Legacy Media Bias Exposed and Debated, and MAGA Heir Apparent Rumblings, with Tom Bevan and Andrew Walworth

25:10And he asked Roger for advice. I was in his office and Rogers and he said, you know, do you have any advice for me? And Rogers said, well, I could certainly use another few hours of Wolf Blitzer.

25:24So they've never had a bunch of dynamic personalities over there, but they used to at least be someplace you could go for facts. And then they surrendered it under Zucker to ideology. And then they decided for two minutes to try to go back to the old CNN. And two things happened. Chris Licht got fired, who was trying to do it. You remember first he demoted and then fired Don Lemon. He got rid of Stelter. He tried to like have that town hall with Trump, with Caitlin Collins, where she decided to be like this hard partisan as opposed to objective news. But he was trying to like put Trump on CNN.

25:58They had a leftist meltdown of their audience. And then they immediately switched back to just, okay, we're leftists. We're MSNBC by different call letters. Because once you've alienated half of your audience and basically told them that you hate them, Tom, it's very, very hard to get them back. No, that's exactly right. And you're right. CNN did have, for a long time, they had a sort of centrist brand, and they were known for, you tune into them when you wanted, you know, when there was a natural disaster or a plane crash or whatever for sort of the hard news. And they went away from that and they started hiring some personnel Because I think they saw the success of Fox and of MSNBC and they thought, oh, my gosh, here we are stuck in the middle.

26:45And, you know, that's where you get run over. And so they decided they made a conscious choice to sort of move in that direction. And again, when Trump was elected, I mean, Jim Acosta was, you know, openly declared war on Trump. And he was their prime guy in the White House press briefing room. Just grandstanding day after day after day. Exactly. And by the way, he became, you know, he wrote books about it. He became very famous, earned himself a lot of money, a lot of notoriety. He was going on, you know, the late night shows and all that. It was a huge success for him, but it did. It alienated and really destroyed the CNN brand to the point where they're hardly distinguishable from MSNBC these days.

27:26So that's the problem. Like, can Washington Post go back, Andrew? Can they if Jeff Bezos wants to do the Zuckerberg thing and bring the Washington Post back to where it was, I don't know, decades ago? I mean, many people would argue it's always had a strong left wing bias, but I would say not as strong as today. I mean, it's just it's gone, you know, it's gone full Rachel Maddow. But can it be corrected? You know, Kessler in this piece is lamenting that all of the I'm reading from the piece, the post liberal columnists generated huge traffic. that's because of the liberal slant of the readership, and now they've all quit.

28:03Every day, I checked the daily traffic numbers, and year over year, it was like being on a water slide with no bottom. I ran one of the most popular features at the Post, an internationally recognized brand. I loved working there, but now working at the Post feels like being on the Titanic after it struck an iceberg, drifting aimlessly as it sank with not enough lifeboats for everyone. The Carpathia, i.e. Bezos, and that was the ship that was, you know, well, he gets to it, appears too far away and too distracted to help. And the captain is shouting commands that the solution is a different ship.

28:44Tom Bevan:Well, it's artfully written. I wouldn't have edited that part of it, Tom. I think that was a nice little paragraph. But I think the question you asked is, you know, could they shift to the middle and would that help the brand? Would that help them build back their audience? I'm going to say yes. I'm not sure what the answer is, but it seems to me that what they're doing now isn't working. And you see that across the board. I mean, CNN isn't working. MSNBC isn't working. The Washington Post isn't working. Arguably, the New York Times isn't working the way it used to. NPR isn't working. None of these sort of people or groups that have sort of latched on to sort of ideology first as their sort of lodestar are having trouble.

29:35Tom Bevan:So, yeah, heck, why not? Why not try to go back to being more objective or being more balanced? It certainly works for real clear politics. So, I think it should work for that. To do that, though, I think we've seen these newsrooms be captured by all of the sort of young, woke journalists that are coming up out of Columbia Journalism School and the like. And anytime that anything happens, they throw these hissy fits and basically browbeat their managers into reverting to or staying the sort of liberal course. I mean, I really do think if Jeff Bezos was serious about that, if the Washington Post is serious about that as a strategy, they would have to absolutely clean house.

30:16I mean, fire everybody and start from scratch and start. Everyone's fired. And hire some editors who are conservative and some who are liberal and hire some journalists who come from Hillsdale as opposed to just Columbia. And really sort of rebuild the ethos at the Washington Post to be sort of bipartisan as opposed to what it is now, which is completely captured by progressives. progressives.

30:37Tom Bevan:Yeah. The first thing you do is you stop hiring anyone who has a master's in journalism from a U.S. institution. That's the absolute first thing you do. Do the Roger Ailes rule. He wasn't hiring people who got their master's at Columbia. If he did, it was because he had a soft spot for them personally for some reason. They knew the parents or what have you. But he knew, and he was not looking for journalists. I mean, when I went into Fox News, I remember thinking I was going to dazzle everybody because I had a law degree and I'd practiced law for 10 years. No one cared about that. Of course, I learned all they really care is about your resume tape and, you know, how do you deliver a story and can you penetrate the lens and, you know, are you a good storyteller and all that?

31:16And then I was like, I always felt like, okay, am I, because in journalism, it's turned very elitist. You know, if you look at the resumes of virtually anybody over NBC, it's Harvard and Yale and Princeton. And I went to Syracuse and Albany Law and I felt somewhat like, is that going to hurt me there? I have no idea because Fox is number one in all this. No, to the contrary. It was a big bonus at Fox. They wanted people who weren't from those institutions, who didn't think they were better than everybody. And it's still part of the Fox News formula to find people on air who you feel like you could have a beer with.

31:49The other channels just don't get it. They will never get it. They will never have the ratings of Fox News. and the Washington Post, I don't know. As much as I criticize Lauren Sanchez, they could probably use a hefty dose of this woman in changing the editorial over there. I mean, like, seriously. Megan, can I say one more thing, going back to what you said about, like, giving advice to these folks and them not taking it and this idea that, you know, having people who actually represent the MAGA point of view, right? You still see that. If you watch any of these Sunday shows, and I stopped watching them years ago because they're just not, they don't make news and they're not really informative.

32:27But, you know, I'll look at the Sunday show lineups from time to time. And it's the same thing. It's like, it's like two sort of liberal journalists and one liberal political operative, and then like an establishment Republican or an anti-Trump Republican. Those are the panels that are appearing on Face the Nation and Meet the Press. And this week, you know, it doesn't have, Rarely do you have someone who actually represents Donald Trump and the MAGA point of view talking about these issues. And so in that sense, it doesn't even reflect reality. No, at best, they'll put on a Republican who hates Trump.

33:02That's the only way you get booked. You get interviewed at one of these roundtables or seminars or you get on CNN or MS. If they're ever going to put a Republican on, it's got to be old school, the kind that hates Trump. And never, never, never a MAGA. Yeah. It's just look, my concern. I don't care about CNN or MSNBC at all. I literally do not care if they dry up and go away tomorrow. But I do care about newspapers. Like I, I think we need them. I mean, we get a lot of our news from newspapers. It's like there is a role in America for the shoe leather reporter who has time to go out there and contact sources and craft stories and get stories.

33:45I mean, is there, it's almost like the month of August, Andrew, is there any news if the reporters don't report on it? You know, like everything slows down because people go on vacay. Same thing, the two weeks over Christmas, we need reporters without the reporters who are out there. And it's tends to be newspaper print reporters, the news dries up. So I do think there's a place for these people. And it is kind of important to save these, these newspapers. Otherwise, I like I don't want all of my news coming from podcasters who don't tend to have a model that allows for that kind of in-depth, time consuming, you know, nuts and bolts reporting.

34:24Yeah.

34:25Tom Bevan:Well, I buy your point, but at the same time, I'd say, look, the newspaper as we know of the sort of daily newspaper, it's time may have come and gone. And maybe there's Kessler going on to Substack and people tuning into your program and dwarfing the audiences of some cable shows. maybe the future is online. Maybe it is, you know, these other platforms and maybe they just have to evolve to the point where they sort of fill the hole that the newspapers are leaving. It does seem hard to me. I mean, if you think about, you know, what drove newspapers for long time was classified advertising. I mean, you know, basically once you take away the classified advertising, that's when newspapers started to fall apart.

35:14Tom Bevan:Maybe there has to be a totally different business model that would provide the kind of revenue that you need to support the kind of investigative journalism that you're talking about. And if it's not classified ads, maybe it's something else. Maybe it's, I don't know what it is, but the business model is definitely changing. It's some sort of backpage.com. We're not in favor of that. That was used for sex trafficking. Yeah. I was trying to think of like the newspaper version of OnlyFans. I don't know. I'm not sure anything to drive some sort of revenue. I don't know. I also think like, you know, Tom, as you know, I went on with the New York Times and gave an interview to Lulu Garcia Navarro over there a couple of months ago.

36:04And, you know, I liked her. She was a nice person, but she was just so not getting it about like where news is going. And she was part, she's part of a dinosaur model. And I think it really is. It's the problem of the times is the problem of the post. We're like, they really don't think they're biased. They think they're reporting the truth. They wouldn't hire somebody with a resume like mine, either when I started at Fox or now, because they think they know better. And they think if they hire kids from these elite so-called universities, they're going to get truth tellers, and that not owning your bias is really important to projecting and even maintaining objectivity.

36:46And she and I got into this back and forth of like, no, it's exactly the opposite. The audience today, especially the young audience, needs you to acknowledge that you have a bias and be honest about it. We pulled some of the discussion. Here's a taste of it. I think you're right that there is some way that we are seeing things or discussing something different, right? I guess what I'm trying to understand is what are the rules of this new world that you are inhabiting? Are you sort of making them up as you go along and you're sort of seeing what it is? Or do you adhere to some of those old values that you used to embrace?

37:21The only way one succeeds in this medium is by violating all those rules that we used to have in journalism, where you don't really talk about yourself at all. You don't talk about your opinions. You might have a bias. Your only goal is to hide it, not to own it and then get past it with the audience. It's just a whole new world. And it's OK. We used to be much more partisan and openly partisan in our journalism and our media, you know, 100 plus years ago. And we survived that just fine. And we will survive this just fine, too. What the audience wants from me is my authentic self and no filter.

37:59What they can smell from a mile away is a phony. So they have no problem with me endorsing Trump, even if they don't like Trump. What they would have a problem with is me pretending I don't have a horse in the race and going out and trying to deliver the news as though I'm completely objective and I'm just as open minded to Kamala as I am to Donald Trump. She she thinks that the Times is fooling people, Tom. She thinks that their audience thinks they're objective. Yeah, well, look, I understand the desire for her to say, well, you know, I'm objective. And you do have these folks who have, and I think this goes back, honestly, to Watergate and this whole generation of students.

38:53And before that, you know, the newspaper business was inhabited by, you know, blue collar folks. This was not an Ivy League, not an elitist type institution. And after Watergate, you had this sort of, you know, generation that came up and viewing journalism as this really noble cause. And they're holding the, you know, the powerful to account. And they're doing all of these sort of a it's sort of a good government type thing, as opposed to people just, you know, the old shoe leather reporters. I was like, I'm going to go out and talk to some people and figure out what the hell is going on and then report it to my readers for better or worse.

39:26It became this – and they had this inflated sense of self that this institution is just above and, to your point, elitist. And they look down on people who don't follow their rules as they were established and all of these things. And it's just also and part of not just above the regular people, but part of the elite circle that they are getting paid to cover, that they're getting paid to question and be skeptical of, but crossed over to wanting to be part of those groups. correct yeah no and it's also led to this this interesting idea which is very anti-journalist in in my opinion uh of the last few days that even leonard downing of the of the washington post at the time wrote you know this idea that there you know we can't do both sides and and you know this moral equivalency that's out there that you know newsrooms shouldn't be objective They shouldn't try to cover both sides because in some instances there aren't two sides.

40:30And that just is, you know, I wish Carl was here to talk about this because Carl's been in the news business a long time. And, you know, when we talk to our reporters, Phil Wegman, Susan Crabtree, when they go out to do a story, you know, Carl's instructions to them is always make sure that the other side's argument is represented in a way that they would recognize and understand. Right. That's important. You quote these people so that when they read the story, they feel like they were treated properly and fairly and their voice was heard. And we just don't have any of that in most of the media stories.

41:04You go out and you read these stories. If you read them carefully, you'll find that the folks that they get, the experts that they get are all totally one-sided. They don't quote anybody from the other side. Or if they do, maybe it's, as you said, like an anti-Trump voice or somebody who's not exactly who they represented to be. And so I think the whole structure of our current journalism is just completely out of whack. But I would say this. Yeah, go ahead, Andrew. I was just saying, you know, when I look at what you're doing, Megan, I agree that you're breaking a lot of journalistic rules.

41:43Tom Bevan:But I also see you and people like you in sort of part of a tradition that goes way back, you know, to Edward R. Murrow or Walter Lipman, George Will, Charles Krauthammer. I mean, people who are sort of opinion journalists, we used to call them. I don't know if people use that term anymore. But people who would present objective facts and present an argument with them. And you knew when you were reading Charles Krauthammer, just as an example, you knew where he was coming from. But nonetheless, you learn something and he was, you know, he would represent the other side of the argument, but make his argument against it.

42:18Tom Bevan:You know, I grew up reading George Will. He was one of my heroes. I loved the way he wrote. Same sort of thing. I mean, he was writing in the New York Times, right? And so there are, you know, that's a tradition I think is worth honoring and continuing. And I think that's partly what I see you doing and people like you who are doing this honestly on air. Well, thank you. I mean, I definitely think that my background in journalism has helped me do well in the podcast space because there is a thirst for real facts, for actual truth through commentary. because I think commentary does help you retain it better, frame it better, understand why it's relevant to your life better, you know, than just like a straight news report that kind of comes from somebody trying to do just exactly just facts and no context and all, you know, it's just a kind of a more fun, useful way, I think, of getting your news and getting your facts.

43:13The problem for people who are on the left, who are still using only sources like the AP, is they get articles like this one. Survivors of Israel's pager attack on Hezbollah struggle to recover. Oh, my gosh. That's an actual headline.

43:34Tom Bevan:That's a good one. At the AP yesterday. This would be like us saying like the families of the 9-11 terrorists remain in mourning at the loss of their gifted pilots. I mean, this is a crazy ass bent on editorial. Andrew from the AP, they go on about how they acknowledge that the attack, this is Israel's, you know, detonating the pagers in the pockets of Hezbollah terrorists. We recognize that group of terrorists, that it wounded more than 3000 people and killed 12, including two children. Hezbollah has acknowledged that most of those wounded and killed were its fighters or personnel. The simultaneous explosions in populated areas, however, also wounded many civilians.

44:23It was well over 90 percent military fighters, which is rather remarkable for any military bomb drop or attack of any kind, whether you're the United States or Israel. And they've decided to focus in here on those who were adjacent to the terrorists who are on a, quote, slow, painful path to recovery 10 months later. Thoughts?

44:51Tom Bevan:Well, that pager attack was one of the most amazing stories that I've ever read. And if you think about it, it is in war, you have collateral damage. It was so about the most closely drawn target you could have. I mean, you had to have one of these pagers in your pocket, and it blew up, you know, everything around your pocket. So not a good thing. But so, you know, I'm sort of stunned. I didn't, I haven't seen that story myself, so I'd love to read it. But yes, there is sort of a, there are examples like that of bias that have just gone so far that they appear ridiculous. And that's an example.

45:34Tom Bevan:That's a pretty ridiculous headline. I mean, it's crazy. They say the survivors. First, they say the hours of interviews offered a rare glimpse into the attacks. Human toll. I'm sorry, but we don't care. They expressly say that everybody they talked to were Hezbollah officials or fighters or members of their families. You know, if you're going to do the terrorism, you're going to probably die by the terrorism. If you're going to do the terrorism from your home around your family, you're endangering them, too. Like, this is an absolutely crazy way in. This is I don't remember us doing like the single tear shed for like the Al Qaeda family members or the Hamas family members.

46:12But as you know, when it comes to Israel, all the rules are different. Well, and that's the point I was going to make is, you know, this story is absurd in and of itself. but it highlights the broader problem, which is the Associated Press and a lot of the media, right, the way that they frame these stories and talk about the narratives that they produce, and they're constantly relying on the Gaza Health Ministry for casualty numbers and the like. Red flag. Right. Like, how can we even, as news consumers, how can we trust anything that they print? How do we know where can we get accurate information about what's actually happening in the Middle East right now?

46:58Because, you know, I approach these stories by and I've done this long enough, but I don't know if the general public realizes that the way that these stories are always framed to cast Israel in the worst possible light. And so I always bake that in when I'm reading. I'm like, OK, you know, there's probably a seed of truth in here. There's probably some famine going on, but do we know why it's being caused and what's causing it? Is Israel totally to blame? Is it genocide that's happening there? I mean, you just there's such bias that is baked into, obviously, our domestic coverage, but this international coverage as well, that it's really hard.

47:39The further you get into this, the harder it is to trust anything that some of these organizations are writing about stuff that's going on beyond our borders. Did you guys see the, while we're on this topic of Israel, this Mahmoud Khalil? He's been on a press tour. He's a media darling now. This guy who's here on, he's got a green card and a visa, but he's not a U.S. citizen. And he was at Columbia. He participated in the protests that basically took hostage the campus of Columbia and really said to the officials at Columbia, nice university here. Shame if anything happened to it. Something will unless you divest entirely from Israel.

48:21Those are our terms. Take them or leave them. I mean, it was truly mob tactics by this group. He makes no apologies for it. And Marco Rubio said, you know what? I, as secretary of state, have the power under the law to eject somebody who is not here as a citizen, whose whose beliefs and behaviors are inconsistent with the foreign policy of the United States, so get out. Well, he's been embattled in the legal system ever since. He's got a team of lawyers that OJ would envy, up and down, criminal and civil. And they're all representing him for free. He's got a$20 million lawsuit against the United States right now saying that he was unfairly detained.

49:00And on top of it, he's on this media tour all over CNN, now latest with the New York Times is Ezra Klein, where he offers the following justification for the 10-7 terrorist attack. Listen.

49:15Tom Bevan:October 7th happens. What do you think that day? To me, it felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle. I remember I didn't sleep for a number of days and Noor was very worried about, like, just my health. And it was heavy. I still remember, I was like, this couldn't happen. What do you mean we had to reach this moment? What moment is this? The situation in the West Bank and Gaza. And you can see that the situation is not sustainable. Unfortunately, we couldn't avoid such a moment. It's unbelievable, Tom. We had to reach the moment where we burned the babies. It was unavoidable.

50:08So it's regrettable. But yeah, who's we, buddy? Who are you talking about? We certainly not me. Yeah. I mean, the idea that we couldn't avoid this moment where where babies were burned alive and killed, parents, you know, hostages taken. Of course we could have avoided this moment. And so I think he just kind of exposed himself further here as, you know, folks had been his detractors have been saying for a long time that this guy really. and this was sort of Marco Rubio's point is, you know, when you're here on a student visa, when you're here as a guest of the United States, at a minimum, we should expect you not to agitate against the United States and do the kind of things that this guy has been doing.

50:58So it was pretty outrageous. I mean, even just listening to that again for the second time now, I'm actually more pissed off about it than I was the first time. I mean, it's really hard to fathom. Get out. Get out. Get out. Go home. We don't want you. Get out. You clearly hate America. It's mutual. Move along. You don't need to be here. This isn't even our fight. Get out. It's so annoying, Andrew. You take in the last 43 minutes before break.

51:24Tom Bevan:Well, you know, I would get one less lawyer and maybe one more PR professional involved because it's disastrous for his brand, so-called, right now. He also said that anti-Semitism on Columbia at Columbia campus is manufactured. He said that, you know, from the river to the sea and globalizing the end of Fadower, he defended both terms. So pretty disastrous. And yeah, I think it's time for him to leave. Good point. Might need the crisis PR. Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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53:19Tom Bevan:about remodeling. Schedule your free quote on windows, siding, roofing, and doors at powerhomeremodeling.com. Power, our work shows. Say you've always wanted to have a backyard oasis. Here's the thing. If you get smart with your money, you can do things like that. With Empower, you can start making the most out of your money so you can go out and live a little. Isn't that why we work so hard? To have some fun with our money? So use Empower and get good at money so you can be a little bad. Join their 20 million customers today at Empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored. Trump sends out a post saying he wants to change, well, not change, but he wants to conduct a new census, which is only supposed to be done every 10 years, technically.

54:07We're only on the five-year mark. It was done in 2020 last. And this is very interesting because there's a question about what, if anything, it could do to our electoral politics. Here's the true social post. I've instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate census based on modern day facts and figures and importantly, using the results and information gained from the presidential election of 24. People who are in our country illegally will not be counted in the census. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Now, you've got RCP's Ben Weingarten, your guy, writing, this could have significant political implications because the census count is used to apportion House seats, determine the number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College for selecting the president, and drive the flow of trillions of dollars in government funds.

55:01But there's also the question of whether you can exclude illegals for those purposes. Like you are, you do not have to let illegals vote, but the constitution seems to read that they are supposed to be included. You're supposed to just count all persons in the United States, which is going to be a legal battle in the same way it's a legal battle right now over Trump and birthright citizenship. So what do we make of this? Andrew, do we think the census and redoing it at the midway point is going to have electoral consequences?

55:37Tom Bevan:Well, I'm not sure he's talking about redoing it before 2030. That would be a big change. The Constitution, you're right, the Constitution calls for a census every 10 years, and we do use that to a portion. He says to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate census. Immediately. Yeah, well, maybe, maybe he's, well, that would be a big change. And then how you would use that, I don't know. Boy, that's a whole different constitutional question of whether you could speed up the census in order to change the numbers. It seems to me that would be a hard, hard, hard lift. It's going to be a legal battle.

56:17Tom Bevan:Yeah, I mean, it's a hard enough lift because, as you point out, the Constitution, the language is kind of clear. It says you have to count everyone in the country, and it doesn't distinguish between the two. But the political consequences of this, and Ben Whitengarden's piece is well worth reading on this, and Pew has done a study on this as well, California and Texas, I think, would both lose seats. Wisconsin and a bunch of other states would gain seats. So it would change the electoral composition and could change control of the House. And we're seeing that right now with all this sort of redistribution argument that's going on, redistricting argument that's going on in Texas and other places now.

57:01Tom Bevan:So this is all part of that same argument. And I do think, though, Trump has a point. And the point is that if you're counting, if you don't count voters and then you you provide these seats based on that number, you're sort of gypping voters. You're sort of. Yeah. Why does my vote get diluted? Because I live in a state with a ton of illegals who don't have the right to vote and whose interests are really not in my head or heart when I go into the ballot box. Right. Well, actually, I think it's the opposite. I think you get more representation because they're counting people who don't vote. So it's anyway, pretty complicated stuff.

57:45Tom Bevan:But I don't think it goes anywhere. I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but it does seem to me that the courts have ruled on this before. And it seems to me that changing the census is pretty tough. I'm trying to do the math that you just quickly did. Does my vote get diluted? If I live in a state like New York or California where there's a fair amount of illegals and I'm a U.S. citizen, is my vote diluted or does it count more? I can't do the math like that. I don't. I think it counts more. Tom, you went to Princeton. Would you like to resolve it? Explain it. No. I wasn't a math major. None of us was. That's why we're in journalism.

58:24That's right. Look, this is, I think, Trump makes a good point. And once again, And in a very Trumpian way, right, which is going to outrage the liberals and, oh, he's breaking all these norms and he wants to rig the system and do all these things. But and I don't know where this goes. Legally, it's going to be tough. I think it will absolutely be challenged in court. There's no question about that. might go all the way to the Supreme Court. And because Democrats, I don't think, want to partake in anything that would discount the counting of folks who are here illegally, because it could drastically alter the composition of some of these states.

59:10Now, again, but we don't know. I mean, this is one of those things. Like, if Texas loses votes, that's the Republican state. If California loses votes, that's a Democratic state. If Arizona loses votes. That's a swing state. New Mexico. Yeah, because just to be clear, because if we're talking about eliminating illegals from the count, it doesn't necessarily mean. It's like Republicans benefit or Democrats benefit. It means certain states are going to lose House members and also electoral votes because the power of your vote, like you get more electoral votes, the more citizens or the more people, again, persons you have living within your borders.

59:47Keep going. Correct. So we don't know exactly how this might actually affect the outcome of, you know, the composition of the House or the composition of the Electoral College. I mean, it would be but it would be interesting. And I do think even though the Constitution says, you know, count all persons here. I don't know that the founders were counting on the fact that there would be, you know, I don't know, 15, 20 million or more people here illegally. So definitely not. I think that that's the argument that the Trump administration will make, and we'll see whether they're successful in that or not.

1:00:21That's right.

1:00:21Tom Bevan:And right now, if you have a diplomatic visa, you're not counted. So, I mean, there are exceptions to the rule even now. Right. So, yeah. It makes no sense to be counting illegals. It doesn't. And I mean, like, I don't know how that'll shake out or whether it will be beneficial to write, you know, red America or blue America. But it does seem stupid and backward to be counting people who cannot vote and have no right to public funds and so on in the census. OK, although in some states they're trying to create them more and more. While we're on that subject, I've been listening to you guys in the redistricting fight down in Texas.

1:00:57I mean, I do think it's really interesting because everybody's basically said all this nonsense that the Trump administration said, Oh, well, those districts created they were created based on racist criteria, so they must be redone. And then Abbott was like, yes, sir, I agree. Racism runs amok. We're going to redo them ASAP. And suddenly they come up with five new House seats for Republicans. OK, I see what's happening. But listening to you guys like you are much closer to this, especially you, Tom, in Illinois, you're basically saying the only reason he has to do this is because it has been done to the Republicans by the Democrats.

1:01:32in every state that this is the Dems game of redistricting their states to make the districts look like little slivers of, you know, a spoon handle in order to get them as Democratic as possible to the point where you have states like Illinois, where what is it they say that they're Kamala Harris only got 53 percent of the vote, but Democrats occupy 82 percent of the state's congressional seats. So how did that happen, Tom? Right. And, you know, it was ironic. J.B. Pritzker went on. He's he's, you know, having his moment now because he's, you know, the father figure to all of these fleeing Democrats.

1:02:13He went on Colbert and Colbert actually, to his credit, put up a map of Illinois and was like, look at these crazy districts. Like, what's going on with you guys? Like what? And and J.B. Pritzker kind of yucked it up. Oh, we had a kindergarten class decide. Well, no, actually, they had they have supermajority control of the state legislature. And they redrew these districts to be as favorable to Democrats. Like, look at this one. There's this like just looking at the map of Illinois right here. Yeah, so it's Illinois 13. It starts it starts in in basically down in sort of the suburbs of St. Louis area and goes up through the middle of the state, almost bisects the entire state.

1:02:47It goes all the way up. It's like a snake. Yeah, exactly. And then and then the other district has to curl all the way around it to go back. I mean, it's it's really absurd. Democrats have abused this privilege. you know, the gerrymandering, they've abused gerrymandering for decades. And when they do it, right, they're just, you know, this is democracy in action. And when Republicans retaliate and do this, right, it's they're suppressing the vote, and they're, you know, killing democracy. So it's all a big game. It's all a big, you know, sort of hypocrisy. Now, the one thing that they, this is what JB said the other night, and the one, the real outrage is that, you know, doing it five years, not waiting for the full 10 years, but it has been done before.

1:03:31It's rare, but it has been done, including by New York, I believe, like in 2024. So again, Democrats do not have clean hands on this at all. And so for them to sort of take this moral high ground, once again, it's all just sort of virtue signaling and posturing. And it has kicked off though, this real interesting national debate and discussion where you've got now all these other states or, Gavin Newsom in California is going to do something. And J.D. Vance is going to Indiana to see if they can maybe squeeze another Republican seat out of there, which is already a heavily Republican state. So it'll be interesting to see how this all ends up working out.

1:04:11But yeah, I mean, to hear the Democrats, A, for the Texas Democrats to sort of cry foul and then flee to Illinois is almost too perfect for awards. I mean, if you had imagined it, people would say, this is, you know, you got to send it back for a rewrite. It's, it's, yeah, it's all well and good until they sit down at the dinner table and say to their fellow Democrats in Illinois, can you believe this gerrymandering? This is a nightmare. Who would do such a thing? Right. This is so wrong. Now we just got news before we came to air that, that they've authorized the FBI to go track down the rogue Democrats.

1:04:45Yeah. So that'll be interesting. What are they going to do? Are they going to arrest them? Like drag them back to Texas because they can't have a vote on the newly proposed lines without these Democrats in the state. That's why they fled to prevent there from being a quorum. So things could get even dicier there. I want to switch gears though, Andrew, because we don't have that much time. Speaking of J.D. Vance, Trump commented, and it's a very interesting comment, and you have to listen to the exact wording, but he commented on J.D. Vance and his future role the other day when he was asked on Tuesday in SOT 7.

1:05:19Listen.

1:05:21Tom Bevan:This weekend, Secretary of State Rubio said that he thought J.D. Vance would be a great nominee. You could clear the entire Republican field right now. Do you agree that the heir apparent to MAGA is J.D. Vance? Well, I think most likely, in all fairness, he's the vice president. I think Marco is also somebody that maybe would get together with JD in some form. I also think we have incredible people, some of the people on the stage right here. So it's too early, obviously, to talk about it, but certainly he's doing a great job and he would be probably favorite at this point. Any thoughts on that, Andrew?

1:05:59Tom Bevan:Well, you know, we played that clip and talked about it because it's so fascinating. And the question was whether he's the heir apparent to the MAGA movement, which is not to say who is the next presidential nominee for the Republican Party? Two different questions. And then in his answer, it sort of sounded like at the end of it that he was sort of aligning to the second, he says, where, you know, he would be favored. Well, that's a political term. So, you know, it's always dangerous to try to parse the president's language too carefully. But I thought that was a really interesting statement.

1:06:35Tom Bevan:And I think, so I think clearly he was answering answering it honestly, which he does from time to time. And he was saying that, yeah, that's what he thinks, that J.D. Vance is the leader. But to put Marco Rubio as a potential leader of the MAGA movement, again, that's interesting. Which, by the way, Trump always does. It's very interesting. I've been noticing this for a while from him. Whenever he's asked this question, he mentions both of them. Yeah. And he clearly hasn't, in his own mind, made up his mind on who he really wants to pass the baton to. Yeah. And the question, of course, is who's at the top of the ticket and who's the number two slot.

1:07:17Tom Bevan:I think those two principles might have different views. I don't think J.D. wants to spend another four or eight years as vice president. Yeah. No. But he's a lot younger than Marco. Yeah. But I think that Rubio being positioned as a MAGA guy, that's really interesting because it does mean – I mean, he's about the one guy who sort of went from being a bushy, really, to being at the head of the MAGA movement. I mean, that's pretty extraordinary, pretty deft politics on his part. Very. I know. I heard you guys talking about Unreel Clear Politics about how – I think it was Carl who was saying he started off as like a tea party, darling.

1:07:55and then he asked him or somebody asked him like how'd you manage that and uh he said i don't know like they just voted for me you know like he but he's maneuvered it i mean he went from lil marco which trump used to say lil with an apostrophe lil marco to mention in every breath by trump as possibly the heir apparent though this one clearly seemed to favor vance tom which you know Obviously, I'm sure J.D. Vance would have been quite happy to hear him say that. And by the way, here's some more support for J.D. Vance as the heir apparent from CNN's Harry Enten. Take a listen to SOT 7B. Where does he stand on this?

1:08:34Tom Bevan:You know, I'm going to quote the esteemed scholar Larry David and say, pretty, pretty good. J.D. Vance at 40 percent. There's no one even close to him. Ron DeSantis back at single digits at eight. Donald Trump Jr. back at 7 percent. But keep in mind that early favorites have actually gone on to win the nomination 63 % of the time, those who have run since 1980. And when you're dealing with fields that are 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, upwards of north of 20, and all of a sudden you're telling me that the early poll leader, who is J.D. Vance, that those win more than 50 % of the time? That is why I say it looks pretty gosh darn good, or pretty, pretty good for the man from Ohio.

1:09:12Tom Bevan:How about vice presidents, sitting vice presidents, the last five sitting vice presidents who ran Richard Nixon in 60, he won. How about Hubert Horatio Humphrey in 68? That's H-H-H. That's a real acronym for him. How about Bush I in 88 won. Al Gore in 2001. Kamala Harris in 2024 won. All of the last five sitting vice presidents who ran for their party's nomination won. So it's not just a polling. Historically speaking, if J.D. Vance gets in this fight and he's the sitting vice president, the history books say, hey, he's got a pretty gosh darn chance of going all the way, at least the general election, because five out of five.

1:09:50Tom, thoughts? Not to nitpick Harry, but Kamala didn't really win. True. She did not even win her party nomination. She did not win the nomination. But look, he makes a good point, which is – look, J.D. Vance has done a good job as vice president, I think, in the eyes of Trump supporters. And Trump clearly thinks highly of him. And I think Trump is right. He – just based on – if you were a neutral observer, you'd say, yeah, I mean he has the highest profile now. He has the highest name ID. I mean, he's going to be in poll position to to win the nomination. The only reason that he might not be or he might have some vulnerabilities.

1:10:36We need to know where where the country is going to be, where the Trump presidency is going to be, where the economy is going to be when J.D. Vance, because that's always the problem. Right. He's going to be basically running for a Trump third term, even though they're nonconsecutive. And so that could be a real asset to him with Republicans or depending on how things work out, it might it might be a bit of a drag on him. So we'll see. But but clearly he is the guy. And I think he knows that. And I think Trump was sort of intimating, look, a Vance Rubio ticket would be ideal in terms of in terms of his mind and the MAGA movement.

1:11:12Yeah, yeah, it would be dreamy. But there's no way the guy who ran Celebrity Apprentice for all those years is going to give up the contest this early. We're seven months into Trump and his second term. He's the star. He would like to remain the star. There's no way he is going to let somebody else become the star by naming them the heir apparent. Probably until the very, very, very end. And maybe not even then. We'll have to wait to find out. He might decide that he's going to run for a third term in the end. He probably won't. He says he probably won't. Okay, let's take a look at Team Blue, because every other day we have another one sort of sticking their head up, kind of going to South Carolina or, let's say, in Rahm Emanuel's case, coming on the Megyn Kelly show and so on.

1:11:56And now we have Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it. He's too fat to be president. I'm sorry, but he is. I don't make these rules. I just know them. You can be too short to be president and you can be too fat to be president. And I think he might be both. It's a double whammy. I don't understand why he doesn't get on the shot. Being that obese is a surefire way to die early. I say this to you as a fan, J.B. Pritzker. No, I don't. I'm not your fan. I'm not your fan at all. But as a fellow American, I urge you, go on the shot. Do something. In any event, this isn't why I had you on, Andrew.

1:12:34I did want to get your thoughts, however, on his possible run, because there's you guys have this up at RealClearPolitics today. J.B. Pritzker's presidential ambitions are sinking him at home. And there's a there's a piece about how he's he's flailing with his own general election voters in Illinois as he tries to create more of a national profile for himself. So what's going on there?

1:13:02Tom Bevan:Well, I think it's the same problem sort of any blue state governor has right now. The advantage they have is that they're not tied to the Biden administration. So they don't have to, they weren't in the cabinet. They don't have to sort of explain why they didn't tell the country about Biden's declining acuity. But at the same time, they've got to defend these records of what they've done to their states. And, you know, Tom lives in Chicago, so I'll let him tell you more about what it's like to live under the Pritzker regime. But it's not an easy case to make to the broader American public. He does seem to have thrown himself in all the way to the left, which I think is interesting.

1:13:44Tom Bevan:I mean, he's really decided that that's where it's going to be. Trans thing, the sanctuary city, this, you know, defending these Texans. And he's decided that's where he's going to go. And, you know, for a die in the will billionaire, it's kind of interesting. Quite the contrast from Rahm Emanuel, Tom. Yeah, for sure. And look, JB's running for reelection as governor for his third term. Now, that doesn't preclude him from running for president in 2028, although he'd have to make a kind of a quick turn there. But at the same time, this new poll from M3 Strategies that came out that we have this piece on the site today shows him underwater for the first time.

1:14:26You know, he's normally because it's such a blue state, he's been viewed favorably and he's at like forty seven fifty now. So there is some discontent, I think, among folks in the state. And we have you know, we have all sorts of problems, you know, people fleeing the state and all of those things. JB likes to present it as we've made so much progress, but there's more progress to be made. Unfortunately for the Republicans, there's no one really there to challenge him. They don't really have a marquee challenger. And JB's got millions and millions of dollars. He's already spent a couple hundred million getting himself elected the first two times.

1:15:05So he's probably going to win reelection. But the bloom is definitely off the chubby rose, as we say. Yes. Oh, my God. Congratulations, J.B. Pritzker, because you've given Tom Bevan the highest gas taxes in the country, the highest property taxes in the country. And I can say, as somebody who lives in the Northeast, that's a real feat. Congrats, because that's tough to do. He's embraced the teachers union. He's screwed over the kids. He loves the trans, the transing of children, the illegals, all of it. Pick your issue. He's like Mom Donnie in the big and tall store. Okay. But only in the big, only there for the big part of it.

1:15:49Okay. I have two things more I need to get through with you. Trump is making some intimations about possibly playing a bigger role in the New York mayoral race, possibly getting involved to try to help maybe Andrew Cuomo defeat Mamdani. Now, this is based on reports by at least one Republican congressman from New York who Trump asked, like, if I were to get involved, who would I help? And one other person he asked. And both apparently said Cuomo. Curtis Lee was a Republican who cannot win, sadly. And Eric Adams' numbers are in the basement. He's got like a 7%. He's got zero chance to win re-election.

1:16:29I'm sorry. It's not going to happen for Eric Adams. I cannot back Andrew Cuomo in any way. I can just let nature take its course. But this guy's too radical to be mayor, Mumdani. In any event, Trump's thinking about it, Andrew. But the question is, with New York, you know, going like 90 percent for Kamala Harris, how helpful can Trump be in stopping Democrats from doing what they want to do?

1:16:56Tom Bevan:I think the only thing that he could do that would be helpful is if he could convince Eric Adams to drop out and maybe Curtis Sliwa as well. That's about it. I think his endorsement or anything, it wouldn't help Cuomo if Donald Trump came out and got the three Republicans left in Manhattan to say, oh, gee, I'll vote for Andrew Cuomo. I don't think that's going to help. So, yeah. But I think, I mean, the interesting thing about Cuomo is before, you know, if you looked at the early polls, he was clearly the leader. Everyone thought he was going to sail to victory in this. And then he ran this horrible, horrible primary campaign.

1:17:37Tom Bevan:If he were running a better campaign now with better negative research and that sort of thing, would it be different? Maybe. It just seemed a little late to me. And he doesn't seem to have sort of corrected his campaign to the point where he's going to be competitive with Mondami. I think it's Mondami's to win at this point. I know. Me too, sadly. Now, this is unfortunate because I really wanted this question to go to Andrew first. Maybe I'm going to do it. I'm not going to be fair and balanced here. I'm sticking with Andrew. I need your opinion and I need it fast on Sidney Sweeney, my friend.

1:18:09Thank God, Megan.

1:18:10Tom Bevan:I appreciate that. Oh, God. Here's my way in. Here's my way in. Vox has a piece up titled Sidney Sweeney and the Unsettling Legacy of the Blonde Bombshell. You remember the Rolling Stone yesterday and the guys at Pod Save America were trying to tell me that this is a right-wing manufactured controversy, that there are actually no leftists upset about Sidney Sweeney. And then we get this. She's part of the unsettling legacy of the blonde bombshell. This is written by a party. Obviously, this is all Dems trying to win back young men. Unsettling legacy of the blonde bombshell. Sweeney represents a modern version of the blonde bombshell, a loaded cultural symbol tied to white femininity, sexuality, and American nostalgia.

1:18:58Marilyn Monroe defined the blonde bombshell for the 20th century, Sweeney updates it for the 21st, and in doing so has become just as culturally divisive. Yes, because that's what Marilyn Monroe was known for, dividing the culture harshly and politically, and not just being a uniformly admired sex symbol, the most admired to ever walk the face of the earth. Thoughts, Andrew?

1:19:25Tom Bevan:Well, I think if the left thinks that sex doesn't sell anymore, they're wrong. Sex will always sell. And she's a sexy woman. And I like the ads personally. And I thought that the sort of blue jeans were great. So there you have it. Tom, I managed to get him to comment on it. I feel like I accomplished something here. You did. That's great. I was following your Twitter back and forth or your ex back and forth with the pod bros. And it's like it's almost the exact opposite of reality, like somehow this was a Republican, a right wing manufactured thing. I mean, it was it was the way the left treated this.

1:20:05And it shows they just they they haven't learned their lessons necessarily. And they're still looking for things to be outraged by things that are, you know, even silly and make them look even worse than than people possibly imagine. I mean, this whole controversy came because folks on the left decided that this was eugenics. They read into this. This was eugenics and it shouldn't be stood for. So once again, just not learning lessons. Here's more. And by the way, this was written by a woman named Constance Grady, who I'll get to in a second. Back to Sweeney, she writes, Her very existence in the public eye revives debates about race, desirability, conservatism, and modern feminism, much like Monroe did in her time, though through different lenses.

1:20:54It's a highly charged encapsulation of American fantasies and fears about white femininity, femininity, what a nice white lady should be, and what we are afraid she might be. This is about people's fear of white people, according to whitey Constance Grady, who is as white as the driven snow. She goes on to say, Marilyn Monroe represented the idealized post-war American woman, desirable, white, submissive, yet powerful through beauty. Sweeney revives the persona in this new era, becoming a vessel for contemporary culture war battles over race, gender and politically and a political identity. So I wondered, Tom, who is this Constance Grady?

1:21:41She's been at Vox for nine years. She's a senior correspondent. She covers books, publishing, gender, celebrity, and theater. She went to the University of Chicago. Oh, boy. Guilty. I mean, they're not as bad as others, but they're still. Okay, here are some facts about her. She wrote articles like in April of 25, the strange link between Trump's tariffs and incel ideology. In-cell, I say. Yes. Trump's tariffs and in-cell. I mean, you got to give him points for ingenuity on that one, at least. Trump's petty revenge on the Kennedy Center. Why the Met Gala still matters. Jon Stewart is as funny as ever.

1:22:22And then this one from July of 2023. Something you almost commissioned. I have it on good authority at Real Clear Politics. A long history of kids doing weird stuff to Barbie. Yes. Constance delved deep into the following. Did you decapitate your Barbies or make them kiss? Barbie was for ripping apart and pulling, putting inexpertly back together. She was for removing heads and limbs. She was for microwaving. She was for chopping off her doll hair. She was for doll orgies. Constance, oh, Constance, sweetheart, you're saying too much. As Jezebel put it in 2007, growing up, everyone did dirty things with their Barbies.

1:23:02Oh, sweetheart, you rip her apart. You make her have sex. What else can you do with her? What else can you do with the problem of what you're going to grow up to face? So this is a sick person. This is who Box has telling us Sydney Sweeney is a problem because she's the blonde bombshell, which is a loaded cultural symbol tied to white femininity and sexuality. The horror! well to the earlier discussion we were having at least she's owning her her liberalism and her progressivism and she's not hiding it at all even if it's making her look at her version yeah i had many a barbie constance i never did dirty school with them or put them in the microwave i might have cut one's hair at one point or another but that's about beauty uh she she went full lena dunham on like the weird sexual perversions of her own childhood good luck Constance.

1:23:57That's not what most of us did with our Barbies. Andrew, am I right or not? Andrew, what does America do with its Barbies?

1:24:05Tom Bevan:I have three daughters and I'm sure they did things with their Barbies, but I don't think they did a lot of that stuff, I hope. I don't know. I mean, this is just a level of sort of left-wing cultural critique that gets ridiculous. And I think that's a good example. of that these days. Yeah. I guess maybe, you know, it does get people like us to talk about it, though. So, I mean, that's really going to be sad he missed this one. Oh, Carl is dying. I hope he's listening right now. He's probably dying. He would have loved the Washington Post conversation. I know. Well, we'll round back with him on it when he comes back the next time.

1:24:46I mean, I will say this. I know a fair amount about Marilyn Monroe. This is completely misstating her actual role in the culture and her legacy. But she was not a controversial figure. She was pretty uniformly beloved. She had a very unique ability of being incredibly sexy and a sex symbol by any man's measure, while non-threatening. I think this is part of why she was beloved. Women wanted to be her and men wanted to be with her. And it was both like the combo of incredible sex appeal and luminous takeovers of any room she was in, but also this little girl-like quality to her, which was non-threatening, was submissive in its nature, and made women marvel at this combination that was also part of why men found her so attractive.

1:25:31Yeah.

1:25:32Tom Bevan:Well, you know, Madonna always comes to mind when I hear these conversations. She sort of viewed as this sort of great icon of the left and, you know, trans, not transsexual, But she transcended a lot of categories. And, you know, people seem to love her. So, you know, maybe Sydney Sweeney is just the Madonna of our age. Oh, my. That's a hot take. I thought Andrew was about to break some news on Madonna there, Tom. I mean, there's no limit to your scoops over at RCP. Well, we know how you feel about J-Lo trying to act like she's a sex symbol at 55. Madonna seems to be, he's even older than that, still trying to make news by being outrageous.

1:26:15No, it's too late. Like you can have sex appeal. You got to go the Ann-Margaret way, okay? There's been no sexier woman on earth, as far as I'm concerned, than Ann-Margaret at her peak. And as she aged, she still, she was very saucy. She was gorgeous, still gorgeous. She's still here. She's still around. But she started to dress. She'd have a little bit more fabric. It's fine. You know, she wasn't like trying to always show off her God-given gifts. and she always had that playful sex kitten way of talking and being and like interviewing. But she realized at some point you take off like the waist high leotard and you put on like a skirt and, you know, like a nice blouse.

1:26:59At some point, that's how you approach your life. At a bare minimum, you don't shove your crotch into the face of 13 dancers. Jennifer, don't get me started again, Tom. I got to go. Sorry. Okay. Goodbye. I triggered you. Yeah. Okay. Coming up. America's nicest judge in the world is here. Why are we inviting an 88 year old judge on the Megan Kelly show? Because he's about to drop a bunch of wisdom bombs that will light up your day. He's awesome. Stand by. We talk a lot on this show about personal freedom? Well, part of that is owning your privacy. And let me tell you, if you have ever Googled your name and found your home address, your phone number, or even your income floating around, it is not a coincidence.

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1:32:00He is known around the world as America's nicest judge, a man whose compassion and understanding on the bench have touched millions. Judge Frank Caprio spent 38 years in Providence Municipal Court, turning everyday traffic cases into heartfelt moments on his show, Caught in Providence, showing that kindness and understanding really can transform lives. And now at 88 years old, he is sharing his journey from humble beginnings to a national symbol of empathy in his book, Compassion in the Court, Life-Changing Stories from America's Nicest Judge. Judge Frank Caprio joins me now. Judge, welcome to the show.

1:32:39Great to have you.

1:32:40Tom Bevan:It was my pleasure to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. All right. So how does one become a nice judge? Because when we think of judges, that's not where we go. Oh, it's very easy. First, you have great parents who treat you like human beings instead of an apostle. and you follow their footsteps and whatever lessons they taught you as a child, you then incorporate into your life in treating other people that way. Some people think, for example, if you come from a position of power, like a judge, that you have to use that power, you know, in adverse ways. I never thought that. I thought it was a tool for good.

1:33:29Tom Bevan:that it was a tool for understanding people, for helping them if I could, to let them know that I understood their problems. And that was basically it. So, Judge, you were born then, what, in 1937? 1936. 1936. Okay, so you've seen a lot. You've been around the block. You did not come from a family of privilege at all. Can I just ask you, Broadview, how do you see the dramatic changes in the world over your 88 years, you know, from your childhood to now? Describe like the massive change you've seen. The thing that impresses me the most is the lack of understanding and civility among people. I was brought up in a working class family.

1:34:21Tom Bevan:and you know my dad was a milkman i delivered newspapers i helped him on the truck and it always was the lessons from my dad were you know treat people honorably and with respect and compassion and understanding now he didn't tell me in those words i just had the opportunity to watch him, you know, how he treated people. And that's how I ended up treating people, the way I do. And it was just a lesson from my parents and the way I was brought up. Do you feel like, what do you, what differences do you see in the country? Right? Because it seems like if you were born in 36, then you were graduating high school, what, around 54, 1954.

1:35:10And we were less populated. We were less overwhelmed, I think, with the number of bodies when we tried to travel and we got on roads. But we were finding each other back then. We had the bowling leagues and we had, I don't know, parades and we had like a shared patriotism. I feel like that's all changed so much.

1:35:28Tom Bevan:Big changes that I've seen in my lifetime are the breakdown of the family unit. The basic unit of society is the family unit. But that's what youngsters see. That's the first impression that they have when they're born and they're brought into this world. And I think, unfortunately, the family unit, the substance of the family unit has broken down over the years. And I think that's a shame. How important is that? You know, like family dinners and time together and, you know, an intact mother and father unit in the home. You cannot import the importance of that enough. Just the family unit being together, the togetherness, the love of each other, being together for all major events and enjoying them together is just something that I think is lacking in the world today.

1:36:33How many cousins did you have growing up? It was a big number, right? Cousins?

1:36:38Tom Bevan:Oh, my cousin's number over 30. Over 30. Wow. My father was one of 10. My mother was one of eight. Wow. All providence the whole life? All I knew was going right. Lucky you. So your dad did the right thing because he wound up showing you what it was like to be a milkman and what it was like to make a living. honest work, though not work that will make you rich. So how did you use that when you got on the bench as a judge? You know, it's interesting you ask that question, because the very first day on the bench, very first day, a woman came in, and the fact of the matter was, she was arrogant, and she had three kids.

1:37:28Tom Bevan:And that was my first day on the bench. And I asked my dad if he would come to the court to view my proceedings and he came so here i am i'm a judge now i got the robe i'm in the court you know my father's watching me so i'm going to show my dad what a great judge i can be so this woman came in and she had four parking tickets and she was a little rude and she said i just don't have the money i have three kids and i don't have the money and i'm not paying them it's my first day on the bench i'm here my dad's in the courtroom i'm gonna now make my mark i'm not gonna take any kind of guff from anybody and so i get into a conversation with her and finally because she is so arrogant and rude i find her the full amount of money without cutting her any kind of a break.

1:38:26Tom Bevan:Now the court is over. And I can't wait to talk to my dad because my dad now sees me with a role. I'm a judge. And I didn't take any guff. And I said, Dad, how did I do? And he looked at me. He said, how did you do? He said, that woman, how could you do that? I said, what woman are you talking about? He said, the woman that you fined her the full charge. I said that. She was arrogant. She was rude. He said, you don't understand. He said, she was scared. And she didn't have any money. And now she may not be able to feed her children tonight. She may not be able to pay the rent. She may not be able to pay any other bills.

1:39:16Tom Bevan:He said, you can't treat people like that. That's not the way you were brought up. my very first day on the bench, my very first day, my very first calling, my dad straightened me out. And it's been a whole different story. There was a reason you were given that case in front of your dad while he was there to remind you, right, of that other piece of having power, right? Knowing when to exercise it and knowing when benevolence is a better way. This is a picture of you on the bench. 38 years on the bench in this role. What's the number one case you remember? Is that the one that you remember because it was your first, or was there another one that taught you something?

1:40:00Tom Bevan:I remember several, but the one that I remember the most is a gentleman who came in. He was 96 when he came in. He was driving his son to get treatment, and we actually bonded with him and invited him to our house. It was one of the full experience. Wow. I mean, you don't hear about stories like this with a judge inviting a litigant in front of them, a constituent to come over for dinner, but you know what? That's Italian, too. They always want to feed you. When you're Italian, that's not that unusual. I know you say in the book, a person's worth is defined from learning from mistakes, not from the mistakes themselves.

1:40:44Can you talk about that?

1:40:46Tom Bevan:I'm sorry. I didn't hear the beginning of that. In the book, you write about how a person's worth is defined from learning from their mistakes, not the mistakes themselves, but from taking some time to learn from the mistakes. I mean, it can be easier said than done. But what do you mean by that? well we don't we don't learn by our victories sometimes we get consumed by them and we feel that we're because we have this power that we really don't have you know so but understanding people's everyday problems you know i i had the privilege of working with my dad on a milk truck when I was 12 years old and delivering newspapers in a working class neighborhood where people really didn't have any money.

1:41:38Tom Bevan:And many of them couldn't even afford to pay for the newspaper. And the question that I had to resolve was, what did I do? Did I stop delivery or not? And the lessons that I took were the lessons that I learned from my dad. And it wasn't that he sat me down and said, listen, you treat somebody this way or that way. It's the way he treated people every single day. And it was those experiences that formed my thought process. Did it ever make it hard for you to issue a harsh punishment against someone in front of you? Because you are so nice and you view people through such a sympathetic lens? It did.

1:42:22Tom Bevan:As a matter of fact, sometimes they challenged you. I actually had a woman come in, you know, and she challenged me. I can't afford to pay it, and I'm not paying it. So I said, you know, what do I do in this situation? So anyway, we worked it out. Did she come over to your house? No. No, she never got an invitation. Not everybody does. I think it's great that you wrote this book, Judge. I mean, I love when people who have a lot of wisdom to give actually put it in writing. And I know that you've been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, so it must have been important to you to write down these stories and these thoughts.

1:43:07I hope you have big plans for the coming months involving your family and everyone who loves you.

1:43:14Tom Bevan:I thought that I would share my early life's experiences and would help other people who are in the same situation. my dad was one of ten my mother was one of eight with all my cousins and aunts and uncles you know we were a very close-knit family and when I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer you know it was a very traumatic time in my life not only in my life but in the life of my family on both sides and I tried to conduct myself in a way that would be quite great credit upon my family and upon how we treat things. I'm sure they love you very much. Listen, I thank you for your public service.

1:44:04It's hard to get smart, kind, well-meaning people like you to serve in public service for their whole lives. Thank you for doing it, sir, and all the best with it and the book, too. It's called, again, Compassion in the Court, Life-Changing Stories from America's Nicest Judge. Check it out, Frank Caprio. Thanks to all of you for joining us today. We'll be back on Monday. Have a great weekend. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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