Kamala Finally Agrees to Interview, and Truth About Learning Loss, with Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Michael Knowles, and Carrie Prejean Boller | Ep. 872
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Hey, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. It's official. The person who would like to be our next president has finally agreed to an interview that's not off the record or with influencers or conducted by her own running mate, though he will be there because he has her emotional support governor. Yes, tomorrow, Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Walz will sit down with CNN's Dana Bash.

CNN promises this interview will present Harris with the first chance to elucidate her position on various domestic and foreign issues. Well, we'll look forward to that. Her elucidating her position. It only took more than a month for the sitting vice president who ousted the sitting president in his bid for a second term.

to actually sit down and answer a reporter's questions in an effort to hopefully elucidate us on how that happened. Oh, and what her actual policies would be if she is elected president when the early voting starts in two weeks and change. This is incredible.

The interview will not be live. I'm sure she didn't want that because she could go back to CNN and say if she has some massive fall down, please take that out. That part wasn't fair. Don't air that. And plus, the nerve factor is lower when it's not live and CNN accommodated. It will reportedly be taped tomorrow afternoon. It will air at 9 p.m. Eastern in a primetime special, and we will have full reaction for you. Joining me now, Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show.

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Let's start with this. And then I've got some breaking news on another media outlet that we've been following. That's just absolutely disgusting, Michael. But so here we have it. The emotional support governor will sit down with our potential next commander in chief for the first interview in five weeks since

Earth shattering developments have happened in the Democratic race and with respect to the White House, who's ruling the country, how she became the nominee and what she actually has in store for us if she is to win. What do you make of the plan? She has to give one interview in the same way that she has to do one debate.

But that's it. She's not good at interviews. She's not good at debates. And so the Democrats, the Kamala campaign are going to give the bare minimum that they have to give to look voters in the face, totally straight faced and say, you can vote for me. I am confident I can I can do the job.

So, you know, we saw similar criticism of Trump back in the GOP primary, such as it was that Trump didn't want to engage in a debate. And I always thought the political calculation here was Trump will only do a debate if it benefits him. Trump will only do a debate if there is sufficient political pressure to make him do a debate. Here, the liberals control the entire media establishment.

They did the coup that replaced Joe Biden with Kamala Harris. So you're not getting a lot of pressure from the establishment media. Probably she's got to do one. It's really weird if the president of the United States can't conduct one single interview, can't conduct one single debate, but that's it. And so they've rigged the rules to be as favorable to Kamala as they can be, just as they rigged the rules in the ABC debate with Trump to be as favorable to Kamala as they can be. And she'll probably eke it

by she'll she'll say things that are a little odd she'll contradict herself she'll she'll do the giggle it won't be a grand slam for her but she'll she'll get by and then the media will move on

Easily. I think there's not going to be some massive fall down moment. Dana Bash, while definitely more sympathetic to the Democrats, doesn't want to torch her career in this sit down because she understands she's going to have to push back a little. But just to be clear, we're not going in there with somebody who is in any way sympathetic toward Team Trump. Here's just a little example of some of Dana Bash in Sot 5.

This is the kind of thing that is playing out all over conservative media. I just want to do a little bit of record-breaking

Correcting Harris was put in charge, as you said earlier, of combating the roots of immigration. She was not and is not the borders of 2020. Even if even if Joe Biden were not running for president, he were still a private citizen going off into the sunset. Would it be OK for the president of the United States, yes or no, to ask another foreign leader to investigate to investigate an American citizen? You know, I've I've.

seen a lot of statements from veterans, including those you serve with saying it's just untoward to be criticizing somebody who served for 24 years. One last question. Donald Trump didn't serve in the military. He received a medical draft deferment for bone spurs to avoid serving in the Vietnam War, reportedly as a favor to his father. Do you find that shameful too?

repeatedly that he could have gotten the hostages out without giving anything in exchange. What do you say to that? What do you say to President Trump now, former president? Why didn't he do it? He's president. I think that was what they call a mic drop moment at the end there. Why didn't he do it when he was president? Yeah, Mike. So, OK, so that's why she was chosen, obviously, Michael.

That's why she was chosen. And this is what makes Kamala's insistence that Walls be present so much more pathetic. You've got a network that is all in for Kamala. You've got an anchor who obviously detests Donald Trump. And even still, Kamala can't handle that kind of an interview. So she's got a tag team with Tim Walls, who's not exactly a Rhodes Scholar himself, but

but who is apparently more articulate and coherent and capable than the top of the ticket, Kamala. This should not inspire confidence in the American people. This should not inspire confidence in Kamala's supporters. It doesn't inspire confidence in me as a woman.

I mean, everyone's supposed to be celebrating that she could be our first female president and she can't even do a sit down interview on her own. I got news for you, Madam Harris. That's not how the presidency is supposed to work. You actually are a single individual imbued with a lot of power, a lot of power. Go read Article 2.

And you don't get to do it with your binky right next to you. Your big white blankie for every interview. That's what he is. At a fundamental level. I used to have a big white blankie that I carried everywhere. He happens to be white and he is her big white blankie that she needs in order to talk to the press. Tim Walls, the big white blankie of the Midwest. What's so astounding here, specifically on the interview and the debate front, is that at a fundamental level,

The only skill that is required in politics is that you be able to speak. That's it. That's how politicians work. That is the instrument that they use, words, speech. This woman can't do it. Part of the reason that Biden was kicked out is that he could no longer speak. And Biden used to be a pretty good talker back in the day, but now his brain doesn't work anymore. So he failed to speak properly at that debate. Then he was gone. Kamala does not have dementia.

kamala is not 150 years old but kamala can't speak that's why the most famous clips of kamala's oration involve being unburdened by what has been and venn diagrams and yellow school buses and and that giggle that giggle which is just noise it's a replacement for speech with incoherent babble so the the only skill that a politician requires this woman lacks and and it's why she's got to tag team the interview with tim waltz

What's going to be really interesting about it is does he jump in to save her? Because they are going to know that that's fraught. I mean, if I were running for president and I had a vice president, especially a man, but any any man or woman sitting next to me. And if I were asked a tough question and my VP jumped in to save me, I would say, excuse me, that one was to me. And I would continue my answer.

I wonder whether he'll have the nerve to do it, right? Would he actually step in because he knows that that will undermine her. And yet that is his purpose for being there. And also, even if she doesn't use the big white blankie in that way, it's half the questions, Michael. It's she gets she's sitting down with Dana Bash, but it's she only has to do it for half the allotted time because he'll get the rest.

Exactly. I think the interview as well as the debate is a defensive move by the Democrats. They're not going into this thinking that they're going to make big gains with the American people. They're just checking a box. It's the bare minimum you've got to do if you're running for president. So if you can...

make it even easier by cutting out half of your questions. Okay, we'll do that. And you're absolutely right. It's fraught, the notion that the VP, the white man VP in the identity politics of the Democrat Party will have to jump in to save Kamala Harris. But Tim Walz is so submissive. He's so obsequious. I'm sure that he can do it in a way that will still exalt the Queen Kamala. And even if not, why?

one, they might end up just cutting it out of the interview. That's one of the reasons it's pre-taped. And two, it won't really matter because the media establishment will not focus on it. They'll suppress it. No one is going to be watching this interview from beginning to end. I think you and I are two of the only people in the country probably who will be doing that. It's just about the little clips that are going to go around. So they're going to find one or two good clips of Kamala and they'll check the box that she did the interview and they'll move on trying to get her into the

White House without ever really having to campaign at all. I actually think people will watch this because it's like, can she speak? I mean, we're all wondering, we've been sold this bill of goods over the past five weeks. Has she been magically transformed? Did she have some interaction with Jack's beans in the beanstalk? Something that would really just be a game changer in her entire personality? I would like to see how she does. I don't expect her to totally crumble, but-

I think there'll be a higher level than, well, I mean, that goes without saying, average viewership for CNN, which means more than three people will be watching. Right, because it's the presidency. You don't think there'll be an uptick in the numbers, like a significant uptick.

It seems to me that people are decided, you know, and there are something like maybe 7% of voters who are undecided. Maybe they were leaning toward RFK Jr. or something. We'll see how the endorsement of RFK Jr. for Donald Trump works out, even though he's going to be forced to remain on the ballot in certain swing states. So you're talking about a relatively small number of people who are not decided. And a lot of the people who are not decided are not the most plugged in. They're not the kind of people who are going to watch politics.

forget about an hour or two hours of political content straight. They might only watch two or three minutes straight. So I agree that there will be certainly much more interest in this interview than pretty much anything else that happens on CNN. And it's historic in that Kamala is finally speaking since she became the nominee. But I don't think it's really going to move the needle either way. I think if this were a perilous risk for Kamala Harris, she just wouldn't do it.

here's what else they need to worry about, Tim Walz in particular. This is how the Democrats have set the stage for this interview and all interactions with Kamala Harris and others. Remember Arielle from the white women for Harris Zoom call? Here's her advice to Tim Walz and others.

As white women, we need to use our privilege to make positive changes. If you find yourself talking over or speaking for BIPOC individuals or God forbid correcting them, just take a beat. And instead we can put our listening ears on. So.

Do learn from and amplify the voices of those who have been historically marginalized and use the privilege you have in order to push for systemic change. As white people, we have a lot to learn and unlearn. So do check your blind spots. Oh my gosh, Michael. That's advice for Dana Bash and for Tim Walz.

Megan, I refuse to believe that that person is sincere in any way. That is obviously a right winger who has subversively infiltrated. There is no way that a person would seriously hit every single caricature of a liberal white woman. The vocal fry, the uptick inflection at the end of a sentence, and the kind of nodding of the head.

head and the idioms like take a beat. There is just okay and we have to not talk as I'm talking to you. It's not two or three of those. I'd say maybe it's sincere. Every single one, this is right-wing political satire.

If only I could see why you say that. In fact, I think she's real. And this is how she actually sees the world. And if Dana Bash has the nerve to, God forbid, challenge or correct a BIPOC like Kamala Harris, she's going to have to answer to little Ariel. Never mind Tim Walz. God forbid a white man do it. Here is the second thing I wanted to get to. This is a big story.

A week to 10 days ago, Judy Woodruff of PBS News went out on the air and actually tried to claim that Trump was trying to kill a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas

Because he didn't want the advancement of peace until he gets into office. It would make him look bad. So he had had a call with Bibi Netanyahu in which he discouraged him from striking such a deal. Here is her original, quote, reporting.

The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the prime minister of Israel, urging him not to cut a deal right now because it's believed that would help the Harris campaign. So I don't know where that—I don't know—who knows whether that will come about or not.

But I have to think that the Harris campaign would like for President Biden to do what presidents do, which is work on that one. Yeah. OK, so two allegations in there that Trump was on the phone with Bibi and secondly, that he was discouraging him from striking a deal. And I guess third, the third is

Because he's worried it would help Kamala Harris. All right. Those are the three allegations. Then she comes out after the fact because team Trump started hitting her immediately saying this is totally irresponsible and untrue. She comes out via tweet. I want to clarify my remarks on the PBS news special on Monday night about the ongoing ceasefire talks in the Middle East.

As I said, this was not based on my original reporting. I was referring to reports I had read in Axios and Reuters about former President Trump having spoken to the Israeli prime minister. In the live TV moment, I repeated the story because I hadn't seen later reporting that both sides denied it. This was a mistake and I apologize for it. Okay, so I and many others said, okay,

Did Axios and Reuters report what she's claiming? Was it in fact their fault? And she just repeated a claim made by two other outlets that was untrue because if that's true, then they were patient zero in the spread of this misinformation. So we went back and checked.

The Reuters report we were able to determine, determined only cited Axios. So they were admitting we didn't do any original reporting. We're basing our report here on Axios. And what Reuters cited to was the fact that they had denied, I think, is what they had reported, that they had denied that they had engaged in such a phone call.

Axios did ultimately report that they were denying they'd had a phone call. And so that left us wondering, well, what was Axios' original report? Because they labeled the report we could find and Reuters found as updated. Now, sometimes when these outlets engage in bad reporting, they update and then they scrub the original without owning it. We saw the Minneapolis Star Tribune do that last week. So we're still trying to figure out whether Woodruff is the villain or Axios is the villain.

and we went and tried to pull the original Axios report. Well, it wasn't available via the way back machine of the internet. I don't know how that thing works, but my producers tell me Axios doesn't subscribe to it. And therefore its reports would not, could not be found there. So

Yashar Ali, who's an independent journalist, and he was the one who broke the story about Judy to begin with, went back to Axios and Reuters and said, did you ever, as she is claiming, report that the two men had a conversation and in it, Trump discouraged Bibi from entering into a ceasefire? And the reasoning was Trump didn't want to help Kamala Harris politically. And he's now

published his answer, the answer he got. I'm scrolling down here. Obviously, he says this was a major allegation by Judy Woodruff. It would mean that Netanyahu was sacrificing the lives of the hostages and the security of Israel for Donald Trump's candidacy and that Donald Trump was trying to keep the hostages and civilians in Gaza in harm's way for political purposes.

When people push back against her, Woodruff tweeted that she had relied on Axios and report and Reuters reporting on the matter, but it missed the Trump and Netanyahu had denied the reporting. She apologized for the oversight, but her tweet was inaccurate. Yashar is nicer than I am. She lied.

As I noted last week, Axios and Reuters never reported that Netanyahu was being urged by Trump not to take a hostage deal. They had just reported that Trump and Netanyahu spoke about Gaza. That was the original reporting. But to be sure, I went back to check a few things and also asked Axios for comment. First, the Reuters report that Woodruff cited was just a pickup of the Axios story. The Axios story Woodruff cited had been updated to reflect Netanyahu's denial that he and Trump ever discussed Gaza and a hostage deal.

A spokesperson for Axios then confirmed to Yashar that they never reported that Trump was said to have been discouraging Netanyahu from taking the deal. This is Axios on the record saying we never reported what Judy Woodruff is claiming we did. Yashar continues, not only were Woodruff's on-air comments inaccurate, but her apology tweet also said that Axios and Reuters reported something they never did.

Neither publication even stepped into the area that she suggested. He writes, I have followed up with PBS for comment. She lied. She lied on the air to try to make Trump look like a callous douchebag who placed his own electoral chances above the safety of American hostages, Israeli hostages in harm's way.

And then she lied when she was caught and called out by trying to blame Axios, who did not commit the sin she accused them of. And she's failed to take responsibility. She is caught red handed. And this is an organization, PBS. We fund Michael Knowles.

We fund it. You're absolutely right. It's great that you delved into this. And then Yashar provided that final little confirmation there. But as you say, it comes down to two words. She lied. And the way that you could have known that she lied before looking into any of this are another two words in her initial comments. The reporting.

The reporting was doing a whole lot of work in her accusations against Donald Trump. It's kind of like another two words that pop up often in liberal attacks on conservatives. Critics say, it's always critics say, they never tell us exactly who those critics are, but the critics supposedly hate these Republicans and they make all sorts of allegations against them. Had she been relying on actual news reports, she would have cited them in her initial comments. What she was engaging in was-

Yes, exactly. It was gossip mongering. It was inventing gossip and rumors to attack Trump. And this is par for the course. We've seen this since 2015.

You know, sources are saying, reports are alleging that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians and that Donald Trump, remember they said he hired hookers in a hotel room in Moscow? They never provided any evidence for that. And sources are alleging that he's corresponding, I don't know, with the KJB or this, that, or the other thing now that he's working with Bibi Netanyahu, who has absolutely no incentive, by the way. Just think about how insane this story is on the face.

that bb netanyahu is willing to sacrifice israeli lives because he just sort of likes donald trump and he thinks that maybe down the line trump will be a little more supportive than biden or harris when when both parties are broadly supportive of israel i guess the republicans are better for israel than democrats but is what what incentive does he have to do any of that it's it's just totally bogus but this is what happens when you when you've exhausted every attack on donald trump for eight years

Come 2024, you just have to make stuff up.

Let's play the Judy Woodruff sought again where she tells the lie. So like now that we know it's a lie, it's not a mistake because if it was a mistake, her apology would have owned that and said, you know what? I'm genuinely sorry. I don't know where I got that from. Axios had reported that there was a phone call and I leapt to a conclusion and that was a failure of mine as a reporter. That's not what she did. She blamed the most incendiary parts of her allegation that they were talking and Trump was trying to get him to stop

the ceasefire in order to help his campaign or not help Kamala's campaign. Judy Woodruff made that up in her head and then reported it as based on reporting. And then when she got caught, she doubled down by saying, well, I was just based on reporting and I hadn't seen the update. No, here's the original sin again. Now look at this now, knowing what we know.

The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the prime minister of Israel, urging him not to cut a deal right now because it's believed that would help the Harris campaign. So I don't know where that, I don't know, who knows whether that will come about or not.

But I have to think that the Harris campaign would like for President Biden to do what presidents do, which is work on that one.

Look at that. All the assumptions go in Harris's favor. Like, of course, she wants to do what's right. And of course, Trump wants to do it wrong. It's just such a glaring example of the disgusting, corrupt media bias that is ubiquitous in our media and indeed in the coverage of this campaign in a way that no political candidate could ever even hope to pay for.

Notice, Megan, even just the definite article there. It's not a report. It's not some report. It's the reporting. As though there were some definitive reporting that in a publicly funded outlet now, we are going to rely, not their own reporting, they're not doing any work, but just the reporting. And what ultimately we discover is the reporting is

It's this woman's imagination. And even beyond an innocent imagination, it's this woman's, it's the establishment media's lies, false fictional narrative to benefit Harris and to harm Trump. It's just absolutely lazy. I mean, you know, whatever. She was looking to fill time. She filled it with a lie that exposed her bias. None of that is

good. But then you go back and fix it. Then you go back. Then the tweet says, I'm a dumbass. I am very sorry. I was wrong. So I was very wrong. And don't try to bring Axios and Reuters down with you on your fake reporting. She's disparaged them both.

And really, PBS must answer for this. They must answer for this. We're going to stay on them too, demanding to know what, if anything, they're going to do. Will there be disciplinary action? Will they force her to issue a proper correction and apology? Because she has not apologized for her actual sin right now. Look, you don't have to look far to find disgusting examples of media bias. But this one is even more pernicious because it's more subtle. Many people probably saw her issue that original report

did not see the tweet trying to fix it and certainly won't see this reporting that proves it was all a lie. This is another example I'm about to show you of media bias. It's more on your face, so it's actually less upsetting, but it is disgusting. And it's Lawrence O'Donnell who had these lovely words to say about RFKJ. Take a listen here.

Robert Kennedy Jr., the Jeffrey Dahmer of the animal kingdom, has horrified his family almost as much as Jeffrey Dahmer horrified his family. By endorsing the most horrifying Republican presidential nominee in history, the only president who was more of a criminal in the White House than Richard Nixon, who Robert Kennedy Jr.'s father tried to keep out of the presidency by running against him until

Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, which instantly, and it seemed permanently, created a beatific glow around the name Robert Kennedy, a name which his son has now fully disgraced. So he's Jeffrey Dahmer. That's basically what you get.

What does he mean by the Jeffrey Dahmer of the animal kingdom? The left is really good at coming up with slogans and phrases that sound like they mean something, but upon even slight inspection, don't seem to have any meaning at all. Is he saying that he is the Jeffrey Dahmer toward animals? Is he basically saying- Yeah, that he eats animals. There was some report about him eating a dog, and I think he said it was a goat. I don't remember the whole specifics, but this is what they said about him. He's a hunter.

Okay, so he's a hunter. So hunters are all Jeffrey Donner. That was the allegation that he ate a dog, which is like, it's not controversial to eat a deer or a chicken or really a goat, but it is controversial to eat a dog, at least in America. And that was what they said about him. My team will correct me if I'm wrong. He denied it and said that that wasn't true.

But don't forget, Barack Obama bragged about eating a dog in his memoir. That got the guy elected president. So I don't know, maybe that was just a smart political move. He's Jeffrey Dahmer. But then I couldn't tell, did he mean he's Jeffrey Dahmer of animals? Because if he's the Jeffrey Dahmer of animals, like we're all animals, that would mean that Jeffrey Dahmer is the Jeffrey Dahmer of the animal kingdom. I don't know. Lawrence O'Donnell, he's not making very much sense. And he comes to his conclusion, which is RFK Jr. has fully disgraced the...

name Robert F. Kennedy. First of all, some of those other Kennedys have gotten up to some disgraceful behavior over the years. RFK, I think, is actually one of the more wholesome and admirable figures in the crew. But putting all of that aside for a moment, they were all singing this man's praises for his whole life. He's an important environmental lawyer. Even when RFK began to raise questions about the efficacy of vaccines,

Don't forget, he had a glowing interview with Jon Stewart back in the mid-2000s. Even then, when he was a reliable Democrat, RFK, what a hero, what a wonderful man to carry on the family name. It's only when RFK Jr. started to apply longstanding principles

Principles that many, many Democrats held in the 1960s to 2024. It's only when RFK said, look, I didn't leave my party. My party left me. I can't get on board with this.

radical leftism. I'm going to support, I'm going to run for president as an independent. And if I'm not going to win, I'm going to support the candidate who I think would be better for the American people, Donald Trump. That's the only time when the knives come out. It's so obviously disingenuous. It's so obviously opportunistic and cynical. And the more that the left goes on these rants, it only gives one more admiration for Bobby Kennedy.

Yeah, I'm just checking myself here. He denied eating a dog. There was an interview with, there was a piece on him in Vanity Fair that he'd eaten a dog. And they alleged that he texted a message to a friend last year, including a photograph that showed him pantomiming eating a cooked animal carcass. Kennedy reportedly recommended that the friend try eating dog while traveling in Korea and

Vanity Fair reported that the photo's digital metadata shows it was taken in 2010, that the publication consulted with a veterinarian who said the carcass in the photo appeared to be a dog's. Kennedy said the image depicted him eating a goat during a trip to South America. Good. So I did remember correctly. This is what they're talking. This is why Lawrence O'Donnell calls him the Jeffery. I mean, it's just.

It's so hard to keep up with the amount of hateful lies against anybody who's either pro-Trump or open-minded to Trump. Or in this case, ran against Trump and might have hurt Trump, but ultimately decided to back Trump instead of Harris. That's his sin. They would have, just this week, there's out a report, some guy saying that RFKJ sold him cocaine at Harvard when RFKJ was like 21.

OK, the man's 70. Right. So it's been 50 years and we're supposed to go back like some dude says he purchased cocaine from RFKJ 50 years ago in 1969. And this is the reason we're supposed to discount him as a Trump endorser. They're really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, Michael.

Also, find me the 20-year-old at Yale or Harvard or any of these other elite schools who was not doing cocaine in the 1970s. I dare you to find me one. I think you will be unsuccessful.

RFKJ for his part has a good sense of humor about this. He actually put out a video. We just pulled it. I saw it the other day in response to the dog eating allegation. And he's it's him with his dogs for the listening audience. And he's frying up their dinner and it's got he's putting all sorts of delicious steak in there and he's making it extra because he is he's positing that he needs to like get in better with his dogs now after they read this terrible report about him. Here's some of it.

This is my dinner. I'm giving him my food.

This is a high and very responsible journalist. I mean, I don't care what it does for me, but look at these guys. These guys will believe in anything they hear on the news. Yeah, daddy would never do something like that.

He's in the dog bed with them. He's reading them books. That's amazing, Michael.

Well, I love it. And what's great, I think, about the RFK Jr. endorsement of Trump is he actually hasn't sacrificed any of his principles or his positions. He didn't even do it so happily. He said, look, I have disagreements with Trump and, you know, I'm continue. I will push back where I think it's important to push back. But elections are a binary choice. It's clear that I'm not going to be the nominee or I'm not going to be the president rather. So I'm going to pick Donald Trump. And I

So one gets the impression that this is obviously a very intelligent person. This is a man who has deeply held beliefs. This is a practical man, a man who puts the common good of the country before his own personal ambitions, who keeps a relatively level head.

and that's what they hate about him i don't just i don't agree with bobby kennedy on many things he is legitimately a liberal on lots of issues and so we would have substantive disagreements but i really respect that this guy is independent he's intelligent

He sticks to his guns, even when the entire media apparatus that his family has done very well with for many decades turns against him. Even when his own family turns against him, he says, "Look, I believe what I believe. I'm not just going to go along with the party line. I'm going to follow my lights as I see them." That's really admirable, and I think that is what so scandalizes the media. I think that's what terrifies them the most.

So what we have, according to the media, is we have Hitler at the top of the ticket, some sort of rabid misogynist as his VP candidate, and then Jeffrey Dahmer as their latest endorser. So that's according to the media, what you have. It's a miracle half the country appears ready to vote for this ticket. Stand by, Michael Knowles. We're going to come back with some very interesting Mark Halperin reporting on the state of this race. Don't go away.

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Michael, on the subject of RFKJ, you mentioned it in passing, but he's tried to take his name off the ballot in the states in which there's a real competition. Like he said in his announcement, I'm not going to try to take it off in like Vermont, but in Michigan and these critical swing states, I am going to try to take it off because I don't want to cause Trump the election and I really want to help him. And now we get word from Michigan, the secretary of state there, that that request has been denied. She will not remove his name from the ballot.

But according to, let's see, I'm trying to see the actual source of this. Associated Press, she is, stand by, she is fighting,

She just attempted to remove Cornel West from the ballot and she lost a court case that she's now appealing. So it's fine to get Cornel West off because we know he's going to hurt Biden, if anybody. But RFKJ has to stay, even though he does not wish to be on said ballot. This is what a free and fair election looks like, just in case you didn't know.

By the way, part of the justification for forcing RFK to remain on the ballot was that he's a minority party candidate. And there's a difference between a small little minority party and one of the two major political parties. But of course, Cornel West is also a minority party candidate. So it doesn't make any sense. And then when you take into the context the last six or eight months of RFK,

trying doggedly to gain ballot access, rebuffed many steps of that way. In fact, he made that a key point of his suspension speech when he did go on to endorse Trump. He said, you know, it has been tooth and nail fighting day after day to try to get on the ballot. And the secretaries of state wanted to keep him off until it might hurt Trump to keep him on. And now he's got to fight tooth and nail to get off the ballot.

It's so crazy. It's really disheartening. Mark Halperin, though, with a very interesting dose of reality for Team Harris and people who might be getting kind of excited about what's happening with her. Now, I will tell you,

This relates to whether Kamala Harris has experienced a post convention bump. And the answer is she hasn't. The answer is she has not Yahoo polling, uh, today showing that, um, she's 47 Trump's 46, seven 19, July 19th to July 22nd before the convention.

It was 46, 46, both. That's a tie. That's the same. That's no movement. She's gotten no bounce. Now there's more polls out today. National poll by YouGov and The Economist shows the same. No, no bounce for her. She's 47. He's 45, which is where they were before. And that's and here's Mark Halperin sounding the alarm on to Democrats on what's happening here. There's some public polling already. There's more coming and there's some private polling.

that suggests that nationally in the battleground states, she's not ahead. She might be ahead on paper, but well within the margin of error. And there's some battleground states now where I think Donald Trump's on this trajectory is going to be ahead. And it may be, regardless of what happens in the interview, regardless what happens in the debate, it may be that by the middle of September,

when things have calmed down, when the Trump campaign have had time to prey on some of the weaknesses that I suggested, that he's ahead in all the Sunbelt states and ahead in Pennsylvania and competitive in Michigan and Wisconsin, which would be roughly where Joe Biden was before the debate with a single path to 270 electoral votes, the three Great Lakes states and Nebraska too. And that would be a scary position for the Democratic Party to be in from mid-September through Election Day.

because then they'd have a candidate who'd never won a presidential election, never won a primary or caucus, had run for president once and failed, had been for most of her time as vice president, not a short-footed person on the national stage. Again, I'm not predicting this will happen, but I think if the data I think is expected to come out, the people who either helped her secure the nomination without a shot being fired, and the people who've long been worried about her against Donald Trump,

will either have been I told you so mode or oh no mode or both. What do you make of that? It reminds me of Gavin Newsom's reaction just speaking with Jon Favreau, the former head of

speech writing for Obama, where even Newsom, this is a sitting Democrat governor, started laughing about the supposedly open and democratic process to nominate Kamala Harris. And Favreau's laughing too. And everybody's laughing because we know that this was a palace coup. It had nothing to do with the democratic base, the will of any voters. She just

slipped right in there. And as Mark Halperin points out there, she's never won a single primary, even the time that she did run for president. So no matter how confident the Democrats are feeling right now, no matter how much more energized they feel after they kicked out poor old Joe, we're dealing with a nominee who is completely untested in a national election, who has not appeared sure-footed, to use his phrase, while she's been vice president.

who doesn't really have any accomplishments under her belt in government or even electorally as she's running for office. So if I were Democrats, I'd be worried. Even probably the best looking poll for Kamala right now came out last Friday. Fairleigh Dickinson poll showed nationally Kamala at 50, Trump at 43, 7% of voters looking at someone else.

Now, of course, that poll was conducted before Friday's endorsement from RFK of Trump. And so there you go. That could be the seven points right there. But of course, the election won't be decided nationally. It'll be decided within the swing states. And so the endorsement of someone like RFK really would worry me if I were a Democrat because the Democrats are hoping to get a bump from the DNC while RFK just blunts whatever bump might have happened.

because he gives his endorsement the day after the DNC. And then the swing states are all separated by what, two or three points now? And RFK was commanding five points in some of those states. So even just that shift alone could represent a shift in momentum for the race. And as Halperin points out, if the momentum continues as it is right now, by the end of September, Democrats are gonna be in a terrible spot.

I mean, if this is true and she's starting to drop in the polls and has maxed out, she's peaked just in the context of the Democrats relief that Biden was out and they had anyone knew. But now there's getting to see her again and the numbers start to fall. There's nothing Tim Walz is going to be able to do to save her. The big white blankie will not save the day. It'll be it'll be like when my mom got rid of my big white blankie and just kept telling me it was in the wash.

until I realized I was on my own. The white blankie went to the wash. Joe Biden went to a farm upstate, I think. That's like they do to old Yeller. And so, you know, there are a lot of mixed metaphors here, but all of it comes down to the fact that Kamala is extraordinarily vulnerable.

And this is why, of course, she only wants to have one debate with Trump. She wants to push that debate as close as she possibly can to early voting beginning. She wants it to be inconsequential in the race. Democrats were clever in this way to set up two debates, one one.

way earlier than it should have been, one way later than it should have been. And so after the first one proved that Biden was incapable, they could just boot him off the ballot and reset. And then they're hoping that the September debate, even if it goes poorly for Kamala, will simply be inconsequential.

But don't forget, the only reason Biden agreed to those debates in the first place is because he was losing, because he was on a bad path. And so he had to do something to try to turn it around. Kamala is just going to try to sit on her hands and wait it out to get into the White House. Well, if these data keep coming up, as Mark Halperin is suggesting, that is going to mean that Kamala is on a bad path. It's a slight path downward, but it's

it's steady that trump is on a steady path up and then she's going to have to try something new but but whatever she tries is is only going to expose her to even greater risk and the risks haven't she can't save herself with her great oratory here is the moment you just referenced with gavin newsom on uh the pod save america podcast how are you feeling about the switch i've

I mean, now we went through a very open process, a very inclusive process. It was bottom up. I don't know if you know that. Yes, that's what I've been told to say. It was a blitz primary, I believe is what they called it. It was a very, very fast blitz. I think it was a blitz primary, so we call that. Oh, a 30-minute convention, you know, between a tweet and another tweet. It's amazing how it happened. Yeah, it's been amazing. But what is amazing is how unified everybody is. It's next level.

That's what I've been told to say. It's amazing. And you remember that Chuck Schumer saw it, soundbite with him saying it's, it's bottom up. It's been grassroots. And here he is saying his bottom up. That's what I've been told to say. We're aware that this is all a lie. We know when we're being lied to, we know this was not bottom up.

I love how Gavin Newsom, after he's been joking around a little too much with these insider guys, this is one of the good aspects of the Pod Save America universe, is that these are insiders that worked in the Obama White House. This is a real beltway, swampy kind of establishment type podcast. And so he can loosen his tie a little bit here. He's speaking with his colleagues in many ways. Gross.

Exactly, with his bros, they can joke about how the firm works. And so he's joking, "Oh yeah, in between one tweet, then we had a 20-minute open primary and then another tweet. That's how it works." But then he makes it really serious at the end. He says, "Oh, wait a second, I'm in public." But you know what's really amazing is

how unified we all are. We're unified. Okay, yeah. Totally unified. A lot of unity I've been seeing in this podcast. And in a sense, the Democrats are unified. They've accepted that Kamala is just the person they're going to have to run this time. But no one's excited about it, including Jon Favreau, including Gavin Newsom, and most importantly, including those moderate and centrist voters that they're going to have to try to pull over in the swing states.

Mm hmm. They they're panicked and they should be panicked because she's peaked. That's how it looks. And now she's actually just going to have to do the work of campaigning, which she has never been very good at. Yes, she's got the whole Democratic Party and establishment behind her. She just raised five hundred million dollars. But they outspent Trump back in 16 to I haven't looked at 20 recently, but for sure in 16.

And look, we reported this last week. Halpern actually sent out a tweet on this too, saying she had Hollywood heavyweights getting her ready for that DNC speech. His tweet was cryptic. He was talking about a Lord was there and there were a lot of creative artists. It only took me a while, but hello. I used to be with CAA, the Creative Artist Agency. He's talking about the top agent and the guy who runs CAA. There's Kevin Huvane and this guy, Brian Lord. So the head of one of, if not the most powerful agency in the world,

And other creative artists within, I mean, everybody's there. Meryl Streep is there, Jennifer Aniston, all the people, Charlize. So these people sat down, some of them, I don't know who, which ones, and got her ready. They can't do that. They're not doing that for the Dana Bash interview. They're not going to do that for the impromptu Joe the Plumber moment. So she'll get caught eventually for who she is.

Exactly. And one aspect of the DNC that I found so shocking was that the most prominent Hollywood celebrity who kept cropping up was Mark Hamill, was this guy who wasn't even the coolest actor in a movie series that began 50 years ago or 40 or so years ago. So I thought, wait, hold on. You guys own Hollywood. Why don't you bring out the big celebs? And it

It just doesn't seem that anyone is all that jazzed up about Kamala. You know, the Dems are putting on a good face and maybe they have a shot and maybe she's got a better shot than Joe Biden had when people realized his brain was applesauce. But I think part of the reason that Gavin Newsom can joke around here about this race, part of the reason that Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan is staying a little bit removed from it is because

some sophisticated Democrats are thinking maybe we just got to write off 2024 and we'll come back and get them at 2028. Maybe I don't want to go down with the ship. Mm-hmm. You wonder what the contest would look like if they actually had had an open primary and let some of these guys throw their hat into the ring. We shall never know. Michael Knowles, a pleasure, my friend. Thank you for being here. Wonderful to see you as always, Megan. Thank you for having me.

We'll be right back with Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. Looking forward to speaking with him. Voting. We've been about it long before it was encouraged and definitely long before it was safe. We've been about it against all odds. We know voting alone doesn't solve everything.

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I'm excited to bring you a first time guest on this show today and a name you likely know very well. Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia. He was rumored to be on the short list for former President Donald Trump's vice presidential running mate, while his accomplishments in Virginia have made him enormously popular in what is increasingly a blue state. But he is not blue. He is

a conservative, and he is popular on both sides of the aisle. So is Virginia possibly in play for President Trump in 2024? And does Governor Youngkin have the model for success for Republicans on a go forward basis? Governor, welcome to the show.

Megan, thank you so much for having me and what an honor it is to be with you. And yes, Virginia is competitive. And we have to remind ourselves that just four years ago, Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points.

And today it's competitive. In 2021, we came back and were able to win a statewide election for a Republican for the first time in 12 years. And I think what Virginians have seen is that common sense conservative policies work.

When we grow an economy and we combat crime and we lift up students and families, good things happen. And therefore, when they see the difference between what Donald Trump did for Americans during his first administration and what they have felt over the course of the last three and a half years in the Biden-Harris administration, they see strength from Donald Trump, weakness from Biden-Harris.

And the idea of reelecting Donald Trump back into the White House is really appealing. And that's why Virginia is competitive. And Megan, I think that's why we're seeing the battleground states as tight as they are right now is because many of these states are seeing the exact same phenomenon. The most important topic,

is the economy and the future of people's confidence to earn a living and take care of their families. The second most important topic is border security and the fact that the nation has become 50 border states. And most importantly, we're seeing America want strength in foreign policy. And it's been the weakness out of the Biden-Harris administration that has enabled

and facilitated in my view, the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East and China being as bold and threatening to Taiwan as it is. So this is about strength versus weakness. And this is a chance I think for America to stand back up and put Donald Trump back in the White House.

So you are a very successful man and you know something about the economy because while you started off, like our son right now is working as a bus boy and you were basically that level when you first entered the workforce, but then went on to chair the Carlyle group and made a bunch of money on your own self-made man. Then you funded your own campaign and ran for governor and won in Virginia as a conservative in what I said, as I said, is increasingly blue state. Can I ask you about what appeared to be Kamala Harris's tax plans?

for Americans, because this is something that you know a lot about how to get an economy going, what makes sense, what would make businesses thrive and hire. And what we've heard so far is that she is adopting Joe Biden's most recent proposals. The Wall Street Journal had a report about this yesterday, which would raise taxes. And I mean, raise them on the so-called rich and rich as anybody making more than $400,000 a year, which means small business owners.

The taxes would go up, quote, sharply on some high income individuals. Some top marginal tax rates would reach the highest point since 1986, saying that the rates would go for individuals up to 44.6 percent, up to 44.6 percent, which is just huge. I mean, they're already at 39 percent.

not to mention what would happen on capital gains taxes. So if make any money in the market, business income, all those taxes are going up. Corporations would face a 28% tax rate up from 21%. Large corporations would pay 21% minimum tax up from 15%. And she even wants to tax unrealized capital gains. So money, it looks like you made on paper, but you didn't cash in the stock. So you didn't actually make those things on those who have very high net worths.

What will this do to the economy if she gets that through? Well, let me begin that I believe that starting as a busboy is a great place to start. And so I think your son has got a bright future in front of him. I firmly believe that because there's dignity in work.

And I think one of the realities in life is that, uh, work is not only a good thing, but, uh, we need more people working across the Commonwealth of Virginia and across America. Uh, and when people are able to keep more of their hard-earned money in their pockets, uh, they in fact want to work harder. And on top of that, they spend, uh,

And this is at the heart of the misguided tax policy that the liberal left has consistently promoted. I mean, at the end of the day, what they want to do is raise taxes. They just want to raise taxes. They want to raise them on everybody. And let's not be confused. A tax increase on corporations will translate into a tax increase for all Americans when product prices go up.

There is a real belief that Kamala Harris will not renew the great tax reform that happened under President Trump's first term in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. And not renewing all of that great tax legislation that facilitated unprecedented economic growth will once again be a broad-based tax increase on all Americans.

The reality is that we need to make sure that we're working to be efficient at the government level, to stop the runaway spending, to invest in the most important things, and to allow Virginians and Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money in their pockets.

You know, Megan, when I came into Virginia, Virginia was suffering. We were bottom third in the nation in job growth. We were bottom 10 in the nation getting our schools back open. We had seen small businesses closed left, right and center. And for nine straight years, we'd seen more Virginians move away than move here from the other 49 states.

There was a real challenge. And one of the first things we did was, one, proclaim that we were open for business, but two, go to work to provide tax relief. And during our first two and a half years, we've seen $5 billion of tax relief, and we already have

another $3 billion in the works that has been passed that voters will realize. And I want to give them more because the system works. When they can keep more money in their pocket, there's more people who are hired, there's more people that are working. And on top of that, then there's more receipts at the state level, which gives us the ability

to reduce taxes again and invest in our most critical topics. I mean, I have to say that we've had record investment in education, record investment in law enforcement, record investment in behavioral health, record investment in cleaning up our streams and rivers and our bays. And we've done all of that with record tax relief because we have record employment. This is a very basic, simple truth.

that when we have more people engaged in our economy who are keeping more money in their pocket, then the economy grows. And yes, that provides more resources in order to invest. But when we raise taxes, when we take money out of people's pockets, when we penalize companies for doing well, we in fact provide the opposite incentive

And that is what the Biden-Harris administration and Kamala Harris wants to do on a go-forward basis, which is going to be severely damaging to the U.S. economy and to American families.

Yeah. You think about, you know, if, if a small business owner employs five people and he sees his taxes go up by these margins, is he just going to suck it up or is he going to lay somebody off so that the business continues to be able to pay its bills? I mean, that's just, it makes common sense, but she just wants to style it as we're going to get the evil rich people and we'll protect the working class. If you're under 400, a hundred thousand, you don't have to worry about it. You see, I'll protect you, but that just ignores the

motivations for corporations and the men and women who lead them. Well, and I'll repeat.

that a tax increase is not limited to just those that it's thinking it's raising taxes on. Raising taxes on corporations across America will increase product prices and will drive inflation. It just will. We know that. And when we see Americans, 66% of Americans today already living paycheck

to paycheck, when they go to the grocery store and it's a gut punch every time they're trying to feed their families, when they're trying to buy a home and all of a sudden the prospect of that American dream is so far away from anything they could realize that they abandoned hope in living that American dream. We know we have to do something different.

You know, in Donald Trump's first administration, we had high growth and low inflation. We had more people lifted out of poverty than ever. We saw more Americans see a pathway to buying a home. Mortgage rates were incredibly low.

And today we see runaway inflation, that silent thief, truly stealing the hard-earned money from so many Virginians and Americans. We've got to get back to economic reality. And the reality is that if we raise taxes on Americans, then we, in fact, are going to damage economic prosperity. If we can continue to pursue economic

policies that understand that it's Americans' money, not the government's, it's Virginians' money, not the government, then we can charge a path forward or chart a path forward that will unleash economic prosperity. We've seen it happen under Donald Trump.

We've seen the opposite happen under Joe Biden. And this is a very clear comparison of two track records, the Kamala Harris track record and the Donald Trump track record. And I'm telling you that given the fact that the economy is the number one topic in America today, people are going to want the Donald Trump track record.

There's, there's, you know, she's been trying her level best to not really show us exactly what the policies are, but this embrace of Biden's tax policy is one of the things we've learned. Um, you've been trying to sound the alarm on some of these things in Virginia and beyond. And one of the things you're doing, there's a lot I want to talk to you about that you're doing in Virginia. That is, I think will be very exciting to a lot of our audience. But one of the things you've just done is try to clean up the Virginia voting

roles to try to purge them of dead people right on and people who are not American citizens, which should not be controversial. But lo and behold, you found a lot of names that needed to go. Well, there's a basic principle here, which is American elections should be decided by citizens of America. Virginia elections should be decided by citizens of Virginia.

And we went to work with the recognition that the voter, the motor voter law that was passed decades ago opened up a risk and whether through purpose or accident, non-citizens are able to register to vote. And unfortunately,

It has been left unattended for a while. I'm very, very pleased with Speaker Johnson's efforts to pass legislation to force the proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. But in Virginia, what we did was go grab simple data analytics. And there are lots of data sets from the Social Security Administration to all the data we have about Virginians and the DMV.

and use those to cross-reference citizens and non-citizens. And when we did that, what did we find? 6,300 non-citizens who were registered to vote. We took the same practice with regards to Virginians who had sadly passed away or moved away. And last year, we found nearly 80,000 folks in the voter rolls that had sadly passed away but shouldn't have been on the voter rolls.

I issued an executive order a couple of weeks back that codified all of these practices. And in fact, now mandates that on a daily basis, we are scrubbing our voter rolls as we head into early voting in September. This is very straightforward. American elections should be decided by American citizens.

The other thing that we really felt strongly about is that the processes of counting votes need to be well understood and trusted. We have paper ballots in Virginia. We have counting machines, no voting machines. We are not connected to the Internet.

We have great custody practices. I want to make sure that our ballot boxes are secured 24 by 7. And I also want to make sure that all Virginians know this and that if non-citizens are voting, that it is in fact a chargeable offense and you'll be arrested.

And all of this went through my executive order so that all Virginians can feel confident that they can trust their elections. The bottom line is, as we look forward, I've just encouraged all governors to do the exact same thing. I've been pleased because I've seen a number of states really take similar actions so that we can provide the kind of confidence in this most important election that it deserves.

you've been, you know, living up to the promises that you made, um, at, to, to govern as you, as you said you would as a conservative. And one of the things you've done is sent the Virginia national guard down to help Texas out with the,

awful border problems we've been having. I'm just ticking through some of the things. So that's one thing a local governor did to try to help the southern states deal with this problem, which we're now, I guess, pretending is no longer a problem because the Democrats want to win. In addition to that, you fought back. And one of the reasons that you were elected was that you would fight back on the COVID madness and on the trans

explosion of the insanity policies in the Virginia schools. And you have lived up to your word.

I, as a parent watched you campaign on this and watch Terry McAuliffe tried to say that parents don't have a say on what goes on inside the classroom. And my jaw dropped. You actually took office and you've done what you promised to do. So let's just spend a minute on the COVID stuff because it was January that Dr. Anthony Fauci told us he's really not satisfied. There was any learning loss at all.

as a result of these school closures. And Randy Weingarten was featured at the DNC like she was some sort of a heroine, even though she pushed these closures to go on indefinitely. There's not been any more detrimental and misguided policy decisions that were made during the pandemic. And there were a lot.

than closing our schools and telling our students that watching a 12-inch screen every day was a quality education. I mean, as I said earlier, Virginia was bottom 10 in the nation in getting our schools back open. And the first thing I did when I came into office was make sure that not only were our schools open, but to give parents the ability to decide whether their child wears a mask or not. We'd watched systematic degradation of expectations in our schools,

And so when you have students that are told that they're proficient in reading and math, but they're not really proficient in reading and math, and you compound that by locking them out of the school buildings, you're not surprised by the fact that Virginia was top nationals.

top in the nation in learning loss in fourth grade reading and math. I'm going to say that again, Virginia, one of the top education systems in America was number one in the nation in learning loss in reading and math. And the primary reason was the fact that the foundations were degraded because of expectations that had been lowered in what it took to be proficient. And second of all, the kids were locked out of the classroom.

And this is not an indictment of teachers. I will tell you, teachers worked hard to try to do the impossible. But that is why when we last year saw this persistent learning loss, Megan, we took immediate action and went and worked on a bipartisan basis with our General Assembly and said we need to fund, particularly in our youngest Virginians, intense tutoring.

And so third through eighth graders now get intense tutoring if they failed or at risk of failing. And by the way, that was over 60% of our students who either failed or risk failing their standards of learning tests.

The results are good. We're seeing the test results improved. I need them to improve a lot faster because we're still behind where we were pre-pandemic. The other area that I have been incredibly concerned about is that when policymakers and administrators and school associations, teachers associations told families that it wasn't important for their students to be in school,

The result of that has been huge increases in chronic absenteeism. I mean, giant increases where students just aren't in the classroom. And if they're not in the classroom, they can't catch up.

And so we initiated a statewide effort to tackle chronic absenteeism. We saw a 16% reduction in chronic absenteeism, but again, that's not nearly enough. So we have to get the kids back in the classroom. And second of all, we have to make sure that they are getting the kinds of support and intensive tutoring that they need. And let me add one more thing, Megan, and I apologize, but this topic is absolutely a passion of mine.

is that during this time period, literally the left facilitated in our kids' lives massive, massive use of social media. And there's been no constraint. And we have seen the role of social media, the addictive nature of social media have such a detrimental impact on our young people. It has damaged them academically,

It has caused severe mental health. We have seen the rates of particularly teen girl suicide attempt and self-harm go up over 150%. And we've got to get at this. And so that's why I signed an executive order last week or at the beginning of July that then translated into draft policies last week to make our schools from bell to bell cell phone free.

And we're going to make sure we work together to draw some boundaries around our kids so that they can learn better and be healthier. So we're trying to help the kids who did suffer learning loss, turn things around. We're trying to get them off of the screens during academic hours and ideally beyond. You signed an executive order back in 2022, removing CRT, critical race theory, and the nonsense that it teaches, which divides us and separates us by class and by it

by race and gender and so on. Um, and then the trans insanity was reversed by you. That was being put in by your predecessor and Ralph Northrup. And that in particular was a restoration of parental rights, Virginia, Virginia of all places. I mean, it's more of a Southern state of course, and used to be red, but because of all the people moving to it from the blue DC area became more and more purple. And now it's kind of blue.

was starting to say that parents didn't have the right to know if their child showed up at school and declared that he was a different gender than the one that he actually was, than his biological sex. You changed all that, Governor. Why?

Well, there is a fundamental right that parents have to make the most important decisions in their children's lives. Yes, education, but their health and well-being right at the top of the list. And we had watched parents be shoved out of their children's lives with politicians and bureaucrats and administrators trying to replace them. And how in the world could this incredibly important, impactful, lifelong decision be

be discussed with somebody at school, but not with parents. And in fact, there was an effort to not tell parents. And so we went to work to reestablish the primary role of parents in their children's lives, to put them at the head of the table, so that there cannot be decisions that are made without parental deep involvement.

It is about the role of parents in children's lives. It's about families. And most importantly, it's about the long-term well-being of kids. What we have seen, of course, is the reality of Virginians, and I believe Americans recognize this is not a political issue. It's not Republicans versus Democrats.

And in fact, one of our observations in our 2021 campaign was that education and particularly the role of parents in their children's lives and standing strong for those rights was not just bipartisan, it was universally supported education.

And I once again believe that Republicans should be winning on this topic of education. We hold high standards. We believe in empowering parents to make decisions with their children, for their children, to not have things imposed on them. We believe that biosecurity

Biological boys should not be playing sports with biological girls. That's fair. That is fair. We have to make sure we stand up for women. And the effort, again, that the Biden-Harris administration has made, that Kamala Harris has made to completely gut the progress in Title IX over the last decades to empower women and girls in America is shameful.

We've got to stand up for women and girls. And this idea that, again, we're going to allow biological boys to play sports with biological girls is just beyond common sense. Okay. So I just want to go over this. You cut taxes.

stimulated business, got the kids back in school, removed the mask mandates, restored some of the learning loss that had been imposed under your predecessor, removed CRT from the schools, got rid of the trans insanity that was governing the teachers and the students, sent National Guard troops from Virginia down to help restore the border in Texas, cleaning up the voter rolls to make sure it's purged of dead people and illegals and

in a now blue state, you have, according to Roanoke College polling, likely voters, a 59% approval rating as a conservative Republican governor. That's the model. I mean, a lot of people think, Governor, that in order to get numbers like that at the state level or the national level, you have to be moderate. You've got to be, forgive me, but more like a Mitt Romney type. And that's the only way forward for Republicans to win the national vote and to win the Electoral College.

You are proving that to be untrue every day of your term.

Well, first of all, you're very kind to offer that assessment. I have to tell you, when I decided that I was going to run for governor and after my wife stopped crying and we prayed over it and we locked our arms together and said that if hired, we would serve, we also committed ourselves to try to do what's right.

And oftentimes we find that there are pressures that take us off of what's right. And we've made mistakes. And let me just be clear. I know we have. But we try really hard to stick to common sense, conservative values that work. And the difference, I believe, today is

Instead of a philosophical debate of what could be under one set of policies versus another set of policies, we have real life case studies that show that common sense conservative policies work,

And the left liberal progressive policies don't. Virginia, which had moved so far left, was seeing a stagnant economy, was seeing small businesses close left, right, and center, was seeing a 20% increase in murder rate, a 20-year high. We saw test scores plummeting across the Commonwealth. And we were watching people move away faster than they were moving here.

The same thing happened at the national level. We watched common sense in the first Trump administration really demonstrate economic strength, foreign policy strength, border strength, and the reality is this works. And then you compare that to what we've seen over the last three and a half years. And what we have again seen very clearly is weak foreign policy causes chaos around the world.

The border czar, Kamala Harris's failure to do anything at the border has caused chaos across the United States. I mean, we have seen such travesty just in Virginia. We have on average five Virginians a day that die from fentanyl overdoses. We had two illegal immigrants that tried to ram the front gate at Marine Base Quantico. I mean, come on. They had a box truck and they tried to drive through the front gate of Quantico and ram it down. We've seen young women sexually assaulted.

This is craziness. And then finally, of course, when it comes to representing the core values of hard work and education and public safety, I mean, these are foundational that we want people to have jobs where they go to work every day and get paid and keep more of that money in their pocket. We want our kids to be challenged in schools and prepared so they can take advantage of the great opportunities of this nation and innovate and lead.

This is the America that we can build together. And unfortunately,

What Kamala Harris stands for is so counter to all of that. And I do believe that when she finally does an interview, when she finally comes out of hiding and has to explain why she was the last person in the room to speak with Joe Biden before the disastrous withdrawal out of Afghanistan, why she signed bills that unleashed unbridled spending that drove inflation,

Why, as a border czar, she didn't actually do anything about trying to secure our border. Why she claimed that she would never want to hold any kind of real jail consequences against illegal immigrants and that she wanted to give everyone free education. Why she said she would never support a bill that would build a border wall. This is a representation of someone who's true to her beliefs.

And let's just make sure that we hold her to those beliefs because that's what she said during her entire political career. And that's why I do believe that when this fall, when she and President Trump have a chance to really speak about the issues, America will again be fully confident in the fact that a strong America under Donald Trump is a better America. All right. I've got to ask you, because I saw you briefly at the Republican National Convention. You're a very tall man. First of all, how tall are you?

I'm six, six, six, six, very, very tall man. And that's good in a politician. They say that the tall politicians historically have done well here in America. But you were reportedly on the short list as one of Trump's possible VP candidates. Is it true? And did you have a celebrity apprentice like moment where you had to wait by the phone and get a call from him?

Well, President Trump and I met personally for the first time. We had spoken on the phone numerous times, and of course he had been very helpful during our 2021 campaign, but we met for the very first time in person in June. And I will tell you, we never spoke about the vice presidency. What we spoke about is how we won in Virginia.

and all of the needed efforts in order to campaign with the Latino vote and to campaign into our military community and to make sure that his policies were compared to her policies

Um, we had a fabulous meeting and I just, uh, deeply appreciate the fact that our relationship has been able to grow since then. Um, JD Vance will do a fabulous job. Uh, I think he is a super big- What have you made of the media pile on on him though? It's been brutal. Yeah, I, I, I do. I firmly believe that that's what the media is trying to do. Listen, they have given the mainstream media has given Kamala Harris a complete free pass

and they're doing everything they can to try to villainize the Trump Vance ticket. I mean, it's just clear. I mean, of course, we haven't seen Kamala Harris flip-flop on any policy yet because she core, in her core, believes in the progressive left policies. And she has unknown anonymous campaign aides coming out and floating policies that look and feel a lot like Donald Trump's policies because they're so popular.

But the reality is the media is not holding her accountable for all of that. And that is why, bluntly, Megan, this show for you is so important because it provides real insights into what's really happening. And it really does bypass the mainstream media, which is doing everything they can to promote a candidate,

who candidly will not speak to the issues, a candidate who is trying to stay out of the limelight and not have to make excuses for her extreme positions, and on top of that, try to undermine and demean, I believe, a presidential candidate who will lead this country with strength. And therefore, that's why I have been vocal in supporting him.

All right, Governor, last question. I know in Virginia they have a wacky law that only lets you serve your term as governor for four years. And while you could come back after somebody else becomes governor and run again, that doesn't happen very often there. So when when does your term end and what are your plans? Like, would you serve potentially in a Trump administration if asked?

Well, behind my desk, I have a clock that counts down from four years to zero.

And while I would love to run for another term as governor constitutionally in Virginia, I can't. And so we have an immense sense of urgency in everything we do because we've got to get eight years worth of work done in four years. And boy, we have had some really great successes. And I'm very proud of the work that we have done. And I have incredibly high ambitions of the work that we will do.

I do think that this urgency has enabled us in a purplish, if not the bluish state, to get an enormous amount done. And Megan, I think when we look back and we see Virginia going from bottom third in job growth to top of the charts in many cases, at least top 10 every year, we've had record number of people working. We have nearly 262%.

thousand more people working today than when we started. We've had $80 billion of capital commitments from companies who have committed to expand here or move here, again, two and a half times any like period. It reflects the fact that when you have a sense of urgency and you're doing things that, yes, represent common sense, well-grounded conservative policy and governance,

you can make a lot happen. And so I am eager to continue to serve Virginians. I also recognize that over the course of this time to January 2026, which is when my term will be up, it'll be time for me to think about what I do next. And I have to say that I have felt as purposeful as I've ever felt serving as governor, as purposeful as I've ever felt serving 8.7 million Virginians.

And I do hope that there'll be an opportunity for me to continue to serve in some capacity going forward. All right. I'm going to, I'm, I like that answer and I'm going to leave it at this. I have a connection with Virginia, a few of them. I used to live there. I was lived in Arlington for a few years when I was first starting out as a reporter and my sister raised her kids there and her, my sister passed, but her three children still live there. And one of them is a teacher. So I appreciate the shout out to the teachers.

Um, and one thing I just want to let the audience know, cause I think too often Republicans forget this piece is you are, you're a conservative who cares. You have a heart. And one of the executive orders that you signed recently, um, it, it helps support the Virginians who are on probation, striving to reenter society successfully following incarceration. Now, my sister, I've told the audience,

fell into the opioid crisis really through no fault of her own. It was prescribed to her by a doctor saying it wasn't addictive. And she had a minor brush up with the law. She wasn't incarcerated or anything like that, but she tried so hard to, to cleanse her record and to get into the workforce. It was so hard. Just this one, just this one minor thing

And it was so hard and it would be so helpful to the others who are out there now who are not criminals, who have just fallen on hard times, who crossed that ethical line once, you know, and are looking for a clean slate to rebuild their lives, to have somebody like you help them on their road back. So I will say, thank you. Thank you for doing that.

Thank you. And I just so appreciate the opportunity to just quickly recognize the fact that every human being is formed in the image of God and everyone therefore has infinite worth. And the sad reality is that 50% of the men and women in Virginia's jails and Department of Corrections are repeat offenders.

And we can do better. And we can do better by systematically supporting, but also demanding that the returning citizens fully participate in getting a job, finding a place to live, enrolling in health care, meeting with their probation officer.

showing up for their substance abuse meetings. And if we do these things, then outcomes can be so much better. And not only does it reduce crime statistics and of course relieve a burden financially on the system,

but it unlocks human flourishing. And that is at the core. And so we have a system that we've been testing for the last 12 months. We believe it works and we rolled it out across the whole Commonwealth. And I look forward to tackling one of these most challenging issues, which is the repetitive nature of crime. And I'm hopeful, I'm hopeful that we can create many more success stories than statistics.

Awesome. Governor, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. Please come back. Yeah, God bless you. Thank you for having me. You as well. Well, January 26, you heard it. His term ends. If Trump wins, I think we know what his next move is, given those term limits could be very interesting. And what a blueprint for other Republicans who think it can't be done even in a blue state. We will be right back with Kerry Prejean Bowler.

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Joining me now, Carrie Prejean Bowler, former Miss California 2009 and now a mom and community activist. Carrie, so good to see you again. Welcome back to the show. Yeah, you're kind of brunette. I like it. It looks good. You like it? I thought I would just change it up a little bit. Honestly, like you can do whatever you want to the curtains. It's the view out the window that makes you spectacular. So I don't think you have to worry about hair color. There's so much to go over. Okay. First, let's talk about Riley Gaines. Riley,

Riley Gaines went down to Georgia Tech to rip them a new one. She was asked to go testify down there over what's happening with the trans insanity. And Georgia Tech is where the NCAA event was held, where she was forced to swim against Leah Thomas and forced to change in a locker room with Leah Thomas. And the head of Georgia Tech failed to show, even though he was supposed to take a listen to her.

I wrote a letter, actually, to the president, President Cabrera of Georgia Tech. I was hoping to today see him and privately and personally hand him this letter, but he's not here.

He didn't have the gumption to show up here. I'm just going to read the letter. You of all people could have protected me and more than 300 young women like me who came to your campus for one of the most significant meets of our lives. Your Georgia Tech University officials knew a naked adult man with full male genitalia was being authorized by Georgia Tech to share a locker room with hundreds of college-age women. This was intentional misconduct.

This was premeditated. It was sexual harassment. And I labeled this as sexual harassment because we did not give our consent to being exploited and exposed to a six foot four fully naked man because you did nothing. That man walked into our women's locker room at your university and saw me undressed down to full nudity.

I didn't even know he had access to our locker room until I heard a man's voice. You allowed college women to be traumatized and violated on your campus. My good for her. She's speaking for the Georgia State Assembly. They're calling out the people who did that to her. Carrie, what did you make of it?

Oh, I get emotional even just hearing it again for the second time. I think that we need to rally behind Riley Gaines and so many other millions of young women. I know you have a daughter, Megan. I have a daughter. My daughter competes in athletics and it is a shame. It is an absolute shame that we are seeing in real time the erasure and elimination of women.

That is what it is. And that's what we must say, because that is the truth. And so Riley, so brave. We need to applaud her and replicate what Riley is doing. I love Riley. And we all have a duty to stand up. We're seeing this in little league sports. We're seeing it in Pop Warner. We're seeing it in all kinds of athletic programs across the nation. This doesn't just happen here in crazy California. We're seeing it. We must stand up. And I'm going to say one thing.

Women must refuse to compete. They must take a knee and refuse to compete against men masquerading as women. You don't just put on a costume and one day say, I'm a woman. You either are XX or you're XY. This insanity, Megan, must end. And it ends with us. We the people.

The it's happening right now in the LPGA, the women's golf circuit, where there is a male golfer by the name of Haley Davidson, who just a few years ago was playing on a men's college team. And now this Haley Davidson, who's a man masquerading as a woman, is

has just moved on to the next round of qualifying school. They have to do two more tournaments, I think, inching even closer to participation on the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour. This person, yeah, it was, let's see,

Riley actually is quoted in this article by the daily mail. I think at a daily wire saying that it looks like this mediocre male will be among the top 95 qualifying female golfers to move on later today and potentially win prize. The, she shared lot Riley shared this video potentially win prize money and so on. And this same person carry

is on record as ripping biological women for not winning more. I'll never understand athletes, he says, who blame a transgender competitor for their own athletic failures. If you don't take accountability for your failures, then you will never actually be good enough to make it.

Yeah, I remember posting about this back in March and he had just won the NXXT tournament, I believe it was. And then the president of the tournament came out and said shortly thereafter, we will not be allowing transgender people

men to compete in women's sports. And so I applauded this organization. And now we're seeing the same dude, the same man. And he just came out with an interview not too long ago, probably six months ago. And the guy interviewing him said, what are your thoughts on so many women saying that you are stronger than women and you can hit the ball further than women? And, you know, just men are biologically more, you know,

can beat women essentially. And he tells the guy interviewing him, yeah, yeah, we can. He is so arrogant. And he's not even, no, he's not sorry. He's not sorry. And he's going to continue this. And so we must boycott. We must boycott. Look what we did with Bud Light. Look what we did with Target. We must refuse to watch this circus. And we must...

I mean, that's when it, that's where it really hurts them is, is when it hits the pocketbook. And so we must refuse to watch. We are the consumers. And then all the women who are about to compete against this dude, I challenge you take a knee, refuse to compete. That's when this circus ends.

Imagine if those women in the boxing ring had done that when opposite those two male boxers, if they just took a knee immediately and said, I refuse, it would have made such a statement. Meanwhile, across the pond, way across in Australia,

a terrible ruling that we were all waiting for in this tickle versus giggle case. We had this woman on Sal Grover who started this website giggle. It was just for women, women's spaces, looking for women, roommates, all that. And this trans, this man who's posing as a woman who goes by Roxanne tickle, it's a man.

tried to get on, try to use the spaces. And she identified him. I mean, frankly, quite easily as a man posing as a woman and said, you're not allowed to use it. Well, he sued her. She came on the show not long ago to talk about the case before it was decided. Here's Sal Grover, the one who started the website, who's fighting back against the madness. Watch.

So if you want to have a conversation about being kind, that's actually the first hurdle you're going to have to get over is that there is going to have to be kindness to women as well. This is not a one way street. I also actually don't think it's kind to tell men who are under the delusion that they are women, that it's true. I think it's actually kindness to tell them the truth. And so even when we're talking about like the, the female only space is like, as, as,

Kath was saying that these are necessary. This is a kindness to women. And we are constantly being like forced to relive like these traumatic experiences that we've had to justify them. It's like, no, we want them. And furthermore, these people I don't even think are like negating the necessity of female only spaces necessarily. They're just trying to get us to force like to get us to see these men as women.

Carrie Sal lost this trans guy.

the right to come into our spaces. And it's much more devastating than that because now we have a ruling on the record, a male judge, Justice Robert Bromwich, who ruled in a decision Friday that sex is changeable and not necessarily binary and ordered Sal Grover to pay $10,000 in Australian cash to this trans person. And the result is this website's done.

done. It's not coming back. And now there's precedent in Australia that there's really no such thing anymore as biological sex. What a sad day, Megan. What a sad horrific day. It makes me emotional. I mean, I know how, how is this happening? How is this happening? And we as women are literally seeing the erasure of our sacred spaces of our sacred places.

We now have to fight for our rights, even to exist, to exist and to have a place. I have goosebumps right now, Megan, because this is the reality of it. This is the reality of it. And I'm glad you mentioned the boxing situation because I wanted to bring that up. I had the opportunity to reach out

Thank God I got ahold of the boxer who was going to compete against the dude, Imane Khalif. And I reached out to her and I talked to her boyfriend and I said, why don't you go in that ring? You go in that ring and you fight against that dude.

Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing. I had this whole interaction with him and he's Hungarian. So I had this whole interaction with him on Instagram. And I said, please, please, I beg you tell your girlfriend, her name is going to come and go. Nobody's going to remember her name, but if everybody will remember her name, if she jumps in that ring and takes a knee and says, no, I'm going to take a knee for women across the world.

This is a worldwide women's rights issue. It's not just here in America. Look what's happening in Australia. And we, we need to take a knee and fight back against this. That's when this is going to change. And so the girl ended up going in the ring and she got, she got beat up and nobody's going to remember her name, but imagine Megan, imagine what would have happened. Imagine all the little girls like your daughter and my daughter who would have saw that girl taken to the

It would have been so huge given the size of the stage, you know, the Olympics, the gold medal round. You know, we've seen like we saw those young girls, those shot putters, they refused. That was great. But it needs to happen on a larger stage where it will command attention or someone makes the active decision to sacrifice the gold medal or the prize money. So

so that they can stand up for your little girl in mind. Carrie, that's what you do all the time. Thank you so much for coming on. Let's continue this discussion. We have more time. I love seeing you. Love seeing you too, Megan. Thank you.

Oh, I'm so upset about the Sal Grover ruling. This is terrible for our Aussie friends. Thank God it didn't come down in our country, but we're about to have a year full of litigation. I mean, honestly, we're it's on. We are fighting these battles in the courts and we will win. I do believe under this U.S. Supreme Court, we'll win. But a lot of girls are going to get hurt in the process. And by the way, more of them if Harris Walls gets elected.

Tomorrow, we are bringing you a very special show with Dennis Quaid and the cast of Reagan. This movie is incredible and it's coming out at a very interesting time in the advance of the presidential election. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

Every day, in big ways and small, people show up for each other. For their friends, their families, their futures. They know today isn't perfect and tomorrow won't be either. But there's always a chance to make it better. And they show up to vote every time. Not for this or that candidate, but for you. On November 5th, will you vote for them? Visit NAACP.org slash vote. Paid for by Priorities USA and NAACP Empowerment Programs, Inc.,

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