Biden Cover-Up Continues, Gavin Newsom's Terrible Answer, and Trump's New Epstein Hoax Framing, with Rich Lowry | Ep. 1109

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

Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.

Still in Vail, Colorado, but not intentionally.

I am in an airport like back room because my flight was delayed five hours, which pretty much blows up one's day.

I was going to do the show when I got back back home on the opposite end, but that not being possible, you now, I mean, for the listening audience, I'm sitting in one of these like crappy little white-walled rooms.

Although I have to say, the staff at the airport has been absolutely lovely, but I'm just saying it's not like a

real set.

I do have the Colorado Mountains in the foreground here.

You can't see it because it would completely wash out the shot, but I have a lovely view of

the mountains here.

And it was a lovely two-day trip.

And it's not really like the trappings of the Red Studio, but it's going to work.

So forgive all the boxes in the background.

And my makeshift studio comes with me on the road.

And this is exactly why.

Okay, let's start with some news.

About, what, was it like a week ago now, we led with the fact that Joe Biden's doctor, Kevin O'Connor, had pled the fifth in response to James Comer's subpoena as he tries to get to the bottom of who was president at the tail end of Joe Biden's alleged presidency.

And he would not answer his questions about whether he was taking, whether he noted any cognitive decline, et cetera, and whether he was asked to lie.

Well, it's happened again.

Do you guys remember when Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson came on on their book?

And they talked about in that book, they wrote about in that book and talked about in the show, how this guy, Anthony Bernal, was a total bully and really at the center of the cover-up of Joe Biden's mental infirmity.

He was Jill Biden's chief enforcer, her jackal.

It sounds like everybody in the Biden White House loathed this guy per this book.

He was not well liked, and he was drunk on his own power.

That's my own take reading the book.

So he got subpoenaed since he clearly was in on the whole Biden mental infirmity cover-up.

He might have been one of the chief architects of it.

And he just pled the fifth, too.

He showed up this morning to Comer's committee and reading here off of the Representative James Comer post on X that was just put out and

just invoked the Fifth Amendment during his congressional deposition.

This is a quote here from Comer.

This week, new reporting confirms President Biden's aides took unauthorized executive actions during his presidency amid his cognitive decline.

He's referring to the Autopen article from the New York Times that we discussed yesterday.

It's no surprise that Anthony Bernal is pleading the Fifth Amendment to shield himself from criminal liability.

During his deposition today, Mr.

Bernal pleaded the Fifth when asked if any unelected official or family members executed the duties of the president and if Joe Biden ever instructed him to lie about his health.

This is a historic scandal and Americans demand transparency and accountability.

We will continue to pursue the truth on their behalf and examine options to get the answers we need.

Wow.

Joining me now to discuss it is National Reviews, Rich Lowry.

Go ahead and subscribe.

Become an NR Plus member today.

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Rich, here we are again.

First the doctor, now one of the chief enforcers within the Biden administration, Jill Biden.

Again, he's her jackal.

That's what all the reporting suggests.

Up there will not answer the question, incredible, of whether any unelected official or family members executed the duties of president and whether Joe Biden ever told him to lie about his health.

Your thoughts?

Yeah, it's pretty extraordinary.

My assumption was that they just lie or dance around such questions.

I never imagined they'd take the fifth, but here we are.

Usually not a great sign about your health if your doctor feels compelled to take the fifth.

And those two questions are incredibly telling, right?

That he doesn't feel comfortable answering those.

And on the Autopen controversy, you know, Biden does this interview with the New York Times.

Kind of extraordinary that he didn't do an interview with the New York Times his entire presidency.

Donald Trump, who hates the New York Times, is on the phone with Maggie Haberman and New York Times journalist all the time.

But in the course of that interview, it was damning, right?

He didn't approve individually these people.

He approved broad categories.

So I think there's a legitimate question about whether those pardons are indeed legally valid.

Do you think there's any chance these things actually get overturned?

You know, all along, I've been kind of looking at the Comer investigation as a political move and a worthwhile one, but not one that's likely going to lead anywhere.

I'm starting to second guess myself.

Yeah, I wonder what the mechanism would be.

Would a court feel empowered to just say no?

Sorry, this doesn't apply.

I guess it would start with the Trump administration challenging one of these pardons, right?

And then

getting litigation going, but we'd be an uncharted challenge.

I don't think they have enough based on that New York Times article.

Okay, so that article was damning, but I don't think that was enough to get a pardon reversed.

However, I'm interested more in this comer lane because, you know, they're running in tandem.

And so you've got the admissions to the New York Times coupled with they're going to get Kevin O'Connor's testimony at some point.

I think they're going to give this guy immunity.

They don't want to put Kevin O'Connor behind bars.

They want an answer to the question.

Right.

And his only other claim of privilege is doctor patient, which can be pierced by a subpoena.

As a lawyer, I can speak to that.

You know very well that you've got a lawyer client privilege you have to uphold.

But if you get subpoenaed to federal court it's a it's a different story so this guy's going to be forced to talk and my only question is whether like if you get o'connor and possibly burnell if they give him immunity too because again they're not interested in putting him behind bars they want right to get the story um whether we could wind up with testimony from two of these top guys saying yes i was told to lie about itself yes there were civilians you know this is brunel right here uh today this second guy in the middle there um and there's griff jenkins trying to get him on record.

If you've got those guys eventually on record saying that

they were in charge of the presidency and they were told a lie, now we're talking about possibly undoing,

I mean, forget the pardons.

We could go well beyond that.

Yeah.

Well, but the ultimate play, though, right, is transparency and just knowing the truth about what was

a conspiracy against the public interest.

So that you just, you just want to get it out.

You know, I don't think Democrats are ever going to fess up to what they did.

What's his name?

Andy Bashir, the governor of Kentucky, was on Meet the Press last weekend.

He wasn't part of this conspiracy.

He wasn't close to the White House.

Asked,

were Democrats too secretive about this and didn't acknowledge the truth soon enough?

And he just, he wouldn't say it, right?

None of them will say it.

So obviously, you got some journalists who've dug in.

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson and Comer's doing good work here.

Yeah, here's Dr.

O'Connor O'Connor on July 9th refusing to answer.

Watch.

Dr.

O'Connor,

were you ever told to lie about the president's health?

The advice of counsel, I must respectfully decline to answer based upon physician patient privilege and in the reliance on my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

I am not a lawyer.

I must follow my lawyer's advice in this matter.

Let the record reflect that Dr.

O'Connor has invoked the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Dr.

O'Connor, please be very clear.

Are you declining to answer the question put to you solely on the ground that you believe the answer will incriminate you?

On the advice of counsel, I must respectfully decline to answer based upon the physician's patient privilege and in reliance on my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

I am not a lawyer and I must rely on my lawyer's advice in this matter.

Dr.

O'Connor, did you ever believe the president was unfit to execute his duties as president?

On the advice of counsel, I must respectfully decline to answer based on the physician-patient privilege and in reliance of my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

I'm not a lawyer, and I must follow my lawyer's advice in this matter.

Wow.

And you heard the same from Bernal this morning, who sounds like a very unlikable guy.

This is pretty incredible.

I mean, Joe Biden's been out of office now for six, almost seven months, and they're still embroiled in scandal created by him.

Yeah, and that's just extraordinary.

To claim a fifth on that question, I, you know, I had a very dim view of what, how they were handling Biden and thought they were lying all along.

But I never would have considered a possibility that someone would have directly told his doctor to lie.

And that at least opens up the possibility there.

You would think, you know, you do it all in body language and you're picking someone who's loyal, you know, who,

you know, is going to be on the team and knows the score.

So nothing nothing explicit has to be said, you know, kind of mafia rules.

But that that non-answer, that invocation of the fifth raises a

possibility that he was actually told to affirmatively to cover it up.

That's exactly right.

Because truly the discussions that must have happened behind closed doors with both O'Connor and Bernal would have gone between the lawyer and the client.

Did anybody tell you to lie about the president, right?

And if the answer were, no, God, no, nobody told me that.

And no, there were no unauthorized civilians making presidential decisions.

And I have nothing to hide, then you could easily walk in here.

You could be combative.

You could give it to Comer just as good as you were getting it.

Right.

They clearly do have something to hide.

And I just, I do not believe they're going to be able to keep it hidden

indefinitely.

Comer or somebody, you know, Comer's enforcement mechanism is to go to the DOJ and have contempt charges brought against them, like we saw it done to Steve Bannon.

And if they don't comply, they could wind up behind bars like we saw it done to Steve Bannon.

So I just don't think Kevin O'Goner is going to go sit in a jail cell.

I think they're going to say, you will talk or you'll go to jail.

On the other hand, we could offer you immunity.

And then you could just give us straightforward answers.

It's just a matter of time before we get to the bottom of this.

Here is that

a bit of our conversation with Tapper and Thompson on Anthony Bernal, who they did quite a bit of reporting on in that book.

You write about this guy, Bernal, a lot, and

you suggest, Jake, it was very tough to find anybody with a nice word to say about this guy who is Joe Biden's top person.

Yeah, and he acknowledged that he had a tough reputation.

He was the chief of staff for Jill Biden and perhaps the most powerful first lady chief of staff in the history of this country.

He is somebody that enforced what Jill Biden wanted.

And at the end of the day, one of the things that was interesting when we wrote this book and researched this book was trying to figure out why was there no discussion of whether or not he should run for re-election?

Why was it just a foregone conclusion that he was going to run for re-election, especially after he had made this kind of vague promise that he would be a one-term president?

And it came down to two people, one of whom spoke for Biden, that's Mike Donnellin, and the other one spoke for First Lady Jill Biden, and that's Anthony Bernal.

And basically, they communicated to the rest of the staff.

Bernal would say, you run for two terms, you serve for two terms, you don't do one.

I mean, he was calling the shots inside that White House, and it really looks like it's possible

Joe Biden found out that he was running for a second term after Anthony Bernal and Jill Biden decided he was going to.

Wouldn't that be amazing?

Now, it's very unusual for a First Lady chief staff to have so much power, but it makes sense here because the First Lady was so influential and she's at the center of this conspiracy.

If Democrats are going to be be upset with with anyone yeah sure they should be upset with joe but they should be upset more about jill because she she knew everything about his condition more than anyone else and she could have pulled the plug and said no honey you know in 2023 when they're considering this yeah sorry not that's not necessary yet

pulled the plug politically and said we're not doing this sorry we're not we're not doing this honey you're not a far but obviously she was fully on on board trying to get him to serve a second term which the idea that he could have served to to you know January 2029 is one of the most preposterous things the American public has ever been asked to believe.

And they didn't believe it.

Yep.

And here is Bernell now through his lawyer.

We've received the statement that they offered to the committee this morning.

This is it in part via Kelly O'Donnell

of NBC.

The committee has sought testimony from Mr.

Brunel for nearly two years without any actual evidence of wrongdoing by Brunel.

Most recently, the committee seeks Brunel's testimony based on a purported controversy regarding the use of the auto pen at the conclusion of President Biden's term.

President Biden has already confirmed that he personally made all decisions concerning his grants of clemency.

Oh, contraire.

I think you're taking some liberties with the facts, Bernell's lawyers.

They say, while the committee only recently began its auto pen investigation, the chairman has already declared that this matter is, quote, the biggest scandal in Oval Office history, end quote.

In addition, on June 4th, 2025, this is the same memo that Dr.

Kevin O'Connor cited, the White House directed the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into this matter.

The chairman has acknowledged that U.S.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced an investigation at DOJ.

So we're very interested, that's quoting her, under these circumstances, it's entirely appropriate and justified for Brunel to invoke his rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

There we go.

And so he respectfully declines to answer any of the committee's questions in the deposition today.

So that's where we stand.

That controversy goes on, and all of this looms over the Democrats like pigpens dirt as he walks around the set of peanuts, right?

It's just there lingering over anybody who's going to potentially run and

throw their hat in the ring for 2028.

Like you mentioned, Bashir.

Like he's definitely Bashir, and all of them are going to get asked about this.

And all prior statements where they defended Biden will be brought up.

The other person who's in the news this week as an obvious contender for the nomination is Gavin Newsom, who went on Sean Ryan's podcast and absolutely dissembled over the question

of

transition procedures and surgeries on minors as young as eight.

Listen to this.

What about for your values?

I mean, is eight years old too young?

Yeah, I mean, look,

now that I have a nine-year-old, just became nine.

Come on, man.

I get it.

So those are legit.

You know,

it's interesting, just the issue of age.

I haven't, it's interesting.

As I am,

as someone that's been so focused on equality broadly, LGBT rights, particularly gay marriage, the trans issue for me is also novel.

It's over the last few years.

I'm trying to understand as much as anyone else.

Whole pronoun thing.

trying to understand all of that.

You know, that was like the hell, all that stuff.

I get it.

Oh my God.

First of all, his hands are flailing.

He gets so nervous.

He can't stop moving his hands, right?

It's a tell.

I'm uncomfortable and I'm probably lying too.

Hands above the midline moving is can be a sign of deception.

He didn't, I mean, come on, man.

I mean, I get it.

Those are legit, period.

The issue of age,

um, ah ah ah ah.

And,

you you know as someone who's been so focused on LGBT

and uh gay marriage you know the trans thing um I

just like I've been thinking about the pronouns yeah that's how he answered that question Rich do you want are you okay with surgical procedures on an eight-year-old

yeah it was a good answer in the sense that it kind of seemed as though he was acknowledging it was a problem with like the come on man i i get it but but it led nowhere and he didn't say it and he's clearly afraid to say it and this is a democrat who showed a little more leg on this than other democrats by at least saying in that famous podcast with charlie kirk that it's unfair for males to compete against females in sports but he just he can't just come out and say no of course it's wrong for an eight-year-old of course it's wrong um and this is another huge problem with with uh for the party right if if there are two things i would advise him on which would seem relatively easy One, say Biden shouldn't have been running again and people should have blown the whistle on it much earlier.

Bad on us.

And we're not going to do surgeries for minors.

And men shouldn't compete against female sports.

It's so easy.

It would seem to be so easy.

So easy.

But people like Bashir and Newsome, who know much more about the Democratic base than I do, apparently don't think it's easy.

They won't do it.

And they're clouding their chances with every mealy-mouthed answer.

Picture J.D.

Vance in a presidential debate being asked that question, or Marco Rubio, for that matter, or any of them.

but you know, assuming for now that it's likely JD, he would be so eloquent, he would be so reasonable, he would be so measured, and you're going to have that flailer with the hands and the stuttering and the come on, man, pulling the Joe Biden, come on, man.

It didn't work for Biden and it's not going to work for Newsom.

Like, I'm just seeing the runway of how the Republicans' chances are going to look.

And right now, I'm feeling good.

Not necessarily about the midterms, but about the presidential race.

Here's another thing.

It's a little off point on the trans issue, but a great moment where Sean asked Gavin Newsom about why they were so able to very quickly clean up the city of San Francisco when Chinese President Xi Jinping came in 2023.

And hear his answer.

And then you can hear how he answered it at the time when it came up.

Listen.

You got a lot of shit when Xi came to.

California.

Yeah.

And, you know,

the big narrative was, and I tend to believe it is, you know, we hear a lot about San Francisco and the homelessness and

pooping on the road and all that kind of stuff.

And it seemed like

all of that was cleaned up when she came to town.

Yeah.

Is that true?

Complete bullshit.

That's complete bullshit.

I know folks say, oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town.

That's true

because it's true.

i gotta credit morning wire my pals over the morning wire who put that together such a good catch that there's no room for wiggle for wiggling it's diametrically opposed because he's getting a little closer to running

yeah i remember him saying that at the time right it was it was a big deal we were all talking about it so clearly you know he hasn't forgotten he just thinks he needs to dissemble about it and and be against poop on the sidewalks in and of itself whether whether you're having a big high-profile international event or not.

I guess this is moderation.

But like my point in showing this is really just to show, like, I think some people have the impression Gavin Newsom is some formidable politician.

You know, he looks the part.

I'll grant him that.

You know, he's a relatively handsome man.

There's no taking that away from him.

But as soon as he starts speaking, things change because he starts lying.

He starts obfuscating.

He has a tendency to say whatever the person across from him wants to hear and then just completely 180ing on it in front of a different audience at a different point.

That's just one example there.

The Charlie Kirk example is another one because he tried to say to Charlie, oh, it's a question of fairness for me on the boys and girls sports.

And then as soon as he got away from Charlie Kirk, he's like, yeah, I looked at it.

I couldn't find an answer.

So I've moved on.

Okay, so that's another reason to feel good about 2028 for Team.

GOP, the Democrat candidates are not looking so great.

Down more at the local level, staying on Team Blue in New York City,

Mario's Cuomo's son, Andrew, thinks he's Mario.

And that's a big mistake because Mario Cuomo was legitimately very popular in New York.

And that's why he made a credible run for president.

Andrew Cuomo has disgraced himself

as a sex pest and the murderer of a bunch of elderly people,

to put it uncharitably, because he's the one who ordered COVID-positive patients to go back into these nursing homes after having been warned that it would lead to the death of the most vulnerable population in those nursing homes.

And he did it anyway.

And that's never been fully addressed.

But then he tried to lie about the number of people who died, all while he got $5 million to have his staff on taxpayer money write a book about how amazingly he handled COVID, where we were all but in prison for two years in New York.

I was there.

Okay,

so he's not popular.

He lost the Democratic primary to this nutcase

Mamdami, who's a socialist, a communist.

and now he's refusing to drop out saying i'm going to run i'm going to run as an independent well that's the lane that eric adams the sitting mayor of new york is running in and all of this sounds nuts except when you look at the current polling cuomo would beat mamdami

in a race if it were just the two of them head to head so what do you make of all that

yeah so the problem is that both adams and cuomo are more radioactive than the communist, right?

They have higher negative and unfavorable ratings than the communists.

So if they have any chance of winning, excuse me, what they're going to have to do is discredit Mom Donnie with Democrats.

Because the Democrat electorate, the electorate in a New York City election, about 70% Democrats.

So Mom Donnie just holds 25% of them.

He can lose a lot.

he's still going to win.

So you need to convince the average Democrat that this guy is going to make you lose your job.

He's going to make your streets unsafe and that he's unacceptable.

And if you manage to do that, it's doable.

I'm not sure it's likelier than not, but it's doable.

Then one of them could surge, whether it's Cuomo or Adams, whoever's in second place, and the others fall away.

So I think there's too much focus.

One, Cuomo thinks he's going to make himself likable by just going out and gladhanding people in the streets.

I don't think that's going to happen.

And two, there has to be some sort of deal.

Don't touch me.

The focus has to be, yeah, bringing Momdani's ratings down, making him radioactive, and then maybe a vista opens up where something's possible where New York City can dodge this bullet.

But I wouldn't bet on it.

I really think it's crazy not to be hitting Mom Dami, Mom Donnie, over the head every day with the law and order stuff.

He 100% was for defund the police.

When other Democrats said, when we say defund the police, we don't really mean defund the police.

We mean transfer some money over to more social services type systems that could intervene in other matters.

And he said, no, we mean defund the police.

And then as we get to know him better, clips keep resurfacing because, in addition to being a sex pest and a

killer of elderly people, Andrew Cuomo has a very, very shitty APO research team that didn't find any of this stuff when he was running against him in the primary.

So here comes the following soundbite from 2020, where Mamdani seemed to be very, very anti-cop and very, very pro pro-some other third force on domestic violence incidents.

Take a listen here to Sat 9.

Police do not create safety.

For many, many people across this city and this state, police actually create and amplify violence.

And it is very important to speak about that reality that many people have because it pushes up against the conventional understanding of police who are seen to be people who come to resolve violence.

But, I mean, you just look at the history of the NYPD and you see that we have invested in a system that functions in many ways to punish poor black and brown people across this city and across the state, frankly, across this country.

And there are so many responsibilities we have given to police that frankly should have nothing to do with their departments.

A homeless person is on a train.

They do not need a stranger with a gun to come and resolve that situation.

You know, if somebody is jaywalking, if somebody is surviving, you know, going through domestic violence, if there are so many different, different situations that would be far better handled by people trained to deal with those specific situations as opposed to an individual with a gun.

So what Nicole Brown Simpson really needed, Rich, was for some social worker to step in and try to explain to OJ that it's not nice to nearly decapitate your ex-wife, or maybe somebody who would talk to him about centering his blackness.

That could have really brought out, you know, some softer side of OJ in Mom Dami's world.

That's what they do.

This is absolutely absurd.

So women who are getting the shit kicked out of them by their husbands now are going to have some sweet little social worker show up with her like knitted sweater to try to talk the husband down off the ledge in Mom Donnie's New York?

Yeah, totally preposterous.

One, you're right about Cuomo's APPO research in the primary.

There's a video like this literally every every single day popping on X.

Where were they during the primary campaign?

And ordinary Democrats aren't anti-cop.

The activists and the ideologues and the progressive element of the Democratic Party, like Mom Dami, are anti-cop.

But Eric Adams won the Democratic primary four years ago on a pro-police platform, a pro-law and order platform.

And people in dangerous neighborhoods do not want the social worker showing up.

They want the guy with a gun on his hip, and they want more of them, and they want he or she to get there faster than they do now.

So, this is absolutely, you're absolutely right.

This is a huge opening, and Cuomo or Adams or whoever wants to have some chance of stopping this guy needs to hammer it.

Especially because it is the communities of color, especially those in the more working class and poor neighborhoods of New York, who need cops more than anyone.

They need cops.

And only people who come from a very privileged background, like Mom Donnie, don't understand that.

Yeah.

Probably never needed a police officer to help resolve a situation that was dangerous or potentially dangerous in his life, and probably never will, right?

But that's not the lived experience of a lot of New Yorkers.

And the crime, you know, that we that we read about in the New York Post and elsewhere that's so harrowing, it's generally quite limited in several very specific neighborhoods.

So what you want to do is flood those places with cops and, you know, go specifically after the gang members and the people have records you know are dangerous.

And you can make the city a lot safer.

Rudy Giuliani proved this back in his day.

And it was popular.

No one wants to get shot.

No one wants to be fearful of getting shot.

No one wants to get harassed on the subways.

And the beginning of the answer, at least in terms of public policy terms, are more cops and better cops.

My brother, Paul, was a lifelong cop, made it to a lieutenant in Albany, New York.

He's retired now.

And do you know how many domestic violence calls he had to go out on and actually save women's lives?

This is in inner city Albany.

These women are terrified and grateful to see the police show up.

This is from the Free Beacon

on what's happening in New York City in particular.

They write, NYPD recorded more than 110,000 domestic violence.

violence incidents in the city during just 2024.

More than 110,000 were someone called the cops.

The four worst precincts for domestic violence, with more than 3,000 recorded incidents each, were located in poor and heavily minority districts around East New York, Little Haiti, the North Bronx, the South Bronx.

Listen to this.

Former NYPD homicide detective Pete Panuccio, who spent four decades with the department and responded to hundreds of domestic violence incidents, called a lack of police involvement, quote, absolutely insane.

Homicide rates will increase.

Women, he writes, will be pulverized.

Women will be pulverized and homicide rates will increase under Mom Dani.

That should be in ads that circulate nonstop in New York for these Upper Westside white liberal women in their Lululemons who want to feel good about themselves by electing a communist and will never have to worry about being one of the ones pulverized as a result of no cops.

Yeah, absolutely.

So

we all fear random crime, but the greatest threat to a lot of people are people you know, especially to women, right?

It's the abusive spouse.

It's the abusive boyfriend.

It's someone you split up from and is stalking you.

And you need law and order and the authorities to protect you from that person.

And Mom Dami just isn't into this as an ideological matter, right?

He doesn't care about extremities.

Yeah.

the other thing that just occurred to me, sorry to interrupt you, is

99% of the social workers are female.

They're all female.

They just are.

Women have tons of empathy.

Women are naturally attracted to that line of work.

And a lot of them are middle-aged or older.

And I wouldn't say in my experience, having met with a lot of them over the course of my career, that they tend to be like the super fit.

So you're going to send these like middle-aged women into these dangerous neighborhoods where a man is beating the hell out of his wife and you're going to have her try to stop it?

Take a guess what's going to happen.

Okay.

Because unlike mom Donnie, I've actually interviewed countless numbers of domestic violence victims.

And it can happen across.

sociological spectrum.

It can happen to rich women.

It can happen to poor women.

But in every case, it's happening at the hands of a man who's extremely controlling and extremely dangerous and could not be talked off the ledge by the person he's supposed to love any, more than anyone else in the world.

And the notion that you could send some third party, likely female, into that situation to diffuse it is absolutely insane.

The only person who can diffuse it is a, is a guy with a with a gun and a badge who can put that guy behind bars.

And even then, sometimes they don't stop.

Yeah.

And sometimes though, right, all you need is

the big guy with the gun to show up.

And that diffuses the situation.

But these wouldn't be situations if the party who is bigger and stronger is not in a rage, right?

Perhaps a violent rage, perhaps even a homicidal rage.

And that's just not, that's not the context for social work, right?

If you need marriage counseling, you need advice on why your kid's through it and doesn't like going to school, whatever,

there is a reason to have social workers.

I don't have anything against all social workers.

My mom was in social work.

There's obviously a place for it.

but she wasn't showing up in violent households

at the cusp of what might perhaps be a violent event.

That's crazy.

And by the way, you know, hello, P.

Diddy's defense team, Zoran, Mom, Donnie.

They're the ones who just made this argument that like domestic violence is different than criminality.

Beating

the daylights out of your wife is criminal.

You do need a cop.

Of course.

It is not like jaywalking, you absolute fool.

I can't believe good friends of mine are going to be living in this city.

Thank God we got out and moved to Connecticut and in danger now at the hands of this lunatic.

Forget the economics of his policies, which I do also want to hit on here.

Before I move on to why our friend Andrew Schultz, comedian, just great guy, loves Mom Donnie.

And I think it's more the economic policies.

I think Andrew's more Democrat-leaning anyway, but meandered over to the Trump field in the last election like a lot of...

even lefties did.

I do want to spend one more minute on sort of identity, the obsession with identity over on Team Blue, because there was an extraordinary moment on CNN with Anna Navarro, who's constantly making inappropriate race comments, like racist comments.

And they're having a debate over Trump's immigration policies and the ICE raids and how he's rounding up people.

And now there's a federal district court judge who said, you can't take into account whether a person's speaking Spanish or

is at a day labor camp.

You can't consider any of these things when you're trying to find people who are here illegally.

Anyway, they're having a debate about this.

And Brad Palumbo's on the set.

He's the co-founder of something called Based Politics.

He happens to be a white man.

And the following extraordinary exchange took place.

Take a listen, SAT 8.

Millions of people out there protesting in small cities and big cities, small protests and huge protests, defying

the fear, defying the reign of terror and retribution that Donald Trump is trying to impose on America.

I think you're definitely being hyperbolic.

You talk about a reign of terror when the doomsday alarm from Democrats or from media critics is always out of 10, it doesn't hit the same.

So I want to respond to you saying that I was hyperbolic when I talked about a reign of terror.

Because that is hyperbolic.

No, it might be hyperbolic for you as a white man.

Oh, it's certainly not hyperbolic for me as a Latino.

No, I'm not.

I'm not.

Being a white man as an insult.

When you invoke it to dismiss my...

Being a white man as an insult?

When you invoke it.

But I just want to make a point that, Brad, all she's saying is that her view of the situation is different from yours.

I don't think that's an insult.

She basically said, I'm wrong because I'm a singer.

No, no, no, no, she just said,

I see it differently from you, which is not an insult.

It's not, and it's also not a racial.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

It was said, and then Abby Phillip allowed it and defended it.

Incredible, Rich.

What a dereliction of beauty as the anchor, first of all.

And he was 100% right to call her out.

I don't know if it matters, but Brad also happens to be gay.

So he checks some minority boxes.

Abby Phillips should be interested in defending him to the extent it was necessary, though he was raising exactly the right point.

Now, how dare she allow that to happen on her set?

And how dare they keep booking Anna Navarro, whose bread and butter is comments like this?

Yeah, so

where to start on this?

There's so much to it.

One, the idea is a reign of terror is obviously absurd, right?

But anyone can have their opinion about immigration enforcement.

Anyone with any color, any creed, any gender should have be able to have an opinion about immigration enforcement.

And he was challenging hers.

And her argument basically was that this was her view and she has unique insight into it as a brown person.

She refers to the brown community.

What is the brown community?

What's that?

There's no such thing as a brown community.

There's no such thing as a white community.

And they're so into this idea of communities that don't exist.

There's no LGBTQ plus community.

The harshest people, some of the harshest critiques I've heard of lesbians have been by gay men, you know, and a lot of gay and lesbian people don't like the whole trans thing.

And even if they're all on board, you know, that part elements of that agenda, some of them are Republicans, some of them are Democrats, some of them are Catholics, some of them are, there's no community.

They don't live all in one big neighborhood and get together for block parties.

It's absurd.

And if you just turn it around and

would have, and if Brad had had a rejoined her, well, you just think that about the reign of terror because you're a Latina, right?

He would have been escorted from the show, escorted out of the building.

and never heard from again on CNN.

And by the way, not for nothing, but even if she wanted to make this argument about how most of the people who are getting rounded up happen to have brown skin, most of them are also male.

So how does his maleness disqualify him from not saying this is a reign of terror?

She, that's their knee-jerk.

You lose your right to speak in the world of Donna Navarro if you are a white male because you're a sin.

Your existence is a sin.

You were born with the sin.

You can't recover from this sin.

You shouldn't even be at the table commenting to her.

And frankly, I think Abby Phillip shares that view.

She's been, for the first couple of years she was on the air, she hid what's obviously her racism.

But as she gets, you know, out there more and more and more, it's coming out more frequently.

She's a problem for CNN.

It's very clear.

Okay.

I found the show unwashable, but everyone ends up talking about the clips.

It's only usually because of Scott Jennings, because he's great.

And then occasionally just absolute lunacy, like we just saw there, but no one's watching it like, hey, I'm really learning something.

This is actually a really good program.

Not at all.

You know, it's like a hate watch and like WTF.

Back on the subject of Mamdani, I want to show you this clip from Andrew Schultz because it hits on a couple of things that I want to talk to you about politically.

It's SAT 10.

The only party right now

that to me seems America first is the Democrat Socialist Party.

Yep.

Bernie is America first.

Mamdani and all his ideas that he he will not be able to execute, and I frankly think many of them are not good ideas, but he is no doubt New York first.

The policies seem to want to help people here.

That's what I care about.

If MAGA wants to take this America first thing back, they got to start looking out for America.

It doesn't seem like they're doing.

Lying to Americans is not America First.

There is one lie, which is Epstein did not have a blackmail ring on all these very influential people.

And by saying that that didn't happen, you have to tell a lot of other little lies.

Every one of them just pulls a little piece of thread away from the fabric.

And we're starting to see right through right now, and it's just embarrassing.

It's very interesting.

So he's, that's a guy who, I mean, I've interviewed him many times.

I think he, I think he's an independent, but though he's been a registered Democrat for most of his life.

He comes from a family of Democrats, though he was supportive of Trump and voted Trump this last election, who now you hear him.

He's attracted by some of the things that Mom Donnie is saying.

And I've heard Andrew and others like him politically talk about that debate in new york city where the question by the moderator was which country would you visit first as new york city mayor and they all said israel and mom dani said i'm not really interested in visiting any country i'm going to stay in new york which was a great answer i have to say to his great answer yeah but like there there is a belief in some circles that like you're not electable

you know, Democrat or Republican unless you do a genuflection toward Israel and you send all the right signals on how you're going to be pro-Israel.

And Mom Donnie didn't do it.

I mean, I think there are reasons for that.

But separately apart from those reasons, it was the right answer to say, I'm the mayor of New York.

Why are you asking me about going to travel to foreign countries?

So I think all that's playing in.

Yeah, so that all that's playing in on his like, I'm looking at that guy.

And then on top of it comes the Epstein scandal, whatever you want to call it, which is affecting Trump supporters, both in that middle ground and on the diehard right too, within the core MAGA movement.

I would say like the more national review types of the Republican Party have not been big into the Epstein scandal.

We haven't covered it that much here on the Megan Kelly show over the past six years.

We've been covering it more this past couple of, what, 10 days, because it became a political scandal.

But there is a very loud piece of MAGA right now that is really outraged over how this is being handled.

And we'll get to what Trump said this morning after you react to those points.

Yeah, so on the clip, one, when he talks about Bernie Sanders being America first, first, there was a time when Bernie was kind of an American first socialist.

He had this famous exchange with Ezra Klein.

I don't know, maybe it was 10 years ago now, the New York Times, where Klein is like,

you like poor people, right?

So, yeah, I do.

You want to help poor people, right?

Yeah, I do.

So then what we should do is let in all these poor people from other countries in the United States who are really poor, and then they'll be better off when they're here.

Bernie's like, no, no, no, I don't favor that.

That'd be crazy.

That'd hurt America.

I'm about helping American working people.

And the the reaction on the left was such that Bernie backed off.

Now he's kind of a cosmopolitan socialist, what he used to be kind of a nationalistic socialist.

And on Mom Domini, I will say this about him.

The theme of affordability is not inherently a socialist theme, and it was an excellent theme because New York City is insanely expensive and is getting more so all the time.

I think rents on average went up like 16% last year.

That's crazy.

The problem is

his answers are wrong, right?

And you have all these problems in New York because it's already embraced socialistic policies.

And he's coming in saying, well, we got these problems because of socialism.

And what we need is more socialism, which doesn't make sense.

It'll be a disaster.

And I do think it's interesting how, you know, to pick up the Epstein thing, this is now being picked up, you know, not just by influencers, voices like that, but by the mainstream media and by Democrats.

At the same time, it's not going away on the right, but you have, you know, Charlie Kirk saying, I'm just not going to talk about it anymore.

So it wouldn't shock me if three weeks from now, it's kind of diminished more on the right and picked up more

from

those other sources.

So Trump gets out there.

I don't actually know what Trump is doing with his messaging because last night I watched the Brett Baer,

the top of his show, and he ran a long report on Epstein and the scandal and the MAGA infighting.

And he ran a soundbite of Trump last night, which we have,

where he's saying we,

I think we have it.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's in SAT1, where he says

he's fine with having Pam Bondi release more materials that she deems releasable.

Here it is in SAT1.

Your daughter-in-law said that there should be transparency in the Epstein case.

Do you agree with her, sir?

The Attorney General's handled that very well.

She is

She's really done a very good job.

And I think that when you look at it, you'll understand that I would like to see that also.

But I think the Attorney General, the credibility is very important.

And you want credible evidence for something like that.

And I think the Attorney General has handled it very well.

Okay, that wasn't on there, but he does say the credible part.

And here's that.

This is later that day.

SAT 6.

Mr.

President, I know you've urged people to move on, but I'm curious, why do you think your supporters in particular have been so interested in the Epstein story?

I don't understand it.

Why they would be so interested.

He's dead for a long time.

He was never a big factor in terms of life.

I don't understand what the interest or what the fascination is.

I really don't.

And the credible information's been given.

Don't forget we went through years of the Mueller witch hunt and all of the different things to steal dossier, which was all fake.

All that information was fake.

But I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody.

It's pretty boring stuff.

It's sordid, but it's boring.

And I don't understand why it keeps going.

I think really only

pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.

But credible information, let them give it.

Anything that's credible, I would say let them have it.

Okay.

So last night, yesterday, that was late Tuesday,

let him have it.

If there's more credible information, she can release it.

Now, he was full of insults for the people who are still interested in Epstein.

But then this morning, he sends out a truth social that was just a barn burner of a post that reads in part,

okay, hold on.

Let me let me get it here.

It's long.

I don't, I'm not going to read the whole thing.

First, it starts off with how the radical left Democrats have hit pay to again, just like with the fake and fully discredited steel dossier, the lying 51 intelligence agents, the laptop from hell, blah, blah, blah.

A totally fake and makeup story used in order to hide crooked Hillary Clinton's big loss in the 2016 presidential election.

These scams and hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at.

It's all they have.

Okay, and then they say their new, he says their new scam is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein hoax.

The Democrats' new scam.

I mean, this is more of a Republican issue.

The Democrats are now piling on, but he says this is a Democrat news scam and what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein hoax.

And my past, in all caps, supporters have bought into this bullshit, quoting here, hook, line, and sinker.

They haven't learned their lesson and probably

never will, even after being conned by the lunatic left for eight long years.

I've had more success in six months than perhaps any president in our country's history.

And all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the fake news and the success-starved Dems is the Jeffrey Epstein hoax.

Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats' work.

Don't even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success because I don't want their support anymore.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Make America great again.

And so what we've seen sort of in the past couple of days is Trump has managed to call large portions of the MAGA base that are still interested in Epstein want answers selfish weaklings.

He doesn't want their support and that they're believing in a Democrat-created hoax.

There's all sorts of substantive responses to that on the Epstein merits, but I'm not interested in that for now.

I'm interested in the politics of it, Rich.

Yeah, so he's in the phase he often is in when he's in the midst of these controversies.

I think spaghetti against the wall phase, and then he'll see what sticks and then...

go with that.

But I don't think it's a great idea to make the connection to the Russia hoax, which was about him.

So this kind of implies that this also is about him.

I don't think it really is.

And the idea that he doesn't know where this is coming from, it was all created by Democrats.

This has been more of a matter of interest for the right, including the highest officials in his Justice Department, right?

Pam Bondi talked about it.

Cash Patel talked about it.

Bongino talked about it.

Now,

Bongino, yeah, I give them a little leeway because, you know, Bogino, Bongino was a podcaster and Patel is kind of a figure.

They didn't talk about it the same way once they were in office.

It's Pam Bondi, who is a sitting Attorney General of the United States, handed out these ridiculous, bogus binders in a stupid act of pandering.

These poor influencers, they held them up like they had, you know, finally had the whole eight tablets.

Of course, when they look through it, they realize it's all older redacted and completely worthless, and then seem to suggest, you know, she's wiggled out, tries to wiggle out of it, but seem to suggest she had a client list on her desk, on her desk.

And then she, you know, everyone wants it to go away, but she turns around a month or two later and says, oh, forget it.

You know, so I understand there are questions about this, but I, you know, and as you've put it, she either was lying then, right, when she said that had the client list, or or is lying now when she says there's no client list.

I take the first option.

I think it was a stupid act of pandering

that and she got wrapped around the axle

on this thing.

But she should tomorrow, she should do a press conference and it should be to the last dog die kind of press conference.

Everyone can come in.

We're credentialing everyone.

I don't know.

I don't care who you are or what outlet you're from.

And I'll answer every single question about it.

And that this is why the conclusion that we've come to, and if there are other things that can be released, as you know, and as i've discussed on the show you know it the epstein files makes it sound as though it's like a file cabinet in the corner of her office and she has one of those little file cabinet keys and she can open it and take out the 10 manila folders with the the epstein files whereas it's a vast investigative record and surely more can be released than has been released surely there's some things you know grand jury secrecy and the less the rest that should stay uh uh shouldn't be disclosed but surely there's more to disclose you know more about it that than i do since i'm a national review type but i we haven't seen the autopsy, right?

Have we seen the actual report on

why they've concluded it?

I think so.

We've heard from the medical examiner for sure.

I'm very well aware of what she found and why she found it, but I don't know that we have the actual paper.

Could be, and I just haven't seen it.

You know, why not?

Here's the problem,

the problem.

Like

it is, there's a middle ground here that I keep trying to remind people of.

You know, I don't believe that there's a massive pedophile ring that's being covered up, though, you know, stranger things have happened.

I don't believe Trump did anything terrible that's in there that he's trying to hide, though it is possible that somebody made some scurrilous allegations against him because that's happened on the record, you know, outside of the Epstein case.

So would I be shocked to see that somebody did it?

No, I wouldn't.

I believe, though, that there might be some names in there who are politically connected to Team Blue and Team Red, and neither side has a great interest in sort of...

hanging those people out to dry.

And those people would be the kind of people making calls being like, would really appreciate it if you didn't do this.

And maybe their donor, you know, the donors are important enough that they're listening.

That's a possibility.

I'm just throwing that out there.

But I think the way this needs to be handled, like any scandal, any potential scandal is you get out early.

You get out loudly.

You open up all the coffers and say, come on in, take a look.

This is everything we know.

You know, this is everything we're going to give you.

Because now we're in a situation where even if Pam Bondi, I have to be fair to the administration, even if she does come on.

I've asked her for an interview to come on this show or gives a presser or cash and Dan join her, even if that happens.

People who are really dug in on this are probably always at this point going to say,

I don't believe it.

You know,

once you're dug in on something, it's almost unwinnable for Trump at this point.

Yeah, someone's reminded me of the

old joke a little while ago.

Guy dies, goes to heavens at the Pearlie Gates.

God said, you know, ask me any questions.

You know, I'm happy to answer anything now.

And he's like, What happened with the Kennedy assassination?

And God says, Lee Harvey Oswald did it.

The guy's like, I didn't know.

I didn't know it went this high up.

The

conspiracy gets this far-reaching.

So, there are some people that that's where they are on this, and there's going to be no way to satisfy them.

Plus, look, it's how did he get his money?

I don't think we'll ever know, right?

And we're denied the sense of closure by his death in jail.

I

think he committed suicide, but

they should try to be as disclosive as they reasonably can you know without breaking any rules and disclosing things that that you know our system says should should be secret and upfront about it and i i think the problem part of the problem here

i think

yeah you go ahead finish your finish your point i was going to say i i just i think bondi is his weakest major uh cabinet pick i understand why he wants her there she's confirmed right it's hard to get someone confirmed i'm sure he likes her and he'll do whatever he wants basically so you know it's all good as far as he's concerned.

But I don't think this press conference, hypothetical press conference,

I don't think she can do it.

I don't think she'd pull it off very well.

I think there'd be more questions

left on, you know, more questions afterwards than

you were when you began.

She just, she's handed this totally incompetently because I'm not sure she's that.

competent.

So look, I think they're going to release more.

I think they have to.

I think transparency is like the go-to for everyone here in this kind of situation.

Mike Johnson was saying, release everything

with Benny Johnson the other day.

So I think they'll release more, but I don't think they're ever going to satisfy

a lot of people.

Because one, I don't think they can be satisfied.

And I just, I'm not sure how much of the total record can be released.

Here is Speaker Johnson on Benny's show yesterday, seven.

It's a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.

I mean, the White House and the White House team are privy to facts that I don't know.

I mean, this isn't my lane.

I haven't been involved in that.

But I agree with the sentiment that we need to put it out there.

And,

you know, Pam Pondi, I don't know when she originally made the statement.

I think she was talking about documents, as I understood it.

They were on her desk.

I don't know that she was specific about a list or whatever, but

she needs to come forward and explain that to everybody.

I like Pam.

I mean, I think she's done a good job.

We need the DOJ focusing on the major priorities.

So let's get this thing resolved.

Yeah, just put it in their review.

I think that's what many and probably most Republicans would very much like, including yours truly, just to put it in their rear view, just put it, put it to bed.

Who wants to spend the next three and a half years obsessing over Jeffrey Epstein?

Not me.

And so what they really need to do now is

figure out how to put it to bed.

I do think a Pam Bondi, maybe you fold in Todd Blanche.

He could probably do it.

The two of them together.

Maybe you bring over a cash or a Dan.

So it's like United Front and Core MAGA has somebody there who they really do trust.

I don't know.

But what President Trump is doing is trying to, you know, he understands strength and he understands how to like completely overpower people.

And he's using those powers to try to stop the conversation.

But I think he's also risking some alienation of some key supporters.

We kicked it off of that Andrew Schultz soundbite, but you can't, I don't think it's a good idea, even for Trump, to look at his supporters and say, you're selfish and you're weakling.

Yeah, and I don't want your support if you're still interested in this.

Overly dismissive, right?

But but this is his MO, right?

It's it's a bulldozer uh all the time and and usually it's worked out for him so you understand him going there and also understand the frustration i mean this has been like a historic month a historic month in terms of his his presidency whatever whatever what he's been able to get done and to have at the at the after all this stuff has happened to be talking about this has to be immensely

who does he have to thank for that Pam Bondi, who put out that stupid method.

Like, why didn't she?

I'm with you.

Why did it have to come out now?

Why didn't she, why, like what was the rush to get that out yeah like on this two sundays ago i don't get it she did step on a lot of his big accomplishments it's i just don't think pambony's going to recover from this very easily she needs to save herself by some sort of a massive sit-down oppressor although trump still is in her corner that's very clear here he is moments ago in the oval watch

I really think that she's done very good.

She says, I gave you all the credible information.

And if she finds any more credible information, she'll give that too.

What more can she do than that?

I mean, honestly, what more can she do?

And we do have bigger problems.

You know, we have problems with millions of illegal people that came in here and they're killers and murderers.

We have 11,888 murderers that were allowed in to our country by Biden, sleepy Joe Biden, stupid Joe Biden.

Okay, she's got the president in her corner, but I do think she's hurting him now.

Now, like she's crossed over into political liability, and that has to be rectified someplace.

Put apart whether you're into Epstein or you're not.

Put that to the side.

We're just talking politics here.

She's been dinged up severely, and she's leading him to get, you know,

in British conflict.

Which I don't think any of his supporters want to see.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, which nobody wants to see.

But why doesn't he just let her twist in the wind and put her out there to press her?

And then he's kind of washed his hands of it.

Yeah.

The problem is, if I'm right, the depressor wouldn't go well.

And who knows, maybe, maybe I'm wrong.

I've been very wrong before.

There's just more fuel on the fire.

So the problem is that maybe that she messed it up and she herself might not be capable of fixing it.

So

she is just twisting out there in the wind.

Well, they're banking on, you know, enough time passing that it'll go away.

However, I, you know, Laura Trump said two nights ago that

they are going to release more you heard trump say bondi will release more to the extent she can it's not confidential so right now they're both saying we'll release more and also off so yeah that's

where we are

We've been through this like a hundred times where there's some controversy, there's some fix that Trump is in.

It's like impossible to see how he gets out of it or how it's going to end.

And it seems like it's going to be long-lasting.

Then it always ends.

And he always gets out of it.

And it's a little different, right?

Because obviously it's his base pushing it rather than the CBS news or whatever.

But there seems an expiration date on every Trump controversy, no matter what.

Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, I just think like Trump is doing too many great things for this to remain the dominant news headline.

And that's appropriate.

I mean, there's always going to be curiosity with it.

It's now going to be like a JFK, you know, mystery that people will always harken back to.

The only question is, when does this acute chapter of pain close and end?

And everybody in the news, at least, moves on so that we can start talking about other things.

I think, you know, we're probably already already getting there, but Trump could certainly hurry that along and stop the bleeding by putting her out there or doing something to be a little bit more transparent, notwithstanding the fact that you'll always have people who will say, not enough.

I still don't believe.

But I think there's a huge faction that actually would accept that.

We'll see.

All right.

I want to ask you about Ukraine and Trump, because it's pretty remarkable what.

what's going on right now.

Trump, when he was running for office, said I'll get that war settled in a day.

He wasn't able to get that war settled in a day.

He later said, I was being facetious, obviously, but he genuinely wants it to stop.

I mean, I truly think Trump loathes war in a uniquely special way.

And now he's sort of reopened the spigot of arms to Ukraine

via NATO by like providing them to NATO, and then they'll provide them to Ukraine, which is a little less exposure for the United States and rather than it just being us versus another nuclear power.

And I think, like, I'm giving, I was giving this speech out here in Vale and a lot of Republicans there.

And somebody was saying, has he betrayed us?

Like, does he not understand that the base elected him to be, you know, to not keep funding Ukraine, to not keep funding our own forever wars or somebody else's?

Like, what's he doing?

And my own thought on it, Rich, was, you know, Trump really gave Putin every benefit of the doubt.

He tried his typical, like,

say nice things about your enemies and mean things about your friends, you know, and it worked to a great extent on the tariffs and other ways, but Putin just can't be charmed.

And slowly but surely, Trump came to his own realization, which is what needed to happen on Putin.

Trump no longer trusts him.

I don't think he likes him.

I think he feels like he,

Putin was trying to play him, and Trump has now seen that for himself.

And so I do think we're at a new day now where he's got...

He's always had to have like one foot in the more isolationist J.D.

Vance, Tucker Carlson camp, and one foot in the more neoconnie camp.

And I think maybe he's got like a couple toes from that first camp now, also over.

The balance is moving to

something that I think, you know, the more traditional wing of the party would like.

Yeah, I agree on all points.

It's very, very important that the person asked you that question.

Never said he was going to cut off Ukraine.

He never did.

A lot of people around him said it.

A lot of people who wanted to cut off Ukraine ended up in high-level positions, but he never said it himself.

And I was fairly, I'm a Ukraine hawk, but but I was much more bullish on Trump's policy here than a lot of other hawks because I thought there was a chance he could shake something loose and we'd get some sort of peace deal, as can be a good peace deal, or it might just be a ceasefire for a couple of years, whatever it is.

But he just would draw a line where the control is now and says, Russia, you know, we regret it, but Russia has taken this territory.

We're not going to get it back anytime soon.

They keep it for now.

And that Putin might go along with that because he'd be afraid of pissing off Trump.

And

he wasn't, at least not as afraid enough.

And then I thought if Putin clearly is playing him along, Trump would turn on him eventually.

And a lot of Ukraine hawks over the last six months, like, see, you're wrong.

You're wrong about him.

He just likes Putin.

He's just with Putin.

I'm not sure.

It took a little longer than I would have liked, but he has made the turn.

Because,

you know,

a lot of things about Trump, they're sort of gonzo and they're big true social posts, but

underneath it is kind of a conventional or commonsensical approach.

Iran, you give them 50 days or 60 days or whatever, talk to them before Israel hits them.

And if nothing comes of it, you hit them, right?

That's a very conventional thing.

Here, see if you can get a peace deal.

Why not?

If you can't, well, then you move to another policy.

And I think the key thing is not the tariff threats.

I don't think that moves Putin.

But I do think, unfortunately, you just got to give Ukraine more weapons and say to Putin, this has already been a meat grinder for you.

It's going to be more of a meat grinder for you.

And you're not really going to gain any more territory.

And maybe you're going to outlast us but you think you're going to outlast us gonna be highly painful for you and maybe you'll think differently in a year and we'll talk then so i i think that's the the basic approach approach and is is the correct one

exactly right i think he he said something interesting about um melania did you see this the other day where he was like loved it you know i'd go i'd hang up i'd hang up from a phone call with putin and i said i had a really nice talk with vladimir and she'd say oh really because you just bombed another city

i'd get home i'd say first lady I had the most wonderful talk with Vladimir.

I think we're finished.

And then I'll turn on the television, or she'll say to me one time, wow, that's strange because they just bombed a nursing home.

I said, what?

So.

Yeah, I think that's so interesting because, of course, Melania Trump, of all people, would understand very well the instincts of a man like Vladimir Putin, given where she grew up in Eastern, you know, the Eastern Bloc, what used to be be part of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and

probably has a very different idea of how he operates and whether her husband should trust him.

Completely.

And this is, you know, with the Epstein clips from Trump, you know, he throws a lot of chaff and BS out there, but they're

also part of his power as a communicator.

It's so real and hits home.

Of course, this is the kind of thing that happens, right?

You think you're doing something great.

You go home, your spouse says, I don't think it's so great.

You know, why is this happening?

You know, know, and so it was, it was funny.

It was memorable and rings true.

And Melania has been right about this.

And the president finally realizes it.

I think it's great because she doesn't,

she doesn't try to, you know, she, she's not on camera or on the scene giving Trump a lot of political advice.

Right.

Like she's very happy, to my delight, frankly, to be behind the scenes, a supporter of her husband and like, not like a lady Jill Biden, who's out there like a lady Macbeth.

You know, she's

been, Melania occasionally shows up with wearing a fancy hat, you know, and at events.

Looking amazing.

So she's not, she's not helping run cabinet meetings.

But she, just a reminder that she obviously is very powerful.

And if you talk to anybody in Trumpland, anybody, they'll say the one person like he will listen to all the time and might even fear a little bit is Melania.

You know, she's earned it by not being

too vocal and too annoying on too many issues.

And so it's pretty interesting that she's playing an important role behind the scenes here.

We'll see.

I mean, no one wants to see this war go on and on and on.

It doesn't seem winnable by either side.

I'd love for it just to come to some conclusion sometime soon so all the killing can stop.

All right, lastly, let's talk up for a minute about illegal immigration because

there was an ICE raid in California on a marijuana farm the other day.

And not only did they conduct an ICE raid, but they wound up rescuing, this is on Thursday, at least 14 migrant children, including 10 who were unaccompanied minors.

They've been now turned over to HHS.

So you have illegals who are here who are minors with no parents.

You have no idea who their parents are.

Working at a pot farm in California.

The ICE agents arrested at least 361 illegals.

That's up from the original 319 that were reported.

And among those who were arrested, we've got previously deported Mexican alien convicted of kidnapping, attempted rape, and attempted child molestation.

Mexican alien previously convicted of rape and DUI.

Salvadoran alien previously convicted of DUI and hit and run.

Mexican alien convicted three times for burglary and a DUI.

These are dangerous people who Gavin Newsom was effectively allowing to work on this pot farm.

and who Trump and his ICE agents and Tom Homan went in there and got, rescuing those children.

This, as elsewhere, you get reports still out of California, this is actually via National Review,

that you've got a professor at California State, Jonathan Anthony Caravello,

who was being detained by federal agents after a riot at a different place, the Glasshouse Farms.

I think, wait, that might be the same place actually.

Same place, for throwing tear gas, a tear gas canister at the ICE agents.

He ran toward the canister, picked it up, threw the canister overhand back at the Border Patrol agents.

It came within approximately several feet of the law enforcement's heads.

So this is what the Trump team is up against.

And the National Review team has a post up today

talking about how

this could all be solved by E-Verify.

Like,

why haven't we done that?

So your thoughts on the E-Verify piece of it and just the news out of California.

Yeah, well,

tolerating illegal immigration creates this cesspool of illegality that leads to all sorts of hideous abuses.

So it doesn't surprise me that you go to that farm that's employing so many illegal workers and you have additional illegality on top of it.

So there's always going to be a place for ICE raids.

But again, I think the main name of the game is cutting off the jobs magnet and making it much harder to employ illegal immigrants.

And in these raids, they shouldn't just be targeting illegal workers.

They should be frog marching the occasional HR person or the employer or the boss of the business that's been violating the laws.

To make a point, don't do this, because

you might get caught by the law as well.

But the easiest way to do it is to have a mandatory e-verify system where you have to verify that your employees are actually legal.

There is no nod and wink arrangement.

You can't claim, oh, I didn't really know.

They gave me these fake documents.

And then it becomes much harder to employ illegal immigrants without ICE having to go the trouble of actually raiding places.

And if illegal immigrants get the message, you know, it's not as easy to work here as I was led to believe.

It wasn't as easy to work here as it was six months ago or a year ago, then you get the self-deportation, which if you're going to get, we've talked about this before, if you get the numbers way up, you need people to leave without having to expend federal resources tracking tracking them down detaining them and returning them you know on a government plane or whatever you need them to to to go the same way they came under their own power so i think you verify is a key part of it but again trump because he's a little conflicted on this issue he hates illegal immigration but he also has a lot of sympathy for employers who need immigrant employees hasn't been willing to to uh really really push for for this system and he has so much power in the party right now if he just said he favors it it'd become a kind of orthodoxy almost instantly.

Immediately.

Immediately.

Yeah.

And he's also worried about the economy.

And I think he's been convinced that mass deportations of farm workers and hotel workers would hurt the economy.

I mean, I think maybe short-term that would be true, but then they'd have to offer higher wages to actual American citizens, which would boost quality of life and net net, wind up boosting his approval ratings.

That's my own back of the envelope.

Would you like to see the professor, the Cal State professor, who threw the canister at the cops?

Maybe, maybe you didn't click on it on National Review, but there he is, right on brand.

I mean, it looks for the listening audience like a totally crazed,

I don't know.

Oh, he's got the same hair as Scott Pressler, who we love, but then he's got just like this crazed look on his face with a very 70s-looking shirt and big glasses and some facial scruff.

And enjoy prison, Professor.

He looks like a great person.

He looks like Zoron Mondani's economics professor from college.

Taught him everything.

I thought he looked a little

like Sonia Sotomayor, but that's too mean to Sonia Sotomayor.

Here is some of the video that we have here.

Look at this of protesters throwing objects at agents in vans.

This is in Los Angeles as they try to conduct their raids.

One appears to fire a gun at federal agents as they're out there.

I mean, these guys, the ICE agents are doing yeoman's work and they are just getting beaten up in city after city and then beaten up on the airwaves by losers like Ana Navarro, right?

Who are comparing them to the Gestapo with their commentary.

And then Tom Holman, who's a hero, goes on with NBC's Dasha Burns.

And look at this, what happens here, South 13.

I think one of the things that's had a lot of folks up in arms is that ICE agents, unlike other law enforcement, have been masked to protect their identities.

That's not something that we've really had on this scale in this country.

Do you?

Well, we never have the scale of of attacks on ice.

We have now up 700% attacks on ice.

Doxying against the city.

We've had increased attacks on police officers as well in the wake of the defund the police movement, too, but they haven't put masks on.

You name it, name a police, name a police agency that's a 700% increase in assaults.

Name one.

I haven't looked at that data yet.

You won't find one.

The same people that complain about ice wearing masks, have they ever said anything about BLM protester wearing masks?

Well, I mean, that leads me to the question.

Do you have concerns?

Let Let me answer, though.

Let me answer.

Did they ever say anything about the mass protesters that became criminals on college campuses that threatened Jewish students and took over buildings, destroyed property?

They were all wearing masks.

Anybody passed legislation saying they can't wear a mask during a protest?

No.

Is it possible for an administration official to be your own personal heroine?

Because Tom Holman is my own personal heroine.

He's so good.

I was looking at the clip.

It reminds reminds me a little bit of J.D.

Vampster in the campaign.

J.D.

would go on any program,

always sure-footed, and occasionally corner the interviewers himself, which is exactly what Homan did there with Dasha Burns.

And

what's happening to ICE agents, this is what you'd want to happen in a healthy society if there really was a Gestapo stalking the streets, right?

But this is not the Gestapo.

They're federal law enforcement agents that are trying to enforce laws that are on the books.

You know, they say they're internment camps, you know, Alligator Alcatraz and all the rest of it.

The federal law says illegal immigrants shall be detained, right?

So it's the other side that's ignored the law and been literally lawless forever.

And now the law is actually being enforced and perversely that's being made made into the dark night of fascism descending.

It's crazy.

It's totally crazy.

And I should correct myself.

I guess Dasha Burns left NBC in January of last year and now is with Political.

That's what we were watching there.

Well, look, I think the ICE stuff is just getting better and better.

They hit another record low on the deportee on the

illegal border crossings in June.

I mean, it was a crazy number.

It was so good.

Everything's working there.

Unfortunately, Rich, the latest poll I saw showed

people are now veering more toward,

well, we shouldn't deport them all.

I'm like,

that's because of the southern border being secure.

It's the same way

how New York City residents voted for the awful Bill de Blasio and

are apparently going to vote for this defund the police, Mom Donnie.

They are forgetting what life was like pre-Giuliani.

And it only took six months of Trump in office for them to forget what life was like under Joe Biden and the masses who came in this country.

Now they're like, oh, maybe it's not so bad.

Now, it was one poll.

It was Gallup.

It was a pretty decent sample size, if memory holds.

But

it's just so funny how quickly people are like, oh, problem solved.

Totally.

Yeah, totally.

That was inevitable.

But I think the administration is committed to kind of punching their way through it.

Because I mean, have we even put a dent really on the Biden influx in terms of numbers, in terms of just getting that number of people out?

No.

So there's so much work yet to be done.

So I don't think they're going to be deterred.

But it's kind of inevitable the polling would shift at least some because one, you know, you don't have the problem coming coming in from the border as you're pointing out two i mean you are going to have to reach people who are who are just illegal immigrants who aren't aren't criminals you know they have to go too they don't they don't belong here and they're more sympathetic than the the you know ms13 member or whatever

yeah

rich lowry you're such a such a stand-up guy for coming on and saving me this morning you were supposed to come on later but you readjusted the schedule to join me here in vail colorado as i said if you can do the show from uh from a random conference room at the airport surely I could

show up on my phone an hour or two early, early to accommodate.

Seriously, I wasn't expecting it, so I was like, well, I was trying to get my makeup on in this room.

And

the nice lady is running in the sound bite list to me.

Thank God.

Greatly appreciated.

Appreciate

Aspen and Vale are wonderful places to go, but you always run this risk.

They're hard to get in and out of.

Unfortunately.

Eventually, I hope to make it home, and I hope to be broadcasting tomorrow from from the normal studio in New Jersey, at least during the summer.

Rich, thank you.

Awesome.

Safe travels.

All right, thank you.

And thanks to all of you for tuning in.

We will be back, we hope, tomorrow.

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

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