Kamala Harris' Shadow Presidency, and Which "White Dude" Harris Will Pick as VP, with Ben Shapiro, Tara Palmeri, and Shelby Talcott | Ep. 850

This episode scrutinizes the portrayal and influence of Kamala Harris as a shadow president and speculates on potential Vice Presidential picks.

1. Harris is being portrayed by some media as a larger-than-life figure, which might be a strategic exaggeration.
2. The discussion suggests there's a media bias that's reshaping Harris's public image in preparation for the 2024 election.
3. Speculation abounds on Harris's potential VP picks, with names like Josh Shapiro, Mark Kelly, and Gretchen Whitmer being tossed around.
4. The episode discusses the potential electoral implications of Harris's strategies and media portrayal.
5. There is skepticism about the durability of Harris's renewed popularity as the election approaches.

1: Opening Remarks

Megyn Kelly introduces the topic of Kamala Harris's shadow presidency, questioning her portrayal as the de facto President. Megyn Kelly: "Kamala Harris appears to be the president of the United States."

2: Media's Portrayal

Discussion on how the media's portrayal of Harris could be influencing public perception. Ben Shapiro: "The media are trying to convince themselves they are in love with Kamala Harris."

3: VP Speculations

Speculation on who Kamala Harris might pick as her Vice President, focusing on strategic political choices. Ben Shapiro: "She's going to pick some sort of VP candidate, likely from a swing state."

4: Political Implications

Analysis of the political implications of the media's portrayal and Harris's strategies. Tara Palmeri: "It's a Harris honeymoon."

5: Closing Thoughts

Final thoughts on the potential impact of Harris's media strategy on the upcoming election. Megyn Kelly: "She's perfectly fine going on that show, notwithstanding the fact that it featured controversial content."

• Critically evaluate media coverage and seek multiple sources to understand political figures.
• Engage in discussions about media influence on politics to foster a more informed electorate.
• Monitor electoral strategies and their implications on your community and state.
• Stay informed about the qualifications and backgrounds of potential VP candidates.
• Participate in political discussions and forums to express and refine your political views.

Megyn Kelly is joined by The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro, host of The Ben Shapiro Show, to discuss Democrats and out of touch celebrities trying to promote and rebrand Kamala Harris, the "vibe shift" among the left, how Trump and the GOP can counter the messaging, the embarrassing "white women" Zoom call for Harris, the upside and downside of JD Vance as Trump's VP pick, if you should have picked someone like Glenn Youngkin, the media war against Vance, the talking point from the left and media that "JD Vance is weird,” how nothing can compare to Kamala Harris and her weird affect, her appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race and the misogynistic and disgusting content they've aired, Harris already talking and acting like she's the president, questions about what Biden is doing now, and more. Then Puck News' Tara Palmeri, host of "Somebody's Gotta Win," and Semafor political correspondent Shelby Talcott join to discuss the latest polling for Harris and Trump, the enthusiasm increase for Harris and whether it will last, how Trump is traditionally under-polled, which "white dude" Harris will pick as her VP, the appeal Josh Shapiro has, whether the VP pick actually matters, explosive reporting that Obama may have called Biden threatening to invoke 25th Amendment if he didn’t step down, how involved Pelosi was in the pressure campaign, and more.

People

Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Josh Shapiro, Mark Kelly, Gretchen Whitmer

Guest Name(s):

Ben Shapiro, Tara Palmeri, Shelby Talcott

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. It is Monday, July 29, and Kamala Harris appears to be the president of the United States. At least that's the way she's talking and she's being portrayed that way. Would you look at this cover of New York magazine this week?

Welcome to Camelot, spelled with a k for the listening audience. With all of the dancing happy Democrats and celebs from Clooney to Beyonce to Chuck Schumer, the reinvention of this woman is being driven by the pravdaesque media coverage she has received over the past eight days during this coronation, all with the intended effect of making America forget both her problems and those of the actual president of the United States, with whom she's been working for four years to impose failing policies.

Remember Joe Biden? Is he even around still? Is he actually still the president? We'll get to why exactly we are starting to wonder.

The failures of the Biden Harris administration are being completely ignored, all in the service of remaking Kamala Harris and the 2024 race. And guess what? It's working. Joining me now, Ben Shapiro, host of the Ben Shapiro show and editor emeritus of the Daily Wire.

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Ben, welcome back. It's. It's working as we're now seeing in a couple of polls. And I'll just kick it off with the Wall Street Journal. Uh, today, the headline this morning, uh, well, the other morning, Harris erases Trump's lead. Wall Street Journal. Paul finds, talks about how they are now two points away from one another. He's 49, she's 47. Within the margin of error. Uh, when he was facing Biden, he had a six point lead just earlier this month, and he is. She is making up ground with blacks, latinos, and young voters.

Uh, in particular, they're looking at battleground states like Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, the Sun belt states, which are more racially, racially and ethnically diverse, and going on as follows. This is a stat I want to give you.

Only 37% of Biden voters were enthusiastic about him in early July.

81% of Harris voters are enthusiastic about her, says one of the pollsters. One was a dem, was, one was a Republican. This is an astounding change. And, Ben, is it any wonder, given what we've seen in the last eight days?

Ben Shapiro
Not at all. I mean, I think there's a combination of factors. As you mentioned, the media are trying to convince themselves they are in love with Kamala Harris after years of recognizing what a political incompetent and buffoon she is. But I think what this really is is just the sugar high of Joe Biden being out of the race. No matter who was going to succeed Joe Biden. Joe Biden being gone is giving them a temporary feeling of euphoria that I think could wear off before the election. The problem, of course, is that this is now an incredibly compressed election cycle. It's about 100 days from here until the election. So the question is, can they pull off the magic trick for the next three months, or is this varnish going to start to wear fairly quickly? I mean, obviously, there's a lot of damaging material on Kamala Harris. She's not very good at politics, and these national campaigns tend to strip the veneer off people fairly quickly. I mean, how many national candidates have we seen over the course of our lifetimes, where you watch them at the beginning, they're brand shiny new, and within about a month and a half, they're not wearing particularly well. Kamala Harris does not wear well. But at the same time, if she never faces a single difficult question, if she never has to do an interview where she's asked about her border policy, if she can simply continue doing what she's been doing the last week, that's a very uphill battle for republicans.

Megyn Kelly
They are now trying to make it into. Well, it really. She'd put herself out there to anybody. I'm sure she'd be happy to sit for an interview with me, uh, with you.

But what she'd really like to do, Ben, is debate, but Donald Trump is too scared. That is the narrative dominating the contest between the two of them.

People to judge out there saying, can you believe, like, has, has it ever happened that a candidate has agreed to a debate and then withdrawn from the debate because Trump agreed to this ABC debate with President Joe Biden I, who is no longer running and she thinks she should get exactly the same terms and same agreement as Biden got. Well, guess what? She's not getting it.

Speaker one.

Ben Shapiro
Yeah, I mean, that's an absurdity. And it's, and it's ridiculous that they're trying to literally do a bait and switch. Here is a different thing. That you agreed to a debate with Joe Biden under certain conditions, anytime, anywhere. It's not the same thing as saying that you agreed to debate Kamala Harris anytime, anywhere. And again, I think this is going to be a tempest in a teapot. They will work out terms of a debate. I would certainly hope that George Stephanopoulos is not the moderator of that debate. But again, right, right now, the amount of momentum that Harris has, it's hard to tell how much of it is sort of air sats and just again, inflating the balloon and how much of it is real. What is certainly true is that the lack of enthusiasm that was attendant on Biden's candidacy immediately upon his debate, all of that has dissipated. And let's be real about this. It's not as though Kamala has jumped to a five point lead. Kamala is still basically dead even with Trump. A lot of these states that he was getting blown away and Biden are now a lot closer, like Michigan or like Georgia. But the base, the race basically reverted to the pre debate state. It didn't, it didn't revert to Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. 2020, it reverted to like February. And in February, Kamala Harris was running like a point or two behind behind Trump and she's still running a point or two behind Trump. I do think that the next three weeks in momentum are going to be very strong for Kamala Harris.

She's going to pick some sort of VP candidate, Liberty, Josh Shapiro or Mark Kelly or Gretchen Whitmer, somebody who is from a swing state. I think that would, she'd be well advised to do that and then she's going to have the convention. So you would expect her to get a little bit of a bump over the next three weeks. And then we'll see if they can, if they can make fetch happen by continuing to pretend that Kamala Harris is actually really good at this.

Megyn Kelly
Well, they're doing their level best. I mean, you tune into any channel right now other than Fox, and you will see, I mean, not only are they giddy, but the reinvention of this woman as truly a Jesus like figure is kind of stomach turning. Here's just a sampling of what we've been seeing.

Ben Shapiro
We spent three weeks sitting outside the ICU with a death watch for democracy. One little heartbeat of hope. Kamala Harris raising her hand and saying.

Tara Palmeri
I'll take care of this.

Megyn Kelly
That is the type of grassroots mobilization and engagement that does remind me of Barack Obama's.

Kamala Harris
Recognize what Vice President Kamala Harris has been able to accomplish in less than one week. A thunderous crescendo rumbling its way across every corner of american political and civic and cultural life. The crown jewel of endorsements for any Democrat and President Barack Obama officially endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

Ben Shapiro
They're so excited. They're just so excited. They're so energized.

It's historic just walking through the streets.

Megyn Kelly
Every other conversation on the street was, who should be her running? Me. The excitement is palpable.

Ben Shapiro
There was a twinkle in her eye.

Megyn Kelly
And I got chilled.

Ben Shapiro
She said, donald Trump, I know you're tight. I was blown away. I was like, I kind of fell.

Megyn Kelly
In love with her.

Ben Shapiro
I just thought it was a great, great opening act.

Megyn Kelly
Ben, I can't. I can't twinkle.

Ben Shapiro
I can't. I. I can't. I just, I can't. I'm sorry. Kamala Harris is the crazy laugh lady. She's the, she's the smug, smiling lady. She's the queen of smarm. She's like, what are we doing here? The attempt to, again, turn her into Barack Obama circa 2008. The truth is her campaign is a lot more like Barack Obama circa 2012, meaning she's got a very unpopular set of policies behind her. She's running an incredibly intersectional campaign. You've already seen her bringing forth. Her campaign is like white dudes for, for Kamala, white women for Kamala. A very weird way to do your campaign. And again, she hasn't faced a single difficult question since she ascended to the throne here in a non democratic coup by the party. So, yeah, again, this is, this will be her high point.

And I'm having a hard time really telling whether this is enthusiasm for Kamala or this is just. I can't. Thank God we got rid of the old man. I mean, it's unprecedented. They did get rid of the old man. They got rid of the corpse, and now they have a lukewarm body in there, as opposed to the moldering corpse of the president of the United States. She so far has basically given some campaign speeches and friendly scenarios. She's not done a single national interview.

Again, I just think that the varnish can't continue this way, this sort of. Of course they're excited. Why wouldn't they be excited? They just went from a 0% chance to win the presidency to a 50% chance to win the presidency. And so they are doing the same thing that every baseball fan does the first day of the season, like, oh, my God, my team could win the World Series. Well, maybe. And then maybe not. And so we'll have to see whether she actually has better chops than she presented in 2019 2020 when she ran the single worst presidential campaign in modern history.

Megyn Kelly
Gianna. I mean, any, any interview that she gives will be with a very friendly outlet who will ask her. Only softballs. That's very clear. So they'll keep the mystique going. They, they all realize that the election is on the line. The media will respond accordingly. So I don't have a lot of hopes about that. But the debate could be interesting. And they. I agree with you. They'll come to terms on something, and maybe we'll get more than one. At, you know, at this point. Who knows? Right now, we'll probably get at least one. You mentioned the white dudes for Kamala and white women for Kamala, just in case the listening audience wasn't paying attention. This is a little of how the white women for Kamala Zoom call that broke Zoom with its hundred thousand participants. We broke Zoom sounded.

Kamala Harris
Don't want to be cheering like a spectator from the stands. I want to be laid out crying the tears of joy and exhaustion and connectedness that is only ever felt by the team who left it all on the field together, enduring the discomfort, the risk, the pain, the backlash. That is the work.

That's why white women so rarely do this work, because it's nothing.

Megyn Kelly
The bad news is that a majority of white women repeatedly vote for Republicans because too many of us believe, consciously or subconsciously, that it is in our best interest to use our privilege and our support systems of white supremacy and the patriarchy shut up to benefit us. Have you seen Kamala glistening the brilliance and shine of her true power and leadership?

Tara Palmeri
And what does that feel like?

Megyn Kelly
Feels like self love.

Tara Palmeri
We are here because, as if you were here earlier, you've heard BIPOC women have tapped us in as white women to step up. Listen and get involved this election season. Don't make it about yourself.

As white women, we need to use our privilege to make positive changes. If you find yourself talking over or speaking for BIPOC individuals or, God forbid, correcting them, just take a beat and instead we can put our listening ears on.

Megyn Kelly
Because she is a woman, she also will listen and lead with empathy, integrity, and the power of the truth.

Trust this moment, my fellow white women.

She's right, Ben, I don't know if you're aware, but when we got our vaginas, we got a truth telling vibe that you men just don't have. It's a little known secret of women. I really appreciate Connie Britton underlying underscoring that for everybody.

Ben Shapiro
I mean, they can't even define what a woman is. Half of men are women according to these people. And I think that you brought me on to torture me here, Megan. Honestly, I feel like Linda Blair and the Exorcist. I'm going to start, my head's going to spin 360 degrees with vomit just going in all directions because what the hell are we watching right now? Like, this is, this is the campaign, Karen's for Kamala over here. Like this is going to be the campaign.

It's the most difficult thing to watch. But you're right that again, it's all about sort of the vibe and it's about the vibe shift. And I think the thing that they're forgetting, and you started to see them discuss this a little bit openly, Kamala may be sort of abandoning the entire blue wall strategy.

They've been saying that she's not going to do well with rural men, particularly. She can do very poorly. If you look at the 2020 election, one of the places where the vote shifted among Democrats is that Biden, weirdly enough, did better among rural white Mendez than the Democrats had done with Hillary in 2016. And Trump actually outperformed in the cities a little bit. And what you're starting to see is sort of a replica of 2016 in the sense that a lot of rural white men and older people are not going to vote for Kamala Harris, who might have voted for Joe Biden. People are forgetting that Biden did have some strengths vis a vis Kamala Harris. All those strengths were obliterated by the fact that he was completely senile and a vegetable. But before that, he had many advantages against Kamala Harris, which is why he was hesitant to drop out of the race in the first place. It's why reportedly, Barack Obama didn't even want him to drop out of the race in favor of Kamala Harris. So if you think that this sort of Hillary Clinton 2016 DNC fight song vibe is going to win you Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, I think not. Which is why you're starting to sell these articles cropping up about, well, you know, maybe she'll just take Arizona or maybe she'll take Georgia or maybe she'll take Nevada. I haven't seen a lot of poll movement in, say, Nevada or Arizona that suggests that she's going to win either of those two states. So, you know, I say this is a tough race for Republicans, and it is in the sense that it has radically shifted.

They're going to have to move on a dime and start attacking her in terms of policy. But this is not the easiest race for Kamala Harris either. And it's not as though it's a foregone conclusion that she is going to waltz her way directly to the White House on the basis of her strong and virile coalition.

Megyn Kelly
That's the thing is, yes, the media is disgusting. They are absolutely disgusting and dishonest in their promotion of this one candidate.

But we've seen this before. And is it really any worse than it was back in 2016 when Trump was running against Hillary Clinton? I mean, he can win, notwithstanding all of the media being against him. It's just not that easy.

Ben Shapiro
Yes. I mean, one of the things that I saw was that there was a poll that showed that her approval rating had spiked. Right? She had this massive spike in approval rating that everybody was talking about. It spiked from 35% approval to 44% approval. I noticed that 44 is not 60. It's not even 50. Right. This is not somebody who is now wildly popular with the american public. What it means is that she got the coming home effect that Biden had lost after the debate. And so we are basically, as we say, back to status quo ante before the debate, which means a very tight race. It means that the Republicans, I know a lot of focus has been put on, like, how is Trump going to campaign? What's he going to say? Trump's going to campaign, how he campaigns, and he's going to say what he's going to say. The thing that I am very much focused on for the Republican Party right now is what is your get out the vote effort? Like, that's almost the only thing that matters at this point because we're back to, again, the base is going to come out for Trump. The base is probably going to come out for Kamala. The independents are likely to split, close down the middle something like that. And what that means is that you really have to have a great voter turnout effort. What does the republican voter turnout effort look like? Because one thing we know about Democrats is they are absolute professionals about this sort of stuff.

Megyn Kelly
How, what, what's the update on that? I really feel like it's been outsourced to turning Point USA. I feel like Charlie Kirk is like the game plan. I'm not sure the RNC is raising money, but who really is in control here? Because most of the vote by mail systems that were put in place in 2020 and these more blue leaning states or purple states in particular remain in place.

Ben Shapiro
Yes. So, you know, as far as Charlie, we'd have to ask Charlie exactly what his plans are. But I'm seeing the same reports that you are, which is the turning point, has been given enormous amount of leeway authority and they've raised enormous amount of capital in order to do massive get out the vote effort. I don't know what their record is in terms of national get out the vote effort. Listen, if it had been me, if I'd been the RNC, my first move would have been I go exactly to whoever ran Ron DeSantis team in Florida, which is the only place that had a great voter turnout record in 2022. And I get all those people, whatever you think of Ron DeSantis. And again, I think he's the best governor in America, but he's not the nominee. I would have gotten his team that did voter turnout to do that nationally. That would've been like my number one priority if I were the RNC speaker one.

Megyn Kelly
But that's not what's happening. And we have no idea how Republicans are feeling right now about mail in voting. You know, you've been railing on this, too, for years now that Trump has been all over the board on it up until very recently. He was against it. He was vocally against it. And that's why Republicans in part have been losing a lot, because the Democrats love the mail in voting, but the Republicans don't trust the mail in voting. They think some Democrats going to get their ballot and throw it in the garbage and replace it with a Dem ballot or just keep it in the garbage and then outdo them at the polls. And I understand that concern. But the truth is if Republicans don't start taking advantage of vote by mail, they're going to keep losing.

Ben Shapiro
That's 100% true. And it's particularly true because the republican base, now that Biden is out, is going to go back to being a disproportionately older base. So Trump is outperforming among young voters what he did in 2020, 2016. But Biden was doing really shockingly well among older voters, which is unusual because usually older voters tend to vote Republican. He was doing slightly better among that group, actually a lot better than he was in 2020, even as he was dropping other parts of his voting constituency. And now a lot of those people, I would assume, are going to revert back to Trump. Those people are exactly the types of people who you want to vote by mail because, you know, grandma 75, is she going to get up and get in the car and actually go to the polling place, or is it easier for her to do that two months in advance of the election?

Megyn Kelly
You know, you're talking about the differences between the Biden numbers and the Harris numbers. And they are stark. They are stark. You're right. I mean, the Democrats right now do have reason to dance because for the first time, their chances have come back. They've come alive. And I saw an interesting post over the weekend, forgive me, because I can't remember who posted it, but I was like, that's a very interesting question.

It said the biggest mistake Trump has made in this election contest was agreeing to debate Joe Biden, which is so interesting, Ben, isn't it? Right. Everybody thinks that was Joe Biden's mistake, but was it Trump's mistake?

Ben Shapiro
I mean, I think that it's hard to say in retrospect it was his mistake because I don't think anyone knew that the Democrats would be stupid enough to actually put a potato out there to debate. I mean, I think that was the core assumption that everybody had, is that he was going to look like State of the Union Joe, and that Trump would, you know, overcome him. He'd do better than Biden did. But when he came out and he was staring at ghosts and looked like the only person is like, the end of the 6th sense, he's the only person in the room who didn't know he was dead when it was that instead of just a normal bad debate performance, I think that was so earth shattering. I can't believe that Trump even could have been expected to do all of that. I will say that maybe all of us deserve a little bit of blame because we all agreed and pointed out the truth. Maybe we all should have done what the media doing, just lied about him. And we should have been like, actually, he did better than expected. And I thought that he was actually pretty lively. Right? We should. We should have done exactly what the, what the legacy media do and just lie about what we saw right in front of our eyes, actually, you know, he's incredibly viral. You know, he. Did you see how articulate he was? He would have stayed in the race and then Trump would have won, so.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, well, honestly, an interesting thought in retrospect. Like, if Trump loses this election, will people look back and say, he never should have agreed to that debate? They could have kept Biden behind closed doors. The enthusiasm would have stayed low. They. He wouldn't have had a reason to force, you know, Biden out of the race? I hadn't thought about it that way at all. But I can see the logic. The second point on the. This. This tweet that I'm not remembering who is the author of it, but was that the second mistake that Trump has made in this race was picking JD Vance? And I know you raised a similar question, and, you know, I.

Without regard to whether people like JD or don't like JD or wanted JD or don't. Didn't want JD, that's a. That's a question worth exploring now that the race has changed and Biden's out and Kamala's in, because now it's gonna be all about race, it's gonna be all about gender. Every little comment, not just JD or Trump, make about women or minorities will be blown up as front page news items for days. But anything any Republican says, it was like some republican talking head on CNN said something which they spent a week hitting on from the Kamala Harris team. So, nevermind if it comes from the vice president or the presidential nominee. So what do you think of that second question?

Ben Shapiro
So, yeah, do I think that. I think there's only one rule with vice presidential candidates, and that is they shouldn't be able to damage you. Meaning that the vice presidential candidates rarely have an upside. There's always this talk of, like, you're gonna pick a vp, the VP is gonna win his home state. That really doesn't materialize very often at all. Nate Silver tried to quantify this. He suggested that maybe a vice presidential candidate, in best case scenario, might be worth, like, 0.4 of a percentage point in their home state. So, again, I don't think that you can count on your vp to really add this massive upside to your candidacy. The one thing you can do is sort of damage control. I don't think that JD is, like, a massive downside guy. I just think of the pick of JD, and again, I think JD is brilliant. But I think that the pick of JDev is more of a blown opportunity by Trump. So let's go back a couple of weeks to the RNC, and Trump is beating the hell out of Biden in the polls. Let's say instead of going JD, he goes, say Glenn Youngkin, right, who's the kind of the last alternative pick and the one who, I understand Susie Wiles, who's his campaign manager, was pushing for. So Youngkin is a relatively popular governor of a purple state, deeply inoffensive to pretty much everybody across the aisle. They would have attacked him, but he'd already been battle tested because he'd already run a very rough gubernatorial race in Virginia. And let's say that Trump had done two things.

Let's say he picked JD, that he picked Youngkin, rather, and let's say that his acceptance speech had gone 35 minutes and not 93. Let's say that he had told his story of the assassination attempt, said a couple more words about unity, and then stopped. I think there's a good shot the election's over, no matter what. Because the feeling of momentum that Trump is actually a unity candidate, bringing the party together, trying to open new spaces for the Republican Party, as opposed to doing with JD what I think everyone sort of agrees was a legacy pick and attempt to turn Trump personally into a Trumpism or bring somebody on who's very personally loyal to Donald Trump.

I don't see exactly what JD as a pick, did. I said this at the time. I'm not sure what it did as a pick to add votes to the Trump coalition. Trump already does. Amazing. With exactly the Rust Belt audiences that JD mostly appeals to in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In fact, Trump has wildly outperformed JD in the one state where they both competed, in Ohio. And by the way, so did Mike DeWine. Right, Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, who's way too moderate for most Republicans. That guy won his gubernatorial race by 20 in the same election cycle where JD won by six. So, yeah, by the way, that's the.

Megyn Kelly
Reason why Vivek Ramaswamy will not be the next senator from Ohio, because that is the reason. Pick him.

Ben Shapiro
That's 100% right. So, again, I think that the pick of JD is more a missed opportunity than it is, like, a massive downside. Picked a. I also think that the beauty of Trump as a candidate is that there's nothing to attack him on because he's already been attacked on everything. Right. As I've said about Trump for almost a decade, at this point, he's a mud monster. So if you throw more mud at him. It's just more mud on the mud monster, and it's total. He's black socks. It never gets dirty. The longer you wear them, the blacker they get. Right? That's Donald Trump as a candidate. No matter what you. No matter what you do to Trump, it just looks like more Trump. The problem with bringing on a very fresh face, he's never been battle tested in a gubernatorial race, for example, is that all this stuff is fresh. And JD is particularly fresh because all of us. I mean, you've said it. I've said, we've all said stuff over the course of our political careers that, you know, don't sound great out of context. The thing is that most of us said it, like, ten years ago. JD, because his trajectory was so short, he went from running a Senate race in 2021 to being the vice presidential candidate in 2024. That means your vetting period is super duper short. And so the time period when he went from, you know, being on Tucker and saying kind of funny and inflammatory things to being the vice presidential candidate is incredibly short. Now, does that mean that it's not unfair? Of course, it's unbelievably unfair.

What they're doing to JD. They're deliberately misreading what he was saying. They're trying to now suggest that he is a weirdo. And again, I think that what that really is is a defensive maneuver in order to prevent people from recognizing the true weirdo in this race is Kamala Harris. She's a weird lady.

Megyn Kelly
And the Democrats.

Ben Shapiro
Yes, it's a weird party, and she's a weird lady. And again, I mean, that's just in the typical sense, like, the weird cackling, the strange smiling, the weird hand motions, the word salad straight from soup plantation. Like, all of it's weird. And then you juxtapose that with his family policy, where he says, basically, it's good to have kids. Like, that's supposed to be weird. She's with RuPaul's drag race doing get out the vote. I mean, just on a raw level, that's a little weirder. It's like, a little weird. So I think they're trying to sort of jujitsu this into JD is a weirdo. With all that put aside, do I think that Trump could have made a more politically savvy pick to win the election than JD? Yes, but I don't think that's what he was doing with JD.

Megyn Kelly
I think there's a couple of things on that pick. Yes. Legacy pick, 100%. But I also think there's a real fear in the inner Trump circle that something could be done to Trump. You know, that if the VP is too attractive to the establishment, to the intelligence community, that. That they could try to take Trump out in some way.

Ben Shapiro
There's a part from the wasp.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, there's a part from lost or something less. I don't know exactly what I'm implying or what they're implying, but I know there's a real fear if the second in command is too attractive to the establishment, it endangers Trump. You go speaker one.

Ben Shapiro
I mean, so, okay, that was reported. I think the Wall Street Journal reported that Tucker actually said that directly to Trump, that you need to say, you need to have, like, a VP insurance policy, somebody who's not going to be so wonderful that you get shot at. The reason I think that that's a particularly stupid line, just generally speaking, is they literally tried to shoot him the week before and he didn't have a vice presidential candidate. So I don't think it's about who he was going to pick for his VP. I think that people who want him to die just kind of want him to die. And it's not as though, oh, my God, I'm thinking this thing through. If I shoot Trump, oh, my God, I'm going to get JD, and that's going to be so much worse. I probably better preserve Trump's life. I don't know that there's any assassin who thinks that way.

Megyn Kelly
You heard Don Junior. Don Junior explicitly said when people were saying, pick Nikki Haley, he said that he'll be impeached in 2 seconds. In 2 seconds if he wins, if she's his number two. And I take that point. I think that's, you know, part of the point they're making.

Ben Shapiro
I mean, the only reason that I disagree with that is they would impeach him in 2 seconds if Mike Pence were his vice president, because they did twice. Like, again, I think that we're ignoring the control. The control here is that they will impeach him no matter what. I mean, are we pretending?

Megyn Kelly
You don't think there's a greater temptation if you've got, like, a Haley or a youngkin who they love? They don't love, but they loved Haley, and they would tolerate youngkin more than, you know, a mAGA type like JD.

Ben Shapiro
I think it's an incremental temptation. Let's put it this way. They 99% want to impeach Donald Trump no matter what. And that they're like, 99.4% depending on who exactly is the vice president. I don't think that you select the vice president on the basis that they might be slightly nicer to you if you pick somebody who is slightly worse for them as vice president. Like, if you're Trump and you're just gaming out how to win. Like, my main focus for Trump is how do you win? Right? I'm a donor to his campaign. I want him to win. Like, I don't. All of this is like, assuming he wins. How about we get to, like, the part where he wins and then we worry about what, what comes next? I would like him to win.

Megyn Kelly
But don't you think how many times we were on the era together in 1516, right back when we were, I was at Fox, they are going to do, they would have done to a youngkin, anybody, name a Rubio, even a Nikki Haley, they would have done to them exactly what they're doing to JD.

Ben Shapiro
Agree.

Megyn Kelly
They take whatever they can. And they really wanted us to believe that Mitt Romney was a sexist pig because of binders full of women. We watched them do that. They would definitely do with Youngkin what they did with Romney and Bain Capital. He's made all his money. He exploits the little guy. He hates poor people. You know, they'll, they'll find a different way in on each of these candidates. They would go with Nikki Haley, with the Boeing and the corporate sponsorships, and she's on the. There's always something to go with, with JD. Yes. He's made some, you know, provocative comments because he, he recently rose to fame on cable news, where you say provocative things. But I just don't think Trump would have been safer with one of these other guys.

Ben Shapiro
So again, I don't actually think that I agree with you. I don't think that it's like if you pick Youngkin, that they wouldn't have attacked Youngkin the same way. They certainly would have. There are only really two questions. One is what's the upside on the candidate? And one is how sticky are the attacks? Those are really the two questions. The question I always had about the JD pick, forget everything else, is, what's the upside on the pick? What do you get from the pick, electorally speaking, where do you win the additional votes that take you to the presidency based on the pick of JDev? And then the question is, how sticky are things? And, you know, again, everyone's going to be attacked.

The stickiness with JD we have yet to see. I mean, I think it's a little early I think everybody's declaring it super sticky. He's definitely going to be tarred for all time, the same way that Dan Quill was with misspelling potato or something. I think it's a little early for that. He's been in the race for like two weeks. With that said, again, when, when attacks have been levied against you, if you're the governor of Virginia, they've been levied against you for years and years and years, then more attacks tend to bounce off of you quicker. Again, maybe, maybe that's not the way that it goes. But the thing I keep going back to is that I don't see JD as a massive liability. I see more JD as, like, was there a better opportunity to win additional voters or to position yourself more toward the middle? Because the thing that Trump has done that's actually extremely intelligent politically in this particular race is he has taken up the positional middle ground on nearly every single issue. Because Biden is running to the left, he has moved to the middle. And so the ability to go find somebody who sort of doubles down on the, hey, you want to moderate, you want somebody who's like a stable moderate, then maybe you should pick me because look, I mean, even look at my.

Megyn Kelly
Vp, that's a good indicator.

Ben Shapiro
I mean, I know that's weird, but that's where we are, right? Very stable.

Megyn Kelly
I do want to get to the weird, the weird attacks because they themselves are weird. JD Vance is not weird. He's like pretty much as normal as they get, which is why they consider him a threat.

That is why they're using a label that doesn't apply to him and for the reasons you just stated. But it's definitely a coordinated attack. Now, the second gentleman, Kamala Harris's husband, said it. Many, many others on the left keep reviving the weird comment. Before we went to air moments ago, AOC put out a tweet calling him weird JD. And here's another sampling.

Ben Shapiro
I don't think Kamala Harris is going to pick anyone as weird and creepy as JD Vance. It demonstrates and shows us exactly what he believes in by selecting a JD.

Megyn Kelly
Vance, who is quite, you know, as the campaign said, weird agenda. The way they talk to people, the way they address people, it is bizarre. It's weird. It is weird.

Ben Shapiro
These are, these are weird people. On the other side, Donald Trump seems to be drifting away from his own nominee because he's had so many weird views.

Megyn Kelly
Unfortunately, Vance's weird views are not even winning praise from within his own party. Donald Trump and his weirdo running mate and the republican apparatus behind them will regroup.

Ben Shapiro
It's not just that he said a lot of things that are weird. It's not just a weird style that he brings. It's that this leads to weird policies.

Megyn Kelly
Kind of weird how they all have the same messaging, Ben.

Ben Shapiro
So apparently, CNN and MSNBC used the word weird to describe JD vance in the last two days over 150 times. So if you don't believe that they're all marching in lockstep and they don't get their talking points from the DNC, they 100% do. So on my show today, I talked a little bit about the sort of weird slur and the fact that they're using this again. To me, this is all projection, because there are only two ways in which a candidate is weird. One is sort of interpersonally weird, right? So you might say somebody who laughs strangely and who starts jabbering about coconut trees. That might be a little weird. JD is not that. Right. When JD talks, JD is actually perfectly normal. You watch him on tv. You watch him give a speech. He's like a normal person who is talking. If anything, he lies on the sort of dull side in terms of his sort of affect. Right? He's not somebody who's electric on tv.

He's not like the vague, very live. Right? He's. He is exactly kind of normal when he's on tv. And then there's weird positionally. And here's where he gets something sort of fascinating. According to the left, what makes you weird is believing that it is actually of moral benefit to the United States for people to have children. That's JD's actual position. It also happens to be the biologically correct position, which is that if you wish society to propagate itself, it's very important that on a moral level, people have kids. Now, when JD was on Tucker's show, he phrased this in the negative. When he was on your show, he phrased it in the positive. The positive is if you have kids, you should get tax benefits because it's good for society for people to have kids. That's totally inarguable. That, I think, is perfectly obvious, because he phrased it in the negative on Tucker and then used some sort of cable news language about cat ladies. That's what they're glomming onto. They're saying he's positionally weird. What is more positionally weird? That people ought to have kids and the society ought to incentivize its citizens to have children? Or is it weirder to suggest that society ought to be completely apathetic about whether people have kids at all and ought to treat your personal decision making as to whether you gallivant around on RuPaul's drag race or become the head of a traditional family and go to church regularly as a matter of moral apathy. Like Kamala Harris is very weird positionally.

The Democratic Party is very weird positionally, a party that has made Sam Britton a member of the administration before he started stealing ladies luggage. There's a person, there's a party that has suggested that Admiral Rachel Levine, who is a dude, is somehow a stand in for women everywhere. It's a weird party filled with, I mean, they have trans influencers jiggling their fake breasts on the, on the lawn of the White House if you're, if you're just talking weird. The Democrats have nothing on weird when it comes to, when it comes to JD Vance. And so they've been trying to manufacture this narrative. This is where I get to the question of stickiness. Again, I doubt this is really going to stick to JD because I just don't think that he's weird enough for it to actually work. But this is certainly what they're trying.

Megyn Kelly
Here is Kamala Harris just this week going on the RuPaul drag race show to seek support in this election. All right. Now everybody knows RuPaul is a drag queen. And drag queens doing drag queen things behind closed doors or in bars or what have you, I don't really care. But shoving in front of my kids and other people's kids, I care.

But the show is controversial for those reasons. So she goes on there. Let's just take a look at. Here she is with Rupaul.

Ben Shapiro
Yay.

Megyn Kelly
It's me, Kamala.

Kamala Harris
Hi, everyone. It's Kamala Harris.

Each day we are seeing our rights and freedoms under attack, including the right of everyone to be who they are, love who they love openly and with pride. So as we fight back against these attacks, let's all remember, no one is alone.

We are all in this together.

And your vote is your power.

So please make sure your voice is heard this November.

Megyn Kelly
All right, you get it?

Kamala Harris
Register to vote.

Megyn Kelly
She's perfectly fine going on that show, notwithstanding the fact that six weeks ago that show featured a trans person. It's a woman who had her breast chopped off and decided to walk down the Runway with a discarded pair of fake breasts in a clear bag. Bloodied, bloodied flesh with a depiction of scars across her nipples and scalpels on fake arms shaving off her breasts. And this was celebrated on this very show that our sitting vice president just celebrated two minutes ago. Look.

Ben Shapiro
Up next, got Mick, now starring in x plant two electric boogaloo.

This look is something I have been wanting to do for so long because top surgery absolutely changed my life.

Shelby Talcott
So I molded my arms.

Ben Shapiro
They're wrapping around me with scalpels.

Shelby Talcott
I have Swarovski crystal blood.

Ben Shapiro
I have a ponytail, and I have two Srovsky crystal tits in a bag.

Tara Palmeri
It is everything that's so fierce.

Ben Shapiro
It's so gorgeous.

Megyn Kelly
I love it.

She wants us to listen to her on what's weird. Not a word of condemnation for that. An endorsement of the show, an appearance on the show that was one of the most disgusting, blatantly misogynistic things I've ever seen on television. Ben Everest and the fact that our sitting vice president, never mind a candidate for president, would go on that show and celebrate it and lend her credibility to it is an outrage in and of itself. She can spare me the discussions on weird.

Ben Shapiro
This is exactly right. And I think that she's running directly into the teeth of something here that I think that, again, it was a misdirect because everybody thinks of her as strange, but I think that this is going to backlash on her.

This, I think, is her first mistake of the campaign, trying to label your political opponent weird while doing a bunch of things that sort of Normie Americans think are weird. It's not a good look. It really is not. And this is, again, not the first time that Democrats have tried to jujitsu a sort of republican attack line onto their opponents. So you remember back when there was a crowd at a NASCAR race that started chanting F Joe Biden, and one of the commentators suggested that they were chanting let's go, Brandon, and that became sort of a rallying cry for people on the right. And then the left took that and they started talking about the dark Brandon memes. Right. They had, like, the sunglasses and the aviators and the, the laser eyes, like dark Brandon. And then that fell apart on them. When it turns out that there is no dark Brandon, there's just a senile old man who's occupying an office you shouldn't hold. Well, if the idea here is that Kamala Harris is a perfect normie, I don't think that that's going to play other than in sort of coastal elite areas of the United States. And so I think that the backlash against this could be fairly strong. The thing that people mistake when they, when it comes to the Trump phenomenon is in 2016. There's been an attempt to philosophize Trump and suggest that Trumpism is really about economic issues. It's dispossessed white people from the Rust Belt who lost their jobs at the factory, and that's why they're voting for Trump. That's actually not the story of 2016.

The story of 2016 is there's a whole group of people in the United States who have families and who go to church and who have a set of values that is directly opposed to the kind of stuff that Kamala Harris is pushing. And they're being told that they are less than, that they are bad, that there's something wrong with them. In fact, they are weird for saying the kinds of stuff about childbearing and child rearing and going to church that JD Vance says. And to me, that's alienating exactly the population that Kamala Harris needs to win over. Who exactly? And say Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona is sitting around going, man, now that she's appearing on RuPaul's drag race, I'm going to go out and vote for her and it's going to shift enough votes for her that it's going to make up for all the votes that she alienates with this kind of stuff.

Megyn Kelly
I just, I cannot get over the fact that we have spent days talking about JD Vance with a throwaway comment about childless cat ladies and these people who are making a deal out of it can't tell you what a woman is. Want to put men into our little girls locker rooms and sports and our will happily cut off the healthy breasts of a 14 year old girl and sterilize her without giving one thought to her. Never mind. In California, with the cooperation of the school and the exclusion of the parents, like, that is not the pro woman party. Hello. This is a catastrophic development that we've had in modern day America. That is the responsibility of the Democrat party.

How on earth are we seeding the who will protect women and girls line to them over a stupid throwaway by JD on cable? It's absolutely dishonest. It's infuriating. I don't blame him. They'd be doing this to any Republican. But we've lost our minds. When this is the news cycle, this is the discussion.

Ben Shapiro
And again, I think what you said is right. It's all a misdirect. It is all a misdirect. It is all an attempt to get the focus onto JD and away from Trump and away from Kamala. That's, that's. She needs everyone to focus on what she's purporting to be, which is this glitzy, glamorous, unifying figure who does ads to Beyonce's freedom and not what she actually is, which is one of the most radical left politicians that we've ever seen in the history of american politics. She was literally the most left wing senator in the United States Senate in 2019. They whitewashed that from the Internet. That's now gone. She's a person who has given control of the border and proceeded to let in somewhere between seven and 10 million illegal immigrants. She's a person who in the last week alone, by the way, her Middle east policy in the last week alone, when she's been effectively the acting president, has been disastrous. She did a full scale press conference in which she spent nearly the entire press conference ripping on Israel for its supposed human rights violations while saying almost nothing about Hamas. And then over the weekend, Hezbollah, which is a terrorist group located in the south of Lebanon, shot a rocket into a druze area. Druze are Muslim Arabs, shot into a druze area of northern Israel. In the Golan, they killed twelve kids. And Kamala Harris's only statement was, we have ironclad support for Israel, and that's why we're pursuing diplomacy to stop this. Again, she's a radical left disaster area.

And I do think that if the Trump administration focuses in on that, and if they run ads about her wanting to ban fracking in Pennsylvania, and if they run ads about RuPaul's drag race in Arizona and Michigan, I don't think that people, when faced with the actual who Kamala Harris is, are going to resonate in quite the same way as New York magazine, which is putting her on top of a coconut. I will mention that they have that Camelot cover that you mentioned there. The end of Camelot is that Mordred actually ends up destroying Camelot. So we should point that out.

Megyn Kelly
Good point. And by the way, we just did an in depth piece with Maureen Callahan, who wrote the book ask not, which is all about the Kennedy family. And she goes in depth on how that whole thing of Camelot, you know, between Jackie and Jack was made up. It was made up by Jackie just to make their relationship look better after he had died. It was based on a bunch of nonsense. He never really did play records of midline plays like that one. Anyway, once again, it's a made up thing.

You mentioned Kamala's reaction when BB came. And then today after this Hezbollah attack, and she's talking like she's already the president. It's very strange, Ben. She like what vice president comes out and says, I let Netanyahu know this. I did this. Take a listen to sat seven.

Kamala Harris
I also expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, and I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there. As I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done.

So to everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you.

Megyn Kelly
Okay? And that wasn't it. She also put out the following.

This is through the assistant to the president and national security advisor to her, Phil Gordon at VP has been briefed and is closely monitoring Hezbollah's horrific attack on a soccer field in northern Israel yesterday which killed a number of children and teenagers. She condemns this horrific attack and mourns for all those killed and wounded. There is no such statement from the sitting president of the United States, only from the sitting vice president.

What's happening. I mean, this actually does feel like a coup. He is technically still in charge. She's not. No one elected her to be president of anything.

Ben Shapiro
I mean, she is the president. I mean, that's the reality. He will not step out because to step out would be to acknowledge that he's no longer capable of the job. And then his story in the american history is defeated. Donald Trump, too senile to even be president, had to drop out. And it also would throw again more relief on the fact that Kamala Harris and the entire administration had been lying about his health status for legitimately years, which is an issue that should come up between now and the election. Some 54% of Americans believe that the Biden administration was lying about Biden's health, and 92% of those believe that Kamala Harris was lying about the president's health during this whole, this whole crisis. She is acting as though she is already president of the United States, as you mentioned. And then there's the actual content of what she says right there, which is an absolute sop to the pro hamas wing of her party. There's a reason. That is the sitting vice president and the presiding officer in the Senate. She didn't go to Netanyahu's speech. And then she proceeded to, in that press conference that you played there, the worst line was she said, I will not be silent. Well, who's trying to silence you, lady? You're the vice president of the United States. You can say whatever you want. The implication, which is that there's a whole group of people trying to silence her is really quite ugly and nefarious. That they're a bunch of people who say what? You never joke about bad stuff.

Yeah. By the way, if I have to hear any more of this crap about how Doug Emhoff is jewish, therefore, she can't possibly be anti Israel. It's such trash. It's such nonsense. Let me say, as a jew, as somebody who actually cares about this sort of stuff because, you know, I wear the kipa. I actually do the thing. As somebody who cares about that Doug Emhoff, as like, your token court jew inside the Kamala Harris White House, that ain't going to do it. Your policy is what's going to do it. It's ridiculous.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, you better watch it because he was out there over the weekend talking about how his feelings get very, very hurt when mean things are said. Ben, you might, you might have just crossed the line. This particular interview was all about JD Vance and his comments about single women, cat ladies. And he was speaking to Preet Bharara, former us attorney. Take a listen. This is, I mean, this is the sitting second gentleman of the United States.

Ben Shapiro
What he said was abhorrent.

It was just stupid, uninformed.

So you're telling a lot of people in this country and this world that they don't matter, that the only thing that matters is this so called old.

Tara Palmeri
Fashioned view of traditional, quote unquote, family.

Ben Shapiro
It hurt. It hurt my feelings.

So it was upsetting all these flippant.

Tara Palmeri
These supplicants, these opportunists like JD Vance.

Ben Shapiro
And others who go on Fox News and other networks and say the most.

Tara Palmeri
Abhorrent things to see if they can.

Ben Shapiro
You know, get clicks and get attention of their dear leader, Donald Trump.

Megyn Kelly
His wife was literally all over the campaign trail last week calling Donald Trump a predator and a criminal. But Doug Mdor's feelings are hurt, Ben, because JD Vance said what he said about people who won't have children and people who will.

Ben Shapiro
I mean, again, I think this entire campaign for the Democrats right now is trying to drive out the female vote. I think they've made very obvious that they do not care about the mail vote. And they are now having Pete Buttigieg run a group called White Dudes for Kamala. And according to the New York Post that that entire group is going to be dedicated to white dudes, effectively learning to listen. They have to learn to listen and to use their ears and to get in touch with the non traditional side of themselves. Sounds like a real pitch for that blue collar man. Up in, up in the middle of Michigan, working at a factory or something, the kind of ringing out Doug Emhoff to preach about his feel. Who's the target audience for that? It certainly isn't men. It certainly isn't men. And the gender gap in this particular election is going to be wider than any gender gap probably in the history of the female vote in the United States.

Megyn Kelly
It's huge. I mean, Trump's been dominating with men, and Biden had a small margin with women, but not enough to win. And now she's trying to drive up her female numbers. And according that Wall Street Journal poll I mentioned, I, here is what they concluded. Trump is viewed as more able than Kamala Harris to handle immigration, the economy, foreign relations and crime. Well, that's quite a few issues. They happen to be the top four on most people's value lists. But Harris has given the edge, 51 to 33, almost a 20 point advantage when it comes to abortion.

And there is nothing that stimulates female support in, on the democratic ticket more than abortion. And there are more than a few pro choice republican women who are more moderate, whether it's been thinking about themselves or their daughters that they're trying to appeal to, too. They don't care what drives them over to the Democrat ticket. But this is a juicy issue for them. And they do need to run up those female margins.

Ben Shapiro
I do think they run the risk of losing whatever mail margin Biden had. I think that the sort of trade that they're making, the trade off between.

Megyn Kelly
You don't think those ladies, the montage of white women for Kamala lecturing everybody on, for the love of God, don't correct a BIPOC person, is going to drive the men to the polls.

Ben Shapiro
Oh, my God. I mean, can you imagine the number of bipartisan households that are going to emerge in the United States where every man is like, I can't vote for that. There's just no way. And every woman's like, but you have to vote for that. I'm, of course, voting for them, but three times for that. I mean, the war of the sexes is never going to be hotter than it will be in this election.

Megyn Kelly
Ben Shapiro, great to talk to you about it before I let go. I got 20 seconds.

How are you feeling now standing all that? How are you feeling about Trump's chances right now?

Ben Shapiro
I mean, I'm a lot more nervous than I was just a couple of weeks ago. I still think that he's got the advantage. But if I put it at like 80 20 before, I would say that we're now at like 55 45 Trump advantage.

Megyn Kelly
I completely agree with that 100% of what you just said. Great to see you, my friend. Let's do it again soon.

Ben Shapiro
You do?

Megyn Kelly
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the appointment of Vice President Kamala Harris as the new democratic nominee. Oh, it was ground up. Wasn't an appointment, was ground up. Grassroots just asked. Chuck Schumer, in a matter of hours, has completely changed the 2024 race. It seems to have tightened the enthusiasm gap in a big way, too. But will it stick? We're breaking down the latest polls and political storylines with Tara Palmeri. She's senior political correspondent for Puck news and host of the somebody's Got to win podcast. And Shelby Talcott, 2024 campaign reporter for Semaphore.

Great to see you, Tara and Shelby. Thanks for being here.

Tara Palmeri
Thanks for having us.

Megyn Kelly
Ok, so we talked a little bit with Ben Shapiro about the Wall Street Journal poll, but there's also been a couple of other polls, including there's a New York Times Sienna poll, which largely mirrored the Wall Street Journal poll, showing that while Trump had been beating Biden by six points, it's much tighter against Kamala Harris. It's now a two or a three point race, all within the margin of error, and that the enthusiasm for Kamala Harris has gone way up. Now, the ABC Ipsos poll shows that her favorability rating is now at 43%, and that is up from 35%. A week ago. So she went up eight points in a week. I think we all know why. Watching the media coverage of her, she hasn't said or done much. It's, you know, a relief that Biden's gone and a celebration of the prospect of winning by the media and the Democrats. But I repeat myself and just give you a flavor for, you know, where the enthusiasm numbers are. Here's Harry Entin, the data guy over on CNN with a report that Democrats will love.

Ben Shapiro
SA 20 Democrats were suffering from low enthusiasm. So enthusiastic about voting. So this is Democrats for Biden or Harris? Look at this. Back in February, just 62% of Democrats said they were enthusiastic about voting for Joe Biden. Look at this now. Woof. Up to 88% now say that they are enthusiastic about voting for Kamala Harris. That is a huge jump. That is a 26 point jump. Look at Trump during the same stretch, Republicans for Trump, it was 80% in February. Look, it's still fairly high at 82%. But compared to February, where Trump had this 18 point advantage, now we see Harris with a six point advantage. It's definitely for Democrats. Game on. They are very enthusiastic. We see it in the money being raised. We see in the volunteer signups. And now we're seeing in the polling as well.

Megyn Kelly
So her favorability went up eight points and the enthusiasm within the Democratic Party for their nominee went up 26 points. And that's what Harry Anton is responding to. And what we're seeing, you know, why we're seeing the Democrats so gleeful, Shelby, and they're reporting about this. What do you make of it?

Tara Palmeri
Yeah, I think, you know, the, the Trump campaign came out last week with actually what I think was a pretty good point, which is, you know, they sort of described this as the Harris honeymoon. And I think there is an argument to be made that Democrats were so relieved to have Joe Biden off the ticket and so relieved to sort of have a reset that that is playing into these vastly different numbers. And this big jump that we're seeing now, the question is, does that continue? Right. So I think the next few weeks, those sorts of polling is going to be really interesting to see once Harris is out on the campaign trail, once the Trump campaign has really solidified what their attacks are going to be against her. That's what I'm looking at more so than these early sort of polling numbers, because I do think that that being relieved has played a role in all of this.

Megyn Kelly
I mean, it's like, you know, you get the new boyfriend or girlfriend, and they seem so attractive and you didn't think they were into you, but they are into you. They start calling again and you have this feeling of euphoria. You're like, yay. And then a few months into it, sometimes the bloom comes off that rose and you realize, eh, it's not that great. So that's what the Trump campaign is hoping will happen with her because the voters kind of know her already. They're just, the Dems are feeling relieved. Now, tara, here is a word of caution from the Wall Street Journal. In that reporting that I just referenced, they say because the poll was done by a GOP pollster and a Dem pollster who worked together. So I like that kind of a poll. And he said, look, be careful not to feel overly optimistic if you're a Democrat. And he said back in July 2020.

So, you know, exactly four years ago, the Wall Street Journal national polling had Biden leading Trump by nine points and Biden leading Trump in August by eleven points.

Now, Biden would go on to win that race in a very tight race. I mean, it was very tight. You know, a couple tens of thousands of votes made all the difference in that race, even though the polling was showing him eleven points ahead of Trump. Right now that poll is showing Trump ahead.

And his conclusion is that Trump is still in a far better position in this election when compared to 2020. Good caution.

Shelby Talcott
I would agree with that. I mean, I've been saying this all along. Trump is historically always under polled.

At no point in 2020 was Trump ever polling ahead of Joe Biden. And in the end, he only won by 140,000 votes over, I mean, he only lost over 140 by 140,000 votes in a number of states, battleground states. So I think there is a lot of momentum. I think there is a lot of enthusiasm. And like you said, it's a shiny new toy. And that tends to wear off with Trump has any luck, then it will wear off in the next, before the next three months. Because she has such a short campaign, it's harder to really make a lasting impact on who this person is, on who Kamala Harris is defining her as quickly as possible. But I think the Trump campaign should ultimately be worried because it looks like he is running against a generic Democrat and that is not what they want right now. If they can define her as a liberal Democrat from San Francisco, you know, failed California, you know, senator, then, you know, they have a chance, but they don't have a lot of time and they have to act quickly and they really haven't been up much anyway. With advertising. But you see them now mobilizing. And I think, you know, she's going to get good press and that's hard.

She's going to get pressed for a while.

Yeah. From the forefront.

Megyn Kelly
It's not going to be honest press. I mean, that's the thing. Like, if anybody like to define her as anything other than a liberal San Francisco politician is dishonest, I mean, that's just what her record shows up until recently when it started getting scrubbed off the Internet, literally getting scrubbed where she'd been dubbed to be the most liberal senator in the US Senate, I. More than Bernie Sanders, more than Elizabeth Warren. At the end of her term, she didn't have any more time to serve. And now it's been scrubbed to say that's not true. Ok, sure.

There's more data suggesting that even in the critical swing states, it's looking better for her, for the Democrats, I should say, than it was. This is Fox News polling and it's showing now Harris and Trump neck and neck in Michigan, where they're currently tied at 49 each. Minnesota, where she's up, according to this poll, six points over Trump. That had been tighter when it was Biden. Pennsylvania, where they're tied, 49 and 49. Wisconsin, where he's up by one point. All of this is within the margin of error. So the numbers had looked much better for Trump when it was Biden where back in April, Biden and Trump, yes, they were still tied in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but in Michigan, a blue state, Michigan, he was three points behind Trump, 46 to 49. And so you are seeing even in those blue wall states that right now, sort of conventional wish wisdom is switching. It's wish switching. I'll stick with you on this. Tara, to. Well, she might not do that well in the blue wall states, in the Rust Belt, but she's got a chance in the Sunbelt that Biden didn't have, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.

I don't know that we should be counting her out in those rust belts, Rust Belt states. Cause it's looking pretty tight there, too.

Shelby Talcott
Yeah. I mean, it is kind of ironic that Trump may be fighting for the Rust Belt in the end and she may end up getting the Sunbelt.

Georgia. In Georgia alone, Trump lost 20% of male voters in the last election. He has a problem connecting with these Republicans who are loyal to Brian Kemp, the governor there, who is no Trump fan, if she selects Senator Mark Warner, sorry, Mark Kelly from Arizona. I mean, he's a very popular senator who's been good on immigration he's a Democrat, he's a moderate. He could help her really make some connections in the Sunbelt, and then that could put Arizona back in play. Republicans throwing millions and millions of dollars at it.

And who knows? I mean, if there would be no other option for Trump if she wins the Sunbelt than to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and he lost Pennsylvania by half a percentage point last election. Michigan, too.

But it may be JD Vance who he picked specifically to work. Those voters may be able to do some magic. We'll see.

Megyn Kelly
I don't know about the vice presidential pick making all the difference. We'll talk about the possibilities in a sec. But I do want to just address a couple of things that have been hanging out there that have been bothering me on the messaging.

Joe Biden came out last week in his farewell address, Shelby. I mean, I don't know what we're calling this. He does seem to be gone.

He did come out today to say, I want to make all these reforms to the supreme Court, none of which is going to happen. So we're not going to really waste a lot of time on that. But, you know, she's the one responding on Netanyahu. She's the one responding to the Hezbollah attack as though she's already in the office. In any event, he, in his farewell address, he actually had the nerve to come out and tout his record on the border.

The border, Shelby, saying that the border crossings are now at a lower point in his administration than they were when he took over as president from Trump, which is like the worst gaslighting I've ever been subjected to. It made my head hurt. My head hurts. We went back just for kicks and did a little math, which we never like to do, of course. And under Trump net net, over the four years, about 2.5 million illegals came in. It's about 2.5 million. Under Joe Biden, it's going to be about ten, between eight and 10 million. I mean, we're still in 2024.

For him to suggest that there's any comparison of the two men's records that makes Joe Biden look tough on immigration is just a blatant lie, but we have not seen the media rush to fact check him.

Tara Palmeri
Yeah, listen, this has been, this is sort of what's tough, I think, about the Trump campaign getting their messaging out, as Tara said, within the next three months. It's a very short period of time, particularly when you have media that tends to be friendlier to one side over the other. But the border has been an issue for democrats this entire election season, and certainly the Trump campaign, when I've talked to the campaign, aides believe that if they can effectively get that message out, that Harris is a tied to the Biden administration. Right. It is not just Joe Biden as president, it is the Biden Harris administration. So she is just as responsible for the last four years as he is, but also be that she was tapped to address the root causes of migration and sort of fell off with that nobody, you know what I mean? So if they can effectively make that argument, then I think that's really hard for Harris to come back from. And so we see why Joe Biden is sort of trying to get ahead of that narrative, because Democrats are well aware that this is going to be a huge talking point for Republicans over the next few months leading into the election.

Megyn Kelly
So they try to change the topic to women, women, abortion. Honestly, like, this party thinks we're all about our lady parts. We are all about our lady parts. Um, and in addition, the dictator narrative, which we see pretty much every day, that Trump would be a dictator.

So he was giving a speech down at a turning point event, Trump over the weekend, and he was speaking to christians, christian voters. And he was trying to make the point that, I know you're unhappy, but if you just vote me into office, you're never going to have to vote again, because I'm going to take care of it all. And I'll play the exact thing that he said. This is now being circulated. People should listen to it, knowing by the left it's all over x and the news media as Trump promising he's never going to leave office. This is a confirmation of the Rachel Maddow theory that if you vote him into office, he's never leaving. We'll play it and let the audience decide.

Ben Shapiro
Christians, get out and vote. Just this time.

You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine.

You won't have to vote anymore. My beautiful christians, I love you. Christians. I'm a Christian, I love you. Get out. You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good.

Megyn Kelly
You're not gonna have to vote.

I mean, the number of headlines online and elsewhere saying that he's promising no more votes if he gets elected, totally misleading media malfeasance. And even after the campaign clarified, he was saying exactly what he said at the end of that clip, which keeps getting edited off of the relevant clips on the Internet that you're going to have it so good, you're not going to need to vote right. You're not going to want to change things. They misrepresent him. Shelby, I know you've been a member of the media a long time. This is what they do, but it's really pernicious.

Tara Palmeri
I think, I think there's plenty of things to pull out. And I've had this conversation with people in the past over various Trump comments. There's plenty of things that can be pulled out that are legitimate criticisms. But then there are also things like this that I do think are sort of misconstrued and oftentimes taken out of context. And it just, it does a disservice to the media industry to not stick to those sort of very obvious ones and instead try to bring in these comments that, you know, as, as we saw. I mean, in my personal opinion, I think it was fairly clear what he was saying. I know other people are probably going to disagree with me on that.

But again, it just goes back to how the media frames things and how we have a responsibility to do better on both sides of the aisle when we are critiquing and reporting on comments from, whether it's Harris or Trump. And sometimes there's certainly a failure in that.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, my God. I mean, often, I don't know if it's a failure. I think it's an intentional malfeasance on the part of people who want to win an election. And those happen to be, you know, on, in the press nine times at a time. Democrats, and they do have a lot of power. They can manipulate, they can manipulate people, although, you know, it doesn't always work. Again, Trump won in 16, notwithstanding a media onslaught never seen before in american history, at least modern history. All right, stand by. We're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, we're going to talk vice presidential candidates for her, which is getting a ton of buzz now. And it's actually been somewhat entertaining to watch them audition on, on tv. My gosh, have you seen them trying to come out and do backflips to get her attention?

It's really not dignified, but it's happening. We'll talk about it.

All right, ladies, so the auditions to be Kamala Harris's running mate are in full force. They're all over cable television. It's actually kind of funny to watch them. We played a soundbite with Ben of all these democrats calling JD Vance weird. And it was like every single one of them, from Gretchen Whitmer to Josh Shapiro to JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. I mean, just one after the other.

Mark Halperin, who correctly predicted that Joe Biden was going to step down, you know, last Sunday, a week ago, he says he at least seems to be saying it's going to be Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania posted a picture of him and said, developing kind of drudge style.

And that would make some sense given how Pennsylvania is a must win, but definitely hearing a lot of other names still in the mix. Tara, what do you think?

Shelby Talcott
Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising to see them on tv trying to show her that they can be a great advocate, that they can be the pit bull if she needs one. I mean, that's part of the job of being a vice president, is you're a surrogate. You're the person who goes out on the campaign trail, raises money, fundraising, and, yeah, I've heard a lot of different names. I think Shapiro is an obvious choice because he is from Pennsylvania. That is a 19 electoral college vote state. It's almost a must win if you don't win the Sunbelt, Arizona, or Georgia. He's very popular. He won his previous election two years ago by 15 points.

That's pretty stunning. And the question now is whether picking a jewish vice president would anger some of the muslim voters in Michigan. Do you win Pennsylvania but lose support in Michigan? I mean, it's a real thing that's being spoken about. He's a devout jew. He is. And he's spoken out in support of Israel. So that's something to be factored right now.

But then again, Kamala Harris.

Megyn Kelly
Well, but speaking out in support of Israel is a different thing. Right. Like, what we're hearing in left wing press over and over is. But he's jewish, so it's a downside of what the fuck? Well, I'm sorry, but it's just total bullshit that we're talking like this now on cable news. Like that's an okay thing. Yeah, well, he's. Well, unfortunately, he's black, so, you know, it's a. No, you. I know you're not doing that, but that's people talking about him.

Shelby Talcott
Well, it's identity politics. I mean, that's. That's truly what it is. And in fact, like some democratic insider said to me, that she actually is soft with jewish voters right now within the party. So he's seen as someone who might be able to speak to suburbanites. She might. He might be able to help her in swing districts, down ballot in New York, in California. And those were the districts that the Democrats lost in 2022. And that is why the Republicans have the House just four seats. So, I mean, he has a lot of advantages. But then some people say, you know, bring on Mark Kelly. He's a guy's guy. He's an astronaut. His wife is Gabby Giffords. He's got a compelling story. Senators love him. And crucially, she's also close in areas.

Arizona, Trump is up by seven points.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah.

Mark Kelly, as much as I love his bio and his brother, by the way, his brother's also an astronaut. He came on my show at NBC and he was amazing. He was totally charming. The brother is like, I was a straight c student. I never got good grades. I don't know how I became an astronaut. But, you know, for what it's worth, you can do it, too. Everyone can do it. He was just a doll anyway. This is not Scott. This is Mark. They're identical twins.

I just don't, it doesn't make sense to me. He's too, you know, but I get it. He's a son of cops and he's gun owner, notwithstanding the fact that he's anti, you know, certain gun measures given what happened to his wife. Okay, so Shapiro is definitely getting the most buzz shelby, but we're starting to hear other names. Oh, we have a little side of Shapiro. Let's give the audience a listen to him.

Ben Shapiro
You could not have a clear contrast between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Think about it. Four years as president, guy stacks the NLRB with a bunch of corporate folks who have tried to rip away your rights every step of the way. We can't go back to that and he can't defend that.

This guy went to the Supreme Court of the United States, a place where Kamala Harris is attorney general in California. California went to stand up to expand the freedoms for the good people of this nation.

Megyn Kelly
A lot of people saying he sounds like Barack Obama in his cadence and his delivery. I can see it. Okay. But putting him to the side, I can see why we all agree he'd be very appealing to her.

Starting to hear some buzz about.

About Waltz. Right? About Tim Waltz. He's the Minnesota governor. I mean, they kind of forgot about Minnesota as a possible place plucking ground for VPS. But why is this guy suddenly getting some buzz?

Tara Palmeri
Yeah, he's, he's been well known in democratic politics, so he would be sort of a major figure. Somebody described, we did a piece recently just sort of diving into all of the possibilities that Harris has. And somebody described it to my colleague as basically like the most exciting group of white men that you could pick from, which is pretty accurate because a lot of these top names are white men. And so again, it goes into that identity politics. But one of the things I think that is a downside to waltz is he hasn't attracted as much national attention as some of the other folks. And so then that dives into the question of does the vice presidential pick really matter? And there's arguments to be made on both sides of the aisle. I know some people believe, particularly for Harris, that it is going to matter. And I've heard that she is going to pick based solely on who is going to help her the most in some of these swing states, which I'm not sure it would necessarily be him over someone like a. Shapiro but then there's the argument that ultimately it doesn't really matter. It's a flash. You know, it's going to be a really big news story for a few days, and then it's going to sort of fade into the background. And if you're going to vote for Harris or if you're going to vote for Donald Trump, then you're going to vote for them, and your vote is not really going to change because of who that person picks as their running mate, which I also think is a legitimate argument. But we'll see.

Megyn Kelly
Well, especially given that she's 59 years old. I mean, Tim Waltz is 60. I must say, he looks a lot older than Kamala does. She looks good for 59.

You know, she's 59. God willing, she's going to have a nice long life ahead of her. This is not like when we elected Joe Biden or frankly, even looking at Trump at 78. If you consider actuarial tables, the vice presidential pick is more relevant the older they are of. So I think you're right. Like, yes, they want some balance. She's a black woman.

Okay? You get the white man. Trump won a different route. I don't know. The Democrats are very identity politics focused, though. So is there any chance she is going to add a Gretchen Whitmer, Tara, who this just this morning said hard.

Shelby Talcott
No, I doubt it. I don't think they would, they would risk that adding two women to a ticket. I, I hate to say it as a woman myself, but I don't, I bet they think that the country isn't ready for two women on the top of the ticket.

Megyn Kelly
I think I totally agree.

Shelby Talcott
A vice president is not someone you go out to vote for. But you also don't want a vice president that gives you a reason not to vote for somebody. Right. And in this case, like Joe Biden was picked because he was seen as the elder statesman, the older white man with this young, vibrant Obama. It's like you want the yin to the yang, right? The salt to the pepper. That's what they're trying to do with Kamala Harris. They want people to feel like there's someone in her ear who's like a part of the establishment, a safe pair of hands. And who knows? Maybe can deliver a state, maybe Josh Shapiro out on the ground in the rust ball could really help her with. It's just half a percentage point. It's like 40,000 voters. Who knows? He's very compelling. I mean, you just played that clip.

I've also heard other names as well. But like Roy Cooper from North Carolina, that is like Democrats cannot get the idea of winning North Carolina out of their head again after Obama. And, you know, Roy Cooper, popular governor of North Carolina, older man again, salt and pepper kind of thing going on. And, yeah, I think they, and he gets along with kamala and there's talk of him as well. But I don't know.

Megyn Kelly
I feel Andy Bashir of Kentucky, who Kentucky brings absolutely nothing to the ticket. There's that we're not debating about Kentucky. The reason he's in consideration, Shelby, is he's a shit stirrer, too. He's a pretty good arguer. He, we saw him played a sound bite of him last week attacking JD Vance as a fake hillbilly. And while JD Vance didn't much like that characterization, he's articulate and he's strong. I mean, he would be a very effective attack dog.

Tara Palmeri
Yeah, exactly. And that's what we're seeing on the Sunday shows is all of these candidates sort of, as we said, vying for this position and showing that they can be that attack dog. And I think the argument that, you know, you need someone who is going to be able to obviously spread your message and go after Donald Trump's campaign coherently and aggressively in a way that maybe Harris, Harris doesn't want to. Right. You need sort of these different styles oftentimes when you're running a presidential campaign. I also think the benefit to Bashir is obviously, you know, he, he has known her for a while. And so there's an argument of, does Harris go and pick somebody who she trusts? Right. And so there's, again, there's arguments to be made for all of these candidates. But I think the one thing that a lot of the top ones that we've been talking about have in common is how their rhetoric is how they can be an attack dog, how they're showing that they can be aggressive in a presidential campaign cycle and make the argument for Harris in a way.

Megyn Kelly
And he's also a blue Democrat governor in a red state, which would be another reason he's on the list.

Soon we're going to find out. Do we know the date on which we're going to find out. Trump kept it like the celebrity apprentice, not telling them. That was one of the interesting things JD told us on Friday is that we literally got the call like a half an hour before he missed the first call from Trump. And when Trump called back, he could hear JD's son in the background. He said, put me. Put him on. Put him on speaker. Put me on speaker. And he said, the little boy, your father, just missed the most important phone call of his life.

It's crazy. But anyway, do we expect.

Do we know when she has to announce it or is going to announce it?

Shelby Talcott
Well, there's a roll call on August 1 through 7th. The latest date is August 7. It's the Ohio roll call. It's when the delegates decide who will be at the top of the ballot, basically, since Joe Biden is no longer on the democratic ballot, and so she ostensibly needs to choose her running mate by that date, August 7. I think, I know we're doing the vetting process, or they're doing the vetting process in such a compressed amount of time. So they're probably dragging it out. It does add enthusiasm and kind of keeps a narrative around Kamala Harris that doesn't dwell on her faults or the things she said in her past. So it might, there might be some sort of thinking to drag out the veep process, but when you don't have a running mate, you don't have someone out there fundraising for you, right? You don't have someone out there stomping for you. And I think she should choose this person sooner rather than later. But we're talking about seven or eight days. We're going to know at the very latest, August 7. She can't drag it on after that, Zachary.

Megyn Kelly
And she's not even technically the nominee. So I guess I'm putting the cart before the horse. You know, she's got to actually, I guess, officially be anointed. I never got to show this on Friday because we had JD on and we kind of stuck to, you know, the facts around him. But there was officially an Obama endorsement of Kamala on Friday in ithood. I'm sorry, but it was the cringiest thing I've seen a long time. It was truly like, and take one. That's, that was the only takeaway I had from it that was very, very obviously rehearsed. I'm going to play for the audience because we haven't gotten to it. Watch.

Kamala Harris
You're both together. Oh, it's good to hear you both.

Ben Shapiro
I can't have this phone call without.

Megyn Kelly
Saying to my girl, Kamala, I am proud of you.

Tara Palmeri
This is going to be historic.

Ben Shapiro
We call to say, michelle and I couldn't be prouder to endorse you and to do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office.

Kamala Harris
Oh, my goodness.

Tara Palmeri
Michelle.

Kamala Harris
Barack, this means so much to me. I am looking forward to doing this with the two of you. Doug and I both.

Megyn Kelly
All right. Okay. Again, very cringey and obviously fake, but important for her. Shelby. And he was the one person we were wondering about. Right. Like, where is Barack Obama? Do we have any reporting on why it took him so long versus everybody else in the democrity?

Tara Palmeri
Yeah, there were comments suggesting that some of the leaders, because, remember, you know, like Nancy Pelosi and some of these other folks also didn't immediately endorse, particularly because they didn't want it to be seen as sort of a coronation of Harris, which obviously it has since become. Right. There's, there's nobody else who really ran against her. So she was sort of the one and only regardless. And so I think once they figured out that she had enough support where she was going to win anyway, it didn't really matter. So that's when we saw the Obamas come out. But as for the cringe thing, I think the cringe part is really interesting because it is sort of, you know, a cringy video, but they've been really leaning into that aspect of her and they've sort of tried to, like, reinvent cringe as cool and relatable. And, you know, it's an open question whether or not that works long term, but I think that has contributed to this, you know, discourse we've seen from, from voters and from politicians with how happy they are in the immediate aftermath of picking Harris because she's been able to take these moments from her past campaign trail where she said something weird or awkward or, like, laughed oddly and they're leaning into it. And so I think that this Obama release video, which obviously was planned. Right. It's sort of meant to be like, it was natural. It was, you know, it was being recorded, obviously.

I think that's intentional. I think, like, the cringe is they're trying to sort of lean into it. And the question is, right, I. Do they lean into it too much and it becomes cringe again? Or does it stay sort of cool with that faction of young liberal voters that they're trying to get over to their side?

Megyn Kelly
Okay, so there is, there is a report out today that came out over the weekend, Tara, from Seymour Hirsch. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner. He was with the Times. He was with the New Yorker, though now he's independent and has had some more controversial reporting. Um, he is reporting that, uh, and he discloses the, with respect, thinness of this. Uh, he says he has gone over reports of Biden's tumultuous trip to Las Vegas last week. This was, this actually appeared in the Daily Mail. One of the reporters who was on board Air Force one, uh, Emily Goodwin of the Daily Mail reported. And it's in the Daily Mail right now, she was part of the press pool that the president was deathly pale, that air force one flew at maximum speed to Delaware, that people, their plates were shaking. It was scary for those on board. It was very clear to them they were going usually fast in the air and that they believed the president was having a medical emergency.

And he says that he has been in touch in the wake of this report and others, that with a senior official in Washington who helped Seymour Hirsch fashion an account of a White House in complete disarray, culminating in the president's withdrawal from the race. And he says that last Saturday, July 20, Obama, Mister Obama, was deeply involved in trying to get. Obama trying to get Biden out of this race. And that there was talk that he would place a call to Biden, quote, on Sunday morning, the official told me, with the approval of Pelosi and Schumer, resuming quotes, Obama called Biden after breakfast and said, here's the deal. We have Kamala's approval to invoke the 25th amendment. But Obama made it clear, he goes on, that he was not going to immediately endorse Kamala Harris. Again. This reporting not being repeated elsewhere.

Don't know whether there's truth to this, but if so, that would be a massive piece of reporting. So what do you make of it?

Shelby Talcott
Yeah, you know, it is one source, unnamed source on background. So I am a little dubious. But, you know, Obama made a point of not requesting to speak with Joe Biden.

He did not want to contact him because he believed that it's according to my reporting as well. And I've been pretty ahead of this, you know, in terms of knowing that, like, Nancy Pelosi was deeply behind this, orchestrating it. She was in contact with, with Obama. But they knew that Obama was not going to have influence on him because of the last time that they talked back in 2019. And he had convinced, sorry, back in 2015 when he had convinced him not to run for office. So it was seen that any sort of influence from Obama was not going to work. And truly, Joe Biden was very dug in. He was very, very dug in at that time.

You know, I was told, though, that if he did not drop out by Sunday, that that following week was going to get increasingly nastier, especially from hell leaders. There would just be, you know, an onslaught of lawmakers calling for him to step down. It would become aggressive. It was just, maybe one of them would have said something like that publicly, but, and it would all be with, you know, the leaders hands off allowing them to do that. No one like Chuck Schumer or hawking Jeffries or Nancy Pelosi stopping them. But I don't believe that it contradicts with my reporting at least, that President Obama picked up the phone and called him and made this threat.

Megyn Kelly
I mean, it would be so extraordinary if that ever gets matched or out there. It was just, that's an earthquake of a report.

But who knows? You know, I don't, it's not true that it was ground up, as Chuck Schumer keeps trying to tell us. We all know that grassroots, he keeps saying, okay, you say, so they let.

Shelby Talcott
The roots rise up.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, they rose all the way up to the very top of the democratic party.

Shelby Talcott
Some water and let it happen. Right.

Tara Palmeri
I think also this, this reporting, just more generally in towers reporting, all of, all of what we've heard points to, regardless of the specifics of this 25th Amendment claim, points to the reality that there was an intense pressure campaign to push Biden out, and it was from Nancy Pelosi on downwards.

And I think that's really the crux of this is just he did face this intense pressure campaign from the highest people in the Democratic Party to step aside.

And I think that, you know, that reporting just generally gets at that reality that, you know, he faced so much pressure that, as Tara said, he did not want to step aside. He had made that clear over the past few weeks. But the pressure built and it was so big that he was, you know, he had no choice. Essentially, in the end, I think there's an argument to be made.

Megyn Kelly
Well, it's tough to look at the numbers now and say the Democrats made a mistake. Very, very tough to make that argument, though the process itself definitely have some questions about that. And if I were a Democrat voter, I'd be wondering why I didn't get to vote for my nominee. Could have been some others with an even better chance against Trump than Kamala Harris, which they want to ignore her flaws in the press. But the record is what the record is. And she owns all of Joe Biden's policy failures. And she's a, she is awkward. So we're going to see it. That can't be hidden.

Ladies, thank you. It's great to see you both.

Kamala Harris
Thank you.

Tara Palmeri
Thank you.

Megyn Kelly
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 SiriusXM 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.

Ben Shapiro
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
Let's go to some of our callers who've got thoughts. Connie in Indiana. Hi, Connie. What's on your mind?

Hi, Megan.

Connie
Well, I just wanted to say, first of all, I think that we need to give JD some credit that they had to go back several years to find something, quote, damaging.

And, you know, and I think that on his show, he did pretty good damage control. But I don't know who will hear it, you know, because not like the left wing media is going to put anything good out there for him.

Megyn Kelly
Well, I mean, our interview went everywhere. It went everywhere. But of course, the spin on it by the left was just like, no, he, he doubled down. He didn't apologize. And so screw him.

Connie
I felt like he did. I think he, I think he did really good with your interview. But then I also wonder things like with Kamala's husband, Doug. I just heard that clip on, on your show a little while ago to how hurt he is about these comments. It's like, well, was he hurt several years ago when they were made, or is it just now that his wife's running for president?

Megyn Kelly
I'm not sure. And it's a lie. Isn't it a lie, Connie? Do you believe for 1 second his feelings are actually hurt?

Connie
Not for 1 second. And then the last thing I just wanted to say that I felt like Taylor Swift. She's done a really good job keeping out of the media, not going one way or the other politically. And I noticed, I don't remember what celebrity was, you probably know, but someone posted a picture of her with her cat around her neck and I thought, you know, at least her out of it. And she wants to come forward and say, hey, I just offended me. Let her do it. It kind of what's really bizarre that a celebrity had to post a picture of her like they're going to.

Megyn Kelly
Wasn't it the Kamala Harris team that did it? I could be wrong, but, yeah, I think it might have been them who said, like, oh, you know, you're taking on people like Taylor. He wasn't saying childless cat ladies are bad. He was saying the sort of chattering nanny class that's always trying to tell us how to live our lives that has intentionally made a decision not to have children because they want to save the environment, are not the people who should be our leaders. And that's really far less controversial than the way it's being spun. But thank you for getting it. Connie, love the fact that you called in and appreciate your insights. Let's go to Gina. Gina is out in Idaho. Hi, Gina. What are your thoughts?

Ben Shapiro
Hi, Megan.

Shelby Talcott
I think that Ron DeSantis would have.

Ben Shapiro
Been a better pick.

Shelby Talcott
Not that I don't like JD. I just think that DeSantis, he has.

Ben Shapiro
A lot of support in Florida, and I think he's got a strong background as being a governor. And if he and Trump could get along, I think he would have been a great person. In case something happened to Trump or looking out eight years from now, taking.

Gina
Over after four years.

Megyn Kelly
So, you know, they, they would do to him. They'd make him into the boogeyman and say, he's this far right cultural warrior who wants to take away women's rights, the six week abortion ban, all that stuff would have come back to haunt him. On the one issue Trump has vulnerability on, which is abortion rights. You know, you saw the numbers there. So I can see why he was risky for Trump plus, I don't think they love each other, but Ron DeSantis, you know, potentially has a long future still in politics. I wonder what he'll do because he is term limited. So maybe he'll do one of those, like he'll run for Senate or do something else. He'd keep himself sort of in a governing position. But thank you for your thoughts, Gina. Great to talk to you. Okay, let's see. Deborah in Georgia, one of our swing states. Hi, Deborah. What's on your mind?

Gina
Good morning, Megan. Thank you for having me. And I love your show, and I greatly appreciate what you do for us.

I do have a comment on JD. I personally, I am a 54 year old single lady, never been married.

And I didn't take none of it offensive because the way he explained it, it was perfectly clear to me. Most common, common sense people got it.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah. And you know what the media does to any Republican.

Gina
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And from being from a swing state, I think everybody's going to be a little surprised this time because everybody and anybody I know, and trust me, most of them voted for Biden because they got mad at the bad tweets. And I told him, get over that crap. So what I mean, tweet, you want what we got now over a mean tweet? They're saying, oh, not only heck no, it's hell no. They're voting for Trump. They like him. They.

Megyn Kelly
George is going to gonna go red this time around, I think so.

Gina
I think it'll be closed. But everybody I know, and I'm gonna tell you, I've seen something this time. I'm a truck driver, so I go to all 48 states.

But every time I.

Two months ago, when I was at home, I stopped at one of the local, very popular gas stations, and there was a group of young men, they were between 20 to 25, out talking to people about Trump to vote for Trump. I've never seen that. I mean, I know we have people that go to door to door, but I've never seen it like that.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah. But I don't know who they were in particular. Yeah, no, I love the, I love the color on it. Deborah, thank you. And drive safely out there. Appreciate what you do.

Okay. Let's go to Stephen in New York. It is not a swing state, but it is still interesting, and it is the place I spent most of my 50 years. Steven, what's on your mind?

Stephen
Hi, Megan. Thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to let you know that sometimes I sit through some of your topics that make me uncomfortable and squirm in my seat and I'm here for it. Thank you.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, well listen, I love having you squirming or not.

Stephen
Thank you. Yep. Sometimes people don't want to be uncomfortable. You do it, you know how to do it and, and I'm on the edge of my seat because of it. As far as the, far as the first debate goes, I don't think it was a mistake. I think Trump took it on like a bull by the horns and he went for it. Too bad it didn't happen in the second debate. So with that said, JD Vance as a pick, as far as I know, June Don Junior is Washington lobbied Mister Trump senior heavily for JD Vance.

You know, listen, can we get a do over? Is that possible? The Dems did it. Wouldn't that shake up the race for us?

Megyn Kelly
Oh, interesting.

Stephen
And do we need JD Vance for these middle of the country states that are already pretty much for Trump? I really wasn't understanding that kind of.

Megyn Kelly
Perspective where like Trump, right to undo a choice and in effect admit that he doesn't sound like, I don't think he'll do that. But I think, listen, I mean I've been through this enough times. Like whoever Trump picked, they would demonize him or her, they would make them. It's some evil devil for whatever issue and it could be a number of them. I, you know, you just get the same story, different person if he subbed out Vance. Stephen, thank you. And see a see in the New York area sometime soon. Okay, let's go to Nebraska. We've got a minute left. Matt in Nebraska, what's on your mind?

Stephen
I gotta tell you Megan, I'm a big fan and we got to not let the Democrats set the narrative on these things. JD Vance is a fantastic pick.

And if the voters can be swayed away, given everything that's happened, the unfettered immigration and all that, if the voters can be swayed away by a guy that they don't like some comments he made, then this country's already lost.

Megyn Kelly
So I love the pick and I'm.

Stephen
Glad we're where we're at.

Megyn Kelly
Matt, I totally agree with that. Thank you for saying that. I just, I can't get over the fact that one side can't even say what a woman is. One side is pro castrating little boys and chopping off the breasts of little girls and sterilizing them. Why are we spending time talking about a stupid cat comment? Get some perspective. Not to mention the 12 million illegals in the country anyway, all of it is just so frustrating. If we had an honest media, this would be easy. But it's one of our many great challenges as a nation. Thank you for calling in, Matt. Thanks to all of you for calling in and for listening, being with us every day. Really appreciate it. Tomorrow, BDH is back and Stephen A. Smith joins us from ESPN.

Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No B's, no agenda and no fear.