Senator Chris Murphy
Appearances
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Well, okay, those are two different questions. I'm good. I'm healthy. My children are healthy. It stopped raining. My job is a pain in the ass these days.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Price gouging by sports teams. So I just tried to buy tickets for me and my two sons to go to a Red Sox game in Boston. It's my favorite team. I really want my kids to become Boston Red Sox fans. I'm not winning that argument. To get a seat that's within eyesight of the field, $175, $150.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
I'm not complaining about the amount of money I make, but nobody who's making $50,000 a year can afford to go to a Red Sox game or a Bruins game or a Rangers game. That's tragic because that's a coming-of-age experience for kids. It's now just affordable for hedge funds.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
managers and CEOs and it's, I don't know, it's heartbreaking to me as like a sports fan who like my relationship with my father was all about our relationship to sports and live sports. So that's my headache.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
yeah i mean that's still my most important job you know being a dad and they're 16 and 13 so like i'm i'm on the clock like i don't have that many years where you know i get to see them every single day and you know what for as long as i've done this job but especially right now like they're the ground right like
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
You can't get too self-important when you've got two kids that don't really care that you're a United States Senator that just wanna know if you can help them with their homework or unwind the problem with the girl they like at school. So to me, that's sort of what keeps me honest in this job is by spending as much time as I can with them.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
And you know, it's so hard at that age to get them to talk to you. So that drive to school, when I have them trapped in the car is sometimes the only moment that I can actually get them to answer some questions. So yeah, sorry that we had to rejigger around the driving to school schedule, but pretty important.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Yeah, I think about this all the time. And it's so heartbreaking to me that we have outsourced to the right a conversation with men and boys. And like, I just do think we have to be honest that like men in general are going through something right now. And of course they are, because for like thousands of years, our societies were patriarchal.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Men were on top of everything, on top of families, the economy, culture. And they still are. But all of a sudden, women are in the workforce. All of a sudden, in 40% of families, the female makes more than the male. And so the easy way that you used to identify yourself as a man, protector, breadwinner, for a lot of men has disappeared. And the right has this really irresponsible tale to tell.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Let's just dial it back to 1950 or 1880. And that's not right. But the left kind of tells boys and men, like, just get over it, like, just get over it. And that's a hard thing to get over because you've got to replace that identity structure with something else. And then, you know, there's a couple other things going on for boys than you guys know this one.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
I think social media has been in some ways much more harmful on boys because they are, you know, less natural in creating social connections. And so when they get given this invitation to withdraw into their phone, boys really easily take it because they're just not as naturally connected as I think as young women are.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
And then let's just be honest, like the Me Too movement has been confusing for young boys, right? Sort of not knowing exactly sort of what's acceptable, what's not acceptable in terms of how they approach girls, which has also caused a lot of them to withdraw, you know, not as much dating. boys having sex much later, that's been tough on boys too. So there's just a lot going on.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
And the left is just kind of like, I don't want to talk about it. It's messy. I'm going to say the wrong words. And the only message that these boys get is from the right, which is it's the women who've done this to you. And we would just be better to dial the whole culture back. And that's a terrible answer. We got to have a better one.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Yeah, I mean, it's just a tactic that they're using to try to get richer. I mean, this whole thing is a con. It's Donald Trump, Elon Musk, their Mar-a-Lago friends, just making up arguments to enable them to steal from us, right? To award themselves contracts, to shut down programs that matter to the middle class like Medicaid in order to
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
give themselves more in order to award contracts to them and their friends, to give themselves more tax breaks. So they're going to tell whatever story is necessary to engage in that kind of theft. I do think we have to have a conversation about where male role models exist. It is true. A lot of young men do look up to people like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban, people who have had this
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
tremendous economic success. But success is not just becoming a billionaire. Success is being a leader, being a good human being, giving back to your community. So one of the things that I'm obsessive about is getting more men into teaching so that you have more male role models that are just doing good, providing an education in the classroom. We need more young men to have easy attachment
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
to male role models early in their life. The dad can be your male role model, but a lot of young men don't have dads in their lives and teachers can do that, but we still have a hard time getting men into the teaching profession. That could help alleviate this reflex that a lot of young men have to sort of look just at the billionaire class as their set of role models.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think you have to see everything through one prism, right? This is a broken man, but a broken man who wants to rule forever, who wants to crush the opposition so that he or his family or his chosen successor can rule in perpetuity. And, you know, there's a playbook for how this happens, how somebody who's democratically elected never leaves power.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
You basically co-opt all of the centers of power in the country and you force them to essentially sign loyalty pledges. So, that's what's happening right now. He's doing that with law firms, he's doing that with colleges and universities, and now he's going to do that with industry. That's what the tariffs are about, at least that's my opinion.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Last night, economists were like super confused when the tariffs came out because they were like, this doesn't make any sense. Like there's no logical explanation for how this is going to improve jobs or improve the trade balance. And, you know, I said, as you read it right, it doesn't make sense economically because it has nothing to do with economics.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
What he's doing is he's setting up the system of penalization on industry so that every industry or every big business has to come to him, bend the knee, kiss the ring and pledge loyalty in order to get tariff relief. And that'll have a double impact. First, the economy will get a little bit better when he releases a certain set of tariffs and everybody can shout hooray.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
But then he gets the loyalty pledge. I don't know what that looks like, but the company could decide to never publicly criticize the president. They could pledge campaign contributions. They could decide that. They're going to police their employees and make sure none of their employees work for Democrats. It's not economic policy.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
It's just about his need to have people prostrate themselves to him and his belief that in doing that, the democracy will become so weak, the opposition will become so weak that he won't ever have to worry about Democrats winning. I don't think that's how it's going to play out. I still think that we have the power to defeat him. But that's the game that he's playing.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Yeah, I can't explain what has happened to Rubio. When he first came to the Senate, I mean, he was an interesting guy. He, you know, participated in a big bipartisan negotiation to change the immigration laws. He actually signed on to a bill that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for, you know, 12 million Americans. And then Over time, he just stopped being interesting.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
This wasn't terribly surprising to us who have watched Rubio. He hasn't participated in any bipartisan talks. He hasn't had an interesting idea in a decade. I think it's really hard to understand what happens when the cult takes over. If you had a friend who went away and joined a cult for three years, who came back a fundamentally different person, Like somebody said, what happened?
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
You'd be like, well, I don't know. Like I wasn't with him in the call. I wasn't you know, I didn't I didn't see the indoctrination they were doing on him. That's kind of my view. It's like they go into this closed information ecosystem, right, where they are only hearing from the MAGA voices in which Donald Trump dominates. That's not the world I live in.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
But something in that world corrupts both your mind and your soul. So you go from being interesting and sometimes independent, like Marco Rubio was, to a stooge in which you just take orders. It's like a cult. And I don't understand how it works. And like maybe there's a you know, there's like a magic potion that they give these guys, but they just come out on the other end of it.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Fundamentally different people. And Rubio is not alone. There's plenty of other members of Congress who used to be interesting, who are now, you know, just sycophants.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
I mean, but I have the same like I have the same feeling that you do, right? Because like, I can't, I can't not have some appreciation for the fact that like, he's the only one doing the right thing. But he birthed this. Yes, birth this like this is his baby. And and he he midwifed the Tea Party into existence, which which led to MAGA.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
And then, you know, his he's got a number of sins that he will have to account for. But, you know, at the heart of it is the second impeachment trial.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
right there were six there were six republicans that came out and voted for it that meant that we only had to get about 10 more republicans and we would have disqualified trump from ever running for office again if mitch mcconnell who was very powerful then by by the time he left being the minority majority leader he was he lost a lot of influence but back then had he come out
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
and put his vote where his mouth was, right? He condemned Trump's role in January 6th, but then he wouldn't vote to impeach him. Had he impeached him, had he voted to impeach him, I'm almost sure that another eight or 10 Republicans would have come along with him. Trump would have been disqualified from office. This would still be a dark moment, but it wouldn't be as dystopian as it is.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
And so I'm with you. I have such complicated feelings about McConnell, in part because He also did some good things before this election. We passed the bipartisan gun bill, which has saved a ton of lives in this country in 2022, because McConnell decided finally to do something about guns. He literally pushed that bill into existence on the Republican side.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
There's a decent handful of good things that he has done, but those original sins, you just can't wash them away.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
I mean, so the person you see, like what you imagine Bernie to be like behind the scenes is exactly what Bernie is like behind the scenes, right? Like Bernie is passionate. He is kind of crotchety, right? Like he can sometimes be a little intimidating to sit down next to and talk to because you know, he's on it all the time. But he and I have become,
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
much closer over the last year, because I really have become convinced that he has the message, right? That his message of fierce, pugilistic economic populism, like I'm gonna tell you who's screwing you, and I'm gonna tell you exactly how we're gonna fix it. That is the crossover message. That is the message that actually steals voters from Trump's base.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
And for a long time, the Democratic Party looked at Bernie as kind of this like fringe figure to avoid. Well, we can't let our party adopt Bernie Sanders' message, No, actually, his message is the message that resonates with a whole lot of poor people out there, a whole lot of people who have been fucked over by the existing economic order.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
And whether Bernie is the messenger or not, I don't know, but what he is selling, corporations ruining your life, corporate consolidation being bad for small businesses and bad for workers, power to unions, double the minimum wage. That's it. That's the winning message.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
As I've begun to say that more publicly and privately, Bernie and I have become closer and it's one of the most fun parts for me of the last year is getting closer to him and feeling a little bit less intimidated than I used to be to sit down next to Bernie Sanders and start a conversation.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
It's embarrassing. Here's what I do. I think the coin of the realm today is authenticity. People want to hear what you really think. You referenced that long Twitter thread that I sent out last night, calling out the tariffs is bullshit. It's all just a mechanism to try to compel loyalty from the business community.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
i you know that's just me right like that's just me literally sitting in my kitchen table being like this is i'm gonna call it out those videos i do they're not scripted right that's just sort of me saying bring in the camera i want to talk about this um you know there's a lot of political communication these days that gets filtered you know by consultants and pollsters and communications professionals and um i have a great team of communications people in my office but like they just let me
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
you to show, that's why Corey's thing was so great the other night was Corey was like himself, he was showing legitimate outrage. He cried in the middle of his filibuster. Like people wanna see who we really are.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
And the voices that are breaking through right now in democratic politics are the voices that are not holding back, like are willing to make some mistakes sometimes, but are just showing you passion, heartbreak, anger, you know, and that's what I'm trying to do. And maybe I succeed every other day.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
Okay. Town halls. Hit it. I want to hit it. Yeah, I'm going to go do town. I'm doing town halls all over the country in Republican districts. We need more of them. Hold these bastards to account.
I've Had It
Trump Dump with Sen. Chris Murphy
I mean, had it, but there's no better options. Like, I mean, it's not like, yeah, the better option is Hakeem Jeffries. So if that's my option, then had it. But like, if the option is like, whatever the new Matt Gaetz is, I would, you know, reconsider the had it.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Yeah, I mean listen this whole thing is bullshit I mean, this is this is Ramaswamy and Musk, you know trying to capture government for their own interests Maybe it's just a TV show But it is definitely not an honest attempt to try to trim the fat off of government it is either just PR or it's part of the kleptocracy in which government is just going to be turned into a instrument to enrich them.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Maybe they cut some car subsidies, but it definitely won't be the ones that go to Elon Musk. But I do think it is true that our party decided over the course of the 2024 election to become the defenders of democracy. And that made it look like we're the defenders of the existing democracy, which nobody likes. So when I came into politics 20 years ago, federal politics
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
You know campaign finance reform ethics reform cleaning up government like that was a top three issued for Democrats We talked about it all the time We were really vocal critics of the way the democracy worked and you know by the time that Trump came around that was kind of like six or seven or eight on our list and so we definitely do have to start elevating our assault on the status quo of
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
In democracy and arguing for why we want to get billionaire dollars out super PAC money out the revolving door closed Whatever it is. We've got to become we've got to sort of recapture our our roots Which is the government and democracy reform party. I Think we do that and we attack their attempts at reform as bogus and we'll be in much better position right before the election
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Yeah, no, I do not think we have the requisite credibility today. And Joe Biden, for all of his strengths, was not necessarily the right messenger to open up a new populist critique of the way that the neoliberal economy works.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I think he was very sincere in his belief that we should start breaking up corporate power and breaking up monopolies, but he was not practiced in that rhetoric because that's not what he had spent his life working on. But I think there's a bunch of ways that we can solve for this. I mean, we can change the way we recruit candidates.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I think I do a pretty good job as a United States senator, but maybe we should not have as many lawyers and maybe we should have more folks who come straight out of working class or union backgrounds running for office at the local and federal level. I think that would help us build credibility as a party.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
We can understand how our really good ideas that just sort of toy with the margins of the existing marketplace don't inspire people. I like the fact that we are through Medicare prescription drug prices, but that really falls cold with a lot of folks. We should just cap prescription drug prices. We should just say that nobody should pay more than X for these drugs.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
25 super important drugs, we should just say that your rent can't increase by more than X percentage a year, that credit card fees can't go higher than this number. I think we just need to be engaged in sort of more broadside frontal assaults on the existing marketplace, have bolder economic reform ideas, and maybe think about having a better diversity of candidate backgrounds.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Yeah, I mean, listen, Oxford is known as breeding populist revolts, right? That's where it all starts.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Just walking over to my office for this interview, I was having that exact conversation with Elizabeth Warren as we were talking about the fact that they are two different messages, right? There is a billionaire cabinet being assembled right now, right? Greater wealth in 169 countries. This is the kleptocracy being constructed right in front of our eyes.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
People who are going into these agencies to steal. steal for their friends. But that's a little different argument than the argument against Kash Patel, right? Kash Patel is being put into the FBI in order to destroy our democracy, in order to make people bear a punishment for political dissent. Neither of those things is super popular.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
If I had to pick, I think it's more important to sort of make people understand that this oligarchy that is being constructed is real and that this fake populism that Trump ran on is indeed illusory. So I think it's probably more important to spend time
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Talking about the billionaire takeover of government because that is real that is happening But I I think you've got to be able to walk and chew gum I also think that we should raise as loud as we can what is happening at DOJ and the FBI and this is where I I I'm a little worried about where our party is.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I think we are still giving them more credit than they deserve I think Democrats don't really believe that Some of our colleagues are going to be in jail six months from now I don't think they understand how the media is as we speak starting to fold Under Trump's pressure and so I would love us to kind of raise the temperature on the threats to democracy I don't think we're over stating the case.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
But I think if we're kind of mild and milquetoast in the way that we talk about why Kash Patel is nominated or why Pam Bondi is nominated, then that argument falls pretty flat.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Yeah, I mean, part of what you're telling Republicans is that this is a jumping off point. If the FBI becomes captured by the White House, if it just becomes an arm, a political arm of the White House, there may be no putting that genie back in the bottle, right? There may be a Democrat who comes along and uses it for their own purposes as well.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
But I think the trouble here is that you have to assume if you beat one of these nominees that somebody better will come along. And what Republicans have been pretty good at over the years is once in a while opposing a nominee, patting themselves on the back, and then somebody even worse gets nominated and they wave them through. I think Trump's made the decision.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
that he wants the DOJ and the FBI to be his political persecution agency. And I don't know that Republicans actually have the strength to oppose multiple rounds of nominees.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So I'm going to try to convince my Republican colleagues, but I am much more focused on making the case to the American public because I have little confidence that the requisite number of Republicans are going to actually stand up multiple times, which is what they would have to do, even if they beat Patel or Bondi on the first vote.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Right. And listen, this is how democracies fall. There are very few instances where a healthy democracy collapses where there is a before and after moment, right? That the parliament building doesn't burn down in every dissent.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
What's going to happen here is that just enough of the political opposition either goes to jail or gets threatened with imprisonment that a lot of regular ordinary Americans just decide to not show up to the protests, to just stay home, to put their energies somewhere else.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
that the press feels sort of just fragile enough, feels the threat of having their license pulled just serious enough that they shave the edges off the way that they cover the president. And if that's the case, then you won't really notice the moment in which the opposition has become so weak that they can't win another election. That's what happened in Hungary. That's what's happened in Turkey.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
That's what's happened in Serbia. They still have elections. There's still an opposition that sort of has the trappings of being real. But the regime always keeps them weak enough that they can never win. And so Republicans will be able to say, well, no, I still see a Democratic Party. I still see op-eds criticizing Donald Trump. This is a healthy democracy, but it's just unhealthy enough.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
that the Trump family never, ever loses power. And I think that's really hard for Americans to believe because we've gone 240 years with two healthy parties. But the playbook is out there for Trump to follow. It's been used a dozen times in other countries and other democracies that are no longer healthy democracies.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
And that's what I worry about, that Republicans will just be able to look themselves in the mirror and say, you know, the Democratic Party's still there, everything's okay, but that the thing is permanently rigged in their favor.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I mean, I am surprised. But I mean, listen, we're going on 30 years of... greed having become an American virtue in which there is really no shame involved in ordering your life in a way that just prioritizes getting wealthier and wealthier and wealthier. And so these guys get away with it because people kind of understand that as long as it's a means towards enrichment,
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
you are fulfilling an American value. But it is extraordinary what everybody from Apple to Amazon to Facebook to Comcast to ABC News has done to signal to Trump that we are not going to give you trouble. And it's because these billionaires and these companies have become so massive and so diversified
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
that government policy really matters to them in terms of what their returns are, in terms of how much money their shareholders make, and in terms of how much money the CEOs take home. And broadly, it sort of feels like the country is giving these billionaires a pass because we've just valued enrichment ahead of the common good or ahead of protecting democracy, and that's super sad.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
That's a relatively new sort of value alignment in this country, new to the last 40 years, but it's part of what will sort of sing the song of democracy's downfall.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So I think the most important thing to do is to convince people that we are in the slide, right? Because if people still think this is a potential dissent, then they aren't going to hold anyone, media companies or their elected officials, to account for participation in that slide. If they bring charges against Liz Cheney or against Adam Kensinger,
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
That in and of itself could spell the end of American democracy because that will be a signal to people that there's just too much risk to get involved in politics. And so if that were to happen, we need people to understand that that is a potential death blow.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
And your elected officials position on that one act, the bringing of charges against a member of the January 6th committee is a red alert moment. And here's where I don't think the party is and the movement is meeting the moment. I agree with you, we are in mid-slide, but we don't talk like it.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
And so the only way that we put pressure on Republicans at the state level, at the federal level, to raise their voices, to put pressure on Republicans to stop the slide, the only way that we get media companies to change their tune is to make people understand that the unraveling is happening as we speak, and that's broadly not the way the Democrats are talking today.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
We're talking as if it's a potential development sometime in the future after January 20th.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Well, I mean, I think it involves a broadside attack on the power of billionaires in our economy today. And have Democrats been a little reluctant to engage in that critique because some of those billionaires are on our side? Certainly.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Um, is it maybe part of the reason why we have stopped, um, elevating campaign finance reform, meaning getting private money out of politics, um, in our issue, uh, priority because, you know, we now more than ever rely on some of those really, really rich people to fund our campaigns and super PAC shirt. Um,
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So this is, I think, part of what we have to get our arms wrapped around, that people want to vote for the party that is going to blow up the current rules of engagement between the economic elites and government. And right now, they don't believe that's the Democratic Party.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So I think we've got to be able to look at ourselves and decide whether we want to still have our own operations funded in part by you know, that very same set of economic elites.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I didn't. So we passed the Senate years ago. Right. So any of us have the opportunity to block it. I did not. I did not block it because I think on balance, it's probably the right thing for the country. But there is this argument about, you know, kids having to. sit out in the freezing cold super early in the morning, which is also not awesome.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So I'm for it, but I'm not like enthusiastically for it. I'm not evangelizing on it.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
That sounds so confusing. Here's my compromise. If you pair it together with the elimination of the penny. I'm in. I mean, we got to stop minting these fucking pennies. I could take a look at that.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I know everybody's like, oh, I've been to Connecticut. I've driven through your state, right from Boston to New York. No, stop. Take a stop in New Haven. Go to Sally's or Modern or Pete's. There's plenty of options. And your opinion about our state and your willingness to spend a little bit of time on your way through will be transformed.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Yeah, I mean, Scott, I think there's a couple things to talk about here. It is true that the approval ratings for the Democratic Party are in the toilet. They're bad, but not much worse than the approval ratings for the Republican Party. People are just down on organized political parties right now. And a lot of the reason why
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
the Democratic number is very low is because Democrats are upset with the Democratic Party. And that's because, you know, Donald Trump has punched this entire country in the nose. And a lot of Democrats are taking out their frustration with Trump on the leaders of their own party, who they don't believe have... stood up an effective resistance. Some of that is, I think, justified.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Some of that is not. But it is also true that the Democratic Party is not seen as a strong enough alternative. One of the things I worry about is that, well, it is true that this is the most corrupt White House in the history of the country. Any one of these scandals from the meme coin to Starlink would have potentially taken down a previous president in a previous time.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
The Democrats aren't really seen as a credible anti-corruption messenger for a couple of reasons. One, because, you know, we weren't really serious about taking out corrupt members of our own party. But also, we don't really talk about with enough volume about the ways in which we would clean up government if we were put in charge.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
When I started out in politics 20, 25 years ago, campaign finance reform, getting big money, corporate money, lobbyist money out of politics, that was a top two or three issue for Democrats. Somewhere along the line, we stopped explaining politics Maybe we stopped caring as much about unrigging the democracy.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Our sort of democracy talk became voting rights talk, which is really important, but that's actually not the thing that sort of scratches the itch that most Americans have today, which is the influence of billionaires and corporations everywhere. inside politics.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
So I think, you know, some of the low approval ratings for Democrats are just a function of sort of the first six months of the Trump administration and people taking out their anger against anybody, including Democrats.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
But some of that is because we just don't talk enough about, you know, what we would do to unrig the democracy if we were put in charge and people aren't going to really listen to our message of Trump's corruption unless they really believe that we're serious about changing the rules so that there's less corruption.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Yes, that's right to an extent. I mean, listen, his approval ratings are sinking, and that is really important. When a president gets down into the 30s, his enablers do start to get cold feet. I mean, it will be harder— for him to pass this massive cut in Medicaid funding in order to finance a billionaire tax cut if his approval ratings are at 35%.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
So I don't necessarily know that the message is in whole not working if in part what your goal is when you're the majority party is to make the majority party really, really unpopular so that their legislative agenda gets jammed up. But yes, we have to be... more willing to engage in risk-tolerant behavior, and we have not.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
I mean, part of the reason that I argued that we should be willing to vote against that Republican continuing resolution was to show that we are not going to be complicit with Republicans on a budget that they wrote without any Democratic input.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
The reason why I thought we all should have skipped the State of the Union speech is because that would have shown a level of seriousness about not wanting to legitimize his corruption and theft. And you're also probably right that we're going to have to be clearer about the legal consequences, you know, should somebody who's on the level eventually get into the DOJ
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
for the people who are blatantly violating the law.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
I think sometimes people expect a little bit too much of the opposition party, but I think if we were engaging in tactics that were a little tougher and had, frankly, a little bit more potential downside for Democrats, that would cause people out in the public to be more willing to engage in riskier behavior themselves or institutions to engage in more riskier behavior as they're trying to stand up a response to Trump's extortion campaign.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Well, the plan has to be to not be distracted, and that's tough. But, you know, we are being gift-wrapped a piece of legislation that tells the entire story about the Trump administration's priorities. And as you mentioned, it's a pretty simple story. You're talking about throwing millions of people off of their health care, potentially tens of millions of people off their health care, Medicaid,
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
insures 24% of Americans in order to finance a massive tax cut for the richest Americans. It's about a trillion dollars in cuts to child nutrition programs and Medicaid and a trillion dollars of tax cuts for the richest 1%. And so that's a story we need to tell over and over and over again. And the best result here is, frankly, to stop it, from ever becoming law.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And I think we have a really good chance of doing that. Nobody thought that we were going to be able to stop the repeal of the Affordable Care Act in 2017, but we did. But they still paid a price for it. They got walloped in the midterms because people didn't really care that it didn't pass.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
They just saw loud and clear what their values were, which was to, at the time, throw 20 million people off their health care. So we need to dual track this, try to kill this bill, but also message it in a way that even if it disappears, they have to own the space. And I think it's OK to still talk about the assault on democracy because I would argue it's all the same story.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
This president's agenda is so complex. historically unpopular, so wildly unpopular that the only way that the Republican Party survives this is for them to destroy democracy, destroy the rule of law, destroy the traditional means of accountability like a free press, a free university system, lawyers who can defend our rights. So it's all the same story.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
They've got this deeply unpopular agenda, which is about destroying the middle class to empower the billionaires, and they have to destroy democracy in order to get away with it. I think that's an elevator pitch.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Like, that doesn't take more than a minute, a minute and a half to explain to people and just don't let his, you know, constant distraction campaign about talking about a third term or invading Canada stop you from being able to repeat that story five times a day.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
No, because I think that is sort of central to this case of his attempt to destroy the rule of law because it's the only way that he gets away with this thievery. I mean, what he is essentially doing with a lot of these disappearances, standing on top of the legitimization of political violence through the
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
pardoning of all the January 6th protesters, is to try to put a chill when it comes to people who are going to stand up to him politically so that you don't see the kind of crowds that you've seen in the past several weeks and months out there protesting his deeply unpopular agenda.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And I think, you know, that there is deep crossover potential in a way that maybe is unexpected on issues like like Abrego Garcia that dovetail pretty nicely with the crossover message on stopping the cuts to Medicaid. It turns out there are actually a lot of pretty conservative folks out there. who don't want any of this.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
You know, I've, you know, said to folks, it's, you know, a lot of the people who voted for him thought that he was serious about lowering costs, and he wasn't serious when he talked about being a dictator. They're finding out that the opposite is true. He's not serious about lowering costs. He's going to increase healthcare costs by kicking people off of Medicaid.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And he is serious about being a dictator. And that's a message that that sort of gives a permission structure for a lot of his vote and his base to think about crossing over.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I hear this critique a lot, and there have been different suggestions about how to tackle this perceived problem. That's the first time I've heard the suggestion about starting the presidential campaign, you know, two years earlier than normal. There's also this idea about creating a shadow cabinet, you know, for instance.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
I guess I don't perceive that problem to be as acute or as real as you do, Scott. I actually think that this party is pretty entrepreneurial. Even though Bernie Sanders and AOC have no official role, they are still drawing tens of thousands of people. I'm a rank-and-file member. Max Frost is a rank-and-file member, but we'll have a couple thousand people in Florida.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
We had a couple thousand people in Missouri and North Carolina last week. I don't I don't know. I think it might be just a little unrealistic to expect that you are going to have three years prior to a presidential campaign. There be some consensus in the political class and the media class about who the one sole leader of the Democratic Party is.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Posit for a second that, you know, one of those high profile names did jump out and declare their presidential presidency. aspirations really early. Well, that might mean that the others do the same. And then all that you have now is Dem on Dem violence.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
You just have, you know, a presidential campaign starting way earlier than it should instead of all of our energy being trained on explaining the corruption and the thievery in the White House. So I don't see this as as as big a problem as it is.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
I think what you're frankly seeing is a lot of folks rise to the moment and, you know, get amplified voices and bigger stages that might not exist if you had some early contest to decide who the one person was that is the legitimate anti-Trump voice inside the progressive movement.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Yeah, listen, right now it's this budget bill that proposes the most massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich in the history of the country. It tells the entire story about the values of this party. They are trying to hand over our government to the billionaire class, and they are willing to run over regular people. to get there.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
It exposes him as a false populist in a way that no other issue does. But as to kind of the tactical way that you deal with how he floods the zone, you have to flood the zone in return. You have to create as much content as he does. And that is a legitimate debate inside the party right now. There's a feeling that, you know, maybe we should just sort of sit back and
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
you know let them destroy themselves um that we shouldn't be acting every single day with five alarm urgency because that kind of wears people out i actually don't think that's true i i think we have to you know put just as much content out there every day as he does i think it's okay for us to sort of have our hair on fire on a daily basis because the democracy is under daily assault
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And as long as we stay pretty laser-like focused on that transfer of wealth, the cut to Medicaid to finance the tax cut for millionaires, I think we're on pretty safe ground.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
You know, it certainly is about volume. And you are right that this generation, right, doesn't think twice, right, about posting dozens of times a day. That's just how online communication works. And it's important for, you know, the older generation to understand that. Second, it's about authenticity. It's about removing the filter between you and your constituents and the
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
sort of high-level politicians, governors and senators still have that filter, still vet their communication through their communications staff. So you don't?
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
I don't. Yeah, I mean, I don't. So the feed that I control is my Twitter feed, and that, yeah, that is just me. Nobody sees those tweets before I send them out, and that provides sort of the foundation for most of my other content. But voters are savvy today. They now know the difference between
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
authentic communication and non-authentic communication, in part because they've watched Donald Trump show the country what authentic communication full of mistakes looks like. The town halls are amazing. Any Democrat can show up anywhere right now, and you will have thousands of people coming out. I think it's really important to be in Republican districts.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
in part because if you are trying to build a true national movement, you have got to sort of show that even in the red parts of the country, folks are having second thoughts. And so if you're just having big turnouts in blue states, that doesn't really ultimately move the needle.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
So I don't think it's coincidental that, you know, once we started to see red states turning out, like what Bernie did in, you know, Idaho, and I think he was in—
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
somewhere in the Mountain West other than Idaho, you started seeing Trump's approval ratings move down into the low 40s because Republican or prior Trump voters looked around and they said, oh, I guess others who voted for Trump, others who live in places that look like the place I live in, have now have the same misgivings that I do.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
So that's why Max and I have been primarily going only to Republican districts, and I think we'll continue doing that.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
So I have a little bit of a different perspective than a lot of my colleagues do on Republicans right now. I really worry that we're giving Republicans too much credit, this idea that they know what the right thing to do is and they aren't doing it because they are scared of Donald Trump or scared of losing an election.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
I think way more Republicans than you think have in their heart given up on the project of democracy. This work to undermine democracy inside the Republican Party that's been, you know, handled and midwifed in part by the pseudo-intellectual infrastructure that surrounds MAGA, you know, it's been ongoing for a decade. It's deep. It's serious.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And so especially in the House of Representatives, I think the vast majority of Republicans there are absolutely willing to give up on elections if that guarantees Republicans rule forever. Many Republicans, most Republicans in Congress have come to the conclusion that progressives writ large are an existential threat to the nation.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And so their number one goal, their mission, is to stop Democrats from ever ruling again. They'd like to do that without destroying democracy, but if that's what it takes, then they're willing to do it. I just think you have to understand that instead of living in this world where
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Oh, boy, they're all really wringing their hands about what Trump is doing to our democracy, and they just can't say it out loud because they're so afraid of him. In the Senate, yes, there's a good group of maybe 15 to 20 who do know what he's doing is wrong. And those approval ratings sitting in the 30s for a period of months, that may be the key.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
getting more of those Republicans to speak up or perhaps voting against some of the worst of this agenda, including the Medicaid cuts. But I don't mean to paint a hopeless picture. I just think it's really important not to sugarcoat what's happened inside the Republican Party. And it's a decade-long effort to try to explain why it's time
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
to transition America to a kind of autocracy or quasi-democracy that can keep up with China. Democracy is just antiquated. It's outdated. It doesn't work in a 2025 global context. That's what a lot of Republicans think today.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
i completely agree with that i mean how can't you if you you know look at um a lot of this polling data i think that you know what's important to understand is that while a lot of the attention has been on young men there has been a significant pull away by young women from the democratic party as well this is a phenomenon that exists most acutely with young men but it exists with young people writ large
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
I do think it's worth really examining why the only movement on the left that has drawn large numbers of young people, but especially young men, over the last 10 to 20 years is Bernie's movement. And I think you really have to, there's a lot of people who say, well, you know, Bernie's brand of politics is toxic. It's, you know, gonna be the downfall of the Democratic Party, but let's be honest,
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Whatever you thought of the Bernie bros, there were a lot of young men who were attracted to what Bernie was selling. And I do think that that's because young men and young women together, but maybe young men in particular because of the very quick downfall of sort of the economic patriarchy, see the consequences of a system that is totally and completely rigged.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And they are looking for an explanation about who did it to them. For young men, you know, the conservative movement says, well, women did this to you. Women did this to you. Their rise in the workforce combined with the Me Too movement has been the source of your unraveling and undoing. Well... What Bernie says is that, yes, somebody did this to you, but it's not women.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
It's the billionaire class. It's the corporate class who has rigged an economy to make sure that no young person can succeed as quickly as they could 30 or 50 years ago. And I just don't know that you'll win young men back or you'll win young people back if you don't have a source for
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
for them to root their frustration is if you don't have a story to tell about why their life got so difficult and so miserable all of a sudden. So, you know, you talked earlier about a moderate candidate being the only path forward. I'm not even sure that kind of center-right-left works any longer in describing sort of how the sort of political positioning exists today.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
I think you probably win with a candidate who is more big-tentus on social and cultural issues, who is less judgmental about people who may not, you know, think the way that most progressives think on climate or guns or gay rights, but is pretty populist on economic issues, is willing to sort of
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
call out the way that corporations have rigged the economy and have some pretty big solutions, especially for young people, about how their life is going to get better much more quickly.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
Yeah, and Sherrod, you know, I mean, Sherrod's bona fides on choice and gay rights, on climate, right? Rock solid. But like Bernie, Sherrod A. just chose to spend 80% of his time talking about an economic message. And B, I think the perception in Ohio, even though he lost, was that he was less judgmental of people who thought differently than him.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And, you know, we have applied these litmus tests. We just have as a party. And, you know, we let... The online left engage in a pretty regular shaming of anybody who isn't inside the conventional orthodoxy. And I think in the past, I've been a part of that. I think a lot of us have been a part of that, either in taking part in it or looking either way when it happened.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And when I think about how the Democratic Party recovers— I don't necessarily think it's in sort of becoming more moderate on economic issues. I think it probably is confronting the failure of neoliberalism pretty directly, but it probably does mean becoming less judgmental and less preachy on the non-economic issues.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
So this is at the heart of the corruption story, and it's a bipartisan corruption story. This town is owned by the healthcare industry, and that's been true for 30 years. The reason healthcare costs are so high in this country is because the for-profit healthcare industry has been able to rig the rules.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
So that they are able to collect a large amount of the total dollars spent in healthcare, whether it be on the private pay side or on the Medicare and Medicaid side, and keep it for profit returns to shareholders or massive CEO salaries. It's just not a coincidence.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
That America, you know, is obviously spending twice as much as other nations on a per capita basis, and we don't utilize the power of the federal government to control and regulate prices. So there's no way ultimately to solve for this problem, the massive crisis.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
massive amount of money that the government spends on health care without the government getting involved in helping to curb the amount of profit that the drug industry, that the hospital industry, that the hospice industry is making off of health care. And it's sort of private equity game in healthcare at scale.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And, you know, the for-profit hospital companies and the drug companies, you know, they are thieves, but at least you can kind of see the thievery when you get to the point, you know, five, 10 years from now, where half of the
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
you know, healthcare system is owned by third parties, by private equity or hedge funds, and you can't even see the ownership structure, it makes it a lot harder to kind of understand how to pull the levers to try to keep costs down. So, you know, part of the reason that I think Democrats haven't done as well as we should when it comes to healthcare is that our ideas are too small.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
You know, we talk about, you know, our prescription drug policy for a long time was, you know, bulk negotiating the price of the top 10 prescription drugs. There's like this good policy, but it leaves people feeling cold. People want a hard cap on all drug prices, all drug prices. They want a limit to the amount of profit that drug companies can make.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
They want the ads off the air and all that money plowed back into, you know, prescription drug price reductions.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
So I just think the Democrats are going to, whether it's a single payer system or not, the Democrats are going to have to talk about the government getting involved in the health care system to limit the amount of profit that the private sector makes in taxing along those savings to consumers.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
I'm certainly game for that. There's another idea that I prefer, which is a national Medicare buy-in, right, to put Medicare as an option for every single individual and every single business. It's not an easy thing because you'd have to price Medicare into the private sector, but I actually have a piece of legislation to do it. There's other pieces of legislation out there.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And so Medicare then would exist on every individual insurance exchange. Every business would have the ability to buy the Medicare plan for its employees. And it's a way to kind of test the idea. OK, you think private insurance is better insurance. It's cheaper insurance. Well, let it go toe to toe with Medicare.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
I think what would happen is very quickly individuals and businesses would choose to go on Medicare because it just is better health care for lower price. And you'd have a very natural market-based transition away from what we have now to something that looks like, you know, Medicare for all.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
And once Medicare had, you know, 60, 70% of the business, you know, frankly, the other companies probably couldn't operate. So that to me is the big idea that
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
you know, gets it to where we probably need to get to, but it does it through consumer and business choice, which is just a whole lot more politically easy than what Bernie is proposing, which is to just have a big legislative fight over requiring that everybody be on Medicare and banning private health care insurance.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)
There's a couple of good ideas out there that you guys haven't thought of yet. Well, several million.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Kristi Noem Plots Citizenship Hunger Games & Kash Patel Drops Epstein News | Prabal Gurung
Do you know what section of the Constitution the suspension clause of habeas corpus is in?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Kristi Noem Plots Citizenship Hunger Games & Kash Patel Drops Epstein News | Prabal Gurung
Do you know which article it is in?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel
Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen says he's considering going to El Salvador to meet with the country's president.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
Breaking news, the President-elect's team has been caught off guard by a sexual assault allegation against Pete Hegseth.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
A whistleblower report that claims when Hegseth was president of Concerned Veterans for America, he was, quote, repeatedly intoxicated to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's events.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
He offered up to me that he's not drinking, and that's not something he's going to do when confirmed here.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
Thank you for having me.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
By the way, would you explain what a jag off is?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
Huh.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
I assume that in each of your weddings, you've pledged to be faithful to your wife. You've taken an oath to do that, haven't you? You've admitted that you had sex at that hotel on October 2017. And you were still married, and you just had a child by another woman. Again. How do you explain your judgment?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
And then how many senators do you know have got a divorce before cheating on their wives? Did you ask them to step down? No? But it's for show. You guys, make sure you make a big show and point out the hypocrisy because a man's made a mistake. And you want to sit there and say that he's not qualified? Give me a joke.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
In a recent podcast, you said, quote, I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
You say we need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units. What's wrong with a mom, by the way? Once you have babies, you therefore are no longer able to be lethal.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
Let's make it very clear for everyone here today. As Secretary of Defense, will you support women continuing to have the opportunity to serve in combat roles?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
I just want to say, for all the talk of experience and not coming from the same cocktail parties that permanent Washington is used to, you are a breath of fresh air.
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Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
Oh, no.
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Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
No, okay.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash
I'm going to get another refill. Hold on. Champagne is my problem when it comes to hangovers. It just is bad.
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Canada PM Friend-Zones Trump & Real ID Brings Out the Karens | Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach & Amanda Doyle
I mean, it's weird, but it is what it is. He has to have some type of outlet, somebody to talk to and listen to him ramble for hours at times.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
So I'm making the case that government and policymakers are often shaping markets to make them work better so they can shape the markets to make Americans richer, their economic lives more stable, even safer if if they know what they're doing. And so this is a hidden history that we've got to pull on and recover if we're going to rebuild after the chaos of Trump in this moment.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
It turns out... What? It's RIP, right? No, but I mean, for 40 years, people did believe that markets are self-regulating, that they would mostly take care of themselves, and they always used the I word, intervene. Government is there to intervene in markets. Only in catastrophes. Usually, like an emergency room, you know, you would come and you would fix things.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
But what I see in the history is that when things go well, government is structuring markets to make them work better. So you can take semiconductors, where just a few years ago we weren't making any advanced semiconductors in the United States. Now we're making the cutting-edge chips that are powering the iPhone.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
You can see it in climate, but you can also see it in financial stability and energy policy. So there are hopeful, inspiring stories, which I think... I need more. I think a lot of us need more in this moment. Well, because we're out of magnets.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Yeah. Well, I wrote the book to talk a lot about public policy today. But I think to do that, well, you've got to look at the past to see what worked and what didn't work, because we can learn from the successes. Often we can learn even more from the failure.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
So in the New Deal, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was a national investment bank headed by this larger than life figure, Jesse Jones, whose story I love telling in the book. It's fantastic. He has so many different crazy things. He's a guy who grew up in Tennessee, goes to Houston, makes a million bucks by the time he's 30 years old, which is a lot. Sure. 19 teens.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
And then he becomes the head of this investment bank, which restructures and supports American finance, but more importantly, gets us out of the Depression. by spurring the housing markets that you mentioned, by making direct loans to industry, and then eventually birthing aviation and synthetic rubber. I mean, these industries really matter.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
They helped us win the war and get us out of the Depression.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Yeah. It is capitalism. Yeah. I mean, the story of American capitalism is one where we bring the state's power to shape and manage markets. So take financial stability as a clear example. The Federal Reserve is charged with keeping prices stable, keeping people employed, and making sure the financial system doesn't implode.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
It has had a checkered history, but for the most part, has done a pretty good job of delivering on that for investors and the folks who rely on it. And so I think what we need to do is learn from those successes, but think about what we could do on housing policy with a similar kind of institution. Or how we can stabilize the price of groceries.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Yeah. I mean, so Bill Simon was the Treasury Secretary 50 years ago. Libertarian is libertarian. He was honestly the hardest character to write about in the book, because the book is a collection of 12 different stories of individuals, successes and failures. Simon, man, you go into the archives, and this guy was just a... total asshole.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Boy, can't you? In the letters that... I mean, he just absolutely... He absolutely had no interest in the state working to make markets better until... Until... the energy crisis in 1973, and he ends up in the Nixon administration in the chair where he has to figure out, oh, there's an oil embargo, and we cannot import any oil from the Middle East. Prices are skyrocketing. What are we going to do?
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
And he does everything from control prices to make allocation decisions to actually creating a structure to make sure that there's enough home heating oil in New England so no one freezes to death. And the irony of I did all this research on this guy expecting to write a pretty critical take He was pretty successful. Right. So even libertarians, in fact, have strategic oil reserve. Exactly.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Is his baby. Exactly. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Right. Now has hundreds of millions of barrels. And it's there to help us in case there is another kind of oil embargo event. And even to some extent, buffer the price. So, you know, there are a lot of stories of Republicans believing in the power of market craft, but using a different language to justify it.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
But this is not... There's no partisan claim on the term.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
No, I mean, it's a couple of people have asked me, is Trump a market crafter? And he's the opposite. I mean, he's a market crasher. Market crasher. Exactly. That would be a great movie. That would be volume two. Exactly. Market crashers. No, but I mean, there are ways to think about the problem that critical minerals, 90% of critical minerals come from China.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
And there would be a way to think about stockpiling those, making public sector investments to mine those minerals here at home. And ironically, J.D. Vance and some other folks in the party were talking about those kinds of ideas as recently as last year. Of course, now they're all loyal soldiers just following the... Because he's brilliant.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Yeah. I mean, the irony of Greenspan, since you mentioned him, is that he's got a rap as a deregulator, and he did do all kinds of deregulation. The guy was also singularly obsessed with financial innovation. He genuinely believed that if we created these credit default swaps and the special purpose vehicles and all of these elaborate complex machinations, the financial system would be safer.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
And yet, as we got obviously to 2008, turns out that wasn't the case. And when they allowed Lehman to just explode, it was part of this whole framework of like, well, what can we do? We need some company just to go bankrupt so everybody learns a lesson. when, in reality, there's a long... There's a long history of threading the needle.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Just 10 years before, the largest hedge fund in the world had also gone bankrupt, but there was a parachute, and there was a way that wasn't creating a bomb in the financial system that allowed that institution to proceed through its bankruptcy proceedings in a way that, you know, the free-market fantasy did not allow for Lehman. So there was a better way.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Why don't they put capital into those markets? I think the simple answer is because we didn't have the institutions of market craft to do that. We had an institution of financial stability market craft. Go save those banks. But we had no institution in housing markets that could make it cheaper, well, these days, to make it cheaper to borrow.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
In the housing crisis moment of 2008, 2009, it would have been about relief for people who'd already borrowed and couldn't make their bills.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Right. So we've decided that finance should be stabilized, but housing shouldn't. Right. That makes no sense. What we need is a housing construction fund to make it cheaper to build multifamily developer housing. We need an industrial policy for modular housing, the kind of homes that are built off site. And then you bring them in and an apartment building can go up within seven days.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
We can do this. We have the ideas, but we have to create the institutional reality to get it done.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
The shit that markets won't properly regulate. Yeah, bring down costs. I mean, Americans have been saying this for years. Come on! Exactly. Exactly.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Absolutely. That's totally right. But let's also not forget that the tariffs are projected of this administration are projected to raise prices anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 each year.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Each pill, I was going to be like, oh. That would be very expensive. But my point is, is absolutely we should be able to get drug prices down. We know how to do that. That's a political problem to get that done. We have made some headway in the IRA. We've got a lot more to do.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
But at the same time, I think we've got to be very focused on communicating that Trumponomics is about raising costs for Americans. That is very clear. And it's going to push us straight into a recession. The only thing that's worse than inflation unemployment. And that's straight around the corner. And we have to have an agenda to rebuild after that.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Yeah. I mean, we could do it. There is a way in some cases to do tariff policy. I'm sure. You know, smartly, you'd want to have it be targeted and say, hey, we don't want China to dump their EVs in our market, something like that. You'd want to do it with Great Britain. Right.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
the european union your allies to do it well and then you'd also want to pair it with public investment because you don't want to just make things expensive you want to speed up the production here at home there there's a way to to do that to think about it and bidenomics has gotten a bad rap in a lot of cases but those ingredients were there with a lot of the core elements around climate policy chips and semiconductors and lena kahn's work at the ftc she's fantastic and you see it now even when they say oh apple has decided they're going to move
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Yeah, I mean, literally, the boats that are coming from China are at half capacity right now because the companies are waiting to ship to see what actually happens. So there's an agility in these supply chains, which I think is important to realize. And so, I mean, but again, the question is, what are we going to do on the other side of this?
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Like, obviously, we have to criticize what's happening right now.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
But all the time that we're doing that, we're not developing this positive agenda for the future. And at least the latter is mostly what I'm focused on.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
I was a little surprised he didn't get a deal. You know, Mark visited the White House two, three times in search of a deal. What kind of deal? What would they get? Well, the FTC has sued to break up Facebook. So, as you know, I talked about this in an article six years ago.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
I'm glad you did. That was a good one. The FTC filed... I thought so. The FTC filed suit a year later, and it's taken forever to wind through the courts, but Mark Zuckerberg was on the stand for, not last week, but the week before, virtually every day. And the Trump FTC is, you know, prosecuting the case to separate Instagram and WhatsApp from Facebook. That's the agenda. And And who knows?
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Google's been declared a monopoly twice in the past eight months. But he doesn't like Google.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
I know, but I do think something has changed. It's not so much about Trump, but I think in the world of antitrust and anti-monopoly, there's been a big shift. Because the guy who's running the FTC now, I think it's really interesting that he kept some of the merger guidelines from the Lena Kahn time.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
They also actually filed suit against, the FTC filed suit against Uber last week for misleading customers. What? Can you believe it? Uber? Uber. Uber. But my point is, is, like, there is still this sense that markets need to be competitive if they're going to work in a way that's in line with the long-term history of American capitalism.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
And I think that's a big shift in antitrust and antimonopoly. It doesn't have anything to do with Trump. So, you know, I'm not giving him any credit for it. But it has a lot more to do with Lena Kahn and a new, more emergent set of approaches to antitrust that's more in keeping with this.
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Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
For sure. Josh Hawley was a fan.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Sir! What do you really think about the Democratic Party? I didn't pick that up.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Yeah, there was a discussion, and there was a disagreement. Listen, I don't agree with the decision a handful of my colleagues made, and this all, to me, sits in context, right?
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
I mean, as you have described, what is happening right now is the billionaire takeover of our government, the highest level of corruption that we have ever seen coming out of the White House, and, by the way, added to it, the destruction of our democracy, because they know that they can't get away with it if we can hold them accountable. And so this moment requires us to break norms.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
This moment requires us to take risks. And I get it. A lot of my colleagues said shutting down the government, being in a government shutdown, that's a risk. That hands power to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. But how on earth are we going to ask the American people to take risks for us, right?
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
When there's a five-alarm constitutional fire and we need them to be out on the streets, not with hundreds, not with thousands or tens of thousands of people, but with hundreds of thousands of people, if we're not willing to show courage and take risks ourselves.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Yeah, listen, so that CR transferred a bunch of money out of programs that help regular people, right? There was money cut from housing programs and job training programs. That's bad for this country. It gave the president new authorities that he didn't have before the CR was passed. What are the new authorities?
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
So, for instance, one of them is that the president under the CR can start new military programs in the country that have not been authorized independently by Congress. And, of course... But before we...
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Well, we don't normally give that kind of open-ended authorization to the president, certainly not at a time when the president is regularly, hourly abusing his statutory and constitutional authority. It seems like a pretty bad time to give him additional.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
So this is the first time since I've been in Congress that we have not had a bipartisan full-year spending bill, right, that was negotiated with Republicans and Democrats. And that's what we wanted. We wanted to have a seat at the table. Listen, this was not going to be a perfect bill.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
But you want it. But you don't want a full year spending bill passed without having some of your priorities in that bill. And that's not what ended up happening here. I get it. The specter of the shutdown was real. You never know who's going to win a fight over a shutdown. But this seems to be a moment where our party should be taking some risks. It didn't seem like they even tried. Yeah.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Yeah, John. I mean, and again, I don't think you can ask the people of this country to do these exceptional things that are going to be necessary to save our democracy if we aren't willing to take risks. not just what happened over the CR, right? I mean, we have the opportunity to just say no to all legislation that's coming before the Senate unless it fixes the constitutional crisis.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
We didn't all have to show up to the State of the Union speech. We could have decided to do something extraordinary, like boycott it en masse.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Yeah, I mean, listen, ultimately, we need to be a party that stands for everybody in this country having access to happiness and success, not just the billionaires. We need to be a party that attacks corporate power, right, so that people are in control of their lives. And listen, we do not hold the levers of power right now. Right.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
So we need to be clear with people that the things that are being broken right now are being broken by Republicans who asked to be in charge of the House and the Senate and the White House. And you are seeing. But the public doesn't view them as breaking it.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
It shouldn't take 10 years to build a bridge, right? It shouldn't take five years to get a subdivision permitted. Government is not working for people right now. And when I first got into politics, the Democratic Party every single day talked about reforming government, talked about reforming democracy, talked about getting big money out of politics, talked about
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
STRICT ETHICS REFORM, AND SOMEWHERE WE LOST OUR WAY. AT SOME POINT, THAT WENT FROM A TOP THREE ISSUE TO LIKE A TOP 20 ISSUE, AND THAT ALLOWED THE REPUBLICAN PARTY TO BECOME THE PARTY THAT WAS ACTUALLY AGGRESSIVE ABOUT REFORM AND GOVERNMENT. IF WE WANT TO BE CREDIBLE ANTI-CORRUPTION MESSENGERS, AND BY THE WAY, THIS IS THE MOST CORRUPT WHITE HOUSE, THE MOST CORRUPT GOVERNMENT WE'VE EVER SEEN.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
THANK GOD I TALKED ABOUT ME. THIS IS THE MOST CORRUPT SHOW I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. Then as Democrats, we have to start talking about how we would fix it. And what happened in this last election, as you know, is that we made democracy the tentpole of the Harris campaign. And it looked like we were defending the existing democracy.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
This version of democracy is working for billionaires, corporations, and the elites. And if we don't talk about how we're going to change that, then we're not going to be credible in this country. But isn't it going to be pretty? Enjoy your coffee.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
So listen, it all started during the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The Democratic Party is supposed to be the party that breaks up the banks, not the party that bails out the banks, right? And it was that day the Democratic Party started to lose credibility.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
history of even when you think about medicare or the aca oftentimes those are just subsidies corporations love the aca they're making a shit ton of money billions of dollars so this party has become addicted recently to sort of writing people checks in order to compensate for the way in which the economy is rigged i'm not saying that the child tax now we're getting somewhere baby come on
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Now you're talking, Murphy! Let's go! So I'm not saying, right, I'm not saying that the child tax credit isn't a good thing or a little bit more money for your Obamacare subsidy isn't a good thing, but that doesn't make people feel good that you're having to give them a little bit of money to compensate for the fact that work doesn't pay in this country. There you go.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
That drug company CEOs are making out like bandits buying their seventh house, right? Hallelujah! Hallelujah! So if you were really serious, if you were really serious about communicating a message that resonates with people, you wouldn't be talking about just negotiating in a different way for 10 drugs.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
You would be talking about putting a cap on the amount of money that any drug company can sell drugs to any American. Is that so hard? That's the point.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
OK, so two things. One, we viewed people like Bernie as an outlier threat to the institutional Democratic Party, when, in fact, what he was talking about and is still talking about is the crossover message, right? Is the message that actually brings... It's the traditional Democratic message. That actually... It's RFK Democrats. And it pulls Trump voters back into the Democratic coalition.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
The second thing is this. The Republican Party has paid for a... permanent infrastructure around ideas and around messaging that makes something like Project 2025 possible.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Whereas Democrats raise lots of money every two years, we blow it all on 30-second ads that disappear into the ether as soon as the election is done, instead of actually building our own permanent infrastructure so that we could be selling our ideas, like economic justice, like loving instead of fearing your neighbor, like breaking up powerful corporations every single day.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
But sell them every day, build the infrastructure in order to be able to sell them every day.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Listen, I think the Republican Party has had some dominant figures, some of them funders like the Kochs, some of them political figures like Donald Trump. The Democratic Party hasn't had that kind of continuity of leadership. But there's also a consultant class inside the Democratic Party that makes a lot of money off of those 30 second ads.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
And they don't make as much money if you're actually developing ideas that last. And so breaking the grip of those consultants on the Democratic Party who have made a lot of money but have not actually produced as many votes as we would like, that's part of our challenge as well. Right. No, listen, I couldn't agree more.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Yeah, but they are handing us the opportunity, right? Donald Trump ran as a fake populist, and he is there for the unmasking, right? He has no clothes. I mean, don't. Right. So they're literally every single day empowering the billionaires. I've still got Chuck Schumer in the gym in my head.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Some of us go to the gym. Some of us don't. Schumer on an elliptical. I'm sorry. So it's there for the taking. I mean, their only legislative agenda item of any consequence is another tax cut. All of the money going to the billionaires and the millionaires. So it's there for the taking to rebrand the Democratic Party as the true populist party. But it takes. But not rebranding.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
actually remaking and doing. Yes. And listen, we are the party that actually has ideas that transfer power from the powerful to the powerless. We have been a little bit too addicted to incrementalism, but they are handing us the opportunity to go out and rip from their coalition, right?
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
People who actually do care about reordering fairness in our economy and are looking at these guys and realizing, you know what? The economy still sucks. My income isn't going up, and it kind of feels like the only people that are benefiting are Elon Musk and their billionaire friends.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
So, like, take the moment and build a set of ideas that are big and hairy and transfer power in a meaningful, easily-to-understand way for the powerful to the powerless. But that's what I'm saying. You weren't there. I don't. I'm there, man.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
So you can't get, so you can't, I don't think, get a lot lower than 27%. Uh-oh. Right? I wouldn't bet on it, friend. And listen, the opportunity of this moment is given how legitimately upset people are at what has happened over the last week. This is an opportunity for the Democratic Party collectively to show that we are ready to meet this moment, show that we are ready to...
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Well, listen, I think every single Democrat has to be a part of this. I mean, again, I reject this idea that people like Bernie are threats to our electoral success. I think these ideas centering our entire conversation around asking the billionaires to transfer a little bit of their success to everybody else is core to the... sort of existential future of the party.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
And we need to bring this conversation everywhere. I mean, this is our project right now. We can't stay in Washington and win this fight, right? We have got to be all... I don't think they're going to let you stay in Washington.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Right. But, you know, listen, 10,000 people are showing up for Bernie, but a thousand people are showing up on a dime for any Democrat who's got a message that resonates. People are desperate to do something right now. They want to be plugged into action. And so we need to be out there giving people mission sets.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Go to your Republican member of Congress's office if they're not going to come out and do a town hall. Tell them what $880 billion of Medicaid cuts would do to your community. Raise your voice online. Go to your state capitol. If we show up and give people action sets, they are going to respond.
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
This is one of these rare moments where it's not like we're asking people to do something and they won't do it. It's the American people asking us to do things that
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Jon Stewart Knocks Dems' Lack of Vision Countering Trump Agenda | Sen. Chris Murphy
Make government work again and make it work for everybody, not just the billionaires. Whoa, make government work again.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
RFK Jr.’s Fiery Hearing, Rethinking Social Media | Filmmaker Rachel Mason
Did you say Lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bioweapon? I probably did say that. Did you say that COVID-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that targets black and white people but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people? I didn't say it was deliberately targeted.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
RFK Jr.’s Fiery Hearing, Rethinking Social Media | Filmmaker Rachel Mason
Did you write in your book, and it's undeniable, that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS? Yes or no, Mr. Kennedy?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
RFK Jr.’s Fiery Hearing, Rethinking Social Media | Filmmaker Rachel Mason
Your organization is making money selling a child's product to parents for $26, which casts fundamental doubt on the usefulness of vaccines. One of them is titled, Unfaxed Unafraid. Next one is, No Vax, No Problem. Are you supportive of this clothing, which is militantly anti-vaccine?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
RFK Jr.’s Fiery Hearing, Rethinking Social Media | Filmmaker Rachel Mason
Are you supportive of these onesies? Wow.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Illegal Immigration
I was born in Texas, but my heritage is Mexican.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Illegal Immigration
Why are you dressed like such a dick?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Illegal Immigration
You said to Sean just a moment ago, they're here illegally. They should go back and get in line to come back in. But wouldn't that create an underground? And you can't just deport 11 million people. That's just not a workable policy, is it? Yeah, well, I think it is workable.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Illegal Immigration
Blunt. There's no way this great republic can afford this legislation. Dramatic. We're turning over more to Canada and Mexico, and I do not like that. It's a destruction of our sovereignty.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | Illegal Immigration
I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, they got to respect my sovereignty.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
Frankly, this pope, as I view it, is a great, great pillar of humanity because he liked freedom and he was in love with the culture of life.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
TDS Time Machine | The Pope
Yeah, I was going to say, Senator Domenici, on the issue of the death penalty, you disagree with the Catholic Church. You know, that's a nice question, but I didn't really come on here to talk about that.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Mike Waltz Leaves the Group Chat & Trump’s Town Hall Gets Racist | Sen. Elissa Slotkin
Republican lawmakers in Minnesota want to, here in the state, add Trump derangement syndrome as an official mental illness.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Jordan Peterson on Pathological Masculinity, Alarming Political Gender Gap Among Young Voters, and Snow White | Ep. 1035
Dean, what is the enemy of progress? Chaos. Yes. Nasty word. Chaos. Merciless foe at chaos. Chaos. Energy unfocused, innovation hindered, hope strangled, greatness disguised. I see greatness in each one of you. I know exactly who you are. What are we doing? Changing the world. What are we doing? Changing the world. That's right.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn's Response to Clooney, Hegseth Saga Gets Personal, and Stopping Alzheimer's, with Rich Lowry, MBD, and Dr. Dale Bredesen | Ep. 1055
What did Hitler do in the Holocaust? He took people from Germany to other countries.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn's Response to Clooney, Hegseth Saga Gets Personal, and Stopping Alzheimer's, with Rich Lowry, MBD, and Dr. Dale Bredesen | Ep. 1055
Where there was no German law. There was not even a pretense of German law. They took them to Poland or Hungary or whatever, and they killed them.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn's Response to Clooney, Hegseth Saga Gets Personal, and Stopping Alzheimer's, with Rich Lowry, MBD, and Dr. Dale Bredesen | Ep. 1055
Well, but get some out of the country.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn's Response to Clooney, Hegseth Saga Gets Personal, and Stopping Alzheimer's, with Rich Lowry, MBD, and Dr. Dale Bredesen | Ep. 1055
There are rogue teachers in America's classrooms right now.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn's Response to Clooney, Hegseth Saga Gets Personal, and Stopping Alzheimer's, with Rich Lowry, MBD, and Dr. Dale Bredesen | Ep. 1055
Rogue teachers. Parents send their children to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn's Response to Clooney, Hegseth Saga Gets Personal, and Stopping Alzheimer's, with Rich Lowry, MBD, and Dr. Dale Bredesen | Ep. 1055
Let's just say Children in America cannot read.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn's Response to Clooney, Hegseth Saga Gets Personal, and Stopping Alzheimer's, with Rich Lowry, MBD, and Dr. Dale Bredesen | Ep. 1055
You're being evasive.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn's Response to Clooney, Hegseth Saga Gets Personal, and Stopping Alzheimer's, with Rich Lowry, MBD, and Dr. Dale Bredesen | Ep. 1055
I think parents' fears are realized. They're looking at these books where sexual discussions are happening with their children at younger and younger ages.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tapper Pressed on Biden Coverage, DOJ Charges Dem Rep, Rubio's Fiery Senate Hearing: AM Update 5/21
You've made a mockery of our country's refugee process, turning it into a system of global apartheid where political ideology and race, more than truth or need, matter. Like the McCarthy-era witch hunts of the 1950s, your campaign of fear and repression is eating away at foundational values of our democracy.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tapper Pressed on Biden Coverage, DOJ Charges Dem Rep, Rubio's Fiery Senate Hearing: AM Update 5/21
Attorney Joseph Welch, to cut through the hysteria with a simple question, he asked Senator McCarthy, have you no sense of decency? And I would ask you the same, Secretary Rubio. You have shown through your words and your actions what the answer is. And I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for Secretary of State. I yield back.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Blue Origin "Mission" Brutally Mocked, and Defamation Case Against NBC, with Batya Ungar-Sargon and Stacey Evans | Ep. 1050
I'm here at the airport. I'm about to board my flight for San Salvador. The goal of this mission is to let the Trump administration, to let the government of El Salvador know that we are going to keep fighting to bring Abrego Garcia home until he returns to his family. I hope to meet with representatives of the government.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Blue Origin "Mission" Brutally Mocked, and Defamation Case Against NBC, with Batya Ungar-Sargon and Stacey Evans | Ep. 1050
I hope to have the chance to actually see Kilmar and see what his condition is. But we are going to keep fighting because this is a miscarriage of justice. This is about due process. This is about rule of law. What bullies do is they begin by picking on the most vulnerable. But if we get rid of the rule of law due process, the United States, it's a short road from there to tyranny.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Blue Origin "Mission" Brutally Mocked, and Defamation Case Against NBC, with Batya Ungar-Sargon and Stacey Evans | Ep. 1050
The Democrat in media outrage over the deportation of Abrego Garcia, an MS-13 El Salvadorian, illegal alien criminal who is hiding in Maryland has been nothing short of despicable. Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room, you would think we deported a candidate for father of the year.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Blue Origin "Mission" Brutally Mocked, and Defamation Case Against NBC, with Batya Ungar-Sargon and Stacey Evans | Ep. 1050
That's because, unfortunately, many in this country care more about this quote-unquote Maryland father, a legal alien MS-13 gang member, than a Maryland mother and an American citizen who was brutally murdered at the hands of a different illegal alien. Of course, I am referring to Rachel Morin.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Suspends Ukraine Aid, Canada-Mexico Tariffs Kick In, Major Address Tonight: AM Update for 3/4
I think every Democrat needs to make up their own mind. I think that State of the Union speech is going to be a farce. I think it's going to be a MAGA pep rally. not a serious talk to the nation.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Budget Battle Escalates, DHS Launches Self-Deport App, Trudeau Officially Replaced: AM Update 3/11
Donald Trump doesn't care about the destruction of Medicare or Medicaid or the Department of Education. because it doesn't impact him. Republicans never want to fix the immigration system. Their motivation is always to make it more chaotic and more confusing. Guys, the whole game is Trump doing favors for his billionaire friends.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump's China Decision, Potential Tax Increase For Rich, Elon Steps Back from DOGE: AM Update 4/24
I am not defending the man. I'm defending the rights of this man to due process. My mission and my purpose is to make sure that we uphold the rule of law, because if we take it away from him, we do jeopardize it for everybody else.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
you know, when you see enough of these, it's like he, he did everything that you expect to see. And that's one of them. Like when, when the truth is you didn't do it. Okay. And that like in any murder case, there's a quality of the way people behave. And, and if the truth is you didn't do it, you don't build a ladder to the truth with a bunch of lies.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And yeah, he said, he, he said he was golfing, you know, there, there are, You know, he bought the boat two weeks before. And here's another thing that, again, it's like I shout at my TV when I see this come on. They found her hair in pliers inside the boat. You know, they matched it with mitochondrial DNA. That's hair, teeth, bones, things like that. So the numbers aren't overwhelming.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
It's not like one in octillions. But it's Lacey Peterson's hair in a pair of pliers in the boat, which is totally consistent with him. dumping her body and using that tool as he's affixing her to these homemade anchors. There's so many individual small points of corroboration with the prosecution's theory that just nobody wants to talk about.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
You know, it's when you put it together, every one of these cases, Megan, is like a collage. You know, each piece, it's like, where does this fit in the picture? And sometimes like a mattress down the street, it probably has no part of it in any way. But But when you start putting little pieces together, you start to see the big picture.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And here, you know, you've got Amber Frey saying his wife is already dead. He buys the boat two weeks before he's actually in the marina, you know, in this in this place and left her a voicemail saying, hey, beautiful, I'm back from the marina, which is also odd because he left his house in where they live, which is not super close to the marina. And and he leaves it 90 miles away.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
It's 90 miles away and he's calling her at 2.30. He leaves at 9.30. He's calling her at 2.30 saying, hey, beautiful, I'm on my way back. So he goes fishing by himself on Christmas Day. And how much time is there to launch a boat that he probably isn't that skilled with at that point? He goes and fishes for 30 minutes.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Give me a break. There's so many problems with that. And then when he's arrested, he's in San Diego. He's changed his appearance. He's got $15,000 in cash and he's got survival gear in a car and he's got two different IDs. He's in possession of his brother's ID. Like, I mean, those are the types of things.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Each one of those things is something that a jury gets to weigh and consider and on determining whether or not he's the guy. And so you have these there's always a burglary down the street. There's always some, somebody got, okay.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Yeah. Okay. So number one, passionate belief, Megan. And look, we see this all the time. We see this everywhere. Politically in our country, on both sides, passionate belief has no necessary connection to the truth. OK, just doesn't like you can you can have a sister in law who's banging the drum and absolutely. I'm sure she personally believes this, but that doesn't equal evidence. OK, so.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And it's also very important to remember that Lacey Peterson and, you know, again, I don't want to age myself here, but I remember this case very well when it happened, as I'm sure you do, too. You're way younger than me, Megan. But look, she was missing. OK, and when it comes when you prosecute cases like this, when somebody is missing before the body is found, those are the ones that that get.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
all of the national media. It's like my Samantha Runyon case back in the day, a little five-year-old girl that disappeared. We had international media attention. The president of the United States was talking about that because that catches the headlines. My Tom and Jackie Hawks case, that couple was missing. They were the ones tied to the anchor and thrown overboard.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Those get overwhelming media-wise because it captures the public's attention. This was an absolute run-of-the-mill Bread and butter, domestic violence, murder in almost every way to be almost to the point of being boring. OK, this is so common. But for the fact that Lacey Peterson was pretty, she was pregnant and she was missing. OK, so we all saw that photo of her.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
So what happens that I can tell you this from personal experience. Good. You know, good hearted, well-meaning members of the community, people, neighbors and complete strangers come out of the woodwork because they want to help.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
So when you talk about this guy, you know, Tom Harshman, you know, that that is something that this was the biggest case in the world for the period of time that she was missing and she was missing for a long time. This was Christmas Day. Her body wasn't discovered until April. So this was something there's been movies made out of this. So well-meaning people come out of the woodwork.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And I'll tell you what. When you talk about – another big thing that the defense has raised is one of the arguments they made in their court documents that I read was, look, if there are all these neighbors that say they saw her after she had died and all these people, and if even one of them is right, that means Scott Peterson couldn't have done it. That's the way the argument goes.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
There were ready just just to be clear, just to be clear.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Right. That's right. So it's essentially it's like a retroactive alibi. You know, hey, if that person. OK, so so here's here's something for you just to keep in mind. There were 74 officially reported sightings of Lacey Peterson in 26 different states and overseas. during the time that she was missing 74. Those are regular folks who were like, Hey, I saw, I think I saw her.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
I think I saw her in, you know, um, Amagansett, New York. I think I, it's like Madeline McCann.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
How many people saw Elvis? And the thing is, some people really want to help. They're well-meaning. And also, I can tell you again from personal experience, every wackadoo comes out of the woodwork saying, I'm certain of this. And what happens when you get – and I don't want to criticize the defense too much. It's their job to raise issues, especially at the trial level.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Yeah, that's about where things stand. I mean, it's utterly absurd. But yeah, it's look, I hate it when women who are seven and a half months pregnant go charging in to stop burglaries and then burglars who are there to steal drive around for days and days with a dead body in their car of somebody that they killed just because apparently and then.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
But my problem is sort of the public's willingness to indulge nonsense. You know, in something like this, this is a horrific double murder. This woman, seven and a half months pregnant. Scott Peterson did it. He's convicted of it. The California Supreme Court, which is absolutely not. I can also tell you not a rubber stamp for for criminal convictions.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
The California Supreme Court upheld this seven to zero. And again, they reversed the death penalty part for reasons unrelated to the guilt of Scott Peterson.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Yeah, and the thing is, it was kind of an innocent... I don't know if that judge hadn't done enough capital case litigation. Essentially what was happening was when jurors were saying, I do not believe in the death penalty, the court has to ask the additional question, could you follow the law? Could you set your personal beliefs aside?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And the vast majority of time they say, no, I actually had a woman who voted death on a case who said, I'm religiously against it. I believe the death penalty is murder, but I could follow the law. So the judge, and I kept her on, and she imposed the death penalty. So the judge didn't ask that next question. Can you set it aside? Like, simply because somebody's
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
opposed to it politically, religiously doesn't mean they're necessarily disqualified as a juror. That was the problem. So we are taught, I mean, the common use of that or the common term would be that's not only a technicality, that's kind of a hyper technicality. I don't disagree with the California Supreme Court's decision on that. That was a mistake.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And I've also – I read one article where it's like the way they wrote it was so disingenuous. It's like the California – Supreme Court has already had reservations. That's not true. That is absolutely not true. It's like this drives me crazy. It drives me crazy.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
They get really smart at that point and decide that they're going to drive to probably a marina that will have more law enforcement witnesses and everybody else because the attention given this case back in the day. And they're going to take the body out and go to pretty much the exact same place that Scott Peterson was fishing, according to him, and dump the body. Yeah, it happens all the time.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Yeah. I mean, look, it's like,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
with with a cape on another thing to keep in mind on that is that remember all the neighbors that came out because because his dog was running around remember this this is 9 30 on christmas christmas day so this is a like every neighbor on that street it seems like saw their dog remember they all came forward and or heard scott talking about how you went golfing so there are people out and about this is not this didn't happen at three o'clock in the morning
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
So, so when everybody sees the dog, right. And literally, and one of the neighbors actually, it was seen by multiple neighbors that it was important for establishing the timeline. And one of the neighbors actually went and put the dog in the backyard with them. And it was the muddy leash and all that. It was a golden retriever. And we can all picture that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
So it's like, everybody sees the dog, but nobody sees Lacey getting forced into a van on their street on Christmas day at nine 30 in the morning when everybody's out and about, you know what I mean? Like,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
are we really having this conversation not you and me but like seeing some good publicly like okay so you've got three guys in the van coming through like are they ninjas are they invisible you know like you know and so some dude um is is interviewed 20 years later who said yeah well i heard a rumor in jail which and this is another thing that kind of drives me crazy sorry to rant here but
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Jailhouse informants have are bad. Right. Like I thought I thought rumors in jail, we weren't supposed to rely on them. And I look, I never used a jailhouse informant in my entire career because of all the inherent problems with a criminal who's going to try to throw somebody else under the bus and say what they heard. Like they're inherently unreliable witnesses.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And that's something that I have to agree with a lot of public defenders about. Like that was something that there was a big scandal in Orange County about it, like Like they're inherently unreliable. But now there's a rumor in a jail and this means everything. This is the this is the key to the whole thing. Look, I know Mark Terry goes very well. Mark and I go way back. We did cases together.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And I got to say, Mark is an outstanding lawyer. And Scott Peterson had him as a trial lawyer. And yeah, like I. Yes, absolutely. This is called Brady evidence. Like you want the defense to have everything. And if the prosecution sat on that or didn't provide it, that's an issue under Brady for potential.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Absolutely. And they should. And they should. But but there are also limits there. There have to be rational limits to what is what is provided to them. It's like, all right, so let me ask you that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
You know, I mean, let's give him a new trial.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
They should turn that over. They should. Yep. They should turn that over. And I don't know. I don't know. You know, part of this is. We've got allegations from essentially a family member and from one side here. So I don't know the reasons. I haven't read that report. If there's something like that, yeah, they should turn that over.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
When I went through training, I had a guy that – Chris Evans was his name. He's now a superior court judge. He trained us when we were baby DAs, and his philosophy on discovery is give the defense absolutely everything and then just beat them with it. So the prosecution shouldn't be – they shouldn't be deciding what's relevant or not. They should just be turning it all over.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
But under Brady, there is – there are limits to what are called Brady events, and that's the prosecution's obligation to discover it. And that is, is it reasonably likely to – you know, lead to, you know, corroborative of a defense or reasonably likely to help the defendant in their claims. And, you know, that's, there's, there's gray area there.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Sorry, I'm not, I'm terrible at poker. Yeah. Not into it. No, it's, there's any irregularity. We're talking about human beings and we're talking about the frailty of human recollection, first of all. So everything is an estimate. I mean, you see your neighbor's dog walking around.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Well, you shouldn't be reopening a case on that. And we're talking 20 years later. And it's like, oh, yeah, I think I got there on my route, you know, about 1030 based on the following. And but also it's so there's so much inherent speculation and supposition, like, well, the dog usually would bark at me. And I don't remember barking that day. But the thing is, also, there's
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Because burglars go and make fake anchors with cement that they purchase all the time. That's why. I mean, anybody knows that. This is the latest case in a few of these that are going on right now where it's kind of like a couple of decades have gone by. And everybody has forgotten the overwhelming evidence against Scott Peterson. And this guy, look, this is a domestic violence murder.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
There's a thing in there's an instruction regarding circumstantial evidence and it's two reasonable interpretations. OK, so that there's an instruction that every jury is provided about whether there's one reasonable interpretation or two, one pointing towards innocence, one point towards guilt.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And the problem is, is that, you know, when you when you have to jump through a million different speculative hoops about. Well, so the mailman remembers the dog barking. OK, good. But that's also consistent completely with the idea that the dog got out when he is when he's loaded his dead wife into the boat.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And somehow he leaves a gate or the garage open long enough for the dog to get outside and leaving at 930. And that just means the dog is running around the neighborhood. At the time, you know, that that is not one of those things that you can say, aha, it's totally.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Your dog is asleep or the dog just got out when he left at 930 and the mailman comes and the dog's not barking because it hasn't been returned yet because the neighbor left. doesn't remember exactly when she did it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
A hundred percent. Right. So the example that we would always give for in explaining that concept to a jury is that the clown came running through the courtroom and bopped somebody on the head with a rubber hammer. You know, some people might remember the red floppy shoes. Some might remember the fuzzy buttons.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
But if somebody didn't remember one of those things, it doesn't mean if the issue is what was the clown wearing? It's very important. If the issue is, did somebody come in and get bopped, bop somebody on the head with a hammer? If that's what the jury is, is that if that's their task to figure out that happened, then those types of details don't remember, don't matter.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And the adrenaline in that situation, there's a whole other thing called weapons focus, where I guarantee half that class got everything wrong because they were just wide eyed at the gun. So that's a great exercise. You probably couldn't do that in law school today because everybody would get sued for the trauma, right? And I can tell you, again, from personal experience,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And I don't have to say alleged because the guy is convicted right now of it. So. You know, everybody forgets Amber Frey and all of the stuff regarding the affair and the fact that he dyed his hair and had fifteen thousand dollars and was down in San Diego and looked like he was going to flee to Mexico. It's like we get these cases.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
it's funny that you say nurse, because we used to joke about this. Nurses are the best prosecution jurors of any potential profession because they are in the real, real world and they don't like falling for BS. So it doesn't surprise me a bit that your friend in America is a woman to control, but I love the whole story.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
So, But so the question is, did somebody was the professor? Did somebody point a gun at him? If that's the issue, then it doesn't like all of those details that everybody got wrong. Doesn't matter because they're still they're being honest. They just recollect different components of it. And sometimes they'll get something completely wrong.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
You see that a lot with facial hair, interestingly enough. So what you see the defense doing in things like like this case is they're going, well, wait a second. There was a woman in the back and yeah, maybe she couldn't see that well with her glasses, but she insists that the man had a bright red cape and our guy didn't have a bright red cape.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
So he's entitled, even though his DNA was found and even though there's a manifesto about how he hated everybody that cut him off in traffic and like all of these evidence. But wait a second. She insists there was a red cape. So we have to do a new trial here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
That's kind of what we're seeing over and over again with cases like this, especially in the modern era and especially with – I think this is – I'm a huge proponent that kind of the interest in true crime is a good thing. People are getting educated. But there's also like – there are downsides too, and that is people – kind of believe some of the things that they see that can be one sided.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And it's it's presented. Look, I work for ABC News. I'm I'm a firm believer in the professionalism of a lot of the media organizations that cover true crime when it's done right. But still, it's not it's not presented in the legal context. And another thing to remember, you know this, Megan, because you want you're an attorney. Our law is based on what's called stare decisis.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And what that means is we're different than a lot of other legal systems in the world that is Napoleonic or code-based. It's called civil law, where essentially a legislature sits down and they write a rule. Our law is based on common sense and wise decisions based on real situations involving real people that have tested, that have withstood the test of time over the years.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
So when you're talking about The legal application of instructions, those instructions essentially reflect 500 years of wisdom of real people and real human frailty and real misrecollection. And and when a jury applies those laws, as they did in the Scott Peterson case, in my experience, 99 plus percent of the time they get it right or they get it pretty close to right. Not always.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
But they get it. They get it right. Sometimes that the right, quote unquote, is is an acquittal. Sometimes they can't reach a decision. A lot of times it is a conviction like here. The jury in this case got it right based on the law, in my view, based on on all of the evidence that was presented, not fanciful theories.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Menendez Brothers is another one right now where everybody forgets. And then all of a sudden, you know, hey, the L.A. Innocence Project is on there, which is a misnomer if there's ever been one. Yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Do you know how many pawn shops there were around Modesto in this area? They call it Meth-Desto. If they cannot connect that watch to Lacey Peterson, if you don't have a serial number saying this is the one that was purchased, how wide does the prosecution detectives have to cast the net
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
I mean, look, they they they did some really good work back in the day when right when DNA became ubiquitous in when CODIS went online and every state joined it. And right when they were using modern cofiler and profiler DNA kits, which are way easier than the old RFLP to understand that that's the the gel that they used to inject.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
For the guy that's dyed his hair and has 15 grand and looks like he's about to split after – you know what I mean? Like compared to all the evidence against Scott Peterson, every pawn shop has a sparkly watch that's been gotten pawned or a ring or something else.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
facts-wise in this. And you got to keep bringing this case back to the facts. When police searched the house, they found Lacey Peterson's purse. They found her sunglasses. So I guess the theory is she is out walking the dog with expensive, sparkly jewelry, but didn't take her sunglasses, didn't take her keys, didn't take her purse. That just doesn't make any sense. So there's immediate problems.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
based on the real evidence that was discovered. And the idea that then they go, well, hey, there was somebody that pawned something in central California during the height of a methamphetamine epidemic where every car is getting broken into and burglaries are happening all the time. It's just absurd, Megan. And the idea also, let's think about this.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
You've got two guys that are in a burglary situation. Gang, which, by the way, I've never heard of. And I worked in the gang unit, a burglary gang. OK, so the burglary gang, somebody identifies them. So so if the thing is, she jumps over a fence with her pregnant woman cape on and they kidnap her because of a burglary. But oh, no, they didn't kidnap her.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
The gang came in and kidnapped her because they weren't actually there and committed a murder because of an offense that you could for a residential burglary back then. You might do you might do a bullet. You might do a year county jail. Maybe you get no time. Maybe you get you're going to get probation or low term.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
No, let's murder a pregnant woman so that she can't identify the guys in our gang is laughably absurd. Like it's just that there's no such thing as a burglary gang, by the way. It just doesn't exist. There's gangs and they commit horrible crimes like a burg gang like.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
You know that they're going to go and commit a first degree murder of a pregnant woman to to help the guys that she saw is absolutely just it. It is ridiculous. And again, going back to that instruction, reasonable versus unreasonable.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
The jury is instructed to reject unreasonable interpretations of evidence, you know, and that is to hold on to their common sense when they're unreasonable in the courtroom. And what I love, though, is the chutzpah of Scott Peterson saying, oh, the police withheld it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
So they they found they found some people that were wrongfully convicted. And that happens in our system. I sit on a board with Purdue University where that's our sole task is trying to identify people who are wrongfully convicted.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
That's another thing that we should probably dispel is the idea that the cops just want to make an arrest because there's – they just want to make an arrest. That by itself, like to any professional law enforcement officer, you look like a buffoon if you arrest the wrong person. And if somebody murdered –
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
A pregnant, beautiful woman like Lacey Peterson, you don't just arrest her husband so that you look good having arrested somebody and then you let the real killer stay free so he can, what, murder the next person, the neighbor down the street two weeks later. Nobody wants to do that. No cop wants to arrest an innocent guy.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
They arrested Scott Peterson because of the overwhelming evidence that they accumulated against him. And the way he behaved, the way he repeatedly lied to everybody. And, you know, it's like that that whole notion that it was withheld to to frame him from him just kind of gets my blood boiling a little bit. I'm sorry.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
But since that initial flurry of kind of glory, if you call it that, where they're doing good work, you know, finding people that are wrongfully convicted, it seems like they've really settled more into stuff like this high profile stuff. That gets a lot of headlines. And then as soon as you – all your viewers have to do is just read the Wikipedia on this case.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Anybody who would murder his pregnant wife so that he can go continue his dalliance with a woman that he likes better, nobody should be shocked that a guy who would do that would turn around and then lie about the circumstances of it. It always gets us when a grown man cries, but it's like the first time I saw – Yeah, the first time I saw a criminal defendant lie and cry, it kind of got to me.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And the second time I saw a murder defendant do that – like it's – this is – again, going back to the evidence here. The lead detective on the case, when they interviewed Scott Peterson – He said he showed a shocking lack of emotion and a shocking lack of additional follow-up questions. He didn't ask for their cards. He didn't ask for where's the state of the investigation.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Can I call you if I have questions? He didn't ask any of those things that you would expect from somebody whose wife had gone missing. What your viewers just watched is the exact opposite of the way that he was behaving. And this is something that I've seen before. This was my Sam Lopez interview. performance with my Kathy Torres case.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
That was a boyfriend who murdered his girlfriend, and she was also missing, found a week later in the trunk of her car. And we convicted him largely based on his interview, where they often will play the wrong role, Megan. The innocent husband, spouse, boyfriend, whatever, will play the role of like, hey, how would an innocent person act?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And they pretend like a bystander who has nothing to hide and no dog in the fight, who's calm and collected and sort of like, peacefully answering questions, respectfully going through it versus a real husband who loved his wife, who's innocent, who would be losing his mind during all of those initial investigation. Like Chris Watts.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Right, and look, people react to grief differently, but when you're cold about it, it's totally inconsistent with what we just watched.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Right. How would an innocent guy not know that that's that that's the police going? Great news. We found her. She was tied up in a warehouse or or like that's exactly what I'm talking about. The thing is, Megan, jury, when you take a jury, you have five hundred twelve deliberating jurors. You have about five hundred years of life experience.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
You have five hundred years of collective common sense wisdom on that. And they might not be experts on DNA or on the forensic processing of cell phone data or whatever it is, but I'll tell you, juries are very, very good at human behavior and how somebody should act under certain circumstances and how they shouldn't. And that jury... They got all that evidence back then.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
The California Supreme Court affirmed this conviction 7-0. They reversed the – They were first the death part because of the, there were some irregularities during jury selection, but they affirmed his conviction. And another term that we keep hearing, there's a Newsweek article on this and it, you know, the defense alleges it was circumstantial evidence. We've all heard that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
I don't think they ever introduced that interview, but you spotted it just like I did. How does he know if he's innocent that that's not them saying great news? Or, hey, she needs a blood transfusion. When your wife is missing, you pick up the frigging phone. Right.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And that's that's the type of thing. And with Scott Peterson, when we're talking about the collage, that's one more piece of that of the collage. And then you look at, you know, you put all of that together and you compare that and the affair and saying that she was going to die.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And the fact that he, according to his own chain story, but later admission, he went from the Berkeley Marina, which is exactly consistent with They found her body. You add all that up. And the fact again, her hair was found on flyers in his boat. OK, you put all that together versus, oh, we've got a theory. There's a drunk guy who thinks he saw a pregnant woman getting into a van. right?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Love you. Bye. Right. And, and this is the golf slash fishing trip, right? The like that, which had to be the shortest surgeon fishing trip in history, 90 miles away about, Hey, just leaving at two 30. Right. So no, you're exactly right.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Right. Right. But you see that over and over again when you actually do murder cases like this. You see and look, the theory always on him and what they convinced the jury of. This was a planned murder. Bought the boat. He bought cement. They were never able to account for. He made the anchors one.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Well, they and they found one, but he had a 90 pound bag of concrete and they couldn't find the rest of it. And the theory always was the rest of it was attached to Lacey. So there's a bunch of missing cement here, too, guys.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Like there's there's so much that you see that all the time, because even dumb criminals are smart enough to go, hey, if I leave a false, you know, voicemail and look, that's like my Daniel Wozniak case. Yeah. You see that all the time, especially in domestic violence cases when the body is missing. It's like, hey, wonderful or beautiful. And you pegged it. You're exactly right.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
It's like they've been married for a long time. And if he's so in love with her, like kind of weird that he's, I don't know, that he's I would probably want to go fishing on Christmas Day, too, if I had the day off or golfing. But there's an there's an inherent inconsistency with that. There's a lot of problems with it. And when you break it all down, that's why that's what it stinks.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
That's why the jury convicted him. The accumulation of all of that evidence. That's why the California Supreme Court affirmed the conviction seven to zero. And that's why when you're, you know. with the defense running around going, wait, we have a drunk guy who thinks he saw somebody get into a van. That's why I'm reacting the way I am.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
We've seen that in TV shows, right? Like you see Starsky and I mean, I'm going to date myself here. Starsky and Hutch are tagging. I know the reference, you know, whoever the cops are today, um, And we have this concept and it's a myth that circumstantial evidence, quote unquote, is somehow inadmissible or bad evidence.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Oh, God. You know, in my fair state of California, Megan, I hope not. I have a strong opinion on this. I don't think the court should grant a new trial based on this. But also, look, Brady evidence is a tricky thing because Brady evidence has been an evolving area of the law and essentially the prosecution is obligated to turn over Basically anything that can be helpful for the defense.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And there's been a lot of litigation, a lot of new cases in California. And you have to err on the on the side of caution on that. So in my view, what the court does is going to depend on whether or not they find that there was a Brady violation on this. And a Brady violation, by the way, is not a statement of innocence. It's it's it is it's a technical issue that that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
would violate the due process rights of any criminal defendant if, if, if exculpatory evidence is withheld. Okay. But, but where the parameters on that, it's kind of been a moving goalpost in the state of California. So I, in my view, I feel very strongly that what the defense has come up with here is laughably short of where I believe the standard should be on that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Um, but you know, prosecutors also make mistakes, detectives make mistakes and you never really know how it's going to be seen. So I, I don't think he should be granted any trial. I really hope he's not. But if he is...
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
I really hope that the Stanislaus County District Attorney's Office approaches this case with as much vigor that, first of all, they defend and they advocate on behalf of their conviction. Because, look, this guy, in my view, not my case here, he really did it. It's a horrific murder. He should have been convicted.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
I believe the California Supreme Court was exactly right for affirming it for all the reasons that they did. And hopefully, if he is granted a new trial, he's retried properly and he's convicted again. you know, that they take it seriously. They don't just go with like, you know, the emotional public momentum. Like we're starting to see over and over again. Yeah, like with Menendez.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
He served his time.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And that's exactly what Newsweek wrote their article on this that I read this morning. Case based on circumstantial evidence, according to L.A. Innocence Project. It's like every single domestic violence murder, guys, in America and in the world throughout history involves some degree of circumstantial evidence. Direct evidence just means a witness comes into court and they say they saw something.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Happy to be here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Circumstantial evidence is pretty much everything else. I mean, circumstantial evidence. It's like, you know, this guy had every poker tell that you could ever want during this investigation, including refusing at one point to communicate with her family, refusing to speak to the police anymore. He told his his.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
his paramour mistress, whatever we want to call Amber Frey, that Lacey was dead when she was very much alive. He said that he was a widower. He bought this boat two weeks before she disappeared. He bought cement, which is consistent with the way her body was found. Her body was heavily decomposed.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And they believe that the coroner testified at the time that it was consistent with with several anchors holding her down. There is so much overwhelming evidence here, and circumstantial evidence is that good old-fashioned, common-sense stuff like somebody running away from a crime scene, somebody in possession of stolen property from a recent burglary that happened down the street.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Circumstantial evidence is the bread and butter of every domestic violence murder case in the history of history. Justice. And that really is the right word for it is justice, like holding people accountable for what they did. The the evidence against this guy is is laughably overwhelming.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And they come in, they get the headlines, Ellie, Ellie Innocence Project, and then everybody forgets all that stuff. And it's like, oh, there was a van down the street with a mattress in it. And essentially, that's what the current legal actions about. They want to test a mattress that was found in some burnout van somewhere in the neighborhood of where Lacey Peterson lived.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
OK, so, you know, if if they get in there and and I can already tell you what the argument is, which they say has blood on it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Right. If they get that thing, they're going to they're going to swab it. And modern modern genetic and DNA testing is so sensitive. I can virtually guarantee you will find unknown male DNA on that mattress. And the next thing that the Innocence Project is going to do is they're going to say, aha, that's the DNA for the real killer. And it doesn't match Scott Peterson.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
But without a link to Lacey Peterson, it is it is literally meaningless. And look, we see that all the time in a lot of cases. Like I said, there are cases where DNA has legitimately freed people that didn't do it. And thank goodness for that. And that's what we want the system to work. And forensic technology is unbiased. And it thank goodness. Right.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Like but there's also a lot of these cases, Megan, that and this is something that drives me crazy, where you'll have, you know, something that happened, maybe say a rape murder and in the 19 1980s. OK, and somebody will have been convicted of rape murder. The jury who, in my experience, I've done a lot of capital case litigation.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
I've done a lot of cases like this, which are bifurcated murder trials. The juries take their task very seriously. The judges tend to be the most experienced and the best. The detectives tend to be the most experienced and the best. And it's imperfect. But everybody really wants to do their job. So then a couple of decades later and say it's a homeless drifter.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
OK, and that guy is convicted and maybe he's got some some sex offenses in his past. And the way it works over and over again is he'll say, hey, it was consensual sex. I understand that she's a stockbroker and I was living in a tent. But trust me, we really had a spark. And boy, did we hit it off. And so that's why my sperm was found all over the place.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
But somebody else came along later and killed her. And that will be the absurd, ridiculous defense that they will run and the jury will reject it properly and he'll get convicted. And then what happens is that, you know, that the DNA comes back like 20 years later or 30 years later, and they'll test the scrapings under her fingernails or they'll test some object that's found at the crime scene.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And, you know, if she pat, if she patted a little boy on the head, that day, or if she shook hands with her mailman or something, you can discover unknown male DNA that has no link whatsoever to the actual murder. But the standard on appeal is could a jury, could a reasonable jury have found differently? Essentially, could they have
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
could they have come to a different result based on that new evidence? And the answer under those circumstances is, yeah, if they didn't consider that, maybe so. So that's the standard for reversal on appeal. So the case comes back for a retrial and
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
Aunt Millie, who worked in the evidence room, put it in the wrong box or the evidence got washed away in the great flood of 82 or and they can't redo it or the critical witnesses have died. The investigator necessary to lay the foundation for that evidence has has passed away. Like you can have this entire host of problems that can afflict a case like that 30 years later. So they they can't.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
retry it. And then what happens is you've got people like Barry Sheck in front of the cameras going another innocent man exonerated, which is the term they love, exonerated from DNA evidence when they weren't exonerated at all. They were they were granted a new trial and the prosecution couldn't proceed. And then that guy goes out.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
And this has happened over and over and over again in America because we know sex offenders keep doing it again. So they'll get out, they'll sue the county, they'll get settlements for a couple million bucks, and then they get caught for doing it again. And nobody wants to talk about those. And it drives me insane.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Scott Peterson May Get a New Trial - A Look Back at the Case: A "True Crime Christmas" Special | Ep. 975
That's right. And not only did he say he was golfing to, he said that in front of neighbors, whoever heard it, he said that about a dozen times. So it's not like one person might've misrecollected. He said it over and over and over again. And that was his story. He didn't want anybody knowing that he was there, apparently. And, you know, I mean, look, this is,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Bombshell New Info About Garcia, Boasberg’s Attempted Power Grab, RFK's Autism Fight: AM Update 4/17
I just landed at the airport in San Salvador a little while ago. I'm now en route into the city, looking forward to meeting with the team from the American Embassy. The goal of my visit is to talk to people here about the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. I told his wife and his family I would do everything possible to bring him home, and we're going to keep working at this
The Megyn Kelly Show
RFK Grilled on the Hill, Trump's Newsy Trip to Syria, Diddy Trial Revelations: AM Update 5/15
He went on the Dr. Phil show. and said that the measles vaccine was never fully tested for safety. You said there's fetal debris in the measles vaccine. All true. All true. Do you want me to lie to the public? None of that is true. Of course it's true.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
$51. After they took her phone, they sent her back to her family. So they released it to her family and they said, you're not allowed to leave here, Katerinburg. You will hear from us. And we now know within the three weeks from January 2nd till January 27th, They investigated every single thing on her cell phone.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
This is where they came across the Venmo, $51 on Venmo, charged her for treason, funding the enemy state. That's what she was charging for, funding the enemy state, buying weapons. And if you know, I started laughing and crying in the same time because it was like, if you know my Ksenia, she is the sweetest, kindest person you'll meet. She goes out of her way to do good for people.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
She hates seeing people hurt. So you can imagine elderly people, young kids without food and water, she would be the first to donate money.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
She's in a labor camp, right? So she wakes up at 6 a.m. in the morning. She works till 9 p.m. at night. She gets two 15-minute breaks in between for lunch or coffee break or to brush her teeth or whatever. Um... It's snowing in Siberia, close to where she's held, close to Siberia. It's snowing. It's freezing cold out there working. There was a moment of her not going to the shower for two weeks.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
But again, Ksenia, knowing her, she would write to me. She'd go, babe, your mom, her mother would send her some wipes and stuff. And she was like, I would use the toilet water to clean myself. She's got problems with her legs. And this worries me. This really worries me. She's now all of a sudden got, she's got leg pain. She's got some big veins popping out on her legs from all the standing.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
She's explaining to me in the letters how she's peeling thousands and thousands of potatoes every day. But you only get a few seconds. There's people yelling and sweating at you all day. And you've got to rush. And then you've got to put the potatoes in the boiling water. So she's got blisters on her hand from the boiling water burning her hands. And she's getting basically no attention.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
Like, it's harsh. It is.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
No, she cannot.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
I'm on your show, Megan, because I know President Trump has a lot of respect for you. I've watched his interviews here, watched your shows. He takes note to what you say. And I'm on you, and I'm begging. I'm not a begging man, but I'm begging for this girl's life. It is not looking good for her. And if there's somebody that can bring Ksenia back, it's President Trump. I know it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
She's already given up. She's already 90% given up. But we will not give up on that. I will not give up on that. You know, I feel like I'm reliving my dad's experience.
The Megyn Kelly Show
American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046
Thinking about why you decided to put a 90-day pause.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Mm-hmm.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Megan, thank you for having me. And yes, the way you just explained it exactly, it's bogus. It just blows my mind, these treason charges. I'll tell you what, we went to Istanbul. She wanted me to go with her to Russia to meet her parents. I didn't like the idea. I didn't like the idea of her going in the first place, but she convinced me. I'm a Russian citizen. I speak the language.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
I'm going to Yekaterinburg. It's not the main city. She convinced me that it's safe. And I bought that plane ticket. And I decided to go to Istanbul with her for New Year's. And from there, she'll go home. I'll come back to LA. And the flight from Istanbul to Yekaterinburg was four hours. My flight back home to LA was about 10. So I knew that by the time I get back in LA, she's already settled in.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
I'll have a message from her. while I got back to LA and I haven't heard a single word from Ksenia. I tried for about six hours that day, like trying to get all of her. Then out of nowhere, I got a message, that simple message, sent me a message and it said, crazy, I've not yet seen my family, speak to you later. And I replied and I said, oh, is everything okay?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
And I haven't heard from her again for about six hours. Then I received a phone call from a random Russian rumba. It was Ksenia in tears. I said, what's wrong? She explained to me that she was arrested, interrogated for 16 hours at the airport. Um... I said, for what? And they said, well, I don't know.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
They took my phone, I was flagged, asked a bunch of questions to the extent where they didn't want to give her water, they didn't want to give her food for 16 hours because they believed she's part of something bigger. And she said, I don't know what you want me to say, but... I'm just here to visit my family. After 16 hours, they released her to her family, but held onto her cell phone.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
And that was the start of everything. That was the January 2nd. That was the start of everything.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Yeah, yeah, you're right. So $51. After they took her phone, they sent her back to her family. So they released it to her family and they said, you're not allowed to leave here, Katerinburg. You will hear from us. And we now know within the three weeks from January 2nd till January 27th, They investigated every single thing on a cell phone.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
This is where they came across the Venmo, $51 on Venmo, charged her for treason, funding the enemy state. That's what she was charging for, funding the enemy state, buying weapons. Yeah. And if you know, I started laughing and crying in the same time because it was like, if you know my Ksenia, she is the sweetest, kindest person you'll meet. She goes out of her way to do good for people.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
She hates seeing people hurt. So you can imagine elderly people, young kids without food and water, she would be the first to donate money. And, um, I'm listening to these charges they charged with and how the Russian media proclaims or The portrait they sculpt for the Russian audience is bogus. Like, for example, she was charged for hooliganism for attacking two male officers.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
I was like, I am a fighter. Yes, I am a fighter. Ksenia is the opposite. Ksenia has got a soft heart, sweet heart, cries easily. She doesn't have a bad bone in her body. So when I heard that, it broke my heart.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Yeah, well, you're taking me back now. The last, like, I'll tell you the process to get that lawyer was, it was very, very difficult because first of all, I'm dealing with the mother and father, which are in Russia, and they want to be hands-on with a lawyer. They want to be able to see the lawyer in person. And they barely speak English. So I need a Russian lawyer.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
So the process started to get a lawyer. And I will tell you, every lawyer turned us down because they said it's too risky. They said you're fighting Russia, like we can lose our license. And eventually, we got all of the lawyers we have right now, or had, and met the parents. The parents loved him. I didn't like him at all. I just didn't like him. I said, we can do better.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
And the parents were persistent on, no, we like this lawyer. We'll go with him. Anyway, go with the lawyer. Long story short, the lawyer ended up telling Kassadin to plead guilty. Now, I was very upset about that. I was like, why would you do that? And he said, look, she's going to get 20 years in prison. I can get that down to five years if she pleads guilty.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
I was like, I don't like this, but the parents liked the idea. So the lawyer got her to plead guilty. And guess what? She got the minimum of 12. It didn't work. But it painted this picture of Ksenia now acknowledging what she did. And it made me very, very upset. This lawyer, as the time progressed in this whole battle, we realized this lawyer is like a puppet to the KGB. Just a puppet.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
He's doing everything they want. He made Ksenia sign letters Ksenia was never supposed to sign. She signed it because the lawyer said, no, everything is going to be good.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
No, no, no, no.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
That's what has been released, is the $51, legalism, funding the enemy state. She's part of a... First, they painted this whole piece of her being a spy.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Yeah, and I was like, this is ridiculous. But it came down to the $51, which is shocking, right? It's still, to this day, it blows my mind that she's losing her life for $51.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
I got to be very smart here because I want to tell you, but I got Cassandra in trouble already once because of being in the media and sharing some stuff she writes in the letters. Because you would think she's written to me before where they blank out some stuff in the letters, which means clearly she's trying to tell me something. They came across it. They blanked it out.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
But if there's things they don't blank out, you would think, I'm okay to shit. So I want to be careful, but the conditions are bad. I can tell you right now, it's harsh. Like, she's in a labor camp, right? So she wakes up at 6 a.m. in the morning. She works till 9 p.m. at night. She gets two 15-minute breaks in between for lunch or coffee break or to brush her teeth or whatever.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
It's snowing in Siberia, close to where she's held, close to Siberia. It's snowing, it's freezing cold out there working. Now, I want to share something with you, which is, it's heartbreaking, but at the same time, I'm so proud of Ksenia, because she's very strong-minded, yet she's very, she's delicate. And she's not cut out for this. She's not. I don't even think I am. I'm a fighter.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
I will deal with it. But to think that Ksenia is in there. She was speaking to me and when all of this happened, she was locked up. She's an esthetician now. So she's all about beauty and taking care of herself. Skincare. Skincare, her beauty. So she explained to me. She's finding humor in all of this because as I read the letters, she will write, ha, ha, ha, can you believe this?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
So she's explaining to me how she ended up chewing on her clothing to get the material loose. And then she would take the material and floss her teeth with it. just to make sure she's taking care of her teeth. And reading that for the first time broke my heart. But it also made me very proud to know that she's strong-minded. She's finding a way.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Good question. Once a week. Okay. But it depends on how they feel. There was a moment of her not going to the shower for two weeks. But again, Ksenia, knowing her, she would write to me. She'd go, babe, your mom, her mother would send her some wipes and stuff. And she was like, I would use the toilet water to clean myself. Oh, boy. And I know this woman. I know her.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
And for her to now live in that circumstance, it's heartbreaking. She's got problems with her legs. And this worries me. This really worries me. She's now all of a sudden got leg pain. She's got some big veins popping out on her legs from all the standing. She had what they think she had a minor seizure. because of the labor, the hard-working labor.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
She had a seizure, which they think, we don't know. She collapsed, shaken. There was a whole thing, the medical, medics were rushed in. She's explaining to me in the letters how she's peeling thousands and thousands of potatoes every day. But you only get a few seconds. There's people yelling and swearing at you all day. And you've got to rush.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
And then you've got to put the potatoes in the boiling water. So she's got blisters on her hand from the boiling water burning her hands. And she's getting basically no attention. Like, it's harsh. It is...
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
No, she cannot, Megan. And she's written that to me in the letter. And she said, Chris, my love, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do 12 years. I'm telling you right now. Which is obviously put one on one together and you can imagine what she's trying to tell me.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
You know, the Biden administration.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
They were not going to give it to me. They were not going to give it to me. I can tell you right now, the Biden administration was not going to give me that wrongful detention. Working with the Biden administration, I want to bring this across. First of all, I want to say I'm grateful that I got that wrongful detention under the Biden administration.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
But there's only a handful of people in that Biden administration that I have a lot of respect for. And one of them is Roger Carstens. He was an amazing man, trying everything to help me get Ksenia out, but he was limited as far as what he could do. I was fighting to get this wrong for the tension. I mean, you have to meet this. I've been in this game now.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
I call it a game because I realized it's a political game for the US and Russia. It's just a game. It's someone's life. It's Ksenia's life, but it's really just a political game. And you have to meet 16. I think you have to meet 16 criterias on a list in order to be declared wrongfully detained. Now, I've done that in August.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
By August, as soon as, by March, by April, I said, guys, what are we still waiting for? Like, Ksenia's clearly wrongfully detained. And I pointed out everything and they're like, yeah, I'm playing the games. And I said, look, there's no rush for any of this. Let's do this right. There will be no prison swap. Take your time, take your time, which upset me. And then,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
there was the first prison swap and Cassandra wasn't included because she's not being declared wrongfully detained. I was very upset. Anyway, so I meet these criterias and I'm speaking with the State Department under the Biden administration. And I said, okay, we've met these criterias. Can we get Cassandra declared wrongfully detained?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Because there might be a next prison swap and I want to make sure Cassandra's on that list. No, Chris, don't rush, don't rush. There will be no swap, I can promise. They guaranteed me. They said, we guarantee you there will be no prison swap until maybe the elections. And I was like, I took a breather. I was like, okay, I guess I can't do much. Guess what? There was a prison swap on August 1st.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
And I missed my opportunity because the Biden administration told me, no, Rice, we'll take this slowly. We want to make sure we do it right. Even though by April, May, I've had the criterias. And we missed an opportunity. Then I met the opportunity, the criteria. I met him. There's two people I want to thank.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Other than the people I work with right now, a man with the name of Peter Berg, big Hollywood producer, very close friends, like a dad to me.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Yes, Peter Berg is currently... Right? Wait, the list goes on. He's currently playing such a big role in helping me get Ksenia back. It was for Peter Berg made a phone call. Peter Berg made a phone call to the US government and he put some fire under them and he said, look here, this girl is clearly being wrongfully detained. And after that phone call, They declared Cassandra wrongfully detained.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Another name I want to thank is Dana White. Dana White being very good friends with President Trump is on board as well. And Dana's advocating for me and Dana's pushing. Now, I'm on your show, Megan, because I know President Trump has a lot of respect for you. He watches your shows. He takes note to what you say. And I'm on you. And I'm begging. I'm not a begging man.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
But I'm begging for this girl's life. It is not looking good for her. And if there's somebody that can bring Ksenia back, it's President Trump. I know it. And I'm begging him. I know he can bring her back like this. She's not doing well.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Well, it's quite. The last three weeks to a month, there's really nothing following, nothing happening. That's why I want to thank you, Megan, for giving me this platform. That's why I feel like there's nothing happening right now. And I'm on here and I'm begging you and I'm begging President Trump Something needs to happen. Woodscarf. I'm trying to get on a phone call with Woodscarf.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
It's not happening. I don't know why. And I'm on your show and I'm trying to connect with Woodscarf to get out of his mouth. I know Senator Rubio is on it as well. Adam Bauer is on his roll.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Megan, you know what? Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm lucky to have her. If you get to know Ksenia, I'm very lucky to be part of her life. And I'm not stopping. I want to say this. Again, you painted a picture already, but I get a lot of mixed messages, hate messages, mixed messages. She gets what she deserves. No. I just want to remind people that Ksenia... is a normal human being.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Loves her friends, loves her family. She'll put them above everything. She's outgoing. She's active. She's being charged for treason for something she did as an American citizen in the United States in 2022. That millions of Americans have done. She's charged for treason, a law that was passed in 2023 by Russia. A year after Cassandra's donation.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
She's not part of any organization other than being a good, loving, kind-hearted human being that loves exercising, laughing. And I'm begging the American people. Do not forget Ksenia and help me. How can you help me? Go to the website, FreeKsenia.com and share the content we share and help me keep her name out there and help me keep this story alive because she's already given up.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
She's already 90% given up. But we will not give up on that. I will not give up on that. You know, I feel like I'm reliving my dad's experience.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
Megan, thank you so much.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Dems Try To Storm Building, CNN Panel Melts Down, and Rise of "Tech Right," with Victor Davis Hanson and Mike Solana | Ep. 1003
There's no evidence that trans athletes have an advantage over anyone else in sports. Trans athletes play sports for the same reasons as anybody else, for our love of the game, to be a part of a team, to challenge ourselves, and most of all, for the youth level, to have fun.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Dems Try To Storm Building, CNN Panel Melts Down, and Rise of "Tech Right," with Victor Davis Hanson and Mike Solana | Ep. 1003
And every young person deserves that opportunity to be their authentic self and to play the sports that they love without compromising any part of who they are.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Dems Try To Storm Building, CNN Panel Melts Down, and Rise of "Tech Right," with Victor Davis Hanson and Mike Solana | Ep. 1003
Right. Especially the last one month.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Dems Ignore Garcia Reality, Karmelo Anthony Family Speaks Out, Bernie Flies Private: AM Update 4/18
We just tried to go visit him in prison just to check on his conditions. Nobody has any communication with him. since he was illegally abducted from Maryland and sent to Seacott Prison in El Salvador. Today's purpose was just to see what his health condition is. And these soldiers were ordered to prevent us from going any farther
The Megyn Kelly Show
Dems Ignore Garcia Reality, Karmelo Anthony Family Speaks Out, Bernie Flies Private: AM Update 4/18
Nobody has any communication with him since he was illegally abducted from Maryland and sent to Seacott Prison in El Salvador.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Ballerina Home from Russian Prison, RFK Autism Announcement, Shower Exec Order: AM Update 4/11
If you know my Ksenia, she is the sweetest, kindest person you'll meet.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Ballerina Home from Russian Prison, RFK Autism Announcement, Shower Exec Order: AM Update 4/11
We now know within the three weeks from January 2nd to January 27th, they investigated every single thing on her cell phone. This is where they came across the Venmo, $51 on Venmo, charged her for treason, funding the enemy state. That's what she was charging for, funding the enemy state, buying weapons.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Ballerina Home from Russian Prison, RFK Autism Announcement, Shower Exec Order: AM Update 4/11
And if you know, I started laughing and crying in the same time because it was like, if you know my Ksenia, she is the sweetest, kindest person you'll meet. She goes out of her way to do good for people. She hates seeing people hurt. So you can imagine elderly people, young kids without food and water, she would be the first to donate money.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Ballerina Home from Russian Prison, RFK Autism Announcement, Shower Exec Order: AM Update 4/11
The lawyer ended up telling Kassadin to plead guilty. Now, I was very upset about that. I was like, why would you do that? And he said, look, she's going to get 20 years in prison. I can get that down to five years if she pleads guilty. I was like, I don't like this, but the parents liked the idea. So the lawyer got her to plead guilty. And guess what? She got the minimum of 12. It didn't work.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Ballerina Home from Russian Prison, RFK Autism Announcement, Shower Exec Order: AM Update 4/11
But it painted this picture of Ksenia now acknowledging what she did. And it made me very, very upset.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Ballerina Home from Russian Prison, RFK Autism Announcement, Shower Exec Order: AM Update 4/11
She's in a labor camp, right? So she wakes up at 6 a.m. in the morning. She works till 9 p.m. at night. She gets two 15-minute breaks in between snowing in Siberia. Close to where she's held, close to Siberia. Her mother would send her some wipes and stuff. And she was like, I would use the toilet water to clean myself. She's got problems with her legs, and this worries me. This really worries me.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Ballerina Home from Russian Prison, RFK Autism Announcement, Shower Exec Order: AM Update 4/11
She's now all of a sudden got, she's got leg pain. She's got some big veins popping out on her legs from all the standing.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
private money completely out of politics, to pass the Stock Act to make sure that not a single person inside government can use insider information or trade to benefit them financially, and we run on populist economics, I think that's a winner, and it's a way for people to stand up and support democracy, but only a reformed version of democracy.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Well, I think in part, I mean, Trump has been very effective in being so public about his corruption that it ends up with it being normalized. I mean, I'm just shocked that the Trump meme coin isn't like the only thing that we're talking about. it's probably the most massive corruption scandal in the history of the country.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
You literally have a, I guess, legal open channel for private donations to the president and his family in exchange for favors. And we just kind of think that it's part of Trump's right to do business in the White House, it's gross. It's disgusting. It's deeply immoral.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
And, you know, the fact that we didn't talk about that every hour of every day once he released that coin was, you know, kind of a signal to the country that we weren't going to take the corruption seriously.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
He can be. I mean, listen, it's not easy to be leader of this party. There are a lot of diverse views inside the caucus. And I think the whole caucus has to make up their mind that we are going to start fighting, that we are going to not just do business as normal.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Listen, he has a compelling argument. I mean, it does feel odd for Democrats to protest Republicans shutting down the government by shutting down the government. And it is also true that the president would have extraordinary powers during a shutdown. I came to a different conclusion.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
I thought that the public would actually blame Republicans for the shutdown of government because they saw them shutting down the government. But it is true that voting no on the continuing resolution would have involved a big risk for Democrats. But we need to be engaged. in risk-tolerant behavior right now.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Because ultimately, the only way to save the democracy is for there to be a national public mobilization of not thousands, not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of people when the five-alarm fire happens. And if the public doesn't see us taking risks...
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
tactical risks daily risks then they are not going to take what will be a risk on their part standing up to a repressive regime where it's clear that the government is willing to make you pay a personal price if you exercise your voice what kind of risks should you and your colleagues be taking right now going forward So in the Senate, the minority has power.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
You cannot proceed to any legislation without the consent of the minority. Now, we have regularly been providing the votes to the Republican majority to move the forward legislation that they care about, including the continuing resolution. We could choose not to do that.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
We could say to Republicans, unless you work with us on some targeted measures to prevent the destruction of our democracy, we are not going to continue to pretend like it's business as usual. We could make that decision as a party. Now, that would mean that occasionally Democrats would need to vote no on legislation that on the merits they may support.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
But if you think that democracy is the number one, number two, number three story, then you have to act like it. And you need to show that you're willing to take a political risk like voting against an otherwise popular bill in order to increase and create leverage to try to save the democracy.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Well, you know, there aren't daily political rallies happening in the country, but anytime you set one up, you're now seeing not thousands of people, but tens of thousands of people attend. You saw what happened with Bernie and AOC over the weekend.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Well, Senator Blumenthal, my colleague in Connecticut, was telling me he went to this, you know, tiny last minute Tesla protest at a dealership in Milford, Connecticut. And there were 600 people that essentially shut down Route 1 in Connecticut. I mean, like people are ready to mobilize. We just haven't been organized enough to give them those opportunities.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
And so this speaks to like the actual need of the Democratic Party right now. OK, we have to be better in our tactics inside Washington. But we actually have to build a political infrastructure that can plug people in. And that's what we've been really terrible at doing over the years. The Republicans have a permanent political infrastructure, mobilizing legal messaging, intellectual.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
The Democrats have a very thin permanent infrastructure. So Democrats, because we raise money primarily from smaller and medium sized donors, we don't have money until about six months before the election. But there's a consultant class in the Democratic Party. And until we break their grip on our party, we're going to continue to spend money badly.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
No. And I actually think that to the extent my messaging has broken through a little bit more than others, I ascribe that to the fact that there is not actually a personal motive attached to it. I think sometimes even if you're not saying it out loud, people can kind of tell when you're putting yourself out there for personal political gain.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
That job looks awful difficult to me. I just would, if I could go down in history as somebody that sort of helped save American democracy at its most significant instance of peril, that would be good enough for me.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
I do. Long ago, the Republican Party decided that they cared more about power than they did democracy. That's what January 6th was all about. Regardless of who won the election, they wanted to make sure that their person was in charge. They believe and have long believed that the Democratic Party progressives are an existential threat to the country and thus impoverished.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
any means justifies the end, which is making sure that a Democrat never again wins a national election. So this seems pretty purposeful and transparent, this decision to rig the rules of democracy so that you still hold elections, but
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
But the minority party, the opposition party, is rendered just weak enough, and the rules are tilted towards the majority party just enough so that Donald Trump and Republicans and the Trump family rule forever. And of course, this is not an unfamiliar system. This is Hungary. This is Turkey. This is Serbia. There are plenty of countries all around the world that hold elections.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
It's just one party continues to win. And that's, I think, the very concrete, the very transparent plan that Trump and his White House are implementing right now.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
They do not fess up to the plan behind closed doors. They are living in a self-created delusion. Most of them will tell you that it's not as bad as you think. Yes, Donald Trump is acting evil. in a way that previous presidents have not, but we will still have a free and fair election, that what he's doing is not enough to topple essential democratic norms.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
They are, of course, also deeply scared of him. They have worked very hard to become United States senators.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Well, we have months, not a year, before our democracy is rendered so damaged such that it can't be repaired. I do think that over the last four years, those surrounding Donald Trump put together a pretty thoughtful plan to destroy democracy and the rule of law. And you are seeing it being implemented.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Just in the last week, and you and others have covered this well, the assault has been trained on academia, institutions of higher education, and the legal community, the biggest law firms in this country. In democracy after democracy, those two institutions, higher education and the legal profession, are in many ways the foundation that undergirds the rule of law.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Those are the places that think about the rule of law, that protect it, that warn when it is being undermined. The legal profession is the place that contests efforts to try to destroy the rule of law. And so it is not coincidental that that's where Trump is going first, that he is trying to—
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
force both higher education and the legal profession to capitulate to him and to commit, often through very explicit bilateral agreements for the most important institutions, to essentially quell protest. And of course, what the administration is doing by taking on these very high-profile institutions is sending a warning to other law firms and to other colleges that if
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
If you take us on, if you file lawsuits against the administration, if you support Democrats, if you allow for campus-wide protests against our priorities, you'll be next. And so what will happen here, what inevitably happens in every democracy in which this tactic is tried,
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
is that they won't have to come after every institution or every firm because most of them will just decide in advance to stay out of the way. And so when students are filing a petition for a massive protest against the Trump administration policy, they may just find it much harder to be able to exercise free speech on those campuses. This is how democracy dies, that everybody just gets scared.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
You make a few examples and everyone else just decides to comply.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
I mean, I think we're a pretty broken brand right now. And I think some of the folks don't, some of the people on the left don't want to go through that hard rewrite of what the Democratic Party stands for.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Well, I think we have become the status quo party. And so we have reverted to defending democracy instead of explaining how we are going to break it down and reform it. We have not been a pugilistically populist party where we name the people who have power and we build very easy to understand solutions about how to transfer power to people that don't have it.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
And then we're a pretty judgmental party filled with a dozen litmus tests. We don't let you in unless you agree with us on kind of everything from gender rights to reproductive rights to gun control to climate.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
We've got to be a party that invites people in as long as they agree with us on the basic economic message and build our party with a little bit more acceptance of people who have diverging views on social and cultural issues. Yeah.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Well, I think first is making the decision that economics is the tent pole and populist economics. That means that you are going to have a party, frankly, that sounds a little bit more like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. You are talking about billionaires and corporate power.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
You are proposing really easy to understand ideas on how to shift that power, whether it be a cap on rent increases or a massive increase in the minimum wage or the regulation of every single drug price, not just the 10 highest-priced drugs.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
And then it is just making that decision to go out and ask people to come into the coalition who might not be with us on issues that I care about, like guns, and nominating candidates as a signal that the party is a big tent that are populist economically but may not line up with us on all the social and cultural stuff.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
So the Senate candidate that ran the furthest ahead of Kamala Harris in the entire country was Dan Osborne, who was a union organizer, an economic populist, but, you know, somebody who, you know, prioritized those issues amongst all the others.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
No, we're not. Listen, we're trying to win power so that we can protect those people. I mean, we just aren't going to be able to protect them if we don't.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
No, if we don't build coalitions that allow us to win elections. Listen, one of my colleagues, John Ossoff, gave a great speech over the weekend in which, you know, he talked in the meat of his speech about the trans community.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
That is a message that can win.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
Oh, I don't know that it really breaks down along generational lines, but I can explain to you what the basic argument is right now. And there are members of leadership who are on both sides of this question, but here it is. Is this a normal moment?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
where you can just keep on punching Donald Trump and pushing down his approval ratings and eventually win the 2026 election and set up a potential win in 2028? Or is there a pretty good chance that we're not going to have a free election in 2026?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
100%. Oh, every single day, I think the chances are growing that we will not have a free and fair election in 2026. What does that look like? It may not even be that, you know, the mechanics of the election are rigged. I'm not suggesting that there's going to be election officials out there stuffing ballots.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
What I'm talking about is that the opposition, the infrastructure necessary for an opposition to win will have been destroyed. Right. No lawyers will represent us. They will take down ActBlue, which is our primary means of raising small dollar contributions. They will have threatened activists with violence so no one will show up to our rallies and to our door knock events.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
This is what happens in, you know, lots of democracies around the world. The opposition is just kept so weak that they can't win. That's what I worry about being the landscape as we approach 2026. And if you believe that... then everything you do right now has to be in service of stopping that kind of weakening or destruction of democracy.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
And so to me, the essential difference right now in the party is that some people think that that's a very low likelihood. And so we should just engage in normal politics where we try to become more popular than Republicans. People like me believe that it won't matter if we're more popular than them because the rules won't allow us to run a fair election.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
And so everything we should be doing right now, both inside the Capitol and outside the Capitol, should be geared towards trying to make Republicans stop this assault on the rule of law and democratic norms.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
So, yeah, the public did not – we're not convinced by our argument in 2024 because we were shilling for the existing version of democracy, which is deeply corrupt, which does not work. Trump is giving us this opportunity because this is the most corrupt White House in the history of the country.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared”
He's giving us an opportunity to run on an anti-corruption message, but we will only win if we actually run on an anti-corruption platform. And so for me, the two things that matter most are populist economics and government reform. If Democrats run on cleaning up Washington with real actual plans to, for instance, get