CBS Cancels Colbert, WSJ's Epstein-Trump Nothingburger, and Barbara Walters' Complicated Legacy, with Maureen Callahan | Ep. 1111

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Speaker 12 Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.

Speaker 12 Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to Megan Kelly's Show and happy Friday.
I mean, there's a lot. This is a lot to go over.

Speaker 12 Before we get to it, and Maureen Callahan, who's our guest today, I want to tell you about Monday.

Speaker 12 I'm leaving the Jersey Shore to go back to New York City and the Sirius XM HQ for a live interview with Rahm Emmanuel, the longtime Democratic political operative, former mayor of Chicago, congressman, and high-level aide to Presidents Clinton and Obama.

Speaker 12 I have never interviewed him before, but reports are that he is seriously considering running for president in the Democrat nomination in 2028.

Speaker 12 Could he be the type type of candidate that gets the Democratic Party back on track? We've talked about him a lot on this show. He's strong.
He's no nonsense. He's a fighter.

Speaker 12 He's more centrist than certainly where the party is going right now.

Speaker 12 AOC and Bernie and Mamdani. So what does he think about what's happened to his party? And how will he sound? Will he sound more centrist? Do we think he can go the distance?

Speaker 12 Those are some of the things I'll be looking for when I speak to him on Monday.

Speaker 12 And you know what else will be interesting he knows that this audience is not a left-wing audience you know i have a lot of centrists watching this show and i have some center lefties and i have a lot of center righties and righties

Speaker 12 but

Speaker 12 so he he wants you guys to hear from him he wants you to listen to him so will he tailor his message to you you know will he try to win you over is this going to be somebody who's actually trying to reach out to people who you know aren't necessarily knee-jerk lifelong Democrats.

Speaker 12 Really looking forward to the whole thing for many reasons. Okay.
But first, we got a lot of news to get to today. It was the Jeffrey Epstein bombshell that wasn't.
It was really just a bomb.

Speaker 12 We told you yesterday that the Wall Street Journal was preparing a big article about Trump's relationship with the disgraced financier. Well, they published it.

Speaker 12 And this is how the text chain went amongst the MK show producers. Is this it?

Speaker 12 Is this all?

Speaker 12 There's nothing more? This is it? Oh, God. That's really how my team and I reacted when we saw it.
We'll get to that in one second.

Speaker 12 Plus, CBS News canceling, CBS, I guess, canceling the late show with Stephen Colbert. Thank God.
Single tier, I mean, super sad for him. Hearts and prayers.

Speaker 12 There's a new documentary about Barbara Walters, and I cannot wait to dig into this with Maureen. She mentioned Barbara and this documentary on her show a couple of weeks ago, The Nerve.

Speaker 12 And I've got a lot of thoughts on the documentary on Barbara Walters, who you may not care that much about if you're, you know, under 35 or even, you know, under 45, maybe, I don't know, but she's a very interesting figure for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 12 And there are a lot of parallels to what's happening right now when it comes to women, personally and professionally. And there's a big debate amongst women and working women and family.

Speaker 12 And I got my own thoughts that I'm looking forward to discussing with all of you and with Maureen here to break it all down, the host of the new hit show on the MK Media Podcast Network, The Nerve with Maureen Callahan.

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Speaker 12 Maureen, welcome back.

Speaker 13 Thank you for having me, Megan.

Speaker 12 Okay, and not only do I love the nerve and feel like I get extra time with you when I listen to it, but I also am now two-thirds of the way through the book you recommended on one of your shows a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 12 The guest.

Speaker 12 I'm listening to it on my audio. Yeah, hold on a second.
Yeah, The Guest by Emma Klein. It's delicious.
I can't wait to see how it went. Yeah.
I'm so happy. I'm so happy.

Speaker 13 It really is. It's, you can, I actually had to slow myself down while reading it because it was going, it's such a great, easy read, but it's literary.
And I really, I, I didn't want it to end.

Speaker 13 And I was really, I was dying to know, just as a writer in me, like, how's she going to land the plane?

Speaker 12 You know? Yeah.

Speaker 13 Because it's, it's really more character driven than like plot driven. But she, in my opinion, she does it beautifully.

Speaker 12 Oh, well, I can't wait. I've got one third left to go.
So there you go. Maureen Callahan's book recommendation.
You're welcome.

Speaker 12 Okay, there's a lot, a lot to get to. I can't wait to dig our teeth into the Barbara thing, but we have to start with actual news and this bomb of an attack on President Trump.
It was a joke.

Speaker 12 I'm sorry, it was a joke. And take it from me, I've done thousands of like exposés on people or covered them or Me Too stories.
This is a nothing burger. It's an absolute nothing burger.

Speaker 12 I laughed when I saw it.

Speaker 12 The big shock piece the journal's been working on that's gotten all this buzz amongst journals in the days leading up to it is that Trump allegedly, he denies it and is now suing over this allegation, in 2003 wrote Jeffrey Epstein a letter as part of a group of letters that came from people like Alan Dershowitz and many others for Jeffrey's 50th birthday party.

Speaker 12 And the big, big sin of the letter is that it apparently appears in the sketch of a woman's body. The implication is that Trump drew it, and then it's signed Donald.

Speaker 12 So he drew a woman with breasts in like a figure and with a marker. And then inside, want us to believe that Donald Trump wrote the following.

Speaker 12 Okay. They said,

Speaker 12 here we go. Hold on.
Uh, voiceover. He writes the words, he allegedly writes the words voiceover.
There must be more to life than having everything.

Speaker 12 Donald, he's like a script. Yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is.
Jeffrey, nor will I, since I also know what it is. Donald, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Speaker 12 Jeffrey, yes, we do, come to think of it. Donald, enigmas never age.
Have you noticed that? Jeffrey, as a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Speaker 12 Donald, a pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Speaker 12 That's it.

Speaker 13 It's terrible dialogue, and it does not sound like Donald J. Trump.
I mean,

Speaker 13 several things. The fact that that is allegedly typewritten, that note,

Speaker 13 it feels to me the way like you, like in any crime story, you know, a suicide is a murder if the suicide note is typewritten, right?

Speaker 12 That's true.

Speaker 13 Secondly, why did the Washington, what, sorry, the journal not reprint the actual document?

Speaker 12 Like, I want to see

Speaker 12 the physical document, right?

Speaker 13 Because who has a more distinctive signature than Donald Trump? His signature looks like skyscrapers.

Speaker 12 It's venting totally.

Speaker 13 So, so, you know, and

Speaker 13 thirdly, I just, I just, it, I don't, I just don't believe it.

Speaker 13 To me, it feels like, remember when the Mueller report was finally published and Rachel Maddow took to the airwaves for an hour to self-soothe and convince herself and her viewers that there must be something in it.

Speaker 13 We got to find it. It's just there.

Speaker 13 You know, it's, it all just feels like, again, you've, you and your guests have said it many times over the past week or so.

Speaker 13 If there was a smoking gun involving Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, we would have known it by now.

Speaker 12 That's right. We wouldn't be waiting for the Wall Street Journal to break it mid President Trump's second term as president.
It's absurd.

Speaker 12 So we don't know whether even the journal has seen the original letter. We know that they say they've seen documents.

Speaker 12 They said Maxwell collected all these letters for this birthday gift Epstein got in 2003, put it in a birthday album. They say, according to documents reviewed.
by the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 12 Well, which documents? Have you seen the letter? Trump's team is saying they they did not hand the letter over to Team Trump when they went to him for comment.

Speaker 12 So it's unclear whether the journal has laid eyes on the actual alleged letter.

Speaker 12 But I have to say, and Trump says this is fake, and people online are doing a word search amongst everything Donald Trump has ever said.

Speaker 12 And apparently they haven't found like any uses of the word Enigma. I guess it's not one of his favorites.

Speaker 12 Not like China.

Speaker 12 So I don't, I have no idea whether it's real. Trump is mad enough saying it's fake and it sounds fake.
It does sound fake to me.

Speaker 12 It doesn't sound like anything that Donald Trump has ever said or written. But I almost don't care.

Speaker 12 It's like, to me, this could be if it really does exist, because it could be a fake that somebody put into a document to make them look bad after the fact.

Speaker 12 Or if it was actually in this book or whatever it is, it could just be Trump said, look, this is what happens with Abby, my assistant, and me a lot.

Speaker 12 They want you to submit. a quote about so-and-so into some, you know, retrospective.

Speaker 12 These are the three they've proposed for you. And it's like, okay, I'll take number one, right? It's like sometimes you're just trying to do somebody a solid.
You're like, okay, that sounds good.

Speaker 12 Let's go with that.

Speaker 12 I'll guarantee you, if this is actually Trump's participation, which he denies, it's that. Like, Ghelane wrote this thing up for you to sign.
Is it cool? Everybody's doing like a body, funny thing.

Speaker 12 And this was the one she had for you. And Trump, the celebrity, was like, fine, I don't care.
And maybe doesn't remember it. Or genuinely, it could be a total fake.

Speaker 12 Either way, I don't care because I said nothing, Burger. It's a body, stupid letter that is totally meaningless.

Speaker 12 This is not some, it's Trump with a 12-year-old, which is really where the Dems were going with this.

Speaker 13 I love this theory. And, you know, I just, I love how these conversations happen in silos.
So we're

Speaker 13 all theorizing or supposedly theorizing about Donald Trump and the authenticity of said letter. And does this go to a larger collusion with Jeffrey Epstein and the abuse of young girls?

Speaker 13 And Bill Clinton's name never comes up. Bill Clinton was on the flight logs as well.
And, you know, they're apparently allegedly, depending on who you talk to, sightings on the island, who knows.

Speaker 13 But the other thing about this, Megan, that I love is

Speaker 13 people online trying to figure out if the wording matches up with anything Donald Trump has said or written in the many decades we've known him. And we're more sophisticated now with AI.

Speaker 13 It reminds me, remember when Primary Colors came out and it was anonymously written? And it was like the inside scoop on the scandalous, you know, behind the scenes goings on with the Clintons.

Speaker 13 And within like a week, Drudge had it with Joe Klein and

Speaker 13 some professor shot it through a computer and it did like a matchup of words and they nailed him. First try.

Speaker 12 That's incredible. I forgot that.
No, I didn't. Well, it's like, look.
I'm sure Trump has used the word enigma here or there, but it's like people are parsing this.

Speaker 12 And people I know who know President Trump very well say, this is, by the way, like, if Trump's going to write something, he's going to write it himself. He's not going to typewrite anything out.

Speaker 12 He might dictate a note and then sign it. But like, this doesn't have the sort of fingerprints of the normal Donald Trump note at all.

Speaker 12 The most like Trump has sent me many notes over the years, years, many.

Speaker 12 And 99% of the time, it's a newspaper article about

Speaker 12 him or or me

Speaker 12 that he wants me to see. And he signs it in that Donald Trump, you know, sort of straight up and down, like you say, skyscraper signature.

Speaker 12 No one, having submitted an alleged draft of what this fake drawn woman looks like, Phil Holloway, attorney and frequent guest of the Megan Kelly show, submitted this last night on X, which I got a genuine kick out of.

Speaker 12 He writes, they finally got him. It looks like what a three-year-old would draw with a stick figure of a woman with just two circles for the boobs and then this very elementary DJT

Speaker 12 at the bottom.

Speaker 12 This is where our minds have to go, Maureen, because there's no proof. There's no proof that he wrote anything at all.

Speaker 13 Who past 1971 is using a typewriter?

Speaker 12 Who? Yeah.

Speaker 13 Donald Trump is taking the time to typewrite.

Speaker 13 Secondly, he does not strike me as a doodler, let alone a sketch artist.

Speaker 13 He doesn't seem the type of doodles.

Speaker 12 Apparently he doodles, but to your point, you're going to find this interesting. He like everything he doodles, all the doodles that, you know, sometimes they ask you as a public figure for a doodle.

Speaker 12 And honestly, I'm like a 13-year-old girl with mine and mine are all like hearts upside down and right side up and sideways and connected.

Speaker 12 He doodles the skyline of Manhattan.

Speaker 12 There are pictures online now of like when they've asked Donald Trump for some of his doodles. Every single time it's a, look look at, there's one.
Every single time it's a skyline of Manhattan.

Speaker 12 So I don't think he really is a doodler when it comes to, and by the way, his statement says,

Speaker 12 first he writes, I never wrote a picture in my life. I don't draw pictures of women.
It's not my language. It's not my words, which is interesting.

Speaker 12 Like if you find a doodle of hearts arranged in a like a kaleidoscopes type design and then you see Megan Kelly in the middle, it might be mine. It might be mine.

Speaker 12 But he knows his doodles and they're of the Manhattan skyline. And he's saying, I don't doodle pictures of women.
And it's not my language or my words.

Speaker 12 In any event, back to my original point, which is who gives a shit, even if it were Trump? It says nothing. I guess we're going with the fact that he says, may every day be another wonderful secret?

Speaker 12 And the suggestion is what? Trump was totally in on the fact that at that point, Jeffrey Epstein was a serial abuser. Okay.

Speaker 12 He was one of the only ones who knew in 2003 because the charges weren't brought against him until 2006. And it was an explosive piece of news when it hit the public airwaves.

Speaker 13 Agreed. Just to get back to the art for a second, again, like Trump, those skyscrapers make total sense to me.
Trump does not strike me as an abstract artist.

Speaker 13 He doesn't strike me as an abstract thinker. He thinks in very concrete, linear terms.
Linear. I just don't see him like Matisse, you know, trying to to denote some sort of female figure.

Speaker 13 And secondly, yeah, you know, it's all sort of meant to

Speaker 13 suggest that he was in on the trafficking and the grooming and the using and all of that. And I just think if you want to approach this thing logically, Trump is nothing but a self-preservationist.

Speaker 13 He gets one whiff of what's going on with Jeffrey Epstein and that sweetheart deal and he's keeping his distance.

Speaker 12 Well, the thing is, so now Trump says he's going to sue Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal, and maybe other individuals. But I don't know that that will go anywhere.
I really don't.

Speaker 12 It's very, very hard for a public figure to sue for defamation. It was easy in the Stephanopoulos case because he said something that was factually wrong.
It was very clear. He said it over and over.

Speaker 12 And there was evidence that he was told by his producers it was wrong. And he said it anyway.

Speaker 12 So all of that would suggest actual malice, suggesting that he could lose, that Stephanopoulos and ABC were going to lose in a courtroom, saying he raped somebody when he didn't.

Speaker 12 But this is a lot harder

Speaker 12 because how is is Trump going to prove he didn't write it? Like it's very hard to prove a negative that you didn't write it.

Speaker 12 And even if he didn't write it, you'd have to prove knowledge of falsity on the journal's part, which is going to be tough because the journal, while he denied it, will have somebody testify, I didn't believe his denial.

Speaker 12 And here are the reasons why I thought it was real. So it's just the standard is so high for a public figure to claim he's been defamed.
I don't know whether he could ever recover.

Speaker 12 But we've seen news organization after news organization fold when Trump comes after them because they've just chosen not to be on his bad side and they don't want to go through the hassle.

Speaker 12 I think that's why CBS folded and because it's trying to get a merger approved by Trump's government. In any event, he's pissed.
And here's the other thing, Maureen.

Speaker 12 We all know if you're going to take a shot at the king, you best not miss. And that's really what the journal just did.

Speaker 13 Right. And you also have to, like, you've talked about this a lot too.

Speaker 13 Does the journal, let's let's say he's because he does say this all the time, like, I'm going to sue you, and people think he's not going to do it. And he does it, even if it seems not that

Speaker 13 strided or strong a case. And sometimes these organizations just don't want to go through discovery.
They don't want to have to turn over those internal conversations via email or whatever.

Speaker 13 You know, maybe somebody was listening on the line or Trump, you know, when Trump went to Murdoch and said, This is a lie. And if you print it, I'm going to sue you.
You know, I mean, who knows?

Speaker 13 The enmity between those two, I love it.

Speaker 12 I can't wait for the book someday yeah the trump will be out war

Speaker 12 uh tucker recently had an interview at main headlines where he he told his guest tucker made news on his own show about himself um and his relationship with the with fox and the murdox and he said the murdox don't like trump he said they hate trump and that they asked me tucker to run for president after they fired me or canceled his show and me to stop trump now Like I have no idea how the Murdochs feel about Trump, but the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and Trump is saying he spoke to Rupert.

Speaker 12 In fact, Trump tweeted out, I told Rupert not to not to print this, and I think he said he said he was going to stop it. I guess he didn't have the power, he says.

Speaker 12 And now he says he's going to sue Rupert, the journal, et cetera.

Speaker 12 Look, I don't know. I think this is much to do about nothing, but it did lead to a different disclosure.

Speaker 12 Trump last night promising that in light of the amount of publicity around Jeffrey Epstein, he's going to have Pam Bondi move to unseal the grand jury proceedings.

Speaker 12 That's a reference to the grand jury proceedings that led to the Jeffrey Epstein indictment and the one that led to the Ghelane Maxwell indictment, which, you know, I think is something, but not really.

Speaker 12 I mean, first of all, the judge can easily say no. It's not really up to the attorney general.
Like the judge can just say no because those are secret for a reason.

Speaker 12 Defense lawyer, like Jeffrey Epstein in that case, Ghelane Maxwell and her case, they never got to see the grand jury proceedings.

Speaker 12 Those are really secret for a reason. So I just, like, even the defendant doesn't get to find out usually what happened in the proceeding.
So the judge could easily say no.

Speaker 12 And I think people are looking for a university of documents outside of what the limited field that was actually used to indict, which would be a much more narrow slice of documents.

Speaker 12 But listen, like I said yesterday, no amount of disclosures at this point is really going to satisfy. President Trump's worst critics.
I would love to see more disclosure on Epstein.

Speaker 12 I don't think the grand jury thing is going to do it, but I don't, I don't know what would do it.

Speaker 12 And frankly, Maureen, now that it's turned into like this Democrat bloodbath into like, let's get him, all these fakers who claim that they care about this, I'm really kind of out.

Speaker 12 I just feel like, all right, you know what? There's never going to be enough disclosure. We're never really going to know what happened on Epstein.
And the Democrats are making such

Speaker 12 a mountain out of all this, trying to pin it on Donald Trump. Like he's, you know, Jeffrey Epstein 2.0.

Speaker 12 F them.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I mean, truly, when I heard that thing about the missing minute of video footage from inside the prison and how that is allegedly just a thing, that like there's always that missing minute from 1159 to midnight, it just defies common sense and belief.

Speaker 13 You know, there's so much about that famous coroner, Mark Badden, I think if I'm saying his name correctly, has said that, you know,

Speaker 13 yeah, that Michael Bodden, excuse me, thank you.

Speaker 13 that the the the the injuries to epstein's neck were not consistent with a hanging uh you know a suicide uh and you know we'll never know we're never going to know frankly the theory that's been floated on your show seems to make the most sense to me that he was an agent of mossad and or the cia

Speaker 12 yeah an agent or asset in some way makes perfect sense to me too right like that somebody decided he needed to go or they were gonna help him go or they got somebody in the prison to help him along but even, you know, they, uh, Mike Francesi, he was a former mobster, a great guy.

Speaker 12 He's got a very successful YouTube show. He's been on this program.
I kind of love this guy.

Speaker 12 He was out there saying on News Nation this week, that can't happen. You can't, it's like virtually impossible.
He'd been in this prison.

Speaker 12 He's like, for a guy to actually successfully hang himself in a prison cell is near impossible.

Speaker 12 And there's no way this like effete, you know, soft-handed little billionaire financier guy had skills that like my people, Mike is saying, don't have, and managed to get her done.

Speaker 12 So look, I just think it's a big mystery, but I'm getting very irritated that this is turning into like a left-wing desire to say Trump is Epstein 2.0. Bull shit.
That's such bulls.

Speaker 12 There's such fucking dishonest cretins.

Speaker 12 The scandal, if there is one, is that there's probably more to know about Epstein and that Trump's attorney general has been promising there's more and she would deliver it.

Speaker 12 And then instead of saying I was wrong, issued the two-page memo in the dark of night. That's the story.
The story's not Trump is Epstein. Trump likes minors.
Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

Speaker 12 And I just feel like I'm out.

Speaker 12 It's been turned into a Democrat-led scandal about Trump being an Epstein type. That's bullshit.
I refused to participate or fuel that fire. So we'll see.
We'll see what, if anything, they disclose.

Speaker 12 But it's crossed over to the point of absurd. Now, okay, there's more to discuss.
There's a lot more to discuss. Like Stephen Colbert's show has been canceled.
That's like, it's great.

Speaker 12 Great news, is it not?

Speaker 13 This is incredible on so many levels. And I'm going to call him on this for the mail.

Speaker 13 But so I was reading, there's this New York, this is such a New York Times way to cover it. So they

Speaker 13 talked to this guy in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who was out having dinner and got the alert on his phone that that the Colbert show has been canceled.

Speaker 13 And he sprung up like he got, he was Batman getting the bat signal and got on the subway and rode it right up to the Ed Sullivan Theater to mourn with Colbert's, like three other fans up there.

Speaker 13 It's amazing. It says everything about the irrelevance of this show.

Speaker 12 That is amazing. And let me tell you something else.
This just hit

Speaker 12 from reporter Matt Bellany, founding partner Puck News and

Speaker 12 formerly Hollywood reporter. The timing and optics, he says, are terrible for the Colbert cancellation.
Not true, not true, not true. The timing and optics are perfect.

Speaker 12 Only leftists think that the timing and optics are terrible because they think somehow this was retaliatory because Stephen Colbert was ripping on CBS for entering into that $16 million settlement with Donald Trump, who was suing them over the 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview and the edited clips claiming it was a deceptive practice under Texas law.

Speaker 12 So they settled the case for $16 million bucks because, frankly, it's obvious.

Speaker 12 They have a merger going on right now where their parent company, Paramount, is trying to sell itself to Skydance and they need approval by Trump's FCC.

Speaker 12 And the belief is that they just paid what to them is a drop in the bucket to make Trump go away on this lawsuit. Okay, fine.
Well, Colbert went out there and cried. Do we have him ripping on it?

Speaker 12 I don't think we have that. But anyway, he went on there recently and he ripped on his own employer for this settlement.
And that's why the left is like, oh, the optics are terrible.

Speaker 12 Like this is clearly just like a, they fired Colbert to satisfy Trump. Number one, if that's true, you can put another feather in Trump's cap for doing something great and making America great again.

Speaker 12 Okay. Number two, there's zero proof to that effect whatsoever.

Speaker 12 And Sherry Redstone, who is the head of CBS, has known that Colbert is a chief Trump antagonist and that Trump hates Colbert since the beginning of Colbert and Trump as you know, dual public figures, and has not fired Colbert, has renewed him time and time again, including recently for a three-year deal when she must have known this merger was in the works.

Speaker 12 So, like, it doesn't make sense to me, but here's why I raised the Matt Bellany report here. It's not for his prelude, which with which I disagree.

Speaker 12 He says, Stephen, but but he says, Colbert's show costs more than $100 million a year to produce and is losing more than $40 million a year. That's unbelievable.
So, net net, it takes in about 60.

Speaker 12 It's losing $40 million a year. He writes CBS execs had been mulling for a long time whether to pull the plug.

Speaker 13 This is amazing for so many reasons, but culturally, it's so indicative of it's another nail in the coffin for legacy media. And

Speaker 13 it's not just that they're canceling Colbert,

Speaker 13 they're killing the show altogether. Now, late-night talk shows have been in America's living rooms basically since the birth of television.

Speaker 13 And we've been hearing rumblings over at ABC that they're none too pleased with Jimmy Kimmel's performance, and he's the next one to go.

Speaker 13 Jimmy Fallon is down to four days a night, and there have been rumors that his show is on the chopping block.

Speaker 13 Seth Meyers, who is in the 1230 slot at NBC, had to fire his band as a cost-cutting measure. Ellen DeGeneres lost her show.
She's out of the country. Oprah has become a joke in the culture.

Speaker 13 Kelly Clarkson, who is the last remaining monocultural daytime talk show, is losing her mind over there. That show is apparently, whether it's the jab plus the schedule, it is, she is, she is

Speaker 13 in a meltdown for the ages. She just canceled her Las Vegas residency Adele style, like a minute before she was supposed to take the stage.
Uh-oh. Yeah.
So it's just, it's a, it's a, it's a dying.

Speaker 13 format. It's a dying art form.
People are going to YouTube, to the digital lane, elsewhere. Finally, with Stephen Colbert, I mean, he is such a school marm.
He is such a hectoring, humorless lecturer.

Speaker 13 Hardworking people at the end of their night do not want to be lectured by the likes of a bespectacled Stephen Colbert projecting from his diaphragm. They want some laughs.

Speaker 13 They want some stuff to go down easy and they want to be lulled to sleep. He's not the guy.

Speaker 12 No, here's a sample of what his show looked like in recent months. And this, this, I would submit to you, is why Stephen Colbert's show is no more.

Speaker 14 Said-5. What's going on in L.A.

Speaker 14 reminds us that as citizens, it is crucial to speak out against Trump's fascist impulses, his rampant corruption, and his egregious violations of our norms and our laws.

Speaker 14 The last time a president bypassed a governor to send in the National Guard was 1965 when LBJ used troops to protect civil rights demonstrators in Alabama. So we've come full circle.

Speaker 14 Troops were deployed to protect protesters by Lyndon B. Johnson, and now they're being used to threaten protesters by Donald B.
Dick.

Speaker 14 And today we learned that U.S. intelligence has determined Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed, and their centrifuges are largely intact.

Speaker 14 Oops and ookie.

Speaker 14 So less Operation Midnight Hammer and more Operation MC Hammer.

Speaker 12 Oh my God, so so dumb. Maureen is right.
That is a team. He must have done it.
It's a terrible joke.

Speaker 13 $100 million to produce that? Are you kidding me?

Speaker 13 He should take a meeting over at MSNBC and see if he can get Jen Saki's failing slot. You know, that seems like more the natural environment for him.

Speaker 12 That's what he wants. He doesn't want laughs.
He wants applause for political hit pieces, which he really loves to do. So great.

Speaker 12 Why don't we just acknowledge that and stop pretending he's a comedian who is in the business of being funny? He isn't. And then he puts on politicians.
He doesn't cross-examine them in any way.

Speaker 12 You know, he doesn't hold his own or hold his salt against people like Kamala Harris by bringing up things that are diametrically opposed to what he's being told. So I don't know.

Speaker 12 I mean, so he will fit in perfectly on MS, by the way.

Speaker 12 I mentioned that the left is freaking out. You, not just like the normal left.
I'm talking about like

Speaker 12 political people are weighing in. Elizabeth Warren's having a meltdown.

Speaker 12 Stacey Abrams having a meltdown right now on X because they think this was punishment for I mentioned this bit where he ripped down the Paramount settlement with Trump. Here he was on Monday, SAT 1.

Speaker 14 While I was on vacation, my parent corporation, Paramount, paid Donald Trump a $16 million settlement over his 60-minutes lawsuit.

Speaker 14 Now, I believe that this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It's Big Fat Bribe because

Speaker 14 this all comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance.

Speaker 14 Not the music I was expecting? Okay,

Speaker 14 that was me dancing in the sky.

Speaker 14 And some of the TV typers out there are blogging that once Skydance gets CBS, the new owner's desire to please Trump could put pressure on late-night host and frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert.

Speaker 12 Okay, okay.

Speaker 14 But how are they going to put pressure on Stephen Colbert

Speaker 14 if they can't find him?

Speaker 14 Oh my God.

Speaker 12 It's not funny. It's not clever.

Speaker 13 It also just goes to the sheer hubris. Like he thinks he's bigger.
than his bosses.

Speaker 13 He thinks he's bigger than CBS and Paramount and this merger that they've been trying to make happen forever with Skydance and they're going to get it done.

Speaker 13 It seems like they are determined to get this done. And he goes on there and he's like, look at me.
I'm such a rebel. You can't silence me.
You won't find me.

Speaker 13 Again, like, who is he serving other than the ego of Stephen Colbert? And I'm so glad he brought up that Kamala interview too. Sorry.

Speaker 13 But like, remember, she went on, it was like days before the election, maybe a week. And you could see him having the realization in real time, this woman's a moron.

Speaker 13 I can't get her to complete a thought. He was trying to

Speaker 13 spoon feed her, you know, some rhetoric and she wouldn't take it. She wouldn't take it.

Speaker 12 She was doing some of her fake accents at the time. He was probably taken aback by who he was dealing with.
Is Jamaican Kamala here? Is it Latina Kamala? We have no idea.

Speaker 12 No, he was trying to get her to like back off of what she said on the view about not disowning any of Joe Biden's positions. And she wouldn't take the bait.
It was just, look, he's a terrible man.

Speaker 12 I really think he's just not a good guy.

Speaker 12 I mean, he completely took that show, which was a great sort of platform in nighttime television and the Ed Sullivan Theater, and completely drove it into the ground.

Speaker 12 He had originally been at Comedy Central where he was more comedy. And when he moved over to CBS, he decided to be more pundit.
He desperately wanted to be Keith Olbermann. And guess what?

Speaker 12 Keith Olberman is a failure. And now, so are you, Stephen Colbert.
And they were paying him $15 million

Speaker 12 a year for that nonsense that we just witnessed, for him to dance around with vaccine needles during the COVID pandemic, which we all knew was controversial, but no, the left had decided that they were some sort of Eucharist.

Speaker 12 And for $15 million a year on a show that's losing $40 million a year, he had to see the writing on the wall.

Speaker 12 In fact, you could make a good argument that he went out there on that Monday and did that so he would have something to point back to as why he got fired when he knew all along his ratings were totally shitty and he didn't know how to book for late night.

Speaker 12 His guest, the last night he was on, Maureen, this is late night television. You get a Tom Cruise, right? You get The Rock.
You get Julia Roberts or Sidney Sweeney. That is how you do late night TV.

Speaker 12 Look who he led with

Speaker 12 his last night on the air. Watch.

Speaker 15 Ever since I led his first impeachment, he's threatened me with jail and prosecution, called me a traitor, accused me of treason, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 15 He coerced Republicans into censuring me in the House, and now the latest attack on me. So I just want to direct this, if this is the right camera, or maybe that's the right camera.

Speaker 11 That's the right camera up there.

Speaker 12 Donald, piss off.

Speaker 12 I'm

Speaker 12 notarizing that all the way.

Speaker 12 But I, wait, yes.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 15 But Donald, before you piss off, would you release the Epstein files?

Speaker 12 Amazing that didn't work.

Speaker 13 Such secondhand embarrassment watching that for everyone involved, but especially these milquetoast guys who try to like sound so cool and edgy and telling the sitting president of the United States.

Speaker 13 Imagine if anyone on the right had done that on the on late night when Obama was president.

Speaker 12 I mean,

Speaker 13 the outrage we'd be hearing, you know, that kind of rhetoric.

Speaker 13 Adam Schiff, I mean, I guarantee you, like, most people who are schlepping their way through an airport or a hospital waiting room would be like, who's that guy again? Who's that guy? Who's that guy?

Speaker 13 That's like a Sunday morning show guest, you know, like a meet the press or something. It's not a late night, sizzly, exciting, sexy guest.
Oh, and the the other great thing I meant to, he what?

Speaker 12 He was the lead. It's one thing if you put him on third, you know, in a longer lineup where you have an actual star leading it.
People that want to tune in to see the lead guest is Adam Schiff.

Speaker 12 That's just a nightmare. It's like.

Speaker 13 Oh, my God. The other great thing I just read before.

Speaker 13 Before the show was that apparently Stephen Colbert was informed by his bosses that he was getting the axe just the night before.

Speaker 13 And that to me sounds like a real humiliation. And And that to me sounds like those bosses wanted to really stick it to him because they'd had it with him and his attitude.

Speaker 13 I would bet behind the scenes, he is a nightmare monster. I would bet.

Speaker 12 Yeah, oh, here he is actually speaking to that in SOT 2, where he announced on Thursday night's program that the show had been canceled. Watch.

Speaker 14 Before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season.
The network will be ending the late show in May.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 5 yeah, I share your feelings.

Speaker 14 It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of the late show on CBS. I'm not being replaced.
This is all just going away.

Speaker 12 That's how bad you were.

Speaker 14 I do want to say,

Speaker 14 I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners. I'm so grateful to the Tiffany Network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home.

Speaker 12 And of course, I'm grateful to you, the audience, who have joined us.

Speaker 12 Okay, let me tell you something, Maureen. His numbers were 2.42 million viewers in the overall.

Speaker 12 And that put him slightly ahead of Jimmy Kimmel, who is at 1.77. And the tonight show was in third at 1.19 million.

Speaker 12 Jimmy, I mean, yeah, Jimmy Fallon has

Speaker 12 viewers. I mean, my God, I can't believe he's drawing a million.
Guaranteed, he's going to be fired. Those numbers are not sustainable because all these shows cost close to $100 million.

Speaker 12 They are not cheap to produce. There's zero chance that lasts.
But then you look at the 18 to 49 demo where Kimmel was now beating Colbert. It was close.
He was at 220,000, but that's a pittance.

Speaker 12 220,000 in the 18 to 49-year-old demo. And Colbert had 219,000.
Fallon bringing up a distant rear at 157,000.

Speaker 12 And let me just tell you what Greg Guttfeld is getting over on Fox, where if the budget for that show is 10 million, it's a lot,

Speaker 12 excluding Greg's salary, which I'm going to guess is better than that. But in any event, 3.29 million, Greg Guttfeld gets 3.29 million.
Any of these other guys would beg for 3.29 million.

Speaker 12 And in the 18 to 49-year-old demo, an average of 238,000, higher than all of them for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 12 Because yes, Greg gets political, but he never forgets the number one rule is to make people laugh.

Speaker 13 Exactly. You know, the interesting thing about Fallon having the lowest ratings is that he's the most apolitical of them all.

Speaker 13 You know, if anything, his show is just watching him, you know, kiss ass for the all of his, I mean, that's also also really embarrassing and difficult to watch it's really beautiful and then he plays these idiotic games with them and it's just it's it the whole thing it just feels old it feels philosophically spiritually uh contextually for the modern age we're in it just feels old all of these guys they're just whistling past their own graveyards it's a matter of time

Speaker 12 before they all get pulled

Speaker 12 That's so exactly right. I've watched some Kimmel.
I mean, sorry, I don't watch Kimmel. I can't stand him.

Speaker 12 The best thing I can say about Jimmy Kimmel is that he's friends with Adam Carolla, who's a truly decent, honorable, great guy. But

Speaker 12 Kimmel doesn't strike me that way. But Fallon is not a bad guy.
Fallon is a sweetheart. But Fallon's shtick is completely empty and has lost all sense of entertainment.

Speaker 12 I take him out of the three of them any day of the week. But Fallon's programming, forgive me, it's not smart.
In no way is it intellectually engaging.

Speaker 12 And while he used to be genuinely funny, like when he first got on, I think he was hungrier or something. Maybe he had better writers.
I don't know. But now it just seems completely phoned in.

Speaker 12 He's not that funny in the moment. He's not, I hate to say it because I really think he's a sweet guy.
And I knew him at NBC a bit.

Speaker 12 And he was one of the highlights there because he's not a bad guy, unlike Kimmel and certainly unlike Colbert. But that doesn't work.
And you mentioned Oprah. It really is the same thing.

Speaker 12 In the same way, these guys are doing the same thing they were doing 15 years ago and it's just not working anymore.

Speaker 12 She's still out there thinking she's just as relevant as she was in 1994 trying to like think she she thinks she can drive a presidential election.

Speaker 12 You know, she thinks she's the answer to Kamala Harris's problems.

Speaker 12 She still thinks she's going to be the one who does like the big sit-down on this, that, the other thing, Ozempe, whatever it is, and she'll be the leader of the national.

Speaker 12 No one gives two shits what Oprah thinks about anything anymore.

Speaker 13 They don't. And in fact, Oprah has completely destroyed her own branch through her own making.
Over at the nerve, we're like dedicated to hitting her good and hard, at least once a month.

Speaker 13 She deserves it.

Speaker 12 But

Speaker 12 thank you.

Speaker 13 But, you know, did you, I don't know if you happen to see this photo for, I mean, it says everything. To me, I was like, these are the three horsewomen of the apocalypse.
We've got Gail,

Speaker 13 who was last seen tying Oprah's shoelaces, literally, at the Bezo Sanchez wedding.

Speaker 13 Amazing photo. Background took it.
So Gail

Speaker 13 in the center, and Oprah's on the right, and in the center is one Chris Jenner, and they are modeling $228 designer caftans, a collaboration, I believe, between Roberto Cavalli and Skims, Kim K's brand, Chris's.

Speaker 13 So, this is what they're spending their cultural currency on, you know, hanging around the likes of Chris Jenner and going into space with Lauren Sanchez and just befouling Venice at that obscenity of a wedding.

Speaker 13 And then Oprah's going to turn around and come back to the United States and tell us how to live our lives, our best lives, and how to be, you know, arbiters of moral rectitude. I mean, f off.

Speaker 12 And then her failure of a friend, Gail. Like, Gail is obviously in the host position at CBS News in the morning because she's Oprah's best friend.
Everybody knows that.

Speaker 12 Nobody knows what Gail has accomplished on her own. She was a newswoman in Baltimore when Oprah was, and they became best friends lifelong.

Speaker 12 And that's why you see her at the Jeff Bezos wedding because she's Oprah's plus one. You never see Stedman.
It's always Gail, Gail, Gail, Gail, who gloms onto Oprah's coattails and gets herself on the

Speaker 12 David Geffen yacht and has used that to sort of get access to celebrities and celebrity interviews so that she can have a career. Now, Gail

Speaker 12 is just as, I mean, she's a, she's a star effer. That's what Gail is.
That's why she said yes to go to Lauren Sanchez's wedding. They don't know Lauren Sanchez.

Speaker 12 Neither one of them knows Lauren Sanchez. She got invited to go up in Blue Origin, undoubtedly because they thought that would lead CBS News to cover it.

Speaker 12 Gail, as we all know, I mean, those of us who have been in particular know, she humiliated herself. She insisted people start calling her an astronaut and acknowledge how inspirational she was.

Speaker 12 And she's circling the drain now, too, in the ratings over at CBS. So CBS has got a lot of problems up and down its lineup, as you point out.
Colbert, chief among them.

Speaker 12 And if they really want any sort of a future in the very limited time there is left for broadcast broadcast TV, then they really will have to change their approach across the board.

Speaker 13 They will. I hope that the Colbert firing augers the inevitable and hopefully undistinguished, embarrassing firing of Gail King.

Speaker 13 I mean, to your point about Stedman, I think it's time to do a wellness check on Stedman. I think it's possible that Gail and Oprah have buried the body.
on the estate in Montecito.

Speaker 13 We have not seen him in months. It's kind of like David Miscovidge, you know, the head of Scientology.
Like,

Speaker 13 where's Sherry? Where's Shelly? Nobody's seen the Shelly. Nobody's seen the wife in like 15 years.

Speaker 12 Yeah. It's true.
Shelly's with Stedman. We don't know where.

Speaker 12 All right, now we have a couple of minutes before the break. Let me try to squeeze this in because I do want to get to Barbara when we come back.

Speaker 12 You did you see the Kiss Cam disaster at the Cold Play concert?

Speaker 13 As I said to your producer, Steve, it's the most interesting thing Cold Play has ever done.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 noted.

Speaker 12 So it turns out, okay, this is the head of this company called Astronomer, which I guess is an AI company, with the head of his HR, oh, the irony, clearly having what looks like an affair and caught on the Kiss Cam inadvertently at the Cold Play concert.

Speaker 12 I didn't realize the reason it went viral is because one of the Cold Play fans was filming the Kiss Cam moment and put it out on her social media. And it caught on.

Speaker 12 Like, so it was really a civilian who wound up drawing all this attention to them. And reportedly, this guy is not well liked at his own company.
There's a former employee who's out there online.

Speaker 12 He could be disgruntled.

Speaker 12 We don't know the circumstances under which he left, but he says his chat chain with all the employees at Astronomer, they're laughing their asses off, enjoying what's happening to this CEO whose wife has reportedly now dropped her married name on her Facebook page and left comments open.

Speaker 12 And seems like she understands exactly what we understood, taking a look at those two. Why is this so viral?

Speaker 13 I wonder if it just taps into, you know, this sort of fear. Like we live, we live in a surveillance state, you know, so we really do.

Speaker 13 And that any one of us at any given time could be caught doing something either impolitic or morally dubious, and the world suddenly knows about it.

Speaker 13 And, you know, there's a great author named John Ronson who wrote a book about this.

Speaker 13 There was a, there was like, do you remember the publicist from New York who tweeted out before she boarded a flight, I'm going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS. And then she turned her phone off.

Speaker 13 And when she landed in Africa, she had been canceled and lost her job and her life was over.

Speaker 13 And I think that this is that writ large kind of, you know, but you're on the kiss cam. and your marriage is just blown up and your job is over and life is over, you know?

Speaker 12 It's like, it's that. You're right.
It's surveillance state. And it's also just like everyone's nightmare about their spouse.

Speaker 12 You know, it's like right there in full technicolor in front of you, unsuspecting, but like very PDA. You know, it's like, that's how everybody's commenting.

Speaker 12 Like, if you're going to have an affair, why, why would you go to the Cold Play concert? Like, an affair is for a hotel room late at night in like dark corners. It's not at the Cold Play concert.

Speaker 12 By the way, there is a statement circulating online that people are saying is his. Our information is it's fake.
So we're not going to report it or go there.

Speaker 12 But yeah, affairs, I mean, by definition, are sort of meant to be hidden. And the boldness of this guy, and yet still the shame when caught.

Speaker 13 I don't even think it was shame. I think it was, oh, shh, like, oh, oh, oh, like, there's no getting around this.
There's no lie I can tell. Like, you can't lie your way out of video.

Speaker 13 You can't, you know, it's, it's right there in real time. And they both knew their lives in that moment had blown up.

Speaker 13 And I think for everyone who has ever worked for or is still in corporate America, just the deliciousness of this happening to an HR exec is like unparalleled.

Speaker 12 It's true. We all hate HR.
It's why we don't have HR here at the Megan Kelly Show.

Speaker 12 But yeah, the nerve of this woman to come in. You know, you look back, I have to say it like his,

Speaker 12 oh, God, do I have it here? Do I have time? I know we're up against the clock. So when he hired her, they put out like a press release.

Speaker 12 And I have to tell you, maybe I'm crazy, but the like words that were used to celebrate her arrival at the firm were kind of weird. I'm just going to say they jumped out at me.

Speaker 12 He was like, she's exceptional, deep expertise,

Speaker 12 such employee engagement. She's got passion for fostering diverse collaborative workplaces.
Certainly does look collaborative. She's a perfect fit.
for astronomer.

Speaker 12 I don't, maybe I'm just a pervert, but as I read it, he's like, she's a perfect fit. She's energized.
She has passion and engagement, deep expertise, exceptional.

Speaker 12 I'm like, he was telling us something and we just had to read what he said to astronomers. He hired her.
My question as the wife would be, when did it start?

Speaker 12 And also as the person who lost out on the top HR job, when did it start? Did it happen before you brought her in for the top job here or after? Because she hasn't been there very long.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 13 And, you know, the other thing that's really refreshing about this story is seeing the wife immediately drop the husband's surname and leave her comments on and make it very clear that there is no path back.

Speaker 13 There is no sort of, you know, we live in this world of like my truth and like my version and like it's not, you know, and she, she, she saw what she saw and she's like, that's it.

Speaker 13 And if you look at the wife, she's much more attractive than the affair partner.

Speaker 12 Just saying. She's very attractive and she's the mother of his two children.
Back

Speaker 12 right away. Maureen's with us for the full show.
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Speaker 12 All right, let's go on Barbara Walters. Let's do this thing.
There is a new documentary out on Hulu

Speaker 12 about Barbara. And it is called Tell Me Everything.
Barbara Walters, Tell Me Everything. Here is the trailer.

Speaker 12 Are you sorry you didn't burn the tapes? Did you ever order anyone killed? No. Please do not interrupt me.
I don't care if I'm shiny.

Speaker 13 I care more about this interview.

Speaker 11 Whether it was her looks or her voice, just the fact that she was a woman, there were people that just didn't believe in her.

Speaker 16 And she loved proving them wrong.

Speaker 12 Okay, let's go. Her job was the love of her life.
But are you afraid of sharing emotions?

Speaker 17 There's certain things I just don't enjoy sharing.

Speaker 12 What's there to know? That would drive me nuts, and I would drive you crazy because I would be saying, but you know.

Speaker 17 Well, we could try it and see if it worked out.

Speaker 12 I think we'll stop and reload.

Speaker 8 Right now, ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you one of America's top news correspondents whose provocative interviews have riveted television viewers. Would you welcome Barbara Walters?

Speaker 12 Okay, first of all, they stole that song from Bombshell, which is a movie I'm familiar with.

Speaker 13 Really?

Speaker 12 Yes. So that was not the greatest choice.
But second of all, okay, the reason I really want to get into this is because I heard you talk about Barbara Walters in this show on your show,

Speaker 12 and I agreed with everything you said. And I want to talk about that.
But I also want to talk about like the full picture of this woman because

Speaker 12 she's a very interesting figure in our culture was but her legacy remains and it's very complex in some ways and it's

Speaker 12 like this is a person who i admired in some ways and whom i'll be honest i judged in some other harsh ways who i know some things about behind the scenes that i'll share with you today

Speaker 12 and whose decision making I think was understandable, but very controversial, very controversial, especially when you look at it through a 2025 lens and all we've learned about the choices women make.

Speaker 12 So, anyway, that's where I'm coming in on this.

Speaker 12 But let's kick it off with where you were on your show, and you were spot on talking about how when you look back through a 2025 lens at the questions that really made Barbara Walters a star, in part, it was these questions that she would ask that nobody else would ask, you realize she was kind of an asshole.

Speaker 12 The questions were very nasty all the time. Like often she said it with a smile and sort of the velvet glove, but they weren't nice.
You called attention to this one. I'll play it here.

Speaker 12 It's her with Bette Midler, SOT 32.

Speaker 12 What do you think of the way you look? Yellow gray. No, no kidding.
Why do I say no kidding? Yeah. Hey,

Speaker 12 because hey, hey, get out of here.

Speaker 12 Yeah. Because everything that I've read about you, you always talk about how when you were a kid, you thought you were so ugly.
Right. You really think you're just...
I think I was great.

Speaker 12 Just a point, just a plea for sympathy. So you should always get the crowd on your side.
You know. You think you're sexy? On the scale of one to ten.
What are you?

Speaker 12 What am I? On a scale of one to ten?

Speaker 12 Oh, I think I'm about a 55. I don't know.
I think I'm a happening girl.

Speaker 12 I mean,

Speaker 12 good for Bette for laughing it off and handling it very well. I have to say, you got to give her a tab at the tip of the hat, but wow.

Speaker 13 It's so mean. And you see this as a threat.
I mean, I'm so happy we're talking about this.

Speaker 13 I really was dying to talk to you about it because she, as you said, she, it's so complicated because I too grew up watching Barbara Walters and those prime time celebrity and political interviews she did.

Speaker 13 You know, I'm looking at her like it was her and Mary Tyler Moore, you know, like I could do this someday if she could do it, you know, and

Speaker 13 you see when you when you watch these back, the threat, the dark thread of cruelty and meanness, it's especially directed at women she's interviewing who you sense she is deeply envious of for one reason or another.

Speaker 13 She did the same thing to Elizabeth Taylor. It's in the documentary, one of the greatest beauties of

Speaker 13 the 20th century. And she

Speaker 13 is when Liz was very vulnerable.

Speaker 12 We have it. And 1977,

Speaker 12 SAT 35. You take it on the back end.

Speaker 12 Are you worried about putting on weight? No. Oh, yeah.
Does it matter to you? No, it doesn't.

Speaker 13 Because I'm so happy and I enjoy eating.

Speaker 12 I like to cook.

Speaker 13 And I enjoy eating.

Speaker 18 And you wouldn't care if you got fat.

Speaker 12 I am fat. Now.

Speaker 12 God, yeah. I didn't want to.
I can hardly get into any of my.

Speaker 12 I didn't want to say it.

Speaker 13 Yeah, she did. She did.
And I love Liz for that. I love Liz Taylor for so many reasons, but she was one of the most vulnerable raw celebrities, public figures.

Speaker 13 She would cop to so much. She really went through it.
And she was the first real voice out there when AIDS exploded.

Speaker 13 She was the first celebrity with the guts to say, you know, let's not stigmatize gay men. You know, this this is bullshit.

Speaker 12 Anyway,

Speaker 13 Barbara did it again to Liz, who's sitting there with the senator John Warner, who Liz dated, but who Barbara dated before Liz married him, and then who Barbara went back to after Liz divorced him.

Speaker 13 So there's all this kind of real psychological darkness.

Speaker 13 And what I, I wish I had touched on the interview she did with Dolly Parton, again, one of the most beloved women in America, a great beauty, at the height of her beauty, youth, power.

Speaker 13 She says to Dolly,

Speaker 13 you know, where I come from, Dolly, we would call people like you and your family hillbillies.

Speaker 13 What do you have to say to that?

Speaker 12 That's right. I'm not sure if she's a little bit of a drama.
She handles her like a pro.

Speaker 13 You know, she handles her like a pro. And she said,

Speaker 13 We have a lot of pride.

Speaker 13 I'm sorry.

Speaker 12 No, no, we have

Speaker 12 a little montage of some of her more controversial questions and exchanges. I think that's in there.
Let's watch it. Sop 30.

Speaker 12 What do you think of the way you look? Do you think you're sexy? I know I'm sexy, but on the scale of one to ten. What do you? Brooke, what are your measurements?

Speaker 12 Do you have any secrets from your mother? Dolly,

Speaker 12 where I come from, would I have called you a hillbilly? Is it all you?

Speaker 12 No. Did you think you were good looking? No.

Speaker 12 Why didn't you have your nose fixed? Everybody must have said to you, have your nose fixed. How did you know it was going to be right? Are you happy with your wife?

Speaker 12 Martha, why do so many people hate you?

Speaker 13 Each and every one of us has people that love us and people that hate us.

Speaker 12 No, not everybody has people who hate them.

Speaker 12 You know, you could stop these rumors. You could say, as many artists have,

Speaker 12 yes, I am gay. Or you could say, no, I'm not.

Speaker 12 Or you could leave it as you are, ambiguous. A little overweight.
More than a little. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Why?

Speaker 12 Do you try to diet? There are people who say that you couldn't be president because you're so heavy. I know you don't want to talk about guys and I won't push it, but.

Speaker 12 How are you going to find anybody? You don't really act. You don't sing.
You don't dance. You don't have any, forgive me, any talent.

Speaker 12 Okay. Sorry, but that was the Kardashians.

Speaker 12 I'll give her that last one.

Speaker 12 But you are sensing a theme.

Speaker 13 You are sensing a theme. And it's a very, it's a,

Speaker 13 it's amazing how she got away with that. And it's amazing the celebrities who sort of, you know, because she had this MO, she would ramp up to it.

Speaker 13 You know, it was all softballs and we're just having drinks. It's the girls chatting, chatting, chatting.
And then bam, she whams you. You don't think you're ugly?

Speaker 13 An original talent like Bette Midler, who probably heard it from a million casting executives, like, you know, these, or Barbara Streisand, you know why she didn't want to fix her nose, Barbara?

Speaker 13 Because she had a one-in-a-generation voice and she probably didn't want to mess with it. She didn't want to risk losing her gift.
Are you kidding?

Speaker 13 She would never have survived in the social media age where just people will not have it. She would have gotten it from the rest of us for being so, so darn mean.

Speaker 12 Yeah. I mean, it was what, ironically, it was one of the things we all kind of liked about her interviews because you didn't know where they were going to go.

Speaker 12 She would ask the forbidden question and you were like,

Speaker 12 and then you watched it. And sometimes it led to gold.
I mean,

Speaker 12 I don't take it with a grain of salt the way I'm saying it, but I'm going to show you an interview where

Speaker 12 her willingness to ask the impertinent question really unearthed something big that turned into a huge story. And it was when she sat down with Mike Tyson and his then-wife, Robin Given.

Speaker 12 Here's a little bit of that, Givens.

Speaker 12 34.

Speaker 12 Does he hit you?

Speaker 12 He shakes, he pushes, he

Speaker 12 swings.

Speaker 12 Sometimes I think he's trying to scare me.

Speaker 12 There are times when, or there were times that it happened when I thought I could handle it, you know.

Speaker 12 And just recently, I've become afraid. I mean, very, very much afraid.
I wanted to do this interview with the two of you together.

Speaker 12 I could have talked to Robin outside and you outside, but I wanted you to hear this because I wanted people to understand.

Speaker 12 And you're sitting here and listening to this. This is a situation in which I'm dealing with my illness.

Speaker 12 So it's like her powers

Speaker 12 could be used for good, you know, like just that willingness to go anywhere and be sort of fearless in asking these questions. It was part of a more complete package that worked on television.

Speaker 13 It did. You know, I was reminded by somebody

Speaker 13 because I remember that interview so vividly. It made, of course, it made tons of headlines.
This was long before Tyson was arrested, tried, and convicted of rape.

Speaker 12 That

Speaker 13 in the aftermath of that interview, the person who was really vilified was Robin Givens. Yeah.
It was Robin Givens who caught a lot of flack for like, how dare you try to imply that this

Speaker 13 poor guy from, you know, an underprivileged background who clawed his way out and is a prize fighter, but maybe not as smart as you, how dare you try to destroy his reputation with these baseless claims that, you know, she really walked right up to saying, he beats me.

Speaker 13 He beats me. And again, like, there's so much of that.
The way it would play out today would be completely different.

Speaker 13 You know, Barbara, I believe, just left with her camera crew. And that night, apparently,

Speaker 13 Givens called 911 because, of course, Tyson was infuriated. by that line of questioning.

Speaker 13 So there's so much about it that's just so fascinating to look back and think, you know, where she went right in the culture and what she gave us and where she went so, so very wrong.

Speaker 12 They talk about how, like, the thing about Barbara that I respected and I knew her a bit was she came up 100% in a man's world.

Speaker 12 It was a male-dominated industry, news entirely, and they did not want her. You know, she started off as a lighter features reporter on the Today Show where she'd been a writer.

Speaker 12 And she was a good writer. And so they gave her a chance on camera.
And she, they point out in the documentary, they weren't hiring women who she says look like me. That's what she says at that time.

Speaker 12 They wanted models. You know, that's what the Today Show was doing at that time.
But Barbara didn't look like a model.

Speaker 12 And she got on because she could write and she was scrappy and she was willing to do the job. And then she started proving herself.
And she definitely had talent in front of a lens.

Speaker 12 as she worked her way up and became a star. I mean, it was, it was like sheer star power because she was talented and she worked hard and made a name for herself at a time when it was very hard to do.

Speaker 12 She was resented, you know, and they put her into the evening news slot and her co-host hated her, hated her guts when she left the NBC, the Today Show, and went over to ABC.

Speaker 12 And she thought it was the opportunity of a lifetime. It wasn't.
She said it was the most unhappy period of her life because her co-host, I'm forgetting his name right now,

Speaker 12 couldn't stand her and treated her absolutely terribly. And the entire staff hated her because they were more with him.

Speaker 12 And a woman in the evening news slot was unthinkable to anybody, even though everybody in the country loved Barbara Walters until they put her in that slot, which was for men, not for her.

Speaker 12 And then ABC got smart and kind of catapulted her to these specials and to 2020 with Hugh Downs.

Speaker 12 And that's where she really sort of got into the sweet spot of what she could do, you know, like great interviewing, great gets.

Speaker 12 But the thing about Barbara Walters that I just have never been able to get past, having read her autobiography, audition, when it first came out, I think it was 2007 or 8,

Speaker 12 is that it was all she had.

Speaker 12 The news, her pursuit of stardom,

Speaker 12 and those who knew her, and they say this in the documentary, money, power, that was it. That was all she had.
Yes, she had a daughter with whom she did not have a good relationship.

Speaker 12 And her quotes about her daughter, both in this documentary, where they clearly got her, obviously, on tape before she passed. This is her daughter Jackie, who she named after her sister Jackie,

Speaker 12 are really kind of devastating. She clearly didn't get along with her.
I don't think she had much use for her. I don't think she did a lot of mothering of her.

Speaker 12 And she came from sort of a messed up family. She had her older sister, who she talks about hating because she was special needs.
And frankly, it was a,

Speaker 12 I mean, it's kind of a courageous admission for her to say, I hated that she was special needs because it kind of ruined my life, my childhood in a way.

Speaker 12 And then her father had, he made and lost several fortunes, she wrote in her book. He basically was running something that looked like Ziegfield Follies.
He started it in Boston.

Speaker 12 It was very, very popular. He brought it to Times Square and elsewhere, and it really took off the dancers and the feathers.
And she grew up seeing all these celebrities behind the scenes.

Speaker 12 And that's how she got comfortable with them and realized they're just like everybody else. I'm not intimidated by them.

Speaker 12 They've got interesting stories to tell and you shouldn't put them up in a pedestal.

Speaker 12 But her father lost fortunes, got in trouble with the law, and she had to work to help support the family, which she also resented. She also says she doesn't know if her mother ever loved her father.

Speaker 12 So that's the home she came from and the home she created, where she had, I think, three husbands.

Speaker 12 and one adopted daughter who she never spent time with, who went to a special like home for kids or like school for troubled kids. And I'm going to elaborate on this in a moment.

Speaker 12 But to me, that's the real tragedy, Maureen, because I think if you look at Oprah and Barbara,

Speaker 12 in this regard, I have to give it to Oprah, who I think realized

Speaker 12 she would not have been a good mother. She could not be a mother to children.

Speaker 12 And instead, and she talks about having followed Barbara's lead, like to just go full born in the journalism industry instead. The difference is Barbara did have a child.

Speaker 12 She adopted a little girl and from all accounts completely neglected her entirely. And that's what's so sad.

Speaker 12 When she died, all the tributes poured in and people who hadn't read her memoir or didn't know that much about her

Speaker 12 just kept praising what a wonderful journalist she was. And all I could think as both the journalist and my mom myself was, it's only half the story.
It's only half the story.

Speaker 12 And it's okay to talk about the other half. I think Barbara Walters would be okay with talking about

Speaker 12 the most important thing she ever undertook in her life, she completely failed at.

Speaker 13 You know, Megan,

Speaker 13 this is such a great point. And I was really horrified by the way she would talk about her daughter.
She would talk about her often on the view,

Speaker 13 the way she would allow the story to be framed in the mainstream media.

Speaker 13 It would be, how interesting would it have been to interview Barbara Walters in 2025 and ask her the tough questions, the uncomfortable questions that she was so willing to ask other famous women, such as, Do you think you were a good mother?

Speaker 13 Do you think you did all you could to be there for your daughter as she navigated not just growing up as an adopted child, which is in itself a trauma? It's a very little discussed one in the culture.

Speaker 13 But you come to a home knowing that your birth parents, your birth mother at least, has given you away.

Speaker 13 That is a deep abiding trauma.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 Barbara, I theorize, felt like this was the done thing. You were a woman.
You had a kid. She adopted a kid.
She left that child with the governess. Cynthia McFadden helpfully tells us, by the way,

Speaker 13 this documentary has not one true friend of Barbara Walters in it because I don't think she had. a single true friend.
I think she was so laser focused on becoming famous.

Speaker 13 And I think it's all wrapped up in this Freudian notion of her father who was probably cheating on her mother with these beautiful showgirls and preferred to be in nightclubs with celebrities rather at home with his own children.

Speaker 13 And when she would get on the view,

Speaker 13 she would name drop like crazy while saying she didn't care about celebrities. And, you know, I noted that

Speaker 13 So there were two things she would always do on the view. One is she would talk about how every year she shared a birthday with Michael.

Speaker 13 I mean, every year, of course, they would go to dinner because she, Michael Douglas, and Catherine Zeta Joan, his wife, all shared the same birthday.

Speaker 13 Those two are nowhere to be seen in this documentary, nor is her daughter, Jackie, who every summer, the hosts of the view would sit around and talk about their summer plans.

Speaker 13 And then they would say to Barbara, oh, Barbara, are you going to see Jackie this summer? And Barbara would always say, well, you know, Jackie's very, very busy. and I don't want to be in position.

Speaker 13 So of course, if she has the time, you know, her daughter clearly wanted nothing to do with her. Barbara sent her packing.

Speaker 13 Her daughter developed a drug dependency, which makes total sense because this poor kid is left to fend for herself while her mother is out chasing celebrities and exclusives.

Speaker 13 And she's lonely and she feels unloved and she self-medicates. And then Barbara sends her packing to one of those homes for like emotionally troubled youth.

Speaker 13 And we all know what goes on in a lot of those homes. And then Barbara goes to the media and she says, Poor me, poor me with a drug-addicted daughter.
How am I supposed to abide this?

Speaker 13 I've done everything. You know, it was just so disgusting.
And it just sort of went to this notion that, like, it was a hollow person inside.

Speaker 13 It was an underdeveloped, hollow person inside who prioritized all of the wrong things and who could only really see the world and even her very troubled,

Speaker 13 dying for parental love daughter through the lens of her own ultimate narcissism.

Speaker 12 Yes, yes, because she writes in the book about how Jackie, the daughter, wound up at this school for troubled youth. And she seems in her book to be mystified about how this happened.

Speaker 12 Like, I don't understand. I did everything I could.
You know, when I, when she started showing behavioral problems, I did everything I could. No, you didn't.
You didn't. You were with Fidel Castro.

Speaker 12 You were with Clint Eastwood. You were with Tom Cruise.
You were with

Speaker 12 Taylor Swift. Like that's,

Speaker 12 when you have a troubled child, you have to step away from, you know, it's a balancing ad for every working mom. And most of the working moms out there are working because they must.

Speaker 12 There's some collection that do it because they love their work. I happen to count myself, thankfully, among them.
But there are vast more people who do it because they have to.

Speaker 12 It's a tough economy and they need a two-figure salary. And some women don't even have a partner and they have to support their children.
So they have to work.

Speaker 12 But then when the shit hits the fan with your kid, you have no choice but to spend more time with them.

Speaker 12 And it was the thing she didn't do. There's this quote I've mentioned on this show before from her book.
I pulled it for today.

Speaker 12 She's talking about her daughter. Well, she's all over the world flitting about doing these interviews.
I telephoned whenever I could.

Speaker 12 told Jackie I missed her and loved her dearly, and asked Zelle, the nanny, to turn on the Today Show before before Jackie went off to nursery school so she could see her mommy in the strange land called China.

Speaker 12 Then I hung up the phone, felt even lonelier, and went back to work.

Speaker 12 Now,

Speaker 12 that I think is real, her putting the daughter in front of the television to spend time with mom while she's away. What I don't really think is real is that she felt bad about it.

Speaker 12 I don't think Barbara did feel bad about it. And I'll tell you why.
And this is not going to appear in the documentary.

Speaker 12 Someone I know, this is a first-hand account, told me that on the view, they used to make a big deal out of Barbara's birthdays every year.

Speaker 12 And one year, they had a big birthday party. I believe this was on the air.
I haven't gone back to check this, but I have no reason to doubt it.

Speaker 12 They had a big birthday party, yay, yay, yay, you turned whatever it was. And they wheeled out a big cake.
And in the cake, surprise, was her daughter.

Speaker 12 And on the air, I guess, you know, she was, she played it off, of course, like, oh, my daughter, wow, wow, wow.

Speaker 12 And this person told me after the show, she was livid with the producers and scolded them to high heaven for bringing her daughter in without asking her because she had plans that weekend.

Speaker 12 and she did not want to have to deal with her pain in the ass daughter suddenly there and and wanting to spend time with her.

Speaker 12 I know that this is, this was told to me by somebody who was there. And again, who I had total trust in.
And I've never been able to look at her the same. And when she died,

Speaker 12 there were all the tributes, Maureen, about what a wonderful journalist she was, how like she was a pioneer for women. You know, she did, she paved the path.
And I

Speaker 12 acknowledge that I am somebody in some ways she paved the path for.

Speaker 12 But I have this other knowledge of her that I find deeply disturbing. And now that we're coming to grips in 2025 America with what it means to be a working woman,

Speaker 12 I had the same recoiling feeling when I watched the documentary. The whole story has to be told.

Speaker 12 The whole story of what it what it means when you make this choice to both work and have children should be told and how some women have navigated it well and some women haven't.

Speaker 12 And this, I think Barbara Walters was never cut out to be a mother and she should have done the Oprah thing. She should have said, this one's not for me.

Speaker 13 It's not for, yeah. I mean, that story is horrific.
That story, she's a monster. She's a monster.
You know, it probably took a lot for Jackie to even agree to that because you know she's got,

Speaker 13 I believe, really, really, really complicated feelings towards her mother.

Speaker 13 What struck me in the doc as well, they make it a point to show Barbara's Barbara's last episode of The View.

Speaker 13 And I believe she had to be gently pushed off that stage because we know all she lived for was the television camera. That was it.
That was where her life began and ended.

Speaker 13 Um, to say, put my kid in front of the TV so they can see, oh my God. Um,

Speaker 13 but you know, they brought out all of these women who all these journalists to say, look at the look at the legacy. This is Barbara's legacy.

Speaker 13 These are, in effect, her professional daughters, you know, the Katie Couric's of the world and the Elizabeth Vargas's and they all came out and it was like confetti and rainbows and stuff.

Speaker 12 They asked me to be there.

Speaker 12 They did. They asked me to be there.
Yeah, I didn't go. I was traveling.
I couldn't go, but I didn't know Barbara. And I thought, this is weird.
Like, they, why, why am I getting invited?

Speaker 12 And it's the Sidney Sweeney invitation to the Sanchez Bezos wedding. You know, like, let's just populate the stage with like someone who's like,

Speaker 12 interesting or relevant on television right now and make it look like this is a Barbara, you know,

Speaker 12 mentee and like somebody to whom Barbara, you know, meant everything, which wasn't true at all, you know, just like I was going to be the Sidney Sweeney of the Barbara farewell without the boobs.

Speaker 13 I'm glad you said it.

Speaker 12 Likewise. But

Speaker 13 yeah, no, I, and that, and that's, that's such a selfish ask for on her part or her team's part as well, because they're, that's asking for your endorsement, like your blind endorsement of her.

Speaker 13 And you you didn't know her. And she could have been a monster.
And in many ways, I think she was a monster.

Speaker 13 And, you know, I remember reading the reports about her life in the years between her leaving The View and her death. And it was his, it was always reported as an extremely lonely life.

Speaker 13 You know, the transactional relationships she had with those celebrities, they were no longer interested in her because she had nothing to offer anymore.

Speaker 13 Those were the kinds of people she forged relationships with. She didn't forge deep, private, abiding relationships.
You could tell she kept nobody's secrets, right?

Speaker 13 Do you think she kept anybody's secrets?

Speaker 12 Yeah. This guy in the piece, Peter Gethers, who is editor of the autobiography, said the following.
She was obsessed with three things. She was obsessed with money, fame, and power.

Speaker 12 She did not have the strongest moral compass. A lot of the relationships she developed were career moves, and she was a pretty transactional person.

Speaker 12 That's amazing.

Speaker 12 And oh, here's Cindy Adams, you know, former gossip columnist, who says in the documentary, she loved being important to a man. She didn't have patience for somebody who's stupid.

Speaker 12 She didn't love you if you were a nobody. You had to be somebody.

Speaker 12 On top of all that, you have Sage Steele, who if you don't get along with Sage Steele, it's you.

Speaker 12 She's truly one of the most lovely, luminous, delightful, thoughtful people you'll ever have the good fortune to meet in your life.

Speaker 12 She went on the view and she has been on the show repeatedly, but one time she was on, she told us the following story about Barbara Walters and Sage backstage. Watch.

Speaker 12 If I don't ask you about Barbara Walters, she attacked you. What do you wait, what?

Speaker 18 It was right after that segment with the Obama segment. And

Speaker 18 we went in the back. And so it was Barbara Whoopee and myself in the dark green room off the side.
I was probably about four feet from the wall in the trash can.

Speaker 18 And Barbara was standing over here in front of me. And she just started to back up towards me and looked at me and got close and elbowed me.

Speaker 18 And then pushed me back into the wall in the trash can. I was like, what did this just do to me? Like this 140-year-old woman just tried to like tackle me.

Speaker 12 What's happening right now?

Speaker 18 And some of the producers saw it. Whoopee saw it.
And Whoopee was like, come here. And she was great.
And she pulled me aside in her little area. And she's like, don't you let her do it.

Speaker 18 And I'm like, am I in a movie right now? A legend, one of the legends in this industry just tried to beat me up.

Speaker 12 Pretty, pretty extraordinary.

Speaker 13 It's like, it's the metaphor for Barbara's entire existence. Get out of my my way.
I am the star. Who are you? You're nobody to me.
You're nothing. Again, like she could never do that now, ever.

Speaker 13 In a post-woke, post-George Floyd America. It's funny because I've heard that story too from someone else that similar experience at the view as a guest, Barbara was being a complete bitch to her.

Speaker 13 And it was Whoopi who would intervene and come over and say, come here. Don't worry.

Speaker 13 That's how she is. We all deal with it.
It's not personal.

Speaker 12 Wow. I mean, think about it.

Speaker 12 All I can guess is that she had different politics from Sage

Speaker 12 and she was threatened by her because

Speaker 12 I mean, she's truly luminous.

Speaker 12 I've seen Sage in person many times and truly, like,

Speaker 12 it's intimidating. She's so beautiful.
Like, you're, you're kind of like knocked on your heels. Like, oh my God, all you can do is just stare at her beautiful face.

Speaker 12 And I'm sure Barbara Walters felt intimidated by that as opposed to like inspired or in admiration of it, because they talk about how she was deeply insecure.

Speaker 12 And the thing about the looks, like what she said to Bette Midler, is a recurring theme in her life. And it is reflected in this piece.
There's a sound bite from Katie Couric.

Speaker 12 You mentioned this on the nerve. Here it is.
This says a lot. SAT 24.

Speaker 19 She often told me, Oh, we're so alike.

Speaker 12 Neither of us is that attractive. And I was like, Thanks.

Speaker 13 But I think what she meant is our looks were secondary

Speaker 12 i mean

Speaker 12 who says that to another person

Speaker 13 a very mean bitter unhappy woman you know i i i mean

Speaker 13 Again, as I said on the show, I am no fan of Katie Corick, but that floored me. I found the cruelty of it so breathtaking.

Speaker 13 In the beginning of the doc, you know, they talk about how Barbara really hated her looks. And I'm looking at these old, these pictures of her as a very young woman starting out.

Speaker 13 And I'm like, she's actually very attractive.

Speaker 12 She's pretty.

Speaker 13 If she had bought into her own beauty, I think she would have aged completely differently, you know?

Speaker 13 Not just because she would have had self-esteem, but she, she, you know, they do say at a certain point, your, your outsides begin to match your insides.

Speaker 13 And with her, she just literally turned into this, like, I don't mean to sound

Speaker 13 really too brutal, but she really did kind of age into this like withered old crone. And she would get her mitts on like these younger, more beautiful starlets or figures in the culture.

Speaker 13 And she would weaponize this sort of faux maternal, like the Monica Lewinsky interview, which I believe she threw Diane Sawyer in front of oncoming traffic to steal.

Speaker 13 You know, she's using this kind of faux maternal instinct to sort of lure Monica into answering the question, like, well, it was something like, you know, did you get on your knees?

Speaker 13 They said you brought the presidential knee pads, like stuff like that, where

Speaker 13 a journalist who had a little bit more, you know, she had been around the block. She understood how all of this worked.
Monica Lewinsky was a girl who found herself thrust into the national spotlight.

Speaker 13 And this was really Barbara, you know, that was just another carcass to feast upon. And she,

Speaker 13 so she, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 12 And if you read the book, one of the other other themes that comes out, and it's probably related to the deep insecurity on the looks front, is she is constantly bragging that allegedly everyone wanted to sleep with her.

Speaker 12 In that trailer, they show like a saucy exchange between Barbara and Clint Eastwood.

Speaker 12 I guarantee you, Clint Eastwood did not want to sleep with Barbara Walters, but was being fun and flirtatious because the cameras were rolling and he knew it would make a fun moment.

Speaker 12 But if you read her book, I think you would walk away with the impression she thought she could have slept with Clint Eastwood. There were rumors that she might have slept with Fidel Castro.

Speaker 12 She definitely dated Alan Greenspan and considered that a feather in the calf. I'm not sure if it is.

Speaker 12 But there was an ongoing obsession in the book about all the men who she'd loved before and how many really, really loved her. And I don't know, she was famous and she had money.

Speaker 12 So maybe she did attract more than her fair share.

Speaker 12 To me, it seemed like a cover for her deep insecurity. I want to play this.
I have to take a break. My team's yelling at me.
We've taken no breaks.

Speaker 12 Do you realize we took one break, but I haven't read any yet, which we need to um

Speaker 12 but here is the thing back on the children and the oprah versus barbara thing listen to this from the documentary this is oprah in tell me everything a hulu documentary about barbara walters saw 28.

Speaker 12 she had a charged complex relationship with her daughter

Speaker 12 and you know i can see why it's one of the reasons why i never had children I remember her telling me once that there's nothing more fulfilling than having children and you should really think about it.

Speaker 12 And I was like, okay, but I'm looking at you.

Speaker 12 So,

Speaker 12 no,

Speaker 12 you are a pioneer in your field and you are trying to break the mold for yourself and for women who are going to follow you, then something's going to have to give for that.

Speaker 12 And that is why I did not have children.

Speaker 12 I knew I could not do both well.

Speaker 12 Both are sacrifices. Sacrifice to do the work and it's also sacrifice to be the mother and to say, no, let somebody else have that.

Speaker 12 And at no time have I ever heard a story, read a story, and based on what I know of Barbara Walters, at no time has Barbara Walters ever said, no, let someone else take that story. No.

Speaker 12 She's not wrong about that, Maureen.

Speaker 13 She's not. She's not.
a stopped clock. You know, Oprah is telling a lot of truth there.
And I love her reaction to being told by Barbara Walters that nothing is more fulfilling than motherhood.

Speaker 13 And Oprah's like, yeah, well, I'm looking at you. And basically telling us, Barbara found no fulfillment in motherhood.

Speaker 13 If anything, what this documentary makes clear, and I'm not personalizing this to Jackie, it could have been any child Barbara had.

Speaker 13 Barbara was not going to find any fulfillment in motherhood. And she couldn't be honest with herself about it.
And instead,

Speaker 13 the motherhood and the troubled child and the single motherdom it's like it just became another part of barbara's press packet

Speaker 13 and to your point about um i read audition when it came out as well and i remember god because she flogged that book every day on the view for like two months and uh i remember reading the stuff about

Speaker 13 her sister who had developmental delays or learning disabilities and with special needs. And I agree with you.

Speaker 13 It is a very gutsy thing to to admit that as a child, you felt less than because there was a sibling who needed more attention and a father who was never in the home and a mother who was not in love with the father, all of that.

Speaker 13 But I would think there would come a point when you are an urbane, sophisticated woman who moves in very rarefied circles and not for nothing, lives in Manhattan and has access to the best psychotherapists, where you can work through that and come out the other side and say, oh my God, my life has been such a blessing.

Speaker 13 I have all this money and fame and power and everything I worked so hard for. And my sister could never have achieved that no matter what.
And I can make my peace with my childhood now.

Speaker 13 And I wonder how much of that unresolved trauma really sort of was some of the fundamental roots of her, her real ever-present rage, which would we would see come out in these interviews.

Speaker 12 I have so much I want to say on this because the connection between how she was with the sister and how she was with the daughter, who she named Jackie after the sister. I have a lot on that.

Speaker 12 I have to take a break. We're going to keep this going.
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Speaker 12 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.

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Speaker 12 Your Highness, I must ask you the question that most Americans want to know about you.

Speaker 13 Are you happy?

Speaker 12 I've had many happy moments in my life, yes.

Speaker 12 I don't think happiness, being happy, is a perpetual state that anyone can be in. No, life isn't that way.
But

Speaker 12 I suppose I have a certain peace of mind, yes.

Speaker 12 And my children give me a great deal of happiness. Princess Grace of Monaco, American actress turned princess, sitting with Barbara Walters.

Speaker 12 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show here with me, Maureen Callahan, host of The Nerve. With Maureen Callahan, go ahead and subscribe right now while I have your attention.

Speaker 12 Just click follow and subscribe on YouTube and on podcasts wherever you get yours for free. That was a good example of Barbara Walters.

Speaker 12 And, you know, as I sit here, sort of somebody who benefited from the path that she did forge, Maureen, I think to myself, you know, how, how is it that someone like me came and was able actually to, yes, have it all?

Speaker 12 I know that's an overused and actually controversial phrase, but I feel like I do. And how is it that I managed it? Well, I came up in a different time.

Speaker 12 And I have to admit, in thanks, in large part, thanks to women like Barbara Walters, who she's right. She couldn't have done both when she was coming up.

Speaker 12 And they make the point in the documentary, Tell Me Everything on Hulu, that

Speaker 12 if she had tried to bring Jackie to the office back then, in the 1960s, she would have been laughed all the way out of the.

Speaker 12 I mean, just the fact that she was a woman and there was a problem for a lot of the folks around her.

Speaker 12 Never mind, someone is bringing their child in or like leaving the office early or asking for flex time or any of that stuff.

Speaker 12 You know, and so there were a lot of strong women like Barbara who made those, I mean, honestly, like very controversial sacrifices just to get women considered in these roles.

Speaker 12 And I've benefited from that, but I thank God every day

Speaker 12 that I didn't make the same choices and that I didn't have to, you know, that in today's day and age, I really hope the path I'm forging for people coming up behind me is

Speaker 12 the actual appreciation of family meaning more. And I love, love, love my career.
I love it. I would do this job for free.
I said that the day Roger Ailes hired me. But

Speaker 12 it doesn't compare to the love I have for my family, my children. And the women who do want to do both have to choose a job that has flexibility

Speaker 12 first and foremost. And my news career has.
Hers didn't for the reasons we've been discussing. They have to choose ideally a partner who is an active father and also has flexibility.

Speaker 12 And thankfully I have that too. And the third thing is some means, you know, some means.

Speaker 12 It's very hard to do both well when you still have to do all the housework and all the cooking and all the driving with the kids. So I totally feel for women who are not in that spot.

Speaker 12 And all that has to be factored in before we just tell these young women, you can have it all. Because the reality is, you probably can't have it all at the same time.

Speaker 12 And unless you really thread the needle,

Speaker 12 you know, it's hard. It's very hard.
So anyway, I just want to acknowledge my humility on this because it's easy for me to be like, she was a shitty mother when

Speaker 12 she just came up at a different time, Maureen. She came at an entirely different time.
I do think she never should have adopted that daughter. Here's what she said on the record.

Speaker 12 This is in the documentary, Tell Me Everything, about

Speaker 12 her regrets on her motherhood, on her daughter Jackie. SAT 31.

Speaker 11 Do you have any regrets when it comes to Jackie?

Speaker 12 Oh, sorry. This is not from the documentary.

Speaker 12 I look back and I think, I wish I had been with her more.

Speaker 12 I was so busy with a career.

Speaker 12 It's the age-old

Speaker 12 problem.

Speaker 12 And, you know, on your deathbed, are you going to say, I wish I'd spent more time in the office? No. You'll say, I wish I spent more time with my family.
And I do feel that way.

Speaker 12 I wish I had spent more time with my Jackie.

Speaker 12 Again, I'm not sure I believe her. And I also think, Maureen, there's a very realization.
There's a very real place for women who say,

Speaker 12 motherhood is not for me.

Speaker 12 I don't think I'd be a good mom or I don't think I'd enjoy being a mom.

Speaker 12 Not the crazy leftist stuff that we're seeing, like, you can't have children because it's bad for the environment.

Speaker 12 But like, it doesn't align with me and my talents and i don't want to do that to a child that's okay too she she didn't do that

Speaker 13 no she didn't i mean to your point i think you know i don't think she knew herself very well and i think what she did know of herself she didn't quite like i i you know when anthony bourdain died i thought about this a lot you know a guy who by design

Speaker 13 his schedule but again by his own architecture has him running around the globe for 360 days out of the year is running from something very deep and very profound.

Speaker 13 And I think the same was true for Barbara Walters, Forever Chasing That Next Big Interview.

Speaker 13 That point you made, which I hadn't put together until you said it, you know, naming the daughter after the sister, she resented. I mean, a Freudian shrink would have a field day with that, right?

Speaker 12 And that

Speaker 13 clip you just showed, just to finish. this thought is um it reminds me of that harry chapin song cats in the cradle you know which is told from the point of view of a father.

Speaker 13 He's singing from the point of view of the son who's like, Dad, when are you going to come home to play with me and hang out with me?

Speaker 13 And the father's always saying, I'll be so soon, soon, and soon never comes. And then, when the child becomes an adult and the father says, Son, I'd love to see you, the son says, Sometime soon.

Speaker 13 And that to me is what's going on there.

Speaker 12 Give me the chill. Just give me the chills with that.
That song is so devastating and such a good reminder. Like, don't wait.

Speaker 12 The fact that she named the daughter Jackie when she admits that she hated the sister is very, very telling and it is disturbing. And this is a passage from the book about when her sister, Jackie,

Speaker 12 died. Barbara was all Jackie had in the world.
You know, their parents had long since passed and Jackie had a devastating illness. She had ovarian cancer and she was in the hospital.

Speaker 12 And Barbara went to be with her for the day of the surgery and I guess a day or two after, and then she left.

Speaker 12 And you can hear, she talks about about having taken her in, in her house, and she resented, very much resented it, did not like having a charge in the house. Forgive me, because I'm not totally sure.

Speaker 12 It's been many years whether that was her mother or her sister, but one of them lived in her house for a time, and she resented the hell out of it. And she writes in audition about when Jackie died.

Speaker 12 She writes,

Speaker 12 okay, she was recovering from ovarian cancer surgery. And she had an aneurysm and passed away.
On that day, Barbara was hundreds of miles away in Milwaukee.

Speaker 12 Okay, here's what she writes: quote, I went down with her when she had the operation and I left because I had to make a speech, for heaven's sakes. She's feeling defensive.

Speaker 12 I left her two days after the operation, and I said, I'll be back. I went to Milwaukee to make this speech for ABC.
I mean, it wasn't a speech for money, but I was auditioning. I was being perfect.

Speaker 12 Just before she was scheduled to go on stage, someone came into her dressing room and told her the terrible news. They said, you're on.

Speaker 12 And I went out and made the most awful speech, she says. I wasn't there when she died.
To this day, Barbara says she has regrets. She regrets that her decision to leave meant her sister died alone.

Speaker 12 I also, in a way, am grateful it happened that way. She was in no pain.
So she left the sister.

Speaker 12 after the operation when the sister had no one else there because she had to give a speech, not paid, she wants us to know, but

Speaker 12 for ABC. And then when she was told, she wants us to applaud the fact that she gave the speech instead of breaking down.

Speaker 12 She put that in her own autobiography about how I went out there and I gave that speech. I don't know.
I think I

Speaker 12 can understand

Speaker 12 playing through pain. You know, you have to when you have an outwardly facing job.
But it was like she had just been told her sister died. And she had just been with his sister days earlier.

Speaker 12 And she wanted pats on the back for going out there on the stage and just giving this barn burner of a speech. And all I could think was,

Speaker 12 that is the coldest, like most callous thing.

Speaker 12 Where was the breakdown?

Speaker 12 Why is it not a lifelong regret that you didn't stay three days so that you would have been with her when she actually died and she was as opposed to her dying alone?

Speaker 13 so this is the real ugly part of this that i think is true and that even barbara knew was so ugly but it's very human that she would not admit in the pages of her book she was probably very relieved

Speaker 13 this problem was gone this needy sibling who took up all the oxygen in the room and what little love their parents had to offer was gone and the sister dying after barbara left you know they often say i mean there's no way of proving this, but they often say that

Speaker 13 there are two things that tend to happen when one is near death.

Speaker 13 They either hang on for their loved ones to get there and say a final goodbye, or they wait for the loved one to leave the room and then they allow themselves to slip away.

Speaker 13 And I gotta wonder if the latter isn't the case with Barbara's sister.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Wow, you're right. That is true.
And I do kind of believe that. I feel like I know people who've experienced that.

Speaker 12 The film does a good job of documenting the fierce rivalry between Barbara and Diane Sawyer. Because I think what we see in the book and the movie is Barbara had real issues with women, with women.

Speaker 12 And, you know, the relationship with the mother is not,

Speaker 12 if memory serves, again, this came out in like 07 or 08.

Speaker 12 She doesn't go that into depth about the mother. But I think she had some real issues there because she clearly, she says, I hated my sister.
I told you what I know about her with the daughter.

Speaker 12 And some of that has also exposed publicly.

Speaker 12 We saw her with Bette Midler and we saw her, you know, Katie Couric's account of what happened and with Taylor. And the Monica Lewinsky interview was controversial too.
Like, she didn't seem to

Speaker 12 give many of these women the benefit of the doubt. That's fine.
You know, if you're equally skeptical with everyone, then you're just probably just a good journalist.

Speaker 12 But she was much more flirtatious with the men. She didn't seem to be as skeptical of them.
And she did have serious issues about her insecurities and her looks.

Speaker 12 I'm going to play something that gets to that first, and then we're going to talk about the Diane Sawyer thing because it's a Friday and why not? Here she is on

Speaker 12 a little bit about herself.

Speaker 12 First, let's play SOT 23 and go right into 23B.

Speaker 12 I was never beautiful. If I had been a dog, I mean, maybe they wouldn't have put me on television.
But, I mean, nobody ever put me on because I was beautiful or glamorous.

Speaker 12 I don't think that I was very good at marriage. It may be that my career was just too important.

Speaker 12 It may have been that I was a difficult person to be married to, and I wasn't willing perhaps to give that much. But through it all, there was this career.

Speaker 12 that I felt I needed to have, and I loved it.

Speaker 12 So she was insecure. She couldn't keep a man.
She was distant from her family, her sister, her daughter. And then Diane Sawyer walked into that buzzsaw.

Speaker 12 I mean

Speaker 12 Houston. Houston.
Their rivalry was legendary, Maureen. They couldn't stand each other.

Speaker 13 No kidding. Now, this is fascinating because you're so right about the mother.
Again, I read the book when it came out, so

Speaker 13 a lot is lost to memory, but I don't remember her fleshing out the mother very much. And I would bet there's a real mother wound there, which is that she was neglected.

Speaker 13 I mean, that's basically what she's telling us with resenting the sister.

Speaker 13 And it's probably a little bit easier to resent the sister than to really resent the mother because then you have to dial into that feeling of rejection. My mom rejected me.

Speaker 12 I think

Speaker 13 there's nothing more painful as a child than feeling the rejection of a mother.

Speaker 13 Diane is so fascinating. Well, the marriage stuff is interesting too, because I do think Barbara was just a narcissist.

Speaker 13 And I think someone says this in the dock, like her real true love was her career. And but she was such a limited person.

Speaker 13 She couldn't expand outside of that in any meaningful way and forge any human relationships that had nothing to do with what somebody could offer her other than like the true things that animate a real friendship, like a kinship, things things in common, someone you can share your pains, your sorrows, your joys with.

Speaker 13 It's a real tragedy. And Diane,

Speaker 13 I think,

Speaker 13 was the horror show version of a sister, like, who hadn't been born with learning disabilities, right? Now that's, is that the other sister you want?

Speaker 12 The beauty?

Speaker 13 The homecoming queen? The one who like presidents and Hollywood stars are all fighting over? Is that because like, I think that's where she really redirected a lot of her rage?

Speaker 13 It went right towards Diane.

Speaker 12 Diane Sawyer is still beautiful, but back in the day,

Speaker 12 she was absolutely stunning. I mean, when she was younger, she absolutely could have been a model on the cover of any magazine.

Speaker 12 She worked for Nixon for a time and then wound up in news and was a star really from the beginning.

Speaker 12 And you can see now, given all this setup that we've done, how Barbara Walters would have reacted very negatively to sharing a newsroom with her.

Speaker 12 And here is ABC's Cynthia McFadden on some of that in SAT 27 from the movie, Tell Me Everything.

Speaker 12 She was certainly

Speaker 12 dogged by Diane's very existence.

Speaker 12 She often said Diane was the perfect woman, if I'm ready. She used the word a blonde goddess, this ideal woman, and that she, Barbara, couldn't compete with that.
She could work harder.

Speaker 12 She could know more people, but she couldn't compete with that.

Speaker 12 The blonde goddess. She couldn't tolerate having Diane Sawyer rise in what she saw as a direct challenge.
to what she had accomplished. What a sadness.

Speaker 12 Talk about the death of joy.

Speaker 12 Cynthia McFadden's no dope. I know her a bit.
She's smart. She knew it.
She laid it on the line. I believe every word of that.

Speaker 13 I do too. And, you know, aside from fixating on Diane Sawyer's looks, and,

Speaker 13 you know, again, Barbara, when she began, she was not on a track. I thought she was like, she was a pretty woman who could have really leaned into that and cultivated that.

Speaker 13 She,

Speaker 13 the other thing that Diane seemed to have, which at least came through the screen for me, that Barbara did not, was like joy. Like she really seemed to love her job.

Speaker 13 And you see her there, like, you know, prepping for camera and she's laughing and she's, you know, it's like, she seems like she might be actually a fun time. And Barbara does not.

Speaker 12 Married to Mike Nichols for all those years. I know, and Barbara Walters is having all sorts of problems.

Speaker 13 Yeah, Diane's up on the vineyard partying with Mike Nichols and Jackie Onassis and no shortage of players.

Speaker 13 And, you know, Barbara is like grinding it out, just wanting America to love her, but while slinging insults at the like of likes of Elizabeth Taylor, go figure.

Speaker 12 It's so true. Yeah, no, Diane Sawyer is quite luminous and also talented for sure.
I mean, this story that I always think about when I think of news and Diane was 9-11.

Speaker 12 when

Speaker 12 she was on the air with Charlie Gibson and they were there, they were live when the towers fell.

Speaker 12 And Charlie Gibson, who was such so professorial and holier than thou in the way he approached the news, said he always regretted how he responded in the moment.

Speaker 12 And forgive me, I'm going to botch it, but he wasn't, I'm not quoting him exactly here, but it was, it was like a newsman.

Speaker 12 You know, it was like, the building appears to have collapsed, and you know, it appears there will be a massive loss of life, you know. And this is him recounting it.
Diane Sawyer

Speaker 12 responded with, oh my God.

Speaker 12 You know, she was a person before she was a news anchor. She was a real person.
She is. She's still here.

Speaker 12 But she, I'm talking about on the air in that moment, she was a real flesh and blood human and possibly religious human.

Speaker 12 I think Diane actually is, with a connection to something bigger than herself who understood exactly what everybody at home was feeling. And Charlie didn't.

Speaker 12 And Barbara, although she could sort of feign the I care thing enough to get people to cry in her interviews,

Speaker 12 I think lacked the gene too. I think also was more of the Charlie Gibson style.

Speaker 13 I think you're so right. And that actually, you hit on something.
So it was a pathology with her. She's got to make her interview subject cry.

Speaker 13 She's got to find your most tender wound and she's going to put her fingers in there and she's going to just spread out and like mangle your guts with her bare hand and you're going to cry on camera.

Speaker 13 You're going to give her that money shot. And when you think about it, it's like, why would you be so intent

Speaker 13 on

Speaker 12 making

Speaker 13 these otherwise powerful people who are interesting movers in the culture, who have something to offer us and we want to get like a sense of who they are behind the scenes. She was a pioneer.

Speaker 13 You know, we talked about too on the show.

Speaker 13 I think she was among the first to go into these celebrities' homes. You know, it's predates cribs and we could see how these people were living.
And it really gave you a whole other,

Speaker 13 you know, insight into people and it humanized them a bit, no matter how lavish their lifestyles, you know, everybody has a kitchen counter and, you know.

Speaker 13 But she really, she, she was really like, she was like a hammerhead shark that way with the tears. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yes. And that's another thing Oprah stole from Barbara.
That became Oprah's signature. Like it wasn't an Oprah interview unless you cried in it, which is like, who's, how is that your goal?

Speaker 12 If you just have like heartfelt conversations that lead to tears or happen to, that's fine. But yes, it seemed to be an obvious goal for both of them.

Speaker 12 Here's one more on her and Diane Sawyer and Catherine Hepburn from the movie on Hulu. Tell me everything.
SAT 26.

Speaker 5 It was just a competitive space to live in.

Speaker 16 Barbara could be very wily, and she wasn't above dirty tricks and tactics that were, in my experience, beneath some for competitors, in particular, Diane Sawyer.

Speaker 12 And now, the one and only Catherine Hepburn.

Speaker 13 Diane had booked fair and square Catherine Hepburn.

Speaker 12 And Barbara, who knew Catherine Hepburn, put a lot of pressure on Kay to unbook

Speaker 13 and go with her.

Speaker 12 You know, and Kate said, No, no,

Speaker 12 I promised Diane, and I will do it with her. How's that for a statement?

Speaker 13 And she did.

Speaker 13 If I showed up on Mars, she would have a note there with the Barbara Walters stationery, just requesting an interview with anybody who might happen to show.

Speaker 13 Wow.

Speaker 13 Okay, there are two amazing things. That reminds me, by the way, when Barbara did get her sit down with Kate, that led to the, it was a meme before memes were a thing.

Speaker 13 If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

Speaker 12 Which passed into urban lore.

Speaker 13 I don't think it was exactly that, but that became like the Barbara.

Speaker 13 And of course, there was the Gilda Radner impersonation of Baba Wawa because she could never pronounce ahs, and Barbara was so offended by that.

Speaker 13 I mean, thirdly, this is the kind of like if I wish the morning show on Apple TV was more like this. I would watch a period piece about these two antagonists going at it, and the stakes are so high.

Speaker 13 It's like, who's going to land that interview with the aging movie star? Like, yes,

Speaker 12 wild. Yes.
I know. It's so, it's amazing to watch.
And I'm sure it was absolutely cutthroat. And I believe she called Kate and tried to get her to bail on it.

Speaker 12 And good for Catherine Hepburn for not doing it. I will say, you know, that sort of dumping on the new girl thing,

Speaker 12 which is something I have never, ever done. I've only, I've only tried to help girls, young women coming up behind me.

Speaker 12 But Katie Couric is guilty of it too, because truly, one of the nicest people in news, she might be number one nicest in all of news, is Ashley Banfield. She's Canadian.
They're nice people. Anyway,

Speaker 12 she worked at NBC and was a rising star back to 9-11. She's the reason, one of the main reasons I went into journalism.

Speaker 12 I was a disaffected lawyer sitting at home on 9-11, like the rest of the country, watching the horrors from my couch. And Ashley Banfield was on TV non-stop for NBC and was such a pro.

Speaker 12 She handled herself so well. And she was in it, man.
She was right in front of the towers. kept her composure, kept her cool, stayed factual, like in a good way.
And I was like, Look at her.

Speaker 12 This is a real public service. And it wasn't, Ashley's beautiful, but it wasn't because it was like, oh, look how gorgeous she is, or she's like a star.
I can see like her star power.

Speaker 12 It was just like shoe leather professional reporting under fire, you know, grace under fire. And I really, really admire her to this day.
Anyway,

Speaker 12 her career got cut short over at NBC by Katie Huric,

Speaker 12 who felt threatened by her and even admitted in her own memoir that she felt threatened by Ashley and far from giving a hand up, was happy to see her head out.

Speaker 12 And I don't think Ashley Banfield's career ever fully rebounded from that. I actually asked her about it one time.

Speaker 12 We were on the air together. It was happening either on her show at News Nation or on one of my shows.
And she's, she was too nice to even complain about it.

Speaker 12 She was like, something, she said something to the effect of like, oh yeah, well, that, that wasn't very nice. That was as much as Ashie would say about it.
But who doesn't help up that?

Speaker 12 Like TV news, especially with these bitches, can be a fucking snake pit. It could be a snake pit.
It's not always the women. Trust me, I've gotten it from some men too.
But man, it's interesting.

Speaker 12 They've got Katie Couric commenting on that. Like, hmm, I wonder if they asked her about her own experience in that lane.

Speaker 13 I thought the same exact thing. And this is why I can never be a fan of Katie Coric.

Speaker 13 The Ashley Banfield part of her memoir stuck out to me so

Speaker 13 like it was

Speaker 13 the anger and the rate, the idea that you would go out of your way to strangle someone else who is trying to come up their career in the crib because they're a threat to you.

Speaker 13 And I believe it was solely the way Ashley looked. I don't even think Katie knew enough about her professional capabilities or potentialities.
It was just like, this woman look is prettier than I am.

Speaker 13 I don't know, maybe Barbara was onto something when she made that comment about their looks.

Speaker 13 But the other thing about Katie that I loathe and I think goes to this, this really poisonous relationship she has with other women, in her book, she writes about how much she still loves Matt Lauer

Speaker 13 and how when all those stories broke, you know, he allegedly put a woman in the hospital after raping her in his office.

Speaker 13 He had the rape button on his desk, allegedly.

Speaker 13 And she reprints these text messages she's sending him, like, I love you, and I will always love you no matter what. And I am here for you.
You know, and he's ignoring her, but she's waxing on and on.

Speaker 13 I mean, to the point where I really think

Speaker 13 something probably went on between the two of them. Either that or it was unrequited on Katie's part.

Speaker 13 But the point being, she is no friend to women because any friend to women would have known what was going on over there.

Speaker 13 And, you know, or those younger women on that set would have felt like, Katie Katie is somebody I could go to in a crisis. She is the truth.

Speaker 12 She sets the tone.

Speaker 13 She's a leader. I could go to her.
There's another person.

Speaker 12 I know a little socially. And, you know, I've always gotten along with Katie outside of the news business.
But inside of her shop, she admits to this behavior.

Speaker 12 And I don't understand the, I just forgive Matt Lauer. We pretend that he just like.
had an extramarital affair or something. You can, you know, whatever.

Speaker 12 The affairs of the heart are complicated, but he serially exploited virtually every young ingenue to come through NBC News when he was the $25 million a year man back when nobody was making those salaries, the biggest star in news and 40-something years old with these 19-year-old girls who were showing up there on their college summer internship, you know, promising to make them stars and believing that them believing that he could or that he would ruin them if they didn't go along to get along.

Speaker 12 I've talked to some of them. So there's no, for me, there's no forgiving Matt Lauer.
I don't, when, when someone shows you that they're genuinely a fucking dirtbag, you accept that and you move on.

Speaker 12 There's, you don't linger. She has a longer relationship with him, but I mean, even that would have been very revealing to me as somebody who had a long relationship with him.

Speaker 12 And I would have said, that's it. I'm moving on.
It's a matter of quality control. This person is no longer going to be in my life.
All right, I got to leave it at that.

Speaker 12 I got to ask you before we go about one additional thing. You got to go, and so do I, but

Speaker 12 we'll be remiss if we do not do at least one clip from the Barack Michelle

Speaker 12 Obama appearance, the podcast, because

Speaker 12 everybody thinks they're going to get a divorce. And let's face it, they probably are.
She dragged him onto her show with Brother Craig, and the following took place. Here's how it started in SOP 36.

Speaker 12 Barack Obama, can you join us on

Speaker 12 out here, brother? Welcome to IMO. Look at you.

Speaker 12 How are you?

Speaker 12 Wait, you guys like each other? Oh, yeah, really, huh? That's

Speaker 12 the rumor meal.

Speaker 12 It's my husband, y'all. She took me back.

Speaker 12 Now, don't start. I can't.

Speaker 12 It was touch and go for a while. It's so nice to have you both in the same room.

Speaker 12 I know, because when we aren't, folks think we're divorced. these are the kinds of things that i just miss

Speaker 22 right so i don't even know this stuff's going on right and then somebody will mention it to me and i'm all like what are you talking about

Speaker 12 people think that they're on this on the outs because they're not always in the same room together maureen that's what she would like people to believe like she She had what, one or two public appearances without him, and that's what led to the divorce speculation.

Speaker 12 That's not quite it, my dear. It's one of the things, oh, your words.
It's your words that led us to believe you can't stand him.

Speaker 13 When he walks in, by the way, it's like anybody who just listened to the pod, they got to watch it because, first of all, we're taking this thing apart tomorrow on the mini-nerf. Oh, good.

Speaker 13 He's got more chemistry with an affection for brother Craig than his own wife, if you look at the way they greet each other.

Speaker 13 And then my favorite thing is the staging now, because we all know that politics is about optics and stage stagecraft.

Speaker 13 Michelle's at this end of the table. Obama's all the way over here at this end.
And Brother Craig is between them like a mediator, like a marriage counselor.

Speaker 13 If they're really still in love and together and not getting a divorce, why aren't they seated next to each other?

Speaker 12 It's true. And like, why the instant affectation, you know, like, oh, my man.
And like, she goes, she doubles down in the following clip. It's just over the top.
And

Speaker 12 here it is, 37.

Speaker 12 There hasn't been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quitting

Speaker 12 my man.

Speaker 12 And we've had some really hard times. So we had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures.
And I have become a better person because of the man I'm married to.

Speaker 12 Okay. Don't make me cry now.
Right at the beginning of the show.

Speaker 12 Don't let me start tearing up that. You can take the hard stuff, but when I start talking about the sweet stuff, you're like, stop.
No, I can't do it.

Speaker 12 I love it.

Speaker 12 I'm enjoying it.

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 12 There ain't been one minute when I thought about quitting my mayan. She doesn't talk like that, right? Who does she think she's kidding? It's quitting.
Like it has no T's or a G, my Mayan. Okay.

Speaker 12 She's like, there's something going on there where she's really acting.

Speaker 12 in order to be like down home and I love my man and trust me. And like the whole thing to me looked like a complete affectation

Speaker 13 it's such a poor performance it reminds me when oprah had her show she would code switch like that too you know sometimes she would talk like a you know rural black woman and then she'd be oprah um and then the other thing is okay michelle told us and i think you and i talked about this uh on your show that um

Speaker 13 remember she said

Speaker 13 there were more than once there there was a good decade solid decade of their marriage that she hated him

Speaker 13 Hated him. So you're going to then turn around and tell us you never once thought about, I mean, again, I would love the lawyer in you to parse quit

Speaker 13 pause.

Speaker 13 And then the addition of I'm a man,

Speaker 13 and that's not her husband. So is there another man? What is it? Is it the dog?

Speaker 12 What is it?

Speaker 12 It's a good point. No, she's, she's on the record.
They can pretend all they want that it's just tabloid fodder that has led people to think they're on the outs.

Speaker 12 That, that, oh, yes, he appeared without her, you know, here or there. And people, no, okay, first of all, she didn't go to the Trump inauguration.
She didn't go to the Jimmy Carter funeral.

Speaker 12 He's been spotted out at basketball games and out to dinner with their daughters repeatedly without her.

Speaker 12 You'd be hard-pressed to find a recent picture of the two of them together. So they clearly did it.

Speaker 12 to try to tamp down the rumors, but the greatest indictment of the state of their relationship all comes from her, from her own statements about how awful marriage and motherhood are.

Speaker 12 It's like, we don't have to make it up. You led us right to that water, Michelle.

Speaker 13 And it's amazing, too, because like Obama, you watch his body language in this thing, and it's like his arms are crossed, his legs are crossed, he's like torqued away towards the camera or towards Brother Craig.

Speaker 13 He seems as fearful of her, and it just is like diffuse, diffuse, deflect, diffuse as Brother Craig does.

Speaker 13 Like those two are like trauma bonding over over here while michelle's trying to get her shivs and her digs in it's wild

Speaker 12 trauma bonding by the way barack obama has no socks on which i really don't like can't can we just where is bring brock the sock where are your socks do you think he's wearing those sockless socks you know the ones that like you can't see either way i object i feel like a man should have socks on women can do what they want That's just the way

Speaker 12 on the socks. I think that's interesting.

Speaker 13 I think, you know, Obama strikes me. I kind of dig the like naked ankle.
Look, he's got nice ankles.

Speaker 12 I like, I believe he's not an ignicant individual.

Speaker 13 Sorry. Okay.
We disagree.

Speaker 12 Sadly, we have to leave it on a disagreement. Yeah, I don't know.
Plus, he's too old. Like, maybe you could pull that off if you're like 22, but he's not.
And it's not working. It's not working.

Speaker 12 Nothing about the segment is working. You're right.
Poor brother Craig stuck in the middle. Oh, oh, he's fraught with peril.

Speaker 12 Anyway, there's more to hear about that interview. And you can do that on Maureen's Mini Nerve.
She drops them on the weekends that tomorrow, Saturday. Check it out.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 12 It's always wonderful having you here.

Speaker 13 Oh my God. Thank you so much, Megan, for having me.
What a conversation. I could go on forever with you.

Speaker 12 No, gosh. It was the same, honestly.
Like, there's nobody I talk to this way. And I hope the audience, I know the audience loves it too, because it's just so many subjects that you want to delve into.

Speaker 12 That, like, this is another reason why cable's dead. You know, you could never, we talked for an hour and 30 minutes about Barbara Walters.
What? But it was great.

Speaker 13 It was so great. It's like, it's like, I love talking psychology with you and Minutia and why people behave the way they do in the public face.
It's like, it's endlessly fascinating.

Speaker 13 And you're like the best person to talk to about it.

Speaker 12 Oh, right back at you. All right.
Well, I'll be listening tomorrow. All of you should too.
Check out The Nerve with Maureen Callahan.

Speaker 12 And just a programming note, don't forget, on Monday, we're live from SiriXM Triumph

Speaker 12 with Ram Emmanuel. I mean, that's going to be pretty interesting.
Actually, if you have a question you would like me to ask Ram Emmanuel, email it to me, Megan at MeganKelly.com. Have a great weekend.

Speaker 12 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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