The Megyn Kelly Show
Remembering Pope Francis’ Life and Legacy, Reality of Trump’s Tariff Policies, and Media Lies, with Kevin O’Leary and David Zweig | Ep. 1053
Mon, 21 Apr 2025
Megyn Kelly begins the show by discussing Pope Francis’ death at 88 after a recent battle with double pneumonia, his legacy as leader of the Catholic Church, his progressive ideology and messaging, the process of the conclave in selecting a new pope, and more. Plus, Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Leary Ventures & Beanstox, joins to discuss SCOTUS pausing deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, the breakdown of what is actually happening under Trump with tariffs and why China is taking advantage of American businesses, the reality of Donald Trump’s tariff policies, why China is taking advantage of American businesses and stealing IP, and more. Then, David Zweig, journalist and author of “An Abundance of Caution,” joins to talk about the ridiculous sheltering of children during Covid, schools remaining closed while restaurants and stores were up and running, the potentially made-up data out of the CDC used as political propaganda, and more. O'Leary- https://x.com/kevinolearytvZweig- https://davidzweig.com/ SimpliSafe: Visit https://simplisafe.com/MEGYN to claim 50% off & your first month free!Grand Canyon University: https://GCU.eduDailyLook: https://dailylook.com to take your style quiz and use code MEGYN for 50% off your first order. Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
Chapter 1: What happened to Pope Francis?
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, and happy Monday. We begin today with news from the Vatican. Pope Francis dead at age 88. It was kind of shocking to wake up to, even though we knew he was not in good health. He had had double pneumonia and been hospitalized for some five weeks in mid-February.
Chapter 2: What was Pope Francis's legacy?
I mean, we knew... We knew he wasn't doing that well, but it seemed like he was past the worst of it and maybe was getting a little better, or at least on the road toward getting a little better. And then Cardinal Kevin Farrell somberly came out this morning and stated at 7.35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the father.
There's no official cause of death released as of now, but as I said, he's been suffering from these chronic lung issues. And then beginning in February, he was in the hospital for some 38 days with these respiratory issues. Amazingly, you've seen this maybe by now, yesterday, just yesterday, he appeared on um, in, in his wheelchair in like the back of the Pope mobile. I don't know what that is.
I'm not exactly sure the vehicle, um, on Easter Sunday. Look at that. It's kind of amazing in St. Peter's square. And, and one of the last people to meet with Pope Francis was vice president JD Vance pretty incredibly, um, The vice president had a brief meeting with the pontiff yesterday where the pair exchanged Easter greetings and gifts. Mr. Vance telling Pope Francis he prays for him daily.
Watch.
I know you've not been feeling great, but it's good to see you in better health. Pray for you every day.
Bless you. Happy Easter.
Wow. Pretty extraordinary. This Pope was elected Pope in March of 2013 after the shock resignation of Pope Benedict. No, no Popes resign. They just don't do it. The first Pope Benedict, sorry, Francis from Latin America. First ever. Can you believe that given how Catholic Latin America is? He was our first Pope from there. And Pope Francis immediately jolted energy and enthusiasm into the church.
He was a Jesuit. He was a little bit more progressive, and this got a lot of people excited. Many people thought the church had gone too hardcore, though we stood by some traditional things like an all-male papacy and celibacy, among other things.
The church's stance on abortion, which people are kidding themselves if they want the Catholic Church to amend, but this is what we hear from young progressives within the Catholic Church. Okay, good luck with that. Maybe we could get... you know, I guess you can still have priests who come to the church married.
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Chapter 3: How did Trump’s tariff policies impact America?
And those business owners are asking, is there any other way to deal with this where we can legitimize their residency here because they're actually productive in terms of being workers for some jobs a lot of Americans don't want? You've heard that narrative. These are the people that are not been charged with any other crimes.
They came into the country illegally, yes, but they actually found jobs that are being paid by American companies. This is a difficult situation because if you just took 18 or call it 20 million people, including the 500,000 that have done crimes and they should, everybody agrees they should be gone. I mean, they're here illegally and they broke the law.
Not everybody.
Well, I mean, most voters think that's a double whammy. That's almost three strikes and you're out. I think the Trump administration will focus really hard on those 500,000. And one way or another, they'll be gone because they are illegal and they did break the law.
So they're either going to end up serving time in an American prison when they're caught, or they're going to go somewhere else back to their native homeland. We'll see how that works out. But the dilemma for the rest of them is... Is there a process by which they can apply legally if they have a sponsor?
Now, this same issue occurred in Europe years ago when they brought workers in into places like France, where they found a way to give them employment because they were willing to sponsor them. I don't know if we're going to get to that place here, because you made the numbers very clear. If Trump got to a million deportations a month, he still wouldn't get it all done before his term's over.
Think about it.
And there's zero chance of getting to even 100,000. Never mind.
I don't think that's realistic. I mean, you'd have to take the commercial airlines into account. You need to be booking seats on every aircraft in America. I just don't see that happening. So, however, I do see the half a million that have broken the law and he has got a clear mandate from the voter. And by the way, I think this is a bipartisan issue.
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Chapter 4: What are the current views on immigration policy?
What he wants and what his administration wants, Lutnik wants and Burgum wants and all the rest of them working on this stuff is reciprocal tariffs, including zero. So if you think about this, Take car parts in Germany. I always use that example. They had outrageous tariffs on car parts going into Germany. And American companies want to compete on the componentry of all kinds of cars.
And they can't because they have some crazy tariff. So Trump is saying, I'm going to throw on the same crazy tariff on car parts from Germany coming into the United States. Right away... rational minds would say, well, that's not going to work for both of us. It's kind of dumb. Why don't we take that down to 10% or zero?
And then we're going to end up, this is why I'm an optimist, with these giant trading partners at zero tariffs. So we'll open up the border to Mexico and Canada and have free trade there eventually after this gets worked out, because there'll be no tariffs in either direction. It's nobody's benefit.
The case in Canada right now, there's an election on the 28th, so it's very close after that gets done. They'll be negotiating. and England and lots of other ones have already stated openly, I'm willing to go to zero to get a deal done. So all of these things will get worked out. And during this period, lots of volatility, because it's not just tariffs today, it's Trump beating up on the Fed.
And this is an old game that's been going on for every administration, including bipartisanly. The executive always beats up on the Fed because the Fed is independent and you can't job on them into making decisions about interest rates. The Fed is worried that these tariffs stay on too long, particularly with China, and they're inflationary. Inflation right now is still north of 2%.
So if I were the Fed, I wouldn't drop rates either because I'm going to look like an idiot in 90 days when inflation is going up because of tariffs not down. So that's a different issue. That adds volatility. But my point is, all the tariffs are going to get worked out except for China. China's a different deal.
We are really getting to the point, and everybody realizes this now, that we are in an economic war with China. They want to become the supreme economy. They want to do it by stealing IP from everybody, including American IP, lots of that. They don't play by the rules of the World Trade Organization, and they haven't since 2000. They just don't give a shit. And everybody's figured that out.
And the only way to change their behavior is to show consequence. And we haven't ever done that. Well, this administration has decided there are consequences to stealing IP and not playing by the rules and not giving assets to markets and using our capital markets by not playing by the rules of GAAP. And all of these things are coming to a head.
I mean, I hate to use this analogy, but it's a good one. This is like squeezing a teenage pimple. That's what's going on here. And they're going to keep squeezing until the acne is gone. And it's going to get ugly, but it's going to get resolved because China can't afford not to have access to the world's largest economy. They just can't. Otherwise, everybody would be unemployed there.
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Chapter 5: How did COVID policies affect schools?
They buried the studies. They moved on. They tried to diminish people like you. and I was mentioning during the break, the great movie Contagion, which I really enjoyed with Gwyneth Paltrow and Matt Damon, which was made years ago, but clearly they used the CDC's blueprint for what they would do in a pandemic, was really telling. And they even had this like,
sort of citizen journalist played by Jude Law. Now he wasn't like you or Alex Berenson. This guy wound up hawking supplements and trying to make money off of the pandemic. But they did sort of use him as like the one detractor, the one lone voice pushing back. And in that movie, it's very interesting because they demonize him, right? Like you shouldn't believe the doubting Thomas.
because he's a hack who's trying to make money off of you. He's got some angle. He's the one person you shouldn't listen to, right? You should listen to the authorities.
The studies show that there is no proof that forsythia works. Who conducted the studies? What defines works against what strain of the virus?
Did you know about the studies when we met the last time?
We can get in a lot of trouble. You really think this Dr Hextall CDC person is Jesus in a lab coat? The government rushed the trials. The lawyers indemnified the drug companies. Maybe it causes autism or narcolepsy or cancer ten years from now. Who knows? The swine flu vaccine killed people back in 1976. Nerve disease. So we're all guinea pigs starting from today.
Just wait, they'll start listing side effects like the credits at the end of a movie.
And that's what they try to do to Alex Berenson. That's what they try to do to you. They try to do to Tucker. Right. Like try to just ignore or in some cases actively diminish or fringe or ban on Twitter. In Alex's case. Right. They didn't like these contrary voices or the Great Barrington people like fringe.
Try to tamp down on them so that people looking for good information either couldn't find it. It had been stifled. It had been censored or had like a sense of. worry in taking it in from the outliers because we've been told this is a fringe person. This is the weird Jude Law character I'm not supposed to listen to.
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Chapter 6: What decisions were made during the pandemic?
And she said, but it's David, you, you know him, he's the same reporter. He wrote other things. And she was like, yeah, I'm not interested. It's not. So to have that like imprimatur of these certain institutions meant everything.
Yeah.
Chapter 7: What lessons can we learn from the pandemic decisions?
And, and this, the problem is the idea that like most, I think regular people, at least some of them are on particularly on the left. So all these things are like, it made intuitive sense. It's like, well, of course, if you're closed schools, all those snot nose kids, that's going to help or mask. I think maybe having something in front of my face might.
The problem is, and I give all these crazy examples through history, our intuitions are often wrong. And that happens especially within medicine. That's why we need randomized studies. That's why we need actual, like a structured, what's known as evidence-based medicine. But instead, during the pandemic, over and over...
We were just told it's basic physics that masks work, but that's not how human beings work. A child might pull it off. It doesn't stay glued to your face. They were using studies done on mannequins where the masks were glued to their face. And this is the stuff that the CDC and other people were citing as evidence that everyone needs to wear a mask.
Our intuitions are wrong all the time, but yet we didn't actually look at science. We were told we're just following the science. There was no following the
It's bad enough when we are seriously hurting children, when we're not being allowed to say goodbye to our loved ones who are dying in nursing homes alone and isolated.
And then came like the final insult, which was the deceptions around the vaccine and the total unwillingness to discuss the actual side effects that were happening to people, including most importantly to me, the myocarditis, because that was killing young people. That was hurting young people.
You know, everybody's life matters, but it's, there's a different value in somebody who's 90 versus somebody who's 15. And they were seeing actual myocarditis heart infections happen to teenage boys as a result of the vaccines. And you were basically not allowed to talk about it. Even now, even now, YouTube's going to slap a warning video on this video because I said that. And it's a fact.
And yet they still, still want to bill it as though it's somehow misinformation. I always thought that if there's something that wrong with the vaccines, the vaccine makers will come back and fix it. They'll own it and they'll fix it. These are the biggest, most rich companies. vaccine or drug companies in the world.
I never anticipated that they would just deny, deny, deny, deny, and let people suffer and even die.
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