Character Assassination Attempt on Vance, and Offensive Olympics Opening Ceremony, with Stephen A. Smith and Victor Davis Hanson | Ep. 851

This episode focuses on the media and political attacks on JD Vance, discussing the dynamics of character assassination within the political sphere and the controversies surrounding the Olympics opening ceremony.

1. Character assassination is a potent tool used in politics to undermine opponents.
2. The media plays a crucial role in shaping public perception of political figures.
3. Controversies in large-scale events like the Olympics can reflect broader societal and political issues.
4. Political biases can lead to a polarized interpretation of events and figures.
5. The episode underscores the importance of critical consumption of media.

1: Introduction to the Episode

Megyn Kelly introduces the topics and guests, setting the stage for a discussion on political tactics and media influence. Megyn Kelly: "Today we're diving deep into the mechanics of political narratives and their impacts."

2: The Political Attack on JD Vance

Analysis of the character attacks against JD Vance and their implications. Victor Davis Hanson: "Character assassination is a strategy, not an accident."

3: Media's Role in Politics

Discussion on how media shapes political landscapes and public opinion. Stephen A. Smith: "The media's not just a platform; it's an actor in the political arena."

4: Controversial Olympics Opening Ceremony

Critique of the Olympics opening ceremony and its perceived political messaging. Megyn Kelly: "The Olympics should bring us together, not divide us further."

1. Critically evaluate media sources: Check the credibility of the information and consider multiple viewpoints.
2. Engage in constructive political discussions: Focus on facts and respect differing opinions to foster understanding.
3. Support transparent media practices: Advocate for clear distinctions between opinion and factual reporting.
4. Educate on media literacy: Encourage critical thinking about how media influences perceptions.
5. Promote unbiased reporting: Support initiatives and platforms that strive for impartiality in news reporting.

Megyn Kelly begins the show by addressing the character assassination and attacks on JD Vance, untrue smears about his upbringing, his former close friend now speaking out against him about trans issues by misconstruing his point of view, the fairness of attacking changing policy positions but hypocrisy when it comes to the other side, and more. Then Stephen A. Smith, host of The Stephen A. Smith Show, joins to discuss whether VP Kamala Harris should be seen as responsible for not speaking up about President Biden's cognitive state, her oath to protect the U.S. Constitution, who actually does the work for elected officials, the state of the 2024 race overall, the opening ceremony at the Olympics that was offensive to Christians, boxers with XY chromosomes competing against women at the Olympics, Trump speaking at a black journalists' conference, and more. Then Victor Davis Hanson, author of "The Case For Trump," joins to discuss the media covering for Kamala Harris as she shifts every unpopular position she previously held, the disgusting Democratic messaging and smears from the media about Vance and "couches," a creepy new ad attacking GOP voters, the latest smear of Vance, his pro-family views and the left's anti-family messaging, and more.

People

JD Vance, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris

Companies

CNN, The New York Times

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Stephen A. Smith, Victor Davis Hanson

Content Warnings:

None

Megyn Kelly
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on SiriusXM channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show. Oh, we've got a good show for you today. Steven A. Smith of ESPN is here. And then Victor Davis Hanson, who's been on vacation for the past insane month or so, is here to weigh in on everything that's happened. Looking forward to both of those conversations. First, we begin with the character assassination of JD Vance. JD Vance is a threat to the Democrats because he understands and is attractive to the working class voters of the swing state Rust belt, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In a way, Kamala Harris, a San Francisco liberal, is not.

This, in a nutshell, is why the Democrats and their media allies are on an all out campaign to destroy him. First, the governor of Kentucky, who is auditioning to get on the ticket with Kamala Harris, openly called JD Vance a phony, suggesting he's overstated his connection to hillbilly culture.

Victor Davis Hanson
And I want the american people to know what a Kentucky is and what they look like, because let me just tell you that JD Vance ain't from here. JD Vance is a phony.

He's fake. I mean, he claims to be from eastern Kentucky, tries to write a book about it to profit off our people, and then he calls us lazy, and he called them lazy, acting like he understands our culture and he's one of us.

Stephen A. Smith
He's not.

Victor Davis Hanson
He said it was weird that I attacked. And this is, in his words, his quote, origin story.

Fictional characters have an origin story.

Real people have childhoods. So let me be clear.

JD Vance ain't from Kentucky, he ain't from Appalachia, and he ain't gonna be your vice president.

Megyn Kelly
It's a lie.

It's a lie. Grew up in Middletown, Ohio. His family is from Kentucky, and he spent his summers there as a kid with his grandparents.

This is pretty rich coming from a guy whose daddy paved his way into Kentucky legal circles and who, unlike JD, is not self made, did not grow up in an abusive, fatherless household with Pepsi and his baby bottle. But, ok, I guess he knows more about the working class and their troubles than JD, whose mother is right now a recovering heroin addict.

In the wake of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, the Democrats in the media may feel, may feel a tinge, wary, perhaps, about immediately continuing their incendiary messaging about Trump being a racist, sexist, pig head, Hitler. Not all of them. The Lincoln Project released an ad comparing Trump to Hitler within 48 hours of the shooting. But some.

Who better to turn on then? Then the young, attractive, great american storyholder, JD Vance.

JD, who used to be more of an establishment Republican without much love for the 2016 version of Donald Trump, went through a fairly significant change on maga and its leader over the last eight years. That's true.

This has led much of the media to assert he's an opportunist, he's a money grubber, he's a phony.

Just last night on CNN, Aaron Burnett paraded out a trans person who was one of JD's closest friends in law school. This was despicable. This coward, angry that JD Vance does not support so called gender affirming care for minors, that's not what it is.

Ended their friendship over this issue and then released dozens of their private texts with JD to the New York Times.

Then the person goes on CNN to call JD Craven.

What I've seen is a chameleon, someone who is able to change their positions and their values depending on what will amass them, political power and wealth. And I think that's really unfortunate because it reflects a lack of integrity.

Started talking in this divisive, dismissive, and cruel way about people who were different from him. And that is just not the person that I used to know.

Not only did CNN allow this person to mischaracterize JD Vance's position, he is against sex change procedures for minors, not adults. They smeared his wife Usha, too, suggesting she's also a whore for the mighty dollar.

Well, I don't think anyone knows what JD or Usha believe, because they have literally changed their principles on every imaginable issue.

What I think is reflected in both of their changing of their principles on every single issue is that their core value is amassing money and power, not the integrity and kindness that I think are core values of everyone in the rust belt.

Kindness. This person wants to lecture us on kindness as they stick the knife in both of these people who are very, very good to this person who goes by Sophia. I have no idea whether this is a biological woman posing as a man or vice versa. I don't care.

All of this ignores the fact that a genuine and heartfelt turnaround on Donald Trump is not only possible, it's fairly common in America. Just today, the Wall Street Journal has a piece up noting that young Mendez back Joe Biden over Trump in 2020 by 15 points. Today, they back Donald Trump by 14, a 29 point swing.

Even yours truly has had a turnaround on Trump, who, you may recall, was not my favorite person and vice versa. In the lead up to the 2016 election, what caused my feelings to change? He governed. He implemented policies to, for example, restore due process on college campuses for young men accused of sexual assault. He passed the anti sex trafficking law protecting women and young girls. He revved up our economy. He rolled back regulations. He cracked down on illegal immigration. He struck racist Dei policies from the federal government. He kept us out of new wars and showed strength on the world stage. This after eight years of an american apologist in the White House.

I can relate to JD's reversal on Trump, and I can relate to his change of heart on the trans issue too.

First of all, I think this person is despicable for attacking their old friends publicly in this way. JD went to visit this person after their gender surgery with like food and comfort. He showed kindness and love throughout because he doesn't want these barbaric procedures being performed on children. Now he's evil. Come on.

And CNN with no pushback with any of that, as our audience well knows. I too used to think the kindest route was to support kids who say they're trans, however possible.

And I now see this issue so very differently. We are hacking up children's bodies. We are ending their fertility. We are ruining their chance at a healthy sex life, all in the name of not offending the radical trans activists. And it is morally unforgivable.

This is the Democrats policy, and it is harshly anti woman.

Women and young girls are being forced to share locker rooms and bathrooms and showers with men who parade around with their penises out, not to mention share their prison cells with serial male rapists.

I guess we don't care because they're prisoners. Who cares what happens to the female prisoners? I do.

They're forced to compete against men in sports in which teenage girls are suffering injury and permanent nerve damage. Field hockey, volleyball, basketball, boxing. How is any of this pro women?

But the Democrats want you to believe the real problem is JD Vance's view that childess, childless leftist politicians don't have the same kind of skin in the game that pro family politicians with kids do is disqualifying.

Now even some Republicans are suggesting maybe Trump should dump Vance over this whole thing. The Wall Street Journal just did a podcast on this very subject. Surprise, surprise. They're owned by Rupert Murdoch, who desperately wanted Doug Bergam as the VP nominee. According to the papers, that position is patently absurd and ignores the GOP long history with the media.

The problem with JD Vance is not his comments about women, and the solution to his problems with the press is not finding a better, more moderate nominee. The GOP has tried that. If you do not think the press would be doing this exact thing to Doug Bergam or Glenn Youngkin or Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley, you haven't been paying attention.

They tried to paint John McCain as a racist for weeks after he released an ad in the 2008 campaign comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. A celebrity, not a serious person.

He's the biggest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead?

Ezra Klein called that ad crypto racist. Bill press deliberately racist. Liberal blogger John Marshall McCain portrayed Obama as a caricature of an uppity black man. Don Lemon McCain incited hate hat tip to Joe Concha, by the way, for some of these reminders, John McCain, who adopted a three month old bangladeshi girl from an orphanage, his daughter Bridget, a racist? Sure.

No surprise, though. According to Pew Research, the unfavorable articles about John McCain outweighed the favorable by a nearly four to one margin. Less than 14% of McCain's press was positive in the lead up to the election. Obama's 71% positive, or at least mixed.

How about Mitt Romney? Four years later in 2012, they practically made the man into a Harvey Weinstein after an innocent comment at a town hall about wanting to hire more female employees and reviewing binders full of women to make sure he found them. You would have thought he said he liked to grab women by the p word. Here's just a small sample.

Victor Davis Hanson
Oh.

Stephen A. Smith
Oh, hello.

Victor Davis Hanson
I was just taking a look at.

Stephen A. Smith
Governor Romney's binding the idea there to.

Victor Davis Hanson
Go and ask where a qualified woman was.

Stephen A. Smith
He just should have come to my house.

Victor Davis Hanson
But I am not surprised that he needed the help. I'm less concerned about his awkward construction and what it might say about his attitudes than I am about his record, which is poor.

Megyn Kelly
What does that mean? I don't know, but he had binders. Were they naked? It was a decent answer from a guy who clearly does not give a.

Victor Davis Hanson
Crap about gender equality.

Megyn Kelly
You would think he would at least keep all the women in the kitchen.

Stephen A. Smith
Romney's like, oh, damn it, they came.

Victor Davis Hanson
With a binder full of women. We don't have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven.

Stephen A. Smith
Young women ready to learn and teach.

Victor Davis Hanson
Binders of qualified women that he learned were out there.

We Catholics call that an epiphany.

Megyn Kelly
They also played the race card with Romney arguing his push for welfare reform, akin to what Bill Clinton pushed through, was racist. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, just as one example, head of the DNC told us flat out. She called it a shockingly transparent attempt to play the race card. And on and on and on it went.

Look, the target here is not JD Vance, just as it wasn't Mitt Romney or John McCain. It's any Republican up against a Democrat, especially in a presidential race. It does not matter the man. It only matters the party.

They will take perfectly benign comments and make them truly awful. There is no avoiding this, so stop pretending that there is.

Finally, a word on reversals. JD Vance is accused of having changed his mind on Trump and gender procedures, and even on cops. His ex trans friend says he hated police and produced a text message reflecting that. But now he praises them from the stump reversals. Absolutely fair game for a campaign, but that rule must apply to both sides.

In the course of hours, Kamala Harris has reversed herself on no less than four major policy positions. She wanted to ban fracking. Now she says she doesn't. She wanted to take away private health insurance. Now she says she doesn't. She wanted to institute a mandatory gun buyback program in connection with an assault weapons ban. Now she says the buyback program is a no go. And she backed Biden's hands off approach to the border until days ago when she said she now supports more funding for enforcement. How did the press respond?

By highlighting her old positions and calling her a flip flopper, a political opportunist? Guess again.

Here's Politico.

Harris campaign pledges she won't ban fracking after Trump accusation quoting Trump accusation.

How about after she said repeatedly that she would ban fracking on camera and elsewhere, the body of the piece actually says the Harris campaign is now pledging not to ban fracking, quote, rejecting what it called false accusations by Donald Trump that she would if elected president, end quote. You know, it's a he said, she said instead of this was absolutely her position and there's zero doubt about it. Roll tape. What a fail politico. You ought to be ashamed.

Bottom line is this. The Republicans are always up, always up against dishonest media that loathes them. They were in zero eight. They were in twelve with moderate across the aisle kind of nominees like McCain and Romney, and they are with Trump and Vance.

The solution is not to reassess the nominees.

The solution is to fight fire with fire, stay on offense, call out the B's. And as Donald Trump said two weeks ago, blood dripping down his face after being shot by an assassin.

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Joining me now for the first time ever, ESPN Stephen A. Smith. He is the host of the Stephen A. Smith show and author of the deeply personal book out last year, Straight Shooter, a memoir of second chances and first takes. Stephen a. Welcome to the show.

Stephen A. Smith
It's been a long time. Megan, how are you? How you doing? How's everything? I hope you and your family are well.

Megyn Kelly
Thank you very much. All is well with me. It's such, it's been such a crazy month, right? How are you experiencing it from your side? I know you want to vote for Kamala, but are you feeling euphoric, like we see with a lot of leaners?

Stephen A. Smith
No, no, no, I'm not.

And I wouldn't say I want to vote for Kamala. I'm an independent and I've been on the record on many, many occasions that I would have voted for a Republican if it were anybody but Trump.

I just view him as a divisive force that I would be, I think would be on a vengeance to, and that's just, that's just my thinking. But I'm not going to fall on anybody, especially somebody as knowledgeable as yourself, feeling differently, particularly with the cases, with the cases that you've articulated. Nevertheless, I would tell you that I'm just happy that Biden's gone. And, you know, when I was talking about the whole Trump Kamala Harris thing on my podcast slash show, one of the things that I got excited about, Megan, was that I love the idea of a competition from the standpoint of what kind of things that you just articulated, because so much has gone, we've been talking so much about what Trump was going through in terms of the civil suits you know, the criminal cases and all of this other stuff that was going on with him, you know, but still, he was the presumptive GOP nominee who is now the GOP nominee officially. You have to deal with this man. And this is something that I've been saying for a year. And I thought I got a lot of heat from it, particularly from the african american community, because people wanted me to focus on that. And I was like, no. I said, the man is going to be the GOP nominee. You're going to have to beat him. And so my attitude is, okay, Kamala Harris, you're the one. You're the presumptive democratic nominee now. You're going to be official come mid to late August. Let's get it on. Let's find out who indeed is the best candidate for the job compared to you two.

Let's see what you, you do going up head to head against one another.

Megyn Kelly
What do you make of what they did with Biden and the elevation of Harris without a single person voting for her?

Stephen A. Smith
I didn't have a problem with the elevation of Harris because she was the VP. I did have a problem with how they clearly were lying to all of us about what was going on with Biden.

Sean Hannity had played it. Chris Cuomo had played it almost a year ago. I said, we need a new president.

It's slippage. It's too flagrant. It's too obvious.

He does not need, we don't need. I think one of the most embarrassing moments that I've ever seen in politics is when Biden gave his State of the Union address and folks were standing up chanting, four more years. That, to me was utterly ridiculous. You knew he was going to be 82 by the time election day rolled around, and you're talking about four more years, but you call yourself a progressive party. I just thought that that was utterly ridiculous. And so it was some of the things that I was pointing to in terms of the cognitive decline or what have you. Clearly had lost his fastball to some degree. He wasn't there. And then we saw the debate on June 27, and it was obvious that, you know, what I had been saying for months was absolutely correct. So clearly it was a change that needed to be made. I have no problem with Kamala Harris being that nominee in place of him, considering the fact that she is the vice president and the campaign dollars that were thrown in his direction. It is the Biden Harris campaign, not just the Biden campaign.

I just thought that it was too late in the game to even go in a different direction. But I also am a bit salty at the fact that there was no primary, there was no battle for anybody to oppose Joe Biden, for him to really, really show that he was capable to begin with, to even show up to the debate this past June 27. So that's where I'm at with it.

Megyn Kelly
Do you, there's a debate going on now about how much Kamala Harris should be held responsible for what Republicans are terming the big lie about Joe Biden's mental acuity. And there's a republican strategist, Alex Castellanos, who says, don't go there because most people are going to forgive her. He's her boss. She kind of had to do it. What was she going to do, run around saying he's non compos mentis, he can't do it.

But this is definitely a line that's being pushed by team Trump and others against Kamala Harris as she was in on it, and she should be held responsible for not outing his condition. How do you feel?

Stephen A. Smith
I don't feel, I don't, I don't agree with Trump's folks on that regard because I think it's too late in the game for all of that. Look, my man, you're the GOP nominee. Go up there and beat her. You know, what record does she have? You've been touting the fact that you have a record and she really, really doesn't. You've been saying all of these things and now, you know, you were, when it was Biden, you were talking about how not one, not two, I'll debate them five different times. Let's get it on. But all of a sudden it's somebody that's 19 years younger than you instead of three or four years older than you. And now you're talking all of this. We don't want to hear that. You know, and I took a lot of hits for this, Megan, as well. I said, listen, regardless of the cases, the legitimacy of some of the cases that were against him, the fact of the matter is that when you talked about engaging in law, fear, the line that he kept saying that was resonating with me is you guys are doing this because you can't beat me. You can't beat me. Well, now you've got a vice president who's the presumptive democratic nominee that's saying, let's get it on. I'm going to beat you. I know I can beat you. I want to take you on. Let's have a debate. Let's go at it. She's doing exactly what you were saying they didn't want to do. And so when I look at it from that standpoint, it has me looking forward to the campaign and it has me looking forward to what I believe will be an imminent debate. And so because of that, that's what I want to see.

Don't try to distract us with, oh, she didn't dime out her boss. There's a lot of people that's not going to do that. I mean, if you're a part of an administration, no matter what, what slippage you may see, you're not going to go out there and advertise it to the world. You're going to talk about things internally. And that's where I give credit to Senator Booker, Cory Booker, when he was questioned about what they're going to do in terms of the Democrats that were looking for Biden to step away and step aside, Cory Booker did not lie. He simply said, these are conversations that should be had in private. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't happen in public. Now, whether you agree or disagree, it wasn't a deceitful comment. He was simply saying, I think we should be, this should be handled in house.

If he's telling Biden, you need to step aside, he's saying, I'm not going to advertise it to the world. I'm going to tell the president, I think you need to step aside. And whether we agree or disagree with that, I don't think that's a position to be offended by, is what I'm saying. And so I say we just move on from here.

Megyn Kelly
How can she not be held accountable when she also took an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United states? And if she saw a man who now is essentially admitting he cannot be president, if she saw that, didn't she have an obligation to do something about it? As far as we know, she did absolutely nothing about it and let him remain in control. And he's in control.

Stephen A. Smith
Well, you're right, Megan. If she did nothing, what I'm saying is if she did, if she spoke, whether it was to Senator Schumer, whether it was to Nancy Pelosi, whether it was to Senator Booker, you know, House Rep. HAKeeM JeFFRIES, former President Barack Obama and others, if she were working internally to make sure those issues were being addressed because of what she witnessed and she saw, but she didn't just go outside and in a public forum come across as betraying the administration that she works under. I don't have a problem with that. You are right. If she did absolutely nothing, I don't know that she did nothing because look, what ultimately ended up happening. If not, I think it's, I think it took too damn long. But the bottom line is he's not going to be, he's not going to have a chance to be the president in 2025. And that's the bottom line.

Megyn Kelly
What should happen with him right now? Because a lot of folks are saying how, like I said, how can he not? Yeah. Should he step down? Because every day we got another example. I don't know if you saw this yesterday, but he's getting off Air Force one and somebody shouted out to him that Speaker Mike Johnson said, I think it's his Supreme Court reforms that he proposed are dead on arrival. They said he's dead on arrival. And we'll play the clip. You can't hear the president very well. Take a listen.

Stephen A. Smith
Okay.

Megyn Kelly
Speaker Johnson said it's dead on arrival.

Stephen A. Smith
And he is.

How are you going to get this?

Megyn Kelly
You can't hear it. But what Joe Biden said was he's dead on arrival. And there's reporters like, what? And he said it again, he's dead on arrival. That makes no sense. He's not making sense.

Stephen A. Smith
That particular quote right there makes no sense. I can't argue with you. I'm not going to even try to argue with you on that one, Megan. You're absolutely right. But what I will say is this. He's the president of the United States. He's got about five months to go.

When I look at it from that standpoint and I look at the kind of things that he's trying to accomplish within his administration, we all know at the end of the day, there's a whole bunch of people that work for an administration that go about the business of getting things done. A lot of times, one of the things that I lament, I'm just saying it could be, no, I hear you.

Megyn Kelly
But we didn't elect them.

Stephen A. Smith
I agree. But, you know, listen, you know a hell of a lot better than me, Megan, that's not how it works. The people that we elect ended up, end up actually doing the little, the littlest amount of work. It's the people that work for them that go about the business of going to maker.

Megyn Kelly
We have, the ultimate decision maker is the commander in chief. You know, ultimately, it was Barack Obama who had to say, okay, go ahead and take out bin Laden.

Stephen A. Smith
That's true.

Megyn Kelly
Donald Trump who had to say, go ahead and take out. Soleimani and those are the men who, by the way, risked their lives by making those decisions. You know, there was that iranian hit that was just taken out on Trump response for the sole. So we do respond, especially in the commander in chief role to one decision maker, and we don't seem to have that right now.

Stephen A. Smith
Well, let me depress you with this, because you cover politics far more intensively than I ever want to. Let me say this to you. One of the things that I've said to people, I said, do you realize the times that we're living in, Megan, the work is in the campaign.

That's it. Once you're an elected official, I've seen politicians literally publicly stating we didn't read the bills. All we do is get somebody to look over and give us some cliff notes and we sign it. They don't work.

If you're a Democrat, you're going to side with the Democrats. If you're a Republican, you're going to side with Republicans. They talk about how many seats are separated in the house between the Democrats and the Republicans. They're not doing any real work once they get in there. That's the problem with politics. That's the problem because you don't really have to do the work comes with the campaigning. Once you're in office, you literally just have to march along the party line. You really do. And that's the sad part about it. And if I'm wrong, tell me, because you would know better than me. I'm certainly not about to challenge you. I'm just telling you what I'm seeing. And I've seen, literally seen politicians literally talk about, we haven't even read the bill.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, well, there's no question a lot of them are lazy and they don't do their work on Capitol Hill and in the White House. But a president, of course, still has massive powers and can shape, yes, he does really fundamental policies. You know, I mean, I mentioned in my opening the title ix changes and what's happened on college campuses. And, you know, if you have a young man, a son, who goes to a college campus under Joe Biden and gets accused of sexual assault, he basically has no due process rights. He's effed. He's going to get labeled an accuser just based on an accusation, I mean, an offender, and he's probably going to get expelled with very little remedies. Under Donald Trump, he reversed that. He just restored due process. He didn't take away women's right to be heard. He just made the system a little bit more fair and balanced for all parties involved. That's just, that's, that is within the power of an executive. You know, you decide, what do we want to do to Title Ix? What do we want to do to various procedures and laws? Anyway, I do think there's still massive.

Stephen A. Smith
Power in that office, and I'm not denying that. What I'm saying, though, Megan, is that in the end, you're still walking along party lines. You're going to do what most people, if not everybody within your party, wants you to do. That's the time that we're living in. That's the unfortunate part where you're looking for the maverick, you're looking for the endangered.

Megyn Kelly
Let me ask you a follow up on that. Let me ask you a follow up on that. I believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, even though Joe Biden ran as a centrist, more moderate dem, he's been governing, governing more from the left. And I believe that is because the team around him is more left. And I think the trans issue is a good issue to show this because I don't think for 1 minute that Joe Biden actually is in favor of these procedures on minors or letting 14 year old girls get their breasts chopped off. I don't think that man actually supports that. And I actually think that most normal democrats don't want that either. And they definitely don't want boys and girls sports. The polls show that that's right posed by 70% of the american people. So why is he doing that? Right? Like what? He is governing more leftist than the.

Stephen A. Smith
Populace because of political expediency.

And I know with him it sounds crazy because he's 81 and this is it for him. 36 years in the Senate, eight years as the vice president, four years as the president.

You would think that enough time has been served. And, you know, you get to operate with a level of freedom and dare I say, impunity in the event that you put off some people. But nevertheless, sometimes folks are concerned about their legacy. They're concerned about towing along party lines to appease the people that have supported them along the way. These are the kind of things that I think have elevated the profile of a Donald Trump dating back to 2016. Because you have folks that felt like these elected officials weren't our own, that the people that we put in office that went up there on Capitol Hill were doing their own things and they were doing it for themselves or for political expediency purposes, where they could remain in office and they could continue to pad their wallets and do whatever and do whatever else they could do. So I think that that ultimately was the birth of Donald Trump, because Donald Trump comes across as a maverick that's going to do things his way and it's going to get them to do what he wants them to do as opposed to it being the other way around. And you have tens of millions of american citizens that are very attracted to that. Fair enough. But most politicians, if not damn near all of them, are all about the business of making sure that they retain power and they remain in a position of influence and power where they can. They could push their agendas and their objectives forward along party lines. And in having a willingness to do that, you're subjected to the whims of the party itself.

And that is why into the big.

Megyn Kelly
Money donors turned off by this is.

Stephen A. Smith
Enter the big money donors and the lobbyist. And that's why you have so many of the american people so damn turned off on both sides, which is why we hear more noise from the fringes as opposed to the centrists, because centrists like myself are like, there's got to be a better way. Operate with decorum. Let's find, you know, some peace amongst us somehow, some way. The word compromise is not something that we're allergic to. And you have people who think like that, but folks on the fringes are like, damn that, we don't want to hear that. Enough of that. And they're, you know, they're making a lot of noise. And that's the reason why, in my opinion.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, no, you're not wrong. The pritzkers are big, big money donors to this cause. And they've gotten a lot of democrats elected, and they will not go silently into the night if you don't back them on the trans radical stuff, even though the populace, again, is against it. I want to get back to that when we talk about the Olympics in a minute. But let me just double back to the discussion about the debates. I'm actually very interested in the debate.

I think it will happen. I definitely think they'll debate. I don't know how many times. I hope it's three, but times away. So do I. I think the reason Trump said no to the debate as scheduled is on the Democrats entirely. I think he agreed to the two debates that Biden said he would do. Trump said what? Whatever you want, I'll do it. I'll do it with ABC, who I know, I know doesn't like me. I'll do it with CNN, who I know, doesn't like me. And I'll do it without a studio audience, even though I want that, I'll do it with the mics cut, even though I don't want that. All of your terms. I accept.

And it went so poorly for his opponent that he dropped out of the entire race. Why should Trump agree to this second debate with all the things that he didn't want? He only agreed because he really wanted to get across from Biden. Now that the whole situation has changed, why, why isn't it? Let's start over. Let's have a real negotiation about what network will host it, what the terms of the debate will be. Let's have that and then I will be there. But I'm not just going to go with the debate that I didn't really love because I really wanted to make Joe Biden do it. Now that Joe Biden's gone.

Stephen A. Smith
Well, what I would say to you is this, first things first. You can note there's nothing wrong with him renegotiating the terms. I'm certainly not implying that he's just supposed to show up under whatever conditions they want without taking himself into consideration. What I'm saying is you talked a lot of smack about how you'll debate Biden anytime, any place, anywhere, because you knew that even though he was older, somebody like Nancy Pelosi is older, but you don't see the slippage from her that you see from Joe Biden. So you saw an opportunity to take advantage of an aging individual that had some slippage that clearly had lost his fastball, and you were gung ho about going after that individual. Well, this is his vice president, who doesn't have that problem, but obviously is somebody that supports all the same policies. Well, if that's what this is about, you shouldn't have a problem going up against her either. And then remember, Megan.

Megyn Kelly
But wait, you're a sports guy. You're a sports.

Stephen A. Smith
I was going there. I was going to the sports.

Megyn Kelly
I know zero about sports, okay, because I feel like in sports, you know, you would renegotiate to make sure the rules are fair, right. You might give up all the advantages on the football field to the other side, let them have the coin toss in their favorite, whatever, however it works. That's about as much as I can do as a sports analogy. But, but he doesn't have to do that with her now. It's a level playing field. So why would he go in and say, okay, you get all the advantages I was going to give to him? You don't. It's level. Let's renegotiate. Let's go on Fox. Let's do someplace that's.

Stephen A. Smith
Well, again, for me, I'm not opposed to the renegotiation. I told you that. But what I'm saying to you is, to use a sports analogy. Well, let me give you a sports analogy since you brought it up.

Megyn Kelly
Simple.

Stephen A. Smith
I'm gonna keep it simple. I'm gonna keep it simple for you. If you wanna go up against the Boston Celtics, because you know what? They got Jason Tatum and they got Jalen Brown. They're pretty damn good, but we think we can take them. Right, and you're in pursuit of a championship when they acquired a seven foot three Christaps Borzingis. You don't get to say, oh, I don't go against, I don't wanna go against them now. I'm not gonna go against them now. No, you still gotta go against them. Do you want the chip or not? Do you want the championship or not? Well, that's standing in your way. They didn't have Christophers the year before, but they had them the next year. You got to go up against him. You don't get to run. LeBron James is still one of the greatest in the world. You want to go up against the Lakers, that's who's waiting for you. You don't get to set up speaker three.

Megyn Kelly
He won't debate. I would be with you if he were saying, I'm not debating her. He's not saying that. He's like, let's do it. I want to do it, but we'll renegotiate it. And he said, fox. Why doesn't she just say, yeah, let's do it on Fox?

Stephen A. Smith
Fox will be very, I have no problem.

Megyn Kelly
Opinion host will be Brett and Martha.

Stephen A. Smith
I have no problem with it whatsoever. I'm just saying we want the debate. I want to see Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump. That's what I want to see and remember. And remember. Me, too. I don't know if you know this. Trump and I haven't spoken since 2014. Before.

We haven't spoken since then. Back then, yeah, he was obviously heavily involved in the world of sports, and we used to see him as sporting events, whatever. He was always somebody that was very, very kind to me. I don't like what I've seen in terms of his behavior since he run for president. And that's why, you know, I haven't communicated. But before then, clearly he was a guy that was ingratiated and connected to the world of sports. And this guy, when you talk about competition, this is somebody that I know loves it and embraced it. All of the years that I knew of him, I didn't know him personally or anything like that. We would just see each other in passing. But that was his reputation. For those of us within the african american community, within the sports community and beyond, white, black and beyond, with his boxing matches at Trump casinos, with some of him showing up at Nick games and things of that nature, he was about competition. He wanted to be an NFL owner. He was trying to acquire ownership of the Buffalo Bills in 2014. And that was the last time we spoke, Megan. And at that time, as I've said publicly on numerous occasions, he called me and he said, I want to own the Buffalo Bills. And the price tag was about $1.4 billion for the franchise at that time. And he said, these MF's better not get in their way. In my way. Talk about the NFL owners. He said, if they do, I'm going to get them all back. I'm going to run for president.

That's exactly what he said to me. And sure enough, it didn't happen, and he ran for president. And I don't think any of them thought he would win.

Megyn Kelly
But here we are, promises made, promises kept, right?

Stephen A. Smith
Yeah, that's right. That's what happened.

Megyn Kelly
Okay, so let me ask you, we're on sports a little bit about the Olympics and what's happening over there. Did you catch any of the opening ceremony and.

Stephen A. Smith
Yes.

Megyn Kelly
Did you really enjoy their, their tribute to Christianity in the last Supper?

Stephen A. Smith
No, I didn't. No, I didn't. No, I didn't. I played it on my podcast yesterday. I played their explanation. They said that, you know, they weren't trying to emulate the last Supper, and they made some kind of explanation for that or what have you. But I saw what Speaker Mike Johnson said. I saw what others have said. And you know what? Religion is a very, very powerful thing. There's no question about that. And as I've been taught over the years, a lot of times people go to the polls and, you know, it's their, one salient issue in their mind that determines what they. How they're going to vote and who they're going to vote for. And when you mess with folks, religion in any way, perceived or literal or otherwise, it could potentially be a price to pay. I think that there's about, you know, 2.42.6 billion christians in this world and in this country, obviously, you know, a vast majority of american citizens consider themselves christians, and you just never know how that's going to affect. I spoke to several people that were highly offended because they were watching the opening ceremony with their kids and they didn't see that coming and they didn't anticipate that, and they were very, very put off with that. I didn't understand why it was necessary at the Olympics or what have you, but they do what they do, and that's just the way it goes. What can you say?

Megyn Kelly
It's, we're the greatest group for offense because they know we won't riot in the streets. We're not going to kill anybody. If you insult Jesus like we see if you even draw the prophet Muhammad. And it's just, it's gone too far. I'm sick of it, too. You want to watch the opening ceremonies like that. It's supposed to be something that brings us together, Stephen, a right. It's like the Olympics. The reason you watch is to have that few moments of like, yeah, we're all together sports and the athletes, and they completely ruined it. And they made a lot of families not want to watch it at all, which is an insult to the athletes.

Stephen A. Smith
Yeah, I don't disagree. I don't disagree because that's. A lot of people were calling me and saying that very, very same thing. Family members, friends and what have you. You'd be surprised. So many times in this country in particular, you know, we're divided on a lot of different things, but there are some things that we come together on, and a lot of us are unified in terms of our thinking. And when you watch the opening ceremonies, you didn't anticipate seeing. And so when you saw that, you knew that a lot of people were going to have a problem with it. I certainly understood where they were coming from.

Megyn Kelly
Okay, I want to talk about men performing in the Olympic games in the women's categories. The International Olympic Committee, not known for its, like, courage, decided to leave this issue to the individual sports to decide whether it would be okay or not. And in boxing?

In boxing, they're allowing it. Okay, so now you've got two. I don't know how to describe these people, to be honest with you. All I know is they reportedly have xy chromosomes, which in my book is a man. I don't know if they're intersex, you know, whatever. It doesn't matter. They have xy chromosomes and they have high testosterone. And both were disqualified at the 2023 world championships for, quote, failing gender eligible eligibility tests.

But however, they're going to participate in Paris. One is from Algeria, Emain Khalif, and one is from Taiwan, Lin Ya Tang Yutang. And this Emaine Khalif.

This person boxed against a mexican opponent, Brianda Tamara, back in December of 2022. It was posted on x. There's a little bit of the video here, and just my goddess not beat the hell out of this woman. And she said, the female opponent said, you know, during this fight, I felt very out of my reach. This person's blows against me hurt me a lot. I don't think I've ever felt this way in my 13 years as a boxer. Not nice, barring with anyone, including men. And thank God I got out of the ring safely. It's good that I did. Is this right? Is this fair? Should this be allowed?

Stephen A. Smith
I don't think it should be. I've been on the record stating that on many, many occasions. And again, I'm a centrist who leans left. I'm a fiscal conservative. I'm fiscal with my dollars. Okay? Make no mistake about it. But I'm socially liberal for the most part. But there are lines that get crossed. And when you talk about women competing against men, particularly in a sport like boxing, it becomes incredibly, incredibly alarming. I remember there was a swimmer and it's swimming, obviously. So that's different. And it's a nonviolent sport. But I think there, I forget his name. I apologize. It's my, it's my lane, but I forgot his name. There we go. There we go. And you're like 400th in the world amongst men.

And then obviously you had the gender transformation and you're number one.

I mean, it's like you're just saying yourself.

At least ask the question. In our society, we pride ourselves on fairness. We certainly want to be as fair to ladies as we possibly can. We're ultra sensitive to it. You could bring up title iX, you could bring up issues of domestic violence and other things. And we're pointing out about the iniquities that have transpired against women on so many levels. Okay? And then we have that heightened level of sensitivity, and then it comes to something like this. And we're not being sensitive to the fact that you're having ladies compete against individuals who biologically were men and obviously had a gender transformation. And so a lot of times it's difficult to speak on that because then doctors and scientists and others get involved in, in the world we're living in. Megan, you know this better than me, probably. I can't tell you how many times I would have a position, and somebody will call up and say, hey, you don't understand. And then they're giving me a whole bunch of, of explanations as to why it is the case and what have you. And I'm like, okay, you know, listen, live and let live. I get that. But when you're talking about a sport like boxing, where somebody's going to be getting beaten up by somebody that they're in the ring with, that was, you know, born of an opposite sex, and then now they're in the ring against one another, what do we say about that? How do you, how do you, how do you speak on that? I don't know the answer to that question. I just know everything about it.

Everything about that feels wrong, and I can't deny that. But that's the world that we're living in, and it goes back and forth, back and forth. Now, years ago, you couldn't even say that. Couldn't even say that. But now it's gotten to a point where people are more open minded about the debate that it entails. And so what I do is I try to lean towards, okay, what do the experts say? What do they tell us? But then I'm a parent, too, and so I know that I would be.

Megyn Kelly
Careful because they're so rabid. The trans activists are just rabid on sharing. Well, it's not just that discussion.

Stephen A. Smith
It's not just that. It's that some of the experts ain't really experts. You know what I'm saying? I mean, they've got partisan agendas. And so you find that out as well. You know, we're not just trusting their expertise, we're trusting their neutrality. We're trusting that you're giving us just the bare bones. What's the truth? And then you find out there are agendas attached to it, which is why it becomes so difficult, which is why people like yourself and so many people, both the right and the left, anybody that's bringing the heat and bringing attention to what the truth really is is something that I embrace because it edifies all of us, because the reality is, a lot of times, we just don't know. A lot of us just don't know. You can do your homework, and in this day and age that we're living in, you can have the facts and two sides have two different versions of the same facts, and it drives folks crazy, because you're like, what? What are you talking about?

Megyn Kelly
You gotta find who you think is what we gotta do and listen.

Stephen A. Smith
That's right. That's right.

Megyn Kelly
Okay. I want to ask you one other thing. So Trump, it was just announced today, is going to be attending the National association of Black Journalists annual convention and career fair this weekend. And they, there's going to be a q and A and so on. In any event, this has led to some sort of a firestorm on x where Nikole Hannah Jones of the New York Times is against it, saying, this is not about reporting the news, it's about making the news. Let's be real about this, this invitation. Jamel Hill, formerly VSBN, she said she's okay with it. And then these two kind of got into it. And Nikole Hannah Jones said, but normalization is part of the process. And we've seen how Trump has moved around black journalists. We've seen how he's insulted and degraded them and so on. And Jamel Hill, I think, standing her ground, saying, no, he should go and be put to the, you know, to tough questions. Do you have a problem with, quote, normalizing Trump by inviting him to this event?

Stephen A. Smith
I don't want to hear that. I side completely with Jamel Hill on this.

He's the GOP nominee.

I mean, we just got to grow up. He's the GOP nominee. Whether you like it or not, one or two people are going to be president of the United States come January of 2025. It's going to be Donald Trump or it's going to be Kamala Harris, period. So if you're the National association of Black Journalists, I'll be there this week, by the way, in Chicago. I won't be there Wednesday when he's there.

Listen, the same platform that you would give to a Kamala Harris, the same platform that you would give to a senator or a congressional figure you should certainly accord to the GOP nominee for the presidency of the United States. And if Trump is willing to come, more power to him. Now, personally speaking, I think he's being slick as hell. And I'm gonna tell you why, Megan, because he's coming. From my understanding, he's coming on Wednesday at twelve noon. Let me tell you something about the National association of Black Journalists. Most people ain't getting there before Wednesday night.

I can assure you that most people are not getting there before Wednesday night. Okay? So if you really, really want to be in front of the masses and you want to be in the eye of the storm, you show up on Thursday or later. That's what you do to come any earlier. It's almost one of those things where he's saying see, they invited me. They wanted me there. They support me, you know, and then he skips town, you know, before.

Megyn Kelly
Answer.

Stephen A. Smith
I know that.

Megyn Kelly
But I mean, listen, you get, you got to give him credit for going at all because this is not black voters. Trump's doing well. He's doing well with black voters. For a republican black journalist, he's not doing well with virtually any journalist. That's the truth.

Stephen A. Smith
I'm not, I'm not knocking him for showing up at all. When I say he's slick, it ain't an insult. I think it's a good move on his part because the later he comes, the more intense the scrutiny will be.

Megyn Kelly
If you should show up on a week, speaker two, you should go and you should show up at noon and give him the hard questions.

Stephen A. Smith
Speaker two well, first of all, they didn't invite me to give him a question. I'd love to sit down and interrogate Donald Trump personally. I don't know how good of a job I would do, but I would love to do it. And by the way, I can't wait to interview you one day. But I got to tell you, I'm looking forward to him coming. I think that he should come, and I think that on too many occasions, it's about what we like, it's about what we prefer and all this other. We got to stop that. We really, really got to stop that. He is the GOP nominee. He's the former president of the United States of America. I don't care what you say about him. He belongs showing up at a journalism conference. There is no excuse for anybody to oppose that. If he's willing to show, I think it's, we should want him.

Megyn Kelly
I think it's great they invited him and I think it's great he's going. I mean, the guy's got, he's got guts. I have to say he's going back to Butler, Pennsylvania, for another rally, too, which is just like, oh, my God. Stephen A. Smith. What a pleasure. I will come on anytime. Thank you for being here.

Stephen A. Smith
That's right. Thank you for having me. And I'm definitely going to invite you on my podcast. Absolutely.

Megyn Kelly
Awesome. It's a date. We'll see you soon.

Stephen A. Smith
All right. All right. Take care.

Megyn Kelly
All right. When we come back, Victor Davis Hansen is back. So many times over this past month, I've been like, what does BDH think? Where is, he's been on vacay, but he's back. And he's got a lot of thoughts on everything that you and I have been discussing now for the better part of a month. The ability to provide for your family has changed quite a bit in the last couple of years. When you go shopping, you're getting less, but you're spending the same. You might have to decide what to buy now and what to do without. But I want to tell you about american financing. If you are a homeowner, they will take the equity you have built up and use it to pay off your high interest debt. They are saving customers an average of $854 a month. Wow. And they are closing some people in as fast as ten days. So you could close this whole deal in like a week and a half. Start today and you may be able to delay two mortgage payments. Call american financing to see what they could do for you. The numbers, 88852 812 19. 88852 812 19. Or go to americanfinancing.net.

kelly.

Now let's get into the liberal media allowing Vice President Kamala Harris to entirely change her core political beliefs without sitting for an interview and being asked a single challenging question. No problem. It's fine. She didn't do any of that stuff. It's just a Donald Trump accusation. Joining me now, Victor Davis Hansen. Victor is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and he's also the author of the Case for Trump. The book is now being re released with an updated look at the 2024 election. It's available for preorder right now. And it's a must read. Again, the case for Trump VDH. Welcome back. Thank God you're back. We've really been missing you.

Can I just, before we get into the news of the day, let's get your overall take on what the hell's happening in the country over the past month.

Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I think it goes back to February, March, April of 2020, when you remember after Joe Biden lost the first three caucuses and elections and then Sanders surge and Elizabeth Warren was being considered Pete. But there was a lot of radical people. And the democratic, the people you've talked about before, the donor class, the grandees, the city bosses, party bosses, they came in and said, old Joe Biden from Scranton is a moderate veneer. And then everybody dropped out. They were promised various things, but a jig, got a cabinet post and there was a faustian bargain. And it was a ceremonial role. We knew that for Joe Biden, he was the moderate from Scranton. And we had the hard left agenda, probably the most radical since the FDR administration.

That was kind of a coup in itself. And then, and we knew almost immediately that he was non compost mentis. So then for three years, there was kind of another subterfuge, and that was that he was fine, that there was a cheap fake. And then suddenly, I think the donor class, Megan, came in and said, this is not.

This is no longer covert. It's overt. And we got to do something, because he's going to lose the House and the Senate and the White House. So they said to Joe, you have to have a stress test, and we're going to have a historic debate before either convention meets or before either party nominates. And if you do well, maybe you can survive. If you don't, we're going to have time to adjust before the names have to be institutionalized on the ballot. He didn't do well. He thought that he could fight through it with subsequent appearances. They attacked people like yourself or me, anybody who questioned his cognitive facilities. And then they. They flipped in a norwegian fashion, and they said, you know, everybody was right. He's not able to do it, but he is able to continue his presidency. And that's what they told him, if you get to have your presidency, we won't. 25th amendment, but you're gone. And then suddenly they had said, you can't get rid of Joe Biden, his supporter said, because of the problematic Kamala Harris. And then that same orwellian narrative kicked in. She's fine. She's Cicero, she's wonderful. She's articulate, she's ebulliente. And so they nullified the wishes of 14 plus million primary voters, and by coronation, before any discussion, she is now the nominee.

And it's the same problem, though, with Joe Biden. And that is they think that because she gave one or two successful performances, she's free now. She's going to be wonderful. But she's innately unable to do extra temporary speeches or to do interviews with disinterested journalists. So she's a. She has a parallel problem with Biden. And so just to finish, I think they think they have the formula from 2020, that tripart formula, keep Joe in the basement under the guise of COVID so he doesn't have to campaign, outsource it to the media and the party's surrogates, too.

In addition to that, he has to be a moderate. So we're going to resurrect old Joe Biden as a moderate for the veneer. And three, they changed in most of the swing states, the balloting laws, so that 70% did not show up on election day. They mail in ballot and they were overwhelmingly had an advantage on the democratic side for mail in. So I think they're going to repeat that. She's not going to be out as a normal candidate. She's going, they have those institutionalized voting changes and they think they can still master early and mail and balloting to their advantage. And they're going to try to reinvent her as a moderate. And that's going to be harder because she's a San Francisco lifelong California politician that said some pretty wacky things. And she doesn't have the ability to be camouflaged the way that Joe Biden did in the eighties and nineties when he was sort of a centrist. That's where we are politically.

Megyn Kelly
I think what's amazing is her stances are there for the taking. They're on camera. She ran for president. A lot of this was said in town halls, at presidential debates, in one on one interviews with CNN anchors.

There's no wiggling out of these prior positions. We, we can see and hear them for ourselves. But now you're getting the whitewashing, like by Politico. It's a Trump accusation that she opposed fracking. A Trump accusation. Just for the record, here she is in 2019 sat 21.

Victor Davis Hanson
There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking. I have a history of working on this issue and have to just acknowledge that the residual impact of fracking is enormous in terms of the impact on the health and safety of communities. I am committed to passing a Green new deal, creating clean jobs, and finally putting an end to fracking once and for all.

Megyn Kelly
Okay, she opposed fracking. Now it's just a Trump accusation that she did that because suddenly she's realized she needs to win Pennsylvania, where fracking is very important and popular and creates a lot of jobs. So now she does it. She doesn't oppose fracking anymore. So they tell us. And you get articles like the one in Politico and this one in the New York Times where they, the headline is why the Kamala Harris of four years ago could haunt her in 2024. Basically, Kamala Harris opposes Kamala Harris, that the subhead is.

Republicans are now digging up her old stances and weaponizing them. They're weaponizing the positions, Victor, where literally they've appeared in, I think, one ad that just plays what she said on fracking, on getting rid of private health insurance and making us all go on Medicare on the border, which now she says should be funded, but before she said shouldn't, and on a mandatory buyback program for assault weapons, meaning any semi automatic pistol that she wants the government to seize from people.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think it goes back to that point. You see, Joe could get away with it because he was in the Senate for over 30 years and he had to horse trade back and forth. And he was from not really a completely liberal state, Delaware. He used to brag, remember, in kind of bizarre fashion that had been a slave state. I didn't know what he meant, but I think he was trying to say I had to be pragmatic to be elected seven or eight times in the Senate. But she's never had that problem. She's always been a state, either a San Francisco city attorney or county, county attorney in the most left wing area of the United States, our statewide office for attorney general, which, by the way, Megan, she almost lost. She only won it by about a fraction of 1%. People were so disgusted with her, and then they kind of coordinated her as a senate, and then when she ran, she never got a single delegate and she pulled out before the primary. But my point is that every environment in which she's worked within has been hard left and she's adjusted to that. Or maybe she was innately that way, but she's never had to articulate a position where there would be somebody who disagrees with her. And that's going to haunt her, because in every one of those scripts, every one of those episodes, she doesn't just say she's for fracking or their new Green deal or amnesty's or things like that. She doubles down, she reemphasizes it. She's unambiguous, she's strident. And that's going to really, I think they're going to do to her what they did to Michael Dukakis in 1988.

He came out of that democratic convention. He said, I'm not ideological. This is not about politics. It's about competency. I had the Massachusetts miracle. I balanced a budget that wasn't quite true.

And George Hw Bush was hapless. And then they've got a guy named, as you remember, Megan Lee Atwater. And he ran the tank ad and Willie Horton, ADHD and the Boston harbor pollution ad, and they hounded him and pounded Dukakis. And when they got through with him, he lost by seven or eight points in the popular vote. And that's the last time, by the way, the Republicans have ever won 51% of the popular vote, because after that, they all turned on the outwater and they said, not in my name. How dare you do that to poor Mike Dukakis. We're better than that. We play by the Marcus of Queensberry rules. He died of a brain tumor. He apologized to Michael Dukakis. But that's how they won that election. And they've lost seven out of the last eight popular votes in the presidential election. And part of the reason is Romney ism and McCain and the Bush is they just didn't want to do what the Democrats do. Trump is not, he has no inhibition. So I think he's going to do what Lee Atwater did to, I hope he does. And redefine.

Yeah, I do, too. He's going to redefine who she really is, just who Dukakis is. And I think that lead, that kind of artificial bump she got in the polls is going to dissipate very quickly as people find out what she said and they run clips of her and her own voice.

Zachary?

Megyn Kelly
It's the same dishonest messaging as we saw with Barack Obama, who ran on hope and change. But meanwhile, as I pointed out, the top of the first hour was sticking the knife in John McCain, suggesting he was a racist.

This guy who adopted a girl from Bangladesh, he's a racist. Okay, sure.

He's, Mitt Romney's a sexist. Okay. This is for all Barack Obama, hope and change. Now we get to Kamala Harris, who's running on freedom. Freedom. And her boss on unity. Unity. Let me show you the latest messaging out of team Democrat. This isn't from Kamala Harris herself. This is from a PAC supporting her called the won't pack down. It's absolutely disgusting. For the listening audience, you need to know what we're going to play and you should go to our YouTube.com Megyn Kelly page for this one.

You're about to see a bunch of obese men with actual sweat stains in their pits and around the collar. Like sweat all over them. They look disgusting and like overly geeky, weird nerd guys delivering the following messages. Watch.

Victor Davis Hanson
We want the government involved in all aspects of your sex life.

Stephen A. Smith
Way more involved. Way more involved.

Megyn Kelly
When you have sexual intercourse, it should be illegal to use contraception. No pills, no condoms.

Stephen A. Smith
Your genitals are reserved for procreation.

Victor Davis Hanson
If you freeze twelve eggs, you should be required to have twelve babies or else you're a serial killer.

Megyn Kelly
And I'm definitely not a serial killer. Are you?

Stephen A. Smith
I'm voting in November. I'm voting in November. We're all voting in November. Are you?

Megyn Kelly
Because what happens in your bedroom is up to me.

Victor Davis Hanson
Is up to me.

Stephen A. Smith
And my son also mouth stuff is a sin.

Megyn Kelly
That is unbelievable. Victor, that is the most disgusting ad I've seen yet. And that is what the Democrats think of republican voters.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, it's kind of the visual counterpart of Barack Obama whining that he lost the Pennsylvania primary.

That was to a private group of donors when he said they were clingers. And then what? Hillary blew up her campaign when she said they were irredeemable and deplorable. And then, of course, she said she was going to put the coal miners out of business. So that doesn't work because this election, unlike 2020, is going to be decided in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. And that the degree to which the Republicans can get out the base and get an extra four. There were about four or 500,000 conservative, blue collar, white male voters that did not vote in 2020 in those three states. If they can get them out, they're going to win because this time I think they've got a very good chance of winning Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. So those are going to, that's going to be where it's going to be decided. And that type of commercial is going.

Megyn Kelly
To hurt the, it's so offensive. But it's right in line. It is with the messaging we've seen from Kamala Harris, from her supporters. There is a disgusting governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, who's part of a disgusting family that's been funding the trans agenda being shoved down our throats and that of our children in school.

And this guy is auditioning to be her choice for VPN, reportedly on the short list, though not one of the top, top choices. And he is out there peddling this smear, disgusting smear against JD Vance that, forgive me, I hate to even repeat it, that he masturbated into a couch. That's basically it. And this gains such traction amongst these leftist loons that the AP decided to take this far left claim totally unsupported because they said it was in his book, another lie.

And to fact check the claim. Oh, we fact checked it. It's not in his book, which is really just a backdoor way of perpetuating and spreading this smear. But to hear it from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is another thing. Listen to sat 26.

Stephen A. Smith
I mean, on the other side, they're just weird. His running mate, as you probably have heard, is, you know, getting known for his obsession with couches.

Megyn Kelly
That's deeply immoral.

Supported by messengers like Chelsea Handler, another absolutely gross commentator always out there swinging for the democratic ticket. Listen, listen up. You wing nut elegy. This country is still controlled by men in systems that were set up by men that are carefully crafted to continue to benefit men. You said Diet Mountain dew drinking, couch humping, dolphin porn aficionado. And before you tell me he didn't really fuck a couch, spare me. I grew up in New Jersey in the eighties where everyone had a couch in their basement, and I know a couch fucker when I see one.

I don't even know what to say about the level of depravity that is now making its way into the democratic messaging.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think, again, there's two things they're not going to talk about. They're not going to talk about the Harris Biden record compared to the prior Trump record and what Trump's agenda will be in 2024. They're not going to do that. And they're not going to talk about Kamala Harris and how she's had a wonderful record as a politician or a vice president or as a senator. And what her view, her vision of America is, because all of the issues, whether it's a border or crime or inflation or foreign policy or the military, whatever it is, women and men in women's sports, they don't pull 50% except for abortion. We're not going to end January 6. It's not going to be, this campaign is going to be on stuff like that, January 6 and abortion. And we'll see if the DemoCR, if the Republicans can understand that. And then the other side of the coin is they're going to have to master early and mail in balloting. Because remember, Megan, and those seem key states after they changed the voting laws in most of them in March and April of 2020, we went from election day, 70% of participation to 30%. And when we looked at those mail in ballots, we discovered two things post facto. One, they were overwhelmingly democratic, and two, the traditional rejection rate for improper names or faulty addresses are not matching the registrar's name or filed after the deadline. It went from a traditional three to 4% and then double the number of ballots and it went down to 0.3 or 0.4. Remember, Mark Zuckerberg injected $419 million for drop boxes and for extra partisan workers to aid government registrar employees.

So that's what this, that's what they're going to do in this campaign.

They're not going to talk about the issues. They do not want to put her out. And I think they're making a big mistake, though, because they feel that, because she's young and she's apparently campos Mentez. They think that she won't have the problems of Biden, but in a weird way, she has the same problems of Biden, only it's not innately physical or mental. It's just who she is. She's not able to speak. She's not able to talk to people extemporaneously. And her whole life, especially as a young, attractive woman in California and somebody that she felt and claimed that she was a minority, she felt that her charm or her gestures or whatever that was in lieu of actually making a coherent and rational argument would suffice. And it did suffice, but not now. And she's going to have to come out. And I think they're going to really, I think you're going to see something like the Dukakis campaign, that we're all going to be caught up in this hysteria that she went from incompetent in the Democrats own words to majestic and we'll see. But I think in the next two or three weeks, if the Democrats did what, if the Republicans did what they did in 1988, it's going to be, it's not going to work for them.

Megyn Kelly
And honestly, they shouldn't hold back. As we just demonstrated, the Democrats are not holding back in the complete character assassination of Trump and JD Vance in particular. But before I get to that, I have more on that.

You mentioned her record and her ties to Biden.

It's a tick tock now to see how long it's going to take her to disavow what Joe Biden did on Afghanistan. They're already, now Harris Biden trying to blame it all on Trump. All we did was implement Trump's plan. That's it. But there is no way she's going to wiggle out of, of being fully on board with the way Joe Biden handled that. We have that, too on tape.

Here we go. This is back to April 2021. Listen, President Biden always said that he wants you to be the last person in the room, particularly for big decisions, just as he was for President Obama. He just made a really big decision. Afghanistan.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yes.

Megyn Kelly
Were you the last person in the room? Room, yes.

And you feel comfortable?

Victor Davis Hanson
I do.

Megyn Kelly
And she went on to elaborate and she felt totally comfortable on it. So Afghanistan, Victor, speak to that because we talked. I mean, obviously the border, she was the border czar, whatever. I don't care what the label was. She was in charge of it and she didn't do anything. The economy, there's absolutely no evidence she knows what to do on the economy. And now the, you know, when it comes to foreign policy and being commander in chief, she was fully on board with his Afghanistan plan.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think if you talk to military officers, and I've talked to a lot of them, they all admit the same thing. And that is Donald Trump had a plan and Mike Pompeo, for about 3500 troops to occupy hold, possess Bagram Air force Base. They spent about $300 million to retrofit it. It was the largest base in Central Asia with access to Russia, China, Iran. And they wanted to hold that. They had, we had a billion dollar and they had about $50 billion worth of munitions.

And Trump likes to, in braggadocious fashion, he likes to tell people, and it's public knowledge, that he told the hierarchy of the Taliban if they, he wouldn't interfere in their government because they had taken over the country, basically, and they'd done that for a long time. But he was going to hold this base and if they tried to kill Americans, he was going to go after their hierarchy. So you could criticize or that particular policy, but that was unambiguously the policy to hold this huge base and not to do what Biden did.

And people around him said that he wanted a 20th anniversary of our supposed misadventure in getting into Afghanistan, close to nine eleven's 20th anniversary. So he could say in a big parade or some type of celebratory fashion, I was the one, only me, after 20 years, I got us out of. And I don't think they had any idea of the mayhem and disaster and humiliation that entailed. But it was very important, Megan, because that was not the end of it.

That presaged the chinese balloon embarrassment, that presaged Putin going into Ukraine, that presaged the idea that Hamas and Hezbollah thought there was going to be a lot of light between us and Israel. They were correct in that. And that really destroyed deterrence that he had inherited from Trump. And it kind of explains why the world is in chaos right now. That was a turning point, that August humiliation of 2021.

Megyn Kelly
Already you've got former Obama spokesman Tommy Vietter tweeting out, oh, it's very helpful. This clip of it's John Bolton, who obviously had a big falling out with Trump a couple of years ago, saying this was Trump's deal, the Afghanistan withdrawal, that was Trump's deal. Very helpful. Clip from John Bolton for rebutting attacks on Harris and Biden over the withdrawal from Afghanistan. This is foreign policy magazine says that the Afghan Afghanistan disastrous withdrawal is an opportunity for Harris, first they say it remains to be seen how much she's weighed down during the campaign by this problem, by one of Biden's lowest foreign policy moments as president. Then they cite Lisa Curtis, a former White House CIA and state Department official. It was fairly clear that it was Biden's personal decision to fully withdraw all in the way that he did. It was, it was all on Biden, you see? And then Ms. Harris thinks this is a wonderful opportunity for Kamala Harris because she says, Miss Curtis thinks this because she says, as a woman, hopefully we can expect Kamala Harris, if elected, to focus more on supporting afghan women. As somebody who's fighting for women's rights in the United States, it would be hard for her to ignore it and on from there. So seed I, it wasn't on her. It was entirely him. And now this is actually a plus because she's a woman who cares about women. So she's going to go in there and help all the women she ignored over the previous four years.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, but I think the clip that you just played is going to be well known to the american people that she was the last person in the room when that decision was made. And I think it's, there's kind of a narrative now about that humiliation. It's just not that we abandoned all those weapons that turned in, turned up in the international terrorist markets. And it wasn't just that we destroyed our own deterrence. And it wasn't just we gave up all of this valuable base and embassy, but it was also this cultural arrogance that while we were weak and being humiliated and fleeing, we had the intellectual cultural arrogance to have the pride flag flying from the embassy to brag that we'd spent $80 million on a gender studies program at the University of Kabul, that we had George Floyd murals on some of the main boulevards. In other words, we were cultural imperialists. But unlike the British of the 19th century, we were completely impotent. And that story is sort of connected, that we were trying to impose this left wing progressive agenda on a traditional islamic society at the same time that we were pulling troops out and showing them that we were both arrogant and weak, culturally arrogant, but militarily weak. And that's, I think most people see, that's the narrative of the Biden administration. We put, we always lectured people all abroad about how superior the progressive vision was on issues of gender and equity and di and all of that stuff. And then they got insulted, whether it was Saudi Arabia or some of our NATO allies, they got the message that they always talk about what we should be doing and how morally superior they are to us and how progressive.

But then when it comes to standing up for us, they don't do anything.

And that's the message they were. In other words, they talked loudly and carried a twig.

Megyn Kelly
Right. So Team Trump is starting to get its advertising going. They have spent money on advertising, and I don't live in a swing state, so I don't see much of it. But they've just dropped an ad addressing not Afghanistan. I'm sure that will come eventually. But a bit about the border. It's a 32nd ad. Here it is, 24.

Stephen A. Smith
I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message.

Victor Davis Hanson
This is America's border czar, and she's failed us under Harris.

Stephen A. Smith
Over 10 million illegally here, a quarter.

Victor Davis Hanson
Of a million Americans dead from fentanyl, brutal migrant crimes, and ISIS now here. Do you have any plans to visit the border? You haven't been to the border and I haven't been to Europe.

I don't understand. I understand the point that you're making. Kamala Harris failed, weak, dangerously liberal.

Megyn Kelly
I think it's very effective. Right. It does. Unlike the other side, it didn't get personal. Just talked about her, her policies.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, that was in the tradition. Megan of Lee outwater, that was, that was like the tank ad or the Willie Horton ad. It was actually factual. It was tough. And there's no, it's. That was a brilliant ad and they're going to show that everywhere. And again, and I think this hysterical bounce that they have got, I'd just like to add one other thing.

The relief that Joe Biden, everybody felt on the left that Joe Biden was no longer an albatross around their neck, that they were not going to automatically lose the election, that they could rehabilitate Kamala Harris from kind of a liability to an asset. All of that gave them, and the media, especially the glee in the media, gave them that three or four points point bounce so that in some polls are equal, some, one or two behind Trump. But they also, I think on the conservative side, people said, well, it's because of JD Vance. I don't think the appointment of JD Vance had much to do with it. And you can argue whether it was wise or not, but the idea that suddenly Trump lost this huge lead he had in some states or maybe nationally by five or six points because of vice president selection, I don't think that was the reason at all. And I think.

Megyn Kelly
Ridiculous.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. The polls will show that either he's more popular than Kamala Harris. I think a Wall Street Journal poll today said that, that he was more popular than Kamala Harris herself and the asset that he has. Again, it's not a traditional selection to balance ethnic or regional considerations. You know, that would be a Marco Rubio or Tim Scott. It's to concentrate on three states where the election is going to be decided, and more importantly, to get somebody who can go on television and explicate the MAGA agenda, the Trump vision better than Trump can. And people don't quite, I've known him a bit, and many of, he was very young when he got all of this attention. And everybody said, well, he just flipped. He's an opportunist. What happened to him from when the period I have talked to him was, I think that he had no idea that this book would be a bestseller. He had no idea the film. He came out of nowhere. He was just saturated with attention, money, and it was mostly from the liberal side. And I think he got caught up a little bit. And they had interpreted this kind of honest dissection or autopsy of Appalachia as well. He's saying that white, poor white people are pathological. If you read the book, he didn't quite say that he was honest about their strangeness.

Megyn Kelly
Such a misrepresentation. He was honest in the book, as you heard Bashir say. He says our people are lazy.

He was from, from this group of people. Yes, Kentucky. But his book is really about his upbringing in Middletown, Ohio. And he's saying, you can dump all the money you want on these communities and just say, oh, they need to be helped financially. But I'm telling you, with some, there is an attitude of apathy, and he walks you through some people he knew who didn't show up to work on time would, he and his buddy would watch a third guy go on 40 lunch breaks or smoke breaks or snack breaks, breaks or bathroom breaks, and each one was getting longer than the previous one. And he was trying to get at there. It's more than just a thing that the government can throw money at. There's, there is an attitude amongst some who are raised in these areas characterized by blight, that we have to be honest about. And of course, that gets used against him by Governor Bashir. Like he hates us. Ok, just stop.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, yeah, but, and I think that's exactly right. And so that when he, he was put in that world, that media, Hollywood, left wing media world, then he opposed Trump. But the problem he had was as he started to digest what people were reviewing his book and what they were saying about him. He started to realize that they were deliberately trying to misinterpret his message and that actually, culturally, historically, traditionally, he had far more in common with the people he was trying to constructively criticize then these newfound opportunistic, wealthy, bicoastal elites. And he soured on them because he never really, I mean, he had experienced them before in school and in his businesses, but now they were saying, you're one of us. And he was trying to say, no, I'm not. And I think that he went through that transformation. I could relate to it. I grew up in a very poor community. I'm speaking that from that now. It's 90% mexican american and to the degree that it's white, most people are from the Oklahoma diaspora. I married a wonderful woman who never went to college, and nobody in her family had ever gone to college.

And I went to Stanford and I thought, wow, this is so good to get out of the San Joaquin Valley and I get off the farm. I don't have to get up and do all this tractor work. And then I started to experience that entitled, credentialed, smug, left Wing, Mediaev University Academic, in my case, the coastal elite from San Diego to Berkeley. And I just saw, I started to see in my twenties that there were values that I grew up with that I thought maybe were restricted. But as you started material, you say if its a choice between middle America and those people, then youll take middle americas common sense and pragmatism and decency every day. I think that was similar to what he, he saw in his thirties. So I don't think he was opportunistic at all.

It was just a maturity. And comparing his newfound friends with the people he grew up with.

Megyn Kelly
Seeing Trump govern changed a lot of us. On Trump, you got over very quickly mean tweets when you saw the policies that were being pushed out of his administration versus the ones that had come down over the previous eight years. I just feel like I am a great example of this. Trump didn't spend a year going after JD Vance and attacking him over and over and over with hundreds of nasty tweets. But I did. And if I can see Trump in a new light and actually openly say I'm going to vote for the guy and I support his policy, then why can't JD Vance? Why is it just automatically, oh, some money grab by JD Vance. He wanted power. He no, there are some of us who legitimately didn't really love Trump originally had a lot of questions about his temperament and the way he might govern and then saw him do it and said, you know what? I feel differently. I just. And they know that. They know that's possible. They just are determined to smear JD to character assassin, assassinate the man. That brings me to some of what I said in the first hour, which is you weren't here, but it was about how they're just attacking him as everything, I mean, misogynist in particular. But of course, we'll get to the racism. That's what they're, that's going to be another attack. And Molly Jong fast, a left wing commentator, picking up on these comments about childless american leaders. Childless leaders is really what he was limiting it to listen to what she said. Vector sat 25 well, so what's interesting is this, is this natalism that comes from an authoritarian playbook, right.

That there, there need to be more white children, right? That's the idea that there's, you know, this is about great replacement theory, racism, right? This is what this is. So don't misunderstand it. For him wanting more children, he wants a certain kind of, you know, racist thing.

He's actually saying he wants more white children. We'll just put out on the board a picture of JD Vance, his wife and their three children. Here is JD Vance with his non white family. If he. What he really wants is more white children in the world, he's doing a very crappy job of it. Victor?

Victor Davis Hanson
JD Vance just reiterated what has been the republican mainstream position, that people who have exorbitant cost to raise children need a tax break, and that is to encourage fertility. And they felt that way without any racial considerations because as late Megan, as 1990s, we had a 2.1 fertility rate. It's down to 1.6. We're down into Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain territory.

Historically, a society that does not have 2.0 is less dynamic. It's an aging population. It accrues enormous overhead for healthcare, and it's always beneficial to have a replacement fertility rate. And that doesn't apply just to white people. If you look at second and third generation Hispanics, African Americans and Asians are even lower than whites. So when JD Vance says we need to encourage child raising, he's talking about to defer these enormous costs to allow people of all backgrounds to have a traditional family and to keep a healthy, dare I say, young and robust population. And we're looking at China. If you look at where China and countries in Italy are, places in Italy or Germany, they're in deep trouble because they're not going to have a sufficient labor force. They're going to have enormous health care costs. And there's something about a society that gets older and older and older. It's less dynamic, it's less risk taking. And that's just historical. It happened in Rome and it happened in the byzantine empire. And any historian worth of salt, when you look at a society in crisis, the first thing you look at is its monetary policy, its inflation policy, its borders, and especially its rate of fertility.

Megyn Kelly
It's amazing because there was no pushback by that anchor on MSNBC of Politico, Jonathan Lemon. Mirror no. Hey, maybe you're being a little too hard on him. He did marry a non white person and has three non white children.

No, that was not relevant. But I want to take a break. But before we get to that, I do want to say so now every day we're getting another drip, drip, drip of JD Vance clips. And he's been making this comment about the birth rate and about how we need more children and also, to be fair, shots against childless politicians for a while, including back in 2020. This clip that came out today, as far as we can tell, is from November 2020. He was on the Chris Buskirk show, who has 115 followers on Rumble. 115.

And this is the clip making the rounds today of JD.

Stephen A. Smith
There are just these basic cadences of life that I think are really powerful and really, really valuable when you have.

Victor Davis Hanson
Kids in your life. And the fact that so many people, especially in America's leadership class, just don't have that in their lives, I worry.

Stephen A. Smith
That it makes people more sociopathic and.

Victor Davis Hanson
Ultimately our whole country a little bit less mentally stable. And of course, you talk about going on Twitter. Final point I'll make is you go on Twitter and almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic.

Megyn Kelly
Are people who don't have kids at home.

So what do you make of it, Victor? Because the left uses this, all these clips to say he hates who made a different life choice than he did.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think he didn't put it the way he had intended. But you and I know people that don't have children that are wonderful people and they're engaged. But I think what he was trying to say that, and you know, as a parent, and I know as a parent and I had three children, that when you can't, you don't have the resources to do what you want because you're going to invest, which today economists tell us about a quarter, a million to a half million dollars per child, then it changes your outlook that you have to sacrifice for someone else. And it's not me talking. The Wall Street Journal, I think you saw that essay about ten days ago where they talked to people who didn't have children and they were worried or they were curious about why so many people are choosing married couples. We're not talking about gays or transgender people, but married couples who deliberately did not want to have children. And the answers were that they inhibit your opportunity and they had anecdotes. I can't go out to eat like I could. We can't go to Florence. We can't do all the things that this new world has entitled us to as upwardly mobile, highly paid urban professionals. So I think that's what he was trying to say. I don't think he needed to, you know, the psychopath, all that stuff. But that's that, I don't think that's that controversial. And I'm speaking to somebody who has siblings that both have children and don't have children. And it does seem that if you don't believe what he said, Megan, and then you would say there's no difference between people who don't have children and people who do.

And we should all not, then it doesn't matter. We should all not have children. We would cease to exist. So there has to be some positive argument for fertility or you won't have a society, it'll crumble. And that means if it's not going to crumble and people are going to have children, they're going to have to make sacrifices. They're not going to have the wherewithal, the disposable income as other people. And that's what he was trying to articulate. And the Republican Party has said that, that it's too expensive in today's world with two income for people to raise children and that shouldn't be so. And we need to have policies that reward people who wish, if they want to have children, children. And that, that's all he was trying to say. And he got caught up. I know both the p. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Megyn Kelly
It's the same thing. It's the same thing as when someone says, you really need to go outside and touch grass. Go outside and touch grass. See nature. It's, he's saying the same thing that his most ardent critics online are these leftist politicians and who don't have children, like an AOC, who make it a point, who want to wear it as a badge of honor. These are not people who just say, you know, I just don't think I'm the mother and type or I tried for kids and it didn't work out for me and I'm sad. Or just people who said, like I don't want them because whatever, it didn't work for my lifestyle. He's talking about bitter, angry leftists who are so rabid in their policies and their beliefs. Often around this issue, they think you're a bad person if you have them because you're ruining the environment and you're bringing them into a world in which the world is going to end, end in ten or 15 years and it's irresponsible. This is all over. This is not a one off. There are many people who believe this on the left, that those people are nuts and that they shouldn't be our leaders. That is very clear. He went on Tucker a bunch of times. I know Tucker's views on this issue that Tucker would never and nor would JD ever see a person who just chose not to have kids because it just, whatever people said, not everybody wants them or who tried and couldn't have them and say you're a sociopath. It's these loons who are all over the Internet who excoriate conservatives as like these paternalistic, like the people who put together that ad I ran of like the fat guys with the sweated pits, like I'm coming for your family.

They see all republicans like that because they haven't made the life choices that these leftist politicians like AOC have made. And to me it's JD fighting back against those jerks, trying to diminish them a bit by saying, you know what? Touch grass, have a kid. Spend some time worrying about someone other than yourself and then tell me how to run the country.

Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. And then you have to ask, what is that commercial and what are all of those social postings intended to influence? Are they intended to influence somebody in, I don't know, Hillsdale, Michigan or rural Wisconsin that there's a family, two members of the family had three kids. One chose not to. Is the one that chose not to is going to get very angry all of a sudden and vote against JD Band? I don't think so.

That whole trope is intended for people who already are going to be solid HarRIs support. I don't see that it's got much traction. All of these things to go back and they, they're basically saying, we're going to try to show you that JD Vance favors a family that would, that has children, a family that works hard, a family that stays together.

And, and I don't see how that's going to be a drawback, especially in the states in which the election is going to be decided, because it doesn't do any good to get a bunch of smelly people supposedly, and overweight and character them and ridicule them when that demographic is going to decide the election. They think it's going to make people where I work at Stanford or Silicon Valley happy, will, but they're going to be irrelevant. It's going to offend people who really matter in this election. And I don't think that, I don't.

Megyn Kelly
Think anybody's ever won a presidential election by spending the entire time attacking the VP on the opposite ticket. Trump is the one running for President Trump that didn't work with protection a little bit because the assassination attempt, and so they're wary of looking like assholes right now, now and going after him full bore. I do believe this is why. One of the reasons JD is front and center. But soon they will go back to their favorite target and we'll resume all the old fights that we've been having over him. All right, stand by. Quick break. Back with VDH after this. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM. It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures. Today you can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph, a Sirius XM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love, great people like Doctor Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free.

Stephen A. Smith
Go to siriusxm.com mkshow to subscribe and get three months free. That's siriusxm.com mkshow and get three months free offer details apply.

Megyn Kelly
And Kamala Harris clearly is capable and is probably and is the most qualified individual to run for president, in fact, more qualified than the last four presidents. My office sued Donald Trump over 100 times. We were the firewall. And it is my singular focus to have her elected as president of these United States, organizing, mobilizing and educating individuals about all that Donald Trump did to this country to divide us based on artificial constructs such as race and class and gender.

Whatever happened to actually fighting crime as the attorney general of New York? That was Letitia James. Victor Davis Hansen's with me, the author of the Case for Trump. And she's been a leading player in the case to get Trump and now is apparently abandoning law enforcement in New York to do one thing, get Kamala Harris elected.

Victor Davis Hanson
She's the poster person for racial divisiveness. And she ran on a campaign almost as a bill of attainder to go back and target Donald Trump in the same way that Fannie Willis did and Alvin Bragg. And I think history is going to show that that didn't work.

But more importantly, if that was true what she said, why would Donald Trump be on a trajectory to get more black voters or more latino voters than either George Bush or John McCain or maybe even George W. Bush? And so they don't ever answer that. Or Ronald Reagan. So they keep saying that he's racially divisive and at the same time he's appealing to minorities in a way that a Republican really hasn't. We know the answers because she mentioned class. But what he did was he's trying to substitute class for race. He's trying to say to the indian american truck driver, the black electrician, the hispanic contractor, the lower middle class white plumber, you all have things in common with each other that you do not have in common with the wealthy white bicoastal elite with a professional dei czar class. And we're going to unite you in a nationalist movement. And that's why they're so scared. Because if he's able to pull that off and suggest to the black lower middle classes and latino classes and white lower middle classes that they all have been shorted by this bi coastal elite of every ethnic and racial background, that's a revolutionary thing to do. It really is.

Megyn Kelly
That's why they're scared. That's why we have to make it about JD Vance allegedly hating childless people and whatever else they're going to resurrect against Trump as soon as they feel an appropriate amount of time has got passed since they tried to kill him in front of our very eyes. Victor, great to see you. Thanks for being here. So glad you're back. And we are back tomorrow. Yes, all the best. We're going to have doctor Drew on and also Bhatia Unger, sorry, she's taking a deep dive into the JD Vance situation and we'll have her thoughts for you. Love to hear your thoughts on all of this. Email MegAN Megyn kelly.com and in the meantime, go to Megan kelly.com where you can sign up for my one email a week. I don't bother you. I don't sell your emails. It's just me. To you with news of the day, news of the week that you may have missed, and an update on our show and Monday dog. All right, we'll see you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show, no bs, no agenda, and no fear.