The Megyn Kelly Show

Absurd Signalgate Spin, NPR Exec Grilled, and Biggest Media Hacks in America, with Ruthless Podcast Hosts | Ep. 1036

March 27, 2025 1h 41m Episode 1036
Megyn Kelly is joined by Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook, hosts of the Ruthless podcast, to discuss the left and media frenzy over Signalgate, how out of touch they are with what most Americans care about, Jeffrey Goldberg claiming he wouldn't release the classified info before he did the next day, the outrageous Democratic Rep questioning of Pete Hegseth, continuing the debunked Hegseth drinking hoax, NPR CEO Katherine Maher getting grilled before Congress over her organization's bias, getting confronted by her woke and controversial past tweets, whether NPR and PBS could get defunded, her cringeworthy "best actress" nominees featuring AOC, Kamala Harris, Jasmine Crockett and Hilaria Baldwin and their changing personas and accents, Kristi Noem’s controversial tenure as DHS Secretary, her use of Venezuelan gang members as the backdrop in her recent social media video, the biggest media hacks in their “Hack Madness”, why CBS host Margaret Brennan is an early favorite to win, the latest controversy with "Snow White" actress Rachel Zegler, new reporting that a social media consultant had to monitor her posts, and more. More from Ruthless: https://ruthlesspodcast.com/ Angel Studios: Become an Angel Guild member today and get 2 free tickets to The King of Kings movie when you become a premium member. Visit https://angel.com/MEGYN Tax Network USA: Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit https://TNUSA.com/MEGYN to speak with a strategist for FREE today Byrna: Go to https://Byrna.com/MEGYN to save 10%

Listen and Follow Along

Full Transcript

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home.

Out, procrastination, putting it off, kicking the can down the road.

In, plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done.

Out, carpet in the bathroom, like why?

In, knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire.

Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today.
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Oh, they're still on freaking signal gate everywhere.
We just like move on. It's not going away.
The Democrats are so excited. They've got something juicy that makes the Trump administration look bad to talk about.
And for some reason, the Trump administration does keep talking about it, which I like. Just stop.
There's this is pointless. You have so many good things you can talk about that don't involve this egg on the face situation.
But they all are. So we will, too, to some extent.
Way more delicious is what happened on the Hill yesterday with NPR and PBS. My God, if you listen to the AM update this morning, that's our new morning show with just the news headlines, which I think you'll like.
My friend Donna, she listens to the show every day. My closest friend from law school, she says, you're starting to get spicier.
Your personality is starting to come through more. First off, we started out Walter Cronkite-like with our delivery.
Now we're getting a little looser. In any event, I think you'll like it.
We talked about some of the soundbites. We played some of the soundbites.
And oh my God, we have so many more. It was so fun.
It's wonderful to see these left-wing hacks get called out explicitly for their left-wing hackism. And we'll do more of that here.
Plus, it's March Madness, which means it's hack madness too. Speaking of hacks, it's hack madness.
What do I mean? Well, what media hacks are performing well in their ruthless brackets? There's only one group of fellas that have the answer to that, and they are Josh Holmes, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook, and Comfortably Smug, the hosts of the Ruthless podcast or variety program. Think of the last movie that made you think, that changed you, nevermind possibly inspired you.
Angel Studios is bringing those kinds of films to the world. Movies like Sound of Freedom, Homestead, Bonhoeffer, and Something to Stand For.
Movies that honor God, celebrate patriotism, and lift our values. And right now, when you join the Angel Guild, you will get two free tickets to see The King of Kings, a blockbuster animated film about the life of Jesus in theaters this Easter.
This is a chance to experience a powerful film that's making waves and changing hearts. With a 95% average audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, Angel Studios films are high quality, family-friendly entertainment that teaches values like freedom, self-reliance, and unity.
To stream their films and to help Angel bring more stories to the world, go to angel.com slash Megan, and that'll help you become a premium Angel Guild member. As a member of the Angel Guild, you get to vote on the stories that matter most to you and your family.
Become an Angel Guild member today by going to angel.com slash Megan, and when you become a premium member, you will get two free tickets to the King of Kings in theaters this Easter, only with Angel Studios. Great to see you guys.
Great to see you, Megan. Thanks for having us.
I love, love, love the NPR story so much. And I hate, hate, hate the signal story.
Not because it makes the Trump administration look bad. I'm happy to talk about stuff that makes the Trump administration.
I don't care. And it's like I'm obviously a Trump supporter.
Still, the news is the news. But this one's just so pointless.
No one's saying anything new. We're going back and forth arguing about whether it was war plans or attack plans.
And like, is Mike Walsh more culpable because he appears to have added Jeffrey Goldberg to the thread? Or is it Pete Hegseth who, you know, released? Was it classified information or is it not classified? Because as defense secretary, he's declassifying it by sharing. Like, I don't care.
The Houthis are dead, which we're really happy. Like the average person, like dead Houthis.
Cool. And probably should take it off signal for the next one and get rid of the nasty reporter.
Like, don't you think that's how most normal people are reacting to this? A hundred percent. No question about it.
I mean, we did our entire show basically on this today. And look, the upshot of this thing is that every administration makes some kind of mistake.
The previous administration, their mistake cost 13 Marines their lives. This administration added a reporter to a text chain and then happened to run a flawless mission against the Houthis, which was a 17-month in-the-making problem where they had 175 separate attacks on U.S.
Navy personnel while the Biden administration did absolutely nothing. Donald Trump's in office all of eight weeks, boom, taken care of.
Suez Canal reopened. An Iran-funded terror operation destroyed.
OK. You know, like in the matter of scandal, where does this rank? I mean, for me, overwhelming success.
Now, granted, they shouldn't have any sort of external communication with the heads of national security apparatus that includes a reporter. They know that.
They acknowledge as much literally the day afterwards. They clearly did not mean it.
They did not include him. Right.
And the president, in fact, took it straight on. He said, here's the way that I would prefer we handle this.
And he talked about the lead ceilings and lead walls, basically describing the situation room. And that should make perfectly clear to anybody going forward the way the president sees this.
It was a screw up. He's standing by his people because, oh, by the way, they executed a perfect mission, which was the whole point of this.
And by the way, an afterthought in the media. But ultimately, yeah.
I mean, that's why you stand by your national security, folks. Clearly a screw up, but we'll do things differently and move on.
The story's done as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, right.
I don't it's like they want to scalp. And, you know, yesterday, with all due respect to Dave Portnoy, they actually raised Dave Portnoy's name at the White House press briefing.
Some reporter was like, well, Dave Portnoy, even Dave Portnoy was laughing about the fact that they took his commentary and elevated it to the presidential level. Like, well, what do you have? I mean, Dave Portnoy is calling for someone to get fired.
He wants Mike Walls to be fired. What are you like? What what are we doing? If Dave Portnoy tells me not to go to a certain place for pizza, I'm very interested.
If he has something interesting to say about sports, about which I know nothing, I'm interested. His social commentary is fun.

But whether someone needs to get fired over Signalgate, I'm out.

And I certainly would never be so dumb as to raise that with the White House, which I think Portnoy agrees with me on.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that pretty much gives away the whole game of what is exactly happening right now with our media.

You've got the establishment media that's in that White House briefing room, and they're concerned with Dave Portnoy's thoughts on what happened here. Only because it runs against Trump.
They don't care about actual news. They don't care about what Americans got from that story, which is, oh, wow, terrorists got blown up.
Terrific. They're trying to make this like some process, gossipy, juicy story when there's nothing there to discuss.
They're like, well, Dave Portnoy said this. It's like maybe you're a little bit way too online here.
Like, yeah, you're using your time in the White House press briefing room to talk about Dave Portnoy's thoughts. And Portnoy is a heck of a showman.
He is a heck of a showman, but he's no showman compared to Donald Trump. And that's my recommendation in the Trump administration is like change the conversation.
You just you just arrested one of these top gang leaders of MS-13 in Virginia. I don't bring them into the briefing room.
You know, we can dissect all of his tattoos. We can ask Robert Costa, do you think this guy is a is a gang member of MS-13? He has an MS-13.
What is the calligraphoy think? In calligraphy on his chest, you know? Dave Fortnoy, is this or is this not MS-13? They're trying, but that won't do it because that's good news for the Trump administration and the left-wing media that's driving this story won't go along with it. But what's been remarkable to me, because if you search all the news sites, and obviously that's my job, they're all still on it.
Everyone. I mean, everything online, all the print papers completely on SignalGate.
And so are all of the more establishment Republican media outlets, right? Like the Wall Street Journal's all over it. National Review's got like four pieces up on how somebody needs to get fired and how terrible this is.
I mean, they, they, I love national review, but they're really turning into never Trumpers. Like they're starting to read much more like the dispatch and they should watch it.
I love those guys, but they need to reign that in a bit because it's all Trump bashing. Um, so, but my takeaway is the people who wanted, and it's in particular about Hegseth, Hegseth to have nothing to do with the Pentagon, and we're totally against his elevation to that post, are the loudest critics in this scandal.
They think there's blood in the water. They're trying to change the conversation from Mike Walls to Pete Hegseth, even though, and I don't think either one should be fired, but even though it was Mike Walls who added this Jeffrey Goldberg to the Atlanta, Pete Hegseth didn't do that.
Pete Hegseth trusted the national security advisor that this was an appropriate place to have this conversation and that he who had created the group Walls had screened everyone appropriately. That's, that was Pete's sin, right.
And then had a frank conversation about the plans, as was obviously requested by Mike Walls and the others who were on there, including the vice president. But I really think it's all these people who hated Pete who will not let this die because they think they can get a scalp.
And I'm here to tell you, it's not gettable. He's not getting fired.
You're going to have to cry harder. Yeah, I think that's right.
Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. You look back at what did Joe Biden do when it comes to the Houthi terrorists? He took them off the terrorist list.
What did Pete Hegseth do? He killed them. And so this is exactly what people voted for.
They wanted action out of this president's what Trump told people he was going to do. He came in and he started acting.
And I mean, we talk about the mainstream media and you're saying that they don't want the conversation to go away. Well, the one guy who's going away is this top leader at MS-13.
Another action that the president has taken. We talked about it a second ago.
But like this guy is acting every single day in a way that voters wanted. And that's why his approval rating and the right track number that everybody follows is so high.
I don't know if you saw this poll from Marist just this week. It showed that the right track number is higher than it's been in 20 years.
And Democrats are scrambling. And when you say Democrats, you have to include the mainstream media in that group of people.
They're also scrambling, trying to figure out what they can do to get out from under Trump's popularity and just incredible start in these first two months.

I think it's also worth a little trip down memory lane when we're talking about the press here.

And you're right.

They're trying to get a scalp, whether it's Peter Waltz or whatever they ask, incessantly about whether or not one of them are going to get fired. How many of those same journalists talked about Afghanistan withdrawal in the same way? Who is going to get fired? Of course, nobody got fired.
Right. And it cost 13 Marines their lives.
But also the story was sort of a process story about, well, Trump wanted to get out of Afghanistan to everybody wanted to do this thing and move on. And you look at some of the Democrats like Chuck Schumer, we highlighted on our show.
He had exactly one thing on all of X over the last five years that contained the word Afghanistan, where there was no call for an investigation. There was no discussion about what went wrong.
He condemned terror, right? And now he's saying that every

single American's life is at risk because of an operation that happened 10 days ago, which was a resounding success. Like this doesn't, it strains credibility.
Yeah. Yep.
A hundred percent. And so now you've got Jeffrey Goldberg moving into saintly status of the Atlantic, this complete left wing hack who has never seen Republican catnip that he hasn't sniffed and rolled around in and peddled to his viewers as real, right? From Russiagate to the fawning piece he did on Mark Milley for like holding the line against this dictatorial Trump, the guy who was going to tell the Chinese if we were going to unleash an attack on them, which, by the way, no one was even planning.
Only Mark Milley's head was Trump going to go attack the Chinese. We didn't attack the Chinese.
Trump didn't give the order to go attack the Chinese. But Mark Milley decided to take it upon himself to, in a treasonous communication, tell his counterpart in China, if we are going to drop any bombs on you, I will give you the heads up.
That's crazy. Which is totally, I mean, insubordinate is an understatement, but he's a patriot in the eyes of the Atlantic.
Okay, so Jeffrey Goldberg goes out there like, I'm the dignified one here, okay? They added me because I'm important, obviously, I'm in everybody's phone, not mine. Mike Wallace is even saying not in his.
No, I have to say, to be honest, that sounds like bullshit to me. He does.
I mean, I don't know how he'd get added from Mike Wallace's phone if he weren't in there. Wallace, in a very awkward exchange with Laura Ingram, seemed to be trying to say, it'd be like if I texted you something, Holmes, and said, hey, you know, great having you on the show today.
Doug, my husband, wanted to send you something, and like I CC'd Doug on the communication, you know, like I added him in. So you didn't have Doug in your contacts, but like sometimes your phone would recognize, oh, this is Doug, right? Like it might say at a future point, if you're searching for a Doug, it might pull that up because there is some AI on your phone that does that for you.
He seemed to be suggesting Goldberg was part of a different conversation he had with somebody. And that's somehow how I have no idea.
Okay. Anyway, back to my main point, all these thoughts.
So Goldberg goes out there and he's like, I didn't, I didn't want to do any of it. I'm so sad that they're making me do this, but I feel, you know, an obligation to tell you how insecure, um, unsecure these comms are and that I had war plans.
And he went all over the news media on Tuesday saying, I'm not, I'm not going to release the stuff they texted about the war plans because it's too incendiary. It's really it's going to compromise our military.
So that I won't do. And here's a little bit of how he sounded on Tuesday.
Watch. The last thing I want is to see American lives endangered in any way.
Let me which is why you didn't include it. And Jeffrey, you rightly didn't publish, of course, the details of everything you saw in that exchange.
So I don't expect you to repeat them here. I don't want to go into details because I don't think it's responsible to operational issues.
And as much as I enjoy national security investigative reporting, I don't, I don't need strike plans two hours before a launch. That's not, that should not be coming into my phone.
I mean, I take this stuff very, very seriously. The White House press secretary has said you're lying.
I've said there are no war plans there. I've said there's no classified information.
So the obvious question is, shouldn't you now demonstrate it? Shouldn't you publish the text?

No, because they're wrong.

I have a pretty clear standards in my own behavior of what I consider information that I consider to be in the public interest, even if it's technically classified or not.

I'm sticking to my principles here.

Sticking to his principles.

Okay.

So just for the record, that was him and the messaging up and down television on Tuesday for whatever it's worth. This, this is what I said on Tuesday.
By the way, I think we're T minus like 72 hours before Jeffrey Goldberg releases it anyway with maybe a couple of things redacted, but I, I don't think he's going to stay in this. Like I I'm above it all and I won't release it.
He, he just, I don't think he can help himself. And I was 100% right, except for the redacting part.
24 hours later. Yeah, except for the redacting.
So he releases it all, virtually 99.99% has been released. I think he withheld the one name of the one guy.
But the whole, all the, it wouldn't be responsible. I take this stuff very, very seriously.
No, I shouldn't publish it.

It'd be wrong.

I have clear standards out the window.

Not a single redaction.

Read it all.

Please click on the Atlantic.

It's the kind of turn that would make Nancy Kerrigan wish she could do it.

I mean, it was a full double axle, triple toe loop.

The guy in 24 hours was so esteemed and he's never going to do it because of principle. And he's like you know what yeah here it is let's get some more publicity also special hats off to your researchers megan who had to sift through tim miller and msnbc and all of that i mean that's enough to give somebody brain damage there should be some kind of a comp reward for something like that hazard pay um it was just's unbelievable.
So this guy has been turned into some sort of a hero and pick your poison. I mean, if you are pro-Europe, you're blaming this all on J.D.
Vance. Like he said terrible things about our best friends, but how they needed to take care of this.
If you are anti-Pete Hegseth, you're saying he needs to get fired. A lot of the sort of pro more neo Connie guys much prefer Tim Walls.
I mean, sorry, not Tim Walls, Mike Walls. So there's like different constituencies coming out.
And Mike Walls with Laura Ingram claimed he will get to the bottom of it, which I believe we will. And he said he's brought in a special helper to do that.
Take a listen here. Top three.
It's embarrassing. Yes, we're going to get to the bottom of it.
We've have I just talked to Elon on the way here. We've got the best technical minds looking at how this happened.
But I can tell you, I can tell you for 100 percent, I don't know this guy. I know him by his horrible reputation.
And he really is a bottom scum of journalists. And I know him in the sense that he hates the president.
But I don't text him. He wasn't on my phone.
And we're going to figure out how this happened. Okay.
I don't. I mean, I guess it's good to have Elon and his tech bros, right? Way in.
But like, they need to stop going on shows and talking about it. Do they? Am I wrong? Just stop it.
So I don't know, like Elon flies rockets to Mars. He might be a little overqualified for this job, but I love how Elon is now like generic IT guy for the entire government.
It's like the way you guys treat me around here. Like the internet goes out and you're like, Duncan, the, the router.
Did you, did you plug it in? Did you take the plug out? That's it. That's like when I married Doug, he was running an internet security software firm.
Like, um, they would protect against hackers, that kind of thing.

And my mom would call up and be like, my browser disappeared.

Where's my browser?

You know, my email is running slow, Elon.

Everything's going to junk.

Okay, but here is the most offensive, absurd take of all. Someone I've never heard of.
You guys are in the biz, so you might have Democrat representative of Texas. What's going on with Texas? We got Jasmine Crockett.
We got this loser, Jimmy Gomez, who had this take on it at a hearing with the CIA director and others. But this exchange is with CIA director John Ratcliffe.
To your knowledge, do you know whether Pete Hegseth had been drinking before he leaked classified information? You're an idiot. I don't have any knowledge of Secretary Hegseth's personal habits.
Director Ratcliffe, same question. Yes or no? You know, no, I'm going to answer that.
I think that's an offensive line of questioning. The answer is no.
I find it interesting that you want to. No, I know I'm going to answer.
You asked me a question. Do you want an answer? No, listen, I don't want to focus on the good work that the CIA is doing, that the intelligence community.
Director, I want to talk about my time. I have huge respect for the CIA, huge respect for men and women in uniform.
But this was a question that's on the top of minds of every American. He stood in front of a podium in Europe holding a drink.
So, of course, we want to know if his performance is compromised. Was his performance compromised because of a successful strike? I yield back.
Mr. I bring my time.
You want to know? You want to talk about accepting responsibility? I reclaim my time. Do you think you should accept responsibility for a successful strike to make Americans safer? I reclaim my time.
By the way, apologies to Texas. He's, of course, actually from California.
Can you believe the nerve of this guy? No, I can't. I can't.
Democrats are in such bad shape. Matt Brooke mentioned it earlier, but their right now favorability rating is the worst it's been in over a generation.
President Trump's favorability rating is the highest it has ever been. It's higher than it was on Election Day.
The Democrats are trying to manufacture anything. This is beyond grasping at straws.
They see that they are falling into a pit and they're trying to grab anything they can, anything that they think will let them get some kind of traction. Because since Election Day, they've been just getting steamrolled nonstop.
Americans could not be more thrilled seeing criminals, illegals getting deported out of this country. The media doesn't watch about egg prices.
Egg prices have halved in the past month. The story that they were trying to push that, oh my God, Biden killed all these chickens and now Trump's caused the egg prices to go up.
Everything that they've tried to get Trump on has failed. This is going to go down in the same line.
They're going to try to make a story out of this. And I completely agree with you.
The Trump administration should ignore this. Talk about the MS-13 guy you just arrested today and move on.
Keep putting up W's for the American people. This guy, Jimmy Gomez, according to a radio host in South Carolina, Brett Winterbull, was, before he entered electoral politics, a labor organizer.
He was organizing labor at the time. Pete Hegseth had a backpack on and a gun slung around his shoulder and was killing bad guys for us in Iraq and Afghanistan and down at Gitmo dealing with the worst of the worst.
So that's how Pete spent his formative adult years. While Jimmy was a mini Barack Obama

trying to organize, in his case, labor.

But he wants to besmirch Pete as a drunk

because he says,

we saw him with the drink in his hand.

What an absolute fucker.

That is based on Pete standing up

in front of a room full of people

at a public event in which he was addressing. I can't remember what the what was the event, you guys.
And was this the NATO summit? Yes. Yeah, it was in Belgium.
It might have been that. Anyway, look, he's saying this is him drinking booze.
This idiot, Matt Iglesias, said, I assume this is the trick of the light. And he's not actually throwing back bourbon on camera.
But it's interesting that the water looks brown. Meanwhile, it would have taken him 10 seconds to Google video from the event where it makes very clear the water was clear, like all water is, and that it was just a lighting trick.
But now it winds up in a congressional hearing as like he's been he's been. This is so disgusting how they use this stuff to absolutely smear honest, hardworking men.
But it's also a perfect vignette into the larger problem that Democrats have when Smug was talking about their approval rating and what it is that they're talking about, this knee-jerk opposition to hugely popular things that President Trump is doing. Think about Jimmy's information flow, right? Think about the information that comes to him on a day-to-day basis to, one, conclude that that was in fact bourbon, and two, that it's on the top of minds of everyone he's talking to.
Think about the information that has to go into that man's head in order to conclude those two things in a congressional hearing and not feel entirely humiliated by the question in the first place. You know, these people are wrecked.
Their brain is just broken. It's so deeply offensive that you would get up there and actually suggest, and only in Congress can you get away with this because you've got a liability shield from defamation, to actually basically call him a drunk.
Say like, was he drunk when he was tweeting this shit? But if not for nothing, there's zero about the actual text that suggests in any way, shape, or form that anyone was impaired while having this discussion. It's absolutely defamatory, but they get away with it.
To pick up on the point you just made, Smug, everyone's favorite pollster, or at least poll analyst, Harry Enten, was over on CNN doing a bit on what you just said on Trump's approval, and here's a bit of it. It's net favorable rating right now comes in at minus four points.
Compare that to where he was when he won in November of 2024, when he was at minus seven points or March of 2017, when he was at minus 10 points. So when you compare Trump against himself, he's actually closer to the apex than he is to the bottom of the trough.
And of course, that's so important because Donald Trump, historically speaking, has had his numbers underestimated. So let's take a look at the percentage of the country who say that we're on the right track.
It's actually a very high percentage when you compare it to some historical numbers. What are we talking about? According to Marist, 45 percent say that we're on the right track.
That's the second highest that Marist has measured since 2009. How about NBC News? 44 percent.
That's the highest since 2004. The bottom line is the percentage of Americans who say we're on the right track is through the roof.
His body movements are so great. They make the hits, don't they? He's like, through the roof.
And he's like, it's so high. It's down low.
And it's out the window. He's very entertaining to watch.
Yeah. No, a little theater goes a long way, particularly at CNN.
It makes the rest of the stuff go down a little easier. It really does.
And he did that on a morning show on CNN. And so what I like to think about is what your typical CNN viewer did for the rest of the day after learning that information, not start off on the right foot when they

found out that Donald Trump, the guy they hate so much, is actually very, very popular. Yeah, they're not feeling about Harry the way the rest of us are.
He's from the Bronx, which is another thing. I love the New York City accent.
I love it. But Brooklyn, Bronx, it's utterly charming to me.
Okay, enough of that. Signalgate will go away.
No one will be fired, and we'll be fine.

However, I don't know if be fired and we'll be fine.

However, I don't know if NPR is going to be OK. I think NPR is about to lose its taxpayer funding based on what I saw yesterday.
Right. I think it's going to based on what Trump tweeted and what we saw yesterday.
It was so great to watch that this woman, Catherine Marr.

Have you like this?

Speaking of smug smug, right? She was so smug. She was like oozing contempt and like superiority and trying to be like, thank you so much for raising a thank you.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to respond to that. Now let me lie for two minutes about how it never happened.
Um, I appreciate you giving me the chance to lie about how I never did the controversial thing. I'm very grateful to you for bringing up.
And then he's just kept hitting her with, Oh, you never did it. Oh, well here, here's you saying you did it.
And the best, I mean, there's so many good ones to choose from, but we might as well just kick it off with my new favorite congressman. He is from Texas.
He's Brandon Gill. He's married to Dinesh D'Souza's daughter.
I didn't know any of this. He is a cold stone dirt stone, cold assassin in that congressional seats.
Watch him. Do you believe that America is addicted to white supremacy? I believe that I tweeted that.
And as I've said earlier, I believe much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade. Do you believe that America believes in black plunder and white democracy? I don't believe that, sir.
You tweeted that in reference to a book you were reading at the time, apparently, The Case for Reparations.

I don't think I've ever read that book, sir.

You tweeted about it.

You said you took a day off to fully read The Case for Reparations.

You put that on Twitter in January of 2020.

Apologies, I don't recall that I did.

Okay.

I have no doubt that your tweet there is correct, but I don't recall that.

Okay.

Do you believe that white people inherently feel superior to other races?

Thank you. I have no doubt that your tweet there is correct, but I don't recall that.
Okay. Do you believe that white people inherently feel superior to other races? I do not.
You don't? You tweeted something to that effect. You said, I grew up feeling superior.
How white of me? Why did you tweet that? I think I was probably reflecting on what it was to grow up in an environment where I had lots of advantages. It sounds like you're saying that white people feel superior.
I don't believe that anybody feels that way, sir. I was just reflecting on my own experiences.
Do you think that white people should pay reparations? I have never said that, sir. Yes, you did.
You said it in January of 2020. You tweeted, yes, the North, yes, all of us, yes, America, yes, our original collective sin and unpaid debt, yes, reparations, yes, on this day.
I don't believe that was a reference to fiscal reparations, sir. What kind of reparations was it a reference to? I think it was just a reference to the idea that we all owe much to the people who came before us.
Oh my God. I love him so much.
I need to know him. He's got to come on this show.
I have to tell him how much I deeply admire him. He's an absolute rock star.
So he was elected class president for the incoming freshman. And for good reason, it's because of that.
He showed up and he wanted to be the tip of the spear. He doesn't take any garbage.
I mean, every time you see the left try to come up with some dirty tricks to go after President Trump, to go after Republicans, or like this, try to rob taxpayers like NPR has been doing, pushing their fake hoaxes, he holds them accountable. That's what you want from a member of Congress.
He's off to a phenomenal start, and you love to see it. You want to see this is the people that we are sending to Congress.
What I love most about it, Smug, is you can tell he's enjoying it. Oh, his big smile.
He's getting a crack in the smile as he's going back. He's like, oh, I got a receipt for that one too.
The cadence of it is fantastic. He's like, oh, but there's a tweet about it.
Yes, you did. Good.
He's so good. Yes, you did.
His lack of emotionality is what made it so good. He was just like, you did.
You said that. You that.
Here's the exact tweet you did. You said you read that book.
You said you took the whole day off and spent the day reading that book. And here's the thing that's so great about it is, you know, so which which is the lie? Were you lying when you said that you read these woke, annoying books time and time again to try to pander to left wingers who you think are your fans? Was that a lie? Or are you lying today under oath when you're looking at me saying you never read these books? Because like, not only did you take the time to lie to all these people if you didn't read these books, but like you actually tweeted it in front of, I don't know how many followers she has, probably hundreds of thousands.
So like the virtue signaling that she felt was important to do, to be like, I'm a leftist, just like all of you. And I'm reading all your favorite insane books.
Like, which is worse if those were lies and she was just pandering or if she really did that shit and then just lied under oath to Congress. Yeah, I think it's pretty clear she lied under oath to Congress.
I mean, look at the organization that she's running. I mean, this is not somebody who's faking leftism.
You had a deep commitment to it over a period of time that like, I don't know if you just flip on the radio, turn on. I mean, that's what it is, folks.
That's what it is. There's no secrets there.
Remember the TED talk? She read the case for reparations? I don't think she read the case for reparations. Go ahead, Ashbrook.
Remember the Ted talk she gave where she was trying to explain why truth doesn't matter, why leftist ideals are more important than truth? Yeah. That like objectivity gets in the way.
And how annoying white men are. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
What I love most about that exchange is like,

we all had this buddy in college who would black out so much.

And then the next,

the next day you'd have to walk him through his evening.

And he'd be like,

Oh no,

that doesn't sound like me at all.

I'd never do that.

The end of it is like,

all right,

who do I need to do with Paul?

Yeah.

Thank God that guy was never subjected to my new favorite representative. Although it probably went down exactly like that with his buddies.
I was like, well, yes, you did. There's a picture of it.
You tweeted about it. I didn't know you were standing on the bar.
Yeah, you did. Here's more.
First of all, I'll go back to the congressional hearing, but I will give you a little bit, for old time's sake, of Catherine Marr's TED Talk that you referenced in 2022. This is before she became the head of NPR.
This is the stuff that got her the job. Watch.
That perhaps for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done is because the truth of the matter is very often for many people.
What happens when we merge facts about the world with our beliefs about the world? So we all have different truths. What? This is not extemporane.
she practiced that speech 37,000 times in front of the mirror so she could deliver it with that cadence and the in fact, folks, with that hushed tone. This is like the worst HR person in corporate America showed up in your office and they're telling you why you have to shut your computer down.
I mean, she's like, yes, and making you go through all the seminars. Go go ahead smug she she's the embodiment of the whole problem the left has now found itself in they've been completely siloed off from the majority of people the way she talks she's doing a ted talk with such self-importance and and explaining to people here's the thing there's lots of truths you know the i i run n.
It's not important for me to give objective facts. We're talking about we need to get across the message that we want people to believe.
National public radio. I'm not surprised at all that she has no memory of tweeting any of those things because people like this, life is theater for these people.
Oh, yeah. And they're just acting, right? And so, yeah, when you're an actor, sometimes you forget your lines.
Here's some more from Catherine Mayer over the years. Again, this is just over the past few years.
Again, before she was made CEO, but I would suggest to you, this is why they made her CEO in January of 2024. Okay, on looting.
I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive, but it's hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people's ancestors as private property. On whiteness.
I know that hysteric white woman voice. I was taught to do it.
I've done it. It's a disturbing recognition.
While I don't recall ever using it to deliberately expose another person to immediate physical harm on my own cognizance, it's not impossible. That is whiteness.
She's got a rant about too many white men in business class and in the lounge. She's annoyed seeing all the white people like herself and the guys, especially with the penises.
She gets upset. I mean, there's you name it.
There's a tweet for it. Catherine are absolutely hates white people.
But reality, realistically, she doesn't. I think she's just faking.
She's been faking for a long time, like all these other upper west side women who are the wokest that you can be and who are being reflected in these polls as the only thing still propping up the Democratic Party. Yeah.
Right. It's these woke white women like Catherine Marr.
Meanwhile, black people are like, would you stop that shit for the love of God? I have a fantastic idea for her, you know, since she's so concerned about reparations and everything at BLM. You know, we're tearing up BLM Plaza here in Washington, D.C.
16th Street is going to be restored to its former glory. But NPR has some fantastic real estate here in our nation's capital.
A beautiful building in the heart of the city. I think we take off the words NPR and we put BLM.
Yeah, and we can just have have everybody go there too. I mean, it doesn't, you know, we can just make it like, uh, basically housing.
Yeah. Right.
For everybody. Yeah.
That'd be great. It'd be service to the community.
Maybe I should be interested in that. I was sort of with her though.
You know, when you were talking, Megan, you were talking about the people that she cloisters herself around and, you know, the white woman, the, the, essentially. She was like, oh, I know that voice.
I was kind of with her on that. You know, I mean, she's like, yeah, that's pretty much it.
That's exactly what annoys all of us. Yeah.
But I mean, it's like, I've been that voice. Okay.
But what do you mean? Like, what specifically did you do? I want to know exactly. Get into more.
That would have been a good follow up. Like, what exactly? You said you did this.
Could you walk us through how and when you use the white woman voice and said all the things that you were taught? Who taught you that it's a disturbing recognition? And you're suggesting you did use it to deliberately expose another person to immediate physical harm. You might have done that.

Who? Who got hurt? Why'd you do that? That is fucking racist. That's actually really upsetting.

Like you should not be the head of NPR or any other news organization.

I remember I remember one time she used that voice and said, you're fired to a guy named Uri Berliner, who had the temerity to say, and maybe at NPR, we should have another Republican

or two. Maybe it shouldn't be 1,000 Libs and Democrats.
Deep track. That's all.
Here's a little bit more. Let's go to Representative Tim Burchett.
This was one of the best. Why did you call President Trump a fascist and a deranged racist sociopath in 2020? Congressman, I appreciate the opportunity to address this.
I regret those tweets. I would not tweet them again today.
They represented a time where I was reflecting on something that I believe that the president had said rather than who he is. I don't presume that anyone is a racist.
You don't believe anyone is a racist? I don't start by presuming anyone is a racist, sir. But thank you so much for asking me because I love that.
Why did you call him a racist, fascist sociopath? I regret that. I regret that.
Bullshit. She doesn't regret that at all.
She totally stands by every word of that. Thank you so much for the opportunity to address all these past comments.
I can't thank you enough. I think the most important thing for everyone to take away from all this is you're paying her.
Your money is going to her against your will. And that has to stop.
It has to stop immediately. This hearing was so important because everyone should have to see.
This is what Doge is doing. They're getting vilified.
They're getting attacked, terrorized across the country because they're bringing garbage like this to light. There's no reason hardworking people who go to work day in, day out are paying that woman's salary.
That's completely unfair. It's wrong.
Yeah, it's supposed to be public information. It's there to try to get people educated on what's going on in their government and their communities and everything else.
In reality, what it is, is a poison. It's going into communities.
When you have viewpoints like this, it's not a surprise that the derivation of that is like DEI that goes on about all the education system problems that we've seen pop up over the last few years. I mean, what they're

doing is quite literally tearing communities apart. A hundred percent.
Well, so here's the thing. So maybe, so she later tried to claim, oh, there's a strong firewall between me and the news division.
You know, I don't run editorial. I'm the head of NPR, but trust me.
But, but, but even so like it, whatever the whole organization is full of rot. It's up and down to the studs.
It's full of rot and hatred for Republicans and an aversion to the truth if that truth reflects negatively on Democrats or positively on Republicans. And that's where the real problem is with NPR.
It's not so much. I mean, she's fun to make fun of.
But the real problem is that this really is media matters with a different moniker. That's how far left they are.
And getting to like how biased they are in their coverage, which, again, we're paying for, is really getting to the heart of the matter. That's what Jim Jordan tried to do in the following exchange, SOT12.
He wrote on the Trump-Russia story, he wrote, at NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump's most visible antagonist representative, Adam Schiff. He said they interviewed him 25 times.
Is that accurate? I was not there at the time, but those numbers sound accurate. Those sound accurate.
But then he said when the Mueller report came out, he said Russiagate faded from our programming. Is that accurate? Again, I was not there at the time.
I'm not. I couldn't say you couldn't say I was not at NPR at the time.
Prepare for that. You knew we were going to ask you about this guy, didn't you? It's come up like 6,000 times already in the hearing.
I just couldn't say whether it faded from our coverage. How about this story? October 2020, the New York Post had the Hunter Biden laptop story.
And one of those editors, I guess one of those 87 Democrat editors, said this. We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.
We don't want to waste the listeners and readers' times on stories that are just pure distractions. Was that a pure distraction story?

Our current editorial leadership believes that that was a mistake, as do I.

Yeah, the whole country knows that was a mistake.

Mr. Berliner said, we became fervent members of the team Natural Origin,

even declaring that the lab leak was debunked by scientists.

Is there a question there?

There is.

You guys were 0 for 3 on the three of the biggest stories in the last five years. You guys were 0 for 3, and yet you maintain that NPR is not biased? Congressman, I do not believe we are politically biased.
No, we are a nonpartisan organization. Oh, my God.
Russiagate, Hunter Laptop, and COVID. I mean, he exposed her, and he's exactly right.
The mistakes only go in one direction. Yeah.
Well, I'm also also reminded that none of this would be happening if not for a two seat majority in the House of Representatives. None of those questions we asked in the first place.
You would have no regrets about any of that at all. I mean, it's one of the things that we tell our listeners and I know you tell your viewers and listeners as well.
You can't sort of relax and hope that everything's going to work out all right. Because but for two seats in the House of Representatives across this country, none of those questions would even be asked, much less contemplated by a woman who's clearly got an agenda to run national public airwaves as she sees fit.
And as she sees fit is off left-hand side of the map. So true.
I mean, they did a great job yesterday of exposing just how left they are. And they referenced back to that Uri Berliner piece in the Free Press.
He won a Peabody. He was there for 25 years, very respected journalist who comes out to say, we've lost our way.
I mean, we are just, we're hard left now. We don't care about truth.
What we care about is protecting Dems and promoting them. And this came up because somebody was asking her, I think it was Jordan again, yeah, about what Uri posited in that piece, which was of the editors in the DC area alone, that's just the only one I checked.
we found 87 Dems and zero Republicans. And she actually had the nerve to try to say that that was concerning to her.
I think this is that, SOT, let's just watch a little bit of it, SOT 11. Is NPR biased? Congressman, I have never seen any instance of- Never? Of political bias determining editorial decisions.
No. Well, Ms.
Bert, Mr. Berliner in his story, a couple, uh, last year wrote I've in the DC area editorial positions at NPR.
He said he found 87 registered Democrats, zero Republicans. Is that accurate? Uh, we do not track the numbers or the voter registration, but I find that.
It was award-winning journalist who worked 25 years at NPR. Mr.
Berliner, was he lying when he wrote that? I am not presuming such. I just don't have, we don't track that information about our journalists.
87 to zero, and you're not biased? I think that is concerning if those numbers are accurate. Then do something about it.
It's more dishonesty. She, she doesn't, she doesn't find that concerning, right? It's been a year since Berliner's piece.
And if she cared at all, they already would have been hired. They hired some six person editorial board to like shore up their editorial over there.
Not one of whom is a Republican, right? Like there is no way forward in cutting out the majority of the country. Now, the majority is right leaning and voted for Trump out of the conversation entirely.
And if you want to be that left wing rag, right on, sister, you do you. That's why we have MSNBC and a lot of other organizations.
But we don't have to pay for it. Bingo.
Right. Right.
That's totally right. I mean, Johnny, you bring this up all the time, but they've had ample opportunity to rectify what was exposed by Berliner.
Right. And we all know what happened.
She pretends like she do. You heard what she said? She says, I was not there at the time that this was taking place.
But when she started, the first thing she did right after she got her login and her password was to get rid of Uri Berliner because he had the temerity to say that maybe we shouldn't be so biased at this place. And so she's her dishonesty is multi level in this whole interaction.
And I really hope so many people saw this because they can see NPR for what it is. And finally, we can not have to pay for it.
It is wild that you could be the CEO, ostensibly the CEO of a company or organization and have little to no idea of what goes on there. Right.
You admit that in a public hearing. It's like she doesn't know anything about the BLM tweets.
She doesn't know anything that's happening in NPR. The only thing she's 100 percent sure of is that she's tweeted that Donald Trump is racist.
Right. And she's very glad that you brought that up.
Very glad. So she could tell you it isn't true.
I don't know why I said that. I was that was crazy talk.
The funny thing is there was a report. I think it was Politico after the hearing yesterday saying that.

No, it was New York Times, Benjamin Mullen, who reported that supporters of public media were breathing a sigh of relief at the end of the hearing.

One longtime public media executive texted me to say that neither chief executive, because PBS was also there, had made a major error yet.

They don't get it, you guys.

No, they're living in a bubble with viewers like you and the members of the Paul R. and John D.
MacArthur Foundation that are right alongside the rest of us as we contribute at gunpoint every April. They're like, Catherine, stellar, right on point.
That part where you said you didn't actually read the books, loved that part. Didn't lay a glove on you.
Wait until you see your funding go away. I mean, probably to be honest, the most important question there was that question we played of the guy being like, why'd you call Donald Trump a fascist, racist sociopath? I meant it lovingly.
That was probably the most important one because Trump already tweeting out, we need to defund these guys. They've got to go.
There's no point in us funding PBS. And all the Dems had was, but Elmo, but Elmo.
Meanwhile, Sesame Street It was sold to HBO in 2015. Right, right.
Elmo is going to be just fine.

He's in the private sector now. He's doing great.
All right. We're going to take a quick break.
We'll be right back. The fellows are with me for the full show and there's a lot more to get to.
The IRS is the largest collection agency in the world. And with April 15th fast approaching, it's more aggressive than ever.
If you owe back taxes or have unfiled returns, waiting is not an option. April 15th could mark another tax year that has passed you by.
So the smart move is to get ahead of it now. But listen, never contact the IRS alone.
Instead, you could let the experts at Tax Network USA handle it for you. Why? Well, not all tax resolution companies are the same.
Tax Network USA has a preferred direct line to the IRS so they know exactly which agents to deal with and which to avoid. With proven strategies to settle tax problems in your favor, whether you owe 10 grand or 10 million, Tax Network USA's attorneys and negotiators have already resolved over 1 billion in tax debt.
Speak with one of their strategists today for free. Don't let the IRS control your future.
Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Megan. That's tnusa.com slash Megan.
April 15th, just around the corner. Act now before the IRS acts first.
Extra strength, Hannity! Eye drops that work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy, allergy eyes. And the winner by knockout is Hannity! Hannity, bring it on! There's been a lot of this in the news lately, and so I decided to save this segment for you.
And I know we're going to get to Hack Madness, your own special version of March Madness in a minute. But to put us in the mood, this is the appetizer to Hack Madness.
I have my own little game for you. And this is more in the field of the Academy Awards.
And I really would love for you guys to weigh in on who you think, who you think is in fact the best actress in America today, outside of Hollywood. Okay.
And I have got a couple of contenders for you. All right.
I've narrowed it down to four and I'm going to show you how these people normally sound and then how they sound when they get in front of certain audiences and certain cameras. And you're going to tell me who you're going to see what's happening, who, who wore it best, who, who fooled you.
Who's really like, who's phoning it in and who's really going method. Okay.
Um, in fourth place, not necessarily fourth place. This is just, I'm going to start with as the fourth possibility, but I've got four total and you'll decide what order they go in.
Um, I'm going to kick it off with AOC. Okay.
Her real name is Sandy Ocasio. This is what she went by her entire life,

Sandy Ocasio. And, um, only when she decided to run for office, did she decide to suddenly become

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and lean into her Puerto Rican history, where her mother was born in Puerto Rico, but her father was born in New York City. And she decided to tell us sob stories about how she's from a poor family and she was living, you know, paycheck to paycheck.
Meanwhile, she was raised in a Tony part of Westchester called Yorktown Heights. The single family home she grew up in was just sold in 2016 for $355,000.
So it's not exactly, you know, food stamp central. She went to Boston University, you know, to hear her tell her story, you'd think she never went to college, right? She was only a bartender.
No, she went to Boston University and graduated with a BA in international relations and economics and then spent some time as a waitress and a bartender. Good for you.
Virtually everyone in America did too. I mean, literally, raise your hand if you had a service personnel job.
Oh my God, yes. Right, All of us, all five of us.
Hello. The difference is we don't run around asking for people to pat us on the back because we did it.
It's called being a normal human. When you're young, you take those kinds of jobs.
And even when you're older, sometimes you do to pay your bills. This is called being a normal human, not, oh, what was me.
I worked as a waitress. And I'll get to some of

what she's saying around that. But that's her story.
Now she makes almost $200,000 a year as a U.S. Congresswoman and is still pretending that she's on her waitress salary.
But in any event, here is how she normally sounds when she's speaking and not thinking about who's listening or trying to fool anybody.

When Donald Trump tapped into this idea When she's speaking and not thinking about who's listening or trying to fool anybody.

When Donald Trump tapped into this idea of make America great again, there there were there was times of economic opportunity.

Wages rose until the 1970s.

They should have taught her at Boston University.

It was where there were times she was right. You got to get that subject verb agreement.
I know it's tough, Sandy. Work on it.
That's her, though, sounding relatively normal relative. Then there's a different version that we've heard a lot more of a lot recently.
I'm proud to be a bartender. Ain't nothing wrong with that.
Ain't nothing wrong. Ain't nothing wrong with working retail, folding clothes for other people to buy.
And I, for one, am tired of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of breeze traveling on our way of life. Our way of life.
All right. So you got you got that in mind? Are we you're with me? Tough to beat.
It is. But we have contenders.
All right. Now I'm going to go outside of the political realm for this next one.
You'll know her as soon as you see her, I think. Let's play the normal version of the person whose name is Hillary, who grew up in a very nice suburb of Boston, going to some Tony rich school that virtually no one else can afford.
I think her dad is a dentist. But now goes by Hilaria Baldwin.
Here she is sounding like her normal self. It's not easy.
And I think part of it is that I'm in shape before I have a baby. And then I stay active when I'm pregnant.
And I'm not trying to stay thin. I'm just trying to keep my circulation going and stretching and keep my muscles going up.

And then?

Married life is really nice.

It feels different.

You know that.

So please leave my family in peace and let this all play out. We have a cucumber.

Cucumbers.

Aceite oliva.

How do you say it? We have some olive oil And we have some vinegar Vinegar I support that so much That's so funny She sounds like Penelope Cruz I'm making it tough for you You're such a fucking hypocritus That's the vinegar it. Okay.
So already I'm torn. I like, I gotta say, just be honest.
I'm not sure who I like better on best actress, but we've, we've got other contenders. So, you know, keep an open mind.
Um, this woman all over the news these days, the new spokesperson for the Democrat party, and we all hope the future of it. Here is Jasmine Crockett as recently as 2023.
Again, sounding like a normal person. My mind, I'm thinking I just got to Austin and I had to be five people to get here.
It's a huge responsibility. You know, the congressional seat is over four times as large as my house seat.
Kind of cute, excited, optimistic, normal hair, normal eyelashes, and probably normal nails, though they weren't shown in that clip. Flash forward to today's day and age, and more recently, and we've done a 180.
If you could speak directly to Elon Musk what would you say? Fuck off. Now I am tired of the white tears.
There has been no oppression for the white man in this country. That it is white men on this side of the aisle telling us people of color on this side of the aisle that y'all are the ones being oppressed.
If you could tell Donald Trump anything tonight, what would you tell him? Stop being Putin's hoe. Unfortunately, we had an opportunity to have a woman leave this country.
And I promise you she would have led us to the promised land. But instead, we got somebody that seems like he want to take us to hell and back again.
We have someone that is occupying the White House. And as far as I'm concerned, he is an enemy to the United States.
We are going to be in your face. We are going to be on your asses.
You and your little friend off of Twitter. Y'all about to find out.
All right. Y'all about to find out.
All right. Do I need to say it again? As I will.
She sounds absolutely nothing like she used to you guys. Nothing.
And that's fake it till you make it. That's how you become the head of the Democrat Party.
It's absolute fakery. I have to confess that I love her.
Yeah, I do. I just do.
I love everything about her. She's fantastic.
The best spokesperson for Democrats. Yeah, exactly.
Right. We do.
We need a whole lot more of her. It's amazing how she's now like street, right? Like, I'm going to whip somebody in hand.
Okay, sure. We'll look forward to that, Jasmine.
OK, no segment like this would be complete without our fourth candidate.

And honestly, she's probably got the inside track and you'll you'll see why.

Here she was sounding normal. Let's talk about respecting the American people.
You respect the American people when you tell them the truth. You respect the American people when you have the courage to be a leader speaking of those things that you may not want people to hear, but they need to hear.
Note how she said courage and here where we had ours being used properly. And yet when she ran for president, having been passed the baton by Joe Biden, very, very different sounding.
Here it is. Have you no empathy, man?

You know, for the suffering of other people.

Have you no sense of purpose?

You better thank a union member for sick leave.

You better thank a union member for sick leave.

You better.

You better thank a union member for vacation time.

You all helped us win in 2020, and we're going to do it again in 2024. We're gone.
Hello to all my divine nine brothers and sisters. And my sorrows.
This is a margin of error race. It's tight.
I'm going to win. I'm going to win gonna win but it's tight weeping may endure for a night this is the best but joy cometh in the morning the path may seem hard the work may seem heavy but joy cometh in the morning and church morning is on its way.
Oh man, that's me Saturday night with a bourbon. Come on.
Have you no decency mind? Come on, you know. A little cool reference for the listener.
We're going to win. Who is going to win this little contest, gentlemen? Is there a clear number one? I mean, I just have such secondhand embarrassment every time you play the second half of those clips.
You watch it. You have to pick one, Holmes.
You have to pick one. I mean, I just, for me, the Hillary, what makes her special is like they all have this beautifully presented juxtaposition.
But what makes her special is pretending that she didn't know the word cucumber. That is special.
To me, that I mean, you're talking about. That's a commitment to the bit.
That's such a commitment to the bit, right? I mean, it's like, no, I don't understand the English language. I'm going to pretend that I don't know what a cucumber is.
Yeah, you said you love Jasmine Crockett. I love Hilaria.
I love her so much. I love that she tries to sound like Penelope Cruz.
It makes me want to buy a Cessna and start running drugs. Wait, we're going to come back to Hilaria in one second.
But I mean, I feel like you're, you might be giving short shrift to Jasmine, right? Who's like that the 2023 version is so sweet. You'll like her.
You're like, Oh, I see why Houstonian said, yeah, let's send this gal to Congress before she was like, bitch, I will cut you. Whoa, wait, what? Here's the thing.
What happened? I think, you know, among those selections that you gave us, number one, it overlooks lifetime achievement, Hillary Clinton, who famously, when she goes in the South, all of a sudden is a Southerner. In those choices, three of those people are doing it out of political expediency.
They're just your standard run the mill. There's political crook, extra points for that, right? Yeah.
Well, I take away points. That's commonplace.
In D.C., it's a dime a dozen finding someone who's going to lie and just play to the audience to get what they want out of them. Hilaria Baldwin is just crazy.
She's doing it for the love of the game. Exactly.
It is the love of the game. It's so pure.

It comes from a pure place of like, I want to be crazy.

I'm going to be totally nuts.

Yeah.

You're right, guys.

And Alex totally buys in, right?

Like he goes on the late night shows.

He's like, you know, my wife, she's from Spain.

She's a thinking chicken.

Literally, she grew up in Boston.

Wait, what?

She's like, definitely not from Spain. What are you saying? Two Bostonians in this, by the way, which is an interesting, maybe there's a regional issue there.
Boston University has just got a reputation of putting out horrible people. Wait, who's the other Bostonian? I think this is a known thing.
Like a lot of people from Boston University, just problems. Problems, problem, problems.
It's a known thing. You're going to get hate mail for that.
Wait, Holmes, who is the other Bostonian? Hilaria? No, no, BU. You've got AOC.
Oh, oh, oh. Alexandria Corsacio-Otes.
Yeah. And I don't think she found that accent until she left Boston, right? I mean, I've seen some clips of her at BU where none of that.
Yeah. She was like, look like a sorority girl.
No, honestly, it's like it's truly like if if I were running for mayor of Chicago next year and I'm running around going top of the morning to you. It's obvious what you're doing.
Megan's doing that. Oh, hey, what's going on? We just got here in Chicago, just looking out for the crime on the streets and all that.
Watching out for my wee ones. Okay.
Speaking of Hilaria, I think, so we all agree. Are we all in agreement that Hilaria won? Or would you guys like to disagree? Anybody have anything? Man, it's so hard to disagree with that.
It is. I would say that Kamala deserves special points for doing it on a national stage.
When you know everyone is watching. Right.
Yeah. And in so many different flavors.
Right? That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That's true. That's true.
That full spectrum of options. Yeah.
I mean, if you want Jamaican, we got some of that, right? Totally. We can go urban.
We can go off-horse. We can go southern.
I mean, there's versatility. If it's a best actor.
It's multiple personality disorder. No, but like if you're a Hollywood casting agent.
It's talent, you'll give you, if you're casting for SNL that you gotta, you gotta go with Kamala. She can, she can do any bit.
You know, we can go take it. Rastafarian.
I have, you know, this is Simon, right? We can go Latina. We can go preacher.
We can do the black sand. Whatever's that.
I don't know what she's doing there with her little urban whatever. She seamlessly transitions from Bob Marley to MLK.
It's amazing. You're right.
That accent, it's like her channeling John Ossoff channeling Barack Obama. So it's like a copy of a copy, you know? It's not a third rate.
All right, so while we're on the subject of Hilaria, she and Alec have this this reality TV show. It must not be doing well because they're clearly now making a point of doing and saying very weird things to try to get into segments like the one that I'm doing right now.
And it's working because they're very strange people. And the following clip went everywhere.
We could have raised it earlier in the week, but we saved it for our friends from the Variety program. And you will see what's.
I've seen one of the loves of her life naked. About the love of her.
He was one of the loves of her life. We went to go see him on Broadway, and he was naked.
We went to go see Take Me Out, the musical that our dear friend Scott Ellis directed, and all these baseball players were in the locker room,

and they were all turned around naked with their dongs hanging out.

And he's there, her boyfriend, and I recognize him.

I met him before.

And when he turns around with his personality hanging, I'm like,

oh, oh, oh, okay.

He had like a clarinet hanging from his pants.

The guy literally turns around, and you're all like, ah, ah.

Whoa.

We go out into the lobby.

We meet them all.

And her boyfriend comes

and I'm like,

hey, how you doing?

And I was like,

I'm going to stay over here.

And you can't pay attention

to what he's saying.

He's standing right here

talking to me.

I'm sitting there looking

and I'm going,

and he's looking at me going,

yeah, you know,

the show and this and that.

I'm like,

you have like a baseball bat that you stuff into your pants every day. How does that work for you? Well, let's move on from that section.
Oh, that's good TV. The fellas can't speak currently.
Oh, man. I've actually seen that clip.
A lot of questions. He ends it with saying it had to be said.
It had to be said. There's a lot going on there.
Is dong an appropriate word for the fellow down south in Rio? I thought that was much more of a dated reference from like 16 Candles. Dong, is that still in the vernacular? You know, we've got a lot that we explore on this topic probably not appropriate for the serious xm uh crowd but we have many nicknames that we could probably share with people dong is a pretty common vernacular but not necessarily one that you would use to describe your wife's ex-boyfriend but in general you're telling me it's still in favor this This is good to know.
How about the personality? He referred to it as the personality. He turned around with his personality out.
Is that, that's gotta be a new one. That's new to me.
Also new. And I thought innovative was the clarinet.
That was, that was something that was brand new. That makes it sound like there's somewhat of a skin problem.
Also alludes to how it was used, perhaps. Oh.
I'm sorry. You know what? This is a classy show.
I'm sorry. What was the last thing? The baseball bat.
The baseball bat. Because it really hurt Alec.
I think that's why that came to mind. It really hurt him.
Yeah, you don't want to think about stuff like that. Has anybody, has anyone given a moment's thought to those that came before them with their spouse? I don't, I'm not sure this is, maybe it's just because you haven't seen them naked.
He keeps referring struck me, he keeps referring to the guy as her boyfriend, like present tense.

And all it did was remind me of President Trump.

What's the name of that dinner that happens in New York?

Al Smith.

Al Smith dinner where he was like, I'm talking about the dudes for Kamala.

You know, they're all voting for Kamala, but it's fine because all their wives and wives' boyfriends are voting for me.

Yeah. Alec Baldwin.
I think he was talking about you.

That's probably right.

I don't know what's going on in that strange relationship, but I do know they're actively seeking attention because they need ratings on their show. Okay.
I feel like I would be remiss if I did not mention, as we're talking about people who have changed themselves dramatically, in mentioning a Republican controversy today that involves Christy Noem.

So Kristi Noem is our Department of Homeland Security head. As you know, she's a controversial pick.
The reason she wasn't chosen for vice president was probably that ridiculous memoir she wrote confessing to killing her puppy cricket who she shot in the face for no reason. Right after before she killed their goat.
And I don't know, like a set of horses. No, not really.
I know horses died, just the puppy and the family goat. And then the daughter got off the bus and was like, where's cricket? Anyway, there was that.
There was an alleged affair with Corey Lewandowski, which was reported by the Daily Mail, which we talked about in the show. She got probably downgraded off of VP and she got made DHS.
And I said to this audience, well, I, I will be rooting for her because that is a very big job. And what we've seen so far is a lot of photo ops.
Okay. She went on, was it Fox news wearing her like FBI DHS jacket? Like she just finished a field operation while she was actually doing the arrests.
Like that's cosplaying. All right.
We'll show you that picture when we get it. Then we saw her out there rounding up illegals on her horse with her cowboy hat, which I said, all right, I'm going to have to give her a pass on that because she actually was raised on a ranch in South Dakota.
That's not necessarily cosplaying, right? But it was obviously a curated photo op that she put together to make sure she looked. And all this, she's got false eyelashes, heavy eyeliner, the big lips with all the gloss, the heavy blush.
She's camera ready. I would be for doing a television hit, but maybe not while I was riding the horses and capturing illegals.
And then she went next level last night. By the way, this is after she got in trouble for being a spokesperson for a dental office when she was still the governor of South Dakota and showing off her fake veneers, which she's really proud of.
Like, she's very obsessed with the new look, which is dramatically different than the old look. And then we see her last night dropping this video from that El Salvadorian prison.
Watch. I also want everybody to know if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.
First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted.
But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people. Okay.
Standing behind her in a cage are dozens of shirtless prisoners in the El Salvadorian jail, looking kind of scared, confused. They're being used as props for her photo op in her skin tight shirt with their hair perfectly curled and coiffed.
And again, the makeup as she tries to sound tough with these prisoners behind her as her background, as like truly her human props in her photo. And I'm telling you, you guys, it's fucked up.
I have no empathy for Venezuelan gang members who wound up in an El Salvadorian jail. But this is messed up.
I mean, truly, to use them in this way as her backdrop to show us how cool she is and how tough she is, is gross and utterly unhelpful to those of us who have been out there arguing that Trump is within his rights to round up these illegal eagles in America and send them there with very limited due process. Utterly unhelpful.
So any thoughts on that? You know, she's had a tendency in recent years. I mean, she started as a congresswoman from South Dakota, a wonderful, cute, like I've got to know her staff and whatnot a little bit on Capitol Hill.
But in recent years, if she's got a major glaring weakness, it's that she gets out in front a little too public of a way. I mean, one of the things that caught my eye early on in the administration was them deciding that they were going to run a bunch of public service announcements using taxpayer dollars, but with her basically to camera.
And I think the challenge for that is you're in Donald Trump's administration and Donald Trump's the star of this show, right? It's, it's not Kristi Noem. And I think everybody sort of understands that.
At least it seems that this administration understands that a lot better than the first time around, but, but, but she's kind of getting herself into a territory where it's a little overexposed. I mean, everybody knows that Tom Holman is walking around, literally showing up in a different place every day, deporting some incredibly violent gang member somewhere, and he's getting the job done.
And his only publicity at all is when some journo asks him a horrible question, and he just dresses him down and moves on, right? I think that's a better approach. I don't remember another DHS secretary showing up for TV hits like this.
Hold on, we'll put it on the board. Like trying to look like, look at her, with the long dangling earrings and the hat and like the jacket.
This is, the whole thing feels like an act. And I'm all for women taking over these powerful, tough, important positions, but I'm embarrassed for how she's presenting herself while doing it.
Like maybe it's time. And as you know, like I look, I'm not really in a position to cast stones here from my made up face at my desk,

but I can guarantee you that if I became secretary of Homeland Security, I would not be

laying on the lip gloss, the lashes and the blush before I started talking about illegals.

I made sure wound up in El Salvador or cosplaying up with my DHS wear before I went on Fox News.

This is a deeply insecure person. And I'm sorry, but it doesn't.
Who are we if we only have honest talk for the left? This is honest talk from someone who's a Trump supporter that he needs to rein her in because she's becoming an embarrassment. It's all a little much, you know, all of the stuff, the ads that, you know, the video in front of the prison.
And the reason why, back to Holmes's point, is like it seems sort of excessive in spiking the football. And you're getting out ahead of the Trump administration.
Let Donald Trump talk about how he wants to talk about the El Salvadorian. And by the way, there's ongoing- Right, litigation.
Litigation over exactly what it is that she's talking about there.

I mean, that guarantee you,

I guarantee you will be entered as an exhibit

in that courtroom.

The one thing I would say in her defense-

The one thing I would say in her defense

is like the PSAs,

if it gets people to self-deport, fantastic.

If that video, you know, in front of those criminals

gets less migrants to try to cross the border and smuggle drugs and that and all into this country, good. I take your point.
I see that. Now, actually, I, in her defense, when she put that out last night, it's getting way more likes than it is getting criticism.
And most of the people criticizing it are like on the left and against this policy to begin with. So I think I'm in a unique spot because I actually support this policy and I want more illegal gang members deported to El Salvador.
However, the way to convince Judge Boesberg, who will be the ultimate trier of fact on this, that we're not winning this fight right now. We just lost to the court of appeals and the Supreme Court may not take it immediately.
So Judge Boesberg is control at the moment, is really not to give him more reasons to suspect what kind of treatment they're going to have down in El Salvador. And to take them and make them look like little lab rats behind prison bars, looking dazed and confused and shirtless as she stands there totally glammed to the nines is a bad fucking move.
I can say this as a lawyer. This is not what you'd want introduced into the record, Christy.
And what should have been done, Duncan, to your point on deterrence is let's stick with the video we have that's already out there of the prisoners being processed. It's bad enough, frankly, of them bent over and being like, you know, put assembly line as they get checked out and yeah, and put into the prison.
Like, I'm not really that comfortable with that, but it's fine. Like, these are gang members.
These are fucking people who killed Americans. So, you know, cry me a river, some of them.
But there is a debate about who got in there that shouldn't have. There were two mistakes made.
A woman got in and she was sent back home. A guy from Nicaragua, who clearly is not a Venezuelan gang member, got in and he was sent back home.
Anyway, I'm just saying right now we're debating over how much due process they should get while we figure out whether they really are Trenda Aragua and whether we should have shipped them to to this prison and shots of them looking, maybe it's for the camera, but like scared and disoriented and a little shell shocked aren't helpful. Okay.
That's my, that's my take on the matter. Feel free to disagree.
My audience often does with me, but that's what we love about each other. Megan at Megan Kelly.com.
Let me take I just have one second to be? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, Smoke.
Not the voice of rationality like you have been. I support it.
I support it. That's good.
I know it's a bad take, but I like it and I support it. All the Democrats at their debate raised their hands and said, I'll give illegals free health care.
You know, if you have an attractive woman, it gets more eyes online. And what they're going to see is, shoot, if I try to enter the country illegally, I'm going to end up in this cage with a bunch of terrible people.
And that doesn't look fun. I know it's it's absolutely bad for the legal system.
And I'm counting on the Supreme Court to hurry up and do its job and help us out there. We can make bad decisions along the way.
We can have a little bit of fun. This is our resident nihilist.
He's the devil. It's funny because I'm really against these people and I trust in Tom Homan's ability to figure out whether they're Venezuelan gang members.
I really do. He is not running around willy nilly, just picking random Hispanics as the left would have you believe.
Right. But it's, it's another thing to put that on display and ask Americans to be like, all right, sure.
I'm fine with zero due process before we do that. Right.
Like, cause that's really what Trump is asking for under the alien enemies act. And look, I've defended it, defended it repeatedly on the show, but I just feel like, I don't, maybe it's a woman thing, you know, maybe I'm too soft, but I, for me, that was too much.

It was like, you look like you're on the backs of people who are in a lot of trouble.

We understand that.

And most of us are okay with them having to sort that out.

But you look like you're trying to make it into a photo op about you looking tough as opposed to a serious and sober legal issue that we're really regretful. We have to deal with, but we do have to deal with things to Joe Biden.
And you should not look like this is a fun thing for you to do. And you're going to wear your skin tight shirt and go down there and try to look hot and threatening.
I just it it's to me is a big turnoff. Okay.
Sorry. So less word, but I appreciate the disagreement and keep them coming.
All right. Stand by quick break more after this.
These days, personal safety is not something that can or should be left to chance, whether at home on the road or just living everyday life, having a reliable way to protect yourself and your family is crucial. That's why Berna is the choice for so many.
Berna is a game-changing, less lethal self-defense tool. It's compact, powerful, and easy to use, and it provides the confidence to act in any situation.
Berna uses non-lethal rounds, tear gas, pepper, and kinetic projectiles to effectively stop a threat from a safe distance. And by the way, with this projectile, you don't actually have to necessarily hit the target in order to incapacitate him.
As long as you're close, the fumes from this thing can potentially be incapacitating. And the best part is Burna can be shipped directly to your door and it's legal in all 50 states.
Burna's proudly American with products hand assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Sometimes a firearm is just not the right option for you.
And Burna provides a powerful alternative. Protect what matters most with Burna.
Visit Burna.com, B-Y-R-N-A.com slash Megan to receive a 10% discount and learn why thousands of people and law enforcement agencies are incorporating Burna's less lethal protection into their lives. Burna, non-lethal self-defense, always ready.
I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.
You can catch The Megan Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love, great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly.
You can stream The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are, no car required. I do it all the time.
I love the SiriusXM app.

It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk, podcast, and more.

Subscribe now.

Get your first three months for free.

Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free.

That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply.
So Hack Madness is a play on March Madness. And I liked the top four, your number one seeds.
this is for hacks in the media, as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, are Nicole Wallace, Eugene Daniels of Politico, but now he's got a show on MSNBC, Nora O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan.

I like it.

I like it a lot.

Big year for CBS.

I mean, Smog is our resident bracketologist here.

We all put a lot of work into the seedings this year. This is our fifth annual, Megan, and every year, it's a body of work, right? You got to get, you got to do a lot of things throughout a calendar year in order to qualify for the tournament.
Then we seed you appropriately on how we thought you did throughout the year. And that's the thing is, so, I mean, it starts with 66.
We have two playing games. We're talking about it's the same size as March Madness.
There are 64 hacks that are going head to head. It gets voted on online on X.
It's huge. I mean, we've so far had, you know, throughout the history of these over 10 million votes cast.
So, I mean, it's bigger than some congressional races in terms of the number of race votes that go into this. But also it's so great because I tag every single one of these hacks.
I add them on X every single time. And very frequently, I get blocked.
They start tweeting about how mad they are. They're like, I'm so unbiased.
And then without fail, they get all these replies of screenshots of like Russiagate nonsense and everything. But like Holmes said, it's their previous year's body of work that goes into deciding it.
And I think to me, the story of this year is that two CBS people got the number one seat in each of their divisions. Further, they were the two who also managed a vice president debate.
Like this has to stop too. Yeah.
It's really remarkable. Yeah.
This is like that trans movie about the Colombian guy who wanted to be trans and they got all the nominations. That's CBS right now.
They got all the nominations. I do.
I mean, I have a one bone to pick because it seems that the latest matchup has this Eugene Daniels up against Don Lemon, who's only an eight seed. What kind of disrespect is that to Don Lemon's hackness? This is very, very, very important, Megan.
We have a proprietary methodology. In college basketball, Ken Pomeroy has this Ken Palm, which he uses as like a quotient to rank basketball teams.
We have this methodology that includes everything from like how liberal they are. Exposure.
How crazy they are. How much of a liar they are.
And then exposure. And like Don Lemon dropped in the seating because his quotient and exposure has gone down a little.
He's been fired twice. Yeah.
I've never seen Duncan this animated about any other subject that we've ever discussed with him. I put a lot of thought into this.
It included a lot of work. It included a lot of numbers.
I the spectrum, you know, now, is it going to be, is it like the NCAA March madness where we've learned this year, there's no more Cinderella stories because it's basically because we're allowing the athletes to make money. And so they can switch to schools and they're leaving their small schools and they're all going to the big schools.
Um, so is that, is that what's happening in hack madness too? Or could there be a sleeper surprise? Like I would say Eugene Daniels kind of a sleeper surprise. Most people, not a household name.
No, not a household name. I mean, there's an inherent bias as we've done this over five years for people who are on TV.
They're recognizable. All the crazy stuff that they've done is visual.
So people can actually see it. There's an inherent bias against print whose body of work, might I say, is extraordinary, but they don't get the kind of representation that's necessary to make it all the way to the final four in this kind of thing.
We're hoping that that sort of works its way out a little bit, but there's only like six print journalists left after one round. So yeah, I mean, this is, you know, household names go a long way.
And there were some newcomers that went down really hard in the first round. And I'm telling you, I mean, as much as some of these people have tried their best, they are not going to overcome Margaret Brennan.
She has done Yeoman's work building towards this championship. And I don't think she's going to be denied this year.
A real powerhouse. Wait, what did Jeffrey Goldberg even make the dance? He's probably not even on your radar.
No, he was a bubble team. He was a bubble team.
He was a bubble team, but it happened. All of this happened a week after the bracket came out.
And so. Sorry, sir.
Sorry. Late submission.
He could have been, you know, in terms of what he's done lately. Yeah.
Serious contender. After that soundbite, we played at the top of the show.
I could have elevated him a couple of seeds at least. I know.
We have some upsets, Michael. This is breaking news because the next round of Hack Madness is currently live on X.
Everyone visit Comfortably Smug on X. Can people still get in on this, you guys? Or is it too late? Yeah.
Where do they go? Well, Eugene. You vote at comfortably smug on X.

I had it pinned right on my profile.

Yeah.

I mean, Eugene Daniels right now is losing to Don Lemon.

He's a one seed.

Don Lemon's an eight seed.

Upset.

Support it.

Anna Navarro's beating Chris Hayes.

Oh, that's surprising.

It's very surprising.

Keith Olbermann is beating Sonny Hostin.

She was a two seed.

Boy, she did a lot of work this year. The view is really, like the power of the view has really started to win.
Yeah. Well, and Joy, what's her name got from the view who got knocked out? Joy Behar.
Joy Behar. Joy Behar.
What about Joy? What'd you do with Joy Reid? Because now no visibility, but I mean, very high up on the hackery scale. Body of work throughout the year, right? She had that kind of visibility throughout a calendar year.
And so she richly deserved it. And it's paying off for Anna Navarro, right? Because in addition to like that, she's also going on like Bill Maher and she's on CNN a lot.
And so all that visibility means she's going to make a long run here in the tournament. All to crown the biggest hack in all of political reporting.
Who did you guys pick? You know how we have to pick our number one. This year I went with Duke for all sorts of reasons on the other bracket, which has completely collapsed, by the way, my bracket.
But who do you guys have for number one? Did you all pick different people? I think we might've picked different people. I will say I had three CBS people in my final four, but I ultimately ended up going with Nicole Wallace.
I thought her making fun of the kid at the State of the Union. It's a recency bias, perhaps, but sometimes that propels a team.
I mean, I had to go with Marco Rubio on Sunday. She goes in day in, day out with the hackery.
It started her like Cinderella run started as a VP debate. And then you saw things as recent as when she tried to go after Marco Rubio

on Sunday, like she keeps at it

week after week with the hacker.

Humiliation.

Yeah, I'm with Smug on this.

I'm counting on America's love of J.D. Vance,

America's love of memes,

and America's hatred of Margaret.

You know, I don't really care, Margaret.

I don't care, Margaret.

It was a huge moment.

It became a whole thing. I'm also a big believer in Margaret Brennan this year.
You know, this tournament. Yeah, I did.
Big believer. Because this tournament is about the big moments, like she did in the debate.
It's also about doing, you know, what you're doing when nobody else is watching. Day in, day out.
That's her show. Nobody watches her show.
But in the big moments, you know, when like Marco Rubio dunks on her or J.D. Vance dunks on her, that's on X.
People see it. She's performing well then, too.
So I'm telling you, I think this is hers to lose. Yeah.
Who was it? Which blonde news anchor was it who said to J.D., like only two, only a few apartment buildings have been taken over by the Venezuelan gangs. Who was that, Steve? Was it Martha Raddatz? Yeah, it was Martha Raddatz.
I think it was Martha Raddatz. We didn't see enough of her this year.
She should get an honorable mention in there. Yeah, we didn't see enough of her.
But she was a bubble team. The exposure's low.
Yeah, she could be a bubble. I mean, Catherine Mayer, Mar, she got in there super late, you know, media executive.
God, if she had just had this testimony, what might have been? In any event, I will tell you, Megan, there's one really special Cinderella story in this year's tournament. A former champion who had not made the bracket for a couple of years due to an unfortunate employment situation has made a return and is now working his way through the bracket, the potato himself, Brian Stelter.
Such a story. Gets fired by CNN, begs his way back.
Yeah. I mean, it's a three seed, I'm told.
It's what's built this country. How can you root against him? I can only imagine the halftime speech he's giving the rest of the team.
Great. While we're on the subject of actresses and awards and hacks, do we have a moment for Rachel Zegler and Snow White? Because there is an update in that story today.
There was an in-depth piece, like a behind the scenes piece. Was it Variety? Talking about how they've been in a full meltdown about this girl for a couple of years now, and how they had her tweet out like a little, yay, Snow White, can't wait, so excited, I love to play her.
And she did it and got like millions of views, and they were like, good job, Rachel. And then she like minutes later followed it up with, and never forget, free Palestine.
this is just, like, a few months after 10-7. It was, like, it hadn't even been a year.
And they were, like, my God, what? And isn't her co-star Jewish? Yes. Yes.
Gal Gadot. Gadot.
I mean, wow. She's Jewish.
And apparently this actually all hell broke loose. They gal started getting death threats.
She's Israeli. Um, and I think served in the IDF.
Uh, they tried, they, they flew an executive, one of the producers out to go visit personally with Rachel Zegler to say, could you please take that down? Because we understand you can have your political views, but those aren't really helpful. And while you're trying to build an audience for a movie, maybe you can save them for like your diary and your friends, but like maybe not, maybe just take the tweet down.
And she wouldn't. And then they had to hire a special media consultant for her to follow her around all the time and make sure she didn't continue shitting on Snow White and The Prince and Young Love and women who want to get married and Steven Spielberg, the executive producer of her previous movie, and white people who she claims wanted to know if she was really a Latina on her first movie.
Like the list was really long. And then the son of that producer who got on the plane to go over and say, would you please, for the love of God, take this down? And she wouldn't, was all on Instagram yesterday admitting it all.
There were a variety of report being like, of course, what would you do when you have this narcissistic nightmare trying to ruin a film that you've put hundreds of millions of dollars into that's

employing all these working class people. She refused to keep her fat mouth shut.
It was a great spilling of the tea. So I don't think she's in the running toward the real Academy Awards.
She wasn't right. She was not nominated for this past year because the film hadn't come out.
So you tell me, you know, you're not Hollywood guys, but you are political oddsmen. So what do you think the odds are of this person working ever again? I don't know.
Doesn't it seem like it's almost a prerequisite in Hollywood? I mean, maybe things have changed a little bit. They are.
Didn't they? Megan, tell me, isn't this the one where they actually took the dwarves out of the seven dwarves? Yes. We have CGI dwarves now.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. Because little people didn't need jobs either.
Yeah. But but it's it's Peter Dinklage wanted the whole field to himself and went out there and was like, this is insulting.
Unless it's me. He kicked the ladder.
Yeah. He got his money in Hollywood.
Now he's like, don't hire anyone else. Oh, nicely done, Smug.
The ladder. Sure, that was nicely done.

That was low.

No, but I mean, he got his money acting as a little person.

Now he's saying it's demeaning for them to have those roles.

He acted as a dwarf on like the most popular show on TV for 10 years, made millions of

dollars.

Now he's like, how dare people hire dwarves to act as dwarves?

It's ridiculous.

He got his money and they kicked the ladder down behind him.

The thing that really shocks me about this story, you know, Disney and all these media companies, they invest hundreds of millions of dollars into these projects. Right.
Have they ever thought about maybe like a little bit of like, I don't know, vulnerability study, opposition research, that sort of thing before you go and hire some Zoomer who's a lunatic. Yeah, but they're all lunatics.
I mean, how many people in Hollywood, maybe not to this extent, but how many people do you hear about actors you love? You love what? Look at Robert De Niro. I love like basically every movie he's ever done.
Every time that guy opens his mouth as a private citizen, I'm like, oh my God, you can't possibly believe that. You know what I mean? So it's like if you're trying to vulnerability study it, where do you start?

Yeah.

I don't think they're all this bad.

I think most young ingenues can be scared into just being quiet until the movie comes out, at least.

Like, please give the movie a chance, understanding that Republicans buy sneakers, too.

You know, to quote Michael Jordan. Like, just give it a chance.
And there are a few actors now that are not, are less afraid of sort of showing their conservative It's also a generational thing. I mean, her generation has basically grown up being told every opinion you have, post it online, share it with the world.
You're the most special person. The world revolves around you.
Everyone has to change to fit your beliefs because you're so special and you're so important and everything you say is validated and that's your truth. And that's not going away anytime soon.
The other problem is Disney keeps doing this shit. Yeah.
They don't care how many times they lose money. I mean, this is...
They're going to learn a lesson on this one, though. I don't think so.
I mean, they're projected to lose between two and four hundred million on this.

I mean, they're not going to learn their lesson.

About a third of what Democrats lost on Kamala Harris.

And I will tell you that I think that this woman will be the governor of California.

I think she is going to run.

And I think that Californians are looking for a step up from Gavin Newsom.

And I think they found their candidate. I think she's going to be the governor.
Maybe a formidable voice of the left. Here's some good news.
Speaking of the woke wars, Anheuser-Busch declines for the first time in over 30 years to sponsor the Pride Fest parade in St. Louis.
They will not, that's Bud Light learning its lesson.

They won't sponsor the Pride Fest and several other companies are saying we're out. This

LGBTQ Pride Fest is now openly complaining, saying we don't understand. DEI is somehow

becoming a bad word. We need these partners.
We need them now more than ever. And they've lost

I'll see you next time. complaining, saying, we don't understand.
DEI is somehow becoming a bad word. We need these partners.
We need them now more than ever. And they've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars as various companies refuse to pitch in, including reportedly, according to the New York Times, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, Comcast, an auto dealership group, Dark Cars.
And then there's Bud Light all saying, not interested. This is a huge victory in an important battle that we've all been fighting.
Will it continue, guys? What do you think? Yeah, I do think it will continue, at least for a while. I mean, all of these companies are ultimately in the business of making money and providing value to shareholders.
And you look at election results and for the first time, they're not talking to just a far left shakedown artist. They're looking at the American people and they want to change it.
It's wonderful to see that they're learning their lesson. Go ahead, Ashbrook.
You got 30 seconds. I was just going to say, I grew up in a very small town.
We had a 4th of July parade every year and I don't remember giant corporate sponsors coming in to make people turn out for that. So I'm guessing if this parade is as popular as that one, then maybe people will still show.
Yeah, they can make it happen without all these corporate dollars. And these corporate corporations are looking at people like Chris Rufo and Robbie Starbuck, who's been doing such a good job of shaming them for continuing DEI policies that are divisive and racist and sexist.
And we've all got our eyes on them now. They know they have real skin in this

game. They will not be universally praised.
They will be publicly humiliated with their core

audience like Bud Light was. So I love it.
It's progress. Great to see you, fellas.

Great to see you, Megan. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.

All right. We'll be back tomorrow with Halpern and see you, Megan.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thanks for having us. All right.

We'll be back tomorrow with Halperin and the morning meeting crew.

See you then.

Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

No BS, no agenda, and no fear.