Media's False "Maryland Dad" Narrative and Left's Spin on Illegal Gang Members, with Steve Deace, Delano Squires, and Joseph Massey | Ep. 1049

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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
Welcome to The Meg Megan Kelly Show. Later, my favorite poet and yours, Joseph Massey, will be here with his latest book.
We are supporting him because we love his poetry. He gets Trump.
He gets MAGA. And then, of course, he got canceled.
But we will not allow him to remain canceled because we have power on the right, too, even over the arts and the artists who the left decides we're supposed to hate. But we begin with the news and it involves immigration today as the corporate media continues to completely misrepresent the now viral case of this guy, Albrego Garcia.
Just a Maryland father, according to the media. He's just a Maryland dad.
We've even crossed over to some describing him as a US man, an American man. He is not an American man.
He is an El Salvadorian who was here illegally under everyone's assessment who's taken a look at this. I mean, there's no question he was here illegally.
There's no question. But it's being misrepresented by the media left and right.
The story's been brought back into the spotlight because El Salvador President Bukele visited the White House yesterday amid his budding bromance with President T. And it really is very funny.
He sent out some tweet after the meeting like, I miss President T. I can't remember what it said, but it was something very strange.
It was a little, it was bromancy. But what happened inside the oval was very consequential when it comes to this case.
And of course, its implications for President Trump's powers to deport illegals in the country. Joining me now to discuss this and all the news, Steve Dace, bestselling author and host of the Steve Dace show on Blaze TV and Delano Squires, contributor to the Blaze and research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
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Guys, welcome back to the show. Good to be here.
Good to be with you, Megan. Great to see you.
Okay, so this guy, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is not a U.S. citizen.
He is from El Salvador. He was brought here when he was 16 by his parents.
He got arrested around, let's see, it was 2019. And he was like 19 or 20 at that time.
He was arrested outside of a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland by Prince George County police officers on suspicion of being a gang member. Okay.
So that he, nobody was bothering him. He was here brought over.
They call him so-called dreamers when it's their parents who bring them. They don't come willingly, but he was no question.
He entered illegally, but then he was suspected of being a gang member and that found him in the crosshairs of law enforcement. And they handed him over to ice.
They recognized that he was not here illegally. The following day, he was served with a notice of appear to appear, and that commenced removal proceedings against him, pursuant to 8 U.S.C.
Section 1229A. He was charged as removable.
The government was recognizing he was here unlawfully, and on top of that, he appeared to have behaved unlawfully, though they did not need the latter in order to deport him. Just the fact that you're here illegally subjects you to being deported.
That's just the way it is. Then he went through not one, but two court proceedings.
The first was a bond hearing on April 29th, 2019 with immigration judge Elizabeth Kessler, who ruled the evidence showed he was a verified member of MS-13. He was afforded a hearing at which he presented evidence and so did the other side.
The court, quote, first reasoned that the respondent failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that his release from custody would not pose a danger to others, as the evidence shows he's a verified member of MS-13. On December 19th, 2019, so, you know, some, what, eight months later or so, the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed that finding that he was a member of MS-13, quote, notwithstanding the respondent's challenges to the reliability of the Prince George's County Police Department gang field interview sheet, the immigration judge appropriately considered allegations of gang affiliation against the respondent in determining that he has not demonstrated that he's not a danger to property or persons here.
Then, as he realized he was about to be actually kicked out of the country, he had already been deemed not qualified for bond. He applied for asylum, even though it was much too late, you have to apply for asylum within a year of getting here.
And then, not coincidentally, also asked for something called withholding from removal from El Salvador in particular, allegedly due to threats from gangs. It was his safety move.
Like, if you won't give me asylum, then please at least say they can't send me back to El Salvador because there are mean gangs there who want to hurt me and my family. And on October 10th, 2019, he was granted not asylum, but withholding of removal to El Salvador.
After the immigration judge agreed, he had established it was more likely than not that he would be persecuted by gangs in El Salvador. ICE did not appeal that grant of relief, and plaintiff Abrego Garcia was then promptly released from custody.
ICE arrested him in Baltimore this past March under the Trump deportation push. So that's his history.
He is under an order of removal. And at that moment where the judge found he didn't qualify for bond and that he was removable, just not to El Salvador, he could have been deported to any country in the world.
The only arguably wrong thing that's happened here is that when Trump deported him, he sent him to the man's home country of El Salvador. But even that has two potential hooks out of it for the Trump administration.
One, if the circumstance that led to the danger for you in that country you're objecting to go into has been removed, then you can be sent back. And that gang that was allegedly persecuting him is no more in El Salvador.
So that's one. Two, Stephen Miller argued this yesterday, that President Trump has declared MS-13 a terrorist organization and ordered all these suspected terrorists to be removed, period, which is a different kind of removal and may supersede the withholding of removal order.
That's something they'd have to argue in court and it would have to play out and it hasn't yet. But I did take note of Stephen Miller's emphasis on the he's a terrorist.

And President Bukele of El Salvador mentioned that word, too. And it seems to me that they're trying to tee up yet another legal argument as to why even the order not to remove him to El Salvador would not be in control over this particular guy because of Trump's immigration ruling.
OK, so that's where we are now. But that leads me to the media today, which has decided he is not an illegal.
He is a Maryland man. That is basically what the media wants us to believe, that he's this really sweet guy who is just a dad in Maryland and the mean, mean Trump administration is trying to kick him out.
We don't understand why they're doing that. It feels very wrong to the media.
Here's a little bit of a stop montage of some of that talking about him. Just a Maryland dad, guys.
That's all. Involving the Maryland father, the Maryland father's case is in court and happening now a hearing for a Maryland man.
Details about a Maryland man. Tonight, the Maryland man.
The Maryland man. Maryland father with protected legal status.
The Maryland father with protected status. Maryland father with protected legal status.
Maryland father with protected legal status. I think that was Newsbusters who put that together.
Very well done. It really tells the story.
Not one fact that I've just espoused in laying out this story for you and for our audience for the fourth time was repeated in these reports because they're not helpful to the narrative. Marilyn father, Steve, is much more appealing.
Megan, I have to tell you this, this entire story, there are two kind of meta things about this that stands out to me. Number one, I mean, the long train of due process that this Maryland father has received, it's way more due process than the state of Colorado is apparently willing to grant parents who don't want their kids taken to the island of Dr.
Moreau against their own will, and then they'll be put in jail if they don't consent. I mean, apparently, this goes to the lie, by the way, we're a nation of immigrants.
When my ancestors came here from Italy and Sicily at the turn of the last century, they didn't view themselves as immigrants. They wanted to become citizens.
We're a nation of citizens, right? And so at any point in time, the people that are lawfully here have less rights than the people who are not um we've

lost the plot and then speaking of which you know i i think this entire story this is the other thing that kind of stands out to me about the meta aspects of this you know i i long for the days when the president was a russian asset uh russian asset uh that was uh you know uh that was compromise uh because of a of a water sports tape uh and he was engaged in a quid pro quo with Ukraine, uh, and, and all the other great scandals. The other side, the left is now down to how dare you deport this MS 13 gang member.
And so I'm reminded of the great prophet Sun Tzu and his art of war. When your opponent is making a fool out of themselves, let them.
Yeah. It's so well said, you know, Delano, this Maryland man thing and it's Newsbusters did a good job of showing how it's the exact same language being used on multiple networks is such a lie.
It's an obvious lie. They are obfuscating this.
And even when they the ones who reference that there was a finding, he's part of MS-13 that was upheld on appeal. The next thing they do is attack the finding.
Well, it wasn't much evidence. Well, you weren't there.
There was no, it was appealed and it was upheld on appeal. They're the ones who are lecturing us about, you have to respect the courts, respect the courts or we're going to have a constitution.
Well, the courts handled this at the time with the Prince George's County gang unit. And by the way, Prince George's County is not some far right county.
It's about as leftist as they come. And now they want us, we're allowed to second guess that court, but no other court that says he was removable or that the Trump administration made an error here.
Yeah, I actually live in Prince George's County, not too far from Hyatt'sville. So yeah, I'm very familiar sort of with the political climate there.

This has been, I think, for people who are not following the news closely, a very confusing case

because there are different perspectives going back and forth, right? Aside from the

propaganda in terms of him being a Maryland man, right? Sort of obfuscating his legal status. It's okay.
Is he a gang member? Is he not a gang member? Has he had his due process or has he not? Is the Supreme Court saying, is there a distinction between facilitating his return and effectuating his return? What I look at are sort of big picture issues, and I think there are ones that apply to each side. One, on the right, I do think there's an issue of due process, and taking it out of this case, right, we're a nation of laws, people have rights, citizens, to Steve's point, have sort of the highest class of rights and non-citizen residents.
I don't I'm not a lawyer, so I can't speak to what that set of rights looks like. But I think there are some people who say, look, if he can be taken off the street and sent back to El Salvador, what happens if if that happens to me and my mom or my dad is on a green card? I understand those concerns.
But on the other side, for people who believe that for too long, the American government, both federal and local, has prioritized the rights of criminals over the rights of law-abiding citizens, this is a moment where we have to say, you know what, we don't have the stomach to do what really needs to be done to make America safe again. And we're going to have to develop it over time.
Because if we freak out over every single incident that the media can spin in a particular way, we're never going to get anywhere. And it's ironic because, you know, President Trump was hosting, you know, the president of El Salvador, who basically said to the gangs, your time is up.
I'm rounding up everybody with, you know, extensive head and neck and arm tattoos, and I'm carting you off to jail. And for someone like me, who has openly questioned whether, you know, we could be a little bit more innovative in some of our criminal justice policies to minimize the sort of third party effects to innocent citizens.
I look at that and say, wow, this guy's doing something that in some respects I can get behind. But I also know that that's not the way we do things in America.
So there's sort of a tension there. And I think if you ask the average American citizen, hey, if you could snap your finger today and lock up every single gang member, Bloods, Crips, neo-Nazis, you know, Italian mafia, Russian mafia, I think many people say yes, because we want our streets to be safe again.
So at a certain point, we're going to have to develop the stomach for this. And we can't allow the media to take every individual incident and get us off track.
Yeah. And that's what they're doing.
So right now, this man is in an El Salvadoran prison, this one that we're sending these illegals to. And the media back home is completely running cover for him.
Just a couple more examples of the ones I gave you. Politico's headline, El Salvador won't return wrongly deported Maryland man.
New York Times, El Salvador's leader says he won't return wrongly deported Maryland man. Bloomberg, Bukele says deported Maryland man won't be returned to the United States.
I mean, he wouldn't even know that he was an El Salvadorian citizen for many of these. And here is the CBC, our friends up north.
El Salvador president says he won't return U.S. man who was deported by mistake.
As if Trump decided Steve Dace needs to go because he mistook you for an illegal and sent you home and then said, there's nothing I can do about this. And here's just one more.
Here's the New York Times' The Daily interviewing their Supreme Court correspondent, Adam Liptak, about whether this guy has had any due process. And now I just laid it out for you.
What happened to him in 2019, the immigration judge, I read you excerpts from her decision. Then it went up an appeal.
I read you excerpts from that court's decision. Then he acclaimed asylum or withholder from removal.
And they said, you don't qualify for asylum. And they gave him withholding from removal from one country only.

But he was absolutely deportable at that moment to any other country.

And listen to the way the Times styles what happened to him.

He wasn't afforded the merest amount of due process.

And if he had been afforded that, he could have made two points.

One, that he's exempt from being deported to El Salvador, and two, that if there are other things to be said about his life, he could dispute that, put in evidence, call witnesses. He was afforded neither of those things.
Yes, he was. And in any event, even if everything was true, even if he's a member of this gang, even if that's criminal conduct, even if it's criminal conduct in the United States, that still doesn't give the government the right to deport him.
Maybe it gives them the right to prosecute him in the United States. Maybe it gives them the right to send him somewhere other than El Salvador.
But the one thing we know is that it's unlawful to send him to El Salvador. We have every right to deport every illegal in this country, every single one who hasn't been granted asylum, that we do not have to prove that they've committed an extra crime on top of their illegal entry.
He was absolutely deportable without any finding about MSN 13, but one was issued by a court and upheld on appeal. He was afforded due process, Steve.
It just happened six years ago, and he was given a temporary reprieve, at least insofar as we wanted to send him back to his home. But we absolutely could have been injected anywhere.
And look at the nonsense being spun on The New York Times. It's a hugely popular podcast.
That's what the left is hearing every day. If I'm the Trump administration, I'm going to park my car, Megan, I'm going to park it right here.
I don't want to move off of this topic. I want them to keep talking.
I want to recycle this day after day after day. If my political opponents want to say, hey, we are the political party of, you cannot deport members of violent gangs, maybe amongst the most violent gangs in the entire hemisphere, or you're heartless and cruel.
That's just not anything, anybody that's not vested in the undoing of America, who's never going to vote our way anyway, right? This is a zero-sum game now, the immigration issue is. These are just like the gender issue, just like really almost every other issue in the country right now.
These are incontrovertible worldviews that just simply cannot share a landmass, cannot share a culture. The idea that the New York Times thinks an unborn baby at the very final stage of development has no right whatsoever to life.
On the other hand, an MS-13 gang member has a right to set his feet down here on the soil of the United States of America. That's just not a worldview.
The country that many of us are talking to could just abide with and live with. And so I think that this is another excellent opportunity.
The left wants to go ahead and cast themselves outside of reality and outside of sanity to the normie voter out there. Let them.
I'd park my car right here. I talk about this issue every day I possibly could if I were this White House.
I'd keep recycling ways to keep bringing it up, Megan, and make them keep owning this. A follow up to you on that, because that would explain yesterday when Bukele went to the White House.
I thought it was pretty extraordinary how Trump basically had the whole cabinet in there. It was I haven't seen that before.
I mean, did you see them all standing there behind the couch? It was Marco Rubio sitting on the couch with Pam Bondi and then Trump and Bukele sitting in their chairs. And behind Rubio and Bondi was everybody.
Stephen Miller was there. Linda McMahon was there.
Kristi Noem was there. Like they're all, you know, everybody was standing.
I was like, wow, this is actually very cool. He's brought some into the oval before, but like there was a reason he brought them all in and he's, he used them to answer questions from reporters.
And as I hear you talking about this, like park your car on it, I think he was parking the car yesterday. I'll just show you some of what I'm talking about because those cabinet members and Stephen Miller, who's senior advisor to the president, were doing battle in particular with CNN's Caitlin Collins.
Which one is that? Well, let me ask Pam, would you ask to answer that question? The Supreme Court ruled, President, that if, as El Salvador wants to return him, this is international matters, foreign affairs, if they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane. So will you return him? It's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizen.

Who, again, is a member of MS-13,

which, as I'm sure you understand,

rapes little girls, murders women, murders children,

is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world,

and I can promise you if he was your neighbor, you would move right away.

So you don't plan to ask for anything else to get him back?

No version of this legally ends up with an ever-living here because he is a citizen of El Salvador. That is the president of El Salvador.
Your question to that for the court can only be directed to him. Does the Kim President of the Taylor Layman on this? Do you plan to return him? How can I smuggle him into the United States? It's like I smuggle him into the United States, or what do I do? Of course, I'm not going to do it.
It's like, I mean, the question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don't have the power to return him to the United States.
You could release him inside of Solomon. Yeah, but I'm not releasing I mean, we're not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country.
That's not going to grab this. Well, they'd love to have a criminal, you know, released into it.
I mean, there's a fascinating thing.

They would love it.

Yeah.

They're sick people.

The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the President of the United States, not by a court.

We want a case 9-0, and people like CNN are portraying it as a loss, as usual, because they want foreign terrorists in the country.

Mr. President, you said that if the Supreme Court said someone needed to be returned, then you would have violent.

You said that on the first one, just two days ago. How long do we have to answer this question from you why don't you just say isn't it wonderful that we're keeping criminals out of our country why can't you just say that megan i i don't do this very often okay but in terms of political execution execution that is chef's kiss level

stuff uh and to make them just sit there and own this and and yes you are welcome to be the party

of of violent gang members and terrorist organizations have a right uh to be in your neighborhoods against your own will you're you're welcome to be the side that represents that argument argument I would not move off this talking point you know there's an old there's an old you know in the radio business in the old FM DJ business the old saying was just when you're getting sick of the song the audience is starting to get it right okay and and I and I would keep going until you've just thought you've completely talked this out and you're sick of it if you're in that white house right now and there aren't any tropes left, there aren't any angles left to this. And I just, I'd recycle a few more days more just to make sure the American people understand totally and completely which side everybody is on on this.
They, they might be, um, they will be getting more fodder to do exactly that. Here's an example of what we're hearing

next level from the left, Delano, from Rachel Morin. Now she's, she decided, no, sorry, sorry, forgive me, not Rachel Morin.
It's from Maria Hinojosa, who decided to say that the reason we're doing this to this man is Trump is a racist. Listen to this.
It's not five.

But it should it should frighten every single person who's watching this. One, the racism is outright.
It's because this gentleman is Salvadoran that they're like, we have nothing to do with him. It's just outright like we don't need another Latino.
We don't need to return him to this country. But two, for any American citizen who has family behind bars, this needs to be concerning to you because the president is saying we will soon be taking you from the United States to Secote.
What do you make of that? It's racism. That's why Trump's so against these illegals.
This is actually one of the ironies that doesn't get discussed enough, particularly when dealing with the left, is that they will simultaneously say that America is a systemically and endemically racist nation that harbors hostilities toward, you know, Black people, brown people, right? So African-Americans, Hispanic people, but then argue that more brown people from South America, Central America need to come here. And it's never made sense to me.
Megan and Steve, if I went to a restaurant. Come to a racist hellhole.
Is that what you're saying? Yes. Right.
If I went to a restaurant and I had terrible service and the food made me sick, the last thing I would do to other people who I love and my family is to say, well, you guys should go there as well. So they're making an argument, right? And they do this constantly.
It's America hates black and brown people, but we should have as many, you know, come here as possible. And look, I say that my parents immigrated from the West Indies in the late 70s, early 80s.
I grew up in New York City where, you know,

every third person has family that came here at some point,

you know, to Steve's point,

since, you know, the turn of the 20th century.

But again, it's a nation of laws.

And I believe every nation,

the immigration policy of every nation has prioritized its citizens over foreign nationals. Point blank period.
I don't care what the nation is. I don't care what foreign nationals you're dealing with.
The citizens should always come first. And I say that thinking of this issue as a father, right? I have responsibilities to my wife and my children.
And even though we may, my wife and I may say, we want to adopt a child. And my children may say, we would love to get a new sibling.
If we tell our kids we're going to adopt one child a week for the next 15 years, at a certain point, they're going to question whether or not there are going to be enough resources, whether the character and sort of culture of our family is going to change, and how we are going to ensure that all of the children, the new children, feel some sense of togetherness in our new home. And America's leaders have failed to do that when it comes to immigration and assimilation so that we all feel that we have, you know, we're equally vested here in this country.
Spot on. This woman, Maria Hinojosa, who I played for from MSNBC, she we've talked about her before.
She's the founder of Futuro Media and host of Latino USA on the public radio exchange, formerly NPR. And in September, she was on MSNBC saying Hispanics back Trump because they want to be white.
She said, quote, Latinos want to be white. They want to be with the cool kids.
So that's how Maria sees the world.

But, you know, the evil Trump doesn't see them as white, which is why they have to go.

I wanted to play one other soundbite from The Daily today and the misinformation that was spewed by this Adam Liptak this morning.

Listen to him suggesting what's next as a result of Trump's behavior here.

This is SOT3.

Adam, I think that probably there are a lot of people out there

that might say something along the lines of,

this man was in the country illegally.

There's a reason to think that he's a gang member.

You know, trust the president.

Maybe there are some mistakes along the way.

But by and large, why are you guys getting all worked up about this?

We send him back to where he belongs.

What would you say to those people that might think that? What I would say is that there's really nothing in the administration's legal logic that would prohibit the administration from picking an American citizen off the street,

send them to a vicious prison in another country where torture is routine, conceitedly lawlessly,

and then say, whoops, sorry, nothing we can do about it.

You're going to spend the rest of your days there.

The legal logic of the Abrego Garcia case is no different than the legal logic of sending Rachel Abrams or Adam Lteck to El Salvador for the rest of our days. Oh, my God.
The fake drama with the music dropping, except for the fact that you're American citizens. And Trump is not claiming that he can pick up any American citizen and deport them.
The whole reason this guy got deported is because he was suspected of being an MS-13 member, which threw him into the crosshairs of law enforcement. They discovered he was here illegally, which is why he was subject to removal.
We are not deporting American citizens to El Salvador. And Trump knows that we cannot deport American citizens to El Salvador.
There was a whole long exchange yesterday at that same meeting about Trump's desire, potentially, to send convicted serial killers or child molesters who are U.S. citizens in our jails now to that prison, like to house them in prisons outside of the United States, people who have had their due process and been found guilty and are incarcerated.
And he said, we're actually looking into whether that is legal. Not you're deported because we don't like you, Adam Liptak, New York Times Supreme Court reporter who thinks he's as in danger as an MS-13 illegal in this country.
It's so dishonest. Okay, but I wanted to turn the page because I mistakenly mentioned the name Rachel Morin when I was trying to get to Maria Hinojosa earlier.
And the reason her name is on my mind is because this poor woman was brutally murdered by an illegal back in Maryland, Delano's home state now. And she was a mother of five.
She was 37 years old. She was jogging along a trail in a quaint little community northeast of Baltimore when an illegal migrant named Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez grabbed her and strangled her and beat her to death.
He was 23 years old. He got here under the Joe Biden welcome program, where we opened our border.
He crossed into the U.S. in February of 2023.
The autopsy reports revealed that this poor woman, Rachel Morin, had endured 15 to 20 blows to the head and had died from a combination of strangulation and blunt force trauma. This guy killed her, then fled the scene.
And authorities said during his trial that they found DNA matching his at the crime scene. Then they traced him to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where police arrested him.
It did not take the

jury long at all to find him guilty. And the Hartford County Sheriff Jeff Gaylor said the United States immigration system failed Rachel Morin.
The failure here again, he said, is the immigration system that allowed this person to enter our country illegally and remain in our country and commit crimes, first in Los Angeles and then here in Harford County.

This is why.

This is why Trump is doing this, Steve.

This is why Stephen Miller is so outraged at the way the media is portraying this,

at the lack of attention that even the Maryland lawmakers,

those who are in the federal government, federal law, you know, those who are

in the federal government have are now speaking out about this guy, Abrego Garcia, but don't have a word for Rachel Morin. Their priorities are completely upside down.
100 percent. And I mean, what you just tragically described, Megan, was 100 percent avoidable crime.
Not all crime is avoidable. Wrong place, wrong time, circumstances beyond your control.
But that was a hundred percent avoidable crime not all crime is avoidable wrong place wrong time circumstances beyond your control but that was a hundred percent unavoidable did not have to happen and it simply happened because the United States federal government under the previous regime aided and abetted it and I mean I mean their fingerprints are on the murder weapon here these two stories are actually connected in some respects what we were just discussing and what we're discussing now from a political standpoint. What we have learned on the right in the last few years is that the way we do persuasion in this era is different now.
And in previous eras, you used to start with an objective truth claim. And then you would close with a personal testimony and story to kind of cinch the argument with an emotional connection.
And the way we do business epistemologically in the West now is different now. And now you have to begin with an emotional appeal.
You have to gain emotional credibility first before people will philosophically listen to you. And the left has beaten us over the head with this for the last couple of decades.
And we're beginning to figure out now and do this better on our own. And we're using stories instead of statistics of tragedies of what you just said.
Hey, because ultimately we're dealing with people and souls here, not numbers on a page. And these statistics, they come home to real stories, real tragedies.
Someone's daughter isn't coming home for Easter this weekend. Someone's daughter isn't going to be there at Christmas next year or ever again.
Why? Why? Why? And then that gets us into the philosophical arguments about what happened here. They're trying to emulate this now with the case of the MS-13 gang member.
In the last election, Trump won Hispanic men overall by 10 points, one of the most astounding pieces of data in all of the exit polling. Did even better with younger Hispanic men.
And what you're seeing is a generational changeover. The original Hispanic voting bloc from the 80s on, one of their primary concerns, if not their primary concern, was, I want to bring as many people that are stuck back home with me here, which means if you put a conservative piece of legislation on the ballot as a referendum, they would often vote for us.
But if you ask them to vote for Republicans, they often would not because of that primary concern. I want to bring more people stuck back in the squalor of home here with me.
Well, we've had a changeover, and ironically, some of these so-called dreamers are one of the reasons why. They view themselves as full-blooded Americans.
They view themselves as citizens, not immigrants. And it is vital to see yourself as a nation of citizens and not immigrants.
They see themselves as a nation of citizens now. They're living in these suburbs now.
They're living in these exurbs now. Those are their schools now with their kids.
And they don't want to bring back from home what was left behind. And they're attracted to that Trump message.
And so what the Democrats are attempting to do, they identify, frankly, more with Lincoln Riley than they do an MS-13 gang member because that could be their daughter. And what the left now is trying to do is say, no, no, you have it wrong.
That could be you

deported next. And that's the case they're trying to make.
It's actually a good strategy.

Or they're saying, no, you're just trying to act white. That's you trying to act white like a cool

kid, quote unquote. It's a good strategy for them, but the problem is they chose the wrong

example to try to emotionally manipulate. So why did they choose this terrible example?

Because they're running out of ideas and running out of time and they're losing ground.

And because- They chose the wrong example to try to emotionally manipulate. So why did they choose this terrible example? Because they're running out of ideas and running out of time and they're losing ground.
Well, and because they had that one sliver of he wasn't technically supposed to be deported to El Salvador. And the Trump administration admitted that that was an administrative error, that that was an error that they made in sending him there in the beginning.
Now they seem to be trying to wiggle out of that. But Megan, that's a technicality that most of the American people won't care about.
All they're gonna care about is- Correct. Get this MS-13 gang member off the streets by hook or by crook.
That's all they're gonna care about. That's right.
That thing, it always throws me because it starts off by sounding like by hooker. And I'm like, how are we gonna use the hookers? How are they going to help us? But I mean, I'm all for it.
If that's, if that's what we have to do. Never looked a gift horse in the mouth, Megan.
Never. Yes.
There don't limit to their powers. Um, before we leave the subject of Rachel Morin, I want to play this soundbite.
Her, her brother, Rachel's brother, Michael spoke at the RNC, um, over the past summer. And then her mother, uh, spoke out with Trump at the border last summer in another event that the media barely covered.
They did not. He went down there.
He met. That's where he met Jocelyn Nungaro's mom.
He met with Rachel Morin's mom. Like Trump has been very clear he was going to make this an issue and do something about it.
And here she is at the border last summer.

She had five children. The trail that Rachel ran daily was a trail that we as a family would walk over the last 25 years.
Hello, Mrs. Morin.
This is Detective so-and-so.

I'm the lead detective on this case. There's no easy way to tell you this.
But we found your daughter's body. She was brutally beaten, raped, and then stuffed into a drainpipe.
We're not here for a political stand, although we are. We're here because we're losing our moms, our daughters, our children to criminals.
Truly, I hope that you will just take my words to heart because it's devastating. Oh, that poor mom.
And that totally brings it home.

It's like, no, no more. No, no more.
We're done. The Joe Biden days of open borders and no consequences and revolving doors out the back of the courtroom once you've been ordered deported are done.
All right. I want to turn the page because there's much more to get to.
And that includes, um, Carmelo Anthony

and this case, um, of the, the altercation he had with Austin Metcalf, a 17 year old down in Texas. So the controversy today in this case is that this young man, he's also 17 has been released after admitting to stabbing Austin Metcalf in the heart at a track meet.
They were both there as spectators, both boys in high school, their whole lives in front of them. He is admitting that he stabbed Austin Metcalf in the heart with a knife.
He alleges it's because Austin Metcalf laid hands on him. He's not even claiming Austin Metcalf had a weapon or threatened to kill him, et cetera.
And now Carmelo Anthony has been released on bail. He was released from jail on Monday after posting a reduced $250,000 bond.
He will remain on house arrest until his trial. A judge in Collin County slashed his $1 million bond originally and said he may await trial at home with an ankle monitor and 24-hour supervision from his parents or some other adult designee.
And the family had set up a give, send, go account, which has already raised over $415,000 so far. I'll just tell you what some seasoned lawyers are saying.
For example, our pal Phil Holloway, he says, I see people held without bond for months or even years for much less serious charges. And I've heard a lot of that.
I mean, you know how many January 6th cases were held without bond who did not murder anybody. But this guy, Delano, gets out on, you know, relatively low bond that somebody else is paying because he's already got this huge GoFundMe account or go give, send, go account.
And you tell me why that is in your opinion. Well, to be frank, I was surprised that bond, that bill was set at a million dollars.
For context, Dylan Roof's bill was set at a million dollars for the gun charges, not for the murders he committed, not for the nine murders in Charleston, South Carolina, but on the gun charges. So a million always seemed high, sounded high to me.
If Carmelo Anthony had a long track record, a long criminal record, then I think it would be different. I think his entire case is going to hinge on his claim that he was acting in self-defense.
a jury will have to hear evidence to substantiate that claim and they will decide whether or not

there's any basis to that claim. I think this is my personal opinion this case has moved from a

local case to a national case because of the racial dynamics at play. And it's unfortunate.
Carmelo is black and Austin was white. Correct, correct.
And it's unfortunate that it seems as if many of the conservatives who typically say, let's wait to hear all the facts, let's get all the evidence, let's let the jury of this person's peers make a decision, have rust to judgment in terms of motives, in terms of what happened or didn't happen. And part of the reason that I've been hesitant to make certain comments on this case publicly and why I'm holding my powder is because I've seen time and time again, the original narrative that gets set into the media, whether on the left, typically on the left, because this race-related crimes are sort of the province of the left.
They have been. I think that's changing now.
But I've seen hands up, don't shoot, go up in flames. I've seen sort of the original narrative, you know, in other cases, go up in flames.
We've even seen, even when it comes to George Floyd, people go from saying, we see the video to now certain commentators, particularly on the right, saying, no, George Floyd, Derek Chauvin had nothing to do with George Floyd's death. It was the overdose.
So my thing is this, the million dollar bond sounded, as I said, sounded high to me. I'm not surprised it was lowered.
The give, send, go stuff, I've seen how that's been sort of painted.

ultimately Carmelo Anthony is

going to face a jury of his peers

and if what

he did, if the sort of original

reports hold true, that

it was just a minor verbal

altercation and he pulled out a knife and

stabbed this young man in the heart, then he's

going to go to jail, going to go to prison for a very, very long time. He's going to.
That's my prediction as a lawyer. And we take on legal cases all the time on this show, given my own past as a tenure practicing attorney at a very high level.
Um, I have no doubt that this, this kid is in a lot of trouble right now.

And you know, passed as a, as a tenure practicing attorney at a very high level. Um, I have no

doubt that this, this kid is in a lot of trouble right now and is more likely than not going to go

to prison probably for the rest of his life. Because we went through the legal standard with

our legal panel just the other day. You cannot respond to non deadly force with deadly force,

period, period. And it doesn't matter what the color of your skin is.
What I think is happening

here is this judge is probably bending over backward for him because of the color of his skin, because the judge is probably afraid of looking like they're being too tough. But the defense law firms down in Texas who deal with this kind of law all the time, for example, Granger and Mueller, a criminal defense law firm from Texas, said those accused of murder in Texas will have a bail amount set at a million dollars or more, period.
That's what they do. The lowering of it was remarkable.
Yes, he's 17. That may have had some effect on the fact that he's still a minor, so he's technically under his parents' control.
But the parents know very well that this kid could be facing life in prison. So there is a flight risk.
There's some sort of risk associated with it, with this. And if what's alleged by the kid's own words here, Steve, is true, I don't know whether the community is in danger or not.
Honestly, like this, this is alleged to be a hair trigger situation where this kid responded to some sort of hand on him, trying to remove him from the spot where Austin and his brother and friends were watching a game. And let's go with the worst possible interpretation.
Austin is a racist, which by the way, there is zero support for. Some left-wing loons got that going on X.
And I hope you all face defamation lawsuits. There's zero support for that.
But let's just go with the worst case thing you could imagine, where Austin Metcalf said something racist. No one's alleging that.
And that Carmelo Anthony got upset and said, yeah, I'm not leaving. And then said, go ahead, make me.
And Austin Metcalf laid hands on him to make him. You still cannot pull a knife and stab him

in the heart. We went through the law.
You, A, cannot be the person who provoked the attack on you in response to which you used a knife. And so he can't claim self-defense for that reason.
And more importantly, B, the response to force being used against you in all 50 states in the union must be proportional to the threat. And you may not use a knife, a gun, or any other means that will obviously cause death or risk serious bodily harm if that is not what's about to happen to you.
Here is the police affidavit in support of the arrest. Anthony later told responding officers he was defending himself, explaining, quote, he put his hands on me.
I told him not to while, quote, crying hysterically. The affidavit said Anthony also asked if Metcalf was going to be OK.
Of course, he had already died, was officially pronounced dead at a hospital less than a half hour after the stabbing. Your thoughts on it, Steve? Well, if you don't mind, just a quick digression.
I wanted to commend the father here of the victim who got just roundly criticized for forgiving his son's murderer because we're conflating forgiveness with forbearance. It doesn't mean we're exempting you from the consequences of your actions.
It just means we're not going to harbor bitterness to you. God forgave me, so I'll forgive you.
And ultimately, you now have to face the consequences for your actions. And I'm going to release you of that and not let that bitterness take root in me and turn me into a person I don't want to become.
That's really why we forgive. And I wanted to make sure that that father got a well-, good and faithful servant from me if this topic came up.
As to your question, I'm fine in a case of self-defense, like what Delano said, just letting the process play out. Unfortunately, we have a hard time doing that when, based on even what you just said in your lead up there, Megan, it is an irregular, it's an,

it's at the very least an irregular reduction in bail for a case of murder in the state of Texas.

Number one, I think it's perfectly fine to question why? What's, what's so unique about this? We have witnesses, we have a police statement, we have, doesn't mean, by the way, he doesn't get due process in a trial, but we're talking about bail here. We're not talking about sentencing okay and so what would be unique and i don't know how you could avoid just coming up

you mean, by the way, he doesn't get due process in a trial, but we're talking about bail here. We're not talking about sentencing.
And so what would be unique? And I don't know how you could avoid just coming up with some of the obvious things that would be unique about this case as to why a certain level of bail leniency would be practiced here as you did. I'm actually way more disturbed in trying to figure out what would contemplate someone to say, I want to give my hard-earned money to this give, send, go.
That's the part to me that I'm just really troubled by. I just don't understand what it is about this case, unless you're so embedded in racial identity that it's become your own idolatry.
I have no idea why you would feel compelled to give your, take money off your kid's table and give it to this cause. Okay.
I mean, that's the part of my, I just, I just can't wrap my brain around that part of this. That's what's happening because not even right now, I'll let you go, Delano, but right now, not even the defendant, Carmelo Anthony, is alleging anything, anything that would justify him stabbing Austin Metcalf through the heart.
He's not even alleging it. Yeah, I can.
I think I can respond to that, Steve. Here's the sense that I get.
on the right the the way this is framed is that, you know, there's sort of this anti-white racist intent coming from the black folks who are contributing to his give, send, go. What I think those people are doing, people who are contributing, saying, this kid is about to get railroaded and we we want to give him resources that he can defend himself.
And what they would say is, look at Daniel Penny, right? I know it's not the same case, different jurisdiction, different set of circumstances, but he ended up using a level of force that led to a man's death. And when he raised, I don't know, $3 million on whatever the platform was, it wasn't because there was anti-Black racism towards Jordan Neely.
It's because they felt he was going to get railroaded in a blue city. And that's the reason that, you know, people were saying we need to give to Daniel Penny's defense.
I think it's a similar sort of sentiment going on here. Now, we can disagree with that sentiment.
But I think this is the problem. This is the danger of immediately racializing these types of cases, because we can admit if this was black on black or white on white, this local crime would probably not be getting national attention.
No doubt. No doubt.
And I think that's something. No, I don't agree with that.
I don't agree with that at all. A 17 year old boy stabs another through the heart after the first boy allegedly, quote, laid hands on him, trying to get him to move seats at a track meet.
Trust me, that's a national story every day of the week. It's something's wrong.
Something's wrong in our society. I don't care.
I don't care what the race is. Even if it had been the other way around, it doesn't matter.
Something's wrong in the heart of the person who stabs another in the heart based on a physical confrontation over a seat at a track meet. And we need to figure out what, what that is, what's wrong.
Why did he do that? I don't think, look, he's going to get his day in court and he'll get due process and all that. What's most interesting to me is what drives a young man to behave that way in the first place.
And that's, I don't know whether we'll ever know. I hope we will.
All right. Stand by guys.
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Hungryroot.com slash MK code MK. Steve, you mentioned it at the top of our first hour together in passing, and I wanted to get into it.

So Colorado has done something absolutely insane when it comes to the transgender madness.

The House, the statehouse in Colorado has passed a bill that seeks to punish parents in custody disputes who will not use the new gender pronouns or name of their own child. So if your child gets corrupted by some left wing school teacher into believing that he's really a she and then he goes to school every day and he's dressing like a girl when you're not there and And he changes his name, you know, from Eric to Emma.
And the whole school is calling him Emma. And he's dressing like a girl when he's at school.
And nobody's told you as the parent. Then if you and your spouse get a divorce and let's say the wife wants to affirm Emma because now it comes out and she's fine with what the school has done and you're not, your child's gender has been reversed by a school without your knowledge or consent.
And you as the dad say, that is Eric. And I'm going to sue the school for doing this.
And this is outrageous. You should have brought this to me.
And I will fight my crazy wife for custody over this because she should not be affirming this. And she doesn't deserve custody.
I deserve at least half. I'm a good dad.
They're going to make it count against you as if you are an abuser. If you refer to the kid as Eric and or call Eric, he, and say he's a him, This is absolute madness.
It's true craziness. And it passed the Colorado Statehouse by a party line vote.
Every single Dem except one voted in favor of this madness. And it's on its way to the Colorado State Senate.
What do you make of it? For one, elections have consequences. And it wasn't too long ago that Colorado sent a Native American Republican to the U.S.
Senate, and Ben Nighthorse Campbell. It wasn't too long ago that Republicans were very competitive in the state, could win the state, frequently in presidential elections.
You have one or two elections. There's a state to the north of me where I live in Iowa here,gan in minnesota uh and its culture is very similar to the one we have in iowa but it's a tale of two states one has a governor in kim reynolds the other governor and tim walls and if you lose uh it's a wrong period of time to these kinds of revolutionaries and radicals i went up and spoke to the minnesota state legislature's a conservative caucus a year ago and they said hey we've never seen things like this mean, this is the state that even Reagan couldn't win.
Even they were like, one election changed this entire state into California. They've had a couple of bad election cycles in a row recently in Colorado.
And now there is really no distinction between the Colorado State Assembly and what goes on in Sacramento every single day in California. All right.
And we have to understand now, ultimately, what time it is. We cannot allow the left to gain a foothold of power because these are the things they will do wherever they get that power.
But in turn now, we need to also be nominating Republicans who understand what time it is and are willing to use the power we give them to stop them from doing things to us like this. So that's the first thing that stands out to me.
Number two, this is a hallmark of every totalitarian belief system uh you know we have 7 000 years of recorded human history uh and there's there's a couple of things that you see in every single human society and here's one of them every time there's any form of strain of totalitarianism takes over in any culture or gains a foothold in any culture they always turn the kids against their parents every single time They always turn the children into instruments and tools of the movement, instruments and tools of

the revolution, instruments and tools of agitprop and of the state, and against the parents in

order to use the children essentially as some form of police force. The brown shirts we saw

a hundred years ago, that wasn't a new thing. It was just a different uniform.
And so this is what

you're seeing here now. And this is where this stuff stuff was always going to go here the one thing the late great robert bork was wrong about is we don't slouch to gomorrah we sprint and ultimately the reason why they hate slippery slope arguments on the left is because they're undefeated they're undefeated i mean we these are the questions we've been asking how far are we going to go with all of this by By which moral standard will we draw the line? And the answer is none.
There is absolutely none at all because whatever grants leftists power and control, that is what they will utilize because that is the foundations of the leftist belief system. Whatever grants me more power and control and turning your children against you grants me a unique amount of both.
This is so sick. And Delano, I have to tell you, it's illegal.
It's unconstitutional. It will be struck down.
I mean, we just had a whole case, 303 Creative, not long ago out of Colorado, where somebody was punished by the Colorado state system for not making websites for certain members of the LGBTQ crowd. And she said, it's not consistent with my belief to celebrate, to post videos about a trans marriage, et cetera.
And the Colorado legislature said, no, you will be punished because that's not consistent with our human rights law. And the U.S.
Supreme Court found in favor of the web designer, saying the state cannot force her to say certain things in support of a certain ideology that she doesn't believe. That is not consistent with the First Amendment.
And similarly, the state cannot punish a father, in my hypothetical, could be a mother, whatever, for refusing to adopt fake pronouns about his or her own child. And not only that, but deprive them of custody of it.
But separate and apart from all that, morally, just morally, this is deeply wrong. And trying to strong arm parents into supporting a process and an ideology that are extremely dangerous for minors.
Yeah, I think one of the most important things that any conservative legislator, policymaker, politician could do is to state unequivocally, whether you start in Genesis or the human genome, there are two sexes, male and female, and switching is not allowed. And all sort of family policy, every issue dealing with this particular subject should flow from that sort of bedrock reality.
I'm not surprised Colorado got here, but I do want to caution listeners and viewers. This is not just a crazy leftist state, crazy blue state issue.
This is the, Megan, the scenario that you painted was exactly what a man named Jeff Younger went through. This is probably five, six, seven years ago.
Jeff ended up running for, he went through this in Texas. And I believe that the judge in that case granted his ex-wife custody of their child, who the wife was calling Luna, right? That wasn't the boy's

name. And he went on to run for office and, I mean, has talked about how difficult this particular, you know, situation has been for him.
And this is exactly what Colorado is doing. And really, to Steve's point, this is a window into the mind of leftists, where they invert reality with their words because they have a God complex, right?

So they think that they can create reality ex nihilo. They can speak words and sort of life will sort of bend around the things that they say.
So they call, quote unquote, conversion therapy when you actually affirm the sex or sexuality of a human being. And they call, quote-unquote, gender-affirming care when you put a kid on cross-sex hormones, on puberty blockers, when you subject, you know, teen girls to double mastectomies and, quote-unquote, gender-affirming hysterectomies.
So this is what they do. They try to create reality through their words.
And every single one of those politicians who voted for that should be primaried. And if I was a conservative in Colorado, I would be running ads on this particular issue, targeting parents nonstop from now until the next election.
Because as you said, Megan, this is a complete insanity. I will say this, last thing here.
It's important to realize that this stuff doesn't sort of just spring up out of the ether and the kids are not just, it's not just that kids are being targeted by Disney and other, you know, media companies. We're talking about the schools and we've known that colleges and universities have been, you know, sort of leftist indoctrination centers for a long time.
But now the left is trying to pull this back down to K through 12. And one of the things that it must do for parents is to spark an education revolution in this country.
And part of that is going to be an increasing number of parents saying, not only am I fully in favor of school choice, you know, and that might be, you know, universal school choice, education savings accounts in some states, but some parents are going to have to make the decision that if I want to ensure that my children are educated according to our value system, the only way to guarantee that I can do that is if I teach them myself. So I do think that you're going to see this lead to a resurgence in homeschooling in many of these states.
You know, this was too radical for Gavin Newsom in California. The California state legislature passed a bill just like this, and Gavin Newsom refused to sign it.
That's how crazy this is. And you accurately point out, Steve, it wasn't so long ago Colorado was reddish purple.
Now it's considered blue, but there's probably a healthy red strain in there that could be revived if they go too far. And if you're too radical for Gavin Newsom, aren't you too radical for Jared Polis to sign? I mean, we're going to find out.
We'll see what the Colorado State Senate does and then what Polis does. But this is crazy town.
And again, the speech restrictions, I think, will be overturned as unconstitutional. All right, let's move on.
I have other things I need to get to. Go quickly.
I was just going to say, if there's such a thing as the Colorado Republican Party, you just did their 2026 campaign ad. This is too radical for Gavin Newsom.
It has to be too radical for Colorado. I don't know if there's a Colorado Republican Party anymore, but if there is, you just did an in-kind contribution with that.
They should listen to me. They would probably do better.
Okay. Speaking of speech that is problematic, AOC has been out there on this, I don't know if it's campaign trail.

I don't know what we're calling it, but this like fight the oligarchy tour with Bernie Sanders from which, you know, venue to venue, she travels first class, sipping her champagne, you know, in the first class cabin as the losers and plebs walk by to coach the one she's really fighting for. And she's decided to ramp up her

anti-Trump rhetoric in a way she's done before, but that could be deeply problematic for her if Trump actually decides to pay some attention to her. Listen to her just the other day, Sat 11.
Donald Trump is a criminal who was found guilty of 34 felony counts of fraud. Liable for sexual abuse.
Of course he's lying and abusing and manipulating the stock market to. To.
When he talks about rapists and criminals, he should look in the mirror. Okay.
Clearly saying that Donald Trump is a racist. Sorry, rapist.
She also thinks he's a racist. She's he's all the ists.
But here she's in deep trouble because he was not found liable for rape. And George Stephanopoulos just had to pay ABC some 15 million dollars to President Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit for saying that she doesn't have any privilege out on the privilege out on the campaign stump.
She's not protected by speech and debate while she's out there. And I ask you, Steve, whether Trump should do something about this, because quickly, here she was just in January on social media about his inauguration.
Listen to her there. All these journalists are like, Congresswoman, are you going to the inauguration? Congresswoman, are you going to the inauguration? Are you going to the inauguration? Let me make myself clear.
I don't celebrate rapists. So no, I'm not going to the inauguration tomorrow.
That's at least twice. Yeah, I'm 10,000% favor of consequences uh being ratcheted up uh comprehensively uh in the culture at the moment so uh commenso festival of uh of lawsuits and lawfare i to me i you know um i this would be just uh restitutional uh for everything they put the president through uh in the last year and a half so I'm completely in and totally in favor of it.
In fact, I, now that you mentioned it, I'm kind of surprised he hasn't done this already. Yeah.
I think he's probably just not paying attention to her, but you know, think about it. Well, hold on now.
You may have also stumbled on something there that that might be the ultimate dis like you're just not even worth the salt in my tears. I have no idea who you are exactly Exactly.
You're not even worthy of a lawsuit. Exactly.
Yes. But think about it.
Like we've gotten so used to people saying the worst things about Trump. I mean, truly the worst things that you're kind of like, oh, whatever.
But like if, if picture like yourself or anyone, you know, if you got called that word, you would absolutely sue her. You know, like it would be so jarring and upsetting and defamatory.

There'd be no question that you needed to do something about it. And really, the standards should not change just because you're Donald Trump.
Yes, as a politician, you need to take barbs like he's a liar. He's a bad person.
You know, those those are opinions to which she's totally entitled. stating that he is a rapist is a statement of fact,

which is false and has been rejected by a court of law. And she continues to do it.
So what do you make of it? It's the campaign rhetoric they want to hear. And it's because here's the thing.
Delano. Oh, Delano.
My bad. My bad.
Go ahead. No, I agree with Steve.
Right. I went to me, the heavier the claim, the heavier the burden of proof in terms of bringing evidence to bear.
You just can't go and say things about people. I remember this happened when Justice Kavanaugh was being confirmed.
And there was a political analyst on MSNBC who basically said, I'm paraphrasing, he was on Joey Reed's show, so that'll give you a sense of what's coming. He said, Kavanaugh is like all the guys I grew up with, you know, in the sort of DMV area, right? He was the last guy in, you know, a gang rape.
And I thought to myself then, I said, I hope Justice Kavanaugh sues this guy under a bridge, because I think people have gotten way too reckless with their words, way too willing to say things and make claims about people that they can't substantiate with evidence. And to your point, Megan, President Trump is not above the law, but he's not below it either.
And this is a standard that I hold across the board, irrespective of political ideology or sort of partisan affiliation of skin color or religion. If you're going to make a claim about somebody, you're going to accuse them of some of the worst crimes known to man, you better come with some evidence.
But there's another issue here that I want to point out. In addition to, you know, I said I live in Maryland, so I'm very familiar with the way blue states operate.
I worked in local government for almost 15 years. My last year was in the gun violence prevention office, and I did some restorative justice training.
I got certified in restorative justice. And one of the things that I noticed is that the people in restorative justice were always against punishment.
They hated the punitive aspect of the justice system, unless it was against people that they didn't like. So if it was against January Sixers, oh, throw them in jail for the rest of their life.
If it was against Trump, throw the book at him. And AOC is using sort of words like felon and criminal in a pejorative sense today when she's talking about Trump.
other time, it would be about ban the box. We shouldn't ask people about their criminal history.
You know, people deserve a second chance. So the left really isn't against, quote unquote, mass incarceration.
They just want a weaponized legal system so that they can enact vengeance against the people that they do not like. And I think that they should be called out on this hypocrisy.
Spot on. I mean, he really, he's not going to shut her up unless he does sue her.
And if he made an example out of her, it would be amazing. But, you know, I do think he's got more important things to do at the moment.
Guys, you've been wonderful. Thank you so much for being here.
Steve Dace, Delano Squires, please come back. You bet.
Anytime. Thank you.
Awesome. Wow.

Gosh, it's so infuriating to watch her do that, isn't it? It's like she has no basis. She just wants to smear him.
That'll go over great with her crowd. But over and over again, she gets that word into people's head, and it's wrong.
It's factually wrong. It's legally wrong.
It's morally wrong. But that's AOC for you.
That's the left's great white hope right there. Sandy Cortez and the way she talks, her weird affect in front of the crowd.
I don't know what she's doing, but I predict that on the more massive national stage, it's not going to go well for her. They think that's their hope for 2028.
Let's see. I don't think so.
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Now we're joined by the official poet of The Megyn Kelly Show, the uncancellable,

thanks to all of you, Joseph Massey. Joseph has a new book of poetry just out.
It's out today, in fact. It's called America is the Poem, and it is absolutely gorgeous.
It's based on a poem he wrote in advance of the inauguration, and here he is reading just part of that. Rain washes the dust from train windows as we barrel through the poem of America.
What you were and will be again. I see you in silos rising like fists from farmland.
America, the land itself says fight. America, you defy the narratives imposed to poison your majesty.
There is no other time to watch her rise again. Joseph, absolutely well done.
Welcome back to the show. I love that.
and just hearing you read that gave me the chills a couple of times like incredibly moving words the way you read it and our mutual friend sasha stone did the video over it so that's awesome love the partnership what inspired you to write it well i'll tell you inspired me. It was when Trump was, when the assassination attempt occurred in Butler, PA, I started to kind of come around to Trump.
Because that assassination attempt, when he stood up with blood on his face, everything became much more real to me. Trump was no longer like a character.
He wasn't some showman or carnival barker like I had kind of had in my head about him for a long time. And it became so real, so viscerally real what the stakes were with the election.
And so I think the poem started writing itself then, but then after he won, I decided to just go for it and to try to make it happen. But even if I didn't get to read the poem at the inauguration, I wanted to end up with a poem that I was proud of and that fellow Americans could be proud of as well.
You wrote the poem and now parlayed it into your latest book called America is the Poem. Both the poem's called that and the book is called that.
Let's get this up front. How can people buy the book? On Amazon.
That's where you could buy it. And you can get it as a Kindle e-book or as a paperback.
Yeah. Okay.
And the reason we want to make sure people know that they can go and support you directly at Amazon and buy this book, America is the Poem, is because no one wanted you to be here. Your industry didn't want you to be here.
Your critics didn't want us to be discussing your poetry. They wanted you, basically, your voice snuffed out and never to be heard from again because you got swept up with really just a dispute with an ex-girlfriend in the Me Too movement and the most vicious people of all, the poetry industry.
Who knew? People thought it might be educators. Who knew? But no one had their money on the poets being the nastiest group of people.
But man, they tried to snuff you out

permanently. So for the audience that hasn't yet heard that story, can you just give us the quick

overview of what they tried to do to you? Yeah, well, I wrote an essay for Colette that goes into

great detail about the whole thing. It's my side of the story.
Anyone can check that out for all those details. But yeah, I was living a decent, clean life after being kind of a drunk in my 20s and being a bit inappropriate at times, as I admitted in the essay and various public declarations that didn't go anywhere.
It was just throwing chum to sharks. But yeah, it was brutal.
It all started with a fake letter. It was a forged letter written by somebody who claimed they met me at a poetry reading.
And then I called her hot. And it was put on a WordPress website.
And then this woman that I had been involved in, involved with, posted the link with malicious intent. And it just spread like wildfire through the poetry community and beyond into the wider literary world.
It was mentioned in Publishers Weekly. There was a disgusting defamatory article published about me in some magazine that's defunct now, but at the time, it got a lot of traction.
And so I immediately lost jobs. I lost a job I had at the University of Pennsylvania.
I lost book deals. I had a book coming out with Wesleyan University Press that was scrapped.
And I lost all my friends. I lost all my social networks.
So it took a year, all of 2018 and most of 2019 to kind of just rebuild a sense of self again, which I did through God, through Jesus Christ, and through the Catholic Church specifically. And then I was able to re-engage my poetry in a way that was even more vital and important.
I realized that I never wrote poetry to become successful. It was always a survival, kind of a survival skill for me.

Mm hmm. Do you do you wonder why you haven't been welcomed back in? You know, you are reviewed by the New York Times and all these other mainstream so-called publications.
And we're seeing many men who were kind of canceled by the Me Too movement given a road back. Why not you? Like, what's to stop you from going that route? Why wouldn't they allow you back? What's to stop me? Other poets are the ones that you're not allowed back once you've been canceled.
And in my case, I'm even more of a boogeyman to them because, well, I published that essay in Quillette, which at that time in 2019, they were all screaming, oh, he's publishing in a fascist publication, Quillette of all things. And then I dared to self-publish and appear on your show.
And I started expressing political opinions on X or then Twitter. And so now I'm not called the things that they were calling me before.
Now I'm the fascist. And the funniest thing I was called recently because of the inaugural poem I wrote was the Poet Laureate of White People, which I thought about including as a blurb on the back of the book, but then I decided against it.
That is so weird. I don't even understand that.
Like that's not something you write about. You're not like, that's not your thing.
Your thing is beauty. And you find beauty in the smallest places and you've spread it both with your photography and your poems.
And you spread it to all of us. If we follow you on Substack, um, on your weekly news, uh, letter, which you deliver by email on, on your poems, on your books.
So I don't, I don't even get the race thing. Is that just to diminish you because they think you're a Trump supporter? That's solely the reason.
That's the only reason. And when I posted a picture of myself wearing a Trump t-shirt, it was like being canceled all over again.
Getting messages from friends or people I thought were friends. I can't believe you would do this.
I can't believe it. I'm like, what? Why? And they never really have any concrete arguments.
It's just pure reactivity. And it's not the kind of behavior I ever expected from poets growing up and reading poetry, reading Rimbaud and Blake and et cetera, I mean, these people were outliers.
They were rebels. They weren't just towing the line.
And poets these days, like every other artist in every other field, they seem to just toe the line to keep the federal, to keep the grant money coming. Yeah, they're uptight social justice scolds.
Yes, yeah, yeah. And I wonder what percentage of them just do it to keep themselves out of the line of fire, you know? Even still, even in 2025? Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I know. There's apparently a big cancellation going on right now.
I won't say any details, but it's just as ugly as it was in 2018. And so I realized a year or two after the cancellation started that I wasn't going to be allowed back and I'm going to have to do it myself.
And so this book and the prior two books, three books are published under my own imprint. And so they can't cancel me.
They can't pull my book because they think I'm a fascist or the poet laureate of white people.

And it drives them crazy.

It does drive them crazy. Yeah.
And I can't say I mind.

You are moving up the ranks already. We have to make sure that Joseph hits number one.
We have

to make sure in poetry. And who are you bouncing off of the number one spot if we manage to make

Thank you. are moving up the ranks already.
We have to make sure that Joseph hits number one. We have to make sure in poetry.
And who are you bouncing off of the number one spot if we manage to make this happen? Well, I would like to take the number one spot from Maria Shriver. Maria Shriver has a book of poetry out, and it's abysmal.
She's not a poet. She's not a poet.
She could have not broken the lines up and it would have been probably maybe a better book, but she's a, yeah, not, not a poet. This needs to happen.
I should take that spot. Yes.
Yes. Please, please.
You know what? We're here just in time for father's day and mother's day coming up, uh, in June and may respectively. This is a beautiful gift.
Why? Like, what are you going to do? You're going to give like another coffee mug or picture frame or bouquet of flowers. Okay.
I mean, fine. Nice try.
But coupled with a book of poetry called America is the Poem, something patriotic, something that will stir a feeling inside of them away, a bouquet of flowers never could do. That's what you need to do.
Go to Amazon right now, buy it. It's called America is the poem by Joseph Massey.
And not only are you getting a great gift for yourself or someone you love, but you're supporting Joseph Massey and most importantly, giving a strong middle finger to the assholes who tried to ruin this man twice, right? For being swept up in an alleged Me Too situation and then for being a Trump supporter. We're the answer.
We are the answer. We're the only ones who can tell the woke Puritan mobs he's not canceled F off.
That's what I love so much about your story is like so many of our audience and others got behind you when they heard the story and said, we refuse to let you keep him down. You know, we refuse.
And most people don't even care to be honest about the specifics of what happened in this whole me too. It's like, okay, whatever it was, you paid a mighty price.
You lost your whole career. Oh, your quote respectability, but you refused to stay down.
Even though Joseph, you had zero connections, zero power. And I think it's fair to say zero money.

that's that's absolutely right yeah i was living in a in substandard conditions in a basement

apartment and just getting just starting to make it working at upenn part-time and then the

cancellation happened and i it lost everything and so it's been a steady process of rebuilding but I've you're right I've never stopped and that drive to write poetry has been with me since I was a child you know it's always been a survival tool it's always been something I use to to process the world and make sense of the world around me they can't take from me. And any real artist isn't going to let a mob take that from them.
So anyone who's being canceled, just keep doing what you're doing. The updates on your ex-feed sometimes, at least certainly less recently, often are pretty honest about how you struggle with depression and are feeling at times hopeless about, can I make it? Are people following? Does my voice matter? But then I saw you move to a nicer place.
You got out of the basement and you got a cat. And I saw signs of hope, both in your writing and in your posts.
Have you experienced an uplift? Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
I mean, I, I live in an, in an amazing apartment that has heat and, uh, doesn't have mold on the walls. I don't ask.
I don't ask. I know.
Jarvis. Jarvis is great.
I have a wonderful tuxedo cat who makes me make sure I get to bed at a certain time and wakes me up at four in the morning. It's like living in a monastery or something.
And yeah, I live in upstate New York now. It's great.
It's beautiful. The landscape is great.
My poetry is paying for my groceries and paying for my paying my utilities and paying my rent. That's not a common situation for for a poet, unless you're Maria Shriver.
And she doesn't need the money. We all know that she's married to Arnold.
Well, she's his ex. I'm sure she did just fine in that divorce.
Now her son's a big star, too. He's got a Nepo baby starring in the latest White Lotus.
So we don't want Maria Shriver at the top of the poetry list. We want Joseph Massey there.
America is the poem is the name of the book. So tell me, how do you spend your days? I would think if you're a poet, you need to be outside walking a lot.
You need to be touching grass. I know you're very connected with nature in general, but I would think if you lived my average day, you would not be inspired to write one word of beauty.
Yeah, it's a contemplative lifestyle. I walk a lot.
And while I'm walking, I'm thinking about poetry or I'm praying. And prayer is a big part of my life.
And all of that is inextricably connected to my creative life, to the poetry. I feel like most things I do are in service to the work.
Even when I'm on the couch watching White Lotus, for example, like I need to come down a little bit from all of it and kind of tune it out.

But everything's in service to the work.

And that's the way it should be.

You know, that's the way I've always lived,

whether I was canceled or not canceled

or standing at a wine and cheese party after a poetry reading

and just wanting to run out the back door.

It's always just been about the art for me. I love it because those pictures make you feel something special too.
And we've all walked by like the puddle with the reflection of the white church steeple and thought, oh, that's so pretty. But only you will stop and take a picture of it.
And the lighting of your shots is just right. You post it online and it's the same exact thing as your poems.
It's like just a moment of feeling something serene, godly, spiritual, beautiful in the midst of X, which is where I consume most of your posts, which is, you know, of course a toxic wasteland. Like Like, I mean, that's what social media is.
And that's kind of why we're there. But just a reminder of your humanity.
I mean, that's the service that you're doing us all and the books all the more so, because that's something you can sit down with, especially people who can't meditate. I know a lot of people are like, I can't, you know, it takes up too much of my, like, as soon as I try to calm my mind, my mind goes nuts.
And I think about every problem, my to-do list. But I feel like poetry is almost a way of meditating without meditating, right? Like you can fill your mind.
It's kind of like a crossword. If you just focus on the words, you can't think of something else, but it's calming and it's restorative.
Yeah. I think of it as a form of meditation and prayer.
More so meditation because you're forced to slow down. It's one line, one word at a time.
And there's a lot of silence in poetry. There's a lot of space around the poem.
And there's a lot of room for thinking and contemplating. And that's the whole goal of my work, whether I'm taking a picture or writing a poem, is to get the viewer, the reader to slow down and to take the world in as it is in the present moment and maybe to feel less impacted by the toxicity of social media, even though I consume it as well.
But there needs to be some outlet that is away from that, and that is nourishing for the spirit and for the heart. And poetry does that.
Your poetry does that, not everybody's. Again, it's called America is the Poem.
Buy it on Amazon. America is the Poem by Joseph Massey.
The thing, too, about the namesake of the book, this poem, is you get why so many of us, and I think you share in, feel so optimistic about Trump's win and what's possible over the next, I guess, two years, we'd have to say, because if the Democrats win the House in the midterms, his agenda will be stymied. But right now it's all, it's no holds barred.
And while the media will tell you it's terrible, everyone's scared. It's a dark time.
He's an authoritarian. I think most of us who voted for him are still feeling extremely happy and optimistic and relieved that the country did the right thing.
And that leads me to a different part of the poem than the one we played when you started, in that soundbite in which we started. I'm just going to read part of it with your permission.
Of course. You write as follows.
America, for love, we go on. America, you defy the narratives imposed to poison your majesty.
All the poison imposed to warp us away from our axis. The true, the beautiful, what binds us to a shared reality, sealed under the hand of God.
Americans, may we all wake to the dawn this day with courage, for we are the whirlwind promised by patriots who fought to the depth of a last breath to birth America. And we are here.
There is no other time to watch her rise again. That's it.
That's beautiful. You get it.
And unlike most of us, you can express it. So have you been feeling it in the first 100 days or so? Absolutely.
Yeah. I don't feel any of the doom and gloom.
Even the tariff stuff didn't freak me out. I didn't understand half of what I read anyway about tariffs.
But part of the poem, America's a Poem, was written on a train ride from upstate New York to Chicago and just going through flyover country and seeing one town, one city after another kind of gutted because industry left and seeing what has been this kind of wreck that's been made of these small towns that once thrived. And you could see how they once thrived, but all the bars and the baseball fields are boarded up and grown over.
And that inspired me. And then when Trump won, the poem just wrote itself.
I mean, I think Trump won. I know Trump won because America refused to roll over and die under woke policies, woke agenda that is out to destroy the country, to destroy actually, to destroy the idea of objective truth.
You can't have a country where there's no objective truth.

And that's just at the most basic level.

Basic truth, beauty, godliness, serenity, connection with other.

That's what you're about.

And that's one of the many reasons I love your poetry, Joseph.

I want everybody, please, please, please go buy the book. Okay.
America is the poem. That's the name of it.

It's by Joseph Massey, who, if you go back and look at my very first interview with Joseph,

which was, hold on a second. It's in my packet.
Pulled it up. It was episode 296 in April of 2022.

We reveal a story of how I insisted on calling him Paul before I came to really understand that was not his name. He let me for a short time.
I liked it. I thought about changing it.
Yeah. Well, it works, you know, from an apostle standpoint, but you're already good on that front.
You already got that covered. So thank you.
Thank you for all the times you've been on episode 296, 566, 754. And now today we love it and we wish you all the best.
Thank you, Megan. America is the poem on Amazon right now.
Get out of there, Maria Shriver. You have enough, by the way, on the subject of the woman who accused Joseph, when this story came out, the Daily Wire reached out to her for comment.
She did not respond, and she has since taken down the Facebook post that was up about Joseph. Tomorrow, we welcome Batya Angersargan.
And do you remember that story about the defamation lawsuit against NBC

over multiple hosts calling this doctor the, quote, uterus collector? Well, his lawyer is here

with me, and we'll go deep into what happened here. We'll see you then.