← The Megyn Kelly Show
The Megyn Kelly Show
Exclusive, Disturbing, Writings From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
01:58:18
Megyn Kelly reveals exclusive new details from the Nashville school shooter’s journals, what we can learn about the killer's obsession with gender identity and race, why we believe it's in the public's interest to know what was written and what was left out of the final Nashville police report, and more. Plus Victor Davis Hanson, author of "The End of Everything," joins to discuss President Trump’s tariff plan and the volatile media and market reaction today, why it’s important to take a deep breath and gain some perspective, what the goal actually is and why it's a slow process, the disconnect between rich conservatives and the working class, why the working class is more focused on trade fairness and employment opportunities than what happens in the stock market, how the Democratic Party has shifted towards representing elite interests, unhinged, self-important leftists freaking out about Trump and Elon, their narcissistic speeches at the weekend rallies, George Conway crying ove...
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- [00:00]
Megyn Kelly
Our state has changed a lot in the last 140 years. We know because Multicare has been here guided by a single making our communities healthier. That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering with local communities to grow programs and services, and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@mycare.org 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. He's been called the disruptor in chief and that's exactly what Trump's tariffs are doing to the market today. False reports of a Trump tariff pause saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average erase a morning 1700 point loss to go up over 800, only for the market to go back to a loss of over 800 when it turned out the rumor wasn't True. Currently at 12 noon on Monday, it is down 500 points back and forth. Look, you can't look, you can't look at it. I, I, I, I'm sure we've lost a lot of money. My mom is on a fixed income. It doesn't matter the income level. You can't look at a moment like this. You're, you're supposed to be in this market for, you know, a long term payoff if you're a younger person and if you're an older person, you're also not supposed to sell. When the market drops precipitously off of an event like tariffs, that's generally what they say. So looking is just bad for the soul and ultimately the pocketbook for many, many people. That's a general rule. And hopefully you've got a financial advisor telling you exactly what to do because you know, people who just wanna play the market like they're in a casino. Okay, I guess you should look. But somebody was just recirculating an old Trump quote cause he used to own a casino in Atlantic City. You know, there's no crying in the casino. The market is like a casino. I mean, it is a better place to go. It is not a guaranteed source of income. It can go up and it can go down and we have volatility right now in our economy. So, you know, hold the line, like hold, don't panic, do not panic. That's actually what Trump is saying this morning. Don't panic. So we're gonna talk about what's happening because these tariffs are having a greater effect on our market at least. And we'll see what they do to our economy. But boy, he is getting such pushback now from establishment Republicans, the ones who didn't really want him. I mean, like I'll look, Elon's not a fan of the tariffs from what we're gleaning on Twitter, but Cor Maga so far seems to be still in Trump's corner. Establishment Republicans like the Journal. They don't like the tariffs. We knew that. They also don't like the immigration reforms. We knew that. They also didn't want Trump. They wanted Nikki Haley. We knew that. And Democrats who just want to hate Trump, to hate him, they're all against him. But what can we just hold on? Just hold on and don't let these Wall street hotshots who live and die by a two point market move dictate the wisdom of Trump's tariffs, which are a longer term strategy. Look, President Trump is far from panicking. He posted this morning on Truth Social, quote, the US Has a chance to do something that should have been done decades ago. Don't be weak, don't be stupid, don't be a panic. And appears to be a new party name he's thrown out there. Oh yeah. In fact, the follow up line is a new party based on weak and stupid people. Be strong, courageous and patient and greatness will be the result. So you heard it from the President. Don't be a panicking panic. We're going to get into it. Plus more of our exclusive reporting on the Nashville School Shooters Journals, which which we broke exclusively this morning on AM Update, which you should check later today after this show. I just want to tell you what happened there. We received an exclusive on the Nashville Shooters Manifesto from the FBI. We exclusively had permission to report on it, though not to post the documents. And we spent the weekend reviewing the over 1000 of them. What we concluded, and it's outlined in Morning Update we, which is on YouTube and on our podcast feed, is that we were misled by Nashville authorities last week who said there's not one document called the Manifesto. So we're just going to tell you based on our reading of these thousand plus documents what the motives here were. And guess what didn't make the dance the shooter's trans ideology at all. At all. So we read through the documents and again, we've been misled. This woman was obsessed with trying to trans herself, wanting to trans herself, trans ideology. I mean it was like reading a leftist playbook on race, gender and hatred for America. And now it's becoming really clear why this wasn't shared with us for two years. Years. Well, we've seen it, and we don't have the same agenda as the people making those decisions. And thanks to Cash Patel and his transparent efforts at the FBI. We will bring you the full report later today. We begin today with Victor Davis Hansen. He's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the book the End of How Wars Descend into Annihilation. What are you doing this Easter to celebrate with your family? Angel Studios, who gave us the box office hit Sound of Freedom, has an unforgettable movie coming out this Easter called the King of Kings. An animated story of the life of Jesus featuring an all star cast including Oscar Isaac, Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Forest Whitaker and more. Using stunning animation with vivid theatrical scenes you've never seen in a movie like this, King of Kings brings the story of Jesus to the big screen for a whole new generation. And I have a special offer. Become a premium member in the Angel Studios Guild, a membership that puts you in the driver's seat to help angel choose which movies it greenlights and you will get two, count em, two free tickets to see King of Kings and every single theatrical release from Angel Studios as well. How about that? Get two free tickets to see King of Kings and join the Angel Guild as a Premium member@angel.com Megan take your kids to a truly wonderful movie this Easter season and be a part of making family Entertainment Great again. Angel.com Megan VDH welcome back. The the meltdown on the establishment right and the Trump hating left over. The volatility caused by Trump's change in tariffs is everywhere. Good luck turning into a tuning into a podcast, a television show, picking up a paper without being told how terrible these decisions are and how Trump doesn't know what he's doing. It is you actively have to work to find somebody like you who says let me tell you another way of looking at this and try to disabuse some of these establishment types of their very, very well held wisdom. So vdh, your thoughts on the tariffs?
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Victor Davis Hanson
Well, there is a lot of misinformation. The first thing is that I know this. I'm like you. I have a 401k and it's been really hurt. But Donald Trump did everything Wall street wanted his first term. He repealed Dodd Frank, he deregulated, he cut taxes, he encouraged accelerated depreciation and the market went up, Megan, 65% under Donald Trump, higher than even Biden, even though that he suffered through the COVID So I was looking at The Dow, when it's 37 or 38,000, it's pretty much where Biden was in 2023. And over the Biden and Trump eight years, it's gone up 100%. It's gone from 19, 1800, when Trump first entered office, up to 38, low point. But if you look at wages, and this is what it's all about, even though the productivity over the last 50 years has almost doubled per worker, wages only went up 35%. Now, as far as the psychodrama goes, you and I are elites and we understand that, but 10% of the country owns 93% of the value of the stock market. 50% are only invested at 1%. So a lot of this paranoia is that these people are not making over a 10 year period what they think to deserve. In other words, their portfolios over the last decade went up by 80% and no longer at this particular point have doubled into 100%. But they're not interested on the people below who would have dreamed of having wage returns to be comparable to the stock market. The other thing is, and I don't understand this, that don't they are not offering any constructive alternative. I keep thinking, well, maybe the left. I remember Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi said that our policy toward China was a job loser. I remember Paul Krugman said he was a mercantilist. I can remember Warren Buffett writing that we are being wiped out by, that was 20 years ago by asymmetrical trade. So I'm waiting for all these voices to come up and say, no, this is what we should do to address the $1 trillion annual trade deficit or the trade deficits that have been without exception, continuous since what, 1975 or half century. They can either say, well, you know, trade deficits don't matter and I'll tell you why, or here's a better way of doing it, or yes, we're paying $3 billion a day in interest on the national debt, but here's what I would do, or here's how I'm going to get. They don't do any of that, especially the left. So it's just. And then when you look at the whole totalitarian, the totality of the Trump 80 days, it's well, we went from 10,000 a day to zero on the border. Nobody said that was possible. We've already identified $150 billion that everybody on both sides admits is pro waste and fraud. Already for the first time in a decade, you can navigate through the Red Sea The Houthis are pretty much in withdrawal. Iran is completely emasculated. And somebody's talking about ending the Ukraine war, which instead of just, we'll give them whatever it takes to the end. So there's been dramatic changes that there's no appreciation. And, you know, one last thing. I, I think workers understand that even if they don't buy stock in the company in which they work, the stock market is important. Donald Trump used to brag that he had raised it 60% his first time. And people said, ah, the stock market, that's not a good barometer. Workers, wages and unemployment. But Donald Trump already had provided this week. You think the stock market would take note 100,000 more jobs than the government said would be produced. And the interest rate at an annual rate maybe at this month is about 2, 5%. And so he's getting to some data. And then you think, well, given this hysteria by the 10% in the media and academia and politics and the corporate world, he's done for. And then you look at the Harvard Harris poll, and he's still 49, 46, down a point or two. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm not this for me. I like to do exactly what you said, take a deep breath and then contextualize this with the Russian collusion hoax that we all said was a fake and were not disbelieved. The COVID lockdown debacle, the Hunter laptop disinformation fable, the lie that Joe Biden was fit as a fiddle, the idea that Kamala Harris had closed the distance and she was three points ahead in Iowa and going to win that. And these all were these psychodramas that turned out to be not what they were. And finally, one last rant. They keep talking about tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, recession, depression. I can't think of a tariff that caused a major recession of depression. It didn't cause a 2008. That was Wall Street. That was this reckless Wall street hysteria that we're seeing now only channeled into subprime mortgage securitization in the market when there wasn't capital there, that they said there was the Smoot Harley Lack did not cause a Great Depression. We had a surplus at the time. It was unnecessary, yes, it was punitive, yes. But it was two years after, when it fully was implemented. It was two years after what, who caused the Great Depression? Buying on the margin and reckless Wall street investors. So it's kind of ironic that Wall street has a tendency to go bananas, speculate and hurt the rest of us. And now they're trying to cite Smoot, Harley, that had nothing to do with the Depression and they should look to themselves. And the final thing is that they think there's going to be help from the Democrats on deregulation, tax reduction, investment, protecting American companies, dealing with the debt, dealing with the deficit. I don't think there is. Nothing's coming out of the left. Everything that's coming out of the left is antithetical to what the Wall Street Journal, for example, believes. So I just would like to hear what their alternative scenario is. Donald Trump's communication, I would only suggest to them that he have a tragic tone. Instead of saying beautiful tariffs and we're going to make them pay, or Europe has been ripping us off, or repertory, he should say, you know, I didn't want to do this, but we've had 50 years of this and nobody draws anybody's attention to it. The offshoring, the outsourcing that has destroyed the industrial base of this country. I don't like cutting federal workers, but who had ever cared about the $37 trillion debt? Who cares about the $3 billion in interest per day? I was tasked to do this in a way that nobody else has addressed it. I don't like doing it, but I'm going to do it for the good of the country, even though I'm going to be hated for doing it. If he said that, I think it'd be. The other thing he could say is he's got to cease all the talk about repertory tariffs where he says, well, we're going to make them pay for all the stuff they did in the past or they manipulate the currency. True. They use health and safety gimmicks to forbid import. True. But for right now, at this moment, he's got to talk about reciprocity, that American people will back him the whole way if he just says, I would like zero tariffs with partners, and barring that, I want our tariffs to be what their tariffs are and just stop all the talk about we're going to have a 10% on everybody regardless, or we're going to tariff Australia even though they have a trade deficit with us. He can get in in the second round to the currency manipulation, the VAT tax, the scams that countries use to say your products aren't clean enough or they may have disease, all of that. But for. But for right now, the American people just want to be do unto others as they do to us, and they will back him to the end of the earth when he makes the argument I am just let, it's on autopilot. The fate is in these people's hands. If China wants to be happy, then just do tariff what we do or I'll go with them on zero tariff. That's a winning argument, but not. Well, Australia had a 19, you know, 2003 little quirk and they stopped beef. That's too intricate right now Australia has basically zero tariffs. They run a deficit with us. We should not be tariffing them.
- [17:09]
Megyn Kelly
The, the Chinese is, that's a special case and it's amazing like the, the disparity in terms of what they import to us versus what we import to them. And you know, people are talking about, well they, Trump really added a lot of tariffs on them, 37% on top of the pre existing tariffs that were already there under Trump 1.0 that Biden claimed to hate but then kept in place. And it's, it affects virtually nothing because they don't buy from us. So like it's almost just an exercise. And well, okay, it's like a thought exercise because compared to what we buy from them, they buy next to nothing from us. But today they actually had the nerve to issue a retaliatory tariff after Trump's 34%. And Trump just issued this statement on Truth Social. He writes, yesterday China issued retaliatory tariffs of 34% on top of their already record setting tariffs, non monetary tariffs, illegal subsidization of companies and massive long term currency manipulation. Despite my warning that any country that retaliates against the US by issuing additional tariffs above and beyond their already existing long term tariffs, a tariff abuse of our nation will be immediately met with new and substantially higher tariffs over and above those initially set. Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8, 2025, the US will impose additional tariffs on China of 50% effective April 9. Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated. Negotiations with other countries which have also requested meetings will begin taking place immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So let's talk about China because you know, the general thinking seems to be what's going to happen in North America is ultimately going to be done by deal between Trump, Canada and Mexico that, you know, he already struck a deal with them first time around and they'll probably strike another deal because we're all on the same continent and we have an interest in having healthy trading relationships with our upstairs and downstairs neighbors. Then there's Europe which now is, you know, acting as a bloc, some 27 countries. And I think the general wisdom is that we'll reach a deal with them, too. Some sort of a deal. Like maybe this is a negotiation to hit something better. So it's really about Asia. These tariffs are about, in large part about Asia and China, the number one, where there's this huge disparity. And then when we hit them with tariffs last time around, they outsourced a lot of their manufacturing to some of these other Asian countries, like Vietnam. We're like, oh, okay, we don't have to do it here. China said, we'll do it in Vietnam. They're not subject to the new increased tariffs on us. So now Trump has included Vietnam and all these smaller Asian countries in his net. So I don't think it's any accident that he's making an example out of China with this truth social post, Victor. And I, I think he's right on, because I think Americans understand on an inherent level that everything we buy was made in China. You can't avoid it if you try. You're, you know, from food to toys to clothes, the electronics, you name it, they make it there, they export it to the America, to America, and we pay through the nose for it. And now Trump's trying to right that balance by bringing American manufacturing back and decreasing our dependence on this country that hates us. Your thoughts on Asia and China and how that all plays in here?
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Victor Davis Hanson
Well, traditionally, in these trade wars, the country that is running a big surplus is more vulnerable because their industry and their economy has been geared toward mercantileism. And that's true, especially of China. The second thing is there's going to be a lot of opportunistic countries, Vietnam in particular, that are going to come to us and say, we can do what China's doing to you and we will give you a better deal. We'll have reciprocal tariffs with you. But if you go after China, we're here and they're going to pop up. It's kind of like usual chairs. If the music goes off, everybody wants a chair. Once he starts to do these deals, a lot of countries will say, if I don't cut a deal with them, I'll be the last one to get into the American market. And so China is vulnerable in that aspect. They also have 300,000 students here. We don't have hardly any there. They are buying hundreds of thousands of farmland in strategically located places. The FBI, CIA has estimated that 1%, and that was very generous of students and people from China. On green cards are actively engaged in espionage. That could be three or four thousand people. So my point is this is that they see us as naive and as ripe for exploitation in 360 degree thinking. If Trump gets into a tiff with him as he is now, he has all sorts of levers. He could say to China tomorrow, we're restricting the number of Chinese students that are coming to the United States by 100,000. They would go ballistic and so would the universities who are using those and charging them 110% as a way of cash to subsidize a lot of the things they shouldn't be doing. So he levers, he could say that tomorrow that the Chinese cannot buy land in the United States, especially farmland within a vicinity of a military base. He, he could really clamp down on patent copyright theft, military exchanges, some of our allies have exchanges with China which they appropriate American technology. So they think that we are completely dependent on them and we are in the short term, but on the long term, their entire growth has been predicated on American magnanimity. And they know that. And you know, getting back to Wall street, we were sold this, Megan, by the Clinton admin, the George Bush administration, the Obama administration, that the more laxity and deference that you gave China, the more that they would rack up surpluses, become affluent, create a middle class consumer class, get plugged in globalization, have their students in western universities, then they would liberalize and then they would become a constitutional society and join the family of nations. That never happened. They used this asymmetrical relationship with Europe and us to make a lot of money, to build a lot of weapons, to bully and their enemies and create the Silk Road Belt and Road mercantile empire. And all as a way of dethroning the United States. So they have no goodwill among Americans and they're much more vulnerable than everybody.
- [24:15]
Megyn Kelly
Thinks we or watching. You know, the usual suspects, for the most part, beat up on Trump. There are a few outliers, but what I am gleaning is that some of the people who are defecting from Trump on this plan, or just giving him time to see how it works, are people who are extremely heavily invested in the market. You know, it's like, okay, I get it, you're not his priority right now. He wants you to benefit too, eventually. But right now he's doing something that he thinks long term could help the bottom half of the country, but they're not used to that. Victor, you know, I've been following Bill Ackman's X feed and he Actually he had a post about you tweeting directly to you saying you made a compelling case for the tariff strategy but that you had one issue incorrect. He claimed that Trump, he describes the Trump tariffs as reciprocal and proportional to these other nations and what they've assessed on us. In actuality, the Trump tariffs were set at levels substantially above and in many cases at a multiple of the counterparty countries tariff levels. And goes on as Bill Ackman tends to do with a very, very long post.
- [25:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I don't think it's the way you calibrate whether it's reciprocal or not. So I think most of them are reciprocal.
- [25:35]
Megyn Kelly
Well, I know what you mean because I mean there are some countries who, they don't have a tariff on our goods necessarily, but we're just not allowed to sell our cars there. They've, they've created such a, like a green scheme that keeps us out that it's 100% tariff.
- [25:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
You know, we, we, I can tell you from agriculture, we dip chickens because we don't want people putting a whole chicken on the counter for more than 24 hours. So we dip them in chlorine tinged water. European does not want, Europe's don't. What they say, oh, we're going to make a law, chlorine is too deadly. Or the Australians say in 2003 we, one Canadian cow came across the border with mad cows. So we're going to ban all beef. And they did until 2019 and then even after that they made it difficult. All of that we can do in a round two. But I do think it's parody. I live in a very poor community and when I go to the supermarket people will come up and talk. Mostly Mexican American people. And I can tell you that not one person the last week has mentioned the stock market. All they have talked about is trade, trade and jobs, jobs, jobs. And These are the 50% who account for 1%, 50% of the country. That accounts for 1% of the market capitalization value in Wall Street. But that's not the people who are reporting. That's not the people who are weighing in. That's not the people who, and I think people. And when they say reciprocity, that's what I was getting to earlier. The first thing they'll say is they would say I talked to four or five people and they said is it true that Mexico has 170 billion trades? That's not fair. Is it true that Canada has 101? Yes. That's all people care about. They don't Want to have inordinate. They don't want to be the bully. They do. They would either like zero tariffs or tit for tat. And if Trump can stick to that, he will not only get a lot of foreign investment and change of attitude, but he will get the overwhelming support of the American people. But if he gets into all of this stuff that we just talked about, which is valid and legitimate, but if he does it in round one, then people are gonna come. Well, Trump's. I think the Wall Street Journal runs almost every day. Trump is lying and not reciprocal or that is a losing argument at this stage.
- [27:52]
Megyn Kelly
Well, just to finish the point on Bill, So then by, by Sunday at 5pm he called for a 90 day pause in the Terrace. So first he was, okay, I disagree with Victor a little, but he said, we have to help Trump succeed is the least we can do. Then by Sunday at 5pm the earlier exchange was Saturday. He called for a 90 day pause. We've gotta pause it. We've gotta pause it. The President's losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe. This is not what we voted for. Gotta call a timeout. Then he followed up by saying, if you haven't noticed by now, I speak the truth, regardless of the consequences to me personally or what other people think. Then by Sunday night, he was taking shots at Howard Lutnick, saying, I just figured out why he's indifferent to the stock market and the economy crashing. He and Caner Fitzgerald, which he runs, are long bonds, meaning they profit when the economy implodes. It's a bad idea to pick a Secretary of Commerce whose firm is leveraged. Long fixed income and irreconcilable conflict of interest. By Monday morning, he was saying he had been unfair to Howard Lutnick. I don't think he's pursuing his self interest. I'm sure he's doing the best he can for the country. I'm just frustrated watching what I believe to be a major policy error. Okay, so what? With all due respect to Bill, I mean, I've seen this from quite a few very heavily invested people. They're, they're against this because they're watching their own fortune or the fortune of their company go up and down precipitously. They, they see these massive falls and they want to stop it. And I get that. But of course, you know, waiting it out long term and letting things settle is what every investment advisor tells you to do, but separate. And apart from that, they don't understand that this isn't about helping the Bill Ackmans of the world. It just isn't. And Republicans in particular are used to a president who is devoted to helping their pocketbooks. It goes back to the wisdom of my nana who lived to be 101. And when she saw I was working at Fox News and I was saying certain things on certain policies and starting to sound more right wing, she said Republicans, she goes, we're, we're Republicans are for the rich. We're not rich, we're Democrats. Right. That's, that was my nana's Wisdom, born in 1915, and she wasn't wrong. And I think there's still a very large portion of the party that is used to that being the basic approach.
- [30:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
Absolutely.
- [30:19]
Megyn Kelly
When they're.
- [30:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
I grew up in the Democratic. I, I grew up in a Democratic. All my siblings are Democrats. And what I was told was the Republicans, all they care about are capital gains tax and privatizing Social Security. That's what I was told. And Trump comes along and for the first time he has. It's not what he said, it's what he did. He recaptured the middle class. You look at every statistic data point from the 2024 election. He redefined American politics. The Democrats are the party of the professional and wealthy and subsidized poor. And he just, he wiped out the Democrats in middle class voting. And that. And this is the reason why. And that's why he hasn't really, he hasn't taken a Wall street hit of the same magnitude in his polls because As I said, 50% of the people won't have 1% of the value of the market.
- [31:14]
Megyn Kelly
Well, on that point, on that point, here's, let me just play this down by. It's for, it's Scott Bessant, our Treasury Secretary, who sat down with Tucker last week and spoke to that a bit. Here it is.
- [31:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
We have President Trump's previous term when everyone said none of this was going to work. Oh, the China terrorists are going to do this. They're going to cause inflation. They didn't. This is going to happen to working. It's going to be bad for working class Americans. Well, guess what, working class Americans that hourly workers did better than supervisory workers. The bottom 50% of households, their net worth increase faster than the top 10% of households. And look, I'm not happy with what's going on in the market today, but the distribution of equities across households. The top 10% of Americans own 88% of equities, 88% of the stock market. The next 40% owns 12% of the stock market, the bottom 50 has debt, they have credit card bills, they rent their homes, they have auto loans and we've got to give them some relief.
- [32:26]
Megyn Kelly
And that top 10%, Victor, as you know, includes all of the Acela media, all these anchors on cnn, all these op ed writers for the Wall Street Journal. That's. Those are the, in the 88%. They are the ones who own the market. Yeah.
- [32:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
And, and because they're running around like a chicken with their head cut off. And as somebody who lived on a farm, I mean, chickens really do run off. It's something to see my youth.
- [32:52]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, boy.
- [32:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
And that's, this is why I use that metaphor, because they remind me of when my grand Swedish grandfather would say cut the chicken's head off and then see this thing flop around.
- [33:03]
Megyn Kelly
Oh my God.
- [33:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
And that's what they're. Yeah. Then they've lost their mind is what I'm saying. And if they would just take a deep breath, breath. And they would just say a job growth shocked everybody. It was up 100,000 jobs that they said would not happen. The inflation rate is looking good. Oil prices are down. Energy are down 10% on the foreign market. It looks like Iran is not going to be the disruptor that everybody said would happen. It looks like there is some pathway that to Ukraine, a ceasefire. It looks like the Red Sea is navigable again. It looks like the southern border is calm. It looks like we can deal with Canada and Mexico even though they have these huge surpluses with us. It looks like if you look at Trump, what he's talking, extending tax cuts, deregulate. It looks like the first term in which the market went up 60%. If they would just look at that and calm down. I think, I don't know what they're trying to do, if they're trying to do a 2008 or 1929 psychological meltdown, but they look ridiculous. They look ridiculous. And you know what's going to happen if Trump cuts all of these deals on this investment and you and I have the same conversation nine months from now and there's 4 trillion investment, then they're going to say, I was with Trump the whole way. I tried to calm people. It reminds me so much of all the people that swore that Christopher Steele was a genius or the, the laptop. They just knew it was cooked up in a Moscow headquarters or that Joe Biden was fit in a fiddle. Joe Scarbo, you know, I've seen this guy, he's never been better. And you know, I, I got a Call on election night and they from a very good journalist and said, oh Victor, I think collapse this Des Moines poll is the most reliable. He is down three point. If he's down in a red state like Iowa, he's lost. And I said this is bogus. Just, he won that state by 12 points. So there that, that class of this elite that owns stock, it's synonymous also with the people who follow every breath in the media and academia and the corporate boardroom and the legal community. But they're not, they're not the most, they're not Americans and not like most Americans is what I mean to say. The majority of Americans don't think like they do. And I'm not making fun of them, I'm just saying they get touchy, they get edgy, they get impulse, they're kind of, I don't know what the word is, but I drive over to the coast, you know, each week on the Stanford campus and by the time I there 48 hours and I come back to central rural, agricultural California, central Valley, it's like, wow, I just went to Mars and I'm now back on Earth. Because they, they're not representative of most.
- [36:11]
Megyn Kelly
I know what you mean. No, I think about it all the time. Because now of course I've been in media for a long time and we have some nice trappings surrounding us as a family. But we used to live in this three bedroom duplex that was in an okay area of town in this small little town in Westchester, you know. No, like a one car garage was fine. I'm not saying we were poor, but we were, we didn't have a lot of money, that's for sure. And we were absolutely happy. We were so happy as a family. And we drive by that all the, all the time. And our kids remember living in that house when they were toddlers. And I always say like, you remember what life was like there. You don't need all this money, you don't need a swimming pool, you don't need this stuff. In order to live a really happy life, you need family, you need friends, you need something ideally that occupies your time on a daily basis that makes you feel like you're contributing to society. But I don't, I just, I can't help but feel that there's an underlying like missing value here. In the rush to condemn his plan by the so called elites, it's like, could you just hold on and come to terms with a moment like what if, what if you did have a massive wipeout on Wall street that didn't rebound. I don't believe for a minute that Trump will leave it there. He, too, loves wealth. He loves wealth. He loves rich people. He surrounds himself with rich people because he so admires them. And what they. There's no way he's going to tell the rich base, you're screwed. But, like, let's just imagine a world in which they do get a little screwed and they actually lose a fair amount of money and the lower half of the country rises up. I just think there's like, this piece of the people covering this, the ones who are having the meltdowns, that cannot imagine a life without their immense wealth.
- [38:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I, I mean, I, I can give you examples. I, I have. I live in a 150-year-old house that was falling apart. So I had, you know, people work on it to rewatch. So Juan was one of the electricians. He had long Covid. He could hardly walk. I said, juan, how long have you been working? He said, I never took a day off. I can't. He was, he was an. A genius. When you looked at this old house, how he figured out circuit panels and everything. And then there was Jose, and he was a painter. And I said, you don't look good today. He said, I have a kidney infection. I have to go up for injections that you see every weekend. And I said, how do you take the fumes? The fumes must add to your kidney. What? He said, what's my alternative? And he said, I have a mortgage on my house. I have car payments. California, I can't even afford 550 for diesel. That's what everybody goes through. And they're not melting down right now. And you know what else? The people who are melting down did not melt down when whole towns were wiped out. They didn't care because they were offshoring and outsourcing and getting returns on investments that beyond their wildest dreams. When the legal class, the academic class, the investor class, the corporate class, the media class woke up in the 70s and 80s and said, oh, my God, the market is not 280 million Americans. For my skills, there's 7 billion consumers. And I have a skill set, or I have a service, or I have goods, or I have the know how to capture that 7 billion. But as far as those muscular classes that assemble, manufacture, farm, mineral, whatever, well, we have a special vocabulary for them. As Joe Biden said, you go down on a mine, we close it, you'll learn how to code or program Hillary. Oh, you know, coal's off, you know, we're going to put you and the mine out of business. Okay. And then we had that language of disparagement for the same people, but now they were tagged with Trump. They were deplorable, they were irredeemable for Obama, they were clingers for Biden, they were chumps, they were dregs and garbage. So that's who they are. And I'm not just saying this to say it's okay to see the market go down. I think the market is going to settle down. I think it's going to digest this. And if these countries start to come in and think I gotta come in before I'm the left out. And Trump is wise enough to take the deal that results in either a no tariff or semi reciprocal and not worry, as I said earlier about the past and then just says we're going to discuss the issue about health or gimmicks and that later this economy is going to tick off. I think interest rates are already going to go down and.
- [40:59]
Megyn Kelly
Right, exactly. Trump's pushing for that.
- [41:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's going to, it's going to be, my only worry is that there's going to be something like a Chinese bioweapon or Covid 2.0 or something. But I think he's got enough people around him that are brilliant and they are determined and they're addressing all at once budget deficits, trade deficits, long term debt. And it's something to, I'll tell you.
- [41:26]
Megyn Kelly
What, here's, here's a little bit of comfort for all the people who are part of the Acela media and the 1% and all that Trump, there were some grumblings out of the Trump White House that he might raise taxes on the rich or at least let them raise. In other words, when the Trump tax cuts expire later this year, he is expected through reconciliation to put them back into place for people. And there was some talk that maybe he would exclude the richest Americans from that in order to pay for his no taxes on tips promise and his no taxes on Social Security promise. And I don't know whether that, whether he's going to do that or not. But I would say if the market continues to bathe in uncertainty and volatility between now and then, you have a much higher chance of Trump not letting your tax cuts expire as a rich person because he's just not, he's not going to completely thumb the middle finger at the, you know, wealthier half of his base. He's just not. It's, that's his whole family. It's every single friend he has. It's him. And he hates taxes and he hates paying the government for things. So it's like just let's use our heads, take a deep breath, calm down, okay? And that applies triple to the leftists, Victor, because not only are they lamenting what's happening with the stock market, even though they were pro tariff their whole lives long. The left has been pro tariff for a long, long time. There's a soundbite of Nancy Pelosi from 1996 making the rounds. I don't know if you've seen it, but she's totally pro tariff. Actually, we have it. Here it is.
- [43:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
How far does China have to go?
- [43:04]
Megyn Kelly
How much more repression, how big a.
- [43:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
Trade deficit and loss of jobs for.
- [43:10]
Megyn Kelly
The American worker and how much more dangerous proliferation has to exist before members of this House of Representatives will say I will not endorse the status quo. Right now we have a $34 billion trade deficit with China. The 1995 figure, it will be over $40 billion for 1996. That the average US MFN tariff on Chinese goods coming into the United States.
- [43:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
Is 2%, whereas the average Chinese MFM.
- [43:41]
Megyn Kelly
Tariff on US goods going into China is 35%. Is that reciprocal? The US allows China to flood our markets with 30 a third of their exports, by the way. So she said it was a $34 billion trade deficit then, now it's like 250 billion.
- [44:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think Trump should really call her up and ask she'll if he can hire her and she can do that again and update it.
- [44:07]
Megyn Kelly
She can really explain to people. Yeah, I just suddenly Richter, they're all about free trade. The left suddenly all about free trade. They don't like tariffs now because it's Trump's plan. And of course they don't like Trump and they don't like Elon. And they're having like severe meltdowns coast to coast. Not only in the protests that we saw over this weekend, completely astroturfed. Right? Like hands off. What does it even mean? I don't even know what it means. Hands off. I guess they don't want Elon doing anything. No, no. Cutting government waste, no finding efficiencies, none of that. And then we get this. The Federalist producing a survey, it was done by the Network of Contagion Research Institute NCRI in partnership with Rutgers University that finds 55% of self identified leftists say killing Trump is justifiable. They go on to say that this is about something more than just the desire to kill Trump. There is a broader assassination culture that appears to be emerging within segments of the U.S. public on the extreme left, quote, these attitudes are not fringe. They reflect an emergent assassinating assassination culture grounded in far left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse. The reports found widespread justification for lethal violence, including assassination among younger, highly online and ideologically left aligned users. The report points to disturbingly high levels of support for political violence, particularly against Trump and Elon Musk. Your thoughts on that?
- [45:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I don't want to be accusatory, but when you have the president United States telling donors that they got to put a bullseye on Trump as Biden did, or you've got people like Jasmine Crockett saying they've got to take, right in the middle of all this hysteria, take Elon down. Or even back earlier when Chuck Schumer led a throng of abortion protesters to the gates of the Supreme Court while it was in session and said Gorschitz Kavanaugh, you reap the wind, you're going to reap the whirlwind. You're not going to know what's going to hit you and you mainstream it. And then you look at the recent act of violence, the ideological rantings, such as they were of the two foiled assassins, plus the Steve Scalise shooting and the trans thing, you're getting the impression that a lot of really stupid, crazy people on the fringes believe that if they were to come out and commit violence against Trump or Elon or some major person like that, they wouldn't be ostracized, they would be canonized. And that is a very dangerous narcotic. If they, that language of our elite, they've got to stop it. And we're already, you know this. If, if anybody on the right on January 6 had started a key, let's say a Mercedes or something around the Capitol, they would have gone, they would be in jail today. And, and the swatting, you know, I was gone and I've lived here my whole life and I have never had more than one county sheriff come up. Three county sheriffs came out when I was gone. My wife was here alone. She was terrified. They came out, they were armed. They went through the whole property. We have 40 acres. Yes, they were worried because somebody they said had called up and said that there was a armed danger here. And they do that. So every, they do that a lot. Yeah, it's happened and it's conservatives and you start getting email the last seven or eight months and it's not. You're an idiot. I thank you. It's be careful if I ever see you. And that kind of email. And a lot of people are getting that. And all of that is this climate that we have no in the left wing mind. We don't have the House, we don't have the Senate, we don't have the White House, we don't have the Supreme Court. We lost the popular vote, the electoral. All the issues that we're for are only 20%. The Trump people are on the right side of 70, 80% of all these issues. So what are we going to do? We're going to go take to the street, we're going to swat, we're going to demonstrate, we're going to, we're going to have a few nuts that'll take out a United Health Executive or stuff. It's really firebomb Teslas. Exactly. It's been encouraged by. There hasn't really been one major Democratic politician who got up and said, this is horrible what you guys are doing to Tesla. Instead, you have people like Tim Waltz that looks out and brags that he's driving down the value of his own public portfolio, as you know, governor of Minnesota by Tesla stock dropping.
- [49:14]
Megyn Kelly
So it's outrageous.
- [49:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
They could stop it if they want it.
- [49:18]
Megyn Kelly
Let me give you the numbers. They say those who identified, who self identified as left of center, 48% say they can see that it's at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. 55% said the same about murdering President Trump. 55% of those who simply identify as left of center think it is somewhat justified to murder Donald Trump. 55. That's sick. There's something deeply wrong inside the Democrat Party. This is not how Republicans talked about Joe Biden. Certainly not 55% of the Republican Party would be out there justifying murder. It's, it's, there's something wrong. There's a sickness. There's a cancerous illness bubbling up inside of their party. These, you know, the assassination attempts on Trump, the burning of the Tesla facilities, the firebombing of the charging stations. They're not one offs the praise of Luigi Mangione. Luigi Mangione. It's all connected. This is not. There's a theme because it is thematic in describing the left today. I have to take a quick break. There's so much more with vdh and we'll pick it up right after this. Let's talk about that car you own but don't use, the one you're paying to keep registered and insured. That's just sitting out there taking up space out front and it's not doing anybody any good. You have a choice. You can give Cars for kids, that's cars with a K a call and have them take care of it for you. Just give them the info and they will come to you as soon as the next day and take that car off your hands at no cost to you. Even better, they will turn that car into funds to help children. So visit cars with a k4kids.org mk that's cars with a k and then the number four to donate. Or just call cars for kids directly at 1-877-cars4kids and they will get that car picked up quickly. Plus you can get a tax deduction and a vacation voucher. These guys have been around for 30 years. You've seen the ads, right? They've done this over a million times. Call now or head on over to Kars K, a R s, the numeral 4 and then kids.org MK right now to get this done. Carsforkids.org MK that's cars with a K. For 140 years, MultiCare has been in Washington prioritizing long term solutions, partnering with local communities and expanding access to care. Together we're building a healthier future. Learn more@mycare.org welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show. On Friday night we received more than 1,000 pages of writings by the Nashville school shooter. Chilling journals that local officials in Nashville did not want you to see. The FBI sent the files to the Megyn Kelly show as well as to Congress. On the heels of a report from the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department last week that was severely lacking. Our team reviewed the documents created by the perpetrator of the March 2023 shooting that tragically took the lives of three children and three adults. The three children were third graders, age 9. The documents provide clear insight into the depraved mind of this killer. Critical context that was excluded from the 48 page report released last week and that has been withheld from the public for two years. At one point about a year plus ago, Steven Crowder got his hands on three pages, which was great. It was something. Three pages out of a thousand. They have been withholding for years, saying it's somehow too much for us to see. We've seen every other shooter's manifesto, rantings, writings. Why not this one? We here at the Megyn Kelly show do not name school shooters. But due to the nature of this news, we will mention that the Shooter's given birth first name is Audrey. However, in the years leading up to the horrific act, she. She instead went by the name Aiden and used he him pronouns. On our AM Update show this morning. That's another show we're doing now. It's 15 minute news update for you in the mornings. You can get it on YouTube.com megan kelly or our podcast feed. We delved into some of the writings and we will continue here. We'll repeat a couple, but we will add because the report from the Nashville police barely touched on the full scope and breadth of what was contained, the killer's struggles with her gender, her obsession with gender identity, alarming racial animus toward herself as a white person, and how those factors contributed to the act that she committed that day. Why do you think they excluded all of this? Why are those two things too hot to touch? The families of the victims do not wish for this information to be made public. We understand that. But we are sharing a sampling of necessary context omitted by the Nashville police and that has been hidden for far too long from the public. The public has a right to know. As a matter of safety in preventing more of these, the FBI has given us permission to say what is written, but not to show the actual documents. The journals contain many pages expressing the shooter's belief that she is a man and was born in, quote, the wrong body. In One entry, dated April 12, 2022, this is a year before the shooting, titled Let Kids Choose Their Sex, the killer writes, quote, how dare God hand me a training bra when I didn't know WTF it was as a kid. I hated it much more. I'd like to dispose my vagina. We should all choose our. Our gender. Now, keep in mind, as you hear just these samplings, I'm going to read you that what the Nashville police represented was that her trans ideology, her gender confusion, had absolutely nothing to do with the horrific act she took from. How do you. Why. How do you glean that this stuff is all over her writings? She's clearly deeply disturbed by it, but somehow that's the part you can excise from her motivation. Wrong. In another, she writes, quote, how does it feel to grow up the gender you were born with and are comfortable and happy with? Well, I don't know that feeling. I never did. You senseless people that you don't know WTF comes out of your mouth telling me I'm female. Female pronouns make me feel like I want to die. Especially called woman. I never was. Ever. I hate being in a woman's Body need to die, but has had nothing to do with the act she took at Covenant School. In an entry marked June 6, 2021, the killer writes, quote, eric and Dylan. That's a reference to the Columbine killers were gods. All those little dumb shits in other school shootings during the 1990s were not gods, just cowards. Even if maybe they had a reason, they left it a mystery. I realized that after knowing Columbine, I immediately became attached to it. Not just the notorious outcome, but the preceding evidence leading up to it. I feel I am the reincarnation of Dylan Klebold. My thoughts of depression are forever linked to his and my experience as well. In a diary entry shortly after that, the killer writes about how epic it would have been if she had shot up her own high school. Quote, kill all the white kids. Kill my own race. F. Yes, destroy all the white people who are teachers. Let all the black kids go. Unless if I don't like you. About a month later, the killer writing several pages about why black pain is different from, quote, white pain. Quote, Black people were given fate, given nothing, while white people get power in the White House, have all the privileges, even to white people like me. White people are born with privileges, black people aren't. Black people always had to earn and fight for their needs and wants. It was like that in history. It's like that now. The killer goes on. Quote, being white sucks, but being black is so cool. Black people should rule, white people should fall. Every white person who lived and died. I hate you all. July of 2022, the killer writes about wanting another therapy session but not having the money. Quote, I need to have another session with my therapist. I need her. It's been two months. I don't deny needing help. I loathe the reality of my fate as an autistic dependent 27 year old. Later on in the journal, three pages that appear to have been printed and affixed into the journal titled in all caps, I hate the American people. The killer writing, America was doomed from the very beginning. Quote, America started with slavery and white people ruling land. Black people were objects and owned by white landowners and farmers. From the start of July 4, 1776. There are no African American rights. Slavery is still happening. It goes on. Quote, Government agencies have all the freedom. White people who want to take away instead of adding more. What do you call that? America's not the land of the free. It's a land full of idiots. It will only get worse in this country. Not near enough. Gods like me, America and Its people all destined to soon be destroyed. The entry signed, quote, I hate you all, Aiden. The journals outline more ideas about how animals are better than people, about how she hates life, she hates money, and a wish list for the day of the attack involving hopes of, quote, lots of blood, lots of victims, 20 plus dead. Sick, sick stuff. Back with me now, Victor Davis Hansen. I'm sorry, Victor, but nothing in there makes it too dangerous to release. This is apart from the fact that it's completely in line in the ways that I just read with what leftist schools and leftist thought is pushing right now in American children. There's nothing especially controversial about this versus manifestos we've seen in other cases. So why wasn't this released for 2 years either by the local authorities in Nashville or by the FBI under Joe Biden? And why, when the Nashville cops finally released some 48 page summary of the thousand pages last week, did they specifically dissect the gender ideology? Is not, not a causal relationship with the act she committed, not, not the gender, not the race craziness she'd suffered. This wasn't a racial crime, but I'm just saying all the inconvenient sicknesses get excised as the reasons. And it took Trump's FBI to submit this thing to us and also to Congress for us to have a clear airing of what was behind this woman's sick mind and what caused her to do this horrendous act.
- [60:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I mean, why wasn't it released? Because under the Obama and Biden administrations and even earlier, they established this principle that there's a binary, that it's kind of a neo Marxist binary, and on one side are oppressors, and on one side are oppressed. And once you find yourself self declared on the oppressed side, then they feel that there's opportunities, exemptions that are accorded to you. Sometimes they're at the university and they're trivial. You know, you get a safe space, you get to pick the race of your roommate, you get a special graduation. But then there's been a movement, we see it in the UK a lot, that penalties and we see it in San Francisco. Fines will be predicated on sexual orientation, gender, race. So this person, I shouldn't say this person, the people who dealt with this case were aware of that and they felt that they would not release the stuff because she was part of this protected group. And if you were to attack this prep, not even attack it, if you were to treat this special person who has exemptions the way you would any other person Then the powers that be would come down on you and they've created this climate of fear. The other thing about it is everything she said you can find in either the school of education or the general campus. I could go into the Stanford bookstore and look at what is assigned and pull out a book within five seconds that had every one of those tropes. She talked about evil white people, black people are still slaves, et cetera, et cetera. That is inculcated and absorbed, not just on the campus, but it drifts off in all these different ways. That's where our teachers are taught in the schools of education. This student probably had a class with one of those types of teachers or the general night classes. It's not just Harvard, Yale, Stanford. It permeates the community college, the high school, that Kate. Dude, you know, can I just jump in there?
- [62:30]
Megyn Kelly
Can I just jump in there? Because I read this before, but my friend's son, elementary school son, I think he was in fourth grade when this was written. It could be third, third or fourth. And she pulled him from this school and it was the same school we pulled our kids from. But he was asked to write something up in school and the question was, what would you teach people about, I guess, if you could teach. And he wrote the following. It's short. The event I would teach people about is slavery. The reason I think it's important to teach people about this event is so then we can see that America was built on black people, not on whites. Behind the scenes, it's all black. The reason we have picked crops, built houses and America is because black people did it all. The only thing white people did was take credit for the work they didn't do. As a white person, I stand with black people all the way. This, this is a sweet boy. And he has absolutely no animus at all inside of him. But they're curating it there. He's clearly been spoon fed this same diet. And he had loving parents who said, oh no you don't.
- [63:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
And he knows there's two themes he also is aware of or he reflects. One is that he will be rewarded in some ways for mouthing or repeating this orthodoxy. And second, he's ignorant. So when he talks about white this, he has no idea what the Battle of Shiloh was or Gettysburg or 700,000 people were wiped out over the question of slavery. He has no idea what it was like on Okinawa or what it was like on Iwo Jima or at the Bulge where people died to give this country its preserve its freedom. And this self critical, always re examining nature of the United States. He has no idea of that. He has no idea. I can tell you that for 20 years at a state college as a professor, when I wanted to send a student to graduate school from a kind of a state college that didn't have a great reputation, the calls that I would get from the admissions committee in law, in medicine, in PhD programs is do you have anybody who is African American or Hispanic? And I did a lot because I was in a minority community. But if I had a white male, they would say don't even, we do not want a white male from Cal State Fresno. That's. I had that. I'm not saying that that balances out anything but the last 50 years, this, since the civil rights movement took a different direction, we have had institutionalized and exempt biases and prejudice and set asides to try to level the playing field, etc. Etc. And to just forget all of that and your ignorance. That's why we have people who do these things. Nobody ever cross examines them. They're narcissistic and I, I hate to say it, they're arrogant because they don't ever feel that they have to hear a opposite point of view or they're too lazy to go out and just pick up any book in the library that would give them a different take on things.
- [65:52]
Megyn Kelly
And they're filling these, these kids heads with hate. This Audrey's head was filled with hate. Self loathing, loathing of her country, loathing of her race, loathing of her gender. I mean it, it was severe. And while she did wind up going to see her therapist, there you heard a reference to it and the mother urged the therapist to see her and they came up with a plan to take away her guns because she was obsessing over killing her own father. She wound up going and getting a gun anyway and that's what she used to kill all these poor little students and their teachers in Nashville, Tennessee. And I, you know, I asked myself, why would the Nashville police officers be trying to scrub the record for us? You know, like I, I kind of get Biden's FBI, but I don't really get. But you know, Kamala Harris won. Nashville, Nashville. Just because it's in Tennessee doesn't make it right wing or Republican. It's not. And you know, I think there is a, there's probably somewhat of a shared instinct to take out the most incendiary social hot buttons from the full explanation of what was in this person's head. You know, what Maybe, maybe in some people's mind they're totally unrelated. I don't see how you make that argument. But the point is it's not for the Nashville police to scrub the record of the evidence of what she was obsessing over before she took the lives of six innocents. That is not okay. That's not what we've been doing in these school shootings. And I say good for Trump's FBI for being honest while trying to be respectful of the families. They didn't blast it everywhere, but, but we have to have an honest account of when these things happen.
- [67:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean all of the rewards, psychological and career rewards are on one side and everybody makes the necessary adjustments anywhere geographically in Los Angeles. Why would a black firewoman say that if she goes into a burning house and sees a white male and she's supposed to pick him up and maybe cannot, then it's his fault for being in the wrong place? That would get you fired anywhere, but that would get you residents or maybe promoted. And the whole thing about. If you'd look at the autopsy of the LA fire, from the public works person to the assistant fire chief to the regular fire chief to the mayor to the deputy mayor, everybody was freelancing in creative ways to try to think up of a DEI woke angle that would draw attention to themselves and be self congratulatory performance art and lead to career enhancement. And that's the landscape we created. And everybody according to their station tries to fit in and, and we see it everywhere. And it, that it's illiberal, that it's contrary to the Constitution, that it's contrary to you, to the whole Enlightenment, nobody cares. They're ignorant.
- [68:55]
Megyn Kelly
And that's all the self hatred, the white hatred, the hatred of country, it's just, it's, it's all there. It's all there. I appreciate you walking through it with me. And again to the listening audience. You can check out the AM update for other recitations. It is not, as I pointed out on that show, our habit to read manifestos of these school shooters. I take no joy in repeating their thoughts and their crazed musings, but given what's been done in this case and how it's not available anywhere else, I felt we had no choice and it was the last responsible move to make on this. Anyway, moving on. Many of the same people who went through those types of adult educations or K through 12, even if they're younger, were out on the streets this weekend in protest of. I don't really understand to be honest, it's like the Cory Booker speech. No one really knows what exactly they're protesting. Just they want you to know they're angry. And hands off. Which seems like a better slogan for the MeToo movement than whatever this hit. What do you mean, hands off? She's wearing the Statue of Liberty outfit. Or is that a he? Forgive me, madam. It's difficult to tell. And there was plenty of that weird mania on the streets at these protests, too. Victor, I'm going to give you one that has it all. Here's a taste of what we heard from these I don't know how many groups. 150 groups at various protests. The hands off protests this weekend. Take a listen to Sat 8. I am black. I am Filipino, Japanese, second generation. I mean, I. And I'm a disabled trans man, but I'm also a Medicaid patient. Oh, God. I'm also a person who uses food stamps. I'm also a person who has been through houselessness in this country. I am also a person who has gone through substance use and addiction. And most of all, I'm. I am a patient of Planned Parenthood. Oh, my Lord. What? I am everything that Donald Trump and Elon Musk want to erase. I'm gluten free. I mean, she hit it all.
- [71:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. What? The thing about all of them is they never present any evidence. So she says, I am everything he wants to erase. And this is what he said and this is what he did. That proves my point. It's the same thing with a. Donald Trump is a fascist. Chris Matthews the other day was saying, no, he's. Just tell us exactly what he's done and if it's any different than any other president and then make your case. And you know, I was always taught by my fifth grade composition teacher that when you're writing or speaking, she would say, now, Victor, remember to limit the first person I to one or two times. All these people have one thing in common. She says, I am. I am. I am. I am. It wasn't about the. It wasn't about the message. It was about me, me, me. And that's something that we forget sometimes. This entire therapeutic left wing movement is predicated on narcissism. And I. I don't really care what their stories are. I want to hear their ideas and their. And whether they'll stand antithesis. But it's always about me, me, me, me. When I was.
- [72:23]
Megyn Kelly
Let me give you one more. This person's playing right into your hands. Watch this. This is from the D.C. rally 7.
- [72:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
My name is Graysa Martinez Rosas. I am an immigrant. I am undocumented, unafraid, queer and unashamed.
- [72:41]
Megyn Kelly
I, I, I. And all of the proper boxes are checked. You're exactly right.
- [72:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
What would be so hard to say? I came here illegally. I have mastered the English language. I obviously have some means. And I took a couple of weeks and filled out some forms and got a green card. And then I decided I wanted to get citizenship and I applied for it. What is so hard about that? Instead of just saying, I came to the country, I found out I was illegal, I didn't do anything about it. And if anybody wants to enforce the law of my host. But again, it's this arrogance. It's all about me, me, me and what I have to do and what you have to do for me. And a lot of people who listen to that just say, I don't have to do anything for you. I follow the law. I can't pick and choose to say, you know what? I am Victor Hansen and I have had this happen to me and I had that happen. And I don't have to go 60 miles an hour in a 50 mile hour zone. I can just do what I want. And that's what people are tired of. It's this therapeutic, narcissistic self infatuation.
- [73:50]
Megyn Kelly
The meltdown, though, about Trump's alleged excesses. Elon's a different story. You know, we'll see. But the Trump alleged successes are interesting to me. They're interesting to me because people who you and I both know and like are joining in on some of that. You know, your old pals and my pals too at National Review have been very critical of Trump. The deportations, taking people to the El Salvadorian prison, his crackdown on a couple of law firms saying, you know what, you're no longer the federal government doesn't want to do business with you, Perkins Coie, you who unleashed through Hillary campaign spying and Russiagate on me. I don't actually think the federal government should be doing business with you. And same for you, Paul Weiss, who rushed to hire the one guy who made it his mission to prosecute me when he worked for Alvin Bragg. And when Alvin Bragg wouldn't prosecute me, wrote a whole book about how I should be prosecuted. And ultimately Tish James took up the mantle and sued me and got an award for $500 million bankrupting or threatening to my company. Trump said, you know what? I don't think the federal government should be in business with these two particular Law firms, well, my friends at National Review who are honest brokers, wrote very, very critical pieces saying that's basically a bill of attainder and that, you know, we're shipping off people without, to a, to a jail, without having them tried and convicted on criminal charges. And so that's what they're talking about. They. This is fascism. This is not us. And this guy, I don't lump in with the National Review crew, but he is a lawyer. He is definitely a Trump hater. And he is starting to lose it over in the case of Paul Weiss, that one of those law firms, they bent the knee to Trump and said, we'll do whatever you want us to do. Please don't do this to us. And Trump got his way. And half of Paul Weiss is just apoplectic now. They're very sad. Paul Weiss, one of the founding partners, two grandchildren wrote this scathing letter, like, our grandpa would never have wanted this. Shame on you. And here is George Conway, formerly married to Kellyanne Conway and a respected lawyer, along with Sarah Longwell, who I believe is also a lawyer and his partner on his podcast talking about the legal profession. And Trump sought to.
- [76:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
When I read that letter, I was just, I was really, I was just moved by it because it really conveyed everything. People want to stand up for something and, and I wanted, I, I wanted.
- [76:27]
Megyn Kelly
Them to know people are listening to them.
- [76:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
And it was good to know that people are listening to us. We're all in this together. And this is a fight for so much more than part profits for partner. This is a fight for democracy. This is a fight for the rule of law. And some people just don't give a.
- [76:49]
Megyn Kelly
And that makes me angry. You know, you join the legal profession.
- [76:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
And they hit you with.
- [76:54]
Megyn Kelly
I have a lot of really good friends who are lawyers.
- [76:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
They hit you with a lot of.
- [76:56]
Megyn Kelly
Like, this is a revered profession. You have a real role that you play in society. There are these invisible lines that you help maintain for the Constitution. And, and then to have everybody just act then like it doesn't matter at all.
- [77:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
Friends, bizarre houses.
- [77:14]
Megyn Kelly
You know, it's, it hurts literally in tears. But I heard none of that when they unleashed the Lawfare campaign against Trump. Victor, those norms don't count when we're summing up the norm breaking.
- [77:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
I would ask Mr. Conway, why do you think that? On November 18th of 2022, three things happened simultaneously. Nathan Wade, the paramore had led lead prosecutor of Fanny Willis's circus, was in the White House talking with the White House counsel and billing him the hours the same day Michael Cole Angelo left the DOJ under Merrick Garland and he had come there from working with Letita James. He left to go to work for Alvin Bragg. And third, on that same day, Joe Biden had Merrick Garland appoint Jack Smith the federal prosecutor. And why did they do that? Because they knew Donald Trump was going to announce his candidacy to run again. That happened all the time. All of that was lawfare. And Joe Biden was on record saying why wasn't he indicted after he left office? He said he had a regret about Merrick Garland because he didn't go after Jack Smith. Jack Smith didn't go after soon enough. Everybody knows that. They know the whole thing, that they, they staged the whole Mar A Lago raid to get 100 files out of taking 13,000 of them. It was 0.008% and they brought little tags to, to do it. And they messed it up and took an arranged photograph. 25 states tried to take him off the ballot and they knew that was illegal. Kevin Kleinsmith, one of the lawyers in the entire Russian collusion FBI lot, doctored and forged a document and he went before the, one of the judges involved in all of these and he got just nothing, no sentence at all compared to what the people who were, you know, parading around nonviolently on January 6th. So the whole legal system has been weaponized. Everybody knows that. And Donald Trump says, we're not going to do business with Perkins Coy. It's because they volunteered to be a paywall so that Hillary Clinton could get dirt on Donald Trump. So she had went through the deed, and then the DNC went through Perkins Coey, and then they went through Fusion GPS and then they hired Christopher Steele to make up 99% of that. And all Trump is saying that each one of you are culpable. And I wish a National review would just say, why are those 51 intelligence authorities that lied, Brennan Clapper, Panetta, who were the architects of it, along with Anthony Blinken and Mike Morale? Why don't they just say what happened to them? They pulled one of the greatest hoax right before the debate to arm Joe Biden with a lie. And they probably influenced some of the voting. 10 days later. Nothing happened to them. Nothing. So all we saw the last four years was a concentrated and often connected legal to warp the law. Warp the law. And if Donald Trump had just said, you know what? I'm tired, I'm not going to run for office, or if he had not been the candidate, it would not have happened. It was all aimed at one person of their hatred. And they thought that they had the moral and legal right to use a law for their own political purposes and there would be no consequences. And so far there hasn't been. Until Trump says, you know what? I'm not going to do business with you. Who abused your ethical and legal responsibilities.
- [80:59]
Megyn Kelly
Right? It's like Trump's not trying to throw these guys in jail. Trump's saying, these don't seem like respectable law firms to me. One what saw a man who tried to throw me in jail unjustly and said, that's the guy for us. Let's hire, let's run and hire him. That's one of the things that Paul Weiss did. And so they made this bed themselves. I mean, Paul Weiss is a very political firm. It's full of Democrats. They decided to get political. They understood that they might alienate someone like Donald Trump. They just didn't bank on him becoming president again and having power. And so I don't see anything wrong whatsoever with what Trump is doing to them. And I think they did the right thing in caving. And who gives two figs what the granddaughters of the founder thinks? They don't have to save the firm. The head of the firm has to save the firm and save the client base and of course save their fat cat salaries and their private school tuitions that they're paying. Like, he has to be practical about this because they made some very bad decisions prior to the moment Donald Trump did that. But George Conway will not cry about any of that. He will not cry about the weaponization against Donald Trump because he was for it.
- [82:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
So, I mean, what's even.
- [82:10]
Megyn Kelly
He was.
- [82:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
What's even worse is the bill of the when they, when the national view calls bill of attainder, there's only two examples that are clear cut. The New York State legislature passed with its Democratic majority, a law that said after Donald Trump was being investigated for tax returns and they passed a law that said, anybody who is being investigated currently for their tax account, we will turn over his state return commission. Then they passed. When E. Jean Carroll came forward and had all of those fantasies and fables, at the first ruling, it said, these are way past 30 years past the statute. And you know what? The same legislature passed a bill that said for the next 12 months, anybody who claims that they have a, that they were sexually assaulted has one year to file charges, no matter how long ago. There is no statute of limit that was aimed at Donald Trump. And they admitted.
- [83:09]
Megyn Kelly
And by the way, a Bill of attainder is where you, like a governmental body declares somebody guilty without a trial. There is no question that these two law firms did the things that Trump believes they did. It is not, it's not a mystery, it's not even something in dispute that the hiring of this employee either happened or didn't happen. It did happen. It's knowable. Perkins Coeys role in Russiagate is very well documented up and down the record. It's, it's known there's no need for a trial.
- [83:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
But it is.
- [83:39]
Megyn Kelly
It's not.
- [83:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
It isn't.
- [83:40]
Megyn Kelly
It's not. Guilt is a criminal matter either. Go ahead, Victor.
- [83:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
But it's not even a law. A bill of attainder says that you see, you post facto create and pass to the legislator a particular piece of legislation to go after what somebody did in the past. He's not doing any of that. He's just saying, I have choices to use all different types of law firms and I just don't want to use those because I feel they're unethical. It's not like the New York legislature deliberately thinking Donald Trump, he's now under investigation in two different. We are going to change the law to go after him for something he's already done. And that's what they did. And nobody at the National Review, where I work for 21 years, said a word.
- [84:24]
Megyn Kelly
And what do you. Well, I mean, they, they. I love National Review. I just want them to, I like.
- [84:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
I like National Review.
- [84:32]
Megyn Kelly
You can have the Bash piece. Definitely have a Bash piece. That's fine. But at a place like nr, we expect there to be a piece on the other side defense. Like half of the Republican Party is MAGA or loyal to Trump and then they're the establishment types. And what, you know, you can't just have. Thankfully, they did get John Yu on there recently to defend some of the Trump immigration actions. But they've been extremely hard on Trump with the tariffs and the immigration. And I did wanna ask you what you thought about the lawfare, Victor. I mean, it's every day. Just now, just as we were coming to air, we got this, the D.C. circuit Court of Appeals, I believe it was an en banc panel, meaning all of them came and sat. They basically said these two leaders of federal boards who are fired by Trump, one was on the NLR and one was on something called the Merit Systems Protection Board. He fired them. They were appointed by Biden and they sued, saying, you don't have the power to fire us. And long story short, Trump, he just lost the D.C. circuit Court of Appeals on Banks said, you didn't have the power to do this. The Supreme Court's going to have to decide. And this is, this too is getting funneled up to the Supreme Court. So every single thing he's, every single executive order, they're trying to stop it dead in its tracks. Victor. By clogging it up in lawfare.
- [85:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, they filed more in the first month than they did than all lawyers did in the four years of the Biden term. So you have about three to four of these 750 district judges and they are the refined version of the Tesla stuff. The disrupting the joint session of Congress if you're Al Green, or the antics of making videos with smut mouth threats, kickboxing, all of that stuff is the street theater. And then the other side is this stuff cherry picking Obama or Biden appointed judges to delay, delay, delay, and then hope that you can, as Robert Mueller did, eat up a year or two years of the Trump term. Fighting, fighting, fighting all this. The weird thing is that we saw that in almost all these cases, these liberal judges, they kind of mirror image the lawfare that went out. Just as we saw Engoron was very biased. We saw that Mershawn's daughter kind of grifted off her father. She was a Democratic consultant. And Judge Furman, I think his brother was an economic advisor to the Biden administration. I think Judge Boasberg has people in his family that are in very left wing activist groups. So the more that they can can establish these judges can establish that they're very left wing, either they're familiar relationships or themselves, the more they're likely to be picked out. And now they've gone. It's all gone to their head. And some of them are more powerful than the national security advisor, the Secretary of State. They are exercising US Security policy right now. They are determining what a president can do vis a vis relations with foreign countries even. And it's gone to their head. And they really have an impression of themselves that's not warranted. And it won't stop until Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court say this is enough. And if they don't stop it, these people on the left never realize that it can be done to them just as easily. And the Republicans did it a little bit, but it's kind of like the filibuster when the, when they were in the majority, they said that the filibuster was a racist relic. That's what Obama said. And then when they were in the minority, he filibustered Judge Alito's appointment. They don't have a consistent philosophy, really, other than whatever the right does. We're going to oppose and make the necessary adjustments to fit the. Fit the case.
- [88:36]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. The Supreme Court is going to have to shore up and take these cases on and take them on faster so that we can get governing underway. They cannot just be this black hole where cases go to die along with the entire Trump agenda. So sooner or later, they're going to have to take them on and they're going to have to decide them and it's going to have to be done at a more expedited pace. Even Judge henderson from the D.C. circuit Court of Appeals said that in the opinion she authored in this case. Like, it's gotta be taken up by the Supreme Court and the sooner the better. Like, get to work. TikTok people. No time like the present. Victor, a pleasure, my friend. Thank you so much for being here.
- [89:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you for having me.
- [89:19]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, when we come back, we've got a story that you will not see anywhere else on a US citizen right now. Detained in Russia. Wait until you hear this. Let's be real. Our modern world can be toxic. From ultra processed foods to environmental chemicals, our bodies are under attack every single day. And one of the biggest casualties are digestion. Millions of people suffer with indigestion, bloating and upset stomach. But here's the good news. We don't have to accept this. Our ancestors had the answer all along. Bitter foods, bitter herbs and plants have been used for centuries to stimulate digestion, support detox and keep the gut thriving. That's why just thrive. Digestive bitters can be a game changer with a powerful blend of ancient time tested bitter herbs. Just one dose before meals wakes up your digestive system, helping you absorb nutrients better. Break down food and say goodbye to bloating and sluggish digestion. Ditch modern toxins and get back to what our bodies were designed for. Reclaim your gut health with Just Thrive digestive bitters. Available now@justthrive health.com use code Megan to save 20% off your first order. That's justthrivehealth.com promo code Megan. As Americans are getting inspired to make their health and fitness a priority, let me tell you about Don and the team at Jacked Up Fitness, a great American company. Their commercial grade power Rack Pro has everything you need to get a full body workout from home. The cable crossover system and integrated weight stacks allow you to do hundreds of exercises. Basically everything you can do at the gym. With everyone's busy schedule, having one of these commercial grade all in one Power Rack Pros right in your own home can be a game changer. And if you are new to strength training, don't worry. Jacked Up Fitness offers the Get Jacked up program free of charge. Led by celebrity fitness trainers Kim Lyons of the Biggest Loser and Clark Bartram, the program has full body video based workouts. You simply press play and follow along. Get started on your fitness journey today for free. Go to getjackedup.com and sign up to access the free program. And when you're ready to order your own Power rack pro, save 10% by using my promo code. MK no more excuses. Let's all get in the best shape of our lives. Go to Get Jacked up. The media is broken. For decades, big cable and legacy media filtered information to hide the truth. But thanks to podcasts like the one that you're listening to and new media around this country, the truth can break through, providing voices and views that legacy outlets we know well will not air. But big cable still has a major way of controlling information access. They do this by limiting access to something called Spectrum, the invisible airwaves that power affordable wireless Internet and by forcing you to keep their bundles, the old cable package bundle, keeping independent media out of reach. Trump and Republicans in Congress have a huge chance right now to get this right by making more spectrum available and breaking the big cable's stranglehold on your information. Tell your senator or representative to work with President Trump and sell more spectrum so everybody can keep listening to shows.
- [92:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Like this, the Megyn Kelly show.
- [92:40]
Megyn Kelly
Go to inthecableopoly.org to learn more.
- [92:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
It takes one guy out there to say, who's that? Kyle who thinks he can just get on a microphone on a podcast and start publicizing this.
- [92:53]
Megyn Kelly
From iHeart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV comes a new true crime podcast, Crook County.
- [93:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
I got recruited into the mob when.
- [93:02]
Megyn Kelly
I was 17 years old. Meet Kenny, an enforcer for the legendary Chicago outfit.
- [93:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
And that was my mission, to snuff.
- [93:10]
Megyn Kelly
The life out of this guy. He lived a secret double life as a firefighter paramedic for the Chicago Fire Department.
- [93:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
I had a wife and I had two children.
- [93:18]
Megyn Kelly
Nobody knew anything. People are dying.
- [93:20]
Chris Van Urden
Is he doing this every night?
- [93:22]
Megyn Kelly
Torn between two worlds.
- [93:23]
Chris Van Urden
I'm covering up murders that these cops are doing.
- [93:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
He.
- [93:26]
Megyn Kelly
He was a freaking crazy man. We don't know who he is really. He is my father and I had no idea about any of this until now. Welcome to Crook county available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly show on Sirius xm. It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures. Today you can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all, all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk podcast and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free.
- [94:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
Go to SiriusXM.com MKShow to subscribe and.
- [94:34]
Megyn Kelly
Get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com MKShow and get three months free. Offer details Apply Foreign now we're going to talk about a woman named Cassinia Carolina. She's a 33 year old dual Russian American citizen and amateur ballerina who has been wrongfully detained in Russia for almost 15 months. And wait until you hear how she's living. Last August, Cassinia was convicted in Russia of, quote, treason and handed a 12 year prison sentence in a Russian labor camp. Her Crime she donated $51.80 in 2022 while in America to a US based nonprofit that helps children and the elderly who have been impacted by the war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin increased the penalties for treason back in 2023 and Russian authorities took her into custody in January of last year while she was visiting her elderly grandmother. Her first visit to the country in three years and before you knew it, she was in jail first for some ridiculous charge and then they said she had committed treason with that $50 donation. And she's been, she's been convicted. She pleaded guilty because she was told that she'd have to do that in order to avoid some genuinely lengthy prison sentence. And so she did, thinking it would just be a slap on the wrist. She could get out of there over this 50 bucks. No, she's there a dozen years. She's been sentenced to a dozen years in a Russian prison. The State Department tells our show that the US Government has officially designated Ksenia as wrongfully detained. That's a good designation for her to get because it means they will work for her release. And now we believe the Trump administration is but a source close to the situation tells us Ksenia is having numerous health problems as she endures reportedly horrific work conditions at a penal colony over 1,000 miles east of Moscow. Luckily, Ksenia has a fighter literally fighting for her. It's her boyfriend, Chris Van Urden. And Chris is a former International Boxing Organization welterweight champion who retired from the sport last year to work full time on Cassinia's release. Here's a video he narrated@free cassinia.com There's.
- [97:10]
Chris Van Urden
A proverb in the Bible that talks about making plans but recognizing that God has the final vote. That is how I feel. I celebrated the past New Year's Eve while vacationing with my amazing girlfriend, Cassena Carolina. She is who I've been waiting for my whole life. She's beautiful, funny, and adventurous. She sneaks food to our Bulldog booth. She lights up every room with her energy and optimisms. My Christmas gift to Kasena was to pay for a trip to Russia. Maybe I thought that would make it go faster and she would be back home with me in Los Angeles sooner. But something intervened. I'm not sure it was God, but it was something. When the Russians found on a Venmo app that she had made a $51 donation to a US nonprofit organization, she was told she was facing charges and could not leave the country. I'm appealing to the Russian government to be the responsible actor here. It was a mistake to arrest her. Please let her go. Show the world you are better than being afraid of my ballerina.
- [98:12]
Megyn Kelly
Chris joins me now. Chris, thank you for being here. I'm so sorry this is happened to your love. So, just to get the chronology right, it was 2022. She made this 51 donation. It was 2023 that Putin upgraded the penalties for treason, making it punishable by life in prison. So this was what we call expose facto. After the fact of her alleged treason, which was the donation, he decided to make this crime punishable by life in prison. Then In January of 2024, she went over there, completely not expecting any trouble from the Russian government. She's got dual citizenship, but suddenly found out she was very, very wrong about that assumption. So tell us how the trouble for her started when she got to Russia.
- [99:02]
Chris Van Urden
Meghan, thank you for having me. And yes, the way you just explained it exactly, it.
- [99:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's.
- [99:07]
Chris Van Urden
It's bogus. It's just blows my mind, these treason charges. I'll tell you what. We went to Istanbul. She wanted me to go with her to Russia to meet her parents. I didn't like the idea. I didn't like the idea of her going in the first place. But she convinced me, I'm a Russian citizen. I speak the language. I'm going to Yekaterenburg. It's not the main city. She convinced me that it's safe. And I bought that plane ticket, and I decided to go to Istanbul with her for New Year's. And from there, she'll go home, I'll come back to LA. And the flight from Istanbul to Yekaterinburg was four hours. My flight back home to LA was about 10. So I knew that by the time I get back in la, she's already settled in. I'll have a message from her. Well, I got back to L. A, and I haven't heard a single word from Gsena. I tried for about six hours that day, like, trying to get Oliver. Then out of nowhere, I got a message. That simple message sent me a message, and it said, crazy, I've not yet seen my family speak to you later. And I replied and I said, is everything okay? And I haven't heard from her again for about six hours. Then I received a phone call from a random Russian rumba. It was Ksenia in tears. I said, what's wrong? She explained to me that she was arrested, interrogated for 16 hours at the airport. I said, for what? And they said, well, I don't know. They took my phone. I was flagged, asked her a bunch of questions to the extent where they didn't. They didn't wanted to give her water, they didn't want to give her food for 16 hours because they believed she's part of something bigger. And she said, I don't know what you want me to say, but I'm just here to visit my family. After 16 hours, they released her to her family, but held onto her cell phone. And that was the start of everything. That was the January 2nd. That was the start of everything.
- [101:13]
Megyn Kelly
So they held onto her cell phone, and it was on her Venmo receipts that they saw she had made this donation while in America as an American citizen to 50 bucks to help children and the elderly displaced by the Ukraine war. And they said that that was, in fact, a. A $50 donation to pay for weapons.
- [101:36]
Chris Van Urden
Yeah. Yeah, you're right. So $51. After they took her phone, they send it back to her family. So they released it to her family, and they said, you're not allowed to leave your Katerinburg. You will hear from us. And we now know within the three weeks from January 2 till January 27, they investigated every single thing on A cell phone. This is where they came across the Venmo 51 on Venmo charger for treason, funding the enemy state. That's what she was charging for funding the enemy state, buying weapons. And if, you know, I started laughing and crying at the same time because I was like, if, you know my Ksenia, she is the sweetest, kindest person you'll meet. She goes out of her way to do good for people. She hates seeing people hurt. So you can imagine elderly people, young kids without food and water. She would be the first to donate money. And I remember listening to these charges they charged her with. And how the Russian media proclaims or the portrait they sculpt for the Russian audience is bogus. Like, for example, she was charged for hooliganism for attacking two male officers. I was like, I am a fighter. Yes, I am a fighter. Ksenia is the opposite. Ksenia has got a soft heart. Sweetheart cries easily. She doesn't have a bad bone in her body. So when I heard that, it broke my heart.
- [103:17]
Megyn Kelly
Mm. So, yeah, originally they said they arrested her for hooliganism, as you pointed out, and then they upgraded the charge to state treason. So she's been slapped with this crazy charge of treason. She's just there to see her grandmother, and she gets a Russian lawyer, which I imagine one has to do in order to fight charges by the Russian authorities. And so how did that happen? And did she not have any counsel, you know, back from the States to help guide her through this process?
- [103:49]
Chris Van Urden
Yeah, well, you're taking me back now. The last. Like, I'll tell you, the process to get that lawyer was. It was very, very difficult because first of all, I'm dealing with the mother and father, which are in Russia, and they want to be hands on with. With a lawyer. They want to be able to see the lawyer in person. And they. They barely speak of English, so I need a Russian lawyer. So the process started to get a lawyer. And I will tell you, every lawyer turned us down because they said, it's too risky. They said, you're fighting Russia. Like, we can lose our license. And eventually we've.
- [104:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
We. We.
- [104:26]
Chris Van Urden
We got all of the lawyer we have right now and. Or had and met the parents. The parents loved him. I didn't like him at all. I just didn't like him. I died. I said, we can do better. And the parents was persistent on, no, we like this lawyer. We'll go with him anyway. Go with the lawyer. Long story short, the lawyer ended up telling Cassidy to plead guilty. Now, I was very upset about that. I was like, why would you do that? And he said, look, she's going to get 20 years in prison. I can get that down to five years if she pleads guilty. I was like, I don't like this. But the parents like the idea. So the lawyer got her to plead guilty, and guess what? She got the minimum of 12. It didn't work, but it painted this picture of Ksenia now acknowledging what she did. And it made me very, very upset. This lawyer, as, as. As the time progressed in this whole battle, we realized this lawyer is like a puppet to the Kurds. Kgb. Just a puppet. He's doing everything they want. He made Cassinia sign letters Cassino was never supposed to sign. She signed it because the lawyer said, no, everything is going to be good.
- [105:46]
Megyn Kelly
So the lawyer wasn't really representing her best interest.
- [105:48]
Chris Van Urden
The lawyer. The lawyer.
- [105:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
The.
- [105:50]
Chris Van Urden
No, no, no, no.
- [105:52]
Megyn Kelly
What other evidence against her that they used or what did it all boil down to this $151 payment.
- [106:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's.
- [106:02]
Chris Van Urden
That's what has been released is the $51. Holy galism. Funding the enemy state. She's part of a first day. They, they, they. They painted this whole piece of her.
- [106:13]
Megyn Kelly
Being a spy and basically because she had dual citizenship.
- [106:18]
Chris Van Urden
Yeah. And I was like, this is ridiculous. But it came down to $51. And. Which is shocking. Right. It still to this day, it blows my mind that she's. She's losing her life for $51.
- [106:34]
Megyn Kelly
So what do we know? I mean, those Russian prisons are no joke. What do we know about the conditions in which she's being held?
- [106:43]
Chris Van Urden
I gotta be. I gotta be very smart here because I want to tell you, but I got Ksenia in trouble already. One, because of being in the media and sharing some stuff she writes in the letters. Because you would think she's written to me before where they blank out some stuff in the letters, which means clearly she tried to tell me something. They came across it. They blanked it out. But if there's things they don't blank out, you would think I'm okay to share it. So I want to be careful. But the conditions are bad. I can tell you right now. It's harsh. Like she's in a labor camp. Right? So she's. That she wakes up at 6am in the morning. She works till 9pm at night. She gets two 15 minutes breaks in between 4 for lunch or coffee break or to brush her teeth or whatever. It's snowing in Siberia. Those two where she's held that close To Siberia. It's snowing. It's freezing cold out there. Working now I want to share something with you which is. It's heartbreaking, but I'm. At the same time I'm so proud of Ksenia because she's very strong minded, yet she's very. She's delicate and she's not, she's not cut out for this. She's not. I don't even think I am. I'm a fighter, I will deal with it. But to think that Ksenia is in a. She was speaking to me and when all of this happened, she was locked up. She's an esthetician now, so she's all about beauty and taking care of herself. Skincare, her beauty. So she explained to me she's finding human. All of this because as I read the letters, she will write, hahaha, can you believe this? So she's explaining to me how she ended up chewing, chewing on her clothing to get the material loose. And then she would take the material and floss her teeth. Word. Just to make sure she's taking care of her teeth. And reading that for the first time broke my heart. But it also made me very proud to know that she's strong minded. She's finding a way. You know, they go.
- [108:54]
Megyn Kelly
How often do they let them shower?
- [108:57]
Chris Van Urden
Good question. Once a week. Okay, but, but, but it depends on how they feel. There was a moment of her not going to showers for two weeks, but again, Ksenia, knowing her, she would write to me and she'd go, babe, your mom. Mom. Her mother would send her some wipes and stuff and she was like, I would use, I would use the, I would use the toilet water to clean myself.
- [109:26]
Megyn Kelly
Oh boy.
- [109:28]
Chris Van Urden
And I know this woman, I know her. And for her to now live in that, that circumstances, it's. It's heartbreaking. You know, she's got problems with her legs and this worries me. This really worries me. She's now all of a sudden got. She's got leg pain, she's got some big veins popping out on her legs from all the standing. She had a. What? They think she had a minor seizure because of the, the labor, the hard working labor. She shared a seizure which they think we don't know. She collapsed, shaken. There was a whole thing. The medical medics were rushed in. She, she's explaining to me in the letters, House, she's peeling thousands and thousands of potatoes every day, but you only get a few seconds. There's people yelling and sweating at you all day and you got, you got a Rush. And then you've got to put the potatoes in the boiling water. So she's got blisters on her hand from the boiling water burning. And, and she's getting basically no attention. Like, it's, it's harsh. It is, it is.
- [110:34]
Megyn Kelly
And that's why you do 12 years in these conditions.
- [110:36]
Chris Van Urden
No, she cannot, Megan. And she's written that to me in the letter. And she said, chris, if I'm. I, I'm. My love, I'm sorry, but I, I'm not going to do 12 years. I'm telling you right now, which is obviously put one on one to get. Put one on one together. And you can imagine what she's trying to tell me.
- [110:56]
Megyn Kelly
I know that you've tried to move heaven and earth. This is an incredibly difficult problem to solve. And you know, the Biden got the designation under, under Biden that, that this is wrong.
- [111:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
You know what? They were not.
- [111:08]
Chris Van Urden
They were not going to give it to me. They were not going to give it to me. I can tell you right now, by the administration was not going to give me that wrongful detention. Working with the Biden administration, I want to cross up. First of all, I want to say I'm grateful that I got that wrongful detention under the Biden administration, but there's only a handful of people in that Biden administration that I have a lot of respect for, and one of them is Roger Carstens. He was an amazing man trying everything to help me get Christian out, but he was limited as far as what he could do. I was fighting to get the wrongful attention. I mean, you have to meet. There's. I've been in this game now, I call it a game, but it's because I realized it's a political game for the US And Russia. It's just a game. It's someone's life. It's Cassini's life, but it's really just a political game. And you have to meet 16, I think you have to meet 16 criteria on a list in order to be declared wrongfully detained. Now, I've done that in August, by August, as soon as, by March, by April. I said, guys, what are we still waiting for? Like, Cassini is clearly wrongfully detained. And I pointed out everything, and they were like, yeah, playing the games. And I said, look, there's no rush for any of this. Let's do this right. There will be no prison swap. Take your time. Take your time. Which upset me. And then there was the first prison swap, and Cassandra wasn't included because she's not being declared wrongfully. The 10th. I was very upset. Anyway, so I meet these criteria, and I'm speaking with the State Department under the Biden administration, and I said, okay, we've met these criteria. Can we get Casino declared wrongfully detained? Because there might be a next prison swap, and I want to make sure Casino is on that list. No, Chris, don't rush. Don't rush. There will be no swap. I can promise. They guaranteed me. They said, we guarantee you there will be no prison swap until maybe the elections. And I was like. I took a breather. I was like, okay, I guess I can't do much. Guess what? There was a prison swap on August 1st, and I missed my opportunity because the Biden administration told me, no rush. We'll take this slowly. We want to make sure we do it right. Even though by April, May, I've had the criterias and we missed an opportunity. Then I met the opportunity, the criteria. I met them. There's two people I want to thank other than the people I work with right now. A man with the name of Peter Berg, big Hollywood producer, very close friends, like a dad.
- [113:40]
Megyn Kelly
Friday Night Lights.
- [113:41]
Chris Van Urden
Yes.
- [113:42]
Megyn Kelly
Peter Berg, lone survivor.
- [113:43]
Chris Van Urden
Currently, he's right. The list goes on. He's currently playing such a big role in helping me get Cassini back. It was for. Peter Berg made a phone call. Peter Berg made a phone call to the. To the US Government, and he put some fire under them. And he said, look here, this girl is clearly being wrongfully detained. And after that phone call, they declared Cassandra wrongfully detained. Another name I want to thank is Dana White. Dana White, being very. Dana White, being very good friends with President Trump, is on board as well. And Dana's advocating for me, and Dana's pushing. Now, I'm on your show, Megan, because I know. I know President Trump has a lot of respect for you. I've watched his interviews. He watches your shows. He takes note to what you say. And I'm on here, and I'm begging. I'm not a begging man, but I'm begging for this girl's life. It is not looking good for her. And if there's somebody that can bring Cassino back, it's President Trump. I know it, and I'm begging him. I know he can bring her back like this. She's not doing well.
- [114:52]
Megyn Kelly
Do you have. I heard that you were in touch with Steve Witkoff, President Trump's envoy, which would be excellent. I mean, he's empowered. We definitely can put you in touch with Rick Grinnell, too. And we can be in touch with him. But do you, what's the messaging right now from the Trump administration?
- [115:13]
Chris Van Urden
Well, it's quite the last, the last three weeks to a month. There's really no. Nothing following, nothing happening. That's why I was. I want to thank you, Megan, for giving me this platform. That's why I feel like there's nothing happening right now. And I'm on here, and I'm begging you, and I'm begging President Trump, something needs to happen. Woodskopf. I'm trying to get him, I'm trying to get on a phone call with Woodskopf. It's not happening. I don't know why. And I'm on you, on your show, and I'm trying to connect with W. To get out of his mouth. I know Senator Rubio is, is on it as well. Adam Bala is on it right now.
- [115:52]
Megyn Kelly
Because that, because of what's happening with the attempt to reach a settlement on the Ukraine war. I wish, you know, it's like she was probably in a better position prior to things hitting this roadblock, right when things were a little better between Trump and Putin. They were getting along a little better. Right now. I'm sure Trump doesn't want to inject something new that they need to bargain over, argue over. He's trying to get a war resolved. But, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. I just, I can. I'm sure you felt the change of fortunes when the, the talk about each other and about resolving this conflict got worse. But that doesn't mean it won't happen. We just need to make sure she stays in their focus. And I'm sure, you know, I'm sure that they're aware there's no way. I mean, President Trump is not the kind to leave an American behind over there, especially ballerina who's in jail for treason because she gave a $50 donation to the Ukrainians. I mean, it's just, it's outrageous on its face. I, I wish I could say I could appeal to Vladimir Putin and, you know, his sense of justice on this. I don't think that's going to work. So I, I promise I will call attention to this segment, to my administration contacts, and we'll hope for the best. I, I feel your pain. This is deeply, deeply wrong. She's lucky to have you, Chris.
- [117:10]
Chris Van Urden
Megan, you know what? Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm lucky to have her. Like, like, if you get to know Christina, like, I'm, I'm very lucky to, to, to Be part of her life. And I'm not stopping. You know, I want to say this, but just again, you painted a picture already. But people, I get a lot of, you know, mixed messages, hate messages, mixed messages. She gets what she deserves. No, I just want to remind people that Cassenia is a normal human being. Loves her friends, loves her families. She'll put them above everything. She's outgoing, she's active. She's being charged for treason for something she did as an American citizen in the United States in 2022 that millions.
- [118:01]
Megyn Kelly
Of Americans have done.
- [118:03]
Chris Van Urden
She's charged for treason, a law that was passed in 2023 by Russia a year after Casino's donation. She did not. She's not part of any organization other than being a good, loving, kind hearted human being that loves exercising, laughing. And I'm begging the American people to not forget Ksenia and help me, you know, how can you help me? Go to the website free cassinia.com and share the content we share and help me keep her name out there and help me keep this story alive because she's already given up. She's already 90% given up. But we will not give up on her. I will not give up on her. You know, I feel like I'm reliving.
- [119:00]
Megyn Kelly
President Trump got my dad's experience and I believe he could get Ksenia home, too. I want to tell the audience again, it's Free Ksenia. The way that's spelled is K S E n I a free k s e n I a.com freecasenia.com to learn more and donate if you feel inspired to try to help Chris in his quest to get his love back home and out of a terrible, terrible place where she does not belong. Chris, thank you. We'll continue to follow it and we'll follow up with you behind the scenes as well.
- [119:35]
Chris Van Urden
Megan, thank you so much.
- [119:37]
Megyn Kelly
All the best. Wow. Jeez. This is. Stuff like this happens. And you know, what I was saying, I think is really true. It's, it's. Now Trump's in a tough position. He's negotiating for something that involves, you know, many, many lives. And that's unfortunate, right, because in a, in a calmer time, her life would get more priority. But, you know, President Trump got Mark Vogel home even though he was trying to negotiate the end of the Ukraine war. And I think he can get Cassinia home, too. I think, I think Putin will let her go. I just don't think Putin's gonna let this dual citizen young ballerina stay in a Russian jail for 12 years. I actually don't think he will. But it's gotta be made a priority and we have to stay on it. Thank you all for listening tomorrow. Really looking forward to bringing you Dr. Mark Hyman. This guy is amazing. He's got so much good information to give you about your health, your doctor, what you need to be worrying about, what the future holds, whether you need to change your doctor. And I think you're going to enjoy the conversation. Great talker and super smart. So we'll do that together tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.