Brian Kilmeade: The President and the Freedom Fighter
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All right, boys and girls, welcome back to another edition of the Ben Domenech podcast brought to you by Fox News. You can check us all out at foxnewspodcast.com. You can also check out my recent interview with Jason Chaffetz. He's at jasoninthehouse.com.

I hope you will subscribe, of course, rate and review this podcast, but only if you like it. Today, my guest is Brian Kilmeade. He's the author of the new book, The President and the Freedom Fighter, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America's Soul. I have had...

a number of conversations with Brian over the years, and he has always been someone who brings an interesting perspective on the history of the country, someone who truly appreciates the different lessons that we can learn from it. I hope that you will enjoy this interview. Brian Kilmeade coming up next.

Brian Kilmeade, thank you so much for taking the time to join me. Ben, I could not do a book and not have a chance to interview with you. It would be bad luck and a bad move for me publicity-wise, too. Well, you've had great fortune with your previous ones, and we've had great conversations about them. I'm looking forward to talking about this one, which is The President and the Freedom Fighter, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and their battle to save America's soul. But before I get into the book, Brian...

I have to ask you, what are things like in New York City right now? You're one of the people who I know who has stayed there throughout this whole process, experienced life in Manhattan as it has gone through the upheaval of the past year and a half plus.

What is your attitude toward the city right now? How do you feel like it's going? Well, I mean, for some reason, and I'd love to see the invoices, they're rebuilding everything. I mean, all the roads are dug up. I cannot tell you how many buildings are being rebuilt or torn down. It's bizarre. And again, I've been coming back and forth for 25 years, and I grew up in Long Island, so I'm no stranger to Manhattan. And I remember those days when you would never go in with your car and expect to come out with your radio. Yeah.

But we got spoiled. I mean, ever since I started here at Fox, which was started filling in in 96, got the job in 97. There's really I've almost had no negative experiences.

interactions with any criminal element. Now I don't see any tourists. I see so many mentally ill and drug users. I don't think you can walk a block, and I think this is more in this country, without smelling marijuana, smelling pot. I don't see many cops around. When they do, they're all clustered together because they feel like they're under siege and they want to have somebody that has their back. I mean, on top of that, they're rebuilding Penn Station, and it looks like one big square building

plywood box. So you really have no idea what they're doing behind it. So you factor that in along with the coronavirus and empty trains still. You cannot drive anywhere. They've taken all the lanes away and put bike lanes in there and motor scooters in there. And then people don't feel secure enough to take mass transportation. So I take the train home. I'm lucky enough to get a car in. And I never had someone sit next to me. But yet I want to hop in a car on Thursday and

And it took me two and a half hours to go 12 miles. That's that's insane, Brian. I mean, I look, I, I have to ask. I know you are you. You give me the vibe of naturally being a hopeful person. Oh, yeah. Someone hopeful about the future, hopeful about the country, hopeful about the city that you love.

I feel like it's going to be a long time for the city to claw back from this terrible combination of mismanagement, bad decisions, a pandemic and everything that has gone through in the last year and a half.

Are you hopeful that that's something that can be turned around within the next couple of years? I would say this. I would say this is a great time to come in as mayor of New York because you had a very lazy man, a mayor whose extraordinarily liberal views really hurt the city. He thought he couldn't break it. He gradually, along with the pandemic, did just that. He broke it.

So now they're going to put it together, but it's a great time because you still have Wall Street. You still got the potential there. People are coming back to work. Once you get tourists back, you could get credit for a boom just by not being an idiot.

You know, by not doing things to hurt the country. The one thing about, and you know this better than anyone, Ben, when you go, the more local you get, the less it matters whether you're a Republican or Democrat. So there were, I mean, you don't even know who was yelling at Rudy Giuliani on a daily basis or Mike Bloomberg if they were Democrat or Republican. You kind of knew where the press was.

I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure if you're a lawyer or not. I'm not sure

And he was saying that Eric Adams calls him three or four times a week. And even if you don't like Bloomberg, you've got to like his organization. And he didn't try to break the city. You know, he's very green-oriented, but he was very law enforcement first.

So that was that I respect. If you could put up with losing the big gulps in exchange for safety for the citizens, I think that's a good point. I mean, he wasn't incompetent. How's that? Yeah. Brian, one more question before we get to your book. I know that you are someone who has a great reputation with...

the cops and the first responders in New York city, they're there. They think very highly of you. When I run into them, they, they bring your name up as one of the people who they really like at Fox. I I'm sure that you've experienced that. They have had a hell of a year and a half to go through, you know, really beginning last spring and summer in terms of the experience that they've had and seeing this, this national defund the police and,

escalation that attacked them in so many different respects.

I see the backlash because I have the time to go out to a lot of communities in America where there is backlash to it. What are they talking to you about the way that they feel now? Do they feel like the corner has been turned, that people understand the madness and the insanity of the kind of cultural and societal breakdown that the defund effort really was pursuing? You know, what's interesting is, to me,

That's a great question. That's the first thing I ask them. Thank you for saying that, but that's what I take pride in, to talk about how things have changed. I remember when I first got out of college and was doing sports, when one of these athletes would know my name and a fellow reporter would recognize what I did. I thought that was cool. And then you meet a celebrity at one of these celebrity games and they kind of know what you did. I thought that was cool. I have totally changed.

When I have a Navy SEAL or anybody, enlisted person or private, come up to me and say, hey, thanks for having our back, or a cop or firefighter say the same thing, that to me makes my day. So it just goes to show you what changes I hope people evolve. But that's one of the ways in which I've evolved. But I always ask them this. You have to realize things have to be getting better, right? People realize what happened over the last year, how much worse their life has gotten when they told you to recede or quit.

And they said most people say not yet. Not yet. I mean, the people, their officers and their police chiefs, they've treated them with respect, but they have not felt as though they can go out and do their jobs aggressively because they know the ramifications could be a national or international event should what they do be wrong or perceived to be wrong. So they're they're pulling their punches. And almost every police force is undermanned.

You know, Brian, I'm nowhere near close to what you've achieved, but I will say that

Since coming, since joining the Fox team, since, you know, sliding in and hosting primetime occasionally, when I go into a cop bar in my in my neighborhood or in D.C. now and I get recognized, it is it is by it is so much more gratifying than being recognized by a politician. It is the best thing in the world. And and and I really appreciate it. So let's talk about this book. You.

You have basically conducted, you've created this series of books that goes through American history and wraps your arms, you wrap your arms around these various stories about key figures. And it's interesting to me because it's a

It's an educational experience. You let the history speak for itself. But it really does seem like you hit the high points and the significant moments in these people's lives as you're covering this in a really impressive way. And I say that because, you know, that when I, you know, open a book like this that is going to talk about Frederick Douglass, you know, I've read a lot of

books about Frederick Douglass. I've read his own autobiography. I've read a number of different books that deal with him. And so I'm kind of curious about the different moments you're going to mention. And you really do drive in and hit some of the key moments in his life and in his relationship with Abraham Lincoln. I'm curious, though, was this something that you picked in terms of your next historical book?

Because of the race relations element of it, just given how much that has seemed to dominate the discussion in the past couple of years? No. Unfortunately, I got lucky on the topic. I wish I didn't.

But I've gotten lucky along the way in that as soon as I start researching this and going into it, before I decide which way I want to go, I say to myself, how am I going to talk about this? I mean, I have a few ideas for sports books, but I don't do them because if I can't talk about it,

to my audience, I can't ask somebody to just put their format on hold and talk about history unless I can relate it to the news. So if I go and do a sports book, like the first two books I did was The Games Do Count and It's How You Play the Game. And I used different figures in sports and news and in celebrity and business and find out what they did in sports first. And that was a little bit of a reach. I feel like I'm kind of screwing with people's format and having them have me on.

But what I try to do is I'm saying, how do I make history newsworthy? Well, with George Washington's Secret Six, we had all the discussion about the CIA and our methods and practices. It worked. Thomas Jefferson, the Tripoli pirates. We had the war on terror. That was Jefferson. It was easy. Donald Trump gets elected. Compare it. Everybody compares him to Andrew Jackson. Man, I got lucky. And then with Texas, Texas is always a hot issue with Sam Houston.

And then I thought, you know, I'm moving up in time. Do I really want to handle the most written about war in America and the Civil War? What can I bring new to it? And what is not going to be that controversial? And I thought, and my goodness, Lincoln is the most written about president of them all. What can I bring new to that? You read Carl Sandburg's book, you don't go, wow, he left a lot out.

You read Ulysses S. Grant with Ron Chernow, which can say I was both men in it, over a thousand pages. And I thought to myself, man, I thought I lost a family member when I closed that book. So how do I, Frederick Douglass wrote his own autobiography, updated it three times. And then the book of the year was David Blight's

book on Frederick Douglass, how do I do that? And I said, well, what if I focus on their relationships? What if I took that slice of time? And what I love writing is these unsung, these heroic stories, these American stories where you come from nowhere and get everywhere. Andrew Jackson, orphaned by the time before he was even a teenager, raised by his county, his town, his country, and would rise to prominence only in America. And

And then you have Frederick Douglass, born a slave, met his mother twice in the middle of the night. Fuzzy memories. Some say they never really happened. It was the fantasies of a kid. It doesn't matter. He was born a slave. Didn't even wear a pair of pants until he was eight, nine years old.

never knew his dad, still never knew for sure who his dad was, and in the most horrible conditions imaginable, for a white person, you had Abraham Lincoln born in abject poverty to two illiterate parents who worked 20 hours a day from almost every day he can remember, who would only have one year of formal schooling combined,

If you were going to say there was two men that are going to emerge to bring us through a most difficult time in our history, it wouldn't have been the slave in Maryland and it wouldn't have been the the the poverty stricken youth gangly guy in the Midwest. It would it would be a guy. It would be someone for Virginia. It would be somebody from the political stock of our founding fathers. But it wasn't.

And that's what I thought people could relate to and see how they grew together, how Douglas was a critic through his writings in the North Star of Lincoln because he saw so much potential in him. And now Lincoln proved timing is everything. Lincoln was a one-term congressman who tried to be senator, didn't work out, went back to his law firm. And when he has a series of Douglas debates, if they were done 10 years prior, it wouldn't have been a big deal. But it was done in the 1850s. People took notice. Again, he lost time.

But when winning, he wowed the world and the country specifically with the depth of his debate and the way he took on slavery and where he talked about where the country should go. And there's Frederick Douglass. Seven years after he escapes to freedom is an international known lecturer in intellect who is leading America's abolitionist movement.

And if I was to tell you those stories, you'd be go, Brian, that's a great story, but it never happened. And now I thought if I could tell you it happened, how they came together with three meetings and they could have had four, but Douglas was too busy. And what could have been done had Lincoln not been assassinated. I thought, man, if I could tell you that story, you could really see how far America has come on race relations and how far our greatest president by far, Abraham Lincoln, evolved in real time and give you so much hope for America in this time.

I'm Ben Nominate. You'll have more with Brian Kilmeade right after this.

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You have so many key decisions that you drill into in this book, but one of my favorites or one of the ones that I think everyone should pay attention to is one that Frederick Douglass made when he was approached by

by John Brown regarding the Harper's Ferry mission that he had in mind. I love this quote that you have in here. Come with me, Douglas, Brown said. I want you for a special purpose. When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm and I shall want you to help hive them. It is such a significant moment for Douglas to reject this approach of terrorism. One that did, of course, spark controversy

enormous reaction and that includes so many different figures who would end up mattering in the war to come. But had Douglas gone on that suicide mission, the whole story would have been

dramatically shortened. You know, he made the decision instead to work through the American political process and essentially, you know, I believe to trust in the American people to come to the right solution as opposed to engaging in what would have been, you know, a terrorist act of rebellion against the American Republic. Uh,

Tell me about the significance of that moment to you and how you reflect on it as such a significant point of a historical road not taken. And if I was to put, I've gotten good at this, if I was to put a caption on what you just said, it would be timing.

It's timing is everything. The sentiment of John Brown, who's seemed a little crazy, but well-meaning, extremely bright. He was determined after after seeing what slavery does to people and seeing growing up with African-Americans around him and seeing how they were treated. He was determined to rid this country of slavery. And even though he had, I think, nine, 10, 11 kids.

He found himself and was a failed businessman in many ways. He found himself on a wild-eyed mission to free the slaves in the South, and he was going to do it himself. And he had a group of people, including a couple of his kids, go into –

The South in the effort, by the way, it would be Robert E. Lee who would be summoned to take him down when they thought this was a major insurrection. They go, no, this is just a this is just a small gang. We could finish these guys off. No problem. So he would meet with Douglas countless times. In fact, he was very tight with Frederick Douglas, his kids, especially his daughter, who would early who sadly would pass away. And they called him basically Uncle John. That was John Brown was all over his house.

So when John Brown would tell him his story, how he's going to fight for the black man and free them in the South, and he was going to let them know that these insurrections would be supported by the slaves once he starts killing white people and slave owners, he said, yeah, I appreciate the sentiment, Douglass said, but I'm not coming. It's like, you've got to come. It's like, no, but he'd work with them and talk with them, but ultimately he wouldn't go.

So Brown goes in, does some damage, actually commandeers a weapons depot, and then he quickly gets alerted. He's outnumbered. They all get killed. He gets jailed and gets hanged. But there's a paper trail right back to Frederick Douglass. And Douglass quickly has to call back, get a message back to his house, destroy all the paperwork with John Brown. And he had to leave the country. And he was thankfully tipped off by a

a railroad operator that they're after him. So he was able to leave Philadelphia and get out of there. So if he had gone with John Brown, yes, that's what he ultimately would be doing. And actually Lincoln would ask him to do just that alert the Southern slave that they have their freedom, tell them to rise up and fight with us and come out of there. And he's like, and Lincoln,

Douglass is thinking to himself when Lincoln says it, yeah, that's pretty much the John Brown plan from two years ago. So, yeah, I'll do that. That sounds good. And he almost got killed because of it. And there was a warrant out for arrest because of it. But Frederick Douglass was smart enough to leave because he knew America wasn't ready. He knew the plan wasn't good. But he also knew that gave great heart to know that white people can feel safe.

uh, the injustice of slavery and want to rid themselves on it. In some cases, almost as much as the people experiencing it. And he fell down with someone like William, uh,

Lloyd Garrison, who was his original mentor, saw his potential and signed him basically to a speaking deal. And then he would help finance the North Star, his newspaper. And another guy named Garrett Smith, who came into a lot of money when his family, when his dad passed away and wanted to help out these causes, a great humanitarian, saw even more potential in

the American Constitution. He was a great document not what William Lloyd He was a great document not what William Lloyd garrison was saying it was a flawed document. garrison was saying it was a flawed document. He say was up to us to live up to it. He say was up to us to live up to it. It was not up for us to rewrite it. And with amendments 13 14th and 15th would would happen in

He would see all that. So when you just think to yourself, you know, white people bad, black people good, it wasn't that simple. There was a lot of white people who looked to the south and said, this is wrong. We got to stop it. The abolitionist movement grew. And there was a lot of people in the north who never experienced slavery. There was only 1% of the black population was in the north at the time. And when you start researching Douglas, you see that he, as much as he would be bitter and,

I'm hoping that you're not going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going to be a victim of the violence that you're going

White people listening don't even have ancestors who are in America hundreds of years ago. It's a fundamental disagreement about the way that you approach societal change and change of our country, which is to say, you know, Douglas makes the argument. The Constitution is a glorious liberty document.

And when Martin Luther King comes to Washington, he talks about the check that has not been kept, the fact that we want to be part of

of this great nation and its promise to us, the promissory note of the Constitution, as opposed to a rejection of it, a vilification of it, which is represented by the 1619 Project, which is represented by people who want to burn and dishonor the flag. You know, it's the difference between wanting to be part of something with your fellow Americans and saying that it ought to be destroyed. I have to ask you, Brian,

I was born in Mississippi. I was born in Jackson, Mississippi. I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, you know, and seeing Fort Sumter there was something that happened almost every Sunday when we would go to church downtown.

The Civil War was ever present in my youth and coming and living in rural Virginia, living in Leesburg, which is a town that both armies marched back and forth through over the course of the war. The Civil War was ever present for me growing up.

What was it like for you? You come from the North. You are a Northeastern guy. You've lived there. It's got to be a different experience for you to not be surrounded by these reminders of the war in such an ever-present way. Well, what a great question. And I'll share that with you too, but I just go to tell you, November 7th is a special on 10 o'clock at night. And what I did is I went

the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I was in the military. I

where you had the 54th Infantry, Massachusetts Infantry, all-black infantry, take heavy casualties in their first major battle in the war because they finally got an opportunity to fight for their freedom. So you have Fort Sumter where the war started, a Confederate statue standing tall, and then the 54th Infantry plaque, which Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott joined me for this interview. I don't care what their remarks were. I just wanted them together to build on each other.

And to me, it's one of the most special parts of the special. And I learned so much listening to them because to hear their different take and how their teachers taught them differently. But you saw all that history right in South Carolina. So...

You know, Lindsey Graham mentioned there was a war of Northern aggression. They learned about that. And Senator Tim Scott had a different impression of what it was like. He had more of the African-American perspective of the war, which was brutality. This is South Carolina, the first state to leave joined by six others. Brian, if I can interrupt the the in my experience, it was the working class white folks called it the war of Northern aggression. It was the rich white folks who called it the late unpleasantness.

Is that true? Yes, yes. In Charleston, that was how they referred to it. The late unpleasantness. Right. With us, you know, I'm surrounded by a lot of Revolutionary War things, which we didn't pay enough attention to, in my view. But we didn't shy at all about the brutality of slavery. I'm telling you. And I grew up in a mostly white area, although five miles from me was a mostly black area. So...

I knew the brutality of it and no one hid from it. And they talked about the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks. We they didn't shy away from that at all. And the older you get, the more you could read the actual words of the people who suffered and the rationality of the founding fathers that didn't stop it.

Except for John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Alexander Hamilton. We know about them. And some people say the only reason they weren't four is because they were in the north and not the south. But it was something on every continent on the planet. We didn't invent it. It spread here. It didn't start here.

So I remember Roots, 1976. I was probably, I was in sixth grade. I remember that the number one series, I think to this day, please watch that show and tell me if you're whitewashing history. The brutality of the African-American experience is there.

for everyone to see and be horrified by. But I also thought it was our story is one of constant never-ending improvement. And to the point is, millions of African Americans have chosen to come here from other countries knowing our past and knowing our present. So how bad can we still be? The goal was first freedom, then equality. Reconstruction is a disaster. Gradually gotten better. If I believed that if Lincoln lived in the 1860s, we wouldn't have needed the 1960s.

So we did have Ulysses S. Grant, thank goodness, but sadly we had Andrew Johnson. And, you know, Grant could only do so much. But people like Frederick Douglass who was pushing for more and demanding nothing but equality...

Not a by himself Booker T. Washington, other same thing stood out, but I thought America was a gradual growth process. There's a brutality of slavery. Here's the greatness of freedom and liberty. Here's what we showed the rest of the world. Here's where we fell short. And then I thought, okay, we're American good and bad. Now all of a sudden we're American still on a bill, a country built on stolen land of white supremacists. How did that happen? You know, Brian, it's difficult to, uh,

add more color to the framing and depiction of Abraham Lincoln. Obviously, as you said before, he is the most written about president. We have all of these different books that have covered him. So instead, let me ask you this. As you were doing the research and the writing on this,

Was there a reflection, an aspect of Lincoln that came out to you in that process that you had perhaps not appreciated before or that you came to appreciate more as you were doing the work? Number one, he always wanted to learn.

His thirst for education was matched by Frederick Douglass' need for education and thirst. But Douglass needed to get out, and he needed – the more he learned, he thirsted for it, and he had to do all types of incredible feats in order to learn the ABCs, read and write. But Lincoln, in many ways, was the same way. His dad said, what are you doing wasting your time reading books?

You know, what do you want to keep going to school? His thirst to get bigger, get stronger. The humility in which he had, the thoughtfulness in which he approached things. They also had a commonality. There's this thing, and I downloaded it. I recommend everyone else do it. The Columbian Orator. Everything from Plato to George Washington's in there. Great thinkers around the world through time. Julius Caesar. And what they said and what they did.

And they both read this book to open up their minds to what the world is like and what generations thought. So to get out of the Indiana, to get out of the Illinois mindset, there's more out there. So I think they're thirst for learning. The other thing about Lincoln, you're going to read some things about Lincoln, see his quotes. You're going to be horrified. He would say, yeah, I'm for everyone should be free. But I don't think blacks are equal to whites. Obviously, they're not intellectually the same as white. And, you know, you recoil.

But then you see Lincoln in Richmond after Jefferson Davis goes on the lam and abandons what was his version of the White House. Napa Maddox takes place and he goes into Richmond. And when he sees African-Americans in great numbers, when he sees how they act, when he gets to know Frederick Douglass and others, he changes his point of view. You don't see it and say, I changed my point of view and say that like Benjamin Franklin said that.

But he realizes the more he's exposed, the more he realizes that's what I was taught. That's what I was told. But it's just not the truth. And that's why he brought up colonization. Guys, there's no way whites and blacks can live together. What do you say? You pack up. I give you some money and you go somewhere else. Now you think, how could Lincoln, our greatest president, arguably, but really no argument, our greatest president think like that? Well, he's a person of his times. How did he end up thinking?

Ended up thinking we have to free all these men and women. We have to get them the right to vote. We got to get them citizenship and we got to do it right away. We got to flood the zone with housing and we got to teach them to read and write with teachers. So,

He began to evolve. Now, I ask you, as people read this book, listen to the book, listen to our podcast, your podcast, Ben, if he can evolve in real time and our country can evolve in real time, why not push us forward without the anger and venom? Why not appreciate the journey in which we took and our greatest president had to evolve and for us more mere mortals?

who would not live in infamy like myself. You will live in infamy. I apologize for putting you in that. I mean, can we cut each other a little slack and just say this is part of the process? And Frederick Douglass did. Frederick Douglass would give speeches in 1876, and so I closed the special, and say, you know, this guy evolved. He came into being this great president. He wasn't there yet.

and yet when Lincoln found out that Frederick Douglass was outside and he was going to meet him for the first time he sent his card up he stayed on the line at the White House for two minutes and walked past sitting senators and people that have been there for days to meet one-on-one with the president so what let me ask you what type of guy was he how could he think blacks are inferior if he thirsted to meet with Frederick Douglass and the first thing he said is my friend Douglass

And when they meet for the last time after the second inaugural, when Douglas is outside and they first try to keep him away because blacks weren't allowed to go to the inaugural bowl, but he was invited and he was on the platform with Lincoln.

Lincoln sees him. He says, my friend Douglas, come see me. He goes, I need to know what you thought of my speech. He's like, you got a lot of people here, Mr. President. Don't worry about me. He goes, I need to know what you thought. There's nobody whose opinion I value more. Actually, I think I nailed that quote. Exactly. And his answer was, no.

It was an esteemed effort, a valiant effort. He loved it. He thought it was perfect. It was the exact message that Douglas was hoping to hear, you know, with malice, you know, with malice to none. Let's put our guns down and let's come back together and let's freedom for all. This is not time for vengeance or revenge.

He loved the speech, even though it was widely panned and many people thought it was too short. But I ask you, even though you read the stuff about Lincoln to your original question that says, man, this guy, he never thought blacks and whites were equal. Yeah, it was true. But if he really thought that in the end at the age 56, when he goes to meet Douglas at the White House, why would he say there's no one whose opinion I value more? So study, learn, debate, but don't judge.

Because we're people of our times. We're not of their times. I was touched by a number of the anecdotes that you relate near the end of the book about, as you mentioned, Abraham Lincoln's visit to Richmond, the dedication of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., which I think people are familiar with because the controversy around it that Douglas attended and spoke at. It's very interesting to think of these

of these interactions that people have that are not from the stage. They are not elevated above the people. They are down on the ground with the people interacting with them as, you know, man to man. And that, and that to me is, it's just a very, it's a powerful element of your book. And it's one of the reasons that I feel like this work of, of popular history is something that's very important because

in order to teach people a lot of the things that have been left out of their experience in our public schooling. Brian, I have one last question for you.

What are you on? What's your energy driver? How do you how are you the Energizer bunny of Fox News capable of hosting, hosting in the morning, hopping around all day, doing some primetime, doing doing all the different things that you do, hosting your radio show? I have no idea how Brian Kilmeade keeps his energy level up.

to this degree. What's your recipe for that? How do you do that? Well, thank you for that. I don't know if I deserve that mantle, but to me, what you do is, this is a big gym. So I worked hard to, I made it clear when Tony Snow got the radio show, guys, I did talk radio, mostly sports talk, but I'd love to fill in. They said, yes. Tony Snow goes to the White House,

they gave me like 15 minutes to say if you and Judge want to split it, you could take it. Judge ended up not doing it after a while in the Palo Tano, so I took it. So you just grab it, and it's fun. Like you love this stuff. You breathe it, especially at home. I'm sure you and Megan talk about it, so you don't really get away from it because you like it. So what I did is wipe out any hobbies, so it's either I'm home or I'm here. There's really no in-between.

Well, that level of dedication clearly shows. And congratulations on the book. I'm sure that...

I'm sure that people will be educated by it. The number of things that you include in here is very impressive. The book is The President and the Freedom Fighter. Brian, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Hey, Ben, can't thank you enough. I appreciate you reading it and talking about it. And you do a great job on the channel. This is the first time we're doing this interview. We're on the same team. So good job in giving up your old team, the Federalists. So thanks so much, man. Thank you, Brian.

I assume that you are all getting ready for your Thanksgiving celebrations this week, undeterred by the New York Times and their allies in the corporate legacy media telling you that this is a celebration in some ways.

of some kind of cultural invasion or worse when it comes to American history. Thanksgiving is a wonderful time and I hope that it's one where you can gather together and have all of the experiences that go with a wonderful family gathering, including arguments, fighting, passive aggressiveness, and of course, disputes over the football game that you play together outside.

One thing in particular I want to emphasize to you all is that there is a right way to do Thanksgiving and a wrong way when it comes to the meal. One in particular is the issue of how to brine or whether to brine your turkey. I'm emphatically in favor of dry brining your turkey. I think anybody who wet brines is just completely foolish. You are not

appreciating the scientific process involved. I also think that you should not cook your stuffing inside your turkey. That's absurd. It's a steaming method of cooking it. You ought to do so on cookie sheets or on any type of other baking apparatus. You should not be doing it that way. Stuffing is definitely the centerpiece of Thanksgiving. It's something that we probably ought to eat

year round, though I don't think that that sort of thing is culturally appreciated. When it comes to cranberry sauce, look, if you want to do your refined method of approaching it with Grand Marnier and

you know, orange peel and cinnamon sticks and the like, that's wonderful. But I am not going to look down on you if you use the jello-like substance that comes out of a can. Mashed potatoes are, of course, essential for any quality Thanksgiving meal. And I hope that you will put the necessary effort into it. One thing that I would advise you is to say that mashed potatoes are not good when they have

a completely even liquid-like consistency. That's not good. You want some chunk to it. You want something that feels like a potato when you bite into it.

Don't overuse pumpkin. Pumpkin is really overrated when it comes to a dish. So it should be, I think, confined to pies as opposed to being something that is represented across the meal. And I also think that there is an important element of any kind of greenery that you want on your table, which is to say, if you're going to have something like Brussels sprouts,

you should definitely include bacon in the process. Any vegetable that has been paired with

with bacon or pork fat is going to be improved through the process. That's my basic advice for a good Thanksgiving, along with, of course, a quality cocktail that you can enjoy with your family and friends. I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'll be hosting Vox News Primetime on Friday and appreciating with it all of the wonderful aspects.

of the pilgrims, the first Thanksgiving, everything that comes with that, in spite of the politically correct of our day, who say that these people were terrible. We'll be fighting against that. I hope you will tune in. I'm Ben Dominich. You've been listening to another edition of the Ben Dominich podcast. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. Have a good one.

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