Katie Porter's Interview Meltdown, AOC's "Body-Shaming," and the Truth About Biden Corruption, with Link Lauren and Ken Vogel | Ep. 1167

22:11Are you OK with people burning the American flag? If you'd like to follow up with us. Are you OK with people chanting death to America? She's walking. She just won't answer. Congresswoman Porter, are you OK with people chanting death to America?

22:30Is it okay? Do you not have a problem with it? Happy to reach out here. I mean, that guy does seem a little gay to me, Link. I don't know. She has one gay assistant, but he's... Honestly, the people around you might be sabotaging you. I'm happy she was getting some exercise in that clip, though. She was getting sunlight, vitamin D, exercise. These are things I think Democrats need more of. But the reason she won't answer is because the Democrats are perfectly fine with Americans chanting, you know, death to America, burning the American flag. as we just saw in portland with nick sorter who's an independent journalist he was trying to put out an american flag that they were burning there is this radical marxist fast you know faction on the left that's growing and growing and folks like katie porter are so scared of turning them off they won't condemn that behavior that's what we're seeing with chuck schumer and hawking jeffries they're not radical far left but they're just capitulating to those folks as they don't want to scare that progressive wing of their party so the reason katie porter didn't answer it's not because she had to go to an event it's because she thinks that's fine yeah she was no she had no problem with it.

23:29Here she is behaving dishonestly and as an extremist on the subject of women's rights versus trans rights. She was on with Bill Maher. Thank God Piers Morgan was there. And here's a snippet of what happened in 5B. You should be able to have a civil debate. Nobody, including Riley Gaines, who I disagree with strongly, should be. What do you disagree with out of interest? I think that it should be up to sporting bodies to make the decisions about who and how she can compete. What has she said that's actually wrong? I think that what she has done is try to turn this... We talked about people, you know, using things to kind of get likes and get clicks.

24:10That's not what she's doing. It's not? I've got no truck for Riley Games personally, but all I've seen her do is stand up for women's rights to fairness and equality. She actually competed against Leah Thomas, and it was obviously unfair. Leah Thomas won one of the races in the NCAA championships by 50 seconds against a bunch of biological females who simply couldn't keep up. That cannot be right. It cannot be fair. That is something. I'm here for a pleasant experience. I was told this would be positive and I would be happy. Bill Maher. That's what I show up on a first date. I was told this was going to go well.

24:48What is happening? I feel bamboozled. But no, this is really what it's like. The women on the left, they purport themselves to be, you know, feminist and we're going to protect and uplift our girls. They're perfectly fine with men coming into their locker rooms, into their sports teams. For folks like Katie Porter, Kamala Harris, all of these elite women Democrats, they think women's rights begin and end with abortion, right? That's it. They think women's rights is abortion. Kamala Harris showed us that on the campaign trail for 107 days. What did Kamala Harris talk about? Bringing abortion. She would go to black colleges and tell young girls, we're going to get you the right to abortion.

25:21We're going to do this abortion. And the girls are like, OK, but women's rights is also like, how do we pay our bills? How do we have health care? How do we not have criminals on the street so we can walk home from work? And so for Katie Porter, of course, she doesn't know about women's rights. And she thinks it's fine for guys to come in to women's sports teams. But this is going to continue to be the losing issue for Democrats. And they keep trying to minimize it. One more, and then we'll move off of Katie Porter. But here she is talking about her 12-year-old after Trump won last November. So on election night, I went to pick up my daughter from water polo practice, and she's 12, and she got in the car and she was crying.

25:56And I said, did someone punch you? Like, water polo's a rough sport. I was like, did someone hit you? Did the coach yell at you? What happened? And she said, Mom, Trump won. Trump's going to win. And what if I get raped and I need to have an abortion? This is from a 12-year-old, my 12-year-old daughter. And so it's really a reminder of how scary this time is for people and how important it is for Democrats to have strategies both at the state level and the federal level to make sure that we can continue to protect people's rights. It's really a reminder of how sick you are as her mother to be filling a 12 year old's head full of worries about getting raped and needing abortions and having that be, of course, your next available option.

26:41I'll have something hideous happen to me. By the way, if it does, it will be at the hands of a Democrat D.A. who lets some criminal come in and go out like it's a revolving door. And then, of course, what I'll do is I'll kill my baby because I'm Katie Porter's daughter. This is this reveals so much about her. No, she's absolutely a radical. And folks like Katie Porter and Pete Buttigieg, these folks who think they're sort of the next generation of the Democratic Party, they always want to portray themselves as very moderate, middle of the road. We're just like moderate Democrats. when push comes to shove and you really press them, they are just as radical as everybody else, right?

27:15They want abortion until the end. They want open borders. They want criminals on the street. They want men and women's sports. They want the transing of children. And they might say, we don't want these things, right? But it's sort of like lying by omission. If you won't condemn something that's absolutely horrific, right? Absolutely disgusting, like a 16-year-old girl getting a mastectomy, which should never happen in the United States of America. If you won't condemn that, then that makes me see you as a sick and disgusting person yourself. And I hate that we even have to have this conversation, you know what I'm saying, about people who are seeking high offices in the United States of America.

27:46But that's who Katie Porter is, and she's kind of on par with this next generation of Democrats. Well, it's like AOC. She wants you to believe that she's super woke and she's really into like uplifting people and we don't put people down for their immutable characteristics. But she's in the news this week for mocking Stephen Miller, basically calling him a dwarf. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller is a normal height man. I think the average height in America, the average height of a man is about five, nine and a half, which is shorter than you might think. But that is the average height of an American male.

28:17Stephen Miller says he's five, ten and a half. So not the tallest guy, but not short. And here's AOC talking about him in SOT 15. The point is, is that they are scrapping and grasping at straws because they have nothing else. Laugh at them. Stephen Miller is a clown. I've never seen that guy in real life, but he looks like he's like 4 '10". And he looks like he is angry about the fact that he's 4 '10". And he looks like he is so mad that he is 4 '10", that he's taking that anger out at any other population possible. Like, laugh at them. One of the most powerful cultural things that you can do to a political movement that is predicated on the puffery of insecure masculinity.

29:17That's what this is about. This isn't people talk about toxic masculinity. And one of the best ways that you can dismantle a movement of insecure men is by making fun of them. Okay. First of all, that is not an AOC thought. That is an Elizabeth Bennett thought penned by Jane Austen. It's a classic line from Pride and Prejudice. We've all read the book a million times and seen the many movies. Elizabeth Bennett is the one who said you laugh at him. That's what you do to a man who intimidates you or by whom you feel put down in any way, shape or form. She cribs it to make it her own. And then she body shames him.

29:54Link, that's not allowed by leftists. I'm reliably told you're not allowed to do that by the woke left. Well, that was my first thought when I saw this clip going viral of AOC. They preach about diversity and love everybody and kumbaya and braid each other's hair. But of course, the first thing they do is going to attacking people's looks and height and the way they look. And we do that here and there, OK? Yeah, but we don't lecture anybody when they do it. Exactly. That's my whole point. It's like I don't act holier than thou. It's like I'm going to break down Lauren Sanchez and Meghan Markle at Fashion Week.

30:24You know what I'm saying? But AOC, these folks on the left, are all about kumbaya diversity. I also think this is rich coming from AOC because part of the reason AOC has been so successful is because of her looks. People talk about this all the time in private. Let's talk about it in public. AOC is not excellent. She's not a genius. Ted Kennedy didn't just hire her years ago to be his intern because she was so brilliant and top of the class. She's beautiful. She has big breasts, cute face. She's Latina. That has helped her advance herself in her career. So she's hating on someone for his looks.

30:54And yeah, the last thing I'll say is actually sort of a more dramatic point. She says we have to laugh at these Republicans. We have to laugh at them and scoff at them. I would rather you laugh at us than pick up guns and try to shoot us as we have seen recently, right? With Charlie Kirk, with the assassination attempts on President Trump and so many other Republicans, Kavanaugh. I would rather you laugh at us than tell your supporters that we're fascists and dictators and Hitler and Nazis to where they come and try to kill us in our own homes. That I would actually prefer, AOC, if we're going to get serious.

31:22Sorry. She doesn't mean it. You're right. She's a complete hypocrite because she's running around there dropping the fascist word like it's going out of style. So she doesn't mean that either. You know, like she doesn't actually mean laugh at them because that's not what she's been doing. And she doesn't actually mean her woke messaging about not shaming people and celebrating whatever immutable characteristics because she doesn't do that if it's a Republican. And then you've got to love the self-flagellation because a little too late in the game, she realized, oh, shit, I'm not supposed to be doing that.

31:46I guess I'm getting blowback on this. So she tried to follow it up. That original video was on Sunday. The next day she goes back on camera to offer this. I want to express my love for the short king community. I don't believe in body shaming. I am talking about how big or small someone is on the inside. Like, for example, I have no idea how tall Andrew Tate is. No idea at all. but that guy looks to me like five three now she's back five three five four whereas physically men of smaller stature can come across they are spiritually six foot if you're a good dad if you're some of my best friends are short women if you're not belittling immigrants you're like you know, 6 '3", spiritually.

32:47I don't know. Am I being problematic? Yes, you're being problematic and dishonest and a hypocrite. Do you, I was talking about how tall or short they are on the inside. Yeah, that's what I used to think when I was dating. Yeah, I'd go on a date and the guy would be, you know, 5 '2 on his profile. He'd say he's 5 '10. He's tall on the inside, okay? He's tall in his brain. But yeah, no, AOC, I don't think anybody should be taking her seriously. like, God, she's really just such a joke. I don't know. AOC to me is just such a joke. I don't know why she's even, you know, put on this pedestal as this leader of the Democratic Party.

33:21She has no accomplishments, right? I remember when she first got in, remember she was doing those sit-ins in Nancy Pelosi's office and causing all this trouble. That AOC, I respected a little bit more because at least she was trying to buck the system and sort of take on the system. Now, you know, she was out campaigning with Joe Biden, wearing the aviator. She's just another member of the swamp. She doesn't have that cool factor. She's not taking on the system anymore. So AOC can sit there and do her little Instagram videos. Why doesn't she actually go have some legislative achievements? That would be sort of a first for her.

33:51Well, I look forward to taking her advice and making lots of fun of her. The internet right now is commenting on how she's gained a bunch of weight and they're calling her abuelita. So, okay, let's do that. Okay. That's what she wants done. Okay. And it's because AOC has been able to coast on her looks for a long time. And people talk about this in D.C. privately. I'm just bringing it out in the open. AOC, the fact that she's very beautiful and voluptuous and has a little waist, that has helped her in her career. I just have to be honest and say it. And so now when she looks a little bit different, you're going to get called out.

34:26You're going to get called out. Yes. Yeah. The internet is pretty clever, I have to say. AOC and the O is for Ozymbic. Okay. Okay, so we got to keep going with terrible people and hypocritical left. I'll get to Megan in a second. We got to go to the view. No. And Whoopi Goldberg, okay? Okay. I have heard from in certain circles, you know, I don't want to just get specific, that you're not allowed to darken your skin as any sort of a costume or it's racist. I heard that. I'm trying to remember where I heard that, but I definitely heard from many, many leftists, You are not allowed to do that. It's racist.

35:06It's always been racist. Don't don't pay any attention to the fact that Billy Crystal opened the Oscars wearing blackface. The point is, it's always been racist and everybody always knew that. Enter Whoopi Goldberg with a solution to how to handle ice being at the Super Bowl looking for illegals. she's threatening to go to the super bowl when when bad money is there and round up all these people that are illegal immigrants do you think that she would go if it was garth brooks or eminem or taylor swift or any other white person understand what you're saying because she's going to go to the super bowl and round up how's she going to know who's who because the Supreme Court has given permission to question anyone who has a Spanish accent or has a dark skin.

35:58Yeah, so here's the thing. Here's the thing. Everybody, get a little cocoa butter, sit in the sun. That's the first thing. And then, and this is the only time you can probably ever do this, give yourself a Latin accent. You know, Whoopi, that is such a good idea. And just seeing if she can tell who's who. Okay, you get the cocoa butter and you tan your face with it and then you speak in a Spanish accent and that's fine. And you know what? At least Whoopi is consistent because Whoopi actually was fine with Ted Danson wearing actual minstrel face, black face, like the deeply offensive stuff from like the 40s films.

36:45She stood right next to him when he did that at a roast. She thought it was hilarious. And then she sat there as Joy Behar celebrated her own wearing of blackface on Halloween. She went as a beautiful black woman. There's Joy with her dark face and her afro, which would be also celebrated. So at least she's not totally hypocritical, but the left is hypocritical. And you tell me whether they on The View would be celebrating it, Link, if you and I went to the Super Bowl wearing brown face and big hoop earrings and lip liner outside the lips. and speaking in a Spanish accent. Well, you know, I was actually going to go as Diana Ross for Halloween this year.

37:24I'll have to throw the Afro in the trash, unfortunately. But, you know, inside joke here, I think it's good. You're allowed to talk about blackface on ABC, just not NBC, I think. I think they're allowed to talk about it on ABC, apparently. But no, I think on ABC as well, it wasn't Jimmy Kimmel in a blackface scandal. Maybe we can find a picture. But Jimmy Kimmel, who's, you know, one of the head on show big guys over at ABC, yeah, he's done blackface for sure. But no, this is just part and parcel of the hypocrisy of the women of The View. As I always say, none of these women are in Mensa either.

37:52They've kind of found the worst five women you can put on a panel and just have them go at it. Yeah, they can't spell Mom backwards. But yeah, no, Whoopi Goldberg, I'm not shocked to see this, but there's also been such an increase in attacks on ICE and sort of vitriol against ICE agents, people having their families threatened and them being attacked and punched and shot at. And so as much fun as it is to laugh about how ridiculous these women of The View are, there are serious repercussions when you vilify law enforcement, right? When you vilify our men and women in uniform, cops, ICE agents, there are real repercussions.

38:23People go out in the street and shoot at them and try to attack them. And so of course that doesn't affect these women on The View because they make millions of dollars and they live in penthouse apartments with chefs and security and their only job is to come to a nice studio each day and get driven home. They don't really understand the immigration crisis, right? They're in this liberal bubble. So, Whoopi Goldberg, I wasn't shocked by any of this, but she's been cosplaying a comedian for years. So she's been a comedian face for a long time. There was a time, a long time ago when she was funny.

38:47It's a really long time ago. A word on what Joy Behar, noted legal expert, not, purported to represent as the Supreme Court ruling. That's not what happened. The Supreme Court, the ICE criteria for deciding whether somebody might be the illegal they're looking for is long. There's a long list of factors that they said that they look at. And one of them is skin color. So if they know they're looking for a guy from Venezuela, they're probably going to rule out a super white guy who has an Irish accent. And that has been upheld by courts for decades now as an acceptable one criterion of many. It cannot be the sole criterion, but it's one of many that they are allowed to factor in, not represented accurately by legal scholar Joy Behar.

39:33All right, stick to fake comedy, Joy. Please, stay in your lane. you know joy behar i think she's a drunk italian she's not an expert you know legal analyst but i think they could also do like a sequel of my cousin vinny with joy behar maybe she can play the attorney and like a my cousin vinny sequel but no i don't take her seriously for her legal promise whatsoever don't don't even talk about her ruining yet another of my favorite movies she it's bad enough she was in manhattan murder mystery which i absolutely freaking love if you haven't seen it run don't walk starring woody allen and diane keaton and joy behar um i can't have her in another one of my favorite movies, My Cousin Vinny, which really is one of the top 10 of all time.

40:10One more thing before we leave the view, and that is Joy Behar, back to our local resident legal expert, on why Trump is so determined to put the National Guard troops in various cities. Watch this, SOT 29. There is crime in American cities, but the way to deal with it is get the funding that you need for police, get the training that you need, and work with local officials. This is a pretext to stop the next election. That's what I think it is. I would say it might also be a distraction from the hearing that's going on right now about the Epstein file. Some things have come up and A.G. Pan Bondi was dodging questions and attacking back.

40:46Do you not think maybe the whole civil unrest storyline is maybe overblown? This is in order to make the case. because in their minds, in all of their minds, they now believe they have carte blanche to do whatever they want to. That's right. Yes, that's what the feeling is. And if they stop us from voting, that's the one thing people have. I mean, it's the one thing that makes us very different from lots of other countries. Our votes, they do count. I do know that they count. If we can put a lot to vote. Okay, so it's back to the Bill Maher. He said he believes this. Then Gavin Newsom repeated Maher.

41:33And now the ladies of The View think Trump's going to have a permanent state of National Guard in all these blue cities. So they can't vote at all because he's worried about people like Joy Behar actually voting. No, I actually, anytime I see clips of The View, I can feel my IQ cells just disintegrating. I can feel my brain atrophying, watching these women try to form a coherent thought. Like if reaching was a sport you're on, they are reaching, okay? They're reaching and forming conclusions, and they are absolutely ridiculous. So no, I don't take any of these women seriously. It's also funny, Alyssa Fair Griffin is supposed to be the conservative on the panel.

42:10There's really not much conservative about her. I would love for them to bring in a real conservative on The View. I dare them to bring in a real conservative for one hour, for 10 minutes on The View. McCain for years, who is conservative, but a Trump hater the whole time she was there. It was like, so that's why she was acceptable, because as long as you're going to dump on Trump, we can take you. And this this same with Alyssa Farrah Griffin. She's a disgruntled former Trumper. She hates Trump. Sarah Haynes was the other one commenting. She also hates Trump. She was the one like, oh, you know, why is he bringing these National Guard troops?

42:37And elsewhere, she tried to claim that there's been no violence against ICE, no threat she's ever seen against ICE. These are the conservatives on the show. Whatever. It's a hot mess. We know that we can't get too exercised about the view. It's just fun to sometimes check in on what they're doing. OK, I want to keep with it. I do I do want to get to Meghan Markle. But before we go there, we've got to spend a minute on Greta Turnberg, who has moved on from her climate activism, as you know, to being a pro-Palestinian warrior. She got she she joined this flotilla, which actually is like a normal thing from Sweden.

43:09I guess they've been doing these flotillas for like 20 years. This is just the latest one. And apparently it's always a collection of C-list stars who are just looking for attention. it's basically like their big brother or their real housewives that you join the flotilla to get your name back in the news and that's Greta Turnberg and there's actually a really interesting piece in National Review that is dated today, October 8th by John Gustafsson that gets really into Greta's background and how, I didn't know this she's the child of two celebrities over there in Sweden and she was somebody who was probably obviously ignored for a while because her parents were busy building these big couriers and then she decided to make like a name for herself through climate activism.

43:49And she had she has Asperger's and severe mental health problems. So those are two different things. But she's, according to John, got actual severe mental health problems so bad that her mother like had to take a leave of absence and be home with her. So this is a girl who needs parental attention more than the mother's short leave of absence and has decided to get it first from climate activists. And now by joining the C-lister flotillas to make Gaza her cause. She's been out there railing about Palestine and Israel and all of that. And finally, we have seen, well, I'll give you the montage of Greta first, and then I'll show you what Trump is saying about her.

44:28SOT24. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you? Why is it so important to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius? Because even at one degree, people are dying from climate change. Because that is what the United Science calls for, to avoid destabilizing the climate so that we have the best possible chance to avoid setting off irreversible chain reactions.

45:19Every fraction of a degree matches. Okay, so none of that was right. And you shouldn't take your climate advice from somebody who has to go home and put benzoyl peroxide on their skin in the evenings. Now Trump has finally decided to weigh in on Greta. And here's what he said. She's just a troublemaker. You know, I mean, she's you mean, she's no longer into the environment now she's into this she's a troublemaker she has an anger management problem i think she should see a doctor she needs anger if you ever watch her she's a young person she's so angry she's so crazy now you can have her you can have she's just a troublemaker how's he wrong he's not wrong at all maybe no katie porter was talking about her daughter maybe the daughter is greta thunberg and we've never seen them in the same room at the same time All comes together.

46:06It's all coming together. Okay, we're analyzing it here. But yeah, no, with Greta Thunberg, she's just a professional activist, which is why I don't take almost any activist seriously. And shout out to the people who opened doors for all of us and yada, yada, yada. But I don't take a lot of these new activists seriously because they just go from one grift to the next. First, it's climate. That didn't work for a few years. Now they went on to Ukraine. Then it's going to be something else. Then it's oil and drilling and everything in between. But these folks are such professional activists. they will go out there.

46:33They'll do like a sit-in or they'll lock arms on a freeway. Then they'll go back to like a five-star hotel and be eating crumpets and scones. So I don't take Greta Thunberg seriously at all. And when it comes to this flotilla, I don't even know what a flotilla is. It sounds like something you could get at like Chipotle, like a flotilla, like a grande flotilla. Like I don't know what a flotilla is. To me, it sounds like what they put together in Jaws 2, which did not end well for most of those high school students. It's like Contiki or something. I don't want to get on a flotilla. Also, I don't share bathrooms and I really like my creature comforts and my amenities, you know what I'm saying?

47:02And my bath salts. So I am not going to be on flotilla. What would the water pressure be like on the flotilla? Probably not so great. Not good. Not good. I am such a creature comfort person. I will change hotel rooms if there's like a faint noise. Okay. I am that person. So I'm not going to be on a flotilla with a bunch of like stinky little liberal, you know, kids on the spectrum. Sorry, I'm going to get canceled for saying that. But I don't want to do that and be on the flotilla and like sailing to Gaza. Who wants to sail to Gaza? Sorry about me. Just remember, they smell good on the inside.

47:30That's what's important. All right, now here we go. Meghan Markle, she is not a well person. She was over in Paris for the Balenciaga fashion show. And she filmed herself, herself, going by the location where Princess Diana died. And here's the video. Her feet are up in the car. she's having a grand old time. She's showing you out the window where she is. And then you see her naked feet crisscrossed in front of her like, the world is at my feet. Ha ha ha. This is so fun. This is where my children's grandmother died. Good times. Let me put this online. No, what's interesting is Meghan Markle, she will try to plead ignorance and say, it was just a video.

48:22I didn't know what I was doing. Her team will put out statements. everything is a deliberate choice with Meghan Markle. In my opinion, she's sociopathic, she's a narcissist, she's a malignant narcissist. And for her to act like she didn't know where Princess Diana died in that famous car crash is just absolute malarkey, buffoonery, tomfoolery. It's like when she said she didn't even know who Prince Harry was in the documentary. She's like, I don't know much about Prince Harry. Is he nice? Then we find pictures of her out in front of Buckingham Palace. It's like if I say I don't know a guy and then there are pictures of me driving around his neighborhood.

48:54Meghan Markle knew exactly who Prince Harry was. She knew exactly where Princess Diana died, but she's doing this for attention. I have a theory. There was some reporting recently that we covered on Spot On that they're doing a Diana documentary to commemorate the anniversary, I believe in 2027. So this could maybe be part of that. I thought maybe Meghan Markle is out doing research for the documentary. I'm sorry for laughing, but she's going to go drive around and take the exact route to sort of, you know, manifest and put herself in that position. But the last thing I'll say about Meghan Markle, she's gone on the Drew Barrymore show and talked about how she'll FaceTime her kids when she's on the road.

49:28She'll send videos to whoever's watching her kids while she's traveling. Instead of going to these fashion shows, you left the royal family because you guys wanted privacy. You wanted to be low key. Go be with your kids and raise your kids. You know, you don't need to go to Balenciaga, who's been accused of grooming children, had pedophilia scandals. Then you're out partying with your friend who's in charge a membership at Soho House. Go be a mom and be with your kids. If that was the reason you left the royal family, go do it. She doesn't want it. That video of her walking into Balenciaga, it was ridiculous.

49:58She looks like she's part of the fashion show in all white walking out like, all eyes are on me. I am the model I've always wanted to be. But no, she doesn't want to be with the children. That's why she keeps doing these things. The same way Hoda Koppi doesn't want to be with her children. And you can't get her off the set of the Today Show. She's there every two weeks launching a new business venture because now she's a CEO. Pow, pow, pow. None of these women actually wants to be at home with their children and it's fine. Look, if you want to be a working mom and do them both, just own it. Don't try to build yourself up as some fake stay-at-home mom because you're obviously not.

50:32And Meghan Markle, you used the word earlier in a post I read that you made, that she's a disaster tourist. That's exactly right. Uvalde and now this. She's never seen a tragedy that she doesn't want to exploit for her own PR, which is sick. All right, we got to run. Link, great to see you. Subscribe to Spot On with Link Lauren on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Go to spotonwithlink.com, and that'll show you all the places you can get more of Link. And who does not want more of Link Lauren? Coming up, Ken Vogel of The New York Times on Hunter Biden. It's time for Medicare annual enrollment again. The mailers, the robocalls, the texts blowing up your phone.

51:10It can be a circus and overwhelming. but this is one Medicare message you do need to hear. Medicare plans can change every year. And even if you like your current plan, your costs could go up or you could lose coverage for things you depend on. This is why I want to tell you about Chapter. Chapter compares every plan nationwide to make sure you are on a plan that best fits your needs. On average, they save people$1 ,100 a year. I get it. Nobody wants to deal with Medicare, but in under 20 minutes, Chapter can review your options. If your plan is already the best for 2026, great, you're done. If not, they will help you switch before rising costs hit your wallet.

51:46No gimmicks, no pushy sales, just straight talk from people who know Medicare inside and out. Call Chapter today at 27 Medicare. That's 27 Medicare to talk to a trusted advisor today.

52:01We absolutely have to keep talking. It's more important now than ever. To cower, to hide, to go silent is not the answer. And all I can tell you is there is no fucking way I am canceling one stop on this tour. Not one stop. I'm going. I'm going to stand on these stages and I'm going to say all the things that we say all the time on this show. We're going to make it safe for me. We're going to make it safe for my team and my guests and you. We're going coast to coast and do something really important, which is say what's true and what's real to honor him. I really now more than ever would love to see you all face to face.

52:43God, I would love to see you face to face. I need to see you face to face. I am doing this tour and I would love for you to join me. MeganKelley.com for the tickets.

52:58We've been reporting for years on the conflicts of interest and alleged corruption related to Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings, especially his position as a board member of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, a job for which he had absolutely no qualifications. The corporate media mostly ignored or downplayed this story, but there was one notable exception, Ken Vogel of The New York Times. And boy, was he shamed for it. Here he is back in September of 2019 when the left was all excited about possibly impeaching Donald Trump for his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky when he urged him to find out exactly what Hunter Biden was up to in his country.

53:39Vogel pointed out on MSNBC that Joe Biden might have a big problem in Ukraine as well due to Hunter's, quote, work there. Watch. This situation involving Joe Biden's sons work for this Ukrainian oligarch owned gas company, which is, I have to quibble with some of what your previous guest said, is a significant liability for Joe Biden. Like there is a story here. We've told some of it. There's more to be told. We're going to continue to sort of pull that back. That said, the way that Rudy is inserting himself into it is both not helpful, I think, to Rudy and to Trump because it kind of jumbles it.

54:21He's getting the facts wrong and he is making it appear as if this is just a partisan hit job. Whereas if he would just kind of leave the reporters to do the work on it, I think that, you know, potentially this story might be taken more seriously. Well, that went over like a lead balloon with Team Biden. In fact, just two days later, they put out a digital ad featuring pundits attacking Vogel by name. Watch.

54:53Trump invited foreign interference in our election in 2016, and he's doing it again. Will media see through Trump's sleazy playbook or fall for it again? What Jim Vogel said is false. It's not simply whataboutism or equalism. It's false. And when he does that, and when, for example, Politico has a whole bunch of headlines today doing the same thing, they need to be taken on. They need to be taken on by the candidates and responsible people in the media. The New York Times is obsessed. You know, it may market itself as part of the resistance. It's obsessed with kind of being right down the middle.

55:26You know, with this Ukraine story, a lot of people say, well, this is just like, you know, 2016. And the press hasn't learned anything. At some point, we have to ask if a lot of journalists don't want to learn anything. That was the Biden campaign that put that out. They could not have the story being told about the Biden family corruption over in Ukraine. And it turns out there is more of the story to be told. And Ken Vogel is telling it in his new book titled Devil's Advocates, the hidden story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden and the Washington insiders on the payrolls of corrupt foreign interests.

56:02The book hits stores on October 14th. You can preorder it right now. And Ken joins me today for an exclusive interview. Ken, welcome to the show. Hey, it's great to be with you, Megan. This is crazy. I read this, it was making my blood boil. And I don't care. I don't, I have never run cover for Rudy Giuliani or anybody else who may have their hand in the till. And I certainly haven't for Hunter Biden. So I applaud you for writing this book. Can you just first set it up why this is an area that is just so ripe for exploitation by foreign governments trying to find some, I'm sorry, weakling here connected to whatever president, could be a right-wing one, could be a left-wing one, for exploitation to try to gain access to power.

56:48Yeah, I mean, there's this sort of mindset in a lot of the developing world, really a lot of the rest of the world, that, you know, you can get what you want from government by essentially paying the government or the people around the government, the families of the elected officials. And we in the U.S. like to think that we're above that. We're different than that. We have all these ethics laws and conflicts of interest laws and disclosure laws that prevent that kind of thing. But it turns out that in the rest of the world, when they sort of get crosswise with the United States or other international bodies, they apply this same mindset and they look for Americans who are close to the government and the top officials in the government to put on their payrolls to be able to at least create the perception that they are gaining some kind of favor or effectively navigating their way out of trouble.

57:39And it turns out that there are plenty of well-connected Americans who are willing to take those paydays, including Hunter Biden, including Rudy Giuliani, but also many others who I profile in detail in the book. Yeah, this is a grift because you have some access to power and you run around to deep pocketed foreigners touting it, trying to seem important, like you can change policy. And certainly when you are the son of the sitting vice president, that carries a lot of weight because what you're zeroing in on with Hunter really all started when Joe Biden was vice president. That's when he joined the board of Burisma in Ukraine.

58:19Before we get to that, I just want to start with a headline that just came out on Tuesday, thanks to our pal John Solomon over at Just the News. And the headline is Joe Biden's team blocked the CIA from distributing report on Sun Hunter's Ukraine business dealings. And what Solomon is reporting that back when Joe Biden was vice president, it was February of 16. His team intervened, his vice presidential team intervened to prevent the CIA from disseminating an intelligence report to policymakers about the senior Ukrainian officials perceptions regarding Hunter Biden and his dealings in Ukraine.

59:01In other words, they were going to tell policymakers in the United States, the CIA was, that the Ukrainians think Hunter Biden is a joke and are rolling their eyes at these professions by Joe Biden that we're not corrupt, but foreign countries like Ukraine are, while his own son was on the take. And he, Joe Biden, his team intervened, saying the VP would, quote, strongly prefer this report not be disseminated. And it looks like it wasn't. It was withheld. Just so we have this, here is Vice President, then Vice President Biden, on his infamous anti-corruption speech he gave in Ukraine. This happened in 2015.

59:45But listen to the holier-than-thou attitude he was espousing while his son was essentially on the take. top 51 but i can tell you you cannot name me a single democracy in the world where the cancer of corruption is prevalent you cannot name me one they are thoroughly inconsistent

1:00:13and it's not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The office of the general prosecutor desperately needs reform. The judiciary should be overhauled. The energy sector needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles, not sweetheart deals. It's not enough to push through laws to increase transparency with regard to official sources of income. Senior elected officials have to remove all conflicts between their business interests and their government responsibilities. Lecture, lecture, lecture. There's no other democracy in the world that system pertains.

1:00:51Just the news reporting that these Ukrainian officials, quote, viewed the alleged ties of the U.S. vice president's family to corruption in Ukraine as evidence of a double standard within the United States government toward matters of corruption and political power, according to the CIA. And there it is in a nutshell, Ken. I mean, there it is in a nutshell. That's what was happening. Yeah, and it's not just that it's a double standard, though. I think certainly it is. And we saw this pattern play out where Hunter Biden was working for individuals and companies that were targeted by U.S.-backed, not just U.S.-backed, but anti-corruption initiatives that were backed by his own father around the world.

1:01:36It wasn't just in Ukraine. But this also gets at this other theme that like the perception is important here. It's not just that, you know, you're paying Hunter Biden to effectuate some change in U.S. policy to get the U.S. to back away from a given prosecution or to enact energy policies that were more favorable to the Ukrainian gas company for which he was working. But rather that there's an importance that there's a weight that is associated with having Hunter Biden on your payroll in Ukraine. So the Ukrainian prosecutors who are being encouraged by Joe Biden to pursue corruption kind of look at it and say, wait a minute.

1:02:15Here is the son of the vice president who is telling us to pursue corruption. The vice president is the son is working for one of the targets of the of this anti-corruption campaign. That's certainly a mixed message, the most charitable way to perceive it, the more cynical way to perceive it. And not qualified to be there. It's one thing if Hunter had had a lifetime in the oil and gas industry, still wouldn't have been great. But at least you'd say, all right, I mean, on paper, at least you can sell it. He didn't. There was absolutely no basis for him to be there other than to curry favor with his father.

1:02:49And your reporting is that's exactly why Burisma put him there. Yeah. And it is something where they, you know, the prosecutors are going to think twice when they see that a very the son of a very important U.S. public official who is very important to the U.S. policy towards Ukraine is is essentially sitting on the board of this entity that that the U.S. is targeting. It's, you know, again, it's like a mixed message at best, but it could be seen as protection, like that they are paying for protection from this prosecution that the U.S. is encouraging. And I think that very much comports with the post-Soviet mindset that prevailed in Ukraine at the time and still.

1:03:35And so you could see where the motivation would be for the Ukrainians or for anyone else who was in a similar position where they're being targeted by a U.S.-backed anti-corruption initiative to look for that kind of protection and see Hunter Biden as the type of person who could provide it. Right. What an opportunity for Hunter, whether it was with the Chinese or the Ukrainians or the Romanians. The opportunity abounded for him to line his own pockets, never mind what it would cost the United States or his father. Now, there is reason to believe that Joe Biden paved the way for him. You've got a quote from Devin Archer, who I did not realize was previously an Abercrombie and Fitch model.

1:04:12You taught me that. But Devin Archer was his business partner and best friend. And those two, plus a guy named Chris Hines of Hines Ketchup fame and fortune, originally formed this business venture, Rosemont Seneca. Eventually, Chris Hines got a touch of morality where he looked at these other two and said, I'm not sure I want this association or whether this is going to a good place. And he peaced out. But Devin Archer and Hunter stayed in business together. And you point out in the book that Devin Archer says Joe Biden used to call people and he said, you do something for me, you're a friend.

1:04:50You do something for my son, you're a friend for life. Yeah, so even if we accept the argument at face value that the Bidens have made and Joe Biden has made himself and Karine Jean-Pier made from the White House podium that Joe Biden never specifically talked about the Biden that Joe Biden has made. Joe Biden is telling these foreign business partners that like he sort of endorses their whatever it is that they're doing with with Hunter so that even if he doesn't know the specifics of it, it is certainly sending the message to these foreigners that, hey, you're getting what you're paying for.

1:05:43OK, so clearly that was the deal where Joe Biden kind of blessed it. Hunter went over there and worked it and sold it. And ultimately, Joe Biden pardoned Hunter Biden for all of it. And you do point out in the book that there's a reason that pardon, that sweeping pardon he gave his son. After all the protestations, I will never pardon Hunter. I'm not pardoning Hunter. And then all the Democrats saying, we believe him. We believe him. It's not going to happen. He did pardon Hunter. Pardon Hunter. And you say there's a reason it went back to January 1st, 2014. Yeah, that's when he was really ramping up his foreign business dealings, including with Burisma.

1:06:19That arrangement started in early 2014 and was made official in about April or May when Hunter Biden was added to the board after Devin Archer, the business partner, sort of paved the way and got on the board first and brokered the introduction. And it's notable. It's not just like, you know, at the time that I wrote the book, it was sort of like it was just me connecting dots. But eventually, the prosecutors in the Hunter Biden case essentially suggested that there is a potential charge for violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, interestingly not connected to his work in Ukraine, but rather to his work in Romania for a different oligarch that they could bring.

1:07:03They, of course, did not bring that, but they were sort of hinting at that, I think, probably to extract a guilty plea. But it's hard to ignore that when you look at the way that the pardon was framed. It's hard to ignore that the prosecutors are suggesting that there might be a potential FARA charge and that the pardon was sort of chronologically situated to cover the activity that would be the basis for such a foreign agent's registration. They went back to the earliest foreign interference that he was doing back to when Joe Biden was VP. And we'll get to Romania because you've broken some news there, too.

1:07:38Just kind of shocking. But let's just stay with Ukraine since we started with it. You report Ukrainian prosecutors. Now, people generally know this story. But just as a refresher for those who haven't been thinking about Hunter Biden in Ukraine blissfully for the past year or so, Ukraine was corrupt, is corrupt. and at one point when Joe Biden was vice president, he went over there and said, and he bragged publicly that he said, you better fire this corrupt prosecutor or I'm not giving you this billion dollars that we committed to give you. And remember he said at the Council on Foreign Relations, son of a bitch, they did it.

1:08:11So they fired this allegedly corrupt prosecutor. Well, it stunk to high heaven because we would later find out that prosecutor was investigating corruption in Ukraine, including at Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Joe Biden's son, Hunter, sat for this do-nothing position, for which he wasn't qualified. So it was like, wait a minute. Are you doing this because you want to clean up corruption in Ukraine? Are you doing this because you want to do your son a solid? And he's already introduced you to some of the officials running Burisma, and the connections between the Bidens and this company have gotten uncomfortably close.

1:08:47You point out in the book, Ukrainian prosecutors were investigating Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma for Corruption and Bribery. Zlochevsky started paying prominent foreign politicians to try to diffuse those investigations and clean up his reputation, not only in Ukraine, but internationally. Zlochevsky's top American recruit was Hunter Biden, while then VP Joe Biden was overseeing Ukraine policy. Buying Hunter's loyalty, according to this thinking, would mean buying favor from his father's government. Hunter Biden was offered a seat on the Burisma board for $1 million a year in salary. He then joined the board in the spring of 2014.

1:09:28And you write about how he had an expensive cocaine problem, mostly private schools for his daughters, expensive tastes, and he needed to fund the Hunter Biden lifestyle. But this whole business of cleaning up Lochevsky's reputation and thus Burisma's reputation would have tentacles throughout America, like Hunter, the vice president's office, law firms, PR firms, all of which Hunter was connected to and seems to have unleashed on cleaning up the reputation of Burisma so Hunter could get his cool mill. Yeah, I mean, it was a very sophisticated reputation laundering campaign and sort of protection campaign where they were seeking to get out of trouble from Ukrainian prosecutors, as well as U.S.

1:10:17Justice Department officials and State Department officials who were encouraging Ukrainian prosecutors and British prosecutors at one point to investigate Zolchevsky. And what's most interesting, at least an important and interesting bit of context here, is like what Zolchevsky was being charged with, or Zolchevsky's background. He was a part of this authoritarian government in Ukraine before 2014 that was toppled by mass street protest and with the encouragement of the US government. And Zolchevsky had been a minister in that government and ended up, he was a minister in the agency that oversaw gas and oil licensing.

1:11:03And lo and behold, a company that he started was awarded all these very lucrative licenses. And so he leaves the government and becomes a billionaire rather quickly as a result of being able to essentially privatize some of these state assets. That is like a quintessential oligarchic corruption pattern of the sort that the US government and Joe Biden, both when he was vice president, before that as a senator, and then when he was president, decried as anathema to democracy. So, you know, they would have reason to be, they, Burisma, would have reason to be concerned that this would be something over which they would be targeted.

1:11:43And in fact, they were, and Hunter Biden was in the middle of this campaign to get them out of trouble. Now, on the prosecutor, there is, I think still some debate about the reasoning for both the prosecutor, you know, the U.S. wanting the prosecutor to be gone and Joe Biden pushing for it. You know, there's a question about whether he was actually investigating Burisma or whether he was just using the threat of an investigation to essentially elicit bribes from Burisma. I can say he actually may have been corrupt. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, big surprise that someone in the Ukrainian government would be would be corrupt.

1:12:22But either way, Burisma was happy when he was fired with under pressure from Joe Biden, because they thought correctly that they would be able to deal in a more open, transparent way with his successor. And in fact, they were able initially to do so. And they ended up getting what they wanted, which is the dropping of these cases by the by the subsequent prosecutor. Can you speak to these like the PR group in the law firms you talk about right about this group, a consulting firm called Blue Star Strategies? Now, this is a Democrat Party linked consulting firm here in America. These are both former Hillary people, the Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano.

1:13:09These are you tell me, who are they and why is some American consulting firm called Blue Star Strategies at all getting involved with Burisma? Well, yeah, they are a Democratic consulting firm. They worked in the Clinton administration, actually, at the same time that Hunter Biden worked in the Clinton administration and the Commerce Department. And they set up this firm that essentially worked with, you know, international interests, oftentimes that were sort of being targeted by prosecutors in their own countries or sometimes international prosecutors and sometimes by the U.S. And that's what happened here with Burisma.

1:13:46They were brought in by one of Hunter's partners with assistance from Hunter Biden. He was involved in the recruitment of Blue Star and the signing of that deal between Burisma and Blue Star. And what they did was both on the PR front trying to essentially cleanse Zolchevsky's reputation, but they also importantly reached out to their contacts in the U.S. government during the Obama-Biden administration to try to get them to back off of Zolchevsky and back off of U.S. support for this prosecution. Now, that would seem to be the kind of thing that would trigger a requirement to register under this Foreign Agents Registration Act as a foreign lobbyist.

1:14:28They did not do that in real time, despite questions from me and others in the press and Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson about why they hadn't done so. So ultimately, at the same time that Hunter Biden was being investigated by the Justice Department for his foreign business, Blue Star was also investigated and they retroactively registered as foreign agents, which to me seems like sort of a tacit admission that they skirted the law in the first place. But they got a deal under which the prosecution was dropped. There would be no charges as long as they filed this registration, which they did. But even the name like Blue Star, it just it reminds me of the blue horseshoe loves whatever from Wall Street, you know, just has this feel to it of like, oh, it's it's meaningless.

1:15:14And therefore, it's hiding something they don't want us to know. Do they deny any of this, Ken? Do these two gals deny that they were taking money after having been hooked up with Burisma through Hunter and his pal to cleanse Burisma's reputation so that it could get this prosecutor off of its back and smooth sailing with the U.S. government? They don't exactly deny it. The way they frame it is that they were just seeking information. They wanted to know why the U.S. government had this negative view of Zolchevsky and of Burisma. And they wanted to help correct the misperceptions in Washington about this guy.

1:15:55So that's the way that they would frame it. Very, very benevolent. So now it wasn't just Bluestar, this consulting firm that Hunter brought in to cleanse Burisma. Again, this is how he was actually earning his million dollars a year. It was not for any oil and gas expertise. It was to work his dad, to bring in this consulting firm, to work the American public's perceptions and the perceptions of the Obama-Biden government. And then this law firm, which is just everywhere, David Boies' firm, he also brought in and he was of counsel to that firm. And you actually point out, I mean, talk about your other conflicts of interest.

1:16:31Hunter Biden had a couple of roles in connection with Burisma, and one was as a lawyer, right? Was that the Burisma deal? Initially, he was sort of brought in through Boyce Schiller, but when he joined the board, he sort of handed off the legal portfolio from Boyce Schiller to another lawyer there. And ultimately, a different firm was brought in to sort of run the effort to try to get the Ukrainian prosecutors to back off. And that firm was Cravath. I'm forgetting the rest of the names there, but Cravath is the first name. Yeah, there you go. And the lawyer who they had, who, again, is very, it's like very symbolic and important that like they're choosing this particular lawyer is a guy by the name of John Beretta, who had worked in the justice in the Obama Justice Department in a rather senior role.

1:17:25And so he comes in and he's basically like advertising to the Ukrainian prosecutors like I worked in the Justice Department and now I am here on behalf of this company to help resolve this situation. And so, again, it's like the signaling that carries so much weight in I mean, it carries so much weight everywhere, but particularly in these foreign countries where there's like less of a clear line between like the government and the allies of the government who are on the outside. And John Beretta and Hunter and Bluestar, they all sort of like take advantage of this perception that they are kind of unofficially carrying the implementer of the government.

1:18:07And that gets them taken seriously and helps their clients. I mean, I know I hear you on we may have had a couple of motivations for getting this prosecutor fired. Right. He may actually have been corrupt. and the Obama-Biden administration may have actually wanted him gone. But it sure does seem convenient that after Hunter Biden worked very hard, he didn't work very hard for many things, but he did work very hard to clean up Burisma's reputation and get this prosecutor fired with an outside consulting firm in the States, with lawyers in the States, Cravath Swain. You don't hire them unless you're really willing to pay for good results.

1:18:45Like, that's a huge, very well-respected firm. and through working his own dad, suddenly the prosecutor was fired while they're lecturing the whole world about corruption. I mean, Joe Biden, like he we could spend all day playing soundbites of him saying Ukraine really needs to root out corruption. They really need to root out corruption. And he was the point person for the Obama administration on making sure that happens. Meanwhile, his son is running around trying to run cover for one of the most apparently corrupt organizations there. Yeah, and, you know, their argument at the time, not at the time, but because of the time, this, as you noted, was not really covered with the sort of degree of intensity that you would typically think that like a high level conflict of interest scandal involving a top U.S.

1:19:35official would be. But after the fact, when this became an issue, the Biden folks argument was, you know, Joe Biden wasn't aware of this. They wasn't aware of what his son was doing beyond saying, you know, beyond being alerted by news stories that he had joined the board and telling him, I hope you know what you're doing. Well, we see from this CIA, this memo where the Biden folks are telling the CIA not to disseminate a memo that really does point out this sort of conflict of interest here, or at least the double standard and the perception of a double standard that like, no, in fact, they were aware of this.

1:20:14And Joe Biden was aware of this and he didn't want others in his government to be made aware of it. So, you know, whether or not he was actively involved in pushing out a prosecutor because it would benefit his son or his son's client or whether it just so happened that it benefited the Burisma, you can't argue that he wasn't aware of this potential conflict of interest. And even if you could argue it, he did. Wait, hold that thought. He did argue it many times just as a refresher for the audience. Hannity show put together this month's montage back in the day. Stop 55. Mr. Vice President, how many times have you ever spoken to your son about his overseas business dealings?

1:20:57I've never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings. I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their businesses, period. and what I will do is the same thing we did in our administration. There will be an absolute wall between personal and private and the government. Do you stand by your statement that you did not discuss any of your son's overseas business? Yes, I stand by that statement. I did not know he was on the board of that company. I've never discussed my business or their business, my son's or daughter's. I never discussed a single thing with my son about anything having to do with Ukraine.

1:21:39Did you lie about never speaking with Hunter? No, I didn't. Go ahead, Ken. Yeah, I mean, so clearly he did know that Hunter was on the board of this company and the people around him knew. And the people around him and possibly him himself did not want others in the government to be sort of aware of this and sort of focused on it as a potential problem that undercut the U.S.'s effort to fight corruption around the world. You know, the other the other thing that's sort of notable on that front is like this this this memo that was circulated or that they attempted to circulate that the Biden folks blocked from circulating came right as the this this effort by Biden to force out the prosecutor was heating up.

1:22:26And as Blue Star's effort to kind of get to to get the U.S. to back away from the prosecution was really at its apex. So like this was the moment when people in the government should have been aware of this. And in fact, we do know that there were some people in the government who were aware of it and were deeply troubled by it and tried to flag it for the vice president himself. And we're told that he just doesn't want to hear it right now at the time. I mean, this is I'm not making light of this at the time. His other son, his older son, Beau, was fighting brain cancer that ultimately cost cost him his life.

1:22:59And so, you know, there is, I guess, a human argument and you could understand why he wouldn't want to be troubled with like what his other son was doing. But it implicated U.S. foreign policy and the ability of the U.S. to take the moral high ground in calling out and fighting corruption, which was, again, a key part of like the Biden doctrine in foreign policy. Yeah, you have to do your job. You're the vice president of the United States. It's very sad, the personal tragedy that happened with Beau Biden. But you have to do your job. That's not a job you can phone in. So if you need to take a leave of absence because of, you know, a massive health problem in your family, then that's what you do.

1:23:37But you don't just say, don't bother me with massive corruption my other son is engaged in that's compromising the United States of America. Do you think this is why when you started to report this story more aggressively or at all, because if you were in 2019, they came at you so hard? It's very normal to see hit pieces like that on MSNBC against people like me. It's not normal to see it against people like you. But obviously you struck a nerve. Yeah, I think that they recognized that this was a real issue and one that they wanted to get ahead of. And it wasn't just them coming after me or other reporters.

1:24:18I mean, we saw it most acutely with the Hunter Biden laptop. And when the New York Post wrote about it in the run up to the 2020 election, the way that the Biden campaign was able to marshal all these former intelligence officials to essentially shout it down and encourage successfully the social media companies to suppress the spread of the link to the New York Post story and any other reporting or commentary about the Hunter Biden laptop really does show the degree to which they recognize that this was a problem, even as they sort of pretended and tried to brush it off as like, oh, no, this is either Russian disinformation or this is like a Rudy Giuliani spin.

1:25:02And, you know, to the point that I was trying to make, maybe not super articulately in that clip that you played from MSNBC, was that Rudy was, in fact, kind of muddying the waters in a way that made it more difficult to discern what the facts were and what the real problems were with having a close family member of the former vice president and potential future president working for corrupt interests that the US government had determined were corrupt in places that were of critical geopolitical importance to U.S. national security priorities. Okay, but now I have it on very good authority that it's only the current president who targets his media foes and folks in the media who make him unhappy.

1:25:50I seem to be gleaning that he wasn't the very first to do this, Ken. I mean, it's a different approach. I take your point. But yes, the Bidens were effective. And, And, you know, maybe there is something to be said for the idea that they were, you know, the Democrats are more accustomed to being able to like work with the media and therefore taking like a less adversarial, publicly adversarial approach and sort of working the back channels. But here was an example where the effort to work the back channels because they did, you know, work to sort of shape our coverage and maybe discourage our coverage before it ran.

1:26:29And then after it ran, they reacted in this very aggressive way that you saw play out there with that digital ad. Did you ever get rattled? Like, did you ever think, oh, God, because the book reports that what's her name, Kate Bedingfield, she wrote a separate letter to the executive editor of The New York Times accusing you of an egregious act of journalistic malpractice, spreading Russian propaganda. That's their favorite go to. Then the Biden team provided the letter to a CNN reporter who published it, Andrew Bates, who literally lied every other sentence. Another Biden aide blasted your reporting on Hunter's work for Burisma as historic malpractice and then called you a coward.

1:27:09Then we saw that Biden campaign produced that video that we just played impugning you by name. You write in the book, this is the type of media targeting for which Trump rightly drew criticism lately. You I mean, the to me as a reporter, this would tell you you're right over the target. But I don't know. Was The New York Times rattled at all by this? The New York Times definitely had my back and the executive editor at the time, Dean Becke, publicly defended, you know, my reporting and me and sort of justified or validated the reporting as being like significant and something that we were going to continue.

1:27:47And we did continue it. And it was it was interesting because it did not it, you know, I think much of the, I can say like much of the mainstream media either sort of shied away from it or was like more measured in their approach to it. And of course, that's changed quite a bit after Biden dropped out of the race. Democrats sort of blamed him for costing them a chance at beating Trump in 2024. And now it seems as if there's much more of an appetite to scrutinize the Bidens. Well, I mean, good for you for doing exactly that. I want to talk about what happened in Romania, but let's just take a quick break first and we'll be back with Ken Vogel.

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1:32:04We absolutely have to keep talking. It's more important now than ever. This fall, Megyn Kelly is taking her show live to cities nationwide. To go silent is not the answer. I'm going. I'm going to stand on these stages, and I'm going to say all the things that we say all the time on this show. We're going to make it safe for me. We're going to make it safe for my team and my guests and you and do something really important, which is say what's true and what's real. And I would love for you to join me. MeganKelley.com for the tickets. You can stream The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are.

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1:33:07Back with me now is Ken Vogel. This is his first interview for his brand new book, Devil's Advocates, the hidden story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden and the Washington insiders on the payrolls of corrupt foreign interests. The book is out next week. You can preorder it right now and be in on the know. Ken, what happened with Hunter Biden and Romania? Yeah, this is one that is a pretty similar fact pattern, actually, with what happened in Ukraine, which is that there was a Romanian oligarch, a real estate developer, extremely wealthy, who was being prosecuted by prosecutors in Romania in connection with what they allege was a corrupt land deal in which he had, again, bought land from the state.

1:33:54You know, Romania was a communist country. Sensing a pattern. Right. And so he was able to get what prosecutors allege was a real sweetheart deal from the state to buy this very coveted land. And he built a massive development on it, including a mall and offices and other commercial properties. And he ended up renting and under a long term lease part of the land to the U.S. government to build the U.S. embassy in Bucharest here. So he's being prosecuted. And who does he reach out to to hire to help him navigate this prosecution? But Boyce Schiller and Hunter Biden and Hunter Biden goes over to Bucharest with a partner at Boyce Schiller.

1:34:40and he meets with the U.S. ambassador under the Obama-Biden administration to Romania. And they talk about this case and they sort of eventually follow up about their concerns with it, essentially seeking the help of the U.S. government in backing away Romanian prosecutors from this case. Well, as if that wasn't enough, Hunter Biden is also working to develop a land deal with this Romanian developer and a Chinese-linked company, not just linked, but a company that was regarded as like a pivotal cog in the Chinese Belt and Road economic influence campaign to essentially create this joint venture that would include Hunter, his partners, the Romanian developer, and the Chinese that would own this land.

1:35:28So you would have, and in so doing, they thought that this might sort of diminish the appetite of the Romanian prosecutors to pursue this case because the real estate developer would have less interest in the land and they would cut a deal with the state that would pay them. But the end result, if this were to have gone through, which it didn't, was that would have been that Hunter, the Romanian, and the Chinese would co-own the land around the U.S. embassy, if not the land itself on which the U.S. embassy was built, you could see why that could cause national security concerns. And it did. One of Hunter's partners at the time, Tony Bobulinski, actually raised this concern to the Romanian real estate developer and said, hey, we need to make sure that the embassy is not included in this transaction.

1:36:18It never got far enough for that to actually be an issue where they were spelling out which specific parcels were involved and which weren't. But again, a concerning fact pattern that just shows how his pursuit, Hunter Biden's pursuit of foreign paydays was in some ways at odds with the foreign policy of the United States that his father as vice president was pushing. We're talking with Ken Vogel, the brand new book out by Ken next week. You can preorder right now is called Devil's Advocates. One of those advocates is Rudy Giuliani. And how widespread was his behavior? And what was it? Yeah, I mean, the thing that's so interesting about Rudy is he, you know, he went after Hunter Biden.

1:37:06In fact, he encouraged Trump to go after Hunter Biden to highlight Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings to as a political cudgel and in some ways effectively, in some ways effectively, as we discussed. But the reason why he was so well versed in sort of the way that this foreign influence business worked is because he himself had worked at the same space. In fact, he had worked at it in ways that directly overlapped with the ways that Hunter Biden had worked in it, including on behalf of this same Romanian real estate developer. So the story there is that Hunter Biden eventually sort of passes off this legal work for the Romanian real estate developer to Louis Freeh, a family friend, the former FBI director, family friend of the Bidens.

1:37:54And also a close friend of Rudy Giuliani. So Louis Freeh is working this case on behalf of the Romanian developer. And when Trump gets into office, Louis Freeh brings in Rudy Giuliani to write a letter to the Romanians calling out some of the elements of this anti-corruption prosecution. So it's sort of, it's more than a little ironic then that Rudy would sort of come after Hunter Biden over his work in the foreign space when he himself had worked at the same space, in some cases on behalf of, or with some of the same people. You know, it does remind me of how, like, if you want to figure out how a hacker is likely to get into your network, you've got to go work with a hacker and have somebody explain it to you.

1:38:36And that's how some of these like hacker criminals keep themselves out of jail. They cut a deal to like work with the FBI to show them how it's done. Not suggesting it's exactly a parallel, but yeah, it makes sense to me. How widespread is this? I mean, like, is it just these guys or is it not just these guys? No, I mean, it's very widespread. And in fact, like the point about the parallels or the points of connective tissue between Hunter and Rudy in this case are important. because it shows that this is a very bipartisan thing. Sure, the foreign interests are looking for people who have connections to the party in power, but they're also looking for connections like across the government.

1:39:17So you see these strange bedfellows types of situations like in Ukraine, where Paul Manafort is working on behalf of the authoritarian president who employed the guy, Zolchevsky, who started Burisma, who hired Hunter Biden. That was the pro-Russian Ukrainian president who got ousted thanks to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's State Department. Yeah, I mean, the U.S. was certainly behind. It was certainly supportive of the street protests that led to his ouster. But Paul Manafort was trying to keep him in power. And so how does Paul Manafort go about doing that? Well, he brings in Tony Podesta, a prominent Democrat with close ties to the Obama administration through his brother, John Podesta.

1:40:00He brings in Tad Devine, a Democratic operative who had worked for John Kerry and would go on to work for Bernie Sanders. He brings in Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman with close ties to Mitt Romney. So you see like all these people who in the U.S. are on opposite sides of some of the most heated political fights between the red side and the blue side. But when they're going abroad and looking to pad their pockets, they're all in alignment on the green side. That is the side that's able to like pay them the most money. And so what country does pay the most? I mean, it's usually there's this dynamic where the ones, the foreign interests are the sort of most toxic and therefore like most, you know, face the most problems from prosecutors at home and in the U.S.

1:40:47and the U.S. State Department, U.S. sanctions. They oftentimes have the most money, often ill-begotten funds, or at least the prosecutors would say what ill-begotten funds, and have the most incentive to try to protect themselves. And also, they're the ones who like, there's the real reputational cost for the well-connected Americans who are going to go on their payroll. And so they're eyeing it and they're saying like, I don't know, this is like a real, a client that might look really bad. So the payday better be worthwhile. And so you see, you know, dictators in Africa. Joseph Kabila was one.

1:41:23He was the former president, strongman president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, launched a huge lobbying campaign in 2018 that I write about in the book that brought in people from across the political spectrum and was paying, you know, millions of dollars because like that's a tough client to take. And it better be worth your while. Mm hmm. What was there anything that really shocked you when you were researching this book? I mean, I think it was the willingness of Americans to sort of try to frame a political argument in the U.S. where they would say, look, this person looks really, really bad.

1:42:01And sure, they've done some terrible things, but like they're kind of it's kind of in the best interest of like U.S. foreign policy for the U.S. to like turn a blind eye to the bad things that they're doing in their country, whether they're human rights violations or corruption or what have you. We're still doing that. We're still doing it. We all buy Apple phones and we deal with China, you know, on a corporate level and a presidential level under both presidents. You know, the most recent ones, notwithstanding, we know what they're doing, the Uyghurs and all that, the human rights abuses over there.

1:42:31So I find that easy to believe. I do wonder, you know, like the Hunter Biden laptop and how willing the media was to go along with Russian disinformation, Russian disinformation. information how much do you think that kind of thing like the censoring of that reporting by x then twitter well how much of an effect do you think that had on like the american media and understanding that we're just not going to go there we're not going to talk about things like that yeah it's tough to know i mean i think it was troubling from the perspective of someone who like is whose whole job is transparency and enforcing transparency in places where it's not where it's not comfortable for the ruling class.

1:43:14And I think there were stories in there. But, you know, I think they did ultimately get told most of them. I mean, maybe I should check myself a little bit. Yeah, thanks to my side of the aisle. I should check myself a little bit because I'm still like in this with this Romania story with the land around the U.S. embassy. Like I found out about that and reporting my book. So this was well after Biden was, you know, the already or, you know, Biden was not Biden already been elected in 2020. So, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of a lot of interesting information out there about this industry, and it doesn't make either side look particularly good.

1:43:54No, but they should be outed, even if it doesn't make them look good. I appreciate writing the book, Ken. I love this kind of stuff. It's the granular detail is very appealing to me because that's evidence. Again, it's called Devil's Advocates, the hidden story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden and the Washington Insiders on the payrolls of corrupt foreign interests by Ken Vogel of The New York Times. Thank you so much for being here. All the best. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Megan. All right. We're back tomorrow, everybody. We will see you then. Don't miss that. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

1:44:28No BS, no agenda and no fear.

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