Matt Welch
Appearances
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I wrote a magazine cover story called The Case Against Donald Trump. So I might be a little bit ill suited or perhaps properly suited to answer the question, which is to say that nothing about the proposition here is that you can't decide which candidate is better or worse side all the time. I vote happily all the time and make lots of decisions.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And I have an unblemished record of never voting for whoever wins as president. And I will surely have that for the rest of my life.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I can't speak for Nate Silver. But choosing a side is ultimately if you have a team that you're carrying water for, that puts you in the awkward position of saying either that the 2016 election was rigged or sold by social media companies or the 2020 election was rigged or stolen by social media companies. It turns you into maroon. Okay, so typical work.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I think one of the ways of thinking about this, you brought up sort of, like, what is the role for people who are editing political magazines or who are hyper-focused on this stuff, as all of us are in some way or another. I, being of a more libertarian mindset, don't like to tell people what their role should be, but I would like to defend my own, which is to say that it is journalistic.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I find, you have been saying that libertarians are, and like reason itself is, sort of a default right wing. I, like Nick, just reject that. I don't come from that.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Yeah, I don't. I live in fucking Brooklyn.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But no, intellectually as well. You know, I wrote a book in 2008, you know, there's a safe election to be on the right. I wrote a book called or the magazine cover for a reason was Be Afraid of President McCain was my contribution to that.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
As someone who's interested both in ideas and for having a sense of protection, similar to yours in one sense, like citizens should engage in self-defense against the people who would use power against us or in our name. So that exploration for me is done best if I am open to everyone's experience and I am not inhabiting the role of telling people who they should vote for.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I'm very happy and Reason has done this forever since 2004 with like the only publication who does it, we go through who the staffers are voting for, all their terrible votes. I love that article.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Firm and supreme all the way down. In a way, it is picking a side. But there is some role to be had when you don't lose your mind all the time in partisan politics and the hysterias thereof. You can keep your wits about you and describe the actual threats as opposed to the imagined threats. And the actual threats many times are worse. But the way that
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
a lot of journalists, let alone people who are in opinion journalism, have reacted by sort of shrieking. They have dulled the ability to drill down into the things that are particularly threat level from Donald Trump. So I think there is a tactical advantage in having some amount of kind of comportmental neutrality as opposed to like telling people who they should vote for.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
We can shriek and have our wits about us at the same time with the absence next door, I think, after the...
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I highly recommend reading Reasons Jacob Solom, who's written three pieces about Kash Patel over the last week going into... at some meticulous detail, all of these criticisms.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Let's see. We're also using audio visuals here. Garcon? This is from, so Sarah was talking about the importance of making good decisions as a publisher and editor. This is I think the Bulwark, I've heard of this. I'll read it for those in the cheap seats here. It says, what unites Elon Musk and the United Healthcare CEO is their belief that laws do not apply to them, unquote.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
There's a class warfare, populism out there waiting for someone to harness it. What the actual fuck is that? It's sort of a rhetorical question. What that is is your brain on brain rot politics. This is when you're doing either trolling out there trying to get clicks successfully, whether they're hate clicks or love clicks, or Jonathan Last actually
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
believes that there is a useful comparison between Brian Thompson and Elon Musk. Because we don't like Elon Musk now, and Brian Thompson is dead. It's very difficult. I only got to the paywall part, and I couldn't go further afterwards. This is what happens to people when you get into a life and death struggle about politics. in every breath.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Has Elon Musk, to show someone here, has he gotten smarter since he's decided to get into politics? No. Has Rob Reiner gotten smarter since he's gotten more involved in politics? No. This is where people go. They get into this very oppo research type of mentality, and it leads you to some dark and morally kind of cretinous places.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
If the world's dreamiest libertarian, if Javier Millay comes down here, he's the current world's dreamiest libertarian, I would be enthusiastic to vote for him. I would probably write nice things about him. And I would not take a sign because I'm a journalist. I don't take signs. Next question.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I didn't say support. I would be interested in writing about him. I would cheer him along. But it's like I am not telling people who to vote for.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
That was tepid. Thank you everyone for coming out to this lovely, lovely place and to spend your time with us. It's a bit of an unfair fight, not just because Reason is hosting this, but because of the proposition that you don't have to pick a side in politics. Of course you don't. have to pick a side in politics. We're not Cuba, or even worse, Australia. We are not forced to vote.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Absolutely. I mean, that is such an impossible to imagine thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I like the sound of your meetings, except for the part where there was meetings in them. Everything else sounds really great.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
No, there are political parties. There should be political parties. And I should not join any of them. That is that is my been my view my entire life.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Well, again, I live in this case in Brooklyn, New York, so I can vote and I do very vociferously as much as I can. I even sometimes talk locally, even sometimes at those types of meetings. And my vote doesn't really move the needle on anything because Democrats are 95 percent of my neighborhood. But I vote and I try and I do I do whatever I do.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But I'm not a member of a party and I don't think that it is right. I think it's perfectly fine to not be a member of a party, to not have a natural inclination to join one, to sit on your hands while your own party does things that are against your deeply held beliefs, which a lot of people who work in professional politics do.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Oftentimes, people who worked in Republican politics for a long time sat on their hands when there was the gay marriage debate that Sarah Longwell was talking about earlier, that they just sort of, even though they wanted this to happen, we're not gonna talk about it. I wanna avoid that. I want to reason it's been in favor of gay marriage since it has existed in 1968.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I think our first editorial was in 1971 on the issue. I find it more potent to be talking about those ideas and those policies without worrying, without calculating whose team I am on or I am not, And therefore my voice is not going to be silenced for even a little bit. I'm not going to hesitate. I'm going to be happy to talk to people who support those things, happy to criticize people who don't.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And then on the next issue, we'll change teams again. It's not to tell anyone else.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
We live our lives in the way that we want. And it makes sense. If you look all around you, there are, even at the most five alarm fire of an election, like in 2020, one third of people who are eligible to vote don't in a presidential election. They choose not to. Catherine Maggie Ward's very, very happy about that.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
When people describe themselves to Gallup, they've been asking people now for decades to self-describe. Do you sort of feel self-identified as a Democrat or a Republican or as an independent? Independents have won that poll month after month, every month since 2012. And for most of the months before that, it usually polls somewhere around in the 40s, the earlier this year.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I reject the premise of your question. I'm, first of all, not smart. And second of all, I wanted Harris to win, even though I didn't vote for her. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
51% of Americans self-identify as an independent rather than picking the side of a Democrat and Republican. And if you think about it even for a half a second, it makes total sense because Democrats and Republicans really suck.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
How about if in Nevada, none of the above had won, right? Because that's on the ballot.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
They are very, very, very bad at what they do, which is like attempt to govern or manage the monopoly on the use of force through extracted taxpayer money and other libertarian things. For example, of the ways that governance sucks, I know you people live in Washington, D.C., so you might have heard that they're doing the annual Cromnibus thing right now or talking about it.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Same way rich people are libertarian, they just decided to become libertarian. I mean, it's a set of ideas and beliefs about policy. It's also, you know, marginal on some level. Libertarians are never a huge part of the electorate, but one of the things, stories that libertarians like to tell and,
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
republicans back when they used to talk about this stuff um back when these guys were republicans um is that free trade to go back to the last question has lifted more people out of extreme poverty over the last 35 years than anyone has ever seen in the history of the world and that is an unvarnished great thing that we don't talk about nearly enough um and so
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
This is a tweet from today from former Never Trump heartthrob or occasional Mitt Romney, who I think Tim worked for at some point.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
liberal ideas, meaning the classical liberal ideas, have been the best poverty eradication program ever. So I don't see any conflict.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
says what does President Trump want Republicans to do vote for the continuing resolution or shut down government absent direction confusion reigns can anyone spot the problem with that let's just like think about it for a second this is Trump is not the president this is the job for Congress Mitt Romney is in that body and yet they don't do things like pass basic budgets they wait
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
So I'm going to leave you with one or two stories, bedtime stories. One is about a very successful billionaire, one of the most successful billionaires in the country who fashioned himself as a philanthropist, which he was and is, and also somewhat of a philosopher, thinking a lot about... Austrian economics and kind of big ideas. He even published kind of a book of his own, Sense of Philosophy.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And he had been a big, you know, multi, multi, tens of millions philanthropist in Germany,
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Policy causes but had long said that I don't want to get into the politics of it I don't want to choose a side in politics as it reduces my effectiveness and I worry that it's going to make me dumber Well president is elected and the president that he sees as oh this could be An extinction level event for American democracy We're gonna see the bubble of American supremacy popped and this is a bad thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
So he decided suddenly to throw a ton of money into politics to oppose this president, to create mirror institutions on his side that he saw the other side doing so well. And the funny thing is, I could be talking about both Charles Koch and George Soros, but for the sake of this, I'm talking about George Soros. And what did he create? What are these things?
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
This very storied intellectual, he really is, theory of reflexivity and all that. What did he create? He created Media Matters of America. And he donated tons and tons of money to Democrats for a long time. Did he make the world a better place even for his issues that he'd been caring about for a long time? I'm not so persuaded that it made him smarter.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I think it actually made him dumber and it made his activities less interesting. Last story, very short, is there once was a badly governed city called New York. People were mad. They thought, we need to get Democrats. Democrats out here, I'm just going to back whatever Republican is going to have an R on his or her jersey. Let's go. Let's do this.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And that is why we got, for at least a short little while, a congressman named George Santos. So that type of thinking is how you get some really, really bad people. Thank you.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
for some scary president to sort of tell them or president-elect to tell them what to do and they've been doing this for year after year after year when's the last time peter suderman that they used the congressional budget act to pass their 12 appropriations bills there is a punchline to that uh that story i'm sure but it's basically never they don't do it anymore it's not something that happens you look around anywhere you live or at least anywhere i live uh tends to be totally misgoverned by horrible democratic administrations i live in
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Brooklyn, New York, where if you drive down the street, you can hide an entire Volkswagen in the potholes out in front of your street, and everyone is taxed up the yin-yang, and nothing works. Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., these are not well-governed places.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
So it's a rational thing to not want to collude with or somehow join one of those teams in spending your money really badly to do bad things and violate other people's rights and do it worse and worse year after year. But it's not to say that the inverse of what we're talking about is true. It's not me and Nick or Libertarians General saying it's bad to be in politics.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
There are perfectly good people on all sides in politics. And I'm glad that there are. I'm glad that there are people who are going to be doing good work in the Trump administration, even though Lord knows I didn't vote for the Trump administration to go in.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
What I would like to suggest to all of us is that sometimes you can achieve those goals that you'll, even those of us who were cursed to pay attention to national politics, you can achieve political goals sometimes better through the outside, which Nick is gonna talk about a little bit more.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And you don't have to either apologize for your own side when they do misdeeds or to sit on your hands when you know they're doing something against uh your own desires and this is what happens in politics again again it's morally corrupting in ways that we'll talk about more and that is your four minutes so
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I was going to say, it's a cough drop, yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Wow, you're like the RFK of SiriusXM.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I mean, look, on these issues, I cede everything to Matt Welch, who is a Southern California boy, hasn't lived there in a long time, but never stops talking about it. Matt should maybe go back. Former LA Times employee, and Camille actually lives in California. But I see things like this, and I see something, you know, like a $17 million budget cut in
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
And, you know, as somebody from the outside who has no particular expertise in the fires that are always afflicting Southern California, one would presume that, you know, beefing up the fire department, not cutting $17 million from the budget would be the first thing that one might do, particularly considering that California has one of the heaviest tax burdens of any country in the state, in the union.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I mean, you look at how much money that they're gathering in taxes? And where is it going? I mean, that's what I would love to see of like, where in LA County is that money going? Otherwise, I mean, obviously, they have an enormous amount of money in their hands to deal with a homelessness problem, which has not, you know, been dealt with. So
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
So maybe we should reroute some of that money towards the fire department. A couple of other small things is that one, I mean, Matt said, you know, we have friends and, you know, it's, she did tweet about it. So, you know, I feel okay saying it, is that our friend Kennedy has a house in the Palisades.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
And Matt and I were talking before this, like we were looking at videos and we're like, oh my God, is that Kennedy's house? Cause we've all been there. And, you know, so we have friends that are just on the front lines of this. And the second thing is, is because, of the unbelievable silliness of the fire chief that you showed clips of. It's like, why are you telling me about staffing?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Nobody cares about the staffing of the post office in California. What are you telling me about your staffing policies? We don't need to know. But they're telling you that because they want you to think, look, they're such great people. But let's move away from her for a second, who seems like a thoroughly ridiculous individual, and just praise the firefighters. I mean, two people have died.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Look at that photograph from the plane. That looks like CGI from an apocalyptic Hollywood movie. And I looked this morning in terror and I say, I don't, this must have killed X number of people. God knows that that number is unfortunately going to increase, but I saw that we have a confirmed two people died in a fire that big. They should have never gotten that big. It should have been contained.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
There should have been policy. We know that this is what happens in Southern California. But on the positive side, if we can find a small silver lining, is that, you know, the people that are fighting this fire are, you know, doing, you know, yeoman's work here. They're doing quite a job that they should be praised for.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
If if I can go backwards on one small thing, which is, I think, a really important thing. Matt said something that I very rarely hear him say, because I've known him for a very long time, is that something is un-American.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
And I think that he's right about that, because I want to just point out that, as you said, Megan, and as Matt said about his friends in the kind of Pasadena area, not all these people are rich. But my response to that is, yes, that's clearly true. But also, who cares? What if they all were rich? That is fine. I didn't grow up rich. I'm not rich now.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I have no special fealty to a class of social and economic class of people. That's not my concern. But I mentioned our friend Kennedy. And on Twitter, someone responded to her talking about her house potentially burning down. And someone responded, sucks to be rich. To which Kennedy responded, go fuck yourself, which is an appropriate tweet, by the way.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I think that's the next one. That's just us. That's queued up. This is a bit of that... you know, Luigi Mangione kind of class warfare that we have kind of accepting these days. Like, well, if it's rich people, then who cares? They can pay for it. Well, that's what I heard when I was in Wisconsin, you know, the day that Donald Trump was there after the riots.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
burning down swathes of cities in Wisconsin. And people say, well, you know, they have insurance. It turned out a lot of them didn't have insurance. But even if that were the case, there are memories there. There are, you know, family photos. There's your entire life. And for someone to say, well, you're in a high tax bracket, so it doesn't matter as much.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I agree with Kennedy that these people should go fuck themselves.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Megan, I think that, I mean, and you're right about Canada. I mean, the conservatives have about 44, 45% in the last opinion polls, and that's just marching towards the next prime ministership. But I think you're right about this.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
And I think it's a kind of global thing because I think people are very tired of the politics of symbolism because the politics of symbolism oftentimes have very destructive consequences. So, for instance, Camille says, you know, rightfully so, said, you know, what? Why not just tell us what the plan is? Lay out the plan for dealing with these fires. Go until. Well, there's no.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
What is the incentive for that? There's no incentive for that. The incentive for people like the fire chief in L.A. County is to come out and you will get on TV because of the people who are controlling these news networks and newspapers, et cetera, will put you on the front cover.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
If you tell them how many one-legged transgender Albanians are going to be fighting fires, like this is symbolism that is tough constituency to find. But they do have one, by the way. But no, that is the same.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Same thing about immigration is that, you know, we talk about immigration in these kind of philosophical ways and accuse the people who are opposed to sort of unmitigated illegal immigration and say, well, you know, if you disagree with that, this is kind of a racist kind of Trumpian thing. And then people in New York City and L.A.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
and, bless their own L.A., but New York City especially, you know, are dealing with this crisis and saying, oh, yeah, that's just not a talking point. It's not like, you know, something that we argue about in the opinion sections of newspapers. It actually has practical consequences. But the incentives are totally wrong.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I mean, there is no incentive to go out there and say, this is our plan for fires. But there is an incentive to go out and say, okay, Look at how great I am. Pat me on the back for what I'm doing for some political issue inside the fire department that no one cares about and affects no one, but affects them negatively. But it's about that person. It's about that fire chief.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Look at how great I am and look at how I'm following the sort of precepts of modern politics. No one cares. You see it in Hollywood too. Think about the interview.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Better firefighters, I think, according to all the data. I don't know.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
YouTube, your move. Your move. C-3PO is on the right side of speech. I want to do the things. It's like, what? He's a robot. By the way, there's a lot of people trying to read Mark Zuckerberg here, and it's like now he's bowing down to Trump.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
If it's any indication of the people I think that Matt and Camille and I have talked to, Megan, I'm sure this is true of you, too, that after the kind of Me Too movement, after the so-called racial reckoning, all of these things that companies were doing after the 2016 election of Donald Trump.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
And when they kind of unwound those things, the number I'm thinking of very specific people in my mind right now, too, who have come to me and said, yeah, no, we never believed that. It was just like we kind of had to do that in the moment. And they're admitting to their own cowardice. And it's not a great position to be in. But it could very well be true.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
And I can't look into his brain and figure out why he's doing this. But it could very well be true that Mark Zuckerberg never believed the stuff that he was implementing on Facebook. And then we had something like COVID. And COVID is a really key component here. Because when it comes to trust in the media, It's been low for a long time. Its lowest ebb has been after COVID.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Incredibly low trust in media because people were actually paying attention. You have to wear masks. You have to stay inside. Your kids can't go to school. So you're actually checking this stuff rather than it only being left to a very narrow band of people who care about this stuff and whether the fact checkers and whether the experts are right about it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
So that kind of buckled people's impression of what these experts are. And so when experts, quote unquote, are coming onto Facebook and saying, no, the expert says this isn't true. We don't have that trust anymore. But to the Stossel thing, one final point is that look at the way they did this. It omits context.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Has anyone here ever written an editorial? I know all of us have. What do you do when you write an editorial? Why is the newspaper not this big, but this big? Because you have to, by nature, omit context in everything that you do. So therefore, it is a weapon to wield against anyone at any time. Of course, it's not going to have context for everything.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
You have to leave certain things out and say, hey, the general narrative is this. I'm going to inform you about some other opinions. And then the fact checker comes in and says, well, why didn't you include the initial narrative? That is unbalanced, as it were. And this is the kind of nonsense game that these people were playing. And people were wising up to it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
And that's the other reason that they backed away from it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Well, I don't even know where to start with this. The people of Greenland as a duchy of the... Wait, wait. Start with this.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Disgust. That's true. So they're obviously very confused as to who they are. They might be sort of intersex as a country. They don't know. They're the intersex of potential territories.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I mean, do we want Italy? I mean, you can want a lot of things. Yes, that we do want. You can't just take Greenland. You can't buy Greenland. You can't take the Panama Canal back from the Panamanians. I mean, there was a debate. There was actually a really interesting debate. And viewers, listeners should go check this out.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
In the 1970s, amongst conservatives, actually, about the situation in Panama, and there's a very famous debate between Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley. And Ronald Reagan said we should... retain control of the canal because we built it. Actually, the French started building it. We finished building it. And William F. Buckley said, it's not a conservative position.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
We should give it back to the Panamanians, which we did under certain conditions when it turned over to full control in 1999. And the Panamanians have reacted to this recently saying, no, We're absolutely not. And look, the thing about Trump is he shoots from the hip and he says things that sometimes the facts need to catch up with him.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
This idea that he said with the Panama Canal, he's like, you know, our our ships are charged more to go through. That's not true. And it has become more expensive, of course, because the water levels have been lower and it costs more and it's slower to get ships through. So they've been raising prices. But that kind of thing is just the kind of natural market of these things.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I thought he was kidding about Greenland. And the more that I've watched this, he's like, well, we need it for national security and we need it for economic security, which I have to say is just completely bonkers. And I don't think this will go anywhere. But it is totally insane to say that we want to become like a local imperial power in the next four years. Like what? Seriously?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
It's surprising.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Ten years later.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
The fact that there's a king in Denmark and in Sweden and in Norway is believably hilarious because they don't do anything and no one cares. But I just want to say that it was interesting to come on the show today and find out that my partner in the fifth column, Camille Foster, has completely lost his fucking mind.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I'm saying that there are legitimate issues imperialist Camille let me say this as a sort of moderate student of the Cold War the way that you do this is not threatening to take people over or buy them and they say no what is happening in Iceland not Greenland let me write that down This is the art of Moynihan's deal. Stop threatening to invade people if you want to have a coalition with them.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
In Iceland, playing with your name on the side of it, Moynihan. They talk about military pressure.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I mean, it's a slightly different situation than Louisiana. We were talking about Greenland at the same time. Which is not contiguous with America. But we have a military base in Iceland, in Keflavik, because we kind of talked to the Icelanders and they were like, okay, what do we get out of this? And it was just a deal. We didn't say we're going to invade you or enlist you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Give us access to your hot springs.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Or I'll kill you. And then negotiate down. Or I'll shoot you in the back.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
I think the right answer there, if you're asked that question, is, yeah, we can maybe turn the screws economically, but we're not going to invade. I mean, that would maybe be the right answer for me.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
But Megan, you raised the point, which I think is a really interesting one, is that the number of people kind of on the isolationist right and the people who say, you know, the Buchananites of yesteryear who are kind of in the Trump coalition now, I've seen a lot of them freaking out on Twitter saying,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
Because what Camille is saying is, you know, the China's Belt and Road policy going across the world, going into Africa and pushing their influence everywhere, that we need to respond to that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
And, you know, that is something that a lot of these people don't like, this idea of being an imperial power or this idea of, you know, threatening military action, whether it's dropping, you know, American troops or whatever it might be, or saying we need to station weapons here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
That's exactly the opposite of the rhetoric that you get from so many of the people that are on the kind of isolationist MAGA right. And it's really interesting because I think what happens with Donald Trump is that there's a lot of projection that people project what they want him to be.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
And so I've had conversations with people that totally forget that he sent, what, 56 Tomahawk missiles into Syria, which in what, the first or second first year of his administration. And like that, that was the night he became president. Is that right? Oh, yeah. That was Van Van Jones, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. A great Van Jones. But that kind of thing is there's a lot of projection.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
And it's really funny to watch the response from people who say we're going to look inward, a kind of Ron Paul vision of the world. And he's like, who are we going to invade locally?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
They already invaded Panama in 1989, so this would be a second go. He formally ruled out Canada. He did say it would be amazing.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mismanagement Leading to Devastating LA Wildfires, and Trump's Serious About Buying Greenland, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 978
He was like the Canadian Al Jolson. It was like, he totally was. Yeah. I don't know if you've heard. Yes, you've waded into this debate before, haven't you, Megan?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Yeah, I mean, I think, as you said when you were laying this out, so many of the details are amorphous. We don't actually know what any of this means. He's insisting that we're going to take it over, we'll own it, and folks won't be able to come back, but we're also not going to have our military there I don't know how those two things work together.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
This is kind of par for the course with Trump in some respects in that this is his truthful hyperbole strategy being deployed again, just like Greenland, just like Mexico, the Mexico-Canada tariffs very recently, where you say something bold and audacious, you promise some horrible consequence if folks don't comply with what you want.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
But as with the Mexico-Canada situation, he never actually laid out any sort of success criteria. So what he ended up settling for, so far as I can tell, doesn't actually seem to be particularly consequential. I don't think you can use the same strategy.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
But there's probably not an easy out like that in this circumstance. Now that you've laid this out and made all of these kind of grand proclamations and insisted that folks are going to do things that they've said they would not do for a very, very, very long time, you kind of have to put up at some point. And I'm just not sure there's any there there.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Moynihan, you mentioned that he was reading for a piece of paper, and I noticed that too. But it's not clear when that piece of paper was authored. It could have been moments before. Thank God.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Yeah, I don't know if it would be helpful, but to the extent Trump has qualities that I'm eager to embrace, one of those is being able to essentially utter uncomfortable truths that no one else is willing to look at and acknowledging the fact that this is a terrible situation. The status quo is completely unacceptable. We can't return to that. We have to do something bold and audacious here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Let me just throw something out there. To do that in the kind of most responsible, delicate way possible while being sufficiently disruptive, I think is a very good thing. But in terms of achieving this kind of Riviera of the Middle East thing, the first and second order problems before you get to the end state where he could actually do the thing that he has done a bunch, build things.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
They're just so hard. The security envelope that would be required to actually allow contractors to come in and do the construction, the effort to actually try to move people around, to perhaps force people out, it would just be extraordinary. And the potential for things to go wrong is enormous.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
And not just there. Not just there.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Wow.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Nobody did. It's the acoustics.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
I don't know. Are posthumous presidential orders a thing? That's not a thing, but it's fine. We get this point. I do appreciate the point. I presume that's correct, actually. Whoever your successor is, if they wiped out the president and the rest of the... We're coming for you. So yes, I presume that's correct. Obliterated.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
They can do a lot. It's AI. It's AI. It's all the de-aging technology that they used in films like The Irishman. You can use all those things. And Joe Biden could be viable for another hundred years. He could be selling merchandise and products. Ice cream? I don't know. It could be. I think it's a savvy deal. Chocolate chip. That's the only thing Joe Biden was ever right about.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
He would do all... He will be the new Max Headroom. He's going to make all his appearances that way.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
I mean, Elon is clearly the most, I think it's just fairly true, the most consequential entrepreneur of our lifetimes, perhaps. I mean, between Tesla and SpaceX alone, that's a pretty big deal. The potential for something like Neuralink is even more profound and, quite frankly, has just become this kind of cultural icon as well.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
At the same time, while he's raised his profile on the political scene, there are moments where Elon is tweeting that I wish he would just kind of pull back on the stick a little bit. There are moments where he's kind of like public hyperbole. I'm just like, dude, could you chill?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Because when I look at what Doge aspires to do, at least on paper, to the extent there is any kind of specific details about it, it's hard for me to get mad about that. Like being concerned, radically obsessed even with cutting the size of government, with reducing waste. It's just a noble and sensible goal.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
And when I see what they're actually doing so far, to the extent anyone knows what's going on, there's a bunch of young kids with laptops or younger people with laptops, sometimes they get in trouble for using the word kid, are showing up in meetings and they're asking questions and they're trying to look at code bases. We don't actually know what the hell is going on.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
There is nothing that suggests to me that the level of panic that has seized the Democratic Party and people who hate Donald Trump in general, and apparently Elon as well, there's nothing that seems to justify that at the moment. But I don't think that the way that they're going about things and the kind of attempts at provocation around these issues is necessarily great for Elon.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Maybe the Democrats kind of overstepped and are way out over their skis. At the moment, he's being accused of committing all kinds of crimes, and there's panic because these kids know how to code and are maybe coding things. People should probably be more panicked about the fact that the payment systems are written in these... old antiquated programming languages.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Nobody actually knows how any of this stuff works. It isn't well documented. The government has the capacity to screw things up all on its own with its long-time experts and long-time consultants. That is what they did with Obamacare. I'm not particularly frightened by programmers showing up and taking a look at code and trying to assess how things work and if they could be better.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
Oh, yeah. Good movie.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
I think that's just Up.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
I mean, I think it's important to just, and we don't have the executive order yet, but what I'll say briefly is, as Matt pointed out, like we've seen this go back and forth a bunch and the attempts to try and kind of dictate exactly what the culture will be or how it will work through executive orders is brilliant. probably a fraught project.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
The best you can hope for in a circumstance like that is a kind of reprieve from whatever kind of social craziness is happening at the moment. So I think folks have to really acknowledge that there are limits on what Donald Trump can do here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Floats America Taking Over Gaza, Major Girls' Sports Executive Order, and Celebrating Episode 1,000, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1000
And I don't know that the actual precedent that currently exists, where you get into office and you just pass a bunch of executive orders reversing the thing that happened right before you were in office, that can't be the status quo that we actually want here. And moving back to the universe of pluralism.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
And, you know, allow me, Matt, to know to kiss up to our host who loves Kara Swisher so much. She's a great journalist that she is. Is that there's two things here in that thing you just read. there, the Whipple says, and I actually, I think this is actually a pretty smart analysis. He's like, you know, it's actually darker than just a coverup that there was a delusion.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
And that strikes me as probably true. I mean, just from, from his reporting, but there's two tiers of this. There's the delusion from within the white house, but there is a coverup and it's from people in the media. That was where the coverup was. And remember all of these quotes from people like on morning Joe, like, Oh, I saw him do a pole vaulting yesterday. And
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
he cleared like eight feet and everyone's like, wow, he's the top of physical health. Harris-Wisher asked that question and does it, by the way, in the, you know, some critics say, not me saying this, some critics say, and then he gives this bullshit answer to which there's a thousand examples of what he just said not being true. And you're not ready with those on a sheet of paper saying,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Yeah, but Ron, X, Y, Z, all the things that happened in the past month that showed that he didn't know where he was and just wasn't being responsive to me. I'm like, the problem with Trump in a way is that you can't get him away from a camera like 40 hours in a 24 hour day. I don't know how he does it, but it's the opposite of Biden's true. Yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Yeah, no, I like that Joe Biden who cares about big government. That's amazing. Dementia Joe Biden is the best Joe Biden. Dementia Joe Biden is like a Hayekian. It's unbelievable. I don't know if I misheard this, but you said he was getting debate prep from Jeffrey Katzenberg, right?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Here's a problem. Don't trust the guy who had a media organization that wasted one point, what, two or three billion dollars in seven months and went out of business. The last thing that would be. Yeah, the short form thing that we all want. It's like five minutes. Yeah, because everybody wants five minutes.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Joe Rogan just did an episode for three and a half days and people are still watching and they love it. But we need five minute videos. Thanks to Jeffrey Gadson.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Yeah, it's just out of touch. You get a 70 year old media mogul who just pissed away a billion dollars. That'll save it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
But all others around the medical practice, medical, real doctor, all others around the president could see, quote, something was terribly wrong.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Yeah, I mean, it's also the the the other thing to I mean, Matt points out something that we tend to forget, because if you asked me early in the morning, I probably wouldn't even remember who ran against Donald Trump in the previous election. This Kamala Harris is so forgettable.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
But imagine this when you have a party that's putting forward presidential candidates in the main idea of the campaign is avoidance. Right. You know, Joe Biden is avoiding interacting with the press, interacting with people like, you know, every time there's a Joe Biden interview, people are like, you know, biting their fingernails.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Is he going to just, you know, tank this one, too, and show people who he really is in the state of his brain, to be honest? And then what happens with Kamala Harris? She becomes the nominee and she avoids the media for how many days? I mean, it's just like you have a party who's like, we don't want to interact with the American people or the media. Right. And the media is on your side.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
The media is high fiving you, trying to push you back into the White House, the party back into the White House. And on the other hand, Donald Trump, love him or hate him, think he's doing a great job or a terrible job. He's constantly interfacing with people and with the press. And sometimes that's going to produce some bad results. But people like that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
And they also don't like a party that seems like they have constantly something to hide.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
There was some kind of unnecessary panic about it for a minute. And I don't think the Stefanik decision was more about New York than it was about Florida. But, you know, those margins, they don't surprise me at all. And I don't think they mean anything because, you know, these are seats that Republicans won by, you know, 30 points and they win them by 15.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
That is meaningless because they're two people who no one had ever heard of. They don't have any name recognition. They're special elections. It doesn't mean anything. This purple state that is now a solidly red state in Florida. And, you know, what the takeaway from this stuff is. Oh, and by the way, about a voter I.D., that's a bipartisan issue, actually.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Not not when it comes to elected officials, but a bipartisan issue. When you ask the average American voter who's like, I'm a liberal. Yes. Should you show I.D.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Hey, Megan. Thanks for having us. Hey, media queen.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Yeah, that was surprising that there was that low amongst Democrats. I hadn't seen that number. The thing that I've been saying this for years, I mean, I think this is like the like the steroid issue. It's like in baseball. It's like, you know, just if people take steroids, they just hit home runs all the time. It's like, no, you have to be a very good baseball player, too.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
That's the same thing with money and politics, people.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
You can give a bazillion dollars. The American people have a certain amount of wisdom in them. They're not dummies. They vote for things. I mean, Elon Musk put in, I mean, George Soros, by the way, put in money to the other campaign too.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
And Reid Hoffman and, you know... We never hear about their billions they dropped into that Wisconsin State Supreme Court race.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Media queen. Yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Please. Yeah, and Randy Fine was outspent 10 to 1, and he won. You know, I mean, I think that Elon, and I've heard this from a lot of Republicans, that they worry about him as a messenger in person. I mean, he's not the most magnetic person. Well, let me ask you something.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
I mean, a couple of things is that, you know, he should have anticipated this. I mean, this is not going to work for Donald Trump in the way that he did is not the same, obviously, as going to work for Mitt Romney. I mean, it inspires a different level of hatred and bile from people. Look, I have a Tesla.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
I was sitting in my car the other day because there's street cleaning in New York and I was moving. And a guy came up and knocked on my window. And I rolled down the window and he said, you gotta get rid of this car. And I was like, taking a back bite. I was like, so every time I go out, I look to see if it's been keyed.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
I mean, I live in a neighborhood that I think in, if it was like in the center of Caracas, people would be like, it's a little too left wing. So I'm like expecting the thing to go up in flames at any point. But you're right.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
I mean, look, in the break, we were just talking about, I saw this number and, you know, year on year, I think it was January and February in Europe, Tesla's sales are down 43%. I mean, they're down not as much in the U.S., but they're down considerably.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
You know, the idiot, worst person in the world, Brad Lander, who, if you know anything about New York politics, I know Matt hates him with the passion that I do. He's going to sue Tesla on behalf of shareholders, like because of the pension fund. in what he's doing to the share price, et cetera. So yeah, he's being rounded on in every possible direction.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
And I think that, you know, you gotta get back to your company. I mean, you're the richest man in the world, but for how much longer if you make a product become, and look, it's just a fact of politics, that divisive. I mean, it's going to be a divisive thing. I mean, I- where we do the Moynihan report show for two way, there's a Tesla dealership right around the corner.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
And I went outside yesterday and there was a huge protest in front of it. I mean, it's like pretty unrelenting. And if you are a stockholder, I mean, you've lost a significant amount of money on this stock, depending when you bought it, you know?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Dude, you could park a Hyundai and it would be set on fire in Oakland.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Did you hear Chuck Schumer after he decided that 25 hours was quite enough? And he was like, the American people owe you the greatest thanks. You know, the world, Mars owes you thanks. You are the best. And it's like, why? Because he just rambled for 25 hours? No one says that to me. I talk nonstop. Like for nothing, too. The exact same thing as him. And I never get accolades for it. Jesus.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
No, it says anything. I love the fact this is the Democratic Party now. The conversation that everyone's having, which is the right conversation, is that there's no policy, that you guys have screwed things up. How are you going to recalibrate? And the idea is to have Cory Booker, the most insufferable person in a building full of insufferable people, talk for 25 hours.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
I would literally vote for American Communist Party before I vote for the Democrats after watching that. I tried to watch some of it. I just had no idea what he was talking about. What's going on with these deportations?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Yeah, he probably charged you $400,000 for all of those things to be wrong about everything. Can I confess something that I've never said to anyone? Oh, please. I vomited in his house. I'm not joking. I interviewed him and I got sick afterwards.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
And I think it might is actually true. It might have been because of the content of the conversation. I'm not sure. But yeah, I've never talked about that. but that's true. Doesn't he have a replica of the White House or something like that?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Yes, in the Lincoln bedroom, and he has a replica of the Monica Lewinsky dress hanging.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
It's just like Kid Rock.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Yeah, no, you have a lot in common with him, Camille. He's a big sneakerhead, so yeah, that's what else I found out, too. Well, I mean, that's not a lot in common.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
He does now. No, no. It was 2016. Yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
I thought my peaking in Frank Luntz's house story was bad, but that, you know.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
For the record, I want it to be known and I want it to be quoted that Camille Foster does not hold the segregationist views of Strom Thurmond against Strom Thurmond.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
He might be in El Salvador. Moynihan. He had the wrong tattoo and he got picked up. No, I loved Moynihan again.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
I saw your mother and I was like, who's that elder stateswoman of the Venezuelan gang scene? I saw.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
For us Irish, by us Irish.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Everybody has opinions. I mean, the right does it. The left does it. When you say, well, this judge was appointed by somebody. The judge always has to be appointed by somebody. You have to do this on a case by case basis because everybody has politics. Everybody has opinions. Every journalist who says they're straight down.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Matt's magazine Reason has always been the most admirable that everybody has to confess who they're voting for in every election in the pages of Reason. Show your cards.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Are there photos of this, Megan? Oh, my God. If you want to remain in the news cycle, Megan, that Matt is saying you're all over, just come next episode all FUBU gear.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
It doesn't matter if you have politics. Something has to be falsifiable, right? I mean, if there is a study that says, you know, vaping is not going to kill you and they say, well, it was paid for by the vaping industry. It's like, well, can you replicate the study? I don't care who paid for it. Is it true? or not.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
And that's ultimately the case with politics, too, is that ideologically motivated people break some great stories on the right, on the left. I mean, you know, the Pentagon Papers, there were people that broke that story because they wanted an end to the Vietnam War. And that was one of the most consequential pieces of journalism of the past 50 years.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Who cares about somebody's politics, provided they are giving you accurate, smart information that you wouldn't get anywhere else. I mean, I'm tired of this idea that we're all pretending that to be above the fray. And, you know, European newspapers don't do that. There's right wing newspapers, left wing newspapers, and they report from that general drift. That's fine as long as it's true.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
That's the important thing. We love you. We love you, Mrs. Kelly.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
I mean, wasn't that the first 10, 15 years of Fox News? Every time there was something that looked like it drifted towards Republicans, it would be fair and balanced, eh? Yes. Just acknowledge what you are, and then that's fine.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
Thank you, Megan. Thank you, Megan.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
I loved, by the way, on this, I saw some, you know, Ron Klain, no one was closer to Biden, so therefore these stories have a lot of credibility. There's no one who's further from Biden than me, and I knew this for four and a half years.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
And if you went back, because we've been doing it for nine years, if you went back to us in 2020, I guarantee you there was some conversation about Joe Biden being too old. I was on Bill Marshall in 2022, and I remember talking about this, that the majority of Democrats thought he shouldn't run again. Why? Because they thought, you know, he wasn't liberal enough or something.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
No, it's because he thought it was too old. All of this stuff is just confirming things that everyone has known. And by the way, there's one great thing is these quotes in there where the cadence of a quote makes all the difference. Like there was a quote in there of Donald Trump said it would be the most Trumpy thing where he's like, I'm the best president. All the people in Europe say it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
I'm the best. They all know me, but I must be the best. If Trump says that, you start laughing. If Biden said that, you're like, oh, my God, he's going to wander into traffic soon. It's a crazy person quote. Trump wants to destroy NATO, more or less. Joe Biden thinks he's the president of NATO.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking New Biden Cognitive Decline Details, Elon's Future, and Cory's Long Speech, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1040
And I love when it's like, is he president of NATO or president of the United States? It's like, he's neither, actually, is the answer to that question.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I think the answer is yes. And I would also point out that that White House press release, if you look at a map of where those border seizures happened, some of our states that border Canada have a lot of territory south of that border. And that's where some of those seizures took place wasn't necessarily like border introductions.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
The reason that you mentioned fentanyl is that gives you the national security excuse. That's why. This is an emergency declaration. You need some reason for the emergency. So the emergency with Canada is fentanyl. The emergency in the southern border is for the cartels. I think it is appropriate to take it as BS, that it's just a fig leaf to do a thing that Trump wants to do.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And that's also illustrated by the fact that It's one of a half a dozen. You mentioned banks and there are U.S. banks that operate in Canada, including retail, but not in every single sector. And there is protectionism associated with that. But Trump has also mentioned the amount that Canada puts into NATO. There have been a number of different rationales for this.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I think the best way to understand what Trump wants to do with tariffs is that Trump wants to do tariffs. He modeled himself after William McKinley. He likes to call himself Tariff Man. All of these things. He truly believes that we can swap the federal income tax with the tariff system, as was indeed the case in America between 1870 and 1913. So let's do that all over again.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
It can't happen because the president can do the tariffs, but cannot necessarily do the tax reform exactly the way that he wants to do it. That has to go through Congress. But he really, truly believes this. And so he's going to because precisely his second administration is a lot more lubricated. It's just going. It is getting things done in a way that the first administration is on.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
You'll see the rhetoric associated with his first State of the Union much different than his first, as you rightly pointed out, Megan. But one of the things that he has wanted to do for a really long time is tariffs. And so that's why they are done. I don't think it's a negotiating tactic at this point. It is an expression of his ideology.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
We were in a more innocent country back then. More innocent country. It's all like professional wrestling all the way down from now on.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I think you need to show more emotion on this, Megan. Your pulse is lacking.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I went today and looked for the arguments of the people who voted no because I have a built-in skepticism of legislation in general and then also stuff that appears to be sort of chasing headlines. First, the text of the bill is pretty innocuous. It's just like, hey, look – People who are born girls should play girls sports. People who are born boys play boys sports.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And if you receive Title nine, if you receive federal funding, you won't get it anymore if you don't follow those rules. Pretty simple. I mean, Trump's executive order was followed and adopted by the NCAA in basically a heartbeat. So it's already the rule of the land. And I don't see a whole lot of upset associated with that. So went and looked at the asterisks on that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
uh, uh, the arguments for it. And there really weren't that many, there wasn't actually the like principled libertarian arguments against it. It was mostly like, Oh, this is just a culture war issue. I think John Hickenlooper was saying that, uh, it, it affects almost nobody. Um, uh, Fetterman said that, uh, it's important to show that you're an ally to trans people. Um, and, um,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I actually agree that it's important to show that you're an ally to your to all constituents. But I don't know what what a vote on this has anything to do with that. Honestly, it's like, do you have the legal rights to participate in society? That's kind of where that goes as far as I'm concerned.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And then I think it was Cortez Masto said something along the lines of if this passes, then all all girls are going to have their genitals inspected. And I just don't think that that's really. Yeah. What's going to happen? I don't think that's what's happening right now in the NCAA. Can I tell you something, Matt?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
See, I think what they have to do is bring the chicken coop cage after the comments yesterday from the Trump administration. Like, just get your own chickens in the backyard. That's not going to be a problem. Or maybe a sugar maple tap so that we can all have maple syrup now?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
The Congress people have been bringing they usually have a one spot and they will do theatrical things. Thomas Massey brought someone last year. I forget who, but it was it was kind of on some point. I think the problem is that Democrats are just not as good at like troll culture.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
as republicans and i don't say that necessarily as a compliment to republicans i kind of wish that we would go to a different place in our governing universe than trolling all the time uh but democrats i mean what did they do they all wore white a couple years ago or several times in the past i wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of handmaid's tale thing uh there was talk of like oh they're going to bring a fired government a federal employee to sit next to them and um
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I just want to say that my 16-year-old, who I think is brain damaged without getting hit by a volleyball, but her first day of... I'm kidding, I love you. Her first day of middle school here in Brooklyn, public middle school, first day of math class. They were encouraged. They were told by their teacher this week is National Coming Out Week.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
So you should feel comfortable, everyone in this room, to come out at age 11. Here in math class in middle school, this is not an isolated type of incident. It happens in a lot of spaces. And I think people are right to go, this is what we should do with 11-year-olds.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I might, you know, if I knew more federal employees, I might know someone that would be personally sad about. But, like, this is just not going to resonate with anyone, really? Like, oh, my God, they fired a federal employee. That's not really going to get the job done.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Democrats are always trying to tell us that we have joy. Remember the Democratic convention? Like, wow, to be all the joy in this room. We're joyful. And they're always sending theater kids to fix the problem. I just don't understand either one of those things.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
It's the music. The music in the background. Fantastic. Little piano thing.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Don't do it. Oh.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Oh God. She's like Stalin. Don't unbutton anything.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Megan, you either need to pay your producers like five times, just hazard pay, or fire them all. I'm not sure which. Or fire yourself.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I mean, who they should bring in is Lech Walesa. They should bring in Lech Walesa, who sent the solidarity anti-communist hero, who, with a bunch of other dissidents from Poland, sent a really sharply worded letter to Donald Trump the other day, making the impassioned case that you shouldn't abandon someone who's been invaded by Russia. That's a serious response.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Darkening your nostrils is not a serious response. I mean, she ended up looking like Lech Walesa, to be honest. That's true.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Wow. Go ahead, Matt. I just want to say that our friend Harry Enten, he's really undergone a change since the election. His New York accent is a lot more pronounced now. I love it. Suddenly just out of bruising like crazy. This opinion change has been going for a while.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Americans had an instinctive and I think correct, at least that I share with desire to support Ukraine in the wake of them getting invaded, unprovoked by Russia. which was Vladimir Putin's fault and not, as Donald Trump has suggested on various times, Zelensky's fault. And other people have suggested that too. Elon Musk and other people have blamed Zelensky for this, which I think is shameful.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And it becomes a conspiracy theory of its own on the right that we're seeing playing out here and there. But so what happens if uh, the U S United States public, preferably through their congressional representatives decide that it's time to stop supporting Ukraine, or at least just say, Hey, look, we gave you a lot of money for a lot of time, but now we don't see a path to victory.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
We feel like we were throwing a lot of money. And also, um, this should be a European led initiative to begin with, which is something that I agree with that latter bit for sure. Uh, should have been that three years ago should have been that 30 years ago. OK, so what does what should an administration do with that set of information?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I think there's an honorable way to go to them and say, hey, look, this is going to wind down. If you want someone else to be your chief sponsor, go with God. But we we don't see a path to victory. We're not going to give you that money. But that's not what the Trump administration has done. And it remains to be seen.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Sure, if there's going to be a conflict with a foreign leader and getting all talky and barky in the White House, Americans are going to support the president and the president is, you know, lighting something on fire, being completely bizarre. We are patriotic people and we rally behind our own. But what should the honorable thing to do? It should be sort of like we are stepping back.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Now, from this role, we don't want to say who's going to, you know, we're not going to dictate terms to people. But Trump is not satisfied with that. He wants to end the war and he wants to be seen as the one who ended the war. And so now we're going from basically leaning very hard on the Ukraine side to starting to lean a little bit on the Russia side. And that is a less honorable path.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And I don't know if Americans who are tired and growing increasingly weary of this war are going to like that particular part of the side switching. We want to be seen as, Americans generally, want to be seen as having a moral stance in the world. Being on Russia's side, even if it's a realistic response, which is how JD Vance and Donald Trump position this, like, hey, look,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
We're the only ones who are acknowledging the reality that Ukraine can't win. So now what? And I get that. That's an argument. What's not an argument is to single out Zelensky as the dictator in the exchange between these two countries. So we'll see how popular that is among Americans. I think it's an open question.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I think quickly, Zelensky screwed up for his people. He's eaten his words. And I wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump announces a signing of a minerals deal at the State of the Union address tonight. Zelensky screwed up, but I don't think Trump took the high road in the run-up to the meeting. There's a lot of diplomatic activity in the week, 10 days beforehand.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And I don't think Zelensky was treated particularly nicely in that process.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
But nor did Biden nor Obama.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Honestly, I think what Ukraine wants is to be part of the negotiations in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else. They don't want to be where the Czechs were in the Munich Agreement and where all of Eastern Europe was in 19- It's shuttle diplomacy.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
That's like what they want. I think this is that's what they're seeking. And they want a security guarantee. There's this sort of kabuki theater that goes like this. Emmanuel Macron in France wants to be wants to lead a European only like a semi NATO. They want to sort of detach. This has been French goals and foreign policy since forever. Cool, right? I like it. You like it. Everyone likes it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And then look at the fine print of what he says when he's out and saying, my dear Donald, at the White House last week, saying, we just want we want to do that. And we're ready to even have our troops and boots on the ground, except, of course, not in combat areas. So that's exactly right. Some pretty French boots on the ground and now British boots, too. But we just want the U.S. solidarity.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
We want a U.S. backstop. This is a French way of saying we want the U.S. to be the one doing the guarantees. Europeans. Germany, too. Germany is the worst. Frederick Merz, I mean, he's also talking about one of some of the strongest game right now. We need to declare independence for the United States. We need to create our own European security.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
We need to spend five percent of GDP or whatever the number is. This is an acceleration towards that. Well, it might. The Germans have not done it. Of course not. No, no. You've never you've never gotten.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
That's the problem. 80% or so of all of NATO actual warfighting capability is American. The munitions, certainly the leadership. And this is a really important part. Like NATO has been able, the Western European countries have been able to underfund NATO and benefit from their security without the burden of responsibility for NATO's decisions. Forever.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And so what Ukraine needs in order to survive, to make a ceasefire something different than just like a five years to wait before Russia pulverizes you again, is for someone to secure their their future, that someone should be Western Europe. Western Europe says they want that to happen, but they actually so far lack the balls to actually do that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
So everyone's dancing around each other in these negotiations trying to get over that fact. I think Donald Trump and I disagree with how he's done it and sort of the approach. I think he's accelerated towards that future, a future that needs to happen, which is that Western Europe has to put on its big boy pants.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Oh, yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Unbelievable.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Didn't all four of us talk about this exact thing in similar, maybe not quite as harsh as Chuck Todd's words on this for several years? Like your family's falling apart and you're running as family man. What the hell are you doing? It's it's crazy to see this.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I'm reminded earlier you mentioned how it was in March or April of 20 of last year when there was the fundraiser that Joe Biden went to Radio City Music Hall instead of the funeral of the cop. We were on your show that morning and we talked about that. I remember that that happened in March or April of last year.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And when did George Clooney come out and say, wow, Biden's Biden's memory sure was going. Yeah. Four months later, July. Four months later. So Chuck Todd, dude, welcome to the whatever this is. But like that stuff about Joe Biden being a family man guy for 50 years and it being a bunch of horse pucky and people knowing that it's horse pucky and that his family is an absolute catastrophe.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
What part of that is new? I don't know. I just don't know.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
But also the idea that maybe Chuck Schumer will be naked. So just have that in your brain.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
I mean, always remember when you're talking about city union addresses that 90 percent of it will be forgotten within a week and including many of the promises that are made about what's going to happen in the future. If you look back at 2017, Trump's first one, he had nice words to say about Justin Trudeau. It says, you know, we support NATO strongly.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And he bragged a lot about how the stock market had done since his election. So I don't think we're going to see either of those or any of those. uh, discussed in great detail. And they spend most of the time talking about how they're going to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something. And which didn't happen, not all at his hands.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
Um, but it's, so we're going to hear things like that that don't really matter that much. And we're doing it on a day where we started a trade war. This is a much more consequential, a single day policy than almost anything he did last time around. Um, and, uh, I'm sure if Michael Moynihan is, uh, glancing down, uh, furiously at his desk. He's watching his stock portfolio continue to be massacred.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018
And also NATO, like— He's come up with six different rationales for Canada.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
So it's incredibly humorous to watch Mark Warner talking about breaches of security when his own Senate Select Committee on Intelligence suffered an extraordinary breach of security when the head of security for the committee was indicted for leaking material that led to the publication of the FISA warrant on Carter Page. in 2017. Remember the indictment involving James Wolfe.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Now that was a story where the circumstances were kind of mysterious because it was a story that seemed like certain people would have wanted to get out. But that really was classified information that was illegal to leak. And it did end up up in the press and it was a major scandal, both journalistically and in the history of Congress that,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
So for him to talk about this situation where they're not exchanging classified material, they're not sitting in a skiff, and they're simply discussing an operation that may be sensitive but not classified. When he says, I demand that you give us that material, there's no reason why Gabbard and Radcliffe can't just say no. You know, we don't have to do anything. Right.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Yeah, and again, not to speak about Michael Bennett specifically, but for members of the U.S.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Senate to talk about an inadvertent leak as if it were this dire, life-threatening matter of national security, when throughout the entire first presidency of Donald Trump, there were epidemic, illegal leaks of classified intelligence from everything involving, you know, the signals intelligence about Michael F.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador, to the alleged contact between Donald Trump and members of Russian intelligence, to the figures connected to Trump or known and suspected Russian agents, to the Alexander Downer stuff. I mean, I did a story about this once and made a list, and I had like 14 or 15 different illegal leaks that came out. All reporters knew what was going on during that time.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
There were tons and tons of material that were being discussed in skiffs. And what would happen would be like some kind of aid from Congress would call you and would essentially confirm the details of a classified story and then would put you on the phone with somebody else who would be the second person to confirm the story. This was going on constantly.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
It drove most of the major Russiagate stories during the Trump period.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Right. Yeah. I mean, this is what journalism was for years and years and years and politics for that matter. Right. And none of that stuff was ever investigated or punished, even though it went on in the open. So I'm a little bit amazed that this not not illegal trend situation is being investigated so vehemently.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
I think the administration comes out looking not so bad. I mean, the security leak is obviously not great. I mean, and it's going to invite criticisms that these people are inexperienced. They don't know what they're doing, right? They're already saying that in droves. But as to the actual discussions, it's not like you had a bunch of people saying, wait, where's Yemen again?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Is that next to Panama? I mean, they... They seem to know what they were doing.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Also, I have to say that just quickly, I think it makes Vance look good. It shows that he's willing to stand up for what he thinks and give his opinion. And that's what we want a vice president to do. If there is any disagreement or if he is challenging the idea, isn't that what we want from these people? We want them to discuss it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
I'm not really sure I understand what the controversy is apart from the security leak.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Thank you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Yeah, I mean, possession is nine-tenths of the law, right? And, I mean, it reminds me of an old story about Joseph Stalin, who apparently he was criticized by the Pope for something. And he essentially said, well, screw the Pope. How many divisions does he have? And, you know... That comes into play here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
That came into play when there was a famous case involving Abraham Lincoln in the beginning of the Civil War, where it also came into play. The courts in these kinds of showdowns tend not to have the upper hand, and that might play out that way.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
I mean, it's ridiculous. First of all, how many times are these people going to invoke Jim Crow? You know, everything is either Jim Crow or Hitler, basically, since Trump arrived on the political scene. The other thing I'll say is, you know, I was a foreigner for... 12 years. I lived in the former Soviet Union.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
I lived in a number of different countries, principally Russia, but also Uzbekistan, Mongolia, some other places. And you never have a sense that you have rights to a place as a foreigner. You always think of yourself as a guest. You always want to be on your best behavior. And you always want to respect the culture, to try to learn the language, do all those things. And the idea...
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
that you can be thrown out of the country at any moment is present in your mind at all times i mean i was thrown out of uzbekistan and they had every right to what'd you do Uh, I was there in the wrong kind of visa and, um, yeah, I was actually playing for the, for an Uzbek baseball team at the time and they threw me out after practice.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Um, but look, the, the, the idea that, that all these people, you know, as much as a civil libertarian as I am, the idea that foreigners or their people who are here illegally have the same rights as Americans, this isn't true. They, they may have, uh, by law, they may have the same speech rights once they get here, but there are,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
The notion that the president doesn't have the ability to throw these people out of the country doesn't hold up, I don't think.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Yeah. And just to go to go back to you're absolutely right. And to go back to the John Harwood thing, the reason that comparison is so obscene is because, you know, the young black men who were rounded up during the Jim Crow period, they were citizens. They had rights. that were ignored and abused during that time.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
They should have shared full equal rights because they were Americans just like us. It's an apples to oranges thing to compare these two situations to claim that these suspected gang members are like abused American citizens just isn't true. And you're right, they've lost all standing to complain about this like they have on speech issues.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
What? Just as like a horror movie exercise. But anyway.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
So Megan, this is my favorite question that you've ever asked me. Jim Rutenberg, the irony of this is astounding. Jim Rutenberg in August of 2016 wrote an extraordinarily influential article called Trump Assessing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism. And the entire argument of the piece was was that Trump was such an extreme threat that journalists had to change the way they did business.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
We no longer had to be just true. We had to be true to quote history's judgment, right? So it was a clarion call for the entire mainstream media To change its they did this, they did that, we don't really care, you sorted out attitude to let's become activists, let's tell you which is the right thing and who is the villain and who isn't, and let's become activists.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
narrative-driven, in-your-face politicized media, which has lost all credibility with audiences. Now, when he says that Trump can circumvent journalistic narratives and go directly to the people, he's absolutely right. But that is a market contest, a free market contest of believability where the mainstream media is losing credibility.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
because it's screwed up so many stories in pursuit of trying to preserve these politicized narratives. They've made so many horrific factual errors and gone over the deep end so many times that people trust the Joe Rogans and Megyn Kellys of the world far more than they do the Jim Rutenbergs of the world. Jim Rutenberg created this situation that he's lamenting. It's extraordinarily ironic.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Not only the bias, though, Megan, it's also just the wimpiness, the whining that, oh, my God, the president can get around the journalistic narratives and get around the mainstream media. You know how the press gets power? By being good at what it does. When you get a good story, when you break news, when you're a great investigative reporter like Cy Hirsch, people listen to you. It's like E.F.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Hutton, you know? When you have... uh good information people listen when you suck at your job like the people at the new york times mostly have for quite a long time now you lose audience and and presidents like donald trump can get around you and you don't have the same influence that you have you had in elections previously i mean as a campaign reporter i've been doing this for
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
I guess since 2004, I covered five straight presidential elections. And the press continually lost influence as people discovered that there were more sources out there on the internet that they trusted more because they got tired of hearing the same old canned stuff from reporters who were too friendly with politicians in both parties, but particularly with Democrats, I would say. And
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
The fact that they get frozen, it's their own fault. It's their own fault for not working and for and for not thinking about the audience first and not their political sponsors.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
It's unbelievable. My father, who was a reporter, used to tell me that you don't need to go to journalism school, that you could learn the basics of the job in two hours. But in those two hours, probably the first thing that they tell you when you start working in journalism is that the one thing that you cannot do is accuse somebody in print of a crime that they have not been committed for.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
That will get you sued 100 times out of 100. And the ABC News case, I understand the argument that you can construe that verdict, I guess, if you take a creative interpretation of it as rape, but it's not going to hold. He wasn't convicted of rape, and it wasn't a criminal case either. The most you can say is sexual assault in that case.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
And he repeatedly said rape and he clearly knew what he was doing. So that that's why they settled in the 60 Minutes case. They settled because they did something embarrassing and they didn't.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Right. Exactly. And to your point about 60 Minutes falling from its great heights, Walter and I talked not that long ago about the 60 Minutes story about speech in Germany, where they did this extraordinary segment, sort of breathlessly showing how wonderful it was to live in a country where six armed cops burst into your door to arrest you for doing memes. And they don't see that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
For insulting somebody.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Remember how these people in New York used to wear those OPP hats everywhere? That whole year, everyone was wearing fur OPP hats. I mean, the skull caps, they were amazing.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Thank you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
Yeah, it seems like this is a person for whom there is more than one language. And it's apparently not just money. But yeah, I think Walter is exactly right. And your comparison to AOC is apt. It's so strange. Ocasio-Cortez, before she ran for Congress for the first time, there was a Bernie-backed group called Brand New Congress whose mission was to replace the entire Congress. Alexa, stop.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
to replace the entire Congress with populist candidates. And they chose to support AOC because when the people from this group met with her, they felt like she was a, quote, normal person and wouldn't come off as an activist who would rub voters the wrong way. And so The irony that she gets into Congress and immediately adopts a completely different personality, I think that does happen at times.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
People, once they get a taste of politics, especially when they get a taste of social media attention, you just never know what's going to happen to them. And the incentives, particularly in Democratic Party politics, are all wrong now. They just incentivize people to behave in ways that they never would in real life.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
All right.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
I think I need to know a little bit more about how this story happened before I can accurately comment on it, because the notion that of all people in the world, the journalist who is probably most hostile to Donald Trump was added to this chat chain about an attack on Yemen.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bizarre Group Chat Details, Media Compares Trump to Nixon, and MK Media Launch, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1034
It's so incredibly improbable that the circumstances of it need to be understood fully before we can properly assess it, I think. I mean, was it a genuine accident or what else happened here? It's just something about it doesn't smell entirely kosher to me.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for having us, Megan.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Oh, that was bizarre. She was looking, Congressman Krakow was looking right at me the entire time, talking about how we want to lie on the world and all this other stuff. And she was really animated. I could not, I made the mistake of trying to follow what she was saying. Uh, which is confusing. Uh, so yeah, it was very strange. The whole hearing was bizarre.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Uh, really, I was only asked one question, uh, really by a Democrat, the entire hearing, which went on for hours. So, um, why were you there and what was the point?
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
I think Jim Jordan really wanted to underscore that there are continuing issues with the censorship landscape, which coincidentally, Vice President Vance talked about this week, a lot of it having to do with the integration of the United States with sort of foreign and especially European driven censorship regimes like the Digital Services Act or the Online Safety Act or Germany's NetzDG Act.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
And the United States is still basically in conflict with a lot of those countries and suppressing a lot of forces within our own country that want those kinds of measures here in the US.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
And there's an angle here that's kind of funny. I think the AP doesn't understand that to a certain extent, Trump is trolling exactly them. The AP style book is essentially the glossary of accepted terminology that the entire print journalism industry uses. And when I first started off in print journalism, the style book was fairly static. It would change every now and then.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
But recently it's become this thing where there are changes constantly where they advise you,
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
oh try to avoid using the work the word woke if you if you can because it's used in a derogatory fashion by conservatives uh don't refer to the uh sex at birth of a transgender person if you can avoid doing that they're constantly instructing you on usages that go far beyond things like grammar or official names and trump by naming the gulf of mexico the gulf of america like i don't know how i feel about that personally but it's incredibly clear that he's
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
sort of returning in kind, that kind of stuff. And for them to throw a fit over this, it's silly on two levels. Number one, I came up in independent journalism. Nobody ever gave me a credential. You don't need a credential to be a journalist. You can do it, as you say, Megan, from where you are. We're supposed to be on the outside. The tantrum is ridiculous.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
But the second thing is they do this constantly. That's what they do. And they're being called out on it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Yeah, I mean, I was advised as a young reporter by, you know, some people who are kind of legendary investigative reporters at the time. Look, if you want friends, you can't stay in this business. This is a business where you're going to lose friends. And if you try to keep them, you're probably not doing your job correctly.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
So get used to having a pretty narrow social life and then you'll be fine. And I think, you know, Walter is talking about, I mean, a lot of people in Washington talk about this concept of the blob, which is everybody you meet is married to somebody else who's a lobbyist.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
And there are these interlocking relationships where every transaction that you see, whether it's a piece of legislation that gets passed or, you know, an executive order, there's a whole bunch of hidden connections that the public doesn't get to see. which is, you know, it's questionable. I think it needs to be reported on, but it's worse when the reporters are part of the equation.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Like, I think all of that internecine, behind the scenes, all those relationships, it's really bad if the reporters are part of that sort of hidden network. They shouldn't be. They should be on the outside. And that way you can trust the stuff that you see on the air much more.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Yeah, I think you're right, Megan. I'm not a lawyer, but I think everybody, obviously, if you don't feel that you can in good conscience bring that case, then resigning is what you should do. But it's the same for a whole string of stories.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
that we've seen over the years and then, you know, like Gary Shapley, the IRS whistleblower, like they, they know when they come forward that they're not going to be working, uh, you know, in, in government anymore. Right. Um, so you, it's essentially resigning, right. When you come forward and you can't come back.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Yeah, I mean, the selective outrage factor in all this is pretty conspicuous. I mean, like, it goes both ways, but they massively overreported, I think, a lot of the Trump cases, you know, particularly the one in New York, with such an obviously politicized case.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
And there was no coverage in that direction, really examining how ridiculous and how what a Frankenstein Ian legal construction that indictment was. But you know, when when you have a person of conscience and the other side now and now it becomes, you know, a soccer of type of story. They didn't cover the FBI whistleblowers or the IRS whistleblowers the same way.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
And that's just the way it's going to be going forward. I mean, we're in a fractured society right now.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
I mean, this has been going on for a long time, this kind of journalism by implication. It started, I think, really with the Russiagate stuff where, I mean, remember we had a cover story in New York Magazine that suggested Donald Trump would have been recruited by the KGB before the village people, basically. And it was just based on a hunch. Let's look at all these dots, these connections.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Could he be a Russian agent? Is there a Manchurian candidate in the White House? That's how they do it. It's journalism by question. I'm not saying that he's drinking bourbon, but could he be drinking bourbon? You're not really – you're not supposed to do that. I know in the age of content being needed all the time and influencers, we do speculate a lot.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
But there are some lines we try not to cross and that's kind of one of them. He knows its implications.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
No, nothing. I mean, having covered her in Iowa and on the campaign trail in 2020, I know a lot of journalists kind of struggled with how to comment on scenes like that. There are a lot of things that come to mind, but you had to speak in code when you talk to your readers about stuff like that. Yes, she was essentially... spinning these giant sandcastles of nothingness.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
But it's impossible to convey the exact impression that she's giving while she goes off on these rants.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
There were no jazz hands. That was a jazz hands moment.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
We talked about this on our show. They're trying to get a piece of the spontaneous and sometimes obscene and sometimes off-color trolling style humor that exists on the Trump side. But the whole point of that is that you can't script it. You can't do your normal schtick and just add the word dick to it and get more traffic that way.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
it's actually exponentially worse than what you were doing before, right? Because now you're just doing, it's the same old thing, but let's just add a useless obscenity that we ourselves look uncomfortable saying.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
It's one thing if it just comes right out of you as part of a spiel that rolls off the tongue, but if you have a staff of people in whatever committee room coming up with, let's just call them a dick, That tells me that their messaging, that they have nothing left in the basket in terms of messaging ideas.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
You know, the Democrats seem always to think that everything is a messaging problem. And if they just change a PR strategy, then it will change some kind of underlying reality that they're not in touch with. There was a great play by Joseph Heller, who is the author of Catch-22 called We Bomb the New Haven. And there was a character in it who says, we're going to bomb Constantinople off the map.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
And somebody else says, why don't we just bomb the map?
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
um and that's what they're always trying to do they're trying to take the shortcut to to actually connecting with voters or changing their policy or changing the actual political direction of what they do to to gather more voters by changing the message and they've done that so many times uh not realizing that you have to actually make some kind of substantive offer to the people that's different than what you were doing before
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
For them to take notice, just like a different presentation doesn't change much.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
There's two things about this. This is an old trope in media and in comedy. It's the urban, sophisticated kid who's picking on the rural hayseed. People have been doing this since there's been journalism. H.L. Mencken was an expert practitioner in this, going to Tennessee and picking on all the local folks during the Scopes Monkey Trial. A, you have to be accurate.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
In other words, the caricature has to be successful and true in some way and not just some stereotyped idea that you picked up by not observing people in real life. The other thing is, if you're going to do that, if you're going to use the sharpest scalpel that you have in your drawer, you've got to do it on your own.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
people too and that's why it's okay when you read mencken he goes after the people who live in baltimore and his peers and and politicians and people on both sides of the aisle with just as much viciousness as he did uh the people in rural tennessee that's what's missing from this show um it just it it's it's not funny because it's just a stereotype and it's it's not meant to go in all directions
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Well, Megan, thanks for having me back again. Sadly, under these circumstances, or actually since everybody got out, I guess we're okay. Megan, the first thing, when I saw the in-cockpit video this morning, I heard you reading your email in the last block there. Then I guess I can talk like this. That jet was coming down like a turd off a tall moose.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
landing an F-18 aboard an aircraft carrier, our average rate of descent is about 800 feet per minute. And I think the last flight tracker data that I saw for this RJ was about 1100 feet per minute. So that RJ came down a lot faster and harder than I would have landed aboard the boat.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
And I think, you know, one of the one of the officials yesterday or last night said, hey, crosswind wasn't an issue. Whenever anything like this happens, Megan, I grab my aviation app and I immediately look at the weather, see what the weather is. And landing on runway 23, the winds were out at 270. So about 40 degrees off the nose or down the runway in really gusty conditions. So it looks like
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
This airplane didn't really have too much of a flare, which is when you get close into the runway, we pull the nose back, pull back on the throttles and kind of do that nice, what we as Navy pilots would say, Air Force landing. But this landing was hard and it looks like it sheared off the right main landing gear.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
took the wing with it, and then the only wing that was left, the left wing, still producing lift, they kind of corkscrew and roll down the runway. But my God, you know, we jokingly in aviation say any landing we can walk away from is a good landing. That was a pretty bad landing, and thank God a lot of people walked away.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, whether if they're talking about clouds or low ceilings or anything like that, just because the sun is out doesn't mean the weather is great. Very, very gusty conditions. When I looked at my phone after the mishap, it was 25 gusts, 45 knots, which is absolutely significant. That's that's some sporty wind conditions. If it's right down the runway, right on the nose.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
That's fine. Still a little sporty. But if it's 40 degrees off, you're kind of crabbing into the wind and having to take that crab out at the last second. Very, very sporty conditions. Sporty. What a word. Or varsity or JV, however you want to word it. It was definitely not pleasant conditions. I'm dangerous, obviously.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Well, let me rephrase that or clean that up a little bit. They're certainly trained, right? The FAA has standards. You have to meet these minimum standards. Endeavor Air has standards. So clearly those two aviators sitting in front of that regional jet had met the standards, the minimum standards. I think what the nuance is experience. That's probably a clean it up by saying experience.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
not to uh you know not not to talk down to any folks in the regional jet uh you know i wasn't born the world's best fighter pilot or actually i was but you're not born you're not born with thousands and thousands of flight hours right you're you're you got to get your hours somewhere so a lot of the folks in the regionals are are doing their time right they're they're building their hours
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
I don't know too many folks who make flying in the regionals a career. They want to fleet up, so to speak, to the main line, to Delta, United, FedEx, where the big money is. So a lot of these regional jet crews are overworked and definitely underpaid, in my opinion. But they have got to meet the minimum requirements.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
I would, Megan. I mean, the fact that all of these, before we jumped on the air, Greg and I were talking about last week, we lost a growler, an E-18 crash. We had an F-35 crash in Eielson Air Force Base weeks ago, and then we've had all these other mishaps. If these were spread out over the fiscal year or the calendar year, they'd be blips on the news media radar for a little bit.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
But the fact that- We're kind of squished into a month here. Everybody's freaking out. I get it. But as you know, intuitively, driving to or from the airport is the most dangerous part of this exercise. I'd have no problem getting on an RJ. But trust me, Megan, I peek in the cockpit when I get on every once in a while just to I don't know why I do, but I look.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Well, that's above my pay grade, Megan, and thank God that all these folks lived. Look at this.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Correct. Yeah. Mitsubishi, I think it is, the good on them for the manufacturer that these folks lived in the seats. Thankfully, or I guess I can say thankfully, this MSAP was on landing, so that aircraft wasn't packed full of fuel. This could be a whole different story if this happened on takeoff. You know, they were coming into land full of fuel for whatever reason.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
The crash rescue folks, they are they're literally sitting in different alert positions on these airfields. They are waiting for something like this to happen. It's sad to say, but as a crash rescue crewman, I don't ever want to be used, but I'm ready to be used. They were on that that crash almost immediately and they were foaming down the aircraft to to protect against the fire.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
But this literally it's got to come up to a higher power, because as I saw you know, this mishap occur. And then I saw the video. I'm like, I'm absolutely stunned that more people didn't get hurt. And real quick to what, and I have to admit something. So in my aviation career, I'm going to age myself. Whenever Greg is on TV, you know, the mishap is going to be figured out.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
This guy has got all the experience in the world. I'd see him in press conferences or, you know, air show or air crash type of documentaries. And this guy is the 500 pound head.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
But to his point, Megan, the more autopilot you use, the less meat and potato flying skills that pilots have. And if you are taking off and landing, or yeah, Greg can probably speak to this better than I can, the majority of mishaps are going to happen in takeoff and landing. So the dependence or the over-dependence on an autopilot is a little scary.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
I mean, we have the capability for an F-18 Hornet to land aboard the boat by itself with me as a passenger, but we used to joke like, Hey, if I'm going to be a flaming ball of wreckage going down the flight deck, I'm going to do it. Not some nerd from Microsoft, right? Some autopilot. So there's got to be a happy balance between autopilot and losing stick and rudder skills, you know?
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
No, I was just going to say, we also have a saying in aviation, if there's any doubt, there's no doubt. So the pilot not flying in this case, if they saw this massive rate of descent coming, like, man, we're going to slam. When in doubt, go around, right? When in doubt, there's no doubt. Go back up. They could have easily, go try it again.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
You have enough gas to go try three, four, five other landings. And if it's too windy, go to a divert field. So when in doubt, do not try and salvage a bad approach because bad things happen.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Megan, you can be on the runway and decide something's not too good. And as long as you have enough flying speed to get airborne again. So absolutely. Even if you're, this would have been the most appropriate time. One of the most appropriate times I've seen in my career when the plane's coming down and you're almost like, you know, I know we're going to hit hard. Don't hit hard.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
Full power and get airborne again, man. Yeah. If anything, if they had selected go around or max power at that point, they would have at least cushioned that landing. But to Greg's point, all the black boxes and the ones and zeros that are talking to each other, guys like Greg are going to dig into it. We will know sooner rather than later. This won't be a six-month, two-year investigation.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
This one's pretty tight.
The Megyn Kelly Show
CBS vs. Free Speech, Elon Baby Drama, and Shocking Plane Crash, with Michael Knowles, Matt Taibbi, and Walter Kirn | Ep. 1009
So, Megan, I saw a meme today. It's now appropriate to start clapping when an airliner lands nowadays. We've frowned upon that, but now we can go back to clapping when we successfully land.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Andrew Schulz on Why Trump Dominates Culture and Politics, Becoming a Dad, and Dating Red Flags | Ep. 1020
Schultzy, Schultzy, Schultzy, Schultzy. Matthew. Hey, cute baby. I didn't get the Amber Alert.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Andrew Schulz on Why Trump Dominates Culture and Politics, Becoming a Dad, and Dating Red Flags | Ep. 1020
Oh, nice. Yeah. What, do you stand up there and grow a mustache? Actually, if you want to know, it's about my wife and I trying to make a baby. Hey, everybody. This dumbass right here has a special about his low sperm count, and it's on Netflix.
The Megyn Kelly Show
What To Expect From Bryan Kohberger's Defense at Trial in 2025 - A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 973
Yes, and the remedy generally for DNA problems like this is you just retest the suspect. He can't change his DNA. His DNA doesn't change. There's a whole rash of these things, and they've been challenged, and they have repeatedly been shut down by the courts of appeal. And so the Koberger defense team, they're doing what they have to do. I have no criticism for them.
The Megyn Kelly Show
What To Expect From Bryan Kohberger's Defense at Trial in 2025 - A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 973
That's their job is to ensure that their client gets fair trial and to present whatever issues they can. But they're pretty dramatic about a lot of things they're doing. And I can tell you right now, that sounds good. It sounds good, especially to a lay audience, that the DNA on that knife sheath is going to be admitted against Brian Kloberger in that trial.
The Megyn Kelly Show
What To Expect From Bryan Kohberger's Defense at Trial in 2025 - A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 973
They're not going to be able to successfully suppress it, and it will be affirmed on appeal.