← The Megyn Kelly Show
The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump's Tariff Victory Lap, Massive EU Trade Deal, and Insane Leftist Sydney Sweeney Backlash, with Victor Davis Hanson
01:41:27
Megyn Kelly is joined by Victor Davis Hanson, author of "The End of Everything," to discuss President Trump’s massive new EU tariff deal, why it’s a major win for Americans, how Democrats and the media falsely predicted the tariffs would be an economic disaster, why Democrats are facing record-low approval ratings, their incoherent current crop of leaders, Trump’s nuanced position on Russia and Putin, how he can bring the war to an end, the truth about inflation under Trump, the fallout from Stephen Colbert’s firing, Jay Leno’s advice not to alienate half the country and simply be funny, the insane leftist backlash against Sydney Sweeney’s new ads with American Eagle, the double entendre about "jeans" and "genes," the viral video of a horrible fight in Cincinnati, the heroic actions of Marine veteran Derrick Perry during a mass stabbing at Walmart, how he ran toward the danger to protect others, and more. More from VDH: https://www.amazon.com/End-Everything-Wars-Descend-Annihilati...
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- [00:00]
Megyn Kelly
This episode is brought to you by Huggies Little Movers. It's fun having a baby that loves to move, but it can be challenging to find a diaper that can keep up with them. Huggies Little Movers is designed to move with your baby with either the double grip strips or the new HugFit 360 degree waistband. You can be confident relying on Huggies Little Movers for your active little ones. Huggies Little Movers made with double grip strips or the new HugFit 360 degree waistband so your little double can keep moving like you Huggies. We got you, baby. Airwick Essential Mist Diffuser transforms your space, creating your perfect ambiance with a wide range of inviting fragrances that make your guests go. Airwick Essential Mist Diffuser's easy to change. Refills allow you to choose your perfect fragrance for any occasion, like lush honeysuckle and raspberry and vibrant island coconut and warm sands. And if guests start shifting from the table to the couches, no worries. It's perfectly portable and cordless. It's Airwick Essential Mist Diffuser. Always inviting. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and happy Monday. Before we get started today, want to share with you some big news about our universe here at the MK show and our independent media company. As you know, I own it entirely. We don't take outside corporate money for shares in our company, and that keeps yours truly squarely in control of our editorial. That doesn't change. Today we announced that we have hired Hope Hicks as our first chief operating officer to build on the success we have had so far and grow it even bigger. You know, Hope, she's the former White House Communications Director under Trump in the first administration, among other top jobs. And I am absolutely thrilled that she has joined our team. Thanks to all of you, the company's been growing, growing, growing. And we've added MK Media and all of our our friends who are growing in that lane, from Emily Jashinsky to Mark Halpern to Maureen Callahan and Link Lauren. Now MK True crime is coming. So there's a lot happening and I needed help. You know, it's kind of just grew organically and I hadn't staffed up appropriately, to be honest with you. So now I've got the best of the best. I mean, Hope Hicks, incredibly smart. She's a smart strategic thinker. I've spent hours and hours with her she's going to help us grow this thing just exactly as it should. And she's not going to try to take it leftward, as virtually every other executive in media would likely try to do. I mean, that's just the nature of media. It attracts the leftists. So I'm thrilled she's on board and we are really lucky to have her. Thank you, guys, all of you, for making the company grow and making a hire like that possible for us. We will repay it to you many fold. Okay, more announcements still to come. Stay tuned. But want to get to what's happening today. Former President Donald Trump in Scotland now making tons of news at an impromptu press conference. I love how he does this. You know, every other president would go overseas, they would stick to the script. It would be incredibly stilted. Trump just like freeform, like, what do you want to know? Well, let's talk about anything. Literally any. Anything. Epstein, great. Putin done. Me and other leaders, great. I'll do it. Tariffs, yes. That's what we're here for. We've never had a president like this. They're all so afraid. They don't want to, like, say anything off script. They don't have the confidence. Trump not only has a lifelong confidence that lets him do this, but he's truly in the zero Fs to give category. And you can thank the Democrats for that. That's one lovely thing we've gotten from the Democrats who have tried to imprison our current president in and the loons who got, God only knows exactly the party affiliation, but who tried to kill Trump and threaten his life. They too have left him in this 0F's to give place. And that's why he's better and stronger than ever. And that's the man you see on the world stage now and negotiating incredible tariff deals, et cetera, which we're going to get to in a huge win on the terrorist front. This is not media spinning. It's a huge win and all of his detractors are being proven wrong every day. Think of, just think of when the tariffs first started to get unveiled and how many people were so quick to jump on him. Even on the right, he's wrong. These are a disaster. He shouldn't do it. Very few defended them and. Or said as we did. Can we just wait and give them the benefit of the doubt? And let's see, let's see how he does. Well, he's doing great. They're paying dividends, quite literally. Joining me now to discuss all of it is Victor Davis Hansen. He's the host of the Victor Davis Hansen show and author of the book the End of Everything. Back in the day we didn't have bitcoin or AI. We worked hard, we saved what we could and we planned for the future. That's still smart advice today. With everything going on in the world. Job uncertainty, rising costs, unpredictable markets. There's never been a better time to protect your family's future. Life insurance through Selectquote is an easy, affordable way to do it. For less than the cost of a monthly streaming service, you can get coverage tailored to your needs. Selectquote has helped over 2 million Americans for more than 40 years. Comparing top rated companies to find the best policy for your health, lifestyle and budget. No medical exam needed and even pre existing conditions are covered. Visit selectquote.com today they shop, you save. It's peace of mind you can count on for you and your loved ones. Get the right life insurance for you for less and save more than 50% 5 0%@SelectQuote.com Megan save more than 50% on term life insurance@SelectQuote.com Megan today to get started. VDH. Welcome back. Great to see you.
- [06:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you for having me. Megan.
- [06:07]
Megyn Kelly
The tariff deal is huge. Let me just. Do we have, do we have the sampling of predictions on the tariffs? You guys, do we have that sound bite? Yeah, watch. This is, this is what the media said was going to happen on the Trump tariffs.
- [06:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
You can't undo the damage. The Trump slump is upon us.
- [06:29]
Megyn Kelly
Now we're in a car driven by.
- [06:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Somebody who is blackout drunk and it's like one of those bad Bugs Bunny cartoons. It's Looney Tunes. This is not Liberation day in America. It's recession day.
- [06:41]
Megyn Kelly
The greatest man made economic crisis in modern presidential history and paralyzed American businesses large and small, forcing them to lay off people, to stop hiring or pause investment decisions. It feels like a. There's an expression in tech called chaos monkey. Well, this particular chaos monkey is throwing feces all over the planet essentially and saying, Kara Switcher, who knows nothing. So you saw top Dems, top media pundits saying it's doom and gloom, it's economic catastrophe coming our way. You could expand that. There was like, the shelves are going to be empty. We're not going to have goods anymore. He's going to devastate American farmers up and down the board, you name it. Now he struck deals all over Asia. We have a deal with Japan. Japan, sorry, Japan, Vietnam, the UK and now beyond the UK to Europe, which is 27 countries. The deal with Japan and the UK looks almost exactly the same. We get to charge them 15% tariffs. They charge US0.0. And the UK, the European Union kept trying to bargain us down. Like maybe, maybe it could just be a 5% tariff. No. 15. Maybe it could be a 10% tariff. No. 15. Okay, if it's going to be a 15% tariff, maybe we'll tariff you guys to some portion. No, you'll charge us zero. That's what they agreed to. In addition to opening US access. Sorry, let me, let me read my note here. Investments in the American market by the Europeans. So he's getting them to invest their money here and opening their markets to, to American companies in the way they hadn't been before. Trump was out there saying, let's face it, you guys weren't really open to us. You were kind of taking advantage of all the buying power of American consumers and you really weren't letting us and our companies sell our goods there. It was one sided. Our so called friends who we got such a hard time for, for, you know, not being nice to, we're taking advantage of us, Victor. And now Trump's done it. He's, he's taking in tariff income. He, he's getting them to invest in the company, the country and our companies get to sell their goods over there. I mean it's a complete win so far.
- [08:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
It is. If I could just detour a bit, Megan. You know, for five years I farm full time and I did it part time here on my farm for 15 years and I grew raisins and the EU subsidized and dumped their raisins with a 500 subsidy dollar a ton and it destroyed the raisin market in the 1980s. And my point is that when Reagan officials, whom I like came out to explain, you know, what they said to us, this is good for you. Because this was the traditional economic exegesis that if they subsidize and we don't, then we're going to have kind of a Darwinian only the strongest will survive and that's good. And you'd say, well, you can't survive when they have a $500 dumping advantage. And then they'd say, well, they won't be able to sustain it. And they did sustain it. And then they'll say it's going to lower prices for Americans if you get less. And it didn't. And so we've been dealing with this economic orthodoxy for a long time and what's missing is we don't really know what the profit margin was for the Japanese, the Chinese, the Europeans. In this market, it could have been 20 or 30. But my point is that they apparently have calculated that as long as it's 15%, they're going to make plenty of money without having to raise prices and get in a trade war as the entry charge to get into this huge consumer market. And everybody said that's not true, but apparently they have made a calculated decision that they will make plenty of money, pay the tariff and be here. The other thing we don't realize is the total market capitalization of Silicon Valley is about $9 trillion. Doug Burgum the other day said there's $15 trillion in foreign investment on schedule to be invested in the United States the next two years. The economists have, you know, they have certain formulas that for every billion dollars of foreign investment, you get, I don't know, 5,000 new jobs. But nobody in their right mind had ever envisioned 15 trillion if that actually happened. So what I'm getting at is there's all sorts of new things that have happened under Trump. The interior department, our EPA not having two years to wait for a permit, but 21 days or getting rid of 1 million self deport, you know, through self deportation, illegal aliens that I can tell you from living here at ground zero of illegal immigration. Many of them, or if not most were on federal, state, local entitlement. So there's all sorts of things that nobody has calculated the actual effects of. They just go back to this old stale orthodoxy, doom and gloom. And then when it doesn't happen, they don't. They neither apologize nor they explain why they were so pessimistic. All those clips that you had, they never said, this is why we're going to have a recession. This is going to be this, this is, they never do. They just parrot each other. And it's very disappointing. Even the Wall Street Journal, not the op ed, but the news section, I went back and looked at it, what they were saying in March, stock market collapse, stagflation, job decrease, decrease real wages. It wasn't that they were wrong that the opposite happened at every one of those categories.
- [12:12]
Megyn Kelly
Right, Exactly. We've got a surging stock market record highs on the stock market. The inflation is down to 2.4%. I mean, very low. Under Trump, the interest rates would go down and the inflation would stop even more if he could get the Fed to cooperate with him. But here's, there was a, there's an, a writer, Colby hall over at Media, who wrote a, an article to his credit, calling out some of the naysayers. Paul Krugman called it the biggest trade shock in history. He said was coming our way. They warmed about, about economic Armageddon. He calls out Bill Ackman, who warned of a self induced economic nuclear winter coming our way, likening the policy to a second great depression. We played Chuck, Chuck Schumer in that montage, declaring the tariffs could destroy New York City's economy, drive the United States into recession, and on and on it goes. Elon didn't like the them either, calling the plan super stupid. We could keep going. So, you know, I really hope people will take a pause here and actually tip the hat to Donald Trump so far because these folks are agreeing to pay 15% tariffs without raising prices. You mentioned it in passing. But they're not going to raise the prices. They're going to absorb that money, which is going to get paid to us, to the United States. There was a report over the weekend that we're now making so much money on the tariffs that Trump's considering a rebate to the American people, which frankly shouldn't happen. It should go to paying down the enormous debt. But, but the point is, when have we ever been discussing a rebate to the American people or had a month like June where we were finally in the black when it comes to our balance sheet for the first time in forever, we were not in the red. We took in more than we spent.
- [13:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. I mean, Scott Besson, who's very conservative and is, is prognosis, has said that we might get a third of a trillion dollars in tariffs. That's unheard of. If that, and, but he said it. And you know, when you look at, everybody's angry at Trump for berating Powell, but we pay $3 billion a day in interest. All Trump is trying to say is if you use the same calculus that you did during the Biden administration where when after all, before the election, they lowered interest rates, if you just cut it by a third, we would save another third of a trillion dollars. That's, you know, 60, that's about $700 billion in interest savings and tariffs. And we're a third of the way to balancing the budget. So there's things that are in process that I don't think any of our journalists or politicians, even if they were disinterested, and most of them aren't, they're prejudiced and biased because Trump just sets them on fire. But if they were disinterested, I don't think they've seen anything like this, this level of foreign investment or this deregulation or the streamlining of the federal government or the sudden closure of the border or nothing's happened like this before. There was a million foreign job, million jobs that foreign nationals held that are no longer there, but there's 2 million new jobs for Americans. And all we heard from these people was you can't do anything unless you have comprehensive immigration reform. And that wasn't true. All you needed was a new president.
- [15:27]
Megyn Kelly
It was very simple, right to the point where his border policies have been so effective. Rahm Emanuel, who's clearly running for president over on the Dempsey told me last week there's nothing he would change about them. Not a thing about the border policies that Trump has instituted. That's incredible. He doesn't like the deportation policies. No Democrats going to, but the border policies. So it's really incredible. Here is the president of the European Union, Ursula von von der Leyen to Trump earlier sat to. You're known as a tough negotiator and deal maker. What is in front and fear and what is in front of us. Most important, if we are successful, I think it would be the biggest deal each of us has ever struck. So I'm very much looking forward ever struck by anybody. That's true. Yeah, that's true.
- [16:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
You and I both figured this is, this is really the biggest trading partnership in the world, so we should give it a shot, right?
- [16:25]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. Very much looking forward to that. Thank you very much.
- [16:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
I do, too.
- [16:31]
Megyn Kelly
He set the deadline of August 1 and some countries are finally realizing he means it. And so here we are, almost there. And the European Union, which is, I mean, 27 countries. Victor, this is huge. They, let's be honest, they bent the knee. They did what he said they needed to do, which was take the 15% and not complain about it, same as Japan. And by the way, all the deals he's striking over in Asia are really important because they're basically an end around China. They open up those markets to the United States. Japan was letting you know you can't go to a street corner in American cities without passing a Toyota dealership. But we couldn't sell our cars over there because they put so many regulations. It wasn't a tariff thing, but there's so many regulations on our cars that they weren't sellable. Trump's changing all of that. Like there's just no trading partner, friend or foe, that he looks at differently. Doesn't matter who you are. He wants to make a deal that will benefit the United States and leverage our incredible buying power. Everyone wants access to the 330 million Americans that are here. But just no president before actually used our strength to improve our negotiations.
- [17:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think also there's two subtexts. They understand that under Trump, this economy in the next four years is going to be the most, it's going to be the freest economy, the least regulated of any of its competitors, and it's going to grow and they want in on that growth. The other thing is they know what they've been doing. The reason that they're making, they're making agreements is they look back at the last 20 years under globalization and so called free trade, that was not fair. And they know they made out like bandits. And so they feel that some of this is repertory. The other thing is they also understand that for all the talk about the 5% at NATO or Japan's rearming, that for the recent history and for the present and for the near future, the United States really does subsidize their defense and has allowed their economies to be mercantile because they spent very. Japan and the EU were spending well under 2% of their defense budget the last 20 years and we were subsidizing. And they know that. And Trump brings all that stuff up to them and they realize they had a pretty good deal and they can have a good deal, maybe not a great deal like they've had, but a good deal. And the alternative was not very palatable to them.
- [18:57]
Megyn Kelly
So now you get the New York Times reacting to the news with the following headline. Trump and the EU have a blueprint for a giant trade deal. Is it good for Europe? Who gives a shit if it's good for Europe? That's a headline for France, for Germany. That is not a headline for the New York Times, Victor.
- [19:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know it. It's almost every time he has something that works. Everybody, I was just, just to show you an example, I was talking to a very well known general not too long ago and I, right before all of the Trump reforms and ads, the end of DI at the Pentagon, changing the direction of the, you know, of the emphasis at the Pentagon into battlefield efficiency, efficacy and not di. I was telling him all this. He said, no, the reason that we're 55,000 recruits short is because of obesity, it's because of drugs, it's because of gangs. We're competing every other reason but the obvious one. And I said, I think they're going to, it's going to work. And it did. It was almost magic, like he did with the border. Suddenly, there is no military recruitment shortfall. We were told that this was systemic and we'd have to live with it with a smaller military. And when it turns out, Megan, all it was is, I looked at the data. It was white, male, rural young people who felt unwelcome. And whether it was because of the vaccination ban or ban when they didn't want to to get a vaccination because they had natural immunity, or it was the DEI ads, or it was a sense they wouldn't be promoted or treated fairly, or it was Mark Milley and Austin's testimony about systemic racism everywhere, which was never proved. But that cohort started to join again, and they were the people who died statistically at twice their numbers in the demographic in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's just another example of this traditional status quo wisdom that's, you can't do this, you can't do this. It won't work. And yet when it works spectacularly, they don't even have the intellectual integrity to say, you know, we were wrong. It actually was the solution. That's right.
- [21:06]
Megyn Kelly
That's exactly right. And we need to watch for that. I'm gonna play a sound bite of one guy next, but on the New York Times front, I wanted to mention this, too. So now Trump, he has this huge win with the European Union, and instead of saying, he's won, they say, oh, but is it good for the eu? As if they're writing in Paris as opposed to in New York, which is in New York State, which is in the United States of America. But they did the same thing on the NATO deal that you just mentioned. When Trump got the NATO countries to agree to spend 5% of their GDP on military spending, their first reaction was, they're not really going to do it. That's not real. Meanwhile, the pledge has always been aspirational. Even the 2% that they had agreed to before was, we'll try. It was never like, we will. It's ironclad. You will get kicked out immediately upon not doing it. It's always been aspirational. It's been an honor system over there. They can't give Trump any credit for getting these countries to actually agree to his deal terms. And the tariffs we're slapping them on, so we're in charge of those. It is going to happen. So now they have to switch it to not will the EU do it, but is it good for the eu? Do you know we really care about the eu? We want to take care of our friends as opposed to what they've been doing to us, which is not taking care of us at all, just exploiting us. And you have raise a great point about we don't know what their profit margin is. Clearly it's above 15% or they would not have rolled over so easily. They don't. We don't know because they don't tell us. But clearly it's a good deal for them or they wouldn't have taken it. And Trump will get no credit for it, but he deserves some. I want to pick up on the point about will the naysayers now admit they were wrong. You know, there are certain things that we try not to comment on because I'm humble enough to realize I don't know anything about them. Economics is not my strong suit and I would never make any pretense otherwise. But that's one of the reasons why I said in my audience, I don't know. I really don't know. I know enough to stay humble and to wait and see. And others took a different route, went out there, acted like experts and now they are embarrassed. But to his credit, somebody like Bill Maher, who took a shot and not surprisingly predicted doom and gloom, has come back to say the following. Listen to this on SOP4.
- [23:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
I remember I, along with probably most people were saying at the beginning, oh, you know, by the 4th of July, somebody had a thing how the country was, the economy was going to be tanked by then. And I was kind of like, well, that seems right to me. But that didn't happen. Let's work first from the reality of that, not from I just hate Donald Trump because that's boring and doesn't get us anywhere and lead you to dishonesty. Because the truth is I don't know what his strategy is. I would have thought, and I got to own it, that these tariffs were going to fucking sink this economy by this time and they didn't.
- [24:09]
Megyn Kelly
Now, what other leftist is going to say that, Victor?
- [24:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
Very few. And you know when you mentioned NATO, remember when Donald Trump told that was in 2017, he told the NATO ministers that they were making a big mistake with the Nordstrom pipeline too, and they should end their reliance on Putin's natural. And they all laughed at him. I remember that very clearly. And then the other things he warned them, he said that your fertility rate, your borders are unsustainable, this wind and solar was going to destroy the German economy. All of that he said. And then he said if you're not, if you don't go up to 2% he said that almost eight years, nine years ago, he said, if you don't go up to 2%, you've got Putin right on your borders. And looking back is the best thing they ever did was when 23 of the 30 nations met that 2%. Because when Putin did invade, they had spent another $100 billion on munitions which they were able to supply Ukraine. But again, nobody said anything other than Donald Trump is going to ruin NATO. He's berating these poor NATO ministers and he's disrupted the post post war Atlantic order. It was really. And none of that was true. NATO is stronger than it ever has. We got two great members, Finland and Sweden, that have joined. It's going to spend another 400 billion. There is no reliance with the Nord Stream pipeline anymore. So everything. I think Bill Maher was really right about that. It creates dishonesty in people who are not known to be dishonest, but they have some fixation, psychological addiction to Donald Trump, and that just clouds all of their judgment. And they lose their reputations because they're not reliable, disinterested thinkers anymore because of Trump.
- [26:01]
Megyn Kelly
Exactly right.
- [26:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
Everybody.
- [26:04]
Megyn Kelly
Wonderful to see them humiliated, I have to admit. Like, it's. These are the kind of moments where you know who to trust. Right. Go back and anybody who predicted doom and gloom, A, understand they were very, very wrong and B, see if they own it. See if they own it and say, I was wrong and I screwed up. My analysis was off. President Trump nailed it. It's quite a day for. For Trump. And I imagine we're gonna get to get some more announcements before August 1st, which I think is it Friday? Is August 1st Friday? Yeah, it's Friday because that's when the deadline is for these deals to come through. Just one point on these Democrats, all of whom predicted everything was gonna be terrible and we were all gonna be bankrupt and so on. This is one of the reasons why they have the lowest approval rating ever. Right? You saw this. The Wall Street Journal just came out with a poll, and it's just absolutely terrible. It's got literally their lowest rating in 35 years. That 63% of voters hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. The highest share since Journal polls dating back to 1990. 63%. A mere 8% of voters view the Democrats, quote, very favorably. 19% view the Republican Party very favorably. And 54% of voters see the GOP unfavorably, so that they're not doing great either. But the Democrats are far, far worse. Nearly two thirds of the country disapprove of that party. And so now, as a result, they're planning on holding town hall meetings across the country to make the case against Trump's agenda and his, quote, norm breaking governing style. Victoria that's the problem. See the norms.
- [27:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, you know, the Quinnipac was a liberal poll. They came out and said only 16% have a positive view of Democratic, the Democratic Congress. And then the question is, why is that? They never say to why is that? And if you look at their signature issues, the border defund, the police, open borders, amnesty, de facto amnesty, what we saw in Afghanistan, all of the economy, the 9, the 9%, hyperinflation. And then, of course, the DEI stuff gets people really angry. And then the trans stuff and biological men and women's sport. There's not one issue that they can say we're 55, 45 on. And then you say, well, maybe they've got a charismatic Obama that can persuade Americans to adopt things they otherwise are afraid of or don't like. There's none. All you have is Haikim Jeffries with a baseball bat or Schumer screaming and yelling each week or those weird videos where they do kickboxing or they start swearing at people. It's just incoherent. Or Jasmine Crockett's Weekly, you know, raging. There's, there's nobody. You mentioned Rahm Emanuel. He is about the only person who may or may not run for president that seems to have think, you know what? I went back and looked at the 92 and 96, 1992, 96 Clinton platform, which got Clinton elected twice with the help of Ross Perot. And that's what I want to go back to. That's the only way they can save themselves. And yet nobody's thinking like that. Maybe he is, because he was part of the Clinton shift to the middle. But I don't think they can go to the middle because no one. I think their problem is they know they have to do that in a general election, but they know that anybody who said that would never be nominated.
- [29:42]
Megyn Kelly
That's Rahm's biggest problem, is getting past the primary with his own party. All right, let's stay on Trump and his comments. Today he made remarks on Vladimir Putin, with whom he's had ongoing negotiations. And this past weekend, the news was Vladimir Putin sent 300 drones over Ukraine, causing even Poland to try to scramble jets to try to protect Ukraine. He's very unhappy with Vladimir Putin, with whom he's tried to negotiate since the beginning of his presidency back in January, his second term. And today you could hear the same tone as he had in recent weeks about he seems to be coming to reality when it comes to who Putin is and how Putin, how dishonest he is in these negotiations. And I put that term negotiations in quotes because I think Trump is, seems, seeming to suggest now it's all been fake. Putin's not been there in good faith. And here's some of that from today.
- [30:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm not so interested in talking anymore. He's. He talks. We have such nice conversations, such respectful and nice conversations, and then people die the following night in a. With a missile going into a town and hitting, I mean, recently, I guess, the nursing home, but they hit other things. Things, whatever they hit, people die. So, I don't know. We'll see what happens.
- [31:03]
Megyn Kelly
By the way, for the watching audience, he's sitting there next to Keir Starmer. They were there talking about the EU trade deal. So what do you make of it now, Victor? Because Trump's in an interesting position in that he's realizing that Putin cannot be trusted, that Putin's not going to stop in Ukraine. Absent something else, he's been threatening secondary sanctions and meaning we're going to sanction companies, sorry, countries that continue to do business with Russia and not just directly sanction Russia. He had originally said they have 50 days from July 12 to come to the table with something real and stop the bombing. And today he said, I'm shortening it to 10 to 12 days, which basically cuts the time in half that he had originally given them. But the reason I say he's in an interesting situation is, you know, the MAGA base does not want any escalation between us and Russia, and they're over Ukraine. But Trump's coming to this on his own, having tried with Putin and realizing this is not someone proceeding in good faith. So what do you make of it?
- [32:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think you make a good point by that emphasis that had he had this attitude before he reached out to put Putin, he would have had a lot more trouble with the MAGA base. But now he can say to them, I got. I took a lot of flack trying to be fair to Putin. I bent over backwards and we have no choice, unless you want me to do something like Afghanistan and just give up on Ukraine. And, you know, it'll happen. It'll be a humiliation for our entire party if they overrun Kiev and they can if we stop supporting. So he's gone more than halfway and that's important for his base. I think the problem, what he didn't realize is that Putin understands that he already had the Crimea, he already had the Donbass, and de facto he knew that Ukraine was not going to be in NATO. And then he's now 50 or 60 miles in many places beyond the Donbass or Crimea. But he's lost a million dead, wounded, and missing. And he's got to tell the military and the apparat and the oligarchic class back there, I lost a million casualties and it was worth it because. And they're going to say, because what? Vladimir, we already knew we had Crimea. We were never going to give it back. We were never going to give Donbas back. We knew they weren't going to get a name. What can you show us was worth a million casualties? And so he thinks he's got to keep going westward, or he thinks he has to somehow terrorize Ukraine into submission, or he thinks the United States is going to bail on Ukraine, and that's not going to happen. And I think that's. So what's either going to happen is that somebody's going to force him to quit on the Russian side, or he's going to see that he's getting very diminishing returns as the casualties mount. I don't think Russia ever imagined they would lose that many people and get so little in return from what they started with.
- [34:05]
Megyn Kelly
So what's likely to happen now? Because Trump, you know, he crossed his MAGA base on Iran, that worked out well. And he tried to cross the MAGA base on Epstein, that didn't work out very well. But this is a big issue. You know, J.D. vance and many others within the MAGA, more isolationist wing, really, as one would think, will be very, very opposed, notwithstanding what they've seen happen here, to any escalation that might make us more at odds with Russia. But you can hear Trump getting there organically. I do not see them just rolling over. J.D. well, because he's a loyal vice president, but, you know, the Republican Party is kind of over the assistance to Ukraine.
- [34:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think he's just going to have to say the only way we're going to have peace is I have to have some leverage. I have no leverage. If we just pull out, he will take Ukraine, and whether you like it or not, you will be blamed for it. And that will be the big campaign issue in 2028. Who lost Ukraine because it'll make the pullout from Afghanistan look like nothing. So we're going to continue our help with Ukraine. We've closed our own border. I've done all this, but I don't have any choice. I got to get the tools to deal with Putin. And he will not deal unless he knows that he can't win. And so that's all he can do. And I think if you look at the polls, most of the people don't like when you phrase the question, are you going to increase aid or are you going to get involved? They say no. But if you just keep the aid going and hope that he will finally see that he can't, he can't get much more visa via the cost, then I think that's the only thing that we can do. And it's the secondary state. There's dividends. Yeah. The big thing is the secondary. We've never done that. Really. That's a devastating. That. That's almost like an act of war. So that means you tell India, for example, if you buy any more Russian oil, you're done with us. You tell China if you buy. You know, it's against the law in the United States to have a second. When Cesar Chavez had a secondary boycott of California grapes, he boycotted Safeway just because they had grapes on the shelf. Not that they were endorsing anything. And it was pretty traumatic, and it didn't really work. It got him a lot of bad publicity. But that's the next step. And I don't know if Trump wants to take that, because unlike all of the hysteria about a trade war, if you have a secondary boycot, that's a pretty radical step. And it's radical in the sense it would probably be very much more effective than what we're doing now. But the cost in economic disruption and problems with people or our allies and neutrals would increase as well.
- [36:50]
Megyn Kelly
And that's. He doesn't want to do anything that's going to mess with the US Economy at all. Because while he really is getting it fired back up again, you can see that. And it's thanks to a number of things, deregulation among them. But the tariffs. Yes, that, too. That the inflation that was inflicted on the American people by Joe Biden continues to loom large. Yes, it's down to 2.9%, but they are still having a massive hangover from the Biden years. And you can see it. You know, the data guru over at cnn, he was out there last week. He was talking about how. How much the Democrats hate their own party and how much America hates the Democrat Party. But then he followed up with the report on where independents are right now with Trump and, and you'll watch this report. On the heels of this report, he pivots to explaining the thing they're really unhappy over is inflation, which even though it's down under Trump, they're still feeling it, so they blame the guy in charge. But here are the numbers with Trump and independence, and this is why. Secondary sanctions, in my view, he may not do not, not with the big countries that we trade with, because he doesn't want to do anything that's going to hurt our economy in any way. Here, watch.
- [38:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
We are Talking about independence, Mr. Berman, and I will say this is the biggest warning sign, the biggest danger sign for President Trump in his second term so far. Why is that? Because it does not appear that there is a bottom to which Donald's support can't fall to. What are we talking about? Trump's not approval rating with independence. You know, there was all this hubbub about Gallup that came out this past week. You see, back in January, it was minus 2 points. Now it's minus 35 points. But what's important here is Gallup is largely matching the average back in January in the average, Trump's net approval rating with independence was minus three. Look at where it's fallen to now, minus 29 points. That is a drop of over 25 points. With the key part of the electorate. If you're not winning among independents, you're probably not winning overall. And when your net approval rating is -29 points, you're definitely not winning overall. When you're that low with independence. It's just the size of the, the drop. It's, I mean, it's staggering. It's huge.
- [38:57]
Megyn Kelly
It's, it is huge. He's taken a tumble there with independence. But again, the tail end of this goes into inflation, which seems to be what's upsetting them.
- [39:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's very funny because if you look at the Wall Street Journal op ed page, they warned us that tariffs would cause a trade war and hyperinflate. It didn't happen. But at the same time, they were urging a secondary boycott of anybody who bought oil from Ukraine. That is a tax that is going to be a trip that would be ten times worse than any tariff. If we did that, it would be so disruptive because these are really big countries like China and India, and if you just simply cut off all aid with China or all, excuse me, all trade with China, all trade with India, it would be a disaster for the world economy. But it would really. That would spike inflation. But I don't understand why People who have argued, let's be moderate about tariffs, then suddenly go whole hog on something we've never even done before. We've had tariffs before, but we've never secondary boycotted huge countries like they're talking about. I think it's. It's a bad thing. A lot of it, I think of the independence a lot. It. Donald Trump's trademark is he's decisive, he's transparent, and he doesn't give a blank what people think. And the Epstein thing hurt him not. I think everybody said it was going to hurt him with a base. That hurt him more, I think, with independence, because they said, well, he's just another politician. They said one thing and then they did the other. And the best thing that he could do is just say, you know, we've had mixed mix. Just say we've had mixed signals. It's. We're just. Anything that comes across my desk that's about Epstein and is legal, I'm going to let it go. And you, the people have to use your own intelligence to sort out who was an innocent bystander, who was collateral versus who was culpable. And I trust your judgment, and that's what I'm going to do. And. Because I think that's hurt him with a lot of people.
- [40:59]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. I was going to say, I don't know if you saw this over the weekend, but the Democrats attempted to take a shot at Trump on inflation over the weekend, and it was a disaster. They tweeted out this graph and the graph read, Trumps America. US grocery prices reached record highs, they say, in 2025. And yet they show in this graph, it goes from October of 2019, where it was low, low, low, low, low, all the way to, like October 21st. Here's the, the chart. And then it starts to spike under who's president again? October 2021. Higher in 2022, higher in 2023, higher the in higher in October 2024, which is where the chart ends. October 2024.
- [41:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know.
- [41:46]
Megyn Kelly
And they had to delete it. It was so wrong.
- [41:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
It was weird. It was right.
- [41:50]
Megyn Kelly
It just wasn't about 2025. Keep going.
- [41:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
They released it for 24 hours. I think everybody looked at it. I know I did. And I thought, wow, you know, and then you had. I remember Janet Yellen saying it was like a Janet Yellen statement that this is not going to cause any inflation at all. When you were borrowing this up, what eventually been 7 trillion. And Larry Summers warned him about it. Remember that? He said, this is the Biggest mistake you could do. We're going to get hyper. He was actually very prescient on that. And, yeah, I, I don't know why. The fact they did that either shows that nobody's in control of the DNC or they have no other argument to offer except dissimulation. Because anybody with a right, a teenager, would not have done that.
- [42:33]
Megyn Kelly
I know who doesn't actually look at the, at the, you know, the axes on the, on the bar chart to see, wait a minute, that one expires while we're still literally at the time when Biden was about to lose. Well, Kamala Harris was about to lose as president. You know, one thing you mentioned, I wanted to, I want to point out the Democrats and how unpopular they are. Back to that discussion. One of the things that Trump has done is to roll back some of these ridiculous green energy initiatives and just green energy, green energy pushes. My own personal problem is with the windmills that are going up and down our shorelines, absolutely ruining our shorelines. America has some of the most beautiful coastal lines in the world. These things have been getting put up with greater frequency. They're a complete eyesore. They kill sea life. They're killing off whales and dolphins, by the way, and they produce almost no energy and they're full of toxins. We're going to do a full report for you guys on this soon. But they're full of toxins. And thanks to Trump, it's been stopped. His, he said no more approval and we're pulling the approvals that the Biden administration was granting in rapid fire numbers, especially as his term expired. So that yesterday I'm down here at the Jersey Shore where they were about to get this scourge. They've already had some, but in even greater numbers thanks to Joe Biden, who had greenlighted all of these windmill projects along the shore and they were going to be building them close in, close into shore. So, I mean, all the beautiful coastline views for everybody. It's not like a rich person thing. It's like working class, middle class, upper class, whatever you're all going to be staring at. Instead of sunsets, windmills that don't do anything other than toxify your water and kill your sea life. Trump stopped it. So I'm driving my car down here the other day and I see a person, because they're very common down here, with a bumper sticker saying stop the windmills. And then beneath that, she has a Harris Waltz bumper sticker. Victor, I really wanted to yell at her. They've been stopped and you can thank President Trump, you know, nothing.
- [44:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, and I feel the same way about these huge solar farms. California Newsom is trying to do what Spain do, get a moment where they can say that at 11 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon, all of power consumed was from renewables, solar, wind. So when I drive the three hours over to work from my farm, you wouldn't believe these mega solar farms. They have some of the most fertile farmland in the world that was producing wheat and cotton and lettuce and tree fruit, and they've destroyed it all. And there's thousands of acres of these solar farms. I'm not just talking, you know, quarter mile, just for miles in California along the west side of the valley. And it's taken out some really valuable farmland. It's ugly. And the weird thing about it is at nighttime, or basically at dawn and dusk, we import enormous amounts of coal driven electricity from places like Utah or Arizona. But just so we can say that we have wind and solar. And when you go by some of the passes in California, you look at these wind farms, Megan, at any given day that looks like about 20% aren't even working and you think, my gosh, this thing doesn't even work. The blade is missing or it's not moving. What did they do with a blade? What do they do with all that stuff? It, they were the ones that told us everything has to be recyclable and we have to hurt, we have to protect bird migrations and they told us about farmland. You can't dis this deeply because you might hurt the three spotted mouse or something. And then you see that when it comes to wind and solar, all environmental regulations, all wildlife, because it's on the left, we just, we just go plow ahead because who's going to, who's going to deregulate us? Because, you know, it's sort of like the LGBT analysis. We can put, I should say the trans. We can put biological males into women's sports and forget about, you know, operating on children when they're really young or the effects of all these drugs and surgeries on people or, or what it does to women who have tried so hard to get equity. And we're just going to throw it out the way because it's a left wing issue and therefore there's no criticism at all. And that's what, that's what's so scary about the wind and solar. They don't apply their own standards to it and it's not going to work. And 20 years from now we're going to look back and say, oh my gosh, we've got a multi billion dollar, multi trillion dollar task of tearing up all these stupid things and restoring the, the landscape to its original condition.
- [47:16]
Megyn Kelly
And what do we do? What do we do with the toxic windmill blades now?
- [47:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't know. I don't know.
- [47:21]
Megyn Kelly
Of an airplane. One blade is the, is the width of an, of a commercial grade airplane full of toxins, which, I mean that's just one blade on one windmill. Imagine how many we're going to have to take down. What do we do? Do we bury it? It's just a nightmare needs to be stopped in its tracks. And thankfully it is. It is happening.
- [47:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
It is.
- [47:42]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, I want to switch.
- [47:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's one of the best issues he's bought because when Donald Trump talks about the damage to birds and wildlife, that sets the left go crazy that he's in the.
- [47:51]
Megyn Kelly
It's amazing now.
- [47:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, it is.
- [47:53]
Megyn Kelly
Exactly right. Because this is one of those things where it's a, it's, this is an environmentalist problem. Not necessarily like the green energy folks don't really care about the environment. They're so obsessed with like the atmosphere and the ozone and all that. They don't care how many birds get killed or whales get killed. They'll deny that it's even a problem. Remember Trump mentioned on Joe Rogan and they tried to fact check him and it was true. Michael Shellenberg did a whole documentary about this. Okay, I want to shift gears to something else in the news which is very disturbing. There was a fight over the weekend in Cincinnati and I want to state up front, we don't know how it got started. I have no idea. Obviously some charged comments of some sort were made. Here's all we know. There was a music festival happening in downtown. Police say it's not connected, but there were a lot of people on foot. We don't know what sparked the fight, but witnesses told the Fox local affiliate that one of the groups made racial comments and then the blows started. We don't know who made the racial comments, but I will submit for the record, irrespective of who made the racial comments, what happened next was completely out of hand and oh, by the way, totally illegal to the point where now you have the Vice President of the United States commenting on it, the head of the civil rights division at DOJ commenting on it. And it's getting a lot of attention because what you see in the video for the listening audience is a white man and A white woman getting a beating by a group of black people. And we don't know, again, largely black assailants, what got it started. But it's absolutely awful to watch. Here's some of the videos as a man in a white T shirt gets chased to the street, shoved to the sidewalk by two others who punch him and kick him when he's down. And eventually they run in, they stomp on the man's head, his torso and more. Here it is.
- [49:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
Oh, yeah, yeah, sleep him. Yep, get him up.
- [50:02]
Megyn Kelly
This is men and women stomping on this man mercilessly. There's zero humanity there. I'm going to play the rest of the tape and talk about JD's comments in a minute, but initial thoughts on it.
- [50:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Victor if you just change the roles, and if that was a black elderly person or somebody over 50 and people were doing three things that you saw in that video, they were laughing about that person being clobbered. There were more than. I mean, it was outnumbered. They were hitting them. And the worst thing I thought about was women were going in there and stepping on people and kicking them in the head. And they hit a woman and knocked her out. And there are other women. They came in. So it was a nightmare. And if the roles had been reversed, we would be talking in George Floyd terms or yes, something like that would.
- [50:53]
Megyn Kelly
Be a story on every newspaper in America. And today it isn't. Quick pause back with VDH right after this. Stand by. A lot of people worry about the online platforms and which one to trust for your general online news source. Right. They don't know most of them are left and you can't trust them. Some are right, but you know, you don't want to be manipulated against righties who, like, hate Trump, for example. And this is where Ground News comes in. This is an important app you need to know about right now. Unlike other platforms amplifying or suppressing certain narratives to shape your worldview, this is an independent platform pulling in perspectives from across the political spectrum to show you the truth. Mainstream media will not with more context than you will find in virtually any other place. I see your comments. I know you're worried about immigration, the economy, simply finding the truth missing from your online feeds. Well, Ground News is here to help. Right now you can get 40% off their vantage plan. That's five bucks a month when you go to groundnews.com Megan that's G R O U N D news.com Megan ground news helps you think freely and hold the powerful accountable.
- [52:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
America is back thanks to President Trump and Leader John Thune's working family. Tax cuts, no tax on tips or overtime. Real relief for every American up early and home late. And they protected Medicaid for Americans, not illegals. Senate Republicans got President Trump's conservative agenda, securing the border, finishing the wall, bringing manufacturing jobs back home, making America great again.
- [52:29]
Megyn Kelly
Thank Leader John Thune and Senate Republicans.
- [52:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
For delivering President Trump's agenda.
- [52:34]
Megyn Kelly
This episode is brought to you by Huggies Little Movers. It's fun having a baby that loves to move, but it can be challenging to find a diaper that can keep up with them. Huggies little Move designed to move with your baby. With either the double grip strips or the new HugFit360 degree waistband, you can be confident relying on Huggies little Movers for your active little ones. Huggies little Movers made with double grip strips or the new HugFit 360 degree waistband so your little double can keep moving. Like you. Huggies. We got you, baby. So Victor, we showed one of the videos out of Cincinnati. And the beginning of that video shows the white man who took the massive beat down, what launched what looked like, at least in this clip, to be the first physical assault where he reaches across and appears to like slap a black man who then starts punching him. But then the whole mob gives him a just an absolute mob beat down. That is merciless. That is not self defense. Under the law, all those people should be arrested. He could be arrested too for the initial physical touch of the which was an assault and battery. But what happened afterward was so grossly disproportionate it's become national news, at least to the point where we're commenting on it and the vice President's commenting on it. Though you will not see an article on this, at least not as of today in the Associated Press, pbs, New York Times, npr, abc, NBC, cnn, Washington Post or msnbc. Notwithstanding the fact that then we see a white woman who seems to try to want to help this man, we don't know whether they were together, try to approach the crowd to see if she can like help him. And she gets the same or very similar treatment at the end of this video. I'm just going to warn the audience, she looks deceased. She's not. Both of them are going to be okay. But here's, here's the video. The white man's now standing. The crowd seems to have him. The white woman's in there. She gets attacked by a black woman. She gets punched in the face by a black man, she's now down on the ground staring blankly at the sky. Someone's trying to drag her. So that's, that's what happened with her. Two people, at least a black woman and a black man beat her down. And that's what led to Vice President J.D. vance weighing in when asked about this incident while giving remarks earlier today. Here it is.
- [55:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't know the full context, I don't know how the fight started, but the one part that I saw that was really gruesome is you had a grown man who sucker punched a middle aged woman. And where I come from, at least when you have a grown man who sucker punches a middle aged woman, woman, that person ought to go to jail for a very long time. And frankly, he's lucky there weren't some better people around because they would have handled it themselves. But if they're not going to handle the cops in Cincinnati, the law enforcement, you've got to prosecute people. We have got to make great American cities safe again for families and children. If you want to take your, your wife or your children out for a meal, you shouldn't be worried about street violence. And the only way to destroy that street violence is to take the thugs who engage in that violence and throw their asses in prison.
- [56:00]
Megyn Kelly
How about that, Victor? Strong remarks from the vice president.
- [56:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I think he's correct again. It was the reaction of the crowd that a lot of people were cheering that on. Women that didn't jumped in, that had nothing to do with it, thought they could get an opportunistic slug. There was a guy who body slammed himself on, somebody was prone, tried to injure him. So I'm sure it was a he said, he said about the original altercation. But at that point people could have just backed off and let two people finish it off or try to come to an agreement. But the crowd went in and it was the idea there was many against one, that they were bullying, that women were going and involving themselves and kicking. And to be frank, I mean there's a racial component to it. But I think we got to get away from the, I think the end of DEI will be very valuable to the country at large. I think there's a sense that with critical legal theory and critical racial theory, this idea that there are, there are entire collective groups that have grievances against society and therefore we have separate expectations of them or accountability of them. And the same thing about the mass looting of stores that we kind of just condone. And you know, when you read critical legal theory or critical racial theory. It goes like this, if I could condense it down, that the only reason that looting is against the law is because wealthy white males don't need to steal Snickers bars or loafers or sneakers. And therefore they made rules against it. So other people in real need could not do that. That's basically what it is. And so I think it's going to be the idea that you're not going to have what they call affinity graduations at colleges anymore that are racially segregated. No more theme houses which were segregated dorms. And I think we're going to have to integrate and assimilate in a way that we used to do with a melting pot. But this idea that particular groups feel that they can say things about something. So when you have, I just give you one example. When Mamdami says that he's going to target whiter neighborhoods and nobody, I mean, what does that mean? He's an Indian American and he's statistically from the most affluent ethnic group in the United States. And yet he says, and he also applied to be an African American applicant for college.
- [58:29]
Megyn Kelly
But that's right.
- [58:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
The whole thing is so distorted. And so race should be incidental, not essential to who we are. But once you say it's essential and that, you make this binary that everybody who is white, and it really started with Barack Obama when he changed affirmative action into diversity, equity, inclusion, because it basically said class doesn't matter anymore. You can be wealthy, you can be privileged, you can be Oprah, it doesn't matter as long as you're not white, and particularly not white male, you're on the victimized, oppressed side of the ledger. And therefore you deserve repertory treatment or some consideration or situational ethics and all the other people don't. And when you have the largest group of impoverished people, not statistically, but in numbers, so called white people, and you realize the people in East Palestine, Ohio have nothing in common with Rachel Maddow or any other person, media talking or Chuck Schumer or any of these elites, then it's, you know, it's, it's kind of strange as to say white, white this, white that, or when we had Lloyd Austin and Millie testifying about white privilege, white rage, white supremacy, they were going to investigate it. They, they released that a year and a half later. They found no systematic racial, systemic racism in ranks. But they did discourage people from enlisting in the military. And then they deny that they did it. So if people feel that they're just individuals and whatever they do they are responsible as an individual? I think we'll see less of this. And so they really need to just say case by case. Did you stomp somebody? This is the statute. This is what we're going to indict. You are, and we don't care. And a lot of the damage was also done in 2020. For four months, we had rioting, looting, $2 billion in damage, 35 people killed, you know, 1,600 officers injured, 15. Hunt. Yes. And then we had Kamala Harris said, this is going to go on. It should go on. It's going to go on. All of the. And every. We had Tim Waltz's wife saying she opened the window and could smell the burning thing. The daughter was bragging that she was going to tip off about the National Guard deployment. It was just a. His that set a stage that there were no consequences. And, you know, the left is very strange. When you went into the Capitol, you could walk into the Capitol illegally, but you could be completely peaceful. You could spend two years in jail for that. So they. They can. They can.
- [61:07]
Megyn Kelly
One of these people is going to jail for two years, not one of these people. It'll be a miracle if they arrest all of them.
- [61:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
No. And they have to. If they don't. If they don't go to jail, then. Then basically we're sending a message that the color of your skin or your claims to victimhood then exempt you from the type of behavior and the consequences of that behavior that's expected of every other American. And the weird thing about it is, especially if it.
- [61:32]
Megyn Kelly
If it emerges that. That this man in any way uttered a racial slur, there is not evidence of that right now. To be clear, nothing. Nothing that is in reportable form. There's online speculation, but if it emerges, worst case scenario, trying to strong man the argument in the defense of this beating, you're. You're really not going to see charges. You're going to see people equate, you know, a racial slur with physical violence and try to say some in some way. This beatdown of this man alone was proportionate and by the way, I guess would also potentially justify the beatdown of the woman who tried to save him. And it wasn't just those two. A third video has now emerged of a third man, third person who happens to be white. This guy's a man, a different one than in the first video, who also got the shit kicked out of him for no apparent reason. Maybe we'll find out there was a verbal slur or something else. But here's that video.
- [62:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Sleep him again.
- [62:36]
Megyn Kelly
He falls hard to the ground. He's rolling. They're really enjoying his suffering. Woman kicks him while he's down. They're treating him like he's an animal. Wor he has to use the car to get himself to his feet. He can barely move. By the way, the cops did release a statement via NBC Cincinnati local. The conditions of these people are unknown. But the police president, the president of the police union, Ken Kober says he believes they were taken to the hospital with, quote, pretty serious injuries for treatment and will be, quote, recovering from this for a while. Go ahead.
- [63:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, well, he should be also telling us that they are close to arresting the people who did that. And again, a couple of things is if the Democrats think that by ignoring this or the media thinks they, they don't understand what they're doing, they're just fueling this anger that people feel that the laws apply differently on the basis of your ideology, your sexual orientation, your gender or your race. And it's not apply or your Paul. It's not applied across the board equally. And it's very ironic because the civil rights movement started to make sure there was equity under the law and that the abuses that people felt during the Jim Crow period were gone forever. And it's and that's what Martin Luther King said. It's the content of your character, not the color of your skin. And now we've gone through DEI and all of these other set aside programs, special treatment. We've created an entire mentality among some people that they're not going to be subject to the same consequences that other people are because they feel they have legitimate grievances. The problem is when you demonize a group and we have white males and you say, you know, at Stanford University we're only going to let in 9% white males and they've done that for three consecutive years until recently. Then what you're doing is you're just creating the sense of that you're not letting them in because they did something wrong. Or you need to have a separate graduation for this group. This group. But we're not going to have a separation separate graduation for someone who would absurdly claim I'm a European American. We need separate and because it's not reciprocal and because we're no longer a 9010 binary, we're a truly multiracial society. It's not working. The number of victims, victims who have claims against the victimizers are so great. And the victimizers suppose that are too small for the amount of victims because when you look at all the people who qualify, there's not enough.
- [65:22]
Megyn Kelly
She's taking her kid around for college tours. You know, it's like getting to be that time of year for rising seniors. And she said she's lost track of the number of land acknowledgments that they have been forced to do. Sometimes multiple land acknowledgments on one college tour. It's not enough to do, like, one when you kick it off, but, like, you got to do it at the Arts and Sciences hall, then you got to do one at the biohall and you gotta do it over at the PE facilities. It's ridiculous. I do want to say they've reported that they've identified. They've identified. This is, per Fox News, at least four suspects. They're still trying to identify at least eight more. Again, they describe the injuries of the two people in particular as serious. I don't know about the third man. And then you get this. This is the thing that you're trying to say. It would be one thing. I mean, if this were a group of white people who kick the shit out of three black people the way we just saw, every newspaper in the country, every cable network would be showing the video and would be talking about white supremacy. But because the races are reversed, no one is even touching it. Now, if it comes out that someone uttered a racial slur, mark my words, then they will. Then CNN will get interested because they get to say the evil white man uttered the N word or whatever. Again, I'm making this up. There's no evidence of that right now. And now that'll be a story that they're interested. Interested in also, because then they can just say they covered it. Right. But it's only going to be permissible to cover once they can blame effectively the white people who were the victims here. And instead, what you have is all the media ignoring it. And here is a sot from the Cincinnati vice mayor. Her name is. Last name is Kearney. She's a Democrat who. She. She reacted to the incident as. Describing it with. It was one incident of adults fighting. Adults fighting is what you get, Victor, when it's white people who get a group beat down by black Americans.
- [67:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I don't think they understand how that comes across to people. Not conservative, liberal, just anybody that when you do that. The other problem is we have two generations now that grew up in the last 60 years under civil rights legislation, which was needed, affirmative action, which was questionable, but was institutionalized under DI. So if you're a young 18 year old white male and you're applying to a university and you didn't understand why you were not going to get in no matter what your SAT because you were guilty of something. But they never, they never grew up on the, on the old system. So they, so they, it's very hard to, to make that argument. Well, yes, but your father or your grandfather in the south or did this or there was a housing just. And you're going to pay for it and that doesn't work. At some point you just have to say we're going to treat people as individuals. And the problem why we don't is there's so many people invested. I can tell you I've been in the university for over 50 years and the number of people that I've watched careers predicated on their race or their gender or their sexual orientation and how they use that, it's just an enormous amount of special interest. And that's one of the reasons that the universe. That's one of the subtexts about the Donald Trump reform of the university. Why they hate him so much because that's the sacred cow. They, they violated the civil rights statutes openly and flagrantly. They violated the 2023 Supreme Court and they thought that they were more moral and they were smarter than everybody and they had a right to do that with their theme houses, graduation safe spaces, race based admissions, et cetera, et cetera. And when they got called on it, they're just outrage. And so that's.
- [69:22]
Megyn Kelly
Right.
- [69:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
But they don't, they don't understand. Yeah, they don't understand public opinion. And it's not, it's not white black either. It's just there's. I live in a 95% Hispanic community. I can tell you that most people are sick of it. They just don't want to talk about racial preferences. And you know, at the same time we were talking about, by the way.
- [69:43]
Megyn Kelly
I hear from our black viewers on this show all the time, they're sick of this too. It's, they are, they are pushing this on us.
- [69:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
You saw that at the, almost the same time there was a white male that went into Walmart and start stabbing people. And a black Marine among other people was one of the people who stopped him, pulled out a gun. So people want to get to the point where we're, we're just race neutral. We don't want to get obsession. And the problem is there's so many in the media and academia and Politics invested on that. It's going to be hard, but it won't, it won't stop until people say, you know what? I'm going to judge people by the content of her. And you can say anything you want about me. You can call me a ray, you can. It has no effect at all.
- [70:27]
Megyn Kelly
And it's not going to stop until the media is, is the same in reporting on these incidents like they 100 again, if the races were reversed, they'd be all over this and they'd be mentioning the race of the participants. But now you get, now you get, for example, the vice mayor, adults fighting, no mention of the race. You think that same mayor wouldn't be mentioning a group of whites engaging in the town of a black man if that had been what happened? Obviously that's not true. By the way. I just want to point this out. There is a new sheriff in town. Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the civil rights division under Trump of the doj, said as follows. Our federal hate crimes laws apply to all Americans. We will monitor closely how local authorities handle this attack. Nobody in our great nation should be the victim of such a crime. And where race is a motivation, federal law may apply. Go ahead, Victor.
- [71:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think that's important. And we saw it with Trayvon Martin where the media had to Photoshop the picture of him to show that George Zimmerman was not injured. Or we came up with a weird word. The New York Times invented the word white Hispanic because they were afraid that, you know, that he was trying to say he was half Latin American. But they got so angry about that and they said, well, look at him, he's white. Therefore we can call him white Hispanic. And because they did not want him to have any claims of victimhood, they only wanted Trayvon Martin. They didn't want it between a Hispanic and black. They wanted it white on black. So what they do is try to, you know, they try to emphasize and create and churn all of this racial tension. And the only thing I can say is people are, it won't also stop until people just tune them out and do not listen to them. And that's already happening with a lot of the legacy media.
- [72:14]
Megyn Kelly
This is, this is always remember, this is. I'm thinking of Sage Steele, now former ESPN sports commentator and now independent and amazing. And she, she got in trouble with ESPN because she made a comment about Barack Obama. She also had questions about the vaccine, but she made a comment about Barack Obama who said, like, he identified as black and like Sage, he's actually a Mixed race. He has a white mother and a black father. And that's exactly what Sage has. And she was making her own honest reaction to that, which is like, okay, if that's how you identify. But to me, it feels wrong and it kind of feels like I'm disrespecting my mom and that part of me and my mom's influence over me, like, I just, she wasn't really down with that way of him identifying. Well, that wasn't okay with espn. That's, that was obvious, given the blowback she got. And you and I both know if she came out and was like, right on, you know, if you're black at all, you've got one black parent, you're black. And that's what he should be saying. And screw the people who go with mixed race, because that's just you trying to hedge and telegraph. You've got white too. You know, ESPN would have, they would have loved that. She would have gotten a promotion for that. But you can't, you can't say anything that is in any way critical of, of a minority racial group, especially blacks in America.
- [73:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
That was what Barack Obama learned very quickly when he ran for office. Remember that in his memoir, he said he just sort of, only when he went to a campus, he only, he wanted to only hang out with black people. He didn't, he had to break up with his white girlfriend. And then he really threw his own grandmother who had actually scrimped and saved, put him in prep school when he said she was a typical white person who was unduly afraid of black males approaching her. So he, he, he didn't want to be known as a multiracial or non racial person. He really wanted to emphasize only half of his own ancestry. And it was very sad because when you look, actually looked at his grandmother and all of that, she was the one person in his life who made sure that he had access to a, you know, a competitive education. And she was a bank. She worked up, worked herself way, way up in a bank through hard work. And yet you never got any appreciation of that. And to be called a typical white person was pretty bad. And we, the irony is, we're back to the 1/16th rule of the old antebellum south, where if you had just one touch of black ancestry, then you were considered black and therefore you were discriminated and treated terribly. Now it's just the opposite. And I've, I've asked a lot of university affirmative action officers, so this, you're letting in on the race so tell me how you do it. They won't tell you. And I said, well, you're using the 1116 confederate idea. Oh, that's sick of it. Why would you mention. I said, well, then tell me the criteria that you're using. Because everything has to have criteria. And they do have ratios like that. They really do that. Allow someone to claim that they're of a minority and you can see where it all leads. It leads to a continual Elizabeth Warren abuse of the system. Phony credentials, phony Personas. And it's got to stop. People just have to say, I don't.
- [75:26]
Megyn Kelly
I've never had one of those full like DNA profiles. Now I'm gonna do it because I too have high cheekbones just like my mama, my pawpaw. And it's very possible I've got some Native American in me. And I also would like a land acknowledgement. When I walk into any college camp, I want it under the, under my feet, wherever I stand, I insist on having it. Because, you know, like Elizabeth Warren, I just have this feeling based on my high cheekbones that I am. So I'm gonna start checking the box. Or maybe I'll have my kids check the box. That'll really make people happy. I do want to spend a minute on that Walmart hero because one of the things I always pray for is that my children will be strong and will also help and protect those who aren't. It's like one of the main things you hope for your children, right? That they'll develop their own strength, and I mean emotional, not just physical, but like emotional and mental strength. But that they'll also use those gifts to help people who aren't as fortunate in that lane. And this guy in the Walmart in Michigan did it to me. He's another Daniel Penny. But you know, he, he's not getting the Daniel Penny treatment. Given the circumstances, which I understand, he's universally, as far as I know, being hailed as a hero. So it's Traverse City, Michigan. According to the sheriff's office, the attacker entered a store in the mall around 5pm Wielding a knife, ultimately injuring 11, six critically, five seriously. The attacker's a 42 year old local homeless man. Enter Derek Perry. Not to be confused with Daniel Penny. The names are kind of similar. This is Derek Perry. He ran toward the suspect while others fled. Here's Derek on the screen for the listening audience. He does happen to be a black man. He ran toward the suspect while everyone else fled. I'd be fleeing too. I'd be terrified. He Ran toward him. He's a Marine veteran. There you go. And in the video you're gonna see here, he shouts at the attacker while brandishing a small handgun. He, he. Perry had a smaller handgun here. Here he is. Watch this.
- [77:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
Throw the knife that way. Throw it away. Throw it away.
- [77:40]
Megyn Kelly
Hey, he hasn't dropped it.
- [77:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
Put it down. Put it down. Okay. I'm a soldier.
- [77:56]
Megyn Kelly
That's our hero. Derek Perry yelling at him to drop the knife, to lay down. Taking command of the situation, his own daughter wrote on Facebook. Heroism. His heroism is a proud daughter moment for her. His daughter in law added the vet. This veteran is a true hero. Those stories are amazing. And this is, look, you need these heroes. This is why we don't prosecute the Daniel Penneys, why we shouldn't. Right. You need in particular American men who know what they're doing. Daniel Penney, too, was armed forces veteran to stand up when they see someone in trouble and to do the thing that 99% of the rest of us are too scared to do.
- [78:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, absolutely. And once he did that, other people came to his aid because they wanted to participate in something noble. And I think that's going to, I think that it's an indication when you see that, that people, and that's unfortunate, have lost, have lost confidence in the ability of law enforcement. And it's not law enforcement, it's at the prosecutorial level. They've lost confidence in the deterrent factor of the law. They feel that the law does not deter criminals anymore or that people, because of their step. Maybe if you're a person's homeless, he thinks that we're so concerned about the homeless, he can go in and do something like that without consequences. But I can tell you, earlier generations would say certain things that people do they would have never done before because they were terrified of the consequences from law enforcement. Are, you know, I can remember in high school, I don't know, 45 years ago, that no one, if you shoplifted, that was a stain. They, they printed your name in the paper, your age, your parents address in a small town, and you were looking at six to eight weeks in juvenile hall for a candy bar. And everybody said, you know, if you were with somebody and you saw him pick up a candy bar, you'd say, you put that down. I don't want anything. I don't want to be near you. They were so, you know, terrified of the consequences. And I wish I could say we all. Private guilt was really a good deterrent. We all feel bad about things but that earlier society was based on a shame culture. You didn't do things because you didn't want to shame your family, your community, your friends. And we've completely got away from that. We don't print the names of people that are charged and we think that's civilized and enlightened. But it's really led to a loss of confidence and deterrence and the law in general.
- [80:38]
Megyn Kelly
There is still some public shaming via the Internet, which, you know, in some cases works and makes sense. It happened this weekend in a glorious fashion when a member of a Florida county school board, she was the chairman, is, is the chairman woman of the Alachua County Public Schools board. Her name is Sarah Rockwell. Had some thoughts on the death of Hulk Hogan. And the thoughts were expressed as follows. Oh, did Hulk die? I didn't even know. Good. One less MAGA in the world. This woman is the chairperson of the school board, which it's Florida. And I guarantee you there's going to be a hefty amount of MAGA loving Republicans in her school district who send their children underneath this woman to work for her teachers in the school board. And this she felt totally comfortable writing that she was celebrating the relatively early 71 year old death of Hulk Hogan because she wanted one less MAGA in the world. Victoria, she was publicly shamed. She then had to apologize. Oh, she's, she made, she made a cruel and flippant comment. She tries to diminish it by saying it was from my personal Facebook account and she deeply regrets it now. But there are others down there, including a GOP state committee woman who is saying she should resign this. There is no way that the parents in this school district are going to be able to trust this woman to oversee a curriculum that includes Republican families or their children. What are your thoughts?
- [82:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I'm kind of a cynic, but I don't think she's sincere because had people either not said anything about that comment posting or had they praised her, she'd be, she wouldn't have. She'd be perfectly happy today. Reminds me of the people in general, but also the minor Democratic official after the flooding in Texas where she basically said these people had it coming to them because they were of a particular race or they were exclusionary or some people posted, well, you didn't believe in climate change, therefore this flooding of the river is what you deserve. And all these people then get contrite and they, they say, I didn't mean this. And they do that. But they only do that because the Internet is Unforgiving. And it is. If you want to go and wait in those waters, there is a deterrent factor there. People will reply. Sometimes not fairly, but there will be a reply. And you have to be very careful what you say. And I think I agree with you. I don't see how a person that would, that was one of her. You know, it takes some thought to, to type something out. It's not like you're just screaming out at the, at the moment. And if she did take that effort, and how could you ever trust her to be fair in a position?
- [83:39]
Megyn Kelly
I, I, it's amazing, though, like, to, to blame it in particular, you know, one less maga in the world. That's what she wants. Less maga in the world. And if they have to die prematurely, so be it. That I'm sorry, she cannot stay. It is over between you and the board, Sarah. I predict she will be gone. Because there's just no way in good conscience they can keep this woman on this board with any Republicans in that school district whatsoever. She wasn't the only one to celebrate Hulk's death, this woman. Yvette Dentromolt. I don't speak French, obviously, but she tweeted out that she was dancing on his grave after he was, after he died. She said, I won't be the first or last to say, fuck that guy. Dance on any grave you want, but this one's mine. She later deleted it, but she has since tweeted. I also took great pleasure reading the obituaries of Henry Kissinger and Rush Limbaugh, and I won't apologize for those either. This is what some people are reduced to. And the thing that she was so upset with about on Hulk Hogan was the fact that he sued Gawker successfully after they published him having sex with a woman and successfully sued Gawker to say that's an invasion of privacy and that he won on $115 million in compensatory. 25 and punitive million and 31 million was the settlement. Then Gawker filed for bankruptcy. But of all things to get upset about, the man's privacy was obviously deeply violated. He sued, and Peter Thiel was behind it, and he successfully shuttered Gawker. But this is the modern left, Victor. I mean, there have been people who have died on the left who I honestly can't stand and of course wouldn't miss, you know, never in a million years would I actually tweet out such a terrible sentiment because no matter who they are, they have loved ones. And in the Case of a public figure. They have fans and just out of respect for humanity, you just don't celebrate when someone dies like this. It's just there's the level of cruelty and soullessness that is like somehow non human.
- [85:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I, I think it's really elemental with a left because they start with the idea that they're for the many and not for the few. They just, they postulate that and therefore they're smarter and they have greater morality because they're for equity and equality and fairness. Doesn't matter whether they are or not or whether they're hypocrites themselves the way they, they conduct their own lives. But once you state that you are morally superior and you're intellectually superior, then almost every, any means are necessary, are justified to get to that noble end. So they excuse what they say or how they act because they think they're, they're morally superior. I mean, I was thinking the other day when I saw Schumer, I thought, wow, did he ever pay a price for going to the, to the Supreme Court doors when it was in session in front of a very angry pro abortion mob and say gorsuch Kavanaugh, you sowed the wind. You're going to reap the whirlwind. You don't know what's going to hit you. And then, you know, a few months later we have people show up at the Justice's house. We had a potential assassin. There was never really any outcry, there was never any DOJ investigation of that. But the pretense of all of that was that abortion is such a noble issue that I can say or do anything I want as a public official. But if anybody had done the opposite from the right and gone in and said, Kagan Sotomayor, you're not, you don't. There would be, there would have been outrage. And it's, it's just a double standard and it's kind of cosmic. That, and that's why it makes it, that's why I think the, there was a recent poll that the Ivy League now only has about 20% of people have high regard for higher education. And I think people, when they were introduced to that idea, it's very smug, it's off putting. It's sanctimonious, self righteous. And that's part of the problem with the left and the Democratic Party now. They come across as sanctimonious, self righteous skulls and hypocritical and people just don't want to hear it anymore.
- [87:56]
Megyn Kelly
Well, by the way, that woman I just told you about, Yvette, she was an adjunct professor of chemistry at Emmanuel College. I don't know what she's doing currently, but the other reason she sort of made a name for herself was she Vani Hari, who's been on this show, Vani calls herself the food babe. She's got great products. She's been, like, at the apex of the push to get artificial food dyes out of our food, which has been working. RFKJ is doing it. So much so that the New York Times is the daily podcast this morning was devoted to it. And of course, typical to what we've been discussing on the New York Times, their bent was, well, in 2015, they tried taking some of the artificial food dyes out of some of the products, and the American people didn't like them. They didn't think that they were colorful enough. It's not a win. There's no moment to celebrate the fact that we're literally putting petroleum in our children's food. Okay. It's unambiguously a win and a watershed moment for RFKJ to have done this. Vani Hari is behind it as well, but that's Yvette's other claim to fame. She decided that Vani Hari is, quote, full of shit and took a shot at her. So this is the same person who now thinks it's wonderful that Hulk Hogan died and really shows a soulless reaction to the death of someone who is very important and inspirational to millions of Americans. Standby. We're going to talk to Victor next, believe it or not, about Sydney Sweeney and Jay Leno. That's straight ahead. It wasn't supposed to get this bad, you know, Remember the time when you actually were on top of your bills? Then inflation hit. Groceries, gas, everything shot up. Prices up 26% from just a few years ago. It's not necessarily your fault if you have fallen into real debt. Let me share a smarter, faster, far easier way out of it. It's called Done with Debt. And they are not like other debt relief companies. They don't push loans or bankruptcy on you. Done With Debt has legendary negotiators who go head to head with your credit card and loan companies. And they have one goal, to drastically reduce or eliminate your debt altogether. They move lightning fast. Most clients see more money in their pocket month one. But a word to the wise, hurry, because some of their debt erasing strategies are time sensitive. So consider talking to a Done with Debt strategist before you make another bill payment. It's free. Visit donewithdebt.com donewithdebt.com Donewithdebt.com let's be honest. America can still be a dangerous place and you cannot afford to wait for help. Sure, you could use a firearm, but in today's America, defending yourself with deadly force could have legal consequences. According to FBI data, 99.9% of all altercations do not require lethal force. That's exactly why so many are turning to Burna. Byrna is proudly American. Hand assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana, these less lethal self defense launchers are trusted by hundreds of government agencies, law enforcement departments and private security companies. Over 600,000 Burna pistols have been sold already, most to private citizens who just refuse to be victims. Burna launchers fire rock hard kinetic rounds and powerful tear gas and pepper projectiles capable of stopping a threat from up to 60ft away. No background checks, no waiting periods and Burna can ship straight to your door. Take responsibility, protect your future. Visit byrna.com right now or your local sportsman's warehouse. That's by rna.com or your local Sportsman's Warehouse. Visit now and be prepared to defend 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. I'm back, Nancy, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk podcast and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free.
- [92:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
Go to SiriusXM.com MK MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com MKShow and get three months free offer details apply.
- [92:27]
Megyn Kelly
So the left continues to cry into their soup about the cancellation of Stephen Colbert. We know all that. They continue to suggest that this is some sort of a free speech violation. This is the government making the left bow down to it because he didn't like Colbert. I really genuinely don't understand the theory. I really don't. I mean, if he wanted to get rid of late night hosts who hate him, why didn't he make them fire Kimmel at ABC when he settled that defamation suit he successfully brought against them? For George Stephanopoulos repeated comments on him allegedly being found liable for rape. Like, if you, if you have some legal leverage over somebody and you really want what you want, why wouldn't you have gotten rid of Kimmel, who's just as hateful as Colbert? Why, why wouldn't he be over at CBS insisting that Gayle King go if he just wanted to get rid of people who hate him or Scott Pelley, who's the, you know, Main brand on 60 Minutes, or Margaret Brennan or Nora O'. Donnell. Clearly Trump is fine having antagonists all over the major media brands, including cbs. So I don't, I don't get that this is all Trump's fault. It's Stephen Colbert's fault. He had no ratings. He had 200 staffers. They paid, they earned $100 million but only netted 40. His show was so bloated and expensive. So they were sorry, they netted 60. So they were losing $40 million a year on that show, which had 200 staffers. Again, the Kelly file, any given time, between nine and 12 staffers and made $100 million a year. That's how you keep your job in television. The way he did it, is how you lose it. It's very simple math. Try to keep up, folks at home. Jay Leno was asked to weigh in. Who did this same job that all these others are doing not too long ago. I was on with Jay Leno when I was a new. I was a newly mother to my third child. So it was 2013. It was December of 2013. I remember that because it was Christmas when I went on the show just round and I had to bring my baby with me because he was a newborn. Anyway, that's not that long ago, 2013. He understood what the rules were back then and he weighed in on the Colbert situation here it is funny, is.
- [94:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
Funny people even, you know, it's funny when someone who's not, when you make fun of their side and they laugh at it, you know, I just find getting out. I don't think anybody wants to hear a lecture. Why shoot for just half an audience all the time? You know, why not try to get the whole. I mean, I like to bring people into the big picture. I don't understand why you would alienate one particular group, you know, or just don't do it at all. I'm not saying you have to throw your support or whatever, but just do what's funny.
- [95:18]
Megyn Kelly
Just speaking there to the head of the Ronald Reagan Foundation. Just do what's funny and don't alienate half your audience, Victor. Sounds so simple, doesn't it?
- [95:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. I remember when people got on Michael Jordan and they said, why aren't you more political? Why don't you reflect? It was during the Obama era and he said, because Republicans, half my audience are Republicans or my consumers that buy my shoes. Why would I want to offend them? You know, when, when Tucker was let go by Fox, unlike Colbert, he was a big money maker and he had a big audience. And I don't remember that was during the Biden administration. I don't remember anybody getting all angry and saying, oh, it was pressure after January six. Or he, he said something about Ukraine and you people, it's your fault that you put pressure on the Murdoch family to get rid of Tucker. They just said, you know what?
- [96:10]
Megyn Kelly
We were angry at the Murdoch family and Fox.
- [96:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes.
- [96:12]
Megyn Kelly
We weren't mad at the government. We weren't, we weren't mad at the government streets.
- [96:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
I thought, you know, everybody just thought, wow, this is a money making show and he's a very skilled host and why would they get rid of him? But nobody said it was, oh, the Biden administration was responsible. The left did it.
- [96:30]
Megyn Kelly
I did.
- [96:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
I never thought that the left did it. I thought it was just some decision that the corporate management. I think Tucker basically said the same thing. He didn't really contest it. He just said, you know what, I work for them. They have the right to do whatever they want. They're the corporate people. If they want to do that and pay the rest of my salary, that's fine. And it was kind of a traumatic thing to happen given he was at the pinnacle of his career. But I don't think anybody. Same thing when others at FOX had left. I don't think anybody said this administration did this to them. And it's very adolescent that Colbert thinks that he has a right to make $20 million a year and lose the network 40 million, as if they're his parents and he's a teenager and he demands that they give him this and this and that and then he's, now, he's going on there and trying to deliberately offend his paymaster so that they, I guess that they terminate him earlier than their year window so he can be a tragic hero or something. But it's really adolescent. He's like a teenager. He really is a little kid that's throwing a fit.
- [97:35]
Megyn Kelly
They really, they really should let him go because there, here's the problem. First of all, it is universally understood that when you fire somebody, they should be brought out the door that day. You don't keep around people who you have fired. They're just, you know, not generally happy campers. And it's not a good office environment. And it's not really a smart move as an employer. So they're keeping him around for the next nine months as a fired employee. And every night he's going out there and railing on them. And really the CBS brass now looks completely, like, weak and feckless and like they have no balls because they're just allowing themselves to be beaten up and insulted and called names every night while they platform this guy. It's ridiculous. And truly, I don't think this can go on much longer. If this is the only shtick Colbert's got left in the bag, it will be cut short.
- [98:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, or it'll either be cut short or people are. It's kind of like network. When Peter Finch just kept doing everything, he was a big hit. That's an old movie. A lot of people don't remember it. But he finally got boring. And I think maybe they'll think, who wants to turn into Colbert every single night and hear how poorly he was treated and how awful is corporate and his. But in the process, he's going to drive down what's left of their ratings. But maybe they think, we'll just kind of let this guy. We'll give him a noose and about three weeks people will be sick of him for whining so much.
- [99:03]
Megyn Kelly
Right now his ratings have spiked because there's so much buzz around the fact that he's been fired and he's going after them every night. So the drama is still high, by the way, Gutfeld is still crushing him. It's amazing. Over on the channel, you have to pay to get. You have to pay. Fox News is not on everybody's cable. CBS is free no matter where you plug your TV on, even if you have the rabbit ears. And he's still outpacing him. So it's an amazing thing. All right, I gotta end with this. Sydney Sweeney, who is an actress. She's the toast of the town. She's a sort of modern day sex symbol. She's being called a white supremacist by people who don't like her latest ad, which is for American Eagle, and she's advertising jeans. And yet the lunatics on the left think she's advertising white supremacy. Here is one of the new ads in the new ad campaign. Sat 20.
- [99:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
You see what I did there, right?
- [100:00]
Megyn Kelly
Genes are passed down from parents to Offspring often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My genes are blue.
- [100:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
Cindy's tweeny, Casper jeans.
- [100:16]
Megyn Kelly
Okay. This is obviously a reference to her body and not to her skin color. But the lunatic left is going to do what the lunatic left is going to do. Victor, your thoughts?
- [100:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, there's an often quoted, a very famous quote, as you know, from Berea. He was the head of the Soviet secret police at the end of the war and to the Cold War. And he always said, I have the crime, you just bring me the criminal. And so what do you. All right, excuse me, I have the criminal in mind. You just. Or we'll just think up a crime. So they have this idea that there's racism everywhere and we're just looking for a person that we can plug into the pre existing crime, whether they did anything or not. And that's what they're doing. I think there's a lot of people on the left. They just have this idea that we have to prove systemic racism and unfairness or we're out of a job, that we just need somebody who is it. And they scan every day's news. Let's put plug him or her into that and then we'll have the criminal. So, you know, but here, but here's.
- [101:21]
Megyn Kelly
What they say this is. They're upset because it's about who gets to be the face of America's best genes. G E N E S. You see, they think it's no accident that they've chosen a white thin woman because you're, I guess, not allowed to celebrate those things in any way, shape or form. But they're completely ignoring the reference to again, her body, which is the thing she's famous for. It's just absurd.
- [101:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't know, Victor, I don't understand that. Because after George Floyd, it's pretty common knowledge there was a lot of surveys done and roughly African American people were appearing in about 50% of commercials even though they were 12% of the demographics. So there was the idea that we're bending over backwards as a commercial society or advertisers were to over represent black people and minority people in general in the aftermath of George Floyd. So I don't know, but once you start doing that and I, I think then the, the demands become insatiable. It's like if you did this, then we're going to have to do this now we have censorship power over anything you do that we consider is not deferential enough to us, whoever it is, but it's not going to work people. Esthetics are universal, Megan. People's are inbred and their brains imprinted. What is beautiful and what is not, whether we like it or not. Thin women are very attractive and unfortunately.
- [102:52]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, and by the way, there's nothing wrong with being white. It's fine. She can be white too. It's like absolutely. Now the answer. Now we're going to see an ad with the black woman and the reference to jeans too. And that won't satisfy them. By the way, the campaign these jeans sales are going to develop to help victims of domestic violence. That still didn't quiet the critics. Victor, great to see you. Thanks for being here. We're back tomorrow with Mike Solana and more. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.
- [103:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Hey, everybody. Conan o' Brien here with an ad about my podcast. Conan o' Brien needs a friend. I've had so many fantastic conversations with people I truly admire. People like Michelle Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Maya Rudolph, Tom Hanks. New episodes are out every Monday and we have a really good time. So subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.