Camille Foster (4:24)

Hey Max, thanks for having us.

Michael Moynihan (4:26)

Hey, media queen.

Matt Welch (4:27)

Happy anniversary. Thank you. Thank you so much. But not as long as nine years.

Camille Foster (4:32)

Media Queen. Yeah, that's.

Michael Moynihan (4:34)

What can I turn to? And there isn't Megyn Kelly this past week and a half.

Matt Welch (4:38)

Oh, that. Thank you for that. Well, congrats. I understand why the show has withstood the test of time because there are very few rivals to the top quality work that we get from the Fifth Column. And I mean that sincerely. You know I love you.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (4:52)

You have great judgment. Thank you.

Camille Foster (4:53)

Thank you.

Matt Welch (4:54)

I do. That's true. We have to start with Biden because this was not going to be our lead today. But this Guardian article is so juicy, we gotta do it. So the Guardian got his hands on this new book. It just hit, you know, shortly before we, we came out and they, the, the new book takes a deep dive into what Joe Biden was like prior to his debate fall disaster and then thereafter. I'm trying. Oh, the name of the book. Uncharted. Uncharted by some guy named Whipple. Last name Whipple. Chris Whipple. He's a reporter. Okay. So Ron Klain is no underling. You know, he's not like some no name staffer. He, he was the chief of staff from 2021 to 2023 and then returned last June again not even a year ago to run debate prep. So very clearly on the innermost Biden circle and somebody who they trusted. And he. I'll just give you the third paragraph of the Guardian piece. According to Klain, as reported by this book Uncharted, it turned out Biden quote, did not know what Trump had been saying and could not grasp what the back and forth was left preparation for the debate and fell asleep instead by the pool, obsessed about foreign leaders saying, quote, these guys say I'm doing a great job as president, so I must be a great president, end quote. Has the ring of truth, quote, didn't really understand what his argument even was on inflation and had nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job and get off my damn lawn. Those two things were. No, I added the second one. And there's so many other juicy quotes in here. We'll go through it. But can I just get your initial reaction to Ron Klain laying it all out there, or at least most of it out there to this reporter for his book, anyone?

Michael Moynihan (6:56)

Ron Klain is one of the biggest modern villains in American politics and this just underscores his absolute duplicity. He was described in a lot of reporting. Wall Street Journal was probably the best on this before it was popular to talk about Biden's not just his cognitive decline, but the shrink wrap, the bubble wrap, Operation Bubble wrap, it was literally called to protect him from, I don't know, having meetings with anybody. Ron Klain was the lead of that. He was described as having more power as a chief of staff than just about any modern chief of staff. He would play, he would run interference anytime someone dared suggest that Biden had any cognitive problems. And he was still saying this in August last year. He was complaining that they've been forced out Biden in August of last year and saying that he was fit and sharp and all of this. So I enjoy him attempting to salvage what remains of his reputation. But he's a bad person.

Matt Welch (7:54)

And say I'm reminded of the Biden quote, the only Biden quote I really like. Good luck in your senior year. That's, that's what I have to say to Ron Klain. It's a great quote. I don't know where it comes from. The inanity of it really works though. Go ahead, Camille.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (8:07)

I don't know if I'm being like more fair to him or anything like that, but I do want to try to say like, the best case scenario here, and it does seem binary. It's either he's being aggressively duplicitous here or he's a total moron. Like the fact that all of us from so far away could, like, see Joe Biden's decline in real time and note it regularly and that these people like the best explanation. Explanation for their. Or the best accounting of their behavior and their, oh, my God, I can't believe this happened, it was so terrible. Is that they just didn't see what was going on. They were oblivious to the fact that this man didn't know where he was most of the time. And here, at least, he seems to be admitting, like, we are doing debate prep and the President can't keep up. After 45 minutes, he didn't seem to know where he was or what he was talking about. He couldn't understand that when he looked into the camera in a kind of confused way that wouldn't suggest to people, wow, Donald Trump is saying crazy things. It would suggest to people that this guy really has no idea what planet he's on. And it was. I mean, this should have been a five alarm fire for them in real time. They shouldn't have let him run at all. But certainly while you're in debate prep, even before it airs, you should be calling every single high profile Democrat, you know, leaking this story to every member, every member of the press you can.

Matt Welch (9:22)

Yeah.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (9:22)

So that you can try to replace this guy on the ticket. And they did not do those things in real time. They are waiting till now. And that's the part that makes it all look so kind of gross and slimy. Also interesting that, like, where is Joe Biden? Like, it's not unusual for presidents to go dark after the inauguration. He went to see a play like Barack Obama. You kind of did see him around in 2017. He may not have been giving grand statements. Joe Biden is gone. They've disappeared him.

Camille Foster (9:48)

It's nuts.

Matt Welch (9:49)

He might be on the International Space Station. Elon might have been responsible.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (9:51)

He may be in El Salvador. I don't know.

Matt Welch (9:53)

He might be in El Salvador.

Camille Foster (9:57)

Moynihan, he had the wrong tattoo and he got picked up. No, I loved.

Matt Welch (10:01)

Oh, my God.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (10:02)

Not in a gang. Wait, I am in a gang.

Matt Welch (10:04)

My mom. Yeah, I told the audience my mom got a tattoo when she turned 70. It's a rosary on her foot. Is she almost out of here?

Camille Foster (10:09)

Oh, my God.

Matt Welch (10:09)

Is that what's happening?

Camille Foster (10:10)

I saw your mother and I was like, who's that? Elder stateswoman of the Venezuelan gang scene.

Matt Welch (10:17)

And she doesn't wear Michael Jordan gear, but she does. She did go to a garage sale once and come home wearing a FUBU sweatshirt.

Camille Foster (10:25)

Oh, that's great. For us Irish. By us Irish. Amazing.

Matt Welch (10:31)

For elderly. Are there, are there photos white grandmas.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (10:35)

Are there photos of this? Megan.

Camille Foster (10:37)

Oh my God. If you want to get my in the news cycle, Megan, that Matt is saying you're all over. Just come next episode. All FUBU gear.

Matt Welch (10:46)

Like, hey man, you're saying is my, my mom is on the next plane to El Salvador. Of course.

Camille Foster (10:51)

That's the important thing. We love you. We love you, Mrs. But please be careful.

Matt Welch (10:57)

Mistakes are going to happen. Like that is still worth it.

Camille Foster (11:01)

I loved by the way on this I saw some person, you know, Ron Klain. No one was closer to Biden. So therefore these stories have a lot of credibility. There's no one who's further from Biden than me. And I knew this for four and a half years. And if you went back, because we've been doing it for nine years, if you went back to us in 2020, I guarantee you there was some conversation about Joe Biden being too old. I was on Bill Marshall in 2022 and I remember talking about this that the majority of Democrats thought he shouldn't run again.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (11:40)

Why?

Camille Foster (11:40)

Because they thought, you know, he wasn't liberal enough or something? No, it's because he thought he was too old. All of this stuff is just confirming things that everyone has known. And by the way, there's one great thing is these quotes in there where the cadence of a quote makes all the difference. Like there was a quote in there of Donald Trump said it. It would be the most Trumpy thing where he's like, I'm the best president. All the people in Europe say it. I'm the best. They all know me that I must be the best. If Trump says it, you start laughing. If Biden said that, you're like, oh my God, he's going to wander into traffic soon. Like it's a crazy person quote. And like, you know, Trump wants to destroy NATO more or less. Joe Biden thinks he's the president of NATO.

Matt Welch (12:20)

Literally. Let's get to that. No, he's not joking. That's not an exaggeration for. Let's keep going through the article, okay, because my hat is off to you, reporter Chris Whipple. You did a great job. I can't wait to read your book. Okay, here's more. As described by Klain to Chris Whipple at one point, again, I'm quoting you from the Guardian piece. At one point, Biden had an idea if he looked perplexed when Trump talked, voters would understand that Trump was an idiot. Klain allegedly replied to Joe Biden, sir, when you look perplexed, people just think you're perplexed. And this is our problem in this race. Now, who knows whether that's true? I've got questions whether he really said that to Joe Biden. Okay, there's more. Okay, the the Whipple told Politico last week in an in an interview about his book. I happen to think that to call it a cover up is simplistic. I think it was stranger and way more troubling than that. Biden's inner circle, his closest advisors, many of them were in the fog of delusion and denial. They believed what they wanted to believe. They go on to talk about how even after the disastrous debate, according to Klain to Whipple, Klain believed Biden should stay in the race. And then after he quit, that he should have stayed in the race. And they talk about, okay, this is the juicy part, the prep for the debate. At his first meeting with Biden in Aspen Lodge, the president's cabin, according to Whipple, Klain was startled. He had never seen him so exhausted and out of it. Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. Unaware. Halfway through the session, the president excused himself and went off to sit by the pool that goals. That evening, Biden met again with Klain and his team. Biden aides Mike Donilon, Steve Richetti and Bruce Reed. We sat around the table, said Klain. Biden had answers on cards. And he was just extremely exhausted. And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. So out of touch with American politics. The sitting president of the United States. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with NATO leaders. And here it is. Moynihan. Yeah, Lane writes Whipple, quote, wondered half seriously if Biden thought he was president of NATO instead of the US he just became very enraptured with being the head of Naito. He said, oh my God, he thought he was the head of Naito and not the president of the United States. That's according to his chief of staff for two years who prepped him for the debate that happened in June of this past year. We pulled a SOT from Ron Klain from July 29th of this past year when he was on with that tough I get to the bottom of all stories. Reporter Kara Swisher watch whether he was in good health or not. Whether he was in good mental health, obviously top advisors got blame for this. The preparation itself and also not being transparent that he wasn't able to campaign effectively. How do you answer those critics?

J.D. Vance (15:52)

Look, what I say is, look at what he did after the deb. His speech in North Carolina the next morning was powerful and effective. He did an interview with George Stephanopoulos I thought was very good. He did a foreign policy press conference I thought was superb tour de force about foreign policy. He then went to Michigan and laid out an agenda for the first hundred days of a second term that I thought was a powerful agenda. Got a great response at the NAACP convention. And so I think the proof that he could campaign was that he did campaign and campaigned very effectively. The idea that somehow people weren't transparent about his. The state of his health or the state of his acuity I think is belied by the fact that the president did events all the time. And, you know, I understand there was a lot of viewership, but he went to the Roosevelt Room a couple times a week, would make a policy announcement, would take questions from the press corps.

Matt Welch (16:39)

Couple steps a week. The idea that people weren't transparent about his mental acuity is belied by his behavior. The same guy who just sat down, just sat down with this reporter. And by the way, they sat down in September. According to the Guardian, he gave the interview in September. So that's him in on July 29. The idea that people covered up his poor mental acuity is a lie. You know, he did all. It's belied by the tour de force. He said he did after that debate. And literally within two months, he is admitting to Chris Whipple. We wondered half seriously if he thought he was president of NATO.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (17:29)

Can I retract my earlier statement? It's just duplicitous. That's the liar.

Camille Foster (17:34)

I love what it's like, is he president of NATO or president of the United States? It's like he's neither, actually, but there.

Michael Moynihan (17:43)

Is actually, it's not a small deal. I mean, like no decisions were made from them and we don't know who did them. And one of. One of the decision makers was exactly Ron Klain.

Camille Foster (17:53)

And you know, allow me, Matt, to know to kiss up to our host who loves Kara Swisher so much. She's a great journalist. That she is, is that there's two things here in that thing you just read there. The Whipple says, and actually, I think this is actually a pretty smart analysis. He's like, you Know, it's actually darker than just a cover up, that there was a delusion. And that strikes me as probably true. I mean, just from his reporting. But there's two tiers of this. There's the delusion from within the White House, but there is a cover up. And it's from people in the media. That was where the COVID up was. And remember all of these quotes from people like on Morning Joe like, oh, I saw him do pole vaulting yesterday and he cleared like eight feet. And everyone's like, wow, he's the top physical health. Harris Misher asked that question. Question. And does it, by the way, in the. Some critics say. Not me saying that. Some critics say. And then he gives this bullshit answer to which there's a thousand examples of what he just said not being true. And you're not ready with those on a sheet of paper saying, yeah, but Ron X, Y, Z, all the things that happened in the past month that showed that he didn't know where he was, it just wasn't being responsive to the meeting. Like, the problem with Trump in a way is that you can't get him away from a camera, like 40 hours in a 24 hour day. I don't know how he does it, but, you know, it's the opposite of Biden.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (19:23)

It's true. Yeah.

Matt Welch (19:24)

Yeah. All right. So here's more, because he's not done. Klain and Jeffrey Katzenberg and others tried to get Biden into shape. Two mock debates were organized, focusing on domestic policy because. Not NATO. No, for the love of God, they must have been like, for the love of God, please don't ask him.

Camille Foster (19:45)

Don't talk about NATO.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (19:46)

Don't talk about NATO.

Camille Foster (19:49)

Oh, my God.

Matt Welch (19:52)

Okay. The first was scheduled to last 90 minutes, but Klain called it off after 45. The president's voice was shot and so was his grasp of the subject. All he really could talk about was his infrastructure plan and how he was rebuilding America and 16 million jobs. He had nothing to say about his agenda for a second term. Klain says Biden grew irritable, saying he would not make promises as he would be criticized for failing to deliver. So he knew. He knew right then and there he wasn't going to be delivering. Klain said he tried to persuade Biden to run on unfinished business, including his attempt. Listen to this. This is the best. Including his attempt to subsidize state and local efforts to do childcare and bring down the cost to $20 a day. And you ought to try to fight for it again. Whipple goes on, quote, Biden seemed befuddled. Quote, well, that just seems like a big spending program. Amazing. It's like these truths, you know, it's like they come out when the filter goes with. With elderliness. Klain said, no, sir, no. It brings down costs for people. It's responsive to inflation. It will bring more people into the workforce. It's good economics. And, you know, this is something you're for. I'm quoting.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (21:15)

That is the weirdest. That is the weirdest moment. Like, I mean, as Matt said, there were real consequential decisions being made, and it's not clear who was making those decisions. And this highlights and underscores that. Biden did also have a moment like this, though, back when he was vice president, where he's publicly talking about student loans and federal subsidies for higher education. And he just kind of candidly acknowledges in public, in full view of everyone, in front of a battery of cameras. Yeah, I mean, they raised the prices of college. I'm sorry.

Matt Welch (21:47)

Right, right.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (21:48)

Federal subsidies raise the prices of college. So every once in a while, the truth just slips out there. But apparently other people are just telling. No, no, no. This is what you actually believe. Okay.

Matt Welch (21:57)

No, it can happen when you're overtired. It can happen when you're drunk, and it can happen when you're elderly and dementia is setting in. Right. Like you have a severe stutter filter. You get. I mean, Brit Hume once told me, as you get older, your give a shit meter just changes. And I think that's true, but also your ability to like, even filter it at all. And I think that's what Joe Biden's suffering that from there, Like. No, that just. That just seems like a big spending program. By the way, you're for it. No.

Camille Foster (22:26)

Yeah, yeah. No, I like that. Joe Biden, who cares about big government. That's amazing.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (22:31)

Dementia. Joe Biden is the best. Joe Biden.

Camille Foster (22:34)

Dementia. Joe Biden is like a Hayekian. It's unbelievable. I don't know if I misheard this, but you said he was getting debate prep from Jeffrey Katzenberg, right?

Matt Welch (22:46)

Yes, yes. Klain. Fellow aides and visitors, including the film mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, tried to get Biden into shape. Two mock debates organized. Focus on domestic policy.

Camille Foster (22:57)

Here's a problem. Don't trust the guy who had a media organization that wasted one point, what, two or $3 billion in seven months and went out of business. The last thing that you. Yeah, the short form thing that we all want. It's like five minutes. Yeah. Because everybody wants five minutes. Joe Rogan just did an episode for three and a half days and people are still watching and they love it. But we need five minute videos.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (23:22)

Thanks to Jeffrey Gat World Boynahan. He was just the head of.

Camille Foster (23:25)

Yeah, it's just out of touch. You get a 70 year old mogul who just pissed away a billion dollars. That'll say.

Matt Welch (23:31)

Talk about missing the moment. All right, here's the last part of it, okay? After he explains to him, you are President of the United States, not NATO. Don't talk about NATO. And also you are for this policy on subsidizing state and local efforts to do childcare. You're for it. You've been pushing it for many years, sir. This is something you support, okay? It's not. Not a big government spending program. Not Biden, quote, didn't want to talk about it. And quote, 25 minutes into the second mock debate, the President was done for the day. I'm just too tired to continue and I'm afraid of losing my voice and I feel bad. He said, I just need some sleep. I'll be fine tomorrow. And he went off to bed. The President was fatigued, befuddled and disengaged, Writes Whipple. Klain feared the debate with Trump would be a nationally televised disaster. It was on. On 27 June, Biden arrived at the Atlanta venue with just minutes to spare because Clean said he was the President of the United States. They weren't going to start without him. On stage for two hours and six minutes, Biden stumbled, stared and mumbled as described by Whipple. Jill Biden praised her husband's performance. She was like, there is no way I am leaving this White House, people. This is the nicest place I've ever lived. I feel important. I love being on Vogue. I think I'm secretly the President. And he did fine.

Camille Foster (25:00)

It was great. But all others around go back to her medical practice.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (25:04)

Dr. Biden, her medical right.

Matt Welch (25:08)

All others around the President could see, quote, something was terribly wrong. Whipple quotes an unnamed close friend of Biden who took a call from Valerie Biden Owens, that's the President's sister and longtime advisor, who was, quote, so angry she was practically incoherent. Runs in the family. And then the same friend reports later, they this friend spoke to Joe Biden who was laughing at his predicament and sounding like the senator and vice President of old. Where did that voice go? The friend wondered. Where did that guy with that voice go? What the f happened to this guy? To Whipple, that was A question on which the political fate of the nation would turn. Eventually, Biden bowed to reality. Klain took a call from Jeff Zients on 21st of July. His successor, Chief of Staff Biden, was out. Despite the debate disaster, the news was a gut punch to Ron Klain. Jeff, that's too bad. Klain said. I think that's a mistake. I think this was an avoidable tragedy. How? How is it avoidable, honestly? What is Ron Klain trying to do here? Go ahead, Matt.

Michael Moynihan (26:14)

It's avoidable if your chief of staff, who is one of the only people in your inner circle, along with Dr. Jill for two, three years, if that chief of staff, instead of protecting and casing the president of the United States in bubble wrap, says to people in 2021 that this is happening because it is happening in 2021 and he is witnessing it. It was not a surprise. It suddenly came down from the heavens in the summer. This is something that has been long gestating that we've all noticed and that certainly he noticed more than Kamala Harris also noticed and then pretended not to and didn't really get many questions about it until like 88 days into her presidential campaign. So the way that you avoid this is that you tell people ahead of time, you note that he's the oldest president in history and that he said he was only gonna really run to forestall Donald Trump and you start looking for alternatives. Ron Klain chose not to do this. His tears are delicious.

Camille Foster (27:14)

Yeah, I mean, it's also the other thing to. I mean, Matt points out something that we tend to forget because if you asked me early in the morning, I probably wouldn't even remember who ran against Donald Trump in the previous election because Kamala Harris is so forgettable. But imagine this when you have a party that's putting forward presidential candidates in. The main idea of the campaign is avoidance, right? You know, Joe Biden is avoiding interacting with the press, interacting with people. Like, you know, every time there's a Joe Biden interview, people are like, you know, biting their fingernails. Is he going to just, you know, tank this one, too? And show people who he really is and the state of his brain, to be honest. And then what happens with Kamala Harris? She becomes the nominee and she avoids the media for how many days? I mean, it's just like you have a party who's like, we don't want to interact with the American people or the media. Right. And the media is on your side. The media is high fiving you, trying to push you back into the White House, the party back into the White House. And on the other hand, Donald Trump, love him or hate him, think he's doing a great job or a terrible job. He's constantly interfacing with people and with the press, and sometimes that's gonna produce some bad results. But people like that, and they also don't like a party that seems like.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (28:32)

They have constantly something to hide and are openly lying. I mean, for Kamala Harris, Joe Biden's cognitive decline was pretty much her January 6th. Like, she could never admit the truth about this publicly. Obvious political reasons, but still, you are actively lying to the American people as you're running for office, and you're lying about one of the most transparently false things imaginable. My boss is always great. He could totally do this job. He should be running. I mean, he's great. He could totally do this. There was never any problem. No, to the extent that's true, you believe that's true. You're only demonstrating that you do not have the judgment to be President of the United States. And to the extent it's not true, then you are, again, just another duplicitous liar who is willing to say just about anything if it means that you get elected and get to stay in power.

Matt Welch (29:20)

I think, Camille, this guy Ron Klain is worse. He's worse than Kamala Harris on it. Right. Because it's like Kamala Harris was. You have to give her in a very tough position, only the nominee, because he gave it to her. And, you know, running around being like he's mentally infirm. We all knew it. Yes, I saw it is a tough way to win and not be. Then be undermined by the guy who gave you the baton. But Ron Klain, as chief of staff, had more than enough opportunity to get this on record with powerful Democrats inside, outside the White House and to get it on record with media and to make sure the public knew before it was too late for them to switch horses. And maybe that's why he feels the need to say now, no, it was never so bad. I did. I didn't think he could do it. It was never so bad. I thought he should step down. And he gave this interview before Kamala officially lost. But let's face it, by September, we all knew the likelihood was that she wasn't gonna be able to pull us out. So that may also be playing a role. Like, I. I was right. Joe Biden could have done it. You know, there were. There were some bad days. And I admit that to this Reporter, but he wasn't so infirm. In any event, what this says to me is they're liars. They. They stole a presidency. And I don't mean that in the sense Donald Trump means it from 2020. I mean, Joe Biden wasn't president. He. He might have been president of NATO, but he was not president of the United States. It appears that Ron Klain was and Jeff Zients was and. And Jill Biden was, and we really don't actually know who was president for most of the time or making all these calls, and it's truly outrageous. And now, bit by bit, they want to be returned to power. No, they lost those two special elections in Florida, but that's Florida, which is very red. I realize they tighten the margin a little, but. All right, I mean, tighten the margins. Won by 15 points. Right? It wasn't 30, but it was 15. But they did win that Wisconsin State Supreme Court election last night pretty easily. They won this special election in the state of Pennsylvania at the state level, not a federal election. And bit by bit, we're seeing Democrats put. Well, voters put Democrats back into power because Trump is controversial. Trump's doing a lot of controversial things, and it's just. It's such a good reminder of what this party did to us for four years. They started dishonestly, and they were dishonest all the way to the end.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (31:50)

Yeah. Interestingly, in Wisconsin, voter ID manages to win pretty easily as well. So, you know, that's.

Matt Welch (31:56)

It's the sort of thing about that. Camille.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (31:58)

Yeah, go ahead.

Matt Welch (31:59)

As much as I would love to say to our audience, and I'm sure, you know, there are a lot of Republicans and conservatives, I know people want to celebrate that as, like, the silver lining. I saw Elon tweeting, it was all about that. The truth is. That's not right. That isn't true.

Megyn Kelly (32:12)

No.

Matt Welch (32:12)

The law in Wisconsin already was that you had to show a photo ID when you vote. That was a law on the book signed into law. And Wisconsin voters had to show voter ID this past election. What they were doing here was writing it into the state constitution so it can't be changed more easily in the future. So that is another layer of protection. But let's be honest, this was not all about the photo id, which is. It's already law in Wisconsin. This was about trying to maintain control of the state Supreme Court so they couldn't redistrict, bless these new redistricting lines that the Democrats want, and captured two additional seats in the US House of Representatives. Right. So I just. I. Believe me, I had a lot of people try to spin me on Twitter today about how. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's a real victory. I was like, okay.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (32:56)

And I was. I was actually underscoring it for the other reason. I mean, I think you had Elon kind of just sky. What is it? Skydive in. What is it? What do we call it? I don't know.

Michael Moynihan (33:05)

Helicopter.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (33:06)

He helicopters in parachute bags of money. Like Scrooge McDuck. He shows up and he tries really, really hard to move the needle in the selection. And to the extent he did move the needle, it seems like he probably moved it in the wrong direction. Like he energized Democrats in Wisconsin, and that doesn't bode well. And I think that it's interesting. I would completely agree. Republicans won handily in Florida. They should have won more handily. And for Democrats, they definitely won in Wisconsin. They kind of managed to bloody Republicans in Florida in an obvious way that is hard to deny. And for Republicans, I mean, eking out that win in Florida, it certainly could have been worse for them, but this isn't really good.

Matt Welch (33:48)

It wasn't any. And they won by 14 points and 15 points, respectively. That's. Listen, the Democrats were outspending them almost 10 to 1. It was literally almost 10 million to 1 million in one of those races. And the Republicans, first of all, the Democrats, they're probably not going to have that kind of dough on every single House race on the next midterm election. And the Republicans will be more engaged and start donating, and it'll be a bigger deal. But I think they knew at some level those two seats were not really in danger, and they didn't really care about slimmer margins. They just wanted to keep. And they did.

Camille Foster (34:16)

There was some kind of unnecessary panic about it for a minute. And I don't think this Stefanik decision was more about New York than it was about Florida. But those margins, they don't surprise me at all. And I don't think they mean anything because these are seats that Republicans won by 30 points and they win them by 15. The is meaningless because they're two people who no one had ever heard of. They don't have any name recognition. They're special elections. It doesn't mean anything. This purple state that is now a solidly red state in Florida. And you know what the takeaway from this stuff is? Oh, and by the way, about voter id, that's a bipartisan issue, actually. Not. Not when it comes to elected officials, but A bipartisan issue. When you ask the average American voter who's like, I'm a liberal.

Matt Welch (35:03)

Yes.

Camille Foster (35:03)

Should you show ID you're going to.

Matt Welch (35:05)

Get in Wisconsin, however, I think I looked it up last night. They had like 24% of Democrat support. They had 77% of independent support and something like that.

Camille Foster (35:14)

Surprising. It's surprising.

Matt Welch (35:16)

So that's why it passed so easily.

Camille Foster (35:18)

Yeah, that was surprising that there was that low amongst Democrats. I hadn't seen that number. The thing that, that I've been saying this for years. I mean, I think this is like the, like the steroid issue. It's like in baseball, it's like, you know, just if people take steroids, they just hit home runs all the time. It's like, no, you have to be a very good baseball player, too. That's the same thing with money and politics. People you, you give. You can give a bazillion dollars. The American people have a certain amount of wisdom in them. They are not dummies. They vote for things. It doesn't. I mean, Elon Musk put in. I mean, George Soros, by the way, put in money to the other campaign, too. Forget about that.

Matt Welch (35:54)

Reid Hoffman, but.

Camille Foster (35:55)

And Reid Hoffman and, you know, we.

Matt Welch (35:58)

Never hear about their billions. They dropped into that.

Camille Foster (36:00)

No, no, they're different.

Matt Welch (36:01)

Nothing here about Elon. Who does. It does look like he net. Net. He outspent them. But like, when you're talking about, well, 10 billion from Soros and Hoffman and 19 for Elon, like. Okay, please.

Camille Foster (36:12)

Yeah. And Randy, Randy Fine was outspent ten to one and he won. You know, I mean, I think Elon, and I've heard this from a lot of Republicans that they worry about him as a messenger in person. I mean, he's not the most magnetic person. He's a.

Matt Welch (36:26)

Well, let me ask you something. He did. He flew out there. He was there Sunday night. He put the cheese head on and he gave away a couple million bucks to people who would register for his super PAC to like judges in a certain way. Yeah, I actually don't think that was it. This is my own belief. They, if you listen to the Wisconsin ads on, you know, leading up to this election, you would have thought that that woman, Susan Crawford was running against Elon. The Democrats used Elon's donations and ultimately, yes, probably visit on Sunday night to turn him into the opponent, you know, to try to say like, he's buying the election. And, you know, Republicans have never been as good at the ad warfare and the messaging. Like, and the difference here I think is that even though Trump won Wisconsin, Big Daddy was not atop the ticket and without him on the ticket, Republicans in swing states must learn how to win anyway, something which they haven't yet proven, you know, that they can win without Trump. And I think another problem they have is Trump is probably fine with that. That's. Is it, you know, he's like, yeah, sorry, you know, he didn't campaign for that Brad Schimmel and that guy had been critical of Trump in the distant past. He was losing in every poll. I, I only saw one poll toward the end. I think it was by Trafalgar that showed him maybe up one or dead even. And there was one other by Rasmussen, which, you know, both of these are more right leaning polls. I like Trafalgar, but I'm just saying every single other poll, the entire race here showed her up by a lot. So I think Trump accurately read the tea leaves and said he's gonna lose and I'm not going to put my name on the line and was fine sending Elon, who's already been taking a beating probably for the President. You know, Elon probably doesn't enjoy this, but is willing to become the, you know, the poster boy for evil, even though he's saving the world in many departments. Cuz it takes some of the heat off djt.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (38:29)

Yeah, he's the lightning rod. And it does make one wonder like what would happen if Elon wasn't around to Trump's, to Trump's numbers. What happens in Wisconsin if Elon isn't around? Who, who gets sent as the surrogate there? Is it J.D. vance? And I don't know that that's much better for him, although he's also a bit of a lightning rod for the President. But you do have to wonder if at some point in the not too distant future, Elon becomes more of a drag on the administration and its approval ratings and its attempt to try to get things done. I've said plenty of very complimentary things about Elon and his prowess as an entrepreneur. I will easily defend him against allegations that he is a Nazi, but it is hard to argue that he isn't belligerent. It would be hard to argue that all of his kind of operations and conduct with respect to Doge have been clearly above board and maximally transparent and conducted in a way that is deft and sophisticated. Sophisticated, it's the opposite of that. And some of that is definitely on him and on the administration for not demanding more from him. So in a lot of Respects. While Democrats are running against Elon, they're running against him because he's made it kind of easy for them to run against him.

Matt Welch (39:39)

No one's running interference for Elon. You know, he's running interference for everybody else. He's taking the bullets so that Trump doesn't have to. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Trump's actually taken a bullet this very year. But. But no one's protecting Elon. You know, he needs his own comm staff. And by the way, he. He. He doesn't have one. Can I tell you something? It's alarming how unprotected, administratively Elon is. He does have, you know, physical security resources. Yeah, no, but, like, I don't. I don't think anybody's gonna mind me saying this, but I saw him at that all in Summit last September, and I went with Abby. You know, she goes with me to most places that I go and handles these administrative headaches that. That I don't have to deal with. He didn't have anybody. And it was funny. Somebody was saying, like, if you want to get Elon, you know, like, if you to book him, you just have to text him. Yeah. Like, you have to know him. You have to dm because there's no assistant. So there's no question in my mind. He doesn't have some massive comm staff that's trying to protect his reputation and make sure that the media is being fair to Elon, which they're completely not, but that all of this, I think, has led to him becoming this, like. I don't know, he's becoming. What's the word?

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (40:48)

Yeah.

Matt Welch (40:49)

No, but, like, when you're the battering rant, when you're. You're the one who keeps getting battered on behalf of everybody else. I can't think of it right now. The punching bag. Thank you. He's a punching bag. Yes. I got there eventually. But wait, here's Harry Enton on CNN talking about what he's saying on Elon Musk and the polling.

Camille Foster (41:06)

If you are a Republican candidate running in a swing state, you don't want Elon Musk anywhere near you. Yes, maybe you like the money, but you do not want his presence in your state. Why is that? Elon Musk, simply put, is an unpopular guy. He is political poison. Look, in Wisconsin, his NET favorable rating, -12 points. 12 points underwater, that is an even worse number. When you look nationally, look at that. It's minus 17 points. So if there's one big lesson to take away from Wisconsin, is Elon Musk does not help Republicans when he shows up. If anything, the data suggests that he hurts him.

Matt Welch (41:41)

I love his again. I love his body language. Yes, the bigness. You know, this is so entertaining. Harry Endon.

Camille Foster (41:51)

I love Harry.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (41:52)

Don't come over, Eli. Just send a Venmo. Can you send a Venmo.

Matt Welch (41:56)

Can you make sure I accept those data points as real? He's not, you know, he'll give it to you straight, this guy. But to me, it's so unfair because we had six weeks of he's a Nazi. He did a Nazi salute. And now we've had another, however many. Well, two months of blaming, of course, everything related to Doge on Elon. But that all has Trump's blessing. And by the way, Trump ran on finding these government efficiencies and was very clear that Elon would come on and a bunch of people in the federal government were going to get fired. It's been stopped at every turn by federal judges, but he's trying. He doesn't have to be doing any of this. He doesn't have to do any of this. I really think he's been unfairly demonized. There's nothing unfair in on that one. All three. We'll start at Moynihan and we'll go around clockwise. Go ahead.

Camille Foster (42:49)

I will say this. I don't know how many people who are being polled the average American. Twitter is not real life. Who is watching Elon Musk on Twitter? We defended him for a very long time against very scurrilous and unfair attacks. We are the type of people that Doge was created for. We talk about the waste and inefficiencies in government and how they can be gotten rid of. But my estimation of Elon has plummeted because of Twitter. It's like the guy just tweets stuff constantly that isn't true. And his own AI Grok. People do this all the time. They say, scan Elon's Twitter feed. And is he saying things that aren't true? It's like, yes, lots of stuff is not true. And I think that's the thing about Elon. The other thing is that he's not Donald Trump. Donald Trump can bullshit you and you're charmed by him. He's funny. He's a TV guy. He knows how to play it. I'm not saying you should do it, but he knows how to play it. Elon just does not. You have to have the personality for this and going out there. And the reason he's on stage is because he's rich, not because he has a personality. And that personality that Donald Trump has would really help him. And I don't think those numbers would be underwater if he was like Donald Trump.

Michael Moynihan (44:06)

I don't worry, I don't worry about the fairness that is afforded to people who are exercising power, which is to say that it's not to, it's not that you remove yourself from critiquing people who are being unfair to him. But for me, arena, the, the locus of, of, you know, doing political journalism and commentary is that you're critiquing power right now. Elon Musk has power. He is worthy of critique, as Moynihan points out. You know, he is, he is polluting the informational ecosystem on a rather daily basis. And pursuant to the thing that we all care about, which is actually making government work better and make it smaller, we're about ready to ratify, you know, a $1.8 trillion year on year deficit, year after year, under Republican management, regardless. Right. The Republicans are about pass a continuing resolution that keeps funding the Department of Education, that thing that we're supposed to get rid of via Doge. That is the stuff that matters in a big, chunky way. A lot of what Elon is focused on, sometime correctly and sometimes incorrectly, is marginal stuff that doesn't even come close to mattering as much. So all of that says to me, plus is a low popularity, that the gains from Doge are going to produce a pendulum swing that's going to make the next person who holds power use it in a different way. And then suddenly we're going to wake up and we still have this $7 trillion government with a $2 trillion deficit.

Matt Welch (45:33)

Well, I will say, I mean, look, we'll see what Trump does when we actually get to the budget, probably the end of this year. But that continuing resolution was just like, let's just, we're going to kick this can down the road and we'll deal with it all in one bill. And that, I think that was smart. They just didn't, they didn't want to do that right up front as their first, most divisive thing. They had a lot of other divisive, important things to do, especially along the border. So I understand why even budget hawks voted for that continuing resolution. Just like, we'll get there. Just give us six more months. We will get there. Go ahead, Camille.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (46:02)

Yeah, I'll say briefly, and actually, I'm going to say something else because this notion of fairness, I actually think, Matt, you probably do endorse some idea of fairness. Not so much that we're going out of our way to be polite to people, and certainly not the kind of motivated journalism that we've become accustomed to where there's this almost coordinated effort to put out a really negative message about someone on the right. The most nefarious possible reading of things. But with Elon, he's just chosen really silly battles, like the aspiration of getting all of the justices impeached and insisting that at every single turn, when the courts try to stop something or ask even practical questions about the use of a rather novel legal law in order to try to accomplish something pretty dramatic, like taking people and sending them to a country they didn't come from, like, at a minimum, it requires, like, some scrutiny. Is defensible here. And insisting that we should disagree.

Matt Welch (46:59)

You're talking about Judge Boozberg. You're totally wrong.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (47:01)

No, I just mean I love you.

Matt Welch (47:03)

Keep going.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (47:03)

Well, I'm giving one example, and I'm just saying that it's something that merits scrutiny. Whether or not the decision was right. Elon responds to every single one of these decisions, insisting that justices need to be impeached. Maybe it's true. It's not really practical. So if you want to make this a priority, messaging wise, that's a mistake.

Matt Welch (47:21)

Trump does that, too, in his. His approvals. It's good for him. I mean, it's not great.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (47:27)

It would. Yeah, it might be worse than that.

Matt Welch (47:29)

But it's higher than it's been in Trump's entire presidency, counting the first term. So they're not holding any of this, really, against Trump. And I do think Elon's out there. You know, I remember at Fox News, whenever one of us would get in trouble for something dumb, we said or really didn't say, whichever. But if we were all over the news, Roger would go out there and do something controversial. He would. He would draw fire away from his favorite anchors, his top anchors. And that was a loyal boss and somebody who knew, you know, how to be a sort of how to run cover for somebody, how to help you when you're in trouble. And I think that in part, is really what Elon is doing right now for Trump. And I think Trump appreciates it. I think Trump is loyal to Elon until he's not. You know, until Elon's run his course and is no longer, you know, is more of a drag than he is a help. And I think at that point, Elon probably will willingly step to the side. He's got a lot to to take care of. I want to play this one other soundbite that's pretty remarkable because to me it's like the Democrats are the masters of these deep pocketed billionaires in politics. The masters. And the one who you see on the Republican side is Elon Musk. You know, like that's, that's the main one you see. And he's become this larger than life figure in the world, not just in America and certainly not just in American politics. He's one of the world's greatest figures and will be one of the few people on the planet right now who will be remembered for generations in the way that Albert Einstein was, you know, in the way that Tesla was, in the way that all these like great inventors were. In any event, here are back to Kara Swisher sitting with Jake Tapper talking about the battle of the billionaires. Listen to how they frame it.

Camille Foster (49:09)

You heard, anytime anybody brings this up, Republican will say, well, what about J.B. pritzker and what about George Soros and what about this? What about that? And I guess the answer is you don't see George first of all, you don't see them out there talking.

Matt Welch (49:23)

No.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (49:24)

Right.

Camille Foster (49:24)

I mean they might be giving money to organizations this and that and people can criticize that they all want, but the idea that like, oh no, I am going to tell these voters, forget like hiring Scott Walker to do it or somebody on the Milwaukee Bucks, I'm gonna tell, right.

Matt Welch (49:39)

No, he has to suck up all the oxygen. He is. Only one other person that needs more attention is Donald Trump. And okay, so it's, it's all about Eli. You can do it. You can give millions, 20 million if you want. You just can't show up at a rally. That's, that's what it boils down to. I don't believe that. Where's the wall to wall negative coverage about any of these Democrat donors like JB Pritzker or George Soros for that matter? You only see that on podcasts and sometimes Fox News.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (50:10)

And that's a silly standard. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Moynihan (50:13)

And like creating organizations like Soros has done over the years is a lot more influential than just showing up at a thing. The Cokes got a lot of pushback over the years for creating organizations. They didn't go on stage much either.

Matt Welch (50:28)

Right. There's breaking news on Elon Musk. I'll leave that as a tease. We're going to take a quick break. Thankfully the guys from the Fifth Column, as they always do, such gentlemen stay with us for the full show. Don't go anywhere. We'll have them and the news coming right up. These days, personal safety is not something that can be left to chance. Whether at home, on the road, or just living everyday life, having a reliable way to protect yourself and your family is crucial. That's why Burna is the choice for so many. Burna is a game changing, less lethal self defense tool. Compact, powerful and easy to use, it provides the confidence to act in any situation. Burna uses non lethal rounds, tear gas, pepper and kinetic projectiles to effectively stop a threat from a safe distance. And the best part, Burna can be shipped directly to your door and it's legal in all 50 states. Byrna is proudly American with products hand assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Sometimes a firearm is not the right option for you and Burna provides a powerful alternative. Protect what matters most with Burna. Visit by r n a.com byrna.com Megan to receive a 10% discount and learn why thousands of people and law enforcement agencies are making the switch to Burna's less lethal protection. Non lethal self defense always ready.

Megyn Kelly (51:50)

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Matt Welch (52:10)

So the breaking news is that this is via Politico. The headline is Trump tells Inner Circle that Musk will leave soon. Now keep in mind, Elon Musk basically told the same to Bret Baier in his interview last Friday where he said, just so you know, he's been hired as a special government employee. That's a special role you can get as a top advisor to the president. And you only have a term of 130 days. It's basically a way to end around Senate confirmation requirements. Joe Biden did this too. Anita Dunn, that monstrosity, she's a horrible lady. She was one of the key people over at the Time's up organization that loved to go after any man who was a Republican. But if you were a woman like Tara Reid seeking their help, it was a big middle finger because Anita Dunn was close to Joe Biden. So screw you, Anita Dunn. In any event, she's, she was a special government employee for Joe Biden. And the thing is, to be honest, at the end of that 130 days, they can just renew it so they can keep it rolling. You actually don't have to leave right after the 130 days. But Brett Baer saw that, you know, we are, I don't know, a month or two away from hitting that point. He asked Elon about it. Do we have that sound bite? I don't know if we have the sound bite. We don't have the sound bite. But here's what he said. I'll tell you what Brett said, then I'll read you the political thing. He asked Moss on Thursday whether he'd be ready to leave when his special government employee status expires. He essentially declared mission accomplished. Quote, I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by 1 trillion within that timeframe. And then this past Monday night, Trump told reporters that, quote, at some point, Elon's going to want to go back to his company and added, he wants to. I would keep him as long as I could keep him. On the heels of that comes this piece in Politico that Elon Musk will leave the administration soon. Trump told his inner circle, including members of his Cabinet. Elon Musk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role as government partner. Ubiquitous cheerleader in Washington. Hatchet man president remains pleased with Musk and his Doge group. But both men have decided in recent days it will soon be time for Musk to return to his businesses and take on a supporting role. According to three Trump insiders who were granted anonymity to speak. There's a headline over in the Daily Mail that he has stepped down as the head of doge. That does not appear to be the case. That is unconfirmed. It feels like, at least as of this hour, that's only the Daily Mail who's reporting that. And that's not in Politico. So we'll wait to see whether that's also true. But I think, look, if it's true that he's going to be stepping down from his responsibilities or like right now in the weeks before he hits 130. There's a reason for that. And my own guess, without having spoken to anybody on Team Trump, is this has been very hard on Elon. You know, his Tesla stock is down, his company's being attacked. Nobody wants to buy a Tesla now because they're worried their car's gonna get vandalized. Keyed that, you know, the place they have to go to recharge. It is going to be set on fire with Molotov cocktails. They can walk into a Tesla dealership that could be bur by some lunatic. It's insane. We have hate crime charges now that the DOJ is trying to file against people doing this, but other than, you know, yes, legally he's being protected by the Attorney General, but like the left is celebrating this. You had Tim Walsh, the vice presidential nominee for the Democrats, out there talking about how joyful it was to watch the Tesla stock fall. I'm sure Elon would love to get back. He got a president elected or at least played a big part. Get back to just trying to solve paralysis with Neuralink, trying to colonize Mars with SpaceX, trying to continue the fight for free speech on X. Running the boring company where he's boring. Big tunnels underneath the earth to get people faster from A to B. And I've missed one, I've missed one of the big ones. I can't keep track. And Tesla, I guess trying to improve our world for our children with more green energy cars. Something the left should like anyway. What do you guys make of it all?

Camille Foster (56:08)

I mean, a couple of things is that he should have anticipated this. I mean, this is not going to work for Donald Trump in the way that he did. Is not the same obviously as going to work for Mitt Romney. I mean, it inspires a different level of hatred and bile from people. Look, I have a Tesla. I was sitting in my car the other day because there's street cleaning in New York and I was moving it and a guy came up and knocked on my window and I rolled down the window and he said, you gotta get rid of this car. And I was like taken aback by it. I was like, so every time I go out, I look to see if it's been keyed. I mean, I live in a neighborhood that I think if it was like in the center of Caracas, people would be like, it's a little too left wing. So I'm expecting the thing to go up in flames at any point. But you're right. I mean, look, in the break we were just talking about, I saw this number and year on year, I think it was January and February in Europe. Tesla's sales are down 43%. I mean, they're down not as much in the U.S. but they're down considerably. The idiot worst person in the world, Brad Lander, who if you know anything about New York politics, I know Matt hates him with the passion that I do. He's going to sue Tesla on behalf of shareholders because of the pension fund in what he's doing to the share price, et cetera, etc. So yeah, he's being rounded on in every possible direction. And I think that, you know, you gotta get back to your, your company. I mean, you're the richest man in the world. But for how much longer? If you make a product become. And look, it's just, it's just a fact of politics that divisive, I mean, it's, it's, it's going to be a divisive thing. I mean, I, I, where we do the Moynihan Report show for two way, there's a Tesla dealership right around the corner. And I went outside yesterday and there was a huge protest in front of it. I mean, it's like pretty unrelenting. And if you are a stockholder, I mean, you've lost a significant amount of money on this stock depending when you bought it, you know?

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (58:06)

Yeah, yeah, definitely depending on when you bought it, because the big drop in the stock, like, it's still doing pretty well if you bought it a year ago. But yeah, I mean, Elon's, Elon's problems here with respect to Tesla are very complicated. I too own one. But I, on the other hand, discovered that, like, my loan to value is absolutely terrible. So I just park it in Oakland overnight. And I'm hoping that someone will actually set it on fire. But I'll tell you, once they destroyed that car, dude, you could party at.

Camille Foster (58:32)

A Hyundai and it would be set on fire in Oakland.

Matt Welch (58:36)

They're fabulous.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (58:37)

They're fabulous.

Matt Welch (58:38)

Park Slope. You're in the wrong neighborhood now to.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (58:40)

Get your test in Oakland. We get it in, it's just not political. Never you mind. I think they'll get around to me. Maybe I just have to wait another week or so, but I will. Yeah, I will go buy two new Teslers as the president. Yeah, I love describing them. They at least won't be impacted by the 25% tariffs that are coming, so that should make things a little easier.

Matt Welch (59:04)

What do you mean? It's a day of liberation. I know. You sound like you have a judgment about it. My libertarian friends, this is the third.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (59:09)

Juneteenth coming for us now.

Michael Moynihan (59:12)

Time to be liberated from.

Matt Welch (59:13)

Well, look, I think it's sad. It's like imagine living in the time of Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison and having them say, I will help solve the nation's problems. I'm happy to pitch in and saying, no, we hate you. That's what the left is saying. We know we hate you. We don't need your brain to help us solve problems. I realize he's a controversial guy, and he doesn't or opine with a velvet glove either. He's not super sweet. And I don't understand how people are having a negative reaction to him. It's not like that. But I just think we're so lucky to have someone like that willing to touch government with a 10 foot pole. It's not like Taylor Swift. She got booed at the super bowl because she got political and she alienated half her fan base and half of the country. And when I saw it, did I feel sorry for her? Not at all. You know, you put yourself out there. You didn't need to get political. But in her case, it was utterly pointless. You have no political sway. You just want to feel like you're more important. It's not enough for. For you to have a billion dollars before you're, you know, 36. You want to feel like you have more influence than you do. And you found out the hard way that you don't. With Elon, he actually is a very important person to have in the world and in this country. And on top of it, he did help get President Trump elected. He actually did move the needle. I don't think there's any question about that. So it really was valuable to us as a nation to have him get political, unlike Taylor Swift. So he did it. I think he did it for his country. He did it because as a businessman, he saw all the red tape and the regulations we were drowning in and realized the average man could never fight this fight. Never fight this fight. So he decided to do it. And he's paid a real price for it. And I think the nation should be in his debt. Okay, listen, I stole the last word on Elon. That's that. Let's move on because there's so much other stuff to get to. Let's spend a minute on Spartacus. I mean, Cory Booker, who this truly was like his. He held a filibuster. I guess it's not technically a filibuster. And why isn't it technically a filibuster? Because he wasn't filibustering anything. He just got up there in the Senate. Well. And talked for 25 hours without stopping. He didn't go to the bathroom, he didn't eat. He didn't sit down. You weren't allowed to or it would be broken. But it wasn't a filibuster. He wasn't trying to stop anything. He was just up there to make a point that he's Spartacus. I mean, really, it was about him. And here he is after the fact. Now, truly to this moment, I have no idea what he was protesting. I have zero clue. I don't Care. But here he is talking about the sacrifice this required of him. Sat 18.

Michael Moynihan (61:52)

But I really spent time dehydrating myself beforehand. So I did not have to go to the bathroom.

Matt Welch (61:57)

He didn't have to go to the.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (61:58)

Bathroom at all for 25 hours.

Michael Moynihan (62:00)

Again, he had on a diaper. Was. Was that my strategy was to stop eating. I think I stopped eating on Friday and then to stop drinking the night before I started on Monday. And that had its benefits and it had its really downsides. And so instead of fighting or figuring out how to go to the bathroom, I ended up, I think, really unfortunately dehydrating myself.

Matt Welch (62:29)

This really. Doesn't he remind you exactly of this guy.

Michael Moynihan (62:36)

Specific incident? What was the worst thing that happened to you in prison?

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (62:43)

It is easy to forget the past. And I cannot answer your question because.

Matt Welch (62:50)

I frankly do not remember. It's Nelson for the listening audience.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (62:54)

Not me personally, but many of my colleagues were bitten. But the experience was a very harsh one. And jail is never good, especially when one has a family.

Matt Welch (63:10)

Hope was always there.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (63:11)

And this is what saved us.

Matt Welch (63:14)

Same man, new version of the same guy. This is. He's Nelson Mandela.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (63:20)

Still get a chill when I hear, like, Mandela talking about that. About that stuff. Not. Not.

Matt Welch (63:24)

And also Cory Booker. Camille, please have some respect.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (63:28)

The Seinfeld of the Senate giving his filibuster about nothing.

Camille Foster (63:32)

Yeah, it just.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (63:33)

It did not land all that.

Matt Welch (63:35)

He got dehydrated, sir.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (63:37)

Yeah, I don't believe.

Camille Foster (63:38)

Did you hear Chuck Schumer after he decided that 25 hours was quite enough and he was like, the American people owe you the greatest thanks. You know the world, Mars thanks. You are the best. And it's like, why? Because he just rambled for 25 hours. If no one says that to me, I fucking talk non stop. No one. Like for nothing, too. The exact same thing as him. And I never get accolades for it. Jesus. No.

Matt Welch (64:06)

It's insane.

Camille Foster (64:06)

I love the fact this is the Democratic Party now. Like the conversation that everyone's having, which is the right conversation, is that there's no policy, that you guys have screwed things up. How are you going to recalibrate? And the idea is to have Cory Booker, the most insufferable person in a building full of insufferable people, talk for 25 hours. I would literally vote for, like, American Communist Party. Before that for the Democrats. After watching that, I tried to watch some of it. I just had no idea what he was talking about.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (64:37)

What's going on with these deportations?

Matt Welch (64:39)

We have. Yeah, we have that. Let's watch.

Camille Foster (64:41)

We have the Schumer with the phrase for a question.

Michael Moynihan (64:45)

Chuck Schumer. It's the only time in my life I can tell you.

Matt Welch (64:47)

No.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (64:50)

I just want to tell you a question.

Camille Foster (64:52)

Do you know you have just broken the record? Do you know how proud this caucus is of you? Do you know how proud America is of you?

Matt Welch (65:06)

Here's. I got that top, though. I had Chuck Schumer for you, Moynihan. But I have Frank Luntz for me. Watch.

Camille Foster (65:13)

What Cory Booker did over the last 24 hours may have changed the course of political history.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (65:21)

I watched a lot of it.

Camille Foster (65:22)

I listened to words. I listened to phrases, how he presents himself.

Matt Welch (65:27)

Did he criticize Donald Trump? Of course he did.

Camille Foster (65:29)

But he struck the kind of tone that grassroots Democrats are looking for. He gave them a reason to fight. He gave them a reason to stand up and say, this is my country, too.

Matt Welch (65:41)

Okay, Frank Luntz, who, FYI, predicted Trump would lose in 2024 after the devastating September debate against Kamala Harris. Okay. He's the same one who said the GOP would win the House in the 2022 midterms by huge margins. That the GOP would win the Senate in 2022. That in 2021. He said Republicans are more pro immigrant than elites realize and Democrats are more pro border security than elites realize. He said in 2021, the GOP shouldn't use the term border wall. They should use the term barrier. It's more accurate and less ugly. This is the same man who wants you to know now, Cory Booker just changed the world.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (66:20)

Yeah.

Camille Foster (66:21)

He probably charged you $400,000 for all of those things to be wrong about everything. Can I confess something that I've never said to anyone?

Matt Welch (66:30)

Oh, please.

Camille Foster (66:31)

I. I vomited in his house. I'm not joking. I interviewed once. I was. So I interviewed him and I got sick afterwards. I don't know why. And I think it might. Is actually true. It might have been because of the content of the conversation. I'm not sure.

Matt Welch (66:47)

But.

Camille Foster (66:47)

Yeah. Doesn't he have a replica? I've never talked about that.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (66:50)

But that's doesn't have a replica of the White House or something like that.

Matt Welch (66:52)

Correct.

Camille Foster (66:53)

In the Lincoln. The Lincoln bedroom. And he has a replica of the Monica Lewinsky dress.

Matt Welch (67:00)

Were you in there?

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (67:01)

He's like Kid Rock.

Camille Foster (67:02)

Yeah, yeah. No, you have a lot in common with him, Camille. He's a big sneaker head. So. Yeah, that's what else I found. Well, too.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (67:06)

I mean, that's not a lot in.

Matt Welch (67:07)

Common, but does he know you vomited in his house?

Camille Foster (67:10)

He does now. No, no. It was 2016. Yeah.

Michael Moynihan (67:18)

Based off of C span and starts paying attention. I shout out Cory Booker for reminding us that the Senate exists. Exists. Because I haven't seen any news of that for years. But I was thinking back to the last time that, that I remember someone being captivated by an actual filibuster. It's when Rand Paul filibustered 12 years ago. And very rightly so, like it was an actual filibuster. I want to stop a thing from happening. What was the thing that he wanted to stop from happening? John Brennan being nominated to the head of the CIA.

Matt Welch (67:51)

That was a good one. Random liar.

Michael Moynihan (67:54)

And it was a good one. And it actually kind of. It was sort of unplanned and more people joined as they went on and it became a critique of NSA surveillance and the ability for the Obama administration to drone American citizens without due process. Due process is something that we should champion regardless of who is president. And Rand Paul reminded us of that. But Cory Poker could have if you think of what is happening this week in the Senate in American politics and American life today on National Liberation Day, which is an absolutely comically ridiculous way to describe the imposition of import taxes in nearly unprecedented sense. But the Senate right now has a bill on the floor co sponsored by Rand Paul and just as we were talking now endorsed by Mitch McConnell, very interestingly enough to undeclared by Trump, a national emergency, which is the fake reason that Trump is using to do Tarif against Canada, the national emergency of the 19 kg of fentanyl that came across the border last year. So he could have been working with Republicans who are defecting right now on a bill that would actually limit the President's power in a meaningful way, in a way that also would be. Have some symbolic resonance because you would see for the first time really any Republicans showing any spine in opposition to Trump. And instead he gave a 25 hour speech and talked about his water tablets and whether he like pooped on his own shoes. It's not as effective.

Camille Foster (69:25)

Look at me.

Matt Welch (69:26)

Yeah, it was a lot of detail about like how he hadn't eaten in a certain amount of time before. And then suddenly you're thinking about Cory Booker's colon and it's supposedly supposed to be inspirational to you. Wow. You're like, that's where you go, come on, you know exactly what you want kicking in.

Camille Foster (69:39)

Frank Luntz's House story was bad, but that, you know, he's trying to Tell us.

Matt Welch (69:44)

I didn't want to get backed up. I don't have to run out of the Senate floor because, you know, I had to empty the poop chute. That's really what he's trying to say. It's not me, it's a US Senator. Same US Senator who said this nonsense when he tried to stop the Brett Kavanaugh confirmat hearings. He literally said this. Watch.

Michael Moynihan (69:59)

And I could not understand, and I violated this rule knowingly why these issues should be withheld from the public. Now, I appreciate the comments of my colleagues. This is about the closest I'll probably ever have in my life to an I am Spartacus moment.

Matt Welch (70:13)

God. Yeah, that's him. This is all about Corey.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (70:17)

He lacks tact in the most profound way. Like, that is actually the thing that makes him uniquely annoying and frustrating. And I think Matt is exactly right. Like, he could have used this in a way more tactical way if all he's trying to do is engage in this kind of project of self aggrandizement and strengthen his bid for supremacy in a leaderless party that is apparently was being drug around by the nose by Jasmine Crockett for about a month and a half. So at least that moment seems to have passed for now. But I will say, if I could say one positive thing, it's that he broke Strom Thurmond's record here. And Strom Thurman's record from the 1960s is when he was filibustering when he.

Matt Welch (71:00)

Tried to stop the Civil Rights Act.

Camille Foster (71:01)

The Civil Rights.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (71:01)

Civil Rights act, yeah. So, you know, along the ground, states rights, defending the rights of the states to actively discriminate, and of course, the Southern way of life, as Trump described it, as the time. Trump seems to have found religion on these matters later in life. So I don't, you know, whatever, hold it against him, but I'll give him points for having at least dislodged that record. This is a slightly less embarrassing thing for someone to have done publicly.

Camille Foster (71:26)

For the record, I want it to be known and I want it to be quoted that Camille Foster does not hold the segregationist views of Strom Thurmond against Strom Thurmond.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (71:37)

That's good to know, if not generous. I care about people. I want the best for everyone.

Matt Welch (71:44)

Yeah, crossed it off my list. I was waiting for the day. I'm glad it finally happened.

Camille Foster (71:48)

We love you so much.

Matt Welch (71:49)

There's a lot to get to. We've got to spend some time on the deportation of the guy who's Elvis El Salvadorian. He's Salvadorian. But if you read the Atlantic, you'd probably think he was a US Citizen who'd never done anything wrong. I came to the story late because I was off on. I was traveling yesterday, and then later on Monday, I went out to California to speak with a lovely group of people. In any event, what appears to have happened here, very long and involved story short, is this guy sneaked into the country illegally in 2012 from El Salvador. He did not claim asylum or any of that nonsense. He ultimately got arrested and in response to that arrest, wound up in an immigration court where he said, or where others said about him, that he was a gang member and that a judge, an immigration judge found there was credible evidence and that he was, in fact, a part of Ms. 13, a dangerous gang. Then it went up to a higher appellate court judge within the immigration system who said, yep, I see it, too. The guy's a danger to society, and no, we will not be releasing him. And he still did not claim asylum. And it wasn't until he was on the. The brink of being deported, we were saying, get out. You have to go back home.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (73:09)

Home.

Matt Welch (73:10)

And he had already, in that time met an American, married her, and his two brothers came, they got green cards. He. They had a baby. He's like, I really don't want to go. And suddenly it was an asylum clip. Suddenly he claimed, I need asylum. It's very dangerous. In El Salvador. There's this terrible gang. It's not Ms. 13, it's a different gang that I never heard of. And if I go back home, I'm going to be killed. They're going to kill my whole family because we've been making some sort of food in my mom's house that has led to death threats against my mom and me and everybody. And you can't send me back there. It was on the eve of deportation, which does undermine the claim entirely. And instead of saying, you know what? You can have asylum because the statute of limitations had passed on that you have to assert asylum claims within one year of getting here. And he didn't. He was well past it. The judge said, all right, I'll give you temporary protection from removal. And all this judge said was, you may not be removed to El Salvador from the United States. And that is the only blanket of protection this guy had over his head that we couldn't remove. But at any point, we could have removed him to Canada, we could have removed him to Mexico, we could have removed him to Colombia. And what happened since Trump is now doing immigration crackdowns is they arrested this guy. Looking at that underlying history that I just laid out saying he's part of Ms. 13 and a higher court court affirmed it and said you gotta go. And if they had deported him even without a hearing to any other country, including Colombia or you know, take your pick, they would have been fine. But instead they deported him to the one country he's not supposed to go to under that non removal blanket which was El Salvador. However, Trump is allowed under the law even to remove him there if the threat that existed when we gave him the temporary protection has abated. If it's been lifted, if something's happened in the country and there's a real argument, I guess this, the, the President Bukele of El Salvador has cracked down in this other gang. It ends in 18, I can't remember, there's Ms. 13, then there, maybe this is Ms. 18, I can't remember, but it's, it's 18. He's completely apparently eradicated this gang in the, in the, in the intervening years. So even then Trump would have had an argument that, you know what, the circumstances that led to his temporary removal have abated. And under the law I'm allowed to say they've abated and he's out of here. But he should have had a hearing about that and they didn't give him one. So they did commit a violation of procedure. And that's the story. It's not great. But I will tell you up front, I view this the same way I view the death of Palestinians. It's all on Hamas. It's all on Hamas. That's really how I see it. Hamas committed a terrible, atrocious terror attack and they invited this unleashed violence into their region that wasn't there. Israel had no choice but to eradicate Hamas and gave warnings and tried to tell everybody we're about to do it. And this is where the bombs are going to fall. Hamas uses its fellow citizens as human shields. And so I blame them for the violence that has happened there thereafter. And that's how I see this. I think this too is the Democrats fault. You opened the borders, you created a national crisis. You let someplace between 10 and 20 million illegals flood into the United States, many of whom got Social Security numbers, many of whom we're now seeing actually voted, many of whom are taking our, our social services that we can't afford for our own people. Get out. Finally, Trump is getting them out of here. And will there be some small, minor administrative mistakes in the process? Yes, that, too, is on the Democrats. You created this problem. Trump is trying to solve it. That he doesn't solve it perfectly on every day and in every way is not on him. It's on you. You created a firestorm of immigrants that we're now trying to get rid of. And it's not going to be perfect or pretty okay. So that's where I stand on my libertarian friends. I have a feeling you feel differently.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (77:09)

I agree with most of the explication of the situation, and it's one of the things I love about you. You get all of the details with respect to the kind of nuances of the case, and that's totally appropriate and important. But I wanna draw a quick analogy to free expression. And I'm on the board of the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, America's premier, perhaps the planet's premier, civil liberties organization. And people like us, and I mean us collectively, all four of us, and most of the people watching, I'm sure, are rabid free speech defenders. And what that means is that in many instances, you find yourself defending people who are saying awful things or awful people who are saying things that are just fine and ought to be okay. And it becomes a difficult circumstance when most of the time that's greeted with a kind of disingenuous, well, you think it's Holocaust denial is great, and it's not that at all. We know that the procedure matters. We know that the marginal kind of edge cases matter a great deal. And here we have a somewhat edge case, like a guy with a somewhat dodgy record, an uncertain circumstance with respect to the kind of his legal status and situation, but an admitted mistake on the part of the Trump administration, at least by the Justice Department, that there was a clerical error of sorts, and they probably shouldn't have done things the way that they did it. Which is at the core of much of the consternation about these deportations. Like the, the. It's easy to kind of talk about this in apocalyptic ways that are perhaps too absurd, but it's also important to just acknowledge what is happening here. We do have a circumstance where people who work for the US Government will show up, they will tell you what agency they're from, but sometimes they're in masks, sometimes they're in unmarked vehicles, and they will kind of spirit you away and they'll move you around to different facilities in order to make it hard for you to kind of marshal mount a legal defense for yourself. And then they'll ship you off to a country where we have, have Very credible reports of systematic human rights violations and all sorts of other bad things. Is that the kind of America that we want to live in, is it.

Matt Welch (79:11)

Better that they're going into the prison there as opposed to just wandering in El Salvador?

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (79:18)

I don't know. There are all sorts of nuances here. And I think just in general, all I'm trying to underscore here is at a minimum, it's relevant that there are technical issues here, it's relevant that there are courts, court objections, and it's relevant that there are kind of public relations issues. But at the core is this idea that there are certain principles that we defend in this country and sometimes we have to defend those principles even in contexts where there are people who are perhaps a little noxious, when there are circumstances that make this less than ideal. And one of the things I'm frustrated by is JD Vance's response to this.

Matt Welch (79:50)

No, I can't disagree with in principle. It's just we're at an emergency level here. You know, Americans are getting killed. They're getting gutted and murdered by these animals. Like the guy who killed Lake and Riley, the guy who killed Jocelyn Nungari, a 12 year old girl who got bound, sexually assaulted and thrown off a bridge. F these guys. I don't give a shit about their hearings. I don't. I have to be honest. We're not deporting American citizens that nobody has said, oh my God, there's an American in the El Salvadorian prison. They are screening and the vast majority of these folks are already under a removal order, have already been adjudicated and it might be all of them. I'm trying, I'm trying to figure this out right now, whether everybody who gets on board one of these planes is actually under an order of removal that's already been handed down by a judge. They just, then what Biden was doing was you get that order and then he send you right back out in America. Now Tom Holman's actually trying to find them, but I'm pretty sure it's either the vast. It's either the vast majority or it's all. So they have had in the vast majority of these cases, some due process, some hearing afforded to them. Way more than they. Yeah, way, way more than you you get in any other country. It's not like we've totally abandoned our principles. And then there's that group under the Alien Enemies act, which was treated differently. And that's playing out in the courts. And I'm on Trump's side on that Too. But the left would have you believe we're actually just rounding up, literally, like we joked about at the top of the show, the Linda Kelly's of the world, you know, because they have a tattoo and a FUBU shirt, which is not exactly the same as being a member of Ms. 13, which apparently they all love Michael Jordan and they wear red and they wear Michael Jordan sweat clothes in addition to a certain set of tattoos. And I'll say one other thing. I realize you can have tattoos, whatever, but. And they say. And it can be ambiguous, they say like a crown. And there are certain other ones. But if you look at that photo behind Kristi Noem, which I was very critical of her for doing, I did not appreciate her using human beings as props for her little photo ops. They all have the same tattoos. It is like a uniform that screams Trenda Aragua. Okay, so anyway, you guys keep going on why I'm wrong.

Michael Moynihan (81:55)

Anytime that you say that, you know, I, I'm normally a favor of due process, but you know, there is an emergency, my brain goes like, Yeah, I remember 9, 11.

Matt Welch (82:04)

But you don't see a difference on illegal immigration. I mean, we're not on illegals. You don't you understand? They get some measure of due process in the United States, but they are not entitled to anywhere near what a US citizen would get.

Michael Moynihan (82:15)

Right. And I understand that in this particular case, the administration acted in defiance of a court order. And I just can't get with that. You know, there's.

Matt Welch (82:23)

Would you care if he had been deported to Columbia?

Michael Moynihan (82:26)

I don't think I would have cared if he'd been deported to Columbia, to be honest with you.

Matt Welch (82:31)

It's the technical violation of the hearing that's fair.

Michael Moynihan (82:34)

Well, I mean, it's also this, this administration and J.D. vance in particular, they've been cruising for a bruising. They want showdowns with the judicial branch. They like this stuff. J.D. vance, who has misrepresented this case on several occasions, I think he said the.

Matt Welch (82:48)

Guy was convicted of being part of MSNB. Ms. 13. MSNBC, Ms. 13.

Camille Foster (82:55)

It's worse than Ms. 13. It's MSNBC.

Matt Welch (83:02)

Now. We're all in favor of him going. He said he'd been convicted, convicted, and that's not right. He was adjudicated by an immigration judge and then that was upheld by an immigrant. But it's not the same as being convicted. And he said that when he got into all this trouble with the courts, it was 2019 under the Biden administration. And that was Trump in 2019.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (83:21)

Yeah. But he's also, he also said it's gross for gang member for us to be more worried about gang members than victims of violent crime, which is profoundly disingenuous.

Matt Welch (83:31)

I mean, no, it's true the left.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (83:32)

Is, but maybe the left is. But I'm not like. And I don't know I would make that claim about the left. But he, but he's seen it publicly like that is the response to kind of categorically from J.D. vance. And I get it again, he's a politician. I expect to make these kind of.

Matt Welch (83:48)

Piece by the Atlantic on Jocelyn Nungare. Where was that?

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (83:54)

I can't speak to that. You know, maybe the Atlantic isn't getting.

Matt Welch (83:56)

Right there, but there are other people who care more about these illegals who, who very much look like they're members of Ms. 13 than he does about the little girls than the Atlantic does about little girls getting sexually assaulted and murdered at 12.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (84:10)

If he'd said it about the Atlantic, he might be able. He might be on slightly better footing. But he made a categorical statement and.

Matt Welch (84:15)

Suggested he was in a fight with the Atlantic. He started it off by attacking the Atlantic. It was in that same.

Michael Moynihan (84:21)

Ted Cruz made a very similar and very similarly sweeping argument too. Ted Cruz, who once self styled as a constitutional conservative. This is not a constitutional way to act in defiance of a judge's order. And that's why the administration acknowledged its error is that you do have to at some point say whoops, did a bad one here. So that type of broad sweeping language again is something that as a civil libertarian I've been hearing for 38 years. Anytime the other team, and for me it's always another team has the presidency, there's always an emergency. And so therefore we have to, to go through tsa, we have to invade Iraq, we have to do this. We have to withdraw this procedure that we used to have beforehand. And as someone who is married to a naturalized citizen, I remember very specifically the layers of procedures that were taking away in the 1990s. Bipartisan signed into law by Bill Clinton when there was a big anti immigration push in the mid-90s from both parties that made it possible for there to be border guards at points of entry who if they didn't like your look and you were, had not gotten your protected status yet, hadn't got a permanent green card that could just stamp do not entry on your passport and you were screwed for five years.

Matt Welch (85:37)

Those are the good old days. Yeah, I'm sure I was like, we're not doing this To US Citizens, you're fine. If you're an American, you're good. This is being done.

Michael Moynihan (85:50)

Citizens and. But the thing is, it's always done to people who are. Have protected status. Every time you crack down on illegal.

Matt Welch (85:56)

Immigrants, protected status still means you're an illegal. It still, it doesn't mean you're a citizen. It does not mean you're like, they treat you like you're a citizen in the press.

Michael Moynihan (86:04)

If you are a legal resident, you're not illegal.

Matt Welch (86:07)

You're.

Michael Moynihan (86:07)

You're just illegal.

Matt Welch (86:08)

You have protected status. You have temporary protected status, which is not the same as being a citizen.

Michael Moynihan (86:14)

Now, talking about, I'm talking about.

Matt Welch (86:17)

I'm just saying you're at the lowest nadir of having due process rights. And the media won't acknowledge that they do not get the same process as you or I would get if they wanted to get us out of here. Be really hard.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (86:28)

It's an edge. Yeah, it's an education.

Matt Welch (86:30)

Exactly. It's an edge case. And that's why I just have no sympathy. I think I speak for most people when I say I don't care. Get them out. Get them out of here. And if they raise an objection, we find that there was a mistake. We can take care of it after the fact, and we should take care of it after the fact. I mean, all it's going to take. Take is Trump saying, let's move this one to Colombia. That guy seems to be willing to take our prisoners or our illegals. Like, go enjoy Colombia, sir. Fine. You think you'll do better there?

Camille Foster (86:53)

We'll see.

Michael Moynihan (86:55)

We can't take care of this one after the fact. They said, oh, he's in a prison. We don't know where he is. They've washed out.

Matt Welch (87:01)

He's in that prison. We know where he is. The Trump administration needs to clean up that piece of it. Like, when we send the wrong people there, there has to be a clear procedure for getting them off to where they need to be, whether it's here or another country. And there's one thing that I personally am struggling with in the deportations to El Salvador, which I'm looking into right now with my team. And that is why do they have to go to jail? You know, like, we generally are not allowed to sell, send anybody to jail unless they've had a trial on criminal charges. So I don't. I totally get the plane loads to Columbia. I.

Camille Foster (87:31)

That is the biggest problem.

Matt Welch (87:32)

Yeah, I'm less.

Camille Foster (87:33)

It's also, by the way, not just the jail.

Matt Welch (87:35)

I Don't understand how that we can just send him to jail. Go ahead, Moynihan.

Camille Foster (87:38)

Yeah, well, it's not just a jail. I mean, I appreciated you having Glenn Greenwald on and having a debate about this stuff and kind of stuff around these cases. And I disagree with Glenn on a lot. I'm on his side on this one. But like, the reason those gangs have disappeared in Bukele's El Salvador is because there's, you know, no civil rights that are left in El Salvador. Right. No civil liberties in that prison is the, I think the largest prison in the world. It has something like 45,000 people and 44,000 some insane number for such a small country. And they've basically look, I mean, if you like that kind of living. And it's a North Korean in its way, because there's no crime in North Korea is that the murders have just fallen off to zero basically there because they put everyone in a prison. The problem is it's not as some sort of holding cell. It's one of the most dangerous prisons on earth and it is one of the largest prisons on earth. Sending somebody back, back to the country from whence they came. I have no problem with sending somebody to a third country and then depositing them in a prison should bother the conscience of everyone. And I don't think that's, you know, should they be here? No, of course not. I've, I've been gotten much more hawkish on certain immigration questions as the, the kind of number of people swelled and you saw it everywhere in New York City and you're like, wow, this is, this is actually a problem that people are being incentivized to come here. And obviously that incentive has been removed.

Matt Welch (89:10)

But you can created by showing El Salvador on the, on the television and this is where we're going to send you.

Camille Foster (89:18)

Yeah, and that's wrong in my, in my estimation because it would also be a disincentive. We shot them in the middle of the street. We can't do that either. We shouldn't do things that are good disincentives that are themselves immoral. I mean, putting people in prison who are un American, it's un American. I just think it's like sending somebody to a third country that they are not from and into their prison system without a trial is just mind boggling to me.

Matt Welch (89:42)

Yeah, see, like this is where like if you've committed a crime here in the United States in addition to crossing the border illegally, like an actual crime, and we just ship you off to El Salvador after you've had your. Because, you know, whatever, you. You. You committed a crime and somehow you weren't. You got out or, you know, the. Some local sanctuary state let you out with a slap on the wrist. That's a different story to me. Like, you've had your due process because, like, when it comes to your. You're going to be imprisoned and you're going to lose your liberty. That is a higher standard of due process. It's much higher than once kicked out of the country.

Camille Foster (90:12)

And I will say one final thing about this that I wouldn't object to. Lake and Riley's killer was given due process.

Matt Welch (90:18)

And on his criminal charges.

Camille Foster (90:20)

Well, I mean, either way, whatever the charges, on all of it, but whatever the charges are, that if you sent that man to a prison in El Salvador, I wouldn't lose a moment's sleep.

Matt Welch (90:31)

You know, because we do have a general policy of providing the same due process to anyone, citizen or not, who's been accused of a crime, whose liberty we're going to take. They will get the same due process you or I would. In a court of law, they would. That's why this guy, Jose Aberra, who killed Lakin Riley, had a whole trial. We devoted all sorts of resources to proving that he was her killer. That's who we are. That's what we do. That makes us very different than the vast majority of countries. But what's happening with these other guys is something else. We're. We're not necessarily accusing them of crimes. We're saying you committed a crime, one crime, by coming here illegally. And then you were adjudicated here illegally and told to leave. And you didn't. So now we're getting rid of you. Won't leave on your own terms. We will get rid of you. And so far, I'm fine with it. Ship them to Colombia, ship them to El Salvador for all I care. It's putting them in prison where I start to get wobbly. And again, I'm looking into whether that. That what the legal justification is for that, because I actually haven't taken a hard look at it. All right, stand by. We got to take a break. More with the Fifth Column hosts straight ahead. Now's the time to prioritize. Gut health. Daily exposure to processed foods, work stress, fluoride and water. Environmental toxins can overwhelm the digestive system. The body faces constant attacks. But there's a way to fight back. Just thrive. Probiotic is a clinically proven probiotic and antioxidant. With science backed strains designed to keep the gut healthy and balanced. Unlike most probiotics that die in stomach acid, Just Thrive survives, delivering real results without gimmicks. Better digestion, a stronger immune system, increased energy and easier weight management all in one powerful probiotic. Available in capsules or delicious berry flavored gummies. That's what I take. They're delicious. There's an option for everyone in the family. For over a decade, Just Thrive has been committed to helping Americans achieve optimal health with trusted science backed solutions. To join the gut health revolution and take control of your health today, visit justthrivehealth.com and save 20% sitewide with promo code Megan that's justthrivehealth.com promo code M.

Megyn Kelly (92:42)

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Matt Welch (93:01)

Of the Megyn Kelly show on Sirius xm. It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures. Today you can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph A, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura. I'm back. 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 spot, comedy talk, podcast and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (93:45)

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Matt Welch (93:56)

Free offer details apply. Guys, you mentioned it at the top and the audience has heard plenty about it. But as you know, I sat down with the New York Times and they released an in depth interview on Saturday. And then the piece hits in the New York Times Magazine this weekend. I'm told you have thoughts. What are they?

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (94:18)

Well, one that you did a great job. I mean, just in general did a great job and it's funny. I was talking to your wonderful producer. Well, you have many wonderful producers, but Steve Krakauer and I said earlier, you know, it's funny. Like folks at the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets have spent so many years now just kind of demagoguing anyone on the Right. That when they actually have to talk to them face to face and engage in a sober conversation, they really don't know what to do. They either turn into Gavin Newsom and are kind of falling all over themselves to deny that they ever held the positions that they actually held, or they're kind of befuddled that the person I'm talking to isn't actually a monster who wants to rip my face off and say terrible things. And you kind of got that dynamic. Like Meghan is just being her usual self and acknowledging facts. I criticize Donald Trump all the time. I've done it in context where he was mad at me months before I went and showed up at a press event. I'm candid about my actual views on things. This is utterly defensible, and it is all consistent with the things that you've been doing publicly. But for them, this is all kind of new territory in some respects. They kind of have to sit down, take you seriously and soberly, and it doesn't make them look particularly great in every instance. But I thought you did handled yourself very well in that particular interview, so thank you. Not that you need my approval or anything.

Matt Welch (95:37)

No, no. But I'm curious because we had such a battle about media, you know, what the future of media is, where the lines should be drawn in today's media environment. You guys are in the same environment I'm in. And, you know, she really seemed to be struggling with getting more opinionated, to the point where you would endorse a candidate and still calling yourself a journalist.

Camille Foster (95:56)

Yeah. I mean, you can do that. I mean, I've been doing it for years, and sometimes I separate those things when I do reported pieces and go all over and shoot things and they're not opinionated pieces. And then I can come back and be opinionated. Right. Lula Navarro. Garcia Navarro.

Matt Welch (96:13)

That's Garcia Navarro.

Camille Foster (96:15)

She is now on CNN shouting at Scott Jennings or whoever, shouting at everybody around her. And she's being an opinion person all the time. I mean, she has the right opinion.

Matt Welch (96:27)

The Times endorses candidates. The time. The time. Most of these newspapers, up until this past November, when they realized they were. She was going to lose and they didn't want to piss off Trump. They almost all endorse candidates, and yet they still do journalism. It's like having an opinion side. They have a news side and they endorse, and that's the same as me, but all in one person.

Camille Foster (96:46)

Everybody has opinions. I mean, I. The right does it, the left does it. When you say well, this judge was appointed by somebody. The judges always has to be appointed by somebody. You have to do this on a case by case basis because everybody has politics, everybody has opinions. Every journalist who says they're straight down Matt's magazine, Reason has always been the most admirable. That everybody has to confess who they're voting for in every election in the pages of Reason, show your cards the.

Michael Moynihan (97:09)

Way you do it or to say that they don't want to tell you. But whatever we ask our staffers, we actually don't do endorsements at Reason. I think the last endorsement they ran was in 1976 or something like that. But I tried to do this when I was at the LA Times too. Like, all right, right. You know, let's just list all of this because one thing, it kind of takes away that as a cudgel. But another, if you pull your, if you poll your own news organization, right. Imagine Megan over at, not just MSNBC but NBC News or also at Fox. That would be interesting. Poll all of your journalists. Maybe you don't even have to make it public. If you have 99% voting for one party, you've got a screwed up news organization. Why don't you want that information?

Matt Welch (97:48)

Would definitely have the most diverse employee base. Definitely. There are tons of Democrats working at Fox. Young people are all leftists. They're all leftists at Fox. Some of them can be massaged out of it. But when you first get into the business, you are. Go ahead, Matt. Sorry.

Michael Moynihan (98:04)

One of the only other outlets that do this is Slate. I don't even know if they did it this past year, but as they went on, it would be like 55, Obama one, Gary Johnson, like the number would always Jack Shaver. And that's useful information. And it's also like showing that you are. You have faith in your audience, you can handle this information. You don't have to run scared. From the LA Times when I was there, was terrified that people would discover something about them. Like, why don't you show it to the world? So like, have faith in your audience.

Camille Foster (98:38)

It doesn't, I don't get it. If you have politics. Yeah, yeah. Something has to be falsifiable, right? I mean, if there is a study that says, you know, vaping is not going to kill you. And they say, well, it was paid for by the vaping industry. It's like, well, can you replicate the study? I don't care who paid for it. Is it true or not? And that's ultimately the case with politics too, is that ideologically motivated people break some great stories on the right, on the left. I mean, you know, the Pentagon Papers, there were people that broke that story because they wanted an end to the Vietnam War. And that was one of the most consequential pieces of journalism of the past 50 years. Who cares about somebody's politics provided they are giving you accurate, smart information that you wouldn't get anywhere else. I mean, I'm tired of this idea that we're all pretending that to be above the fray. And you know, European newspapers don't do that. There's right wing newspapers, left wing newspapers, and they report from that general drift. That's fine as long as it's true.

Matt Welch (99:33)

And just let me filter it though. Like, if you're a hard partisan, I would love if you would just share that with me as opposed to posing as an objective journalist who's just gonna give me the straight facts and then, and then I can take it for what it's worth. You're right when you say it takes away a cudgel. Matt, that's. The New York Times would stop being this punching bag for the rest of us if it would just say we are a left wing organization. We are going to report through our liberal bias like we own that. Take it for what it's worth. It may not be worth anything to you. They wouldn't lose a single reader because all of their readers already know this. But it's just the reputation. They would stop. Stop getting battered as much by those of us on the right because they're pretending they're fakers. And that's what's such a turnoff. Right? It's like, why wouldn't you just take away the battering ram we've been using on you for all these decades? Because the jig is up. We already know anyway.

Camille Foster (100:25)

I mean, that was the. Wasn't that the first 10, 15 years of Fox News? That every time there was something that looked like it drifted towards Republicans, it'd be fair and balanced. Eh?

Matt Welch (100:35)

Yes.

Camille Foster (100:36)

Just acknowledge what you are and then that's fine.

Matt Welch (100:38)

No, that's right. And then they changed it. Then they changed the slogan from fair and balanced. I don't know what the new slogan is. It happened.

Camille Foster (100:44)

We report. Well, it used to be we report, you decide. Right.

Matt Welch (100:47)

Well, that was always it. No, but they got rid of fair imbalanced. I think they, they. I don't know if it's because they wanted to lean more into like, owning what they do, but I actually think fair imbalance worked because it was really like it provided balance to the rest of the news media, which was true. And they did it in a fair way. Worked for me. In any event, you guys, you also have worked very much for me today, but both in fact and rhetorically, thank you as always, for being here.

Camille Foster (101:11)

Thank you, Megan.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown (101:11)

Thank you, Megan.

Matt Welch (101:13)

All right, tomorrow we're gonna have Michael Knowles and Anna Kasparian. And then later this week, we're bringing back Mike and Dave, Mike Davis and Dave Aronberg, and they are going to help us hash out, and I mean hash it out, some of these big legal disputes that are coming down the pike and have been getting fought in the, in the courts this week. You're going to love that. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda and no fear. As President Trump is settling into his new administration, one of the top Democrats in Congress aiming to undermine him and the Trump agenda is Senator Dick Durbin. According to our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition, Senator Durbin has a new scheme, a government takeover of your credit card. Today, Americans have thousands of choices in credit cards, but they say Senator Durbin's plan will result in less competition and less security. That means more risk for your credit and your identity. Learn more@guardyourcard.org and consider telling your senators to stop Dick Durbin's government takeover of your credit card before it's too late.

Megyn Kelly (102:27)

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