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Guest is the one and only Megyn Kelly, of course, the host, the Megyn Kelly show and the AM update on the Sirius XM New Channel 111, the Megan Kelly Channel. Very grateful for Megan stopping by. We're going to talk about the news of the day, including the aftermath of the government shutdown, why the Democrats caved as they did, how they feel about it, why they're so upset, and a little bit of a Gavin Newsom talk as well. So stay tuned to that conversation. Megan will be here briefly. But before Megan joins us, I want to talk to you about something that has really been put in sharp relief this week. But it's part of a broader long running battle in both parties between the populist wings of the parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, and the establishment wings, which I think have a lot of parallels. That's my reported Matlock that's coming next up. Stay here. 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Whether you're texting, browsing or using apps. The UPPhone ensures your personal information stays personal. It's the phone for people who are done being watched. Ready to take back your digital privacy? Visit unplugged.com mark and get $25 off a phone case with the purchase of a phone. Again, go to unplugged.com mark because your life, your data, it should be yours, not theirs. Plus, from Election Day through Veterans Day, unplugged is honoring those who serve all veterans and active duty military. Get $175 off any up phone and they're donating $50 from each purchase to support veterans charity Valor Mission Project. Learn more and order your iPhone today@unplugged.com Mark. Get this today. All right, next up to jump right into my reported monologue. I was in D.C. this week, talked to a lot of people and of course, always on the phone, texting, emailing and incredible story. Right to go from last Tuesday. Just a week ago, Democrats with a smashing victory all across the country on the election night. And all but the most dishonest Republicans would have said yes. Great moment for Democrats. Lots of momentum. Really their best day politically since Donald Trump was elected to the government shutdown ending, which was done by Democrats in the Senate and has caused a massive new civil war within the Democratic Party aimed at Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader. But really having the party facing another one of these existential crises. So I'm trying to put it all in context. How could we have these two tentpole events so close together? And what is it about? And one of the ways I do my reporting, and I always like to try to share with you how I do my reporting, my analysis is I look for asymmetrical differences between the party. What's something going on with the Republicans where the Democrats aren't doing it the same or vice versa. Because when you look at the contrast between the parties at any given moment, you can find clues that can explain what's going on and often help you figure out what we try to do here, help you figure out what's coming next. One party may be better at digital technology than the other. That'd be one example of something that I'm always Tracking these differences emerge, though, at the same time as they are what I call the mirror moments, where simultaneously you have symmetries between the two parties where things look alike. So on the one hand, looking at the differences, but then on the other hand, where are they the same or similar? It's the push and pull between symmetry on the one hand and asymmetry on the other that I think is defining American politics right now. And the most important similarity I see is the symmetry, is both parties now are in the midst of long running populist revolts that date back to 2015, 2016, really, when they've emerged in full force. Although they've been around, of course, throughout American history. There's always some undercurrent of populism. And we saw the rise of Bill Clinton 92 and Pat Buchanan in 92. Populism was at play there as well. But really 2015, where now, since 2015, the one politicians in both parties, symmetrically, who are on the rise are the ones who are best channeling that demand, populist demand for fundamental change, the insistence that the old order has got to be toppled, that business as usual has to be disrupted, and that the entrenched interests have to be brought to heel, that we cannot let the status quo prevail. Obviously, the clearest example of all this, the person who is most ridden that wave of populist anger and energy, is Donald Trump. He is the sun around which everything else orbits, not just in his party and in his red America, but on the blue side as well. And then on that blue side, the most obvious examples now of people doing the symmetrical thing across the mirror, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and the newly elected mayor here in Gotham City, Zoran Mamdani, at the grassroots. For both parties, again, it's symmetrical. The currency is exactly the same. It's about anger, it's often about conspiracy theories, and it's about distrust. And that distrust is extended towards institutions across the board, political media, business. But it's also distrust towards anyone who's doing things the old way, who's protecting the old order. So in this past week, as I've said, we've seen these two political earthquakes that have shaken both parties. The Republicans shaken, shaken by election Day and what happened then, and the Democrats really shaken by the end of the shutdown and the way it happened, that showed that eight Democratic senators could basically go out on their own and really bother the rest of the party, almost the entirety of the rest of the party. So election ends up on Democratic terms and Then eight Democratic senators end the shutdown on Republican terms. So how did it happen? The Republicans scored a huge win, and now Democrats are turning inward. They're bitter, they're divided. And those eight senators, they've got almost no defenders. The paradox here and the defining asymmetry to me in this moment, is how each party has handled what have been whiplash reversals in the space of a week. Never in modern history, in, say, since Reagan, has one party been so completely dominated by. By just one figure, just one person. And of course, that's Donald Trump. For the Republicans, he's the sun, he's the moon, he's the stars. He's the dominant figure who defines everything in his orbit across the aisle. Though I can't remember a time when either party were so utterly leaderless as today's Democrats are. One party dominated by a single person, the other party. Not even a collection of dominant figures, Just. Just nothing. Just a void. The midterms, all about Trump. The end of the shutdown, also all about Trump for both sides and the Democratic infighting that we're seeing now. It's not about health care policy exactly, although that's certainly at issue. It's more about this question that's come to define the resistance for the Democratic anti establishment, the populist wing. It's about how do you oppose Donald Trump? How do you oppose him? What are the methods used? How far do you go? But as much as these two moments are big, there's something swirling. It's bigger and it's longer running. And it is what I said before, it's the establishment wing versus the populace, the old order versus upheaval. And in both parties, these have played out over one issue of late in a pretty dominant way, another symmetry. Both the left and the right, the Democrats and the Republicans, have played out this establishment versus populist drama around the question of America's support for Israel and the related thing that's occurred, which is allegations in both parties that there's anti Semitism that comes with that. Okay. And whether you're talking about Nick Fuentes and his video streams or the far left campus protests that we've seen for a while now, the tensions have really torn both sides apart. These are real conflicts. You see it on social media, on cable, in writing, in essays, on substack, you see it in politics. But I think these are symptoms not of just what's seen on the surface, Israel and antisemitism allegations, but these are symptoms of something deeper. And again, this is something deeper in both parties that, that's symmetrical. These are proxy wars again, between the establishment and the insurgent populace who are trying to smash the old order and take the power on the right. Now, we've seen it come in sharp relief just in the last couple weeks, fights over Tucker Carlson and those who excuse or try to explain away his interview with Nick Fuentes. But that's not what it's about. It's really about the Trump era, redefinition of what it means to be a conservative. Okay. And a movement who sees what's happened with Tucker and Fuentes and their elevation as morally and politically toxic. So, again, this is not about Israel and anti Semitism. It's about arguments about what free speech occurs, like with Stephen Colbert, or free markets, where Donald Trump is interfering with companies by demanding tribute from them in a way no previous Republican president or presidential candidate would have dreamed of. And it's about free trade. It's about tariffs and the tariff policy, which is antithetical to a Republican orthodoxy for so long. And it's foreign policy. It's about whether the Republicans are going to stand against dictators like Vladimir Putin. That would have been the historic Republican position, and stand with embattled allies like Ukraine. So then when you have someone like Ted Cruz, okay, who has been outspoken, defending the principles of a more traditional Republican Party, elevating the ideas of Reagan, of the bushes, of John McCain, of Mitt Romney, when Ted Cruz and others do it, though they rarely say outright, this is, you know, we can't follow Donald Trump here. They just talk about the ideas because they want to keep on the good side of maga. They want to avoid the wrath of maga. But no, make no mistake, Ted Cruz, when he talks about don't fire, don't pressure, don't use the FCC to pressure Colbert, we don't. These tariffs are really damaging to the economy in Texas. Or when he says, you know, this is a dangerous thing to interfere with these investments, demanding money from these corporations, Cruz and others. This is about saying the populist fervor has gone too far on some issues. It's taken the Republican Party too far afield. Same on the Democratic side. We see now this revolt against Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, and the shutdown strategy that failed in the minds of so many on the left. That's also about a longer term fight between the populace and the establishment. The populace and the party have tried to change things. That began again in earnest in 2016 when Bernie Sanders ran for the Democratic nomination. And the reality is, if The Democratic Party had it in a crooked way, changed the rules, rigged the game to stop Sanders from winning. I think he would have been the Democratic nominee. He got pretty close to beating Hillary Clinton. And had he won, 2016 would have featured not one, but two major party nominees nominating outsiders, populist outsiders, neither of whom were members of the party up until the time they filed to run that year. And certainly neither of them both at the time and now true insiders in any way in their tribes, two outsiders. Democrats now have been doing for a long time what Republicans are now going through regarding Israel, okay? And regarding America's support for Israel and regarding these allegations of anti Semitism. But just as that is a stand in on the Republican side, on the Democratic side too, it's a stand in for this deeper fight, this deeper, more profound fight, a clash between those who want continuity, want the establishment to continue to be in charge, and those who are demanding change. And now you see as the 2028 presidential campaign starts to form, some people, not very many, but some people in the party are saying this leftward lurch that we've engaged in on cultural issues, on economics, on crime, on the border, it's destroying the Democratic brand, it's destroying the party. You got to give Rahm Emanuel credit, former congressman, former mayor of Chicago, former Obama chief of staff. He's tepidly, not full throatedly, but he's out there leading the way for the establishment to push back and say, we will not be a broad based party, we will not be a majority party, we will not win the White House regularly if we don't push back against political correctness, woke orthodoxy, things like trans policy or policing, and we've got to be more centrist on those things. And then also on the economy, you know, this abundance agenda that a bunch of Democrats, some more moderate, some not, saying we need to be the party of economic growth, we need the party who can build things big, public infrastructure, housing, et cetera. These are all attempts to reclaim the image of the Democratic Party the way Bill Clinton did, Barack Obama did to some extent, as a party that's pro growth and that's centrist to take that ground away because they want to win elections in the middle. And the establishment believes that the populace are too far to the left to do right by the party. The emotion, the factionalism you see on the left now, that is being mirrored in the turmoil that we see on the right. This huge debate which some people try to play down, they say it's an inside game and to some extent, it is Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson and the Heritage foundation trying to get right with what they believe about antisemitism, etc. They this is the same, but it's just in a different key, the left and the right. The symmetry is there's a fight over Israel, there's a fight over anti Semitism, but that's not what this is really about. So Gerard Baker, he's a communist for the Wall Street Journal. He's nailed all this in his column this week. It's part of what got me to do some more reporting. Because he's a charter member of the establishment. He writes this, he says the rise of populism. He's talking about the right here, but it applies to both. The rise of populism has been characterized by a liberalization of thought and speech once suppressed by prevailing orthodoxies. But with this liberation inevitably came a wider unleashing of much uglier sentiments. So in Baker's view, and again, this is the establishment view, sure there's some positive things to populism on the right, but it's empowered people to say and do things that are dangerous, that are alarming. And again, Baker's talking about as an establishment guy, he's talking about Republicans, the party he thinks about more. But it's true on the left, okay. Baker writes in his column about J.D. vance and a lot of people in the establishment on the right, they've given up on Trump. Trump is Trump. Trump's going to be an anti establishment populist who pursues policies that are antithetical to the Reagan, Bush, Bush, Romney, McCain wing of the party. And so Baker's leaning forward and saying, okay, Trump will be Trump for the next couple years, but we need to think about a post Trump conservatism. Can the party at that point return to Reagan just as a lot of Democrats now, in thinking about 2028 say, can they go back to what for them is the sort of more moderate, centrist establishment time of Bill Clinton, of Barack Obama. That's their comfort zone in the Democratic establishment. For the Republicans at this point, it's anything pre Trump, they'd be comfortable with Reagan, with Bush, with Romney. The Democrats want to go back. And so for a lot of centrist Democrats, what was heartening for them last Tuesday, they didn't like the the anti establishment victory by Mamdani in New York, but they loved Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, the two Democrats who won governorships races in New Jersey and Virginia, because they're establishment sweethearts Their optics are just right. They're trying to stay right with the populism and with the anti Trumpism. But their substance, their style is of the old order. They're pragmatic. They have national security credentials. They're trying to build healthy economies in a more establishment way. But notice that neither of them really, in their campaigns or on election night, neither of them called out the populist left any more than Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have. They do not want to put themselves in the line of fire. Nobody in the establishment really wants to take on that fight because, and again, it's symmetrical with the Republicans. They don't want to take Cruz, doesn't want to fight Donald Trump over maga. They want to try to finesse things back. And so Democrats are really excited to have those two Democrats who, they're liberals, but they're establishment liberals. Okay? So they model an establishment conduct that got rhetorical nods to the far left. They carefully talk during the campaign, somewhat awkwardly, about trans issues. They play the we'll fight trump card strong because that unites the party, but no open warfare with the base. And again, it's the same on the right. The symmetry is Ted Cruz will critique Donald Trump's corporate bullying or his tariff policy or his use of the FCC to try to limit free speech, but he's not taking on Trump himself. Okay, nobody wants to get eaten on either side. There's another symmetry. They don't get eaten by the populist tiger. They know the populace have their pitchforks and they don't want to be attacked. But they do want their party to be more to the center and they do want more establishment. They want the establishment to keep its power for. For the people who are critical of the populace. Right? They're saying just enough to try to try to nudge things back. Better to thought to be an establishment globalist than to open your mouth and say what you really think and confirm it and become a target of the far left. The populist far right, Chuck Schumer is maybe the poster child for what's going on right now in the Democratic Party. Classic establishment figure. Been in Congress forever, doesn't speak the language of the populace. Worried about the rising power of aoc, quite obviously never endorsed Mamdani in the New York mayor's race. Even though he lives in New York. He's from New York and he's had happen to him now because he's not figured out how to tame the populace and the blue side, he's now become Mitch McConnell. He's now dealing with exactly what McConnell Deal dealt with. So the MSNBC wing of the Democrats, the Blue sky wing, they're starting to think of them like McConnell, symbols of everything that they want to overthrow, everything too establishment, too orthodox, not willing to fight Trump hard enough. And then on the right, you've got, as I said, people like Gerard Baker who are looking to JD Vance much more closely than they are Trump on these issues related to anti Semitism in Israel, but more broadly, because while, as I said, they've given up on Trump, they do see Vance as potentially redeemable, a bridge back potentially to the Reagan wing of the party. Right. So on this Tucker Carlson flap with Fuentes, more than a flap, Trump and Vance have been relatively quiet. They're not looking to be out front on it. But Baker, in his column in the Journal, Wall Street Journal, he focuses on Vance and he suggests that Vance is being naive about here about what's going on. This isn't just about platforming Fuentes. It isn't just about language and words. Here's what he writes more in the column. Mr. Vance's breezily breezy dismissal of the struggle to extirpate extremists from the right wing coalition as infighting is a mistake. What we saw at Heritage last week was the latest episode in the struggle of good against evil. So Baker's view again represents the establishment. These fights are not just about Israel, not just about anti Semitism, they're about good and evil. They're profound and, and Baker associates the dark side of the populace with evil. Same thing happens on the right. Okay, the stakes here are just massive. And this is another symmetry. The stakes are massive because this is not just about one off year election or about how to government shutdown ends. And it's not just, as I've said, it's not just about Israel and anti Semitism. This is about power in America, who has it, who wants it and who's willing to burn down the existing houses to get it. Right now, today, again, this huge asymmetry, one party, the Republicans and the conservatives, they orbit around a single person and the other party has no center of gravity at all. They're formless, leaderless, but both sides, and this is the symmetry, they're caught between populism, the rise of technology that's unleashed forces that we still don't fully understand, and then the collapse of the party machinery, the collapse of the ability of the two political parties to enforce what they want. We're watching America's politics now every day. And We've seen it in the last week being remade by these two twin revolts. They're both mirror images of each other and polar opposites at the same time. And what we're finding is that the future is completely unknown, future of the Republican Party after Donald Trump, the future of Chuck Schumer and the future of both party establishments. There's efforts in both parties to push back, partly because of the dangers of the extremists in the populist side, but also because the establishment wants to keep its power. They don't want to give up the power to other people, to a different wing of the party. This fight is at the center of everything that's happening right now. And you can see almost every political development that's coming next. Next up, the midterms, the presidential jockeying. Who is going to try to harness the power of the populists? Who's going to try to own that? On the Republican side, the MAGA movement. On the Democratic side, the Sanders AOC wing of the party. Who's going to try to ride that to power and who's going to stand up to it and say, you know what, that isn't the right way to govern. And in some cases, that's an evil way to govern. That's the debate. That's the fight. We'll watch it here together. All right. Let me know what you think of what I just reported to you. Based on countless conversations with people in both parties, in both the establishment wing and the populist wing, I feel pretty comfortable understanding where things stand now. But I want to hear what you think. Email me your thoughts on what I just said. Send an email to nextup halpernmail.com Again, that's next up, halpernmail.com Never miss a show. Make sure to subscribe to the NextUp YouTube channel. You can watch full episodes there. Get exclusive bonus content from the show. Go to our YouTube channel. It's YouTube.com nextup halperin. And of course, you can always listen to the show on your phone or car radio. Wherever you are, subscribe to the Next up with Mark Halperin program. Wherever you get your podcast, make sure you have downloads turned on there. That way you'll be the first to get all my new reports and episodes when they go live. Wherever you get your podcast, only on Next up. Again, that's Apple Spotify. Wherever you get your podcast. All right, time for a little break here. And when we come back, next up, the great Megan Kelly. Are you being lied to? They tell you to max out your 401k and your IRA and then they make you beg for permission to to use your own money. 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That's bankonyourself.com mark one more time, bankonyourself.com mark all right, next up and joining me now, Megan Kelly host the Megyn Kelly show and AM Update on Sirius XM's the Megyn Kelly Channel. 11 1. My new favorite number. Megan, thank you for making time.