Trump's Iran Decision Approaches, Kamala's Strange New Accent, and The Key Vance Factor, with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke | Ep. 1300

26:08The second reason is that when you are dealing in real estate, especially in a place in New York, especially in the 70s and the 80s, then saying anything that comes into your head or being wild can help. you go into a closed room you talk to people who are probably a little bit surprised maybe intimidated by you and you say crazy stuff and you get what you want and we know that this is one of the reasons that Donald Trump is so rich but when you're the president your words matter so even if you say something that works you've still said it I thought this back in his first term when he would praise Kim Jong-un yeah that seems to have worked but the president of the United States should not be praising a dictator.

26:56Likewise here, sure, maybe it works to say you will wipe out a civilization. I did love that he subsequently wrote, God bless the Iranian people, so they're the same message. He was going to wipe out the civilization and bless them. But he shouldn't have said that. That's not a thing. Even in the context of a great debate, that is not a thing that an American president can say. There are rules. And so when I watch him here, I see somebody who is applying a skill set that is different to that which is expected of the presidency. Now, sometimes that's actually quite refreshing. I'm not somebody who always dislikes this in Trump.

27:36I do think sometimes you need a guy who comes to Washington and just sort of says, but that's nonsense. The way you're doing it is stupid and shakes everything up. And there have been some advantages to having him in our politics as well as downsides, but it's just not going to work here. You do need to build a coalition. You do need to set out your aims. You do need to talk in a way that is appropriate for the presidency. And I just haven't seen that from the beginning, which is what I always describe as the original sin, as this adventure in Iran, which I'm not intrinsically opposed to. And another thing that plays a role here, clearly, is the success of the Venezuelan operation, I think, inclined him to think this could be easy, short, and very successful as well.

28:22I analogize it a little bit to our success in the initial phase of the Afghan war, just taking Kabul and toppling the Taliban made us, George W. Bush, think, well, we can do the same thing in Baghdad, which was a more difficult proposition. Now, both Afghanistan and Iraq involved extensive ground operations, obviously, in a way. We had guys in the ground in Venezuela briefly, and Iran as well. But we're not talking about that here. But I think the same thing was at play. I got this incredibly proficient military. We just grabbed this guy dead of night. We can do anything we want. And again, this plays into just Trump's inherent optimism.

28:57Like his critics very often, they, you know, focus on the American carnage Trump, you know, that phrase from the first inaugural, he's so apocalyptic and so negative. Now, I can obviously, there's an aspect to him. But I think the more pervasive one is just an overwhelming optimism. I talked to him about this once during the lawfare campaign before the 2024 primaries when they're trying to throw him in jail. I was like, do you ever lose sleep at night? He's like, no, I just figure, I assume everything's gonna work out. And if it doesn't work out, I'll change course and find some other way out of it.

29:30And that's worked for him his entire adult life. And he's applying that here as well for better or worse. Yes, it's a very interesting point that the skillset that he has rhetorically is just, it's mismatched to the moment. And it has served him and us well many times. And even the unpredictability of taking out Soleimani, which I thought was great. I mean, that guy actually does have American blood on his hands without question. And maybe it even could have been used here as well if we had just taken out the Ayatollah. You know, that would have been fraught for sure. You'd taken out the leader of Shiite Islam.

30:06My counterfactual, by the way, runs in the opposite direction, Megan. If I get to have a do-over again, maybe what you do, you don't take the Ayatollah out, make it clear you're not going to try to kill the regime. Instead, you're doing another 12-day war, you know, for two weeks or for three weeks that would perhaps keep the Iranians from going up the escalation ladder and closing the strait. And then you degrade a lot of stuff. And then you can, you know, close the book at your discretion and go away and focus on other stuff, which I think Trump ultimately would want to do. But once you make it clear this is an existential war for the regime, there's no incentive for it not to take the most extreme steps it can in retaliation.

30:43Yeah, and they're enjoying playing it out. Like they can take a lot of pain. You know, it's like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. How many times did they waterboard that guy? Like he didn't care. And that's the mentality of a lot of these religious zealots in the Middle East. They don't care about themselves, their pain, their loss of life, the loss of life of their children in the way we do. I mean, they'll exact retribution against you for, you know, taking it or risking it, but they'll expend their child's life in order to advance the regime. That's what we're dealing with. You know, so it's like, it's, that's why it's like, you just don't start it.

31:25Just don't, don't start something like this. Then you don't risk the escalatory ladder where the next thing you know, they've discovered this thing with the Strait of Hormuz, which has changed the world economy, which is turning our friends against us. Already we're seeing discussions in Europe about jet fuel over the summer and flights being canceled, like things like that, that will drive those poll numbers down even more, Charles. Well, or do it, but build the case. We can win this. This is not like a war game scenario where we're looking at a potential conflict with China, and there are some outcomes where you say we would lose.

32:05We can win this. We are infinitely more powerful than them. But, and I'm not criticizing this, we're not prepared to do what it would take, because the public doesn't want that. We could, we'd lose a lot of people, but we could win this. And if we had been invaded here, and the reaction of the public was different, we would fight back and we would win and we would lose people and then we would move on. So it's not that we're in this situation because we're weak. We're in this situation because, as you say, we have a desire to stay alive and see our fellow citizens stay alive. and the regime does not.

32:55Now, I don't think he would have been able to build a coalition in the way that George W. Bush did after 9-11. I agree. But if Trump had made the case and over a sustained period of time said what he now says, look, this has been a thorn in our side for 46 years. They've killed a lot of our servicemen. They are built atop an ideology that hates us. His slogan is death to America. They are building nuclear weapons. And once they have those nuclear weapons, then they will become like North Korea, essentially immune from our influence. We have to do something about this. if he had built that case told people it would cost American lives told people that it would lead to increased gas prices and told people that there was a risk of trouble in the straits of Hormuz and I think we probably have had a better plan for the straits of Hormuz if he had done this as a result as Rich points out we might be looking at a different calculation at that point the escalation you're describing is baked in because again it's not for a lack of technical ability we could open the strait of hormones we could own the strait of hormones if we wanted i mean we could go and invade britain tomorrow when we would win we would own that country if we wanted we just don't want to do that and we don't want to uh go all out here either and so i think the big problem for him was that he didn't ever make that case he did it in the middle of the night.

34:34And then as we were talking about earlier, Rich is absolutely right. Trump actually has been an Iran hawk for a very long time. But it is also true that if you ask the average voter who isn't familiar with all of that, what they thought he was campaigning on in 2016, 2020 and 2024, it was no new wars in the Middle East. That's the vibe. That's the tone that they heard. And the juxtaposition between those two things just makes this impossible. So I think he set himself up to be placed into this problem where they can escalate in ways that we are not able, but not willing to counter. Yep, totally agree.

35:13You're right. The average person doesn't realize, oh, there was an exception to the promise he made. I mean, I could play you a soundbite that would keep us here for four minutes of Trump saying, no new wars, no new wars, no new wars in the Middle East. These wars in the Middle East keep you bogged down. They cost billions of dollars. It's money we could be spending on, you know, our people here at home. They get distracted. They never end well. It's quagmire. I mean, we've got the soundbite. Like there was no like, but I might launch one against Iran. And by the way, you know, the intelligence was Tulsi Gabbard testified to this a couple of weeks before we started the war that Iran was not close to having a nuclear weapon, that our strikes against the three sites with Iranian or with the nuclear facilities had been very effective.

35:57As Trump said, they'd been basically obliterated and that they were not close to getting a nuke. And that was one of the reasons why he knew people weren't going to buy it because he'd done those June strikes and we kind of bought what he sold then. And if you bought what he sold then, you were not going to buy that they were close to a nuclear weapon six months later. Here is something Glenn Greenwald pointed out online. It's a good point. He writes, if you ask 15 people who are MAGA followers what the Iran war aim was, you will hear 15 different answers because Trump gave a different goal every day.

36:27Here's what he said was his main goal on the day the war started. And he's got a Washington Post headline, Trump colon, freedom for Iran is goal of major military operation. And I remember that too. That was the initial goal, freedom. They were going to be free. We were going to do regime change. And now he keeps saying that we've done regime change, which we clearly haven't. That's a lie too. And it's so transparent. Honestly, it's one thing for Trump to be like, you know, the economy's hot. It's the hottest it's ever been. And you're like, OK, that's puffery. He wants people to feel good. The better they feel, the more they spend.

37:04But like, this is serious stuff. Don't tell me there's been a regime change because three guys named Abdul are gone and three guys named Mohammed are now in. That's basically how it is. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that the three new guys seem more radical than the three old guys. And there's no fatwa against a nuclear weapon. We found one sort of nice guy we can talk to who is the Speaker of the Parliament. But he's not actually in control. You know, you've got the IRGC calling the shots. They seem to be really wanting to queer all deals on ceasefires. And then you've got, I don't know, whoever's still in there.

37:42The Ayatollah's incapacitated son, who may or may not be still alive or in a coma, we have no idea. But he and the people around him are definitely more radical than the dead Ayatollah, according to all the reports. So it's yet another thing we just don't know about. And here's the latest on the numbers. This just came out yesterday via NBC. One third of Americans approve of this war. One third. You've got two thirds of the country who are against this. And the only people who are in the approved category are Republicans. 74 % of Republicans approve. One quarter of the Republican Party disapproves.

38:23But the share of Republicans who disapprove of the war is higher than the share who disapprove of his job overall. So there's a healthy amount of Republicans who can still, like me, say, I don't disapprove of Trump. I have not abandoned Trump like some of my friends have. But I strongly disapprove of this choice. And he's really trying to start a fight with me and others. And I just refuse. I'm not going there. He enjoys it too much and it's pointless. But I still approve of his general approach to his domestic agenda. I really would love for him to get back to it. NBC reports that 13 % of self-described supporters of the MAGA movement now say they disapprove of Trump's handling of the war, which is interesting that he's lost 13 % of like the core, core MAGA.

39:12I mean, which I did not think was movable in any way. Anyway, he sees that. And while Trump may tell you he feels so great about the MAGA numbers, 80 % of independents, 82 % disapprove of this war. 82. It's not a fringe, like the majority, the two thirds of the country wants this to stop. That's why, Rich, Trump wants it to stop. He's listened to Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin and Netanyahu and Thiessen and Keane and all of the much more hawkish people who are in his ear. But that NBC poll and the Reuters-Ipsos poll that came out today and the AP poll and the Pew poll and all the polls that have come out now that all repeat this number, two-thirds disapprove.

39:56He sees that, too. He's not immune to that by any stretch. Yeah, well, he hadn't, again, as we've repeated over and over again, he didn't build a case for it publicly prior to the launching of the war, and the war wasn't popular at the outset. So usual political physics say support goes down for a war over time rather than growing unless they're really unusual circumstances, or you're winning a smashing victory, and this so far has been fairly inconclusive. On the regime change thing, it's absurd. They're saying that the regime has changed. Again, key aspect of Trump's character. He thinks he can bend reality to his words.

40:32Benefits to this, downsides, benefits. It can often get him through obstacles that you would you would think are going to stop him. Downsides, it's just it's detached from reality. Right. So that's that's what we're seeing. I think regime change, despite that Washington Post headline, it was something obviously he mentioned in that white-hatted initial statement about the war. You know, we hope the Iranian people will rise up after the shooting stops. But there are a lot of other objectives that have been consistent from the beginning, whether it's further degrading their nuclear program or their missile program that have been consistent.

41:11And I think we're succeeding on. But I never thought you could change the regime from the air unless you got exceptionally lucky. Then you'd not have any control over what would come next. And I think there are signs the regime is fracturing. This is one reason we don't really know whether we can believe what's coming from the Iranian side. And there's a chance that fracture grows or, you know, as I mentioned earlier, that discontent rises six months, 12 months from now. But to underline a point you were making earlier, Megan, this is a regime that just a couple months ago slaughtered tens of thousands of people in the streets.

41:46We don't know what the actual number is. So obviously they do not have the best interests of the Iranian people at heart. So if you're going to lose some bridges, it's not going to affect them, right? If you're willing to kill your own people and the cause of your regime's own survival, it's not as though infrastructure projects are going to move you as well. So this, again, goes to something we've all been saying here. These guys, the Iranian regime, they're not real estate developers. They don't have rational calculus the same way we do. They have an entirely different worldview. This just in, that Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner are also still in the U.S.

42:25The plane that was supposed to take them this morning from Miami to Europe and to Pakistan did not leave until several minutes ago and is now instead making its way to Washington, D.C. So they're heading to see Trump, as is the vice president, and no one is going to Islamabad right now, at least. Doesn't mean it won't happen later today, because the Iranians are still saying, we're not coming. We're not going to be there. Um, they're mad because we have continued our blockade of the Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz and they want us to remove that. And Trump, I understand why he's like, that's my, that's my pressure point on you.

43:06I'm not removing that boot off of your neck until we cut a deal. And they're like, we're not even going to talk about a deal until you move your foot. So that's where we are right now. Um, waiting for something. Here's one other thing he told Joe Kernan of CNBC. Charles, to your point about the president's rhetoric, and does it work when we're on the subject of war? Here's thought four. And when it's over, and it will end, when it's over, you know, they want it to be over immediately. And I just looked at a little chart. World War I, four years and three months. World War II, six years. Korean War, three years.

43:42Vietnam, 19 years. Iraq, eight years. i'm five months okay five months i would have won vietnam very quickly i would have if i were president i would have won iraq in the same amount of time that we won because essentially we've won here okay i mean people can play games the democrats can say well we should have done better no matter what if i did it in one week they should have said they'd say we should have done better look at venezuela i took it over in 45 minutes it was basically a 45 minute by the way a very strong military country and we took it over in a day but let's be nice but we basically took it over in 45 minutes we took it over during the attack in 45 minutes so he would have won vietnam very quickly had he been president it would have been one it would have been quick charles thoughts yeah we didn't go to vietnam tv he is ridiculous when he talks like this.

44:40He does it on the economy as well. And I think to your earlier question, I think this is the sort of thing that is starting to annoy people. The reason that he was reelected was that people believed that the economy would be considerably better under him. And it's not. Now, I don't think that that is necessarily his fault. I think actually, we look far too much to our presidents and to Washington DC in general for economic outcomes. Economics doesn't really work like that. But Trump does talk like that. Both parties do, but Trump is particularly brigadierous when he does it. He says, I alone can fix.

45:16He says that we're entering a new golden age and so forth. And he's doing the same thing here. And I hear underconfidence in his words. I hear a certain fear. Perhaps this relates to the Wall Street Journal piece I didn't read, that Trump Trump knows that from the average person's point of view, again, and I will distinguish this from my own view, which is not against this action per se. And I think the Iranian regime is a real problem. But I think from the average person's point of view, who rationally does not follow politics in the way that we do, but is by no means ignorant. the united states was trundling along and then all of a sudden we went into iran and now gas prices are 25 plus percent higher that's how they see it and whether we have won or lost or whatever games the democrats are supposed to play and they are playing games of course it's politics the public is going to need to be persuaded that there is more to it than that but they're not being.

46:25It's just not good enough to go in in the middle of the night, give a two minute speech in the middle of the night at Mar-a-Lago in a Trump ad, and then to say, well, we won. When people are looking at gas prices, and they're looking at an economy that not because of this, but in general, is not particularly different than it was at the end of the Biden administration. I just think people find that tiresome because it doesn't pay the bills. And Trump should understand that. And look, if he was the sort of person who, like me, says, well, look, presidents don't run the economy. These things are very complicated.

47:01Policy changes take years to kick in and so forth. That would be one thing. But he's not, Meghan. We all know he's not. He thinks that things are wonderful, perfect when he's president, and they're awful when he's not. And he said it right there. I mean, I'm pleased he didn't go back to World War II and say that unlike that feckless Eisenhower fellow he'd had it done in 1942. But it's just quite boring outside of campaigning. And there's just going to come a point 11 years in at which people say, even when he's right, oh, could you give it a rest? Yeah. You know, Rich, I've been wondering whether Trump thinks his Trump card is this new guy who is in confirmation hearings today to become the new chairman of the Fed, right?

47:48That he calls Jerome Powell, too late, too late because he won't lower interest rates. And Trump really thinks that's the key to unleashing the economy, that it worked to his advantage in his first term. And he's been begging Powell to do it. Powell won't do it because we still have inflation from Joe Biden. And if you lower interest rates, it tends to drive up inflation. But Trump really believes that it will unleash his economy if he can get interest rates lower a bit on borrowing, you know, homes and so on. And this guy's going to get confirmed. He seemed pretty milquetoast today at his confirmation hearings.

48:22I haven't heard any rumblings of he's not going to get confirmed. And Powell's term ends in May, I think, right? It's like next month. It's very soon. And so I've been wondering whether Trump thinks that's, again, his Trump card on the economy. Like, I'm taking a beating on these gas prices, but I'm going to have a guy who is much more amenable to my opinions in charge of interest rates just in time for the months leading up to the midterms. Yeah, he's probably thinking that this is another aspect in which he's a real estate developer. Real estate developers always want low interest rates. And this is something Trump's been consistent on the last 10 years.

48:58He always wants interest rates lower no matter what. And I think Warsh may agree with him here in the short term, but he is a real pro, Kevin Warsh. He's going to Malackey. And it wouldn't shock me if by the end of Trump's term here, he hates Kevin Warsh, too, because he hasn't done his bidding. But I think a lot of, in terms of the midterms, a lot of the economic factors are kind of baked in the cake. The gas prices have not helped, obviously. But it's hard to see huge changes before then. They're changing people's attitudes one way or the other about the economy, and they're dissatisfied about the economy.

49:37And this is the key thing. This is what's hurting Trump most, right, is that his strength forever has been successful business guy, knows how to make the economy grow, did it in the first term, especially if you put, you know, the last COVID year aside, which people weren't inclined to do in 2020, but were inclined to do in retrospect. And his numbers on the economy are the worst they've ever been. So that's what's driving the midterms. That's what accounts for his approval rating being down. It's been going down for a year now. I think the approval disapproved crossed in May of last year. It had about a 47 percent approval.

50:13It's been down steadily since, but it's overwhelmingly driven by the economy. Now it's in the 30s. Now it's in the 30s. Well, if you go to the average, it's about 40. Yeah, the RCP average. But yeah, we don't normally see it in the 30s. Like, that's surprising. A year ago, according to the NBC News poll, he was at 45 percent approved, 55 percent disapproved. Now he's at 37 % approve and 63 % disapprove. There was another poll that just hit today that had similar numbers. They're all starting to come back right around their high 30s, which is, that's not great. Not great at all. Okay, we're going to come back and turn the page and talk about the latest poll that just dropped on Kamala Harris and the other top Democrat contenders and the GOP side and ask you guys what you think.

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52:47It's an NR day here at the MK Show. go ahead and sign up for nr at nationalreview.com. You can get all of their content without the annoying ads and you can get the audio version of their articles. It is a great way. Oftentimes, guys, I am starting my day, putting the makeup on and I just press play on nr article after nr article and it makes life so much easier, makes news consumption so much easier and your AI is very good. Not everybody's AI reader is good, but the one on nr.com is. So thank you for that. OK, there is a new poll out just now from Echelon, likely voters, and it looks at both the Democratic field and the Republican field for 2028.

53:31I'm going to start with the Republican field, even though this is because we're adults. So we're good at delayed gratification because the Kamala Harris sound that I have queued up for you guys is the greatest thing you will see or hear all day. It's a gift from me to you. We have the best sound bites, but delayed gratification. Let's start with GOP since we just got off of Trump and Iran. They are showing Vance at 42 percent and Rubio at 14, which is quite a quite a drop down. Rubio had been higher in an earlier poll we had seen. Trump Jr., that's Don Trump Jr., at 10 percent and Ron DeSantis at 8 percent.

54:09Charlie, that's you and your wife and your friends. There you go. The 8 percent there. So Vance, obviously the heavy favorite, given the name recognition and given his current role. But there's been a lot of debate within Republican circles, Rich, about whether this whole thing could sink. I don't think it could make J.D. Vance. I don't know if he comes back from the Middle East with some huge win. They capitulated. They folded. They gave up everything. Maybe, but that's not realistic. So, like, this does seem fraught. And we discussed on the show last week, I think, it feels a little like making Kamala Harris the borders are, you know, like, thanks so much for the assignment.

54:51Is there anything else I could do instead of this thing? So how do you see this playing out for him? And also just zooming out to what's happening in the Republican Party right now, you know, with the more hawkish neocon group here and then the more isolationist group and the proxy fight over JD versus Marco, etc. So how do you see it all playing out there? So I don't think anyone's blaming J.D. Vance if the negotiations fail in Islamabad, assuming there's another round, which I think there will be eventually. I think the main political risk to him of the war is somehow getting separated from Donald Trump.

55:28And that hasn't happened yet, right, because he's going to Islamabad. And J.D. has every incentive to keep that from happening. If you believe all the reporting in the big New York Times piece on Trump's decision to go to war, J.D. apparently is the only guy actually told Trump his opinion, which I think speaks well of it. He's like, I don't support this, sir, but if you decide to do it, I'll be with you. And all indications are he has been a loyal soldier and Trump's appreciate Trump appreciates it. So the big X factor in terms of 2028 is just Trump for J.D. If Trump decides he doesn't like him anymore, Trump decides just to screw him for the sake of it, that would be very bad.

56:05But I'm doubtful that Marco Rubio will actually run. He's at this incredibly prominent place in American politics and American government. He's doing things that he believes in deeply. We knocked off Maduro. Maybe we're coming around to Cuba when the Iran thing is over. And we're really going to believe that he's going to give all that up, give up the eighth floor of the State Department, which is an awesome space, give up an effect in Air Force One that he has on his own, his own version, knockoff version of Air Force One, being greeted as a head of state in foreign countries to start driving in a rented car from Pizza Ranch restaurant to Pizza Ranch restaurant in Iowa.

56:45Sounds amazing. Probably be an upward underdog campaign against J.D. Vance, maybe, but I'm kind of doubtful. So refresh my memory on that, Rich. I guess I haven't really paid any attention in the past elections as to who in the administration decides they are going to run for the nomination and whether they have to leave their post. So is that I mean, is it typically like if you're in the administration and you want to run for the primary nomination, you got to leave what, like a year and a half prior to the end of the president's term? Yeah, I don't know what what the general rule of thumb is, but I think it's especially fraud if you're the secretary of state.

57:24And the secretary of state is like a serious job. And supposedly has other jobs too, like national security advisor. So you just have to say, I'm giving up the gig of a lifetime for what could be, long shots probably exaggerating it, but not a certain clear path to the nomination. And a nomination that any nomination is worth having, because in the abstract, it's about a 50 % chance of winning. But you could have a president at 40 % approval in 2028. It could be very difficult for Republicans. And he's still young. So I don't know, maybe he does it. But again, I'm just a little doubtful. J.D.'s got another factor to worry about here, Charlie, which is, you know, as the president's fortunes go, so go your fortunes if you're the VP.

58:10You know, it's not like he's an outsider. It's everything Trump has done. He's going to be asked to explain and defend and he's going to be in that Kamala Harris position of like on the view. Is there anything you would have done differently? And President Trump is watching. And if you answer that wrong, you lose the most important endorsement you need. But if you say there's nothing, you turn off an electorate that may be only approving of him by, you know, whatever, some small margin. I think it's a problem on both sides of the coin. The reason J.D. Vance is polling at 40 percent or so, I imagine, is because people know who he is.

58:47And the reason that people know who he is is because he's the vice president to Trump. And so if Trump is unpopular, then he will be the vice president to the unpopular Trump. And that will be a problem. But as you say, if he tries to separate himself from Trump, it will sound silly and unpersuasive. Also, Trump will go after him and then his fortunes will fall in that lane as well. The reason that Marco Rubio is lower is fewer people know who he is. he's less closely associated with Trump. Now, if you are looking at 2028, that's probably a problem. And if Rubio did run, he might have some of the same problems.

59:32But that's probably good news for him if he thinks he might run later on, that he's not so closely associated, because by that point, he would be able to stand up and say, well, I think Trump got some things right. And here are the things that I think he got wrong. So I do see this as a big problem for J.D. Vance. This is, of course, why it is extremely rare for vice presidents to win subsequent elections. The last one who did it was George H.W. Bush. Reagan was very popular, and Michael Dukakis was not. And Joe Biden did it, but not immediately on the back end. Well, that's true. That's true.

1:00:13Sorry. I meant directly. Yeah, I meant directly. And, you know, in American history, it sort of mostly happens when the president dies, as happened with Franklin Roosevelt and then with Harry Truman. So this is just not a normal path. Even Al Gore could not parlay Clinton's relative popularity into a win in 2000. Well, I say that not because of Al Gore, but because of Bill Clinton. That political scion, that gifted forager? No, I meant because of Bill Clinton, like even in 2000, I should have said it the other way around, even Bill Clinton could not push Al Gore into the presidency in the year 2000.

1:00:51I think it's quite clear that if Bill Clinton had been able to run for a third term in 2000, he'd have had a really good shot. But it just doesn't seem to happen. And so you're looking at intrinsic headwinds. And then the last thing I'd say is Those headwinds are made worse by Trump being such a monumental figure, somebody who has dominated the last, at that point, it will have been 13 years of our politics, someone who has an almost cult-like following. So J.D. Vance is going to rise and fall on the basis of Trump. To your point, Charlie, and I share this with you, whether it's Trump or not Trump, I don't think most people want to be thinking about the president this much.

1:01:37You know, you you you want a small executive branch. I agree with you on that. And when Trump is in there, you just you devote so much time thinking about him because he needs the press coverage. It's his oxygen. So he does all the stuff to get covered and the press needs to sell papers and get clicks. So they run, you know, like dogs after the liver snaps. And it's just it's nonstop, which Trump loves. But I don't think is necessarily good for our country and certainly not good for his would be successor. If you have a populace, it's like, I need a break. I need it back. Like I need somebody super boring who's not going to require any of my attention.

1:02:19And that leads me to the Democrats, Rich, because J.D. Vance or Marco, whomever it is, maybe it's DeSantis, Charlie, they are going to have the gift of a terrible Democrat nominee. I mean, truly, like who who scares us over on Team Blue? Like the only people who I think the three of us would like, who would like, you know, that person would be very effective. We'll never get through the Democrat primary. And so we're kind of in a good position, too, because even if our candidate is weakened thanks to, you know, Trump being so controversial, there's such a mess over there. And let me tell you something, Rich.

1:02:59Right now, guess who's leading? I'll tell you who's leading. Kamala Harris is at the top of the field in the latest poll that I just referenced, Echelon, at 22 percent. Now that's a lot lower than the one we read yesterday where she was at like 42 % and next was Gavin Newsom who was in the 20s. So these polls are all over the board. But this one does show her leading at 22. This one shows Newsom right behind her at 21. Buttigieg is third at 12. AOC is fourth at 10. Josh Shapiro, fifth at five. Cory Booker, who definitely is hetero and very happily married. It comes in after Josh Shapiro at four.

1:03:42Mark Kelly of Arizona, Senator, is next at three. And J.B. Pritzker is last at three percent. Well, I guess tied tied for last with Mark Kelly. So it's according to this poll right now between Harris and Newsom and Harris. She's feeling good, you guys. She's starting to feel like a little swagger a few months out. You know, Trump's not doing that great in the polls. She's like, how you like me now? So she goes to this like women of color seminar yesterday and she's back to dispensing all sorts of wisdom. Let me just show you how she kicked it off. She really wanted people to have a good morning here in SOT 7.

1:04:21Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Oh, God is good.

1:04:32All right. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome back to Power Rising.

1:04:41It's so Hillary Clinton-like, it's uncanny. She's so alienating, Charlie. I just can't believe that I've had to spend so much of my adult life with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. You know, I am hoping, I'm hoping that the reason that she's leading in the polls is a combination of name recognition, which obviously she should be and also i think democrats who wish she'd won and so they feel like they're answering the question who do you wish had won the 2024 election and so they say kamala harris because if they nominate her again i mean first off she'd actually probably have a chance if the republicans really do sink to the 30s but second i just can't go through it again I've been a bona fide Kamala Harris hater now.

1:05:34You can. We can do it. We can do it together. 2014. I mean, if you go back and you read my diatribes against her, they go back 12 years. I'd forgotten that. I'd forgotten that she starts off there sounding as if she's drunk. She always sounds as if she's drunk. Then she panders. Then she panders with the preacher stuff. And then the laugh. I mean, there's a little clip and it's everything that is wrong with her. And she's at 40%. What have I done to deserve this? All right, hold your fire because we got a lot to get through here. So you can't just give it all up on the first answer. Rich, don't think I didn't save some glory for you.

1:06:15I've got multiple sound bites here. Here she is with, I don't know if this is a new accent, but it's kind of a new accent. And she tries it out a couple times in SOT 8. What gives me hope, Leah, is that we're going to win the midterms. It's going to be difficult. And to say, I'm going to get mine also.

1:06:40And so don't count on me. She's a black woman who does a fake black woman accent. I don't care. You know, if you do fake accents. Here you thought I gave all the goodness to Charlie, but no, Rich Lowry. She's going to win. Yeah. So if you do fake accents, almost by definition, you're a bad politician. And we're talking about, you know, Trump's upsides, downsides in the first segment. But one upside is that you can never get him to do a fake accent. You know, he's he's always himself, even when he's reading a script that he's not particularly into or believes, you know, he kind of signals that.

1:07:13He walked to McDonald's in a suit and tie. Trump won't change for anyone. He goes to McDonald's, he's wearing a suit and tie, and that's how he presents himself. So well, and she the reason she's doing that, Rich, is because she was at the power rising summit. And this is how they describe it. A convening of black women harnessing their collective wisdom to create an actionable agenda. Absolutely nothing. Nothingness there. But black women is the piece you need to hear. Yeah. Totally unburdened by the things that have been. So she's got to go like full black accent, black scent. And like, we're going to win.

1:07:51And can we hear it one more time? Let's play it one more time, Sadie. What gives me hope, Leah, is that we're going to win the midterms.

1:08:01It's going to be difficult. And to say, I'm going to get mine also.

1:08:09And so don't count on me. Yeah. There's a little more here. Stand by. It's not 11. Watch. It's been a bit controversial. But one of the things I've been saying is this. As I have reflected on what has been going on, I've come to the realization that part of the issue is part of the frailty, I think, of human nature for some, is they are purely transactional people. They're not pretending to be grounded in morals or values or principles. They're not pretending. They're literally not pretending. They're in it for what they can get out of it. Their mantra is, I'm going to get mine. I think it's okay for us to be a bit transactional too.

1:09:01And to say, I'm going to get mine also.

1:09:06And so don't count on me to be a voter and be the backbone of the Democratic Party. They should count on the fact we're going to expect and they're going to have to know when they start counting on the vote. It's because they better produce if they win. Honestly, I picture somebody like Professor Carol Swain looking at this like, how dare you imitate me in this way? Right. How dare you pander to me with these fake, bizarre street accents as though that represents the black experience. But what she was saying there, Rich, is substantively interesting because she's playing the black woman card to a group of black women, which telegraphs pretty strongly to me.

1:09:55She is going to run. She's basically saying, don't let them take your vote for granted. We matter and we should get ours. Yes. So she's definitely running. What else is she going to do? It's incredibly condescending, the act there. It's kind of notable that she called out other people for not pretending to have a core, where she does pretend to have a core, but it's just pretending, right? This is a completely hollow figure. And then also it's a bit rich lambasting the Democratic establishment for not delivering when she was a senator herself and at the center of Democratic politics for a very, very long time.

1:10:31So I've got to believe - You made her the nominee. Yeah. So I got it now. It was handed to her. She didn't win it. But I got to believe that this is name ID that has her at the top of the polls. If not, it's it's very it's very depressing as an American. But they're in the same position, Rich, as you and I talked about that night that Joe Biden went down in that debate, June of 24. And you came on. It was late at night. We were all stunned that he had fallen apart and he was not able to spit out sentences. And we said that night he's he's done. But we talked about it that night, the very thing that would go on to haunt the Democrats for the entire remainder of the race, which was how are they going to replace the white guy with anyone other than the black woman who is next in line?

1:11:19And they couldn't. So they went with her. And now who's the number two on this list? Another white, straight Christian dude. Is this Democrat Party gonna? I know they won't win, but are they really going to do that? Because who's the most important voting bloc of Team Blue? Yeah, I think what's different this time is it's not just a Democratic establishment that is soaked in identity politics, scared of its base. It's going to be actual Democratic voters making the decision. And, you know, we saw in 2020 Biden is not a great statesman. He was in a reduced state even then. But that was a rational choice compared to the other alternatives.

1:11:59And parties tend, not always, but tend to make rational choices. So she's going to have to go out and win this this time on the merits. And that's a much harder proposition, obviously, than just making 100 phone calls or whatever she did after Biden dropped out. All right. Part of the fun of this woman, Charles, is analyzing the way she speaks. And I've said before about her that in another life, my partner was Polish and he spoke fluent Polish. And the Polish language is very beautiful. And it does this thing where they say the thing three times like, oh, you're so brilliant. You're so smart.

1:12:40You have so much knowledge. It's like that's the custom in speaking Polish is to say the thing three times, not one time. And I think she's got some Polish in her. I like only she doesn't and she only speaks English because she's so repetitive. She inserts so many phrases in her sentences that are unnecessary. And it's, I think, a nervous tick to buy time because she can't think quickly enough on like how I'm going to land this sentence. But here is a little flavor of that in SOT 9. Recognizing that at some point this administration will be termed out and there's going to be a whole lot of debris.

1:13:21And I would caution us against talking about rebuilding with any sense of nostalgia about how things were. Because even before, they weren't working so well for a lot of folks. And so we're going to have to be clear eyes. We're not going to go back to just trying to bring back the status quo. the thing that you worked well in and made you comfortable. We've got to upend some of this stuff to actually get this work done, including, again, health care, child care, what we need to do around housing. There has to be a vision that is about what we do when we're in power because it's one thing to know how to fight the power.

1:14:10It's another thing to be in power and own that power. And I know everybody in this room knows what it means to be in power and empowered. Anyway, that's how I've been thinking. That's how she's been thinking, Charles.

1:14:29I think that's a threat, actually. She just talked about housing, you know, typical policy. But I think when they say we're not if we win, we're not just going back to the status quo. I think that means they have learned from how Trump's wielded power and they're going to double down on it. We had this astonishing statement from James Carville the other day. As soon as they get in, Puerto Rico is a state, D.C. is a state, and the Supreme Court has 15 justices. Now, I'm not sure they're going to be able to do all that, but I think that's where they're headed. That's what the tendency is. So on the repetitiveness point, I think she thinks that what she's doing is eloquence.

1:15:07She reminds me of someone who thinks they can sing but can't And they do all the little moves I think she thinks that she is profound I find her excruciating to watch as a result But I really truly believe that she thinks she's an orator And so the pauses and the searching for the words Are beneficial to the audience because she is saying something that is so important. The accent thing annoys me. It's odd. I obviously have an English accent. Americans often like English accents. I was in a barbecue place in South Carolina in 2024. This African-American lady came out and she just loved my accent.

1:15:58I said to her, no, I love your accent. I live in the South. I love Southern African-American accents. I just think they sound fantastic. I love listening to African Americans in the South talk. Whatever it is about my accent that Americans like, I like about their accent. So what annoys me about Kamala Harris is that she's doing an impression and a bad one. You know, if somebody actually spoke like that, I'd want to listen to them all day. Rich and I half joke about this. I actually, although she's putting it on two at one level, I actually quite like listening to Jasper Crockett. I actually quite like listening.

1:16:37She's like your girlfriend. I know. I know she is. She is. I think she's pretty too. But I really do. I know. When you need people who really truly come from southern black areas, I love listening to them talk. But Kamala Harris's impression is bad. And it's condescending that she's trying to do it. It's not a problem about, one of the few things that is not a problem about Kamala Harris, she just doesn't have that accent. That's not where she's from. It's not her family background. She's from California. She just picked up a different vocal pattern. It's not a problem with me. I don't sound like a Southern person either.

1:17:15But it would be really condescending if I started doing it badly. Do you ever try to fake an American accent, Charlie? No, because I'm, this is exactly my point, because I'm not American. Try it. Give it a try. No, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. But I'm just not of that. So, you know, it's not a good or bad thing to have different accents. But she, don't you think that, the point I'm driving at is, because it's a bad impression, and it's condescending, don't you think that that just sums up in one clip? the problem with Kamala Harris is that she wants to be someone she's not she wants to be an orator and talk like Martin Luther King but she can't do it she wants to talk like the ladies at that event but she can't do it she's a person doing an impression of what she wishes she were and it's why she lost and it's why people don't like her whereas Trump there's so many things wrong with her we have talked about them all I've spent 11 years writing them down every opportunity that I've had.

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1:22:21Guys, something very exciting is happening. We'll turn the page from Kamala, sad as that is. This weekend, and that is the White House Correspondents Dinner. Yes, I know you're sad that you're not going this year like me. Actually, no, I was invited by a few different people and said no to everybody because I don't have to do that anymore. Thank God in my new role. But Jake Tapper is going and he's very excited to go. And he has a message for this administration, which he previewed last night on Stephen Colbert. Watch. I like the pocket square. Thank you. Oh, yeah. So this is a special freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

1:23:12That's very nice. Yeah. And we're I'm going to be, you know, Saturday night's the White House Correspondents dinner. I did not know. And there are a bunch of us that are going to be wearing these. These are from the reporters committee for the free press. And because there might be some guests there that are unfamiliar with. Oh, this is the first time this is the first time that the president is going to be attending, right now that you say so. Yes. I brought you one. Oh, that's a little bit. Thank you.

1:23:45So isn't that nice, Rich? They're going to stand up and speak truth to power. Make sure Trump knows how important freedom of the press and freedom of speech are in America. CNN. Yeah, I'm not into pin wearing. This is very reminiscent of what we talked about this a month or two ago. Was it the Grammys or something? Everyone was wearing pins. They didn't quite know what the pins were, but the pins stood for some sort of social justice cause. This is this is pointless and annoying. And that dinner has been pointless and annoying for a very long time. Back in the day, I don't know, 20, 25 years ago, it was kind of enjoyable.

1:24:21But then it got celebrified and journalists shouldn't consider themselves working journalists as celebrities and have the same mores. But but this is this this is very incestuous and annoying event. The worst part about it, Charlie, is not even the actual event, the White House Correspondents Dinner. It's all the events around the dinner where like this magazine wants you to show up and like be photographed at their party. And that, you know, sort of kingmaker wants you to show up at his or her party. And, you know, you got to go kiss the ring at all these parties to try to prove that you're somebody special in Washington.

1:25:01Meanwhile, you're supposed to be a shoe leather, scrappy, hates everyone reporter. That's what a good D.C. reporter is like. They don't want to rub elbows with any of these people. They want to bring all of them down, no matter which party they're in. They're looking for the latest scandal, not for the latest free cocktail and red carpet opportunity. And it's yet another reason to avoid this thing, but it goes on. Yeah, well, I wasn't invited. So I have to slum it here on the beach with my family. But I do think the most annoying part, as you say, is that this only goes in one direction. There's nothing particularly offensive about that pocket square.

1:25:41First Amendment is crucially important. And sometimes Donald Trump isn't good on free speech. It's just that that moment there only seems to happen when a Republican's president, that laughter slash clapping from the audience on Stephen Corbeil's show with a journalist who's being smug. They didn't do that when, for example, Twitter and Facebook shut down the New York Post story into the Hunter Biden laptop. They didn't do that when abortion covering journalists were being targeted in California. It's just so one-sided. So it's not that Jake Tapper is completely wrong there. It's great to shout at all administrations and all government officials about the First Amendment.

1:26:32It just becomes so annoying when it only happens in limited circumstances. And I think all the people who are clapping in that probably don't know that. They probably think that they're entirely virtuous and that their opponents are entirely evil. What about under Joe Biden when James O 'Keefe, who's he is a journalist, he's a muckraker, when he got the FBI raiding his home early in the morning because Joe Biden was upset that he got his hands on Ashley Biden's diary and was considering publishing it. What about when James Rosen was basically frozen out of asking another question for months in the White House press briefing room because he had the nerve to ask about Joe Biden's health and its deterioration?

1:27:11And by the way, it wasn't just him. All the press corps understood they'd be punished by this White House, the Biden White House, if they inquired about Joe Biden's health. I don't remember his little pocket square back then. It's only when it's Trump. And Rich, to that point, the New York Post reports today that a group of over 250 journalists implored members of the Beltway Press Corps to, quote, forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday. Prominent veteran journalists such as former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, you knew that was coming, infamous for erroneous reporting on President George W.

1:27:48Bush's military service, correct, and former ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson both signed the missive. So now we're getting journalism lessons from Dan Rather again, who left this business in shame. The letter aired a litany of grievances against Trump, such as his defamation suits against various outlets, which he's winning. ABC settled that case because George Stephanopoulos said 16 times Trump had been found liable for rape when it wasn't true. That's not some speak truth to power moment. ABC ought to be ashamed of itself anyway. OK, his defamation suits against various outlets, against favoritism toward conservative media.

1:28:25Oh, like that wasn't a thing toward liberal media when we had Obama or Biden in there and FCC communications chair Brendan Carr's offensive tactics. Another complaint was Trump's decision to pardon the January 6th Capitol rioters, which the letter claims sends a message that attacks on the press will be forgiven. What? This is so absurd. Your thoughts on the pocket square and the unified messaging led by Dan Rather, Rich. Yeah. So they're supposed to be forcibly demonstrating their opposition to Donald Trump. They do it every single day. It pervades all their work. They don't need to do anything at this dinner to reinforce the point.

1:29:06And look, the press, you know, it's oppositional or should be by by nature. But as Charlie points out, it just goes one way. Right. Right. Joe Biden would have been such a wonderful figure of mockery for on every late night show. Right. Very bad for the country that he was in his debilitated state. But there was something kind of funny about it. But Stephen Colbert would never do it. And this is another problem with this dinner, not the most important thing. It's all people inside the bubble in good graces in the bubble, not even realizing they're in the bubble. So there's no conflict. There's never anything interesting.

1:29:39And all the mockery and disdain just goes in one direction. Can I just add something to that? Well, and Charlie says, I object to the pocket square because they only do it to the one side. Agreed. But the other problem is it does nothing. It's an empty, meaningless virtue signal. Right. It's like it's it's worse than nothing because it's meant to make them look somehow above board. And like they really care about these issues, Charlie, when, you know, Tapper's infamous for completely blowing it on the Biden mental health story, as did all of CNN. They did not care about freedom of the press to do honest reporting until they saw that Biden was imploding.

1:30:21And then they found, you know, their spine, shall I say. So their little pocket square isn't going to change anything. They need to look inward for that. Go ahead. Well, I was going to bolster Rich's point and also secco what you just said, which is that they are aware of it. They just think that there is a greater purpose to serve. If you go back and you watch Saturday Night Live from 2019, when Joe Biden was running in the Democratic primary and losing at the beginning, I think he was played by Woody Harrelson. And he's an idiot. He's a senile idiot who doesn't know where he is. That's the joke.

1:31:01Likewise, Kamala Harris is this sort of vain, insecure, mumbling fool who's constantly taking pictures of herself and looking at the camera. Well, once Joe Biden had won the nomination for the Democratic Party, they stopped the sketch. They didn't keep doing it throughout his presidency, even though it was far more relevant by 2023 than it had been in 2019. Likewise, you know, obviously I write about politics, so I get all of these unsolicited and frankly unwanted emails from people trying to share opposition research on people they dislike. And in 2019, I got email after email after email from the left about Joe Biden saying Joe Biden was a racist.

1:31:47Joe Biden defended segregation. Joe Biden opposed busing and so forth. That all disappeared as well. And that's what makes this particularly annoying. It's not that the criticisms of Trump that you mentioned from that letter are wrong in every case. And I think some of what Brendan Carr has been doing is bad. It's that the indignation stops the second it doesn't serve the broader political purpose. The mockery stops the second it doesn't serve the broader political purpose. But then when it's somebody on the side they dislike, it instantly goes up to 11. And we're all supposed to clap it as coming from a good place.

1:32:24But it doesn't come from a good place. It comes from a very cynical place in almost every case. To me, it's amazing how they're pretending that the press corps, the White House press corps and beyond, is what it was 20 years ago. Like, this is all such a farce. This is a lie. You know, I've mentioned this to the audience before, but when I first got in the news, it was 2003. And I got a part-time job at WJLA in Washington. and I was so excited. It was so thrilling to me. I was still practicing law and I got this job one day a week doing, I said I'd work for free, but he did pay me. And I loved it so much.

1:33:06And then he invited me to the radio and television correspondence dinner, which is sort of a wider spread like invitation list. And you don't have to work at the White House in order to get invited to that. And it's the dinner featured in broadcast news, which is one of my favorite movies. I love I love that movie. And I love the William Hurt scene as he's the new anchor in Washington. And he goes up to Holly Hunter and says, it's incredible who's here. And she says, who? And he says, me. That's how I felt. You know, I went, it was so exciting. It was my new business news. And I was taking one step out of the law and I was thrilled to be doing it.

1:33:40And I looked around and Sam Donaldson was one of the people I saw. And he was so respected at the time at ABC, saw Supreme Court justices there. It was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. they call it nerd prom, you know, and the press back in 2003, Rich still did have some respect. It really did. It wasn't yet totally fractured. And I remember thinking about my next move, you know, after they made me an offer to that ABC affiliate. And at the time I was like, all right, well, if I'm, if I'm good enough to be full-time here, maybe I'm good enough to be full-time someplace better than here. And, uh, I, I, I talked to somebody at MSNBC and at Fox, like I I absolutely would have gone to MSNBC.

1:34:19I had absolutely no qualms about that. It was very different back then. It was like trying to be nonpartisan. I didn't even know that Fox was partisan. I was so clueless about news. But things were just starting to change. And now in 23 years time, the news business is a shadow of its former self. Yeah, absolutely. And similar experience in print, local newspaper in the Washington, D.C. area. and the guy who's a proprietor and the editor, former Washington Post reporter, and he was a curmudgeon, right? He didn't have an ideology. He just wanted to know the facts, wanted you to get them right, and wanted stories.

1:34:56That was it. And as media has become professionalized and these people imagine themselves as their great tribunes of justice, It's a different, totally different attitude than when we started out. And it's discredited the news, right? Because it's no longer just the facts that we're driving an agenda. We're driving the agenda because the agenda is deeply just. And we're going to support narratives that reinforce the agenda. So that's been like a 20-year process. It's a very bad one. Trump accelerated it because they even thought they were more just and they had to be more open with their agenda.

1:35:38and their narratives. And now we've had this splintering. So certainly the broadcast outlets and all that will never, never be the same. I mean, I've talked about this before, but I, and I'm very grateful for my time at Fox News, very grateful. It made my whole career. But I do think sort of cable news accelerated the deterioration in the following way. It had been not openly partisan and the whole media leaned left, but not as openly and perhaps not quite as severely as it does now. And Fox came around as the antidote to that left-wing bias and leaned in. And then the others realized that was a very successful business model.

1:36:16They were cleaning the clocks of CNN and eventually MS. And then they leaned into their partisanship openly and more obviously. And things just got progressively polarized. The broadcast media became more and more irrelevant. And then they started to lean into their bias more openly. And it's not that it's Fox's fault, but it's like the Fox antidote to what was indeed left-wing bias wound up, I think, making the problem, yes, exposed, but also kind of worse in some ways. Or maybe it was just a trajectory the news business was on either way. But the fact that Dan Rather is leading this charge, I mean, because in those early days at Fox where I got hired in August of 04, One of the very first stories they put me on was that 60 Minutes 2 piece they were doing on George W.

1:37:03Bush where they had faked papers around his National Guard service. And Dan Rather was leading the charge and it led to his exit from CBS. And so now he wants to be our moral better. Here's what Trump posted in March, Charlie, when he said he was going to attend because he hasn't been attending these things as president. The White House Correspondents Association has asked me very nicely to be the honoree at this year's dinner, a long and storied tradition since it began in 1924 under then President Calvin Coolidge. In honor of our nation's 250th birthday and the fact that these correspondents now admit that I am truly one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country, the GOAT, according to many, it will be my honor to accept their invitation and work to make it the greatest, hottest, and most spectacular dinner of any kind ever.

1:37:57I just have a feeling that's not how it's going to go down. I think he's going to walk into open hostility from the little pocket square people. But your thoughts? Well, I don't think that they're going to uniformly affirm that he's the greatest of all time in the White House. I agree. But that is classic Trump. And I actually, in this context, like Trump when he does that, because I think it has a tendency to puncture the bubble. and the bubble in this instance is a ridiculous one so i like trump when he's like this the white house dinner that he's going to is in my view pointless i was of course joking i would much rather stay on the beach with my family but he is uh he is hostile to them they're hostile to him.

1:38:56And in that sense, they both get what they want, right? I mean, this is, it's a pantomime, it's a Punch and Judy show. They want to play that role. They want to channel Watergate. They think that that's who they are. And then Trump thinks he's the greatest president who's ever existed. And then the audience sort of watches it as a drama. And I think this might make this one more interesting than the average. It's amazing, though, right, that Trump can't resist the pull of these people, right? He should be so much bigger than this dinner. He doesn't need to go to this dinner. He shouldn't go to this dinner, in my view.

1:39:34But he can't help calling these people, caring about what they write, what they say, you know, working behind the scenes. So he's such a media creature through and through. As always. Now, we've never had a woman as the guest of honor because we've never had a female president. And that is because we are a nation of sexist pigs. Back to Kamala Harris before we go. I've got to play SOT 13 and listen to the repetition, too. I do believe America is, can be and will be ready for a woman to be pressing United States. And I strongly believe, you know, I mentor, as we all do, a lot of people. And one of the things I will say to our young people, and I know we have many here, is don't ever let someone's limited ability to see your capacity to be a limitation on your ambition for yourself.

1:40:33That's their limitation, not ours. so again part of it is i just try to not let other people's problems be my problem in terms of believing and knowing and acting on who can do what and um that's where i land on that believing and acting and knowing and also is can be and will be and she's basically, everyone's a bunch of sexists. That's really what she wants you to know, Charlie. How do you plead? Well, and I love the end of it, which was straight from Forrest Gump, where she just exits by saying, and that's where I land on that. I'm just going to start using that. If I'm not really sure where I'm going with an answer, I'm just going to say, maybe when we're doing the podcast, Rich, you know, when you don't know when I'm going to finish or not, when I'm unclear, I can just say, and that's where I land on that.

1:41:29This is my new favorite Kamala Harris-ism I've ever heard. You are looking for a way of understanding whether Charlie's pausing or done with his points on the editors, Rich. Not easy. This could be it. You're pro-mega, but I don't even think you could do it. This is the pause from the end. It's funny. I guess on this show, I don't care. I'll just step on poor Charlie, but on the editors, it's a gentleman's show. You are much more polite than I am. Guys, a pleasure to see you. Thank you. Thanks so much for being here. Talk soon. Yeah. All right. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether you think Trump should go to the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

1:42:07Does he do them this honor? And how do you think it'll go? You can email me, Megan, at MeganKelley.com. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

1:42:28Hey, it's Sebastian Maniscalco, and I got a new podcast with my buddy, Pete Correale. Every week on the Sebastian Maniscalco Show, we talk about life, family, culture, and all the weird stuff we just accept now. You'll hear classic stories from the road and get the behind-the-scenes look at our lives. We got everybody from comedians, actors, athletes, authors, maybe even my neighbor. Listen to The Sebastian Maniscalco Show wherever you get your podcasts. In the U.S., there's a break-in every 26 seconds. But when intruders step near, SimpliSafe Home Security steps up. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.

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