
Megyn Kelly is joined by Nicole Shanahan, "Back To The People" podcast host, to discuss the major executive orders Trump has signed in his first 48 hours, how he just ended DEI at federal agencies and universities, the challenges of implementation, liberals like Bill Maher calling out the ridiculous DEI focus and how it relates to the LA wildfires, how counterproductive DEI has proven to be, Trump’s major AI announcement, hundreds of billions being invested in the AI "infrastructure," the alarming discussion about AI and mRNA vaccines, the way some on the right and left are turning against RFK Jr. in absurd ways, and more. Then Sasha Stone, host of “Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning,” joins to discuss her personal story of leaving the Democratic party, her full MAGA conversion, being canceled publicly last year and what happened with advertisers, the media meltdown over Trump’s January 6 pardons and executive actions within his first 48 hours in office, the truth about those...
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Megyn Kelly
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show, live on Sirius XM channel 111, every weekday at noon East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show. President Trump has continued a relentless pace since taking office just 48 hours ago. On day two, he ordered the closure of all federal DEI offices. Yes. And according to a memo sent Yesterday, all federal DEI employees will be placed on paid leave by 5pm tonight. Good luck making use of those absolutely useless empty degrees. Plus, the crackdown on the border crisis is already in motion. That, too, is equally uplifting. Border czar Tom Homan said this morning They've already got 308 illegal migrant criminals in custody. Sanity and common sense are returning to America. And today we have two guests who have been tracking the shift in the culture in a way that's beyond politics. Later, someone whose podcast and substack I absolutely love. I'm her fan. I might be her biggest fan. Her name is Sasha Stone. She was with us a couple years ago, and I listen to her podcast all the time. And she's such a great cultural commentator. She just has a wisdom about her in seeing the forest for the trees. So we're gonna talk to her about where she thinks we are. She's also been a victim of the woke mob and been canceled herself as someone who she too campaigned for Joe Biden. I say too, because I often reference my friend in New York who campaigned for Joe Biden back in 2020, but who now is probably more to the right than I am. And Sasha's followed a similar trajectory. And Hollywood, you'll be stunned to hear, turned on her. In any event, we are going to start, though, today with someone who played a role in helping put Trump back in office, a former Democrat. You got two former Democrats on the show today, but now independents who started to tell the MAGA story through moving ads, the best ads of the entire campaign. Nicole Shanahan was RFKJ's vice presidential candidate, his running mate, and she hosts the Back to the People podcast. Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American Dream starts with purpose. By honoring your career calling, you can impact your family, friends, and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself. Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online on campus and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve Your unique academic, personal and professional goals. With over 340 academic programs as of September 2024, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others is yours. Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private Christian, affordable Visit gcu. Edu welcome back, Nicole.
Nicole Shanahan
Hi, Megan. Good to see you. Thanks for having me on.
Megyn Kelly
Likewise. Okay, so how are you feeling just in the wake of everything that's happened this week?
Nicole Shanahan
Well, very good. I didn't make it out to D.C. california's on fire and I wanted to be close to home. My entire community is here. Lots of people impacted. But I did watch with great enthusiasm seeing President Trump get to the Oval Office with piles of executive orders in front of him. I watched with great interest, read many of them, really happy the direction that these go. I think his base and many others in the country are very happy to see a return to sanity. And then the folks that are concerned that some of these actions might end up heavy handed, I think it's our responsibility to keep that conversation open. We're one country. We're one country for the people and we have a leader right now who understands how to get there. And so I think that here in California, I like to think of myself as serving a bridge of information. I don't try to add sensationalism in the conversation, but I do like to stick to the details and help alleviate through some of the misinformation that the mainstream media is politicizing.
Megyn Kelly
Mm. Well, I wanna tell the audience here's here are. This is Charlie Kirk posted this this morning. It's a list of the executive orders we got yesterday. Among other things, he writes as follows. On day two, the president restored merit based hiring at the faa. Yes, that's important. The people who governed the planes in the sky ending an insane Obama era push to put travelers lives in the hands of incompetence hired for diversity reasons. There. There should be no DEI hires anywhere, but certainly not at the faa. In, in medical schools, in residency programs, Anything involving human life. Even the far left must see how the insanity of it. Whether they do or they don't, it's stopping. Today at the faa, he ordered the closure of all federal DEI offices. As I said a moment ago, he ordered the repeal of LBA, LBJ's infamous executive order which mandated affirmative action instead of merit based hiring and federal contracting. That's huge. He prohibited the use of all racial discrimination or DEI at federal contractors and universities receiving taxpayer dollars. Now let's Just pause there. That is wonderful. I don't know how he enforced that. Prohibited the use of racial discrimination or dei, which is the same thing. It is the same thing. You. Racial discrimination against whites is illegal. It's, it's illegal against blacks, against Asians, all the groups. It doesn't make it any better to do it against whites because the country has a history of doing it to blacks. It's just not the way the law is written, the civil laws, civil rights laws. So he's saying you can't racially discriminate at universities that get taxpayer dollars, which is almost all of them. You can't use DEI at these universities. I mean, Nicole, you know as well as I do there's going to be a revolt. You can't tell these universities that because they won't listen.
Nicole Shanahan
You know, the conversation is happening. I was just on a phone call yesterday with a farmers association that went woke because it felt like it had to. And as a result, this farmers association wasn't actually able to do the things for the farmers that the farmers were asking. And so they went irrelevant. And that's what these policies do, is they make institutions that need to get stuff done irrelevant at best. At worst, it makes them dangerous. In the case of the fire department in la, these policies are dangerous policies. They normalize this idea of failing upwards, something that my friends and I are noticing all the time. These people are failing and they're getting promoted. And these positions are not ceremonial. They are being treated as if they are ceremonial. These are not ceremonial roles. These are roles requiring execution, performance excellence, competition. Competition is good. It's good for the people, it's good for the economy and it's necessary for the execution of duties.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, well, we've taken a massive step away from that, as you know, and this is the public's rejection. His election is the public's rejection of that nonsense. So I don't know what's going to happen at these universities. I, you know, that telling them that they are not allowed to use DEI if they receive taxpayer dollars, I just, I think they're just going to ignore it. So the question is, how, how does that get enforced? You know, does Trump actually pull the federal dollars when we get complaints?
Nicole Shanahan
Yeah, well, I can tell you ways that they can redact applicant information to take out anything related to race. I've worked on an AI that actually does that. That AI exists. It's being actually used in some district attorney's offices across the country to redact out any information about race and languages. Spoken and background. I mean, so it's possible to execute very seamlessly and I can argue it's actually a good use of AI. There's many bad, misguided uses of AI, but there's ways to enforce it. I don't know that you necessarily want to enforce it. It is in the best interest. The market demands that we get beyond race based dictation of policies. And so I believe that it is truly in the best interest of these universities because they're going to shoot themselves in the foot when these individuals go out into the world and they've basically been taught that they can fail up and they're going to be required to compete again in the market. And those individuals are not good donors to the universities down the road. So it's really, really, I think, in everyone's best interest. Just going back to basic economics. We need competition, we need real competition and policies that weaken our institutions. It's cannibalistic. They're cannibalizing their own reputations.
Megyn Kelly
It's also illegal. I mean, it's, it's blatantly illegal. You may not hire based on race at all. It cannot even be a factor that's really clear under the law. We just pretended for a few years that those laws did not exist. And like Trump's a hundred percent right, this is unconstitutional, this is unlawful to hire based on race at all. If they even consider a person being black, white, brown, Asian, whatever, it doesn't matter, it's unlawful. So they're gonna ignore that one at their peril. What he's saying here is we're going to enforce the law and they're going to have battles. Nicole, because we played this a while ago. I don't know if you remember this case because you're out in California. It happened at Stanford Law when Erwin Chemerinsky, who's the dean out there, had a bunch of students who he had over to his home, graciously know, get together and talk about the law, turned it into a pro Palestinian protest against him for like no particular reason and really got in his face, in the face of his wife. So he was in the news and he was alarmed, not his heels at the craz. Is that Cal Berkeley? Sorry. He was alarmed and on his heels about how crazy the DEI has gotten to the point where, you know, these pro Palestinian protesters couldn't see the awfulness of what had happened to the Israelis. Well, he's hashtag part of the problem because Erwin Chemerinsky is on camera saying he's totally pro racial Preferences when it comes to populating the staff at UCAL Berkeley. He knows he's not supposed to, but he just keeps it quiet. Here, watch this.
Sasha Stone
Ever I'm deposed, I'm gonna deny I said this to you. When we do faculty hiring, we're quite conscious that diversity is important to us. And we say diversity is important. It's fine to say that, but I'm very careful. When we have a faculty appointments committee meeting, anytime somebody says we should really prefer this candidate or this candidate because this person would add diversity, don't say that. You can think it, you can vote it, but our discussions are not privileged. So don't ever articulate that. That's what you're doing.
Megyn Kelly
That's what we're up against.
Nicole Shanahan
Yeah, yeah. It's misguided and it's misdirected. It's oddly destructive, self destructive, and we're up against it. But I think that these individuals also know that it's not producing the kind of academic rigor that their predecessors trained them into. And so, you know, and I understand that there's, again, you have to realize that there's outside influences for this. Just blatant Marxist influences. And it's deeply, deeply misguided. I oftentimes ask people, I'm like, well, what is it going to take to realize that our American system of merit and egalitarianism is at stake? Is it going to take your house burning down? Right. Like, you know, because that's happening, right? People's homes are literally burning down because of these policies. And, and I. And for many, that has been the case. Is it going to take your grandmother getting robbed on the streets of San Francisco to wake up? I'll tell you, amongst the Asian community, that has been the case. And they have woken up. If you have many of the, you know, California is home to a diversity of Asian Americans, and they're sick and tired of this as well. You know, growing up, the Asian community.
Megyn Kelly
Is the reason that affirmative action fell at universities. They filed that lawsuit saying, this cannot be. You cannot discriminate on the basis of race in admissions. In 2024, it was. And the Supreme Court finally agreed. Sorry, keep going.
Nicole Shanahan
Yeah, look it like the homes. I was raised in a home with a Chinese mother, and you know her. It, it is all about working hard. It is all about going to work and, and doing a good job and, and earning your way and realizing it's not always fair. And sometimes you'll be looked over for promotion. But that doesn't mean that you, you know, try to burn the place down. It means that you have to work harder and find good mentors and, and, and learn how to work within a community of people, all from different backgrounds and, and to really deliver value for your organization and, and for the people that you serve. If, if you are in a client based industry, it's showing up and making sure your clients are happy. I mean, some policies I've seen have encouraged people to turn on their own clients, to turn on their patients and say, well, it's their fault, they don't know what they're talking about. And it creates the spoiled entitlement that, you know, the, the people that I, I grew up with, you know, the people who said work hard and you can overcome poverty. None of us recognize this new world of, of, of race based entitlement. It's very, very bizarre.
Megyn Kelly
And just so destructive. So it's wonderful to see Trump doing this. You mentioned the LA fires. I know you're, you live a little north of that, you're in Northern California, but the, the debate that's unfolded in the wake of this and it's ongoing now that Palisades fire is, I think 63% contained. And I just heard my pal Janice Dean saying on Fox News this morning they expect rain this weekend. So that's good in the area. We're hoping and praying that's true. But you know, the whole thing has been a level of incompetence that we haven't seen in recent history. I mean, it's just been absolutely devastating. And the intense focus by the LAFD on DEI and promoting the fact that the fire chief is a lesbian and so are her top two lieutenants, which no one cares about at all. She just keeps introducing it into the national conversation has led to a lot of commentary, mostly on the right, but to his credit. Enter Bill Maher on the matter on his show this past Friday. And here's a little bit of that.
Nicole Shanahan
Look me in the eye and tell me anyone could have done worse. We just got our ass kicked by fire.
Megyn Kelly
The good news is our fire chief is a lesbian. Am I against a lesbian being chief?
Nicole Shanahan
Of course. Of course not.
Megyn Kelly
Do I think a lesbian can do the job?
Nicole Shanahan
Of course I do.
Megyn Kelly
And maybe she's the best person for the job.
Nicole Shanahan
Or maybe they really wanted a lesbian in that job and she's just the.
Megyn Kelly
Best lesbian for the job. And with essential services.
Nicole Shanahan
That's not good enough. Crowley's official bio says Chief Crowley leads.
Megyn Kelly
A diverse department, creating, supporting and promoting.
Nicole Shanahan
A culture that values diversity, inclusion and equity.
Megyn Kelly
While striving to meet and exceed the expectations of the communities. Well, you didn't exceed my expectations.
Sasha Stone
Was that.
Megyn Kelly
Which was that the whole city wouldn't burn down. Fair.
Nicole Shanahan
I, again, I would love someone to do a great job in their role. I wish that she was successful. I wish that we didn't have to have this conversation. I wish that DI policies weren't such a massive failure for the public. I am a classic liberal who, you know, loves to see diversity in the state of California, but it has to be around egalitarian merit. And that is not what's happened here. Our controller, who manages the finances of our state, she ran on dei and that was pretty much her biggest platform. You cannot make that your biggest platform when you are running for these roles. I'm sorry, it is inappropriate. It is not. What makes you qualified for these roles? What makes you qualified for these roles is your understanding of how to execute very, very well. And in the case of LA and the fires, we needed that reservoir full. We needed the departments well funded, we needed the fleets of vehicles properly maintained, and that wasn't happening. And again, the. The problem with DIY DEI failed was because they treated it as ceremonial. It's very misguided. And if you hear the talk in these communities, it's very much, you know, the whites had their time, now it's time for us. And they treat it as. It's as if it's the ceremonial passing of the guard from one group of ethnicities to another group of ethnicities. But that is wrong. That is not how you govern. I'm sorry. And if that did lead to success, it would be the first time in human history that merely basing competition on skin color, it conflates these things that are completely incompatible. And so it's not that it's wrong on its face, it's that it doesn't work. Right? It really, really doesn't work. And the idea of diversity is wonderful, but it can't be racist. And so again, they're conflating two terms, diversity and the function of racism. And so it's. It's problematic. We need to go back to common sense. Common sense requires us to look at an individual for their work and their actions and that alone, and not for their skin color.
Megyn Kelly
It's so crazy. I mean, I hear you say, I'm like, on behalf of all white people, our time is not over. It's not just like it's not over for Asians or brown people or black people. It is the American people's time that's it. Irrespective of your color, you've got a shot. Work hard, try harder. Look at J.D. vance. He has zero, zero family advantages other than love and a grandma who really believed in him. He had a drug addled mother, his father abandoned him. He's now our sitting vice president. It doesn't, it's, there's no, it's over. That's Ibram X Kendi thinking that, you know, you're, you're saying some people believe in where the answer to past discrimination against one group is current discrimination against another group. That's morally wrong and it is illegal. My white children have just as much of a shot and have absolutely no burden on them because of ancestry that as a black child does down the road, you know, or in the inner city. Even somebody who, with less financial advantage, which is actually a greater hill to climb. It's just absurd. And finally Trump is saying, no, we're not doing that. We're not letting you know in particular white boys and white men be the current, you know, pay yours for all of America's prior sins. That's totally insane. We're not doing it anymore. Here's one more. Keeping going on the things he did yesterday. Ordered federal buildings worldwide to stop flying the pride flag, which the left had turned into a de facto second national flag around the world. That's exactly right. Good, I'm glad it's coming down. I have zero tolerance for any flag other than the stars and stripes on any federal building. That's it. It's not a time to promote anybody's agenda. No one's. Not women's, not lgbtq, not blacks, nobody. That's it. It's America. That's what we used to be about. Our shared purpose, our shared love of country. Go look at Nicole's ads if you don't believe me. And then here's what I wanted to ask you about. He launched the Stargate project. This is the big quote infrastructure announcement he made yesterday. A collaboration with Silicon Valley. Just so our audience knows, you used to be married to the co founder of Google, aimed at cementing America as the global leader in emerging AI technology. And you talked about how you've done some AI stuff. Now can you talk about this? Because the AI thing, I don't totally understand it, but he had the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, the CEO of SoftBank Masayoshi Son, and the chairman of Oracle, Larry Ellison, at the White House yesterday to announce that they're supposedly going to invest 100 billion in a project to Start with plans to pour up to 500 billion into Stargate. And it's supposed to create a hundred thousand US jobs, build data centers around the country, and it's going to ensure that we remain ahead of China in the AI arms race, which I don't really understand, but I do understand Elon Musk weighing in to say they don't have anywhere near that much money. It was kind of interesting because Elon's his best tech friend, but he came out and kind of poured cold water over this whole thing. So what's your take on it?
Nicole Shanahan
Yeah, so I'm an early AI developer. I started developing AI over 10 years ago, sold an AI business in 2020. Have, you know, have been involved actively at Stanford Law on issues around AI, AI, government governance, human alignment of AI. And, you know, there's, there's a few arms races happening right now. Yes, there is the national arms race, but there's also a race within the United States happening right now. And I was, I, along with many others, were very curious, watching with great interest what went on in yesterday's conference for Stargate AI, because the arms race that's happening in the United States is between a few groups. Most notably there's the Elon Musk AI team, and then there's a Sam Altman AI team. And if you look at the history, Elon and Sam, they were one, and then had a major fracturing, major fracturing. And when I look at the world of Google and Microsoft and their founders, they're kind of more, you know, there's many, many dots on the board, right? And, and they're all vying for the top position in AI. And of course, the government contractors around AI, that's going to be very, very major. And so we're watching this all unfold in real time right before our eyes. The thing that had the MAHA community up in arms was the comment by Larry Ellison yesterday on using AI to develop a cancer vaccine through the mri.
Megyn Kelly
Let me just play that. I have that, Nicole. I'm going to play that. And then you react to it. Here he is. So you can do early cancer detection. If you can do, using AI, you can do early cancer detection with a blood test and using AI to look at the blood test, you can find the cancers that are actually seriously threatening the person. Once we gene sequence, once we gene sequence that cancer tumor, you can then vaccinate the person, design a vaccine for every individual person to vaccinate them against that cancer. And you can make that vaccine, that MRNA vaccine. You can make that robotically again using AI in about 48 hours. So imagine early cancer detection, the development of a cancer vaccine for your particular cancer aimed at you, and have that vaccine available in 48 hours. This is the promise of AI and the promise of the future. Go ahead.
Nicole Shanahan
People heard that and they were really up in arms. Especially folks who understand that what we need for the MRNA platform right now is a moratorium. It's not ready for human use. Many people will explain why. One of the major reasons is that it is an. It delivers an inconsistent result in individuals. So you could be deploying the MRNA as it was. I think it was 700 million Americans received it and 700 million doses. Doses went out. Yes, sorry, 700 million doses. Thank you for that correction. And amongst those, you know, the estimate is around 5% doesn't deliver as expected into the host and you don't know what dose or what individuals that's going to happen. And so many of the turbo cancers, we're seeing many of the blood clots. I sent you in your team a paper about how it's showing up in over ovaries long after the date. How the shedding can even impact. The shedding from an individual who received the vaccine can impact someone who didn't take the vaccine. And now there's a study showing that women who didn't take the vaccine but were around someone who was shedding after receiving the vaccine were having irregular menstrual cycles because it was showing up in their ovaries. So one of the things that I think is really important, and this is an ARG issues that I know this group of people cares about, the Stargate people, they, they care about the economy, they care about competitiveness, they care about the population. And in order for our population to grow, to be strong, to be fully able bodied, and for our economy, our human economy to thrive, we do need a moratorium on the MRNA for the time being. And I understand how many people are so impressed by this, especially computer engineers. They think that you can, the human body as you program an AI system, as you program a computer system. And the trouble with that mentality is that nature and you know, we don't even have models and the science around how nature works and how our bodies interact with nature, there's a element to it that when you interject something like the MRNA vaccine, there's a huge amount of stochastic randomness that can occur. And so these, you know, if you see some of the uproar on X today about that, that's individuals who understand this pretty deeply, and they're, they're very concerned. And yes, yes, there's something very, very impressive about the MRNA platform. I mean, how wonderful if it worked 100% of the time and with a great deal of reliability. But, but we do need a moratorium on it for the time being. And I think.
Megyn Kelly
So it's not Russian roulette to take it.
Nicole Shanahan
Exactly, exactly. And, and as I said, AI is a computer system. Health, human health is not. It is not. And so there are some good uses of AI in the world, and for those I'm always happy to be a resource on. For instance, I was just with a farmer and we were coming up with a farm plan and I was like, man, I would love, you know, if there's an AI that could help me model the phases, deploying a new pasture, you know, raised chicken operation on this lot, on this very specific lot here in California, wouldn't that be great? Because farmers are really struggling financially and that's actually a really great economic use of AI. So there's so many. I could think about, of about 250 things that could have been shared in yesterday's conference that are really excellent uses of AI, and I didn't really hear them. Instead, I heard a few that were kind of, you know, out there, and if deployed too quickly, could lead to, you know, an extinction event. And so I think we, I think we have to be careful.
Megyn Kelly
Well, I mean, let's not forget the MRNA vaccine was developed under Trump. Operation Warp Speed was Trump's. And, you know, I'm not sure what lessons he's taken from the vaccine injuries that, that started popping up and they were snuffed out by the media and they were ignored by the Biden administration, not to mention big pharma. But now we have a new sheriff in town and we'll see whether Trump's on board with that. I think he's, he's, he takes credit for the vaccine. He feels proud of the vaccine. I don't know how much he is going to listen to vaccine injury stories around mRNA, but it's felt to me like Larry Ellison was kind of ahead of his skis on that. Like, I'm into arms race against China. I want to win against China. I don't know if I'm into, like, experimental cancer vaccines that have the same Russian roulette effect. And I'll just say one other thing about it, Nicole, which is one of my biggest reasons for believing in the vaccine during COVID was I naively thought if there's some significant injury rate with a vaccine like this that there'll be 700 million doses in the United States. There's no way Big pharma won't cure it, won't put everything they have into rectifying the damage they caused. Right. There'd just be too many Americans suffering. They. They'll have too much money. They have all this immunity. They, they will want to cure the problem that they helped cause. And I was totally wrong about that. We're still in the complete denial phase.
Nicole Shanahan
Unfortunately, that's the case. And I will say that had the MRNA platform worked as they had hoped, that is something to be proud of. And I would say the speed at which it was deployed in a regular environment where you would have time to test and you had free speech, because, remember, free speech was taken away. So that feedback loop was removed. Really important feedback loop, and that was removed. And so now we have free speech again. Thank you very much, President Trump. This is time for us to talk about it reasonably and logically. And it is not unusual for advancements in biotech to scale back, to come back to the lab, to come back to the researchers. Moratoriums have happened throughout civilization on technological advances, and they're important. And I think that it is time for us to really ask for a global moratorium on the MRNA platform. It needs more time.
Megyn Kelly
We need to really understand, figure out what the risks are. Yeah, I've completely lost my own trust in Big Pharma. Completely. And I think that's appropriate. Rfkj, of course, is not on board with, I think, this kind of thing. He won't be running the new AI venture. Ideally, if he gets confirmed, he's going to be running the National Institutes of Health, and he doesn't yet have a confirmation hearing scheduled, they say, because they're asking for more information. You know, they want to have all their ammo against him before they dig in. But we're starting to see a preview of some of the attacks they're preparing. They're not all from Democrats, though, mostly, but Mike Pence's group, they're very against him because they're very, very pro life. And, you know, RFKJ's more pro choice, though. You know, there's a real question about how much he's going to be weighing in on that in the new role. I think he understands the Trump administration is pro life. Anyway, here's what Mike Pence said. RFK has expressed support for conspiracy theories involving vaccines and WiFi. That's where he starts. I think that's so interesting. Vaccines is interesting given the conversation we just discussed and given the fact that I really think they overstate his position on other vaccines. But the WI fi thing is really interesting to me because let me tell you, I heard a lot about this. Like, you have to watch out for WI fi, be careful about WI Fi. And I was like, is that true? Like, I, I'm open minded. So I went to my doctor, my doctor said, get the vaccine. He in no way is he new agey.
Sasha Stone
Right.
Megyn Kelly
I think he would laugh at the conversation we just had, frankly about mRNA's, you know, he's like that. But he said there are studies suggesting that a certain amount of at least emf, you know, like radio, frequent radiation frequency coming out of like your outlets, your devices and yes, your wi fi can be disruptive and potentially deeply problematic, especially to children. He and he sent me the studies that are being circulated within sort of the mainstream medical community. But now it gets reduced, Nicole, to a weird conspiracy theory that this weirdo RFKJ is pushing and a reason he can't be confirmed.
Nicole Shanahan
Yeah, I'm surprised to hear that from Pence. And you know, when I, when I hear that, I hear, well, big pharma and big telecom, big tech is, you know, in his pocket. That's, that's what I hear. But I have to believe that someone like Pence who, you know, really cares about the dignity of life, is a pro lifer, can understand that some of these vaccines, especially the hpv, are actually really hurting women's abilities to conceive and to bring a child to bear. In some cases, there's been reports of the MRNA vaccine causing miscarriages, premature bleeding, babies dying. I mean, it's so I, I think, you know, vaccine injury is real. Concern about vaccine injury is a duty of anyone in government right now. And it's hard for me to reconcile that you could be both so pro life and so ignorant to these things happening today. So, and again, on, on the EMF and electrochemical pollutants that impact our body or these electrochemical processes that happen within our body. Again, it doesn't reconcile that you could be both a pro lifer and not understand that women of childbearing age are experiencing cancer at rates never before seen, and these women are going to undergo treatments that are going to impact their ability to conceive and bear a child.
Megyn Kelly
That's a great point.
Nicole Shanahan
Yeah. So, so that doesn't reconcile. And I think that if you are a pro lifer and you really care about these babies coming into the world, because you are someone that believes that life is sacred. You cannot ignore these things that are happening right now.
Megyn Kelly
I pulled up the article he sent me. I mean, truly, I thought my doctor was going to just laugh at this and be like, you're fine. I mean, there are people who live next to cell phone towers and you know, GE headquarters who are absolutely fine, move on. Which is what he says to me over virtually everything. He's the opposite of an alarmist. But on this one, you know, this sort of EMF thing, this RF thing, like the WI fi and the number of plugs and the number of electronics in your house. This is the article. Here's the abstract in part from what he sent me from the nih. Okay. And this is in part how it reads EMF exposure or electromagnetic fields. That's what it stands for. These are electromagnetic waves under like a certain size. He says it reads, A developing child's brain is vulnerable to EMF radiation. Thus their caregivers. Concerns about the health effects of EMFs are increasing. EMF exposure is divided into two categories. Extremely low frequencies involving high voltage transmission lines and in home wiring and radio frequency frequencies. RFS involving mobile phones, smart devices, base stations, Wi Fi and 5G technologies. The biological effects of EMFs on humans include stimulation, thermal, non thermal, the latter of which is the least known. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Among the health issues related to EMFs, the most important issue is human carcinogenicity. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancers, evaluation of the carcinogenic risk risks to humans, these ELFs and RFs were evaluated as possible human carcinogens and goes on from there. My point is Mike Pence doesn't have a medical degree. Mike Pence doesn't have a lifetime acting as a lawyer to look into things like this like RFK does. But Mike Pence thinks that he can kill RFK's nomination because of the life issue by sneaking in these other issues to make him look like a kook. And you tell me, Nicole, how many other people are trying to do that to him? They, they just dismiss him out of hand as a nut case instead of saying what if what he's saying is actually true?
Nicole Shanahan
First, I want to comment on kudos to your doctor for sending you that paper. That, that it's really makes me happy to hear that those doctors exist out there. That's great. And, and, but to answer your question, it is, it's beyond misguided. I mean, RFK has come out and he has been so consistent in saying that every abortion is a tragedy. And that he, you know, he's not one of these folks that conflates the right to bodily autonomy argument to, let's all just get as many more. You know, just get an abortion. Abortions are great. Let's celebrate abortions. Now. That's weird. RFK has never, ever been on that side of the bodily autonomy argument. I mean, that's way out there. Like, celebrating abortions is. Is oddly, say, it's just odd. It's. There's satanic elements to it.
Megyn Kelly
It's.
Nicole Shanahan
That is not. That is not the case of RFK Jr. At all. This is a man that loves life. He loves children. He loves seeing people thrive. And he is a deeply concerned person that has dedicated his entire life to making sure that the conditions for a beautiful life remain on this planet. And he has worked tirelessly at that and has surrounded himself with really, really good people that had.
Megyn Kelly
Had.
Nicole Shanahan
Was the highlight of my experience joining the campaign was meeting the people at Children's Health Defense, meeting these mothers that have dedicated their whole, whole lives to fighting against the blindness and the inconsistency and the corruption that is hu children. And so I. I really think that if you are sitting in a Senate seat right now and. And you care, and you're a person of God and you really do care about the sanctity of life, this is our shot. This is our shot to reverse the rates of cancer, to reverse the rates of autism, to reverse the rates of miscarriages and, you know, struggling to conceive. I mean, we can invest in the sciences and use this massive technological advancement that's going on more broadly, but we can direct it properly. There are a few people set up to do that well in the world right now. And. And RFK Jr. Is, is a real shot. And so I. I plead this case to those in the Senate. You know, this is. This is going to feel. It's going to feel like our country can exhale in relief when. When we see RFK and that team heading hhs.
Megyn Kelly
Right on. Already you're getting groups like the outgoing FDA chairman who saying, look, calm down, because if you think it's gonna be easy to reform a group like this, think again. Maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years down the line. But if they put into place some of these changes they're talking about on, like, preservative free food, you're gonna have a farm shutdown, you're gonna tank the economy. There are very powerful interest groups that will be at play here, no matter who's running FDA and You know, right now we think it's gonna be Marty Makary, who's great, and rfkj, I'm sure will have a lot of input and so on. But what do you make of that pushback, Nicole? That it's like, calm down, it can't be done. Washington is Washington.
Nicole Shanahan
I, I hear it, I, I Look, the Red 3 ban just happened. Look how much celebration that caused. Red is, is up next. And these are like tiny, tiny advancements compared to what needs to happen. So it's true, this is going to be a lot of conversation. We're going to have to have the right people in these roles who understand how to navigate this atmosphere and we have to have consensus builders and we have to have individuals who aren't going to side pocket lobbyists dollars to trade, you know, one thing for another. And it really is a consolidation of efforts on behalf of the people and we have to prioritize things from, you know, mandates to consumer goods. Like these are completely different categories. One of the topics that I think is worth visiting is, you know, the spraying that's happening in the sky. Like people didn't consent to some of these sprays, right? They didn't consent, they don't know, they're not aware of it. Like where is the informed consent? So the categories around informed consent are different.
Megyn Kelly
What are you talking about? What is the spraying in the skies? You mean over crops?
Nicole Shanahan
Well, that's one form of spraying, but the spraying that I'm alluding to is the weather modification. The geoengineering projects which have been around for decades, it used to be silver oxide and, and you know, there are contracts such as in the uae. They, they do cloud seeding. This is very well known, established science and, and it's pretty common amongst those in the world of weather and climate. And the problem is that we've kind of skipped over the consent phase of these operations and public disclosure and the same with certain outcomes of the MRNA platform which were mandated onto people and they didn't have true informed consent. So, so there's a few categories that I think that are worth our government really prioritizing over consumer categories where people have a choice, people have a choice to read a label and not consume Red 40. And again, we shouldn't overlook the fact that it's highly carcinogenic and we should get that out of our food supply and we definitely shouldn't be subsidizing these companies in any way. But, but then there's this other category of, you know, stuff is entering individuals, bodies across the country and they don't have the ability to consent to it. If they're outside on the coastline and you see some of these geoengineering projects overhead, that that's, that comes down, it's inhaled, it ends up in our soil, it ends up in our water, we can't control it. And so that's where government needs to protect the sovereignty of the individual.
Megyn Kelly
I want to know more about that. I don't know about the weather modification and then the cloud seeding and I would like to. So let's put a pin in that one and make another date because it sounds like you have a lot of expertise on it. Nicole, as so many other things in the Maha movement. Thank God that, that Trump won and RFKJ won and we won and that I know you'll have a major voice on a lot of these issues. Thanks for being here today.
Nicole Shanahan
Thank you. I really do believe we have a real chance.
Megyn Kelly
Yes, me too. For the first time in so long. And you know, we haven't even scratched the surface. You know, RFKJ is determined to get those big pharma ads off of TV which entice people into buying medication or pushing for medication that they don't necessarily need, which can cause other problems. It's just we've been taken advantage of so much by big pharma. I realize they've done some good, but man, they've done a lot of bad too, let's be honest. Nicole Shanahan, everybody. Coming up, Sasha Stone is here. Don't miss Sasha. Here's a shocking truth about New Year's resolutions. Whether you want to lose weight, improve your energy, or beat that embarrassing post meal bloat, nothing's going to work if your gut is not healthy first. This is why for 2025, I want to introduce you to Just Thrive Probiotic. Most probiotics die in your harsh stomach acid before they can do much good. Good. Just Thrive Probiotic is the only probiotic clinically proven to arrive in your gut 100 alive. That means better digestion, healthy immunity, great energy and easy weight management. It comes in capsule form or berry flavored gummy. So there's an option for everyone in the family. Plus, this thing is backed by an industry leading 100 money back guarantee love the way you feel or get a full product refund, no questions asked. Ready to transform your health health in 2025. Visit justthrivehealth.com and use the code Megan for 20% off your first 90 day bottle. That's like getting a month for free. Justthrivehealth.com promo code Megan, here's to your best health with Just Thrive. Sasha Stone was on this show back in 2022 when she first detailed her political shift from the left Left. If the left wants to understand the attraction of maga, they need to read Sasha Stone's substack and stop canceling her and listen to her podcast of the same name. Free Thinking through the fourth turning with Sasha Stone. Sasha, welcome back to the show.
Sasha Stone
Oh, my God, it's so great to see you, Megan. I, I mean, it's been. The last time I think I talked to you, you had no, it was, there was no set. There was like. I don't even think you were on serious yet. Right.
Megyn Kelly
It's, that's probably right. I think I, Yeah, no, I'm your number one fan. Like, I'm fangirling out right now.
Sasha Stone
Stop.
Megyn Kelly
Truly. I never miss an episode. I encourage everybody to download the podcast. There's something incredibly soothing about your voice and your storytelling. It's, it's like a, it's a journey. It's. Yes, it's newsy, too, but it's, it's not like I'm going there for news, obviously. I, I, I have a lot of sources I can go to for news. I'm going there to hear your unique take on the news in, like, a soothing, entertaining, clever, transformational way. I, I absolutely love it.
Sasha Stone
You'll have to excuse me. I'm going to go pass out in the other room. I can't believe Megan Kelly just said that to me. I am your huge fan. I listen every day. Today I was like, oh, now I'm not gonna get to listen to me. Oh, I am on Megan's show.
Megyn Kelly
Well, listen, I even, like, listen at.
Sasha Stone
The moment with him.
Megyn Kelly
I mean, I'm delighted to share you with our, with our audience because I think they're going to love everything you do just as much as I do. And so let's talk about your backstory. I know we talked about it a bit before, but let's do it again for those who didn't hear that episode, because we're bigger now, and a lot's happened since you were last on. As you pointed out, it was a long time ago. So just like, you're a California girl, right? You grow up like I did in the 70s, and you stumble into a career, I think it's fair to say, as a Hollywood critic, as a film critic and somebody who became very popular and sponsored by studios at Awards Daily, that was your website or blog that was very well supported and important. I mean, it was beloved by the Hollywood crowd, which is really the crowd that matters when you're doing that kind of work.
Sasha Stone
Yeah, I think of myself really in a funny way as an Internet person first. Like, I got online in 1999 and I became a early adopter, building a website and, you know, talking to people from all over the world. And so I built this site, Oscarwatch.com and it was starting to get popular enough that Hollywood was paying attention to me and they were saying things like, who is this person and what's she saying about the Oscars? That we aren't controlling because the media controlled it back then so much. And, but I liked being a rabble rouser. I liked busting up that whole system and I liked having a voice where people didn't really see me as you. I mean, I'm not a video person. I'm not like you, Megan. I'm not, you know, I, I, I run from the camera. I'm, I'm horrified and terrified of it. But so the Internet gave me a chance to, to kind of hide. But as I stumbled into the Oscars, I just kept, kept being guided by, I have to tell the truth. I have to tell what I think is true as opposed to what I know everybody else wants me to say. But over time, you know, the more money they throw at you, the more you're expected to kind of go along with what they want you to say. It's just like politics, right? It's just like lobbyists. And the Democratic Party is just like Hollywood, the way that it's run. And I look around the Oscar scene right now and I'm embarrassed for how having contributed to it. You know, I didn't start getting into politics until 2015 and I became a Hillary, a devout Hillary supporter. And I spent every second of every day online arguing with Bernie Bros, arguing with Trump supporters and saying, we have to elect her. You know, the world will end if we don't. And that got the attention of Neera Tanden and people in the Democratic Party and they, they singled me out as an influencer. And that's how I ended up being plucked from the Internet and put into this picnic with Joe Biden when he first announced he was running. And so it's really shocking to them that I turned the way that I did it is because they didn't follow it from 2020 to now.
Megyn Kelly
It's shocking and it's upsetting. It does. You know, it reminds me of Something I wanted to say. Obviously, I've gotten closer to Team Trump in the past year than I ever had been before, but I make a point of never asking them for anything. Like, Trump asked me to speak in Pittsburgh, and I said yes. And Team Trump asked me to speak the day before his inauguration, and I said yes. But I asked them for nothing. Nothing. I did not ask them for great seats at the inauguration festivities or ball tickets or anything like that, because I don't want to owe him anything. It's fine if he feels like I've done him a solid, but to do this job honestly, I cannot owe him anything because then I would feel afraid to criticize him. So I totally get what you're saying. If the studios are paying your bills, you start to just bit by bit feel like, oh, God, am I free to say exactly what I want to say?
Sasha Stone
Absolutely. And in fact, they will write directly and say, take that post down. Or, you know, and the more money you make, you know, seriously, the more money that you make, the harder it is you get in a trap. And I see all these other people that came up, these little bloggers that, you know, if you're, if you're working, like, as a salesman and they're throwing all this money at you, what else are you going to do? You know, you're not going to be like, I'm going to say whatever I want to say. You can't. So it's just a little bit here, a little bit there.
Megyn Kelly
Jody Shaw, who I, you know, talked about on the show yesterday, and it takes a very strong person to just, just say what they actually feel when they aren't rich and they don't have a guaranteed income and they have people. I know you have a daughter who they need to support and help. So. All right, so your life is going well. You're doing it on your own. You're your own boss. And then. And you're big Democrat. And then 2020 seems to be the beginning of the shift. Covid. I mean, is it fair to market, like, COVID lockdowns and to like, the Trump raid on Mar a Lago as, like, two big benchmarks in your transformation?
Sasha Stone
Absolutely, because the Trump raid was when I became a Trump voter and a Trump supporter. But before that, I was just, I'm. When I was on your show, even, I'm not a Trump supporter, but I'm not a Trump voter. But. And I had to say that because I knew the Trump line was one you cannot cross. You can be anti cancel culture. You can be critical of the studios. But you cannot say I support Donald Trump because he's considered, as, you know, the world's greatest evil. Right. So I have to be. I knew I had to do that. And if I ever did take that leap, it was going to be serious and it was going to hurt. It was going to hurt my. My business. I knew that. But at the same time, I knew that I'd been writing on my site for all these years, and sooner or later, someone was going to say, sounds like a Trumper doing.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, so somebody did say that. This, this past summer, right. This. That's when. Because I'd been listening to you, and I've been listening to you talk about how some friends and some. Some people were abandoning you. Like, they, they were getting on to the fact that you were. You had shown up at MAGA rallies, you know, like, you weren't the Sasha they knew. And then the big. The big takedown, quote, unquote, happened this past summer. Was it Hollywood Reporter?
Sasha Stone
Yeah, it was. It was a conscious decision by me to kind of go public, Meaning I didn't. I have two Twitter accounts. I didn't want to keep pretending to be one thing in my lockdown Twitter account and hiding on my other. I felt like a hypocrite. And I also knew someone was going to break the story because we were heading into the election and I was very much pro Trump by then. And I had to say, this is what I think. And I also, to be totally honest, I wanted to join the fight. I wanted people to hear what I had to say. I wanted to refute tweets in public. I wanted to use my platform. But I had also had a conversation with the people who work for me saying, this is happening. We have to figure this out, because it's going to happen. And they understood, and they were going to build their own site. They just kept putting it off. And then came the joke about white dudes for Harris, which.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, can you explain that?
Sasha Stone
I say is the thing that ended my career was. It's hilarious to me, but I think what happened was Richard Hania or Hanania or whatever his name is, he's on subset two. I think he tweeted something mocking them. And I retweeted it and I said white power. But I grew up in the 80s. You grew up. You know, we used sarcasm. We were not cat and fearful. We were. You know, we love jokes. We love to be. And so to me, it's the funniest joke to say white power about these people. But Boy, they didn't like that. That was blasphemy.
Megyn Kelly
You're mocking them. It's so obvious that you're mocking them. I was mocking them.
Sasha Stone
Yeah. And I didn't know that it was a problem until I heard from my friend who called me, my really good friend, and he said, what did you mean by that tweet? And I said, what are you talking about?
Megyn Kelly
And he said, I said, power to the white people.
Sasha Stone
Yes. And then I was going to compound the problem by saying, what self respecting white supremacist would claim white dudes for Harris? Like they just wouldn't. But that wouldn't go over. Have gone over very well either. And then another friend who works with me wrote me and said, you know, this is happening. It has millions of views. What's going on? And I said it was a joke. And. And he said, well, people aren't seeing it that way. I'm getting all these DMs, there's trouble. And I. I didn't take it down at first until I heard from her, the journalist Rebecca Keegan, who DM'd me and said, hi, Sasha, I just want to write. I do a story with you. Would you like to talk to me for? I was like, what? In 25 years, these people have never asked to do a profile on me. A single mother with a little baby who built a website, who launched an industry, who was a woman owned business. Never once did they do that profile that I always thought would be coming. Like, look at what she built. Look at what she did. But now Rebecca Keegan at the Hollywood Reporter wanted to talk to me. So I knew what it was. Obviously it was going to be a hit piece. And so I felt absolute terror and I said, are you going to write it anyway? And she said, yes. And I said, okay, well, I'll talk to you. And I did. I talked to her for like two hours. Stupidly, Megan. Stupidly. I need to learn how to not, you know, like, not be so forthcoming because I said things I really wish I had.
Megyn Kelly
I didn't have to tell all that stuff. They're not out for your best interests at all. You do get to. I mean, with practice, you know, like, that was a lesson you learned. And then you'll learn more lessons and then you'll get it. Then you'll totally have it.
Sasha Stone
Yeah, but I'm just killing myself. Like, why did you say that? Why? Just give her what she needs to know, you know, Try to. But I thought, I'm gonna, like, tell her my story. And she's gonna understand it, and she's gonna get it. But what I forgot was that if you're someone who wakes up with npr goes, you know, goes to sleep with, like, NBC News and CNN and Rachel Maddow, there's no getting it. There's no way. You know, it's like trying to explain witchcraft and that. There's no witchcraft in Salem. Like, they are so and so. Anyway, yes, it. It. And then I was terrified and horrified, and I told my staff, and they quit the site that day because they had to. They have to make a living.
Megyn Kelly
Oh, no.
Sasha Stone
So they all immediately set up another site that got into the story, too, because they told her, and it sounded like they were all jumping ship and that they were abandoning me. And she made it sound like. Like, you know, all of this was happening because of the tweet, but it was actually her story that was causing the fear. And so that's where. That's where things really got bad for me in ways that I could have never guessed. These are people that I knew. They were my friends. I thought, I have never felt. And I know you felt it. I know, but I've never felt that way. It was like a punch in the stomach. It was. It made me sick, and I was horrified. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. I kept thinking, this isn't really happening, is it? But it was. So Apple pulled their ads that day, and as the Usually when Oscar season is revving up, all the studios write me and they say, could we buy inventory? And I sell out my inventory every year. Which I couldn't believe anyway, by the way. Never. I could never believe that I made money doing this crazy thing. But that was it. Only one studio decided somehow to advertise, and so I'll always be grateful to them for that. That there was at least one that had the. The courage to say, you know, we value her voice, we're not afraid of the mob, and we're going to advertise. You know.
Megyn Kelly
No, I can relate to this. Just in that when we launched this show, the one thing I said to my. My partner at Red Seed Ventures, Chris Balf, was don't. Don't give me any advertisers who don't have strong spines. I don't want somebody running at the first LGBTQ nasty letter about me saying, men cannot become women. And I'm telling you, we haven't lost a single one. Not a single advertiser has abandoned us at all over anything we've said. It's been amazing. And it's so freeing, right? So I feel like the destruction comes, and then, like a phoenix, you will rise out of those ashes and be better aligned with the people supporting you. And I really think, like, you got to get ads on your podcast. I don't. I don't. I feel like there aren't any. I don't hear any ads in your. But you got. You. You need to know, I need to make money this way.
Sasha Stone
I'm not a very good. No, I know. I'm just not a very good business person that way. Like, I, I. You know, my site is still for free. I don't even have a premium part of it. But.
Megyn Kelly
No, you need. You need. Do you need to make money like this? We will pay. I'm telling you. I myself would pay, and I pay for almost none of this stuff. So I'm like, I consume so much, but definitely pay. And I would certainly listen to a couple of ads to listen to you. You. You gotta do it, and I will help you do it if you want me to connect you with Chris, who can help you do this, and I will.
Sasha Stone
Sure.
Megyn Kelly
100. Yes. You can make money in this lane, and you're very talented. You should make money in this lane.
Sasha Stone
Oh, thank you. And. And there is. There is. I was listening, listen, watching you tweet with the tiger mom, Amy Chu, and you were saying to her that it was great that she stood up to Yale and she didn't walk out. And there's a part of me that thinks that I want to stay in just for that reason, but the other part of me is like, I don't know how interested I am in it anymore. The movie's that good. It's a corrupt. It's like the Democratic Party. It's corrupt. I mean, I like a lot of people in it. I like a lot of the movies, but. I don't know. But a part of me, the fighter in me, wants to, you know, continue to say things they don't want me to say, you know, And I want.
Megyn Kelly
To hear your take on these movies. I think there's such a huge market for people on the right half of the country who would like to hear the straight scoop on what's good, what's not good, what's woke and annoying and not worth our time, you know, could have used your. Your two cents before I spent my time watching Conclave. Anyway, I'm sorry, but even I would 100% tune into that. In addition to your political commentary, I would love to hear somebody who I know is Sane and not woke. Analyze these films. And I can tell, it's so fun. You have encyclopedic knowledge of films, and I don't have encyclopedic knowledge, but I. I did grow up nothing other than watching television and movies. I didn't.
Sasha Stone
No, I know.
Megyn Kelly
Quartz.
Sasha Stone
I love movie references. I know you are a movie fan. The other day, the movie you were talking about was Hannah and Her Sisters. The Woody Allen movie that had the. The death. Yes. Wait, where he goes? Religions.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Sasha Stone
Something about.
Megyn Kelly
Exactly.
Sasha Stone
That was one.
Megyn Kelly
And Woody Allen's running around trying to figure out a new religion. And by the way, I saw Woody Allen at a restaurant last week in New York, and he was there with his wife.
Sasha Stone
Wife.
Megyn Kelly
Soon Yi. And I have to say, I looked it up. He's 89 now. She's my age. She's 54. And I, you know, hashtag goals. To be out at a New York City restaurant on a Wednesday at 9pm when you're 89. Walking of your own power.
Sasha Stone
Yeah.
Megyn Kelly
Hanging out with friends. They were there with two others. I have to say, I was kind of impressed. I think it's a lifetime of walking in New York that did it. And probably. No, the joy that comes with doing what you want. What.
Sasha Stone
And his health. Like, he's always been really weird about that. He always walks after dinner. He's very strict about his diet. Speaking of encyclopedic dogs, like, how do I know this about. But I just do. But. But I love your movie references, and you bring them up all the time. Broadcast news, you know, all the movies. And I always think, she's a movie fan. And, like, there's so many movie fans that just don't watch movies anymore because the movies are so bad.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
Sasha Stone
I call it getting woke. Like you did with Conclave. Well, now Conclave is my one advertiser, so I'm gonna be nice.
Megyn Kelly
Well, then I'll support them insofar as that.
Sasha Stone
Yeah, exactly. But, like, I call it getting woke. Like with Twisters, I felt like I got woked because Twisters was supposed to be. They were selling Glenn Powell as the hero. And I was like, great, great. Finally, a movie that kind of seems like Top Gun Maverick, baby. But then I get there, and it's like, no, no, it's not. Because the smartest girl in the room also has to save the town from the tornado. And they put Glenn Powell in the barn, and then they don't even let him kiss at the end. You know, it's like a waste So I thought that's getting.
Megyn Kelly
What you make of the big controversy over it ends with us. Have you been following that on your.
Sasha Stone
Show Only and on Tik Tok. They're obsessed with it on TikTok, by.
Megyn Kelly
The way, that would be a great entry point for you. You.
Sasha Stone
I, you know, I listened to your side of it, and I. I had taken the other side of it. At first I thought, I'm going to defend Blake Lively.
Megyn Kelly
Of course, that's. That's the only information that was being given.
Sasha Stone
But it's getting weirder. The story. Like, it's the. There's layers of it. Now can I tell something going on that.
Megyn Kelly
So just today, I got my hands on this document that was just filed by Blake Lively's team. Her lawyers went into this California human rights office where she tried to launch this campaign against Justin Baldoni and complained, saying that they should be shut down. Justin Baldoni should be shut down from offering any public defense of these allegations because it's all retaliatory. Everything he does to defend himself, according to Blake Lively's lawyers, is retaliation against her. And truly, it's as if they're saying. Saying they can launch whatever public attack they want on him, but he cannot respond or it's retaliation against a sexual harassment victim. It's totally absurd. And if it were true.
Sasha Stone
Yeah.
Megyn Kelly
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard never would have had the ultimate resolution that they had in the court of public opinion.
Sasha Stone
That's right. And I feel like hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Like, I feel like there's something more. There's. I don't know that this would all be happening if there wasn't some sort of deeper layer of feelings happening. I don't want to say that because I don't want to, but it's a little personal, you know?
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. It's my opinion.
Sasha Stone
It feels a little personal to me. There's something a little more than just a career spat. I think there's. There's a rejection of passion there that makes me wonder about what's happening behind the scenes in conversation with her husband.
Megyn Kelly
And now, I mean, I'll show this later because there's also a video that dropped today that totally disproves her most. One of her most salacious claims against him. So her case is falling apart. That's why she's trying to shut him down from releasing further evidence or talking about it at all. And she's basically lost the public war in, you know, the opinions. And so she's trying to shut him up. It's like, well, she didn't bank on him fighting back and actually winning. All right, but I want to get back to you and Maga because one of the things I really love about you is much in the same way that Nicole Shanahan produced those. Remember the MAGA people video? She did, like, the MAGA people in, like, the 1950s. Like, aliens from space came down and observed the people. That's how you are. You. You're able to describe, like, MAGA and Trump and the movement in exactly that kind of way. Like, zoom out. What. Who are they? What are they about? And I guess as good a place to start on that as any is the J6 pardons, which, of course, the left is melting down over.
Sasha Stone
Yeah. And I. I hear a lot of conservatives, too, like Jonathan Turley just tweeted something out, and. And I. I understand that I've learned more about the law listening to your show than I've ever known about it. So I understand that there's. There's a legal process that could have perhaps been taken to fix the problems in the cases. And maybe we go through the. Maybe it's five more years down the road, they finally get released and all that. And I get the part where he says that it's not a good thing to just blanket pardon these people. What I don't understand is them saying that it's his militia army and that he incited an armed mob to attack the Capitol. It's just not true. And I had a personal way into that, because in 2020, part of my research to getting to know the world of the right was that I was listening to Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, and I listened to it a lot. And then. So after the election, I felt, as a Democrat, that it had been rigged and that it was such a big rigging that we'd never have a fair election in this country again. And so I'd left the Democratic Party, but I went over to MAGA because I had heard that they were going to protest the election and that Trump was not accepting the results. And I thought, wow, really? That's wild. Of course, come to find later, we found out that he. That the cabal that got together to try to rig the election had planned on him not accepting the results. And in fact, I think they even planned on a mob attacking him, attacking the Capitol. But if you followed the Stop the Steal, you knew what that was about. And if you didn't, you would never know because of the way the media has Covered it. But with these guys, these patriots, they don't see themselves as violent, right? That when they show up at a. At a State House or whatever, when they're armed, they're not trying to threaten violence. They're saying, if you attack me, I will defend myself. Because they think the left is the violent side. And they are. They are. I. I come from the left. This is a by any means necessary party. And so the maga, the same way that, you know, maga, they're not the breaking windows, attacking government property party. They're just not. And. And if you know that about them, you know, even Alex Jones was out there on the. In D.C. saying, no violence. Peaceful. Peaceful only. And. And so. So for me, I thought, When I heard about the riot, I thought, what is that? What are they doing? That's not the MAGA I know. And so as I watched this whole thing play out, and I saw how the media portrayed them, and I saw how people talked about them and described them as terrorists, I began to feel, not just defensive of them, but worried about the truth of what actually happened. You know, we know about the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping. We know about what they did with. With the Muslim men, the FBI entrapment case. So why wouldn't they. If they knew something was coming to DC on January 6, why wouldn't they do that? I'm not saying that the FBI set it up, but I am saying that it's possible that the FBI informants looking for a payout could have have been working with a separate group, not Trump's group, to get this whole thing going, you know, so that they had this proof, this thing that they had with the Gretchen Whitmer case. The same thing. You know, it was like, these are violent people. They're a threat to our democracy. They're a threat to our country. And here's proof, you know.
Megyn Kelly
Oh, yeah, and it could be used against Trump. It could be used to. To potentially, as they tried to impeach Trump so that he could, if they had their way, never run for office again. And to smear all of them, not just all of the Trump family, but all of maga, all of the Trump supporters. And really, I think the end goal was never let him return to office, which is one of the reasons why it's so incredible he just got sworn in again. I don't.
Sasha Stone
I never get tired of seeing that. It's just. It is the greatest thing that's ever happened, I think, in American politics, and not just because, you know, I voted for him. And I, like, I'm happy with the way things are going now, but also because they deserved it. They deserved it. You know, you don't do that in America. You don't treat American citizens like terrorists. So with the pardons, I thought that Trump was saying, you know, we're just going to let this go. These cases were corrupt. They had, you know, they were. They thought that they were fighting for me and that they were, you know, defending the, the, you know, democracy or whatever in their minds. Even though he had nothing to do with it. Because obviously Trump spent, if you read Ted Cruz's book, he spent an extensive amount of time trying to convince Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to argue in the Senate. And they were doing that finally. So why would he have wanted a violent riot when all that did was hand power to the Democrats? Not just power, but absolute power. They could get anything they wanted after that. Look, it's done all the time in politics, you know.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. And it was used not only to. I mean, if they had managed to actually convict him on the impeachment, he wouldn't have been able to run again. But when that failed, then they used it over and over in Georgia and at the federal level to try to stop him, to put him in jail so that he couldn't return to power. I mean, like, they, they threw everything they had at him. And we continue to hear about January 6th. Even before the pardons, it continued to be a theme. Barack Obama pushed it in the last hours of the campaign. So did Kamala, so did Joe Biden. It's just, it was their favorite theme. And now, yes, it'll be in the news for a while here, and then it will stop. Because people have lives to live. I just don't think anyone other than the left is obsessing over J6.
Sasha Stone
But, but let me ask you this. As a lawyer, the fact that she came out and said, this is like Pearl harbor and 9 11, doesn't that convict them in the court of public opinion and in D.C. so that they can't even get fair trial?
Megyn Kelly
That was the goal, right? That was the goal. Completely antithetical to the duties. Yeah. Of a prosecutor or a public figure who shouldn't be doing that. But, you know, we saw that repeatedly when it came to anything, not just Trump, but on the right. Like, they're, they're happy to weigh in and, and go with guilt before, before anything's proven. They just don't like it when it's done to their side. I mean, what we've been seeing Already is a media that remains unhinged. You know, like the CNN with the. The. It was a Heil Hitler thing with Elon. We put together just a random mashup of some of the media coverage of Trump's first day. You'll be shocked to see it's. It's not measured. It's. Here we just for your entertainment, take a look.
Sasha Stone
We just witnessed the first inauguration of a convicted felon.
Megyn Kelly
Donald Trump has been president for a grand total of 11 hours, and he.
Nicole Shanahan
Wasted no time imposing his will on American government.
Sasha Stone
It is remarkable that he said in his inaugural address that, I was saved by God, not talking about personal redemption in terms of his religious experience as a private individual. To claim that God sent you is something that we don't expect in political life. We expect it in other parts of life, maybe.
Megyn Kelly
The obsession of Trump's rhetoric is always a theme of national decline. It's a little like a cult leader who keeps predicting different days for the.
Nicole Shanahan
End of the world.
Sasha Stone
This was the inauguration of the oligarchs.
Nicole Shanahan
He is.
Megyn Kelly
He has decided to make good on his promise to be a dictator on day one.
Sasha Stone
I don't really love that everybody's just participating in this farce.
Megyn Kelly
The cruelty is the point of this coming administration. So it is very hard for me to look at this spectacle of the takeover of the United States, msnbc, having themselves a normal one. Sasha.
Sasha Stone
Oh, my God. I don't understand. I look at that and I just feel sadness because I feel like, like, how do. They don't have a chance, you know, we don't have a chance. If this is our media, we don't have a chance. It's the same thing it's been for the last, what has it been, eight years of this by now. Are they ever going to give us a break and say, we're going to, you know, just, we're going to stop all this hysteria and we're going to kind of get back to America the way that we all remember it as a normal country.
Megyn Kelly
Do you think?
Sasha Stone
Yeah, I think.
Megyn Kelly
Do you think anybody in LA is going to learn this lesson, you know, in the wake of the collapse there, the fires and the, the Democrat policies being an ineptitude, being outed?
Sasha Stone
No, no, I, I don't. Because they don't have a chance. It's. It's so hard to explain to people. And I, when I tried, when I said, look, I was in a bubble, and you're in a bubble, too. Like, I just sound insane to them, they don't understand that Your whole worldview is shaped by those around you, by your social media algorithms, by the media that you consume. And so to you, that's normal. Right? So imagine being one of these people that thought that Trump was Hitler, and the idea that he was ever Hitler is absurd. But how does a country survive? How does a culture survive? How does Hollywood survive? How do the Democrats survive being that disconnected from reality? And how do we get back to a place where, you know, that's the thing about the right is they have their problems, but there's not a delusion, there's not as much delusional thinking because there are so many people who are allowed to dissent. You know, you're one of them. You won't hold back if you're bad about something. You know, you don't just say, oh, I'm going to stay loyal to Trump or loyal to whatever. And that exists on the right. It doesn't exist on the left. Not anymore.
Megyn Kelly
True. You know, it's funny because at the inauguration, you saw, like, Snoop Dogg, he was there after he said Trump was a white supremacist. He'd been ripping Trump and MAGA a new one just as recently as like a year, a year and a half ago. And he's seen the light. He played at the Crypto ball, which was the David Sacks ball. He's the new crypto czar. He played and celebrated Trump. I saw Vince Vaughn was at the Starlight Ball. Like, he, I don't, I don't remember him ever ripping on Trump, but that's kind of an act of courage for someone as mainstream right as. It's like Jon Voight was at the Trump rally with me. He's an open conservative. He's been very unabashed about his politics for a long time. I don't know, Vince Vaughn's not really in that category, but he was there. Carrie Underwood playing, that was an act of courage too, like. But I definitely think that the dam has broken, at least for the strongest Hollywood types to be able to say they're Republican or they like Trump or they're open minded to him.
Sasha Stone
Right. Well, what they have is a collapsed empire. And so it's, it's, it reminds me a little bit. And people are going to be horrified by this. And I apologize in advance. Please don't splash it all over social media. I guess too late. But it reminds me of the south after the Civil War, because it was kind of like they refused to accept defeat. They held on to the past, but it didn't matter because the World moved on without them. And that's what's happening now. The world is just moving on without the left. And I think that a lot of people, especially black men, are really into Trump. You know, he's cool now. And so I feel like they, they, they want to be in the cool side, you know, they want to be on the masculine side. That's why all the, the, the athletes were doing the Trump dance. And on Tik Tok, it's a whole different vibe because Trump is cool on Tik Tok, right. You have his granddaughter, Kai Trump. She's huge. She's an influencer now. Her, her little video on Trump, like got like a million views in like 15 minutes or something like that. She's hugely popular. He's popular with the young young. He's cool. Like, they wear MAGA hats, as you pointed out, that to be cool. Right. I'm gonna walk around town my MAGA hat because I feel rebellious and edgy, you know?
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
Sasha Stone
So. And I feel sad for the left. I feel sad that they're still stuck. I feel sad that the people in Hollywood feel like they have to fear me the way that they do. Like, get over yourself.
Megyn Kelly
They're still getting together for their white dudes for Harris meetings. Like, how pathetic. Like, so sad.
Sasha Stone
I lost my headphones.
Megyn Kelly
Do they know, I wonder if they know that they're viewed as pathetic. Like, it's. Talk about being uncool. It's not just the guys either. You see these videos all over social media of like these young, hot women with like Trump bikinis, the MAGA bikinis, like dancing. Right. It's just a totally, if you're that term, vibe shift. But it is one.
Sasha Stone
It is one. Especially on Tick Tock. If you're a hot female, you want to be maga, right? You're. That's where the boys are. Right. You're not. And they're hot dudes. Hot dudes. Hot dudes for Trump instead of white dudes for heiress. But so, like, just to add, to circle it back, which is that, you know, I get it about January 6th. I understand. But I also see the bigger picture. I see what they've all been through. I see that they've been treated like second class citizens for so long and somehow we forgave all the people who lost their minds and in the summer of 2020, but we can't forgive them. And that's because it's race related for them. They see the Trump people as white and the protesters as black, and they see it all Defined with their reversed hierarchy, which is what woke is. Wokeism or whatever you want to call it. But that's how the courts saw it too. And to me that's wrong. I don't know anything about the law, but it seems to me that that's intent and they can't, can't. They can't know intent. Right.
Megyn Kelly
Well, I mean, my, my feeling on it is okay, maybe, maybe it was intent, maybe they proved it in an individual case here or there, or maybe they didn't, we didn't. We'll never know on the BLM rioters because they didn't charge them.
Sasha Stone
Right.
Megyn Kelly
They didn't charge. The worst of the. I mean, antifa was getting away with, I mean, violent assaults of civilians, cops. And it wasn't just antifa, it was regular leftists, turn after turn. And we'll never know how the courts would have handled them. For the most part, if anybody got arrested, they got let right out and then paid reparation damages by their cities who are apologizing to them for arresting them. At first, they. So spare me. I don't, I don't feel bad at all. I really don't. I have to say, I don't have one degree of horror at the J6 pardons, not one. Like if I'd been in charge, I probably wouldn't have pardoned the most violent. But I don't care. I'm not in the least worked up about the fact that they got commutations. I feel like let's move on. And until you're gonna go back and charge all those BLMers, spare.
Sasha Stone
No, exactly. And just really quickly, I wanted to tell you this story that I was dry. I started driving across country in like 2020 and I got pulled over by a cop in like, I don't know, Illinois or something. And. And it was right during the protests and stuff. And he pulled me over and I looked at him and I said, how you doing? How's it going? And he said, not good. And he started to tear up. And I just thought the pain we've caused over our madness and our hysteria. And now people would say, well, at least he has his life. And he's not George Floyd and he's not killed or whatever. But this was a man who was working as a law enforcement officer who said that all of his friends were retiring, leaving the force. They all felt terrible because. Because all of America thought they were racists. And we all went along with this and were expected to go along with it for months and months and Then the Democrats turn around and say, oh, you know, we're the side that cares about cops. No, you're not. You know, you never were. You're the side that said cops were systemically racist. Defund the police. That's who you are.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, all right. I. I want to end with this. I have something that I think will be of comfort to you as a Californian, and that is Kamala Harris is gone, but she's not forgotten. And she went out to the LA wildfires as her first post vice presidency act. And I mean, she really. She had a lovely profundity. For those of you out there, I think this is really gonna buoy your mood. Sasha, just take a listen. Take a listen.
Nicole Shanahan
Strangers who, in the face of that.
Sasha Stone
Stranger, they see a neighbor.
Nicole Shanahan
These are folks who understand the.
Sasha Stone
The strength and the value of community.
Nicole Shanahan
Which is everyone coming together with a shared sense of purpose and identity as.
Sasha Stone
A community of people. What is she talking about?
Megyn Kelly
Nobody knows.
Sasha Stone
What is she talking.
Megyn Kelly
It's amazing. At least she's consistent. We can give her that.
Sasha Stone
No, that's so I don't understand what her play is here. She. She's actually going to make a run for it and to please make a run for it in 2028. Please do it. Do it.
Megyn Kelly
Well, at the presidential level. I mean, I worry for you Californians because if she ran out there, I suppose it's possible she could win as a governor of California, given how blue it is. But the. Kamala Harris is never going to be president of the United States. Never.
Sasha Stone
I don't even think she can make governor because if she does run, someone will run against her and they will beat her. She's just not. I'm sorry, she could be a prosecutor, whatever. She can't be politician.
Megyn Kelly
No, she's proven that time and time again. Okay, so everybody needs to go on the podcast right now and download. Just search Sasha Stone and it will come up free. Thinking through the fourth turning and you can subscribe to the substack and then you email me and let me know what you thought, because I think you're really gonna love it. Thanks so much for being here, Sasha.
Sasha Stone
Thank you so much for having me, Megan. Thank you.
Megyn Kelly
All the best. Listen up, football fans. It's playoff time and it's now or never. Don't miss out on the last few weeks of football action with prize picks. The best place to win cash while watching the playoffs and to have a little extra fun, especially if your team is already out of the hunt. Prize picks is a way to get involved and have a rooting interest. That's fun. Pick some of your favorite players to score. Enjoy the game on the edge of your seat that way. If you sign up today, you will get 50 bucks instantly. When you play with 5 bucks, you don't even need to win to receive the $50 bonus. It's guaranteed. Then you can make your Prize picks. Doug likes the Eagles, so maybe he would take the players on Philly to score some touchdowns this weekend. I have to say I'm rooting for them too. I hope it happens. Prize Picks adds a little spice to the viewing experience, especially if you don't have a stake in the game. Otherwise, like it's your team. Download the app today and use the code Megan to get 50 bucks bucks instantly. After you play your first $5 lineup again, download the Prize Picks apps today, use the code Megan, play 5 bucks and instantly get 50 from this promotion I'm Megyn Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly show on Sirius xm. It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures. Today you can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly show on Sirius XM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad free music, coverage of every major sport, comedy talk, podcast and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free.
Sasha Stone
Go to SiriusXM.com MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com MKShow and get three months.
Megyn Kelly
Free offer details apply okay, wanted to get to that Justin Baldoni news before we go. As you know, we had Brian Friedman, his lawyer, on the show, also my own personal attorney, to talk about Justin's defense. And this thing is getting even more bizarre. So you may remember that one of the key allegations in her complaint against Justin Baldoni was as follows. Okay, from paragraph 48 of her complaint, she writes, on another occasion, Mr. Baldoni and Ms. Lively were filming a slow dance scene for a montage in which no sound was recorded. Mr. Baldoni chose to let the camera roll and have them perform the scene, but did not act in character as Ryle. Instead, he spoke to Ms. Lively out of character as himself. At one point, he leaned forward and slowly dragged his lips from her ear and down her neck as he said, it smells so good. None of this was remotely in character or based on any dialogue in the script. And nothing needed to be said because, again, there was no sound. Mr. Baldoni was caressing Ms. Lively with his mouth in a way that had nothing to do with their roles. When Ms. Lively later objected to this behavior, Mr. Baldoni's response was, I'm not even attracted to you. Well, guess what? TMZ has gotten its hands on that video. And you can hear Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni interacting as themselves, knowing that this is all on video and that this is going to be used to create this dance scene. And. And no such moment is shown. Just. Just watch it. Watch it. Oh, my gosh.
Sasha Stone
We know.
Megyn Kelly
Sh.
Nicole Shanahan
And Emily and I have, like.
Megyn Kelly
We have these moments where staring you just literally for. We've done it for, like, five minutes. It's like. I think you would find it terrifying. They're talking about their spouses, not a sociopath, and big time stops. But, like, it's.
Sasha Stone
That's just how it's been for us from the beginning.
Megyn Kelly
No, we're like, oh, my God, there's not enough time.
Sasha Stone
And I think I don't. And they score again.
Megyn Kelly
Like, oh, my God, I forgot to tell you something else.
Sasha Stone
Oh, I think that's cute.
Megyn Kelly
You guys are really cute. I think it's more than cute. They're acting like lovers. Noses and my nose is so big. It was hoping that we could address this. It's not too late. Just gotta shut down.
Sasha Stone
We're gonna call an insurance month and.
Megyn Kelly
Just deal with that and then deal with your big nose. Cut. Just kidding. Okay, There. Okay. So he puts his. He puts his, like, head in her neck. Am I getting beard on you today? And says, am I getting beard on you Good. Well, it's not bad. It's my body makeup. Right? And then says, smells good. And she says, it's my body makeup. That's her big harassment moment. They. They are playfully acting for the camera, trying to make it look like two lovers. Two people in a relationship are dancing with one another. Another. She's giggling. She's holding his hands. They're in. They are not. Not speaking as their characters because the sound was not going to be used in the film. But they are in character in the way. Obviously, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni are not choosing to hold hands and nuzzle each other and act and behave as lovers in front of this room full of people. They're doing that because they are in character and they Are trying to make it look for the camera like they love each other. She's completely flirtatious with him. Them, he is flirtatious back, but they're talking about their spouses and it's all in good fun. She laughs, she laughs and says, oh, did you get beard on me? She doesn't say, oh my God, you nuzzled me and said that I smell good. That she, this is what she's done throughout. She said he, he came in my trailer while I was breastfeeding. Well then he produced the text messages showing her saying I'm breastfeeding, come on over. She like time and time again she accuses him of doing something which then when you hear the full context is an absolute nothing burger. She accused his producing partner of showing her pornography. Then they produced in his lawsuit against her a picture of the alleged pornography. And it was a beautiful, artistic, absolutely non pornographic shot of, of his business partner and his wife with their newborn baby in a bathtub. After a bathtub birth, an at home birth, holding one another, you can't see any body parts. You can just see that two people clearly are in a bathtub holding their baby. Just here's yet another one. She wants us to believe this is actionable harassment. What we just witnessed there. You tell me whether that's what that looks like to you. Well, so now I said that they had written to the human rights office in California. Let me correct that. It was to the, it's to the United States District Court in the Southern District of New York where she filed her lawsuit against him. There's cross lawsuits by each saying this is all retaliatory. All of his leaks to the media are retaliatory. And asking the court to shut him and Brian Friedman up, saying this must be shut down because they're trying to try this case in the media. The, the only reason this whole thing got started before she filed the lawsuit, she just went to the California Human Rights office is because, because she clearly cooperated with the New York Times to leak the whole thing. Indeed, that's, Brian argues, the reason she went and filed the complaint with the Human Rights Division so that she could then leak it to the Times so she could start to rehabilitate her reputation which got smeared because she turned out to be not a very nice person in the videos released last summer. Now that she's had her shot against him and she's severely damaged him with that New York Times piece and this complaint which she managed to get leaked, now she wants a complete gag order, order now he needs to be shut down to protect her. This is very unfair to poor Blake. Why should Justin be able to release snippets to the media without the full context? That's what she said. That's what she did. She alleged. She alleges that she's a MeToo victim there. That's absurd. And I can tell you that as somebody who's not a Hollywood actress, notwithstanding ending my very short stint in that cartoon. Burcham. Okay, but I'm just saying this person is not an honest broker. I believe her less than ever. I actually disbelieve her fully now. And they should not be gagged. I will happily participate in releasing any further leaks that they have, because the truth should be out there. What does she have to fear if she's telling the truth? That's it for today. We will see you tomorrow when the gang from Ruthless will join us. And we will get neck deep into the latest smears against Pete Hegseth. They've not given up on trying to stop him. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda, and no fear.
Summary of "Trump Ends DEI, 1/6 Pardons Media Meltdown, and Bombshell New Blake Lively Video, with Nicole Shanahan and Sasha Stone | Ep. 988"
Release Date: January 22, 2025 Podcast: The Megyn Kelly Show Host: Megyn Kelly Guests: Nicole Shanahan and Sasha Stone
Timestamp: [00:00 - 03:16]
Megyn Kelly opens the episode by highlighting President Donald Trump's swift actions within his first two days in office. Notably, Trump ordered the closure of all federal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices, placing DEI employees on paid leave and calling DEI initiatives "absolutely useless empty degrees." Additionally, Trump initiated a crackdown on the border crisis, with Border Czar Tom Homan reporting the custody of 308 illegal migrant criminals, signaling a return to "sanity and common sense" in America.
Timestamp: [03:16 - 06:44]
Nicole Shanahan, the former Vice Presidential candidate for RFK Jr. and host of the "Back to the People" podcast, joins Megyn Kelly. Shanahan discusses the positive reception of Trump's executive orders, expressing optimism about the direction of his administration. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining open conversations to prevent potential overreach and misinformation.
Notable Quote:
Timestamp: [06:44 - 10:19]
The discussion delves into the repercussions of terminating DEI initiatives, particularly in federal institutions and universities. Kelly cites Charlie Kirk's critique of Trump’s policies, emphasizing the illegality of racial discrimination in federal hiring and contracting. Shanahan agrees, highlighting how DEI policies have rendered institutions ineffective and even dangerous by promoting incompetence over merit.
Notable Quotes:
Timestamp: [10:19 - 14:22]
Kelly raises concerns about the enforcement of Trump's DEI repeal, questioning whether federal dollars will be pulled from non-compliant universities. Shanahan introduces the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to redact racial information from applications, arguing that technological solutions can effectively enforce merit-based policies.
Notable Quote:
Timestamp: [14:22 - 20:56]
The conversation shifts to legal challenges against affirmative action, culminating in the Supreme Court's 2024 decision deeming race-based admissions unconstitutional. Shanahan discusses the cultural shift required to move beyond race-based policies, advocating for meritocracy and individual achievement without racial considerations.
Notable Quotes:
Timestamp: [24:08 - 34:26]
Kelly introduces the Stargate project, a significant infrastructure initiative announced by Trump, aiming to invest up to $500 billion in AI development to maintain America's lead over China. Shanahan critiques the project's focus on mRNA technology, citing potential health risks and advocating for a moratorium until further research ensures safety and efficacy.
Notable Quotes:
Timestamp: [34:26 - 38:50]
The discussion deepens into the controversial topic of mRNA vaccines. Shanahan highlights the inconsistency and potential dangers of rapid deployment without adequate testing, including cases of vaccine-induced complications. She calls for a halt on the widespread use of mRNA vaccines to allow for more comprehensive studies.
Notable Quotes:
Timestamp: [38:50 - 45:27]
Kelly transitions to discussing RFK Jr.'s nomination and the political battles surrounding it. She references criticisms from Mike Pence, who accuses RFK Jr. of supporting conspiracy theories related to vaccines and Wi-Fi. Shanahan defends RFK Jr., arguing that his stance is driven by genuine concerns about public health and informed consent.
Notable Quotes:
Timestamp: [51:30 - 90:52]
Sasha Stone, a former Democrat turned independent and cultural commentator, joins the show. Kelly praises Stone's insightful podcast and substack, highlighting her transition from a Hollywood influencer to a vocal MAGA supporter. Stone shares her experiences of political shifts post-2020, including backlash from Hollywood and the challenges of maintaining authenticity while facing media persecution.
Notable Quotes:
Timestamp: [90:52 - 95:27]
Stone and Kelly discuss the persistent media bias against MAGA supporters, particularly focusing on the January 6th pardons and their portrayal as terrorists. Stone emphasizes the importance of fair trials and criticizes the media's role in shaping public opinion against Trump supporters without evidence. They also touch upon the broader cultural conflicts between the left and the right, highlighting the challenges faced by conservatives in Hollywood and mainstream media.
Notable Quotes:
Timestamp: [92:56 - 95:27]
Towards the end of the episode, Kelly addresses the ongoing controversy between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. She critiques Lively's allegations as baseless and manipulative, arguing that the evidence presented does not support claims of harassment. Kelly defends Baldoni, asserting that the situation is being misconstrued by the media to tarnish his reputation.
Notable Quotes:
Timestamp: [95:27 - End]
Megyn Kelly wraps up the episode by reaffirming her support for her guests and encouraging listeners to engage with their platforms for further insights. She emphasizes the show's commitment to open, honest, and fear-free discussions on pressing political and cultural issues.
DEI Termination: Trump's immediate termination of DEI offices aims to restore merit-based hiring but faces resistance from institutions unwilling to comply.
AI and mRNA Concerns: The Stargate project represents a massive investment in AI, yet there are significant concerns regarding the safety and ethical implications of mRNA vaccine technologies.
Political Polarization: The episode highlights the deep political divides in America, especially surrounding figures like RFK Jr. and the portrayal of MAGA supporters in mainstream media.
Media Bias: Persistent media bias and the suppression of conservative voices continue to undermine fair discourse and political balance.
Cultural Shifts: The transformation of influencers like Sasha Stone from liberal to conservative underscores the shifting landscape of cultural and political affiliations in Hollywood and beyond.
Nicole Shanahan [03:24]: "We're one country for the people and we have a leader right now who understands how to get there."
Nicole Shanahan [08:31]: "Competition is good for the people, it's good for the economy and it's necessary for the execution of duties."
Megyn Kelly [06:44]: "You can't tell these universities that because they won't listen."
Megyn Kelly [33:08]: "I have completely lost my own trust in Big Pharma."
Sasha Stone [55:42]: "I have never felt that way. It was like a punch in the stomach."
Sasha Stone [87:03]: "It's like trying to explain witchcraft and that. There's no witchcraft in Salem."
Megyn Kelly [94:58]: "She wants us to believe this is actionable harassment. That's absurd."
Episode 988 of "The Megyn Kelly Show" provides a comprehensive and dynamic discussion on the immediate impacts of President Trump's executive orders on DEI, the challenges facing AI and mRNA vaccine technologies, and the ongoing cultural and political battles within America. Through insightful conversations with Nicole Shanahan and Sasha Stone, the episode underscores the complexities of maintaining meritocracy, combating media bias, and navigating the fractured political landscape.
For listeners interested in understanding the intricate dynamics of current American politics, cultural shifts, and the implications of policy changes, this episode offers a thought-provoking and engaging exploration.