Walz's Debate Brain Freeze, New Emhoff Allegations, and Trump Spurns 60 Minutes, with The Fifth Column hosts | Ep. 904
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Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM channel one 11 every weekday at noon East. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show. We meet again. It feels like it's just been a couple of minutes since we last chatted, but a lot's gone down. It's the morning after now, the big VP debate last night. And honestly, like the more I've thought about it over the past, why it was 12 hours when we signed off ago. Um,

The angrier I've gotten over the amount of bias and push there was by those moderators in favor of the Democrats. It's just so out of control. The media bias is out of control. I don't think these Republicans should be agreeing to do any more of these debates at any point on any of these networks. And the only way they should is if there is an equal number of

in a forum of their choice. They can say to the Democrats, you choose ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, even MSNBC, you choose. You choose two, two of those. And we'll choose two. We'll do one with the

Otherwise, you are voluntarily going into a lion's den in which you're the bait. The lion will try to eat you. And they treat the other candidate as the little baby lion cub. They will try to protect that person and run cover for that person. And if you wind up posing any sort of a threat to that person,

everyone in the arena is against you. They will try to cut your head off. I mean, that's what we saw. Or in last night's situation, cut your mic off.

We're going to get into it in some more detail with our wonderful guest today, guys, who I love and I know you do too. But before we get to them, there's a stunning new story out today involving Vice President Kamala Harris's husband, Doug Emhoff. Now, do you remember this Jen Psaki clip that we showed you just a couple of days ago and we mocked her for her ridiculous lapdog bootlicking performance when she had this guy knowing he...

He had cheated on his first wife before Kamala Harris with his child's nanny. Look, people have marital problems and they make bad decisions when they're married to people that they don't love. All right. However, banging your child's nanny and impregnating her is in a special league of its own. Whatever. He got through the marriage. He managed to somehow remain friends with that first wife and he married Kamala.

I think most of us would have left it alone if he hadn't then paraded himself out there and let the media parade himself out there like he was the ideal husband on steroids. Like he is the new version of what it means to be a real man and eschews toxic masculinity and should really be the role model for my boys and yours. F that.

I want my boys to be like my husband, who did not bang the nanny nor impregnate another woman while married to me or ever. It's just it's insane that they tried to sell us this lie. That was the context in which we raised before I get to today's news. The following Jen Psaki clip where she interviewed the current second gentleman, the man who could be our first gentleman in a few months on I think it was Sunday. Watch.

An interesting part of how people have talked about your role here is how your role has reshaped the perception of masculinity. And I'm not sure you planned on that, but you are an incredibly supportive spouse. Has that been an evolution for you? And do you think that's part of the role you might play as first gentleman?

It's funny. I've started to think a lot about this. I've always been like this. My dad was like this. And to me, it's the right thing to do, you know, support women. When we lift up women, we support women, whether it's pay equity, child care, family leave and all these issues that, you know, this post-Obs Hellscape.

Women should not be less than. There's a pop culture phrase, wife guy, which you've kind of been known as. Are you familiar with this? I've heard about it. As called a wife guy, a proud wife guy. How do you feel about that? Well, if I do something annoying to Kamala and she gets upset, I'll just show her that article. It's an interesting gesture there at the end with the hand in your face, because that's the news today that this so-called always supporter of women actually smacked an ex-girlfriend in the face.

either a smack or a punch. It was unclear, according to the Daily Mail's exclusive reporting, that this super guy who's redefined toxic masculinity actually beat a woman that he was dating prior to Kamala. The Daily Mail reports that he did not respond to requests for comment on the article. What does that mean?

There's not even going to be a denial. I guess they'll get around to it. Just an allegation right now. But let me tell you, take some time today to read that Daily Mail report because it's incredibly detailed. Incredibly detailed.

with several friends of the very successful attorney that he was dating, his alleged victim, going to the Daily Mail, providing records to the Daily Mail, speaking in great detail about the call that the abuse victim alleged made to them after he smacked her in front of other people, in front of French valets over there in Cannes, France. And

No one's looked into this, I guess, other than the Daily Mail. Certainly Jen Psaki, I hope, wasn't aware of it when she let him get away with, I've always been like this, a supporter of women, except when I'm slapping them in the face or banging the nanny on the ones I'm married to behind the back of. I'm sorry, this is just, if this were a Republican, it would be leading every news channel, every news channel.

One of our guests on this show last night, Mark Halperin, reported on our show last month that there was still more oppo research to drop about Vice President Harris and her husband. How she, and by extension he, had never really been formally vetted. Look how she got elevated so quickly to the VP spot under Biden.

He was losing. He needed to win South Carolina to secure the nomination. He made a deal with James Clyburn. He would select a black woman as his running mate. Bob's your uncle. She was in. It's just unbelievable.

Now the vetting begins by the Daily Mail. God bless them because they actually do look into these stories. Other people think are too beneath them to check, although they'd be they'd love to report these other respectable news outlets on Stormy Daniels and whether she said Trump wore a condom. That's not beneath them. But this is a CD. All of this is unbelievable. Also, this today.

The New York Times, they've got a daily podcast. It's very popular. The lefties love it. It's called The Daily. Sometimes I listen to it because I like to keep my finger on the pulse of what the left is doing. And today was interesting because they were doing a debate rundown. How did it go? Could not believe my ears. They believe the only moment Americans will remember about the vice presidential debate last night in which J.D. Vance wiped the floor of

with Tim Walz is an exchange between the two candidates near the end about democracy, specifically the 2020 election. And guess what else? They did not even run the soundbite where Tim Walz calls himself a knucklehead after he clearly gets caught in and confronted with a lie he told about being in China for the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Joining me now to discuss these and many other stories, Camille Foster, partner at Freethink, Michael Moynihan, contributor to the Free Press, and Matt Welsh, editor-at-large for Reason. Together, they are the hosts of The Fifth Column. You can find all their content and support them at wethefifth.com.

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Thanks for having us. Can you believe what I just went over in my intro? I, I'm like, I'm really, I'm really at, at base. All those stories are about media bias. I, even the, you know, the daily mail breaking this reporting, you, you, I think a second gentleman punching a woman in the face would be news irrespective of a, I mean, I just think in any normal news cycle,

The mainstream press would report on that if they had it. But in this news cycle, no one was interested. No one cared to run down, oh, if he banged the nanny on it behind his first wife's back and impregnated her, maybe he's not a good guy. Perhaps that that weren't some phone calls. Again, I want to say in Doug's defense, Doug Emhoff's, not to be confused with the actual great women loving man, Doug Brunt, um,

We don't know whether it's true. All I can tell you is that the Daily Mail report is extremely detailed with multiple witnesses coming forward now. And their first exclusive reporting was about him with a nanny, which he admitted. So they've got a good track record when it comes to him. So all three stories at their base, Matt Welsh, are about media bias. And in the wake of those last night's debate, what I told you about the Daily today,

This being broken October 2nd by the Daily Mail. Where's your head this morning? I would imagine that we will see some follow up reporting, I think, more on the Daily Mail. Right. But first, it's it is it's not bow drop. It's the Daily Mail, which is a fantastic newspaper, but it sometimes shades a little bit outside the lines. The New York Post brought it up.

And there's three unnamed sources and it's a month before the election. So that's all a lot of buyer beware. But also, as you rightly point out, there's some detail in here. And the two that caught my eye were that one of the phone calls that the woman made allegedly made right after this thing happened was in the car with her.

Doug Imhoff to a friend, according to one of those friends, unnamed so far. That is a level of granular, maybe that even kind of exists somewhere detail, which is very interesting. And the other bit, and you have to go down in the New York Post story, so Moynihan didn't get there because of his attention span issues, is that this allegedly came up in previous vetting

or like the Biden administration was made aware of this at some point previously. So if that is true, then then I think that it's going to absolutely warrant some follow up and we'll see what that follow up is. I can't believe really honestly that many people with a straight face are saying that Tim Walz won that debate. I do get the point that

the weakest part of JD Vance's otherwise very, very strong night last night was, uh, him trying to answer about January 6th. Um, uh, because January 6th is unanswerable. Uh,

As far as I'm concerned, the way that Donald Trump behaved and the price of doing business to be Trump's running mate or just to be someone in good graces with Trump world for the most part is to either minimize what he did or apologize for it. And I think kind of just to jump in there, Matt, just to jump in. He wasn't actually really even asked to defend Trump on J6.

It was who won the last election, which is that that's the real trigger point for Trump. Keep going. Yeah. I mean, in either way, his answer was not very good, although there's an element of his answer that was really interesting. I mean, he changed the subject, but he changed the subject to something that is true and an advantage of Vance, certainly maybe even Trump and Vance over the Democratic administration.

which is about their pro-censorship views. And that's when Tim Walls uncorked the unbelievable shouting fire in a crowded theater. Crap.

that we have been talking about since it first happened 100 years ago of what just garbage that is. And it was not true. You can yell the file fire in a crowded theater. You can absolutely absolutely can. And so that's that was a very interesting thing. Yes. But that was Vance's low point at minute 90. But my God, in a debate where Walls

It looks in the camera. Bridget Phetasy had the greatest line about last night, by the way. She said that the whole vibe of this election and certainly the split screen of it or this debate is of an adult confronting his coach who molested him. Look, the look, the sour, unhappy look on Tim Walz's face as he's like, you know, I'm a small town and you're like.

dude, you lied. You lied about Tiananmen. What are you doing? And it's like, oh, you know, John Cougar is great. Like what? Like he's, I'm a knucklehead. It was terrible, terrible, terrible. And anyone who watched that debate and saw that moment, there's no way that you can come out, even if it was trivial, like the actual underlying thing about it. It's trivial, but it's not trivial when someone has a pattern of being dishonest and gilding their own lily as Tim Walz definitely does. Just like Joe Biden. He's a lily gilder.

Well said. Yes. If I were team Trump, I'd immediately have an ad that shows like above him, tampon Tim and under underneath him knucklehead. That's what I'd, I'd have that everywhere today. Tampon Tim knucklehead. That's what he is. Um, there were so many lies on Tim Wallace's part, none of which the mainstream media will call him out on. Um, but let's just stick with overall impressions before we get into the specifics. Cause I haven't talked to you guys. Camille, your thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, I thought overall, well, first, just to start with Emhoff, I was pretty shocked to see this story. Certainly expect we'll see additional reporting about it. This is the kind of thing that, I mean, it is October. We're supposed to get surprises like this. I will not make any sort of snide slap in the face joke, but I am tempted to.

One wonders why you, if you have this opposition research and you know that this is going to come out about the husband of the person at the top of the ticket, why you don't make certain it gets out there a little earlier at a time when maybe it won't be so harmful to you, but whatever. At any rate, maybe that's not great strategy and that's the reason I'm not hired to run campaigns. But overall last night, I definitely thought JD did a much better job than Walsh throughout. I was certainly also a bit worried

disappointed, however, not surprised by the moderators. I'm sure we'll get into some of the specifics there with respect to their interesting performance and the way JD responded to it. But the thing that really most surprised me about last night is that JD and his team didn't do a better job of preparing so that they could actually land some real body shots on walls. The fact that there wasn't really any substantive conversation about his record with respect to COVID and

and the way that he handled the kind of Black Lives Matter fallout there. Like, I would have expected some sharp barbs there, given what I know about J.D. and his previous debate responses.

So I think there were probably some missed opportunities there from this standpoint. But I mean, if you're someone who likes Trump... Because, you know, Camille, looking back at it, like he did a great job of being like, you had three and a half years. Why didn't you do it? Why didn't you do it? But it does not seem that voters, and there's a long report out by Cook Political Report today suggesting...

The trying to tie her to all of Biden's policies thing is not working. They recognize that the VP is totally feckless in every administration, except for that of George W. Bush. And they're not blaming her for Bidenomics and other things. So he did spend a lot of the debate doing that. And there is reason to question whether that was the best strategy as opposed to tying her

And Tim Walls to the far, far left and continuously bringing up their far, far left policies and behaviors like him giving the rioters a chance to burn things down before he sent in the National Guard. So that is a very interesting story.

point, I think he did it because one of his main goals was to be likable, you know, to rehabilitate his image in the minds of those suburban women who the GOP has lost to show them you like me. And the answer to get you to like me is not to beat up on the guy who he may be 60, but let's face it. He looks like he's in his seventies. Who's got this sort of shoksy nature, right? That's just going to make you dislike me more. Keep going.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's entirely possible to thread the needle there. Like, you can be respectful. You can say, look, I think he's a good man. He's got a family he cares about, as they did throughout the night. But we absolutely have to talk about his record. The most important job when you are the executive of a country or a state is to ensure the well-being and security of the citizens who voted you into office.

And when Tim Walls had his back up against the wall during admittedly exceptionally difficult times, extraordinarily difficult times in the midst of COVID, he froze. He didn't do what he ought to have done. He took too long to deploy the National Guard. And as a result, not on the first night, on the second night, you've got a police station being burnt down. You've got him continuing even to this day to kind of,

shuck and jive and suggest that other people are somehow mostly responsible for this. In real time, he got it wrong. And in retrospect, it's clear that he got it wrong. And he needs to answer for that if he wants to ascend to some higher office. I think you can do that while being respectful. And again, I just think it was a real missed opportunity from their standpoint. Look, the VP debate is only going to matter so much, but you've got an opportunity to make the other guy really, really screw things up.

And apart from Walls just kind of putting his own foot in his mouth, I just did not see enough from from J.D. last night in that respect. But I did think Moynihan J.D. was like a surgeon cutting with precision into the bullshit being offered by Tim Walls. And one of my favorite moments was when he described Tim Walls's law that repealed the

a law that requires the care of infants born alive after botched abortions. There was a law in the book since 2015 in Minnesota that said if a baby's born alive after botched abortions, which horrifically happens more than you would think, the law said you must provide life-saving care to the baby. And Tim Walz repealed that law and changed it to just comfort care. You can...

you can let the baby die. You do not need to save that baby's life or do anything to try. And Vance raised it. Walls denied that he had done it. And JD looked at him and said, what that I said is incorrect. We have that moment, you guys. I think we have this. Let's watch it.

You're free to disagree with me on this and explain this to me, but as I read the Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide life-saving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion. That is, I think, whether you're pro-choice or pro-abortion, that is fundamentally barbaric.

Barak, these are women's decisions to make about their health care decisions and the physicians who know best when they need to do this. Trying to distort the way a law is written to try and make a point, that's not it at all. What was I wrong about, Governor? Please tell me. What was I wrong about? That is not the way the law is written. Look, I've given this advice on a lot of things, getting involved, getting against. That's been misread, and it was fact-checked at the last debate. But the point on this is there's a continuation of these guys to try and tell women or to get involved.

Okay. So he tried to say, it's not true. I didn't do the thing you're saying. And then when Walls was like, well, what specifically is not true? Walls is a lawyer. Sorry, Vance, Vance, Vance is a lawyer. Walls is not. So Vance is looking at Walls saying, what, what about my assertion is incorrect? And Walls' response was it was fact-checked at the ABC debate. This is the moment to which he was referring. Watch.

Her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth. It's execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born is okay. There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born. Trying to distort the way a law is written to try and make a point. That's not it at all. What was I wrong about, Governor? Please tell me. What was I wrong about? That is not the way the law is written. Look,

I've given this advice on a lot of things, getting involved, getting against. That's been misread, and it was fact-checked at the last debate. Just utterly dishonest because that fact-check completely ignored that it is legal to let an infant die on the table after you attempted to kill it in the womb, but it nonetheless survived. That's thanks to Tim Walz. And by the way, we pulled the stats.

from 2015 to 2023, which was the date Tim Walz repealed the law requiring life-saving care,

24 babies were born alive in Minnesota after an attempted abortion. Think of how horrific that is. This mother goes in, forgive me, I'm trying to do this without passing explicit judgment on abortion, but she goes in to kill her baby. These are late-term pregnancies. The baby nonetheless is birthed and it lived. It survived the attempt to kill it in its mother's womb. And then she attempts to kill it again

She lets it suffer to death there on the table and the doctors don't have to intervene. And so 24 were born alive after an attempted abortion between 15 and 23. They were required to try to save the baby during that period. Some most died. And then as of Tim Wall's repeal of that law in 23, we don't know how many times this happened because he removed the reporting requirement.

He said, you don't have to save their lives and you don't have to tell us when this happens. Those are the facts, Moynihan. That's just an overview on the fact check and an insight into one of the dynamics. He was allowed to get away with this. There was no attempted fact check, of course, by the CBS moderators on that. They only had them in pocket for J.D. Vance. I mean, look, you know, Matt mentioned earlier that

the worst moment for Vance was on the 2020 election. And that was because Tim Walz turned to him and asked him a question.

And this incredibly bad moment for Waltz is when J.D. Vance turns to him and asks him a question, which I cannot believe he wasn't prepared for. I mean, that and the Tiananmen thing, which I suspect we'll get to. But that tells you a lot about the moderators, by the way. You have the two kind of most impactful for me moments in that debate is when the two candidates are allowed to interact with one another and ask them pointed questions. I mean, and Camille is right, too, that...

Why, you know, I would love for J.D. Vance, and I think I know why he was doing this, you know, keep in mind that the whole strategy, this completely insane, bizarro, please fire your political consultant strategy, was to paint him as a weirdo. Do you remember this? He's a weirdo. Walls is...

Yeah, we have this. So he did this on Jen Psaki show before he was selected as her running mate. And this was apparently what dazzled Kamala so much. She chose him. Here it is. And then I'll let you take it.

These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room. That's what it comes down to. Don't get sugarcoating this. These are weird ideas. Listen to them speak. Listen to how they talk about things. Listen to how your previous guests were right. Like you said, they've told them that they shouldn't talk about race. They can't help it. It is built into their DNA because there is no plan. Go ahead. I just want to say that Jen Psaki is a real crackerjack question. She's just really good at it.

weird when you hire Biden's press spokesman. Anyway, I will say this, that whole weird thing, I mean, obviously Vance's response to that last night was to be incredibly normal and incredibly relatable, which I think is what he is when he's talking about

policy. If you throw the guy into a donut shop and do the, you know, political thing where you have to press flesh, maybe he's not great at that. But I honestly. He's the opposite of Trump in that way, Moynihan. He's the opposite of Trump in that way. Trump's not as great at the policy or the debate, but he's amazing in the one on one and real people settings. Yes, he's absolutely fantastic. And this is the yin and the yang thing here. They balance each other out

wonderfully in that sense that he decided to play it nice. I saw a lot of people and people that I know saying, you know, really should have pushed him on a lot of this stuff. And he was being too nice and saying, you know, we agree on this. But it was actually a nice breath of fresh air in some ways. But I will say, I want to go back quickly to the Doug Emhoff thing, because I read that this morning when I was on my way into the city. And, you know, the same caveats.

Three people unnamed, it just dropped. I have no idea if this is true, but that's not what I'm interested in. What I'm interested in is the exact same thing that happened with Hunter Biden. People say, Hunter Biden's not running for president. You know, in a way, I'm not interested in that either. What I'm interested in is the fact that the president's son and, you know, the vice president's son and the vice president had Ukraine in his portfolio, all of a sudden gets a job...

for an extraordinary amount of money that he's not qualified for, doesn't pique your interest at all?

Literally not at all? That's incredible to me. This is the same thing that I... I'm not going to predict the future. I have no idea if people will come back on this. But it strikes me it's the same thing that so many feminists did with Bill Clinton, who apologized for it afterwards and defended it at the time. Said, well, you know, he's our guy. We don't really care what he does as long as he protects, you know, Roe v. Wade, etc. This Emhoff thing is, for me, a media test.

And it is a relevant issue. I mean, particularly when you have this Jonathan Capehart and these people at the Washington Post saying this is the form of masculinity that we should all aspire to. Well, if it's true that he's beating up women, I would suggest that it's not at all, right? And this is...

The whole thing drives me crazy from the media perspective. And again, I don't know if it's true. And I'm giving him, you know, the benefit of the doubt on this. But that should be investigated. And it's incredible that it hasn't been.

I'm offering the appropriate caveats for this point in the story, but I'm not giving him the benefit of the doubt. I'm not. He doesn't deserve it. He banged the nanny while he was married and then either aborted the child or now this report by the Daily Mail suggests maybe there was a miscarriage of the child and they tracked down the original affair partner, the nanny, and got her on camera. And she is reportedly saying that he paid her 80 grand for

to go away and keep her mouth shut, but that according to friends, she had a miscarriage and she blamed him. And we don't know why she blamed him for the miscarriage, but they're also reporting in the daily mail that she called emergency services to her house, possibly including cops and

at one point during the pregnancy and what was there. I mean, an enterprise, an enterprising media would want to know if this were somebody with a last name, Trump or Vance, they would go figure out immediately what they had on their hands. And, and a Democrat party that hadn't committed a coup and just decided at the top levels, who was going to be the new president.

candidate might have done oppo research on those they were considering to make sure there weren't these kinds of skeletons in the closet of the person who would be the very first first gentleman in the White House in U.S. history.

Because, you know, they're always talking about how Trump's a bad role model. And, you know, this isn't somebody who our kids can look up to. How about this? Do they care that we're about to elevate as the first gentleman, somebody who cheats on his wife, impregnates the nanny, abandons his responsibility toward her, according to these reports, and actually might be a woman beater? Do they...

Do they care? Because I care a little. I actually do. I think, call me crazy, it's even more controversial than Donald Trump sounding like a complete asshole on that Access Hollywood bus. Am I wrong? I don't know. Donald Trump's running for president and was the president. So I'm going to elevate what happens to the actual candidates over what the candidate spouses have done in the past or what the contents of their bad, bad personal lives are, you know,

you know, I, I, I think that Donald Trump's life has been vetted a lot. And I think people have made the rational or whatever they've rationalized to themselves, how much they care about it and how much they don't. And it tends to match up with their political priors. But if he's a woman beater, it's a huge deal. It is bigger than Trump saying, I like to grab women. Again, I,

I mean, beating a woman is, is worse than like two guys in a room. Well, one of them, um, uh, smacked, uh, someone's around so hard that their head turned. All right. Uh, according to the people and the other one made a braggadocious, uh, claim, uh,

while in having an interview or even off an interview or whatever, of those two actions without a question, smack in someone's face is the worst thing. He's also not running for president Trump is. So that's, that's where my mind like, like, I get it. I get it. He's not on the ticket. I do want to pick up on, on the thing that you just said though, which is a, you mentioned this sort of democratic coup to elevate Kamala Harris, because I think that that's,

speaks to a media bias element that was perpetuated again that's been ongoing for two months now plus with kamala harris which is that we still have not heard anything about her performance as vice president when the president was shown to be too old and too cognitively impaired to

do his job. And here's the way that you do that. Okay. So in it's perfectly rational and correct to ask JD Vance. I saw some conservatives try to say to us, I got work. We're tired of hearing about January 6th. No, dude, you got to ask that question because it's the Mike Pence question. What would you do if you're Mike Pence and how might that play out in the future? That's totally. And that you, that's you ask both candidates that, but you can also ask both candidates because it might come up. What would you do?

Um, if your president's the guy at the top of the ticket or woman at the top of the ticket, uh, is shown to be impaired in a way that has happened a couple of times in American history, including right now, including with the person who's running for president was being vice president.

And throwing Robert Herr under the bus, saying that what he did was obviously politically. Right. I mean, what would you do? And how clever if they asked it of J.D. because he's got a nearly 80 year old boss. And then they turn to Tim Walz and say, what's the obligation of a vice president when the person above them has become mentally infirm? Because it is.

And the total obvious, you know, equal question, but implies her implicate. And also just how would you evaluate what she did in that moment? She hasn't been asked that question. It's been two plus months that she's been the candidate. Somehow she has not been asked that question. The somehow is that she's only done one one on one interview with Stephanie Rule. And I think the last question with that was, can we trust you?

And the first you don't count. You don't count Oprah. Are you amazing? With the journalist even more than I think. Yes. I mean, she hasn't been asked that question, which is amazing. And that leads to another quick thing, which is that you saw last night the difference between someone who's been answering questions and someone who is not. Yeah. J.D. Vance got his reps in. Why?

Walls did not. Walls was scared. He was sped up. He seemed almost coked up, super nervous. He seemed. Matt Welch says Walls is doing coke. He's not doing coke. He was on Ibogaine. We know this. But you see the difference of it.

And this is and this is a point, again, the Vance sort of made at the end, like, oh, how can they talk about democracy? This is this deflection about January 6th when they are really bad on censorship, which they are. And part of the not only just being bad on censorship, but if you really care about democracy, you subject yourself to scrutiny. They have not.

And like the little bit of scrutiny that the moderators added last night, which I appreciated actually, when they went straight in for the Tiananmen Square question and didn't give him the off ramp on it, just like, what were you doing, dude? And did something similar to Vance about the Trump Hitler quote too. That was fine. He was absolutely trapped. He was a deer in the headlights. You've got to subject yourself to scrutiny. They have it. They think that they can waltz into the White House

without taking questions. And that's just in the front. Yeah. Let me just show, let me just show, cause you're exactly right in the dynamic and you could tell walls was unsteady on his feet. Here is part of his very first answer. Um, they kicked off the debate by going to him. And the question was, uh, basically as follows, Iran launched his largest attack yet on Israel, um, blah, blah, blah. Would you support or opposed a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran?

And here's Tim Walz. Governor Walz, if you were the final voice in the Situation Room, would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran? You have two minutes. Well, thank you. And thank you for those joining at home tonight. Let's keep in mind where this started. October 7th, Hamas terrorists...

massacred over 1400 Israelis and took prisoners. Iran, Israel's ability to be able to defend itself is absolutely fundamental. Getting its hostages back, fundamental, and ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

But the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute fundamental necessity for the United States to have the steady leadership there. You saw it experienced today where along with our Israeli partners and our coalition able to stop the incoming attack. But what's fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter. Four fundamentals and two confusing saying Israel when you meant Iran.

Um, not, not ideal. May I remind you of Donald Trump's first tweet when she chose him? Thank you. I mean, he did seem unsteady and that's the thing because one of the goals when you get out there, Camille is to try to project, don't worry if anything happens at the top, I can do this job. And at no point last night did Tim walls convey that.

Yeah, for a moment there, I almost thought he's going to get into the thing, like pull out the little board and start drawing up a play. Like, this is what you do. This is how you do it. Coach Walls, ready to go. It's just he was not he was not prepared for this moment on so many different levels. But I do think like he was just off to a shaky start there. And I was hoping that he meant everything.

Iran and its proxies as opposed to Israel and its proxies. He just clearly, clearly, clearly out of his depth last night. And look, he's had better moments. Some of his speeches have been great. Some of his, some of the various campaign events, he's had these just really energetic performances. I gave him compliments for his DNC performance, but those are

are not hostile interrogations. And to the extent debates matter at all, it is that they give you a sense of what these people might be like under pressure. And I think Kamala Harris comported herself much better than her counterpart did last night. But certainly when she's been in these interview contexts, even when they're not particularly hostile interviews, she has not been great. And Walls last night was not great. So I think in both instances, they've kind of taken a bit of an L

there and how much will this matter to the American people eventually? How much does this factor into the actual election? I don't know. That Cook Political Report out today says nothing's mattered. Nothing's changed the numbers. That debate between Trump and Harris did not change the numbers. The endorsements by Taylor Swift

whatever, Elon Musk did not change the numbers. Nothing's changing the numbers. They're as tight as tight could be. I do want to spend a little minute, a minute or two, Moynihan, on that, the moment where he got confronted about his lie about being in China when Tiananmen Square happened. You think he was in a tank? And,

He was standing in front of the tank. He was the man with the, he was the man with the bag. I mean, you have to ask with Wallace, which side was he on? Which was he with the Chinese? He loves the Chinese so very much. So he said he was over there. It happened in the spring of 89 and it was in the spring and he did not go over there until August.

which as the audience may know, is not spring by anyone's estimation. And it was part of the pattern of dishonesty by this guy. So to their credit, they raised it yesterday. I would have styled it even tougher, to be honest with you. I would have raised the series of lies he's told, but okay, fine. I'll take what I can get. And it was a meltdown. I mean, it was like a malfunction. That's what I thought I was witnessing. Let's play the soundbite.

And to the folks out there who didn't get at the top of this, look, I grew up in small, rural Nebraska, a town of 400, a town that you rode your bike with your buddies till the streetlights come on, and I'm proud of that service. I joined the National Guard at 17, worked on family farms, and then I

Use the GI Bill to become a teacher. What does this have to do? A young teacher. You're lying. My first year out, I got the opportunity in the summer of 89 to travel to China. 35 years ago, be able to do that. I came back home and then started a program to take young people there. We would take basketball teams. We would take baseball teams. We would take dancers. And we would go back and forth to China. The issue for that was to try and learn. Now, look, my community knows who I

am. They saw where I was at. They look, I will be the first to tell you, I have poured my heart into my community. I've tried to do the best I can, but I've not been perfect. And I'm a knucklehead at times, but it's always been about that. Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy? All I said on this was, is I got there that summer and misspoke on this. So I will just, that's what I've said. So I was in

Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests went in. And from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance. Thank you, Governor.

Jeez. Okay. What he said earlier, it was a disaster. But just so you know, according to the reporting, Walls described being in Hong Kong in May 1989, didn't go till August, during the student uprising that culminated in the Tiananmen Square massacre, an assertion that is belied by newspaper accounts at the time. Quote, as the events were unfolding, several of us went in

Wall said at a 2014 hearing commemorating the massacre's 25th anniversary. I still remember the train station in Hong Kong. Several of us went in as the events were unfolding. What?

Again, it's it's like the Hillary Clinton Bosnia moment that she could feel the bullets licking her hair as they shot past Moynihan. It's like these are lies that he did not go in anywhere. He was sitting his ass in the Midwest. He did not go for months after the massacre.

Yes. I mean, weirdly, habitual liars become politicians. Shocking. I have to say, not prepared for that answer. I wasn't, as a listener, prepared for his answer. I was driving last night and I almost had to pull over because, you know, I know this is coming. And by the way, to point out, he has said this multiple times, multiple times, that he was in China, he was in Hong Kong. Hong Kong, by the way,

It happened in 89 was not a part of China was six that went back to China. But his response, which is like, I mean, who in America because his response is like, you know, I was at Lake Minnetonka playing hockey one time and it's like, dude, seriously, you're gonna be the vice president.

He grew up in a neighborhood where they rode their bikes until the streetlights went on. Who gives a shit? So did I. That doesn't make me qualified to be vice president. No one cares. The Chinese didn't have the streetlights or something. I don't know. But I love the best bit was I kept on waiting for him to get to the, you know, studied denial that they'd presumably gone over a million times. And he then says, we brought dancers.

What are you talking about? It was unbelievable. That's one thing that I knew that he should expect. I mean, Doug Emhoff is like the least of, I mean, Matt, by the way, I just want to point out, I do a podcast with Matt Welch.

And I do want to distance myself from a Doug Emhoff apologist like Matt. And I know that he has been having a relationship with his own nanny. But let's not. Au pair is different. We've gone over this. Open hand slaps only.

Open hand slaps only. Yes. And that was Camille. I think we need to replay. You guys replay that second part of the Tim Walls answer on the Tiananmen thing where Peter's out at the end. Cause I'll tell you, you know what it had to me, forgive me, but it had Ron DeSantis weird smile vibes. Didn't it? At the end, like where you're like, and I don't forget to smile. Okay. Just watch.

Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy? All I said on this was, is I got there that summer and misspoke on this. So I will just, that's what I've said. So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest went in. And from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.

Thank you, Governor. I wish I had stopped speaking two sentences ago. That's what he was trying to tell me. I love the formulation, which he did in other places last night of, you know, what I've said is,

Which is a way of saying that I have had an effective line in campaign appearances that I wish I could translate now in a different context so that you would all understand. But maybe if I say it, it'll sound like it's past tense and it's already been fact checked at the previous debate. So can we move on, please? Have I run out of time? It is so absolutely crazy. Where was the little gift moment?

The gift follow-up to J.D. Vance, like Tim Walz got after everything. Like, would you like to fact check specifically the following two claims that I just heard from your opponent? They kept giving Walz those opportunities. That would have been a great moment to look at J.D. Vance and say, do you accept that he just misspoke when he said he was

at the massacre and in China when this happened, when in fact he was sitting in Nebraska or Minnesota, wherever he was at the time. J.D. Vance didn't get any of those opportunities and it would have been a great chance for J.D. Vance to say, no, we don't accept that because this is at least the 12th lie he's told publicly that we've caught him in and we've only known him for eight weeks.

Well, the mics weren't off. So J.D. could have pushed in there and probably should have. I mean, if I'd been there, I would I would have said I know a little something about geography. And I know that the distance between Beijing and Hong Kong is actually not inconsequential. I have no idea what this man is talking about. It seems like he is telling yet another self-serving lie and he should just own it if that is what happened. We can forgive you, but only if you can admit that you lied.

I don't know why Paul just was joking. He was back stateside, wasn't he? I think he was stateside when it happened and then traveled to China in August. So he wasn't even close. Months removed. Go ahead, Moynihan. Yeah, but no, but he was at a Chinese restaurant that night. He was there.

Great. I had a great meal. Peking duck. It was in Nebraska. No, to the point about J.D. Vance, this is, I think, the only thing where I thought he was weak was that he was being too nice, which I think there's a lot to be said for that. But he didn't butt in in a few places he should have. At one point, when he did change the subject and talked about free speech...

He was actually talking and Tim Waltz said something when Vance was talking, and I don't know if anyone else caught this, when he said something about his hatred of freedom of speech and quoted him on this saying that there is no right to misinformation or whatever the exact quote is. And he said, no, no, no. And this is under him talking. He said, no, I'm talking about hate speech.

Two things about this that are incredibly important as Americans, and you know this, obviously, Megan, as a lawyer, there is no First Amendment exception to hate speech. Full stop. We are not. Thank God we can be as hateful as we want.

Yeah, I mean, we can insult them. Give me a person and I'll give you some hate speech right now. People like they have this deranged idea. And to go back one time, one more time to fire in a crowded theater that and I've mentioned this a million times in the podcast is my favorite old song. That case was an abrogation of somebody's free speech rights who was opposing the First World War. A socialist, by the way, handing out newspapers and was arrested for it. And the court said you can't.

yell, fire in a crowded theater. That was someone opposing the First World War, which was a very stupid thing for America to be into in the first place in 1917. That is what the president, and he's saying that the hate speech, no, that's what I'm talking about. You can't say hate speech things. You know, this is kind of, it would have been great to push him on that to get a sense, because I think this is a real epidemic in the Democratic Party these days, that there are these carve-outs for speech and for misinformation. And if there aren't, there certainly should be.

that's the vibe I get from a lot of these guys. Oh, I would have been, I wish I had been there. And there was Oliver Wendell Holmes and just actually you can, you can't, I don't believe you're a lawyer, governor Wallace. You can yell fire in a crowded theater and you can say hateful things because you're

This is the United States of America, and it's right there in amendment number one. It's one of our favorites, was one of the founders favorites and was one of the founding principles upon which this country was built. There's no exception for speech.

Tim Walz or Kamala Harris magically deems hateful. But they've been pushing this, both of them and a lot of Democrats have for quite some time. These young Democrats on college campuses say that they want, they want, they A, believe that the Constitution doesn't protect hate speech. And those who understand that it does want a constitutional amendment that would explicitly ban it. Who do you want to decide what's hate speech? Donald Trump?

Kamala Harris, no thanks. All right, we're going to take a quick break. There's so much more to get to with the guys from the fifth column coming up. It doesn't matter what state you reside in. It doesn't matter if you live in the suburbs or if your home is in a rural area. Bidenomics has had a negative effect on many aspects of our lives. Gas has gone up an insane 51%. Rent is up 22%. Groceries are up 22%, higher than before Mr. Biden took office. Electricity is up a whopping 32%.

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Speaking of leftists' misunderstanding of our Constitution and what matters, we had one of the most abysmal questions of the night as the second topic. The

She brings up Hurricane Helene, which is a great issue. People are really suffering to this moment. And so far, the response by this White House has been, I think, shameful. The fact that she was out there partying with Demi Lovato and Sterling K. Brown and having her beef Wellington while people were begging for help on their rooftops, drowning to death with their grandchildren is an absolute disgrace.

That might have been a good question, but no, they raised it and you're thinking, okay, yes, great. Here we go. And then came the pivot mid question, not to have, not to hurricane Helene at all, but to an Al Gore lie about why we're getting bad hurricanes. Look at this.

Let's turn now to Hurricane Helene. The storm could become one of the deadliest on record. More than 160 people are dead and hundreds more are missing. Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger, and more deadly because of the historic rainfall.

Senator Vance, according to CBS News polling, seven in 10 Americans and more than 60 percent of Republicans under the age of 45 favor the U.S. taking steps to try and reduce climate change. Senator, what responsibility would the Trump administration have to try and reduce the impact of climate change?

What? Guys, this is so absurd. They do this every time. Every time there's a bad storm, we've got to go to, it's climate change, and the Republicans need to sign the Green New Deal because everything is... We've been having terrible hurricanes for a long, long time. A quick search suggests that if you... Okay, this is from...

spiked online and this guy, Andrew Montfort, who writes, if you were to plot a trend over the past 30 years, you would say that if anything, hurricanes are becoming less frequent and frequent and less intense. In truth, records of hurricane activity like all weather and climate data are highly variable, trending up or down or staying the same for years or decades at a time, then flipping from one regime to another, often without apparent

cause. You must be extremely cautious about drawing any conclusions. And by the way, hurricanes are not causing more damage than they used to. And goes on to say that, yes, this hurricane had some 140 mile per hour winds.

But there was Camille in 69 with 150. There was a hurricane in 1935 that had 160, which hit the U.S. before climate change was deemed a major concern. What these leftists do is they use hurricanes and other natural disasters to spread fear and alarm about global warming. And he points out this practice has a long and dishonorable history. Completely agree.

But that's what we saw. I mean, did we spend eight minutes on abortion? Did we spend eight or nine minutes on January 6th?

And Hurricane Helene and the suffering and the federal response, which has been piss poor so far, doesn't even get a real question. She pops it into a question so she can look like she asked about it and then she buries it. Thoughts? We've been doing this question at presidential debates for 25 years now. The big fire in California. What are you going to do about climate change? In fact, you know, I almost want to give them credit for the usual thing to ask a Republican is like,

Do you believe in climate change there instead of the actual? No, don't give credit. Don't give credit, Matt, because I'm not. I'm not. This is with a fact check. But I just think you saw her pop in with a so-called fact check that no one asked for. So she comes out to say, you know, I'll be the arbiter on climate change and how it actually is real. Hold on a second. I flagged it after nobody up there said it wasn't real. She Tim Walz is like Donald Trump called it a hoax.

Nobody up there said it was a hoax. And then she pops in later with, oh, God, I can't find it. But she says, oh, we have it. Even better. Let's watch her do it. The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the Earth's climate is warming at an unprecedented rate. Margaret.

I just want to show you how strong I am and how factual I am in all my own beliefs. Go ahead, Matt. What are you even doing right there? Two things that I find interesting about that. One is I agree with you. I think this is the worst part of the moderation of the debate because it's the second question.

And it's also, interestingly, I think maybe the most skilled answer that J.D. Vance gave, and I don't even necessarily agree with all the policy in his answer, but the way that he talked about it, it's like, okay, if you take this seriously of reducing carbon emissions, what would you do? I think we should do this, this, and the other. And it was really, really good. Like we're sitting at home just like it.

nodding along like i'm nodding along with jd vance i don't want to but i am because he's and he was uh he's doing it uh kind of uh uh kind of uh correctly but this is uh this is exactly what media has been doing for so long and part of it is and i was kind of reflecting on this with jimmy carter turning 100 years old that seems like a weird thing to bring up at this moment but but um

If you think about both Carter and Reagan and the way that they approached and thought about and talked about and debated and disagreed about government and the role of the federal government and how that's different than the role of the states as something both of them who were both former governors should know. They thought about this and acted on this constantly.

Right. They understood that there was some things that the federal government does and there's some things that the federal government does not. They would sometimes subject an answer to a question based on that test. Is this a proper thing for the federal government to do? Is it not? And sometimes Jimmy Carter, believe it or not, said, no, that's not a proper thing. That was so absent last night, especially among the moderators, which it always is, because moderators and journalists in general, just like they walk around.

When they see a problem, they see a big do something button and want to mash it. And like they want to yell at you if you're not mashing it as hard as they are. But one of the problems for me last night that I bemoan as someone who prefers limited and smaller government is that both candidates, which is true of both tickets, they kind of just took that as given. Right. We have a child care crisis in this country. What are you going to do about it? We have the gun epidemic.

What are you going to do about it? We have this and that and the other. And J.D. Vance, part of his sort of amiability was kind of like, yes, well, I agree. And I think we should do something here and there. But it's also a sign of where the Republican Party is right now, which is they do want to outbid or like compete with Democrats for saying, here's what the federal government will do to help you right now in all cases.

The question would have been good. And Megan, you're absolutely right about this to say, what should the federal government be doing right now with these people in this hurricane? Are there tradeoffs that they have made that have been bad tradeoffs? Should there have been this? Should there have been that? Trump has made some pretty strong claims. It's been many of them have been rebutted about the federal response. You know, there's a lot of things to talk about with that. And instead, you go to this 25 year old. We've been talking about it forever. Bad

and wrongly kind of a gormless question about climate change. And shout out to J.D. Vance for actually answering it pretty well. Here's his answer. Let's watch it.

Senator, what responsibility would the Trump administration have to try and reduce the impact of climate change? I'll give you two minutes. Sure. So first of all, let's start with the hurricane because it's an unbelievable, unspeakable human tragedy. I just saw today actually a photograph of two grandparents on a roof with a six-year-old child. And it was the last photograph ever taken of them because the roof collapsed.

and those innocent people lost their lives. And I'm sure Governor Walz joins me in saying our hearts go out to those innocent people, our prayers go out to them, and we want as robust and aggressive as a federal response as we can get. Tim Walz is nodding along. Go ahead, Moynihan.

Yeah, I mean, this is deeply frustrating. As Matt said, this has been the same question for 25 years. And, you know, also just to add, you know, watching J.D. Vance and watching him, that very quick response, and it gets much better. I mean, that was a pointed response.

response. We shouldn't be surprised by this. Everybody who does this, everybody who should be in the White House governing our lives should be good at it. And we're surprised that somebody's so fluid, but this is his job and he's exceptionally good at his job. The thing that

It struck me about this question, Megan, is that, you know, I know very little about the science of climate change. But what I do know is I know politics and I know that the Pew poll in 2024, as in every year before it, has the 10 issues that concern voters most.

What is the last one? The very last one is climate change. That's not to say it's not an important issue. It is the last issue. What do people who are in North Carolina, people who have been affected by this hurricane, what are they saying on social media? If you kind of go out there and, you know, listen to people, they're like, you know, these kind of Northeastern, you know, newspapers and, you know, media outlets aren't paying attention to us.

This should be if this would be a bigger story if this had hit Brooklyn. And I think that that's true. And there's nothing that kind of underscores the idea of media bias than, you know, this coming up in the debate and you're saying, oh, good, this is coming up. Our concerns are coming up. What is the federal? And then it turns to something about climate change. And you say, oh, yeah, that's them. That's what they do. But one final thing is what Matt said.

which is the thing that drove me crazy last night, and this is to knock both of them, is that I come from a different era. I come from different politics. I am obviously, as your listeners know and listeners of Fifth Column know, we're all more libertarian in our economic outlook. And the buddy cop film that we saw last night at the McBurney, right?

is because there is no version of the Republican Party that is free market oriented. And as Matt says, it's like, you know, we have to solve child care. What is your administration going to do? And I'm like, that's a great idea. We can spend on this. We can spend on this. That agreement was that there's so little daylight between Democratic and Republican economic policy these days that it really bums me out.

To be honest. Yeah. Yeah. No, this today's Republican Party does not share the Reagan. The scariest nine words in the English language are I'm from the government and I'm here to help. They do not share that at all. So, yes, you're right. Climate change consistently rings at the bottom of what viewers or voters care about. And yet there was a high in the in the play at the at the debate. And immigration is consistently consistent.

One, two, three at the lowest on what they care about. And that one got rolling. And as soon as it got rolling, she shut it down. Margaret Brennan, who was absolutely

absolutely terrible last night. Not only... I'm sorry. She looked like she was stuck in 1992. Just the whole look. The fashion, the makeup. Don't make that face of me, Mack. Well, she knows it's true. I'm just the only one with the guts to say it. And... But she...

She gets out there and just as it starts to roll and they start to fight on immigration in a way that's really good, like J.D. is bringing up the specifics of what Biden Harris have done with this app that lets illegals come into the country, quote, legally. But it's all a sleight of hand that CBS actually cut his mic.

It was egregious. Let me tell you something. This is something. As a moderator who has tried to herd these cats on the stage many times, I'm not opposed to cutting a mic if things have gotten totally out of hand. However,

However, I do believe that a strong moderator can stop that. And I think I have a history that proves that there is a way of communicating with the guys on the stage where you can let them know, I will give you a chance on this standby. Let this person finish. You be quiet right now. I'm coming to you or now we're done. Right. And she couldn't do it. She's afraid. And she's, she doesn't moderate live debates like that all the time where she doesn't just read her pre written questions.

However, you only cut the mics when now it's past the point of usefulness and they're just talking over each other and they've had their fair say and now it's just a waste of the viewer's time. That's when you say, I'm cutting the mics and we're moving forward. This was getting to the meat of it. This was right at the heart of what...

Biden Harris has done and J.D. Walsh was J.D. Vance was moving in for the kill. I mean, he was about to strike body blows. And that's when CBS shut it down, even though immigration is so highly ranked compared to climate change, which isn't watch.

To clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status. Senator, we have so much to get to. Margaret, I think it's important because the rules were that you guys weren't going to fact check. And since you're fact checking me, I think it's important to say what's actually going on. So there's an application called the CBP OneApp.

where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole, and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand. That is not a person coming in, applying for a green card and waiting for 10 years. That is the facilitation of illegal immigration, Margaret, by all means.

Thank you, Senator, for describing the legal process. We have so much to get to, Senator. Those laws have been on the books since 1990. Thank you, gentlemen. The CBP1 app has not been on the books since 1990.

It's something that Kamala Harris created, Margaret. Gentlemen, the audience can't hear you because your mics are cut. We have so much we want to get to. Thank you for explaining the legal process. Nora. Oh, my God, it's infuriating. You have both candidates telling you they want to fight on this. They want to engage. They're the ones running for office, not you, Margaret Brennan. And she did that time and time again. We have so much to get to. I would have said...

They just cut your mics, turn their mics back on, turn his mic back on. Mr. Vance, you have 30 seconds. Mr. Waltz, you'll have 30 after that. Go. That was there's a reason, Camille. They stepped in there.

I mean, it's also just bad TV. Like, I want to see them have that conversation. And I've thought it multiple times last night. Like, these debates, it's interesting. There are ways in which these things are important. Also, it's really outmoded. In the era of Joe Rogan, when folks are tuning in to three hours of conversation, I want to see these people have discussions with one another, someone who is competent there to help

shepherd things and make certain that the conversation is going someplace and not getting horribly circular and obnoxious. But this was exactly an opportunity for them to really dig into the issues and have some kind of substantive exchange. They were both interested in having that engagement. And her, at a moment when she's been called out for breaking the rules that her own network has established here, rules that I suspect they're breaking because in the first, well, actually, I won't get into that part.

But after being called out for that, then to kind of obnoxiously nod and sort of grin like your mics have been cut. Nobody can hear what you're saying anyways. Why? Why can they hear what you're saying? This isn't about you performing. And had you not interjected in the way that you did, none of this would have transpired at all. They would have just continued on. But yeah, a huge missed opportunity for CBS performance.

And for the networks in general, I think we've talked about this a couple of times now after these debates, but we definitely need more formats for candidates to interact with one another and with journalists as well, like actually competent journalists so that the American people can have a better, a better opportunity to assess the caliber of the people who are running for the highest offices in the country.

It was amazing. To clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status. She was trying to correct what J.D. Vance had said, because he said, we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.

And he was talking about Springfield, Ohio. So she was trying to correct him, saying these are legal migrants. And he was trying to respond, saying, let me fact check your fact check, madam, because this is my home state. I'm a senator from there, and I know exactly how the Haitian migrants got there. These are not the kind of legal migrants who wait for years to get their green card and so on. They were given this fast pass thanks to this

app that Biden Harris put in place. And then Tim Walz jumps in to say that's been there since 1990. And J.D. Vance was saying, absolutely not. No, it hasn't. We all remember when they put that in place a couple of years ago, it was supposed to solve this problem. It only added to it. And she refused to let him correct it.

Tim Walz, she falsely corrected him. Tim Walz jumps in. J.D. Vance now tries to correct him, but he's not allowed to. And she kicked this whole thing off. She kicked it the whole thing off, Margaret Brennan, by saying the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border consistently ranks as one of the top issues for American voters. So then let them talk about it.

There's a reason they didn't want to, guys. And it's the same reason that according to the Media Research Center, 84% of the coverage on CBS Evening News every weeknight and every weekend has been

positive when talking about Kamala Harris, when talking about Donald Trump, 79% has been negative, literally almost the exact same figure, only reverse on the positivity and the negativity. They're in the tank for team blue and it's outrageous. Your blood must boil. I know we're used to it. It's not okay to be used to it.

and this is the three major networks too. Let's keep in mind, as we've mentioned before on this program, that, uh, it's about the last bastions of places that have, uh, truly mixed audiences, the nightly newscasts on the old timey network, CBS, NBC, and ABC. Um, so you would think that given that, um,

that it should have the people who work there have a certain type of sensibility that understands that, that respects that, and that that respect then will be reflected in the way that they kind of deal with both the candidates and also the people who support their candidates. I suspect maybe less than kind of an instrumental sense of like, we want to make sure that the Democrats do well here. I suspect this is only, you know, we can only can't guess what's inside human hearts.

There's an industry media pressure specifically around when you're platforming, you know, Republicans and people who with any kind of adjacency to Donald Trump. It's very, very strong internal media pressure to say you must vote.

There was an entire meta debate going into this debate among journalists saying like, oh, my God, they're not going to do fact checks. They have to do fact checks. There's so many journalists who think that ABC did a good job last time with its absolutely very, very loaded, one sided kind of fact check and follow ups towards Donald Trump as compared to Kamala Harris.

Though it should be pointed out, um, as we did when we were on with you earlier, uh, after the Donald Trump debate, like that shouldn't be an excuse. JD Vance didn't have to, uh, you know, lean on that excuse to not win the debate. He won the debate despite that, all of that. And I think there's a way a skilled debater can come up with that. Um, but it is, uh, uh,

I think that they they are sitting there, especially on issues related to immigration. They're ready to jump in with that fact check because they have this sort of internal pressure of like, oh, no, he's going to do the lies. And it's a lie that could actually hurt people. There have been, you know, schools have been closed in Springfield. It's a very emotional topic. But a journalist, I think the journalistic sensibility in my in my view should be.

especially with immigration. And that's an issue that I disagree with JD Bantz on a lot, right? But especially immigration is hellishly complicated. That is exactly when you let them go back and forth. Well, actually, this law came in 1990. Well, actually, it did this. It did this.

talk about it because most people don't understand the overlapping rules that go with that and the interpretations of those rules and how that's created this loophole here and this pressure there. It is really, really complicated. So you do a service to reviewers if you let those debates go out. And it wasn't as if they were sitting there and just hurling racial epithets at one another. It was a

disagreement about policy. That's what we should want to see, I think. It was totally substantive. Yes, I agree. But what we heard from Margaret Brennan all night long was, we have so much to get to. In fact, we have a bit of that. Watch. Super cut.

Gentlemen, we have a lot to get to. Nora? Thank you. Senator, we have so much to get to. We have so much to get to, Senator. The audience can't hear you because your mics are cut. We have so much we want to get to. We have a lot to get to ahead, gentlemen, on many topics.

Oh my God, she's so irritating. It's very, very irritating. Right? I mean, one of my irritants about watching these debates has been like the need by these moderators. I mean, the women in particular to try to be like total...

humorless ball busters. You know, like we saw the Lindsay Davis clip, like there are no states in the union in which they are executing the babies at all. And then you see, you know, Margaret, but we have so much to get to or Nora O'Donnell with the

all the scientists agree that climate change is real and the earth is overheating. And then you had Dana bash at the first debate with like, I mean, she was actually the worst. Her face never moved from the, like the Mr. Vice president, Mr. President, former president Trump. Like, I don't understand why these women don't, they think that being taken seriously requires nothing but seriousness. Even if it feels false and affected, you can smile, you can show warmth and

You can have a sense of humor where the situation calls for it. It's an utter fail that they, maybe they don't have personalities. I don't know these people personally. Maybe they really are just this way in real life. Truly. They might have no personality. Maybe that's what I'm stumbling into. I mean, I will say the one time I met Nora O'Donnell in person, um, we were at one of those like radio and television correspondent dinners and we were in the gowns and kind of walk next to each other. And, um,

We shook hands and she shook my, she shook my hand like she was Arnold Schwarzenegger. She grifted and she shook it so hard. And I was like, I hate to tell you, but you are communicating exactly the opposite of the message you want me to receive, right? Everything you're telling me is that you're insecure.

it's not working. Like you, I think you're trying to project strength and you're doing the, and that's exactly what that does. I'm humorless and I will play right into the stereotypes of the uptight left wing nasty woman, right? Like just fucking have a sense of humor. Let a little smile out. Like go into, it's just painful. The handshake of somebody who, who sleeps with their nanny. That would stress you out.

I am the Doug Amhoff here. I'm the new man, so I am not going to comment on these ladies at all. Because, you know, I don't want to give you my hyper macho response. It's a toxically masculine response. I mean, I am toxic for a lot of reasons. Masculinity is not one of them.

But Matt's point is right. And I don't, you don't know after being in the media for so long, if these people are actually rooting for a particular candidate. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. But it is so internal. It was the thing that happened and disappeared during the Trump years, the without evidence thing that I always bring up, that, you know, little parenthetical in every article Donald Trump said, without evidence.

Politicians say things without evidence all the time, and that disappeared when Donald Trump disappeared from the White House. And the reason I think that is important is because it's not really about whether or not Donald Trump saying something is true or saying the lie or J.D. Vance saying something that's true.

it's about kind of signaling to the people within your cohort that you asked the question. You have to make sure to push back. It's not about, you know, the people who are watching and those are the people that matter, right? Because they pay your bills and they're the voters. It's really about positioning themselves, right? And I think that if J.D. Vance can be upset

about maybe AI taking our jobs and industrial policy coming back to the United States. I think that the job of the two women we saw last night could be done by ChatGPT in a much better way. And I'm not even joking. I think that could outsource those jobs to a supercomputer that can beat Gary Knapper off in chess and give us a good debate. It takes a human. It's like when you, you know,

whatever you get to the airport. You know, I think I've told the audience this happened to us, but we were at the airport and my 11 year old daughter had a bottle, an unopened bottle. It was like brand new of Johnson's baby shampoo and the security TSA took it. It was like, okay, it's Johnson's baby shampoo. You can see that this is a child. Like they're like, nope. I mean, it's above four ounces. You know, it was like six ounces, whatever it was.

I was like, can you really, can we, I know the rule, but this is ridiculous. And this is on the second leg of our journey. So like the other airport had no problem with it, but now you get to the extra, you know, it's like the policy. I know the policy, but like, you're a human. So the reason they have humans here instead of AI or monkeys is because we have judgment. We can exercise discretion and you can like, this is really, of course they took the bottle. Of

Of course. So it's just, if you're not going to exercise any discretion, if you're not going to say, oh, wait, this is actually getting good. It's heating up. It's not just television. It's broadcast television. There's a broadcast piece to what we're doing. This is entertaining. Let it fly. Then why have a human there at all? Yeah. Why not let the computer just run it and read whatever questions chat GPT comes up with? It's a complete frustration, but I wanted to pivot to this on the subject of media bias, because that's kind of where we are.

In the news yesterday was the fact that 60 Minutes is going to be platforming drink. Not both candidates, Kamala Harris and not Donald Trump. Trump was invited, but said no. And now 60 is getting indignant. You know, like we offered it to both for many, many years. We've had both candidates come on shortly before the election. We've profiled them both and asked tough questions. And in this unprecedented move, Donald Trump

after they claim he said yes, has now said no. Steve Chung, who speaks on behalf of the Trump campaign, come out and said, that's fake news. We did not actually agree. We had discussions, but we didn't agree and we're not going to agree. We're not going to go on. And I got to say, I think this is the right move by Donald Trump because who could forget when he did this the last time

He was taken out of context. He was sliced and diced by Leslie Stahl in her interview, but he taped it on his own as well. So he had his own recording of the interview and then he released it, including this unbelievable clip about the Hunter Biden laptop. Watch. It's this I think it's one of the biggest scandals I've ever seen. And you don't cover it.

You want to talk about... Well, because it can't be verified. You want to talk about insignificant things. I'm telling you. Of course it can be verified. Excuse me. They found the laptop. Leslie, Leslie. It can't be verified. What can't be verified? The laptop. Why do you say that? Because it can't be verified. Even the family hasn't... The family on the laptop, he's gone into hiding. For five days, he's gone into hiding. He's preparing for your debate. Oh, it's taken him five days to prepare. I doubt it. I doubt it. Okay.

At that very moment, the FBI had in its possession the laptop and had had it for a year and had verified it. And that same FBI would later take the stand in the Hunter Biden trial and testify that it was absolutely verified. It was Hunter Biden's. It was not Russian disinformation. It was then and is now and has since been verifiable and verified.

And CBS News has never apologized for that to Donald Trump, has never owned that as a mistake they made on their flagship program. So why should he go on? Why should Trump give them the ratings and the opportunity to lie and mislead again? Because it would be fun. It's fun for us.

It's fun for us. I have said in every contentious interview I've ever done or with a person who didn't really want to do it. And then I convinced them. I always tell people, you can tape it yourself, too. I don't own your words. I mean, you tape it. You just please be nice and don't broadcast it.

And they did that. And this is exactly why you do that. But I would say, look, I mean, first of all, on the laptop, I'm sorry to be, you know, flogging a dead horse here. But it was the most easily verifiable thing in the planet just by taking those emails, random emails, and asking people if they sent them. Did you send this? Did you get this? Did you send this? There you go. That's it.

That's it. It's verified. On top of the fact that the FBI had had it for a year and had verified it before. But, you know, I don't think that he should back out of this because Donald Trump as a showman, not as a debater, I think he's a terrible debater. I think as a showman, like in that exchange, I mean,

I mean, he was very, very good in that exchange, just hammering her. You know, you can't verify it. And she's like, no, no. And he keeps going at her. He's very, very good at that. Make your own TV out of it. Release the clips later and just go in there and say, this is what you guys do to people.

This is what you did to me last time. You're going to do it to me again. Try to do it to me right now. Just go in there and play with them. There's no harm in doing it. I would say, but is there harm? Is there? OK, let me let me ask you about this, because I referenced it a couple of times already. But this Cook political report is showing it's getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And so I realized Trump fighting with the media. Leslie Stahl, 60 Minutes, very good for Republicans. They love it. Eat it up.

they hate the media. They couldn't hate the media more. So big points. He doesn't need more points with the Republicans. He needs these independents, these swing state voters, this tiny sliver in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and elsewhere that will swing this election. And this new political report by Cook,

that just she Kamala Harris holds a narrow lead of 49 to 48 in a two way matchup and has a lead within the margin of error in Arizona plus two Michigan plus three Nevada plus one Pennsylvania plus one Wisconsin plus two.

Trump is ahead 49 to 47 in Georgia. And the two candidates are tied in North Carolina, North Carolina. Trump should be winning North Carolina. He won it in 2020. He lost most of the swing states, but he won that. Nope, not right now. He's up. He's, he's tied with her in North Carolina and they're showing that she has slowly but surely, uh,

not entirely erased, but severely tightened his lead on the issue of who's better to handle inflation in this country. Like she is tightening this. And so does Trump fighting with Leslie Stahl or Scott Pelley, you tell me, Camille, do anything to help him with independence in Pennsylvania or like, how is he going to get those people?

Because he needs to get those people. Yeah, I think it's all a matter of how he comports himself in those interviews. As we've talked about after the last debate, while they were hostile, while it was loaded against him from the very outset, there was certainly some bias there. There were things he could have done to help himself that he didn't do. And I think were he to sit down for the 60 Minutes interview, you ask them to air it uncut, that's an option. That could

that could potentially help you. You keep pounding on the fact that you want to have this conversation with Kamala Harris and actual debate on a platform that is more likely to be friendly to you. She won't do it. You should be out there talking about it. And quite frankly, if I was him and it was a 60 minutes thing, maybe you try to get some rules that are a little bit more amicable for you, but,

insist on doing it with Kamala Harris. You want as many of these showdowns as possible if you're Donald Trump going down to the wire. And let's face it, Kamala is not phenomenal in all of these contexts. In many instances, and quite frankly, with respect to the one debate they had, I thought Donald Trump more injured himself in that debate than Kamala Harris comported herself in a phenomenal way. She's been giving the exact same answers

in some instances, to different questions for weeks now. It looks completely ridiculous. Point that out in a format that is perhaps supposed to be favorable to her. That might help you. Those are the kinds of things that will actually move the needle for him. I don't know that the rallies are going to be, like,

as effective in that respect. Certainly your ground operation in the various battleground states is important and consequential. But in terms of what the candidate can do to help himself, getting out there, doing media and doing it in a competent way, the way that J.D. Vance largely did last night, is the very best thing that Trump could do to help himself in this race. And I don't know that he actually advances the ball by turning down an opportunity like this, especially because they're going to spin it.

You may be right. And you know they're going to spin it. And she's going to do it. So now she's got control of the show and he's not in there. And here's... Like, this...

This is not an encouraging report. I mean, it shows it very tight and you can make the argument that when it's tight, that's a Trump lead, right? That we've heard that at least at the national level, the experts are saying that doesn't really necessarily apply at the swing state level, but on the national popular vote, a tie goes to Trump, you know, cause all these others who, who like in 16 Hillary Clinton was up going into that election in the national vote. And yes, she did win the popular vote, but not by as much. Anyway, the secret Trump vote is,

has to be factored in and we'll find out whether that's still a thing. But listen to some of these numbers. They report Trump continues to lead on the economy, but his advantage on inflation has disappeared. He did have a six point lead in August over her 48 to 42. Now it's evenly divided 47 to 47 on who they trust more to handle the issue that 60% of swing state voters say is the aspect of the economy that concerns them the most. They care most about inflation and they're evenly split now on

on that issue. They say there's a few explanations for it. The first is that Harris's message on the economy has broken through. Another is that Trump's attempt to link her to Bidenomics, I mentioned this earlier, has not been as effective as the Republicans had hoped. And they go on to talk about how even Trump's

Best issue, immigration. He's still winning on it. He has his largest lead over her there, 51 to 42. But that's a five-point drop.

from where he was over Harris in August. And guys, what this tells me is that her inanity over, I'm going to issue price controls and I'm going to give all first-time home buyers 25,000 bucks. And trust me, that's not going to drive up the price of homes for people who aren't first-time home buyers who are competing against those same people in the market is working. It's working. She's somehow getting through on it.

So maybe these guys are right, Matt, that he should go out there on 60 Minutes and at least try to counter some of this.

Well, let's remember, Megan, it's true on one hand that Republicans really hate the media. That's like the binding glue that has put together the Republican coalition predating Trump. But it's really strongly now. But they're not the only ones who hate the media. It is an American pastime right now to absolutely loathe the media. It's right down there with Congress. It's a special bond.

It's a special bond. So you can get a lot of independents. And this, I think, election, like most are, especially in a divided country, is one lost by the independents. And Kamala Harris has been pretty competitive with that group for a while. So I think you can absolutely get some hay if you're being treated unfairly by the media. And also, as Michael points out, when you just sort of see the clip with him and Leslie Stahl, and I say this is someone who's

not going to vote for Trump in any circumstance ever in my life, your face starts to smile a little bit because he's there giving it. He's doing the Trump thing, and that is still entertaining. And especially those of us who have personal memories about Leslie Stahl that we don't particularly enjoy. So, yes, he should absolutely do that. I suspect

Megan, that the the betterness that she is doing on the economy has nothing to do with what she has said about it. I think that if you pulled any American off the street, even like a high attention voter and say, can you define the opportunity economy? They would be like, I mean, I don't know. I don't know what she's talking about. I think what she's benefiting from is that the economy is doing better. You know, inflation cut interest rates.

Fed cut interest rates. Inflation has been going down. America has been, and everyone forgets this when their party is not in charge of the white house, but America has grown better than all the rich countries have over the last couple of years. Um, we are kind of a miraculous machine regardless of all the idiocy that happens in Washington. And usually it is regardless, uh, or in, in defiance of it. So, um, yeah, you feel things are getting a little bit better. Uh, and maybe the one, uh,

element, attack element that she has said that's been successful, especially when it comes to inflation, is that she keeps hammering home that his tariffs raise prices. What she doesn't really discuss. She calls it a 20 percent tax on like a sales tax. I I think it is. I think tariffs are bad. And I think it's a if it's not a direct 20 percent price price hike, it's going to get

pretty close and it's awful. But what she hasn't done, and this is like the one time that Stephanie Ruhle actually asked a follow-up question in her one, not even softball, but t-ball interview with Kamala Harris. She attempted to say, but hey, look, you support lots of tariffs too, including most of the Trump ones. How are they not?

themselves tax increases. She hasn't had to really answer that question. But I think that one perhaps, and it could be my own priors, has stuck a little bit to Trump. And the immigration thing is actually very interesting to me. I would like to dive into those statistics. But if it is true that Trump has lost five percentage points on immigration since August or whatever, what has changed about immigration and the way that we talk about it? I mean, I think I know.

I think I think it's eating the dogs and eating the cats is what has changed. So it's the fact that in June, Joe Biden issued this executive order to severely curtail asylum claims because he knew he had a general election coming and he wanted to deprive the Republicans of a talking point saying, look at the border right now. So he managed to curtail the flow and

going into the summer, and it remains relatively low compared to where it's been during their four years. And it's working in convincing some Americans, oh, the problem's been solved, as if they're going to leave that executive order in place during a Harris administration, which we have zero interest to believe

zero reason to believe is the case. All right, stand by. I got to take a break and I will be right back. The guys from the fifth column, stay with me. One thing we don't talk about enough is how exercise plays a vital role in that. And it's not just cardio. We really need to look at strength training. More muscle helps to boost metabolism and helps as we age. It helps truly keep us safe. But

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Camille, I think it was you who said one of the reasons we watch these things is to figure out whether they can do it. Like, do they have a facility with words? Could they be the spokesperson for the nation? And that brings me to this little ditty from Kamala Harris yesterday on the Israel situation as Iran was launching missiles into Israel. You tell me whether this person passes that test.

But initial indications are that Israel, with our assistance, was able to defeat this attack. Our joint defenses have been effective. And this operation and successful cooperation saved many innocent lives. My commitment to the security of Israel is unwavering. And let us be clear, Iran is not only a threat to Israel, Iran is also a threat to American personnel in the region, American interests,

and innocent civilians across the region who suffer at the hands of Iran based and backed terrorist proxies. To me, that looks like a hostage video. Like blink, blink twice. Iran is very bad. Right? I mean, somebody wrote that for her. And I would suggest the reason she could not read it with any conviction is because she feels none.

She doesn't want to say those words defending Israel. That is not something that actually she feels. I think she's probably more sympathetic with the other side because she's all about the DEI and most of the DEI proponents are not at all pro-Israel. But either way, that was just a pathetic display. And we're going to have to watch that for how many years if she wins? I don't know. Would anybody like to defend her?

I mean, I wouldn't defend her. And I also I don't know what her actual feelings about all of this are. But it does feel like one can at least acknowledge that there is always this litany that she walls and Biden parrot a parrot every single time they talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They certainly began by talking about October 7th, which is appropriate.

But they eventually get around to talking about the Palestinians and the humanitarian crisis and eventually say things about ceasefires. And it is interesting. I mean, certainly the expansion of the conflict in terms of Israel actually taking the fight to Hezbollah in Lebanon is a pretty major deal. And certainly the Iranian response with respect to them launching rockets into Israel is a very, very big deal. The

it always feels like they're trying to toe the line when they talk about these things. And her reading from prepared, carefully prepared remarks in a context like that does seem to be of a piece with this rather careful discussion of how they are thinking through policy and what ought to happen here. At least she didn't do what Joe Biden has done earlier in the week when he was talking about the conflict, insisting,

as this kind of conflict with Hezbollah was heating up, that what was needed right away was a ceasefire. And it just wasn't obvious to me why that would be a strategically sensible decision for Israel at that particular point in time. Was it because they had unique concern about the Iranians doing something? Well, they've done something now and one does have to deal with that. But Hezbollah had already been doing things. They're launching rockets and have never stopped launching rockets into Israel. And that

it seems to me is far more consequential a matter for us to like take into consideration here. So, yeah, I think that Kamala and Walz have been particularly careful here, Biden as well, and in general, that suggests that there's something perhaps a little less than savory about the way that they discuss these issues.

I really, really, really want to ask you about the Ta-Nehisi Coates discussion over on CBS because it was amazing. So Ta-Nehisi Coates has a new book out where he's decided to take on the topic of Israel and the war in Gaza. And in a book that apparently has absolutely no nuance, really goes after Israel.

I'm not surprised. I'm sure you guys are not surprised. And so he goes over on CBS morning news to promote it. And Tony Dhaka pool, um, who my understanding is,

His ex-wife is Jewish and lives in Israel with his few children. I think he has three children, so they live in Israel. He's now married to Katie Tur of MSNBC. But in any event, he's got a real, three very good reasons to question false narratives around Israel. Really pressed him in a way that I thought was actually amazing, but he's taking all sorts of heat for it on the internet. Watch this. I have to say, when I read the book,

I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away, the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist. Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the first and the second intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits?

And is it because you just don't believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist? Well, I would say the perspective that you just outlined, there is no shortage of that perspective in American media. The reporters of those who believe more sympathetically about Israel and its right to exist don't have a problem getting their voice out. And it's what I struggle with throughout this book.

What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place and not any of the other states out there? - There's nothing that offends me about a Jewish state. I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy no matter where they are. I'm the child of Jim Crow.

I'm the child of people that were born into a country where that was exactly the case of American apartheid. Why is there no agency in this book for the Palestinians? They exist in your narrative merely as victims of the Israelis. Either apartheid is right or it's wrong. It's really, really simple. Okay, I'll just give you a sample of the blowback that Tony got for asking those questions. Abdallah Fayyad, who's a correspondent for Vox, said,

The questions that one host asks are incredibly hostile, combative and rude, telling Ta-Nehisi Coates that his new book wouldn't have any value were it not for the accolades he previously received. They're also cartoonishly racist, blaming Palestinians for their own oppression. Of course, not to be outdone, enter Mehdi Hassan.

insane first question from Ducapole suggesting Coates's book would be in the backpack of an extremist than the usual right to exist propaganda question, which Coates dismisses masterfully. Crystal Ball didn't like it either. First question accuses Coates of extremism and rest of segment is spent insinuating he's an anti-Semite. Great, great stuff. Wajahat Ali, he's of the infamous

Don Lemon clip that our audience may remember where he's laughing at the Trump supporters is with their maps in their Ukraine. And that's why you're hot. Tony goes off, goes on an offensive attack against Coates. But there were two co-hosts there who literally said nothing and let him blather on incessantly shameful stuff all around. Here's somebody from

a social media publisher owned by Al Jazeera. The insane interrogation of Coates and the regurgitation of Israeli anti-Palestinian propaganda by this host makes sense when you learn that he is fully personally invested in the system of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid. And then she went on to call for CBS to reprimand Tony for those questions. Yes. Would you like to take that one?

I want to take a few things here. Tony DiCupo is a friend of mine. I didn't know Tony's opinion on Israel. That surprised me. Tony is a very fair interviewer. He's a straight up guy. He's somebody who is like interested in getting to the truth and he's not a super ideological guy.

And they were all incredibly fair questions. I mean, why would those not be fair questions? Someone should be fired for asking tough questions of the great Ta-Nehisi Coates. The thing about Coates' book, and I have skimmed what's available to me, and I suspect it's now on sale. I think it was yesterday. And I will read it. But the incredible thing about it, there's a profile of him in New York Magazine. We did a very long segment on it in the fifth column.

is that he says that the conflict is simple.

And I'm not saying, this is not my interpretation of what he believes the conflict to be. It is what he says. I was shocked to find out that it was actually quite simple. No, it isn't. And, you know, if you cannot bat away those questions, which are actually very important questions, I don't know where you get off speaking on this issue at all. I mean, Camille pointed out in, and I'll let Camille say this, but Camille pointed out in our broadcast when we were talking about it,

his constant invocation of something that is not anything like the current situation in Israel, which is race relations in America, which is Jim Crow and how he grew up in Baltimore. I don't know the relationship that that has between a country that is desperate to survive and is surrounded on every single front

with people that would like to see it die. I mean, I don't like, you know, it's not a simple thing. And, you know, also people saying like, oh, Tony has, he's invested settler colonialism. I'm pretty sure that his ex-wife and kids don't live in the West Bank, but that's the issue.

These people believe the entire state of Israel is illegitimate and shouldn't exist. So which was the question he asked Ta-Nehisi Coates. Is there something, a problem that you have with the Jewish state in general? Rather than him saying no, he kind of says, yes, I do have it. But I have that, you know, with everything. It's like, you know, every time I've heard Ta-Nehisi Coates before this, he speaks through the prism of race. It's surprising that race offends him in this context.

Go ahead, Camille. Well, I mean, I'm more consistent on these matters, Moynihan. So I'll say that with Coates, I'm at least a little sympathetic to the argument that the notion of kind of ethnic identity as a cornerstone for any sort of national project is not something that I find particularly intriguing or interesting. But what I will say is I'm always a big fan of nuance. And the fundamental kind of motive force of Coates'

Coates' work, both here and in other contexts, is to completely obliterate nuance and to insist that historic events, things that bring us to where we are today, that they're always simple and that they're always simple in ways that are very convenient for him. They paint people, the particular characters as the worst sort of monsters imaginable. They're always motivated by something that looks almost exactly like

American Jim Crow or racism, and they're always animated by some sort of kind of racial animus. I would agree with Moynihan's assessment that these were, it seemed to me, eminently fair questions, if a bit pointed at certain points. But that is what's supposed to happen when you go out and do media. He didn't...

I think someone characterized it as though he suggested Ta-Nehisi was an extremist. He didn't do that. What he said was, if I took your name off of this, if I removed all of the rest of the context and we just focused on the Israeli-Palestinian bits, it is so devoid of nuance that it would have seemed appropriate to find it in the backpack of someone who was an actual terrorist, an Islamic extremist. He didn't even deny that.

Those perspectives are well represented in the mainstream press. I didn't feel the need to unpack them again here. That was the response he gave. He didn't say, I'm offended that you would say that. He said, I am interested in giving a voice to the voiceless. I would suggest that Islamic extremists are not, in fact, the voiceless.

And I don't think that that's what he meant to say, that he wanted to give a voice to them. But it's worth paying attention to the things that Hezbollah, that the people who are actually the leadership of Hamas, the things that they have said about themselves, they say things about how they love death. They love it. So when the Israelis deliver it to them on a platter, they're thanked for it. That's what they want, isn't it? I mean, I find myself as someone who has been just kind of vehemently anti-war in many instances, which I still...

Am I a poor war? I dislike it tremendously. But it does seem to me that this is not a sufficiently sensible, well-informed perspective. One has to at least be willing to take a look at particular context and do the moral math and evaluate how you got to a particular circumstance and what the future could possibly look like given

the many ways that things could play out. And it does seem to me that a status quo where Hamas, where Hezbollah, where Iran continue to be such huge influential players in this region of the world is one that is just generally on net bad for humanity as in general, it's certainly bad for Israel, but I'd say on average, it's bad for people in the Middle East.

And it is it's it's one of those things that it just becomes so difficult for me to understand how someone can be unflinchingly critical and skeptical of the Israelis and of the Israeli project and not be similarly skeptical about what's going on.

what a world will look like if Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran are given carte blanche to continue doing the things that they do because we say, no, no, no, no, ceasefire now, ceasefire now. And it's always the Israelis who we expect to abide by these ceasefire, acknowledging that these other parties don't actually care, that they're constantly involved in hurling missiles into civilian populations.

Yeah. Yeah. They didn't abide by it. And can I just say one thing? Here's what's annoying to me. I hate people who consider themselves Israel experts after, you know, one year of playing analyst on this issue. There are people with a couple of weeks, lifetime knowledge of exactly what's going on here. And I encourage you to talk to people like that and to learn Ta-Nehisi Coates is not one of them. It's,

It weirdly the left in this country and elsewhere has tried to turn this whole thing into a conflict about skin color and DEI type principles. As if on cue, Ta-Nehisi Coates enters to say, yes, did somebody call for me? Yes, I love looking at things through that prism. I'm ready. Writes a book as though he's an authority figure and just kind of says like,

Well, I'm hearing the other perspective everywhere. So I just thought I'd give you, you know, this perspective as, you know, a DEI expert. It's just so infuriating. Go ahead, Matt Welsh. I have one very important thing in common with Tom Ahisikotz that I would like to confess right up top is that I too have spent 10 days in Israel on a junket.

And also, I have not recently published a book about that called The Message. I think there's a little there's a role for humility in this world, and he's not filling it as far as I can tell. Calling Israel an ethnocracy is.

just strikes me as odd with my admittedly only 10 days in Israel level of knowledge, which is not sufficient to make a lot of calls. But there is an Arab-

minority in Israel, 2 million strong. That's a weird thing for an ethnocracy to be about. Right. Um, I don't know that if you look around the region, uh, immediately that you will find such ethnic diversity in the surrounding States or any of the surrounding States, maybe there are on that I'm unaware of, which is possible, but I kind of, uh, I'm taking the under, uh,

uh, uh, primarily. So it's a very strange like thing to put on only Israel. And that's a way also of kind of not expressing a lot of knowledge about, and he does this in the New York magazine interview, uh, about the founding of States in general. He was like, Oh, you know, there should be good founding myths of the state. We have a great founding myth in the United States. Suddenly we liked it was founding mess. Okay. That's fine. I do too. Um, uh, but like Israel has a bad one. Um,

The founding myth of England is what? The founding myth of most countries in Europe is they are ethnic nation states with a dominant ethnic nationality. And they still kind of struggle with those things as when that is your primary definition, even if you're now a modern liberal democracy and you're pluralistic and you respect the rights of minorities, it adds different things. You can count on not many hands, maybe one, maximum two, the number of

sort of successful, actually multi-ethnic, multi-religious liberal states. Israel's kind of one of them, if that's what we're talking about. So it's really weird for me just to say, I mean, I understand. And certainly I think Camille has some sympathy for the critique that it is called the Jewish state, right? Like in the self-definition definition,

behind that. And there's some knock on laws in the country who gets to serve in the military, who doesn't, that are just sort of like strange to American ears. They're kind of hard to figure out. But to single them out for being an ethnocracy, I think is pretty damned ignorant. I mean, it's truly, you know, when you're hammer, right? All right. Before we wrap it up, I love

Moynihan and I have been seeing each other behind your backs, guys, Camille and Matt. We had a private date without... Don't tell Doug. I told you. Lord. I thought I was having a secret date with Barry, but it turned out to be Moynihan, which is fine. It's also nice. No, I knew it was Matt.

And I went on over to the Honestly podcast where Moynihan was doing the interview. And we had a nice chat about a lot of stuff, including the state of media today and you two guys. And here's a little bit of how that went. Megan Kelly, give me a positive vision of America's future because you've given me quite a dark one. Okay. So first of all, I'll start where we began. Barry Weiss,

and yours truly, and you're in there too, Moynihan. So Barry, I've said to her before, I think on the ideological scale, she's definitely not a far lefty. She's probably like, if one is the super far left and 10 is the super far right, I put her at like a four or a five. And I put myself at like a six or a seven, you know? And yet-

We're dear friends. I absolutely adore her. She comes on my show and I go on hers. And that works. We can talk to each other. We still love each other and don't care about the differences that divide us. They're unimportant in the grand scheme.

You and your libertarian weird friends who come on my show all the time. I accept. I don't judge. But all three of us have created, have helped create, and exist now in this ecosystem that is the antidote to all the media problems that we discussed. And it's not only working, it's crushing. It's literally crushing mainstream media.

So well done with the tables turned Moynihan. I thought you did a very nice interview and I'm happy to see you doing great work over the free press after that horrid experience at vice. Good on you. Here we continue in our, in our new ecosystem.

Yes. And I think that, you know, listeners should know they should go listen to the whole thing. But I haven't heard the edit. I don't know what they cut from this. I've been bedridden and sick for the past four days. But right before that, you gave me the darkest look at America. And I said, Megyn Kelly, thank you for joining us on Honestly. And you said, no, no, no, hold on, hold on. That is too grim to go out on. Then you went out on the closet.

the point. So Megyn Kelly, the grimness, it overwhelmed her. And she said, you know what, we have to stop. And we have to look at the fact that we are doing good work and people are loving it. And there is an alternative for people. And I agree with that. And I was very happy that you came on. And so far, I'm told that the audience loves it. So.

Oh, well, thank you. I mean, honestly, I'm, I'm always thinking about that. There's always something to make you feel better about a situation when you fail mightily, when you are humiliated, when you bomb a test, if you're a kid, whatever, there's always something that you can get out of it to turn it into a positive. If you spend some time reflecting, what did I learn? You

You know, how will I now do better the next time? How can I build an ecosystem different than the one that I loathe and spend so much time criticizing? And, um, so I do actually, my, I generally have a more optimistic view. I actually think it's been important to my, my life in news. I think it's one of the reasons why people are attracted to the show. Same as you guys. It's not, we can talk about the dark stuff and be honest about it, but it's

It's not a dark show. That's how I feel about you guys. And actually it's generally, it's what attracts me to various personalities to come on the show. If it's all dour and dark and foreboding, I tend to eliminate those people because it's just too, I don't want to live like that, you know?

Yeah. And today you got to find out that Matt was hooking up with his nanny. I mean, so there's always a silver lining. You get a little, it's not all rockets coming into television. Did I ever tell you that when my first child was born, we interviewed nannies and we interviewed a woman who was the former Miss Maine. And we knew that before she came for the interview. I was like, look, this is a testament to me that I would even consider this as

and to my marriage. And we did not wind up hiring her, but we hired this incredibly gorgeous woman from Brazil who was stunningly gorgeous, but very sweet. If you have a good marriage, you're good. Doug Emhoff, you are not that person. Go ahead, Camille. No, I was going to say exactly that. If the marriage, if the foundation is strong and if your wife is bad,

And I mean, come on, you know how you do. That's a black version. You don't actually have anything to worry about. I would never jeopardize my marriage with any nanny, no matter how super hot she is, because my marriage is great. Nope. My wife is pretty hot. She's pretty hot. She's put together very well. She's held together very well. I've said you have a hot wife. Also, Miss Maine was probably super hot too. So I'm just kidding. You gotta roll the ice sometimes.

You know, I have to tell you, she's very, very attractive. Yeah. Yeah. You never know what somebody is unveiling in their home. There's somebody I know whose name you would know, but I'm not going to share with you now. But she's got this routine. She does. I know with the men in her life and she calls it Night of the Seven Veils. It doesn't matter if you bring Miss USA in this universe. No man is leaving Night of the Seven Veils. Wow. I need more information about that.

And is it on the subway line? Like, how do I get there? I can bring an email. My only hint is you already know this person and that's what I'm going to tell you on the air. Okay. What fun tricks do you have to make sure your spouse doesn't stray into the Miss Universe pageant? Email me, Megan, at megankelly.com. Thanks for sticking around, guys. See you again soon. Talk later.

And back tomorrow with Michael Knowles. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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