Elon and Vivek Prepare to Lead DOGE, Pete Hegseth to Pentagon, and Trump Goes to White House, with Bill Ackman | Ep. 943
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show. President-elect Donald Trump is in Washington, D.C. today. It's all happening. Meeting with President Joe Biden. I mean, imagine that. God, to be a fly on the wall for the whole thing. I mean, we will. We will be able to see it, but to actually be there. And he's also going to meet with Congress. And he keeps making picks for his next administration. And they're so fun. It's so fun to watch people melt down over them.

Last night, he announced Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, the co-host of Fox & Friends weekend. I have to say, I love this. Pete Hegseth is a great guy. I love Pete Hegseth. But Pete Hegseth was not getting any airtime at Fox News. And Tom Lowell, my old EP, and I put him on my show and went to Roger and said, this guy is incredible. You need to make him

a contributor. And Roger was like, who? We're like, this guy, he served in Afghanistan. He served in Iraq. He's great looking. He's great sounding. He's smart. He's also got an Ivy league pedigree. We need to scoop him up before somebody else scoops him up. And he did it. I'm feeling like I have a very good record on this. I, I,

helped make Ben Shapiro a star, Buck Sexton, Pete Hegson. I'm feeling really good today. In any event, they're really upset about Pete. I'm not. I was surprised at first, but I'm actually really excited about it the more I think about it. And we'll talk about it today. Today, we've got someone on the full show who's making his very first appearance here, someone I've wanted to bring to you for more than a year now. And his name is Bill Ackman.

He's an extremely successful hedge fund manager, reportedly worth about $9 billion, who became a household name after he began speaking out against the anti-Israel insanity that unleashed on our college campuses last fall after the terrorist attack on Israel. Remember the blame Israel crowd? I mean, on 10-7, these people were blaming Israel. Uh,

This year, he had a political evolution of sorts and wound up endorsing Donald Trump. He gave 33 reasons why, including the open border, economic issues, and the withdrawal from Afghanistan and how disastrous it was under Joe Biden, echoing the common sense issues many Americans also had on their minds when they voted for Trump. He is the CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management and the co-trustee of the Pershing Square Foundation. Bill Ackman joins me now.

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Bill, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Great. Great to have you. So it's super fun to watch Trump name these names to the cabinet. And I don't know about you, but I'm I'm loving it. I think it's just so innovative to go completely Trumpian, just completely.

Just keep people on their heels. Do not go with establishment types like he tried to do the first time. And I see absolutely nothing wrong with him going with Trump loyalists, but that term keeps getting bandied about as though it's a bad thing. Actually, I think it's, I call it the dream team. I'm really super impressed. We have Elon Musk. We have a good friend of mine, Vivek Ramaswamy, who's incredibly talented. I'd love all these. I've actually been super impressed with all the picks so far.

The New York Times, the daily podcast today and the New York Times itself is really wrestling with Elon's elevation to the right hand man of the sitting president elect. They don't seem happy. I feel like you should look at somebody like Elon who's willing to serve in any capacity for our government and just say thank you.

But they are concerned. He's got 100 different lawsuits against him. How is he going to deal with those conflicts of interest? He's got all sorts of regulatory constrictions on him that are important to our safety. You know, why can't how can he possibly be in this important role? What do you make of Elon being willing to serve as he is?

I think he's a great American. I think he's a great global citizen. You know, if you have to think of a guy who's made more consequential impact on society, on everything from the electric car to space to now Neuralink, AI, he's, I would say, the most important figure of our time.

in the non-political sphere. And now we have the benefit of all of his talents, you know, working alongside the president. I mean, it's an incredible home run. I have not been this excited to be, you know, an American, if you will, in a very long time. And so it's amazing.

Yeah, I feel the same. And so what they announced last night was that Elon and Vivek are going to work together on Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, and start trying to find efficiencies in the biggest business of them all, the United States government, and figure out where we can tighten our belt and save some money.

And yet, you know, sort of the established Washington, D.C. class is very upset about this because it means jobs of federal bureaucrats. And that's what runs D.C. So what do you make of this idea of Doge? Trump says in the announcement it's going to be completely outside government. These two will not be government employees.

Yeah, I think it's a home run. I've always thought of the United States as one of the greatest. My day job is to find these really great companies that have lost their way. And then what we try to do is bring in great new management and have them fix the business. And that's basically what's happening here. And they're not going to have to look far. And everyone knows the government is the most ineffective bureaucracy in the world. Governments generally. Ours is not particularly effective.

impressed us as citizens. And now we have an opportunity not just to find cost savings, but actually to operate more effectively. The analogy that Musk makes is he says, think of the government

uh, you know, as just a, you know, when you go get your license, you know, updated, think about how inefficient that process is. Well, imagine the entire country being run that way. And I think that's the opportunity and having sort of outsiders do this. You know, Elon certainly has the playbook. You know, X was a quasi governmental, uh,

and the way it operated in San Francisco. And he stepped in, he took out 80, 90% of the employees and it's become a much more effective platform, software development, the various features, functionality, have been able to happen much more quickly under new leadership. And I think that's what we have here. And so I think it's gonna be a huge boon for the economy, for business generally. And that will help everyone. Yeah.

When we saw, uh, Javier Millet run for, and then ascend to power in Argentina, a lot of us were shocked by how he spoke and the things he did with the chainsaw that he was going to take to government and highly entertaining. Here he is with his chainsaw. And, um,

Look at this guy. I love him. So I have friends who are from Argentina and they're absolutely thrilled with what he's doing. And he told everybody there we're in for some short-term pain as we try to get our enormous inflation down. But these are the things we have to do. Here he is. This is video for the listening audience of him pulling these names off a board, the ministry of this ministry of that and throwing them behind him. We don't need it. It's down. It's out.

And that's how I see Elon and Vivek, you know, who are supposed to go in there and Javier, Javier Mille, our government. I had the advantage of being next to Elon in September when he spoke on the all in podcast, um, at their summit. And I too was there and spoke on the same thing. Um,

And he was describing what it was he would like to do if this whole thing worked out, if Trump were elected and if he could form this Doge thing. Take a listen here to Sat 10. If you could just pair two, three, four, five percent of those organizations, what kind of impact would that have? Yeah, I mean, I think we'd need to do more than that, I think. Ideally, if you could shrink the size of the government with Trump, what would be a good target?

Just in terms of, like, ballpark. I mean, are you trying to get me assassinated before this even happens? No, no. Pick a low number. I mean, you know, there's that old phrase, go postal. I mean, it's like their minds. It's just that people, you know, have, like, immediately tossed out with no severance and, you know, now can't pay their mortgage. Then you see some reasonable off-ramp where...

Yeah. Yeah. So a reasonable off ramp where, you know, they're still, you know, earning, they're still receiving money, but have like, I don't know, a year or two to find jobs in the private sector, which they will find. And then they will be in a different operating system. So you heard him, Bill, say in response to Jason, who said two, three, four percent. And Elon said, oh, it's going to be more than that. So how high do you think we could go on shaving the bureaucracy?

I think there's a massive amount of waste. And I think you're going to see fairly dramatic change. And I think it'll be incredibly uplifting for the people who stay. And I think it'll be uplifting for the people who have the opportunity to do something new. As he said, I think they're going to be quite generous with severance, making sure that people can transition to the private sector. So I think it's going to be good for everyone. Yeah. What do you make of that? Because the last thing Trump wants 100 days into his administration is a

massive layoffs that run up the unemployment rate and make them look bad. So he's not going to want that narrative in the press, even though he will want these efficiencies. So how would you recommend they handle the offloading of these federal employees?

Sure. So what's interesting is you don't want to give people a disincentive to find a job, right? If you just hand everyone two years severance, some people may say, okay, I'll take the next 20 months to just have fun. I'll go look for a job. And then it becomes hard to get a job at the end of that. So I think the right approach is to give enough severance so people are absolutely covered between this job and the next one.

And then basically pay it to them over time. But when they find a job, pay them the balance of the severance. Let's say they give it a year of severance. Someone finds a job a month after leaving government. Well, then they get 11 months of salary as a bonus. People are incentivized to find severance.

their next job. And I think you have job training. And then of course, there are a lot of people in government where you could probably just instead of severance, you allow them to begin the retirement process early. And government employees are very well taken care of in terms of pension.

I like that. That makes sense and is less scary for those worried that it might be their next on the chopping block. But we all know there are too many employees, that we have 20 people to do the job of one, and they're counting on no one paying attention to how inefficient the government is. That's...

it's baked into the system that no one's going to be looking at just how much red tape there is and how many people we have enforcing it and how useless it is and worse than useless. It's pernicious. It stops development. It stops business. One more Elon clip. And then I want to talk about a post you, you made on X today. He explained with SpaceX how impossible the regulatory system makes it.

and really kind of said, at this rate, we're never going to colonize Mars, which is one of his life goals. We're never going to get there. Because when it comes to building rockets and so on, it's just absolutely prohibitive what they make innovators go through. Here was his example in SOC 27. The next flight of Starship is ready to fly. We are waiting for regulatory approval. LAUGHTER

You know, it really should not be possible to build a giant rocket faster than the paper can move from one desk to another. I mean, it's perfectly well said. And he talked just about other problems he had, like one of the rockets dumped water. I think it was potable water. You know, it was drinkable water on the desert as a release valve.

And he got fined like $35,000 for that and went to them and said, what are you doing? You know, I'm trying to innovate. I'm working with the government. I've been used by NASA to resupply the space station. Get off of my back. And they won't. It's just those are all great examples of A, why we need reform and B, what drove him here. So what do you make of it?

Look, I think actually just getting back to what you talked about before, the context for the efficiency creation in government is one in which I think there's going to be a huge boon in the economy. I think what's interesting is I'm hearing from friends who control a lot of assets, invest in lots of operating companies, that the management teams of their businesses are extremely optimistic. Even those that voted against Trump are

are excited about what's going to happen with the economy. So I think we're going to have a big economic boom. And actually freeing up a meaningful number of government employees to make them available to the private sector will actually help manage the potential for inflation. So the cost cutting is one thing, but making the government more efficient on regulatory approvals. You think about how difficult it is in America to build a bridge, a highway, a house, a

And, you know, the faster if you can accelerate construction, obviously, that has a huge impact on infrastructure, the fluidity of the economy, driving demand. And actually, I think freeing up government workers to step into some of these roles that will be created will actually help the economy manage through this period.

It could really change their lives, too, for the better. It'd be so exciting to work for one of these innovative companies, hiring new blood. These people have been stuck in these concrete jungles in the circles of D.C. And maybe it's a new leaf for them, too. You wrote in that ex-post to which I referred and you mentioned that merger and acquisition activity is about to explode. Do you think so?

Yes. So the Biden administration has been, and Lina Khan, who's led the FTC, very anti sort of merger. And the result of that is, you know, many of the startups in our country don't get to a scale where they can go public. They have to be basically sold.

If you don't allow the Facebooks and the Googles and the other companies to make acquisitions, these businesses eventually either run out of capital or run out of opportunity. There are a lot of big companies where meaningful synergies can be created when one business buys another, but if you can't do a deal, you have to put it on hold. The antitrust environment in the last four years was one in which

you wouldn't even try to do a transaction. I think that's going to change. And so there's sort of a long list of transactions that are waiting to happen in the event there's a change in administration. And now that post-November 5th, you'll see very aggressive announcements. And the benefit of a merger beyond just the synergies is that often it's an opportunity for the people who invested in the first company, the company being acquired, to take their capital and redeploy it in something else. It's going to free a lot of capital in the economy. That's going to put money

into the, you know, in the system that's going to fuel growth, you know, so it's going to be a pretty exciting time for the country, for sure. What are, what are you hearing about non-U.S. companies looking at America right now?

I think they're frightened, I guess I would say. They're frightened to the extent they don't have a presence in the United States. The US is going to be the best economy. We really are one of the best economies in the world right now, certainly the best large economy in the world. China is in a lot of trouble. This whole European continent is really struggling. We're the best economy, and that's going to change in an even more positive way.

And Trump, as we know, is very America first. And if you don't have a presence here, you're at risk of tariffs being put on your goods. So we're hearing foreign companies that don't have a presence here looking for an ability to immediately have a presence so that they're not locked out of the U.S. economy. And that, of course, is also going to bring jobs here and drive growth.

Hmm. We saw an announcement right after Trump won that certain companies, Steve Madden was one, but he wasn't the only one, um, had already decided that they would not build a plant in China as they'd been considering doing. Now that particular company didn't say, I'll build it in the United States. He went to another country, but it wasn't one of our enemies. It wasn't somebody who's actively working against us like the Chinese are. So that was a, a bit of good news too. I wonder how many more

U.S. companies like that or even foreign companies like that will maybe they won't move to the to the states to build their companies, but they'll avoid enriching one of our enemies. And that, too, is a is a plus for us.

Yeah, look, I'm very, very bullish on the Trump administration, as I think is the entire business community. And business is sort of a confidence game. When people lose confidence, they don't hire people, they don't make investments, they decide not to build the next factory, build the next building. All of that is the opposite is happening. People are actually hiring people in anticipation of growth. They're making, they're increasing their

you know, estimates of what the revenues will be in the next 12 months. And that has a very powerful self-fulfilling effect. So, you know, you're seeing interesting things, obviously, on the economy. You're also seeing our enemies, you know, Iran, I just read this morning, is tabled their response to Israel and is talking about, you know, a negotiation with the U.S. I mean, it just shows the importance of having strength in the White House.

Mm hmm. What what do you make of have you given any thought to Trump's tariff proposals? Because those have been controversial with some in the business community and some people got burned by I mean, I remember some agriculture workers saying that the tariffs he had in place first time around really hurt them, some farmers. So but, you know, this is crux, a critical piece of his plan. So what do you make of his proposed tariffs?

Sure. I think Trump used tariffs. I think you have to think about the context, right? The context was World War II, the rest of the world was decimated. And Marshall Plan, we helped rebuild Europe. You know, Japan had to recover from, you know, the destruction of the war. And all of these governments put in place tariffs to kind of protect their home markets. And that allowed, you know, their economies to recover. That allowed Japan to develop an auto industry.

And now what's interesting is those tariffs stayed in place even when Japan became one of the most successful, built one of the most successful auto industries in the world. And Europe, if you think about BMW, Mercedes, and all the various very successful auto companies in Europe, they've had the benefit of tariffs versus the US. And that goes for everything from food and wine and so on and so forth. And I think the United States has been a very open market to the rest of the world. And I think Trump's view is

look, if they're going to use tariffs, we should too. And let's use tariffs as a way to make the world get rid of terrorists that are out there. So I think it's a very important negotiating tool. And I think it'll be very effective in using it. Now, there's risk associated with tariffs, right? If the response to more tariffs from the US is that the foreign governments decide to put even more tariffs on their own,

own home markets you can get into sort of a downward spiral which is very negative for the economy but i think he's pretty smart and sophisticated i think he'll have a very capable team working with him uh so i'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and uh you know his goal of course look i think president trump's goal fundamentally is to be one of the great it's to be the greatest president of all time right that has to be his ambition and you know obviously the economy is you know if not the most important you know certainly one or two and uh

I would say it's probably the most important issue and it's something he knows a lot about and he's going to build a very capable team. And I'm just confident he's going to execute well. Well, I know you have been a registered Democrat for most, if not all of your adult life. And when you said, but I'm voting for Donald Trump this time, one of the things you pointed out was.

If you wanted to destroy this country, one of the things you would do is open the borders. You would just let this influx of migrants come into the country, come into the cities. And while we talk a lot about illegal immigration on this show and elsewhere,

It's different when you actually go, you zoom into a community, Springfield, Ohio was one during this election cycle, but there are many others and see how that influx is actually changing the way people live without their consent or approval. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's a problem. You know, we have a very small version of that in New York city where I lived, but it's, you know, 200,000 people in a city of 11 million.

Springfield, I think, was 20,000 people in a city of 40,000. So obviously, but even in New York, it's had a very significant impact.

Did you see what Mayor Adams said today or yesterday? I think it was where he said he's not ruling out working with the Trump administration to try to deal with this problem. New York is overwhelmed. There are way too many illegal immigrants. We already have our problems. It's not like New York was running super efficiently prior to all these buses and flights bringing all these illegal aliens up here.

The interesting thing is that this is arguably, I certainly believe it to be the best place, best country in the world. And you see how many millions of people want to come here. And when you have the opportunity of millions of people coming to your country, and actually immigration is important for growth, for bringing in talent, and so on and so forth, you want to have policies that let in the people you want to let in. And in fact, the way our policies work today, my wife runs a really interesting company, and she has a very talented collection of

of MIT PhDs that she used to teach when she was a professor. Now she's hired many of them, but many of them are from Germany, other places around the world, and just the challenges in trying to get these incredibly well-educated, educated in America, brilliant minds. Obviously, no criminal records. They're going to help advance our society. It's hard to take a year or two, if not more, to bring them into the country if you can do so. Meanwhile, we've allowed...

sort of unvetted people walk across the border. And then we provide subsidies when they get here. So it's the reverse of a sensible immigration policy. We should take advantage of the fact that this is an incredibly desirable country and we should pick and choose the right people and we should vet them carefully. And we need to, I mean, one of the things we're hoping from Doge, if you will, if you went to MIT, you don't have a criminal record,

and you've got a job at an interesting company in the United States, or you want to build a business here, it should be a 30-day process to vet you. It shouldn't be a year or two years. We should make it really, really easy for the best and brightest to come to America. And we should make it difficult for criminals to cross the border. If not, we should make it impossible.

Tom is our man. Tom Homan and Steve Miller are going to get that done. I guess under the leadership of Kristi Noem, I will tell the audience the truth. I'm not her biggest fan. I've had her on the show, found her absolutely delightful. And then a couple of things hit that really changed my opinion on her. But I will say this.

I don't care about my personal feelings toward Kristi Noem and my own opinion of what kind of a person she is. She's now going to be given one of the most important jobs in the country, and therefore we have to support her and root for her because DHS is big. I mean, it is big. That's a huge, huge responsibility. And, you know, you look at

anything would be an improvement over Mayorkas. And I think she is loyal to Trump. She'll work with Trump. She won't push back on his agenda. She's not going to have her own set of priorities. She's going to enact his, and he has made very clear what he wants to happen when it comes to immigration. Let me ask you this, um, bill, as you mentioned, like your wife's connections with people who went to MIT and are in Germany or German, what have you, you look around the world, you look at Germany, you look at France,

the UK, and you see the influx, just the absolute influx of migrants from the Arab world, and you see their cultures radically changing. Many of these men in particular, but families in some cases, won't assimilate and have zero desire to. And we've had people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali write books and papers and speaking out about this for a long time saying, continue this way at your own peril.

because you really don't have your country the way you thought you did. And that became very clear after 10-7 in all of these countries, including our own. So how does that resonate with you as a Jewish man who's been very outspoken on the blowback, the blaming of Jews in the wake of the 10-7 attack and the outpouring of support for not just the Palestinians, but for Hamas, even in our own country?

Yeah, look, it's been a kind of a wake-up call, I think, for the entire country. You know, Jews are 0.2% of the global population. And when a country, you know, sort of attacks Jews, it's usually a very bad warning sign. And it went very quickly from sort of anti-Israel to anti-Semitism. And then it became anti-Americanism. You know, on college campuses, they were, you know, putting up, you know, holding Hamas flags and burning American flags. And so...

Obviously, very disconcerting about some of the youth in our country. With respect to Muslim immigration in Europe, I think you look at what's going on in Amsterdam, continuing to happen since a soccer game between an Israeli team and a local team, and people being beaten up on the streets.

And the police really doing nothing. And I think, you know, on the anniversary or within a day of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, which was a, you know, I would say the beginnings of the Nazi destruction of the Jews and during World War Two. So, you know, these are obviously disconcerting things for, you know, Christians.

someone comes of Jewish origin. Uh, but I would say very disconcerting for someone who's an American, um, because, uh, you know, it starts with the Jews and then unfortunately it expands to, uh, to other groups. And it really is representative of, uh, a group of people in the country that, uh, don't love our country. And, uh,

And that's not, you don't want to import into your country people who hate your country. That is the beginning of the end. And I think Ayaan and Douglas Murray, I don't know if you know, if you follow him. Yes, I love Douglas. Yes. He's amazing. One of the greatest minds alive.

We had the opportunity to have dinner with him a couple of nights ago. And seven years ago, he wrote a book about the death of Europe, basically. And this was his warning. So I think immigration policies globally are going to be rethought. You look at what's happened to Sweden in terms of crime rates and the crimes and unfortunately, the rapes and so on. They're still in denial.

Can I tell you something, Bill? We went on two family vacations over the past year. One, it was to the Netherlands and we went to Sweden. They're still in denial. I mean, we asked everybody about what consequence there's been to the influx of immigrants. No, it's fine. We love immigrants. We love immigration. You know, that's the kind of country I'm like, okay, we'll see how that goes for you. And then a year earlier than that, we went to Amsterdam. And it's just crazy to see what you just referred to, this attack, this

on Israelis there to support a soccer team. When we were there, which was two years ago, it was November two years ago, they still actively talked about the shame they had in what happened leading up to the Holocaust and then not protecting Jews better. And they had a Holocaust memorial that they really were very proud of because they wanted to show sort of a tone. It's of course where Anne Frank hid out and was ultimately found

There's a long history in that particular region when it comes to the mistreatment of Jews, and they seemed to actively feel burdened by it. And then you see this, and the response has been really just pretty feckless. And I wonder, why do you think that is? Do you think that's a migrant problem? What is happening?

You know, I think you look at my wake up call, of course, was actually not October 7th, but October 8th. On October 8th, 34 Harvard student organizations put out a letter basically saying in the morning after and during a period where there were still terrorists on Israeli soil, basically saying Israel was solely responsible for the acts of Hamas.

And to take the side of terrorists after one of the most vile, certainly the most vile terrorist activity in probably in our lifetime, is

you know, sent a very bad message about what students are learning on campus. And that really led me to kind of a deep dive of, you know, what is the origin of this sort of point of view? And when I spent time at the Harvard campus talking to faculty, they said, look, Billis comes from really this DEI ideology. And I'm like, what? DEI has to do with

um, you know, Israel. And, uh, they explained to me this whole, you know, that kids are basically taught this framework where, you know, you have to think about the world. There are two kinds of people. There are oppressors and these are basically the successful people. Uh, and then they're, they oppressed. And those are people that the successful people became successful by oppressing. And, uh, in fact, people interpret American history this way. And in some places, American history is taught this way. And, uh, you know, it just shows the importance of

making sure your kids are learning the facts and not being taught an ideology that ultimately is very, very harmful. But when you believe that kind of ideology, you take the side always of quote unquote people, take the side against successful people, sort of an anti-Mercatocratic ideology. And America is this built on a meritocracy.

So it's really an anti-American idea. It's been fascinating to be where I am watching you sort of come out on these issues and come to grapple with the DEI program. I mean, I think you would admit conservatives were onto this a long time prior, and many of us have been railing about it. I was super late to the party. My first kind of...

You know, Vivek, who was a friend of mine, gave me a draft of his book, Woke Inc. And I read it and it really resonated with me. I actually gave him a blurb for the back cover and people were kind of surprised. Bill, you gave a blurb to the back of Woke Inc. But it really wasn't until the events on campus after October 7th that I realized.

the degree of harm that can come from what is actually fundamentally like this neo-Marxist ideology. And it's interesting how successful countries, ultimately, if you look at what's going on in universities, universities become very left wing in America. The Harvard campus, 2% of the faculty-

An anonymous survey admitted that they were conservative and they had to do an anonymous survey because they couldn't admit it in a public forum. 98% were left or far left. And if that's the backdrop, you know, and you're teaching young minds, you're going to install a certain ideology in their point of view. And it requires a very strong young person to learn in that environment and have different views. Yeah.

I do feel hopeful. I want to talk more about the universities. I do feel hopeful though. I mean, I've been seeing so many videos online of young people, college age people, male and female with the MAGA hats on dancing, celebrating. MAGA is cool to

being a Republican right now is cool in a way it hasn't been for a very long time. And I do wonder any, and also being subversive is fun. You know, the, the more crap you get for putting on the red hat, the more attractive it can be, especially to young people. And so I really do wonder whether that filters into the Ivy league or

It's a certain kind of person that gets into the Ivy League. They are diligent. They're very hardworking. They're usually very, very bright, though not in all cases. And they're used to following rules and seeking approval. I don't know that the subversive type gets attracted to the Ivy League, but it will be interesting to see if they more and more do go to these institutions and enjoy stirring the pot a bit. What do you think?

I think if you've listened to President Trump speak about his plans for higher education, and I think universities are going to have to broaden perspectives

You're already seeing this at places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, where the alumni base is withholding donations because they're concerned about the ideologies that have developed on campus. So there's some combination of financial pressure, alumni pressure, litigation as they have not provided a safe environment for their student bodies. They've allowed sort of anti-Semitism to emerge. Elise Stefanik, who's now going to be at the UN, has really been a very powerful advocate for kind of fixing-

Yeah, she's amazing about fixing the problems on campus. So I think we bottomed, I would say, sometime around October 7th, October 8th. And I think the country's made a huge recovery. I think for Trump to get not just a windfall in California,

you know, the states, but also, you know, for public control of the Senate, public control of Congress, as well as a mandate in terms of a majority of the American people voting them into office. I think, you know, we haven't seen something like this for, you know, many decades. And I think that, you know,

I would say the left has been very quiet with the last eight days or so, which I think is interesting. I think hopefully it's a wake-up call for everyone. Then of course, markets have done very well and markets uplift many people, whether you're a pensioner or whether you're an active person on Wall Street. I think that lifts the mood certainly because the stronger markets, stronger economy will help everyone.

The Trump plan for universities, he's been laying them out over time. This one, this clip is from November 2023. He hasn't said anything different than this, so I think this is still what he plans, but this is what he said about it in part. Take a listen, South 13. Americans have been horrified to see students and faculty at Harvard and other once respected universities expressing support for the savages and jihadists who attacked Israel.

We spend more money on higher education than any other country, and yet they're turning our students into communists and terrorists and sympathizers. Under the plan I'm announcing today, we will take the billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments.

and we will then use that money to endow a new institution called the American Academy. Its mission will be to make a truly world-class education available to every American free of charge and do it without adding a single dime to the federal debt. It will be strictly nonpolitical, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed. What do you make of that, to tax the private endowments? That's getting more and more steam. Yeah, look, I think it...

If you think about it, I'll use my Harvard example. Harvard gets huge subsidies from taxpayers. One is the tax exemption, which of course is enormously valuable to Harvard. It's enabled them to generate billions of dollars. So effectively, when you think about a tax exemption, it means the entire country is paying for the education that's taking place on the Harvard campus.

And that sort of nonprofit status, I think, confers certain responsibilities, right? If the entire country is supporting a university, the university only represents one political ideology. That doesn't make sense. You would argue if you want to be a private university and adopt a particular ideology, then fine, be private. And private means no funding from taxpayers. So I think there's a real logic to it. The other thing he said in there was that these universities are turning our students into communists.

And you actually have some experience with that too, on a personal level, as far as I read, with your own daughter. Can you talk about that? Because I've told this audience before, I am not a billionaire, but I do know a lot of them. And a lot of them have told me the story of their kids going off to college and they typically go to these great schools, you know, quote, great. And they come home within a year or a semester and

Loathing the parents, loathing the parents' wealth while they're riding on the private jet, ripping on the dad for earning it. You know, just they get turned. Loving children get turned against the country and their parents by these so-called great universities.

Yeah, look, I think there's some truth to that. I mean, unfortunately I've got a wonderful relationship with my girls. I've got four of them. Um, but my, my oldest was a social studies major at Harvard and the social studies department really has become the Marxist department at the school. And she studied Marx. Um, and, uh,

adorno and a bunch of other sort of philosophers and you know over uh thanksgiving we you know we'd be talking about i'd talk about something if you will capitalistic and she'd have an incredibly negative reaction there was a period there where she would you know leave the table incredibly upset at her father for

questioning some of the ideology she had learned on campus. Now, I would say the good news is that's worn off a bit as she's had to operate in the real world. But I do think I didn't understand it again until post-October 7th, and I had a better understanding of what's being taught in school. So it's not a, I thought it was, I didn't really believe it to be true until I saw the outcome.

- Are you surprised that we haven't had

And forgive me because I've seen different stats on this. I've been checking since a week ago to see how the Jewish vote went. And people I trust have said, oh, Jews went more for Trump. But then when I look at the actual data, the data doesn't support that, what I've seen, that they did not go more for Trump. At least he's always had the more Orthodox Jewish community behind him. They're more conservative. But the more liberal Jews do not seem to have migrated over to Trump in any significant fashion, of course, according to what I last looked up on the data.

Why not? You know, what's interesting is, and I think of particular examples of people that I know that, you know, they watch MSNBC.

They read the New York Times. They live in a very sort of they're in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their friends, you know, read the same newspapers and follow the same media. And they become really indoctrinated. And actually, what's interesting is many, many of these people are, I would say, Jewish by, you know, their mother was Jewish. But their their new religion is sort of progressive Jewish.

politics. And, you know, it's interesting in America, what's happened is, I think people like to belong to something. And people today, belonging to a political party can have more, you know, instead of going to a temple or church, you know, once a week, they go listen to, you know, their favorite, you know, media to speak about, you know, what they should believe. And when you

You know, it's like being part of a cult. It's really remarkable. So I do think there's some subset of people, that's why they're so shocked by the election outcome. And I think, you know, mainstream media is suffering.

Uh, and you've seen, I saw some interesting statistics on CNN viewership down 40% since the election Fox up 60% since the election, something like this, but actually the general trends are, are X is taking more and more share and podcasts are taking more and more share. Cause I think the public and one of the big wake up calls for me, I, I for years believed that Trump had said that, you know, the good people on both sides included the Nazis and, uh,

you know quote white nationalists and when you actually watch the entire clip of what he actually said he said explicitly the opposite and that was a major wake-up call where i held a belief for years on the basis of something i saw on you know probably cnn um and you know i i've been sort of more uh you know x has become my principal source of

of media and it's citizen journalism, it's podcasts, and then it's actually watching the entire video clip as opposed to something that's excerpted in a way to cause you to come to a certain conclusion. I mean, the most perhaps dramatic example of that during the election was the 60 Minutes interview

of Kamala. And that's still, you know, the transcript is still not seeing the light of day. But 60 Minutes basically destroyed their credibility to help advance a political candidate. And that, you know, I think the people now realize what's what's happened. I think this election is a great example of that. It's I don't know what made the difference between you and everyone else, because that's exactly right. And of course, people on, you know, more

my side of the aisle, I'm a registered independent, but I voted Republican. I supported Trump, have been seeing this for a long time, right? And we're immersed. I, of course, spent 13 years at Fox. And this is kind of what we do over at Fox and conservative media. We keep an eye on the other side and we try to remind people not to trust them for very good reason. But so what

I look at you, Bill, and I think, how did you get out? It was 10-7, I guess, because so many people don't get out of that brainwashing that they give to you, not just at MS, but at CNN as well, as you know, and walk away believing the very fine people. And I'll give you one example on that. When I went to NBC, my very short stint there,

Trump said that comment while I was over there and I was giving an interview, you know, as, as myself to, I think it was USA Today. I'm trying to remember the publication to promote my show.

And the reporter asked me about that. Like, how could he say very fine people on both sides? And I said, that's not what he said. He, he made clear he wasn't talking to him. And the NBC PR person jumped right in and said, he said it that there's, we don't really want to get into that. And I remember looking at her like, what, what do you do? First of all, I don't need your protection, but is it that important to you that that narrative get

forwarded, you know, get advanced? And the answer is yes. So do you think it all came down to 10-7 for you that like that you got out of the brainwashing? Actually, I give so I big believer in free speech actually invested with Elon in Twitter when he took it private. You know, he put up whatever 30 billion. I put up 10 million. So it was more of a symbolic, you know, support for free speech.

And I think, by the way, it's going to end up being a good investment. A lot of people have knocked Elon for throwing away $20 billion or whatever the number is. But I wasn't really focused on making a profit. I wanted to be just sort of symbolically supportive of free speech. And I think what's happened, I think this is sort of a...

In order for mainstream media to survive, they're going to have to move to providing the truth to their audience. I really believe that. Interesting, this morning, the owner of the LA Times said,

announced that he was basically firing the entire editorial board to bring in a more diverse editorial board. He said, look, the American people have spoken in the election. They want to hear more. They want broader sort of viewpoints. And the beauty of X is that you can, I try to follow people on climate. I follow people who are quote unquote climate deniers. And I follow people who are, you know, believe quote unquote in climate change and on every sort of issue, whether it's

vaccines, you know, all the controversial issues of the day, you can find very thoughtful people expressing their arguments on both sides of an issue. And I, you know, I think the algorithm has some trouble with me because I can't quite figure out who I am, but I do think how to get to the truth, you listen to the most thoughtful, intelligent people who make their case on one side of an issue and, and the people on the other side. And then, you know, I think, so I've been using X as a,

as a vehicle to get to the truth. And actually it's quite helpful in my business. I had some insights on everything from, you know, I was aware of the impact of COVID would have on markets before, you know, weeks before the rest of the world. And when you know more than the rest of the world, a few weeks in advance, you can do very, very well. And the same thing was true on the feds move on interest rates. So it's actually, you know,

I still read the Wall Street Journal, the FT, Skim the Times, Economist, and other sort of publications, but I've really broadened my sources of media and I try to find empirical sources.

uh sources uh and uh you know i was on lex friedman uh i don't know i'm sure you probably know lex yeah i thought you know trump should do a long form podcast and i was very happy to see him do lex and of course joe rogan and that of course i think played a very significant role because people have been hearing all the stuff about trump uh as translated and excerpted through uh the media and then they got to see him unscripted for three hours and they got a better sense of who he was this person

That's exactly right. I completely agree with everything you said on X. Elon's changed the world with that. I mean, he's truly, he's opened up conversation in a way it wasn't available to any of us in that large a forum prior to him owning it. I mean, and you need look no further than the gender stuff. You were not allowed to say that a man cannot become a woman on any of these platforms until Elon bought Twitter.

And obviously that issue is personal to Elon. And I don't know, I guess I just, I believe in divine right order. And I just kind of think maybe that happened to Elon so that, cause he too was, I think a Democrat and was voting, you know, Obama and so on. Then this happened to his son who was convinced that he was a girl. Elon says that he was duped into signing the papers that would allow for transition surgery at 16. And, um,

Before you knew it, truly he was changing the world in profound ways in a different lane. He's already been changing it, but in the free speech lane and on this particular issue, allowing conversations we couldn't have had before.

Bill, hold that thought. Hold your response until I take a quick break and we'll come back. Bill Ackman with us for the full show today. And we will get into Trump's latest cabinet picks, including Pete Hegsett. Don't go away. Four years of crushing interest rates, runaway inflation and reckless government spending. And who's paying the price now? You are. You might have bills stacking up, debt collectors on your back. You might barely be able to keep food on the table. Done with debt can be a way out.

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I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megan Kelly Show on Triumph, a Sirius XM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave,

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Bill, what do you think? Do you think these media companies that we discussed are in a downward spiral right now will take a cue from Elon and X and start allowing more discussion on these hot button issues? Well, actually, I give CNN some credit. Scott Jennings, I think, has been really outstanding in terms of presenting an alternative voice. It's

and so i think he's sort of helpful um but you know i think what's unfortunate about media companies i think that the privilege of owning a media company for some people appears to be this is a vehicle that i can use to advance my political uh point of view it's really not about you know bringing truth to the people it's about how do i manipulate the audience to coming to a conclusion about what i believe uh and uh i do think you know the the x platform is about you know just

open free speech, let people share their views and let the truth kind of emerge. I think that, you know, world, I think fundamentally people are looking for truth. I mean, perhaps some subset of people want to just be reinforced with whatever they already believe. But when you

have an election outcome like this one where you have, I would say, 45% of the country in complete shock about what took place, they have to be questioning their sources of truth and sources of information. And so economics are a very powerful force. And as the audience leaves mainstream media, they're going to have to adapt. And so I think that's really the opportunity. If no one's watching MSNBC, they're going to have to change.

Yes, a few and fewer and fewer people are watching MSNBC and even fewer than that are watching CNN, which is why there's a report out in Puck News that they will be having mass layoffs at CNN. I'm not surprised. The numbers are rock bottom. I mean, they're not even remote compatibilities.

competitor to Fox anymore or to MS. Chris Wallace just announced he's leaving CNN. Obviously, they did not renew his $8.5 million deal. His show got relegated to another channel and then didn't do well. They can't support those salaries anymore, not with their ratings, not nearly with their ratings. I know I will say this.

Having been through many presidential cycles at Fox News, I mean, I remember the doldrums of when Romney lost in 2012 and our ratings were in the tank compared to where they normally were. I mean, the audience left. They did not want to see anything about the start of Barack Obama's second term. So the audience, whatever was there before, will likely come back. But the CNN's problem is it was crappy to begin with. It's not going to get any better even...

even if they recover from this valley, there's the, the promised land is no longer in sight. Uh, and for MSNBC bill, I don't know if you saw the story. It's absolutely incredible. We've been talking about some of these crazy donations, the Harris campaign made to

to get these endorsements, you know, that reportedly paid $5 million to Megan Thee Stallion. Somehow Oprah's production company got a million dollars to build that set. I mean, I'm in TV. It doesn't cost a million dollars to build even the fanciest set. It just doesn't. $100,000 to the sex podcaster to make her hotel room look. No, that doesn't cost $100,000. It doesn't. At most, that would cost maybe 20 grand. I don't know where all this money went or why they spent so much.

willingly and irresponsibly. But there's a report out today that Al Sharpton... Thank God she's not running the country. Because imagine what she would do with the federal budget. No kidding. It's the opposite of what Elon's about to do with Vivek. And

Hold on a second. Al Sharpton, who not only runs the National Action Network, that's his nonprofit organization, which is very sketchy to begin with. He hosts a show on MSNBC and it just came out today via the Free Beacon, which is a great group, Chuck Ross there, that her campaign donated, donated 500,000 to his nonprofit weeks before

Harris went to sit with him for an interview on MSNBC. I'm dying. I'm dying from the conflict of interest. I'm dead. It happened. Bill, this is like the bias is coming out of the ears. This is so irresponsible, unethical, and not allowed. It's so egregious, MSNBC is going to have to respond. You cannot make a donation to an anchor's

charity on the side of $500,000 as a presidential candidate, then go sit with the anchor and he didn't disclose it. He didn't disclose. This is not a news organization, but they continue to masquerade as one. Yeah, it's terrible. And actually, we've had our own experience with Al Sharpton. I don't know if you know this, but after I sort of- Oh, he protested you.

Well, the protests happen every Thursday, 12 to 2. And when I actually read on X that he was going to be protesting me, I reached out to him. I said, look, you know, happy to sit down, happy to explain my thinking on DEI.

And he's been unwilling to meet with me. And, you know, the off ramp, of course, with sadly with or maybe sadly is the wrong word, but Al Sharpton is, you know, if you make the right donation to the right place, you know, the protesters go away. But this is not something that we do here. So 12 to 2.

And the protesters have no idea who I am. I actually actually walked through the protest to come into the office. They're paid. Look, at least people are getting paid something, which I feel good about. Maybe they get twenty five dollars an hour to protest us for a couple of hours. But it's so silly. Is this because you supported the firing of Claudine Gay, a black woman who ran Harvard? This is what got you in trouble with him.

I don't know if it's specific to Claudine itself, but I wrote a 5,000 word piece on DEI that, you know, got, went viral, you know, 40 million views or something. And ultimately I was a catalyst, an important catalyst for her stepping down from Harvard. So, you know, combination of those two things, I think I've,

He doesn't like me for that. Or he saw this as an opportunity. And I'm happy to discuss and I'm happy to hear his point of view. And if he disagrees with something, I'll have to explain where I'm coming from. But he's been unwilling to take a meeting, which I find usually people protest so you can engage. There's no engagement.

Yeah, I don't recommend it. I've talked to Al Sharpton. It's not worth your time. Plus, I think he's going to be fired soon. They got to fire Joy Reid now and they got to fire Al Sharpton because honestly, this is one of the more egregious breaches of journalistic ethics I've ever seen. There is

they didn't respond to Chuck Ross of the free beacon. When he called, there is no way they can get away with not responding on this. I mean, I'm going to have to, in fact, team, please call them every day. Let's call them every day and demand a response. I think if they can't get away with this, this is an absolute black eye for the entire profession. That's already, uh,

made a fool out of itself, but this is just, this is beyond. Yeah, that was crazy because I remember he was very mad at you for supporting the firing of Claudine Gay. Meanwhile, you also supported the firing of the MIT and the white women who were running those other organizations. It had nothing to do with color, but he's a race hustler. So he saw an opportunity to get his so-called charity in the news and himself in the news.

And I guess those 12 people, they need work from 12 to 2. Can you hire them, Bill? Maybe we can offload them onto the new Elon program. I'm sure they're good people, but I don't know that they know why they're there.

Actually, I actually chatted with one of them. One day I got dropped off at the office. I forgot it was between 12 and 2. And I was chatting with one of the people there. And I said, look, anytime Hal Sharpton wants to sit down, I'm available to speak. But actually, what you make, I think, is a really important one. I think that campaigns have to disclose if they're paying Oprah or a Hollywood star or music, an artist. At the time.

Yeah, so they can't do it after the election. It's absurd. Right, right. She bought the endorsements of all these stars. That's clearly how it looks. If we're wrong, tell us we're wrong. How are we wrong? Because why does Megan Thee Stallion get $5 million? Obviously, they paid her. In no world does it cost $5 million to show up in a couple of stages to run up and down on. These weren't, it was not...

uh, advanced production. So this is kind of crazy. And, and for what, all right, for what, what did she get? This is why, uh, Lindy Lee, she's on the DNC finance committee. She spoke with my friend, um, over at news nation, rich McHugh, who I met while at NBC. He he's a great producer. And now he's doing some more on air work. He was Ronan Farrow's producer during the whole me too stuff. He quit NBC and discussed, uh,

when they spiked the Harvey Weinstein story that they had. He had no job. This guy, Rich McHugh, is a hero. He has four daughters and he said, you people are so gross. You're going to pretend we didn't have the story when we did. I'm out of here. And I'm just thrilled to see Rich at News Nation now with a job. So he's doing more on air work. And he sat down with this woman, Lindy Lee of the DNC Finance Committee. Listen to her. She's not happy about the spending either. It's absolutely in turmoil. People are stepping down. Yeah. And there are going to be elections. Yeah.

What about the current hierarchy leadership at the NC? I mean, almost everyone's going to be gone. They're just going to be gone. Gone? Yeah, they're going to be gone, to be clear. I thought it was just obvious that it was. A disaster. Yeah, I just thought it was obvious. I didn't realize that it would be a shock to everyone. This wasn't a loss. This was a shellacking. This is not some, like, blip. This is an avalanche. And if we don't wake up,

This is not because we weren't left enough. If we don't correctly diagnose the problem, we're never going to change. We're going to keep losing. And some people are just saying, oh, America is misogynistic and sexist. You know, obviously there's some of that, but we can't just blame the entire country and label them as, you know, racist. That's not going to get us anywhere. But the way that the campaign was run and the way that the finances were handled were just terrible.

It left much to be desired. Top donors have not gotten any sort of briefing or an apology or any sort of explanation as to where our money went. There are names, like, you know, random staffers who are being paid mountains of money. I mean, they obviously didn't deliver. But one million, does Oprah really need a million? That reminds me of when Tom Brady got millions from the PPP program. I mean, come on. And also building a Call Her Daddy set for $100,000.

Mm hmm. What in the world? I mean, come on. Wow. I was really stunned to hear that. So, Bill, as somebody who's been a donor to campaigns in the past, what what would you do if you were a Democrat donor in this round and you found out you donated millions of dollars? Is there anything to be done?

Well, fortunately, I really have not been a major funder of elections, politics, etc. I have generally historically supported more Democrats than Republicans. But, you know, the DNC is a total disaster. I've been very, very public about that beginning over a year ago. But if you think about, you know, lying to the American people about the cognitive health of the president,

making it impossible for RFK to get on a ballot or making it incredibly expensive for him to do so, changing the rules on debates so that people can participate, threatening. Dean Phillips was a guy I met early on I thought was a very capable potential candidate for

for president. And he tried to hire political consultants, sort of democratic political consultants. And the DNC threatened the consultants that if they worked for him, they would never get another job working in politics again. And he had to hire people and they would use a pseudonym

uh, in terms of when they work for him for fear that, uh, uh, you know, if he was not successful and, you know, the very, uh, low, low probability, very high probability event, he would not, uh, make it, it wouldn't be done, uh, for in the political sphere. So it's a,

It operated like the mafia and in an incredibly anti-American, anti-democratic fashion. And I think the best thing I heard from that clip is the whole thing is going to get blown up and needs entirely new leadership. Look, I think it's important. Frankly, I think there should be more than two parties. But if there are two parties, it's important that they're both effective.

And they put forth quality candidates because I'm a big believer that competition, one of the sort of American attributes of our country, leads to the best outcomes. And we want the best candidates for president from all parties. And we want a fair system. And we'll let the public decide. Let the American people decide. But don't have these tactics. And the Harris campaign, based on the disclosure, spent $583 million on staff in 103 days.

Over the same period, or maybe even over a longer period, the Trump team spent $10 million, like a 50 to 1, 60 to 1 difference. There's clearly going to be a lot of fraud there. But again, that's the past. It speaks to some extent on how the DNC and the Democratic Party ran this election. But I'm going to be a little more optimistic about

because I'm very happy with the outcome. And I think the outcome is going to be a great, you know, this is a very significant turning point in the country and the economy and, you know, in geopolitics. And you're seeing it in geopolitics in just the last week, you know, which I think is very encouraging about a safer world.

We have tape just coming in of the president. I'll show it to you in one second. But just to put a period at the end of that discussion, the Free Beacon report also notes that the Harris campaign donated to the National Urban League two million, the Black Economic Alliance, one hundred and fifty thousand, Black Church Pack, one hundred and fifty thousand, Haitian Ladies Fund, thirty thousand.

obviously trying to just buy the support of all these organizations with the money of their donors. This isn't get out the vote. This isn't campaign signs and same way they tried to buy Al Sharpton. And maybe that's what Al Sharpton's, uh, so-called charity again, in air quotes is in the business of, but you may not then interview that donor on the air and not disclose it.

You know, I'll just give you an example. I'm in Connecticut and I don't get specific about anything involving how you could ever find my kids just for their safety. So I don't talk about which schools they go to. And there have been stories in the news involving my kids' schools, various stories,

And I don't touch those stories because I cannot bring you the story as the anchor and talk about the school for good or for bad without disclosing to you that I have a relationship to the school. That's dishonest. It's not ethical. So even though I'd love to talk about some of these stories, I can't.

Look at the position this guy's in. He just pocketed half a million dollars from her. And then he sits across from her and doesn't tell the audience. It's outrageous. Okay, enough about that. Let's take a look at President-elect Trump sitting down with Joe Biden, who is still the president, just FYI. I kind of lost track of him, but he's there in a remarkable sight on Capitol Hill this morning at the White House. Watch.

Well, Mr. President-elect and former president, Donald, congratulations. Thank you very much. And looking forward to having, like we said, a smooth transition. Do everything we can to make sure you're accommodated, what you need. And we're going to get a chance to talk about some of that today. So welcome. Thank you very much. And thank you very much. And politics is tough.

And it's in many cases not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today. And I appreciate it very much. A transition that's so smooth, it'll be as smooth as it can get. And I very much appreciate that, Jim. You're welcome. The man on screen right has been trying to imprison the man on screen left for the better part of two years. That's an extraordinary thing.

gesture for President Trump to go in there, shake his hand and be magnanimous. I mean, I give some credit to Biden for making it go smoothly and being a pro in the moment. But what's behind that picture is the one man trying to ruin the other. That's what just went on for four years. I mean, it's

I'm taking a deep breath, Bill, because it's what we used to love about our country, like more than virtually any other thing, the peaceful transition of power. Trump behaved very badly around 2020 and kind of threw that out the window. But then the retribution against him was unmatched. Maybe it's the dawn of a new day. You know, maybe we're getting back to a more dignified political class. But what do you think?

I think you might be right. Look, I think that the problem last time is that it was unexpected, I think, both to Trump and to certainly Hillary Clinton and others and her followers that he would get elected. It was this incredible, you know, grown and sort of half the country. And, you know, from the moment he, you know, his candidacy and his election was questioned in terms of its legitimacy. And then he was attacked with the

you know, by the media instantaneously. And then the Russian, you know, sort of investigation. And, you know, it's very, made it very difficult for him to be magnanimous, I would say, from the beginning, you know, because he was really like, you know, under attack, you know, over time. Yeah.

And I think what's great about this outcome is that he's coming in with a groundswell of support, majority of the country. No one's questioning such a landslide. You couldn't question the legitimacy of the election. That's not a healthy thing for the country.

And it's actually been very peaceful, very quiet, which I think is very good. And he's been working very quickly to bring in a new team. And we're starting to see some indications of green shoots in terms of geopolitics. And I think you're going to see the same thing from some big announcements from companies of some combination of transactions and investments. And that will really lift the economic spirits of the country, which

which will be great. That's great. Well, if it happens in the next two months, Biden will take credit for it. Same as he's, he's tried to do it. Same as Obama's tried to do about Trump's first term. Um, this just in the first lady, Jill Biden handed Trump a handwritten letter of congratulations per the white house and expressed her readiness to assist with the transition. I mean, like that's pretty rich because she's been sitting in on cabinet meetings. She's been acting as a co-president to the sitting president. So,

Pretty extraordinary. She felt the need to insert herself in that moment, but okay. Let's go back to what Trump has done so far because I'm very interested in some of these nominations. Now, the Hegseth one, he was just on Sean Ryan's podcast and what great timing for our friend Sean and said a lot of great things. I'm sure Trump didn't see that, but Trump does for sure watch Fox and Friends every day. And there's zero doubt he knows Pete from Fox and Friends and they've met before. He considered him for VA secretary on his first term.

But it didn't work out. So here's a little bit why for the listening audience, you can see why Trump chose him again. He's young. He's only 44. But by the way, I learned this today. Did you know that JFK appointed, of course, his brother, RFK senior as attorney general when RFK was only 35 years old and had never tried a case?

He had never tried a case and he became our attorney general. So age is but a number. Pete Hegseth actually has gone to war for our country twice. He went to Iraq. He went to Afghanistan. He was a combat vet in the Army National Guard and has been, has just wrote a book about our woke military, is very much in touch with the troops, maybe not beloved by the generals, but I think that's probably why he got hired. Here's a little bit from Pete on the woke military with Sean Ryan's SOT7.

Well, first of all, you've got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and you've got to fire this. I mean, obviously, you're going to bring in a new secretary of defense, but any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the DEI woke shit has got to go. Either you're in for war fighting, and that's it, and that's the only litmus test we care about. You've got to get DEI and CRT out of military academies so you're not training young officers to be baptized in this type of thinking.

And then, you know, whatever the standards-- whatever the combat standards were, say, in, I don't know, 1995, let's just make those the standards. And as far as recruiting, to hire the guy that, you know, did Top Gun: Maverick and create some real ads that motivate people to want to serve. People don't want to serve because they don't trust that their senior leaders are gonna have their best interest in mind in combat. Just hearing that is exciting. What do you think of it?

Totally agree. Look, I don't actually know the guy, but I've read a bit about him, you know, 20 years in the military. He's kind of seems like a soldier's soldier. You know, one of the problems we have is, you know, recruitment. I think he's the kind of guy to inspire young Americans to enlist. Clearly is a very good spokesperson, strikes me as a good leader. Got a master's degree in, I think, foreign policy from the Kennedy School. You know, clearly a smart, art

articulate person. When you send people into battle, the fact that you have combat experience, a couple of brown stars, I think gives you a lot of credibility. And I love the fact that this administration is much younger

than perhaps previous administration. We have people in roles. I'm a big believer you don't need to be old to be right, which I think is one of the most powerful things ever told to me when I was 25 years old. And so George Washington was what when he was saving the country?

How old was he? Not very old. I don't know, but they were all very young. It's incredible. You go back and look at Thomas Jefferson, all of them, other than John Adams, he was the, he was the oldie of the group. Um, but yeah, they were all, they were babes. Um, Pete goes on. This is controversial, but gotta say I support this too. Sot six.

I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated. We've all served with women and they're great. It's just our institutions don't have to incentivize that in places where traditionally, not traditionally, over human history, men in those positions are more capable.

So FYI, NPR Marine Corps releases study on women in combat units. Uh, it was a year long study. The study found all male units outperformed mixed gender units across the board. I just, it's not sexism. It's about results. Women can absolutely serve in support roles to those who are in combat, but I completely agree with him on it. What do you think?

Well, actually, one example to the contrary is Israel. They don't have a choice because it's such a small country, but women play a very important role in the military in Israel. I don't know enough of the details to know precisely how they serve, for example, in Gaza or otherwise, but it is a mixed gender military that's one of the most effective militaries in the world. I don't actually know enough to know the answer, but I think it depends on the facts.

Mm-hmm. I'm pro. Women can serve. Women can do a lot of great things. I don't think it's useful or helpful in the combat setting. I've heard that from a lot of vets. It's no offense to women. We can do... In fact, when I trained to be a Marine, which this is a joke, Bill, but I did go down to Camp Lejeune and I did advanced training for the Marines there for two days for a segment. It was amazing. I slept there, I showered there, did the whole bit. They did say that women... One thing that women are better at is aim on the triggers. For whatever reason...

I guess women do a better job of controlling their breathing generally, and it can affect, you know, your trigger finger. So, you know, I realized that would be combat, but there may be supportive roles for women that would not change the dynamic of the group setting, which is one of the things that guys complain about. All right. I'll give you just a couple more because it's interesting to hear from Pete. He only did this interview like a week ago. So, and I, I hear this came together for secretary of defense two days ago.

So it is possible Trump saw it. Here he is in Sat 4. In the past X number of years, 10, 12, 15, the Pentagon has a perfect record in all of its war games against China. We lose every time. The way our system works, the way our bureaucratic system works, where the speed of weapons procurement works, we're always...

a decade behind in fighting the last war. China's building an army specifically dedicated to defeating the United States of America. That is their strategic outset. Take hypersonic missiles. And if, you know, 15 hypersonic missiles can take out our 10 aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict, what does that look like? If they've already got us by the balls economically, which you pointed out very well, with our grid, culturally, there's plenty of elite capture going on around the globe.

I mean, and then microchips and everything. Why do they want Taiwan? They want to corner the market completely on the technological future. We can't even drive our cars without the stuff we need out of China these days. I mean, they have a full spectrum, long term view of not just regional, but global domination. And we are, we have our heads up our asses. I think it's going to be very tough to defeat him, Bill. He's...

That he's got the star factor. He's very bright. He's actually served and signed up after 9-11. He was one of those guys who rushed to the war. He understands television and soundbites. I don't. Good luck to them in trying to convince enough Republicans to peel away from Pete Hegseth. I don't think it's going to happen. I think it looks like a very interesting candidate for sure.

What else do you think? Because right now, one of the big roles we're looking at is maybe Treasury. We don't know. You know, he hasn't made a lot of the big financial announcements yet. Trump. Yeah, actually, Scott Besant is sort of the lead candidate for Treasury secretary. It's a super important role. I know Scott not well, but I have a lot of respect for him. He's trained by one of the best. Stanley Druckenmiller is probably the greatest economist.

macro investor of all time and macro investing requires a real knowledge of the economy, interest rates, you know, all the kinds of things that Treasury Secretary needs to think about. So I'm a big fan of, you know, that decision. He's definitely, I think, the best athlete, if you will, in consideration for the role. And I think, you know, the market would respond very favorably to that choice. Now, this is a dumb question, but how does the Treasury Secretary affect

your world, like business leaders like you? Why do you pay such attention to that? Secretary is like, you know, sort of the CFO, the chief financial officer of the United States government. And so while, you know, you know, think about your favorite company, you know, CEO plays a very important role. CEO in this case, of course, is the president. But he's, you know, the the right hand finance person who has to step in and think about how crises are managed. You know,

Pete, in that interview, talked about how important the economy was in terms of military effectiveness. So just having the right finance executive, if you will, in that seat, I think is something you need the right person making the right decisions about the government and how the government's financed economic policy. And it's also really important for markets that investors have confidence in.

in the person who sits in that seat. And Steve Mnuchin did a great job. He's really one of the people who made it through the whole Trump administration with his reputation entirely actually enhanced, dealing with some of the biggest challenges. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a feat in and of itself. All right, Marco Rubio. One of the things that pro-Israel Americans, which is the majority of Americans, have been pointing out is that, you know, Rubio, Elise Stefanik, these are very pro-Israel people.

lawmakers. And Trump has elevated them, which is making a lot of folks feel better about what Trump, you know, what his policies will be. I think they had no reason to worry. He wants the war to end. But by the way, Israel has already won the war. But he's not in any way ever shown an anti-Israel strain. He's not empathetic at all to the Hamas crowd. He's

I think the reason a lot of folks in like Dearborn, Michigan voted for him and he won it is because he, he wants to bring it to a close. He is not a neocon. He's not all about like, let's dump more weapons and ammo ammunition so that we can keep this thing going.

But Marco Rubio, one of the reasons that people love him was he was very, very fiercely defending Israel after they got attacked, even when it became controversial in some pockets to do it. Here's a clip of him from November of 23 in Sathri.

Are you filming it? I want you guys to get this. I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals who did horrifying crimes. And I hope you guys post that. And what about the civilians that are being killed every day? Hamas should stop hiding behind civilians, putting civilians in the way. Hamas knew that this was going to lead to this.

Hamas has stopped building their military installations underneath hospitals. So you don't care that 15,000 have died. You don't care about the babies that are being killed every day. I think it's terrible. And I think Hamas is 100 percent to blame. That's what I think. Make sure you post that, please. That's Medea Benjamin of Code Pink. So what do you make of Rubio?

I think he's a great choice. He's got a lot of foreign policy experience. He's been in the Senate a significant period of time. I think he serves on the Foreign Policy Committee. He's got some very senior roles. And I think he's entirely right about Hamas. I think Israel needs to get rid of them, and that ultimately will protect civilians long term.

The border situation is going to be very dicey, as we alluded to earlier. It's not the media is not going to go along with deportations. They're going to film everyone.

whether the person's a murderer or not, and try to make it seem like they're pulling some law-abiding sweet grandpa away from his family. And this will be a test to see how much of that the American people can take who are getting their news only from these biased news sources. What do you think about the deportation plan?

I don't know precisely what the plan is ultimately going to be, but I think Obama, Clinton both deported, I think, millions of people. I think people forget that. We wouldn't have to deport people if we did a better job managing the border in the first place.

um, you know, I've been a big, uh, you know, supporter of, uh, of actually, uh, so-called DACA kids, um, financed a lot of, and these are kids brought into the country by their parents, uh, when they're, you know, six years old or whatever, they grew up here, they go to high school here, uh, and then they want to go to college and they've been able to, you know, the, uh, none of the, uh, scholarships and government financing sort of applies to them. Uh, so Don Graham, the former owner of, uh,

The Washington Post inspired me to help these kids. So I'm someone who certainly has a soft spot for people who these are striving, hardworking, young people.

Americans. And so I think it's a complicated issue. But unfortunately, we have people who did not come here illegally. They've overwhelmed cities. And you heard Eric Adams talking about what's sort of necessary here. And I think we have every right to return people who came to the country illegally and send them back to the countries they came from and let them

you know, apply to come here legally. I mean, perhaps, you know, just the cost of sending back, actually the economic cost of sending 10 million people back tomorrow and even the logistics of doing something like that is impractical. So I think we're going to have to come up with some way with sorting through

the millions of people that came here illegally. And if someone came here illegally and they've worked hard and they paid taxes and they haven't committed a crime, I think you should think quite seriously about whether that person should be entitled to stay in the country. Whereas if someone's committed a crime, it gets very easily or they haven't paid taxes or they haven't been a good citizen. So I think some sort of sifting

where you prioritize the people who are the greatest threat to the country, who are not making a contribution, and where you perhaps give a benefit to the people who, while they may have come here illegally, they have made an important contribution to the country. And I think that might be a way to address the problem. I think one other way to do it is I think that, one, people are turning back

Some groups that were trying to come into the country before the election happened have literally turned back.

And I think some number of people, you give them a ticket, they'll head back home for fear of getting, quote unquote, deported. So I think it's a complicated issue. I don't think it's practical to send 10 million people home overnight. I think that would actually have some economic implications. So I think a sorting and a prioritization, there certainly are a couple million of those should go back promptly because they're a threat to the country.

One of the problems we may have is Venezuela saying it's not going to take them. It's not going to take its own citizens back. So I'm looking forward to seeing what Trump does with that because I don't think he's going to respond well to that at all. I say, yeah, you have to start with the criminals first.

the ones who have committed additional crimes here or who we know are criminals in their homes, home countries first as they are planning to do. But no one who came in over the past four years should stay. Not one. We opened the border. They've done nothing. I don't care whether they found a job or not. They need to go back home. We can't. The country's full. We cannot brook 10 to 20 million illegal immigrants who took advantage of Biden's open border. People have been here 20 years. That's a different story. I don't think Trump's going to look at those folks. We got enough to deal with.

but it's going to be spawned as a no mercy, as a brutal, as a cruel policy. And some will say, I'm with my family. And you heard Tom Hogan say, you know what? Then the family should go home with you. If you want to stay with the family, then they should go too. But that's not a reason for you to be allowed to stay here. But that's going to be the major story of Trump's administration.

probably after the Elon-Vivek joint partnership, because the left is already primed to hate it. They don't like Vivek. They don't like Elon. They don't want them to succeed. So I think those will be the two biggest news stories that we see. And then the tariffs, they'll be looking forward to that and his dismantling of DEI, which we'll all be cheering from the sideline, but the media will not.

Now, they're in an existential crisis about the DEI things, Bill, as you know, as somebody who does not support DEI. And you've got lots of charges of racism and misogyny in the wake of Kamala Harris's loss. I wonder if you think, because we've been debating this on the show, that this party is capable of excising that cancer out.

from its base. Can it go forward as the Democrat party of old, the Bill Clinton party that you probably voted for, right? Like, is that gettable still or no? I don't know.

I really don't. It depends on how they respond. If the same people are in power, I don't see any changes. If this, as you saw the video earlier on your show, leads to an effect, a neutron bomb blows up in the party and they have to reconstitute and go back to their roots, then you could see a meaningful change for sure. I don't think they can do it. You've got

The amount of distress over Trump's win is related to their belief that he's a misogynist, he's a racist, he's a fascist, Hitler-esque character. And it's expanded beyond Trump, as you know, to the Republican half of the country, the people who voted for Trump. There was a clip over on The View yesterday. My audience says I love to make fun of The View, Bill. Sorry, I'm going to take you over to The View with Sonny Hostin lamenting

about people are going to have to visit their evil family members this Thanksgiving and this Christmas who may have done the unthinkable, and that's vote for Donald Trump. Here's a bit of that.

I would never let my politics be the reason I don't show up to see my family because they won't always be there. I'm going to disagree. I completely understand her point because I really do feel that this candidate, you know, President-elect Trump, is just a different type of candidate from the things he's said and the things he's done and the things he will do. It's more of a moral issue for me. And I think it's more of a moral issue for other people. We're just, you know...

I would say it was different when, let's say, Bush got elected. You know, you may not have agreed with his policies, but you didn't feel like he was a deeply flawed person, deeply flawed by character, deeply flawed in morality. So I think when people feel that someone voted not only against their families, but against them and against people that they loved, I think it's okay to take a beat. What do you make of that, Bill? Somebody's probably got a lot of Democrat friends who feel she does.

And Democrat kids. So for Thanksgiving, look, I think it's very anti-family. It's crazy. Look, we got to a place in America where, you know, very sadly that if you supported Trump, you know, people would sort of disown you. And that, you know, this this hit the crazy notion, the Hitlerian notion, as you referred to it.

We were just talking about how pro-Israel his picks have been. Would Hitler have chosen, built a team that's supportive of Israel? I mean, the whole thing is absurd. It really is really absurd. And it just speaks to how people have been indoctrinated into a cult. They're like, the religion is that this guy is evil, this guy is Hitler, this guy is...

And therefore, if you support Hitler, you know, clearly you're an evil person and therefore you shouldn't show up at Thanksgiving. But, you know, I think the evidence shows that he's not obviously he's not Hitler. Many of his friends are Jewish, grew up in the New York City real estate community, which is a lot of Jews. His daughter's Jewish. Sure. His grandchildren are Jewish.

So the part of the problem, more religious people that I think you asked before about the statistics and the statistics I've read is he got more of the Jewish vote than, you know, than any Republican in, I don't know, maybe ever decades, a number something like 45 percent.

And that may understate it. And by the way, I would say, you know, in light of how some members of the progressive left, members of the Jewish community feel, this may be a case where the, you know, the post vote, they might not be telling the truth, voting for Trump. They're still not willing to admit. I think the percentage, I'd be surprised if it's not a majority of Jewish people, particularly in light of

what's going on around the world with anti-Semitism, what's going on with anti-Israel sentiment. I bet a substantial majority of Jews voted for Trump. Part of the problem, as we discussed earlier, is these universities, and it's not just the Ivies, but a lot of the universities, even second tier, are indoctrination factories churning out anti-Semites, churning out pro-DEI warriors,

And so even while you might have party elders like James Carville jumping up and down saying, stop doing this, this is not the way to win elections. You've got whole factories creating woke little Democrats who think this is really important. And this leads me to a tweet you sent out. I think it was yesterday. Was it yesterday where you were saying a friend of yours was asked to write a recommendation for someone's child to get into politics?

Yale, I'll read just a little bit of what you posted. Um, you wrote a friend was asked to write a recommendation for a daughter, somebody else's daughter who was applying to Yale worth a read dear blank. I'm unwilling to write a letter of recommendation in support of your daughter's application to Yale. I no longer do that. It's not that I don't believe she's qualified on the contrary. It's because I do.

You wouldn't ask me to write a letter of recommendation for her admission to Hamas, but Yale is no different than Hamas, a cult that abides no disagreement and a cult certain of its purpose and mission beyond reflection. Yale is potentially even more dangerous. Hamas will be defeated shortly. Yale will continue to send its graduates into positions of power for years.

And then he goes on to say a recent study at Harvard found roughly 50% of the students and professors would not discuss uncomfortable topics. An essential life skill is the ability to change your mind. She won't learn any of that at an Ivy league school, any of them. Um, there's been some blowback on this online. You're still trending for it. People saying Yale is like Hamas. Yeah. Yale is no different than Hamas. It's more dangerous. How, how could it possibly be? Yeah.

So that's my friend Adam, and he sends out some interesting emails. So I thought that was a particularly interesting one. But I think the point he makes about the indoctrination nature, maybe really what I've been talking about before, a bit of a cult, the structure of elite universities, even 30 years ago, they were more left than right, but the balance was different.

Over time, what happens is each faculty department, the economics department, the social department, the physics department promotes the – if you think about the structure of universities, basically it used to be that professors got tenure and they do it today and they got tenure to –

protect them to the extent they had views that were inconsistent with kind of the convention, the conventional views or even the church's views, you know, Galileo, you know, to protect the next Galileo saying sort of controversial things. What tenure has become is a device to really control the politics of a university. So if you're an aspiring PhD candidate and you want to get your degree, you can't put forth a paper that's inconsistent with the politics of the department. And each of these departments

have tipped sufficiently far to the left because they won't promote a candidate. You're not going to get appointed to the Harvard Social Studies faculty if you don't agree politically with the very progressive left-wing nature of that department. So once you reach a certain tipping point in terms of the percentage of the faculty on the left, the whole university veers left.

And that's really sort of the point he's making. There is not an opportunity for viewpoint diversity. There's enormous...

self-censorship because of people, again, the people are self-censoring vote that they voted for Trump. Uh, they have to self-censor on university campuses that they have conservative views. And this, of course, think about a university. It's a place where you're supposed to be exposed to very broad viewpoints. So you can figure out the truth and that's not what's happening. And, uh, so I think it's obviously the letter is a bit tongue in cheek. He probably sent it knowing him. Um, but, uh, but it really makes the point, uh, of the problems with our elite universities.

You mentioned you have four kids. Do you have any who are in college or yet to go to college? So I have two have graduated, one in college now. She was not happy with me voting for President Trump. And she made a very, you know, did her best to try to convince me otherwise. And many of the arguments and videos and things she sent me were, you know, I would say, no, that's not true, sweetheart. You know, please, let me send you the full clip. Let me send you the video. No, there's a counterpoint to that argument.

But, you know, people become incredibly again, it feels like a religion and it shouldn't be right. We should choose a presidential candidate, a senator, et cetera, on the basis of, you know, who we think isn't going to act in the best interest of the country. And, you know, he's going to that he's going to make abortions legal everywhere in America is going to take away reproductive rights.

um, you know, these are, uh, I said, no, no, no, that's, that's already been decided. It's a state level issue. Um, but it, I'm sure there are many families where, uh, there's a lot of dissension over this and, uh, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity. It's gotten to a place where they don't want to really want to talk about politics at all. That's not a good place because they're going to stay where they are emotionally and

you know, with their faulty logic on some of these accusations, you should send her some Megyn Kelly show videos there the Friday before the election. I took on the abortion issue in depth.

And, um, we, we have never taken a position on abortion itself on this show. So she should listen to it because it's purely from a legal standpoint. Uh, I practiced law for 10 years. You should send it to her because it will not offend her pro-choice nature and it will make her feel better about what is and is not going to happen in a Trump administration on this issue.

And you should send her all of my stuff, frankly, because I think she I can get her bill. I can get her. I can get her myself. If I could get her to watch it, I got you. I would. I absolutely will. Well, here's what I was going to ask. So you've got a little one, I think, with your with your second wife, your current wife. Yes. Would you send your daughter to any of these schools? Like, what do you should she not go to college? Like, what do you what should people be doing?

Yes. Well, look, I think the economic logic behind sending someone to college today is much less compelling than it was in the past. First of all, you can learn anything today with some combination of podcasts, YouTube videos, what you read, et cetera. There are actually many online free courses, MIT and other places. And to spend three hundred and twenty thousand, which is what it costs to

to go to Harvard today, you better get a great education. So I'm hoping that we got 13 years before she's applying to school, maybe 12. I think hopefully what's happened in the last year is

It's going to catalyze sufficient change in our system of higher education and hopefully in our secondary schools so that we, you know, it's really important that America has a great educational system. We're ranked like 30th in the world and we spend more than anyone else. It's a bit like our health care system. And I'm hoping this administration, it's going to play a very powerful role in fixing both of those disastrous aspects of our country. Yeah.

Well, thank you for being part of the solution. Bill Ackman, it's a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Wow. What a time. What a crazy time. I want to tell our audience before we go, just breaking, John Thune wins GOP leader race. So Rick Scott did not win.

And John Thune, who is a good man. I think Trump will do just fine with him. He's not pure MAGA, but he's a conservative guy and he will be the new leader. The point is the Republicans are in the majority and hallelujah, it looks like they'll control the house as well. President Trump's in DC. There'll be a lot of fallout tomorrow and we will talk about it all with the fellas from Ruthless for the full show. Don't miss that. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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