Absurd New Resistance Efforts for Trump Address, and Dems Vote Against Protecting Women's Sports, with the Fifth Column | Ep. 1018

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Speaker 2 Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.

Speaker 2 Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
It is the first big President Trump address tonight since taking office.

Speaker 2 Not that he hasn't been making news on a daily basis since his inauguration 43 days ago. Overnight, he paused all military aid going to Ukraine, for now, at least.

Speaker 2 And those tariffs on Canada and Mexico officially took effect. Plus, he hiked the ones on China by another 10%.

Speaker 2 Those stories, both could evolve throughout the day today, and there might be announcements coming tonight during the speech.

Speaker 2 There's probably going to be something up his sleeve, something big to announce. We'll find out.
The theme of the president's speech tonight, the renewal of the American dream.

Speaker 2 Democrats were told in closed-door meetings Monday night to avoid using props to disrupt Mr. Trump's speech.

Speaker 2 What did they have in mind? But an Axios report details the wide array of disruptions Democrats may deploy, including hand clappers.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Please let that happen.

Speaker 2 Doge signs and empty egg cartons.

Speaker 2 Joining me now today for the full show are friends from the fifth column podcast, Camille Foster of Freethink, Michael Moynihan, whose two-way show, The Moynihan Report, launches later this month, and Matt Welsh of Reason Magazine.

Speaker 2 You can find their work and subscribe at wethefifth.com.

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Speaker 2 welcome back guys so like the hand clappers that you have like on new year's like the little the little plastic things you get

Speaker 2 what is a hand

Speaker 12 what is a hand clapper i just aren't your hands for clapping i mean have we gone from a you lie to president obama to people bringing in air horns like they're at a goddamn FIFA game?

Speaker 12 Like what is happening here? This is ridiculous. That was remember the you lie thing was the most controversial thing of like a month.
We were in a more innocent country back then.

Speaker 12 More innocent country. It's all like professional wrestling all the way down from now on.

Speaker 2 The empty egg cartons, like literally, they were in charge of everything up until what, six weeks ago?

Speaker 2 Who is that going to persuade?

Speaker 12 See, I think what they have to do is bring the chicken coop cage

Speaker 12 after the comments yesterday from

Speaker 12 the Trump administration. Like, just get your own chickens in the backyard.

Speaker 2 That's not going to be a problem.

Speaker 12 Or maybe a sugar maple tap so that we can all have maple syrup now.

Speaker 2 I mean, I like, this can't be what this cannot be the plan. I realize they don't have Nancy Pelosi positioned behind President Trump anymore because she's not Speaker of the House.

Speaker 2 It'll be Republican Mike Johnson and J.D. Vance.
But like,

Speaker 2 there's going to have to be something better. I mean, what we're hearing is some are going to no show.

Speaker 2 And then they said to the ones, I guess the leadership was saying, no, you should show up, but you should bring somebody, should bring somebody who will make a point.

Speaker 2 By the way, like, is that a thing? I don't remember like the Congress members ever bringing a guest. Isn't it just the president who brings a guest and puts them up in the first lady's box?

Speaker 2 Or is it a thing for all the congressmen to do it?

Speaker 12 The Congress people have been bringing, they usually have a one spot and they will do theatrical things. Thomas Massey brought someone last year.
I forget who, but it was

Speaker 12 kind of on some point. I think the problem is that Democrats are just not as good at like troll culture as Republicans.
And I don't say that necessarily as a compliment to Republicans.

Speaker 12 I kind of wish that we would go to a different place in our governing universe than trolling all the time.

Speaker 12 But Democrats, what did they do? They all wore white a couple of years ago or several times in the past. I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of handmaid's tale thing.

Speaker 12 There was talk of like, oh, they're going to bring a fired government federal employee to sit next to them. And

Speaker 12 I might, you know, if I knew more federal employees, I might know someone that would be personally sad about. But like, this is just not going to resonate with anyone, really?

Speaker 12 Like, oh my God, they fired a federal employee.

Speaker 2 That's not really going to get the job done. Oh, and by the way, there's talk about some, this literally was in one of the reports today about wearing the

Speaker 2 pink p hats. Some are going to wear the pink pee hats.
I mean, yes, that's in one of the reports today. I don't know whether you're dumb enough to do it.

Speaker 2 I don't know. And that's the one word I don't say.
I say them all, almost all. Really? It's a short list of ones I won't say.

Speaker 12 Oh, wow. Okay.
But be sure not to say it.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you're so like aggressive. And they use a lovely lady part and they turn it into something like aggressively vulgar.
And I just, I decline to participate.

Speaker 12 Well, I want to agree with you on one thing. It is a lovely lady part.

Speaker 2 But I want to continue and say that

Speaker 12 the most amazing thing to me is we have these conversations and you see them with, you know, bozos like Steve Schmidt and Chuck Todd about, you know, the president's age and should Jake Tapper write this book and Biden, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 12 We shouldn't have done this. We shouldn't have done that.
Donald Trump is giving Democrats a lot of openings. It doesn't matter if you agree with them or not.

Speaker 12 There's just a lot of openings because there's a lot happening. What are they doing in response? I mean, where is the political strategy here?

Speaker 12 Like, we're going to have like noisemakers and we're going to throw egg crates. And like, what are you talking about? Seriously, you've had the time now to assimilate this defeat from November.

Speaker 12 Notice, by the way, that Donald Trump is actually keeping his promises in an aggressive way, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't.

Speaker 12 But, you know, the way in which he's handling it, you know, Elon Musk, all this stuff, there's so many openings.

Speaker 12 I see people burning Tesla chargers in towns that are, you know, one away from where I grew up, but I don't see, I don't see a lot of strategy when it comes to policy and when it comes time to fighting back.

Speaker 12 I mean, you notice MSNBC, they're like, all right, we're going to get rid of Joy Reed, and then we're going to replace her with another Joy Reed, right? And this is like all these people.

Speaker 12 It's like the exact same strategy you guys had for the previous Trump administration and the previous four years of Joe Biden in which you fought the future Trump administration.

Speaker 12 I mean, I don't see any strategy here from Democrats whatsoever.

Speaker 2 They don't have one.

Speaker 2 The most they've come up with is organizing like move on to send some nasty protesters to some of these Republican town halls to make it seem like Republicans are very mad at Republicans.

Speaker 2 And maybe there are some Republicans, but for the most part, these are Democrat operatives showing up at Republican town halls to yell at them.

Speaker 2 Yes, okay, hold on. This is Politico.

Speaker 2 Let me see, where is it? Politico. Large-scale disruption is still unlikely tonight.

Speaker 2 Some lawmakers have privately discussed walking out as an entire caucus during the speech or wearing pink hats in protest, but there's less enthusiasm for such demonstrations than in the past years.

Speaker 2 Camille, they just can't get excited about wearing all white or wearing the pink p-hats tonight. Maybe there will be a couple of brave souls who will do it.
We'll have to tune in to find out.

Speaker 2 You think that's really going to move the electorate in favor of their party?

Speaker 13 I think bringing back the pink hats is about the only chance that they have tonight. And they just should find the strength within themselves to get those things someplace.

Speaker 13 I'm sure that the Trump administration would be trembling with fear if he had to stare into the gallery and saw nothing but a sea of these hands.

Speaker 12 I mean,

Speaker 12 they are flailing.

Speaker 13 They are flailing at a time when they really ought to be getting their stuff together. And the fact that, you know, AOC and was the other,

Speaker 13 what's Congressman Jasmine Sullivan or something like that?

Speaker 12 Crockett. Crockett.

Speaker 13 I mean, these are the two most prominent Democrats in America at the moment. That is not a good thing by any stretch of the imagination.

Speaker 13 They seem to be on their back foot when they're not airing conspiracy theories about the worst possible imaginable thing that Elon Musk is imagined to be doing with Doge.

Speaker 13 They're just utterly...

Speaker 13 quiet, which is very, very strange. There are a plethora of things that they could be talking about and that they could be agitating about.

Speaker 13 I think the president has had any number of important victories, but he's also done lots of things that they could actually be out in the field criticizing. And they're just not doing

Speaker 13 a great job in opposition.

Speaker 2 No, they're not. And so, here,

Speaker 2 I knew you were coming, so we checked out the view today. And here was their

Speaker 2 recommendation for how their team should handle tonight's address.

Speaker 2 I think they should walk out en masse.

Speaker 2 Naked or clothes? Naked.

Speaker 2 Naked and

Speaker 2 I mean, they should walk out, you know.

Speaker 2 Boys, they're going to be a laugh track, by the way?

Speaker 2 I think they should walk out. I think that a picture is worth a thousand words.
There would be joy to a certain extent. I actually don't think that they should show up at all.

Speaker 2 I think that when history resurfaces the photos of this first speech in this abnormal presidency, he said he was going to be a dictator from day one, and we warned about the demise of our democracy and the rise of fascism, And I think we've seen it in the first days of his presidency.

Speaker 2 I think the record will show that the room was half empty.

Speaker 2 Wow. Okay.

Speaker 2 There's a proposal.

Speaker 12 That is with the absolute worst advice. Like fascism.

Speaker 13 Fascism is on the rise. It's on the march and we didn't show up.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That is the advice.
We ran

Speaker 2 incredible.

Speaker 12 But also from the idea that maybe Chuck Schumer will be naked.

Speaker 2 So just like, have that in your brain.

Speaker 2 Is that the one that's reaping the whirlwind he talked about? Because that really would make me behave differently.

Speaker 2 You mentioned Jasmine Crockett. Can I just give you a word on her?

Speaker 2 There was like, there were all sorts of reactions to the Zelensky-Trump Oval Office meeting. Hers began as follows.

Speaker 2 In short,

Speaker 2 bullies ain't shit.

Speaker 2 Bullies ain't shit. I just

Speaker 2 that qualifies as her, I guess, sophisticated political analysis from an elected elected representatives. Bullies ain't shit.
Oh, okay. Thank you, Harry.

Speaker 13 Congresswoman Cardi B.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 13 Cardi B would be a little bit more eloquent.

Speaker 2 She's probably,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 she might make it rhyme. I don't know.

Speaker 2 But yeah, that's the level of political discourse.

Speaker 2 I mean, I do think Trump he's got an opportunity tonight because usually at this point, the reason they don't call it a State of the Union address is because when it's your first year in office, you've only been there for a few weeks and you usually haven't gotten anything done.

Speaker 2 And by God, not the case at all. I mean, just the Lake and Riley Act would be reason enough to hold this address and get into the specifics of what's happened at the border.
You know,

Speaker 2 the reports are, and Trump has been saying that the numbers are down more than 100% at the border. The latest is that we're down 94% of crossings at the border.

Speaker 2 I mean, it was like almost 200,000 a month this time last year, and it's down to 8,000 a month this year.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's incredible what he's, he's, he has sealed up the border almost as, as much as is humanly possible, but there's so much beyond the executive order.

Speaker 2 This is just an extraordinary presidency so far in terms of volume and the number of things that, you know, some might have predicted this older, perhaps tired, second go-it-it president could possibly get done.

Speaker 2 He's governing like his life depends on it with the number of things going on. So I think it's actually going to feel and sound very much like a victory speech.

Speaker 2 Like, here are all the things we've already delivered on for you, and it will be a substantial list. So, what do you guys think?

Speaker 12 I mean,

Speaker 12 always remember when you're talking about State of the Union addresses that 90% of it will be forgotten within a week, and including many of the promises that are made about what's going to happen in the future.

Speaker 12 If you look back at 2017, Trump's first one,

Speaker 12 he had nice words to say about Justin Trudeau. He says, you know, we support NATO strongly, and he bragged a lot about how the stock market had done since his election.

Speaker 12 So I don't think we're going to see either of those or any of those discussed in great detail.

Speaker 12 And they spend most of the time talking about how they're going to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something, which didn't happen, not all.

Speaker 2 At his

Speaker 12 hands, but it's so we're going to hear things like that that don't really matter that much. And we're doing it on a day where we started a trade war.

Speaker 12 This is a much more consequential single-day policy than almost anything he did last time around.

Speaker 12 And I'm sure if Michael Moynihan is glancing down furiously at his desk, he's watching his stock portfolio continue. Rumble, massacred.

Speaker 2 Today is not the day for that.

Speaker 12 Today's supernatural. Yesterday wasn't either.

Speaker 2 Trump thought that that was going to be something to tout, right? I mean, he made the deadline for them to do.

Speaker 2 It wasn't really clear exactly what he wanted them to do in Canada and Mexico in order not to be subjected to these tariffs

Speaker 2 right before. this address.
So clearly Trump wanted to use that in his speech tonight. And he said, well, they haven't accomplished enough.

Speaker 2 But again, it was kind of unclear what exactly are they supposed to do.

Speaker 2 We realize that the border is not secure because of Mexico, and he's still complaining about the amount of fentanyl that's coming across it.

Speaker 2 Yes, I think everybody agrees there were some stats around that were very bad in terms of busts we just made.

Speaker 2 And it's coming across the Canadian border.

Speaker 2 Some reason

Speaker 2 about the trade deficit with Canada, and that's why he's punishing them. It remains unclear.
Trump hasn't said specifically, here are your sins, at least not as much with respect to Canada.

Speaker 2 He keeps pointing to, yes, fentanyl, but also trade deficit. So now they're each facing

Speaker 2 tariffs.

Speaker 12 He's come up with six.

Speaker 2 Well, anyway, so let's talk about it because he's very happy about it. And he clearly thinks he's going to, A, get money for the United States from doing this.

Speaker 2 He points out that, like, Canada's got all these banks in the United States, but not a single American bank is allowed in Canada. How's that fair? Right?

Speaker 2 Like, just these basic things that frankly people can understand. They're like, you're right.
There is a bank from Canada down the road.

Speaker 2 Why can't we have this sort of basic fairness is what Trump's going for. You guys, as libertarians, are not big fans of tariffs.

Speaker 2 We had a conversation when Trump first announced that he might slap 10% tariffs across the board months and months and months ago. And now

Speaker 2 he's done it. It's not 10% across the board, but these are big old tariffs on two of our so-called friends.
So what do you make of them?

Speaker 13 I mean, they're huge tariffs.

Speaker 12 This is the time for him to tout them today. He should do it today because the tail of this is not going to look good for him.
And we already see this echoing out into certain input costs.

Speaker 12 I mean, we've seen a lot of numbers in this, and the Wall Street Journal has been covering this pretty closely, is that in anticipation of these tariffs, the input costs for a lot of things, a lot of American manufacturing have gone through the roof.

Speaker 12 You have also seen a lot of Republican congressmen, Republican senators talking both off the record and on the record, that they're really fearful of what this is going to to do, particularly in agriculture, because we always think about this as an export thing only.

Speaker 12 I mean, import thing only. We want to put barriers up because someone's being unfair to us and we will reap the benefits.
Remember, Donald Trump says that the tariffs are going to pay for themselves.

Speaker 12 on their own. The most lovely word in the English language, according to Donald Trump, is tariffs.
So why would you ever take them down? Why would you ever use them as leverage?

Speaker 12 Why not just keep them in forever if they're so consequential to the American economy and in a positive way?

Speaker 12 I mean, there's literally no economists that you can find that believe that trade is a net negative.

Speaker 12 They think it's a net positive that has some sort of factors that aren't great that you have to account for, you know, the hollowing out of certain American industries that was kind of inevitable in any case, but there was some consequences of free trade.

Speaker 12 But on net, it is a very, very positive thing for the... American consumer.
And when you see people like American farmers, they export so much stuff.

Speaker 12 And this is is going to really hit their bottom line and they're worried about it. And a lot of people.

Speaker 2 Donald Trump has suggested it might.

Speaker 12 Yeah, and Ron Jones did the first time around talking about it.

Speaker 12 And these are much more consequential tariffs than the first time around.

Speaker 12 So I think that, you know, the Wall Street Journal had an editorial the other day that said it was, you know, we're again back to the dumbest tariffs of all time. We'll see.

Speaker 12 They do not look good for the American consumer. And we are going to take a hit.
It's just going to happen.

Speaker 12 It's just a matter of how much can the American voter and consumer take of this and how much will they blame Donald Trump in the law run.

Speaker 2 Just FYI, this is what the White House put out on a fact sheet on its tariffs to justify the tariffs in part. And I'm bringing this part up because it mentions more about Canada.

Speaker 2 A recent study recognized Canada's heightened domestic production of fentanyl and its growing footprint within international narcotics distribution.

Speaker 2 Canada-based drug trafficking organizations maintain robust super labs, mostly in rural and dense areas in western Canada, some of which can produce 44 to 66 pounds of fentanyl weekly.

Speaker 2 Last year's northern border fentanyl,

Speaker 2 though smaller than Mexico's, could kill 9.5 million Americans due to the drug's potency. Proof of Canada's growing role in this crisis.

Speaker 2 Fentanyl seizures at the northern border in the first four months of the fiscal year are quickly closing in on what was seized the entirety of fiscal year 2022.

Speaker 2 Both nations' failure to arrest traffickers, seize drugs, or coordinate with U.S. law enforcement constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to America's security.

Speaker 2 Do you think President Trump wants them to step up

Speaker 2 crackdown on fentanyl and greater crackdowns on the border? Or do you think President Trump wants to extract the 25% penalty?

Speaker 2 Which one is the better result in his mind?

Speaker 12 I think the answer is yes.

Speaker 12 And I would also point out that that White House press release, if you look at a map of where those border seizures happened, some of our states that border Canada have a lot lot of territory south of that border, and that's where some of those seizures took place.

Speaker 12 It wasn't necessarily like border interdictions. The reason that you mentioned fentanyl is that that gives you the national security excuse.
That's why.

Speaker 12 It's not, it's not, you know, this is an emergency declaration. You need some reason for the emergency.
So the emergency with Canada is fentanyl.

Speaker 12 The emergency in the southern border is for the cartels. I think it is appropriate to take it as BS,

Speaker 12 that it's just a fig leaf to do a thing that Trump wants to do. And that's also illustrated by the fact that it's one of a half a dozen.
You mentioned banks, and there are U.S.

Speaker 12 banks that operate in Canada, including retail, but not in every single sector. And there is protectionism associated with that.
But Trump has also mentioned the amount that Canada puts into NATO.

Speaker 12 There have been a whole number of different rationales for this. I think the best way to understand what Trump wants to do with tariffs is that Trump wants to do tariffs.

Speaker 12 He modeled himself after William McKinley. He likes to call himself tariff man, all of these things.

Speaker 12 He truly believes that we can swap the federal income tax with a tariff system, as was indeed the case in America between 1870 and 1913. So let's do that all over again.

Speaker 12 It can't happen because the president can do the tariffs, but cannot necessarily do the tax reform exactly the way that he wants to do it. That has to go through Congress.

Speaker 12 But he really, truly believes this. And so he's going to,

Speaker 12 because precisely his second administration is a lot more lubricated. It's just going.
It is getting things done in a way that the first administration is done.

Speaker 12 You'll see the rhetoric associated with his first State of the Union much different than his first, as you rightly pointed out, Megan. But one of the things that

Speaker 12 he has wanted to do for a really long time is tariffs. And so that's why they are done.
I don't think it's a negotiating tactic at this point. It is an expression of his ideology.

Speaker 12 And one thing to add to that is that it's not an economic argument. I mean, obviously, the economic argument is a lot harder.

Speaker 12 So if you're making the argument that it's about fentanyl, like, look, no one in their right mind is going to say, great, we want more fentanyl coming.

Speaker 12 I mean, I think we could all agree that, you know, Canada, Mexico, a more aggressive stance towards, you know, drugs that are killing a huge number of people coming across the border is a good thing.

Speaker 12 Can you negotiate that in a way that doesn't punish, you know, American consumers? I mean, we saw today, right before we started this, that Ontario slapped on a 25% tariff on electricity.

Speaker 12 that they deliver to almost 2 million households.

Speaker 2 They promised that they would, and now they've done it.

Speaker 12 And now they've done it. And, you know, that's an immediate thing that people feel in their pocketbook.
Is that a long-term good? I mean, what is the negotiation here? I mean,

Speaker 12 is this for American manufacturing? I just can't even, I mean, is it for fentanyl?

Speaker 12 It seems like a very, very, you know, slapdash willy-nilly policy, but I think people are going to feel really quickly. So that's why I said, you know, mentioning that.

Speaker 2 I confess, I haven't looked at how bad the trade deficit is between the United States and Canada or the United States and Mexico.

Speaker 2 I know it was very bad between the United States and China, which is why they got, in addition to the tariff, Trump put on tariffs in his first term, which the Democrats ripped, but then Joe Biden kept in place.

Speaker 2 And most economists actually wound up defending them. And then he came back into office and slapped another 10% on China.
And now just last night slapped another 10% on China.

Speaker 2 But there's no question that there's a massive trade deficit between China and us.

Speaker 2 I don't know what it is between us and Canada and us and Mexico, but I'm sure there's a basic fairness argument to be made.

Speaker 12 You could also talk to most economists who don't believe trade deficits are even a thing that matters. I mean, that ultimately it is a benefit to American consumers either way.

Speaker 12 I mean, that if there's some equalization is, and again, this is, you know, something that I believe myself, but I am not an economist and should probably talk to an economist about this.

Speaker 12 But that is a widely held view that trade deficits are not something that is like an actual deficit, which is another thing that we have to pay attention to at the moment.

Speaker 2 Our real deficits. I mean, I guess we should know the answers to these, and maybe President Trump will fill in some of these blanks at his speech tonight and defend why he thinks these are necessary.

Speaker 2 But I, for one, am willing to see how it goes. I think if the economy really starts tanking and large swaths of the American economic machine start hurting, Trump will do something.

Speaker 2 I mean, that is really what he prides himself on more than anything, is his being a businessman, his cutting deals.

Speaker 2 And Trump in particular is not going to look at a suffering stock market for very long and say, I won't do anything. He'll do it.
He will do something.

Speaker 2 He's just, that's the thing about Trump is he's active. You know, he doesn't just sit back and then go quiet and we see him half dead on a Rehoboth beach weeks later, being wheeled out by his wife.

Speaker 2 That's Trump is active. So I feel like let's give him a shot.
He clearly believes in this. Let's see how it goes.
If it turns disastrous, I think he'll.

Speaker 2 he'll do what's necessary to undo it or make up the losses somehow. I'm willing to hear him out tonight.
Okay, so let's talk about what, like the look of it.

Speaker 2 As I point out, we're not going to have Nancy Pelosi behind him. It's going to be Mike Johnson and J.D.
Vance, which will be, I think, a pleasure for most of us.

Speaker 2 And then you've got the guests who are going to be invited to sit in the First Lady's, you know, sort of skybox there. And

Speaker 2 he is bringing, among other people, Peyton McNabb.

Speaker 2 the now 19-year-old girl from North Carolina who was slammed so hard in the face by a volleyball by a male pretending to be a female player that she suffered permanent nerve damage and a traumatic brain injury.

Speaker 2 I think she's a perfect guest to accompany the president to be there so he can make a reference to her. Here's the video.
Here, that's Peyton on the right.

Speaker 2 Sorry, sorry, that's the male player on the right. And then Peyton is going to get it.
Watch.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And so the spikes of male players are, they've been documented to be far more powerful and with high higher velocity than what any woman can do and so this girl is a great walking now.

Speaker 2 But since Peyton got injured, there have been so many young girls who have been injured, who have had trophies stolen from them. And guys, this comes on the heels of yesterday,

Speaker 2 every Democrat in the Senate and both of the so-called independents, who are also secret Democrats, voting against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.

Speaker 2 Every single one, even though this issue has 80%

Speaker 2 support by the American public to not let boys into girls' sports, it's insane. That alone is a huge winner and winning moment for Trump tonight.
Thoughts?

Speaker 13 It's clearly a very popular policy nationally.

Speaker 13 This is perhaps one of the issues where Donald Trump, especially with respect to, by comparison to Democrats, has just been able to kind of lap his opposition.

Speaker 13 There are, I think, plenty of people like weirdo

Speaker 13 libertarians who have this concern about whether or not the federal government ought to be getting involved.

Speaker 13 And it is rather ironic and surprising to hear Democratic senators making arguments that we have made for years and years and years on a range of issues that the states and the local government ought to be making these fundamental decisions about what's happening with specific kind of narrow issues.

Speaker 13 And this, in many respects, is a kind of specific and narrow issues. There are particular particular cases that have risen to national attention, as you just pointed out.

Speaker 13 But for the most part, I don't know that most people experience a lot of this stuff in their everyday lives.

Speaker 13 And the question that I've asked since Donald Trump's inauguration and the executive orders pertaining to this is whether or not the objective

Speaker 13 ought to be to try and pass executive orders or even to pass a new federal statute that is going to outlaw certain things, as opposed to trying to make certain that there is a kind of neutrality, that universities and the NCAA aren't trying to push particular values on parents and families and communities and even players and incentivize things in the way that Joe Biden had before.

Speaker 13 And now Donald Trump is essentially trying to reverse that.

Speaker 13 The reason why you need some sort of federal legislation, if you're a conservative who's concerned about these issues, is because you know that just doing this with respect to executive orders,

Speaker 13 it's going to be tit for tat. As soon as Donald Trump is out of office, someone else is going to do this.

Speaker 13 So the question becomes, perhaps going for pluralism, perhaps trying to make some of these things less ideological is a better path forward on a range of

Speaker 13 issues, even a lot of the diversity issues.

Speaker 2 It's very hard because we're,

Speaker 2 I take your point, state-by-state experiment and all that, but I actually do think it's a civil rights

Speaker 2 issue for girls and for women. And they're already entitled to this protection under the existing law.
It just must be enforced.

Speaker 2 But secondly, we've, of course, been through four years of Joe Biden where he implemented these so-called reforms into Title IX and policy and his, you know, dear friend pressure on universities.

Speaker 2 And so Trump has to try to undo it on a national level, both through executive order and Title IX new guidance, and ideally through a statute which would stop this pendulum from swinging back and forth and back and forth, and we could have predictability.

Speaker 2 Here is

Speaker 2 who we need to keep our eyes on, okay? Because the senators who are from blue states like New York and California are not going to be punished for their absurd vote.

Speaker 2 And keep in mind, they didn't even have the balls to allow a vote. That's what they were being asked on.
Will you vote for cloture? Which is where you need 60 votes in the Senate to say yes.

Speaker 2 That's it. They just needed to allow this to proceed to the Senate floor for a real vote and then let majority rule as it always should.
They wouldn't.

Speaker 2 So they affirmatively stopped it because they knew that the Republicans did have the 53 votes. All 53 Republicans were ready to vote yes on this.

Speaker 2 And they couldn't get the chance to because they needed seven Dems to cross over. So here are the true villains, the ones who are in swing states who must be targeted.

Speaker 2 I'm begging Elon to use some of his money and he's 100%

Speaker 2 with me on this issue, 100% with me. I beg you to use some of your money to help defeat the following people.
Arizona, both of them have to go.

Speaker 2 Ruben Gallego, it it should have been Carrie Lake anyway, which he would have voted the right way. Mark Kelly, who I liked and who I still have a personal affinity for.
I'm sorry, you need to go.

Speaker 2 If I could wave my magic wand, you're fired, sir, because you voted the wrong way.

Speaker 2 Georgia, John Ossoff, who's got a daughter, but doesn't seem to give two shits about what happens to her on the sports field. And Raphael Warnock, who I think is going soon anyway.

Speaker 2 Michigan, Gary Peters, Alyssa Slotkin, you have to go too. You didn't show up.

Speaker 2 You didn't think it was important enough, even though you're one of the women in the Senate to show up and support young girls trying to work their way up the power chain behind you.

Speaker 2 Nevada, Catherine Cortez-Masto, you too. Jackie Rosen, gone, if I have anything to say about it.
Pennsylvania, fuck you, John Fetterman. You act like you're a man of the people.

Speaker 2 You're going to look out for the weak. You get it.
You don't get shit. You really don't.

Speaker 2 That part of your brain still appears to be injured because you're going to let all these little girls go out there and get a traumatic brain injury.

Speaker 2 You, of all people who understand what that brain injury can do, screw you and your working class appeal. You don't get it at all.

Speaker 2 And then there's Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin, who exposed herself as a complete idiot in those confirmation hearings that I went down to. She was one of the dopiest people we saw up there.

Speaker 2 I'm not surprised she landed in the wrong place. But those are swing state Democratic senators who ruined the protection of girls and women thanks to their votes.

Speaker 2 On this issue, they ought to be targeted and they ought to be made to pay at the ballot box the next chance we get.

Speaker 12 I think you need to show more emotion on this, Megan.

Speaker 2 Your pulse is lacking. I think I gotta go.

Speaker 2 You show me a girl, you show me a 16-year-old girl with a traumatic brain injury and permanent paralysis because she's trying to play her high school game.

Speaker 2 I am angry.

Speaker 2 I'm furious with them.

Speaker 12 I went today and looked for the arguments of the people who voted no because

Speaker 12 I have a built-in skepticism of

Speaker 12 legislation in general and then also stuff that appears to be sort of chasing headlines. First, the text of the bill is pretty innocuous.
It's just like, hey, look,

Speaker 12 people who are born girls should play girl sports. People who are born boys should play boy sports.
And if you receive Title IX, if you receive federal funding,

Speaker 12 you won't get it anymore if you don't follow those rules. Pretty simple.
I mean, Trump's executive order was followed and adopted by the NCAA in basically a heartbeat.

Speaker 12 So it's already the rule of the land. And I don't see a whole lot of upset associated with that.
So I went and looked at the

Speaker 12 arguments for it. And there really weren't that many.
There wasn't actually the like principled libertarian arguments against it. It was mostly like, oh, this is just a culture war issue.

Speaker 12 I think John Hickenlooper was saying that.

Speaker 12 It affects almost nobody.

Speaker 12 Federman said that it's important to show that you're an ally to trans people.

Speaker 12 And I actually agree that it's important to show that you're an ally to your, to all constituents, but I don't know what a vote on this has anything to do with that, honestly.

Speaker 12 It's like, do you have the legal rights to participate in society? That's kind of where that goes, as far as I'm concerned. And then I think it was Cortez Masto

Speaker 12 said something along the lines of, if this passes, then

Speaker 12 all girls are going to have their genitals inspected.

Speaker 12 And I just don't think that that's really

Speaker 12 what's going to happen. I don't think that's what's happening right now in the NCAA.

Speaker 2 Let me tell you something, Matt. Let me tell you something in response to that.
It's exactly the opposite because here's what's happening now. I know this because I am the mother of this age child.

Speaker 2 You know, I have a 15 and a 13 and 11 year old. And this is where this kind of thing becomes a problem.

Speaker 2 When they're little, you know, when it's not an issue pre-puberty, when they're seven and eight and playing against each other, there's not a difference so much, a little difference there is, but like it's not a dangerous difference between boys and girls at that, at that age.

Speaker 2 But this is where, where my kids are, where it does become an issue.

Speaker 2 And what's happening now is if you have a, you know, gender non-conforming girl who's out there, let's say on the field hockey field, parents are starting to worry that it's a boy. Is that a boy?

Speaker 2 Because there are a lot of moms now who are like, my child is not playing against a biological boy. It isn't safe.
And I object to it.

Speaker 2 And so now questions get asked about, is that a girl or is that a boy?

Speaker 2 Inspect genitals. That's, of course, hysterical talk from the left.
But

Speaker 2 there are like questions. Is that a boy or is it a girl? And you're entitled to know as a parent who has a child out there.
Because look at Peyton McNabb.

Speaker 2 Nobody wants their child to have that happen to them. Or the girl in Massachusetts who had all of her teeth knocked out on the field hockey field by a boy pretending to be a girl, the other team.

Speaker 2 And the trauma to the rest of her teammates and watching her mouth fall out of her skull, which is what happened, with blood everywhere.

Speaker 2 Fuck you, John Fetterman, and your empathy for the trans people. Where's your empathy for that girl who has no more teeth in Massachusetts?

Speaker 2 Anyway, so if we know that boys are not allowed to play in girls' athletics, of course, we will do what we have always done, which is just say, That's a more masculine looking girl.

Speaker 2 That's maybe it's a lesbian, maybe it's like a butch lesbian. Fine.
Most women have zero problem with that. We love, we love all women.
We love the lesbians. We love the lipstick kind.

Speaker 2 We love the butch kind. We don't care.
Welcome to the sports. Lead, be great.
Awesome.

Speaker 2 But if you have to wonder whether it's secretly a boy, it raises safety and other concerns that do make you get more not inspecting on the child, but worried and inquisitional and can lead to awkward, uncomfortable moments for everyone.

Speaker 13 No, Megan, I think you're making a really good case. And I will say that, admittedly, I don't follow this issue nearly as closely.
My kids are pretty young. My daughter just turned seven.

Speaker 13 My son turned three today.

Speaker 13 And Leah is outclassing most boys her age in every athletic engagement.

Speaker 13 But the thing that I was surprised to learn today, actually reading up on this a little bit, is that even the Biden administration had more than entertained the possibility of actually implementing some kind of restrictions on the policies that they were putting forward in this area because they had the same kinds of concerns that there would be situations where you'd had a boy who'd gone through puberty who then decided to do some sort of transition and as a result would have a particularly unfair advantage in certain sports and could endanger some of their fellow athletes.

Speaker 13 So the fact that they're even willing to entertain that sort of thing does give, I think, some credence to the arguments that are being leveled from the right right now.

Speaker 13 And it also suggests that there was probably, and I would imagine continues to be, a real opportunity to actually get some Democratic support for a piece of legislation that makes sense to them.

Speaker 13 As Matt said, the one that does exist seems fairly innocuous, but perhaps there's a way to actually barter to get something done here, which I think, you know, ultimately getting the win is far more important, I think, than just having the battle and, you know, losing a close vote.

Speaker 13 So maybe they do come back and actually get this done by looking to whatever models are.

Speaker 2 They wrote it intentionally to be as non-controversial as possible, you you know, so that they didn't put all these weird things in there that would allow the Democrats to wiggle out of it.

Speaker 2 It's very simple.

Speaker 2 It's the thing that 80% of the populace supports. And these Dems all voted no.
Not one showed courage. On this subject, before we move on from it, just this week, this is via The Lion,

Speaker 2 it's a new media outlet that publishes articles on news and culture.

Speaker 2 They reported that in Southern California at the track meet out there,

Speaker 2 a junior who goes by A.B. Hernandez, who's a biological male,

Speaker 2 finished first in the high jump, the long jump, and the triple jump. The triple jump performance, which I'm about to show to you, was eight feet further than the runner-up.

Speaker 2 Eight feet

Speaker 2 he jumped further than the girl. Watch it.

Speaker 2 and you hear somebody say that's just wrong

Speaker 2 because they know

Speaker 2 no no girl is going to be able to compete against that here is a b hernandez after the meet

Speaker 11 like how are you using all that momentum and just all that energy to try to put into a great year this year?

Speaker 2 I just keep telling myself you are number one and it's yours to lose.

Speaker 11 Just a 40 foot, jumping that and the triple, keeping that consistency with that hitting that 40 foot mark.

Speaker 11 What's just your expectations for the rest of the year?

Speaker 2 Expectations just to keep my phases longer,

Speaker 2 push more, work out more, get further, hopefully hit a 41 this year if it's possible, preferably at state so that I can possibly win.

Speaker 2 Okay, and then I'm just going to make two other points quickly.

Speaker 2 That's why this this A.B. Hernandez is being allowed to play.
Yes, woke ideology and all that, but also these ridiculous schools who want wins. There is a school in Westchester.
It's a private school.

Speaker 2 And they fired their athletic director because he was against letting boys onto the girls' teams for safety and fairness issues. And they wanted boys on the girls' teams because they want to win.

Speaker 2 the rugby championship or the ice hockey championship. I can't remember which one it was.
It must be ice hockey because rugby is not big here.

Speaker 2 They want to win the ice hockey championship, the girls' team. And the more boys they can put on the team, the better.

Speaker 2 And here's the second thing: staying in California, there's the San Francisco Waldorf girls basketball team. We, um, we have covered this team in the past.

Speaker 2 Uh, they've been dominating thanks to a boy named Harry, who is on the team, who typically averages 20 points a game. 20 points a game.
But he was out

Speaker 2 in the last week of February. And

Speaker 2 by the way, in January, he scored 29 points.

Speaker 2 That was his average. But he did not play in the recent playoff game.
And guess what? His team lost by 26 points. They really missed their biological boy on the team.

Speaker 2 So this is what girls are up against. You run into these athletic directors who want the W, or the school principal who wants the W at all costs,

Speaker 2 or extremely woke Californians who are like, boys are girls, or CBS News, who in reporting on what happened last night says as follows.

Speaker 2 Senate Dems on Monday blocked a measure that sought to ban transgender girls and women from competing on school sports teams that match their gender identity.

Speaker 2 Talk about not phrasing the problem correctly, right? This is what we're up against. So it's a no.
It must be a federal statute. It cannot be a state-by-state experiment.
We need national legislation.

Speaker 2 And while we don't need this on girls' teams, we do need in Congress more people with balls.

Speaker 12 Well, some of them don't have balls

Speaker 2 because they're women.

Speaker 12 And I believe in those categories, Megan.

Speaker 12 Every Baldwin does not have balls. And that's just a biological fact.

Speaker 12 A couple of things here is that, you know, I think last time we were on, and Matt was pointing out something that you've you've pointed out this time too. It's an 80-20 issue.
And those are very rare.

Speaker 12 And, you know, even though you're in a blue state, this is a pretty clear issue for people when they have girls. I mean, I have a girl who is just turned 14 years old is.

Speaker 12 shockingly when you look at me an exceptional athlete and a very competitive athlete i was just in florida for for a gymnastics meet i'm all over the country for them and you know it's funny when we were in florida we went to the meet and it was the only meet we'd ever been to where there were men doing male just gymnastics which is a different thing by the way they do rings and they do pommel horse the girls don't do that because there's a strength issue right those are very strength oriented things and that's the basic thing that do are we even having that argument still that men and women are fundamentally different that was by the way an argument we had you know four or five years ago that i just had my head in my hands and i couldn't believe that this was actually an argument that was being proffered by the people on the other side of this issue.

Speaker 12 But there are two two things, as you point out, is one of them is a fairness issue, and one of them is a safety issue, because there are different sports. You point out hockey.

Speaker 12 No one ever talks about that. Leah Thomas is going to beat you in the pool because of obvious biological differences.
On the hockey rink, my daughter and I are both obsessive hockey fans.

Speaker 12 We go to NHL games all the time. And I would love for her to play hockey when she gets into high school.
But that's a different story because people are hitting each other all the time.

Speaker 12 That is the point of hockey.

Speaker 12 Like losing a race i mean the i mean you saw the the four nations game against the the the canadians in the us they fought there were three fights with the first nine seconds of the game and like this is what the game is it's a physical game and then all of a sudden you're like wait a second this is why you saw that with the the boxing um and the morocco

Speaker 12 yeah yeah that like that stuff is terrifying. I mean, to watch that.
And if you have a girl that's out there who's 15, 16 years old, that doesn't matter if you're in a blue state or a red state.

Speaker 12 That's an issue that Donald Trump is obviously right to bring up tonight because it's a winning issue.

Speaker 12 And immigration is obviously a winning issue too, that he has the public on his side in those things.

Speaker 12 And it's amazing to me that Democrats just are caught in the same ideology of culture war because like you mentioned Title IX, that Title IX is where people have been fighting culture war stuff for the past decade.

Speaker 12 And it's time that it stops. It's kind of insane because most of the American people are on the side of sanity on this issue.

Speaker 2 It's not by by the way, just since you're just among friends here, you can tell us the truth. At those gymnastics tournaments, you're really just looking for Olivia Dunn, are you not?

Speaker 12 It's a you're I literally have no idea who that is, Megan. And I what do you mean?

Speaker 2 She's like this incredibly talented, very beautiful.

Speaker 12 I know exactly who she is. I'm lying to you.

Speaker 12 I'm literally, I have a tattoo of her in my shoulder blade.

Speaker 12 I know my daughter, she listens to the show sometimes.

Speaker 2 I don't want to know that. That's true.
I'm there only in a sort of academic way. That's different.

Speaker 2 What are there? I want to talk about some of these guests, but there's also on the, well, we're on the gender front, January Little John.

Speaker 2 And she had her daughter socially transitioned by her school without her permission and somehow managed to save her daughter, who's now in high school.

Speaker 2 This is when she was in middle school, and get her back on the path. Kids who express gender confusion, if you just leave them alone and you don't start socially transitioning them or changing names,

Speaker 2 90% of them plus will revert to their biological sex and forget the gender nonsense. But what happens is these schools, without telling the parents,

Speaker 2 start transitioning them. And then they don't tell the parents anything.

Speaker 2 The parents have no idea that when they go to school, they assume an entirely different identity, name, put on different clothing. Everybody there experiences them as somebody of the opposite sex.

Speaker 2 It's very dark. Trump said this was happening.
We just did a story on this. He said it repeatedly, but over the campaign trail, he said it.
And

Speaker 2 they tried to fact-check him. Axios tried to fact-check him, saying that's not happening.
It's happening all over the place. It's happening all over New York City, public and private.

Speaker 2 I can attest to that personally. I've looked at the policy in both and known people that it's happening to.
And this is out in California.

Speaker 2 And so tonight, to his credit, Trump brings the mother of a girl to whom it happened. Socially transitioning these children is a huge step, and it's one that's very hard to undo, very,

Speaker 2 because the kids got emotional currency in it. You know, it's like you make this big leap and everybody's like, yeah, snaps, snaps.
You know, now she's a boy.

Speaker 2 And then the kids got to be like, no, didn't work out. No one's given any thought to that.
That should be a decision that is made with parents, but these schools are doing it without.

Speaker 2 So I credit Trump a lot for choosing these people, putting them in the first ladies, you know, seating area. And so, you know, we'll see.

Speaker 2 The whole point of doing that, guys, is try to force the media to talk about it.

Speaker 12 But will they? I think that one final point on this for me is that it's not really an ideological issue.

Speaker 12 The reason it became an issue nominally of the right was because people on the right were fighting these kind of woke wars and they stopped caring.

Speaker 12 The number of people you talk to that are not on the right, that live in New York City, who will quietly tell you that they agree with this stuff, but are afraid of voicing it publicly is enormous.

Speaker 12 I mean, you know, we saw today Martina Navartalova, the famous tennis player who's gay and a very left-wing woman, if you follow her on Twitter, was excoriating Democrats for voting against this. J.K.

Speaker 12 Rowling is a left-winger. People might think differently because they think, you know, this issue, she's a liberal person.
There's a lot of liberals on this side. That's why it's an 80-20 issue.

Speaker 12 And one of the gaslighting things is to make people think that this is a right-wing issue.

Speaker 12 It might be handled differently by people on the right, but it is an 80-20 issue because it does go beyond kind of ideological boundaries.

Speaker 12 And I think people are kind of becoming a little more comfortable talking about it because maybe the administration made it that way, maybe the culture made it that way. But people

Speaker 2 helped more than anything else.

Speaker 12 I just want to say that my 16-year-old, who I think is brain damaged without getting hit by a volleyball, but her first

Speaker 12 day of

Speaker 2 just kidding, Izzy, love you.

Speaker 12 Her first day of middle school here in Brooklyn, public middle school, first day of math class,

Speaker 12 they were encouraged, they were told by their teacher, this week is National Coming Out Week. So you should feel comfortable, everyone in this room, to come out at age 11

Speaker 12 here here

Speaker 12 in math class in middle school. This is not an isolated type of incident.
It happens a lot in a lot of spaces. And I think people are right to go,

Speaker 12 is this what we should do with 11-year-olds?

Speaker 2 And that also speaks to you. Can you imagine if somebody stood up and said, invitation accepted, I am a conservative who voted for control, or who supported.

Speaker 2 Can you imagine what those teachers would do?

Speaker 12 Thrown out of the school altogether.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think Matt's daughter would be a good person.

Speaker 2 They actually will punish

Speaker 2 her for that.

Speaker 2 Stand by. We're going to take a quick break.
Moynihan's going to go back to his Olivia Dunn file on his phone, and we will resume right after this quick advertisement. Don't leave.

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Speaker 2 Just to round it out, a couple of other guests we know he's going to be having, the Comperatori family, the family of the man who was killed at the Trump Butler rally.

Speaker 2 Stephanie Diller, this is a very smart one from Long Island. She's the widow of Jonathan Diller, that NYPD officer who was murdered at a traffic stop in Queens in March of 2024.

Speaker 2 You remember Trump flew in from Florida and he attended the wake when Biden opted to go to the fundraiser and sit for the, I think it was the Smartless podcast that day. It was so ridiculous.

Speaker 2 And then, yeah, and then he went to that fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall with Bill Kling. So dumb.
Anyway, so the widow of Jonathan Diller will be there.

Speaker 2 Mark Fogel, the school teacher Trump got back from Russia, along with his 95-year-old mother, who asked Trump to get him back for her. They're going to be there, smart.

Speaker 2 The mother and sister of Lake and Riley, Allison and Lauren Phillips. That'll be a very powerful moment.

Speaker 2 Alexis Nungari, all this poor mom, the mother of Jocelyn, 12-year-old girl who was murdered by two illegals.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Biden's administration had apprehended and released them. just before they murdered Jocelyn.
A steel worker

Speaker 2 who has been helping out, including including at Hurricane Helene in the aftermath. And

Speaker 2 Roberto Ortiz from Texas,

Speaker 2 who was with the U.S. Border Patrol for a decade.
He has been shot at repeatedly by cartel members. So we'll find, we'll see all these folks mentioned by the president tonight.
Should be compelling.

Speaker 2 The speeches generally are boring, except for those personal moments.

Speaker 2 Trump is rarely boring, but he's still a president. He's still got a long speech to read through.
And so these addresses tend to be

Speaker 2 long and monotonous and predictable. And the Republicans in the audience will be totally obsequious and be on their feet every other.
And you'll be like, shut up. It's too much applause.

Speaker 2 And the Democrats will be sitting there cross-armed, no matter what great thing he's done. You know, I give you AOC back in the Trump years when he celebrated the bipartisan passage of the

Speaker 2 Anti-Sex Trafficking Act. And she was like,

Speaker 2 those are sex workers. We're not crapping for their,

Speaker 2 whatever, I don't know,

Speaker 2 in her head. But that's some of what's going to happen tonight.
For sure, he's going to mention Doge,

Speaker 2 which has been very demonized and really is absolutely loathed by the left. And I do mean loathed, but they're getting clever on how they express their outrage.

Speaker 2 They have formed the rapid response team, Super PAC protest group, George Soros-funded inorganic riot organization. No, choir, my friends, choir.

Speaker 2 And yes. And the choir is now shutting down.

Speaker 2 Yes. Literally not making it up.

Speaker 2 Where people are getting laid off like they went to NOAA on Monday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where hundreds of workers had been laid off last week.

Speaker 2 They wore pink vests and they sang, my friends, here is a soundbite. Yes, I did that for you.

Speaker 15 Do you have joy?

Speaker 12 People out there are going to try to tear you down,

Speaker 12 but the world outside can't take us down, and that's what this song is about.

Speaker 2 This joy that I have,

Speaker 2 the world can give it to me.

Speaker 2 The world can give it, the world can't take it away.

Speaker 2 Strength,

Speaker 2 no, the strength that I have

Speaker 2 to meet my mic fellowship.

Speaker 2 Hands off our Noah sign round.

Speaker 12 Can I try to take their joy away right now? I love that these guys like you all just got fired. Do you have joy? No, I just get fucking fired.
What are you talking about?

Speaker 2 I'm going to sing your job back.

Speaker 12 It's like, no, please don't.

Speaker 12 Lord. Democrats are always trying to tell us that we have joy.
Remember the Democratic Convention? Like, wow, to feel all the joy in this room?

Speaker 12 And they're always sending theater kids to fix the problem. I just don't understand either one of those things.

Speaker 2 Yes, we need more theater kids. This is, you're right.
It's like their instinct is to go to the theater kid thing. And that will bring me to my

Speaker 2 next person I wanted to introduce you to, who is a TikToker.

Speaker 2 She goes by the name of Antoninette Selly, C-E-L-Y.

Speaker 2 And she's got 16,000 followers, and yet somehow we found her. And she was very upset about what happened in the Oval last Friday with Zelensky.
And I mean, really upset. You think you're upset?

Speaker 2 You should see what Antoninette did. I'll show you.

Speaker 2 Oi, what a day it's been. And I am so exhausted.
If you notice, my hair is gone.

Speaker 2 And I had to cut my nails

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 today I did an updated transformation into

Speaker 2 President Zelensky. I stayed in the makeup for hours and I watched the Oscars and had dinner in the makeup.
Oh, and

Speaker 2 what? No, I'm not going to leave you to leave it there. Of course, I'm going to show you what happened.
Music!

Speaker 12 The music at the back. Fantastic.
The little piano thing.

Speaker 2 Almost as good as the rapid response choir.

Speaker 2 Music.

Speaker 2 What is the lens? Here is the first part of her transformation into Volodymyr Zelensky.

Speaker 12 Don't do it. Oh.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Annette's doing a good job. She's putting black eyeliner inside her nostrils now to make her nostrils bigger.

Speaker 2 She already looks at the man.

Speaker 2 Dark eye girls.

Speaker 2 Like a man.

Speaker 2 Man here. Zelensky here.

Speaker 16 Oh my gosh. Oh, no.

Speaker 2 She put on a beard and

Speaker 2 mustache.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. She's like Stalin.

Speaker 12 Don't unbutton anything.

Speaker 2 She took off her little shirt. She's winking at us.
My God,

Speaker 12 she dressed up as Joseph's.

Speaker 12 Megan, you either need to pay your producers like five times. Does hazard pay? Or fire them all.

Speaker 12 I'm not sure which or fire yourself i guarantee you if you showed that to zelensky like you know what let's we'll give it to russia i don't want to be associated with these people

Speaker 2 it's fine cow

Speaker 12 numbers right up there I was upset by it too,

Speaker 12 but I never for one second thought about trying to make myself look like Zelensky and then film it for 16,000 poor, unfortunate people. That is real.
To a a soundtrack. To a soundtrack.

Speaker 12 I got to say, though,

Speaker 12 she kind of looks like Zelensky until she takes it there. She looks like Zelensky.
And then she takes it too far and looks like the guy who changes my brake fluid.

Speaker 2 She looks like an Albanian gangster at the end of the day. It's so amazing.
Like, why are they doing this?

Speaker 2 The Rapid Response Choir founded February 2025. They have songs like

Speaker 2 The Little Light of Mine. Okay, we know that one.

Speaker 2 All you fascists bound to lose.

Speaker 2 And Doge is to blame. Well, OPM says you can sign up and pledge to retire and just walk away from job security into uncertainty with no guarantee.
That's what Elon calls efficiency.

Speaker 2 Doge, Doge is to blame for this mess that they cannot contain. Under cover of night, they've tried to take all our rights, but we won't back down, not without a fight.

Speaker 2 And then there's joy in resistance. of course continuing the theme so i mean

Speaker 2 back to where we started we've got possibly some pink pea hats tonight maybe some wearing of the white an occasional guest who is a fired federal worker the resistance choir

Speaker 2 i mean who they should bring in is lekwalessa They should bring in Lekwalessa, who sent,

Speaker 12 you know, the solidarity anti-communist hero who with a bunch of other dissidents from Poland sent a really sharply worded letter to uh donald trump the other day making the impassioned case that you shouldn't abandon someone who's been invaded by russia um that's a serious response but darkening your nostrils is not a serious response i mean she ended up looking like lech valesa to be honest that's true like modern work i have to say like you put that black stuff on your nostrils man oh man like that was yeah truly transformational i mean good i mean you learned

Speaker 2 tick tock megan i mean that's how your makeup tutorials

Speaker 2 quite a bit.

Speaker 2 You also learn a lot if you watch MSNBC. I don't know if you're aware, but

Speaker 2 their reaction,

Speaker 2 you're not going to be able to believe this, to the Friday Oval Office situation was to claim that Trump is weirdly and problematically tied to Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.

Speaker 2 I'll give you just a little taste of Rachel Maddow's monologue on it last night.

Speaker 2 Imagine if a foreign adversary, imagine if the Putin government somehow could, just do a thought experiment, imagine they could somehow

Speaker 2 exert control or influence over the government of the United States. What do you think the Putin government would have the U.S.

Speaker 17 government do if he could control it?

Speaker 2 What kind of headlines would you expect to see? about the operations of our government under that kind of a scenario.

Speaker 2 And what would you expect the news out of the Oval Office and the White House to look like on a day like today?

Speaker 2 Her fake drama.

Speaker 12 Serious tone.

Speaker 12 Very serious tone. I want to say that it's an amazing thing because

Speaker 12 I am,

Speaker 12 weirdly,

Speaker 12 probably on Rachel Maddow's side on this one. When it comes to, I didn't like how it was handled.
We talked about it in our podcast.

Speaker 12 I think Zelensky probably shouldn't have been baited that way and actually

Speaker 12 said he expressed regret today because of the situation that that resulted in.

Speaker 12 But I absolutely would never say, and you didn't hear us say in the two-hour podcast that we did about this at any point, that this was a result of some conspiratorial Donald Trump is under the control of the FSB.

Speaker 12 This stuff has been debunked time and again.

Speaker 12 And this is the reason that despite the fact they're in opposition, and as Megan, you know this very well, is that when you're an opposition network, an opposition magazine, newspaper, whatever, you tend to have circulation and viewership numbers that go through the roof when you're in opposition.

Speaker 12 Theirs have cratered. And the reason is, is that people might not like this.

Speaker 12 You know, people might not support the way Donald Trump handled this and J.D. Vance handled this.
But I don't think that the instinct is to say they are under the control of the Kremlin.

Speaker 12 I don't, that's not why. And it's actually a pretty embarrassing and juvenile way of thinking of it at this point, after it's been thoroughly researched and debunked.

Speaker 12 But there are other reasons that people can make, in my opinion, a desperately wrong call vis-a-vis Ukraine.

Speaker 12 And I don't think the only explanation for that is the man must be either a fascist or a Russian stooge. That is

Speaker 12 true.

Speaker 2 It's like when you delude yourself with a conspiracy theory, like most conspiracy theorists, you cannot let it go. You know,

Speaker 2 even when it's been totally disproven, you just still hold on. You're like, but I know better than all these other people.

Speaker 2 And so with every new news story, she's looking for proof of the lies that she told us for four years.

Speaker 2 I will say this. We talked about it yesterday.
Mark Halperin conducted a poll with an independent pollster named Wick.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they showed that the reaction to that exchange was overwhelmingly in Trump's favor among American voters. So they actually thought Trump handled himself very well.

Speaker 2 And some 62% said they found Zelensky's behavior offensive.

Speaker 2 And then there's this on Trump's overall policy with Ukraine, where it's going to be painful.

Speaker 2 It's not going to be settled on terms anybody who feels bad for Ukraine is going to like, but it is going to stop the killing, at least for now.

Speaker 2 Here's Harry Enton over on CNN talking about how Trump's doing with the populace on this. It's stop four.

Speaker 15 So I think the easiest way we can kind of just ask this is: do Americans like the way that Trump's handling his job and compare it to how they felt about Joe Biden? So this is the net approval rating.

Speaker 15 You look at Joe Biden back in 2024. He was 22 points underwater.
Holy cow. You look at Donald Trump, it's just a different planet entirely.

Speaker 15 I mean, the gulf between these two is wider than the Gulf of America or Mexico, depending on which side of the aisle you stand on. He's at plus two.

Speaker 15 And so on this simple question, I think Americans are saying, okay, Donald Trump's doing all right on this.

Speaker 12 You know, know, I'll just

Speaker 2 give you one more where he's talking about what Americans want now versus what they wanted in 22.

Speaker 15 Because that want a quick end of the war, look at this. You go back to August of 2022, it was at 31%.

Speaker 15 Now we're at 50%. I mean, that is a rocket ship upwards in terms of the Americans who want a quick end to the war, even if it means Russia keeps the captured Ukraine land.

Speaker 15 One of the reasons why we're seeing this is Americans who say Russia is an enemy. You go back to 2023, it was 64%.
And that CBS News YouGov poll, it was down to 34%.

Speaker 15 Now, there is a chunk that believes that Russia is an unfriendly nation, but the percentage who believe that they're either an ally or friendly, that's up to 34% as well, basically equal to the percentage who say that they're an enemy.

Speaker 2 Wow. Go ahead, Matt.

Speaker 12 I just want to say that our friend Harry Enton, he's really undergone a change since the election. His New York accent is a lot more pronounced now.

Speaker 2 I love it.

Speaker 12 Suddenly. Just out of burrowing

Speaker 12 like crazy.

Speaker 12 This opinion change has been going for a while.

Speaker 12 Americans had an instinctive, and I think correct, or at least that I share with desire to support Ukraine in the wake of them getting invaded unprovoked by Russia, which was Vladimir Putin's fault and not, as Donald Trump has suggested on various times, Zelensky's fault.

Speaker 12 And other people have suggested that too. Elon Musk and other people have blamed Zelensky for this.
which I think is shameful.

Speaker 12 And it becomes a conspiracy theory of its own on the right that we're seeing playing out here and there. But so what happens if

Speaker 12 the U.S., the United States public, preferably through their congressional representatives, decide that it's time to stop supporting Ukraine or at least to say, hey, look, we gave you a lot of money for a lot of time, but now we don't see a path to victory.

Speaker 12 We feel like we were throwing a lot of money. And also, this should be a European-led initiative to begin with, which is something that I agree with.
That latter bit for sure.

Speaker 12 Should have been that three years ago, should have been that 30 years ago. Okay, so

Speaker 12 what should an administration do with that set of information? I think there's an honorable way to go to them and say, hey, look, this is going to wind down.

Speaker 12 If you want someone else to be your chief sponsor, go with God. But we don't see a path to victory.
We're not going to give you that money. But that's not what the Trump administration has done.

Speaker 12 And it remains to be seen.

Speaker 12 Sure, if there's going to be a conflict with a foreign leader and getting all talky and barky in the White House, Americans are going to support the president and the president is, you know, lighting something on fire, being completely bizarre.

Speaker 12 We are patriotic people and we rally behind our own.

Speaker 12 But what should the honorable thing to do? It should be sort of like we are stepping back now from this role. We don't want to say who's going to, you know, we're not going to dictate terms to people.

Speaker 12 But Trump is not satisfied with that. He wants to end the war and he wants to be seen as the one who ended the war.

Speaker 12 And so now we're going from basically leaning very hard on the Ukraine side to starting to lean a little bit on the Russia. side.
And that is a less honorable path.

Speaker 12 And I don't know if Americans who are tired and growing increasingly weary of this war are going to like that particular part of the side switching.

Speaker 12 We want to be seen as, Americans generally want to be seen as having a moral stance in the world, being on Russia's side, even if it's a a realistic response, which is how J.D. Bance and Donald Trump

Speaker 12 position this. Like, hey, look, we're the only ones who are acknowledging the reality that Ukraine can't win.
So now what? And I get that. That's an argument.

Speaker 12 What's not an argument is to single out Zelensky as the dictator in the exchange between these two countries. So we'll see how popular that is among Americans.

Speaker 2 I think it's an argument. That was a tweet.
That was a tweet or a truth social post, but he didn't say that to his face.

Speaker 2 And I will, I encourage you, I know you are busy guys who have a lot going on, but you should go back and take a look at the video we did yesterday.

Speaker 2 It's on our YouTube feed right now, where we went through every one of the moments leading up to the big moment where things really melted down between them.

Speaker 2 And we showed how Zelensky was antagonizing Trump with the eye eye rolls and the sighs and interrupting him and correcting him over and over and over. And Trump took it.
He took it. He took it.

Speaker 2 He took it.

Speaker 2 He was taking the high road, guys. But Trump is Trump.
And the American people elected him knowing who he is. And this is not a way to get on his good side.
He should have been flattered.

Speaker 2 He definitely should not have been antagonized. And where did Trump, forget JD, where did Trump lose it? Trump lost it when Zelensky said, the danger may be coming to you.

Speaker 2 And that's when he came in and was like, you're not going to talk that way in the Oval Office to the American people. Now, now I'm done.
Now it's over.

Speaker 2 I don't blame Trump at all for his behavior in the Oval. And JD didn't get mad or really interjected at all until he'd seen all that behavior by Zelensky, the stuff I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 Go back and look at the video. And then

Speaker 2 he was called by his first name. in what was obviously a disrespectful moment.
That's, I said this yesterday.

Speaker 2 It's one thing, world leaders don't usually call each other by their first names, but they'll occasionally do it in a moment of levity or warmth, you know, or like

Speaker 2 whatever Trump might say, like BB and I go

Speaker 2 way back, or we had a moment back when we were having lunch, you know, but where it's tense and you're in the middle of this escalating thing where the guy's eye rolling at you.

Speaker 2 And by the way, he has said very, very critical things about JD prior to this day and vice versa. So they don't like each other.

Speaker 2 And then you lean over and in front of the press, you're like, you refer to him as JD. What are you talking about, JD? Explain yourself.
And so JD gave him shot back.

Speaker 2 It wasn't a nasty answer, but there was a tone to it that showed things were starting to go down. And then the rest is history.

Speaker 2 But anyway, my point is simply, I really don't think Trump behaved badly in that. I think he was antagonized over and over and over.

Speaker 2 And to the extent that Donald Trump's capable of taking that kind of needling on the world stage in front of the American public, he did it.

Speaker 2 And then finally, they pushed him too far when they started to threaten the safety of Americans. And to me, it was totally understandable.

Speaker 12 I think on that point, there's a language issue and a big language issue. I mean, Zelensky is not a great English speaker.

Speaker 12 And what he was trying to convey in that moment where Donald Trump lost it with him is that Trump had previously said, you know, I watched all 45 minutes of it, had said the ocean between us.

Speaker 12 And that had come up two more times. And Zelensky brings it up that last time that kind of sets Trump off.

Speaker 12 And, you know, what I took him to be saying, and this is a kind of a boring thing that people have said for years, is he's trying to express that, you know, if we allow the Russians to do this,

Speaker 12 they'll be emboldened and that will come to other countries, including America. And the ocean won't protect you.
And I think that that was a more benign thing. than maybe Trump read it.

Speaker 12 And I've re-watched it a bunch of times. And

Speaker 12 every time I rewatch it, I realize the clumsiness. I mean, you notice right afterwards, he goes on Brett Baer's show in about three or four pretty basic words.

Speaker 12 He has to, he has to consult with the translator offset who yells what the words are. And he says, okay, okay.
And he continues his answer.

Speaker 12 And it's just like, it's the reckless thing, which I said previously on our podcast, is that doing that. in that situation in such a kind of hinge moment when your language skills are questionable

Speaker 12 and not 100%. I mean, anyone who speaks a foreign language understands that

Speaker 12 when you're not like a fluent speaker, you're going to miss a lot of tone and intimation.

Speaker 12 And I think that that was a huge problem. I mean, I think if Zelensky grew up in Queens, but happened to be the leader of Ukraine, much like the leader of Estonia grew up in New Jersey in the past,

Speaker 12 then it would have been a completely different exchange. I mean, judging those tones and everything, it became quite difficult.

Speaker 2 I think quickly that

Speaker 12 I think quickly Zelensky screwed up for his people.

Speaker 12 He's eaten his words, and I wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump announces the signing of a minerals deal at the State of the Union address tonight.

Speaker 12 Zelensky screwed up, but I don't think Trump took the high road in the run-up to the meeting. There's a lot of diplomatic activity in the week, 10 days beforehand.
And

Speaker 12 I don't think Zelensky was treated particularly nicely in that process.

Speaker 2 He wasn't, but

Speaker 2 it's the problem that Zelensky faced in the lead up

Speaker 2 in the meeting still is there's, I mean, a total and utter power imbalance. And it's like, it's very annoying.

Speaker 2 But one of the things he challenged Trump on was Trump keeps saying that we've spent $350 billion on Ukraine. I don't know where Trump's getting that number from.
I've tried to replicate that.

Speaker 2 I cannot find what's in 350 billion or how he's getting there. But we got to 250 billion.
I could find that.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 then there's one source that says, well, if you just limit it to this particular kind of aid, it's more like 115 billion, which would put the Europeans at 136 billion above us but you'd have to limit our aid down to one particular thing and our aid has been vast and we've been doing military training and we've been doing you know sending munitions and so on so i think that if you look at our pentagon there's no question we've spent more than um the europeans and zelensky was trying to say that we haven't and trump handled it what he handled it he was like no not really and zelensky's yes they kind of agreed to disagree but like it is true that we have done the lion's share the united states has done the lion's share in funding this war on behalf of ukraine And where have we gotten?

Speaker 2 To a stalemate, to a place like, I don't understand. Like, I look at it from the Rachel Maddow point of view, and I, or yours, Moynihan, since you say it's similar on this issue substantively.

Speaker 2 What is it that Trump should be insisting on that he's not?

Speaker 2 He, I think, accurately perceives the American people do not have the appetite for American boots on the ground to maintain security in Ukraine.

Speaker 2 So he thinks the Europeans should do it, which makes a lot of sense because it is their backyard and Ukraine is part of Europe.

Speaker 2 That makes perfect sense to me, but he didn't, well, today he pulled all eight because he's mad now. And of course, it's working.
Zelensky's already coming back and you're probably right.

Speaker 2 He'll sign that minerals deal and Trump will likely announce it tonight because Trump decided to play hardball. But he said to Zelensky, here's what I will do.

Speaker 2 I'll invest billions, hundreds of billions of dollars in your country. Now I want something for it.

Speaker 2 I would like some of these rare earth materials that we really need because Russia and Ukraine are rich with them and the United States is not. And China is rich with them and we are not.

Speaker 2 So that could help me and my people. And it wouldn't be too terrible for you either because we'll give you all this money in exchange for it.

Speaker 2 And we'll have this ongoing economic presence there and actual physical presence as we work with you to try to extract this stuff that will be a deterrent in other ways to Putin.

Speaker 2 That's what Trump has proposed. How is that so offensive?

Speaker 12 Well, I think it's offensive. I think that what what Zelensky is, and again, I think that probably Richel Matto and I have pretty substantive differences on this, but

Speaker 12 I'm on the Ukrainian side on this, and I think that Putin and the gang in the Kremlin are horrible, monstrous dictatorship, and that's what it is. They are actually a dictatorship.

Speaker 12 But I will say this, that when it comes to what Zelensky was asking for, and he kept on interceding and saying this, and it's a frustrating thing for Ukrainians, is not getting a security guarantee because they've had security guarantees in the past i mean they made a security guarantee by giving up their nuclear weapons after the cold war that we give you we give up our weapons and we have the protection that we need and none of that has come and come to come to bear i mean you see that even he mentioned

Speaker 2 okay but let's let's have a back and forth on this so how does that look if if trump gave him that and there was a moment in which Trump suggested he might be open-minded to it yesterday, but Zelensky didn't take the W and just kept stepping over Trump.

Speaker 2 But I don't, in general, I don't think Trump wants to give that.

Speaker 2 Nor did Biden, nor did Obama.

Speaker 2 Nobody does.

Speaker 12 No, nobody does.

Speaker 2 No, okay.

Speaker 2 But let's say we gave that. No, it's not, and it shouldn't be.
I'm not sending my sons over there to go fight for Ukrainians if Vladimir Putin crosses that line. Hell no.
Or daughter.

Speaker 2 And that, so that's what I'm talking about. So if we sent troops over there to be the enforcers of this deal as the security for Ukraine, you know, security guarantees, then we're involved.

Speaker 2 Then if Putin crosses the line again, it's a war between Russia and the United States. Hell no, we don't want that.
The country doesn't want that.

Speaker 12 No, I don't want American soldiers over there either. I don't think that's the only way of doing it.

Speaker 12 I mean, Donald Trump, of course, is saying that there is a way of doing that, that it would deter people, it would deter people in the Kremlin if we had Americans working on the ground there, which I just don't believe because we had Americans working in Kiev when they were trying to surround it in 2008.

Speaker 2 Captain, it takes me back. What is it he should be offering that will calm the other side down? What do they want from Trump that he's not giving?

Speaker 12 Well, there's no conversation about a number of things. There's no conversation about the status of various Ukrainian cities that are under Russian occupation.

Speaker 12 There's no conversation about the tens of thousands of children that have been stolen from Ukrainians. I mean, this is not a controversial thing.
People understand that this happened.

Speaker 12 I mean, those are two huge things. I mean, if the argument is you give us minerals and then what? What do we get for it? There's no negotiation there.
It doesn't appear that there's much negotiation.

Speaker 2 No, but you give us minerals and we give you hundreds of billions in aid. I mean, it's not, we're not getting it for, they're not giving it up for free.

Speaker 12 Well, we don't know if that's, I mean, there's the contours of that deal are unclear to anybody, both people involved and people like myself.

Speaker 2 Well, that's reportedly what they're negotiating, that we will continue our ongoing economic investment in Ukraine in exchange for the minerals. We want

Speaker 2 all the monies that we've given so far, virtually every dollar is unsecured. And Trump keeps saying with the Europeans, it was secured.
They got loans and we gave gifts. And Zelensky denied that.

Speaker 2 It is true. That's another thing Trump's saying that is true.
The Europeans got guarantees and we didn't. So, and of course they're trying to negotiate what Russian's going to get to keep.

Speaker 2 And Trump seems to be telegraphing, look, they're probably going to keep what they've gotten. Like, and no more.
You know, you kept them out of Kyiv and that was great.

Speaker 2 And there's not going to be further incursions. But Trump, I mean, it seems to be, look, let's just leave it where it is.
It's gotten bad enough already. Let's stop the bleeding.

Speaker 12 Honestly, I think what Ukraine wants is to be part of the negotiations in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.

Speaker 12 They don't want to be where the Czechs were in the Munich Agreement and where all of Eastern Europe was

Speaker 2 in 1925. It's Trump with the one side, and then he goes to the other side.
Like it's not the same thing.

Speaker 12 That's like what they want. I think that's what they're seeking.
And they want a security guarantee. There's this sort of kabuki theater that goes like this.
Emmanuel Macron in France

Speaker 12 wants to lead a European-only

Speaker 12 like semi-NATO. They want to sort of detach.
This has been French goals and foreign policy since forever. Cool, right?

Speaker 15 I like it. You like it.

Speaker 12 Everyone likes it. And then look at the fine print of what he says when he's out and saying, my dear Donald, at the White House last week.
He's saying, we just want, we want to do that.

Speaker 12 And we're ready to even have our troops and boots on the ground, except, of course, not in combat areas.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 12 some pretty French boots on the ground and now British boots too.

Speaker 12 But we just want the U.S. solidarity.
We want a U.S. backstop.
This is a French way of saying we want the U.S. to be the one doing the guarantees.
Europeans.

Speaker 2 Germany too.

Speaker 2 Germany's the worst.

Speaker 12 Frederick Merz, I mean, he's also talking about some of the strongest game right now. We need to declare independence from the United States.
We need to create our own European security.

Speaker 12 We need to spend 5% of GDP or whatever the number is. This is an acceleration towards the, well, it might be

Speaker 2 never.

Speaker 12 Of course not. No, no, you've never, you've never gotten away from the United States.

Speaker 2 And then somebody was asking, well, what specifically, what, what specifically in terms of military will you give to Ukraine? And he was like, oh, well, you know, we'll see.

Speaker 12 That's the problem. 80% or so of all of NATO actual warfighting capability is American.
The munitions, certainly the leadership. And this is a really important part.

Speaker 12 Like NATO has been able, the Western European countries have been able to underfund NATO and benefit from their security without the burden of responsibility for NATO's decisions forever.

Speaker 12 And so what Ukraine needs in order to survive, to make a ceasefire something different than just like a five years to wait before Russia pulverizes you again, is for someone to secure their future.

Speaker 12 That someone should be Western Europe. Western Europe says they want that to happen.
but they actually so far lack the balls to actually do that.

Speaker 12 So everyone's dancing around each other in these negotiations, trying to get over that fact.

Speaker 12 I think Donald Trump, and I disagree with how he's done it and sort of the approach, I think he's accelerated towards that future, a future that needs to happen, which is that Western Europe has to put on its big boy pants.

Speaker 2 So, Sikhaniza, let me just say this. So, in the wake of that Friday Oval meeting, all the European leaders are talking tough.
You're like, oh, we got your back. Ukraine, we got your back.

Speaker 2 We got your back. Like, we'll do this.

Speaker 2 They're all frauds. They can't do it without us.

Speaker 2 That's the reality, unless they dramatically change their spending habits and live up to military commitments they've made previously, that they've been flouting for years.

Speaker 2 So, technically, I guess they can, but nobody believes they actually will. That's the problem.
So that now they want to rub Trump's face in, oh, he's terrible. He didn't stand by his ally.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, even the New York Times, their podcast yesterday, was admitting they can't do it. They need the United States.
So they can try to walk all over Donald Trump, like, oh, what a cad he is.

Speaker 2 He's terrible. We'll just do it.
We'll do it without him. But listen to the New York Times, the Daily.
having this discussion. It's Michael Barbaro, the host with Peter Baker,

Speaker 2 the White House correspondent for the New York Times.

Speaker 17 Time and time again, Europeans have said yeah we're going to step up and take more of the burden from the united states without actually following through

Speaker 17 and they have risen to the occasion with ukraine over these last three years they've actually donated more money for ukraine's defense than the united states has you may have heard trump say the opposite he's wrong about that

Speaker 18 but it's still a question whether they can do everything that ukraine would need and would lose without american support and for europe it really is a moment of truth right and it seems worth noting that UK's prime minister, even as he announced more money for Ukraine, said, we've got to be honest, we still need a backstop from the U.S.

Speaker 18 There's nothing approaching a true guarantee of Ukraine's safety unless the U.S. is involved.

Speaker 17 That's right. I mean, you know, they don't expect the U.S.
to put. troops on the ground.

Speaker 17 What they would like would be air support or logistical support or intel support and mainly just political and geopolitical support.

Speaker 17 The idea that the United States is behind them on this and that Russia ought not to try anything because it would not just be aggravating Europe, but aggravating the United States and taking a real chance there.

Speaker 17 And it's not clear that Trump wants to do that.

Speaker 2 So they can't do it without us. They need to not keep aggravating President Trump.
President Trump, I think, probably would get around to, you know, Intel support if that's where we are.

Speaker 2 That's a much different commitment than we're going to send American military to Ukraine and be the first defense against Vladimir Putin, which puts us in a war if Putin gets hungry again.

Speaker 2 He knows he can't do that. I just think Trump is threading a very difficult-to-thread needle here, and he needs people's support.

Speaker 2 He's trying to bring an end to this impossible, near-intractable conflict. He needs Zelensky to not be a prick.
And I don't care if he doesn't like the way Trump's talking in the oval.

Speaker 2 He has no bargaining power, none, zero.

Speaker 2 He is in in a supplicant position, and he needs to know that when he's over here dealing with our commander-in-chief, to whom he owes and needs everything, from whom he needs everything.

Speaker 2 And the Europeans, the same. So you can act all high and mighty with a bunch of swagger.
But there's only one real player here, and it's us. And that's why we are speaking to Putin.

Speaker 2 And Trump is trying to speak nicely to Putin and not say the terrible things about Putin. He understands all the things that you said, Matt.
He's trying to negotiate in the way that he knows how.

Speaker 2 It works for him if you compliment him, if you flatter him. He's trying to do exactly that with Putin because that in Trump's head is the price of getting a deal done.

Speaker 2 It's irrefucking relevant to the rest of us. We should not be paying, getting upset or drawing conclusions from any of that language.
We should be looking at what Trump accomplishes.

Speaker 2 But when dealing with Trump, you should know how to play him.

Speaker 2 And that there's no excuse for Zelensky to have gone in there and to have been openly antagonistic, given the power imbalance and given what we know about Trump. That's my own take on it.

Speaker 2 I'll give you guys the last word.

Speaker 13 I would just say briefly that I think there was obviously a miscalculation. I would agree with that with respect to Zelensky's approach.

Speaker 13 But another miscalculation might be that if this is diplomacy, if it is uniquely sensitive, even if Donald Trump wants to use the particular tactics he's most comfortable with, that he should be having most of these conversations in private, that he should be having his his envoys conduct most of these conversations in person.

Speaker 13 And that the fundamental issue with this meeting on Friday is that it was a room full of people with cameras. Yes.

Speaker 13 Like that should not have happened, even if they thought they were going to sign this deal.

Speaker 13 And had they been able to do that, given the administration's stated objective of achieving a peace as quickly as possible, we would be far closer to that if this blowup had happened behind closed doors.

Speaker 13 And the opportunity that I think JD Vance missed first and that Donald Trump eventually missed as well was to say, you know what?

Speaker 13 Things are getting a little intense. I understand why emotions are running high here.
I don't like some of the things that have been said, but we've got all afternoon to continue to talk about this.

Speaker 13 We are going to get to the bottom of it. That's what we do here.
Fix hard problems. Meeting over.
Thanks, everybody, for coming. We've got hard work to do.
That's what should have happened.

Speaker 13 And that's the opportunity that I think JD and Donald miss.

Speaker 13 Can we credit Zelensky with the first error of the day?

Speaker 12 Yes, fine.

Speaker 13 But in general, this should be happening

Speaker 13 behind closed doors, which has been happening subsequent to that Friday meeting, but it was an unnecessary failure.

Speaker 2 Like, why didn't they have the deal signed? And why, like, I don't know why JD and these others were even in the room. It should have been Zelensky shows up.
They sign the deal. They have lunch.

Speaker 2 Then they go out with a signed deal. Just the two of them.
Now, I don't know why the vice president was there. He normally wouldn't be there.
Just the two of them go out and talk to the press.

Speaker 2 And Zelensky never should have negotiated pieces of part two that day. It should have been purely celebratory.
That should have been very clear between both leaders. We've signed this historic deal.

Speaker 2 Yay, the United States is doing super lots of stuff in Ukraine. Hello, Vladimir Putin.
We're really good friends and we're going to prom together. Like, that's that day.
Everything else gets tabled.

Speaker 2 And then you have your arguments about security guarantees and how many times Putin has violated them behind closed doors leading up to phase two when you're trying to convince America to do more and be the backstop to the Europeans that everybody knows the Europeans need.

Speaker 2 Zelensky blew it and he tried to antagonize Trump over security guarantees, which is part two during

Speaker 2 part one.

Speaker 2 There were too many players in the room that he hadn't signed the deal yet and he had been amped up by Democrats like Chris Murphy and Mark Kelly before he even got there, who I believe pushed that guy into the wrong headspace when he went into what was one of the most important meetings of his life.

Speaker 2 Okay, quick break back with the guys. Wait, you want something else quickly before we go?

Speaker 12 No, I was going to say, just

Speaker 12 I was going to say, you know, it plays into the conspiracy theory when you said it's very abnormal for J.D. Vance to be there.

Speaker 12 And they didn't sign that beforehand when Zelensky said quite, quite frankly, that he was willing to sign it.

Speaker 12 So I do understand those conspiracy theories that he was baited into it in some way, because it's just that the chronology of it is kind of strange, but that's all I want to say.

Speaker 2 I just don't believe it because I believe much more that Trump, like the the the conspiracy theory is that the deal was like falling apart and it wasn't favorable to trump and trump couldn't get putin to agree to it like ie having european security forces patrol ukraine and so that trump did something to tank the deal in that oval office meeting so that it didn't look like his deal-making skills were bad it you know it made it look like oh zelensky's a hothead you know it fell apart that doesn't sound right to me because Trump is not shy about owning up to any reality, good or bad.

Speaker 2 He'll spin it. He'll spin all of it, of course.
But when have you ever seen him so scared about a nasty political reality that he does something like that? That's not, that's conspiracy theory talk.

Speaker 2 This president

Speaker 12 is much more DD Vance himself, who has always had a very, very negative idea of Zelensky and the war in Ukraine, where Trump has been a little more kind of, you know, not on one side or another, more willing to kind of negotiate a deal.

Speaker 12 I mean, the entire thing that he says is that, you know,

Speaker 12 until you say we can promise peace, until you want to work towards peace, I cannot give you the weapons of war.

Speaker 12 I mean, that is, and as you pointed out, Megan, I mean, that is part of that deal is that we will give you the weapons of war if you promise peace. I don't think that that's something that J.D.

Speaker 12 Vance has ever wanted at all. So, I mean, that strikes me as more plausible, less plausible that it was Trump, you know, in some kind of nine.

Speaker 2 I hear you. And there's no question JD is not a Zelensky fan or a fan of this, you know, of Ukraine.

Speaker 2 But I also just think it's much more consistent with Trump to have wanted the win and to have wanted to run around being like, I got the minerals deal.

Speaker 2 And that loser who was there before me got nothing. He got us further and further entrenched in this thing and I got us the minerals deal, which, you know, Trump is all about that.

Speaker 2 Like we're about to annex Greenland because he wants minerals. He wants like this is important to Trump.

Speaker 12 So I'm saying if he announces it tonight and says, not only did I get the deal, but I played hardball.

Speaker 2 You saw it on television.

Speaker 2 That's how I negotiated. Yeah.
He wouldn't have done that whole.

Speaker 2 I just don't think that he would have blown it up or Trump would have done anything. Like

Speaker 2 you're just saying, J.D. Vance intentionally blew it up so that Trump could then spend the weekend renegotiating and announce it tonight.

Speaker 12 I don't think there's a chain of events there. I just think that right now, Donald Trump is probably

Speaker 12 likely to say, yeah, I'll sign that deal. Because not only is it the deal that they had worked out before and that he wanted and Zelensky agreed to, but if you get away from it.

Speaker 2 Zelensky came back begging.

Speaker 2 He came back begging. He's been begging for three days.
That's what's going to make the deal look more.

Speaker 12 Now you come back and say, look at the negotiation. I played such hardball with them that they came groveling back.

Speaker 2 That's no better than I got it signed on Friday with no problem. Look at me.

Speaker 2 It was easy for me. It's a little bit better.
I think it's a little better. Okay, I got to go.
I mean, I'm not going, going, but I have to take a break. Okay, we'll be right back.

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Speaker 2 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

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Speaker 2 So bit by bit, some distance out from the November election and the debacle of the the June debate with Biden and Trump, truth bombs are starting to emerge here, there, and everywhere.

Speaker 2 And you mentioned one earlier in the show. Chuck Todd sat down with Steve Schmidt of the Lincoln Project and listened to this.

Speaker 19 You know, Joe Biden never should have been there in the first place, right? Number one, he shouldn't have run for president. I completely got so angry at Joe Biden, the man,

Speaker 19 when I read the transcript of the Hunter Biden Biden trial, and when I realized that not one,

Speaker 19 not two,

Speaker 2 but three Biden children were all dealing with drug problems in 2018.

Speaker 19 And Joe Biden, Joe Biden said, now's a perfect time to run for president because who cares about our family? I have to tell you something about Joe Biden.

Speaker 19 There's this mythology about Joe Biden that the man cared so much. It's all bullshit.
This man supposedly cared so much about his family.

Speaker 19 It created a myth, and he did it for 40 years. God bless him, that he was this incredible family man.

Speaker 12 What he really was was a craven political animal

Speaker 19 that never was desperate. The man considered or ran for president every four years he was eligible.

Speaker 12 You know,

Speaker 2 unbelievable. Pretty interesting, right, guys?

Speaker 12 Didn't all four of us talk about this exact thing in similar, maybe not quite as harsh as Chuck Todd's words on this for several years?

Speaker 12 Seriously, like your family's falling apart and you're running as family man. What the hell are you doing?

Speaker 12 It's crazy to see this. I'm reminded earlier, you mentioned how it was in March or April of 20 of last year when there was the fundraiser

Speaker 12 that Joe Biden went to Radio City music hall instead of the funeral of the cop. We were on your show that morning and we talked about that.
I remember that.

Speaker 12 That happened in March or April of last year. And when did George Clooney come out and say, wow, wow,

Speaker 12 Biden's memory sure was going. Yeah.
Four months later. July.

Speaker 12 It's four months later. So Chuck Todd, dude, welcome to the whatever this is.

Speaker 12 But like that stuff about Joe Biden being a family man guy for 50 years and it being a bunch of horse pucky and people knowing that it's horse pucky and that his family is an absolute catastrophe.

Speaker 12 What part of that is new? I just don't know. No, no.

Speaker 12 Well, what part of that is new is that him talking about it, if you want an example, like, by the way, way nobody looks at this stuff as like oh he knew but this is bravery it undermines people's confidence in the mainstream media that doesn't need any more undermining i mean the opinion polls are like 18 below congress that people believe the mainstream media and this is somebody saying i knew this for a long time i thought this for a long time and i decided to not make it public i decided not to talk about it why not because you were a straight news man no you were talking about other things i guarantee you if you go and look at what chuck togg said for the past eight years, you're definitely going to find some things that are sharp-elbowed and that have opinions, but that opinion was left out.

Speaker 12 What do you think? People, when they see that, they're like, yeah, there is a kind of conspiracy in the media of silence because they don't like Donald Trump. They don't want him to win.

Speaker 12 So therefore, let's thumb the scales for this guy. It's kind of gross.

Speaker 2 Here's just a little bit more.

Speaker 2 Steve Schmidt weighing in on whether he'd trust Hunter Biden or the Trump children more to babysit his own children?

Speaker 12 I had to leave the kids with someone.

Speaker 12 And my choices are Hunter Biden

Speaker 12 or Ashley Biden

Speaker 12 or Don Jr.

Speaker 12 and Eric and Laura Trump. Like, I'm dropping the kids off at Don and Eric in Laura's house.

Speaker 2 How about that? The Lincoln Project guys.

Speaker 2 Honestly, like

Speaker 2 fear about anything.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 I mean, this is a guy that literally said that he saw the Lincoln project as generational wealth. What is it required to have generational wealth is to be fighting Donald Trump all the time?

Speaker 2 Did he get fired? Because now he's calling it a grift. Did he get fired?

Speaker 12 Yeah, well, it was a grift when he was there. And I think that he left under

Speaker 12 a cloud. But, you know, it's amazing that this is the same person that

Speaker 12 was talking about how he was going to get wealthy from being the anti-use.

Speaker 2 anti-peace.

Speaker 2 You can't trust anybody, anybody other than Mark Zuckerberg, that is,

Speaker 2 who decided to put it all out there, guys. And the minute we have left, here he is at his wife's 40th birthday party.
Watch.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, I'm here to show

Speaker 2 you imitating Benson Boon, wearing the jumpsuit.

Speaker 2 I mean, he brought it, guys. Admire or judge.

Speaker 12 I love it.

Speaker 13 I love it. I love him living his best life.
I don't love the shoes.

Speaker 13 That is the principal objection. The shoes and the pants could have been a bit better fitted.
A little shoe short.

Speaker 12 Well, Camillo, the pants were fitted just right because then you realize that he doesn't bring it.

Speaker 12 Oh, maybe, maybe put it on full screen.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 that's fine. Sorry.
We're okay. A lot of money.

Speaker 12 One problem you can't solve.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 Stick a sock in it. Stick a sock in it.
That's it. Maybe.
Maybe. Yeah.

Speaker 12 You got a lot of cash. Maybe buy a very fancy sock.
Put it in there.

Speaker 2 He's not, he's unashamed. Size large.
Leave him alone.

Speaker 2 Got it.

Speaker 2 It's always a pleasure, guys. We had to end it on an R-rated note, naturally.
That's our thing. Of course.
Thank you for being here.

Speaker 2 That's right. All right.

Speaker 2 We are back tomorrow with Rich Lowry and Mark Halford. Don't miss that.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no no agenda, and no fear.

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