Horrifying CNN Celebration of Luigi, Sanchez in Space, and Maher's White House Trip, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi | Ep. 1048

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Megyn Kelly Show | Episode 1048

Title: Horrifying CNN Celebration of Luigi, Sanchez in Space, and Maher's White House Trip, with Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi
Host/Author: SiriusXM
Release Date: April 14, 2025

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1. Female Empowerment and Lauren Sanchez's Space Trip

Overview:
Megyn Kelly opens the discussion by critiquing a recent female empowerment event where women donned provocative, fake astronaut suits and participated in a brief space-like experience. She specifically targets Lauren Sanchez and other celebrities, arguing that the stunt undermines genuine female achievements in space exploration.

Key Points:

• Critique of the Event: Kelly condemns the portrayal of women in "sexually suggestive" astronaut outfits, suggesting it reduces female empowerment to mere physical appearance.
• Lauren Sanchez's Role: Sanchez is highlighted as leveraging her relationship with Jeff Bezos to participate in the space stunt, which Kelly views as more about celebrity than actual contribution to space programs.
• Media's Role: Kelly criticizes CNN and other media outlets for celebrating what she perceives as superficial achievements, rather than recognizing the real efforts of women in space.

Notable Quotes:

• Megyn Kelly [05:03]: "I don't feel empowered. This is like another, it's, it's female White House Press corps day at the White House."
• Walter Kirn [05:22]: "These were the lowest IQ space crew that has ever been launched from Earth."
• Megyn Kelly [06:07]: "Don't show your boobs. Don't talk about your ass. Don't get your specially made spacesuit so that we can make sure to see all your curves as you go to outer space."

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2. Attack on Pennsylvania Governor's Mansion

Overview:
The conversation shifts to a disturbing incident where Cody Ballmer, a 38-year-old man, firebombed the Pennsylvania Governor's mansion. The discussion delves into the motivations behind Ballmer's actions and the media's portrayal of such violent acts.

Key Points:

• Incident Details: Ballmer attacked Governor Josh Shapiro's residence, resulting in significant property damage but no injuries to the governor or his family.
• Ballmer's Background: Ballmer, a father of five, faced foreclosure on his property and expressed resentment towards Governor Shapiro, possibly influencing his drastic actions.
• Media Narratives: Kirn and Taibbi criticize how the media conflates personal grievances with political violence, questioning whether Ballmer's actions were ideologically motivated or purely personal.

Notable Quotes:

• Megyn Kelly [21:34]: "Aggravated arson. He may also face federal charges."
• Walter Kirn [23:23]: "Democrats are going to have to be careful because I don't know how they distinguish between different sorts of violence and political violence anymore."
• Matt Taibbi [25:41]: "We don't know. But, but I think, you know, Walter's right to talk about the lionization of Luigi and how we're in this space now where a big segment of the media is kind of intellectualizing violence as a logical response to things."

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3. Media and RFK Jr. Controversy

Overview:
The hosts discuss RFK Jr.'s controversial speech at the FDA, where his remarks were misconstrued as derogatory towards individuals with intellectual disabilities. They explore the media's responsibility in accurately reporting such events and the implications of misrepresentation.

Key Points:

• Misinterpretation of Speech: RFK Jr. referred to his experience at a state school for the intellectually disabled, mistakenly reported by media outlets like Politico as using a slur.
• Media Accountability: Kirn and Taibbi highlight the failure of media outlets to fact-check and accurately report RFK Jr.'s statements, leading to defamation.
• Impact on RFK Jr.: The misreporting has damaged RFK Jr.'s reputation, prompting discussions about media bias and the protection of individuals from unjust smear campaigns.

Notable Quotes:

• Megyn Kelly [30:18]: "That's what he was referring to for the audience that doesn't know. Stanning is like, you know, stalker fanning like, like over the top fandom."
• Walter Kirn [34:59]: "He has tweets turned off. If she doesn't follow you on Twitter, you're not even allowed to talk back at her."
• Matt Taibbi [42:50]: "If your 8-year-old boy doesn't think Hitler's mustache is funny, that's when I would call a psychiatrist, actually."

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4. Matt Taibbi's Lawsuit Against a Congresswoman

Overview:
Matt Taibbi discusses his legal battle against Representative Sidney Kamlager-Dove for making defamatory statements during a congressional hearing. This segment delves into the challenges journalists face when dealing with misinformation and personal attacks.

Key Points:

• Defamatory Claims: Kamlager-Dove accused Taibbi of being a serial sexual harasser based on a fictional passage from a satirical book he co-authored.
• Legal Action: Taibbi filed a $10 million lawsuit after Kamlager-Dove repeated these unfounded claims on social media, violating his reputation and professional standing.
• Media's Role in Defamation: The hosts critique the media's tendency to amplify false narratives without proper verification, emphasizing the need for accountability.

Notable Quotes:

• Matt Taibbi [67:06]: "I'm not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured."
• Megyn Kelly [73:11]: "They didn't give him a fair chance, of course. Matt, they're not going to give him a fair chance, but they'll use anything to smear him."
• Walter Kirn [71:49]: "He(she) decided to speak in the one kind of way that actually violates the First Amendment."

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5. Bill Maher's Meeting with President Trump

Overview:
Bill Maher recounts his experience meeting President Trump at the White House, highlighting a stark contrast to other media personalities' often contentious interactions with the former president. The discussion explores the implications of such interactions for the media landscape.

Key Points:

• Positive Interaction: Maher describes Trump as gracious and measured, differing from his previous antagonistic stance.
• Authenticity and Risks: Both Maher and Kirn commend Maher for stepping outside typical media confrontations, recognizing the potential backlash.
• Impact on Media: The meeting is seen as a rare instance of genuine dialogue between a media skeptic and a controversial political figure, raising questions about future media-government interactions.

Notable Quotes:

• Bill Maher [96:05]: "I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him."
• Walter Kirn [98:25]: "She decided to speak in the one kind of way that actually violates the First Amendment."
• Megyn Kelly [100:23]: "I give Trump tons of credit because Maher's been a chief antagonist."

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6. Immigration and Deportation Cases

Overview:
The hosts analyze a recent deportation case involving Abrego Garcia, an alleged member of MS-13 gang in the U.S. They critique the media's understanding of immigration laws and the complexities surrounding deportation orders.

Key Points:

• Case Details: Garcia, originally from El Salvador, was deported despite his claims of fear for his family's safety, after being implicated as an MS-13 member based on limited evidence.
• Legal Nuances: Discussions include the distinction between deportation and withholding orders, and the Supreme Court's stance on facilitating removal without enforcing it.
• Media Misrepresentation: Kirn and Taibbi lament the media's superficial coverage of immigration laws, highlighting the lack of depth in reporting complex legal issues.

Notable Quotes:

• Megyn Kelly [79:03]: "He could be with his family."
• Stephen Miller [83:34]: "He would be arrested, he'd be put in confinement. He would be deported the second time to El Salvador again."
• Matt Taibbi [85:01]: "Reporters to act like they know what they're talking about, it's a huge window into the, the general cluelessness of the business about these things."

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Conclusion: Critical Examination of Media Narratives and Accountability

Throughout the episode, Megyn Kelly, alongside her guests Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi, fiercely critiques the media's handling of sensitive issues such as female empowerment stunts, political violence, defamation, and immigration laws. The conversation underscores the necessity for accurate reporting, accountability, and a deeper understanding of complex societal issues. By highlighting specific instances where media narratives fail to capture the nuances, the hosts advocate for a more informed and responsible approach to journalism.

Final Notable Quotes:

• Walter Kirn [81:59]: "It's a horrible waste of lawyers, money and time to be worrying about cases like this when there are tens of thousands of them that are probably nearly this serious."
• Megyn Kelly [88:19]: "She decided to go to the politics of personal destruction. And it was despicable."

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Conclusion:
This episode of The Megyn Kelly Show presents a critical lens on contemporary media practices, emphasizing the importance of thorough journalism and the dangers of superficial reporting. By engaging with guests Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, Kelly navigates through controversial topics, advocating for authenticity, accountability, and a reevaluation of how media narratives are constructed and disseminated.

Transcript

[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 [e-mail] welcome to the Megyn Kelly show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and happy Monday and happy birthday, yeardley. My daughter turns 14 today. All you moms and dads out there know it seems like yesterday. You know, so, so crazy how in a blink of an eye, 14 years go by and soon it'll be 18. And then they tell me she might leave me, though I'm in denial about that fact for my daughter and my two sons. Anyway, happy birthday, sweetheart. It was a very busy weekend. President Donald Trump was getting standing ovations at the UFC event on Saturday, mingling with Shaq. That was quite a sight. Joe Rogan and more. Bernie Sanders and aoc. They were back out on their Fighting the Oligarchy tour. You know, the one that she's been flying first class to and from. You know, oligarchy for me, but not for the is really what she's saying. And then this morning, a bunch of ladies celebrated female empowerment by putting on sexy fake astronaut suits and going up into sort of outer space for 11 minutes through all of the engineering and mathematical wizardry and physics wizardry of a bunch of people who didn't get any credit and were behind some control room panel. I guess we're supposed to believe that, like, Gayle King is an astronaut now. We're supposed to be celebrating them somehow. It's supposed to be empowering because not enough women have gone up into space. What we mean is not enough are astro astronauts. Not enough women are astronauts. That's what we mean. We don't mean. Please put Gayle King and yet another opportunity for her to try to act like a star while she's next to Oprah, who also was there. Of course, she didn't get to go up, but she stood there on the sidelines. I don't, I don't feel empowered. This is like another, it's, it's female White House Press corps day at the White House. Remember I told you this during Obama. They were like, it's, it's Female Empowerment Day or whatever. And they, and they invited a bunch of Women, including yours truly and some people from Fox to go over there and interview the president. And I was like, no. It's a no. You can. I'll go over when I'm getting asked there because I'm worthy as a journalist, period. Not journalist with a vagina. Okay. I don't really want to be celebrated for that at all by anyone who doesn't know me. And I just feel uncomfortable about this. Like, why? If they had been six astronauts going up there, then yes. Okay, what did they do? The one gal is engaged to a billionaire and these are a bunch of celebrities she wanted to befriend. Okay. Of course, Lauren Chan has whatever her name had to show off her tits. Okay. It's a little early in the hour to be dropping the T word. Her breasts in her little fake astronaut outfit. Because you know what's a day if we don't get to see the girls on Lauren Sanchez? It's not as offensive as showing them at the presidential inauguration. But I think it's a little off message. Isn't it a little off message? We're gonna get into all the big stories today. Joining me now for the full show, Matt Taibbi, editor of Racket News on Substack, and Walter Kern, he's editor at large for county highway, which I like County Highway. Together they host the America this Week podcast. You've heard about tariffs recently, plus inflation, supply chain disruptions. It's a lot. But there is a silver lining that most people missed. President Trump specifically exempted gold and silver bullion from the tariff talk. The administration preserved the ability to diversify into precious metals. If you are concerned about your savings, consider a free consultation with a Birchgold precious metals specialist. The first step is to text MK to 989-898 and receive your free no obligation info kit on gold. Learn how to hold gold and silver in a tax sheltered account. Birchgold will help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a gold IRA for no money out of pocket. With an A rating from the Better Business Bureau and thousands of thankful customers, consider texting MK to 989898 again. Text MK to 989898 to claim your free info kit right now. Guys, welcome back to the show.

[Matt Taibbi]

Thanks for having us on.

[Walter Kirn]

Great to be here.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, nothing says female empowerment like getting this opportunity to go to outer space and making sure everyone can see your breasts. I think it's, it's important as they beam this woman into outer space that we answer the question, but what do her Breasts look like. Am I wrong?

[Walter Kirn]

Lifted. I hear there's no gravity in space. Space is the cosmic bra. That Katy Perry needs to be further empowered bothers me. She's already got about a billion dollars and, you know, short of Taylor Swift is the most famous pop star and female pop star in the world. That she needs empowerment says something sad about women, because it means that even with a billion dollars, they still need a boost from the space program or Jeff Bezos private space program. But they were all oligarchs, let's remember they were oligarchs in space. And so they're trying to have their cake and eat it, too. On. On the left, I guess. If that's.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's exactly right.

[Walter Kirn]

That's the left.

[Megyn Kelly]

Katy Perry was quoted as saying, we're putting the ass in astronauts. Okay.

[Sean Spicer]

All right.

[Megyn Kelly]

You go, girl. This is so.

[Walter Kirn]

This is why she needs empowering, because she keeps revealing her stupidity like that, and we have to boost her back up.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes. It's so cringy. I'm sorry, but I'm like, why are you. Don't show your boobs. Don't talk about your ass. Don't get your specially made spacesuit so that we can make sure to see all your curves as you go to outer space. Is that what it is to be a woman? Just show off as much sex appeal, ass and boob as you can. I don't. Matt. I. I'm not sure I didn't catch that page in the female handbook.

[Matt Taibbi]

I'm a little bit confused about the political meaning of toplessness now. You know, we saw. There was that demonstration in Paris where all. All of the demonstrators were topless, and I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to look. Not look, look furtively. Also, what exactly the meaning of that was supposed to be. Was it supposed to be erotic? De. Eroticizing? Yeah, it's. It's a very strange message now. It's. I think it's supposed to be something about empowerment, but it comes across as mostly confusing to me. So. I don't know.

[Megyn Kelly]

They dropped the movie Hidden Figures years ago. Right. And that's a great movie about women who are behind the scenes. I don't know how true it is, but it's a great movie. And it's women who are behind the scenes at NASA and contributed to the space program. Okay, that I get. What did these women do? Like, honestly, one is sleeping with a billionaire who created this program and is jetting people, I mean, to outer space for, like, 10 minutes, you know, for as long as like your average YouTube video takes. And they came back and they're like, everything's changed. Is it. I don't. Okay. They had nothing to do with any of the engineering. There's basically. They're just looking for famous faces who could draw attention to Jeff Bezos's weird little rocket. His first little rocket. Looks exactly like a penis. Exactly. The guy's working something out. I think he's like, working out his sexual fantasies on us. And this one looks exactly like a breast with the nipple on the top. Look at this one. I'm sorry, gentlemen, you know exactly what that looks like. Everyone does. And now look at this one. It's like a. I guess you could say igloo if you wanted to be charitable. To me, it looks like a breast. Above. From above. It really looks like a breastball.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, Walter, it's a little glands. Like, it's glands.

[Walter Kirn]

Like, I was in terror that we were going to have another space shuttle disaster and that we were going to have to mourn these people for maybe the next 700 years. They did add to the space program something that it hasn't had, which is the red carpet and the sort of fashion critique at the beginning. So it was a combination of the MTV Music Awards, the Oscars, you know, and the Apollo program. I, I thought it was condescending. I, I think that's what you're getting at. It was, it was, it was belittling to women and, and they belittled women with their behavior and their, I don't know, antics, I would call them.

[Matt Taibbi]

I was under the impression that, that most astronauts were basically mostly women, or at least half women now. I, I didn't.

[Megyn Kelly]

They probably are.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, I didn't. There was nothing. Was that part of their critique, that there aren't enough?

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes, yes.

[Matt Taibbi]

Really? Because it seems like there are quite a lot of female astronauts.

[Megyn Kelly]

No, Lauren Sanchez is saying, like, I don't know, they're crossing some new frontier for women. Here she was in her post flight interview. Let's hear how she enjoyed it. Earth looked so. It was so quiet. It was just quiet. And is it what you expected? No, no. Better. I don't think you can describe it because you know what I was saying, it was like quiet. But then also that's because you were.

[Walter Kirn]

Inside a space capsule and you look.

[Megyn Kelly]

At it and you're like, we're all in this together. Seeing Jeff before I left, I just went like, you know, I had to come back. I mean, we're getting married. If I didn't come back that would be. That would be. That would be a bummer for me. Only you, by the way, would say this to me. You said, jeff, if you don't want to marry me, you don't have to send me to. Don't have to send me to space. I'm sorry. We're watching this woman. She was a news anchor like 10 years ago. Then she married the head of CAA and then she reportedly cheated on him with Jeff Bezos and moved on to Jeff Bezos. And now we're supposed to celebrate her crossing new barriers for women, meaning boinking a billionaire and getting a free ticket to space for 11 minutes. It was flat but quiet. Like these profundities. Walter, I hold a buckle up.

[Walter Kirn]

You know, I. I actually met a female astronaut once who was on the space shuttle and had quite an interesting conversation with her. And. And real astronauts are extremely intelligent scientists who've been tested to the limits of their physical and mental fitness. But this was really not women in space. It was stupid people in space. These were. This was the lowest IQ space crew that has ever been launched from Earth. And she didn't even have the wit to have some writer give her lines for. When she got back. She tried to make them up. It was so quiet. Yeah, you were in a soundproof space capsule, lady.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, it was. It was a little far out. Space nuts. A little bit.

[Megyn Kelly]

Little space nuts on that front. Can you just watch here. Here are the women dramatically exiting the nipple shaped space capsule. Watch. There's the billionaire. See? Honey, see what I got you for Christmas?

[Walter Kirn]

She hasn't been away that long. Dude, it was 10 minutes. I know.

[Megyn Kelly]

Literally, they're treating her like she was in Nam. Where are my babies? My babies. Like she. She was almost dead. Here's Katy Perry kisses the ground. Right? Right. You were in such danger. Gayle King thanking God. And by that I mean Oprah, without whom she'd have no career. She too. Okay. Kisses the ground, somebody already. You should be kissing Oprah. Oprah's there. Kiss Oprah. That's. She's worth far more to you than. Than the ground. Thank you, Jesus. She's. I mean, truly. It's like they're right back from Nam. What did they do? They got in their special Oscar de la Renta designed suits, laid down in a capsule and came back in 10 minutes.

[Walter Kirn]

You guys, that was one small step for womankind, one giant leap backwards for mankind, as far as I can see.

[Matt Taibbi]

Or one giant step forward for reality shows.

[Walter Kirn]

Yeah, that's true. That it was reality.

[Matt Taibbi]

It could Be. It could be a great concept. Like, you know, dumb celebrities in space. I. I would watch that.

[Megyn Kelly]

Why didn't they wear like, at least a little part of you? That was hoping they'd get untethered. Know, they could just like, I didn't want them to like, die, but maybe just be out there for a while so we could have a break from all this nonsense. Especially from Lauren Sanchez. I. It's like, why are we pretending she's done anything? She. She is with Jeff Bezos. That's literally why we know her name. And again, it was all over the tabloids. Like, they got together through an extra mar. All right, fine. People fall out of love. But like, why are we celebrating this? Like, oh, the love affair. They're going to have this b bazillion dollar wedding ceremony and you can tell exactly who they're trying to, like, cozy up to. They were either on the nipple shaped space capsule or they run cover for them in the press. But it's because we have this obsession with money, right? With like, what looks like achievement. And Jeff Bezos is obviously very, very accomplished. But to me, it's like, I don't know. Matt, you and I have talked about this before. Like, as a journalist, the more people fawn over somebody like Bezos and this. The more I. I want to run the other direction, right? It's like my reportorial instincts are ill. I. They're forming clubs again, and I don't want to be a member of any of them.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, the more supplicating that goes on, the more uncomfortable you usually get. And there was a lot of that in this one. I guess they. They did prove that Botox survives reentry into the atmosphere.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, I thought he said rear entry. Which has already been proven.

[Walter Kirn]

Okay, but they are asking.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's only 13 minutes after what's happening. Walter, you've lost control of this show.

[Walter Kirn]

Yeah, I have. Why don't they send somebody into space who can actually come back and describe it? Well, you know, not just a journalist, but a poet or something. I mean, they went to space and we have no idea what it was like except that it was very quiet.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's quiet.

[Matt Taibbi]

It was like big and stuff.

[Walter Kirn]

Katie will write a song about it, you know, But I. Yeah, I. That was a nullity. That was a publicity stunt that probably cost more money than any in history. The Elon envy from Jeff Bezos is just absolutely, you know, conspicuous. Elon will get supermodels and a poet or something interesting for a crew. This was terrible.

[Megyn Kelly]

Here is. My team just sent me the side by side 20, 21 Blue Origin versus now, which I think was the first flight. There's. There's Bezos in the cowboy hat and three others. And now here's the ladies of the new Blue Origin on the right with their sexy. Like it looks like something that. Remember that original Jennifer Garner movie that made her a star where she was like the spy climbing over like the lights, the beams of light. And so looks like something our spies might need to wear. And really it's just Lauren Sanchez gave this long interview about why they wore this tight outfit over here on the right. Here it is in SOT 31. Watch this. Where's Carrie Ann from her Instagram? She's bowing. Well, they're comfortable, okay? That's for sure. They're comfortable. Again. She went to Oscar de la Renta's people and she rejected. Just so you know. I know, Matt, you were wondering. She rejected pockets on the hips because they didn't want to look too, too hippie. And. And then they had zippers put on the bottom of the pants so that she could go flair or not, depending on each woman's preference. And from. For all that, what did we get? Yeah, we got. It was like quiet but also alive. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I don't think you can describe it because like, you know what I'm saying? Like quiet but then also really like alive. And then the takeaway. We're all in this together.

[Walter Kirn]

No, we aren't. I didn't get to go. You didn't get to go. Matt didn't get to go. 99 and 99 of the people who ever lived didn't get to go. They chose these airheads. Bring it. Send a kid into space like an 8 year old kid who will actually be thrilled and impressed and come back and tell us something. This, this, this girl is so. This Sanchez is so spoiled that even going into space didn't impress her, you know?

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh God, Very, very little will. And when you're married to Jeff Bezos and you could literally afford to buy it and sell everyone in America's family. But I suppose we're supposed to celebrate her. That's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to celebrate her because accomplishment. She bagged the billionaire after banging the billionaire after allegedly cheating. At least according to what I read in the National Enquirer. But there was a whole lawsuit about it where she accused. They said maybe her brother had sold pictures of text messages between the two of Them. Then he claimed he'd been like falsely attacked by. Can't remember who. He blamed it on a foreign government. Anyway, it was a big scandal. Enough of them. Now in other news about deplorable people. Some absolute lunatic firebombed the Pennsylvania governors mansion where Josh Shapiro and his wife and their children were sleeping. This guy goes in there at 2 in the morning. I have to say it wasn't exactly, exactly like a Jack Bauer entry. Seems like no one really tried to stop him. I don't know what the story is on the governor's security, but I'm underwhelmed that he managed to break the window, get into the governor's mansion and start dropping Molotov cocktails. And then apparently it took them a while to actually track him down. That's a separate matter. Look at the devastation inside the mansion. You could hear Governor Shapiro came out after the fact and you could tell he was somewhat rattled. Here he is, Sat 21. Last night we experienced an attack not just on our family, but on the entire commonwealth of Pennsylvania here at the Governor's residence. I spoke a couple hours ago with Director Kash Patel of the FBI. He promised all of the resources of the federal government.

[Bill Maher]

He was extremely kind and courteous and.

[Megyn Kelly]

Thoughtful in his conversation with me. And I thanked him and the women.

[Bill Maher]

And men of the FBI and the.

[Walter Kirn]

President of the United States for their support.

[Megyn Kelly]

Laura and I are. Lori and I are overwhelmed by the prayers and the messages of support that.

[Bill Maher]

We'Ve received from all across Pennsylvania and all across the United States.

[Megyn Kelly]

Wow. I feel for him. He's got four young kids. I mean they. Vic came pretty close to being killed this evening and it was by some 38 year old guy reportedly. Cody Ballmer is his name. He's now charged with attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson. Look at this. This is reminding me of like the Notre Dame Cathedral shots we saw after it burned. Aggravated arson. He may also face federal charges. Still, this man Ballmer is a father of at least five, four sons and a daughter. According to a 2020 Facebook post. Unconfirmed information on Ballmer. Someone found an old Facebook post from him, purportedly from him. These things come out in the days after and then they sometimes turn out not to be true as an asterisk here. But his Facebook post we believe says he's a registered socialist. Voting record shows nonpartisan unaffiliated voter. Social media posts show he supported Black Lives Matter universal health care as a right, criticized MAGA supporters, Christians and the second Amendment, was also anti Biden had A post that read, knowing is half the battle, the other half is extreme violence. Shared posts supporting mask mandates during COVID rants slamming toxic femininity, complained about gas prices, supported Kanye Press, Kanye West's presidential run, et cetera. I mean, it sounds like this guy started deteriorating. And then the New York Post reports that his Harrisburg, Pennsylvania property was subject to a foreclosure. And he was facing that the sale was about to go ahead and had obvious serious resentments for Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and his wife Lori, and their four children, two dogs and another family who lived there. No injuries. I should have mentioned that up higher. Um, one last thing. He was. He acted quickly. He got into the home. Uh, he was there for less than a minute. And the break in and setting of the fire happened while the troopers were looking for him. The officials believe he did have a plan, noting how quickly he was in and out of the residence and calling him methodical in his approach. He exited the property the same way he entered it over the fence. So what do we make of this? Is this a political story? Is this a random nutcase story? What. What is this story, guys?

[Matt Taibbi]

Walter.

[Walter Kirn]

Well, Democrats are going to have to be careful because I don't know how they distinguish between different sorts of violence and political violence anymore. You know, if he'd been in a Tesla or just gotten out of one, it would have been thought to be maybe commendable that someone had firebombed it. If he were Luigi and he were good looking and it actually succeeded in someone, he might have been celebrated by Taylor Lorenz and people like that. As it is, he's not a very attractive or a very sane human being, and he nearly killed children. And there's nothing to do with him, but, you know, throw away the key. But we're starting to get into a world of blurred lines around violence. And as much as I am horrified by this, and I really do feel bad for those kids, they're going to be genuinely traumatized and scared, especially because their father has ambitions in politics. But, but let's lay off the violence across the board, or at least lay off the fandom around certain kinds of it.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, the. The Free beacons. Peter Hassan tweeted out, this is exactly why it's so dangerous to lionize Luigi Mangione. If it's okay to hit anybody in power you consider evil, then any politician is fair game. I mean, it's an interesting point now because it's not every day you see a governor's mansion firebombed. Matt, this is a striking development in the land of political attacks. And I use that term generically for a reason. I don't know whether this guy's a nutcase. He sounds extreme in his political rhetoric, but I, I'm not seeing, you know, stuff about like being abducted by space aliens in his social media that we've unearthed so far. He sounds like somebody was pissed off about his foreclosure. And I can't help watching this thinking we'd be hearing very different messaging from the Democrat side if this had been Ron DeSantis. I really think we would. There'd be an attempt to like, understand, well, you know, how Ron DeSantis brought this on himself.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's going to be critical to determine what exactly the motive was here. You know, very often in these cases when people do extremely destructive things, including things like school shootings, a significant percentage of those folks are, you know, sociopathic, you know, predisposed to violence of some kind or another. And people attribute motives to them that they assume because of the way they dress or because of what music they listen to or that, that sort of thing. So in this case, you know, all we have are, are some superficial indisia. Right. We, we see a person who is associated with a lot of traditionally left leaning causes targeting a Democratic governor who, you know, maybe stands out on one or two particular issues as, you know, as being something that kind of traditional liberals or socialists might not be happy about. But we can't assume that that's the reason, frankly, on the foreclosure front, as somebody who's covered foreclosure courts, I'm a little surprised there hasn't been more violence of this kind dating back to the mid-2000s, because I've seen how enraged people are by being thrown out of their, their homes. You know, a significant percentage of those people are tossed out kind of unfairly. So, you know, we don't know. But, but I think, you know, Walter's right to talk about the lionization of Luigi and how we're in this space now where a big segment of the media is kind of intellectualizing violence as a logical response to things. And that is very scary.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's a new version of intellectualizing looting and rioting as one of the available options to you when you have some sort of societal upset. You mentioned Walter Taylor Lorenz for a reason. Former New York Times, former Washington Post columnist who is now trying to make it in the independent lane. And she sat down with CNN's Donnie. Is it Donnie O'Sullivan I actually don't know this guy who's got some show about misinformation and had the most remarkable exchange regarding Luigi Mangione, the man who stands accused of gunning down in Cold Blood the CEO of UnitedHealthcare A couple of months ago. Here it is hilarious to see these millionaire media pundits on TV clutching their pearls about someone stanning a murderer when this is the United States of America. As if we don't lionize criminals, as if we don't have, you know, we don't stan murderers of all sorts and we give them Netflix shows. There's a huge disconnect between the narratives and angles and sort of mainstream media pushes and what the American public feels. And you see that in moments like this, the women who got her outside court in New York. So you're gonna see women especially that feel like, oh, my God, right? Like, here's this man who. Who's revolutionary, who's famous, who's handsome, who's young, who's smart. He's a person that seems this. Like this morally good man, which is hard to find. Yeah. I just realized women will literally date an assassin before they swipe right on me.

[Walter Kirn]

That's.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's where we are. That is repulsive. The way she describes Luigi Mangione as if. And not in a mocking way. Not like these. These lunatics are going to say the following things about him. She clearly shares in it. She obviously tweeted out something sympathetic about him right after he did it. This is right in her wheelhouse because she claims she's got every ailment known to man and womankind. I don't. From the pull pulling out the hair to the n. I don't. She's got a lot of issues, so she blame. Now she blames them all in insurance company. So she clearly looks at this guy as a hero. And that's her talking about for the audience that doesn't know. Stanning is like, you know, stalkery fanning like, like over the top fandom. And she's talking about him as a, quote, morally good man. He's a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find. And then. Laughter this guy does. No pushback from CNN's correspondent O. Sullivan. No pushback whatsoever, Matt.

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean, there's so many things that are crazy about this that one doesn't even know where to start. Walter and I, just a couple of weeks ago, we. We did a. A segment on Flannery. O Connor's a good man is hard to Find because It was the 100th anniversary of her birth. And here's Taylor Lorenz, who is probably the most anti literate person in media. Making a reference to a good man is hard to find. This is. She's someone who, if you handed her a hardcover book, would be tempted to bite it. I think because she's probably never read the thing anything in her life and I think she miss if she did know that story, she misunderstood the point of it, clearly. But this idea of Luigi Mangioni as a morally good man, I, I just, I don't know how that goes over and how, what, what CNN is thinking putting that on the air.

[Megyn Kelly]

Right.

[Matt Taibbi]

It's crazy.

[Megyn Kelly]

To your point about the books, it reminds me of we love Victor Davis Hansen. We have him on all the time. He's truly a brilliant guy. He knows everything. Encyclopedic knowledge of so many subjects. And we always, you know, say like if Victor says it happened, it happened because his memory is so good and it's solid. But he clearly is an avid reader. I mean he's a college professor many years. He's an avid reader. He's not really an avid pop culture consumer. And on one of the shows one day he referred to the woman who was married to Jay Z as Beyonce. Because all he does is read. That's all he does is read. It's to his credit. Taylor Lorenz is the opposite of Victor Davis Hansen. She reads nothing. She just pulls out her hair, feels sorry for herself, cries on tv, doxes innocent people who happen to write conservative things and then defend cold blooded accused killers. Walter as good looking, morally good, famous, revolutionary smart. It's so hard to find.

[Walter Kirn]

Well, of course this is all a put on and I think, Megan, your experience in, in news and opinion reveals that to you too. There were many people they could have interviewed about Luigi Mangioni, but they picked Taylor Lorenz because she could be counted on to model this kind of goofy teenage Beatlemania Manson girl fandom that would set the Internet on fire. CNN will set itself on fire if it can get ratings at this point. And they just did that. She got on my Twitter this morning because I made, you know, I made adequate fun of this thing. And she said, I wasn't talking about myself. These aren't my feelings. I was just observing what's going on among young women. But that's not it at all. What she's doing is she's modeling the kind of reaction that you're now allowed to have to Luigi them sort of, you know, Being like they're on a date, joking at the bar about something and you know, their dating life or whatever was supposed to show America that you can be light hearted and fun and teeny bopper about this subject. But what they had to say really didn't matter. It was the way they said it and the way they laughed and the way they made everyone, they gave everyone permission to sort of have this strange Tiger Beat feelings about Tiger Beat.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, Sean Cassidy and Robbie Benson and John Travolta that. That's how old I am, guys. It's a lie that she was just parroting what others might say about Luigi. Here is what Taylor Lorenz said right after the murder. I mean, in hours after Thompson was killed. Brian Thompson was killed allegedly by Luigi. She got online and expressed her dismay with the health care, health industry, insurance industry. What happened was somebody posted on Blue Sky, Blue Cross, Blue Shield in Connecticut, New York and Missouri has declared it will no longer pay for anesthesia for the full length of some surgeries. Lorenz replied, and people wonder why we want these executives dead. Following that, she went viral for a comment on Piers Morgan where she said, quote, I do believe in the sanctity of life. And I think that's why I felt, along with so many other Americans, joy, unfortunately, joy. Upon learning that Brian Thompson, father of two boys, had been murdered, gunned down in his prime, she made her super joyful. So Walter, don't give her one inch. She doesn't deserve it.

[Walter Kirn]

Oh, I didn't give her an inch. But I noticed something. She has replies turned off. If she doesn't follow you on Twitter, you're not even allowed to talk back at her. And yet she's celebrating people who shoot others. I mean this is a phobic, fragile, you know, person who you're not allow.

[Megyn Kelly]

To say that people at, at FDA walk out.

[Walter Kirn]

I mean it in the classical sense that her growth is stunted. You know, not that she suffers from any sort of genetic syndrome, though that.

[Megyn Kelly]

May mean slow as an actual word, like the, the process of that automobile was retarded by the nails in the road.

[Walter Kirn]

But it was, it was the host who was really, is really to be deplored. I mean she's, she's out there doing her act, you know, trying to get attention for her new independent journalism career. But that guy, not he, he, he complied with it. He, he, he fanned it, he, he emphasized, loved it, amplified it.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's what he was there for. Yeah, that's, that's the thing. So, and by the way, Pro tip for you, Donnie. The way to get more women swiping right on your profile is not to suggest you think it's hilarious when people kill innocent men on the street. And that that's an awesome like ha ha ha. Lucky him. This is such a fun conversation. Maybe that's how I'll get more girls. It's a no. Maybe you do want to wind up with like a tailor, maybe with that kind of girl, but not with normal red blooded American women. Matt Lispica I got the feeling he wanted.

[Walter Kirn]

I got the feeling he wanted Luigi to swipe right on his.

[Megyn Kelly]

That could be. That could also be. Might as well get go there. Since we brought it up. RFKJ is the subject of an unfair, untrue smear. On Friday he went over to fda, the Food and Drug Administration, now run by Marty Makary, Yay of Johns Hopkins, one of the few sane voices during COVID and did like a rally the troops kind of message, you know, like stand tall and you know, be careful of disinformation and people trying to corrupt you. That like good stuff. And made a reference as he has so many times. If you've interviewed rfkj, you've heard him make this reference to this like home quote for the that was the name of the home that he volunteered at when he was young. And he talks about the Special Olympics, which was started by his family and so on. And cue the newspaper articles. He used the R word to describe children or, you know, people with disabilities. He used the R word notwithstanding the fact that that wasn't true. He was making a reference again to this group. Hold on, I'll find it. Here it is. Okay, here are a couple of headlines. Mediaites Sarah Rumpf. FDA staffers dish on unhinged meeting with RFK Jr. Where he called Special Olympics athletes. Then after the truth came out, she later updated the headline to FDA staffers dish on unhinged meeting with RFK Jr. Quote, the deep state is real without an acknowledgment. We'll go back and check it again. Sarah that she said something that was false and potentially defamatory against him in her original headline, which was so wrong they had to take it down. Now when you do that, you then need to fix it. You need to acknowledge your mistake and fix it. It's not that hard. Daily Beast staffers walk out of RFKJ's slur ridden speech about the deep state. Slur ridden. Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action, who is a complete hack. This is a woman who used to run this group that didn't want guns available to children, particularly in the school setting, sounded normal. She turns out to be a far left hack, partisan, dishonest person. During remarks to FDA employees today, RFKJ touted his work for the Special Olympics, but shocked several FDA employees when he said he spent 200 hours in high school working with, quote, the. Again, at our last check, the tweet was still up. No clarification. Here's what he actually said. And by the way, Politico was the original sinner on this. They're the ones who got this going. Here's what he actually said. Because of my family's commitment to these issues, I spent 200 hours at the Wasaic home for the retarded when I was in high school. I guarantee you I could tell my team to pull the clip when he said that on me and on other people's shows. Like, this is so messed up. And there was an audio recording, too. We're told that there was an audio recording of his remarks there. Politico went on to say the remark jolted several FDA employees in the audience who misheard the reference and thought he was making a derogatory remark about people with intellectual disabilities. According to two employees granted anonymity for fear of retaliation. Gee, why did you think that? What do you think it is about RKJ that led them to believe he, he slurred when it comes to people with mental disabilities in front of the entire FDA staff, Walter, that's the thing that's so ridiculous about it. Like, and then he dropped the N word. You know, like, what, what other things would, you know, your average cabinet secretary do in front of a, you know, hundreds of new employees other than find groups to slur?

[Walter Kirn]

You know, it's so ironic that the person who is doing his level best and has committed his life and his fortune at this point to stopping autism is going to be, you know, harassed for having just how significant this cultural property properly quoted the name of a, of a institution. I think first of all, every generation should be allowed to have the vocabulary that it did when it was 30 years old. And, you know, not that he said the word, but that he wasn't afraid to say it, even though it was the name of something. Probably comes from the fact that he lived at a time when that's how people spoke. Having to reset to the beliefs and the speech, the speech sensitivities of 22 year olds. Forever is getting old.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah. I mean, they didn't give him a fair chance, of course. Matt, they're not going to give him a fair chance, but they'll use anything to smear him. This is another version of binders full of women, which is proof that Mitt Romney is this raging sexist. It's kind of another version of good people, you know, very fine people on both sides. You know, these lies that they make up based on one word that they pull and then twist and you know, what is it like about you can't put you on your pants on before the lie spreads around the world. And Politico is very well read and I'm sure in defense of these others who just ran with it, they went off of the Politico piece, which was what got the whole thing started. They later did clarify Writing for the record, this article and headline have been updated to make clear that Kennedy was referring to the Wasaic State School for the Mentally Retarded where he worked in high school, not using a derogatory term for people with intellectual disabilities.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, oddly this, this ties back to the Taylor Lorenz story because she was famous, among other things, for a piece she did years ago where she sort of hit out in the new app clubhouse and claimed to overhear Mark Andreessen using what she called the R slur.

[Megyn Kelly]

Good memory.

[Matt Taibbi]

She posted a, a tweet of all the people who didn't do anything when the R R slur was, was used. Now it turned out that he, it wasn't Andreessen who used the word and it was actually a quote, a self referential quote involving a group of redditors who described their sort of Gamestop stock ploy as like the revolution of the. Or something like that. And so the question was, what do we think about this revolution? Or something along those lines. And so the whole thing had to be kind of retracted, corrected, clarified, etc. Etc. But what's interesting about that is that that at the time there was this concerted effort to define the harm standard as even using this old word in a private setting essentially was, was somehow not even acceptable. Like the argument was, we can't have apps like Clubhouse because people will be doing this all the time behind closed doors. We go from that to it's okay to shoot people in broad daylight if you know, and that's a morally good person who, who does that. So there's harm over here, which she later described as the reaction to that is destroying her life to, you know, to this thing, which is a completely different idea about what harm is. It's, it's, it's mind Boggling.

[Megyn Kelly]

You guys just did. Did you do this on your show or did you write, did you write something on this? I can't remember. But on the NPR that's not funny challenge.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh, that was, that was me. Yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, okay. Because I subscribe and I get it via email. Matt. I subscribe to almost nobody's email. You should be honored because I do not like to clog up my inbox, but I do subscribe to yours. So sometimes I don't know whether it's quotes from the show or whether it's just you, but this is seems, this also seems related to me because NPR has like re upped this old show that it put out. It's the that's Not Funny challenge and in which they advise parents who may be concerned that their children may become murderers to keep them away from problematic jokes. Like you can't say the R word or God knows where things will go. And you definitely can't have a child who thinks Hitler's mustache is funny. Or you might have, you know, the next one of two things. Republican president or serial killer. In the eyes of npr, it's the same thing. And they really want in today's day and age to warn parents about the warning signs of your son becoming an incel. Murderer, as you put it in the piece. And it's probably. It starts with bad jokes.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, it was really an amazing thing because what they did is in response to the popularity of the Netflix show Adolescence, which Keir Starmer is now going to mandate that every secondary school student in, in the UK has to watch. The story is basically about a, a beatific young boy who is moved to knife crime or a murder against a young girl because he listens to Andrew Tate. Basically sort of misogynistic online content. And so they, they regurgitated this whole interview they did two years ago about the dangers of that kind of content. And this expert on online radicalization, by the way, who, where do you go to get that job expert in online radicalization anyway?

[Megyn Kelly]

Isis.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, it's so bizarre. And the whole thing was about how the first thing you have to do is, is make sure is monitor your children for any signs that they are laughing at inappropriate humor or calling things that really aren't funny funny. Like for instance, finding Hitler.

[Megyn Kelly]

Anyone ever had an eight or nine year old boy? Literally every single piece of humor is inappropriate. Every single, everything is funny.

[Matt Taibbi]

And they singled out Hitler's mustache, which Walter, I don't know or Megan, actually both of you, I would think is one of the Funniest things that's ever existed is Hitler's mustache.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's a very strange choice by a very strange man.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, absolutely. If your 8 year old boy doesn't think Hitler's mustache is funny, that's when I would call psychiatrist, actually.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, honestly, it's like. But you, you point out this piece and it's so true that like for decades now, especially when we all grew up, think of the things that we were listening to. Go back. And I dare anybody to go back. Start the original Bad News Bears. Just, just hit play on the original Bad News Bears. You don't have to go two minutes in to hear every slur there is. The slurs for Hispanics, the slurs for blacks, the slurs for gays. All of them right there from like right out of the barn. You're like, whoa, never mind. We're gonna try something else. When you have little kids, we didn't all turn into psychopathic murderers, Walter. But NPR is really worried about inappropriate humor.

[Walter Kirn]

Remember that TV movie, the Boy in the Bubble? It was John Travolta. Yeah. Didn't have an immune system, so they had to be completely encased in a sterile capsule. Well, that's what they're trying to do to kids now. They're the boy in the Bubble. They don't have immune systems. They can't figure things out. They can't reject bad ideas. They, they can't distinguish between sick humor that's just funny and actually killing someone for kicks. And so we're going to keep them in the bubble and it's going to be zipped tight and the parents are going to check in every few hours to make sure there are no holes in it. Well, what happens to that is your kid develops absolutely no immunity and will go out into the world and probably go crazy almost instantly once they're out of controlled environment.

[Megyn Kelly]

So.

[Walter Kirn]

So I see. Toughen your kids up. Use the old standard of exposing them to everything. You know, let them smoke cigarettes and get sick. Let them have a drink and throw up and let them laugh at Hitler's mustache. They'll be good people someday. The other thing is going to create freaks.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, right. Honestly, they need bad humor. They need to be able to make fun of each other. They need to be able to touch the untouchable or it becomes too important to them. It becomes like larger than life. And as usual, NPR's advice is totally wrong. An update for you. Shannon Watts is still not taken down. Her post, Mediaite has now added the political clarification that I read to you earlier. That's not good enough. You have to say, as we reported, what we reported was wrong. It ends with he was referencing this school, not using a derogatory term for people with intellectual disabilities. And then you just need to add, as we earlier reported, we misled you. That's it. We were sorry we fucked up. We listened to Politico. I mean, that you should.

[Walter Kirn]

Politico restated the name of the institution and its article and therefore is as guilty of exactly the same crime as rfk, are they not?

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, no, they kicked it off. They. They exactly, yes. But they don't own that piece of it. Hold that thought. Quick break. More back with Matt and Walter after this. There's a lot of talk about government debt, but after four years of inflation, another real crisis is personal debt. Some people are working harder than ever and still drowning in credit card debt and overdue bills. But there's Done With Debt. Done With Debt has unique escape strategies to help end your debt fast so you keep more of your hard earned money. Done With Debt does not try to sell you a loan or bankruptcy. Their tough negotiators go one on one with your credit card and loan companies. With one goal in to drastically reduce your bills, eliminate interest and erase penalties. Most clients wind up with more money in their pockets month one. And they don't stop until they break you free from debt permanently. Take a few minutes and visit donewithdebt.com, speak with one of their strategists. It's free, but listen up. Some of their solutions are time sensitive, so you will need to move quickly. Go to donewithdebt.com that's donewithdebt.com hi everyone.

[Sean Spicer]

This is former White House press Secretary Sean Spicer. We all know that Americans are still recovering from the record inflation of the past four years. Now some in Congress want to make cuts to Medicaid, a program that provides critical health care to 72 million struggling Americans, including veterans, people with disabilities, kids, and your friends and neighbors. 40% of American births are actually covered by Medicaid. And Medicaid covers health care costs for a third of children with cancer. Working families rely on this program. It has 77% support. Nearly 9 in 10Americans oppose Medicaid cuts. Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to protect Medicaid. As president, he's still promising to love and cherish Medicaid. Did you know that 12 million Medicaid families live in rural communities? Many of these people voted for Donald Trump and they didn't Vote for this. If Congress cuts Medicaid, a lot of rural hospitals could close and a lot of rural families will be hurt. No matter how you look at it, cutting Medicaid just doesn't make sense. Stand with President Trump and tell Congress not to cut Medicaid.

[Megyn Kelly]

Now, I have been dying to get back from break because I missed serious gold in the Blue Origin story that my team has redirected me to. And now I will bring you guys there as well. Take a listen to the female commentators as this nipple shaped rocket ship was about to take off. And the two commentators, I had to know their names when I heard this. I'm told by Steve Krakauer include Teresa Thompson, who normally works with ESPN Sports, and Kristen Fisher, who used to be on Fox but then went to cnn. But both of them, we believe are just doing like Blue Origin announcing on this particular day, like not working for an outlet. So obviously hired by Bezos to do this. And would you listen to the commentary, guys? When you are out there at this moment, this rocket feels like it is alive. It feels like it is a living capsule access bridge thing, right? And there's the gantry pulling back. And this right here is the moment that they've been training for. Training two days. Becoming a crew, becoming a team. After you go through an experience like this, it's, it's more than a team. It's almost like a family who are so tight to go through something as intense. You know, as you said, this is like a, a bridled beast. This, this thing wants to take off. Switch to onboard helium. Here we go. Good luck and Godspeed, ladies. We're cheering you on from. Let's launch. This termination system is armed. Oh, my God. They're training. They did two days. And I asked my team to pull like, what did they do during their two days? Okay, here they are, their tasks. They spent the past two days at facilities for Blue Origin going over preparations. According to Blue Origin's Arion Cornell, their tasks included practicing how to get into and out of the new shepherd capsule. You go in, then, then you go out. Oh, once again, ladies. Okay. The group also practiced how to put on and take off their seat Bel. I'm dying, I'm dying. Let me see if there's anything else. Oh, they had to get fitted in their flight suits, guys. They had to get fitted and they had to learn how to communicate with ground control. That. Okay, this is what's so funny about it to me. First of all, these two nitwits talking about the training They've been through all their training. It all comes down to this. Secondly, isn't that was like astronaut training, the universal phrase for something that's extremely physically taxing on you. They used to like stick the astronauts in these booths and like put it like make it sub zero temperatures and then make them super confused. They couldn't like perform simple tasks anymore and then like make their hearing go away. They would deprive you sensory deprivation, one sense after the other. And that's like part of the. And now it's like they had to learn how to get in, get in and out. But they dress it up on the one thing by saying they had to learn egress and ingress. That's astronaut talk. They had to click in and out of their seatbelts. And then the other girl going on about how after you go through an experience like that you are more than a team, you are family. That egress and ingress and seat belt buckling, then lying down in your Oscar de la Renta suit. Walter's just got his, his finger on his face.

[Walter Kirn]

Just a few weeks ago, actual astronauts who got stranded in space for months, floating around in weightless condition, not in this, you know, luxury vehicle, were rescued by another rocket and brought back to Earth. And it hardly made a splash on the media. These people have already gotten 50 times the publicity that those heroes and the person who rescued them got.

[Megyn Kelly]

ISS and Elon, right? The people who are on the international.

[Walter Kirn]

Bezos basically put his girlfriend and her pals into a giant vibrator, shot them into orbit for 10 minutes, and they came back telling all about the thrill. We've got everything upside down. And if women get any more empowerment of this sort, they're, they're going to be denied the right to vote.

[Matt Taibbi]

I love the color commentary though. It's, you know, speaking with knowledge, as if they know what this is like, generally.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes. I was like, are these astronauts? I mean, are these. No, it's like some girl from ESPN and some girl from CNN like, oh, let me tell you what the training does for you on something like this. Hello. What?

[Matt Taibbi]

It's it. Yeah, it's, it's crazy. It's like, you know, when you, when you go to get a Chevy Traverse test drive, you come out more like a family than like, you know, somebody who just took a car. I mean, like they're talking about getting out of a car.

[Megyn Kelly]

Basically, all their training, it comes down to this. Can we hear the beginning of that again? I need to hear that again. Just let's Just play it again.

[Matt Taibbi]

Egress.

[Megyn Kelly]

When you are out there at this moment, this rocket feels like it is alive. It feels like it is a living thing, right? And there's the gantry pulling back. And this right here is the moment that they've been training for two days. Becoming a crew, becoming a tune. After you go through an experience like this, it's. It's more than a team. It's almost like a family who are so tight. Something as intense. You know, as you said, this is like a. A bridled beast. This. This thing wants to take off. Switch to onboard helium. Here we go.

[Walter Kirn]

That's the sexual part.

[Megyn Kelly]

Good luck and Godspeed, ladies. We're cheering you on. Let's launch. This termination system is armed. I. I can't. The drama. That's also like, a stereotypically female thing, which is not great, right, to be overly dramatic when the circumstances don't call for it. I'm not saying what they were doing was guaranteed safe. Obviously, we have seen accidents before. It's not like there was some degree of risk there. But the training, it all comes down to, literally. They learned how to buckle their seat belts and wear the suits that were designer and showed Lauren Sanchez's boobs. Okay. I am. I don't. No one's going to convince me that those rockets are not phallic. I think we're all just part of some weird Jeff Bezos sexual fantasy right now. I really do. There's something happening there. I don't. I don't wish to participate. Okay. There's a lot of other news. You wouldn't know it, but first, I got to spend a minute on you, Matt Taibbi, because you were mentioned last week on our show. We were talking about, speaking of Politico, a political report about Anonymous. That guy who worked within the government who came out during the Trump administration was like those of us at dhs, Miles Taylor. We were handling him behind the scenes, like we really got control of the government. Anyway, that guy left government service in 2019 and turned out to be like a nothing burger. He was nowhere near as important as he would have had us believe. And Trump just revoked his security clearance, which no one knows why he still had it anyway, and said, I want an investigation to see if he used any classified info. So with respect to that guy and somebody else who worked for Trump, he wanted some government snooping around to see if they had done anything wrong. And he's not charging anybody. He's doing some, like, kicking of the tires. And Politico in response to this, writes this article, like never before has the White House leaned on the DOJ or one of its top agencies to investigate a private citizen in retaliation for something that citizen has allegedly done. And I was like, why don't you tell it to James O'Keefe and Matt Taibbi? And I read them Ron Johnson's press release the day you testified at that hearing on the weaponization of government, only to go home and get a visit from the irs. And Ron Johnson was saying, there is zero chance this is coincidental. And then, sure enough, you got audited. They were. They began at least an audit. So I would love to know your thoughts on that political assertion and whether that has resolved now and the government is finally off your back.

[Matt Taibbi]

They are, I was actually told at the end of that month. So they. That happened on, I think, March 9th of 2023. By the end of the month, they told me that I was in the clear. They actually owed me a lot of money. And the investigation had been started up on the same day as one of the main Twitter files reports. And once the Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the treasury asking basically what the deal was, they sent over a whole bunch of documents and conceded that there was nothing there, and then informed me personally that I was in the clear, so I'm not being investigated anymore. And then, thanks to Jim Jordan, actually, they changed the policy about personal visits to people by the irs. So that's. That was actually a positive outcome to that whole thing.

[Megyn Kelly]

Wow. I mean, your thoughts then that this by Trump is the first time it's ever happened?

[Matt Taibbi]

Clearly not. You know, I think we've. We can go back through history and find many examples of people who've been investigated or, you know, at least the DoJ has been nudged in the direction of somebody. I mean, I think that's been a feature of almost every presidential administration going back to Nixon. Am I wrong about that, Walter? I can't think of anybody who hasn't been in trouble for that. But, you know, that whole thing, Miles Taylor, you know, he's a character. He was a significant character in the Twitter files. We didn't do a lot of the reports on those, but I know that there was talk about investigating him even. Even before the end of Trump's first term.

[Megyn Kelly]

So, yeah, I'm sure there was. By the way, just in case the audience doesn't remember the Twitter files, of course, is the release of all sorts of files at Twitter Now X by Elon, once he took it over, showing massive government coordination with Social media companies, including X, to do things like stifle all free discussion around Covid and many other subjects. Sorry. Go ahead, Walter. What were you going to say?

[Walter Kirn]

Well, maybe I don't understand security clearances, but I thought the deal was you get one and then you get to look at stuff that you're not allowed to talk about. This guy may not have talked about, you know, classified information, but he did open his mouth very loudly and you know, against his commander in chief at the time or you know, his executive. And why he would expect that he would not become a target once he's outed. The reason he was anonymous is that he was afraid of what he was doing. But then he got de. Anonymized and, and, and they're looking into him. That makes him a victim of some kind. And why do you keep these clearances for life? I don't understand that at all.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, I don't get it either.

[Walter Kirn]

They walk around with them. Apparently they're a great way to earn money because, you know.

[Matt Taibbi]

Subsidy.

[Walter Kirn]

Yeah, they're a subsidy to people. It's sort of like a. An honorary badge that you can use for the rest of your life. And people who want you to look at classified things I guess can have you do that. But I think they should probably expire and not need to be taken away.

[Megyn Kelly]

I agree. And then you can get it on a case by case basis, but that seems to be plenty. Now, not. Not content to have had your first or at least probably wasn't your first, Matt. But your most recent appearance before Congress result in a scary visit from the irs. You went back to Congress, you've been back a few times and the most recent one was just a couple of months ago, I believe, whereupon. Well, you got at this hearing called a sexual. A serial sexual harasser by some far left California Democrat named Representative Sidney Kamlager. Dove, who all state up front had zero evidence to support that defamatory claim. She just pulled out of thin air to smear Matt Taibi in a congressional hearing. Matt didn't love it. Here's what happened. Watch. The majority is relitigating a made up conspiracy theory about a part of the State Department that no longer exists to distract from the dumpster fire. Foreign policy this administration is pursuing and elevating a serial sexual harasser as their star witness in the process. Mr. Chair, I request unanimous consent to enter into the record two articles about the Republican witness Matt Taibi. The first is a Chicago Reader article entitled 20 Years Ago in Moscow, Matt Taibbi was a misogynist, a hole and possibly worse. And a Washington Post article titled the Two Expat Bros who Terrorized Women Correspondents in Moscow.

[Walter Kirn]

Go.

[Megyn Kelly]

So you did what very few people will do when they've been smeared, and you actually filed a lawsuit. Because while she has a congressional privilege to say all that all sorts of nonsense when she's in that seat, she repeated the smears on social media. I looked into this recently, and the privilege still may exist, but not to the same extent as it does when they're in their congressional seat. She exposed herself by repeating that online. And you're suing her for 10 million bucks. So what's behind that? Why did you decide to do that?

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, when this story first came out in 2017, it's based on a single passage in a book that I co wrote with my former co editor in Moscow, and it's completely fictional, like almost everything else in the Exile. I mean, the Exile was a satirical newspaper where everything was basically backwards. The whole idea was an UN newspaper. So, like, for instance, the corrections always referred to things that had never actually been in the newspaper. Most of the bylines were of fake people describing fake adventures. And in one passage, Mark described something that it didn't happen. It's a massive exaggeration of something. And so all the people who were involved were eventually contacted at that time. They recanted. There were corrections at the time. I was in litigation with some newspapers at the time. That's all been done and finished. And nobody's ever accused me of sexual harassment here or in Russia, not even.

[Megyn Kelly]

During the MeToo movement.

[Matt Taibbi]

None of that stuff. I'm, you know, I'm one of those people who goes straight home from work, doesn't socialize, nothing, and. But I knew in the hearing as soon as she said that, I thought about the speech and debate clause, and I realized that she's allowed to say that. And then on the way home, I saw that she was retweeting this, I think in an effort to try to get a rise out of me, because she said something along the lines of, you know, my silence in the hearing was telling, but I think. I think that the privilege is penetrated once you go outside Congress and start retweeting on X and blue sky. And I'd had enough at that point of this thing. This thing did major damage to my life and career, and it's not true. And so, you know, for her to drag this up seven years later, it's. I. I just. I just run out of patience.

[Megyn Kelly]

Good for You. No, I remember looking at this when I can't remember whether it was Dick Blumenthal or Tim Kaine, but one of them had said to Pete Hegseth, had suggested that he was beating his wife in the. In the hearing or. Or an ex wife. I mean, like the literal, like, classic defamatory statement. And they can be protected. These guys can do whatever they want. It's disgusting. But then they repeated it on social media, and I remember saying, you know, he should sue. And some smart lawyers responded saying, well, there's. It's protected because of speech and debate. And I actually spent some time looking into it because I didn't think social media would qualify. And I did find a lot of big loopholes that you could drive a truck through. You are far less protected when you are tweeting as a congressman on X or on Blue sky than you are when you're in that seat. And I think she's in for a whole messy legal battle that she didn't anticipate. So good for you, because no one ever fights back, Matt. No one ever fights back. Did. Have you had any response from her or her team?

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, I probably can't get into that publicly, but what I, what I will say is that there was a lot of positive response about this, and part of that was from other journalists because, you know, I don't know if you agree with this, but I think there's been kind of a laissez faire attitude toward outright libel in the last eight, nine years. People just say such crazy things online, and there's this attitude that we don't have to back it up. We don't have to make notations when we make corrections. We don't have to leave it on the page to. To tell people that we made a mistake before we can say what we want and get away with it. Most people won't sue. And I think you have to, because that's the argument for not censoring, is that this other system actually works. And, you know, as somebody who's very against censorship, I think when people do do that, that kind of thing, you have to try to hold them accountable.

[Megyn Kelly]

So Matt's too much of a gentleman to say what he really thinks, Walter, but what did you make of that exchange?

[Walter Kirn]

Well, Matt is a gentleman, as testified by the fact he's only suing her for 10 million. I mean, we live in the day of billion dollar lawsuits. I think Trump just went after CBS for billions. Alex Jones coughed up Fox, coughed up to Dominion. But the damage to Matt his family, his children, you know, and so on from that charge, which was completely unfounded, is worth, I think, a lot more than that. So he's really, he's really being a boy scout by asking for so little. When I heard it, you know, I have a lot of friends who, you know, watch our podcast and they started texting me saying, I can't watch this. Poor Matt, he's sitting up there, you know, and, and I thought to myself, well, you know, he likes it. He knows what's going to happen now. It's an adventure for him. Last time the IRS came, this time they libeled him. They might pull out a gun next time. I mean, he's driving Congress. CR.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, it was just, it was a hearing on the censorship industrial complex. The need for First Amendment safeguards at the State Department. I mean, it's really, that's, that's kind of a no brainer. You. Of course we need First Amendment safeguards. We've been through quite a lot of censorship. That's what the ex. The Twitter files showed, among other things. And instead of taking any sort of a lesson and listening open mindedly, she decided to go to the politics of personal destruction. And it was despicable.

[Walter Kirn]

She decided to speak in the one kind of way that actually violates the First Amendment. I mean, in the sense that, you know, the irony. Yeah, the irony. No censorship for her, only for others, I guess.

[Megyn Kelly]

Moving on. Yeah.

[Matt Taibbi]

Just quickly is that, you know, from the very beginning, I know when I testified about the Twitter files, you know, two years ago, the, the Democrats treated me almost like I was worse than a Trump supporter. To the, to them, they think of me as some kind of apostate, but I've been a lifelong supporter of the First Amendment. I've been a Democrat most of my life. I probably agree with them about some things. If they wanted to open a discussion about what's appropriate for online regulation, but they, they decided to go completely in a different direction. And I. The political sense of that escapes me. I just don't understand why they do.

[Megyn Kelly]

Well, I guarantee you that woman did no research other than on you, other than, you know, smear research stuff that she could get to smear you. She, she didn't. She wasn't interested in probing who you actually are, what your views are, and she was too dumb to know you. So, you know, all of it reflected very poorly on her and I think it will continue to. Okay, a couple other things. This just in the el. The president of El Salvador was at the White House this morning. And met with President Trump. This is the guy who's taking our Venezuelan gang members and other illegals into this controversial prison, which does not look like a day at the park. And one of the guys that we deported, this guy, last name Abrego Garcia, is at the center of the controversy now because the Supreme Court, just to be clear, has already ruled that Trump can use the Alien Enemies act to deport these people. And what process they'll get before we deport them. The answer is some, and we'll figure out how much. But I guarantee it's not gonna be much. It's not gonna be much immigrants we're trying to kick out, get a very de minimis level of due process. It's not like you are. The three of us would get in a court of law, accused of crimes. That's the highest level, by the way. An illegal accused of a crime who's tried in a court would get the same level of due process in a criminal court as we would, too. But on deportation hearings, it's a quickie, you know, what do we know? What don't we know? Get out. And then they usually stay. Okay, so what happened with this guy was he was brought over and he was like, 15 or 16 by his parents from El Salvador and then grew up to allegedly become part of MS.13 here in America down in Virginia or Maryland around there. And he got pinpointed as a potentially, you know, problematic guy, as a gang member, potentially, and dragged into immigration court. And we had an immigration proceeding against him. We didn't, like, have a criminal proceeding against him. And then it went up on appeal within the immigration system. And two courts, the lower court and the upper court, found that he had enough gang ties that they were convinced he was a member of Ms. 13. They took witness testimony from a confidential informant, and apparently even El Salvador says he was a member of MS.13. So he was ordered to be deported. Get out now. He's in his mid-20s. Please leave. And only this. This took a while, all these proceedings, and only on the eve of his deportation did he say I. It was basically an asylum claim. You can't claim asylum in the United States unless you claim it within, like, the first year of being here, which he missed. But. So it wasn't asylum exactly, but it was like, I need humanitarian relief. You can't send me back to El Salvador. And the reason is that there's this terrible gang there that wants to kill me and my whole family. We were making some sort of a food. They like to make that Food. They didn't want my family to make the food. My mother, my, my brother, me will all be dead if you send me back to El Salvador. And some judge was like, okay. And gave him this order of suspended removal where he. We could still deport him. We could send him to any country in the world that would have him, but we can't send him to El Salvador because of this judge's order. At least then, if circumstances change, you can send him back to El Salvador. And by the way, that gang that was allegedly targeting him that he forgot to mention during two long immigration removal hearings, never mentioned once, only came up once he lost and he was ordered deported, no longer exists. So our government very easily could have gone back into immigration court and gotten an order saying, the removal suspension's lifted. You're going home, buddy. But now he's, like, been removed thanks to Trump. And he's playing the. I married an American. I have kids. One may be special needs. This is so wrong. I'm just a dreamer. Forget all those allegations about me being part of MS.13 that two courts found were real, that El Salvador says are real. It was never found by a criminal court, so it can't be real. And we think the evidence is sketchy. And I, I'm an American. Send me back home, which he's not. He's an El Salvadorian. That's. That's the synopsis, by the way, the one the media won't give you about this guy Abrego Garcia, who's become the left wing's poster boy for wrongful deportation. Deportations. The left has taken this case up. They got an order from a lower court judge saying, we have to. We have to make sure that he gets deported. That we. Sorry, returned. Returned to the United States from the Salvadoran prison to which we were not allowed to. To deport him, technically. And the Supreme Court took it up and said, all right, you have to help facilitate his removal, but you don't have to insure it. You don't have to actually execute on it. That's somebody else's job. But you, United States government, you do have to help facilitate his removal from that prison and return. And that was a lower burden than the left wanted. They wanted. You have to make sure he gets back here. And the Supreme Court would not give that. So that's where the case stands now. As Bukele, the president of El Salvador, shows up at the White House. And all the left was saying, why don't you just put him on your plane? Put this gang member on the El Salvadoran president's plane and bring him back. Well, that didn't happen. And the news just out of the Oval is as follows. Watch. Well, I kept. I'm supposedly not suggesting that I smuggle.

[Matt Taibbi]

A terrorist into the United States, Right.

[Megyn Kelly]

How can I smuggle. How can I return him to the United States?

[Matt Taibbi]

Like, I smuggle him into the United.

[Megyn Kelly]

States or what do I do?

[Matt Taibbi]

Of course I'm not going to do it.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's like, I mean, the question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don't have the power to return.

[Matt Taibbi]

Him to the United States.

[Megyn Kelly]

And now it's a very interesting legal thicket because Trump is saying, Team Trump, Stephen Miller, saying, we don't have the authority to go into a foreign government, a foreign nation, and take someone who is a Salvadoran citizen, who has no citizenry here, and bring him back to the United States, where we don't have that authority. Now you hear the Salvadoran president saying, we don't have authority to take someone who's been said to be a gang member and adjudicated by the. By President Trump, by executive order, a terrorist and drop him back off into the United States. And that's where things stand now. It's getting. Now it's getting really interesting to me. Thoughts on it, guys?

[Walter Kirn]

Well, one of the. One of the terrible effects of unconstrained immigration and illegal immigration is that every one of those people represents total tie up of our court system. I mean, that we are spending this amount of time, this amount of care, this amount of, you know, media space on a gang member or an alleged gang member, but definitely an illegal.

[Megyn Kelly]

Definitely, definitely illegal deportation order. Settled.

[Walter Kirn]

Illegal is an argument for. For there really being a very strict and, like you say, de minimis process for, I think, getting him out of here. Because we can't afford these resources, we can't afford this divisive argument and this legal quagmire over every single person. And, you know, this is not somebody to embrace for the left, you know, and that they want immediate results from a US Government that takes forever to get you, you know, get you a permit for something or whatever is ridiculous. These are the kind of issues that no matter what Trump does, are going to keep the left and the Democrats in the minority for a long time.

[Megyn Kelly]

Mm. Matt, it's very interesting because Trump got an order last week, late last week from the high court, saying the deportation of the Columbia University agitator, Mahmoud Khalil, the guy who was the Spokesperson for the on campus group of Columbia that overtook that building, Hamilton hall and held people hostage and defame the bill or defaced the building that Trump and Marco Rubio, who acted as Secretary of State to say his presence here is not consistent with the foreign policy goals of the United States. The high court said, you're fine, you're good there. That was their first poster boy, by the way. We told you that was not going to work. And we were right. And now this guy's going down because the Supreme Court would not order a mandate that we actually make sure he get back here. And now we're in this really interesting place where we're this legal limbo, but here's. And that works for Trump because possession is 9/10 of the law and he's in El Salvador. Here is Stephen Miller. I'm gonna advancing this now outside of the White House and I think it was yesterday, but not sure where all these reporters, because they're all left wingers, they all think this guy should be released back. It was today, okay? It was this morning. They all think he should be released back in the United States, gang member or not, terrorist or not, illegal or not. And Stephen Miller, who knows the subject like the back of his hand, did a little slice and dice in the media. Watch this.

[Stephen Miller]

Let's see if any of you have researched anything about this issue at all. Can anyone here tell me what would happen to the illegal alien from El Salvador if he came back to the United States? Does anyone here know? Anyone want to guess? Any of you?

[Megyn Kelly]

He could be with his family.

[Stephen Miller]

He would be arrested, he'd be put in confinement. He would be deported the second time to El Salvador again, because there's no withholding order for an alien who's a member of foreign terrorist organization, number one. Number two is the gang that he's a member of doesn't exist in El Salvador anymore. So what you're asking for is to be deported twice. So I'm trying to understand from you all is so if he came back and under our laws he was then deported to Egypt or to Somalia, which you then saying, great, I'm so glad that you deported him to another country. Is that what you'd all be saying? But do you understand our immigration laws at all? Do you know the difference between a deportation order and a withholding order? Do you know the difference? Any of you, Please, do you? Well, we're not in the government. What I'm getting from this conversation, education, is that not one person in the media knows the Difference between a deportation order and a withholding. Is that a fair statement? You're learning this all for the first time right now? I guess so. Okay, so the deportation order means the judge has said he must be deported from the country. He has no right to remain here any longer. He must be removed from the country. So his only options are to be deported to his home country or another country.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's it. By the way, that happens, he doesn't.

[Stephen Miller]

Get to stay here. He doesn't get to live here. He has no future here. He has no right to be here. He's an illegal alien.

[Megyn Kelly]

That was amazing. Was it not amazing?

[Matt Taibbi]

No, it's. It's incredible. And it's. It's a source of frustration for me because I think all of us in media, we often get asked to respond immediately to things that happen outside our areas of expertise. You know, there's a reason why most people who are in journalism cover. Tend to cover a couple of topics for years on end because it takes that long to become intimately familiar with certain kinds of issues. So if you ask me a question about digital censorship right now or, you know, First Amendment online questions, I probably know the answer to that. But if, but if it's about immigration law, you know, there's a huge mountain that you have to climb to know even the basics. And there's lots of stuff that that is not terribly well known, like changes in the Patriot act to the Immigration and Naturalization Act. These are all little tiny things that you have to know about the difference between what's legal and what's not. And it takes not days or weeks, sometimes it takes months or years to have a clue. So for these reporters to act like they know what they're talking about, it's a huge window into the, the general cluelessness of the business about these things.

[Megyn Kelly]

I have to say, to me, it's unforgivable, Walter, because people who listen to this show were not surprised by one word we just went through from the time I started my little soliloquy to right now. They have heard me discuss this since this guy's name came up both on this show and on our Morning Update news because it actually, like, if you're gonna cover it, you can. There are lots of things, like we didn't go nose dive into the tariff policy because we don't do a lot of economic news here, and I'm not an expert on that. I gave an interview to the Daily Mail promoting something, and they kept asking me, are we going to go to recession? I'M like, what the are you asking me for? I have no idea what. How I know if we're having a recession. And my point is, like, I know my lane and legal matters is 100% within my lane, and this is understandable, but did I know that this guy had an order of deportation and then that he got the suspension of removal just because of the El Salvadoran sob story he gave? Yes, I did. You know why? I read I did my homework before I reported on it. And you could times that by a thousand if I were going to go show up curbside and try to cross examine Stephen Miller. Oh, my God, they're lazy, Walter. They're lazy. Which I guess is not a sin in and of itself, though it kind of is. It's sloth. It's actually literally a sin. But in any event, on top of just being slothful on their couches, they then show up unprepared, and then they write articles about it, about how this guy's married to an American and they screwed up. They never should have been deported without telling you. He actually did have a deportation order. He never mentioned his sob story until they were about to kick him out. The gang that he got the deportation order suspended over no longer exists. And that he is Salvadoran, like, what other country should we be sending him to since we have a valid deportation order for the guy right now anyway? That's why it's so abhorrent to see them so stupid and uninformed.

[Walter Kirn]

Well, you know, they are uninformed. You are informed. The legalistic details of this are fascinating, and I think you're correct in your analysis. But most Americans look at this and they go, oh, this is a guy we want out of here who isn't supposed to be here. And this is why we need Greenland. This is why we need our version of Siberia. In the United States, we have to depend on other countries to exile people. We need something that we own that nobody wants to go to where it's really cold and really lonely, that we can send people without all this legal folder all. And we want to get rid of them. And I think northern Greenland, interior Greenland is a great candidate for that. Maybe, you know, in the old days, maybe would have been sent to dig the Panama Canal. Maybe we need to make it a little deeper, I don't know. But England had Australia, and we need something like that at this point, some third option to either ridiculous legal quagmires or, you know, total deportation.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, I think that's what we found here. In El Salvador. What? What? My audience keeps emailing me and I do read the emails. You can email me megan kelly.com is where's our due process? Where's Lake and Riley's due process? Where's Jocelyn Ngaro's due process? Where's the due process of the American citizens who are getting murdered by these criminals in our country? Every week you read about these, the children who are getting molested, sexually molested. Like we're. We. I will say the vast majority of people who listen to and watch this show couldn't give a shit about Abrego Garcia's due process. They don't care. So to your original point, Walter, it's a, it's a win, win for Trump.

[Walter Kirn]

The guy's argument for what not wanting to go home was fear of crime. Well, that's our argument against getting rid of, for getting rid of him. And I say it being our country and him being a visitor, we win. And we should win quickly. Really. It is a horrible waste. For all the fascination it provides. It's a horrible waste of lawyers, money and time to be worrying about cases like this when there are tens of thousands of them that are probably nearly this serious and then hundreds of thousands behind those.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, well, we'll see. I mean, there's a bit of a, I don't know, fisticuffs now because they're both like, I don't have the power. I don't have the power. Which is a very interesting position because what, what the Supreme Court did was they said facilitate, but they don't actually have to execute on it. And kicked it down to the lower court and said, you come up with a, with an order that's consistent with this order. And now I don't know what she's going to do because like this is she's not going to be able to force the El Salvadoran president to do anything. And our government's going to continue to say we don't have control over what the El Salvadorian government does anyway. We'll watch it, guys. Stand by. Quick break. Back with Matt and Walter in one minute. We live in a world our biology just was not built for. Artificial light, seed oils, microplastics, chronic stress. It's no wonder our health is under attack. These modern stressors disrupt our cells ability to function the way they should, impacting gut health, immunity, even how we age. Amra, Cholesterol, that's arm Ra, is a bioactive whole food that helps restore cellular signaling and strengthens your body from the inside out. It's packed with over 400 powerful nutrients that work to reinforce your immune barriers, fortify your gut, rev up metabolism and even support stronger skin and hair. It's pure, potent, natural and clean. And we have got you a special offer. Get 15% off your first order. Just go to tryarmra.com megan or enter the code Megan at checkout. That's T R Y A r m r a.com Megan these days, personal safety is not something that can be left to chance. Whether at home, on the road, or just living everyday life, having a reliable way to protect yourself and your family is crucial. That's why Burna is the choice for many. Burna is a game changing, less lethal self defense tool. Compact, powerful and easy to use, it provides the confidence to act in any situation. Burna uses non lethal rounds, tear gas, pepper and kinetic projectiles to effectively stop a threat from a safe distance. And the best part is Burna can be shipped direct to your door and it's legal in all 50 states. Burna's proudly American with products hand assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Sometimes a firearm is not the right option and Byrna provides a powerful alternative or supplement to your self defense plan. Protect what matters most with Burna. Visit Burna.com, that's by R N A.com to receive a 10% discount and learn why thousands of people and law enforcement agencies are adding Burna's less lethal protection. Berna Non lethal self defense always ready.

[Sean Spicer]

Hi everyone. This is former White House press secretary Sean Spicer. We all know that Americans are still recovering from the record inflation of the past four years. Now some in Congress want to make cuts to Medicaid, a program that provides critical health care to 72 million struggling Americans, including veterans, people with disabilities, kids, and your friends and neighbors. 40% of American births are actually covered by Medicaid. And Medicaid covers health care costs for a third of children with cancer. Working families rely on this program. It has 77% support. Nearly 9 in 10Americans oppose Medicaid cuts. Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to protect Medicaid. As president, he's still promising to love and cherish Medicaid. Did you know that 12 million Medicaid families live in rural communities? Many of these people voted for Donald Trump and they didn't vote for this. If Congress cuts Medicaid, a lot of rural hospitals could close and a lot of rural families will be hurt. No matter how you look at it, cutting Medicaid just doesn't make sense. Stand with President Trump and tell Congress not to cut Medicaid.

[Megyn Kelly]

I'm Megyn 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 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.

[Stephen Miller]

Go to SiriusXM.com MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com MKShow and get three months free offer details apply.

[Megyn Kelly]

So Bill Maher finally got back on his show and told us what happened when he went to the White House and met with Donald Trump. I really, I like Bill Maher. I like going on his show. But he definitely has been suffering from a case of the tds. Once the TDS gets you, it's hard to come out from under it, but I see shoots of grass mixing all sorts of metaphors. I think he's started to come out from under it, and to his credit, he went there. It was brokered by Kid Rock. And to his credit, President Trump allowed it, welcomed this and was very gracious to Bill Maher, who has been brutal about Trump for many years. So here's a bit of how Maher described the experience in SOC12.

[Bill Maher]

Everything I've ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent. At least on this night with this guy Bob. Kid Rock told me the night before, he said, if you want to get a word in edgewise, you're gonna have to cut him off. He'll just go on. Not at all. I've had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected, people who don't look you in the eye, people who don't really listen because they just want to get to their next thing. People whose response to things you say just doesn't track. Like what? None of that with him. And he mostly steered the conversation to what do you think about this? I know your mind is blown. So is mine. I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them. The way I was able to talk.

[Megyn Kelly]

With Donald Trump, pretty extraordinary. Walter. I'm starting to see the veil come down. You know, he's starting to see the man that a lot of us have seen for a long time now. If we don't have the tds, you got it. It's hard. If he comes out from the tds, he might be one of the only ones to have ever actively had it and then shed the disease.

[Walter Kirn]

I really like Bill Maher and I've been on his show and I love talking to him. After you do the show, he usually throws a party. From talking to him, I've gotten to know that he really believes what he says most of the time. And I'm sure he believes everything he said about Donald Trump. And he sounds genuinely surprised. And that was a huge risk for him to go and to come back and to be that sincere and genuine. He's taking non stop hell for it. I mean, people are using every obscenity to tell him to go away right now. And I got, I kind of admire him for it. You don't see actual risks taken in the media. They talk about audience capture. Everybody ends up a slave to their audience's prejudices. Well, he took the risk of not being. And he sounds a little like a kid, you know, who just danced with a girl and said they're really not scary and they're not mean, they smell kind of good and they're soft all over. And that, and that authenticity is touching to me. And boy, the abuse won't stop.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, he was pretty defensive about that. Let me play stop 14.

[Bill Maher]

My favorite part of the whole night was we were standing in the blowjob.

[Megyn Kelly]

Room, Bill Clinton's Monica Lewinsky room.

[Walter Kirn]

We were.

[Bill Maher]

And he said, you know, I've heard from a lot of people who really like that we're having this dinner. Not all, but a lot. And I said same. A lot of people told me they loved it, but not all. And we agreed. The people who don't even want us to talk, we don't like. You don't talk. As opposed to what? Writing the same editorial for the millionth time and making 25 hour speeches into the wind? Really? That's what liberals have. He takes the piss out of everybody else and we can hold ours. Okay, that's my report. You can hate me for it, but I'm not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured. And why he isn't that in other settings, I don't know. And I can't answer. And it's not my place to answer. I'm just telling you what I saw. And I wasn't high.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's the only, you know, Matt, I was trying to. Yeah, I was going to figure out how, why this doesn't irk me the way the Morning Joe trip to Mar A Lago irritated me because that one I just felt was performative. I really felt like they wanted access to a person in power who they had been so unfair to for years. I mean, they just, that show in general is just such a lie and so unfair. And I don't feel that way about Bill Maher or his show at all. I think he's an honest broker and he, he has, you know, Trump supporters on all the time. It's just he, he isn't one. He hasn't been one. So I, I agree that it was a courageous thing for him to do, for both of them to do. And I honestly, I give Trump tons of credit because Maher's been a chief antagonist. Your thoughts?

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, in addition to being an honest broker and I think believing what he says and like Walter, I've been on his show and I've talked to Bill many times after the show and always enjoyed just talking to him. He's also a natural comic. And I think one thing that he really struggled with in the last eight years was the sheer quantity of laughable stuff that came out of the quote, unquote left that he was told he wasn't allowed to laugh about. And that I think that was a big factor for him, you know, sort of being told that there are things that are off limits and the not so veiled threat that if you even entertain the idea of, of calling Donald Trump sane or a normal politician in public, that your career is going to be over. Now, Bill is just big enough that he can avoid the fate that most everybody else who went there experienced. And I, I think, you know, this thing that he did, I think it's a significant moment for, for media because now there might be some other people who come out of the woodwork and say, you know what? I'm just tired of saying the same stuff over and over again and not really fully believing it.

[Megyn Kelly]

I wonder if it's going to change at all the way he covers the president because he's, he's definitely been tough on Trump. He's, he's very tough on Democrats, too, by the way. He hates Wokeism. He's been a very strong ally in that battle. But usually on Trump, he's saying something negative. And so I do wonder now if he'll start saying more positive things, Walter, and if so, what happens with his audience?

[Walter Kirn]

Bill's got a unique relationship to his audience. He's always challenging them. Really. I mean, every Bill Marshall has something that's a little uncomfortable for people that doesn't play to their prejudices or their, you know, assumptions. So this is the biggest case of that yet. And I think his audience is going to stick with him. And I, and I. But I think he'll stage us as tough on Trump, but it will be more issues based.

[Megyn Kelly]

I think he's gonna say tough on Trump as well. He's just, you know, he doesn't like Trump. I think that's still true. But I think he saw like a glimpse of the man like that we actually know, like the real Trump and not the fighter who's out there being attacked all the time, who's gotta be, you know, tough and is tough in return. And, you know, Bill Maher, among many others has thrown some very tough punches his way as well. So anyway, I am in favor of the meeting. I feel very differently about it than I did about the Mar a lago kiss the ring a thon by members of the media who make their living tearing him down with lies. That's not what mar does. Anyway, guys, this was such a pleasure. Thanks for being here today on this special Monday edition.

[Matt Taibbi]

Absolutely. Thanks, Megan.

[Walter Kirn]

Thank you, Megan.

[Megyn Kelly]

I see you soon. I forgot to. I was so focused on my daughter Yarley's birthday today, I forgot to say happy one day belated birthday strudel. Yes. Drudwick Brunt turned four and it's happening. He. No, it's not. He's still very naughty. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.