Laura Ingraham: Trump Changed Politics Forever | KMP Ep.50

21:50Understand what the pilgrims came here for, what the struggles were of America. Because if you don't understand the struggles of every generation, you will not be invested in this country going forward. So I think it's tough to be a kid today. They have a lot more, but they have a lot more challenges.

22:13Katie Miller:There's a lot more toys. Distractions. I do not think I would have been the writer or the reader or the thinker that I try to be. today if I had those distractions because I'm easily, you know, distractible. Who's secretly the funniest person at Fox when the cameras aren't rolling? When the cameras aren't rolling. Hold on a second. There's a lot of funny people at Fox. I well, I would say, well, she's not at Fox anymore, but Judge Jeanine is truly one of the funniest people. She can actually not a lot of people can make me laugh, Katie, but she can make me laugh. And, you know, obviously Raymond Arroyo is a great friend of mine.

23:00He's extremely funny. But he comes out of, you know, the theater and, you know, he was a theater kid and was a writer too. So, he's a writer.

23:09Katie Miller:Who is even nicer in person when they appear on TV? Shannon Bream, Bret Baier. Oh, Bret Baier is hysterical. Sorry, Bret Baier is also hysterical. One of the best impersonators, impressionists, very, very talented and has a very dry sense of humor. Hannity's like my brother. We've known each other for over 30 years. Shannon Bream is an amazing individual. It's like the Academy Awards. I'm leaving people out. But the behind the scenes people, Tony, who's been directing me in tech for years. I love someone who says, I always got your back, Ingram. Don't worry about that. He's like, Tony, you know who you are.

23:54I love you, ma 'am. Great people.

23:55Katie Miller:Who sends the most typos? Most typos? Yeah, like in an email. Oh. Well, I don't read my email. I think I have 40 ,000 emails in my Fox inbox. I never read them because people know how to get me. It may be someone who I can't name because I'll get in trouble. But not a superior. Someone who... Who's the last to leave the Christmas party?

24:23Isn't Griff Jenkins? It could be. I don't know why. I don't know.

24:27Katie Miller:I don't tend to go to the Christmas parties. I go to a little bit, but I'm boring. I have three kids. I go home early. Do Fox hosts hang out after work, or does everyone disappear the second the red light goes off? They tend to disappear, because I think, as you know, you're rushing home. You're balancing 100 million things. Who's your best friend at Fox? My best friend is probably Sean Hill. You're the mother of three children? Yes. At what point in your career did you decide to have children? Well, it's a long story, but I had breast cancer in 2005, and I was engaged at that time. And then that kind of, the cancer was detected, and then the engagement was off, and we were going to have kids right away.

25:13And I was like, God, I always thought, I always really, I felt called to have children. And so after kind of the treatments wrapped up, you know, I did chemo and radiation. It wasn't fun, but, you know, I got through it. And I kept doing my radio show throughout, which really kept me going and my friends and my family. I started the process of examining adoption. And it was a multi-year process, and it was a lot. I tried to adopt domestically, but a couple of those fell through, and it was really demoralizing. memorializing. And then I spoke Spanish pretty well. And my Russian is very good, my Russian language, because I lived in the Soviet Union as a student.

25:56And so I just started that process and various agencies and seven trips to Russia. And yeah, two weeks at a time. It was a lot.

26:06Katie Miller:How closely did you adopt each of your children? My daughter was first in 2008. My next son was two years later, a year and a half later, and my next son was another year and a half later. Are you a strict mom or a softie? Well, I'm strict unless they get me at a vulnerable time where I'm in the middle of something. But I'm pretty strict. I worry about the kids. What's one parenting rule you've become much more flexible than you expected? don't sweat the small stuff. If your room is a mess, at some point, I just gave up on that. Like, the room is like, every time I come into my middle son, Dimitri's room, now he's 18, the furniture is in a different place.

27:03Like, yesterday I went in there, and there's a, the bench from, I have a little home gym. The bench, which is two floors down, is really heavy. It's somehow in the middle of his room and there's LED lights lining every crevice of the room. It's like Vegas in his room. When did you have time to do this? Well, I just don't want to go downstairs to the gym. I said, wait a second. You brought all the weight stacks. And then I said, you know, I just threw up my hands. I'm like left. So stuff like that. He enjoys doing stuff like that. The kids all have their funny little personality. You got to let them express themselves in those ways.

27:41Katie Miller:You know firsthand what it takes to legally bring children into this country. Has that shaped your personal views on immigration and your philosophy on how others should be able to do that? Yeah, I think that adoption, I think a lot of people think and have said, well, why did you go overseas to get a kid? There's all these kids here. Well, the sad thing is because there's so much abortion here, there aren't the kids to adopt here that there was in many decades past. Far fewer. So that's number one. And number two, there is a need internationally for children who are abandoned, who have no one.

28:32And in a lot of countries, and Russia doesn't allow adoption anymore. Obviously, with the war, we wouldn't be doing that. But I think one of my sons was one of the last kids out of Russia. Children are children. They're children. Like bringing them into the country legally versus putting them in a migrant caravan to be raped and trafficked and abused is something completely different. So I don't think there's no disconnect there. But if you can help a child in need, I certainly help, I think, my fair share of charitable endeavors. But if you can help a child in need who has no one, I think that's what it's all about.

29:12Katie Miller:You mentioned earlier that... I wish I could adopt more, but it's three against one. That was good enough for me. You mentioned earlier that you liked doing the show at 10 p.m. is that because you were able to put the kids to bed and put them all down and then get back to the show yeah back then they were they were younger so 16 18 21 now so it's a different world now but when they were younger could have dinner and then go back to work and seven o 'clock is a fast day it doesn't seem like it but it's like this and i'm like sprinting like before i could kind of take my time right but it's it's fast so i'm kind of a i i adjusted because i've always been an early morning person.

29:51But I realized for the first year and a half of my Fox show, I still did my radio show. So I was literally burning, not literally, but burning the candle at both ends. I was working in the morning early until noon. And then I was picking back up to do the 10 o 'clock show. And one of my producers at the time, Tommy, and then Raymond said, you can't keep doing this. The kids are little. And it was insane. So I stopped that.

30:17Katie Miller:How have your kids handled your fame? They're just, I mean, I think it's like, and you have the same, they just get used to it. You know, they don't know anything different. And, you know, my kids aren't political. They're not political people. They're just regular kids. And so I don't encourage them to go into what I do at all. And they're just, I'm just mom. And I happen to be on TV every night. But it's just part of the deal. But they love President Trump and they've enjoyed, you know, one of the most, one of the things I'll remember most about 2016 was it was, I think, November 3rd, right?

31:00It was a Monday or Sunday night before the election. And it was Trump's last big day. He did five cities in one day, one of those days. Do you remember this? One of those days he ended in Leesburg, Virginia. He was supposed to be in Leesburg at midnight. Well, of course the day was, forget it, it was a very, very long day. And so I said to my daughter, who was 12, or 11, I said, let's pull you out of school, let's go to this rally and let's see President Trump. She's like, okay, can my friends come?

31:37Katie Miller:So I guess a couple of her friends, down this neighbors came. And we drove out to Leesburg and one of the guys who was organizing said, do you want to speak? I said, sure. We got there and it was the moment I knew Trump was going to win. I had a decent sense from the radio show what people were saying that he had a real shot. But that night we get to, it was freezing. It's like one of those uncharacteristically cold November nights, early November nights. I'm like, oh my God, where are we? There were lights, trails of lights, flashlights through these paths in the woods going to the Leesburg Fairground.

32:14I was like, oh, my God, what is happening? There were, I mean, it was hours in traffic to get into this place. We get in. There is a line. I still have a video. Lines sneaking through the forest to get to the woods to get to where this thing was going to be. And there were people in wheelchairs, people with children on their shoulders. People just lined up and they were there for hours because they wanted to see Trump on his last big stop. So we get there and Trump didn't come. He was late by like two hours. And Maria's like, Mom, I'm getting tired.

32:51Katie Miller:I said, I said, well, come on, hold on. She's like, OK, OK. Finally, we got word that Trump landed at Dulles. He pulls up with his motorcade. We're standing right there. Crowd's going crazy in the pavilion. and only about 2 ,000 could get let in. And there were, I sound like Trump, there were like 40 ,000 in the woods, couldn't get in. And we're standing there. Trump comes out of the car and he looks at us. He looks at Maria and he said, well, why are you guys late? Like, you were late getting here. I'm like, okay. He just was funny. And so then he steps up and starts speaking. And it was a wild end to the wildest campaign I've ever reported on.

33:35And that was the coolest memory. But my daughter grew up with it. And now she's a college junior.

33:42Katie Miller:What's been your favorite age to parent? Well, I think the teenage years, it's not gonna sound too insightful, but are not my favorite. I think the five, six, seven, till like 10. I love that age. But, you know, now it's funny when the kids are older, you like every age. Like, oh, I wish you were 18 again. I wish you were 15 again. But I love that little age where they're still curious and they still want to cuddle. And they're still, mommy, mommy, mommy. When are you coming home? I saved all my voicemail messages. Like, when are you coming home? When are you going to do a bedtime story? You know, and I can't wait to have grandkids.

34:24I can't wait.

34:26Katie Miller:What do you eat in a typical day? um i eat a lot of tuna so boring like tuna salad i like barbecue potato chips sorry rfk jr i like um i like steak um i like sushi i eat a lot of tuna like like i don't know that kind of tuna raw tuna and um i like a lot of slow cooker stuff i make a lot in the slow cooker so it's easy do Do you cook for your family before the show? I do about two nights a week during the week. It's hard to do it otherwise. So, you know, we don't do takeout all the time, but the kids chip in now because they're older. Nico, my youngest, is a pretty good cook. So he likes to cook.

35:08I like making my roast chicken, which is my favorite. And it's actually so easy to make a roast chicken. I stuff it and do all the vegetables around it.

35:16Katie Miller:What's the best thing your kids make? Nico likes making his, you know, pasta, you know, dish with marinara and hamburger and that kind of a thing that always tastes good and you can keep it forever. What's your skincare routine? I wash my face every day, Katie, at least once. I just I just use like the whatever I have. I don't have like a I don't have like a big routine of like I'm going to use like some crazy expensive stuff. although um i do like um like a natural toner to use at the end of the makeup the makeup is a lot every day it's a lot so if i had a dollar for all how do you keep your skin from breaking out yeah it sometimes does but that's usually chocolate if i eat chocolate or tomatoes for some reason tomatoes like raw tomatoes or chocolate or too much citrus i still break out But otherwise, my skin's not bad.

36:16I try to do kind of basic skin care.

36:19Katie Miller:Now we play the game of would you rather. Do this every episode. Would you rather spend a week as chief of staff for Kamala Harris or one month as a guest host on The View?

36:33Kamala Harris.

36:35Katie Miller:Would you rather have to sing your opening monologue or rhyme the entire show? Sing the opening monologue. You gave me a great idea. That's a good one. Would you rather clean glitter off the floor or unclog a kitchen sink with your hands? With the hands, the kitchen sink, as long as the disposal's not on. Would you rather do a show with perfectly styled hair but no makeup or with flawless makeup but messy hair? Ooh. Probably messy hair, better makeup, I guess. I don't know. Both are bad. Both options are really bad. Would you rather compete on The Amazing Race with Judge Jeanine or Dancing with the Stars with Greg Gutfeld?

37:17Ooh.

37:21I think I want to do both, but I think Judge Jeanine, I don't know. Judge Jeanine, although Greg's going to be mad at me, but Judge Jeanine.

37:32Katie Miller:Which of your cabinet is your favorite to interview? Besson. Why? Why? He has like a very dry sense of humor that I cry laughing. He's so smart and he's so funny and our kids get along really well. So yeah, I adore him. How do you pick the guests for your show each night? You know, who does well, obviously. It's like it's a business. So who does well? Who has something to say to advance the narrative? I don't want an echo chamber. I like a give and take. A lot of Democrats won't come on, but we still try. But I like debating. I like debating people. And so, you know, when I interview President Trump, you know, I'll talk to him about, you know, why are we still letting these Chinese students in the country?

38:21Like, why are we still doing this? But, you know, it's a legitimate question. So it's not like, you're great. How great are you? You know, we're so great tonight.

38:31Katie Miller:Yeah, we're so great. So I don't like echo chamber interviews. I want someone who can tell me something I don't already know. What's a conspiracy theory that you believe in?

38:46Katie Miller:Conspiracy theory. Well, I think it was a conspiracy theory. It turned out obviously not to be the whole origin of COVID. But it obviously didn't start in a wet market, as Anthony Fauci said innumerable times. started in the Wuhan lab and we helped fund it. What's the first app you open in the morning? Twitter. Oh, sorry, X. What's the last book you read? This is the Isaacson biography of Musk, which I just finished. Really? Unbelievable. You hadn't read it before? I hadn't read it before. It's a long book. But now my son's reading it. He's still in it for me. But it's incredible from beginning to end.

39:27What a life.

39:28Katie Miller:They say they need to do like a second version because it cuts off to a... Yeah, but it's still, it's his, what I loved about it was his drive to do the unthinkable, what people thought wasn't possible in his singular drive to advance knowledge, which people like Edison, Henry Ford, Galileo, doesn't come along many times. What do you think is the biggest threat to America today? An uninformed public, a generation that doesn't know what came before. Do you think the legacy media wants to keep America stupid? Dumb and numb, smoke pot, smoke a lot of pot, weed's fine, right? That's the message we get.

40:17More people are using weed regularly now than alcohol, we learned yesterday. So it's pot, porn, online gambling, and surface knowledge.

40:31Instagram, TikTok.

40:32Katie Miller:No, nothing against them, but that's not knowledge. Kelsey Grammer had said that sitcoms really aren't funny anymore because the writers stopped trusting their audience. Oh, yeah, I would say that. And don't you think that, like, the legacy media has become such a culture that where they're pushing their own viewpoints instead of letting the public make up their own? Yeah, I mean, the boss is, the customer is always right, right? So when Norman Lear did All in the Family, you weren't even alive, But in the 70s, we have like 27 million people watching that every Sunday night. And it offended everybody.

41:09Katie Miller:That's why SNL is not funny. Right. Well, again, humor, you hear humor all day long on the street. Like you get out on the street here, you'll hear people ribbing each other, laughing at each other. People in their own circles tend to be a lot funnier. And people were different. Once they let go of all the politics, that's where the real humor comes out. But that's fun. Like, I grew up hearing Polish jokes. I'm half Polish. So it was Polish jokes, Italian jokes. None of us took it that seriously. Not that, you know, you like being made fun of. But it became part of the, you know, mean-spiritedness is different, like real mean-spiritedness.

41:46But Don Rickles was one of my favorite comedians. I mean, he's just hysterically funny.

41:52Katie Miller:Do you think we should still have a White House correspondence dinner? I think it's become, it's not my cup of tea, but everyone, someone called it the nerd prom years ago. I used to go a long time ago. It was fun. I had some fun experiences. Fun to see people, but it's not really about the country. And again, we saw this with the Mueller investigation. We saw this with how they covered COVID. We've seen this and how they even cover the economy. An agenda from the legacy media. I'm a commentator. I don't pretend to be an objective journalist. I don't pretend to be that. I'm an analyst, so I think I'm a fair one.

42:40But these objective journalists who claim that they're, oh, well, we're here for the public trust. No, no. I can't name a journalist who would be considered in the club of journalists today who are really operating in the public trust or for the

43:03Katie Miller:public good, for the public knowledge. So we have an informed public. I mean, they're circling the wagons now, Katie, for the Smithsonian Institution. It's ridiculous. I mean, certain things are worthy of being recorded as history, and certain things aren't to these people. So the March for Life, longest running march in American history, that doesn't count. But make sure the transgender civil rights crusade, that gets adequately expressed at the Smithsonian. The National Portrait Gallery, I remember going in between President Trump's first and second term, and the plaque on his portrait was like, he caused an insurrection in this country.

43:43Yeah.

43:43Katie Miller:And that's what they want to remember President Trump for. If that's not biased, I'm not sure what is. Yeah. Well, again, you can do that. You can have your museums making fun of conservatives or the pro-life. Go for it. But when it's tax dollars, I mean, they make fun of conservatives in films, songs, you know, cable TV. Go for it. That's no problem. but don't use our tax dollars and then give us a one-sided view of American history. If you weren't hosting a nightly TV primetime show, what would you be doing? I'd probably be a high school sports athletics coach. That's probably, probably be a field hockey coach.

44:21Katie Miller:What's the biggest value you're trying to instill in your children? Hard work, hard work and family. If you could host a dinner party with three people dead or alive who's sitting at the table and what are you eating? It's got to be eating homemade pasta, like real fabulous homemade pasta. Like you make the pasta at home, the sauce at home, the tomatoes from the garden, and some fabulous conversation. Do you garden? Well, this year was a struggle. I had a little problem with my garden this year, but yes, normally I garden. And I have poison ivy all over my arms from weeding, so I can test the fact.

45:00It looks like stigmata. That's scary. So who would I have at the dinner? George Washington, Booker T. Washington, and Frank Sinatra.

45:14Katie Miller:It's a good one. Yeah. Three of the greats. Thank you so much for doing this. So much fun. I hope we do it again. Thank you so much for watching this episode of the Katie Miller Podcast. We'll be back next week, 6 p.m. on Tuesday nights. See you then.

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