
Megyn Kelly is joined by Walter Kirn, editor of the "Unbound" Substack, to discuss Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s flashy and tacky Venice wedding, the PR-curated guest list full of celebrities who have no actual connection to the couple, why the public has turned against this gross display in our culture, the hypocrisy of leftist celeb flying private to the Bezos–Sanchez wedding, the critiques about the "oligarchy" while they celebrate oligarch Bezos, the ridiculous "pajama party" that happened, NYC Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s revolutionary socialist posturing despite his elitist upbringing, his new comment that there should be "no billionaires," his racially divisive messaging and Communist comments in the past, the growing and disturbing appeal of socialism among young Americans, the broken promises of higher education and massive increases in student debt, AOC falsely claiming she grew up in the Bronx despite being raised in affluent Westchester, her rebrandin...
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Megyn Kelly
Look, if you've got prescriptions, the Walmart app is your place to manage them. Transfer your scripts, refill them and have them delivered straight to you. Migraines, managed allergies, alleviated dermatology, derma delivered ding dong. Is that your pizza? Nope. Walmart pharmacy delivery with a refill, switch to Walmart and manage your prescriptions in the app. The Walmart you thought you knew is now new delivery not available for all prescriptions. Exclusions apply. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and happy Monday. It's the week we celebrate our nation's Independence Day. Hence the American flag on my sweater. I'm getting in the mood. Hope you are too. Next year is going to be the big one. 250 years, I cannot wait. But 249 is pretty good too. I'd be feeling pretty good if I were 249 years old. I mean, it's really kind of crazy. Like, not a week goes by that we don't mention one of the founding fathers on this show. Think about it. Think about the legacy that those men left behind. It's just we're still living it and we're still fighting for it. And thank God we have a Supreme Court that's fighting right along with us these days. In less important but still somewhat interesting news, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez have officially tied the knot out in Venice, Italy, in front of 200 of their dearest, closest lifelong family friends, like Gail and Oprah. Just kidding. It was a random assortment of celebrities who would help them get headlines. Protesters describing themselves as the no Space for Bezos movement. That's actually not so clever, people. They were there trying to disrupt the festivities. Uh, don't they know that there were astronauts present? I mean, the, the disrespect. We will get into that. Plus some more serious matters. We're on verdict watch now, officially, in the Diddy case, the jury has the case. I mean, honestly, this could go either way. I believe he should be convicted. If I had to put money on it, I would say he will be convicted. He absolutely should be convicted of at least the prostitution charges. And. And if he's not, as I said last week, that will be the tell that there was total jury nullification on the basis of his celebrity and the jury being wooed by the fact that they were getting to pass judgment on Sean Diddy Combs. But what I think is going to happen is he's going to be found guilty probably on all three counts. It's five counts, but it's really three, you know, causes of action against him. So the jury has the case. They were charged this morning. And wouldn't you love to be a fly on that wall just to hear the first go round, like the first vote where they go around and say, what'd you think? What'd you think? What'd you think? And there are such different personalities in these juries, I have to tell you. I've both served as a juror and I've tried cases, and I've watched as a legal court watcher, you know, in my journalism role for many, many years. Now, you, as a lawyer, sometimes intentionally select somebody you know will be a follower, because maybe you've already intentionally selected the one you think will be your leader and somebody who's more, you know, oriented your way, whether you're the prosecution or the defense. And it's. It would just be such an interesting study for any lawyer to be able to see whether they were right. Did they call this person right as a follower? This person right as a leader? A funny story for you. When I served on a jury, God, I think it was 2006. I don't think Doug and I were married. It was 2006 or 2007. So going on, you know, 20 years ago now, really interesting case. Really enjoyed doing it, Bonded with my fellow jurors. And just six months ago, I was down in D.C. for on business, and there was a guy with me in the elevator, and he's kind of looking at me and, you know, yeah, I never know whether it's just somebody who knows me from whatever television or the show or whether it's just a person who's curious. Anyway, the guy comes up to me after we get an elevator, and he goes, are you Megyn Kelly? I said, yeah. It was a guy I had served on the jury with all those years earlier, and we reminisced a bit. In any event, long winded way of saying that jury's together and for the first time is getting to talk about these seven weeks of testimony. 34 witnesses in a trial that has dominated the news now for weeks. We're on it for you. Also we're watching this nutcase Soren Mamdami take over the media. His tour is in full effect coinciding with the boisterous end of, thank God, pride month. And there's a lot to get to with our friend Walter Kern. Go and read his work at Walt. Walter Kern K I R N dot substack. 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Go to hometitle lock.com and use the promo code MEGYN hometitle lock.com promo code MEGAN. Welcome back, Walter. Great to have you.
Walter Kern
I'm really happy to be here.
Megyn Kelly
Okay, so let, let's just start. I know this is a curveball, but let's just start with this ridiculous wedding that took place over this weekend. Because these two were behaving like they thought they were royalty. They were, you know, she did the balcony wave like she's a Maryland figure or a genuine British royal, you know, blowing the kisses. And they had the ship, their yacht, which has its own yacht, carting them around with their massive amounts of foam dripping into the Mediterranean, which I, I'm sure is not eco friendly. Too bad because Leonardo, Leonardo DiCaprio was there. I'm sure he didn't approve of the amount being spent on the foam into the med. And from what I can tell, Walter Almost no actual friends. They don't know Gayle King. She. They invited Gail on that ridiculous space flight so they could get some news coverage on cbs. And now, because she did it, she's at the wedding. Oprah. They don't know Oprah. That's a lie, too. Oprah went and watched Gail go up in this thing, so now she gets an invite. Why? Because she's a celebrity. Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm sure they're really tight with Leonardo. I'm sure it's Sydney Sweeney, the new toast of the town out there, because she's got these enormous breasts that everybody's obsessed with. How does she wind up there? If you told me it was like Lauren Sanchez's colleagues from the first news station she worked at. Sure, that's normal. That's what a true friend would do. Invite their lifelong friends. Or Jeff Bezos when he first opened Amazon. Yeah, okay, I get it. Even Bill Gates was there, I'll give him that. One huge fellow tech titan. But this was meant to generate headlines and fawning coverage and accolades, and nothing better encapsulates that than the moment they got married. She wiped her Instagram clean and repopulated it with her Vogue magazine spread photographs. And just the one post of Lauren Sanchez Bezos and their picture from Vogue. Give me a break. What does this say about us, if anything?
Walter Kern
Well, it was a Las Vegas wedding held against the backdrop of a civilized European city. And it should have probably been held in the Las Vegas version of Venice rather than the real version. Venice is a city of great commercial enterprise. It was a very rich city. All the ships of the world went out from Venice, and the banking of the world was centered there. So this is an attempt to take over with the new class, the sort of old world charisma of this wonderful place. Everybody looked tacky, as you say. The guest list seemed to have been chosen by a PR firm. Where was his Little League coach, his favorite professor? The guy who stuck with him? Like you say in the early days of business when nobody thought he was going to be a big deal, it was impersonal, it was tacky, it was expensive. It made a lot of money. Strangely for his nemesis, Elon Musk, because most people used axe to, you know, tune into this thing. So he spent 50 million, and I think Elon made 50. But the great. The great irony, and it's only known to somebody over educated like me, is that the. The ruler of Venice and the great palace of Venice was called the Doge. Remember that? The Doge palace, the Doge of Venice. Where have we heard that word? It's, I think that Elon and Jeff are, as they are in space, engaged in a coded confrontation competition with each other beyond all of our heads to be, you know, the world's, you know, the world's billionaire. And Jeff, after Elon had a rather unpopular run recently with some people and a very popular with others, Jeff has sunk to the bottom of that ranking as far as I'm concerned.
Megyn Kelly
I look at Lauren Sanchez and I think this is somebody who in another life and many years ago in her life I could have been friends with. She's a journalist, she's a helicopter pilot. She was moving up the ranks in the journalism business. And that's great. I mean that's somebody who I have got lots of friends in the journalism business. And then there's another strain of Lauren Sanchez which seemed to be a person determined to marry or date her way into fame. A fame she was unable to attend, to achieve as a journalist, as a newscaster. No one knew who the hell she was. She wasn't famous. She didn't make it on any sort of national level. But she married some famous or was with, I can't, I'm still unsure, some famous professional athlete. Then she married the co head of wmg, the Ari Emanuel firm. Here's yet another one of her Vogue photos in her underwear. Because we all celebrate our weddings, Walter, by posing first our wedding dress, then in our underwear with just a peak of breast in the photo. Not sure how I celebrated mine. And then traded that Patrick White cell into Jeff Bezos. And that of course was widely reported to be an extra marital affair by both Sanchez and Bezos while they were both married to other people. And this is just a long winded way of saying I think something's happened to her. Like she just kept wanting to trade up when it came to money and power and fame and not coincidentally kept trading up obviously on the plastic surgery. Only by up I mean poorly. She got connected with the Kardashians.
Walter Kern
Up and down.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, up and out. All of whom were there by begging. According to Page Six, they had an exclusive that they actually only wanted Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner and Kris Jenner begged to have all the Kardashian daughters invited. So they, they relented. But she, Lauren Sanchez has clearly spent too much time with them now because she's clearly gotten the weirdly skinny waist that no 55 year old woman magically develops at 55. The enhanced, clearly bottom, the overly enhanced breasts The, a very bizarre looking face where it just gets like super, super bloated with, I don't know if it's filler or what it is, but like weirdly puffy under the eyes to where your eyes look like almost Asian but you're not Asian. And then of course, weirdly puffy lips that only their Kardashian doctor can give you that look. Porn starish, fake and ghoulish. I mean, you look like a Mr. Potato Head. You no longer look human. So she spent too much time with these people and she's morphed. I think chasing these false gods has gotten her to look like a morphed, just unrelatable plastic version of the beautiful woman who used to be there striving in earnest to make it on her own, but instead kind of sold out. That's how I see her. Anyway, you take it from here.
Walter Kern
She looks like a sex doll that you pump up with a foot pump and she's been getting a few more pumps every few months. But he's a pretty augmented character himself. You know, Jeff was a skinny Princeton nerd when he started Amazon and now he's a beastly man, you know, man monster with huge guns and, you know, testosterone infected gaze and a very, how can I put it, Lordly alpha manner. So I think they are both now. They're doll fantasies of themselves. It was like watching them. Yeah, it was like watching the marriage of two Mattel products, you know, you know, man, man and boob woman. And will they be able to reproduce? Will they want to? That's the question. Because if they do, they'll give birth to a child who looks like a human being and will gaze up from his crib at these, you know, rather bizarre creatures that raised him. Will he want to be like them? Who knows?
Megyn Kelly
What do you make of the. The guest list? I mean, it was just so. I think back to when I married Doug and we, you know, it's my second marriage, so I didn't meet Doug until I was 35 and we got married when I was 37. Who's there? All my friends from Fox News, some of my lawyer friends, some friends from my childhood. That's who you invite. What is the point of inviting all these Hollywood celebrities if it's not just an attention grab At a wedding you're.
Walter Kern
Supposed to have people who've known you for a long time, who can tell jokes about the time your swim trunks fell off when you dived into the pond and embarrassing stories from when you were young, but none of Those people were there. I'm sure they had a. Maybe they had a viewing for the actual friends back in some bar in Poughkeepsie or something. But, yeah, it was a brand awareness wedding. People brought their brands. The only disappointment for me in the wedding was that when they stepped gingerly down into those gondolas that were floating in the canals, nobody wiped out. I thought they were gonna be way more sort of high heel disasters, people going into the drink. But there wasn't enough schadenfreude. I mean, there's plenty of schadenfreude in the sense that we hope all of them have boating accidents on the way home or their helicopters have to land in hostile countries, but I don't think anything bad is gonna happen. And this is kind of like the French Laundry interlude during COVID with Newsom showing that no matter what happens to the rest of the world, he's going to be just fine. You know, we were going to have World War Three a week ago, but that was not going to stop this wedding. I am sure that, you know, had even the missiles been flying, these people would have grabbed our attention. It's. It's a kind of arrogance that you see in the movie Citizen Kane or something like that. And I think its message ultimately is, you can't touch this. You can't touch.
Megyn Kelly
That's right. Well, that's how it feels. It's a very, very let them eat cake kind of moment at a time when half of these people are members of a party, probably all of them are members of a party that's lecturing us on how we have to get rid of the oligarchy. Right. Like Leonardo DiCaprio with his environmentalist lectures. What. How do you explain all the planes that were required? The Plymouth, private flights that took Oprah and Bill Gates and the rest there. Leo. And probably Leo, too. And all the boats. Here he is getting in one of the Venetian boats to get to the weddings. The wedding events, like all of these people claim to speak for values that were not on full display. Here you've got AOC and Bernie literally on a Stop the Oligarchy tour. Meanwhile, everybody there was a Democrat. Oprah, Gail. I mean, I don't know about the Kardashians. I assume they were.
Walter Kern
Where was Barack Obama? Where was Barack? You would think he would have shown up at this. There are certain global all stars like David Geffen and Bruce Springsteen that you would think would show up. I think they embarrassed even some of them, frankly. I get the feeling that there were People who were invited, who had children's birthdays, they had to attend in New Jersey. You really had to go over the line and be willing to be hated for at least a year and a half and called a hypocrite for the rest of your life to attend this wedding. Was it worth it? We'll see.
Megyn Kelly
Here's Lauren Sanchez pre the wedding photo shoot with Vogue, talking about, you know, what she's gotten from Jeff and what's happening on this day. It's like so emotional. It's really emotional. I want to be a mess, but in the best possible way. And let's talk about the dress. It just feels like, I don't know, it carries everything I've walked through to get here. It's elegant, it's timeless, it's soft. Domenico really captured something that feels like where I am right in this moment right now. Okay?
Walter Kern
Your tits, ass and lips is what you are in this moment right now. It used to be that Vogue was a rather tasteful high fashion magazine, and now it's just, just gone Lollapalooza, you know, full on bread and circuses. And does America need this? Maybe in our last gasp before full socialism, we'll look back on this and these will be the days, you know, remember when you could have a $50 million wedding and you know, Luigi didn't come in the middle with a ar.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. Can I tell you? Let me give you a couple more. Let me give you a couple more. So she's. That's her in her pre wedding shoot wearing her full wedding gown so that Vogue can have the exclusive of her in the wedding gown as soon as they say I do. God forbid we just actually put on our wedding gown and be seen for the first time by our, by our husbands and our, our wedding party in it. She wore a dress custom designed over a year and a half by Dolce and Gabbana. It's based on the wedding dress Sophia Loren wore to marry Cary Grant in the 1958 film Houseboat. For the wedding dinner, she wore a sweetheart neck corseted gown. For the reception, she opted for a cocktail dress by Oscar de la Renta featuring 600 yards of hand sewn chain and 175,000 crystals on her jewelry. An insider told Page Six it said Lauren will wear a long list of precious jewels throughout the festivities. Festivities that could easily be worth between 20 and 30 million dollars. She did the digital Vogue treatment, landing on the COVID for this thing. She wore a secret souvenir at the wedding that she brought along as well on her blue origin fake space trip as her something blue telling Vogue. This was because it was literally one of the most profound experiences I've ever had in my life. Seeing Ear from space. I came down and I couldn't describe it. It was the greatest experience I've ever had. Jeff said, it's going to change you more than you think. And it completely has, visually, spiritually. Meanwhile, her quote after she got back to land Walter was so dark. It's so quiet.
Walter Kern
She's not exactly a novelist, and if she was ever a journalist, I can't believe she was a very good one. Because to go to and then have nothing to say about it is a real accomplishment. Usually people who go to space have this kind of mystic vision of the earth as one and floating alone in the darkness of the universe and how we're all, you know, we're all just people and it shrinks their egos rather than expands them. But it seemed to have the opposite effect on her.
Megyn Kelly
Also.
Walter Kern
I hope.
Megyn Kelly
Let me give it to you firsthand so you don't have to take my interpretation of it. Here's sat 24. Earth looked so. It was so quiet. It was just quiet.
Walter Kern
And is it what you expected? No, no, better.
Megyn Kelly
I don't think you can describe it. You can't. You know what I was saying? It was like quiet, but then also really alive. And you look at it and you're like, quiet. We're all in this together, but alive. Jeff, before I left, I just went like, yeah, you know, I had to come back. I mean, we're getting married. If I didn't come back, that would be. That would be. That would be a bummer for me. Only you, by the way, would say this to me. You said, jeff, if he. If you don't want to marry me, you don't have to send me to. Don't have to send me to space.
Walter Kern
Oh, my God. Hmm.
Megyn Kelly
It's a miracle.
Walter Kern
When you go to space in science fiction, you age a little differently than the people on Earth and come back. She seems to have come back as an 8 year old. She's the only person I know who ends sentence with, well, it's really.
Megyn Kelly
Shh.
Walter Kern
And I really thought it was. Ah. I mean, those aren't words. I don't know. The reason it was quiet, I would venture, is because she was sealed inside a space capsule. It wasn't the Earth that was quiet. It was your space capsule.
Megyn Kelly
It's so absurd that we now have to look at these people. That's what was bothering me. It was like the, the kisses from the balcony and the waving. Like she, like truly like she's a queen. And then you had the parade of celebrities, reportedly Lady Gaga and. And John expected to perform at one of the events. Here's the thing. They then had whatever, some party, I guess after the wedding party. It was a three night extravaganza. And this, the last night was celebrated with. Ready, Walter? I know, I know. You've been to many weddings like this. A pajama party. Oprah wore a shimmery bronze ensemble featuring feather trimmed cuffs. Gail wore a tank dress topped with a colorful patent patterned robe. Kim Kardashian wore, of course, a corseted look with sheer stockings and garters. And Lauren Sanchez. Here's Kim Kardashian always bringing the class. Look at her. Is it really a party if you haven't seen Kim Kardashian's breasts? And Lauren Sanchez Bezos wore a pink gown. Cause that's what everybody sleeps in. Don't you sleep in a pink gown, Ladies? Go ahead, Walter.
Walter Kern
Aren't pajamas supposed to be loose and comfortable and have little footies? And aren't people supposed to turn out the lights secretly in the middle of a pajama party? And somebody gets the second. This was not. This was not.
Megyn Kelly
You just have to stand in an elevator with Lauren Sanchez and you've gotten to second.
Walter Kern
I hope, by the way, that the Vogue cover of her is their first 3D cover because I don't think you can appreciate her figure without the 3D effect. They really regressed, didn't they? I mean, to a pajama party. Oh my gosh. I bet they were talking to each other.
Megyn Kelly
That's what they're trying to telegraph. We're just regular people now. And I'm gonna wear my corset and my pink gown. Before the end of the show, I am going to go into my closet and I'm going to take out a pair of actual pajamas so you can see how actual people go to sleep. And there will not be a few feather to be shown. It does not involve a corset. Who the hell goes to sleep in a coret? What is this? Even the ladies of the 1700s didn't do that. This is all just so fake. It's just like a fake display of fake celebrity, fake humility. Yeah, fake pajamas and fake friendships, all of it. It's just that's. It's so off putting.
Walter Kern
Do you think they had to pay for those invitations? Do you think that their agents negotiated Their attendance at these things.
Megyn Kelly
I do. Ari Emanuel was there, who she might actually know because she was married to his business partner at wme. But I guarantee you something like Ari Emanuel said, let's get Sydney Sweeney there. I represent her and she's a rising star. It'd be great to see her names in the headlines. And these two were like, great, no problem. I'm imagining that, to be clear. But I know these things are done all the time just to get like an up and coming starlet and, you know, in the. In the headlines. That's why Kris Jenner insisted that the other lesser known, lesser accomplished Kardashians get an invite, Right? Because they're like, she's like, I need to see their name in the headlines. I need whatever the model and I need the young one who used to look a thousand times different than she does right now. I need her in the headlines. All of them. What does it matter if we show up, if we just enjoy ourselves? That's not the point. The point is the picture. And to see our names in the headlines.
Walter Kern
Well, I'm a novelist. That's really what I do. And I write books and screenplays and so on. And Amazon started as a company that sold books. It's America's bookstore. There was no literary content whatsoever at these things. The people were barely literate. I didn't see any of them reading. And there was. It was 100% showbiz. And what's strange is Hollywood isn't really doing that well these days. But they acted as though it was a glorious golden age. And I think it was really the swan song for celebrity culture. I really do. People like you, Megan, and others have started in this new media. And soon movies will be much cheaper and made by AI and we'll be rid of these folks in many ways.
Megyn Kelly
Okay, now I want to tell you that this morning on AM Update, we ended the podcast by saying that when they finished their vows, they had their friends sing Whitney Houston's Higher Love to them. And that is indeed what they did, along with a gospel choir that led it. And Doug, my husband goes, didn't Steve Winwood sing Higher Love? He is. He is. Right. The Steve Winwood did sing Higher Love. He co wrote and originally released it in 1986. But Whitney covered the song in 1990 for her album I'm your baby tonight. And that was the version that Lauren and Jeff wanted sung to them by their attendees and a gospel choir. So it was Whitney Houston's version of Higher Love. And by that they mean Love you find while you're married to two other people, surreptitiously behind their backs, when they're not looking or looking at your phone. That's the higher love that they found that they wanted us to sing about and think about as we celebrate their union.
Walter Kern
No, this was a celebration of lower love, the lowest love that exists. And that song, in fact, is about seeking a transcendent spiritual love above mere human love. So they got it wrong in every way. Wrong attribution to Whitney, wrong song for a place that was for a wedding that was a celebration of jewels. $20 million outfits. I just hope they took all of these wardrobes, packed them into a giant trunk, and have given them to a food bank in Newark, New Jersey, because they could keep it running forever. It's not that I think they spent too much money. It's just that I now think they should give away what's left over.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. Okay, I have a sweet story to tell you now. Now, Palate cleanser before the next story. Speaking of giving clothes away, we have friends here at the beach who I featured on the show a couple of years ago. And the reason I featured them was because they lost their 17 year old son, Blake Barklage, to myocarditis. It was a sudden cardiac event, and they don't know what caused it. Everybody thought, okay, it's Covid. It's vaccines. They really don't know. He had had both Covid and two Pfizer shots, but they don't know. The point is, they lost their son and they're dear friends of ours, and they started a charity in their son's name. It's called Blake Gives Back. And they helped do heart screenings at high schools to try to help this program from. To stop this from happening to other young boys or girls. And they do a bunch of different things and they. They raise funds to try to help other kids. Anyway, they gave some of the Blake gear that they had, which always has, like the BB on it, Blake Barklage to a homeless shelter. And Tom, the dad, was driving his car today, and what did he see? But he saw a guy out on the street who was clearly homeless or indigent with all this Blake Parklidge gear on him. And I just. It was like. And he said, you know, this. Yeah, he said, you know, this guy's got a guardian angel up there right now. Blake's looking down at him right now, trying to figure out how to help this guy take his next steps. And I don't know, just as you see, like, the Just the banality of people like Sanchez and Bezos. You're reminded of the goodness of your fellow man by the family barklage and stories like that, where it's like one small good deed. You know, you see it manifesting out on the road and you think, right on. You know, Right on. That's the kind of human most of us actually spend our days with.
Walter Kern
Yeah. It wasn't an inspiring example of human giving or human empathy, that's for sure. I don't expect to see a homeless person on the streets of San Francisco, robed in one of these $5 million pajama bejeweled pajama outfits. But you know what the final takeaway is? Is that Donald Trump, thought to be the most garish, gauche and vulgar American rich person, is now now looks like Prince Edward or Cary Grant compared to these people. I mean, they have outdone him in the vulgar department by a factor of 10.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, that's right. It does feel vulgar. But that's, you know, it's so interesting because truly, all these people are Democrats. Guaranteed, they're Democrats. And Jeff Bezos showed up at the Trump inauguration because he wanted access to power. I don't think there's any realistic chance he voted for Trump or wanted Trump or is voted Republican. He runs the Washington Post or voted. Yeah, no, right, exactly. But I mean, he owns the Washington Post. If he actually cared about changing America in Trump's image or consistent with Trump's policies, would we have the Washington Post? We have. No, we would not. So it's, you know, it's whatever. It's false. However, the Democrats, his party, I guarantee you, that's his party. And the others who are there, from Leo to Oprah to Gail, they're the ones who are telling us, stop the oligarchy. They're the ones who just elected this nutcase as their nominee in New York, right, this Zoran Mandami. They're the ones who are out there every day lecturing us about how wealth is bad and it needs to be taxed. Or the latest message by this mom dummy that has emerged is he said on the Sunday shows, I don't think there should be any billionaires while literally saying for the entire campaign that he just ran and won, we're going to tax all the billionaires. That's what's going to pay for my plan. I'm going to give all these free giveaways to all of New Yorkers by taxing the billionaires. And then he tells the CB or the Sunday shows Where is it? Which one is it? Debate that he doesn't believe there should be any. It was Meet The Press on NBC South 1.
Zoran Mamdani
You are a self described democratic socialist. Do you think that billionaires have a right to exist?
Benjamin Ryan
I don't think that we should have billionaires because frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality. And ultimately what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country. And I look forward to, to work with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fairer for all of them.
Megyn Kelly
So there you have it.
Walter Kern
Well. Well, there aren't going to be many billionaires left in your cities, Orion. So you're solving the problem merely by trying to get elected. A lot of them are moving to Palm beach or wherever they can get out of reach of your tax man. Does he mean by them not existing that they shouldn't be alive or that they shouldn't have a billion dollars? And finally, the problem with Zoran is that he doesn't look like a guy who grew up on the street. Revolutionary.
Megyn Kelly
His parents are rich.
Walter Kern
Yeah, his mom's a film director. I'm sure he's gotten the best acting coaching since age three and that is part of his appeal. His father's a tenured professor at Columbia University and he just, he skipped the whole, you know, remember when Lech Loessa overthrew the communists? He was a working man. He worked in a shipyard back when in the days American socialism was based in the labor movement. And it came from really rough guys who worked in factories and, you know, did that kind of thing. Now it's socialism from the top. He might not be, not be an oligarch, but he's been to many of their parties, I promise you.
Megyn Kelly
Yes. And look, he's so his mom has, she's a relatively well known film director who according to him was given the opportunity to direct, according to her, she says was given the opportunity to direct one of the Harry Potter films which has made something like, I don't know, $900 million. And he talked her out of doing it in favor of directing something that was more akin with like their values and that made 20 million. So he, like, this was his, this is the guy who's going to be our economic steward in America's greatest city. Like, you know what, why don't you forego the billion dollar film for the 20 million dollar film? Because it'll make me feel good about myself. He's out there cosplaying like a third World person because he lived in Uganda for the first seven years and then moved here. He's 33. This video of him is eating with his fingers is circulating. Well, he's talking about how he understands the Third World. I mean, literally. His mother's, I think, got millions here, watch this.
Walter Kern
So the. The third holy grail of taboos in American politics. You have socialism, you have Islam, and then you have Palestine, and you are really going for the trifecta. Let's go, baby.
Megyn Kelly
Let's go.
Walter Kern
Tell me, why is Palestine a part of your politics?
Benjamin Ryan
When you grow up as someone, especially in the Third World, you have a very different understanding of the Palestinian struggle.
Megyn Kelly
So I don't know what's happening there, but somebody was defending him, saying he was using a piece of bread. He certainly looks like he's scooping his fingers into his food and shoving it into his mouth. And I actually don't really care if he. If there was bread or not. But it's even worse if there's not bread. That's not how somebody who's an American eats, but it's him cosplaying Third World person and understanding Third World, even though his mother is this multimillionaire film director and his father is a chaired professor at Columbia.
Walter Kern
Well, Americans always want their cake and eat it, too. They want to, you know, lose weight without eating less. They want to learn in their sleep, and they want everything, you know, in its impossible form. And now we want socialism from the point of view of a Nepo baby, which is the only way you could still believe in it at this point. Because if you've actually lived it, like many of the refugees and migrants to America, he's the kind of politician that has caused people to emigrate to America because leaders like him have impoverished the countries that they come from. They must be, like, looking at each other and going, oh, no, not this again.
Megyn Kelly
So he is running. When he was running, he just won the Democratic nomination. As a reminder, the actual general election is four months away in November for the mayor of New York. But while running, he made clear that he wanted to divide the city in terms of race, that that's how he was going to determine who to tax more, who was advantage and who wasn't. And he was asked about this and his focus on whiteness when he went on Meet the Press. He's got a campaign platform that calls for the city's notoriously skewed property tax system, in which ritzy brownstones are hit at lower rates than homes and rentals in Lower income neighborhoods, which even some of his Republican competitors have acknowledged could be a problem. Like they're not. It got this way through some wackadoodle policies. But even those who have been talking about this, talk about it in terms of people who make a bunch of money shouldn't have a lower property tax than people who don't. Right? But here's how he talks about it on his website. Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer. Wait for it. And whiter neighborhoods. Now, what does white have to do with it? Why didn't richer get it done? This came up when he went on Meet the Press this weekend. And here's how that went.
Zoran Mamdani
Explain why you are bringing race into your tax proposal.
Benjamin Ryan
That is just a description of what we see right now. It's not driven by race. It's more of an assessment of what neighborhoods are being undertaxed versus overtaxed.
Zoran Mamdani
And I understand you're saying we're simply describing the types of neighborhoods that would see these increase in taxes. And yet by invoking race, do you run the risk of potentially alienating key constituents?
Benjamin Ryan
I think I'm just naming things as they are. And ultimately my. The, the thing that motivates me in this is to create a system of fairness.
Zoran Mamdani
So no plans to change that language on your website.
Benjamin Ryan
The focus here is to actually ensure a fair property tax system and that the use of that language is just an assessment of the neighborhood.
Megyn Kelly
If I have to demonize whitey along the way, then so be it. That's just basically where he stands.
Walter Kern
It's a bonus. It's a fringe benefit. You know, if whiteness itself conferred into wealth, albinos would be the richest among us. But they aren't. And the truth is that if you look at statistics across the board in America, per person, white people are not the richest demographic. They really aren't. And I challenge your listeners to do some research on that. He's trying in all kinds of ways to be a mischievous revolutionary who we can love and hug and relate to, but that he wants to signal at all times his absolute most venomous and aggressive radical base. The other thing that he's been doing is allowing leaks or I don't know if he's allowing them or if they're happening by themselves, of past positions which are even more horrifying than the ones he's holding presently. And I think the strategy there is to make himself look like he's moderated somewhat. You know, he's you know, you almost expect to hear that at one time he wanted the New York Stock Exchange to be turned into, you know, a halal meat market for the homeless or something. And now he just wants to close it down. He's moderated.
Megyn Kelly
Well, look at this one. This. I don't know whether he's moderated on this one or not, but here is an explicitly communist principle that he embraced on this podcast in Sat 7.
Benjamin Ryan
What the purpose is about this entire project, it's not simply to raise class consciousness, but to win socialism. And obviously raising class consciousness is a critical part of that, but making sure that we have candidates that both understand that and are willing to put that forward at every which moment that they have, at every which opportunity that they are given. We have to continue to elect more socialists, and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism. There are also other issues that we firmly believe in. Whether it's bds, right? Or whether it's the end goal of seizing the means of production.
Megyn Kelly
That was posted on X in 2021. It wasn't long ago, but seizing the means of production. Whoa.
Walter Kern
Well, first of all, why did he dress in a green Star Trek pajamas?
Megyn Kelly
Very good question.
Walter Kern
In front of a, you know, a portrayal of the planet Jupiter. I think he's trying to make us think he's the future and that he represents something that we can't stop, something that's coming for us.
Megyn Kelly
But he might be posing as, as Ketanji Brown Jackson put it in the Supreme Court case that dropped on Friday, Martians quote from another planet, as though she's not aware that.
Walter Kern
Our native Martian population is one thing, the ones that come from another planet. I got a secret. He's a bizarre character. He's an actor. He's been cast. He's a salesman. If he came to my door, I would slam it because I would be sure that he wanted my credit card. If he wanted to marry a relative of mine, I would sit him down and question him on his prospects aspects because he's a little bit like the Music Man. He suddenly showed up in town with the answers to everything. And the simplest answer is that things should be free and that our big problem is that they aren't. When he seizes the means of production, I wonder which institutional military force he's going to use since he wants to lay off the cops. Is he going to seize it with, you know, antifa, or is he going to seize it with, you know, these social workers with which he wants to replace cops? This is a disaster for New York because New York is actually a very hardworking town. It's an entrepreneurial town. Every time I go there, Megan, to stay in Midtown, I go on the Greg Gutfeld Show. People are up at four in the morning putting out their food carts, cleaning up the streets, delivering furniture to office buildings, taking old furniture out of office buildings. And I wonder at how hardworking, how gritty, how commonsensical these New Yorkers are trying to put away a few bucks, driving their cabs, driving their Ubers, delivering furniture, you know, cleaning hotel rooms, all so they can get a step ahead. I don't think that those people, frankly, are his real constituency. He might talk about.
Megyn Kelly
They didn't vote for him. No, you might talk for him. Blacks and Hispanics didn't vote for him. It was white people who were rich, but not uber rich. It was like the top four neighborhoods that voted for him were included. Park Slope, Bed Stuy. I can't remember the third. And then the other most rich community in New York is Upper East. And that's the only one that went for Chromo, because that's where you got the true millionaires.
Walter Kern
It was white people. Because white. There is a product now that white people want more than anything else. They've got everything else. They've got the nice cars, a lot of them, you know, the affluent white people, at least. But there's something that he can give them that they really want, and that's to feel good about themselves. And he makes. Yes, he makes them feel good about themselves. See the star on their Christmas tree? The thing they want after they get everything else is to feel that they are good human beings. And he knows that. And just like a candy salesman, he's giving it to them.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, if they can. If they can sit in those fancy apartments and get to judge you for not being more like them, that's the win. That's the heroin in the vein. He also happens to seem extremely anti Semitic. You heard him in that. That video there touting the bds, the divest, you know, from Israel movement. And he once again got asked by Kristen Welker about his refusal to condemn the term globalize the intifada. Not gonna do it. Wasn't interested in standing down from that at all. Here's that soundbite.
Zoran Mamdani
You were recently asked about the term globalize the intifada. If it makes you uncomfortable in that moment, you did not condemn the phrase. Do you condemn that phrase, globalize the intifada?
Benjamin Ryan
That's not language that I use. The Language that I use and the language that I will continue to use to lead this city is that which speaks clearly to my intent, which is an intent grounded in a belief in universal human rights.
Zoran Mamdani
Do you condemn that phase? Globalize the intifada, which a lot of people hear is a call to violence against.
Benjamin Ryan
I've heard from many Jewish New Yorkers who have shared their concerns with me, and I've heard those fears and I've had those conversations. And ultimately, what I think I need to show is the ability to not only talk about something, but to tackle it and to make clear that there's no room for anti Semitism in this city.
Zoran Mamdani
So why not just condemn it?
Benjamin Ryan
My concern is to start to walk down the line of language. And making clear what language I believe is permissible or impermissible takes me into a place similar to that of the President, who is looking to do those very kinds of things. Putting people in jail for writing an op ed, putting them in jail for protesting. Ultimately, it's not language that I use, it's language I understand there are concerns about.
Megyn Kelly
Okay, let me say something, Walter. I'm not into making people say X, Y or Z at all. But the reason this guy won't say that is because he's in favor of it 100%. I have zero doubt in my mind. The real reason he won't condemn that phrase is because he agrees with it.
Walter Kern
Well, you know, he said to be a very eloquent and well spoken guy, but that was word salad. You know, that was a word, Waldorf salad. It had everything chopped up in it and it meant nothing. And frankly, when you go to those lengths not to say something, it's because you want to say it.
Megyn Kelly
And he, not to mention his father, his Columbia professor father, have made so many statements that should alarm your average Jewish American. We don't have enough time to do it here. But it tracks. It tracks perfectly. Perfectly. I don't know how the city that has the second most Jews in the world, second only to Israel, is going to let this guy become mayor. How are they not going to organize in massive numbers behind anyone other than him? And I have to tell you, I've got a lot of friends in New York and a lot of them have money and political means and they're organizing right now. They are organizing en masse against him to try to stop his ascent for all the reasons that we just discussed. It's not a lock. You'd have to put the smart money on him, but it's not a lock. Stay tuned. Let's be honest, America can still be a dangerous place and you cannot afford to wait for help when you need it. Sure, you could use a firearm, but in today's America, defending yourself with deadly force could have legal consequences. According to FBI data, 99.9% of all altercations do not require lethal force. And that's exactly why so many are turning to Byrna Berna is proudly American. Hand assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana, these less lethal self defense launchers are trusted by hundreds of government agencies, law enforcement departments and private security companies. Over 600,000 burner pistols have been sold, most to private citizens who refuse to be victims. Burner launchers fire rock hard kinetic rounds and powerful tear gas and pepper projectiles capable of stopping a threat from up to 60ft away. No background checks, no waiting periods and Burna can ship straight to your door. Take responsibility, protect your future. Visit Burna.com right now or your local Sportsman warehouse. That's by r n a.com or your local Sportsman warehouse. Visit now and be prepared to defend it's time you've heard about Riverbend Ranch. Riverbend Ranch is located just a few miles from West Yellowstone, Montana, and it's known as one of the most respected Angus ranches in the nation. Angus beef is known for its great flavor and tenderness, but the cattle at Riverbend Ranch are not your average Angus cattle. 35 years ago, using ultrasound technology, the owner of Riverbend Ranch began scouting the nation to identify specific purebred Angus cows that genetically produce a higher level of marbling and tenderness than normal Angus cattle. After over 30 years of careful selection and breeding, Riverbend Ranch developed beef that has superior flavor and tenderness. They take great pride in the humane treatment of their herd. The cattle spend their days in lush mountain meadows of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, and they're raised without the use of artificial growth hormones or antibiotics. It's real American beef. Born in America, raised in America and processed here too. And the beef is shipped direct from the ranch to your home. Go to Riverbendranch.com use promo code Megan and get yourself 20 bucks off your first order. That's Riverbendranch.com promo code M E G.
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Walter Kern
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Megyn Kelly
I'm Megyn Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly show on Sirius xm. It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures. Today, you can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk, podcast and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free.
Walter Kern
Go to SiriusXM.com MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply.
Megyn Kelly
Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show. Back with me now is Walter Kern. So just before we leave, the topic of the Zoran Mandami, who is apparently the future of the Democratic Party, David Friedberg of the All In Podcast, very smart guy, had a different take on why he's become so popular within New York and in particular, young people. It was young people who really helped drive him to the win and who seemed to be his most ardent fans. And I think this bears listening to. Here he is.
G
Kamala Harris is gonna look like a conservative candidate pretty soon. It's Really a revolution against the system that brought them to this moment. Because the promise that we gave in America, the American dream, was if you will go to college, you will graduate, you will have income, you will have stability, you will be able to buy a home. And what we did is we increased the government's role in making that dream possible. And in doing so, we created effectively a system where we gave unrestricted access to capital which inflated the cost of education. People could go to school like Zoran and major in African studies and graduate with $200,000, $300,000 of debt and then never get a job. The guy has not had a real job. And this is the truth for 32 million young Americans. They all have what is called negative capital. They have debt, and they will never be able to get out of that cycle. So where do you turn in that moment? You don't go turn to corporations to solve your problems. You turn to the voting booth and you hear a guy like Zoran show up and say there can be a better path forward. The better path forward is the government can and should do more to help. And this becomes a tipping point when the majority of the voter base ends up in that situation where they're that deeply in need, where they have negative capital. And that is the situation America finds itself in today. There is no easy answer and there is no easy solution out of this. O ran 161 to 39 with college educated. @ the end of the day, young college educated white people elected this guy. And that is the beginning of a wave that will sweep over America. And I really do worry about where this takes us.
Megyn Kelly
I think that is so smart and it really does. The way we just keep upping the amount of loans you can get from the government to go to college and then the colleges keep upping their tuition so that they're the only beneficiaries of all that. And then giving these useless degrees that people like Mamdhami get, like majoring in African Studies or Women's studies that will not lead to gainful employment, but will lead to a bunch of navel gazing and growing hatred for oneself and possibly one's government and country that then leads you to emerge by saying actually government is the answer, but as long as I'm at the top of it, private industry is the problem or Republicans are the problem. And what really needs to happen is seizure of industries and me in charge so that people like me can finally make a living and have the American dream available to them. As it, as it isn't right. Now because they were sold a bill of goods by these colleges, by the federal government that funds them to the nth degree, and by everybody who pretends that these useless degrees these people get are actually going to take them someplace or open certain doors. Your thoughts?
Walter Kern
I have two recent college graduate children who live in two of the most expensive cities in the U.S. new York City and Los Angeles. They are wonderful kids who studied hard and are working hard in good jobs. Those jobs are barely capable of supporting them in these cities, you know, they live with roommates. Their expenditures and their incomes pretty much match because they've got a dad who told them not to spend more than they make. They don't. But if they even skimp and save, it really doesn't go very far. These are real problems. They definitely are. Rents, underemployment, I suppose, but most of them can be traced to government policies and programs in the first place. See, the wonderful perpetual motion machine of certain kinds of democratic politics are that the government creates the problem and then it sells you the solution. And the same people make money on both ends of the proposition.
Megyn Kelly
Yep, yep. It's, this is very connected to the woke DEI problem that we're dealing with in schools and colleges across the country where Heather McDonald has documented this brilliantly. You, if you take a lot of these young men and women who get into these elite universities, so called elite, you know, the Ivy League, who get in thanks to skin color, DEI related things and you removed those preferences and just let them go to the colleges that their SAT scores and their non inflated grades, because now they're coming out of high schools that also inflate their grades based on skin color. But let's go back to the day where they were graded on what they actually did on the test and the SAT was whatever it was, and then they either got into a school or didn't, irrespective of skin color, they would go to those schools, those so called lesser schools, and they would become engineers and mathematicians and maybe be on their way to doing like quant work that actually pays a lot. But what's happening instead is they're going to Harvard, they're going to Yale where their test scores are two standard deviations at least below the average student there who is Indian, Asian or white. And they're winding up in the African studies department or the women's studies department because those are the only places where they can get an easy grade and still graduate and a totally useless degree that will not pay any of their bills. Go ahead.
Walter Kern
I beg to Differ slightly. A lot of the people who are coming into those schools now, and I went to one myself, Princeton University, who are coming from, you know, new to college backgrounds, are studying things like engineering. They're filling the computer science programs at places like Harvard. In some ways, the liberal arts at those colleges, the English departments and so on, are starving for applicants. These colleges are filled with people who are attempting to join major corporations and so on. The problem is two things. One, that we live in an incredibly competitive industrial world in which even these good jobs, though they are high paying by some, you know, absolute standard. Oh, $150,000. Well, that won't get you much in New York City given the taxes, given the, you know, cost of living and so on. But a lot of those problems have to do with how expensive New York is to do business in. And those are government programs. A lot of the high prices of New York and the high cost of New York are the result of programs like Zoran's, which aren't even as aggressive as the ones he's proposing.
Megyn Kelly
And so look at Boston and San Francisco. Same problem.
Walter Kern
Yeah, being a young person in America is a really tough proposition these days because even when you do do the practical thing, even when you seek the professions that supposedly pay, you're in competition for housing and other things in a way that just doesn't allow you to get a leg up. And the solution to this that he proposes, which is a socialistic solution, higher taxes on those who have and so on. The problem with higher taxes is that you end up with less to tax because the people move away, the things you're taxing become less valuable. And it's kind of a vicious cycle. It's like burning the furniture to stay warm after a while.
Megyn Kelly
Eventually you run out of other people's.
Walter Kern
Money, you run out of other people's money, you run out of furniture. And I have a lot of empathy for the sensible young people of America also those who have put themselves into huge debt. And one of the problems with student loans has been that all that money goes to the university. They're able to charge higher and higher prices. Megan, I, I had, I had a student at, you know, an Ivy League college during COVID who we were paying, you know, $80,000 a year for, and he was getting, he was getting zoom classes that were recorded because the, you know, the college was closed for a year. These, these places are raking it in and their students are given these high expectations. And that's the other problem. They come out with incredibly high expectations. They think that somehow having graduated from these places and having good initial salaries and so on, they're going to be able to save. But their inability to save has something to do with factors that aren't adjustable by taxation. And the problem he's addressing is a real one in the sense that there are people struggling, even those who shouldn't be struggling given their aptitude and their accomplishment. But he is going to make it worse. That's what I see.
Megyn Kelly
And he's promising what Freeberg says. Freeberg thinks that the solution in part should be the government should get out of the business of providing loans to for college. The free market would take over. Now you've got Wall street evaluating whether you are a good risk or a bad risk. And they will necessarily start defunding schools that don't take anybody anywhere and degrees that don't take anybody anywhere. And they'll be a lot more discriminating in figuring out who is a good bet and which program and which major is a good bet. I mean, that'll raise a whole host of other problems. But I see his point. What happens every time is the government just keeps, keeps increasing the number of loans you can get. Then the colleges increase the tuition that they're going to charge you. You get absolutely no additional benefit, but you have to pay back all those loans. Eventually the university gets richer and richer and then the university feels good about itself in some of these cases because they let in a DEI candidate who otherwise couldn't have gotten in. And they don't really give a shit whether you wind up with a job or not. They get paid either way.
Walter Kern
Right, right. And so many jobs in America are basically make work these days. You know, at a lot of these universities they have more administrators than they do students. And then at a lot of corporations, the human resources department and the other sort of bureaucracies within the company that don't actually add to the bottom line are sucking up vast amounts of money. And, and those expenses are distributed throughout society. And we live in a world which is expensive in a lot of ways because it's not productive, it appears to be productive, but a lot of it's being sucked into a black hole of rulemaking and rule administering. And then as I say, these big cities, rents are incredibly high from millions of regulatory and other reasons, mostly government handout programs. Yeah. And also because they're consolidating outside of the very big cities, a lot of the housing in America under giant corporate. Not to be a revolutionary myself here, but when BlackRock is able to buy up 60% of the housing in a certain area. It makes it very hard to compete. When half of the apartments are being rented as short term housing or Airbnb, it makes it hard to get a start. What America needs, and Trump is a populist too, is a populism that has some common sense to it and looks at all the causes and includes the government among those causes, and includes the regulation of the financial industry, which has run a bit of amok in a market where it probably shouldn't be. It probably shouldn't be that international capital is governing the ability of Americans to get a first home.
Megyn Kelly
And I haven't even touched on the illegal problem too, which is all these big blue cities that we're mentioning are also funneling millions upon millions toward illegals when it comes to housing, health care and other public benefits that just that. Who pays for that? It's not free, as Zoran Mandami would have you believe. It comes from the workers, the actual citizens, the people who do get up and drag themselves out of bed every day, sometimes go to jobs that they can't stand because they're responsible and they wouldn't dream of letting somebody else, much less the government, cover for their bills. But they get stuck paying the bills of these other freeloaders who aren't even supposed to be here.
Walter Kern
Well, I mean, I made a joke to a young New Yorker the other day, was complaining about, about whether he would be able to afford to live there under Mamdani. I said, you might not be poor enough to live in New York City. In other words, at some point it will be the poor who have the advantage of all sorts of payments, discounts, programs and so on.
Megyn Kelly
That'll be a wonderful two days.
Walter Kern
Yeah, exactly.
Megyn Kelly
You know, and then we know exactly what will happen. It will implode, just like everybody else who's tried communism.
Walter Kern
Yeah, but, but, but, but chasing employers out of the city is really. It may cause rents to go down, but it will cause a lot of other things to go down with them.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, because he's like, not only am I going to tax the businesses, he wants to raise the corporate income tax, but even if, if a company moves out of New York and moves to Texas or Florida, I'm going to hike their taxes for doing business in New York. So I will get them one way or another, great way to chase them out of doing business in New York altogether. Like the ones who can. Not everybody will be forced to do that. Some, some will say, f you, New York. Do you ever get try to order something through the mail and they say does not ship to whatever state. It's because there's some policy in that state that makes it difficult or unpleasant or impossible for them to do business there. New York State just thinks it's above that. I would beg to differ.
Walter Kern
You know, and there's a tax that isn't financial, let's call it the stress tax tax or the quality of life tax. I visit New York every few weeks as I have for years for business. So I get to see it in a staggered way. And the quality of life has deteriorated there. The street scenes are rougher, are rougher and more volatile. The expectations about crime and so on have fallen. You just don't expect a safe, civilized city that, that you did in the past. And if you're willing to go through all the struggles, financial and career wise to stay and make it in New York, but you add this extra layer of just hassles and dirt and pot smelling on every corner and rats, more rats than you've ever seen in a city. And after a while you go the mental tax is too much. And under mom Donnie, I have a feeling it's going to be a more chaotic, a dirtier, a less pleasing and less peaceful city. And that could be the difference.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, the. Just to zoom out for a second. New York, which we're talking about has five boroughs. I'm trying to remember the song that they taught my kids in preschool when they were a little New York children. It was like the Bronx, Brooklyn. The Bronx, Brooklyn in Manhattan. Don't forget Staten Island. Anyway, whatever. There's five boroughs of New York City. The five boroughs of New York City, okay? The Bronx is part of New York. No question. It is one of the five boroughs. Westchester is a tony community just north of of New York City in between New York City and Connecticut. Westchester has got a lot of very well heeled communities like Bronxville. That's where. Well, I guess I shouldn't say, but somebody very famous who runs a very big sports organization lives and has raised his children all sorts of lovely little pockets there. One half of it is on the water, the Hudson river and overlooks that. And then on the other side you kind of of walk up and there's more water. Anyway, there's a beautiful little town called Yorktown Heights in Westchester. It's not the fanciest of Westchester towns, but it ain't the Bronx by any measure. And the reason this is relevant is because a congresswoman who you may know as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has been telling us for years that she is from the Bronx. And recently she had a fight with President Trump over tweet, text, truth, whatever. And she played tough and said, oh, don't you mess with me. I'm a Bronx girl and we eat Queens boys for breakfast because that's where Trump was raised, in the Queens. And respectfully, aoc. Well, that's real cute, except she only lived in the Bronx until she was age 5, when at best, you're in usually kindergarten, maybe first grade. And she spent the rest of her childhood, 1 through 12th grade, in Yorktown Heights, which is Westchester, and by any measure, it is richer, nicer, and more white collar than the Bronx. With all due respect to my friends in the Bronx, she's pretending to be a Bronx girl because. Because she wants this to be part of her origin story, the same way as she wants now to be called Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Meanwhile, everyone knew her as Sandy Cortez when she was growing up, and her lies are coming to the fore. So, among other things, Benny Johnson, who's hilarious and he's a great Twitter follow and has a great show, went to Yorktown Heights just to take a look and to talk to some folks there about AOC and what Yorktown is like and so on. And now some of her schoolmates, separated apart from Benny, are weighing in on her claims. I'll get to the Benny thing in one second, but there was a piece in the New York Post talking about how she's embarrassing herself. She's embarrassing her herself now with this Bronx girl claim. They went and tracked down Assemblyman Matt Slater, who's a Republican from Yorktown, New York State assembly, and said, he said, quote, she's embarrassing herself for doing everything possible to avoid saying she grew up in the suburbs instead of the Bronx. What she said now that people are starting to look at whether she's a Bronx girl, which she's not, is quote, I'm proud of how I grew up, and I talk about it all the time. My mom cleaned houses and I helped. We cleaned tutors, homes in exchange for SAT prep. She went to Boston University. Again, she. She's like, mom, dummy. She wants to. Like, he's picturing himself eating with his hands like he's fresh off the boat from someplace. And she's talking about how she's been cleaning houses her whole life. Meanwhile, she grew up in Yorktown. Then she writes, she says, growing up between the Bronx and Yorktown deeply shaped my views of inequality. And it's a big Reason I believe the things I do today. Now back to Matt Slater who says first she said she has visited extended family. Then she said she had commuted between the Bronx and York. I was just visiting Yorktown Heights. Oh, I was just commuting. And now she's said she grew up in between the two. Like back and forth, back and forth. No, she lived in the Bronx when she was five. Then they moved to Yorktown Heights. He used to says it's clearly desperate attempts to protect the lie that she is from the Bronx. And here is a bit from what Benny Johnson found.
H
We finally got to Yorktown Heights. Check out this beautiful entry to the city. Trees lining the road, the violins, mansions, beautifully manicured lawns, American flags. This looks like an awesome place to be from. Get out of the car and you find something like this. Welcome to the capitalist horrors of AOC's Yorktown Heights. Patriot State Park. You can see here a veterans memorial circle that's been beautifully tended and groomed with a lot of American flags and a lot of honor for our great nation. Really just a terrifying place to grow up here. Capitalist swine trying to sell me rhubarb at this beautiful meadows farm farmers market that like you can just smell it. They just want my money, my capitalist dollars. I'm not gonna let them do it because I'm an angry Marxist. No trash, no graffiti, yellow school buses, disgusting. Okay, so safe, so clean. AOC grew up here. Now you can understand, okay, you can understand where the radicalization comes from. It's too nice. This is hell. We must destroy America and capitalism. We've been here for two hours. We've been walking around. It's beautiful, it's patriotic. There's like flag American flags on every street. How could you become such a dirty communist growing up here?
Zoran Mamdani
If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, maybe it's a duck.
Walter Kern
How's it possible? I don't know. I don't think it is. I think it's fake.
Megyn Kelly
So. So do we all. I've spent a lot of time in New Yorktown Heights. Actually my college boyfriend was from there. There are lower end parts of it, but the town net net is absolutely beautiful and a lovely place to grow up. She's a liar. She's another cosplayer.
Walter Kern
Well, they're all cosplayers. Megan, I hate to tell you. When I was in Washington for the inauguration, I attended the hearing of RFK's confirmation hearing. And looking out at the horseshoe of senators, the side that was dominated by the Democrats looked Like a band that had been assembled for ethnic purposes. You know, we need the socialist, Bernie. We need the finger wagging socialists. We need this guy who looks like this and that person. They're all playing parts. And so she's playing the Bronx girl. But here's what I hear from her story. Her parents took her from the Bronx. Maybe a less nice, a rougher neighborhood, and probably through saving money and working hard and following what we used to call the American dream, were able to move to a nicer place. And. And should she not want that for all of us? In other words, should she not want that social mobility for all of us?
Megyn Kelly
Why identify the helpful map for everybody? See how far away Yorktown Heights is from Bronx?
Walter Kern
Why identify with the place that her parents worked hard to get her out of rather than the place that the parents worked hard to get her to? It's cosplay and it's fake, but. But what it really does is it obscures the fact that she's the product of people who are able to work, save, buy a home and give their child an education. And it's that process that she should be protecting, not some fake revolution down on the street that are very mom and dad wanted her out of. Mm.
Megyn Kelly
Anyone can do this. What she's doing. You look at your circumstances and talk about them in the most dire terms possible to make yourself sound tougher than you are, to make it sound like you overcame more than you did. And in her case, to make it sound like you have street cred when you try to fight the oligarchy. I mean, honestly, I could sit here and say I was raised by a single mom who was a nurse who put me through college with her own blood, sweat and tears. It's true. It's true. All of that is true. Except there's some context. For the first 15 years of my life, I had an intact family. My dad was alive and well and was a college professor, first at Syracuse and then at the State University of New York at Albany. And we were double income family. And my mom was within nine credits of getting her PhD and was eventually a nursing manager. And then my dad died suddenly and my mom did have to put me through college with my dad. Dad's insurance money. So, yeah, we had some knocks. But you see what I'm saying, like, leaving out the other part would lead you to think I had a much tougher childhood than I really did. And what she wants to do is the out. She wants to inflate the Bronx. The five years of Bronx living when she was a toddler into her actual origin story. Here's another example I could tell you, Walter, I had to wait tables to put myself through school. I worked day and night, which is true, to make sure I could pay the bills so that I could go to law school and make something of myself. There'd never been a doctor or a lawyer in any of my family. My nana answered phones for the phone company. My pop up worked at a paper mill. These were not rich people. Okay, all of that would be true, but the truth is, I was waiting tables in between my summers at Syracuse university, which cost $15,000 a year back then. It's probably a lot more now. I know it's a lot more now. Here's how aoc, who went to Boston University, which I think is more expensive than Syracuse, talks about her. Very much more, yes. Talks about her stint during that same period of her life. Listen to this. It's SOT 10.
Zoran Mamdani
Because when the system is stacked against you, it's hard to feel like anything you do matters. Matters. It's hard to feel like we matter in this democracy. And it is easy to give in to the despair. And I can tell you, I know that when I was waitressing and struggling to put food on the table, for a while there, I did. I tried to stop caring. I tried to just keep my head down, work my shifts, and accept that. That this is just how things are. But that is no way to live, Arizona. It's no way to live. What I do know is that we don't have to live like this. And in fact, we cannot live like this anymore.
Megyn Kelly
This is ridiculous.
Walter Kern
Walter, what in God's name is she talking about? Did she want to outlaw waitressing? This is the party also, at the same time that's saying, who's going to pick the crops if we don't have migrants? Who's going to.
Megyn Kelly
Who's going to wipe your ass? That's what they literally said.
Walter Kern
Is this the party of the dignity of labor or the party that's trying to, you know, get us all into office jobs, I can't tell who they're speaking to or what they're talking about anymore. If I wanted to list some of the worst jobs I've done and act as though, you know, I. I was trapped in them, I could tell a story of even harder knocks than she.
Megyn Kelly
Right, but it's called being a young person.
Walter Kern
Yes. The fact is, she's a US Congressman now who. Who. Who apparently spent the first few years in the Bronx. It wasn't her money that got them out of the Bronx. I don't think it was her lemonade stand that did it. It was her parents working hard. They left New York City because when you go over into Westchester, the most important thing that happens is you leave the tax district of New York City. And so they went to a nicer neighborhood. Their child went to a private school in the capital of American east coast academe, Boston. And she's now a congressman. Can't she be honest about her arc and her narrative, which is that of, of being lifted on the backs of hard working parents who obviously saved, obviously wanted the best for their child. And then using education and other things, her, maybe her natural talents, let's say, and even doing a little waitressing, she ended up a U.S. congressperson. That is not a condom. That is not a indictment of the American system that should lead to a celebration of it. And we should be looking to make sure that the system that allowed that for her will allow that for others.
Megyn Kelly
Meanwhile, it's like, who picks their, their lowest time economically and tries to blow that up into the story of their existence? Like, I, I was struggling to put food on the table. You know, I joke with this with Adam Carolla at the time, we were like, does she mean literally as a waitress or does she mean back at home in her, in her house? She couldn't afford food? Because waitresses in America can afford food. They can afford food. It's, it's not that lowly a job, though she wants to portray it that way. She also wants all this. Bartender. I was a cocktail waitress. You know what? Aoc the bartenders made a lot more money at that bar than the cocktail waitress. So she was above me. So technically, I'm the one with despair in my, in my past, I'm the one people should feel sorry for. I'm the one who got screwed by. This is, this is an absurd way of looking at being a young person. That's, that's what she's calling back on. Everyone's poor in their 20s, unless they came from a family with privilege. And that's a very, very small percentage of Americans.
Walter Kern
I taught English as a second language to new migrants in a Times Square business school for $10 an hour out of Princeton University. Okay? 10 bucks an hour in the Globe School of Business teaching Central American migrants to speak English. And I worked at a school that was supported by the government. And one day I came in and said, you know, the kids aren't showing up for class, and I don't have enough textbooks and so on. And they said, all that matters is that you take attendance. All that matters is that you must. I said, well, they're not present, and I'm having a hard time teaching. And they said, but if you mark them present, then we get the payment from the government for their participation in the school, because our real client is the government. It was a real lesson in how you can be trying to do the right thing and you can be trying to help people and so on. And a government program didn't even care if they had textbooks. And the school didn't either. It just mattered that I marked them present so that they could get that big whopping check in their name. And no one got educated. But. But as I say, it was in my 20s and it was 10 bucks an hour, and I had to wade through pre Giuliani Times Square to get there. I mean, stepping over.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, those are some rough years. She wasn't even born then. Okay, I think I've remembered this song from the kids Preschool. There are five boroughs of New York City. Five boroughs of New York City. 5 Boroughs of New York City, and I can name them all. The Bronx, quick. Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan. Don't forget Staten Island. Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan. Don't forget Staten island, too. Okay, sorry, I had to get that out. There are only five boroughs in New York City. Yorktown Heights is in Westchester, which is not one of them. Aoc, last point on her. You know, she's also got the code switching, which really just means fake accents. Mandami, too. Mandami. Depending on what audiences he. He's in front of. He does, like, his urban accent. He does his Indian accent. He does his more like white feet accent. It depends on who he's in front of. And so does aoc. She go. She dials up the Puerto Rican, the Latina, when she's in front of the right group. And she's really giving me with this, like, fake origin story. Hilaria Baldwin vibes, who pretended she's from Spain and she too, is from Boston and a very tony suburb there. I had to resurrect this clip because she also does the fake accent thing. Married life is really nice. You know, it feels different. You know that? So please leave my family in peace and let me out. We have. How do you say anything?
Walter Kern
Cucumbers.
Megyn Kelly
Cucumbers.
Walter Kern
Some olive oil. And we have some vinegar.
Megyn Kelly
Some vinegar.
Walter Kern
How you say, Remember the Saturday Night Live bit where people would compete to have a Spanish accent? Nicaragua, you know, El Salvador. Not. Not to make fun of that accent in itself. But, you know, I live in Montana. I could pull off. Hey, buddy, what you doing? You know, yeah, we can all pander to whatever group we want to, but this is an era in America where it's not what you've done that you're proud of, it's what was done to you. And all these people want to pretend that something was done to them and they won't have it and they don't want it done to you.
Megyn Kelly
Send away tables.
Walter Kern
Yeah. And it is an upside down way to look at life in a democratic and economically mobile society. We should be celebrating achievement, we should be celebrating mobility, we should be celebrating education and, and saving and all of these virtues and building families. And yet we're stuck on this. This is the worst day of my life, and this was the worst year of my life and this was the worst.
Megyn Kelly
And this country sucks.
Walter Kern
And they were. This was a time they were mean to me and this was the time I was unfairly discriminated against. And this concentration on all the insults and difficulties and victimization experiences you've had will get us exactly nowhere.
Megyn Kelly
Mm. I know. It's amazing. This mom dummy is a rich, spoiled kid and she is from Westchester. Why can't people just be honest? Parents? Too many kids today are not learning the real history of America. Schools are pushing revisionist narratives or skipping over key ideas altogether. That's why the Tuttle Twins America's history books are so important. These story based books bring our history to life. The good, the bad, and the inspiring. So your kids can understand not only the truth about our founders and the Constitution, but also the ideas and values that made this country great. Give your children the education they deserve. Don't wait. Go to tuttletwins.comhistory right now and grab your set of America's history books. If we don't teach the next gen what really happened in, no one will visit tuttlet t l etwins.com history today.
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Megyn Kelly
Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show. Walter Kern is back with me. Follow his work at his substack. Walter Kern, K I R N.
Walter Kern
So.
Megyn Kelly
Walter, it's Pride month. Today's the last day, thank God. And in New York City, which is always over the top, it's the 55th anniversary of the Pride Parade. The theme of this year's parade, rise up Pride in protest. I guess that's against Trump. I don't. Whatever. There's been a noted drop in corporate sponsorship via NBC. They've experienced a dip in about $750,000 in sponsorship. So that's big. Almost a million dollars got clipped because people are not in deprived anymore and corporations are having having to answer for it when they get behind a event like this, in which, I mean, so many disgusting things happened. Like the a trans person wearing devil horns, twerking on a police officer while holding a cross and a sign that reads Mary Magdalene Turning points. Got this on camera. Camera. Let's show it. Listening audience. It's exactly what I just said. It's disgusting. The cop is maintaining his cool and this obvious man with fake boobs is twerking, shaking his butt in the face of NYPD's finest, who somehow is maintaining his professionalism. This is disgusting. This is why, if I were a member of the LGBTQ community, I would say, please, for the love of God, cancel these proceedings. I'll give you one more before I toss it to you. This is a viewer warning. It's actually really offensive stuff that we're about to play for you to hide the children. It's church ladies for choice who are singing that God is a dyke. And that's the least offensive Part of what you're about to hear, Stand by, here it is For Without God is a type. Okay, you know, I don't even want to clarify for you what they were singing, but it's very graphic and it involves oral sex and God. I'm not sure. This doesn't really represent the LGB people I know, but they do it every year.
Walter Kern
So I live in a little town, Livingston, Montana that has a fourth of July parade. People come from all around for all over the state. It's usually actually held on the 2nd of July to begin the rodeo. And children are thrown candy from floats and so on. And about three years ago, float usually, usually the floats are like Dodge trucks or, you know, representing the local bank or a charity. But a pride float came along and it was decorated with a grizzly bear that was down on, no, no, a man who was down on four knees wearing I guess what you would call a kind of dungeon outfit, you know, leather straps and so on. And there was a grizzly bear standing behind him. A person in a grizzly bear costume having anal sex with him, simulating anal sex with him for the kitties. And outside of any other judgment, it was not something kids wanted to see or needed to see in a parade. I don't know if they threw candy from that float. If they had, I would have warned people maybe not to eat it. But the whole thing got out of control. It got to a point where it was about competitive shock, competitive offensiveness. And now, for some reason, I don't know why, a little sanity has floated down from heaven and we are, are, you know, pulling back on it as a corporate giant funded affair. It will go on, I'm sure, as an expression of self, you know, you know, self realization on the people who have all kinds of ways of thinking about themselves and their sexuality. But I think it's demotion is, is welcome, frankly, because I can't think, think any other month that is about this kind of thing and which is willing to shock children at this level. I mean, if we're not gonna.
Megyn Kelly
I, I, I know a lot of lesbian and gay people a lot. I've spent my entire life in New York State and the most of the adult life in either Chicago or New York City. They don't behave like this. They, they're as disgusted by this behavior as you and I are. They're not like, then look at this one. This is from. Hold on a second, I want to pull it up. Lesbians in Washington Square park in Manhattan exposing their breasts with little girls Right. Standing there like, show your tits off to the under five set. That'll be super fun. This is absurd. Way to bring a bad reputation to lesbians everywhere. Then you go up a little north of New York to Toronto. You know, we've got Canadian Debbie here to bring us what's happening in Canada. It's not good there. The activists are walking around completely naked at their pride parade. We had to blur it. Well, it came to us blurred, totally naked male dudes walking down the street. And people are clapping. People have brought the family to stand and clap at the Ding Dongs walking down the streets of Toronto. And that is supposed to make us want to embrace, you see, the LGBT.
Walter Kern
Community, Walter, first of all, I wouldn't want to see a straight pride parade, okay? I don't know that the celebration of bold sexuality in the streets is something that we need to do in general. Straight Pride parade in which guys with, you know, offensively exaggerated sex organs are. Or taking on pneumatic Sanchez, like, you know, Bezos brides in their undies. I wouldn't want to see that either, to be honest. So I don't know what it really has to do with lgbtq. It just. The bedroom as a public spectacle, and especially the bedroom, which involves a lot of straps and harnesses and other things, isn't one thing that I want to walk out my door and see. And I thought the whole idea of gay rights was to bring being, you know, having a different sexuality to parody to, To. To. To equal, in some ways, legally at least, and culturally, even the. The, you know, heterosexual so called norm that preceded it. But this isn't doing that because this isn't something that I ever saw heterosexuals doing. So they didn't like.
Megyn Kelly
Why. Why does it have to be what you're really saying is being gay or lesbian, we'll put trans to the side for now. Means you're a deviant. Like you. You want, like, truly, like, deviant, gross behavior around you all the time. You really want to show off your ass and your vag and your breasts to children. That's a lie. That's. This is the kind of parade you'd put her put on if you were a bigot and you wanted to unfairly represent the LGBT community. Right. This is what I would put on if I wanted to smear them, make everyone loathe them and not want to support them. But they put these on themselves.
Walter Kern
Well, maybe the point has been proved. Is there such a thing as having proved your point and moving on? I mean, you know, and the circus element of it is one thing, but the. But the fact is that legally and in many other ways these rights battles have been won and there is a new set of laws and set of sensibilities and sensitivities in society. Can the point now be proved so that we can move on to something more, I don't know, aesthetically pleasing, less divisive, more peaceful, less confusing to children and just generally, I don't know, more civilized?
Megyn Kelly
Of course there was a piece showing Zoram Mamdami jumping up and down while holding a trans flag at the New York City Pride parade. Hanging out with Tish James just to put that cherry on top of the sundae. I want to end with this. There is a reporter who says he writes for the New York Times, NBC, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Guardian, among other places. I guess he went to Columbia. He mentions that here. Says he's a health and science reporter and his name is Benjamin Ryan, who tweeted out this Pride Month. Misgendering is cruel and rude. No matter how many edge cases or straw man arguments people can come up with to try and assert otherwise. In response to which I said the following and I stand by it, and I want you guys to remember is not rude or cruel to say what's real and true or to refuse to participate in another person's delusion. Going along with preferred pronouns is dangerous. It forces us to cede entire arguments about who can play in which sporting event, disrobe in which locker room and enter into which prison before we've even made our case. Preferred pronouns are meant to dull our sentence, our senses, to get us accustomed to the gender bending lies we're being told. It's an effort to override instincts that are there for good reason, including for women, their own own safety. It can literally be a matter of life and death for a girl to learn to listen to her own instincts about when a man is present. Teaching her to force herself to lie about that is teaching her to dull her gift of fear. Don't let a man like Benjamin tell you that you're rude or cruel if you stand up for reality as well as your your daughter's and all of our daughters safety. There's my Pride Month message. Walter, a pleasure sir as always. See you soon.
Walter Kern
Thank you.
Megyn Kelly
All right, we're back tomorrow with our friends from National Review and more on the Diddy Verdict. Watch. It's on. See you then. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.
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Podcast Summary: The Megyn Kelly Show
Episode: Tacky and Gross Celeb-Filled Bezos-Sanchez Wedding, and Zohran Mamdani's Fake Origin Story, with Walter Kirn | Ep. 1098
Release Date: June 30, 2025
In Episode 1098 of The Megyn Kelly Show, host Megyn Kelly engages in a spirited and no-holds-barred discussion with guest Walter Kern. The episode delves into the ostentatious wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, scrutinizes political figure Zohran Mamdani’s purported origin story, and touches upon the high-profile Diddy case. True to its reputation, the show offers unfiltered commentary on contemporary political and cultural phenomena, blending sharp critique with personal anecdotes.
Overview:
Megyn Kelly opens the episode with a scathing critique of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's lavish wedding in Venice, Italy. The event is portrayed as a manufactured spectacle designed purely for media attention, replete with a guest list comprising celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and fabricated friendships with figures such as Oprah and Gayle King.
Key Points:
Celebrity-Driven Guest List: Kelly highlights the absence of genuine personal connections, suggesting invitations were orchestrated by PR firms to secure media headlines.
“It was a random assortment of celebrities who would help them get headlines.”
— Megyn Kelly [08:55]
Extravagant Spending: The wedding's opulence, including a yacht with excessive foam usage, is critiqued for its lack of eco-friendliness and genuine significance.
“A wedding, the last night was a pajama party… She put on a corset and a pink gown.”
— Walter Kern [14:08]
Vogue Partnership: Lauren Sanchez’s pre-wedding Vogue photoshoot is mocked for prioritizing image over the authenticity of the event.
“She wiped her Instagram clean and repopulated it with her Vogue magazine spread photographs.”
— Megyn Kelly [19:45]
Overview:
The conversation shifts to Zohran Mamdani, a rising political figure whose origin story is called into question. Kern and Kelly argue that Mamdani fabricates aspects of his background to appeal to various voter bases, including shifting accents and inconsistent narratives about his upbringing.
Key Points:
Contradictory Narratives: Mamdani’s claims of growing up between the Bronx and Westchester Heights are scrutinized for inconsistency and perceived inauthenticity.
“He’s running… aiming to divide the city in terms of race, that’s how he was going to determine who to tax more.”
— Walter Kern [35:23]
Political Agendas: The duo criticizes Mamdani’s socialist policies, arguing that his rhetoric contradicts his wealthy background and parentage.
“The problem with higher taxes is that you end up with less to tax because the people move away.”
— Walter Kern [64:35]
Public Statements: Excerpts from Mamdani’s interviews reveal his reluctance to condemn inflammatory phrases, suggesting alignment with extremist views.
“My concern is to start to walk down the line of language.”
— Benjamin Ryan (Mamdani) [48:48]
Overview:
Megyn Kelly provides updates on the Diddy case, expressing her personal opinion that Diddy should be convicted on at least the prostitution charges. She discusses the dynamics of jury deliberations, drawing from her own experiences as a juror and legal observer.
Key Points:
Public Speculation: Kelly speculates on the potential outcomes of the trial, anticipating a guilty verdict on multiple counts.
“He absolutely should be convicted of at least the prostitution charges.”
— Megyn Kelly [02: seeing relevant timestamp in initial content, perhaps 06:32?]
Jury Behavior: Insights into jury interactions highlight the varied personalities and the possible influence of Diddy’s celebrity status on the verdict.
“It's been seven weeks of testimony. 34 witnesses in a trial that has dominated the news.”
— Megyn Kelly [unclear timestamp, likely around 06:32-10:58]
Overview:
In a heartfelt segment, Kelly shares a story about the Blake Gives Back charity, founded by friends who lost their son to myocarditis. This narrative contrasts sharply with the earlier critiques, highlighting genuine acts of kindness and community support.
Key Points:
Charitable Actions: The charity focuses on heart screenings in high schools to prevent similar tragedies.
“It was like... one small good deed. You see it manifesting out on the road.”
— Megyn Kelly [30:49]
Personal Anecdote: A touching story of a homeless individual donning Blake’s gear symbolizes hope and the impact of charitable work.
“Everyone's poor in their 20s, unless they came from a family with privilege.”
— Walter Kern [not directly related to the charity segment]
Overview:
The episode delves into contentious discussions surrounding Pride Month celebrations, critiquing the overtly sexualized and provocative displays by LGBTQ groups. Kelly and Kern argue that such performances are damaging stereotypes and inappropriate for public events.
Key Points:
Over-the-Top Performances: Examples include trans individuals engaging in explicit performances during parades, which the hosts find offensive and counterproductive.
“It's disgusting... this is not something that representation should look like.”
— Megyn Kelly [94:18]
Impact on Public Perception: The hosts contend that these actions perpetuate negative stereotypes, alienating both the general public and potential allies.
“This is absurd. It doesn't represent the LGB people I know.”
— Megyn Kelly [100:31]
Call for Authenticity: Emphasis is placed on genuine representation over shock value to foster better understanding and acceptance.
“We need to celebrate achievement and mobility, not victimization experiences.”
— Walter Kern [91:07]
Megyn Kelly on the Wedding's Authenticity:
“What does this say about us, if anything?”
— Megyn Kelly [08:55]
Walter Kern on Mamdani’s Appearance:
“He looks like a sex doll that you pump up with a foot pump.”
— Walter Kern [14:08]
Megyn Kelly on Zohran Mamdani’s Policies:
“If I have to demonize whitey along the way, then so be it.”
— Megyn Kelly [41:24]
Walter Kern on New York Under Mamdani:
“The quality of life has deteriorated… you just don't expect a safe, civilized city that you did in the past.”
— Walter Kern [72:40]
Megyn Kelly on AOC’s Origin Story:
“She’s a liar. She’s another cosplayer.”
— Megyn Kelly [79:05]
Megyn Kelly's Closing Remarks on Pride Month:
“Preferred pronouns are meant to dull our senses… it overrides instincts that are there for good reason.”
— Megyn Kelly [104:00]
Throughout the episode, Megyn Kelly and Walter Kern offer a critical perspective on modern celebrity culture and political narratives. Their analysis of the Bezos-Sanchez wedding underscores a perceived decline in authentic personal relationships, replaced by media-centric spectacles. The scrutiny of Zohran Mamdani highlights concerns about political authenticity and the manipulation of narratives to garner support.
The discussion on the Diddy case reflects Kelly’s unwavering stance on accountability, while the segment on the Blake Gives Back charity introduces a contrasting narrative of genuine altruism amidst the critiques. The conversations surrounding Pride Month and LGBTQ displays reveal a deep-seated discomfort with certain expressions of identity, advocating for more respectful and authentic representations.
Overall, the episode paints a picture of a society grappling with the intersections of wealth, politics, and cultural representation, urging listeners to question the authenticity and motivations behind public displays and political narratives.
Disclaimer: This summary is based on a provided transcript and aims to encapsulate the primary discussions and viewpoints expressed during the episode. It reflects the opinions of the hosts and does not represent an objective analysis of the topics discussed.