President Trump is Back, Major Executive Orders, and Biden's Last Minute Pardons, with Emily Jashinsky and Eliana Johnson | Ep. 986

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Megyn Kelly Show – Episode 986

Title: President Trump is Back, Major Executive Orders, and Biden's Last Minute Pardons, with Emily Jashinsky and Eliana Johnson
Host/Author: SiriusXM
Release Date: January 20, 2025

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1. Introduction and Context

In Episode 986 of The Megyn Kelly Show, host Megyn Kelly delivers groundbreaking news: Donald Trump has been inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States, with J.D. Vance serving as Vice President. Broadcasting live from Washington D.C., Kelly sets the stage for a comprehensive discussion on Trump's return to the White House, the executive orders he has signed, and the implications of President Biden's last-minute pardons.

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2. Inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President

A. Oath-Taking Ceremony

The episode begins with Kelly recounting the dramatic inauguration day:

• Trump's Entrance: Trump and his family worshiped at St. John's Church before a brief visit to the White House, where incoming officials attended.

• Notable Attendees: Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama were present, while Melania Trump's designer outfits by Adam Lippis and Eric Javits received praise for their class and sophistication.

• Oath of Office: Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath to Trump.

  [03:56] Donald Trump: "I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear."

B. Trump's Inaugural Speech Highlights

Trump's speech emphasized themes of unity, optimism, and a return to American greatness:

• Personal Anecdote: Trump shared a harrowing experience of surviving an assassination attempt.

  [06:01] Donald Trump: "Ago in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin's bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America Great Again."

• Executive Orders Announcement: He outlined immediate executive actions focusing on immigration, gender policies, and economic reforms.

• Closing Remarks: Trump declared a new era of peace and prosperity for America.

  [08:44] Donald Trump: "Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers... The future is ours. And our golden age has just begun."

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3. Major Executive Orders Signed by Trump

Kelly delves into the key executive orders signed by Trump, highlighting their significance and potential impact:

A. Immigration Policies

• National Emergency at the Southern Border: Enables expedited actions to secure the border.

  [07:26] Donald Trump: "Today, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border."

• Resumption of Border Wall Construction: Allows Trump to unlock federal funding without congressional approval.

• End to Birthright Citizenship: A controversial move aiming to redefine citizenship parameters.

• Military Involvement in Border Security: Positions the U.S. military for enhanced border protection.

B. Gender and Diversity Policies

• Recognition of Two Genders: Officially restricts government recognition to male and female.

  [07:26] Donald Trump: "As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female."

• Removal of Radical Gender Ideology: Ceases policies enforcing gender fluidity in public and private sectors.

• Government Identification Adjustments: Mandates that IDs reflect biological sex, not self-identified gender.

C. Other Notable Executive Orders

• Energy Sector Reforms: Speeds up permitting for pipelines and power plants, rolls back energy efficiency regulations.
• Trade Practices Investigation: Directs federal agencies to scrutinize and address trade deficits and unfair currency practices.
• Tariffs and Trade Adjustments: Focuses on countering China’s trade practices and ensuring counterfeit goods do not enter the U.S.

Kelly provides a detailed breakdown of each order, emphasizing their alignment with Trump's "America First" agenda and anticipating legal challenges.

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4. Reactions and Analysis

A. Trump Supporters' Enthusiasm

Kelly describes the palpable excitement among Trump supporters at the Capital One Arena:

[05:00] Megyn Kelly: "The enthusiasm in this town right now is palpable."

Supporters cheered fervently as Trump took office, reflecting widespread approval of his policies.

B. Analysis by Emily Jasinski and Eliana Johnson

Guests Emily Jasinski and Eliana Johnson offer insightful commentary:

• Policy Support: Jasinski highlights that the executive orders have substantial public backing, with many aligning with broader American sentiments.

  [24:06] Emily Jasinski: "The gender and DEI won. That's the issue that he probably won the presidency on."

• Media Narratives: Johnson critiques mainstream media's portrayal of Trump’s policies, arguing they misrepresent the administration's actions.

  [29:24] Eliana Johnson: "The media is framing this... they think that this just feels like we're returning to something normal, like a baseline."

• Public Opinion Polls: Kelly shares polling data illustrating strong support for Trump’s immigration and gender policies among the American populace.

  [27:50] Megyn Kelly: "77% agree society has gone too far in accommodating trans people."

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5. President Biden's Last-Minute Pardons

Kelly examines the implications of President Biden's final acts before leaving office:

A. List of Pardoned Individuals

Biden pardoned several high-profile figures, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, members of the January 6th Committee, General Mark Milley, and five members of his own family.

B. Reactions and Guest Commentary

• Hypocrisy and Political Strategy: Jasinski and Johnson criticize Biden’s pardons as hypocritical and politically motivated, undermining his campaign promises against family pardons.

  [44:43] Megyn Kelly: "Biden made the point that they wouldn't be convicted... but Trump has cover to pardon all of the people who actually are in danger."

• Legal and Ethical Concerns: Discussion centers on the legal ramifications of pardoning political figures and the precedent it sets for future administrations.

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6. Demographics and Public Opinion

Kelly presents compelling polling statistics that demonstrate significant support for Trump's policies across various demographics:

• Immigration:

  • 55% support mass deportations for all illegal immigrants.
  • 63% back deportations for those who arrived in the last four years.

• Gender Policies:

  • 77% believe society has gone too far in accommodating trans people.
  • 79% oppose trans women participating in women's sports.

A. Impact on the Republican Party

The data suggests a strong alignment between Trump's policies and the preferences of a broad segment of the American electorate, potentially reshaping the Republican Party's strategies moving forward.

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7. Fashion and Symbolism

A lighter segment focuses on Melania Trump's attire and the symbolic value it holds:

• Designer Highlights: Kelly praises Melania's outfits, designed by Adam Lippis and Eric Javits, emphasizing their elegance and sophistication.

  [00:00] Megyn Kelly: "Look at Melania, this incredible hat. Absolutely stunning."

• Cultural Symbolism: The fashion choices are seen as a statement of class and grace, contrasting with criticisms of previous White House styles.

  [76:20] Eliana Johnson: "They're not just saying, 'Oh, hey, we did this,' but they're going out there and posting it to their own marketing platforms."

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8. Predictions and Future Outlook

Guests anticipate significant developments stemming from Trump's inaugural actions:

A. Legal Challenges to Executive Orders

Many of Trump's executive orders, especially those concerning immigration and gender policies, are expected to face immediate legal scrutiny and potential challenges in courts.

B. Impact on Future Legislation

• Antitrust Concerns: Potential battles over antitrust laws and the power of major corporations.
• Birthright Citizenship: Anticipated challenges due to constitutional constraints.

C. Immigration Enforcement

Trump's administration is poised to implement stricter immigration enforcement, which may reshape border policies and the nation's approach to asylum seekers.

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9. Conclusion

Episode 986 of The Megyn Kelly Show offers a comprehensive analysis of Donald Trump's return to the U.S. presidency. Through detailed discussions on the inauguration, executive orders, public opinion, and political strategies, Kelly and her guests provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of the current political landscape. The episode underscores the significant shifts in policy direction and the potential for substantial legal and cultural impacts in the months to come.

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Notable Quotes:

• Donald Trump on Oath:

  [03:56] Donald Trump: "I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear."

• Trump on Survival and Purpose:

  [06:01] Donald Trump: "But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America Great Again."

• Megyn Kelly on Executive Orders:

  [07:26] Megyn Kelly: "As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female."

• Eliana Johnson on Media Framing:

  [29:24] Eliana Johnson: "The media is framing this... they think that this just feels like we're returning to something normal, like a baseline."

• Emily Jasinski on Policy Support:

  [24:06] Emily Jasinski: "The gender and DEI won. That's the issue that he probably won the presidency on."

• Megyn Kelly on Public Support:

  [27:50] Megyn Kelly: "77% agree society has gone too far in accommodating trans people."

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This summary captures the essence of Episode 986, providing a structured and detailed overview for listeners who may not have tuned in. The inclusion of notable quotes with timestamps offers direct insights into key moments of the discussion.

Transcript

[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. How happy are we today? We're broadcasting from Washington D.C. where our prayers have been answered. It is official. Joe Biden is gone. Kamala Harris is gone. Everyone has cleaned out of the White House press office and Donald Trump is the 47th president of the United States. J.D. vance, the vice president, right now. It happened. The day began at St. John's Church where Donald Trump, his family and incoming top officials worshiped and demonstrated that class and grace are back in the White House. Look at Melania, this incredible hat. Absolutely stunning. All right, so here we got a little fashion info for you, Lippis. It is a guy named Adam Lippis who designed that beautiful dress. It was a navy blue coat and then the hat was by Eric Javits, another New York based designer. Lippis is 52. He rose to prominence as a creative director for Oscar de la renta, but since 2004 has his own company. He also used to design for Target. So good for her for getting a guy who is close to being a man of the people. Mr. Trump and Melania then took a brief visit over to the White House where President Biden was heard saying two words to President Trump. Welcome home. Good line. This lovely little piece of jargon came just after Mr. Biden announced pardons for Dr. Fauci, the January 6th Committee, General Mark Milley and many, many others to protect them from, quote, baseless and politically motivated investigations. Because who would want to be the target of one of those? And just before he pardoned the five, count him, five members of his family with about 15 minutes to go in his presidency, Mr. Biden for the last time using his power to protect those around him. Yeah, I mean, we did Hunter in advance and then he did brother Jim and the sister and the in laws and basically anyone named Biden other than his daughter Ashley, who as far as we know has a substance abuse problem but no criminality in her life. Okay, so at noon, his presidency did come to an end per the US Constitution. Constitution, Trumps began. And take a listen to the reaction from Trump supporters in the Capital One arena here in Washington. It's where I can't remember what they're called, but the hockey team and the basketball team play here inside. Thanks to the extreme cold here. It is freaking cold in Washington. As the new president entered the Capitol building on Capitol Hill. That's very cool. So what you're seeing there is that they're not even. They're not anywhere near the action. Right. The President's walking into the rotunda on Capitol Hill a couple miles away. And so there were people who were in that room. Then there were people who are in the overflow room inside the U.S. capitol building. And then these folks in the Capitol One building, which is the sports arena, or overflow. Overflow. And you would have thought they were right in front of him, given those cheers. The enthusiasm in this town right now is palpable. I mean, palpable. And here is the moment it became official when Chief justice of the United States John Roberts swore in Donald J. Trump as the 47th president. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear.

[Donald Trump]

I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear.

[Megyn Kelly]

That I will faithfully execute.

[Donald Trump]

That I will faithfully execute.

[Megyn Kelly]

The office of President of the United States.

[Donald Trump]

The office of President of the United States.

[Megyn Kelly]

And will to the best of my.

[Donald Trump]

Ability and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend, preserve, protect and defend.

[Megyn Kelly]

The Constitution of the United States.

[Donald Trump]

The Constitution of the United States.

[Megyn Kelly]

So help me God.

[Donald Trump]

So help me God.

[Eliana Johnson]

Congratulations, Mr. Kevin.

[Megyn Kelly]

Wow. Shaking the hand of outgoing President Joe Biden, hugging his family. There was a moment there where Chief Justice John Roberts got started a little sooner than the family anticipated. So Melania had to step in sort of at the very beginning of the oath. And then you saw Trump's children come sort of like, oh, it's time, you know, like, we gotta get over there. And Tiffany Trump was sort of in the middle, and it was kind of nice. Joe Biden kind of said, come over here and stand here. You could go a different way with it could go a different way, but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was just being a nice guy. The crowd inside the Capitol included Trump's predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Not Michelle, because she's not a phony and she hates him and didn't want to be there. We don't know why she didn't come, but of course that's why she didn't come. The guys who made all the news and got the attention of all the news media were the tech titans, Elon Musk of X, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and the Washington Post. Mark Zuckerberg, who created Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple and more, many more. Sundar, the guy who runs Google. They were all there as the President delivered a message about unity, about Optimism and about always now putting America first, as you will see in this sound bite. No clapping nor any standing ovation. However, from now, former President Joe Biden or any of the democrats sitting behind Mr. Trump, even when he discussed surviving an assassin's bullet just a few months.

[Donald Trump]

Ago in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin's bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America Great Again.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, I get it. They don't generally stand for the other side. If he hadn't finished it with Make America Great Again, they probably would have stood, I guess. I don't know. I'm glad we don't have to find out, but maybe we can give him that one. Whatever. Everybody else is on their feet, clapping away, and it was a beautiful moment. And Trump seemed contemplative and seemed a bit more serene. He's definitely in a great mood. He's been working around the clock, and you can only imagine what that was like for him to return. You know, he talked about how they, they tried to kill me. They. They indicted me, and I'm back. I did it. I survived. But perhaps my own favorite moment from this speech was President Trump announ the executive actions he plans to take today. They're happening now, including that the federal government will only recognize two genders.

[Donald Trump]

Today, I will sign a series of historic executive orders. First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. We will drill, baby, drill. I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.

[Megyn Kelly]

And wait until you hear how exactly he did that, because now we have the executive orders, and they're a thing of beauty. I know so many, so many people who have worked so hard for this moment were rejoicing on. On that portion of the speech. And when you read the executive actions that he took on that, it's just absolutely huge. Thank God he won. The speech had a fittingly Trumpian ending, where he boldly declared that America is entering a new period of peace and prosperity.

[Donald Trump]

Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. They were farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steel workers and coal miners, police officers and pioneers who pushed onward, marched forward, and let no obstacle defeat their spirit or their pride. Together, they laid down the railroads, raised up the skyscrapers, built great highways, won two world wars, defeated fascism and communism and triumphed over every single challenge that they faced. We will stand bravely. We will live proudly, we will dream boldly, and nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans. The future is ours. And our golden age has just begun. Thank you. God bless America. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[Megyn Kelly]

First speech as the 47th president. CNN's John King called the president's speech dark. Of course, we always hear that when Trump speaks. And here's Gayle King over on CBS making it all about race. Guys, I have to say I'm looking at this crowd. I do not see many people of color.

[Eliana Johnson]

Has anybody else besides me observe that? I'm fascinated by why that is on.

[Megyn Kelly]

Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Oh my God. You know what, why don't you take a look at your own party if you're looking for absence of diversity, okay, See what happened to the working class because they fled your party, Gayle King, in droves and they're not coming back anytime soon, you elitist snob who's obsessed over people's melanin. Nobody in the Republican Party thinks like that. And by the way, there were plenty of people of color both there and in the overflow room and over at the Capitol arena arena. And I saw them myself when I was there yesterday. So get over yourself. After his historic speech, Trump heading over to Capitol One arena. And there at this moment, he is addressing or about to supporters of all races. And he's going to sit at this desk and sit and sign his first set of executive orders on the border, energy and more. I'm going to list for you what they are joining me now to react to all of this and other breaking news out of the Trump second term. Now underway are the EJ's. Who better than this historic day to have Emily Jasinsky, D.C. correspondent for unheard and host of Undercurrents. And Eliana Johnson, editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon and co host of the podcast Ink Stained Wretches. Trust in media is at an all time low. And let's be honest, it's not without reason. We are all seeing how stories can be shaped or even buried depending on who's in charge. But there is a platform that doesn't play by those rules, one that prioritizes transparency and lets you see the full picture. That platform is Ground News, an app and website that gathers related articles from around the world in one place, highlighting each source's political bias and corporate Influence and they show you stories that are underreported by one side of the political spectrum. Ground News has an entire blind spot feed with stories that are receiving lopsided coverage. This reveals how media narratives are shaping the conversation. And my viewers will get 40% off their vantage plan, which gives you unlimited access to their website and app. They're independent and supported by subscribers, not corporate interests. Check them [e-mail] Megan that's ground G R O U N D news.com M E G Y N to take back control of the news you consume. Great to see you.

[Emily Jasinski]

Great to be with you.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, how are you feeling?

[Emily Jasinski]

Good.

[Eliana Johnson]

Eliana is just keeping it short right now. Yeah, I mean, I mean, how could you? Look at the golden ages upon us. The sun is shining through the window.

[Megyn Kelly]

I apologize for your like half lit face. It's just sort of we're here and it's like we're dealing with the sun. It's. It's nice to have some sun. But it's freaking cold outside.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yes, Freezing, right? Oh yeah, it's freezing.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, I don't like, I don't know how they honestly could have done the inauguration outside. Because it's one thing if you had to show up for one hour and stand there, but you had to get there. The orders to get there were begin at 8. So at a. That's the latest. You could have shown up at 8 in the morning for a 12 o'clock ceremony. It would have been a nightmare.

[Emily Jasinski]

Well, you know, it could be 75 degrees and I wouldn't want to stand outside for. In a crowd like that. But for this Minnesota girl. I was like all bundled up this morning ready to trek. I was afraid I was gonna have to walk five blocks to get here. It's not cold out.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, come on, it's cold.

[Emily Jasinski]

20 degrees, it's fine.

[Megyn Kelly]

But it's what feels like seven with the wind.

[Emily Jasinski]

Yes, but anything above zero for us hardy Midwesterners again.

[Eliana Johnson]

Upstate New York and Wisconsin.

[Megyn Kelly]

I was gonna say I don't wanna be.

[Emily Jasinski]

I don't wanna be out there, but it was not as cold as I.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, I couldn't have done it.

[Eliana Johnson]

We get it. Eliana. You're very tough.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, I did feel bad though because, you know, While they fit 20,000 people into the Capital One arena, they like, that's nowhere near of the people who wanted to come watch this inauguration, you know, it would have been hundreds of thousand of thousands and many had purchased their tickets. And the people who wind up not getting in Are like the hardcore ranking people. Yeah.

[Emily Jasinski]

In fact, like Joe Rogan, he's gonna make it in. But, you know, Joe Schmoe from Minnesota is not gonna make it in.

[Megyn Kelly]

You know, what happened with us is we went to the Capitol arena with Trump yesterday, and I spoke at his event there and saw much of the same cast of characters as came today. And my whole family went. We had a great time. We did not get invited to the inner inauguration, which is fine. That was for, like, mostly his top, top surrogates and donors. But they did invite us to go back to the Capitol One arena in a VIP thing. And you know what? You should give those tickets to somebody else, because we had the whole day yesterday. Let somebody else do it so we can get more, like, people who really, you know, regular people who don't have VIP access. But I think no matter how many people did that, you know, you needed 10 times the number of stadiums.

[Eliana Johnson]

There is a cool thing about Trump supporters. Anytime you go to a rally, they love the fellowship with each other and they can find it anywhere. Like the hardcore Trump Die Hards, they don't mind standing outside and getting rained on because they meet people from around the country who are just like them. And for a long time, they couldn't find other people like that, and they were like a little bit of fright. So there were 220,000 inauguration tickets. Granted, when it was supposed to be outside, you could fit about 20,000 in Capital One Arena. So there is a big gap. But what I've seen just walking around the city in the last couple of days is a lot of people finding fellowship.

[Megyn Kelly]

They're thrilled. They're the least. Do you guys know. Have you ever watched Fox and Father? It's Lawrence Fox and Father Calvin Robinson. They're UK guys. Awesome. They got unceremoniously canceled by GB News, which is supposed to be conservative. But in any event, so they were trying to get, I guess, to the Capitol arena today, and either couldn't, or something happened, so they wound up watching it with Kid Rock in his hotel room. A lot of those things have happened, you know, and people. You can hear the cheering. We saw it in our hotel room, and you could hear the cheers when Trump was actually. When he took the oath of office. As soon as it was done, like, all over the hotel room, down in the lobby, just. People are feeling so jubilant. And I'm sure everybody listening to this has had their own experience of that.

[Emily Jasinski]

You know, one striking thing about this inauguration, 2024 versus 2016, is crowd size. Would not have been a problem. This go around. Yes.

[Eliana Johnson]

So that's for Trump was higher.

[Emily Jasinski]

But then even when you look at who was inside, it was the CEO of Google, CEO of Meta, every corporate CEO, the CEO of TikTok, CEO of Amazon, CEO of Amazon and his wife, who. I know, I know. We'll get to what's striking to me that America's top corporations and their leaders, they want to be associated with and want to be seen with this guy, which is a really striking contrast from big time eight years ago. It was not the case. They were. They want to be associated with him. And then I think it will be quite different depending on how this term goes for people working in the White House and coming out of the White House. I mean, those were tough times for those folks. But this, this is a very different environment.

[Eliana Johnson]

Did you see over the weekend, Oscar de la Renta was tweeting out. Oh, yes, looks right.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah.

[Emily Jasinski]

And that they did Ivanka's and they did Usha Vance.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, yeah, that's right.

[Eliana Johnson]

Who looked amazing. She.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, honestly, after Melania, she was his close second on Best Dressed.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

Class of one. None of us wants to compete.

[Emily Jasinski]

Usha was my one.

[Megyn Kelly]

She was your number one. She just is the nicest person. I've met her. I spent a little time with her. She's genuinely kind, warm, friendly. Like she' perfect for jd who is also nice and like kind. But I think she's sort of a softer place to fall, you know what I mean? Like, she's just that sort of loving. Yeah. And he's also like more of a fighter. Right. She's like the brainy Supreme Court clerk, brilliant lawyer, but also this loving mom. And like every smile, look at that smile. She's got the thousand watt smile. She looks so happy. She was so cute when she was holding their daughter Mirabel.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

With the, the, the three band aids on her fingers.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yes.

[Megyn Kelly]

You know, we don't know why she had the three band aids on her fingers.

[Eliana Johnson]

Sucking her thumb.

[Megyn Kelly]

Well, some kids, yeah, she was sucking her thumb. But some kids actually like those for security blankets. I have a friend whose daughter loves band aids. They just make her. It's like a, it's like a lovey for her. Or maybe she just gets her fingers hurt a lot. Know what's going on. But it was adorable. And it was so. Any mom is like, yep, been there. You just get. It's such an easy gimme. Sure you want to wear them? You're good.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

Anyway, Usha was a star. Okay, let's get to the executive orders and then we got to get to what Joe Biden did. Because the executive orders are truly a thing of beauty. I'm so happy about these. I mean, they're going to be legal challenges on these within two minutes, some of these in particular. But let's just talk about what they are. All right, this is a summary on the border. Close the border to asylum seeking migrants. Resume border wall construction. Declare an end to birthright citizenship. Now that one's gonna be tricky. Cause it's in the Constitution. Trump thinks that there's a loophole in it because it says you have to be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States in order for this to apply. And there's a legal argument that you're not if you're just born here to somebody who's here. That's gonna play out for the first time, you know, once and for all. Conservatives have been wanting to have this fight and they're about to get it. Involve the US Military in border security. This too is going to draw immediate legal challenges because we have strict limits in our law for how our military is used. Declare migrant crossings across US Mexico border to be a national emergency. The Wall Street Journal noting that this would allow Trump to unilaterally unlock federal funding for border wall construction without approval from Congress, et cetera. Designate drug cartels as global terrorists. That CBP1 this app that Biden's been allowing these illegals to use, offering 40,000 supposed appointments a month like we're supposed to allow the, the, the border to be open. Because these people are going to go through this orderly process by using the app and then show up to their asylum hearings. It hasn't. We've opened the door. We let them loose. They don't show up to the asylum hearings. We never follow up. And even if they show up to the asylum hearings and we say you don't get asylum, they just leave and we don't arrest them. We never even try to track them down. It's a nightmare that's over. It's no longer available and existing appointments have all been canceled. Right on. Okay, Gender and diversity. This is the one. Hold on. Cause I have a better description of it on my phone than what I have here in my hand. And I wanna make sure I get this one right. Standby. Okay. All radical gender ideology, guidance, communication policies and forms are removed. How great is that? There is a government. There's now a government wide recognition that of the biological reality of two sexes clearly defines male and female. Female is Decide woman is defined as an adult human female. Hallelujah.

[Eliana Johnson]

Controversial stuff too.

[Megyn Kelly]

It never should have been hard, but it it was. Thanks to Biden Harris, agencies will cease pretending that men can be women and women can be men when enforcing laws that protect against sex discrimination. Great. The executive order directs that government identification like passports and personnel records will reflect biological reality, not self assessed gender identity. Let's see. Ends the practice of housing men in women's prisons and taxpayer funded transitions for male prisoners. Ends the forced recitation of preferred pronouns in schools and in government settings. Your school can no longer make you say he is a she when you know he is a he and you don't have to say it's my religion or I don't want to. Right. They're just not allowed to do that anymore thanks to this Trump executive order. It's a thing of beauty and I like I cannot wait. Okay. Tariffs and trade. Directing federal agencies to begin an investigation into trade practices including trade deficits, unfair currency practices, counterfeit goods and a special exemption allowing low value goods to come to the US Terrorists free. Tariff free. Assessing China's compliance with the trade deal. Okay, I'll skip some of that, but it's a stump. On tariffs energy. Okay, here, these are. There's some great ones in here. Declare a national emergency on energy which could allow Trump to unlock powers to speed permitting for pipelines and power plants. Order the federal government to roll back regulations that impede domestic energy production. Signal an intention to loosen the limits on tailpipe pollution and fuel economy standards, which Trump refers to as the electric vehicle mandate. Roll back energy efficiency regulations for dishwashers, shower heads and gas stoves. Open the Alaska wilderness to more oil and gas drilling. Eliminate environmental justice programs across the government which are aimed at protecting poor communities from excess pollut pollution. It's not on here, but one of the ones in the original list is pulling the permits for on all federal lands for those terrible wind farms. That is huge. Let me tell you down where I go in the summer in New Jersey. This is a huge issue for us. They are going to put in this huge wind farm like nine miles from shore where you will see. They will ruin the Jersey coastline. You will hear them. They will torture the sea life, including the whales. That one of those things breaks and you cannot the ocean gets ruined. The toxic toxins that fall in, that's what happened in Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket last summer. It is absolutely huge that Trump said no more. And the only reason these are about to go through in New Jersey, among Other places is because the feds gave the permit and Trump just pulled it. I love that. It's all so good. He will sign an executive order reinstating service members who were unjustly expelled from the military for objective to the COVID vaccine mandate with full back pay. Oh my, I'm feeling euphoric. He will end remote work policies for the federal workforce and he will order many agencies back to the office four to five days a week. And he's renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and reinstating the name Mount McKinley to our highest mountain which is in Alaska because they changed the name thanks to wokeness under Barack Obama. God bless President Trump. What's your favorite? Which one do you want to talk about?

[Emily Jasinski]

You know what I thought was so interesting is these are some of the ones he highlighted in his address. What we read news over the weekend was that he's gonna sign between 100 and 200. Not totally clear. And I think there were mixed messages coming out from the Trump folks. How many exactly there were gonna be. The ones he chose to highlight in his inaugural address were ones these things probably have 70% support from the American people. So he was clearly strategic about what he chose to highlight. The gender and DEI won. That's the issue that he probably won the presidency on. I mean his most viral ad was I'm for you, she's for they them.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes.

[Emily Jasinski]

And about Kamala Harris's support for taxpayer funded gender transitions for illegal immigrants and prisons. The birthright citizenship one will be controversial. But overall these are things that the broad segments of the American people support. So I'll be interested to see which other ones come out tonight and do they get lost in this big shuffle level of doing 100 as opposed to 10?

[Megyn Kelly]

He said in his post inaugural address to his address in the overflow room. Some people wanted me not to announce them all right away. I think he said this. I either said it there or I read it. But yeah, he said they didn't want me to announce it all. They wanted me to trickle it out. I said, no, we're doing it all.

[Emily Jasinski]

You know, he'll never be more powerful than he is today.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, you know what, you're right. So so much goodwill, momentum.

[Emily Jasinski]

Good idea.

[Megyn Kelly]

People are like, yes, change was a which. What's your favorite in there?

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, I mean it's got to be DEI because that's the catch all. That's the umbrella term. They even sneak gender stuff under the DEI umbrella. So I mean between those two, I think people understand regular Americans understand how sweeping that is, and it's huge. But I was also struck. I mean, I got the press release of the executive actions from the White House. They wasted no time. They sent it out, I think at 12:24pm and I am looking at this and I'm thinking to myself, if somebody had sent this to me in 2012, I would have had an, an out of body experience saying, why do we need to do any of this? Right? Like, so much of this is actually just rewinding the clock. Obama's administration is what changed Title IX to put, to completely radicalize our regime on sex and gender, to conflate gender identity and sex. He also put men in women's prisons. Like, so much of this stuff came out of the Obama administration. Trump was able to tweak some of it. Biden comes back in, reinstates all of it. And here we are, day one of the Trump administration. We're just rewinding the clock on so much of this in ways that it's like, it's not easy even him creating new ideas. It's literally just him rewinding the clock to sanity.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's so true.

[Emily Jasinski]

One of the questions that raised in my mind actually is it puts Democrats in an interesting position for the 2028 campaign. And if anybody cares to ask in the media, so where do they stand on these executive orders? Are they going to campaign against them? Will they undo them on their day?

[Eliana Johnson]

Gayle King's not gonna ask about it.

[Emily Jasinski]

You know, Trump's not running again. But it does put them in an interesting spot.

[Megyn Kelly]

You mentioned the, you know, where the American people feel. So here's a couple of numbers to support that. There was a new that just came out on the gender, well known, a few of these issues. First of all, on mass deportations, 55% of the American people support them. For all illegals. All of them. Not some, all of them. 55%. 63% support deportations for those who arrived illegally in the past four years. 63%. Two thirds of the American public wants you out if you got here in the past four years. And a majority, healthy majority, 55 want you out irrespective of when you got here. If you're here illegally, 87% support deporting illegal immigrant criminals. And then on, let's see. Oh, on like foreign engagement with like the foreign wars, 60% support less foreign engagement on trans issues. Here we go. Listen to this. They said, do you agree or disagree? Society has gone too far in accommodating trans people. 77% agree.

[Eliana Johnson]

Accommodating. They even rigged that question.

[Megyn Kelly]

Right?

[Eliana Johnson]

They even rigged that question totally.

[Megyn Kelly]

77%. Nearly 80% of the populace says we have gone too far. 93% of the GOP, 62% of Democrats say that 62 trans women agree or disagree. Trans women should not be allowed in women's sports. Trans women, which is a fake term, that's men pretending to be women, should not be allowed in women's Sports. Should be. 79% agree with that. 79. It's 94% of GOPers, 67% of Dems. I mean, that's. How the hell are they going to challenge Trump on this executive order? How the hell are the Dems in the Senate going to stop a vote on the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports act that just passed the House, like they did when it passed the House under Biden's administration. It passed the House under his administration. It got to the Senate and they stopped it. But now, yes, the GOP controls the Senate, but you need 60 votes to get cloture on. On a vote. You need 60 senators to say, we'll have a vote on it and good luck. They, you know, you're telling me that all those Dems are going to say no in response to 67% of their voters saying, we're against this. It's going to be a huge issue. And then last but not least, minors should not be able to get puberty. Blockers agree or disagree. 71% agree they should not be allowed. 90% of the GOP, 54% of Dems. We've won on that issue. We've won. That battle's over whether they know it.

[Eliana Johnson]

Or not, when I don't. I think the media is framing this. The video clip you showed of John Carl calling this dark, they're framing this. They're really trying hard to shoehorn this back into the American carnage narrative of Donald Trump being an aggressive fascist. He is aggressively instating fascism around the country. And to most Americans, they look at this and they're like, this just feels like we're returning to something normal, like a baseline. And that's not what the media senses with this at all. They think this is something that's like, pushing in a different direction, but for a lot of people, it just feels like stability and calm. Can you.

[Megyn Kelly]

Can we talk about that for one second? Doug and I were watching this this morning, and we were talking about just how extraordinary it is that Trump is our president. You know, that he became president, that he's now been returned to the presidency. We were talking about just how awful Barack Obama was and how radically he changed the country with his far left progressive agenda. And he.

[Eliana Johnson]

And not with Congress.

[Megyn Kelly]

No, no, with his pen and his phone. Remember his pen and his phone. And I mean, it was infamous. Like he, he was, he was more dangerous than any politician that's followed because he was so affable and he had his folksy way of talking and, you know, people were like, I like him. And they felt good about themselves. They're voting for the first black president. So it was like, like he had all his momentum as his agent of hope and change, like a great slogan, and they felt good about themselves. And then he did things that should make you feel good about yourselves. You know, when it comes to changes in race, changes in the gender approach, he's the reason we're doing these sex changes on these prisoners and so on.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yep, 100%.

[Megyn Kelly]

And then you get Trump the wrecking ball, you know, crass and impolite and a fighter, and America's like, we want him. And that was just never understood. They thought it was all about the working class, which it was in part. But it was also like, we don't want any of this radicalism. And when Trump lost because he behaved badly around January 6, the left thought it had a new mandate with Joe Biden to just triple down and then some on Obama's radicalness, and that's why he held his head in shame as he exited office today.

[Emily Jasinski]

Well, there's some real differences between Joe Biden and Barack Obama, which is why I don't think there's much love lost between the two.

[Eliana Johnson]

You mean one is a sort of sentient being. His brain is functioning.

[Megyn Kelly]

There's that.

[Emily Jasinski]

Let's say Joe Biden at the top of his game and Barack Obama at the top of his game. All right, let's just, let's make that comparison, which is that Barack Obama is a genuine, once in a generation political talent.

[Megyn Kelly]

Talent. Right.

[Emily Jasinski]

And so is Donald Trump. And they both tug on, like, real parts of the American character and things that the country wants to believe it is. And now they're both two term presidents. And I think you could see at the Carter funeral that these guys have, like, grudging, if genuine, but genuine respect for each other as, like, political athletes. You know, Obama, the country, I think, wanted to elect a black president, and Obama played on those things, but, like, he's a real rhetorical superstar. And Trump is too, in a completely different way. And America likes an underdog story. And to Trump's credit, his genius was flipping so much of the conventional wisdom of the Republican Party on its head.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, he remade the party and the country.

[Emily Jasinski]

The immigration stuff you talked about, that was not the position. When he ran in 2015, we were coming on the heels of. And you were at Fox, Meghan. Yeah, when I remember out of 2012, it was like, comprehensive immigration reform. And even, you know, I remember, like, the prime time at Fox was like, we gotta get behind it. Oh, that was Roger Elliot Romney. Oh, yeah. And Trump was able to pierce through that and say, like, people don't want that.

[Eliana Johnson]

That's.

[Megyn Kelly]

By the way, I watched a little bit of CBS this Morning, which is when I heard Gayle King, like, where are the people of color?

[Eliana Johnson]

While he's rolling back the DEI stuff because of his mandate to do the.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, right. She's still. She's obsessed. I mean, there's no getting her off of that horse. But on cbs, that was how they were spinning the immigration reform. Like, well, the Republicans aren't gonna get behind this, you know, because they're Chamber of Commerce Republicans and they like these workers and so on. And like, yes, there is still a small contingent of the Republican Party saying that, but this is Trump's Republican Party. Cbs, great job. Just trying to stir up trouble, you know, like, find a way of saying he's gonna fail. Trump's not gonna fail with these immigration reforms. That he has a mandate from Dems and Republicans. Look at those numbers we just went through.

[Eliana Johnson]

But that tells me they're not listening to anybody who actually supports Donald Trump. Like, that's what you hear. If you're still talking to the Chamber of Commerce guys. And that's your sort of Republican source.

[Megyn Kelly]

Alan Kinzinger, Mitt Romney.

[Eliana Johnson]

Oh, no, no, no. But I mean, this is the thing. Like, even on the sex and gender stuff, Trump, of all people, totally changed the paradigm. This is the guy who was inviting Caitlyn Jenner to go use the bathroom at Trump tower back in 2015. I think that was maybe 2016. And yet I went back and looked at the new news coverage, and no offense to Betsy DeVos, but she even reportedly at the time was wavering about rolling back Obama's Title 9 stuff on sex and gender identity. I think this was according to the Washington Post. And you go back and you think to that time period, early 2017. Yeah, it was really tough to be an American who actually said what you thought, let alone in Washington, D.C. and so Donald Trump, of all people, was the one who, like, gave A shot in the arm to the culture war. I mean, it's incredible to think about.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes. This is like the point I was trying to make yesterday at the Capitol One arena because they asked me if I would speak about culture. Like, they give you an assigned topic so that they don't have the same topic being discussed over and over.

[Emily Jasinski]

And, like, maybe no more comedian snafus.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, yeah, I think. I don't think they want to stay. Stick to the script.

[Eliana Johnson]

So they asked me, you should have slipped one in.

[Megyn Kelly]

They know I'm into that. Right. So they're like, oh, shit, sorry, I lost my ears. They said, can you talk about culture? So I did. So, I mean, this is obviously an issue near and dear to my heart, but this is one of the points that I was trying to make, is that, you know, the DEI battle has been hard fought and it's gone on for years now, but it took a lot of human sacrifice to get to the point where we're all. I mean, not the entire country, but the majority of the countries back in the same place of, we don't want this. We object to race essentialism. We object to the trans mania. We object to the trans activists who are the most ardent bullies in America right now. And I went through some of, like, the people who sacrificed themselves to get us here. I think they cut a sound bite. Can we listen to some of that? I don't have my ears in, but, like, let's play it. And then you had Oprah herself. Oprah, she'll interview you if you pay her a million dollars, too. Yeah. So low, low fee of a million dollars to sit down with Oprah Winfrey. Apparently, that's what the Harris campaign paid her production company, she says, and for that, you know what you get? You get Oprah yelling at you, kamala Harris, why are you doing that? Calm down, madam. My favorite was the preacher accent. Joy cometh in the morning. Morning. She wasn't wrong about that. It came at about 1:22am on election night when the election was called for Donald J. Trump, all of you wearing the MAGA hats, it used to be an act of civil disobedience, right? Yes, sir. Defiance of a register that didn't want to hear from you. But wearing that hat for much of the past eight years has been an act of courage, too. Those battles, one after the other, have been fought, and this anti DEI momentum has been built brick by brick, thanks to all of you and you who listened to Donald Trump, who, when a reporter asked him at a presidential debate in 2015 about some of the language he used, responded by saying, what I say is what I say, and if you don't like it, too bad. So I thank all of you for being part of the Trump movement and for bringing these changes upon us and for bringing Donald Trump back into the office. And a reminder before I go, stay strong. We haven't won the war. We're winning. We've won a bunch of battles. But he's gonna need all of you every step of the way. We're gonna have to be patient. We're gonna have to steal. Our spines. Do not bend, never bow. What I say is what I say. God bless you. God bless President Trump. God bless the United States of America. We finally figured out how to lower the screen in here so that we're not in full sun. That my. That was my point, right, Is that it's been a lot of people, and I went through, in the longer speech of examples like Jody Shaw of Smith College, who I think, you know, I don't know that she ever was able to rebuild her life because she picked a fight with them over what they were doing on dei and they tried to ruin her life. And there's so many beyond her.

[Emily Jasinski]

Part of me thinks that this stuff started, like, in the 90s, and it's taken a generation or a generation and a half that it's been that long that the country's lived with this, and it's trickled down from the country's most elite institution into the public schools. And that was why. That was when. And why people really revolted against this. Because when it doesn't touch you, what does it matter? You don't quite know what it is. And that's also with the gender ideology that started to trickle down into the public school. Did you.

[Megyn Kelly]

Did you see that poll that showed that 67% of people under the age of 30 are enthusiastic about Trump's term, about Trump taking on more than any other age cohort? The young people are the most enthusiastic about Trump. And I do believe all of this is very much part of it.

[Emily Jasinski]

Totally. Those are the people who will pay the biggest costs in applying to colleges, applying to jobs. You know, like, we're set up.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, more or less.

[Emily Jasinski]

We've been through the ringer. And I think about it, you know, with. We think. We look at our kids and think, ugh, I. At least I do. Like, I wouldn't want to be them going through all of this.

[Megyn Kelly]

Good luck, kids.

[Emily Jasinski]

Best of luck.

[Megyn Kelly]

But, I mean, by the way, the free Beacons hiring. She does. She's not as cold as she sounds.

[Eliana Johnson]

Oh, no, she's way colder. A great editor. A great editor.

[Megyn Kelly]

Amazing. Everybody says it too.

[Emily Jasinski]

But, you know, so I do think it was living with us for 30, 40 years.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah, yeah, I think that. And I mean, I worked in the conservative youth movement when I first graduated college, and I was like a college conservative myself. And if someone had showed me those numbers when I was in college, my jaw would have been on the floor. I would have. What happened? Tell me what happened. It would have been astounding, because the tides, especially with millennials and then early Gen Z, you looked across polling, it was like everyone was with the far left in these generations. And what's sad, Megan, my favorite line. I was watching that at home, was when you said it brick by brick. What's sad is that a lot of those bricks are people with real lives who had to go through this over the course of years. I mean, people like Chloe Cole.

[Megyn Kelly]

Who she. I had her in my draft. I just forgot to mention her.

[Eliana Johnson]

Unbelievable.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah. I mean, she's. She's a transitioner, as. As we call people who, you know, go down that path and look at, like, the physical changes to her. They're on. They're irreversible, as Abigail Schreier said.

[Eliana Johnson]

And by the way, Jeff Bezos is on the dais. Amazon did not let Abigail monetize. Put ads for that book on Amazon back.

[Megyn Kelly]

Exactly right.

[Eliana Johnson]

Here's Jeff Bezos. While Donald Trump is announc. The gender, like the sex, men and women executive order. Jeff Bezos is right there.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, Sundar Pichai is there, who, you know, runs Google.

[Emily Jasinski]

Mark Zuckerberg, ladies and gentlemen.

[Megyn Kelly]

Exactly. No, I mean, it's like all these guys. It's great. They're coming on board because they bent the knee to Trump. I'm totally in favor of it, but they are absolutely. Hashtag part of the problem. And how we got here. Never mind what they did on Covid. Right. I know. We don't talk about COVID We just don't talk about COVID anymore. I don't know if you knew that. We really don't talk about it when it comes to Anthony Fauci, who's now free as a jailbird, just out on parole.

[Emily Jasinski]

Yeah, we got to get to that.

[Megyn Kelly]

We got to get to that. But in any event, there they were. Hashtag part of the problem. So we'll see whether they change their tune now. We'll see whether on YouTube now I can say they're mutilating. The bodies of children in the name of this pernicious ideology and whether YouTube will allow my video to live and be. And not be demonetized. Because that's. You're not allowed to say that word on YouTube. But I've said it now. Trump is president. And we'll see. Let's do, we'll go back to Trump too, but let's do go to the pardons because this is just, just egregious. Everybody under the sun, I mean, the J6 committee members, his entire family, right? Mark Milley and Dr. Fauci. And by the way, the pardons go back, especially Fauci, go back to 2014. It starts in 2014. Forward. What the hell was he doing in 2014? It's because he funded gain of function research. It's because he was behind the problem that caused the damn pandemic.

[Emily Jasinski]

I read it differently, actually. I thought he was just trying to normalize the date he set for Hunter and he's like, everyone went back to 2014, so, like, that's going to be the date for everyone. Because I think his families did too. For the crooked brothers and the in laws that just became the date for. It did, yeah. But like the sister in laws, I don't really know. But the statement that went with the pardons for his incredible family, I mean.

[Megyn Kelly]

I got to find it.

[Emily Jasinski]

We got to assume, like, Biden didn't write this, but we can't expect him to have any level of self awareness.

[Megyn Kelly]

But true.

[Emily Jasinski]

I just pulled it up on my phone where he says that he's protecting them against baseless and politically motivated investigations. And he says they wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families. Even when individuals have done nothing wrong and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage their reputations and finances. That is, and he called it the worst kind of partisan politics coming from the ostensible leader of a party that pioneered and used lawfare as its primary electoral strategy. It really is galling, is just shocking. And for them to think that, that they always said Trump was gonna do it. And he may have egged on his crowds to say lock her up, but he then actually didn't sic the Department of Justice on his political enemies when he got in there. And I think said to advisers like, I'm not actually gonna do that. But now what leg do they have to stand on if Trump wants to go in and preemptively pardon his entire white House staff half and go after his political enemies.

[Megyn Kelly]

He should, he should do that. But to me, that's not even the point.

[Emily Jasinski]

The Hunter pardon and this pardon are shockingly hypocritical.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, agreed. Go ahead.

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, I was gonna say Biden literally campaigned on not doing that. There are sound bites of Joe Biden in 2020 saying, as he's being asked in the campaign trail, I will not pardon my family. Donald Trump is going to do that. I will not. I mean, it's part of how he convinced Americans to vote for him.

[Megyn Kelly]

Him.

[Eliana Johnson]

It's just disgraceful. It's disgusting.

[Megyn Kelly]

Let's see. Hello, we have in 15. I think some of that. Yeah, here's Biden. December 2020. President Trump is reportedly considering a wave of preemptive pardons. Does this concern you, all these preemptive pardons?

[Donald Trump]

Well, it's, it concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent sets and.

[Emily Jasinski]

How the rest of the world looks.

[Donald Trump]

At us as a nation of laws and injustice. You're not going to see in our administration that kind of approach to pardons.

[Megyn Kelly]

You're not really. And they were all saying it. By the way, Adam Schiff was on camera. He got a pardon because he was on the J6 committee. Liz Cheney got a pardon.

[Emily Jasinski]

And all the staffers, all the staffers.

[Megyn Kelly]

Kinzinger. Right. He was just out two weeks ago saying, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take a pardon.

[Emily Jasinski]

By the way, they don't have to accept them.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's right. I did not question about whether it's valid if they don't accept. Right, yeah.

[Emily Jasinski]

Right.

[Megyn Kelly]

Like there's, I mean, there's a legal debate on whether you must say, I accept. And I think most lawyers say, yeah, you do. You have to say, I accept it in order for it to be valid for you. And there's. But I really think so. The Fauci one is the one that has me most ticked off because I really do think Fauci lied repeatedly to Congress, and Rand Paul certainly thinks that, and I think was preparing to go after him. And I don't know what else Fauci did. I, I mean, we, we've never been able to find the smoking gun evidence that he actually was behind the COVID virus, the, the one at issue. But he definitely funded gain of function research, which is very dangerous, including in the Wuhan lab, through this Peter Dasak Group. And we just were never given the information to close that last loop. It would be wonderful to get it under the Trump administration.

[Emily Jasinski]

None of these guys can plead the Fifth, if they're called the four Congress.

[Megyn Kelly]

So that's the silver lining. They all have to testify fully, they cannot plead the fifth. And, and by the way, it doesn't stop any investigations whatsoever, or civil lawsuits. And you know what else it doesn't stop?

[Emily Jasinski]

State lawsuits.

[Megyn Kelly]

State prosecutions. State prosecutions, you can be prosecuted by the state. A federal pardon does not. That was Trump's problem, remember?

[Eliana Johnson]

Right.

[Megyn Kelly]

We were saying, like he could pardon himself, but only for the federal crimes, not for those state prosecutions in New York or in Georgia. Well, guess what, Dr. Fauci and J, six committee members and General Milley, you're all in the same position and you know, somebody was pointing out online line, let's be real, if they were prosecuted by the Feds in Washington D.C. not a one would be convicted of anything. Given the jury pool here, nothing. So I mean, it's galling, I agree. But realistically, they weren't gonna get convicted.

[Emily Jasinski]

Biden made the point that they wouldn't be convicted. The process is the punishment.

[Megyn Kelly]

I know, but in a way. But to your original point, so what did we really lose? Cuz we weren't gonna get convictions of any of those people. And yet now Trump has cover to pardon all of the people who actually are in danger in this jurisdiction. All of them.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yep. And what's, I think even just from a big picture perspective, we don't want to lose our sense of shock at this type of like banana republic behavior. And James Biden, I had actually, like in the Biden tornado of corruption over the last half decade, forgotten that he had completely. He's obviously lied to Congress. And James Comer recommended that he be prosecuted. He recommended it to Merrick Garland's Department of Justice, so obviously dead on arrival. But would have pursued it had James Biden not been pardoned. Because James Biden said, he said straight up that Joe Biden did not meet with their business partners while they were seeking a deal with these Chinese businessmen. We know that that is not true. That is a lie. He lied to Congress and now he's pardoned for it. But that was a lie to cover up corruption. That was a lie to cover up corruption on behalf of the President, not just his relatives.

[Megyn Kelly]

And yeah, it's, he didn't pardon himself, which is interesting. And I'll tell you, the one thing that jumped out at me was Mark Milley who issued a statement saying, hold on a second, I have it here in part. Okay. He said, my family and I are deeply grateful for the President's actions today. After 43 years of faithful service in uniform to our nation, protecting and defending the Constitution. I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the Lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights. I do not want to put my family, friends, and those with whom I served through the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety. Really, how are you any different from Donald Trump, who's 78 years old and really didn't want to spend the time he had left fighting for his freedom in four different jurisdictions? Right. All of these Democrats, I assume. I don't know what Millie is, but he certainly sounds like a Democrat, and he behaved like one at the end of Trump's term. Want such sympathy for themselves, like, poor me, the evil Trump. They have absolutely no empathy for him or take no responsibility for what they did. Did what they've been doing to him.

[Eliana Johnson]

For years now, and their own role in it. Right. Like, they don't. It doesn't occur to them that they may have contributed to the problem. They're still unwilling to admit that. And that's what I saw from Gayle King, too. When she's out there waxing poetic about how she doesn't see any people of color at Trump's inauguration, it's like, you're missing the entire point. You were still missing the entire point. The House of Celebrity Apprentice just beat you in an election twice.

[Megyn Kelly]

Twice, yeah. How did that happen, Gail?

[Eliana Johnson]

And it didn't clock. I mean, it's still. It's still not registering.

[Megyn Kelly]

You know, you can't say, these people who are obsessed with race, you cannot save them from themselves. Like, I don't think they can be cleansed of this illness. The. The ones we're going for are the ones who are faking it just to keep their jobs and go along. Yeah, the CEOs. Right. Exactly. Or like, those guys who work at the banks on Wall street who just kind of went along with. No, I definitely want to hire another woman for sure. Even though the three weakest people on my team happen to be female.

[Eliana Johnson]

But a woman driver, you say? That sounds wonderful.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, yeah. Like, we are great at many, many things. We don't have to be great at driving. No. But honestly, like, the day. That's why there was such a backlash to Caitlin Clark owning her white privilege when she was recognized as times Athlete of the Year. What I heard from everybody, my audience, my friends, my colleagues, was, we don't have to do that anymore. We want a whole presidential election and a House and a Senate so that we don't have to do that anymore. And that's. Trump is just such a breath of fresh air. He comes in and he's like, you know, he dropped some. Some swears yesterday at the Capitol One Arena. I think he said bullshit. You know, he infamously called Ted Cruz the P word.

[Eliana Johnson]

He saluted the Village People and the assless chaps. Incredible, Incredible.

[Megyn Kelly]

Talk about the Village People. What a moment. Somebody tweeted out we. It was a Democrat. We've officially lost the gays. Like, the gays have officially lost the Village People. We lost those five gays. And I didn't realize that the Village People is like, the Globetrotters were like. I guess they just keep getting replaced because those guys were not. The Village People came to fame in the 70s.

[Eliana Johnson]

They look good.

[Megyn Kelly]

They're not 80. These guys are young. They were so entertaining. My favorite was the Native American, but it was tight. It was tight. It was hard to pick a favorite. And Trump dancing with the Village People to ymca. This is the most iconic Doug Mills.

[Eliana Johnson]

New York Times shot. That is a good shot.

[Megyn Kelly]

Doug Mills is a genius, because that is gold. That will live forever. And for the listening audience, it's the Native American with a huge headdress coming down in the back of him and the huge Y. You know, his arms up in a Y. And Trump in his, like, signature dance move. Like, the fists out and his hip out to the side. And, like, the Indian guy looks so happy. Like, he just looks so jubilant. It's such. I don't like. What is it that's so attractive about that photo?

[Eliana Johnson]

I just don't know how Republicans got the upper hand in the culture war again. Like 2012, it was. The Republican autopsy was saying that you needed to moderate in order to win voters. And here we are, it's 2025, and Donald Trump, a man who spent his life as a Democrat, has completely shifted the cultural tide to what Eliana was saying. All of these. It came to be called wokeness, but all of this sort of cultural progressivism, some people call it cultural Marxism, had started stacking up slowly in our institutions. It did come from the campuses. It came from postmodernism. And then it was slowly taking over society. And then it happened all at once in 2020. It felt like the snowball had rolled down the hill. And it's Donald Trump. It is Donald Trump in the year 2025. It's not Mitt Romney. It's not some conservative standard bearer. No offense to Ted Cruz. It's not Ted Cruz. It's Donald Trump. He was the only one who could come in and just melt the fraught lost that had settled over the culture. It's very, very honestly surreal when you.

[Megyn Kelly]

Think about what's happening on our college campuses, most of whom do receive some federal money. How are they going to stop all this? Right, because the executive order can only apply to schools that accept federal money. He can't control state schools. And how is it going? How are they going to deal with this? Like the women's studies departments that have completely sold out to the trans lobby. How are they going to handle the fact that, that they can't insist on preferred pronouns, that there's an executive order saying there are only two genders? He should have said two sexes. But fine, I'll give him. I know where he's going.

[Eliana Johnson]

I don't think he wrote it.

[Megyn Kelly]

No, I don't think he did either. But it'll be like how these things actually get implemented and the pushback legally and culturally and as a practical matter are still a big question mark for me. Like that, that's, that's going to be a big storyline over the next coming weeks and months, months as Trump actually gets to work. And of course the immigration thing is going to take top slot on the news channels because already today, already today they are showing and circulating videos, have you seen it? Of the so called asylum seekers, you know, alleged silence seekers, being told CPB1 has been shut down, you cannot use that app anymore. And the media is showing them crying like, oh, but I, I want to get in. I'm sure you do want to get in. I'm sorry, it's not your country. We have no right, we have no obligation to let you in. And this process has been so disgustingly abused by so many others before you. You can't come in. You're going to have to go someplace else.

[Eliana Johnson]

There are people from your country who are in line, who you're trying to skip.

[Megyn Kelly]

Right?

[Eliana Johnson]

I mean, it's is, it was, there was no sense of order. It was complete chaos. It has been for like a decade. And so there has to be a process. Most Americans agree with that. We just went through the new New York Times Ipsos numbers. So those, those images, I think they may ultimately have a little bit of. You may see that showing up a little bit in public opinion polling. We saw that back in 2017 during the Kids in Cages false narrative. But I don't think it's gonna work the way the media thinks it will.

[Megyn Kelly]

I wonder is they're definitely not in favor of Closing the border or finishing off the border fence.

[Emily Jasinski]

But Trump didn't lose because he had restrictive immigration policies.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, God, no.

[Emily Jasinski]

You know, in 2016 or 2020, he didn't lose because of kids in cages. And I think now, now he knows how important it is. I, I'm not sure those images will, will be particularly damaging to him.

[Megyn Kelly]

I think today at the after party.

[Emily Jasinski]

He'S actually doing something. Yeah, it's having a real impact.

[Megyn Kelly]

He said today at the after speech, immigration was the reason. It was the number one reason. He said, I know, I know, you know, inflation was important, too. But he's like, immigration was huge. And like he said, there's only so many times you can tell people what the price of bread is. But, you know, you see what's happening at our border. And look, you know, the reason I think somebody like, you know, Tucker Carlson, who's obviously a big fan of Trump, is so devoted to him, is he expects to see that border closed. Like his top surrogates and closest, you know, people to him and including his family members, they want that border closed.

[Emily Jasinski]

And it's not just happening at the border, as we've seen the past four years. It's happening in New York City and it's happening in Chicago, and it's happening in Colorado. And that's why I think he got coast to coast support for this policy nationally. Is that like DEI and the gender ideology that trickled down to touch all Americans? So did this immigration crisis, where it.

[Megyn Kelly]

Was everywhere and continues to be. And that's why the other piece of this is Tom Homan, who's heading up the deportation force. He said that he, there was a report that he was going to start in Chicago, but the administration is being cagey about where they're going to start because they don't want all the illegals to flee from one city to the next. I think they want some element of strategic ambiguity. Yeah, right, exactly. Like we used to have in Taiwan. But I bet they're starting right now. I guarantee you Tom Holman is either at his desk or in the field working on deportations at this moment. That guy was chomping at the bit. And I do expect the media to make a huge sob story out of this, like, oh, poor. But they're setting the stage. You know, Homan and others now have been rejiggering the narrative to there's no such thing as family separations. The families are welcome to leave with the illegal. It's not our obligation to leave the illegal here so that he or she can stay with their family who may or may not be here lawfully. That's the choice of the family. And I heard, I think it was Kristi Noem say at her confirmation hearing hearing, when somebody gets arrested and they have to go into prison, we don't talk about family separation. It's like, right, you, you're going to have to leave your family because you did something wrong. Like, that's on you, madam, or sir. And I think the media is gonna, they're not gonna embrace that narrative. They're gonna be playing the heartstrings like, oh, look at the poor family separations. And the rest of us who have hearts and may feel sorry for when in watching some of these videos have to remember why it's happening.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah. I mean, make no mistake, all of these stories are heart wrenching. I mean, you talk to people at the border, it's like, my God, that is terrible. I know. You just want a better life for your child. And they are really sad stories. But they also are encouraging more people to cross the Darien gap. If you let them in, you're bringing more and more people through the Darien Gap where women are getting sexually assaulted, young girls are getting raped, they're being impregnated, they are all trafficked by cartels. Every single person pays. Plenty of sources can tell you that if you actually talk to people on the board. So when you see these sob stories, they are representing even worse stories when you let them in. I mean, we have to have a process. And Tom Homan is somebody who came out of the Obama administration to the conversation we were having earlier about just rolling back the clock to before Obama dramatically upended the way that immigration worked in this country via executive orders in particular. But he's someone who's a great example. Like the Trump administration isn't necessarily like aggressively devising these innovative policies. They're literally just going back to a baseline, forcing.

[Megyn Kelly]

Used to be my team has pulled a sound bite that they think we want to see. It's Rachel MADDOW Talking to NBC's Jacob Sober off, who's.

[Eliana Johnson]

He's terrible on immigration.

[Megyn Kelly]

He's very, very woke on immigration. Let's watch. Does it feel like an emergency where you are standing? Feels no different than 20 minutes ago or 30 minutes ago or an hour ago when we got here early this morning. Rachel, the one, one practical change that we do know that has gone into effect here is that that CBP1 app that was put into place by the Biden administration. Part of their effort stated effort to have a more fair, safe, humane, orderly process at the border has been discontinued by the Trump administration and President Trump. So he said no change. Like it's fine. She's waiting for him to be like, families are being ripped apart. He's like, it's the same. We're good. Yeah.

[Eliana Johnson]

But he'll get to it later this week.

[Emily Jasinski]

You know who, you know who I want to hear from who has, I think has his finger on the pulse of, you know, all immigration changes is probably not him.

[Megyn Kelly]

Not him at all.

[Emily Jasinski]

He thinks, by the way, he's subject of a defamation lawsuit at NBC over coverage of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. So maybe not him. The uterus collector.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's right. I forgot I saw that and then I never followed up on that.

[Emily Jasinski]

Yeah, I'm thrilled he's still out there.

[Megyn Kelly]

Thrilled to hear that. He's not a good person. He's such a jerk. He is one of the guys who was on my set the day of my blackface comments and couldn't throw me under the bus soon enough. He was like, back it up over.

[Emily Jasinski]

Her 10 times over semi.

[Megyn Kelly]

I was like, to Mexico. So I hope you lose in your defamation case and I hope you have to stay at the border a nice long time. You can meet my friend Tom Homan and see what he's doing. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with the EJ's right after this. Life is busy and finding the time to shop for clothes can feel impossible. This is why daily loads look is a game changer. The number one premium personal styling service for women. Here's how it works. A stylist curates a box of up to 12 pieces tailored to body shape, preferences and lifestyle. Whether chic office outfits or cozy, everyday looks are needed. Daily look delivers what fits the moment. Everything can be tried on at home and you keep what works and send back the rest with free shipping both ways. It's a seamless, stress free way to elevate any wardrobe. Daily look works with top brands like Kate Spade and more, offering premium pieces for every occasion. Sizes range from extra small to 3x and 0 to 24, making it an inclusive styling service for everyone at every size. Daily Look's mission is simple. To elevate personal style while saving time and effort. It's time to get your own personal stylist with Daily Look. Head to DailyLook.com to take your style quiz and use code Megan for 50% off your first order. That's DailyLook.com for 50% off. And make sure you use my promo code M E G Y N so they know we sent you dailylook.com promo code M E G Y N When it comes to grocery shopping and meal planning, it's often stressful and time consuming. Between busy schedules and personal demands, finding the time to shop, plan meals or cook healthy dishes from scratch is challenging. On top of that, maintaining special dietary needs and health health goals can feel overwhelming. But now there is Hungry Root, the easiest way to eat healthy. Hungryroot acts as a personal shopper and nutritionist. Combined, it handles everything from weekly grocery shopping to meal planning, offering personalized recommendations based on individual tastes, preferences and health goals. From smoothies and snacks to full meals, all offerings are healthy with no artificial sweeteners or preservatives. Only top quality ingredients are used, making healthy eating easy and delicious. Take advantage of this exclusive offer for a limited time, get 40% off your first box plus get a free item in every box for Life. Go to hungryroot.com mk use the code mk that's hungryroot.com mk use the Code mk to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your Choice for Life. Hungryroot.com that's Code MK this podcast is.

[Emily Jasinski]

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[Megyn Kelly]

I'm Meghan Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM. It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures. Today you can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk, podcast and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months free for free go to SiriusXM.com MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply. I, James David Vance, do solemnly swear. I, James David Vance, do solemnly swear. That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States States. That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That I will bear true faith That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. And allegiance to the same. That I take this obligation freely. That I take this obligation freely. Without any mental reservation. Without any you mental reservation. Okay, that was my favorite moment of the whole thing. Yes, Mirabel was adorable, but what I loved about that was a. A couple things, but number one, it was his mom. His mom Beverly, who just hit 10 years clean from her heroin addiction. And I gotta tell you, like, this actually kind of makes me kind of emotional, but. But, like, the way she looks kind of reminds me of my sister, you know, who was also an addict, recovering, like Beverly, but, you know, like a little weathered, like beautiful, but a little, a little weathered. You can tell this person's not had the easiest life. And look at her, you guys, it's so sweet. She's there seeing her son sworn in as the vice president. Like, if you know his story, and I know it, you know, well now, but like, he suffered, you know, he suffered so mightily. His dad abandoned them. His mom had man after man in the house. His mom had a history of abuse. And he writes all about the time she drove him 90 miles an hour in a car and threatened to kill them both. And he was terrified. And the police came. He heard a lot of domestic violence in the house. He never knew what pajamas were. He slept in blue jeans, as he said most hillbilly kids did most of their upbring, had Pepsi in his baby bottle. So he had a weight problem most of his life. He still struggles with it. He had absolutely no signs that something wonderful would happen in his life. None. None whatsoever. And he had some, the blessing of some strong women around him. His mamaw chief among them, who became a national figure when he wrote Hillbilly Elegy. His sister Lindsay, with whom he has a very close loving relationship. She's five years old. Amy Chua, professor at Yale Law School, who really is one of the reasons he is up there today. She saw him as something special and helped him encourage him to write that book, which changed everything. Usha, who he met at Yale Law School. And inside this abusive environment was a really smart, gifted kid. And Mamaw saw it. She kicked his ass. She was merciless on him. She made him work hard and keep his marks up and so on. And he wound up using the military to go to college, went to Ohio State, and he did really well. Like, he crushed Ohio State in two years with a double major. And the next thing you knew, he was like, you know, what? What the hell? He applied to Yale Law School and got in. And that, I'm sure, was the biggest game changer of his life, you know, getting into Yale Law School.

[Eliana Johnson]

And he served.

[Megyn Kelly]

And he served. He served as a Marine for five years, I think it was. And like, to see him up there and to see his loving mother. Mother who I'm sure this is by far the greatest accomplishment she's seen in her own life. You know, I mean, her. Her daughter Lindsay's great, too, but this is remarkable. Be alive for it, you know, like, be able to take it in, because J.D. vance is young. J.D. vance just turned 40 a few months ago, which is why he has toddlers up there with him. And that's another piece of the wonderful moment, which is we're gonna have him for, God willing, decades to come. And if all goes well, he could be the person to whom Trump passes the baton in four years to keep this whole thing going. So, anyway, for me, by far, number.

[Emily Jasinski]

One moment, there's another aspect of that. I looked at it and saw something different, which is interesting, but there were a lot of storylines colliding in that moment, which is that he chose Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court justice who administered the oath to him, and his wife. Usha clerked for Kavanaugh, I believe, on the D.C. circuit, and then she clerked for John Roberts. So she was a clerk to the two guys who were up there administering the oaths of office. And I had a conversation with JD Way back when, before he ran for any kind of office, who relayed the impact that Kavanaugh's ordeal had on him and sort of the way he saw things. Well, Trump played a big role in sticking by Kavanaugh and getting him elected to the court. And Kavanaugh is also a longtime friend of Amy Chua's at Yale, and her daughter, I believe, also clerked for him. So he's sort of a central figure in all of this, and it was really nice to see him up there sort of tying it all together.

[Megyn Kelly]

Totally agree. No, I thought the same thing, and I thought both of those guys have come under serious fire from leftists who are out to ruin them. J.D. there was a period where even the, the Republican Party was saying he's not gonna make it, that they're gonna pull him after Trump named him, that he wasn't gonna survive. Childless cat lady. And by the way, for the record, I said from the beginning, you people are fools. That is not going to happen. He will remain the nominee. And Trump stood by him, too. Trump did not waiver on JD he did not waver on Brett Kavanaugh. And so there was a poetic justice to Kavanaugh being the one to administer the oath to JD Today.

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, and I think if you told venture capitalist author J.D. vance that in 2025, Brett Kavanaugh, like, tell him, you know what, what year was that? 2018, when the Kavanaugh stuff happened. Tell him in November of 2018 that in just seven years, you will have your hand on the Bible and Brett Kavanaugh will be the man swearing you in as Vice President of the United states. I mean, J.D. vance's story is so irresistible that even Ron Howard made a Netflix movie about it. And as we were.

[Megyn Kelly]

As before, he was a known Republican Trump supporter.

[Eliana Johnson]

Right. And it just, it gave me chills as you were walking us through his background, Megan. Because, because, you know, that doesn't get to happen. That doesn't happen to a lot of people. It actually doesn't happen to a lot of people in our politics anymore because of the way upward mobility and like, things have gotten stagnated. And he beat the odds. And there he is. He has the story that I think the press would be slobbering over right now if he were a Democrat. And we're hearing none of it.

[Megyn Kelly]

Not to mention he married a woman who happens to be brown and he has mixed race kids, which they would be celebrating too. But instead they tell us he too is a white supremacist who's working for a white supremacist now. It doesn't count.

[Eliana Johnson]

By the way, I literally heard that on NP as I was coming over here. Oh, yeah, in the car, they were talking about how Donald Trump stands for white supremacy.

[Emily Jasinski]

Not a lot of people of color except second lady of the United States and the children.

[Megyn Kelly]

Right? In fact, you guys, can we pull, can we pull over the sound bite of JD Vance in my interview of him in 2017 on wheat when I said, are you going to run for office? And his reaction to it, I think you guys can probably find it. We've played it before, but it's a Great one when I interviewed him back then. So I feel like I, I, we can almost say exactly what he would have said. He wouldn't have believed that. You know, there was, it was clear when I sat with him in 17 that he was possibly contemplating a future in politics because he had just left Peter Thiel and working for him in Silicon Valley. And he told me one of the reasons he left is here he is, you know, this Midwestern guy from Ohio who didn't have a lot of travel in his life growing up, if any, Kentucky, as we know, down in the Halla. But he goes out to San Francisco and he said, people are openly defecating on the streets. He's like, I got to get out of here. Like, I, I can't survive in this. If this is San Francisco, I'm out. So he comes back home and he started, you know, this sort of initiative where he was going to help people like him get out into the workforce. And it never really went anywhere, but it always seemed like a placeholder to sort of rejigger the next step. And he and Usha were just starting their children, their, their family. She was super pregnant.

[Emily Jasinski]

His wife was clerking, too, and had a newborn baby while she clerked for the court. And he played a big role in helping her out while she was doing something else.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's why it's so insane when people are trying to say that he doesn't like women. It's like, what kind of a husband who's very accomplished in his own right and went to Yale Law School and worked in Silicon Valley would be that supportive of his very busy wife who's pregnant with their child, who then is clerking on the Supreme Court? Obviously, he's a very evolved, involved man. And, you know, again, if he were Democrat, they'd be calling him a feminist.

[Emily Jasinski]

Oh, he would have gotten the M. Hoff treatment.

[Megyn Kelly]

Totally.

[Eliana Johnson]

Oh, that's such a good point. Yeah, the wife guy.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, yeah, the wife husband.

[Eliana Johnson]

He's a girl dad.

[Megyn Kelly]

He's a wife guy without the cheating and abuse. He's totally, yeah, he's just like, Doug M. Hoff. We have it, Deb. Oh, but she's, she's looking for it. Okay, when we have it, we'll, we'll drop it in for, for the listening audience. Okay, so that's, that's J.D. vance. I want to go back to Melania. I have to say it's a delight to see somebody who is incredibly stylish and sophisticated and classy resume this role. I am sick of the Vogues of the world trying to make Kari Jean Pierre and her alleged style a thing. Jill Biden, who I grant you, you, you know, has been a lifetime partner to Joe Biden. I can't say good partner, given that she allowed him to run for reelection. But prior to now, she seems like she was okay to his infirmity trying to make her into fashion icon. Melania Trump, an actual supermodel who is about 6 foot 4 in this, in this video we're watching now. Never in Vogue, never on the COVID of Vogue. And man, just the elegance of that whole. That. My, my favorite thing though were like the memes about the house hat because she, she, they were like, she's taking a list of all the enemies. She's under that hat. Like, and you and you and you. And then people went wild. Cuz Trump, when he came out to be sworn in, tried to give her a kiss.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yes.

[Megyn Kelly]

And he couldn't get to her face. Or maybe he was just doing the polite thing that sometimes our men do. Or like, you're all made up and they don't totally make contact. But here, here it is. That video, he gets almost there. It's very tough. It was the hat, it was the makeup. But look at her, you guys. She is stunning.

[Eliana Johnson]

Unbelievable. I'm curious, actually. We talked earlier in the show about how Oscar de la Renta was sort of openly posting on social media about how they addressed Usha and Ivanka. And if I'm remembering correctly, it was only like Dolce and Gabbana that would dress Melania during the first terms. Something like that. And now I'm so fascinated that these brands actually want to be associated with.

[Megyn Kelly]

Right.

[Eliana Johnson]

Like, they're not just saying, like, oh, hey, we did this, but don't tell anyone. Like, they're going out there and posting it to their own marketing platforms. That's the vibe shift if I've ever seen one.

[Megyn Kelly]

Want to buy a dress from the designer who does Melania's clothing.

[Emily Jasinski]

What cracked me up was JFK's grandson, a great grandson. I don't know how to tweet. Yeah, that was like, oh, she's more beautiful than Jackie O. Somebody was like, that's your grandma, dude.

[Megyn Kelly]

What? Seriously? That's weird.

[Eliana Johnson]

That is weird. That's really weird.

[Megyn Kelly]

I don't know what that is about. Okay, so while we're on the subject of fashion, you knew that Lauren Sanchez was not going to make it through this show without a mention. She dresses like a prostitute. She looked like a hooker at the inauguration. She wore a Corset. And she had her boobs on display. I can't. With this woman. They were. The girls were out. Look at this. Look at this. I can see the middle of her boobs. I can see her underboob. Like right there. Right. This is absurd. She couldn't even keep them covered up for a day. And all over the X was a picture of Mark Zuckerberg next to her. Coughing.

[Emily Jasinski]

The action was at.

[Megyn Kelly]

So you keep. I don't blame him at all. That's exactly.

[Emily Jasinski]

You can't look away. You can't look away.

[Eliana Johnson]

Oh, I.

[Emily Jasinski]

It was like bombs out in the rotunda. And we were joking before the show. Like, are we. Are we getting.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, who could blame him? That's why she did it.

[Emily Jasinski]

Are we going to get.

[Eliana Johnson]

It is. It is.

[Emily Jasinski]

Washington Post style section coverage of the Lauren Sanchez get up.

[Megyn Kelly]

I'm going to guess no.

[Eliana Johnson]

It's amazing. The first thing that Megan and Eliana started talking about when we walked in was Lauren Sanchez.

[Emily Jasinski]

It was incredible. The headline out of.

[Megyn Kelly]

No one could believe it. It was the cheesiest thing ever. I'm sorry. Plenty of people write about John Fetterman in his shorts. Which is fine. I don't agree with that either. But how many people are going to write about her showing her breasts?

[Emily Jasinski]

The Washington Free Beacon.

[Megyn Kelly]

We'll be writing about that.

[Emily Jasinski]

Okay, Full fashion analysis.

[Eliana Johnson]

No Woman of the year.

[Megyn Kelly]

Can I tell you something? They're vicious because Jeff Bezos runs the Washington Post, owns it and owns Amazon. Of course. And I will tell you, this is not my first time saying she dresses like a hooker, because she does. And we called out. We had a call do with some Hollywood PR firm. I can't remember who we were trying to get, but we tried to avoid those people. But sometimes you can't. And this PR agent went off on our booker. They're so angry because they represent her or they do some business with her. She had, you know, talked to them. Whatever. It's like those two don't like to be made fun of. He's done a lot to change his look. He looks nothing like he looked 20 years ago. She. I don't think she's seen a doctor. She doesn't want to go under the scalp. I mean, you tell me that's not natural, and that's fine if that's your choice, but have some dignity and some respect for your setting. In your circumstances, no one should be talking about your tits. Sorry. They should be talking about the inauguration.

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, they're totally out of touch. I mean, out of touch at the moment. They're trying really hard to get back into touch. I mean, this is the thing with Jeff Bezos, right, Is suddenly you go from what we were talking about earlier, like censorship on Amazon, proud censorship on Amazon, to flipping and being behind Trump as he denounces censorship at his inauguration. I mean, they're slowly trying. I'm not saying their motives are good. I hope to God their motives are pure. I doubt it. But I think what she was trying to do is actually make a statement like, I'm not of this city. This, this. I'm not of this movement.

[Emily Jasinski]

We picked up what she was putting down.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, we did. It wasn't subtle. Think about it. Because you look at. I mean, Melania Trump. She's. She's got a breast. She's got. She's trying to say. She's not. Just say it.

[Eliana Johnson]

Megan.

[Megyn Kelly]

She. She's curvy. Okay. But look how she dresses. She's. She's the epitome of class. Yeah. Like, she could wear that outfit and get even more attention if she wanted to. Even, you know, when she's not at the inauguration, she doesn't dress like that. She does not run around showing off all the assets. Yes. Back in the day, she took nude pictures. I know that Trump is reportedly the one who leaked them to the New York Post.

[Eliana Johnson]

Hell, yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

This is a long time ago, before they were in presidential politics. And it certainly wasn't at a presidential inauguration. I just feel like if you can invite. Remember Christy Teigen who showed her underwear off at the White House Correspondents Dinner? And now you got this woman who's shown off her breasts at the inauguration. Like, please, for the love of God, have some respect for these institutions.

[Eliana Johnson]

Who is Chrissy Teigen? No, I'm kidding.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's the right response, actually. Okay, so before we end predictions for the next three weeks, what we're about.

[Emily Jasinski]

To look at, it's going to be a wild ride.

[Megyn Kelly]

That. That applies the next four years.

[Emily Jasinski]

Oh, yeah.

[Eliana Johnson]

No warning, by the way, Megan did not give us warning for our predictions.

[Emily Jasinski]

So now we have stupid enough to.

[Megyn Kelly]

Make a lot of lawfare.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, I think the birthright citizenship one is the one to watch. I actually think some of the biggest fights behind closed doors in this administration are, oddly enough, going to be over antitrust. I know that sounds like a silly thing, but a lot of these young staffers spent the last decade talking about how corporations like Amazon and Facebook were too big, meta were too big.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's probably why they There.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yes. And I think. Yeah, exactly. I think they know that. And so that, to me seems like one of the big battles to watch. I think we're going to see some of the consequences early, but the birthright citizenship thing is going to be tough to hold up.

[Emily Jasinski]

I'm watching TikTok because that was an executive order, too. That was a 90 day reprieve. TRUMP wants to work out a deal where it's 50% US owned. You're already hearing Republicans pushback, Tom Cotton in particular, who is a Trump ally.

[Megyn Kelly]

I don't know that you can undo. Undo a law that's been duly passed by Congress and signed by the president by executive order. Like, that's like. I have nothing against tick tock necessarily, but I don't think you can undo a duly passed law with an executive order.

[Emily Jasinski]

Biden saying, I'm just not going to enforce this was another example. You signed the law.

[Megyn Kelly]

We didn't talk about Biden declaring a new 28th amendment.

[Eliana Johnson]

Oh, yeah. Oh, right, yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

That. I don't.

[Eliana Johnson]

I forgot we're equal now by tweet.

[Megyn Kelly]

And then the American Bar association and Georgetown Law celebrating it like it was real. It's insane.

[Eliana Johnson]

States have rescinded their support for the era. Like Senator Six of them have rescinded their support. So it's like the most extra constitutional bullshit that you can imagine. And yet there's. Yeah, nobody cares.

[Megyn Kelly]

There are only 20, 27amendments. That's. That's. That there is. He did not. You cannot do a 28th amendment by tweet. And they better. They better accept that or Trump's going to start doing it every day.

[Eliana Johnson]

Two genders and 28amendments. This is Trump's America.

[Megyn Kelly]

27.

[Eliana Johnson]

27Amendments. Yeah. Sorry.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's crazy. Okay, we'll end the show on this. My team did find the JD Vance exchange with yours truly when I talked to them. Now, I guess it was three, eight years ago, just. It doesn't seem that long. But he looks so different and in many ways he was so different. Certainly his life was too. Watch. What do you think? Should he run for office?

[Emily Jasinski]

I think someday, if the time is right and if he really feels that.

[Megyn Kelly]

That'S the best way that he can.

[Emily Jasinski]

Control, contribute to his home, then I think that would be a great idea.

[Megyn Kelly]

Why do you get uncomfortable when that idea comes up? I just, I think that, you know, when people ask me if I wanted one for office, part of me wonders, like, do they think I just give off a used car salesman vibe? Don't you think it's more born of hope that you could be a. You could be a real change agent. Yeah, No, I think that's the optimistic take on it. I'm very flattered when people ask me and you never say never, but it's just not something that I think about doing right now. Now, never say never. That's our vice president. Crazy, right?

[Eliana Johnson]

He looks so different.

[Megyn Kelly]

So different. He's grown up in a lot of ways. I had to say I'm wishing him all the best. I have, like, been praying a lot for those two, for the Cabinet members. I really hope the Senate does the right thing, gives Pete Hegseth a vote soon and doesn't let him twist in the wind and that Trump's nominees get in there. We have so much important business to do and this is no time to jerk around in the Senate. You know, we need, he needs his full Cabinet. We all know, you know, he's gonna push his agenda through. If you guys don't wanna vote for the nominees, you don't have to vote for them, but they deserve a vote and we gotta get going. This country overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump and they support his politics. Even the polls that I just read, like the New York Times, showed they support his policies more than they support him personally. Either way, you can't get in the way. Stop getting in the way of those policies because the American people voted for them. So prayers up for the Trump family and the Vance family and for the country which I feel like is on the right track for the first time in a long time. Thank you both so much. Dealing with, like, the traffic these two, just to get over here is like, you can't move in D.C. right now. I don't know what's going to happen.

[Eliana Johnson]

I've never seen anything like it.

[Megyn Kelly]

Right.

[Eliana Johnson]

And you know, there really are a lot of people here. Prayers for everyone to get home safe because people have the time of their lives. It's, it's fun. It's fun to see. I don't even care if it's left or right, you know, it's just fun to see.

[Megyn Kelly]

No, they're having a good time, including us. All right, lots of love. Let us know what you think. You can email me Megan M e g y ngankelly.com we'll see you tomorrow with NR Day. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.