Patrick Smith (7:55)

Initially Megan, it's an absolute horror. It looks like a murder suicide as you alluded to. 787s just don't simply rotate, get airborne and then settle back down. It looks like the captain for whatever reason wanted to check out that day. And sadly Megan, this isn't the first example of a pilot just wanting to take an aircraft down or take people with them. Egypt Air 990 or the German wings mishap I believe. In 2015 before I started flying for FedEx, there was a famous incident with a former Flying Tigers pilot who was going to jump in the jump seat and crash a plane into FedEx headquarters so he could get the insurance. And you know, he didn't want to look like a murder so he wanted to crash the airplane. So Megan, all indications are that the captain selected the cutoff position on the fuel switches about 10 seconds for that first officer who was flying the airplane to be a little confused and look around going hey, what are we doing here? And then to put them back on. And sadly, one of the motors spooled up a little bit above idle and the other one was just trying to come online, so. But it was too late. Real quick, Megan, I know pilots unions hate this, but we have like HD cameras on the other side of the moon. If we had some HD cameras in the cockpit instead of just a voice recorder, we'd know for absolute 100% certainty what happened. But for whatever reason, pilots unions don't like a camera looking over their shoulder. Maybe this will change that.

Camille Foster (9:29)

I mean, it's like being a cop. You're in, you got other people's lives potentially in your hands and unfortunately you have to sacrifice a bit of privacy because this is not the first time this has happened. I mean, just researching for the show, we have seen pilot, you know, death by suicide, but while committing mass murder before. I mean, that crash, that German air, that German pilot in 2015 was the most recent, but there were many prior to that. Captain Steve, as you hear, as you look at the video of that plane, it was taking off and then of course comes back down and it almost looks like a gentle come down, but obviously it wasn't and it wasn't supposed to be coming down. And you hear these facts as reported by the Journal, what conclusions do you reach?

Steve Scheibner (10:09)

Well, at first, when you see that video, it doesn't make any sense. I've never seen anything like that. An airplane that takes off, it looks like it achieves flight fine. And then seconds later, maybe four or five seconds later, you can see the nose kind of come over clearly. The wings are losing lift. And the airplane then begins to settle in to the buildings off the end of the Runway. And it does look like it's landing, but it's not. We clearly know that at this point, the only answer to that is it's a dual engine failure. And what caused the dual engine failure? And I think now with this Wall Street Journal confirmation, plus a preliminary report which, you know, they parse their words a little bit, they said the fuel control switches transitioned from run to cutoff. They don't transition. Somebody has to place them there. It's a three step process. You have to grasp the switch, pull it up because it's spring loaded, pull it down and let it go. So that's only a human has to do that. And there's no known procedure that I know of at 200ft off the ground on rotate, where you would grab those switches and put them to cut off. So either way, it was pilot error. Whether it was Intentional or unintentional. I think now the Wall Street Journal has kind of concluded that it's intentional. And that's no surprise.

Camille Foster (11:23)

And my understanding is. And maybe you can speak to this, Patrick, but my understanding is they put a little guard on the control panel, dashboard. I'm not exactly sure what the right term is, but where they keep those fuel switches, there's like a little guard so that a pilot can't inadvertently, like, knock it with his hip or his hand while he's reaching for something. So it really does look like, by all accounts. Here's a picture we got from the Daily Mail for the listening audience. It shows a little control panel and you can see the tiny little fuel levers, but to the right and to the left of them is like a little metal guard that stands up. And my understanding is, Patrick, that's. That's to prevent anything inadvertent from happening.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (12:02)

That's. That's correct. And I think we need to start out by saying that there's a lot here that we just don't know. The report that came out the other day was, Was very preliminary. We don't even have a CVR transcript yet. You've mentioned a few times what we know. What we know. Well, what about all the things we don't know? And as a result, I tend to be a little more reserved and conservative in my assessment of what happened.

Camille Foster (12:35)

What do you think happened?

Matthew Wiz Buckley (12:37)

I don't know. We don't know.

Camille Foster (12:39)

Well, you say you're more reserved. How are you more reserved? What conclusion are you reaching?

Matthew Wiz Buckley (12:43)

I don't necessarily. By the murder suicide scenario. I'm not saying it didn't happen. There's evidence leaning in that direction strongly. But the dynamics of the crash don't quite make sense that way. So let me get this straight. You're going to shut the engines off at the moment of rotation and glide to a crash? There are so many unknowns. In a scenario like that, there's no guarantee that the crash would be catastrophic, that everybody would be killed, that the person who did it would be killed. Just to the left of the impact area where the plane hit is a mostly open stretch without buildings or larger obstructions. If the plane had just been a little more to that side, the crash could have been at least partly survivable. It just doesn't seem like the way somebody would go about doing something like that. And you go back to Egypt there, and then try Sherman wings and MH370, which almost certainly was a murder suicide. It just, it feels different. And there remains the distinct possibility this is going to sound preposterous, that the fuel control switches were shut off accidentally, inadvertently, in a moment of absurd absentmindedness. And while it sounds preposterous, that sort of thing has happened before.

Camille Foster (14:11)

For the listening audience. Patrick speaking. And both of our other pilots are shaking their heads no. But I like the disagreement. I appreciate the different, the different opinions because we don't know what happened. Go ahead, Wiz.

Patrick Smith (14:22)

I just couldn't disagree more. Megan. If there was anything but what we've been talking about, they would go out of their way in this report to say it. If there was a hiccup in the electrical systems, Megan, these jets, you wouldn't know that yet.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (14:36)

You would not know any of that yet. This is so.

Patrick Smith (14:38)

Absolutely would know that. You absolutely know that because these jets battle tales.

Camille Foster (14:42)

Okay, let's stuff.

Patrick Smith (14:44)

No, those engines, they data link stuff directly to ge, the, the flight control computers. They know just about everything at this point. If there was any other straws they could be grasping at, they would throw that in the report right now. They did not. There was no electrical hiccups. There was no contaminated fuel. They put in this preliminary report, very preliminary stuff. Obviously what they believe. If there was any other thing on God's green earth, they probably would, would have written that down.

Camille Foster (15:14)

Go ahead, Captain. Steve, I'll come back to you. One second. Patrick, I'll come right back to you. Let me get Captain STEPHEN yeah, I.

Steve Scheibner (15:22)

Agree that, that there's no way that those switches move from run to cutoff. And that's. They said in the preliminary report that they were, they were, they didn't say place. They said transition to cutoff. Let's assume for a minute that there, there's some reason that there was an electronic glitch. You would have to believe that it happened on both switches one second apart. And if that were the case, they would be grounding every single Boeing airplane on the planet. They all have those same switches. There would be an investigation into what was wrong with those switches. None of that has come out of this. And so what's not being reported in the report is, or what's not taking place is just as important as what you read in the report. I don't think Boeing or anybody else suspects that there's anything wrong with the 787 because there's not.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (16:09)

Correct.

Camille Foster (16:09)

I'll give you the floor one second, One second. But I just want to say this. We also have the other piece of evidence, which is the co pilot, the one who was actually flying the plane believed the Captain did it, 100% believed he did it. And then the captain denied it in some sort of calm manner, which was said to be his manner. And then we'll get to the reports about his mental state, which vary. Okay, go ahead, Patrick. You wanted to defend your position.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (16:36)

Again, I'm not concluding anything. I'm leaving open the possibility that this indeed was a murder suicide. And as I said, it is certainly trending that way, but it's not. We don't know for sure. There's a lot we don't know. And what of the possibility that he simply shut them off by mistake? It has happened before and I'm sure my guests know that. It sounds ridiculous, but it has happened. And there also was mention in the report of a Boeing service bulletin that was put out a few years back regarding fuel control switches that would not lock into position and could potentially slide back to the cutoff position on their own. What of that? To me, that kind of jumped out. It's not likely. But it's also not likely that the captain shut the engines off and. And crash the plane.

Camille Foster (17:27)

I don't find that unlikely at all. I actually don't find that unlikely. It's happened. You know, we are just pulling these.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (17:32)

Well, so has the other scenario, but nobody wants to talk about that because it's not.

Camille Foster (17:37)

We're talking about it. You're having your way, Patrick. What are you complaining about? Here's some examples you've got. This is from the faa. They call them aircraft assisted pilot suicides, saying they're rare. They include the November 2013 crash of Mozambique Airlines, a plane bound for Angola, which was eerily similar to the German Wings plane one that was Germanwings Flight 9525. That one was so eerie where that pilot died, taking 149 other people with him. He was depressed and flew the plane right into the side of a mountain. That was absolutely awful. He was 27 years old. We know he was determined to kill himself. Okay, and then there's. Let's see, there's a bunch Egypt Airlines, you guys mentioned Flight 990 off Nantucket in 1999, killing all 27, 217 people on board, caused by deliberate separate action, according to the ntsb. In that case, a relief pilot, Gamil Al Battudi, waited for the captain to leave the cockpit, then disengage the autopilot. As the plane descended, he could be heard saying in Arabic, I rely on God, over and over. And there are more I mean, you could keep going.

Patrick Smith (18:41)

Hey, Megan, real quick. Yeah. With the Egypt air mishap. So the captain actually came back from the head or whatever he was doing and saw this going on. He jumped in, pulled back on the control yoke and he's fighting with the fo, the first officer at the time, and the Boeing at the time. The captain would override the first officer's control inputs. Guess what he did to take the airplane down after that? He reached over and shut the fuel to the engines off. So another instance of that. But let's be clear, Megan, whether it's the India Board, the ntsb, history has shown us that we want to have preliminary reports. Why does the flying public want to wait 12 to 18 months to find out why an airliner crashed? No. So they want to compile as much facts as they can as quickly as they can. As Captain Steve alluded to, if there was something going on in these brand new 787 airliners where just magically the fuel switches go to cutoff, they would be freaking the hell out right now. They're not. You know, I'll support Patrick a little bit and say, of course there's all sorts of, you know, slim to none possibilities going on here, but all the evidence is, is pointing in this direction. And you know, Megan, it sounds like we're going to talk about mental health stuff here in a little bit, but.

Camille Foster (19:58)

Yeah, let me tell you what the reporting is on that, okay. The Daily Telegraph is reporting the following, that Captain Mohan Rangan Nathan, a leading aviation safety expert in India, has revealed that, quote, several Air India pilots had allegedly confirmed that this experienced pilot had suffered from poor mental health. The captain we're talking about here, Sumit Subarwal, the one, he's now dead, age 56, who we are speculating may have brought down this plane. So this other captain is saying that he's spoken with several Air India pilots who allegedly confirmed to him that this pilot had suffered from poor mental health. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, he claimed, quote, he had taken time off from flying in the last three to four years. He had taken medical leave for that. This captain is understood to have taken bereavement leave after the death of his mother. Again, this is from the Daily Telegraph, though it's believed by this man doing the reporting, a different captain, Rang Ganathan, that he'd been medically cleared by Air India prior to the fatal crash. The Telegraph said that while Air India declined to comment, an official working with their parent company, Tata Group, told the publication that Captain Sabarwal the guy at issue, had not taken any medical leave, with the preliminary report failing to obtain any significant findings. They added that within the last two years, both pilots on board the flight had passed the Class 1 medical exam, which makes it neat evaluation of their psychophysical capabilities. Unfortunately, some of those other pilots in the cases that we just went over also passed their exams and were not identified as having mental problems, but they clearly did. Your thoughts on that, guys?

Steve Scheibner (21:41)

Well, Megan, we just went out with a video about mental and emotional health and I interviewed Dr. Charlie Carreri, who's really the pioneer in this field. He's the guy responsible for. It's at least in American, Delta, United and Southwest, their programs that are in place where pilots can go self report without any fear of incrimination or losing their jobs, which is hugely important because there's a big stigma with mental health. And I think that's the direction that all this is going is to sit and talk about what's the mental health issues with pilots. And it's a very stressful job and you have to balance on the road with at home. And those two things don't always go together very well for people that travel all the time. And then there's the stress and the responsibility that goes with the job. So I think there's never a bad time to have that conversation about mental health. Certainly now this is kind of a springboard into having that conversation and it's certainly one I think it's important to have.

Patrick Smith (22:36)

Hey, Megan, a quick, quick update with the German wings. They actually knew. A lot of his doctors knew, but apparently the German medical system, it's. To steal a phrase, it's verboten. Those two systems weren't allowed to talk in Germany. Apparently you could say I'm absolutely nuts and suicidal. I'm going to crash an airliner. The doctors were forbidden from telling whatever the German FAA is about any of this. Oh yeah, trust me. After that, I think they've hopefully made some changes in the German system. But at the time that all the doctors after can, I had to shrug their shoulders and say that thing was so disturbing by law not to do that.

Camille Foster (23:17)

Yep, that thing was so disturbing. And it was, it was very clear in that case that it was, it was a murder suicide.

Patrick Smith (23:22)

Right.

Camille Foster (23:22)

It, like my husband and I have, you know, as one does in gallows humor, made jokes about it. There's. I'm down here at the Jersey shore for the summer and we always take our kids to this amusement park at least once a summer. And there's One of those rides, the Scrambler, at this amusement park. And there's something crazy about this particular scrambler. It goes to, like, a gear that you've never seen before where you really feel like you're going to be flung right off the coast of New Jersey into the ocean. And one time, like, one of the first times I ever rode it, I looked at my husband and our kids, and I tried to get a look at the guy operating it. And I said to my husband, Doug, I'm like, gee, he's like the German pilot. This is it. You're like. He's. It's. It's gallows humor. But, like, there are. There are people who are extremely sick. And that's what's so disturbing about this, is it's one thing if you're sick and you commit suicide, but if that's what happened here, we're talking about a mass serial killer. Same thing with MH370. Like that, you're beyond suicidal. You're one of the worst homicidal maniacs in world history. We're talking about hundreds, hundreds of murders in an instant. Which, to your point, Patrick, is why we should be cautious before completely throwing this captain under the bus.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (24:34)

And by the way, as Steve alluded to airlines, regulators, the pilots unions, at least in the US We've come a long way. There's a lot of, I guess you could call it proactivity now towards self reporting and being open and upfront about mental health issues to keep trouble from being driven underground where it could cause some sort of accident or something awful. That being said, I mean, there are people with mental health issues in every line of work from surgeons, police officers, airline pilots, whomever. It's very important to emphasize here, very important that having a mental health issue, having even depression, does not turn you into a psychopathic mass murderer. For that to happen, there has to be something else going on. What it is, I don't know. How is that diagnosed? How is that discovered? How do we know who those outliers are?

Camille Foster (25:46)

What do you do, like, when you get off the plane, when you guys fly commercially? You know, my friend, I mentioned this before, my friend, she's always giving the pilots boxes of chocolates. I'm like, yeah, Elle, that's not gonna save you, okay? But she does. What do you guys do when you get on board the plane? Do you look at the pilot? Like, this is something that's gonna be running through the minds of people? I realize it's like the chance of getting hit by lightning. It's extremely remote, but like, it's going to be through us nervous flyers, through our heads the next time we get on board a plane. Captain Steve, what do you think?

Steve Scheibner (26:15)

Well, Megan, we've talked a lot about this on my channel. I'm coming up to my retirement date in three months and I'm, you know, just because I turn 65, it's, I'm done. And it's kind of a one size fits all position. But I tell people, look, when you get on an airplane and you can look up into the cockpit, you don't care what gender the person is. You don't care what color their skin is. What you're looking for is a little bit of gray hair. And if you see gray hair, that reassures you. If you see somebody up there that looks like it's one of your teenage daughter's dates, it's, it's not cause for your teenage daughter, you know, again, you know, and I was young at one point, I get it, but I also wasn't the captain at that point. Over the years, I've aged and I think it's a little bit of gray hair is reassuring, especially in a position where you're sitting in the back and you're trusting somebody basically with your life.

Camille Foster (27:06)

Yeah. The older one here is the one who is allegedly culpable and the younger1 who's 32, the co pilot was 32, who was flying a plane. First officer. And the guy, you know, being possibly accused was 56. Go ahead, Patrick. You're going to say something.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (27:20)

I would somewhat disagree with that. I understand that it's reassuring to people, but it's also not necessarily meaningful. You know, there are a lot of younger, fully qualified, excellent airline pilots out there. So the extrapolation you made, maybe without meaning too, is that, you know, younger pilots aren't as safe as older pilots. And I just, I just can't, I can't accept that.

Steve Scheibner (27:45)

Well, it didn't, I'm not saying that they're, they're equally qualified. What they lack is the, the experience and the judgment, and that's what you pay for with, with the captain on an airliner is somebody that's been around the block a couple times that can say at certain times, slow down. That's, that's the experience.

Camille Foster (28:05)

A little bit about you, Captain Steve, because I neglected to do that. But you joined the Navy after college. You were commissioned and trained as a pilot back in 83, 84. Commercial pilot for 40 years. And you were initially scheduled to fly American Airline Flight 11 on September 11, 2001, the first plane that hit the World Trade Center. My God, I didn't know that. That is really chilling.

Steve Scheibner (28:26)

I was actually scheduled to be the first officer on that flight, and due to kind of an extraordinary circumstance, I was bumped from the flight the night before. And there's a documentary called In My Seat that's available on YouTube that tells my story. But I travel now all around the world talking about living on borrowed time. So that, that was my near death experience. But yeah, it kind of gives you chills on the back of your neck thinking about how close it was to being basically the pilot on the first airplane that flew into the first World Trade Center.

Camille Foster (28:59)

Yeah, speaking.

Patrick Smith (28:59)

Megan, I want to drop anchor a little bit on the mental health stuff, not to freak the flying public out even more. Pilots are either gods and we're flawless or we're not, which clearly we're not. Megan, if you go to your FAA doc, or as Steve will know, you know, in the Navy flying fighters, we had a flight surgeon. Of course the flight surgeon would say, hey, if anything's wrong with you, you make sure you come and tell me. That was the last person on this planet we would tell anything was wrong to. Why? Because then we're grounded and we're not flying and we're not doing the one thing that's probably making us happy. So if you tell your FAA doctor in your annual physical or every six months or whatever it is, like, hey, I'm not feeling too good. I'm a little depressed. Guess what's going to happen. You're going to get immediately grounded, most likely, and you're put over in this filing cabinet and it's an absolute nightmare. Megan, this is one of the reasons I started the no Fallen Heroes foundation four years ago is because of aviation mental health. We have got to hide anything that's wrong with us. You're going to lose your job or potentially your license. It is a perverse system right now where pilots are forced to either self medicate, drink, hide what's wrong with them, or lose their job until the FAA steps up and says, hey, we're going to have a no kidding, serious conversation about this. Pilots and mental health is, is, is the elephant in the room that nobody's.

Camille Foster (30:27)

Really talking about that is really terrifying and makes perfect sense. What you're saying is that my friend needs to board the aircraft with like a pot of coffee and maybe a breathalyzer.

Patrick Smith (30:38)

Well, you know, real quick, you know, Sully and Miracle and the Hudson, everything like that. Obviously a great Aviator did some good stuff. It's funny in the movie because they're like, oh, hey, they kept doing the count. Like, hey, we saved this many. I got to be honest with you, Megan. Maybe I'm just speaking for me. If both engines flamed out and I'm sully, guess who I care about in that moment?

Steve Scheibner (30:59)

Me.

Patrick Smith (31:00)

All interest is self interest. The fact that I saved 150 people sit behind me is gravy. But remember, unless you're a suicidal captain, as potentially in this case, if something goes wrong with the airplane, I'm caring about me right now and my beautiful bride, my kids. Oh, and everybody else too, if they do a documentary about it.

Camille Foster (31:18)

Well, we have to find out. I don't know whether he had a family or what they. Obviously there's one report suggested he had a mother who died recently. There was an interesting report about this. This captain from a long time ago. This is in the Wall Street Journal. They said that he started his flying career in the early 1990s. He attended the Indira Gandhi Academy. It's a prestigious flight school run in India that a friend of his who overlapped with him for one year in flight school said he stood out among their classmates. Very polite, never cursed, never drank alcohol, spoke softly. So softly that sometimes they had difficulty hearing him, had to ask him to speak louder. Unlike other students, messy quarters. Sabarwal kept a spartan room filled with the bare minimum. If you open his cupboard, said the friend, there were two formal shirts, two T shirts, two pairs of shoes, one slippers and one bag. So it wouldn't be unusual, I think to find a pilot who's meticulous then figuring out where, if at all, he turned homicidal is a different question altogether. Can I ask you something, Wiz on Patrick's point of like, if you wanted to bring down the plane, this doesn't really seem like the way you would do it. Like the, you know, it is strange to like it's all on cam, you know, as opposed to the MH370 guy, who. It's never been confirmed. We can't because the plane disappeared. That that was a murder suicide. But I agree that that's overwhelmingly likely what happened. He. He got the, the plane out over the Indian Ocean, which is huge and vast. And you, you know, you're guaranteed to kill everybody, to have almost no evidence of it. Like, why, if you were going to do this, would you do it so soon after takeoff and in an area where there's a field right there where maybe it could be recovered by the co pilot or something could happen, Megan.

Patrick Smith (33:02)

That that airliner was gliding like a set of car keys at that point. That's exactly when you'd want to do was enough time where they, like Captain Steve said, just got airborne and immediately the engine shut off and it's going to settle right back down. Any higher altitude, unless he knocks out the first officer, the FO is going to have time to put those switches back. There's a horrific 10 second delay. God bless the first officer for. Whoa, what are you doing? Remember Megan, in the west, we got rid of the Imperial captain years ago. Like you can't question the captain and they're a God on the flight deck. We don't do that in the West. In some of these other countries, Asian and Indian, the captain is still kind of revered as a guy. So you can tell in that 10 seconds maybe that the FO was like, what are you doing? Why did you do that? And then the guy just kind of sitting there as the plane's descending into the neighborhood, the FO puts the switches back on. Maybe if he had done it a little bit quicker, he could have gotten some thrust. So we're never going to be able to know until we all transition and meet this guy again why he did this. It's just, you know, I don't think.

Camille Foster (34:06)

He'S going to be the same place you and I are.

Patrick Smith (34:10)

And it's interesting because some people online are like, well, well, he, he replied with, oh, I, I didn't. Hey, man, if you're about to commit murder, suicide, telling the truth probably isn't high on your list of things to do in that moment. So clearly.

Camille Foster (34:24)

And he knew there'd be a black.

Patrick Smith (34:25)

Box recorder, he knew it was being recorded, Correct?

Steve Scheibner (34:28)

Go ahead, Steve And Megan, you're, you're asking why, with a rational mind, we're trying to make sense out of something that's completely irrational. Now, when he stepped over that line, none of us is really ever going to know, but what we do know is that what he did was completely psychotic and it doesn't make any sense. But I agree that that's the, if you're going to do what he did, that's the perfect place to do it. 200ft off the ground, there's no recovery from that and that airplane is going to crash and most likely everybody's going to die. I think he was just thinking about himself in that moment, clearly. And. But the rational mind tries to make sense of the irrational and it doesn't, it doesn't work.

Camille Foster (35:07)

It doesn't. I'll give you the last word, Patrick. Go ahead.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (35:09)

So why glide onto the roof of the building? Why not simply push the nose down and crash into the ground at that point? Why? Why the glide? I'm not saying it didn't happen that way, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And meanwhile here I want to point out, I think, where the whole conversation is veering in a little bit of a sensationalist the direction. And I don't want people to have this idea that when you get onto a commercial flight you should start psychoanalyzing your pilots in the hierarchy that you should. The idea that your pilot is going to crash the plane is like so out there among the possibilities and things you should be thinking about.

Patrick Smith (35:56)

Hey Megan, real quick, after 9 11, there's a famous story of a US air captain in Philadelphia. I love the Jersey Shore reference. I was born and raised in Margate, so nice job there. But this guy was in Philly and he went through tsa. Do you remember when they were stealing, you know, tweezers and fingernail clippers? Well, they took his fingernail clippers and he looked at the TSA agent, whatever, and said, go ahead and take that, I have these. And he held his hands up, he's like, I don't need my nail clippers to take the plane down. I have these. Guess what happened? They threw that guy in jail and it took the union like a couple of days to get him out and fight like two or three years to get his job back. So he said, I have these. I don't need a fingernail clipper.

Camille Foster (36:38)

So I know I said that Patrick was going to have the last word, but. No, sorry about that. Some interesting points there. No, no, no, because he raised some interesting points. Like, I love to hear you respond, Captain Steven. Why wouldn't he just put it in a nosedive and take it down? That's actually a good question.

Steve Scheibner (36:51)

Again, we're trying to make rational sense out of something that's completely irrational. Maybe he's fantasized about turning the fuel control just a cutoff. They were placed one second apart from each other, which is consistent with the way we turn them on and turn them off. It's a one handed operation. One, two, it goes like that. So he probably was fantasizing over that on some level, thinking about just watching the airplane descend. The reports are that I guess apparently he was very calm in this. He was the only one on that airplane apparently that knew what was coming next. If I was the first officer, I would absolutely be in a panic about it.

Patrick Smith (37:27)

You're.

Steve Scheibner (37:27)

You're. You're transitioning from flying out normally to what just happened. The. The fact that the first officer had the presence of mind to reach down and put them back to the run position is semi incredible in my mind. Good on him for doing that. He almost, almost saved the day because of where it was done. It was done so low that there was really no recovering from it.

Patrick Smith (37:50)

Megan, with the German wings. Remember what the German wings guy did? Lock. Locked the cockpit. Captain's beaten. Trying to break down the door. He put the autopilot in a gentle descent and flew into the Alps. So why didn't. I'll answer a question, Patrick's question with a question. Why didn't that guy just roll the plane inverted and fly it straight into the ground? He put it into a gentle descent like Captain Steve just said. Maybe he had some sort of weird fetish about. I'm just going to watch this thing slowly fly into the side of the mountain. So, again, you can't crazy.

Camille Foster (38:20)

Can I. Can I ask this one other question? What about the survivor? Do you think he could be important? You know, like there's a survivor, right?

Matthew Wiz Buckley (38:31)

Unlikely.

Steve Scheibner (38:32)

He was seated right in front of the wing spar, which is the heaviest, strongest part of the airplane. It's a steel girder, basically right behind where he was. And that probably took most of the impact. The fact that he said one of the initial reports was that he heard a loud bang and the lights flickered. That would be consistent with the Ram air turbine.

Matt Welch (38:51)

Yeah.

Steve Scheibner (38:52)

Eyewitnesses in that situation are not necessarily reliable, but with all the other information we have that his account fits with the deployment of the rats. So he's one part of this that. That seems to be accurate with the whole transition of what took place in those basically 60 seconds.

Patrick Smith (39:09)

Megan, if he was in.

Camille Foster (39:11)

Having observed the pilot in a sort of mental state are very slim, I think. Go ahead, Wiz.

Patrick Smith (39:17)

Well, if he was in our fighter squadron, his call sign would be Highlander. You have Gallo's humor. So do we. So you got to cut that guy's head off to kill him, Clearly. So his new call signs. Highlander.

Camille Foster (39:28)

It's true. When you're in a dangerous business, you're actually in one. I just report on many. And so you have to go to that. Otherwise you're just. You're crying every day. Guys. Thank you. Patrick, we gave you a hard time, but you kept the discussion interesting with your different people.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (39:41)

That's my job, okay?

Camille Foster (39:42)

Thanks to all of you.

Patrick Smith (39:43)

Good job, Patrick.

Camille Foster (39:45)

All the best. Wow, what a story. My God, so disturbing. I totally accept that the odds of this happening to you are incredibly small and it is not something that you need to worry about at all. But then you think about what Wiz was saying about the mental health screening and how it's not set up to encourage honesty and transparency from our pilots and you think, well, there is an action point here that we need to really think about. Thankfully we've got Sean Duffy running transportation, so maybe this is something that we can actually message we can get to him. This did not happen in America. This happened in India. But you know, there but for the grace of God, God rest those souls. All right, we'll be right back with our friends from the fifth column. Here's one way to clean up your medicine cabinet this season and replace toxin filled conventional products with more natural ones. Propolis immune support throat spray and propolis plus vitamin C liposomal that can be must haves in the medicine cabinet as seasonal germs start to hit. Did you know that germs can enter through your nasal passages just as easily as through your mouth? Propolis nasal spray is a great non toxic swab for other over the counter drug filled medications. It's non habit forming natural and has antimicrobial benefits. Beekeepers Naturals makes clean non toxic products that actually work. They never use harmful ingredients like red dye number three or other synthetic dyes or artificial flavors. Their products are third party tested for all pesticides and they're dedicated to sustainable beekeeping too and helping save the bees. Beekeepers naturals is offering you an exclusive right now. Go to beekeepersnaturals.com Megan or enter code Megan to get 20% off your order. That's beekeepersnaturals.com, megan or enter code Megan. Beekeepers Naturals products are also available at Target, Whole Foods, Walmart, CVS and Walgreens. Joining me today for the rest of the show to react to all of today's headlines are our pals from the fifth column, Camille Foster, editor at large of Tangle News and Matt Welsh of Reason magazine. Moynihan is scrambling to make it. That'll be the drama that takes us through the next hour. Will he or won't he? But in the meantime, you can find all of their work@we the fifth.com okay. And you can subscribe there too. Guys. Great to see you. It's a pleasure. I wanna start with do we have the Mark Halpern sat you guys, my team. Okay. Oh all right, stand by. I have it in front of me. So I went on with my pal Mark Halperin on his nextup show this morning. We taped it before I taped my show. We're doing this live and Halperin is everywhere. He does that show and he does Two Way and he's like, you know, whatever. And apparently on his two Way show today, and even in our interview, he raised this with me and I knew what he was talking about. But I wanna tell you what happened on Two Way. He said the following. Everyone I know believes a major newspaper, one of the top three newspapers in the country, is about to publish a piece about President Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Everyone I know knows that, and people in the White House know that too. When that story drops, if it drops today, and some people think it might, it could drive the day. Then he asks the following questions to Dan Turrentine and Sean Spicer. Either answer them or say, in fact, we don't know. How did Trump and Jeffrey Epstein meet? I don't know. They say, did Trump ever go to Jeffrey Epstein's townhouse? Yes. It's not a townhouse, it's a mansion. How many times? I believe many what occasions? One on one parties. What did he go for? I don't know. Okay? He's just asking these questions, it's fine. These guys don't know. I think I know the answers to a lot of these and I answered them on Halpern's show. So if you wanna hear my answers, you can tune in to nextup. Not that I'm some expert on Epstein. I've just been neck deep in all of these reports over the past couple of weeks for obvious reasons. But I can tell you, I don't know why we're afraid to say it's the Wall Street Journal. Maybe that will turn out to be untrue, but I've been told by multiple sources that the Journal's working on a piece on Trump and Epstein. And guys, there's no question in my mind that there's gonna be a lot there, because they knew each other for 15 years. They were actually close friends for 15 years prior to Epstein's troubles. And I'm sure they did spend a lot of time together, but what does that tell us? He spent a lot of time with a lot of luminaries. And they weren't all pedophiles. Right? It's like a lot of them, some of them were women. It was. The Dalai Lama was over at Epstein's house. Michael Wolf just told Vicki Ward that a couple of days ago and we could go on. So what? It's not, it doesn't make Trump look bad or it doesn't incriminate him in any way that he was friends with the guy. He's already admitted that. The question is, are you going to produce evidence that Trump took advantage of an underaged girl? Now, if they're there, then we're talking a scandal. But honestly, if, if somebody's got that proof, we would have seen it by now, would we not?

Patrick Smith (44:34)

Yeah, yeah.

Matt Welch (44:37)

The Biden administration had access to all of these files, at least the Biden Justice Department did. Whether or not the president or any of his people looked at it, the possibility that this information, this damning, incriminating information that would have devastated Donald Trump's future prospects for its politician or perhaps even brought him under criminal suspicion, the likelihood that that would not have already come out years ago is unbelievably low. I just can't imagine it. We've seen leaks of absolutely everything else. We've seen legal trials that have been completely prosecuted on much thinner, thinner, thinner, less sensational grounds we would see. So that doesn't seem to be what's hidden here or obscure it.

Camille Foster (45:18)

Anyways, E. Jean Carroll accused him of rape, which was a completely bullshit allegation. I don't believe one word that E. Jean Carroll said. But Trump is on camera with the, you know, you can grab him by the P word and they let you get away with it when you're a celebrity. So it's like the fact that Trump might have had a handsy 40s and 50s or even earlier than that, I don't know. It's not going to come as a huge shock, Matt, but it's. If there were proof that he had a thing for underaged girls, you don't think we'd know that by now?

Megyn Kelly (45:52)

I think we would know that. I think the potential political damage of this story, and let's keep in mind the Wall Street Journal was not alone, but they were ahead of the pack, mostly in writing about the Biden White House Operation Bubble Wrap cover up for months and years. They did.

Camille Foster (46:09)

Wait, is that a real term or are you just saying that because I love that?

Megyn Kelly (46:12)

No, no, that was the term. That was the term among both the Journal and the New York Times reporting about the forgotten. That Joe Biden, that's all talked about on this show. They use Operation Bubble Wrap to describe the Dr. Jill Biden kind of initiative, and maybe we'll even talk about that later on in the Episode, who knows? But so anyways, Wall Street Journal does good reporting, period. But right now, I think the fact of the matter about the politics of this is that Trump is facing a political challenge the likes of which he hasn't really seen in a good while, which is that some people in his base are like, I don't know, dude, I don't like how you're handling this, or I don't like how your administration is handling this. And at a time when there's a lot of people who are more of the independent bent among people in media, the conservative media, podcasts and substack who are dissatisfied with the level of disclosure so far in Epstein related information from the Justice Department, having this story drop to remind you of what we already know on the record is that he does have a relationship, as does a lot of people, including several people that all three of us know have been to Epstein's island or have had interactions with him, scientists and people like that. But the timing of that information, at a time when there's these struggles between Pam Bondi and Dan Bongino and when there are people who haven't gone full Charlie Kirk in that they haven't gotten a call from the president and said, okay, I'll stop talking about it. People are still talking about it on the right.

Camille Foster (47:46)

Well, Charlie is too. He had that one day of like, I'm not doing it. And then the next two days his shows have been heavily good on Charlie.

Megyn Kelly (47:53)

Which is not something that I say every single day. But Trump just went out and called those people on the right and within MAGA who are talking about it still. He called up a bunch of losers. He said he's lost respect.

Camille Foster (48:05)

Bad people who are weaklings.

Megyn Kelly (48:07)

Weaklings. And that they're working for the fake news and that this is all like a fake news plot or a liberal Democratic plot that you fell for. It's a hoax and et cetera. It's going to be really interesting against that backdrop to see what those people do. You have just been insulted by the president. I don't know, Megan, if you know this, but sometimes Donald Trump insults people in the media on the right.

Camille Foster (48:31)

It's a day ending in y. I will say for the record, my advice to all those people who are on the right is just keep doing your thing. Like you. You can't. You can't run a show that way. A journalistic outfit, you really can't run that way. President Trump will get mad at any journalist who is doing their job. And I don't forget the fake news, they got their own issues. But I mean, honest reporters who actually like Trump and are fair to Trump and you just, you know, it's part of being a journalist. You are disliked more than you're liked. And that's just the way it goes if you're doing your job right. Yeah.

Matt Welch (49:07)

I mean, there's. It seems to me, though, without having seen the Wall Street Journal reporting or the reporting from whomever it is going to be publishing this story, there's no possibility that we would be talking about this or that this story would be coming out if there was not this profound mishandling of the disclosures related to the Epstein investigation. Everything about this has gone badly for the administration. The messaging around it has been absolutely terrible. Someone should absolutely lose their job over it. Whether or not it happens this week or a couple of weeks from now is the only question. I suppose that that actually ought to be seriously entertained. But they mishandled this. Like, one doesn't have to believe any sort of conspiracy theories to look at the situation to raise an eyebrow and say, what on earth is going on over there? Who is responsible for actually talking to the public?

Camille Foster (49:57)

When I think about, like, oh, I don't know what they have, is it a picture of Trump with, like a young girl? Like, it's not gonna be with some really young girl, but let's say, like as a 17 year old girl. If that had come out, if they have that and that comes out on any other day, it'd be like, all right, whatever. Everybody knows that Trump was a bit of a playboy when he was younger. He's had multiple wives. He was a man about town when he was younger. And it wouldn't have been a total yawn, but it would have been mostly a yawn. Certainly his supporters would not have given two figs about that. But now would be a terrible time for that to drop because of the way this is all snowballed into. Like, why is he so adamant about not releasing another document? And then if they drop this story with that kind of thing now, it could potentially hurt him because now even his own supporters have been insulted for actually caring about child, you know, issues including potentially sexual abuse. And then you see that and you think, oh, how much is there in this lane? And why does that explain. I'll give you the last thought on that. Whoever wants to take it in the 30 seconds we have before a break.

Megyn Kelly (51:07)

Just to say that Trump has, over the last 10 years, successfully used insult comedy to kind of bring his base into line and into Check. Most famously in my point of view with the House Freedom Caucus, which started off as an antagonist and then he whipped them into line by the end of 2017. Can he do that with his base of people who are independent in media? We are going to find out.

Camille Foster (51:31)

Yeah, we're in the process of finding out. Okay. Be right back with the Fifth Column. Don't go away. I've been talking a lot about Riverbend Ranch steaks lately, and for good reason. The ranch is just a few miles from West Yellowstone, Montana, and their steaks are amazing. They're incredibly flavorful and surprisingly tender. Our listeners have shared so much great feedback. Riverbend Ranch raises Angus cattle, but they've taken it further. For 35 years, more than three decades now, the owner has selectively bred Angus cattle with superior genetics for marbling and tenderness, creating a herd that truly stands out. Their beef is born, raised, and processed entirely in the United States without artificial growth hormones or antibiotics, and it's shipped directly from the ranch to your door. Riverbend Ranch is not just another beef company. It's a legacy of quality care and craftsmanship that you can taste in every bite. Order from riverbendranch.com and use the promo code. Megan for 20 bucks off your first order and let me know what you think. That's Riverbendranch.com promo code M E G Y N. Back with me now, two of the three, Camille Foster and Matt Murray Welsh of the Fifth Column. I mean, Moynihan's not here, so I think we can. We can just say the. The two best. The best two have made.

Matt Welch (52:52)

We can say that anytime.

Megyn Kelly (52:53)

He's very busy trying to get his name scrubbed off certain flight logs. I didn't really understand the exact thing, but hopefully he'll be finished.

Camille Foster (53:01)

You never know. He's a bomb, vant. I mean, who knows where he's been? My team did send me this, just for what it's worth, okay? Michael Wolf, like, he, he's like, to me, he's like a Gabe Sherman type where like 50% of what he writes is explosive and spot on and jaw dropping. And the other fifth is totally made up. That's my own impression. And he get. But he gets all these very, very famous billionaire type people to let him follow them around like a fly on the wall, you know, like the Murdochs and many others. And then they all regret doing it. Trump. Anyway, he dropped a book not long ago called Too Famous, like T o O. And he wrote this in the book the FBI did not list in Its findings of the Epstein residence search. A set of pictures that Epstein sometimes removed from the safe to show friends. A dozen or so snapshots from shortly before their quarrel in 2004 of Donald Trump at Epstein's Palm beach home posing with a variety of young women in various stages of undress, some topless, sitting on his lap, touching his hair, laughing, and pointing at a suggestive stain on the front of the future president's pants. Now, that's Michael Wolf. Yeah. So I have no idea whether any of that is true. But again, you know, this has been out there, and if this is now, somebody's gonna produce this photo. My first question will be, where'd you get it? What other photos of Jeffrey Epstein's do you have? And why haven't they been made public before? Now? That would be the kind of thing Trump wouldn't want hitting. But that doesn't prove he molested anybody. And let's not forget that one of Epstein's lawyers, not Dershowitz, the other guy, whose name is escaping me right now, but he is on the record as saying there's nothing. Jeffrey Epstein had nothing on Donald Trump. I asked him, I specifically asked Epstein whether he had anything on Trump, and the answer was no.

Megyn Kelly (54:58)

So that lawyer also described Donald Trump, correct?

Camille Foster (55:03)

Yes, but it's one thing to show, like the current president, but then he owned a beauty pageant, and he was just like a rich guy sort of frolicking about with young girls. And I don't. I mean, the stain is just. That's so nasty. If they're all making fun of it and having fun with it on camera, the odds are it's an absolute nothing burger. And just like, you know, these are people letting off some steam, having fun, not thinking he's going to be the future president. I can see why Trump would be like, yeah, that's not ideal. I'm not going to be putting that out, or I don't want to invite somebody to put that out. But again, it sounds like that's not in the government's possession, that that's in somebody who knew Epstein's possession because it was not seized. That's Michael Wolf's point. Not seized. So this is some private individual. Could it be Michael Wolf? I have no idea who's been holding onto it for however long. Michael Wolfe dropped tapes of Epstein right before the presidential election. They just didn't get any attention because we were focused on saving the world. And he couldn't stop Trump's reelection with his last 11th hour hit piece on Trump and It had to do with Epstein. In any event, that's where things stand. Any thoughts on that, on the picture, on the details? Wolf?

Megyn Kelly (56:13)

It's a 50 50. It's a 7525. I'm not sure in what direction I would go. Probably 2575. With his veracity, he's just been historically kind of loose and sloppy. But he also does have access. So it's always buyer beware. I would caution that if there is a photo, anything like what you describe, that's trouble for Trump. There's such a difference between visuals and non visuals. And this is gonna sound like a strange comparison, but I'm gonna make it anyways. With the Abu Ghraib photos, right? The prison that the US Military ran in Iraq and abused prisoners. And it was bad when those first photos came out, it was awful. America had a reckoning along a conversation. Then candidate Barack Obama said, when I'm president, we're going to release the rest of them. And then when he became president, he changed his mind, partly because. And their stated reason was not that Barack Obama was in the photos, but like, this is gonna make life difficult. The Abu Ghraib photos changed or impacted American foreign policy, and it absolutely cut into trust for the government and the military and a bunch of other things besides. It makes things uncomfortable. So it's just the visuals of seeing this. There can be totally documented Senate reports.

Camille Foster (57:30)

How would you recommend he handle it, Matt? Like at this point, if he were taking your advice on what to do right now, what would it be?

Megyn Kelly (57:38)

My advice is not for the health of the political prospects of any sitting politician. My advice is I want to see everything as long as it doesn't abuse the individual rights of some of the people in the images. And it certainly would not abuse Donald Trump's individual rights to have that released in any shape or form. I want to see all those photos. I want to see the rest of the Abu Ghraib photos, too. Not that I relish looking at them. I want the maximum transparency. And let's just remember that again, regardless of what one thinks about, you know, the Epstein files being a skeleton key towards everything. And I don't at all think that one can look at the real reporting from people like Julie Brown, heroic reporting at the Miami Herald that basically reopened the case in 2019 because of them working hard to uncover previously covered up files. Not even covered up, just unreleased files, we should be in favor of transparency. And one reason that Pam Bondi is rightly in the crosshairs, in my opinion, Right now is that she could have said in February, she could have said, I'm in favor of transparency. And we're going to see and do the serious work to try to release as many files as possible. And we'll go over which names need to be redacted and which don't. And that's difficult work. And we're going to do this also in light of Ghislaine Maxwell has an open appeals process going and you don't want to jeopardize that. That's not what she did. She invited influencers to the White House and gave them Trapper Keeper, the fan service, not transparency. And then when those fans and they.

Camille Foster (59:08)

Read phase one, they were phase one, like there were more phases coming.

Matt Welch (59:11)

They did. They did. So there's two things that I want to say, one of which I'm actually a little nervous to say and I kind of don't want to say it, but I may say it anyway.

Camille Foster (59:19)

Do it.

Matt Welch (59:20)

The first thing is perhaps a disagreement with you, Matt. I love transparency. Secrecy is for losers.

Camille Foster (59:27)

This is what makes you guys the top two. Just FYI. This is what makes you the top two. Keep going.

Matt Welch (59:32)

Thank you. Thank you. The secrecy is for losers, et cetera, et cetera. That said, there is a reality here, like libertarians are both concerned about transparency and checking government power, but also checking government's ability to abuse that power. And in a high profile investigation like this, what we all know is that if your name is published, even in a totally innocent way, because of your own personal affiliation with Epstein, which might not have been criminal in any sort of nature whatsoever, to have it publicized in a sloppy way or at all, even in this particular climate is tantamount to accusing you of something really, really nefarious. So I appreciate the restraint on the part of judges who've been involved in this case. And now even with respect to federal disclosures, that's at least a worthwhile consideration. Now, that's a bit of a nuanced point. It just kind of brings two things in attention. Now, the other thing that I want to say that I'm a little reluctant to say, but I can't be the first person to think this is, why the hell haven't we seen some AI generated video of Donald Trump with Epstein or even AI generated photo of it? It would be so easy to do, especially when you have things like this out. You would expect it to spread like wildfire. It is. It is just odd to me that something like that hasn't happened yet. I don't Necessarily want it to. In fact, I don't want it to, but it is.

Camille Foster (60:52)

Adam Schiff is in his basement right now creating. He's personally stitching it together. I'm sure it's going to.

Matt Welch (60:59)

I don't know if he has the technical prowess, but I believe he has the motive for sure.

Camille Foster (61:02)

Here's the tweet. I was referring to the guy. It's the lawyer, David Schoen. S C H O E N who did later. He represented Trump, I think maybe. Was it the first impeachment trial earlier, I guess I should say he said second impeachment trial. He said, I. This is a tweet. I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein's defense as his criminal lawyer nine days before he died. He sought my advice for months before that. I can say authoritatively, unequivocally and definitively that he had no information to hurt President Trump. I specifically asked him, exclamation point. So that's, you know, as close as we're gonna get to hearing from Epstein himself that he didn't have any real compromise on Trump. And if there's a picture, okay, fine, it'll keep tongues wagging. But look, the reason why, I really think. I don't know how long this goes on, you know, if there's a drip, drip, drip in the Journal or whoever else. And like, the problem for Trump is now the left wing is suddenly interested in Epstein. These absolute cretins who had absolutely nothing, not a care for, who might have been hurt behind the scenes by some pedophile ring or just freaks who hung out with Epstein. Now suddenly they're everyone's savior. Like, oh, I'm on it. I'm on it. In fact, there was an extraordinary exchange on Morning Joe where Jamie Raskin, a villain, went on to his credit. Scarborough asked him something along these lines. Look, what happened, Congressman could have gotten.

Megyn Kelly (62:23)

That from 21 to 25, when Democrats controlled the DOJ. Why, it was a crisis then, it's a crisis now. Why didn't. Why didn't Democrats call for it from 21 to 25? So, I mean, you have to go back, look specifically at particular prosecutorial decisions and what was taking place in terms of the other cases. So, I don't know. We could try to reconstruct that record. But the point is, is that Donald Trump is the one who has led the crusade to say that Epstein, who was his very close friend, and there's all kinds of pictures of them.

Camille Foster (63:08)

She has no answer. Donald Trump did not lead the crusade. Trump surrogates Definitely were into the Epstein thing. Trump himself has always been very measured. Yeah. Family. I'm Don Jr. Yes, I mean, that's true. But how about Jamie Raskin? I don't know. There may have been issues going. But Trump. But Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

Megyn Kelly (63:26)

Litigate the past. Here's why Trump screwed up.

Camille Foster (63:29)

But that's Trump's problem now, is because forget Jamie Raskin. No one gives a shit what he's thinking or doing. But now, suddenly you're gonna have the New York Times like, oh, well, it's a chance to hurt him. Great. And I don't know whether that's gonna help or hurt Trump because it's gonna generate a lot of additional coverage of it. But as soon as the Times and the Guardian and the Washington Post are on the story and CNN's doing it WALL to wall, that's when all of us on the right are gonna start defending Trump because we can't stand those people. And it's just too cynical.

Matt Welch (63:57)

And I mean, without.

Megyn Kelly (63:58)

Go ahead, Matt. Just in general, always, those legacy media institutions have so much less oomph and power and influence than they used to. So it's always worth keeping in mind, I think what will drive some of these headlines, what we're already seeing, which is that Democrats in Congress are going to say, oh, we're going to need to have some hearings on this in August. And the thing is, maybe we should have hearings on this if it means that we need to figure out the behavior, particularly at the Department of Justice way back in 2007, the first time around, like, why did these decisions get made and what were the contours of it or whatever, that there might need to be those.

Camille Foster (64:34)

Why did Alex Acosta cut such a sweetheart deal? And by the way, I had Vicky Ward on the show two days ago, the reporter who wrote for Vanity Fair for all those years and then wrote that piece in the Daily Beast in 2019, saying, I spoke with a member of Trump transition team. That person said they weren't worried about Alex Acosta getting confirmed because he told them, the reason I gave Epstein the sweetheart deal is because he belongs to intelligence. This is above my pay grade, and basically I needed to make it go away. So she stands by that 100%. She'll go back and look at the clip. It's on our YouTube feed right now. She was like, I have absolutely no doubt about my reporting. Stand by it 100%. The person was in the room with Acosta and heard him say it, and I have never gone back, even once untilla on my reporting. So she's, you know, she stands by her reasons on why Acosta did what he did. And you're right, if we're actually going to have a special counsel, I don't think we're going to have congressional hearings because Dems would have to control the House now. They might in 2026, but right now they don't. So they can't have hearings. I don't think we will have hearings. But if we were going to, we definitely have to keep 2007, 2008 in the mix. What was George W. Bush's, you know, in the last year, his attorney general doing? Why did Alberto Gonzalez or his top team sign off on this? Because Alex Acosta said main justice vetted everything and approved everything I did. And we know what that means now. Later he told the Office of Professional Responsibility, reportedly, we've never seen the actual Q and A that he was, that he was not told to drop it because of any intelligence link. So anyway, that's just yet another something that they'd have to look into. All right, I want to shift gears now. This is not an important thing actually before I get to this, but this is my second. This is my. After the plane crash, this is my second favorite story. But before I get to it, I just want to say this. It does occur to me this is a self inflicted wound because of Pam Bondi. I don't think there's any question. I don't know why she thought it would be a great idea to drop this two page memo in the dark of night in the middle of the summer during a slow news time when people have nothing to chew on. But that Sunday night.

Matt Welch (66:33)

What, for Monday? For Monday, yeah, yeah.

Camille Foster (66:36)

Like if you want to bury a story, you bury a story during a busy news time, not during a slow news time. Somebody when Elon and Trump were fighting on Twitter and we were all refreshing our ex, you know, like people addicted to crack. You know, like every two seconds like refresh, refresh. Somebody tweeted out, like, by the way, if you have any bad news you want to drop, now would probably be the time to do it. No one cares. She did the opposite. But I want to say this as we're talking about all this today, National Review had the headline that I'll read it to you exclusive. Trump administration to cut off federal funding to hospitals that provide gender transition services to minors. Yes, right on. They're in the process right now in the senate of approving $9 billion worth of doge cuts. It's not the full gamut, but it's a very nice start. That's $9 billion we're gonna have in the pocket that we didn't. It's today. One of the other great news stories we'll get to is we appear to be about to defund officially NPR and pbs to the tune of a billion dollars. Who should not be getting one more penny of taxpayer money in June thanks to Trump's tariffs. That's according to NBC, which hates Trump. We had a surplus for the first time in forever in the month of June, again thanks to the tariffs. We were not deficit spending in June. We were spending in the black. Like, like people who have a budget and are going to live up to it and actually have savings to put away. It doesn't sound like the United States. He just this week signed the Halt Fentanyl act, cracking down on fentanyl and the people who deal it, which is a scourge across America. Really devastating to working class communities and middle class communities too, across the country. So he's just racked up a ton of wins. A ton of wins and things for which he should be celebrated. So I understand Trump's frustration at having to talk about this cretin Jeffrey Epstein again. For that, he needs to blame Pam Bondi. He doesn't seem like he wants to do that. Anybody wanna comment on the Trump W's? Before we move on to my second favorite story of the day, Just as.

Megyn Kelly (68:47)

The libertarian jerk hole here in the corner, 9 billion is a good.

Camille Foster (68:52)

You might be slipping out of the number one position.

Megyn Kelly (68:56)

I've been on the show before. I know where I belong.

Matt Welch (68:59)

It ain't number one.

Megyn Kelly (69:00)

But $9 billion operates. Operates the federal government for one half of a day. It is much less than the $500 billion rescissions package that Rand Paul was looking for. Obviously much less than the initial claims of doge. I like 9 billion. It's better than zero. But it's only 9 billion better than zero. And I'm glad for the PBS NPR thing, which you alluded to, and some other things besides. But I want more government cutting, period.

Matt Welch (69:28)

And I would co sign and just say trimming politically divisive things that the federal government is funding. I mean, probably appropriate. The federal government shouldn't be throwing tons and tons of money at things that most Americans aren't particularly interested in. That doesn't make a lot of sense. But we can talk about it, okay?

Camille Foster (69:48)

No, I want to talk about what happened at the Coldplay concert. I'm sorry, but it's everywhere. It's all anybody's talking about. And we just got some news on it. So in an extraordinary chain of events, there was a Coldplay concert. And where was the Coldplay concert? I was at Gillette Stadium, home to the NFL's New England Patriots in Foxborough, Massachusetts. And here is what happened. They had, like, the Kiss cam kind of thing that goes around. And I guess we should play it. Do we have the video that zeroed in on this one couple? And I'll describe it for the listening audience, though I imagine 99% of the audience has seen this clip already. Cause it's gone totally viral. Let's watch it. Yeah. Oh, look at these two. All right. Come on. You're okay. Oh. What?

Megyn Kelly (70:33)

Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy.

Camille Foster (70:40)

At the beginning of the clip, it's got the man behind the woman, like, holding her with his arms around her, and she's swaying in his arms. These are two obvious lovers or in some sort of romantic relationship. It's not how I hold the head of our hr. Non existent. We don't have that person. But anyway, it turns out the man is. Hold on. His name is. He's an astronomer. He's a CEO of a company called Astronomer.

Matt Welch (71:09)

Andy Byron, I think is his name.

Camille Foster (71:11)

Thank you. Thank you. Andy Byron and his HR director, who. That's who he's holding in there. And I'll give you her name, too, in a second. I got it all here. I just. It's spread out across my packet. Stand by. This is if it's my favorite story. I should have been more prepared. Oh, it's in the update. Is in the update. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, guys. Bear with me. So much paper and so little time. Okay. His name, yeah, is Andy Byron. B, Y, R, O, N. And he's the CEO of a company called Astronomer. And that is his Chief People Officer. Is that what we're calling HR now? That is so weird. Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot. C, A, B, O, T. The problem here is that Andy Byron is married to someone other than Kristen Cabot, who, again, the irony of her being head of hr. And he has two children, and it appears that they were caught in what appears to be an affair. And here's the latest reporting, okay. That Byron and his wife, both 50, live in Northborough, which I think is by Foxborough, Massachusetts. And per Mrs. SpaceX on X, who is heavily covering and tracking the story, his wife has now deactivated her account. The wife later dropped her married name on her Facebook account, to the delight of Mrs. SpaceX, who wrote, what a class act. Go, Megan. Get that divorce lawyer and get the money. Okay, so this is all speculation because none of this has been confirmed by the relevant players. But what we do know for sure is that this is the guy that is his head of hr. They were caught in an obvious embrace, and as soon as that cam went on them and they saw their image up in the thing, it was the worst cover up ever. She turned her back to the camera and he just, like, squ. He looked totally humiliated, Embarrassed. It's like, hello. Everybody knows to just act like you didn't do anything wrong, you gotta keep the. Keep holding and then make it into, like, a dance. That's all it was. It was a dance. It wasn't an embrace or do something other than turn and cower in humiliation.

Matt Welch (73:25)

Camille, he did so many things wrong. I mean, the very first thing is. And look, I've never cheated on my wife. I'm not cheating on my wife. I love you, baby. It's her birthday. I'm.

Camille Foster (73:32)

Oh, happy birthday.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (73:33)

Great.

Matt Welch (73:34)

But if I did it tomorrow. A phrase from O.J. simpson. I sure as hell am not gonna take my side chick to a stadium with 65,000 strangers and just kind of march through the crowd and go up to our box and then be holding her in a warm embrace at a Coldplay concert. I think that the actual star of this story, though, is Chris Martin, who decides, given an opportunity here, to let these people off the hook and just let the camera move along, to suggest explicitly that these people are either having an affair. Seriously, you just throw the fans under the bus who paid their hard earned money for these tickets? Maybe he's probably for a very expensive box.

Megyn Kelly (74:16)

He's being an accelerationist, Camille. He's just trying to get them faster to where they were maybe going all along.

Camille Foster (74:22)

Maybe he didn't believe it. It feels like the same. The only reason he would say that is if he didn't believe it. You know, if he just thought they were camera shy and he's giving him a hard time. But as it turns out, he may have been correct. We don't have confirmation of that. Take it with a grain of salt. There could be some other innoc and explanation. As much as we all trust Mrs. SpaceX and her reporting, we really don't have this confirmed. But it's everywhere. It's everywhere. And honestly, it's just. It's alarming because every woman sees that and has, like, a shudder go down her spine. That, like, your marriage could go up in an instant based on really bad judgment. People do this. They have affairs. You know, marriages fall apart normally. Not in such a public way where you've got Chris Martin involved. Here. We've got the right clip now. Let's watch it. Yeah.

Matt Welch (75:14)

Oh, look at this.

Megyn Kelly (75:15)

All right, come on.

Camille Foster (75:16)

You're okay. Oh. What?

Megyn Kelly (75:20)

Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy.

Matt Welch (75:23)

Oh, she's talking to her friend. That's her friend.

Camille Foster (75:27)

She whips her back to the camera.

Patrick Smith (75:30)

Yeah.

Camille Foster (75:30)

And he actually. He actually beds down to get out. Like, squatting to get out. No, the sight. Honestly, they should have listened to me. Look. Well, he's really hugging her. It's tight.

Matt Welch (75:44)

Yeah, he's just leaning. You have to lean in at that point, right? You really.

Camille Foster (75:47)

You gotta, like, kiss her on the top of her head and be like, she's so cute. My head of hr. She's been through a lot. Somebody just died. That's why I'm holding her. Like. I don't know. I'm not sure what you do, but I don't think this is it.

Matt Welch (75:57)

It is a pity Moynihan isn't here because he would have great advice. You just wouldn't.

Megyn Kelly (76:02)

He wouldn't. He wouldn't be turning and shying away. I think he has a certain transparency in the way he looks like Megan. I'm just alarmed a little bit by the level of specificity in your suggestions for how to avoid with your side piece.

Camille Foster (76:19)

You know what? It's because I'm an actress now. I don't know if you caught my premiere In With Love, Megan. My. My, my Meghan Markle parody, but I'm an actress.

Matt Welch (76:26)

I did see.

Camille Foster (76:27)

Yeah. And let me explain to you how it works in the improv world, since you clearly don't know. It's just everything's a yes. You don't say, no. It's like, yes, I'm on camera. Yes, I'm hugging. Yes, it's no problem. Yes. It's never like, no, no, I wasn't doing it. You threw something at me. And we're gonna go with it. Okay.

Matt Welch (76:45)

Train it up.

Camille Foster (76:46)

Welsh.

Matt Welch (76:47)

Okay, thank you. It's great advice.

Camille Foster (76:49)

Yeah. This is the problem. When you haven't been the way I have to outer space. You don't know things. See, I probably. This guy and I will probably get along. He's an astronomer. I'm an astro. We should probably connect. He should give me the exclusive.

Megyn Kelly (77:01)

Are you auditioning for something here? Seems very loving.

Camille Foster (77:06)

Definitely. Not. I feel about my spouse the way Camille feels about his. Okay. It's not related, but it kind of is. Forgive me, because we're taking a. Usually we do harder news and then softer news, but I'm taking a. Dana, I'm taking a different route. Scotty Scheffler, you know me in the sports. Do I have it wrong? The golf Scheffler, the golf champion.

Matt Welch (77:29)

I'm not a golf guy. I don't know.

Camille Foster (77:30)

Look at this. I got nothing here. I'm talking to two, like, intellectuals. And Moynihan would not help here either.

Matt Welch (77:37)

Sports, no, he doesn't know golf either. But basketball, football, I'm your guy.

Camille Foster (77:41)

Yeah, okay. All right, well, golf is a sport, too. And this guy, Scotty Scheffler is very popular and very successful in his accomplishments. I'm going to tell you all the stuff that he's done in one second he's number one in the world. Just in case you didn't know that, which I didn't. He's 29, three time major champion, has won the Masters twice and the PGA Championship. This year, he's looking to inch closer to the career Grand Slam at the Open this week at Royal Portrait 16 time PGA Tour winner, and he's been the number one ranked golfer for over 100 weeks. So it's crazy. Like, I don't think you can get any more accomplished in the world of golf. And he just gave a press conference. I saw this on X and I. It's rare that I sit and I watch, like the whole four minute clip of somebody I don't know at all. I was fascinated by what he said. I'm gonna play you part of it, and you'll see why I was.

Patrick Smith (78:41)

It feels like you work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament for like a few minutes. It only lasts a few minutes. That kind of euphoric feeling like, okay, now, now what are we going to eat for dinner? You know, life goes on. I love the challenge. I love being able to play this game for a living.

Matt Welch (78:57)

It's.

Patrick Smith (78:58)

It's one of the greatest joys of my life. But does it fill the deepest, you know, wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not. You know, that's why I talk about families being my priority, because it really is, you know, I'm blessed to be able to come out here and play golf. But that if my golf ever started affecting my home life or it ever affected the relationship I have with my wife or with my son, you know, that's going to be the last Day that I play out here for a living. You know, this is not the be all, end all. This is not the most important thing in my life. And that's why I wrestle with, why is this so important to me? Because, you know, I would much rather be a great father than I would be a great golfer.

Camille Foster (79:31)

He went on, right, and he was talking about how, you know, you. You work all day, you're out here on the course all day, the links, whatever, and you're practicing, practicing, practicing. You get up early in the morning. My wife always says thank you to me when I go, because she knows I'm really putting it all out there for the family. And then you win, and you're like, yay. He really talked about how winning's great, but it's really not that great. Like, you make such sacrifice. You put so much effort into getting the win. When you get it, there is that moment of euphoria, but then it's quickly over. He's like, so I won. I can't remember which tournament, but, you know, one of them. And he's like. And everybody's like, yeah. And you're hugging. And then that night, you know, we went out, like, watched a movie. Like, we went out to dinner. You know, it's like. And then you're right back that. The. The questions that come your way immediately are, what are you gonna do for the next one? Like, what can you do the next one? Like, what's gonna happen the next one? I could totally understand what he's saying. I'm not an athlete, but it reminded me a little bit of back when I practiced law. And you would kill yourself getting ready for this big trial. You know, it's like the super bowl of law. And, I mean, night and day with no sleep and, like, years that way. And then you'd try the case, and, yes, you would win. I lost one, but we got it reversed on appeal, any event. So it was all net, net. It was all wins. And you'd. You'd be so thrilled at having the W, and you would go out and celebrate that night. And then the next day, it's just done. It's done. But the pain of losing was so acute and would weigh on you for weeks, you know, like, oh, it so far outweighed the joy of winning. And I've never heard a professional athlete just be so honest about it and just get, like, really real about how that high is a bit of a false God. And what's real is sitting in your living room.

Matt Welch (81:29)

Yeah. I mean, and you Mentioned his age. I don't remember how old you said he was. So sub 30. He's fortunate to have figured it out so early. I don't know that most people do. I mean, I think we are people of privilege. We live, you know, pretty, pretty, pretty extraordinary lives in many respects. We get to talk to really prominent people in all kinds of public contexts, occasionally come in for controversy, but. But we've been able to do a lot of stuff. Before I had kids, my wife and I visited every continent, including Antarctica, and done all kinds of cool crap. But what I've come to realize, and I think the knowledge I have that other people don't, having already done a lot of the bucket list stuff that I could have imagined before we had kids, is the most important thing I do every day is like, wake up and try to be a great husband and try to be a great father. And that doesn't mean I don't care about other things, but I've put those things into the right context. I think my daughter and my son really helped crystallize what my priorities are, like my marriage and my own kind of personal happiness and my ability to be present in any given moment. And we used to have one of those posters in the office that said something like, you know, it's not the destination, it's the journey. And I hated it for years. I was like, I want to win. But I have come around to completely understanding it. Like it is. It is those quiet moments. The best moments of my life are those quiet moments where not so quiet moments where everyone is in the bed together for 15 or 20 minutes and to be able to recognize it in that moment is an extraordinary privilege. And we don't do it enough. We're consumed with politics, we're consumed with career advancement, or the next thing that we want to do, and we forget that the moment you achieve the great thing you'd been thinking about, you're immediately thinking about, okay, what's next? What other thing am I striving for? Just things. However things are in your life right now, it could be so much worse. And it may be eventually. The void is screaming out for all of us, but we have this moment to be present, to be grateful. And I love that. I mean, it's such a great sentiment. I don't really watch golf, but I'm an instant fan of his.

Camille Foster (83:37)

Yeah, same. Because you look at those kids, like, I think about my kids when they were babes in their cribs and they smell so good and they're so happy. To see you in the morning, to go in and get them, you've already won. This is, this is daily winning the, the W staring you in the face. It's not to say you shouldn't have any professional ambition. It's just when you have that satisfaction that true, like true real love and joy. It's like everything else is kind of gravy. I'm not even sure if you can get the high from winning on the golf course or whatever now in my case in the ratings or whatever. God, you're chasing once you know what really matters, right? It's like that fulfillment is up here. Maybe you can bump up a degree or two, but I don't know. Even people who don't have kids, Matt, I think can recognize the disappointment of chasing something that's kind of false, whether it's an Oscar in Hollywood or a trophy in sports. You know, not to undermine the whole process and the discipline and, you know, being great at something, but like the win isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be.

Megyn Kelly (84:39)

First of all, I need to take credit. I was badgering Camille Foster to have kids for a very long time. It's actually pronatalist on the podcast.

Matt Welch (84:49)

It's true.

Megyn Kelly (84:49)

I love how kids don't have any idea what you do for a living, not what you do. Megan in particular, my 17 year old knows exactly what you do.

Camille Foster (84:58)

I love her dad.

Megyn Kelly (84:58)

You are on Megyn Kelly. I've seen her on TikTok.

Camille Foster (85:01)

You're like, that's why I put up with this abuse.

Steve Scheibner (85:05)

Basically.

Megyn Kelly (85:06)

But there was an interesting interview. We just had the baseball all star game which was really terrific this week in Atlanta. In Atlanta, where it had been banned by idiots a couple years ago. But there was an interview with Francisco Lindor, the great Mets shortstop, that was kind of similar reported. Just like, you know, what is your motivation to go out there every day? Just a little 30 second clip. I recommend looking at it and he's like kind of gave an Allen Iverson almost, you know, like motivation. But no, it's not about motivation. It's about work ethic. Motivation is temporary. It lasts for a while. It's on your shoulder, makes you think to do a thing. But to do the grind every single day, to pursue a consistent level of excellence, to be the best at what you do. That takes a lot of discipline and it takes work ethic and kind of long term thinking. And that way you're much more at peace actually about whether you win and where you lose. Did you put in your Best effort, great. And then if, hopefully if you have some kidlets around who don't even know that you play baseball or host a podcast or do whatever, it's incredibly rewarding. You feel like you've done your best. And if you're fortunate enough, like all of us are in this conversation to know that that work, that attempt to strive for a consistent excellence and the work ethic that goes into it can contribute to you. Be able to provide some stability and comfort for your kids to pursue the things that they want to. It is so satisfying. It's as satisfying as like growing a garden and eating your food. Like, oh man. There's just something elemental about that and it's not necessarily chasing immediate spike of highs. It's about a long term. I'm grinding, I'm working and I'm putting in long hours. But I'm doing it for this reason. And that reason is the true source of the happiness.

Camille Foster (86:56)

Yeah, it's a good reminder not to get too drawn into it. Could be anything in your life, even for like my work, my, my stay at home moms who watch or listen to the show. You're on social media, you make a post, you check it over and over to see how many likes you've gotten. The same false God, you know, as like thinking winning the PGA Tour is going to be the thing that fulfills you or winning the Oscar, you know, for whatever movie is going to be the. It's exactly the same thing. You know, we all get sucked into it and it's a, what a great gift he gave us. A great reminder that whether it's this huge goal that everybody in the world, well, most of us have watched and know about, or it's something in your private life that you've prioritized like getting a raise or getting a new job title or getting a social media like, or whatever, getting the right invitation to the right, you know, cocktail parties, they're all false. They're not going to do the thing for you that you're looking for it really. Book inside your living room. That's where the answer is, guys. Stand by. More coming up when we come back. Don't go away. Let's be honest, no one has time to simmer bones for 24 hours. But our bodies could use the benefits of real bone broth, especially as we get older. That is where Paleo Valley's 100% grass fed bone broth protein powder comes in. It's made from American cattle raised with regenerative farming practices sourced only from bones and water. No chemicals, no fillers, no mystery ingredients, just clean, traceable nutrition that you can actually trust. Collagen levels can drop fast after age 30. This protein can help replenish what's missing, supporting joint comfort, gut health, muscle recovery and even smoother, more hydrated skin. It's perfect for busy people. Use it in coffee smoothies or hot water. Chocolate, vanilla, salted caramel. All those flavors turn in your morning drink and they turn it into a collagen rich treat. Or you could just try savory Original in soups and in stews or unflavored when you want a clean boost. Get 20% off your first order now@paleovalley.com Megan with code Megan Check it out. We just had the one year anniversary, one year mark since Butler, Pennsylvania, which was, you know, just a sea change moment in American politics in a way. I mean, Trump was on his way toward winning the election, but that moment and the way he handled it just galvanized support behind him even amongst disaffected Republicans who were sort of eh, about him after that moment didn't feel that way. Now if you were a member of the press and a normal person, you could at least begrudgingly say, wow, he really handled that like a, like a champ. You know, gosh, if you were a lunatic member of the press, you speculated on MSNBC about how he faked it, how it was all the whole thing was fake. Totally disrespectful to Corey Comparatori and his widow. They've never explained that piece of their bizarre theory nor apologized to her for saying such a thing. And if you are a member of the press, you might, who is a lunatic, have made it all about you, your trauma. And I don't mean that you were almost shot, which is something Selena Zito can say, by the way. Thank you, Megyn Kelly show viewers. Her book debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, which I'm sure did not want to put her there. So God bless all of you for buying her book. Butler. She was there with the president on that day. So if you're a real loon, here's where you go with it. This is CBS's Seth MacFarlane who appeared on Chuck Todd's cast. Sorry, sorry, Scott. Scott McFarlane. That's a different Seth is a different guy. Scott McFarlane who appeared on the Chuck Todd cast, which has the same number of viewers as people who are in this screen right here. And here's what he said about Butler. For those of us who were there, it Wasn't an immediate or even a.

Patrick Smith (91:01)

Long term reflection on Secret Service.

Camille Foster (91:04)

For those of us there, it was.

Patrick Smith (91:06)

Such a horror because you saw an.

Megyn Kelly (91:10)

Emerging America and it wasn't the shooting, Chuck. This was.

Patrick Smith (91:14)

I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours.

Camille Foster (91:18)

I got put on trauma leave.

Patrick Smith (91:19)

Not because I think of the shooting, but because you could.

Camille Foster (91:22)

You saw it in the eyes, the.

Megyn Kelly (91:24)

Reaction to the people.

Camille Foster (91:25)

They were coming for us.

Megyn Kelly (91:27)

If he didn't jump up with his.

Patrick Smith (91:28)

Fist, they were going to come kill us.

Camille Foster (91:29)

I know many of us on press row, as we talked about this on.

Patrick Smith (91:33)

Our text chains for weeks after, were.

Camille Foster (91:35)

Quite confident we'd be dead if he.

Steve Scheibner (91:37)

Didn'T get back up.

Patrick Smith (91:38)

There was a subset, not everybody.

Camille Foster (91:40)

There's dozens of people in the crowd.

Patrick Smith (91:42)

Who started comforting us saying, you did this. This is your fault. You caused this. You killed him. And they're going to beat us with their hands. I mean, they were going to. They were going to kill us. And respectfully, the Secret Service had bigger issues in protecting us.

Megyn Kelly (91:57)

When he jumped up triumphantly, it saved us.

Camille Foster (92:01)

But that's the thing I can't eliminate.

Patrick Smith (92:04)

From my mind's eye the look in their faces.

Megyn Kelly (92:07)

That's what America is right now.

Patrick Smith (92:09)

It's not rational. It's an irrational thought to think the media shot somebody from atop a building. But the lack of rationality is what connects January 6th to this.

Camille Foster (92:20)

Oh, my gosh. What?

Matt Welch (92:23)

Wow.

Camille Foster (92:23)

He's the. He's the CBS's J6 reporter, by the way. Do you believe that lunacy?

Megyn Kelly (92:31)

I can't. I'm just trying to. I'm out here with like, with diagrams against bulletin board, just trying to. What the. What, what is the theory exactly here? Yeah.

Camille Foster (92:46)

That was going to kill the media. The totally peaceful mob that didn't even stampede out of the joint before Trump jumped up. That was there. You read Selena's book, lovingly, happily celebrating him. And then, to their enormous credit, stayed calm even after the bullets were flying. And then, yes, when Trump stood up and heroically did that, felt inspired. But who is ever talking about the mob turning on the media? This is the first I've heard anything like that. And it's totally inconsistent with the actual tone and tenor of MAGA rallies. That guy. I'm just going to say it is fucking making that up to the same way AOC wants us to believe she was almost raped on J6 when she wasn't even there.

Megyn Kelly (93:29)

He's imagining. He's imagining thing. Making media the center of the story and also transposing his personal grief at an electoral outcome with. With the reality in front of him. I mean, he's mad that people responded. I mean, Trump stood up there. I didn't vote for Trump, as we know. He got up, blood coming out of his ear and said, fight, fight, fight. You can't. I think it's really, really difficult to look at that and say, wow, that. That's scary. The way he acted there or that response there. No, it was awesome. He got up. The shooting was horrifying. And we could have had the only fair thing to say to Scott McFarland about his scenario planning here. And it's something that we talk about constantly in the Fifth Column podcast. America has a problem with political violence. That assassination attempt was very much part of it. Killed a man. And it's terrible. And it's an unresolved problem with political violence on the right and on the left in different ways. And we don't talk about it. Honestly, all that is true. If Trump would have died that day, I shudder to think what would have happened in America. We all dodged a bullet. Cory Compaturon sadly did not. But the country dodged a bullet, and. But we still have that problem in front of us. So that part of it is true. That's the only part of it that's semi true. But it's not what the. What are you doing? That's not the story from that day.

Matt Welch (94:51)

Yeah, and he didn't. He didn't even seem to get there.

Camille Foster (94:55)

Yeah, he didn't. He never got there.

Matt Welch (94:56)

To that conclusion. Like the grappling with the reality. And honestly, on the Fifth Column, there are many things that we talk about regularly. The surging. Not the surging, but the persistent, growing problem of political violence that we've had in this country, which became really prominent and undeniable in the summer of 2020, which certainly played a part on January 6, which has risen up in so many other occasions. And honestly, when President Trump was elected, that assassination attempt at the baseball field during that congressional baseball game, we've seen so many instances of this. We should be trying to connect it not in a way that directs blame at either of these political parties, but in a way that acknowledges this is a reality in our politics and we need to do something about it. And doing something about it means sober, honest, thoughtful engagement with one another, talking honestly about ways that we can kind of ratchet down the temperature of our political exchanges and debates. We don't do that. Honestly, for the most part, we're looking for who to blame in various circumstances as opposed to and this is interesting because it has a parallel to the very first segment on your show today, Megan, but the kind of NTSB style investigation of what happened with this particular plane crash, what went wrong, how can we avert it and make certain it doesn't happen again? I'd love to see us have a serious bipartisan investigation and inquiry into what happened during the summer of 2020, into what happened with COVID and why we didn't do a better job with messaging there, into what happened with January 6th. But we won't have a sober, honest, not at all politicized investigation into these things because our politics is utterly broken and our politicians, generally speaking, are not really in the business of actually trying to get to the bottom of things nearly as much as they are assailing their political enemies. And quite frankly, you just saw an example of a journalist who is similarly intrigued.

Camille Foster (96:44)

Well, that's where I see it, about.

Matt Welch (96:46)

The nature of things and I think.

Camille Foster (96:47)

Actually agree on it. Yeah, that's a member of the media lifting up the veil. This is what I think of Trump supporters. They're deranged, googly eyed mad men who want to kill members of the media like me and would in a New York minute that the I my life was the one you should have been worried about the day of Butler, as a member of the media, I was almost killed. I could see it in their eyes. Trust me. Now CBS sends that guy out to go do reporting on January 6th on, you know, ongoing on Trump, on anything involving Trump supporters. And they're supposed to watch CBS and watch this guy come on camera and think, I can trust him, he's fair, he gets me, he's made the effort to get my side of the country. Bullshit. That guy should actually be fired. He should be fired. Obviously he's not. Well.

Megyn Kelly (97:44)

Yeah, yeah, that is not the way. There's a new book out about the COVID disastrous response. And one of the authors, not in front of you, is two Princeton sociologists actually, who describe themselves as left of center. And it's an absolutely harsh indictment on what were supposed to be the truth seeking institutions in this country, in science, in governments and in the media, in academia. And everyone really, really failed during COVID and as a result really like helped erode and shred trust and impinge on civil liberties and such like. We see this kind of example here. The journalism industry, as it has been collapsing through things that may or may not be related to this, has been covering itself in this type of kind of openly partisan. And what's the worst thing he said there, besides all the words, it's that me and all the other reporters were text messaging each other with this kind of sentiment. Then you're all crazy. I hope that's not true, honestly.

Camille Foster (98:49)

Because that they're like, yes, yes. This is like the main face of NBC's political coverage for many years. Like, yes, right on. Yes, I'm. No, no pause at all. Like, gee, do you think you might want to pause before condemning the entire group that was there that themselves had been traumatized by this? No, no, not a thought. Because he was like, right on. By the way, we don't have time for it. But Francis Collins, he was on Late night on Colbert just last night. Maybe we do have time. Let's play it really quickly. We're gonna play it. Stop. 35.

Matt Welch (99:20)

Stephen.

Megyn Kelly (99:20)

We have other deficits that politics aren't going to solve. Maybe they're making it worse. There's a truth deficit.

Camille Foster (99:27)

We're in a place now.

Megyn Kelly (99:29)

Yeah. We're seeing to be no real penalty for saying something that's demonstrably false.

Matthew Wiz Buckley (99:35)

It just.

Matt Welch (99:36)

No, it's not irony.

Camille Foster (99:38)

We have a trust deficit where because.

Megyn Kelly (99:41)

People don't know if they can be sure somebody's telling the truth, why should.

Camille Foster (99:45)

I trust that person?

Megyn Kelly (99:45)

So we stop trusting each other most of the time.

Patrick Smith (99:48)

And that's dangerous also for our future.

Camille Foster (99:51)

Oh, gee.

Matt Welch (99:51)

Wow. No introspection.

Camille Foster (99:53)

How happen. Francis Collins, you guys, you have to stay for two more minutes and we just have to talk about that clip. Don't go away. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly show on Sirius xm. It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures. Today, you can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk podcast and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free.

Steve Scheibner (100:44)

Go to SiriusXM.com MKShow to subscribe and get three months free.

Camille Foster (100:50)

Free.

Matt Welch (100:50)

That's SiriusXM.com MKShow and get three months.

Steve Scheibner (100:55)

Free offer details apply.

Camille Foster (101:02)

Okay, guys, so Francis Collins, who ran the NIH and and the COVID response above Fauci says we're at a Truth deficit. And. And this is really unfortunate and lamentable. This is the man who decided to try to ruin people like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who's now running NIH and in the Francis Collins seat because he said maybe we should do focus protection and just focus on the people who are really vulnerable and ask them to, you know, lock down and not the entire society. That might make more sense than having totally fine, perfectly healthy children and young people run around masked or not run around at all or arrest them while surfing or out in a public park, not near anyone. And so he decided he had to be labeled fringe and ruined. This is one of our best scientists in America at Stanford that now that guy wants to turn around. That's the least of his sins, by the way, and lecture us on how it's really sad we have a truth deficit in this country and something ought to be done about it. Thoughts on that?

Megyn Kelly (102:04)

Let's evaluate the truth seekingness of the following quote. The scienceness of the following quote. When the Great Barrington Declaration came out in the summer or late early fall of 2020 that Jay Bhattachary and others signed, basically saying we want focus protection, his words, Francis Collins's word. We need a quick and devastating takedown of these fringe epidemiologists. Okay, Quick and devastating takedown. That is some clown talk, bro. To paraphrase Bryce Harper. What are you doing? There's no truth, there's no science. That's a political hatchet job. And what effect did it have? Jay Bhattachary was censured by a hundred faculty members at Stanford. Censured. The amount of chilling effect. There's a great piece by John Tierney, City Journal a couple of years ago, talking about all these different places where peer review was happening in epidemiology science as related to Covid. After this intervention by Francis Cole, it had a huge chilling effect on scientific discourse. And meanwhile, then the Biden administration did all kinds of job boning against social media companies to have them suppress people. Just like go ahead and kick them off your platform of people. Not just Joe Rogan from Spotify was their attempt that they talked about on a daily basis. But people like rand Paul from YouTube, successful. They kicked him off for a while. Amazing mass kind of censorship jawboning event. He was is in the middle of this. I don't want to hear a single damn word coming out of his mouth about truth and freedom and science and anything like that. Unless the first one is I'm sorry I screwed up, not sorry he Totally screwed up. And Stephen Colbert, who is doing dance routines with giant syringes about the vaccine, is also not the place to have that conversation.

Camille Foster (103:58)

No. And lets him totally get away with that. Camille.

Matt Welch (104:01)

Yeah, I mean, well, he's not a journalist, so I don't expect him to do much better. And he came there for a PR opportunity, but it would have been much better to have him do a little bit of introspection. During our moment of most profound need, our public health infrastructure completely failed us just in terms of messaging and communicating with people in an honest and transparent way, communicating both our certainty and our uncertainty. Really profound uncertainty. At various moments, like that's what they should have been doing. They failed profoundly. We don't even have to get into debates about vaccine efficacy or anything else. I think the quote that Matt just cited and the many, many, many instances of people getting way out over their skis, openly misleading the American public about the use of masks or necessity of masks in certain instances, only to reverse themselves later, all of that has not only had consequence, it didn't only had consequences during the pandemic. It has contributed to this circumstance we find ourselves in where people don't know who to trust. They only trust people who kind of openly agree with them. They're upset with the bureaucracy, they're upset with the institutions broadly. There is an absolute need for us to go back, think carefully about what happened there. And it isn't too late to do it. We can still do it at this point, but it is definitely the case that a lot of these people just need to.

Camille Foster (105:18)

By the way, he didn't get up.

Matt Welch (105:19)

Got to be cleared out.

Camille Foster (105:20)

He didn't get a pardon. Fauci got a pardon. But he was on all those emails too, when those two decided to stifle any discussion about whether this thing originated in a lab. Remember that explosive story where it was like, I mean, now we all know.

Matt Welch (105:35)

Could not talk about it.

Camille Foster (105:35)

Definitely started in a lab, but you couldn't talk about it. And those two got those ridiculous epidemiologists together who had all. Privately, we found out thanks to the House, that the Republican led House that investigated it and got the emails privately, they were like, this doesn't look like anything in nature that we've ever seen before. Kind of looks like we grew it in a lab. And then those two went in there and brow beat them. And then within literally like hours, they all did a 180 saying, it's natural, it's natural. Came from a pangolin or something like that. Definitely, definitely, definitely not in a lab. And the nerve. So, okay, you're going to be a dishonest, disgusting broker on a pandemic that took a lot of lives. That's okay. That's your decision. You'll have to live with that and, you know, face up to it when you meet your maker. But then to have the nerve to go on a truth tour trying to lecture the rest of us. I actually want to hear it one more time. Let's. Now, having had that discussion, let's play SOT 35 one more time.

Megyn Kelly (106:34)

Stephen, we have other deficits that politics aren't going to solve. Maybe they're making it worse. There's a truth deficit. We're in a place now. Yeah. Where seems to be no real penalty for saying something that's demonstrably false.

Camille Foster (106:49)

It just. Oh my God. No, it's not.

Megyn Kelly (106:52)

We have.

Camille Foster (106:52)

We have a trust deficit where.

Megyn Kelly (106:55)

Because people don't know if they can be sure somebody's telling the truth.

Camille Foster (106:58)

Why should I trust that person?

Megyn Kelly (107:00)

So we stop trusting each other most of the time.

Patrick Smith (107:02)

And that's dangerous also for our future.

Camille Foster (107:06)

It's very meta, you know, like what he's saying applies 100% to him. And you're watching it thinking, I agree with every word. It's just you're the one who created the trust deficit. You're the one who said the untruths for which there was no accountability. Just as a reminder, in those emails he gave, he give gives the order in the emails writing that it's important to settle the matter, to, quote, put down this very destructive conspiracy about COVID starting in a lab, lest the experts do, quote, great potential harm to science and international harmony. What?

Matt Welch (107:45)

A counter conspiracy?

Camille Foster (107:46)

Been held accountable.

Matt Welch (107:48)

A counter conspiracy. I do.

Megyn Kelly (107:50)

Using the word settle. Yeah. I'm going to resettle the science in the name of science.

Camille Foster (107:55)

Yeah. Why. Why was it so important to have it settled when you could see the debate was raging within the top experts of the world saying, okay, it could it be natural? Might be, but geez, we don't think so. He wouldn't let it play out. He wanted a conclusion because he knew we funded it. That's the reason. Listen, he knew that we were funding gain of function research in that Covid lab. He knew that we were paying ecohealth alliance to partner with the Bat lady to do it. And he didn't want it to come out that he and Anthony Foushee were likely behind the entire pandemic. That's what was going on there. And now he's given Red carpet rollout on Stephen Colbert and not asked about any of that shit. It's infuriating. Now, wait. Now I've taken. I've abused you. I've kept you seven minutes over. Do you have another few minutes? Cause there is one other thing I wanted to get to.

Matt Welch (108:45)

Yeah, we got time for you, Megan.

Camille Foster (108:46)

Okay. Okay. God bless you. Because there's nobody else I'd rather do this with. I've been waiting all week to do this with you guys. Oh, no. Did you catch the piece in the New York Times entitled is it time to stop snubbing your right wing family?

Matt Welch (109:04)

Fantastic.

Camille Foster (109:06)

It is, it is. It's so good. I can't wait to talk about it. And if you haven't read it, Camille, fear not. I have it here and I'm going to bring you the highlights.

Matt Welch (109:15)

Thank you.

Camille Foster (109:16)

Now, the man's name is David Litt. L, I T, T. However, the term does not apply with respect to his piece. As the kids would say, that's slang.

Patrick Smith (109:25)

Or cool.

Camille Foster (109:27)

Okay, I'm just gonna give you a little from the top. Published July 13. Not too long ago, I felt a civic duty to be rude to my wife's younger brother. I met Matt Kapler, names him in 2012, and it was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal. I jogged to Sondheim. I was one of President Barack Obama's. Who does that? I was one of President Barack Obama's speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree. He was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician's license. Ah, can you imagine? It's basically like, what a rube. Unlike me, my early memories of Matt are hazy. I was mostly trying to impress his parents. Still, we got along, chatting amiably on holidays and family events. Then the pandemic hit and our preferences began to feel more like. Feel like more than differences in taste, we were on opposite sides of a cultural civil war. The deepest divide was vaccination. I wasn't shocked when Matt didn't get the COVID shot, but I was was baffled. Turning down a vaccine during a pandemic seemed like a rejection of science and self preservation. It felt like he was tearing up. He was tearing up the social contract that until that point, I'd imagined we shared. Had Matt been a friend rather than a family member, I probably would have cut off contact completely. As it was on the rare and always outdoor occasions when we saw each other, I spoke in disapproving snippets. Then he quotes work's been good. I guess that's, that's Matt saying work's been good and David with the it's my disapproving snippet of you, Matt. My frostiness wasn't personal, it was strategic. Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways? This is not a parody. This is real. He's actually writing this in the first person. I wasn't the only one thinking this. A 2021 essay for USA Today declared, It's time to start shunning the vaccine. Hesitant, an LA Times piece went further, arguing that to create teachable moments, it may be necessary to mock some anti vaxxers deaths, which he brings up again here as like, these were my teachers. Shunning as a form of accountability goes back millenniums. And then he goes back on Hester Prynne and the Scarlet Letter. And what that was meant to do. That was before social media blah blah, blah, blah. What people used to do. He says few people who lost friends over the vaccine changed their minds. They just got new friends. Those exiled from one version of society were quickly welcomed by another. An alternate universe full of grievance peddlers and conspiracy theorists who thrived on stories of victimized conservatives. So he goes on about how he really wrestled with this and he really kind of tried to shun poor Matt. But then they decided to start surfing together. Matt, like a typical right winger, didn't write him off, didn't take it too personally, continued talking to him, was nice to him, and actually volunteered to help him learn how to surf. And he says, okay. I wish I could have learned the lesson that ostracism doesn't help, doesn't work. I wish I could have learned this through self reflection and study. What actually happened is that I started surfing after moving to the Jersey shore. Oh great. In 2022, I signed up for lessons. Despite my advanced age of 35 and lack of natural talent, I got hooked. Matt was the only other surfer I knew. I put my principled unfriendliness aside. Listen to the guy cloaking himself in glory for being a dick all the way through Matt, not abandoning him and continuing to help him. From the moment we began paddling out together, I could tell my cold shoulder strategy had backfired. I'd spent the peak of the pandemic in a cultural bubble and he had done the same. Driving to a break or changing into our wetsuits. He'd often express Opinions about the merits of vigilantism or the health benefits of Mexican stem cell injections that I found slightly unhinged. Where is this coming from? I wondered. The answer was nearly always Joe Rogan. I assumed our surf buddy experiment would either fall, fail spectacularly, or would bring Matt over to my side. Neither of those things occurred, however. Instead, the connections we found were tiny and unrelated to politics. And then he goes on to talk about common ground they found on non political matters. And he forgave Matt for being a crazy Joe Rogan fan and started to rethink his decision to completely ostracize Matt from his life. And he decided that this was a better path. That shunning, he writes, plays into the hands of demagogues, making it easier for them to divide us and even in some cases to incite violence. So he hasn't learned anything about his worldviews other than when you have the hateful, awful people on the other side. The shunning isn't the most effective way of getting them to change their worldview because they. You drive them into the arms of the true lunatics. That's what he learned on the surfboard with Matt. There's so much in here. I'll start with you, Matt Welsh. You're, since you're a Matt and you read the piece, your thoughts on it.

Megyn Kelly (115:08)

There are so many aspects of that that make me want to both punch the window that I'm looking through right now and also just laugh myself to death because the lack of self awareness is so fantastic. But there are public policy aspects of this that are worth thinking about. End of 2021, we were just talking about when Francis Collins was in office, the President of the United States was calling this the pandemic of the unvaccinated. That sense of absolutely divisive and accusatory. You don't like, you're not doing what we want you to do and so therefore your death is your fault. That was widespread in mainstream media, mainstream democratic discourse, and in democratic governance during the Biden administration. And it is, and it was sick. Joe Biden accused Ron DeSantis and all these governors who were not doing exactly what he wanted to do in terms of like schools and other aspects. He was accusing them of playing with kids lives. Remember I wrote about all this stuff in real time. Like you're accusing a governor of a state during a pandemic of being more interested in politics than his own children in his family, because DeSantis has a bunch of kids and the children in the state living or dying. That is so warped. I mean, it's a terrible thing to. Terrible place to be as a human being. Like, maybe I shouldn't ostracize people. Like my principled unfriendliness. Like, dude, you've got.

Camille Foster (116:34)

You.

Megyn Kelly (116:35)

You need to touch a lot of grass.

Matt Welch (116:37)

Yeah, yeah.

Megyn Kelly (116:38)

And maybe even some weed while you're touching. Like go somewhere, smoke out a lot.

Camille Foster (116:43)

Touch it and smoke it and figure.

Megyn Kelly (116:45)

Out why you've become a monster. Because you kind of have. Just as an interpersonal way of going through things. But also these theater kids held power. He still has the power to get. Matt isn't out there writing in the New York Times op ed page, thinking about reconsidering. And let's be honest, this wouldn't have been published if Kamala Harris would have won because he wouldn't be going through the same levels of introspection. Same reason Gavin Newsom wouldn't be going on bro podcasts now if Kamala Harris would have won. Now suddenly the New York Times is like, oh, maybe we should, I don't know, profile Andrew Schultz or something. Like there's a palpable difference. Like maybe we can't just pretend like half of the country is irredeemable bigots, that we should just sort of shun their way into modifying their behavior. It's a whole.

Camille Foster (117:32)

I guess CBS's McFarlane didn't get the memo.

Matt Welch (117:35)

No, I mean, the Times was still going after Schultz in that piece as well, where they were profiling him. Look, I wholeheartedly agree with everything that you all have said about this situation. I mean, especially like that the notion of casting you just deliberately being an asshole to everyone in this self serving way is just so obnoxious, it's nearly beyond belief. Except we've all lived this. We've watched this happen. We know people who have done this themselves. And I will say for my part, I have weird politics. It is always the case, long before COVID that we would be in circumstances where people would meet me, discover something that I think, like, I don't know, the Department of Education should be completely shuttered and think what a monster you are. I can't even talk to you. And I think for people like us, we've long had this. Given that experience, you have to be pretty generous to people, even when you have a severe disagreement and looking for those areas of common ground and trying to persuade people on the basis of the things that we have in common as opposed to trying to castigate everyone who is imagined to be somewhat different. From you or diverges from accepted opinion on something and attributing the worst possible motives to them. That is just a monstrous way to live. I do have real concerns, though, that this has been a hallmark of the left, that they've been uniquely censorious in many instances that they've been, interestingly, because many of them aren't believers, they've been weirdly puritanical and kind of prone to condemnations. But some people on the right have adopted some of these same approaches to politics and to kind of social interactions. Victory. And I'm someone who, in that summer of 2021, I remember, and we were talking around that time, Megan, and some periods after as well, I got published two pieces within the space of a couple of months and found myself at the center of like a hate storm. Like, the first was in June where I was skeptical of the critical race theory bans, not critical race theory itself. I have nothing but contempt for those ideas. But I didn't think the bands were a good idea, and I said so in a public place. And a lot of conservatives got openly and secretly angry with me. And a couple of weeks later, I remember that debate.

Camille Foster (119:52)

I was down here at the shore when we had it.

Matt Welch (119:53)

Yeah. And a couple of weeks later I published this story about Amy Cooper, the Central Park Karen, quote, unquote. And people on the left were not impressed with it. And it was the same exact thing in the other direction. And there was never really an interest in. Maybe we should have a conversation. Perhaps Camille is an honest broker. And the fact that he manages to piss off people on both sides has something to do with the fact that he's just trying to get at the truth. We don't seem to have an appetite for that. And my Joe Rogan bro who surfs, who's still cool enough with you to take to invite you out to surf, despite the fact that you've been strategically and deliberately an asshole to him systematically for years. He deserves a medal. And you desperately, desperately, desperately need to touch grass, as has already been said, and think carefully about the kind of person you want to be. Just be better, motherfucker.

Camille Foster (120:43)

Come on. Because, you know, yeah, be better, motherfucker. You know, like he's putting all those things, those. Those things in there to. To win him plaudits from the left wingers he assumes correctly are reading the times right. Like, I was a complete douche to him. Let me reassure you. At every turn, I treated him like absolute shit. Let me reenact the dialogue. How's is work going okay. Hmm. Like, oh my. I mean, I think we've also determined that David is a gay man. No, he'. He's. I think it's a sister in law. But he's certainly acting a little on the edge. Anyway, he's doing it because he wants snaps, right? He wants snaps from the Times readers. That's why he's. And what does he think is going to get him snaps? Being a complete asshole to someone he loves, someone who's in his family, someone who's been nothing but nice to him. And none of that matters. All that matters is he didn't get the COVID jab. People he watches is Joe Rogan. So we have to hate him. I mean, truly, even his on paper indictment of the guy doesn't go beyond that. Like, what. Where is. Where is Matt's terrible sin? You didn't even say that. Like, he listens to Tucker Carlson. Like, I Joe Rogan. He's kind of middle of the road. Like, what do you mean? Anyway, I just think it's such an amazing window right into how the left is. And, and is anybody surprised that this was a speechwriter for Obama?

Megyn Kelly (122:10)

Just zero. I would just add this a cautionary tale for everybody. We're talking on a podcast that talks about politics, the people who are going to be higher than normal sense of involvement or consumer interest in politics. You don't have to bring your politics into everything. You don't have to bring it into your baseball or your golf. You certainly don't have to bring it to your family, especially in ways where you're naming them out loud. You don't have to. The world is a big and beautiful place. Anytime I go anywhere in America, which I do as often as possible because America is awesome. The first conversations that you have with people aren't about politics. I spent 4th of July on the 13th deck of a cruise ship in Boston, moored with a bunch of senior retirees standing up and putting their hand over their heart as the military anthems of each branch of the military were played as we're watching on a big screen.

Camille Foster (123:05)

What the.

Megyn Kelly (123:06)

What's wrong with you? Am I going to turn to the lady next to me and say, I don't know, man. Did you vote for someone I didn't like?

Camille Foster (123:13)

That's right. You look like a Trumper.

Megyn Kelly (123:16)

That's actually not how normal humans live go in any direction in America. And no one really is having those conversations except when you've over politicized everything and too much of your brain space on a daily basis. Is taken up by politics. Don't do it. You don't have to. You don't judge people that way. We're all awesome in our way. Even our theater kids are awesome. They just need to maybe have a little bit less power.

Camille Foster (123:42)

I have, like, dear friends, like truly very, very close friends who are die hard liberals and also woke. Not just liberals. I mean, I don't have a lot of friends who are woke, but I have a couple of girlfriends who are woke. And people ask me, like, how have you maintained those friendships through, like the last five years in particular? And we've not all of them has survived. I told the audience months ago that a friend did break up with me not too long ago over politics. But for the most part, my dearest friends are still intact. And the reason is with some, we sometimes discuss politics, but we do it totally respectfully. I am completely open to their worldview. And there's so many things on the Republican side that you can criticize. I'm happy to give them all their main points, which are never unreasonable. You know, they're not like nutcases. And they give me mine too, about the Democrats. So if we go there, we go. Go only 10% into the polit, and usually there's plenty to criticize on both sides. And I'm delighted to give it up about the right, and they're usually fine giving it up about the left. But the vast majority of our time together, we talk about our lives, you know, like, who's running around all day thinking about Trump or politics? Like, we do it for our jobs. Sure. And that's fun. Like when I'm with my friends, we talk about our lives, we talk about our kids, we talk about something funny that happened with other friends or a dinner we went to or a party we went to, or what's going on with your mom. How's your mom doing? Doing? Where did you guys vacation? What was it like? There's so much you can discuss that doesn't come anywhere near the political sphere. And there's so much within politics that you can discuss that's like fair game and isn't going to upset anybody. It's just these people who are so hard, partisan, like you, David Litt, are the ones who ruin it for everyone, for families and friend groups. He's the one who should be kicked out. He's the Hester of the group. Hester Prynne, right? Was that her last name? Yeah, Prynne from the Scarlet Letter. You're, you're, you're Hester. You get the Scarlet Letter. Not sweet. Matt. Matt, I hope I see you here on the Jersey Shore, and I hope you come up to me and you tell me it's me, Matt, and I will give you a hug, and we can talk about your jerk relative. Guys, thanks for doing overtime. It's always a pleasure. And all the best to Moynihan. Hope whatever he's going through resolve resolves quickly.

Megyn Kelly (125:55)

Yeah. Amen. We'll work on antiviral bacteria.

Matt Welch (126:00)

Thanks, Megan.

Camille Foster (126:01)

See you soon.

Matt Welch (126:02)

All right.

Camille Foster (126:03)

Awesome. What another great show. I love those guys. What a day. Thank you all for tuning in. Please tune in tomorrow, too. We're gonna have Maureen Callahan, the one and only. She and I have a lot to go through, including the sit down on Michelle Obama's Remember Megan O Michelle as an update to her podcast that stars Barack O. And we both have a lot of thoughts. Tune in then. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda, and no fear.