← Next Up with Mark Halperin
Next Up with Mark Halperin
Megyn Kelly on Dems’ Shutdown Deal Meltdown and Schumer’s Fall, Plus Inside the Rise of Nick Fuentes
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On this very newsy edition of Next Up, Megyn Kelly joins the show to break down the fallout from the government shutdown — the deal that enraged Democrats, why Chuck Schumer could be pushed out by his own party, and why the GOP’s 2028 bench may be stronger than the Democrats’. Plus, Mark delivers not one, but two new reports on today’s show. First, he examines the populist revolts reshaping both parties — and the attempt by establishment power in Washington to hang on. From Trump’s continued dominance and Schumer’s mounting weakness to the Democratic civil war sparked by the shutdown deal, Mark explains how anger, distrust, and disillusionment have become the new currency of American politics. Later, he turns to one of the most urgent issues facing the country: how America lost its young men — and what the rise of figures like Nick Fuentes reveals about a generation alienated from faith, work, and purpose — and the leaders who failed to reach them. Unplugged: Switching is simple, V...
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Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte paint, finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro, you just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app Download today. Welcome, everybody. If you're looking for nextup, you've come to the right place. And if you're looking for me, Mark Halpern, you found me here. I am the editor in chief of the live interactive video platform 2way and your guide to everything. Next up, it's Tuesday, November 11th. Expressing our gratitude to all veterans out there on this Veterans Day and grateful to you all for coming back, tuning in. Maybe you're here for the first time. We'll make you pleased that you did because we've got a great program for you today. 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.
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B
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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A
I'd love you to put on not just your political analyst hat, but your psycho analyst hat and explain why Democrats are so upset about ending the government shutdown, putting people back to work, getting this map benefits, why are they cracking up over this?
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B
I will need my psycho hat if I'm going to analyze their behavior. They think they were winning, right? They think they had a win last Tuesday, which they did, and that they were on a roll and that people were approving of them, finally fighting back and that for some reason unnecessarily they rolled over. Whereas I think there are some much more pragmatic lawmakers in the Senate who realized they're not winning anything. They're not actually going to be able to do anything on Obamacare by force. And while they hold out on this demand that will never be met, we're having danger in the skies. It was only a matter of time before we had an actual catastrophe that would be blamed on them. And people are starting to get very upset about losing their paychecks. And the Trump administration was saying we're gonna slow roll these flights between now and Thanksgiving down to a trickle, which would have caused a full on Revolt in the country. You tell them they can't travel on the busiest travel day of the year to go get their turkey, and you have a serious problem on your hands.
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A
Yeah. I find it weird, though, that there's. There's eight Democratic senators who are sort of sensible and rational and read the room and said, we're not getting a better deal. It doesn't matter how long we wait. And, and yet everybody on Twitter, everybody on Blue sky, everybody on MSNBC is complaining about these eight rather than thanking them. I just find it confusing. There's, there's almost no one defending them.
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B
Yeah. And, you know, the cowardice of their fellow Democratic senators, most of whom wanted this deal, too. They just didn't want to put their names on it. You know, these are the only brave ones because they are not up for reelection in the next two to three years. And so they've got a little bit longer of a Runway politically. So. But, but all the reports are that the Democrats were thrilled. Most Democrats, these eight were willing to put their name on the line because they're all catching heat. You know, they're. They're worried. They understand fully full well that there was no grace, gracious end game here. No, no graceful end for them to the shutdown because the Republicans were not going to give them this vote, and they were not going to change their minds on Obamacare subsidies as the price they had to pay to reopen the government. You know, and so, like, what was the end game just to look like they were fighting? Well, they did that for 40 days. That, that can't go on forever. People need to fly places. They need, you know, their government checks. So I think that they understood that eventually they were gonna have to cave. And the only question was when? And, yeah, it's very easy for the people in the cheap sheet seats online or sitting at home to try to just say, no, fight. You know, this is the Ezra Klein plan, Right. They look like you're fighting, like, get people fired up, but, you know, there are actually real people suffering. And some, some more judicious thinkers in the Senate realized someone had to be the grownup in the room.
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A
Right. This is either a really easy question or impossible to answer. I leave it to you. Why wasn't there a connection between, less than a week ago, Democrats winning nationwide in elections, suggesting some sort of momentum and popular support? Why was there no connection, apparently, between that and the ability to win the fight over the shutdown?
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B
Well, I think this should come as heartening news to Republicans. They're just as disorganized over on their team as the Republicans are on theirs. Like they're not some magic geniuses over there. The days of the Obama campaign machine making all the right calls and knowing exactly the right messages are over. Even Obama himself doesn't have the magic keys anymore. And so look, there's no leader there, Mark. I mean, there was a poll out just this week showing the number one person getting votes as the Democratic Party leader is. I don't know, that's their leader. And as far as like the ones who may run for president, J.B. pritzker, he's below Donald Trump as the Democrats leader. So they don't really have somebody strong calling the shots. They have Chuck Schumer, who clearly wanted this thing over. He's been around the Senate long enough to know they had no game, but he was smart enough not to put his name on it. However, he knew he'd get blamed since he is technically the leader of the Dems in the Senate. And sure enough, that's what's happening. Maybe he's not going to run again. Maybe he's at the point now where he's just going to toss this thing over to AOC and let her try her hand at it. But he's in the weakest, like a weaker position than I've ever seen him since he became the minority leader.
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A
Yeah. And on the precipice potentially having his career end on whatever the opposite of a high note is because. Because I don't know how he digs out of this because he's so out of step with where the energy in the party is. And they seem, Democrats seem to think about him now the way Republicans think about Mitch McConnell, that he's just, you.
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B
Know, and he's just yesterday unlikable. Like Senator Schumer is the most artificial, tough to connect with person on earth. You know, I mean, what, who, like, what's he even doing? Did he, did he refuse to vote yes on this crossover and then call his imaginary family friends, the Baileys, to tell them about his latest courageous act? Right. That came out that he had some. A group of imaginary friends he was using for every single political war story for the past three decades and they don't exist. That's how artificial he is. And you can tell, remember when they forced Kamala Harris through and they didn't have the primary and he was the first one to come out and say ground up, ground up. It was from the ground up, which we knew is a lie. Everything he says is false. So what's his constituency. There's not like some huge contingent of Chuck Schumer fan girls who are like, no, hell no. Chuck can't go. So I don't see him having a long Runway left.
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A
Here's another thing I thought happened. I'm curious to know if you share this view. I talked earlier in the program about how the parties are exact opposite. One party revolves entirely around a single person as a leader, Donald Trump. And as you just said, the other party doesn't have a leader. But then if you go to the second chairs, you got Scott Bessant, you got the Vice President, you have Secretary of Transportation Duffy, you have all these. Caroline Levitt, you have all these Republicans, Marco. But I'm talking specifically on the shutdown. And then you've got even Speaker Johnson with his daily press conference. Like, you've got all these second chair players backing the President up in the news cycle, not just going on red media, but Scott Besson's going on MSNBC and pushing back on stuff. And you think about, well, who were the big Democratic stars on the shutdown? No one. Right?
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B
No one knows coming to mind.
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A
So. So that disparity seems to me to have played a role here. And again, that continues.
- [33:51]
B
I mean, it does speak to the fact that they really don't have a bench, nor do they have a leader. And like, the person who's been most vocal about it was probably, I don't know, Gavin Newsom, I mean, who's not even in Washington. He's a California governor because he's dying for airtime and ink and he knows how to get it. But no, you're right. There isn't some strong person over on Team Dem. Even Chris Murphy, who's even more desperate than Gavin Newsome to see his name in the papers, was relatively quiet until the whole thing fell apart. Because I think they all know that they don't want the cheese stank on them, you know, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. They don't want the cheese stank on him, Mark. They know this is a loser, that they had no leverage to really force the Republicans to do what they wanted, and the Republicans were never gonna do it. That they were maybe not enjoying the shutdown, but not really afraid of it either, because they really didn't have as much skin in the game as the Dems did. So it was only a matter of time before they folded. And I can see why. Most were like, I'm not. I'm not gonna be the face of this crisis.
- [34:48]
A
Yeah, I'm told that A lot of the MSNBC shows in the holiday, they'll often run the credits, you know, at the end of the year in the holiday episode. And I'm told Chris Murphy said. Special thanks to Chris Murphy will appear in almost all of those for those MSNBC shows because they're grateful to him for always being available. You mentioned Newsom. I'm curious of your view on this. Some, some people, analysts have looked at him and said, you know, he's not. He's got a lot of problems politically, but compared to the beginning of the year and now, he seems a little bit more formidable or in some cases, a lot more formidable. Do you. Does your view of him and whether he'd be a strong presidential candidate evolved at all during this year based on his performance of late?
- [35:27]
B
Well, I think he is doing much better right now than he was doing this time last year. I mean, he was. His career was basically in tatters after the L. A wildfires and what happened in the Palisades. And by all rights, should, should still be. I mean, people still haven't rebuilt. Nothing's happening in the Palisades. They can't get permits. Nothing's going back up. An entire half of Los Angeles has been ruined, burned to the ground, and he has done nothing to facilitate those people's lives being built back up. So that is still out there and is going to come back to haunt him. But it's receded from the front pages and the front of mind when you think about Gavin Newsom, because he switched in the past year to just being a primary Trump antagonist, which is what the Democrats want. So it was a smart move. And he's pretty good at it. I think he's got a lot of training to do, though, honestly, Mark, he's so dishonest and he's so oily. Like, that's, that's my, you know that word, like oily, like he's slick and kind of greasy and not honest. That's how. That's the feeling I get when he talks. And the thing with the hands has gotta stop. It's too much. You know, I'm kind of doing like the Violet Beauregard hand when she turns into a grape and gets rolled around. That's what he's like, just nothing. But the hands. It's very distracting. They're not additive. They're just constantly like he's doing some sort of weird sign language. And all he can focus on is why he can't control himself. So I think he does need a lot more discipline. Both in messaging, you know, physical and verbal. But I think he's on his way. He's definitely better off than he was a year ago, as I said.
- [36:56]
A
And for those listening on the podcast, Megan was just moving her hands like she was in a souped up version of the Blue Man Group. They were moving very quickly. You and I haven't had a chance to catch up about election Day and all that happened. What would you say were the reasons that Democrats did better than the polls suggested and that most people thought they would do?
- [37:17]
B
I do think it's Trump. I think Trump, you know, understandably says it's not him, but it's definitely Trump. What has changed in the past year dramatically in the country? Trump. Trump took over. Trump's enacting his policies. I mean, everybody expected, for the most part, the Dems to win in blue New Jersey. And probably we thought Winston Sears was gonna lose. She wasn't a very good candidate. That's not, you know, 2020 hindsight. That was real. You knew it in the moment. Even at that terrible debate for Spamberger, who was just awful. And I said this at the time, with all due respect to Winston, it was very strange how winsome Sears handled it. Like, Abigail, Abigail, Abigail. It was weird. You could just tell, like, this person's a little off and tough to connect to. I mean, I would have voted for her in a New York minute, but she's not a great candidate. Notwithstanding, the J. Jones thing was horrific. But you called it. If Abigail Spamberger did well enough, she was going to drag him across the finish line with her. And that's what happened. And then Zoran Mamdani is a nightmare. And probably would have happened with or without Trump, but maybe not by the margins. I don't know. New York has lost its ever loving mind. Any city that would elect Bill de Blasio twice could elect Zoram Mamdani. We have a death wish here in New York that seems obvious to me. So I don't blame that one exactly on Trump, but those state results, I do. And what happened with the Georgia election, with that special election with the energy people? I think Trump, while we love him on the right, and if you're at all. I don't consider myself exactly maga, but I'm a MAGA adjacent and I speak fluent maga. You love Trump, you love his style, you love his pugilistic nature, but it definitely alienates independence and they make the difference in every election. And they are now voting overwhelmingly blue and the Republicans are going to have to do something about that if they would like to retain power come the midterms.
- [39:04]
A
And is the thing to do about that the economy getting better, or are there other stylistic things you think that could be done to keep there from being a rerun in 26 for what we just saw in 25?
- [39:16]
B
Well, I'd like to dig into the, dig deeper into the numbers because there was a sloughing off of Latin support, Latin Americans. And I do wonder if that has anything to do with the deportations and the terrible, terrible press around ice. I'm totally in favor of what Tom Homan is doing, but this is an area in which the biased media may be making a difference because it's nonstop negative coverage around Tom Homan's efforts to deport. Again, the worst. First, yes, some people who are having committed additional felonies have been swept up in his raids. Fine. Only illegals. They make it sound like it's all Americans they're getting, and they don't. You have to read the fine print to realize the Americans who are being arrested by Tom Homan are people who behaved terribly at an ICE protest, tried to hurt an ICE officer. Or, for example, they say, children. Yeah. American children are being deported when their mother, who's here with them without a dad, turns out to be an illegal. And they say to the mom, do you want your four toddlers to go with you back to El Salvador or do you want to leave them here with an aunt? And she says, I want to take them. And then the left wing press runs with, we're deporting American children. So it's been very, very unfair, I have to say, to the Trump administration. But I do see some softening in support on the deportation effort. And that could explain some of the Latino vote. I think the economy, though, is number one. It's been number one before he ran it continues to be number one. And while Trump thinks he's working on that by, yes, rolling back regulations, which is a real thing, getting the Trump tax cuts to remain permanent. Also real people don't feel it yet, like the massive inflation from the Biden era is still there and they don't see him. You know, Bill O'Reilly, my old colleague from Fox, had a good idea. A news nation over the weekend suggesting that Trump appoint an affordability czar, like a cost of living czar, because people wanna see that you're doing something. They wanna feel like you're doing something, as opposed to you just saying, trust me, the tariffs are gonna come back to help you.
- [41:12]
A
Yeah. Last Question. You talked about media bias. I'm amazed of all the changes Donald Trump has caused and pushed through Reagan. Both Bushes saw liberal media bias and railed against it, but really didn't make much progress. Donald Trump has gotten the top two officials at the BBC out of office because they ran something blatantly unfair against him. It wasn't the only reason they left. But I'm just wondering what you think. No one wants anyone to lose their jobs, but the fact that the BBC, of all organizations, biased against America, biased against this president, forced to make a change because they did something against him. I'm just wondering what you think of that.
- [41:50]
B
I mean, I think it was a no brainer that they had to go. I mean when I was at Fox, Mark, we, we didn't have Standards and practices stand, you know, this group of like storied reporters and editors and lawyers who would review your pieces and your scripts and make sure that NBC wasn't going to get in legal trouble because we did have it at NBC, but at Fox it was basically, you know, somebody in your ear going, oh shit, take that down.
- [42:14]
A
Don't say that.
- [42:15]
B
Right.
- [42:15]
A
No.
- [42:15]
B
God.
- [42:16]
A
Go to break, go to break.
- [42:18]
B
Yeah, so look, it worked and we did it. But that's kind of the Fox way at NBC they had eight, an entire team. And I know ABC is the of people who would pour over every word before an anchor would say it on the air. And so a report like that definitely would have been vetted over and over and over at NBC. And I have to say my belief is the NBC Standards and practices group would never have allowed the edit that I saw on the BBC. By any reporter's standards. It was egregious and no question so egregious someone would have to be fired. And truly I would be saying that if they did a similar thing to a Democrat president too. It was that bad. Every reporter knows it's dicey even skipping like one or two sentences in the same answer to. But the last part of the answer together with the first part of the answer for clarity. You can do it depending on the context, but it's dicey. You in no world can go an hour later in a speech and pull the most incendiary part and then staple it together with the first part of the speech as if it was one conscious, you know, stream of consciousness thought delivered as an, as a message to a group to foment violence. I mean everything they did there was severely unethical. Someone all along was going to get fired. I am impressed that the top two honchos said we've got to go. But I think even they are realizing that this is like potentially an existential crisis for the BBC and without some dramatic move on their part. Trump's billion dollar lawsuit really was coming.
- [43:53]
A
Yeah. And there were other factors, but that one's front and center. And I think it's extraordinary that they felt they had to be held accountable. And it does show. Again, I think Donald Trump's efforts to hold the press accountable are extending not just here, but at least into the United Kingdom. It's kind of an extraordinary achievement for those who don't like to see bias. Megan, very grateful to you for making time. Great to see you and of course, anytime excited about the new channel. Thank you.
- [44:17]
B
All right, we'll see you soon.
- [44:19]
A
All right, next up, my conversations in Washington and around the country this week have given me more thoughts about what's going to happen with young boys in America. That's next up. If you're a homeowner in America, you need to listen to this. The FBI has been warning about a type of real estate fraud that is on the rise called title theft. And your equity is the target. Here's how it works. Criminals forge your signature on a single document, use a fake notary stamp and file it with the county. And just like that, on record, they own your home. Using your ownership, they can take out loans against your equity and even sell your property. And you won't know about any of this until foreclosure or collection notices show up in the mail. That's why I partnered with the folks at home title lock, so you can protect your equity and find out today if you already are a victim. Use my promo code, markometitlelock.com and you'll get a free title history report and a free trial of their million dollar triple lock protection. That includes 247 monitoring of your title records, urgent alerts to any changes, and if fraud does occur, their u. S. Based restoration team will spend up to $1 million to fix it. Don't be a victim. Protect your Equity today. That's hometitlelock.com promo code mark. All right, one more thing I want to talk to you about. This week been much on my mind and I was in Washington. I talked to a ton of people around in the Trump orbit and on Capitol Hill and in the think tank community and of course, always communicating with folks electronically. A lot of people in my world know Tucker Carlson and know people at the Heritage Foundation. And this whole controversy about whether the Heritage foundation was too coddling of Tucker as it related to his interview with Nick Fuentes. And whether it was soft, it just. All that drama very adjacent to my world. I just know a lot of people who care a lot about it, who know the individuals involved. Not too many of them know Fuentes, but they know the folks at Heritage and they know Tucker. And it's easy to get caught up in the drama of it. And some of the big issues of platforming or what is anti Semitism or can you be anti Israel but not anti Semitic? All those issues, you know, much discussed. But I keep going back to a different issue that's connected to all this, which is the fight for the hearts and minds of our young men. As a father of a boy, as someone who knows a lot of people with sons, that's really, to me, what we should be talking about more than the inside fighting, because that's really what this is about. It's about, how does Nick Fuentes have this massive audience, mostly of young men? A guy who says the despicable things he says, a guy who, I mean, everybody's got different tastes, but I don't find the show that compelling. I get, I get his shtick. I'm not saying it's. It's not entertaining at all. But why has he gotten this following amongst young men? And, and, and that's the reason why some people coddle him, either because they want that same young male community or because they respect it. They respect the fact that he has this following. You say the same thing about Candace, or though her following is not as much young men as Fuentes is, but this question of young men and how our political and spiritual and business and educational leaders are dealing with them. And if you want to see it through the prism of politics, you go back to our Charlie Kirk, and in my last interview with him, the day before he died, we talked about this issue, and I. It's probably the issue I talked to him about the most in our communications offline, which is. Which is his work to appeal to young men. He did it in a spiritual way, in a cultural way, but he didn't do it in a hateful way. And the division now you see within MAGA and with and within the Trump movement, Republican Party, is, are you going to appeal to young men in a. In a way that is negative and demonizing others and hateful and predicated on conspiracy theories, or are you going to find other ways to appeal to them? Appeal to them on faith, appeal to them on economics? Charlie was consumed with being Able to afford a. Young men being able to afford to buy a home, young people in general, but a focus on young men, because if you can't afford a home, if your economic future seems dark, you're going to be more susceptible to listening to people who are selling snake oil. Okay? So that issue, and it's an issue on the left and of course, the politics of this are immense because part of why Donald Trump won in 2024 is he did well with young men of different races across the board. So I've been thinking about this in the context of the Tucker Carlson Fuentes thing, but also in the context of the agendas of the two parties. What are they talking about programmatically in terms of policy that could appeal to young men Again, young women, important too. Older men, everybody's important. But it's this battle over young men and Fuentes hold over young men that is so resonant here. That is the source of his strength and his power and trying to unlock that. Right, trying to unlock that. So key, as I've talked to people in the last week in Washington, it just, you can't ignore it. The White House, the Senate and House offices of Republican members of Congress, they're filled with people who are in the so called gripper movement. They're filled with people who like Fuentes, who like the parts of Tucker that are at least adjacent to Fuentes, who like Candace Owen. Right. So you can't demonize their followers or pretend that these are often a distant place in rural America or, you know, not, not adjacent to power, really. Literally in the White House, there are people who are followers of Fuentes literally on Capitol Hill in young men. And you can't say, oh, they're haters or forget them or they'll all just vote Republican. That's not what that issue here at issue here is giving real meaning to the lives of these young men. So their political interests, their podcast interests, their focus on the future is not about people who are lovers of Hitler, anti Semitic people who are haters. That's a crazy, a crazy thing to consign our young men to. Okay, so what is it that they're missing? Right. To some extent it's economic opportunity. To some extent it's, it's a lack of trust in institutions. And of course that feeds on itself. If these young men don't trust politicians or the media, traditional media or corporations, that's going to just continue to spiral because the more they hear from those places, the more they're going to believe conspiracy theories about them. So we have to find a way to understand why they're turning so hard against our traditional institutions and why they're turning for their hope to these dark places. So somebody sent me a tweet that I'm going to read to you from because it's so instructive, it's so vivid, it's got so much texture to it that explains how young men find themselves. Fans of Fuentes, fans of Candace Owen, fans of two people who Charlie Kirk did not agree with regarding what's the source of inspiration? This guy, I never heard of him. His name is Michael Young. He's a writer and he's a researcher. He focuses on culture, political philosophy and the rise of postmodernism. Seems like a very learned guy. He's also a dad and his Twitter account is at Wok Underscore Distance. That's, that's, that's where he tweets. So here's what he writes about, about the central question of what is it that's causing young men to turn towards not just bros on, on podcasts, but these, these haters, these dark, conspiracy minded haters. Followers of Hitler in some cases. Here's what he writes. I despise the group or movement. Again, that's the followers of Fuentes. But if you want to understand where Fuentes gets purchased with young men, I will tell you how it happened by telling you about my experience at the orientation night when my son joined elementary school band. So he's a dad and he's. And he goes to the school to learn about his son's participation in band. Here's what he writes. More My 11 year old son joined the elementary school band and so I went to the parents Orientation night which was held at a local high school. As the night went on, it became obvious to me why young men rage against the larger social system. I think he's spot on to focus on the schools because that's where these young men are being acculturated. That's where they're getting their signals about what society thinks of them. Here's what he says. The classrooms were inundated with DEI messages and Trans Pride flags on the walls. There were posters, stickers and various decorations that all invoked the various totems of diversity, Black Lives Matter messaging, decolonization messaging, LGBTQ messaging, and basically every sort of race and gender social justice messaging that you can imagine was present. Now I'm not, I'm saying these causes or these points of view should be banned from conversation. But he's finding what I Hear from lots of folks that a lot of schools, this is, this is what dominates. This is what dominates. This is the prevailing culture. He continues, when it comes to how the teachers behaved, I'm going to draw. I'm going to draw on both that night and the other times I've been at my son's school in order to explain it. To begin, the boys are treated almost as though they are defective girls. The feminine modes of interaction and socialization are treated as though they are the only legitimate modes of interaction and serve as the. As a taken for granted way to properly interact and navigate the world. This is such a huge insight. These schools, a lot of female teachers, not only they're teaching that feminine is good and masculine is bad, that feminine is normal and masculine is not. Now we went through long time in the history of society where the opposite was done, but what seems to have occurred is an overcorrection. Here's what he writes. My son often comes home from school and expresses utter frustration at the fact that his preferred way of communicating as well as the things that are aligned with his temperament are treated as though they were somehow inferior. Again, men, young men, boys are told your masculine ways of behaving that are natural to you as a boy. Those are wrong, those are bad. Then he keeps. Keep reading here. Now I want you to imagine what it's like for an 11 year old boy to be saturated in that environment day after day. He is an alien in his own school who is treated essentially like a ticking time bomb who needs to be effectively managed rather than engaged with and taught. And he knows this is happening. Boys aren't dumb. Continuing. It's hard to overstate the level of hostility towards boys that is floating around in the ambient culture of the school system. It isn't so much that there is an explicit form of anti male bigotry, although examples of that exist. It's more that there is an overall attitude of distaste for anything masculine and an utter indifference towards the interests, fortunes and inner lives of young boys. I got to read that again. It's so accurate. An utter indifference towards the interests, fortunes and inner lives of young boys. When you show an utter indifference to the interest, fortunes and inner lives of young boys. Nick Fuentes walks in the room. The expectations, norms, rules and standards of behavior cater to the sensibilities of girls and women. Now he's overstating the case, I'm sure, just a little bit, but the general direction is spot on. Here's what he writes again. This is the entire social system that a young boy goes through when. From when he is six years old, all the way until he's graduated from university. All this happens during their formative years. Now, imagine you are a young white male. You graduate from the school system and are released into the world only to find that the feminine modes of socialization pushed on you are entirely unfit for the purpose that the social skills you were taught fail utterly. In both the job markets, young men tend towards things like construction, engineering, building, landscaping, et cetera, and they have no purchase in the dating market. Okay, here's how he concludes. Once you understand this, the real question is not why are some young men radicalizing? The real question is why are there any young men at all who have not been radicalized? None of this, he says, is to excuse any of the extremist radicals like Fuentes who are attempting to harness the resentment and anger of young men for their evil purposes. The point is to get you to understand why young men will attach themselves to any voice who is willing to stridently call for the obliteration of the social system and ideology which lied to them during their formative years and is currently doing things which rob them of opportunities for advancement and success. And I'd add happiness in there for a lot of these boys, the institution have totally blown their credibility with young men and have completely destroyed young men's trust in institutions. Young men view the current set of social institutions as ideologically corrupt and totally illegitimate. And they view the narratives that emerge from these institutions as being expressions of nothing more than a story told to legitimize an ideology which seeks to hold them back. All right. As such, he says, the institutions and their narratives have absolutely no normative pull on young Gen Z men. So we wonder why Fuentes has such a following. It's because he is welcoming them with open arms into a community where you can be a bro, where you can say what you want, where you can listen to somebody attack the institutions that they have gone through. And so, of course, they're susceptible to him. I don't want to win the fight with Nick Fuentes about whether Israel's bad or whether he's anti Semitic or not. Other people can have that fight. The fight we all should want to win is to win back these young boys, to create educational opportunities and forums and environments where they don't feel this way. And again, does every school do this to every boy, regardless of race? No. But has our culture overall, have a school's overall public and private schools moved in this direction? Of course they have. And that is the challenge for all of us, is to win back the boys. To win back the boys economic opportunity where they can act like boys and not feel criticized. And that's without talking about the accusations made against boys, the pressure boys are put under to conform. Fuentes is giving them something. Charlie Kirk was trying to give them something, and Charlie Kirk was winning that fight. But in the absence of Charlie Kirk on the left and the right, not just on the right, there needs to be a way to get these boys back feeling good about themselves, good about our society, good about their place in our society, rather than what we have now, which is fights over elites. Okay, the fights over the elites, as I say, they're interesting. I know so many people involved with them. I don't really care who runs the Heritage foundation. In all honesty, I don't really care about whether Tucker was too soft on Nick Fuentes, although people do. What I care about is whether we take the lesson from this. You just think back to times in totalitarian regimes when people say, how did people follow that dictator? How did people follow that oppressive regime? Why did they not rise up? And the answer is because that that dictator gave them something to believe in, made them feel good about themselves, told a different story, a different narrative about what possibilities they had in life, and turned hatred into something they got excited about, hating another group, turning their bad feelings about themselves and their standing in society into the ability to say, well, look at those people. Look at those other people over there. If our reaction to the Tucker Fuentes heritage story is to say, ah, Tucker shouldn't have been so soft on him. We're failing young men the way to help the young men in the schools, in our society, in your families, inspire them. Inspire them. Help them have economic opportunity, but help them have things they can believe in. Faith, opportunity, community, real leaders, real ideas about the future to make them feel good. We're going to have institutions. The establishment may not. May not survive, but they're going to be institutions. And we need young men to have things to believe in. And if you want to help the country, worry a lot more about that than who Tucker Carlson books on his show. All right, that's it for today's episode. Very grateful to you for being part of of NextUp. All you nexters will come back, I hope, on Thursday. We'll have a brand new episode. Subscribe to NextUp as a podcast or on YouTube all the time. Be here, see our clips, see our full episodes, and of course, tell all your friends, families, colleagues, and even your enemies about this program so they can join in, be nexters and always know what's coming next up.