The TRUTH About Jill's Treatment of Joe Biden, Bari Weiss' Leadership, and "Strangers" Accuracy, with Maureen Callahan | Ep. 1332

27:00This is early on in my career at Fox where I was doing my finances and I was like, if I can manage, you know, to like manage my money, I could potentially get to the point where I have as much as$1 ,000 extra a month to spend. I'll have real spending money,$1 ,000 a month. And I was so excited over it. I am no happier today than I was that day. More money generally creates more problems and more things you have to worry about. I'm not saying it's not a blessing. I'm just saying for people out there who think a lot of money is the be all end all, it's not. And this woman was too busy nurturing, I don't know, like her sense of being a super mom, which she doesn't necessarily sound like she was.

27:40She sounds like a terrible mother. I'm sorry. Writing this book is the act of a terrible mother. I'm sorry. And also it's not a great mother, super mom thing to do, to forget to nurture your marriage and like the institution that you're bringing the children up in, like the loving family, the core of what will produce strong egos and abilities to handle themselves when adversity comes their way. And instead of just a normal divorce where it's like it didn't work out, we're still gonna be in each other's lives. She blows it up into this national story to where now Gwyneth Paltrow is going to star in a Netflix movie about her shitty husband.

28:15And her kids have got to see that. Well, will she? Can Netflix go through with this? The whole premise of the book was blown up by The New Yorker. The whole thing was blown up. And she's an unreliable narrator, which is why I don't believe anything she has to say about her marriage or her husband. She said he was going to leave me with nothing. He was basically a sociopath. I was listening to, she did any number of podcast interviews in which she said, what was it? Oh, she was on the Foster Sisters one. And they said, it sounds really like you were married to a sociopath. You know, what do you think about that?

28:51And she says she was gleeful about it. That's definitely what she wants us to think. She says, well, you know, I wasn't allowed to put anything regarding mental health in the book. So she was like, I had to take some stuff out, which to me says she basically called him a sociopath in the book. And Legal over at her publishers, which has another fire on their hands with Amy Griffin, who accused a man everybody can identify in Amarillo, Texas, of being a violent child predator and brutal child rapist. They've got a real problem there. They were like, you can't call your husband a psychopath. At least legal was on alert that day.

29:29And by the way, the fact that he has no feelings left for you doesn't mean he has no feelings. Exactly. You know, like a narcissist. Right. Right. And like his one statement he gave that everybody's had to include when reporting on her book basically ends with, you know, I dispute her characterizations of me in this book. And I and also I have a loving, supportive relationship with my children and they are loving and supportive of me as well. Like that was, you could see that was the one thing he was like, don't go there. Like do not F with anything suggesting I haven't been a supportive dad because, and then she talks about in the book, she writes out how he made fun of her one time.

30:08She was like, you know, you're going to leave me with nothing. You're not going to let me have the houses or whatever. And he responded in a mimicking voice like, poor Belle, nothing ever goes her way. So you can hear the contempt. This is her description of how he spoke to her, the contempt he has for her. That doesn't develop overnight out of nothing. There's a reason for that. And then the most famous story in the book that made the rounds, that made a lot of people want to read it, was about the sandwich. All right? So when he goes back to Martha's Vineyard house to tell the children with her, he's having the conversation.

30:49He's got the plane and the pilot waiting for him. and in the middle of telling the girls like he's leaving their mother, he looks at Belle, the mom, and he was like, starving. Can you make me a sandwich? Which does make you hate him, right? You're like, well, you're a prick. And then she did it. She did it. So you're like, oh my God, my skin's starting to crawl. Like this is not a healthy couple at all. So the fact that he would ask her to make him a sandwich while he's leaving her and delivering the breakup news is very bizarre and unhealthy. And I do give her credit because I think it was an aha moment for her in retrospect to realize she did it, that she did it.

31:32And she describes in the book about how she just wanted to make that the best sandwich he'd ever eaten so that he would be like, how could I leave this woman who makes the amazing sandwiches? Like they don't have help who makes sandwiches. Sorry, I don't believe they didn't have help in the house during COVID. I don't even know if I believe this story. Because again, if she's going to lie about the big stuff, I can't trust her in any way. There are bits of it that sound plagiarized to me, really. Okay, so there's a very famous scene that has blown up into a cultural meme surrounding a very popular Bravo reality show called Summer House.

32:09And at the crux of that fight between a boyfriend and a girlfriend or an engaged couple breaking up was a sandwich, a sandwich. Now, Belle, at another point in the book, finds herself on the bathroom floor. Her husband's leaving her, and she cannot get herself up off. Not just any floor. It's the bathroom floor. Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love, the cultural cancer that is Eat, Pray, Love. I love when you talk about this. Elizabeth Gilbert. She opens that book, and she is on the bathroom floor of her well-tended New Jersey home at 3 a.m., and she cannot get herself off. She's like a 28-year-old healthy woman.

32:47And why? She has come to the conclusion she must leave her husband. Does she know why? She does not. Is the guy a bad guy? No. In fact, he's a great guy. He makes a nice living. He loves her. He's in love with her. Nothing's wrong with him. She just wants to leave and she doesn't know why. Spends that book vilifying the husband who everybody identifies. You know what I mean? Yeah. There are these tracks that are just so parallel. Wasn't Amy Griffin on the floor of her closet? Great primal scream. I mean, everyone's on the floor in these books. Meghan Markle is on the floor waiting for Harry to come home in tears.

33:20At least Drew Barrymore actually gets down on the floor. We can see her doing it. So we know in her case, it's legit. I want to play some of the soundbites because the audience by this point is kind of like, let me have a look at this gal. Let's play SOT 21. This is Bell Burden on Oprah. You just brought up finances. I wanted to say this. I hear a lot of women, a lot of women, have made a similar mistake as you did, allowing your spouses to handle all the finances. And you write on page 95 about, I lost touch with both the big picture and the details of our financial life, depending on James to tell me what to do.

34:01I felt some shame about it, about not being involved, about not asking questions, but I was afraid I wouldn't understand it, that it was too complicated for me, even though I was a former corporate lawyer. I settled into the vagueness, the luxury and privilege of not knowing. What do you want to say to all the women doing that right now? If my book does one thing, if it makes women pay more attention to their finances and what's going on in their relationship or their marriage financially, I will be so happy because I think I'm not alone in what I did. I mean, truly, who is she talking to? Like the 0.0001%.

34:44Yes, virtually all women are paying attention to the finances. They have to help pay them. Usually women are the check writers and the bill payers. And the purchasers. Yeah. So like she sees herself as our like, you know, our underdog here to save the day. We're way ahead of you, Belle. We actually do. Most of us work and pay the bills, and it's not unfamiliar to bust out a checkbook or go online and pay our bills. Like, I really, if this does one thing, let it be that. And let me give you a similar one. She goes on with, this is Drew Barrymore, right? Is it 22B? Yeah, let's play that one. I want this to be an incredible tutorial on how we as women can really give up the power and find themselves in scenarios where they are very financially hurt.

35:39Absolutely. And if I am a cautionary tale on this one subject, I am happy with that. OK, because I really I think you've given a scout's guide for how women can approach the financials in their marital life in a way that protects them. I really kind of got very comfortable in not knowing and put you in a terrible position. It did. I was really at risk of losing my financial security. Here's your scout's guide. Have a sixty three million dollar trust fund. 63, I said 67 earlier, I think it's 63. 45 million of which comes from a trust from your father, Carter Burden's estate. Tell everyone that you don't know how you're gonna make ends meet when you're earning$800 ,000 a year.

36:28Apparently that was her income in 2019. That was her income. So I think that's over and above what the husband was giving in the 600 ,000 because this is before he left her. He left her in 2020. This is 2019. she earned$800 ,000 in income and had$10 million in assets that the husband had no claim to, reports the free press. They had a Tribeca apartment that last year was listed for just under$12 million. They had purchased it for four, so that's$8 million in change. All of this is, this is how she's our cautionary tale, Maury. She's our cautionary tale. You know, you look at her with Oprah in particular, everything about this tableau.

37:10Belle is on cream upon cream upon cream. We're virginal. We're just innocent. The big bad wolf came and got me. And she's smiling ear to ear. She's so excited to tell her tale of, whoa, there's not a tear there. We're on Oprah. Megan, we're sitting across from Oprah. We've done it. We did it. We accomplished something, mommy. Do you love me now? And then what's the other thing? Yes, look at them. Cream on cream. You're right. Cream everywhere. Oh, and so she's like, yeah, I didn't understand. You know, I left it all to him. I do not buy this fundamental premise at all. A woman who comes from that level of wealth has had a team of accountants and lawyers and money managers since birth.

37:52Since birth. Yeah, sorry. Don't buy it. She's upset because they have a prenup. And the prenup that she willingly signed said that you keep what you come into the marriage with. and the normal rule, the default for a prenup would be you keep what you come into the marriage with and then monies that are earned during the course of the marriage will be divided between the two parties in some shape or form, but it'll be divided. And he said, I don't want that. You keep what you came into the marriage with, but I think we should keep what we earn. Like he was only making$200 ,000 a year. Now I say only just because he wound up very rich at a hedge fund.

38:32when he signed that prenup. So he didn't know, in his defense, he didn't know he was gonna make it big at a hedge fund. He was a lawyer, just like she was. He didn't come from money either, did he? He came from no money. That's why this marriage initially kind of worked because let's face it, it's like some people marry for love and some people, especially from this kind of wealth, choose other things. For her, this guy was, she thought he was kind of sexy. He was dynamic. He was an up and coming lawyer at the same firm she was, who I think was a little bit senior to her. So there's that dynamic of, wow, he's important.

39:05And he was a mover and a shaker who was clearly going places. For him, he was, I don't know if he was from the wrong side of the tracks exactly, but he had no pedigree like she did. She had the family background, connection to the Vanderbilts, the famous grandma, the mother too, was high up in the Bloomberg administration. And she had the$70 million trust fund, which we just learned about. And so she could connect him to the right people because he apparently all along wanted to get into leave the law and be a hedge fund guy, which is where the big bucks are. But it's hard to do unless you have the right connections.

39:39And she did. So clearly he was using her to some extent. And look, she went into it when they met at the law firm, he was dating somebody else. And so was she. Oh, that's right. She was too. So it started a little like, all right, you lose them how you get them. Like, be careful how you get them. Here's the other thing that she writes about in the book, which I, oh, by the way, I forgot one of her ancestors, John Jay. Oh. Okay. We have Roger Sherman on Doug's side. Who's that? He signed the Constitution. He's one of our founding fathers. Or the Declaration. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. I know. It's so fun.

40:13We should have named Stradwick Sherman. Well, there's, I'm sure that another dog will find his way. Oh, no, there will be no other dog. Oh, really? Well, maybe in the distant, distant future. Anyway, keep going. Earmark that name. So she writes about him. This is the allure he had for her. This may have been transactional, but I don't think it was just one way. He had a little bit of danger to him. He lived downtown. He introduced her to nightclubs and rock venues down there. She was like, oh, my first show. I wasn't cool. This guy was kind of cool. My brother was cool. This guy was kind of cool.

40:50he had a roommate who had like a drug problem, which to someone like for that's like, oh, we're now, we're down at the zoo. I get to look at this, like this, I get to feel a little bit cool, you know? So she, I think that that was an attraction for her. And I think, you know, I didn't know that actually, that it's really hard to break into the hedge fund world if you don't come from that world. Well, because you need access to rich people. You know, that's how you get them to invest with you. And if you've got the connections, if you're in the social register, which is a thing, Um, it's actually a very funny thing.

41:22My, my college roommate who I adored, she was in the social register. She had gone to Princeton day school, which is a day, a day school. That's, you know, a private school in Princeton. And I'm like, and at the time, this is of course, back in the late eighties, early nineties. I'm like, how much was that? And it was 15 grand a year, which is what Syracuse would cost. And I was like, your parents paid$15 ,000 a year for you to go to high school. You wound up the same place I did. Like, what do you mean? Like my parents paid nothing, just the taxes. And I wound up here. I don't think Princeton day school worked out, but we always had a good laugh over that.

41:49But she was in the social register. She was like, and she would show it to me. And like, they, you list the name of your boat. The little boys are referred to as master, master so-and-so. Wow. It shows all the lineage because these people tend to inbreed, you know, like they want to stay amongst their own. Right. They don't really want to welcome a Maureen Callahan or a Megyn Kelly at all. That's cool with me. Yeah. No, it's fine. They want like their own. You have to have the right lineage, the right pedigree. You know, the blue bloods want to create more blue bloods. So for him to have broken in there, that was a big plus for him.

42:25You know, even though - This is great insight into a lot of the source of the rage and why we have to publicly burn the husband down. Yeah. She gave him, in her mind, you're not there without me. She's not wrong. And you used me. Now - She knew. The using was obvious. But, you know, but they also had kids together. There must have been love there at some point. Oh, my favorite thing. She goes, you know, what really, what really, really was just so dastardly was we had just ordered a new bed. And it was a very expensive mattress. Very expensive. It was a sleep number, which they advertise on television.

43:04You know, there are really expensive mattresses that go for like$200 ,000. Oh, my. I didn't know that. It's a sleep mattress. like Elon Musk buys those. It's a sleep mattress. And yeah, one side can be firm and the other side can be soft. And once, you know, it's like NASA technology. And she's like, oh, in our bed frame, it was really a bitch to get that thing on the bed frame. Like as if she can't just have a custom bed frame. You know what I mean? It's like her gripes are so outer limits. Oh, at some point, I can't remember whether I read this in the book or heard her say this on an interview, but she was talking about how their wine collection is worth so much money, they have to keep it off site.

43:46It's not even at their home and their art too. They've got some crazy ass amount of like valuable art. That's what the super rich do. And that was my first clue that I should really stop listening to this woman's tale of woe.

44:02The climate controlled warehouse for the Rothko's. But now to see the numbers, I mean, the New Yorker to its credit did a deep dive on like all the finances. And it's really, it's stunning that the, yeah, the$5.4 million home in Martha's Vineyard, the place in Tribeca, which they just sold for 12 million, but bought for four. So that's an$8 million profit. Her overall$63 million in assets and trusts. Again, you might say, well, that's tied up. I don't know. I'm not a trust baby, a trust fund baby, but okay, let's say most of that's tied up and she can't touch it for some time. By the way, they say it's hers.

44:38So if she's sharing it with siblings, they don't mention that. They say that that's her$63 million she inherited. But on top of that, she's got these degrees. She was making$800 ,000 a year in 2019. There's some asterisks saying, well, that was an especially good year for her because she sold something that was worth$200 ,000. All right, well, that leaves$600 ,000. Again, this is before the$600 ,000 per year she was getting from the husband for child custody. So clearly she's doing something. And you know how it is. When you have a lot of money like that, money begets money. People will pay you all sorts of money for whatever.

45:09You can start some stupid ass business and you've got all these rich people who are used to just giving money to each other. It's not that hard. So in any event, yet another embarrassment for this publication. Hold on a second. Let me see if I can find, I'd love to find the name of the publication. I had it in here someplace. That actually put this out, the same as the one that did the tell. Oh yeah, here it is. Dial Press. And in particular, there's an editor there named Whitney. Frick. And she also did Amy Griffin's book, The Tell. The same editor did both books. And she defended The Tell when it came out that Amy was being accused of fabricating the whole thing and stealing another woman's story, which she denies.

45:54They came out and said the following, book publishers are not investigators. This is Amy's story. We trust her and all of our authors that they are recounting their memories truthfully. This is so pathetic. What do you mean? You've disparaged and defamed this guy, James, whose real name I just said a minute ago, you've disparaged and defamed, essentially the teacher down in Texas in - Mr. Mason. Yeah, Amarillo, where Amy Griffin's from. What do you mean we trust them that they are recounting their memories truthfully? That's how you get sued. Like that, what a shirking of all burden. And especially in Amy's case and now in Bell Burden's, once it comes out from an in-depth investigation, the Times has done two on Amy Griffin and the New Yorker's now done one on Bell Burden.

46:47Don't these publishers have a responsibility to go back and say, we feel the need to add a note at the beginning of this publication that we've misled you actively in something that's supposed to be a memoir, like a truthful recitation of one's life. This is not nonfiction. This is not fiction, I should say. And same for Oprah and Gwyneth and the others who whitewashed these stories, Maureen. That statement from the publisher sounds to me like a cover your ass statement because they all have legal departments. This is like, you wouldn't know this unless you're writing a book, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, a memoir.

47:27Well, fiction is fiction. Okay, nonfiction. So Ask Not, I wrote about a large number of the girls and women I wrote about are no longer with us. The law in America is you cannot defame the dead. And yet I had legal eyes on that book from inside the publisher, Eight Ways to Sunday. On top of also paying, they don't fact check it per se. They just try to protect themselves from a lawsuit. As the author, it's prudent to spend your money to hire an outside fact checker to make sure that everything you've got your eyes dotted, et cetera. That's a cover your ass statement. They're trying to say, we didn't have a lawyer.

48:05Look at that. It's a memoir. We just got to trust the writer. That's all on her. She's getting sued. We're indemnified, which they're not. And how this woman has a job still? I know. Out of my mind. Honestly, beware. If Whitney Frick is the editor on your book, that's her attitude, apparently, toward truth or falsity. And what's being billed is a true story in the form of a memoir. So good luck with that. Gwyneth, good luck with your project on Netflix. Now, I do want to talk about a book that deserves to be on the New York Times bestseller list because I just want to tell you quickly. My husband, Doug Brunt, his book, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel, is crushing it.

48:41It's doing really well. Amazing. And it's very hard to say this for any book. The reviews have been uniformly raves. He's gotten such great reviews on this, and it's selling well, too. And I just wanted to read one to you. You'll hear what it's about in this review. But this guy, we don't know him. His name is Steve Eubanks, and he wrote a very long, great review. Not very long, but a nice, in-depth review, and I'll read you some of it. he goes on first of all that the best nonfiction writers are ones who started in fiction because they know how to tell a tale they know how to spin a story for you so that it's interesting and then they can use those same same storytelling abilities when they write the nonfiction work which is exactly what Doug did so he says yeah the biggest compliment you can give a narrative nonfiction book is it reads like fiction enter Doug Brunt who had a best-selling fiction catalog before shifting gears with the wildly successful The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, which I praised to the rooftops when it hit.

49:40But there's always the risk of a sophomore slump. Many great writers have one book in them. The follow-up always tells the tale. Well, fear not. Brunt's newest book, The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel, is at least as good, if not better, than his first. Like Diesel, most people only know the name Nobel because of Emanuel's Uncle Alfred, the inventor of dynamite who created the Nobel Prize. But what you don't know is that Alfred did not conjure his invention out of some dream. His father, Immanuel, was an explosives expert who created the first contact mine, blah, blah, blah. There wouldn't be a Nobel Prize if not for Immanuel, however, who stood up to the king of Sweden and wanted the family to contest, which wanted the family to contest Alfred's will.

50:21And then he goes on to talk about learning stuff in school that it turns out was not true at all, how Doug disproves it in this book. He says this is not just a book about an industrialist, although it would be excellent if that was its only storyline. This is the most fascinating history you will ever read about the Romanovs, Rasputin, Lenin, and especially Joseph Stalin. Brunt takes you places your history professors dared not tread for fear of ticking off cranky old commie department heads with dandruff on the shoulders and their tweed jackets and teeth the color of not good hide. I don't know who that is, but it sounds fun.

50:56If you want the real story of the Russian revolution, its devastating impact on the Russian people, Europe and the rest of the world, read this book. And then here's just one more. There's more though, he says, Brunt never writes this, the best ones don't. But the subtext of Nobel is that the revolutionary impulses that darkened Eastern Europe and led to 70 years of death haven't gone away. And he goes on just talking about how timely the book is. He says, read this book and recommend it to others. You won't regret it. That's incredible. So sweet. Such a good one. That's incredible. That's so exciting.

51:29You know, we're lucky enough we have Doug on the nerve tomorrow. Oh, yay. Which I'm really excited about. And I was really thinking about it, you know, because he left a copy of the book for me the last time I was here. And he prefaced it by saying, you know, I don't necessarily think it's your thing, but I'm just going to leave it for you. And that was really sweet. But I was really, I was thinking about him and Nobel and I had obviously read some of the book and loving it. But I was like, we write about very different things, but we definitely have a similar interest as authors. And that is in hidden parts of history and people lost to history.

52:07And there's nothing more fun, whether you're a writer or a reader in digging that up. And you both have a great gift of a writer, which is an economy with words. We'll be right back. If you are heading into summer without a medical emergency kit, you are taking a risk most people don't even think about until it's too late. Summer colds linger and can turn into sinus infections that last for weeks. Getting sick right before vacation can derail everything. And when you are traveling, finding a doctor in pharmacy is stressful. But let me tell you about the medical emergency kit from the wellness company.

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53:25Close your eyes. Focus. Listen to work getting done with monday.com. Relax as AI does the manual work. while your teams are aligned on a single source of truth. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform so flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Notice, you're limitless. Now open your eyes. Go to monday.com. Start for free and finally, breathe. Oh my goodness, Belle. We got some talking to do, girl. I see that you've marked the book up. I have marked the book. I wanted to do this book because there are so many friends that I've had who've gone through this. And I feel like I've gone through it with them.

54:15Yes. You are every woman. You have written the manual for every woman. This book is just, it's a memoir of marriage, but it's also a memoir of every woman who's gone through divorce. You are every woman. Oprah is so out of touch. I mean, this is, I have to recant because the other day, you know, I know you did this as well. Gail on call her daddy. Yeah. With the finding the friend in bed with the husband. And, you know, my producer Marlena and I, we went through it together and I was kind of like, I can't help but like Oprah in this moment. She's being a good friend. She's like, what do you mean he's driving your best friend who he just fucked to the train station?

54:55What are you talking about? And I'm like, everybody does need an Oprah. And then I see that and I'm like, no, no, no. Yeah, Maureen, catch yourself before you go any further. You are every woman. Really? Really? Really? No. We were just talking in the break about what makes us resent this woman. And I was saying, I can't stand the fact that she took a spot at Harvard and at NYU Law and apparently just used them, those spots and those degrees, to get her MRS degree, which is what she really wanted. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a wife and a mother. Stop taking up other people's spots at these institutions if that's what your goal is.

55:34It pisses me off because there are a lot of young men and young women who would kill to get a spot at one of those institutions and then would use it to actually make a difference in this world. And then sit around after, you know, the husband leaves you because you got uninteresting and you let yourself go and you were already boring to begin with. You gave up the one thing that would have given you something to discuss when you came at the dinner party, dinner table at night. and say, I don't know how to make ends meet. Like, use your damn degree. Go practice law. Hang out your shingle. Do something.

56:06Like the ineptitude, the helplessness, the feigned helplessness projects a weakness that I really abhor. Here's another theory of the case. What if she's not that bright? What if she's a good student and could do the memorization and test taking and had all the top tutors to help her through and all of the special dispensations. And then she got a nice cushy job because of who her parents were. But what if she's not that bright? She's clearly not an original thinker. She couldn't even craft a story that could hold up to scrutiny for more than a year. As soon as the New Yorker took one look at it and was like, why don't I check the marital assets?

56:46Although, you know, my theory is that he gave the financial, he gave the divorce settlement or like papers from the divorce proceeding to the New Yorker. I think you're dead on. I'm sure he was sick of this narrative. Of course. Who does she think she's kidding? Of course. And he's got to run around New York City circles with this on his back. His reputation counts for something in the world he's in. You're asking people to trust you with great amounts of wealth. And she's out here trying to assassinate his character, trying to fuck with his life in every way possible. And every woman on the talk show circuit line has bought it hook, line, and sinker.

57:24The Oprah treatment, the Gwyneth treatment, the Drew treatment, now the Netflix treatment. And this poor guy is like, you know what? It was a complicated marriage. I choose not to say anything because he's smart. He realizes coming out there and saying, let me tell you what a nightmare Belle was. It's not going to win him any fans. It's not going to win him all these women who now hate him back over. He had an affair. But again, what preceded it? What was going on in the marriage? That's really not disclosed. She makes it sound like, oh, it's just a total surprise. And then these quiet admissions about letting herself go, not being interesting, not going out, not having sex, not doing whatever.

58:02OK, so enough about Bell Burden, but this is the greatest book promo she's had. OK, I want to talk about CBS News. Wow. A lot of drama over there. So I didn't realize that now in the wake of like bloody Sunday, they only have three correspondents left. It's Bill Whitaker, Leslie Stahl, and some other guy who's like a sports guy over there. I can't remember his name. That's it. Everyone's been fired. Barry Weiss fired the executive producer. She fired the top two female correspondents. Anderson Cooper quit. Obviously, he was not in line with the new management. He chalked it up to, oh, my busy life.

58:43But the timing was not accidental. Just as the Ellisons took over CBS and they came under all this scrutiny to try. It's funny because there's a divide. You know, the left wing thinks that Barry and the Ellisons are trying to Trumpify CBS and that's why they're leaving and no longer watching. I disagree with that. I think the Ellisons would like to make CBS somewhat more Trump friendly because they want an end with the administration. They want the administration to approve all of their mergers. Barry can't stand Trump. Barry is a non woke Trump hating liberal, which is fine. That's who she is.

59:14But like there's Barry's definitely not trying to like. She's do more and more pieces that fluff Trump. She may be trying to inject a little bit more fair and balance into the 60 Minutes pieces here and there. I'm sure that's what Scott Pelley objected to. That's not a bad goal, right? 60 has gotten so far left. Scott Pelley, Leslie Stahl, they all hate Trump. That guy Bill Whitaker, the fluffing he did of Kamala Harris in that one ridiculous interview. Like, they're not wrong that 60 Minutes has a bias problem and it leans left. My issue about how this shit is going down, Maureen, is, of course, Scott Pelley is a prig and deserved to be canned long ago.

59:51He's totally unrelatable and he's very biased. However, irrespective of the fact that what they're trying to do in, like, fixing the editorial over there, you know, I think as somebody on the right side is something that's laudable, they're not handling it well. Whenever the drama of inside your company blows up to the point where it is a multiple day story on every news outlet in the country, you've done something wrong. You haven't managed your talent and your off-air talent well at all. And it's part of what a good leader does. Yesterday I was explaining Roger Ailes and how whenever he had to demote somebody or lateral move somebody, he always made it seem both to them, and they'd know, but definitely to the outside world, like it was a promotion.

1:00:39And he would put personal skin in the game to make sure it looked like that because he cared about his people. Sometimes you're not making it in the ratings. That's unfortunate, but he wouldn't fire you. I mean, honestly, he did it to Gretchen Carlson. She was hosting Fox and Friends. That wasn't working out. She wasn't fun. And so he gave her her own solo show in the middle of the day. No offense to Gretchen. I was in the middle of the day solo too. But it actually was a promotion for me. And I wound up going from there to the prime time. With Gretchen, it wasn't because Fox and Friends was one of our highest rated shows.

1:01:13And she wasn't working on it. But he made it look like it was good. He gave her her staff. She got to name it what she wanted, whatever. I wasn't just thinking of her. There are many people who did this too. And then they don't run to the news media and start complaining. Now she wound up complaining about him in a different way. But my point is simply when it's spilling out like this with this drama and now the other, the last remaining three are threatening to quit, something's gone very, very wrong in the way that the problems are being managed over there. What's your take? Well, you and I have been talking about this for a while, ever since she took over.

1:01:46And I remember saying to you that what I have heard is that impeccable source. Barry's terrible at managing people. Terrible. She was terrible at the free press. She's very lucky that the Ellisons came according because the free press started off as very buzzy and kind of electric and then it just fell flat. Nobody talks about it anymore. People were leaving. The staff morale was terrible. She doesn't listen to anybody. She's busy having dinners over Bill Ackman's private residence being told what a genius she is. You know, and so she, you know, and I remember saying to you, like, you can't go in and fire the entire newsroom.

1:02:28Like your job coming in is to have a little bit of humility and say, you know, what can I learn from you? What can you tell me about this storied institution? You know, and when you've got like people who are, Leslie Stahl is like 84 years old. She's going to be like, I don't need this. I don't like, you're going to have an empty roster. I mean, my problem with 60 Minutes is that it's just gone soft. Like Mike, since the days of Mike Wallace. Murderer's Row, what it used to be. A murderer's row. What a compliment to me. When I was at the post, somebody was like, you're on Murderer's Row. And I was like, deeply thankful.

1:03:00Yeah. You know, that's a real epic compliment. They were great. You want to be on Murderer's Row. And now it's like, they're doing softballs of like, let's go visit Adele in her mansion. You know, it's like, who cares? What is this thing doing? Why does it exist? So Barry goes in there. And one of the first things she does is steals an on-air opportunity from one of the correspondents by doing that town hall with Erica Kirk, which bombed. I'm sorry, but there is, I've said this before, more to broadcast journalism than just the journalism piece. Barry, with all due respect, is not a television personality at all in any way.

1:03:37She's not. And she failed. It was a miserable exchange. Erica is a very interesting person. love her or hate her. And I realize there are a lot of people there who feel strongly about Erica. I love her. She's interesting. You could make an interesting interview with her. You know what I mean? Like you could definitely go to Barry, but Barry chose her favorite issues and tried to zero in on those without realizing those don't have mass appeal and also stole the on-air opportunity from an on-air talent. You never saw Roger Ailes doing his own interview. You didn't see Chris Licht or Jeff Zucker, the bosses at CNN sequentially, go take the big interviews from Anderson Cooper or Caitlin Collins.

1:04:22Most people have no idea who's been running MSNBC all these years because that person would never swoop in and do the job of the on-air talent. Barry Weiss did that because Barry Weiss wants to be a star, like you said. And I'm sorry, whatever you think of Barry Weiss, let me tell you that the on-air talent don't like her and They don't appreciate this bullshit. So she swoops in. She's going to rule with an iron fist. There's a report out today that she said to David Ellison, the son of Larry, what's your tolerance for pain? And he said, hi. And so they fired Scott Pelley. They played the tough guy.

1:04:58Like, yeah, yo, bitch, you're out of here, Scott Pelley. And no one's crying any tears over Scott Pelley. But on the heels of firing Sharon Alfonsi, the other woman, the executive producer, they just lost an executive producer. This was the new executive producer. So three women, by the way, last week, fired in one fell swoop. Then Scott Pelley, that's four, in seven days. And he came out, Scott Pelley said, that he said to Barry in front of the staff, why did you fire the executive producer of the show? And she was like, I'm not answering that question. Okay, you can do that. You can say, I don't owe anybody an explanation.

1:05:38He's like, why did you fire Sharon? I'm not answering that question. Why'd you fire that? I'm not answering that question. What, you can play hardball all you want. What is that going to do to the existing morale within CBS News, within 60 minutes? It's going to make everyone hate you. You won't even say why. That's their boss. That's the, not their boss, but that's their colleague with whom they've been building this show now for many months during a tumultuous time. And all they know is you've canned her. It makes everybody feel unsteady. I'm sorry, but there's a way to handle people. And she doesn't know what it is, and clearly neither do the Ellicents.

1:06:14They're enjoying their little two minutes of power, like, yeah, my tolerance for pain is high. Fuck them. Fuck all of them. Let's red-wedding them, you know, from Game of Thrones. And you can feel really good about yourself for a while until you see the bad ink start to pop up in publication after publication after publication, and people like Steve Croft start to come out, who was part of Murderer's Row and say, what are you doing? He says 60 Minutes is a shadow of its former self. He's like, he says it no longer exists. Yeah, sorry, it was an interview with New York Magazine. The firings are too substantial.

1:06:50It seems almost impossible for me to imagine what kind of a show they can put on in September. It is very difficult for me to imagine a world without 60 Minutes or a show like 60 Minutes, which is not afraid to take on the government. You see the timidity all across the broadcast schedule right now. Um, and all of this is self-created. It's self-inflicted. You know, I wouldn't necessarily trust it. If my boss says to me, my tolerance for pain is high because I'm going to think that's going to boomerang back on me someday. David Ellison's tolerance for pain is not going to be super. She's not going to last more than a year in this job.

1:07:27No, she's not. And I also listening to you read that and what Steve Croft had to say about the hollowing out of 60 minutes and how they'll never rebuild it. I actually think that what's going on here is that Barry doesn't know how to create. She knows how to destroy. She knows how to be in opposition to something. She made her name with that open letter to the New York Times saying the editorial page has gone too woke, too left. She wasn't wrong, but that's how she made her bones and how she got her venture capital to found the free press, which was exciting for a minute. And then it flopped. Right.

1:08:04And now we're over here at CBS and we're not creating new things. We're not creating excitement. We're not bringing in people to make something bigger or better. She's destroying it because I don't think she knows what else to do. Yeah, I know. And honestly, you can't swoop into 60 minutes, fire all the top staff without any explanation, and then expect the remaining ones to do exactly what you want them to do. It's not a prison camp, right? This is not forced labor. Right. Like you are not the Gestapo, like just ease up a little. These are human beings. They've built their careers there. They've put in a lot of blood and sweat and tears at CBS.

1:08:42And listen, CBS is leftist. It's whatever. But like these people have worked there for a long time and they, not like us, but they respect Scott Pelley. They love 60 Minutes. They're not going to take well to this. So I really, I said from the beginning, you actually can fire everybody. And that's what you're going to need to do. If that's if you want this kind of change. Yeah, then you better fire them all or you're going to have a very unhappy work staff sitting there, very resentful of you and looking to undermine you at every turn. And they can. They're like the CIA. They will be leaking on Barry now to the end of time.

1:09:19She already has taken a massive black eye and it's only going to get worse. She doesn't understand that she's going to conduct meetings like that and tell Scott Pelley basically fuck off. And that entire full of investigative journalists isn't recording this. Yes. And going to leak it to everybody they know. Is she that thick? And wait for the next mistake you make and the next meeting and the one after that. Because they're loyal to him, not to her. That's the truth. Okay, I'm just giving the dynamics inside a newsroom. I'm not defending Scott Pelley. But these are the dynamics inside a newsroom, and they do need to be managed.

1:09:55Like any corporation, you can't just go in there like, what's your tolerance for pain? Hi, then let's start hurting people. Oh, great. What a wonderful place to work. Here, by the way, is Topra. That's Tony Dokapul. Oh, right. Yeah, the one who's always crying. He should be crying because his show has never seen worse ratings. um lionizing scott pelly on the way out the one they just fired here's what he said sat six he was in some ways a man from another era and that's not a knock he didn't watch the competition he said because he knew who he was a journalist who valued truth at all costs and always kept alive the memory of colleagues killed in the field a reminder that his chosen line of work could be a dangerous one.

1:10:46But Pelley also made one major break from the past. He changed the signs around here under the CBS Evening News logo where Scott Pelley's own name would have been. He instead wrote the CBS Evening News with all of us. Well, Scott, from all of us, thank you. That red sounded watched like an obit. Like, yeah, he's dead. He may as well be dead because He's not 60 anymore, so he's dead. We can bury him. So there was just on the break, I was looking at the Daily Mail, and they have this amazing piece about Scott Pelley, this woman who interned for him years ago. You know, my whole thing with Scott Pelley is I cannot stand the taking of the readers on and off and putting the arm of the readers into our mouth.

1:11:34And we're just, we're so, we're such an intellectual, and I got to put him back on. I don't care about the news, Maureen. Megan, this former intern who now works in the media says she was in the control room working for him and she saw him instruct the cameraman slowly zoom in on me as I remove my eye. It's like William Hurt in broadcast news. She said from that moment on, I was like, you can't take this guy seriously. That is so like with all of us. so that's perfect because it's the same way that somebody's like, I don't like to talk about myself I never talk about myself, I only know my friends are really interested in talking about me for some reason so I'll talk to myself about them because they ask but I hate to talk about myself, I would never it's narcissistic and it's self-centered but a lot of people do have questions about me so what would you like to know about me?

1:12:27Putting all of us instead of like with Scott Pelley while night after night he's insisting he's the ultimate authority on every story. He is the ultimate know-it-all. He's not in the business of learning anything. He proved that time and time again. It's just perfect. That is chess kiss on brand for him. We played the Moms for Liberty site yesterday. He's such an arrogant jerk trying to tell these Moms for Liberty who are on there lamenting porn, basically, in our school libraries that it was a figment of their imagination and that they make things up and then they don't back them up. It's like this is not a question of opinion.

1:13:08It's a matter of fact. It's been proven over and over. A Supreme Court case acknowledged it, but he never corrected the record. That's just one example here. Interestingly, well, here's more first before we move on to that. Jimmy Kimmel had some thoughts on Scott Pelley last night. Saw five. Last night, the Trump suck ups at CBS fired a great and deeply respected journalist, Scott Pelley, from his job at 60 Minutes because he stood up for truth and integrity at a show that's been the gold standard for broadcast journalism for 57 years. He said the collapse of values at the top has become untenable and he let him have it in a staff meeting right to the new guy's face.

1:13:49okay uh 57 years i i would guess it's more like 42 60 has not been respected for the past 15 years like they they did go hard left we could see it the leslie stall the laptop can't be verified right right which we only knew about because trump tape recorded it himself you know like she didn't air that right that the ridiculous fluffing of kamala harris that was insane during the campaign, trying to make her sound better than she was. All of it. You know, the audience knows. It was terminal. That Sharon Alfonsi who got fired. Again, I'm not defending her journalism, just saying that the handling of it has been very poor.

1:14:28But she was the one who was giggling about the crackdown on free speech in Germany, like the arrest of people for their opinions. That's right. She thought it was hilarious. That's right. Like you clearly saw a woman who wanted to bring that over here to the United States. So it has not been the gold standard for that long. and it actually is interesting because Steve Croft, in addition now here speaking out to New York Magazine, he went out with Bill O 'Reilly recently. Really? Yes, which I thought was very interesting because clearly they have different political sensibilities, but they're both kind of older, grizzled news guys.

1:15:01So there seemed to be a mutual respect there. And he did lift the dress up a little on what it was like to be on 60 Minutes during the heyday, you know, the 60 Minutes. And the answer is not great. Listen here, Asat, 6B. I can remember when I was tapped to go to 60 Minutes, I thought this was fantastic. And I expected to do a lot of people would just come up and say, that's really great. I'm really happy for you, whatever the thing. Right. And then you realize after a while that not everybody was happy that I got this job. Right. You were more competition. There were other people that wanted it.

1:15:36And so then you've all of a sudden made a bunch of enemies. and um and that's it's just you know it's a snake pit okay it's fascinating that he used that word i actually put this in my book when i got offered the prime time spot at fox o'reilly was my mentor but the name the name of my show came from a segment i had done on o'reilly for years called the kelly file and um i talked to him about it he was one of the first people i talk to about it. Like, what should I do? Should I take it? What, you know, how should I think about this? And he encouraged me and, but he warned me and he said, cable news primetime is a snake pit and was really kind of warning me to watch my back.

1:16:28He's not, it's interesting to hear somebody like Steve Croft, who I always looked at as like, just a tough shoe leather reporter. You know, he's definitely a lefty. His interviews of Obama were just downright shameful. He was in love with Obama. Shameful. But, you know, I begrudgingly accept that when not doing a political story, right, like where his politics made their way into it, he would do a good job. That even at 60, there was that like that jealousy that makes ascension to a top spot, a real, you know, double edged sword. There can be serious positives. In many ways, you succeed on paper, but the downside to success is it's enormous.

1:17:11All of your colleagues in his case turn against you. Some of mine did at Fox too, out of jealousy or competitive feelings. And then the outside world starts paying a lot more attention to you. I would say not so much in Steve Croft's case, but certainly at Fox and even in this role, the more success you have, the bigger target you are, the more people misrepresent you and just hate you for kind of no reason other than you make them feel bad about themselves in some way. But it was interesting to hear somebody like a man, like Steve Croft, talk about that dynamic. And I'm sure it's probably true for all of them.

1:17:49It is probably true for all of them. It's interesting because at 60 Minutes, and I don't know if it will be the case going forward, But they would typically assign one correspondent to presidential contenders. And then as the field winnowed, Croft was assigned Obama, and he was lucky in that Obama got elected. And so Steve was Obama's guy. Every time Obama did a 60 Minutes interview, he sat with Steve Croft. He owned that, right? So that's a great thing to have. But I think it's interesting to, you're right, to hear a man talk about like what we typically consider like sort of more the province of mean girl stuff.

1:18:29Yeah. You know, competition, jealousy, sort of like an aggressiveness that can feel subterranean. Do you think it's every industry? At that level? I was going to ask you that. I don't, media is bad. It's very bad in terms of its toxicity for sure. You know, I was with Sean Ryan last week and, you know, you can't go online right now without seeing multiple attacks on me by these bots that are clearly paid for by AI firms that are very, very pro-Israel who have decided I need to be destroyed because I'm not in favor of this war. And it's like swimming in a stew of toxicity. And at this point in my career, I've gotten used to dealing with that.

1:19:09It doesn't make it any more pleasant. But I was wondering, like, do you think it's every industry? And I think the answer is it's a lot of them. I think a lot of the people listening to this right now have some measure of this in their day jobs. Oh, sure. Where like if they've ascended, they're a target. Or even if they're whatever position they're in, there's somebody who begrudges them. The job, the success, the benefits, the respect of the boss in the company. You know, there's always something. And people, as my therapist always says, people are complicated. You know, they need to work out their issues on you sometimes.

1:19:43You know, I think it happens at every point of your career. And I was thinking when I was first starting out and like, you know, I was ambitious and I was competitive and I wanted to do the best job. I wanted to be better than the person next to me and I wanted to get the promotion. And that's, you're kind of, at least I was, under the impression that as you rise, if you're lucky enough to, because I think luck is a huge factor, no matter how hard you work, that it somehow would lessen, right? That as you get - Your life is going to get better. You're going to make a little more money. You're going to have a little more institutional respect.

1:20:22More people in your field will know who you are. It'll get easier. And in fact, sometimes I think it can get more intense, you know, because now you're fighting for fewer positions in rarefied air. I'm sure it happens like at like at like the world's best medical facilities. I'm sure it is a snake pit. You know, colleges, neurologists. Right. Or if you're at Tesla or if you're in tech or like I think it's everywhere. I think it's I'm sure it's like even like who got to go on that on that most recent moon voyage. Who got to go? So you could hear little rumblings like, why is the head astronaut, is it DEI?

1:21:01I don't think it was. I think it was the most qualified guy who was also mediogenic, right? Because you have to now be mediogenic up in outer space. You got to project some confidence. You know what I mean? It's true. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I feel like most people go through this. They go through some sort of toxicity in their job that makes them question like, how great is this? Do I want to keep doing this? For me, I've always been lucky in that I love the news. I love talking about the news. I love reading the news. And I love delivering the news. I think we do it in a very compelling, I think, entertaining way, which is what our brand has been.

1:21:38That's why people come to us. They trust us, and they know that they're going to get the news in a way that's interesting. It's not going to be like some bore fest like you can get from Scott Pelley, where it's not only boring, but it's wrong. It's biased, and he'll never correct it. In any event, I don't think Scott Pelley is going to wind up on a podcast anytime soon. I think he's probably thinking that's beneath him and he's too important for that. My prediction would be next move would be like PBS, like a frontline type program. That'll be his ride off into the sunset. It won't be independent media.

1:22:15I guarantee you he thinks that's beneath him. beneath him it really it really it really only works if the arm goes into your mouth and it's unhygienic and some poor minion of yours has to pick up your eyeglasses and clean them i would put i would put his future with a side of like teaching media studies at like columbia oh god or at the kennedy school uh yeah yeah school government sure the fake harvard okay maureen stays with us we got a lot more to get to including dr jill biden and uh the latest from Blake Lively. For 250 years, Americans have believed in a powerful idea that we were meant to live free, free to work hard, free to move, free to enjoy life without being held back.

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1:25:47Maureen Callahan is back with me. She is the host of The Nerve, which you should subscribe to now on YouTube and all podcast platforms. I was saying the other day, you weren't even here, how the nerve is perfect for the summer in particular. You know, and like, it's like the cocktail you need when you go off to the beach, you know, like, that's exactly how I'd want to spend my time on the beach. Just sitting in a chair under an umbrella, listening to the nerve. It's shooted into my veins. It's the truth. You know, I feel that way. Okay. I don't exactly feel that way about Dr. Jill Biden, but I do feel the need to get to an update on her because she won't stop herself on this book tour.

1:26:24She continues to go out and about. And here is, okay, is it, here's the slip she did on Morning Joe when talking about the joint presidency she shared with Joe. You tell me, listen to the pronouns in SOT 8B. Me, Doug, I thought we were a great team. We chose Kamala, Joe chose Kamala to be VP. And And so we were supportive of her. What? We. We chose Kamala. Not he. We. Oh, I'm so happy to be talking to you about this because I just want to get out of my system. We're apolitical over at the nerve. But this to me is just like, this is just a malignant narcissist who will not leave the stage and is insistent upon bringing all of us into her delusional reality in which she had no idea anything was wrong with her husband.

1:27:25No idea. And she says, we chose her. We chose her. That isn't even factually correct. Because if you remember the palace intrigue at the time, they were forced into it. The news dropped on a Sunday. Normally it's a Friday news dump. So that was how like perilous this whole thing was. They really finally got him to sign the document like I won't run. And this is my announcement. Kamala immediately begins getting on the phone, whipping the votes, whipping the votes, whipping the calls, getting in. Like that's how Kamala got the nomination. It wasn't because the Bidens hated her. Yeah, they hated her guts.

1:27:59And they were forced to take her as his VP, too, even though she had called him a racist on the open debate stage because she's a black woman. That's why. And Jill apparently was the one who never forgave her for that. Yeah. At the debate. Yeah. Jill Biden can't stand Kamala Harris and it's mutual. So it's like, okay. And she clearly seems kind of bitter at her and her complaints. There was this moment at the 92nd Street Y in New York on Tuesday where she was doing her book event. And guess who made a guest appearance? Awkward AF, as the kids say, Sot8E. Oh, Joe has a question. Like you couldn't ask it later?

1:28:37who do you love most in the whole world whoopi

1:28:48that pisses me off and the reason that pisses me off is that if they had their way he'd be president right now this pisses me off on a human level because i've got i can speak as someone who has a living parent with dementia and another parent who died of cancer. Now, Jill's out here going, oh, you know, it's been very hard. Joe's got stage four cancer. Very, very difficult diagnosis. Yeah, I know well. I would no sooner drag my father out to a book event. Oh my God. To have to dress in a suit. Do you know how enervating that is for someone who is that sick? Yes. And then to have to sit there for two hours and be transported back and forth and not for nothing.

1:29:30traffic in New York right now. It took me two hours to get to you today. It normally takes an hour. We've got the World Cup. We've got the Knicks. We've got graduations happening. It is gridlock everywhere. That is not a kind act that you do for the man you say you love more than anybody, which apparently she doesn't because now it's Whoopi Goldberg. And like he's infirm. Just take one look at him. Who do you love more than anyone else in the world? And that was the most they could have him do. That was the most, the twisting of the, you know, the turn behind the Barbie could deliver. And literally they, they wanted him to be the leader of the free world right now, only because Trump stopped him.

1:30:12Did it not happen? I mean, it's incredible to me to see him as he deteriorates even further, just the obviousness of their lie. Of course, we all knew it. I'm just saying like, there it is the evidence, more evidence of it. And it's so glaring and it's galling. Okay. So that's what's happening over in Jill Biden world. Good luck with your book. That was the one thing Joe Biden gave us that I liked. I liked his saying, good luck in your senior year. Wait, wait, what was that? He just randomly says it and it works for me. I don't know. It's just like a good kiss off. Good luck in your senior year.

1:30:43Okay. Blake Lively, something interesting happened on the show this week. So there's a woman named Victoria Burke. Is that her her last name. And she came on the program because she is the one who came up with and drafted that 47.1 law that will allow a woman who sues somebody for sexual harassment and then gets slapped with a defamation lawsuit as a counterclaim by the guy. It'll allow her to recover her attorney's fees times three if the defamation claim gets dismissed. It was a way of evening the playing field. It could be the man who's getting harassed. I handled a case like that when I was a lawyer, but usually it's the man harassing a woman, let's be honest, because men are generally in the power position still.

1:31:36And she was trying to help disempowered, unconnected, poor women who get harassed, stop a really powerful connected guy from making her life a living hell by giving him some skin in the game. If you hit me with this defamation claim and I managed to make it go away, you're going to have to pay me my attorney's fees and whatever actual damages you caused me times three and punitives. So it's a severe penalty. Blake Lively tried to use it against Justin Baldoni. Right now, after walking away from this lawsuit, which was bullshit from the start, She's trying to make him pay this so she can declare it a victory.

1:32:12And Victoria came on the program and made quite a bit of news about what's happened here. Listen, listen here. I received a communication from her attorney that Blake was intending to now move 47.1 nationwide, including she would be moving it to New York. And I responded, I'm already doing that. And can you please check with me before going forward? Because my whole strategy was to fly this under the radar because we basically usually don't have much opposition. And I said, there's oftentimes your client is compared to Amber Heard. And so I would prefer you check with me and just stick with like mentioning the California part about mentioning it's being moved nationwide.

1:32:58Cause I was worried that this is going to become just a PR campaign for her. And it wasn't going to be about survivors anymore. It was going to be about like, I didn't want her to turn my bill into the Met Gala. Amazing. And that's what Blake Lively is doing. So there, this whole thing is about her trying to emerge Maureen as a champion of women, trying to bring that 41 point 47.1 provision nationwide. She's the one who stole it from Victoria Burke and expanded it nationwide because she's Blake Lively, who was terribly sexually harassed by Justin Baldoni, champion of the ladies. Meanwhile, the originator of the whole bill, who actually was the victim of a sexual assault, unlike Blake, is saying, please don't do that.

1:33:48If anybody's going to bring it national, it's going to be me who has learned how to get this thing passed in four states so far. And I neither need nor want your help. And they're not listening to her. So Blake Lively is going to do even more damage to women. It's not enough that she's damaged any other woman who's going to come forward and say, that man sexually harassed me because now it's synonymous with this, right? Yeah. Now she has to further shit on not only the author, the hard one authorship of a bill and the author who says, please don't do that. There is an entire strategy here that you don't understand.

1:34:29You're a fucking actress. Yes. Get out of my lane. And I'm trying to help women of lower socioeconomic class than the likes of you. And Blake says, no, I'm going to do what I want. Like, it's so on brand. I just burn it to the ground. I just want her. You know, Ryan's out there right now promoting his Wrexum series, you know, trying to just be Mr. Relatable guy. Wrexum? Yeah, you know that? Welcome to Wrexum. No, but it sounds an awful lot like another word. You're so right. Nominative determinism. Wreckum. Wreckum. Who wants – no, rectum. That's what I – Oh, you're filthy. I don't know. That's what I heard.

1:35:08Oh, my God. So, yeah, no, but she's just burning it all to the ground, burning it all – not enough. Not enough. Like, if she really wanted that Taylor Swift invite to the wedding. Yeah. Now it's definitely not happening. If she was on the bubble at all, Taylor is definitely crossing you off the invite list. This is so humiliating. I just feel like she truly is all about her. Even in defeat, we knew that she was trying to make herself look like a victor by filing this thing and pinching Justin for potential millions. But I didn't realize this piece of it until this woman came on our show and broke this news that it's about much more than that.

1:35:40It's about Blake trying to make herself look like she's a champion for all women and to bring this provision nationally, even though the author of it, an actual victim, does not want her interfering. And basically it's stolen valor because Blake's like, with all my money and resources, I can do this faster and better than you can. Meanwhile, she can't because she's a nitwit. She doesn't understand the strategy. And this woman also was saying it was never intended for use by somebody like Blake Lively. She said that also in our extended interview, saying like we talked about how she is the empowered one.

1:36:15She's the one in the richer, more connected power position versus Justin Baldoni. She doesn't need a defamation law tweak in order to protect herself from Justin. You're right. It's like he's the one who, if anything, would need protection from her. Anyway, she's such a small person and that's been exposed to this whole lawsuit. So that's a blessing. Ted Danson. I know. Who saw this coming? I didn't either. It was just in my feed yesterday. I'm like, well, this is interesting. Ted Danson is one of the people who has done blackface in the most infamous way possible. He did minstrel show blackface.

1:36:56I think there's a difference. There is a difference between, you know, blackface in that somebody wants to look like Diana Ross and they tint their skin with like tanner. and this, we're showing the picture of him in like what they used to do like in the 1930s with the white makeup around the mouth and the black like shoe polish on the face, which is, I mean, whatever. You're not allowed to say either one is okay. Trust me, I learned that the hard way. But this is just obviously so degrading and nobody ever had an idea in modern history that this would be okay, except for Ted Danson. So he did that in 1992 at the Friars Club in a roast of Whoopi, who was his lover at the time.

1:37:36And she helped him write it and was totally in on it. And so he went on this podcast with W. Kama Bell. W. Kama Bell. And he was so self-flagellated. Let me just give you a feel for how Ted sounded. Sot29. Why I would like to address this is, and apologize forever, I am, I know what was in my heart. So I have no problem talking about this, but I need to and want to apologize for the rest of my life because somebody today can go on the internet, you're right, and go, what the fuck? Yeah. Wow. I feel betrayed. I feel angry and whatever. And I did that. Okay. So let me tell you something about this Kamala Bell.

1:38:26After the 2024 election, he this is the headline from him. Voters ran toward racism, misogyny and xenophobia. If Kamala was a rich white man, the race probably wouldn't be as close. The country still has an uninvestigated race problem that we are afraid to investigate. after I said my comments on NBC about how I didn't like when I was growing up, blackface wasn't like you wouldn't get canceled for it. Like in the 70s and the 80s, he came for me. He started ripping me and was unforgiving, unapologetic or whatever, unforgiving entirely of me. Let's see how he handled Ted Danson, who not only talked about, I never wore blackface, just talked about it.

1:39:14But Ted Warritt in Minstrel Show. Let's hear what he said to Ted. I do want to give you some more flowers around the fact that you demonstrated to me how to apologize in public. Thank you. How to say, oops. And around an issue, and I'm sure you know what I'm referring to. I do. We can go anywhere you want, but only because it's you. Yeah, okay. I mean, you would be the person I'd want to go talk to. And when you did my podcast, I want to give you a little flower. We nipped around. We weren't nipping around it, but you said something, I said something, and we both looked at each other going, ah, I know what you're talking about.

1:40:04And you said, yes, I do, and we'll move on. Yeah. Which was full of grace. It went on like this for quite some time. Ted Danson talked about how he went to some race, like expert sat with her for an hour to, you know, expunge the sin from his head and heart. You know, he did the mandated therapy basically and to make him non-racist, I guess. I guess. And he got flowers for that too. This was like a lick fest by this Kamau Bell who is completely forgiving of Ted Danson because he was self-flagellating over it. I don't remember Ted Danson ever coming out when I was twisting in the wind at NBC and saying, no, she's not wrong.

1:40:46It wasn't just the 70s and the 80s where people would do this and think it wasn't a problem. I did it at the Friars Club in 1992 in the worst way you could possibly do it. And I didn't realize when I did that that it was incredibly like all these. I love calling attention to this because all these people let me twist in the wind. I know Jimmy Jimmy Kimmel's done it, too. I mean, I don't know that it's ever really been OK, but to don it. But what Ted had going for him in that moment is he was with Whoopi Goldberg. They were having this hot affair and everybody was really, really like attracted.

1:41:18Like you couldn't look away because it was like, you know, Ted Danson, he was such a good looking guy even now. And Whoopi Goldberg? Yeah. Like I think he left his wife for Whoopi. His wife of many years. He suggested this was racist too. The fascinating, the fascination. No, that was not it. That trust me. It was not it. It was like this very handsome, talented, masculine guy with like Whoopi Goldberg, who doesn't look like she bathes very often. That's it. She's not as attractive. And, you know, Whoopi took like half of that heat. And she was like, if it's okay with me, it's okay. So you can't assail him.

1:41:56And everybody loved him, right? What was the other thing I was going to say about this with the – oh, what that host said about, you know, America's still got a very big race problem. Uninvestigated. Uninvestigated. Really? Bullshit. And I was thinking about this last night because I was watching the Knicks game, which was electrifying. Yeah, go Knicks. And you watch these guys on the court, you know, and a mixed race crowd and everybody's behind their team. That's it. And New York, one of the most polyglot cities in the world. Nobody gives a shit what color your skin is. They're just in it for the Knicks.

1:42:32That's it. And we are the melting pot and we love it. So, you know, fuck off with this uninvestigated racism. Oh, my God. Like, uninvestigated? Are you kidding me? Like, do you watch MSNBC? Have you seen them over the past six years? Because it's been investigated. CNN, too. They've been investigating it. Trust me. But I just love how all these people were like, let her twist. Because she said, you know, people used to do this in the 70s and the 80s, and they didn't get canceled. Like, this was something you would see. Turns out NBC, I said that on NBC, and my show was canceled. NBC's biggest star did it.

1:43:02Ted Danson, not to mention Zach Graff, the one on Scrubs. Oh, he did? They'd been airing that on Scrubs two years prior to my comments on NBC. Luanne De La Sepse from The Real Housewives. That was a flashpoint moment. She did it on Bravo. It was a flashpoint moment. That's the segment we were discussing. Oh, really? That was the segment we were discussing. But my point was simply like, it was everywhere and you didn't always get canceled over it. That's what I said. Luanne survived. Yeah, no, it was just ridiculous. But Ted Danson let me twist in the wind. Twisted. So you twist too, sir, although not on Kamau Bell's show.

1:43:36He's going to give you lots of flowers because you're a self-flagellating leftist. Maureen, a pleasure, my friend. Always lovely to see you. Love you, Megan. Can't wait to tune into The Nerve. Recommend you all do it as well. I'll be listening right alongside you. We're back tomorrow with somebody I've never interviewed, best-selling author James Patterson. Now we'll see if he has gotten a review like the ones Doug is getting. something tells me he has but I'm looking forward to meeting him and it's going to be fun so we'll see you then thanks for listening until tomorrow thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show no BS no agenda and no fear

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