Clay Travis Chats With Megyn Kelly

This week on Wins & Losses, Clay Travis is joined by Megyn Kelly. Clay and Megyn discuss her background as an attorney, and the big decision she made to leave that world behind and pursue journalism. Megyn details how difficult that decision was, and also explains how her past career as a lawyer really prepared her to be a journalist. Clay and Megyn discuss the media as a whole, the upcoming election in 2020, as well as her brand new podcast, and much more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Wins and Losses with Clay Travis. Clay talks
with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Now here's Clay Travis. Welcome and appreciate all of you
listening to us the Wins and Losses Podcast. I am

(00:23):
Clay Travis, and we are about to be joined by
Megan Kelly, who has had a really impressive media career.
She also fled the law as as quickly, probably as
she could. I'm actually curious. I read quite a bit
about her practice of law and her most recent book.
But we're going to run through a bunch of different stories,
but beginning right off the top here. Megan, thanks for
joining us, and was leaving the practice of law the

(00:46):
best decision you ever made in your career? It was
definitely one of them. Um. Yeah, it wasn't that easy
at the time, but yes, in retrospect for sure. By
the way, thank you for having me. Um. So you
know how it is when you become a lawyer or
anything that requires a bunch of schooling, right, So it's
a lot of money and a lot of time. Your
ego gets attached to it. And I had worked my

(01:10):
tail off. I was at a big, well respected firm,
Jones Day, which I loved, and I was about to
make partner. I was there nine years, I practiced law
nine years and was about to make partner. And that
was a feather that I wanted in my cap. You know,
I felt that I had earned it, and I don't
remember my twenties because I was at the office of
the entire time, and I really felt like I should

(01:32):
stay long enough to get that feather. But then I
just got honest with myself and realized I was miserable. Miserable.
You know. It's they say the law is a jealous mistress,
and you know, my mistress is so needy. She was
calling constantly. She never gave me a weekend off, and
I wanted my mistress to go away. So finally I

(01:53):
did find, you know, the resolve to get out, and
I never looked back. You know. It's just the parts
of the practice of I do miss, but the overall
lifestyle I don't miss one bit. So I want to
kind of dive into that because we have a lot
of lawyers who listened to this show, and you hit
on several different interesting angles there that that I find

(02:14):
to be fascinating. And I want to start with the
first one. One of the pratfalls I would say of
having success is people look at you like you're crazy
when you decide to do something else. And I people
who kind of know my story and are listening. I
practiced law for a couple of years, and I remember
I started at twenty five. I had what I call
a quarter life crisis, and I was looking around the

(02:35):
office and I was like, oh my god, this could
be the next fifty years of my life being a litigator.
And I was like, this is not what I love.
It's slow moving. I don't like the procedural aspects of
the law. I don't really enjoy writing over the same issues,
arguing about things that I don't really care about, frankly,
and so I ended up like writing was my escape,

(02:55):
writing about sports, which led into radio, which led into TV.
For you, was there or a moment in your career
where you had sort of an epiphany and you thought
this is not for me, even though, like you said,
you're about to be partner. You're being very successful, You're
making a lot of money. What I called the golden
handcuffs very often of being a lawyer, where you can't

(03:15):
quite find the will to escape. What was it for
you that was that final impetus or epiphany or was
there one or was it a gradual process? Well, there
was there was a moment, an aha moment. But you know,
like you, I know, you had a middle class background,
and so did I and so and I put myself
through law school, so I had a bunch of debt

(03:36):
and I had never seen or even dreamed of money
like they were paying me. You know it was it
felt like a fortune and one that I could never
rebuild if I left the firm. I mean, just I
was so proud of myself, you know, for making good
and earning real money on my own, paying back my
law school debt, and I just thought, who am I
If I'm not Megan Kelly Esquire. Yes, I'm not sure

(03:59):
who I am or whether I could ever achieve this
level of success. And of course the firm pulled me
aside and kind of telegraphed, You'll never achieve this level
of success if you leave. You know, you're a great
guy who I love. A Jones pulled me aside. He
was in the issues and Appeals department, which is very
are you day, and he said MKA. He said, no
matter how good you are at whatever else you intend

(04:20):
to do, you will never be as good at that
as you are at the practice of law. You don't leave.
And you know you've got really smart people saying things
like that to you. You think I shouldn't go like I.
But with all that in mind, there was one night
I was in Chicago and I was driving home in
the Kennedy one night at two am, yet again, and

(04:44):
just tears were streaming down my face because I was exhausted.
As you know, the practice of law is incredibly acrimonious.
I was a litigator, so you know, constant fighting, and
it's really it's just snake pit fighting. Um. I was
just stressed out and I hadn't seen I'd missed funerals,
I'd missed weddings, and I thought maybe I could just

(05:08):
go off the road and break a femur. Like if
I broke a femur, then I'd have to be in
the hospital for a while. It can't just be like
a rib because I'll have to go back. It's wild
that lawyers think like that, but you sometimes do start
to think, Man, if I just had an illness that
I know, I could get over but you know, like

(05:29):
it wasn't that bad, but I couldn't work for a
couple of weeks. Like, but when you start thinking if
I could break a leg, I could have a little
bit more time to myself, it's kind of a sign
that maybe you don't have the perfect work life balance
right right right, And it's like you finally get to
the point where you're like, I don't care anymore. I
went to visit my friend who worked in Boston as

(05:51):
a nurse at her around that time, and she had
no money, and we've got to high school together, we
were always close friends. And she was so happy. She
was living a crappy one bedroom walk up and we
went to the corner bar. We had a couple of
beers for like a buck each, you know, contrasted to
my life in Chicago with the big, fancy martiniz and
the steak dinners and the nice purse, you know, and

(06:14):
she was so happy, and I was so happy with her.
It was just a reminder that I really didn't need
all those trappings at all. You know, they were just
window dressing around a life that I wasn't enjoying. And
so those two things kind of got me to the
point where I was like, all right, I gotta get out,
and now the big question is what the hell else

(06:34):
can I do? Yeah, so you mentioned the way that
you approached the law if you come from a middle
class background. I remember, as a second year summer associate,
I was working in downtown Nashville, where I grew up.
My dad was in another building. He was a lifelong
state employee, and I was making more money as a
summer associate at twenty three years old or whatever the

(06:56):
heck I was than he was at you know, sixty
three or four years old, approaching retirement age. And remember
him coming into that building and seeing the office and
everything else. And there are those trappings of success, right,
if you never have experienced them before, it can feel
a little bit constraining to even think, oh, I'm gonna
leave and try something else. But yet almost every lawyer

(07:20):
you talked to has a parachute plan, right. They have
something they would do if they weren't practicing law, and
so many of them get wrapped up. So you make
the decision to try something else, and you eventually are
going to get into working in journalism and doing reporting
and being on television what made you think that you

(07:41):
would be good at that? And did you have any
other things or aspirations that you also considered exploring when
you decided to leave. So I confess I had nothing
other than journalism that I thought about. I had in
high school. I had thought, perhaps I want to be
a journalist. I took one of those APT two tests.
You're one of those tests that says this is what

(08:02):
you should be, and it's that journalist, and I thought, okay,
well that's interesting. I like to write, I like to read. Um,
I like to tell stories. But I kind of I
did like a couple of day internship with the All
of any Times Union, my local paper I'm from Albany,
New York, and a couple of other small things. And
then I went to Syracuse, so not to the journalism school.
I couldn't get in there. Um. I went for policy

(08:25):
and I took a bunch of classes at Newhouse and
I liked it. But then I just got sidetracked with
the whole law thing. And so when I decided to
leave the law, it was a natural next step to consider.
And what I realized was and I'm sure you and
a lot of your listeners who are lawyers understand this.
I hadn't exactly been preparing for journalism, but I had,

(08:45):
in the way you see in the Karate kid with
the wax on and wax off, been learning skills that
would make me very good at the next profession if
as so long as I chose wisely. You know, there
are a lot of skills you learn in law school
and in the practice of law that are very transferable, uh,
in helpful ways to other jobs. And one of the
things I loved through law school and as as a

(09:07):
litigator was getting up on my feet and making an argument.
I loved that. I loved being on and having the
pressure of real people looking at me and in the
case of a judge testing me, uh, and the case
of a jury needing to be persuaded in easy to
understand terms and to see if I could do it,
you know. And in the law, you really do have

(09:30):
to have a foothold, at least in the facts. Unlike
journalism today, UM, you kind of have to stick with
the record. And that's the challenge, right. You might have
bad facts and you've got to find a way through them.
I loved all that. I hated interrogatory. I hated the acrimony.
I wasn't too keen on like the really nasty depositions.

(09:50):
But I loved arguing in front of courts of appeal.
I loved all the trials I did. It was like
that stuff, And so I just thought, all those skills
are going to translate for me in journal So when
I first started, I stunk, but I knew eventually I
could be good if I just kept practicing. When you
say you stunk, what does that mean? You know, for

(10:11):
people out there who haven't ever thought about the discipline
of being an on air reporter, did you go back
and watch yourself? What were you doing poorly? And how
did you get the opportunity to even find out that
you stunk? What did you have to do? And how
much I'm always fascinated by this. How much of a
pay cut? I know this is in your book, but
how much of a pay cut did you have to
take to move from nearly being a partner at one

(10:33):
of the elite law firms in the country to basically
starting all over again as a journalist. I mean it
was huge. I was approaching a seven figure deal um
and I took a job at Page seventeen thousand dollars
a year when I when I left, so it was
I mean, I wasn't making seven figures, so it would
have been a partner. But um, but there's a big

(10:57):
drop from several hundred thousand dollars a year your ish
to sev dollars a year that most people frankly wouldn't
take no matter what. That's right, and you really do
have to slam face first into the wall of unhappiness.
I think to make that leap. At least that's what
it took for me, you know, you know, thinking about
harming yourself, like that's that's more than a red flag,

(11:19):
you know, that's a five alarm fire kind of flag. Um.
So you know what happened with my evolution in terms
of like growing and getting my feet you know? Under
me was I had a buddy who, um, she was
in my guitar class, and she offered to help me
make a resume tape, which I had never even heard of.
I didn't understand. I was like, don't I have just

(11:40):
have to tell him that I'm about to make partner
at a big law firm. She's like, no one's going
to give a damn about that. She was right, don't
even wanted to see a paper resume. They just wanted
to see a tape of you on camera delivering it
can be fake news, but just they just want to
see how you penetrate the lens. So she helped me
make it, and and the guy who shot the tape
for me agreed to hook me up with his professor

(12:02):
at this local college in Chicago, and that professor let
me audits his journalism class. So I went there every
Wednesday night after I left Jones Day, and I was
like the old lady at that point, I was like
one with all these you know, twenty nineteen year old
I was like, isn't learning fun? Kids? You know? And

(12:23):
and I was loving it. I'm learning all about this
new profession that I'm considering. And we'd have to go
down on the streets of Chicago. So there I'd be
on South Michigan Avenue in the blustery cold weather at
eight pm doing fake news reporting into this professor's sort
of real looking TV camera, and you couldn't stop. You

(12:43):
had to do a minute long report. You had to
nail it, you know, you couldn't have to. You have
to treat it like it was a live shot and
it was thrilling, and all I could think was this
is what I want to do, and please God, don't
let anyone from Jones Day by right now. So when
do you when do you actually confess to the partners

(13:07):
and the people that you worked for and with at
Jones Day that you were exploring in a serious way journalism,
Like how far into the process did you get before
you were like, Hey, this is you know, not guitar
lessons that I'm just doing on the side. This is
something that that maybe I have an interest in. So
I kind of got discouraged. There. I was with my

(13:28):
resume tape, thinking okay, great, but I don't have a
single connection, you know, in news. I don't have anything
on my resume to suggest I could do news. You know.
I just had that feeling that I'm sure a lot
of people get, which is just apathy and self doubt
and you know, the desire to stay in my couch.

(13:49):
And by the way, my therapist always says, the desire
to stay on one's couch couch should always be fought
like that retreat is that it's almost always at And
one day I was watching Lifetime television, Lifetime television play
and they ran this movie, this you know, lifetime movie

(14:09):
called the Jessica Savage Story. And she was this amazing
journalist back in the late seventies eighties who was making
it in the man's industry, one of the only women.
She was like Jessica and Connie Chung and a young
Barbara Walters. And that was it, and it was a
great story. It ended in ruination, sadly, but as most
lifetime stories do, at least you didn't get murdered by
her husband, right. But I was inspired to try, so

(14:33):
I started cold calling news directors and every single one
was like, by you know, no one wanted to talk
to me. They didn't they didn't want to help me.
Theyn't want to give me a chance. And uh, Finally
I got smart and I decided to walk my tape
into the news station in dc um W j l
A and they had a cable channel that was like

(14:54):
their sister, and I thought, maybe they'll pop me on
that cable channel that like, not a lot of people
are watching. I got a shot there and I went in.
I met this guy, Bill Lord, who was the news
director for both and God bless that guy. He put
me on the air. So he started just just one
day a week, one day a week. And at that
point I had to disclose to Jones Day that I
was doing this because hey, they might see me and

(15:16):
be he could create an ethical conflict depending on what
I was reporting on UM. So he, you know, I
sort of said, it's just gonna be fun. I just
want to try it out. And they were a little leary,
but said okay, do it. And then I was doing
pretty well and the Lord said, well, how about you
do two days a week? So I did Saturdays and
Sundays and I did the law job the other days.

(15:37):
And then they came to me and said, how about
you do another day of a week. And that would
have required me to go part time at Jones Day,
and so I went. I spoke with a head of
general Litigation, a guy named Tim Cullen, who was so great,
and he said, Okay, I'm sad because this feels like
a trial separation and those usually lead to divorce. And
I said, Tim, you know it very well might, but

(16:00):
I gotta try. So he he let me stay at
Jones Day, you know, part time. UM. And then eventually
I decided it was time to make a full time leap.
All right, so your how old? The first time you
go on air with I think it was w j
l A. You said, so that would have been two
thousand three, so I was thirty two. Okay, so you've

(16:21):
never really done television before you're thirty two years old.
You get to go on this, uh, this relatively small
station in Washington, d C. What did you do the
first time that you were on television? The very first
time I ever saw myself on television, it was taped,
so I was clear like it was a taped piece.
But what would you remember the time? Do you remember

(16:42):
the topic of the tape piece? Do you remember what
you reported? It was the very first thing I ever
did was on a hurricane, and it was Hurricane Isabelle
that had gone through Virginia, and I thought for sure,
I thought I was gonna be doing doing mostly legal stuff.
Is that that had been my pitch? And I remember
calling Bill Lord. My first day was a Friday, and
I was like, probably don't need me, right because the
storms come in and you know you're not gonna need

(17:05):
a lawyer, legal expert type, And he goes, if you
don't already have rain boots and rain pants and rains
like that, you better go get up and get in here,
like oh no, And so it was a crazy night.
I did a report on not that night, but the
next day on the hurricane, and it was fine. But
the first time I had to do a live shot
where it's like go, you know, like I'd practiced on

(17:25):
the streets of Chicago, was at the d. It was
the dullest airport and there was something going on with
the airport and security and they had a scare. You know.
It's just back when we were still pretty close to
nine eleven and there was a scare every other day, um,
and and it was here in the headlights, you know,
and they're like you can hear the anchor toss to you.

(17:46):
And really, I'm like, I don't know who the hell
I am? Who the hell am? I just say your name,
say something, say something resembling anything. And I got through it,
and I thought I had been totally incomprehensible. When I
looked back at leader, it was okay. It wasn't hideous,
but it was terrifying. Be sure to catch live editions

(18:07):
about kicked the coverage with Clay Travis week days at
six am Eastern three am Pacific. I'm Clay Travis is
Wins and Losses. We're talking with Megan Kelly. So do
you go back, like an athlete and study your early
tapes in television to figure out what you're doing well?
Or did you find that you kind of got a
sense for how you were doing. What about the discipline

(18:29):
of television came to you and how did you get better?
I definitely went back and looked at the tapes, and
I think that's a must do, you know, because it
is a visual medium and you have to see or
whatever the mechanism is, listened to yourself and see what
works and what doesn't work. You know, you may think
you sound fine, when you go back and you watch yourself,

(18:51):
you see a totally different product. So I did that
for years when I first started, you know, at w
j l A, and then and then at Fox News.
But the truth is that is a skill you only
develop by doing it over and over and over. You know,
It's like typing, and you you cannot type seventy words
a minute before you've done and so on. So I

(19:13):
would just say yes to everything, which I think every
young person in a job should do. I mean, I
I always tell the young people who are asking me
for advice, you know, if they want you to empty
the trash, empty the trash, like say yes to every
weekend ship to working on Christmas. You know, have some gumption,
go after it, you know, don't don't be ah, I'm
above this kind of person. And that leads to opportunity,

(19:36):
you know, because the sad truth is it will set
you apart from of your competition, um so and and
and it just happened to be and in my profession,
as it is in most that that makes you better.
You know, you get your ten thou hours in and
before you know it, you're doing it almost effortlessly. What
I have found is, and this is probably a legal

(19:57):
background as well, what I get to do now is
make argue months. But instead of having to take as
you said earlier, sometimes you're on the wrong side of
an argument. You're like, boy, I'd rather have the facts
of that other side now, you know, with the position
that I'm in, And I think you get to do
this now as well. You get to look at all
the facts, array them as you see fit, and then
make your case. And as you were talking about your

(20:18):
legal career, it struck me watch having watched your television show. Basically,
what you're doing is arguing in front of a jury
every single night about cases and stories that matter the
most to you in a compelling fashion. Right, It's basically
like an oral argument that you get to make every
single night when you're doing a live television show. Absolutely

(20:38):
and one of the biggest challenges but also rewards if
you do it right. Of of doing that show in
that way was taking really condensed, really difficult subjects and
condensing them in a way that my imaginary viewer that
the one I picture in my head, Yes, she's working.

(20:59):
Who do you picture? By the way, who do you picture?
Because I I do that for my radio show, my
television show to an average person who's watching, Who in
your mind is an average Megan Kelly viewer. I have
a woman in my head named Madge who lives in Iowa.
She works all day, She's got a couple of kids,
and she and her husband come home from work and
at night and they turn on the TV. Maybe they

(21:20):
have a glass of wine and they want to consume
their news in a way that is easy to understand,
somewhat entertaining, trustworthy, and that they don't have to work
too hard to get. So it's my job to take
something hugely complex, like a Supreme Court ruling on redistricting,
and try to make Madge not have to work for

(21:42):
it at all. If Madge has to hit the rewind
button on the remote control, I have failed. It should
it's I used to call it. It's like cool water
going over a hot brain. That's how I want my
news delivery to feel to the consumer. And and if
you have to try too hard on the air, you
haven't tried hard enough prior to getting to air. But

(22:04):
I will say, Clay, one of the things I like
about you and and one of the things I think
maybe the solution to our entirely disgustingly broken media is
more lawyers delivering the news in whatever way works for them.
Because lawyers, I think, in their soul they're programmed to
understand at least both sides and to try in some

(22:27):
way to recognize the other argument. I do. And I
don't know if it's just that we're soul as hacks
or you know, these trained elite arguers. The latter sounds better,
but whatever it is, most lawyers I know, Dan Abrams
is another they they're really good at being fair. I

(22:47):
don't think there's any doubt at all. I mean, what
I always say on my show is I care about
three things. The facts, the facts, the facts. And one
of the things that troubles me the most about our
country today is you can disagree with my opinions or
your opinions or anybody's opinion out there in the world
of media, or your friends and family posting on social
media all day, but if you start with incorrect facts,

(23:08):
then you get to a place with an incorrect opinion.
And so uh, there's a lot of people who don't
care about the factual basis whether you're a Democrat, Republican, independent,
and it seems like we have lost that, particularly in
a social media age. And I do think lawyers are
better attuned to being able to consider both sides of
an issue and at least understand the importance of facts,

(23:30):
because what you're talking about is basically the skills of
a great trial lawyer. And a great trial lawyer can
take facts which are honest and accurate and put the
best spin possible on them to advocate for the cause
they believe in. But they know that the facts have
to be right, or the jury is not going to
trust them right face to face. It seems to me
we've lost the ability to recognize the foundational basis of fact.

(23:55):
It's one of the things that is most disturbing me
and most inspiring me to get back out there, because
both sides do it right. You know, President Trump, I
always say he doesn't. He doesn't have an adult relationship
with the truth. You know. I think all of his
years in real estate, UM sort of led him to
tolerate a certain level of you know, puffery. We would

(24:18):
have called it in the law UM. And so he is,
I think, by nature and optimists who tries to oversell
positive outcomes. But he also if he gets himself in trouble,
he's not just gonna level with you about what he
did and why it wasn't a big deal. He's going
to try to tell you the facts are other than
what they are. That's a character trait that he has,
for better or for worse. But on the left, you

(24:40):
see like a post factual world when it comes to
discussions on tough subjects, you know, like the transgender issue
and the gender issue in general. You know that there's
there's no more biological sex and that you know, having
having certain genitalia is totally irrelevant to whether you're a
woman or a man. I don't believe that's true. Scientifically,

(25:04):
we can talk about what your life is like and
how you want to be accepted, and I'm totally pro
all of that, but there is a basis in science,
and I don't like the silencing of the scientific community
or even in the you know, all the Black Lives
Matter protests that we saw this summer. You know, you
can want to be an advocate against racism without making

(25:26):
up lies about the police. Uh. And I'm not talking
about George Floyd, but I'm talking about the lives that
were put out there about the number of cases of
police brutality, but police killings of black men, there are
real data on that, and they've been they've been either
suppressed their silenced. In fact, I've represented, I've got it

(25:49):
right here. I mean that that I keep because it's
been such a big topic in the world of sports. Um,
you know, a police officer is seventeen times seventeen and
a half time as likely to be killed by a
black potential suspect as a police officer is to kill
an unarmed black man in this country. Right, that's a fact.

(26:10):
I'm reading directly from the Wall Street Journal. The data
is clear and transparent and straightforward. That is factual basis.
Now we can talk once we have those facts in
place about ways to make the country better based on
our relationship between police and those that they consider suspects
of crimes, whatever race. They might be right to try
to dial down the tension, but it's as if that

(26:33):
fact makes people uncomfortable, and so you can't even have
an honest conversation about how to fix things if you
can't begin with a common basis effect. That's right, because
they'll call you a racist, and no one wants to
be called a racist. And and it's it's sad because book,
I'm sort of a free agent now, right, so it's

(26:54):
like I don't really care what they call me, and
they've already called me all the me memes that I'm
doing just fine. But I do worry about civilians, right,
for lack of a better term, because they don't want
to put themselves out there. I've got good friends who
are you know, they're successful doctors and lawyers, and they
can't even like a tweet without having to worry about.

(27:14):
And that's not okay. You know that the data on
police shootings or killings of black suspects are knowable. They
are knowable. It's not a perfect science, but they have
been reported for years. The Washington Post has been keeping
running tally of it all. And for some reason, and
you know, people can draw their own conclusions, these activists

(27:36):
want us only to look at the percentage of black
people in the population, which tends to be around and
then look at the number of black people who are
killed by police in a year, and that's just not
the relevant data. They don't want you to factor in
at all the level of black criminality, and that The

(27:58):
Wall Street Journal has been doing a great job and
reporting the savas on this, but over the violent crimes
in the major cities of this country are committed by
black men. Now, the cops are not they're they're not
arresting women if that doesn't make them sexist against men.
They're going after the people who are committing the crime,
and so necessarily the interactions between those guys and polices

(28:22):
they're going to go up. And they're fraught because if
you resist arrest, and the data show that that's what's
happened in virtually all these cases where a death results,
your odds of getting injured or killed by the police
officers go up exponentially. That's an argument that is all
factual based, Right. I think it's an important one that
needs to be discussed in the country. You couldn't say

(28:45):
that on CNN today. You couldn't say that today on MSNBC. Right,
I really don't think you could. Why do you think
and you worked and had your own show, and you
did had a tremendous success at Fox News. Why do
you think our society, media culture has created this world
where there are facts that aren't allowed to be spoken

(29:07):
on television on certain networks, and by the way, you
can make it across the board, right there facts probably
that make Fox News viewers uncomfortable that don't get shared
very often. We don't have a Walter Cronkite of the
world who's sitting down and kind of the arbiter that
everybody trust to be a great official, so to speak,
of the world at large. How do we put the

(29:28):
genie back in the bottle? Can we are things going
to even get worse from here? Boy? I mean, I
think with what's happening with this sort of woke culture. Um,
you know, the social justice warriors. It's going to be
tough there. There that's a small group of Americans. They
do not represent the majority in trying to cancel everybody
and shut everybody up. But they're really loud, and the

(29:49):
media is they're in complete fealty to that small group. Um.
And so it's dangerous. And I'll tell you most they're are.
There are so many intellectuals black end white, but a
lot of black intellectuals who are sort of pushing a
more heterodox view, you know, from Glenn Lowry to Coleman
Hughes obviously, um, Shelby Steele, Thomas Soul. But so you

(30:13):
can read black intellectuals who have done all the research
on this um and see what their worldview is. It
would it would back up everything I just said. Right,
go look at read Jason Riley in the Wall Street
Journal if you want to know the facts. Um. But
if a white person says it, they're going to call
you a racist. So you just you know, to really
know what's going on, you have to actually be prepared
to take some you know, some some punches in their face.

(30:36):
But I think what's happened with the media is they're
left They're not just liberal, they're leftist, and they love
to virtue signal. You know, early on in my career,
I got sent down to cover the Duke what we
now know is the fake rape case with a cross case. Yes,
and uh, I went out. When I first heard about

(30:57):
that case, I was new to Fox. It was like
two thousand five, and I at the time, it's thirty four,
so I was whatever, not that far out of college.
And I was like, these guys they probably did it,
you know, like action the cross players, and you know,
you had you had preconceived stereotypes as a you know,
girl who had gone to Syracuse. You're like, oh, I

(31:18):
can see these stupid lacrosse guys doing something like this,
by the way, everybody does. And then one of the
great things about being a lawyer is you end up
representing people that you're like, man, this guy seems like
a total jerk, and then you start to look at
the facts and you're like, man, maybe this is not
very similar at all to what was initially reported. So
that's fast. So you go down to Duke, and when

(31:40):
do you start to have doubts about that case as
a lawyer, and you start to look at it because
you're in a unique position there. Well, i'll tell you
the first thing I happened before I left for North
Carolina was britt Hume, my boss and the DC Bureau said, um,
keep an open mind. And it was just the small
piece of advice, but it was the best advice, right
because it just a good reminder that it really isn't

(32:02):
about what I think, It's about where the facts lead.
And I'm going down there in a fact finding mission.
So that's what I did. And I went down and
Fox gave me the you know, latitude to develop sources.
Normally they just have each other to a camera. We
have to do live shot every half hour on a
big story like that. But they sent a different report
to to do that so I could actually develop sax.

(32:23):
And it was very clear if you just had an
open mind, the facts did not support this woman delegations.
Her story started to fall apart very early, and I
reported those inconsistencies in her story and so on, and
at the time, this is very early in my career,
people were suggesting it was racist of me and each

(32:45):
sexist of me to be quote siding with these three
white privileged guys instead of this uh, single mother, black
um person who lived on sort of the Durham side
as opposed to the Duke's side. You know, it's like
that there's two areas of Durham one's one's less affluent
than the other. And uh, I just had to forge

(33:08):
through that. You just had to say, Okay, they're gonna
call me names, but I have to report the news.
That's what I made me paid to do. And you
know who the other person was who was getting the
facts right, who was on cable news at that time,
Dan Abrams, who I mentioned earlier, a lawyer who came
to MSNBC at the time from Court TV. And his

(33:28):
dad is Floyd Abrams, the famed First Amendment attorney who
argued New York Times to be solid it. So I
just think, you know, being open minds of the facts
helped me land in the right place and on these
cop shootings. Um that you just have to be open minded.
You have to be open minded and go where the
evidence goes. You know, the Michael Brown case in Ferguson,

(33:51):
you know people should go that. Kamala Harris and others
are still referring to Michael Brown as a victim, that
she's murdered, that he was murdered. He was not murdered.
And there were at least five black eyewitnesses who said
they saw him turn and run after the officer when
the officer, you know, was already had already been attacked,

(34:12):
hands up, don't shoot. A proven law. Yet it contends
to be continues to be propagated well, And that's so
that's what we have to be aware of now that
the media is in full virtue signaling mode, because what
I've noticed with with these cases is the media, which
again is leftist, it's not just liberal, it's leftist. They

(34:34):
will take these incendiary cases, these videos of of a
white police officer, or even if of a black police officer,
and they'll say that's racist too, if it's if it's
a black defendant, and they'll say they'll play it over
and over, over and over and over to tell you
that all police are brutal, and all police are racist,
and it's systemically racist, and it's so misrepresentative because you

(34:57):
could do the same with a white police officer. They're
doing this to a white defendant, and that that doesn't
mean that all police need to be stopped because they
must be brutal against everybody either. Because if you look
at the numbers of police killings of defendants here in
New York City, they in the seventies, they were in
the four hundreds a year. Now they're down to thirty
plus in a year. The police are going in the

(35:19):
right direction on this stuff. They're aware that they've had problems.
But when it comes to race, it's the media that
drives the narrative that it's a black white thing, and
they do that for reasons of their own, especially in
an election year you mentioned earlier. So you're covering Duke
Lacrosse in two thousand five, that is before there is

(35:40):
actually a social media universe really, I mean Facebook is
just getting started, then Twitter doesn't exist. That has put,
you know, sort of jet fuel or added steroids to
what was already a trend line moving in that direction
of everybody being able to find their own worldview by
turning on their television or just picking up their phone. Uh,

(36:01):
what was it like for you? I'm curious as you
move up in the world to go from Megan Kelly,
who's a reporter, right, like you're not necessarily giving your
own opinions to making that transition to an opinionist, and
how did you do it? Well? I mean, I think
I'm sort of a hybrid. You know. I'm still a

(36:21):
journalist and that's why I was out there angering presidential
debates for Fox. UM. But I've I've offered opinion in
the fields that I think I have some expertise in,
and that's tended to be legal stuff, you know. And
I think this whole Black Lives Matter thing started based
on a legal case, and I know how to look
at a legal case, and I've never gotten one wrong.

(36:42):
I've never looked at one of these situations and said
this is how it's going to come out and been
proven wrong on it. And there's a reason for that,
you know. I'm I'm an objective juror on this stuff.
I will go where the evidence takes me. Um. So
that's sort of what I've tried to do. I've tried
to sort of hold on to my journalistic integrity. You know,
I'm not somebody who would go out there. I watched

(37:03):
somebody like Nicole Wallace on the MSNBC. I don't know
what she is. She used to work, She's a work
in Republican circle. She's as far from Republican as you
can get now, and she's openly saying she's hosting a
daytime quote news show on MSNBC, but she openly says
she's going to vote for Joe Biden. So back in
my day, you weren't supposed to do that as a journalist.

(37:24):
You we didn't announce who you're going to vote for.
You didn't announce whether your pro choice or pro life.
And I wouldn't touch those rails either. But I do
feel very comfortable correcting the record, even on dicey issues.
What you mentioned the Donald Trump, the debate that you did,
which I thought was fantastic and so well managed, but
it obviously turned your life upside down. What is your

(37:49):
relationship like now, if at all, with President Trump? Have
you had any interaction with the White House since? And
how did you find him both as a private in
a public figure. How much overlap was there in the
way he would behave privately versus the way he behaved publicly.
So privately, I before the debate and even ultimately after

(38:13):
the debate have found him utterly charming. You know, you
might be surprised utterly charming generous, self deprecating, effusive, and kind, complementary. Um,
I had nothing but kind feelings toward him, and and
I still have kind feelings toward him. I don't like

(38:34):
what he did towards me for those nine months, and
I don't love the way he talks about you know,
some of my fellow citizens these days. You know, he's
not careful with his language and it can be problematic. UM.
And I see the flaws that people accuse him off.
There's no question he can be thin skinned and so on.
We all have our problems and his are magnified because
he's the president. But professionally, we went through a very

(38:58):
tough period together for those nine months. Wasn't tough for him,
It was tough for me, and I hated it it was.
It was really just one of the most challenging things
I've been through professionally, and it was one of those
things that sort of there's probably a lesson in it,
because you know, I asked tough questions of all the
guys that night. The only difference was Trump wouldn't let

(39:19):
it go. You know, he made a thing out of
it and wouldn't let it go. And ultimately I couldn't
get him off my back. You know, Roger L's tried
and Sean Hannity tried for me, and he was tight
with Trump. He just he just wouldn't he wouldn't back off.
He was I think he was enjoying the storyline. And
so finally the lesson is it only stopped when I

(39:40):
took it in hand myself and I contacted him through
a friend. It was actually Brian kilmead Um who got
a message to him that I wanted to meet with him.
And you know, Roger Leader said, you should have met
on neutral ground, you should have gone a Trump tower.
I was like, Roger, I don't care. I don't care
if it looks like I'm pursuing him or I'm an
aspect dary Well I am. I'm a journalist. The nature

(40:03):
of our relationship is, you know, pursuer and pursued. And
so we met and I basically, I mean the conversation
was off the record, but the bottom line is I said,
please knock it off. You know you've done You've done
this long enough. You made your point. Um, I want
you to put me back on the sidelines where I belong,
you belong in the playing field. And I belong on

(40:25):
the sidelines. Put me back there. No harm done and
he was totally gracious about it, and we've never had
a problem since. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports
talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows
at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the I
Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.

(40:45):
You said earlier in our conversation, I'm Clay Travis. This
is wins and losses. We're talking with Meg and Kelly.
Retreat is almost always bad. You left Fox for NBC.
Obviously that didn't work out. Maybe it did because maybe
you're happy where you are now. If you were going back,
would you say, hey, I should have stated Fox, I
could have kept doing that show. Or was leaving Fox

(41:08):
like leaving the practice of law for you? You You felt
like you had done everything you could there and you
were ready for another new challenge. And how would you
say to people out there who were, you know, trying
to weigh decisions that they make in their own career,
how did you make that choice? And looking back on it,
would you change anything? It's so smart, Clay, this is

(41:28):
this is why you're doing so well. Um. That's a
great question, and it the answer is it was the latter. Um,
it was. You know, I don't regret leaving Fox at all.
I kind of missed my old show because I think
it was a service. I think it was an honest
show that you could trust. And if The Kelly File

(41:49):
we're still on now, I would watch it, you know.
And it's one of the reasons why I'm I'm launching
this podcast, you know, because I do want to get
back to doing the news in a way that I
think is fair and illuminating and hopefully yeerless. Um. But
I don't regret the decision to leave, because it was
just a combination of things. It had been a rough
time with Trump, yes, but that was in the past.

(42:10):
But you know, the Roger Ail thing changed my life
a lot at Fox. And even when it came out that,
you know, he really did have this side of him
that was really problematic. Um, people found it tough to forgive,
you know, not everybody, but you know, I have dear,
dear friends there. Some of my best friends are there.

(42:30):
But some people who I really loved and admired just
never got over it. You know that I they thought
I had turned on him because I didn't support him.
And you know you I couldn't explain it any better
than you know I had publicly. You know, it's I
too felt loyal to Roger and grateful to him for
what he'd done for me over the course of my career.

(42:50):
But when faced with the direct question about whether he
was capable of doing this two women or not, there
was no way I was gonna lie. There's just there's
just no way I was going to do it. So
my life changed a lot there. The dynamic changed. And
while it was changing, um, my life was explosive. It

(43:13):
was you talked about acrimony. You know, I left a
lot because it was too many hours and it was
too acrimonious. Put that on steroids for my time in
cable news prime time. Um, you know O'Reilly told me
before I joined the prime time lineup that he said
it's a snake pit, and it got it. I've never

(43:35):
been told something more true. And so every time somebody
would come after me, there was somebody in the press
or another journalist or Trump or whoever, it would lead
to another crisis meeting. You know, the Trump thing had
led to armed guards in my life, people showing up
at my apartment. It was dangerous and we lived like
that for nine months. So I was weary, you know.

(43:56):
And at the same time, I had three young kids
at the time, they were seven, five, and three, and
I missed them. I missed mothering. And I remember talking
my therapist about at the time and he said, you know,
he said, look at Chelsea Clinton. She had two parents

(44:17):
who were incredibly busy, you know, they weren't there with
her every day. She turned out just fine. And I said,
I'm not worried about my kids turning out fine. I'm
worried about missing it. I'm missing the whole thing. I
don't see them anymore. I don't see them Monday through
Friday because of these hours. You know, I go to

(44:38):
work before they get home from school now, and what
I'm doing isn't good enough. So I just there were
a lot of tears that year. There was so much stress,
and my life was was totally joyless. And I thought,
once again, despite the fact that I was making a
lot of money and offered a lot of money to
stay and had a position of influence, it was irrelevant

(45:01):
to me. I was running and it wasn't running to NBC,
but I was just running to a different lifestyle and
the reason I went to NBC over anybody else, So
simply I thought I could do this morning show that
would let me then get home to my kids. I
could still do the news and get home to my kids.
And you know, that obviously did not work out, and

(45:22):
I wasn't well thought out on my part either, But
it was a good move to get out and I
did exercise some new muscles there and I got to
interview Vladimir Putin, which is cool. Um, So it wasn't
all bad. And and the bottom line is now in
I am totally engaged with my kids, with my husband,
with my personal life, tight friendships now with my friends

(45:45):
that had gone unnurtured. I feel well, I feel healthy,
I feel happy, you know, as happy as an Irish
Catholic living in New York and b And there's a
lot of a lot of things going against me, um um.
And I don't regret it from it. I don't regret
for one minute. One of the things that I think
is fascinating about becoming a public figure, and obviously you

(46:06):
did that leaving the law, which is a serious job
and it's filled with acrimony, but most of the time
you're not gonna wake up in the morning and people
aren't going to be mentioning your name or having a
strong opinion about you. Is lots of people that you
don't know at all and you'll never be able to
interact with suddenly have such strong opinions about you. And
I find that transition to be utterly fascinating. I've certainly

(46:29):
seen it in my life. And I was talking with
my wife the other day and she was like, what
percentage of the American public do you think has a
positive view of you? And I was like thirty and
she was like really, And I was like, well, I
mean the media. I'm in the media. I'm in the
opinion business. I was like, a lot of people like me,
but a probably more people dislike me because they have
kind of a you know, caricatured version of me because

(46:50):
they've heard opinion they don't like and they think about that.
And I said, but the really, the truth is, and
I'm brought to this because of what you just mentioned,
your three young kids. I've got a twelve year old,
a ten year old, and a six year old. And
I said, really, the only thing I care is what
people in my house think about me, because they know me,
and then secondarily people that are close to me and
my family, and then people that I work with on

(47:10):
a daily basis. I really don't care outside of that,
but I'm curious for you and I and my wife
says like that's my superpower. I just genuinely don't care
what people I don't know think about me. But I
wonder if that's true for you and what it was
like to suddenly go from I would say you got
generally favorable pressed with the Kelly File too suddenly, and

(47:33):
you may disagree with that, but it seemed generally favorable.
It's at least as favorable as somebody who's working at
Fox News can get to. Suddenly you are just getting
attacked on all angles by everyone, and it's like that
had to be wild. What does that experience like to
be in the center of the storm like you were
and still are to a certain extent, but certainly then

(47:54):
you really were well. I mean, that was very stressful,
like being misread, resented day after day. It felt like
every word I said turned into a ridiculous controversy not
supported by the facts, and you know, there's only so
much you can do about that. I've I've always sort
of been of the belief that you just have to

(48:15):
let that go because you can't control what the media
is going to do and say about you or what
people think of you. Um. But when it comes in
every other day over the course of you know, more
than a year, it's it's hard. I'm not gonna lie,
it was. It was tough on me emotionally. Um. I
think in general, in general, I'm of the belief that

(48:37):
you know, life in the public square, if you're doing
it right, means loved hate, It never ignored, you know,
like you just have to resign to that that you'll
all have people, you know, scoff at me as I
walk down the street and I but I'll have far
more people come over and want to hug me and
coll me. They love me, and my kids see both sides,
you know. They they're Even my little guy, who's now seven,

(48:58):
he gets it. You know, he'll see something a picture
of me on the tabloid or whatever, and I'll say, oh, honey,
you know, there's lots of lies about mommy out there,
and he'll say, well, why don't why don't you correct them?
And I'm like, because there's no need the people who
believe that stuff want to believe it, and the people
who don't believe it don't need to be persuaded. You know,
my fans know who I am and they don't believe

(49:22):
the nonsense. And the other people, in my experience have
been very agenda driven. They're they're in a different kind
of bubble. There's really no point um in fighting those fights,
so you kind of have to surrender to it if
you're gonna put yourself out there is a public figure.
Why the podcast? You are starting a new podcast? We
have a lot of people that you're working with who

(49:42):
I know are super smart on the business side, and
I think you've chosen well there. But why this particular
way to reach your audience. Well, I really wanted to
be independent, meaning not have a corporate sponsor above me
controlling everything. I didn't set you know, but old media,
if you will, because there are pressures. There are pressures

(50:03):
to cover the news in a certain way, to not
say certain things, um, and I just don't want to
live like that anymore. I'm at a point in my
life where I don't want to do that, and I
think we're at a point in our country where we
need more free agents who are just ready to say
what's true, no matter what slings and arrows right, no
matter what slings and arrows come. And I'm in a

(50:25):
position to do it now. You know, It's like I've
been at ABC, I've been at NBC, I've been at Fox. UM,
I've done a lot of things, and I'm ready to
just be in control of my own little empire. And
and honestly, if we start with ten listeners, great, maybe
the next week we'll have twelve, and over time I
will build up my relationship again with my audience, who

(50:46):
I do believe is there. I know how they feel.
I know there are strong people out there who don't
believe in these nonsense safe spaces, who really want to
have challenging conversations, who are way tougher than you know,
these media people give them credit for. You know, those
are the people I'm going after and there it's great
because they have more and more options in podcasting. I

(51:08):
think my voice will be additive to the ones that
are already out there, and hopefully people remember that I
do the news. I bring the news in a way
that's user friendly. UM. But for me, it just made
perfect sense because I wouldn't have a corporate master. Um,
I could. I could do things the way I wanted to.
And I genuinely believe that this is the future, and
that you know, television news is dying, it's yesterday. Digital

(51:31):
as the future, and so this is where should place
your bet. I've got two quick questions for you, because
I know you're busy, um, and then I've got a
broad question for you at the end, if we can
run through really quick because I jotted down, Um, in general,
did you watch Bombshell? And if so, what's it like
to have someone as talented as Charlie's her own playing you?

(51:52):
Like most people you know jokingly kind of say, I
think Wolf Blitzer. Somebody was like, hey, if somebody played
you in a movie, who would owe is der Fauci.
He was like, who would you want? And he was
like Brad Pitt and everybody kind of laughs. Charlie Starone
played you. And if you were like a normal you know,
woman sitting out there, and You're like, any woman can
play you in a movie. A lot of women, especially

(52:14):
around your your age, my wife's age, you'd be like, oh,
I would love to have Charlie's throne. So did you
watch it, and what is it like to have somebody
that accomplished inhabiting you in some way. I did watch it.
I wasn't sure if I was going to watch it
because I had nothing to do with it, and I
was concerned that it was going to be a hit

(52:34):
piece either. I don't know either about me or my
friends at Fox. You know, I still love Fox. I
still have a lot of good memories there, and I
just I just knew they'd probably turn it into a
parody of people who I really care about. Um And
to some extent they did, and I really hated what
they did to Brian kill me in that movie, just
as one example. UM. But I did ultimately watch it,

(52:58):
and I up actually doing a piece with some of
the women who were portrayed in there, whose stories were portrayed,
and I posted it on on my YouTube channel. If
you want to go look it up. It's actually really good.
I think the women were very open about their experience
at Falks. But look, it was surreal and it was
incredibly emotional. I didn't expect it to be quite that emotional,
you know that I'd have tears running down my face

(53:20):
in certain certain scenes, you know, whenever they showed my
kids on the screen. Even now, even telling you about it,
it chokes me up. I get that thing in my throat,
you know, because it was tough for them too, like
the whole couple of years, Trump and nails and all that.
Um it just brought back a lot of painful memories.
And of course I'm thinking to myself, there's a reason

(53:42):
I repressed all of this. Imagine taking one of the
most difficult years or two of your life and been
seeing it on the big screen. You know, Red Back
performed back for you. Um So it was traumatic in
some ways, but overall I felt, you know, the movie
was a force for good. Is it did help hina
light on sexual harassment and how how it usually goes

(54:03):
down and how tricky it is to navigate. Um So
I'm in favor of that. And you know, I thought
Jay Roach, the guy who directed it made it happen,
was a terrific guy. So as a part of that,
the Me too movement sexual harassment, I think, and this
kind of ties in with the Duke Lacrosse in many ways.
The Brett Kavanaugh hearing, and I don't know that I've

(54:26):
heard you talk a ton about this, but it fired
me up in a really big way as a lawyer,
because it was to me, it was like Duke Lacrosse,
except in the Senate Judiciary Committee. I don't know what
you think about Brett Kavanaugh. I don't know if you've
ever met him before, but when you looked at all
the evidence there, it to me was so transparent that

(54:48):
that was a attempt to get him without the goods,
so to speak. If you're a lawyer, you look at
all the facts and everything else. And what started as
something that I think is very reasonable, me too, moved
to believe all women, which is fundamentally anti everything lawyers
are taught. Right if we went to law school and

(55:09):
they said, oh, you have to believe the white person,
well that's everything that was wrong with the Jim Crow
South and everything before then. And the same thing, to
me is true of believe all women, or believe all
Hispanics are all agents, or the only thing that matters
is the facts. Where you is troubled by the evolution
and how quickly it moved from what may well have
been occurring at Fox News with Roger Ailes and many

(55:32):
other people in media having to deal with sexual harassment
to something with Brett Kavanaugh, which is fundamentally not that.
It seemed to me it was an awkward high school
encounter even if it ever occurred that I think almost
everyone who's ever been sixteen or seventeen has experienced, and
I don't even believe it happened. But even if you
accept the allegation on its face, as lawyers often do

(55:53):
or judges do, there was no basis to it. So
I too felt deeply affect did by what happened in
that case, and was disgusted by the allegations that were
thrown at Brett Kavanaugh with zero, zero, credible supporting evidence.
In the case of especially these later ones who came forward, Um,

(56:13):
we can talk about Blasi for because I put her
in a different category. But yes, you go back and
take a look at some of my coverage on NBC.
There were articles written up about it because let's just say,
I was the lone voice defending Brett Cavanaugh and just
holding people to account it. There was a guy named
Jacob Jacob sober Off who came on my show and
said he's now been subjected to five allegations of sexual assaults.

(56:35):
I said, hold on, that's not true, and we went
through and of course I had it at the ready
because as all lawyers do about exactly what had been alleged.
And you know, creepy poorn lawyer, as Tucker would say,
Michael Avanadi's client, who was the worst of all of them? Um,
and then and then there was the one that he
was counting in there, which was the mother of some

(56:56):
woman who may have been Brett Cavanaugh's girlfriend at some point, remember,
is her daughter saying he drew her against the wall.
And the NBC published that account. Oh my god. And
by the way, the the actual daughter, the actual girlfriend
later came out and said, that's that didn't happen. So
if somebody had bothered to check with me, you might

(57:16):
not have gone out on that limb. But this is
this is how the news works. So you've got this guy,
Jacob Soberrock out there saying five allegations of credible assault.
Are you kidding me? So? Yeah, Even while I was
NBC on NBC, I was, I was outraged about what
was being done to him. I think the blade before
thing is it's not egregious for the media to report

(57:37):
on that, and the facts on that deserve to be heard.
Her testimonial. I was fine with her offering that testimonial.
My own, you know, personal take as a lawyer on
what probably happened there was you know, the concept in
the law of the eggshell plaintiffs. Yes, and it's basically,
you know, some people are I don't want to say

(57:57):
that the weaker is not the word I'm looking for,
but no, that the people are out there who are
not aware of it, like the thin skull. Like if
you accidentally hit somebody who has a thin skull, it's
a it's a concept and a plaintiff law, you're responsible
for what happens to them, but they can be impacted
in a way that would not happen to the average person.

(58:18):
Does that make sense like for people I'm trying to say,
until way for people to understand it, that's exactly right.
So you know, you sort of you don't know who
you're gonna hit, who you're dealing negligently hit the softball.
You don't know how tough their skull is going to be.
And my impression of her was she was a very
fragile person who seemed very very nervous, very um maybe

(58:45):
slightly not all together and U and so My impression was,
this is a girl who may have had some sort
of an interaction with the young Brett Havanaugh, and in
her world it was something significant. In his world it
was enoughing, and in the average woman's world it was
it might have been nothing. And because I just I

(59:05):
have a hard time believing she just totally made it
up for political purposes to to kill the guy. Though
I've seen that happen, I have definitely I don't rule
that out, um, but I think to come with it
thirty years later and expect this guy who's had a
stellar record on the bench, not a whiff of problematic
reports while he's been on the federal bench. In fact,
to the contrary, so many female character witnesses, young girls,

(59:27):
old women, talking about would an advocate he's been so nothing,
nothing credible at all. Um. Is was really unfair because
the guy there was no way he could defend himself.
How do you I mean he tried, he had the
journals and all that, and nobody remembered her story, including
her own friend. UM. Anyway, so that's that's blasi forward.

(59:47):
I didn't object to a media vetting of the claim
she brought forward. Everyone else I feel very differently about.
It was a huge smear job. It changed the Supreme
Court nomination process forever. What the Democrats were doing to
Brett Kavanaugh was disgusting and unforgivable. It was unforgivable the
fact that they accused him of gang rape from this

(01:00:09):
Julie Sweat Knicks allegations, which were completely and obviously focused
from day one, day one. It was disgusting. And the
fact that they would run with an allegation like that
at places like NBC, but wouldn't run the Harvey Weinstein
rape stories that Rose mcgallen was on the record with
and other women were on the record with with NBC.

(01:00:32):
That's just one of the media that dropped the ball
on It is egregious, right. It just tells you everything
you need to know about bias. They protect the guy,
the rich guy. He's donated to all the Democrats and
you know, he makes legal threats, so okay, peace out.
By the way, they have their own, you know, predator
inside the halls of NBC. As it turned out, um
which recording to Roning was exactly why they didn't want

(01:00:54):
to tell the story of Harvey Weinsteins. But as long
as it's a Republican nominated of the Supreme Court. Have
Adam go for it? Julie Sweat, Nick Michael Abanadi? How
many times can we put you on television? Um? Anyway,
to me, it was a travesty and we're gearing up
for another one. That's what I was gonna say. We're
talking before this. This is not going to go up
till next week. But how much of a mess do

(01:01:15):
you think this next day? And I guess what I
should say because you got me fired up too. These
are theoretically some of the brightest legal minds in politics
that are on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sitting as Democrats, right,
And I watched those hearings and I just thought to myself,
how in the world could you ever think this makes

(01:01:35):
sense as an objective lawyer? Right? The way that so
many of those Democrats behaved, And I would like to
think that Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee wouldn't behave
the same way. We may have to wait a few
years to find out, but to me, the precedent that
the Kavanaugh here hearing set is effectively no one is
eligible to be a Supreme Court justice because everybody's got

(01:01:57):
something that somebody negative can say about them, even if
it doesn't rise to the level of being criminal. Well,
that's the thing is like people are taking a hard
look at Coney Barrett saying, oh, they're going to come
after her for her faith or you know, for this
ruling or for that ruling. They're going to come after anyone.
If I were Trump, I would pick who I genuinely want,
you know, I would want to pick the one who

(01:02:17):
would give me the best legacy on the bench with
the rulings I hope for right that who's going to
be institutionalist and originalists and represent, you know, my world
view when it comes to law the best possible, because
whoever it is is going to get killed unfairly by
the press and by the Democrats. And I think you're
doing more generous than I am. I don't look at

(01:02:37):
those Democrat lawyers and think these are some of the
best legal minds in the country. I really know very
few people who have. I said, for Paul, for politicians,
they're some of the best legal minds, right, I mean
that that's the best of the elected officials unfortunately, that
have a law degrees that we could rely on. And
I just sat there discussed it. I mean, you know,
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Um And by

(01:02:59):
the way, years why the Lindsay Graham moment was so huge.
We all watched and I covered at length while the
wall gavel, the gavel the Supreme Court confirmation hearing is
in recent history of John Roberts, of Samuel Alito, of
Lana Kagan, if Sonia Soto mayor, none of this happened.
There was like a little Aldo who got a little
bit unfairly beat up and his wife shed a tear. Right.

(01:03:20):
It's like a sad moment in the in the process,
that's it, And that was already more vicious than it
used to be, other than bourk And to see them
try to destroy this man, destroy him without any concern
for the truth, for what, what would be admissible in
a court of law, what's appropriate to report to an

(01:03:41):
audience of millions, was infuriating. And so I think we're
going to see it again. I think I don't know
how to solve it. I think it's like a nuclear
arms race now where no one's gonna step down. Each
side just keeps raising the anti Although all I can
hope is that because I think Trump's going to fill

(01:04:02):
the seat, and I think he's going to get his vote,
and I think he's going to install the next justice
on the Supreme Court. Um. And I don't think the Democrats.
I I don't believe they're going to pull the trigger
on unpastacking the court. Yeah. Yeah, I just I can't
believe they do that. It's that is killing the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is done. If they do that, it's over.
I just by the way I go that far. Yeah,

(01:04:27):
I can't imagine. I was just gonna say, if you
want to read about that, there's a fantastic book by
Molly Hemingway h called Justice on Trial, the Kavanaugh Confirmation
and the Future of the Supreme Court. It goes all
the way through. Uh, it's an incredible book. Molly Hemmingway.
I want to make sure I get it right. And
Carrie Severino did a phenomenal job on that. All right,

(01:04:48):
I've kept you for a long time. Final question here
because I'm always kind of curious. This is the Wins
and Losses Podcast. I'm Clay Travis. We've been talking with
Megan Kelly and by the way, this is fantas like
I want to bring you on to talk when this
when this process actually starts playing out on the Supreme Court, like,
I feel like it's gonna be I feel like it's
gonna be covered so poorly that I'm already fired up

(01:05:10):
about just wanting to have a panel of smart lawyers
who aren't trying to come at this from a like
I'm not telling you who I think should be on
the Supreme Court, Right, I'm not the president. I probably
would disagree with many of the rulings that Brett Kavanaugh
would make, or Sonya Sada mayor for that purpose, whoever
you want to point to, Right, But Brett Kavanaugh was
imminently qualified and probably as good of a choice as

(01:05:33):
Donald Trump could make. Right, Like regard if you're acknowledging
that the Republican is going to make the choice, I
think Amy Coney Barrett, based on everything that I know
about her, and if research, is an eminently reasonable choice.
This isn't George Bush trying to put Harriet Myers on
the Court because he's good friends with her. You know,
this is an eminently reasonable choice. And I just feel

(01:05:54):
like the media by and large is going to do
such an awful and crappy job of covering this that
I feel like there has to be an outlet that
can do a good job of it. And I'm sure
you'll do a good job on your podcast, but I
feel like that's being lost now. I couldn't agree more.
And it did occur to me, you know, for the
purposes of my launching this podcast. It was good timing,

(01:06:14):
you know, to have this battle. I do respect the
work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. For the record, I do
think she was a liberal icon. She was She was
a fighter for women. I refer not to what she
did on the bench, but what she did as an
advocate prior to that and at Harvard coming up in
a man's world. So I mean respect, respect, And I
loved her friendship with Scalia and they were an example
and bipartisanship. Um. But this battle is going to require objective,

(01:06:39):
fair voices out there where people know they can turn
for the truth, the truth, and I know you're one
of them, and I will be too. As soon as
I get this thing launched the week of the twenty eight,
we will be listening, all right. Final question, what do
you wish you could go back and tell yourself when
you walked out of the law firm and into your
media career. That would have helped you the most to

(01:07:00):
be prepared for what was to come. Mm hmm, wow.
I might have said, you just turned back in there, girl, don't.
You'll be a partner. You can become really successful there
and you know, at some point you can ride off
into the sunset. I mean, I got a lot of
friends who who have stayed in the partner life and uh,

(01:07:22):
and they're doing well. And the positive with that is
you grind and it's a tough, tough job, but by
and large, you don't have to worry about waking up
and pulling out your phone and somebody is you know,
somebody has come after you and you're trending, you know
on on Twitter. You know. Okay on that front. The
difference between your adversary coming after you in the practice

(01:07:42):
of law in my experience, and those who come after you,
as you know, in this profession and media is the
lawyers still have honor. They do, not all of them,
but for the most part, lawyers still have honor in
my experience, and they they won't try to hurt you
unfair early. Um. That's not the case in media. Their

(01:08:03):
their business is to be unfair and unfactual in today's
day and age, and so as frustrating as that can be,
it is it is like that's our reality, and one
just now has to learn how to navigate around it,
and then, unfortunately help people who aren't in the media
learned to navigate around it because they also live in
a world of Facebook and Twitter where things they're just

(01:08:26):
said about them that aren't true, and now they have
to pussy foot around every issue when they're at their
jobs lest they lose them, you know. And so I
don't know. I just think the call is greater than
ever to do what we're doing. But sure, I think
in some ways my life would have been easier had
I just taken that partnership and tried a bunch of
cases and retired with you know, I guess in fifteen

(01:08:46):
more years with it, with a fat pension of some sort. Um. Listen,
I'll leave you with this because I've mentioned my therapist
several times. He's amazing. Um. After one one of the
many blow ups in my life or we were talking
and uh, he said, you know, Megan, you don't always
have to take the path of most resistance. And I thought,

(01:09:08):
you know. If you know me at all, you know
that I do. Some of us are just pugilistic by nature,
and for whatever reason, the flame finds us. And I
think that's brought great, great gifts into my life and
some downsides as well, but I'm balanced. I wouldn't train
any of it. This has been phenomenal. This has been fantastic.
I would encourage all of you to go make sure

(01:09:30):
that you subscribe to Megan Kelly's new podcast. Go follow
her on Twitter at Megan Kelly. I'll tweet out the link.
If you haven't followed her already, you can make sure
you do it just in time for the Supreme Court
confirmation battle that appears it's going to be eminent on
the next few days. Megan, thank you so much. I
know how busy you are. This was phenomenal. Look forward
to being able to talk some time again down the line.
Thanks Clay, I appreciate it. That is Megan Kelly. I'm

(01:09:52):
Clay Travis. This has been wins and losses. Be sure
to catch live editions about Kick the Coverage with Clay
Travis weekday. He's at six am Eastern three am Pacific,