Megan Kelly and her co-hosts dissect President Trump's successful strike on three Iranian nuclear sites, criticizing CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand for leaking low-confidence failure assessments while ignoring IAEA confirmation of destroyed centrifuges. They satirize Michelle Obama in a parody podcast, analyze NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte's sudden praise for Trump, and condemn progressive mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's socialist platform that threatens to turn Manhattan into "Gaza." Ultimately, the episode argues that leftist ideology and a lack of Democratic leadership are driving dangerous radicalization within American cities. [Automatically generated summary]
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon East.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
We begin today with a reaction to a historic press briefing at the Pentagon this morning.
Wow, did this one deliver?
We haven't seen anything like this in a very long time.
Nothing's coming to mind in my history as a reporter.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Raisincane delivering an update on President Trump's strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend.
And it was fascinating.
Secretary Hegseth calling the bombings, quote, a resounding success, and said it was the most complex and secretive military operation in history.
And I don't know about that.
Like developing the atom bomb was pretty big.
It was complex and it was secretive, but I take his point.
It was one of.
I think that's probably what he meant to say.
He said the bombings directly led to a ceasefire agreement, true, and an end to what the administration is calling the 12-day war between Israel and Iran.
And the Defense Secretary took the media in that room to task because the Pentagon media has been a failure, a total and utter failure in reporting on this administration and in particular this mission for not playing it straight on this.
I mean, yes, it's the Trump administration, so they would love praise, but that's not the media's job.
But just play it straight.
You know, normally there's not an instinct or shouldn't be to shit all over the military heroes after they risk their lives.
That's really not been our thing since Vietnam.
And then we learned those lessons.
It is a strain of leftism.
They veered dangerously close to doing that when the Iraq war got launched.
But for some reason, now, because Trump is the commander-in-chief, I guess it's fine to just not give any credit to the brave pilots who conducted this mission.
I mean, truly risked their lives to conduct this mission.
It's just more important to rip on Trump, you see.
And Hegseth knows that both as a former member of the military and as defense secretary and a key part of the Trump administration himself.
So he went after them for how they've covered Operation Midnight Hammer.
That's what they're calling this.
Based on a selective leak from what we know was a preliminary low-confidence intelligence assessment.
Let me just tell you something.
You know, Catherine Herridge, we worked together at Fox News for many years.
She was our Intel reporter over there.
Then she went to CBS and did it for many years.
And this is what she said in a post today on preliminary assessments labeled low confidence.
In the hierarchy of Intel reports, a preliminary assessment with low confidence would not carry much weight.
It's an early snapshot that concedes the picture will likely change as more intelligence is developed.
Based on that, so that's normally why the Pentagon would not release such a thing to the public, but some asshole within the Pentagon working for the Defense Intelligence Agency leaked it.
And who did this person go to?
They went to a reporter by the name of Natasha Bertrand, who is the person who has been the best stenographer for deep state type intel operatives.
This is the person who had the scoop on how 51 intelligence agents say the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation.
She led the reporting on Russia, Russia, Russia gate info.
We'll have more on her later, but my point is simply, there's a reason that some Trump hater within the Pentagon went to a different Trump hater, now working for CNN, who's got a long history of Trump hating that has completely undermined any credibility this young woman hoped to have.
She's very young, but she keeps getting awards and Emmys because if you just say terrible things about Trump, especially if you can put an Intel source behind them, you'll win awards.
In any event, she's the one who got this whole thing started saying that the operation was a failure.
It was a fucking failure.
Sorry.
And so now it's now at the point where you've got the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense, because the media ran with this is snowballed, going out there to say, just sit down.
Okay.
Sit down.
And by the way, neither the New York Times nor CNN even noted that this preliminary assessment was of, quote, low confidence in their initial reports on this.
We pointed this out in AM update.
Neither one pointed out that the assessment was of low confidence.
Do you think that might be relevant?
Could that be relevant?
You know, maybe the audience should be told that.
You know, just asking.
Here's Hegseth this morning.
Because you, and I mean, specifically you, the press, specifically you, the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard, it's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad.
Trump Haters in the Pentagon00:14:48
You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes.
You have to hope maybe they weren't effective.
Maybe the way the Trump administration has represented them isn't true.
So let's take half truths, spun information, leaked information, and then spin it.
Spin it in every way we can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the public mind over whether or not our brave pilots were successful.
Secretary Hegseth then turned the press conference over to Chairman Kane, who revealed the extraordinary skill and true heroism of service members whose stories seldom reached the public.
It's so extraordinary to get a play-by-play like this.
He began by describing exactly how the military shot down those 14 missiles heading at them.
Iran fired them in the wake of our dropping the bombs on Iranian nuclear sites.
And this was Iran's retaliation, you'll recall, against American air bases.
One went, I think, to Iraq, but in Qatar on Monday.
Roughly 44 American soldiers responsible for defending the entire base to include CENTCOM's forward headquarters in the Middle East.
The oldest soldier was a 28-year-old captain.
The youngest was a 21-year-old private who'd been in the military for less than two years.
You at that age are the sole person responsible to defend this base.
These awesome humans, along with their Qatari brothers and sisters in arms, stood between a salvo of Iranian missiles and the safety of Al Udeed.
They are the unsung heroes of the 21st century United States Army.
He described what it was like for them to be sitting there and understanding that they had 120 seconds to act to strike down these incoming missiles with our own Patriot missiles, which end them and protect us.
And how these young guys, this one guy, the 21-year-old guy, had been in the armed services for less than two years.
Think of it.
It's so great when they put that sort of human element onto these reports.
The general then explained just how much time and effort went into the bombing.
There were three nuclear sites that we bombed, but in particular, the one at Fordo.
And it was crazy.
That's the one that truly, it was like the Top Gun Maverick operation.
If you haven't seen Top Gun Maverick, you've got to download that movie tonight with your family because it's all about how there was a nuclear site of a foreign government that we needed to hit where they were enriching uranium.
It was going to be in this very skinny little valley that would be very difficult to get into and fly an F-16 into or what looked like one of these B-2 bombers.
And you're going to have to reach Mach 10 and it was going to be impossible to maneuver and it could only be done by a couple of planes.
They had to get in and get out and they could get shot down and one was going to sort of loosen the spigot on the site.
Another was going to drop the big bomb that was going to take it out.
I mean, it's like, it's got so many parallels, not perfect, but it's a lot of parallels.
So he explained much more about the strike on the nuclear facility at Fordo, that much like in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, where we'd been on this mission, we learned later that the CIA had been on this mission for years, for years after 9-11, to figure out everything they could about not just bin Laden, but everything related to bin Laden, everyone related to bin Laden, so they could figure out where he was.
They've been doing that on Fordo.
They knew where it was, but they knew everything.
They knew when the Iranians started it.
They watched them build it.
They had been on a mission for years to know everything that could be known about this place.
And then they developed a plan long ago.
This has been in the works just in case to destroy it.
All right.
General Kane revealing that one officer spent 15 years on this issue.
He said they started building it in 2009.
And this guy has basically been in a basement for that entire time.
And then they added a second guy to it.
So these two guys have spent the last 15 years on nothing other than Fordo.
And not only have they been studying everything there is to know about Fordo, but they realized we were going to need a new bomb to destroy Fordo, that we didn't have that in our existing arsenal.
And that is how those 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs were born.
Listen.
In 2009, a defense threat reduction agency officer was brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran.
For security purposes, I'm not going to share his name.
He was shown some photos and some highly classified intelligence of what looked like a major construction project in the mountains of Iran.
He was tasked to study this facility, work with the intelligence community to understand it, and he was soon joined by an additional teammate.
For more than 15 years, this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target, Ford, a critical element of Iran's covert nuclear weapons program.
And along the way, they realized we did not have a weapon that could adequately strike and kill this target.
So they began a journey to work with industry and other tacticians to develop the GBU-57.
They accomplished hundreds of test shots and dropped many full-scale weapons against extremely realistic targets for a single purpose.
Kill this target at the time and place of our nation's choosing.
And then on a day in June of 2025, more than 15 years after they started their life's work, the phone rang and the President of the United States ordered the B-2 force that you've supported to go strike and kill this target.
Think of it.
Can you imagine that?
Can you imagine?
I'd love, I'd love to meet these two guys.
I understand perfectly well why we can't.
But wouldn't you love to meet these pilots?
And then these guys, these guys who are, they're like the CIA agent who found bin Laden.
They do all the preliminary work.
They know this site like the back of their hands.
I'm sure they worked every day to figure out exactly what it would take to destroy it.
And then once they built that bomb and understood, then got the call from President Trump that we're doing it.
Like your site, Fordo, is now under my target.
We're doing it.
Then those guys have got to pray.
They've got to hope that the military guys who fly the B-2s do it perfectly, that nothing goes wrong, that the Iranians don't detect the flights on the way in.
I mean, think of it.
It's crazy how much had to go right for these guys, the amount of planning and professionalism.
General Kane next describing the stunning precision required to actually hit Fordo, where it was most vulnerable, all of which they knew that this was not just like a bunch of guys like, oh, we got to go bomb this very small site.
They knew Fordo forward and backward, and they were very prepared to destroy it.
You can see these three holes depicted here is the main exhaust shaft with two additional ventilation shafts on either side.
The United States decided to strike these two ventilation shafts seen here on the main graphic as the primary point of entry into the mission space.
In the days preceding the attack against Fordeau, the Iranians attempted to cover the shafts with concrete to try to prevent an attack.
The planners had to account for this.
They accounted for everything.
The cap was forcibly removed by the first weapon, and the main shaft was uncovered.
Weapons two, three, four, five were tasked to enter the main shaft, move down into the complex at greater than 1,000 feet per second and explode in the mission space.
Then he talked about there was a weapon six with the flex capability, which sounded a lot like the flex capacitor and things got really exciting.
But no, it's incredible.
The four-star general showing exactly how these bombs work, debuting stunning footage of a test shot.
This isn't the actual bombing of the Iranian facility.
It's a test shot the military did of a GBU-57 bomb, just like the one that was used on Iran.
You were watching it right now.
For the listening audience, it's hard to explain.
You should just go watch it 14 minutes after the hour on our MK YouTube feed, but it's incredible.
And you've got up-close footage of this thing sort of burrowing.
It looks like almost to me, it looks like a space shuttle, like that, that we would launch upward normally, but we're launching it straight downward, burrowing into the ground.
And then it explodes when it gets down there.
Yeah, okay.
So then there's a human element to every military operation.
General Kane knew that.
And as I already pointed out, he talked to some, spoke to some of that.
But he went on, these pilots absolutely risked their lives to protect this country.
There was a time in which we wouldn't have had to be reminded of this by the Secretary of Defense, by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
There was a time in which we would have understood and inherently recognized and paid homage to the emotional strain that this type of mission creates on those who execute it and on their families.
We used to be quick to praise the heroes of our military, especially in effectively never before attempted missions like this one.
And General Kane took that on earlier today too.
Watch.
When the crews went to work on Friday, they kissed their loved ones goodbye, not knowing when or if they'd be home.
Late on Saturday night, their families became aware of what was happening.
And on Sunday, when those jets returned from Whiteman, their families were there.
Flags flying and tears flowing.
I have chills literally talking about this.
The jets rejoined into a formation of four airplanes, followed by a formation of three and came up overhead whiteman proudly in the traffic pattern, pitching out to land right over the base and landing to the incredible cheers of their families who sacrifice and serve right alongside their family members.
Like I said, there were a lot of flags and a lot of tears.
One commander told me this is a moment in the lives of our families that they will never forget.
It's incredible.
I have chills just thinking about it.
General Kane is an F-16 pilot himself, by the way.
All I could think of when he was talking about it was this video that was circulating on X over the weekend.
I think this is Blue Angels down in Florida.
It's not these guys, but the scene as he described it reminded me of this.
And I'll bet you those pilots saw something like this when they flew back home to Missouri.
God bless America and gentlemen.
It's Americans on their porch.
I think it's the Blue Angels flying overhead in a similar formation.
And of course, Thunderstruck playing in the background, which is one of the greatest songs ever made.
It's just so, it's so impressive.
It's something to be honored.
I really don't care how you feel about the Iranian mission.
I mean, the mission to take out the Iranian nuclear sites.
As I made clear, I'm in favor of it, but I don't care.
You can support our military and the incredible feat they accomplished, no matter how you feel.
So this is one of the things that Pete and General Kane were saying.
Like, could you just pause for two minutes?
Could you give us two days trying to process what happened, trying to get a handle on how it went?
General Kane said, that doesn't come from me.
You know, what exactly we destroyed.
He said, we don't grade our own homework.
But Pete saying, just calm down and give us a beat, and we will bring you the results, just like we're doing this morning.
But instead, you need Natasha Bertrand to have a leak from some Trump hater of low confidence, not identified as such, reporting that it was a failure, that nothing was destroyed, and that it's only been set back by a month or two.
It's not true that now we've had reports from the Israeli intelligence.
We've had reports from the IAEA.
The IAEA is out there saying the sites have been destroyed.
The director of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, said specifically, not just the entrance.
This is one of the reports, like maybe they just got the entrance to the Fordo facility, the exit.
He said, no, the centrifuges at Fordo, where they are doing the enrichment of the uranium, are no longer operational.
I mean, what more do you need to hear?
So the press, having been subjected to this appropriate lecture from these two, absolutely remained clueless and got absolutely nothing of what had just been communicated to them.
And instead, thought this would be the moment to whine again to Secretary Hegseth about why he called the pilots boys when one of them was female.
Why not acknowledge the female pilots that also participated in this mission?
The early messages that you sent out only congratulated the boys.
So it is something like our boys and bombers.
See, this is the kind of thing the press does, right?
Of course, the chairman mentioned a female bomber pilot.
Defending Reporting on Pilots00:02:03
That's fantastic.
She's fantastic.
She's a hero.
I want more female bomber pilots.
I hope the men and women of our country sign up to do such brave and audacious things.
But when you spin it as because I say our boys and bombers is a common phrase, I'll keep saying things like that, whether they're men or women.
We're very proud of that female pilot, just like I'm very proud of those male pilots.
And I don't care if it's a male or a female in that cockpit and the American people don't care.
But it's the obsession with race and gender in this department that's changed priorities.
We don't do that anymore.
We don't play your little games.
Right on.
Well handled like a boss.
Secretary Hegseth also lashing out at Fox News's Jennifer Griffin, who on Sunday posted on X about there being a female pilot.
It's an expression.
Our boys, I guarantee you, I was the only female lawyer in my Chicago law firm when I what kind of a moron would take offense to the generic reference of our boys?
We get it, all right?
Only the most thin-skinned sensitive women would be like, oh, and I guarantee you, the most thin-skinned, sensitive women don't become B-2 bomber pilots.
This is an absurdity.
But she was one of the ones to quickly call him out for using the term boys in the bombers.
And Hegseth and she had an exchange this morning.
Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Ford mountain or some of it?
Because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance.
Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?
Of course, we're watching every single aspect, but Jennifer, you've been about the worst.
The one who misrepresents the most intentionally reported about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night.
And in fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy.
Fast Debt Relief Solutions00:02:51
So I take issue with that.
I appreciate you acknowledging that this was the first operate, the most successful mission based on operational security that this department has done since you've been here.
And I appreciate that.
So we're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where.
I mean, I like Jennifer, but he's not wrong that she's had a definite and detectable bias against Donald Trump.
If you look at her reporting, that's just, it's obvious.
Again, I really like her and I respect what she's been through as a reporter and a woman, but I don't, I see why he's angry.
And you heard her there defending her reporting.
Here now to react to all of this, the fellas are back.
Josh Holmes, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook, and Comfortably Smug, the hosts of the Ruthless podcast.
You were on top of your bills and then inflation hit.
Groceries, gas, everything shot up.
Prices are up 26% from just a few years ago.
26%.
Let me share a smarter, faster, far easier way out of debt.
It's called done with debt.
And they're not like other debt relief companies.
They don't push loans or bankruptcy on you.
Done with debt, they have negotiators who go head to head with your credit card and load companies.
They have one goal, to drastically reduce or eliminate your debt altogether.
And unlike others, done with debt can move lightning fast.
Most clients need more money in their pocket month one.
But a word to the wise, hurry, because some of their brilliant debt erasing strategies are time sensitive.
Do not make another bill payment until you speak with a done with debt strategist.
It's free.
Visit donewithdebt.com.
That's donewithdebt.com, donewithdebt.com.
Guys, great to see you.
What a banger.
First 23 minutes.
How's it making you feel?
I love it.
You know, and what a great press conference.
And for those of us who grew up and revere America and love our country, believe in American exceptionalism, believe that America is the greatest force for good that this world has ever known.
This feels like we've returned America to the leader of the free world.
Well, and I love the way Megan compared it to the hunt for bin Laden.
Like, you know, there were people at the CIA that were on the bin Laden desk for their entire career focused only on this thing.
And to think the United States of America had not just one, but two dudes or ladies, I don't, I guess we don't know.
I don't want to pull ahead of time.
You never know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sitting in a basement somewhere studying for, I mean, I have niche interests, but 15 years on one facility on the other side of the globe, that's a lot.
I think it's, it's, and it says a lot, right?
It's like, who could ever question the resolve of the United States of America?
Do not screw with America.
We will have two dudes in a basement.
Study your facility for 15 years.
They're killing you.
And they're heroes.
And we will never know their names.
CIA Bin Laden Desk Focus00:14:40
You're exactly right, Megan.
But you said something about how you would like to meet them.
And I'm quite confident that when they heard that, you launched a thousand conversations among them and their buddies about how you said you want to meet them.
I would love to meet them, even in private, even just to press the flesh and say thank you and just show them that this country loves them and is proud of them, notwithstanding what these moronic reporters would have them believe.
And the New York Times wants people to feel.
You know, on the subject of Jennifer Griffin, not to beat up on her too much, but I'll just give you one example.
So right just today, today now, she's reporting because, you know, Trump yesterday was like, I'm not sure we need an agreement with Iran.
Like, I guess we could put something in writing that we're going to like inspect, but we blew up their nuclear facilities.
And Trump's kind of like, and I guess maybe we'll just have to blow up more.
I don't, like, it's done.
He's like, it's destroyed.
So I guess we could put something in writing.
He says, I don't care if we have an agreement or not.
And then of course, Jennifer Griffin comes out and says, actually, every U.S. and Israeli expert who has studied the Iranian nuclear program tells me that without the agreement and inspectors on the ground, the Iranian regime, which while definitely hurt, survived the humiliary military strikes, humiliating military strikes on its key nuclear sites and its ballistic middle infrastructure missile, will return to pursuing nuclear enrichment.
You can't bomb the knowledge.
There's no way to bomb Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The military is a tool to set the program back in order to then negotiate.
But, you know, I have to say, guys, it seems to me that our ability to know what was happening at Fordo was pretty good.
And it seems to have largely come from our intel, the Israeli intel, satellite images, and probably not exactly the IAEA inspections that Iran had to allow.
I mean, I'm sure it's a combo, but like my point is simply, we seem to have known Fordo the way your GYN knows your ovaries.
And that's a good thing.
I don't quite know how to react to that.
I presume that you've probably...
Well, more can be said.
It is like an ovary.
He says you don't actually have the ability to lay hands on it every day, but you can check it out and keep an eye on it and make sure its general health is where you want it to be.
Okay.
Okay.
That's a fair assessment.
Well, I don't want to continue the parallel here.
Look, if you think about the way that the press has just entered into this conversation with casting doubt and using this low confidence intel assessment to basically suggest that this mission was a failure, which is ridiculous.
It's also illogical in that the stated mission from Donald Trump over and over and over again, and then after over and over and over again, was to render these nuclear sites inoperable.
That's what it was.
Now, unless you didn't pay attention to the news for the last 10 days, the Israeli Air Force was basically doing an Oshkosh air show over Tehran.
It wasn't a lot of opportunity to just sort of like one shot and done.
I mean, if they didn't get the job done, does anybody really think that Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and our brave men and women in uniform wouldn't get that job done?
Or moreover, that somehow Natasha Bertrand has a better handle on whether or not they're enriching uranium spill than our United States military that mapped out, as you say, the ovaries of a nuclear facility.
You know, I mean, that's just the logical piece of this that makes no sense.
Well, and here's the other thing.
Like the initial report was like, oh, they collapsed the entrance to Fordo.
That's basically it.
And meanwhile, you hear General Kane talking about how all the number of bombs we had, but these like burrowing bombs that, again, just picture like a rocket that we watched launch only facing down, going down into the earth, that the precision drops of each into each ventilation shaft that was on either side of the centrifuges doing the enrichment.
And the reason was because you can get down in those ventilation shafts.
Here's a, this is from the test video that they showed us.
This isn't the actual, but supposedly it looks like what it looked like.
So they go down into those two ventilation shafts on either end and then dropped off like a thousand pounds, whatever.
These are 30,000 pound bombs and caused a huge explosion.
In the presser, they talked about how the pilots talked about it was pitch dark and then it lit up like the daytime, possibly because they hit a uranium centrifuge.
And now they want us to be believed like, oh, they basically knocked down a screen door with their and back to Holmes's point on the whole common sense of this.
Do you think like if Donald Trump wasn't super confident that he got what he needed to out of these strikes, do you think he would have been calling for a ceasefire and getting the Iranians and the Israelis to the table the next day?
That's the mission.
That was the point of the mission.
If it didn't succeed and they were basically doing whatever the heck they wanted over Tehran for a calendar week, they would, of course, would have gotten the job done.
I mean, it's just five.
Even Trump said that.
Trump, in his thing about the agreement, when he's like, I don't think we need an agreement, he says, you know, I told Marco, like, should we have an agreement?
goes because I think they'll do whatever we want them to do.
Like, right?
He's like, right now, they're going to sign whatever the hell we want and resign so they don't see our B2 bombers again anytime soon.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, look, fire up the ACDC, fire up Freebird.
We got America back on top of the world right now.
You see it, you know, Trump goes over to NATO and what a difference eight years makes, right?
They're like making fun of him eight years ago.
Now they're like, oh, you wanted 2%?
How about five?
How about 5% of our GDP?
What else do you need?
To me, that's the most stunning thing of seeing the press reaction, especially from people like Natasha Bertrand, is we are so incredibly fortunate.
President Trump saw this window of opportunity where Israel had degraded so many of Iran's proxies all around that region.
And America had already bombed the Houthis.
And so you have a window of opportunity for this problem, this thorn in our side, which could eventually get to the point where Iran has a nuclear bomb.
And he has the foresight and knows there's so much chatter out there online of like, oh, no, this is going to be a forever war.
This is going to be 20 years of boots on the ground in Iran.
And he's willing to do the right thing.
Precision strike, which takes care of the problem.
Americans should be celebrating.
Wow.
Universally celebrating.
How lucky are we?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The only group of people trying to take America down a peg right now is the press.
I mean, Pete Hegseth had the temerity to say thank you to our boys in the air.
And they're like, wait a minute, you didn't mention women.
You played this clip.
They asked him about it again today.
And it's an issue that I think deserves some examination.
You know, our good friend Josh Holmes pointed out earlier this week that if you look throughout history, like it's Cindy Lauper's famous song, Girls Just Want to Have Fun.
Well, the truth of the matter is boys want to have fun too.
So you need to go back through everything in history and even things out if you're going to start doing it right now in America's history.
That's so true.
The nerve of Cindy Lauper, who knew she was such a sexist pig.
This exclusionary language must stop.
By the way, we looked it up.
The Washington Times is reporting that the woman who asked that totally inane question was Associated Press reporter Tara Kopp, Tara COPP.
If so, she ought to be ashamed of herself.
If not, we'll correct it after we find out if we're wrong.
But I don't think we're wrong.
It tracks.
So bizarre.
The whole thing.
It tracks perfectly.
You have this incredible mission, this absolute success.
Presidents from the 90s were talking about how you go about dealing with nuclear ambitions in Iran.
We end up with a successful strike and they're like, Mr. Secretary, were there trans capabilities in B2s?
Like we got to make sure that everyone feels comfortable and allowed to bomb to rock.
I mean, what in the hell?
That's exactly right.
Was there a non-binary bomber?
If so, I can't.
If not, I can't get behind this.
There's so much more to talk about here.
So I want to spend a minute on the media.
Laura Coates of CNN did like a whole hour earlier this week on how this was a failure.
Here's a sampling.
Just how effective were the American strikes on Iran's nuclear program?
Well, tonight, CNN is learning a preliminary intelligence assessment suggests they did not destroy Iran's nuclear sites.
This early report is from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.
CNN has spoken with seven people, briefed on it.
One source says that the strike set Iran back, quote, maybe a few months, tops.
Two others tell us the country's talk pal of enriched uranium was also not destroyed.
Another says the centrifuges are largely intact.
Really?
Because the director of the IAEA is now on record saying the centrifuges are no longer operational.
The CIA and every other intelligence agency to look at this, including the Israelis, say it's been destroyed and it will take years for them to rebuild anything.
So like I look forward to their correction.
What's happening instead is you had Trump take aim in particular at CNN because they hired this dishonest Natasha Berstrand.
Bertrand, that's my opinion.
She's actually not just bad, dishonest.
They hired her and Trump says she should be fired.
I agree.
She shouldn't be hired.
The fact that she has a job at all after her disastrous fake news reporting for years at Politico and Business Insider and for the Atlantic is a miracle.
I mean, it's a travesty.
So he says she should be fired.
This is a ridiculous thing that she's out there still doing this to me.
And then you get, wait for it, Jake Tapper to swoop in and provide a lecture to the president on what the proper role of a journalist is.
I think we have it.
Let's watch.
Yes.
We don't know yet whether this administration is accurately portraying what happened in Iran or not.
We don't know.
That's the point of publishing what we know that the government learns once we learn it.
The lesson's there.
The news media needs to press for facts, even if it's uncomfortable, even if as Americans and as humans, there is a personal instinct to rally around the flag.
Asking questions is literally our job, demanding facts and answers instead of just taking a president's word for it.
History has taught us the most pro service member action we can take is to ask questions of our leaders, especially in times of war.
That, for journalists, is the height of it.
My head hurts.
We have the obligation to ask questions of our presidents and not just take their word.
We know.
Yeah, we know.
We just spent four years covering for an invalid.
I wonder what was different about him.
Maybe it was because he's a Democrat.
I will say, Megan, though, it was nice to see that Jake has now regained control of his faculties after the beatdown that you administered during his book tour.
My God, that was incredible.
That's the only time I've ever felt really sorry for him ever in my life.
No, he deserved it.
He said he wanted a beatdown.
So he said he was looking forward to the exchange.
And I think it went as we to oblige.
Okay.
So they're all, you know, they're all upset at CNN that their star reporter is now coming under fire.
Let me just give you a sample.
I know you guys know, but like the audience, because no one's ever heard of this woman, Natasha Bertrand.
I can't even get her name straight.
She's very young.
She is fucking clueless.
Honestly, she has no idea how not to be used as a stenographer for intel forces that have an agenda.
These are the least trustworthy people on the planet.
Like their leaks to you require the most scrutiny, doubt, and tire kicking of any leak you'll ever get.
But instead, her only test seems to have been, does this help or hurt Trump?
Hurt?
I'll go with it.
Let's do that.
Here's just a sampling of her over the past couple of years.
But if you take, for example, the steel dossier at kind of face value, or you take that as any kind of guide, there was a lot of internal dissent within the Russian government about whether or not and to what extent the Russians should interfere in the U.S. election and coordinate with Donald Trump.
Trump said, Russia, if you're listening, it almost seemed like a signal.
Intelligence experts have been telling me that it seemed like at that moment, Trump was signaling to the Russians that it was okay for them to do that and implicitly giving them his permission to do that.
But it makes it much more plausible that Trump did go to Russia and he did have these kinds of sexual escapades with prostitutes.
And no, Trump has been traveling to Moscow for quite some time.
And it just makes it all the more plausible that what the dossier says he did actually did occur.
What if Donald Trump actually knew beforehand that the Russians planned to do this and was kind of giving them a signal to proceed?
Because former intelligence officials that I spoke to said that this might have been, in fact, a signal to the Russians to give them kind of political cover in order to hack into Clinton's emails.
All right, Natasha, thanks so much.
You covered this so closely and it shows.
I mean, it's first-class reporting.
We could have been here all day with soundbites from her just like this.
You guys know Eric Wempel, right, at the Washington Post?
Unsubstantiated Claims About Trump00:10:28
He's a media critic and he's unsparing.
And he, to his credit, will be unsparing even of left-wing reporters.
And he went off on this woman in February of 2020.
I'm just going to give you a couple of samples, okay?
He started by recounting a hit that she was doing on MSNBC because she used to be an MSNBC contributor.
Now she's over at CNN.
And he talks about how she went on Joy Reed's show.
And they turned to Natasha on whether Trump wanted Russian meddling or whether he just can't accept that foreign help is there.
Natasha responded: We don't have the reporting that suggests the president has told AIDS, for example, that he really wants Russia to interfere because he thinks that it's going to help him, right?
Eric Wempel goes on, No, we don't have that reporting, though there's no prohibition against fantasizing about it on national television.
Such is the theme of Bertrand's commentary during previous coverage of Russian interference, specifically the Steele dossier.
Bertrand helped or heaped credibility on the dossier, which was published and followed by BuzzFeed in January 17, in repeated television appearances.
Her written work has appeared on Business Insider, The Atlantic Political, where she's now a national security correspondent.
She was at Political before CNN too.
Along the way, she bootstrapped her punditry into a contributor's role in MSNBC.
Her boosterism for these lies dates back years.
And he goes on about how she got the Paul Manafort story wrong.
She kept going on the air to play up every piece of the fake Russia gate reporting in the most uncharitable way towards Trump possible.
He says her highlight reel features a great deal of thumb on the scale speculation regarding the dossier.
And if I read you all the highlights, we'd be here all day.
But let's just suffice it to say that she never saw a negative piece of information from the Intel community about Trump she didn't like.
And she's the one who printed, who broke the big news in Politico about the 51 intelligence agents who say the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation.
This is the woman who just took a massive dump on those B2 pilots because she decided to run with nothing was destroyed except for the screen door.
And without telling the audience, it was low confidence.
So Natasha Bertrand has a very long and storied history of trafficking in just not only lies, but figments of her own imagination.
I think there were rumors I'd heard from other journalists that the reason why she hops from publication to publication is because editors eventually get sick of having to deal with covering for what are out and out lies.
Sort of Taylor Lorenz issue.
Yeah.
So she has to keep hopping around to publications.
And further, I've heard from Democrats that she's the easiest way to place anything you want and get it out there.
Of course.
She has built her fire off of these TV hits where she basically says whatever any kind of like loony tune resistance, you know, wine mom wants to hear.
They want to be told, you're not crazy, lady.
It's not, you know, you're catting your brain worms.
Actually, Trump is a Russian agent this whole time.
Believe me.
Now, let's kill the Chablis.
Have an afternoon.
Her entire career is based off of just feeding into that madness and telling insane people you're not the crazy one.
And she's gotten away with it for so long.
I cannot wait for it to finally catch up with her.
I mean, I have, yeah, it's like, I, I don't know if they're lies.
I don't know what they are, but how is she wrong so often and always in one direction?
You know, is she this naive?
Because when if you're going to cover this beat, you know, Intel, the Pentagon, I'm sorry, but like you need a Catherine Herridge.
You know, you need like a motherfucker who will like be all over you.
She won't believe a word you say.
She dislikes everyone.
Like that's what you need.
It works.
It works.
You can't have this doe-eyed, no-nothing reporter who just gets used as a tool, a stooge of these Intel agents who are far smarter than she is.
So I don't know if these are lies or just she's fine being used and made to look like a fool in every report she does smug.
I don't know.
Yeah, I don't, I don't know if they're lies, Megan.
I think what it is is to the, it's wish casting.
Like whatever is the least charitable, you know, fact that the deep state can spin to her, she's going to accept it at face value because she wants it to be true so badly.
The other thing that really comes to mind in all of this, you know, with reporters like that talking about how, oh, well, we didn't actually, you know, take out the nuclear sites.
Like it's, it's their, their instinct to sort of root against Trump.
And it reminds me so much of those like early months of COVID where you got this whole sort of strain of journalism that seemed like it was almost rooting for the virus.
Yeah.
You know?
Yes.
Yep.
Big inroads in Manhattan this afternoon.
No, it's true.
It's true.
But I think the Intel thing, look, this is a fairly recent phenomenon in the, it's in the era of Trump, where we've sort of become more skeptical of what the deep state is producing.
And there's just cabal.
It's been, it's not new, but now we know about it.
That part is new of like the Brennans and the clappers and their acolytes that sort of live within this apparatus.
And people like Natasha Bertrand are their exclusive way out to just sort of undermine the larger mission of the country and the president and everything else.
But they do this very tricky thing.
And you could hurt here in the clips that you played of her doing just this, which is making an assertion that is like blindly insane, totally unsupported by facts.
And then she drops a comma and says, Intel officials say.
Yep.
Right.
Intel official, unidentified, is likely one of these, you know, somebody who picks up Brennan's coffee in the morning.
But that's the way that she can traffic the information to the American people.
This has been happening for decades.
It's only in the era of Trump that we've become aware of it.
And what you have is like in that example, Jake Tapper trying to spin this as like some glorious, noble effort at reporting by leaking a preliminary low confidence report, which she did not tell the audience was low confidence in her initial reporting.
Neither CNN nor the New York Times thought that would be relevant at all.
And I read you the Catherine Herridge explanation of how a normal schooled Pentagon or Intel reporter would receive such a leak.
They would be like, this is not worth the paper it's printed on.
It's it that's but what they do is when Pete Hegseth comes out and says, just stop.
That was low confidence and it was preliminary.
All their instincts are, we're being lied to.
We're being spun.
We're being spun.
As opposed to, what if he's telling the truth?
What if, you know, when Tulsi Gabbard comes out, which she just did too, and said it was that the facilities were destroyed.
The CIA John Radcliffe comes out and says, you know, I can't remember his phrase, but it was basically massive damage at all of them and devastating.
The IAEA guy saying, let's get more specific.
The centrifuges are no longer operational.
And he went on to describe the mass.
What if they're telling us the truth?
What if they're not all just engaged in a massive cover-up operation, but our pilots actually did get it done?
How is it you can't even allow for that?
Right.
And if you go back to the first clip you played, what was the one thing she was willing to take at face value?
The steel dossier.
Wasn't going to question that.
A lot of good reasons to believe that.
But it's not just her, you know, it's not just her.
There's an editorial process that falls apart when they don't include that this is a low confidence preliminary early report.
And also, by the way, the CIA says and also other intelligence sources say, and the way that they frame it is that this is the fact.
And then here's a quote from Pete Hegseth, who worked at Fox News and therefore not credible.
And then here's more conjecture from blind sources that we're not even quoting.
We're just paraphrasing our interpretation of what it is they're claiming.
Well said.
And the Israelis feel pretty confident that these facilities were destroyed.
And like, I don't know, not for nothing, but Mossad and these Israelis can put a missile into an apartment bedroom to kill a guy in Tehran.
I think they're pretty well sourced.
And not to not, I mean, like, they're the most under.
And Duncan, I don't think it's from the IAEA inspections that they knew where those guys were living and how to murder them.
Keep going.
And then the other side of it is like, they're the most under threat.
Like they have all the incentive of the world to be like, I think maybe we did 50% of the job.
Like you should go back in there.
But if they're confident in it, then we should be pretty confident.
That's why it's more pernicious than anything.
And that what they're assuming by saying this story is that basically Donald Trump is going to try to put our men and women in uniform in harm's way for something that didn't get done and then throw a bumper sticker and say it got done.
It's insane.
It is, it's, it literally doesn't make any sense.
It's a despise imagination.
And as Judge Judy says, if it doesn't make any sense, it isn't true.
Okay, stand by.
There's much more to discuss.
We've got to get over the romance between Trump and the UN Secretary General.
It was unlike anything we've ever seen before.
NATO hates us.
NATO's, but Secretary Donald.
NATO hates us and yet no longer.
Now we're BFFs.
It was an extraordinary turnabout.
We'll talk about it next.
Let me tell you about Financial Yield Solutions Inc., known as FYSI.
If you are handling your own books or you have a bookkeeper, you risk inaccuracies, missed deductions, and blind spots in cash flow.
FYSI's team of seasoned accounting professionals, corporate and tax attorneys handle every journal entry, bank reconciliation, and month-end close with unmatched precision, delivering clear and timely financial reports that keep you in control.
They weave advanced tax avoidance strategies into your bookkeeping so you capture every deduction before you file and plug you into their network of industry leaders and referral partners for real-world growth opportunities.
Michelle Obama Eulogy Tensions00:12:08
Set up your free consultation to learn how FYSI's experts will transform your books into a growth engine and accelerate your business to the next level.
Act now to claim your free $5,000 business assessment available only for a limited time.
Visit fysi.com slash Megan.
Use promo code Megan or call 800-877-4000 today.
Here with me for the full show today, the hosts of the Ruthless podcast, John Ashbrook, Michael Duncan, Josh Holmes, and the man known to his minions as Comfortably Smug.
You can find all of their shows at ruthlesspodcast.com.
And speaking of shows, you guys are here.
You are my audience, in addition to my actual audience, for the world premiere of the following exclusive trailer.
You know, we've been doing, we've been getting into the parody business here on the MK show.
We had some fun at Megan Markle's expense, and we had some fun at the expense of the ladies from Blue Origin when we did our own Blonde Origin.
And our latest target, as you will see in this little trailer for tomorrow's bigger piece, is Michelle Obama.
Watch a former first lady with her own podcast.
I'm Michelle Obama.
People line up for my advice.
No, not her.
This former first lady.
I'm Megan O. People need to hear from me.
Many people don't understand.
Not much is covered in the White House.
It's expensive to live in the White House.
We made it through.
We got out alive.
But what happened to me?
What happened to me?
No one talks about this.
No, they don't.
With advice that will inspire.
Do you know what having children does to your life?
It ruins it.
They mess you up.
What is marriage?
It's about misery.
Folks think that this is harsh.
It's like you're going to have a bad decade.
We don't articulate our pain.
Yes.
Meet Megan O Friday on the Megan Kelly Show.
I think you don't like it.
I love that stuff.
Yeah.
I love the deadpan.
We don't talk about that.
Nobody ever talks about that.
Maureen is my sister on the podcast.
You know, she has her brother with her.
All he does is kiss her ass and get told how wrong he is on everything he says.
Anyway, we had so much fun doing this because it's like, basically, we're doing the things that Saturday Night Live should do.
We're targeting the people who should be subjected to scorn and ridicule, but the left won't touch because they're too revered.
Like for some reason, Megan Markle's in that category.
Michelle Obama, obviously, the ladies of Blue Origin.
Everyone's too afraid of Jeff Bezos to touch the Lauren Sanchez thing.
It's like we've been having such a good time just saying what's obvious about the like Michelle, she should change her name to Misery Obama.
That's really what I think of when I Misery Obama never has a positive word to say.
Never, never, not about children, not about family, not about, certainly not about her husband.
By the way, before we leave this topic, here is her latest soundbite that made the rounds.
This happened on June 18th, but I was off.
Here it is, SAT 39.
You should have threw a boy in the mix.
I'm so glad I didn't have a boy.
He would have been a Barack Obama.
Baby Barack, it would have been a mix.
No, I would have felt for him.
She just borrowed our boys.
Oh, yeah, I got it.
Wow.
Did you catch that?
She's glad she didn't have a boy because he would have been a Barack Obama.
And that's a hard pass for her.
This woman can't stand him.
Wait a minute.
Now I like her.
She prevented another Barack in the world.
Irene Racing Quakes.
We could have had another shot.
No, wait.
Speaking of Barack Obama, he decided to drop a post on X today.
And I thought, okay, maybe in the wake of the Pete Hegset presser, he's going to say something like, no matter how you feel about the Iranian strike, hats off to our, you know, boys in blue, our, our guys and the bombers.
He went a different way.
This is what it was.
Curious how you're thinking about this eulogy specifically in the moment and all the tensions that you just brought up.
I didn't even want to talk.
I was so mad.
Part of the reason I think I ended up having anything to say at that moment was when I heard some of the victims' families forgive the shooter.
And I thought, all right, let's see if maybe this is a way America can hear me at this moment.
Go back to that day 10 years ago.
What I think binds it together, all these different strands.
A case upholding healthcare, a case declaring same-sex marriage part of our constitutional protection, of mourning.
I think what pulls it all together is that no one person did any of that.
Okay.
So he's sitting around on a June Thursday thinking about himself and his glory days.
And to your point, Smug, I'm starting to warm up to Michelle Obama's POV.
I mean, like, what is he doing?
That's really something.
You know, a lot of people can try to be critical of President George W. Bush, but he said numerous times that upon leaving the White House, he saw it as not a respect that wasn't even given to him of leave with grace.
The job is someone else's now.
Yeah.
And like the kind of thing you do when you respect your country.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then you've got the, first off, Michelle Obama being like, you don't understand how tough it was.
You know, hats off to the production team, though, at the Megan Kelly show.
I've seen some numbers and I think your production team actually may have doubled the total audience of the Michelle Obama podcast.
Last time I saw, they had like just the most atrocious numbers.
And I mean, I guess that's terrible.
I thought it was just because everyone's done with the Obamas.
It doesn't want to hear about him.
But like, even if you were the kind of person who's like, I really care what Michelle Obama thinks.
And then she's like, it was tough.
We barely survived living into life.
We got out alive.
I have a conspiracy theory on this, Megan.
And that is Michelle Obama is probably getting really tired of people being like, you should run.
Like you should be a politician.
She's like, I'm going to disabuse you.
I'm going to make myself as likable as possible.
Negative I am.
Yeah.
People stop asking.
Misery Obama does not want to run for office.
Misery just wants to sit and talk about how miserable she is.
And honestly, when you see the full parody tomorrow, you'll laugh.
Like I even, I started bursting out laughing a couple of times because it seems impossible.
Like it seems like I'm being too mean.
But then we've intersplicated the actual Michelle Obama saying these exact things.
Like we haven't made that.
I'd like to create outtakes of that whole thing too, Megan.
It's a good idea, Holmes.
It's going to be great.
We may, let me try to put that together for you on request.
I will speak to the production team because the fellas have good ideas.
Okay, so that's, by the way, Bill Clinton too.
He had time to tweet out about June 19th or Juneteenth.
He had time to tweet out about Zorhan Mamdani, but not a word about the military accomplishment that they all said we needed to do, that they all said Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon.
And our boys went out there and made sure it didn't happen.
And because it was under Trump, they couldn't spare just a fucking tweet just to say, proud to be an American.
Go Team USA or like, congrats to our men and women in uniform for once again proving what a true professional looks like.
You can absolutely find a way to tip your hat to these guys over whom you were commander in chief for a time without endorsing the mission if you don't want to do that.
You know, it's just, no, it's more important to talk about Zorhan Mamdani or Juneteenth or in Obama's case, himself.
And it's even deeper.
Like Jeb Bush tweeted out congratulations to President Trump for stopping Iran's nuclear program.
And Trump tweets out, thanks for the shout out, Jeb Bush.
Like if you have a situation where President Trump like viciously destroys you on stage, and then you can come out and be like, bygones are bygones.
I celebrate America, you know, de-arming a terrible ally of ours and preventing Iran from having a nuclear program.
You know, I've given this some thought, though, on the Bill Clinton side of things.
And I, you know, I'm tired of Barack Obama.
I don't necessarily need to hear from the Clintons.
There is one media appearance that is absolutely essential that he makes at some point.
It's that Monica Lewinsky podcast.
I mean, can you imagine that would be an absolute barn burner?
Now, wait, I'm sorry.
I'm pausing because I'm just looking at this possible breaking news that's coming in.
The Times of Israel has a report.
It's sourced to one source.
So it's sourcing a local Israeli Hebrew daily newspaper.
So it's not the Times of Israel's original reporting.
So we'll see whether it's true, but I'll give you the headline.
It's that Netanyahu has agreed to end the Gaza war within two weeks after the U.S. strike on the Iranian facilities.
And it also goes on to say, again, we don't have this confirmed, that the deal will include the expansion of the Abraham Accords, according to a source familiar with the conversation.
That would be huge.
And actually also has a plan for what to do with Gaza.
This is according, again, they're citing this one outlet that we don't know.
We don't know.
I don't know.
Let's see.
What's this?
This is another thing coming in per this paper.
Gaza hostilities will conclude within two weeks.
Ending conditions.
Yeah.
Will encompass four Arab nations, including Egypt and the UAE to administer the Gaza Strip, replacing the murderous Hamas terrorist organization.
The remaining Hamas leadership will face exile to other countries while the hostages gain freedom.
If this is true, it's huge.
If this is true, I mean, there is no reason why President Trump doesn't get the Nobel Peace Prize.
If it's true, I mean, these are generational issues, which have been conflicts that have gone unresolved and caused so much loss of life and misery.
And if this is true, in six months, this guy, I mean, I'm flabbergasted.
I never thought in my lifetime I'd see this.
Yeah.
And if the Nobel committee can't see it within themselves to give him that prize, they need to just create a new one called the Trump Peace Prize.
This is peace in our time.
Wow.
Possibly like we've never seen in our entire lives.
I got the chills.
Like I actually, there are hairs standing up in the back of my neck because like they've think of that.
Like getting the hostages back is number one.
Bringing the fighting to a close officially between Israel and Hamas and expanding the Abraham Accords.
That's going to be very interesting.
Who's next?
Saudi would be huge.
And then possibly having the UAE and Egypt oversee Gaza, Muslims, right?
Not the United States, not Israel, most importantly, but Muslims, you know, who don't want the Palestinians coming to them, but could be responsible for keeping the peace in that region.
My God, I mean, what a, what a massive undertaking.
Medicaid Funding for Planned Parenthood00:03:25
Again, huge grain of salt to the audience.
We do not know.
Times of Israel is legit, but we do not know this other paper they're citing.
It's a Hebrew daily newspaper who's reporting this based on a phone call they're saying happened between Trump and Netanyahu.
So that would be such a one, so wonderful for the world.
We'll put a pin in it until if it's true, it's going to come out probably within the next hour.
We can round back to it.
But no, I'm just letting you know that that's that's what I was looking at.
I have to spend a minute on what happened at the Supreme Court today, which did happen and has been confirmed.
Another victory for sanity as the Supreme Court rules that states can cut off Medicaid funding to planned parenthood within their states.
What happened was the state of South Carolina did it.
You're already not supposed to be using taxpayer money on Planned Parenthood, on abortion.
But what happens in various states is Planned Parenthood says, oh, well, Mary's coming here for contraception or they always say cancer screenings, even though they're really not done at that all these Planned Parenthoods.
She's just coming here for her cancer screening or her birth control.
That's all.
But Mary's not going to have an abortion and she's not going to use her Medicaid money for an abortion.
And that's how they get Medicaid funding for Mary's visit.
But money's fungible.
And Medicaid is a joint state and federal program.
So we are, we are funding abortions because our money is going to Planned Parenthood in various states.
And there are millions of Americans who have a very, very deep problem with that.
Planned Parenthood should get its own money from its own well-heeled, deep-pocketed leftist donors like Alex Soros now and his weird wife, Uma.
And that's where they should get their money, not from us, not from taxpayers who want nothing to do with abortion.
So the Supreme Court has sided with the sane people because what happened was Mary, who's not really named Mary, in this case, it's an individual who said, I'm going to sue you.
Her name is Julie Edwards, saying, I want to keep going back to my South Carolina Planned Parenthood for birth control.
And I want my Medicaid payments to pay for it.
And the governor had said, no, we're not allowing that for anybody.
Julie, sorry.
And the Supreme Court just said states actually do have that right because Medicaid has a private right of action to enforce it.
Like you have a right to sort of get the doctor of your choosing.
And the Supreme Court said, no, this is one exception to that rule.
The states do not have to allow a private plaintiff to bring a lawsuit if a governor says no public funds for Planned Parenthood are happening in our state.
And that's, that's huge, you guys.
That's a big ruling.
It is really big.
It all stems from what they call the Mexico City policy, which is reinstated every time there's a Republican president, which prohibits taxpayer, federal taxpayer dollars for going to pay for abortion.
But as the left does with almost everything that they do, they try to figure out a way for taxpayers to pay for their social agenda in one way or another.
This is a perfect example of how they've done that.
The idea that Medicaid dollars are going to planned parenthood.
I mean, we know what that outfit does.
And for decades, they've just couched it under women's health, women's health.
This is a women's health clinic.
Now it's an abortion store.
Mark Ruda and Flattery Tactics00:14:47
That's what it is.
And let's be very clear about it.
But that's a big court ruling.
Gosh, what a time to be alive and that we're having some sanity on the street.
Tomorrow we're going to get, we expect, I think it's the last day of opinions.
We expect to get the ruling on whether these nationwide injunctions can keep getting handed down by these district courts, which is the number one form of resistance 2.0 to stop the Trump administration.
It's coming up in the context of birthright citizenship, you know, which Trump has said you can't have.
He's interpreted the Constitution to say you're not a citizen just because you're born here if you're born to somebody who doesn't have citizenship.
And a judge blocked that executive order and issued a nationwide injunction against enforcing it.
And so while this doesn't exactly get to the birthright citizenship issue, that's the context in which the notion of a nationwide injunction is coming up.
So this is going to be a very interesting case on all fronts.
We'll have it covered for you tomorrow because it'll come down at 10 a.m.
Okay, let's keep going because there's still a lot to get to.
We were on Iran.
Let's take the close pivot to NATO and related issues.
NATO, of course, is an organization that many North Atlantic countries have joined originally to prevent aggression in the region by countries like Russia.
Now it's less clear what exactly we're all doing in this party, but it's very, very important to the Europeans because we seem to be the big brother who protects everybody.
And they don't want big brother to leave.
They like big brother's muscles.
They like big brother's strength and they really like his big military with the big B2s.
So they want us to get along with the Big Brother.
They want Big Brother to stay in the alliance.
And Trump all along, first term and second, has kind of been saying, I guess we will, but like we're kind of sick of you freeloading off of us.
Why don't you at least pay what you've already agreed to pay, which is the 2% of your GDP, all of you countries, instead of freeloading?
And he went over there and I pulled this for AM update today.
People should listen to that pod.
But I pulled the New York Times article from 2018 when he went to NATO and it was so negative.
It was like, he has everyone rattled.
He's disrespectful.
He's doing things unconventionally.
You know, all the backbiting comments about Trump, both from the Times reporters and from other countries who are like, what is this effing thing that's come over here trying to demand we pay 2% for real and threatening to leave NATO if we don't?
Now flash forward to, you know, all these years later, what, five, six, seven years, and NATO's like, let's do this.
And Trump gets him to pay 5% of GDP or at least commit the major nations to commit to doing that.
And does the Times say like, nailed it, Mr. President?
Good for you.
You know what?
Your irascible nature actually wound up working on these people long term.
No, they complained that they're not actually going to pay the 5%.
And why wasn't there more attention on Ukraine and the funding for that war?
He can't win.
He's at the point where literally the Secretary General of NATO is calling him daddy and saying he deserves the praise.
Shut up.
And they're still like, no, he's failing.
He sucks.
Okay, so let me give you the soundbites because everybody wants to hear the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutit and his comments about Trump.
Daddy, this is what set everything off where he referred to him as daddy.
I think that's 14.
They've had a big fight like two kids in a schoolyard.
You know, they fight like hell.
You can't stop them.
Let them fight for about two, three minutes.
Then it's easy to stop them.
And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.
Strong language.
Every once in a while, you have to use a certain word.
Okay.
He didn't say you're my daddy, but he said daddy has to use strong language.
That's okay.
All right.
I'm fine.
I think it's fine.
Trump gets asked about it by this snarky reporter and says this in SAT 11.
Mark Ritter, the NATO chief who is your friend, he called you daddy earlier.
Do you recall your NATO allies as kind of children?
No, he likes me.
I think he likes me.
If he doesn't, I'll let you know.
I'll come back and I'll hit him hard.
Okay.
He did.
He did it very affectionately.
Daddy, you're my daddy.
Okay.
One more.
One more before I toss it to you.
Mark Rude got asked about it by maybe the same reporter.
She sounds terrible.
Take a listen.
The language that you have used when talking to Donald Trump has been notable because of its flattery.
Today you called him daddy and you sent a text message to him that was gushing with praise.
Is this the way that you feel that you have to act when doing business with the U.S. president through flattery and praise?
Isn't it a bit demeaning?
And doesn't it make you look weak?
No, I don't think so.
I think it's a bit of a question of taste, but I think he's a good friend.
And when he is doing stuff, which is forcing us to, for example, when it comes to making more investments, I mean, would you ever think that this would be the result of this summit if he would not have been re-elected president?
Do you really think that the seven or eight countries who said, yeah, somewhere in the 2030s, we might meet the 2%, we've now all decided in the last four or five months to get to 2%.
So doesn't he deserve some praise?
And when it comes to Iran, the fact that he took this decisive action, very targeted, to make sure that Iran would not be able to get its hands on a nuclear capability.
I think he deserves all the praise.
That's it right there.
Such a good age.
Right.
Former prime minister of the Netherlands there, Mark Ruda.
Good for him.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
A couple observations.
The first is that was the same reporter.
Sort of into the daddy talk.
It's Deborah Haynes of Sky News.
Yeah.
She's got a thing with the daddy talk.
I don't know what's up with that.
You get two questions to ask the president of the United States.
The NATO Secretary Just like, tell me more about the daddy thing.
Let's talk more about that.
I don't know.
I'm not saying.
I'm going to send her a t-shirt.
They're already making t-shirts.
They're red.
And they have Trump's picture on it and they read daddy.
Second observation is this guy.
What an exceptional head of hair he has.
Right.
I mean, I will follow that man anyway.
That is incredible.
Put it back up.
I didn't look at the hair.
Can we put him back up there?
You don't have to run the sound.
You'll have terrific.
It's S-tier flow.
It really is.
It's like the kind of thing you would want leading your nation.
Yeah, he makes Mitt Romney look like Mr. Rolly Taylor, producers.
Let's see.
Not her.
No, we're not.
Mark Ruda.
Yeah, just a great head of hair.
Good.
More than happy to feel the daddy talk from that young Sky News.
They're a good-looking people.
And I mean, the thing is, is that, you know, his job is to ensure NATO is in a position to accomplish what they need to get done.
And for a reporter to, again, use her time to try to make it, do you feel you need to be effusive in your flattery?
That he has to be like, let me present the facts to you.
Did you not just see what happened in Iran?
Right.
And that he has to say, he even says, like, if President Trump had not been re-elected, do you think we'd be in a place where all these countries have agreed to this funding?
But tell me more about the daddy talk.
It's unbelievable.
I will tell you.
He's like, look, there's a question of like taste.
Even our friends in Europe are starting to get that the way to deal with these woke asshole reporters is to laugh at them?
Go ahead, Astronomy.
It's exactly right.
It's one of the fringe benefits of Trump being who he is, that all of these other leaders are like, wait a minute, I don't have to just take it from this idiot.
I have common sense too.
And I'm going to answer your question that is so stupid with normal common sense and you're going to look really dumb.
And Trump has shown everybody.
I mean, that's real leadership.
He's shown everybody around the world that you can do that and you can win.
I mean, and also, you know, I don't think what's been appreciated is the second and third order effects and results of President Trump taking this decisive action.
We've already talked about how, you know, the Houthis and Hezbollah and the various groups that Iran would lean on had been dismantled and President Trump used this window of opportunity to then get rid of the nuclear program.
Part of the reason Iran also didn't have it is because Syria, you see, like the allies in the region that they had are all one by one falling apart.
Russia no longer has any say in this region.
So Europe's got to be in a happy position.
China now can't buy cheap oil from Iran.
You're seeing a situation where President Trump has been able to just slice through all these geopolitical problems that we've had.
So I imagine Europeans are thrilled.
Well, it's restoring America to the leader of the free world.
Yeah, the Europeans are thrilled, but the left, I'm sure, is furious.
Oh, they're right.
Because four years of Joe Biden, they all had to walk around and pretend that this guy was bringing America back on the world stage.
You know, like totenic colostomy bag around in the Middle Ages.
May or may not have shit his britches over there when he met the Pope or the shit.
Or he parted in front of the queen or something like that.
I can't remember.
But it must make them furious to see Donald Trump roll up eight years ago.
They were laughing at him, like you said, Holmes.
And now, you know, they're kissing the ring.
Yeah.
And now Mark Ruda, he was like doubling and tripling down.
Here's more.
Somebody tried to play the, but he's so unpredictable.
You know, he's, he's like irascible and he's he's unpredictable.
And here's what Mark Ruda said to that guy, Sat 15.
He's a good friend.
I trust him.
He was totally right that Europe and Canada were not basically providing to NATO what we should provide.
Now we are correcting that.
We are equalizing.
I think it is a man of strength, but also a man of peace.
You've seen that basically now with Iran, the man of strength being able to command his B-2 bombers to go into Iran to take out the nuclear capability, but also the man of peace who is then immediately following up with making sure that Israel and Iran will commit to a ceasefire.
And I think this is exactly what you want the American president to do, provide that type of leadership.
And so I find him very predictable.
Because the question had been, you're dealing with a very unpredictable president or friend who's been all over the map on Article 5 in the past, but how do you know?
How are you certain that the Trump you're dealing with right now is the same version of Trump that you'll be dealing with for the rest of this term?
And he went on, like the beginning was, I've known him for almost 10 years.
He's a good friend.
I trust him.
He was totally right.
Europe and Canada were not providing to NATO what we should provide.
And then goes on to say what you just heard him say, like he is predictable and he's a friend.
It's like, this is, we've never heard world leaders do this.
Like this guy seems genuinely inspired by Trump, his strength, his unwillingness to bend.
And I can only hope it becomes a little more contagious across the pond because they could use the backbone.
Okay.
I got it.
I got to spend a moment on Kerry Lake.
I can't believe what I saw yesterday.
Did you see it?
Oh, oh, sorry.
Steve really wants us to play the White House's response to the daddy thing.
I'm less enamored with it, but okay, we'll play it.
Here it is, SAT 16.
Steve likes.
The White House put this out.
Okay, we get it.
It's strong.
They're leaning in.
It's cute.
The White House has a sense of humor, which we appreciate.
Okay.
But I got to get to Kerry Lake.
So Carrie Lake is working for the president.
Hold on.
I got my papers here.
Okay.
She's working for the president right now as a senior advisor at the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
And she's dogeifying it, which Trump instructed her to do.
She announced last week that this group was eliminating 1,400 positions, which is an 85% cut of the personnel from March.
And that's when Trump signed an executive order gutting the agency.
He does not think this is an important agency.
They oversee Voice of America, which has like radio reporting throughout the world and funds several other independent broadcast outlets stationed around the globe.
During the hearing, she was talking about how one of the reasons they're getting rid of all these people is because it's staffed with people who hate America.
This is clearly Trump's conclusion, too.
Yeah, and exactly.
So she went in there to, you know, what's the one to basically take a sledgehammer to them, chainsaw to them.
And now they're having hearings on Capitol Hill talking about whether this is a good idea.
And one of the persons who cross-examined her was Arizona.
That's where she's from.
Democratic Representative Greg Stanton.
Now, he started off.
I don't know, is this in our sound bite?
Because he started off going for her.
Greg Stanton sounds like a prick.
I'm going to be honest.
I'll just give you a little bit more than what you're going to hear in the sound bite.
He said she's eroding America's soft power around the globe.
Your job is to tell the people of the world the truth about America, which I guess he doesn't think Carrie Lake will tell.
Then challenged her on her election losses in Arizona and her refusal to accept them.
You lost fair and square.
He said she lost due to her own toxic politics.
You're an adjudicated liar and two-time political loser.
He said people around the world can't trust this agency if she's lied about her own election outcomes.
He sarcastically asked her to run for Arizona governor again.
So just so you know, that's what led up to her giving him an elbow of her own right in the face and just watch.
You are an adjudicated liar and a two-time political loser in Arizona.
You lost for governor in 2022 to Katie Hobbs.
You lost even worse to Ruben Gallego for Senate in 2024.
Well, Arizona has another election for governor next year.
Will you do us all a favor and run it back and run for governor again?
I yield.
The gentle lady on the question is a little bit of a message.
Free Fair Elections Debate00:07:34
Can I respond to some of that?
Because that was complete insanity.
I wish I could yield back the last five minutes of my life.
But you were here.
You came in late.
And we're talking about USAGM today, the Agency for Global Media, and how they can put out absolute abject lies.
And we can't control any, we have no say over what the editorial content is.
And I would hope that you would not be okay with that.
They could literally put out a lie about anybody here.
And I know you've been the victim of that.
I know you've been the victim.
I remember the stories about you where they said you had a gay lover and those were going to be a lot of people.
Mr. Chairman, those kind of lies could be broadcast today on VOA.
And you couldn't pick up the phone, Representative Stanton, and call them and say, hey, you're putting out lies about me.
And how would you like it if those lies were put on Voice of America right now?
Ruling on the chair, on the member, she was responding and I thought rather complimentary that in fact those were untrue and she was defending that.
So that's what he says.
I'll leave it as that.
Republican Darrell Issa.
You guys.
That's awesome.
Come on.
So good.
So good.
Perfect.
What a mic drop.
She's quick on her feet.
I mean, she obviously is very talented and she has not lost any of that.
I mean, her ability to answer and dodge and we even like take it right back to him is something to behold.
And that was.
Truly.
It was a thing of beauty because like she kept it.
She's stone cold.
Like she kept it professional.
She managed to work the insult into like a substantive response.
And the reply says, like, I thought it was complimentary.
She said it was untrue.
She just straight up calls it, calls a guy a homo in the middle of a congressional hearing.
And then it's like, but it's untrue, right?
I mean, you said it's untrue.
So maybe you could respond to it.
It'd be so wrong if you couldn't correct it.
It would be so wrong, right?
And it would be a shame to keep talking about this gay lover rumor, which we all acknowledge should not be true.
Again, the gay lover rumor.
Is that in the record?
Official record.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess the other thing I really loved about it, Megan, like back to the whole common sense thing.
Voice of America.
Well, maybe if you work there, you shouldn't hate America.
Yeah.
Like it's really that complicated.
Also, it's just so antiquated.
I mean, this is the thing with Doge and as it applies now to Voice of America and everything else.
Like it was built in a time where radio was like the only way that you could get anything ever and you couldn't certainly get anything overseas.
Like are you aware of the internet, folks?
Right.
Like why are we paying any money for this anti-graded organization?
I got to give you one more.
Like she's, remember her on the campaign trail, how effective she was, like the biased media would get in her face.
And she's of the media.
You know, she was an anchor in Arizona for 25 years, I think.
And she was just so effective at slicing and dicing.
And she still got it.
So here's Pramea Jayapal, part of the squad, trying to come for her on her election denialism.
And she was ready.
Watch.
I wanted to start just by confirming, do you support democracy or authoritarianism?
That's pretty obvious.
I support freedom and democracy.
Democracy.
Great.
Would you agree that accepting the results of a fair and free election are critical to a functioning democracy?
Would you agree that my question is, cancer survivor would have been a nice thing to do?
Ms. Lake, this is my time.
Would you accept that accepting the results of a free and fair election are critical to a functioning democracy?
It's a yes or no question.
Do you think it's essential for democracy to have a free and fair election?
We need free and fair elections.
Free and fair elections right now.
Thank you.
She's holding up a picture of little Daniel, the guy who was made the honorary Secret Service kid.
Would you agree that you should have stood for this cancer survivor, you Cretan?
I love that she brought the photo with her.
She had the visual aids, Daniel's prepared, man.
Right?
It's just so nice.
You know how it is when you're a Republican or you're right of center, you never get to see that.
You only get to see the leftists beat up on our people.
And usually they try to go high road.
It's just like in the era of Trump, we're done with that.
And it's wonderful.
It is wonderful.
It's nice to see.
Plus, the content is just extraordinary.
What a time to be doing shows.
Right.
Yes.
Wait, while we're doing it, why don't I give you this gift too?
Because wait, do we have, yeah, Brandon Gill.
Is he not our favorite?
Oh, it's the best.
So good.
Right?
Who doesn't love Brandon Gill?
Well, he was at it again.
Might as well spend a minute on him before we go to break.
He had Dr. Sean Harper there, who is a DEI lover.
And he was talking about how every organization needs to have like representation in the same proportion as the race or even fat people exist in America.
Like literally, he was saying that.
I mean, okay.
So what is the military need to have like 75% fat people?
Cause isn't the country like 75% obese, whatever.
So that's this guy's.
I come from a long line of them.
I'm allowed.
Again, my mom does not appreciate when I say that.
So Brandon Gill gets Dr. Sean Harper in front of him.
And here's a bit of that in SOC 27.
Which race do you think should be preferred?
I do not think that a single race should be preferred.
You just said that you believe that race should be considered in employer hiring practices.
I don't know.
There's going to be a transcript of this hearing.
I didn't say that in that way.
Okay.
Why don't you explain what you believe?
What I agree and what I believe is that the demographic composition of workplaces, which our nation's military Congress ought to reflect the diversity of demographic composition, racial demographic.
Is that what you're saying?
Racial gender.
Okay.
So race should be a factor in employer hiring practices.
Yeah, that's what you're saying, is it not?
Organizations ought to attempt to match the diversity of hopping around the question.
No, I am answering quite straightforwardly, as a matter of fact.
You can determine which races are preferred.
I don't.
I already told you I don't have a single racial group.
Do you tell me that you believe that the demographic, the racial demographic makeup should be taken into account in hiring practices?
And it should be reflected in all levels of companies and other organizations.
But who gets to decide?
Right?
The greatest part about all of this is just watching just the full compilation that we've discussed is just dismantling this leftist argument that has never been challenged in any serious way by media, by punditry, by lawmakers themselves.
And now you get to see it almost every day and their entire fallacy, everything that they believe, all of these policies that they've foisted upon the American people just fall like rocks.
Yeah, we're going to end racism by doing a little bit of racism.
We have to say, it's important to do some racism while we're doing eliminating the racism.
Okay.
Now I got to take a quick break and then we'll come right back because we've got to touch on mandami, mamdani, because I'm terrified to think he might be with us for a while.
Simply Safe Home Security Promo00:02:52
Stand by.
You know that moment at night when you're locking up, you're turning off the lights and you just want to feel completely safe before heading to bed?
That is what Simply Safe can give to you.
Most security systems only take action after someone breaks in.
That's too late.
Simply Safe's new Active Guard outdoor protection helps stop break-ins before they happen.
This is so smart.
AI-powered cameras and live monitoring agents detect suspicious activity around your property.
If someone's lurking, agents talk to them in real time.
Can you imagine this?
They turn the spotlights on them.
They can call the police.
This is so great.
It's a proactive way of deterring crime before it starts.
No contracts, by the way, no hidden fees.
It was named best home security system of 2025 by CNET.
More than 4 million Americans trust SimplySafe.
I mean, it almost makes you want to like have it happen just so you can see your security system go off and scare the you know what out of a bad guy.
These guys have monitoring plans that start around $1 a day plus a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Visit simply safe, simply is spelled S-I-M-P-L-I dot com slash Megan to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free.
That's simplysafe.com slash Megan.
There's no safe like SimplySafe.
If you are a homeowner, listen to this.
In today's AI and cyber world, scammers can steal home titles and your equity is the target.
Here's how it works.
Criminals can forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay a small fee with your county, and just like that, your home title has been transferred out of your name.
Then they can take out loans using your equity or even sell your property.
So when's the last time you checked in your home title?
If your answer is never, you can check out Home Title Lock to see if you're already a victim.
Use my promo code Megan at home titlelock.com and you will get a free title history report and a free trial of their million dollar triple lock protection.
That's 24-7 monitoring of your title, urgent alerts to any changes.
Then if fraud does happen, they will spend up to $1 million to fix it.
Don't be a victim.
Protect your equity today.
Go to hometitalock.com and use promo code Megan.
That's hometitalock.com, promo code Megan.
I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.
You can catch the Megan Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love.
Great people like Dr. Laura, Flynn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.
You can stream the Megan Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are.
Democratic Party Base Shift00:10:00
No car required.
I do it all the time.
I love the SiriusXM app.
It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more.
Subscribe now, get your first three months for free.
Go to seriousxm.com slash MK Show to subscribe and get three months free.
That's seriousxm.com slash MK Show and get three months free.
Offer details apply.
Okay, Mamdani, he's won the socialist for the Democratic nomination, looking pretty good for winning the entire mayoral race.
However, two interesting things, it appears that Cuomo is now out entirely.
He's not going to run as an independent.
And now there's growing pressure on Curtis Sliwa, the Republican guardian angel, to drop out because even though we love Curtis and it would be so nice if a Republican could be the mayor, it's not going to happen.
He has no chance.
So there's pressure on him to get out so that the city can coalesce behind Eric Adams, who is the last best choice of stopping Mamdani right now.
His relaunch at his campaign offices has people lining up around the block in New York.
I mean, he's gotten a second life here.
What's going to happen?
And how did this happen?
Geez.
The funniest take I saw on the internet about all this was, you know, we've all been concerned about the Islamic extremist reaction and, you know, potential consequence to America as a result of the Iranian bombing.
We just didn't know it would come so quickly in the form of a Democratic primary in New York City.
Yeah, this is a bad news deal, but it's indicative of where the Democratic Party is.
Their energy is all behind not just somebody who's totally unqualified to run a city like that, but somebody whose ideas are so antithetical to America in and of itself and so off the left-hand side of the map that it's like they're killing themselves.
And I love it.
It's terrific.
So here's the thing is if you look at the breakdown of where he won, Mandani won in New York City, upper middle class and wealthy people came out in droves to vote for him.
Yeah.
Look at his margins in Fedstai and Bushwick.
Yeah.
You know, so like, poor voters, the blacks, the Hispanics and the working class all went for Cuomo.
They did not vote for this guy.
It was the white, college-educated graduate degree holders across Manhattan and Brooklyn.
So this deranged kind of white guilt, which has just gripped the progressive movement of thinking that, well, white people are evil.
Capitalism is evil.
Even though I have a place in the Upper East Side, capitalism is a horrible system.
It doesn't work for people.
Even though, you know, from Park Ave, I go shopping on Madison every day.
It's a wonderful system for me.
But I think we need a communist.
They get what they deserve.
They're going to get what they deserve.
I, I, I, you know, for so many folks, Megan, yourself included, who no longer live in New York, who don't have a place in there.
You see what they've done.
It just keeps getting worse and worse and worse.
They really whittled down the old talent pool of candidates, right?
I mean, we were basically down to a choice between a guy who killed your grandmother and a socialist psychopath or, you know, or the current guy, which is like no bucket of free.
No, it reminds me of back in the day, CNN.
I'm going to screw this up, but CNN launched a competitor to the five.
Roger had come up with the five.
And as he likes to say, they people thought that, liked to say, people thought he named it that because it had five hosts, but he says, I named it that because that's about how long it took me to think it up.
That he'd have five hosts on at five hosting a news program.
And it's hugely successful.
I think it's still the number one show on cable news.
And CNN decided to try to do the same thing.
And they came up with, they have no original ideas.
So they came up with their own group that was going to go like across from this group.
And if Memory serves, it was like Van Jones and Essie Cup.
And I can't remember who the others were, but I remember Roger's like, my God, he's like, they've got an atheist.
They've got a communist.
They've got a like a Marxist.
I can't remember the other one.
He's like, so far, I'm rooting for the communist.
Anyway, it's kind of the situation New Yorkers are in in looking at these candidates.
Like, I think I want the corrupt one who just takes money from Egypt.
Yeah.
I mean, like, you look at New York City, like, you know, how America looks at a place like Syria during the Civil War.
It's like, we need to fund the moderate New Yorkers on the ground.
Right.
I know it's true.
It's like, well, I was talking to somebody about Syria the other day.
And it's like, you know, it was taken over by al-Qaeda, but they don't seem that al-Qaeda-y.
So, you know, fingers crossed.
This is, these are not good positions to be in.
You tell me, because like there's a, there's a debate playing out about whether this guy, Mandami, is a, is a reflection of like too much illegal immigration and no, people don't assimilate and they bring their values and, and then the white working, the white upper class that has the white guilt, you know, buying into all those messages and this coalition is born.
And then there's another line of thinking that's more something you might hear from a Steve Bannon, you know, which is like, it's the left's populist uprising.
These young people can't buy homes and they can't get a decent job and they can't make it without both the mom and the dad working.
And they just, they want a revolution.
They want to burn shit down.
And the socialist message of just taxing the billionaires is extremely attractive.
And so, and by the way, those people have never lived during the New York of the 1970s or late 80s.
So they've totally forgotten what these leftist policies actually lead to.
So what do you think?
I think, I think that the second thing that you mentioned, I think there's some validity to that.
There are people who don't see any path to buy their own home out there off the left-hand side, but you don't need to put your hopes in a guy that's going to take away your guns and control the food flow into Manhattan.
Everything that he is talking about is going to turn Manhattan into Gaza.
And they're going to start shooting rockets from Flatiron into Williamsburg.
This guy is absolutely insane.
And he is not the only leftist out there.
There has to be somebody else who is literally not going to get rid of the cops, not get like everything he's doing.
Open the prisons.
That doesn't put somebody in a home.
Yeah.
It's also indicative of this larger lack of leadership within the Democratic Party in and of itself, right?
I mean, both political parties from time to time have been captured by this like super radical, totally inconsistent with where the center of the country is type movement.
It's full of energy for a variety of different reasons, but always there's somebody that provides some leadership to try to like recapitalize that and make sure that, no, these are good policies.
Like, you don't need a clinically insane person to lead you down the road in order to have, you know, what it is that you're all really looking for.
I think Donald Trump's done a lot of that within the Republican Party.
But if you look around, like Chuck Schumer in the home state here, Chuck Schumer and Nakeem Jeffries, they're the first ones who are just dodging all of this, right?
A real leader would sit there and be like, look, we're not going to get rid of the NYPD, which is what this guy is campaigning on.
Clearly, that's not something that Democrats believe in, except he can't say it and he won't say it, which is how this has grown within the Democratic Party.
Yeah, so Bill Clinton is congratulating him.
That's another thing Bill Clinton weighed in on rather than our troops' victory and seems to be all in on this guy, notwithstanding what we just said.
Bill Clinton doesn't want the prisons open and the cops gone.
Go ahead, Duncan.
Well, and neither do the lower income and middle income voters of New York.
Like if there was this really this left-wing populism idea that is so popular, you would think the New Yorkers who are struggling the most would have voted for it.
But they didn't.
They voted for Cuomo, right?
It was the affluent, the wealthy, over $100,000 a year who were voting for this guy.
So I think it's more just the luxury beliefs of people who like don't actually have to worry about, well, you abolish prisons, you know, you're going to let all the criminals out in the street.
But, you know, I live 100 floors up, so it doesn't matter.
This has become the base of the Democratic Party.
Dorman building, security, possibly an iron fence around my doorman building.
They can't get to me.
And on the Upper East Side, where my children go to private school, we'll have no problems no matter what I vote for.
That's why you get nutcases can mobilize his supporters to actually storm the doorman building.
That's what it's going to take.
Yeah, that is what it's going to take.
Well, that's a lot of people are saying that.
Like, let's let them see what the natural consequences of this decision are.
Let's not save them from 1970s New York.
Let's watch them experience it.
It's sad to me.
I mean, we moved right outside of New York and it's like, I still love New York.
And we go into New York.
And I want my kids to be able to go there and your kids to be able to go there and watch a Broadway show and not worry about getting shot in the face.
It's just, it's, this is a dark moment for the city and the country.
And I, I, for the Democrat Party, I don't, I don't know what their future looks like.
In any event, not a dark moment for the fellas because we always have things to talk about.
It's great to see you guys.
Great to see you, Megan.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks for having us.
The pleasure is all mine.
And don't forget, ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow on the show, Maureen Callahan will be here and we will have the premiere of our latest parody.