← The Megyn Kelly Show
The Megyn Kelly Show
Newsom Tries to Salvage Political Career, and Woke Policies Backfire, with Stu Burguiere and Ilya Shapiro | Ep. 981
01:39:19
Megyn Kelly is joined by Stu Burguiere, host of BlazeTV's "Stu Does America," to discuss Gov. Gavin Newsom deflecting responsibility and going on Pod Save America to try to save his political career, how LA mayor Karen Bass promised citizens she wouldn't leave the country as mayor but ended up in Ghana during wildfires, CNN's "fact checker" getting the facts wrong about the LA wildfires and Palisades reservoir, lack of responsibility from government officials, the failures of the woke leadership in LA and all of California, liberal residents finally angry with Democrats and wanting to vote them out, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry getting in front of the cameras to “help” LA citizens after wildfires, their constant need for attention, and more. Then Ilya Shapiro, author of "Lawless," joins to discuss how a woke mob tried to ruin his career and cancel him, what he learned from the experience, the sorry state of many law schools in America, how college students can combat wokeness and...
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- [00:01]
Megyn Kelly
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show, live on Sirius XM channel 111, every weekday at noon East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and happy Monday. Oh, there's a lot to get to today. Thank you for being with us. All eyes remain on these LA wildfires which are ongoing and the damage that they've done. And, and speaking of ongoing, the ongoing lack of accountability from the top officials. It is truly a game of like, he's pointing to her and she's pointing to him and he's pointing to them like it's nobody, nobody. Not one person, not one person has stepped up, up to say, I take responsibility. Like Ron DeSantis would. I'm sorry, he's my model. Because that's another state that's dealt with overwhelming natural disasters time and time again. That, by the way, when they strike may be a mystery, but that they're going to strike is not. And he would be the first to say, the buck stops with me. I'm the chief executive of the state. To the extent there was an inadequate preparation or response, it's on me. That's what Ron DeSantis would say. You know it and I know it. And what you have in California is these mealy mouthed kale eating broccoli, pushing Birk stock, whatever, wearing politicians who can't find another person fast enough to blame. My absolute favorite, though, is the fire chief. She's growing on me. When she's not focusing on her lesbianism, she's actually quite fierce. She is not going down without bringing Mayor Karen Bass with her. And who could blame her? All right, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We begin with California Governor Gavin Newsom, who spent the weekend trying to avoid responsibility as the fires were still burning by dropping by the Pod Save America podcast for an attempt to clean up his own image.
- [02:09]
Stu Burguiere
I want to know the answers.
- [02:11]
Megyn Kelly
So I'm the governor of California.
- [02:12]
Ilya Shapiro
I want to know the answer.
- [02:13]
Megyn Kelly
I've got that question.
- [02:13]
Ilya Shapiro
I can't tell you about how many people. What happened?
- [02:16]
Stu Burguiere
My own team saying what happened.
- [02:18]
Ilya Shapiro
And I want to get the answer.
- [02:19]
Stu Burguiere
I'll be candid with the one getting straight answers.
- [02:21]
Ilya Shapiro
Yeah, I watched the press conference.
- [02:22]
Stu Burguiere
I met with some of those leaders. We had my team start talking to.
- [02:26]
Ilya Shapiro
Local leaders saying what's going on our state. You weren't getting straight answers.
- [02:29]
Stu Burguiere
I was getting different answers.
- [02:31]
Ilya Shapiro
When you start getting different answers, then I'm not getting the actual story.
- [02:35]
Megyn Kelly
So you decided the thing to do would be to go on Pod Save America to talk about it, because it's. In the end, it's all about you. This is another David Muir, folks. He is just as vain and worried about his image in the middle of this emergency as David Muir with his little fake fireman's jacket and clothes pins in the back. It's the same person. The same person. Though I have to say, Gavin Newsom's probably a little smarter than David Muir, but that's. The bar is very low. Listen to this. He goes out there. Hold on a second. Do we have it here? It's sought for. It's Gavin Newsom talking on Pod Save America. No, no. Is it Positive America? Yeah, yeah, it's on Positive America about it. To me, it's like a. It's like a Hillary Clinton moment. You know, when she went, she was like. The flames were licking me as I rushed across the airport. And then Cheryl Atkinson came out, who had been there reporting on this visit that Hillary Clinton was doing for CBS and showed absolutely nothing happened at the airport. She was totally fine. But the drama, it's very image serving the drama that Gavin Newsom was basically almost burned. Burned alive. The governor of California. Take a listen.
- [03:49]
Ilya Shapiro
We went up to one of the canyons on the fire.
- [03:53]
Stu Burguiere
Sitting there feeling we're a good quarter mile away.
- [03:56]
Megyn Kelly
I'm not making this up.
- [03:57]
Ilya Shapiro
Video to bear it out. All of a sudden, we see an ember hits the tree.
- [04:01]
Stu Burguiere
Tree goes on fire.
- [04:02]
Ilya Shapiro
Hundred seconds.
- [04:03]
Megyn Kelly
God is my witness.
- [04:04]
Ilya Shapiro
May have been 90 seconds.
- [04:05]
Stu Burguiere
The house is in flames.
- [04:07]
Ilya Shapiro
I have embers of flames. They're taking it off my hair. And we're running back into the car.
- [04:11]
Stu Burguiere
Winds are swirling around. Garbage cans were in the air, and.
- [04:15]
Ilya Shapiro
We were getting the hell out of there.
- [04:17]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, why is he saying is. God is my witness and I'm not making this up before he tells the story. Truly. Like, can I see the video? Can I see the embers for here? I mean, I've got questions. Sir, I don't find you to be a truth teller based on a long, long history of your lies. But seriously, who stops? Can you imagine if Ron Desantis in the middle of responding. No, no, not in the middle of responding. In the middle of the hurricane devastating his state. Swinging over to talk with the guys at Ruthless about, like, how it affected him. I got super wet. The rain came down, got in my hair, and then my hair got blown too. Not making this up. Hand to God, there's videotape of it. The press would be excoriating him. But Gavin Newsom. Let's talk about my hair. Did I manage to work my hair into the comp, into the conversation, or not? There's a lot, a lot to get through today, and we're thrilled to do it today with Stu Berghear. He's the host of Stu Does America for Blaze tv. Looking for the perfect gift or. Or maybe just a treat for yourself? Firecracker Farm Hot Saul is an awesome gift, beautifully packaged and unlike anything else out there. It's tasty, handcrafted, and totally unique. Perfect for anyone who loves bold flavors. Wouldn't this be a fun thing to send your love for Valentine's Day? Or just your mom to let her know you're thinking about her? This is not your typical salt. Each stainless steel push grinder is packed with amazing flavor. It's available in heat levels from mild to. That's for me, too. Wow. That may be for you. So there's something for everyone. Every sprinkle brings out incredible flavor without overpowering your dish. Firecracker Farm hot salt is made with love by a small family business, plus a percentage of every sale goes to Support charities, Operation 300 and the Pipeheader Foundation. But here's the thing. Firecracker is a small operation, so they can only make so much at a time, especially during the holidays and when people are running to get their products. So there's always a chance that they could run out. You don't want to take that chance. Get it while you can. It's the perfect gift. But don't wait too long or you might miss out. And you shouldn't. Cause it's awesome. Firecracker Farm Hot Salt. Handcrafted, flavorful, and unforgettable. Get yours today at Firecracker Farm. Stu, welcome back.
- [06:41]
Ilya Shapiro
Hey, Megan. How are you?
- [06:42]
Megyn Kelly
Great. So the important thing is, how is his hair? Did it or did it not have embers in it? And you tell me what the answer is to my question about what the press would be doing to Ron DeSantis if he swung by the Ruthless podcast in the middle of the hurricane. The fires are still burning. There's zero purpose in going on Pod Save America other than to burnish his own image.
- [07:04]
Ilya Shapiro
And of course, that's all he cares about. Right? That's why he tells this harrowing story of the embers landing in his hair, which we know has to be false, because if an ember hit his hair with the amount of product he has in it, it would set the entire shoreline on fire.
- [07:19]
Megyn Kelly
Makes sense.
- [07:20]
Ilya Shapiro
This can't possibly be a true story from Gavin Newsom, but that is All Gavin Newsom cares about is his image. He's immediately gone into this defensive mode where he's trying to blame everybody else. As if he had nothing to do with the idea of having water to put out fires. As if that was a strange concept. Who could have possibly known that a fire could happen? Who could possibly know that the Santa anda winds would come back? Who could possibly know that we might need water if those two things combine? And that's one of the things when you talk about DeSantis, you know, he wouldn't be interested in that. I mean, I think one of the things that's interesting about DeSantis nationally is a lot of people have this idea that he is always involved in culture war issues. And he does care about those things, right? He does care about wokeness. He does care about righting those wrongs. And that's good in my view. But really the reason why he was so popular, this all happened before COVID He was really popular before these culture war issues were widely known. Because he took as a priority the idea of competent governance and being able to defend against what is really the main concern of a lot of people in Florida, which is, God forbid a hurricane comes. What do we do? There's a massive natural disaster. What do we do? Are we gonna be prepared for it or is it gonna roll out of control like what we're seeing in California? Every single part of Ron DeSantis job has been to be prepared for those moments. The people of Florida, who are residents there, even if they hate his politics on other issues, know he does that stuff well and are willing to put him back in office whether they agree with him on wokeness or not. Because he's doing the type of. He's doing the types of things that are baseline requirements of any competent person. He is making sure they are prepared. He's making sure those trucks are lined up before the storm hits. He knows exactly what he's doing. He explains it to the people and it gets done properly. Gavin just understands.
- [09:19]
Megyn Kelly
He pre stationed all the electrical workers in. In the danger areas before the hurricane hit. And this is the same thing. They knew the Santa Ana winds were going to be up to 100 miles an hour before Karen Bass left for Ghana, which now the LA Times is reporting that when she ran for mayor, because she'd been flitting about the world when she'd been a U.S. congresswoman, including over to Africa many times she promised the citizens of LA she would not take any international trips. She said, don't worry, not Only will I be living in Los Angeles, but I will not leave Los Angeles on any international trips if I become mayor. And what does she do? She went to Ghana. Why? It was something super important, something she really needed to get. No, she wanted to. She was a damn boondoggle. Like, she had to be there for the inauguration of the leader. Who gives a shit whether we have an L. A mayor at the inauguration in Ghana? I mean, it's ridiculous anyway. Okay, so she is totally incompetent. And they'd been warned. She'd been warned. Her office had been warned and the citizens of Los Angeles had been warned that the Santa Ana winds were going to be very dangerous and that there was a supremely high risk of fire. Did she pre position, you know, the electrical workers, the firefighters? Did she bring in tanks and tanks of extra water? Did she make sure the reservoirs were filled? Did anybody under her do that? Did Gavin Newsom? No one. No one did any of that.
- [10:43]
Ilya Shapiro
Still, Meghan, she didn't even preposition herself. She was in Ghana. I mean, she's created a situation where the tragedy is so deep in her own city that Ghana actually looks pretty good to a lot of the residents. And that is quite the heavy lift for someone in America to pull off. It's shocking. I mean, we see what happens when people do prepare. We've seen private individuals who have been able to protect their property. It's a very difficult thing to do on a larger basis, of course, but you can do it. This is something that was known, and that's the biggest issue here, is that every explanation for what has occurred points to these politicians, every single one of them, with the exception of climate change. And the reason why they're all going down this road of climate change as the excuse for what has occurred is because it's the only thing that doesn't point to them. It's the only thing that instead points to some mom in Ohio in her minivan trucking her kids around to soccer practice. It's her fault. It's not my fault. It's their fault. They can point to anyone else. They are in a situation where the only escape route is to blame a 0.9 degree Celsius temperature rise over a century. That's all they have. And so that's the direction they're going. Because it's not one of these situations where you can blame Donald Trump. Sure, they might say that in passing, and that's usually their catch all for everything. But this is a situation where Democrats have run the state, Democrats have run this city forever. They've had occasional Republicans who have been in office who are very, very moderate and honestly big time environmentalists anyway who have been over there. This has been in control by these hardcore environmentalists this entire time. They've implemented all of these policies and this is the result of it. And the only person to blame is themselves. So they gotta blame, you know, invisible gases.
- [12:33]
Megyn Kelly
Gavin Newsom is now writing to the Department of Water and Power and to LA Mayor Karen Bass demanding an investigation. He writes, I request that the water department and LA county officials swiftly prepare a comprehensive review examining their local preparation. Underscore local local because the state preparation, trust me, it was absolutely perfect. Local preparation and response procedures to ensure available water supply for emergencies and document any causes of the loss of water pressure and unavailability of water supplies. Fully and transparent and transparently please share the information and records. Blah blah blah. Babylon be comes out. This is actually, this was, you know, prescient because this is a January 2022 headline, but it's perfect for that letter I just read which just came out on Friday. Gavin Newsom demands answers from whoever's in charge of California. Exactly right. So now he wants an after action review. This is that like he is pretending like there is just complete separation of church and state here. You know, he had absolutely nothing to do with it. Like if, if there's a local government that the governor really his hands are tied. He can do nothing to prepare for an emergency nor to address it after the fact. All he can do is just demand answers like Stubberg here and Megyn Kelly, like as observers outside the realms of power.
- [14:01]
Ilya Shapiro
It's insane. I mean here's a guy who has been, who is governed in a way that is incredibly invasive into the people's lives of everyday Californians. He's tried to control every aspect of people's businesses. He's tried to shut them down. Not of course the French Laundry where he was out eating, but he's tried to shut down businesses, he's tried to require them to take medications they may or may not want. He's tried to do literally everything to control their life on a daily basis. But he has no control whatsoever, no impact, no influence whatsoever over all of these towns and whether they have any water available in their fire hydrants. It's really insulting to our intelligence. Is it not? Everybody knows how Gavin Newsom has governed. He's been. All he cares about is involving himself in your day to day life when he's not a thinking about his political future. Or B, hooking up with one of his best friend's wives. When he's doing those sorts of things, maybe he's a little distracted, but he has absolutely all sorts of authority over these issues and at the very least could have been there standing on the soapbox from the top of the mountain saying, hey, we don't have this water situation ready to go for when there's a big fire. We know the fire's coming, we need to do something immediately. You could have heard that from another person who doesn't happen to be the governor of California named Donald Trump, who has said it on a hundred different podcasts talking about how this needed to happen and over and over again. I mean, conservatives have been talking about this forever. Land management, water management, you know, not to mention all the DEI craziness that I'm sure we'll get into. All of this has been stuff that conservatives have been pointing out forever. And he's opposed it largely on that basis and has gone the opposite direction and made it much worse.
- [15:50]
Megyn Kelly
He, not only has he been opposing it, but he's been funneling the California taxpayers money to the homeless who are everywhere thanks to him to soft on crime das right, who he supports and Searle supports, who are letting these looters in and out. And then he denies it. Meanwhile, we've seen the law that's been on the books up until recently when the California taxpayers reversed it saying if you steal under a thousand dollars, we're not gonna come after you. It's fine, it's a misdemeanor. And to these illegals who are now getting Medicaid in California thanks to him, illegals. So like this guy's priorities are not with keeping people safe at all. He doesn't care about the crime, about the illegals, and obviously not about the fires, which after the fact, you know, again, like, hey, sure, could somebody let me know how that happened? That seems bad. He gets caught out in front of the fires by NBC's Jacob Soboroff, who is further left than Gavin Newsom. Trust me, I know him. I worked with him for a year plus at NBC and spent a fair amount of time with this guy. Very far left kid, and not a kid, but he's younger. And he starts asking Gavin Newsom a bunch of softball questions and Newsom tries to spin that everything was filled, all the reservoirs were totally filled. I don't know what the hubbub is about. And Soboroff asks one follow up question pointing out that the reservoir that serviced Pacific Palisades Was empty. Watch this when he talks about the.
- [17:31]
Ilya Shapiro
Delta smelt and reservoirs. The reservoirs are completely full, the state reservoirs here in Southern California. That mis and disinformation, I don't think advantages or aids any of us responding to Donald Trump's insults. We would spend another month. I'm very familiar with them. Every elected official that he disagrees with, very familiar with him. We do know, though, from reporting here locally, that that one reservoir that serves the Palisades was not full. And that's exactly what triggered my desire to get the investigation to understand what was happening.
- [18:01]
Megyn Kelly
There was a very obvious threat to this particular area. And now indeed Stu there. According to the LA Times, that they believe, or the Washington Post, they believe that this fire in the Pacific Palisade was the result of a nearby fire that had started on New Year's Eve, thanks to fireworks that they put out. But it was still smoldering, and with the high winds, it sort of jumped anyway. All of which is foreseeable. And his. He's going to die on the hill of. Well, the locals didn't fill their reservoir, but the state reservoirs had water.
- [18:33]
Ilya Shapiro
Amazing. I mean, the time to look into it is before the entire city burns to the ground. That's kind of the time you target, as a governor, someone who's competent to look into such matters as not having water to fight fires. You don't look into it after. You're just looking at a bunch of rubble. You look at it before the issue. That's entirely your job as governor. And he's failed at it over and over and over again. And that's gonna be his fallout. Of course, he's gonna be the basically the multiple Spider man meme, where everyone's just pointing fingers at each other. That's what's gonna happen in California. They're all gonna, I guess, decide to blame everybody. Of course, Donald Trump is gonna get his share of the inexplicable blame. He's not even President of the United States yet, but this is still gonna be his fault somehow. That's all out there. And this is something that, as you point out, someone like Ron DeSantis doesn't do. They look at this stuff in advance and try to fix it before it happens. And Gavin Newsom has had multiple issues like this. I mean, if you go back to even his handling of COVID which was horrid and horrific, but one of the first things he did when he got into office, and this is covered in a Michael Lewis book, not a conservative author by any means, but they had an infectious disease expert who was running their health department for the state government. But the problem with her was she was white and blonde. And Gavin Newsom wanted a person of color in that role and hired someone who had absolutely no idea what they were doing whatsoever. This is not me talking about this again. This is a liberal author who describes this story in detail. And like, I'm sure I wouldn't have agreed with everything that an infectious disease expert would have recommended for Covid either. I probably would have my problems with it. But the idea that you would put someone in an important position like that before COVID not knowing that it was coming, just putting someone in there who looked the way that you wanted them to look, going all out DEI with the lives of Californians instead of picking someone who was already on staff and already lined up for the job, who was an infectious disease expert because she was white and blonde. This sort of stuff has been foundational to Gavin Newsom and the way he has run the state of California. And people shouldn't forget it. This is his fault. This is his fault. It's Karen Bass fault and he needs to be held responsible for it.
- [20:55]
Megyn Kelly
Now you've got the media, including CNN's Fact Checker air quotes Daniel Dale trying to tell us that there was no shortage of water in la. I mean, we know that the reservoir that serviced the area that burned to the ground was empty. But he's like, there's absolutely no problem with shortage of water in the LA area. Listen to this moron.
- [21:21]
Ilya Shapiro
There is no shortage of water in the Los Angeles area area. The reservoirs are at or above historical levels. The water is there.
- [21:30]
Megyn Kelly
Now.
- [21:31]
Ilya Shapiro
We have seen high profile issues in.
- [21:33]
Stu Burguiere
One part of the city, Pacific Palisades.
- [21:35]
Ilya Shapiro
Where some hydrants were dry or did.
- [21:37]
Stu Burguiere
Not have a lot of water.
- [21:38]
Ilya Shapiro
But that was not because there was not enough water in the region. That was because of technical logistical infrastructure issues.
- [21:46]
Megyn Kelly
Infrastructure issues. Okay. The LA Times on Friday, a Department of Water official acknowledged that the reservoir's absence, the one we're talking about for Palisades, likely contributed to some diminished pressure and dry hydrants in upper regions of the Palisades. The reservoir's absence meaning look at this empty reservoir that service Pacific Palisades, that it contributed to the diminished pressure and the dry hydrants. So how do you figure that there's no shortage of water in the LA area, Daniel Dale, and that this empty reservoir had no effect? Are you who died and made you fire chief or Department of Water investigator? He has, he knows nothing, this guy. All he knows how to do is run cover for Democrats. They go on in the LA Times, to your point about Michael Lewis, this is no conservative publication. This is not the Wall Street Journal or the New York Post. They write, citing a former. That quote I read you was from a current DWP official. Now they go to a former general manager, a guy named Martin Adams. Had the reservoir been operable, it would have extended water pressure in the Palisades. It would have, of course, because they ran out of water pressure in the upper parts of the Palisades once the lower parts of the Palisades were in trouble. And by the way, Janice, the woman who runs the Department of Waterworks, came out and admitted all this already. Daniel Dale. Daniel Dale, I fact checked you and you failed. You failed the fact checked. And honestly, it would help you a lot if you would just stop. If you just check your political agenda when actually looking into things. Because we've heard the water chief talk about this. She was out there the day after talking about how the low pressure prevented them from getting water in the upper regions of the Palisades. And then, no, none of the officials denied that there was no water in the, in the reservoir that was supposed to be servicing those hydrants, that that was indeed a big problem for the firefighters. It wasn't just the fact that there's shitty infrastructure. It was the absence of water to draw from in the first place. In any event, you won't hear that on cnn. You know why? All right, standby. We're going to take a quick break and we'll come right back with Stubergear and more coverage of what's happening in LA and what's happening tomorrow morning, beginning at 9:30, which is Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi face the beginning of their confirmation hearings and what the Democrats are now threatening when it comes to Pete. Are you ready to make better sleep your New Year's resolution? Let me tell you about Cozy Earth. Their sheets, made with 100% premium viscose from bamboo, are incredibly soft, breathable, and get even softer with every wash. Good sleep is essential to your routine, gives you the energy to tackle your day and feel your best. Cozy Earth also prioritizes quality and care with a 100 night sleep trial. You try their sheets out for up to 100 nights and if you do not love them, they let you return them for a full refund. Who else does that? And for cozy nights and relaxed mornings, their bamboo pajama set is another must have. It's soft, breathable, and sleeps cooler than Cotton keeping you perfectly comfortable. A better year starts with better sleep. Wrap yourself in cozy earth. Visit cozyearth.com Megan use my exclusive code Megan M E G Y N for up to 40% off your order. That's cozyearth.com Megan. And if you get a post purchase survey, tell them you heard about Cozy Earth from the Megyn Kelly Show. Don't wait. Head to cozyearth.com Megan now and use code Megan M E G Y N for up to 40% off. This is becoming a thing, right? So you've got Daniel Dale of CNN saying there was absolutely no water shortage. It's not a thing. And then Elon Musk, God love him because he's getting the Starlink satellite feed up so that people can have service out there. He's doing a lot, as he always does in these tragedies to help people. And he goes out there and he's become sort of a citizen journalist with his, you know, iPhone going out there trying to film. He, he did it in Israel after 10, 7. Now he's in LA with some of the firefighters. And the problem he has in talking to some of these firefighters is it's not a high likelihood that the firefighters on cam with Elon Musk and being seen by their bosses and by LA Mayor Karen Bass and by everybody are going to throw anybody above them under the bus. So in the, at the end of their 13 minute exchange, the following thing happened.
- [26:27]
Ilya Shapiro
Watch, like along the, maybe, correct me.
- [26:32]
Megyn Kelly
If I'm wrong, along in Malibu, along.
- [26:34]
Ilya Shapiro
The coast, there was no shortage of water.
- [26:36]
Megyn Kelly
In the Palisades, there was a shortage.
- [26:38]
Ilya Shapiro
Of water at a certain point, or is that not? Well, we were just, we were flowing just an amount of, amount of water that the system couldn't overbect just because of how much water these firefighters or utilizing. Okay, all right.
- [26:57]
Megyn Kelly
Okay. So we were flowing an amount of water that the system couldn't hold. So he doesn't point to the reservoir and he doesn't talk about the empty hydrants. He says, you know, the amount of water that we were throwing through this urban system was too much for the system. And in his defense, the Waterworks woman, Janice Quinones, did say after the fire that an urban system cannot handle the amount of firefighting that we were doing. Normally they would throw in helicopters with water, but they couldn't given the winds. All right? So ultimately what they did was they got tankers of water to come and sort of serve as backup, but too late, too little, too late. Right. Again, a failure of planning in any event, no acknowledgment by the firefighter and who knows whether even understood about the reservoir that was empty that services Palisades. However, a Department of Water official spoke to the L. A Times again and acknowledged, quoting here, that the reservoir's absence likely contributed to diminished pressure and dry hydrants in the upper regions of the Palisade. So it's already been admitted. Nonetheless, what do you see now? After Elon tweets out his live stream, Gavin Newsom's like, his lies have been exposed. Exposed. And then he's like, oh, yeah, by the way, I want a full report on why that reservoir was empty. Right? So it's like trying to have it both ways. It's a lie that we were out of water, but we were out of water. And I want a full report because it was definitely not my fault. It was the locals. And then you've got the local firefighters being like, oh, the diminished pressure. No one in Los Angeles should expect clear and honest answers because they all lead back to government incompetence and refusal to take responsibilities due.
- [28:39]
Ilya Shapiro
Yeah, you're totally right. And, of course, that's why they keep going to climate change. Right? I mean, you know, we could talk about there not being any water available in Los Angeles, but I did some deep research, which is looking at a map of Los Angeles, and there's this giant body of water right there called the Pacific Ocean, which. There's tons and tons of water right there. The question is whether it's distributed. It's distributed to the correct places. You need to have it in the right place to be able to put out the fires. And that's the thing we're criticizing. It's not a lack of water. Of course they have water. They have lots of. They've had lots of rain. They have these reservoirs for a reason. The fact that they weren't full, I mean, look, this is a real stress. We can't downplay that. You know, we can't say that this is an easy thing to deal with. These fires, even when you're incredibly prepared, they're still very difficult to deal with. And when you have hundreds of homes burning down and every, you know, having damage to all the connections between them, you're going to have issues with water pressure, but, like, that's secondary to what you can do. No one, I don't think anyone's sitting here and saying, hey, like, you should have been able to stop this fire completely. I don't think anyone's saying that, hey, you need to be able to control the winds of Santa Ana. We're not the ones that are constantly saying we can control the weather to the tenth of the degree. That's them. I think there are going to be natural disasters and sometimes they will do real damage. The question is how much of this is the fault of the government and how much of it could have been prevented. When you talk about climate change, you might be talking, maybe it is. I mean, I haven't seen much evidence of this, but maybe it is a little bit drier. Maybe there is a slight around the fringes difference when it comes to climate change. We're talking about less than a degree Celsius over a century. But maybe it did something that's not the main story. If the main story is it burns 998 homes instead of 1,000, we're not celebrating that. We want this to be a situation that's under control. And at the very least, the people who are there risking their lives, standing there with their fire trucks outside of these homes, watching the flames with the hoses in hand and nothing coming out of that, that is the type of thing that is inexcusable.
- [30:53]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. Why weren't there. Why weren't the tankers that we eventually saw in these neighborhoods pre positioned so that there'd never be a situation in which those in the upper hills of the Palisades would run out of water, as we saw reported by firefighters left and right, which the media also tried to tell us was not true, but then had to admit because the firefighters were coming out and saying it. You know, like the gaslighting that, that the city of Los Angeles is going through must be infuriating for those who are looking at their houses in ashes right now. Just as an update, as of today, the latest count is 24 dead cadaver dogs are now being brought in to locate human remains. They expect that number to go up. 12,300 structures have burned. That Palisades fire is only 13% contained. The Eden fire, which is one of the other ones, 27% contained. And so they're still in danger out there. I want to get to what the fire chief now is saying. The this woman who you know, she's a lesbian, she wants you to know she's a lesbian. Yay. She's a lesbian in the first line of her fire chief bio. And she hired two other lesbians to work for her right under. Okay, great. Anyway, she is now potentially going to get fired. The Daily Mail had a report out at 4pm on Friday saying she'd been fired. And then they had to update it, saying actually it didn't go as planned. She went into the meeting with a. With the mayor expecting to get fired. Somehow something happened in that room, they say, that led to her not getting fired. I don't know. But this woman, she knows how to fight fires. And she's doing it now on the air, and she is like, bitch, I'm not going down alone. To the LA mayor, it's been pretty extraordinary to watch this woman, Crowley, fight back and tell us all. I've been trying to warn these morons that we needed more resources and that we were not in a position to do what we needed to be able to do. Her fire department got caught. $17 million by this mayor in the last year's budget. But that's not all. So let me give you number one where she spoke to Fox LA on Friday. SOT 7.
- [33:05]
Ilya Shapiro
The city of Los Angeles fail you.
- [33:07]
Megyn Kelly
And your department and our city. It's my job to stand up as a chief and exactly say justifiably what the fire department needs to operate to meet the demands of the community. Did they fail you? That is our job. And I tell you, that's why I'm here. So let's get us what we need so our firefighters can do their jobs. Did they fail you? Yes. Oh, boy. Shots fired. Okay, then she goes over to Jake Tapper show on CNN on Friday and listen to this. Let me be clear. The $17 million budget cut and the elimination of our civilian positions like our mechanics did and has and will continue to severely impact our ability to repair our apparatus. So with that, we have over 100 fire apparatus out of service. And having these apparatus in the proper amount of mechanics would have helped. And so it did absolutely negatively impact. By the way, she went on like, that was not the only. Like, she's unloading now, Stu. So good luck to Daniel Dale and Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, who all just want to run cover for the Democratic leadership.
- [34:18]
Ilya Shapiro
Yeah, it's funny how, you know, diversity was their most important thing, but as soon as it. As soon as it's going to be beneficial to them to blame a lesbian firefighter, they're going to be blaming her, I'm sure. Which is. It's really fascinating how that switches around. The DEI doesn't last all the way to accountability. I'm glad to see her out there talking like this. And like, it's funny because I think this kind of shows where conservatives come from on these DEI issues. If she's actually like the best firefighter for the job. Fantastic. Be great. I don't care. Like, whoever it is, whatever skin color they have, whatever genitals they have, whichever genitals they like, whatever it is, I don't care. I want the fires put out. And I think it's really important that you have somebody who's at least stepping up publicly now and doing this while this is going on. I will say I think we need to think a little deeper than that when it comes to what they can do. If you happen to be in this position and you know your state is letting you down now, don't wait until half of your city is ash before you start saying these things. Call them out publicly beforehand. Let people know. It might cost you your job. It's possible. But you could be saving thousands of lives, hundreds of lives. We don't know. You said that number is 24. As you said, Megan, that number's going up. That's going up by a lot. And I can't even imagine where it's going to end. It's a terrifying thought. So if you can get out in front of this, if you're one of these positions, you know these things, I might not know this. Megyn Kelly might not know this, because we can't follow the inner workings of every police, fire department around the country. But if you make us aware of it, we can talk about it and maybe draw attention to it before these tragedies happen.
- [35:57]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, these. Just to give people an idea of scale, Manhattan is 14,000 acres. In LA, at least 17,000 acres have been burned to the ground, have been eliminated. They're gone. It's. It's truly. It is shocking. I heard somebody saying it looks like Mars, you know, like it looks like the surface of Mars now just burned embers. Think about it. An area bigger than the island of Manhattan. Think of if New York were just eliminated. It looks. Forgive me, but it looks like a nuclear bomb hit the region and it's just gone. Just a huge swath of one of our most beautiful cities is gone. So all these politicians are done. I. They don't appear to know it, but. Mayor Bass, your career's over. You're probably going to be recalled and kicked out of it. Office. There's a change.com petition with over 100,000 signatures. She's. She's going. I don't know if she knows that. Gavin Newsom. Same. You're effed. Stop telling us about the embers in your hair. It's over for you, my friend. I'm Sorry, but your political career ended last week. Again, he. He's pretending like he doesn't know it. I'm here to tell you you're done. The only question is what they do now. And I have to tell you, like my friend who lives in California whose house burned is. This is my one woke friend. I love this woman dearly, but she's woke. And amazingly, we've maintained our friendship. We kind of just don't talk about these subjects much. But she's woke and she's like, mk, everyone I know is ready to vote Republican. She's like, everyone I know, all of her woke friends, all of her Dem friends, she was like, we're all talking about how soon we can get Republican leadership into these offices. I mean, that is saying something.
- [37:50]
Ilya Shapiro
It sure is. It's saying a lot. And I think you're. I think you're right. I do have my doubts because I've seen California go down roads where I thought they might wake up, and they haven't. But I. I think you're right in this circumstance. And I think it's because it's crossed some weird line for people. You know, as I'm watching the footage of Los Angeles, you know, burned to the ground, you know, we were showing side by side photos of this and Nagasaki, and you can't really tell the difference other than one being black and white and one in color. And I. I feel like as a. As a person who grew up in the United States, we're a little spoiled here, right? We have the, I think, the best country that's ever existed. And I just look at this country as a place where something like this can't happen. And I realized as I was having that thought, how many times I've had that thought recently, you know, watching Covid happen, I thought, that can't possibly happen. When Italy was going through those shutdowns, I remember thinking like, that could never happen here. And then weeks later, where were we? You know, watching the withdrawal from Afghanistan, this can't be happening. With America. Watching Maui burn. This can't be happening in America. But these things keep happening in America, Megan, over and over and over again. This, I think, is deeper than Karen Bass or even Gavin Newsom, who's, I will agree with you, while the city was burning to the ground, so was Gavin Newsom 2028. And we can be thankful for that one little slice of this story. But, like, this is happening a lot and we have to make a major change. Thank God Trump is coming into office here in a week. From today, thank God that's happening. That's a piece of the puzzle, but it is bigger. I don't even think the President of the United States can handle the transition like that. It's going to take all of us to wake up and realize that we're going down a really dark road.
- [39:39]
Megyn Kelly
Two things. One, it's his vanity that makes him refuse to acknowledge reality. He's done. It's over. Gavin Newsom, it's over. It's his vanity. And that's why, you know, the hair and the Meet the Press and Pod Save America let me rehabilitate my own image. And Karen Bass, too. She promised she wouldn't take the overseas trips. She took the overseas trips. Jesse Kelly was here on Friday saying, these people who run for local office tend to be middling and unimpressive. I'm putting it in nicer terms than Jesse did, and he said, they use the taxpayer's dime to go on these boondoggles to see the world. They want you and me and my friend in LA to pay for their vacations so they can go around and see Ghana, which is super cool. And. And this woman, Karen Bass, is on record saying, when, like she says, when I first considered running for LA mayor and I realized I wasn't gonna be able to take my trips to Africa, I first thought, yeah, I don't want to do that. I don't want to give that up. But, you know, then I realized I'm gonna have to do it. Well, she didn't do it. She's been over to Paris three times now. She's like, oh, it's because of the Olympics. I had to go see the Olympics. And she's back and forth to Ghana. So the vanity, right, of these players who we keep putting in office, when you want somebody who's just a workhorse again, like a Desantis, who just wants to get in there and do a good job, who gets off on being patted on the back for his competency, not for his hair or how well traveled he is. So, okay, that's number one. And then I want to show this, too, when we talk about Nagasaki and Mars and what it looks like now. There's this guy, he's on TikTok. His name. He goes by Selfish Chef. He doesn't give his real name. And he was coming back into the California region from, I think, Florida, where he'd been Orlando. And look, so you can see he's filming. This is Saturday. Look at this. He saw la, which was dark. And then you get to the fires burning just wait, because it goes on. You see a third of the city just completely on fire, truly, as if a nuclear bomb has been dropped on Los Angeles and it keeps going and going. Look, there's more and more and more. This was Saturday, Stu. This was Saturday. This wasn't. This wasn't Tuesday, the day that all the homes burned. This is ongoing. And the fucking governor goes on pod Save America.
- [42:18]
Ilya Shapiro
It's jaw dropping. I mean, it looks like a disaster movie. You know, there's, there's a reason why they always place these disaster movies in LA and Los Angeles, because there's all these landmarks and, and things that you recognize. And you know, every movie with the rock in it has, you know, a bunch of buildings being knocked down in Los Angeles. This is what it looks like. I mean, it really looks like that in real life. And, you know, it's shocking because, you know, some level of tree planning could have prevented a lot of this. We saw this with Caruso, who was able to protect the property that he owns, this mall, by hiring private firefighters and bringing them out and protecting a lot of the structures around this facility.
- [42:57]
Megyn Kelly
As well positioned tanks of water.
- [43:01]
Ilya Shapiro
Exactly, exactly. Now, I don't know, I know you were a lawyer, I don't know if you're a firefighter, Megan, but you seem to understand the concept that water puts.
- [43:09]
Megyn Kelly
Them out because I'm too small. Okay, Message to the fellow women of America. I am too petite to fight fires. I'm strong enough for a 5 foot 6 woman who's in relatively good shape. I can do stuff that the average person my size can do, but I can't fight fires because I can't lift men or anything over about 70 pounds over my shoulder. And that's even being generous to myself. Go ahead, Stu.
- [43:36]
Ilya Shapiro
Well, you people to do every role, but you do seem to have nailed the idea that water puts fire out. And that is a really important thing that many in California apparently didn't understand. And like, look, you know, he had a lot of resources, you know, and by the way, this guy could have been mayor. You may have seen the DeSantis approach to this fire if he was. But, you know, he could have been mayor and he's not. And he has a lot of resources. But I would venture to say despite his personal wealth, which is significant, he does not have the resources of the state of California at his disposal. And my guess is that if California actually prioritized this as opposed to seeing how many lesbian firefighters they could hire and making sure their number one priority was diversity, which is what these fire departments were saying and these cities were saying leading up to this event. If your priority number one was instead making sure that if a fire began, if the conditions presented themselves where one could be coming, that we had hundreds, thousands of these trucks ready to go at our disposal. Number one, let's get this thing fired up so we can go and protect as many of these communities as possible. That's not to say there wouldn't be any damage. Look, nature has a pretty strong will and it's not always easy to overcome. But mastery of these situations by human beings is how we've excelled. People used to diet rates 30, 40, 50 times as much from natural disasters 100, 150 years ago. We've been able to lower that a significant amount because of mastery of these issues, being able to protect people from weather and all these disasters. Disasters. And California has this. We all know how to do it. There's plenty of water right there. There's plenty of ways to make this a lot better. It might not have been perfect, but gosh, it didn't have to be this. And now we're looking at one of the worst disasters in American history.
- [45:25]
Megyn Kelly
You know what I hear when I listen to you? Racism. I hear racism. Yeah. I hear it when I listen to myself talking about Karen Bass, too. It must be our racism. Just ask these two D list actresses, Yvette Nicole Brown and Kim Whitley, with a different take on why Mayor Karen Bass is coming under such criticism. And she's got a spine of steel.
- [45:48]
Ilya Shapiro
Yes.
- [45:48]
Megyn Kelly
And she's also been a black woman.
- [45:49]
Ilya Shapiro
In America a very long time.
- [45:50]
Megyn Kelly
So none of this is new to her. We're mad because we're tired of it. We're mad for her and we're going to stand.
- [45:58]
Ilya Shapiro
Listen, I don't know how you here.
- [46:00]
Megyn Kelly
But I'm happy you're here because somebody needs to say stand, you know, behind.
- [46:05]
Ilya Shapiro
Her and support her because how is she handling it?
- [46:08]
Megyn Kelly
You can see it in her face. She stays calm.
- [46:10]
Ilya Shapiro
But think about this. She has the city to take care of.
- [46:13]
Megyn Kelly
She does not have time to hear all these reporters.
- [46:16]
Ilya Shapiro
She is also not mayor of every municipality in California.
- [46:20]
Megyn Kelly
Yes, we have fires every year. And I don't remember in the 30.
- [46:24]
Ilya Shapiro
Years almost that I've lived in LA.
- [46:25]
Megyn Kelly
I've never seen somebody, everybody react like.
- [46:27]
Ilya Shapiro
This to the mayor and blame one.
- [46:29]
Megyn Kelly
Person for a natural disaster. Yeah, I've never seen it. Now, what's different this time? Interesting. Isn't it that.
- [46:36]
Ilya Shapiro
Amen, sister. Amen.
- [46:39]
Megyn Kelly
God. Still.
- [46:42]
Ilya Shapiro
I mean, it's the same stuff over and over and over again. I mean, I don't know how they could even possibly believe that this would work. Especially when I will say maybe with more blame I place on the, on the, on the shoulders of a really annoying white guy who thinks he's incredibly good looking, Gavin Newsom. I mean, I put this centrally on his shoulders. I don't know what that is. I seem to be blaming people for their confidence level, not their skin color, which is the way you're supposed to do it. Though she does seem terrible at this job and you know, part of your job.
- [47:17]
Megyn Kelly
She directed people to URL who wanted help finding resources. She's too dumb to be the mayor.
- [47:27]
Ilya Shapiro
She's very, very dumb. And I will say it makes sense that she was on the short list to become vice president under Joe Biden. I mean, California incompetence and stupidity seems to be a prerequisite to be considered for that job. And I don't know if it would have been better or worse if she got that job. Maybe the people of Los Angeles are wishing that she did.
- [47:47]
Megyn Kelly
That's what's incredible. Think about it. Kamala Harris was a DEI hire 100% for vice president. Karen Bass almost got the job. She's even dumber than Kamala. That's obvious. And then you've got three fire chiefs, like the top, the deputy and the person who's who runs DEI at the LA fire who are apparently there because they have vaginas and they like to share them with other women. I mean, honestly, like, I'm sorry that I am allowed to question your competency when it's very clear you did not get hired because of it. When you yourself are touting all the firsts. Karine Jean Pierre is another one. She's in there touting how she's the first black lesbian. You know she sucks too. Like, stop touting these irrelevant characteristics as reasons we're supposed to celebrate you and then try to hide behind them when you come under criticism for your incompetence. Like, obviously those questions are going to be asked if you are crushing the job, not so much when you are terrible at it. Live by dei, die by dei. More on that and Meghan Markle and her ridiculous appearance in this matter right after this break. More with Stu did you know that American homeowners nationwide have over $32 trillion in equity and cyber criminals are targeting it right now with a growing scam the FBI calls house stealing. House alarms, doorbell cams, deadbolts. They're not gonna Work against these thieves because they're not after your stuff, they're after your home equity. If your title is not being monitored, scammers can transfer the title of your home into their name, then take out loans against it or even sell it behind your back. The best way to protect your equity is with triple lock protection from home Title Lock. Triple lock protection is 24,7 monitoring and God forbid if the worst happens, restoration services at no out of pocket cost to you. When was the last time you checked on your title? Likely never. And that's exactly what scammers are counting on. Make sure you're not already a victim. You can get a free title history report and a 30 day free trial of triple lock protection today by going to hometitlelock.com and using the promo code Megan. Or just click on the link in the description. That's hometitlelock.com, promo code. M, E, G Y N Couple of points due. So on the subject of whether they were prepared, there is a report. There was a report on Friday by the Daily Mail saying that there's a leaked memo revealing that Karen Bass, the mayor, demanded that this fire department, from whom she'd already cut 17 million, cut an extra $49 million from their budget just one week before these wildfires. There was a leaked memo of Karen Bass proposed cuts obtained by a fire department whistleblower. It's dated January 6th. And in it, Bass demanded that the fire department make an extra $49 million in budget cuts on top of the 17.6 million she already cut, saying, let's see. Oh, and then, and then. Then, let's see. Okay. Yeah. She says the only way to provide a cost savings would be to close as many as 16 fire stations. Not resources, but fire stations. This equates to at least one fire station per city council district. And then says openly they're trying to allocate more money for the homeless and they need to start taking from everyone. It's pretty amazing. Then you've got the Free Beacon with a report that two months before these blazes, the LA fire chief, this woman Crowley, said she needed more firefighters, that they didn't have enough. And on November 18, she asked them for more, saying the fire department has not grown in decades despite significant population growth, saying we are not able to meet the challenges of this city right now. We need more firefighters. So you got Karen Bass saying you need another 50 million cut from you. And the fire chief saying, actually what we need is more money and more firefighters. We are not equal to the task right now. And of course that's not what happened. And then of course you've got reports out of the Washington Post saying the firefighters were slower to respond to this blaze that unleashed in the Palisades because it was so widespread. They were spread too thin and they didn't have enough people. So all of that, you can see exactly what was happening here. They didn't have enough people. She did try to say something about it. It wasn't listened to. And Karen Bass was not prioritizing public health. Now back to the DEI point. Here's a butted sound bite. You're going to hear the Fire Chief, Kristen Crowley, her DEI head, who is a. Who's also a lesbian and black, double bonus, talking about her DEI efforts. And we've played this zombie before. And then the third thing on here is going to be Janiece Quinones, the woman who runs the water department who is celebrating her commitment to dei. Listen, our Diversity Equity Inclusion Bureau. Now we actually have the staff to do the work when it comes to doing a deep dive where 18 portraits.
- [53:01]
Ilya Shapiro
Of the LA City Fire Department's chiefs hang a long, proud tradition at a 136-year-old agency.
- [53:07]
Megyn Kelly
But I've also noticed that nobody ever looked like me. I am super inspired.
- [53:12]
Ilya Shapiro
She took time out of her already busy schedule to tell us about her vision for the department's future. One that includes a three year strategic plan to increase diversity.
- [53:21]
Megyn Kelly
People ask me, well, what, what number are you looking for? I said I'm not looking for a number. It's never enough.
- [53:26]
Ilya Shapiro
You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency, whether it's a medical call or a fire call.
- [53:31]
Megyn Kelly
That looks like you. It's been really important for the DWP to put an equity lens on everything. Yes. Yeah. And that's the number one thing that attracted me to this role. It's important to me that everything we do, it's with an equity lens and social justice. Equity and social justice. I'm sorry, Stu, but I think they should all be fired. They should all be fired. Anytime you spent fire chief worrying about this, making sure you have the staff for DEI and so proud that you amass the staff for that. While you're short firefighters, you should be fired. You're. You're black lesbian DEI chief. That's a position that is unnecessary. And if she says, I want a firefighter coming to rescue me who looks like me, she is dead wrong. Dead wrong, wrong. I want someone who looks like the Rock to come in and rescue me. And Then the last one, dei, is her number one priority. Social justice and equity. No wonder they didn't have water.
- [54:30]
Ilya Shapiro
Right? That's exactly it. I mean, if you're, especially when you're saying it that way, it's one thing to say, okay, like, you know, we want to make sure that we're giving everyone an equal chance. Of course that's the appropriate way to look at anyone who comes in for, for any job. But to say it's your number one priority just shows that you don't care about your, your customers. If you're, if you're a business saying that, if you're saying our number one thing is equity and diversity, well, what about the hamburgers you're making? Shouldn't that be the number one thing? And when it comes to something like this, which is serious, it's life and death, your number one idea maybe should have been how to get water to the areas that might need it in case of a fire and maybe have some backup systems and pre planning done to go against that. And, you know, the fact that that is their number one priority is terrifying. And that statement about, I find it insulting in so many ways, this idea that when someone comes to rescue for a fire, they need to look like you. First of all, no people in America think that. I don't know anyone. I've never met anyone in my entire life, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, anybody who's ever thought that way, that they want their doctor to look like them because they can't get good care if they don't look like them or a firefighter or a police officer. That's not the way that's supposed to work. You want someone to come in and do the job competently. You want merit to play into the decision as to how they got that job. You don't want skin color or genitals to be the factor there. And secondarily, the part of this that's so crazy is when they say, hey, we want someone who looks like the residents to come rescue them is implicit in that, is that everyone who has a certain skin color looks alike. I got news for you. I happen to be a white guy, and a lot of WWE wrestlers are also white guys. You can tell the difference between us. We don't look the same at all. It's really this insulting thing that, well, I guess all Asians look alike. So we need to set Asians who look like other Asians into the Asian communities is racist on a whole separate level. So this is just like a bunch of crazy intersectional Roads going into this area where all the cars just seem to keep crashing in between.
- [56:49]
Megyn Kelly
Not to mention, it's like these three women who are at the top there are all. I mean, honestly, I'm not trying to be mean, but they're, they're obese. These are overweight, out of shape women. And the last thing I want to see if I am in a burning building is a, a woman and be an obese woman who, who takes comfort. I'm going to die. But it's, it's in the presence of an obese lesbian. It's. This is ridiculous.
- [57:15]
Ilya Shapiro
That's how we, you know, that's how my dad went to. In the presence of an obese lesbian. Megan, thank you for bringing that up.
- [57:21]
Megyn Kelly
I speak for all women. I believe I speak for all females in Los Angeles when I say we want a strong man to rescue us. That's what we want. Do we ask for too much?
- [57:33]
Ilya Shapiro
Look, I don't know, maybe if it's Gina Carano coming around the corner, I'm going to be okay with it. I don't know, Maybe there's some level, I mean, she's pretty strong. She's certainly, she's one that can actually definitely lift me over her head and throw me outside the window if I needed to be thrown out. But I mean, you're right, it needs to be someone who can obviously, competently do the role that is overwhelmingly going to be males. I mean, it just, it just is. Especially when you think about some of the people being rescued are big fat guys like me. So you need somebody who's really strong to be able to grab them and carry them outside. Because, you know, this is just realities. It's the realities we've been talking about forever.
- [58:11]
Megyn Kelly
Why can't we get to sports if they are so intent on getting women into the ranks of the fire department? Why can't we get the so called trans women, let's get the fake women who want to invade our sports and redirect them to the fire department. That would be a great place for you to break barriers as a quote woman in the firefighting realm where you still have all of your male advantage because you've become a quote woman post puberty. Everybody wins.
- [58:40]
Ilya Shapiro
You know what? Nobel Peace Prize to Megyn Kelly for that idea. I think you've won it. I think you've nailed it. You solved all of us.
- [58:47]
Megyn Kelly
Thomas, we got good news and bad news. You can no longer swim with the ladies, but you can firefight with the best of them. Okay, Meghan and Harry, these absolute cretins decide to inject themselves into the devastation in Los Angeles for one reason. To get their faces back on camera and to improve their image. They want people to think well of them. So they decide what. You know, what they really need. Us. What they need is us. And honestly, stuff. You go there, you don't make a mention. No. You don't get caught on camera. Nobody knows what you do. What you did, that. Maybe that's one thing. Although with these two know. But no, they made sure that they got on camera. They made sure that their names got in the press. And that's. That was the name of the game. First of all, I got one other thing. When you're actually a member of the Royal Family, Harry, and the British population like answers to you, sort of. They're your subjects. Maybe they do need to see you during times of tragedy. You're in America now, and we don't give a shit about you. You're not our fucking prince. You'll never be king. We hate your wife. Stay at home in your $29 million mansion. All right? Stop getting off on the trauma porn of real suffering in Los Angeles. It's ridiculous, it's offensive. And don't take my word for it. Go and follow the speed of our friend Justine Bateman, who just went off on these. What did she call them? Disaster opportunists. Which is exactly right. Disaster tourists.
- [60:25]
Ilya Shapiro
I'm going to have to now withdraw that Nobel Peace Prize I earlier offered you. After your words, by the way.
- [60:32]
Megyn Kelly
Jean Pierre would tell you it's noble. It's the Nobel Peace Prize.
- [60:35]
Ilya Shapiro
Just the Noble Prize. The Nobel Prize.
- [60:37]
Megyn Kelly
The Nobel Prize.
- [60:38]
Ilya Shapiro
And I mean, look, you might say that she's not sacrificing for this, Meghan, but she is delaying her Netflix series for this. This is. I mean, she's really invested in really caring about this. I don't know. Maybe she does care. I do think, at the end of.
- [60:53]
Megyn Kelly
The day, she doesn't.
- [60:54]
Ilya Shapiro
The pro. The priorities on camera.
- [60:58]
Megyn Kelly
The Queen's husband was dying, and she went on Oprah and suggested one or both of them are raging racists. She couldn't have cared less. She doesn't care about anyone other than herself. And I include Harry in that. She cares about her image. That's why she's there. That's why she's writing positive messages on bananas to sex workers, which just happens to be on camera. If you want to help the people of Los Angeles. And I know that millions of Americans around the country right now are doing exactly this, you can make a donation. You can participate in GoFundMes. There are all sorts of groups that will help you. You don't have to fly there and inject yourself right in the heart of it on camera where, you know, you'll become the story. She did the same thing after Uvalde. She flew down there and made sure she got on camera when kids had just died at the hands of a shooter. This is a pattern for her. It's not about charity. It's about her image.
- [61:56]
Ilya Shapiro
Yeah, I cannot disagree with one part of that. And that's sad because there's no, you know, I mean, think of the emptiness of that life, Megan. Like, if that's your job to go around and just think about your image 24 hours a day. I mean, she doesn't even have acting anymore. She's actually picked a profession that somehow is like more conceited and more self indulgent than acting, which is quite the. Quite the trick she's been able to pull off. Very difficult to do. But, you know, she's now doing this, you know, with. With its constant focus of media attention on her in this weird idea that she's. She's got these like mythical villains that she seems to be fighting all the time, people trying to thwart her, I don't know, rise. Her meteoric rise through throughout the world. And it's like, I don't know. I don't know what she's doing. It doesn't seem like she has her priorities straight in any way. And, you know, I mean, look, if she could raise a bunch of money, which she could, and donate it to these people, that would be great. But her going down there and doing something on the ground does absolutely nothing for anybody except get cameras on her.
- [63:07]
Megyn Kelly
Proceeds of that Netflix deal. Why don't she give him some huge donation from her hunch? She got 150 million from Netflix and Spotify, and that's what led Bill Simmons to call them grifters because they did nothing over at Spotify. Now she still takes the Netflix check. You know why she can't air her special? Because it's all about her Martha Stewart type reinvention in her huge mansion. Even though it's not her mansion, it's a rented mansion. Trying to make herself into like queen of Montecito and sell us jams and breads and a lifestyle that she's curating. It would be a bit tone deaf for her to release this steps from the ashes, including of her neighbors in L. A, her dead neighbors and their Community that's been absolutely leveled. People who don't have her 150 million, she can't release it. And Netflix. You release it now at your own peril. That thing needs to wait a year minimum before it hits the airwaves. Otherwise you'll have people like me all over you for being disgustingly insensitive. All right, we have to move on because there's a couple of things we have to hit.
- [64:13]
Ilya Shapiro
So I put her on your show.
- [64:14]
Megyn Kelly
Hegseth. Oh, yeah, That's. That's.
- [64:17]
Ilya Shapiro
Can you imagine that? I will give anything to see her just literally everybody fool her, tell her that she was going on another show, and then she walks in and this. The interview starts. Any amount of money for that to happen. Please make it happen somehow.
- [64:30]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, you know what we could do? Pay per view. And we could donate the proceeds to those suffering in la. She should totally do it. It would raise tens and tens of millions. Pete Hegseth. The hearing begins tomorrow at 9:30. And the news headline is that the top Democrats are a whining that they have not received the FBI report on Pete, which they historically don't receive. Historically. This is only provided to the chairman of the committee, Senate Armed Services, who got it, along with the ranking member, the top Dem who got it. They don't get to keep it, but they get briefed on it. But all these lower losers are like, why don't we have it? Because you're not the chair and you're not the ranking member. Sorry, go talk to the ranking member if you want to know what was in it. And you've got Dick Blumenthal, who's from my now adopted home state, Connecticut, saying there is damning information that won't even be in the FBI report. This is from the New York Times. He says, okay, Democrats on the committee believe that there are additional allegations that should appear in the pages of the FBI background check to inform their questioning. That belief is based in part on information they have gleaned from individuals who have quietly approached Senate offices to divulge info about Mr. Hegseth, quote. Damning is an understatement, said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, referring to additional info about Mr. Hegseth that he has been made aware of that in his estimation, ought to appear in that FBI report. It was not clear what information he was referring to. So he's trying to generate a bunch of negative headlines about Pete and I guess has some sort of big surprise potentially for Pete tomorrow based on some rando who came to him and Somehow not the FBI. What do you make of it?
- [66:20]
Ilya Shapiro
I mean, this seems to be their pattern every single time, doesn't it? They've always got some secret thing. I don't know if they got this one from Fusion GPS or not. There's always some secret revelation that's coming around the corner that's going to convince people to not go for someone related to, typically Donald Trump. I mean, that's usually where this ends up. You know, I mean, I've heard, and I heard your show, you know, several weeks ago when you were going through the stuff that's gone on in Pete Hegseth's personal life and you talk to him, I know at length about it. And, you know, he has had his, his issues there. I think they're going to try to dredge all that stuff up and they're going to try to bring it into, you know, try to, to go even further on that front. They're going to, you know, I'm sure they can come up with their, their nameless accusers. This has been something that is a, it's worn well before the Democrats over the years. I don't think it works with the American people anymore. And part of the reason I think it doesn't work is because of what we were just talking about when it comes to DEI and the way that this stuff plays out. For so long, the left has done and worked really, really hard to take the idea of merit out of the process of hiring someone. And is Pete Hagseph the best man for the job? Well, I mean, that's something that they can determine in these hearings and try to come up with it. Donald Trump thinks he is, he won the election. He should have, within certain guidelines, the rights to pick who he wants. But like coming to this and trying to pick apart not his ability to do this job, but his actions taken with a particular girlfriend, if it's not a crime. And that's a totally different line to me. If that is of course true or there's evidence of that, that is a, that is a different line. But if, what if this comes down to what it usually is, which is some, you know, faceless person saying something that he did that was wrong that they can kind of try to manipulate into making him look like the worst person on earth just to make sure that Donald Trump doesn't get who he wants. Because they want to delay him, they want to delay his agenda. They want to push it down the line because they look at this timeline, I think in a somewhat devious but Rational way, which is you've got four years as president. Two years into it, you've got an election, which means those last two years may be very difficult to get anything done. That second year of the four year term is an election year. And a lot of these wormy Republicans who are in purple districts are not going to want to do much of anything. So you've got one year to kill here. And the longer you can draw out things like Pete Hegseth and who knows who else, I'm sure many of his other nominees, they'll do the same thing to. The longer you can draw that out, the shorter the window is for him to actually get anything done. And what they wanna do is slam the brakes on all the things that he's doing to undo the terror they've unleashed on the American people over the past four years. So I think they'll go to any lengths. We saw this with Brett Kavanaugh. They will go to any lengths to destroy something.
- [69:14]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, so that, that raises an interesting question, which is do the Democrats trot out that alleged rape accuser who complained that he allegedly raped her back in 2017, which led to no charges because the local authorities were not satisfied there was actually a case there? So do they trot her out, Christine Blasey, Ford style tomorrow to kick things off with a bang?
- [69:44]
Ilya Shapiro
I certainly believe they want to. The question is, of course, I mean, she. Because she did come up with. They did settle that case. Right. So theoretically, she shouldn't come out, at least if she's standing by that agreement. We all know how that stuff works.
- [69:57]
Megyn Kelly
No, but he said she can. He said go ahead. Go ahead.
- [70:02]
Ilya Shapiro
Yep.
- [70:03]
Megyn Kelly
And she hasn't come out.
- [70:04]
Ilya Shapiro
And she hasn't come out. I mean, look, I imagine that this is the type of thing she doesn't necessarily want to revisit publicly. You went through the details of it.
- [70:14]
Megyn Kelly
Then why did you friend leak the memo to the Trump transition team? Her friend. There is no friend on earth who would leak a memo to the Trump transition team that you had allegedly been raped by his DoD nominee without your permission. To me, there's just, it's very clear. This woman greenlit this report probably again because of the husband who is very dug in on the he raped her narrative, which is much better for him than my wife slept with Pete Hegseth down the hall while I was asleep in our hotel room with our two minor children. But, but I don't know. So far, the woman, you know, she, she made a splash or somebody on her behalf made a Splash with the, with the Trump transition team saying, here's a memo, read this. But since then, nothing. And they've been threatened by Pete's lawyers. Defamation's still a thing. Like, you come out and repeat these defamatory allegations. We're ready, so we'll see. I mean, there's a lot at stake tomorrow, and that'll be the big question for, for me. Did, did the Democrats actually put her on and does this woman have the nerve to say publicly what she said behind closed doors?
- [71:17]
Ilya Shapiro
Yeah. If I remember right, too, with Blasey Ford, there was a period where we didn't know who she was, and then we eventually got her name but didn't expect her to speak publicly. And then it kept escalating and Democrats kept calling it out. And then there was sort of a splashy announcement of her coming to testify on this situation. So I would not be surprised if they follow that same playbook. You know, I just don't know if it works anymore. I, I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic here, but I, I do feel like people are starting to look at this stuff in a, from a different lens of the believe all women standard. That never made any sense. And I heard that primarily from women who know other women and know you should not believe all women knows somebody who, who's lied, whether they're man or a woman. Women are human beings. They lie, they exaggerate, they tell stories that sound good to their husbands when the other story doesn't sound very good to their husband. I don't know if that's the case. I wasn't there. But reading the materials, looking at all of them, seeing the evidence that we do have, I have a really strong lean that, that did not go down in the way that it was that the accusation sounded at the beginning of it. And at the end of the day, who wants to be questioned by that stuff? Who wants to be questioned on every little detail? I would not be surprised if they're trying to get her to come out. But I mean, the fact that she.
- [72:41]
Megyn Kelly
Hasn'T already, especially if she's lying, if you're lying, the last thing you want to do is go testify before Congress and lie under oath and in a way that would be defamatory and you could get sued, like, my God, it'd be hard enough to do if it were true. And if it's a lie and you're under pressure simply from your husband, this is a supposition even harder. So we'll see how far the Democrats do, you know, bring this tomorrow and what witnesses they are prepared to unleash. We will have full coverage of all of that, rest assured. And then we have to see what happens with Pam Bondi too, because while we have every assumption she'll get through relatively easily there, there are many on the left who are saber rattling now because she defended some of Trump's election claims. And they're like we can't have an election denier as the attorney general. So just not going to be all that pleasant for her either. And it'll be fascinating to watch just how hard they go. Stuberg Gear a pleasure, my friend. Thanks for being here.
- [73:38]
Ilya Shapiro
Thanks so much for having me make it was great.
- [73:41]
Megyn Kelly
All right, coming up next, we've got Ilya Shapiro. You remember Ilya, who got completely screwed over by Georgetown Law, remember, because he sent out that tweet about so called lesser black woman when he was saying the obvious best choice for the U.S. supreme Court, it was some Indian jurist who he was backing. And he was saying instead, because Biden has said we're going to get a black woman no matter what, that he thought it would be a lesser than because he thought the best person was this Indian guy. In any event, they ruined his career as a result of that tweet. Ruined it. And now he's out with a book which is written like the Washington examiner says, it reads like a thriller. And it's true. Like I do kind of believe having been through something similar. Only when you've been subjected to the most disgusting cancel culture mobile do you find like the fierce power to really put their terrible behavior in perspective. And Ilya does just that and shines a light on what's happening at our law schools with the out of control dei. I mean, they, these law schools, they would love what that fire chief said and what her third in command said and what that Janice Quinones said. And all those law students are what we call future lawyers and future judges and God forbid, even future Supreme Court justices. We take a look underneath that curtain next. 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 Sirius XM 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. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free.
- [75:47]
Ilya Shapiro
Go to SiriusXM.com MKShow to subscribe and.
- [75:52]
Megyn Kelly
Get three months free.
- [75:54]
Ilya Shapiro
That's SiriusXM.com MKShow and get three months.
- [75:59]
Megyn Kelly
Free offer details apply back in 2022, we told you the story of how Ilya Shapiro, very respected lawyer and public commentator, was about to start a new prestigious job as the executive director of the Georgetown center for the Constitution. That was before a woke mob demanded he lose the job before he even began it. He was immediately suspended and Georgetown conducted a four month investigation into a single tweet, the one that I just referenced. The university lifted the suspension on the technicality that Ilya was not yet an employee at Georgetown when he posted. And Ilya joined us on this show in June of 2022 to discuss the emotional toll of the whole ordeal.
- [76:51]
Stu Burguiere
I felt sick to my stomach and especially come around noontime when the dean issued his statement, I thought, okay, I'm gonna get fired. I was transitioning jobs from Cato to Georgetown. I'm, how can I provide for my family? I have two little boys who are 4 and 6. This is horrific. I've blown up my life. I've, you know, it was honestly, Megan, the probably the second worst day of my life. The worst being when my mom passed when I was in college.
- [77:20]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, these disgusting people. But that was not the end of the story. Just days later, Ilya resigned, saying the atmosphere at Georgetown made it untenable for him to do his job. Even though they were like, we'll see, we'll kind of tolerate you, you know, under strict conditions. He can, he can start here. Well, he is back here today stronger than ever. He has a new job as the Director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute, which we love. Read City Journal. It is the best publication. And he's out this week with a new book called Lawless the Miseducation of America's Elites. Oh, it's like shoot it into my veins. It's about the illiberal takeover of American law schools and its dire consequences on free speech, civil discourse and much, much more. Ilya, welcome back and thank you for writing this.
- [78:09]
Stu Burguiere
Great to be back, Megan. And of course, you played that clip. You were a central part of the, the denouement of that whole saga. And I'm glad to be back. Stronger, as you said, they tried to cancel me they tried to ruin my career and I turned it around on them. And you know, I thought I knew what I was getting into and I thought I knew about the problems in higher ed and law school specifically. But looking at this stuff, using my so called lived experience as a jumping off point, you can see the failures in ideology, bureaucracy and leadership. We're not in a good state.
- [78:44]
Megyn Kelly
I just want to show people the amount of hysterics over your one tweet, which you wound up saying, okay, it was poorly worded, but the principle stands. We should not be choosing Supreme Court justices based on their, their lady parts and their skin color. And this led to such affected upset at Georgetown Law School and elsewhere. But I mean, it was truly performative. And these are the two clips that I asked my team for because I remember them. First, the students who are protesting you in quotes wanted reparations because they, they, they missed lunch. I think it was. Here it is thought 37 in terms of coming back to this reparation thing because like this is, this is great.
- [79:27]
Ilya Shapiro
But we have to do so much.
- [79:29]
Megyn Kelly
Work to catch up for all this.
- [79:30]
Ilya Shapiro
Stuff that we missed.
- [79:31]
Megyn Kelly
All I'm saying is I don't know if it's a couple dinners or lunches, but that would help us because we like, we can't. I can't go home for lunch now.
- [79:41]
Ilya Shapiro
Because I need to study. I have to, I have to make up for this class that I lost. So it's little things like that. It doesn't have to be something that.
- [79:47]
Megyn Kelly
Takes a year, three figure out. It's like we know our black students or whatever group is hurting and we're going to give them things today, whether it's snacks, whether it's counseling, whether it's whatever.
- [79:57]
Ilya Shapiro
But the part of that trust is to see an immediate reaction to what we are saying.
- [80:02]
Megyn Kelly
The food will be great. We have food on the way. She wants reparations in the form of free food and, and crying rooms.
- [80:13]
Stu Burguiere
Megan, wait, we have rooms?
- [80:15]
Megyn Kelly
That's the second one. Sat 38.
- [80:19]
Ilya Shapiro
Really, really hard to walk out of.
- [80:21]
Stu Burguiere
Class or a meeting in tears.
- [80:23]
Ilya Shapiro
And you should always have a place on campus where you can go and feel like you're not. Then also under people's eyes and observation.
- [80:31]
Stu Burguiere
Maybe you don't want to answer a.
- [80:33]
Ilya Shapiro
Question of what's going on or what's wrong. And if you're finding that you're not getting the person you want to talk.
- [80:39]
Megyn Kelly
To or not getting a spirit space.
- [80:41]
Ilya Shapiro
That you need, reach out to me anytime, anytime, and we will find you. Space.
- [80:48]
Megyn Kelly
So you've got to call the dean to say, I need to cry. I can't have anybody looking at me. And he will find you space as opposed to educating law students.
- [80:57]
Stu Burguiere
And you saw the masks, by the way. This is 2022. This whole investigation, so called, was conducted via Zoom. Because if we had, if I had, I never even had talked to the dean since in person, because if we had gotten together, we would have had to all been masked, given the COVID hysteria, which I talk a little bit about in the book, as a symptom of the failed leadership. And Megan, look, these deans, you saw two of them there in those clips. They're generally not woke radicals, they're generally not social justice warriors. They're spineless cowards. They're bureaucrats who try to climb the greasy pole. And that means placating this illiberal mob. It's a kind of cascade of failures in higher education.
- [81:43]
Megyn Kelly
It's called the Miseducation of America's Elites by Ilya Shapiro. You can get it right now. It's on sale officially beginning January 14th. But let's support Ilya and get it, get the advance because that helps drive up his numbers and we want to force him onto the New York Times bestseller list. That'll really get their goat. So you start digging into, geez, maybe it's not just Georgetown Law School that's lost its ever loving mind. Perhaps this is a real problem because it wasn't just at Georgetown we've seen this terrible behavior. Who could forget this one? This is Sat 39, and I remind the audience we covered this. This is out at Stanford Law School where the Associate Dean for DEI tried lecturing 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan back in March of 2023, just to give you a flavor for how widespread the craziness is that Ilya started to dig into. Watch this. 39. I'm uncomfortable because this event is tearing at the fabric of this community that I care about. And I'm here to support and I don't know, and I have to ask myself, and I'm not a cynic, to ask this. Is the juice worth the squeeze?
- [82:52]
Stu Burguiere
It isn't a setting, but for many.
- [82:54]
Megyn Kelly
People in this law school who work here, who study here and who live here, your advocacy, your opinions from the bench land as absolute disenfranchisement of their rights and does land. They're snapping. If you're snapping, you're out. I'm not hiring anybody who snaps as applause, and they're thrilled because he's a fifth circuit, which is a more conservative bench and he was a Trump appointee, so he's not allowed to speak at Stanford. And that's why she's saying is the juice worth the squeeze? Because you've written opinions to which we object. Ilya but you found this is not just a Stanford or Georgetown problem or.
- [83:36]
Stu Burguiere
Yale or a couple of other. I mean it's a particularly dangerous thing at the so called elite schools who turn out the next generation leaders and who give each other prizes for these sorts of things. But universally it's a lot of things going on that don't necessarily make the national news. It's not just shout downs of a federal judge or me. This happened to me at a different school also in the Bay Area, what used to be called UC Hastings until they renamed it because it turns out Mr. Hastings did some politically incorrect things. Just the culture of silence and of self censorship and of teaching that avoids taking serious legal theory seriously. Originalism, say the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted based on the original public meaning of its words, which a majority of the Supreme Court, about half the federal judiciary uses just to do their basic jobs. They don't have to agree with it, they should teach it. And at best you have kind of snide remarks about how it's inappropriate and why would anyone think this way? We have broken systems of education that's really more activism on the teaching and the faculty front, but also on the bureaucratic front. So we have now in most places, including law schools, more non teaching staff than faculty. I don't know what all of these bureaucrats are doing. Well, actually I do. They're orientating and training and imbuing a culture where, well, there's no such thing as objective truth and one's rights and freedoms depend on where you are in some sort of privilege hierarchy or intersectional matrix. All this mumbo jumbo that is directly contrary to the structure of the law. They're basically saying, you students in law school, what you're learning, all of these systems and structures, institutions are illegitimate. You need to question them and turn them down. I mean, this is a huge disservice to our nation.
- [85:30]
Megyn Kelly
We are seeing DEI crumble minute to minute. You had Mark Zuckerberg last week saying it's done at Meta, no more DEI at Facebook. You have all these big companies like Caterpillar and Walmart, very well known companies thanks in large part to the work of Robbie Starbuck, who's been serially embarrassing them all by threatening to just make it public. What they're doing, starting to run and abandon dei. You had a very interesting legal case just last week. It was U.S. district Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth, Texas who ruled on Friday that American Airlines violated its legal responsibilities in managing employees retirement assets by encouraging environmentally and socially responsible investing in its 401k plan. This has been happening more and more where these companies try to bend the knee to so called ESG, which is another form of DEI and say we're only going to use like BlackRock to do our investments. And BlackRock prioritizes companies that'll get it. Little pats on the back from the DEI crowd instead of prioritizing making money. And now we have a federal district court ruling saying you violated the law. You have a legal responsibility to these retirees to make money, not to make yourselves feel like so called good people. My point is it's starting to crumble, Ilya. But not at the law schools, right?
- [86:53]
Stu Burguiere
I'm optimistic, cautiously optimistic in society writ large. Like Brett Kavanaugh, I live on the sunrise side of the mountain as kind of normal people realize these excesses and what's going on. And there are market forces after all in the corporate world, but in academia it's different. And the left hand doesn't know what the far left hand is doing. There are, you know, 0.05% non progressive professors. That's why I was so threatening that I was going to be joining the Georgetown faculty. I would have increased the number of non progressives from two to three out of, you know, 150. And that's why we need external forces, exogenous shocks, employers, state legislatures, abolishing these bureaucracies in state schools, trustees and donors, as we've seen since October 7th in the disastrous testimony of the university presidents putting pressure on these schools, saying look, you're gonna get, you are getting big black eyes for your handling of these things, for not enforcing your own rules. Because I tell you what, Megan, this is not rocket science. We don't need higher education institutions, don't need to go out and theorize a whole new way of how to deal with disruption or what is the meaning of free speech or how to promote open inquiry, civil discourse. You know, this is all established. It's a failure of will, it's a failure of not, not enforcing your own policies. So we're very much in the eye of the storm with respect to higher ed generally and law schools specifically. And it goes even to the accreditor. There's a monopoly on law school accreditation by the American Bar association, which I hope is something that the Trump Department of Education changes. But the ABA puts in all sorts of nefarious rules that even those deans that want to reform find it hard to do so sometimes. So a lot of challenges there. And regardless of the green shoots and the pushback that we're seeing in society writ large, which we have to keep going even if we've passed peak woke, we can't keep our foot, take our foot off the gas. But in educational institutions, and especially in law schools or medical schools, where these things are literally a life and death situation, you know, we need to pursue all of the above kind of strategies.
- [89:13]
Megyn Kelly
Again, the book is called Lawless by Ilya I L Y A Shapiro. Get it? Now, the, the law school thing, is there any chance what's gonna happen there? And what is happening is what we've seen even at the far left schools in places like New York City. You know, I've told the audience before, I have, I have a friend, she was committed to the left. She canvassed for Joe Biden back in 2020. Her kids, lefties. And now especially her son who's at one of these snooty private schools in New York City has completely been red pilled. He is 100% Trump. He's pro maga. He's got the hat because they pushed him too far. These kids, they want to rebel against the machine. And when the whole machine is like, you will be woke and you will prioritize skin color and gender and sexual preference, at some point, the mob underneath moves the other way to say we won't.
- [90:12]
Stu Burguiere
Well, that's seemingly what happened in the presidential election. You know, Americans across the board of every demographic woke up, if you will, from the woke and said, this is, this is just too much. It doesn't make sense. And so there is some hope, and there's certainly hope that the, the students coming in reject some of the mumbo jumbo that they're being taught. But, but again, you know, part of the problem is admissions officers, if you write, you know, it's not just DEI officials or the head, the head dean, if you write in your application that you want to change the world and revolutionize structures and change injustice and what have you, is going to be a thumb on the scale for you, rather than if you say, well, I want to go into corporate antitrust to make things better for the American consumer, have our markets run more efficiently, or I want to be a prosecutor to go after child molesters or something like this. So there are A lot of pathologies in higher ed, in law schools. And as Bill Ackman wrote presciently the same day this essay came out, that Claudine Gay resigned the presidency of Harvard. Antisemitism, that spur of antisemitism that we've seen is based in our most progressive, educated places. That is the canary in the coal mine, the tip of the iceberg that reveals so many pathologies underneath the academic corruption, the moral relativism, the failures of leadership. This is a. I mean, I wrote my book to show that it's not just about me. You know, the thriller part of my story, which by the way, I also publish for the first time ever anywhere, the actual full report of the DEI office that investigated me. It is just amazing. That's one of the appendix of the book. But the moral rot in general, I've been using this opportunity, starting with when I went on your show in June of 2022, to expose all of this stuff and make people aware. And so I don't know where this ends. We have the University of Austin, for example, as an alternative institution just born, their first cohort, I'll be speaking there later this month. They don't have a law school, but there's centers and institutes starting up in various institutions across the country to teach excellence and rigor and civics. All of these things that DEI trainers consider to be white supremacist tropes and even deans. At Yale, for example, I tally a lot of Yale's missteps, Yale Law's missteps. Heather Gerken, the dean there, wants to be president of one of the Ivy League institutions. And she recognizes that what's gone on is not good. And so she went out and hired scholars, including a former Alito clerk, to kind of right the ship a little bit. So we are seeing some progress, but we need to keep pushing and you know, not accepting this rot, this degradation, this illiberalism in, in, in law schools and beyond.
- [93:04]
Megyn Kelly
My advice to any law school student, or a college student for that matter, who is under threat of being downgraded unless they say the left wing things they're being asked to say is don't do it. Write what's true, what's real, what you really feel, even if it's non woke. And then when you get the bad grade, you save it like a merit badge. And when you go out to interview for a real job and you will have done your research on who's far left and who's normal, you show it to them, you show them why you got a D in con law, the first D of your career, because you were a straight A student in everything else prior to that moment. Because you wrote that wokeism is ruining America and is pernicious in particular in advanced degrees like law and medicine. Write that. And then you should work for the employer who celebrates your D with you, like me or like Ilya. People that were out there were half the I'm hiring.
- [94:04]
Stu Burguiere
Absolutely young lawyers want to work for the Manhattan Institute. Send your resume.
- [94:09]
Megyn Kelly
Truly and, but just more and more, you look at the numbers, look at the people who put Trump in office. They've rejected this wholesale. You're not alone. You just have to find the right employer and get through these far left institutions who try to ruin you and make you say what they want you to say, make you feel what they want you to feel before you can have access to the employers who feel very differently. Here's what Peter Thiel said on the Honestly podcast in November about these far left universities. Kind of interesting. Listen here. 40.
- [94:39]
Ilya Shapiro
They are no longer good places to learn how to defend liberalism. Maybe they're good places for training conservatives. You know, if you go to Yale Law School, if you're one of, you know, five people in the class of 170 who's still conservative at the end, you'll be pretty good at understanding what's wrong with liberalism. You'll have thought about it a lot and you'll be a more thoughtful person. And so it will actually train you well to be a conservative. And we're right to value the, you know, the small number of conservatives who come out of that gauntlet as quite talented people.
- [95:12]
Megyn Kelly
How about that, Elia? It's like going from sea level up to the Rockies to do your aerobic training. Then you come back down to fight the fights at sea level.
- [95:21]
Stu Burguiere
Conservatives and libertarians get great training. They are exposed to lots of ideas. They know how to see every different argument. And this is one of the ironies. These law schools are doing a disservice to their progressive students by not teaching them what the argument is from the other side. And then they go into federal court and they don't know what to do. They don't know how to argue.
- [95:42]
Megyn Kelly
They're looking for their crimes.
- [95:44]
Stu Burguiere
Yeah, right. Sidebar, your honor. I need to cry for a moment.
- [95:48]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, the judge would be like, I'll make you cry. Great. You want to cry? No problem. You came to the right place. Or somebody's got screamed at by more than her share. It's like that's life, that's law.
- [96:00]
Stu Burguiere
They're graduating students who aren't qualified to do much of anything other than to be HR officials or DEI deans or what have you. It's, you know, I hope that, that some institutions seize on the market opportunity that's created. And I think some are, for example, University of Chicago, University of Virginia are generally better their law schools on these metrics than Yale and Stanford, for example, or Georgetown is particularly bad. Harvard, well, Harvard is an institution writ large. Fire. The foundation for Individual Rights and Expression recently gave them a zero for the second consecutive year for their free speech. But anyway, there are gradations. And so a talented entrepreneurial dean or other educational leader who doesn't have to be conservative or mag or anything else, but just doing their job, trying to attract higher quality faculty and students and donors just by not being crazy, can capitalize in this moment. And we see bits of that here and there.
- [96:58]
Megyn Kelly
Again, the book is called Lawless the Miseducation of America's Elites by Ilya Shapiro. I gotta ask you this, Ilia, so there's a couple things in the news that I'm gonna take advantage of your expertise to talk. Just came out that the Jack Smith report, even though Jack Smith has now officially resigned his position as special prosecutor is going to come out about Trump, that even Judge Aileen Cannon down there in Florida has cleared the way for a piece of it to come out. Trump thinks this is nonsense. He's like, the guy was never properly appointed. The court ruled that Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that. So why should people have access to this? Do you think that makes any sense?
- [97:36]
Stu Burguiere
Judge Cannon generally has been had a thoughtful approach to the litigation. So if she sees that it's justified to release parts of it, you know, I haven't started to study the legal issues as closely as she has. I'm sure she has some reason to do so. But more broadly, I do hope that the incoming administration, the Justice Department, looks at all the lawfare that has been thrown at President Trump and anyone who supported him and investigates the causes of that. That doesn't mean doing exactly the same thing at the other side, but it does mean looking at whether members of the deep state have violated their oaths of office in leaking things or working counterproductively to orders that they've received, things like that, because we have a clear breakdown, an institutional breakdown that has led to the public eventually not trusting any institutions writ large, which is not good for the country. So whether it's with the Jack Smith investigation or Anything else? I hope there is an dedicated office in the Justice Department that looks at this use of lawfare.
- [98:40]
Megyn Kelly
My hope is that we get our hands on the Jack Smith internal memos. But my belief is that they've all been burned. There will be no record of them when Team Trump takes over. Ilya Shapiro, thank you for being here again. The book is the Miseducation of America's Elites. We're back tomorrow with full coverage of what they do to Pete Hegseth. Don't miss this show. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.