Dems Celebrate George Floyd on Memorial Day, and AOC 2028 Rumblings, with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke | Ep. 1325

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Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at New Neist. Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly, welcome to the Megan Kelly Show and happy Monday! I hope you had a great memorial day and had a moment to pay tribute to our troops who have given the ultimate sacrifice and their families too. Forget about the families, but when you meet them, boy oh boy, you are reminded of how much the entire family gives. When they have a man or woman in service in the armed forces who ultimately is killed. I mean it's just... We move on with our merry lives and we forget about them and we shouldn't. And one way of remembering them would be to check out our Memorial Day special featuring Army Master, Aviator Alan C. Mack. It was an amazing conversation about why it's so important to honor our men and women in uniform who have fallen in service. So you're not going to hear much of that from top Democrats, that's for sure. As yesterday, liberal politicians in Minnesota seemed to only care about one thing, the death of one man and one man only, George Floyd. It was really unbelievable, their public messages around death and dying yesterday on Memorial Day, where they were not about our fallen troops, they were about George fucking Floyd. He died six years ago on Sunday. After being arrested in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020, the video showed Officer Derek Chauvin appearing to put his knee on Floyd's neck as Mr. Floyd shouted out, I can't breathe. There are still however major questions about his actual cause of death and exactly where Chauvin's knee was and virtually everything around this case because we've been lied to about it for quite some time. The incident sparked days of protests and riots and supercharged the DEI movement that continues to infect our children in schools across this country, in the government, in all sorts of institutions in America that are only now in some cases being rolled back thanks to the Trump administration. I mean, it's wonderful. You get these little updates like DEI, they've gotten rid of DEI here, there, this company, that, this university. Great. Where's the apology for all of the people you tortured for six years? All the students you didn't let in because they happen to be white or God forbid Asian. Right? Like where's your accountability for going so insane you violated federal civil rights laws for six years? You thought the discrimination was better if it were just against whites. Then it would be fine. Then you would be noble. It took Donald Trump to come in and strong arm these people off of these positions. Not all of them. Some are holding on. And yesterday's tributes to George Floyd like he was Jesus underscore that the problem is not yet fully solved. To many on the left that one death was apparently more important than the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who have died for our country. Exhibit A, the Minnesota governor and Kamala Harris's failed VP running mate Tim Walsh. Governor Walsh posting on ex yesterday quote six years ago today George Floyd's murder started a global movement for change. Let us continue working to build a society that lives up to its democratic ideals of liberty and justice for all. Walsh also paid a visit to George Floyd Square in Minneapolis yesterday dancing. Watch this. Not bad for an old white guy. I know what this is. Alrighty, thank you. I appreciate you. I don't know what that is, but it looks like somebody wearing handcuffs trying to chug a beer. I'm sure that's not the proper tribute to anyone. I don't know. He's so happy. He's in his glory just like Kamala Harris, his old running mate. Whenever he's talking about race and how bad white he is that that really gives him a Jones. He did relief release a brief Memorial Day message on X remembering, you know, our fallen troops. This guy wanted to be their commander. Remember when he told us that he had made it all the way to the top of his unit and was a command sergeant major. Those were lies. Remember, we were the ones who interviewed his former platoon mates who were disgusted at his stolen valor. Maybe there's a reason his mind is not so much on the troops, but on George Floyd. He also happened to have blown off the nearby Fort Snelling Memorial Day program, despite reportedly appearing on the program as someone who had agreed to speak. But hey, he was busy. He was with, you know, his buds in George Floyd Square, which there is such a thing. Look, look, all you want. Okay. Look all you want at that video of the event. You will not find the governor at the place where nearly 200,000 veterans and their family members are buried. The old white guy was too busy busting a move in George Floyd Square. Yeah. Is anyone surprised? Mr. Stolen Valor didn't have time to go where the actual troops who have served showed up to pay tribute to the fallen. He was too busy for that. He went to the place where he actually feels like a hero. George Floyd Square tracks. Let's check in with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry. Remember back in 2020 when he was run out of a protest for not being sufficiently anti-police. Remember this? Go down, go down, go down. You're still under arrest. Go down, go down, go down. Go down, go down, go down. Go forward. Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. How do you left? Shame, shame, shame, shame. I mean, who cares watching him get humiliated? Can you imagine somebody doing that to you? Imagine Trump in that scenario where they tried to do that to him. I'd like to see it actually. I kind of would. Mayor Fry, he basically was leaving on figurative bended knee. I mean, he was like, okay, got it. Super woke, but not woke enough. Have to go even hardcore woker. And he was sure to make up for his failings just a few days later when he literally bent the knee and sobbed before George Floyd's coffin. Remember him and his COVID mask? Sobbing in front of George Floyd's. Oh my God, what an idiot. He's sobbing. He is sobbing the way you'd sob if this were a family member, like the heaving shoulders. Think about the number of people in your life who could evoke that reaction from you by saying anything. I mean, it would absolutely be a blood relative or a lifelong best friend. But what is this performance art? So Mayor Fry yesterday put out a thread. This is his big opportunity. I mean, this is like, this actually is his national holiday. He put out a lot, a thread of five posts on X about Floyd, reading in part that Floyd's murder quote, forced Minneapolis to confront painful truths about race, policing, inequity and trust and demanded hard conversations and accountability. The weight of what happened is still with our city. Six years later, and the responsibility to keep moving forward together is to, he's really the Justin Trudeau of America. Two and a half hours later, Fry, Frey, whatever, I don't care. Put out one post for Memorial Day, just one, I say. One post, not a five post tweet thread, but one. And the official account for his city was no better. Putting out a post at 11 a.m., calling on everyone quote, to gather, be with community and honor George's life. Got that out nice and early. Let's get together and celebrate George. Five hours later at 4 p.m., came the most generic Memorial Day post imaginable. It just says Memorial Day with a flag, not even like, let's remember in honor of, they couldn't even manage those like set up words like they did for their George Floyd post. It's ridiculous. All of it shows you where their actual heart is. They're appealing to the same, I don't know, radical, insane people we watched for two months in Minneapolis harass and terrorize ICE agents. And there's news on that front today as well. Joining me now to react to this and much more, it is an NR Day here at the MK show, National Review Editor Rich Lowry, and National Review Senior Editor Charles C.W. Cook. Go become an NR Plus subscriber now to get all of their content. When there are supply constraints on commodities, prices surge. You see it with fuel prices with everything happening 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 gold. And that's why everyone from central banks to savvy savers consider diversifying with gold. If you've been thinking about it for years but have still never moved some of your savings into physical gold, consider Birch Gold Group. Now through May 29th, Birch Gold is giving first time gold buyers a rebate of up to $10,000 on qualifying purchases. For details and a free info kit on diversifying into gold, text MK to the number 989898. Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or 401K in whole or just in part into a tax sheltered IRA in 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. Welcome back, Rich and Charlie. Great to have you. How's it going? Thanks for having us. It's going. This is like, it shows you their true feelings, right? I mean, we're not surprised to see it, Rich, but it's the fervor. The fervor is still alive and well six years later. And I distinctly remember. I remember this so well. I was, I remember where I was listening to you guys on the editors in the wake of like the wokenfication of America that happened after Floyd and you, one of your exit questions, Rich, was, you know, something to the effect of, well, we will we still be dealing with this craziness in a couple of years? Or is this just temporary post George Floyd? And I think most people thought it was temporary, but little did we know, like, I think you're right. He is temporary, but the temporariness of it has been sustained much longer than I think any of us anticipated. And it's just absurd. Yeah. Tim Walz is the most painful, cringe-worthy politician in America. There's nothing that he does that doesn't make you embarrassed for him, including this. And of course they made George Floyd a secular, secular saint a long time ago. If you know anything about his background or what happened in this case, he's a very unlikely candidate for such sainthood. But it drove this insanity in American life where you woke up the next day and every elite institution in America was woke suddenly. Now that tide is receded, but not entirely so. And then we also have this de-policing movement in cities across the country that was an utter debacle and not for privileged people, so-called, or most white people, it was a disaster for vulnerable minority communities. Now that all that trend is also receded with, thank God, or really seeing a major wave of declines in murder and violent crime throughout America, including in some places that you wouldn't really expect. San Francisco's gotten the message. They've cracked down on car thefts that they were accepting as inevitable a year or two ago. Baltimore in April, I think, just had four homicides, the lowest since the current tracking began in 1970. So all that's good, but this mind virus still exists. It's somewhat in remission. But if these people take power again, you're going to see it making a comeback. Charlie, your take on it, because we saw this in multiple blue cities as though George Floyd were George Washington. I mean, absolutely ignoring who this guy actually was the way he actually lived his life and even the lies we've been told about the condition he was in on the day of the actual encounter with Derek Chauvin, where he said he couldn't breathe multiple times before the officer even laid a finger on him. We knew that he had enough fentanyl in him to kill a horse prior to encountering Derek Chauvin, all this stuff which has been whitewashed by people like Mayor Frye. Well, it was a mass panic. And even if George Floyd had been the greatest man who'd ever lived and had been killed, the consequences of that death would still not have been justified. The insistence that unarmed African-American men are constantly being killed by police. That's not true. And then the rejection of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act and the words of the Declaration of Independence, which is really what wokeness is, would have been unjustified as well. Well, you know, that clip you showed of Mayor Frye being booed and having to leave reminded me of when I covered Occupy Wall Street. And I was down there and they had John Lewis, the civil rights hero, as their guest. And John Lewis was going to make a speech and someone started saying, hang on a minute, he's not better than us. Why should he be able to speak? There's a long line of people who want to speak. And so John Lewis, after about 30 minutes, had to leave. They didn't let him speak. You can watch the video on YouTube. It's absolutely hilarious. When they have this guy who really did go through actual state violence, actual apartheid, you know, an actual state that was rejecting the words of the Declaration, it was violently attacked. And he's there to talk and they say, no, no, no, no, we're far too egalitarian to let him speak, because that would imply that we're elevating him above us. And I think looking at Jay Gafrye, first off, you see how silly crowds can be. But second, and the same is true of Tim Walsh, what I see in those videos, Megan, is Selma envy. I see people who did not have to go through the things that the actual civil rights heroes in this country's history had to injure, but kind of wish they had. And it is their moment. They wish that they'd been there. And so they're going to try and inflict it on the rest of us when thankfully, mercifully, we don't live in that country anymore. You've got Sonny Hauston over at the view, Rich. She brings this up in the context of the fund that Todd Blanche is forming over at DOJ to compensate people who have been the victim of lawfare. And the left's big reaction to it has been, are you telling me that some people arrested on January 6th might get compensation out of this fund that hasn't been approved to Congress? Well, we object. I mean, it's not unusual for the DOJ to create funds and to compensate people who have been injured by the DOJ. That's how Peter Struck and Lisa Page got $2 million without congressional approval. The size of the Trump fund is unusual. It's over a billion dollars. And so therefore, people on the left and the right think that we should have congressional approval of that. But in any event, that was the issue being discussed on the view. And would you listen to where she took it in the context of this George Floyd debate? But into terms that I would hope that folks on the right would understand is I remember in 2020, Republicans were big mad that Kamala Harris tweeted out that people should give money to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which essentially offered cash bail for people who participated in the Black Lives Matter protest. People were saying that's bailing out people who destroyed property, who may have assaulted police officers. There was very limited destruction of property. It was a very significant rallying call on the right. And I do think it hurt Kamala Harris' chances in 2020 in that election. We saw with our own eyes what happened at the Capitol. But now they're going to get financial compensation. Like make that make sense to me. I just think we need to make it clear that there can be no comparison between the Black Lives Matter movement and what we saw on January 6th. So I just want to make that clear. And that's not the suggestion that we did. I know that was a great one. I agree. I know that wasn't your suggestion. But you know, people that watch our show take away different things. So I just want to make that part clear. There were very limited destruction of property and violence during the uprising, the Black Lives Matter uprising. That's a lie. Such a lie. Look, all three of us are wide-eyed. We all agree there should be no comparison between those BLM riots in January 6th. None whatsoever. But not because for the reason that she would state. It's because the BLM riots dwarfed what happened on January 6th in size and scale and injuries and property damage on every front. Every front. I had my team just pull some stats. BLM, the insurance industry estimates it exceeded $1 billion in damage nationally, making it among the costliest civil unrest periods in U.S. history. Damage to the Capitol on January 6th was in the millions. Not a billion, not over a billion in the millions. Arrests, roughly 14,000 plus arrests were tied to the riots, the BLM riots. January 6th, more than 1,400 people charged federally. And we know that so many of those was a nothing. They walked into the Capitol being waved in by a security officer, only to then just walk out. And they wound up on a watch list and arrested. But that's literally one-tenth the size of what the BLM arrests were. Law enforcement, hundreds of officers injured during the unrest around the BLM riots. 2,000 was the official estimate by the police union. 2,000 cops were hurt in those BLM riots. About 140 Capitol and DC officers were injured during the January 6th riot. So it's not to excuse what happened to those cops, but there's just no comparison. There were thousands of cops and at least one killed in the BLM riots. The left will tell you people died on January 6th, but it's not true. Only Ashley Abbott was killed on January 6th. And at least 25 deaths outside of cops were linked to the unrest and violence during the BLM riots. There is no comparison. This revisionist history, if we need to remember them as peaceful and just this beautiful civil rights protest that was enacted by lovers of George Floyd and freedom, it's a lie. Yeah, well, and it's also not revisionist in her terms, right? This is what they said all along. Things were burning down and they're saying they're mostly peaceful and don't worry it's limited property damage. Riots are always terrible, right? Sometimes you hit the target, you mean to hit, you know, you burn down the police station or destroy a cop car. That's bad enough, but almost always you're burning down other things and hurting other people and killing innocents, right? You bring down a convenience store or a gas station. It had nothing to do with anything you're supposedly protesting. And if you look at the much bigger riots in the 60s and the 70s, there's some cities, Detroit, Washington, D.C., who never really recovered, right? And it's not the people in the suburbs who are suffering from that. It was the most vulnerable people again, which is a common theme to these welks sort of policies. They end up hurting the people they're supposedly in favor of and trying to support. And then she also calls it an uprising, which I think is actually a correct characterization if you get into it technically, get into it technically, but she means it as a positive connotation. It's a justified revolution against an illegitimate authority, the law enforcement system in the United States, because it's inherently racist. And that's the lie that undergirds all of this. Very, very limited destruction of property, she says. Just as one example, Charlie, we pulled, this is from Alpha News and its documentary, Very Good, Right Leaning News Outlet in Minnesota. They did a very good documentary on the death of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin. Very good. If you haven't seen it, highly recommend. But here's just one sound bite from the documentary on the burning of the police station. This is just one city in one night of the ongoing riots we saw. So I get a command over the radio that we need to evacuate the third precinct. Evacuate now, evacuate now. I said, like, right now. We have to evacuate right now. And they said, yes, immediately. We run. We run with our belts on and 50 some people and three SWAT teams. And we get to the fence. We can't get out. We got a gun where you're sitting ducks here. There was only one way in and one way out. And the way out was locked. 23 is a brief speed. North, west corner of the crack. North, west corner of the front has been breached. They're coming in. They're coming in the back. We need to move. We need to move. We need to move now. One of the SWATs rams through the fence to get it open. I remember looking through the rear of your mirror as we left. It looked like a zombie movie. They all just rushed to the fence and started climbing the fence. And they caused the fences to collapse. And then they just all rushed the precinct. But as I got a maybe a quarter black way, I realized that not everyone was in vehicles. They were running basically for their lives at that point. Just, you know, I'm going to show another video, Charlie, but just minimum just. And this is from the crowd that lectures us at every turn about how history is real. History is important. We need to teach it in the schools so that the children understand slavery and Jim Crow. But I guess they don't need to understand what actually went down in the BLM summer of 2020. No. I mean, I want to downplay January 6th. It was a disaster. And I think Trump should have been impeached and convicted. And I'm quite happy going after the people who did it. But it was a small relative to 2020 and be it was actually unusual for the right conservatives. Normally they did that. But conservatives normally don't do that sort of thing. Whereas if you go back to what happened in 2020, this is where I find it the most annoying. They really have it both ways. On the one hand, they now say, well, it wasn't much damage or well, it was just limited violence. It was a peaceful uprising. On the other hand, if you go back, they were saying violence is the language of the unheard. And they would say, well, it doesn't matter. This was a big argument at the time. They would say it doesn't matter because all of those stores that they were looting and burning have insurance. And they would say, in some cases, why are you so opposed to it when you love the American Revolution? There's a very, very big gap between this is like the American Revolution and there wasn't much violence. And I think this is a progressive advantage in our politics is they never, ever stop litigating things that have happened. You want to see a progressive do this? Ask them about the 2000 election. Bush v. Gore. They're still adamant. The Gore won that election, which he didn't, but they do it more than we do. And that line is going to be said over and over and over and over again. And unfortunately, a lot of people are going to believe it. It's not true. I think that was the most damage ever done in any riots in American history. It wasn't that it was the single riot that caused the most damage because as Rich says, there were big city riots in the 60s. But I think collectively, the what you might call George Floyd riots, I think did more damage than any other sort of moment or political season in the history of the United States. So to say that on television. So not very limited, very limited destruction of property as Sonny Haasden would say. No, it wasn't. And it's again, it's you said this at the beginning, there's never been any accounting for what happened. You know, I wasn't involved in January 6. I was appalled by it, but I'm quite happy to sit here and say, yeah, that was really bad. I think there should have been more consequences that they will not apologize. They won't apologize for trying to defund the police. They forgot that they did that, which by the way, mostly affects African Americans and poor people. They won't apologize for trying to destroy our national creed, which they really did try to do by insisting that discrimination is good. If it runs in one direction by insisting there's been no change in America since the 1860s by pretending that the average cop is going out there with the hope of killing or hurting minorities. They won't apologize for egging on and they did that as well. The rioters and they won't apologize for destroying faith in public health, which they did if you remember by saying, stay in your home, stay in your home, stay in your home, stay in your homes. Oh, but actually, if you want to go out and riot, that's fine because it's more of a public health. Public health emergency. And I just, it makes me crazy because I feel as if they want to just move on from it as if it never happened or even rewrite it. And it was actually a huge moment in American history. And it could easily happen again. You know, at least on January 6th, we know that there was some amount of feds present. There was some instigation. I've talked to reporters who were there covering it myself by some of those people toward the January 6th protesters. I'm not saying all of them were incensed by that. Some of them just behaved terribly. But at least we know that like at the BLM riots, that was organic. That was like, well, it was George Soros funded and all that. But I mean, leftist planned and organic rage as opposed to, you know, right wingers who were there trying to make left wingers look bad. That's not what happened. And it went beyond, it was property damage. It was murder. It was injuries to cops actually throwing bricks at cops heads. We saw that down in Baltimore. I mean, you mentioned the the murder rate in Baltimore right now. Those cops got completely harassed down there. I remember that one that night, not to mention the absurd razier fist. We pulled some video of one couple getting harassed in Pittsburgh as BLM terrorized a white couple. Watch this. BLM, this is how you're treated. Take a plan to bail in Pittsburgh, in that hell, and see how it's not real bad. 12 and f*** those people that built this district, that's mine. You owe them f***ing. They're confronting a white couple at the table. Uh huh. In their faces. They're drinking their drinks. They f***ing go. They f***ing go. They f***ing go. They knocked the drink over and put a fist in the air. We all saw the videos, too, of them making people say BLM, say it, say it. You know, the harassment. I know we're spending a lot of time on Huston, Rich, but this is a leftist narrative that we cannot let stand. The BLM riots were terror. It was domestic terror that was unleashed on the streets of America for months. Not in all cases. I personally watched a BLM demonstration on the Upper West Side that it was, that was totally peaceful. I did. It was fine. It was normal Americans who were upset about what they'd seen on that tape and they got together and protested. That's fine. That's their right. That's as American as Apple Pie. But you and I both know that the vast majority of what we saw in the summer of George Floyd of Palooza was anti-American. It was riotous. It was criminal. It was illegal. It was harassing. It was burning. It was looting. And it was setting black people up for more death and murder, which has been documented. Spent two minutes talking to Heather McDonald. She can walk you through precinct by precinct. What happened with policing and what happened in poor black neighborhoods as a result of the drawback. We've interviewed people on this show, black members of these communities who saw crime, skyrocket as a result of the cops pulling back. And she, Sonny Hauston, who might be whiter than I am in attitude, et cetera. She's got millions. Her son went to Harvard. She's still bitching about how hard he has it and how like everybody in their white neighborhood wants to kill him. Sure they do. Sure. Wants to go out there and minimize it down to a nothing because she didn't feel anything in Westchester, Rich. You know, she, it was fine. You know, she was like me on the Upper West Side where we saw like a nice protest. She didn't have to deal with it because she's not actually living the black experience of the people I've put on this show. You guys have interviewed at National Review who had a loved one killed or endangered as a result of the insanity she helped unleash. Yeah. So that harassing behavior that you're showing, that's classic revolutionary, totalitarian fervor. You see the same thing in the French Revolution or in the Cultural Revolution in China. It's not enough for you just to walk away or mind your own business or eat your brunch. You have to become a believer. Now because this, the scheme of things is relatively small scale movement and we live in a lawful and liberal society, they weren't guillotying or stoning people afterwards if they didn't go along. But that's the logic that we've seen in other parts of the world over and over again. And this, the deep policing, you had cops quitting, you had jurisdictions reducing the number of cops and you had cops not going to the hotspots, which they need to do. Cops need to go and interact with dangerous people. And in most cities in the country, the vast majority of violent crime is driven by a small number of offenders who've already committed crimes and already known to the authorities. You need to go and get them and arrest them and deter them. And you do that, you have a much safer place. If you don't, you have a debacle. And the years after this, we had a debacle that was a deliberate and foreseeable outcome of these moronic policies. We had all these newspaper headlines, defending, looting. There was a book in defense of looting. Like looting was good, property destruction was great, burning down cop stations was fine, hurting cops, no problem. It's just, it's absolutely absurd. That George Floyd's death should not be marked at all. It shouldn't be a touch point for anything other than a reminder of how badly we allowed certain groups to behave in this country without throwing the book at all of them. It was a revolving door through the police stations that remained standing as they got away with slaps on the wrist and would start an era in earnest of policing that allowed revolving doors. It was really the Ferguson effect that started that, Ferguson, Missouri back years earlier. But this took it times 10. So no, we will not be doing revisionist history on George Floyd and what happened with BLM in the riots. The, a related, I don't know, it's kind of related, it feels related. Story in the news today is what's happening in Minneapolis and Minnesota. Sorry, no, in New Jersey, in New Jersey with, well, there's a couple. And I'm kind of confusing my stories because they're both reminding me of it. In New Jersey, we had lawmakers at an ICE facility trying to storm it, trying to get their moment on camera. And, you know, the nonsense is starting up again. Let me, let me stay there and then I'll go back to Minnesota on what's happening. But it was at a place called Delaney Hall where we had ICE protests. And it seems like to me, this is my headline, you guys tell me what you think, the Democrats are looking for another Minneapolis. They want, you know, the unrest of February and March that we saw there when we were cracking down on illegal immigrants. They're itching to make it start back up again because they know it's good for them. And I mean, I think there's some sincerity to their outrage over the fact that we've got some of these illegal migrants locked up. So what happened yesterday was at this ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, the new governor, female Mikey, Mikey Sherrill was denied access to the complex. All right. So now why does the governor go to an ICE complex? She's looking for her moment, you know, she wants her moment on cam, her AOC moment in the white pants suit, maybe Charlie. And they don't, they don't just open the doors and let her in. So then we start to get a bunch of protesters there because word has gotten out that the prisoners inside are having a hunger strike in response to allegedly terrible conditions. They claim that there are absolutely disgusting things happening inside like worms in their hotels, crowded in non-air conditioned rooms and so on. The Department of Homeland Security, Mark Wayne Mullen, chief says there is no hunger strike happening. There is nothing more than a political stunt by the New Jersey sanctuary politicians for fundraising clicks. And there are no subprime conditions whatsoever that these are all lies for attention, either by leftists or the inmates or both. So she went and then we had protesters outside and then we had Senator Andy Kim, who's a Democrat from New Jersey show up there and the left is going nuts with this imagery because he tried to put himself in between law enforcement and the protesters and tried to deescalate. He says he was trying to deescalate the tactical teams versus the immigrant advocates and they weren't having it. And he wound up getting some crossfire from some pepper spray and there's video now of them spraying his eyes with water to try to relieve him. He's outraged, they're all outraged. You tell me what you make of whether this is happening organically or whether the Democrats have decided they're kind of tired of being quiet and letting the Republicans hurt themselves and engage in the circular firing squad we've all been in for the past six months. And they'd really like some headlines of their own again. Well, I think it's organic. There's probably a large element of organic nature to it because they hate ICE and they believe the lies about ICE that ICE is an American gestapo. Now it's often asked, we'll see these stories about people picked up and detained by ICE and they end up a facility in Texas or Louisiana even if they're picked up in the northeast and people are, this is so terrible why you're transporting them across several states. Because those states, one, actually don't obstruct these kind of facilities and two, you typically don't see these kind of protests outside these sort of facilities. So maybe bad things are happening there. I don't know, maybe they're worms in the... Andy's in that video on the soup by the way. Sorry to keep you on the road. Yeah, maybe something bad's happening there but the ICE has very specific standards for detention. They are extensively overseen by all sorts of House and Senate committees, five or six in the GAO. So it's very unlikely that these horror stories are happening but they want to believe these protesters that these are gulag type facilities and they do not deserve to exist and they should be shut down. And if you're a senator and you become part of the mob, we haven't seen video of the actual tear gassing but if you're getting in the way there between a mob and law enforcement officials who want to move people out, you might get tear gassed, right? That's on you, not on them. What do you think is going to happen? Yeah, it's kind of a classic op where you become part of the mob and then you're shoved or they yell at you or you get tear gassed and you're like, oh my God, look what they did to me as a sitting US senator. Yeah. She's a classic play but you're right, Megan. Right, you're... Yeah, we're no longer... ICE is no longer picking them up in Minnesota but the fight has moved to this different realm now. It's also... I clearly wanted the headline. To me, this would make more sense, Charlie, if it were Abigail Spanberger who has ruined Virginia in just a matter of a couple of months and has already terrible poll numbers as a result of going far left, which she's far more radical than she led the Commonwealth Motors to believe. But New Jersey, Mikey Sherrill was part of that same little trio that got elected in the State House races last election cycle. And she also promised to be more moderate. You remember, she was in a very tight race there with the Republican. So I don't totally understand what she's doing. Let me just give you a little sound bite of her along with Senator Andy Kim together on site there before the alleged pepper spray incident. This type of facility shows exactly why we should not have private mass detention facilities. They were raising not just concerns about the conditions but about how they are intentionally not being given access to the courts, that this is a farce of a system. Your thoughts on it? I have a lot of thoughts on it. The distinction that I have drawn right from the beginning of this is between people who have specific criticisms, which is fine. This is a free country and people who don't believe in the enforcement of law at all and or are trying to block it, which is I think what we saw in Minnesota. I'm happy to talk to people about what our immigration policy should be or how I should behave. But if you are of the view that ISIS per se legitimate because all immigration enforcement is illegitimate and you're going to try to kick out ice from your locality, then we don't have much to talk about because you are repudiating our constitutional order. I don't think that Andy Kim is doing that. I do think that he went down there to get pepper sprayed. I think this is a growing problem. This is true on the right as well. This is not purely a Democrat problem of politicians behaving more like activists, preferring to be activists, forgetting that they are lawmakers and they are part of the machinery and ought to use their influence within it. I think that distinction has to be drawn. Rich mentioned these complaints that people are moved around across the country. It sounds a bit specific, but that's a perfect example of how silly some of these objections have become. It might sound to people as if that's somehow sinister. ISIS is a federal organization. Immigration is a federal question. Of course, people are moved around the country. I live in Florida. I file my business taxes in Utah. Where was Timothy McVeigh then after he was Colorado? This is how the federal government works. It moves people around. There's nothing sinister about that. The reason I bring that up is just because it's another good example. They did it with Carl Rittenhouse as well, by the way. He crossed state lines as if people aren't allowed to do that. This is another good example of how what should be quite a straightforward policy debate, which again, I'm open to, is elevated up into something that it's simply not. Then you end up with ICE being cast as the Nazis. When there are federal law enforcement agency that is enforcing a federal law that's been on the books for a very long time and that by all accounts was ratified pretty emphatically in 2024, where immigration was a huge issue. I just find it so difficult to talk to people in the Andy Kim mode about this topic because they're not really complaining about the specifics. They're rejecting the very notion of immigration enforcement per se. Once they do that, I just don't have much to say back. The irony is, Rich, they kind of won this fight. Unfortunately, they already won this. I had Greg Bovino on the program just a couple of weeks ago. He's the ousted top, one of the top dogs at Customs and Border Patrol. He was saying, there's really no question that the homin, and I love Tom Homan, but he's definitely representing more of the worst, not just first, but kind of worst only policy that the Trump administration has retreated to in the wake of the PR debacle in Minneapolis. Those crazy blue-haired ladies got their way. Trump did take his foot off the accelerator. I get why his poll numbers were precipitously falling. The public did not approve of what they were seeing, the death of Alex Pretty and the other woman and enabling media and so on. All just created a political firestorm for the president. We've eased up. I'm not sure what the Democrats are doing other than they need another hit off the needle. It felt so good. Yeah, I think there are two things. One, the homin approaches, I understand it, in theory would be, you let up on the very visible presence in cities and picking people up in a public way. Which is kind of what Bovino was involved in. Let's kind of scare everyone and get a lot of legal immigrants to go home. There's something to be said for that approach as well. But Homan also wanted work site enforcement, major workplace enforcement. He's been telling people at events and privately, this is coming. It hasn't come yet. I think his approach would be a sounder one if you're actually doing it, but we haven't seen that in part because Trump's ambiguous at best about work site enforcement. And then two, what Democrats are up to the end of the day, they just consider immigration enforcement illegitimate. So you see this cascade where they oppose the public operation in Minneapolis, that ends. Then they oppose the detention. We know nothing about how these people were picked up. It doesn't matter to them. They're just being detained and that's wrong. And then if they could, again, they'd work their way all the way down to, let's not enforce the border. And they'd protest that as well because they don't consider it illegitimate. I think this is, they don't consider it legitimate. And this is an underestimated aspect of politics. People do things by and large, shockingly, because they think it's the right thing. And they think it is moral to let anyone who comes in the country and claims asylum into the country. They think it's the right thing to do. At the end of the day, that's why Joe Biden did it. If he didn't think it was the right thing to do, the groups pushing him to do it thought it was the right thing to do because they have this righteous belief that borders end of the day. They shouldn't exist or if they do exist, they should basically be aligned in the map and a suggestion not to come into the country, not a barrier to coming in the country. And that's still driving them. So they've been pushed back on all this stuff, Megan. This is the connection to the George Floyd. It's not at the extreme high tide it was, any of this, but you can see it's still there. And if they get unified control in Washington in 2028, they're going to try to bring it back with a vengeance. Well, speaking of Democrats making dumb moves, Kamala Harris is back in the news. Charlie's favorite, Mrs. Who He Loves. He misses her desperately and I'm happy to tell you, you might be getting a whole lot more of her. There was an in-depth piece in Vanity Fair and the title of it is Who Wants Kamala Harris to Run? In response to which I thought, I do, I definitely do. I do not speak for Charlie, but I definitely do. It starts with a great quote by James Carvel. It's written by Aiden McLaughlin who writes, quitting the endless campaign is easier said than done. When Al Gore was in the same position as Kamala Harris, James Carvel quipped that running for president is like sex. You don't do it once and forget about it. He writes that she drew 75 million votes in 2024. This is why she might have a case for running. The most of any runner up in history, she holds a double digit lead in some early primary polls. Her book was a smashing success, selling half a million copies in its first week. The extension of her book tour was not forced either. She's drawing sold out crowds and she's proven a popular voice on social media. He writes where a recent TikTok video excoriating the Supreme Court decision on voting rights drew more than 19 million views. According to multiple sources, close to the former vice president, she remains undecided but is strongly considering another run. Quote, people around her are pushing her to run. Says a person who's spoken with her. She seemed inclined to seriously entertain it. I'll get you to weigh in before I get to part two of his piece, which begins as follows. I spoke with more than two dozen Harris campaign staffers, former White House aides, elected officials, political ops, and big dollar donors for this piece. Aside from her own close advisors, none spoke enthusiastically about a Harris 2028 campaign. Some, after praising Harris on the record, asked to speak on background to give more candid opinions about her political future. So there's what they're saying on the record of anti-fair, and then there's what they're saying in order to try to guide the piece to get her not to do it, Charles, which tells us what? Well, which tells us that they think she might lose. I mean, if she were to run again and become the nominee, we really would be in a new era. One of the things that is so interesting about American history before, about the 1950s is you do get a lot of characters who lose a general election and then come back. You know, Adley Stevenson ran twice in the 50s. William James Bryan ran three times in the late 19th century. And that just stops at some point, 60 or 70 years ago. But if she were to come back and be the nominee, then we'd have had Trump who lost an election in 2020 and then came back and won in his case. And then we'd have Kamala Harris. So I think the last person who did that was Richard Nixon, who lost in 1960 and won in 1968. But that was uncommon. I don't think it's going to happen. As you can hear, I'm quite interested. The running? I think she's going to run, but I don't think she's going to win the nomination. And as you can hear, I'm quite interested by this sort of history side of it. But I just don't think that that's going to happen. I think once again, she is incapable of seeing how she comes across. I think that's been a problem for her entire career. I'm slightly also incapable, Megan, of judging her. Fairly because I hate her and I think she's the worst person in American life. But if you look at the last election, she really did fall on her face. And the new narrative is that she was let down by Joe Biden. In fact, there was a piece that used the word, they said Biden effed her. I think this was twice in the piece. Yeah. And I'll be perfectly honest. When I first read that, I thought, well, that is a scandal. Until I realized the context and they meant politically. I'm serious. I was completely shocked by this. I've been away for a week and I thought, wow, I've missed a scandal. I'm not sure that's true. I mean, I think that Biden didn't do her any favors. I think it was very difficult for a vice president running to separate herself out from Joe Biden. I also just think that she's not particularly good at it. And it wasn't the case that she had to throw in at the last minute and that she didn't have enough time. She was doing much better at the beginning. The more time went on, people began to shift from her and realize what she was. So I do think she's going to try and run again. I think she thinks she should be president. I don't think she's going to get the nomination. I love this. I love it so much. And I want it very badly. Here is that piece quoting again from the Vanity Fair piece. President Biden's disastrous decision to run for a second term and his late parachute pull to exit the race did her no favors. Quote, Joe Biden fucked her, says the third White House aide. He after and according to her book, he called her the morning of the debate to be like, I heard your donors are talking shit about me back to this source. He was the fucking worst. He's a prick. So this is probably the aide to Kamala who's speaking to Aiden McLaughlin here, Rich, because of course, team Harris completely blames team Biden for the loss. But it goes on to say just a couple of the other quotes. I've spoken to maybe one person at 100 who thinks she should run, says another source, whether it's former campaign colleagues, people around DC or just people around the country who are like, oh God, she's not going to run again. I've been all over the country for these midterms. I've not encountered anyone, anyone who said, boy, I really hope Kamala runs, says one veteran Democratic operative. Will she run most likely? Yes. Should she absolutely not? Says a former White House aide. There is no appetite for the former VP to return to the campaign trail. I can't really name one person who's excited about the prospect of her running. I am or thinks that it would wind up being a successful endeavor, nor are donors particularly enthusiastic. So those realities are going to be heard by the Kamala Harris team. It's not like whatever they're saying publicly, they're aware of this. Yeah, she's going to run. I think she should run. What else is she going to do? And she'd have some chance of winning the nomination. The chance wouldn't be zero. Now, Biden did screw her in that he was an unpopular president, right? And she couldn't escape. So that was bad. But he also handed a nomination to her that she got by calling some people on the phone one afternoon. How often does that happen? So, but I've been completely dismissive of another Kamala Harris campaign, but doesn't see one reaction when a candidate loses. We never want to see you again. Forget it. Thank you. Goodbye. I don't think that's the reaction of Democrats to her. She's leading in the pollings very early. That's probably name ID. But do you run down the other possibilities? You're like, are any of these people giant killers themselves? No. So I think it's the chance for winning the nomination is not zero. I bet on the field rather than her, but she's going to give it a college try. And for her purposes, she should. There's news about AOC today, which we'll talk about in a minute. But first we take a break. More with Rich and Charlie who are here for the show on this NR day. Don't go away. What does it feel like when your clothes actually feel good? This spring, cozy earth makes the case that what you wear at home matters just as much as what you wear out of the house and maybe even more. Let me tell you about the brushed bamboo jogger set made from viscose from bamboo. It's lightweight, breathable and unbelievably soft with enough structure to feel put together even at home or their lake house clogs. Designed for everyday home life, they feature a cushioned footbed, ultra soft interior and easy slip on design. And with easy returns and a lifetime warranty, it's comfort worth upgrading to. Give yourself the kind of comfort that lives with you all day. Designed to keep you cozy, comfortable and actually relaxed all season long. Head on over to cozy earth.com and use our code MAGAN for up to 30% off your order, but just for a limited time. This exclusive offer runs just through June 1st. Okay. Through June 1st only. So do not wait. That's code MAGAN at cozy earth.com for up to 30% off. And if you see a post purchase survey, tell them that you heard about cozy earth right here. We are back now with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cook of National Review for our and our day here at the MK show. Debbie Murphy really wants me to get this line in from that vanity fair piece. And so I must it ends with them or at least toward the end of the piece. They write in late April at a summit in Chicago, Kamala Harris was asked what she's learned about herself as she's had time to reflect over the last few months. Quote, I don't like losing. She said, breaking into a laugh as she looked out into the audience. We don't either an attendee in the audience shouted back. Move along lady. You are the loser. I think you got to come to terms with that fact and keep going. Okay. AOC. The last we heard from AOC on any sort of national basis was just a couple of months ago in Munich, where she was asked some foreign policy questions that were very, very basic. The three of us understand most of my audience understands that the basic policy of the United States with respect to Taiwan is something we call strategic ambiguity, where we really don't want the Chinese reclaiming Taiwan and taking it back over. And we may or may not be prepared to defend Taiwan from such an attempt, but we don't talk about it. We don't want to provoke the Chinese. We don't want to provoke the Taiwanese on whom we rely for our computer chips and so on. So we've just kind of maintained the shoulder shrug policy when that subject comes up. It's kind of basic. It's kind of interesting, really. This is not something that the three of us should know. And AOC, who is she's been in Congress since 2018, right? We're going on eight years now, should not know. She should know, especially because she continues to get mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. And she doesn't tamp down that talk. But here's how it went for her in Taiwan before I get to what is happening today, not in Taiwan, in Munich, about Taiwan, sought 16B. Would and should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move? You know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, this is, of course, a very long-standing policy of the United States. And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point. And we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise. Okay. So she was mocked universally. We cut out the long pauses just to keep the sound bite going, but it sounds even worse when you hear her long pauses. And now we get this from Axios. AOC takes more steps toward a 2028 run. Democratic operatives expect that she would easily raise $100 million or more just from small-dollar donors, mobilize many supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders past campaigns, and command attention as few other candidates could. She has launched a national tour in recent weeks without calling it that. Justin May, she's rallied voters in Philadelphia for a left-wing congressional candidate in a competitive primary. She's spoken at a rally in Montgomery, Alabama about voting rights. She's addressed the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta with Georgia Senator Rafael Warnock. She met with Rev. Martin Luther King's junior's daughter at the King's Center in Atlanta to talk about data center and voting rights. She's visited the Morehouse School of Medicine to discuss Black maternal health. She's rolled out several endorsements and races across the country. None of this, I don't hear, you know what I don't hear and hear? Queens. I don't hear anything about her district, which includes Queens and part of Westchester. Nothing, nothing. Okay. Here is what I did hear from her when she went to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where she seems to be taking on some of the characteristics of Kamala Harris. See if you can guess why I say that. Listen. I'm here today, brothers and sisters, with a simple message. We stand together and we are not going back. What happens to New York, what happens to Tennessee, happens to California, what happens to Louisiana, happens to all of us. Ebenezer, because this is America. We are not divided by state. We are united by our humanity and common citizenship. Because no man can grant us our humanity. No law can erase it. No King, no system and no president can strip it away. Ebenezer, because it is not given by man. It is ordained by God. Thank you Ebenezer Church and Happy Mother's Day. Praise God. They're both smiling. Rich, you want to start on that one? We always talk about this mocked people that do this. I just wonder whether it just seems like inevitable. Anyone who speaks in a black church feels the need to talk that way. If I stood at Ebenezer, the podium there, I'd do it too. Maybe it's just a network of such a powerful, rhetorical American style. I would or I wouldn't? No, you wouldn't. It's ridiculous. You're not a ridiculous person. Thank you. Because seriously, can you actually manage yourself standing in front of a mostly black crowd in a church and being like, brothers and sisters, in front of God? No, you would not happen. I'm the same way on AOC as Kamala. I think she should run. I think she is going to run. She's so light though, so light. I think Kamala kind of statesperson compared to AOC. Yes, I mean, sadly, you're right. She's all white suit and it's an empty one, Charlie, but she is popular with the progressive wing of her party. Yeah. Well, in her defense, in her answer in Munich, she had the ambiguity down, just not necessarily. She's halfway there. I just spent a week in the Deep South and I will agree with Rich to some extent. It's quite tempting to start talking like the people around you because it's such a lelting way of communicating, but it is also ridiculous. To that extent, I really think that people who aren't African Americans in church should try and avoid slipping into sounding like African Americans in church. She couldn't do it and Hillary couldn't do it. I don't know what it is to infect Democrats when they enter a church that they suddenly become. That I think she's going to run too. I actually think that perhaps one reason she did do this is because it might be her biggest problem gaining African American voters. If you look at the last few years of Democratic primaries, Democrats have been dispositive. They're the ones who've decided who the nominee is. Sorry, African American Democrats who've decided who the nominee is. But they've also been more moderate. They saved the party from Bernie Sanders in 2020 and they revivified Joe Biden who looked as if he was done. The wing of the party that AOC represents is the Bernie Sanders wing. That's who she is. I would be surprised if there was a mass uprising, to use a word we used earlier, of African American Democrats in her favor. Perhaps she knows that. Perhaps she's trying to change that by going to their church. The last thing is, it was quite funny, wasn't it, when she was just speaking? Because she got some parts of the tone and the intonation and the pattern right. But she couldn't say Ebenezer right. So she sort of ended up, she kept adding the R on the end. So she ended up sounding almost Irish or something where she sort of say Ebenezer and then she'd go like a pirate. She hasn't quite got it. She's not quite there yet. But she's gonna run. It's not the first time she's tried it. We actually have an AOC montage of her trying to sound like a preacher. Here's a little bit. Watch. About how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out so much of the boots to breathe traveling on our way of life. That's way worse. I mean, that's bordering on parody. We've talked about this. One of the reasons is that it's such a great, the black preacher sort of tone is so great. I just could listen to it all day. Yes, we're authentic. Of course she wants to sound like that. It's wonderful. Yes, yes. If you had the actual Rafael or not doing it, fine. That's cool. But here she is. Remember she was campaigning. It was a Jamal Bowman when he was in trouble and she went and she campaigned for him and she looked like a lunatic. This is when she whipped her hair out of the bun here. Watch. Look. Running, jumping. Before the week. Just jumping, jumping, jumping. Reminds me of my aerobic stays. Screaming. Here comes down the hair. What the? Charlie, are you feeling that special tingle that you feel when you watch Jasmine Crockett or no? No, I love Jasmine Crockett. I love Jasmine Crockett. I know you do. But no. And in fact, the opposite. I actually think that that's lowered my opinion of AOC quite seriously because I don't think she's particularly good at that. I've always thought that although she's a lightweight and I didn't think she's going to be the nominee, I've always thought she had something. She's good on social media. She's savvy. But those three videos have lowered my opinion of her. Ruined AOC for Charlie. But she's just, yeah. The Republicans should consult me before they run their campaign ads against her. I think I've found the magic sauce. She's not particularly good at that. But again, I don't think that's her lane, as they say. I think if she has a lane, it's not going to be that one. To me, that looks like a caricature of what Hollywood might produce in a movie of what a really hot, young, leftist politician looks and sounds like. But in real life, no one's voting for that other than some tiny percentage of far-left young progressives with multiple piercing stretch. Yeah. So I thought the case for her running is that she could pick up the Bernie Sanders coalition. And that's a lot in the Democratic Party. But the thing with Bernie, absolutely authentic, like him or hate him, and always knew his brief. You never have a sense when he gets any question thrown at him that he doesn't know the answer. He hasn't thought it through sincerely. True. And not the case with AOC. No. Well, over on Team Blue, we have some interesting news out of the state of Maine. Graham Platner is running. He's a former US Marine Corps member. And he served four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and is taking on Susan Collins, who's this sort of more moderate, to put it mildly, Republican, who's been in office for a long time. And he's up over her by eight points right now. And you can see why, because Maine is not particularly right-leaning anymore. And though she's been there for a long time, she's been there for a long time. And I think on both sides, there's sort of like a, oh, do we have any fresh blood feeling coming into the parties? And she's definitely not fresh blood. She's older. She sounds older. She's got the shaky voice thing, which I think is a health thing as opposed to an age thing, but whatever, she just doesn't seem all that robust. And he's coming for her. He's up eight for the, and this is a Senate seat that, you know, the Republicans would like to defend. Now, it comes out, and I don't know why now it's interesting, but it comes out that he, on this Reddit account, that's caused him so much trouble. You know, he's made a lot of controversial comments over there, and it was deleted, but it's all archived, so everybody has it, that he saw a video posted by PFC Ted Daniels from Afghanistan, and it's of Daniels fighting with his brethren over there. He's an American in 2012, and Daniels in this video gets shot. This isn't American. This is one of ours. It gets shot four times. Now you see him sort of at the top, looks like at the top of the hill, and then he goes down under the face of the hill, putting himself much more in the front, in the line of fire, because the Taliban fighters are shooting already when they're at the top of the hill. Never mind if you're going to crawl down the front of it and continue shooting at them. He would later say he did that to draw the fire away from his comrades, but whatever, he got shot four times and lived to tell about it. Thank goodness. Here's the video for our Taliban fighters. I'm hit! Let's see if from his helmet. I'm hit! I'm hit! Fuck! No! Help me! I'm hit! I'm hit! I'm hit! I'm hit! I'm hit! The Great Jim Garrity has a column at National Review about this right now. I believe it was broken by Fox News Digital late last week, and the headline is that Graham Platner has sparked outrage again as he appears to mock this wounded soldier, saying he's a dumb motherfucker who didn't deserve to live, quoting here. At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and holding contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban's part is the only reason this mouth breather made at home. He managed to make every possible shit decision when it comes to small unit combat. So the headline is he didn't deserve to live, and then it appears that he, Graham Platner, did not respond at first when asked outside of a market near his home whether he regrets making the post. Let's see, did not respond, and doesn't look like he is feeling too remorseful about it because he still, as far as I can tell, has not responded, has not apologized, and is just sort of standing by saying that a fellow service man who risked his life, or us in Afghanistan, honorably, and received a purple heart for his four bullet wounds, deserved it, and actually didn't deserve to live, and that he's a dumb motherfucker. Your thoughts on it, Charlie? Well, I think Graham Platner is a creep, and I think that that is obvious across pretty much everything I know about the guy. He has, oh, sorry, had a Nazi tattoo on his chest, which is something I, in my 41 years of somehow, managed to avoid doing by accident. And from that moment on, he has got worse and worse and worse, and I think it's absolutely astonishing that he's up eight in Maine, and I hope he loses. I mean, it's not even as if there's much of an excuse. Susan Collins is a moderate establishment figure, a very nice lady, who seems to be unimpeachable in her personal life. She's less conservative than I am, but she's also a senator in Maine. So this idea that anyone but Susan Collins has to be elected to that seat, I think is ridiculous. Once again, Graham Platner in that Reddit post is saying words that you couldn't waterboard out of me. I mean, we've seen him talk about women in absolutely appalling ways. We've seen him profess himself to be a communist, and now he's pleased when he sees American soldiers being shot. I almost can't believe this is a real person. I can't believe this is a real race. And after the last 10 years of American politics, that's saying something. It's true. Wait, correcting myself here, Garretty's post goes on to say that after he originally tried not to respond, he did pull the indignation card, Rich, by saying, I did four tours in the infantry. Any attempt to say that I disrespect veterans is slanderous and offensive when asked the follow up question. Slanderous and offensive. I mean, is it because like he didn't deserve to live seems pretty black and white to me. It seems pretty simple to just say, I was behaving like a knucklehead. I shouldn't have said that. I was being an idiot because I thought his decision on the battlefield was really dumb. And I wasn't articulate about saying that. Yes, clear this guy's poisonous toad. We have extensive record online of him being a poisonous toad and no evidence that he's stopped being a poisonous toad. But what they're going to argue is that this is a product of his service and he was in a bad place when he came back. So that's why he was such an a-hole online. I hate to say it. I think you got a favor in this race. It's going to be a very tough year for Republicans. Now, Susan Collins is a survivor. She's survived with the polling was against her before. Maybe she will this time. But I kind of think the other Democrat would have been easier for Susan Collins because it was an 80 year old white woman with a real poor record as governor and quite a left wing record as governor. Whereas Platinum's anti-establishment, he's something fresh and new in lots of bad ways, I would argue, but different than Susan Collins. So he's got a real puncher's chance in this race. And I hate saying it because he deserves to be a streamer like Hasan Piker and not anywhere near the Senate. But he's got a real chance to be there next year. He's, I mean, he's for expanding the Supreme Court. He's for making Puerto Rico and DC a state. So before our friends up in Maine fall in love with his anti-war stance, which I know a lot of Republicans are feeling, yours truly included, let's not get so blind on his radical leftist nature as to fall in love with him. I'm sure there's a lot of positions that our friends across the aisle may share with us on one issue or another, at least certainly if you're an independent like I am. But good God, he, you know, there's no expanding the Supreme Court and there's definitely no making Puerto Rico and DC states or the Republicans will never win an election ever again. That blog has had a lot of things on it. One of the most offensive was somebody posted white people aren't as racist or stupid as Trump thinks. And his response was living in white rural America, I'm afraid to tell you, they actually are. And I mean, there's tons of really offensive stuff on here. He's ripping on black people and whatever. It's like it goes on and on. But that's Graham Plattner who's again up eight. And speaking of Democrats who have stepped in it over the weekend intentionally or not, Tom Steyer is running for LA mayor next to Spencer Pratt, who should be winning. And sorry, governor, and next to next to our friend, Steve Hilton, who should be winning. And he decided to weigh in on the transgender debate on the podcast of the very angry lady with the blonde hair. I can never remember her name, but she, he went on her podcast and the subject of trans athletes comes up. He's from California. Keep in mind, just this past weekend, there's one of the most infamous trans athletes competed in track and field. This is a boy who looks like a girl now because he's posing as one with the long blonde hair. It's a boy and he's crushing all these women in the high jump and the long jump and the triple jump by like several inches and several feet depending on the event. And no female is keeping up with him. Now that the accommodation that Gavin Newsom has come up with for these female athletes, the actual female athletes is that if they're, you know, first, but for the presence of this boy, they get to stand on the podium with him. They can stand up there next to the boy posing as the girl and they both get a first place medal. It's ridiculous. Get off of my riser. Go to the boys event. Steve, you can get yourself on the riser there. Get off of my riser. That's what these girls are clearly thinking, looking at him like, what are you doing up here? So Tom Steyer from California, a billionaire, decides to weigh in on this debate. And this is what he said, Sot 14. I'm totally in favor of trans athletes in high school. I think when you understand the vulnerability, the stress, the danger of being a trans kid and you understand that almost half of them try to commit suicide. Yeah. And then you think we're going to punish those kids. We're going to cut them off from team sports. We're going to cut them off from participating in the community. We're going to cut them off from fun. It's like, no, we're not. No, we're not. And you know, as someone who played sports my whole life and love sports and love playing sports, they're more important things than whether you start on your high school basketball team. And that is standing up for people who are under threat of death. Oh my God, shame on you, Tom Steyer. Shame on you. Rich's head is like in his chest right now. This is so outrageous that these young girls have to endanger themselves. I mean, literally, I refer to the girl in Lowell, Massachusetts on the field hockey field who got all of her teeth knocked out. The other girls were so horrified, some of them could barely go on by a boy wielding a field hockey stick and inadvertently smashing it in her face with the force that a boy who's in full boy puberty with all of his testosterone coming in can do that. That has to happen because it's the boy who is in danger according to Tom Steyer. It's the boy who is experiencing stress and vulnerability. How dare he? I issued him an invitation to come on this program to have a debate with somebody who actually will challenge him. Respectfully, we can have it. No response because he's super tough, Rich, while he's sitting across from the angry lady who's a far leftist, but he wouldn't dare come on this program and say that to me. He doesn't have the balls. I don't care how many billions he has. He's so wrong. He's a coward and he's a failure. That sound bite is so wrong on every level, including as you guys at National Review know, because you've been reporting on it. And was it Audrey Falkberg? But I can't remember. She hasn't been there in a while, but you know who I mean. She did a great report on putting the lie to this nonsense. It's about half of trans youth attempt suicide. That is total bullshit. Everything he said is bullshit. Hold on a second. I have it in front of me. Oh, it's Maddie Kerns. It was Maddie Kerns who said, the only long-term study done on transsexuals like post-surgery. So like they've done the crossover to see if like, did having the procedures make them less suicidal, you know, more well. It was a 2011 Swedish study and it found overall mortality for these people was higher, was higher than for those who remain in their biological sex. Your thoughts? Well, Steyer is a class enemy because he's a billionaire. So he's pandering and desperate clawing to get into one of the top slots in that gubernatorial primary. But you're right. This answer has everything terrible in it. Beginning with his go-to argument for everything that if you don't bend to the trans agenda, you are causing trans people to die because they're going to commit suicide. Now we've heard it mostly with regard to so-called gender reassignment surgery. But here we are if this guy is not on the podium with the girls, he's going to commit suicide. It's insane. And yeah, it's not the most important thing if you're a girl, whether you're starting on a high school basketball team or not, varsity basketball team. But it is pretty important when you spent years on a travel team, probably practicing, playing, and it's one of your aspirations. Why should a guy take your spot on the basketball team or anything else? It's crazy. And then also the idea that trans people won't have fun. Fun will be banned and prohibited for them if they aren't competing. He has girls and competitive sports. It's just everything about it so vomit inducing. They also... You know what's fun? It's fun to win. It's really fun to win. And I'm sure that this A.B. Hernandez in California is having a grand old time, less so the girls coming in behind him. Go ahead, Charles. They always play both sides of it. On the one hand, they say it's so important that people who say they're of the opposite sex need to play in sports, that we need to upend all of our institutions to accommodate it. And then they say when it happens, well, it's only sports. It's not like sports matter. You know, I like sports, but it's not like sports are important. You've got to pick a lane. They're either important or they're not. And the reason they do that is that they know that they are actually very important to people. And they know that Congress recognized that they're important to people, which is why we have Title IX. And Congress did not intend Title IX to be hacked by men who by dint of their biological virtues, I suppose they are bigger and stronger on average than women, can win. The second thing is, Rich talked about the threat of suicide. That is a fundamentally undemocratic position. I mean, to say I have to get my way or I'll kill myself in any other circumstance would be rejected out of hand. If I said I didn't tax is too high. So unless you lower taxes, I'm going to kill myself. Or to pick something that is far more important in the grand scheme of things, abortion, I'm pro life. I think abortion is killing in most states, abortion is legal. In some states, abortion is legal almost to the point of birth. So am I allowed to say you have to enforce my particular abortion preferences or I'll kill myself? And then what everyone just has to follow it. It is completely ridiculous that that's become currency within our political system. And in addition to Maddie Kerns is reporting on that study at 2011 from Sweden, remember when that trans lawyer went before the Supreme Court in Scrimetti, which was looking at whether you could stop the pre pu the puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for trans youth. And this, this lawyer who I think is a woman posing as a man who goes by the name chase strain, Gio got up there and made a stunning admission when Alito pressed her again, she's posing as a he pressed her on this ridiculous claim because she tried to argue that these trans youth, if they didn't get access to all these puberty blockers, etc. were going to kill themselves. And finally, somebody in the form of Justice Alito, who is entitled to honesty from a member of the Supreme Court bar, no matter what her issues, pressed her on what is that true? Like what is the data for that? And she gave it up. Listen. On page 195 of the cash report, it says, there is no evidence that gender affirmative treatments reduce suicide. What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is can completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare. And we're talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don't necessarily have completed suicides within them. However, there are multiple studies, long term longitudinal studies that do show that there is a reduction in suicidality, which I think is a positive outcome to this treatment. Suicidality. So she's saying it'll reduce the amount that they want to kill themselves. Okay, there's actually not data to support that either. Like this is a lie that continues to be pushed on us. But as you point out, Charlie, even if it were true, and by the way, if it's, if the suicidality is caused by the fact that they're not allowed to transition, then why do why do we have an increased at to some level, thoughts of suicide by L's and G's, the lesbian and gay crowd, right? Like they're not looking at transition. Could it be that just being in the LGBTQ rainbow, you know, coalition raises additional challenges that, you know, you may find stressful, and there's no surgery that's going to solve it for you. You might need actual therapy to address your issues. But, you know, as you point out, this cannot be a trump card on the sacrifice of girls and women's rights or children's safety and the protection by those of us who are over the age of 18 of their fertility, their right to sexual enjoyment when they get old enough to understand what that is, which is taken away from them when we castrate them at age 11 and 12 as loving but well-meaning parents when it comes to the medicalization. None of this, none of this should be a matter of choice for the parents or anybody else. It's the child's choice that he or she can hold on to and must make only, only when they reach the age of majority. Yeah. Sorry, I'm, I'm still struggling to get over that voice coming out of someone who's a moustache. That was really quite disconcerting. It never fools anybody. It's really bizarre. So what we talked earlier about the summer of 2020 and the moment at which the medical authorities decided that having told us not to go outside for months, taking our kids out of school and so forth, that it was okay to riot. I think there was sort of the moment at which people said, so is this all just made up? Which of course it wasn't, but their guidance was. The same thing happened around the same time with the trans issue. This is one reason why there is such low trust now in government health organizations and academics because from the United States all the way across Europe, people who had previously been trusted, people who had a doctor before their name or PhD after it just started making things up. And you would see people say with a straight face that there was no difference between the average strength of a man and the average strength of a woman. There's no difference in the height between the average man and women. There's no difference in stamina or athletic ability. And the thing is you don't have to have a medical degree or a doctor to know that that is just absolute nonsense. And it wasn't just those sort of boldface lies. It was when you dug down into it, they started lying in papers and in government guidance as well. And this suicide 50% number was just one of those. But there are tons of them that they just proliferated. And they've slowly been pulled back and especially in Europe, which has been a little faster than the United States, a lot of that guidance has been rescinded and a lot of the indulgence has been reversed. But people still remember that there was all of that lying. And I think as you say, what was great about that moment was that there was an immediate consequence for Chase Strangio had Chase Strangio lied to Justice Alita. It's a bit like being put under oath or subpoenaed or put in a box in a courtroom. You suddenly can't do it anymore. Whereas if you're the British National Health Service, or you're a politician, or you work for a state level public health organization, you can say whatever you want to follow the trend. But Chase Strangio couldn't because the court has rules. And that was really a terrific moment by Justice Alita where he got Chase Strangio to admit that. Yeah, you have a duty of candor to the court as an officer of the court. And I mean, especially when it's the Supreme Court and you're part of the Supreme Court bar where the behavior bar is up here as well. And so she was caught. She had to give it up. And she did. It's not just streamers and so on. The Hollywood crowd too, still pushing this messaging rich. This went unnoticed because nobody really cares about these two people. But it is indicative of left wing thinking that still dominates the Democrat Party. I mean, that leaked DNC autopsy report that came out, well, it's not leaked because they actually finally made the decision to release it after a lot of pressure. But it said, oh, that Kamala Harris, they them add that Trump unleashed was very, very effective. But then they were quick to say, but it's not going to change any of our behaviors. We're totally, we're on board with the trans thing. Like notwithstanding that, you know, that was a good ad, but nothing's going to change. Here's a little microcosm of really, truly this is how the, the average leftist, not like the more moderate Dems who still linger in some pockets of the country, but the leftists have taken over the party how they think. And this is Lena Dunham talking about Monica Lewinsky. Forgive me. Here you go. What's interesting now is these conversations about now we have more conversations than ever about what gender is, but also this sort of T's very internet word gatekeeping of what being female is, which is this kind of, you know, we know the word turf, like what it is to kind of say, if you haven't been female in this extremely specific way that is involves biology, then you are not welcome at this party. I had, I had Dylan Milvaney on recently. And, you know, it's, it's an amazing, her story is amazing. I have multiple nuclear trans family members. It's a big, it's been a big education for me to see, to be around that. I think, you know, I got to go speak it at trans day of visibility in D.C. last year with this amazing group called the Christopher Street project. And the thing I expressed was just how having a trans sibling, having trans people in my life has really opened up in this most expansive way. So there she's complaining of the gatekeeping of what female is. And of course, Rich, the irony of saying, if you're not female in the exact specific way they want, you're not female. That's biology. That's what a specific thing that's too constraining. She means, she means not having a penis. The left. Yes, exactly. But it's the left that's saying, if you're a tomboy and probably gay, like a female who's probably lesbian, you're, no, you're a boy. That's, that's not being female in exactly the specific way that's demanded by leftist. There's the ones who have reimposed these gender norms. We on team sanity, which is right wingers and they're the independence who lean right. We're fine. We have a big tent. We love our butch lesbians. We're not trying to make them into boys. Okay. And we love our femme boys. We're not trying to make them into girls. It's fine. It's her. That's the irony. She's the one doing all that, Rich. First, by the way, when she said nuclear trans, I was like, is this a new gender? Don't tell Trump you'll invade. This is why a traditional gay guy like the journalist Andrew Sullivan hates this stuff because it would mean like everyone would be trying to convince him, he's really a girl. Or he's like, no, I'm a guy. I'm just a gay guy. So this is crazy. And again, these aren't hugely no disrespect to Monaco, Lewinsky, or Lena Dono, I mean, I did have it right a hit show, not the most thoughtful or original people. So these are just the beliefs that they're received, they come down to them and they're reflecting, right? And thinking they're being extremely original and thoughtful when they're saying it. But again, as a theme of this whole episode is this stuff is still working, hasn't gone away. I believe we've reached peak woke because I don't think they're going to get every institution in American life to go along the way they did in 2020. But they will do as much as they can to push and reimpose the stuff as possible if they're in power again. Once AOC took the pronouns out of her ex bio, it was a very good sign. We were off to the races on the end of peak woke. It was just, you know, she was as woke as they come. She lectured us on all the things and she did take those pronouns down and it's over. I mean, it's lingering. But the war on that issue has been won. We just have a few more legal battles to put to rest. Thank God. Thank God. But so that we have to, we have to, you know, obviously, AB Hernandez is on the podium out in California. So we still have some work to do. But the, I would say the lion share of this battle has been won and is behind us. Thank God. All right. Stand by. Rich and Charlie, stay with us and quick break first. If your dog is scratching more than usual, licking his paws or shaking her head, it might seem like normal dog behavior. But it turns out those can actually be signs. Your dog has allergies and a lot of those issues start in the gut. 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Along with the Megan Kelly show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Droshinsky, Jesse Kelly, real clear politics and many more. It's bold, no BS news. Only on the Megan Kelly channel, SiriusXM 111 and on the SiriusXM app. Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cook are back with me now. So guys, there may or may not be a deal to settle the Iran war or at least to engage in a phase one settlement of the Iran war that would be followed by a phase two, which would take us closer to a more encompassing peace deal. They are saying precious little about it. So I'll tell you what we've cobbled together based on all the reporting. First of all, President Trump has said that it's going to be a good and proper deal if he makes it, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of cash. Our deal is exactly the opposite, he said, but nobody has seen it or knows what it is. It isn't even fully negotiated yet. So don't listen to the losers who are critical about something they know nothing about. I don't make bad deals. Then we did find out from a truth social that he thinks that quote should be mandatory that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan should have to join the Abraham Accords where they recognize Israel's right to exist and engage in diplomatic relations with Israel. Apparently that call didn't go over very well as Axios's Barak Ravid, who's gotten scoop after scoop from the administration, reported that when Trump said it on the call with these people, quote, there was silence on the line and Trump joked and asked if they were still there. So I don't think they want these are Middle East Arab allies joining the Abraham Accords to be part of the settlement of this deal. He also said Iran should join. Okay, good luck with that. I mean, good luck with that. Wow. So we, this is what I think is happening. Trita Parsey, who's done a great job in reporting on this war from the beginning, he posted to his sub stack the following that the agreement includes a comprehensive cessation of hostilities. So we're going to stop bombing them and they're going to stop hitting us over there, including in Lebanon, which was originally what we were supposed to have with this ceasefire, but it didn't go through. Israel kept bombing Lebanon and in fairness to Israel, Lebanon kept attacking Israel too. So we're supposed to have a comprehensive cessation of hostilities, including in Lebanon, the gradual release of Iran's frozen assets. So we've got a bunch of their cash around the world that we're freezing that they can't get access to. And we're going to ease that and an end to America's blockade of the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. So we'll pull to some extent our warfighters from the straight and allow Iranian ports to come back open and online. And then the maritime traffic through the straight, which has been under Iranian control, quote, will would resume under joint Iranian and Omani oversight. Oman is the other country that has access, you know, is the border of Strait of Hormuz, those two. So I don't know what that means. They'll work together to allow ship traffic. Will they be charging? I don't know. And then that would give them additional 30 days to negotiate a final agreement. The second stage would address the nuclear issue and the long-term status of the Strait of Hormuz. I'm just going to give you a little flavor of the reaction from the more hawkish, Republican, and Democrat thought leaders, politicians, and so on here. Watch. I remember when we never used to negotiate with terrorists. Here we negotiate with terrorists repeatedly, constantly. So when they're quote unquote negotiating, they have no intention of living up to any aspect of any deal. Did I really prefer not making a deal and going back to combat operations? They will be empowered here as a result of a deal and they will continue. Where we're going to unfreeze Iranian assets and give them billions of dollars to be able to control proxies again. Giving Iran more money, as he has said, will allow them to do things like fuel their proxies, terrorist proxies. If the result of all of this is to be an Iranian regime still run by Islamists who chant death to America, now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium and develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, that outcome would be a disastrous mistake. The details are still coming out and I pray that the early reports are wrong. Rich, your thoughts. So I think what's going on here clearly President Trump is highly reluctant to start bombing Iran again. I think for a number of reasons, right? One, obviously the politics. Two, we're running low on precision munitions. Three, the Gulf States aren't so sure we can protect them from Iranian retaliation. Now, I also think the Iranians don't particularly want to get bombed again either. So I think both sides are ready for a deal and then both sides are trying to avoid overbidding for a deal. I think we'll get a basic trade of the blockade, our blockade, for an opening of the Strait of Hormuz in some form or another and then you'll see what you can get on the nuclear. The problem Trump has is I think at the moment he seems more eager for a deal than the Iranians are and the Iranians see that and sense that. And two, once the Iranians at the outset of the conflict claim to facto control the Strait and we couldn't or didn't or whatever take it back, then they have this enormous strategic chit that you have to negotiate over to get back before you even get to the nuclear stuff, which you consider most important. So I think there'll be a deal and the devil will be in the details, especially on the nuclear side of it. I'm not surprised to hear them objecting to our loosening the spigot on Iranian assets and funds, Charlie, because that's something that people who can't stand Iran don't trust Iran and think Iran is going to launch some sort of nuke against Israel, et cetera, really don't want for them to be flush with cash. And if they do have control over the Strait at all and we're loosening our restrictions on their cash, they're not going to like that. So does it go through? Well, I don't think that any of the people that you played clips from are going to persuade Trump. I think Trump's going to make his own decision as he did going in. I do wonder if it was a mistake. As you know, I've been unsure as to what I've thought throughout. I'm not as educated in this area as rich as and I'm also not as sure of my views on foreign policy. I mean, to me, it seems that the sort of solid argument, if we end up with that being the deal, is that you've got broadly what we had under Obama, except that we also have bombed their nuclear sites. But we did that before we went in this second time. So I do think it's going to be quite difficult to spin. The argument is going to have to be, well, look, gas prices are coming down again. Well, yeah, but they went up because we went in. So I think Trump might want out, but I'm not sure we're in a particularly good position now. And I think that a lot of the criticisms having gone in that we just heard are correct. Out would be good. I'm in favor of out. I don't think it's going to be pretty or perfect, but out is better than in. And at this point, you know, given the poll numbers on this war, it's like, how much are we going to lose? We can't lose much more. It was like, the grand platter is up by eight, we could lose control of the Senate on team sanity. We're definitely looks like going to lose control of the house. Though the redistricting offers one shed of light. I'm rooting for out. And I hope the president withstands this pressure. Guys, a pleasure as always, check out National Review Go and subscribe, become a member. That's the best way. So you don't have to deal with the ads. They have such great content over there. We will see you right here for more tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.