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Welcome to the Megyn Kelly, show your home for open honest and provocative conversations.
Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show, so excited to bring you Sam Harris. Today, I first talked to Sam way back in December 2020, it was just episode. 37 of our burgeoning little show, like many conversations he has. It was long. It was deep it affected me, greatly for days. And days afterward, we talked about political tribalism race essentialism cancel culture, the woke left, the rise of
Victimhood, Trump, Biden, even meditation in some ways, it feels like a lifetime ago, but in other ways, these stories have only gotten more relevant and alarming after Sam's comments about Hunter Biden. Back in August, you may remember this. He was on the podcast trigonometry which we love and Sam likes to and made some comments about how we'll get to it. But basically he didn't care what was on the hunter by the laptop that Trump was a unique figure who needed him.
Stopped and well, we'll play the sound bites. You can hear yourself so much backlash, came his way and Sam stepped away from the spotlight for a bit. But glad to say he's back with me today, and we have so much to discuss Sam. Harris is an author neuroscientist and host of the very popular making sense podcast, Sam. Great to have you back on, Welcome
Back. Hey Megan, great to see you.
So you've been busy, you've had a, you had an eventful fall and winter.
Season and let me just start with, how are you? How you doing? I'm
great. Actually, I, as you said, I've stepped away from Twitter and I'm actually embarrassed to say, what a, an immense change that has been in my life. I mean, it's really, we can talk about that, but I was, I was genuinely surprised that it was as much of a problem for me as it was. And I really only recognize that in retrospect. So maybe I, obviously, I knew something was off and I,
Decided to delete my account, but I'm just amazed at what Twitter has done. Not just to me, but to society make us is a problem of social media more generally, but I think Twitter really is the epicenter of it. And I just think it has, you know, we've all been enrolled in a psychological experiment to which no one really has consented. And the results are, are not looking good and it's so, yeah, we can, we can get into that if you want to but it's, you know, I'm
Great. And it's really been a huge Improvement not to be segment in my life. And, you know, the hours and minutes between checking Twitter, which is really what life had become. It's very strange to say it, but that really is what it what has happened to so many people.
I understand. And I understand in particular, for someone like you, who is, I don't know if you call yourself in the center, I think you do. You mean left on some things?
Right. On some things, you surprised both sides with your takes on various issues. You can't be eating easily pigeon-holed and for somebody like that. It's a, it's an even rougher place. I mean, I can kind of relate to this because while mostly I'm leaning right on a lot of issues today just because I'm big into the culture wars and we've lost our minds. I understand because a lot of the times, the people who follow me from the left because they know I'm not
not hard right now give their side of fair shake and they just want facts. Right? I did I deal. In fact they'll get very upset over certain things I'm saying or sometimes the right will here because I'm not afraid to criticize figures on the right whether it's Trump DeSantis etcetera. And so I understand you at Twitter's one of those places where they just want you to be on their team and if you're on their team, they'll back you. And if you say something that goes against the team narrative, they get very very angry and it can be very toxic.
Yeah. Yeah. As you say if you're in the center you really do. Get it from both sides. You know, if your you do I say as much against woke ISM as I think virtually anyone on the right. And I say as much against trumpism as virtually anyone on the left but if there's any daylight between you and the right and the left on any specific topic, yeah, you you're treated like the near enemy, right? You know, it's just, it's it.
It's even more of a vicious and dishonest sort of attack against you. And so, it's it, I think it is very different being more or less just a line with one pole and because then you can really just discount what you're getting from the other side. But I really don't have another side, right? I, I'm very much in the center. Not not because I think the truth is always at the midpoint between two extremes but because I'm genuinely not a
Addison, right? And so I'm calling balls and Strikes as I see them. And so you know, for instance, no matter how much I despise trumpism as a as a movement and no matter how much I think Trump is is precisely the wrong sort of person to have been put in the Oval Office. You know I'm not willing to take cheap shots at him. Let me despite what would Trump is may think I do but so so for instance, when
You know, he's someone takes a clip from a press conference of his that is genuinely misleading. Like the you know, the fine people clip after Charlottesville right that was you know that was not what he what he seemed to say over on the left, right? And could be made to seem to say by endlessly referencing that clip of him, saying they're fine people on both sides was not. In fact what he said in context, right? He was not praising Nazis and
Anti-semites in the way he was made to seem. And so that's an unfair attack and it's, you know, it's the sort of thing that has happened to me as you referenced and many of us are just living and dying by Clips. But partisans are happy to play that game because they're not, they don't really care what their opponents think, they only care what they can be made to seem to think, right? They what part of tribalist and a partisan wants to do at each moment politically
is tar their opponents with the most extreme and however tenuously plausible version of what they can seem to mean right and then they just want to hold them to that no matter how uncharitable that is, no matter how dishonest that is until the end of time, right? And so I'm just I'm not willing to play that game as much as it gets played with me. And yeah, so then when you
When you decline to do that, you get a tremendous amount of hate from both sides.
Yeah. Well that's why we can get into the comments about Trump and hundred Biden but that's why I thought it was useful. But why are people so averse to hearing someone like you who has defended the cops in the midst of the BLM storm, against them spoken out against woke ISM, has been an important really smart which is a bonus voice on some of these really important issues.
Who's that? That the right in particular cares about why do they care so much that you hate Trump like okay, you hate Trump. Lot of people hate Trump. Why people love Trump like, okay, that I think it's valuable to have somebody like you who's not deranged? Who's not just suffering. From this sort of leftism that takes over your brain and makes you see everybody on the right is terrible. That's not you. Why is it so upsetting to them? Hear you say? I really really hate him. Here are all the reasons I hate him and don't think he should be near the great. It's to me a window, a window? We
Should open we should listen to. We should consider may not be persuasive. May not may feel offended in the moment but that's what the right criticizes, the left for doing being little snowflakes who can't hear another view, right? The right is supposed to be able to hear opposing views, walk away fortified by new opinions or insights that they accept or reject and move on with their beautiful lives.
Yeah, it's not so much that I hate Trump. It's really, you know, I don't hate him as a person. I think I hate the fact of him. I hate this. I hate what he has done to our politics and to our society. Generally it's not, you know, it's for me the bright line with Trump has always been his refusal to agree, to a peaceful transfer of power, you know, in in the run-up to the
20/20 election. I mean there were there, obviously, there are many other reasons, I literally a hundred reasons to have deplored his candidacy, in my view, and I was very, you know, outspoken on those reasons. But the the true point of no return for me was his decline into to accept a peaceful transfer of power. And this is I really think they should be uncontroversial, right? This is, you know,
Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural celebrated, our peaceful transfer of power as a miracle, right? And and you know he I think he was right to to emphasize that it distinguishes us from so many other societies that are struggling to create valid democracies and stable ones. And Trump did his best to destroy that miracle in 2020 and he effectively did, and we did not have a peaceful transfer of power.
Power. So, you know, whatever you think about him as a person, whether you think he's, you know, entertaining and, you know, would just be worth paying attention to or you always wanted him to disappear. That was the point of no return, I think politically and ethically. And yeah. So that's is so the, you know, that was going on for a good eight months before the election was actually run. And it was, it was quite clear. I mean, the put the painful irony here.
Is that he attempted to do what he claimed was being done to him and he really did attempt to steal an election. And the fact that so many people in our society, believe that the election was stolen from him is, you know, it's not something that
I necessarily blame millions of people for. I mean there's so much misinformation and so much confusion now, and it's so little trust in our institutions. Again, this is largely a problem engineered for us by social media that. Yeah, you know, I can't blame millions of people for for not quite understanding what happened there. But, you know, I believe I do understand what happened there. I think it's pretty clear. It was pretty clear in real time. What was happening and it was
Hannibal, and it was beyond that it was actually dangerous. So, yeah, I mean, that's, you know, it's not a matter of personal animus toward Trump, I think Trump is, is kind of a goofy Entertainer really in the end. He's a con man and he's, I don't think he's a normal person. I don't think he's an ethical person. I don't think he, I think he's a malignantly selfish person, but he's not someone who I would need to pay attention to if he hadn't already been president and wasn't seeking the
Since the again thing, right? So you say, the point of no return, and yet he has returned, and it may be returning in an even more robust way in over the next weeks and months to come. Let me ask you this time because I one thing about your comments to trigonometry and I'll play part of them, has me listening to comments, like the ones you just made and saying. But
don't you understand what led people to believe that Trump was cheated out of his second term? It was in part comments. Like the ones you made because they rightly believed the Trump hating left, would do anything to stop him and saw your comments as an admission to that effect? It was, and I thought wasn't the ends. Justify the means, he must be stopped. He's a unique figure and that that's just one of the many things.
Things that had people believing, they will do anything. And in particular, the suppression of the hunter, Biden laptop, let me let you can ruminate on that. While I get the audience up to speed with the sound bite that
were talking about it. Let me just let me just say it as preface to the sound bite that. I'm not actually saying what I seem to be saying in this clip, right? This is a clip that was maliciously spread on Twitter by someone who subsequently spread a clip that you tried to have me.
Saying that I wished more children died during covid. Right? I mean, and that clip was so inept and it was, it was so clear. What I was in in context, that not a lot of people believe that, but it's the same person who circulated the clip. And this is a larger problem again with social media that people are behaving like Psychopaths, right? And people, you know, whether they're Psychopaths or not, they're actually just consciously misleading, millions of people just for the
You know, just for the lulz, you know, and just to exact some kind of reputational harm on people, they don't like, and it's, it's not good, right? So I'm happy to feel free to play the clip. I'm happy to talk about it, but I'm actually, it's not, I'm not actually saying what I seem to be saying in this click. OK. And I got that was reasonably. Clear in context? I mean, the truth is, I'm not I wasn't speaking, as well as I might have spoke in that context.
Listen to the wind up without knowing what we're going to do that on the on the back end. So let me play what we have and then you can take it on top three.
Yep.
100 by. And at that point, 100 by literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared, right? It's like, it's and there's nothing. First of all, it's Hunter buy them, right? It's not. It's like, it's not Joe Biden. But even if Joe, but like, even whatever scope of Joe Biden's corruption is like they do. If we could just go down that rabbit hole endlessly and understand the, he's getting kickbacks from hundred Biden's deals and Ukraine or whatever else, right or China.
It is infinitesimal. Compared to the corruption, we know Trump is involved in. It's like, it's like, it's like a firefly to the sun, right? I mean, like, there's just it doesn't even, it doesn't even stack up against Trump University, right? Trump University as a story is worse than anything that could be in Hunter Biden's laptop, in my view right now, that's not that doesn't answer the people who say is still completely unfair.
To not have looked at the laptop in a timely way and to have shut down the, you know, the New York, post's, twitter account, like that. That's a just a conspiracy is a left-wing conspiracy to deny the presidency to Donald Trump. Absolutely. It was absolutely right, but I think it was warranted
Okay. Go ahead. Yeah, so the thing that's genuinely misleading there is that is the final line? I think it was warranted, right? That was not what I was saying in context, and what I meant to say, and the distinction for me is I was so, here's, here's what I was talking about in context, right? So, we have this, this October surprise dropped by Rudy Giuliani, something like 10 days before the election. This is this laptop from hell. And this is it
It was a very unpleasant echo of what had happened in the previous election, with Jim Comey deciding to revisit Hillary Clinton's emails, based on the discovery of Anthony Weiner's laptop and we know what happened there. We know that that was really, you know, obviously I think Hillary's failed candidacy was over. Determined she was a terrible candidate for a variety of reasons and it's understandable, she didn't become president, but we saw what happened to the polls, you know hour by hour after that, that press conference.
And it did seem decisive, right? And so, I viewed the emergence of this laptop as many people did as just this, you know, on the one hand, it certainly seemed like it stood a good chance of being fake or at least doctor door and some species of of disinformation. But most important not knowing what was true there that the Clock Was ticking, right? And it didn't seem
At all, prudent to be Hostage, to Rudy, giuliani's timeline right into have to figure out how to drill down on this laptop, in the 10 days. Before the election, making it the front page story across the board, trying to figure out what was real there. So my position was never that it was an easy call journalistically. I in fact in the in the context of this interview I talked about it being a coin toss. I talk about being uncertain, what I think should happen.
Happened there. But I sound very certain In that clip in that clip as I seem to be saying that it was just straight a straightforwardly wise decision to ignore the laptop. What I actually was saying and what I actually believe is that it was a genuinely hard decision journalistically to decide what to do when that laptop emerged at 10 days before the election. And I think, you know, it's it's a coin toss whether or not an institution, like the New York Times, should have just ignored it and
till after the election, I'm not saying they should have ignored until the end of time. I'm not saying that it's not totally valid now to look at what's in that laptop. Although the truth is now that Trump is a candidate for the presidency. Again, I still don't care, what's in that laptop, right? And this was the other point. I was making we know so much about Donald Trump and Joe Biden. As people write, these are the same two men
who this is your judgment. This is a difference. This is less controversial. This is where you Veer off or two buttons worse than or trunks worse than by did.
Going to convince me differently. I get that. Like, that's that we've had that debate with people many times and that's what leads people to the polls and they make the choice, they do. It's the, it's the, it's the notion that because you said in the interview politically speaking, I consider Trump an existential threat, or you said that after the fact, he's an existential threat. And so the thought that he's an existential threat and really must be stopped, right? And that I'm not really interested in information
that but that's not true. Not so I just want to
Clarify that, I mean, I was not I was not saying in that interview that the ends justify the means and that we are free to do illegal and unethical things in order to stop Trump. And I don't think he's and I did not think he's an existential threat of that sort. I don't think Trump is orange Hitler, right? I think he's a deeply selfish and unqualified person for to put in the presidency and
Or, I think he's, you know, he's dangerous, right? But he's not ideological, he's not, he's not nearly as Sinister as he could be. And again, I in the context of that interview, I made that clear, the whole bit about him being, I mean, there's a, I think part of the clip you didn't play as I drew an analogy to an asteroid hurtling toward Earth again. It was misleading in the clip because what I was talking about is just how irrelevant it was. Whether there was a conspiracy or not whether people are
Talking behind closed doors.
I understand that. I agree with you. You're talking about is it conspiracy just cause you have people in a room talking about that coming at them like an asteroid, no doubt,
they'll or talking in public and in private about how to stop Trump and I consider that fine. What I don't consider fine is lying about him lying about his what he actually means when he's speaking lying about what he's done and hasn't done one line about what he intends and doesn't intend and so much of the problem of trump is completely in plain view, I'm here
He's the wait, are
you saying the right doing that or the Lagoon use that when you list that off? That's a left. That's that's who did that? We
all know that isn't that is the left and I haven't done that with Trump. My the point I'm making is that
It was it was totally valid to avert your eyes from the hunter Biden laptop story with 10 days to run out before the election, given that, this this October surprise was clearly engineered for political reasons, right? So that's, that's all I was saying that
the citizenry can avert to anything, it's the question of whether journalists should be in on it. Should we should be making decisions to protect a
budget
journalists have to make editorial decisions all the time as you know and you signal boost things you think are important and going to make the future better than the past and
you so maybe you don't run with it. Maybe the New York Times says we don't have it. We don't think the sourcing is there. But what happened in this case was the New York. Post's reporting was entirely shut down. Their Twitter account was frozen, they couldn't, you couldn't, I couldn't retweet the article as somebody who wasn't shut down. There was
Lutely, no, communication of that. In our, in our online, social square and it definitely suppress circulation of a very big story. So, it wasn't just, we, the New York Times, don't think the sourcing is there. It was we big Tack and big journalism are going to put our thumb on the New York Post and squash its reporting, which was clearly done to advance the Biden
campus. Well, let me just again, I would dispute the fact that at the time
it was clear whether the New York Post story was was valid. So I do think it was an understandable judgment call on the part of the people at Twitter. I don't think it was the right thing to do that. If you don't do
that, you don't do that. You don't say, we little armchair Warriors, will decide without having done any of the reporting. We haven't seen the laptop. We haven't talked to the FBI. We now know they had an investigation open, which we knew at the time. They haven't done anything. It's little armchair Warriors, saying that hurts biotin
And I don't think anybody who believes if the subway all about Donald Trump's positions that they would have had the same reluctance to publish it. We all know that.
Oh no, that's completely true. Yeah, so that insofar as they're, you know, I'm acknowledging a massive bias against Trump on the part of the people at Twitter and the people in, you know, much of the established so mainstream media. That's true, right? And it was understandable. And yes, the, if they had that
I've been, you know, Donald Trump jr. Is laptop that there's no question that would have been a different response and I do think it was almost certainly the wrong decision for Twitter to block that story. And, and and to ban, I think they, I think they took down the New York Post account briefly if I yeah. Memory serves. Yeah. No. I think again, that's, that's we quite distinct from The New York Times, just deciding not to look into it for 11 days, right? I mean that that's so
There were, you know, aggregations to the the practice of bias there and I'm, you know, I'm much more comfortable with what the New York Times didn't didn't do than what with what Twitter did or didn't do
so. And I think it helped helps feed what you hate, which is conspiracy. Yeah. Saying what you hate, you'll decide what you'll sell tells what you hate, but I know you're not a big conspiracy person and I pride myself on not getting sucked into those either. I really do I
My listeners know, I'm Vigilant about taking in information from the left and the right. So no one can corrupt my brain. No one can make me down their team, jersey advertently, or inadvertently. I want to deal. In fact, it's getting harder and harder with AI and chat GPT and so on, and we're just going to be an ongoing battle. However, it's worth the effort, so, but this is how conspiracies are born little things like this. It's not wasn't a little thing. The the suppression of a story by a by big Tech by a respected news.
Paper. I don't care if you're on the left of the right, and your post is Alexander, Hamilton founded. It's been around for a long, long time. So I'm very, very well. They have legit reporters over there and they did have the story as we now know, 100% Washington, Post New York Times, they've all acknowledged it. Now, the laptop was real. Those disinformation experts who put out their statement, those Intel experts have been embarrassed and they should have gone with the story and they should have reported on the story. So that's it's just bit by bit things like that that send people down the rabbit hole that send people down.
And to read it hell from which they emerge thinking. There are lizard people, right? We could go down the list,
right? Right. But but the point I made there that was so provocative that people found so astounding and objectionable was that there could be nothing on that laptop that I would have cared about right now. That is you know still true, right? Because it's be again because I believe we know so much about Trump and Biden as people now.
I'm not a fan of Biden running again for the presidency, you know. I hope he doesn't, although I don't know who the other candidate. I don't know who we would put in his place, but still, I know, I believe, I know so much about him as a person and that, and there's nothing on that on his sons laptop. That is all likely to offset that, you know, if Biden were living like Andrew Tate, right? If he was driving around in a Bugatti, he had all kinds of homes. We didn't know about well, then, okay.
Okay. Then some allegation of corruption, might land in a way that would balance the scales against Trump. But again, we know so much about Trump's history that precedes his even running for the presidency in 2016 that makes him in my view, one of the most corrupt people we've ever seen in public life. And so that's why I simply don't care about what Hunter Hunter Biden has been up to, we know Hunter is, you know, a disaster, right? And he has been a crack.
Addict, you know, and it's just,
this is about whether Joe disaster. The the what was happening in the corruption front was whether Joe is taking 10% from the as the big guy and that whether it would be persuade persuade each other, it would be persuasive to you or not is relevant. It's relevant to a campaign and, and to balancing out the scales. And one of the reasons why you may not think the Biden corruption compares to corruption, on the Trump side is because the mainstream media won't report it. They don't care, Sam, they won't go.
Digging on abide in Story, the way they would go digging on a trump story. If Trump's daughter had written a diary that talked about inappropriately, long showers between her and her, father, you don't think the mainstream media would have covered that for days. No, they blacked out the actual Biden, diary story.
Okay, well then it's been so successfully blacked out that this is the first I'm hearing of it. So I can't really respond but your point is, certainly true, right? That there is this bias, but again, the bias is understandable, because we know so much about these guys. Now, it's not that they think sexual harassment charge against Biden, that was looked into and it didn't get completely suppressed. But there are literally dozens
of Utah read. I'm one of like two people who did it.
I flew to her during the covid pandemic. While I didn't even have a network, I didn't even have a show because everyone was ignoring her and I was mad. And I um, I can't show you another there. I don't think there is another journalist in America, who interviewed both the Trump accusers and Tara Reid and Biden's accusers
because I ran out of Paris story, I believe in the New York Times. So I mean it was covered in because it got it got into my brain but my point is even if it's
like, you know how is covered I you know you know very well how it
Is covered. If you look at the same way that the stories about the Andrew Cuomo accusers. Originally were covered that the Instinct of the media is at first to run cover and they demolished error read. They completely pulled this woman apart. They, I read about her bankruptcies in the paper. Why the hell is that relevant? She's poor Tara Reid is poor. Yeah, the accusers. Don't come in these perfect. Little packages. That. Did they do that to all of Trumps accusers. Absolutely not. They did it. They weren't interested in tearing them down to this day. They
build them up.
Yeah, I'm you know I'm not going to dispute the bias, right? I'm just going to, I just still feel that the scale of it is so non analogous, you know, when you, when you look at it but what
happens from how do you know that you're working with all the facts? When you say that when I am
telling again? Well
my industry stop specifically stops you from having the relevant information there.
I intentionally don't investigate when they smell a rat on the Democratic side, especially if Trump's on the other side,
well, I think the whole thing's been a process, right? So, you know, Biden went through a primary, right? We're Biden went through a primary process where even his current vice president accused him of racism, right? In order to land a blow when she still had presidential aspirations, right? So that there's been a the incentives have been such
That that everyone gets banged around by everybody else. You know, over the course of years of being a political candidate, my point about corruption is just that we know how Biden lives his life day-to-day. He's again, both of these men have been in the public eye for practically as long as you and I have been alive. So he just can't hide that, that kind of corruption. And Trump, doesn't hide his corruption, and he's never hidden it. And so,
Again it's just it's the scale of it. Yes, I'm sure they're unsaid. I'm not sure but I'm I would not be surprised there. If there were many unsavory things we might find out about Joe, Biden on Hunters laptop or somewhere else, right? Is it, but from what I think we know about him. He's a very different sort of person than Trump is. He is not a once-in-a-generation narcissist. He is not the he mean
Pump is is not a normal human being. Really, I mean, he's really not, he's not the sort of person who can even put his children in front of his own interest, you know? I mean, someone Praises, his children in his presence and the first thing out of his mouth is to say, oh well they're just, you know, they're just riding my coattails, right?
It's just is what a narcissist does and it's unbelievables out love based on how you feel about them or how you reflect on them and I think there's a good case to be made that Trump is a narcissist.
I mean, I think most presidents have some large
Touch of ever. If ever there were a case to be made about anybody. It's
yeah, I don't dispute that but I don't I think that, you know, sort of the hubris of then, that's the calculation that everyone should go into the voting booth with right ladies. Shouldn't be you don't need to see the hunter Biden laptop because it's just obvious one. Man is a better person than the other is just such a
fail. Well, again, that would be, it's not, it's
not that. So it's even if you say
Trump is not a great man Trump's, not a great whatever. Not a great dad, shouldn't really be anywhere near the presidency with that sort of temperament and erratic Behavior. Okay, ideally that wouldn't happen when you look across the the aisle and you got, you know, sleepy, Joe from Scranton. Okay, fine. We haven't seen as anywhere near the number of bad stories about him as we have about Trump. However, this guy. Now as you point out they have records this guy what are we seeing? He and his party want to pack the
In court, they want to add States so that we can get rid of the legislative filibuster, they opened the Border entirely. We have absolutely no rule of law Downs that they want to ignore Court rulings entirely, they seem fine with Supreme Court, Justices having their lives and their children. Their family threatened on a regular basis and the law being violated. But not enforcing it through Merrick Garland, which has now admitted. They, they're openly saying that they're going to ignore court rulings including from the US Supreme Court which Joe Biden did when it came to the whole rent a bait
Process that that he had during covid. If they're eliminating gender, they won't say what a woman is, which I know you don't approve of, that's lunacy, right? So it's like, okay, Trump. I get it. You I know you've mentioned Trump University in the in the trigonometry thing like the corruption. Guess who asked Trump about that? It presidential debate me. Okay, so I get it. However, the level of lunacy happening on the left right now, makes all of that pale in comparison.
Well, there's lunacy on both sides, right? I mean on the other side, you got people talking about Jewish space lasers, setting fires in California. It's right. You got going on. You got, that's cute. Yo, this is retailer to running. Its
can't say what a woman is. They cannot say what a woman is. You
can't go from. Listen, I mean, I'm happy to Pivot to. Whoa. Chasm. If you want, if you want me to talk about that, I'd be, you know, we will agree about about levels of
problem country and to ourselves and to our culture and to that. What's up
Portent in America. That's
what listen. I mean, the problem for me is that that
They're the extreme left and the extreme, right? Or, you know, me trumpism is not quite conservatism but let's let's do two extremes just to keep it simple. Both extremes are completely pathological and dishonest and and
I would read dangerous. I think you're excusing. The Democratic party's enormous shift to the left
over that. I am not. I've spent much more time. I certainly had my
Cast talking about and worrying. About woke is mm I know and you know identitarian moral panics on the left then I have spent time worrying about Trump and trumpism right because
before I know in this argument you're equating q and the far left as you know and what I'm saying is the Democrats, I get q and on, I get on the trust me I've had people call up. Wanted me to sign on to those theories or they're not going to listen. Bye. I'm not the podcast for you. That's not my thing and it's never going to be
However, it's the Democratic party, putting out these as Democratic party that won't protect the Border. It's the Democratic party that wants to pack the court. It's Joe Biden, who wouldn't say no to that, it's his AG who wouldn't protect the Supreme Court. It's his AG who wanted to go legal and the White House. That wanted to label parents objecting to the covid restrictions and to the overreach as a domestic terrorist like that. That's not the left. That's not the Marjorie Taylor green of the left, that's Biden.
Hmm, yeah. Well I don't think Biden has been fully captured by by the far left but there's no question. He's had to Pander to the far left to be the to be the Democratic nominee in the first place and he'll have to do it again, presumably to seek the presidency in 2024, although I do hold out some hope that we've seen the the peak woke ISM and I think the pendulum might be swinging back and I certainly
I have to think it is because it looks so ridiculous. But yeah, there's a their asymmetries here that are just worth pointing out in the one asymmetry. And this is something I've pointed out many times is that, you know, the extreme, right? When you talking about, you know, white nationalist racists in our society say that the kinds of people who marched in Charlottesville or, you know, Q&A, you know the crazy end of trumpism
Is Extreme, right? It has not captured major institutions apart from, you know, the, you know, to some degree, the brain of trump and a few people in Congress, right? Who, you know, again, the someone like Marjorie Taylor green, but it hasn't, it hasn't completely vitiated our institutions, the way far left identitarian politics have. Right? So we with woke gives them. You have the
Yuan Corruption of Journalism, and Science, and Hollywood and you know, all of our tools for making sense at scale in in popular culture. So but
You know, that the reason why that's so shocking is because we expect the New York Times and a scientific journal like nature or science or an institution, like Stanford University to be above rank political partisanship and not to be deranged by its own tribalism, right? And and we get, we don't expect that of some
Of an institution like Fox News or Breitbart, right? And so it to some degree, the shock is Testament to how different various institutions have been up until now. But yeah, I spent a lot more time worrying about what's happening at Stanford University and the New York Times. And in, you know, in our scientific journals like like science or level Lancet or Jama in the aftermath of you know, the last you know,
For five years then I spend worrying about Q&A, right? And because q and on is just you know, at a glance crazy but it's not that it's not scary but it's it is The Fringe or The Fringe for a
reason. Yeah. It doesn't write what I think the word users capture. That's exactly right. They don't have the capture of those major institutions. So where does that leave us? We got to turn the page to woke ISM. What to do, very happy to hear. You say you think we may have reached Peak and we're going to get into
The latest on you and I believe you audience members how now the head of the student group at San Francisco, State University is responding to Riley gains. Here's a tip, she's not sorry, not at all. Sam Harris stays with us for the whole show. Very interesting conversation. Hope you're enjoying it.
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So Sam, before we get into Rio games and all that's happening on that front, I did, you see this now? Viral exchange between this BBC journalist and Elon Musk know, you probably didn't cause you're not on Twitter, start Twitter. So, all right, I'm going to show you lighten me. I'm going to show it to you. So you'll on sat down with the BBC and they were talking. I believe he was trying to press him.
Really, the journalist was talking about his own experience on Twitter and how he thought it was more - after Ilan took over and so Ilan, pushed back, and it went on for about two or three minutes in the clip that's online. We shorten it down to the to a one-minute highlight, watch, what happened?
Painting one example, I do. Honestly don't even want to see. I can't name a single example. I'll tell you why. Because I don't actually use that for you feed anymore because I just don't particularly like it. You said you got a people. A lot of people are quite similar II. Only kind of secondly we said you've seen more helpful content but you can't name a single example, not even one. I'm not sure. I've used that feet for the last three or four weeks and I'll learn how did you see that? He will contact contact because I've been, I've been using it. I've been using Twitter since you've taken over for the last six months because then you must have at some point scene.
In the you for you hateful, content, I'm asking for one example, right? You can't give us a moment and I'm saying when I say so that you don't know what you're talking about, really? Yes. Because you can't be a single example of hateful. Canta Canta, not even one tweets. Look, his people say all sorts of nonsense. I'm literally asking for a single example. You can't name one, right? And as I already said, I don't use that face. But listen, how did you know that? I don't think this is getting any literally, said, you experience more hateful content and then couldn't name a single example. Right? And as I said, that's absurd. I
I haven't actually looked at that feed but how would you know if this were for Content? Because I'm saying that's what I saw a few weeks ago. I can't give you an exact example. Let's move on.
This is so embarrassing, Sam. This is so embarrassing. Your you have a degree in philosophy. You understand it. Like, we have to, you have to have your reasoning. Hey, you have your reasoning behind any idea that you're going to debate, if you're going to debate it. Well, this guy went in there totally unprepared and for once the interview, we caught the interviewer completely flat.
Footed and really kept pressing for me as a journalist. It was delicious, was a delight because I never go into an interview without my facts, without my backup without my evidence. You don't just say like it's got more hateful, and if you see what preceded that he says, it's got more racist and more sexist since you took over. And that's where he'll and said, give me an example. What did you make of it?
Yeah, well, I mean, it's just kind of a comedy of errors. There are we really on both sides? Because, you know, had he given a single example. There's no reason to think that would be a valid representation of
Of a trend, right? But, you know, I'm sure there are people who quantify these things and yeah, I can I'm certainly prepared to believe that it's gotten more hateful and you know that the guardrails have come off to some degree since Elon took over. But you know, any one person's experience is not going to be a valid way of quantifying that. But yeah, that was ridiculous exchange and work to elon's Advantage.
The larger point with, you know, Elon and Twitter. Is that Elon is the poster boy for what is wrong with Twitter. Right? And it's not, it's not because he's running it badly. I mean, I really am agnostic as to whether or not he can improve it as a platform. I think he's done some, some ill-considered things, you know, in his tenure as its owner but it's his actual personal use of the platform.
Form. That is so worthy of criticism, right? Is tweet any Lon you know Elon was a friend, right? So it's not I'm not I don't like to be in a position to say this but I think Twitter has been obviously bad for him as a person, right? He's obviously addicted to it. He's he's he's behaving in ways that are starkly unethical. He singled out you know individual citizens in front of what now
Something like 130 million people, you know, you know, bullying them and abusing them with, you know, two great consequence in their lives. And it's, it's just not good. It's and so it's yeah. I bet I just think it's Twitter is an awful place for many. Many people is and but certainly not everybody. If you're just sharing, happy cat memes on Twitter, I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about. You just you're just getting lots of love back
and I doubt that right place, no one is immune.
They'll find something nice to say about York at some point. It's just Twitter. I have to say though, not for nothing. If I spent ten minutes on Twitter and then I spend 10 minutes on Instagram. I feel worse after Instagram. I feel worse. Yeah, I
like them for different reasons but yeah,
I know right? I know what I'm getting in news. I know news is kind of dark and a cynical place and there's going to be fights. I go into it with open eyes. That's my business. I go over to Instagram and suddenly you
You do even if you're a secure person like I am start feeling like I guess my life kind of sucks. I my meals don't look like that. My ass doesn't look like that. I'm not running through wheat Fields holding hands with my husband every day. You know, there you just kind of emerge feeling down even though the content on its face is supposed to lift you up and I will just say this in Elon and Twitter's defense I found Twitter a more hateful
Place before he took it over. I was subjected to tons of hate on Twitter before he took it over from. I guess you would call them not you, but one might call them well-meaning leftists who were trying to correct me on all my wrong. Think, and in doing so hurling terrible invective at me, calling me terrible names. Now, at least I have more people on my side who can fight them, who can hurl the invectives back? Now I can say, Dylan Mulvaney
He's not a woman period And I don't get banned. I find it a more open place and maybe that leads to more opinion. Some might find helpful I mean for me it's like oh that's America. Right? We get let's let's hash it out. Let's see. And if it's not healthy for you don't like you can leave site like you did but it's not fair to suppress just the one side as was happening under the old
management.
Yeah, my concern is that it's, it's not America right? Or at least. It shouldn't be America. Maybe the reason why I left Twitter was not so much that I was getting so much abuse, right? Because in fact, I sort of solve that problem. I install the, you know, an app which allowed me to delete, you know, massive numbers of Twitter's a Twitter account, see by the batch, you know, or you know, sorta mute them block them. So,
Wasn't seen a lot of hated a certain point but then I asked myself, why the hell am I? The sort of person who's blocking you know, 10,000 people at a pass. I mean, how did everything right? But know that the my real concern was that I was getting a distorted picture of other human beings that I was seeing people. Not only at their worst but I was seeing them in ways that where they would never be this way.
In real life, right? Like I had dinner with these people, they would not behave like Psychopaths and yet they were presenting like psychopaths in my feed. You every minute of the day and that's why that that Distortion is what what most worried me.
I get it. I will say there are some people on there with whom I would never be friends with whom. I would never have dinner and when they post a picture of them with their cat, or they posed, some something nice about their kids, it's healthy. It reminds me, this is a human to this is somebody who, you know, where we in the bunker together, we'd have each other's backs. We'd let everything slide that those are good moments, you know, on that platform to do it is indeed flawed. All right, stand by we're going to turn to Riley gains and woke ISM. And the confrontation Sam had with a
Transgender person who was given it to him, and he was given it pretty good, right back. That's next. Don't forget, you can find the Megyn Kelly show it, live on SiriusXM, try of Channel 111 every weekday at noon East the Coca-Cola Company care of dr. Pepper and PepsiCo are bringing consumers more choices with less sugar than ever before from sparkling flavored and bottled waters, 20 sugar, sports drinks, teas and sodas consumers are taking advantage of these choices. In fact, nearly 60% of
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I don't know if you've been following what happened with Riley gains? The the swimmer. Have you been tuning into the envelope?
Yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean not actually sure. This is your wheelhouse and not mine but yes, I know the story a little bit.
Okay. Well, I'll just I'll get the audience and you up to speed on the latest. So she went she was a competitive swimmer at the college level. She swam against Lea Thomas who's a trans woman. She tied against Leah, Thomas, they refused to let Riley hold the trophy they
On it, Leah, Thomas to have it for the photo op. Leah, Thomas shouldn't even have been in that pool Riley. Gains should not have had to tie or share a trophy with a man, a biological man, especially since it appears to me that Leah Thomas is really, I don't even know if Lee Thomas is actually transfer the in-depth report by the daily wire suggest. This is a man who has Auto China philia which is a fetish where you get off on dressing like a woman. It's sexually arousing to you to dress like a woman, which is not really a trans thing. It's a different thing. It's like a kink. It's a fetish in any event.
This poor girl. Riley Gaines had had to swim against Leah, so Leah, a sorry. Riley now has become, somebody goes in the college circuit tours and talks about this and her remarks. As I understand, it are limited to the field of Athletics. She's not against trans people, trans rights, she's making the point. That look, there are some serious downsides to letting somebody like the atomic swim against me. Well, all hell broke loose on the on the San Francisco, State University campus when Riley went there. Here's just a little flavor.
We're going to set up the response. Now, from the student Group by showing you what actually happened, the day Riley was there and was shouted down. I was forced to into a room. Essentially, kidnapped by the mob.
Oh my goodness. So she was happy twice, right. It is reminiscent of what happened to Brett Weinstein at Evergreen and is just a little like, just this, the school mob, taking something down, trying to threaten the physically, she was punched twice. She says,
Bi trans woman. So now we at the head, the president of the University, I think it's the president herself has blocked. Riley gains on Twitter know that she's blocked while Riley gains on Twitter and now we have the president of the student group. She's the Student Association associated associated students. President, her name is Karina Zamora. Issuing her response in writing and it's not going to read the whole thing, but you must hear a fair amount of this to
Keep the mindset. This is what we're dealing with on the evening of Thursday, April 6th. The San Francisco State chapter of Turning Point. USA hosted saving women's sports with Riley gains on our campus and event, that promoted discriminatory rhetoric towards trans women, athletes dot dot, dot students. Orchestrating to students protesting were coerced and given unwarranted, warning cards, threatening arrest. If they violated the Turning Point USA,
Say policy though, TP USA was followed by protesters. So they acknowledged, Riley was followed by protesters. I believe the enforcement of these policies was weaponized to silence and threatened protesters and the presence of police was both excessive and uncalled for, okay? Tell it to Riley gains the heavy police presence in response to peaceful protest and the threat of arrest aimed towards students upholding the principles of
Social justice and positive change leads her to believe that the Administration has failed to uphold the principles, our campus, Prides itself on I as president of associated students, condemn and stand against the hateful rhetoric and promotion of violence spread by talking. But by turning point USA and Riley gains, as well, as the confrontational behavior of the University Police. She goes on to say, I call on the president, the university and her Administration to hold themselves.
Selves accountable and host a community Forum to hear how damaging these tactics have been to our student body demanding to know how the university plans to move forward with a plausible action plan finishing with two are trans identifying students. We see you, we hear you and we are here to up, lift your voices, as president, Karina Zamora in solidarity, by the wayside. I mean not a word of apology to Riley to the students who showed up there in
Port of Riley or wanting to hear Riley? It's all about them. They're not a bit. Sorry, they're prepared. I'm sure to do it again and they want to know why they were threatened for their behavior. So where does that leave us?
Yeah, well, I'm obviously there's there's a tension between the Free Speech rights of speakers and the Free Speech rights of those who would protest those speakers. I think we should
I think all these institutions have a responsibility to err on the side of protecting speakers, right? And allowing events to continue in a civil way, right? So you know, that was not a peaceful protest. Whenever you're not letting someone leave a room, you know, you were this. That's a hostage situation. That's not a, it's not a exercise of free speech. So yeah, I think there should be very little tolerance for that.
Tickler line getting crossed among by protesters on college campuses or anywhere else, right? You're physically coercing somebody. One year mob in them in that way and not letting them leave a room or and and certain speech. You know what is is threatening right? Where you put your putting people in fear for their life right now the the speech that questions the wisdom
Of letting trans women compete against being a biological women in sport like swimming. That is not violence right into Khalid. Violence is just a symptom of a, you know, what has become a crazy ideology, right? And it's again, is this a problem with the with the extremes politically they view everything in terms of power? This is true both.
On the left and the right, but it's especially clear on the left at the moment, they're not interested in what's true? They're not interested in the actual motives of the people. They're attacking. They view everything. As a as an exercise of power, right? Even scientific knowledge, a concept of objectivity. You just asking questions about biology all, this is power. None of it has anything to do with truth, right? And that's so crazy making
And it's so at odds with what is actually going on in the minds of people who are, who are simply worried for obvious reasons about specific outcomes and they're worried that you know to take us to a specific case, a thirteen-year-old isn't in a position to really consent to any reversible and irreversible medical procedure, right? So that's it. You know, they're genuinely hard problems to solve here.
At the policy level and at the individual level and it requires wisdom and compassion from all of us to, to interact with those problems, and try to try to find our way to some, some decent outcome right out. But the problems are are different. And even the probably the strands issue is not the same. When you're talking about trans men and trans women, right? We don't we don't have the analogous problem of trans men,
Fighting to dominate their divisions in sports a right. You know, not having having biological women, transitioning to become men, posing a problem in in, in sport. So this is
just where their locker rooms or their prison sentences or even. So are our sponsorship since scholarships. I mean, look how many sponsorships Dylan Mulvaney is getting. Now, we talked about it yesterday on the show, even for bras and
and women's facial cream. Aging, facial cream. Oil of Olay. Like, why did we run out of biological women to sell bras? We now have to go to biological men to sell bras, I mean, and not to mention tampons. Tampax is working with Dylan. Mulvaney Dilla Mulvaney does not even have a vagina. I mean, it sucks. Am I Drawing the Line to close to actual Womanhood here? Like this is insane.
Yeah, but again, it's a Continuum problem, right? So there on the far end of, you know, one side of this Continuum, you have absolutely clear cases of gender dysphoria in children at the earliest possible time, where there really is no real realistic threat of social contagion or ideology browbeating them into you know having a problem that they don't.
Have right? So and I you know, I've I know cases like this. I know you did, I know a trans girl who, as a four-year-old felt that, you know, he is a four-year-old boy was born into the wrong body, right? And there were no incentives to convince this kid that, you know, that he was trans and should eventually transition. But the on the far extreme of the other side of this Continuum, you have
Have obviously deranged gaslighting advocacy of just completely crazy propositions, right? You know, and and the problem for the rest of us is to try to figure out how to interact with this whole space in a way that is compassionate and pragmatic. And it's, you know, so to take the case of the specific case of trans girls. Sorry.
School girls. Do, you know true deciding that they're trans or non-binary? There. There is legitimate concern that social contagion is, at least part of the story, right? You have lots of young girls, you know, teenage girls and and tween girls who decide they, you know, are no longer gender conforming, right? And it's a kind of fad, and it's not to say that every one of those cases is a matter of social contagion. But certainly, some seem to be and in those cases
It is totally legitimate and it is not at all an expression of violence, or, you know, you know, malicious, use of power to be concerned. That social contagion, is leading some young people who aren't really in a position to think. So, clearly about the far future in their lives, to make irrevocable choices, you know, to go on hormones or puberty blockers or, or to have surgeries, I mean, to have teenagers having
Double mastectomy is right? This is it is easy to see that. That well-intentioned people will get very worried about all of this and it's not an expression of hatred, right? And this is a completely distinct problem from the kinds of problems. You know, you just raised of YouTube competition in sport, right? And denying female athletes, The Experience they would have of succeeding because you have biologically male
It's outcompeting them, right? It's a totally different issue and ever. All of these issues are getting conflated and we find it very difficult to to talk about these things. But it's this process is not at all helped by dishonest and hysterical moral panics happening on the left. And that's you know that's what is happening in many cases.
How do you those people are not persuadable? You know the the the people running after Riley shouting at her.
Punching her. Mocking her tears as she been punched in the face. Okay? This is not a person with whom we can reason and there are many more just like them. It's not just because it's San Francisco, State University, the trans activists, as a rule are fairly rabbit, they're just the worst spokespeople, the absolute worst, and they lead to the elimination of of compassion. You know, I was talking to Glenn Beck on his show the other day saying, I started this.
Whole journey, very compassionate towards the trans Community. I had a trans person in my family. I wound up marrying Doug, as a trans person in his family, and I saw the bullying and I saw how tough it was. And this person went through in my family before it was a thing before it was okay. You know, when it was still, very stigmatized had nothing but compassion,
I feel differently now. I feel like it's gone too far. It's eroding reality biology. They're getting rid of male or female on birth certificates. Doctors in the hospital are not allowed to ask whether you're a man or a woman or tell their pain, their residents 42 year old male, you're not allowed to say that it's considered offensive we can't say breastfeed that's offensive. I have suggest feed people with vaginas as
Those two women, not to mention the parodies of us by people like Dylan and others. These people who are all over Tick, Tock more, and more saying, what's normal is trans Sis Sis, which means biological man or woman, that's what's abnormal. Your parents, slapping some label on you that may or may not have what's normal is the freedom of being a trans person and choosing? No wrong. I've got thousands of years of biology on myself. So I am less and less compassionate by the day and it seems like that.
That that make me even more. So am I wrong? Do I need to readjust?
Well yeah it was an understandable reaction that many people have and this is a reaction that that many people who have migrated right word politically have had where they've the attacks on them from the left have been so dishonest and incessant, and gaslighting that. And they've been, they've been, you know, commensurately love bombed by people on the right that they have just, you know, as again, it almost of an experiment in social psychology,
Their politics have changed because it's it's an understandable reaction to to hostility on from one side and and you know, love and understanding from the other. But I do think that our, our reasoning about what is real, and what we should do in light of what is real needs to to escape the again, understandable, psychological reaction to
Us being confronted by assholes again and again and again that's again. Another reason why I got off Twitter. I felt Twitter was distorting, my sense of what was even important to respond to because the noise is turned up so loud on many of these issues.
But this is a really, this is not just Twitter issue. I mean, this came too, much
is not all, it's not all the
time, but I heard grade classroom, you know? This was nothing. Happened to me on this front too.
To alienate me. I wasn't attacked by trans activists though. I'm sure it's a matter of time, um, but this does come into your world. Now, my mean, I've told the story publicly, but in my son's, third grade, classroom at our New York, City private school. They were asked on a weekly basis, whether they were still sure that they were boys. They had to hold up their fists and do a 1 through 5 rating of how confused they were. They were showing them video after video of trans kids suggesting
202. You like The Color Purple? Well you might have something to consider it when I could go on. So that's the kind of it's not. This is well beyond, you know I mean Riley gains. What was she doing? She was swimming. She's swimming and suddenly there's a man next door in the pool like it's everywhere. Now it's unavoidable.
Yeah, although I would say that, I do think it is spilling out into the real world largely because of what is happening on social media. I mean to activism is dominating institutions because of institutional concern about what happens on social media, you know, so you need to take a specific case. The New York Times has become as woke as it has become largely based on its concern over blowback on Twitter, right?
Amy Twitter and effectively became the editorial board of the New York Times there. For a while.
Later is that is the chief cancel culture officer, right? It's like yeah, their CEO of cancel
culture,
Yeah, so when we're talking about institutional capture, and we're talking about the gaslighting of a whole society, where you can't even use the word woman, right? Without self consciousness, without scare quotes without worrying that you're going to be attacked as a bigot for having agent. Just spoke in the English language that is largely a phenomenon born of social media, right? It is what it is. What? So what
The activist class on social media has successfully done by hectoring. Everyone else, in in the institutions that you would think would be impervious to this kind of bullying. Write the solution Again by a fringe, you know?
What do we do about that? I mean, what's the what's the answer? Right? If you think P quokkas and maybe behind us? Why is that? Because social media is still as popular as ever unfortunately. And you know, you still get everyone's for perfect you know saying the right things and the DEA ice cores and the DEA officers has now become a cottage industry to turn out these degrees and pay people two hundred thousand dollars a year, to enforce the i principles Etc.
Well, I think everyone has to grow a spine, right? I think institutions in particular and those running them have to grow spines and, and lay down bright lines around, what is acceptable and not acceptable. So, if to take a similar case, what happened at Stanford law school recently rights, like the, the capitulations to completely irrational student outbursts
Have to stop, right? And they have to start, I think they have to stop in real time rather than just in retrospect, right? So it's, you know, it's fine to have apologized to the judge after the fact and to have written a letter that is somewhat, you know, sanity restoring with respect to the values of the institution but it'd be much better to be able to do that in real time in the room. Right? And you know, I think one of these schools is just going to have to start experimenting.
Spelling students who behave this way, ran the way, you know, this could have happened at Yale you know, five years ago or whenever that was when you know Nicholas christakis was surrounded by a mob in the quad and you know, to some degree taken hostage there. And it was, it was reminiscent of what happened to bread at Evergreen. It was these are uncivil, and, and indefensible
All eruptions of unreason and social disorder, right? I mean, and they're happening in the among the most privileged people on planet Earth, right? Ami, the admit, that's another painful irony here, which is so crazy making, you know, you're talking about people who For Whom the the world really is their oyster, right? I'm like the, you talk about students at Yale or lost.
Students at Stanford and they're acting like they they're, they're inmates in some kind of oppressive institution. Finally, trying to break free of their chains. Right. So yeah, I think institutional patience for this kind of thing needs to run out and yeah, I'm sure there's a layer it with in all of these institutions of
D EI bureaucrats that shouldn't exist. That's not to say that we don't have problems with racism and other forms of bigotry in our society and you know anti-trans bigotry. I'm sure is a real thing and we should deplore it and we should resist it and we should criticize it but
The, the examples of bigotry that are now being cited by the activists class or not examples of bigotry at all. Right. And so, and that's what is so destabilizing. It's the dishonesty. It's the, it's the, you know, hallucinatory, hallucinatory quality of all of this, right? Where? Again, it's not just happening on the trans issue. It happens just as much on the race issue. It's just it amounts to
So much of our social conversation conversation being gummed up with with lies, right? And half-truths, and it's, so yeah, it would be clarifying. To have institutions that will simply not give into the mob, right? That's that would be the first bright line. I would draw you just can't be bullied by what's happening on Twitter. If you're the New York Times or Stanford or any other real
place, we've had a couple of
Green shoots on that front. You know, the New York Times and some of its trans reporting. They haven't exactly Gone full fair and balanced on it, but they've done some good reporting on. For example, what's happening, when we, you know, engaging these surgeries, with minors, and there's been a ton of pushback and so far, they have not bent the knee. The best example of a company handling. This as far as I've seen, has been the Wall Street Journal, when they had some 240 journalists complain about
About the journal publishing. People like Heather McDonald. Who's absolutely brilliant. I'm sure you've read her stuff and the journal said we get it, you're upset. You're upset is really not our concern. Take care. If you would like to quit, you are more than Able by true. It was short, it was sweet, no one quit, they moved on, they never had another Uprising. It was very well handled.
Yeah, yeah, so that, I mean, that's an exam I didn't know about that example, but that's the kind of thing that has to happen on mass. And again, I do hold out some hope that we've seen the peak of this thing because, you know, it is somewhat analogous to what happened in the 80s around the, you know, satanic cult Panic, right? And, you know, the, the fixation on preschools as being, you know, points of access to kids, right? And
There was so much crazy fear about a phenomenon that really doesn't even seem to have existed, right? I mean, this is, I'm sure there was a satanic cult or two. But, you know, there was, there was not an epidemic of human sacrifice or, you know, any human sacrifice at all. I think and yet, you know, we had people believing that in any given year, you know, ten thousand infants or more were killed by, you know, satanic Cults. It's just
I missed that one.
Yeah. Oh, they actually thought the journalist Lawrence Wright tells a great story about he'll. He'll use. He was just turning his attention to this topic. The New Yorker writer and he was at a seminar run by a member of law enforcement. I think this was probably in Texas and the
the cop at that point said that 50,000 people that year had been murdered by a satanic Cults. Many of them children and right realized at that moment that he was in the presence of something very strange. Because he knew that there was no year in American history where 50,000 people had been murdered ever. Pray for anything much less by satanic Cults. So there it's hard to diagnose a moral panic. When is happening, especially
One is conflated with real concerns about social inequality and and bigotry and, you know, racism and transphobia and homophobia and and all the rest and, you know, me too. And I mean, these are all this. Like there's, there's not that there's not aren't problems that sort of answer to these names. But what the activist class has done with all of these problems has been,
You know, truly dishonest and and divisive and we have to pull back from the brink here.
Do you feel like you know, a lot of Democrats, a lot of liberals? Do you feel like that side is starting to come around?
I do and I felt this for some time again because it's so extreme that it what you encounter in private. You know with virtually everyone is a very different set of opinions than their comfortable air in public, right? And that's been true for a long time are there many. Many people in private
Who will say things that are entirely reasonable and yet they're the, you know, part of the, the silent majority when when this conversation spills out into public and even among kids writing me, I'm you know meeting you know when I when I when I talk to my daughter and you kind of take her her temperature on many of these topics and and hear what her friends think race is. Not quite what, you know, woke activists would hope
Up on these topics. So yeah, I do I do I'm cautiously optimistic, you know, I'm not, I'm rarely accused of being an optimist but I'm I do think that this can't last that much longer because it's it's, you know, the untruths or so obvious here and it's and it, you know, it will give us each each extreme of amplifying of the other politically. I mean, we if we get Trump again as president it will be
Cuz the excesses of the far left, right? I mean, that will be the thing that will dry even reasonable people to overlook the fact that, you know, he's painfully unqualified for
the elegant him. Is that as the 800-pound gorilla, who can stop it, who will fight it? Yeah. And somebody on the show recently was making the point. Can't remember who it was, but it was not a trump hater, but they were saying, probably it would get worse under Trump because he so animates this group of people that were talking about
About you know, that maybe woke ism is actually not as bad right now. Is it, otherwise would have been another Joe Biden. Even though he's pushing it, he doesn't actively, you know, bring it out in people. He doesn't motivate those who want to March for that. Cause that's also an interesting Theory. I tell you, one thing goes both ways. Yeah. So I was at a big event, not long ago and there was a very well-known black liberal Hollywood name household, Hollywood name who came up to me and said,
Megan. I'm a huge fan and he said I send all of your videos to all of my liberal friends. And I said, well, why do you, why do you send them? And he said, because all of them are too afraid to follow you, they don't want to be seen as a follower on, you know, if any checks your followers but they make me, send them all of your videos. So I do, and we all say, yeah, right on search, we're cheering you from the sidelines. I got such a kick out of that. I think that's growing. I do think that
that there's a growing contingent of people who just need to hear truth spoken and repeatedly and not just from, you know, DieHard conservatives on the hard, right? You know, that just normal people need to say what's real and it's so liberating when you do here and I think the more people like you say and I say it, the more other people feel comfortable saying it and weirdly that leads me to the Dali Lama. We talked about this yesterday and the only reason I'm asking you about us a mix. I remember from our last time, you, you worked as like an unofficial body
Hard for him, at some point in your life, right? Yeah. Right. Okay.
For a month. Yeah. Like 30 years ago. Yeah,
you're right. But they were like shoving you to the front. The real bodyguards were like shoving. You to the front because they wanted you to take the arrows. So he's rightfully in my view, come under Fire for this bizarre. Troubling exchange with this little boy, that happened in India, where he was on a receiving line of sorts people were coming up to him and forgive me. We're going to show this video again. I find it really disturbing.
Irving but you has to be seen to be able to be believed and the boy comes up to him, just to tell the audience, what they're going to see and they I'll just read it so I don't get it wrong. The child asks, if he can hug him and the Dalai Lama says first here and as for a kiss on his I guess better know where the first kisses and then he says right here. Also now the first ones on his cheek then he points to his lips and says now here and he puckers up in the boy leans
And people are kind of laughing. There's some small Applause and then you see the Dalai Lama staring at the boy. And then the, he says to the boy, then suck my tongue and he sticks. His tongue out in the boy, kind of goes backwards. There's a bit of laughter and the boy, and the Dalai Lama Lama, leave it lean into one. Another, the Dalai Lama's tongue is out, and they come close and the boy kind of gets out of the way. So this is what we're going to see. I'll show it to you and then we'll talk about it. Yeah.
Then.
My tongue.
What do you make of
it? Yeah. Well, you know honestly I'm not quite sure what to make of it and I agree it's completely bizarre and you know, unacceptable on its face. What I have a hard time seeing it as a, you know a Frank expression of sexual interest in a child largely because he's doing this in front of thousands of people right there, the idea that you're going
NG to be, you know, practice your pedophilia in front of thousands of people will, you know, on camera and get away with it. Seems patently insane. So, you know, I don't know what to me. Like, I had this happened in private, that would be more disturbing on some level because it's like, okay, then then it's really inappropriate Overture toward a child. But, you know, for this, I honestly don't know what to say about it. I mean it's some combination of a, you know, weird.
Tibetan joke or a, you know, a symptom of brain damage on the part of The Dalai Lama, like he's an 87 year old man. You know, I don't know. I don't know what's happening there and I haven't, haven't seen him for 30 years. I can tell you, 30 years ago, he was an extraordinary and extraordinarily inspiring person, right? And so and so I have no idea what's going on there and it's yeah, I completely understand the reaction to it and it's truly unfortunate.
Fortunate that a moment like that can become indelible and and really be the really damaged the legacy of someone who I consider to have been a just an extraordinarily wise and compassionate person into far as I am, you know, fit to judge. You know what, he's what kind of person he's been been like all these years from the outside so it's good that it's awful. It's awful and strange. So
right? Because we never know, we never know. We've seen a lot of here.
As fall when the truth about them comes out, you know, Jerry Sandusky. And the whole thing at Penn State, I know it's a lot of people looked up to him and believed he loved, you know, kids and then then we were told a very different story. Think about the Dalai Lama though, I understand your point it would it would in some ways be worse, if he did it behind closed doors because then you'd really have to say where is this going? And you knew that that Exchange in that moment at least was going nowhere? However I think the it's the II tribute his willingness to do
It in the open to his age. I don't think a normal person who doesn't have pedophilic instincts would ever ask for that or do that in any setting? I think perhaps a screen got got dropped because he's getting old and forgot how grossly inappropriate. People would see that. That's that's not something any normal. Aged person does not one I've known tons of them. Nobody Does that, you don't do that unless you have that instinct. And that's why I really think this is a before-and-after moment for him.
I actually would be vigilant about. Keeping him away from children from this point forward. I understand you want your, the Dalai Lama, your the Dalai Lama to death, but this guy shouldn't be anywhere near children. You certainly shouldn't be parading him in front of them because I believe that boy was essentially abused right there. I think that experience has the real threat of staying with that child forever more as an abuse moment and we all witnessed it, you know, the whole world is seen it now. It troubles me Sam and it troubles me when you didn't, but I'm probably when people defend it as we saw.
A guy from Rolling Stone do when CNN yesterday because there really needs to be a hard stop on anything like that from everyone in polite society, when it comes to anything, that might even open the door a little bit to the exploitation of
kids.
Yeah, I agree, I met again, I don't know really, I don't know how to interpret what was happening there again, and I don't know if there's anything in tibetan culture that that I'm unaware of that would have made some sense of it. I mean, I, you know, I know
looked into that stick, we looked into they said, sticking out your tongue is frequent but not
that's the thing. Yeah, I mean that's so that, but
yeah, you know, it's just it's such a total Miss calibration of, of
The effect it was going to have on the, you know, the his audience and the rest of the world that I just I don't know what to attribute it to on his side. Again, he's an 87 year old man and gave me your interpretation could be correct. But I just this, there's no way to know.
I mean, there's no way either to investigate, right, like, that's what I would love to see. Let's do an investigation. See if there's anybody where there's smoke, there's fire. And there's other little boys out there who have a story to tell or now grown boy.
Boys, that's what should happen. But I don't think there's gonna be an appetite for that because he's so revered, you know, he's so revered and has for so many years, been held up as this holy leader. And this wise man, it's like, well, sometimes are our heroes fall sometimes behind closed doors, they do absolutely reprehensible things. And you have to be open-minded to it when it's staring you in the face. So I hope they do that. And at a minimum, I hope they keep him away from any child in any private setting. Okay, so last but not
What is this mean? For everything? We've discussed for presidential politics and the next Presidential vote in your view? Let's say, I know you're not going to drop for drop. I got that. But could a Sam Harris, get behind anybody in the GOP field. Could you get behind a Glenn young Canal? Nikki Haley was just announced yesterday. Tim Scott is forming a an exploratory committee which is sort of the step before actually declaring and now we know that the first Republican presidential debate is going to happen. Fox News in
In August and Milwaukee, which is going to host the GOP 2024 convention. So things are starting to happen and it looks like the Dems are going to go with Biden. We don't know for sure but he seemed to tell the Easter Bunny and Al Roker the other day. He's he's going to run. He just hasn't announced yet. So what does it look like for you?
Well again my criticism of trump is truly nonpartisan and it's not an insofar as it would extend to a disinclination to vote for any other Republican. It's really only to the degree that they have pandered to trumpism, right? So if you're going to, if you're going to hold up, a candidate who has also gone all-in on the big lie that the 20/20 election was stolen. And that you know the January 6th was a was a nothing burger and you know nothing was ever at stake and
I mean, that's that's, you know, that's the larger crater that Trump has left in the GOP. And then in our politics, some of that in the midterms but I'm a normal Republican candidate is somebody who, you know, I would I'm not quite sure who would it could conceivably rise to the to the top of the field there and actually get the nomination. But that's the sort of person who I really have, you know, nothing negative to say about.
About it. It's just, I don't know what the candidates you mentioned. I don't know what each of them have said, specifically on the topic of the big lie and a, you know, election denialism and how they reacted to Trump's not think those three events. Careful to
our stay away from it. Those three are not, you know, Kerry Lakes if you will. Right, right. So yeah. I think, I don't know. I feel like you could get behind them. Could you get behind a Kamala Harris?
No, why no?
Well, when I just don't think she is electable, right? But I mean the degree to, which she has pandered to the far left and will continue to Pander to the far left. I just think is, is, you know, unconscionable, right? So it's just not, you know, I don't imagine that she necessarily agrees with all of the the dogmas. She has paid lip service to over there. So the, you know, there's a kind of a cynicism and an opportunism that I
I believe I detect there but insofar as she does believe those things and so far as she does think that, you know, we have an epidemic of racist, cops performing lynchings, on our city streets and you know, that's again, it's completely dysfunctional to be lying about real problems, right? So, and and then manufacturing fake problems. So
Yeah, no I couldn't I couldn't support her but I don't think. Anyway. I don't think that's likely to happen but I don't think she's likely but something
happens to him.
Yeah, yeah. That would be. I don't honestly I have no inside knowledge or even any intuitions about what the Democrats are going to do if Biden? For some reason, wasn't going to be the candidate and I don't know who would I don't know if it's Gavin Newsom. I don't know who would could rise to the to the top of the field but I can't imagine that.
Would be Kamala Harris.
Gonna be tough, tough lady to move off to the side, given what they say they stand for. All right, well after we, when we get closer to the election, we'll come back and we'll talk politics again. We'll see whether the gorilla made it happen or whether somebody else is in the gop's. Lat things are about to get pretty fun. As you going to debate season, Sam, thanks for being here. Thanks for speaking. So openly, and honestly better, thank you,
Megan.
Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show, no BS, No Agenda, and no fear.
