← The Megyn Kelly Show
The Megyn Kelly Show
Colbert's Hissy Fit Farewell Tour, Xi's Ominous Comment, and Murdaugh's New Trial, with Glenn Greenwald | Ep. 1318
01:42:51
Megyn Kelly is joined by Glenn Greenwald, host of "System Update" on Substack, to discuss Stephen Colbert’s embarrassing hissy fit farewell tour destroying CBS furniture with David Letterman, how late night ratings over the past 20 years show the format completely collapsed, why he should just go out like a man, the tens of millions Stephen Colbert is losing for CBS, his bizarre tactics of kissing male and female guests in his final week, how celebrities in 2026 like Charlize Theron have an addiction to attention, how Michael Jackson was for everyone and achieved fame no one anymore can, the chilling comment China President Xi said to President Trump about the Thucydides Trap, how Trump says he's fine with 500,000 Chinese students coming and staying in America and China buying up farmland, Trump saying we’re at war with Iran to help Israel and the Gulf states, what happens if America tries to get out of the war now, whether criminals Alex Murdaugh and Harvey Weinstein deserve new t...
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- [00:00]
Glenn Greenwald
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- [00:34]
Megyn Kelly
questions like what shoes are you going to wear?
- [00:38]
Glenn Greenwald
Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay,
- [00:43]
Megyn Kelly
the right shoes can make or break an rsvp.
- [00:46]
Glenn Greenwald
So own the moment. You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes at the perfect price, of course. Get ready to get ready with designer Shoe Warehouse. Head to your DSW store or dsw.today and let us surprise you.
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Megyn Kelly
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and Happy Friday. President Trump is on his way back from his big summit in China and says the trip was a major success. But his sit down on Fox last night delivered some eyebrow raising comments. Plus the latest on the Alec Murdoch case as a couple of jurors speak out. And Stephen Colbert's bizarre goodbye to late night is finally almost over. Praise Jesus. My God, it's gone on forever. But not before he throws a hissy fit temper tantrum with the former host of the CBS program. He and Letterman got together to to just express how very, very angry they are about poor Stephen Colbert show getting canceled. Cry me a river, would you? Take it like a man? Honestly, where are your testicles? This is so humiliating. Like we know you got canceled.
- [02:07]
Glenn Greenwald
Be a man.
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Megyn Kelly
Geez Louise. This is like pathetic. When I got canned from NBC, I everybody was calling me a racist. They were humiliating me everywhere. Yes, I got a little teary the because it was overwhelming. And that was it. That was it. I didn't blubber and blubber on. I didn't ask everybody feel so sorry for me on the day like days on end. Nor would I have had they given me the opportunity to stay on the air. Like take it like a man. Stop it. Stop this. Put your big boy pants on and exit with grace. You're humiliating yourself. Truly. You're humiliating mankind. I don't want my sons to see this behavior. Like, this is so embarrassing. You didn't get cancer, you got canceled. It happens. Grow up. All right, we're gonna bring in our very first guest, very first guest ever here on the MK Show. That's the podfather of our show, Glenn Greenwald, I speak of. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and host of System Update on substack. When it comes to supplements, there are two things that matter most. You need it to work and you need to trust it. Both are absolutely essential. Many hosts have been taking and authentically endorsing Relief factor for these two reasons for over a decade. That's over 10 years of lending their voices to help get you out of pain drug free. Why? Because Relief Factor does work. It offers a quick start option. They actually lose money on this first offer, but they do it so that people can try it and see for themselves. That's how confident they are in their product. More than 1 million people have tried Relief Factor. I'm one of them. And about two thirds go on to order more because they've gotten such relief from it. The creator of Relief Factor actually returned home from Vietnam as a combat veteran and decided to become a doctor simply to help people. He is the one who created Relief Factor originally to help his patients with pain. And when he saw how well it worked, he decided to make it available to everyone. If pain has been holding you back, maybe it's time you found out why so many people make Relief Factor but part of their routine. You see, it helps fight the inflammation that causes pain. It doesn't just treat the symptom. It goes after the underlying source of the symptoms. Try it for yourself. There's a three week quick start. You can start today and see how it works for you. Visit relieffactor.com or call 800 for relief. Glenn, welcome back. What's happening with this man? Like, we've all suffered professional setbacks. None of us made this big a deal out of it. The long goodbye. Johnny Carson had less of a goodbye when he announced his retirement from the Tonight show. And he actually was beloved. Let me show you the latest that he's done. Colbert with David Letterman. They're very, very angry. Very angry that he's got to go watch.
- [04:58]
Glenn Greenwald
You guys will verify that this is actually CBS property, right? 100%. Yeah. Okay. Anytime you're ready, Stephen. It's all fun until somebody puts out an eye. Yeah, that'll do. Gentlemen, get ready. Oh, my go.
- [05:14]
Megyn Kelly
Yes. Oh, oh, oh.
- [05:16]
Glenn Greenwald
Oh, my God, Yes. My desk chair. All right, well, say goodbye, my friend. The Late Show 1993-2026. So how many years is that no way of knowing. All yours, my friend. Yeah, pleasure is all mine. I enjoy destroying stuff. It's great, great fun. Thank you for everything you've done for our country. Feelings mutual, Dave. Thank you. Anything you'd like to say to the audience before we go? Well, not necessarily to the audience, but to the folks at cbs. In the words of the great Ed
- [06:00]
Megyn Kelly
Murrow, good night and good luck.
- [06:02]
Glenn Greenwald
Mother.
- [06:05]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, they're angry, Glenn, because they had the nerve to cancel his failing show. What do you make of it?
- [06:13]
Glenn Greenwald
They're hard to watch. You know, I grew up with Johnny Carson and I never really understood, you know, when you're a teenager or whatever, the appeal of Johnny Carson. But I actually find myself going back and watching Johnny Carson clips because it's just kind of a representative of that era. The way he did interviews, the kind of humor, you know, he was actually kind of a subtle, humorous. So maybe as a kid, you don't really understand why he's funny, he's older, he appeals to your parents. But the reason was, was because it was actual, genuine humor. And he never took himself too seriously like he thought of himself as a comedian, which is an important role in society, which is to make people laugh, too sometimes. There's kind of a politicized aspect to it that you poke at taboos and you delve into sensitive subjects in a way that's unexpected. That's a big part of humor. But these guys have all. Like so many of our institutions, like so many in the age of Trump, have convinced themselves that they have some transcendent role. No, they're not just comedians. As David Letterman said, thank you for what you've done for our country. He doesn't just mean holding hands of people at night. He means the political war that you've waged. And they see themselves as martyrs, as people who are battling evil, by which they mean Donald Trump. And they've completely turned themselves into basically like a celebrity guest version of whatever is on msnbc. It really aligns perfectly. And they. They've broken the whole notion of late night tv, which is the place where people used to be able to gather, no matter what your religion or race or politics were. It was just kind of a centralized cultural thought that, that people really, really drank at because there was no politics to it. So that's the first thing. And the other thing is they. Do you notice, like, they all. This whole thing with cbs. I have my huge critiques about cbs. I do think part of why they fired Colbert is because they didn't want, like, Very liberal programming out because they have a lot to do with the Trump administration that they need done. But reality is it was a money making, money losing show. And if you're looking at it from a business perspective, you would, you would cut it anyway. But they are trying to now depict themselves as these like hardcore rebels and dissidents, radicals who are saying F you to the man. These are people who have made extreme fortunes working for large corporations their entire lives. And now at the very end, with their bank accounts all stuffed with billions and millions of dollars of these corporations, they're not going to feign like they're the common man giving the middle finger to the corporation. It's all such a fraud, like a self important, just bloviating fraud. And it really sickens me.
- [08:53]
Megyn Kelly
Totally. And you know the thing that's crazy, they were losing $40 million a year. I mean, $40 million. What show would be kept on the air because when it was losing $40 million a year, that would be professional malpractice to leave that show on the air. But the irony of having Letterman pretend that this wasn't coming when Letterman was, when he launched his show, 1993, we pulled the numbers, Glenn. He averaged 7.8 million total viewers and 4.4 million in the key 18 to 49 year old demo. All right, 4.4 million in the demo. By the time he handed it off to Colbert, those numbers were down to 2.8 million and 530,000. The late night format collapsed while David Letterman was at the helm and he knew he was handing what was effectively a loser to the next guy. So Colbert steps in there with a program that is a shadow of its former self. The people had just gotten over it. And Cole Letterman wasn't what he'd been and certainly Colbert wasn't the answer. And he never got things going in the beginning of the Trump administration. He raised the numbers a little. He got it up 1 million to 3.8 million. Okay. And it was 520,000 in the demo. So he never got the demo up. But by the time Trump left office, he was down to 2.6 million total and 226,000 in the demo. Only now has he ticked up a little bit from that as he does his little farewell, you know, tour. And people are, people on the left are feeling nostalgic for it. But the, the format died. It died as Letterman was handing it over. Colbert was never able to revive it for more than an instant during Trump 1.0, when. Because that's because of Trump being So interesting. And now they want to pretend that they had a smash success on their hands, whereas they were getting beaten by Greg Gutfeld by the end. And they don't. Who makes a fraction, I'm sure of what Stephen Colbert is making.
- [10:59]
Glenn Greenwald
Right. I mean, and you know, I do think it is an unfortunate development. I'm a gigantic fan of the Internet and the advent of independent media. I really am the byproduct of it. My work is been as a result of it, probably not possible without it. So. And to this day I continue to be a massive fan of all the good that it's done. But one of the things that I do think a country needs is a kind of gathering place where everybody goes and kind of feels part of the same part of your day that is shared with everybody else is kind of a ritual. It's kind of like a cultural reinforcement of what it means to be an American or whatever country that you're in. And we have lost that. Not only though, because the Internet, because if the Internet offered a zillion other choices, but late night TV continued to be compelling, you would still have people watching late night tv. The problem is, is that the people who got put in there, and again, this very much is a byproduct of Trump, where Trump took over everything. And I've seen this happen to so many institutions. I mean, I used to work all the time with the ACLU as a civil libertarian. I was always a big admirer of the aclu growing up. I revered the aclu, what it did in Skokie. And overnight the ACLU turned into nothing but a liberal wing of the Democratic Party because everything was just anti Trump. And they made tons of money off of it. They got rewarded for it. They grew massively in ways the ACLU never imagined. But every one of these groups, organizations, even entertainment outlets became politicized because they thought that their mission was to do everything possible to stop Donald Trump. And they got good feedback from it. As you said, Colbert's ratings at first rose because if it was the era of Trump and he positioned himself as against Trump. So this guy Nagat was like a short term sugar high, but the price was long term destruction of these institutions. They're gutting them out of their purpose.
- [12:52]
Megyn Kelly
I'm so humiliated, Glenn. I'm humiliated for him that he stayed on the air all this time. He made the whole year about the fact that he was fired and was leaving. Now on his last night, Jimmy Kimmel has announced he won't program. He's not going to Do a fresh program. She's going to seed the airwaves to poor Steven so he can get as many eyeballs as possible and really stick it to cbs. Just show him what a hit they actually were. Letting go. This is ridiculous. I mean, truly, it is bigger than Johnny Carson got. And I was there when Johnny Carson stepped. I remember what happened. Like, this is absurd. Why are they pretending that this is some sort of fucking temple? That is how this feels. It's a damn late night show that had complete irrelevance except for a very small sliver of committed far leftists.
- [13:46]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, well, I would say like Democratic partisans, basically, which isn't quite the same thing, but basically, you know, it's the idea. It became a politics show. It was basically just like a late night MSNBC show. That's really what it was. And it wasn't anything else. You would never go to see Stephen Colbert if you weren't sharing his anti Trump politics. And this was this, this is why the show failed, because you already have tons of anti Trump everything. You know, it's like if you go back to 2013 and 2014, like in the independent digital media space, you had all these different outlets, you know, like Vice and Vulture and the Huffington Post and buzzfeed. They're all gone. They're all gone. They were growing massively into something interesting. They're all either gone or just total shells of themselves, like a three people keeping a front page up. And the reason is, is because all they were offering was the same anti Trump agitprop that the New York Times decided it was going to latch itself onto. And if you have the New York Times doing it, you don't need alternative media doing it because the New York Times is already doing it. There's nothing alternative about it. And that happened to every one of these outlets. The problem is, is that Stephen Colbert obviously lives in a very tiny enclave of Los and New York elites, all of whom are liberal, all of whom tell him, oh, what you're doing is so important. It's so important. This is what you get told. If you're an elite culture and you do anything against Trump, you got that like one time you asked a hard question or multiple times you asked hard questions during that debate, the big one, and you suddenly became beloved in the culture that previously hated you. They're monomaniacal about Trump. So if you're opposing Trump, you become this person in their minds that get constantly told, oh, what you're doing is so important. And then they start believing their own pr. And, and even though by the end that show is worthless, it's just reinforcing very banal liberal political thought against Trump. They've convinced themselves that what they're doing. But I just have to say too, Megan, like again, when David Letterman was on the air, when Stephen Colbert was on the air all this time, they were happy to collect CBS's news, the Paycheck from CBS News. Only when David Letterman left and then only when Stephen Colbert was on his way out, did they suddenly find their voice. Like, no, we're anti corporate guys. We're going to really give it to the man. These are the men. These are the people whose bank accounts are extremely rich for serving corporate power. They don't really know what else to do.
- [16:06]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, I mean, it is crazy because I think back when I was at NBC, the number one thing I was critical about them on leaving NBC was how they handled the Harvey Weinstein reporting that was being done by Ronan Farrell and how they clearly buried it. And I, while on the air at NBC, while employed by them, went out on the air and called my boss, Andy Lack, a liar. He had issued this ridiculous statement about how they didn't have two sources. And I knew they did have two sources. And I had seen the script that showed Ronan had two sources and NBC spiked it. And I ripped on him on the air. Everyone around me freaked out. Glenn, it's not that I'm some hero. I'm just saying it's possible to do it. Like, if you actually do have a material disagreement with your employer, if they're doing something deeply wrong, you can go out on the air and say what's real. You have a platform. Stephen Colbert does to this moment.
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Glenn Greenwald
Right.
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Megyn Kelly
He's not exposing anything about cbs. He's only talking about himself. Some of us did it and some of us, you know. Well, let's just say it doesn't always wind up great for those people. That's fine. You leave with your integrity and, you know, you've done the right thing. He just wants us to feel sorry for him because just like Kimmel, who had his complete meltdown when he was off the air for five days, he can't stand the thought of life. Not in front of the klieg lights. He can't stand it. They need it, Glenn. It's their lifeblood.
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Glenn Greenwald
Well, did this not, you know, to continue the comparison with Johnny Carson, who I do think has been retrospectively kind of revived, and this sort of respect for him in contrast to what came after him. Johnny Carson left When he was still, you know, I wouldn't say at his prime necessarily, but still perfectly capable of clinging to that program. He was in, you know, of good health. He had sound mind. He was still funny. He left voluntarily. The network did not want him to leave. And he just kind of gracefully said, you know what? I've done this for long enough. I want to go kind of live the last stage of my life in peace and in privacy. And he, like, exited the stage very gracefully. Didn't make himself the big center of attention. They did a couple of shows, like the last week, as you would expect, kind of commemorating it. These guys, it's not just that they're so desperate for attention, although they are. It's also that they don't want to be what they are not. They don't want to be comedians. They're not satisfied with that. They think they're too important for that. And they've converted themselves into political martyrs or, you know, people who are so courageous that they are standing up to the corp. I'm not even saying you have to go on air and condemn your bosses, but if you're working inside a corporation, making a lot of money, and you do that for a long time, either attack your corporate bosses while you're there, or if you leave, don't suddenly at the last second when they fire you, pretend that you're some kind of like anti corporate radical willing to stand up to your bosses. This whole thing is infused with a kind of elevated cause that they fabricated and that exists. In what world is Stephen. Is Stephen Colbert a martyr of anything? Of anything?
- [19:12]
Megyn Kelly
No. No. And they're all back to my time at Fox News. I was there for 14 years. I left willingly. They made me a very nice offer to stay, but I had enough and I wanted to do something else and raise my own kids. So I'm leaving for NBC. The night I announced I was leaving, I just said goodbye. I said, you know, thank you to everybody, and I said goodbye on the air. And that was it. I didn't make a big deal out of it. O'Reilly, he was the number one. He was the face of Fox News. By the way, my show was number one in the key demo when I left. It had been for years. O'Reilly had the number one show in all of cable with the overall numbers for many, many years. He was the face of Fox News after I left. They elevated him even more. He got paid even more, and he got fired over this whole MeToo situation. Did he make a big deal out of it? He didn't. He left. It was it. That was it. It was like not some big deal. It is not customary to martyr yourself on the way out if you've been fired or to spend months celebrating yourself if you are leaving of your own volition. This is weird. He's, this is a brand new format in which he's, he really thinks he's some sort of Jesus figure on the cross. Like given what the horrible things CBS is doing to him, which is simply his show has been canceled after years of letting it bleed out in the red and paying him tens of millions of dollars, making him a household name, making him a multi, multi millionaire, funding all of his homes and cars and kids educations. And he actually wants people to feel sorry for him.
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Glenn Greenwald
I know.
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Megyn Kelly
Now on his last week, oh, by the way, not only will Jimmy Kimmel not be doing live programming the night he goes off for the last time, Jimmy Fallon has also said he'll be doing just taped programming. He's going to run a rerun out of respect.
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Glenn Greenwald
My God, such sacrifices, such. Look at the sacrifices that these people are going to make for their values. It's so impressive, so courageous.
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Megyn Kelly
Didn't you throw up in your mouth?
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Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. You know, look, I do think, and this is, you know, have been an issue of mine for a long time, like you don't want the government influencing what's on television or being able to use its regulatory power to get what it wants. I think these are legitimate questions surrounding not just Trump administration but administrations that have come before it. This is something for you allow people to talk about you allow questions to be raised, you examine it, whatever. But this is not what's being done. What's being done is that Stephen Colbert himself has been turned into some kind of, as you said, Jesus figure. I think there was some recent award show, they gave him like an award and they all like stood up for him. This like very prolonged sustained Hollywood applause. Not because he's some great comedian, because he's not. I mean I do think he was innovative and interesting, you know, 25 years ago when he was on with Jon Stewart and was doing, you know, they were doing some, some, some actually innovative things. But his show is, is, is, is barely funny. It's not really funny. And even with celebrities it's like a very ass kissing show. To say nothing to politics. It was because they need to. This is why Hollywood often like at those award shows so often it smuggles in political speeches because they, they don't want to feel like they're only Actors, they don't want to feel like they're only comedians. They want to feel like they're more important figures in the history of the world than just that. And they assume this. This inflated sense of themselves. And that's what so much of this is about.
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Megyn Kelly
Yes. Okay, so that's the perfect setup for the sound bite I'm about to play. This is from this past week for some reason. First, I saw Julia Louis Dre Fisco on Colbert's show and tried to do this Veep reenactment. It was so lame. It was so not funny, as the kids would say. It was cringe. It was very cringy. I felt uncomfortable watching the whole thing. But he's doing something where he's kissing everyone. Like, actually kissing, male and female. It's a little weird. I'm gonna show you some vitsot23 because
- [23:15]
Glenn Greenwald
I think you've made out with guests on camera. No, I think you just wanted to make out with me.
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Megyn Kelly
This is all a late night host. He's kissing Jimmy Fall.
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Glenn Greenwald
Is there none?
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Megyn Kelly
What could possibly go wrong? He's kissing Julie a little. Regret this on the lips, people. Ew. Pedro Pascal tapping his lips. I'm sorry. This is gross. Like. Like, who. Who kisses Julia Louis Dreyfus on the mouth? Who. Like, by the way, no one knows where any of those mouths have been. This is weird. I, like, I don't kiss my own mother on the mouth. My mom and I kiss on the cheek. That's it. Like, this is very strange behavior, Glenn.
- [24:01]
Glenn Greenwald
I. I mean, I totally. I didn't see. I didn't see that. I saw the images circulating, and I was actually. I didn't. You know, I just saw them kind of crossing my feet, and I was even wondering, like, are those real or those distorted? You never know. You have to look into it and find out. I just didn't. But I just saw the video, and it is. And you're welcome.
- [24:17]
Megyn Kelly
It's.
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Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. Thank you so much for doing that work for me. I was just about to go do it because I'm so interested. No, but the. What it reeks to me is of. Is of desperation, you know, Like, Julia we. Dreyfus is funny. Like, she's a funny actress. She's had great success. I love Veep. I thought Seinfeld at the time was great, whatever. But that's because she was being a comedian. She was being, like, just a comic actress now. Like, if. When they're trying to become political figures, when they're trying to. What in Their mind is like elevate whatever they do, but when reality, they're just kind of dragging it into the gutter because it's just so uninteresting. The when they be, they're not, they're not interesting political thinkers. That isn't why they're successful. Nobody has ever tuned in to any of this to watch, hear their political views. Unless, you know, you have a like minded political audience, in which case you're going to reduce your audience as Stephen Colbert has done. And it just, this is all but so without being able to be funny, without really having anything relevant culturally to contribute, it's oh, let's just start kissing on the lips. Because that at least get people talking about the show. And I guess it works. It was, as I said, circulating in my feed. I wouldn't usually see the Colbert show in there. And I don't know, it's just you
- [25:28]
Megyn Kelly
and I both drop trial right now and do a big moon in front of the camera and we get lots of attention like most, like most people who are doing a show, especially a political show like Stephen Colbert is doing, would like to maintain some level of dignity on camera in front of their audiences while doing the show. That's not what he's like, why is he kissing Jimmy Fallon? And the participation of all the other late night hosts like he's their God. Like the emasculination. What's the emasculation that they're engaging in for what again? So that you can, I mean, it's not like Stephen Colbert invented the genre. Right. It's like when Barbara Walters retired, that, that was big. I mean, that was big. She was a pioneer.
- [26:14]
Glenn Greenwald
It was like an email journalist, an institution, like something. Yes, pioneering, as you said. Exactly.
- [26:20]
Megyn Kelly
He doesn't have any of that. What are they doing?
- [26:23]
Glenn Greenwald
No, but he's being distorted into some kind of victim of Trump administration authoritarianism. This is the, this is the subtext for everything that we live in Trump's America. And in Trump's America, if you criticize Donald Trump, you go to a gulag or you're put into prison, or you're shot by masked ICE agents on the street, or you have your corporate bosses fire you in order to please the Trump administration. And I'm not even saying, again, I'm not saying there aren't actual questions there that, that people like you and I and others who, you know, engage in politics, people talk about politics, but talking about it as politics would raise and debate and discuss it's worth examination. But that's not what this is about. This is about creating this kind of storyline where they're heroic. They're these central figures who have done such important things. I don't know what, but important things. And at the end, they end up getting martyred like they are acting like they were put on the cross. And this persecution narrative does not work for extremely rich celebrities who have always gotten along very well with corporate bosses until their show started losing money. And I do think it's such an interesting thing about the economics, you know, the reason why is because technology now is such that you and I can have, can be talking to each other. We have microphones in front of each other, cameras in front of each other, small staffs. You know, you can have small staffs in a studio and still produce like a professional enough show. But at networks, they have hundreds of people employed, but not almost more than our people under 50 watching Stephen Colbert. Like, the numbers are pretty close. Colbert staffers, Glenn, 200 staffers. Exactly. And he's not producing 200 times better of a product than anybody, than anybody. There's a zillion people I would rather watch just sit in front of a camera with a cheap microphone and talk than watch Stephen Colbert. And that is what the Internet has, has permitted is it really has rooted out the frauds. Like the people who are only successful because they had a captive audience. No one's captive anymore to CBS except still like old people who watch because it's, it's their viewing habits. But other than that, young people, they're not going to watch CBS out of habit or just because they have to. They're going to only watch if there's something compelling on. And there's not. It's.
- [28:45]
Megyn Kelly
No, it's so crazy. Like, I did not make as much as Stephen Colbert is making when I was in the primetime at Fox. But my show made $100 million in ads a year. That. Okay, $100 million in ads a year. And that's not including these subscription fees that Fox would get because people liked the lineup. They liked what was in the primetime. They liked up and down the dial. But that makes sense. That's why that show worked. And we did it on a shoestring budget. I only had 12 main producers, which is small for cable. You have to produce six segments a night. I mean, it's a lot. It's a labor intensive product and it still is over there. But Fox always did it on the Lean. This guy's got one hour of like a couple of guests. I don't know Maybe three at most. He does a standup monologue. So I guess he needs a couple of writers since he's clearly not writing his own stuff anymore. I don't even know how you get to 200 staffers. And how much was his show making, Steve? It took in 60 and lost 40. Like I don't know, those economics are not sustainable. So it took in 60 and it cost 100 to make. It cost $100 million to make and it took in 60. You know, like just so people understand the economics. Right. So then there's my show at Fox. I don't know what it cost, but it was some fraction of that, teeny tiny fraction of that. And we made 100 million. Like that's something that's available to anybody who wants to be in the news or entertainment business. And you could easily replace Stephen Colbert with an up and coming, hungry, you know, excited, young, talented guy who wouldn't require any of the star trappings or salary that he demands and probably get at least equal to, if not potentially in a year, a bigger number. Like why, why don't any of these other comedians acknowledge that? Why do they all go along with this?
- [30:48]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, ironically I. This is the part of it that, you know, you could go to YouTube and find some young comedian who doesn't have a huge name but has like a big following online, which is, you know, if they have a following online, it means their following tends to be a lot younger than the average network or cable news viewer, which is what's created by advertisers and the like. So they're more valuable. The problem is, is that the reason why they don't just take somebody like that and pay them, you know, 1/20 of what Stephen Colbert is making and give them an hour on CBS News is because they can't control those people. They don't trust them enough, they don't have enough a proven track record that they're good malleable people. And you know, your stint at NBC was very short lived in part because you weren't that malleable. You know, you, they couldn't just hold you and into something that they wanted you to be or that the other people there wanted you to be. And the fact that, that you weren't is why you were gone so so soon. So that's the irony is Stephen Colbert has lasted there so long because he's never been offensive. They were willing to lose money on him because he never really did anything. You know, basically that show is some movie star, some actor has a new Show a new book, a new whatever they want to promote. So the deal is they go, they go on those shows, they sit down for like eight minutes, talk a few minutes about some pre planned story and then the rest of the time promoting the project. It's like the easiest thing in the world. But that's what that show, that's what those networks want. They don't want edgy comedy or people they can't control. And that's why they've lost their audience.
- [32:22]
Megyn Kelly
Farewell, I mean, just truly farewell. It's like, I don't know, I feel like I don't know what they're going to replace him with, but who cares? The whole medium has become totally irrelevant. It should just lean into what it is, which is, it's, it's political hit jobs every night after night. I mean, it's interesting me because those five late night comedians, quote unquote, just launched a podcast and it's appearing on my podcast feed under the news feed. Not entertainment news. Yeah, they're actually so like they're not that. They're not entertainment and they're not news. I don't know what they are.
- [33:00]
Glenn Greenwald
But also, but also, as you noted, and when I tell people this who aren't, you know, conservatives, people get shocked. The number one rated late night talk show host in the country is Greg Gutfeld. His audience is not huge. Yeah, but he is the number one rated late night talk show. He's number one. Notice he's never included in their little club even though he has the bigger audience of all five of them. Because they're not joining on the basis of comedy, they're joining on the basis of politics. And Greg Gutfeld doesn't fit in. He fits in as a late night comedy show host, that's what he is. But not as the political actors they think they are that they've recast themselves as.
- [33:38]
Megyn Kelly
No, the way they talk, I'm sure the way they talk about Gutfeld and Fox is just like, oh, you know, the cult over there, whatever. He's not real. Those numbers aren't real.
- [33:48]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah.
- [33:48]
Megyn Kelly
The day they announced Colbert's cancellation, his guest was Adam Schiff. I mean like no one wants to see Adam Schiff on as a late night entertainment guest, you know, is it like those shows when we were young, had Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts and
- [34:05]
Glenn Greenwald
a list celebrity like Rodney Dangerfield, like that, that insult comic was on the Don Rickles, you know, like it was very, it was, I'm not saying it was never political, but it was like entertainment people who are identified as being like entertainers. It was really a show for entertainers. And it was funny. That's what the guests he invited back were the ones he thought was funny, the ones that Americans liked as they went to sleep. Having Adam Schiff on. Could you imagine Johnny Carson having someone like the Adam Schiff equivalent on. Especially on the night that you announced your cancellation? Never. That already is showing the attempt to infuse it with this political importance, but like a liberal cause.
- [34:44]
Megyn Kelly
And Johnny Carson also was in the business of making stars. Like, if you got the chance to appear on his show as a comedian, you were on your way to becoming a star. Letterman had that in the beginning, too. None of these guys has that ability. They can't make stars. They don't. They don't have enough star power. Power themselves. Speaking of star power, we've been talking this week on the show about the Michael Jackson story, the new movie and the allegations against Tim Glenn. And we actually, I talked about the. The nature of this movie and the controversies around it because it stops before any of the sexual molestation scandal came out. And I hadn't yet seen it, but I did go to see it with my. With my family on Wednesday night. It was amazing. I have to say. I highly recommend. It was supremely entertaining. Both actors who played the young Michael Jackson and the older Michael Jackson, the older of whom is Jafar Jackson, Jermaine Jackson's son, he's Michael Jackson's nephew, did such a great job. But the younger kid did such a great job, too. Gosh, they were very talented. By the way, for those wondering, you can take the whole family to it. The only viewer warning is Joe Jackson was an abusive bastard, Michael's dad. And there is a scene in the beginning where he beats Michael that is very jarring, even to us old news, cynical bastards. It was upsetting. The little boy did almost too good a job of acting hysterical and hurt. Other than that, you're good. But he's been very much in the news. And I'm not gonna ask you about the Michael Jackson scandal, but I am sort of. It's led to a bunch of discussions about whether we even have celebrity like that anymore. Like Michael Jackson transcended everything. Doug and I were talking about this this morning. Like he. He transcended race. He himself was neither black nor white really, over the course of his life. He transcended aging. Right. He never sort of grew up. He always remained a child in his. You know what? He liked the people he wanted to hang out with. I understand the controversy with that. But I'm just saying he, he. It was just something like he, he was for everyone. It wasn't just for women, like the way Taylor Swift is or just for men, you know, the way some of these, like, I don't know, maybe hard rocker bands, I don't know. But he was for everybody. And he was universally known, universally beloved. He was just such a huge star. And I wonder whether is it even possible to have that today. Is there anybody who we could use to help explain that level of fame and notoriety to our kids?
- [37:21]
Glenn Greenwald
It is something I do think is so interesting. Michael Jackson came to Brazil once, and I think maybe more than once. And to this day, people in Brazil talk about. About it. It was like a huge moment in Brazil. He, I think, actually filmed a. A music video in one of the Rio favelas and he had extreme global fame. And like, I think it very much relates to what we were just talking about, which is, as you said, Michael Jackson didn't do anything that would alienate a particular group. He wasn't trying to plant his flag and say, I'm this, and if you're not this, I'm not for you. I remember actually Michael Jordan, who was by far the biggest athlete, certainly the biggest basketball player, but I say the biggest athlete when we were growing up as well, was once asked, like, why don't you comment on politics? And he basically said this famous phrase, which is, while Republicans buy shoes to buy tennis sneakers as well. I'm not in the field of being a politician. If I run for the Senate, maybe I'll take political stands, But I'm a basketball player, I'm an entertainer, I'm in the business of selling things. I think that's a big part of what has been lost. But also with the Internet, it's amazing. You can go online and find people who are quite famous by every metric, people who are known by millions of people, people who get stopped on the street, people who have huge numbers of fans, and a lot of people have no idea who they are. It's like fame has become very diffused, very kind of segmented and segregated. And I think it reflects what we were just talking about, which is that we don't anymore have this kind of common cultural gathering place, this kind of common culture even, almost. Because if you're a streamer, if you're a YouTuber, if you're an entertainer, you can appeal to a niche global audience and make huge amounts of money, gather millions of fans, and also be completely unknown to huge numbers of people as well. And, you know, it's like what you were just saying, you know, if you went on Johnny Carson, you were there, he could make a star because so many millions of Americans were watching. That doesn't exist anymore. There is no common cultural kind of gathering point that we have any longer. It's all been so segmented and segregated. And maybe you can find some benefits in that. But I also do think that there are some serious harms to that as well. We want to share things in common with one another across lines. But everything is so political. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It was just. Or actually, you know, now that you mentioned it, you know, I've been working on this project about issues with. With animals. Like, you saw this thing with Richland Farms and the horrific experiments that were being done to Beagles. And you know, I've known the activists working on this for a decade. I read about it a decade ago because of them. And yet all of a sudden, like this, this very apolitical trans ideological movement formed around this issue. You had like Laura Trump and Laura Loomer and like Fox News personalities, you were doing it. Lots of Republican members of Congress as well as liberal members of Congress and left wing activists completely aligned and assembled around this common cause that we all can relate to, which is dogs. And the idea of industrially abusing dogs and torturing dogs is something that horrifies all of us. And the reason I noticed it is because it so rarely happens, whereas it used to happen a lot more like with Michael Jackson. Michael was Michael Jackson on the left or the right? Neither. Neither. He didn't have that prison at all.
- [40:57]
Megyn Kelly
No, exactly right. And he. There's a line in the movie, and again, it was made by his estate and by people who love Michael and with the full cooperation of his family. I think it's executive produced by his brother Jermaine. His mother is still alive and clearly blessed it. And the actor Jafar, who plays him, who's the grandson of Michael's mother, said she approved. Like this has been blessed by the family. But there is a line in there where Michael said he wanted to avoid too much overexposure. He wanted to be like Greta Garbo, who really didn't put herself out there that much, that he liked there being a level of mystery. And really Michael Jackson did live up to that. When think of your memories of Michael Jackson. He gave a couple of massive, like, interviews that were massive because he never did them and because he made so much news in them, like with Martin Bashir, he Gave one to Diane Sawyer and one to Oprah. I can't think of others off the top of my head, but, like, the fact that I can even list the ones he did tells us a lot. And he intentionally tried to keep his big performances on stage or on vinyl, you know, and it's just the opposite of the way the stars are today, where they're everywhere. They'll go to anything and they'll overshare. You know, I like Charlize Theron. I just saw some video of her on a subway being interviewed by somebody, like, giving up all these sex secrets. And she's done this before. She's talked about her sex secrets. Let me just tell you, there's one sex secret about Charlize Theron that she's obviously not giving up yet. And I don't know why, because let me tell you, Charlize, it's fine. It's fine at this. In 2026America, you can declare what you actually are and everybody will still love you. That's all I'm gonna say. But in any event, it's too much, Glenn. You know, it's like Tom Cruise gets it. He keeps himself sort of not all that available. Some of these old school stars still get it, but most don't. And it's kind of sad. Like, I think we lost something.
- [43:02]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, it's like a mystique. You know, what makes. At the end of the day, we're all human and we're all have very ordinary aspects to us, even if we excel and are exceptional in one particular or two particular areas. I think there's actually Twitter used to do this too. You know, there'd be very, very respected people in their fields who had accomplished great things, and then they would just start, you know, getting dragged down into the Twitter mud or commenting on everything. And it would be. You would look at them and you would say, wow, they're actually quite mediocre. They, you know, it would strip them of image. So many of those people, like, during COVID a lot of, you know, just certainly in the Trump era as well, because mystique and enigma is a really. Are really attractive traits. It kind of draws you to people you want to know more. But if they're just shoving in your face everything about their life, they have Instagram pages and they're posting everything that they're doing and thinking and saying. At every second, you realize how ordinary they are. And I think you're right. Like, one of the things about these big stars is you feel like, oh, they. They exist they're very ethereal, you know, like the life is like, only they. They materialize on stage, as you were saying, with Michael Jackson in front of, like, 300,000 screaming fans or 150,000 people in a stadium. But if you start hearing from Michael Jackson every day about his thoughts on, like, whatever he happened to watch on CNN or whatever, and he just, like, goes on TikTok or Instagram and you know you're going to be like, oh, that's. He's zero. He's mediocre. And that is. It's like this attention addiction in this attention economy. I think we all have it a little bit. You have to, like, fight against it and resist it. And. Yeah, I think. I think you're exactly right. This overexposure is. Is. Has killed, like, any of the mystique of celebrities, become almost tawdry.
- [44:49]
Megyn Kelly
Leonardo DiCaprio, he's good that not, you know, he doesn't give many interviews. It's. It's good. You know, back in our day, they used to not really put themselves out there. Every once in a while, they might do a Barbara Walters sit down for one of her most fascinating people specials. Those were always great because they would be more profiles of the person where you really got to know them on their ranch. Like with Clint Eastwood, maybe she'd ask you if you'd been involved in a scandal, a couple of, like, very blunt questions. So that was always a highlight. It was a different way of getting to know them, and they all knew the price of admission, and it worked. But today, it's like sitting on the subway talking about your intimate sex preferences is just weird and it's too much. And it's the opposite of Garbo, by the way. Trump once told me that that's Melania's approach, too, that she's more like a Garbo, you know, which I think is actually that.
- [45:41]
Glenn Greenwald
I think that is very true. Like, we don't ever. I, like, barely know Melania's voice. Like, given her stature and her platform, we barely hear much from her or about her. And that's clearly part of. I think you're absolutely right. Like, a deliberate, conscious effort not to. To kind of be this person that you want to know more about. Right. Like, when someone has a. Like a kind of wall between you and them and hiding things, which they should be, because you don't need to know everything about them, it kind of makes them more interesting. Like, you want to know more. Whereas if she were just sounding off every day about everything, you'd be just please go away. She really. I think that's a really good point, Jill. Yeah.
- [46:19]
Megyn Kelly
The latest assassination attempt at the Hinckley Hilton in Washington. You know, Melania was right next to Trump for that one. It wasn't like Butler, where she was not even there. She was there, and she would have been potentially in the line of fire. And Trump held that presser immediately after, back at the White House, and she was there, and he said, do you. Somebody asked about Melania, and he was like, do you want to, you know, come up? And she declined. She net like, it's. That's why when she came out and did the little bit on Epstein and like, stop the lies. We're not. We weren't friends. It was so extraordinary. It's like, oh, my God, she's speaking. She never speaks. She never covets the camera, the microphone. She did her little documentary on her life, which was controlled, and that was. She. That's what she was comfortable with. But she rarely feels the need for us to see her or to put her voice or her opinions on camera. It's a 180 from the last first lady, and it's delightful because if ever there was a woman who the camera loved, it's Melania Trump. She just doesn't feel the need for that kind of attention, which is probably good for them, because in that. In that marriage, there can only be one who needs attention and has been
- [47:27]
Glenn Greenwald
wanting to have it. Compete with Trump when it comes to media attention would be very fatal to any kind of connection.
- [47:34]
Megyn Kelly
No, exactly. You've got a seed here and back. Back to you. And that works for both of them. Okay, wait. Speaking of loving the camera, though, Kamala Harris is back.
- [47:44]
Glenn Greenwald
She.
- [47:44]
Megyn Kelly
She's gotten a little taste of it, Glenn, and she. She's enjoying it. She's back, and she's got a lot of predictions or forecasts or pieces of advice, I guess we should say, for how the Democrats should combat what they see as the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. The reason the Voting Rights act has, over the past 70 years, been rolled back bit by bit to the point where it's really no longer doing anything is because we've grown. We've grown as a society. We are no longer meeting blacks at the polling stations with rabid dogs and, you know, citizenship tests. And the Supreme Court has evolved on the. On its jurisprudence around it, too. Now they're pretending that we've gone right back to Jim Crow because of the Supreme Court's latest ruling on how you can't draw These districts such that they like empower only black people in the, in the state of Louisiana and you know, not whites and so on. It's like just draw them the way you want to draw them anyway. There have been a lot of extreme reactions to this decision and Kamala Harris has decided to weigh in. She went to a group that's for black women to give them her. Her sort of thoughts on it. The name of this group is Win with Black Women. It was an emergency virtual meeting meeting. Their website describes them as a collective of intergenerational, intersectional black women leaders throughout the nation. They come together to stand united in support of black women. So here's what she said to that group in terms of how to fight this thing. I think that we need an expanded playbook. This is a moment where there are no bad ideas. No bad idea brainstorm is what I'd like to call it.
- [49:31]
Glenn Greenwald
And in that no bad ideas brainstorm,
- [49:34]
Megyn Kelly
we talk about what we need to do and think about doing around the electoral College. We talk about the idea of Supreme Court reform, which includes extreme expanding the Supreme Court. We invite a conversation about multi member districts. We talk about, look, that if we win the Senate, which we should, and
- [49:57]
Glenn Greenwald
we will, then the Senate Judiciary Committee
- [50:01]
Megyn Kelly
should have rules that they put in place.
- [50:03]
Glenn Greenwald
So when these people come before as
- [50:06]
Megyn Kelly
nominees to the Supreme Court and lie
- [50:09]
Glenn Greenwald
that they are held to account and consequence. Let's talk about statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C. these are the things I think that we've got to do.
- [50:19]
Megyn Kelly
We've got to neutralize these red states from cheating, including blue states, expanding their maps.
- [50:28]
Glenn Greenwald
Look, we got to fight fire with fire.
- [50:30]
Megyn Kelly
These folks are playing to win. We got to play to win too. She slips into her little accent there at the end. I think she means it. What's scary to me is she means it. And a lot of the stuff she wants to do there that's extremely radical can be done with Democrat control of the White House and a simple majority in both bodies of Congress.
- [50:48]
Glenn Greenwald
I don't know that she means anything. That's the thing about. There are people who mean that like everything about her is such a fraud. And we're talking before about like the lack of mystique. You know, she's was the vice president, United States. There comes like a certain grandeur of that, that office. And when she's just there on a zoom with her like background blurred and saying this stuff in this fake accent that she's not hers, trying to put on a Persona that's clearly not hers, trying to black Ify herself because in the last election a lot of black people even said I don't even think she's black. You just realize the fraud of her. But yeah, I mean the Democratic Party believes like the Republican Party believes by the way, that the other side cheats and goes to any lane and that they have to too. She's just echo, she's the last thing she is is a radical. She's like a very like kind of like Colbert like pretending to be this anti system radical but in reality she's a byproduct of the system and the establishment. This is just kind of a blackface, if you will, in order to create a new personality.
- [51:49]
Megyn Kelly
It is an interesting preview though because we've heard James Carville say this, we've heard her say this. Most Dems are saying this behind the scenes. When we come back, I'm just going to lay out for the audience exactly how all that could in fact happen if everything goes blue next election cycle. Stand by. Glenn's with us for the show. When there are supply constraints on commodities prices surge, you see it with the fuel prices happening right now, right as a result of what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz. And you know what else is a limited commodity? Gold. They mine it out of the ground and when it's gone, it's gone. Governments cannot just print more of it. And that is why everyone from central banks to savvy savers consider diversifying with gold. If you've been thinking about it for years but have never moved some of your savings into physical gold, consider Birch Gold Group. Now through May 29th, Birch Gold is giving first time gold buyers a rebate of up to $10,000 on qualifying purchases. For details and a free information kit on diversifying into Gold. Text MK to the number 989898 Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or 401K into a tax sheltered IRA and physical gold. Text MK to the number 989898 to see if you qualify for a first time gold buyer rebate of up to $10,000. Not sure if you have the experience
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Glenn Greenwald
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Megyn Kelly
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Glenn Greenwald
Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay,
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Megyn Kelly
the right shoes can make or break an rsvp. So own the moment.
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Glenn Greenwald
You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes at the perfect price, of course. Get ready to get ready with Designer Shoe Warehouse. Head to your DSW store or dsw.com today and let us surprise you.
- [54:11]
Megyn Kelly
Glenn Greenwald, host of System Update, is back with me now. Go and subscribe to his substack. It's greenwald.substack.com so just a moment. Moment More on the Kamala Harris comments. She seems to want to talk about getting rid of the Electoral College, something that has been tried since 700 times before, literally, and would require a constitutional amendment, which is not going to happen. So that's pie in the sky bullshit. Packing the court. She doesn't say packing the court there. She says let's try to hold the Supreme Court justices who make us promises during their confirmation hearings to account. If they don't live up to their promises later, that's never going to fly. That will be a separation of powers violation. There's been fierce legal debates over this for many, many years. And those who believe Congress cannot control the Supreme Court, a co equal branch of government in this way will win that. So that's another pie in the sky. However, and I don't know what she means about multi members districts. We're going to look at multi members dis. I have no idea what she's talking about. Is that redistricting? They're doing that now. The Democrats are on the losing end of that effort thanks to the court rulings across the nation. But when she talks about statehood for puerto Rico and D.C. and when other Democrats talk about packing the court, adding additional justices, all of that can be done if the Democrats simply win control of the White House, win control of the House and win control of the Senate. They actually can do that. And this is what many people fear, is that they will get rid of the filibuster because you would need a filibuster, a filibuster proof majority in order to get a vote on these things. But if you get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, you'll, you can do that and all you need is a simple majority. I mean, I think a lot of people don't realize that if you want to make Washington D.C. a state or Puerto Rico a state, or even Trump right now is casually referencing Venezuela becoming a state which we don't want. All it requires is a majority vote in the House, Senate and for the president to sign it into law. Same for adding seats to the U. S. Supreme Court. So we truly could be one election away, not the midterms, but the one after, from having the kind of rule that truly could radicalize the country. Glenn. And more and more Democrats are speaking openly about wanting to do it. But would they?
- [56:28]
Glenn Greenwald
Here's the thing. I think a lot of this is about the political realities, which is, and I'm not endorsing this or defending it in any way, I'm simply describing that there is this widespread view among Democratic voters, the kind of party base that the Republican Party basically treats politics as a war, is willing to do anything and anything to gain power. And the Democratic Party is always this meek little ethical club that feels compelled to abide by the rules. Now, I know Republicans think the same thing, that their party is always body by the rules. And Democrats are these, you know, power hungry monsters who will do anything, probably some truth to each of those things. But because Democrats perceive that and then also perceive that Trump is this a, this historical evil, this existential threat to American democracy we've never confronted before because they think those things, they've lost patience with any politician who seems to be too constrained by conventions or the Constitution or the law or tradition, the pesky
- [57:38]
Megyn Kelly
matter of the US Constitution, these little
- [57:40]
Glenn Greenwald
annoying technicalities like the Constitution and separation of powers. And that's why Chuck Schumer, for example, has become so extremely unpopular among Democratic voters, because there's a perception that he sticks to these old rules. And this is one of the reasons why AOC has become so popular. It's not really an ideological shift at all. Like maybe on Israel there's an ideological shift, maybe on foreign policy a little bit. It's not really about that. It's about this idea that you're supposed to be combative. You're supposed to get down in the dirt with Republicans and show the Republicans that the Democratic Party will cross lines too, like the Republicans are doing. That was the whole thing with the Virginia redistricting battle was to prove that the Democrats are going to steal Steve through redistricting as well. And all of this is necessary. No, it did not. It's necessary for Kamala Harris to have some kind of credibility because she wants to run for president again in 2028among Democratic Party voters. So she's now trying to show, hey, I'm out here with my black accent that I never had before. And I'm going to speak in that because that's really combative. It's a very, very condescending. But also these ideas. Kamala Harris is an institutionalist. She's worked her way up the political system by being as far from a radical as you can be. She was a prosecutor is how she started. It's always been at the center of the party, but now they feel like they can't have viability. You're going to get depicted as being Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries, who they also hate if you're too wedded to traditional roles. So this idea of expanding the court statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico obviously would become two extremely Democratic states. This is stuff that I don't believe, Kamala Harris believes. But if we've seen this before, when you have politicians kind of pandering to voters with ideas that they have, even though the DC Class doesn't have them, you can push the Overton Window far enough that it does become the position of the Democratic Party. And I do think it becomes something that's of course not going to happen to something that will actually, if they get enough political power, which they might. Trump is unpopular. The war has made him unpopular. Gas prices, economy, Epstein. Stuff that has given not the Democratic Party a popularity boost, but the Republicans, a big albatross. Certainly in 2026 and maybe into 2028, then it is possible. And I do think that kind of talk warrants attention.
- [59:58]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, it's scary to me because you hate, I mean, you genuinely hate to see Trump's approval ratings where they are, because that's, that's how we get to Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and God forbid, the White House, too. I mean, to me, that's genuinely scary. The problem is the numbers are going in one direction and it's not great. This is the latest from Harry Entin, who took a look at Trump's approval ratings this morning.
- [60:27]
Glenn Greenwald
Trump's net approval rating hits a new low. You could see it right here, 20 points underwater. And what you just see on your screen right here is it's been a steady climb downward. You know, you go back to January of 2025 at the beginning was plus 6, then minus 6 by May 2025, minus 9, minus 14, minus 15. But over the last few months, as the Iran war has taken shape, as those gas prices have jumped through the roof, Trump has hit a new low. He's at minus 20 points, which is the lowest point of his second term. Have there been any polls recently in which Trump has not had a negative net approval rating? Every poll since March 29, 2025, that is over. Over a year ago. You can't find a single poll in which he has anything but a net negative approval rating. And you just look right at this and you say the net effect on your personal finances. The best of the group is the tax law, right? That's 16 points underwater. How about tariffs? 49 points underwater. How about the Iran war? That effect on your finances? 67 points underwater. No wonder Trump is underwater in every single poll. No wonder he's hitting new lows in the aggregate.
- [61:36]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, that is depressing stuff. But we're six months out from the midterms, and maybe there's some. Some time to stop the bleeding. The problem is he doesn't really seem to recognize those numbers as real, Glenn, because when given the chance to show even fake empathy for people's economic situation at home, he doesn't. It's. I mean, to his credit, it's really not on brand for Trump to do so, and he's sticking with his authentic self. But it's like, as a supporter of generally more Republicans than Democrats, I'd certainly like to see at least an attempt at it, because people are hurting and clearly they're angry.
- [62:18]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. I mean, I think the only thing I like on cnn, by the way, is Harry Edmond, because it's kind of like polling data in the form of, like, Catskill or the Porch belt comedian kind of delivery. It's like very weird mix. It actually makes it interesting.
- [62:31]
Megyn Kelly
Ye. Yes. Like a Dirty Dancing.
- [62:33]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. Yeah. It's bizarre. Nothing is interesting to see except that. And also, by the way, he's pretty straightforward about things. Like, he's talked before about the Democrats difficulty about Trump's popularity. He's not really a partisan hack. He tries to really stick to what shows. Yeah. I think on the one hand, Trump's insularity on this question is understandable because both times that he ran, when he won, the poll showed him losing by a significant margin, and it damaged the credibility of polling. There was that ridiculous poll from an seltzer in Iowa, the gold standard that made everyone think Trump was not gonna just lose, but lose big. And then he, of course, won Iowa easily. So I understand that on the one hand, but on the other, I think a lot of this is that Trump is so surrounded by sycophants. It really has become the culture of the White House, that they constantly are just showing him anything positive. Like he constantly goes back to this one MAGA poll that for self identified MAGA people at the beginning of Iran war that he's like, I'm at 100%. It's become like, I'm at 100% with everybody. And you see there the unpopularity of the Iran war, which of course is going to be unpopular. He ran on a promise not to engage the country in this, these kind of wars. And if there weren't any implications at home that there weren't, you know, there aren't, thankfully huge numbers of troops being killed, but there already are disruptions at the gas price, at the gas pipe. And I think a big part of that is this message that has been conveyed from D.C. for so long. We're not, we don't really care about your suffering. We're interested in these fun little adventures over here, these wars over here, these big meetings over here. And you know, Trump ran on a basic promise to represent what he called the forgotten men and women, the working class of the United States, the deindustrialized Rust Belt. And the focus of the administration has been not on. That has been in many ways the opposite. This war is extremely unpopular. And I think the problem is with this war is that there's really no way out for Trump. I can't. You know, it's kind of like the war in Ukraine and Russia. I always, from the beginning said if NATO defines victory as every Russian troop out of every inch of Ukrainian soil, including Crimea, that is never going to happen. And since NATO defined it that way, there could never be an end to the war because that was never going to happen. And either they would accept an ending of the war that wasn't that, admit defeat to Russia, which they couldn't do, or the war would just go on forever, which it seems like it. It is. Same with this war. The Iranians aren't going to give Trump the things he said he needs because they don't feel threatened enough. They feel like they're in a good position. And the longer it goes on, even though it's not active combat, prices are going to rise, oil is going to rise. There's huge disruptions in the energy market globally, but all sorts of other secondary implications as well. People are feeling it where they care most, which is at the pocketbook already. Midterms are hard for an incumbent president. When you add on economic difficulties. A very unpopular war that's hung around Trump's neck that he talks about all the time. Because he has to. I think it's very, very grim.
- [65:32]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, the best thing the Republicans have going for them is the Democrats. They've got that, that's a, that's. And that is not nothing. You know, like you look at your crazy ass opponent and it's like you're still in it. No matter how low Trump's approval ratings are. He did speak with Sean Hannity over in Beijing, where he's been for a couple of days this week in this bilateral summit with Xi Jinping. Some interesting things happened. Before I get to the sound, bite this, this one jumped out at me and I'll explain why. Late Thursday. Okay, let me jump back a little earlier. She gave a speech. It was his opening remarks at the bilateral meeting. And in it, in those remarks, he questioned if the two nations could overcome the. Now, forgive me, because this is tough for me, but it's the Thucydides trap. The Thucydides, Thucydides trap. And that's a theory suggesting that when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, a war could result. So the Chinese president raised that in his opening remarks addressing the American president, which is extremely provocative. I mean, that is not diplomacy. That is we're the rising power. They've been open about their plan to be the world's greatest superpower by 2050, and they, they can wait. And the reason it jumped out at me is because I actually happen to be reading this book right here that my husband recommended to me called Destined for For War by Graham Allison. And the subtitle is Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap. And it's all about that exact thing. It's a very interesting book and it's not that dense. You know, you can read it even though it has the word Thucydides in the front. And it's all about how China is well positioned to win this conflict between the two countries because it has never ending patience. And it is the rising power. And that we are the declining power. At least we're behaving like it, we have, have active decisions that, that project that and that it, they're dead. Like it's, it's Sparta and Athens and the declining power eventually will lash out and that there will be armed conflict between the two. So he gets up there, the Chinese president raises this question right in front of us. Rude. And Trump decides to pretend that it was all about Joe Biden. He, he came out with this long true social post and invoked Joe Biden suggesting, oh, that was all about Crazy Joe and how he really did have our nation in decline. But he praised several things that I've done, you know, to bring the country back. That's not how she wait. Worded it at all. He did not limit it to Joe Biden. This was an insult. And, you know, Trump, who was behaving more diplomatically, chose to ignore it and deftly put it on an earlier president so they could still get along, which I have to say was a good move by Trump. But one has to hope that Trump recognizes, in fact what it was and behaves accordingly because he doesn't sound like he's getting ready to do that, Glenn. Instead, he said the following. Let me start with SOT5, which seems to be making excuses for some rather offensive intrusions the Chinese are about to make into our country, which will only accelerate their rise and you could argue, accelerate our decline. Here it is. SA 5.
- [69:06]
Glenn Greenwald
I would assume I'm in Beijing if I wanted to buy property near one of their military installations. I don't think President Xi wouldn't let you.
- [69:16]
Megyn Kelly
I don't.
- [69:16]
Glenn Greenwald
Look, it's not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop, you want to see farmers lose a lot of money, just take that out of the market. But they've had a lot of land for a long time. Obama did nothing about it. They bought a lot of it during the Obama administration. He did nothing about it. As far as the students, it's 500,000 students. They come good students. I could tell them I don't want any students. It's a very insulting thing to say to a country. They would then immediately go out and start building universities all over China. I frankly think that it's good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture and many of them want to stay here.
- [70:05]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, Glenn, who wants that? Literally, what American wants. It was 300,000 Chinese students like two months ago. Now it's 500,000. And he goes on to say many of them will stay here. We don't want that either. We don't want them taking up our university slots at our most prestigious universities. And we definitely don't want them staying, nor do we want them buying up American farmland.
- [70:31]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, there are some Americans who actually do want that, particularly Wall street and the corporate community. They love the relate. They're in bed with the Chinese and always have been. I think if you look at, you know, this kind of theory about declining and rising powers that you are mentioning, the Chinese president raised that. That book addresses. I read parts of that book. I think, I don't know, a couple years ago. And the, the big difference to me in terms of the US Training relationship, aside from the fact that both sides have nuclear weapons and so a war could mean instantaneous extinction of the planet and the species, which I think adds a pretty big component, is that generally when the United States goes to war with a country, Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam or whatever, all the power centers are united in the idea that that's an enemy country. The business community has always depended on China. Look at how many American firms, crucial American firms, Tesla and Apple and on and on, use China and related markets for very cheap labor, for very cheap production costs, and then ship those products back to the United States in order to be priced competitively. And there's all, I mean, Elon Musk and all those CEOs went to China because China is crucial to their business model. And Trump is very much of this class. He's a nativist. He's anti immigrant on the one hand. But if you look at how Trump has talked about China and especially President Xi, President Trump has this admiration for people he thinks are strong, tough leaders, even if they're dictatorial, even if they're. This is something that he respects on a personal level. People are like tough and strong and have an iron grip on power. And President Xi and the Chinese merit respect in that if you, if that's your worldview. And he's always talked about she very respectable terms and he wants a friendship with Xi and.
- [72:26]
Megyn Kelly
But he's not getting it. That's one of the interesting things. Just quickly, he kept complimenting Xi. He kept, over and over kept complimenting him. And they weren't, the compliments were not returned. That's not how the Chinese behave. It was not great that, that piece of the dynamic keep going.
- [72:40]
Glenn Greenwald
I know, but I think that, you know, we grew up with this framework that the Republicans are really strong on foreign policy, the Democrats are weak. It's kind of something that you like, just wind people up and everybody thinks. But if you look, for example, you know, like when President Obama was in office, John McCain, Lindsey Grahams used to attack him for being too soft on Russia. And then Trump comes in and it's the Democrats who demand more involvement in the war in Ukraine, more confrontation with Russia in Syria. That was a Bill Hillary Clinton thing. Nancy Pelosi flew to Taiwan and treated the Taiwanese like they were their own separate sovereign state. A very anti Chinese provocative move. And Trump has always been very kind of talked about China the way Wall street does, like in these very respectful terms, like, we need China. We can't separate from China. Even this thing, like, yeah, I want Chinese students there. They're great people, they contribute a lot to society. And I think you see these conflicting impulses. And look, on the one hand, I don't think we should want people pursuing a war with China and the United States. But on the other hand, they are definitely a competitor and you could even say an adversary that wants to supplant the United States and influence all throughout the world. And people responsible for the United States and for its government should think about China in that way. And I think on some level, Trump doesn't. He looks at President Xi, sees like a strong, equal businessman and wants to do deals with him and has a respect for him. That, as you say, I don't think the Chinese return for Trump or the United States.
- [74:09]
Megyn Kelly
No, no, they, they did not return it. And I don't think they'd return it for any American leader. It was to me offensive that he raised that in his opening remarks. And they're just the hassle they gave to our Secret Service and having guns and entering rooms, though that came out reportedly that they were very confrontational with Secret service that because they were armed. Yes, hello. They're with a president who they've tried to assassinate four times here in the country. Yeah, they're gonna have their armed weapons, like, stop harassing us. And apparently somebody from the admin made the point to them, we would never do this to you in our country. Like, knock it off. So it was annoying. They're annoying. And we don't need 500,000 of them in our universities, nevermind staying here and buying up our farmland. And Trump's only excuse on the farmland was like, oh, the prices of farms are going to go down, suggesting the competition for them is going to go away. Well, I'm. Who, how do we know that there, there actually might be American buyers for these farms? But why do we want the Chinese to own all our farmland? They already are. They already owned some significant portion of it, like Smithfield.
- [75:12]
Glenn Greenwald
They have Smithfield farms. Yeah, I mean, I was just gonna
- [75:15]
Megyn Kelly
say ask any beef or pork producer.
- [75:18]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. And I think, like, we've seen this conflict before in Trump, you know, that whole controversy, Remember, with the H1BS with Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon saying, you guys are insane if you don't want more people here on, on H1BS because obviously Silicon Valley and Wall street love H1BS because these people come and they work for less than Americans do. And they're basically indentured servants because their ability to stay in the United States depends on their keeping their job. Employers love that kind of dependency, that kind of power and leverage they have over. But the anti immigrant wing of Trump's movement, the American first wing, is like, wait, now we're trying to bring more foreigners into the United States? I thought the idea was we wanted to get rid of them. And you've seen this, you know, in other immigration contexts as well, like these mass immigran immigrations. When Trump started, when the, When I started, you know, trying to deport farm workers or hotel workers, you know, big corporate chains of hotel owners and big farming interests went to the White House and said, you can't. These are our workers. Yeah, they're, they're undocumented, they're illegal, but they work for less. We need them. And that's when you saw Trump say, we're not going to necessarily. Trump has hotels, too. And he said, yeah, we're not going to necessarily target illegal legals who are working in these industries because we don't want to harm our industries. This conflict is very real. Trump is not really Pap Buchanan. He's not a nativist in this pure sense. It's a strain of his politics that he picked up on, that he knew could be beneficial. I think Trump's idea is basically, let's keep out the bad ones, like the ones from the bad countries, the ones whose culture, they just come and stay on welfare or whatever. But the good ones, like the Indians, the Chinese, that we want them working for Silicon Valley, that's. I think Trump's mindset is very much the Wall Street Silicon Valley mindset. And of course, Trump is very tied to both sectors.
- [76:57]
Megyn Kelly
Well, they'll be the only Asians who get into Harvard, given the way they do their admissions now, notwithstanding the Supreme Court decision. So good luck with that. Welcome to our world. One other thing on Trump, I mean, I think in the President's defense, I think he's thinking it would be very nice to get along with China, Right? Like, we do not want a world war with China.
- [77:14]
Glenn Greenwald
We don't. I agree.
- [77:15]
Megyn Kelly
We are dependent on them buying some of our materials, too. It's not just one way. Like he said soybeans, he mentioned. He said they're gonna buy 200 Boeing jets, which is very good for Boeing. So he's trying to sort of, okay, these are areas we can cooperate on. We can be friends. And Trump, he does have a sense of optimism, which is to his credit, but not always valid in the political context. Right. In dealing with China, I think we need a. A hefty dose of cynicism and suspicion. Um, so I don't know. You know, the president, I do think he understands that there are risks and he's trying to play the long game. But. But it's frustrating to hear talk of half a million Chinese students coming and staying to America. No, thank you. Okay, one more. There was an admission on the Iran war which jumped out at me and it might to you, too. Here it is in Sat 7.
- [78:06]
Glenn Greenwald
We're doing it to help Israel and to help Saudi Arabia and to help Qatar and UAE and, you know, Kuwait and other countries. Bahrain. It also helps China. We're actually. I told him today, I said, you know, we're helping you and we're helping you in another way because I don't think they want. I don't think China wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon either. I said this. Don't go crazy. You don't need them having a nuclear weapon. What did he say? Well, he's not going to respond to my chair. He's a pretty cool guy. He's not going to say, oh, gee, that's a good point. I think he might. What's he going to do? I mean, what a wonderful point. You think he agreed? Yeah, I think that was the impression. I don't think he wants him to have. No, he would like to see it end, but he's been good about it,
- [78:55]
Megyn Kelly
you know, so there it is. I mean, lest there was any doubt, it's the first thing in the answer. We did it to help Israel. We're doing it to help. Is renamed other countries. He has said the world can't have Iran having a nuclear weapon. But just to say that is so controversial that we're doing it to help Israel. We know, we know that. We've said that many times. And then you get called an anti Semite. But that's not anti Semitic. It is a fact. You heard it from the President of the United States himself. He thinks it's also helping some of the Gulf Arab states. Fine. That's not controversial. You can say that. But prior to the president saying it himself explicitly, you weren't allowed to say that other piece of it or you were called an anti Semite.
- [79:34]
Glenn Greenwald
I thought this was a movement that was calling itself America first. And then you have Trump saying, oh, yeah, this war. Well, it's kind of helping us. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon. But you know, yeah, we're helping Israel get rid of their big enemy. And also when we talk about these Persian Gulf states, what we mean are Persian Gulf dictatorships, Arab dictatorships that have extreme levels of human rights abuses that we claim to be so offended when they appear in Iran. You think protesters fare any better in Dubai or in, in Riyadh or in Doha or in Bahrain or Kuwait? No, they. Or then Iran. No, they don't. And this idea, you know, we're. And also the Strait of Hormuz, Trump himself said at the beginning, out of frustration, look, if you're not willing to go to a war with Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, we don't have to do it. We don't need the Strait of Hormuz, which is true. We don't get oil from the Strait of Hormuz. China does. And the Gulf states need the Strait of Hormuz to sell oil. But Trump is in bed with these Persian Gulf dictators. He loves them, too. They're extremely rich. They have a kind of shared aesthetic with this very ostentatious, gold laden kind of, you know, wealth expression. He loves them. His family's in bed with the, with, with the Persian Gulf states, and he's very close to them. He listens to them, and obviously to Israel. And I don't think these are good things for our country. Why are we, why are we prosecuting a war that's harming Americans for the benefit of Israel or these Persian Gulf dictators? And on the question of China. Yeah. I mean, opening up the Strait of Hormuz is far more in China's interest than ours. The problem is, is that the only reason the Strait of Hormuz is closed is because Israel, is because the United States joined Israel and attacking Iran. It was perfectly open. The Strait of Hormuz was prior to this war for forever. It's only closed now because it was a response to the attack on Iran. And I think the rest of the world is like, you caused this problem, it's your responsibility to fix it. And I think it's a reasonable view for most countries to have.
- [81:34]
Megyn Kelly
It does make you wonder, though. If we did just pack up and go home, would China swoop in and just make them open it? You know, like, what if we really did just say, yeah, sorry, but we're out. We did break the thing at Pottery Barn and we're not gonna pay for it. We're just gonna walk out of the store, like, good luck getting us. I mean, it would be kind of interesting. And I Don't. I'm so in favor of just wrapping it up for so many reasons. That's very tempting to me. Probably the Chinese are much better positioned to make the Iranians open it than we are, since they're a big customer. I don't know. It seems like something we should have on the table.
- [82:07]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, I think what would happen is Iran would just say China is more than welcome to use this trade of Hormuz because of the power relationship, because they buy so much oil from Iran, from that area. And the Chinese do have a lot of power and leverage with Iran, but they could charge for pretty much everybody else, and they could do it on a country by country basis. Remember, Iran is not closing the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is closing the Strait of Hormuz for the United States, for people they don't want using the Strait of Hormuz and charging for the rest. The United States is the one that has a blockade on any ships going to or from Iran. So it's the United States that's blockading the Strait of Hormuz from the Chinese perspective, not the Iranians. So if the Americans went home tomorrow, like you said, which I think we should do, because there's no benefit in continuing this war. Anything else, it's only harming Americans. The Chinese would be fine. They do a lot of business with Iran. Iran would perfectly allow them to use this trade of Hormuz under whatever commercial terms the Chinese are comfortable with. This war is serving nobody's interest other than Israel's. And yes, there's animosity now in Saudi Arabia and, and the Amara and the Emiratis and, and, and the, the, the, the in Bahrain and with the, with the Qataris because Iran attacked those countries, and they attacked those countries because the US Used military bases in them to attack Iran. They would work that out. They would. They, they don't want regional conflict. They don't want to go to war with Iran. Iran's a huge country, so everybody would be fine if we left tomorrow except one country, and that country's name is Israel. That's the reason why Trump can't get out.
- [83:39]
Megyn Kelly
Yes, correct. And that's the reason why Trump got in, and it's the reason why he can't get out. And it's one of the reasons why Americans are more disapproving of Israel now than ever. And that's not anti Semitism. That's something called policy. Benjamin Netanyahu and time after time in which they've pulled us into their fight. I mean, just the most recently twice in the last year, June. And now again with this war. Okay, we have to take a break. We're gonna be right back. Glenn stays with us to the end. Do not go away. You might already own a firearm, but what if you could start with less lethal methods to avoid the financial and mental repercussions of pulling the trigger? This is where Byrna comes in. That's by rna. Byrna's less lethal launchers are equipped with tear gas and kinetic ammunition and designed to incapacitate an attacker for up to 40 minutes. And Burna is excited to introduce the all new compact launcher. It's a sleek, slim device and it hits like a sledgehammer. The same size as a smartphone, allowing women to conceal. Carry everywhere comfortably and with confidence. It fires at 400ft per second. That's a lot of power to stop aggressors in their tracks before they get anywhere near you. Their pistols are American made and hand assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. With over 80% of the components in the compact launcher being sourced in the usa. I mean, Burna is amazing even without that. But it's very nice to know that's true. Burna is legal in all 50 states. It requires no background checks, and it can be shipped directly to your door and burn. It is trusted by hundreds of police departments too. So this is a great device, even if you are a firearm owner. And if you're not, this is something that you might be comfortable with. Right? Like a lot of women I know are worried if they get a gun, it's going to be used on them and it's lights out. Well, if this gets used on you, it's not lights out. It's an uncomfortable thing that may stop you or incapacitate you for a while, but it's not lights out and it will make you feel better. God forbid you get that scary sound happening in the middle of the night and someone is there who shouldn't be. All right, so try before you buy if you want by visiting Burna.com and you can find a burn a dealer partner near you. That's B Y R N a dot com. Come, let's talk about an uncomfortable reality. What happens financially to our loved ones once we're no longer here? We put off thinking about it for obvious reasons, but the best thing we can do for our family is to just take a few minutes and deal with this problem to ensure that they're not left with a financial burden of mortgage, tuition, medical bills and so on. Okay. Taking steps to financially protect your family is actually easier nowadays than ever. And that is where Ethos comes in. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy and 100% online. You don't have to deal with real humans. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes and even get same day coverage. There's no medical exam even. All you need to do is just answer a few simple health questions and you can get up to 3 million bucks in coverage. You will get the lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers with some policies as low as $30 a month. Month. It's no wonder why Ethos has 4.8 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot with over 4000 reviews. So take 10 minutes to get covered today. Just get it out of the way with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote@ethos.com MK that's ethos.com MK Application times may vary as may rates Parents have you heard your kids say I'm not a math kid? Well with Mathnasium every kid can be a math kid. Customize their math instruction so kids who are struggling are able to catch up and get ahead and advanced kids are challenged to reach higher. Math Nasium makes math fun so kids learn to love it. Parents say that Mathnasium has not only improved their kids grades, it's given them a new level of confidence in math and in school overall. Visit mathnasium.com to find a location near you Struggling with your weight Prolon's five Day Fasting Mimicking Diet is a clinically
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gift when you subscribe@prolonlife.com hey everyone, it's me, Megyn Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Siriusx. It's called the Megyn Kelly Channel and it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies. Along with the Megyn Kelly show, you're gonna hear from people like Mark Halperin, link Lauren Maureen Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, RealClearPolitics, and many more. It's bold. No BS news only on the Megyn Kelly Channel, Sirius XM111 and on the SiriusXM app. Glenn Greenwald is back with me now. So, so Glenn, this week it came out that the Alec Murdaugh conviction for killing his wife and son Paul had been overturned and he's been granted a new trial by the Supreme Court of South Carolina. Very interesting case. I think they 100% made the right decision, even though I think he's guilty because there was a clerk of court named Becky Hill who clearly interfered with the jury, who there was testimony she was explicitly telling them, watch his body language when he was taking the stand. Another juror who would ultimately be dismissed, the so called egg juror, because she left her eggs in the jury room and when she got dismissed, said, can I go get my eggs? My, my dozen eggs in the jury room testified that Becky Hill explicitly said to her, you know, oh, he's basically, he's guilty. I mean, like she really just explicit manipulation. This woman was very manipulative. And Alec Murdoch, just like the rest of us, deserves a trial free from interference by the court clerk. Now, one of the jurors, now keep in mind, only three of the jurors said they even had any interaction with Becky Hill in which she said anything to them beyond, there's the bathroom and here's your lunch. And so NBC appears to have booked one of the ones who had nothing to do with Becky Hill. And that person is named Amy Williams. And this is what she had to say in sat 25. Some jurors tonight in disbelief at the court's decision undoing their verdict. And I was like, what?
- [90:29]
Glenn Greenwald
Why? The evidence was overwhelming. He was guilty.
- [90:35]
Megyn Kelly
Now we also get Alec Murdoch's reaction to the news breaking in the New York Times. He reportedly said, quote, I, I still don't believe it. I don't believe it. Per his lawyers, they say he told, he told them that in prison. He did not believe that. They, he, they've denied so many of his motions, he just didn't think he'd get one. They are going to move for a change of venue if and when the new prosecution is filed, either by the current AG or when his term ends. All those running for the AG spot have all said they want to retry him, too. And we debated on the show the other day about whether they'd move for a change of venue, which is his hometown and he might like it there. And they are saying indeed they will try to seek a change of venue for this case. The jurors, let's see. The state Supreme Court said the judge who oversaw the first trial had allowed prosecutors to go Too far, too long and far too deep into his financial wrongdoings. So if and when they do retry him, they will not be able to go deep on what a financial crook he was, which was the motive for the crimes. That's why he killed them. He wanted sympathy as both his law firm and the plaintiffs in this other case were zeroing in on his finances. And that's why he murdered his own family. Now, meantime, he's already been convicted for the financial crimes in a separate proceeding and sentenced to 27 year state prison sentence and a 40 year federal sentence. They're running concurrently. And even if he receives credit for good behavior, the most likely outcome is that he'll be in prison until his late 80s. So what's the point of all this, Glenn? And what is the point, while I have you, of potentially retrying Harvey Weinstein? Because the jury in his latest New York City criminal trial just returned hopelessly deadlocked and a mistrial was declared there too. After he was found guilty, that case went up and it was argued to the New York State highest court by our friend Arthur Aidala, who convinced that court they had let in a bunch of female testimonials against him that had nothing to do with the charges and it was too much undue prejudice. They agreed, they sent it back down. This is the retrial which has now ended in ruination because they couldn't convince a jury to convict him. So he, is he headed for a third trial when he's going to be in jail pretty much forever. On the LA conviction is Alec Murdoch, even though he's going to be in jail pretty much forever based on the financial convictions.
- [93:00]
Glenn Greenwald
I think both cases, but especially this Murdoch case, is so interesting in so many ways, has a lot of really important lessons about how we think of the Justice Department. Him, I mean, I can understand why even if you're going to spend the rest of your life in jail, you would prefer not to have it reflected that you murdered your own wife and son for the most sociopathic of reasons. So I can understand why he would pursue that even if he were going to remain in jail no matter what on these financial clients, which, as you say, he would. That makes sense to me. But you know, I, I'll just. There's always been this, this idea that has been part of our political discourse for so long about our criminal justice system that if somebody's guilty, they shouldn't be let off on what people often refer to as a technicality, like, oh, this woman made a few comments she shouldn't have made. But everyone knows he's guilty. Why should we undo his conviction when, as that juror said, it's so clear that he's guilty? And I remember in my first. In my first year of law school, I had this British professor who taught criminal procedure. And he was very British, but he lived in the United States for 30 years, was an American citizen, and he was. He once said that he remembers when he came to the United States and he started hearing. It was very common in the 80s and 90s, when people would say, why did they let this person off on a technicality? And he said, I've never heard of a country that refers to its own constitution as a technicality before. Like, it matters. Like, you need a fair trial. Putting someone in prison. You know, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson said, it's better to let. Let 10 guilty people go than to punish one innocent person. Like, these rules really matter. Putting people in a cage for life. You want to make sure the rules are really abided by before we let the state do that. And even if he is undoubtedly guilty, and I haven't studied the case in depth, but from what I've seen, I think the evidence is overwhelming. I think a retrial is appropriate when you have an officer of the court influencing the jury, even if she didn't influence it, tried to in ways that clearly, if you were a defendant or if it was your family member who was the defendant facing many years in prison on a horrible crime, you would feel like that was totally a contaminated procedure. And I think it's an important thing because also what you're talking about here is, you know, he comes, as I'm sure you've talked about many times, covering the story from, like, one of the most powerful families in South Carolina, you know, generations of prosecutors and, you know, lead law enforcement officers, very wealthy, very politically powerful, kind of an aristocratic side, South Carolina family. I think it was so important to demonstrate that even somebody like that in South Carolina is going to be held accountable under the law. And they really have done a very good job of doing so. So I think it's also appropriate to retry him. But also, the Harvey Weinstein case, I think, also has such an important lesson about our criminal justice system. I'll just tell you quickly. In Brazil, there was this case where there was this dog that got murdered. And it was like a beloved community dog. It lived on the street, but the whole community took care of the dog. It was like their dog, even though he was technically homeless. And the Story was that four teenage boys came and just tortured this dog, beat it and then killed it.
- [96:06]
Megyn Kelly
Can't hear it.
- [96:07]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, no, as. But anyway, as it turned out like that, because they were teenagers, no media outlet would report their, their identity. And so the Internet found out their identities, put their home addresses all over the Internet and actually wrote a column saying this kind of mob justice is very disturbing because people can seem guilty based on what you know. But the trial is a really important thing to actually determine guilt or innocence. They've exuded, they exhumed the body of the dog. Turns out they can't really find any signs that they were tortured. The kids have always denied it, but their lives are ruined because of this Internet mob justice. I think in the Harvey Weinstein case case, I'm not going to compare him to them and suggest that he, he's not guilty, he's a horrible person. But I do think the me too excesses produced a lot of hysteria where they changed laws about how long you can. You have to bring cases. That's why Eugene Carroll was able to sue Donald Trump. And I think it's so important that we not let the media, social media, political impulses dictate outcomes of who we decided are guilty and innocent. The laws and the rules that we have, even though may seem legalistic, have been developed over centuries. They're going back to British law and European enlightenment concepts. These were designed by our founders, enshrined in the Constitution. These are really important, and I think it's very good to have these kind of cases that illustrate even though it seems like it's an annoying bureaucratic process that often impedes justice, at the end of the day, it is the system that has the highest potential of producing justice.
- [97:43]
Megyn Kelly
Yes, I totally agree to agree with everything you said. And that was one of the big things we weren't getting was trial by jury when we had our revolution and demanded a new way. And that's why it's in the Constitution as a right. We all have a trial by jury of our peers, and that jury must be impartial or as practically impartial as we can get in today's day and age. And he, he did not have that because of Becky Hill. So that's. We got to do it. All right, this is a left field story, but I love these stories. So I've decided to bring this to you. Glenn, we have another pretendion in the news. What is a pretendian, you ask? It is someone pretending to be an Indian for cultural status. Fake degrees, you know, Honorary degrees, of course. We must pay homage to the original Pretendian. And that would be Elizabeth Warren, who for our younger view, who don't remember this. She pretended to be an Indian for many years. Was listed on the Harvard Law School faculty roster as a Native American. Tried to write a cookbook based on her Native American heritage, which was fake. She has no Native American heritage whatsoever. But she got away for years by claiming she was. And this is how she explained her lies when it came out that she wasn't. Sat 32, Baby, I still have a picture on my mantle at home. And it's a picture my mother had. Before that a picture of my grandfather.
- [99:08]
Glenn Greenwald
And my Aunt Bee has walked by
- [99:09]
Megyn Kelly
that picture at least a thousand times. Remarked that he that her father, my papa had high cheekbones like all of the Indians do. Because that's how she saw it. And she said, and your mother got those same great cheekbones.
- [99:28]
Glenn Greenwald
And I didn't.
- [99:29]
Megyn Kelly
She thought this was the bad deal she had gotten in life. Being Native American has been part of my story, I guess, since the day I was born. Okay. It was part of her story, all right. It was a fake part of her story. It was totally made up. These are lies she was telling. Yeah. She was advertised as Harvard's first Native American law professor. In any event, we like the stories about the Pretendions. And here is another one. She has just. Her name is Buffy St. Marie. She was awarded an honorary doctorate of law degree from the University of Toronto in 2019. At the time, they said she was being recognized for her work in music and the arts as well as for her advocacy for the rights and dignity of all people. But on Wednesday, the university voted to rescind her honorary degree because she was lying about her identity. She is not an Indian. She pretended that she was Glenn and it came out in 2023, per the CBC, that's the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, that even though Buffy Saint Marie had appeared on Sesame street in the 1970s, she'd won numerous awards, including an Oscar in 1983 for co writing the song Up Where We Belong. She became considered the first indigenous person to ever win the award. She appeared on a Canadian stamp. But it turned out that she faked her indigenous ancestry. And here is how the CBC reported that in 23, her niece Heidi St.
- [101:06]
Glenn Greenwald
Marie says her aunt's ancestry story is an elaborate fabrication.
- [101:11]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, she's clearly born in the United States. She's clearly not Indigenous or Native American.
- [101:19]
Glenn Greenwald
The Fifth Estate obtained Saint Marie's birth certificate which indicates she was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts. To white parents Albert and Winifred Santa Maria, the very people Saint Marie claims adopted her. Her lawyer says that document may not be authentic, but the Stoneham town clerk
- [101:37]
Megyn Kelly
says that's not possible.
- [101:39]
Glenn Greenwald
I can say absolutely with 100% certainty
- [101:43]
Megyn Kelly
that this is the original birth certificate.
- [101:47]
Glenn Greenwald
She was not born in Canada.
- [101:50]
Megyn Kelly
So we're thrilled. We are thrilled that yet another pretend Indian pretendian is outed and is losing the fake honors she obtained through lying. I mean, this must happen, and then they must be shamed in order to stop this from continuing.
- [102:07]
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn, There are always really hilarious aspects to each one of these incidents, and then also some interesting and important lessons, but just on Elizabeth Warren. I once read a law law review article when this all emerged, and I was looking into it, that was about the failure of Harvard to hire or Ivy League schools to hire professors, women of color as professors. And then there was a footnote saying there are some exceptions, like this woman got hired at Yale. This black woman is at Princeton. And then Elizabeth Warren was hired. The first Harvard made the first hired, the first Native American. Elizabeth Warren was first to us. Oh, no. A woman of color. And she. All those years she knew this. I mean, she of course, understood that. That's how she. She's like the whitest woman on the planet. And also, I always just thought, like, Trump, as we know, is actually funny. And the media gets confused by that. And he would. This was always such an inversion of the truth. He would refer to Elizabeth Warren as Pocahontas. He even did it once when he was meeting Native American tribe leaders in the White House. And the media was always like, that's racist against Native Americans. He was never mocking Native Americans. He was mocking Elizabeth Warren, who's not Native American, for pretending to be Native American. And they just still to this day insist that the Pocahontas, nicknamed for Elizabeth Warren, which is perfect, is somehow racist against Native Americans. And I do think the interesting thing in the story is, like, we're constantly told that white people have all the advantages, that marginalized groups are treated so poorly, are excluded and denied opportunities. Why is it that there are so many of these stories, like Rachel Doziel, who is that white woman who worked for the NAACP and pretended to be black, braided her hair. Yeah, Dozel, why. Why are there so many of these stories where white people are pretending to be members of marginalized groups like you would think of marginalized groups were treated so terribly. Nobody. You. You would have it in the other direction, like, oh, I'm going to pretend to be White. Because that's the way you get treated well in society. That's the way you get. No, but it's always these reverse stories. And look at how many honors she got. Look at how respectfully she was treated. Almost worshiped as this, like, indigenous woman when. And she lied about her own parents like, because of course she has the whitest name ever. And those parents have the whitest names ever. And you see that all this. She didn't do anything other than identify falsely as an indigenous woman. And all these honors and liberal culture is so effed up when it comes to what it values and what it prioritizes little.
- [104:33]
Megyn Kelly
I didn't even know this. Maybe I knew it. I forgot it. But that Sachin little feather who accepted Marlon Brando's Oscar for the Godfather. But she showed up at the Oscar and she delivered a speech and it was about the treatment of Native Americans and how bad it is. She was a pretendian. She was not.
- [104:51]
Glenn Greenwald
I did not know that.
- [104:52]
Megyn Kelly
American. Yeah.
- [104:54]
Glenn Greenwald
She was putting feathers in their hair. Like, again, it's always so condescending. It's like. Yeah, I remember that she showed up and Marlon Brando rejected his Oscar to protest the treatment of Native Americans and her as his symbol of the. The mistreatment of. And she was fake. She was just a white girl.
- [105:11]
Megyn Kelly
Yes. Her family, after she died in 2022, came forward and said she had been lying about her background. This is in the San Francisco Chronicles. They said their sisters claim to have Apache and Yaqui interest ancestry through her father was, quote, a lie and a fantasy. It's. You gotta love it. Accountability. Glenn. Appreciate it. Thank you for helping walk me through it and have a wonderful weekend.
- [105:36]
Glenn Greenwald
Oh, it's great to see you, Megan. Talk to you soon.
- [105:39]
Megyn Kelly
You too. You too. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda. Agenda and no fear.
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