
Loading summary
James Fitzgerald
America, America, you used to be so.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Fun but now you go to bed at night scrolling on your phone.
Ashley Banfield
Well listen up America.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Carnival is here with world class crew.
James Fitzgerald
And ropes, cars too and comedy and snorkeling and dining like everything from sea to shining sea.
LifeLock Representative
Find your fun again@carnival.com Carnival is calling ships registry Bahamas in Panama.
Megyn Kelly
Lifelock, how can I help?
Ashley Banfield
The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
LifeLock Representative
One in four tax paying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.
Ashley Banfield
What do I do?
Vice President J.D. Vance
My refund though.
Megyn Kelly
I'm freaking out.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Don't worry, I can fix this.
LifeLock Representative
Lifelock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage.
Ashley Banfield
I'm so relieved.
Megyn Kelly
No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way.
LifeLock Representative
One in four was a fraud paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com Specialoffer terms apply.
Megyn Kelly
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show. We are in Washington D.C. today, and we are officially in the old Executive Office Building, which houses a bunch of different offices related to the presidency and including this office that we're in right now, which is the Vice President's ceremonial office. It's very fancy, it's ornate and it's lovely. And we are sitting down with the Vice President himself today. We just wrapped the interview. It's fascinating. He's in rare form. He's funny, he's in depth, he's interesting. And we cover everything from Iran to affordability to immigration and what's real to Don Lemon. So I had to subject the poor man to that. It's sort of a coming home for the two of us in a way, in that it was nine years ago that I went out to Ohio and interviewed back then, just a regular old J.D. vance, who didn't have the title senator, wasn't even running for Senate, never mind vice president. And he had just left a stint with Peter Thiel out in San Francisco, which was not for J.D. he told me at the time, Sam framing, he and USHO were newly married. They were expecting their first baby, living in a small little apartment. And look at him now. What a change in his life in just those nine years. We talk about that too. I think you're going to enjoy this exchange. Without further ado, Vice President J.D. vance. You know PureTalk's favorite holiday, President's Day, because they believe Wireless service should only cost you a couple of presidents. Just a Jackson and a Lincoln, to be exact. For just 25 bucks a month, Pure Talk gives you unlimited talk, text and plenty of data. Now, compare that to big wireless. They'd rather celebrate Benjamin Franklin Day so they can charge your family hundreds every month. Pure Talk is an American wireless company that supports our veteran, all of them, and invests in a US Only customer service team. So when you call, you are talking to someone right here at home. PureTalk uses the same towers as the big carrier, so enjoy superior 5G coverage without the inflated price. Just 25 bucks a month for talk, text and plenty of data. No contract, no cancellation fee. What are you waiting for? Go to PureTalk.com Kelly and you will get 50% off your first month. 5, 0% off again. That's PureTalk.com Kelly to make the switch to Pure Talk. Mr. Vice President, thank you so much for being here.
James Fitzgerald
Of course.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Good to see you.
Megyn Kelly
Thanks for having us here.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is my ceremonial office, which I use mostly for interviews, but it's actually the most, I think the most beautiful office in the complex, which is. It's sad that I never use it, but I'm glad I got to show it to you.
Megyn Kelly
You're a long way from the holler.
Vice President J.D. Vance
I'm a long way from the holler. That's right.
Megyn Kelly
How's it feeling? How are you enjoying it?
Vice President J.D. Vance
It feels good. I mean, look, it's. It's the coolest job in Washington because I always joke with the president that I get to be involved in everything, but he's the one who actually has to make the decisions. I get, like, all of the benefit, but not nearly the same level of pressure as the President. So we're really enjoying it. The kids are doing well, family's doing well, and just the job. I mean, there are very few things you ever get to do in your professional life where you feel like you have such a big impact, and we're trying to use it as wisely and as well as we can.
Megyn Kelly
It happened so quickly for you.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yes, it did.
Megyn Kelly
You know, it felt like overnight and your life changed so dramatically. I have a lot of substantive questions for you, but let me just start with. This is my. The thing I really wanted to know. What's the most absurd thing about Washington?
Vice President J.D. Vance
Oh, that's a very tough, tough thing to answer.
Megyn Kelly
So many to choose from.
Vice President J.D. Vance
I mean, the thing that's absurd, just from our personal perspective, is that whenever I go anywhere, I'm surrounded by a motorcade of like 20, 30, 40 cars, right? And so just you get like this amazing mixture of people, like tourists from Kansas or Ohio who are so sweet and nice as you're driving through Washington, D.C. and then you get like the really angry kind of crazy radical who's running after your car, flipping you off. And just like the performative politics of Washington. And a lot of the people who live in Washington is very weird to me. I think it's a town of people where it's like everything is kind of transactional, but people try to pretend that it's not. And I think that really warps things. And then just not from our perspective, not from perspective of the administration or from us personally. But if you think about Washington, it's a place that almost nobody is from. So there's like, you know, historically middle class black population. It's small and it's getting smaller because most of them are sort of selling their houses now that they're inflated and moving out to the burbs. Right. So what you have is most of the residents here are not actually from here. And I think it just has like a psychologically warping effect. So you go to a Nationals game and everybody's rooting for the Nationals, but they don't actually care if the Nationals win. Whereas if you go to a Reds game, every person there is is going to sob at the end of the game if they don't win. It's just a weird. It's like a placeless place. And I think that's the most bizarre part of Washington.
Megyn Kelly
I can't picture you in it. I mean, obviously I can. I can see you in it, but I can't picture you because there's so much insincerity. I mean, I lived here for three years and everyone takes themselves so seriously.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Absolutely. All the egos.
Megyn Kelly
That must be so hard to bond with.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, it's definitely true that you have people who are sort of super huge egos. So a friend of mine, he's actually like a think tank intellectual, he told me once about the United States Senate when I was thinking about running for the Senate. He said, the thing you have to realize about the United States Senate is that it's 100 people who wake up every morning, look in the mirror and think to themselves, they're going to be the President of the United States. And that is absolutely true.
James Fitzgerald
Right.
Vice President J.D. Vance
But enough Edgar's.
Megyn Kelly
We have plenty of time for him later.
Vice President J.D. Vance
It is a place of very intense egos, but the problem is people take themselves too seriously.
Ashley Banfield
Right.
Vice President J.D. Vance
So Nobody in Washington can really make fun of themselves. Nobody can tell a joke at their own expense. It just. It is an odd place.
Megyn Kelly
It's one of the reasons why I think they have a love hate relationship with your boss.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yes.
Megyn Kelly
Because they can't stand him. Because they don't like his politics.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Correct.
Megyn Kelly
But I think at some level, even the press corps is so relieved to have somebody who will crack a joke every once in a while.
James Fitzgerald
Yes.
Megyn Kelly
Who will say, we have to cut this cabinet meeting short because it was boring the last time, which.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Thank God for that. No, I mean. I mean, the president, he is just. If Washington is an insincere place. Think you said that and said it well, he is like the polar opposite. He just says what's on his mind. He doesn't care how anybody's gonna react to it. You. What you see is what you get. And people always ask, well, what is he like in private? He is in private exactly like he is when he's in front of a camera. And I think that. That you're right. It kind of. There are some members of the press who kind of like him for it, then some members of the press who don't. And then I think for most members of the press, it's a little bit of both.
James Fitzgerald
Right.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Like, they admire the game, even if for some political reason, they can't. They just can't admit that they actually like him. But most of them actually do.
Megyn Kelly
They hate themselves.
James Fitzgerald
Exactly.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Exactly. I mean, look, there was a moment in the Oval Office, I wasn't even in there, but, you know, I was in the West Wing, and somebody sent me where he was talking to Kaitlan Collins, who's the CNN anchor. And I have, like, a decent relationship with Kaitlan Collins, which is unusual given that she's from cnn. But the president, she's asking a question. The president says, why don't you ever smile?
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
Vice President J.D. Vance
And it's actually, like, so perceptive. Even if you're asking a tough question, even if you take your job very seriously, like, why does it always have to be so antagonistic?
Megyn Kelly
Well, I laughed because I saw online everybody was calling him sexist for saying that. And I literally said the same thing about Kaitlan Collins a year ago on my show. She never smiles. Every once in a while, you have to smile. Roger Ailes used to tell us that every once in a while, you get. Remember, smiles. Show the viewers that you have a.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Heart, have some fun.
Megyn Kelly
Right.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Like life. You can't always take yourself too seriously. You're going to have a heart. Attack. And that's too much of the Washington press corps. And of course, they don't act like that when the other guys are in power. So it is. There is a political bias angle to it. But I just, I think that the press would have a much higher. Like, the media is one of the least trusted institutions in the United States of America. More people would trust them, more people would like them if they actually express the range of emotions. Like, I'm not saying you have to agree with everything that me or President Trump do, but nobody is angry all the time. And when you come across as angry all the time, it's just fake.
Megyn Kelly
And also fake. Confused or befuddled about, for example, the lowest crime rate in 125 years.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Absolutely.
Megyn Kelly
New York Times. We may never know.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yes.
Megyn Kelly
How it happened.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yeah, well, okay, so just on this one, lowest crime rate in 120 years, a massive drop in murders. That is human beings who are fellow citizens, in some cases our family and friends who are walking around America's cities, who, but for the pro law and order policies of the Trump administration, would literally not be with us. Like, that's one of those things where when you measure it in human lives, you realize how powerful and important this is. There are many, many dozens of people in most of America's major cities who are walking around right now who get to go home to their kids, who get to play with their dog, because we have actually brought some common sense back to our crime policies. But just going back to the media, okay, so I remember this question I got from a New York Times reporter. I was doing one of these long form interviews, and she asked me, you know, she said, well, you know, sometimes you give these speeches and you're like, happy, Go lucky. And, you know, you play around with your kids and you're obviously very happy when you're doing that, but sometimes you're like, really annoyed or really angry. Like, what is the real JD And I remember thinking to myself, what human being isn't sometimes pissed off at what's going on in the country, but also can laugh about it? What human being doesn't enjoy playing with their kids, but maybe gets annoyed when they're dealing with some bullshit at work? The idea that you have to be like, one dimensional is, I think, one of the reasons why the media is so broken. And it's one of the reasons why they can't tell the true stories that are out there. You asked about the crime. Okay. Why is the crime rate so low? There are a lot of reasons. One is that We've empowered local law enforcement. Another reason is because we've deported a lot of criminals in the United States that should have never been here in the first place because they were illegal aliens. So the media cannot even express an ounce of nuance. It's never, oh, well, maybe this, we disagree with this. Let's have a conversation about that. But like, let's tell the truth about the fact that there are Americans who are alive today because of Donald Trump's crime and immigration policies. They can't do that. It's always just shouting, angry all the time, you're Gestapo. You're the fascist. And it's, it's just crazy. And it does the American people a real disservice. It's frankly. Why, you know, you probably have, I don't know, five times as many viewers, 100 times as many viewers as the average CNN show because people are fed up with the bullshit. Yeah, I'm not sure if I'm supposed.
Megyn Kelly
To hear you're allowed, you know. Yeah, no, our YouTube feed on a monthly basis beats all of CNN, just our show 100%.
Vice President J.D. Vance
That doesn't surprise me at all.
Megyn Kelly
And we know why. Yes, let's talk about the illegal immigration. So this year we've had 2.2 million self deportations and about 675,000 actual deportations under the Trump Vance administration. That's about, let's call it 3 million, the self deportations. We're assuming we're going to have more on the front end than the back end because people who are willing to take the deal are going to take it now and go. So unfortunately, it could be that that number could go down. And people who really want those 10 to 12 could be as many as 20 million illegals who are here, most of whom came under Joe Biden. They want them all gone. But at this pace, it's not going to happen. So to those people who think this is going too slowly, what do you say?
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, I say a few things. First of all, there are ways in which it will accelerate. You're right. There may be some front end self deportations that you can't replicate in years two and three. There also may be some people who wanted to do it in year one but couldn't get in the line, couldn't, you know, I mean, self deporting two and a half million people, that's a lot just bureaucratically. So I think those numbers will continue. They may taper off a little bit. Number two, all of the immigration enforcement officers that we hired because Biden gutted immigration enforcement. Most of them are in training right now. Most of them have not even hit the streets. There are a lot of ways in which we are doing a slow ramp of immigration enforcement because we inherited a deportation operation that was so broken. And then the third thing that I'd say is the left has fought us so aggressively, but many of our victories are starting to bear fruit. I mean, like just yesterday or the day before, you had a left wing judge who said that we could not end temporary protected status for illegal Haitian immigrants. Now, this is a program that was put in place illegally, I believe, in the Obama administration. And now a judge is saying that we can't end it. Well, we're going to appeal, that we're going to win. But some of this stuff has taken where judges have tried to stop us from deporting illegal aliens, and that's had to work its way through the appeals process. Some of those cases, I believe are at the Supreme Court right now. So it just takes time to do this in the proper way, to do it in a legal way. It's taken time, especially when the left is fighting us so aggressively. But it's going to keep on happening. I mean, the president has been very clear. We're not going to stop enforcing our immigration policies. We're going to keep doing it. But I think, frankly, we'll probably be in a better position to do it a year from now than we are today. And we're certainly in a much better position today than we were a year ago.
Megyn Kelly
That's interesting, because the legal landscape will have been cleared exactly, of some of these hurdles thanks to the Supreme Court.
Vice President J.D. Vance
I mean, Megan, sometimes Steven Miller is one of my closest friends in the administration. He and I go way back. Sometimes we'll exchange messages and it's like, can you believe this judge did this? It's going to delay this thing another three months or another six months. But then you realize, okay, three months, six months. But we keep on winning these cases, Right? So, yes, you have radical judges who are slowing things. They're not going to be able to stop things so long as we in the administration maintain our posture on it. And we're going to.
Megyn Kelly
Do you find it shocking? Like the judge who issued that order saying, you cannot end temporary protected status. It's the same judge who tried to stop Trump's ban on transgender serving in the military. And both times she said it's animus.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yes.
Megyn Kelly
The administration either hates transgender people or now in this case, it has. It hates black people from Haiti. And both I mean, she was overruled on the first case. She's likely to be overruled on this case. But you're a lawyer. Do you find it shocking how opinionated, how personal these judges may.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yes, I do. And there was the one judge who was like, the administration should read the Declaration of Independence. I guarantee you that our president and the Trump administration is aware of the Declaration of Independence and has actually read it. I don't think Biden could have cited the first 10 words of the Declaration of Independence. So there is this weird judicial animosity towards the administration. But we kind of knew we were going to do this. I mean, I remember during the transition we talked through, okay, we know there are some far left judges who are going to do nationwide injunctions, which by the way, I think are illegitimate, but set that to the side. And we know we're going to have to power through this stuff. We're only a year into a four year term, so we are making progress. But this animus point is really interesting because I think to the extent that there are still, and I'm fundamentally optimistic about human nature, there are still some good faith people on the far left who are trying to, who hopefully would try to understand where we're coming from. Here's what I would say. So I got an email from a classmate of mine a couple of weeks ago and I didn't respond to it, but I did read it and it was basically like, you know, it was a plea to sort of stop the chaos and to calm down the chaos. And I read it and I thought, okay, this is a good human being. Even though I disagree with his politics. And of course we don't want immigration enforcement to be chaotic. It's one of the reasons why we've encouraged state and local officials to work with us. But fundamentally the question is, are we allowed to do what the American people elected us to do? Biden lets in call it 20 million illegal aliens. If the courts tell us that we're not allowed to deport the people that the American people elected us to deport, that's fundamentally not about even immigration anymore. That's about democracy. Are the American people still sovereign? If one administration can do something and the other administration can't do what the American people elected them to do in order to reverse it. And if you think about even, there's another layer to it which is nobody elected Joe Biden to open the border. If you actually look at what Joe Biden said on immigration during the 2020 campaign, he sounded a lot more like A moderate, even conservative Republican. And then, of course, they got into power and they opened the border. So doesn't it cast into doubt the legitimacy of our system if one president running on reasonable immigration enforcement opens the border and then another president is not allowed to close it and deport all those people who came? I think that's fundamentally what's. What's at stake here is do judges control, does the far left control American, the American constitutional republic, or do the people, and I believe the people are sovereign, which is why we've pursued the policies that we have.
Megyn Kelly
The example of Minneapolis has been troubling to both sides. The left has used it to say ICE is out of control and the Trump administration, administration is out of control. And the right is frustrated that by some accounts, we appear to have bent the knee there.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yes.
Megyn Kelly
In other words, Nome's out, Homan's in. Now we're only focusing on the criminals. He says we're focused on the non criminal illegals. I realize they've all committed crimes by coming here illegally. But my point is the far right, definitely the right, I think, wants all illegals gone, of course. And actually the poll showed that the majority of the American people still want that. They want all of the illegals gone, not just the ones who committed additional crimes upon getting here. And I think a lot of us are wondering, what is the plan for getting them? Because it seems that the left has effectively exercised its veto by its terrible behavior in Minneapolis. Yeah, such to, you know, Homan is very focused on getting the illegals out. He's. All of the reforms he's announcing are with respect to getting the illegals who have committed additional crimes and notification of them before they leave the local jails, which would be great. That would be a compromise of sanctuary city policy there. We don't yet have an agreement on that in Minneapolis, which is the biggest area. Maybe we'll get it. But the point is simply, what about all the others?
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yeah, yeah. So I actually, I kind of like that our side is so insistent on this issue. I like the pressure. I like people saying, we recognize you've done a lot, now do more. I think that's kind of how this should work, is that fundamentally, you know, the president and I and the entire administration, we work for the American people. And so I hear these complaints, I hear these criticisms. I guess I'd say a couple things. So, first of all, again, you have an entire legal landscape, but also a deportation enforcement mechanism. All of these additional ICE officers that we brought in as part of the One big beautiful bill that's getting online now.
Megyn Kelly
They're not going to Minneapolis.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, some of them will.
Megyn Kelly
Some of them just announced a drawdown of 700 children.
Vice President J.D. Vance
So Homan announced a partial drawdown, but because the local authorities are cooperating with them, and this is why it's important to segregate. What are we talking about, immigration enforcement or everything else? We're not drawing down immigration enforcement. We're drawing down some of the federal officers that were helping the guys doing immigration enforcement. And this is what I think, frankly, the far left and also some of our guys on the right didn't fully appreciate. When Homan says, we're drawing 700 people down. Those are the people who were protecting the ICE officers as they went out and did deportations and immigration enforcement. Most of the people that we have in Minneapolis, they're not doing immigration enforcement. That's true. Even after the 700 drawdown, most of them are protecting the immigration officers from the mob that's forming around them. So as we get more and more cooperation from Minneapolis and from. From the state of Minnesota, and we are. We are starting to get real cooperation from them in a way that we haven't. We don't want people there doing effectively police work so that they can protect our immigration officers. We want the immigration officers to go and do their work, and if they get into a problem, they can call local police. As that happens, you'll. I think you're going to see some of that. That law enforcement shifting to the local police, which is exactly what we wanted. And by the way, well, before the Peretti shooting or the Renee Goode shooting, that's what we were asking. Because if you look even in very blue places like Memphis, Tennessee, or a number of other cities, you see the system working as it should. An immigration officer goes in, arrests an illegal alien, that person gets processed and deported. And if, God forbid, you have a mob forming, the ICE officers can call the local police and say, hey, these guys are threatening us. They're harassing us. They're maybe even assaulting us. The reason why Minneapolis was so chaotic is because we had to have all these extra officers doing the job the local police wouldn't do. If the local police are willing to step up a little bit, I think that's a good thing, not a bad thing. And, you know, I don't want to give this talk of surrender, because I know that we haven't surrendered.
James Fitzgerald
I.
Vice President J.D. Vance
But if they're in Minnesota doing the very thing that they said they refused to do, I don't think that's a surrender on the part of the Trump administration, especially as we continue on immigration enforcement.
Megyn Kelly
What about the secret option of E Verify where we go after the employers and we find them, if we find out that they're employing illegals.
James Fitzgerald
Yeah.
Megyn Kelly
It seems there's been a reluctance to do that even by the Trump administration because there are a lot of employers who, let's face it, like employing cheap labor through illegal immigrants.
James Fitzgerald
Yes.
Vice President J.D. Vance
So I, you know, you know, I supported E VERIFY legislation when I was in the Senate. It's been an issue. I actually campaigned on it when I ran for the Senate. It's funny, I've never talked to the President about E VERIFY specifically, but it would require an act of Congress and that, that is something that, look, I would like to believe that Congress would support E VERIFY legislation. I frankly don't know that we have the people that would make it happen. But look, if Congress wants to do it, then they should do it. And then of course, that would give us some additional immigration enforcement tools. We would love that. But fundamentally, that is something that Congress has to fix. We've done a lot, by the way. We've made it harder for employers to hire illegal aliens, we've made it harder for illegal aliens and frankly some legal visa holders to get access to the benefits that should go to American citizens. So there's a lot that we can do administratively certain things like fully verify. You do need Congress.
James Fitzgerald
Congress.
Megyn Kelly
You mentioned Congress. It's not looking so good for the Republicans to hold on to the House. We'll see, at least in the midterms. I mean, now some people are worried about the Senate, which would really be calamitous for the right.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yep.
Megyn Kelly
What will happen if the Democrats do win control of the House? Only will anything change? I mean, I realize you're going to have an investigation coming your way every two weeks, but we haven't had a lot of legislation pushed through the first year just given the 60 vote threshold in the Senate. So realistically, what do you think would change?
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, I think a couple things. One, Democrats will try to spend more money, particularly on their targeted populations. You'd see a lot of legislation saying we're going to shut down the government unless we give more health care benefits to illegal aliens, more federal backed loans to illegal aliens. So that would definitely be a fight that we would have and I think we would win some of those fights. But if the Democrats control the House, we probably wouldn't win all of them. The bigger thing that would happen is just impeachment Impeachment, impeachment. Like, if you look at. Go back to 95, okay, so Republicans win. Bill Clinton does what's called the triangulation, and you have this great bipartisan compromise on welfare reform and on tax policy and on regulatory policy. Anybody hoping that Democrats win, and you see a lot of bipartisan legislation, you need to stop taking the drugs, because that's not going to happen. Democrats are not interested. They have said they're not interested in doing any big bipartisan legislation for the American people. What are they interested in? Impeachment. They are interested in getting Trump and getting the people in his administration. And that's what we would have for two years. We would have a government, we would have a Department of justice, we would have a White House where we'd still be able to get a lot done. But fundamentally, there's a lot that wouldn't happen because we'd be so focused on sham impeachment trials where the Democrats, by the way, would know they weren't going anywhere. But that's all they have, actually. Ask yourself, what is it that unifies the Democratic Party in 2026America? You know, you might say it's, It's. It's men and women's sports and. Okay, nobody really cares about that. Or if they do care about it, they hate it like we do. Okay. You can't run a national party on men and women's sports, raising taxes on hardworking Americans. A lot of Democrats believe that. You can't run a campaign on that. The only thing that they have is they hate Donald Trump. That's what unifies their party. They hate the Trump administration. That's what unifies their party, and that's what their legislative agenda would look like if we gave them power.
Megyn Kelly
Also hating Trump and hating abortion. I mean, loving abortion. Those two things. Yeah, I mean, they're really solid. Solid.
Vice President J.D. Vance
They, they like. Again, I don't think this is true of most Democrats in our country, but most elected Democrats, it is a weird obsession with a culture of death, gender ideology, affirmative action, diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's like all of the things that divide Americans against each other, that make Americans hate one another and that make Americans poorer and less safe. That is the operating focus of elected Democrats. But they're smart enough to recognize they can't run on that. They can't run on any of their actual policies. So they're not going to try to enact this stuff. They're just going to try to attack the president.
Megyn Kelly
We mentioned the press a minute ago. Someone who Claims to be a member of it is Don Lemon, who's been.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Arrested now the dumbest man in television.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, I mean that. And that's saying something. He's under arrest because he stormed a church in the middle of a Sunday service, along with a lot of other rioters and disrupted people trying to worship. He's trying to cloak himself in the First Amendment, saying this is an attack on freedom of the press. And you say what?
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, I say first, Don, no one's objecting to you standing outside of a church and protesting. No one's objecting to you, to no one, saying, you can't protest the Trump administration's immigration policies or, frankly, our policies on anything else. What you cannot do is go into somebody's house of worship and prevent them from exercising their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. That's what happened, by the way. There's a federal law on the books that says you're not allowed to interrupt churches, you're not allowed to prevent people from entering or leaving a church. And the Biden administration aggressively prosecuted people. Where was Don Lemon when people were getting aggressively prosecuted for sham violations of the Fake Face Act? We have a rock solid violation of the Face act, which is you were sticking a microphone in the face of a minister during the church service while the people you were with were preventing people from leaving. That's a violation of the law. That's not about the First Amendment. You care about criticizing our immigration policies, then stand outside the church and protest. You don't get to violate other people's rights. And if you do, the Trump administration, we're going to try to do everything that we can to make sure you suffer legal consequences.
Megyn Kelly
The administration is trying to decide right now what to do about Iran, and that's a tough one, too, because you actually have a split, you know, within the Republican Party, as you do on so many things, because Republicans love to disagree with each other, unlike the Democrats.
Vice President J.D. Vance
We do. And I love that. I love the diversity. I love the dynamism.
Megyn Kelly
But just how aggressive should we be with Iran? There is a very large faction of the Republican Party that says, what are we talking about Iran for? What do you mean, America first, let's focus on our own problems, affordability, all these things. They think President Trump spent too much time focused on overseas issues anyway, and they definitely don't want to get involved in Iran. And then there's a larger faction, another faction that is also large, that's more Neo Khani, that says, we missed an opportunity. We let those protesters down, you know, the windows closing. We should be more aggressive militarily there right now. Where do you fall?
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, so first of all, I hear the criticisms out there. The administration is too focused on foreign policy. I just have to defend the President. I don't think that's true. I think that certainly when you're the President, United States, you do have to conduct foreign policy. We're the most powerful country in the world. But what I see him every day, he's laser focused on how do we make the American people more prosperous and more secure in their own country. That's what our immigration policy is about, which we've taken a raft of crap over. That's what our crime policy is about. That's, you know, even the foreign policy stuff. Much of the President's foreign policy has been focused on reshoring industry, on using tariffs to force people to reinvest the United States of America. So the global criticism, I just don't think people, look, the President is going to have to engage in foreign policy. But this President, I think, is much more focused on the home front than any president in my lifetime. And he's gotten a lot. I mean, look, $18 trillion in new investment. The country's finally starting to re industrialize.
Megyn Kelly
18 trillion other countries who are investing.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Into the United States, investing in the United States of America. That has been the exact opposite for building companies our entire lives, Megan. It has been American money building factories overseas. Now it's other money coming in to build factories for American workers and the American people. That's big, by the way. We're not going to see the full benefits of that for years, maybe even a decade. But that's the sort of investment in the country that really pays long term dividends. Now, Iran, specifically, like, what should we do with Iran? Okay, a couple of things. First of all, it's the President's decision. He will ultimately decide how we handle this particular Iranian situation, just like he decided on Operation Midnight Hammer. What he has been very clear on, if you go back to 2015-2016-2021-2025, the President has said consistently, we can't let these people have a nuclear weapon. Now why, why does that matter to America? Number one, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, like you think it's bad when we have a domestic terror attack where a couple of people die and you're right, what happens when the same people who are shooting up a mall or driving airplanes into buildings have a nuclear weapon? That is unacceptable. And it's not just them, because if the Iranians get a nuclear weapon, you know, who gets a nuclear weapon? Like the next day the Saudi Arabians and then somebody else in the Gulf Arab state. And so you have nuclear proliferation on a global scale. The biggest threat to security in the world is a lot of people having nuclear weapons. So what the President said is Iran's not going to get a nuclear weapon. We're going to work with China and Russia and any country, whether they're free friend or whether we're a little more competitive to try to draw down the amount of nuclear weapons that exist in the world. I think that's the most important thing you could do for peace and stability. And the question is, what do you do to enforce that red line? Okay, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. That is the stated policy goal of the President of the United States. It's so funny, sometimes you have people who are saying, well, the President's too belligerent. And then sometimes you have people who say, well the President, he's talking about diplomacy and he's talking about negotiating with the Iranians. We shouldn't negotiate, we should just bomb them. What the President's going to do is he's going to keep his options open. He's going to talk to everybody. He's going to try to accomplish what he can through non military means. And if he feels like the military is the only option, then he's ultimately going to choose that option. I can't, I'm not. Obviously even if I knew what we were going to do, I would not tell you and your, and your many millions of listeners. But I feel like people have to remember that this is not about like, look, I grew up in the Iraq generation. I literally enlisted. I enlisted in the Marine Corps as an idealistic young kid right after 9, 11. I went to Iraq in 2000. Right listed in 2003. I went to Iraq in 2005. I am very cognizant that the Middle east leads to quagmires. Trust me. So is the President United States. And we're hearing that. We know that's out there, but more importantly, we know the history and the President does not. He has no interest in repeating the history of Iraq. What he does want to make sure is that there's a totally separate issue which is you don't let crazy people get nuclear weapons and then lead to a nuclear arms race all over the world.
Ashley Banfield
But this is this.
Megyn Kelly
I mean you're, you tell me whether this is about nuclear weapons right now or not. But what we're Seeing in Iran is these protests on the street. Not as much anymore because they've been killing a lot of the protesters. But it's, should we go in there and help the protesters get rid of this regime? Like get rid of the Ayatollah, which, let's face it, it's much different in Iran. The regime goes well beyond the Ayatollah. It's not like Venezuela where take off Maduro. It's a lot more complex. Even if we got rid of the Ayatollah, there'd be a whole bunch of others just like him, part of the regime. And so the last thing most Americans want to hear is what we heard in Venezuela, which is now we're running Iran.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yeah, the President is very aware of all this stuff, Megan. But I'll tell you, you know, protests, you know, counter regime. I mean, look, in a perfect world, would I love it if a bunch of freedom loving Iranians, who by the way, are amazing, they're brave people. If you know anything about the Persian people, they're like an incredible group of human beings. If they took over their own country and had a government that was much more friendly to the United States of America, would that be a good thing? Absolutely, that would be a good thing. But fundamentally, what the President has always been focused on, even with this most recent round of protests, you saw, I think his most recent truth, or at least one of the more recent communications he made about Iran, it's nuclear weapons based. We are still focused on this question of ensuring they don't get a nuclear weapon. And here's the good thing. Because of what happened last summer, I feel 100% confident that even if the Iranians were rushing towards a nuclear weapon, they couldn't get one during the Trump administration. But we're not worried about the next three years, worried about the next 30 years. We have to make sure that you don't. Look, what I really worry about, I think this is, you know, obviously I disagree a lot with Bill Clinton, but Bill Clinton fundamentally decided, you know what, we're just going to let North Korea have a nuclear weapon. We're not going to do anything to stop it. What happens if 30 years from now, the number of nuclear countries, it's less than 10, maybe about 10. What if it goes to 100? What if every military in the world has a nuclear weapon? What if a crazy person gets elected in some random out outposts of the world that you and I couldn't even find on a map? And now all of a sudden a crazy guy has access to nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation. That is very much a bad thing. And something in America first foreign policy should focus on. That is certainly where the President is.
Megyn Kelly
Most worried about when it comes to defending the homeland. The President's been looking northward to Greenland and to Canada, but he's been very focused on Greenland.
James Fitzgerald
Yes.
Megyn Kelly
And you tell me what we got that made him say, okay. Now I'm happy because he gave that speech at the UN like, we need to have Greenland and we need to own it because no one would defend something on lease. Yeah, but then by the end of the UN summit, he came out saying, we're satisfied, but we seem to only have gotten permission that we might have had already to build more military bases on a couple of their outposts.
Vice President J.D. Vance
No, we definitely have gotten much more than we originally had. So first of all, again, it's important to define the interest here. Greenland is very important to America's national security. Our entire missile defense system, by the way, would be inoperable if the Russians or the Chinese controlled Greenland. So God forbid, I don't think it's going to happen, to be clear, but God forbid some foreign country launches a missile, an icbm, at the United States of America. We couldn't defend ourselves if a foreign country controlled Greenland. And by the way, the Chinese and the Russians have both expressed an interest in controlling Greenland. Okay, so what is the defensive mechanism for Greenland? You have a population of about 60,000 people on a massive territory that's like the size of my hometown and I didn't grow up in a big town. And then on top of that, you have Denmark, which has been one of the better NATO allies, to be clear, but has still radically under invested in security compared to the Russians and the Chinese. So the President has said very simply, we are on the hook for this island. It's one of those unwritten rules that everybody knows that if the Chinese or the Russians affected one of our critical missile defense systems, we would necessarily defend that, but we're not getting anything for it. This is an unfair situation. The United States has no ownership over this island and we don't get any of the benefit. So let's actually rewrite the rules here a little bit and say if the United States is going to protect the entire world's missile defense system, primarily our own, but other people benefit from it, we should get some benefit from the bargain. Now, it's interesting because I actually was sitting in this room one of the rare times I've used this ceremonial office for official business. Me and Marco and a lot of the leaders from Denmark and Greenland had a great conversation. And it's funny when you see this.
Megyn Kelly
One where they ran for their cigarettes when they exited the building.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Maybe I think they did.
Megyn Kelly
They were stressed.
Vice President J.D. Vance
I did not follow up. I did not see what they did afterwards. We had a good meeting. It's so funny to me because the Europeans, they're so friendly and private and they're willing to make a lot of accommodations. And then publicly they attack us and they say, we're not going to work with the Americans. We're not going to do anything with the Americans. I'm sorry. It's all bogus. We all know, everybody knows, that this situation is going to come to a resolution. I think it's going to be a resolution that's good for Europe. Most importantly, it'll be a resolution that's good for the United States of America. But the idea that they haven't made any accommodations or concessions to the United States, it's not true.
Megyn Kelly
Are we at the beginning of a new world order where we move away from Europe and toward anything else, maybe even potentially Russia, if we can get past what's happened here? I mean, there's a real question about that, given some of the speeches you've made to the European Union, some of the speeches that President Trump has made, what's happening culturally in Europe, what's their crackdowns on free speech? They just look less and less like we do. And there's a real question about whether there's a massive shift happening now in terms of world alliances long term.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, it's definitely, I think, a new world order. I think the president has sought to it. There's a new world order in trade, There's a new world order in globalization and the way that we invest in our economy versus, you know, foreign supply chains. There's a new world order. And that the President is willing to shake up some old alliance structures. I mean, NATO, I think, is much different because of the President's leadership than it was 10 years ago. It was sort of coasting. It was effectively a protectorate of the United States of America. Obviously, you saw what happened in Venezuela. So, yeah, the President is putting a stamp on world history. But fundamentally, in an America first way, like that is the orienting focus. And so when people say, well, you can't work with Putin on anything because you disagree with the Ukraine invasion, well, the president said very clearly, Putin should not have invaded Ukraine. We're going to try to work and bring that to an end. But there might be some areas of Cooperation, too. His attitude is not, you're our friend, you're our enemy. We're going to go to war with our enemies, and we're going to be, you know, we're going to give our friends everything without asking questions. His attitude is we're about alliances, and you could have a country where we have a 90% aligned interest, but we're going to disagree on 10% of issues. Meanwhile, we may disagree with Russia on a lot, but when we agree on some things, and I do think that is a fundamental reorientation. The other thing that's much different, Megan, about the president's foreign policy and just the way that he does business and it's, look, there's a lot that I've learned from him, but this is nearly at the top of the list of the things I admire about the president, United States is he will talk to anybody. Like, you know, when he was thinking about who to make his vice president, he was talking to the gardener at Mar A Lago. He told me that. And I said, well, sir, what did the gardener at Mar A Lago said, this really matters to my life. And, but, but, you know when people say you shouldn't talk to this person, right? You shouldn't talk to Kim Jong Un of North Korea because that's. That gives him something for nothing. No, I'm going to have a conversation. We're going to actually conduct diplomacy. If we have to use the military, he's obviously not afraid to do it when he feels like he needs to. But the willingness to just communicate and break down barriers is very important. This is, by the way, Meghan, one thing I would say about the Iranians that is just really weird to me, and I don't understand their system, and I frankly think that it makes diplomacy with them extraordinarily difficult. Is the person who makes the decisions in Iran is the supreme leader.
Megyn Kelly
Leader.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Okay. The president, our sense is, doesn't have a lot of juice, doesn't really matter. The foreign minister seems to talk to the supreme leader, and that's mainly the person that we've communicated with. But it's a very weird country to conduct diplomacy with when you can't even talk to the person who's in charge of the country. That makes all of this much more complicated, and it makes the whole situation much more absurd. Like, he can pick up the phone and call Putin. He can pick up the phone, call Xi. Even countries that we have very hostile relations with, he can pick up the phone. You know, North Korea. He met the guy at the 38th parallel. It is bizarre that we can't just talk to the actual leadership of a country. It's really makes diplomacy very, very difficult.
Megyn Kelly
What, why are we letting 600,000 Chinese students into our universities? It was 300 and change. Laura Ingraham asked President Trump about this and he said, oh, you need to do business with China. It seemed like some sort of a deal had been cut where we gave them a bone of allowing double their students. Nobody wants this.
Vice President J.D. Vance
You know, it's not. The President's view is we don't want to create an unnecessarily antagonistic relationship with China. Like, there are certainly some disagreements, there are some things where our interests collide, but we can protect our intellectual property, in the President's view, without creating an unnecessary conflict with the Chinese.
Megyn Kelly
One of these Chinese students is one lost by an American.
Vice President J.D. Vance
What the President is trying to, trying to do is I think, create this situation where we can have good relations. Now, we're not radically, this has been misreported. I think we're not like radically increasing the number of visas that we give to China. That's just not true. I've seen that reported. It's not true. What we are doing is trying to preserve a very delicate diplomatic balance. Like anything, there are risks and rewards and costs and benefits. But the President is trying to balance a very important relationship with the United States.
Megyn Kelly
How about election integrity here at home? There's a bill right now.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Let's get the SAVE Act. Let's get the SAVE Act.
James Fitzgerald
No.
Megyn Kelly
What's going to happen with that?
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, we're working very hard right now to get the Senate to approve it. Because if the Senate approves it, we think the House would approve it too. Now that would require, I think, some Republican senators who, maybe they're a little too attached to the filibuster. Maybe they're a little too attached to Senate procedure. This is about the integrity of American democracy. Like do the people control who they elect or do some shady people. It's like, who actually controls the people who cast the ballots or the people who count the ballots? We want the sovereignty to be with the people who cast the ballots. And that's why we have to get the SAVE act passed. And you'll hear people say all the time, and I love this argument, they'll say, well, if you look at this precinct, only three illegal aliens voted in this election. Number one, that's three illegal aliens too many. And number two, if it's not a big problem, then why not just allow us to Check ID and exercise some basic precautions to prevent illegal aliens from voting. I never quite understand the person who says, on the one hand this never happens and on the other hand your effort to prevent it from happening is a threat to American democracy, which is fundamentally the Democrats argument, by the way. It's like an 8515 issue.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Most Democrats want voter ID because they want to protect their own votes, but.
Megyn Kelly
The elected leaders don't want to vote.
Vice President J.D. Vance
The elected leaders don't because they know that the more control they give to the people who are counting the ballots as opposed to those who are casting the ballots, the more control they will have. Because what happens is this where the.
Megyn Kelly
Rubber meets the road, like on the filibuster, and whether we get rid of it. John Thune doesn't want a lot of.
Vice President J.D. Vance
I hope that it is. That is what we're working very hard to make happen. Now, there is also some in between solutions we're working on. Like, for example, could you allow the Democrats to preserve the filibuster but actually force them to go and do a real filibuster? Like not where stand there a procedural paperwork filibuster, but stand there and talk. If you really want to prevent us from checking ID before votes, if you really want to ensure that illegal aliens have the right to vote, then stand on the Senate floor Quarry booker style for 30 hours and defend fend that to the American people, at the very least, then we'd have a real debate. We're working on it. I can't tell you how it's going to turn out because I can't predict 51 GOP senators, but we are making progress.
Megyn Kelly
Let's talk affordability for a minute here. A lot of people still suffering. President Trump says, look, we've made a lot of progress, but you know, the average American sitting at home doesn't feel it because the polls show that the numbers are not good for the administration on the economy. And that just reflects what people are feeling.
James Fitzgerald
Of course.
Megyn Kelly
So what, what can actually happen, let's say, between now and November, speaking of the midterms.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yeah.
Megyn Kelly
So that people actually feel better about what's happening in their wallet.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yeah. So I will say if you look at the numbers on affordability, they're starting to move in our direction a little bit. But it's, it's, there's clear movement from where there was, say, four or five months ago. I think that's a good thing. But here's the way that I think about it, Megan, is if you could just, just dollars and cents. The average American household lost about $3,000 of net wages during the Biden administration. That's through inflation, that's through higher taxes. The average American household, now this is about a month old, but had gained about $1,200 during the Trump administration. So there's a good news, there's the bad news. The good news there is that compared to last year, you were twelve hundred dollars richer than you were. The bad news is that compared to four or five years ago, you're about $2800 or I guess $1800 poorer than you were. Okay. So we recognize there's still a lot of work to do. I don't think that there's anything to do, Megan, other than to do the work. You know, we continue to have a lot of capital coming into the country. That means higher wages, more jobs for the American people. We continue to see grocery prices, I think, starting to come down a little bit. There are a couple of categories. You know, we really worry about beef in particular, that we're working very hard to bring down, not for the midterms, but just because we want the American people to buy some ground beef and to buy some steak if they so choose. You know, there are things like cars and houses where we're seeing some real progress. Rents have now declined five months in a row. That's a big thing that's happening. So it's one of these things where I don't think you're going to be able to trick the American people. They know they got $3,000 poor during the Biden administration. I think they're going to judge us by how much we've made them wealthier. And I think that come November, the verdict there is going to be positive, but we just have to keep working on it.
Megyn Kelly
The, the number one question that my audience wanted me to ask you.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Oh, God.
Megyn Kelly
I know. I was actually surprised by it, was they think the Republicans suck at messaging.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Okay.
Megyn Kelly
They want to know what the administration is going to do to get their arguments out more strongly on immigration and on the progress that they've made. I think there's a frustration actually amongst the GOP base that there have been a lot of wins, but people don't know it and that there actually is a sound immigration policy. But they let the left run with this narrative and the media is only too happy to spread lies about the four, the five year old boy who is wrongfully deported and all that. Right. Is there, is there a plan?
Vice President J.D. Vance
There is. I mean, one is the President. I are just Going to get on the road a lot more in the next, the next eight, nine months. And you know, part of this is you've got to look, cbs, NBC, abc, there's always going to be an editorial slant to those networks, but they're also declining in power. So I do things like this. I talk to you, I talk to your viewers through this conversation. But most importantly, we get out on the road constantly because most people still consume their news through their local affiliate, right? If their local CVS guy is saying, oh, the vice President came to town, the President came to town. This is what they're talking about. That's how you get the message out there. It's non traditional media. I think we were very good about this in the campaign in 2024. It's something we want to get back to in 2026 is actually taking the message to people. You're going on a lot of podcasts and a lot of the non traditional media, which frankly, I think has more narrative power than the traditional media does. You know, that's part of what we just have to do. I think the first year we're so focused on governing. Now we've got to go out there and talk a little bit more about what we've achieved. I, I do think there's a lot to hang our hat on to be proud of, that the American people should be proud of. But you're right, we gotta get out there and talk about it more.
Megyn Kelly
Somebody who's not shy about talking at all is Gavin Newsom. He's been everywhere. Vogue really loves him. I don't know if you saw the Vogue piece on him, but they're real. Oh, they like it.
Vice President J.D. Vance
I don't make it a habit to read Vogue or to read about Gavin Newsom.
Megyn Kelly
I kid you not. This is the lead line of their piece. Let's get this out of the way. He's embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address. It must drive Trump nuts. Newsome life. Ardent, energetic, a glimmer of optimism in his eye, Kennedy esque. Do you expect Vogue to give you this same treatment when you sit down.
Vice President J.D. Vance
With just completely unbiased reporting. That is like something out of Pravda.
Megyn Kelly
Yes, that's.
Vice President J.D. Vance
That's what Pravda would have written about Stalin, that this is what you're up against. Yeah, but I mean, how many people read Vote Nobody?
Megyn Kelly
But I really, it's just, it was just a segue into 2028 and whether you think there could be a square off with the Kennedy esque Gavin Newsom and possibly yourself.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, we'll see. I mean I. Look, I'll give you the answer I've given to other people, Megan, which is it's so far in the future, I.
Megyn Kelly
Don'T want the answer you've given to other people.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Yeah, but it's the truth. And all I can tell you is the truth is, look, I think that if we take care of business, the politics in 2028 will figure itself out. And if we don't take care of business, there is no amount of salesmanship that is going to change that. You just got to actually do a good job at the job that we have right now. And I think the American people hopefully in two, three, four years say, you know what, we want another term of the governance of this agenda. We don't want to go back to the crazy woke Democrats. We want to double down on reinvesting in America, on rebuilding the American middle class. I think that's ultimately what they're going to decide. I can't predict the future, but it's why I'm focused on the job that I have now. The other thing, Megan, is I made this observation and I think that it would be so warping and because of that very bad for the American people if I woke up every day and thought to myself how do I maximize my chances in 2028? Because sometimes the answer to that question, in fact probably most of the time, time is going to be a little bit different than how do I maximize the chances of giving the American people a win. Right. I got to focus on this job or I'm going to hurt a lot of people who really depend on me.
Megyn Kelly
What? Can I just ask you about the personal considerations that go into it? You're expecting a fourth baby.
James Fitzgerald
Yes.
Megyn Kelly
You have a young, vibrant, very smart and successful wife who had a big career before you guys got here.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Sure.
Megyn Kelly
So what will factor into whether you actually do run?
Vice President J.D. Vance
Oh, I mean a huge factor. Look, if we ever have that conversation, seriously, it's, you know, do the kids actually want to do it? Do they like this?
James Fitzgerald
Right.
Vice President J.D. Vance
I mean so far they're very happy. They've actually thrived in and I think our 8 year old struggles more with it than our two younger kids because you know, they're both, you've met them, but the two younger kids are extroverts. Right. It just says the two younger kids are like me and the other kid is like her. So he doesn't like the attention. He doesn't like the kids cameras. He doesn't like that people are always offering to do special things for him, even. Even when the special thing is nice. He just kind of wants to blend in a little bit. So I think the question is going to be, can the family support it happily? Can we keep our, you know, our family healthy? And if the answer is yes, then obviously that's a notch in favor of doing it. If the answer is no, I'd say that's pretty dispositive towards not doing it. But again, we'll have that conversation in a few years when we've actually done a good job here and can have that conversation with, I think, a little bit more of, first of all, it's there staring you in the face. It's not three years in the future, it's now. But also just where we have a little bit more sense of what is good for the kids. I mean, my first obligation, as much as I love the American people, it's to my wife and my kids, and we got to keep them happy. And so far, so good.
Megyn Kelly
I'm going to wrap it up, because I know you got to go ahead. How are you going to prepare for this fourth baby?
Vice President J.D. Vance
I don't. I mean, at this point, we're getting so many kids that they just kind of take care of themselves. So I guess we'll train the others to change diapers and do a bottle. I mean, I don't know. It's going to be chaotic. The thing is, we, Usha and I had this conversation. There are certainly sacrifices that come along with this life, but there are also a lot of good things. Like, we live in this beautiful, very protected mansion that the American people have gifted us. So thank you. You're a taxpayer. Thank you for that. You know, we also. Most of our meals are prepared for us, so we don't have to worry as much about cooking we did when baby number three came along. So there are a lot of things that in some ways make having a baby easier. You don't have to worry about TSA lines when you're the vice president. Air Force Two makes transportation pretty easy. So there are all these weird little ways where I actually think it'll be a little bit easier. It'll obviously be harder in some ways, but I just. My attitude towards kids. I remember after we had Ewan, our oldest, I was like, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into? No more kids. And then we had a second, then we had a third, and now both of us are just like, what's one more?
Megyn Kelly
Whatever. I'll share with the audience. I don't think you'll mind that we were with you guys personally at one point, and your kids were outside, and you just sort of called from afar. Please don't create any ruination and despair. I loved it. It actually made me think. Mr. Vice President, what do you think Mamaw would think of all this?
Vice President J.D. Vance
Oh, man, I don't know. I think she would. I ask myself that question a lot. I think she'd be amazed by it. And, you know, she was fundamentally just such a patriotic person. I think she'd be in this room right now looking up at the molding and the beautiful imagery and just saying what a blessing it is to be here. But I think the thing that she would just most like about our life is, is the kids. Mama always just loved kids. She loved grandbabies, and she loved the weird little things that they would say. She loved how, you know, they were at one minute super caring and affectionate, at the other minute, completely rebellious and. And I think that's what, you know, as much she'd be impressed by the pomp and the circumstance of the professional role. If mama were alive right now, she'd probably be living with us, and she'd be much more worried about the kids. Kids. And anything I was doing at the.
Megyn Kelly
White House, I feel like she could really. You know, how Marco Rubio's got every role in the administration. I feel like she could have done him. She could have taken any one of those off of his hands, and we would have been in very good hands.
Vice President J.D. Vance
That's right. No, that's another thing that will make the new. The new baby much easier is Marco has agreed to be nanny to our fourth kid. So, you know, what's another job?
Megyn Kelly
He can do it. All right, we gotta go. I forgot to ask you quickly, if you'll allow me, please. Savannah Guthrie is in the midst of a national crisis right now.
Vice President J.D. Vance
It sounds very sad.
Megyn Kelly
It looks awful.
Vice President J.D. Vance
It looks awful.
Megyn Kelly
Just wanted to give you the chance to comment on it because the White House sent out a tweet yesterday asking people to call in if they have any information, but.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Well, obviously thinking about her and praying for her. And I believe it's her mother in law. Is that right?
Megyn Kelly
It's her mom.
Vice President J.D. Vance
It's her mom. Okay. So praying for her mom and the whole situation just seems, you know, very scary. So what we've done at the White House is basically offered every resource that we can to try to help. And, you know, what can you do but help where we can and pray that it all turns out right. But certainly knows. I hope she knows we're all thinking about her at the White House because sort of the worst, one of the worst situations you can imagine personally. So we'll just keep tabs of it, keep on helping out where we can and hope that it goes okay.
Megyn Kelly
We're praying for her. We're praying for you every day.
Vice President J.D. Vance
I appreciate it.
Megyn Kelly
Thank you for the sacrifice that I know it takes to do this job.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Good to see you, Megan.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, you too.
James Fitzgerald
Thanks.
Megyn Kelly
All the best. If you are stressed out about getting out of debt, it's go time. This is one of those moments where timing matters and let me tell you about done with debt 2025 was a record year for them. People who collectively had more than 102 million in debt turned to them for help. And right now may be the best time to negotiate a settlement if you need one. Done With Debt tracks credit card and loan company behavior. They're experienced at knowing who who's negotiating and when and what it takes to get you the biggest reduction possible. Whether you are carrying 10,000 or 500,000 in debt, this may be the best chance you will get all year. So consider scheduling a free consultation. It only takes a few minutes. Imagine waking up without that weight on your shoulders and doing it without taking out another loan or filing for bankruptcy. Done With Debt helps you through the debt relief process so you keep more of your paycheck every month. Go to donewithdebt.com that's donewithdebt.com Go there right now. LifeLock how can I help?
Ashley Banfield
The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
LifeLock Representative
One in four tax paying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.
Ashley Banfield
What do I do?
Vice President J.D. Vance
My refund though.
Megyn Kelly
I'm freaking out.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Don't worry.
Megyn Kelly
I can fix this.
LifeLock Representative
LifeLock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage.
Ashley Banfield
I'm so relieved.
Megyn Kelly
No problem. I'll be with you every step, step of the way.
LifeLock Representative
One in four was a fraud Paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com Special offer terms apply On Deck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team or bridging cash flow gaps on Deck's loans up to $400,000. Make it happen fast. Rated a plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star trust pilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes@ondeck.com depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan be issued by Ondeck or Celtic Bank. Ondeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
Megyn Kelly
Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show. And now we shift our attention to news of the day and the latest in the search for Nancy Guthrie, the missing mom of Savannah Guthrie. NBC News host Ashley Banfield, who hosts her own podcast called Drop Dead Serious, is breaking exclusives on this case like nobody's business. And yesterday she had quite a doozy. I'm going to bring her on. She's going to explain what she learned. But she reported exclusively that they actually do have a potential suspect in the case and the identity is rather shocking. I'm going to bring her in now. Ashley Banfield, thank you so much for joining us. So tell us what your you say very reliable law enforcement source told you about a possible suspect in the case. Sure.
Ashley Banfield
So after almost four decades in this business, I have collected a few friends at the FBI and in local law enforcement all over the country. And the source that I have is impeccable. And he said that not only were the cameras smashed, plural, plural, cameras smashed. So that the suspect likely knew about the locations of them, but that the car belonging to the sister of Savannah Guthrie, Annie Guthrie, was towed, impounded and taken into evidence. And that. And this is the wording. It's very important. The wording is very important. He said they now believe the son in law may be the prime suspect. Those are the words, son in law may be the prime suspect at this point. And I'm very mindful. I covered the Elizabeth Smart case. I was out in Salt Lake City for five weeks while Elizabeth Smart had vanished. And I recall specifically a lot of language saying Ed Smart is likely the prime suspect here. And so you gotta be really mindful that, as you know, Megan, you're a lawyer, police investigations start in the middle of the circle and they go out in concentric circles in terms of investigating family members, Right. You start in the middle of the family, you investigate out from there. Then you go to contractors and friends and workers and everybody else who's had some contact. And then there's the randoms. So it is not surprising that someone in the family is being looked at. That language to me was pretty strident, though.
Megyn Kelly
It's surprising to me because there was forced entry. And from the beginning I thought, well, they must have ruled out the family pretty quickly if this is a case of forced entry, because the family wouldn't need to do that. The family Would presumably have a key. And if they didn't have a key and they wanted to get in, they just knock on the door and Nancy Guthrie would open it.
Ashley Banfield
So this is super interesting, and I had a long conversation with my former colleague Brian Entin about this because Brian identified blood drops at the front door.
Megyn Kelly
Right.
Ashley Banfield
And he's shown the video. It's pretty impressive. However, my source says the back door is wide open. Back door left, wide open. That's what my source said. I had a Megan half hour conversation two days ago.
Megyn Kelly
I watched it.
Ashley Banfield
Yeah. And I specifically said. So are you telling me when you said that she did not walk out of that house on her own, I said, are you telling me that she might have been carried out of that house? And I used the word over the threshold of the front door. And he said. I didn't say front door, but he didn't say. He didn't say no. Carried. But when he said, I didn't say no to the front door. And then, you know, the next day I'm getting information about the back door. It's pretty safe to say. Well, that makes perfect sense. However, why is there blood at the front door? And Brian Enten said he couldn't find the trail continuing past to the walkway that would take you to the driveway. Now, it is, you know, gravel. A little harder maybe to see any blood, but not impossible. So I'm trying to go see.
Megyn Kelly
Couldn't they have gotten her in the car, Ashley? I mean, like, I'm picturing a scenario where couldn't all those facts be consistent with. They came in through the back door. Yeah. Then they got her. Then they brought her out the front door after injuring her.
Ashley Banfield
Could.
Megyn Kelly
Then the blood trail continued just to the driveway.
Ashley Banfield
Well, it didn't.
Megyn Kelly
Where they then put her in a car.
Ashley Banfield
That's the problem.
Megyn Kelly
It ended well prior to the driveway. Yeah.
Ashley Banfield
The blood trail is just at the front door on those tiles. Then the gravel starts right away and it's a walkway to the driveway. And it's not close. I mean, it's. It's. It's a bit of a ways. Nancy Guthrie can't walk 50ft. 50 yards. Pardon me. Nancy Guthrie can't walk 50 yards on her own. So she would need assistance. And if you're bleeding and you've been in an, you know, a. Some sort of a melee, that would be even less. So. I was going through the scenarios in my mind. Okay, maybe the front door camera is smashed and there. And the doorbell is rung to get Mrs. Guthrie downstairs because that would be difficult in the middle of the night. It would get her down those stairs. So the confrontation might happen at the front door. Right there at the tiles, there's a struggle. And then because the car is not parked right out front where all that could be visible, potentially, maybe the car is around the back and that's why they go out the back door.
Megyn Kelly
And is that a possibility? I have no idea.
Ashley Banfield
I don't know because I've been trying to see with drone video whether the car could get out into a darker spot or maybe out of camera view because the smashing has to happen. But I was told that the cameras were smashed and plural. So if there's a camera in the back, camera in the front, smashed. And then of course, Brian and to noticed it and said, ask the, the sheriff, did you take them or did you think the guy or the suspect took them? And the sheriff had a funny answer. He said, yes, I noticed that. We're looking into it.
Megyn Kelly
Yes. So what he saw, Brian, engine saw, was like the, the remnants of a nest camera. Not even the nest camera, right. Like it was clear to him that they had been removed, which is not the same thing as destroyed. The sheriff is saying that they were destroyed right before we got to them. So he made it sound like they were destroyed by the perpetrator here, by the bad guy.
Ashley Banfield
So sheriff didn't say on the news conference that the cameras were destroyed. Brian Enten shot that video and asked, the cameras are missing, did law enforcement take them or did the perpetrator take them? And the response from the sheriff was, yes, we noticed that too. We're looking into it. And so look, I can tell you, you know this Pima county, there's not a lot of crime there. I, I'm trying to think of the last major thing that happened. I think it was Gabby Giffords being shot there, what, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And so I think he's working in real time, you know, and trying to protect his investigation, keep the integrity and answer real questions he wasn't expecting, maybe, and couching, you know, his verbiage as best he can. But he didn't say, oh, we don't know that we took the cameras or no, there never was a camera there. He said, yes, we noticed that too, and we're investigating that.
Megyn Kelly
We've got, it's your reporting that that has added that they were destroyed, but.
Ashley Banfield
And multiple. I don't know the location of the other one. My guessing, and it's just me would be backdoor, but that's where you place the nest camera. My source also said, and this is musings, not evidence or information. Who takes an 84 year old woman who can't walk well on her own? It is a burden. It is a, it is a troublesome endeavor. It makes you more susceptible to being caught. You now have a problem on your hands. What are you going to do with this person without anybody seeing it? And it stands to reason, it's very unusual for some random burglar to take the person if something happens.
Megyn Kelly
It's not a random burglar. No, I agree. So it's either somebody who's kidnapping her and wants to money for a ransom or is kidnapping her as a revenge because they dislike her. Or maybe Savannah or another family member. Or it could have been personal musings.
Ashley Banfield
Again, it could have been a murder.
Megyn Kelly
That they were then removing the body from the crime scene.
Ashley Banfield
That's even worse because again, now it's on your hands to get rid of the body and the evidence is now in your car and all the rest. It's not that it hasn't happened, it has. It's more likely that a random person would leave that body in the house and get, get a clean getaway with no DNA evidence in the car, if that's possible. But the other random musings was that something like this. And again, these are the random musings. This is not evidence. This, this kind of a crime typically requires a benefit. And like you mentioned, the ransom notes musings are baloney. That, you know, you don't email a ransom note to TMZ or a local, you know, station. It's not normal, it's not usual. And that time frame as well, ransom notes usually come pretty quickly. This was 72 hours later, so. And look, I can't wait for that investigation to yield some idiot that thought that they were going to get some bitcoin out of a tragic situation. It makes me they're just, they're just festering parasites when they do this.
Megyn Kelly
I mean, it does. We still don't know though whether Savannah Guthrie has received a ransom demand or law enforcement has because they've been very cagey about the ransom question. The first day he was asked, which was Monday, Sheriff Nanos said, no, I haven't heard anything like that. And he was kind of forthcoming. And then as you know, yesterday, Tuesday, he was much more tight lipped. He wasn't as forthcoming with answers. And the question of whether a ransom note had been introduced seemed more ambiguous on day two than it did on day One.
Ashley Banfield
You know, it's funny, I'm looking back at my notes for my conversation. I said, has there been a. And this was the Monday, as you said, has there been any demand for ransom? And he said, we don't know. He said to me, we don't know. Those are the words. However, this came out yesterday. You probably saw it. This was the QR code. And the statement from Chris Nanos, the sheriff, saying, we are aware of reports circulating about possible ransom notes. Parentheses S, right note, parentheses S. Regarding the investigation into Nancy Guthrie, we're taking all tips and leads very seriously. Anything that comes in goes directly to our detectives who are coordinating with the FBI. We encourage anybody to use this QR code. So I think. And also our friend Harvey Levin at TMZ broke it yesterday. They got the email yesterday. So I don't think Harvey had it on Monday. And I would highly doubt that the local TV station had it Monday and didn't report it till Tuesday.
Megyn Kelly
All right, but that's sort of a red herring, we think, on the side. But the news about the. About Savannah's brother in law is huge. I mean, that if that's. Look, I have to be honest. A lot of people initially thought it should we be looking at the family because just that's the way it works. 90% of the time that. Yeah, exactly. That's who it is. Usually crime is not committed by some random person coming into a home and kidnapping an 84 year old. Usually it's a tragedy that some Knows where terrible.
Ashley Banfield
Both cameras are.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, exactly. Knows where both cameras are front and back. And possibly manages to get her to open the door or somehow maybe has a relationship with her. And. And. But of course, the thought of Savannah's not on the table. She was in New York. She had to fly out there after this all happened. The sister, I mean, like, it's just. It just seems beyond.
Ashley Banfield
Can I ask you a question?
Megyn Kelly
That the sister had something to do with it, but now we're talking about the sister's husband. Yeah, you go.
Ashley Banfield
Spidey senses. Megan, with all your experience in being a lawyer and being in the media, do you think that they would seize the vehicle of Savannah Guthrie's sister and impound it? Tow it, not ask for it. Come in, we want to take a look. Tow it, impound it. The words that were used are it is in evidence. If they didn't have a little stronger feeling about this because that's sends a massive message early in the investigation. If you are taking the daughter of the victim's car and a famous daughter's sister. That was another thing that I just, I'm just putting a lot of pieces together.
Megyn Kelly
No, you're right. And you're. The other thing the audience should know, they probably already do know, is you're not some whack reporter. Like, this is your beat. You've been covering crime for 20 years. You're very solid.
Ashley Banfield
Your reporting standards, 38, but who's counting?
Megyn Kelly
38 years this year. Reporting for many, many years. But like your reporting standards are very high. So you, you understand very well the, the gravity of reporting something like this. This is not just some slapdash operation. And you trust this source that told you right now he's the high level.
Ashley Banfield
Yeah, high level.
Megyn Kelly
So, no, you're right, they wouldn't.
Ashley Banfield
And when was it that they seized the car? Why was it they seized the car?
Megyn Kelly
When? When?
Ashley Banfield
I don't know the answer to that. But I do know that the FBI, according to Brian Enten, was over at Annie Guthrie's house yesterday for several hours.
Megyn Kelly
Is Savannah staying at Annie Guthrie's?
Ashley Banfield
I have heard that reporting. Nancy Liu at Newsnation reported that Savannah was staying there. And somebody else told me today, I think Savannah's staying there. I don't have that myself.
Megyn Kelly
I mean it's. One does wonder why Savannah hasn't said anything. I do. Like I. If this were my sibling and my sibling were, I believed, wrongly accused, I might say something. I mean, I might come out and say something.
Ashley Banfield
Go back two days ago. I would never walk in Savannah's shoes. My heart has been absolutely breaking for Savannah in all of this, in so many ways right from the get go. But I don't know that I would say something publicly if this was my mom. I have an 87 year old mom. This is.
Megyn Kelly
No, no, no. But if, but if your sibling now were.
Ashley Banfield
We're offered up, but even before, I'm going to take you in stages. So you give a statement to NBC early saying we're worried and we're working with law enforcement. Then you give a statement the next day saying, please pray. Again, I don't know that I would make a public statement or come out, but if my mom was missing, I think I would, I think I would be everywhere saying, please, if you've seen anything, help me, help me. If you've seen a car, if you've seen anything, this is where we lived. You would make it such a bigger media event and so many more eyeballs. And crowdsourcing is one of the best ways to solve crimes. It's How Gabby Petito's body was found, for God's sake. So if there were some concerns, I could understand silence. But I can also understand silence out of just utter grief.
Megyn Kelly
Mm. I know. Me too. I'm just picturing if Savannah's at her sister Annie's house yesterday, and Annie's husband is there. Tomaso. And the sheriff shows up, the FBI shows up and seizes his vehicle. Like that's an OMG moment. They'd have to have a warrant. They obviously. They had to go into court and show that there was probable cause to get that warrant. What was in that? Probable cause? Affidavit from the law enforcement officer that suggested they had the right to seize his car. We know that. That. Oh, Annie's car. Right. But she's married to him. So it's six one way. But was it Annie or was it Tommaso? Or was it both? Do we know, Ashley, that. That dropped off the mother, Nancy, on Saturday night? I believe it was a church mahjong event. And they brought him. They brought her home.
Ashley Banfield
So I've heard it both ways. I've heard Annie dropped her off, and then I've heard that Annie and her husband dropped her off, and I've heard that both ways multiple times from the sheriff himself in news conferences too. So it is a little bit unclear. And I don't know if they're unclear. And quite frankly, I don't know if this many hour meeting over at Annie's house yesterday, where the FBI was there, yielded a conversation, because most people would say, I think I need a lawyer here. This sounds weird. At least most people should say. Everybody should say, I need a lawyer before I say hello. And that's innocent people. That's to protect the innocent. Let's be really clear. I'm always very mindful. It's not about guilty people trying to cover up, although often it is. But innocent people need to protect the way their words can also be used against them, even when they don't mean it a certain way. I shot the sheriff. Well, just put that in writing. It now says, I shot the sheriff. You don't hear the inflection.
Megyn Kelly
Yep. So, okay, so we know that they must have gotten a probable cause affidavit to go in there and seize the car, which they did. Annie's car. And now why do we believe. Is it just from the source. That the focus is on Annie's husband, whose name is Tommaso Sioni? He. I believe he's a native from Italy. He's Italian born, and he's 50 years old, but he's been married to Savannah's sister for quite some time. He's 50 years old. He's from Tucson now. I mean, he's been living in Tucson. Do we know anything more about him?
Ashley Banfield
Let me tell you about this strange thing that we found. He's got a bio that appears on a website for the Tapirulan Cultural Association. That's a nonprofit based in Cremona, Italy. It's focused on promoting contemporary artists. Started in 2004. And this is what he quotes in his bio on that website. I was born in San Juan giovanni Valdarno on June 18, 1975. Since 2006, I have lived in Tucson, Arizona. I write when I have the chance. I study lizards. I play the electric bass. I make homemade pasta. LinkedIn has him as a teacher at Basis Oro Valley School from 2007 to today. They say he's a primary instructor for sixth grade science and AP biology. And Reverb Nation, which is a website based on music, says he put out an album with a three man music group called Early Black. That music's still out there. But again, I've seen some pictures when he's with the three together. Two, three guys. I don't know if that's the band. It kind of looks like a band picture. But yeah, apparently he's this bass player, electric bass, who's in a band called Early Black.
Megyn Kelly
Do we know how long they've been married?
Ashley Banfield
I don't know that.
Megyn Kelly
No. Isn't she an older sister to Savannah or. No.
Ashley Banfield
So I'm not sure.
Megyn Kelly
I think Savannah's my age exactly. I think she's.
Ashley Banfield
She's a little younger than me. If I'm 50, I think she's like 56, 55, something like that.
Megyn Kelly
Well, I'm 55. Oh my God. When did that happen? So I think, I think she's my age.
Ashley Banfield
Look at this. This is crazy.
Megyn Kelly
I'm pretty sure she's my age exactly. We have. Savannah and I actually have a lot in common. It's kind of eerie.
Ashley Banfield
We worked at Court TV together.
Megyn Kelly
I know, I know.
Ashley Banfield
You know, I remember, I remember being in the bathroom, the ladies room at Court TV and Court TV was getting shut down. They were very kind to us. They gave us nine months to find other jobs and Savannah got a over at NBC and I said, well, you gotta call my friend so and so. And you're getting that job. You're getting that job, girl. And then she said to me later, I. I got the interview and I'm I got the job. I'm gonna work at msnbc. And I said, oh no, you're going to host the Today show. Mark my word. And we always talk about that. Whenever I talk to her, I'm like, yeah, don't ever question me again, sister. Especially in the ladies room.
Megyn Kelly
Well, it's funny because I'm down here in D.C. today to interview the vice president. They allowed us to do our second hour from his ceremonial office here. It's beautiful. But when I first met Savannah Guthrie, it was at the Supreme Court because she was doing high court coverage for NBC and I was doing it for Fox or she was Ms. At the time. And now all these years later, it's very strange. I was just back down here covering the Supreme Court for the big argument on boys and girls sports two weeks ago. And here I am covering this terrible tragedy for her. And it's like at this point, Ashley, it's like I don't know if there can be a good outcome. If they can find Nancy Guthrie and she's fine, that's it. And by the way, we do have a soundbite on that. The sheriff says he's holding out hope that that could still happen. This is played on the Today show this morning. Here's sat zero this morning.
Ashley Banfield
The desperate search for 84 year old Nancy Guthrie now entering its fourth day with the Pima county sheriff saying he's holding out hope. Savannah's mom is alive.
Vice President J.D. Vance
We have nothing else to go on.
James Fitzgerald
But the belief that she is here, she's present, she's alive and we want to save her.
Ashley Banfield
NBC News is aware of two reports of ransom notes sent to news organizations that reference Nancy Guthrie. NBC News has not seen those notes and so far no law enforcement agency has substantiated them. The Pima County Sheriff's office saying it's also a aware of the reports, adding, we are taking all tips and leads very seriously.
Vice President J.D. Vance
The leads we've got coming in are critical to us. They're. They're valuable and we're sharing those with the FBI and others.
Ashley Banfield
FBI agents are now working closely with local authorities. The sheriff's department says Guthrie had several cameras at her home, but it's still unclear if there's any footage from the overnight hours when she was believed to be abducted. They're also still trying to find out any usable video from neighbors homes from.
Megyn Kelly
Any usable video from neighbors homes. And he seemed to speak to Sheriff Chris Nanos. Whether they do find. Whether they did find any usable video from Nancy's home or elsewhere In a way, again, that was cryptic. He's not the most clear on his communications. This is CBS Morning. Watch this here in SOT3.
Vice President J.D. Vance
The sheriff also says surveillance video from Guthrie's home has led them nowhere. So far, none of the camera images have revealed to us anything of substance, of nature, really.
James Fitzgerald
Anything.
Vice President J.D. Vance
No.
James Fitzgerald
It only goes so far back.
Vice President J.D. Vance
And so we're giving it to those camera makers and saying, can you do.
James Fitzgerald
Something more with this?
Ashley Banfield
I think I know that mean yeah, please tell me so. And I'm not a tech guru, but I know about Nest cams and my source said they were Nest, specifically said they were smashed and said they were Nest. And so my conversation on Monday with Sheriff Nanos was that they are working with the tech companies to get what's in the cloud, but that there were warrant issues and it was taking a long time and he was very frustrated working with the companies. He thought he'd have it back sooner and by Monday night he was annoyed that he didn't have it. Yesterday in the news conference, he seemed still to be frustrated waiting on these images. And I believe that's because perhaps the device itself may hold maybe just the last hour and they're looking for the history and for that, maybe the family doesn't have the password, whatever it is to get in, that's my guess. But the fact that they know they're smashed would at least give you the last image of it being smashed. That doesn't mean it was smashed from the front. Maybe someone came in the back door and smashed that front camera from inside side so then you don't see who's doing it or they were completely draped in black because everybody knows porch pirates notice drape themselves now because of camera cameras that can catch you coming up to them. Smashing them doesn't reverse what you've already seen. That's what I was thinking about that. But the other thing that I think is super key and my source said to me specifically, 2am is the focus and that's because the of the pacemaker separation. The sheriff wouldn't go that far. He kept saying, well, we're still leaving it open a wide window. I'm not going to narrow that window down for the public here. But my source said, oh no, it is the separation of the pacemaker from the Apple devices that we believe is the moment she went out that doorway and was spirited away.
Megyn Kelly
Yes, I mean, I think the rest of us had gleaned that, even though the sheriff wouldn't say it explicitly. But now your source is saying, yes, and so can you just reiterate, was there any sort of. Of caution given to you about saying Savannah's brother in law is or may be the prime suspect? Like that? Was that. Is that as good as saying, yeah, Savannah, may be. I may be. You may be. I mean, yeah. What's the worth of it? The.
Ashley Banfield
Well, I want to tell you one other thing he told me because there's. There were some reports that were pulled back. Somebody reported, I think on Monday that Mrs. Guthrie was dragged from her bed. And the sheriff came out.
Megyn Kelly
The sheriff said that. The sheriff said that I listened to an interview with you. Literally. Yeah.
Ashley Banfield
And he said, I didn't mean to be literally. And. And then he walked back that. And I couldn't get him to pinpoint an epicenter of the crime scene. Is it in the bedroom? Is it in the living room? Is it in the kitchen? Is it the front door? I couldn't get him to pinpoint that. He also wouldn't on Monday when I did the interview. He would not confirm that there was blood inside the house. But my source has confirmed there was blood inside the house. Brian Enten has confirmed that there's outside. My source said outside as well, but we saw the pictures. So there's blood inside the house and there's blood outside the house. And as far. And I want to be so careful with this because I. On my podcast, I said it over and over. Watch yourself. This is the language that's used. Son in law may be prime suspect now, meaning that's where the focus is going. This is where they're thinking. But is he. Is he going to be named? Is he going to be released? Is he going to be arrested? That's not. He did not go that far. But he said without question, when he towed the daughter's car, impounded it, put it in evidence. Son in law may be prime suspect now. And that's the language.
Megyn Kelly
Did he say anything about. Do we know if this. This man has a criminal history or anything about, you know, why? Was there any color as to why?
Ashley Banfield
No, the only color, I surmise is because they've gone to the point where they've towed the vehicle of somebody very prominent or connected to somebody very prominent in a very prominent, widely viewed case. I think you've. I'm trying to figure out, look, yes, you got to get a warrant if you're going to tow it against their will. Would they have agreed? Would they have said, sure, my God, take the car, of course, we have nothing to hide. And they just towed it rather Than having the integrity of it messed up with someone driving it, you know?
Megyn Kelly
Yes, I guess. I mean, that is certainly what you would do. And. But it's been impounded too, so it's not too evident.
Ashley Banfield
Yes, that's different.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, that's. It's not great. Okay, last question, Ashley. The sheriff, Chris Nanos. The nanos, the one that we've been discussing, actually issued a statement apparently in response to your news that reads as follows. At this point, investigators have not identified a suspect or person of interest in this case. Detectives continue to speak with anyone who may have had contact with Mrs. Guthrie. Detectives are working closely with Guthrie family. While we appreciate the public's concern, the sharing of unverified accusations or false information is irresponsible and does not assist the investigation. No suspect or person of interest has been identified at this time, which is not exactly a denial of what you reported, but seems aimed at you, your thoughts on it, that I've had it.
Ashley Banfield
Happen a million times and they don't want to release that publicly at this point. Point. They're not naming him publicly at this point. That's how I look at that. Listen, I said very carefully, may be prime suspect at this point. I did not say they've got their suspect at this time. That's not what my source said. Source says that he may be the prime suspect at this time. And I understand that. I understand that they're doing their work and they want to probably keep him talking. You know how it works. The minute somebody stops talking and they get a lawyer, it's harder. The work is a little bit harder, but it is odd as well. And I know you probably picked up on this. The answer to the question is, is there danger to the community? I remember that with Kohberger. No, nothing out there. Nothing to see here. Well, yes, there was a maniacal random murderer who slaughtered four children using a knife. K bar knife was out there for over five, six weeks. And so to say we don't get this is how the answer was from. From the Pima county sheriff's office. To say that we. We don't have somebody out there, you know, kidnapping 84 year old ladies every day. And we don't believe that that's happening. We don't think there's some sort of serial event happening. But, you know, we want to. We want to figure out what's going on. That was an odd answer as well. I. I would have thought we have no idea who did this and this is terrible. So, yes, whoever it is is out there and until and unless we can figure out if it's targeted, I would say lock your. Your doors. Yeah, but there wasn't even a warning to anybody. Lock your doors.
Megyn Kelly
You know, have you spoken to your source since the sheriff issued that statement?
Ashley Banfield
Yes, I have, and I got an interesting response. And that was. Everybody's clamming up. They're really worried about getting, you know, reverb from the ship, so.
Megyn Kelly
But no wiggling from this source.
Ashley Banfield
Nothing changed. Nothing changed. And again, there's a lot of law enforcement communities down there right now. There's border patrol, there's FBI. There's, of course, Pima county and probably neighboring counties have been alerted. Right. So there are a lot of. There are a lot of people who have their hands in this pot. My source is one of the highest.
Megyn Kelly
Okay, very good. Thank you.
Ashley Banfield
Not a kid, not a young guy, not. Not a gunslinger. Not somebody who's dipping in, dipping out of the office. Not. Not someone in the administration, you know, administrative aspects of the. Of the offices that are. That are involved. Somebody who's.
Megyn Kelly
Who's actually very high, been around the block. All right, well, as always, Ashley, you are ahead of everybody else on this crime story, and we appreciate your great reporting. I watched the interview the other night, even before you had this exclusive. I thought you asked such good questions, and I learned a lot, so thank you.
Ashley Banfield
Well, we learned from the best. You're a good colleague of mine, and I watch you all the time, and you know how much I admire you.
Megyn Kelly
Right back at you, sister. We'll talk soon. Okay, we're going to pause for a second, and we're going to bring in James Fitzgerald. He's an FBI former FBI profiler. He was on with us yesterday for reaction to this breaking news. That's next. Ever been in a bad relationship? You know, the kind that just wears you down. You settle in, even though deep down you know this is not how it's supposed to be. Well, that's what daily aches and pains can feel like. You stop expecting to feel good. You start thinking, maybe this is just my life now. But it doesn't have to be. With relief actor, you can break up with pain, just like Anthony did. He wrote, quote, I was dealing with debilitating pain and fatigue. And I've been taking relief factor for about two months, and now I'm back to running my business, fishing, gardening, and doing the things that really matter to me. And listen, maybe it's your back pain, knee issues, or stiffness that's slowing you down. Relief factor might help give you your mobility back relief factor is 100% drug free and it targets the inflammation that causes pain so you can move better, feel better and actually enjoy life again. Try the three week quick start for just 1995. Go to relieffactor.com or call 800 for relief. Break up with pain and get back to what matters. You don't have to overhaul your whole life in 2026. Just start with simple swaps like upgrading your snacks, which will make a big difference. Masa chips are made with just three real ingredients organic corn, sea salt and 100% grass fed beef tallow. No seed oils, no fillers, no mystery chemicals, just seriously good tasting food. Unlike regular chips, Masa leaves you feeling satisfied and energized, not bloated or sluggish. And because they're more filling, you will not find yourself mindlessly snacking and still feeling hungry after they have flavors like lime and churro ready to give Masa a try? Go to masachhips.com mk use the code mk for 25 off your first order or just simply click the link in the video description or scan the QR code to claim this delicious offer. Don't feel like ordering online? Masa is now available nationwide. At your local Sprouts supermarket. Stop by and pick up a couple of bags before they're gone. Lifelock how can I help?
Ashley Banfield
The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
LifeLock Representative
One in four tax paying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.
Ashley Banfield
What do I do?
Vice President J.D. Vance
My refund though.
Megyn Kelly
I'm freaking out.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Don't worry, I can fix this.
LifeLock Representative
LifeLock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage.
Ashley Banfield
I'm so relieved.
Megyn Kelly
No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way.
LifeLock Representative
One in four was a fraud. Paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com Specialoffer terms apply on Deck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team or bridging cash flow gaps, On Deck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A Plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star trust pilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes@ondeck.com depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by On Deck or Celtic Bank. On Deck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
Megyn Kelly
Hey everyone, it's me, Megyn Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius xm. It's called the Megyn Kelly Channel. And it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies. Along with the Megyn Kelly show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Jashinski, Jesse Kelly, RealClear Politics and many more. It's bold. No BS news only on the Megyn Kelly Channel, SiriusXM 111 and on the Sirius XM app. Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show. We're joined now by James Fitzgerald. He's a former FBI profiler, has worked on several huge cases for the FBI. He joined us yesterday in a riveting exchange as well. Jim, a lot has happened in the past 24 hours since we last spoke. So we wanted to get your reaction to all of it. Let's just start with the biggest piece. Ashley Banfield reporting exclusively based on what she describes as a source high up in law enforcement, someone who's been around the block who says that the brother in law of Savannah Guthrie, whose name is Tommaso Sioni, is, quote, may be the prime suspect. And with respect to Mr. Sioni, we have not had any interaction with him. We have, I'm assuming that he denies this vehemently. We haven't heard from the family at all and he's not been expressly accused as being the suspect. But maybe this, the prime suspect was the wording that Ashley Banfield's law enforcement source gave her. And on top of that, law enforcement sources told Ashley Banfield that police have now towed and impounded the vehicle belonging to his wife, Annie Guthrie, who is Savannah's sister and the missing woman, Nancy Guthrie's daughter. Bashfield went on to report that there was some connection to Annie Guthrie's car and his son in law. So that's again, take it for what it's worth because it's one reporter with one law enforcement source unconfirmed and unresponded to by the actual target of the report. The sheriff's office has come out just to reiterate to the audience and tried to dismiss the report somewhat. It was an express denial, but they did say there is no suspect or person of interest who's been identified at this time. Yeah, that's it. We have not identified a suspect or a person of interest. We continue to speak with anyone who may have had contact with Ms. Guthrie and we're working daily. We appreciate public's concern, but sharing of unverified accusations or false information is IRRESPONSIBLE it does not explicitly deny that they've. That they're looking at the son in law or that they towed and impounded Annie Guthrie's car. So your reaction to all that?
James Fitzgerald
Okay, a lot there and a lot. I just know to your interview with Ashley. Very informative. When we started yesterday, talking, you and I, victimology was the first term I mentioned. And in victimology we said family, friends, then we broke it down to, you know, repairmen and. And visitors at a house, whatever. And family always has to go first and actually brought it up, the concentric circles. You know, 80 to 85% of murders are committed by someone who knows the victim, how well they know them, you know, in passing, tangentially, or actually, you know, a close, you know, very specific close family member. So it's nothing unusual about family members being looked into in this sort of investigation. Impounding a car either through consent of your. Of the owner or certainly with a search warrant, which covers them more legally down the line. Those will never go to trial or pretrial motions, whatever, you know, makes the most sense there. So they must have had probable cause for something, something to bring in this car. And consider this.
Megyn Kelly
They did it via warrant. Sure. Whether he just gave it over.
James Fitzgerald
Sure. Would say, would sign the consent forms. I've done that hundreds of times in my law enforcement career. People, if they nothing to hide, or even if they do, sometimes they would still sign the property over, whatever it is. So in a consent form. So that happens all the time. And I'm a linguist too. We can talk about that a little bit later with maybe these alleged ransom letters.
Megyn Kelly
But yeah, we definitely get to that.
James Fitzgerald
Interesting qualifier that this word may. My y may be a prime suspect. And I get it, the source, whoever it is, is sort of covering their tracks in that regard because maybe they're very close, but not that close that they have more information than that. But again, quite frankly, looking at the immediate family member, would not that be that unusual? Now, why they were perhaps interviewing one or more family members, the sister, the brother in law, perhaps they were also running phone, cell phone tower checks, and they see some activity late, you know, two in the morning, Sunday morning.
Megyn Kelly
So let me ask part of the probable cause exactly. This is where I want to go with it, because forget Ashley's report for a second. If you're law enforcement out there and you know that it was Annie. I think it was Annie Guthrie, and I don't know whether the husband was with her or not, but I think it was Annie Guthrie that Brought the mom back from playing Mah jong. We were also told that it was a church event. So I'm assuming it was Mah Jongg at the church on Saturday night at 9:45, hence the interest in her car potentially. But you would of course, even though you assume a loving relationship between a mother and a daughter, that's not how cops work. They actually don't assume loving relationships with anybody. Everybody's on the table until they're not on the table. So they would have, wouldn't they? As a matter of due course, Jim have done a search on her phone and where it was all night long and on her husband's phone and where it was all night long.
James Fitzgerald
And Meghan, besides that, she's the last person ostensibly that saw her alive, certainly on the record. So it has makes every sense and every common sense from a, an investigative perspective to look at that phone and then while they're looking at her phone, you know, look at the husband's phone to the meaning Savannah's brother in law and that that makes perfect sense. And maybe something came up investigatively, calls, you know, incoming, outgoing, maybe text messages. But if nothing else, just the pings on the local towers that said hey, you know, this car was here. And if the mother was dropped off at 9, 10, even 11 o' clock at night, it seems like everyone's sort of signing into the fact that whatever bad happened to her was around 2am give or take. So that's when the pinging would have to start again. Maybe very normal for the daughter Annie's car to show up there again. 9, 10 o' clock when mom's being dropped off. But if then goes back at 2:00 in the morning, that's when questions have to be asked. And the phone may not even indicate, well, it probably wouldn't indicate what car is being used. Who knows how many cars Annie and her husband have. And it's interesting, it's. We only hear one car being taken by the search warrant and impounded, but not multiple. And there's no indications that the home was searched. So perhaps the police just going one step at a time, stick with the obvious thing. Maybe they know the car was the one that dropped her off or that's the one that was out at 2am and that's why they're looking to search it for little graphic here, but you know, obviously blood, tissue, anything that could be found and connected to Mrs. Guthrie.
Megyn Kelly
The of course they would say to everyone who had had interactions with Nancy within the hours leading up to her disappearance? You tell me. But I think they. As soon as they sat down with Annie and Tommaso the next day, they would have said, can we have your phones? Wouldn't they, Jim? I mean, isn't that standard? Of course. May I. Can we have your phones, like, just to rule you out?
James Fitzgerald
Well, two things. Yeah. For exclusionary purposes, of course. Asked for the phones. But I hope when the early interviews were done, and you don't know yet, but I hope they separated husband and wife and did separate interviews, and that way you could find out any kind of conflicting stories there. We don't know. I mean, everyone was probably crying, crying, upset. The police go in there, and who knows, they may just interview people on a couch. And Annie and her husband were there at the same time. I'm hoping at some point we have separate interviews and they can actually break down and really get into the weeds about who was where when. And of course, that is if they haven't lawyered up yet.
Megyn Kelly
True. As Ashley's one law enforcement source has told her that they have now towed and impounded Annie's vehicle. What does that tell you? Okay, so let's. Let's assume they didn't get a warrant. Let's assume they just asked Annie if they could take her car and they took it and they impounded it. What does that tell us?
James Fitzgerald
Well, the word impounding doesn't really mean anything from a legal perspective. I mean, you could argue it could, but just if it's consensually agreed to, they could just take it to the parking lot of the police or the sheriff's department, and they have their. Their evidence response team go through it. They probably would bring in the FBI and those who do this stuff all the time. And of course, they're vacuuming, they're taking any kind of. Of liquid samples, whatever they may be. And. And they may have a cadaver dog. We talked about that a little bit yesterday, Megan. So they're doing all kinds of forensic searches. They have, you know, material they spray. They have. They have, you know, laser lights and all this stuff to look for. We'll just say remnants of someone being in there, you know, most likely against their will. I'm thinking in the trunk or the back seat, not just riding in the passenger seat. The mother may have very well been in that car. So her DNA in that car in and of itself touched DNA.
Megyn Kelly
I think we know she was, you know.
James Fitzgerald
Yes.
Megyn Kelly
When Annie dropped her off.
James Fitzgerald
Now, that would be the front seat or maybe the back seat seat. Was she in the trunk, was she in some other part of the suv? I don't even know what kind of car it is that you wouldn't have an 84 year old person riding in and that's what they'd be looking for. Some of this very specific.
Megyn Kelly
Well, of course we know that she, she was bleeding. We, we know that from the blood spatter. But, but before I get to that, is there any reason if they didn't suspect Annie or her husband. I haven't heard that they suspect any. If they didn't suspect her, her spouse, Tommaso, is there any reason they would take that car? Like why would they take that car, Jim? I'm trying to find like a benign explanation for why they would again reportedly, according to one law enforcement source, take their car and it wasn't denied in that sheriff's statement.
James Fitzgerald
Investigatively, they're trying to cover every possible lead, every possible potential they can and they certainly want to make sure it's not damaged. Damaged or somehow you know, cleaned out or something else done with the car that could cover up evidence. So someone came up with the idea and again I'm listening to the denials that you related from the, from the sheriff's spokesperson and that you know, no prime suspect, no one is a person of interest but they felt. Let's cover our tracks here. Let's get the only car that we knew at least that Saturday night, you know, before midnight that the mother was in. Let's go in there and see if perhaps any of those forensic materials there. So on the grand scheme of things, Megan, I don't think it's all that unusual that this car would be taken. I don't want to jump the gun here and right away point the finger at Tomaso. You know, we've been all but down the path before of cases like this and well this guy looks really good but you know, it turned out not to be that person. So. And I, you know, I respect Ashley's source. I'm never a big fan of sources. I would, was never one while in the FBI, but that's another story. So, and I know they got, I'm familiar with cases I worked including the anthrax case where an high up source got things really wrong and, and that didn't actually help the case when Chief Moose was not supposed to release the information from the tarot card. That's a piece of history there for your listeners. But so these sources, the source of machine is not always correct but assuming that he's on to something there or she through Ashley, it's not that unusual to take the closest people to a missing victim or a murder victim and, and, and just search out everything about them and that way you can safely say you've ruled them out. And, and Megan, you're an attorney. I can see the investigator, the detective in court two years from now. Well, did you ever even consider searching the car of, of, of the brother in law, you know, and the sister? And they say no, they didn't. Well, in that in front of a jury, that can create a whole sort of exculpatory sort of situation. So they're covering all their tracks here. They may have 100% grounds for doing this or it may also be sort of an exclusionary thing. Let's get it out there.
Megyn Kelly
Exactly. Maybe. So it's possible they just took that car to say we tracked down every lead. And it's possible this guy, this law enforcement officer, as you point out, we don't know if it's a guy or gal saying the brother, maybe the brother in law may be the prime suspect. Could just be him speculating. This is on the opposite side of the ledger. We should do both because we have no idea whether this is going to bear out or not. We don't want to wrongly condemn this man. Nor does Ashley Banfield, by the way. She's, but she's a very solid reporter. So we're following step by step.
James Fitzgerald
I'll just end this part or I'll go on as long as you want. But I would actually say at this point the investigators would be remiss if they did not take that car and do a thorough search of it, turn it back and say, hey, you found nothing in there and go from there. It doesn't mean they won't find anything. I don't know. You and I are on the outside, so is actually technically she's talking to someone on the inside. So we don't know. But I feel that's a very logical investigative step for them to take, including the phones, as you said earlier. And say, folks, this is very routine. You have no problem with this, right? There's some other cases. I know, the John Bennett Ramsey case. The parents, you know, fought tooth and nail. We don't have to get into all that. But there are some parents or some family members that don't want to give up information or they fight it for months, you know, interviews, things like that. And you wonder why.
Megyn Kelly
Well, this would have been so strange. I mean, I just can't imagine that Annie and Tommaso would have said Anything other than please take our phones and look at them. Even if there was something to hide in this, you know, whatever scenario, because they called the cops at noon on Sunday, she had only been. They'd only been alerted at 11:10 that she hadn't shown up at mass. So the sheriff has been pointing out they took about an hour to look for her themselves. They were worried. They realized, like, this is very strange. She's not where she's supposed to be and she's not in her home. But my point is, like, the sheriff then shows up at noon and, you know, at some point during the day when they realized they actually had a missing person, he might have said to them, can I see your friends phones? He might not have. He might have just been treating them as just complete victims. And. But I. It would have been so bizarre if he said, hey, can I see your phones? Just because you were last with her. So bizarre at that point for. For somebody to be like, no, you can. Like, I feel like they would have been handling the whole investigation differently if somebody had said that. So, okay, let's just keep going because that's all a discussion about what we don't know and what it might mean, which is not that helpful. But we do know that we've now seen blood out in front of the house. It is true that the. The nest camera is gone from the front of the house. Ashley's reporting that it was. There was one there and then there was one behind the house and that they were destroyed. So what did you glean from the blood evidence in the front?
James Fitzgerald
I mean, obviously Mrs. Guthrie didn't go of her own accord. I mean, that's, That's. That's very simple to stay there. We kind of discussed that yesterday. And that is clear blood spatter to some degree. It looks like it's falling from a gravity perspective straight down. I don't see the, you know, the brushstroke, so to speak, going off in different directions. I didn't really look at that closely, but. So it looks like someone's being carried out or at least, you know, supported under their arms. Because we know this woman can't walk all that far on her own. And if someone punched her in the nose, punched her in the mouth, of course she's going to need help walking or she has to be carried. So somehow the blood from a gravity perspective is flowing downward. Who knows how the body was repositioned in some way, shape or form was. It was a cover. You know, did the person have a, you know, whatever Paper towels, whatever, put it over mouth or nose to make sure the blood hopefully wouldn't get in the car. They probably didn't care about it on the, on the street or the driveway, whatever that is, the pavement, but they probably didn't want it in the car. Now the odds are it's still wound up there anyway. There's going to be trace evidence if that if Mrs. Guthrie was put in the car, there's going to be trace evidence of her certainly what she was wearing, etc. So without seeing more of a, of a, of a longitudinal from inside the house to outside, the exact length and breadth of the blood droppings. I'm not sure what else to make. Although the body just could have been repositioned where the blood came down more on top of Mrs. Guthrie, whatever she's wearing. And for the moments from wherever it stopped at the front door into the car, we have an absence of it. And it could be a very logical explanation having to do with physics and gravity.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, you, you raise a good point about how it's blood droplets, there's not a smearing of it and there's a, there's a significant amount, but I don't. It could be from like a nosebleed that to me did not look like somebody had been, you know, shot in the femoral artery. Right. It wasn't that level of blood.
James Fitzgerald
No. And it doesn't look like arterial bleeding as you just intimated there. But, you know, someone had to slap this. I hate to, you know, get as graphic as it, but, you know, probably to control her. She may have started yelling, screaming, who knows? We discussed yesterday, did someone ring the bell, knock on the door, did they have a key to the door? This brings in the family situation. We can't rule anything out at this point. You know, is it that stranger? Is it a stranger that she kind of knew that knocked on the door and recognized, oh, can you help me? And they let her in and then, you know, she's cold cocked by somehow hiding someone behind, you know, behind the door jamb, whatever. So it's, there's still a lot of scenarios to look at here, but the blood itself, I'm not going to put any high level sophistication that, you know, special bandages were used to stop it. It could have just very well been, let's just pick the person up and put in the car. And you raised a point early on with Ashley and I think both of you agreed on it. And if this was a stranger and somehow she was killed, just leave the Body there. There's no reason to take the body, especially now that there's been no kidnapping demand, certainly of which we are aware. But if somebody knew the person, that's a whole different set of. Of criminal activity. There's then staging involved. And stage does not be real sophisticated where you pull out drawers and you take some jewelry to make it look like it was a burglary of some sort. It could simply be just removing the body and. Or the person and. And that could be the sort. So if you're. If you know the person. And again, we're now talking that it's not a kidnapping for ransom if you know the person and you think you could be a logical suspect. You do a lot of things different when you commit a crime to avoid being named in that suspect pool.
Megyn Kelly
It's just so strange that she was removed. I mean, if this isn't a kidnapping for money, why was she removed? Like we talked about yesterday, maybe it was a kidnapping for money all along, but she passed once she was kidnapped because she's an old woman and she isn't in great health. But either way, you were pointing out they could still try a ransom demand. And that does not appear to have happened so far. Which I'm going to get to those ransom notes in one second. But I'm still on the house. Ashley's also reporting that there were two nest not ring cameras we saw. One was used to be at the front door and her reporting is at the second one. I think she believed it. The second was at the second, the back door and that the back door was open. She reported that as well from her law enforcement source. So it is interesting that the two cameras, her reporting is that they were destroyed. And then we believe, though it hasn't been confirmed, that then law enforcement took them. So that. Is that a sophisticated thing or no. And what does it tell you? Like, I would imagine if I'm going to break into a house, I don't know, I'm probably only worrying about the nest camera that's on the door that I'm using. I mean, it's kind of interesting that they're both allegedly destroyed on front and back.
James Fitzgerald
You know, I like throwing in quasi historical elements sometimes when I'm looking at these cases and when I was a young police officer, FBI buries the unscrew the top of the door, you know, the front door.
Megyn Kelly
Can you repeat that, Jim? I missed that.
James Fitzgerald
Sure. As a young police officer and then FBI handling burglary cases, big ones, little ones, sometimes the bad guy would Go up and unscrew the light on top of the front door. And that just gives them privacy. They may do it the night before or sometime during the day, then come back. So that's not what happened here, but it shows that someone's thinking a little bit in advance. And I didn't use the word yesterday, but I truly believe that the term that this person was mission oriented. They went there with a purpose and they knew enough didn't have to unscrew the light bulb. Like I said before, all these cameras are out there, but they knew enough to take one or both cameras. Perhaps they did both cameras first because they weren't sure how they would get in ingress and how they would get out egress. So they wanted to cover, you know, both angles, so to speak, and just take out both cameras and smash them. I'm not sure why the police wouldn't say that they have the cameras or they don't have the cameras, but you know, smashed or not, but whatever, they're not admitting to that. So perhaps it's evidence they know they can find on the person. Although you think there'd be no reason for them to keep the cameras if they took them with them, meaning the kidnapper, the abductor. So, so again, a little bit of sophistication I'll give to this team I person or team I, but I won't put them in some sort of a, you know, ultra level of, of criminal mastermind. They knew to smash a camera, maybe take it and, and, and do whatever with it. In the old days, they would have unscrewed the light bulb on top of one or two doors leading into the place.
Vice President J.D. Vance
So.
James Fitzgerald
Yeah, why not do it? And again, it's just, it's just one extra step you can take as a criminal to hopefully present, prevent something bad from happening. Let me add this, Megan. I learned this years ago. When people are arrested early in their life, or it could be, or two or three before they get arrested, they do some time, they realize they made one mistake and whatever that mistake was, they will not repeat again. So you have to ask yourself, and I know we talked about family members, maybe not long term criminals with, with lengthy rap sheets, but even someone else, perhaps they got caught before or they did prison time with someone who got caught before with the use of a, of a, of a, of a, of a door camera, a security camera. And the first thing they learned is just take that thing out. In the old days, they would leave DNA behind. They got caught with that and they made sure. To protect themselves, you know, like on a rape scene or let fingerprints. They know to wear gloves. They got their. An eyewitness id, so they wear masks after that. And we would talk to these guys when we eventually arrest them or even as a profile, we go back into prison and interview them years later after the conviction. And they would, you know, tell us, yeah, my buddy got caught for that. And I swore I would never do a crime and make that mistake. So what I know.
Megyn Kelly
What I. What I know from being a member of the press for a while is there is such a thing as the stupid criminal files. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out there was actual video of whoever did this walking up to the camera, unmasked, undisguised, and slamming it. Like, we have seen what seemed like sophisticated criminals make the stupidest mistakes leading up to the crime or in the aftermath of the crime. And I'm really hoping that was the case here. Like, some idiot didn't realize that would be on tape and that it could be retrieved, you know, we just don't know. Fingers crossed. But let's keep going because I do want to talk about the ransom notes with you, Ashley. You heard she didn't think much of it. Doesn't sound like anybody she's talked to thought much of it. At least three different media outlets, TMZ and cnn, Tucson affiliates KOLD and kgun, that's three have reported that they received ransom notes earlier this week. It is interesting that two of them are in Tucson and then the third is tmz. The outlets say the notes describe specific evidence in Nancy Guthrie's home where authorities say she lived alone and was last see Saturday night. They said, we received a note referencing Guthrie. It makes a specific demand for several million dollars in bitcoin. This is KGUN by Thursday, meaning tomorrow, and threatens to kill her if payments not received by Monday. Okay. I don't know. It's like a payment plan. Thursday to Monday. It also makes specific reference to two pieces of evidence at the crime scene which we cannot authenticate as legitimate. We forwarded the full contents of the note to investigators and the authorities. And then the sheriff put out a statement saying that they. They're looking into all of this. All this stuff goes directly to our detective. Okay. Your thoughts on the ransom notes?
James Fitzgerald
Yeah. Along with being a profile profiler, I'm also a forensic linguist. I was the guy that used language in the Unabomb case to, you know, positively identify Ted Kaczynski and go from there. And that's where I've been. I've been working a lot in that field ever since then. So these notes would be very interesting to me or any forensic linguist. Of course. A linguist is one who studies language forensic. You do it within the confines of the criminal justice system. So I'd be very interested to see these. A few things about these notes or whatever they are. Emails. I'm not sure they came through the US Mail, posted somewhere, dropped off somewhere.
Megyn Kelly
TMZ got it via email.
James Fitzgerald
Okay. Obviously there's all kinds of computer work they can do, and the FBI has a team that they can trace everything where it goes back to where it originated. Hopefully there are anonymizers that some people use it. You can't get through to the origin, the actual origin of the email, but I would love to look at the language of it itself, and I would like to see if the language is similar. Then the. We'll say the kidnappers sent them to the same multiple sources just to make sure someone got it and they. And they saw it. If they're different, if it's different language usages. I don't mean to be English, no doubt. But if there are different content, different stylistic features, then we know one of them is fake and the. And. Or at least two of them, and the other one is. Is similar or could be conceivably the real deal. So we would see if people are just on their own doing this. And the Daniel Pearl case, I was asked to. There was. There was one email that came in with his pictures, of course. He was the Wall Street Journal journalist in. In Pakistan in 2002 with the pictures of the gun to his head and all. And that was published in the media, that email, that sort of abduction email. And I was the one asked to rule out all these copycat emails. There were dozens of them. And we could. And said the only authentic one is the one with Daniel Pearl's pictures hooked to them. So I've done that in other cases too. So a bureau or someone hopefully has a forensic linguist looking at these documents, first of all, to compare them to themselves and see if they're written by the same person. Then secondly, the information contained therein, how authentic is it? Are they accurately describing the inside of the home? Are they accurately describing perhaps what Mrs. Guthrie was wearing? And these are all factors that would then serve to authenticate the letters themselves. But you just don't know in this particular case how often these, these, these letters are legitimate because it's such a high.
Megyn Kelly
Figure that out. How are they Gonna figure that out. Jim. It's like, I know bitcoin is a red flag, but that's. What else would the kidnapper ask for? Bitcoin actually can't be traced. It's as good as anything else. I mean, if I were going to kidnap somebody, I suppose I'd consider a bitcoin payment. Because truly, it's like once you. We've done series on fraud, and it's often the method of choice because once you put like 10 grand into that bitcoin machine, it's gone forever and it's not traced. Dismissable. So I kind of. I don't know. A fraudster writing a fake note could be asking for bitcoin. And the real kidnapper could also be asking for bitcoin. So how do they figure out whether this is real?
James Fitzgerald
Well, first of all, they'd want to ask for proof of life. I think we discussed that yesterday. Send some kind of a picture, a video that hopefully can be determined not to be AI And I would suggest no one in the family. I can't tell them what to do. But you would need some proof that she is alive. And of course, the kidnappers. And again, we're going down this kidnapping route. If, in fact, that's the case, we can. You would want to kind of make sure you work it out that way that she is, in fact, still alive. If the family's going to put the money out there, they could play hardball and say, no, just give us the money and we'll let her go. So that's where that whole.
Megyn Kelly
You could do, like Q and A, Jim. I mean, you could. You could ask, like, questions only Nancy could answer. You know, like, we talked yesterday about the old, like, holding up the newspaper. But there's other ways of making sure they have her without actually requiring that.
James Fitzgerald
Yes, and the other thing is the FBI doesn't put money up. It would have to be the family that does it. We're going to assume Savannah has the means to put up some money or the family somewhere does if need be.
Megyn Kelly
That's interesting.
James Fitzgerald
I won't go any further than that.
Megyn Kelly
That actually reminds me. The reward that they said they're probably posting right now is 2500 bucks, which. What's that about? Obviously, I'm sure Savannah would give any amount of money if she actually believed it would lead to the return of Nancy. So there must be a reason why she's not saying it's a $5 million reward.
James Fitzgerald
That is odd, too. I mean, that amount is so low. I just helped Post a Reward for a 30 year old homicide of a friend of mine. And, and it was substantially more than that. But so yeah, I think if a reward ever comes into play here they are going to in fact up that amount and take it from there. But, but the police are invested are who investigating this. The FBI are going to be giving guidance in that regard.
Megyn Kelly
I wonder there must be some reason they told her not to do it yet because there's no question she has it and would post it if she thought it were going to crack open this case. But back to, to the ransom notes. So they proof of life is that basically it like you look for that and then I guess you track down the provenance of the communications if you can and see if that looks like anybody who's legitimate. I mean it kind of sounds like it's. Well, I don't know. I mean I was going to say maybe it's somebody in Tucson, but really we just know that two Tucson news outlets were targeted along with tmz, which that's got to tell us something. I don't know what.
James Fitzgerald
And you have to ask, you know, why wasn't a note of some sort it could be very carefully written without fingerprints or DNA why that wasn't left at the crime scene itself and why it took 48, maybe even 72 hours for any kind of a note to show up and then to news outlets which has happened before. But it's just, it's just, it's just highly unusual and other kidnappings which I.
Megyn Kelly
Am aware now that I think about it because you and I have talked about your work on the Unabombered case many times. You know, Ted Kaczynski, he wrote to the media like at some level we talked about did he want to get caught? Was he mad that all these dopes in the media couldn't figure out it was him? Like could that be what's happening here? This, that this really is the kidnapper and that we're dismissing it too quickly?
James Fitzgerald
Yeah, but of course Kaczynski, well he had his own psychological issues which I've discussed, discussed in my most recent book and other things. But you know, he wasn't in it for money. He was dealing with the media. His, his, his ransom demand, so to speak was the New York Times publishing his article which everyone else called Manifesto. And that's what he wanted in that regard. And, and of course his letters were mailed back from the San Francisco Bay area. We all, we could, we could trace it there. So yeah, yeah, I'm not here. Without looking at these letters, I can't say they're legit or not. They're probably not all legit if they're differently, different styles to them or came in from different addresses, but one of them mixed in there maybe. And you would hope that there'd be some kind of a code or some kind of a singular aspect to it, that if the law enforcement does have it, they know that this is the real person and this is not, you know, some copycat. And that, of course, would never be released. And I'm also a fan of. We do have, if it's a few, even, you know, a few hundred words of this demand. I'm a big. I'm a big fan of putting it out there. They can leave some signature, singular stuff off, but put it out there for anyone who may recognize. Maybe it's a non native English speaker. A forensic linguist could tell that Male, female writing styles, forensic links can do that. I'm asking this all the time in my. In my private business with threatening type things and harassing type things. So. So I'm hoping they. They do bring someone on board to look at these and determine their provenance. They may be legit, they may be bogus. They're not all going to be legit. One's going to be legit unless they're identical communications sent to these different.
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, it could be one especially. I don't know, it could be one guy just trying to get as much coverage of his demands as possible, sent.
James Fitzgerald
This, and there are wacky people out there.
Megyn Kelly
That's another thing we discussed in your Unabomber coverage, is that investigation is that it wound up being a good thing that, that his manifesto or letter, his article was published because it was his brother who saw it and eventually said, that writing looks kind of familiar. This sounds like my brother Ted. So, yeah, you're right. There's an argument in favor of making these ransom notes public and letting us all see what the person is demanding. And by the way, I don't know, to me it seems odd because if I. If I really had Nancy Guthrie and I wanted millions of dollars in Bitcoin, I think I'd include a picture of her in my. In my note or something that was just absolutely bulletproof that I had or some sort of fact that she would only reveal to me. So this does sound like BS to me. But I mean, we'll see. Let me ask you this. So now we're on day four. If she was stolen, technically in the wee hours of Sunday, which would be day one, this would be day four. What is your prognosis for this investigation right now?
James Fitzgerald
I know as an investigator when I work these types of crimes, I always work them with the assumption that the person is still alive. And I mean it could be a potential kidnapping scenario, it could be an abduction, it could just be a kid that walked away or a teenager who ran away. Other parts of the investigative team can go on the fact that she's probably dead. Let's turn over every rock sometimes, literally that we have to. But I like to look at these as if it's still a, it's still a search and rescue mission and in an attempt to determine where she is. And I would be very careful if I was the one doing the public speaking, which I've done in the past in certain cases where if I'm advising the people going in front of the cameras to be careful what they say. And I think that's, I think, I think Savannah has probably been advised right now, let's not say anything. We'll determine, you know, the prayers are fine, the post she put out there. But other than that, she's not putting anything out public. She's probably being advised not to do that. And, and that's a smart thing. So when the time is right, they will know what to say and how to say it. But I'm going to assume that she's, I would work this case is that she's still alive and, and we're trying to get her back because you put the, you put the negative feelings out there as the spokesperson or this negative, you know, connotation that she may be dead, then it could become a self fulfilling prophecy by the bad guys. Said, well I think she's dead anyway, so let's just, you know, so let's hope she's alive. Let's hope we keep talking, let's hope we keep humanizing her. She's an older woman, she needs her meds, she's a loving mother, etc. Grandmother. Let's get this person back safely.
Megyn Kelly
The, the other two things I forgot to mention are yesterday, Brian Enten and other reporters on scene at the house saw a local sheriff's helicopter come over the property and that it lingered there, they said for about just over 30 minutes. That's kind of interesting, Jim. I mean they had searched the area extensively Sunday and Monday, so I don't know what that means. Maybe they were, they thought they'd get an aerial view though. They had, they had fixed wing aircraft and they had helicopters out there. As well on Sundays. Kind of odd that it returned to the scene. And the second thing I wanted to mention is kind of strange that the police turned back over the house to the family, leaving the blood evidence there. That's how we've seen it. But because Brian Enten, a great reporter for News Nation, actually did what few others did. He. He went up to the front door and saw what was there, what was there to report, and sure enough, found a lot.
James Fitzgerald
But.
Megyn Kelly
And now reportedly, they do have a cop or a security person stationed there to keep reporters and lookie loos away. But what do you make of that helicopter and. Or the fact that they didn't clean up the blood evidence because before they turn the house back over to the family.
James Fitzgerald
Yeah, two things there. I mean, it could be another investigative team came in and they said, hey, look, can you take us up? There's. I've done a case out in Oklahoma or wherever, and there's some things about the terrain. Maybe you can help me. They could put a drone up there, too, and take aerial photos, but maybe they just felt seeing it in real time, sort of in person. So there could be a lot of reasons what. The helicopter was up there and hovering for, you know, 30 minutes or so. I'm not sure what to make into that. Make of that. But as far as giving the house back, I suppose they feel. The law enforcement feels they got the evidence out of there. They can. They've done all the forensic sweeps. And I'm hoping. I mean, I sort of laughed, but I don't. I don't mean it in a funny way. I'm assuming every square inch of that house has been searched. I'll never forget the Ramsey case. The little girl was down in the sub basement for six hours after the parents called. And so I'm assuming every square inch. The pool house, you know, wherever they keep the filter and the chlorinator for the pool, all those things have been searched. I know we have blood out front, but nonetheless. Which looks like an egress of Mrs. Guthrie. So, I mean, you reach a certain point. Point. And the family just want to say, hey, can we have our house back? And as long as all the evidence has been taken out of there, the forensic evidence, it's time. If they had it for 48 hours.
Megyn Kelly
They don't clean up. Yeah, they don't.
James Fitzgerald
And they don't do that either. There's companies that do that.
Megyn Kelly
Wow. All right, well, I'm sure we'll have more developments. Jim on. We'll probably be needing to Talk to you again soon. Thank you so much for sharing all your expertise and your time with us.
James Fitzgerald
You're welcome, Megan. You have a nice day.
Megyn Kelly
You too. Wow. What a day. What a couple of. What a shift, right? To go from J.D. vance to the Guthrie case in such depth. But we care about it. We care what happens. We're obviously praying for Nancy Guthrie and for the whole family, and seems like they might be getting closer now. Praying that they're getting closer. So we'll talk more about it. We'll certainly talk more about JD as well tomorrow. I'll say my one observation that I want to share with you before we go. I'll try to raise this tomorrow, too. If I remember is just how different he is. He'll talk about anything. Nothing's off limits. Like, he went from subject to subject with ease. Think of our last vice president and how stilted she was on everything. It was like her weird transgressions into Venn diagrams and burden. And so like, this guy was like, boom, boom, boom. He could make jokes, he make fun of himself, he could get serious. He could talk in depth on policy. He could, you know, be funny about Don Lemon and so on. It's just these. I'm not even sure these. These two are like the same species.
James Fitzgerald
She.
Megyn Kelly
She's like an alien being who doesn't totally understand the English language. I miss her. I'm not gonna lie. I kind of hope she gets the nomination and that we get to see those two debate. But in any event, what a difference. And looking forward to your thoughts on all of today's program. You know, you can email me meganaganchelly.com thank you for listening. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda, and no fear. Lifelock, how can I help?
Ashley Banfield
The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
LifeLock Representative
One in four tax paying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.
Ashley Banfield
What do I do?
Vice President J.D. Vance
My refund, though.
Megyn Kelly
I'm freaking out.
Vice President J.D. Vance
Don't worry.
James Fitzgerald
I can fix this.
LifeLock Representative
Lifelock fixes identity theft, guaranteed, and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage.
Ashley Banfield
I'm so relieved.
Megyn Kelly
No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way.
LifeLock Representative
One in four was a fraud. Paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com Special offer terms apply.
VP JD Vance on Deportations, Greenland, and Don Lemon, PLUS Latest on Savannah Guthrie's Mom's Abduction
Date: February 4, 2026
This episode features an in-depth interview with Vice President J.D. Vance discussing the Trump administration's policies on immigration, crime, foreign policy, and political culture in Washington, DC. The conversation also touches on media narratives and the administrative hurdles of governance. In the second half, Megyn Kelly is joined by Ashley Banfield for developing news on the suspect in the abduction of Savannah Guthrie's mother, followed by analysis with former FBI profiler James Fitzgerald. The episode is engaging, open, and combines policy deep-dives with breaking crime reporting.
The episode mixes sharp, unscripted political exchange with policy wonkery, personal storytelling, tough crime reporting, and informed analysis. Vance is candid and folksy but detailed; Kelly inquisitive and direct; Banfield and Fitzgerald are seasoned, detailed, and cautious, mindful not to over-speculate.
This episode is a comprehensive showcase of the Kelly show’s strengths: access to top officials, willingness to challenge guest and administration alike, and the ability to pivot between high-level policy and urgent national true-crime stories.
Listeners will come away with nuanced understanding of:
This summary preserves the language, key moments, and in-depth nature of the discussion, ensuring those who missed the episode receive all major developments and insights.