The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump's New Iran Messaging, with Piers Morgan, Plane Crash Leaves Pilots Dead, and CNN Tries Being a Podcast, with Kmele Foster  |  Ep. 1279
Aired: 2026-03-23
Duration: 02:25:04


=== Trump As War Face (07:09) ===

[00:00:46]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
[00:00:57]  Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
[00:00:59]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
[00:01:00]  We are back live in the Red Studio and so happy to be with you.
[00:01:04]  There's a lot of news to get to today, including CNN's attempt to make its on-air talent pretend to be podcasters.
[00:01:12]  This is my favorite story of the day.
[00:01:13]  We'll get to it later.
[00:01:14]  But we begin with developments on the war in Iran, which seem to be changing by the minute.
[00:01:20]  Early this morning, President Trump posting a message to Truth Social claiming, quote, productive talks are underway with Iran and saying therefore he is postponing his own self-imposed deadline to strike Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.
[00:01:35]  The president two days ago gave the 48-hour deadline saying if Iran did not open the Strait of Hormuz, he would quote obliterate various Iranian power plants, starting with the biggest one first.
[00:01:46]  That deadline would be 7:44 p.m. this evening.
[00:01:50]  In response, Iran then promising to quote irreversibly destroy essential infrastructure across the Middle East, even suggesting they may hit desalinization, desalination plants throughout the region, which would be truly catastrophic for Israel and potentially for the Gulf states.
[00:02:10]  So that's where we stood because Iran didn't open the Strait of Hormuz as demanded by President Trump.
[00:02:16]  And that's where things stood until this morning, thus staring down that 7:44 p.m. deadline, which was looking rather ugly.
[00:02:23]  It caused stock futures to jump and the cost of oil to fall because President Trump came out suggesting we'd reach some sort of an agreement.
[00:02:36]  And then many asked whether this entire thing is about market manipulation.
[00:02:40]  Okay, so did we actually reach a stand down with Iran?
[00:02:43]  Did we speak with them?
[00:02:45]  How?
[00:02:45]  Through whom?
[00:02:47]  They're denying it.
[00:02:48]  Iran's foreign minister came out and denied any talks were underway at all.
[00:02:53]  And the New York Times, reporting that the Israeli military, no sooner than Trump had issued that true social, began conducting a new wave of strikes today.
[00:03:02]  And that's extremely important.
[00:03:04]  So Trump says you got 24, you got 48 hours to allow traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:03:09]  Iran says, F you, you, if you strike us in the way you're saying, after 48 hours by hitting our energy plants, we are going to hit the desalination plants throughout the Middle East, among other targets.
[00:03:26]  And there it stood in détente until this morning when Trump issued his great news.
[00:03:30]  We've been speaking with the Iranians, we've made major progress, and I'm going to hold off on my threat.
[00:03:37]  Then the Iranians come out and deny that we've been having any such talks and say this is Trump caving because they don't, they know he doesn't want what they threatened, and that this is a sort of taco situation.
[00:03:50]  Trump always chickens out.
[00:03:51]  That's what his critics are saying.
[00:03:52]  It's what the Iranians are saying.
[00:03:54]  But either way, no sooner does Trump say, okay, we're going to stop our threat and we won't be bombing any of your energy plants or et cetera, than the Israelis drop a couple of bombs and proceed full steam ahead.
[00:04:08]  Any talk of this war winding down, which comes as welcome news to most of us, probably sends shivers down the spine of Senator Lindsey Graham, who is still out there as the main spokesperson for the administration for some reason.
[00:04:21]  It's amazing. that Trump, who is generally a communications genius, has seen fit to let this guy be the face of this war.
[00:04:30]  Just yesterday on Fox News, he was calling for U.S. Marines to take Iran's Karg Island, which would be extremely complicated and controversial, comparing the operation to Iwo Jima during World War II.
[00:04:45]  Here's what I tell President Trump.
[00:04:47]  Keep it up for a few more weeks.
[00:04:49]  Take Carg Island where all of the resources they have to produce oil.
[00:04:53]  Control that island.
[00:04:54]  Let this regime down a vine.
[00:04:56]  Is this going to, though, take Carg Island?
[00:04:58]  Is it going to involve U.S. troops on the ground?
[00:05:00]  Let me just read you something from The Atlantic does an assessment on that.
[00:05:03]  They say U.S. troops may well take Carg Island.
[00:05:05]  We believe their ability to do so, but only to endure ballistic missile strikes, drone attacks, petrochemical smoke, all without a reliable means of obtaining logistical support.
[00:05:15]  The result could be a grinding war of attrition.
[00:05:17]  They talk about how far away they would be from resupply.
[00:05:20]  I'm sort of tired of all this armchair quarterback, and this has been an amazing military operation.
[00:05:25]  God bless the fallen.
[00:05:27]  But it's a difference when we talk about troops on the ground.
[00:05:30]  I trust the Marines, not that guy.
[00:05:32]  I trust D.O.D. We got two Marine expeditionary units sailing to this island.
[00:05:38]  We did Iwo Jima.
[00:05:40]  We can do this.
[00:05:41]  The Marines, my money is always on the Marines.
[00:05:44]  Unbelievable.
[00:05:45]  6,821 U.S. service personnel died in the battle for Iwo Jima.
[00:05:51]  19,217 were wounded.
[00:05:53]  How dare he speak about it so cavalierly?
[00:05:55]  How dare he?
[00:05:57]  He doesn't have any kids.
[00:05:58]  He's not sending a young son or daughter into battle.
[00:06:01]  F this guy.
[00:06:02]  Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna posting on X that Senator Graham is acting as if our troops are, quote, expendable cattle.
[00:06:09]  That's exactly right.
[00:06:10]  How dare he?
[00:06:12]  And now we learn over the weekend that Rupert Murdoch was one of the main people to be goading Trump into this war.
[00:06:18]  Rupert Murdoch, who is 95 years old, he'll be dead soon.
[00:06:22]  And he too is acting as if our troops are, quote, expendable cattle.
[00:06:27]  He won't have to live with the consequences of what he's doing.
[00:06:30]  And good for Anna Paulina Luna.
[00:06:32]  Also Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace called him out as well.
[00:06:36]  There are now Republicans pushing back on this bloodthirsty lunatic for how jubilantly he wants to send our troops in to fight his favorite and Israel's battle.
[00:06:49]  Joining me now on all of it, Piers Morgan.
[00:06:50]  He's host of Piers Morgan Uncensored on YouTube.
[00:06:55]  Sleep is important, yet so overlooked.
[00:06:58]  But let me tell you about Brooklyn Betting.
[00:07:00]  It's designed and assembled right in Arizona.
[00:07:03]  No middlemen, just top quality and honest pricing.
[00:07:06]  Their mattresses fit every body type and sleep style.
[00:07:10]  Sleep hop, their Glacio Tex covers, and thermoregulation help keep you cool and comfortable all night long.
[00:07:17]  They are one of the few mattresses endorsed by the American Chiropractic Association for Spinal Alignment and Back Health.
[00:07:23]  Plus, they're 100% fiberglass-free for peace of mind.
[00:07:26]  And Brooklyn Betting offers a 120-night comfort trial.
[00:07:29]  Love it or return it or exchange it.
[00:07:31]  Hassle-free.
[00:07:32]  No wonder they've been awarded the best mattress by CNET and best hybrid mattress by Wirecutter.
[00:07:37]  Go to BrooklynBetting.com and use my promo code Megan at checkout to get 30% off site-wide.
[00:07:42]  That's BrooklynBetting.com and promo code Megan for 30% off site-wide.
[00:07:47]  Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout.
[00:07:50]  Brooklynbetting.com promo code M-E-G-Y-N.
[00:07:54]  Piers, welcome back.

=== Iran's Unpredictable Retaliation (15:30) ===

[00:07:56]  Let's just start as journalists with the folly of making this lunatic the face of the war by a man, Trump, who normally is more media savvy than us all.
[00:08:08]  What is happening there?
[00:08:10]  Well, Megan, great to be back on your show.
[00:08:12]  I do not understand any of this.
[00:08:16]  Donald Trump is somebody who the entire world knows campaigned very vociferously and very repeatedly on a ticket of no more engagement in foreign wars, which he felt were way too expensive both economically and on human life.
[00:08:33]  And he wanted to focus on boosting the American economy.
[00:08:37]  And then a few months before the midterm elections, which are going to be difficult enough as it is for any incumbent president, he launches the biggest attack in the Middle East that we've seen since the Iraq war, possibly even bigger, given the enormity of what is now coming back by way of Iran's response.
[00:08:56]  It's having an obvious, massive impact on not just the U.S. economy, but the global economy.
[00:09:03]  And none of the predictions that we were given in the first few days has come true.
[00:09:09]  In fact, quite the opposite.
[00:09:10]  It looks like the Americans and the Israeli combined military has been very successful militarily in destroying a lot of Iranian military hardware.
[00:09:22]  But in terms of tactics in this war, the Iranians have basically held everybody to hostage because they control the Strait of Hormuz and because they know that by attacking their neighboring Gulf states in places that will really hurt them to do with their energy plants, to do with tourism areas and so on, that they can have a stranglehold over any military.
[00:09:44]  And that's exactly what's happened.
[00:09:45]  And the constant mixed messaging from Donald Trump and the administration and the very incendiary gung-ho rhetoric from people like Lindsey Graham, the combined effect of all this, when we can all see with our own eyes how this war is playing out.
[00:10:01]  And it's quite clear the Iranians have not got the abject surrender memo.
[00:10:06]  And I'm not even sure that they have got the memo we're being told about this morning, which is that they're all ready to do a deal.
[00:10:13]  They're showing no sign of any of this.
[00:10:15]  And so I stand here, sitting here scratching my head in incredulity about what of any of this makes any sense at all if you're the president of the United States.
[00:10:31]  Trump's messaging has been everywhere.
[00:10:34]  You know, we've obliterated them.
[00:10:36]  We've basically won.
[00:10:38]  We're about to obliterate you, and we will win.
[00:10:41]  It's over.
[00:10:42]  We've defeated them.
[00:10:43]  We've achieved all our objectives.
[00:10:44]  And then we may be sending in ground troops to take Karg Island.
[00:10:50]  They have no defenses left.
[00:10:51]  We've destroyed everything.
[00:10:52]  And then you open up the Strait of Hormuz or we're bombing all of your energy plants.
[00:10:57]  Like you waited 24 hours and you will get a brand new message from our president.
[00:11:03]  Meanwhile, Iran is sitting over there saying, we are not negotiating.
[00:11:07]  We don't know who he thinks he's negotiating with, but we didn't agree to anything.
[00:11:11]  This is a stand down by the president who realized that we meant it, that if he actually did start bombing our energy plants, we were going to start attacking the desalination plants throughout the region, which, you know, we reported in our morning news update this morning, Piers, is like, you've got several of these Gulf countries, these Gulf Arab countries that have over 90% of their drinking water depends on desalination.
[00:11:38]  I mean, it would be truly catastrophic if the Iranians actually did that, not to mention what knocking out the Iranian energy plants would do to world energy prices and oil prices.
[00:11:51]  And Iran hasn't budged on the Strait of Hormuz problem.
[00:11:54]  Right.
[00:11:55]  And you've got no sign of any actual regime change.
[00:11:58]  We know the Ayatollah was killed.
[00:12:00]  We haven't seen his son.
[00:12:02]  So he's presumed either dead or very seriously injured in a way that's incapacitated him.
[00:12:07]  But regardless of that, the IRGC are still clearly firmly in charge of the country.
[00:12:12]  And we know that because there's been no sign of any uprising by the people, many of whom are very opposed to the regime.
[00:12:19]  But there are two reasons why we're not seeing the uprising.
[00:12:21]  Well, three, I would argue.
[00:12:23]  One is there are bombs obviously flying everywhere, which makes it very unsafe to hit the streets.
[00:12:27]  Secondly, they remember what happened in January when the regime cracked down in the most vicious and vengeful manner against protesters, killing up to 30,000 of them.
[00:12:37]  And three, it's obvious to everybody that the IRGC are completely in control.
[00:12:42]  And there are 250 odd thousand of them.
[00:12:45]  There are four to 500,000 paramilitaries below them, heavily armed.
[00:12:50]  And then there's nearly a million regular Iranian army.
[00:12:53]  This is, you know, you're not dealing with some tin pot regime here that's just going to roll over or a regime like Venezuela, where they were quite happy to do a deal.
[00:13:03]  Here you're dealing with an ideological country fueled by religion, which is pathologically opposed to any American rule over them in any capacity and hates Israel too, who are just not going to be bullied into towing the line in the way that Donald Trump seems to think they are.
[00:13:22]  And they have the weaponry to resist being bullied.
[00:13:25]  But that weaponry, it's not just military.
[00:13:27]  They've got a lot of military, particularly ballistic missiles, which they've now been firing way further than people thought.
[00:13:35]  And that even imperils places like where I am right now in London in terms of its potential reach.
[00:13:40]  But they're doing it very tactically, smartly.
[00:13:44]  You have to be honest about it, economically, by controlling Australia for moose, where 20% of the world's oil comes through every day.
[00:13:52]  And with the way they've gone after the neighboring Gulf states, they're sending a message that we may not have the firepower you do, but we can strangle you with the economy.
[00:14:02]  And that is proving to the Gulf states and to Europe and to, I would imagine, many Americans, deeply unpalatable and ultimately unsustainable.
[00:14:13]  The report just hitting now via the Jerusalem Post is that Iranian parliamentary speaker, Mohamed Bagr Galbaif, is leading the talks with the United States.
[00:14:26]  So it's possible we have found a person to talk to.
[00:14:29]  Trump had said earlier that we wouldn't know who we were talking with because who to talk to because we'd killed them all.
[00:14:38]  But now there is the parliament speaker, Mohamed Bagr Galibaf, Galibaif, Galibaf, who apparently is speaking with the United States.
[00:14:47]  And let's hope that's true.
[00:14:49]  The latest reports on what the demands were by each side sounded absolutely impossible for reaching an agreement, Piers, though they often do in the beginning.
[00:14:59]  The Iranians were demanding a ceasefire, okay, guarantees that the war will not resume in the future, okay, maybe, and compensation.
[00:15:08]  They use the word reparations for what we've done over there so far.
[00:15:12]  The U.S. was demanding no missile program for five years, zero uranium enrichment.
[00:15:18]  That's what we wanted beforehand that they wouldn't agree to.
[00:15:20]  Decommissioning the Natan's Ifshan and Fordow nuclear facilities, strict outside observation protocols around the creation and use of centrifuges and related machinery that could advance a nuclear weapons program, arms control treaties that include a missile cap, no higher than 1,000, no financing for proxies, and those are the basics of the deal.
[00:15:42]  Trump sees the demand for reparations as a non-starter, but somebody on his team suggested, well, we could potentially call it the return of frozen money, returning frozen assets.
[00:15:53]  There are different ways we could wordsmith it to give them their so-called reparations.
[00:15:58]  This is via Axios today.
[00:16:00]  So let's hope that it is true.
[00:16:02]  They're finding a way to start talking to one another.
[00:16:06]  The big unknown here, an untrustworthy piece of this is Israel, Pierce, who has no desire nor any goal or interest whatsoever in stopping the war.
[00:16:20]  In fact, from the beginning, this has all been very much in Israel's interest and literally no one else's.
[00:16:26]  Yeah, well, you know, I believe Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, when he was asked point blank, why did America launch a preemptive strike against Iran?
[00:16:36]  And he replied very unequivocally on camera for the world to see that the reason was that the United States had been informed by another country, clearly Israel, that they were about to attack Iran, and that the implication of that would be that Iran would then retaliate against both the person attacking them and against American interests.
[00:16:56]  And that because of that, America had to launch a preemptive strike.
[00:16:59]  It sounded ridiculously convoluted at the time as an explanation and excuse for what was going on.
[00:17:06]  And very quickly, the pressure against the United States and against the Trump administration became so overwhelming, they did a screeching U-turn and said, well, he never meant to say exactly what we heard come out of his mouth.
[00:17:19]  Actually, no, he meant this, this, this, and this.
[00:17:21]  But we all heard him.
[00:17:22]  Marco Rubio is a very smart guy.
[00:17:24]  He didn't say that by accident.
[00:17:26]  And that reinforced the belief that many have, and I share this belief, that I think Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, had eight different visits to see Donald Trump in the months leading up to this.
[00:17:37]  And I think he put increasing pressure on Donald Trump about Iran.
[00:17:41]  It was, as Netanyahu, who said very early.
[00:17:43]  They admitted that.
[00:17:45]  They've admitted that.
[00:17:46]  You don't even have to say you think it.
[00:17:47]  That's a fact.
[00:17:48]  Right.
[00:17:48]  And Netanyahu, who said it's a 40-year dream of his to do what is now happening.
[00:17:53]  But the Israeli agenda here is very different to the United States agenda and the rest of the world's agenda.
[00:17:59]  The Israelis don't care if there's complete and utter chaos in Iran.
[00:18:02]  They would like complete utter chaos.
[00:18:04]  They want this regime.
[00:18:05]  And the Gulf states.
[00:18:06]  And the Gulf states.
[00:18:08]  But the United States' national interest should not mean chaos in Iran because that will be a stick to beat the U.S. economy with for many years to come if that's allowed to happen.
[00:18:20]  Not to mention fermenting, as we saw with Iraq.
[00:18:23]  You know, I opposed very aggressively the war on Iraq in 2003 because I was not convinced about the weapons of mass destruction defense for doing it.
[00:18:33]  And it turned out to be nonsense.
[00:18:34]  And of course, we know what happened in Iraq.
[00:18:36]  Out of the chaos came ISIS, al-Qaeda, all these terror groups who wreaked utter havoc for the next two decades.
[00:18:44]  And the worry about Iran is if you actually achieved one of the supposed mission statements of bringing down this regime, well, what would follow?
[00:18:53]  You know, there's a very high likelihood of all the disparate groups you have rampaging around a rudderless Iran that you would end up with something appalling like ISIS or al-Qaeda and the equivalent in Iran.
[00:19:06]  So people have to be very, I think, clear-minded about what is happening here and the potential dangers.
[00:19:12]  It is obvious that Iran's retaliation has been in a way that the Americans and Israelis did not predict.
[00:19:20]  It's also obvious from the way we saw Israel target one of the big oil refineries in Iran that they don't care about having an energy war.
[00:19:30]  But the United States should, and the rest of the world should, because an energy war, which led to Iran attacking, as we've seen, they attacked one of the refineries in Qatar.
[00:19:40]  That was 17% of the world gas, I think, come through that particular refinery.
[00:19:46]  And you mentioned desalination plants.
[00:19:48]  You know, I read something the other day.
[00:19:49]  I haven't independently verified the exact information here, but it's worth reporting as a sort of overview of what could happen that somewhere like Saudi Arabia, say, take a city of Riyadh, 12 million people, they rely heavily on desalination.
[00:20:05]  If you took that plant away and they had no way of desalinating seawater into drinking water, they've only got a few weeks of drinking water available for their entire population.
[00:20:17]  It doesn't take a genius to work out how devastating that could be.
[00:20:21]  So a war on energy plants has always been seen as a red line, but the Israelis have been barreling through that.
[00:20:26]  And then Donald Trump says, well, they didn't tell me and I don't agree with him.
[00:20:30]  And they promised not to do it again.
[00:20:32]  Does anybody take that promise entirely seriously?
[00:20:35]  Because I don't.
[00:20:37]  And right now, so now you have the Israelis dropping bombs as Trump is saying, oh, we're making great progress.
[00:20:42]  We're doing really well.
[00:20:43]  And we're not going to drop the bombs on the energy plants, at least that we said we were going to.
[00:20:47]  Now it comes out that, again, via the Jerusalem Post, that supposedly we've found somebody, the Iranian parliament speaker, to talk to.
[00:20:55]  But on the tarmac in Palm Beach talking about this this morning, peers, President Trump would not say who Steve Witkoff was talking to on the Iranian side, saying instead, quote, I can't.
[00:21:06]  I don't want them to be killed.
[00:21:09]  Killed by whom?
[00:21:11]  The only other country killing people in Iran is Israel.
[00:21:16]  So once again, it's a tacit admission that we cannot control who's supposed to be the junior partner in this whole thing.
[00:21:24]  Why wouldn't we just tell Israel, don't kill them?
[00:21:28]  We're trying to negotiate an end to this war.
[00:21:30]  A second piece of it is, this being reported by Sky News this morning, an Israeli security establishment source going on record with Sky about Trump's message saying, great news, we're making progress and we're going to hold off on our 48-hour threat to bomb their energy plants, saying I would approach this cautiously with a grain of salt.
[00:21:49]  It's early Monday morning in the U.S., the start of the trading week.
[00:21:52]  Markets opened higher based on Trump's statement, largely as expected following the weekend reports that the negotiations and the latest statement by Trump.
[00:22:00]  That said, I wouldn't view this move as a final step.
[00:22:02]  We saw a similar pattern last week.
[00:22:04]  Oil prices have declined, supporting the positive sentiment in the short term.
[00:22:08]  For now, it appears Mr. Trump has bought a few more days roughly into week four until the Marines arrive and complete their initial deployment and organization phase.
[00:22:16]  The Iranians are already denying it.
[00:22:18]  Again, this is quoting an Israeli security person.
[00:22:21]  So that's Israel saying, don't believe the Trump news.
[00:22:24]  He's just trying to spike the markets.
[00:22:27]  It's full steam ahead.
[00:22:29]  And Trump openly worried that the Israelis are now going to kill the Iranian parliamentarian who we're speaking with.
[00:22:36]  Right.
[00:22:36]  And the Israelis are also openly saying you can't win this war from the air alone.
[00:22:40]  You need ground troops.
[00:22:42]  Well, where are the Israeli ground troops in that case?
[00:22:44]  Because all I'm seeing at the moment are thousands of American ground troops heading over there.
[00:22:49]  And is Donald Trump really going to commit thousands of American ground troops to a war in the Middle East in one of the biggest countries, one of the most heavily armed countries, a country that's already proved itself to be extremely skillful in the way that it's conducted itself in this war against a far superior military?
[00:23:07]  I think that has the potential for complete disaster.
[00:23:10]  Takes me right back to 2003 with the war in Iraq, where the full-scale ground invasion, you know, you could ultimately look back and say that all of it was a complete disaster and cost over a million lives on all sides.
[00:23:22]  You know, I'm not saying this will be the same, but nobody knows is the point.

=== Economic Threats Over Military (16:06) ===

[00:23:26]  And it looks to me like Donald Trump doesn't know.
[00:23:28]  If you go back and look at his rhetoric in the first 48 hours of this war, it was really gung-ho.
[00:23:34]  You know, this is a clarion call to the Iranian people, rise up now.
[00:23:37]  The regime's gone.
[00:23:39]  We're going to destabilize everything.
[00:23:40]  We're going to take down all their armed forces.
[00:23:42]  Blah, Here we are now, and none of that stuff has happened.
[00:23:48]  And, you know, if I was an American citizen, I'd be like, hang on, you're going to commit now thousands of ground troops to a war we keep being told we've already won to achieve something in terms of neutralizing his nuclear capacity that we were told happened last year and all these other excuses unraveling, which we know can't be right because of the contradictory statements that have come since.
[00:24:11]  So I just think that Donald Trump here has lit a tinderbox and he's finding it very, very difficult to put it out.
[00:24:18]  Does he want an off-ramp?
[00:24:20]  Well, I would hope he does because I just see this getting worse.
[00:24:23]  I just think this gets worse the longer it goes on.
[00:24:26]  But what that off-ramp looks like and how he can claim any plausible victory, I imagine is keeping him even more awake at night than he normally is.
[00:24:36]  I mean, my own take on it is I don't care how he claims it.
[00:24:39]  I don't care how insincere it sounds or how untrue it is.
[00:24:43]  I just want him to do it.
[00:24:45]  Just do it.
[00:24:46]  He's very good at it.
[00:24:47]  Look what we did with Greenland.
[00:24:49]  You know, it's like he got the use of some military islands off the coast of Greenland that we already had the use of.
[00:24:54]  We declared it like a big victory that they had rolled over and given us what we wanted.
[00:25:00]  And great, we moved on from Greenland.
[00:25:02]  This is so much more important and so much more consequential if we don't.
[00:25:06]  We are having some massive losses, but we did do some great things when it comes to wiping out their navy and wiping out much of their air force.
[00:25:13]  And we did take out the Ayatollah, who was a terrible man.
[00:25:16]  I don't know whether that's going to be great long term or not, because who knows what's happening with the sun, but the sun is more extreme than the father.
[00:25:23]  But in any event, there are some ways of declaring a victory and just getting out, Piers.
[00:25:27]  I mean, that's, to me, that's the best case scenario.
[00:25:30]  The last thing I think I and most Americans want to see is Marines on the ground taking Karg Island or any place else in Iran.
[00:25:38]  This is how the Vietnam War started.
[00:25:41]  Lest we forget.
[00:25:42]  That's exactly right.
[00:25:43]  Go and study history.
[00:25:44]  If you want to see how that started, it began with a few thousand Marines, right?
[00:25:48]  And we know how that ended up.
[00:25:51]  And this, I would say.
[00:25:52]  And the other piece of it is, like, you were smart to oppose the Iran war, sorry, the Iraq war in the beginning.
[00:25:58]  I wish I could say the same about myself.
[00:25:59]  But instead, I spent 14 years of Fox News cheerleading these wars.
[00:26:03]  I mean, cheerleading them.
[00:26:05]  I take full responsibility for doing exactly that.
[00:26:08]  And I mean, in the dark days of these wars, Piers, where we were seeing guys beheaded.
[00:26:14]  We were seeing American troops put in cages and burned to death.
[00:26:18]  We had to do the surge where we doubled down on sending ground troops over there.
[00:26:22]  We created ISIS, all these national domestic terror threats rising.
[00:26:27]  We all cheerled our troops' efforts on the ground.
[00:26:30]  We accepted all the administration's bullshit that was being shoved down our throats about Iraq and Afghanistan.
[00:26:37]  It's now since come out that they just lied about Afghanistan and the alleged successes there for years, for years.
[00:26:44]  And I refuse to be a part of that again.
[00:26:47]  I refuse, especially when the president's own messaging has been a 180 day-to-day on this.
[00:26:53]  And the justification for the war has been all over the board.
[00:26:57]  Now we're pretending that we went in there saying, okay, it was all about the missiles.
[00:27:00]  No, we didn't even say that.
[00:27:02]  It's like we got over there.
[00:27:03]  We realized they had a bunch of missiles.
[00:27:05]  And suddenly, retroactively, it was like, well, we're there to stop the missiles.
[00:27:09]  Yeah.
[00:27:09]  Look, nothing that's been said has happened from those initial reasons stated for this war.
[00:27:16]  None of it's happened.
[00:27:18]  And the fear I would have is if Donald Trump does the right thing, I think it'd be the right thing to walk away and get out of this as fast as possible and just take the hit, then you end up with a win for the Iranian regime.
[00:27:31]  It would feel emboldened.
[00:27:32]  Yes, a lot of the military firepower would have been destroyed, but they could build that back.
[00:27:37]  They would remain intact when regime change was a clear stated aim at the start of the war.
[00:27:43]  The regime would remain intact.
[00:27:44]  The people did not rise up.
[00:27:46]  And you would look at it and the economic damage they've been able to create by controlling the straight deformous and by attacking the Gulf states should not be underestimated going forward as further emboldening this Iranian regime.
[00:27:59]  They will think, right, now we know how to hold the world to ransom.
[00:28:03]  We have proven you don't need to have a military that matches the American military, the biggest and greatest military in the history of this planet.
[00:28:11]  You don't need to better match it.
[00:28:13]  You just need to have the control of the energy and to be able to terrorize the Gulf states in your neighborhood in a way that drives people, expats who live there to leave the country as they've been doing in their droves, or tourists to stay away.
[00:28:27]  Because that is the future business model of the Gulf states.
[00:28:30]  I've been out there a lot.
[00:28:31]  I like going there very much.
[00:28:33]  It's been a very vibrant, dynamic, forward-moving part of the world.
[00:28:37]  But right now, they're paralyzed.
[00:28:39]  People don't want to go there because it's raining with bombs and missiles all the time.
[00:28:44]  And the whole sales pitch of the Middle East, which is come here, it's safe.
[00:28:49]  It's sunny.
[00:28:51]  You can leave your door open at night.
[00:28:52]  I know friends who live in Dubai.
[00:28:53]  They haven't locked their front door in 15 years.
[00:28:56]  Well, that safety sales pitch clearly right now isn't working.
[00:29:01]  And they know the oil is running out, which has been the main economy they've had.
[00:29:06]  They're replacing it with a sustained campaign throughout the region of tourism based around sport and entertainment primarily.
[00:29:13]  And it's been very successful.
[00:29:15]  But right now, none of that is happening.
[00:29:17]  You know, British Airways, the airline that I use when I fly to the Gulf, I think I saw that they've stopped flying to Dubai now till June or July.
[00:29:26]  So this is having real time, real-time consequences on the moving forward business model of the entire region.
[00:29:35]  And Iran knows that.
[00:29:36]  And Iran knows it can do that anytime it wants.
[00:29:40]  It can turn that tap on and off.
[00:29:42]  And if it wants to get into an energy fist fight, then Iran really, I mean, you remember the confrontation with Zelensky Nyevlovsk about who holds the cards.
[00:29:51]  Iran is showing it holds the cards that matter.
[00:29:54]  And the cards are not necessarily in this war, military cards.
[00:29:58]  They're economic cards and oil cards.
[00:30:01]  That's exactly right.
[00:30:03]  Whether they hold all the cards or not is not, it's irrelevant.
[00:30:05]  They hold enough cards that they're a meaningful player at the table and we're going to have to deal with them.
[00:30:10]  I mean, they are controlling the Strait of Hormuz and Trump clearly cares about it, which is why he made that huge threat, which seemed reckless to many, which responded, resulted in them responding with an even bigger threat of their own to basically starve the entire Middle East of water.
[00:30:29]  I mean, the number of people who would die if they did what they said they were going to do is chilling.
[00:30:34]  So that's the situation we're in right now.
[00:30:36]  But domestically, I'm sure Trump is looking at what this means politically, which should be a smaller matter versus life and death.
[00:30:45]  But it does matter back home to Americans.
[00:30:47]  And while Americans may not be thinking about, gee, you know, what does Iran mean to me?
[00:30:53]  Or at least they weren't four weeks ago.
[00:30:56]  And they're certainly not thinking about how can we take over Cuba, which is in the news this morning as well.
[00:31:00]  Like that's our next domino to drop that we were talking with them.
[00:31:04]  But, you know, there may be a military option as well.
[00:31:06]  Like, okay, no one is thinking about how I can improve the lives of the people in Cuba.
[00:31:12]  They are thinking about the economy and Trump's numbers on the economy are dismal, Pierce.
[00:31:17]  They're dismal.
[00:31:18]  First of all, gas prices are linked to everything.
[00:31:20]  People do care about them as a standalone, but they're also an indicator, oil prices in general and gas, of where the economy is going.
[00:31:27]  Gas prices are up $1 from a month ago, $1 per gallon.
[00:31:30]  And diesel prices are up almost $1.50 from a month ago.
[00:31:35]  Everything runs on diesel.
[00:31:36]  Everything.
[00:31:37]  All the major trucks you see, all the major shipping you see, the planes, the cranes, literally everything other than probably your sedan runs on diesel.
[00:31:45]  And many of the sedans run on diesel too.
[00:31:48]  And the latest polling to come out on this shows the following.
[00:31:50]  Okay.
[00:31:51]  When it comes to, obviously, when it comes to the economy, Trump's numbers are bad.
[00:31:56]  They've been bad, but they're even worse.
[00:31:58]  I'm trying to pull it up here.
[00:32:00]  This is all conflicts in Iraq.
[00:32:02]  Okay.
[00:32:02]  This is his job approval ratings.
[00:32:05]  Overall, 40% approve.
[00:32:07]  This is in a new CBS poll.
[00:32:09]  Immigration, 45% approve, which is his highest number.
[00:32:13]  On Iran, just 38% approve.
[00:32:15]  On the economy, he has a 36% approval rating.
[00:32:17]  On inflation, it's 33%.
[00:32:21]  So you've got two-thirds of the United States opposing him, not approving of his job when it comes to the economy and inflation.
[00:32:28]  And when it comes to this war, we're seeing now some more realistic numbers.
[00:32:33]  You can pull MAGA all you want.
[00:32:35]  MAGA's with Trump.
[00:32:36]  But there are a lot of Republicans who do not consider themselves MAGA.
[00:32:39]  And by the way, Pierce, normally, like two months ago, we would have called them neocons.
[00:32:44]  And those people should have approved of this war more than anybody.
[00:32:46]  Now it appears that the coalition has shifted because the non-MAGA Republicans are only 70% in favor of this war, which means 30% of them are not in favor.
[00:32:56]  Those are not neocons.
[00:32:58]  Those are people who were Republican voters who came over for Trump, who have turned on him.
[00:33:03]  And when you pull the larger group of Trump voters in 2024, there was a poll that just took a look at this.
[00:33:09]  One quarter of the voters disapprove of what is happening in Iran and their opinions on Trump are turning too.
[00:33:16]  So this will have political consequences we need to pay attention to.
[00:33:19]  Yeah, no question.
[00:33:20]  I mean, again, I just question the timing of this six, seven months before the midterm elections.
[00:33:25]  It would already be tough for any incumbent president.
[00:33:28]  Why do this now?
[00:33:30]  And, you know, the thing we're not factoring in there to these polls is what will happen in a few weeks and months when the real effect of what is going on right now with Australia Formula becomes clearer.
[00:33:44]  Because when you hold up the supply of fuel to the world, of energy to the world, it takes quite a few weeks to actually manifest itself into food supplies and so on.
[00:33:56]  So I think you're going to see a big spike in inflation this summer running into the fall and the midterms.
[00:34:03]  Now, how's Trump going to talk his way out of that?
[00:34:06]  You're going to see inflation rising again.
[00:34:09]  You're going to see prices going up again.
[00:34:12]  The gas pump you've already addressed, none of this is serving the average American.
[00:34:17]  And if at the same time, the Iranian regime that you apparently did this to depose remains intact and is still just as bellicose and is clearly still wielding control over things like Australia Formos and the neighboring Gulf states and so on, then I think most Americans would be like, why did we do this, Donald?
[00:34:40]  What's going on?
[00:34:41]  How does this sit with America first, any of it?
[00:34:45]  That's the thing.
[00:34:46]  I mean, MAGA may go with Trump however he feels, whatever he says, even if it's diametrically opposed from what he ran on.
[00:34:54]  But America First Republicans don't agree and America first independents don't agree.
[00:34:59]  The independents are the ones who decide elections.
[00:35:02]  Republicans don't like it.
[00:35:04]  Democrats don't like it, but it is the truth.
[00:35:06]  And here's CNN's Harry Enton talking about Trump's economic approval rating among independents right now.
[00:35:13]  Listen here, Satan.
[00:35:14]  21st century presidents, economic net approval ratings at this point in term two among independents, Trump is 48 points underwater.
[00:35:22]  Just one in five independents, excuse me, just one in four independents say that they approve of the job that he is doing when it comes to the economy.
[00:35:30]  His net approval rating on the economy among independents, twice as bad as Barack Obama's was at this point, who was 25 points underwater and double digits worse than George W. Bush was among independents, according to CBS News, at this point when it comes to the economy.
[00:35:44]  Look, these are numbers that if I were a Republican running for Congress, I would be shaking in place because there's really nowhere to hide if you're a Republican running for Congress.
[00:35:56]  Pierce, you and I both know while Trump will scoff at these polls and say they're not real, et cetera.
[00:36:00]  He'll focus on the MA numbers.
[00:36:02]  He's not dumb and he sees what we see.
[00:36:05]  And I think it's one of the reasons why he had the reversal this morning.
[00:36:08]  I think he's looking at the economic outcome here as opposed to what else is happening militarily.
[00:36:13]  What do you think?
[00:36:14]  100%.
[00:36:15]  And so he should.
[00:36:17]  You know, he came in on a mission statement to improve the lives of average Americans.
[00:36:22]  That's why they voted for him in such big numbers.
[00:36:25]  They didn't like what happened under President Biden and the Democrats.
[00:36:28]  And they saw in Trump the kind of Pied Piper figure that would come in and he would not go and attack Middle Eastern countries like some of these predecessors.
[00:36:38]  He would instead focus on domestic issues.
[00:36:41]  He would make America safe by sorting out the border, which he did, and he would make Americans more prosperous.
[00:36:48]  He'd make them pay less tax.
[00:36:50]  He'd bring down the cost of living.
[00:36:53]  He'd stop inflation and so on.
[00:36:55]  Well, none of this is going to happen.
[00:36:57]  I can tell you, the run-up to the midterms, unless an absolute miracle happens, I cannot see anything but increased financial pain for the average American over the next six months.
[00:37:09]  This just seems to me utterly inevitable.
[00:37:11]  And the same will happen in my country, the UK, and across Europe and across the world.
[00:37:16]  This seismic shock, this is the single greatest shock to the global energy system we have ever seen already.
[00:37:24]  And it's not over.
[00:37:25]  If this was to escalate even further, and I think there's a high likelihood, despite all Donald Trump's statements today, to say, look, it's pretty much over.
[00:37:33]  They want to do a deal.
[00:37:34]  The Iranians aren't saying that.
[00:37:35]  It just carries on a lot longer than the- Iranians aren't saying it.
[00:37:40]  The Israelis aren't saying it.
[00:37:41]  And we're sending Marines to Iran right now.
[00:37:44]  Sorry, keep going.
[00:37:44]  No, I just think if you put boots on the ground to add to the mix, I think this could turn into a horror story for Donald Trump.
[00:37:50]  And I just wonder who's advising him.
[00:37:52]  It's like, Mr. President, Rupert Murdoch.
[00:37:56]  Well, I don't know what to believe of who's in his ear or not.
[00:37:59]  All I know is that whoever is telling him this is all going to play out really well, I think needs to probably right now be replaced by people telling him, Mr. President, you have a clear and imminent threat to your ability to control any part of Congress come November.
[00:38:17]  I think it's almost certain he'd probably lose the House right now.
[00:38:20]  And more and more increasingly likely, if this war carries on, he will lose the Senate too.
[00:38:26]  That paralyzes any president.
[00:38:28]  It would make Donald Trump the lamest of lame duck presidents.
[00:38:32]  He knows it.
[00:38:32]  We know everyone knows it.
[00:38:34]  It's how the system works.
[00:38:35]  So again, I come back to why do it now?
[00:38:39]  Why do it like this?
[00:38:40]  And you forgot the General Petraeus number one rule of war.
[00:38:44]  How does it end?
[00:38:46]  Petraeus called his book that.
[00:38:48]  How does it end is the first question you should always ask before you go to war.
[00:38:53]  In other words, what is the mission statement?
[00:38:55]  What does victory look like?
[00:38:58]  And we still don't know.
[00:38:59]  You know, if you ask anyone of the administration at any given moment of any given day, what is the end game here?
[00:39:06]  What is victory?
[00:39:07]  They can't really tell you.
[00:39:11]  Which is an opportunity.
[00:39:12]  That's an opportunity for us.
[00:39:14]  Just get out then.
[00:39:15]  Just get out.
[00:39:15]  It's fine.
[00:39:16]  You know, then we haven't made it so crystal clear that something less of whatever that non-crystal clear thing is would be an obvious loss.
[00:39:25]  So let's just declare victory and get out.
[00:39:28]  I realize it's complicated at this point, but it's only going to be more complicated the longer we wait.

=== Losing The Audience (11:29) ===

[00:39:32]  And one point I wanted to make, Pierce.
[00:39:35]  So now, according to this poll, this is a YouGov Yahoo poll that shows 24% of Trump voters in 2024 do not support this war.
[00:39:45]  So it's basically one quarter of the Trump voters who voted for him last time are against this war.
[00:39:52]  15% of those say they're strongly against it.
[00:39:55]  And they point something interesting out when writing this up on CNN.
[00:39:59]  They point out that it took until 2006, three years after the Iraq war began, for GOP opposition to start to creep into the high teens.
[00:40:12]  That's where we've started with the Iran war.
[00:40:15]  I mean, 2006 was the darkest days.
[00:40:19]  It was truly like this is second term George W. Bush with the beheadings.
[00:40:24]  That's what was happening.
[00:40:25]  I remember because it was like months before I started my first job ever as an anchor with Bill Hemmer.
[00:40:30]  And the news cycle was so incredibly dark.
[00:40:32]  And Fox News is asking itself, like, how do we get people to tune in?
[00:40:35]  People are being beheaded.
[00:40:37]  And that's what made it creep up into the high teens.
[00:40:41]  Now here we are in week four of this thing, and you've got 24% of Trump voters saying we are against this thing.
[00:40:48]  The president has got to stop this.
[00:40:50]  We don't have to stay over there.
[00:40:53]  All right.
[00:40:54]  I want to shift because I know I only have a short time with you.
[00:40:56]  And I've got to ask you, I've got to ask you about what your former place of employment, CNN, is doing to keep up with the peers Morgan's of the world.
[00:41:05]  Pierce, they are jealous of your numbers and possibly my own.
[00:41:09]  It's incredible what they are doing.
[00:41:11]  They've decided that if they try to make Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper and their sets look more like they are podcasters and in digital media, people will start listening to them again.
[00:41:28]  They've got Anderson Cooper.
[00:41:29]  They tell him to take off your jacket and roll up your shirt sleeves.
[00:41:32]  They got him the big microphone that was like Edward R. Murrow style or that you'd see on a podcasting set.
[00:41:38]  Jake Tapper literally did his show from his office with his panels squeezed in on his little couch because he says that's where they do their actual journalism from, Pierce.
[00:41:53]  So they're getting more authentic, they think.
[00:41:56]  And you say what about this desperate ploy to save their ratings?
[00:42:00]  Well, I think flattery is the most impressive thing you can have.
[00:42:05]  Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
[00:42:08]  Having just done seven weeks of filming my show from my sitting room at home, because I managed to fall over and break my femur and need a new hip.
[00:42:19]  You and I know, and I've seen, I watch your show very regularly, and often you're in different locations.
[00:42:24]  It doesn't matter where you are because you can create exactly the same show from wherever you are in the world.
[00:42:28]  And I'm the same.
[00:42:29]  I've been all over the world doing my show from all sorts of different locations.
[00:42:33]  That's the beauty of the nimbleness of what we now do.
[00:42:37]  And we know that our viewers thoroughly embrace that.
[00:42:40]  But the difference is we're not mainstream media and they've been very sniffy about all of us and saying, oh, look at these podcasters.
[00:42:47]  No one really cares about them.
[00:42:48]  There's a whole campaign going on now about no one, they're all irrelevant, these podcasters and YouTubers, no one cares.
[00:42:55]  And I'm like, I've got four kids from 32 down to 14.
[00:42:59]  None of them watch mainstream television at all.
[00:43:02]  They all watch YouTube.
[00:43:04]  They all watch my show, your show.
[00:43:06]  They watch Tucker.
[00:43:07]  They watch Candace.
[00:43:08]  They watch all these shows.
[00:43:10]  Increasingly, interestingly, they're not watching Ben Shapiro.
[00:43:14]  For example, I saw the numbers came out a few days ago about the dramatic shift downwards in his YouTube numbers.
[00:43:21]  I'm not surprised because he's gone from Ben Shapiro, the king of free speech, to Ben Shapiro, the guy that says, if you say anything critical about Israel, you must be anti-Semitic and we must cancel you.
[00:43:32]  The hypocrisy is real.
[00:43:33]  But when I see someone like Anderson Cooper, oh, I have to say, in my experience of working with him, and I lose that phrase advisedly because he was such a poisonous little backstabber when I worked there.
[00:43:46]  Watching him rolling his sleeves up with his big old microphone, trying to be Edwin Morrow was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
[00:43:55]  At least with Jake Tapper.
[00:43:57]  I found Jake Tapper's office mesmerizing.
[00:43:59]  He's got so much cool stuff in there.
[00:44:01]  But really, Anderson Cooper, the new Ed Morrow, do me a favor.
[00:44:07]  You know, he's just completely toe-curling.
[00:44:11]  But like I said, imitation is the best form of flattery.
[00:44:14]  They are trying to look like us, but they don't.
[00:44:18]  I mean, Anderson Cooper never expresses an opinion worth listening to anyway.
[00:44:22]  But that's why people turn to us.
[00:44:24]  They know what's happening in the news.
[00:44:26]  They want to know what to think about what's happening in the news.
[00:44:29]  And we tell them, we give them strident, honest opinion.
[00:44:33]  Take it or leave it, but at least no one is controlling us.
[00:44:36]  We're our own bosses.
[00:44:38]  We say what we believe in the moment.
[00:44:40]  We're not afraid to change our views.
[00:44:42]  If facts change.
[00:44:43]  We are unencumbered spirits.
[00:44:45]  They cannot say the same.
[00:44:46]  They're still living the old mainstream media television rules.
[00:44:52]  And they are like a straitjacket, as you and I discovered.
[00:44:55]  So look, on one level, I've got some great friends at CNN.
[00:44:58]  So actually, I've always got on very well with Jake.
[00:45:01]  I get on very well with people like Caitlin Collins and Wolf Blitzer and Aaron Burnett and others.
[00:45:06]  I've got no issues with a lot of my colleagues there.
[00:45:08]  But I do think they've got an extra essential problem, CNN, about what they are going to try to do going forward.
[00:45:14]  Because the average age of a CNN viewer is nearly 70.
[00:45:18]  70.
[00:45:18]  The average age of my viewers, in your viewers, is about 45.
[00:45:22]  And the reason young people gravitate to us is we look quite cool to them.
[00:45:27]  We're not sitting in conventional mainstream media locations preaching a kind of mainstream media.
[00:45:35]  It's not the set.
[00:45:37]  It's the person and the messaging.
[00:45:39]  And to your point, like my audience disagrees with me all the time.
[00:45:42]  A lot of them are supportive of this war.
[00:45:44]  That doesn't mean that they leave.
[00:45:46]  They're interested in hearing the ideas kicked around, honestly, by somebody who overall they trust.
[00:45:51]  The problem for CNN is they sacrificed that long ago and it's going to take more than a set design to get it back.
[00:45:56]  By the way, on the subject of Ben Shapiro, who I know attacked you for absolutely no reason and just doubled down, he's lost 150,000 subscribers over the past year, 150,000.
[00:46:06]  At least there's a real reason to believe that he may be paying for subscribers and views.
[00:46:11]  Many who study the industry believe that.
[00:46:13]  But I want to show you one thing quickly.
[00:46:14]  He's not only trying to force you into saying what he wants you to say around Israel and this war, et cetera, and me too.
[00:46:21]  He tried it with Michael Knowles, his own colleague over there, where they were having a discussion.
[00:46:25]  He wasn't having it.
[00:46:26]  Like a BLMer, like a BLMer.
[00:46:29]  He tried to make him say what he wanted him to say.
[00:46:32]  Here's the example in SAT 9.
[00:46:34]  Michael, I'll just ask you straight up.
[00:46:36]  Is Candace Owens doing something evil by attacking Erica Kern?
[00:46:39]  I think that it's wrong to attack Erica Kerr.
[00:46:42]  Say the sentence with her name.
[00:46:44]  I'm not going to dance.
[00:46:46]  I know you're on it for the podcast.
[00:46:48]  You don't have to dance like the podcast.
[00:46:50]  You are dancing pretty quickly.
[00:46:51]  I mean, there's a lot that's happening right now.
[00:46:52]  I know.
[00:46:52]  I don't think there's any tapestry.
[00:46:54]  Totally clear.
[00:46:55]  Even if you aren't interested in the podcast for the podcast, people who are leading the invective against Candace are her biggest publicists.
[00:47:03]  Make him say it.
[00:47:04]  BLM, say it.
[00:47:06]  That's what Ben Shapiro has become, Piers.
[00:47:08]  Yeah.
[00:47:09]  It's like he's all for free speech, as long as it's exactly how he tells you you need to speak.
[00:47:15]  And I'm not having it.
[00:47:17]  You're not having it.
[00:47:18]  That's why our numbers are going through the roof as more and more people tune in.
[00:47:22]  That's why he's losing his audience.
[00:47:24]  And credit to Michael Knowles, who came on my show last week and was great, as he always is.
[00:47:29]  We don't always agree about everything, but he's always a civilized debater.
[00:47:33]  He's always an interesting guy.
[00:47:34]  He's always well informed.
[00:47:35]  He's very intelligent.
[00:47:36]  And he just wasn't going to be browbeaten by Ben Shapiro into saying what Ben Shapiro wanted him to say.
[00:47:43]  And you can have all sorts of views about Candice.
[00:47:45]  I have Candace on all the time.
[00:47:47]  We lock horns about all sorts of things.
[00:47:49]  You know, I don't particularly like the way she's gone after Erica Koch.
[00:47:53]  I don't agree with her about Bridget Macron being a man, whatever it is.
[00:47:56]  But Candace is a very dynamic and popular person in this space.
[00:48:02]  She has strong opinions, strong views, and I like arguing with her, just as I do with you when we had our tear-up about Bad Bunny.
[00:48:09]  42 million people watched one of those clips of me and you going at it about bad bunny on our TikTok channel.
[00:48:17]  Anderson Cooper can roll his sleeves up and take all his clothes off.
[00:48:20]  He's not going to get numbers like that.
[00:48:24]  A pleasure, my friend.
[00:48:26]  Thank you so much.
[00:48:26]  I agree with everything you just said.
[00:48:28]  We'll talk again soon.
[00:48:29]  Great to see you.
[00:48:30]  Take care.
[00:48:31]  Piers Morgan, the one and only, one of my inspos for getting into this space to begin with.
[00:48:35]  He wasn't yet in this space when I got in this space, but his no-nonsense, honest approach to the news has defined him for decades.
[00:48:44]  And it was something I admired about Piers back when I was still sort of the more polished anchor, not sharing her own opinions, including the day I got into podcasting back in 2020.
[00:48:54]  I mean, I named him and Tucker as two of my inspirations because they were people who I felt spoke honestly to their audiences.
[00:49:01]  The consequences be damned.
[00:49:03]  Now they will both wind up fired within like two years of that.
[00:49:07]  And that's no accident, right?
[00:49:09]  I was also canned at NBC, though technically it wasn't a firing in any event.
[00:49:14]  I certainly had my show canceled.
[00:49:17]  So eventually it comes for all of us if we're going to be super honest about the way we feel, because then we get dubbed controversial and we get dubbed all the terrible things.
[00:49:26]  And we have to live with that, unfortunately, but it's worth it.
[00:49:29]  It's worth it for living free.
[00:49:33]  My God, it's worth it for living free.
[00:49:36]  I live free.
[00:49:37]  No one controls me.
[00:49:39]  No one.
[00:49:40]  No one.
[00:49:40]  There's no agenda pushing me to say one thing or another, anything other than my own opinion.
[00:49:46]  I don't take any foreign money.
[00:49:47]  I don't take any money from the government.
[00:49:49]  I don't owe any favors to anybody in the Trump administration.
[00:49:52]  Nothing.
[00:49:53]  Nothing.
[00:49:54]  That's why I can give you my unvarnished view.
[00:49:56]  You can take it.
[00:49:56]  You can leave it.
[00:49:57]  I think I have a close enough relationship with my audience that we can get through a disagreement because we have before.
[00:50:03]  But you will not find that when you tune in to CNN or Fox.
[00:50:09]  Now we know that Lindsey Graham and Rupert Murdoch, the two people, the guy who owns the channel and the guy who's the face of it now, were the two biggest boosters, not to mention Mark Thiessen and General Jack Keene, the two biggest boosters pushing this war.
[00:50:21]  Do you really think you're going to get objective analysis now over there on how it's going?
[00:50:24]  Do you?
[00:50:25]  Of course not.
[00:50:26]  I have no agenda.
[00:50:27]  I'll tell you what my bias is.
[00:50:29]  We have to get through it together.
[00:50:31]  We have to get through it together.
[00:50:32]  And you have to get various viewpoints.
[00:50:33]  And I know you can get the opposite any place you want, any up and down the channel over at FNC.
[00:50:38]  Anyway, you tell me whether Anderson Cooper's rolled up sleeves are going to make you tune over to CNN now to listen to his take.
[00:50:46]  I doubt it.
[00:50:47]  Camille Foster's here next.
[00:50:49]  Think about this.
[00:50:50]  In 2006, $20,000 equaled roughly 33 ounces of gold at spot price.
[00:50:56]  At today's prices, those 33 ounces would be worth about $165,000.

=== JD Vance's Conflict Reticence (15:06) ===

[00:51:02]  That's why many smart Americans diversify a portion of their savings into precious metals.
[00:51:07]  And that's why you should consider buying gold from Birch Gold Group.
[00:51:10]  For thousands of years, gold has been a store of wealth.
[00:51:13]  And today, it's a crucial part of any balanced strategy.
[00:51:16]  Even better, Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered retirement account in gold.
[00:51:22]  Just text MK to the number 989898 to receive your free info kit on gold.
[00:51:27]  There's no obligation, just useful information.
[00:51:30]  With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers, let Birch Gold help you diversify with gold.
[00:51:38]  Now that's peace of mind.
[00:51:39]  Again, text MK to 989898 today.
[00:51:44]  Blir det for varmt inne når sola kommer?
[00:51:47]  Sliter du med blending i stua eller på TV-skjermen?
[00:51:50]  Nå får du 40% rabatt på sesongens bestselgere hos Kjelsmarkiser.
[00:51:55]  Vi leverer skreddesydd solskjerming tilpasset norske forhold, både innvendig og utvendig.
[00:52:01]  Bestiller du nå, sikrer du levering før sommeren og unngår høysesong og ventetid.
[00:52:06]  Gjør bolig klar for sola?
[00:52:08]  Bestill gratis befaring i dag på kjelsmarkiser.no Vi sier ikke at du er dum hvis du velger helt OK-dekning hos en annen mobil å praterere.
[00:52:18]  Vi sier bare at det er smart å spare penger med Norges beste 5G-dekning på OneCall.no Plus, CNN's bizarre attempt to save itself from irrelevancy by turning into a podcast or a cosplaying a podcast, wannabe something, let's bring in Camille Foster.
[00:52:44]  He is editor-at-large of Tangle News.
[00:52:46]  Camille, so good to see you.
[00:52:48]  There's a lot.
[00:52:49]  Hey, Megan.
[00:52:50]  A lot to get to.
[00:52:51]  Let's start with President Trump on the tarmac down in Florida before he left Mar-a-Lago on his latest comments on Iran.
[00:53:00]  Watch.
[00:53:01]  Iran's foreign ministry says you're not telling the truth when it comes to productive conversations down the road.
[00:53:06]  Well, they're going to have to get themselves better public relations, people.
[00:53:10]  We have had very, very strong talks.
[00:53:14]  We'll see where they lead.
[00:53:15]  We have points, major points of agreement.
[00:53:18]  I would say almost all points of agreement.
[00:53:21]  Perhaps that hasn't been conveyed.
[00:53:23]  The communication, as you know, has been blown to pieces.
[00:53:26]  But we've had very strong talks.
[00:53:27]  Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner had them.
[00:53:31]  They went, I would say, perfectly.
[00:53:35]  They want very much to make a deal.
[00:53:37]  We'd like to make a deal too.
[00:53:39]  We're going to get together today by probably phone.
[00:53:44]  We're doing a five-day period.
[00:53:45]  We'll see how that goes.
[00:53:47]  And if it goes well, we're going to end up with settling this.
[00:53:50]  Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out.
[00:53:53]  But we're dealing with the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader.
[00:53:59]  You know, it's a little tough.
[00:54:00]  They've wiped out, we've wiped out everybody.
[00:54:03]  Not the Supreme Leader.
[00:54:05]  No, not the Supreme Leader.
[00:54:06]  We want the enriched uranium before we can end this.
[00:54:08]  We want no enrichment, but we also want the rich, enriched uranium.
[00:54:16]  So they need better PR people.
[00:54:19]  I think they're all getting bombed.
[00:54:21]  And we're going to keep bombing our little hearts out if we can't reach a deal.
[00:54:26]  I mean, I'm going to say something controversial.
[00:54:27]  That's the kind of commentary that actually makes me love Trump.
[00:54:30]  You know, it's like, I don't like this war.
[00:54:32]  I'm not in support of this war, but like he is funny.
[00:54:36]  He is funny.
[00:54:38]  And I don't like Iran.
[00:54:39]  I'm certainly not rooting for them to win.
[00:54:41]  So he's trying to show some American muscle there in getting them to the bargaining table.
[00:54:46]  They don't want to come.
[00:54:48]  And that's, you know, sort of frank talk from Donald Trump.
[00:54:51]  What do you make of it?
[00:54:52]  Yeah, I mean, the conflicting messages on whether or not they're talking, are they talking?
[00:54:56]  That's a little frustrating, but not at all surprising.
[00:54:59]  I mean, Iran is always messaging in a very particular way, trying to show strength and be muscular in a context like this.
[00:55:05]  But we've got plenty of reporting that gives us a clear indication that there are a lot of various intermediaries who are having conversations between the two parties trying to help here.
[00:55:16]  The president mentioned Jared Kushner in particular and Steve Witkoff, who have been having some conversations, apparently.
[00:55:23]  And I would fully expect that there are discussions, but everything that we've heard so far, apart from what the president has said, suggests that the two sides are pretty far apart and that we're not anywhere near any sort of resolution.
[00:55:36]  And thus far, even while these conversations are going on, even while he's extended from the 48-hour deadline to add five more days, strikes are still going on, both from the Israelis, from Iran, from the United States, in Iran, certainly in Lebanon as well.
[00:55:55]  So the situation is still pretty precarious.
[00:55:58]  I think a lot of people were very concerned over the weekend that we would see a huge escalation this weekend with some strikes on Iranian energy facilities.
[00:56:06]  And to the extent we're decimating their energy infrastructure, that has huge implications.
[00:56:10]  That's not just a matter of Iran.
[00:56:15]  That's an attack on the Iranian people and not just the government.
[00:56:19]  You know, that's not something I think we want to do because we want the Iranian people to remain on our side, though some are supporting all of our movements because they're so anti-Ayatollah.
[00:56:29]  Speaking of the Ayatollah, Trump mentioned him.
[00:56:32]  We don't know who it is.
[00:56:34]  We know that the old Ayatollah's son got elected to the position, but he may be dead or extremely physically and mentally incapacitated because apparently nobody's seen him.
[00:56:44]  And there are rumors that he's brain dead or actually dead.
[00:56:47]  So who knows?
[00:56:48]  But here's what Trump had to say about the Strait of Hormuz and the Ayatollah.
[00:56:52]  What about the Strait of Hormuz?
[00:56:53]  Who's going to be in control of it?
[00:56:55]  Can it be opened very soon if this works?
[00:56:57]  How soon?
[00:56:58]  And who's control of it?
[00:56:59]  Will Iran still be able to control the flow?
[00:57:02]  Be jointly controlled.
[00:57:04]  By whom?
[00:57:06]  Maybe me.
[00:57:07]  Maybe me.
[00:57:09]  Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is, whoever the next Ayatollah.
[00:57:16]  Maybe me.
[00:57:17]  He's running Venezuela.
[00:57:19]  Yeah.
[00:57:20]  And he may be running Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:57:24]  Or Marco Rubio.
[00:57:25]  Marco Rubio.
[00:57:25]  He's another candidate.
[00:57:27]  Marco Rubio should definitely be chosen for this.
[00:57:29]  Maybe me, me and the Ayatollah.
[00:57:31]  And we don't believe there is an Ayatollah.
[00:57:33]  Forgive me, Camille, but I don't feel confident about where it's going.
[00:57:38]  It's very difficult to know just what the strategy is here, just where the priorities are.
[00:57:43]  It is interesting that there are so many conversations happening about the economic implications of this conflict, particularly with the Straits of Hormuz, but beyond that as well.
[00:57:51]  I mean, you had Scott Besson on nearly all of the Sunday shows yesterday being the chief advocate for this conflict, but also trying to contextualize the administration, yeah, the administration's strategy with respect to the very Treasury Secretary.
[00:58:05]  Exactly, which is very, I mean, you would expect State Department, someone from the Department of Defense, maybe the Vice President of the United States.
[00:58:10]  But no, you've got the Treasury Secretary out there talking about the priorities for this conflict, but then also trying to contextualize what seems like a very odd strategy of essentially loosening some of the restrictions that have been placed on Iran, loosening some of the restrictions that have been placed on Russia in the midst of a conflict where both of these countries are essentially parties to the conflict, Iran directly, obviously, and Russia, because Iran is an ally of theirs.
[00:58:35]  And there has been clear reporting and statements from Putin and the Russian regime as well, indicating that this is their partner.
[00:58:43]  They're providing them with at least some sort of security support.
[00:58:47]  Certainly, the weaponry that we've been taking out for weeks there was supplied by the Russians and the Chinese in many instances.
[00:58:55]  So it's a very interesting situation.
[00:58:59]  I think it does bring into question some of the earlier claims that there was this kind of existential imminent threat because the concern doesn't really seem to be that if we stop doing this tomorrow, there's going to be an attack on the homeland.
[00:59:12]  In which case, that helps perhaps put into context some of the kind of strange public opinion polling numbers.
[00:59:18]  And by strange, I mean just not particularly supportive of this effort, at least amongst the general public.
[00:59:25]  Yeah, they didn't, well, they didn't sell it.
[00:59:27]  They didn't take the time to sell it.
[00:59:29]  And after the fact, their rationales kept changing day by day, literally day by day, so people know when they're being spun.
[00:59:36]  But I also think that the reason most Republicans are in favor of this conflict is they hate Iran.
[00:59:42]  Not the people, but the government.
[00:59:44]  They know that Iran has been messing with American troops and interests for the better part of the last 50 years.
[00:59:49]  So it's just like, that's kind of where my husband is.
[00:59:51]  Like, F Iran, you know, sick of their nonsense and this bullshit.
[00:59:55]  And like, why wouldn't we bomb them?
[00:59:57]  We know they're up to no good.
[00:59:58]  They're nefarious and they definitely don't have our interests at heart.
[01:00:02]  I think it's more complicated than that, but I get it too.
[01:00:05]  I mean, I get that attitude.
[01:00:08]  I wanted to, you mentioned JD Vance not being out there.
[01:00:11]  It is interesting.
[01:00:12]  It is interesting that it's the Treasury Secretary who's doing all the defense, like not Marco, not JD.
[01:00:20]  And there is a report now today from Bloomberg that says one of the biggest pushers of this war, shockingly, you won't read this in the Wall Street Journal, was Rupert Murdoch, who owns the journal and the Post and Fox News.
[01:00:35]  And they report that, this is how they write it.
[01:00:38]  Trump's Iran war drive exposes limits of yes, sir, cabinet.
[01:00:42]  Trump's decision to wage war on Iran was partly motivated by pressure from outside allies, while his own White House team stayed more muted.
[01:00:50]  Those privately pressing Trump to strike Iran included Rupert Murdoch and some conservative commentators.
[01:00:56]  We know that that included Mark Thiessen, General Jack Keene, and Mark Levin famously of Fox News, among others.
[01:01:04]  Lindsey Graham, I mean, he's in a different category because he's an elected politician.
[01:01:08]  Then they write that Murdoch communicated with Trump several times as he urged the president to take on Tehran, according to one person briefed on their interactions.
[01:01:16]  Then they write some of Trump's closest advisors were more muted, including Vance, Rubio, and Susie Wiles.
[01:01:24]  Few, if any, told him directly that it was an ill-conceived idea.
[01:01:28]  Wiles tried to ensure that he understood his options, while Vance urged top officials to speak candidly to the president about the possibility of war.
[01:01:36]  In private meetings before the attacks, Vance asked questions about how any war would work.
[01:01:42]  And then on the heels of that report from Bloomberg, you get this one from the Washington Post, Camille.
[01:01:48]  Vance has not decided on 2028.
[01:01:51]  Vance has maintained in recent private conversations that he has not yet decided whether he will seek the presidential nomination for 2028, according to two people who have recently discussed the matter with him.
[01:02:02]  One of those people cited Vance's fourth child and said the vice president has put a priority on his family life and is unlikely to make a final decision until he and Usha Vance see how another baby affects their lives.
[01:02:14]  So what do you make of where JD Vance stands now in terms of his political future, given everything that's happening?
[01:02:23]  Well, by all appearances, it seems like he has been somewhat sidelined here.
[01:02:28]  It's clear that JD is someone who, based on his previous comments, presumably has some reticence about this conflict.
[01:02:37]  Publicly, his statements have been generally supportive of the administration.
[01:02:41]  But in terms of his future prospects, I mean, all of the reporting about the contests between Rubio and JD have been incredibly difficult to ignore.
[01:02:50]  Certainly things that JD and his team have heard.
[01:02:53]  And it would be very strange if he were super bullish on the prospect of running for BP at a time when it seems that he doesn't really have the full support of the president of the United States.
[01:03:02]  He isn't, as we just mentioned, the person who's out there selling what is the most important thing for the administration at this point, this particular conflict, which the president has to one, hope goes really well, and two, really does need to do some messaging around.
[01:03:16]  So it's a real challenge for JD.
[01:03:19]  But frankly, if you are JD Vance and you are a principled opponent of this kind of intervention abroad, then you ought to be doing everything within your power, even if it means alienating your boss to try and advocate against the conflict.
[01:03:35]  That is what leadership requires and looks like.
[01:03:38]  And it isn't clear that that's going on.
[01:03:41]  So one does have to wonder about his viability as a candidate, if that's the sort of perspective that he hopes to embody and the sort of policy priority that he hopes to pursue.
[01:03:52]  Okay, but here's why I disagree with everything you just said.
[01:03:55]  Okay, tell me.
[01:03:56]  I think JD Vance is actually in a great position right now because I think there's no question he opposes this war.
[01:04:03]  Of course he opposes this war.
[01:04:05]  He is a true non-interventionalist.
[01:04:07]  I think he's much more in the field of Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Kent, Tucker.
[01:04:11]  You know, it was clear before the election that he would oppose this kind of action and stuck by that principle.
[01:04:17]  But he is doing correctly the job of the vice president, which is to have his boss's back.
[01:04:25]  Now, the real question to me, like, and it would be a disastrous move politically and otherwise for JD Vance to turn on Trump publicly on this war.
[01:04:31]  And so he's doing the right thing by standing by his boss.
[01:04:34]  He, you know, once Trump made his decision, said, I'm on board, and he's been defensive of the president.
[01:04:39]  And I think that's good.
[01:04:40]  Now, the real question is when 2028 kicks off, which will be, you know, technically after the midterms, but realistically within 12 months of that, and he gets the Kamala Harris Sonny Hostin of the View question, is there anything you would do differently?
[01:04:58]  Like in particular on the Iran war?
[01:05:01]  Sure.
[01:05:01]  That's the moment.
[01:05:03]  What does he say there?
[01:05:04]  And I would submit that in that moment, what he needs to say is in general, I remain a non-interventionalist.
[01:05:15]  And had I been commander-in-chief, would I have done what President Donald Trump did?
[01:05:19]  It's hard to say because I wasn't there for every briefing he got based on what I knew.
[01:05:24]  Probably not.
[01:05:25]  Probably not.
[01:05:25]  But these are the amazing things the president got out of it.
[01:05:29]  And I supported his decision making.
[01:05:30]  And Trump is this unique political figure who has this incredible feel for dangers for the politics of a given matter and for taking huge amounts of information and coming out with like a key takeaway.
[01:05:44]  So I would never publicly second guess him on it.
[01:05:46]  Something like that.
[01:05:47]  Something that doesn't throw the president under the bus, but telegraphs to everybody, yes, I would have done that one differently.
[01:05:52]  And here's why I don't think it's going to hurt him if he answers it that way or whatever, however he comes out of this.
[01:05:57]  Because if you take a look at the polls, so the latest poll, according to Yahoo YouGov, is 24% of those who voted for Trump in 2024 are against this war.

=== Pushed By Netanyahu (09:15) ===

[01:06:08]  And the remaining are for it.
[01:06:10]  So he's, you know, 25% of the voters who voted for him the first time might not do it again.
[01:06:17]  Those people are the isolationists or the non-interventionalists.
[01:06:21]  JD will be acceptable to them, potentially.
[01:06:23]  I'm not saying guaranteed, but he's potentially acceptable to them.
[01:06:26]  The other 75 are neocons who hate Trump, but like what he's doing.
[01:06:32]  Now suddenly they're warming up to him.
[01:06:34]  And diehard MAGA, which will just follow Trump wherever he leads them.
[01:06:38]  The diehard MAGA, they won't abandon JD Vance for answering a question like that that way.
[01:06:44]  And they will see him as the Trump standard bearer because he was the guy's VP.
[01:06:48]  And he's going to have two more years at this point, two and a half of loyalty to Trump and backing Trump and being another big face of the administration.
[01:06:55]  So they're still going to love him.
[01:06:56]  It's the neo-Connie right wing that won't like JD.
[01:07:00]  And while they're suddenly like, yay, Trump, you know, they don't actually like Trump and JD.
[01:07:05]  They're using Trump to get this war against Iran, which they want.
[01:07:09]  And once they've gotten the war, like there's only so many other places in the Middle East they can invade Camille.
[01:07:15]  So like, I don't think they're going to be looking at the next Republican administration as like another tool by which we can hammer.
[01:07:21]  Now, they are talking about Turkey.
[01:07:24]  That's a little scary, but let's say they managed to like put their turkey desires, their warhawk turkey desire to the side.
[01:07:31]  I think even they would even realize, even if they couldn't put it aside, that they can't convince another Republican administration to start another war.
[01:07:36]  Maybe I'm crazy.
[01:07:37]  I believe the last promises.
[01:07:39]  But in any event, this is my long analysis on why I think JD is fine.
[01:07:42]  And he's probably in a better position than ever to secure the GOP nomination because the non-interventionalists are not going to be backing Marco Rubio.
[01:07:52]  I think they're too worried he shares Trump's ability to get pushed by people like Netanyahu.
[01:08:00]  Yeah, see, I do wonder about that particular narrative.
[01:08:04]  I mean, it does seem to me that Donald Trump is a guy who makes his own decisions and choices.
[01:08:09]  At the moment, I think he seemed to make some determination that there needed to be action in this particular conflict to the extent he made that decision.
[01:08:17]  Let me jump in on that.
[01:08:18]  Let me jump in and then I'll give it right back to you.
[01:08:20]  Recently, we talked about the Britney Hughes DWI.
[01:08:22]  She used to date Justin Timberlake, who also had a DWI, as luck would have it.
[01:08:27]  In any event, Justin Timberlake, according to Britney Spears' memoir, pushed her into having an abortion of their baby that they got pregnant with.
[01:08:34]  Now, he pushed her and pushed her, and she didn't want to do it, but she says he really pushed her and she did it.
[01:08:38]  So was that Britney's decision?
[01:08:40]  Yes, it was.
[01:08:41]  But if Justin Timberlake hadn't pushed and pushed her, would she have done it?
[01:08:44]  No, she wouldn't have.
[01:08:46]  It's the same thing.
[01:08:47]  Like, there's no question BB pushed Trump into this.
[01:08:49]  Yes, that doesn't excuse Trump.
[01:08:51]  It was President Trump's decision.
[01:08:52]  Totally, of course.
[01:08:54]  But how does that absolve B.B. Netanyahu for being the primary pusher of this war?
[01:08:59]  It was his brainchild.
[01:09:00]  It was his dream for decades.
[01:09:02]  He was at the White House seven times pushing it.
[01:09:04]  He had Lindsey Graham advising him on how to push it, how to manipulate Trump into it.
[01:09:08]  Like there's just no question.
[01:09:09]  And then ultimately, they were the final catalyst of it around when we would do it, according to Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson and Trump.
[01:09:16]  So it's like that doesn't, neither man is absolved.
[01:09:20]  Man is absolved, but there's no question that but for B.B. Netanyahu, we would not have done this now.
[01:09:25]  I mean, we've just seen reporting that suggests not only Israel, but also MBS and Saudis were generally supportive of some sort of effort like this, some sort of intervention like this.
[01:09:35]  It's not hard to imagine that the White House, having had its success in Venezuela, having previously had its success with Midnight Hammer, imagined a very short kind of brutal assault in Iran could be something that could actually produce beneficial results in the region.
[01:09:50]  And maybe they're reading the tea leaves.
[01:09:52]  Perhaps they're looking at the situation again with Venezuela.
[01:09:55]  You go in, you know that their defenses were provided by two of your major geopolitical adversaries.
[01:10:00]  If you can do something similar in Iran now before, say, they get hypersonic missiles or something like that from China, you might be better positioned to actually achieve some sort of meaningful change and recalibration in the region than by not doing anything at all.
[01:10:18]  Is it possible that there are theoretically, yes, Camille, that's possible, but that's not what actually happened.
[01:10:23]  Like in your imaginary world, sure.
[01:10:25]  We know that the BB influence was real.
[01:10:28]  We know that he was there seven times.
[01:10:29]  We know that he was coordinating with Lindsey Graham.
[01:10:32]  We know that Trump was listening to him.
[01:10:34]  We know Marco Rubio said the imminent threat was Israel was about to attack them.
[01:10:40]  And we realized they would attack us in response.
[01:10:44]  Yeah.
[01:10:44]  And I'm not dismissing any of that.
[01:10:46]  I'm also suggesting that it is not entirely, it's not unreasonable to acknowledge that countries have aligned interests.
[01:10:54]  And it is not a circumstance where the administration hasn't had public and prominent disagreements with Israel with respect to the prosecution of this particular conflict and even with respect to the prosecution of the conflict in Gaza.
[01:11:09]  So I think it's imperative that we are granting this administration agency.
[01:11:14]  I saw, you know, Joe Kent had been making the rounds recently and in his summary of this particular incident and in discussing Syria and Iraq, he puts somehow the responsibility for those conflicts on Israel.
[01:11:28]  I think that's a mistake.
[01:11:29]  I think to the extent we want to be critical of this administration, and I have been on any number of things and have been here too, I think it's important to just speak directly and say the president of the United States made a decision to go into Iran.
[01:11:42]  And the president of the United States, to the extent there doesn't really seem like there's a great strategy, to the extent the messaging is wrong, to the extent the emphasis is in the wrong place, that is on him.
[01:11:51]  He's culpable for that.
[01:11:52]  He made the decision.
[01:11:53]  And what will the next administration do?
[01:11:55]  I think that will have everything to do with who ends up getting elected.
[01:11:58]  I don't know that the president is particularly vulnerable to power.
[01:12:01]  And I'd say one last thing about Joe Kent since I mentioned him a moment ago.
[01:12:06]  The suggestion that there's somehow, you know, perhaps some sort of danger to the president and that perhaps that's what he's responding to, that he's not just being kind of pressured, as you mentioned, in meetings, which is totally conventional and understandable.
[01:12:20]  But the notion that there's somehow some sort of danger or threat to his life or his family's life and he needs to be concerned about that.
[01:12:27]  And that's why he attacked.
[01:12:28]  I think that sort of thing is just so sensational and over the top that anyone who's making those kinds of assertions, like there ought to be a huge number of question marks just kind of surrounding them and any other statements that they're making.
[01:12:42]  I don't, I mean, he said that to Tucker, that he thought that might have been one of the reasons.
[01:12:46]  Tucker asked him, how do you take a man who ran for 10 years on not getting us involved in any Middle East wars and flip him?
[01:12:53]  How does that happen?
[01:12:54]  And his answer was, you know, the pressure that was brought to bear by Israel and Lindsey Graham and others on Trump, who made the case over and over and over and convinced him this could be done quickly.
[01:13:04]  And the dissenters were left out of the room.
[01:13:06]  And now we hear, you know, weren't really saying all that much dissent anyway, like the JDs and the Marcos and the Susie Wileses of the world, maybe not have been in favor, but weren't really making a strong case against it.
[01:13:17]  As far as I know, Tucker was the only one going in there and getting in front of Trump and really making the case against it.
[01:13:22]  He failed, but he tried.
[01:13:25]  So, you know, there's that.
[01:13:27]  And then Joe Kent said that the other possibility is that Trump felt he might be threatened, like he might have skin in the game.
[01:13:36]  Like, do it, do it, or else something could happen to you.
[01:13:40]  Like, hate to see something happen to you.
[01:13:43]  It's just a little too consistent.
[01:13:46]  Well, I hear that.
[01:13:47]  I hear that.
[01:13:47]  And Joe Kent and I did not go there, but I think, you know, if I'm to give him the benefit of the doubt, Camille, he was the National Counterterrorism Center chief.
[01:13:58]  He's seen a lot of stuff that you and I have not seen.
[01:14:03]  And he knows what, you know, our government and other governments are capable of in a way you and I don't fully appreciate.
[01:14:12]  So, and he can't really share too many of the specifics about it.
[01:14:16]  But if he's got that concern, I think he's worth listening to.
[01:14:19]  Yeah, because I wouldn't dismiss that.
[01:14:21]  We can listen.
[01:14:22]  And perhaps I shouldn't dismiss it out of hand, but I will say extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
[01:14:27]  And thus far, I haven't seen evidence of that.
[01:14:30]  And I certainly wouldn't expect the relationship with Israel and the United States to be as close as it is if, in fact, that were the case, if that was the kind of pressure that we're being brought to bear.
[01:14:39]  I mean, we find out everything.
[01:14:41]  The president of the United States, you know, can't hook up with an intern without everyone in the country and on the planet finding out about it.
[01:14:48]  I think that sort of thing, we would hear about it.
[01:14:50]  There would be leaks, undoubtedly.
[01:14:54]  I don't know.
[01:14:55]  I really don't know.
[01:14:56]  I used to feel that, but I just feel like, you know, the number of things that our government has kept secret from us, like, just look what's happened with the Epstein files.
[01:15:05]  You know, look at the number of redactions.
[01:15:07]  Look at the number of loopholes the size of a Mac truck you could drive through, that law mandating the release of them.
[01:15:12]  I just feel like they do hide things.
[01:15:16]  And I don't know exactly why.
[01:15:18]  I don't think we're getting the full story on a lot of the big, like, there's a lot more to know, I think, about the Butler shooter.

=== Networks Embrace Podcaster Aesthetic (15:32) ===

[01:15:23]  Why don't we?
[01:15:24]  You know, why did Tucker and Miranda Devine of the New York Post have to break all the news about his social media?
[01:15:29]  Why didn't we hear?
[01:15:30]  Why did we just hear from the FBI that a very limited profile?
[01:15:33]  And they were going to leave it at that until Tucker and Miranda Devine broke that.
[01:15:37]  They had the same source, is my understanding, who gave them a leak.
[01:15:40]  Anyway, I'm not nearly as trusting of government as I used to be.
[01:15:45]  And it's really just from years on this earth and in this business that have gotten me there.
[01:15:48]  But fair enough.
[01:15:49]  Let's keep going because there's more to discuss.
[01:15:54]  I want to talk to you about the CBS News because they're a hot mess and they're failing.
[01:16:02]  You'll be shocked to hear.
[01:16:03]  Failing.
[01:16:04]  CBS News hired Tony Docapool because they wanted to save their evening news, but it's going a different way, Camille.
[01:16:13]  Brian Steinberg over Variety dropped a piece just a few days ago that read the opening line of which is the following.
[01:16:19]  Suddenly, CBS Evening News is back, where executives at the news division behind the show hoped never to return.
[01:16:26]  Viewership for the program, anchored by Tony Docapool since the start of the year, has once again dropped below 4 million.
[01:16:32]  I mean, this is the evening news.
[01:16:34]  Remember, this is like the one that would get, I mean, just like 15 years ago, 10 million a night, easily, easily, sometimes 15 million a night.
[01:16:42]  Dropped below 4 million, a critical demarcation point that previously spurred alarm at the at CBS News.
[01:16:50]  They recently scrapped a version of CBS News anchored by Maurice Dubois and John Dickerson after the program shed audience and fell below 4 million on many weeknights.
[01:17:01]  They're back.
[01:17:02]  They did this whole thing.
[01:17:03]  They got rid of those two.
[01:17:05]  They brought in Tony Docapool from the morning show.
[01:17:08]  Oh, we're redoing it.
[01:17:09]  We're going to have a softer, gentler approach.
[01:17:11]  You know, we got new management.
[01:17:12]  We got new anchor.
[01:17:13]  We got new everything.
[01:17:14]  Pretty soon they're going to be having podcast microphones.
[01:17:16]  We'll get to that.
[01:17:16]  And have him rolling up his sleeves and trying to sound like Joe Rogan.
[01:17:21]  And they're right back where they started from.
[01:17:25]  Variety reporting the following.
[01:17:26]  The overall audience for the program for the first five days ended March 13th stood at nearly 3.83 million and at 468,000 in the key demo between 25 and 54, under 470,000 in the key demo.
[01:17:43]  Oh my God.
[01:17:44]  Like when I was on Fox in the prime time on cable, which is always much lower than broadcast because you have to pay for it.
[01:17:50]  It's not free when you plug in your TV.
[01:17:53]  We were, our demo was like 700,000, 800,000, often above that.
[01:17:58]  And this is CBS free broadcast news below 470,000 in the key demo.
[01:18:04]  It's a nightmare.
[01:18:06]  In contrast, World News Tonight, which is the winner in the network evening news shows, is averaging 8.48 million, so 8.5 million, along with about a million in the demo.
[01:18:18]  NBC averaging about $6.5 million overall, about a million, 946,000 in the demo.
[01:18:26]  And then they point out that quarter to date, CBS Evening News has shared, has shed 15% of its viewership in the key advertising demo, which is the most sought after audience because it's what pays your advertising rates, which is the only way that they make money.
[01:18:46]  Cable news like Fox gets money from subscriber fees and ads.
[01:18:50]  The networks are in a different place.
[01:18:51]  They need those advertising dollars.
[01:18:52]  And one more fact for you.
[01:18:54]  When Nora O'Donnell ended her tenure at CBS Evening News in 2024 for bad ratings, she left with an audience of nearly 5.4 million.
[01:19:03]  They fired her, reportedly, demoted, when she had 5.4.
[01:19:08]  And now he is getting under 4 million.
[01:19:12]  Camille, network news is dead.
[01:19:15]  That's my takeaway.
[01:19:16]  It's dead.
[01:19:17]  You can put Tony in there.
[01:19:18]  You can put Maurice and what's his name in there.
[01:19:23]  It's not the anchor.
[01:19:24]  It's not the management.
[01:19:26]  It's the animal.
[01:19:29]  It's dead.
[01:19:30]  It's the deer.
[01:19:31]  It has a few steps in it, but it's been hit by the back truck.
[01:19:34]  It's stumbling off to the side of the road.
[01:19:36]  And there's no saving it, no matter how many rescue teams you send with paddles.
[01:19:40]  I mean, the viewership habits have evolved in substantive ways.
[01:19:45]  People are watching most things online.
[01:19:48]  They're watching YouTubers.
[01:19:50]  They're watching independent media voices.
[01:19:52]  They're mostly consuming clips.
[01:19:55]  And when you actually take a look at, I mean, brands with vestigial credibility, these older, old guard media companies, the CBS, NBC, ABC, they have been able to benefit for a very long time from the fact that they had this kind of vaunted posts with their broadcast stations over the air, completely free.
[01:20:14]  The reality is that virtually everyone has internet access at this point.
[01:20:18]  And most people are watching clips and younger audiences are, unfortunately or not, consuming a lot of their news, getting a lot of their news from TikTok and Instagram.
[01:20:27]  Competing with those new brands and emerging brands is not the sort of thing you're going to be able to do if most of what you're doing is depending on the fact that, well, hey, we're CBS News.
[01:20:39]  We're supposed to be important.
[01:20:40]  We're supposed to be relevant.
[01:20:42]  I think it's also important that CBS News, like the New York Times and various other prestigious kind of older, larger media institutions, they're doing a lot of important original reporting.
[01:20:53]  At the same time, however, that reporting gets cannibalized pretty quickly.
[01:20:56]  It is an unforgiving, fast-moving media ecosystem.
[01:21:00]  There are new entrants all the time.
[01:21:02]  There are new voices all the time.
[01:21:04]  And even the kind of negative, the swirl of negative attention that has surrounded CBS since Barry, who was a friend, took over, it's been a real challenge for them to kind of get up from under a lot of that kind of miasma.
[01:21:19]  So one hopes for good things there, but hope is probably not enough to make all of it work in their advantage, to their advantage, generally speaking.
[01:21:29]  And if you look at what's happening to the clips on no one could do it.
[01:21:32]  Yeah, and look at this.
[01:21:33]  No one could turn around the CBS numbers.
[01:21:36]  And Barry definitely cannot do it.
[01:21:39]  She doesn't even know TV.
[01:21:40]  She's literally never even been producing.
[01:21:46]  Well, let me tell you something, though.
[01:21:47]  There is something to know.
[01:21:48]  I mean, broadcast television is something that you actually do need to know a thing or two about.
[01:21:52]  Trust me, I came up under Britt Hume and he's the one who taught me that it's not just journalism.
[01:21:58]  There's a reason they call it broadcast journalism.
[01:22:01]  And the broadcast piece of it is important and there is something to know about how to do that.
[01:22:06]  She doesn't know any of it, but it's not really her fault.
[01:22:10]  It is not turnaroundable.
[01:22:12]  It is like a sinking aircraft carrier that you're trying to put water wings on and puff, puff, puff them up.
[01:22:18]  It's not going to work.
[01:22:20]  It's an aircraft carrier.
[01:22:21]  It's going to the bottom of the ocean.
[01:22:24]  And it's the same thing over at CNN.
[01:22:26]  We talked about this in our first hour with peers a bit, but you saw what they're doing over there now to save their ratings, Camille.
[01:22:33]  I mean, it's a nightmare.
[01:22:35]  They've decided to take Jake Tapper's show and Anderson Cooper's and make them look like your show and my show.
[01:22:47]  They now have the big microphones that we have on our podcasts.
[01:22:52]  This is amazing.
[01:22:53]  They told Anderson to take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves.
[01:22:58]  And originally, the InSpo was supposed to be Edward R. Murrow, who used to do his old CBS radio show like this.
[01:23:05]  We have a clip.
[01:23:06]  Here's Anderson without his jacket on and the top button of his shirt is undone for the listening audience.
[01:23:10]  That's cool.
[01:23:11]  Now you're Camille Foster.
[01:23:13]  You've done it.
[01:23:15]  And originally the Inspo Camille was Edward R. Murrow.
[01:23:20]  And here's how he used to look on CBS.
[01:23:22]  You can see, it's like- Loose and tied.
[01:23:25]  Okay, other than the suspenders.
[01:23:26]  Yeah.
[01:23:27]  Yeah.
[01:23:27]  Okay.
[01:23:27]  So that's what they were going for.
[01:23:29]  By the way, CBS also, because CBS just laid off all of its entire radio staff.
[01:23:36]  So CBS radio is closing and a couple hundred people just got laid off, sadly.
[01:23:41]  But this was Edward R. Murrow.
[01:23:43]  Here he has his jacket on and he's smoking a cigarette.
[01:23:45]  Anderson Cooper is another 100,000 in the demo from busting out a cigarette on the air, Camille.
[01:23:52]  And Tapper, I guess they didn't want her to look exactly like Anderson.
[01:23:56]  They're trying to mix it up, you know?
[01:23:57]  So like you're tuning in over there and it's like, you know, a day in the life on Sirius XM's Megan Kelly channel.
[01:24:02]  You'll get a, you get a Jesse Kelly, you'll get an Adam Carolla, you'll get a real clear politics, you'll get a variety.
[01:24:09]  They take us into Jake Tapper's office and here is Jake Tapper explaining why he's hosting the lead from his office at SOT 13.
[01:24:18]  So you're probably wondering what's going on, why we're in my office for the first hour of the lead today.
[01:24:25]  So it's an experiment.
[01:24:26]  This is my actual desk where I do my actual work, not the desk in the studio.
[01:24:31]  And we thought we would bring you into the space where me and my team do our actual journalism and plan the show every day.
[01:24:37]  So here we are giving it a shot.
[01:24:39]  You might also be wondering about the decor, the posters and the kerchiefs and such on my wall.
[01:24:45]  Well, the theme is these are all losing presidential campaigns.
[01:24:48]  And this hobby started 26 years ago after I covered my very first presidential campaign in the year 2000.
[01:24:53]  There's an autographed Gore Lieberman one from 2000.
[01:24:57]  So anyway, this all became a hobby.
[01:24:59]  Here, come back to me here.
[01:25:00]  You'll see this is one of the grand achievements in my collection.
[01:25:06]  It's an Al Smith poster.
[01:25:08]  He lost in 1928.
[01:25:10]  Democrat to Herbert Herber.
[01:25:11]  Republicans, too, on the wall here and from the modern era.
[01:25:16]  Okay, Camille.
[01:25:17]  I mean, were you wondering about the kerchiefs on the wall?
[01:25:20]  A little bit, actually.
[01:25:21]  The decor stands out.
[01:25:23]  I like Jake.
[01:25:24]  I like Jake a lot.
[01:25:26]  I don't think his producers are doing him much favors there.
[01:25:29]  Like, that is not a great setup for having a conversation and producing a podcast or doing television.
[01:25:35]  And I don't even know what the distinction between those two things are anymore.
[01:25:39]  In fact, the fact that they are trying so hard to kind of lean into the podcaster aesthetic is telling.
[01:25:47]  I think it's appropriate that they're trying to find things that work.
[01:25:51]  But what they have to understand is that this is not just about aesthetics.
[01:25:55]  In many respects, the reason why independent journalists and independent media, independent news commentators are finding success is precisely because they are not CBS, CNN, MSNBC.
[01:26:08]  People are interested in getting away from those massive kind of establishment productions.
[01:26:14]  They want to know people personally.
[01:26:16]  And to the extent anything was working in that clip, the fact that I get to see Jake's office and he's kind of talking to me about the things that are interesting to him, that's actually interesting.
[01:26:26]  And it's perhaps a little bit more engaging than the traditional conventional newscast where all of the trappings are similar.
[01:26:32]  All of the segments and the breaks are things that we seem almost rote at this point.
[01:26:38]  Not to mention the fact that they've got to go to commercial at these very particular times that always interrupt the flow of the conversation.
[01:26:45]  I'd say that those things are far more important than the kind of microphone that you have and the aesthetic of the set.
[01:26:51]  Or your sleeves.
[01:26:52]  Sure.
[01:26:53]  Yes.
[01:26:53]  Yes.
[01:26:54]  You only have between 38 and 42 minutes of content in a one-hour cable news show.
[01:26:59]  All the rest are ads and you've got to hit your brakes.
[01:27:02]  So it is interruptive.
[01:27:03]  That's true.
[01:27:04]  I have to say, I think there's something very telling about the fact that Jake has pictures of losers all over his office walls.
[01:27:15]  That is unbelievable.
[01:27:18]  People would surround themselves with a bunch of losers as their inspo when they do their job.
[01:27:29]  He's been very successful in media, broadly speaking.
[01:27:33]  So I don't begrudge anyone their particular interests.
[01:27:36]  I want to use the word fetish, but I don't want to have any sort of, I'm not trying to suggest anything by using it.
[01:27:44]  It's just, you know, appropriate rhetorical flourish, if you will.
[01:27:48]  It's telling.
[01:27:48]  It's definitely telling.
[01:27:50]  And it's not telling anything good.
[01:27:51]  Here's a little bit more.
[01:27:54]  This is, let's see.
[01:27:56]  Oh, wait.
[01:27:56]  No, this is, okay, here's part of the problem.
[01:27:59]  Anderson Cooper.
[01:28:00]  Okay, so not only are they cosplaying as podcasters, but they're on the set for him.
[01:28:04]  And he's got all the CNN fancy tools that we've seen on election night and on his show and the graphics.
[01:28:10]  They have a whole graphics department.
[01:28:13]  Does he use that to show a map when he's talking about the Iranian gas fields?
[01:28:18]  No, they use, I'm going to show the sound bite, but they've got a setup camera which pans to a physical map.
[01:28:23]  They're going above his desk on Anderson's desk.
[01:28:27]  So now we have to like do the bird's eye look down at his desk instead of using the enormous like graphic design tools that CNN has spent millions of dollars to build.
[01:28:38]  Watch this.
[01:28:40]  On the map is so right here to just, you know, where my hand is.
[01:28:45]  This is the part right here.
[01:28:47]  And then the Qataris have a field that is actually geologically part of the same field.
[01:28:54]  And they share that.
[01:28:56]  The majority, as Alex was mentioning, the majority of the area is actually controlled by Qatar.
[01:29:01]  But the Iranians get a large percentage, you know, 70 or 80% of their domestic gas actually comes from this field right here, even though they have gas deposits throughout the country.
[01:29:13]  But this is the one that they can exploit.
[01:29:15]  They have a lot of problems exploiting their natural resources because of the sanctions.
[01:29:20]  And that's why they're concentrating on that area because it's the most workable for them.
[01:29:25]  But with this attack, that calls all of that into question.
[01:29:28]  Why do you think President Trump would say to, according to the reporting, to say to the Israelis to stop going after these kind of facilities?
[01:29:37]  This is amazing to me.
[01:29:38]  It's almost like they're embarrassed.
[01:29:39]  I'm talking about flushing your money down the drive.
[01:29:40]  Yeah, they're embarrassed by the level of resourcing that they have.
[01:29:44]  I mean, I would love to be able to have the kind of animation budget, the map technology, the displays that you can touch in our studio so that we can do that sort of stuff all the time.
[01:29:55]  It's just, again, the aesthetics aren't the problem.
[01:30:00]  That's not the issue.
[01:30:01]  I think viewers would be happy to see that animated in a more instructive way.
[01:30:06]  What they're actually doing with the map, trying to make it look like it's a kind of lower rent operation, is just distracting.
[01:30:13]  It's just like a place map.
[01:30:15]  Distracting.
[01:30:16]  The next thing we're going to have the U.S. president's place, Matt, there.
[01:30:18]  Which one is it?
[01:30:19]  Oh, back when we were on this guy.
[01:30:21]  Yeah, I mean, like you do with your kids in the morning.
[01:30:23]  No, it's a very, they don't get it.
[01:30:24]  And, you know, there's also an irony in it because what we're also seeing now every other day, it seems, from various corners of cable news is discussions about how podcasters are totally irrelevant.
[01:30:37]  Any podcaster who has questions about this war, they have no power.
[01:30:40]  They're totally irrelevant.
[01:30:42]  Meanwhile, they're literally trying to make themselves into podcasts.
[01:30:45]  They're doing their level best to make themselves look not like television shows, but like these podcasters who are, trust us, completely irrelevant with no influence whatsoever.

=== CNN's Unsustainable Model (05:13) ===

[01:30:56]  It just doesn't work.
[01:30:57]  I'm sad.
[01:30:59]  It's sad, really.
[01:31:00]  I feel like if I were at CNN, I would definitely leave like ASAP.
[01:31:04]  And if I wanted to start a podcast, that's what I would do.
[01:31:08]  Just start one.
[01:31:09]  But it's harder than it looks, Camille.
[01:31:10]  And, you know, Chris Cuomo tried and failed.
[01:31:14]  Don Lemon's having a resurgence now because he put himself in the news with his little stunt at the Minneapolis church, but not as a podcast, like he's got a YouTube thing going.
[01:31:23]  But it's not as hard.
[01:31:25]  It's not as easy as it looks, right?
[01:31:27]  There's a lot of people who have tried it and already failed.
[01:31:29]  Sure.
[01:31:29]  Sure.
[01:31:30]  I'd also say that there's plenty of ways to experiment with podcasts, with independent media, with bringing in new voices, with trying to leverage the CNN or the CBS brand to try to borrow from creators who are already having success in independent media, perhaps bring them into your ecosystem.
[01:31:48]  And I know CBS has been making some strides in that direction.
[01:31:52]  I do think that the attention.
[01:31:55]  Well, look, the attention economy is a thing.
[01:31:57]  What's a stride?
[01:31:58]  People are going to reign supreme.
[01:32:00]  Well, they're bringing in the people.
[01:32:02]  You know, whether or not it works right away is another question entirely.
[01:32:06]  It doesn't matter.
[01:32:07]  And when I was at NBC, we put on a great show.
[01:32:09]  Honestly, we had great guests.
[01:32:10]  They were really smart.
[01:32:11]  They told amazing stories.
[01:32:12]  We tanked in the ratings, so the show went away.
[01:32:15]  Like, that's really what happened.
[01:32:16]  Of course, they said it was about something else.
[01:32:18]  But my point is, like, it doesn't matter.
[01:32:19]  It doesn't matter how much you polish that deer before it runs off and dies.
[01:32:23]  It's dying.
[01:32:24]  It got hit.
[01:32:25]  Is it your perspective that broadcast news in general, broadcast television is just kind of completely dead as a result?
[01:32:31]  What's going to take its place?
[01:32:33]  What do you think comes next?
[01:32:36]  Nothing.
[01:32:36]  Nothing on the television.
[01:32:37]  Nothing.
[01:32:38]  I mean, NBC and ABC still have the remnants of those, you know, $15 million, 15 million viewer programs in the evening.
[01:32:46]  It's all very old people.
[01:32:48]  So, I mean, by definition, the audience is not going to be there around for too much longer with respect to the elderly.
[01:32:54]  I have one who's near and dear to me, my own mom.
[01:32:58]  But that's, you need replacement viewers.
[01:33:01]  That's how you stay in business.
[01:33:02]  That's why the disparity between like getting 8 million at night and only getting like 650,000 in the demo is very alarming.
[01:33:09]  Sure.
[01:33:10]  Like the demo is, that's how you make your money.
[01:33:12]  That means everybody else, like the vast majority of those 8 million for in ABC's case or 6 million in NBC, are older.
[01:33:22]  They're, you know, 55 to 85.
[01:33:25]  That's where they are.
[01:33:26]  Those are generally not the ones that advertisers want to target, target.
[01:33:29]  And again, that's how they make their money purely off of advertisers.
[01:33:32]  So this is not a sustainable business model.
[01:33:34]  You need the next gen getting addicted to your product and they don't have it.
[01:33:39]  And CNN's numbers are far worse.
[01:33:41]  CNN's overall numbers are what CBS's demo numbers are.
[01:33:47]  CNN's demo numbers are too embarrassing to even speak.
[01:33:51]  They're getting slashies, meaning under 50,000 in the key advertising demo.
[01:33:56]  You cannot sustain a business this way.
[01:33:58]  Mostly it's CNN's online business, their CNN.com, which has been paying most of the salaries over there.
[01:34:03]  And it's been that way for some time.
[01:34:05]  But these numbers are too dismal to be sustained.
[01:34:09]  The only way forward is to dramatically cut headcount and just actually do podcasts that have five staffers.
[01:34:17]  Yeah.
[01:34:18]  Yeah.
[01:34:18]  Anderson Cooper has, when I was there, he had over 100 staffers.
[01:34:21]  100 for one hour.
[01:34:24]  On the Kelly file, we had 12.
[01:34:26]  On the Megan Kelly show now, we have five.
[01:34:29]  You just, you can't.
[01:34:31]  It's not sustainable.
[01:34:32]  It's a, it's a bad business model.
[01:34:33]  It already failed.
[01:34:34]  And propping it up with one button undone is not the answer.
[01:34:41]  Yeah.
[01:34:42]  All right.
[01:34:42]  I got to take a quick break.
[01:34:43]  But speaking of Don Lemon, we have news on him that I want to ask you about when we come right back.
[01:34:47]  Go away.
[01:34:49]  Relief Factor loves hearing from pain-free customers and hopes they can help you next.
[01:34:54]  One user of Relief Factor named Kim wrote to them to say, quote, before trying Relief Actor, I struggled just to make it through my workdays.
[01:35:01]  I would collapse on the couch at night, aching everywhere.
[01:35:04]  Within a few weeks of starting Relief Actor, the daily pain began to fade.
[01:35:08]  Now I'm keeping up at work and I still have energy left for my family.
[01:35:12]  There are many stories like Kim's of parents having more love to give, but no strength to do it, things like that.
[01:35:19]  Relief Actor could be the solution.
[01:35:21]  It eases pain, sure, but it does more than that.
[01:35:23]  It can restore evenings, laughter, and the simple joy of being present.
[01:35:27]  If you have back pain, knee issues, or stiffness slowing you down, Relief Factor could give you your mobility back.
[01:35:34]  Relief Actor is 100% drug-free and targets the inflammation that causes pain, helping you move better, feel better, and actually enjoy life again.
[01:35:41]  Try the three-week quick start for just $19.95.
[01:35:44]  Go to relieffactor.com or call 800 for relief.
[01:35:48]  Why shouldn't you be next in getting out of pain?
[01:35:55]  Camille Foster is back with me.
[01:35:56]  So Camille, Don Laman, got the New York Times treatment thanks to his little brush with activism and now with the law, where he stormed a Minneapolis church.

=== Don Lemon Coordination Concerns (03:30) ===

[01:36:09]  He says he just did it as a journalist, but his statements on scene certainly suggest he was more of a participant than he was neutral observer, just documenting what others were doing.
[01:36:20]  And he's now been arrested on charges that he violated the religious freedom of worshipers in St. Paul, Minnesota.
[01:36:28]  So the New York Times gives him this kind of amusing feature where they talk about how he's on a tour right now with D.L. Hughley.
[01:36:37]  D.L. Hughley, yeah.
[01:36:38]  And yeah, thank you, Hughley.
[01:36:41]  And they're going on a big tour where they're getting about 300 people per venue.
[01:36:47]  Okay.
[01:36:49]  No comment.
[01:36:51]  And Lemon, they write, cradled the mic at City Winery and quoted Representative John Lewis on the nobility of good trouble and appeared to choke up while repurposing a civil rights spiritual that he said his grandmother taught him.
[01:37:07]  I'm not going to try to sing it.
[01:37:09]  Then DL joined him on stage and compared himself and Lemon on a much lower scale to James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, pining for a future progressive Trump to take the White House and counter govern with equal force.
[01:37:26]  So Lemon replied, Should I run?
[01:37:29]  The Lemon heads in the audience, which is what Lemon calls his own fans, roared.
[01:37:37]  It had struck him in Los Angeles, he continued, while he was detained in that holding room, that maybe he had been, quote, been playing at too small a level.
[01:37:47]  Soon enough, Hughley was comparing Lemon to Rosa Parks.
[01:37:54]  Okay.
[01:37:55]  All right.
[01:37:58]  All right.
[01:37:59]  Would you like to take it from here, sir?
[01:38:02]  Should we go back to the Kirchhoffs and Jake Taffer's office?
[01:38:05]  I mean, it's just, there's so much self-aggrandizement there.
[01:38:07]  And it's clear that Don Lemon thinks a great deal of himself and thinks a great deal of himself, both as a journalism and perhaps as a potential politician.
[01:38:15]  I think the thing that I found most interesting about the New York Times piece is it acknowledges the fact that the case against him, there's at least certain dimensions of it that are kind of incontrovertible.
[01:38:28]  At a minimum, you've got this politically aligned group who he was kind of, we don't actually know all the information in the case, but who he had been kind of talking to.
[01:38:39]  He was giving them advice on what to say and what not to say.
[01:38:42]  At some point, this stops looking like journalism and starts to look like coordination.
[01:38:46]  I think the important thing to foreground, however, and I am a advocate of the First Amendment in general, and I know that you are as well.
[01:38:55]  We talked earlier about the prosecution of journalists in other contexts.
[01:38:59]  There's always going to be a certain level of scrutiny that's appropriate when a journalist finds themselves in legal trouble when they're journalisming.
[01:39:07]  But in this particular context, there's at least real reasons to ask questions about what is Don Lemon actually up to here.
[01:39:15]  And I know that while he may be a little concerned about his own legal circumstances, there's no doubt about it.
[01:39:21]  This has generally been quite good for him.
[01:39:25]  It's gotten him a tremendous amount of interest.
[01:39:27]  You're not getting Rosa Parks vibes from the sound of it.
[01:39:31]  I'd like to probe why not.
[01:39:34]  And we'll do that on the opposite side of this quick break.
[01:39:36]  Camille, don't go away.
[01:39:38]  There's a lot more in this article to dissect.

=== Corporate Umbrella Pretense (14:50) ===

[01:39:40]  If you are looking to make smarter choices for your health this year, consider Riverbend Ranch.
[01:39:45]  Their steaks are not only delicious, they also contain real, high-quality protein that helps fuel your body.
[01:39:51]  Beef is a complete protein and contains all nine essential amino acids your body needs to function.
[01:39:56]  It also keeps you fuller for longer, reducing cravings and snacking.
[01:40:01]  But here's the key: not all beef is created equal.
[01:40:03]  The quality of the beef depends entirely on how it's raised and where it comes from.
[01:40:08]  That's where Riverbend Ranch stands apart.
[01:40:11]  For more than 35 years, Riverbend Ranch has been building an elite black Angus herd, carefully selecting cattle for exceptional flavor and tenderness.
[01:40:20]  All Riverbend Ranch cattle are born and raised right here in the USA.
[01:40:23]  They never use growth hormones or antibiotics, and the beef is processed at the ranch in their award-winning USDA-inspected facility.
[01:40:31]  No shortcuts, no middlemen.
[01:40:33]  Just incredible, healthy, and flavorful beef shipped directly to your home.
[01:40:37]  Order today at riverbendranch.com and use the promo code MEGAN for 20 bucks off your first order.
[01:41:13]  Blammo, 2015.
[01:41:17]  But still, go on cold and no.
[01:41:48]  111 and on the Sirius XM app.
[01:41:55]  Camille Foster of Tangle News is back with me.
[01:41:58]  Just two updates before we resume our Don Lemon discussion.
[01:42:02]  This from our news in the first hour, this from the New York Times, this hit today.
[01:42:08]  Netanyahu, this is per the reporter Edward Wong, who wrote it, knew from the New York Times, Netanyahu embraced a plan by the Mossad chief to ignite a regime change uprising in Iran for a quick victory.
[01:42:19]  He used it to help convince Trump to start the war, despite doubts among some senior U.S. and Israeli officials.
[01:42:27]  It was a critical flaw in war plans.
[01:42:29]  The headline of the piece is, Israel thought it could spur rebellion inside Iran.
[01:42:33]  That hasn't happened.
[01:42:35]  It's an interesting look at exactly how Netanyahu convinced himself and Trump that they could do it, just a quickie regime change.
[01:42:43]  Then there's this, Yashar Ali reporting that the speaker of Iran's parliament, who we reported in the first hour, was, according to the Jerusalem Post, the person with whom we were having these negotiations to like, hopefully bring this thing to a close, says no negotiations have taken place and that President Trump is claiming otherwise simply to manipulate markets.
[01:43:05]  So that's the update as of 2 p.m. Eastern on this Monday, March 23rd.
[01:43:12]  Now back to Don Lemon.
[01:43:14]  Weirdest transition ever.
[01:43:17]  Okay, so Camille, they go on.
[01:43:19]  Rosa Parks, I mean, Don Lemon, gets the treatment and says as follows.
[01:43:25]  First of all, touts his followers on YouTube to the New York Times.
[01:43:30]  And they write that his guest bookings have become starrier since his mix up with the law.
[01:43:39]  And they referenced AOC, who agreed to go on his show.
[01:43:46]  I think they're using that term very loosely.
[01:43:49]  Then this is how Don Lemon interviewed Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
[01:43:55]  Sandy, when you heard about what happened to me, what did you think?
[01:44:04]  It's crazy.
[01:44:05]  It's the old, but enough about me.
[01:44:07]  What do you think of me?
[01:44:08]  And yeah.
[01:44:11]  And then they point out that Jimmy Kimmel invited him on his show.
[01:44:13]  So he's having his two minutes of fame and he's milking it for all it's worth, just like Rosa Parks did.
[01:44:19]  If I'm not, I mean, if I'm not wrong about my history, Camille.
[01:44:23]  Yeah.
[01:44:24]  I mean, this is, he certainly had, he had this moment.
[01:44:27]  He had a bit of a resurgence.
[01:44:29]  This is not a hit piece by any stretch, but it is impossible to ignore what the story is actually telling you.
[01:44:36]  Like when you read the concluding paragraphs, the writer getting ready to leave the room, Don asking, do you think I'm crazy?
[01:44:45]  Do you think this will be huge news?
[01:44:48]  And there's the details about him driving away with helicopters overhead and tons of media and Don being particularly pleased that this was him back on CNN again.
[01:44:59]  His name was back in the names of anchors on his old network.
[01:45:04]  This feels like something that is fundamentally about him.
[01:45:07]  And as I said before we went to break, ultimately, I think this is pretty good for Don Lemon.
[01:45:13]  There is a piece of this that is obviously absurd and another dimension of it that's pretty serious.
[01:45:19]  Again, First Amendment protections for journalists, incredibly important.
[01:45:23]  You mentioned Tucker earlier, who'd been talking about his own entanglement with the Trump administration related to his opposition to the conflict in Iran and the fact that he says now that he's being investigated by the CIA or something like that.
[01:45:37]  I don't know how true that is.
[01:45:39]  We haven't seen any evidence of that just yet.
[01:45:40]  He was told that.
[01:45:41]  But in either case, that gives one a sense of the tension between power and it being exercised in any particular way when journalists are involved.
[01:45:53]  There are always major questions there and things that anyone who is even remotely concerned about civil liberties ought to be interested in.
[01:46:00]  So I care about that.
[01:46:02]  At the same time, it's impossible to ignore how much Don Lemon is interested in really milking this and taking advantage of it, of how self-interested he is, and the fact that he's just kind of to the extent there's going to be someone who is the person who we're paying attention to, who is the victim who needs to actually be talked about in these contexts.
[01:46:25]  Like Don Lemon is not the guy that you want.
[01:46:27]  And it's interesting that Rosa Parks gets mentioned because there's this woman, Claudette Colvin, who she is the person who was on a bus, who the NAACP had this choice.
[01:46:38]  They could go with Claudette Colvin or they could have gone with Rosa Parks.
[01:46:41]  Claudette Colvin was an unwed mother who was on that bus.
[01:46:45]  Claudette Colvin was not the ideal person to build a national campaign around.
[01:46:50]  Rosa Parks, on the other hand, didn't have those negatives.
[01:46:54]  And as a result, we know her name.
[01:46:56]  And people perhaps are only just hearing about Claudette Colvin because I'm mentioning her in this context.
[01:47:01]  Don Lemon is sort of similar in that regard.
[01:47:04]  He isn't the ideal person.
[01:47:06]  He's not similar to Claude.
[01:47:07]  He's not either no similarity.
[01:47:10]  He's so self-aggrandizing.
[01:47:11]  It's ridiculous.
[01:47:12]  You know, Tucker told the story about the CIA, and he's big into exposing government corruption and that kind of thing, but he almost never talks about himself.
[01:47:20]  Almost never.
[01:47:22]  He doesn't like talking about himself, which is the opposite of Don Lamon.
[01:47:27]  Here's just a couple of quotes from the piece.
[01:47:31]  When I asked how he identifies himself in the journalistic streamer influencer space, Laman said he was agnostic so long as journalists came first.
[01:47:38]  I do consider myself an influencer, he added, because I do think that I have cultural influence.
[01:47:46]  And then there's this.
[01:47:49]  He volunteered something his therapist had shared recently.
[01:47:53]  He said, the therapist, you are black history.
[01:48:00]  Lemon tells the author.
[01:48:01]  Wow.
[01:48:02]  He wept, he said, but he did not disagree.
[01:48:09]  You know, we were talking earlier about the networks.
[01:48:13]  And the reality is that whatever Don Lemon was doing at CNN before, there were some guardrails there.
[01:48:19]  From an editorial standpoint, there were particular standards that they had to try to enforce.
[01:48:24]  And independent of all of that, out on his own, him kind of closely collaborating with the people that he's covering in ways that perhaps might get him into some trouble.
[01:48:35]  Again, I don't know the details of the investigation just yet.
[01:48:39]  Like this doesn't really seem like the sort of thing that might have happened if he was under that sort of corporate umbrella, if there were people around him who were concerned about his well-being and him having the appropriate legal standing.
[01:48:51]  So to the extent, you know, we're talking about independent media, this is the kind of thing that people who are out here creating content for themselves, who are attempting to do journalism on their own, they ought to pay attention to this.
[01:49:05]  It's imperative that you're actually careful.
[01:49:07]  Standards matter.
[01:49:09]  Those details matter.
[01:49:10]  The way that you actually go out and do your job matters.
[01:49:13]  And it's not sufficient for it to be kind of politically well aligned, for it to be tickling the fancy of the core audience that you have.
[01:49:22]  Like you actually have to worry about those others.
[01:49:25]  Most of us know this, which leads me to the final point about Don Laman, which is it's not just that he's self-aggrandizing and in love with the sound of his own voice.
[01:49:33]  He is dumb.
[01:49:34]  Don Lemon is a dumb dumb.
[01:49:37]  I'm sorry.
[01:49:37]  He's a dumb Laman.
[01:49:39]  And that's just true.
[01:49:40]  I'm sorry.
[01:49:41]  Hey, you didn't have to watch much of his show to know that.
[01:49:43]  Hello.
[01:49:43]  He said the MH370 plane went into a black hole.
[01:49:46]  I remember.
[01:49:47]  And clearly the writer of this piece thinks so too.
[01:49:51]  Yeah.
[01:49:52]  Because he included this little ditty about how when he, the dog was how he showed up.
[01:49:59]  Don was operating his own lighting equipment from a cell phone and had three dogs, one of whom was wearing a diaper, stirring at Lemon's shoeless feet.
[01:50:07]  My eyes.
[01:50:09]  Then he writes that during an ad break, as the dogs fussed, Laman retrieved a high frequency whistle and tapped a button.
[01:50:18]  Only they can hear this, he says.
[01:50:20]  It's like a little ep.
[01:50:22]  It's an actual dog whistle.
[01:50:25]  Allison Gallist, his spokesperson as, asked, by the way, Alan, Alison Gollis is the one who allegedly had the affair with Jeff Zucker while he was married, and he moved her into his apartment building right above the apartment that he shared with his wife and family, which led the ruthless guys to do the knock three times on the ceiling if you want me twice on the floor.
[01:50:48]  It's the greatest parlay from a story into a music cell.
[01:50:51]  I totally missed that.
[01:50:52]  But Allison Gollast, yeah, it was worth your time.
[01:50:55]  She was with Jeff Zucker, maybe still is, I don't know, and now is Don Lemon's spokesperson.
[01:51:01]  And so she says to him, it's an actual dog whistle, she asks.
[01:51:06]  And Don responds, not a whistle.
[01:51:09]  We don't hear it, but they can.
[01:51:13]  Yeah.
[01:51:13]  That's what a dog whistle is.
[01:51:16]  She responds.
[01:51:18]  He protested again, totally not getting it, Camille.
[01:51:23]  Then she responded again.
[01:51:25]  That's what a dog whistle is, Don.
[01:51:28]  He turned to me, the author, and cackled, feigning humiliation.
[01:51:32]  Don't write that.
[01:51:35]  No, no.
[01:51:37]  I love that.
[01:51:38]  Not a whistle.
[01:51:39]  Only they can hear it.
[01:51:41]  Not a whistle.
[01:51:43]  We don't hear it, but they can.
[01:51:45]  That's why we call it a dog whistle.
[01:51:49]  Don, this is the best part of the piece.
[01:51:51]  Clearly, the author also believed he is an idiot.
[01:51:55]  Again, not the most sophisticated journalist at all.
[01:51:59]  I think there were questions along those lines to former colleagues of his that they declined to answer.
[01:52:06]  And I look, I want to be fair.
[01:52:08]  I try to be as even-handed as possible.
[01:52:11]  I've never been a huge fan of Don Lemons.
[01:52:13]  I will say, at least it doesn't seem that he's completely switched his perspectives now that he's gone independent.
[01:52:20]  The same sort of kind of critical line that he was taking, he's taking now.
[01:52:24]  I suppose it's a little bit less, there's a little bit less of a pretense that he's attempting to be objective when he's covering stories.
[01:52:33]  He's very much a partisan.
[01:52:34]  You saw the enthusiasm and excitement when he met with Kamala Harris and Tall called her a lemonhead, which is the weirdest name imaginable to give to your fandom.
[01:52:44]  So, I mean, this is what he is.
[01:52:47]  He is at this point just kind of more partisan activist than journalists.
[01:52:52]  And, you know, that's fine.
[01:52:53]  If that's what you want and that's what your audience wants, that's fine.
[01:52:57]  Again, it matters how you go about doing these things.
[01:53:00]  And that is, I think, the clear takeaway here.
[01:53:03]  But I'd also say, again, just from the Trump administration standpoint, I don't know that I saw anything in that particular fiasco at the church that like rose to the level of criminality.
[01:53:17]  It looked ridiculous.
[01:53:18]  How much of it did you watch?
[01:53:20]  I watched a fair amount of the clips at the time.
[01:53:22]  Certainly I watched the interaction with Don Lemon and the pastor inside of the church who asked him to leave.
[01:53:28]  I think what you do at that point is leave promptly.
[01:53:31]  They've asked you, they've asked you to go.
[01:53:34]  But again, the activists, I think, made a huge mistake going to that church and holding a demonstration during their service.
[01:53:40]  And I think Don Lemon made a huge mistake coordinating all of his activities with them, giving them advice on how to go about doing this sort of stuff, and then injecting himself into the story in the way that he did.
[01:53:52]  So it was sloppy.
[01:53:53]  It looked terrible.
[01:53:55]  It didn't look like being told to leave.
[01:53:57]  He didn't leave, which was a crime.
[01:53:59]  He committed trespass, 100%.
[01:54:03]  And on top of that, knowing that he was not welcome there, that he was violating the law by remaining, he stuck around to justify the protesters' behavior over and over to the pastor and to others, saying, this is, you know, this is what the Constitution allows, which is wrong too.
[01:54:19]  Then saying trauma is all part of it, watching crying children flee, terrified and actually in tears, being held by their parents and running in other circumstances to get away from him.

=== Passengers Take Control (16:10) ===

[01:54:31]  He said, trauma's part of it.
[01:54:32]  It's part of the process.
[01:54:34]  That's not what a journalist does.
[01:54:36]  He was a partisan activist inside that church that day.
[01:54:39]  And that's why I firmly believe Don Lemon was properly charged and is likely to be convicted.
[01:54:44]  And those tears he shed for the New York Times, trying to make himself look important and in touch with his emotions are going to come back for real.
[01:54:52]  That's my prediction when he actually stands inside that courtroom and has to answer for what he's done.
[01:54:57]  All we really need now is a civil lawsuit by somebody inside the church.
[01:55:01]  There was one, but there was a question about whether the person was even there against him because he did traumatize them.
[01:55:07]  He was part of it and he should be held liable for it.
[01:55:10]  Camille, a pleasure, my friend.
[01:55:11]  Great to see you.
[01:55:12]  Everybody check him out at Tangle News and to be continued.
[01:55:16]  Before we go, though, we have to get to this.
[01:55:19]  As we were on with Camille, the video just dropped of this shocking plane crash that happened last night at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.
[01:55:28]  It happened around 1140 p.m. East Coast time.
[01:55:32]  Again, this is Sunday night leading into Monday.
[01:55:35]  An Air Canada jet carrying more than 70 passengers collided with a fire truck while landing.
[01:55:41]  The pilot and the co-pilot were both killed.
[01:55:44]  Several others were injured.
[01:55:46]  We're told that a flight attendant was ejected from the farther back in the plane toward the front cockpit, but is still alive.
[01:55:55]  One passenger on the flight later telling the media, quote, the pilot was trying to brake, to break, to slow the plane down to avoid the crash.
[01:56:02]  And that made a huge noise.
[01:56:04]  I've never heard it before.
[01:56:05]  It was like a grinding.
[01:56:07]  You hear the collision.
[01:56:08]  We got thrown forward and everybody's screaming.
[01:56:12]  I guess the flight attendant who was thrown forward was actually ejected while still strapped into her seat.
[01:56:20]  She did survive, but suffered a broken leg.
[01:56:24]  And we're going to bring in our guest, Captain Steve, in a second.
[01:56:29]  But I want to show you the videotape that just dropped online of the flight landing and hitting the fire truck, which you can see very clearly.
[01:56:40]  Okay, so ignore the yellow stripe.
[01:56:42]  Here comes the plane.
[01:56:43]  Where did it go?
[01:56:43]  Here comes the plane.
[01:56:46]  Stand by.
[01:56:47]  Here it comes.
[01:56:47]  There it is.
[01:56:48]  And you can see it's heading for the fire truck.
[01:56:51]  And it goes right over it.
[01:56:54]  My God.
[01:56:55]  Joining me now, Captain Steve of the Popular Aviation YouTube channel.
[01:56:59]  He's a former commercial airline pilot for American Airlines with over 42 years of experience, including time as a Navy pilot.
[01:57:05]  Captain Steve, good to see you again.
[01:57:07]  How does this happen?
[01:57:10]  Well, it's a tragedy on every level.
[01:57:12]  Obviously, a big mistake was made.
[01:57:15]  They talk on two different frequencies, and that's kind of the setup for this, is that the tower controller would be talking to the Air Canada flight on one frequency and the fire truck on a different frequency.
[01:57:27]  So the pilot on the Air Canada flight doesn't have, he doesn't hear the communication with the truck and vice versa.
[01:57:34]  So the tower controller, maybe busy, distracted, it's hard to say what, clears the airplane to land and the runway is theirs.
[01:57:41]  And then the fire truck calls up and says, hey, we'd like to cross the runway.
[01:57:45]  And maybe he gets distracted, loses fact, sight of the fact that he cleared somebody to land already and he clears them across the runway and the collision is unavoidable.
[01:57:55]  was raining last night at LaGuardia, impossible to stop in that shorter runway before you're going to hit that truck.
[01:58:03]  I don't understand how you could make that kind of an error as an air traffic controller.
[01:58:09]  I mean, would it be one controller who's responsible for one runway?
[01:58:14]  So any traffic that's going to cross onto that runway, either a plane or a fire truck, would have to go through that one controller?
[01:58:22]  Yes, typically at that time of night at LaGuardia, it was after 11 p.m.
[01:58:25]  So my understanding, I was based at LaGuardia for most of my career.
[01:58:29]  Sometime after 11 p.m., the traffic, the volume of traffic really slows down.
[01:58:33]  So they're going to go down to one controller.
[01:58:36]  That same controller is going to work the ground frequency, the tower frequency, talking to aircraft landing and aircraft taking off, and also any other third frequency where there might be a fire truck repositioning from one side of the airport to the other.
[01:58:49]  All three of those are going to be handled by one person.
[01:58:51]  And again, sometimes these things come down to simple human error.
[01:58:55]  If he just lost track of the site that, sight of the fact that he cleared them to land, there wasn't enough time for the pilots then to either go around, because once they touch down, they're committed and they can't slam on the brakes hard enough in the rain to stop.
[01:59:11]  And that truck, as you can see, it's a fire truck and it's not, he can't hit the gas and go fast enough to get across that runway.
[01:59:19]  So once they're both committed, it's a matter of time until they collide with each other.
[01:59:23]  It's awful.
[01:59:25]  It's incredible, but the guys in the fire truck are apparently fine.
[01:59:31]  The report is that they suffered injuries not believed to be life-threatening.
[01:59:36]  So maybe they're somewhat injured, but it's not a life-threatening.
[01:59:39]  I mean, how could they possibly have survived that?
[01:59:44]  They were hit by an airplane.
[01:59:47]  And the captain and the co-pilot of the airplane died, but the fire truck guys did not?
[01:59:54]  I mean, does that make any sense to you, Captain?
[01:59:56]  Well, looking at the video and how the collision took place, the cockpit takes the brunt of the collision.
[02:00:03]  They're abroadside, a T-bone, if you will, with that fire truck.
[02:00:06]  The fire truck immediately begins to roll and it hits the fire truck towards the back of the fire truck.
[02:00:12]  So let's say that there's two firemen in the front.
[02:00:16]  They give way and the collision, the force of the collision now gives way to the rolling motion.
[02:00:21]  So they're strapped into that fire truck and they're rolling, tossing along with the truck, but they didn't take the full-on blunt impact like the airplane did.
[02:00:29]  That's why I believe both pilots were killed on impact.
[02:00:31]  They had no place to go and no place for the impact to relieve.
[02:00:35]  Then the flight attendant, according to the stories now, is ejected.
[02:00:40]  That flight attendant's seat on that particular CRJ900 sits right behind the cockpit door.
[02:00:45]  It slides out the cockpit behind the cockpit door.
[02:00:48]  The flight attendant is looking back at the passengers.
[02:00:51]  If that cockpit is completely obliterated, the next layer is that door where the flight attendant is and she gets ejected, fortunately, in her seat, which is going to absorb a lot of the shock of the impact when she hits the ground.
[02:01:06]  And only having a broken leg is a minor miracle.
[02:01:08]  It's incredible that she's alive.
[02:01:11]  Yes, they are describing how the passengers helped each other slide down the wing to get out, which is just so scary.
[02:01:18]  I mean, we've all been given those safety briefings, but you kind of listen with one ear if that, because you don't think it's going to happen to you.
[02:01:24]  There's one witness, Rebecca LaCoury, who said the plane hit turbulence while descending, and then she felt it break hard and heard a loud boom.
[02:01:33]  Quote, everybody just jolted out of their seats.
[02:01:35]  People hit their heads.
[02:01:36]  People were bleeding, which she told to News 12 Long Island.
[02:01:42]  I mean, how would the people jolt out of their seats if they were wearing their seatbelts?
[02:01:47]  Like, it's just the impact would have sent them, what, you don't have your seatbelt on tightly enough?
[02:01:52]  Because I can imagine going forward, sometimes you have those hard landings where you really kind of slam the runway and you do kind of jolt forward.
[02:01:59]  But what's that?
[02:02:00]  Like you'd be going so far forward, you'd hit your head on the seat in front of you.
[02:02:04]  What would happen to the passengers?
[02:02:06]  It would be the same impact as a car T-boning another car.
[02:02:09]  You might have your seatbelt on and cars have a shoulder strap.
[02:02:12]  The airplane doesn't.
[02:02:13]  So you're just strapped in with whatever you get across your lap.
[02:02:16]  And you're going to go forward and you're going to hit probably the trade table in front of you, which is plastic and hard.
[02:02:22]  That's going to really hurt.
[02:02:24]  Most people don't cinch their seatbelt down real tight for landing.
[02:02:27]  They just have it on and connected.
[02:02:29]  And so it's loose.
[02:02:30]  And so you're going to slide.
[02:02:31]  And first thing you're going to do is hit that seatbelt real hard, which is going to cause a lot of bruising and some damage.
[02:02:37]  And then you're going to hit the seat in front of you.
[02:02:40]  So I'm not surprised that there's a lot of injuries.
[02:02:42]  And I'm sure that there are a lot of whiplash type of injuries from people hitting their head on the seat in front of them.
[02:02:47]  But the good news is they're all strapped in.
[02:02:50]  They're not going flying and they're not going to hit anything else.
[02:02:53]  And once that airplane does come to a stop, then they can start the process of getting out of the aircraft.
[02:02:59]  And it doesn't look like there was any secondary fire from any of the fuel tanks.
[02:03:02]  So that's also some good news with this one.
[02:03:05]  Well, isn't it incredible, Captain, that the pilots were dead?
[02:03:10]  God rest them.
[02:03:12]  And so no one was manning the aircraft for the last few seconds of that crash.
[02:03:17]  Like nobody would have been applying the brakes.
[02:03:20]  And still it did stop.
[02:03:22]  And though there were 70 on board, only 40 passengers and crew members and the two from the fire truck were taken to hospitals.
[02:03:32]  So I mean, it's really, it's very scary when you think about the fact that the pilots obviously were no longer in control of the airplane.
[02:03:39]  Right.
[02:03:39]  Well, put yourself in the place of the passengers.
[02:03:41]  That airplane has now collided with a truck.
[02:03:43]  It's coming to a stop eventually, even if there aren't pilots at the brakes up front.
[02:03:47]  The number one flight attendant in front of you has just been ejected from the airplane.
[02:03:51]  I think they have two flight attendants on those CRJs.
[02:03:53]  So there's one in the way back, but that's the only flight attendant.
[02:03:56]  And you don't know what condition he or she is in.
[02:03:59]  They could have been injured as well.
[02:04:00]  So basically, kind of human instinct, the survival instinct takes over.
[02:04:05]  And once you come to a stop, everybody sort of looks around.
[02:04:08]  You do a self-assessment.
[02:04:09]  Am I whole?
[02:04:10]  Am I okay?
[02:04:10]  And you get that seatbelt off and you start going out those exits.
[02:04:13]  Not a lot has to get explained at that moment, but the flight attendants typically in a situation like that look to the cockpit for direction.
[02:04:21]  They're going to wait for a call from the captain.
[02:04:23]  Well, in this case, the captain and the co-pilot are dead, so they're not going to get any instructions from them.
[02:04:28]  And the passengers basically took over and did the next thing.
[02:04:33]  They did.
[02:04:33]  Their report is that another passenger, someone named Jack Cabot, 22 years old, said after the plane landed hard, it veered back and forth.
[02:04:42]  No one was driving at that point, he said.
[02:04:45]  Mr. Cabot said that despite the chaos on board, passengers reacted quickly.
[02:04:49]  They opened the emergency door and evacuated, he said, some with their luggage.
[02:04:54]  I mean, the wherewithal to be like, I'm just going to grab my bag from the overhead compartment.
[02:04:58]  I'm not sure that's admirable, but some did it.
[02:05:02]  And then here's the moment where you can hear air traffic control speaking to the relevant parties prior to the collision.
[02:05:11]  Listen here.
[02:05:15]  2603, standby.
[02:05:16]  Who's the vehicle needed to cross the runway?
[02:05:21]  Truck one and company Laguardia Tower.
[02:05:23]  Truck one and company.
[02:05:25]  Truck one and company Laguardi Tower requesting to cross Fort at Delta.
[02:05:29]  Truck one and company at Cross Fort Delta.
[02:05:32]  Truck one and company crossing Fort Delta.
[02:05:35]  Frontier 4195 to stop there, please.
[02:05:39]  Stop, stop, stop, stop.
[02:05:40]  Truck one, stop, stop, stop.
[02:05:42]  Stop, truck one.
[02:05:43]  Stop.
[02:05:44]  Stop, truck one, stop.
[02:05:47]  Bell 2603, go around.
[02:05:48]  Runway heading 2000.
[02:05:50]  646.
[02:05:53]  646 is he collaborative vehicle airs in hold position.
[02:05:55]  I know he can't move.
[02:05:56]  Vehicle service line to you now.
[02:05:59]  I mean, you got to feel when you hear that for the air traffic controller.
[02:06:02]  That's got to be an air traffic controller's worst nightmare.
[02:06:05]  But what did you hear listening to that clip?
[02:06:07]  Well, I just filmed a Reacts video to that exact same audio.
[02:06:10]  And my analysis of it was the controller did keep his head, which is extraordinary if you think about it, because he's second guessing immediately, did I set this up to happen?
[02:06:21]  But it's like any sporting event.
[02:06:23]  You know, if you're on the field, you can't be worried about what happened four seconds ago.
[02:06:26]  You have to be worried about what's taking place right now.
[02:06:29]  So he sees the collision take place in front of him as he's looking out the window.
[02:06:33]  He's got other airplanes coming behind.
[02:06:34]  So they tell Delta, who's about to land, to go around.
[02:06:38]  And so they got to get instructions to them.
[02:06:40]  And then he's got to get the other fire trucks out there to take, you know, look for people, passengers, and so forth, and assess the damage on the runway.
[02:06:49]  All of that is kind of hard to do, especially when you're watching something as shocking as that take place right in front of you.
[02:06:55]  But he cleared the fire truck to cross on Delta.
[02:06:58]  Delta is an angled taxiway.
[02:07:00]  And so it's not a 90-degree crossing across runway four.
[02:07:04]  It's kind of a 45-degree.
[02:07:05]  So for the truck to get across the runway, it would have to turn onto the runway a little bit, straighten out, and then go across at Delta.
[02:07:13]  I don't think the truck ever saw the airplane coming.
[02:07:17]  I'm not sure that they would have even looked out in that direction to see if anybody was coming.
[02:07:21]  Once the tower clears the truck to go onto the runway, they're taking his word for it that somebody's coming or nobody's coming and the runway is clear for them to cross.
[02:07:30]  So I think they were probably as shocked as anybody else was.
[02:07:32]  And at that point where the Air Canada flight has already touched down, it's too late.
[02:07:39]  They can't go around.
[02:07:40]  They can't fly over the top of the truck.
[02:07:43]  And they also can't stop in the little bit of runway they have left.
[02:07:45]  So they probably slammed on the brakes.
[02:07:47]  And I'm sure both pilots were on the brakes as hard as they could get.
[02:07:50]  But you saw all of the water that they had dusted up from their braking action.
[02:07:56]  There was a lot of water on that runway that night.
[02:07:58]  And so they're just going to hydroplane right into the side of that truck.
[02:08:02]  Every knot that you can reduce off of your airspeed is a knot that's going to be in your favor and going to create less force.
[02:08:10]  Boom, right there.
[02:08:12]  See all that?
[02:08:12]  That's all spray.
[02:08:16]  Yeah, I do see it now now that you call attention to it.
[02:08:19]  If it hadn't been raining, I don't know.
[02:08:21]  It didn't seem like he had any time.
[02:08:23]  If it hadn't been pouring rain, do you think there would have been a better chance of survival?
[02:08:27]  So I think they would have hit the truck anyway, but they would have been going slower when they hit the truck.
[02:08:32]  So that reduces the amount of force the slower you're going.
[02:08:35]  But because of the water, they just didn't have a chance at all.
[02:08:40]  Oh, God.
[02:08:41]  There's more from that, from what we're watching there.
[02:08:45]  It's not in the soundbite, but in the audio, a controller can be heard repeatedly calling for the truck to stop after initially clearing the vehicle onto an active runway and then later saying, I messed up following the collision.
[02:08:58]  You can hear a second controller respond, no, man, you did the best you could.
[02:09:04]  Then there's a little bit more news, which I'll get to in a second.
[02:09:06]  But question for you, just so you can clarify.
[02:09:09]  When we listened to that soundbite, they kept saying Delta, Delta, Delta.
[02:09:13]  And I thought they meant the airline Delta, which confused me because this was an Air Canada jet.
[02:09:17]  So you're saying the name of the runway was Delta.
[02:09:19]  That's what we're hearing.
[02:09:20]  Because he never says Air Canada.
[02:09:22]  Right.
[02:09:22]  So they're landing on runway four, but the taxiways are always given alphabetical numbers, alpha, bravo, Charlie, Delta.
[02:09:28]  And so Delta is the taxiway.
[02:09:30]  It's a little confusing because everybody's used to Delta the airline.
[02:09:34]  If he had said Charlie, he wouldn't have been confused, or Bravo, you wouldn't have been confused.
[02:09:37]  But since it's taxiway Delta, it sounds like he's talking to a Delta airliner.
[02:09:42]  He's not now.
[02:09:43]  To add to the confusion, there was a real actual Delta airplane behind the Air Canada that crashed, and they were about to land too.
[02:09:51]  And that's the, the next thing he says is Delta, and he gives the call sign.
[02:09:54]  He tells them to go around.
[02:09:56]  They fly over the top of all of this and go around.
[02:10:00]  But that was the Delta Airlines.
[02:10:01]  The other was a Delta taxiway.
[02:10:04]  Oh, so that Delta Airlines, do you think they had one of those things that we've all been on where like they're about to land and then they abort the landing and they go back up suddenly?
[02:10:12]  Yep, you've been there and done that, and all of a sudden you're looking, thinking you're going to touch down in a second, and all of a sudden you hear the power come back up and you're climbing out again and everybody's wondering what in the world's going on.
[02:10:21]  Eventually the pilot comes on and says, sorry, folks, we had to do a go-around.
[02:10:25]  They kind of explain it away.
[02:10:26]  But that's a last resort.
[02:10:27]  That's a last-minute thing.
[02:10:29]  If there's some reason that the landing is not going to be safe or compromised for some reason, the pilots are trained to go around.
[02:10:36]  It always happens at Logan Airport in Boston.
[02:10:39]  I don't know why.

=== TSA Screening Shortages (12:07) ===

[02:10:41]  I was based at Logan for a dozen years, and I don't disagree with you about that.
[02:10:45]  Yep, you're right.
[02:10:46]  Ah.
[02:10:47]  Yeah, I don't know if they have short runways or what.
[02:10:49]  Can we watch that?
[02:10:50]  Can we listen to that soundbite again where we hear the air traffic controller?
[02:10:53]  Let's hear that again now, understanding better what Delta means.
[02:10:57]  2603 ILS 4.
[02:10:59]  2603, standby.
[02:11:00]  Who is the vehicle needed to cross the runway?
[02:11:05]  Truck 1 and company LaGuardia Tower.
[02:11:07]  Truck 1 and Company.
[02:11:09]  Truck 1 and Company LaGuardia Tower requesting to cross 4 at Delta.
[02:11:13]  Truck 1 and Company, it's crossed 4 at Delta.
[02:11:16]  Truck 1 and Company crossing 4 at Delta.
[02:11:19]  Frontier 4195 to stop there, please.
[02:11:23]  Stop, stop, stop, stop.
[02:11:24]  Truck one.
[02:11:24]  Stop, stop, stop.
[02:11:25]  Stop, truck one, stop.
[02:11:28]  Stop, truck one, stop.
[02:11:31]  Delta 2603, go around.
[02:11:32]  Runway heading 2000.
[02:11:33]  JAS 646.
[02:11:36]  JAS 646 is he collide with vehicle agents, hold position.
[02:11:39]  I know he can't move.
[02:11:40]  Vehicle service flying to you now.
[02:11:43]  So Captain Steve, explain to me, are we hearing him give the truck permission to go on to the Delta runway and then immediately try to take it away?
[02:11:51]  Yes.
[02:11:52]  So he's asking, he's on Delta Taxiway.
[02:11:55]  He's asking permission to cross runway four at Delta is what he says.
[02:11:59]  And then he's going to cross at the other side back onto Delta.
[02:12:02]  So he's going to cross the runway.
[02:12:04]  You always have to ask permission before you go on any active runway.
[02:12:06]  He's granted permission from Delta Taxiway to cross runway four and then re-emerge at the other side on Delta.
[02:12:15]  He never gets there because Jazz, Jazz 646 is the call sign of the Air Canada regional jet that crashed into him.
[02:12:22]  They had already touched down at the point where he's entering the runway and the two just were on a collision course and it couldn't be avoided at that point.
[02:12:30]  And so what we hear is the air traffic controller trying to get the truck to abandon because he knows the airplane cannot abandon.
[02:12:37]  Correct.
[02:12:38]  And so one of the things that I talked about on my analysis video is the air traffic controllers and the pilots are trained to respond to certain commands.
[02:12:46]  The air traffic controller will say, go around and I'm trained to go around.
[02:12:50]  Or he might say, takeoff clearance rejected or takeoff clearance disapproved and I know to stop then on the runway.
[02:12:58]  The conversation that they have with the fire trucks and the crash trucks, the pickup trucks and the fire trucks on the airport is a little less formal.
[02:13:06]  It's more of just kind of like a talking, yeah, go straight, turn left, turn right.
[02:13:10]  There's not all that formal training.
[02:13:13]  And so, but stop, stop, stop is pretty easy to understand.
[02:13:16]  I'm not sure that stop, stop, stop would have prevented this at all.
[02:13:19]  He was already on the runway.
[02:13:21]  So at that point, if he stops, then he's right there in the middle of the runway.
[02:13:24]  So again, if you don't see that airplane coming and you don't know to gun it and get across, then there's really no hope to avoid that accident.
[02:13:33]  And maybe not stopping saved his life and the other firefighters' life since, as you point out, it was the tail end of the fire engine that got hit, not the front end where the driver was.
[02:13:44]  And I think there were just two on board.
[02:13:47]  A little bit more on this.
[02:13:49]  LaGuardia Airport has just opened, so that's good.
[02:13:51]  It was closed all day.
[02:13:53]  The airport resumed flights on just one runway, reports CNN, in line with an FAA operations plan.
[02:14:00]  Much of the wreckage from the crash remained on the runway, the other runway.
[02:14:03]  As NTSB officials began their investigation, there have been some 600 cancellations at the airport today.
[02:14:09]  This is such a nightmare, Captain, on the heels of what folks are going through inside the airports thanks to the TSA, you know, work outage and they're not getting paid thanks to this refusal to fund them.
[02:14:23]  And these poor passengers now, like they're standing for hours and hours and hours at the airport.
[02:14:29]  My husband Doug feels so vindicated going three hours in advance for every flight.
[02:14:34]  Now everybody's got to do that.
[02:14:35]  Only it's like eight hours in advance.
[02:14:38]  And then, you know, making light of it, but like then this tragedy unfolds at the airport.
[02:14:42]  This, according to what I read, is directly related in the view of most to the staffage shortages when it comes to short staffing, staffing shortages when it comes to air traffic controllers.
[02:14:55]  Sources telling NBC News that this air traffic controller was working two positions at the time of the crash.
[02:15:00]  And I think that's power for the chorus for most of our controllers, no?
[02:15:04]  It is.
[02:15:05]  We've known for a long time that there was a shortage of air traffic controllers.
[02:15:09]  You just can't snap your fingers and come up with new air traffic controllers.
[02:15:12]  It takes a long time to train and to train somebody that can handle the traffic at LaGuardia.
[02:15:17]  That's an experienced controller there for sure.
[02:15:21]  And so as a result, and people are people, they've got to take sick time and vacation and those sort of things.
[02:15:27]  There's going to be times during the day where they go to minimum staffing.
[02:15:31]  So 11 o'clock at night, if the traffic pattern is slow and there's not that much going on.
[02:15:38]  Again, I don't think this was necessarily due to an overworked controller at the time.
[02:15:44]  I think the controller just lost track of the site that he had given somebody clearance to land and then cleared that truck across the runway.
[02:15:52]  This is, I don't want to assess blame, but I think in the final outcome of this is going to be a lot of human error, I'm afraid.
[02:16:00]  That's certainly how it sounds.
[02:16:02]  And, you know, these guys are only human.
[02:16:05]  It's just so infuriating to me because you think of the amount of waste we have in what we spend our government funds on.
[02:16:13]  There's just so much incredible waste.
[02:16:15]  Not to get political with you, Captain, but like just look at the amounts that we spend on other countries.
[02:16:20]  And here, if you made air traffic controllers get a really great salary, you'd have people running to sign up to get this training.
[02:16:30]  You'd have to have nerves of steel.
[02:16:31]  You have to be that guy.
[02:16:33]  But you'd have people running to sign up to do it.
[02:16:36]  And instead, we just won't incentivize positions like this.
[02:16:40]  We just decide it's not a problem we're going to focus on because we never see the air traffic controllers and we don't really even think about them until something like this happens.
[02:16:48]  And a lot of times, you know, people will say, well, an air traffic controller, eventually they make a six-figure salary and that's a lot of money.
[02:16:54]  Well, it's not a lot of money if you have to live in downtown New York City or if you have to live in Washington, D.C. You might have to get a second job to make ends meet.
[02:17:03]  So again, you're right.
[02:17:05]  You have to be willing to pay for things.
[02:17:07]  And if there's money there, the people will come out and take those jobs.
[02:17:10]  If not, they're going to go someplace else.
[02:17:11]  The most talented people are.
[02:17:13]  They're going to go someplace where they can put better things on the table for their family.
[02:17:18]  One ironic thing about this crash making, because a lot of people are asking me, is it safe to fly?
[02:17:23]  And there's been a lot of accidents.
[02:17:24]  And LaGuardia has been in the news a lot recently in this past year.
[02:17:28]  The last fatality at LaGuardia was in 1992.
[02:17:32]  It was a U.S. air flight, U.S. Air Flight 405, went off runway 1-3 on the takeoff roll and ended up in Flushing Bay.
[02:17:39]  27 people died.
[02:17:41]  That was March 22nd, 1992, to the day.
[02:17:46]  Wow.
[02:17:46]  This was 34 years ago to the crash last night.
[02:17:50]  So it's been 34 years since fatalities at LaGuardia, but to the day, March 22nd.
[02:17:57]  Wow.
[02:17:58]  All right.
[02:17:58]  That does make me feel better.
[02:17:59]  How about the TSA shortage?
[02:18:01]  Does that, you know, on the one hand, we, you know, I'm not, I'm old enough to remember when there was no TSA.
[02:18:07]  Anyone could walk into the airport.
[02:18:09]  Your friend could see you right to your gate.
[02:18:11]  You know, there was no magnetometer.
[02:18:13]  Like, you were good.
[02:18:14]  Just get on board the airplane.
[02:18:16]  That changed after 9-11.
[02:18:19]  And I've heard very smart people say, why do we even need a TSA?
[02:18:24]  Like, maybe this is an opportunity to reevaluate what we're doing here.
[02:18:29]  But then you think about, you know, Richard Reeve with his shoe bomb.
[02:18:33]  You think about what happened on 9-11 with the box cutters.
[02:18:36]  And this new idea has been put into the minds of bad guys.
[02:18:40]  We're in the middle of a war right now in the Middle East, which could lead more people to want to retaliate against Americans on planes.
[02:18:46]  You never know that the idea has now been created that you could use an airplane as a weapon.
[02:18:51]  So what do you make of the current shortages happening at TSA?
[02:18:56]  Some 400 have quit or had to quit to go get another job because they're not getting paid.
[02:19:01]  These are not rich people.
[02:19:03]  They need to pay their rent and pay their grocery bills.
[02:19:06]  And we're not paying them.
[02:19:07]  We're expecting them to work for free, which none of us would ever do.
[02:19:09]  It's just so unfair.
[02:19:10]  But in any event, are we safe given the shortages in TSA, not doing the screening, or at least not in the greatest, the same numbers as we had?
[02:19:20]  And do we really still need TSA?
[02:19:23]  Well, I think the screenings are still good.
[02:19:25]  It might take you a lot longer to get through the screening, but you're going to get the same quality of screening, even though some people have quit and they're not working.
[02:19:32]  I can't blame them, honestly.
[02:19:34]  This is not the first time this year that they haven't gotten paid.
[02:19:37]  And if you're living paycheck to paycheck, at some point, your landlord doesn't care that your employer is not paying you.
[02:19:43]  They want their rent check.
[02:19:44]  And so you got to put food on the table.
[02:19:46]  And at some point, you got to go, how many times is this going to happen to this job where I might be making at the top end $60,000, $70,000 a year?
[02:19:54]  And that's after a bunch of years with TSA.
[02:19:57]  You and I are old enough to remember prior to 9-11, there was still security at the airport, but it was private companies that did it.
[02:20:04]  Now, part of, I think, the knee-jerk reaction to 9-11 was, well, we have to do something.
[02:20:09]  And so the government took control of screenings at the airport as though anybody on 9-11 would have been caught by a government screener as opposed to a private screener because all of the things that they did on 9-11 were legal at the time.
[02:20:24]  They didn't bring the box cutters and so forth were not illegal.
[02:20:28]  I think there's a good case to be made for going back to private concerns that do the screening.
[02:20:34]  I think you could manage the expense a whole lot more, get it out of the government's hands.
[02:20:39]  But remember back in 9-11, there was a bloodthirst for getting something done.
[02:20:44]  And so part of it was government takeover screening.
[02:20:47]  Let's go to war in Iraq.
[02:20:49]  Let's show the world, you know, we're united and all of that.
[02:20:52]  I understand that sentiment.
[02:20:53]  But now, 20, what, five years later, I think it's a time to review some of that stuff.
[02:20:59]  And maybe there's a better path forward.
[02:21:03]  Yes, I told the story before, but like, we've all had this situation where like my kid had a bottle unopened, brand new, still with a seal on of Johnson's baby shampoo in the backpack.
[02:21:17]  And it was like eight ounces instead of four ounces.
[02:21:20]  They took it.
[02:21:21]  It's like, okay, you could see that it's a kid.
[02:21:23]  You can see that it's sealed.
[02:21:25]  Like, do you like to me, it always drives me crazy, TSA, because it's like, no, that's why they put humans here to enforce these rules so that they can use their judgment.
[02:21:36]  And you know, a bottle of Johnson's baby shampoo, and you say, come on, right?
[02:21:42]  It's just ridiculous the way it is now.
[02:21:44]  So, Megan, I have to go through the same security to the passengers.
[02:21:47]  See this right here at sea, Captain, right?
[02:21:49]  I had to go through the same security, especially over in London.
[02:21:51]  I lost more tubes of toothpaste than I can count because they look at it and they say, They're obsessed.
[02:21:57]  It's over the amount and out it goes.
[02:21:59]  And so, those are just the rules.
[02:22:01]  You know, you don't have to like it, you just have to do it sometimes.
[02:22:05]  It is designed to make the whole thing safer, I suppose.
[02:22:08]  But at the same time, it doesn't seem like there's any common sense in any of this.
[02:22:12]  And we could do it a thorough review.
[02:22:14]  While they're redoing the air traffic control system around the country, why don't we look at TSA and how we screen passengers getting on and off airplanes?
[02:22:22]  I think that would be well.
[02:22:24]  I also object to calling toothpaste a liquid.
[02:22:26]  It is not a liquid.
[02:22:27]  If you can't drink it, it's not a liquid, and you cannot drink a toothpaste.
[02:22:31]  But yeah, they're obsessed with the toothpaste.
[02:22:33]  We've gotten nabbed on that many times.
[02:22:36]  And then there were some more reasonable moments where our one son had a water gun that looked exactly like a serious firearm.
[02:22:46]  Thankfully, they did stop him and they did confiscate it.

=== Airport Safety Rules (02:15) ===

[02:22:49]  I was like, I'll give you that one.
[02:22:51]  Yeah, that would set off an alarm in any TSA.
[02:22:54]  But having said all that, Megan, we just said these people aren't getting paid.
[02:22:58]  They have a thankless job to begin with.
[02:22:59]  They get paid really poor wages.
[02:23:02]  And a little bit of a thank you going through a TSA would be nice.
[02:23:06]  I'm sure everybody is exasperated by the time they get up to the TSA screener.
[02:23:10]  You know, my ambition, I've flown a lot this past week, is to just say, hey, thanks for showing up to work.
[02:23:15]  I really appreciate the efforts you're putting in.
[02:23:17]  I hope you guys get paid real soon.
[02:23:19]  And a little bit of nice goes a long way.
[02:23:23]  That's true.
[02:23:24]  Maybe slip them a 20 or something too if you can afford it.
[02:23:27]  I bet they could use it right now.
[02:23:28]  It's such a dereliction of duty by our legislators.
[02:23:31]  I'm sorry.
[02:23:31]  I'm like, to me, I blame the Democrats because you don't hijack funding for an organization as important as DHS to make a point about ICE.
[02:23:39]  That's something you can litigate at the electoral box, the next ballot box, you know, on midterms on the presidential election, but you don't punish the existing workers in the existing department and the existing civilians by withholding funding from a group that is validly established and has a job to do.
[02:23:57]  Captain, I stole the last word.
[02:23:58]  Thank you so much for coming on and giving us your expertise.
[02:24:01]  My pleasure, Megan.
[02:24:02]  All right, Captain Steve, everybody, and check out his channel because you can hear his own breakdown and his own words on his channel of what happened today.
[02:24:10]  And if you're out there, stay safe, especially if it involves the airports and LaGuardia.
[02:24:14]  We are back tomorrow with an NR day.
[02:24:16]  We'll see you then.
[02:24:19]  Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
[02:24:21]  No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
[02:25:01]  Till for one call and the same thing.