 You just watched a quick snippet from Megyn Kelly's hour-long interview with Donald Trump. And the question that she asked him there might seem straightforward, but it's actually not. It's a really loaded question, and the implications of his answer are important, because if he answers no, then he is essentially buying into the premise that trans people aren't real and they're illegitimate, which means that they're not entitled to civil rights or equal treatment like the rest of us. Therefore, politically persecuting them is justifiable and even warranted. So what he says here matters, but as you saw, Trump really didn't give a straight answer, and Megyn Kelly was not too happy about that apparently, because in an episode of Glenn Beck's show, she responded and said that she thought his answer there was a weak sauce. What was your takeaway? Because he never really answered it, but he did shake his head no towards the beginning. What's your takeaway from that? Well, I thought it was weak sauce. I really wish he did better on that. I like Ron DeSantis' answer, I'm going to be honest, which is no. No. No. No. Obviously no. And it's not determined based on who can give birth. It's determined by God, and it's pretty obvious just as soon as you come out of the womb. That's the way it's always been. That's the way it continues to be, notwithstanding this weird agenda by some activists in this crazy trans agenda-pushing cult. So Trump clearly knows that. I don't know if he's trying to appease some group of trans voters that he thinks is going to make the difference with him. Even when I had Don Jr. on my show, he was kind of dancing around this issue. I think that they think they're somehow going to do better with Democrats if they don't hit this straight on, even though 98% of the Republican Party is united on this issue. It is not a winner for any Republican to hedge on this. Just ask Asa Hutchinson. Interesting. Now, she says that Trump's answer is weak sauce because everyone just knows that gender is determined by God. Obviously, idiot, we all know this. I mean, if you happen to be an atheist or intersex, then I guess she doesn't have an answer for you, but either way, just accept what she's saying. Don't question it. God is the one who chooses whether or not we're male or female. And that's it. That's the end of the story, except no, that's not the case. But still, she claims that it's more politically savvy if you just say no, as Ron DeSantis did. The problem with that is Trump is ahead of DeSantis. So even if he is quote unquote worse on the trans issue, and trust me, he's very transphobic, he makes that abundantly clear during this interview and we'll get to that. But even if Trump is worse in her eyes on this issue, then how does she explain him being ahead? Well, it's because she doesn't actually care about the politics and what is or isn't going to work for Donald Trump. She's an influencer now. So a grifter cares about one thing and one thing only views and clicks. That's two things. But you get what I'm saying. It's the same thing pretty much, right? She just wants to farm negative engagement, right? So by being outrageously anti trans, that's going to benefit her viewers, but politically speaking, not necessarily this might be her number one issue because it gets her the most clicks. But I mean, in a GOP primary, they have to speak to actual voters and not just people on the internet. And so while most Republican voters probably support genocide against trans people, and maybe that's like priority number one for Megyn Kelly, maybe it's priority number eight or nine for GOP voters. And if that wasn't the case, then wouldn't DeSantis be ahead? So just when it comes to the practicality of being super anti trans, she's just not correct even as it relates to a GOP primary. And I think that she's demonstrating that. But what she didn't talk about and what you didn't see was the four minutes of conversation leading up to that question, because Trump made it very clear that he also hates trans people. And if he's elected again, he is going to go after trans people despite his wishy-washy answer on the trans question. I'm the one that wouldn't allow it in the military. That was a big move. I wouldn't allow it in the military. Should biological men who say that they're trans be allowed in women's restrooms and women's locker rooms, women's prisons, women's spaces. Yeah. My stance on that is really pretty much what I had in the military. I think it has to be no. They shouldn't. Yeah. That's my stance. I mean, that's been my stance. So would you be in favor of a ban then on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors? I think yes. Yes. Yes, I would. Yeah. So the additional context makes it so much worse because he said all of that he affirmed support for policies that will literally lead to trans people killing themselves. Yet she still thinks that he's not sufficiently anti-trans enough for her. It's outrageous. You can never be extreme enough for these conservative influencers, but there's a reason for that. The reason why she refuses to take yes for an answer is because she knows extreme transphobia gets you more views and clicks on YouTube, right? Nobody paid attention to Michael Knowles until he called for the eradication of trans people. And then all of a sudden he's making headlines again. Negative engagement farming works. It does wonders for you algorithmically speaking. They know this. And as a result, we're seeing this race to the bottom where influencers compete to say the most outrageous things imaginable in order to garner the most attention. It's why we see just pearly things say that women shouldn't vote or gay people say that actually homophobia is fine and trans people say that transphobia is fine, right? And these political influencers who don't actually believe what they're saying, they're trying to now pressure politicians to adopt their same views at the behest of their audiences, right? But when it comes to LGBTQ plus rights, that's already happened. They won here, right? But what really struck me about Megan Kelly's interview with Donald Trump is how extreme she looked compared to Donald Trump. I mean, in 2016, she looked normal compared to Donald Trump. But now that she's in this space, not on Fox News, now that she has to think about views and clicks and engagement, now she looks more extreme. She has pushed to be more extreme. That's what being an influencer does to a person. But let me show you what I mean by that. So she grilled Trump in one particular area where I think he's actually the most reasonable COVID vaccines. And sure, he's reasonable on this issue specifically for self-interested reasons because he wants credit for saving millions of lives with the COVID-19 vaccines. But I mean, I don't care how he arrived at this issue. He's on the right side of this issue. He's not anti-COVID vaccine, and that's good. But Megan Kelly tries to get him to say the COVID vaccines are bad actually. And to an extent, he capitulates. Let me ask you this because this is the number one question I ask my audience. What would you like me to ask President Trump? These are your fans. This is the number one question they wanted me to ask you, that you shut the country down for six weeks in spring of 2020. Operation warp speed rushed through. Let me ask that question. This is my audience's question. I gotta get it out. But I let the governors shut down. Some did and some didn't. Some didn't shut down at all. Operation warp speed, though. That was on the vaccines. They were rushed through. They have helped but also hurt a lot of people. And your White House actually supported mask mandates. So wouldn't you like a do-over on any of that? Look, when this came in, nobody knew what the hell it was. It sounded like an ancient, you know, pandemic. You thought that was from 200 years ago or from 1917. We never thought you'd have a pandemic. Nobody had any idea. As far as the vaccine's concerned, you had the original COVID. And the vaccine had an impact on that. And there are some people, I will tell you, some friends of mine that are Democrat, I think they voted for me, but they're Democrat. Very smart people, top people. They say, you know, I don't understand one thing. Why don't you talk more about the vaccine? It was one of the greatest things you've ever done. Now think of that. They say to me, and I say, I'm not going to talk about it one way or the other. First of all, no mandates. I don't want mandates. I never had mandates. Florida sort of had a mandate because they were giving the vaccine. They were demanding everybody take the vaccine. It's another thing. But no mandates, no anything. I didn't demand anybody take it. But I have people on the other side. I don't know my side, although probably there are some on my side, too. They said, you saved 100 million people because I got it done in nine months as opposed to five years to 12 years. A lot of people. You're proud of it. No, I'm not proud of it. I'm saying what Democrats think. Democrats. I get it. And I'm not somebody who denies some of the good that the vaccines did. I live through that too. But of course, a lot of people have been vaccine injured. And that's one of the questions. Those people are mad that they were rushed through and that they can't sue. Now, if you're feeling a little bit of deja vu, well, it might be because just a couple of weeks ago, we watched Jimmy Dorr interview Cornell West and he tried to get him to talk about the COVID vaccines being bad because that's what his audience wants to see. Any things that's going to translate into a winning political message for a leftist candidate. Isn't that bizarre? But I mean, more and more we are seeing audience captured influencers push politicians to the right. And what I hate is that it's working. It might not work on Cornell West, but you can see that it is working on Donald Trump. The tail is wagging the dog, right? Megyn Kelly knows her audience will be pissed if she doesn't sufficiently pushed back. That was the number one question they wanted to know. So she tried to pretend as if this is some huge issue, even though she tacitly admits she knows it, right? She knows that it's a vocal minority of online conspiracy theorists who want her to pretend like the vaccine is bad. And Trump knows that as well. But they all have to play pretend for views and clicks. Now, to be clear, Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was atrocious. Like two weeks into the pandemic, even two weeks, we were already seeing Republicans and him talk about sacrificing old people to the gods of capitalism so we could reopen, right? But he does deserve credit for the vaccines, at least partial credit because of Operation Warp Speed. And he's right to want to take credit for it because the vaccines were good, right? But he can't. So it leads to bizarre exchanges where he says that the vaccines saved lives, but yet he's not proud of the vaccines because that's what he has to do, right? Even Trump who sets the agenda is capitulating. I mean, what we're seeing are grifters like Megan Kelly and Jimmy Dorr set standards for politicians, right? And I get that the media, traditionally speaking, has always had agenda setting power, but these grifters are simply proxies for their audiences. So like the dumbest people online are having a substantial impact on political discourse and politicians. And it's worrying, to say the least, to put it mildly, right? But even though they're profiting off of vaccine misinformation, that still comes at a cost. That cost is hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths from people who were told they didn't need the vaccine because they've got ivermectin instead, and that'll treat it. And this isn't just conjecture. There's evidence that party affiliation is literally linked to excess COVID-19 deaths. But to bring it back to Trump here, I think that he knows that he can't be as extreme as people like Vivek Ramaswamy or Ron DeSantis. So he has to play along. Because at this point in time, I mean, he's not just speaking to GOP primary voters, the most extreme voters in the country. He is forced to talk to centrists as well. Because let's face it, he's going to be the nominee at this point in time. It looks as if he's going to be the GOP nominee. So simply pandering to the furthest right of the GOP's base is not going to pay off for him. And he knows that. And at least on some policies, it's kind of forced him to pander to moderates more, which is a good thing. Take abortion, for example. This is what he said in an interview on NBC News. And I was actually surprised he's hinted that Republicans were kind of fucking up when it came to abortion and not so many words. But what he says here is good. He attacks DeSantis from the left on the issue of abortion. 92% of the Democrats don't want to see abortion after a certain period of time. If a federal ban landed on your desk, if you were reelected, would you sign it at 15 weeks? Are you talking about a complete ban? A ban at 15 weeks? Well, people are starting to think of 15 weeks. That seems to be a number that people are talking about right now. Would you sign that? I would sit down with both sides and I'd negotiate something and we'll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years. I'm not going to say I would or I wouldn't. I mean DeSantis is willing to sign a five week and six week ban. Would you support that? I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake. Your ears are not deceiving you, my friends. You just heard far-right demagogue Donald Trump say that he's going to talk to both sides when it comes to the issue of abortion, which is contradictory, right? And the stepdance is very bizarre because on one hand he is capitulating so he doesn't piss off his far-right base, but at the same time he's very clearly forced to pander to the middle when it comes to the issue of abortion because he's previously noted that the extremism on this issue has hurt Republicans, right? But I mean, if you pivot on this issue, you're going to piss off the far-right. So why does he choose to capitulate on vaccines and not this? I it's weird. I don't think he's really thinking that deeply about this to be clear. But I mean, there's a more important point that I want to make after watching all of these interviews because regardless if the grifters think that he's sufficiently anti-trans or anti-vax or anti- abortion, I mean, we all know that the policies are going to be extremely harmful regardless. So it doesn't really matter the degree to which he's anti-trans or anti-vax. We know it's going to be very, very bad. And I think that a second from term is going to be undoubtedly worse than his first term. And this growing thirst for more extremist policies is not going to go away anytime soon. But even if he somehow manages to lose the primary, which I just can't fathom at this moment, but if it happens, I mean, Project 2025 has taught us that we don't need to parse out the differences between him or DeSantis and Mike Pence because regardless of who wins, we're going to get extremism. Extremism on trans rights, extremism on abortion, extremism on corporate supremacy, and this demand for extremism that we're seeing from the right is going to give the next Republican president the confidence that he needs to roll with an iron fist. Like everywhere there's glow, you see them all the time. I mean, it's constant. My children are going to be like, mama, glow, glow, glow, glow. I turn on TV, there's glow in the background. Every TV show, news media, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why.