Real Story Behind Hegseth "Double Tap" Reporting, and Katie Miller vs. Abby Phillip Throwdown, with Mark Halperin | Ep. 1203

Transcript

Speaker 1 Tackle the cost of living crisis or get the hell out of the way.

Speaker 2 I'm Tom Steyer.

Speaker 3 I wanted to build a business here.

Speaker 4 Now it's worth billions of dollars.

Speaker 6 And I walked away from it because I wanted to give back to California.

Speaker 7 We need to get back to basics.

Speaker 8 Homes you can afford, cut utility rates by 25%, and make California a top 10 education state again.

Speaker 10 Sacramento politicians are afraid to change up this system.

Speaker 11 I'm not.

Speaker 1 I'm Tom Steyer, and I'm running for governor.

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Speaker 13 Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at Mid East.

Speaker 13 Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show and happy Monday.
I hope you and your family had a great Thanksgiving. We did.

Speaker 13 It was like the real Thanksgiving, but it felt like the fake Thanksgiving because we already had our fakesgiving with our extended family. And so it was super easy.

Speaker 13 We actually went out to this lovely restaurant and somebody else cooked, which, you know, for my family, that's a gift to us all. Caught a little bit of a cold, but I'm on the mend.

Speaker 13 And now we are back with a packed show. I'm so excited.
It's December. For those of you who are listening, we have in the red studio now our Christmas trees, our white,

Speaker 13 like well, they're green Christmas trees with fake snow all over them and little white blinky lights. It makes me so happy.
We have our Christmas decorations up already.

Speaker 13 I wonder if you do too. Doesn't it just improve your mood? Here in Connecticut, tomorrow we're supposed to get some snow.

Speaker 17 Oh,

Speaker 13 I miss snow. At heart, I'm just a Syracuse girl.
That's where I live the first 10 years of my life. I miss snow and sledding.
I love Christmas. I know you do too.

Speaker 13 So let's take a moment on this December 1st. You only get some 80 to 90 to 100 of them if you're lucky in your life.
And enjoy the most wonderful time of the year.

Speaker 13 And know it is not too early to play the Christmas carols. Even my boys had to admit I'm allowed to play them now.
Okay,

Speaker 13 just before we went to break, a group of Democrats dubbed the seditious six by the Trump administration released a video urging military members to disobey orders they think are illegal.

Speaker 13 It came out of nowhere. No one, even the left-wing press, started asking questions about this.
No one knew what the hell are the orders that they're talking about, and they didn't know.

Speaker 13 These lawmakers got embarrassed repeatedly, thinking that the media would just go along with this. Like, of course, it's Trump, so he's issued illegal orders.
They didn't.

Speaker 13 And it got to the point where even Caroline Levitt complimented the mainstream media for asking questions of these Democrat lawmakers who then looked like morons, unable to name the alleged illegal order.

Speaker 13 So that's basically how it went down.

Speaker 13 And then, of course, since their friends had been embarrassed, meaning the Democrats, the media went to work trying to find some new reporting that actually would suggest there had been an illegal order.

Speaker 13 And lo and behold, they came up with it. I mean, it's just like,

Speaker 13 I'm sorry, but we would be remiss if we didn't point out, can you imagine the Washington Post doing this in order to actually run cover for our Republican administration as opposed to expose one?

Speaker 13 Can you imagine if they had done something like this, this, you know, next level reporting to get to the bottom of how many orders have been issued and where and how, and which one may have crossed the line when Joe Biden was the president.

Speaker 13 It's just so on the nose.

Speaker 13 We'll get into what they've come up with. Plus, the spin continues after the tragic shooting in D.C.
of two National Guard members by an Afghani national last week.

Speaker 13 Joining me now to discuss it all, Mark Halperin. He is the host of Next Up with Mark Halperin on the MK Media Podcast Network.
Go and subscribe right now. It's a great, great show.

Speaker 13 I love listening to Mark's opening talking points. He keeps me centered and up to date on the latest Inside the Beltway.

Speaker 13 So go ahead and subscribe right now wherever get your audio podcast and on YouTube at Next Up Halperin, H-A-L-P-E-R-I-N.com.

Speaker 13 Believe it or not, Christmas is sneaking up fast. Can you believe it? And let's be honest, between shopping, travel, and endless to-do lists, it can be chaos every year.

Speaker 13 But we don't have to just survive it. We can reclaim the peace and purpose Christmas was meant to bring.
Somewhere along the way, Advent became a marathon of gifts, dinners, and decorations.

Speaker 13 But what's the point if we're left exhausted and distracted? Let me tell you about Hallow.

Speaker 13 Their Advent prayer challenge, Pray 25, Be Still, features reflections from Chris Pratt, Gwen Stefani, and more. It's a call to pause, breathe, and remember the real story of Christmas.

Speaker 13 A young woman's life upended, a man protecting his family, and a corrupt ruler trying to destroy it all. And yet, they found peace.
This is not about a hallmark moment.

Speaker 13 It's about finding stillness and divine peace in a broken world. Try Hallow free for three months at hallow.com/slash Megan.

Speaker 16 Mark, welcome back.

Speaker 15 Good to be here. And I broke the rules and started listening to the Christmas music on Tuesday.
So

Speaker 12 yes.

Speaker 13 Now, let me ask you a question about that. Do you listen to only Christmas music, like when you're in your car, or do you go back and forth, you know, for the next three weeks?

Speaker 15 No, when I'm in the car, it's the Sirius XM holiday channels. And,

Speaker 15 you know,

Speaker 15 I like Sinatra, the Carpenters. I like

Speaker 15 pretty much any artist I've ever liked. I just love spinning up the Christmas stuff.
And

Speaker 15 then, you know, if I'm being let down, I just switch to the phone and program myself.

Speaker 13 Yes, same. I love

Speaker 13 SiriusXM has made channel four now, the Holly channel. They've got the 15 is now the Fallon Christmas.
That's a new one.

Speaker 13 Those are good ones that I haven't always heard. And then I love traditional Christmas, which I think is 71, Sinatra 70, which also is a good channel, by the way.

Speaker 15 It's a great channel. Those are the three I listen to.

Speaker 15 We were just away for Thanksgiving, and so I had the car and

Speaker 15 I just locked in on those three. I saved all three channels.

Speaker 13 Yes, sweet. It's like, it gets you right in the mood.
And soon we'll be busting out the Christmas specials. Do you unleash those in a certain way? I'm curious.

Speaker 15 I'm a linear TV guy when it comes to Christmas specials. I like to watch them as they're offered up by the majors.
Oh.

Speaker 18 oh, old school. Okay.

Speaker 13 Do you have a favorite?

Speaker 15 I love Rudolph, and I love the Charlie Brown one.

Speaker 13 Oh, interesting.

Speaker 13 I love Santa Claus's Coming to Town and the Berger, Meister, Meister Burger. That's a great one.
Except we fast forward through the scene where Jessica sings. It's a bad one.

Speaker 19 Yeah, she's

Speaker 15 a little warbly.

Speaker 15 I love Claymation, and I tried to explain to my son, like that when I was a kid, Claymation was the equivalent of like 4D graphics.

Speaker 17 But

Speaker 15 I just, there's something about the claymation I just find, like, any claymation that's got Santa whiskers, I just love it.

Speaker 13 Yes, it's good stuff. And I'll give you one more before we move on to the news, which is: I grew up watching this.
It's, I'm going to be honest, it's not well made.

Speaker 13 You see that when you're an adult in a way that you don't when you're a kid, but I still love it. And it's called The Christmas That Almost Wasn't.

Speaker 13 It's so good.

Speaker 13 You can find it on, at one point, you couldn't find it anywhere before we had apps all over our tvs and i had to order it from some remote website in italy i don't know i got it anyway it's so cute it's about this guy named mr prune who lives to ruin christmas and he's harassing santa and mrs claus at the pole at the north pole and santa has to go get a job down in like every man town he takes one at a toy store mr prune won't let up he's a major antagonist this guy it's just such a fun one and of course for me it brings back childhood memories I don't know that one, but I like the Dickensian name of Mr.

Speaker 15 Prune.

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 15 We just watched, I'd never seen it, The Dog Who Saved Christmas. You ever seen that?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 15 It's hokey, but it's really good.

Speaker 13 Recommend. Okay.
Thank you for that circle.

Speaker 13 And I do need to mention one other thing. I mention it every year, but my favorite Christmas special of all time is Christmas in Connecticut, which is from 1947.
Barbara Stanwick.

Speaker 13 Hello, black and white. They have a sleigh that they ride.
That's me hitting the horses with the straps

Speaker 13 through the like Connecticut countryside, the snow. It's a very weird and inappropriate love story that somehow you root for anyway.

Speaker 13 And just the whole setting of it makes me feel like it's Christmastime.

Speaker 15 I love that. I'll tell you, I know we said we both keep saying one more, but I have to do one more, which is the Bing Crosby David Bowie Little Drummer Boy.
Do you know that? Yes.

Speaker 13 That's a great one.

Speaker 16 It's magical.

Speaker 16 That truly is one of the

Speaker 13 greatest of all time. Merry Christmas, yeah.

Speaker 13 Now, see, now that is an appropriate use of the term magical. This morning on AM update, which you sometimes host on,

Speaker 13 we talked about the Corey Booker engagement, and Corey Booker used the term magical

Speaker 13 to describe, I think, their date or their second date. Then when he proposed, he had Mariah Carey playing Mark.

Speaker 13 He took her out on their first date to Broadway to see a female empowerment play, suffragette, the suffs. I don't, I've got questions, Mark Halperin.

Speaker 13 What's happening with Corey Booker?

Speaker 15 Well, first of all, they gave the exclusive pictures and TikTok and backstory to the New York Times, but it read like People magazine. It was just like this classic there we're seeing.

Speaker 15 Those of you watching on YouTube, you can see.

Speaker 15 And the whole thing that you just outlined, and you hit most of the highlights, I felt was written by ChatGPT. Like,

Speaker 15 composed the TikTok of Corey Booker's Whirlwind Romance with this young lady.

Speaker 15 Now, they made her Jewish in the real version, which was a bit of a surprise.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Did not. I don't know.
Yeah. Yeah.
They had like a split wedding. They got married at City Hall, and then they had like a show wedding that was half Jewish and half whatever it is he is.

Speaker 13 I mean, half Jewish, half gay.

Speaker 12 Yeah. I mean, that's what everybody's everybody's thinking.

Speaker 15 I mean, everyone I know who knows him is surprised, but not surprised.

Speaker 15 And, you know, he is, he has gone to New Hampshire in the last couple of months, and he is kind of an under-discussed person of ambition.

Speaker 15 You remember James Carville's famous line about running for president when somebody says, well, that person ran or they really get before they really run again.

Speaker 15 And James said, running for president is like having sex. You don't just do it once and then say, ah, I did it.
I'm done. Don't need to do it again.

Speaker 13 So I didn't hear it. I've never heard that.
That's very bad.

Speaker 15 Yeah, now, in this case, as you said, some people are raising the question of what kind of sex are we actually talking about.

Speaker 13 But because

Speaker 13 I heard on his way to New Hampshire, he swung by Chelsea in Manhattan and also Provincetown, Massachusetts. It's just unconfirmed report, allegedly, Mark.

Speaker 15 Good places to raise money.

Speaker 15 Look,

Speaker 15 people have talked about his personal life forever.

Speaker 15 And,

Speaker 15 you know, you don't need to have the world's most sensitive Gator to have have a point of view here.

Speaker 15 But he's now, like Tim Scott, he's legally wed. And I wish the young couple all happiness.

Speaker 13 Me too. Me too.
However short-lived it may be. It may take him right through to 2028 and the primary season and not beyond.
But I hope I'm wrong. And I'm just a cynical mofo.

Speaker 13 And I've misread the entire situation. Though I do view Mariah Carey as a blaring red siren warning sound.

Speaker 13 Any woman dating a man.

Speaker 13 No man should select that song wasn't chair or mariah carry i mean share or liz liza minelli so yeah true equally damning you raise a good point um it's the trifecta in any event good luck to them they're gonna need it um okay back here we've got the democrats have stumbled upon their alleged illegal order and they're thrilled they're so excited um what they're saying is that on one of those venezuelan drug boat strikes we struck the boat that there were two survivors, drug dealers, driving the boat or on the boat who were then clinging to the remnants of the boat, and that on Pete Hegseth's order, they then dropped a second bomb to take out the two survivors and then two more bombs to sink the boat, because I guess we want no remnants of the boat whatsoever.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 Trump was asked about this on Air Force One and Trump denied that Pete had done it. He actually said, Pete told me that he hasn't done it, that he did not agree to that.

Speaker 13 And now we've had two inquiries opened in Republican-controlled bodies of Congress, the House and the Senate.

Speaker 13 So the Republicans are at least making a show of seeming interested in whether this happened because many military experts have said they don't see how this could be legal.

Speaker 13 Like that you are, you're not allowed, they say, and this is still under investigation about what happened. But if what I just said is true, and that's an if,

Speaker 13 that it would be clearly illegal because you're not allowed to kill people who survive an initial strike and who are, even if they're enemy combatants, kind of hanging on, or in this case, possibly literally hanging on for dear life.

Speaker 13 Your thoughts on it?

Speaker 15 Well, I contain multitudes on this. First of all, I'm a big fan of stopping the invasion of drugs into the United States.

Speaker 15 And I think our children and our grandchildren are going to be so confused when they read in the history books that we had presidents who did nothing about it and just sat back and let people send drugs into the country that killed people and hurt productivity and just all the scourge of things that drugs do.

Speaker 15 So I'm a big fan of anything that addresses that, number one.

Speaker 15 Number two, I think President Trump has proven that if you use force aggressively and you use it in a way that minimizes or doesn't have it doesn't cause any loss of American life, that it can be a great deterrent.

Speaker 15 We saw that

Speaker 15 at least potentially with Iran. We've seen it in other cases and we're seeing it here.
So people who say, well, you know, they're not interdicting all the drugs. They're just getting a few boats.

Speaker 15 No, they're sending a message to people whose families and individuals are going to be more reluctant to go to the high seas with drugs destined for the United States or elsewhere. So

Speaker 15 I don't want to be misunderstood. I think those two things are good.
But I'm also old-fashioned about two things. And I think they're really fundamental to what America is about.

Speaker 15 Number one, I don't think the President of the United States should kill people indiscriminately or

Speaker 15 our forces should kill people indiscriminately in violation of law and American tradition. And that may be what's happened here

Speaker 15 in this particular case,

Speaker 15 but it's clearly the case in general. And I think there's been insufficient debate about it and insufficient scrutiny about it.

Speaker 15 And number two, super old-fashioned and kind of diluted, I think Congress is a co-equal branch and in some cases a superior branch when it comes to the declaration of war.

Speaker 15 And I think no American, whatever you call your politics, no American should be complacent about presidents, all the post-World Cold War presidents have done this, using their power and disregarding Congress's role in declaring war.

Speaker 15 And I think that's what's happened here, too. And I think that's, at a minimum, should be examined.

Speaker 13 Well, that touches on an interesting dynamic that's popping up more and more in the press about whether there's some group of Republicans that are dejected and demoralized on Capitol Hill right now, Mark, because they feel like a rubber stamp to Trump.

Speaker 13 They feel like they can't challenge him or they're going to get primaried and chased out of Congress, MTG style. And so

Speaker 13 they do feel like they've ceded their constitutional authority because they're all so afraid of the 800-pound gorilla.

Speaker 13 Now, is that an actual thing right now or is that just a leftist media fever dream?

Speaker 15 No, it's an actual thing.

Speaker 15 It's not based based on, you know, talking to Democrats or talking to Don Bacon or Tom Massey.

Speaker 15 They're Trump loyalists who are unhappy. Now, some of them are unhappy because of principle.

Speaker 15 And you don't see, as we did over the weekend, normally in the Trump era, you don't see the Republican chairs of the applicable committees in the House and Senate saying this needs to be investigated and saying it in a bipartisan way with the Democratic ranking members.

Speaker 15 And they're doing that because they are troubled by this on principle.

Speaker 15 Most of the unhappiness amongst Republicans, again, not a Democratic or media creation, is concern about the midterms, concern that they're going to lose the House majority because

Speaker 15 of the economy and a feeling that the White House is insufficiently moving to address what voters are concerned about, particularly how much things cost.

Speaker 15 So those are two different areas of unhappiness, one principle, one pure politics.

Speaker 15 And again, I think the political one is probably, if you could quantify unhappiness, probably a greater source right now amongst Republicans.

Speaker 13 Right, because, well, we were talking about this a little on the tour, that

Speaker 13 it's, in a way, it's so much more fun to be in the opposition, you know, and just like lay criticisms on the people in power.

Speaker 13 But then when your team is in power, and there's infighting and there's all sorts of articles every day about how terrible they are.

Speaker 13 And I know it's from mostly the mainstream, which hates Trump and hates everybody in the Trump administration. but it's aggravating and it's irritating and it can be kind of a downer.

Speaker 13 And I feel like the Republican Party is going through that right now. What do you think?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 15 there's sort of three main areas, right? One is

Speaker 15 about dealing with the economy, this word that the president doesn't much like, affordability. But

Speaker 15 these are tough problems. The cost of housing, the cost of food, the cost of energy.
These are tough issues for any president to deal with. So that's one source of anxiety and infighting.

Speaker 15 Two is there's some cabinet members like Pete Hagseth, like Cash Patel, head of the FBI, and like Christy Noam, who have now had to face multiple stories that are super negative about their stewardships that, again, are not from the deep state.

Speaker 15 They're not from Democrats.

Speaker 15 There are some cases published in

Speaker 15 the legacy media, but not always. So today, for instance, the New York Post has a story about Cash Patel by Miranda Devine.

Speaker 13 I saw it. We should talk about it.
It's devastating.

Speaker 15 It's a devastating piece. And again, you got to consider the source.
Miranda's a great reporter and writer and columnist. She's not writing a negative story based on the deep state sources.

Speaker 13 She's just that's what concerns me.

Speaker 21 She's so good.

Speaker 15 Yeah. So that's number two: you've got some cabinet members.
And then the president's poll numbers just aren't good. And again, that's not the liberal media.
It's not fake polls.

Speaker 15 Every poll, including private Republican polls, show it's a snapshot of where we are. It doesn't mean they'll be bad next year.
It doesn't mean he can't turn things around.

Speaker 15 But his poll numbers are really bad right now. And that just allows.

Speaker 13 The one that just hit is from Gallup, which is, you know, the mother of all polls. Forgive me, I'm having a cough drop.
But that has approval rating down to 36, a new second term low. Keep going.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and amongst independents, I think in that poll, it's 25.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 15 And again, this is not liberal.

Speaker 15 It's not anti-Trump. If his numbers are that bad at the midterms, they'll lose the House.
They might lose the Senate. So that just causes anxiety.

Speaker 15 And And this White House has done a very good job of not just making Republicans in Congress afraid of them, although they're good at that, but making them feel they're being communicated with.

Speaker 15 And right now, they're claiming they don't feel that way. The White House takes issue with that and says they're communicating all the time.
And it's just an excuse to rail against the White House.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 15 this is not a great time right now for the president's political team.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 15 there's an interval here to improve things. But at the moment,

Speaker 15 they're these sources of attention. And when you see somebody like Miranda Devine write a piece like that about Cash Patel, who's the ultimate loyalist, it just makes everybody think, huh?

Speaker 15 Like a horror movie, like

Speaker 15 the villain or the enemy or whatever you want to describe it, they're in the house. They're not outside the house.
They're in the house.

Speaker 13 Well, the FBI report she references confused me.

Speaker 13 Because this is what she, her headline is, opinion, damning report labels FBI rudderless ship under Cash Patel, with him and Dan Bongino more concerned with building personal resumes, which is a quote.

Speaker 13 And then she bases her report on, it's called a 115 report, quote, source reporting and analysis of the FBI under the leadership of FBI Director Cash Patel, a pulse check for the first six months for U.S.

Speaker 13 Senate Committee on the Judiciary and Chairman Chuck Grassley Grassley, and U.S.

Speaker 13 House Committee on the Judiciary and Chairman Jim Jordan by the National Alliance of Retired and Active Duty FBI Special Agents and Analysts.

Speaker 13 So I remain unclear on whether this was requested by the Senate Committee, whether this is just a bunch of like ex-FBI people who are disgruntled and predictably don't like Dan and Cash,

Speaker 13 or what this is. Sounds so official.
I don't understand whether it is, but

Speaker 13 what we do know is it's very nasty.

Speaker 13 It really goes after cash.

Speaker 13 They have a passing shot at Dan Bongino trying to diminish him, but mostly it's focused on Cash Patel. And the thing that they're really zeroing in on is what they say is like

Speaker 13 a vanity, I guess, of his, a vanity. That they talk about how when he flew out to the Charlie Kirk

Speaker 13 staging, like the FBI staging in the wake of it.

Speaker 13 He was insistent on getting an FBI jacket brought to him on board the plane before he disembarked, and that he apparently did not have his own, quoting here, FBI raid jacket with him.

Speaker 13 He refused to step from the plane without wearing one. That

Speaker 13 FBI special agents at the Salt Lake City Field Office, busy working on the Kirk case, quote, had to stop and ask around to find an FBI raid jacket, a medium-sized one that would fit.

Speaker 13 When a jacket belonging to a female agent was delivered to Patel on the plane, he complained that, quote, two areas on the upper sleeves did not have Velcro patches attached.

Speaker 13 And then

Speaker 13 he would not leave the plane, quote, until he had two patches to cover those areas, quote, so members of an FBI SWAT team took patches off of their uniforms and ran those patches over to Patel at the airport.

Speaker 13 The patches were then attached to the loner FBI raid jacket, and Patel disembarked from the plane. The director was not happy with the way the investigation was going.

Speaker 13 He had an expletive-filled tirade, whatever. All that's kind of ridiculous.
Of course, people yell in these tense times, but the jacket story, if true, it's not great.

Speaker 15 No. Look, I had the same reaction you did too.
Like I'm reading this story. I've read my share of stories about stuff like this.

Speaker 15 I don't remember this kind of quasi-official anonymous report that's handed over like that.

Speaker 15 I just don't remember anything quite like that, not just with the FBI. I don't remember anything like that.

Speaker 15 They wrote like a serious, rigorous report with all these details, but it's not official, but it's kind of official.

Speaker 15 And then again, the question of Miranda, she's the only one, as far as i know who's reported this so far she's not anti-trump she doesn't write for an anti-trump publication and yet with a few uh to-be-shore paragraphs of positive things it's a very negative story it's a very negative report so you got to ask yourself you know how did this thing get done and how did it end up with miranda and how did miranda decide to write it up um

Speaker 15 these are not the only stories like this about cash patel there's other stories but most of them have circulated in you places like the Washington Post, the New York Times.

Speaker 15 So it's a bit of a mystery, but you're seeing the same things with Pete Hagseth and to some extent with Christy Noam, which is you just, again,

Speaker 15 it's not liberal media. It's people who love the president, who care about the president, who are using different outlets, in this case the New York Post, to put out there there's problems.

Speaker 15 It's hard to escape the conclusion that the people are motivated by a desire to get the president to to make a change in personnel. And he's not done that yet.

Speaker 15 And it's not clear if these will have an impact.

Speaker 13 It's always

Speaker 13 today we had a decision from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals before we came on the air

Speaker 13 saying that Alina Haba cannot be the acting U.S. attorney for

Speaker 13 a district in New Jersey.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 this is separate from the Tish James and James Comey challenge, which is still making its way up to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Speaker 13 And we'll see whether that court affirms the lower court decision that she too was,

Speaker 13 that the prosecutor there was also not appointed correctly. That's

Speaker 13 Lindsay Halligan. So this is a separate thing.
It's Alina Haba. She was Trump's personal lawyer, and he made her acting U.S.

Speaker 13 attorney within this district in the Northeast that answers to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Speaker 13 Third Circuit Court of Appeals came down unanimously, three judge panel, saying They don't have the power to appoint her. She's got to go.
She was not properly appointed. She's not the proper U.S.

Speaker 13 attorney. This is not a great decision for Trump.

Speaker 13 It's not a great decision to the extent it gets considered by the Fourth Circuit that's deciding something similar, though not identical, with Lindsey Halligan.

Speaker 13 But the first thing I did when I got it, Mark, was to look at who are the judges, who was appointed, who are they appointed by?

Speaker 13 And in today's day and age, what you need to see is not just a Republican president. You need to see Trump, that it was a Trump appointee, if Trump has any fighting chance.
If you see George W.

Speaker 13 Bush appointee, George H.W. Bush appointee, Reagan, you're not going to see it.
You might as well see it be a Barack Obama judge. It's almost that bad.

Speaker 12 They all hate Trump.

Speaker 13 And that court was two W appointees and an Obama appointee. So not surprisingly, we knew how it was going to go.
And that's exactly how it went.

Speaker 13 And that's kind of what I think when I see a lot of the Republicans leaking on Trump. Because clearly this came from somebody who's more, I think, right-wing aligned.
They went to Miranda.

Speaker 13 I could be wrong, but it's not just Miranda. I see some of these reporting in other right-wing papers.

Speaker 13 And I think it's the Bush-era people who, you know, just because they're part of the Trump administration in some way, shape, or form, like they're currently at the FBI, does not mean that they're pro-Trump.

Speaker 13 And if you were there, even if you're a Republican, but you're a more George W.

Speaker 13 Bush Republican, you might go to the Post or the Wall Street Journal in particular and leak something very damaging to Trump. So it will look like it's, you know, right-on-right violence.

Speaker 13 It'll look more credible to the right-wing, that is.

Speaker 13 But you really hate him just as much as the left hates him. And what you almost never see is Democrats doing this to Democrats.

Speaker 13 I'm like, you're telling me there weren't terrible stories to leak about Pete Budig

Speaker 13 Bull, you know, or Merrick Garland for that matter, or Chris Ray, even. There were.
It just doesn't happen.

Speaker 15 Well, it does happen with Kamala Harris. So there's at least one exception there.

Speaker 15 There were stories like that about her and her staff.

Speaker 15 I think that

Speaker 15 it's a sad thing, but it's true. Judges are result-oriented.
And I used to say it all the time after Bush v. Gore.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 lawyers and various political lawyers would call me and say, no, no, judges are fair. Justices are fair.
They follow the law. No.
They're almost all result-oriented. And I think that's just horrible.

Speaker 15 They should be ruling based on the law. You know, no matter who nominated them for the court.

Speaker 15 In this case, you're absolutely right that it's a cheat for a reporter to say Republicans are saying if they're Bush Republicans, because the Bushes and the Bush, you know, Team Bush are not fans of Donald Trump, you know, any more, as you said, than the team Obama is.

Speaker 15 But I'll say again, there are Republicans now who are unhappy with Cash Patel, who are Trump Republicans. There are Trump Republicans who are unhappy with Donald Trump right now,

Speaker 15 some about

Speaker 15 the economy, some about Epstein.

Speaker 15 and you see that reflected not just at the elite level, which is I'm talking about, but you see that in the Gallup poll, but also in other, even Republican polls.

Speaker 15 Republicans, for various reasons, are unhappy, even Trump Republicans with the president right now. And his first order of business is to turn that around, not just overall, but on issues.

Speaker 15 Republicans need to be confident about the economy and his policies. They need to be confident about Epstein and his view there, etc.
So

Speaker 15 he no doubt has problems with Bush Republicans and Reagan Republicans, but he's got some problems with Trump Republicans too now. And I know that because I talked to them directly.

Speaker 13 Well, we have a year to go before the midterm. So it's reversible, but it requires some honesty right now about what exactly are the problems and are they fixable?

Speaker 13 Like the economy, like a better message and actual better policy on health care. Like not running around saying we need all these Chinese immigrants here and in our universities and that

Speaker 13 we need H-1B visas to abound because our workers can't do it. Like that interview with Laura Ingram, that's the kind of stuff that etches away at the base.
They do not want to hear that stuff at all,

Speaker 13 even though the more Chamber of Commerce Republicans do like it, and that's why he says it. Okay, let's keep going, though, on this

Speaker 13 story about the alleged illegal strike.

Speaker 13 The left is now very, very concerned, very concerned, about a president or his Department of Warhead ordering an illegal death, an illegal killing of someone deemed an enemy combatant.

Speaker 13 Except they didn't much seem to mind during the Obama era. I was on all the time talking about these strikes that Obama was doing with the drones.

Speaker 13 I remember O'Reilly and I having many, many debates about this. And

Speaker 13 hold on, we've got some with Obama bragging. about how good he was at killing people.
And oh, he told you that in your book, too. Hold on a second.
Where is that sound bite, Debbie?

Speaker 13 I know, that one's not on tape, but the Obama drone strike is.

Speaker 13 This is where he was, SAT7 is where he was joking about how good he was with the Predator drones at the White House correspondence.

Speaker 13 And it is a joke, but it's based on reality because he really was taking out not just alleged terrorists, but Americans

Speaker 13 who had had no due process. with his drones.
Here's the joke, and then we'll get to the bigger news you made with him in your book.

Speaker 23 The Jonas brothers are here.

Speaker 21 They're out there somewhere.

Speaker 23 Sasha and Malia are huge fans,

Speaker 23 but boys don't get any ideas. I have two words for you: predator drones.

Speaker 23 You will never see it coming.

Speaker 13 Okay, so they were perfectly willing to yuck it up. I didn't see like a sixth senator video saying, oh, disobey illegal orders in case you get one to take out the Jonas brothers.

Speaker 13 But with you, Mark,

Speaker 13 he took that joke and made a very serious comment that showed his real feelings about his use of those drones. And what did he say?

Speaker 15 Well, he didn't say it directly to me. He said it, it was, we reported that he said it to his ace.
He said, I guess I'm pretty good at killing people.

Speaker 15 I think that's the quote

Speaker 15 in

Speaker 15 Double Down, the sequel to Game Change. And as you said, he killed at least one American.
That's a big difference, right? For the president of the United States.

Speaker 15 Do we owe the same level of due process to people who aren't Americans, who the president says we're at? I don't think so.

Speaker 15 But for an American to get no due process and have his president kill him, that's quite something. Now, again, it might have been justified by

Speaker 15 some

Speaker 15 moral

Speaker 15 situational ethics thing. But as you said, where was the outrage then by the press? I was outraged.

Speaker 15 I was talking quite a bit about it. But where was the outrage from the media and

Speaker 15 from Democrats and Republicans who are principled?

Speaker 15 Like, again, there might be a justification for it, but in this country, with our traditions, this should be discussed and debated, and the president should have to justify it rather than just saying, I control the weapons, and now with the drones, you know, even easier, I control these things, and so I'm going to kill whoever I think should be killed.

Speaker 15 That's just not our tradition.

Speaker 15 There might be a justification for it, and I'm not saying I don't share the goals, but it should be debated and discussed and scrutinized, and there should be disclosure about it.

Speaker 15 And I would say nothing could be more MAGA than saying we can't have a president who's unfettered in their ability to use our military to do whatever he wants.

Speaker 15 That's just not the way America is.

Speaker 13 He said to you, or they quoted in your book, Double Down 2012, turns out I'm really good at killing people.

Speaker 13 Didn't know that was going to be a strong suit of mine. I mean, wow.
It was a 16-year-old. He was an American citizen, excuse me, killed by a U.S.
drone strike in Yemen.

Speaker 13 He was the son of terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. And the justification was,

Speaker 13 wrong place, wrong time. Like, too bad.
Sorry, not sorry. And

Speaker 13 look, the problem they have in the Hegseth situation is reportedly, and again, this is a big asterisk because this is Washington Post reporting,

Speaker 13 that

Speaker 13 allegedly after this incident on September 2nd, they then changed the policy, the approach to not, quote, double tap if there were survivors on the boats, from the boats now swimming in the water after their boat was blown to smithereens.

Speaker 13 So it would suggest an acknowledgement that having taken out those two on September 2nd was not ideal.

Speaker 13 I don't know if it's an acknowledgement it was illegal, but it certainly seems to have been a change in policy.

Speaker 13 And in the law, that's exactly the kind of thing you use against somebody, the change in policy or the change in behavior. Having said all that, Mark, these guys are in no danger whatsoever.

Speaker 13 If some overzealous, you know, Senate panel leads to a recommendation for charges, the DOJ

Speaker 13 somehow finds, I don't know, some weird independent streak and decides to indict these guys or whoever it would be, it might be a military prosecution. President Trump is going to pardon them.

Speaker 13 These guys have nothing to worry about for this strike.

Speaker 15 Well,

Speaker 15 they don't have anything to worry about. I agree with you from the point of view of a Justice Department indictment.

Speaker 15 And I may be wrong about this, but I don't know that the president can pardon people in the court of military justice

Speaker 15 and certainly it could impact their careers.

Speaker 13 I think he can.

Speaker 20 Really?

Speaker 16 I don't know. I've never taken an example.

Speaker 13 Well, I'm trying to remember.

Speaker 13 I was reading, among others, Andy McCarthy this morning, who was very tough on the president here, very tough on Hegseth, and not at all on his side, but I think he did acknowledge up front that a pardon would be likely and could render it moot.

Speaker 15 Yeah, you know, if you read the Washington Post story carefully, as you did,

Speaker 15 people should know that the Washington Post story leaves room for the notion that the order to kill the last two gentlemen, allegedly, was not a direct order from Hexeth.

Speaker 15 That Hegseth's order was make sure, you know, everybody gets killed.

Speaker 15 But it's possible, if you read the Post story literally, that

Speaker 15 it was the commander who said do the second tap rather than Hexeth himself.

Speaker 13 Well, I mean, I guess that won't necessarily affect anything other than the truth of Hegseth's denial, as espoused by Trump on Air Force One, that Hexeth told me he did not order that.

Speaker 13 So, I mean, that may get Hexeth off the hook. In any event, it's like, to me, it's kind of annoying to even debate it.
I do think our soldiers and, you know, all armed forces should

Speaker 13 not commit war crimes definitely on on the on team don't commit a war crime but i also feel like i object to even the scrutiny of this of this event because it's all manufactured it's only being done to retroactively justify this you know, seditious six and their, that's what Hegseth is calling them, and their video, which was based on nothing.

Speaker 13 They're just now digging. It's a fishing expedition.
And it does feel a little, you know, Stalin's right-hand man-esque, like, show me the man and I'll show show you the crime.

Speaker 13 That's how it feels to me.

Speaker 13 So I'm really not that into it, nor do I really care that we're killing the drug boat guys trying to kill my kids and yours right now by bringing their fentanyl to the United States to try to get our kids when they go to college with, you know, some drug in some moment of weakness where they think they're taking a Xanax, like what happened to poor Eric Bowling's child, and instead it's laced with fentanyl.

Speaker 13 So I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they're on the boat or in the the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer.

Speaker 13 I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little.

Speaker 13 Like I'm really having a difficult time ginning up sympathy for these guys who 10 seconds earlier almost got taken out by the initial bomb, but because they managed to get ejected, you know, a little too soon, had to be taken out in the water.

Speaker 13 I realize legally it may make a difference, but truly, Mark, this is a tough case to really gin up the the sympathies of the American people.

Speaker 15 Yeah, like I said,

Speaker 15 I share the

Speaker 15 premise that you just raised because I think it's important that we do something to keep our porous border from being flooded with drugs that are killing our people.

Speaker 15 So if this is in service of that, I think it's something that should be considered.

Speaker 15 I just think there needs to be more debate because I just don't think it's good for the United States to be violating international law, if that's what happened here, or taking human life under

Speaker 15 conditions that aren't vetted. Now, I will say

Speaker 15 every one of these

Speaker 15 actions has a legal team. And my hope would be that the legal team is signing off on this stuff.

Speaker 13 That's what Hexeth is saying.

Speaker 15 Yeah, so while outside lawyers may say this is a clear violation,

Speaker 15 let's find out.

Speaker 15 Again,

Speaker 15 declassification without

Speaker 15 revealing sources sources and methods and operational details. Let's find out what the legal justification was for it.
Because

Speaker 15 if it can't be justified legally, then it's hard to defend it,

Speaker 15 even if the mission and the goals are admirable and necessary. But presumably these were signed off by lawyers.
So let's see what they said. Let's see how they justified it.

Speaker 15 That hasn't been forthcoming, and I do think that

Speaker 15 that would quiet the complaints of at least some who are fair-minded about this.

Speaker 13 Yes, and Hexa says they did have sign-off from lawyers at the top of the DOJ and the military system on these strikes, though his memo is a little ambiguous on like, what about the question of the two swimming in the water?

Speaker 13 In any event, I'm not going to lie, I'm glad they're dead.

Speaker 13 Let's keep going because

Speaker 13 there's a new ad out today. This whole thing got started as a result of this so-called seditious six.
Again, that's a Hexeth term for these lawmakers.

Speaker 13 Now, today,

Speaker 13 there's a new ad that's just been put out by the Women's March, which is such a weird thing to still have around as like an organization dropping ads. And this one is trying to do the same thing.

Speaker 13 And the way those six tried to get between the commander-in-chief and his armed military,

Speaker 13 this one seems to try to get between the commander-in-chief and his armed ICE officers. Here it is, watch this:

Speaker 25 you will be caught, you will be removed

Speaker 25 and you will never return.

Speaker 13 Christine over the TV.

Speaker 13 Someone comes in with handcuffs. A man.

Speaker 13 He looks forlorn.

Speaker 18 She's hugging him. Daddy, how's your day?

Speaker 13 He's an ice officer.

Speaker 13 What will you say, read the captions, when she asks about your day?

Speaker 13 Nag these dramatic scenes of ICE taken out of context, arresting people.

Speaker 7 A mask can't hide you from your neighbors,

Speaker 22 your children.

Speaker 22 God.

Speaker 22 Hell no.

Speaker 22 You can walk away

Speaker 7 before the shape

Speaker 7 followed you home.

Speaker 18 Daddy, how's your day?

Speaker 13 You can walk away.

Speaker 13 You can walk away as an officer, well, not and still receive your paycheck, because these are just cops who are charged with making a rest mark based on warrants that are given to them through a duly enacted process.

Speaker 13 That's not what the left will tell you. They think it's all like dragging kids out of their homes and making little girls cry.
That's what the Women's March wants you to believe.

Speaker 13 But they also thought that, you know, equal rights meant wearing a pink P-word hat. and standing on the upper west side doing absolutely nothing.
That's the same group.

Speaker 15 Yeah. The tens of millions of people who voted for President Trump left no ambiguity about the mandate he had on these issues.

Speaker 15 And they may not like every way ICE operates, but the macro mission to do what is necessary to not just control the border and not just remove certain people from the United States, but to send the message that you cannot come to this country illegally and expect to be treated like a citizen.

Speaker 15 That's what's happening. Now, are things happening that are in error or in excess or that that aren't to the liking of a Democratic mayor or governor? They are.

Speaker 15 And that's being fought out on the streets of the United States. And,

Speaker 15 you know, the hard cases, the hard cases are when some American citizen gets caught up or some grandma who's been sewing clothes in a community for 30 years gets caught up.

Speaker 15 But if people are here illegally,

Speaker 15 then the law says they need to go and in some cases they're being told to go.

Speaker 15 If some a citizen is caught up, the government should do its best to make amends and to figure out how to keep that from happening. But

Speaker 15 this isn't some rogue operation that's disconnected from democracy. This is what people who voted for the president, in the main, one of the main things that they wanted to see him do.

Speaker 15 And that's what's happening.

Speaker 13 Circling back.

Speaker 13 You can be pardoned by the president under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It happened under Biden via the U.S.
Probation Office.

Speaker 13 The president can pardon somebody under the

Speaker 13 for federal offenses, including those obtained in U.S. district courts, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and military courts martial.
Yeah, that's what I thought.

Speaker 2 Sound corrected.

Speaker 13 Yeah, no worries. They can be pardoned by Trump, and they will be.
So they're not really facing any actual legal jeopardy, at least not under this administration.

Speaker 13 And given what we saw at the end of Biden, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw just a blanket from Trump on his way out that he pardons all the military officers for any crimes, any alleged crimes in connection with the Venezuelan drug boat raids, so that they don't have to worry and they shouldn't have to worry.

Speaker 13 This should not be a distraction for them. They already have to put their lives on the line every day, their actual safety.
They shouldn't have to worry about this BS too.

Speaker 13 All right, forging forward.

Speaker 13 Let's talk about what's happening in Minnesota because we spent the first like 42 minutes talking about some not great things for Republicans with which they are going to have to deal.

Speaker 13 But they do have something happening on Team Blue that is an outrage and that gets right to the heart, I think, of why most Republicans cannot stand Democrat rule.

Speaker 13 This excessive government purse that is filled with other people's money, none of which anyone can afford, that is then doled out to favored interest groups.

Speaker 13 And then even when fraud is detected, the purse is not closed.

Speaker 13 Instead, it's refilled with more of your money and mine to fund, in this case, Somali immigrants who are buying luxury cars, fancy jewelry, nice homes and clothes, and in some cases, funneling money back to Somalia to pay for a terrorist group, terrorist group, al-Shabaab, and all under the, I mean, open eyes of Minnesota lawmakers, who reports City Journal and the New York Times in a combo, a pair of reports, knew.

Speaker 13 They knew they were being defrauded, but didn't want to say anything because they were worried about being called racist, Mark.

Speaker 15 You know, the parallel is to this horrible thing that's happened in the UK with

Speaker 15 immigrants molesting children. Thank you.
And government officials say the same thing. Well, we didn't do anything because we didn't want to appear to be racist or prejudiced.

Speaker 15 This story is so outrageous that the New York Times wrote one of the most fair anti-democratic stories that I've ever read in the paper about what's happened.

Speaker 15 And as you said, all these charities, all these

Speaker 15 government programs, government-funded programs, and in many cases, government-funding private groups, some coming out of COVID, they just created fraudulent schemes, fake patients, fake students,

Speaker 15 young people with diseases and afflictions. And they just basically said, you know, we help these hundred kids, so give us all the money that

Speaker 15 we should get from the government. And as you said,

Speaker 15 basically, the Democrats would see the cookie jar being robbed, and then they put more cookies back in the same jar and then turn their backs again.

Speaker 15 This is a massive scandal. And the scale, it's not just kind of symbolic.
The scale of it is like a billion dollars in Minnesota alone for the fraud in these programs.

Speaker 15 As you said, most of it, most of the people who've been charged by the U.S. attorney are from the Somali community.
Now, many of them are American citizens, either born here or naturalized.

Speaker 15 But as you said, many also have ties back to Somalia. And

Speaker 15 the Democrats don't really have an explanation for how this happened, except to say, as you did, well, we didn't want to appear racist. We didn't want to appear prejudiced.

Speaker 15 This is an important community in our state.

Speaker 15 It's a massive ripoff of the taxpayers, massive, and a massive repudiation of the notion that you can just hand out government money and hope for the best that people aren't going to commit fraud.

Speaker 13 Oh, I mean, I don't even know if it was hope for the best situation. I mean, I watched this one guy who's part of the Democratic lawmaking crew.

Speaker 13 I think he's a Republican, but he's part of the statehouse in Minnesota over the weekend. And he was like, they all knew.
Everyone knew.

Speaker 13 We've all been jumping up and down about this for years. They just didn't care.
They just decided it was in their interest group to funnel the money to this interest group

Speaker 13 that paid for them. You know, all these Somali immigrants are voting Democrat.

Speaker 13 And he was saying it doesn't make any sense because if you look at their values values on paper, they sound more like Republicans. Culturally, the Somali crew is not exactly far left.

Speaker 13 They like school choice, he said, is their number one most important issue. So why are they voting Democrat? Because of this.
Because they're giving them cash giveaways.

Speaker 13 Here's a tweet put out by the Minnesota Department of Homeland Security. I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's long.
Hold on, actually, I have it here.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 13 Again, just a couple highlights. Tim Waltz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota.

Speaker 13 We let Tim Waltz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud, but no, we got the opposite response.

Speaker 13 He systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports.

Speaker 13 Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation by him. It's scary, isolating, and left us wondering who we can turn to.
This is a cascade of systemic failures leading up to Tim Waltz.

Speaker 13 Then they go on. There's a little bit more.
Fundamentally, Tim Walls is dishonest, lacks ethics and integrity, has poor leadership abilities, and has never taken accountability for his role in fraud.

Speaker 13 Instead, he deflects by blaming national politics for his own failings. That's exactly right.

Speaker 13 As far as I can see, and they thank the New York Times for bringing the plight of Minnesota to the national stage. I have to say, Mark, I think Tim Walls is done.
I think this will bring him down.

Speaker 13 He's running for a third term. I think it's over for him.
What do you think?

Speaker 15 Well, the current speaker, Republican Speakers, is going to probably be the Republican nominee, I think, and whoever their nominee is. I think it's hard to win a third term.

Speaker 15 And this story is going to continue to reverberate around the state. It is more of a blue state than a purple state, though.

Speaker 15 For whatever reasons he got elected twice, maybe he can win again. But certainly he's imperiled.
And certainly

Speaker 15 the threads on this are going to continue to be pulled. But I'm not ready to predict he's going to lose, but he's obviously obviously now in a very tough political position.

Speaker 15 When the New York Times does a very long, big story calling into question your competence and maybe your ideology, it's a sign of trouble for sure.

Speaker 13 What did you make of the City Journal report followed a few days later by the New York Times report? I was like, first of all, go City Journal.

Speaker 13 But what did you, do you think the New York Times have been working on this and got scooped? Or are they hustled to get it? Because a lot of these facts have been out there.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's a good question. The timing, obviously, probably not coincidental because they're so close together.

Speaker 15 The question of the money being used to go overseas to fund criminal activity, I still want to see more documentation on that.

Speaker 15 It's certainly suggestive, but I'd like to see more because it's obviously a huge charge and a potentially massive story.

Speaker 13 Well, I tip my hat to the good folks of City Journal who are ahead of a lot of the mainstream news reporting, and that is a publication well worth your time, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 13 Mark Halpern stays with us. We will be right back, and there's a lot more news to get to.
Stand by.

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Speaker 11 I'm not.

Speaker 13 Mark Halperin is back with me. He is the host of Next Up with Mark Halperin on MK Media.
Go and subscribe. Get it on YouTube, youtube.com slash AT next up.
Not AT, at, at,

Speaker 13 I feel like Ron Burgundy. You got to do the

Speaker 13 at is what he's trying to tell me in this prompter. It's youtube.com slash at, like the at sign, next up, Halperin.
Okay. I don't know why they did that, Mark Halperin, but it's annoying.

Speaker 15 Can I tell you the best story about that? I heard the other day. It's about someone we both know, but I'm not going to say who it is.

Speaker 22 Oh, good teas.

Speaker 15 This person was reading prompter, and it was a story about the hag.

Speaker 15 And this person was reading the Prompter and said,

Speaker 15 The Hagu, they said.

Speaker 13 Oh, no.

Speaker 16 The Hagu.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Makes me laugh every time.

Speaker 13 Hates when I tell this story, but I have to tell it because she's so fun.

Speaker 13 Abby's very smart, but she has this weird thing with pronunciations that she doesn't, she doesn't, she's like a, she's laughing. She has like a mental block on certain pronunciations

Speaker 13 and certain words. And one time, Mark Siegel was sitting on the set with me at Fox, and

Speaker 13 he had like updated his thoughts.

Speaker 13 I don't know what she was bringing me, but she was bringing me something about the segment that we were doing.

Speaker 13 And what

Speaker 13 it said, what it was about was:

Speaker 13 wait, okay, reverse. She had to transcribe something, a medical presser that had just happened, and give it to me while I was interviewing Mark Siegel.

Speaker 13 And the document she brought out that she had typed up said,

Speaker 13 They said she suffered a grandma seizure.

Speaker 15 That's if you're going to have a seizure, it's one of the best ones to have.

Speaker 13 Totally, but it's so much better than like the mean uncle seizure. Yeah,

Speaker 15 or the mean kin dad, the block seizure. There's all sorts of bad ones, but the grandma one, right?

Speaker 16 That's awesome.

Speaker 13 No, it's like it's kind of nice to you and gives you a bunch of candy at the end. Yeah,

Speaker 15 pinches your cheeks,

Speaker 12 speaks to you. Picks up,

Speaker 4 mats your hair.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Back to Tim Walz, because we can't leave that story without me showing the following war between,

Speaker 13 well, I'll get into this in one second, between Trump and Walls. But here's Walls trying to do damage control on this on Meet the Press.

Speaker 13 I don't think he understands what that term means. Here he is with Kristen Welker, SOT 19.

Speaker 13 Do you take responsibility for failing to stop this fraud in your state?

Speaker 27 Certainly, I take responsibility for putting people in jail. Governors don't get to just talk theoretically.

Speaker 15 We have to solve problems.

Speaker 27 And I will note, it's not just Somalis. Minnesota is a generous state.
Minnesota is a prosperous day. It's a well-run state.
We're AAA bond rated, but that attracts criminals.

Speaker 27 Those people are going to jail. We're doing everything we can, but to demonize an entire community on the actions of a few, it's lazy.

Speaker 13 So they're so well-run. that the criminals were attracted to Minnesota.
And it's not all Somalis. It's literally hundreds of Somalis except for the eight who are non-Somali.
So don't generalize, Mark.

Speaker 13 He too has gotten the research paper on don't alienate the Somalis. They're still voting for us.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 15 it's very reminiscent of how he handled controversies during his presidential, vice presidential campaign, which is he's got some stuff to say and he hopes the parade moves on before anybody asks a follow-up question.

Speaker 15 I did a little checking during the break. Minnesota used to have two-year terms for president, for governor.
They don't anymore, four-year terms, no term limits, but no one's ever won a third term.

Speaker 15 No one has ever successfully been a third term, two, four, third term, four-year governor. And

Speaker 15 I think he might not break the streak after that.

Speaker 13 If they vote for him, they deserve what they're getting at this point. But so

Speaker 13 here was a little war of words between Trump and President Trump,

Speaker 13 President Trump and Governor Walls. Which is the opening shot? It's actually, the opening shot was in a truth social in which President Trump called Tim Walls retarded.

Speaker 13 He used the word, quote, retarded. And then Tim Walls responded to that

Speaker 13 again on Meet the Press. I think it's SOT 20.

Speaker 27 Look, Donald Trump insulting me is a badge of honor for me, but I think we all know as both as an educator for a couple decades and as a parent,

Speaker 27 using that term is just so damaging.

Speaker 15 It's hurtful.

Speaker 27 This is cruelness. This is meanness.
It's aimed at a broader community. And as far as demonizing our Somali community, maybe he could help us on some things.

Speaker 27 Demonizing an entire community, folks who are in the professions, educators, artists, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, they bring the diversity and the energy to a place like Minnesota.

Speaker 27 And for him to just randomly decide to do this, it makes no sense. Do your job.
Get the criminals out. Secure our border, but do it with dignity.

Speaker 27 and respect to the American tradition of respecting immigrants and refugees as a beacon of hope.

Speaker 13 Okay, Trump shutting down immigration from third world countries was not done randomly.

Speaker 13 It was done in the wake of this reporting and the shooting of these two National Guardsmen by an Afghani national over the weekend. It wasn't random.

Speaker 13 But let me just give you the last piece of the story, which is Trump then responding to that chastising from Tim Wallace on Air Force One Sunday night, SAT 2.

Speaker 22 You call him what many Americans do find an offensive word retarded. Do you stand by that claim of calling Tim Walsh retarded? Yeah, I think there's something wrong with him.
Absolutely.

Speaker 22 Do you have a problem with him?

Speaker 21 You know what? I think there's something wrong with him. Anybody that would do what he did, anybody that would allow those people into his state and pay billions of dollars out to Somalia,

Speaker 22 there's something wrong with Walsh.

Speaker 13 Okay, so Trump's defense is

Speaker 13 he actually is slow.

Speaker 13 He's not even taking on the issue that that term is offensive to some. He's like, but it's real.
It's, I'm telling you, he's not, he's not, he's slow.

Speaker 17 Which is

Speaker 15 classic Trump. Hey, I was going to say, anyone who spent any time with Donald Trump is zero surprised at that response.

Speaker 13 He's not sorry, Mark. You're shocked?

Speaker 15 No, he's not even sorry, not sorry. He's just not sorry.

Speaker 13 Oh, no, not sorry. And I have to say, like, I've been thinking about that word because a lot of people are starting to use that word again.

Speaker 13 I don't mean to be too philosophical about it, but I do think it's one of those, like,

Speaker 13 it's a message word. It's not really like anybody wants to make fun of people who are slow when it comes to brain development.

Speaker 13 It's that they're sick and tired of being told what they can and cannot say. That term was used for decades, you know, without it.

Speaker 13 No one's trying to actually say something negative about that community. They're trying to say something about the person they're targeting that they're kind of slow.

Speaker 13 And this is a way of saying we're done being word-policed. I think that's why Trump says it too.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and also it's a word that he grew up using, I'm sure, because when he was a kid, that was a word people use. So, again, I'm not surprised by it.

Speaker 15 I'm always against word policing, just as a general matter.

Speaker 13 Yeah, it never works with Donald Trump. I can speak to that firsthand.
Just don't, just don't go there.

Speaker 13 He's not going to be moved by you at all.

Speaker 15 No matter how good your research is, no matter how good your research is, no matter how high profile the debate moment, he will not be missed by the word police. That's right.

Speaker 13 But this wound up being a great strength of his as things turned out.

Speaker 13 Okay, speaking of the National Guard soldiers who were shot,

Speaker 13 that tweet that Trump sent out, or True Social, in the wake of this tragedy, these two poor young National Guardsmen, one 20, 124, the 20-year-old now dead, the 24-year-old still fighting for his life.

Speaker 13 I don't know. It doesn't sound good, Mark.

Speaker 13 The perpetrator shot and expected to to make it shot by a third national guardsman but now trump sends out this truth social which is just i mean it is a barn burner and i have to say it may be in the view of many americans the best thing he's done since becoming president for the second time i'm going to read just a couple highlights very long but here are the highlights um

Speaker 13 he's talking about how he's going to get rid of these migrants and asylum seekers and he says a migrant earning 30 grand with a green card will get roughly 50 grand in yearly benefits for their family.

Speaker 13 As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great state of Minnesota.

Speaker 13 Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for prey as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses, hoping against hope that they will be left alone.

Speaker 13 The seriously retarded governor of Minnesota, Tim Walls, does nothing. And on we go.
Then he says, I will permanently pause migration from all third world countries to allow the U.S.

Speaker 13 system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden's auto pen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the U.S.

Speaker 13 or who's incapable of loving our country.

Speaker 13 I will end all federal benefits and subsidies to non-citizens of our country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any foreign national who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western civilization.

Speaker 13 I don't know whether any of that or all of it is true, but I think most Republicans would say, shoot it into my veins. That's exactly what I voted for.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and not just only Republicans, some independents, some Democrats. That's been Donald Trump's core message for a while.
And very informed by the experience with Europe.

Speaker 15 You know, Europe is dealing with all of these problems, in some ways more severe than what the United States has dealt with.

Speaker 15 Whatever laws might be broken by what the president's suggesting, whatever traditions, whatever norms, whatever downsides there are,

Speaker 15 the coalition that elected him president two out of three times is well on board with that philosophy about what America needs to do to be safe and prosperous.

Speaker 15 So there are tens of millions who don't like what the president wrote, but there are tens of millions who do. And again, no one should be surprised that that's his reaction to what occurred.

Speaker 13 And we talked about the Gallup poll earlier, which had an overall not great approval number for Trump. But one of the areas in which he's still very much holding on is immigration.

Speaker 13 So you tell me whether this retort to that truth social by Mark Kelly,

Speaker 13 who's one of the so-called seditious six in connection with that Pete Hegseth story we covered earlier, but also has decided to weigh in on this whole thing with the National Guardsman as well.

Speaker 13 Tell me whether this is effective, given those poll numbers. SOT 9.

Speaker 28 This is kind of more of the same from this president. When he says things like third world countries, what is he really saying? I think what he's saying is he doesn't want brown people in our country.

Speaker 13 Mark?

Speaker 15 I mean, if he wants to get the squad's endorsement for president, it could be effective.

Speaker 13 Is that what that is?

Speaker 15 I mean,

Speaker 15 it's more than that.

Speaker 15 It's the belief of the Democratic Party about Donald Trump. They believe he's motivated by racism.
It's what they think about Stephen Miller, too.

Speaker 15 They think they're bigots who want America to be an all-white country when that's not what they want.

Speaker 15 But that's the Mark Kelly is enunciating the view of Blue America about President Trump's view on immigration.

Speaker 13 I mean, honestly, it's

Speaker 13 so tired. It's so worn.
It doesn't work.

Speaker 13 It's like, okay, you can keep trying to, you know, use those plays out of that old playbook, but you use them to try to get a woman elected president and it failed.

Speaker 13 What would make you think it's going to work better now on an issue that Trump, notwithstanding his overall sagging numbers, still has huge support on?

Speaker 13 So, okay, I guess that's what they're going to do.

Speaker 13 There's more of that coming. You'll be shocked from Jasmine Crockett on MS Now.
Here's SOT 10.

Speaker 24 And the idea that one person can get out of line and commit such a horrific crime as shooting two of our National Guardsmen, two National Guardsmen that never ever asked to be here.

Speaker 24 In fact, we know the young lady that lost her life specifically, we're saying that this is a waste of time, but now you want to go against every single immigrant. That doesn't make sense.

Speaker 24 And it's frankly not who we are because if that's the case, let's talk about the white supremacists and how many of them need to be kicked out of this country because I can guarantee you I can track down more crimes that they've committed because overall, immigrants have a lower

Speaker 13 crime committal rate than white supremacists.

Speaker 24 But we don't want to talk about that in this country.

Speaker 16 Overall, I I love that.

Speaker 13 Overall, yes, because there are indeed still more Americans in America than there are immigrants, madam. But

Speaker 13 once again, playing the race card there

Speaker 13 and a bunch of disinformation as she does it,

Speaker 13 Trump prioritizing deporting migrants instead of white supremacists. Your thoughts on her?

Speaker 15 Well, I have to confess, in the last three weeks, Representative Crockett has become a guilty pleasure for me. I love watching her on TV and watching how her mind works as it connects to her mouth.

Speaker 15 I really do. It's just something mesmerizing about how she takes questions and spins them back.

Speaker 15 It's like not, it's not word salad, it's like a word pad tie. It's a lot of complexities.
There's different flavors, textures all in there.

Speaker 15 So it's hard for me to analyze what she says because I just watch her like this.

Speaker 15 For those listening on the podcast version, I dropped my mouth in slack-jawed disbelief. I mean,

Speaker 15 it's incredible the things she says.

Speaker 15 And she's still thinking of running for statewide office, which I would look forward to.

Speaker 13 And by the way, that reference she made to the National Guardswoman who was killed, thinking it was pointless or a waste of time to be doing this in D.C. is way, way out of context.

Speaker 13 And shame on her for doing that to a newly fallen soldier.

Speaker 13 What the woman said, Sarah, was that

Speaker 13 it's pointless if they're not going to let us actually do law enforcement. She wanted to have the reins taken off of her and the other National Guardsmen.
She wanted to do more law enforcement.

Speaker 13 She was upset over, you know, these constant crackdowns on them, not to be able to do anything to actually help the city of D.C. So that's a Democrat problem, Jasmine Crockett.

Speaker 13 That's not a complaint that she was there in the first place. It was a request

Speaker 13 for people like you to try to to take the reins off so that the National Guard can do what they're capable of doing. But who would expect media honesty from her?

Speaker 13 Okay,

Speaker 13 you mentioned Stephen Miller, and he's kind of in the news today because of his wife, Katie Miller, who went on CNN

Speaker 13 and had a very interesting exchange with Abby Phillip, who tries to act like she's just totally benign, just totally neutral.

Speaker 13 You know, it's just the facts that make her always come down on the side of the Democrats. It's not her bias.
It's just the facts.

Speaker 13 She can't be in charge of the fact that all the facts run in favor of Democrats. That's just how it goes.
So they had an exchange on her show, and I'll just let it play out. You'll get it.

Speaker 13 This is Friday night, SAT 26.

Speaker 29 Wait, you have Jennifer Welch on your show very often, and you've never pushed back, as she holds

Speaker 29 my husband, a white nationalist. Hold on.
That is no different than Nick Fuentez going on Chucker Carlson's show. It's not, and you should admit it.

Speaker 30 Hold on, wait, hold on. How is it anything similar? It's not remotely similar at all.
Nick Fuentes sits around and says that he likes Hitler. How is that similar?

Speaker 26 What does she have to do with it? What does she have to do with it? Hold on. She is nothing but

Speaker 26 methods.

Speaker 30 Scott, Katie is the person who just said to me that it is comparable to say that Nick Fuentes, who is literally a neo-Nazi, is the same as somebody, a liberal, who has an opinion who is not a neo-naz.

Speaker 29 They are not

Speaker 29 the same. How do you want, excuse me, let's go back to the next one? They are not

Speaker 29 Nick Wenten espousing an opinion on Super Bowl's show. It is not a significant time.
And he didn't push back the same way you didn't push back when someone called

Speaker 29 me. Hold on a second.

Speaker 29 Hold on a second.

Speaker 30 If someone comes on this show and says, I love Hitler and I admire what he did, they would never, first of all, I would never invite them on the show and they would never be invited back.

Speaker 30 So those two things are.

Speaker 29 But yet you've gone on Jennifer Welsh's podcast. It's the same thing.

Speaker 16 Okay.

Speaker 13 So Jennifer Welsh came up. I think I said that that's Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, but also she was on Doge.
She's an independent professional in her own right and podcast host.

Speaker 13 That Jennifer Welsh, who I'm just now getting to see in these podcast clips, who's possibly the most hateful person in the national dialogue today, it's like tough to say, but even Joy Reed is more joyful than this woman.

Speaker 13 She's truly deeply, deeply hateful of everybody on Team Red.

Speaker 13 Here's just a sampling of this person who Abby Phillip is totally fine with, has on her show repeatedly, went on this woman's show herself. Abby Phillip did.
Not hateful. See, Stephen Miller, hateful.

Speaker 13 Jennifer Welsh, not hateful. That's Abbie Phillips' world.
Here, watch.

Speaker 13 Shockingly, the conservatives that I thought were just crusty, old white people have morphed into this young group of misogynists.

Speaker 13 And I can tell you, when I'm around white people, they test the racist water. They test it on people like you all.
Stephen Miller is a Nazi and he is a sociopath.

Speaker 13 He is a little insecure white supremacist. This guy was bullied in high school and he's unattractive and he's four foot 10 and nobody fucking likes him.
Get to J.D.

Speaker 13 Vance, who is a failed drag queen because little Moses Mike Grinder Johnson worships two things. Donald Trump and his closeted life.
For this dementia-ridden, diaper-wearing sack of shit.

Speaker 13 He started off his 60-minute interview by saying, I am not a Nazi.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 13 He clearly, clearly is a Nazi. People that Triple Trump

Speaker 13 should be banned, boycotted from enjoying the best thing that America has to offer, which is multiculturalism.

Speaker 13 Get your fat asses out of the Mexican restaurant, get your fat asses over to Cracker Barrel, because nobody wants to see your fucking smug ass, teeny weeny, pink arm, big gut around.

Speaker 13 Nobody wants to see that shit. No one.

Speaker 13 You got it? Not hateful. It's fine.
Abby Phillip can assert. That's just a liberal with an opinion.
That's how she described her.

Speaker 13 Stephen Miller, with his immigration crackdown, supported by the vast majority of Americans, hateful.

Speaker 13 Clearly, Abby Phillip has no problem with him being called a white supremacist or a Nazi because she was actually on. Jennifer Welch's show when Jennifer said that directly to Abby Phillip.
Fine.

Speaker 17 your thoughts?

Speaker 15 I just think the left has to play by the same rules as they want the right to play by. And if

Speaker 15 they want to be the police of who can speak on the national town square,

Speaker 15 then they need to recognize that they've got policing to do in their backyard as well. And they just, right now, that's just not how they feel.

Speaker 15 And they should, because they should either let everybody speak or they should police their own side.

Speaker 13 But here's what's happening there. I mean, you're being polite, but Abby Phillip finds absolutely nothing wrong with what that woman said.
I guarantee you she agrees with all of it.

Speaker 13 She's a fan of this Welsh person. And so she wants her to come on her show, I think four times we counted.
She said yes to this, to going on this person's show.

Speaker 13 Then this woman, do we have the soundbite, you guys? I don't know where we are, but like in the in the SOT lineup, but she went on her show and she's the woman said it directly to her. Here's that.

Speaker 13 Listen to this. There was no pushback.
here's what abby philip tried to just sort of say oh gee i don't know what's in his head gee could be white supremacist who who can know watch

Speaker 13 stephen miller is a white supremacist i mean he is and he's basically running the white house they keep trump busy with his decorating projects he's got building the arch now he's got his oval office design and then you have these real sociopaths that are real anti-Semites, true white supremacists like Stephen Miller.

Speaker 13 And even though he's Jewish, he's like a Nazi Jew.

Speaker 16 Well, look,

Speaker 13 I can't speak to

Speaker 13 what Stephen Miller's motivations are.

Speaker 13 You're such an asshole. I'm sorry, but Abby Phillip is a fucking asshole.

Speaker 13 She let her call him a Nazi Jew

Speaker 13 and just said,

Speaker 13 I'm sorry, but I can't speak to what his motivations are. What a cowardly dodge just to try to maintain some semblance of objectivity.
The only proper response to that is, come on, hold it, hold it.

Speaker 13 We can criticize his immigration policy all day long if you want. Don't call him a Nazi Jew.
That's disgusting.

Speaker 15 Well, she calls balls and strikes. It's just she's never seen a Democrat or anything but a strike.

Speaker 13 She's going to have to have her glasses readjusted really soon. But this is the mainstream of CNN, Mark.

Speaker 13 This is the reinvented, more mainstream, moderate CNN. That's truly one of the faces of it.

Speaker 15 Yeah, if Paramount buys them and Allison enacts his vision, I'd be surprised if she's still in that job.

Speaker 19 Good.

Speaker 13 Get her, Ellison. Go, Barry.
You can do some crossover programming. They're going to need your help.

Speaker 17 Get her.

Speaker 13 Get rid of her. And by the way, she will fail in the Independent League because she has no personality.
She has a lot of bias and no personality. It's a bad combo, actually, but perfect, perfect.

Speaker 13 She's for sure.

Speaker 15 She's making our friend Scott Jennings rich.

Speaker 13 Well, that's good. We're in favor of that.
But he can go on some other loser show at CNN for that when she gets fired.

Speaker 13 Something else happened on regular TV, CNN, with Abby Phillip. That actually is kind of interesting.
And that is the son of Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas went on

Speaker 13 and reportedly, as Maureen would say, reportedly, allegedly, did not do that well to the point where, hold on, I'm just going to give you the headline before we play it.

Speaker 13 The The parents are said to be so furious with CNN that they intend to blacklist the entire network moving forward.

Speaker 13 Now you're having Scott Jennings weigh in on this and others as well. This is from a debate that happened on November 10th, but is only now causing the response.

Speaker 15 Yeah, you can before you play it, because I skimmed the New York Post story. What does their son do for a living? Like, why was he on CNN?

Speaker 13 Funny, you should ask.

Speaker 13 He is host of SiriXM's Young young americans with dylan douglas and a 2022 graduate of brown university which is pretty much all we need to know about him was gonna guess wesliami gen z political show airs saturdays at 10 a.m must have missed it what were you gonna say mark i said i would have guessed wesliam but brown's okay

Speaker 13 brown i mean it

Speaker 13 literally

Speaker 13 there's no school no school in the nation to which I would less want to I would I would I would

Speaker 13 there's no school worse than Brown when it comes to woctopia. They're number one.
They're worse than Columbia.

Speaker 13 They're number one.

Speaker 15 Oberlin.

Speaker 13 Oberlin is. No, what's worse about Oberman?

Speaker 18 Oberlin.

Speaker 13 I know they're terrible.

Speaker 13 They're ensconced in scandal. But truly, like, I think Brown is an outpost for Hamas.
I think that's almost literally true. Almost.
But they're so bad.

Speaker 15 Oberlin's bad.

Speaker 13 Come on. It's really bad.

Speaker 13 Oberlin is not, like, if you

Speaker 15 go undercover. Let's go undercover.
Could we post? Do you think we could both pass for college students? Let's go undercover.

Speaker 13 Here's what I'd like to do. Go undercover as a Jewish American and go to Brown University.
And like, if I were a man, I'd wear the yarmulke.

Speaker 13 I'd do like something to make it obvious because they are breeding.

Speaker 13 breeding anti-Semites, in my opinion, at Brown University. It's disgusting.
It's worse than any place.

Speaker 15 All right, let's do this. Let's get a makeup artist who can turn you into an Orthodox Jewish man.
And I'll get a couple of people.

Speaker 13 I think we should have to take off the makeup and then wear like the right hair.

Speaker 15 Let's go to Brown and

Speaker 15 we'll go to the Hillel and then you'll walk out and we'll just shoot the whole thing and see what happens.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I think, well, I'll be lucky if I make it across campus because that university is disgusting.

Speaker 13 In any event, back to Mr. Douglas, Dylan, that is, who's the dual Nepo baby.
And

Speaker 13 this is what, look at this. This is reportedly what has his parents so irate over his, quote, humiliation, allegedly at the hands of CNN, that they're going to boycott the network here.

Speaker 25 Beck, you cannot put on the American people that Democrats were the one that were hurting people, making this plight.

Speaker 28 Who was casting the votes against opening the government? Democrats or Republicans? Who was

Speaker 26 casting the votes?

Speaker 25 Scott, who was wanting to cut SNAP benefits?

Speaker 26 Nobody. And Republicans came out.
And who was

Speaker 25 Who is playing up SNAP benefits after two courts ruled that it was unallowed?

Speaker 28 Republicans voted to fund SNAP 15 times. Democrats voted to defund it 15 times.

Speaker 20 And we have to do it.

Speaker 25 Talk about the Affordable Health Care Act. That's terrible.
Denmark legislation is not perfect. We understand that Democrats, Republicans, independents.

Speaker 25 70% of Americans, not Democrats, not just independents, 70% of Americans believe that they should include, increase those subsidies past the Denmark of December, the COVID-era subsidy benefits.

Speaker 25 So it's a huge, huge thing that Democrats, Republicans, 70% agree with. And look, when it comes to the government shutdown, I was of the persuasion that to go for it, I didn't really get it.

Speaker 25 You know, Democrats wanted a fight. They got a fight.
Chuck Schumer back in last year

Speaker 25 didn't fight. He got a lot of flack for it, particularly in his home state of New York.

Speaker 25 So they wanted a fight, but they found a fight that was worth fighting with talking about the Affordable Health Care Act. People were with them.
Democrats were leading in the polls.

Speaker 25 We won big on Tuesday.

Speaker 26 That's what it was for, right? It was for the election.

Speaker 25 Well, I think we should have kept going.

Speaker 25 What I don't understand, and which I would love others to help me out and understand, I don't understand why we caved so soon when the American people, it seemed to be on our.

Speaker 28 Because the election ended. You just said it.
It was for the election.

Speaker 20 Listen.

Speaker 28 The election ended.

Speaker 13 That's it.

Speaker 15 Seems like normal, normal, like, whatever. I'm booking him on Next Stop, by the way.

Speaker 16 Are you? You should.

Speaker 15 Will you do it? Right now. I'm trying right now.
As we speak, I'm using my hand off camera to text the booker and say,

Speaker 13 I actually would listen to that.

Speaker 13 Let's see if he does any better with you. He didn't do well.
I mean, that's clear. He wasn't substantive and he didn't have his talking points lined up.
Never mind actual substance.

Speaker 13 But did anyone expect any different? Like, why did they think their 22-year-old son would go on a CNN across from the Scott Jennings of the world and do well?

Speaker 13 Why did they think that?

Speaker 15 I mean, I don't know. For a liberal in a CNN pundit slot, I didn't think he was so bad.
I mean, it wasn't great, but I mean, with those qualifiers okay

Speaker 20 but honestly like

Speaker 15 I could name name I could name names but I mean I thought he you know whatever like grading on the normal curve I didn't I don't know if I were his parents maybe maybe they didn't like the part that part in his hair I that I would I would redo the hair but to me it is

Speaker 13 a big thing exposes something no it never works not on a man I have a center part it's good but it doesn't work on a man but but am i right that he had a center part

Speaker 13 can we roll the tape again i need to see it now now.

Speaker 15 I think, maybe I'm wrong.

Speaker 16 I thought I thought it was a center part.

Speaker 13 No, it requires investigation.

Speaker 26 It's important for the American people

Speaker 25 that Democrats were the one that were hurting people, making this play.

Speaker 26 Kind of.

Speaker 20 Who was casting the votes?

Speaker 2 It's pretty centering.

Speaker 21 I was just currently in the government. Democrats were the same.

Speaker 16 Centering and it's indistinct.

Speaker 26 Who was casting the votes? It's not great.

Speaker 25 Scott, who's wanting to snap back?

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 15 if my son said, I'm going up against Scott Jennings and I'm going to have a center part, I'd say, no.

Speaker 15 Let's pick a side.

Speaker 13 First of all, show up like a man with a real opinion and a real part.

Speaker 13 But I think this espouses so much about Hollywood.

Speaker 13 I think those two are used to everybody genuflecting when they walk by, never mind their offspring with the dual royalty of Hollywood legends, at least Michael Douglas aside.

Speaker 13 The Catherine Zeta Jones is no slouch in her own right when it comes to Hollywood fame, success, and movies and so on. And they're horrified.

Speaker 13 They don't understand what it's like to be in our lane.

Speaker 18 Mark. I mean, honestly, it's like.
I totally agree.

Speaker 26 Totally. Right? They don't like it's

Speaker 13 a day ending in why to have multiple negative stories written about you that are not true, to have people say the most vile things.

Speaker 13 This guy had mild pushback by Scott Jennings in a segment for which he was not prepared. Who cares? Like, look what happened with Katie Miller the other day.
Like,

Speaker 13 they should not allow their 22-year-old son to be out there if their skin is this thin.

Speaker 15 Totally agree. And I'll say, say, in my dealing with Hollywood people around politics and, you know, and public policy, they're pretty thin skin.
They just want to be told they're right.

Speaker 15 So I'm not surprised that they thought their precious little bundle was

Speaker 15 overwhelmed in the rough and tumble of a CNN set with Scott Jennings.

Speaker 13 Well, while we're on the university set,

Speaker 13 Brown, Oberlin, and Dylan Douglas, let's take a march across the pond. I guess

Speaker 13 a sale across the pond to see what's happening with the now

Speaker 13 ex-elected president of the Oxford Union.

Speaker 13 This guy, George Aberonier, got elected to be the head of the president of the Oxford Union, the debate club, which is historic and has been around for a long, long time.

Speaker 13 And months earlier, before Charlie Kirk's death, He debated Charlie and Charlie crushed him. It was beautiful.

Speaker 13 Charlie, this guy who never graduated college, never went to college, up against this Oxford kid who was the now elected head of the debate society. And Charlie swept the floor with him.
It was great.

Speaker 13 And right after Charlie was shot, and as you know, we were on the air together, it was clear right from the moment that first, not even the most terrible video hit, but the first video hit, that this was obviously a very severe situation and life-threatening at a minimum.

Speaker 13 And instead of recognizing that, this guy, George Abernier,

Speaker 13 who had debated in a gentlemanly fashion against him Charlie, Charlie didn't throw shots under the belt or anything like that, celebrated it.

Speaker 13 Sending, we have it. I thought it was just a tweet.

Speaker 13 Tweeting out something like, it's wild, wow, LOL, that Charlie got shot. And now he decided to sit down with the British outlet LBC

Speaker 13 and tried to justify his disgusting tweets, again, which were totally insensitive to Charlie, to his then-wife, now widow Erica, to his children, to the community that loved Charlie and supported him, who he knew was suffering when he did all this, but had absolutely no compunctions about doing it anyway.

Speaker 13 And now here he is trying to explain why he sent out the repeated tweets.

Speaker 21 A stupid and kind of silly thing for me to say. I reacted to kind of a notification and the headline.
I had no real context for you know what had happened.

Speaker 21 I didn't really understand the severity of the situation. I reacted poorly.
And then, upon kind of realizing just how serious kind of these things were, I kind of deleted everything.

Speaker 21 I posted on my social media kind of apologizing. Because there'll be some people listening saying, Well, you know, did you really need to know how severe the situation was?

Speaker 21 And you knew a guy who you'd met had got shot. Of course, and I think it's a valid position.
I think. Why did you?

Speaker 16 I think part of the Mr.

Speaker 21 Mr.

Speaker 21 Kirk's comments don't exist in a vacuum you know he is an incredibly kind of polarizing figure and I think it's almost a symptom of him and my reaction a symptom of kind of how we have discourse online in which you know it's oftentimes very reactive it's oftentimes about saying something almost inflammatory almost because I wanted to say spark a conversation about kind of what happened the fact that oh my god like this is such a major event that's just taken place and you wanted to get in a reaction you wanted to get a reaction exactly I wanted to get a reaction I want to have a conversation and you know a laugh, oh, almost almost exactly like a laugh and a bit of a reaction.

Speaker 21 And kind of, I realized afterwards that you know that wasn't the right way to go about it.

Speaker 13 Oh my god, Mark, the original tweets are: Charlie Kirk got shot. Let's fucking go.
He posted on WhatsApp shortly after the shooting. Charlie Kirk got shot.
L-O-O-O-L, he added on Instagram.

Speaker 13 It was repeated. This is not

Speaker 13 there. There was a melee at the Charlie Kirk event.
There was a gun that went off. He knew Charlie got shot.

Speaker 13 And now this idiot interviewer lets him get away with, I didn't realize how serious it was. And the fact that this guy's even still, I think he's still at Oxford.

Speaker 13 He did eventually get a vote of no confidence to be president of the Debate Society for this year.

Speaker 13 But he's at Oxford right now and given a total pass. for those comments.

Speaker 15 I mean, the original behavior on social media is just so abhorrent, but to then decide to sit for an interview where the ostensible premise is to explain what you did and to come so ill-prepared and to make the whole thing just worse and more grotesque, I just,

Speaker 15 I find it to be one of the saddest things. And of course, the premise of his defense is that Charlie was some evil,

Speaker 15 polarizing monster. Which, you know, in the months since he's died, the left and the media has had all this time to produce evidence that Charlie was a bigoted, hateful person.

Speaker 15 And of course they haven't because he wasn't and they can't. And yet that's what he brings to the table as his defense.
Well, I could say these things because Charlie was such a hateful person.

Speaker 15 Just makes me sick.

Speaker 13 It's disgusting. So this was LBC is leading Britain's conversation with Louis Goodall.
Lewis, you failed. That was a disgusting display.

Speaker 13 That was a pathetic attempt at actually holding him to account for what he, in fact, wrote in those two posts. And I didn't realize how serious it was when the tweets themselves say Charlie got shot.

Speaker 13 Fuck you, Lewis. You fell down on the job and you humiliated yourself.
Humiliated yourself against a true villain, too, which makes it especially egregious. Stand by.

Speaker 13 Mark Halperin returns after this quick break. You know about FOMO, right? Fear of missing out? But listen up.
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Speaker 11 I'm not.

Speaker 13 Hey, everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news.
I now have my very own channel on SiriusXM.

Speaker 13 It's called the Megan Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies.

Speaker 13 Along with the Megan Kelly show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Dushinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more.

Speaker 13 It's bold, no BS news only on the Megan Kelly channel, SiriusXM 111, and on the SiriusXM XM app.

Speaker 13 Mark Halperin is back with me. Mark, tomorrow is election day.

Speaker 13 Not in very many places, but in some places, including in Tennessee, where there is a U.S. House seat up for grabs right now.
The Republican who held the district has retired.

Speaker 13 to go be part of the private sector, but was apparently facing some sort of a scandal anyway, so he's out.

Speaker 13 And now this Afton Bain, who's a Democrat, she's currently serving in the Tennessee statehouse as a representative, is running for now to be a member of the U.S.

Speaker 13 Congress against a Republican who would seem to be a shoo-in.

Speaker 13 I think this district went, what, 30 points or something like that, overwhelmingly to the Republican last time around.

Speaker 13 The Democrats now say it would be like a victory if they could get it to, you know, within 10 points this race. But this woman who they are running is an apparent lunatic.

Speaker 13 We covered her on AM update last week before we went on vacay.

Speaker 13 But here she is, we didn't get to this soundbite, outside of the Tennessee statehouse where she was trying to make some sort of a point, but looked much more like our children when they were toddlers.

Speaker 13 Here it is.

Speaker 13 She's trying to barge into the

Speaker 13 I think it's the speaker's office.

Speaker 13 Sorry, the governor's.

Speaker 13 That's her screaming.

Speaker 13 Are you okay?

Speaker 13 Sorry, that was completely unnecessary.

Speaker 13 Then the video goes on for another two minutes with her just sitting on the floor, moaning, just rocking and moaning like a drama queen. Like you're trying to play it up for the cameras.

Speaker 13 And now this woman who says she can't stand Nashville, she hates is running for a Congress position that would represent Nashville, among other areas in Tennessee. And you tell me

Speaker 13 whether the Democrats have any shot at actually winning or coming within their alleged goal of keeping the race relatively tight.

Speaker 15 Well, you never know for sure. It's hard to poll special elections.

Speaker 15 She's unlikely to win, and largely because of the makeup of the district, very pro-Trump, but she will outperform Kamala Harris in the district.

Speaker 15 And so I don't, assuming she's not going to win, I don't think it matters that she's going, how close she comes. I think what matters is why is she coming close?

Speaker 15 Because as that clip and many others I've seen suggest, I haven't had a chance to go out there and watch for myself, she's not a very good candidate.

Speaker 15 Sometimes, you know, you can overperform in a district if you're a Democrat in a Republican district because you're awesome. She's not, although her media is pretty good.
Her paid ads are pretty good.

Speaker 15 So I think that the issue here is, are the issues that are resonating in this race that are allowing a liberal Democrat to overperform in a very red district, will those be the issues that resonate next year?

Speaker 15 And if you look at her campaign ads, particularly the last couple, They could be Donald Trump ads from 2024. All the issues she's talking about, in terms of being anti-Washington, pro-change,

Speaker 15 worried about working-class voters, they're all Trump rhetoric. Doesn't have the same solutions, but they're all Trump rhetoric.

Speaker 15 So I think the important thing is to see how close she comes as a measure of just how potent these set of issues might be for Democrats next year, because every Democrat's going to run on the same issue she's running on.

Speaker 13 What I think is interesting about this person, and again, last week's AM update, I think it was Monday or Tuesday, had a lot of sound bites bites from her she's a nut but what i think is interesting is to me this seems to be like a trend for democrats like i think they're

Speaker 13 they're leaning into crazy they seem to like this they seem to think oh she'll get attention you know like she she's gonna get clicks like that crazy podcaster jennifer what whatever welsh um this seems to work for them they think in like generating enthusiasm so is that the future of the democrat party well i think some of her quote-unquote crazy stuff may be not helping her.

Speaker 15 It may be not why they're attracted to her. I'll tell you what I do see, and I mentioned this before, the quality of her ads.
She's very good on camera in controlled situations, like Mondami, right?

Speaker 15 Like Zoran Mondami. So I think they're looking for people who are good on social, good on video, who can,

Speaker 15 you know, get attention. right and she's gotten attention the last ad i think it's her last ad of the campaign at the very closing shot she winks at the camera.

Speaker 15 And it's, you know, it's very affecting.

Speaker 15 Whether you like her or hate her or care about her politics, you can't help. She's very watchable.

Speaker 15 And I think you're seeing not just Democrats, but everybody in politics gravitating towards watchable. Because that's one thing that Donald Trump has as part of his success.

Speaker 15 You can't teach it, you can't package it. But if you find candidates who have it, it's a big advantage because you got to get people to pay attention.
And Trump has shown the way and how to do that.

Speaker 13 Well, that leads us back to your friend, Jasmine Crockett, your girlfriend, who you can't take your eyes off of when she's on the camera on the screen.

Speaker 15 She's my guilty pleasure, not my girlfriend.

Speaker 13 But I think you would say she's watchable. But I mean,

Speaker 13 what of the fact that these two women are watchable for all the wrong reasons? As a woman, I have to tell you, I object. I object to their stupidity, to their drama.

Speaker 13 They're giving all of us a bad name.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and they're giving, to some extent, they're giving, you know, substantive politicians a bad name. But what's incredible about her is Mondani is consistently a pretty good performer.

Speaker 15 He had a bad second debate, but she is, she, I've talked to people who've been on TV with her. She's not a good performer except for Crockett or this other gal in Tennessee.
No, this is in Tennessee.

Speaker 15 Crockett, I don't know. I need more data.
But this woman in Tennessee, she's good when she's packaged. And that's, you know, that's something because a lot of politics can be packaged.
I, you know,

Speaker 15 I'm surrounded by people with divergent views on AOC and whether she'll be a strong presidential candidate.

Speaker 15 But there's no doubt that those who think she'll be a strong candidate if she runs see in her, you know, just the attention economy, the capacity to get folks to listen to what she has to say.

Speaker 15 It's quite high with her. And that's something because, you know,

Speaker 15 Governor Bashir ain't got that.

Speaker 13 So what do you think, Mark? We started the show by talking about where Trump's polling is right now, that Gallup poll, and some of the problems that the Republican Party is facing at the moment. Yes,

Speaker 13 they have 12 months, just about 11 months, I guess, to work it out.

Speaker 13 I mean, if Trump can get some better economic numbers and not just get the numbers, but actually make people feel like things have gotten better, is that all going to turn around?

Speaker 13 Like, what if he called you up tomorrow, Mark, and said, what should I do? What do you say?

Speaker 15 I'd say talk to someone who knows, but then I'd say, I'll say, I'll tell you secretly on Megan Kelly.

Speaker 15 I think the economy, which of course is is a truism, it's always the biggest issue.

Speaker 15 But I think there's just a big gap now between how people feel about the economy and the better parts of the economy. And so I think I'm really, you know, I don't want to waste December.

Speaker 15 I won't be sitting around doing nothing, but I'm really focused on Stay of the Union because I think Stay of the Union is when he'll get massive audience and he'll get a chance to say, here's my theory of the case.

Speaker 15 Here's what's worked so far. Here's what hasn't.
And terrorists will be a big part of that. The relationship with China will be a big part of that.
But so will all these questions about

Speaker 15 what is America's economy going to be? Are we going to be a manufacturing country? Are we going to be a big exporter? How are we going to make people feel better about their kids' economic future?

Speaker 15 And I don't think currently he's explaining that in a very linear way.

Speaker 13 Mark, you're not going to believe this. My crack team just forwarded me a new Emerson College poll/slash the hill.

Speaker 13 It has that Tennessee race within two points.

Speaker 13 It has the Republican up two

Speaker 13 Matt Van Epps and this crazy lady, Democrat Afton Bain, at 46. Small sample, likely voters, though, which is good.
Only 600 people certainly have a lot of people.

Speaker 15 Oh my god, that's a bit of an outlier. And even the Democrats don't have the race that close.

Speaker 15 But, you know, I never predict special elections because the polling just can't capture who's going to turn out

Speaker 15 on December 2nd. Not normally a time people are hyped up to go vote.
But the district is such that she'll fall short. And as I said, people will make up all sorts of rules.

Speaker 15 If she's within five, it means this, ten means this, whatever. She's going to do substantially better than Kamala Harris.
And Republicans had to spend a lot of money in this race.

Speaker 13 What if she wins?

Speaker 15 It'll be by the standards of like special elections, it'll be an earthquake if she wins. Because the level of overperformance will be so dramatic, and Republicans will have spent money, right?

Speaker 15 You could say, well, we can fight this message by spending money. They spent a fortune to try to make sure they held the seat.

Speaker 15 And it makes Speaker Johnson's majority, you know, virtually non-existent. So it'll be a massive deal if she wins, but I don't know anyone in the state who thinks she's going to.

Speaker 13 I mean, if this is the standard, like my Strudwick is available, he's free, he's good-looking, he's starting to respond to commands, which the Democrats love. I don't wink.

Speaker 13 This woman is not the answer.

Speaker 15 Can he wink? Can he wink?

Speaker 19 No, but everybody can wink.

Speaker 13 He can crap and eat it. Okay.

Speaker 15 See, see, there's a metaphor there that

Speaker 15 surmounts and surpasses all other metaphors.

Speaker 13 This could work in politics.

Speaker 13 This is actually a useful skill for any lawmaker headed to Washington.

Speaker 16 Exactly. Mark Halperin, thank you.

Speaker 13 Thanks for helping me on this video.

Speaker 15 It's been good to see you.

Speaker 13 Under the weather day.

Speaker 15 Happy holidays. Ho, ho, ho, ho.

Speaker 13 You too. Bye.
All right, we will be back tomorrow. It's an NR day, and we look forward to seeing you then.

Speaker 13 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

Speaker 2 Tackle the cost of living crisis or get the hell out of the way. I'm Tom Steyer.

Speaker 11 I'm not.

Speaker 12 I'm Tom Steyer and I'm running for governor.

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Real Story Behind Hegseth "Double Tap" Reporting, and Katie Miller vs. Abby Phillip Throwdown, with Mark Halperin | Ep. 1203

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