Muse

Hi, Megan.

Thank you for coming. It's so great. Cheers. Five years.

This is the five years. That's how we start. We're going to start talking about five years.

We sip it, right? We sip it.

You do whatever you want with it. Yeah, might as well.

I'm going to sip it. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Well, that's a naughty little one.

Single mall. Not like that. That's amazing. It's quite a welcome. Okay.

Are you cool if I take my shirt off? Can we get- Always starts this. Can we text Doug about this? By the way, when he saw it, he'd be like, no, I'm actually fine with that. Body is totally all right.

Didn't I tell you Doug's Scottish family motto is the funniest thing? So they went over to Scotland, the whole clan, like their family, to take their mom. And they saw old family gravestones. And they found out that they had a family motto with a clan that they were associated with. And it was, non to mayo sed cavio. I'm like, what's that? It sounds cool. And it means, be fearless. Yes, but cautious.

That's actually great advice.

We know of new methods of attack.

Greetings and welcome back to another exciting installment of the Fifth Column Podcast. This is your weekly rhetorical assault on the news cycle, the people that make it, occasionally ourselves. I'm Camille Foster. I'm delighted to be here. I'm with Matt Welch and Michael Moynihan and I have a sense that this is going to be a good one that's just that's my feeling

but this is our first video one

officially yes the first official video for subscribers we've been doing them yeah we're out of previews we don't subscribe still on a somewhat temporary set but I think it's great I think it looks great I also

magnificent and we have great company did you hear that? we have great company we have great looking was that a lady? we are ladies

not just a lady the lady of the hour Miss Megan Kelly joining us in the studio Megan Kelly for our very first installment of the fifth column

I'm honored to be the inaugural.

Made the trek to our enclave in Soho. It used to be Midtown.

Which I literally would not do for anyone else.

Thank you.

I was like, they want me to go to the city on a weekday afternoon?

Like all the way down. I'm from Connecticut.

But I managed to work in a Botox appointment after this. Are you serious? Let's go.

Can I come with you? Yeah. We shoot like a thing that's for like- It's not an anti-hangover. You know, that might be like a subscriber thing, me getting Botox with Megan. And then she comes out looking great and I come out looking all deranged.

When I saw far too much movement in my eyebrows, I was like, Abby.

They would give him the BBL by mistake, which would be just amazing. Oh, that one. Yeah.

Botox, you've been doing that for a while?

Of course. Really? Since I'm 54 years old, I've been doing it for a long while. Oh, okay. Yeah. Those are the two things I do. I do Botox, and twice a year I get a laser procedure called the Fraxel. And it does everything. Okay.

I have somebody that I know that does the Fraxel. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. It's incredible. It's like burn your face.

No, it doesn't hurt. It doesn't. It is expensive. It's like $2,500.

But she was like peeling for weeks. No, it's one week. It's not- Oh, she got it under the bridge in Queens, so maybe a different- Okay, no. This guy was like, I'm going with a Fraxel.

It's one week, and you don't even have to have any downtime. I don't even miss a show. Like the first day, you're just a little sunburned, a little swollen. You know, you don't look like your best.

Yeah.

And then you're kind of a little sandpapery for the next five days, and within six days, baby's bottom all over your face. See, look,

Matt needs that. Everybody wants to talk about Trump and politics. We get you on the show, and we want to talk about the beauty regimen.

I'm telling you, men should have it, too, because it takes off skin cancer. Like, it's a maintenance to prevent all sorts of bad things.

Can you do some peels and stuff? No, I just get rid of the grays at some regular interval. Yeah, I bring the youthful energy to the podcast. It'd be very weird if I had shocks of gray hair everywhere.

Yeah, you can't be the old guy. Has anyone noticed that I stopped giving a shit about 30 years ago? Everyone.

They mention it in the comments all the time.

Even in audio, which is weird. There's someone in my life, who last night said to me, you have to stop cutting your own hair. And I was like, why? What? Shit, like, what do you think? I am like, sometimes, sometimes. I can always tell the difference. That's my own cut. Yeah. That's my own cut. It's been, you've had highs and lows. I like this one. I've had highs and lows. Can we do a super cut of our appearances in Megan's show over the past 30 years? Oh, my God, that's a lot of lows. When we were young and,

is that, well, let's start there. Not 30 years, five years.

It feels like 30. It feels like 30. So you've got a five-year anniversary. Five-year anniversary.

Yeah.

Geez.

I know. Can you believe it? I mean, actually, it's an interesting journey, right? You're at Fox. You leave Fox under circumstances. You go to NBC. You leave NBC under circumstances.

I didn't have too much circumstances, but NBC had circumstances. I could have stayed at Fox. Yeah. I could not have stayed at NBC.

Okay. We're involved with some contention. Yeah, there was drama. There was some drama. There was drama. Can you do the twirl first? No. Wow. We can just move the chair around.

If you can look at it just in the right angle and exclude my C-section scars, you're going to find it really hot. Yeah. But I mean, like at that time, like projecting forward five years later, who will the most consequential people be in media broadly? Not just in like political media, but in media broadly. I looked at the charts today, the Apple podcast charts, and you are in the top 10 and have been reliably for a very long time. very long like how does that feel how does that happen give us the secret um i don't really care

about that i have to say like it's nice to be successful because you want to keep doing it that's really how i see it um but i see it the same way today as i saw it five years ago which is like just keep rowing just keep rowing because if you go by like downloads and followers and all that your fortunes rise and they fall like the haircut yeah so you know your ego by the way your ego can't sustain if you're too tied to like the daily numbers right but i always felt like the mission was just truth just try to stay to the truth tell the actual facts and then you can offer analysis on top of that and the audience will come over time they'll come and they did i mean that's proven true for me in every job i've ever had even that nbc show that dog of a show was getting better in the ratings when things fell apart but over time i feel like people will get

it if you're a truth teller they'll figure it out was that a dog of a show you say a dog of a show but was that because it wasn't you you were doing an impression of what megan at nbc should be because very different than the mock show it's very very different than this show so like that kind of interregnum there like how do you think of that show as was that like my entry into the mainstream they loved you because of how you questioned donald trump yes yes 100 100 why yes and then you're a bit of a wild card when you're in there oh shit this woman actually has opinions You're right. But you were somewhere in between, you know, being an NBC person and being a Megan Cohn.

Yeah. They were like, oh, my God, it's attacking Jane Fonda.

Yeah.

Why is it doing that? You know, it's defending Brett Kavanaugh. Well, let's get this thing out of here. I look back on that year. I really only the show was really on the air for a year. And I feel like I was temporarily insane. You know what I mean? I feel like I was not actually insane, but I just feel like it wasn't me in so many ways. And the reason I got there is because I had had such a rough couple of years leading up to my decision to leave Fox that by the time I left, I was really, I thought, pulling the plug on politics. Like, I'm just not going to do politics. I'm going to be more of an Oprah character. Don't get me started on Oprah because I see her so differently now. But I'm going to be more of an Oprah type character who's just talking about lifestyle and ways to do better in life and enrich your life outside of politics.

Morning show is different, right?

Well, I just wasn't even thinking morning show, which is notably frivolous. And I never thought of myself as a frivolous person. I thought this was going to be more substantive conversations about what matters. And I was very much of the opinion that politics didn't matter. It shouldn't matter anyways. And I was so, it just found it so toxic. I was like, I got to get away from that. That's all I know. So NBC, like an idiot, I thought it would be like a kinder, gentler place to go. I wouldn't do politics. Sometimes I'd go on Dateline, which I loved and I love crime. And I was just so wrong, so, so wrong. And then when the show didn't do well, then they started to add more frivolity to my hour, like from the earlier Today Show. And that was really off brand for me. But those are the segments that rated the highest. So they were like, please do more fashion shows. And I was like, oh, God, you know, like you'll do what they want you to because you're trying to save the show and paying all this money. But it just got like the gulf between who I am and what the show was just grew and grew and grew to the point where then it started to do better. And then then it all ended, as you know, why it ended. So it's just the whole thing was tumultuous. But you walked away with the money, which is great. Well, I got the money, but I had to make them give me the money.

Yeah.

I mean, those fuckers didn't want to give me a one die. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about this. That's probably all I'm allowed to say.

There's no cameras here. I will say that you can't see this. My daughter is here off camera.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

But I remember I told her about this. I said that she got this money for not working. And I remember her saying, like, why? And I was like, to make you go away. Sometimes they pay you a lot of money. Here's the legal reason. That was my fatherly advice. Because they phoned it to me. Yeah, let's go.

You know, I would have much rather worked every day of that contract for the dough. But when somebody unfairly terminates you or cuts you loose, when they have no grounds, the law says they have to make good on your deal. That's a general legal statement, nothing about my particular circumstances.

But that was entirely political. The reason, it wasn't because of the performance of the show, it was because of who you were, right?

I'm not allowed to talk about it.

Wow. Yeah.

I haven't signed any NDAs in my life except for one, and I can't tell you what circumstance under which I signed that, but you can just draw your own conclusion about why I can't talk about it.

for 60 dollars much less 60 million so i'm just saying and have yeah and how was the what was the

kind of discussions up into launching the new megan kelly thing who did you talk to who said podcasts indie media do it yourself in your house like it was totally ben shapiro oh okay yeah i

love him i've loved him for years he used to come on my show when nobody knew who he was i helped No.

make Ben Shapiro. He would tell you that right now. And when I was sitting on my couch, I think he felt sorry for me and he wanted me to get back out there. And like a good dear friend, he called me up and he's like, MK, you got to do what I'm doing. This is like a real lane. You don't have to sit on your couch. You don't have to work for the man. And I was like, Ben, you're different. You give your opinions all the time. I don't really do that. He's like, just fly out here to California and take a look. So I did. I flew out to California to look at the Daily Wire just as a friend and he showed me what they were doing it was a huge operation already crushing it then yeah he was totally and i was like you know what i can do that this this actually does fire me up this is the first thing i've seen that makes me want to get off the couch so when you said

something there is that we i don't do opinions really um i play it down the middle you did that at fox less political even at nbc and i was matt and we were having lunch today and i remembered our earliest uh appearances on your show and you would always say these things starting like you know we just call it like we see it we're not here for any party or clique we just did it do you do you feel that you became more political much more opinionated over the course and again that's not a negative thing over the course of time and it's a more political show now than it was five years yes 100 much much yeah how and why what happened well 2020 i wasn't in the business of

offering my opinion so i wasn't used to it so when i first launched the show i was like i don't offer opinions i just know how to bring them out of other people yeah that's that's my thing and then just covering the news every day for two hours live like you kind of can't stop yourself you know it's like stuff was so outrageous this is peak blm peak covid i was like i've got to talk about this this is insane dr fauci i'm not gonna have any opinion on this guy the blm raise your fist or you can't eat your meal in peace i was like there's no way i'm not saying anything about this so i kind of lost it honestly you know the the wall between me and the opinion offering and on some of the things i actually just had to sit down and think about do i have an opinion on this like most recently we talked about this but like tariffs i don't know anything about tariffs i don't know what my opinion is to this moment i don't know um so some of the things i actually just had to put thought into it if i wanted to offer any guidance to the audience and what i came to see over time is like the audience actually wanted to hear what i thought like It was less meaningful to them to hear me just be this impartial arbiter. They wanted to know what I thought, even if they disagreed with me. They wanted to hear my reasoning.

It's hard to sustain for two hours a day to be a traffic cop of people being guests on your show.

In this medium, too. Yeah, it's not. It doesn't work.

It's impossible to do. And to be overly sensitive about whether or not you're going to be authentic, like 100% authentic and tell the truth as you see it from your point of view, Which, I mean, 2020, the whole censorious period that followed after that was very much people guardedly offering their perspectives on various topics and doing their best to evade certain topics. But you never did that, which I suspect actually is part of the reason why the show became increasingly political in different ways.

Well, it's funny because I've been looking at like Charlie Kirk lately because there's so many attacks being heaped on him now posthumously that I'm angry about it. and I'm bit by bit attacking them just because he's not around to do it. So I'm happy to do it. And I do think one of the things people loved about Charlie and one of the reasons he connected with so many people, yes, for sure, it was his connection with faith and the way he could evangelize our political opinions in a way very few can do. But also he really was a fearless truth teller and he did it unabashedly. You know, he said all the things and he was really frank about them in a way that was jarring for some people to hear. but was real and was true and was unafraid and like now going back through like the clips that they used to bash him i see it tenfold you know like this is why i loved charlie these things that they're plucking are the things that made me fall in love with the guy like at a very young age he was very brave and for many years they just dismissed him as like fringe or you know conspiratorial whatever none of which is true of charlie and now it's kind of funny to see them Now that he's not around to defend himself, trying to resurrect those false claims.

It's also the exact opposite of the definition of fringe. I mean, he was incredibly mainstream and he was resonating with people. And that's interesting to look at even if you don't agree with him. And I was, you know, when we were on the show last time, I mean, I was offended by this. And you called back to the Trump shooting, I think, when I said something very similar to this, is that this is not a time to adjudicate what Charlie believed and whether he was right or not. Because what you're trying to do is get to a conclusion of whether or not he deserved it. That's it. Right? Because if you're saying, well, he said this about it, look, you're going, you're on the radio two, three hours a day. As you say, it's about Rush Limbaugh all the time. If he didn't have a big catalog of, you know, weird statements or things I disagree with, I would think there was something incredibly wrong when you're talking that much. I disagree with myself from yesterday.

You're not the only one.

Ten years ago, and Charlie Kirk started to do this when he was 18 or 19 years old, my response to that and my negativity about the negative response was not because of anything in particular that he said or whatever. He's just like, why are we actually putting this stuff under the microscope now when we should be talking about this outrageous, you know, bout of political violence?

Well, I know why they're doing it. They're doing it because they're afraid. They see these 122,000 chapters applied for at Turning Points USA, which only had 2,000 the day Charlie died. 2,000. 1,000 at colleges and 1,000 at high schools thereabouts. And they're scared. They're trying to stop it. They're trying to get to the parents of those kids to say, racist, bigot, horrible man, transphobe, don't have your kid open up a Turning Point. That's why. So it's on. You know, like, I don't want to have this discussion now either, but if they're going to force it in the pages of the New York Times and with Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates, it's on.

good let's do it then fine but Ezra Klein seems like well he's the reasonable in this conversation by far and I actually sat through the entire conversation and talked about it in the other show that I did last night which drives me crazy but um on this point we had was it not the last time we were on your show the time before that when we had a funny disagreement about you saying I don't care punish them do you remember this this is Lisa yeah yeah and it was just like you It's a long list of people I was like. Frankly, that's every time we go on the show. She was like, you mean the guy that cooked my dinner last night? Something else. Not Doug. Doug's fine. Fuck them. Poor Doug. It's like, fuck him, punish him. He's like, sorry. He's a Scottish mother. That's you who want to punish Doug. But on that, and we were like, no, no, there's principle here. Yeah. You know, we've talked a lot about this on the show recently. That sort of vengeance and payback versus principle, right?

I mean, it's like feel good. Right. It's either your words or the whiskey. OK, it doesn't matter.

We'll give her more because it's going to feel great after the second one. But that where are you on that? Because we were meekly saying, no, no, Megan, we can't do this because the next time those guys will have that power. And it's bad when they have that power. So it's bad when anybody has that power. How are you thinking about that now? Because there's so much there's so many people that I think rightfully we all want to see suffer. but let's do it in the way that's kind of above board.

You're a no on this, right? I'm where I was in our last conversation. Let's torture him. I think one of two things will happen after we're done with these four years of power and ideally, you know, eight or 12, but let's say we lose in 2028. One of two things will happen. Either they will have learned their lessons after we put them through four years of pain and did to them what they've been doing to us and they'll stop or they'll double down and they'll do more of it to us, like even more than they did during Biden's four years. And I'm fine with either of those. I really am because there is no way we get to I'm standing down when they're back in power if we stand down right now. Zero chance. If the Republicans don't use the power while they have it, there is no outcome of they were nice guys, so we're going to be nice guys. The Democrats are not capable of that. They're either going to hurt us without us having hurt them or they'll hurt us a little worse. i just think there's no way forward that leads to a good result without us trying but if you don't

think of it in a party political way of that who wins this time or next time will they do it next time in just in a principle way that we don't want to use the government or empower the government okay okay so you're done with principle on this yes done well no no i'm not done with principle we're arguing about tactics the tactic is they do intersect right tactics and principles well

you have to hear we're trying to get to where we used to be like during the bush years when everything was peaceful oh wait uh but no but like yeah our battles internally didn't include like locking up our adversaries right and like harassing everybody we didn't like if we could just get back to that that'd be great but the my own view is the only way back to that is to hurt them to hurt them in all the ways that they hurt us they have to feel the pain uniquely and acutely and only that will make them reluctant to unleash these powers against us when they inevitably get back to power.

I think the word that jumps out at me is we. When did you become a we or when did the we?

Well, I'm not we Republican. I don't like Republicans.

I know, but you just said we 13 times.

Team sanity. Like team sanity right now that happens to be the GOP. But I'm an independent and I'll never be a registered Republican. I've been a registered Dem. I've been a registered Republican. I think I told you guys that in my voting history for in presidential races, now i've got i i had four damn four republican now i voted for trump again so i've now got five republican but i'm right down the middle on my voting history like so i'm not some hard partisan but team sanity is very much with the gop right now you can't vote as a democrat if you care about america i really think that i just think they've gone so insane they're chopping off the body parts of healthy children

who could vote for these lunatics but you've had moments recently when i've listened to the show when you've had that principle like troops in chicago and places you say well i don't know

without an invitation correct but so there's that right where you say that could be a we that could be we right there's a legal president trump did that without an invitation from the illinois governor i would criticize him yeah i would absolutely go on the air and say you can't

do that i mean he's sending people to portland against antifa you don't like antifa do you

megan kelly that's a different that's a different way in he's sending them to protect ice which he has the right to do but if he just sends a bunch of troops to you know oregon state to address the crime problem he and i are going to have a problem he cannot do that under the constitution and i will absolutely call him out as i have many times it's why my relationship with him has been so up and

down. I might backtrack just a little bit because I want to talk about the alternative to the escalation here, because it seems like the way that we got to here is creeping escalation over many administrations and various abuses under Democrats, under Republicans, like violations of civil liberties that were a little questionable. And if we're escalating again now, escalation the next time around seems very likely and further escalation seems very likely. That doesn't feel like a kind of mutually assured destruction kind of situation. It seems like just outright madness. And it does seem to me that another approach might be implementing safeguards, like trying to ensure that it was that executive order that the administration put into place when they first came against lawfare and leveraging government power to achieve these various political ends or partisan ends. And have they actually worked on that? Like trying to cultivate some sort of credibility that's bipartisan, like appealing to the sensitive people on the left. I can only operate in this way. But it does seem to me that that is not just practical. It's actually the way that we got to founding the country. The founders had to set aside their differences and come together and try and press forward. I love it on paper. It's not going to work. Because they're

too crazy. Yeah, they're too crazy. They're the ones who crossed the breach. They're the ones who tried to imprison our former president and our nominated candidate for the rest of his life and tried to bankrupt him and change the law so he could be civil sued civilly by that nutcase eugene carroll that's my opinion eugene and i'm entitled to it don't sue me because it's on if you do um i think when she says don't she's saying do i mean i have a very mean lawyer and i'm really out of that fact but anyway um my point is they're the ones who crossed all of these norms right like it's amazing like the the wall street journal of all places tweeted out that that trump's the trump administration's indictment of comey was unprecedented oh really unprecedented in what way the fact that he has a particular title that hasn't been indicted before you guys that the left crossed the unprecedented bridge first. Not just with Trump, but all of his top aides, who actually served prison time.

Yeah, but we all, everyone at this table criticized that stuff. No, we were on your show criticizing it for four years. The unprecedented dimension here is that the president of the United States publicly, and then deleted it, although he would later restate it, we look weak. We need to go after these people. And we need to punish them. Get after them.

They still call them shifty shit. Yeah, I mean, I think, gotta go after them.

Even the pretense of an independent judicial branch, like pursuing the law and actually prosecuting people on the basis of the evidence without any sort of partisan favor. Even that pretense, I think, is actually important. When you blow, when you obliterate the pretense and proceed directly to, look, this is how it is.

How do you think it wound up in The New York Times in April of 2022? I'm with you. That Joe Biden was pressuring the DOJ to indict Trump? Undoubtedly. How do you think that wound up there?

Listen, I would say leaks. Why was that in there? It was problematic. It was criminal. They were trying to justify their actions in various instances.

No, they were going public with the pressure on Merrick Garland. The pretense was eviscerated. Zero dispute.

Zero dispute.

And then what happened with Merrick Garland? He did it. Yeah. So forget it. No, zero dispute. You're upset about the pretense being gone. Take it up with Joe Biden. Okay. He crossed all these norms. And not only did they indict Trump twice through his federal special prosecutor, but the feds cooperated with both the New York and the Georgia prosecutions. They were involved in both of them. These guys were pretending to stay out of it. Yeah, should put Donald Trump in jail. They didn't care if he spent every last day behind bars and to bankrupt him and to humiliate him with the E. Jean Carroll thing. They couldn't have cared less. And not just him, but Roger Stone, who he had the same charges that James Comey did. The FBI showed up at his house at 6 a.m. to arrest him. Guess what? The New York Times was there. CNN was there on the Roger Stone. The FBI came at six. CNN was there at 604. Oh, we just got lucky. We didn't just like we got lucky with the Mar-a-Lago raid. Jeez, sometimes you just have a sixth sense for it. But James Comey, have you seen a perp walk of him? Did the FBI raid his house and humiliate him? So he should be thankful that we're not doing to him exactly what they did to Trump and Trump's emissaries. Also, Peter Navarro, also Steve Bannon, who allegedly committed the same crime that Merrick Garland committed, contempt of Congress. But guess who didn't get prosecuted? Guess who didn't sit in jail? Merrick Garland, because he runs the DOJ. I'm sorry, but it's war right now. It's war, not in the ideally firing sense. I mean, we have had our people get shot. But these are policy wars and a war for the soul of the country. And I firmly believe now, and I'm pretty moderate in my politics, that if we don't fight fire with fire, we'll lose.

But that's not moderate, right? That is you. Every election is on a war footing. And there's an equal number of people who, you know, say they started at first, not necessarily Megyn Kelly.

But this is a fact that the Dems fight. Like, you can't argue this fact.

You can say.

Who was indicted by a Republican president that was running for president on the other side?

It wouldn't be necessarily the specific, you know, a perfectly matching indictment. But the they started at first is could be lawfare, could be crazy. You talked about crazy people. Marjorie Taylor Greene is not the most sane person member of Congress. It's not hard to point and look at Republicans and see some crazy out there. And so they get as hepped up, right? They're ready to then go to war next time they win. So every presidential election is this momentous, you know, this side's going to go to war against this side. I don't see how that's ever going to lead to any kind of de-escalation in a way that's favorable to those of us who don't have a we necessarily.

Because they have to feel that there's risk involved to them if they do it again. If they don't feel the risk, they're going to keep doing it. They've proven that. It's the only way, you know, to keep the kid from touching the stove again is for them to touch the hot stove. But they have to feel the pain in order for it to really bring the lesson home. Otherwise, the kid might touch the cold stove a second time. Not that I've favored this in my own family. I'm not saying this is a parenting method. But I'm just saying for these guys, unless they actually fear that this could happen to them or their family, they will do it again. They think the ends justify the means. They did something truly extraordinary and dangerous when they did this to Trump and his people. And so I really and I do not in the same way where I would draw the line on Trump sending troops that weren't invited by the governor. You know, he can send them to protect ICE, but he can't just send them in as a crime force. I do draw the line at you can't just make up crimes like they did against Trump. Sure. That I'm not in favor with. There has to be an actual crime. And if it turns out Lisa Cook did not actually commit mortgage fraud or James Comey cannot be gotten on this, you know, lying to Congress charge, then he must be let go. And the process would have been the punishment. But there must be at least a good faith basis to believe they committed a crime.

Yeah. I mean, the process is the punishment, obviously. but the i mean guys like andy mccarthy somebody you respect and that you respect um who has said this is a dog's breakfast of a case and it's clearly just punishment and that is what's happening here i mean to your point though i mean i agree with you in the sense that if the special prosecutor stuff and you remember ken starr and lawrence walsh who was there on contra stuff and then there was a bipartisan thing that we have to get rid of this law yeah and how long did that last yeah we got rid of it in a bipartisan way and everyone's like yeah fuck it well they're

Like there's the independent council and there's the special council, but it really doesn't save you.

It's the same thing at the end of the day. But as you well know, if Republicans lose the House, impeachment starts the next day. This is the challenge.

No one cares because there won't be a trial in the Senate because the GOP will control the Senate.

Although they could lose more than the House. And I suspect even if you're right, that one of the risks is if the party goes too far. And I put it this way. The Trump administration goes too far in exacting retribution. Again, even if it's constrained in the way that you described, these are legitimate people, people who committed legitimate crimes. They're being prosecuted for them. Are we being a little selective about this? Maybe.

Would we have looked the other way on mortgage fraud, you know, an application if they hadn't done this to us?

And one imagines they're actually looking for the mortgage fraud in these particular instances. But set all that aside and let's presume that you're right. It's possible that what Republicans actually end up doing is putting themselves in the wilderness for an extended, protracted period of time. It is. Because people don't trust them anymore. In which case, if the left is the danger, this could actually be a mechanism for allowing them to come back to power because, I mean.

I don't disagree with that, Camille. That's the danger to Republicans in doing this because the American populace is not really in favor of retribution. And they're probably.

not going to like this lawfare stuff. Though Trump's approval rating has not gone down since he started this. Like he, the stuff about Schiff, the stuff about Letitia James, the stuff about Lisa Cook has been out there in the latest New York Times polling and Trump's numbers didn't change. They went up one point from month four to month eight. So, so far it hasn't been hurting him at all. Now, if we have a bunch of people indicted and it dominates the

news day to day, this is a concern. What do you think Americans want Republicans to be? I mean, It's been a very interesting thing for me and for us. I mean, we come on your show as the slightly adversarial libertarians, right? We're in the same tent. I mean, if you look at us on there, we're probably agreeing with you 88% of the time. And then we have that 10, 12, 15% where we're like, well, the Constitution and being nerdy.

Well, what about immigration? Yeah, well, that's Matt.

Can we just do a separate, let's cut him out? I too like the immigration. Yeah, I've become much more skeptical. I know. Much more skeptical. that's just me but as far as like what it is to be a republican i mean you said um you don't know what you think about tariffs for instance you know for the libertarian wing of the party and i don't

yeah you're against him i i when trump said he was going to raise tariffs on 10 across the board you guys were like on 10 percent that's not nice you know his films coming in 300 percent

I'm like, what? No, this is all bad. So, but this stuff, and I get that that was not really meshing with voters like Cato Institute, white papers. That's not what the voters wanted. They wanted a more populist thing. But at the same time, like what is, I mean, you go out there, you have a very big audience. You're going to do this tour. We'll be a part of this tour. Yeah. I'm excited. I'm provided after this episode. We don't get kicked off. We'll see what happens. Don't buy your tickets yet. Um, but what is it to be a Republican, to be conservative now? Because it's so divorced from what it was for me 10, 15 years ago on so many issues. And we're not talking about Israel and foreign policy and Iran and this stuff. It's just, you know, free trade is, is a big one. Government power is a big one. What is it? Spending. God. Do you guys know what the latest number is on spending, by the way? Well, no.

6.66 trillion dollars wow three six demonic trillion the demonic trillion but you know it's

also things like the government owning part of intel it's like what the fuck yeah and i talked and i mentioned this story a thousand times on this show of when i was talking to steve bannon about this and i said you were editor of breitbart during you know the auto bailouts and you guys were rambling about this and he's like yeah we were wrong and i was like oh you have changed that much. And he's like, yep. And then he said a bunch of nice things about AOC, and I wanted to put a gun in my mouth. He's like a socialist Republican

in a way. He ripped on her on my show like a week ago. Really? He's not in favor of her messaging. For people

with short memories, he ripped on you

a fair amount. Oh, we used to be arch

enemies. Arch enemies. And then you had your rapprochement on the show. Yes. I want

to say something about Andy McCarthy and Steve Bannon and try to get back to that question. I'm not sure what it is. But we're the conservative party.

What is it to be a conservative Republican now?

Okay, so I guess I'll start with that. MAGA has taken over the Republican Party. So, you know, to be a Republican now is to be a MAGA Republican. But there's still fissures within MAGA. Yeah, or you're in the minority, which is fine. But the National Review guys who I love, I love all those National Review. I love Rich, DeTon, Charles Cook, and Andy. Love them all. But I think they would admit that they're not in the majority of their own party right now. But they have held true to their principles. And if you read NRO, which I do every day, you'll see they're still holding true to their principles. They're not like big fans of Donald Trump. So I admire that because those are their deeply held principles and they have not abandoned them in the era of Trump. I think most of the Republican Party is pro-Trump now and has adopted the MAGA core beliefs. I'm somebody who is not really ideological for most of my life and was not in the business of like signing on to this opinion or that or this school of thought or that. For most of my adult life, I was a soulless lawyer who could see both sides and virtually everything. which really helped me in my reporting.

Are you now a soulless podcast host?

I'm more soulful. I would say I'm more soulful. And I wouldn't describe myself as MAGA. I don't really identify with any ideology. I don't like team jerseys. I don't want to have to support everything Trump does or anybody else does.

But maybe MAGA is not fully ideological, right? It's more like of a cultural feeling, like the left's coming to get us.

Yes, well, that I identify with. And I speak fluent MAGA. Like, I think I understand the MAGA base very well. and i'm much more aligned with them than i am anybody else in our culture right now like even more so than the nro folks who i love and i want to hear from but they don't speak for me usually and so that leads me to andy who i adore and who is brilliant by any man's measure but i will say with all due respect to my friend he does suffer

a little bit from the tds matt and not a little bit and wow hospitalized even in the house it was really bad it can cloud your judgment on trump and i'll just give you one example i listen to the editors every time it comes out twice weekly and i listen to andy's podcast standalone every time it comes out but throughout the whole trump run leading up to 24 andy was predicting trump would lose that he'd be so bogged down in lawfare there'd be so much negative news around him that there wasn't enough strength in the party to get him over the edge and i never agreed with that you know i i entertained it and i reported what he was saying and had people kick it around on the show never really believed it and he was so very wrong and i do think he was a little clouded by his dislike of donald trump and i am factoring that in right now to what he's writing about the comey stuff because andy was really really convinced that this indictment was all based on andy mccabe leaking and it really looks like that's that's wrong too that this is um a different guy this daniel rack or whatever his last name is not ratcliffe it's close to that um who was leaking for comey he was his friend and he came out as a special governmental employee for about a year and a half or two anyway it looks like it was a totally different leak that's a little harder to discount and it's going to make the case a little bit easier for the government and andy refused to talk like he was dug in on the mccabe thing which again appears to be wrong so even the great vaunted andy mccarthy again who i adore and who's brilliant i think needs to like try to separate himself from his tds if he wants his legal analysis to stay strong and like really accurate and who was the other one um there's one other name

what did we just say i said i wanted to get another refill i just want to make sure that'll help you remember one more i'll remember we'll come back to us in a minute yeah but like in the republic this is the thing within maga of what it is in what it is to be maga i mean you say that

it's what bannon bannon yeah okay got it takes me a second so bannon and i hated each other's guts Yeah. He was running bright about Bart, which came for me viciously after that Trump debate. And endlessly. I mean, it was like really brutal, featured and, you know, long 60 minutes pieces and so on.

But also to point out that you said at some point publicly, I'm not spilling the beans here, that you had to have like security. There are people threatening you because of this. I mean, yes, for you to get over that is pretty impressive. I mean, I I don't know that I would. Yeah.

thing yeah to quote elizabeth bennett about mr darcy i just see him so differently now no it's not a weird analogy you have a different type of tds don't you you just love so much but i do love steve bannon i i i'm completely over all that stuff it's completely forgotten and forgiven it's politics politics is ugly it's dirty you got if you're gonna get in the arena you're gonna get some sharp elbows right to the gut in the face and if you can't take it you should

find a different business. But you're getting those more than anyone now because you're on that podcast chart, right? Because you're so influential, because you have such big numbers, is that, Megan, please sort out the Republican Party. Yeah. That's so weird. Pretty much everything I've seen since our last appearance, shall we say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Like, I didn't realize that this was, that I had helped precipitate this. I know. Me neither. I swear to god i didn't i i don't know where i went i went somewhere i was gone for like a week and i came back and i was like wait that time we were on that was like a thing and it's a thing and it's and that's just about your success and about your power because people presume that you have the power to move the party and move maga and expel people and accept people that's kind of a new

position for you i don't have that power that that is not uh within my capabilities nor do i want it to be in my power. You know, I mean, obviously we're talking about the pressure on me right now to like denounce Candace Owens or denounce Tucker, which I've said. I did that on your show, by the way. That's my role. Well, that's part of the point I was going to make. So, so there's a lot of pressure on me to do that and I'm not going to do that. And I've been having clear about that on Twitter. Yeah. I've been having Twitter wars, X wars. I've said it on my show and there people are very angry with me for not doing that. And, and that's people within your own camp, by the

A lot of people that I know that are friends of yours that have been pretty rough.

Well, they're very frustrated with some of the coverage that they're seeing from those two. And they think I have the power to like chastise them out of this coverage. And I don't think I have that power, nor would I exercise it if I did. I'm not interested in doing that. I am not godmother to the Republican Party. I'm not anybody's mommy. I'm responsible for what I say and only what I say. And my approach to covering the news and covering Republican politics and all the wars that we're discussing is generally to get as wide of a diversity Reverse viewpoint, you know, group of viewpoints on my show as I can. You know, you mentioned the tour. We're having Tucker Carlson on the tour and we're having Ben Shapiro, I think, the next night. Or it's reverse, like literally within a couple nights of each other. I think you're having the same night in a cage. If there's anybody in the nation who could get those two guys to come on together, it is me. I submit humbly. I really do think I could make that happen.

And your relationship with Ben Shapiro has not been... No, I love Ben.

We're really tight and he's been so respectful. he was on a few weeks ago. And we talked about my very mild criticisms of Israel. I mean, truly, like, I'm not an Israeli critic. I don't know why people are treating me like I am. It's because I won't denounce these other two. I've had some mild pushback. You know, I'm at the point, like, a lot of Americans where I just feel like, okay, it's gone on a long time and, like, I can see them losing all the support. But anyway, we talked about it. Ben agreed with what I was saying. He was like, they do need to wrap it up. They know that. I've said that to Netanyahu myself, he told me. So anyway, on this tour, we'll have Tucker. We'll have Ben. we'll have you guys who i think are more pro-israel or defensive of israel we'll have emily jashinsky we'll have glenn greenwald you know who are in the opposite glenn's gonna be on glenn's gonna be on yeah so i it's important to me to to be able to we have nro all the national review guys you know who are coming and they'll take a much more bellicose stance i think on some of these issues i and then a steve bannon type like he's he's mag like on my show it's important to me to be able to have all these people come and feel like their viewpoints will be respected and that they can express them fully. And then I trust my audience to make up their own minds. I am not in the business of then running around after you do me the courtesy of coming on my show and telling me your viewpoint of being like, he sucks. He's terrible. He's an anti-Semite or an Islamophobe or a racist, which I, I don't believe, you know, I, I just, I'm not going to do it. And now it's turned into like a like this this faction that's trying to pressure me online feels to me like the BLM people raise your fist and say it say it it does have that dimension and the answer is no yeah now that you're making me say it a condition of our relationship it's a hard no but it's literally a conversation we had you've only hardened my resolve to never do it like I will never be bullied ask anybody that's the one thing that I will never bend the knee to I'm not going to be

bullied I mean look is that it let me ask you a question about that because is that we we had saying we had lunch today and we're talking about this in that that is clearly your response on x and on your show is that the more you push me the more i'm going to say fuck you to you which is a honest and natural response irish yeah an irish response i don't want to impugn my people but that's who we are it's like don't fucking make me say it because i don't fucking punch you but that kind of response like if it wasn't that way if there wasn't that big push you just gave Andy McCarthy. Like, you know, you said, I love the guy, but here's, here's where I think he's wrong. So you can say that about people. You have said that about a lot of people, but when they say do it to Tucker or Candace, you pull back.

So Tucker is in a different camp because I adore Tucker. I really, I love him.

I will say, and I've said this, I've said this privately to people because incidentally, people have said it to me and probably to us we get a lot of emails like you're on megan show you know why aren't you saying x why are you still going on that kind of thing so we get it as you know second tier people too but for yourself a third tier i'm sorry i didn't want to i don't want to elevate you where you don't deserve to be that's fine but that kind of thing i understand and i knew tucker back in the day and you know i texted him about a year ago his libertarian days In his libertarian days. And we and he said in a text, like, I think we agree on a lot of things. I'm like, I don't think so these days. But I guess you probably do. You probably do. Maybe on some things, but there's big things. Right. Right. Huge things where I'm like, OK, you've gone to conspiracy world and I hate conspiracy world. But when it comes to those things, when it comes to Candace and Tucker and stuff, is it only because people are pushing you on this? And because of the people say the accusation of anti-Semitism, I will say forthrightly, full throatedly, that is an absurd bullshit charge that doesn't stick to you in any way. Dennis Prager, he I think he might be the prime minister of Israel. I'm not even sure. There's no one that loves Israel more than Dennis Prager, who made a video saying the same thing. And I think that that's true. At the same time, when it comes to these people, you know what my position is. i was on your show saying i when you said things are taken out of context you didn't tell me which

ones so i went back and watched i just said some of the things and i'm not saying that's not true

i don't know but it is true it happens sometimes well because i i said right after that they'd been taking charlie kirk out of context so i went back and i started watching and it is actually crazier than i thought i mean the the stuff these days is crazier than i thought and so i guess the question is like Like, what are the guardrails of who you want in the coalition? Who you, like, say, like, oh, these are people, like, Candace is very popular.

That's not up to me.

I know it's not. But if you say we're opinion mongers, that's what we do. We say this is our opinion of X, Y, and Z. Are there people that are off limits for sort of friendly reasons, I guess, in the Tucker sense?

Well, listen, there's a reason I've never invited on Nick Fuentes. Right? Yeah. Like, he's an interesting guy, from what I hear, but he's not my cup of tea.

He called Ben Shapiro today filth.

Filth. He filmed himself doing a little video game where he was shooting Jews wearing the yarmulke and said the one was Ben Shapiro. Good God. I don't really need to see an additional video to figure out who he is. I'm good. I got it. That was years ago and I, whatever. Okay, I see he's having a resurgence. That's up to people if they want to listen to him. He, by the way, still not a fan of the Jews. Just in that time, he was like, ah, yeah. Whereas I, on the other hand, have been very defensive of American Jews. I feel like they were bullied. They were harassed. What's been happening to them on college campuses is a travesty. The ripping down of the hostage posters was absolutely disgusting. Now, I make a distinction there between them and Israel, who I have no obligation to defend. But my fellow Americans who are being subjected to blatant anti-Semitism, yes, every day of the week I've defended them and will continue to. I don't have to defend Israel and I don't defend Israel. You know, I generally am on Israel's side. I'm certainly not on the side of Hamas, which is a terrorist organization and was absolutely vile and disgusting in that 10-7 attack. And I cried on the air after it happened. But that doesn't mean I don't get to criticize Israel. I think it's gone on too long. And as much as I see that Hamas is great at propaganda, they've been controlling the narrative, the Gaza Ministry of Peace, whatever they put out. Those numbers are all lies. And a lot of these photos are lies. And they put out the sickest child that they've made sick. I know what Hamas does. Trust me. And I've been covering it. But that doesn't mean that the devastation and destruction can go on forever. And Israel's now taken out Hezbollah. It's decimated Hamas. It had a war with Iran that we almost got dragged into, you know, in more full flower. It's time to wrap it up in this American's view. I am entitled to that opinion and I will not be shamed out of it by being called an anti-semite now as for my decision to platform tucker too bad too fucking bad I love him we're friends I don't think he's an anti-semite at all I've don't listen to all of tucker's shows I don't listen to all your shows I don't have that many hours broadcasting 17 hours a day seriously so

like I raise my kids our shows are very anti-semitic sometimes I don't know we have weak moments yeah That's you too.

But I don't really care. I think Tucker's a very important, valuable voice in the national conversation. I'm thrilled. Do you think he has a platform?

I think Candace is a part from Tucker.

I don't know her. I don't really know her that well. Although I will tell you, we recently had a very nice exchange before all this. And I was just reminded in my own head that Candace is a young mom of like three young kids. She's under a lot of pressure. She's got a big show. she's she's been under attack since she since she came onto the public airwaves and she's been under attack constantly and i it's my prerogative if i say to myself that is not someone i wish to attack i do not feel that way i don't want to do it and i felt this way and now that people have made my attacking her the stakes of my relationship with whatever person is saying this i'm gonna have to say goodbye to that person i won't do it i think now it's like a point of pride it's it's literally the same thing as the BLM folks trying to make you raise your fist. The answer is no.

I think there's a lot of truth to that. And I would take it out of the realm of kind of personal appraisal of this person and whether or not you like them and care about them. And just like we began the conversation talking about Charlie's death and murder. And of late, there have been a number of people, not solely Candace, this is not about her, but a number of people promulgating conspiracy theories. And we live in an age of conspiracy theories. The left and the right are stewing them in ways that make me deeply, deeply uncomfortable. And one of the latest conspiracy theories is, and it's multidimensional, always in these ways that are completely bizarre, that Turning Points had some financial issues, that Israel or the Jews broadly were somehow involved in his death and it was because of this this change and it just it is so obviously ridiculous self-evidently ridiculous that i i find myself amazed that anyone can take this on board and precisely the way i was amazed in 2020 when i saw this incredible harassment taking place on street corners when people are trying to have dinner or any number of other insane ideas and i actually saw a kid when you were at a turning points event recently ask you a question about this, about Nick Fuentes in particular, but also just about this cadre of people who believe in and are pushing like the most outrageous ideas. And it does seem like there are moments where you

have said this is not the way these are not conspiratorial at all like i'm i'm much closer to where you guys are and i'm just i i'm not a conspiracy yeah i'm really not i'm like trust

the government yeah really like we don't do that exactly i don't trust that but i truly like i i

don't believe in almost any of these conspiracies i really don't um are you concerned about the this

are you as concerned as i am or perhaps how concerned are you about the specter of all of the conspiracy theories in our politics. Do you think you don't think it's an important part of

what's happening? I think, well, like, first of all, I think the antidote to it is not to run around attacking these people, but to just say what's true. Like, I agree with that. You know, I was asked and I've said on my show many times what I think happened to Charlie. And I do believe he was murdered by Tyler Robinson, a disaffected young man who had, I don't know, maybe had a good childhood. It's not clear to me. I want to know more, frankly. And then fell into this very bizarre group and started dating a trans person who's also a furry and himself got into furry culture according to his social media and became untethered and then was fed a bunch of lies about Charlie. I think we don't actually know how he came to believe Charlie was a fascist and hate hateful and all the things he said about Charlie. But I'm going to bet he was listening to the American media and the American left. That's actually one of the things I'd like to find out more about him and got it in his head that murder was an answer. And I do think, as we talked about earlier, the cheers for Luigi Mangione may have played into that. You know, we'll have to find all those facts out. But that's what I think happened. And I have spent zero time, literally zero, entertaining videotapes of the bullet and the this and I don't, I just don't go there. And I actually have a policy in general of not allowing that stuff to infect my mind. Because I do think if you spent a lot of time pondering, did we land on the moon? You could maybe get sucked into it. I just don't want to. I only have limited hours in the day. I have real problems that people are suffering from right now that I do have to weigh in on and help people navigate. And this stuff doesn't seem to be on my list. It doesn't need to be on my list. And I choose not to make it on my list.

How did the Charlie Kirk assassination change you, if it did, or your sense of things? and was there a moment or two or 17 where you're like maybe i'm not gonna go in public in front of thousands of people a lot in the very near future how did that play out i mean you did at a turning

point event yeah like a week or 10 days later and i was like well i mean it has changed me it's only

it's been less than three weeks um i mean right now i'm still angry about it yeah it's dissipating like you could say how are you and i could honestly say i'm great you know i am i'm great like my life is great thank god but you know i wouldn't have said the word great a week into it and but now i'm starting to feel more like myself um i'm still very angry which for me is like a

great emotion i love anger i do we couldn't tell i know you love anger i do megan that's what fuels

you it really helps you work through an issue you know you express it and then it's out of you and you feel good like in my but that's okay but that's a different but that's a different

relationship with anger because some people nurture the contempt they want to stew in it and that's very different than i'm angry i've expressed that i've dealt with it in some way

yes expressing it is what it's the release it's like yes okay i've expressed it and therefore i feel better and like i'm okay now like we've worked it out we've called out bad guys and like bad behavior so i find that very cathartic and i think a lot of my audience does too and i think anger is an appropriate reaction to a lot of what we see um i think suppressing anger would be far worse or pretending that it's something else no it's a real emotion it's a real emotion

my sort of anger about this until one time i didn't want to talk about this just me talking about it is to that one person who shall not be named candace the thing that made me the thing made me angry about this um is that she has been stewing in insane anti-semitic conspiracy theories and i i don't say as of tucker i'm just saying specifically of her that i have known because i've studied this stuff for a long time history is my interest particularly 20th century history we've seen this the judeo bolsheviks and all this stuff i've heard a million times stalin was jewish everything bad was jewish was that to use the opportunity of charlie's death to talk about Israel, when Israel is not part of that conversation beyond the conversation, let's say, that you had with him, which I don't think there's any difference between that letter and what he talked about with you. Because to say, I support Israel and I'm upset about where this is going, it's, you know, the numbers are going down amongst young people. Let's wrap this up. Is it, is, as I

said on the show, you know, my friend Eli. I do think there's a little difference just to put a pin. Okay, we can start with it. But, you know, my friend Eli Lake, who's just like, I don't think they should go into Gaza City again. People in Israel are opposed to Netanyahu and this stuff. So there's that kind of tumult and debate that you have in Israel and amongst people who are supportive of Israel. But the fact that I turn her show on, and it's a long disquisition on Israel's potential involvement in this, is that this is your deranged obsession. And now you're applying it with zero evidence. Zero. We were talking before. We care about evidence. Zero evidence that there's some involvement of Israel in this crime. and to say that i'm overstating that is not only no one has but i can see the comments right now is i'm understating it i've watched this stuff and i'm blown away by it particularly because she's up in the top 10 of these podcast charts too yeah and this disgusting stuff is just jew obsessed i'm sorry she is jew obsessed and i could make a two-hour clip of her talking about what's Jewish and what the Jewish people are doing here. Not Israeli people, talking about Jewish people. Stalin was Jewish. Lenin was Jewish. Who was the, the Bolshevik revolution was all Jews. And like, okay, this is just classic, boring antisemitism. And I know the sensitivity that we have of being called racist because we have talked about things since the beginning of the show to now. And you say, oh, that jeans ad, you like the jeans ad, you're a racism this is not that i am very finely tuned to that stuff this is just deranged bananas conspiracy and anti-semitism the people who i know who have been supporters and fans of hers who have texted me after our appearance which i didn't know made any impact at first was like no no it's worse and sending me these lists of this stuff in my anger about this stuff was that that was used in the same way the shooting of Donald Trump was used to make political points outside the purview of what was at hand there. Let's bring Israel. What the fuck are you talking about? What does Israel have to do? Well, Charlie was shaky on that. Yeah, let's talk about that. That's fine. We should look at his legacy.

Well, that's what we talked about.

Yeah, we talked about that, but that's totally fine to talk about. But the reason we were talking about it was because these deranged lunatics were saying, Well, the Israelis must have killed her because he was getting killed him because he was getting a little shaky on Israel, which is like beyond comprehension that sensible people could think that. So my anger about that is not about cleansing this, that and, you know, you should gatekeep here. And personally, I saw that stuff and I thought it was fucking disgusting and a disgusting way of treating somebody's brutal murder to make your little fucking pet political cause. the number one thing and why have all the episodes since then been about Israel? Why not just about him and his legacy and not about the thing that you decided you cared about a couple years ago, a year and a half ago, whatever it is? I find that deeply, deeply unsettling.

Well, I totally understand that. I mean, I'm not going to comment on it for the reasons that I've discussed. And I haven't seen one minute of it. I don't, I haven't seen the show. I haven't seen a clip. I haven't seen any of this stuff.

No, this isn't answer for that.

This is my own irritation. I totally, I hear you. Not at all lubricated by. And like, of course, I have plenty of Jewish people and Jewish friends in my life who have said similar things to me. So I know you're giving voice to a real sentiment that's out there. And Jews are already in the minority and they already feel under attack and they feel like anti-Semitism doesn't matter to anybody. And their people are getting shot outside of the embassy in Washington. And then there's no follow up.

And I get all of that. Killed in Denver with a Molotov cocktail, killed in California to protest. And that's ignored.

So I get all of that. I just if people want me to be the policewoman of the Republican Party and I'm not going to be. And I do think that they made a mistake in trying to force me to comment on something because ultimately, like if this took its course, I probably would have weighed in at some point. But now it's a matter of principle. Now it's like, you know, you will bend or we won't watch you. OK, then I guess you're not going to watch me because I'm not playing this game. I didn't play it. I didn't post a black square. I didn't raise a fist. I never said BLM. Well, that's because you were a racist. Other than with scorn. Fine. That's fine.

There is Megan's black square.

Truly.

They've been calling me a racist and a transphobe. Megan, you're in a black talk today for a black last time. All these things for years. And I know I'm not those things either. And I know I'm not an anti-Semite. And anybody who says that, because I won't say the magical words about Candace, can F off. Because I know who I am and I've earned the right to more grace on this issue than that. But if they don't want to give it to me, that's a them problem. Like, I don't know what to say about it. Like, I've definitely got my thoughts. Trust me, I've got my thoughts, but they're mine.

Yeah. You were saying- Do you want to throw away the list of people that we wanted her to expel from the party? Matt printed it out. Taped underneath the table.

You said earlier about how you speak MAGA. You speak MAGA a little bit better than maybe some of our friends at National Review. And by the way, I don't have TDS. I have JD DS. Not any personal animus, but like you need derangement for derangement syndrome. My derangement towards JD was that he wasn't going to win the Senate in Ohio, which I said many, many times. Maybe on your show. Definitely on this show. Now he's like the vice president. He's going to be the next president. I was just super duper wrong about it. We try hard not to do predictions.

You think Andy McCarthy was wrong. God, no. His track record is horrible. It's very embarrassing.

He's honest, it is wrongness.

You speaking MAGA is, at least in part, you speaking with your audience, I would imagine, right?

Yeah, a large portion of them.

You are an independent powerhouse producer. What do you think about, how do you, do you worry, do you disregard the concept of audience capture? Everybody who is in the podcast space thinks about this at some point. Does your audience want you to be like this and they mau-mau you to go and to be part of this? Do you worry about this? Is this something you conceptualize?

No, because I think I'm in the advantaged place of them knowing they can't rely on me to only whisper sweet nothings to them about Donald Trump. Like, they know that. So I've built the audience by saying what's real, even if it's bad for Trump. Like, the numbers only have gone up after years of me doing that. So they know what they're getting. And the ones who wanted to abandon me for somebody who was always purely supportive of Trump probably did that long ago. Because there are a lot of options out there who will do that, who will just defend the president at every turn. It's actually kind of funny because Charlie was such a person. Like, Charlie loved the president so much. And he—I never had—like, people say, what would Charlie have said about this or that or the other? And I'm always like, Charlie would have defended Trump. That's generally what he did because he was such a believer in him and also was such a graceful, loving, good faith kind of guy. Like he always looked at Trump through the most generous lens. He could interpret anything he did through a generous lens. In any event, I'm not like that. I'm a cynical mofo who interprets almost nothing through a generous lens. I'm all out of generosity.

That's the title of the episode, by the way, people. All cynical generosity, the Megan Kellogg story.

Listen to the AM update show we did today. Today I had on Glenn Greenwald. We covered a different range. But like on the morning update show, it was about this new deal he's taken with Pfizer, the drug company to like oh we're going to lower the prescription drug costs you can go and yeah

i saw that i hadn't listened to it i was like that's not going to be a positive trump no it

wasn't it wasn't so we talked about what he did because we got to give the president his due this is something mostly democrats but also republicans have wanted for years or lower drugs cheaper rates why do we have to pay more why aren't we most favored nation status on our medicaid drug costs get it reported it and then part two was about how pfizer fucking sucks and your entire administration has been telling us that they're lying felons for years. We ran an RFKJ SOT saying exactly that. We ran a Peter Navarro SOT saying Pfizer's been lying to him. We read a bunch of tweets saying this is a total betrayal. This villainous company that's never been held to account for its failure to disclose the health risks, myocarditis, and other vaccine side effects. They lied about it stopping contagion. So that was also in there. Now that's, if you can't go to a person who's only going to whisper Trump's sweet nothings to you, I'm not for you.

Is that the big concern? Like the Pfizer thing, which I hadn't listened to and I was like, Megan's going to be on fire about this one when I saw it. But you're not somebody who does that. And you, you know, call the president out when you think he's wrong about things. And I know a lot of people in the MAGA universe that have their kind of breaking point on certain things. And some people, it's foreign policy, bombing Iran. I mean, that'd be somebody like Glenn. what is it for you when you look at what trump has been doing in this term which is much more aggressive term than the first term where you say this i'm a little uneasy about or it could go pear-shaped or it is going pear-shaped now and i'm like upset about the president um there have

been a couple things like if i if i could take out my eraser and do some of the trump behaviors like i'm not thrilled at what he's doing to the law firms yeah yeah i don't think it's illegal but i don't love it yeah um i don't love some of the like the intel deal that that feels a little soviet yeah right don't love that thank you megan don't love libertarians say thank you don't love some of like the money-making ventures you know for the trump family don't destroy my trump coin

value right now but listen i literally opened a hotel a trump hotel in riyadh this week is that

true yeah but i miss that like no i do have a tough time getting too worked up about it given hunter biden you know what i mean like they didn't care they let their guy grift all the way into the white house and while he was there so like i'm really having difficulty working up too much of ire about it but like if i have met the eraser again and can undo whatever like i have a problem with i i don't love that so those are the things that come to mind off top why do you think those

things happen though for trump because i mean he's not somebody who's

You

you know motivated by ideology in the way that sort of we are money he likes money yeah but is it like he's mad do you do you think he's a principled guy that has a series of principles

that he adheres to the principles are what is good for me all right i got my answer and i think that i said this when he was running that i think of course trump is a narcissist so is obama like you kind of have to be the run president yeah that's like part of the job description so maybe trump has an extra dose of it like it could be you know he's had two or three

of the shots as opposed to just the one i think my fourth if you're keeping track at home in our

first video episode number four so so that's true but i always believed about him that if you could align the country with his own ego like what is good for america i mean that makes trump look and feel good we would win like we actually would get tired of all the winning and he probably would

work with anyone to to get those things done our producers gesticulating wildly at me or at least he has been subtly she hasn't gesticulating wildly so i know you've got to run yeah yeah it's a bit of a tradition to on the exit say thank you while asking a last question and the last question i mean this is this is easy but i desperately want to know yeah what are the next

five years look like oh hopefully very much like the last five you know i i don't want to do anything different i love what i'm doing right now i you know when i was at fox and i was a

correspondent are you gonna divorce doug anytime oh hell no i gotta i gotta say it bernard goldberg had a piece if you're wondering why i'm sitting between these two it's because of him this would

be very clear yeah no your future at cbs i mean as if what the fuck was that he wrote him he wrote me an apologetic note okay yeah i think he was genuinely fooled by somebody giving him bad information. I was not at CBS. I did not have a screen test. A screen test? You're not going to do a screen test.

She's never been on TV before. Let's see what she does.

Are you fucking kidding me?

That was the tell. The screen test.

I don't know why he went with it, but I'm not going to CBS. I wasn't at CBS. I didn't have a screen test. I would never go. No offense, but I'm so over that world. This is so much better. Look what we do now. We're just sitting here drinking whiskey in the middle of the day. Just with friends, talking about the news. It's the middle of the day? sorry this is so much more enriching yeah than anything i ever did on cable news on broadcast anywhere and i worked for abc first then many years at fox then mbc so i've been around but you started abc i did the first year in television was part-time at abc news working for a guy named bill lord down in uh washington dc wjla and that's how i got my start i was still practicing law anyway my point is i've never been happier and and while i was at fox i was a correspondent i thought maybe I could be an anchor. And then I was co-hosting a show. I thought maybe I could like co-host my own show. Right. And then I co-hosting your own show in the middle of the day. You're like, maybe I could be in the primetime one day. Now, having done all that, I have no desire. Like I'm finally doing exactly what I want to be doing. I do not have some like higher goal that I want to attain. I just want to keep doing this. And if I could keep doing this, raising my kids, being with my family a great amount of the day, I'll be perfectly happy. let's go

awesome MK thank you so much for coming all the way down here to visit us

thank you guys for helping make the show so successful

she did have an appointment by the way yeah we did help that's why she's in we did help thank you

we booked the appointment after I accepted is that true

can we get some receipts on that we'll put them on the screen just to make sure that that's true

for the record

thank you Moynihan's gonna pick up the bill this time so it's fine I will it's been a pleasure good luck bye which was said within a slight intimidation good luck no no no good luck you fucking losers we know a new method of attacks. The Trojan Horse. The Fifth Column.