Maddow's Softball Fani Willis Interview, and "Deadly Force" at Mar-a-Lago, with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke

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Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show. Happy Wednesday. Right? It's Wednesday. Starting to lose track now as we're getting almost at the end of the school year. Right? Are you having that at all? It's like, what, what's happening? Who am I? I can't wait for school to be out. I don't know about you, but, like, doesn't your life get a little easier when school is out because you don't have to, like get up at the crack of dawn and get the kids all over hell and gone. It's like you can just kind of like work on your stuff as your kids are asleep in their beds. It's so much easier. But then, of course, that comes the day. Anyway, in real news, new court documents revealing that FBI agents were authorized before they raided Trump's facility at Mar a Lagoon. You remember a couple August ago to use deadly force, to use deadly force if necessary on the former president of the United States and those around him, his family.

Are you like going to like shoot Barron if he tries to stop you from getting a box? Was that the plan?

The mainstream media just kind of shrugging, saying it's standard operating procedure for the agency. Well, that's true, but this was no standard operating raid and they knew that. This is actually really outrageous that special procedures wouldn't put in place. They understood they already had another part of the government down there protecting the guy, armed agents from the Secret Service. What did they think they were going to do? They could like a shootout at the ok corral to get Trump's thoughts on Kim Jong un, it's, it's amazing. We're going to talk to our panel about it in a minute. Plus, Rachel Maddow gets the first interview with the disgraced Fulton County DA, Fannie Willis. And then she proceeded to disgrace herself. Maddow did. What a joke. What a joke of an interview. That was. Not one tough question. Not one. Shame on you, Rachel Maddow. Shame on you.

Fannie Willis did win her primary. I know you're shocked. In Atlanta, Fulton county last night. She's now going to go on to have a general election contest against a Republican. And guess who showed up to celebrate her big win? Hellova. Nathan Wade, ex lover, they tell us. Do we believe it?

Rich Lowry
We report.

Megyn Kelly
You decide. Joining me now, two of our favorites for NR day. That's National Review Day here at the Megyn Kelly Show, Rich Lowry, who is editor in chief of National Review, and Charles CW Cook, who is a senior writer for National Review and host of the Charles CW Cook podcast. You can find all of their work by becoming an NR plus subscriber. I am. I recommend it. You get rid of almost all of the annoying ads. And also I get the actual magazine delivered to my house, which I like to leave around just so my kids could pick it up, just start to thumb through it. That's how we sort of start to counter program in other ways against the left wing indoctrination of their schools. And you should do it as well.

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megan Rich, Charles, welcome back. Great to see you.

Rich Lowry
Hey, thanks for having us.

Charles CW Cook
Thanks for having me.

Megyn Kelly
I heard somebody on National Review, I must have been on the editors saying that they used to thumb through the magazine when they were young and start to take in the musings of William F. Buckley. And I thought, oh, that's smart. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do. Do that exact same thing. I've. Mom's already read it all by the time it gets here, but the kids haven't. All right, so let's kick it off with maybe we'll have to shoot Trump when we go to execute this warrant at Mar a Lago to get the documents that we believe he's withholding. And it turned out he was indeed withholding. But his defense is, I was working with you. I was going to get it to you eventually. Okay, that'll play out in court.

And, Rich, the thing is, it is standard operating procedure for the cops to have that sort of shoot, if necessary, permission just because they don't want the FBI agents to get in trouble. But this was not a standard procedure. As I point out, as a former president with secret service protection at a very busy location, and they had authorized them to go door to door in Mar a Lago, banging on the doors to get documents.

This seems really over the top. What do you think?

Rich Lowry
Well, I'm generally a critic of all aspects of the law, fair campaign against Donald Trump, but I'd love to believe it'd be hilarious, among other things, that Joe Biden opposed the lethal raid on Osama bin Laden, but supported the lethal raid on Donald Trump, or potential lethal raid. But this is standard operating procedure. The FBI was not going to shoot down Donald Trump, but if something crazy happened, they need the authorization, and they have it in all searches because you are coming in, maybe you're knocking down a door. They weren't going to do that in this circumstance. Maybe someone freaks out and does something that represents a threat and you, you need to be able to deal with it. But that clearly wasn't gonna happen in this case. So I think this is, this is Trump whipping up people with an all caps truth social post. That was.

It's not a faithful representation of the reality of the situation, in my view.

Megyn Kelly
Well, it did. It did. They were permitted to do it. That piece is real. Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary. The FBI had a medic on the scene. They had identified a local trauma center for anyone injured during the raid and did have a plan to go room by room, including, you know, through the Mar a Lago residents, and said that they will the FBI engage with the US Secret Service per existing relationships? I mean, that's what's so nuts about this is this. I mean, what, like, what could have happened here? This could have gone south and quickly. They knew they were going to a place with armed guards who also work for the same federal government. And you really want to say it's just standard, like, okay, it's fine that there were no increased risks?

Rich Lowry
Well, I imagine this was deconflicted, right, with the Secret Service.

And you know, what if Trump takes out a shotgun, I mean, we go down, I'm not sure, but you can come up with all sorts of crazy possible scenarios that weren't going to happen and didn't happen. So someone shoots the FBI. So are we supposed to say if someone shot at the FBI, we wouldn't want the FBI to have the authority to shoot back?

Megyn Kelly
No, but when it comes to dealing with the former president of the United States, there would have to be a carve out. Like, what's that?

There would have to be a carve out in dealing with the actual former president. Can. I mean, just imagine what.

I don't know. Here's the thing, rich, but here's the thing. I don't know that the Secret Service was consulted and given a heads up as to this. In fact, my belief is that they probably weren't.

No, my belief is they probably weren't, because what was happening, you can see in the motion practice leading up to this, the judge was getting increasingly irritated with Donald Trump and mad that he wasn't turning over the documents. That's how the prosecutor, the FBI was feeling the prosecution, and so they wouldn't have wanted to give anybody around him a heads up.

And so there really could have been a situation where the Secret Service was caught off guard on who was coming for the president. I mean, I just think this is all at a very high level.

Rich Lowry
And so are we supposed to believe, though, that someone, say, an FBI agent is shot, they shouldn't be able to shoot back?

Megyn Kelly
You don't need, you don't need a pre authorization for that, rich. You or I wouldn't need a pre authorization.

Rich Lowry
So what's the outrage then?

Megyn Kelly
What if they could have anything, could have shot a special procedure. Go ahead.

Rich Lowry
If they could have shot back anyway, what's, what's, why is it so terrible that they had no authorization to shoot back, necessarily?

Megyn Kelly
Because it's a pre green light. I mean, it's a pre green light for to go onto the property of the former president of the United States with armed weapons and the ability to go into all the private spaces of Mar a Lago, the guests, the private residents, the children's homes where, you know, there are armed guards whose job it is to protect the former leader of the free world. I mean, the stakes are already gonna be high. The tensions are gonna be higher than your average raid. They knew all of this. And I think if they, if they weren't coordinating with the Secret Service, then this is absolutely egregious. They endangered everybody down there.

Rich Lowry
Well, that's the criticism of the raid itself. Right.

Rather than the rate being carried out under standard procedure. You're saying the rate itself was danger.

Megyn Kelly
Well, I've maintained that position.

Charles CW Cook
I think you're both right in that.

Megyn Kelly
Go ahead, Charles.

Charles CW Cook
Well, I think you're both right in that. This is what government is.

If you're going to use government, you're ultimately going to use force. Every government action is ultimately backed by force, which is why we should use it sparingly and why we should want limited government and rules that define and determine what the government can do. And I think ultimately, the criticism here then has to be, why did they raid Mar a Lago?

And I've wondered that myself. I think this is the strongest case against Trump. I've never been persuaded that this raid was necessary.

I can't see it. And as you say, when you do this, whether you have pre authorization or not, and rich is absolutely right, if you're going to go in, you, of course, have to have that as an option.

But if you're going to go in, you're going to create that enormous risk. And even before this, there was a risk to this raid that was not necessarily to life, but to our norms. This was a departure. And when those departures are made, sometimes they have to be. I want careful consideration in the build up, and I've just never been convinced that there was that consideration. And this is another knock on effect of that. So I think. I think you're both right.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, well, I do think it's a stretch to say. Not a stretch. It's an outright lie to say, as Marjorie Taylor Greene did, that they went down there to assassinate President Trump. That's not, that is not true.

But there's no question that they failed the mission.

Yeah, that's right. This endangered him, I think, unnecessarily. And those around him and those at Mar a Lago. And the government's, of course, been criticized for doing something we've never seen done before there, too. But the breaking of norms, hold on to that thought, which you just said, because we're going to get back to something that happened last night on Rachel Maddow with Fannie Willis. The breaking of norms and who did it first really is kind of where we're going to go with it. Before I get to Fannie Willis, though, and there's a lot to discuss there, let's talk about the wrap up of Trump's first trial. We haven't had closing arguments yet, but we're about to.

Court's off today, but we're going to have them. And then we think the jury will get the case next week.

So having watched everything, and I know you read everything, and I do, too, that Andy writes at National Review, and I love your podcast with him, rich. I listen to that every week, as you know. How do you think the prosecution did and how do you think it's going to come out?

Rich Lowry
Well, Frederick's worth my odds of a hung jury are higher than they were going in. I was maybe 20, 30% chance of a hung jury. Now maybe. I think it's a 50 50 kind of a coin flip because this is such a stretch legally. And Michael Cohen is obviously a liar and he stole from the Trump Organization. And yeah, he didn't lose his cool on the stand and freak out, but that doesn't reduce the fact or get around the fact that he's not a credible person. And I don't need to tell you just the legalities here. One, you need to say he falsified business records. Maybe he did. But there's a colorable case that this was a legal fee.

Cohen was acting as a lawyer when he forged this agreement with Stormy Daniels representative. It's the kind of thing a lawyer does. He was continuing to, to be a lawyer for Trump, and it was booked as a legal fee rather than reimbursement, obviously didn't harm anyone. He was plushed up so he could pay taxes on this reimbursement. And then there needs to be an intent to defraud. But no one was defrauded. Right. The tax man wasn't defrauded. Nothing was stolen from anyone. So that underlying offense, there's nothing there, and that would obviously just be a misdemeanor that statute of limitations had expired on, unless there's some other offense, which is supposedly stealing the election and violating campaign finance laws. But there's no reason to think that this was a campaign expense. If Trump sincerely thought it was a campaign expense, he would have paid the expense from his campaign. Right? He's a penny pincher. He wouldn't have shelled out personally if he thought it was a campaign expense. Prior president suggests it's not a campaign expense. The FEC didn't pursue this. And then the larger theory that he somehow stole the election by booking this reimbursement falsely is obviously preposterous because that happened in 2017, after the 2016 elections. So there's no way that the way you account for this after the fact affects how people voted in 2016. And the hush payment itself was not illegal. So this is ridiculous. It's completely preposterous. And I have enough faith, maybe naively, and a Manhattan jury to think that there's at least one or two people that are going to see through it.

You know, if they don't, it's a travesty. It'll eventually be overturned on appeal. But it doesn't help Trump to win eventually in 2025 or 2026, when he's had to expend all the time and resources fighting this now, when he's going to have potentially convicted felon label around his neck. Maybe that doesn't make a difference. I don't think it's going to make a big difference, but it could. That's the whole point of it. And it doesn't help if you reverse it a year or two after the election.

Megyn Kelly
Charles, did we know that rich was an optimist? Is this. This is news to you? I mean, I know we know. MBD. No, not. But so sunny, so, so up on the prospect of a fair jurist, on that twelve person jury in Manhattan. What do you think?

Charles CW Cook
Well, I agree with everything Rich said about the trial. I just am a little more pessimistic when it comes to the prospects for the jury. This topic, in a sense, is related to our last one, in that that raid and Mar a Lago was primarily contrived because the president wanted the image of Mar a Lago being raided. And this trial in New York, not federal, of course. Now, a state concern was staged because its architects wanted the sight of Donald Trump in a courtroom. They wanted these facts to be known, and they bent the law every which way to achieve it. If the jury agrees with the prosecution, that will be a bonus.

But I think the chance of that is relatively high, because I just think there are an awful lot of people in Manhattan who share the aim here, which is to put that big neon sign behind Donald Trump that says convicted felon, whether or not there is much scaffolding underneath it. Now, I will say I do generally take an optimistic view. I wrote a piece recently, actually, in which I pointed out that one of the things that is working in America at the moment, despite all of the problems that we have, is the jury system. The vast majority of highly publicized trials that we have seen over the last five years have come out well.

And the best part of them has been the conduct of the jury, which seems to have behaved really seriously. But last time I was on your show, Megan, we were talking about this jury and the indications, at least of those who got kicked off the jury or were not put on it was that there are a sad number of people who do not take their role seriously. And I am a little more worried than rich that that number will be twelve.

Megyn Kelly
And I also share Andy's concern that the judge is the father figure in the courthouse, in the courtroom. And if the judge wants a conviction, it's pretty easy for him to steer the jury toward a conviction, not necessarily just through his rulings on what's hearsay, what's in, what's out. During the course of the trial, as we saw when Stormy took the stand, when Costello was on the stand, you know, he's very biased against the defense both times, never mind Cohen. But in the jury instructions, which are already going the prosecution's way, they're not coming out. The final jury instructions, which will determine how this case breaks absolutely, are not yet done. He's going to approve them as of Wednesday.

But the ruling so far are not good. He, the judge right now, or the defense right now is trying to get the word willfully added to two places in the instructions, which is a part of the legal requirements. They have to show willfulness on the part of Donald Trump, that he did these things knowingly. Willfully. That's an element of criminal law, and it's not a gimme. The judge has reserved judgment on whether he's going to put that in there. That's the central argument of the case that, you know, was Trump willingly doing something unlawful, and now he's basically siphoned it down to what the prosecution needs to prove is that Trump falsified business records to hide an underlying crime. But crime may be too strong, rich, because the prosecution is now arguing, presumably in the wake of, you know, the weaknesses being exposed on this campaign finance allegation, that it doesn't really have to be a crime. When they say an unlawful act was trying to be hidden, it could be a tortious act, it could be a breach of contract, it could be defamation. They're arguing right now it's crime or just generic unlawful conduct that, you know, that, who knows? This is what Andy's been saying. Could be like a violation of what? Like russian law, you know, Sharia law. What are they talking about?

Rich Lowry
Yeah, I mean, our whole system is based right on. You set out the crime really specifically. Right. So everyone knows what it is and the defendant knows what it is. And this was an outrage from the beginning. The indictment didn't tell us what the supposed second offense was. And you kind of figured maybe by the time there was a trial or during the course of the trial, we'd know what the second offense is or is alleged to be. And we don't, they don't. You know, it's just, it's out in the ether. There's something. So this, you know, whatever happens in this case, I do think this is one of the things, maybe again, here, I'm being overly optimistic. Over time, everyone's going to realize this was a travesty. I'm not saying like tomorrow, but ten years from now when the histories are written, and just to be clear, I'm not giving for Rangers friends out there a Marc messier type 1994 guarantee that Trump's going to get off. I just think that the chances of him getting off, getting a hung jury are, are higher than I would have thought. Going in the judge is a big part.

Megyn Kelly
You guys have been, you ran a piece by Brad Smith not long ago, this whole case, we've had him on the show, former FEC commissioner appointed by Bill Clinton, and he's been jumping up and down on this case. And thus the Trump team tried to call him as an expert witness and they were rejected twice. I mean, once at the beginning of the trial and then once at the end of the trial, they're going to call him as a witness. And the judge so limited what he could say that it was pointless to do. But he had a great thread on x yesterday trying to point out what an absurd position this judge has left the defense in. I'm just going to read you part of it, he writes, Judge merchandise so restricted my testimony that the defense decided not to call me. It's, of course, elementary that the judge instructs the jury on the law. But federal election campaign law is very complex, to the point where even Antonin Scalia said, it's so intricate, I can't figure it out.

Keeping going here with what Brad posted, he says, someone has to bring this specific knowledge of this act and what it requires and what it doesn't to the jury.

Part of the state's case is that they wrongly reported the Trump team did what they knew to be a campaign expenditure in order to hide the payment until after the election.

And then he says, but an expenditure made on October 27 when the money was sent to stormy Daniels lawyer would not, under law, be reported until December 8, a full 30 days after the election. To Rich's point a moment ago, even the payment, never mind the documentation of it, none of it would have been happening until after the election. And he goes on to say the judge allowed Michael Cohen to go on at length about whether and how his activity violated the federal Election Campaign act. He let Michael Cohen essentially testify as a legal witness, as an, as an expert legal witness. So effectively, the jury got its instructions on this law from Michael Cohen, with an exclamation point added by Brad Smith, concluding that this judge's bias is very evident. And now this jury is going to be going in there with nothing better than Michael Cohen's assertions when it comes to whether there was an underlying unlawful act in Trump somehow violating campaign finance laws.

Charles CW Cook
Yeah, well, this is an example of what David French used to call Trump law, where at no point in the process does someone stand up and say, you know, this isn't really how we do it.

And at all stages in these cases, this one being another good example, I keep waiting for someone to intervene and say, no, but they don't.

So you have this.

This mens rear requirement, which needs fleshing out, and the details of what is a federal law, not a state law, that needs fleshing out.

And you have a judge who is capable of insisting on a more classically liberal approach to the defendant, but hasn't.

And I just don't know how to square that with the way that those who have brought this case and are cheerleading this case tend to see criminal justice matters.

And if you were to describe what you just described to your average left of center Trump critic, but not mentioned that the case had to do with Donald Trump, or anyone who'd been president, for that matter, or anyone in public life, they would be outraged by it.

The expert witness would be deemed mandatory. They might even argue that the Constitution required the provision of expert witnesses. There'd be some penumbra in the Fifth Amendment that required it. But because it's Trump, once again, we just gloss over it. I think this is the big legal story of the last eight years, that so many people who call themselves liberals have abandoned everything they ever believed about the presumption of innocence, about the degree to which it's incumbent upon the prosecution to prove their case and provide juries with necessary information, the value of the right to remain silent, and so on and so forth, all of these things have just gone out of the window whenever it is Trump. And you read these sort of Archie bunker style screeds in our elite opinion outlets from people who just would not adopt that worldview otherwise. And this is another example of it. And you said the judge is biased, perhaps biased, certainly inconsistent. I mean, it is an inconsistency that is glaring. And that galls me as somebody who has a real pronounced saucepan for the defense.

Megyn Kelly
That's what's so different about, I think you guys and the left National Review are not big fans of Trump.

You know, the editorials and the writers. And there's some who I think, I think probably most of you will vote for him, but definitely not your first choice and been openly critical about him. But you're sane and you can see objectively through your opinion what's right and what's wrong. When it comes to the treatment of Trump. I can't say the same for the left that hates Trump.

He, there really is something called Trump Derangement syndrome. I mean, you see it rich. Like, they do get deranged when it comes to him, where they don't care about the things Charlie was just talking about. The ends justify the means.

And the end of stopping Trump is the ultimate end, above all ends. Speaker one.

Rich Lowry
Yeah. So this, this case is so bad. There have been some folks left of center who have said, this is not a good idea. This doesn't, doesn't stand up. This isn't the way to go. But it's not, not most right. The majority just willing to go along because they assume it will hurt Trump. And as we've seen, Trump sort of tiptoeing through the raindrops and probably getting most of these cases delayed, except for this one. You've had people on the left, frankly, writing, openly, writing, well, it was really bad idea to rely on the criminal justice system to stop them, which just shows that they're using it for political means. Right? That was the whole purpose, the whole purpose of all this, the whole rush to do it before the election. And with the Bragg case, it has to be a 2024 thing. Right? If he did it in 2023, it'd be old news by now. If he does it in 2025, he either can't do it because he elected president or it doesn't really matter much because Trump will presumably, if he loses, be mostly politically defanged. Who knows? I've said that before and it hasn't been true, but probably would be the case now. So he has to do it now. It's an election event, right? It's not a trial. It's an election event. And if nothing else happens again, the time spent in a courtroom four days a week, a presidential candidate during a presidential campaign, the cliche is a campaign's most precious resource is the candidate's time, and he's trying to make the most of it being there. Right. He has press availabilities before and afterwards, but often they're about the trial themselves.

It doesn't look great, you know, behind steel barriers. And he has some Republicans sort of backing them up. But it must better out there doing rallies where he can take down names and organize and energize people. So if nothing else, for a month or more, Bragg has kept a presidential candidate from doing what a president candidate should be free to do in a free country. That itself is an outrage. But again, there's almost no one on the other side who will say, I don't like Trump, I don't want him to win. I don't think he should have done this hush money payment. I think he's dishonest. But don't do it this way. That's where they're never willing to go. They're never willing to say, but the process is too important. The legalities are too important. The technicalities matter. Never cause the overriding goal is all they care about, which is stopping Trump, which they're failing at.

Charles CW Cook
And when they do do it, most of the people you mentioned, rich, are arguing on a utilitarian basis that it's not working.

Not that they're devastated by the sight of it in a country where we're supposed to prosecute crimes, not people. They are. It's not working. People feel sorry for him. The polls aren't shifting. This case might not come to fruition.

It's not from the gut. That's what I find so difficult.

Megyn Kelly
That's what's driving me nuts, because I understand and share in people's repulsion to what happened on January 6. I completely understand that. We had Charlie on, I think, the day after Biden won, and Trump was not spared at all, or the day after January 6 was not spared at all for the behavior that he engaged in and that some of the worst people on Capitol Hill that day engaged in.

But I also see how horrific what they're doing with our courts and our justice system is with respect to a presidential candidate. And they are, as you point out, they're open about it. It's on the nose. And so where is their horror in response to that? And also, where was their horror in response to Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton? And, you know, I got into this yesterday when Bill Maher was on the program, and I'll tell you, you know, he sat down. I appreciated him coming on the show, but as soon as he asked, and he asked me explicitly whether I was going to vote for Trump, it's not normally something I announce who I'm voting for as a journalist, but I did the day that Biden, with his pen, redid title IX, which is going to affect my daughter and yours. You know, all three of us, all of our kids, the boys are, they lost their due process on college campuses. The girls lost their rights in their private spaces. And well beyond that. I mean, there's so many problems with him. But I said, I'm gonna vote. I'm gonna vote for Donald Trump.

And it's not that I love Trump.

I don't love Trump. He's fine. I'm not, like, a fan of Trump's, but I can see that he does good things and he does some bad things, whatever.

But as soon as I said it, you could see the shift. Right?

He looked angry and he actually stopped looking me in the eye. Watch. Hillary Clinton, of course, is the original election denier. I'm sure you voted for her in 16.

Bill Maher
Well, she's not an election denier.

Megyn Kelly
She absolutely was the OG election denier.

Bill Maher
First of all, she came out before the sun had risen to concede the.

Megyn Kelly
Election to Trump, and then spent the next four years saying he was illegitimate. He was an illegitimate president.

Bill Maher
She. Okay, first of all, saying she didn't say he was an illegitimate.

Megyn Kelly
No, she did.

Bill Maher
You tell me exactly what she said.

Megyn Kelly
She said those exact words repeatedly.

Bill Maher
Okay. I mean, she conceded the election.

Whether you're interpreting her disappointment at losing it as the same thing as Trump not conceding it, I don't know that that's where you're getting it from. But again, it's a tremendous false equivalency.

You could ask Hillary Clinton right now who won that election. She will tell you Donald Trump won.

Megyn Kelly
Now, she knows she has to because of what Trump has.

Bill Maher
She came out that night, she did, in her purple suit, and conceded the election.

Megyn Kelly
Correct.

And then spent the next four years trying to convince us it was not legitimate. All right, so just for the record, and our audience knows this, and you guys, but just for the record, let's play sat ten.

Speaker
I do think that he knows that he's an illegitimate president. I believe he knows he's an illegitimate president. He knows. He knows that there were a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out the way it did. As I've been telling candidates who have come to see me, you can run the best campaign.

You can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you. Joe and Kamala can win by 3 million votes and still lose. Take it from me. So we need numbers overwhelming so Trump can't sneak or steal his way to victory.

Megyn Kelly
Okay, so why, why can't a smart guy like Mary know that? I mean, he genuinely seemed surprised to hear this from me.

He doesn't. It's. I think it's just his true hatred for Trump.

Rich Lowry
Rich, now, he is better than most. And I think he's, he's actually been fascinating and inspiring at times to watch, like, the Harrison butger thing. He's more reasonable on that.

Megyn Kelly
He's great on the culture stuff. He's great on culture.

Rich Lowry
Yeah. But one, they might not know this, right?

They haven't focused on it the same way. I think the distinction between conceding and not conceding is meaningful, but they did not accept the legitimacy of the 2016 election. Right. And this caused the whole Russia collusion hoax and all the rest of it. And Hillary's still saying things like that today. Right. And if it's bad for one side to do it, it's bad for the other side to do it. And it totally deranged our politics for years. That, that investigation, again, the root of which.

Megyn Kelly
She's the reason we had Russiagate, she's the reason she sabotaged his entire first term with these allegations that he stole it with the help of the Russians. She hired fusion GPS. She had her lawyers down there pretending that there were some magic computers at Trump Tower that were communicating with the Russians. That's all tied to Hillary. But she's. It's fine because she said the words he won. I. It's no, she is the OG denier.

Rich Lowry
Right. And this is going to be much worse if Trump wins in November, which I think is more likely than not. The, the reaction will be much worse than it was in, in 2016. Wouldn't surprise me. If you see a blm style violence in the street that people make excuses for, say, is mostly peaceful, they are going to be out of their minds. They already were. But it's going to be several magnitudes worse in the end of this year and beginning of 25 if he wins.

Megyn Kelly
What do you think, Charlie?

Charles CW Cook
I think I'm fairly well placed to say this as someone who's not going to vote for Trump and who has said that he should have been impeached and still believed that and is still appalled more by what he did than what the rioters did on January 6, which was to try to use the constitution and federal law to stay in office.

The left has a massive liability and its total incapacity to see itself as guilty of many of the same crimes. The very fact that I've said this, by the way, will probably get picked up and someone will write and say, ah, false equivalence. They just can't see it.

There is a reason why when you poll people on which party represents the greatest threat to democracy or which party is a better guarantor of democracy, it's about even 49, 48, every poll seems to show it. And this absolutely infuriates people on the left because they point to Trump and they say, look at all the things he did and he did. I agree. I have written it over and over again. I say it again right here. I started this segment by saying all of that is true, but they just cannot grasp that. Just because they won't acknowledge it, as you saw in the segment with Bill Maher, doesn't mean that the public hasn't seen it happen. The public heard Hillary Clinton say that over and over again. Jimmy Carter said it. The public heard the Russiagate allegations over and over again and knows that they came to absolutely nothing. And although it is not identical, I accept it. It is not identical. The public knows that Joe Biden tried to steal nearly a trillion dollars from the treasury for his student loan bailout despite his own party having said he couldn't do it. The public knows that Joe Biden refused to say prior to 2020 that he was against packing the Supreme Court. The public knows that when his party, Joe Biden's party, gets upset at gridlock in Washington, it starts talking about abolishing the Senate.

These are not identical. I can reiterate, if you like, all of the things Trump did wrong is why I'm not voting for him. But what has happened here is that the democratic party has decided that because Trump is a threat to democracy as it sees it, our democracy, as it sees, it's always a telling phrase that whatever it does to try to get rid of Trump is therefore legitimate. It isn't the same thing in different clothing. It is a defense of democracy. So while we sit and we talk about these absurd trials that I think are a stain on the country, they see that, too, as being a legitimate exercise of power to defend America from Trump. But not everyone in America does. And so they get confused because they think, well, hang on a minute, we're doing the right thing. Whatever mechanism we need to use to get rid of him. Another one didn't mention was trying to kick him off the ballot on the most absurd reading of the 14th Amendment.

Megyn Kelly
That was shot down.

Charles CW Cook
Nine nothing in the Supreme Court. They think, well, that's not the same because Trump is bad. Therefore, whatever it takes to get rid of him is legitimate. But you know who doesn't think that? Americans. They don't believe that. They think what Trump did was appalling, as I do. They also think that trying to bend the system to get rid of him is appalling and the Democrats can't internalize it. So I don't know what Bill Maher thinks. I last went on his show eight years ago. But I think you see some of that in the astonished reaction that you get because they've never got past the first position, which is, well, we're on the side of the angels. And then when people don't agree with that proposition, they sort of look quizzical at you.

Megyn Kelly
By the way, I got to follow up.

What are you thinking? Because I know how you feel about RFKJ. Like Jill Stein, Cornel west. Who are you gonna write in, Rich?

What are you gonna do, Charlie?

Charles CW Cook
Well, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna vote for every other elected office. I mean, every, every state representative and senators. Up in Florida, we have a Senate election. Rick Scott will be running again, and 24. I'm just gonna not vote in the presidential election. Look, I totally accept people have different views on this.

I just can't vote for someone who tried to do what Trump did in 2020, and I won't.

Megyn Kelly
I get it. Honestly, I get it. I mean, I'm not going to pretend I didn't wrestle with it. I mean, I voted for him last time, too. It wasn't easy. I know people, people have made fun of me. Like, what do you mean it wasn't easy? Trump. Biden. But it's just, I knew I was going to vote for Biden, but there are just certain issues that are so important to me. I want someone in there who's going to do the right thing on them. And, you know, it does basically boil down to a binary choice.

We, you know, really, my vote doesn't count in Connecticut. Neither does yours in Florida. You kind of know how it's going to go at this point. Rich, you're in Virginia or. No. Are you in Connecticut, too? We're both out of luck.

So, Rich, who are you voting for? Have you said?

Rich Lowry
I haven't said, you know, unless I have a change of heart? Probably not for Trump.

My out is I don't live in a swing state, so I don't need to do it. There are many things I just can't accept about him and I find intolerable. But there are a hundred things he's going to be better on, on policy. You know, title IX is among them. So I prefer him to Biden. It's just I'm never myself gonna be a Trump guy.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah. Yeah. And that's fine. Right? That's what I say when people say, where should I go for real news? I've said, like, people like you have gotten me through the past four to six years because I like to go to places who are not trump sycophants but who can report the news fairly. Right. And that, that's a very narrow window. Window there, like, where you don't love him and you can get past your hatred of him to actually report the real news.

Rich Lowry
I don't hate him.

Charles CW Cook
Yeah.

Rich Lowry
I find him enjoyable in many ways. They're just aspects of him that are deeply problematic.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, no, I know. And January 6 is chief among them. I mean, I realize it's not what the Democrats say. It wasn't an insurrection, but he behaved terribly and he did his level best to corrupt the system such that he could remain in power and to not concede his loss. But ultimately he did. He got out, which is something the left is missing. He did go. They're predicting he never will this time around. All right. Okay. Stand by. Quick break. Back with more.

This just in. This, this just in. James Comey has a message for you guys and he wants you to hear it loud and clear. Take a listen. Rich Lowry and Charles CW Cook. Watch this. When you think about a second Trump administration, what do you think the implications would be for the FBI?

Bill Maher
Oh, serious. For the Justice Department and the FBI, because Trump is coming for those institutions. He knows their power. And I think he has regrets that he didn't work hard enough to corrupt them last time. So he's coming for them. And that's a danger for all Americans. He's going to put people in positions in those organizations. He didn't have all stars the last time. He'll have the bottom of the barrel this time. But people who will want to do his will and that should worry every American. This election matters because of a reason like that. People have to participate. You cannot sit on the sideline. I don't care how you feel about Joe Biden. You must vote for him.

Megyn Kelly
You got it. He's talking to you, Rich and Charles and me, too, I guess. But you guys are not even filling in the bubble, so you're going to have some answering to do to James Comey. Rich.

Rich Lowry
Yeah, I mean, the law enforcement system might be distorted if Joe Biden doesn't, doesn't win a second term. It would be shocking. Look, I don't like when Trump talks about retaliation and all that. I don't like it. I don't think it's very likely to happen. But there could be a no kidding investigation of Joe Biden. I mean, I think it's going to be very tempting just to take the Robert Herr report and just scratch out the justifications for not charging him, that he's a good natured old man who can't remember things and just say, here's evidence of crimes. Let's look into this. And as we've learned repeatedly in the Trump years, just being investigated itself is a punishment, right? It causes you worry, sucks away resources. So I think there can be a real temptation to do that. But the fact is, when it comes down to frank illegalities, people aren't going to do it. Even if Trump orders it, they're not going to do it because they've seen what can happen to you. So I think that it's unnecessarily a dire, unsurprisingly, take there from James Comey.

Megyn Kelly
Has there been a man, I'm curious for both of you, has there been a man who your opinion of has changed more dramatically in the past, you know, six, seven years, from the beginning of the Trump presidency to now, than James Comey? I mean, for me, I think he might be, like the number one who I either always had wrong, you know, or just changed dramatically. What do you think, Charles?

Charles CW Cook
Yeah, I mean, it's partly him and it's partly the FBI, right? No, I think we should abolish the FBI. I'm just not convinced it can be fixed. It is so politicized.

And then you have James Comey speaking as if it is this great paragon of virtue, and anyone who suggests otherwise is somehow a crazy right wing Trump lover. Well, I don't think that's me. So I've sort of seen the two of them decline in the same way. I assumed that Comey was on the level, and his descriptions of the institution that he used to be in charge of were correct.

But over time, I found his approach to be farcical and with it, the FBI.

I think it's one of those great examples of an institution that actually, in that case didn't have a particularly great history, but perhaps had a period in which it was trustworthy and traded on that for a long time, long after its role had changed. So it's not just James Comey, although he's symptomatic. I think the whole thing is a problem, and I think we've sort of forgotten it's one of the great tragedies. One of the many great tragedies of January 6 was that in one instant, the Republican Party took this dead weight and hung it around its own neck. When prior to that, you had three or four years of crazy subversion and election denialism from the left. And in fact, prior to the 2020 election, it was the left that was shouting about the prospect of the election being stolen. Remember that great conspiracy theory in the summer of 2020, the postmaster general was going to steal the election.

Rich Lowry
That's right.

Charles CW Cook
That was a great one in one moment.

And I don't pretend that this didn't happen. It did. It was a choice made by Trump and his acolytes. But in one moment, the conservatives said, no, that's our reputation. Now we will take that on. Which was immensely.

Megyn Kelly
Hold my beer.

Charles CW Cook
Yeah, hold my beer, stupid.

But we shouldn't forget, just because the Republicans did that, and they did do that, the FBI absolutely disgraced itself for two or three years, and James Comey did as well. If I had been James Comey, and I'll say this, and I'll shut up, if I had been James Comey after that press conference where I had to come out, announce that the allegations that I've been investigated weren't true, try and create a new standard in american law that was essentially guilty, but we can't prove it.

I would have slunk away somewhere warm and sonny, for the rest of my life, I wouldn't dare to show my face in public. And that he is now sitting, trying to bully people in to vote for Joe Biden on MSNBC, I assume that was. MSNBC is something else.

Megyn Kelly
It's Comey's vanity. He can't stop himself. Something again, I didn't know about him, but I will give you a little look at his favorite candidate and you tell me whether this is somebody we should keep in the office for the next. Well, I guess, all told, four plus years. Take a look at James, Joe Biden addressing.

Let's see, where was he when he made all of these errors? My God, the NAACP.

Yep, yep, here it is in New Hampshire. Watch.

Rich Lowry
Or the NAAC, as he says.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, hold on. You'll you'll see it stop. Five.

Rich Lowry
And when I was vice president, things were kind of bad during the pandemic.

And what happened was Barack said to me, go to Detroit and help fix it, folks.

Megyn Kelly
He wasn't vice president in the pandemic.

Rich Lowry
I just came from Atlanta, where I delivered a commencement at Morehouse college.

They're truly inspiring.

I protect the expanded the Affordable Care act, saving millions of families. $800,000 in premium, $8,000 a year in premium, 800.

Megyn Kelly
The erection stormed Capitol Hill patriots erectionists.

And we could have kept going.

He misquoted Trump. There were at least nine corrections they had to make. I got doubts about their chosen candidate, Rich. And I actually really have doubts that he can even make it to November.

Rich Lowry
Yeah. I mean, so do I. I think there's some significant chance he doesn't. And look, misspeaking is one thing. We all do it. Speaking at the level he does is another thing. But the most disturbing of those gaffes that he just went through is not knowing when he was vice president. Right. It's as disturbing as her transcape. Yeah. Not knowing when Beau died, not knowing the date and not knowing what was going on in his own life. So that's confusion and that's disturbing in someone his age. And it's just absurd to think that he's going to be president of the United States until January 2029. Right? I mean, please, who are you trying to fool?

Megyn Kelly
So if you elect him, one person who's definitely not voting for Joe Biden is the White House transcription guy. He's, he can't do that.

Rich Lowry
No, he's got a good job. He's got a good job. Guaranteed.

Megyn Kelly
True. He's got forever employment or at least four years. Stand by. We'll get to Fannie Willis and Rachel Maddow right after this. Don't go away. 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 Sirius XM 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.

Go to siriusxm.com to subscribe and get three months free.

Charles CW Cook
That's siriusxm.com mkshow and get three months.

Rich Lowry
Free offer details apply.

Megyn Kelly
All right, guys, so Fannie Willis was running in a primary. She won with 83% of the vote in.

She was considered the favorite in the race. She crushed the person challenging her. And now she's going to face Atlanta based lawyer Courtney Kramer in the general, who is a Republican. First Republican to seek the office in more than two decades, inspired, no doubt, by Fannie's ethical lapses.

Then, by the way, Judge Scott McAfee won to the judge who ruled on this case and who was trying the case ultimately against Trump down in Fulton county, he won with 83% of the votes in. Okay, so that's that.

So Fannie Willis, I guess, fresh off her big win, decides to give her first interview, post her ethics scandal to Rachel Maddow. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, which night after night lectures us on the importance of journalism. Journalism. That's why Trump is so bad. Trump is so bad because he attacks the press and journalists matter. What they do matters and asked zero, zero difficult questions. If Annie Willis, here's a montage of the question she did ask you. Tell me whether we're going for Edward R. Murrow awards here or not.

Speaker
Let me start by asking you about what your life has been like and how things have changed over the course of this past year. I wondered what effect the sort of constant threat of violence that you've been living with has had on, on you and on your ability to do your work. Do you feel like you've changed over the course of this term in office in terms of having to develop new skills, new resources, develop a thicker skin than you might not have expected when you took this.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, my God.

Nothing, nothing about the odor of mendacity that the judge found lingered in the courtroom after her testimony and that of those supporting her. Nothing. Not a one. Tough question. I'll just give you one more, rich, and I'll give it to you. Here's a little bit of about how Rachel Maddow got into it, setting Fannie Willis up as really the unheard victim here because no one is defending this poor, poor woman. Watch.

Speaker
They opened the floodgates on her.

Megyn Kelly
In.

Speaker
A way that is underappreciated in this country. They have created a maelstrom of political harassment and pressure, bringing it down to bear on this one prosecutor like a laser. She is out there defending herself so ably. This story for all of us. This is not a profile in courage.

This is a profile in cowardice. She's standing alone against all of this. These are human beings. They are not magic. They are not bulletproof.

Megyn Kelly
They are not Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith.

Speaker
And right now they have no one defending them as they are being asked to bear superhuman pressure and threat. And it is working.

And there has been no significant countervailing pressure defending them.

And the history that we are making is that there is no one defending Fonny Willis but herself.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, my God. Who will defend them? The prosecutors with all of the power.

Why? Remind me again, rich, why was it that Fannie Willis was so evilly targeted by so many? Was that what happened there?

Rich Lowry
Yeah. Where did that come from? I don't know whether it was this interview or a press conference, but Fawni Willis was saying all of a sudden there's this oversight committee, you know, that's looking into me and other prosecutors. It must be because they're now, you know, black Das in Georgia, frankly, corrupt and unethical and hiring her boyfriend to be her special prosecutor. And this interview is ridiculous. Oprah would have done a tougher interview with Bonnie Willis. And we were talking about Bill Maher earlier. Bill Maher is interesting. He's sort of changing as we go along. He's a thinking person. Rachel Maddow is the worst. She's utterly predictable. Total conspiracy theorists during the whole Russia hoax. But the mainstream media treats her like she's the gold standard, right? I think only Eric Wimpole, the lonely media writer at the Washington Post, ever called Rachel Maddow on any of her conspiracy theories during Russiagate. So this is, I mean, this is what you get. This is what you expect. MSNBC is a network entirely devoted to boosting these prosecutions. I mean, Lawrence O'Donnell, the way he describes stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen as he's like a standing, inspiring people. It's ridiculous.

Megyn Kelly
I hate to see what his Saturday night looks like. So, Charles, this brings me to the promised moment that we mentioned an hour ago, holding onto the, you know, the left's obsession with the norms and just their complete blindness to what they are doing. How we got to this place like, like here, you know, like what, what has Fannie Willis ever done to anyone? Why would they investigate her? This is so wrong. By the way, we're told that that committee, which is at the state senate in Georgia investigating Fannie Willis's behavior here now originally was the Democrats idea that they wanted to push after Ahmaud Arbery was killed. And they they weren't satisfied with the prosecutor's response. So this actually wasn't originally about black prosecutors. It was about white prosecutors at that point. Only now have they taken a look at her, who she happens to be black because of her ethical lapses, which have the odor of mendacity, according to the judge trying the case.

But here is just a little taste, Charles of Maddow and her indignation from the same monologue, different soundbites than you just heard about, about what these evil Republicans are doing. Watch this.

Speaker
Republicans in the state legislature decided that for the first time in the history of that state, they needed to give themselves a new power. They needed to give themselves the power to remove prosecutors. They have created a maelstrom of political harassment and pressure, bringing it down to bear on this one prosecutor like a laser, because she brought this case against someone of their party. This is Republicans using their political power to try to shut off the legal system, to try to shut off the rule of law here so it cannot be used against their guy, against Trump. They are taking apart the judicial system. They are fundamentally changing the judiciary in the state, in the entire state, all to protect this one powerful defendant in their own party.

Megyn Kelly
It sound familiar? Does that sound like anybody you know over the past year and a half?

Charles CW Cook
I mean, it's a great glimpse into the maddow extended universe. Chris Hayes is also a narrator of this great fiction. I love her analogies. I think you played it twice, or she said it twice. But she kept using as her analogy of great heavy pressure, a laser, which is not heavy, it's light.

She also seems to think that the prosecutor is the judiciary.

This is why I don't watch MSNBC, Megan, because it is a parallel universe.

It is an amusement park of nonsense.

And that segment was extremely heavy on dudgeon and indignation and extremely light on anything that comports with reality.

And if she and Chris Hayes and others presented themselves as entertainment or as a sort of partisan feel good provider, that would be fine.

This country has a long history of partisan journalism, much of which, 100 years ago especially, was awful.

But when you combine that with, as you referred to at the beginning of the segment, this saccharine, self indulgent, self congratulatory pretense that Rachel Maddow and her confreres are speaking up for the sanctity of journalism and american law, it becomes truly revolting. And again, I don't know what Bill Maher thinks or doesn't think. He is interesting and smart. I've always got on well with him.

But you see in that segment why so many people on the left who consume MSNBC every day don't know anything about America.

I'm not blind to the fact this exists on the right as well. We can list the locations that provide the same service.

But I have been amazed in my work at the sheer number of otherwise intelligent people who just don't know what's happening in the United States, who are shocked, as you showed that in that Bill Maclip, when you tell them that Hillary Clinton used the word illegitimate, who are amazed when this case or that case doesn't go the way they wanted. It's not a political trial necessarily, but the Rittenhouse trial was a good example of this.

The parallel set of facts that I kept reading in the New York Times that had nothing to do with what that case acted, which was televised, by the way. Anyone could watch it, by the way.

Megyn Kelly
Charles, Bill also told me that cops died. That number of cops died on January 6.

Charles CW Cook
Oh, yeah, cops died. 10,000 African Americans are shot by cops every year. Is that is the median. Is the media. There was a, there was a poll that showed that the registered Democrats who watched MSNBC's conception of how deadly Covid was was, like, off by a factor of 400.

Megyn Kelly
And just quickly, rich. He also told me, he also told me that Michael Cohen went to jail for three years for campaign finance violations. We know that's not true, which I corrected. He also said that Trump's immigration numbers have been about the same as Joe Biden's.

I mean, true. He said all of the things.

Rich Lowry
Yeah. One of the most disturbing things to go back about to the Alvin Bragg case, there's some significant chance that Judge Merchant is a Rachel Maddow viewer, right?

Megyn Kelly
Oh, 100%. Unlike Charlie. He is watching, and he's watching religiously.

Can I just say, so, just to highlight what was in that clip? I mean, it's amazing if you look at it. This is the first time in history that the, the legal system has been used this way. A maelstrom of political harassment. Oh, the horror. Rachel, can one imagine that they're using political power to shut down the rule of law?

Yes, we've seen that, madam. It's a, it's, they're fundamentally taking apart the judiciary all because of one person and their hatred for them. Yes, it is terrible. And you are the one doing it. It's your side. Republicans are taking new acts in response to your breach into brand new, unchartered territory that in almost 250 years we've never entered before Charles. That's. That's why we're here.

Charles CW Cook
Yeah. And I just want to flesh something out on this because it's irritated me over the last three or four years in other contexts.

One of the reasons that I think progressivism is so damaging to America is that its core goal is to separate out a certain group of people and make them untouchable and untouched by the democratic branches of government. And so you see this, and we saw it during the Russiagate hoax as well. You see this in Washington, where there is this conception that the Department of Justice and the FBI are somehow independent of the president, the one guy who's elected and in whom all of the powers of the executive are vested by article two. But what Rachel Maddow is saying, there is another example of that. It is true that the state is looking into Frannie Willis, but Fanny Willis is a prosecutor who works for the state and has power only at the pleasure of the state, who is able to execute laws only insofar as those laws are ratified by the state. Here in Florida, DeSantis a few years ago removed a prosecutor who said he was not willing to enforce state law.

And there was this great outcry about this on the left. Oh, my goodness. But this guy was elected. Yeah, he was elected, but he also said out loud, I'm not going to enforce the law of the state from the power of which grants me my position. And so DeSantis, who has the power under Florida law to remove prosecutors who don't do their jobs, did. So if Fanny Willis gets kicked out from her role despite being elected, it will be because she's corrupt. It will be because she's violating the trust that the state has put in. That's not a problem. It's not intruding. It's not the government intruding in an area.

It's not the government coming into someone's private house and telling them what to do. It is the government upholding its own standards. So what Rachel Maddow is essentially saying there is the opposite of what she's pretending. She's saying she wants Fanny Willis to operate with impunity. She wants Fanny Willis to operate independently of the government, of the state she's representing. That just cannot fly.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, and as you point out earlier, Rich, then Fannie Willis tried to blame it on a race. Oh, it's just now that we have 14 minority prosecutors. That's why the state's getting involved in overseeing. No, it's because of your corruption. It's because of what you did. Take responsibility for your own actions. Those other 13, I'm sure they didn't have affairs with their special prosecutor and pay them a higher rate than the other prosecutors were paid. And then take the standard and in my strong, well informed opinion, lie about it. We know he lied. We know Nathan Wade lied under oath, and the judge knows it, too. That's why he said odor of mendacity. And that's why his decision to allow her to stay on the case is being appealed. I want to give you one other thing, Rich. Here she is. Of course, you saw those loving, you know, smoochy Rachel Maddow questions to Fannie. And Fannie had the following reaction to one of them asking how she is. That reminded me of another person who loves to play the victim. Watch these two soundbites.

Thank you for asking.

Cori Bush
Not many people ask about what is the personal journey.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, well, I guess. And also thank you for asking because.

Speaker
Not many people have asked if I'm okay.

Megyn Kelly
It's so fun to be a victim. Can be a queen, princess, Queen of Fulton county.

Come on. Who do you think you're kidding? What do you make of it, rich?

Rich Lowry
Yeah, look, I mean, this is, the progressives always go to this. They always go to race and victimhood. And look, I mean, there must be some upstanding crusader against Donald Trump that they can make a hero of, right? None immediately comes to mind, but there must be one out there. But here they're taking this woman who lied and was unethical and making her into a heroine and a victim solely because this goes back to what we were talking about a while ago, because she's pursuing the right target. Right. Donald Trump. So that's the gateway. Once you're through that and you're anti Trump, it doesn't matter what your ethics are. It doesn't matter what your motives are, it doesn't matter what your procedures are, doesn't matter what the legalities are. All that has to be blessed and held up. And it's because they consider Trump basically Hitler. So most of us would consider any means legitimate to stop Hitler anywhere along the way. And that's the way they think about Donald Trump, and he's just not, and it ends up distorting their worldview and how they operate and making them the baddies, you know, the villains in a lot of these scenarios, but they can't, they can't see it.

Megyn Kelly
So, Charles, that's a perfect segue into Cori Bush, who is just a left wing loon who is out there now and she does this on the anniversary of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson and Michael Brown's would have been birthday in Ferguson. Over and over and over, she keeps pushing this bill that she wants passed, which would.

I'll give you a couple of highlights. Recruit, hire, train, and dispatch mental health professionals and community health workers to provide comprehensive mental health services to individuals who have suffered traumatic experiences or are in grief, in bereavement, or at risk of suicide or violence as a result of witnessing or experiencing law enforcement personnel violence. The death of a family member due to law enforcement personnel violence. The death of a colleague or a neighbor due to law enforcement personnel violence. And this is how the bill defines law enforcement personnel violence. Law enforcement personnel violence means a situation where a law enforcement agent uses force.

So now the taxpayers under this Corey Bush bill would have to pay for the mental health services for anyone, anyone who is on the other side of a law enforcement agent using force, justified or not. And here she is announcing this bill once again, which has gotten no traction. Just the other day. Watch 23.

Cori Bush
Michael Brown should have turned 28 years old. Just 81 days after his 18th birthday, a Ferguson police officer killed him.

In a just world, Mike Brown would be with his loved ones right now, dreaming of his future as he blows out the candles on his birthday cake. They were all left to live through the trauma police violence leaves in his wake to deal with the mental health effects of it on their own.

Police killings of unarmed black people are responsible for more than 50 million additional days of poor mental health days per year. Almost a decade has passed since we lost Mike Brown, but we're still on the front lines of the movement to save black lives. Happy birthday. Mike Brown rest hour.

Megyn Kelly
Michael Brown is dead because he attacked a police officer. That's why he's dead. Sad he has only himself to blame, as Eric Holder's DOJ found. Eric Holder's DOJ. I'll just show you this one thing, Charles.

As you know, Shelby and Eli Steele made a documentary called what killed Michael Brown. You can still get it on Amazon, which tried to ban it for a time. And they, in the documentary, take a deep dive on what killed Michael Brown. And it was not cop racism.

And they had actors read actual testimonials that were given to the Dojo by the actual witnesses to the moment that officer Darren Wilson did shoot Michael Brown when he was charging the officer. Take a listen.

Cori Bush
Immediately after he did his body gesture.

Megyn Kelly
He came force, you know, full charge of the officer.

Cori Bush
His hands were balled up.

He has his arms bent towards his chest. And he's running like, you know, almost like a tackle running. I heard him say, get down about.

Megyn Kelly
Two or three times.

Cori Bush
You probably would have. Would have shot him instantly if you charge at me like that. But when he was running back, he was screaming, stop.

Charles CW Cook
Stop.

Cori Bush
And the officer was backing up as he kept coming closer to him, and he didn't stop.

Megyn Kelly
But he's her poster boy. What do you think?

Charles CW Cook
Well, I actually think there's something profoundly wrong with her, and I don't say that facetiously, but she is somebody who has spent a long time trying to defund the police, abolished the police at one point.

Now she's trying to pass this law, which is not a federal concern.

Police are and ought to be local, while spending quite a lot of money, up to $600,000 a year, on private security. And then when called on it, saying, well, of course I need private security, otherwise I'd be in danger, which is fair. I don't begrudge her private security, but it's incredible to argue indignantly that you need private security because without them, you might be in danger while trying for a period to defund and abolish the police. And she doesn't seem to be able to see it. So her logical reasoning skills are perhaps not what we would want in a federal representative.

I mean, this is really an offshoot of defund the police in the sense that it is a softer attempt to imply that the entire, and I won't say force, because there are hundreds of them around the country, thousands of them. But the entire police apparatus of the United States is irretrievably racist, which I don't think is true.

The presumption of the bill is every day police go out there and they harass and batter African Americans, and it's so bad and so frequent that we need a federal law that deals with the consequences of it. And the irony of that is that while, of course, there are some bad police officers in America, and while there are presumably some racist police officers in America, and while we have occasionally, as is inevitable in a country of 330 million people, seen some incidents that were regrettable in America, if she, as she said, wants to save black lives the way you do that is to train the police properly and fund them, this seems irrefutable. I've never read a single statistical analysis here that shows otherwise. The way that you improve the outcomes for disproportionately poor African Americans in America is to make sure that they have good, well trained, well funded police.

If Ibamax Kendi had any integrity about him at all, he would define defund the police as a racist policy. His definition being that anything that disproportionately affects or hurts African Americans or minorities is racism. Well, Cory Bush's approach to policing is, by his definition, racist. And yet, once again, we see her on the screen insisting otherwise. She's a menace.

Megyn Kelly
Rich, just some data.

You know, we always look at the Washington Post, which now tracks the number of black men who are shot. Unarmed black men who are shot by cops each year. The cops, they pull over or have interactions with tens of millions of Americans every year. They want to check your license. You didn't signal when you were taking a red. Whatever it is a turn.

On average, they make between seven and 10 million arrests a year in this country. Between seven and 10 million. And according to the Washington Post, the number of unarmed black men who, on average, get shot by cops each year is between twelve and 19 for the past ten years. I just pulled up the past 09:09 years. It's 174 in the past nine years, out of some seven to 10 million each year who get pulled over of Americans. And by the way, just to give you a feel for what's in those twelve to 19 per year who they consider unarmed men. Uh, one of the cases we just pulled, two Louisiana state prisoners, um, two Louisiana state prison transport officers shot and killed a prisoner trying to escape. All right, so it's a prisoner trying to get away from them. The second one is a four year old boy was killed by cops. Why did they do that? Because the cops showed up at a home where a woman had been stabbed multiple times in a domestic dispute. And the suspect, who was the stabber, grabbed the little boy, pointed a knife to his throat, and one officer, obviously fearing that the worst was about to happen, fired his weapon to try to save the child, but struck them both and killed them. That's counted in the twelve to 19. And yet this moron is out there wasting my time and yours, pretending that there's a massive problem with racist cops traumatizing the black community and her exhibit a is Michael Brown, the poster child in the hands up, don't shoot lie.

Rich Lowry
Yeah, it was a total lie. It's a lie that hasn't completely died yet. There was never an epidemic of police shooting of unarmed black men. That was a lie. You know, those twelve to 19 a year, whatever they are, they run the gamut from some that are true, outrageous, and cops should be punished for, and do get punished for, to ambiguous cases, to just totally justified uses of force, even though the person, the target, was unarmed. And, Megan, a month or two ago, they tried to make a big deal of this. I think it was in Chicago they tried to make an outrage of a case where a young man was pulled over, had a gun, defied the orders of the police to keep his window rolled down. Yeah, and shot at the police first.

And they were trying to make him one of these victims whose names we supposedly remember forever. So, look, Michael Brown's life was a tragedy, but the tragedy was everything that happened before that interaction with the cop that led to him being so undisciplined, led him to being such a bully, led him to having such a poor impulse control and judgment, such that he tried to take that cop's gun and probably shoot him dead. So it was a totally justified use of force. Took a long time to bat down the counter case. People were respectable. People on tv were holding up their hands, right, because they thought that's what happened. It was a complete lie. And of course, she's going to do everything she can do to continue to perpetuate this lie for all time.

Megyn Kelly
You know what's amazing is that piece by Shelby and Eli.

You know, they call it not who killed michael brown, what killed michael brown, because if you look at it, and it's so worth your 2 hours, so worth it. They go into the history behind that moment in Ferguson, Missouri, and Democrat policies that ruined the community.

They document the uprising in, you know, socioeconomic uprising of the black family and how well black AmeRICans were doing in this area before the great society, before these ridiculous welfare policies that Lyndon Johnson put in place and before the state decided to start, quote, helping the black community there and the housing projects that replaced their Single Family homes that they'd been living in and working in. And just the whole history behind this is told. And those policies happened because of people like Cori Bush, because of people like her. And as she still wants to get out of any responsibility for these left wing, ruinous policies by pointing the finger at innocent cops who in this case, did not do anything wrong, and in the vast majority of cases have done nothing but try to protect all communities, including the black community. It's just. It needs to be called out when it happens. You guys are great. Love you both. Thanks so much for being here.

Rich Lowry
Thank you.

Megyn Kelly
Okay.

Rich Lowry
Talk right?

Megyn Kelly
To be continued.

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

Maddow's Softball Fani Willis Interview, and "Deadly Force" at Mar-a-Lago, with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke | Ep. 798

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1: Introduction

2: Analysis of "Deadly Force" Authorization

3: Critique of Maddow's Interview Techniques

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