Megyn's Time 100 Recap, Trump's Board of Directors, and Dems' Sagging Poll Numbers, with Mark Halperin | Ep. 1057

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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. It's Friday, and we have a great mix of political news and Hollywood gossip, some of it involving yours, truly.
We also wanted to let you know that we are soon going to be dropping an exclusive interview with Colin Carroll. He is one of those Pentagon officials fired last week, reportedly over a leaks investigation, but was it actually something else? He will tell his story in full right here, and we will drop it for you just a bit later.
He hasn't spoken out yet publicly, so this will be the first you'll hear from him, and I think you're going to find his testimonial very compelling. But first, last night I did go to the Time 100.
You remember yesterday I was still a little bit on the fence. Do I go? Do I not go? I don't totally believe in these big, you know, red carpet galas.
I've been to very, very many of these. And I don't know.
I just had mixed feelings about it. It's very self-congratulatory, right? To go to something like that.
And it's also not true. You know, I said this last night with all due respect to time.
I don't think they really do pick the most influential people in the country. You know, I think it's really like a PR event for time and that's fine.
You know, I don't want to be ungrateful. I, I mean, I appreciate being named again, but it's, I have to be honest, these things, they're very navel gazy and it's, I don't know.
Can I tell you, I looked around last night. There was not one other conservative in the room.
Not one, not one. You'd find like the occasional civilian who'd come over and be like, Hey, I'm one of, you know, your kind, but like not as soon.
Now they did name some like JD Vance was named and some other people who, you know, were named as Joe Rogan. I mean, he's not conservative, but, you know, he voted for Trump anyway.
They weren't there. But I mean, of the 100, I'd say about six or seven.
Wean right. It's just the way it is.
It's the way it is. Media is the way it is in New York.
And so it's just, you know, the things are awkward. Plus, let's face it, what do we do on this show but criticize the media left and right

and up and down all day, every day?

And half of them were there.

So that's awkward.

It's awkward.

All right, we're going to get into all the stories in just a minute.

And along for this ride with me today is Mark Halperin.

Mark is editor-in-chief and host of Two Way on YouTube.

And now starting next week, he's the host of a brand new show on the MK Media Network. It's called Next Up with Mark Halperin.
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Mark, great to see you. Megan, great to see you.
Really happy to be part of this and grateful to you and all of your team for making me a part of it. Oh, the pleasure has been all ours.
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Watch this. Breaking news.
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Alright, who is that sweet baby? That's my little boy, James, who every time I'm doing something on two way, and I'm sure he'll say the same thing about next up always says, is this another boring politics show? And he looks at my number of followers compared to the people he watches on YouTube. And he thinks I'm kind of a loser because he's watching people with millions and millions of followers.
So I decided if I got him a little bit invested in NextUp, maybe he'd cut me some slack for the first few episodes. Yeah, no, same.
My kids, they watch like a Mr. Beast video, and it's got like 100 million downloads.
And they're like, Mom, you know, you really got to step up your game. Like, yeah, sure.
A hundred million. That's same.
Same thing. That can't be the goal.
Same thing in my asshole. Um, okay.
So let's start with the time 100 and then we can talk about that other ridiculous gathering that's happening this weekend. So I, I'm, I know you've been, uh, this is, I've, the way it works is like you get inducted and then they invite you back as like, you know, one of the members, like a reigning, like a reigning jeopardy champion.
Yeah, exactly. So I've been a few times cause I got inducted back in 2014.
And I gotta be honest when they inducted me again this year, I was like, did they forget that they already put me on this list back in 20? I don't even know if you, can you, can you be inducted twice? I have no idea. You can, you can.
Yeah. And then I found out it wasn't a mistake, which I thought it was, might've been anyway.
So that's fine. But I had to tell you, Mark, I really did wrestle with, like, I don't really, the people at time were absolutely lovely.
I should say that up front. They were really nice up and down the line and like did not sense one iota of hostility toward me given my political views.
You know, they they did nothing other than make me feel welcome and were super kind. And I appreciate that.
But the nature of the gathering is just off putting to me. Whereas when I first went in 14, I was a little bit more starry eyed.
It was very cool. It felt like something to me.
You know, I, it felt like, wow, I've accomplished something, which, you know, I hadn't, I, I launched my primetime show. That was good.
But I get, even then I wasn't one of the most influential people and, um, you go and you, you get asked, like, what does it mean to you to be one of the, it's like, oh God. And so I, I wrestled with whether I should go on the red carpet and give interviews.
I definitely was going on the red carpet for a picture for sure. I wanted to do that, but, but you also have to choose whether you want to talk to the, you know, the press that's there, like Daily Mail and extra and all those folks.
So you, you'll, you'll hear a little bit of that struggle as I sat and spoke to Extra TV.

Here's a soundbite.

Congratulations.

I want to know, when you first found out that you were on the list, what was your reaction?

I kind of laughed because I've been here before, and then I was canceled, and now here I'm back again.

So that was good.

What does that say to you?

It says that nobody decides who gets canceled other than the American public. Okay.
So Abigail Fine and my assistant insisted that we play that soundbite, which we did because she was with me through the set cancellation. But, you know, overall, it just felt a little embarrassing, right? To be walking around with people pretending that this is real, that this really is the 100 most influential people and that somehow you've moved up in some imaginary power grid.
Yeah. First of all, I'm like you.
Any event that I can't wear sneakers to, the bar is high to get me to get dressed and go.

Look, I worked a time.

This event, I'll use an in-play word.

It's a scam.

It's an advertising play.

They use the leverage of 100 plus years of a great journalism brand. And they say to famous people and influential people, come be at the dinner.

And you can tell people you're one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Then they say to their biggest advertisers, come sit at a table.
You can sit with a Nobel prize winner and Megyn Kelly. It's, it is, I, I won't say it's corrupt, but it is not an exercise in journalism.
It's an exercise in stroking and, and cultivating advertisers. Yes.
Right. Of course.
And, uh, you know, when, when you're there, it's very clear because you look around and it's like, all right, some people there have accomplished so much. Like Simone Biles, she was there.
She spoke. She's impressive by anybody's measure.
I mean, she's just incredible. She's been through a lot, too.
And, you know, total respect. But then you had people like Blake Lively, who was there with her husband, Ryan Reynolds.
By the way, they were there. I think she was inducted the first year I was inducted to were on the same path with these people.
And Blake Lively has been in some movies and some successful TV shows. But in no world is this person one of the most influential people in America.
this is part of what you say is the scam. And here is another thing I was wrestling with.
I knew if I went and I gave interviews on the red carpet, Mark, I was going to be honest in response to the questions, which, as you know, is a hard no for these things. Like, that's not the goal.
You don't be honest. You just, like, play it straight.
You're supposed to say, I'm in love with the other 99, and I'm the least accomplished. That's right.
I'm so honored to be here. Maybe I shouldn't go over to the people and give an interview.
But then I was like, ah, F it. So I did, and I was asked by the Daily Mail about Blake Lively.
And here's how that went. So who are you most looking forward to seeing the night? Well, I'm definitely hoping for some sort of a selfie in the distance with both Blake Lively and Meghan Markle since they provided me with so many hours of content.
There's a lot of controversy right now with Blake being on the Time 100 list. It's a ridiculous joke.
She shouldn't be there. She has no influence over anything.
I mean, what do you think of when you read headlines every day about her? I mean, I think she launched a fake Me Too allegation against him, and she's lived to regret doing it because virtually every allegation she has made has fallen apart. And so for her to be honored for doing that, to try to ruin a man over absolutely nothing, is a scandal.
And obviously they're looking for big stars to come here and generate pages on their magazines, but that was very wrong. Right.
Are you going to be avoiding her inside because she's expected to be here with Ryan? I have a feeling she's going to be avoiding me. I won't be avoiding anybody.
I'm good. And what do you think of her new movie, Another Simple Favor? People are saying she's peeping with Anna.
Do you believe that? I couldn't care less, but I do care when people bastardize the Me Too allegations against people who don't deserve it. And you know, notwithstanding the fact that they can lawyer up with very powerful PR people and lawyers and so on, we have to be very clear eyed on what looks real and what doesn't and call it out when it isn't.
Otherwise, no one who's actual, you know, actually experienced these things is going to be believed. So, you know, now today there are a bunch of headlines about that and me specifically hitting her on what I said, I believe is a fake Me Too claim against Justin Baldoni.
Go ahead. Well, I was going to say, in all fairness, Megan, you brought up Blake Lively, not the Daily Mail.
So she said, who are you excited to see? So I know, but that's one person. I know.
I know. Look, as you said originally, it is not the 100 most influential people in the world.
Far from it. I would say every year there might be two or three people who could arguably be on that actual list.
Yeah. But there is no universe, none, where Blake Lively would be on the list.
And I was not surprised you said what you said. And I was not surprised that a lot of the media found it interesting.
Yeah, because it's very rare to have a red carpet comment along those lines. And I don't mean to be impolite, but I got I'm not going to lie.
Like I'm very outspoken about my opinion on this person on this show. Millions of people have already heard it.
And in no world was I going to stand there and try to pretend like I didn't feel that it just would have been a farce. But I have to tell you, it's pretty cathartic to say how you really feel.
It's like, I just said what was real. I like I did it.
And it's very funny because you can see Doug, my husband in the background, like, okay, here we go. This is happening.
Um, then there was another interviewer. Yeah, go ahead.
Sorry. It'd be the equivalent if you won an Oscar and rather than going up and saying how honored you were to be, uh, to win over the other four nominees.
If you said, you know what, in thinking about the five performances, I definitely deserve to win. It would be, it'd be break, breaking, breaking the fourth wall in the same way.
Or more likely, none of us really deserves to be here. This is ridiculous.
I should be here. It's a bad year in my category.
And you four shouldn't be here either. They asked me about my recent dust-up with George Clooney, who rather like focusing on his waning acting career is commenting on yours truly and my journalism.
And I had a little response to him on the show the other day. And here's that exchange when that came up.
You don't on your show also shy away from controversy. I saw that you addressed George Clooney's comments.
Why did you feel the need to respond? Oh, because it's too delicious not to. Honestly, George Clooney trying to advise me on how to practice journalism.
Take care, honey. Okay.
You know what? He should call me up. I would love to talk to him about it.
He's obviously got thoughts on me. So let's do that.
That'll be fun. So Mark, it was basically a night of antagonism.
Yeah. And I mean, you know, taking on Blake Lively is one thing.
Clooney is like, it's like taking on royalty. So, um, again, you're one of the few people with the courage and the reality to, uh, to say what you said.
And, and, uh, I think, I think, I hope people, I've been, obviously people think it's interesting because you did it.

But I hope people focus on at least somewhat on the substance of what you said, because he has gotten a free ride for for the arc of what he did. Yeah, I mean, beta royalty.
That's that's the truth. Beta royalty at best.
Like Maureen says about Meghan Markle, beta royal or Harry. Meghan Markle was not there.
She actually only wound up participating in the summit leading up to the big event, which I was invited to, but declined to go. Had I known we might have crossed paths, I might have reconsidered it.
But it's probably best for all that we did not. I mean, the last thing I want to be honest with you is for her to, like, come over and give me a hug.
And then I'd feel bad about being honest about how, you know, ridiculous she is. So I think I might have dodged a bullet there on the subject of Blake Lively before we leave the time 100.
She was there and I did manage to get my selfie, which you heard me reference there with Doug and yours truly in the foreground. And she's in the back.
You can see her right there. She's right behind me.
And she's, you can see the side view. She's having a chat with somebody.
She's an absolutely beautiful woman. She was with Ryan Reynolds.
He was there. He was very nice to everybody around him.
But the truth is, and I've said many times, I don't think what she's doing to Justin Baldoni is in any way fair, gracious, nice, or just. And so I couldn't help looking at her the whole night, like some sort of twisted mean girl.
Like there's something wrong with this person because all the allegations that she's launched against him have fallen apart. Virtually every single one of them.
Now there's still going to be a trial. She'll have her day in court and all that, supposedly.
But to me, there's something wrong with her to say the things she said when it's all being disproved like on camera where there's actual evidence. So she had the opportunity to go up before the audience and give a speech.
You know, they pick one or two, like I mentioned, Simone Biles was one, Blake Lively is another. She decided to make the whole thing about her mother's rape.
Here's a bit. What does influence mean? How we use that matters.
I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum. What I will speak to you separately is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today.
Before I say more, I want to warn that I will speak about tonight covers trauma. So please feel free to step away if you need.
My life was influenced most by my mother sitting here tonight she wanted me to share with you that she is a survivor of the worst crimes someone can commit against a woman. My mom never got justice from her work acquaintance who attempted to take her life.
She has always credited her beating heart today with the story she heard from another woman in a similar circumstance. The woman painfully and graphically shared how she escaped.
And because of hearing that woman speak to her experience instead of shutting down in fear and unfair shame, my mom is alive today. We don't let our daughters know, but one day we break their hearts by letting them in on the secret that we kept from them as they pranced around in princess dresses.
That they are not, and will likely never be safe, at work, at home, in a parking lot, in a medical office, online, in any space they inhabit, physically, emotionally, professionally. Never underestimate a woman's ability to endure pain.
Life's just a bullet here. So thank you to every woman whose strength brought life to me and my four children, and thank you to every man, including my sweet husband, who are kind and good when no one is watching, and to all the communities across the gender, age, political, geographical, and racial spectrum who fight every day just to be safe, I see you and I share tonight and my influence with you for as long as I have the ability to affect even one other person.
Okay, Mark. Now, why she would make her whole speech about her mother's trauma from more than 45 years ago, I don't know.
But that was the darkest view of womanhood in America that I think I've ever heard from a public figure at an awards ceremony like this. We, she, she goes on, you heard it there.
We don't let our daughters know, but one day we break their hearts by letting them in on the secret that we've kept from them as they pranced around in princess dresses that they are not and will likely never be safe. Not at work, not at home, not in a parking lot, in a medical office, not online, not in any space they inhabit.
Not physically, not emotionally, not professionally. Thank you.
Thank you. My God.
What did you make of it? How long did she go on for? Like 10 minutes. Yeah.
Like seven. I mean, look, obviously, to say the obvious, I don't want to minimize the horrible experience her mother had as she described it.
But tonally, as you said, for the occasion, probably a little bit off key. But also, I agree with your view of it, which is don't ever minimize violence against anyone, including women.
But to say that girls have to be kind of afraid their whole lives rather than strong and empowered and careful, I just I don't know that that that would be the consensus view of how to of how to shape the lives of young women. To me, it was evidence of how desperate she is to improve her standing in the public eye as a result of this battle she started with Justin Baldoni.
She's really taken a serious hit. You know, she thought she was going to file this Me Too claim against him and sort of, you know, with the human rights group and get the New York Times to write about it.
And she was going to be elevated as a Me Too heroine. And instead, he lawyered up and he got a great one, happens to be my own lawyer too, Brian Friedman, and started

fighting her back on each and every claim. And as I've said, they started to fall apart.
I mean, we've covered it extensively on this show. And so the public opinion of Blake Lively has gone down precipitously.
She has a whole legion of people who no longer like her at all. And my own belief is she used her mother's rape to try to improve her standing with a certain section of the populace.
Like, feel sorry for my mom, feel sorry for me, because I understand trauma. And the wink and a nod piece of it was, I too am a victim.
And, you know, like the torch has been passed. And just like every woman and little girl, I and my children and all of yours, too, the females have to live in fear that they will never be safe anywhere.
Thanks a lot for coming. I'm Blake Lively.
I mean, it was just I thought such an obvious manipulation of her image. She used her mother and the mother's supposed trauma.
I have no idea what happened to the mother. And I thought it was just one of the most cynical displays.
Yeah. Look, I followed it probably not as close as you, but I followed it really closely.
It's an interesting story and it's compelling. And I agree with you.
So far, based on what we've seen publicly, a lot of the things she said just are not backed up, but not just by documented evidence, but by other people who had insight into what happened. And clearly, she's super concerned about her public image.
And clearly, whenever she goes out now, she's got the opportunity to try to shape it and reshape it. And I agree with you.
This seemed like a self-conscious attempt to recast her image at a time when she went on offense and now she's very much on defense. You know, the last bit of it reminded me of, we did a segment a couple of weeks ago, a month ago on Bill Weir, who's at CNN as their climate reporter now.
And he admitted that both in 2020 when his kid was born and then again in 2024 on Earth Day, he wrote a letter to his son. And it was like, I'm very sad that the water that you drink will be covered in toxins, that the ice cream you try to eat will melt in a world that's too warm and dying.
It was the darkest stuff, Mark. And that's like, I can speak to this.
I'm a mother of two boys and a daughter. And in no world am I privately sitting here waiting in fear as I watch my daughter prance around in princess dresses.
When am I going to have to tell her she'll never be safe? There's no place, not online, not at work, not at home, not on, like, that's just, it's a leftist thing, this catastrophizing that we're in this extremely dark world. And there's danger around every corner, mostly at the fault of conservatives.
And to me, it was it almost like was a window on perhaps why she went the way she went with these allegations against Justin Baldoni. Maybe maybe she actually did perceive these massive slights at every corner.

If this is how she views life, you know, that it's everything is dangerous and with lurking people wanting to hurt us. It's there's like a psychosis.
But it is, in my experience, limited to the left. The right has like its conspiracy theories that they love, but the left has this weird, dark worldview about people out to get them and ruin everything around us.
Yeah. And again, particularly for young people to instill in them rather than a sense of empowerment and strength and possibility and self-determination to instill in them a fear that they can never be safe.

I just not, not the way I think anybody should parent, whether they're kids or boys or boys

or girls.

I'll say this.

I saw Ed Sheeran again.

I interviewed him at NBC and he was completely charming then.

And once again, completely charming last night.

Gail King was there and she was working the tables that had celebrities at them the way a bride works her wedding. I mean, she did not skip somebody who was famous.
It was ridiculous. Most of us leave the- Gayle's in the always be booking mode.
Yeah. I mean, but most of us leave the celebrities alone.
I have to say it's like there's something's something a little pathetic about running after them, like as a supplicant, like, please, please talk to me. Obviously she did not feel that way.
We had the other musical entertainment. He was great.
My gosh, now I'm gonna forget his name. Miles Smith.
He was amazing. And I would definitely go see him in concert.
I think he's having one this Monday night. And last but not least at all, I met Demi Moore, who was stunning.
And we posed for a photograph together. Here we are.
And could not have been nicer. She was completely friendly to everybody there.
I have to say to her

credit, because she's an A-list star for sure. And some of these people won't deign to speak to

anyone other than their little cosseted, collected table, but she was very friendly with everyone

there. So that's my armchair assessment of the Time 100.
Again, my thanks to Time. I don't mean

to sound like an ingrate. I just have to be honest about my feelings on the whole thing.
I'm glad you went. Glad you went.
Yeah. Yeah, me too.
Doug and I had fun. And we met some nice people.
We loved our table in particular. Okay.
Speaking, though, of this kind of navel-gazing, self-celebratory event, the Nerd Prom is tomorrow night in Washington, D.C., the White House Correspondents Dinner, Mark. And I'm sure we've both been to many of these things.
They're a complete bore. They're just absolutely painful.
But there's a time in Washington when you have to do it in your career. And it's amazing to me that they're still going.
This year, President Trump will not be there. He doesn't have a good relationship with the media, so there's even less reason to go.
And you tell me whether these things have long passed their expiration date. Well, I mean, I used to like going early in my career because I could see a lot of people, particularly after I moved to New York, which I did a long time ago and still covered Washington regularly.
So I liked them just because I could see, you know, 50 people in one night and to reacquaint. So for me, that was good.
The overall notion of the thing, particularly with the Republican president, is past its sell date, because although Donald Trump has a special relationship with the media, it's always been a bunch of almost all liberal reporters from liberal organizations celebrating their own worldview and not treating George Bush the same as Barack Obama. In addition, it's supposed to be about celebrating journalism and starting in three or four decades ago, people started bringing celebrities and turned it into

something very different. So I Washington in general is such a boring place that I don't mind a little celebrity and a little bit of excitement.
But this massive dinner, particularly with Donald Trump in the office and the White House Correspondents Association, having gone just crazy anti president, I think I think they would have been better off canceling it as opposed to doing the version of it they're going to do. Here's one of the funniest and most telling takes that I just read before we came to air on Nerd Prom.
It's by this guy who writes for Mediaite named Colby Hall, who his headline is, this year's White House Correspondents Dinner serves only to normalize Trump's First Amendment dumpster fire.

I won't be a part of it. Good for you, Colby.
Good for you. He's so self-congratulatory again.
And he says as follows. President Trump's constant attacks on the media, which is in his first term,

ranged from petty insults to ominous but contained action against the press,

have escalated into a war that mirrors authoritarian states and far flung regions of the world.

That's why I'm opting to skip this year's weekend.

And he goes on to quote certain upset journalists who don't want any part of this.

They have. OK, let's see.
What is there to celebrate? One prominent editor of an influential outlet said the first Trump term was weird enough because the White House didn't engage, but his staffers like Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway still really gave a shit. Now it's like the current tripe White House truly, not performatively, hates and is attacking the press.
Then you've got him quoting another person saying, with Disney bending the knee to Trump, Paramount contemplating doing the same to settle the president's insane lawsuit against 60 Minutes, the White House bringing in all these ridiculously sycophantic alt-media figures, Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend et al. It's an unsettling time to be in news media and an odd time to be celebrating anything.
Finally, said a longtime cable news anchor to Colby Hall, to me, this represents everything that's wrong with both Washington and the White House press corps, which is in the midst of a crisis of relevancy, public trust and confidence. Having a big black tie soiree does not read right to Americans.
That's the only point I will seed of those three. So the press is outraged that anybody would go to celebrate the white.
Like, it's not a celebration of Trump, but in the era of Trump, they're not even allowed to go to this because they hate Trump. You know, there's a thing in Politico playbook this morning that I read twice because I thought maybe I was missing a parody.
But, you know, the parties have already started. They start on like Wednesday night.
And they quote a reporter saying that all the reporters are hugging each other and the hugs are lingering a little longer than usual because everybody is so upset. They're also traumatized by having to cover a Republican president.
I mean, again, this goes back to the Biden years and the Obama years.

The thing that's so obvious that they just won't admit is that the central dynamic here is not some of the things they claim it is. The central dynamic is they've covered Republican presidents, particularly this one, hostily for decades.
And they want to be treated exactly the same way they are treated by Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. And they're just not going to be treated that way.
And it's possible that even if they changed their behavior and weren't biased, maybe the Trump administration wouldn't change. But let's try it and see.
Let's try covering them fairly and then see what happens. I mean, and Trump, to his credit, like he just announced yesterday on True Social that he was sitting down last night with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic.
And he says, like, this is the guy he's he hates me. He reported what Trump says is a lie about Trump referring to our dead soldiers as suckers and losers.
He reported the signal gate controversy, which has been, you know, a big story in Trump's first 100 days. And yet he still sat down with him.
You know, it's like Trump, look, he and I were on the outs for nine months. He still sat down with me.
He didn't actually even like the interview, but then, you know, he, to his credit, he will give you second and third and fourth chances in the press. They just hate him.
They hate his politics, Mark. It's not about what he says about the press.
No, of course. You know, the example I've been giving to reporters to kind of try to raise their consciousness is what's one of the things the press is most upset about.
They're obsessed about upset about the Associated Press not being allowed to cover the White House the way they used to because of their content. OK, so what I say to them is, OK, you've turned that into a crisis of the Constitution.
In the last administration, the Biden folks did the exact same thing to the New York Post. They didn't like the New York Post coverage of Hunter Biden.
And so they excluded the New York Post reporters from covering White House events. I'd argue that that was even worse because the nature of of why they were so they excluded the new york post reporters from covering white house events

i'd argue that that was even worse because the nature of of why they were so angry and because it wasn't covered that wasn't covered anywhere but the new york post and by people like us

and so here you have one president doing something that's ignored and the other president does something pretty much the same but not quite as bad in my view and it it's treated as a constitutional crisis. So unless the press comes clean on that, comes clean on Biden's mental acuity loss and the conspiracy to cover that up, it's very hard to see how they think they have the standing to say, this president doesn't like us.
He doesn't appreciate us. He doesn't appreciate what we do.
All presidents don't like their coverage. All presidents do things to the media that I wish they wouldn't do.
But the double standard is so strong. I don't know.
I don't understand how they think they're going to look better in the eyes of the American people or how a dinner like this makes any sense until they decide to cover every president really tough. I'm not saying they should cover Donald Trump lightly.
What I'm saying is they should cover him tough and fair, same way they've covered other presidents, and they just don't do that with him. I should say this.
The headline in HuffPost this morning is, HuffPost is bringing workers fired by Trump to the White House Correspondents' Dinner to highlight the Trump administration's scorched earth attack on vital government functions and its workers. HuffPost is bringing guests who have experienced the fallout firsthand.
Some guy who is a federal watchdog in charge of protecting whistleblowers who Trump fired. Rohit Chopra, who headed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until Trump fired him.
Andrew Bivens, a USAID employee. I mean, okay.
not the role of the media. That's not the role of the media.
Right. Like, take it, take it, Stan, take a position, HuffPo.
That's great. Just own it.
In any event, it will go forward. And I'm sure we'll enjoy the pictures and stories that come out of it and cover it right here.
OK, before we move on totally from White House Correspondents Dinners, they haven't always been totally inconsequential. And while they'll sit there this year lamenting the fact that President Trump is in the Oval, it's arguably because of their little event that he ran in the first place.
You could make a pretty decent case that had they not had this annual event every year, Donald Trump would still be a private citizen hosting Celebrity Apprentice and running his business. And do you care to explain why? And then we will play the soundbite.
Well, look, I, I, one thing I do like have liked historically about the dinner is the comedy, uh, when the trained, the professional comedians have been good, I think it's been great. And I think presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama were brilliant.
I think they they they had they worked on great routines with their team, with their routines, with their teams. I thought their delivery was great.
I really enjoyed being in the room for those comedic stylings. In 2011, Donald Trump attended the dinner.
I don't know how many others he's attended before he ran because he wasn't a big Washington guy. And in fact, when I ran into him that night before the comedian spoke, he did what he always did to me.
Whenever I saw him anywhere in the country besides New York, he offered me a ride home. He always was saying, come fly back to New York.
I didn't because I was staying on to go to parties afterwards. But that night, he was a big topic of the comedian's routine.
And he didn't like it. He could just tell from his face.
And maybe you'll have that in the clip. Some people say he was so angry at how he was treated at that dinner that that's what caused him to decide to run five years later.

I don't think so. I've talked to him about it.
I don't think that's the reason. I mean, he was already thinking about running.
But it certainly, I think, got him resentful of the attitude in that room and the way the Washington establishment laughed at him and treated him like an unserious person. And I think no small measure of satisfaction for him off of this night that he's able to then come back to Washington six years later as the elected president of the United States.
We take you back now to 2011, the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and Seth Meyers was that so-called comedian. No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald.

And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter.

Like, did we fake the moon landing?

What really happened in Roswell?

And where are Biggie and Tupac?

You, Mr. Trump, recognize that the real problem was a lack of leadership.

And so ultimately you didn't blame Little John or Meat Loaf.

You fired Gary Busey.

And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican, which is surprising since I just assumed he was running as a joke.
Donald Trump said recently he has a great relationship with the blacks, though unless the blacks are a family of white people, I bet he's mistaken. I mean, utter contempt for him there.
And who could blame him for being genuinely pissed off? Yeah. I mean, they treated him like a joke.
And of course, as you know, Megan, that's how he was largely treated. It's that same year that he spoke at CPAC.
It's really how I got to meet him originally. He spoke at CPAC.
He gave the best received speech of the whole group in 2011, filled with people thinking of running in 2012. And I went on TV the next morning and I said, you may not take him seriously, but take his idea seriously because they have a lot of resonance with the American people.
And that's how he felt about himself. He didn't feel, of course, like he was a joke.
He sat at the dinner. I think he was sitting at the Washington Post table, pretty close to the stage.
And here you have the sitting president of the United States and Seth Meyers making fun of him. And he did not like it.
I don't think it's what caused him to run in some linear way,

but I definitely think it was part of his psychology of saying, I'm going to prove that I'm not a joke. I'm going to prove that I'm a serious person.
And of course, five years later, he did. So you were not only right about that in that moment, you've been right about a lot, but there was another moment regarding Donald Trump that you are famously able to cite in which you were predicting that he might actually win the 2016 presidential election, which did not go over well on the set at MSNBC.
We've got that queued up for the audience to watch. I think you've gone out of your way to find the path, argue for the path,

forge the path for him in an argumentative way with your co-host to the nomination. Tonight, I thought you were interestingly optimistic.

Where are you getting the path of positivity you laid out on your broadcast?

Well, it's not a question of optimism.

It's a question of looking at the data and looking at what's going on in the battleground states. I agree with Steve.
She's still overwhelmingly the favorite. If it turns out that she doesn't have the hold on the coalition of the ascendant that Barack Obama had, I think it's possible he could find his way to 270.
I think that's fair. But I think the idea that there's some magical state with magical polls that we don't see where he's ahead in a blue state is completely false he's ahead in iowa that's it oh that's so delicious that is you got written up by the hateful media matters for for you know the nerve to predict something like that and the smug nicole wallace like you're an idiot there's no way he's winning and you had it it was it was worse than that.
MSNBC took that clip. And I was like, I think my title was senior political analyst at MSNBC at the time.
I had a show on Bloomberg and a contract with NBC. They put on the website that clip of Brian making fun of me for saying Trump might win.
And the headline was something like, Brian Williams schools Mark Halperperin and i was like guys i worked i work here like don't don't put on a clip mocking me and and and and then of course i'll spoiler alert trump won uh and um as i said i thought hillary flint was probably going to win but i thought trump had a pretty good chance and in the days between that clip i think that was like a week before election day, maybe in the intervening days, I grew more confident that he might win. And I, you know, I don't know how many rallies of Donald Trump, Brian covered.
I covered Trump rallies that year in 30 states, 30 states. And so it seemed obvious to me that he might win.
And yet that, that, that clip was, was probably the most extreme example of what I experienced for most of the year, as I told people, as I started doing in 2011. Do not underestimate the resonance he has with tens of millions of people.
I'm sure they came back and apologized to you and thanked you for your insight after Trump won. So funny you should say that.
I called management and I said, take the clip down. And also, uh, because I have, I'm the senior political analyst here, like, trust me, your coverage here should not reflect the possibility that Trump can't win.
You know, it should reflect the possibility that Trump can win. I will say I got something that people might, if they were super generous, consider it an apology, but I never got an actual apology.
Yeah. Trust me.
They're not big over at NBC on apologies, even when they're clearly owed. Okay.
Later today, I mentioned it at the top of the hour, I'm going to sit down with Colin Carroll, who is one of the guys fired at the Pentagon. One of the three pushed out.
And then there's also this comms guy who says he resigned voluntarily, but the Pentagon saying they forced him out. Um, and he's going to tell us his story about why he's going to say, I believe he's not the leaker and that this is not being handled well, nor fairly.
And I wonder if you can give us your perspective, Mark, on what's happening at the Pentagon, because we have been covering, you know, all the palace intrigue, but this is like every day there there's a new barrage of bad press. Yeah, look, the palace intrigue is interesting.
And I'll speak in a second about about the confusion about what's going on. It's important, right? It's one of the hardest buildings in the world to run.
It's a huge bureaucracy. Say whatever you want positive about Pete Hegseth.
He does not have the normal experience to do this job. So he's going to have to rise to the occasion to do the job well.
In most stories I report on, sometimes I'll have dissenting voices about, you know, is it A or is it B? Who's telling the truth? Who's not? But usually there's one kind of through line of, well, this seems to be what's going on. I am baffled here because I have top shelf sources saying all these stories are coming from these four guys.
They're all annoyed. They were fired.
They're all just talking every day to the press leaking as they did originally, which was their offense for being fired. And that once they shut up, the stories will stop.
I'll say, I don't understand Pete Heggs' posture. He went after them very hard publicly.
If you've fired people, and remember, the three who were fired are his friends. If you fire your friends- Two out of three.
Yeah, two out of three. I mean, two close friends, one associate, I believe.
If you do that, I don't know why you'd pick a fight with them publicly, both in terms of doing the right thing, even if you think they did something wrong, but also just as a matter of tactics, because if he attacks them and they are the leakers, they're probably going to keep leaking. But I also have people close to them, and you'll be told this too, they say absolutely not.
They didn't leak originally, and they're not leaking now. And I've got sources pointing fingers at other people, saying other people in the administration are the ones doing this, some in the Pentagon, some in the White House.
And those people and their folks deny it. So I've been disappointed in most of the coverage because it's not getting at the mystery here, which is some of the stories of Adam are cheap shots.
Some I think are quite legitimate to scrutinize. But what is driving this endless number of stories? I cannot figure it out yet.
I know there's no we wrestled with this the other day. There's no clear motive.
If you look at the leaks that have come out, it's it's not easy to understand what the ideological objective would be. Correct.
So the motive could be you think he's not a good secretary of defense and you want the president to fire him, although I don't know that these stories will achieve that. It could be, you know, some people say, well, it's people who are neocons and they don't like the way he's doing things or people on the left from the deep state.
I can come up with motives, but I cannot come up with any idea, clear idea about who's doing it. But as I said, the people close to Secretary Hegseth are quite certain that it's these guys who were the original leakers that got them fired and that they're the ones leaking now.
But as I said, they deny it. And I consider this to be a mystery as of right now.
I will probe every angle, and the audience will be able to make up its own mind about my guest. Do you think Pete Hegseth will survive this, and will he survive as defense secretary? Because it's very clear some group of people that's pretty loud is out to get him.
Yeah. So I've got what I call the Trump board of directors.
OK. And the board of directors is Tucker, Charlie Kirk and Don Jr.
And if the board of directors support something, I think generally it happens. And I believe all three of them, I know all three of them have been supportive, particularly

recently Don Jr. and Charlie.

They've been very supportive on social media and elsewhere of Pete Hegseth.

So I don't think the president will be inclined to get rid of him.

And of course, he doesn't want to give in to these stories, most of which are published

by media organizations he considers hostile.

I think the only, so I can't invent an offense that Pete Hegseth could be charged with.

the which are published by media organizations he considers hostile i think the only so i can't i can't invent an offense that p uh except could be charged with that would cause the president on his own uh to go past the shoot someone on fifth avenue bar i think what will be determinative is when congress comes back to town i think if some republicans like tom cotton for instance who've been very supportive if they decide that they don't think he's right for the job, that a change needs to be made, then I think it's possible that the president would listen to that because he knows how important congressional support is for someone who's embattled. But if less members of Congress either go public or tell the president they're going to go public, I think he can proverbially shoot people on Fifth Avenue and he'll survive.
The board of directors will not bend the knee to Tom Cotton. They don't like him.
Yeah. At least one member of the board likes him.
I won't say which. But the board of directors doesn't always get their way.
And I think the board of directors listens to the president. And if the president says it's not tenable, then I think the board of directors might stand down.
But they're not inclined to. And I got to tell you, again, if you're someone in Trump world and you want something or you want to improve your standing or whatever it is, you want the board of directors on your side.
It's a very funny way of looking at it. And you're not wrong.
I agree with your assessment. I, this may sound weird, but I would also move JD Vance over there because typically vice presidents are powerless, but he's not, he's on that board.
I, well, I, I, I call him the, like the ex officio member of the board because he is the vice president, but I agree with you. He's on the board.
They're all on the same text chain. It's one of the most undercovered stories in the administration.
Those guys are texting in that group, but in other groups all the time. Never been anything like that in American history because, of course, texting hasn't been around much.
And historically, you haven't had outside people. Last I checked, Charlie and Tucker and Don Jr.
did not have government IDs, but they are in the rhythm every day of projects that need projecting and that the board of directors pays attention to. I think the vice president is the most powerful vice president of our lifetime.
And that means passing Dick Cheney and Al Gore, for instance, Walter Mondale. Wait, hold that thought.
All of them. Hold that thought.
I want to hear more on that, but I have to squeeze in this break. So we pick it up on the opposite side of this on why JD Vance is the most powerful vice president in history Mark is here today he is promoting his new show next up with Mark Halperin it's a brand new podcast it starts on Tuesday go subscribe on YouTube and subscribe on all podcast platforms you're gonna love it are you watching the NBA playoffs now is the time to turn your basketball smarts into serious fun with prize picks, a go-to for daily fantasy sports.
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Run your game. Before the break, we left the audience with the thought of why Mark Halperin believes J.D.
Vance is turning out to be the most consequential VP in history. Why? Yeah, after less than 100 days, fewer than 100 days.
Everybody likes him for the most part. And he's very good at publicly and privately dealing with the president.
He's a very smart guy, as you know. He's very, as I say, he speaks MAGA, affluent MAGA with a suburban accent.
He has the ability to talk about the movement and the agenda in a way that for some years is easier to understand and

appreciate than even the president does, who's a leader of the movement. And I think if you look at

personnel, policy, the press, he is in every meeting. He often gets his way.
His allies are

all over the administration. As we talked about last segment, the board of directors are the ones who made him the vice president they're the ones whose advocacy got donald trump to choose him so the board of directors loves him and he loves the board of directors and so i look at everything they're doing from dealing with capitol hill to dealing with foreign governments i think the speeches he gave in europe that the europeans are still on their fainting couches over, the speeches he's given domestically are some of the most important speeches that not just anyone in this administration, but anyone in the party has given in the last decade.
And I can't find a single issue where his influence is not very high. Lastly, I'll say, vice presidents usually, of course, a big job, but the incumbents who are thinking of running for president, and the last three in that category, Biden, Gore, and Bush 41, the White House operation was built to hold them down because they said, the more you're out there meeting with donors, the more you're out there trying to raise your own political profile, the more it might distract or hurt the president.
And they didn't want that. This White House doesn't feel that way.
They like J.D. Vance out there talking to donors.
They like him out there elevating his profile. So he has the platform of the vice presidency to position himself, but also to help the party and to help the administration in ways that I just didn't see with the previous vice presidents.
Yeah, Trump's confident enough in his own power that he doesn't need to feel threatened by J.D. For those just joining us, the so-called board of directors in Mark's view is Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, and Don Jr., who I have a text thread, says Mark, where they weigh in on very substantial matters and advise the president accordingly.

And that rings very true to me.

OK, so that's J.D.

There's there's a bit of breaking news that I just wanted to bring up, Mark, and it kind of dovetails on what's happening with the Trump agenda, which we'll talk more about. as you know in trump 2.0 one of the main resistance efforts is the lawfare and trying

to shut down all those executive orders especially when it comes to illegal immigration and these deportations, the various tools that Trump is using to do them.

So an extraordinary event in Wisconsin where there was a hearing underway involving a guy, an illegal immigrant named Eduardo Flores Ruiz, 30 years old from Mexico, who was charged with battery for allegedly punching someone 30 times in the face after they complained about his loud music. Go back home to Mexico.
Okay, that's me. That wasn't the judge.
Anyway, he was facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin and was there in court on a hearing. ICE agents arrived in that courtroom.
It belonged to Judge Hannah Dugan, D-U-G-A-N, of the Milwaukee County Circuit. She's a Democrat, and they arrived during a pretrial hearing for this guy.
She asked them to leave and to speak to the circuit court's chief judge, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. By the time they returned from doing that, the defendant had left.
And according, again, to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Judge Dugan was believed to have been hiding the migrant and his attorney in a jury deliberation room. Some sources told the outlet that in fact, what happened was she took him and his lawyer to a side door in the courtroom and directed them to a private hallway into the public area where he fled.
He fled. So what just happened yesterday was the judge was arrested by, announced by Cash Patel and the FBI, where he wrote, just now the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee on charges of obstruction.
She obstructed an immigration arrest operation last week. We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse.
Eduardo Flores

Ruiz, allowing him, an illegal alien, to evade arrest. He says, thankfully, our agents chased down the perp on foot, and he's been in custody since, but the judge's obstruction created increased danger to the public.
We'll have more to share there soon. And sure enough, you look up this woman's bio and it's, she used to be a poverty attorney.
She's a dem. She was executive director of Catholic charities for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
I'm sorry, I'm a Catholic, but this doesn't come as any surprise that she, as in this role, would be extremely sympathetic to illegals in her courtroom. room.
Her attorney has said that has said that she wholeheartedly regrets and protests her arrest. Not sure what that means.
It was not made in the interest of public safety and we want the court to release her. She was released from custody awaiting further proceedings.
But wow, I mean, that's hardball. Yeah, look, Donald Trump is trying to change a lot of things.
And one of the things he's trying to change, which during the campaign obviously had broad support, is shut down the border. And for many Americans, I'd say tens of millions, they have they give Donald Trump a lot of leeway and his team at DHS and the other departments to say shutting down the border is going to involve and removing people.
It's going to involve doing some things that maybe aren't by the book, and that maybe in some cases gets the balance wrong between national security and civil liberties at least a little bit off. And they're fine with that.
And for other Americans, including a lot of people in the media and a lot of Democrats and this judge, anything they see that deviates from the book or anything that violates their sense of whether the borders should be open is too far, that they don't want anything done along those lines. And I think I like having a big, robust national debate about this.
You see that in a lot of these cases, and this is one that's going to get more attention. It's important to say, why are the people supportive of this supportive? They're supportive because they say, we had an open border.
You talk about lawlessness. You talk about undermining American values, American way of life.
We had effectively an open border for several years. And fixing that as quickly as the president has done involves, in the view of some, taking steps that they say are necessary, that other people say go too far and violate different provisions of the Constitution or American law.
I think this will continue to play out all four years in office because writing and changing things from where they were to where the president wants to get them, it's clear that he's happy and his administration's happy to do things that have never been done before. They're openly making the argument on Team Trump now about, you know, we're not really going to be able to provide all these illegals due process.
It's just it's not realistic. Trump was saying it's going to take 200 years if you have many trials for each one of these people.
And so it's a new argument. It's totally fair in my view.
It's like, did did Lakin Riley get due process before illegals killed her, you know, an illegal? it's a new argument it's totally fair in my view it's like did did lakin riley get due process before illegals killed her you know an illegal it's not practicable if we have reason to believe that you are not a u.s citizen and in all these cases they've got the goods on these guys maybe not so much on extra crimes they've committed but they know they know who's here illegally that's those are the ones they're starting with it's not there's not a doubt that they don't belong here. That's all you need.
You're out. Goodbye.
There doesn't need to be some three-week hearing or, you know, right to counsel on the ACLU filing class actions to stop it all, Mark. I mean, it's sort of forcing Trump's hand on, you know what? Due process really isn't that important to me when it comes to these illegals and getting them out.
Yeah, look, and that's the view of tens of millions of people. I think the area that becomes important to talk through is what if it violates American law? OK, what if there's an actual statute, not not a previous administration policy? There are people come on two way all the time that say due process for someone here illegally whose first act in the United States was to break the law, offended that someone who's here illegally would be called a Maryland man, and people say bring him home when this is not his legal home.
All of those have added up to people saying, including some of the administration, we're not just happy to violate past practice. We're happy to violate the law and wait to see if judges hold them to it.
But this is, for many, symbolically important. And as you said, Megan, practically, these people do not have the due process rights of American citizens.
Historically, they've had some, and some Americans say there should be no change, and the president's saying, for practical and moral purposes, there needs to be a change. And the courts eventually are going to decide which of these changes are permissible and which are not.
But there's no doubt, as I said, tens of millions of Americans would say, if you're here legally, go back. When we catch you, you go back.
You don't get a judge and the right to confront your accusers and 12 jurors and all of that because they just don't think that that's where the bar is for someone whose first act in America was to break the law. These judges are truly out of control.
I mean, the fact that that Judge Boesberg in D.C. actually tried to have a contempt hearing and hold the Trump administration in contempt after the Supreme Court had said he didn't have jurisdiction, that the case was improperly filed before him.
But he was so desperate to punish Team Trump, he went ahead with the hearing anyway. He said, you're likely in criminal contempt.
If you won't prosecute the case, I will appoint a special prosecutor to go after those who disobeyed my order. I mean, that's just one example.
Then now you got a judge actually releasing the illegal as ICE is there to arrest him as if it's any of her business. What happens between this guy and ICE? I mean, openly subverting the president on it.
And that it reminds me of something I wanted to get to in our Pentagon discussion, but forgot James O'Keefe, you know, formerly of Project Veritas. And now he runs this OMG network.
He did one of his undercover videos on somebody named Nicholas Terza, who is a Department of Defense branch chief, and got this guy on camera, as James does, on how he is determined to undermine Trump and his agenda within the Department of Defense. Here it is.
I'm assuming that you're the same guy who tried to overthrow an election. He's just like truly setting his down to back with a dictatorship.
He's illegitimate. Dictatorship.
Generally immoral, breaking everyone. We're going to resist him.
Everything he does. I am very...
You're going to resist Trump. And I've never been last patriotic.
Your least favorite thing about position and has now resigned since James O'Keefe posted that video. But here, here's the truth.
Um, there are people just like that everywhere. They're on the federal bench.
They're on the bench in Wisconsin. They're, I mean, at the department of defense who will actively work to as resistance 2.0.
That's what's happening. Yeah.

So just on the previous point and Judge Boasberg,

there is issues related

to the rights

or presumed

or stated rights

of people here illegally.

What's mostly at issue,

I believe,

in these cases,

in that case

and some others,

is the question

of whether the administration

is disregarding

judicial rulings,

improperly disregarding them.

And that's obviously a very dangerous area. But that's not what I'm arguing.
My point is you lost the case. The Supreme Court said this was improperly filed in your courtroom.
That's the end of your decisions, whether you're mad about them disobeying you or not. Yeah, I'm just saying in some of the rulings we're talking about, that's the issue.
It's not about the rights of people here illegally. It's about whether district court judge decisions are being disregarded.
Again, not in that case, but in some of these other cases.

Um, in, in, in, inside the federal government, there are deep staters who are just defending the turf of their agency.

There's liberals who don't like Trump or Trump's policies.

There's corrupt people who't like Trump or Trump's policies.

There's corrupt people who may be taking money from foreign powers. And there's people whose

motives are not clear, but who clearly are part of an effort to obstruct. And I've talked to people

throughout the administration, and they say part of what they're trying to do now is to let the

decisions be made as they're supposed to be by following the agenda the president set and by the people at the top of the departments and agencies who are supposed to carry them out. And this is one of the things I think Donald Trump has done that's with Elon Musk and others that's most unprecedented.
They're making Ronald Reagan look like George H.W. Bush, an establishment accommodationist.
They're really trying to find the people who are going to try to continue to obstruct the agenda and get them out of there or corrupt the agenda and get them out of there. And I think you're going to see that video is the tip of the iceberg in every part of the government.
There are people who are hostile to Donald Trump and they're trying to fix that. There was some not great polling that came out on Trump via Fox News.
It's, you know, we're getting the 100 day or celebrating or lamenting the 100 day mark. And it showed that he has a 44% approval rating, 55% disapproved.
That's down five points from a 49% approval in March. On border security, he gets his highest marks.
They love what he's done at the border. 55% approve, 40% disapprove.
On immigration, it's about tied, meaning more, I think, the deportations. It's got to be speaking to that because it's just immigration general has approved 47, disapproved 48.

Foreign policy, he's down 14 point.

There's a 14 point gap.

The disapprovers are winning 54 to 40.

The economy, he's down 18 points.

Disapprovers, 56 percent.

Approvers, 38 percent.

Tariffs, they don't like the tariffs.

Disapprove, 58 percent. Approve, 33 percent.
Inflation, bad. Uh, tariffs, they don't like the tariffs disapprove 58% approve 33% inflation bad disapprove 59% approve 33%.
Only 59% of voters are unhappy. 59% of voters are unhappy with how things are going in the country, but that's much better than Joe Biden was doing, which was any place from 68 to 70 plus.
But just as the Democrats listen to us, go through those numbers and think, oh, maybe there's hope. You take a look what's happened over there.
And I'll kick it off with Harry Enten, who breaks down the data in the following clip. Saw 10.
This, I think, is a revolt, a revolt that is going on within the Democratic Party right now. Democrats undem leaders in Congress, the belief that they will do the right thing when it comes to the economy.
Last year at this time, 80 percent believed that the Democratic leaders in Congress would do the right thing when it comes to the economy. Keep in mind, this is Democrats.
Look at where we are now. That number has been slashed in half to just 39 percent.
Holy Toledo, that is the lowest number by far in Gallup polling. The lowest previous was just 60 percent, which is 21 points higher than this.
Democrats hate, hate, hate, hate what their congressional leaders in Washington are doing right now on the key issue of the day. The economy and their confidence has fallen through the floor.
I love his body motions. I love how he gives it his all, the upward, downward, left, right.
So what do you make of all that with both Trump's numbers and the Dems? Well, Harry's a friend of mine. And whenever I see him, I say, Harry, tranquilo.
It's a little a little overexcited. But I know that's just a shtick.
I know. I know.
People like it. I was like, just a little bit, like one notch, tranquilo, Harry.
On the president, talking to people in both parties about the polls. And I know a lot of people like to be skeptical of polls and say they're fake if they don't agree with them.
I tell people in both parties, if your party is polling badly or the trend is bad and you just want to say it's not true, sometimes there's an outlier. But if all the polls are saying the same thing, you do yourself a disservice if you pretend it's not true.
Where the president's poll numbers are pretty clear. And I believe from talking to folks that they're all down in all the categories that you listed.
I think it's primarily being driven by the tariffs. The tariffs are so unpopular and they're so dominating the news about how many people are upset about them.
businesses upset about them, and a lot of people in small businesses, large businesses, raising specters of inflation and shortages, etc.

And I think if people are feeling bad about the president, then they're going to feel they're going to get more negative answers.

His numbers have not gone through the floor because the president has a pretty high floor because there's tens of millions of folks, maybe 40 percent of the electorate, maybe a little higher, who will be with him thick or thin. So I think what they're trying to do is raise all the numbers by talking about the tariffs in a different way.
And as we've seen over the last few days, backing off the sort of doom and gloom about the tariffs, saying the tariffs are going to be a long term thing, but they're not going to be forever, that there's not going to be a major trade war with China. I think people as the weekends are feeling a little bit better about things.
And I would suspect that if they keep that up in a disciplined way, his numbers on all topics will go a little bit back up. The paradox of Donald Trump, though, is he's got a very high floor, but he's also got a very low ceiling.
Just as there's tens of millions of people who will be for him no matter what, there are tens of millions who will be against him no matter what. And so the range of his performance reviews, not just overall approval, but on everything, I think is a pretty narrow band.
On the Democrats, the reason they're so unpopular now is because conservatives and a lot of independents don't like them. They think they're still nutsy cuckoo and too far to the left.
But they're also not getting very high marks from the liberals in their own party who are disappointed that they're not doing a better job and a more energetic job in fighting Donald Trump. So I think their floor actually could be lower than it is currently seems because they have a very challenging task.
They have to rehabilitate their image with moderates and centrists and independents and the Republicans they want to reach while not further alienating the far left. And executing on that requires someone typically of the political skill of Bill Clinton.
And there aren't very many people like that and no one I see in the Democratic Party currently. So their brand is being defined primarily right now, I would say, by four people, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and AOC.
And if you were on Madison Avenue or in some sexy PR firm or brand management company somewhere else in the country, I don't know that those would be your top four draft picks. I think Tim Walls would want you to mention him.
He was profiled as he saw in the Atlanta. Honorable mention.
Yeah. And he says, here's the following.
They say, Walls is a big metaphor guy. For instance, he refers to his delirious vice presidential campaign as his 90-day Eras tour, the Taylor Swift tour.
It's a good line, but even the Atlantic writes as follows, but an imperfect metaphor. Taylor Swift's Eras tour reinforced her rolling dominance.
Waltz has ended abruptly and badly. They talk about how he had a good crowd when he spoke recently at the Youngstown Dior Performing Arts Center.
2,800 people. OK, I mean, I guess that's not bad, but he was just the vice presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket.
I would expect it would have could have gone a little bigger. And then he volunteered that Bill Clinton called him in early October and said to him, don't allow them to make you a caricature, referring here to Walt's own campaign higher-ups, not Trump.
You are a consequential governor, and that's what you should be running on. So I think Tim Walz, I know you don't agree, but he thinks he's still in it, that he could be on your little short list, and you're selling him short.
I don't disagree that he thinks that. I just don't know that he's as top of mind as the other four with the media and the Democratic Party and the public at large when they think about who defines the brand right now.
But he'd be in the top 10. How about Pete Buttigieg? Because he went on Andrew Schultz's podcast and I just don't see this guy doing it.
I got to be honest. But he said the following.
I mean, talk about controversial. The left won't write 10,000 articles about this because he's on their team.
But trust me, if someone like me or Tucker Carlson ever spoke like this or anybody right of center. They'd be killing them.
Take a listen. It's Sop 13.
Of course. So we're in what's called a surprise adoption scenario.
So we literally, I was at work. I was traveling.
We got a phone call. Chaston called me.
And the next day, we were in a rural Midwestern hospital holding them in our arms and they were like one day old.

Like it was like that, like just from like normal life.

And by the way, it's twins, which was amazing.

You didn't know it was twins before.

We were just on a list.

You know, we said that we were willing to adopt or we wanted to adopt.

We said that we wanted to adopt without regard for race.

By the way, anybody who says race is not a thing in this country should experience an adoption process where there are literally different lists.

If you say that you want a white kid only versus if you say that doesn't matter.

Like literally a different list.

What is that?

What do you mean by that?

The list for white kid only is longer.

And not only that, there was actually a discount or you didn't have to pay a deposit on the fee. This is like how it works.
There was a discount for the babies of color. That's what he said.
And then he tried to correct it to, you didn't have to pay a deposit. There's so much in there, Mark.
So first of all, the list to get a white baby is longer. I mean, there are far more white people in America than there are black people.
So I'm not sure because it's his team that has been lecturing us like when Amy Coney Barrett got chosen as Trump's latest justice, that it's not okay for a white couple to adopt a black baby or a baby of color because somehow that's like us working out our need to further colonize. I don't understand the criticism, but it was all over the internet when it came out that she had adopted, I think, two children from Haiti, that the crazy woke leftist that he speaks for will tell you you shouldn't do that, that you're depriving this child of a chance to connect to a parent who shares the history behind this race.
But now with this crowd, he wants to say, we're racist as Americans because the question is asked of potential adoptive parents, do you have a preference on the race of your baby? And then he slips and said, you get a discount for the babies of color. I mean, you tell me, anybody, think of anybody on the right who said that.
I don't care who it is. Could be somebody as likable and almost universally loved who's on the right and happens to be in a gay marriage as Guy Benson.
They'd be killing him. Yeah.
I mean, look, I don't agree with you. I

don't disagree at all, of course, with the point about the double standard. I've listened to what

he said. That's the third time I've heard it.
I find the whole thing a little confusing. I'm not

really sure what points he's trying to make that he really wants to make because the points he

seems to be making, I don't know that they're true, and I don't really understand why he'd

be wanting to make them. I find the whole thing baffling.
But there's no doubt that one of the things, you know, people always want to say, this is the reason Donald Trump won. There are a lot of reasons he won in 2024.
I think one of the things that tens of millions of Americans have gotten sick of is the way Democrats talk about race and expect others to talk about race. And depending on how you interpret what Pete Buttigieg said there, there's certainly moments that a lot on the right would say that's just not the right way to talk about it, and certainly not the way conservatives could talk about it.
So they're not the only example of this, of course. And I want to stay on presidential politics and whether this guy's got the stuff.
But since we're now on the topic of the Democrats' obsession with race, Trump is floating a proposal similar to what they're doing in Hungary, where they're rewarding women for having babies. Over there, you can actually avoid paying taxes if you have, like, I don't know, two kids.
Forgive me if I don't have all the facts at the ready, but it's something like that. And J.D.
Vance, of course, has been speaking out about this for a long time. So is Tucker Carlson, member of the board, Charlie Kirk, member of the board.
Okay, so it is something on Team Trump that people are looking at, how to incentivize increasing the birth rate because it's not what it needs to be for population replacement. And this one of the proposals reportedly being kicked around is possibly giving women a five thousand dollar tax break per child.
None of this has been formally proposed, but reports are leaking. That's where the view picked it up.
I'm sorry, Mark Halpern, but you're going to have to comment on them. Here is the discussion they had the other day.
When I look at something like this, these proposals, I wanna know why, and I wanna know who's making them. And so when I looked into that, they're saying that the US birth rate is declining.
However, in 2024, there was a 1% increase in US births. But that increase was with Hispanic mothers and Asian mothers.
So they don't seem to be concerned about that increase. They seem to be more concerned about a decrease in other populations.
Say it. No, I think I said enough.
It's based on, though. And so, well, it's just based on a study.
They want more people to pay in. And so the other thing I will- But have they said that anywhere? I mean, I feel like it would be fair.
Yeah, it's just- Fair to home. Have they said that this is to target only white families? I didn't say that.
We have to read between the lines. I just gave the stats.
I'm not gonna say it. Yeah, but it's about economics.
They're wanting people to pay in.

I'm just giving facts.

Okay.

So the suggestion is he wants to do this because he wants more white babies.

Just a quick fact check.

Because they're saying that the birth rates are, he's unhappy that the whites aren't having more babies versus the Asians and others. And yeah, if you look at the birth rates that are down, it's whites and blacks, whites and blacks are down.
Yeah. So it makes no sense.
Yeah. Birth rates are down.
I think they're like 1.2 something average and they need to be like more like 2.2. I believe that I have that close to right.
This is just about having enough workers, enough people to support the social security system. The alternative is to have more immigration.
And I think that the president's inclination, and I think a national consensus to have more legal immigration would be there if we can get the border under control. So there's two possibilities to have the right number of workers and other people contributing to society, either more legal immigration or higher birth rates.
And so I don't I don't think anyone in the Republican Party of any responsibility is thinking about this in terms of race. It's a math game.
It's a math problem. And there's no one's going to say you only get the money if you're white.
This would be a universal policy. And it's something that responsible leaders are going to have to think about because the birth rate's just not high enough right now in the country.
The numbers are as follows. They're up for Hispanics and Asians for whom the number of births rose 4% and 5% respectively year over year.
But the number of births declined 4% for black women, 3% for American Indian and Alaska native women, and declined less than 1% for white women. So if anything, it's declined more for black women than it has for white women.
So if Trump wants to incentivize random women to have more babies, you'd have to be thinking, yes, he is looking at the populace that's having the fewest, which would be black people, which does not dovetail at all with Sonny's and Joy's argument. It's just all so ridiculous.
So back on the subject of Pete Buttigieg, whatever, Buttigieg, and whether he's on the list or AOC is really on the list.

I mean, I realize we're a long way off from 2028, Mark, but are they starting to form like exploratory committees? Is it, they've got to be thinking about it. Yeah, no formal committees, but they are thinking about it and they have to start taking some steps.
And of course, we'll see a big unofficial cattle call in the context of the midterms in a year when we see who's asked to campaign for candidates on the ballot, who's asked to raise money for candidates on the ballot. I think the main thing about the field, and I'd apply this less to Pete Buttigieg than most of the others, but I would apply it to him.
People who handicap these folks, I think, are overestimating their readiness. Most people who run have been performers on the national stage as politicians, or as in the case of Donald Trump, as celebrities or television stars for a long time.
And it takes a lot to perform at that level. And I think people underestimate the degree of difficulty of being a successful presidential candidate.
Pete Buttigieg, the reason I say he's close to the front of that line is he's done a lot of media. He's been a cabinet secretary.
He understands more than AOC does, more than some of these governors who get talked about what it means. When Barack Obama was in that kind of pre-presidential phase, he went on Meet the Press, he went on Monday Night Football, he went on The Tonight Show, and he performed at a top level, just as a performative matter, on all those places.
There's performance, there's policy, there's pressure. These are the things that people say, well, they've been a governor, they can do that, or they've been a senator, or they've been a business person.
No, it's what separates the people who actually make it. In every case, people who've won have been part of what I call the national conversation, capital N, capital C.
AOC hasn't done that. Buttigieg has done it more than most, but not at the level the people who've been nominees and presidents have done.
And I think that applies even more so to almost everybody else who I hear mentioned. It doesn't mean they can't do it, but starting now, let's say now they started and really tried to put themselves out there, it would be for a far shorter period of time than everyone, everyone in my career who's been the nominee of either party or elected president.
So you're not that impressed with the potential Democratic field? I'm not at all impressed with it. Not at all.
Because of the standard I'm talking about, it really is not as easy as some people seem to think it is. And I look at, for instance, Governor Shapiro.
I was very high on him. And I still think he's probably in the top five of likely to be the nominee.
And I still think potentially he's a formidable candidate, although I had board member Charlie Kirk on two-way the other night, and he was very down on Shapiro. Governor Shapiro was vetted, as Kamala Harris is running running me and got a lot of scrutiny, more than anybody else, certainly more than Tim Walz.
Half dozen or more opposition research stories dumped on his head. I was unimpressed with how he and his team handled those.
And if you talk to people in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who watch him every day, he's certainly a smooth operator at times. He's certainly liked by people like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama who have some judgment about what it takes.
But he has not proven so far to me to be a red light performer on the national stage. And again, he's someone who's close to the front as the governor of a big state, an eastern state, who's had some moments in the national spotlight.
But no, I'm not impressed with this group at all. And when I asked Charlie to name three formidable potential Democratic candidates, I think the only one he named was the governor of Kentucky.
And he's my poster child for how wrong I think most people are as they evaluate these candidates. He's got no experience on the national stage, none whatsoever.
He's got limited experience even in his own state. Sorry, Andy Beshear.
So if he said to Andy Beshear, go on Monday Night Football, sit in the broadcast booth with the announcers, go on The Tonight Show, go on Meet the Press, or maybe your show would be a better equivalent today, I would revert my eyes because I don't think he could ace those. And that's one of the gauntlets.
Could he do an interview with Tom Friedman or somebody on foreign policy? Could he go to the NRA or some other group and give a big speech? It's just, as I say, it's not as easy as people seem to think it is. And just objectively and subjectively, no one who's talked about, no one has the level of experience on the national conversation as John Kerry did, or Mitt Romney did, or, um, or, or Al Gore or John McCain or Donald Trump, even out of politics, it's not even really not even close.

How about Gavin Newsom? Well, it's a great example. He's got it, right? Governor of a massive state, tons of media, doing this podcast now.
I'm higher on him. And by the way, he's on the second episode of Next Up next week on Thursday.
That'll he's, he is underrated, not just by people on the right, but by people in the press, I think he has been part of the conversation. He's pretty confident guy, but, but, but, but I'm less certain he's going to run than other people are.
I think he's got family issues and other issues. Um, and running from California is tough because of the time difference.
So but yes, Gavin Newsom, by the metric I'm talking about, part of the national conversation, he is. And again, I'm not his spokesman.
I see why some people don't like him. But he is a much more moderate, much more centrist, thoughtful, policy oriented person who really does think about the future in ways not all politicians do than he's normally given credit for.
I see the flaws people see. I disagree.
Totally disagree. He's radical when it comes to the trans issue.
He's as radical as they come, only outdone by Tim Walz. Yeah.
Yeah. On some issues, he's very far left.
But on a lot of issues like dealing with homelessness, dealing with urban problems, I'm not saying he's executed perfectly. I'm not saying he's executed perfectly.
But if you ask him his actual positions on crime, you'd hear moderate. Look what he did as mayor of San Francisco.
You'd hear moderate on the trans issue too, but it's a lie. I look forward to hearing the interview nonetheless, because I trust you won't give him a pass.
Stand by. We're going to take a break and we will come back with Mark in just a minute.
He's host of Next Up with Mark Halpern. You can go and subscribe now.
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Offer details apply. A little bit more coming in on this judge in Wisconsin who just got arrested by the FBI for escorting an illegal who was in her courtroom facing assault charges out of the courtroom trying to avoid an ICE arrest.
That is the allegation. And Pam Bondi was just on Fox News talking about it.
Here it is. And to set the stage for you and Sandra, this was truly horrific.
This guy was in court being prosecuted by a state prosecutor for domestic violence battery. He had beat up two people, a guy and a girl, beat the guy, hit the guy 30 times, knocked him to the ground, choked him, beat up a woman so badly they both had to go to the hospital.
And John, you know, it's so rare for victims to want to cooperate. They wanted to cooperate.
They were sitting in the courtroom with the state prosecutor. The judge learns that ICE was outside to get the guy because he had been deported in 2013, came back in our country, commits these crimes, charged with committing these crimes.
Victims in court. Judge finds out.
She goes out in the hallway, screams at the immigration officers. She's furious, visibly shaken, upset, sends them off to talk to the chief judge.
She comes back in the courtroom. You're going to believe this.
Takes the defendant and the defense attorney back in her chambers, takes them out of private exit and tells them to leave. While a state prosecutor and victims of domestic violence are sitting in the courtroom.
Mark, this story is currently topping the Washington Post website, Drudge Report, The Wall Street Journal. This is going to grow.
It's going to get bigger over this weekend and could turn into a firestorm, which is good for Trump. Yeah.
I mean, look, it's an incredible story. Just anybody with a nose for news can tell you it's there's a gee whiz element to this.
But, you know, this woman thought she was going to run the Underground Railroad. And I think she's going to regret it if the charges are true.
It's an extraordinary step for a judge to take. And as you said, this is this is going to be a long running drama and her background will be scrutinized and what exactly she chose to do and maybe who aided her.

But if the allegations are true, it's it's a it's an extraordinary thing for anyone to do. But for a judge, an officer of the court to do, I think she's going to have a lot of trouble if these things really did happen the way the attorney general says they did.
what's so perfect about it is she's doing allegedly explicitly and physically what these other judges are doing with their pens, right? Like inserting herself in a way that ensures that this illegal will go free and will be set back out onto the streets of America with no consequences for any bad actions. That's how

a lot of us feel. These federal district court judges are behaving from coast to coast.
So it's

just going to undermine what the ACLU is doing, the American faith in the judiciary. I think it's

a story that the U.S. Supreme Court will know about and be upset by.
It's just bad on every

level for Team Blue. I know the wheels of justice grind slowly.
I was once a litigant in a case that

Thank you. will know about and be upset by.
It's just bad on every level for Team Blue.

I know the wheels of justice grind slowly.

I was once a litigant in a case that took 21 years to resolve,

and twice to the Supreme Court.

Things take a long time.

I wish the Supreme Court was going to move faster on all these things.

I think there's just too much that's going on, that the Trump administration is going up to the line,

and in some cases appearing to go over the line.

Maybe the court will say that's fine, but maybe they won't.

And there's just too much happening that's now unresolved. And I agree with the notion that these district court judges are not super legislators unto themselves, not just for their jurisdictions, but for the whole country.
I think that's a dangerous thing, regardless of ideology. And to leave these district court decisions,

sometimes where they're saying they apply nationally,

out there waiting for the Supreme Court

to get through the appellate process,

to accept the case,

to schedule arguments,

to have the cases argued,

to go back and forth.

Some of these issues pertaining to immigration,

to Doge especially,

I just think the normal timetable is just not right. Yeah, no, it's not.
And it can't be sustained in this way. It was Joe Biden who caused a huge portion of this problem by opening up the southern border.
And we're all dealing with the effects of it in our real lives. And Trump is a policy matter.
We don't know for sure whether it was the Joe Biden or whether it was some aid around Joe Biden, since the stories are leaking out left and right now about how mentally infirm he was and how hard the left worked to cover it up. There's like four or five books coming out now on this particular subject, and even lefties are asking lefty lawmakers about it.
Elizabeth Warren sat down on a podcast called

Talk Easy on Sunday, and it did not go well when this subject came up. Here she is.

Do you regret saying that President Biden had a mental acuity? He had a sharpness to him.

You said that up until July of last year.

I said what I believe to be true. And you think he was as sharp as you? I said I had not seen decline.
And I hadn't at that point. You did not see any decline from 2024 Joe Biden to 2021 Joe Biden? Not when I said that.
You know, the thing is, look, he was sharp. He was on his feet.
I saw a live event. I had meetings with him a couple of times.
Senator, on his feet is not praise. He can speak in sentences is not praise.
Fair enough. Fair enough.
Look, it is the question is, what are we going to do now? Okay. Good for you, Sam Fragoso, for asking the questions for listening audience.
At one point, she says, I said what I believed. And she kind of cocks her head to the side and raises her eyebrows, like got it.
And he did exactly the same head cock and look back at her. Like, let's go lady.
I've got you. So what do you make of it? This is the biggest sham in the history of the media because you didn't need, you don't need to say to Elizabeth Warren, did you have in some private meeting, did you see this? Watch C-SPAN.
He spoke to a dead Congresswoman. Okay.
And I mean, you don't, it's a joke. It's a joke.
It's a joke to be on the head of the pen and say, did you see it? The question is, why did you participate in a conspiracy of silence with the media and the bullies on the Biden team to deny what we could all see with our own eyes? And you think about the things Donald Trump has been accused of. Books can be written.
Authors don't have subpoena power. Donald Trump was investigated by an independent counsel.
This needs a serious

investigation, not necessarily to punish the media and the people in the Biden White House, although they deserve to be punished. They deserve to have some sanction for what they did, but to understand how it could happen and to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Because what happened was a guy who was showing mental decline in 2017, I saw it with my own eyes, in 2017, was allowed to be protected by his family, his aides, and the White House press corps, the same White House press corps organizations, and in many cases, the same people now covering Donald Trump, who they participated in the cover up of Joe Biden with the express intent of not helping Donald Trump. So I find this to be just appalling.
And I know why you played the clip and it's a great clip. And I look forward to more instances where people are asked to be held accountable.
But she shouldn't be able to get away to saying, I never saw it because she didn't. Of course, she saw it because, of course, she sees C-SPAN.
Yeah, everyone saw it. It was everywhere.
That was another thing.

Buttigieg on that podcast was like, you know, I'm really worried about the state of journalism,

that people might mistake some podcaster for an actual journalist that's got the whole

weight of a newsroom behind him, as if, you know, that we can trust. And it reminded me of when I

sat down with the New York Times recently, and she was trying to tell me that they're the vaunted

New York Times. And I was trying to say, really, where was Peter Baker on the mental decline story?

Why didn't he figure out that a neurologist had been to the White House 10 times in the past year don't tell me about the vaunted corporate media being so much better and more reliable than the random podcast host this is the biggest story we've had in a decade and they if you wanted to be to be most charitable, missed it. But the truth is, actively covered it up.
Actively covered it up and didn't report when Biden officials called them the few times a few people raised it, called them and said, if you keep doing that, you will be cut off. That should have been a front page story, no matter if the person said off the record before that or not.
They should have said, I don't accept off the record.

And no, you cannot tell us how to cover the president's obvious mental decline. So it's it's it's one of the biggest stories of all time.
And and and I have so much to say about the interview The New York Times did with you. But but I will say they did not show.
I felt that person who interviewed you did not show show an appreciation for why you're successful as contrasts with the way her paper operates on a lot of stories. Oh, well, thank you.
I think I like that. I appreciate that.
We got to leave it there because we're going to run out of time, but I want to remind the audience it's called Next Up. They've got to check it out.
Go subscribe, support Mark. We want this to be a success for all of our sakes.
We need honest journalists like him out there supported and able to tell the news honestly to the audiences nationwide. So it's going to be a big success.
I'm sure. Thanks to all of you next up.
And don't forget, we are going to be dropping a bonus episode. It's coming with one of the men fired last week from the Pentagon.
This is the first time he will be telling his story about these leaking allegations.

Don't miss it later today.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

No BS, no agenda, and no fear.