After 9 years as an audio-only podcast, The Fifth Column pivots to video with a conversation with the one and only, super-noncontroversial media personality, Megyn Kelly. Amidst several afternoon shots of top-shelf whiskey, Megyn talks Botox, Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, eye-for-an-eye politics, Israel, Candace Owens, and her very happy career in indie media after the salt mines of cable.
I like how Megyn keeps saying she isn’t really partisan or ideological, but then a couple minutes later is like “we must smash the leftists and craft chalices from their skulls!”
The whole thing was we and them we and them. She's alwaShe's not been on a team. We know that. It's okay to be biased, but you should acknowledge it yourself. The whole what they did to us we're doing to them... If that's not being a partisan, what is?
Need it or want it? This seems pretty close to compromising on principles that i thought these guys held, and ones which drew me to the show in the first place.
I think they should let go of the pretense of having reasonable debates with MK. MK explicitly speaks about politics like the Black Panthers that MM rages against. The “we are at war” rhetoric is toxic and our FC boys know it.
If you listen to her show with any regularity, you see how she became who she is and that her takes are often more complex and nuanced than she’s given credit for. When you listen, you do hear the stories and you find out what happened behind the scenes, and while she is very clearly more partisan than I think even she wants to admit, she has a solid rationale for her stances. She also gives people who clearly disagree with her space to engage while those “on the other side” wouldn’t dare. More people would understand her positions and evolution if they engaged with her. But too many times people dismiss her because they think she’s not on our team so why would we.
It was obvious that she had thought about the “well they did it to ‘us’ so we’re gonna do it to ‘them harder.’ And she may be 100% right about ‘them’ doing it harder to MAGA-types when ‘they’ are back in office. I just found the answer to build weapons and use them now to be unsatisfying. MAGA is not going to end the Democrats. Democrats will not end MAGA.
Neither party should ever again occupy the White House.
That’s not quite how I heard it, I thought she said she had become more partisan over time as she began to view (rightly or wrongly) the GOP being the party of sanity. The non-partisan reference seemed to be more about her past voting record.
I can picture her drinking her whiskey out of skulls though.
I appreciate the trio letting Kelly talk and reveal who she is: a person who has emotional reactions to the world around her, and who chooses her allies almost solely on the basis of whether they share those emotions. And on a whole range of issues, she has no problem going YOLO with a raw take, brandishing the clarity of her emotions as a caution against probing whether she has a detailed understanding of what she's commenting on. But with CO and a slew of self-contained soundbites of Jew-hatred, Kelly doesn't have enough information to comment. Spare me.
I appreciate these interviews for showing me the depth of people I just have no interest in learning more about now. Batya was a similar conversation. How vapid.
I'm not sure I do appreciate the guys so meekly letting her go mask off and reiterate time and time again that she wants to hurt "them", that "they're" the ones who shot first, that the biggest injustice of the last ten years was the prosecution of Donald Trump, etc, etc. This was Hannity levels of right wing hackery and revisionist history, and it went seemingly unabated.
Megyn Kelly is exactly the kind of media pundit they so ruthlessly criticize for being relentlessly partisan and unconcerned with the truth, and even personal friendship hasn't gotten in the way of that - see Michael's angry screed against Batya a few months back. So I find their complete rolling over in the face of Megyn's mouth-foaming propaganda to be fucking pathetic and beneath all three of them.
Exactly. Mischaracterize Charlie’s murder from the left and you’re scum who deserves to be canceled and bankrupted, but do it from the Jew-hating right and “I’ve not looked into it, I don’t have the time to listen to all her episodes.”
And the Fifth guys know it, but they become different people with different values and priorities when Megyn walks in the room, which is really, really disappointing.
Yeah, I hadn't paid attention to her in a long while but remembered her as a down the center reasonable type. She just sounds like every other asshole on Twitter now, which is a shame.
I'd argue the only way this fixes itself is by the voting public getting sick of it to the point that the politically homeless center of the electorate becomes big and juicy, whereupon one of the parties will come to its senses and realize the middle is a lot bigger than the extreme on its own side. I don't know if the parties have gotten extreme enough yet for this to happen, but I am guessing we're close: it's hard to see how the level of retardation on either side gets much worse.
Point being that while it might appear that one of them deescalates at some point, it won't be in direct response to retaliation by the other side but rather by the realization that the better political strategy is to shoot for the center. The spin won't match the reality of what happened, but savvy observers will know.
She just gave a forthright admission that she doesn’t give a shit about principles. Michael even gave her a chance to walk it back. If he had half a spine he would have given her the Batia treatment, but he cowered. I found that exchange absolutely telling.
I used to begrudgingly admire her, but that's totally over now. Her politics aren't based on truth, they're based on rage. That's a house built on sand, there's nothing consistent there.
Yeah, to the extent she's further involved in Fifdom, I'm just gonna tune those entries out. This was useful insofar as it confirms that destroying her enemies is her core principle. I don't respect that, it doesn't lead to truth.
I listened to the episode last night and honestly, it was just kind of upsetting to listen to. It's such an ugly, ugly perspective to view your political opponents like that. No wonder political violence is on the rise when some of the most prominent voices out there are engaging in this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric.
I have to admit that this distressed me so much that I kind of checked out afterwards. Did she say exactly how she is going to hurt them really bad? She talked about hurting them and wagging war but I really want to know ...like how? What does that mean?
What shocked me was the absolute certainty with which she asserted this to be the admin’s plan. Total lunacy. “Our retribution is a one time balancing of the scales, and don’t even think about reciprocating when y’all get back in because then it will be your fault when we do it again which we won’t if you just shut up and play dead.”
Such a childish position by Megyn regarding Candace, but you guys made it too easy for her to squirm out of it that way by not fully quoting any one of a hundred things Candace has said. I love the show and you guys, but there is a whiff of not wanting to piss off a good connection. Why did Michael go after Batya Ungar-Sargon so much harder than this over tariffs?
The difference is Batya is defending the tariffs. Megyn is not defending what Candace said- she’s saying she hasn’t watched or listened to her. Sounds like she’s choosing not to, for whatever personal reasons. She did say that she has her own opinions about the
situation and in the future might share them, but doesn’t want to be bullied into it by a mob.
She called Candace "brilliant" (hilarious) and interrupted Michael during the exchange on her show to insinuate that he was taking Candace out of context.
I was confused by that when I heard it too, but it’s entirely possible that Megyn was referencing Candace from a time at Daily Wire and TPUSA, when she was friends with Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk. There are so many media personalities and you make a lot of assumptions about who they are. When Charlie Kirk died, I admit I had lumped him in with the obnoxious “debate me bro” guys who “own” people and I never watched him. After the algorithm fed me an endless loop of his videos in the days after the assassination, I was surprised to learn I was entirely wrong. I suspect there is something similar afoot here with Megyn. Maybe she’s giving too much credit to Candace based on priors, and she’s hesitant to join the pile on. She hasn’t spent enough time watching Candace lately. I think if Megyn is moved to speak her mind about Candace, she will.
you weren't "entirely" wrong. Kirk spewed absolute horseshit about anything related to Ukraine, regularly and with astonishing arrogance, which was in direct proportion to his deep and profound ignorance.
She chooses who to listen to and when. Every time someone on her side says something t she just looks perplexed. “Well. I haven’t heard that. I only have so much time in the day. Har har.”
The only place I ever hear about what Candace Owens is saying is on this podcast. I'm a 'touch grass' person, so there's a lot I guess I'm not exposed to.
Megyn's stance on this is reactionary in the truest sense: It's nothing more substantive than a reaction to what others are perceived to have said.
Nothing good ever comes from refusing to criticize bad ideas because it would support the "other side", however one chooses to define "sides". (And I seriously cannot believe that her professed ignorance of Candace's commentary, while taking the time to speak in support, can be anything but willful.)
I don't know where this phrase came from—I thought it was Hitchens, but I can't find evidence of that with a quick search—but never let your enemies do your thinking for you.
It would have been boring if they made the whole thing about Owens. I thought Kmele and Moynihan articulated the problems with giving Owens a pass pretty damn well, each in their own way. Clearly she’s dug in her heels about taking a side so there’s only so far that exchange was going to go.
Tariffs are a safe disagreement to have. It’s the classic “just arguing about the numbers”. To say- “you’re quoting Max Blumenthal, talking about demons and witchcraft being real, refusing to condemn to antisemitic lunatics on your own side and advocating for going to war with the Left” is another thing altogether
Taking the slippery slope argument and strapping on skis!
But more seriously, she doesn't have a problem criticizing Chase Strangio or any number of people on the left. So clearly there is some line that's too much for her as an "independent" journalist.
The ostrich thing of willfully not taking on the Owens craziness is a real problem. You have to police your own side to have credibility.
I think that her argument on CO is one of cupping your hands over your ears and yelling when someone tries to present negative information. When she was getting a bit of visibility, I’d seen a few things, yawned, and moved on.
My opinion of Charlie Kirk was very similar.
On subsequent closer review, the really negative things about Charlie largely proved false. CO, OTOH, holy crap!
At that point, I tend to just discard her entirely.
But the cancel mob won’t be satisfied with just ignoring her. You MUST denounce, or you’re literally Hitler.
I liked how she was very clear that she did not have a side and yet she had a very clear sense of who “we” are, who “they” are, and what “we” are gonna do to “them.” She’s just an umpire you see calling balls and strikes, pay no attention to the fact that she’s wearing one team’s uniform. Now, I don’t begrudge the boys having on members of their eclectic group of media friends. But I so much prefer when they bring on guests who teach me something or surprise me or provoke a good argument.
I think this just illuminates that Megyn is a partisan. Don’t even think she is an anti-semite because I just don’t think she has the complexity to even go that far with it on this topic. It’s really as simple as, Tucker is my friend and Candace is on my side so therefore I cannot denounce their abhorrent views. Nothing complex about it.
Yes, but she is more than happy to earn a buck on trashing the left. This woman is a fucking dunce and the TFC boys are lapping up her milk because she gave them exposure to hapless morons.
This is kinda a case of "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." When your opponents are promoting socialism, race essentialism, chopping off kids' nads, and Jew hatred, you don't have to do much to be sane by comparison.
Re: your second sentence, maybe not, and yet they still manage to fall short of the mark almost without fail. Quite a feat in a way. But the bigger problem is, even if I agreed with your characterization of MAGA’s/her “opponents” (you speak as though a typical non-MAGA person is either fine with those things or, even less plausibly, actually doing them), it still wouldn’t begin to justify saying “meh, due process schmue process, just round ‘em up, send ‘em down south, and let Bukele sort ‘em out”, to name just one of the indefensible things this administration has been gleefully doing.
When I was younger I would roll my eyes, thinking that all these things my parents constantly lectured me about were just pious clichés that parents say to their kids: the golden rule, “two wrongs don’t make a right”, don’t lie/cheat/steal, be humble in victory and honorable in defeat, etc. Nope, turns out all that stuff is not just the makings of decency and character, but actual small-r republican values that serve as a good practical guide to self-government and mutual respect among citizens. (They also happen to be an almost literal inversion of Donald Trump’s own character and behavior, but never mind; I’m genuinely not trying to be petty here.)
But now this extremely shrill faction of each party, who don’t care about any of that stuff and in fact think you’re a sucker if you do, is seen by the other side as definitive of their opponents merely because they’re so fucking loud on the internet all the time.
> you speak as though a typical non-MAGA person is either fine with those things or, even less plausibly, actually doing them
I'm speaking of the people in the center and on the center-right (and probably even a lot of people on the center-left, meaning old-school Democrat types) who looked at the choice between Trump and the MAGA agenda vs. Harris and the far-left progtard agenda and decided immediately which was the lesser evil. That some of them may now be regretting their choice doesn't falsify the calculus that went into the choice at the time: it's more a result of a change in conditions in which the Trump administration has doubled down on its own retardation.
I'm still waiting for one of the two parties to run on a Sane People 'XX agenda, which I would vote for without hesitation. That said, the ability for Democrats to do that successfully was seriously damaged by Biden suggesting that he would do exactly such a thing, and then pivoting to the far left the moment he got into office. (Well, at least whoever was setting Administration policy did.) Such a campaign has to be *credible*.
Wow indeed. Megyn’s ‘Team Sanity’ looks like a civil libertarians nightmare.
The latest edition of Reason magazine (cover art by MM’s ex)is “Culture War Police State.” Cover story by C.J. CIARAMELLA. “From library books to abortion, gender, and even food, the culture war is now feeding the police state.”
Can you imagine if a guest defended Zohran Mamdani in the same way? Moynihan would have lit them on fire. Instead he went full cuck and just said “yes, mommy”. 🤡
Yeah, I totally agree. I’m afraid it’s as simple as they are friends with Megyn and like going on her show. I imagine it’s much more difficult to ask your friends the hard questions and push back a bit when the answers are lacking. It would have been interesting to see how Megyn responded to some more pointed questions. At the same time, Megyn said enough that I was able to form my own view of her position. Though sometimes I also want the catharsis of seeing BS arguments called out!
I kept hoping that towards the end the guys would lead Megyn from the studio to an adjacent room where Noam Dworman would be waiting for her in a gimp suit with a projector loaded with clips of Candace on the Jews.
Megan conveniently leaves out the attempts to steal the election and January 6th. I doubt any of the lawfare would have happened if Trump had taken is loss like an adult. America thought Trump should have been punished and punished swiftly. When that didn't happen, the Dems unwisely went dirty.
The attempts to steal the election forever put Trump beyond the pale for me. I live in Georgia and I will vote against Stacy Abrams every chance I get for the exact same reason.
Absolute false equivalence. Stacy Abrams didn’t tell an angry mob to march on Congress to “take their country back”. And Trump absolutely lied about his assets to secure favorable loans in the New York case. The distance between those 2 is massive.
Interesting to see someone call themselves "moderate" and "principled" while directing arguing for authoritarianism and laughing at the mention of the Founders and the Constitution. Guess I'm just old now and can't keep up with the modern lingo.
Agree. Watching these dudes just completely abandon all of their principles to suck up to this morally bankrupt plastic filled simpleton without a word of pushback was painful.
I won't stop subscribing because I think their non-Megyn content is great and they "usually" call it as they see it from a center-right lens. But they behaved like neutered little boys in this episode and they deserve to be mocked for their spinelessness.
Here’s my problem with Megyn regarding Candace, and I wish the guys would have pointed this out to her, she rightfully goes hard after left wing antisemites but decides she has nothing to say about right wing antisemites. That makes her a hypocrite. It also doesn’t help her case that I’ve heard her defend Candace twice and another time actually said she respected her LMAO.
I like how Megyn keeps saying she isn’t really partisan or ideological, but then a couple minutes later is like “we must smash the leftists and craft chalices from their skulls!”
The whole thing was we and them we and them. She's alwaShe's not been on a team. We know that. It's okay to be biased, but you should acknowledge it yourself. The whole what they did to us we're doing to them... If that's not being a partisan, what is?
Yeah I don't see why the dudes give her so much slack on this. It's exactly the kind of thing they are so sharp on when it comes from anywhere else.
They need her platform numbers. Frustrating.
Need it or want it? This seems pretty close to compromising on principles that i thought these guys held, and ones which drew me to the show in the first place.
I think they should let go of the pretense of having reasonable debates with MK. MK explicitly speaks about politics like the Black Panthers that MM rages against. The “we are at war” rhetoric is toxic and our FC boys know it.
They are not “being brave and calling bullshit.”
If you listen to her show with any regularity, you see how she became who she is and that her takes are often more complex and nuanced than she’s given credit for. When you listen, you do hear the stories and you find out what happened behind the scenes, and while she is very clearly more partisan than I think even she wants to admit, she has a solid rationale for her stances. She also gives people who clearly disagree with her space to engage while those “on the other side” wouldn’t dare. More people would understand her positions and evolution if they engaged with her. But too many times people dismiss her because they think she’s not on our team so why would we.
It was obvious that she had thought about the “well they did it to ‘us’ so we’re gonna do it to ‘them harder.’ And she may be 100% right about ‘them’ doing it harder to MAGA-types when ‘they’ are back in office. I just found the answer to build weapons and use them now to be unsatisfying. MAGA is not going to end the Democrats. Democrats will not end MAGA.
Neither party should ever again occupy the White House.
Fascinating how that 'nuance' never shows up when she's had the guys on.
I thought her and those on her side we're against the use of pronouns.
That’s not quite how I heard it, I thought she said she had become more partisan over time as she began to view (rightly or wrongly) the GOP being the party of sanity. The non-partisan reference seemed to be more about her past voting record.
I can picture her drinking her whiskey out of skulls though.
exactly. I kept yelling "horseshit" through almost all of her assertions
Yes, agreed
I appreciate the trio letting Kelly talk and reveal who she is: a person who has emotional reactions to the world around her, and who chooses her allies almost solely on the basis of whether they share those emotions. And on a whole range of issues, she has no problem going YOLO with a raw take, brandishing the clarity of her emotions as a caution against probing whether she has a detailed understanding of what she's commenting on. But with CO and a slew of self-contained soundbites of Jew-hatred, Kelly doesn't have enough information to comment. Spare me.
I appreciate these interviews for showing me the depth of people I just have no interest in learning more about now. Batya was a similar conversation. How vapid.
that was exactly my feeling. Her and Batya are the same as far as I'm concerned.
Batya seems a nice person at least. Like you might be able to talk about other things with her. Kelly is insufferable on all levels.
She’s a typical wine mom and has the sophistication of opinions of the average wine mom.
This wine mom just virtually threw her glass of wine in your face.
Cool. Megyn Kelly is functionally the intellectual equivalent of a real housewife. And deserves to be taken as seriously.
Enjoy your poison. 😘
Bingo
I'm not sure I do appreciate the guys so meekly letting her go mask off and reiterate time and time again that she wants to hurt "them", that "they're" the ones who shot first, that the biggest injustice of the last ten years was the prosecution of Donald Trump, etc, etc. This was Hannity levels of right wing hackery and revisionist history, and it went seemingly unabated.
Megyn Kelly is exactly the kind of media pundit they so ruthlessly criticize for being relentlessly partisan and unconcerned with the truth, and even personal friendship hasn't gotten in the way of that - see Michael's angry screed against Batya a few months back. So I find their complete rolling over in the face of Megyn's mouth-foaming propaganda to be fucking pathetic and beneath all three of them.
Summed it up perfectly
Exactly. Mischaracterize Charlie’s murder from the left and you’re scum who deserves to be canceled and bankrupted, but do it from the Jew-hating right and “I’ve not looked into it, I don’t have the time to listen to all her episodes.”
And the Fifth guys know it, but they become different people with different values and priorities when Megyn walks in the room, which is really, really disappointing.
Yeah, I hadn't paid attention to her in a long while but remembered her as a down the center reasonable type. She just sounds like every other asshole on Twitter now, which is a shame.
"We just have to hurt them real bad and then they'll get it and give up and we can get back to normal!"
Thoroughly.
Fucking.
Retarded.
I'd argue the only way this fixes itself is by the voting public getting sick of it to the point that the politically homeless center of the electorate becomes big and juicy, whereupon one of the parties will come to its senses and realize the middle is a lot bigger than the extreme on its own side. I don't know if the parties have gotten extreme enough yet for this to happen, but I am guessing we're close: it's hard to see how the level of retardation on either side gets much worse.
Point being that while it might appear that one of them deescalates at some point, it won't be in direct response to retaliation by the other side but rather by the realization that the better political strategy is to shoot for the center. The spin won't match the reality of what happened, but savvy observers will know.
She just gave a forthright admission that she doesn’t give a shit about principles. Michael even gave her a chance to walk it back. If he had half a spine he would have given her the Batia treatment, but he cowered. I found that exchange absolutely telling.
And until that time comes, grifters like her will continue to hoover up what ever cash the chaos spews out.
I used to begrudgingly admire her, but that's totally over now. Her politics aren't based on truth, they're based on rage. That's a house built on sand, there's nothing consistent there.
It was a super revealing answer. There are no adults, only children in her sandbox.
Yeah, to the extent she's further involved in Fifdom, I'm just gonna tune those entries out. This was useful insofar as it confirms that destroying her enemies is her core principle. I don't respect that, it doesn't lead to truth.
I listened to the episode last night and honestly, it was just kind of upsetting to listen to. It's such an ugly, ugly perspective to view your political opponents like that. No wonder political violence is on the rise when some of the most prominent voices out there are engaging in this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric.
I have to admit that this distressed me so much that I kind of checked out afterwards. Did she say exactly how she is going to hurt them really bad? She talked about hurting them and wagging war but I really want to know ...like how? What does that mean?
And after all the chest-thumping about what a brave truth teller she is.
I don't think she has thought any further than Friday on any of this.
Otherwise they won't learn their lesson, you know?
What shocked me was the absolute certainty with which she asserted this to be the admin’s plan. Total lunacy. “Our retribution is a one time balancing of the scales, and don’t even think about reciprocating when y’all get back in because then it will be your fault when we do it again which we won’t if you just shut up and play dead.”
Such a childish position by Megyn regarding Candace, but you guys made it too easy for her to squirm out of it that way by not fully quoting any one of a hundred things Candace has said. I love the show and you guys, but there is a whiff of not wanting to piss off a good connection. Why did Michael go after Batya Ungar-Sargon so much harder than this over tariffs?
Since it's Moynihan, I assume it's because he has a bigger boner for Megyn than for Batya.
Can’t blame him. She’s hot af.
If Mar-a-Lago face is your jam, she’s certainly among the least repulsive.
You should work on your standards.
She spends a lot on it. Can’t imagine what she looks like the morning of the day before her next Botox treatment.
The difference is Batya is defending the tariffs. Megyn is not defending what Candace said- she’s saying she hasn’t watched or listened to her. Sounds like she’s choosing not to, for whatever personal reasons. She did say that she has her own opinions about the
situation and in the future might share them, but doesn’t want to be bullied into it by a mob.
She called Candace "brilliant" (hilarious) and interrupted Michael during the exchange on her show to insinuate that he was taking Candace out of context.
I was confused by that when I heard it too, but it’s entirely possible that Megyn was referencing Candace from a time at Daily Wire and TPUSA, when she was friends with Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk. There are so many media personalities and you make a lot of assumptions about who they are. When Charlie Kirk died, I admit I had lumped him in with the obnoxious “debate me bro” guys who “own” people and I never watched him. After the algorithm fed me an endless loop of his videos in the days after the assassination, I was surprised to learn I was entirely wrong. I suspect there is something similar afoot here with Megyn. Maybe she’s giving too much credit to Candace based on priors, and she’s hesitant to join the pile on. She hasn’t spent enough time watching Candace lately. I think if Megyn is moved to speak her mind about Candace, she will.
you weren't "entirely" wrong. Kirk spewed absolute horseshit about anything related to Ukraine, regularly and with astonishing arrogance, which was in direct proportion to his deep and profound ignorance.
She chooses who to listen to and when. Every time someone on her side says something t she just looks perplexed. “Well. I haven’t heard that. I only have so much time in the day. Har har.”
The only place I ever hear about what Candace Owens is saying is on this podcast. I'm a 'touch grass' person, so there's a lot I guess I'm not exposed to.
I purposefully avoid CO bc she’s annoying and insane. 🤪
Megyn's stance on this is reactionary in the truest sense: It's nothing more substantive than a reaction to what others are perceived to have said.
Nothing good ever comes from refusing to criticize bad ideas because it would support the "other side", however one chooses to define "sides". (And I seriously cannot believe that her professed ignorance of Candace's commentary, while taking the time to speak in support, can be anything but willful.)
I don't know where this phrase came from—I thought it was Hitchens, but I can't find evidence of that with a quick search—but never let your enemies do your thinking for you.
It would have been boring if they made the whole thing about Owens. I thought Kmele and Moynihan articulated the problems with giving Owens a pass pretty damn well, each in their own way. Clearly she’s dug in her heels about taking a side so there’s only so far that exchange was going to go.
Because MM feels much more strongly about the harms of tariffs than he does about the harms of Candace Owens.
MK is taking the stupidly simplistic position of "I won't attack Candace just because you want me to" and so just keeps saying that CO is fine.
There's a whole lot of room between attacking Owens and praising her.
Saying that someone is wrong about something is not an attack.
Tariffs are a safe disagreement to have. It’s the classic “just arguing about the numbers”. To say- “you’re quoting Max Blumenthal, talking about demons and witchcraft being real, refusing to condemn to antisemitic lunatics on your own side and advocating for going to war with the Left” is another thing altogether
Taking the slippery slope argument and strapping on skis!
But more seriously, she doesn't have a problem criticizing Chase Strangio or any number of people on the left. So clearly there is some line that's too much for her as an "independent" journalist.
The ostrich thing of willfully not taking on the Owens craziness is a real problem. You have to police your own side to have credibility.
I think that her argument on CO is one of cupping your hands over your ears and yelling when someone tries to present negative information. When she was getting a bit of visibility, I’d seen a few things, yawned, and moved on.
My opinion of Charlie Kirk was very similar.
On subsequent closer review, the really negative things about Charlie largely proved false. CO, OTOH, holy crap!
At that point, I tend to just discard her entirely.
But the cancel mob won’t be satisfied with just ignoring her. You MUST denounce, or you’re literally Hitler.
She doesn’t have a “side” she said so herself. And that is all it takes to make it true.
I liked how she was very clear that she did not have a side and yet she had a very clear sense of who “we” are, who “they” are, and what “we” are gonna do to “them.” She’s just an umpire you see calling balls and strikes, pay no attention to the fact that she’s wearing one team’s uniform. Now, I don’t begrudge the boys having on members of their eclectic group of media friends. But I so much prefer when they bring on guests who teach me something or surprise me or provoke a good argument.
I mean giving her space to lay it out means this is her best argument and it's still bad. It's why to have interviews lije this.
I think this just illuminates that Megyn is a partisan. Don’t even think she is an anti-semite because I just don’t think she has the complexity to even go that far with it on this topic. It’s really as simple as, Tucker is my friend and Candace is on my side so therefore I cannot denounce their abhorrent views. Nothing complex about it.
Right, but popular fronts are bad on the left and they're bad on the right
Yes, but she is more than happy to earn a buck on trashing the left. This woman is a fucking dunce and the TFC boys are lapping up her milk because she gave them exposure to hapless morons.
It's not lacking complexity. It's pure grift. Simple as that. Audience capture and where can she continue to grow the audience. She's full of shit.
"I'm on Team Sanity and right now that's with the GOP"
Wow
This is kinda a case of "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." When your opponents are promoting socialism, race essentialism, chopping off kids' nads, and Jew hatred, you don't have to do much to be sane by comparison.
Re: your second sentence, maybe not, and yet they still manage to fall short of the mark almost without fail. Quite a feat in a way. But the bigger problem is, even if I agreed with your characterization of MAGA’s/her “opponents” (you speak as though a typical non-MAGA person is either fine with those things or, even less plausibly, actually doing them), it still wouldn’t begin to justify saying “meh, due process schmue process, just round ‘em up, send ‘em down south, and let Bukele sort ‘em out”, to name just one of the indefensible things this administration has been gleefully doing.
When I was younger I would roll my eyes, thinking that all these things my parents constantly lectured me about were just pious clichés that parents say to their kids: the golden rule, “two wrongs don’t make a right”, don’t lie/cheat/steal, be humble in victory and honorable in defeat, etc. Nope, turns out all that stuff is not just the makings of decency and character, but actual small-r republican values that serve as a good practical guide to self-government and mutual respect among citizens. (They also happen to be an almost literal inversion of Donald Trump’s own character and behavior, but never mind; I’m genuinely not trying to be petty here.)
But now this extremely shrill faction of each party, who don’t care about any of that stuff and in fact think you’re a sucker if you do, is seen by the other side as definitive of their opponents merely because they’re so fucking loud on the internet all the time.
Come on, don’t fall for that bullshit.
> you speak as though a typical non-MAGA person is either fine with those things or, even less plausibly, actually doing them
I'm speaking of the people in the center and on the center-right (and probably even a lot of people on the center-left, meaning old-school Democrat types) who looked at the choice between Trump and the MAGA agenda vs. Harris and the far-left progtard agenda and decided immediately which was the lesser evil. That some of them may now be regretting their choice doesn't falsify the calculus that went into the choice at the time: it's more a result of a change in conditions in which the Trump administration has doubled down on its own retardation.
I'm still waiting for one of the two parties to run on a Sane People 'XX agenda, which I would vote for without hesitation. That said, the ability for Democrats to do that successfully was seriously damaged by Biden suggesting that he would do exactly such a thing, and then pivoting to the far left the moment he got into office. (Well, at least whoever was setting Administration policy did.) Such a campaign has to be *credible*.
Wow indeed. Megyn’s ‘Team Sanity’ looks like a civil libertarians nightmare.
The latest edition of Reason magazine (cover art by MM’s ex)is “Culture War Police State.” Cover story by C.J. CIARAMELLA. “From library books to abortion, gender, and even food, the culture war is now feeding the police state.”
LOL did I just hear MK try to explain Candace by saying she is a young mom under a lot of pressure?! Did not see that one coming.
Doesn’t everyone become an antisemitic nut job when they’re under a lot of pressure?
Post partum pogroms are totally a thing.
I literally lol’d.
I’ll let you know after my daughter’s born in April.
If you’re a young mom under a lot of pressure and you’re having a psychotic break about the Jews, maybe you could just take a little break.
I can't believe they let that one go. If it was anyone else, especially Michael would be "are you fucking kidding me?"
I’m choosing to believe that he was at least thinking it
Hmm, the postpartum psychosis defense
Can you imagine if a guest defended Zohran Mamdani in the same way? Moynihan would have lit them on fire. Instead he went full cuck and just said “yes, mommy”. 🤡
Yeah, I totally agree. I’m afraid it’s as simple as they are friends with Megyn and like going on her show. I imagine it’s much more difficult to ask your friends the hard questions and push back a bit when the answers are lacking. It would have been interesting to see how Megyn responded to some more pointed questions. At the same time, Megyn said enough that I was able to form my own view of her position. Though sometimes I also want the catharsis of seeing BS arguments called out!
And the dudes just let it fly
Me pouring another scotch and firing up the video: "Be bullshit, call brave fellas!"
Yeah good luck
I kept hoping that towards the end the guys would lead Megyn from the studio to an adjacent room where Noam Dworman would be waiting for her in a gimp suit with a projector loaded with clips of Candace on the Jews.
Michael was more than happy to be the gimp here.
I kind of felt he put one leg in the gimp suit but then took it out. I’m sure it was on in his head though!
That would be quality entertainment
Megan conveniently leaves out the attempts to steal the election and January 6th. I doubt any of the lawfare would have happened if Trump had taken is loss like an adult. America thought Trump should have been punished and punished swiftly. When that didn't happen, the Dems unwisely went dirty.
The attempts to steal the election forever put Trump beyond the pale for me. I live in Georgia and I will vote against Stacy Abrams every chance I get for the exact same reason.
Absolute false equivalence. Stacy Abrams didn’t tell an angry mob to march on Congress to “take their country back”. And Trump absolutely lied about his assets to secure favorable loans in the New York case. The distance between those 2 is massive.
There is a huge difference, but both can still suck.
My son also chooses to double down when people point out he’s wrong. The difference is he’s 4…
Interesting to see someone call themselves "moderate" and "principled" while directing arguing for authoritarianism and laughing at the mention of the Founders and the Constitution. Guess I'm just old now and can't keep up with the modern lingo.
Been a paid subscriber since the Patreon days. Cancelling because of this episode. These dudes are ugly.
Come on now, at least Kmele is handsome.
Nice burner account, Kmele.
I've got plenty of smoke for Kmele, just not over his appearance.
e.g. Future is an uncompelling rapper whose music is best suited as inoffensive background noise, aka Mall Rap.
That’s why they had MK on ~ to soften the blow.
"Better living through chemistry."
Agree. Watching these dudes just completely abandon all of their principles to suck up to this morally bankrupt plastic filled simpleton without a word of pushback was painful.
I won't stop subscribing because I think their non-Megyn content is great and they "usually" call it as they see it from a center-right lens. But they behaved like neutered little boys in this episode and they deserve to be mocked for their spinelessness.
Performative cancelling. Cute.
I still prefer to listen to it.
Here’s my problem with Megyn regarding Candace, and I wish the guys would have pointed this out to her, she rightfully goes hard after left wing antisemites but decides she has nothing to say about right wing antisemites. That makes her a hypocrite. It also doesn’t help her case that I’ve heard her defend Candace twice and another time actually said she respected her LMAO.
Kudos to Michael for cutting his own hair! Perhaps for the next video episode he could comb it?
Whoa! Let’s not get crazy here