What Got CUT From CBS' Netanyahu Interview, Plus Spencer Pratt's Secret Ingredient, with Michael Knowles | Ep. 1314

Summary

The Megyn Kelly Show – Episode 1314 What Got CUT From CBS' Netanyahu Interview, Plus Spencer Pratt's Secret Ingredient, with Michael Knowles
Date: May 11, 2026
Host: Megyn Kelly
Guest: Michael Knowles

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Megyn Kelly dives into the extensive CBS 60 Minutes interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, highlighting key content that was cut from the TV broadcast but available in the full online version. She explores the implications of these editorial decisions, especially regarding Israel’s stance on the Iran war, social media influence, and shifting American public opinion. The episode also features cultural-political commentary with guest Michael Knowles, including spirited discussions about Republican redistricting wins, Trump and the Iran conflict, the LA mayoral race with Spencer Pratt, and a critique of contemporary cultural developments. The tone is candid, skeptical, and at turns irreverent.

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Main Segments & Discussion Highlights

1. What CBS Cut from the Netanyahu Interview

Segment start: [01:00]

Netanyahu on the Iran War

• CBS aired a 12-minute segment; full 70-minute interview posted online due to prior lawsuits about misleading edits.
• Differences between broadcast and full interview: Some crucial context, nuance, and directness were left out on TV.
• Netanyahu strongly asserted the war with Iran isn’t over due to unresolved nuclear issues, missile programs, and regional proxies.
  • Quote (Netanyahu, [07:57]):
    “It accomplished a great deal, but it's not over because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium, that has to be taken out of Iran. ... There's work to be done.”
• Netanyahu dodged questions about potential military action timelines or tactics, citing “uncertainty and risk.”
• He denied the New York Times’ characterization of him pushing for “guaranteed” regime change, emphasizing he warned Trump about the uncertainties.
  • Quote (Netanyahu, [10:22]):
    “No, that's actually incorrect... We both agreed there was uncertainty and risk involved.”

On the Strait of Hormuz Crisis

• Netanyahu admits lack of foresight: Israel and the US did not anticipate Iran successfully seizing the Strait, giving Iran major leverage.
  • Quote (Netanyahu, [13:25]):
    “No, I don't claim perfect foresight... they should have figured out that's what's coming.”
• Megyn's skeptical commentary: Questions whether Israel’s intelligence actually missed this or simply didn't care, as chaos in the Middle East can serve Israeli interests, while the US seeks stability.

How Long Will the War Last?

• Netanyahu claims regime days are “numbered” but won’t commit to specifics: “It's not going to take years. It may not take months.”
  • Quote (Netanyahu, [17:11]):
    “Once that happens, that regime, I think their days are numbered. But it could take a lot of days... It may not take months.”
• Megyn draws parallels with past US wars where victory was always just “weeks or months” away.

Social Media and American Public Opinion

• Netanyahu attributes declining US support for Israel to foreign manipulation of social media.
  • Quote (Netanyahu, [21:12]):
    “We have several countries that basically manipulated social media with bot farms… That's something that has hurt us badly.”
• Controversially, Netanyahu picks up Major Garrett’s phone: Suggests anyone can be defamed online, foreshadowing how propaganda wars can target critics.
  • Quote (Netanyahu, [25:04]):
    “If I want to, I can paint you as a monster. ... People will believe it. ... We've not done well on the propaganda war. We have to fight back against these lies.”
• Megyn points out Israel is also actively waging information campaigns in the US, referencing documented payments to influencers (“Project Esther”) and Brad Parscale’s AI media contracting for Israel.

2. Editorial Critique: CBS' Coverage Choices

Segment woven throughout [22:12], [26:00], [32:31]

• Megyn is sharply critical of CBS' editing, implying pro-Israel editorial bias and avoidance of topics that might alienate American audiences or present Israeli decisions in a harsher light.
• She accuses CBS, and specifically Bari Weiss’ leadership, of running “protection” for Netanyahu and not asking tougher or follow-up questions about social media campaigns or attacks on Americans who question Israeli policy.
• Points to former ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt’s statements and Netanyahu’s own admissions about waging digital warfare to counter criticism and influence US opinion.
• Discusses how Israel has paid influencers to create pro-Israel content and attack critics, per documents uncovered by Responsible Statecraft.

3. Trump, Iran, and the Ceasefire

Discussion with Michael Knowles [44:05]-[49:55]

• Trump calls Iran’s counterproposal to end the war “unbelievably weak” ([44:34]).
  • Quote (Trump, [44:34]):
    “I didn't even finish reading it. I said, I'm not going to waste my time reading it. ... It’s on life support.”
• Megyn and Michael agree Trump is now seeking an exit, offering little appetite for continued engagement.
• Knowles argues the US has three options:
  • Take a bad deal,
  • Launch a massive, politically unsellable invasion,
  • Or maintain the fragile status quo.
• Both emphasize that the engagement with Iran has no good or clear outcomes.

4. US Politics: Republican Redistricting Wins & Election Outlook

Segment [58:18]-[65:59]

• Virginia Supreme Court strikes down pro-Democrat redistricting due to procedural violations.
• Michael Knowles recalls Democrats’ historical willingness to reshape the judiciary for political ends (FDR court-packing analogy).
• Discusses probable Republican gains in the House due to court-driven redistricting reversals but tempers expectations due to historically poor polling.
• Megyn draws on past elections to forecast that despite favorable maps, Republicans face tough midterms based on presidential approval numbers and ongoing Iran crisis.

5. Culture & Media Critique: AOC, Pronouns, and American Identity

Segment [71:49]-[74:29]

• AOC’s history lessons ridiculed:
  • Claims Founding Fathers fought the “billionaires of their time” is refuted, with facts cited about the wealth of George Washington, John Hancock, and others.
  • Quote (Michael Knowles, [72:57]):
    “Her view is entirely diametrically opposed to the truth. If anything, a reconsideration of the American Revolution should really make us love billionaires even more.”
• Side note: Ongoing discussion on the performative nature of progressive rhetoric and the drift toward populist anti-wealth sentiment.

6. Spencer Pratt & LA Mayoral Race

Segment [74:29]-[88:05]

• Spencer Pratt, former reality TV star, is gaining traction in the LA mayoral race, emphasizing tough messaging on homelessness and crime.
• Attack ad against Pratt backfires: The AFL-CIO ad lists his opposition to expensive taxpayer programs for the homeless and support for more police as negatives—Megyn and Knowles mock the ad, noting it may actually appeal to exasperated voters.
  • Quote (AFL-CIO Ad, [80:16]):
    “Pratt opposes us using taxpayer money to build brand new houses for Our unhoused neighbors… rather than more social workers.”
• CBS reportedly gave Pratt a 28-minute interview but cut it down to a 3-minute “hit piece” focused on detractors and trivialities.
  • Quote (Pratt, [82:27]):
    “I would much rather be in my house feeding my hummingbirds and have my life back, but that wasn't God's path for me. And so now I'm going to undo the harm these people are doing to a lot of people in the city of la.”
• Knowles expresses skepticism that a Republican can ever win LA, but credits Pratt with shifting the race and breaking through with outsider messaging.

7. Strange Legal News: JP Morgan Case

Segment [90:45]-[100:52]

• Megyn and Michael dissect a bizarre lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and even sexual assault at JP Morgan, with the plaintiff’s claims viewed as fantastical and non-credible.
• The suit included wildly implausible claims, such as being drugged with both Rohypnol and Viagra in combination.
• Michael Knowles lampoons the slang and details presented in the complaint, and both hosts argue it fits a pattern of opportunistic and fabricated litigation.

8. Cultural Commentary: Gender, Bathrooms, and Parenting

Segment [101:09]-[103:49]

• Megyn spotlights Jerry O'Connell’s controversial statement about not intervening if a biological man enters a women’s restroom—calls it “cowardly” and endangering to his daughters.
• Michael Knowles argues this is symptomatic of the “church of nice” and societal unwillingness to stand firm on basic truths and boundaries.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Netanyahu on propaganda wars ([25:04]):
  “If I want to, I can paint you as a monster. ... People will believe it.”
• Megyn Kelly on information warfare ([32:31]):
  “He's been very explicit about what he's about to do and then we know about at least some of it... Israel was paying influencers $7,000 per post to attack those perceived as dangers to Israel.”
• Michael Knowles on the Democratic Party ([69:38]):
  “I always say the Republican Party is the worst party in the United States other than the Democrats.”
• Megyn Kelly on LA's mayoral choices ([88:05]):
  “If they continue to put Democrats in power after Gavin Newsom ruined their state and Karen Bass let it burn, they deserve what's coming their way. ... You can't just keep electing the same kinds of people and expecting different results.”
• On the JP Morgan lawsuit ([97:34]):
  • Knowles: “It reads as pornography, it reads like science fiction... all the euphemisms, but that was a tell to me. That is not a lady term.”
• On gender debates ([103:49]):
  • Knowles: “If we cannot insist on basic truths... then call me Francisco Franco.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• CBS/Netanyahu Editing Discussion: 01:00 – 32:31
• Trump/Iran & Geopolitics: 44:05 – 49:55
• Redistricting/US Political Landscape: 58:18 – 65:59
• Culture & Media Critique (AOC): 71:49 – 74:29
• Spencer Pratt/LA Mayoral Race: 74:29 – 88:05
• JP Morgan Lawsuit Commentary: 90:45 – 100:52
• Gender/Restroom Incident: 101:09 – 103:49

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Summary Takeaways

• CBS has shifted its editorial approach on major interviews after previous controversies, but some substantive issues—especially around Israel—still receive partial or protective edits.
• Netanyahu is adamant about the necessity and longevity of the Iran campaign, downplays criticism as propaganda, and is unequivocal about Israel’s intent to wage a digital information war.
• Megyn Kelly is sharply critical of both Israeli policy and American media’s deference to it, accusing CBS of soft-pedaling and selective coverage.
• Michael Knowles adds historical and political perspective, highlighting the structural shifts favoring Republicans but conceding broader voter skepticism due to war and economy.
• The episode combines deep political analysis, cutting media critique, and cultural commentary, bridging high-stakes foreign policy with lighter, sometimes sarcastic, observations about American life and politics.

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Tone:
Direct, skeptical, unsparing on political/media figures; at times irreverent and humorous, especially in discussion with guest Michael Knowles. The conversation is informed by a broad base of news, current affairs, and a willingness to critique both sides.

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This summary captures the breadth and sharpness of the episode’s discussions. Key segments are highlighted for easy listening reference and further exploration.

Transcript

[Megyn Kelly]

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[Michael Knowles]

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[Megyn Kelly]

Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show. I hope you all had a great Mother's Day. If you tuned into AM Update this morning, you heard my kids take over the show. All three of them tracked the script for me like they did last Mother's Day, and it was a hoot. And thank you for all the sweet, sweet comments over on YouTube. We post the show on YouTube as well, even though it has no video. And I love that people will go there and listen to it. Thank you so much for that, by the way. And the comments are so sweet. So God bless. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope all of you moms out there, I had a great day. I certainly did. And yeah, it's just such a good reminder of what's important, you know, like the news matters. And we keep up on it. Obviously, we keep up on it a lot. And if you're listening this show, so do you. But, like, time with your family, time with the people you love and who love you, the ones you go through this crazy life with, that's what really matters. And we all know that. But, like, too often, we forget to stop and actually immerse ourselves without our phones, just in time with, with those people, you know? And I don't know if you're like me, but mine are getting older, you know, my Oldest son has got two more years in the House before he goes off to college. It's hard to believe, so every moment counts. Every moment. Anyway, thank you for sharing so many of them with us. We greatly appreciate it. We've got a lot of news to get to today. Our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition, says Washington politicians are always getting in your wallet and now they're messing with your credit card. They say your credit card and the security it offers are under attack. And that Senators Dick Durbin and Roger Marshall want to change the nation's payment system to benefit corporate megastores like Walmart and Target at the expense of everyday Americans. Credit cards can keep your payments secure and provide rewards that families use to help make everyday purchases more affordable. The Electronic Payments Coalition says the Durbin Marshall mandates would let corporate megastores cut corners on credit card processing, radio routing transactions over cheaper, untested networks with weaker security and fewer protections. Find out [e-mail] and consider telling Congress to guard your card. Big developments in the battle of redistricting. I mean, finally some good news for the Republicans ahead of the midterms. Now we'll see, you know, like, the margin of houses of House seats that they've been able to create for themselves now through redistricting has been incredible. I mean, this has been the Democrats advantage for years. They're the ones who game the systems and rejigger the elections and the maps to their favor. Republicans haven't even been really in the game that much, and now they finally started to fight back and they were losing, you know, thanks to California's maneuverings. And so, well, they're winning again. And it's, you know, careful what you wish for because the Democrats are like, okay, it's on. Well, now that you said it's like the Republicans might have stopped at Texas had you not declared it a federal case, but now you did and you're losing. Now, that doesn't mean that Republicans can heave a sigh of relief in advance of these midterms. You know, in 2018, I think they lost the midterms by, like, they lost 40 seats. So let's not kid ourselves. They've got work to do. But things certainly got a lot better for them. Got a lot better for them over the past week and a half thanks to court rulings. Plus, there are big developments with Spencer Pratt's surging campaign for mayor in la. Could he actually win? He's got all the momentum despite a recent hit piece on him by CBS News. Great job. CBS this Is the new CBS same as the old cbs. And speaking of cbs, we begin today with the latest in the Iran war and President Trump calling Iran's latest response to a US Proposal to end the war, quote, totally unacceptable. What does this have to do with cbs? They had Netanyahu on last night. Get to that in a second. Iran, in turn hitting back by calling its counteroffer, quote, generous and responsible. According to the Wall Street Journal, the end does not seem to be imminent at all. So that made what? The leader of America's partner in this war? He seems to think he's an equal partner. Not sure he's aware. He's got 10 million people in his country. We've got 330 million in ours. Our interests are a lot greater and frankly, more important. Sorry, but they are. And we're running this thing. It's our military, it's our boots on the ground, not yours that has been doing the lion's share of all this. So, yeah, we're not equal partners. But in any event, Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, went on 60 Minutes last night and this whole thing made that appearance all the more interesting. 60 aired a good chunk of correspondent Major Garrett's interview with the prime minister on TV last night. The segment was about 12 minutes, but CBS also released the full 70 minute sit down online. That's not out of the goodness of their hearts. That's thanks to President Trump's lawsuit back in 2024 when he alleged 60 Minutes made misleading edits to a Kamala Harris interview in an effort to make her look good. And when we saw the outtakes, we found out that, of course, is absolutely true. We saw the tease that they posted. Remember, they had posted different versions of the same answer. One was she was asked a question. It was actually about, wasn't it about Netanyahu. And they posted one piece of the answer on one show and another piece of the answer on another show. And it became very clear to those of us out in the world that they'd been manipulating us, which they had been. So now 60 Minutes posts many of its full interviews with newsmakers, and they are sometimes quite illuminating. Like in March when we showed you a misleading edit of Pete Hegseth's interview with Major Garrett when the show suggested that Secretary Hegseth was responding to a question about Israel dragging the US into the war. And the extended interview showed the question didn't mention Israel at all. There's manipulation going on over at cbs, especially around the topic of Israel. For, hmm, I wonder why now this Time. There was no smoking gun showing journalistic malpractice in last night's Netanyahu interview. But there were some notable ways in which the edited piece differed from the actual full interview in substance, substantive ways. The interview began with BB Saying the war is not over, and here's an extended version that's slightly longer than what you might have seen if you watched 60 Minutes last night.

[Major Garrett]

Is the war with Iran over? And if it isn't, who will decide when it is?

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

I think it accomplished a great deal, but it's not over because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium, that has to be taken out of Iran. There are still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There are still proxies that Iran supports. There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. Now, we've degraded a lot of it, but all of that is still there, and there's work to be done.

[Major Garrett]

How do you envision the highly enriched uranium will be removed from Iran?

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

You go in and you take it out.

[Major Garrett]

With what? Special forces from Israel? Special forces from the United States?

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

Well, I'm not going to talk about military means, but what President Trump has said to me, I want to go in there, and I think it can be done physically. That's not the problem. If you have an agreement and you go in and you take it out, why not? That's the best way.

[Major Garrett]

What if there isn't an agreement? Can it be taken out by force?

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

Well, you're going to ask me these questions. I'm going to dodge them, because I'm not going to talk about our military possibilities, plans, or anything of the kind.

[Major Garrett]

And I'm just trying to get at how long is it going to take to achieve that aim.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

I'm not going to give a timetable to it, but I'm going to say that's a terrifically important mission.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, okay, our president doesn't seem to have the appetite for this. They're reporting today over the weekend. They report in the Atlantic. He's bored. He's bored with this war. That's the second report using that exact term that we've seen about the president. He's really not that into it anymore, but you can see this guy feels differently. He's not gonna talk about timing. Lots of important missions yet to be done in Iran. And here's his answer on the infamous meeting inside the White House Situation Room from February, which the New York Times first broke the news of, where he reportedly persuaded President Trump to start this war. Again, this clip we're going to show you here is a bit longer than what aired in the 60 Minutes broadcast last night.

[Major Garrett]

New York Times on April 7 reported the following about a fateful meeting February 11 in the White House. And the New York Times reports as follows, quote, in the situation room on February 11, Mr. Netanyahu made a hard sell, suggesting that Iran was ripe for regime change and expressing the belief that a joint U. S. Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Iranian, to the Islamic Republic. Is that correct?

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

No, that's actually incorrect.

[Major Garrett]

Because in what ways is it incorrect?

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

It's incorrect in the sense that I said, oh, well, it's guaranteed we can do it, and so on. I didn't say that. We both understood that we have little time to act because otherwise they'd get nuclear weapons. We both understood that we have little time to act because otherwise they'll bury underground their ballistic missile capabilities. But while we were. We said that part of the action would be the removal of the leadership and other measures. There was uncertainty. And we said it all this, you know, is uncertain if you ever, you know, engage in military.

[Major Garrett]

In the confines of that conversation, you noted the uncertainty.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

Not only did I notice, we both agreed, you know, that there was both uncertainty and risk involved.

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay, got it. Now he wants to underscore that he was really clear with President Trump on the risk and uncertainty around his plan, you know, his assurances that we could take out the ayatollah and effect regime change easy, three, four days, tops. Now, he wants you all to know he was really clear on the risk and uncertainty that he advised the president of. Okay, so it's Trump's fault. That's really what he's saying. He advised the risk and Trump overruled him. Is that true, or is he possibly overstating the amount of caution that he laced his remarks in? And here's an important answer here. Netanyahu on why America and Israel and Israel did not anticipate Iran doing the one thing that has changed this entire conflict and indeed has changed Iran's standing in the war, in the world. Iran, it's now calling itself a global superpower, and it's not the only one I've seen very smart military analysts say, unfortunately, that's become true, and that's the Strait of Hormuz. Why didn't we anticipate Israel, not didn't anticipate it in the United States, apparently didn't take it seriously. The reports are that Trump didn't believe they could do it and that Netanyahu had told him it wasn't Realistic. But they've done it. They've done it. And it's the thing that is holding everything up. It's holding up the closure of this war, the progress of talks around this war. We've given them a new tool even more powerful than a nuke. That's what this war has done to Iran. And if you don't think that's empowering, you haven't been paying attention. And unfortunately, it's incredibly empowering for Iran right now. They hold a lot of cards, and they're going to hold them forever. Unless we have a permanent military presence in the Strait of Hormuz, which we police from now to the end of time, I don't think we're prepared to do that. You know how much money that's going to be. Okay, so why. Why didn't we, or they apparently anticipate that they could and would take control of the Strait? Here's the answer. Most of this, again, did not air on tv. Watch.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

No, I don't claim perfect foresight, and nobody had perfect foresight. Neither did the Iranians. They should have figured out that that's what's coming.

[Major Garrett]

Did you say that most of these risks would be minimal?

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

I don't remember using that language, and I don't.

[Major Garrett]

Would that be a fair interpretation?

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

No, I would say that the overall conception was that this would elicit a problem, a response that they probably would not shoulder, but they did shoulder. And now they respond. They're attacking, they're being attacked accordingly.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah. Yes, it's a problem. Yeah, we're aware. So there at least some telegraph of the truth. They didn't anticipate it. They didn't think that they could shoulder it. Well, they could. And honestly, did he really not know? Did Netanyahu and Israel not anticipate that? I just, I have that a very hard time just believing that. I mean, like, their, Their intelligence is second to none. They. They knew the Ayatollah was going to be above ground on a certain day with his top emissaries. Their intelligence was really good on the Ayatollah's whereabouts and his plans and was spot on. But they didn't anticipate that they could effectively take control of the Strait of Hormuz. Or did they just not care? Because their goal is chaos in the Middle east, which benefits them. And our goal is very, very different. Our goal is not chaos in the Middle East. We have a lot of friends and partners and allies there with whom we do great business and whose relationships with us have only been getting Stronger. And that's a good thing for the United States. Is it really great for us to have chaos in the Middle East? Is it great for us to have, by the way, Iran bombing our allies over there, which is what they've been doing. That's another thing. That was just very, very interesting piece in the Atlantic by a big time neocon hawk, a guy who was behind the Iraq War, the surge in Iraq, and push for, you know, all sorts of conflicts, writing some tough talk about how the war in Iran is going, saying basically, we've lost and it's worse than our loss in Vietnam, it's worse than anything than Afghanistan, it's worse than Iraq, it's very, very bad because we've empowered Iran in a way that we didn't anticipate. And Robert Kagan is the name of the guy. And, yeah, talking about how Iran has now become empowered as a result of its control of the Strait of Hormuz. And, and one of the ways in which we've been compromised is in fighting back. Not only did it take the Strait, it started bombing all of its allies in the neighborhood, our allies in the neighborhood. And that the reason Trump entered into a ceasefire was not a desire for a ceasefire so much as it was the fact that Iran had bombed the energy infrastructure in Qatar. And that if that anything like that continued, we were going to be setting the energy markets back by years, decades, and it needed to stop asap. They actually pulled another trick out of their hat that materially changed the course of the war. It wasn't just a, oh, we're going to be nice. All right, so there's been a lot happening. This has been a very savvy, you know, tough effort that we're fighting over there. It's not a compliment, it's just a reality and something the skeptics about the war had advised President Trump about. Okay, so now here's Netanyahu claiming he was one of them. Okay, sure. You were. Sure. And here's another thing that did not air at all on last night's broadcast, and that's Netanyahu discussing how long this war might last.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

We had our brave pilots and your brave pilots over the skies of Tehran, over the skies of Iran. That changed, that broke that mask of invincibility. And once that happens, once that happens, that regime, I think their days are numbered. But it could take a lot of days, I grant you that. And if you say, how long would it take this war? I think a lot has been accomplished in a very short time. It's not going to take years. It may not take months.

[Major Garrett]

It better not take months.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

It may not take months. It depends. You know, it depends a lot. I don't want to put a schedule on it. I think there's a mission schedule. There are goals to be achieved. But so far, I think an enormous amount has been done in a very short time.

[Megyn Kelly]

So are we going to be perpetually months away from enduring the, from ending the war? Remember, President Trump said it was going to be four weeks. Now we get from Netanyahu months. And won't, won't get more specific. Are we going to be perpetually months away from ending this thing, just like Iran was perpetually weeks away from obtaining a nuclear weapon in the years before Operation Epic Fury, that's what we've dubbed this war. I mean, truly, Netanyahu has been saying that they're weeks away for years now, weeks and months at most. This is sounding like the Iraq war clips that we brought to you when this war began in March. Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld saying it was just going to be weeks or months at the outset. Eight years later, that war finally ended. Not to mention ground troops, the more ground troops, the surge that was Iraq. Several sections of the interview focused on how support for Israel is on the decline here in America, especially among young people, Democrat and Republican and Independent, and what the cause of that is. Now, here's an excerpt. This is from the full interview, where we removed a lengthy aside from Netanyahu about Israel not targeting civilians, this is a point that they make very often, that Israel says they never target civilians, and they do indeed drop, for example, pamphlets on sites they're about to bomb, telling them that they're about to bomb them. And it's also true that the Palestinians that the Hamas will hide in a place like a hospital, you know, to make it tougher for Israel. That's all true, and we know that about Israel. But it's also true that, that Israel has killed civilians, thousands of them, in Gaza. And it's happening again now in Lebanon. We've watched journalists get blown up and they're, they don't seem particularly apologetic about it. I gotta tell you. They're kind of like, oh, well, we've got tens of thousands dead in Gaza, tens of thousands. And they are not all Hamas fighters. There are thousands and thousands of civilians. So that was an aside, but it's a separate debate. Okay, we want to talk here, show you here the discussion about social media and his concerns, because let me tell you, Bibi thinks that's the reason Americans are turning on his country, this idea

[Major Garrett]

that a younger generation are on social media or scrolling. Do you believe Israel is at risk of losing this war on that social media front? Meaning what is being portrayed, what is being said? And this is particularly, I believe, important in America for younger Americans, Republican and Democrat, who have hardened themselves against Israel, scrolling through images which tell them that there is something not as you describe, but uncivilized. And they would use words like barbaric. In Gaza and in Lebanon, we have

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

seen the deterioration of support for Israel in the United States almost, I would say correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media. And that by itself is not what caused it. And I don't believe in, you know, in censoring them or anything, but I'll tell you what happened. We have several countries that basically manipulated social media with bot farms with fake addresses to break the American sympathy to Israel, to break the American Israeli alliance because they think it's in their interests and they do it in a clever way. You know, it's like you hear a text message, I'm a red blooded Texan, I always supported Israel, but I can't stand what they're doing. I'm turning against Israel. And they, then you trace the address to some basement in Pakistan, you know, and that's, that's something that has hurt us badly.

[Megyn Kelly]

So that whole thing about bot farms did not air. Okay? The version that aired on TV included some of what we just played, but it was combined with a section from the very end of the interview which focused on Israel's tactics to respond to the sentiment shift, not the shift itself. All right, they let him get away with it's, it's all social media. It's, you know, it's not Israel's behavior. It has nothing to do with those tens of thousands dead in Gaza or Gaza looking like a parking lot now or the, the thirst, what appears to be a thirst for more war by Israel on this front and that front, like the do it all. Who could forget when then the focus shifted to Hezbollah after Hamas. And then it was we're going to get the Houthis. And then it was they talked us into bombing the Iranian nuclear sites and now we're back from war in Iran and not to mention Syria, like they've been behind a lot. It's not that though. It's none of that. It's just social media that's what's caused the shift. So they're not interested at CBS in talking about that. Right. Because they included a little about how Israel's responding to the sentiment shift, like the evil podcasters or social media trolls who are causing it. And they don't want to discuss the actual shift itself and whether it has to do with Israel's behavior at all. Again, why is that? Why does CBS not want to discuss that? Could it be the Ellisons and their hand placed handmaiden, Bari Weiss, who runs CBS now, who's huge on Israel? It's truly her favorite issue. I mean, that is true. She's extremely concerned about Israel and has been for a long, long time. You know, Glenn Greenwald was telling us about what she did to that professor at Columbia who she thought was too anti Israel. Like she's been on a cancellation crusade for a long time against anybody who she thinks is too critical of Israel. And now she's in charge of cbs. And honestly, you can see it in the coverage. You can see it. So Netanyahu, in a rather chilling moment, actually reached over and picked up Major Garrett's iPhone in order to make his point. Okay. About social media. Now, what's interesting about this exchange, Going to show it to you. This is the final exchange in the 70 minute sit down. Okay, but this is, this is purportedly Netanyahu trying to tell us what's being done to Israel by propagandists out there. And I would submit to the jury that it is very much true of what Israel is doing to its critics now too.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

Watch again, you can say anything because it's this, this is yours, right? Mm, speaking of, you're not immune either, because you can penetrate this machine, you can penetrate this, this little instrument. And you can say about Major Garrett anything you want. And I can paint you as a monster. And if I say it often enough, enough, people will believe it. I am not bemoaning this. I'm stating this as a fact. Israel is besieged on the media front, on the propaganda front, and we've not done well on the propaganda war. We have to fight back against these lies, this propaganda, with the only weapon we have is the truth. I'm trying to do that now and we'll try to do that in a much greater effort.

[Megyn Kelly]

Wow. I mean, that's pretty chilling. He picked up Major's phone and said to a journalist, you are not immune. If I want to, I can paint you as a monster. He says, I can paint you as a monster and people will believe it. Oh, we know. Trust me, we're aware that. I mean, what's interesting is there was no follow up about what Israel actually is doing what it actually is doing here in America, which I'll get to in one second, but they are. It's interesting to me because I talked to Charlie Kirk about this. You know, he and I were on the same trajectory on Israel, very, very ardently pro. And Charlie was in a different situation than I was because he had a lot of Israeli donors and very prominent Jewish donors to Turning Point, and so kind of felt financially beholden to folks who shared that view and may have given him money because he shared it. I, thank God, don't have that problem. Nobody owns me. I. I take the only people I take money from, you know, about Cozy Earth, love them, right? Like all my advertisers, that's. That's the only one that they. They pay money to get their ads on this show, and that's it. Obviously, Sirius XM pays me to license the broadcast, but no special interests like this, okay? And I've been offered money. I have been offered money by very pro Israeli, and when I was very pro Israeli, you know, two years ago, and I always said no, because I just. I understood that it could compromise me as a journalist. I didn't want that to happen. I didn't. I don't like anybody having me by a leash. But in any event, Charlie and I talked openly about how Israel was very bad at the propaganda war, about how the Palestinians were so much better at propaganda than Israel. And the thing that he and I discussed, Israel needed to do, excuse me, was to get its own Caroline Levitt to be out there every day. And. And Charlie said, for example, why. Why should I be out there doing this? Why should it be me and you, Megan? Excuse me, I need some water. Why should it be us? Why don't they have their own Caroline Levitt or Admiral Kirby who's out there setting the record straight? Well, they went a different way. They joined the likes of the propagandists and those engaged in the business of personal destruction of their critics. So we'll talk about that in a second, okay? But back to the broadcast last night. These two moments, the last two soundbites, they were shortened. They were combined as if they happened back to back, you know, with the phone. Now, they didn't include the comment about how Israel will be fighting back. They teased that they will use the same tactics to fight fire with fire on the social media front. Well, they're doing it, okay? They're doing that. Bibi said it several times throughout the full interview, but none of that made the broadcast version. So why didn't that go in there? Why? There were also several references by Netanyahu to the Americans turning against Israel, saying that they also hate America. Oh, they do. Okay. So according to Netanyahu, if you are against Israel and its tactics militarily, you hate your own country here in America, you hate America. This is a talking point we've seen from the prominent pro Israel media voices in the past few weeks. It seems to be like a new favorite. All of those references were cut from the broadcast version of the interview. Why? Why did Barry Weiss and her CBS cut from the interview of Netanyahu all the references by Netanyahu attacking Americans who have questions about Israel as anti American? Is it possible they believed that might make him look bad and further alienate Americans? I mean, I think there's a level of protection being run now on a, on a foreign leader that's just obvious. It's as plain as the nose on your face. And you have to ask yourself why and whether we're allowing this. Because let me tell you, if I had Netanyahu sitting here and he made those claims, I would absolutely follow up with questions. For example, about his own explicit statements last August or September saying Israel was going to get in this game. And then Jonathan GreenLatt of the ADL that was formed allegedly here to fight anti Semitism, and he addressed the Knesset right around that same timeframe and made really clear what he expected next in this information war. Here's what he said. But we need the kind of genius

[Michael Knowles]

that manufactured Apollo gold pagers and infiltrated

[Megyn Kelly]

Hezbollah for over a dec to prepare for this battle. We need the kind of courage that

[Michael Knowles]

executed Operation Deep Layer inside Syria and destroyed Iranian missile manufacturing capabilities to undertake this mission. This is the kind of ingenuity and

[Megyn Kelly]

inventiveness that have always been a hallmark of the state of Israel. That have always been a characteristic of the Jewish people. I know we can do it. Okay. You know, you know that we can do it. Okay, well how about Netanyahu? What specifically has he said? Listen to this one.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

We're going to have to use the tools of battle. You know, the weapons change over time. You can't fight today with swords. That doesn't work very well. Okay. And you can't find with the fight with cavalry, that doesn't work very well. And you have these new things, you know, like drones, things like that. I won't get into that. But we have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield to admit which were engaged. And the most important ones are the social media and the most important purchase that is going on right now is class.

[Megyn Kelly]

TikTok.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

TikTok number one.

[Michael Knowles]

Number one.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

And I hope it goes through because it's, it can be consequential. And the other one, what's the other one that's most important? X successful. Very good. And you know, so we have to talk to Elon. He's not an enemy, he's a friend. We should talk to him.

[Megyn Kelly]

Great. So there it is. He's been very explicit about what he's about to do and then we know about at least some of it. Okay, we know that Israel, thanks to an effort called Project Esther, paid a bunch of social medias media influencers approximately $7,000 per post pro Israel or against its attackers in an effort to, quote, fight anti Semitism. I've said this before. I've gotten attacked by many on social media as making things up. Sorry if you weren't smart enough to get paid for your tweets, folks, but it's true. It's absolutely true. It was first broken by Responsible Statecraft, which is an online magazine of the Quincy Institute. They advocate restraint in foreign policy and they documented the fact in September that Israel was paying influencers $7,000 per post, they write. In a meeting dedicated to harnessing pro Israeli media energy on Friday, the Prime Minister Netanyahu alluded to a cohort of Israel's influencers. We do have to fight back. How do we fight back our influencers? I think you should also talk to them if you have a chance to that community. They're very important. Being paid by Israel to post on social media is also very lucrative, they write. According to previously unreported recent documents, these influencers are likely being paid around $7,000 per post on social media such as Tick Tock, Instagram, etc on behalf of Israel. Bridges Partners, a firm working for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs, sent a series of invoices for its influencer campaign to Havas Media Group Germany, an international media group working for Israel. Very interesting. A group in Germany working for Israel, Germany. I may be coming back to that in days to come and I'll explain why then. The invoices detail a sum of $900,000 starting in June and slated end in November for a cohort of 14 to 18 influencers to create content. They had to disclose this because this group had to register under the Foreign Agents Registration act and they noted it that the funding is for payments for influencers and production. So we don't know exactly what the number was or exactly who the influencers were or even whether this is the only such program. But it is absolutely true that Israel was paying thousands of dollars per post to several influencers to attack those perceived as dangers to Israel or enemies of the Israeli state or Netanyahu, and to promote stories about Israel that reflected well on it. It was called Project Esther. In addition, by the way, this same publication, Responsible Statecraft, broke the news, which is also true that Brad Parscale, who is senior executive at Salem Media and has his own AI company, had to register as a foreign agent for Israel. Same situation. This is from the Hill. September 30, 2025. Does that date sound familiar? It's all happening. Was the unleashed last September Pascal. This is according to the Hill. The Pascal has registered as a foreign agent for Israel hired to create digital campaigns combating anti Semitism in a contract worth $6 million. By the way, I've also read it's it's 99 million. According to his contract, his company is hired to create content where at least 80% is tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts and other relevant digital and broadcast outlets. Axios also reporting that Parscale, a top eight on President Trump's first two campaigns, registered as a foreign agent to work on Israel's behalf and create digital media combating anti Semitism. Now, I know Parscale personally and I have had long discussions with him about what his AI can do and let me tell you, it's substantial. This is before he decided to become a foreign agent for Israel and when he thought that I was completely in Israel's corner and not Israel skeptical. And I was, I used to be. Honestly, it's like they, they have their own bad behavior to thanks for losing me and Netanyahu's paranoia about like, oh, social media. They get on there and like people from, you know, some third world country are on there saying I, I live in Texas and I've turned on Israel and it's all BS propaganda. That's Israel's claim. That's not at all what what changed my views. Not at all. It was I literally made a speculative comment about whether Epstein might have been an asset for Israeli intelligence and immediately got called an anti Semite, as did Charlie Kirk. He and I were part of the conversation. That's what led in part to our conversation one month before he was murdered about how annoyed we were and how quickly the pressure campaign began on us both and the name calling, using that term simply in response to speculation about Epstein. It was Crazy. Charlie was angry about what was being done to him and I was too. And I firmly believe he would have been on the same trajectory I have been on because the name calling against me only got worse. The demands of me only got worse. Sometimes proxies were put in. You have to say this or you're an anti Semite or you have to say that, Ernie, you're an anti Semite. I've refused all along, as I know Charlie would have, because he was a free speech advocate, very much so, and would never have bent the knee to these bullies, whether it's BLM or the adl. And on and on it went. It's gotten worse and worse and worse. And then Israel got us into yet another damn war. Yet another war. So people in the United States who are having some negative feelings toward not the Israeli people who we love and have a lot in common with, but their government have every reason to feel that way. And it's not because of fucking TikTok. Okay, like, honestly, I want to read this guy the, the, the poem that Dr. Ben Carson loves, right, by Mamie Waite, about yourself to, to blame. Is it Mamie White Brown? I'm trying to remember her exact last name. It's amazing. I've read it on the air before that basically every refrain ends with, you have yourself to blame. Look inward. It's what the miller is, the last name. Look inward. Those words are actually in the poem. Look inward. I, I. It's crazy to me that he's spending time lamenting how it's really totally social media. I think what's happened here is Israel's behaved badly in a number of ways, extremely confrontationally and in a way that's actually gotten us into a war now. And that's what's led people that plus what they did in Gaza. And honestly, he's worried about like the social media campaign about Gaza. That's another thing that didn't work on me, sir. It wasn't any social media campaign about Gaza. I tried to defend you on Gaza as long as humanly possible, but you just. The thirst for bloodlust over there was a little too much. It went on for years, every day. Were were all the dead children propaganda by Palestine? I don't think so. Then you started it again in Lebanon. That wasn't TikTok. That made me believe that. I don't even fucking have TikTok, okay? It's not even on my phone. And X is heavily dominated by the pro Israel crowd. X is not an anti Israel forum. At all. So what are you talking about? My personal Instagram has basically videos of that lazy. That lady who does all the stuff on the 80s and what it's like to be a Gen Xer. Fashion tips and other great lifestyle and maha type content. I don't use Instagram for politics. I. It's. I don't follow many political people on there. I don't even follow many news people on there. So I didn't get any of my viewpoints from these social media platforms you're so worried about. Okay. I got them from news sources and from your obvious attacks on yours truly on my dear friend Charlie Kirk and on some other friends of mine. So this campaign remains ongoing. And I will say this just while I have you, I am so grateful to all of you for continuing to tune into the show and not allowing this attempted destruction to occur. I love reading the comments and the emails from all of you who say you see what they're doing. I knew that. I mean, you're too savvy not to, but yeah, it's. It's a lot. And to hear him play the victim is pretty galling. Okay, sure, sir, sure. You're many things. The victim's not one of them. All right, coming up next, we got a lot of other news to discuss. Michael Knowles will be here to do it. Don't go away. We've all been there. Stuck in a rigid multi year security contract with cancellation fees so high they feel like a ransom note. It's frustrating, right? Security should not feel like a trap. But let me tell you about Simplisafe. They completely changed the game by offering 24. 7 professional monitoring. The that's actually affordable. With no long term contracts, Simplisafe can give genuine peace of mind. 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[Michael Knowles]

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[Megyn Kelly]

Joining me now, Michael Knowles. He is the host of the Daily Wires, the Michael Knowles Show. Michael, great to see you again. We started by talking about NETanyahu's interview on 60, but President Trump has just given an interview weighing in on the Iran war in particular. Iran has now issued its response to our demands to end this thing. The President says he's not happy. Here's what he, what he said. Watch.

[Michael Knowles]

For the time being, the ceasefire remains in place.

[Donald Trump]

You know, it's unbelievably weak. I would say, I would call it

[Megyn Kelly]

the weakest right now. After reading that piece of garbage they sent us. I didn't even finish reading it. I said, I'm not going to waste my time reading it. I would say it's one of the weakest right now. It's on life support.

[Donald Trump]

They understand.

[Megyn Kelly]

These are all medical people. Dr. Oz, life support is not a good thing. Do you agree? Bad prognostic. I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support, where the doctor walks in and says, sir, your loved one

[Donald Trump]

has approximately a 1% chance of living.

[Megyn Kelly]

That kind of brings it home. Just for those listening at home, apparently the response this is per the Wall Street Journal, hasn't been made public yet, but it doesn't speak to our demand for commitments on the fate of Iran's nuclear program or its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Instead, reports to the Journal, Iran proposes an end to the fighting and a gradual opening of the Strait of Hormuz. Then they punt the nuclear issues to getting negotiated over the next 30 days. And they do offer some sort of a proposal on the Highly enriched uranium and having it diluted and possibly transferred, but apparently not to. To satisfy Trump or really feel that our proposal was directly addressed. You know, the problem we have now is that more and more, this is Bloomberg reporting this too, that the President's not that interested in the war anymore. He wants it to go away, but we can't really make it go away without reopening that strait. That's. That's for damn sure. Which was. It was reopened before it was opened, before we launch this war. But whatever that may be, Michael, we can't end it without that thing coming back open. And the Iranians know they have a pretty powerful card.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, I love President Trump's vivid language, typically graphic. He's describing the life support of the ceasefire. But then what does that mean for the ceasefire to disappear? Either means you're gonna have a negotiated end to the war, actually put an end to hostilities, or you're gonna have an escalation again. And unfortunately, this is an area where you know how much I hate to say I told you so on any number of political issues, but this was always my fear before the Iran war. And while it was being launched, you had a lot of people celebrating, you know, waiting for, I don't know, freedom parades in Iran and a pro Western return of the Shah or something like that. I never really thought that was gonna happen. And really what I assumed was at the end, you'd either end up with a deal you don't want or. Or a massive military operation that would be politically unsellable at home. So there were really no good options. I know some people make the claim that war in Iran would be unjust, that the regime doesn't deserve it, or something like that. I never thought that. We've been in hostilities with Iran for 50 years. But the problem is, in order to establish a just war, you need to have a reasonable probability of success, which means you have to know exactly what your objective is. Is the objective just to get rid of the nuclear program? Is it to set back the nuclear program? Is it regime as many people wanted from the beginning? So you need a reasonable probability of success, which I don't think we're really gonna have, at least on the regime change front. Don't forget, the mullahs, for all their wickedness and sins, lasted twice as long in power as the CIA regime that we helped to promote in 1953 with the CIA coup that helped get rid of Mosaddegh and ensconced the Shah. So I thought the mullahs are a lot tougher than people give them credit for. And then the other thing that you need is proportionality, that the goods to be achieved are going to outweigh the losses incurred. And there, too, it's just. It's. These guys are really tough. They're a very evil regime, so they're willing to use all the sorts of tricks at their disposal. And on the American front, people have PTSD from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, so they don't want a protracted military engagement. They don't want a ton of boots on the ground. So it's a brutal kind of quagmire. The one thing I would say for President Trump's position here, trying to negotiate a way out of this thing, is that many of our toughest presidents, not just many American presidents, but even some of our toughest presidents on matters of war and peace, actually took the more dovish side. So you think of Ronald Reagan famously, and this one involves Iran. After the Beirut barracks bombings, Reagan did not directly retaliate. He actually pulled the troops out of Lebanon. You think of Truman being reserved on war with China. You think of Eisenhower and Kennedy being more reserved on war with Vietnam. So, you know, I don't think that Trump is in a. An impossible situation here. He's in a brutal situation. He's in a very difficult situation. There's no real win available to him. So, to your point, Meghan, the reporting that says he's kind of sick of the war in Iran. Yeah, I get it. That's a big threat to the Republicans right now, even as we've got a lot of structural wins thanks to the courts, thanks to redistricting. So any way to wind this thing down, I think is probably the right thing to do, because the probability of ousting that regime under current political conditions, I think is basically zero.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, I totally agree with all that. Like, let's just get out. It's not going to be graceful. It's not going to look so great. President Trump's a great salesman. He can probably sell it as a win no matter what. Whether it is or it isn't, honestly, almost doesn't even matter at this point. It's like we have our own problems to worry about, including now political ones for the GOP that definitely need care and feeding. So let's. Let's just go, whatever. I know that they control the strait. It's very complicated. But like, New York Times reported last Monday that these Revolutionary Guard guys actually are somewhat mercenary. Like, money may speak to them. It may not just be this theocratic, you know, Allah type motivated action. And so if that's true, President Trump talks money, he knows how to deal with people who like money. And maybe we can set up some deal, like, we don't really get our oil out of the strait. I realize the whole global economy is dependent, but, like, maybe we can set up some deal where they do get some money out of the strait, because now they've discovered that tool and we get out of there. Like, I don't see any other way other than giving them something to make them want to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which is what we really want at this point right now. You've done a lot of damage. That's great.

[Michael Knowles]

You have these three options, which is either you just take a bad deal or you invade Iran, which nobody really wants to do, or you could just keep the status quo, which is what the President has been doing, though he's signaling that's probably coming to an end, which is because Iran launches its blockade to hold hostage 20% of the world's oil and natural gas and fertilizer and petrochemicals and all this other stuff. So you're basically holding the global economy hostage. And then Trump does the reverse Uno card double blockade, where he says, okay, well, we're gonna starve you and we're gonna stop you from exporting your oil. And then it just becomes this game of chicken. What's gonna happen first, a global recession or the Iranian oil pipes bursting? And that's a very, very dangerous game, especially in a midterm year.

[Megyn Kelly]

Exactly right. Because they're going to start, they'll do what they did that led to the ceasefire, which is they'll attack Qatar, they'll attack all of our Arab allies and their energy infrastructure, which will only hurt the global economy even more, in addition to those allies of ours. And then President Trump will be scared because we cannot have a global recession. We certainly can't have an American one. Okay, stand by. We're going to turn the page from Iran and discuss those Republican redistricting wins. And Spencer Pratt when we come back. Paying 70, 80, 90amonth to Big Wireless for unlimited data is insanity. Especially when Pure Talk is going to give you unlimited high speed Data for just 34 bucks a month. 34.99. Unlimited high speed data at PureTalk used to start at 55 bucks a month, but because PureTalk is constantly pushing to give you more for less, you can now get unlimited high speed data for just under $35. So if you have looked at Pure Talk before and did not make the move, check again. And if you're wondering, is Pure Talk's network really as good as the overpriced big guys, try it out for 30 days. No contract, no cancellation fees. So you have nothing to lose. Their US Customer service team is standing by to help you switch in as little as 10 minutes. Just dial £250 and say Megyn Kelly. If you say with an Irish accent, you could get a bigger discount. I don't know. Try it out, see what happens. Dial pound 250 and say Megyn Kelly to claim unlimited high speed data for just $34.99 pound 250. And then say Megan Kelly to switch to America's wireless company, PureTalk. Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles show, is back with me now. Michael, something funny that my team just gave me. So this morning, our AM Update, you know, our little morning news headline show. It's only 16 or so minutes. It was tracked last night not by yours truly, but by my children, my three kids, as they did last Mother's Day as a gift. As a Mother's Day gift to yours truly. They took on the hard work of actually getting the tracking done. I was there. I confess that it was actually super fun and enjoyable to watch them do it. This is the second time they've done it. They did it last Mother's Day as well. And my team put together a little one minute. Is it the highlight reel of some of the outtakes? They did a great job. But here it's always fun to hear the stumbles. And here are a few of them. Three, two, one, go. Good morning, everyone. I'm Thatcher. I'm Yates. And I'm Yardley. And this is a special Mother's Day edition of AM Update where we're giving our mom the day off. Now start out. You just screwed one of those words up.

[Michael Knowles]

That's okay.

[Megyn Kelly]

With the candidate hammering city leaders over. Shoot. Where should I pick up from? The only type that can spread person to person, though close through person. I'm confused on what I'm saying here. The Pentagon releasing a trove of declassified materials on Friday related to the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomia. Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Phenomena. Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. An early april poll from UCLA's Luskin School of. This is annoying. Don't do it. You. I'm so much worse than you. I'm doing so much better than making more. How do you do this every day? Thank you, everyone. Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day. Thanks. Have a great day.

[Michael Knowles]

Megan. They. I know they stumbled over a few words here, here and there, but your children are much better at articulating the English language than many members of Congress. So I would not let that discourage them at all. That's great. Also, you know, you can hear at the top, Megan, your children's names, which is. It's giving me intense WASP name envy because the Knowles lying, they're very WASPy. I mean, there's. I got a lot. I've got like Clarences and Basil kind of, you know, I. You're for my fourth kid coming out. I gotta get a little more American, a little more English about this.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes. Are you expecting another child?

[Michael Knowles]

We are, yes. That's another speech. So happy Mother's Day to you and to my poor beleaguered wife with our three and a half children. Three that she's juggling all at once. And then one of them half cooking as we speak.

[Megyn Kelly]

Congrats, that's great news. Yes. I know the names. We take a lot of guff for them. Cause a lot of people do not like the unusual names.

[Michael Knowles]

But they're great.

[Megyn Kelly]

They came by them honestly. Yates is named after Doug's dad, whose name was Manley Yates Brunt. And so he didn't want to go with Manly, but we liked Yates. And my dad too. His full name is Edward Yates. But. And then when you have a kid named Yates, you know, you can't go with, like, Ann for your next kid. So anyway, Yardley, I'm pretty sure is named after a very fat bald man in the movie Christmas in Connecticut, Alexander Yardley, which I had seen. And like, shortly after I saw it, I was like, I've got it. It's Yeardley. And so, yes, she knows she's named after a very fat old bald man in the newspaper business, though, so that's good. I'm sure she loves that magazine at least. Yeah. And then along came Thatcher. But, yeah, my. My Nana, God love her, she lived to 101. She said they have to live with those names. She was.

[Michael Knowles]

Dear Ex, I am calling to all of the many, many listeners. I am calling for a resurgence, a revival of good, solid, WASPy American names. This is a great. And I might. I might be the first one to follow suit, frankly, when our, when our new do it.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes, I've got some, some suggestions for you. I remember there was one family name on Doug's side for our daughter that we quickly rejected. But it was, it was, you know, Old school. You know, a lot of people like to name their kids old school names. Parthenia.

[Michael Knowles]

Parthenia.

[Megyn Kelly]

Parthenia.

[Michael Knowles]

That's my middle name.

[Megyn Kelly]

How would you like that? Parthenia Brunt. Oh my God. You're asking to get beaten up.

[Michael Knowles]

Parthenia. I love it. I love beautiful this. You know, obviously with demographic change, mass migration, a lot of names come and go in the UK now. You know, nine out of ten kids is Muhammad. Basically. I that what we talk about. All the ways we gotta restrict migration, sure, we gotta increase the birth rate, but if we could just name a whole generation of Parthenias, that would go a long way to preserving the culture. I just love it.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's true. We might be back on track. You raise a good point. All right, Inspector, speaking of getting back on track, let's talk about this wonderful redistricting win out of the Commonwealth of Virginia. So they tried to get too cute by half down there and go from a 6, 5 split, Dems Republicans on their districts within the Commonwealth of Virginia and change it to a 10 to 1 Democrat advantage. And they did this by a ballot initiative that did not make at all clear to the voters what they were voting on. You know, it used sort of flowery language that made it just sound like, do you favor democracy? And sure enough, they did. And before they knew it, their entire state, which is almost half Republicans, was. Their districts were wiped out. They insured almost entire Democrat rule for years to come. The Republicans filed a lawsuit saying that's bullshit. They didn't follow the proper procedures in order to get something like that passed. And the high court in Virginia, Virginia's highest court, agreed and really like gave it to the Democrats on this obvious nasty procedural maneuvering, saying, you've completely violated the law. This will not stand. And now there is a serious discussion going amongst some Democrats about whether they should immediately pass a new law limiting those who can be eligible for the state's highest court to anyone under age 54, which would make all of the current justices ineligible and would lead to them losing their seats right away. At which point the theory is the. The game plan is to then replace them. I think it's seven of them with new judges who promised in advance that they will overrule the decision. This the court just handed down and find the opposite way upholding this new scheme which would completely invalidate the state's judiciary forever. It will. It. They will lose all legitimacy if they do this. It is one of, if not the most extreme things I've ever heard. Someone say about how to respond to a judicial decision one does not like. And yet it's reportedly being seriously considered by Virginia Democrats in the wake of this devastating blow to their plan. Your thoughts on it?

[Michael Knowles]

Well, this is not anything new for the Democrat playbook. This goes back some 80, 90 years. Now, Franklin Roosevelt, when his New Deal programs were being struck down as unconstitutional ad infinitum, decided that he was just gonna blow up the Supreme Court and he was going to rearrange it such that he would have a rubber stamp. And the only reason he didn't follow through with that, in fact, was because one of the justices decided to flip at the last minute to try to preserve something like the integrity the Supreme Court. So they call it the switch in time. That saves nine. But Democrats have wanted to do this for a long time. They threatened to do it at the federal level. So there's no surprise now. The downside for them is I think people see through it. Coincidentally, I was just up last week at Dartmouth. I was debating the left wing pundit Mehdi Hassan over whether or not Trump has upheld the Constitution. And this is Dartmouth. This is a liberal Ivy League campus, obviously overwhelmingly hates Trump. But what was very interesting is this was a formal debate so you could see who objectively won and lost. And even at this very liberal campus, there was a six point swing. Happy to say I won the debate, even though Mehdi wrote a book called how to Win Every Debate. Very happy to say, well, there will be a new edition how to Win Every Debate except against Michael. But even beyond, it's not that I had such, you know, stunning rhetoric or anything like that. It's just very simple.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, that it is.

[Michael Knowles]

Everybody knows that Trump has upheld the Constitution. And people recognize that today at the state level and at the federal level, the great threats to the constitutional order come from the Democrats. I mean, here they're talking about essentially throwing out the Supreme Court in Virginia. But what's so stunning is that the Democrats are getting knocked down on constitutional points every which way. I think a lot of people are gonna be confused. They're gonna think that the reason the redistricting in Virginia has gone down is because of the US Supreme Court decision, Louisiana vs Calais, which said that Democrats can no longer racially discriminate in their gerrymandering, that that was a violation of the 14th Amendment. But no, this is actually different. The Democrats are getting struck down on their redistricting on multiple fronts at the federal level, at the state level, and all of this. Meghan brings back a Memory to me. About two months ago, I was interviewing the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, and I said, you know, hey, Mr. Speaker, things are looking pretty bad for the midterms, huh? And he looks at me, says, michael looks me dead in the eye. He says, michael, I think we're gonna grow the majority in the midterms. And I said, well, what's in your coffee? Hold on, can I have a sip of that? I don't know which. If you smoked something before this interview, but, you know, he said, he looked at me dead in the eye. He says, I think we're gonna grow the majority. And I said, well, I like the enthusiasm, I like the optimism, but I don't know. I don't know if I agree with that. Now that we are looking, because of the Virginia Supreme Court decision, the US Supreme Court decision, redistricting going on around the country, we are looking at a potential gain of, of 14 congressional seats for Republicans. I'm now thinking that House Speaker Mike Johnson is Babe Ruth calling his shot to center field if this actually works out for Republicans. Big if. But if it does, that will be the greatest political call in the history of the US Congress.

[Megyn Kelly]

I'm counting here, because you've got. Okay, yeah, yeah, 14. You got 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14. Yes. And Democrats look like they're gonna gain some six seats from redistricting, which, you know, according to my math is less than 14. So that's good. At least even I can do that. However, the problem is the question is how big right. Will the swing likely be to Democrats? I think most non Republican speaker people think the Democrats are going to pick up seats because the party out of power almost always does. And because of the poll numbers surrounding everything Trump is doing right now. Unfortunately, the President's numbers, I mean, across the board are in the bottom third. I mean, they're just really bad.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, it's rough.

[Megyn Kelly]

And especially just as a political reality.

[Michael Knowles]

We were talking about the Iran war.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's not great.

[Michael Knowles]

I mean, that's the big wild card. But, you know, the point that the Democrats can make is that the President's poll numbers and the GOP's poll numbers are quite bad right now. The point the Republicans can make is that's true. Democrats are also historically unpopular right now, which is how you might get.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

I don't know.

[Michael Knowles]

People are talking about a potential upset in the LA mayors race. I'm pretty skeptical of that. But both parties are looking very, very bad. And then you have the wild card of the Iran War, which is that if the war continues to drag on, and we have a recession, or we just have surging gas prices, or right now, housing is looking very shaky, and obviously you get a lot of inflation the longer that the strait remains closed. But all of that could have a very, very acute effect on the midterm elections. Frankly, that is what the Iranians are counting on. That's probably the chief aspect of their political strategy right now. And then what the Trump administration's counting on is that Iran just implodes before that happens. So that's that very dangerous game. But I agree with you. I mean, by all historical precedent, Republicans should be probably blown out of the water in the midterms. Whether or not these decisions from the courts can help to stop the tide, obviously, that remains to be seen.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, I mean, they'll certainly stem some of the bleeding. But, you know, as I pointed out earlier, in 2018, that was Trump's first term, his first midterms. The Republicans lost 40 seats. Now, we also, I don't know, we expected a big Republican wave during President Biden's midterms, remember, in the middle of his term in 2022. And I remember talking to you that night, and we didn't get it. The Republicans did take control of the House, but it was really slim. You know, they barely. They barely had the margin. And that slim margin has been relevant ever since. So it's like, maybe that same dynamic will kick in here and save the Republicans to where, like, people are what they are and they don't really flip around in their partisan voting anymore. And it's like, you know, I view it like, okay, so these people voted for Trump and they weren't all Republicans. It's like getting married, and, like, your wife is like a size 4, and she's young and she's got the flaxen hair and the flowing dress, and she makes you all your meals in the beginning, and then a couple years into it, like, she's gained 100 pounds, and she just sits on the couch all day and watches shows. The kids are unkempt, and you never get a drink brought to you, never mind a meal made. And you're like, there's a hot, sexy lady at the office paying me attention. But then you get a little closer, and the hot, sexy, lazy at the office is crazy. She wants to cut the penises off of your children.

[Michael Knowles]

She happens all the time.

[Megyn Kelly]

To let millions of people into your home to take your job. You're like, eh, you know what? My original choice isn't looking so bad. So we're lucky over here on Team Sanity that the left is so nuts and it could save us.

[Michael Knowles]

I certainly hope so. I hope that we have the discipline that when we lecherously show up to the office water cooler and stand over the desk of that beautiful looking woman who looks suspiciously like a mixture of Gavin Newsom and aoc, that we recognize that it's not worth it. It is not. She's gonna chop it off. It's not worth it, as you say. I agree. And you do actually see that reflected in some of the polls. I mean, obviously the admin has taken a hit, but the Democrats are looking really, really bad. There was that op ed in the New York Times just published yesterday, I think it was maybe today that said that Democrats need to stop talking about climate change, which was their existential, fundamentally religious issue for decades at this point. I mean, AOC made her career on the Green New Deal. Al Gore made his care on that PowerPoint movie, and the Democrats have been talking about this since 1972. Now they're saying pull the plug on that. They're obviously trying to downplay the trans issue unsuccessfully though, cuz they haven't changed their opinions at all. They're trying to downplay their support for open borders. They can't really even hide that. So we are lucky that the Democrats strategy, they told us this months ago, was they're gonna run like Abigail Spanberger in Virginia. Abigail Spanberger who pretended to be a moderate and then immediately upon taking office gave us the most left wing agenda we'd ever seen in Virginia. The problem with that is we've now seen how it plays out. And so when you push these people even a little bit, you saw it in the California governor debate, you saw it in the LA Mayor debate. When you ask them on any of these issues, do you wanna give welfare to illegals, do you wanna just open up the borders to your country? They all say yes, they can't help it. And I always say the Republican Party is the worst party in the United States other than the Democrats.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's exactly it. That's what they have to bank on. It'll be interesting this month as Jerome Powell steps down from the Fed and we have his replacement come into power. You know, because I think Trump thinks the new guy will be more, you know, someone who can work with him on interest rates to try to get the economy going. But of course the reason that Powell doesn't want to lower interest rates is he's still worried about inflation. Trump doesn't think that's a problem. But as inflation starts to gear up again as a result of this oil problem, we're having this energy issue. I wonder whether the new guy will be inclined to lower interest rates, you know what I mean? Because inflation's more relevant right now than it was two months ago. That'll be an interesting thing to watch as we go into the summer. And yeah, the Democrats have a lot, they have a lot on their plate that they have to deal with too. We'll see. They got. Well, only the electorate can tell us its mood and we'll find out in about six months.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, nothing drives inflation as reliably as energy, obviously. And this is just one of these points that when you zoom out from the historical perspective, I think this is what caused a lot of skepticism on the Iran war is, you know, the way President Trump talks about it. I think he's totally sincere. I think he viewed this as a digression because it met his non negotiable line, which is, we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. And, you know, reasonable minds might disagree about how close Iran was to a nuclear weapon, but he said, look, that's satisfied my criteria. So we're gonna go there, but it's just gonna be a little digression. Don't worry about it. It's. We're gonna put it in a compartment over here and then we're gonna get back to our agenda. And the problem, especially when it comes to war, but really with any geopolitical event is you can't just compartmentalize it. All of a sudden there's so many externalities, there's so many unintended consequences that, yes, to your point, Megan, you might even be getting into issues with the Fed because even if they were inclined to cut rates, maybe now gas prices, oil's driving inflation up a little too much because it raises cost of any good that's shipped. And all of a sudden now that has an effect on housing and all, you know, these things spin out of control. This is one reason that we conservatives are a little shyer about wielding the government than the left is. The left thinks they can control everything in society and really you can't.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, well, aoc, you mentioned her. She Green New Deal. That was her big thing. She also had pronouns in her Twitter bio which have been removed. So those are two small victories. As you know, her green energy push gets demolished by her own party and she's taken out the pronouns. But she's onto a new thing which she stole from Bernie Sanders and here's. Well, it's a bunch of disinformation, but it also gives you the highlight of where she's going. Slot 23. The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. And we are declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and power and the state. Wrong again. So apparently, if you were to calculate George Washington's net worth in 2026 numbers, it would equate to $600 million. So he. He really wasn't about fighting the rich. That's not really what the American Revolution was about either. But details, Michael, details.

[Michael Knowles]

George Washington. Not only was his estate worth. Yes, as you say, Meghan, the equivalent of about $600 million. He also had neglected his plantation for all the years of his public service. So you could say, well, he wasn't technically the equivalent of a billionaire. He actually might have been. You know, he was sacrificing a lot of his wealth in order to fight for the revolution. But we have some other data points as well. George Washington was not the single wealthiest person in the colonies at the time. He was pretty close, but not the single most. That would probably go to Robert Morris, who is one of the few founding fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. The single wealthiest man in the colonies at the time of the revolution. But it's not just him. Think about the most famous signature associated with any of the documents of the Founding. That would, of course, be John Hancock. So identified with the Founding that it actually became a synonym for a signature. You know, give us your John Hancock. John Hancock, far and away one of the wealthiest people in the colonies at the time. That's why it was such a statement when he wrote his name clearly and in large font, because he was risking everything. So what I love about AOC's little history lesson here is not only is she a little bit off, she kind of, you know, messed around with a few facts. She is perfectly, 100% wrong. Her view is entirely diametrically opposed to the truth. And if anything, a reconsideration of the American Revolution should really make us love billionaires even more.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, honestly, like, one of their biggest complaints was taxation without representation. They didn't want England taking all of that money without them having any say in the matter. So you have to have means in order to object to the government taking them. Something she conveniently ignores. She failed on every front. I don't know what they're teaching them at Boston University right now, Michael, but her year, I think she was out. She was out to lunch or she was too busy making those margaritas. Somebody who does show political promise, unlike aoc, is Spencer Pratt. You mentioned him and this guy. It's been very fun to watch him go unleash a can of reality whoop ass on our friends in California. Now, I want to start with what you said before. You remain skeptical. I remain skeptical too, because it's California. I mean, what are the odds they're gonna do the right thing? He's still trailing in the polls behind Karen Bass, the Poly Market and Kalshi. You know, that's the betting markets. Look at these two. Show Spencer significantly improving his odds since that debate of last week. But Karen Bass also significantly improved and she's reportedly some 20 points ahead of him in the betting markets and double digits ahead of him in the actual polls. The other woman is basically imploded as a result of that debate. But you remain skeptical that Californians are actually going to do it. Notwithstanding. Let me just show something from him. Notwithstanding. Amazing. He shared this to his. His social media. It's thought 19B and it's him in an ad showing the streets, streets of homes in Los Angeles and drug addicts watch.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

Black house

[Megyn Kelly]

into something at the end. And it's a homeless encounter encampment. Your street deserves better. LA deserves better. Vote Pratt for LA Mayor. Excellent. Right? No one's there. No kids on bikes, no girls doing hopscotch or jump rope. Nothing. Because this neighborhood, like so many others in LA really is suffering from a homelessness problem that becomes a drug problem doors away from where their children play.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, one of the attack ads on Spencer Pratt, which I thought was a parody, came out and said, you know, Spencer Pratt doesn't wanna give a bunch of your money to junkie bums. Spencer Pratt doesn't wanna funnel all your cash to unions or whatever. And I thought, oh, this is clearly a right winger who is making a joke about this. No, apparently it was a real ad from an AFL CIO union. You can read this in the Electoral commission reports. And so they're completely out of touch. And Spencer Pratt is tapping into something real. This is why he can go on TV in news interviews and say, they call me the reality star. Yeah, I'm the only candidate in touch with reality. The problem is what you mentioned, Megan, on the Kalshi and Poly Market prediction markets, which is. Yes. When he came out there at that debate and just completely dominated, you know, created the legend of Pratt daddy just coming home and restoring order, unfortunately, all that really did was get rid of Nitya Raman who was the socialist from the city council. And you say okay, well at least you take the really far left candidate out. Well, we had a socialist on the city council running for mayor. But the current mayor, Karen Best, was a card carrying communist. She was a member of an actual communist organization. That's why Joe Biden overlooked her when he said that he was gonna pick run maid who was a black woman. He had three choices. He had Karen Bass who was a communist. He had Susan Rice who was Obama's full man for Benghazi. That left Kamala Harris. That's the only way she got that job. But Karen Bass was in the running. She was just way too radical. And so look, it's la, it's Gomorrah by the sea as we fondly call it. And there's just not a ton of evidence that Pratt's gonna be able to get the lift that is required. It could consolidate the race so that now you only have one crazy Democrat. I hope. I want every Republican out there. I wish him all the best. I wann everything I can to support his campaign. Any sane person needs to go vote for Pratt. The problem is LA just isn't sane. I mean if the last, I've seen it up close for the last 10, 12 years, if the homeless encampments, the junkies, the crime, all of it, burning the city down on at least one occasion, if that doesn't lead you to vote for Republicans, I'm afraid the very best ad in the world is not going to convince you either.

[Megyn Kelly]

I know one of my producers lives in California, Lauren. And she's, she's given me about 40 soundbites from Spencer Pratt because she's so desperate to see him elected. She's, you know, a good, she's a good nice Orange County California Republican. And those poor reasonable people are left in a, in a field of hard leftists who still like Karen Bass after she burned down their city. I mean it's like forget the homelessness, she burned down their city. There's like, there's no more Palisades and yet she's leading in the polls. Here's a little bit more from Spencer. I want to show this. Oh wait, we have the ad to which you refer that you, you thought was an ad for him, but really it was a, it was an attack ad here in sought. I think it's what, 19 from the AFL CIO.

[Michael Knowles]

Republican Spencer Pratt is the last thing Los Angeles needs for mayor. Pratt opposes us using taxpayer money to build brand new houses for Our unhoused neighbors saying it's time for the homeless

[Megyn Kelly]

to get help or get out.

[Michael Knowles]

Pratt thinks LA needs thousands more police

[Megyn Kelly]

officers rather than more social workers.

[Michael Knowles]

And Republican Spencer Pratt thinks public employee unions should have less power, not more. LA is on the right track and needs to stay the course. Vote no on Republican Spencer Pratt.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh my God, that really is incredible.

[Michael Knowles]

Spencer Pratt doesn't want to kick puppies. Spencer Pratt loves, loves tasty apple pie. Like, what are you, who are you appealing to? What is the argument?

[Megyn Kelly]

It does show you something about the average California Democrat. Like that they thought that ad would be really effective and maybe it will be. That's what's crazy. Like we're laughing. But they're probably right. Their neighbors probably loved what they wrote because you did. You saw the Katie Porter debate, right, With Steve Helton and others. That was the gubernatorial debate you saw. It was like, is it true that you want to continue using taxpayer money to fund healthcare for illegals? And she's like, absolutely, of course. That's what's humane. It was like, oh my gosh, wow, she's saying it out loud. Okay, wait, let me keep going with Spencer because back to CBS. They did a 28 interview with the guy. 28 minute interview. And it wound up in a three minute interview hit piece, he said. And we looked at it. It really was slanted. They only include like, they highlighted his time on reality tv, including a sound bite from it. They had a sound bite from a detractor rolling her eyes at him and of all the great points he made. They used one 40 second sound bite. He spoke to them for a half an hour, but they had plenty of time for the Hills clips. For his detractors clips, it's like, okay, what are we doing here? Here is a little bit from the interview and this is 15. Are you being strategic now or is this, is this the authentic Spencer Pratt?

[Donald Trump]

I'm standing in my Airstream in my burned down house. So I'm being strategic to fight these people that have destroyed my life, my neighbor's life, all of Angelino's life. So yes, I being very strategic to win and save la. But no, there's no strategy when you're standing in an Airstream on your burnout town. You can't fake that. There's no bit to that. I would much rather be in my house feeding my hummingbirds and have my life back, but that wasn't God's path for me. And so now I'm going to undo the harm these people are doing to A lot of people in the city of la. And back to this thing, for instance, they say, oh, he seems so angry. Everyone I talk to in LA is angry. They're actually angrier than me because I have a beautiful two kids, a beautiful wife. Some people are alone and they're dealing with the destruction of their city, not feeling safe on the streets. All the disasters in this city, they're alone. At least I have my family. I was a professional villain. I was a TV character personally, and I don't regret one of those things because it was a show. I worked with the producer, I work with the story writers and everything was fake. Everybody thought I was this bad boyfriend. 20 years later, I'm still with my wife. We have two beautiful kids.

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay, so that was a long clip from the outtakes, Michael. A small portion of that made it into the three minute piece. But the three minute and 30 second tape spot, which had just 40 second seconds, 46 seconds of Pratt's interview also included. See this line about him? The 42 year old former reality star, who has no political experience, is now a main character in the Los Angeles mayoral race. They featured debate clips with Karen Bass, including Karen Bass saying for the first time we've had a reduction of homelessness two years in a row because of policies that I have put in place that's kind of favorable toward Karen Bass. Don't you think you really could have highlighted some other portions of that debate? And then they've got a political pundit in there who says it would be a hard road to convince a blue city like LA to vote for a candidate like Pratt, identifying him, quote, as not only a novice politician, but somebody who has pretty much aligned himself with Trump and Republicans. So he's now saying he's never going to give CBS an interview again and that if he becomes mayor and gets reelected one time, that for the entire eight years he will not be be speaking to them as how mad he is about what they did. It does make you wonder whether it's even worth it, you know, to sit down with these outlets that are just that are just going to do a piece like that about you.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, it's very tempting because network news still has decent penetration, especially, you know, it doesn't play as much online. But among ordinary people who go out and vote, it is important to reach them. What's confounding about the CBS interview, the hit job on press, is that CBS is supposed to be the most moderate of the three. When Barry Weiss took over there, the promise was that it was gonna be, look, she's not a conservative, but it was gonna be at least a little more centrist, a little more fair. I myself, I've done interviews with cbs, and I thought they were actually more than fair to me. So the question is, why Pratt? Why are they going after Pratt? And I wonder if there's a pragmatic decision here, which is they don't think he's going to win, and so they're willing to kind of write him off and cast him to the side. This is all psychobabble. It's pure speculation. But it is a strange zag. After CBS had been positioning itself as being the network most fair and favorable to conservatives, why would they go out and really smack down the most exciting local camp?

[Megyn Kelly]

Such a joke. You know, that hasn't happened at all. You know, it's like, yes, they stated that because the Ellisons have. Have some affinity for Trump, but Barry Weiss doesn't. If you ever read the Free Press, and I did all the time, it's not woke, but it's not pro Trump. They don't like Trump. And that's her. She's not woke, except on the issue of Israel and anti Semitism. She's very woke. As woke as they come on that she's as identity politics favorable as BLM is to its issues. But she doesn't like Trump. So this line about him being a, you know, he aligned himself with the maggot. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure she's not monitoring every piece that they do, but. But that line would not be a problem with the Berry Weiss. I knew she'd be fine with that. We'll see. I. I'm rooting for him. I love what he's doing. And I think even if he loses this race, Michael, he may have a future in politics, notwithstanding. I don't know whether he'll throw his hat into a national race of some sort, but I think he's helping redefine who can run for office and how it can be done. You know, he's. It's very. That is very Trump. Like, you know, if you think about it, the way he's going about it, he just doesn't care. The mocking face when the other candidate was, like, making fun of him, he's like, that's great stuff. He's fearless.

[Michael Knowles]

And Trump, Trump himself is literally a reality TV star. So the parallels are pretty close. I thought Pratt's great response to this question of, you know, you don't have any experience in politics, so what makes you think you could be a mayor is. Well, it was actually Trump's response when he became the Republican nominee without ever having held public office says look at what experience got us. Yeah, okay, well, if experience in LA is burning down the Palisades while you're on another continent and the fire is being caused by one of your own, one of your own ideological comrades, this left wing arsonist, allegedly, then if that's experience, I want the opposite. Give me a novice, please. I trust him a lot more with my home.

[Megyn Kelly]

Home. What good has her experience done la? I mean, it's just, look, if they continue to put Democrats in power after Gavin Newsom ruined their state and Karen Bass let it burn, they deserve what's coming their way. I love you Californians, but you deserve it because you can't just keep electing the same kinds of people and expecting different results. It's just that's not the way the world works. All right, let me take a quick break and we're going to come right back. There's much, much more to discuss, including an update in the most bizarre case happening at J.P. morgan. The wall Street Journal took a deep dive on these this pair over the weekend and we did learn a few facts. When there are supply constraints on commodities prices surge, you see it with the fuel prices happening right now, right as a result of what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz. And you know what else is a limited commodity? Gold. They mine it out of the ground and when it's gone, it's gone. Governments cannot just print more of the and that is why everyone from central banks to savvy savers, consider diversifying with gold. If you've been thinking about it for years but have never moved some of your savings into physical gold, consider Birch Gold group. Now through May 29, Birch Gold is giving first time gold buyers a rebate of up to $10,000 on qualifying purchases. For details and a free information kit on diversifying into Gold, text MK to the number 98989. Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or 401K into a tax sheltered IRA and physical gold. Text MK to the number 989898 to see if you qualify for a first time gold buyer rebate of up to $10,000. So good, so good, so good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom Rack stores now and up to 60% off. Stock up and save. Save on the brands you love like Vince Sam Edelman Frame and free people. Join the NordicLub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack.

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[Megyn Kelly]

Hey everyone, it's me, Megyn Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius. It's called the Megyn Kelly Channel. And it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered, with no agenda and no apologies. Along with the Megyn Kelly show, you're gonna hear from people like Mark Halperin, link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Jasinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear politics, and many more. It's bold. No BS news only on the Megyn Kelly channel, SiriusXM 111 and on the SiriusXM app. Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles show is back with me now. So Michael, I don't know if you've been following this JP Morgan saga, but there is this man who is accusing a an executive there named Lorna Hajdini of allegedly harassing him in some very bizarre and yours truly finds not credible ways. The banker's name is Chirayu Rana. He's the complainant. And I mentioned Lorna is the accused. JP Morgan denies all of this and she denies all of this saying never, never a sexual interlude. We never had sexual relations of any kind. I never drugged him. He alleges that she gave him both Rohypnol and Viagra so that she could rape him. Not to mention the alleged time that she forced him. He claims to allow her to go down on him, which she did. But he cried the whole time. He wants us to know he cried during the the entire windy, as I understand it's called by some men. Okay, now we are learning more about him. There was a deep dive in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. It was very good. It says first of all, correcting the record on a couple things. He apparently is unmarried. There had been reports he was married. He's unmarried. He was not having any sort of an affair. He had alleged she was his supervisor. She Wasn't we actually reported that correctly here on this program? Program they report that outside of work, these two were regularly communicating with each other in group texts and would sometimes go out together as a group. On occasion, co workers would joke about Rana's Nepalese background in the chats and refer to Indian men as, quote, brown boys. That's a term he claimed she used against him. Rana liked one message. This is the plaintiff, Rana, where a colleague asked, quote, if a brown boy could join a gathering. One screenshot reviewed by the Wall Street Journal shows they write that Rana and Hajjdini also exchanged seemingly friendly text messages with Hajjdini, sending him soundcloud links and memes. According to these screenshots, nothing, though, about screenshots showing her harassing him, calling him any sort of derogatory words, trying to command him as her sex slave, as he's claiming in this lawsuit. And we learned late last week that J.P. morgan tried to settle this case before he filed it for a million dollars. He rejected it. He originally wanted. He was demanding 11, and now he's asking for 22 million. The wall Street Journal report does point out he's been at several banks over the past, I think, 10 years. He's got somewhat of a, you know, short work history at every bank he's gone to, none of whom want to comment on the record about him. And then, of course, it broke that he had taken family bereavement leave for his dead father. And his father is alive and well. There's an intimation now in the Wall Street Journal report that there may be someone who's like a father to him, who. Who he's now saying that may have been okay. That's not how bereavemently leave works. It has generally does, like father has a definite definition. Can't just be like, you know, that the superintendent of your apartment building passed, and you need time, colleagues, kids who went to school with him in college. He went to Rutgers, remember him as driven and ambitious. Others recall him as socially awkward. Some say he could be aggressive while playing sports at Rutgers. He's from Vienna, Virginia, a wealthy suburb, the first of Nepalese immigrants, firstborn, I should say, and that's about it. So he cycled through prestigious financial firms, including Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Carlyle Group, and an affiliate of Apollo Global Management, and so on, but never stayed at anyone for a particularly long time and didn't make it at JP Morgan for a particularly long time. And then when he left, JP Morgan didn't make it at the Next firm that he was with right before he filed this lawsuit for a particularly long time. All of which leaves us where Michael Knowles.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, look, maybe it's all a big misunderstanding because if he initially claimed that his father had died, and then it turns out his father didn't die, but it was someone who was like a father to him. Maybe there was someone at JP Morgan who was like a dominatrix to him. You know, it wasn't this girl, you know, sort of straddling him throughout the day at his cubicle. But maybe there was someone who was kind of like his, I don't know, sexual harasser. It's also very confusing because we were told initially that Mr. Chirayu, whatever, he, he had a wife whom he called a. Pardon the phrase, it's from the reporting that he who is a fish head, he said.

[Megyn Kelly]

And even that Lorna allegedly said that. Allegedly that he alleges that his harasser said. Look at these. Taking off her top. Does your fish head Asian wife have anything resembling these? These cannons?

[Michael Knowles]

That's the key. No, Megan, I guess there's no. Like, this is the key. When I knew for a fact it was all untrue. Not just because this woman is very good looking. Plenty of good looking women are totally nuts. And not just cause she had a good job. Women in finance are definitely nuts. And not just cause this guy has a checkered history. It was that word cannons. You know, I had heard the slur that he allegedly called his wife before. Cause I watched Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood, a great movie, but it was cannons. Because maybe you can clarify this for me. Me? As far as I can tell, no woman has ever actually referred to no. I mean men do, but there is no. This lawsuit, in my humble opinion, reads like a Penthouse letter. You asked if I'd been following the story. I've been reading the news reports a little, but only late at night when I can turn the blinds down. Because it's embarrassing even to read this kind of material. I've barely covered it on this show. It's saucy, it's sultry, it comes from this guy's crazy fantasies. And I suspect he will not be getting a single dollar.

[Megyn Kelly]

I agree with you entirely. This is our opinion that this man is making this up. No woman has referred to her breasts as cannons. Any term of art about the breasts I've ever heard a woman say, literally every time has been the girls. I just. Women, they're not throwing around like cute terms really for they'll say breast, breasts, boobs, The T word. But like, I've never heard a woman call them cannons.

[Michael Knowles]

That's another one I don't think the women use. That's more of a male. I don't mean we could. Look, Megan, we could fill three shows with all of the euphemisms, but that was a tell to me. That is not a lady term.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes, yes, I agree. And I'm just going to be honest. Like, this woman looks very attractive. This guy, you know, it looks pretty nerdy. He doesn't really look like anything special that you'd risk your entire career for, though that's not to say that some women can't have psychological issues. And maybe there's something about this really super tall guy who allegedly played basketball at Rutgers. He claims she squeezed his calf muscle and said, oh, you really did play basketball, didn't you? Which also sounds fake. Yeah, maybe there was something about him that did it for her. But this to me seems like a disgusting smear campaign. And I will say I'm also very suspicious of these shorts work stints. He left JP Morgan like a year ago and in that time found a new job and left it already. Okay, there you. When someone wants to come work for Michael Knowles, you look at the resume and one of the first things you look for is, okay, what other jobs have they had and how long did they hold them?

[Michael Knowles]

Right?

[Megyn Kelly]

Because if it's little short, less than one year stints, this person is the problem, not the job.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, it's all sorts of red flags here and then even just the specificity of the supposed episodes like the one you referenced it earlier. So I'm not, you know, I'm not telling tales out of school where he says that she came up to him, gave him multiple drugs, supposedly pleasured him, and he cried tears. Not of joy, tears of joy maybe you could understand from this guy, but tears. I just. Just nothing. Like every single red flag for scammer is going off here. And I do feel for this woman, assuming that this is all bogus, which I think we. We mostly do. Th. This woman, I think she is married. Like she has a family. It. It is, it's really awful that she's been dragged through the mud.

[Megyn Kelly]

I don't know if she's married. I. I haven't heard that.

[Michael Knowles]

I thought she was. I could be wrong. She's like a very.

[Megyn Kelly]

She's got a reputation to uphold. It's very hard to make it in a man's World at J.P. morgan on Wall Street. You're kidding me. This girl is like the unicorn that she's made it this far and she's well respected and she's apparently on a good fast track, and it's like, boom, she gets saddled with this bullshit. Like, this is. I mean, listen, it's happened to a lot of men, too. Then it'd be taken probably a lot more seriously if it were a woman alleging this stuff about a man. But this just sounds so incredibly laughable. The Rohypnol Viagra combo. I mean, honestly, we don't even know if this is a medical possibility. You know, like, the Viagra can just work on that one appendage and, like, everything's been knocked out. Your arms and legs are like this, but your one other appendage is at attention. I just don't buy it. Michael Nullstar.

[Michael Knowles]

No, this is. It reads as pornography, you know, it reads like Penthouse or Playboy, but it also reads like science fiction. I don't know. I've never tried it. I don't intend to try it. A cigar and a scotch is about as far as I go, so we'll have to let the courts figure it out.

[Megyn Kelly]

All right, note to my team. Today, we will get the answer to whether this is possible. We know people. We know professionals. I don't know. Who do we call? Do we call? Like a prostate cancer doc? Do we call?

[Michael Knowles]

I would not expect we can find this out.

[Megyn Kelly]

We are gonna have this. We're gonna have this answer for you tomorrow here on the MK Show. All right, before we go, we've got to spend one minute minute on poor Jerry o'. Connell. I really like Jerry o'. Connell. He's so fun on social media. He. He was in Stand By Me. He was in Jerry Maguire. He's married to Rebecca Ramjin, formerly Rebecca Ramjin Stamos, who's a supermodel, but boy, oh, boy, he gave an interview to Jamie Kennedy and came up with the very, very wrong answer about what he would do. I think he's got three or four daughters. If you saw a trans person in their bathroom. 21. Not to make this about horoscopes, but I'm an Aquarian.

[Michael Knowles]

I let.

[Megyn Kelly]

I water. Water flows. I let water flow.

[Michael Knowles]

I'm like, water, baby.

[Megyn Kelly]

Let's say you're at the Montage Hotel. Okay. Fancy hotel, five star boots. You're in the lobby. Sure. And there is a guy there who's about 35 years old for some person. Person. Well, he's a guy. I'm gonna tell you why he's a guy. Because he's wearing A dress. He's wearing, like a Jill Sanders skirt. Oh, fun. And you notice that his. His unit is hanging out and it's about eight inches. Eight inches? Yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

Soft.

[Megyn Kelly]

And he goes into the women's room. What say you? But he's wearing his Jill Sanders skirt. I would say nothing. Of course you wouldn't.

[Michael Knowles]

And that's why we're fucking here.

[Megyn Kelly]

I would say nothing. Nothing. It's the wrong answer. It's a fail, and it's cowardly. And it's going to endanger his twin daughters. That's what he has. Your thoughts, Michael?

[Michael Knowles]

That is the politics. That's the church of nice. That's the morality of the people who think on the left. And you even get this on the right. A little laissez faire. Don't yuck my yummy. Do whatever you want. Who's to say I don't want to be an authoritarian? I don't know. I'm not gonna tell you how I see things, folks. If we cannot insist on basic truths and conclusions, basic limits, we cannot have a society, if it is authoritarian, to keep the man with the giant appendage out of the daughter's bathroom, then call me Francisco Franco.

[Megyn Kelly]

Giant. Michael, thank you. Always wonderful to see you. Tomorrow we are back with Garagos and Murphy of the well. We're gonna ask Garagos about the new Michael Jackson movie. He was his client. See you then. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.