Megyn's Response to Clooney, Hegseth Saga Gets Personal, and Stopping Alzheimer's, with Rich Lowry, MBD, and Dr. Dale Bredesen | Ep. 1055

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Speaker 3 Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.

Speaker 3 Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.

Speaker 3 We begin on the subject of George Clooney, who is busy trying to look 30 years younger than he actually is with weirdly dyed jet black hair, trying his hand on Broadway.

Speaker 3 He's starring in a play about Edward R. Murrow because Clooney fancies himself a journalist, you see, and has lots of thoughts on how journalists need to do journalism.
Like he does it, mainly.

Speaker 3 You know, like stumbling upon the biggest story of the decade that a sitting president is mentally infirm and ought to be 25th Amendmented right out of office and then burying it, saying absolutely nothing for weeks on end.

Speaker 3 And then only after that president humiliates himself on the national stage at a presidential debate and then refuses to step down as the entire Democrat Party watches its electoral chances up and down the ticket, goes swirling down the toilet, finally decides to write an op-ed in the New York Times saying Joe Biden is not up for the job.

Speaker 3 That's not journalism, George. It's cowardice, followed by

Speaker 3 naked partisanship. You're not fooling anyone.
So now he's starring in this Broadway show.

Speaker 3 By the way, what's the matter, George? Are the Hollywood roles getting a little hard to come by as you age and get decidedly more smug and self-congratulatory? I'm just asking.

Speaker 3 And chooses to finish this show by lecturing the audience on how journalism ought to be done. Speaking as Edward R.
Murrow, he warns about the ongoing struggle for truth and integrity in the media.

Speaker 3 Truth and integrity. About the potential for the media to be manipulated and used for propaganda.

Speaker 3 Apparently, he ends the whole thing with a video montage featuring, as the show closes, yours truly, and Elon Musk doing a quote, Nazi salute. Okay.

Speaker 3 Because Elon Musk and I are the dangers George Clooney fears.

Speaker 3 Not the propaganda that was pushed on us for four years by his favorite leftist, so-called journalists, that President Biden was fine, that these were all cheap fakes we were seeing, or for the four years before that, that President Trump was a Russian asset, but propaganda that dare to defend anything done by Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 That's all propaganda, you see. Any defense of Trump is the dangerous propaganda of which he speaks.
That's a violation of truth and integrity in media.

Speaker 3 By the way, one of Clooney's favorite news anchors, not for nothing, is Chris Wallace, who shut down any discussion of Hunter Biden's ties to Ukraine or China at a presidential debate as entirely irrelevant and off limits.

Speaker 3 That's his fave.

Speaker 3 So our pal, Georgie, got wind of the fact that this show mocked him for trying to lecture anyone on journalism, especially given the timeline on his own disclosures about Mr. Biden.
Refresher.

Speaker 3 He hosted a fundraiser for Biden on June 15th, in which Mr. Biden could barely walk or talk.

Speaker 3 His appearance was so alarming that it was in the news for two weeks after, as it was clear he had to be escorted offstage by Barack Obama. Remember?

Speaker 3 A debate was raging in the news right then about whether Mr. Biden was fit to be president, never mind, for a second term.
And Clooney

Speaker 3 said nothing,

Speaker 3 absolutely nothing. Then came the disastrous presidential debate on June 23rd.

Speaker 3 And as calls grew steadily louder for Joe Biden to drop out, but he refused, that's when Clooney finally came out with an op-ed on July 10th. admitting to some of what he had seen a month earlier.

Speaker 3 He only spoke up when he saw the Democrats' electoral prospects swirling down the drain.

Speaker 3 But now he wants full credit for speaking truth to power and is even lecturing other Democrats for not doing their part. You know, some in my party weren't telling the truth, he said in an interview.

Speaker 3 In any event, I guess we hurt his thin-skinned Hollywood feelings here on the show because these big stars, they're not very good at taking criticism.

Speaker 3 You see, they're surrounded by yes men, managers, agents, PR folks who tell them that their every idea is brilliant, every thought a treasure.

Speaker 3 Nothing but profundity coming out of George Clooney's mouth. Maybe that'll give me an invitation to one of his swanky Hollywood parties.

Speaker 3 So he and Broadway's biggest and oldest bully, Patty LuPone, remember when she screamed at a ticket-holding audience member for not wearing a mask? Watch.

Speaker 5 Put your mask over your nose. That's why you're in the theater.
That is the rule. If you don't want to follow the rule, get the fuck out! out.

Speaker 5 Salary.

Speaker 5 You pay my salary. Bullshit.
Chris Harper pays my salary.

Speaker 5 Who do you think you are?

Speaker 4 Do we have a friend?

Speaker 5 Just put your mask over your nose.

Speaker 3 She's an angry woman, very angry, like so many leftist women.

Speaker 3 So she and George get together and they start navel gazing on stage about themselves, of course, and their vaunted profession and how bad, how just terrible the media is, and had the following exchange.

Speaker 6 What we do in this is we talk about the responsibility of journalists to hold truth to power, right?

Speaker 4 That's our goal.

Speaker 6 And so if you're doing that, And we don't tell people what to think when we show that montage at the end, for instance.

Speaker 6 You see Megan Kelly, she's who's come out and said, you know, I'm not a journalist. I didn't say I was a journalist.

Speaker 4 Neither is she, by the way.

Speaker 7 You know, but I'm not quite sure what she's done.

Speaker 6 I've at least been to, you know, Darfur and Sudan and the Congo and been shot at to try to get stories out. You know, I'm not quite sure what she has done to be a journalist.

Speaker 6 Having said that, we only show her words in this play. We don't tell people what to think.

Speaker 6 It's not out of context. We don't manipulate it.

Speaker 7 We literally just go, these are your words.

Speaker 3 He actually thinks I'm objecting to something he put on his show about me. I have no idea what you put on your show about me.
I couldn't care less, sir.

Speaker 3 I was mocking you for trying to lecture journalists on how to do journalism based on your own failure to speak truth to power. That's what you, you failed.

Speaker 3 You only did it when you knew your candidate was going to cost you up and down the ballot.

Speaker 3 And so Mr. Clooney is not quite sure what yours truly has done to be a journalist, which surprised me not at all.
Not at all. Why would he know anything about the journalism career I have had?

Speaker 3 Absolutely none of my stories held any interest for George Clooney. Of that, I have no doubt.
You see, I've spent the past 20 years interviewing people like Suzette Kilo,

Speaker 3 who owned the little pink house that got seized by her local government, declaring government domain, a decision that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, like the cake baker in Colorado.

Speaker 3 who didn't want to bake a gay wedding cake because it violated his religious beliefs. Oh, and by the way, also the gay couple he offended.

Speaker 3 People like triple and quadruple amputees back from Iraq and Afghanistan, who the Hollywood class looked down upon, actually loathed, judged, and treated like scum because they didn't like those wars.

Speaker 3 Not like the Ukraine war. No, not at all.

Speaker 3 What did you do? to help the hundreds of men I featured on my Fox News show year after year, George, to help find housing and help for them, to help them rehabilitate their lives. I didn't see you.

Speaker 3 I see you went to Darfur. That's great.
What about our guys? Because I never saw you at a Tunnel to Towers fundraiser, at a gathering for our Navy SEALs, and I've been to many of them.

Speaker 3 I never

Speaker 3 saw you at any of the public appearances that I've attended where our injured. Soldiers are just back from war seeking a helping hand.

Speaker 3 I guess you never saw the interviews I've done of the Medal of Honors winners. They weren't very interesting to you, like Dakota Meyer.

Speaker 3 You didn't want to hear his story about the overwhelming sacrifice he made for this country, both on the battlefield and then back home, where had it not been for a guardian angel looking over him, he would have taken that gun, it would have had bullets in it, and he would have taken his life in a truck one day.

Speaker 3 Did you miss that one, George? You didn't make that story into a movie, did you? No, it's been mostly Mark Wahlberg who shows any interest in our troops.

Speaker 3 I guess you never saw my interview with D-transitioner Chloe Cole on what the gender cult has done to our young girls, or with Peyton McNabb after she suffered permanent nerve damage from a trans volleyball player, or with Patriot Barbie, aka Lindsey Graham, who explained to our audience how the draconian lockdowns and intentional ruination of her business in Oregon during COVID led to her finding herself at the U.S.

Speaker 3 Capitol on

Speaker 3 January 6th.

Speaker 3 No, you had no interest in stories like that that actually probed the minds of regular Americans and found out why they did the things you only had an urge to demonize in your elite Hollywood circles.

Speaker 3 That's not the kind of fearless journalism you're talking about. I could go on, George.

Speaker 3 The school and mass shootings I've had to cover with tear-stained faces all around me, the women who told me their stories of domestic abuse or sexual assault or rape.

Speaker 3 The women who accused Trump, George, you should have liked that one.

Speaker 3 And those who accused Joe Biden, too.

Speaker 3 Wonder if you saw that one. It also got buried by your favorite media stars.
I guess these stories never made it on your radar.

Speaker 3 You were too busy in your $100 million Lake Como mansion or at one of your five other homes, running about the stage, pretending to be a journalist who speaks truth to power.

Speaker 3 Now, you tell us in that soundbite, you even got shot at one time. And even that turns out to be a lie consistent with your others.
You've told the story many times.

Speaker 3 You need to be more careful if you're going to lie like this on camera. You once had a gun pulled on you by a kid in Darfur more than 20 years ago.

Speaker 3 Only now with Patty Lupone, who you accurately deduce is a moron who will never check, did you change it to you actually got shot at. That didn't happen.

Speaker 3 George, this is not the kind of truth and integrity we want in our profession.

Speaker 3 So no, it's no surprise that Clooney has not seen much of my work, not my six presidential debates, not my sit-downs with Trump, Putin, Modi, Netanyahu.

Speaker 3 His world is the world of entertainment and cosplaying human rights advocate on the arm of his wife. You know, the one who followed the professional wrestler he used to date.

Speaker 3 Maybe in the next decade, he'll catch a show or two and catch on to the kind of journalism that has made this show consistently one of, if not the, top news shows in the country.

Speaker 3 Over 2 billion views and news some call relentlessly factual. George.

Speaker 3 Joining me today, Rich Lowry and Michael Brendan Doherty of National Review.

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Speaker 3 Guys, great to see you. Welcome back.
And is it any surprise? Is it any surprise to you, Rich Lowry, that George Clooney has, quote, no idea what I've done to call myself a journalist?

Speaker 9 No, of course not. Classic Hollywood phenomenon.
He plays someone in a movie or writes a movie about someone and then thinks he has great insight to what that is. And maybe he's kind of one himself.

Speaker 9 Clearly, he says, I'm not a journalist, but then he said he did this journalistic thing, you know, exposing the truth.

Speaker 10 He's been to Darfar.

Speaker 9 Yeah, so good for him for his activism there. But look, he lied at the very least by omission about Joe Biden, right? He hosts this fundraiser in Hollywood.
Everyone sees what's happening.

Speaker 9 Everyone sees him freeze on stage. Everyone knows he is debilitated to some extent or other, and no one says anything.

Speaker 9 And when all of us pointed out, who watched it with their own eyes, they said we are making it up. I don't know whether Clooney actually said we were making it up.

Speaker 9 They certainly was fine with everyone saying that we made it up. And then the debate happens.
They can't deny it anymore. Then he comes out with his op-ed.

Speaker 9 Everyone knew, you know, he was not the same man that we had seen before. So for him to lecture anyone, anyone, even someone who doesn't have your journalistic record on what fact

Speaker 9 telling the truth is, even if it hurts, and what being factual is, is a complete travesty.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 That's the thing, MBD, is you know as well as I do that George Clooney probably consumes news mostly on MSNBC.

Speaker 3 The reason he liked Chris Wallace is because Chris started to openly lean much more leftward in his interviews, et cetera.

Speaker 3 And he doesn't have any interest, George Clooney, in the Suzette Kilos of the world.

Speaker 3 He has zero desire to find out what the COVID lockdowns did to regular Americans and what might have driven somebody to show up at the Capitol on J6, right?

Speaker 3 Like those stories are beneath George Clooney, as does he feel the rest of us are.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and I worry that there's no core of real conviction with George Clooney. I mean, his first major kind of political statement as an artist was a movie Three Kings that criticized George H.W.

Speaker 4 Bush for not finishing the job in Iraq and carrying on an invasion all the way to Baghdad.

Speaker 4 Years later, of course, when it was no longer in Democrats' partisan interest to make an argument like that, he abandoned it like a cheap date.

Speaker 4 So like, again, there has just been a theme of raw partisanship, but dressed up as higher principle. And it just doesn't, it doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.

Speaker 4 And why would it? Again, like we shouldn't necessarily be looking to Hollywood for any kind of guidance in politics.

Speaker 3 And what's amazing to me is that if he's going to take the time to lecture American journalists on how to do their job, that now's the time he chooses to do it, right, Rich?

Speaker 3 Like now, now, once again, democracy dies in darkness. That crew's back.

Speaker 4 Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 They went totally silent during the four years of Joe Biden. And it's not like he didn't do things to excess.
It's not like he didn't ignore our laws.

Speaker 3 It's not like he didn't, you know, open the southern border, you know, like all those things.

Speaker 3 He had absolutely no interest in lecturing the press on how to do their job, even though they went totally silent during those years.

Speaker 3 It's only now that Trump's back in office that he feels the need to remind us of our responsibility to truth and integrity.

Speaker 9 Yeah, there are a lot of things that are shrouded in darkness. One, the president's condition, which we talked about.

Speaker 9 We're still learning more about what people on the inside knew and saw and did, yeah, by the day. The border, again, these were things that were out in the open.

Speaker 9 So the operation to hide them did not succeed because people could see with their own eyes. But they didn't acknowledge that again until late in 2024, the middle of 2024.

Speaker 9 They finally realized, oh, this is going to get Donald Trump elected. We at least should try to do something about it.
And then just the insanity of the trans stuff. And there's some cracks there.

Speaker 9 They're just cracks, right? It seems it's brave in the Democratic context for Gavin Newsom to say, oh, yeah, there's a fairness issue for male, if a male plays in a female sport.

Speaker 9 But they tried to hide all that. They tried to gaslight us all on that.
They said we were hateful, retrograde, purveyors of disinformation, all the rest.

Speaker 9 But the public could see the truth, which is a big reason that Donald Trump won last November.

Speaker 3 You know, like most of these Hollywood people, MBD, he doesn't have a grip on the facts, and he hasn't, but he's spoken out about many news stories in an effort to sway public opinion.

Speaker 3 And probably the one that comes to mind next after Biden was the Breonna Taylor case down in Kentucky, where he's from.

Speaker 3 So he came out after these officers executed a so-called no-knock warrant, though they did knock, and they went into the facility,

Speaker 3 this apartment. And this woman, Breonna Taylor, was shot and killed as they had a shootout with with her boyfriend who was in the hallway and shot first at cops.

Speaker 3 Her boyfriend shot first at cops who had announced themselves in any event.

Speaker 3 He spoke out about it and said her name was Breonna Taylor and she was shot to death in her bed by three white police officers, which wasn't true. Breonna Taylor was not asleep in her bed.

Speaker 3 She got up too and came out in the hallway and was standing next to her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, as the officers announced their presence, knocked six times, and then resorted to a forced entry.

Speaker 3 This guy, Walker, admitted that he fired the first shot and he hit. He hit an officer in the femur.
The guy almost bled to death.

Speaker 3 Her ex-boyfriend was up to his neck in drug deals, and she was seen on tape with this guy, going to retrieve packages with him, going to a trap house, and so on.

Speaker 3 The media wants you to believe she was squeaky clean.

Speaker 3 George Clooney wanted us to believe she was, she had absolutely no connection to anyone or anything nefarious, and that while she was asleep, completely innocent in her bed, three white cops just executed her because she's black.

Speaker 3 That was the implication. Very clear.
He was wrong on the facts. He was wrong on the implications.
But that's what the Hollywood knee-jerk reaction is to news like that.

Speaker 3 And this guy now feels the need to lecture us about truth and integrity in reporting the facts.

Speaker 4 Right. And remember, like, this is a guy who jumped on the story because he's from Kentucky.
When was the last time he was in Kentucky? This is a man who spends his time on Lake Como and Los Angeles.

Speaker 4 And while he was in Lake Como in Los Angeles, there was a huge news story that he could have shown some light on about Harvey Weinstein. Where was George?

Speaker 4 Well, he says, oh, well, we knew Harvey liked girls, but we didn't know anything wrong was happening. Well, what?

Speaker 4 What was that? I mean, at least... You know, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck made like a penitent film, you know, set in the Middle Ages about sexual assault.

Speaker 4 George Clooney just sidestepped the whole thing as if he didn't know anything about Harvey Weinstein or about the casting couch culture in Hollywood.

Speaker 4 And that's a story he actually could have shown some light on.

Speaker 4 And yet he goes on, you know, the Academy Awards and congratulates himself and Hollywood for, quote, being out of touch with the rest of the country and being ahead of things like, you know,

Speaker 4 civil rights or gay rights etc i i it just you know there's no real record of substance there from him where it would have counted again it's just he he has um

Speaker 4 you know he is a filmmaker he has a taste for story and so the the narrative of what you know he thinks should have happened in kentucky fills his mind and then he knows better than the cops what the standard operating procedure should be i mean it's a joke Right.

Speaker 3 Without doing any, you know, homework to look into it. Of course, the subject of Kentucky came up with this loudmouth Patty Lupone, and he had to mention the Confederate flags.

Speaker 3 Like, that's the first thing that came to his mind in discussing his home state is the Confederate flags that he sees when he goes back to visit his parents in Kentucky. Nice.

Speaker 3 That's yes, because that's what Kentucky's all about. When you think Kentucky, you think Confederate flag and the Confederacy.
I mean, that's his mindset.

Speaker 3 I really do believe this guy's, obviously, his career is waning. His biggest days are behind him.

Speaker 3 I'm convinced he married this Amal Clooney just because he wanted to make himself seem like a more serious person.

Speaker 3 So he found some human rights lawyer that would legitimize him because I guess he didn't feel that way with the professional wrestler and now parades around Hollywood like he's some sort of dignitary, like he's had some ambassador work under his belt.

Speaker 3 It's not true. You actually have to study.
I'm glad he went to Darfur. I'm glad he went to Sudan.

Speaker 3 But I mean, the fact is, George Clooney must not know anything if he doesn't know that I'm a journalist.

Speaker 3 I mean, truly, like, not to toot my own horn, but like, I think literally anybody who watches the news regularly in America would know that and would have some idea of some of the highlights because they have gone everywhere in certain instances.

Speaker 3 So, this is George just being, I only watch CNN or MS.

Speaker 3 I'm above it all, but I am in a position to lecture you, lowly American losers, especially the MAGA folks, on what you need to be a good informed person. So good luck with that and your crappy play.

Speaker 4 Okay, moving on to other items in the news.

Speaker 3 Let's talk about Pete Hegseth, who is in day whatever of an ongoing firestorm.

Speaker 3 It's been building for a while, but it's getting, you know, I don't know if it's at its apex now or if we're about to get to the apex, but it's climbing, where he fired these alleged leakers.

Speaker 3 He accused these three guys, I mean, you know, the Pentagon, and Pete signed off of it.

Speaker 3 These three guys at the Pentagon of leaking material that would have included top secret information to NBC News about attack plans in Panama

Speaker 3 and said, we've gotten our guys. We feel satisfied.
We're going to continue our investigation, but, you know, I'm satisfied these are the people involved. They've all denied it.

Speaker 3 And then, I mean, got, was the subject of a barrage of bad press every day thereafter. That happened on Friday.

Speaker 3 It had this guy over in the comms shop who I guess they really didn't love, and he didn't want to be number two in the shop. And I guess that's all that was available to him.
In any event, he left.

Speaker 3 He wrote a scathing piece in Politico, which is not exactly where right-wingers run.

Speaker 3 Don Jr. disavowed that guy and said, he's not part of our movement.
Don't believe this guy. And then the other two, or the other three,

Speaker 3 at least one of them sat down with Tucker Carlson and said, this isn't about my alleged leaking, which I didn't do. This is about my position on Iran and being more dovish.

Speaker 3 The other two haven't really spoken out, I think, other than to deny deny that they're leakers. And now the narrative is building like everywhere because there's not like a strong MAGA media.

Speaker 3 You know, online and the digital lane, you've got MAGA supporters, but there's not like a publication like the Journal or The Post or the Times that's pro-Trump where you can kind of go to hear the MAGA defense.

Speaker 3 So you've got the journal ripping on him. This morning, I listened to this podcast.
Sometimes I listen to Potomac Watch, which is the journal editorial.

Speaker 3 Bored people.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's Paul.

Speaker 3 Ripped him to shreds, right?

Speaker 3 chaos chaos chaos and it's just really too much chaos he has to go which to me seems like well you can't fire somebody because of chaos we have to see if the chaos is real and what caused the chaos and then determine whether that's on him right in any event you can see him twisting so far trump is saying that he's standing behind him but for how long remains a fair question mbd your thoughts on it

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, I'll be totally frank. I actually know one of the fired people involved, Dan Caldwell, the one who was on Tucker Carlson.
I've known him for about six or seven years.

Speaker 4 I find the idea that he would leak to liberal press absolutely preposterous. And

Speaker 4 I would stake quite a bet that he did not leak to NBC at all.

Speaker 4 And certainly that he didn't leak classified information.

Speaker 4 And I believe him when he says he didn't.

Speaker 4 There are reports today in Politico.

Speaker 4 There was a long report saying that there was actually less ideology than meets the eye in this internal knife fight,

Speaker 4 that in fact it was fueled by jealousy from another Heg Seth

Speaker 4 chief of staff, Joe Casper, who has

Speaker 3 been moved out of that post.

Speaker 4 Right. He was the one who supposedly initiated the investigation that led to the firing of those three staffers.
And then he is now being pushed into a new role.

Speaker 4 Why? I hasn't been, I think, adequately.

Speaker 3 I mean, I can report that he's not the decision maker, however. I can tell you that.

Speaker 4 Right. And, well, of course, he shouldn't.

Speaker 4 The buck stops with Hegseth. So Hegseth was obviously convinced that these three people did something wrong.

Speaker 4 I know Dan Caldwell to be a very loyal person who believes he becomes more effective by serving his boss well and then being handed more responsibility. And that's kind of marked his career.

Speaker 4 And I would stand by his reputation. I don't know Colin

Speaker 4 was another one of these people fired. I don't know him well.
And another one,

Speaker 4 Selnick,

Speaker 4 doesn't seem to have politics at all, as far as I can tell, no political record. He just has a record of reform in veterans affairs that I think was very strong during the first Trump administration.

Speaker 4 And we don't know, MBD.

Speaker 3 It could be that, like, one of these guys is the suspected leaker and the other two have shrapnel wounds. You know, like, I have no idea, but you're right.

Speaker 3 I haven't been able to determine like what did the other two have to do with it. Caldwell seems to be the face of it.
And I'm not sure what the relation is.

Speaker 3 It sounds like these three knew each other and were friendly and were friendly with Pete, too, which is to your point about this might be about, or might have at least started with some sort of internal personality clashes or power struggles.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 4 I mean, these three were, I've definitely been in the same networks together and networks together with veterans networks together that Pete Hexeth was a part of before he became head of the DOD.

Speaker 4 So people who were not privileged in that way may have, may have been jealous of their influence, even if there was no

Speaker 4 you know, political content to that jealousy. At the same time, there are politics to this, and it is interesting to see that there are people now rallying to Pete's side

Speaker 4 this week who three or four weeks ago were saying that what he did on the signal chat was worth resigning over.

Speaker 4 Let me ask you that.

Speaker 3 Is that more neoconnie people? Because it's very interesting to watch the factions because Caldwell goes on with Tucker and says, What's what really was behind my termination is I am dovish on Iran.

Speaker 3 I do not think we should be bombing Iran through Israel or any other way. And

Speaker 3 now you have people who would like us to bomb Iran. Like, is Pete so bad? Because they're like, they're deducing maybe Pete's on the opposite side.

Speaker 4 Well, I think there's fear that if Pete Hegseth goes, who replaces him?

Speaker 4 You know, it could be someone already in the Department of Defense, someone like Elbridge Colby, who has said, like, oh, we can contain Iran. Ukraine is a tertiary issue.
We need to focus on China.

Speaker 4 You know, that would be seen as a bigger threat. And Colby is an established kind of old school Republican hand.
He's sort of like out of central casting from

Speaker 4 the 1950s through 70s and knows where the bodies are buried.

Speaker 4 He could be very effective.

Speaker 4 Whereas people may think Pete Hegseth

Speaker 4 is not totally in the camp of the restrainers and not totally in the camp of the Hawks, but you know wants to serve his his president and and you know the president himself is not

Speaker 4 um hyper ideological on these questions you know the the president is willing to strike iran is willing you know to take out solemni is willing to uh bomb them and has said that iran can't have a nuke yeah iran can't have a nuclear weapon and he's willing to uh you know make the ground shake in order to bring that up uh

Speaker 4 you know bring that fact into existence so

Speaker 4 um you know it's it it's very consequent the the the person who leads the department of defense is extremely consequential and so it's not a surprise that there's intense rivalry i mean this is the the biggest human organization on the planet um you know what you'd like to see is for

Speaker 4 um

Speaker 4 if to have for hexeth to succeed and dan caldwell said he wants hexeth to succeed on the tucker carlson show. I think Hexeth has to assert

Speaker 4 a very firm chain of command at which he's at the top.

Speaker 4 There are no more rivalrist factions below him, that any rivalries that exist exist to serve him and to serve the president, right? To get the best advice, to get the best diversity of perspectives

Speaker 4 ahead of a major decision, and not to have this kind of knife fighting. Because, I mean, it seems to me like a lot of people have been fired that can make a good contribution

Speaker 4 to our national security. And

Speaker 4 I think it's a shame.

Speaker 3 We just don't know what they know. You know, if some evidence comes out that they actually were funneling top secret information to NBC News, they'd have to be fired.

Speaker 3 Like, I have no idea whether that's coming, but that would be, I'm just saying, for example, that would be a no-brainer. And we don't know, but it certainly appears that

Speaker 3 some faction of these four, that comms guy, Elliot is his last name, or these three accused but denying that they are leakers, are leaking to the press right now because Pete's on the other end of a battering ram since they got fired on Friday.

Speaker 3 It's like the New York Times had a long hit piece, Political has had repeated hit pieces, NPR is reporting that they're looking for a new Pentagon chief, but that's one anonymous source, and NPR is not exactly known for its Trump world exclusive.

Speaker 9 So I don't judge that. George Kalini might be more plugged in than NPR.

Speaker 3 Yeah, seriously. So it's like, if I saw that from like Fox News, I'd pay attention, but yeah, I don't until I don't really know about the NPR sourcing there.
I want to play this for you, Rich.

Speaker 3 Vice President Vance weighed in on Hegseth just this morning. Here's what he said.

Speaker 13 Look, I have 100% confidence in the Secretary. I know the President does, and really the entire team does.
It's one of the most bizarre things about the Hegseth nomination.

Speaker 13 From the very beginning, the media seemed to want to tank it.

Speaker 13 And when they failed and he got confirmed, they decided they wanted to keep on that effort to destroy Pete Hegseth as a man as the Secretary of Defense. I think he's doing a great job.

Speaker 13 I think that he's brought a certain spirit back to the Department of Defense. And if you look at our military recruitment numbers, that's,

Speaker 13 in my view, the best testament to his leadership of the military is that for the first time in a very long time, we don't have terrible recruitment problems in the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force.

Speaker 13 That's a great testament to his leadership. And I wish, frankly, the press talked more about that and not about anonymous sourcing from random staffers.

Speaker 3 The recruiting numbers are good.

Speaker 3 They're very good, Rich. But look, you and I both know that they always say they're standing behind the person until they get it.

Speaker 9 It's never 80% support, right?

Speaker 4 It's always 100%.

Speaker 3 So it's like almost meaningless to play those soundbites in all fairness.

Speaker 3 But at least publicly, Monday and Tuesday now, or I guess Monday and Wednesday, we've had direct soundbites from the president and vice president saying they are fully behind Pete.

Speaker 9 Yeah. So you're right in what you said at the top of this segment.

Speaker 9 You got this dynamic going in the media where there are headlines about chaos at the Pentagon and they're headlines about headlines about chaos at the Pentagon, right? So

Speaker 9 they want to create this phenomenon. And very often it works.
It's not going to work with Trump. I wouldn't expect him to be dumped over this anytime soon.

Speaker 9 But what's disturbing, and it relates to what JD said, right? Because JD went right to Pete's strength, right?

Speaker 9 Inspirational figure, more recruiting. People want to go and be in that organization that he's going to devote to warfighting.

Speaker 9 When people want to sign up for the military, that's why they want to do it, right?

Speaker 9 So, everyone who's in favor of his nomination said he's a change agent, joeled of energy, better recruiting, great communicator. All that's true.

Speaker 9 But no one said he's a great administrator, and we're extremely confident he can run the Pentagon.

Speaker 9 And what's disturbing about this, it'd be one thing if the building just randomly, the establishment, were shooting at him.

Speaker 9 And I'm sure, sure, it is, but this was a war, an ugly war for power and influence among his people, his loyalist people he brought in to help him run the building.

Speaker 9 So, I still still think the big question is, now some people have rocky starts to want to have take major steps in responsibility like this, and they figure it out, they learn from it, and it evens out.

Speaker 9 But there is a question, a bigger question now, whether he'll be able to run the building. And this thing about the signal chat,

Speaker 9 who knows? We haven't seen the, you know, a journalist wasn't CC'd on that, so we haven't actually seen them.

Speaker 9 But it just feels to me when you're roping in your wife, you know, your brother, your lawyer, you are someone who feels embattled, doesn't know who to trust, and you're going down to this core of the very most loyal people you have.

Speaker 9 And that's just, you're not going to be able to run the building that way, right?

Speaker 9 He needs some big chief of staff who can really do this job that's probably not within his current circle of trust, but he has to develop trust with. And this just isn't easy.

Speaker 9 You know, a lot of people aren't managers, and this is a huge managerial job. So I don't think he's going to get ousted for this.

Speaker 9 I would expect them to continue to support him, but I think there are concerns whether he can figure this out out and he needs to start figuring it out because it's a big job and everyone should want him to succeed.

Speaker 3 I mean, I will say this, MBD.

Speaker 3 This second signal text chain was reportedly with Pete, with his brother and his lawyer, both of whom are Pentagon employees now, and his wife, who's not, and some other collection, and I don't know who they are.

Speaker 3 Okay, it's... I'm told that what's on there was declassified, like that he didn't share any classified information.

Speaker 3 But let me say this.

Speaker 3 Where was this leftist freak out when Joe Biden had Jill Biden at cabinet meetings sitting at the resolute desk with his chair, his jacket on the back of her chair?

Speaker 3 She shepherded him around to every official function. We have no idea whether she was secretly our president, but she absolutely was at cabinet meetings.
They didn't care at all.

Speaker 4 No, and not only that,

Speaker 4 her close aide was also responsible for guarding the president from staff and from other cabinet members from the reporting we've seen. We saw that after the debate,

Speaker 4 Hunter Biden then came in and started performing that role. And

Speaker 4 there was no

Speaker 4 sign of outrage. This was just a family coming together to help

Speaker 4 their man in distress. And

Speaker 3 he's good care of him.

Speaker 4 He loves his son.

Speaker 4 One interesting possibility brought up,

Speaker 4 one thing I think people could look out for in the following days is, are the leaks still coming so and are they coming from uh

Speaker 4 from within going to the pentagon right okay so if they they're not done if they are if they are could it be really be these three guys i mean uh if if they're leaking stuff that's actively in the pentagon and secondly caldwell pointed to um the defense policy board which is not really a well-known institution uh but it's this This is something that is filled with Biden-era appointments like Susan Rice, Michelle Flournoy,

Speaker 4 Michael Hanlon of Brookings, lots of Biden-era people are still on it. They haven't met since the Trump administration has taken office, but they all have security clearances.

Speaker 4 They all have access to career employees in the Department of Defense. And, you know, that is not an unreasonable place to look for leaks when you're talking when this, the

Speaker 4 news outlets are NBC and Politico.

Speaker 3 I don't think Susan Rice and Michelle Flournoy are going to be on on the Defense Advisory Board for much longer.

Speaker 3 Trump, as we all know, has had his hands full, but I'm going to make a bold prediction that they shouldn't get too comfortable in their seats.

Speaker 4 Go ahead, Rich. What were you going to say?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I was going to say when this first broke and they're basically frog marched out of the building, I thought they had to have receipts. There's no way this happened without serious receipts.

Speaker 9 But then Caldwell's denial was so categorical with Tucker. As you pointed out, I think yesterday, Megan,

Speaker 9 there's some legal jeopardy here. So usually if you have exposure, you're not going and talking about it at length with a high-profile interviewer the way he did.

Speaker 9 And then Hexeth in his interview on Fox and Friend with Brian killed me. And I thought Brian did a great job.
He said something that made my ears perked up.

Speaker 9 He said, you know, and they or others around them might have been leaking. So wait a minute.
So was it, was it them? And we know it's them and that's why they're removed and fired?

Speaker 9 Or is it someone around them? And who are those people?

Speaker 4 So the big question marks.

Speaker 3 Whichever it was, like if it was one of these guys or if it was somebody else that leaked that story to NBC News with, I mean, actual, that the Pentagon had been asked to draw up attack plans for Panama is going to jail.

Speaker 3 That person is going to prison. I have no idea who it is.
But forget like the leak that Elon Musk came to the Pentagon and got a briefing.

Speaker 3 Forget all the other stuff. Like that, that report, whoever leaked to the NBC News reporter is probably going to jail.

Speaker 3 So I do believe that in any Department of Defense, they would get to the bottom of who did that. It shouldn't be too difficult.
You know, there are lots of ways to find leakers.

Speaker 3 It's just a question of whether they will, and I guess what cooperation they're going to get from their suspects, whether it goes beyond these three.

Speaker 3 I want to play a soundbite of Pete on Fox and Friends yesterday. Listen here.

Speaker 14 I mean, I've gotten a fraction of what President Trump got in that first term. What he's endured is superhuman.
It's not hard for me to do this job. I know exactly why I'm here.

Speaker 14 to bring warfighting and the warfighting ethos back to the Pentagon, to rip out the insidious ideologies and not compromise and not back down, to bring in new press voices into the Pentagon, which we've done, to reestablish standards and accountability, to not tolerate leakers, to 100% operational control of our border, to get rid of trans lunacy in the military.

Speaker 14 We haven't backed down. See, here's the thing.
A lot of people come to Washington and they just play the game.

Speaker 14 And it's, you punch their ticket and get along to go along and start doing meet the press and going going to the council on foreign relations and spending time with all the new cocktail sipping crowd that's not why i'm here i'm here because president trump asked me to bring warfighting back to the pantagon every single day right that is our focus and if people don't like it they can come after me no worries i'm standing right here the warfighters are behind us our enemies know they're on notice our allies know we're behind them and that in this dangerous world for the american people is what it's all about

Speaker 3 All right, I'm just going to be honest. I don't think that was that great.

Speaker 3 The first half was solid and right on. And then it seemed to me he was a little nervous.

Speaker 3 He struck me as nervous, which you don't normally see with Pete and certainly somebody who's on TV as often as Pete has been.

Speaker 3 And so this is totally my speculation, but it made me feel like, not that they have him on the ropes exactly, Rich, but.

Speaker 3 I feel like he knows he's embattled with the voice going up and like getting super defensive toward the end.

Speaker 3 That to me, more than anything else, Telegraph, like he's, he might be a little worried here.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 9 So look, great communicator, no doubt about it. Great communicator.
There's a reason he was on TV, but a little overly defensive, a little excitable, kind of jumping around a little bit.

Speaker 9 There are some people giving the advice, don't do any more media for the time being.

Speaker 9 But I just, his, his survival there and his success, which is more important, you know, Pete Hexeth doesn't matter in the scheme of things. You want him actually to make our

Speaker 9 force more lethal and lean and mean and all that depends on running the building. And it's just, it's really hard coming in as a change agent, one of these big agencies.
It's really, really hard.

Speaker 9 Very few people actually succeed in it, but

Speaker 9 he needs some help in that regard. And

Speaker 9 the first team of

Speaker 9 people he brought in that he thought were loyalists, maybe weren't, obviously was not in. So he's going to have a second bite of the Apple, but

Speaker 9 we should hope hope he has some serious administrators who are going to run the place for him.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I say, like, still totally rooting for him. I think he probably will survive this unless there's other, some other big shoe to drop.

Speaker 3 Like, we had leaks. There was an investigation.
They tell us they found the leakers. Those guys deny it, but that's what the Pentagon says that they are.

Speaker 3 And then

Speaker 3 a barrage of negative press accounts about Pete. hit the news.
I don't think that makes a fireable defense secretary, not in Trump world.

Speaker 3 I think Trump's going to understand what's happening right now.

Speaker 3 And now, if there's ongoing problems, if this becomes chronic and it's just like a distraction, then he'll turf him because he's not afraid of firing people. But I don't think we're there yet.

Speaker 3 I just wait to see what else. I do believe other negative press will be coming and we'll see what it is and how it's handled.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's so weird to be getting your Trump updates in Politico and the New York Times. I mean, it's just ridiculous.

Speaker 3 Who are these people? Who turns to them? Okay, anyway, moving on.

Speaker 3 Did you catch the Larry David piece? Obviously, on Bill Maher. This is a couple days old now, but we haven't talked about it on the show, and it's just amazing.

Speaker 3 So he pens a piece in the New York Times and op-ed called My Dinner with Adolf. It comes on the heels of Marr's dinner with Trump.
He doesn't name Marr. It's very clearly about Marr.

Speaker 3 In part, it reads. Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939, a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the old chancellery with the world's most reviled man, Adolf Hitler.

Speaker 3 I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go.
He's Hitler.

Speaker 3 He's a monster, in quotes. But eventually, I concluded that hate gets us nowhere.

Speaker 3 I knew he couldn't change his views, but we need to talk to the other side, even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.

Speaker 3 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 I joked that I was surprised to see him in a tan suit because if he wore that out it would be perceived as unführer-like. That amused him to no end and I realized I'd never seen him laugh before.

Speaker 3 Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I'd seen and heard, the public Hitler.
But this private Hitler was a completely different animal.

Speaker 3 And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.
Two hours later the dinner was over, and the Führer escorted me to the door.

Speaker 3 I'm so glad to have met you. I hope I'm no longer the monster you thought I was.
I must say, Mein Fuhrer, I'm so thankful I came.

Speaker 3 Although we disagree on many issues, it doesn't mean that we have to hate each other. And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night.

Speaker 4 This is unbelievable, Michael.

Speaker 3 Unbelievable. So, I mean, I'm allowed to remember when you weren't supposed to use Hitler to make your points, you know, but okay, I guess we're past that.
Your thoughts on it?

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 I have to say I'm surprised.

Speaker 4 Larry David has appeared on Saturday Night Live with Trump and like making a joke, like where he shouts, Trump's a racist, and like an annoying liberal lefty from Hollywood would.

Speaker 4 And it seemed to be he was self-deprecating on this point. And in fact, one of his,

Speaker 4 there's an a very funny episode of his show, Carbier Enthusiasm, where he decides that wearing a MAGA hat is a perfect way of getting out of awkward social obligations in Hollywood.

Speaker 3 And also, also, where he goes into a Holocaust museum and steals the shoes that are on display of Holocaust victims because he needs new shoes.

Speaker 3 Like he's been, yeah, irreverent, certainly when it comes to the Holocaust and obviously Trump.

Speaker 4 Very irreverent and irreverent too. I mean, you know, arguably, like there was an there was an episode of his show where he came to discover that his, you know,

Speaker 4 descendants were not C-O-H-E-N Cone, but C-O-N-E Cone.

Speaker 4 And like the episode was basically like an anti-Semitic tract of him discovering that he was like of Christian parentage, and then he became like a nicer, kinder, gentler, braver, more volunteeristic person.

Speaker 4 I mean, so I always thought of Larry David as someone who,

Speaker 4 you know, stood aside from liberal pieties in Hollywood and, in fact, made fun of them. And then so I was actually just shocked that he,

Speaker 4 you know, that he didn't. Didn't you ever hear about his fight with Alan Dershowitz?

Speaker 3 Alan Dershowitz has been railing about Larry David for calling him out for defending Trump in the first impeachment trial for years now. You know how Alan, he holds a grudge.
And

Speaker 3 he, so he, yeah, he, he basically screamed at Alan in a Martha's Vineyard like 7-Eleven for doing this. He's not a tolerant guy.
I don't know, Richard me.

Speaker 4 Like,

Speaker 3 it really is amazing that he wrote this and that the Times printed this.

Speaker 11 Yeah,

Speaker 9 they always go to Hitler.

Speaker 9 It's so boring. It's so conventional, but they can't help themselves.
There's nothing that Trump has in common with Hitler, right?

Speaker 9 He's a thoroughly American figure, runs through this populist tradition, going through Andrew Jackson, Huey Long, George Wallace, not the racism of George Wallace, but the anti-elitism.

Speaker 9 And there are things to like and really dislike about that tradition. That's all fair game, but they got to go to Hitler.
And look, Bill Maher did the right thing, right?

Speaker 9 Donald Trump, like it or not, is at the center of our national life. Bill Maher is a hugely consequential commentator who talks about Donald Trump all the time.

Speaker 9 He should know as much as he reasonably can about Donald Trump. And as Winston Churchill used to say, there's nothing like being there, going yourself and seeing yourself.

Speaker 9 And he learned things about Donald Trump, right? And they didn't accord with his worldview.

Speaker 9 And unlike George Clooney until the last moment with Joe Biden, he admits it and will admit the attention and say he actually learned something and he's going to share it with his viewers, which is the honest, factual thing to do.

Speaker 9 And the fact is, Donald Trump in person, he's a professional host in part, so he can be extremely gracious.

Speaker 9 He's a great one-on-one politician, which accounts for a lot of his hold on the Republican Party, which you might miss unless you know them that about him. And now Bill Maher knows it.

Speaker 9 He went and found out, which was the right thing to do.

Speaker 3 And Larry David digs in saying,

Speaker 3 basically, but you met with Hitler. We don't want to hear about the softer side of Hitler.
That's really what he's saying here. Without it ever even occurring to him,

Speaker 3 what if what's happening is he's not Hitler and Bill Maher is starting to realize that? Like, might there be secret option number two?

Speaker 3 Stay with me here, Larry, that Trump actually doesn't annex countries and hasn't killed 6 million people and might actually be somebody who could really help the country out.

Speaker 3 I said it. He can't, that, he's too far gone.
The TDS is too advanced. It's a stage five TDS situation.
I'm sorry, but oh well. Okay, stand by, Rich and MBD.
Stay with me. Quick break first.

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Speaker 16 You know, what did Hitler do in the Holocaust? He took people from Germany to other countries

Speaker 16 where there was no German law. There was not even a pretense of German law.
They took them to Poland or,

Speaker 16 you know, Hungary or whatever, and he killed them.

Speaker 9 And so when you see what's happening right now with this El Salvadoran gulag, I mean, this Seacot gulag,

Speaker 4 he's basically taking a page out of that playbook, you think?

Speaker 16 Well, but gets him out of the country.

Speaker 3 Okay, that's more Hitler talk from Chris Matthews and Jim Acosta. Welcome back to the Vegan Kelly Show, back with you now, Rich Lowry and MBD, Michael Brendan Doherty of National Review.

Speaker 3 Become an NR Plus member today to get all of their content. I love NR Plus.
I don't agree with everything they write, but I love them all.

Speaker 3 All except for one, and that I'll keep it to myself.

Speaker 4 Anyway,

Speaker 4 it's no one on this show.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, more Hitler-esque talk, this time about the El Salvadoran prison. That's why he's doing it because he's going to ship them overseas and kill them.
I heard that phrase come out.

Speaker 3 They don't point out that most of the people who have been shipped there so far are El Salvadoran. And if not, they're Venezuelan gang members who we could put in prisons here too.

Speaker 3 And by the way, any illegal who gets arrested and has to face deportation and a hearing has to go to jail. That's what we're supposed to be doing.

Speaker 3 We haven't been under Joe Biden, but you're supposed to hold him. Unfortunately, you're only allowed to hold him for 90 days.
And then you got to let them roam. And then they're never seen from again.

Speaker 3 But what Trump is doing is saying, these are people who have been deported.

Speaker 3 We believe that the vast majority of these people, if not all these people, have already been deported, like ordered, removed. They had their due process.
And now he's doing exactly that.

Speaker 3 Now, what's going to happen to them after a year in this prison? I don't know because, you know, you can't hold them forever.

Speaker 3 But I haven't seen any assurances that's not the plan. I'm not sure, Rich, but where do you stand on

Speaker 3 the El Salvadoran prison and in general on what Trump's doing with the immigration reform?

Speaker 9 Yeah. So this is my latest hot take on.
on this makeup. One, the politics are just terrible for Democrats, right?

Speaker 9 Because if you say I'm advocating, they have so little credibility on on immigration if you say i'm advocating for a legal immigrant who may have beaten his wife probably did be his wife may be a member of ms 13 but it's all about due process a lot of the public's just going to hear oh you're advocating for an illegal immigrant who may have beaten his wife maybe a member of ms 13.

Speaker 9 so so this is this is not a good good issue for them but i think like substantively in terms of where we are in deportations it's the the whole alien enemies thing is is a blind alley let's say the administration succeeds legally which seems unlikely but all the tda members go to that prison in El Salvador.

Speaker 4 Okay, great.

Speaker 9 We still have 18 million illegal immigrants here. And so far, there are a couple of things that need to happen to really deal with that.

Speaker 9 Many people have pointed out, you've pointed out the problem is they come in here without any due process, right?

Speaker 9 And then once they're here, there's all this procedures, and it's so hard to get them out. So, one, you need Congress, we need more ICE officers, we need more detention space.

Speaker 9 And during the campaign, they were talking about massive tent cities to house people. Where's that? Well, you need Congress to fund it.

Speaker 9 And then you need reform of the asylum system, which is an outrage, which was abused by this guy, Brego Garcia. Not technically asylum, a withholding a removal, but it was basically the same thing.

Speaker 9 It was absurd. You know, his family suffered from gang violence.
They weren't persecuted in El Salvador.

Speaker 9 And the business that was being extorted had closed at the time he got this withholding a removal. So the occasion for this extortion that he was complaining about was no longer there.

Speaker 9 And then the gang got crushed, right? So there's no fear whatsoever. And he was still living free in this country.
So you need to change all that.

Speaker 9 But also, I think it's within the power of the Trump administration now to do work site raids. And it's understandable they're going after the worst of the worst.

Speaker 9 You do that for some substantive reasons, obviously. You do it for the politics, but you got to, I'm making up the numbers.

Speaker 9 You got to send like 15 ICE agents to get one guy because he might be a threat. He might shoot at you, right? You need a lot of robust presence.
Worksite raids, you send.

Speaker 9 five ICE agents to a meat packing plant in Iowa and you get 150 guys and you deport them and then you fine the hell out of that meat packing plant.

Speaker 9 And then what happens is every other meat packing plant in Iowa says, we don't want to be fined. They go to their legal employees.
Sorry, guys, you know, you can't work here anymore.

Speaker 9 And then you might have some of those legal employees saying, you know what? I don't want to be deported. I don't want to be held in detention.
I'll go home on my own.

Speaker 9 And the biggest thing we need, which is I've been shocked for 10 years that Donald Trump doesn't talk about this. He's very ambiguous on this issue.

Speaker 9 You need a so-called e-verify system that's a foolproof system where you just can't hire people who are illegal aliens. That dries up all the jobs.

Speaker 9 And then you might have, you know, millions of people saying, we don't want to be here anymore.

Speaker 9 So we're just not going to be able to cherry pick our way through 18 million people and work through this process and really move the numbers.

Speaker 9 You need those kind of things to make a big difference in my mind.

Speaker 3 No, we're not. MBD, one interesting fact.
Rich mentioned that Abrego Garcia, he's the one, MS-13, an accused wife beater.

Speaker 3 And he's the one Chris Van Hollen went over there to meet with and was photographed with with the margaritas in front of them. And he always set up.
Oh, you know, they set me up.

Speaker 3 Well, if you're too dumb not to understand propaganda, too bad on you. In any event, here he was in 2017, Chris Van Holland.
This, the Heritage Foundation tweeted this out, and we verified it.

Speaker 3 It's real.

Speaker 3 This is 2017, Chris Van Hollen. Shame on President Trump for tearing apart hardworking immigrant families.
We should be focused on MS-13, not scholarship winners. How times have changed.

Speaker 3 Now he's dancing the waltz with a guy and sipping the margaritas. Or so it would appear.
Well,

Speaker 4 at first, I mean, the first move of Democrats, right, was to deny that he was part of MS-13 and try to make him into father of the year. I mean, it was,

Speaker 4 I mean, it's, it's pathetic.

Speaker 4 I do think, I actually disagree with Rich a little bit. I actually think this is giving Democrats a little bit of juice, at least among their base.

Speaker 4 I mean, I'm seeing all over social media, like hysterical conspiracy theories that like, this is a test run. They're going to do this to,

Speaker 4 you know, a deportable alien first, and then they're going to start doing it to a Rachel Maddow will be next. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Right, exactly. And so I do think it is,

Speaker 4 I think it's actually the first time since Trump has been inaugurated that Democrats have been able to focus on one story and bring sustained attention to it.

Speaker 4 Again, I agree with Richard. It probably doesn't work with independents, and it certainly doesn't work with Republicans.

Speaker 4 But motivating the base is what Democrats have to do to start rebuilding their party, getting fundraising up.

Speaker 4 And I think that's

Speaker 4 what they're doing. And, you know,

Speaker 4 El Salvador officials are very cagey in

Speaker 4 getting Abreo Garcia to be dressed up in

Speaker 4 civilian clothes, not looking like

Speaker 4 he's coming out of Dachau or something like that. He looks like, he almost looked like he was at a resort with the...

Speaker 4 with the

Speaker 4 cup in front of him.

Speaker 3 The plaid summer colors, the button-down shirt. Yeah, more and more we're hearing this.
And Trump made some comment about, like,

Speaker 3 you know, we've,

Speaker 3 it was like a reference to possible American criminals being sent to this prison. And the left, of course, that just fed right into their belief that, yeah, Rachel Maddow is going to go.

Speaker 3 He's just going to start deporting people he doesn't like. He wasn't talking about deporting Americans.
He was talking about prison space.

Speaker 3 And like, it'd be great if we could house some of our worst prisoners in a place like this so we didn't have to worry about

Speaker 3 But this keeps getting brought up by the left as like proof he wants to ship Americans, you know, law-abiding Americans or any other kind of Americans, you know, without due process to El Salvador.

Speaker 3 Here's Simone Sanders to the point you just made on MSNBC, Medi.

Speaker 3 The realistic way in which democracies die is that it's dismantled brick by brick, piece by piece.

Speaker 3 That is why Kilmar Abrego Garcia's specific case, the case of the gentleman who's a makeup artist out of California, who was also sent to that prison. That is why

Speaker 3 the 75% of the folks who have been sent, the men who have been sent there that don't have criminal records, that is why this is so important. Because if they could do it to them,

Speaker 3 if they could snatch students off the street without any pushback or recourse, they will do it to any of us.

Speaker 4 To be very clear, it's going to be the people of color and vulnerable communities that are next to them.

Speaker 4 That is the only proper response, Rich Lowry.

Speaker 3 Thank you for knowing exactly what to say.

Speaker 9 Yeah, of course. I think this, this, Megan, it does go to a contradiction.

Speaker 9 On the one hand, illegal immigrants, they should be detained until their proceedings are fully worked out and they're removed.

Speaker 4 That's what the law says.

Speaker 9 And we've just never done it. No one's done it.
Abrego Garcia was released during the first Trump administration. He should have been held.
They all should be held.

Speaker 9 But we need more detention space to do that. But if the argument is, well, this in El Salvador is just...

Speaker 9 basically detention space like in America, then you're going to get the courts will saying, well, well, okay, you effectively have control over all these prisoners.

Speaker 9 So if we're telling you to bring them back, it's not a foreign policy issue. It's just a U.S.
detention space like any other. It just happens to be overseas.

Speaker 9 So again, I just don't, I don't, I, they're straining at every possible, looking for every possible avenue they can to

Speaker 9 hop scotch procedural obstacles to get the numbers of deportations up, right? Because we had 10 million come in or whatever it was the last four years, and they got to go and they should go.

Speaker 9 I just don't think they're going to prevail on this one.

Speaker 3 What's crazy, Michael, is that you've now got, you know, you had the Supreme Court weigh in twice so far on the Alien Enemies Act, which is Trump's best tool, he thinks, toward getting these people out of here and getting them out fast.

Speaker 3 And the first one was,

Speaker 3 this statute is reviewable, but only in small part.

Speaker 3 And the second was, and to say, if you want to bring a challenge under it, you have to file a habeas proceeding, meaning an objection to whether you qualify as like an actual gang member under his order in the jurisdiction where you're being held.

Speaker 3 So, you know, not in front of D.C. Judge Boesberg, but in that case, it was in Texas where they had the deportees.
And then

Speaker 3 secondly, they just waited in on Friday night to say, stop all deportations under the Alien Enemies Act until we can figure out what's going on, which was very sweeping, seven to two.

Speaker 3 Alito went off the next day. And not a good ruling for Trump, but not a permanent.
That's like, just stop until we can address this case on the the merits, and it's working its way up.

Speaker 3 But what you got in the meantime was this

Speaker 3 decision from this Judge Sweeney, Judge Charlotte Sweeney,

Speaker 3 a Biden appointee, who just ruled that she's, first of all, she's certified a putative class, meaning she's given the initial blessing for this whole thing to be on a class action track for all alien enemies, act, deportees, to be part of a class, and said they have to get at least 21 days' notice before you can remove them.

Speaker 3 So she said the Supreme Court didn't say how much due process is enough, but according to this judge, we have to, for 21 days, we got to let these people stick around. This is the worst of the worst.

Speaker 3 Can you imagine what's going to happen when we get to the ones who aren't additional criminals?

Speaker 4 I mean, it's, it is preposterous. I mean, the idea that you're going to have

Speaker 4 ICE roll up and give this 21-day notice, which is like, you have three weeks to disappear from here and find a cousin in another state to stay with until we lose you again.

Speaker 4 I mean, it's utterly ridiculous.

Speaker 4 It's basically lawless.

Speaker 4 You know, I understand, you know, some,

Speaker 4 I understand a little bit why some Democrats and some judges are alarmed by

Speaker 4 the use of this act, you know, whether it's really proper to consider

Speaker 4 illegal immigrants, you know, part of a hostile invasion, you know, in the laws of war. I understand that reticence, but you can't just make up law

Speaker 4 out of nowhere and invent judicial process

Speaker 4 from nothing. But we've seen this over and over again, this judicial brinksmanship under Trump that is

Speaker 4 absolutely destabilizing to self-government.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 it's not a surprise that you're getting a lot of MAGA Republicans getting radicalized about the judiciary and saying, we need to,

Speaker 4 in the words of J.D. Vance, like the courts issued its warning.
Now let the court enforce it and just ignore. the judicial branch.

Speaker 4 I don't think Donald Trump wants to go that far, but boy, that ruling really is tempting. It is a tempting

Speaker 4 test case.

Speaker 3 Here's what she said.

Speaker 3 The government must provide both petitioners in this case, this is out of Colorado District Court, and the provisionally certified class of individuals they seek to represent, meaning all deportees under the Alien Enemies Act, with a 21-day notice to the individuals detained pursuant to the act.

Speaker 3 So anybody who's going to be deported pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act and Trump's proclamation, to get a 21-day notice,

Speaker 3 must state the government intends to remove the individual pursuant to the act and the proclamation, must provide notice of a right to seek judicial review, must inform the individuals that they may consult an attorney regarding their detainment and the government's intent to remove them, must be written in a language that the individual understands.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 these are people who literally crossed our southern border illegally, committed crimes against American citizens when they got here, in some cases resisted Tom Homan when he tried to arrest them.

Speaker 3 And now, I mean,

Speaker 3 this is unbelievable. Each one gets gets 21-day notice and hearing what's next, like court appointed counsel.
So we're paying for their defense. And all the way through to the U.S.

Speaker 3 Supreme Court, each one of these guys is going to appeal up to the U.S. Supreme Court on the worst.
This is why.

Speaker 3 This is why we really are headed for a showdown here, Rich, where if we get more rulings like we got from our Colorado friend, Charlotte Sweeney, a Biden appointee, who hasn't done anything in her very short career to distinguish herself as a foreign policy expert or an immigration expert, but now thinks she's co-president is really, they're tempting, they're begging Trump to ignore them.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 9 So on the procedures, this is why we should do many more expedited removals. My understanding of the statute, you can do an expedited removal.
It's basically no process.

Speaker 9 It's kind of a common sense thing. They come here illegally, you turn them back around and they go home, right?

Speaker 9 That's what most people think.

Speaker 3 But here's the one exception. Here's the one exception.
So Trump expanded expedited removal to go beyond just the southern border and the initial encounter.

Speaker 3 But if they claim asylum, then then you do have to give them an asylum

Speaker 9 yeah the

Speaker 9 the broken and insane and lunatic asylum process is a huge element of this immigration crisis we've experienced over the last 10 years or so it needs to be drastically reformed and perhaps my friend mark kikorian center for immigration studies makes a very compelling case we shouldn't do it at all you know we can have a certain number of refugees they're in our country in some other country and we decide to admit them but the whole process of someone getting here and then starting this huge procedural process that means they'll stay right that's how many, that's how it's worked in the past.

Speaker 9 That's why they're coming. That's why they say these certain things that they think are magic words that get them to stay.

Speaker 9 That's got to end. But you need Congress to do it.
On this thing,

Speaker 9 the El Salvador prison, I think there are a couple of reasons the administration's dug in. One, they don't like to admit mistakes.

Speaker 9 I do think Abrego Garcia, clearly deportable alien, could have been deported anywhere else. I think he should come home and be deported to Panama immediately in accordance with the lawful process.

Speaker 9 But one, they don't like admitting error. Two, they want this power, right, to be able to do this in an expedited manner.
Three, as we were discussing earlier, I know MBD disagrees a little bit.

Speaker 9 They think it's good politics. And four, if, if, if, I hope they don't do this.
They shouldn't do this in my mind.

Speaker 9 If they're going to defy a court on something, this thing is set up perfectly for that purpose, right? Supreme Court says, bring him back. And you say, He's an El Salvador.

Speaker 4 You go get him.

Speaker 9 Right. You go get him.

Speaker 3 To the point you were just making, here's Tom Homan on Fox today sat for

Speaker 17 but here's what they're doing though here's the plan the biden administration overwhelmed the system 10.5 million people came to the border they know it's going to take years to get through the court docket by then they're hoping there's another uh democratic administration in they'll have u.s citizen children then all of a sudden nobody wants them removed we're spoiling their plans to have future democratic voters and and during through a census have control of the house through a census vote democratic sanctuary cities get more seats in the house this is their plan to the immigration court to appeal after appeal after appeal, district judge, district judge, to slow us down because their hopes is they'll gain power again, then they can warn amnesty to 10 million illegal aliens that are released in this country illegally.

Speaker 17 That is their plan. We're trying to remove these public safety threats, national security threats as quick as possible.

Speaker 3 You know, on that same front, MBD, as I mentioned, the Supreme Court stopped the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act on Friday night at one in the morning. They stopped them.

Speaker 3 So when's our hearing? When is this resuming? When are we going to know what Trump can do, the commander-in-chief, the duly elected president of the United States?

Speaker 3 And Mike Davis, very smart lawyer with the Article III project, just tweeted out the following.

Speaker 3 Dear Commanding General John Roberts, when does the President of the United States have your permission to resume his military operation to deport the most dangerous terrorists in the Western hemisphere?

Speaker 3 Or do you want the president to ship them to the Chevy Chase Country Club?

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 3 now we're talking.

Speaker 4 I mean, he's exactly right. I mean, when do we get our president back? Right? I mean, that's the Supreme Court effectively absconded with the presidency until further notice.

Speaker 4 And we only have Justice Alito standing up. It's insane.
And yes, there are limits, right? You know, you could say that the court order says, oh, you know, we want the president to effectuate

Speaker 4 bringing back Garcia from El Salvador. But he belongs in El Salvador.
Facilitate. He belongs in El Salvador.

Speaker 4 And there are,

Speaker 4 he belongs in El Salvador, and there are limits. I mean, it's not like the Supreme Court can say, you know, send the Navy and launch an amphibious invasion and then go rescue him.
Give me a break.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 this is makey up law. I mean, the president has an ability to negotiate with other heads of other sovereign heads of states

Speaker 4 and to proceed and carry out lawful actions. And once he does, there are consequences to that that aren't reversible and aren't justiciable.
So, you know,

Speaker 4 this is going too far. And the Supreme Court had better get out of this by the end of this week, because otherwise it is going to be tempting another huge confrontation.
with the president.

Speaker 4 And in most cases, when they sit down to rule, they look at the Constitution, they look at Article 1 and Article 2, and they decide, you know what?

Speaker 4 The president really has authority over executive actions, and Congress really has authority over the law. And there's nothing we can, you know, do about it.
And there's no lacuna to hide in.

Speaker 3 Here is another thing.

Speaker 3 Speaking of the Supreme Court, you guys probably saw this case went up yesterday involving Maryland parents who it's a group of Muslims, Christians, and Jews who said, we've had it with with your weird hypersexual LGBTQ propaganda being shoved into our children's curriculum in the pre-K through five years.

Speaker 3 Pre-K.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I didn't watch the argument yet, but most court observers who I trust think the parents are going to win this, which would be amazing.

Speaker 3 It will be a very historic ruling if they do, the restoration of parental rights, another thing Trump ran on, by the way.

Speaker 3 And this could could be a ruling that could have far-ranging implications. Here's a sample of how it went.
This is the attorney for the schools, Montgomery County Schools.

Speaker 3 His name's Alan Schoenfeld, getting the business from Trump appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Speaker 12 They're being used in English language instruction at age three.

Speaker 15 Some of them.

Speaker 10 So Pride Puppy was the book that was used for the pre-kindergarten curriculum. That's no longer in the curriculum.

Speaker 12 That's the one where they are supposed to look for the leather and things and bondage things like that.

Speaker 10 It's not bondage, it's a woman in a leather jacket.

Speaker 15 It's a sex worker, right? No, no, that's not correct. No,

Speaker 15 I thought, gosh, I read it. Is it drag queen and drag queen? Drag queen and drag queen.

Speaker 10 Correct. The leather that they're pointing to is a woman in a leather jacket.

Speaker 10 And one of the words is drag queen in the circle.

Speaker 12 And they're supposed to look for those.

Speaker 10 It is an option at the end of the book, correct?

Speaker 4 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3 They're going down. And it's going to be a glorious thing, Rich, when they do go down.

Speaker 9 Oh, yeah, vomitous. God bless these parents for standing up.
It's not always easy to do this.

Speaker 9 You know, the Montgomery County, one of their arguments was we can't have an opt-out because so many parents will opt out.

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 they said it became unholy. Yeah, what does that tell you?

Speaker 11 That's a sign.

Speaker 9 The public school should be consensus, boring, conventional educational matter. That's it.

Speaker 9 You know, college, yeah, you know, take your courses on controversial literary theory or critical theory or whatever, but not in grade school. And

Speaker 9 I think they will prevail. They should prevail.
The argument that was made from the progressive side, from the bench, is that this isn't coercion. It's just exposing the children to this material.

Speaker 9 But that's part of the point, right? These parents don't want their children exposed to Pride Puppy and searching for leather outfits in a book for second graders or whatever it is. It is absurd.

Speaker 9 The only case you can make for having this stuff in the classroom is that you're going to have an opt-out. You shouldn't even have it then.

Speaker 9 But to not have an opt-out is totally sustainable, wrong, a travesty, won't stand.

Speaker 3 That's all they're asking for is an opt-out, this coalition of parents. They're not saying you have to remove it from the curriculum.
They're saying we just want an opt-out. And by the way,

Speaker 3 where are all the Muslim advocates? Where's Rashida Talib?

Speaker 3 This is a group. The name plaintiffs are Muslim.

Speaker 3 A lot of Muslims in this community saying this is totally not kosher with kosher is the the wrong word, but they're not okay with our religion and promoting this stuff.

Speaker 3 Not one of their representatives is out there. It's all about Palestine for her.

Speaker 3 She won't advocate for them. We'll give another one.
Here's Justice Kagan.

Speaker 3 Even Kagan, who,

Speaker 3 you know, I think technically she's straight.

Speaker 4 We talked about this another time.

Speaker 3 Anyway,

Speaker 3 but even Kagan seemed a bit taken aback by this going out to the very, very young kids. It's Sat 18.

Speaker 19 I too was struck by

Speaker 19 these are you know young kids picture books and on matters concerning sexuality I suspect there are a lot of non-religious parents who weren't all that thrilled about this

Speaker 19 but I guess I'm searching for what in

Speaker 19 your legal arguments would allow us to draw lines in this area.

Speaker 20 We think there are lines that can be drawn. They're the same lines that this court has drawn in every other free exercise case.

Speaker 20 And the burden, a plaintiff has to show that its beliefs are religious, that they are sincere,

Speaker 20 there has to be a substantial infringement

Speaker 20 or burden or pressure.

Speaker 19 I'm really searching for something, and I know that you realize that, and you're still not giving me anything other than if it's in a school and a sincere religious parent has an objection,

Speaker 19 that objection is always going to result in an opt-out. That's right.

Speaker 19 No matter what the instruction is like, no matter what the materials are, no matter how old the kids are.

Speaker 20 And that's the rule that schools everywhere in the country are working under right now.

Speaker 3 Justice Alito, too, also noted that this case involves extremely young children, as young as five, noting that as kids become older, they're better able to make distinctions about what a teacher is presenting.

Speaker 3 But when they're that young, it's a very different story. It's really up to adults to filter out what's inappropriate for them, Michael.

Speaker 3 I don't think this is going to be one of those cases where Roberts goes soft knee or Amy Cody Barrett goes soft knee. I think it's looking like a six to three decision from what I've read so far.

Speaker 4 I think you're right. I mean, ideally, not only that, ideally, Gorsuch would then run back and try to rewrite Bostock decision because this is actually a downward consequence of that decision.

Speaker 4 This is him reaping what he sowed so many years ago, which is basically that

Speaker 4 he said that if you read the 1964 Civil Rights Act with the same squinted Episcopal eyes that he brought to the case, that transgender

Speaker 4 people have

Speaker 4 civil rights as transgender identity. And of course, the schools in the United States would then follow up with a curriculum to foster respect for the most minority of sexual minorities.

Speaker 4 Of course, this is the downward effect of that. And he should repent.
Like, we should get sackcloth and ashes out

Speaker 4 besides the

Speaker 4 judicial garb.

Speaker 4 No, I don't think it's going to be close. But there's also a kind of

Speaker 4 problem in our ruling about religious freedoms in this is that you have to prove that there's a sincere religious belief.

Speaker 4 Like, is it really a religious belief that that men are men and women are women? It's so true. I mean, I suppose it is.
I suppose it is.

Speaker 4 I mean, someone, you know, we could have a school of people come along and say, listen, you know, technically, when you sit on a chair, there actually is an exchange of molecules between the chair and your

Speaker 4 physical body. Therefore, there's no distinction between the two.
And I can throw you out of the window just as easily as I throw the chair out of a window.

Speaker 4 And then I have to come and say, well, my Christian faith teaches me that, in fact, a person is a person and a chair is a chair. I mean,

Speaker 4 give me a break. Do we have anything common underlying our law? Or can any fool theory come out of an academic department and lead to us introducing four-year-olds to leather daddies and drag means?

Speaker 11 Give me a break.

Speaker 3 So well said. Yeah, the books are nuts.
There's, what are your words? One character in the book says, my pronouns are like the weather. They change depending on how I feel.

Speaker 3 Somebody says, sometimes I use all the pronouns I can think of. Another book, Prince and Knight, grades K through five.
A young prince and a knight fall in love after battling a dragon together.

Speaker 3 I mean, okay. Just like when we were kids, right? I mean, like

Speaker 3 they battle the dragon and then they hop in bed together. That's not how the story ends.
Born ready, a mother tells a story of her transgender son, Penelope. Again, K through five.

Speaker 3 Another book called Love Violet about a same-sex crush between classmates.

Speaker 3 Uncle Bobby's wedding, where a niece is concerned about her uncle who's engaged to another man, won't spend time with her anymore. Look, I'm just going to end with this.

Speaker 3 One of the other news sources that George Clooney loves is 60 Minutes.

Speaker 3 And let me just show you as I say goodbye how 60 Minutes, when they had Moms for Liberty on, who's been objecting to these kinds of books in our curriculum, K through 12 education, this is how the vaunted 60 Minutes George handled it.

Speaker 3 There are rogue teachers in America's classrooms right now.

Speaker 4 Rogue teachers.

Speaker 8 Rogue teachers.

Speaker 21 Parents send their children to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology.

Speaker 15 What ideology are they being indoctrinated into?

Speaker 3 Let's just say, children in America cannot read.

Speaker 8 They often dodged questions with talking points.

Speaker 4 You're being invasive.

Speaker 21 21% of Hispanic students are being unrealistic.

Speaker 15 What ideology are the children being indoctrinated into? What is your fear?

Speaker 3 I think parents' fears are realized.

Speaker 21 They're looking at these books where sexual discussions are happening with their children at younger and younger ages.

Speaker 8 Tiffany Justice read from sexually explicit books written for older teens, but found in a few lower schools.

Speaker 15 Most people wouldn't want them in a lower school.

Speaker 8 But in a tactic of outrage politics, Moms for Liberty takes a kernel of of truth and concludes these examples are not rare mistakes, but a plot to sexualize children.

Speaker 3 Unbelievable. Now it's gotten so bad, and it was when they sat with him two years ago, that this case has gone all the way up to the U.S.
Supreme Court, and not a party is arguing it isn't happening.

Speaker 3 It was not an outrage politics measure. it is not a rare mistake it's policy that they're openly fighting for and fighting to prevent opt-outs from

Speaker 4 scott and george so pay attention to some better news sources because that one failed mightily unbelievable is it not rich it's incredible that that clip it's so telling because that That is the what they used to call the voice of God, right?

Speaker 9 That was Walter Cronkite. That was when there were three broadcast networks and nothing else.
And they were just telling you the truth.

Speaker 9 You know, you just, you sat down for 30 minutes and you had to believe every word they say. He's, he's, his DNA is right from there.
That's in his line of authority.

Speaker 9 And he has the voice, he has the look, but it's just so obviously stilted and ridiculous and wrong.

Speaker 9 And so, so that's, that's why that, that whole mode of media is not as influential as it was and never will be again.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well said. Guys, great to see you.
Thanks for coming. See you soon.
soon.

Speaker 9 Megan, I got a programming tip for you, by the way, recommendation. I think you need to do an afternoon update, too.
So you're doing morning show and afternoon.

Speaker 9 So you're literally just broadcasting all during the day, right?

Speaker 11 Just go do the full thing, right?

Speaker 9 Don't hang out.

Speaker 3 Abigail Finan just screamed from the next room, oh my gosh,

Speaker 4 we're up to here.

Speaker 3 But the AM update is doing really well. So people are enjoying it.
So we do it. Anyway, great to see you guys.

Speaker 9 Thanks for having us.

Speaker 3 Okay, up next, Dr. Dale Bredison with the latest on how you can prevent Alzheimer's.
Yes, it's preventable. Just ask him.
These days, it feels like nothing surprises us anymore, but not in a good way.

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Speaker 22 Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast. Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 23 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

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Speaker 3 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.

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Speaker 3 Did you know that a couple of years ago, researchers from Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association released the following stats?

Speaker 3 They did a long study and the authors affirmed that while the vast majority of cases of Alzheimer's are found in Americans over the age of 65, between 2013 and 2017, They found a 143% increase in diagnoses for those between 55 and 64, a 311% increase in diagnoses of Alzheimer's for those between 45 and 54, and a 373% increase in diagnoses for those between 30 and 44.

Speaker 3 So listen up. You need to know what you can do to stave off Alzheimer's.
And my next guest, a medical doctor, says you can. He's been on the show before.
His name is Dr. Dale Bredeson.

Speaker 3 I respect him immensely. And he's back with a new book called The Ageless Brain, How to Sharpen and Protect Your Mind for a Lifetime.
Dale, welcome back to the show. Wonderful to see you.

Speaker 3 Those stats are really alarming. So

Speaker 3 is it actually a growing problem or we're just getting better at diagnosing?

Speaker 11 It's a growing problem.

Speaker 11 When I was training many years ago, we never saw people in their 40s, 50s. This was a disease of your late 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.

Speaker 11 Now, one of the most common things we see is people who are in their 40s or 50s who are getting diagnosed with Alzheimer's. So, yes, we're getting a little better at diagnosing it for sure.

Speaker 11 There are new blood tests, et cetera, but there's no question it is on the increase in these young groups.

Speaker 3 Okay, we've talked before about some of the preventative measures, and I want to go back over some of them now, but I'm going to lead with the most controversial, but maybe promising.

Speaker 3 You tell me, can Ozempic help stave off Alzheimer's and dementia?

Speaker 11 It is possible. That's one of the many things, you know, we're hearing from RFK about all these different things.
One of the issues is, what are we doing about metabolism?

Speaker 11 We do not have an optimal, as you know, we do not have an optimal metabolism in most people in this country.

Speaker 11 Too much high-carb food, too much ultra-processed food, and a lot of damage, frankly, to our metabolic systems. And so this is one of the possibilities.
And there are other things as well.

Speaker 11 There are things you can do to avoid that. But improving your insulin sensitivity, of course, what Olzempic will do will increase your endogenous insulin as well.

Speaker 11 The problem, of course, is that there are some side effects and we don't yet know the long-term effects of using GLP-1s.

Speaker 3 What effect on Alzheimer's do statins have? Because I have been hearing all sorts of info about they're good. No, they're bad.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's a great point because they're both. That's the problem.
So they have one effect, which is to reduce the overall inflammation.

Speaker 11 And as I pointed out in the book, and which as you know, this book is really about saving synapses for all of us. You know, in the U.S.,

Speaker 11 whether you live to 80, 90, 100, 110, of course, people are trying to push that up far to 140, 160, whatever it is, your lifespan, unfortunately, is not met often by your brain span.

Speaker 11 So you get to 40 or 50 or 60 and things just collapse, as you know. And so as you indicated, more young people having a problem.
So this is a time in which the

Speaker 11 you've got to look at what are these different drivers and whether, so what will happen with the statins? Yes, you lower the inflammation, which by the way, you can do with other things.

Speaker 11 You don't need statins to do that, but you also lower the support for the brain. You lower the cholesterol.
And to be fair, you make some in the brain as well.

Speaker 11 But if you use a statin, if you have to do that, and we recommend you do other things first, there are things like Zetia and bergamot and just changing your diet and exercise, a lot of things you can do before you ever need statins.

Speaker 11 And there are also things beyond. PCSK9 inhibitors can be even better than this.
But if you're going to use a statin, use one that would be called a hydrophilic statin.

Speaker 11 That would be like a crestor, instead of one that is a hydrophobic statin, which would be like a lipitor.

Speaker 3 Let's go through again. The book is called The Ageless Brain by Dr.
Dale Bredison, who I completely respect and support.

Speaker 3 The diet, I mean, diet, exercise, supplements, and toxins, I think are like the big categories. I've heard you say dairy is not great.

Speaker 4 Now,

Speaker 3 dairy, like you're saying like Greek yogurt every day is not good for preventing Alzheimer's because that's, it's like so good for doing so many other things for you.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's a great point. And for some people, it'll be okay.
But here's the problem. When you have any sort of dairy can produce some degree of inflammation.

Speaker 11 So if you've got someone who already has some degree of cognitive decline, or if you're trying to optimize your brain span, then you want to take that into account.

Speaker 11 You want to get rid of grains, which can damage your lining of your gut. You want to get rid of dairy.
And it's not to say you can't slowly reintroduce it in the future.

Speaker 11 But you have to remember, when you see someone who's beginning to have some cognitive decline, only one of two things will happen. Either you will help them to improve, and we've published that

Speaker 11 many times, or they will die.

Speaker 11 They will go on to develop Alzheimer's disease and pass away. So we want to do everything possible.
We want to pull out all the stops to get the optimal reversal of cognitive decline.

Speaker 11 And we were the first to publish that back in 2014.

Speaker 11 And so that does, we want to do everything possible. That includes getting rid of some grains.
That includes getting rid of dairy. And it includes getting rid of simple carbs.

Speaker 11 And then you want to have a plant-rich, mildly ketogenic diet. You want to have appropriate exercise, as you said, and just go right down the list, managing stress, optimizing sleep.

Speaker 11 These are things that people aren't doing. When I ask people, you know, how much did you sleep last night? What did your wearable show for your sleep?

Speaker 11 They don't know. So you want to have at least seven hours of sleep at night.
You want to have at least an hour and a half half of REM each night.

Speaker 11 You want to have at least one hour of deep sleep each night. And you want to have an oxygen concentration, saturation in your blood of at least 94% while you're sleeping.

Speaker 11 So many people don't have that. So they are getting, this is why the brain span in America does not equal the lifespan in America.
And that's something that clearly can be improved.

Speaker 3 By the way, folks, this can all show up. I have an aura ring on here.
They're not paying me. I paid for this.

Speaker 3 But all that information Dale Dale just mentioned comes to me every morning on this aura ring. You can get a Fitbit.

Speaker 3 You can get an Apple Watch, but all that stuff is very easy to get your arms around to find. On exercise, it's a certain kind of exercise, is it not?

Speaker 3 Like I've been told that the best aerobic exercise for somebody trying to stave off Alzheimer's includes at least a couple times a week interval training.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's a great point. So there's so much now for all of these things that we know that we didn't know even just a few years ago.
So as you said, HIT,

Speaker 11 this high-intensity interval training has turned out to be the one that seems to be the most effective at reducing your risk for cognitive decline.

Speaker 11 But then beyond that, there are things like katsu bands. These are restriction bands that you can put on your arms and your legs.
And what they do is they actually give you more bang for your buck.

Speaker 11 Because what happens, Megan, is you get different mechanisms.

Speaker 11 So when you do strength training, you are improving your insulin sensitivity, which is critical for your brain and critical for preventing cognitive decline of Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 11 On the other hand, when you do the aerobic training, you are improving blood flow and oxygenation.

Speaker 11 This is one of the reasons something called EWAT is so helpful, which is exercise with oxygen therapy. EWAT gives you better blood flow and better oxygenation at the same time.

Speaker 11 So many people find this very helpful. So there's a lot of new understanding about what works the best and what are things that are available to get best outcomes in that area.

Speaker 3 This is all in the book. You can learn more about that oxygen therapy.
It sounds kind of fun to like be on the treadmill with your little mask on. I'll do it if it'll help my brain.

Speaker 3 Again, the book is The Ageless Brain. Dr.
Bredeson, of course, also the author of The End of Alzheimer's and many amazing, great books.

Speaker 3 Okay, so a little bit of sleep. We talked about that, a little bit of diet, exercise.
Now, the detoxification of one's life is very important.

Speaker 3 It just took a nice step forward today with RFKJ banning some of the food dyes, not all of them, but he got it the first eight. It's a start.
Nobody's even been paying attention to this stuff.

Speaker 3 But what are the big ones?

Speaker 11 So, yeah, so the big three are things that are inorganics, and that would be things like air pollution, we know is a huge issue, and that's been published repeatedly as increasing risk for Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 11 Here in California, the California fires, big issue.

Speaker 11 Also, things like mercury amalgams, things like that. So, those are all under the inorganics.
Then, these organics, and that's things like anesthetic agents.

Speaker 11 People have these long anesthetic procedures and then start to go downhill after that. So you need to detox from that.

Speaker 11 Things like benzene, toluene, glyphosate, all of those are in the organic group. And then finally, the biotoxin group.

Speaker 11 And again, this is something that hasn't even been recognized, hasn't been talked about nearly enough. There are biotoxins that we live with, things like trichothesines and ocratoxin A.

Speaker 11 And these are things that are typically made by different mold species. And as you know, Megan, one of the ones that's been talked about a lot lately on the organic part is microplastics.

Speaker 11 There is increasing evidence that, number one, we're all exposed to these things. They're in the air, they're in the water, they're in the food, things like that.

Speaker 11 What we know now is that they concentrate in your brain. We are all exposed to and ingesting, on average, one credit card worth of microplastics each week.

Speaker 11 So the increase in our exposure has been dramatic. Unfortunately,

Speaker 3 I mean, like I talk about air pollution and microplastics in the air, just like an air filter?

Speaker 11 Yeah, so there are a couple of things. So air filters, things like HEPA filters for your home, very helpful.
In addition, you can now undergo things like plasma exchange.

Speaker 11 Plasmaphoresis will reduce this by about 70%, dramatic reductions in these, whether you do through plasmaphoresis.

Speaker 11 You can also do it through things like sauna and sweating followed by showers with non-toxic soaps. So there are lots of ways to get at this, increasing your glutathione level.

Speaker 11 You can take things like NAC and acetylcysteine or S-acetyl glutathione, any of these sorts of things.

Speaker 11 Some people will actually go and get IVs with glutathione in them, something called the PK protocol could be very helpful. So on and on and on.

Speaker 11 There are things that can be done, but as you said, you've got to recognize this.

Speaker 11 You've got to know that we are exposed to to this. And we now know that they do concentrate in the brain more than the liver, more than the kidney.
And we know that they're associated.

Speaker 11 Your level of microplastics is associated with your risk for cognitive decline. What's not clear yet is whether these are causal or simply an effect.

Speaker 11 It may be that as you're getting dementia, you allow them into your brain more. That's not been clear yet.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 the concern at the moment is that these probably are part of the overall causation of risk for cognitive decline.

Speaker 3 You got to have your house tested for mold and not the air test, the like Swiffer tests where you let the dust build up for two weeks, you wipe the dust, you send the dust rag in.

Speaker 3 The air test is not worth the paper it's printed on. I went through this personally.
We just went through a very expensive renovation of our beach home because it was riddled with mold, riddled.

Speaker 3 I learned that from the last time, the first time you came on in 2022. But I mean, now we've resolved that.
Then there's Lyme disease, which a lot of people openly have.

Speaker 3 And sometimes just like a latent form of it, you can clean that up. The point is that many people don't want to know, Doc.
Like they're like, if I get it, I'm going to get it.

Speaker 3 But what you've been saying for so many years now is.

Speaker 3 There really are things you can do to stave it off.

Speaker 3 And if you would just pay attention now, before you're symptomatic or when you just maybe have a couple of symptoms, you really can potentially turn this aircraft carrier around.

Speaker 11 Absolutely. And in fact, we're rapidly getting to a point where we are able to make sure that nobody gets this.
So here's the big problem, Megan.

Speaker 11 The current standard of care in medicine

Speaker 11 has got the biggest gap in history between what is being done with the standard of care and what is actually possible and available.

Speaker 11 You just mentioned today that you had your home renovated because it was full of mold. Who's doing that? Not very many people are doing that.

Speaker 11 There is so much that this gap is what we hope is going to be addressed by the new administration.

Speaker 11 You know, when you hear RFK talk about peptides, about bioidentical hormones, about stem cells, about all of these things that have not been the standard of care, what's available today is far more than what is being utilized, and our health is suffering for it.

Speaker 3 So people need to know that Dr. Bredison does not need the money from this book.
He's been doing very well. He's in high demand, but he's refreshed this book and put it out there.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's a new book, but he's refreshed his teachings from the end of Alzheimer's. And it's available right now.
All this stuff is in the book. It's called The Ageless Brain.
I have it.

Speaker 3 I highly, highly recommend it. It's an easy read.

Speaker 3 He writes in a way that you can consume and digest, and then it's a reference for you if you want to figure out what's a plasma exchange, what's PK protocol, all in there.

Speaker 3 And I know I speak for many when I say I'm so grateful to you, Dr. Bredeson.
Thank you so much for writing the book and coming on and talking to us.

Speaker 11 Thank you, Megan. Great to talk to you, as always.

Speaker 3 Oh, the one and only. I mean, everybody loves him.
You know, Dr. Mark Hyman was on.
He loves Dr. Bredison.
They all, there's like everyone else, and then there's Dr.

Speaker 3 Bredison when it comes on to the subject of preventing Alzheimer's.

Speaker 3 The book again is The Ageless Brain: How to Sharpen and Protect Your Mind for a Lifetime. We're back tomorrow with Glenn Greenwald.
We'll see you then.

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show: No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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