Dems Reckon with Biden's Pardon Lies, and Kamala's Possibly Tipsy Closing Message, with The Fifth Column Hosts | Ep. 955
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Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon east. I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and happy Tuesday. From President Biden's pardon of his son, Hunter continues. It's so fun watching the leftist meltdown over this, like the wrestling with what we don't. Why? Why did he do this to us?

because he's a lying liar who lies. Again, consume other media people. Try to expand your horizons and then you won't feel so stupid all the time. Can you imagine being one of these viewers of like MSNBC and that's just your only news source? Like not an ironic viewer like the rest of us, you know, who are like, oh my God.

Maybe he didn't collude with Russia. I mean, my God, maybe he didn't actually do anything wrong with that phone call with Ukraine. Jeez. I mean, maybe Trump has a point about the weaponization of the Department of Justice. Jeez, maybe those so-called experts who attacked him actually weren't really all that reliable. And now finally, maybe Joe Biden actually isn't all that honest. Is it possible he was intending on doing this

pardon all along. Hello. You don't have to watch Fox. You don't have to watch this show, but you should because we're actually very fair and we're very, as somebody put in our, it was one of our commenters online, relentlessly factual. Thank you, Megyn Kelly show viewer. We are relentlessly factual. Just expand. That's all I'm asking. Expand. You don't have to eliminate MS.

But you are being misled on a daily basis. That is why you feel so dumb and confused all the time as these houses of cards continue to collapse week after week, month after month. And by the way, we have an update for you on the MSNBC ratings. My God.

Um, okay. So now you've got the New York times, which is one of the ones that got it so wrong. Now trying to like spin its way out of this. You see president Biden had a legitimate change of heart late on a Saturday evening, uh,

on Nantucket last weekend under a dark sky. That's how he finally came to this realization. It was totally in good faith just up until the dark sky came. And then there are those who are speaking out publicly attacking Joe Biden for even what they say is a legacy-defining mistake. I mean, here's what I think about this legacy-defining thing, because we're seeing that in a lot of these pieces. These are people who

are mad at Joe Biden for not stepping aside earlier. They blame him for the fact that Kamala Harris lost. And while they had to go through 107 days of he's going to go on Mount Rushmore,

for this selfless decision to pass the baton. They really were angry with him all along because they didn't really think she could do it and they were right. And now they got saddled with Trump 2.0, which they're very unhappy about. So now it's fine to just be like, Biden fucking sucks. And this is as good an excuse as any to say,

It was the pardon. His legacy is ruined. You know, we were totally willing to go the Mount Rushmore route. It wasn't because of the loss. It's because of the pardon, because we're a party of principles and we don't break our word. So it's just super fun to watch these narratives take hold. They're all lies, as was Joe Biden's promise not to pardon Hunter.

as was virtually everything Hunter and Joe Biden have ever said about Hunter Biden's Burisma and Chinese and Romanian business deals. So where does that leave us today? Well, let's bring in our pals from the fifth column to chat all about it. Camille Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welsh, who you can find at wethefifth.com.

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Guys, welcome back to the show. Thank you for having us. Merry war on anti-Christmas, we are noticing in your Christmasy set. Really nice. Well, it's December 3rd. I'm leaning in. It's time. Do it. Lean into it. It's not anti-anything. She's just celebrating Christmas, Matt. Well, she's anti-war on Christmas. She's just fighting on behalf of Christmas. That's fine. We say Merry Christmas. Remember that from the O'Reilly War on Christmas? We say Merry Christmas. You'd have to walk into a store and explain that.

I do wrestle every year with a Christmas card. Like, do I put happy holidays on there? Cause I'm sending it to Jewish friends too. But in the end I always go with, with Merry Christmas because yeah, like to your point, I am. They brought the Christmas songs. Yeah. Yeah. Libra and I'm playing them nonstop. I'm driving my kids crazy. Okay.

What do you make of my analysis? That is just very fun to watch the spiraling of like, oh, he's tarnished the legacy. Oh, under a dark sky, he had a last minute change of heart. Like it's very different messaging depending on which pocket of the Democratic Party you're looking at. Anyone want to take that? Megan, I want to go after your commenter here because I

You apparently deal in facts, but in your monologue, you did not. You said the people who watch MSNBC should go somewhere else. They have gone somewhere else because no one watches MSNBC. The premise of your statement is wrong. If people did watch it, I would agree with you. But as I assume we'll get to on this episode of the show, there's seven people left watching it. And one of them is Keith Olbermann screaming in his basement. And two others are my producers. Yeah.

It's the new view. I think, by the way, and I'm totally convinced of this.

I'm actually quite serious about this, is that I don't think Joe Biden lied about this. I think that he's so infirm that somebody over the weekend was like, hey, Joey B, do you remember that you said you were going to pardon your son? He was like, oh, yeah. Yeah, let's do that. I think that's kind of probably how it happened. I don't think he's having any revelations at this point because we can't hold those two ideas in our head at once that he is completely infirm and out of it. And apparently still the president. Did that person's name rhyme with bunter?

He's an oil expert who works in China and Ukraine. I don't know who he is. And artist. But he's a brilliant painter. And artist. That's right. Respect. Show some respect. The thing that gets me, Megan, and it's reiterated the way that you introduced the whole thing, is that, yeah, people are like, this is the thing that tarnishes his legacy.

There have been more consequential lies that I'm still madder about. I mean, I don't think that Hunter Biden should have gone to jail for lying on a gun application for a crime that I think 100 people, 130 people are prosecuted for each year and also a crime that his father enhanced the penalty of.

going into it because Democrats have idiotic ideas about people and gun ownership. Let's table that aside. A more consequential lie is when President Biden

Jen Psaki and Rochelle Walensky and a bunch of other people said, oh, we're totally not going to make the COVID vaccine mandatory. We weren't. The federal government doesn't even have that authority. They went from there to look, look at what you made me do. We have to do it. And we're going to fire people in the military. Tens and thousands of people lost their jobs because

because they lied about this consequential thing and having healthy young people take a COVID vaccine and forcing them to, not giving them a choice, is a much more consequential lie. And you don't see the same wailing and gnashing of teeth among the media because they participated in that lie.

Um, I, to this day, I mean, I was pointing this out, uh, minutes after this news came out that that is the more consequential lie that I'm, uh, I'm more upset about. And, you know, rational people with blue check marks are like, you know, why don't they just take their jab? We still have this mindset in this country that is one of, it's one of the most beneficial things about Donald Trump winning is that he's appointing a whole passel of people who were on the other side of all of those debates, not just the lying about it, uh,

Not just the suppression of speech that came about it, but all of the basic sort of morality of compelling people to do something that they wouldn't normally want to or need to do. Those lies are more important. So this is a guy who's been lying

Since the first time he was kicked out of running for president guy who as president, how many times has he told the story about his uncle being eaten by cannibals? And people are like, oh yeah, that's, that's normal. The worst lie that he told in part of this, in, in this pardon, did you catch it all the way down at the bottom of his announcement? He's like, look, I've always said, I'll I'll be, I've been truthful. The one thing about my life is I'll just be square and truthful to the American people. My dude. No.

You have been lying your face off my whole fucking life. Move off the stage. Yeah. You know, to me, what's interesting about it, because like a president pardoning somebody, even somebody who might be a relative, you know,

you know, it's a story for sure, but this one's gotten so much attention from the left and the right. So I'm asking myself, like, what is it? I mean, yes, it's sweeping. Yes, most sweeping since Richard Nixon. It's for all crimes. It's not just like for the one or two that he's been actually prosecuted or found guilty on. So what is it? And to me, it's just that it undermines, it's just the big reveal at the end of the Biden story that he is an abject liar, that all

All the stuff we've been getting fed about how noble the Justice Department is has been bullshit. And Biden knew it all along. And like these Democrats who were defending that system now look stupid. So they're angry.

You know, I was telling my kids this story about my mom because we did, you know, it was Thanksgiving last weekend and last week. And it's a great story. The short version is when my Nana was like 90, she died at 101. But this is my mom's mom.

My mom and my stepfather were driving my Nana to my uncle's house where we all met for Thanksgiving. And my mom was joking with my Nan that my mom as a lifelong veterans hospital nurse would that whenever my mom sees a flag out on the street, my mom has to salute or the VA will track her down the government and get, she'll get in trouble. Um,

She's messing with my 90-year-old Nana who's in the back seat. And Peter, my stepfather, is going totally along with it. He's like, oh, no, no, it's a rule. She's got to do it to my Nana. And my Nana's like, oh, my God. So my important hands in the back seat go, Linda, there's one. There's one over there. And my mom's like, oh, that's a big one. That's the double. I got to do the double solution. So we get to my uncle's and we all meet.

And my nan is like, oh, Megan, your poor mother. She had to salute every single flag on the whole way down. She was like, there's a huge one. She had to do the double salute. Otherwise the government, they're going to get her in trouble. I'm like, no, no, Nan. That's not, it's not true. She's like, what? No, your mother said so. It's true. I said, mom, she think like, and she goes, Linda, Linda, tell her, tell her the truth. And my mom goes, no, mom, I was just pulling your leg. And my nan was like,

What? She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe the story. The truth came out. My Nana identified my mother as an abject liar. And the big, the big reveal was had before the Turkey. This is the big reveal before the Turkey, you know, or I guess right around the Turkey by Joe Biden. I was lying all along. The whole thing was made up. The DJ, the DOJ is corrupt. Don't trust it. It's been politicized. I'm the one who politicized it.

And all of our protestations that we couldn't say that while Trump was in the crosshairs were made up. Yeah. Not only not only could they not say that it was corrupt, they were insisting it was the other way around the entire time. Like Kamala Harris is out there on the campaign trail talking about these active cases and in some cases, cases recently decided cases and cases.

touting all of this as proof that Donald Trump could not be elected and was kind of an inappropriate person to elect while all this stuff with Hunter Biden was just kind of waiting there in the wings and would be resolved. I am dispositionally inclined to agree with virtually everything that's been said. In fact, I suspect I do agree with it. But I also wonder if there isn't room for us to acknowledge that the political landscape is pretty weird. The climate is pretty charged.

And I've tried to put myself in Joe Biden's shoes here. And I think I'm on record as are the other two guys. You fell down. That Joe probably should have done this pardon.

And that there probably was real opportunity for maybe Joe Biden and Donald Trump to collaborate on something here. Donald Trump is probably going to pardon some January 6th people. Perhaps you're turning the page on some of these things politically and you're suggesting, look, the old the old wars are over. Let's go forward together like we're all Americans. Maybe you could have done that, but that isn't what happened here. Instead, it's Joe Biden kind of generally acknowledge.

acknowledging that there is some kind of political corruption. There is a tinge of it in our justice system. It does seem that impartiality goes out the window when you're a certain kind of person with a certain kind of profile. And to the extent that's true, then maybe that justifies a more sweeping pardon

that is expansive, that protects you from your political adversaries once they take power. I mean, again, that's a very generous interpretation of things, but it does seem to me that some dimensions of that aren't entirely unreasonable.

I just one one thing about this, I would say, is that that I think is incredibly beneficial is what the president, as you said, Megan, I mean, I don't get incredibly exercised about this. I think it's wrong to pardon a member of your family. It's it's allowed. You can do it. I mean, you know, back to Seth Rich and all of these kind of corrupt pardons that we've had in the past. But the one thing that is true.

I'm sorry, Mark Rich, Seth Rich is a different conspiracy, but Mark Rich in the end of the second Clinton term. But I will say this, that it does have this kind of X-ray capability. So I'm happy they did it because as I think that you might have mentioned, and I saw all over Twitter, there was some brilliant enterprising young person put together a nine and a half minute cut.

in a matter of what, eight hours of people talking on MSNBC, on CNN, et cetera, about this pardon that was never going to happen. And so the fact that it did happen is this great exposure to a number of people that rely on hyper-partisan news sources and people that are just playing team tribal politics. They're saying, you know, this is a man who respects

the Justice Department, and he would never do something as politicized. And now you have somebody like Molly John Fast on MSNBC getting the news in real time and just stopping and saying,

can I process this? No, no, you're right. You have to do it in real time. That's the job. So I got nothing. It's like, no, you have something. Yeah. You don't want to say it. And that's exactly right. It's been great about this is for your listeners to go find this nine minute cut. I found it so compelling. And I can't remember who was the was was Weissman, I think, was the worst of them all on MSNBC. You know, these people just like

going so over the top of this is the fundamental difference between this wonderful president. I'd love to have been in the anchor desk when Molly Jong fast was like, I've got nothing. I'll give you a minute, find your balls, come back and we'll continue the discussion. Like, I understand you need a minute, but there's, we played that yesterday. So if people want to hear it, you can listen to that and Weissman. Um, but here's a good one from

And Dan Goldman, who I used to know a little bit when I was at NBC, is such a transformation. That guy, when he was coming on, when I was at NBC, he was trying to be like this model. I think at the time he was a more moderate guy. Then he ran for Congress and went far left and insane in his Biden defending. It's just such lies. So here he is on CNN here with Brianna Keillor, who makes him watch the old clip of himself. Watch. Right.

In July of 2023, just after that plea deal fell through, this is what you said. I want to watch. Do you think a pardon for his son would be a mistake? Yes, and I don't think there's any chance that President Biden is going to do that. Merrick Garland kept on. A Trump-appointed U.S. attorney to investigate the president's son. If there is not an indication of the independence of the Department of Justice beyond that, I don't know what we could look for.

What does that feel like? Watching yourself back then, reassuring people that Biden was not going to issue a pardon for his son. Yeah, and I think that if that plea agreement and that plea deal had gone through, there would be no pardon. That was a satisfactory outcome. It had already fallen through. Sorry, she said it was good for her. You took him at his word. So what does that feel like?

knowing that he's gone back on it? Well, as I said, I'm disappointed that after the plea fell through and it became clear about why it did, including Republican congressional intervention in this case, which made this case very unique.

But that's all. Everything he said happened, happened before Joe Biden promised not to pardon. So that was just spinning, spinning, spinning. It's so fun to watch him squirm. Good for her. I've criticized her a lot and she deserves it. But that was a good moment. Like it was too long of a question, by the way. Don't ask somebody how you feel. Just say you took him at his word and then let them know.

I don't like that. How does it make you feel? I kind of like different, different. I feel bad. If Dan Goldman had any, like any confidence, you know, or any sense of honesty, he would laugh. He'd be like bad. I feel embarrassed. Yeah. You know, like he could have put it on Biden. He could have in that moment, put it on Biden and said, he embarrassed us all those of us who believed him, but he is just, here he is again, just doing the president's bidding.

Even if you want, if he makes himself into yet again, the court jester. Imagine how much better politics would begin to be in this country. We're not even politics or sort of political culture. If we reimagined or reinstated the idea that once in a while, at least you say, gosh, sorry for lying.

Whoops. Sorry that I something that I asserted turned out not to be true. A prediction I made was wrong. I mean, I predicted that J.D. Vance wouldn't become the senator of Ohio because he wasn't a talented politician. I was wrong. I probably said something like that on the show. Sorry. Wrong. That's why we try not to make predictions, but like to actually carry water for a politician and then be confronted with it. And you just kind of keep carrying water. I mean, let's keep in mind that the reason why that plea deal fell through is because

It was a weird plea deal. It was a strange thing. It was tried to do for him what this pardon did for him. Exactly. Yeah. White. Absolutely. Yeah.

And going back to 2014 is a pretty weird thing, considering that we are talking about tax fraud and a gun charge. And so what do we and why are we putting the judge in a position to decide whether the terms of the plea deal are being met or not? The judge was rightfully scornful of that fact. All of that looks bad. And this whole clothing that Democrats do and media does

of, oh, no, we are the ones who really care about the rule of law and the norms. We're not going to hear much about norms for a while, I do predict, but we care about all that stuff. Again, they have already swept under the rug that back in February when Robert Herr came out with this report about why we're not going to prosecute Joe Biden for the documents case. What did Democrats do then? Did they respect the independence of the judiciary?

Did they say, oh, just a professional over here doing his work? No, they threw him, led by Kamala Harris, under the bus for daring to suggest in February of the year of our Lord 2024 that maybe Joe Biden is kind of too old to be prosecuted because jurors would think that he's an old man who's forgetful.

They absolutely threw him under the bus, called him a Republican, said this and that. They did that in real time because it was politically expedient. That's what politicians do, whether they are Democratic politicians or Republican politicians. The very few politicians at all that deserve anything like respect from normal human beings are ones who can occasionally admit error and act like decent human beings. Dan Goldman can't.

Yeah. Norms and institutions is the new experts. Right. It's just we stopped believing those terms. Like, stop throwing those at us. Like, no, no one believes that anymore. Go ahead, Moynihan. Yeah, I just think it's worse in a way because he hasn't. You know, when Matt says liar, he's not a liar.

He didn't lie about this. He trusted someone. He trusted that what Joe Biden said was going to be true. And you can come on the other side of that, as you pointed out, Megan, and just be like, look, you know, the president made this promise.

promise to us, to the voters, you know, Jen Psaki on her show on MSNBC, Karine Jean-Pierre in front of the lectern every day promising us that this wouldn't happen because it stinks of corruption. But people are too obsessed with the tribal politics and people like independent actors. When Jared Polis comes out from Colorado and says, this is no good.

And you see him get leaped on by all of these people that are within the firmament of, you know, Democratic Party politics and machine politics. But you got to look at the voters. The voters don't like being lied to. And there's no way around this one. The liar here is Joe Biden. If Mr. Levi Strauss, scion to the fortune, wants to say, you know, well.

Yeah, Dan Goldman, by the way, is just like you and I. He's a scion to the Levi Strauss fortune. And I think it was his great-grandfather that was like the president. So this is like a lot of money for a lot of years. But just like you and I, he could just say, look, I was misled on this. I mean, who do you have fealty to? Joe Biden is leaving office. He's not going on Mount Rushmore. He might go to Mount Rushmore just for a visit. But he's like, I just want to wander around for a little bit. That'd be fun. Yeah.

They gave us Kamala Harris, which is a total, total disaster. The Democratic Party is in the point like a baseball team that goes in the last place. It's a rebuilding year. And it's totally fine to throw Joe Biden under the bus. But there's so much of a thing.

back up. But it's a habitual thing where they're just like, we got to go out there and protect our guy. It just makes you look stupid and it makes you look untrustworthy. But how much of this is- I want to read you guys some of what the New York Times said about this and their attempt to cover it up. But before I do, take a look at Dave Portnoy and his meltdown in response to this whole thing.

Your brain is broken. Your brain is broken. You don't get it. Because here's the thing. What the Democrats have done for, I don't know, 12 years, have taken this moral high ground that we're the righteous party, the truth, honesty, integrity, and Trump is a threat to democracy. He's Hitler and he's a Nazi and this and that.

And then the Democrats, whether it's the primary or this, time and again, they're worse than anything Trump's ever done. So if you're like, "But, but, but, but," it's not that. It's the lecturing, it's the Democrats, this engine just lying straight to our face

pretending they're the moral righteous authority and thinking the American people are so stupid that we don't see through it. Blow up the Democratic Party. You guys are fucking scumbag liars and you prove it time and again. And this is just the latest in a long line with Hunter Biden. Yeah, I would pardon my son too if I had one, if I could save his ass too. I just wouldn't lie about it like you guys.

Exactly. Fucking scumbag liar. I can relate to that sentiment. It's in Massachusetts, man. It's just like a guy on the street in my home state like, dude, this guy's a fucking liar. I can't believe it. It's just this accent from Dave Portnoy convinces me of everything he says.

Yeah, I'm very much in line with that thinking. Like I'm the whiff of corruption, all of that stuff. Sure. Ultimately, though, he does have this presidential prerogative here. It happens to be his son. The actual issue is the way that you went about this, the lying, the dishonesty.

And perhaps it's also fair to flag the overstatement on the part of the people on the left who were like, oh, look at this, this very honorable man who could never possibly do the thing, the most bad thing, which definitely separates him from Trump. Actually, it's very different. And actually, what about this? What if it's not lying? What if it is, as The New York Times has told us, just a change of mind.

A dark sky had fallen over Nantucket, Massachusetts on Saturday evening when President Biden left church. What a godly man. Alongside his family after his final Thanksgiving as president. Inside a borrowed vacation compound earlier in the week with its views of the Nantucket harbor.

Mr. Biden had met with his wife, Jill Biden. I'm going into Hollywood. Yeah, wow. And his son, Hunter Biden, to discuss a decision that had tormented him for months. The issue, a pardon that would clear Hunter of years of legal trouble. Something the president had repeatedly insisted he would not do. A pardon was the

was the one thing he could do for his troubled son, a recovering addict who he felt had been subjected to years of public pain. Oh!

That red scare hooch again? I gotta say, yeah, I mean, it sounds like the Philadelphia story. You're like, I can't believe it. It's being written in Nantucket Harbor, see? But also, you're in Nantucket Harbor and you're being defended by the Levi's scion. It's like really relatable. I'm sorry, other part of Massachusetts? That's what's killing me about this.

Dave Portnoy, it's the non-Nantucket versions. I appreciate that. That's right. No, but that's, this is what I was saying yesterday. Like, this is what gets to me, you know? And I told the audience, they know the story, but like, I'm not the only one. Millions of people have this in their family where somebody, you know, in love got swept up into the opioid crisis. That wasn't a Hunter's thing. I mean, he was a crack cocaine, whatever, but

you know, my sister actually legitimately got caught up in the opioid crisis by a doctor telling her this thing was not going to be addictive. And then it was, and really never righted the ship again, you know, and she died two years ago at age 58. And,

I'm just, it, it makes me so angry because she had no advantages like this. She did not have a presidential connection, nor did my, you know, place in the public sphere or my financial resources save her. She didn't have the connection she needed because there was some petty anti-crime that she got involved in basically like a shoplifting thing. But anyway, my point is it wasn't like a massive bankroll.

Bank robbery. But once you have that on your record, you're effed. She could just never get rid of it. She couldn't get a job. Even when she got clean and sober, which she had been for many, many years by the time she passed, she could never get a job once it's on your record. And they want us to feel sorry for this rich, spoiled fucking broad.

Brat Hunter Biden, who's had an entire life of privilege as the son of a senator, the son of a sitting vice president, the son of a president who had every advantage in the book and squandered them all after exploiting them to the detriment of our country with his dad's hand guiding the ship.

And now we're supposed to feel sorry for these two? Well, I don't at all. And the New York Times doesn't get it. The thing that you're talking about, Moynihan, the thing you like about Portnoy, and the thing that you're picking up on in what I read, the dark sky in Nantucket after leaving the church, sure. His final Thanksgiving as president inside a borrowed vacation compound on Nantucket. Like,

with views of the like, shut up. No one in the country who's sitting in jail or whose kid is about to go to jail for a gun charge or tax evasion or drugs gives two shits about your problems. Mm hmm.

There's a guy sitting in jail. My colleague at Reason, Jacob Sullivan, was one of the best journalists in the country for my money, wrote about a really good piece about this pardon and all the hypocrisies of it and the dissonances and the things that Biden has talked about that are lying, which goes way beyond just his saying that he was not going to do it and then doing it just the way that he characterized Republican pressure, this and that. But there are people who are in jail right now for serving four year sentences and they're

Because they lied on their application to get a gun about being a legal in their state cannabis user. That's it. They weren't a crackhead. They weren't going down the slide in a way that Michael Moynihan still feels pretty envious about. They weren't doing all the things. They didn't get a cushy job at Burisma.

Well, their dad was in charge. The dad, the vice president, was in charge of the, I don't know, Ukraine portfolio in the Obama administration. Speaking of which, I mean, is that good parenting?

Let's see. I've got a troubled fail son over here. He's going to get a job that he would not otherwise get unless I was vice president, perhaps with his portfolio. It has nothing to do with any of his skills. I'm going to sign off on that and give him a high five. That's not good parenting. Sorry to say that out loud, but it's just not. But there are people who are in jail for stuff like this.

uh, wouldn't you think that you might go out and find a few of those to pardon as well? Maybe have second thoughts about you wanting to increase the penalties for these types of things because you hate guns so much. Um, and no, he's not taking that opportunity. And this, and this is one of the infuriating things about all politicized pardons. And of course, Donald Trump did political pardons as well. Uh, and he's about to do some more, I'm sure. Um,

the problem with that is that there are genuine people who should be pardoned. Um, we've seen on the last three presidents deserve some credit, uh, for pardoning some amount of people. It's not nearly enough for people who are languishing in jail for things that we no longer consider crimes and who were never violent. Um, you should be spending your entire presidency doing that, but particularly after you have pardoned your fail son, uh,

And lied about it while doing it and cloaking it the mantle of truth. Go out and find people who are in jail who are less reprobate crackheads and get them out of jail now, too. Yeah. Biden didn't just criminal justice reform when he was president. You know, I mean, that was a lot of people who were affected by that. Forget the pardon power. He actually changed the law to let some people out of prison. A lot of them.

but Biden's done nothing. Biden tightened these laws, these very same gun laws that wound up coming back to haunt his son. And now, and then he gave him a pardon once he got convicted of the damn crime and wants us to feel sorry for him. This is more from the New York Times morning hand. Mr. Biden's decision has tarnished

A storied public legacy. Storied, I say. That began more than 50 years ago. It began more than 50 years ago at a hospital bedside of two sons who survived a car crash that killed his first wife and young daughter. Several people close to Mr. Biden said the decision created a conflict between two core identities, the anguished father trying to protect his son and the president who takes pride in

and standing on principle. - He's a private man. - I just want to do everything in the Kate Hepburn accent. That relates to what you were saying about your sister. I mean, this is a thing that most people are very reticent about saying and talking about, but I think it's kind of necessary at this point. We all know somebody. I mean, I know people very close to me who have gone through very similar things.

drug addiction, you know, in trouble with the law, et cetera. And I'm not talking about myself, Matt Welch, but other people close to me. But, you know, if they were to lean on these things in their life, in the mistakes that they made, people talk about this as a tragedy, as an addiction, all true. But in times when you actually have to also say we made mistakes, I made a mistake as a person. I'm trying to correct that mistake. It's

And they don't have this kind of, you know, excuse factory. So you think about Joe Biden. And again, this is the thing that people don't want to say because it's kind of impolite to say so. It's car crash. It is a bow and a rock.

it is Hunter's drug issue. I get that these are very difficult things for a family. And I have an enormous amount of sympathy for that. But I start kind of losing that sympathy when it's deployed, not mentioned, but deployed is the correct verb. It is like it is deployed in a political way. I mean, we've all been

been through this and it doesn't resonate, right? The reason it doesn't resonate is because we don't get out of trouble. We don't get board seats on Ukrainian energy firms with no background in this. We don't get art shows, despite the fact that our art is absolute garbage in any, anybody with any taste in art understands this, this like he has had a path

out of this for so long. Joe Biden was Scranton Joe, working class man who took the Amtrak every day. I don't buy that, but okay, let's grant him that. His son was not.

These are people who grew up in extraordinary privilege. I just made a joke about Dave Portnoy, you know, the non Nantucket versus the Nantucket. Dave Portnoy, I don't know if people remember this, but he got stuck in his boat off of Nantucket this summer, which by the way, shows you you're not a blue blood. You have to call the Coast Guard. But Dave Portnoy is like, he got rich later. He's like a working class guy with a working class accent.

And we have sympathy for him. We understand somebody who's made it. And we look at someone like Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, you know, scratching his chin saying, what shall we do with Hunter when he's sitting in his mansion in a borrowed mansion, by the way, he didn't buy it. Like Barack Obama did. Probably owned by Jim Biden.

who's also going down. - Yeah, exactly. Is that the next pardon, by the way? Is that the next blank check? - 100%. And by the way, if I were Trump, I'd definitely pardon myself in the wake of all this. I would. And then we'll have weeks of stories of whether a pardon can be given by a president to himself. But I would be pardoning myself. Now, forget the J6 defendants. I'd definitely be pardoning myself and saying, "These people are lunatics. Even Joe Biden admits they cannot be trusted. They've already said that they want a dismissal without prejudice of these federal charges against me."

F them. I'm not putting my, my, why should I, why should I have less protection than Hunter Biden? I want to play this for you guys. Chuck Todd, he's, he's in the Catherine Hepburn field when he looks at Joe Biden, or at least, at least he was four years ago on Joe Biden inauguration day. Listen here. To watch Joe Biden today. It was such a stark reminder of, of how as a country, uh,

We do seek out whatever we think we were missing, you know, whatever it is we thought we were missing in the previous president. He is the better angel president. Joe Biden believes he's eternally optimistic. He's not cynical. The guy's been in Washington so long, you would think, you know, some of us are here too long and you become cynical. He's never cynical. He still thinks the better angels exist. And it was just such an important moment.

Okay, stand by, stand by. That's the, that's the, my boyfriend's so hot and dreamy, he's never gonna cheat on me portion of our story. And here is the expected epilogue. And there is, you wanna read, you wanna get angry just as somebody in just all these mixed emotions. You read the Hallie Biden transcript and that's Beau's widow. Yes. And essentially he turned her into a crack addict. Yes.

And this was all happening in 2017, 2018. And Joe and Joe Biden were so concerned about their family that they decided to run for president. Yep. I just so when you talk about the word selfish, I it's almost like the word doesn't. I mean, I their decision to run for president put the entire Democratic Party and the United States of America in the position that it's in now.

Jeez. My boyfriend isn't loyal. My boyfriend is bad. God, don't fall. Who doesn't have a show who's just in front of some weird screen with the changing landscapes behind it with Chris Eliza like word.

Right on. Is that what makes the difference? Is that what flips the switch from obsequious to honest all of a sudden? Matt, earlier in this conversation, you mentioned how Joe Biden just kind of signed off on Hunter's joining the family business in which he and his uncle fleece foreign governments for tons and tons of cash because of their connection to the president or then vice president. He didn't just do that. He also lied about it a lot.

I don't know anything about this. I've never been in participate, participated in any of Hunter's meetings. And we actually know that those things are fundamentally untrue. Never been in business with my son. Yeah. If you're going to talk about the political dimensions of this and kind of bring in all of the family matters related to it, you probably ought to mention that fact as well, that this has dogged Joe Biden for years, not just Hunter Biden, but Joe Biden, because he has been so reliably dishonest about it, misrepresenting the degree to which

It stinks of corruption and it reveals something really filthy about the way he and his family have profited mightily from his time in politics, not just good old fashioned public service. All of that is part of the story as well. And all of that, in many ways, is a tale as old as time. But it's also Joe Biden's story.

That is who he is. He was never the savior of democracy. He was never this man who was like, he was always this guy too. He's always lied. That's what you do in politics. He's definitely not cynical because when your son,

joins the board of a Ukrainian energy company on the heels of an uprising in Ukraine in which Viktor Yanukovych is shuffled off to Moscow. And there's a lot of tumult in the country. You as a father who, as Matt pointed out, your remit is the Ukraine portfolio. You don't have the power to say at the very least, son, this looks really bad.

Maybe you should do this. Maybe don't do this. Not maybe don't do this. I'm the vice president. Don't do this. I tell you not to do this. But there's no cynicism in him. Like they said to Iran and Hezbollah, don't. Please don't. I mean...

I mean, this wish casting is unbelievable. I have to say that I hadn't seen those two Chuck Todd clips. One, because I'm not on FaceTime calls with Chris Eliza. I think it's the only way to get that one. I presumed, Megan, you were actually on that call in your screen recording. My producers earn every penny of their salaries. Good Lord. You should get hazard pay for watching that stuff. But the first one is,

I mean, it is so obsequious and over the top and fawning and wish casting. This is what we, this is not what is going to be heat, but, but he's claiming that this is the truth, right? We have seen through his tenure in Washington. This is absolutely baffling to anyone who's watched Biden's tenure is that he's not cynical. He's not a creature of Washington. He's managed to stay above the fray. And it's like, and then to go four years later and be like, Oh, by the way, he was running for president.

because his family was in trouble. And by the way, his son was smoking crack and having a relationship with his dead brother's widow. I mean, it's the most insane Mexican soap opera. It's so insane. And you didn't know that at the time. You didn't see that at the time. Because I'll tell you what that would be. That would be like the most cynical thing I can think of to run for president for that reason.

Well, it's interesting to see, like for some, I don't know if the truth is finally becoming apparent, you know, like the Chuck Todd's of the world, the Jared Polis of the world, Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado, a Democrat. He's criticized Biden. Go take a look at his his comments under his tweet. They're killing him. The Democrats are so angry there. They feel betrayed that he would criticize Joe Biden over this.

Um, so some, some Democrats and, you know, media commentators have spoken out like that, like this is bullshit. F him. What has he done? And then you have the New York times with under the dark night started 50 years ago, man tormented, by the way, just for kicks. Here's one more of those. This is ABC's Mary Bruce and sought to.

Without evidence? Wow.

Wow. We pivoted to a without evidence from Trump. We got a without evidence. Yes. In the middle of farming. No evidence of corruption.

Against the Biden's son. The only living son, by the way, is gross. I have to say. I know that once again, he uses it. And so do his media enablers. They also use it. But anyway, more importantly, I just wanted to show you a little bit more of Dark Knight 50 years ago coverage from ABC's Mary Bruce. But that that brings me to something I think is special that you're really going to enjoy. And that's from your friend and everyone's Don Lemon. Oh, boy.

Good morning, elimination. I missed you guys. Did you guys miss me? What's good for the Donald is good for the Hunter. So if you're going to talk about selective prosecution and you're going to talk about lawfare, okay, that's why I said Joe Biden should use it too. And also this whole idea about a president having complete immunity. Well, maybe Joe Biden needs to do some shit before he leaves because if he would just be immune.

What? What if he jailed Donald Trump for, I don't know, January 6th? I'm just saying. How do you do that? What's good for the Donald is good for the Joe Biden. The economy is messed up and they're paying more for goods.

They don't even care if their family member is going to get deported. They don't care. Oh, my God. I can't believe it. What happened with the gas prices? Don't do the voice talk. You know what? I don't drive. I take the subway. Y'all want to have dinner tonight? That's my attitude. And I wouldn't help them do nothing.

I got a fact. There's a subway in Sag Harbor? I was going to say. Do you feel enlightened? Lemonation. I kept on thinking that my internet connection was going out. Hello, my lemon heads. Now it's lamination. Lemon.

- I hope Evan Dando sued. - I kept on thinking that- - I think he was trying to do some legal analysis there. - I don't know what that was. - Just jail him. He just go over to his house and put him in jail. - Get on the Sag Harbor subway.

He took the subway to Washington. And that is, you should have shown the beginning of that clip where he gets kicked in the head by a horse. Because he's just like on the fritz the whole time. I literally thought my connection was going out. I was like, oh, what? I think I lost them. Because there was, what, 10 seconds between his very deep thoughts. I think, by the way, the Don Lemon thing. And I feel bad.

picking on Don Lemon because he obviously has some cognitive issues and the decline has been pretty significant. But I think we first saw that with his interview with Elon Musk. And I am watching this and thinking like, how?

on earth did they keep him at CNN for that long from the black hole swallowed up the Malaysian flight gee what could it have been let me really try to think what it was that kept him in his spot as long as they did hmm hmm

Camille seems to have frozen. He's black and he's gay, as he said repeatedly when he was trying to get them not to fire him. I remember. I'm a black gay man. Just like Camille. Cable news prime time. Yeah. Every time we try to fire Camille, he says that too. Yeah. So annoying.

He's saying that he's he's open minded. Suddenly he's like gay. No comment. No. Now, Camille used to be spelled differently because because my team is so competent, they have pulled the clip that really sums up this entire thing. And this is really what Joe Biden is doing. And the media is either shocked, horrified or making excuses for him. But here's Joe Biden.

Come on, flounder. Can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes. You fucked up. You trusted us.

That's amazing. Still still works all these years later. I think there's one point that's worth reflecting on for everybody of all political persuasions, including those who are enjoying lapping up everyone's tears. It's that as soon as you get yourself in the position of this is the vessel through which I can smite the person I hate.

So that's what Chuck Todd thought Joe Biden was on Inauguration Day. I'm sure you called him Joseph Robinette Biden the second to show it. Then you are going to tell yourself a fable about how honorable he is and how swelled with emotion and honor America was in doing that. And you see people invest Donald Trump with the same kind of hopes as they're using him to beat back the left.

don't place your hopes in politicians, people. They're going to lie to you. That's what they do. That's how they got there. Don't start. You're going to embarrass yourself. It's a very good point. They will disappoint you and they will all lie to you 100%, unlike the guys from the fifth column. They are staying with me. That's no lie. Don't go anywhere because we will finally get...

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Well, we almost missed all the fun while we were having our turkey. And that was another turkey took to the airways and gave her a farewell message. I don't know what it was, but it was glorious.

Kamala Harris decided to give us an early Christmas gift and to speak out on camera yet again with a little Thanksgiving Day inspo, which I really appreciate it because, you know, I'd been missing her a little and gave a little message to her supporters. We've pulled a little so you can hear how, if at all, she's changed her messaging.

The outcome of this election obviously is not what we wanted. It is a coalition where we bring people together based on a deep love of our country and our understanding that the strength of our country will be a function of our willingness to put in the work and that we will do that work.

With a sense of joy, yes. With a sense of work ethic and understanding that it's going to be hard. But it's good work. It's good work.

to be engaged in a collective fight for America's future, that we're all in this together. And that work continues. The work must continues. So look, we still have a lot to fight for, okay? A future where every American can pursue their dreams, ambitions, and aspirations. I just have to remind you, don't you ever let anybody take your power from you. Look,

This mission that we have, it takes hard work. As you've heard me say many times, we like hard work. You just said that. Hard work is good work. Hard work can be joyful work. Mm-hmm.

Is that Boris Yeltsin? That is late 90s Boris Yeltsin slash the person I was across the bar from the other night. It was like, let me tell you something. Don't let anyone ever tell you. If anyone says that, you know that they're drunk. Don't let anyone ever tell you. She's obviously either having a stroke or she's wasted. And I prefer the first one.

Do you guys have any... Go ahead, Matt. Just asking the two fellas if you have any experience of talking with someone late at night when they're slurring a lot and trying really hard to act like they're not. Yeah, that's me. Oh, Matt Welch. Game knows game. I mean, wow. Just the...

The trying to make understanding be really just four syllables. Like you could see the mental concentration. I'm going to do it. I'm going to, I'm going to understand. Totally. She reminds me of this woman, Doug and I were at some party. This is years ago. And she was at our preschool and she comes up to me drunk, very drunk at this bar. And she's like,

I need to talk to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's always a good thing. I owe you an apology. And of course, you're like, you're forgiven. It's fine. We're good. Right? It was like, get me out of here. She's like, no. She said, I never liked you. I never liked you. And it's always very confusing because Doug is a very nice person. Yeah. But I never liked you. So.

Kind of the opposite of Moynihan, strangely. Is there anyone who can come get me out of this? Of course, all my friends were over there like, ha, ha, ha, laughing. Anyway, finally, my love Christina came and got me and rescued me from the convo. But my point is, that's who she reminded me of. Like, ha.

Like, I need to talk to you. Like you said, don't you ever let someone take your power. Power work is good work. It's good. It's joyful. It is the opposite of the Katharine Hepburn mid-Atlantic accent of that clear Christmas. She's like, I don't even know. But you have to realize something about this. There is one important political point here.

Someone watched that. A whole team of people watched that and were like, yeah, that's good. And they're like, your friends across the bar laughing like, oh shit, Megan's dealing with the drunk mom here. That's her staff. They're like, you know what? Print it. Put it out. Let's put it out. The DNC retweeted it. Put it out. The DNC was like, check this out. This is why we lost in

And that should have been the caption. Good Lord. It wasn't our fault. That's exactly right. And it was just, it, she hit it all right. Camille was like ambitions, aspirations, dreams. And that thing about like, she keeps using that line. She used it in her concession speech or whatever that was after she lost. Like, don't you let anybody take your power away from you. Don't you ever let me. Well, it's like,

We're literally taking your power away from you on January 20th. You're losing it all. How much did you take her keys away from her?

Look at the lighting of it, too. I mean, like, they set that shot up. And the drab beige curtains in the back. Like, that also was very nice. Which matches her jacket. Yeah, she looks like she's hiding in the woods hunting a deer. Like, the whole thing is weird. Like, all blending. Her hair, her jacket. With her glock. But the best thing is, I know people listen to this on audio only, so I should probably describe it. The best is when she puts her hands together like this and puts it under her chin for a moment. Wait, let's show Moinihan.

Yeah, this is... Get her off the camera. There it is. No, that's how she did it. Go ahead. Don't let anyone ever do the thing that they shouldn't do. Because doing the thing that they shouldn't do is bad. Never, ever. Never do it. It's so... It's amazing. We're going to do a full breakdown later as a separate episode of that Pod Save America interview of her campaign team. Yeah. But have you ever heard...

so much denial and so many excuses. And they knew enough to say, no excuses, no excuses. And then they just deliver excuses after tough political environment. Making excuses, pointing fingers while insisting you're not doing it. And of course, not taking any responsibility for any of the mistakes made because there were no mistakes. It was amazing. You ran a great campaign. Well, you listened to it, Camille, and you were like, I actually, I'm starting to feel sorry for her. Like she had a terrible team behind her. As it turns out, it wasn't all her fault.

Yeah. Although I don't actually feel sorry for her, but I do get a little, but I don't feel sorry for her at all. Not, not, you had a Don desperately wanted that. She didn't want to figure out if you felt sorry for her. Yeah. She didn't want to, she didn't want to compete for the, not for the nomination at all. She didn't want there to be some sort of open field. No, no, no, no. Just, just give it to me.

Give me all of the things. Hand me the baton. Same way I got the VP nod from Joe Biden. Like, it's not really a competition. Just give me the things. So, yeah, I can't feel sorry for her. I will say, though, that my favorite Thanksgiving message was Donald Trump's Happy Thanksgiving post, which has become something of a tradition for him. Like, every single one of them begins with a Happy Thanksgiving to all, including. Haters of the losers.

is always, always like the most deplorable people in the world who actually want the bad things. Like I still want good things for you people too. No matter how terrible you are. Unbelievable. Camille, I'm glad that you pointed out that I just want to point out that he did this in 2013.

way before he was running for president, where he said, I'd like to spend my best wishes to all on 9-11 on this special day to the haters and losers too. Always. On 9-11. The haters and losers. Which I took as a swipe at Al Qaeda, to be honest, so I'm on his side on this one. Yeah. I'm going to interpret that way as well. Speaking of Trump truths, his posts on Truth Social, he did have a hell of a one yesterday. It reads as follows. Mm-hmm.

Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire world in the Middle East. But it's all talk and no action, exclamation point. Please let this truth serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20th, 2025, the date that I proudly assume office as president of the United States, there will be, in all caps, all hell.

hell to pay in the Middle East and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America. In all caps again, release the hostages now. 63 hostages are believed to still be in the captivity of Hamas. Of the some 250 who were taken, 71 have been confirmed dead.

dead. So we don't know, we don't exactly know the precise numbers of who is alive, but we believe it's some 63. And this is what he said when he was running too, that those hostages better be released before I even get sworn in. And it's a very interesting situation because the Trump base, the MAGA base is non-interventionist, interventionalist, right? They really are not very pro-

American power and might being exercised militarily. Trump, I've said this before, is a little less that way than I think many in his core base. But this is Trump clearly threatening some sort of, I think, military action. I mean, maybe I'm overstating it. Maybe it's just some sort of sanction I'm not reading. But in any event, what if they don't release the hostages before he gets inaugurated? Any thoughts?

Yeah, cut or screwed. That's that's that's what I'm hearing. They're not going to be a major non-NATO ally anymore. They're going to be running into the bomb shelter is the implication of what he is saying. I kind of agree with you, but maybe I would I would stand off some of the edges on his base being non-interventionist.

or him being non-interventionist. I think some non-interventionists did vote for him, but he's always been a Jacksonian, right? So he doesn't like nation building. America doesn't like nation building, if we're being honest. A lot of our interventionist and neoconservative pals still are kind of in denial about that, but it is just true. We don't like, Americans soured on Afghanistan, we soured on the Iraq war, and we had reason to.

So we don't want to go and put boots on the ground, but doesn't mean we don't also want to avoid like punching someone in the face if they take some of our people. So Trump is a Jacksonian. He's in the Andrew Jackson kind of mold of I will act.

absolutely threatened i mean this is the biggest you know uh military strike in the history of the world so he's going to go like a little bit more than hiroshima that seems a little bit unlikely but uh you know he wants to talk very very loudly and have a stick to carry and wave around and then see what what you do i think you will see a lot of scrambling on the part of cutter perhaps of

Turkey as well. And Iran, and we're seeing all kinds of weird things happening in Syria right now, which is too complex for my little brain to even understand. But I think people are moving on the chessboard very fast because he has a clear difference, not just in the sort of Jacksonian, I'm going to punch you in the jaw with my whole hand kind of approach. But the Biden approach, which I think is often misunderstood, has been mostly like, hey,

hey, if we give money to everybody, maybe we just tell everyone to kind of cool it. Just don't get too out of hand in whatever you do. So he tells that message to Israel. He also tells that message to Iran. And he tells that message to this guy and that guy. It's sort of like we want we want to just kind of can you please contain it? Like we're going to support Ukraine, but only until after he lost the election or after Kamala Harris lost the election. Do we allow them to shoot with long range missiles?

And I would imagine that came after having a conversation with Donald Trump. So it's a different thing. It's not containment anymore. It is like, no, don't rile us up. If you rile us up, we will absolutely hit you in the face, which has never been Biden's message, but it's definitely Trump's.

I think that's absolutely right. And, you know, there's a lot of people that project their own ideas of foreign policy on Donald Trump because of the sentence that you heard, like ad infinitum, that he didn't start any new wars, that that somehow translates into the fact that he's kind of a pussycat on the global stage. I think there's a few things about this. I mean, you...

Think of, you know, Kash Patel, for instance. I mean, this is the most MAGA guy that you see on Bannon's show. And, you know, a week ago, he's like, we have to prioritize our relationship with Israel. And it's making so many of those people, Megan, that you're referencing, you know, on Twitter and there's a little upset, a little exercise. Like, this is not what we want. It's like, you do remember the Abraham Accords, right? You do see the polling in Israel when it came to Kamala Harris

versus Donald Trump, who they preferred by an enormous margin. It was Donald Trump. And they would not prefer that in the middle of a war, in the most brutal war in its history, if they thought

Donald Trump was soft on this issues. I mean, it doesn't matter what I mean, Donald Trump is obviously has a flair for, you know, going big and saying, you know, since the founding of the republic, nothing like this has ever been seen. As Matt points out, I guess that's Hiroshima and Nagasaki together on one day. You know, he's doing the Donald Trump bluster. But I talked to an Israeli yesterday after this thing came out, after this truth. So someone sent it to him.

And we were talking and he is a very moderate kind of guy and had this kind of glow on his face. And we were talking about how Joe Biden, Joe Biden never said that. He never came out and said in keeping in mind that of the hostages that are there, there are Americans. Yeah. And I know that people don't consider them Americans because they're dual nationals. They served in the IDF and they're Israeli Americans, but they're American citizens there. And has there been any,

a constant drumbeat or any drumbeat coming from that podium that Joe Biden's never behind. But I suppose it would be Kareem Jean-Pierre saying, give them back and give them back now or there are going to be enormous consequences. No, we've seen a lot of fiddling with Israel and like, well, maybe we'll have a weapons embargo. I mean, does anyone think in the non-interventionist universe that there's going to be a weapons embargo on Israel through Donald Trump? You got to be kidding me. No.

No, that's not going to happen. I mean, Ukraine thing too. I mean, the Russians responded to his ideas about a peace settlement saying, no, this is ridiculous. And you don't, you say this is ridiculous to Donald Trump. He's not going to like go away into the night and saying, well, you know, I don't believe in intervention.

I think that, you know, the Russian reaction in the last couple of days towards the Kellogg plan of what will happen in Ukraine was one of total contempt. And he's not going to appreciate that. And I think that he is probably telling in Zelensky and the calls with him, you know, yeah, you know, amp it up and then we'll come in and we'll solve it. He's not somebody that's like, just lie down your weapons and let's take what is happening to you right now. That's just not who he is.

Hmm. You raise a good point about what Trump is about to inherit, right? So we not only have, yes, the hostages still in the custody of Hamas, but the Ukraine war amping up to a dangerous level right before he takes the office. And then, of course, the thing in Syria is just it's almost hard to get your arms around that Bashar al-Assad could fall.

that this sort of dictator, strongman, you know, villain in the eyes of America for decades now, how about he's been in the news forever? I mean, since I feel like

I can't remember not having it be Bashar al-Assad as the boogeyman of Syria and the chemical weapons and the whole thing with the civil war there spun out of control. And now it's like he could go down, you know, one of the major cities in Syria fell to these rebels and one of the presidential palaces, but not his, but he could be forced to flee. I don't know where it's going to land, but then you look at who's rising and you're like,

Huh? Right. The dictator, you know, because these groups who are sort of storming the palaces and taking over the cities don't look all that friendly to the United States or, you know, Christians or peace lovers. And yet they're trying to sort of say we've reformed, you know, you could work with us. Like stability is what's best in the Middle East. That's not what Donald Trump is walking into.

No, it's not. And on the Syria thing, just quickly, that, you know, the group that is taking over vast swaths of the country and, you know, took over Aleppo, which is a city that used to have 50, 60,000 Christians and is down to about 10,000. And they say now, and there's been some reporting on the ground, we'll see how this pans out, that this group has been, you know,

broadly ecumenical on their way in. They were surprised that they weren't being executed, arrested, whatever. There hasn't been some sort of ethnic or religious cleansing. But keeping in mind, Megan, to your point, these are people, you know, one of these commanders was in U.S. custody at one point in Iraq. I mean, these are people that have just

denounced their association with both ISIS and Al Qaeda. I mean, do we believe that? I very, very highly doubt it. But we get back to that situation that people came to in 2006. It's like Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. He was a scumbag. And he was the butcher of Iraq for so long. And as

Assad, you know, keep in mind that he was granted that position from Hafez al-Assad, his father, who was also a butcher in Syria. But the Syrians, of course, have been supported by Hezbollah and by Russia. Russia's carrying out airstrikes in Aleppo today. They hadn't done that since 2016. So, I mean, this is a chaotic situation that Donald Trump is inheriting. And this is not one in which

you can make a deal. You can't make a deal with these people. I mean, these are people that don't give a shit about America. These are religious extremists on one side. A country like Syria has been America's enemy and Hezbollah, who has been America's enemy for a long time too, but they saw the opening. And that opening was because of what Israel was doing and what Ukraine was doing. Ukraine had their Russians bogged down.

And the Israelis had taken out almost the entire Hezbollah leadership. And so the vacuum is being filled. And that's the Middle East. And that's what Donald Trump is inheriting. And Iran, Iran's eye was on the Israel ball and what's happening to Hezbollah. And maybe, maybe potentially wondering how the hell its main proxy got dragged into the Israel Hamas thing when, you know, it wasn't really for a while. Anyway, yeah, we're

Like all the forces came together to make things a bit of a powder keg, not a bit of like an actual powder keg right now. And so Trump, as much of a dealmaker as he is and a negotiator and, you know, yes, I think instinctually non-interventionalist, but also he doesn't fuck around. You know, he's not afraid to drop a bomb on Soleimani, that kind of thing. He's going to have to play this just right, you know, because we actually do have.

A number of conflicts that are begging for our intervention and an American populist that doesn't want it. I don't think the American populist wants to get involved in anything involving Iran or Syria or Russia. I think they'd like to see us out of the Ukrainian conflict, Camille.

Well, I was just going to say that we haven't even talked about the situation in Asia. I mean, there's a weird Ukrainian connection with the North Koreans sending troops to Russia to participate in that conflict. The news today about martial law being declared in South Korea. And then there's China.

There's always China. And there's certainly the conflict that's roiling with respect to tariffs and the likely implications for China there. But we're always watching China and Taiwan. So there are so many broiling conflicts at this point and potential conflicts. So Trump is really going to have his hands full.

And to the extent he does have some deal making savvy, it would be wonderful to see him deploy it. I do wonder what kind of conversations he's having with the Saudis at this point where the Middle East is concerned. I mean, to the extent there were things to celebrate with respect to foreign policy during the Trump administration, the Abraham Accords and the progress that seemed to be made there was something. And it almost certainly helped to precipitate

um, the horribleness, um, that Hamas, uh, unleashed, um, in, in, um, on October 6th. But I do wonder, um, I do wonder like what kind of conversations are happening there, because if they can get the Saudis back to the table in a more meaningful way, perhaps that can help to unwind things. But I certainly don't have any expectation that Hamas is actually going to comply with the request. Certainly the early statements don't suggest as much. But Matt Welsh, that raises such a good point because think about it. Um,

We started the show talking about the media, like, oh, he's damaged his legacy. You know, Joe Biden has with this pardon of his son. He's tarnished his perfect legacy. And, you know, you were saying this is so absurd. Like, look what he did during COVID and so on. And look what he did in the Middle East. Look what happened with respect to the U.S. foreign policy during the four years between Trump leaving and Trump returning. You know, things are on fire now.

And there's been no accountability. And by the way, the media doesn't hold Joe Biden accountable for any of this. There's no talk anymore about the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and how provocative it was or just I mean, the abandonment of the Abraham Accords and the road that we were on, not toward solving everything in the Middle East. That's too grand a goal. But towards stability there, like I said, stability. So Trump goes back now.

It's like one step forward, two steps backward. It's going to take a lot just to, I don't even know if it's possible just to get back to where we were in 2020 when he was voted out.

One thing to think about is that the Abraham Accords are still in place. They're still strong. They haven't really backslid. One of the first things that Biden did upon becoming president said, yeah, OK, we're keeping the embassy in Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords are still with us. He saw the point of it, which is not surprising. I think that we have as Americans a tendency with some understandable reason, but we do it to excess of always saying,

casting ourselves as the major player in every conflict. Like this happened. One thing, I'm going to let you finish your point, but the thing, the thing that, yes. Okay. Fine. To your point. But the, one of the very first things that happened with Joe Biden was he humiliated himself in front of the Saudis. Remember he, he embarrassed us and himself when he went over there and right. Like he didn't, after saying he wasn't going to,

Yes. After saying he wasn't. And then he tried to strong arm them. And it was it was a humiliation. It was another Barack Obama type of humiliation for the United States on an international scale. I, I, I am nobody's fan of Saudi Arabia. It's a very mild way of putting it. I think they've had a very malign influence on American foreign policy. To me, the most humiliating thing that's ever involved Saudi Arabia is George W. Bush walking hand in hand in his ranch in Crawford, Saudi

With with I forget which member of the House of Saud that was, but it was just gross to see that happen within. It wasn't Bandar Bandar, whose nickname was Bandar Bush, because he had been so friendly with Bush family stretching back decades. But, you know, this is the country where 15 of the 19 hijackers came from and many of them came to America illegally.

by working around the normal visa channels. There's a lot of bad stuff. It hasn't been a great relationship. Every single administration, Democrat or a Republican, but to different degrees, has been overly reliant. Saudi Arabia always puts itself in the middle of any peace process. Sometimes that works well, sometimes it doesn't.

One of the things that they were asking for by administration is that they want to become a major non-NATO ally as well. That's the thing. They want security guarantees from us in addition to the many scores of billions of dollars worth of hardware that they pay for.

Um, and I don't, and they've been holding up a lot of normalization with Israel, uh, dependent on that. I don't want us to give them that security guarantee. I don't like the fact that we gave Qatar, uh, that security, uh, guarantee they don't deserve it. Um, and it's part of the, the, like, let's have our fingers in every, in every little pie. Um, there are better ways and worse ways to do the middle East. Uh,

None of them are going to guarantee that the Middle East is going to work out well in the end because it almost never does. It would be great if it did better. I'm curious to see whether the Trump approach to Iran in particular and also to Israel that is much different than the Biden and kind of Democratic approach, Obama approach writ large.

I'm interested to see what kind of fruits that yields. And it's also interesting to observe that some of the incoming Trump administration people, including the guy who is the head of the transition team for foreign policy, has said pretty upfront, we're not interested in regime change in Iran.

So that's playing to your kind of non-interventionist side. A lot of the people who worry about neocons or American interventionism are always worried about Lindsey Graham is going to try to topple yet another regime somewhere, maybe in Tehran. And I think it's good and right that Trump coming in says, not interested.

But also laying down the kind of thing like if you transgress against us, it's going to turn out very, very badly for you. I think that's more in keeping with what American appetites and attitudes are. And I think that'll also become true of the Syrian civil war.

ongoing. I mean, it's more than a decade now. Um, I can't imagine American intervening in any meaningful sense. Do you remember even like when John McCain would, would go there and he's like posing with guys like I found the moderate militias and like, you know, the next day we'd find out that they'd like dismembered somebody on live television. Um,

There's not going to be a moderate partner in Syria. It's just not going to happen. No government there is going to be good. It's all going to be a mess. And hopefully Trump has the wisdom not to get in there and meddle. I think what he might do is sort of draw a cordon around it and say, don't spill.

Your borders, whatever you do, you know, be savage to one another. But don't let that spill over here or else you're going to get punched in the jaw. Just just a quick addendum to that of the things that Trump is inheriting. I mean, obviously, it was it's never monocausal. It's it's there's a number of reasons that October 7th happened. But one of them is upsetting that relationship with Saudi Arabia. As Matt points out, there was a Saudi official.

U.S. defense alignment and treaty that PIPA was going to have to pass the Senate that was about 90, 95% done, but it required that the Israelis say that we recognize a two-state solution is in the future, and then it would require Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel. And

what happened after October 7th and the upset within the country of making any sorts of deals with Israel has made that nearly impossible. Trump has a very good relationship with

with Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudis in general. So we'll see how that goes. I mean, that I think is one of the biggest foreign policy challenges. And in Iran too, and Matt's right, you can say that, I mean, there's no idea that we're gonna invade Iran. This has been a conversation since 2003, Iran's next, Iran's next. No, but I think that the Trump administration, and I know a number of the people that are involved in the kind of Iran areas of this and know what they believe, I mean,

And they will make Tehran hurt, particularly with like oil exports and things like that and make the economy hurt. And the Iranians are rational. They're very sensitive to things like that. Because remember, I mean, the Israelis just hit, you know, at 100 some odd Israeli Air Force planes going into Iranian airspace and bombing things in Iran and nobody really even noticed it.

That if you had said that five years ago, that's going to precipitate a regional war. It didn't. It's a very delicate situation. But Trump really, really has his work cut out for him in the Middle East.

It's crazy when you think about it. All right, so we've got Hezbollah, we've got Hamas, we've got our hostages in Israel. We have got civil war in Syria amounting to a potential deposition of Assad. We'll have to see whether he withstands this and who's ruling Syria in the next year. And we've got Ukraine fighting Russia. And as you point out, North Korea now sending its troops to help the Russians. And we've got...

China and Taiwan. And I mean, I think almost no American appetite to do much if China goes for Taiwan. I mean, who they're in other than like the most neocony of neocons, nobody wants to see Americans get involved in a proxy or direct war with China over Taiwan chips or no chips. Um,

There's just a lot there's been. I know you could make the case that it shouldn't be handled by Truth Social. But right now is the way the president elect communicates. And we'll see. We'll see whether he gets any any results. All right. Stand by. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back. Yet another attack drops on Pete Hegseth and we will go behind it.

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A couple of things to go over in our last block together. Pete Hegseth, for Pete Hegseth, the hits just keep on coming. The latest is from CBS News. The headline is GOP insiders sought Hegseth's removal as leader of veterans group in 2016.

They go on to say one of those who led the effort to oust Hegseth as the head of Concerned Veterans of America in 2016 was Jesse Jane Duff. That name may be familiar to our audience because she was at some point a Fox News contributor. She might still be. She's a Marine veteran. And she worked for this group at the same time Pete was running it. Let's see.

They say this is according to multiple Republican insiders familiar with the events. Duff sought Hegseth's removal from leadership roles in the veterans group. According to CBS News, Duff, a Newsmax analyst, served as an advisor for Concerned Veterans for America while he helmed the organization from 13 to 16. CBS has learned the allegations contained in the seven-page report

first reported by the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, originated with Duff. So now we know that the so-called whistleblower who was in the New Yorker report that we got to yesterday, alleging that Pete went to a strip club and allegedly stormed the stage, uh,

A source close to the situation tells us he was not at the strip club. This is not true at all that he admits to drinking and, you know, having drank too much here and there, but that there are specifics in there that are not true. And that were said by a disgruntled employee. And now we know who we're talking about. It's Jesse Jane Duff, who does not like Pete. And it's probably safe to say he doesn't like her. The report also reveals he fired her from concerned veterans for America, according to two sources and,

And, uh, it is believed by his supporters that she's been out to get him ever since filing reports like this one, trying to get him ousted at the veterans organization where he was ultimately let go and, um, raising questions about improprieties when it comes to the money at this group saying that they had tons of dough, uh,

Uh, in, in the coffers he raised according to, um, this CBS news report. Let's see when I get my numbers right that, okay. First it was veterans for freedom. That was one of the groups that he became a director at in 2006 and executive director in 2007, in 2008 filing. So the organization raised over 8.7 million in revenue, but spent 9 million.

By 2010, tax filings show revenue had dropped to just under $265,000. Then they say he started Concerned Veterans for America in 2011. By 2016, the year he resigned, so five years later, the organization raised $15.9 million and listed $16.4 million in expenses. The following year, after he stepped down, the nonprofit reduced its expenses after major programs developed in the last fiscal year were paused.

Okay, so what we have here is it appears Jesse Jane Duff getting fired by Pete. She doesn't like him. We don't know why. It could be this financial stuff as she's allegedly claiming, or it could be something else. It could be because he fired her as it appears.

his side is claiming, but it's another hit, right? Is that he's, he can't manage financial money, finance finances. And in this CBS news piece, they quote Margaret Hoover, who's now host of PBS is firing line and,

who is a former advisor to Vets for Freedom. And she tells CNN that Hegseth managed the organization, quote, very poorly, expressing doubt that he could run the sprawling Defense Department when he had struggled with a staff of less than 10 people and a budget of under $10 million. The staff at the Department of Defense is almost $3 million.

And we have 750 military installations around the world and a budget of, I didn't realize it was quite this large, $842 billion. Which understates it, actually. Billion, yes. So where does that leave us on the latest with respect to Pete Hegseth?

I mean, the as soon as the Jane Mayer story came out, I went instinctively to the usual place of like, oh, there's a Jane Mayer hit piece about a Republican nominee to a thing. So I probably can safely discount a lot that comes from there. Margaret Hoover, I know and I think is an honorable person. So I will I will listen to her testimony with interest. For me, the the baseline with

Pete, who I know a tiny bit, Green Rooms, I'm sure we all kind of know him similarly. Megan, you probably know him a little bit more, is that does the sloppiness of his personal life, which normally I don't care about. Yeah, I don't care about that with RFK Jr., for example. He's a heroin addict for 15 years. Whatever. Yeah.

My complaints with him are separate from that, but it's the DOD. So like, do we have a different standard for that kind of sloppiness? I'm old enough. And Megan, you're almost old enough to remember the John Tower days back a long time ago, whereas like, oh, is he, you know, his drinking issues? Is it big enough to maybe make us think that we shouldn't have this person in this sensitive job? Pete.

sounds like he's been cutting a swath out there um which you know hats off but do i want michael moynihan to be the head of the department of defense as opposed to hhs um um well because i don't want to say compromise is it because when megan said the thing about forming the strip club stage wasn't true i was disappointed i was like oh exactly i was on his side and then it turned out not to be true that was a source that was a single source uh

So we've all been there. Come on. I think I think I haven't been there. Moynihan, I think so. That's a legitimate question worth asking, regardless of the hit piece of the stuff that's coming at him. And then just managerial experience. I'm not totally impressed with like, oh, he's they spent 16 million dollars and only raised 15.6. I mean, welcome to nonprofit world. Those are kind of normal.

If it was really, really lopsided, then we can talk, and I haven't gotten to the weeds of it. But it is legitimate to say to someone who's going to manage a gigantic organization, what is your experience with managing organizations? Is it good? Is it bad? How big is it? What do people who saw you manage those organizations say? And I have seen a couple of people have said, hey, it's great. There's no problems.

So but I think those are legitimate things to ask. I mean, just the thought that it's like Pete sitting there with his little, you know, visor on and his pencil and his pad figuring out the budget at DOD is not what's going to happen. You know, he's being hired to do other things there. Correct. That Trump prioritizes and that, you know, the electorate prayer, like de-wokifying the military, taking out these generals who just want to see their names in the paper and putting in somebody who cares more about the enlisted guys and isn't so.

you know, trigger happy that they push for, you know, the first response being military engagement. And, you know, somebody who's actually served, who understands that that's actually very risky and what it's done for the United States and for the guys involved and gals over the past 20 years. I mean, Pete knows that firsthand. So I do think that like, he may not have the managerial skills on the dough, but he's not going to be doing that. But you said something that was interesting to me, Matt, which is,

Like, do you hold the guy's personal foibles against him? And we've been having that debate on the show. I subscribe to Ann Coulter's Substack. She's always entertaining. And she had just interviewed Heather MacDonald. And I've interviewed Heather many times, and Heather has said this to me too. Heather has absolutely no use, really, for the Me Too movement and for deposing men based on their personal conduct when it comes to office romances or

male libido. You know, she basically says that's something that's biologically engineered in men from the dawn of time and we shouldn't be hiring and firing guys based on it. I mean, I'm sure you could find the most egregious case that Heather would find upsetting too, but just as a general rule, she's really not into the me too thing. And Anne's point was actually the more traditionally conservative points saying character matters and, you know, saying, um,

And was like, I don't know about this rape allegation against Pete, but I'm concerned enough about the fact that he cheated on three wives. Not one, not two, all three.

And, um, that matters to me. And like these allegations about how he's treating underlings and, you know, women in particular, and, you know, she would not approve of the stripper story, even though they're denying it. And so like, and it, it really does like, it reminded me of 2010 at Fox news. That's exactly the angle we would have come into this story on had it been a Republican or a Democrat. And have we, have we changed so much in those 14 years? Maybe it's Trump's ascendancy ascendancy. Um,

all the bullshit that's been done to the country that leads us to be like, we don't give a shit any longer. Where do you guys stand on it? And I mean, of all of the departments, of all the appointments, I mean, for it to be the Pentagon, for it to be the Defense Department, I mean, they actually care about that sort of thing there. Like that kind of conduct amongst enlisted persons is a problem, a huge problem. It is not a small thing that folks are going to wink at and say, it doesn't really matter here.

To the extent Pete is going to be the guy, he has to actually be an exemplar on those things. And his conduct, personal, private conduct, the extent it becomes public, certainly it's consequential and it's relevant. There aren't a lot of things that we can kind of measure this up against. I think it's correct, Megan. He won't be responsible for being the bean counter there. Although I imagine some of his decisions and the focus of his particular leadership and leadership team are going to have

an awful lot to say about whether or not the Pentagon becomes actually worse, which is hard to imagine with respect to its kind of fiduciary unseriousness as an institution. So finding someone who is more disciplined, who has fewer skeletons in the closet is,

perhaps a good look for the Trump administration. One wonders if they're not actually going to move away from him at this point. I share Matt's skepticism of the more recent revelations, like a single source who is kind of complaining, who turns out to be someone who has kind of some personal animus towards you. That's not so exciting to me. And it's not at all surprising to see that kind of thing, scoring headlines with someone this controversial, but against the backdrop of all of the other things.

your mom writing a rather impassioned note to you about your horrific personal conduct. It's not a great look. And it's the sort of thing that one actually has to address and address pretty forcefully. The mom note didn't get to me at all. I was like, you should hear the way my mom talks to me, but love you, love you, mom. But it got to Doug. Like my husband was like, that's not good.

He's like, you know, having heard what she said, he's like, it's really not great. But I was like, come on. Like the mother saw a son back from the combat tours, treating his wives badly in the midst of a contentious divorce, calling the soon to be ex-wife who he had cheated on names and said, no.

knock it off. You are not only abusing this woman with those words, but you're a serial abuser of what you cheated on your first wife. This is exactly how God forbid I ever found my son in this situation. And I have to, um, I would hope I'd speak to him, like get your shit together. I do not approve of one thing you've done in the past two years when it comes to women or whatever years that one, I, I don't know. I wasn't as moved by it by you and, and Duggar Camille. Yeah.

I would say, by the way, there's there are a number of Senate Republicans who aren't just Susan Collins, who are dismayed by this and worried about it. And, you know, Wall Street Journal did some reporting on this of like, you know, we're going to wait for we'd like to see the FBI investigation into this. That's not the Jan Jane Mayer investigation, who's somebody who obviously took responsibility.

at Kavanaugh, did some shoddy reporting there. I think did some shoddy reporting back when she did a book about Anita Hill. And, you know, then ran to the defense of Al Franken, who, by the way, I think deserved defending. But she's very partisan in her defenses. But to Anne's point, I mean, it shows you a lot of things. I mean, I disagree with Anne on about 70% of things, but I do find her wildly entertaining and funny. She's amazing. She's very smart. She's very smart. She's very consistent on this

on this issue from the Clinton. I mean, we knew of Ann Coulter because she wrote a book called High Crimes and Misdemeanors about what Bill Clinton was doing. She was very consistent on these issues. But the one thing that gives me some pause

Because I think that it starts in a lot of ways with these movements that go way overboard. The reason so many of us are reticent when these charges come up was because of this kind of fanaticism of the Me Too movement that had some real honest targets that deserve to be taken down. And I could list off 10 of them, but we started lumping everybody into the same thing. Louis CK was the same as some guy was weird to you at work.

And, you know, at the, on the other side of this, there's so many people you have to like these people who are responsible for these movements. I mean, I know you talk a lot, Megan, about trans issues. There was a article in the New York times last week that, you know, trans advocates saying, you know, maybe we're going a little too far with this. Maybe we're pushing a little too hard and there's no grace in what we do when people disagree with us. And that's JK Rowling, that's you, et cetera. But that's the same thing in the me too movement is that when you,

take when you have a movement like this in your hands and you sort of control it and you deploy it and you just kind of ruin people's lives or try to get them kicked out of their company or whatever it might be, get kicked out of politics. There is a backlash eventually if you go too far, if you're weaponizing something for political purposes. And that's why I think when I saw the rape allegation and I read a little bit about it,

And I might be totally wrong about this. I have no idea what the answer to this is. But when I read that, I was like, oh, here we go again. This is somebody who's got to pay out. It looks like utter bullshit. It

It seems like bullshit. And why? I don't know if I would think that instinctually in 1995 or 2005. I'm just kind of conditioned at this point because there's been so much politicization of these charges. And it's no surprise that it's Jane Mayer coming out and saying it. And again, people who are hyper-partisan, people who have axes to grind can be right. Jane Mayer can be right about all this stuff. I do not know. I have not done the counter research. Let me tell you something about that.

Yeah. Uh, in that same CBS news report that I was reading from with this latest, you know, Jesse Jane Duff and financial, uh, issues, they summarize that rape allegation in the, on the last page, just to make sure you didn't miss it last month. It was revealed that Hegseth had secretly paid a financial settlement to a woman who had accused him of raping her in 2017 at a Republican women's banquet at the Hyatt Regency in Monterey, California. This

The city of Monterey released its 2017 investigation into Hegseth. The accuser, who has not been publicly named, reported she felt as though she had been drugged and recalled repeatedly saying no while in a hotel room with Hegseth. She alleged that he prevented her from leaving and was on top of her. CBS News does not publicly name individuals who have reported an alleged sexual assault unless that person chooses to publicly identify themselves.

That's a very strange story. I mean, and I think that's it. No, then they say the allegation, according to his lawyer, the allegation was investigated by the police department and they found no evidence for it. They did. Then they point out that they did not bring charges and that he denies it and says it was consensual. There's not this audience knows the details of this case better than anybody right now, because we've done we've gone in depth on this multiple times. None of the exculpatory facts that are laid out in that police report.

None is in there, not a one. And so this is what happens. And my little note reads so unfair. This is what happens to men in particular, right? Like somebody drops a bomb of a report, the original reporting, and then the police report comes out.

You know, honest reporters will go through it and report the stuff that's bad for the person who's accused and the stuff that's good for the person who's accused. And a fair report would tell you both. But what we have here is let's just summarize. And all we'll pick is the stuff that's terrible for Pete.

Oh, he was by the door. None of the stuff that she was seeing. She didn't look drunk to anybody at any point, including her own husband. Her alleged period in which she could have been drunk, drugged was only two hours long. That's not how the date rape drug works. She refused to participate in a pretextual phone call where she called him with police on the line after the fact to ask him about the alleged crime. I mean, on and on. Like there's so many. Three witnesses are she was totally sober. She was on camera, totally sober, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That's not, none of that's in there. Her story, what Pete said,

It was consensual. She told me she was going to tell her husband that she fell asleep and the husband at the same time telling the cops she came home and told me she fell asleep. No, it doesn't get mentioned. It's just not not this person, by the way. It really screws up the incentives. You have no incentive to not attack somebody who you really don't like. Or if you made a mistake and you want to get out of it, there's there's no negative repercussions for you, even if there's exculpatory evidence on Pete Hegseth's side, because you can never be named because we don't do that as journalists.

If you release the name of the accuser, and that's how she should be referred to, not as the victim. We don't know if this person's a victim. This person's claimed she's a victim. The police were not persuaded. She should be the accuser. That's a fair term until there's been a jury verdict. So the accuser, we don't know her name. And therefore, what if this person has accused someone in the past?

That would be a massive development. And so what if you are a man who is out there and knows that you've been accused by Jane Doe

and you know her by her proper name, but you have zero clue that she is now the person accusing Pete Hegseth. And maybe if you heard this person's actual name, you might come forward to say, this person accused me too, and it was total bullshit. Now, I don't know whether any of that could happen here. I'm just saying the fact that we protect the identities of these, quote, victims is entirely unfair to the person being accused, and that's just one way in which

It hampers a guy from offering a full defense. Yeah, there's like an appropriate level of sensitivity that you have to have when dealing with these cases. We all know people who have had their lives decimated by erroneous charges personally. In some cases, that happens in the pages of The New York Times. And it's it's awful and terrible.

And one, I think the most generous thing you can presume is that they're attempting to protect these alleged victims by kind of treading carefully here. But when you only do that in one direction and you hide it,

or obscure anything that might be a sculptor evidence for the accused then you're not doing them a service once it becomes once it hits the headlines and it becomes obvious that their details here to complicate the situation this is a married woman just every incentive if she was actually just having an affair to continually and consistently misrepresented as something else

because obviously it's beneficial to her, especially if she starts to ask for money. Now, is it also the case that an honest victim would do precisely the same thing? Sure it is, but it still matters. And actually being serious and nuanced about this, as opposed to having a hypersensitivity that gives all...

all of the deference to the accuser and presumes essentially the guilt and culpability of the accused, especially if it's someone who happens to get around a lot and might be more likely to stumble across someone who is a nefarious actor in this way, that's wrong. And we really do actually still need to correct the scales with respect to that.

Guess what else is not in this report, Camille, summarizing the alleged rape allegation, the fact that she was married at the time, as you just pointed out, and that the husband was asleep in their hotel room with their two children down the hall, which might give somebody some pause about coming clean on what looks like a booty call and not a rape.

Omitted. If you want to summarize that there's this alleged rape allegation against him, you may as a news organization. But part of the pain in the ass of summarizing a complex case and believe me, I've been there many times is you have to pick and choose which details to use and which to leave out in order to be fair to the person you are besmirching.

and CBS News, it's a fail. And it does lead me to say, this is what I think of everything else you just reported. What else is in there about the fucking finances that you didn't print? What is there about, Jesse Jane Duff, I like Jesse Jane, but I'm just saying, what are you leaving out on your latest allegations? You and Jane Mayer? And this is why, okay, we know that he cheated on the three wives. Maybe that's enough, but

everything outside of that, I'm like, no, this can't be the reason he doesn't get confirmed because this is a corrupt system. I want to point out that the media on this issue, this is not just a kind of close judgment call when you have something like, well, we don't know. They didn't choose to to the police didn't choose to prosecute or arrest him.

This is not just for close calls. I want to point out somebody that has really, really had their lives ruined in a false accusation. And Matt knows this person because he's a huge baseball fan. Trevor Bauer was a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers and he was accused in 2021. In 2020, he won the Cy Young Award. This is not a slouch. This guy has not pitched in the major leagues since. And I want to read you just the first paragraph of an AP story.

after this whole thing blew up and it blew up, not like it wasn't close anymore. A video evidence that,

This one was lying in Arizona. Woman who accused former major league pitcher Trevor Bauer of sexual assault has been charged with defrauding the baseball player. An indictment unsealed Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court charges the woman with fraud, theft by extortion, both felonies, but doesn't provide blah, blah, blah. The next sentence, the Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victim of sexual assault unless they come forward.

publicly. He was vindicated and she was charged with fraud. He went to play in Japan and then I think he just refused a Mexican Winter League contract. He didn't play baseball in the major leagues. Life was destroyed. This woman was charged and they don't name her. Hmm.

Oh my God. We covered the Trevor Bauer. We covered that and how it fell apart. And it was a nightmare, but I did not realize that there was an AP report after she'd been charged, refusing to name her. Holy shit. She said she was accused of sexual assault. And not only the charges are not only that she wasn't, that she wasn't, and she tried to extort him and they still wouldn't name her. It's, it's sickening. The,

The lessons always are that people always respond to incentives. It's the basic economics idea. And also that behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated. And for a long time in the sort of apex of the Me Too movement, there's a lot of people who are rewarded either through making allegations themselves or participating in social media pylon that had to do with allegations.

And you're just rewarded simply by like that, that rush of excitement when you kind of popularize the takedown of a person that you seem is that you think is bad or is famous or something that you sort of suspect is guilty of wrongdoing. And the behavior that gets rewarded, that gets repeated also refers to the way that

the media, uh, handles themselves. It refers to the way that Jane Mayer handles herself, not just with Kavanaugh, but also in her really bad reporting on the Koch brothers back in the day and the way that it's completely the opposite, how she reported on George Soros about the exact same stuff basically. Uh, but it looked all saintly when it came to him. Um, when you have sort of like a partisan coded, uh,

uh, reward structures for people who engage in very one-sided partisan journalism that isn't particularly good journalism, um, then you're going to do it again. It's going to be a single source story, um, that is throwing someone like Mark judge under the bus, uh,

And, uh, and, uh, whatever, you know, you're going to go on to your next Pulitzer. Uh, this is bad. Um, and, and the, the ticket for getting out of that system, um, is by, you know, doing whatever we all can as individuals or people in the media to call out, uh,

Obviously bad and bad faith behavior as it happens, but it also depends on consumers. Like don't reward people who do this, who pass around things they don't know is true, whether or not something happened. They're participating gleefully in the social media pylon, et cetera. Got to stand up and say, hey, look, you don't know this and you might be ruining someone's life. Maybe like slow your roll a little bit.

The, um, this is why I look at this. Like I think about when I practice law and if you try a case and you introduce a bunch of evidence against somebody and then you introduce some sort of a bomb against them,

And it turns out that bomb was inappropriately admitted. Your verdict is going to get thrown out. Even if you had a bunch of other evidence that was valid and could have persuaded the jury to reach a verdict that was in your favor, it's going to get thrown out because if there's something that was introduced and it shouldn't have been, that is prejudicial against the defendant that could have affected the outcome of the verdict, your verdict is going to go away. And that's why like this whole process is so corrupted because

not just against Pete, against, you know, the election against Trump was perverted. Like a lot of these nominees are having this done to them right now.

And with Pete, I feel like, okay, we know about the infidelities. Let's deal with that. Like I'm perfectly willing to have a debate on whether that is a game changer for the department of defense head. But I am, I, I can't have an honest debate with anybody who's going to raise this stuff with me and say, well, I saw it on CBS news. Like, or any Senator who hasn't done his or her homework that wants to try to cross examine Pete in a way that will undoubtedly be very unfair and

And that's why I keep winding up with like, he has to be confirmed. He has to be in the same way Trump had to be elected. He has to be confirmed. The middle finger must be put in place. And if he sucks, he will be fired. I do believe Trump will fire him if he does any of this shit.

While in that position, I think he'll be well supported right underneath the top level as well. I also think I've said this yesterday, I think at the top of DOJ, at the top of FBI or at the top of DOD, we could look to Ron DeSantis. I say it again. We really like he could be of great help to us. This is another guy. He would fit in perfectly here. He knows how to bust shit up and fight. He doesn't care what people write about him in the media, but he's an extremely competent executive and he happens to be a Navy man. So.

Okay. That's, that's where I stand. I think he should be confirmed, but if he can't be, or if we're looking for alternatives, you know, DeSantis is time in Florida is limited. Thanks to term limits. And we could do, we could do a lot worse than him. Uh, that's not about the final word. I'll give you guys the final word. Do you have a better choice? I we've ruled out Moynihan. I,

But anyone else? We did? I'm not ruling them out. I like it. I like it. I'm willing to forgive them. I didn't storm the stage. I just got up there because I thought I had left a dollar bill there that I tried to give one and I gave two. So I had to get up and get it back. Fair. That's totally reasonable. And why that's disqualifying.

Yeah, but OK, really unfair. Very, very unfair. I do like that recommendation, though. It is it is frequently suggested that there are no serious people who like Donald Trump, who who could possibly be appointed. And he's got these kind of rogues gallery of people. I think he's he's just decided that he doesn't really care about the vetting process, but he's not doing himself any favors either.

by going about things this way. There are almost certainly better appointments that he could make in a couple of instances. People who are less controversial would still potentially, presumably, be loyal to him and not undermine him personally, but would also just be better at governing these institutions, these really important, massively consequential institutions who have a more, let's say,

more evidence on their CV that they're actually well-suited for the job as opposed to combat experience, obviously important.

Your educational pedigree, obviously important, but it matters if you've worked in and around these institutions in some way, shape, or form because they are bizarre and strange. You don't want it only to be staffed with creatures from the inside, but there are almost certainly some better choices here. And I think the Trump administration should probably give that some consideration. I think the person you need for this job...

I don't like, I think it's kind of a gimmick to focus on DEI and if anyone listens to

to the fifth column, they know that this is not stuff that we appreciate in any way. As a matter of fact, we loathe it. But I think that's a kind of small percentage of what needs to be done at DOD, obviously. I think what you need is, I mean, some of the combat experience, of course. I mean, all of this stuff makes sense to me. But Megan, you have been doing the show for a very long time. You've been a journalist for a very long time. And your eyes popped out of your head when you read

850 billion, as Matt pointed out, surely an undercount. The person who goes into DOD needs to be the person that goes in there and trims the fat and says, there's a lot of bad spending here and we need to kind of make this a leaner machine. I think that's the thing that, and you know, I don't think Pete Hegseth

is the guy to do that. No offense to him. I mean, my pick would be not somebody who wrote a book that excoriates DOD for being too woke or something. I think it's just somebody that needs to go in there and stop the never-ending growth

of that department. It just, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger every year. And now we have Republicans actually, because Republicans always say we want to cut government, but not DOD. That was always, the military was always a piece apart. And now we have a Republican party who doesn't think that way. So someone going in there with a, with a scalpel or a sledgehammer, it seems like a better choice to me. Yeah. The, uh, uh,

He would never do this for reasons that will become immediately obvious, but an actually good pick would be our friend and former guest in the fifth column, Peter Meyer, former Republican congressman. He did vote for Trump's second impeachment. So Trump is never going to do anything except have him taste his- It's not realistic, though.

Taste his boot. But a young guy who has served, has spent a crucial time in Afghanistan, including he did some heroic stuff with Seth Moulton, if I'm not mistaken, in Afghanistan, trying to get people out during the debacle. He's annoying.

There's somebody on the Democratic side who's kind of coming towards your position. Don't be mean to him. No, he can F right off. No, he isn't. First of all, he created all the conditions that he's now complaining about. He voted for all the shit that mandated the boys and the girls sports. It's thanks to him that he has to worry about his daughter's situation. Maybe he was out on a walk in Nantucket and he was like, I see the mistake of my ways.

Seth Bolton, you're not forgiven. If you want to come on the Megyn Kelly show, it's on. Let's do this, my friend. Under pressure from the left, he's already walking it back, being like, I didn't say

say that we should change anything. I just said we should be talking. We should be talking about it. He lost all his courage when he left the battlefield. I'm sorry. Don't be wrong, Steph Moulton. Come on. Not just that he should come on, but that we all should go together because we have some friends there to Salem, Massachusetts. Let's do a live witch trial with Seth Moulton, Megyn Kelly, and the best callers. The trial of Seth Moulton. Yes.

Just so many bad Moynihan accents. Oh my God. You could do weird. I'm going to start it just like this. I'm going to start it with,

I never liked you. I never liked you. Yes, yes. Honestly, Meg, the next time we record together in person, now that we know this is a thing, like we're drinking. Like at least... Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're very offended when you drank with our friends from Red Scare and not with us. Yes. I know. Next time you're in person, it's happening. We owe you an apology. We'll have the Doug Brunt special. He loves to make the martinis. I gotta go. It's good. Okay.

We'll see you in Salem next month. All right. Thanks Megan. Bye. And thanks to all of our listeners for spending the time with us today. We appreciate it. Don't forget to tune in tomorrow where we're also going to have some amazing guests. We'll find out together who it is. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

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