Kohberger Family Whitewashing, Maduro Dancing, and Symphony DEI, w/ Greenwald, Lowry, & Clarinetist

What this episode is about

Megan Kelly discusses controversial topics including the influence of political advocacy in New York City, updates on Venezuela under Maduro, and a clarinetist's allegations that his non-hire was due to DEI initiatives that overshadowed merit. The episode features insights from journalist Glenn Greenwald and offers a critique of diversity policies in orchestras.

Key takeaways

• When tenant advocates channel Marx, the line between advocacy and absurdity blurs—welcome to 2026!
• Blind auditions: designed for fairness, now debated in the context of modern diversity politics—who defines 'best'?
• Maduro's Venezuela: a cautionary tale where rising coffee prices rival political turmoil—grab your beans while you can!
• Coberger's sister's PR spin raises eyebrows: can you really erase family ties to infamy with a soft interview?
• In the world of elite beef, Riverbend Ranch shows quality can triumph over distribution—just don’t ask for a cheap cut!

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 15:00: Brian Coberger, University of Idaho, Howard Bloom, Celia Maduro
2. 15:00 – 30:00: Celia Maduro, Brian Coberger, Howard Bloom
3. 30:00 – 45:00: Celia Maduro
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00: Celia Maduro, Glenn Greenwald, Rich Lowry
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00: Nick Shirley, Celia Maduro, CIA Weaver, Harit Dylan
6. 1:15:00 – 1:30:00: Nick Shirley, Nick Sorder, Nashville Symphony, Daily Look
7. 1:30:00 – 1:45:00: Nashville Symphony, James Zimmerman
8. 1:45:00 – 2:00:00: Knoxville Orchestra, Nashville Symphony, Harit Dylan, James Zimmerman
9. 2:00:00 – 2:03:50: James Zimmerman, Knoxville Orchestra

Notable quotes from "Kohberger Family Whitewashing, Maduro Dancing, and Symphony DEI, w/ Greenwald, Lowry, & Clarinetist"

• Full pinko kami. She makes AOC sound like Ronald Reagan. Plus, we have updates on Venezuela and Maduro. Our friend Rich Lowry of National Review is going to be here soon. And…

  about Celia Maduro · at 0:12

• Tell I can tell you is not easy. It's not easy to be the best one at the Nashville Symphony or anywhere else, even the Bethlehem Central Symphony or band as we used to call it.…

  about Nashville Symphony · at 1:07

• To start with something we didn't even tell you we were going to talk about today. And that is Brian Coberger.

  about Brian Coberger · at 3:04

• I'm going to tell you the reporting I'm basing this off of, including that of Howard Bloom, who has owned this story from the beginning, doing exclusive updates on Graden…

  about Howard Bloom · at 5:06

• Word, but a full-scale investigation unleashing some 2,000 agents all over Minneapolis in the wake of Nick Shirley's independent journalist explosive report that hit on…

  about Nick Shirley · at 1:12:06

• Now, this is all broken by Nick Sorder, I should say, a journalist on X, another independent journalist who went to the Mini the Minneapolis is the mil the Minnesota Hilton. Okay, so the.

  about Nick Sorder · at 1:20:12

• Prevent any bias in the selection. It's supposed to mean that someone will get the spot strictly based on merit. James Zimmerman started playing the clarinet in 1991 and then…

  about James Zimmerman · at 1:26:58

• To you? like what have you been doing from 2020 to now when you auditioned for the Knoxville Orchestra?

  about Knoxville Orchestra · at 1:53:49

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Celia Maduro — Person · 16 mentions · first at 0:18
• Nick Shirley — Person · 12 mentions · first at 1:12:12
• Brian Coberger — Person · 6 mentions · first at 3:07
• James Zimmerman — Person · 5 mentions · first at 1:27:02
• Rich Lowry — Person · 4 mentions · first at 0:21
  Like Ronald Reagan. Plus, we have updates on Venezuela and Maduro. Our friend Rich Lowry of National Review is going to be here soon. And later we have an exclusive interview…
• Howard Bloom — Person · 4 mentions · first at 5:10
• Nick Sorder — Person · 4 mentions · first at 1:20:12
• Glenn Greenwald — Person · 2 mentions · first at 1:34
  Didn't give him the job. Well, he's here to tell you his story firsthand. We're going to start today with Glenn Greenwald. He's the first guest in the history of the MK show. Back with his first 2026 appearance on the show now.
• Harit Dylan — Person · 2 mentions · first at 1:11:26
  So, Harit Dylan, who's running the civil division at the Department of Justice, she saw that and tweeted out, Hey, reminder, hey, FYI, we're watching you. And it's illegal to discriminate.
• CIA Weaver — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:04:16
  Her name is CIA Weaver. And I'll get the name of the wonderful woman online who tracked Sea Weaver's accounts before she started deleting them all. And this woman did a great job. Michelle Tandler.
• Peggy Flanagan — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:17:20
  Appears to be committed by a bunch of Somali. their lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanigan, is an idiot. And here she was on December 26th in Minnesota reacting to some of these reports. His report hit on the December 26th. Let's look at.
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) — Person · 1 mention
• Zoran Mum Donny — Person · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• Nashville Symphony — Company · 9 mentions · first at 1:11
• Knoxville Orchestra — Company · 4 mentions · first at 1:53:53
• Knoxville Symphony — Company · 1 mention · first at 1:26:34
  My next guest is making major headlines right now after filing a lawsuit against the Knoxville Symphony in Tennessee, claiming that despite winning a blind audition, in which…
• Exxon — Company · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• DEI judge — Concept · 3 mentions
• Tennessee's Promissory Estoppel doctrine — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

• University of Idaho — Place · 4 mentions · first at 3:44
  Quadruple murderer of the Idaho 4, a crime that took place in 2022 at the University of Idaho. While these four students either slept in their beds or were in their rooms at 4…

Sponsors

• Daily Look — Sponsor · 1 mention · first at 1:25:34
  Does that resonate, ladies? Well, our sponsor, Daily Look, makes that wardrobe upgrade way too easy. Daily Look, is the number one rated premium personal styling service for women. With Daily Look, you get your own dedicated.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly show. We are off to a wild start to 2026 with news breaking left and right, including shocking comments from New York City Mayor Mom Donny's tenant advocate who has gone full pinko kami. She makes AOC sound like Ronald Reagan. Plus, we have updates on Venezuela and Maduro. Our friend Rich Lowry of National Review is going to be here soon. And later we have an exclusive interview with a clarinet player who was not hired despite winning a blind audition. He says because of DEI You know remember when Heather McDonald was on couple years ago she's very sophisticated. She knows all about the symphony. She was railing on what was happening to our orchestras coast to coast which are known for these blind auditions so that they can get the best people. you literally they cannot see you when you go and you play your clarinet or your obo or your flute and

0:59 they just choose the best player. Well, this guy was the best clarinetist, which as a former clarinetist myself, I can tell I can tell you is not easy. It's not easy to be the best one at the Nashville Symphony or anywhere else, even the Bethlehem Central Symphony or band as we used to call it. And um this guy won it by a by a landslide, but as soon as they saw that it was a white guy who wasn't towing the DEI line at his last job, they fired his ass. They didn't give him the job. Well, he's here to tell you his story firsthand. We're going to start today with Glenn Greenwald. He's the first guest in the history of the MK show. Back with his first 2026 appearance on the show now.

1:43 He's a Pulit surprisewinning journalist and host of Rumble's System Update. Don't miss a moment. Subscribe to this show on YouTube and follow me on Insta, Facebook, and X. I've been talking a lot about Riverbend Ranch because I love their stakes. They have some spectacular beef bundles that are wonderful gifts to friends and family. Their prime rib roast and other bundles are only available while supplies last and they are going fast. For the last 35 years, Riverbend Ranch has been creating an elite Angus herd by using ultrasound technology to identify genetically superior cattle with a focus on flavor and tenderness. They only use the top 1 or 2% of the other of the entire Angus population as their breeding stock, producing beef that has much more flavor and tenderness than your average Angus beef. All Riverbend Ranch cattle are born and raised in the USA, and the beef is processed right at the ranch in their

2:35 award-winning USDA inspected processing facility. You avoid the costly middlemen because the beef is sent directly from Riverbend Ranch to your home. Order from riverbendranch.com and use the promo code Megan for 20 bucks off your first order. Let me know what you think. That's riverbendranch.com. Promo code Megan. Glenn, welcome back.

2:56 Always great to see you, Megan. Thanks for having me. All right, I'm going to throw you for a loop here because I definitely want to get to Venezuela and all that stuff, but I want to start with something we didn't even tell you we were going to talk about today. And that is Brian Coberger. You're a lawyer and you're a journalist. So, I'm going to throw this at you knowing that you can handle this from just your experience on on both of those fronts. Something rather, I don't want to say infuriating, but definitely frustrating, annoying, and disappointing, has taken place yet again at the New York Times. So, they interviewed Mel Coberger, short for Melissa, who is Brian Coberger, admitted quadruple murderer of the Idaho 4, a crime that took place in 2022 at the University of Idaho. While these four students either slept in their beds or were in their rooms at 4 in the morning when Brian Coberger, who was pursuing

3:52 his PhD in criminology at the neighboring University of Washington just 10 miles away, sneaked into their off-campus apartment at the University of Idaho and murdered all four of these young people. Two were 20, two were 21. Um, Zana Kernodal, Ethan Chapen, um, Madison Mogan, and Zana Kernodal. and and um Casey Gonzalezeves and we know he did the the crime cuz he now admitted it to save his life this summer. He coped a plea deal in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. Well, now his sister comes out and in what is an obvious attempt to whitewash whatever her family's involvement in this, if any, was she gives this interview to the New York Times trying to sound very sympathetic. And I'll tell you the reason I have a problem with it. I don't blame Brian Coberger's crimes on his family. I'm not a lunatic. But there have long been questions about what the family knew and when and in particular

4:53 what suspicions this sister Melissa had about her brother and what if anything her mother and Brian's mother, same woman, knew about his crimes. And I'm I'm going to tell you the reporting I'm basing this off of, including that of Howard Bloom, who has owned this story from the beginning, doing exclusive updates on uh Graden Carter's p publication airmail, on this show as well, for NBC and Dine in reporting that was so explosive and on point, it actually led the judge to delay the trial or consider delaying the trial because it was such a big scoop, all the stuff that he and Dline got. Anyway, Howard Bloom knows what he's writing about and has been proven right time and time again in this case. So, she gives this interview, Glenn, and she it's the reporter's name is Mike Baker. Not that Mike Baker, not not our former CIA friend, uh, a different reporter. And this guy, from what I can tell, has let

5:50 this woman completely rehab her image and her family's image without knowing much about the case or without testing much about the case. First, she says, okay, there's some interesting backgrounds, some of which we covered in today's AM update. She says she was, by the way, her picture, she's there, she has blue hair, she has like a goth t-shirt on, she has heavy, weird makeup, and her story is that she was just hired to go work as a mental health therapist. I got to tell you, if I walked in to my new therapist and saw this woman sitting there, I would run the other way. um a goth blue-haired you you know sister of Brian Coberger. It's a no. And I wasn't the only one who felt that way because she had she says to give up her job that she just got as a mental health counselor as soon as her brother got arrested. Shocking. Um she talks about how when she first heard about the crimes, this is long before his arrest.

6:48 They happened um two months earlier. It occurred to her that he was just the type of person who would leave his door unlocked and go out on late night jog. So she called him and said, "Brian, you're running outside and this psycho killer's on the loose. Be careful." He thanked her for checking on him and assured her he would stay safe. Of course, he knew he would because he knew he was the psycho killer and that there was no random criminal running around trying to kill college students other than Brian Coberger. Um, then in early December that year, they write her brother returned to their parents' home in Pennsylvania for the holidays. And later that month, he got a call from their sister Amanda. I'm sorry, Miss Goldberger. Mel got a call from their sister Amanda who said cops had burst into the house in the middle of the night and arrested Brian in handcuffs.

7:34 The sister Amanda said to Mel, "I'm with the FBI. Brian's been arrested." Mel claims, "I was like, for what?" The response from Amanda, the Idaho murders. For a brief moment, Mel wondered if it was a prank. Then a sense of nausea overtook her. Then we go on for several pages about what a beautiful family they had. The mother was Catholic, raised them with Catholic values. They read books like Little House on the Prairie by little by Laura Engles Wilder. Books we read in my very own family for that matter. And I I too was raised by a Catholic mother and father. Um and I would submit for the record these are not the values that are taught. That would lead one to become a psychopathic quadruple murderer at age in mid20s. Um she talks about how she's been angered by internet posts from people who speculated about her family and what they had known about Coberger being the killer. I've always been the person who

8:29 has spoken up for what's right. She says, "If I ever had a reason to believe my brother did anything, I would have turned him in. absolutely no scrutiny of this by the Times reporter and no testing of it with what's already been reported extensively about this family and this case. Um she he does however let her talk about how poor Brian was overweight. He uh was now they believe uh somebody with autism. He endured persistent bullying. He wrote online of having no emotion, little remorse and feeling like an organic sack of meat with no self-worth. Later, he spiraled into heroin addiction. How did all that happen, by the way, in such a perfect family, just reading Little House on the Prairie and spending so much quality time together? It's never addressed. Uh we were all worried that he was on the path to an early death but then became so proud of him because he had overcome so much and notwithstanding his socially

9:25 awkward persona and his abrasive nature he wound up never violent by the way she says at the University of Washington pursuing his PhD. Okay. Then she goes on to say in the days before the raid they'd gathered for Christmas. They were hugging tightly. They played TV party games. I'm sure it's just the perfect of Norman Rockwell Americana inside this house that produced one of the most prolific young serial killers we've seen in recent decades. Miss Coberger Mel was cleaning up in the kitchen. A sharp edge of foil caused her finger to bleed and her brother initially expressing disgust at the sight of blood then helped clean the cut and cover it with a bandage. Um, of course, we don't get into the nature of the crime, which was by knife that he murdered these four innocents at the University of Idaho so brutally. Glenn, Mike Baker, I guess, didn't think this was worth mentioning, but I realize this

10:25 is why he included the detail in here because he this feigning disgust at the sight of blood, but this should have been brought home was they were so bloody these crimes that the house itself began to bleed. We saw in the police photos, which I am now putting on the board for the vis for the viewing audience on YouTube. This is the exterior of the home, the murder house on the University of Idaho, where blood is dripping outside of the house. That's how badly these young people were hacked to death and the amount of blood that they spilled. So, here he is figning disgust is the word used in the piece at the sight of blood. and she says, Mel does that she recalls in those days at home Brian only briefly mentioning the Idaho murder saying the investigators were still hunting for the killer. Uh she says now here we get to it.

11:19 Colberger, Miss Colberger, Mel, knowing that her brother had driven a wife, a white Elantra back from school, said she had briefly wondered if they were looking for the same model. But then she learned that his was from a different year, 2015, and they were only thinking that the model was between years 2011 and 2013. Now, that right there is such an obvious lie, Glenn. Like, you I don't know if you have siblings all these these years we've been together. I don't know what your family your family of origin looks like, but I if your mind goes to my brother might be the homicidal maniac who took those four lives, but technically his white Elantra was built 2 years after the years they're looking for. I'm calling on you. you if you've placed your sibling in the field of possible killers, you're actually not relieved that that maybe it was a the cut off was 2013 as opposed to 2015, which by the

12:15 way they later updated anyway. Okay, I'm getting to this. So then they write about how um okay that that the mother has been praying daily now for families of the victims that Mel Coberger has put the names of the victims and their birthdays into her digital calendar so she will get reminders about them during the holidays. Her family has felt grief that Mr. Coberger could not be with them but then she would think of the victim's families and the pain they must be feeling. very careful to say there's only one set of victims and I'm not I'm not on the list. I get that. Okay. Here is what we know from Howard Bloom. He has reported the following. That Mel Coberger reportedly confronted her father, Michael Coberger, with her fears that Brian was involved in the murders.

13:09 The book uh Howards, which he wrote, um When the Night Comes Calling, great book, by the way. The book claims that her father quote turned his back and walked away when faced with his daughter's suspicion. This is the daughter Mel being interviewed by the Times. The sister Mel was reportedly a witness to her brother engaging in odd behavior such as wearing his rubber gloves and placing his personal garbage into Ziploc bags before disposing of it in a neighbor's trash can in the days leading up to his arrest. That detail too omitted by Mike Baker. nothing about the the sister reportedly witnessing Brian doing the most suspicious thing of all. The thing that could have led a jury to convict him even without his DNA on the knife sheath, taking all of his personal trash, putting it into ziplockc baggies, and then making sure it went out into the neighbor's garbage bin instead of that at his home of origin

14:02 after he'd went he'd gone back to the Poconos with his dad who drove him cross country. And what if anything did the dad knew? No. And here's the real capper. The final real capper before I give it to you, Glenn Greenwall. The mother who's praying for the victims and she's Catholic and the little house in the prairie blah blah blah blah blah. The mother is at the center of this whole thing because while the father did not even bother to show up to the sentencing, allegedly he wasn't feeling well or was having heart trouble and Mel stayed home with him. The mother showed up and the mother has been there for Brian all along. When we finally got a hold of his phone records, we found out that the murders, which were done at 4 between 4:05 and 4:20 a.m. It was in a 12minut span, right in that exact time frame. And he had turned off his phone from like 2:30 to 4:30 a.m. there while he committed these crimes. Um, then he

14:58 turned his phone back on. So he gets back to his home, University of Idaho, uh, sorry, University of Washington by, let's say, 5:456 at the latest. What happens or 4:45 at the latest, what happens when he gets there? He calls his mother within an hour. We know from his phone records that at 6:13 a.m., this is within two hours of having hacked four innocents to death with a knife, just him. At 6:13 a.m., he made an attempt to call his mother. A minute later, angry that he couldn't get her, he called his dad, asking why his mother did not answer. At 6:17 a.m., he connects with his mother for 36 minutes. At 8:03 a.m., he calls his mother again and speaks to her for 54 minutes while driving back to the crime scene in Moscow, Idaho. Why was he doing that? Had she told him, make sure you go back and see about the knife sheath. Had he confessed anything to the mother? It's very hard to believe

16:05 they didn't discuss it. 120 minutes after he did it when he was obviously very insistent on getting a hold of the mother in the first place. At 9:00 a.m., another 9-minute conversation with the mother, totaling over three hours of conversation that day via five calls, none of which is mentioned in this rehabilitative puff piece in the New York Times that did absolutely no kicking of the sisters story or tires, Glenn. And it was a journalistic fail where this guy obviously let himself get used by a young woman with some psychological training on how to manipulate people as it turns out according to me. Um, and this had no business appearing in a paper of record like the Times. That's what I wanted to get your thoughts on.

16:56 Yeah, there's a lot there and I totally agree that by far the most interesting or at least consequential part of all these events is the journalistic angle. Um, by the way, I do have a brother and I couldn't imagine ever remotely even for like a fleeting second considering the possibility that he's a serial killer. And then if I were actually in a realm where I was considering that possibility, that would already be extremely alarming. Um, and the idea that, oh, I'm going to exonerate him only because the car that he was driving was out of the range by about a year.

17:28 Once you're down that road, you're pretty far well beyond where anybody would would ever be. We think that would be a pretty big red flag. But the journalist angle I think is so important, Megan, because I think, you know, you and I work in in journalism, so we see it up close. Most people who don't work in journalism don't, like we don't see, you know, heart surgeries up close or or people flying aircraft. And when you do, you you see things that I think people should be aware of. Often times, one of the things that is most dangerous to journalism is when you get a source who can provide you with an important value. And this is a big scoop, right? This is uh the sister of this serial killer in a case that has gotten major attention. He's kind of this enigma in mystery. He has never spoken. He didn't defend himself in court. He plead guilty. No one understands why he did what he did. He

18:13 won't provide any information. And now the sister is speaking for the first time. It's a big benefit to the reporter at the New York Times to get the story. It's why we're talking about it. Gets a lot of attention. And one of the problems that bad journalists fall into, the temptation that they refuse to resist, is that when you have a source who's giving you an important story that could help your career, there's it's very tempting to start trying to almost become their advocate, like to take their side, to almost say to them, if you give me this story, I will help you as well. And it becomes this quidd proquo where now the journalist isn't doing journalism by interviewing this source. the journalist hat is out the window because they're so grateful they got the story and in the course of probably negotiating they have a personal relationship that develops and so you have all of these questions. I

18:58 haven't followed this case that closely so I can't opine on every aspect of it. But what clearly seems to be the case and I did look at this article a few days ago when it came out maybe yesterday. Uh even though I didn't know I was going to talk about it with you. It was my impression there were so many aspect of the story where like there's so many obvious follow-ups that just aren't in here. I wasn't even aware that there was other reporting that they should have been confronted with. But that I do think is something that happens quite often and and it's a big problem with journalism.

19:26 It's a total fail. And you're exactly right. He was so excited and enamored with his exclusive that he fell down on the job and didn't ask the basic follow-up questions. And I don't even know does he even know about the case? Has he read anything by Howard Bloom so much? Howard, for example, had been walking us through from the beginning the fact that the FBI had been following Brian Coberger when he tked back home to the Poconos from the University of Washington with his family. Howard is the one who broke the news that the FBI in trying to match the DNA that was found on the knife sheath used not just the public database of DNA to see if there was a match but the private databases too which is technically a no no but it doesn't violate a law it's just a stated rule and that's how they found him. Howard broke so many exclusives on this case and to not actually just do a search or be familiar

20:18 with his reporting before you get to the family member would also be a dereliction of duty. The entire thing it's not worth the paper it's printed on. It's it is a an attempt to rehab some suspicious behavior. I'm not blaming the murders on the family, but there is a real question about whether a Mel Coberger had real suspicions about her brother long before the FBI showed up in their house that night that went beyond, oh gee, they're all washed away by the fact that it turns out the Hyundai Elantre they're looking for is two year between two 2011 and 2013, not his 2015 vehicle. And B, what was the mother discussing in 3 hours worth of talks? 2 hours after he committed the crimes with her son. That is the most suspicious and by the way obvious question that he should have at least asked and if there was no answer should have told us that that exchange took place. So shame on the times. Uh it's a

21:15 great get but only if you handle it properly which he did not do here. Okay let's move on to some hard news. We've covered that case extensively here and our audience I think has an interest in it. So that's why I threw you that for that loop. Okay. Also very much in the news today is Venezuela and President Trump can cannot stop talking about Venezuela to literally anybody who calls him. Kristen Welker of NBC, Joe Scarboro of NBC just made news talking to Trump about NBC about uh Venezuela. And Trump just told Joe Scarboro in in a phone interview um that Scarboro has now reported on um quote the president's response, Joe, on the difference between Iraq and Venezuela is that Bush didn't keep the oil. We are going to keep the oil. And to underline his point, Trump said his comments, I'm quoting here from the Scarboro Report, said his comments were no longer on background and said in 2016, "I said we

22:16 should have kept the oil. It caused a lot of controversy." "Well, we should have kept the oil," the president said. "And we're going to rebuild their broken down oil facilities, and this time we're going to keep the oil." Well, I don't know what that means, Glenn, but and I realize that Venezuela took a bunch of oil from our oil companies decades ago and didn't fully repay uh the oil companies, but that's literally decades ago now. And I don't know what Trump is talking about, but it seems as close as we're gonna get to just an admission that this really is about the oil and that it wasn't that it was about seizing it, that we're going to seize their oil and not just about keeping it away from people like Iran and Russia and Cuba and other bad actors with whom Maduro had been cooperating.

23:04 So, by the way, on the on the heels of that, he also says openly that we need to nurse Venezuela back to health before there can be an election. So, we are there to get the oil. I don't know what the US oil companies are saying about this. We searched but didn't find anything explicitly. And now, instead of, you know, focusing all of our efforts on nursing the United States economy back to health, we're going to be nursing Venezuela back to a place where we can trust its elections. We don't know when they're happening. So, this is potentially an issue for Trump as we go forward to the midterms. I'll give you one other fact. He says, "No, it's not." He says, and I quote, "Ma is with me." He says, "Ma loves it. Ma loves what I'm doing. Ma loves everything I do. MAGA is me. Ma loves everything I do. And I love everything I do, too." So, your thoughts on all of that?

23:57 First of all, I think one of the big problems here is that this is a highly consequential action. You can call it a war if or not a war if you want. I personally regard it as a war when we send our air force and bomb the crap out of multiple cities in a country, including their capital after we have a massive military buildup and spend months bombing their boats off the international waters of their coast with the CIA covert operation inside the country that has lasted many months. Invade their country with our military.

24:24 take their leader, bring him back to Washington, and then have the president declare the United States now in charge of that country, ruling that country, governing that country. To me, that's a war, but you can call it whatever you want. And also, we don't know how far this is going to go. President Trump himself has said this may not be the end. We may put troops on the ground. He said he's not afraid of that. He's happy to do that if that's necessary. So, there's a lot more that can happen. But even in terms of what has happened up to this point, there's two problems, major problems with it. First one is this was never discussed during the campaign. We just had a major presidential campaign that went on for 18 months as they always do that. We had presidential debates, campaign planks. Nobody ever suggested that it was somehow important to our national security or otherwise in our interest to go in and and effectuate

25:10 regime change in Venezuela using our military and our CIA. That was never discussed. To the extent anything was discussed, there was a claim which I agree with that we have a major problem with fentanyl entering the United States. I think the big problem is why do so many Americans want to consume drugs. But in terms of the supply, fentanyl doesn't come from Venezuela. Trump himself said thousands of times fentanyl comes their precursors do from China and they come through Mexico. And to the extent he proposed any solution, it wasn't going and doing regime change in Venezuela. It was bombing the drug cartels in Mexico, which we haven't done. and it suddenly switched to this other thing. So when you have that, the fact that we have a major election, there's been no real discussion of this, it suddenly happens, combined with the fact that the rationale keeps changing.

25:54 Originally, we were told we have to do this because drugs are coming from Venezuela. As I just said, fentanyl, which is by far the most concerning drug, doesn't come from Venezuela. Cocaine, a small percentage, 7 to n% comes from Venezuela. These are all according to government reports under Donald Trump that his DEA and other agencies prepared. So a and also just because we take Maduro out and leave the government in place doesn't mean that the drug cartels are going to disappear. We're not in Venezuela. How are we going to stop that or change? And then Colombia and other countries including Mexico can just even if the drug flow were impeded from Venezuela just send more drugs into United States. It's not going to impede a single iota of drugs in the United States. It's not going to help people who have drug addiction problems and want drugs and keep consuming drugs in the United States.

26:38 Then we were told it's about liberating the Venezuelan people except the entire communist government under Maduro is still in place. President Trump wants to leave them in place at least for the time being. He's saying there we don't want to have elections. There was an assumption that President Trump would put into power the opposition candidate Edmund Gonzalez who was declared the winner of the last election or Maria Machado the Nobel Prize winner and he's saying no we're not going to put them in place. We're going to do business with the communist regime. There's evidence that there's more repression now in Venezuela because they feel like they've been attacked externally. So that rationale has gone by the wayside and then what? We're going to take their oil. Do you know how long it's going to take to refurbish that oil uh infrastructure? And Megan, even if we steal their oil, and I can promise you

27:24 if we do that, obviously a lot of people in Venezuela are going to fight very hard against the United States against that. going to be dragged into the middle of a guerilla war, the kind that any country would fight if we say we're going to steal your oil for our benefit. But for whose benefit would that be? For the shareholders and the executives of Exxon and Chevron and these international oil conglomerates, none of that is going to flow to the benefit of the American people. So the question is for whom for whose benefit is all of this happening? I think Americans voted for no more regime change wars. We don't want to be governing other countries. We can barely govern our own. And they've made that repeatedly clear. I think it's one of the reasons why they voted for President Trump because he promised not to do more regime change wars. And now suddenly because MAGA loves it and MAGA loves everything that he does, which may

28:09 be true, but MAGA is a small portion of the of the voting population. I think it's going to create a lot of political problems for Trump in the midterms, but much more importantly, major geopolitical problems for the United States. What we're seeing now is uh many conservatives who are kind of leaning into American power and openly using the term imperialism like we're fine with that. You know what? We're we're the badass of the Western Hemisphere. We can do it. We have the military capability and might to show off in this way, which is a good deterrent for these bad guys to see like only we could pull this off, you know, like good for us. You better not f with us. And you know, if it takes messing with like this tinpot country, that's what I've heard people say, then then too bad. Who gives a about Venezuela is what a lot of people are kind of saying. Like they've effed with us for too long. They were playing

29:03 footsie with our enemies who cannot have a greater foothold in the Western Hemisphere. You know, Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't have allowed this. Monroe wouldn't have allowed this. And why should Donald J. Trump allow this when he can send the Delta force in there and boom, Bob's your uncle. Maduro's out. Yes, his vice president is still running the country, but as Trump says, we control her because we control the oil embargo happening around Venezuela. I th this is not new, Megan. I mean, nobody doubts that the United States has the most powerful military on the planet. China has caught up in a lot of ways, but overall the United States military is by far the most powerful military force on the planet. I don't know anyone literally who doubts that we are now spending a trillion dollar a year, the first ever trillion dollar a year budget on our military. This is all going to the coffers of Boeing and North

29:56 of Grumman and Palanteer and all the rest of the military-industrial complex that I thought we were supposed to be worried about and we're trying to weaken. So if you want to take the position that hey we're back to 2002 we're just going to go around the world bombing invading

30:18 that doesn't work. President Trump himself is saying no we're going to rebuild Venezuela. Um are you able to hear me?

30:24 You're back. Okay. Yeah. Now I got you. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah. So, I was saying there there's this attempt to distinguish between what this is and neoconservatism by saying no, the neocons wanted to nation build. They actually really didn't. They just wanted to bomb and kill enemies and that's what we were doing. And it actually redounded to our harm in so many ways. We tried this so many times throughout history. It's not like the United States has been shy about invading other countries and overthrowing regimes. We've been doing this for many, many decades. And look at what we have. $ 38 trillion in debt, an educational system and healthcare system that are totally broken. massive income inequality, people who can't buy a home, and now the the idea is we're just going to double down and we're going to put more and more into our military.

31:02 Honestly, I don't mean to be too psychoanalytical about this, but I do think this idea that like, yeah, we're back and we're going to dominate the world. This is like a very psychological need that I think comes from weakness that a lot of people feel like they don't get to really go to war. Only a tiny fraction of our population are the people who fight in it, at least unless we have a draft again. People don't have an opportunity to really feel like they're purposeful and and brave and courageous and connected to a mission.

31:29 And so by getting to watch our military from afar carry out successful operations, people get to feel strong and powerful. Like you see these people walking around who don't really display any bravery or strength themselves saying like, "Yeah, this is our hemisphere. We" and they're getting like this kind of vicarious strength from the bravery of others. I think it's very a very damaging way to to try and feel good about yourself. And the bigger problem is you can go and fight the rest of the world. The reason that big powers like England or France or Belgium or the United States stop being imperial powers is because it sucks all of your resources out of you. You're constantly slaughtering people and murdering people, trying to manage countries that you don't understand thousands of miles away using all kinds of inhumane force.

32:13 People decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. That's why imperialism was renounced. and this idea that we're going to go back to it. I thought the whole point of the Trump movement was we're going to focus our resources here at home. We're going to invest in our communities, in our people. We don't want to build up the military-industrial complex. We don't want to constantly be fighting wars. And like overnight, all of that vanished. And now we're right back to this sort of like Lindsey Graham, Bill Crystal model of the world that I thought the Malaga movement was about renouncing.

32:40 Totally. You saw how happy Lindsey Graham was yesterday. It was like it was he was he was twitching with like ecstasy. I mean he I've never seen him smiling that much and why wouldn't he? I don't blame him. He's getting what he wants.

32:54 No, I know. It's like um Trump's been surrounded by actual neocons who really love bombing things and the policies seem to reflect that. Now I don't you know Trump does what he wants to do. Um but one does wonder if you're hanging out with Lindsey Graham whether that's a great thing as our president. Now, Trump did add to the story. I read this in the um New York Times, and at first I didn't believe it because there's been a lot of going on about Trump. Like the Washington Post yesterday reported that the reason he doesn't want um Maria to

33:30 is because she which just sounded like And now already the New York uh the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have both said that that's a bunch of nonsense. So, you do have to be very skeptical. But the New York Times on Sunday reported, and I'm reading here, Mr. Maduro's regular public dancing and other displays of nonchalants in recent weeks helped persuade some of the Trump team that the Venezuelan president was mocking them and trying to call what he believed to be a bluff, according to two of the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity. So, the White House decided to follow through on its military threats, which sounded kind of too cute by half. But then the Times reported this this morning. Just this morning, President Trump is addressing Republican lawmakers at the House GOP retreat. That happened this morning at 10 a.m. In wide-ranging remarks, he praised the US raid in Venezuela and said that he had

34:19 been annoyed at the way the ousted Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro had danced as Trump administration officials escalated their threats against him in the weeks before the raid. Here is that moment today in Sautan. They've been after this guy for years and years and years and uh you know he's a violent guy. He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit but he's a violent guy and he's killed millions of people. He's tortured. They have a torture chamber in the middle of Caracus.

34:59 So he mentioned the dancing. By the way, here's the dancing. Uh, in case you didn't see it, this is a video uh from November 22nd. Here is Maduro trying to imitate the Trump dance, which could be the reason he's in handcuffs in a New York City jail at the moment, which is mildly amusing until you really think it through and then it gets kind of disturbing.

35:23 Here's the thing that's bothering me, Megan. When I was uh comparing Trump's foreign policy instincts to the Democrats under Biden and Harris and also especially Hillary Clinton, what always struck me about Donald Trump, and I said this many times on television and other places, is that when he talked about war, he talked about war and prioritized the most important thing about it, which is that people in large numbers die. You bomb people and we talk about bombing, but there's people on the ground who are now dead, innocent people. He talks about the war in Ukraine. He always is emphasizing the number of people who who are died in a way that I think is very important and very healthy. And he always showed this kind of aversion to war because of that.

36:03 And it is true that in his first term, he was the first president not to involve the United States in a new war in decades. That really was true about him. And I used to talk about that a lot in this last year though. And I started noticing this when he bombed Yemen in the first month after criticizing bombing for Biden for having bombed Yemen. And then he restarted that Biden camp that bombing campaign. but especially when he bombed uh Iran in conjunction with Israel and he started going around talking about how he and Netanyahu were war heroes and it kept saying Netanyahu deserves a pardon for the criminal charges that he faced because those two are war heroes and you could see Trump really taking this sort of like pride and sense of strength. He didn't of course fight in the military.

36:45 There was the Vietnam War that he avoided, but he started feeling like he was a war hero and he was starting to get this kind of positive feeling from ordering things bombed and from blowing things up and from showing that he was the strongest. And so in the first term, John Bolton tried to pressure him, so did Marco Rubio, to do regime change in Venezuela. And he was okay with it. And then he realized it was too hard and he didn't do it. And that's what led to John Bolton leaving. And now suddenly we're back to, oh yeah, look what happened. He defied me and I went in and we got him. like he risked the lives of soldiers and our military and potentially started a new war in Venezuela because he didn't like the fact that Maduro was was dancing. And I do believe that was was part of the motive because none of it none of the rest of it makes sense in terms of what it is that we did here. The last thing I

37:28 just want to say quickly, Megan, if I could is like if if no m even if a country is weaker, even if a country doesn't have the military that the United States has, people just instinctively have nationalistic pride just like the United States does. If we get attacked or people threaten us, we unite behind our government against them. That is what countries do. And if Venezuelans, including ones who don't like Maduro, who hate Maduro, think the United States is there to take their oil and use it for the benefit of big oil companies or Americans, of course they're going to fight the United States. And not just they, but people throughout the region. It's going to generate the kind of anti-American sentiment that we saw and still see in the Middle East because of the same behavior. There's long-term consequences to all of this, no matter how triumphalist people might be feeling right now.

38:13 There's I mean Trump is too smart to not realize that he's there there is no way he's planning on just stealing the oil without giving anything to the Venezuelans. I just think he's too smart. You know, he may be talking loosely. He's definitely talking loosely to NBC and Scarboro, but you know, as for official policy, it's got to involve more than that. has to come at the enrichment of the Venezuelans or he he would know what they what they would do. I mean so far what we've seen is reactions out of Venezuela that appear to be favorable. Though some of them are old like you do have to be very careful about what you're seeing online. I know you've been tweeting about some of the videos that are like four years old.

38:53 It's like no no they were cheering about something else. But there are definitely many Venezuelans who are all over ex praising President Trump. I mean, Anna Navarro on the View was praising President Trump about this. It does not seem like we went in there and decapitated a regime that was super popular. Uh, it seems like even the Venezuelans were not too in love with Maduro. Now, that doesn't necessarily make it right. I'm just saying I don't know if the analysis of like they're going to rally around their flag and their deposed leader is going to work here.

39:23 Okay, let me let me just address that. Um, first of all, Democrats despise George Bush and Diff Cheney. They believed he stole the 2000 election. But the minute our country was attacked, almost everybody united behind George Bush and Dick Cheney, not for like a week or for a month, but for like two or three years, gave them license to go and attack Iraq. He had 75 80% approval rating. I'll just give you a quick uh analogy in in Brazil where, as you know, I live and I I do reporting. A few months ago, Donald Trump announced he was going to tear up impose tariffs on Brazil, sanction Brazilian leaders because he didn't want Ja Bnar, the former president who Trump likes, going to prison. he doesn't like other policies that Brazil is enacting. And huge numbers of Brazilians, including ones who hate the government, who hate the current president, Lulu Dilva, united and said, "It's not the United

40:09 States that governs our country. We govern our country. We decide how Brazilians and Brazil is governed, not the United States. There's always this unifying feeling." The problem is is that exiles or people who left Venezuela, you know, we used to hear from like before the Iraq war, these Iraqi exiles who kept telling us, "Oh, they're going to be dancing in the streets. are going to welcome you as liberators. They weren't representative of the people who are actually in Iraq who remember are indoctrinated with all kinds of

40:34 Let me ask you something there. Let me ask you something because I heard I heard a defense on that that I was like that's actually not a bad defense. Talking about the vast difference culturally between Iraq and Venezuela talking about how you're you know you're going in the Middle East with a bunch of Muslims who are raised in ways that we cannot relate to at all. third world and versus Venezuelans who are largely Catholic who may have a background that's much more similar to you know a lot of Latinos living in Miami and so it's not going to be as difficult to sort of help them revamp their country and reestablish a democracy that works in the way that we want it to and that would be favorable toward the US. Okay, first of all, this discourse is completely contrary to everything else we've been hearing for years from the conservative movement, which is the idea that Venezuelans and other Latin

41:24 Americans, Central Americans, Latin Americans cannot come to our country and assimilate because they are primitive. They don't share our values. They can't understand liberal democracy. They can't uh integrate into American culture the way say like Europeans could, Italians could, the Irish could. It's different race. It's a different culture. This is something that we've been hearing for a long time now. Suddenly Venezuelans are very aligned with us and similar to us and are ready to adopt Jeffersonian democracy in a way that the Iraqis weren't. That's the first thing. The second thing is most of the people in these countries in Venezuela and elsewhere are poor people. They're not very well educated. They've been living under communism for 25 years now. They are indoctrinated to believe that the United States is evil just like we're indoctrinated to believe that Cuba and and Venezuela and communist countries

42:07 are evil. They have that same level of indoctrination. They're not reading freely the media or having open debate in Venezuela. They don't want the United States who they view and Hugo Chavez was a very popular Venezuelan leader before Maduro used to talk about how George Bush was Satan. The United States is the great Satan. These are things they've been indoctrinated with for a long time. They're not going to they're not Venezuela said when when when exactly when he followed Bush. So these Venezuelans in Miami are not representative of like Venezuelans in the rural area of the country or the poor Venezuelans who live in Caracus who are now very wellarmed.

42:44 And I think we like to tell ourselves that other countries are grateful when we invade them, when we bomb them, when we remove their leader. And the last thing I'll say, Megan, is if China came in and arrested Trump out of the White House, you would have huge numbers of Americans celebrating that. Oh, Trump was Trump. and it doesn't really say much about either the justifiability or what most people in the country think. These are very unrepresented people we're seeing in the media.

43:07 I would definitely say that well that would never happen. But secondly, um in Trump's defense, Maduro was not the recognized leader of Venezuela. So it's not exactly the same as actually like capturing a head of state who's legitimately by any measure the running the country. He lost an election in July of 2024. He refused to seed his power and claimed falsely that he had won. Um, I want to give you this. It's not just Venezuela. Now, we're talking about possibly invading Cuba. That seemed to be what Marco Rubio was intimating and even Trump was intimating just yesterday. We played the soundbite on yesterday's show. And not just Cuba, but Colombia, where Trump said the president there better quote, "Watch his ass." Um, and then also Greenland is back on the table. Um, and that got very interesting over on CNN when Stephen Miller gave an interview to Jake Tapper about what's going to happen with Greenland because

44:09 Trump keeps saying we have to have it. We we just we have to have it. We need Greenland. Like he's not backing off. It's caused an international incident. Now, European leaders have spoken out saying, "We would like to remind you that it belongs to Denmark and that that's a NATO country and that there will be no taking Greenland." Um, but here's what Steven Miller said to Jake Tapper. Sat 7. The premier of Greenland and the premier of Denmark and other Danish officials are responding to a Twitter post from your wife Katie Miller, herself, a former Trump White House official, showing Greenland covered with an American flag, saying, "Soon after that was posted, President Trump repeated the claim that the US needs Greenland for national security reasons." The Danish prime minister um responded to this in an interview earlier today as reported by Bloomberg.

44:53 quote, "I believe one should take the American president seriously when he says that he wants Greenland, but I will also make it clear that if the US chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO, and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War. Can you rule out that the US is is ever going to try to take Greenland by force?"

45:15 It wouldn't be a military action against Greenland. The the Greenland has a population of 30,000 people, Jake. The the real question is by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The United States is the power of NATO for the United States to secure the Arctic region to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests. Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States. Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.

45:46 So, that's a long list. I didn't even mention Iran where Trump said we're locked and loaded and ready to go in if they shoot any protesters over there. And the protests have been growing. And by the way, now there's reports that the Ayatollah has said he's ready to flee to Russia if need be. Though these protests are not quite as extreme as ones we've seen in the past where he did no such thing. So whatever. Take the Iran with an asterisk. But Greenland rhetoric is ramping up. Your thoughts? I mean, there's there's no coherence here. Like, Colombia, where President Trump is threatening the president of of Colombia, Gustava Pro, is a democratically elected leader. Nobody doubts that. He just doesn't like pro because pro is a leftwing leader who has been criticizing Trump. So, that now is justification for threatening pro. And we're going to go to war in Colombia possibly. We're threatening. You can't

46:32 threaten all these wars in Iran, in Cuba, and not follow through. And that's going to be a lot of different wars that we're then going to be fighting. And then as far as Greenland is concerned, you know, Stephen Miller saying, "What by what right does Green does Denmark have?" Greenland's like saying, "But what by what right does the United States have California? By what right does the United States have Mexico?" These are century old uh nations that have been defined by their borders and recognized internationally for for for centuries. And while it may be true that Denmark isn't going to go to war with the United States over Greenland, the entire EU, all of NATO is going to absolutely separate from the United States if the United States steals land from an EU and a NATO member. Can

47:09 I ask you something? Can Can I just ask you something? Is that such a bad thing? I don't know. Like, are we

47:14 Look, I don't get kicked out of NATO. Like, you can't kick us out. We're the funding the whole thing that a lot of Americans, a lot of Republicans have been saying we should dump NATO to begin with. I I don't even I I I think I I like when President Trump was questioning the ongoing viability of NATO because it was a defensive alliance uh formed to protect Western Europe against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer no longer exists. So I think there's a very good reason for questioning NATO. All I'm saying is that Stephen

47:38 we didn't have NATO. There's I mean we we might not have the Ukraine war right now. Keep going.

47:42 All I'm saying Megan is that while Steven Miller is right in this very simplistic dismissive tone Denmark is not going to go to war with the United States over Greenland. It's only because it can't. there's going to be massive consequences in terms of having entire regions of the world hate the United States, view us as this rogue nation. And you can say, I don't really care about that, but that's what opens up China to all of this influence. That's why China has so much influence because so many countries have concluded the United States is this bully that uses military force. All of this has major implications. The reason why, you know, we get attacked by by the Middle East, the reason that there are a lot of people who hate us in the Middle East is because this is the behavior we've been engaging in for the Middle East for decades. We've been overthrowing their governments, imposing dictatorships on

48:22 them, taking their oil, telling them that they have no rights. Yes, they can't fight us in the sense that they have a military equal to ours, but there's all kinds of repercussions from that. The CIA has a term for that. It's called blowback. That if you just go around the world bullying other countries and taking things that you want, there's going to be a lot of ramifications that you have to take into consideration that are going to come back to say nothing at the cost of who's going to fight all these words that Trump is is vowing and threatening.

48:48 I mean, I don't think Trump wants to get involved in a war. Like, I think you can see that, too. He doesn't want He definitely He was one of the first people to oppose the Iraq war when Republicans were all defending it. He doesn't want a war. He He's defining his foreign policy as these pinpoint strikes where he gets in and he gets out and by the time you've heard that there's a war on, it's over, right? And he says, "We're not at war with Venezuela. We're at war with their drug dealers and people like that." that he says. But I don't I give Trump the benefit of the doubt that he does not want anything prolonged and would do his best to stop something like that. The risks I think we're looking at here are that the other sides don't agree, right? Like we want the war before we got attacked on 911 either,

49:27 right? The you can always avoid war as long as the other side just submits and does everything that you tell them to do. The problem is that very often they don't do that. And many of the worst wars have happened not because leaders wanted wars, but because once you start threatening military conflict, you have military buildup, tensions increase, you have escalation, you have miscommunication, all these things can happen in a very way. This is a very dangerous game to be playing. Like, yes, I do believe that Donald Trump doesn't want to fall into some major quagmire in war. The problem is is that the policies that he's pursuing are very likely to lead to that. I mean, he what if the Venezuelans don't submit to all of his orders? He's already said, "We'll be happy to put brutes on the ground." And that now you have an escalated situation. Look at how Vietnam began.

50:11 We're going to send some advisers. We don't want war in Vietnam. And within a few years, we had tons of military uh tons of soldiers. And within a few years after that, there were 60,000 American dead soldiers. Not because anyone ever set out and said, "I want to have a decade long war in Vietnam," but because the policies we pursued led inexorably to that. I definitely don't think Trump is going to willingly walk us there. But the question is, is it out? Is it out of our control? Is it is it potentially out? Great to see you, my friend. See you soon, Glenn. Up next, we're slowly.

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51:33 Use the code MK to get 25% off your first order or simply click the link in the description or scan the QR code to claim this delicious offer. Don't feel like ordering online? Masa is now available nationwide at your local Sprouts supermarket. Stop by, pick up a couple of bags before they're all gone. Joining me now, our pal Rich Lowry, who is editor of National Review, NR, and my buds over there are very much in favor of the action in Venezuela and dropped a very interesting podcast debating it yesterday on the editors, which I highly recommend. So, Rich, um, we just had Glenn Greenwald on, and I know you didn't hear Glenn's defense, but you've probably seen his remarks on Twitter, and you know, Glenn, um, very, very much against, you know, sort of this imperialist behavior by, uh, President Trump, by the United States, worried about the unintended consequences,

52:23 you know, where it will land, whether there'll be a revolt of some sort within Venezuela, a rallying around their own flag, a rejection of any American control, and certainly of any attempt to seize the oil.

52:34 Yeah. as Trump told Scarboro, according to Scarboro this morning, he intends to do that. We're going to quote keep the oil. What's your give us your best defense of why this was a good idea?

52:45 Yeah. So, Maduro is a a terrible person, terrible leader of Venezuela, allied with all the enemies of the United States. By by the standards of when the Monroe doctrine was really in its heyday, every aspect of this regime would have been unacceptable. the disorder that was spreading in the hemisphere and here in the United States via the mass migration it's caused the criminality and the drug running the uh allied with our enemies. None of that would have been acceptable. So look, I I agree with what you were saying yesterday. This is pretextual. The idea that it's just a law enforcement operation. It was an act of war to topple the head of state there. But in terms of what we've seen in other interventions the US under has undertaken the last 20 years, this is so minimalistic, right? This would be the equivalent of a snatch and grab against Saddam Hussein, then having a Ba'ist general take power, and then hoping you

53:38 can influence him to do what you want. So there are all sorts of ways this can go sideways. There all sorts of risks. But the way he's done it so far is calculated to minimize those risks, I think. So for people who, you know, haven't spent their lives studying the Monroe Doctrine as like freshened up by Teddy Roosevelt, can you just give us a little background because I I did read over in NR about like the numerous interventions that we did do in the South America over the years when one of our neighbors was turning out to be derelct or dirt baggy or something that we found potentially problematic to us And certainly if we saw at the time it was always Europe we were worried about. It wasn't China back then or Russia. If we saw them meddling we were pretty quick to go down there and say oh no.

54:32 Yeah. So the Monod doctrine is the idea that that we have supremacy in the hemisphere. Right. So the strategic purpose of it is to exclude European nations because they represent a significant threat to us potentially geopolitically. And then what happens after its initial annunciation you get the Roosevelt coral corollary and the lodge corollary which basically kind of flip it in his head in some respects. So instead of excluding others from intervening intervening we assume a right to intervene when there's disorder such that it's a threat to us or it might tempt someone else to come in and intervene. So if you just

55:13 just so just for the record this is not a Trump invention. This has been around for over 150 years. This is Trump is actually just resurrecting a principle that was has already been recognized by presidents long ago.

55:25 So the Trump corollary is basically just the Roosevelt corollary or the lodge corollary. It's not a new corollary, but he likes putting his names on things. So so he he has to have his name on a corollary. But this is a traditional American approach he's taken. Now we gotten away from it the last 30 years. The last real manifestation of this was when George HW Bush went into Panama. But this is we went into Latin America on much less provocation than this. Countries would just be poorly run fiscally and we'd go in and say, "Okay, we're taking over your finances because we don't want you in debt to Britain or Germany because that might tempt them to come in and seize your territory or take control of your government. We don't want to see that to hap see that happen." And so in so many respects, Trump feels completely new because he's very old and represents traditions we'd gotten away from for better or worse.

56:20 The Panama thing actually worked out okay. I mean, like not all of these interventions have worked out. In fact, the vast majority of them have not worked out like Iraq and Libya. But the Panama thing, which is probably the most analogous, did work out pretty well.

56:37 And we'll see whether, you know, that's what's going to happen here. What do you make of Trump saying to Scarboro though that we're going to keep the oil? Again, I don't know what that means exactly. It's like a snippet.

56:46 How do we keep the oil? It's not our oil. I realize they owe us some oil or at least some payments for oil they took from Exxon and back in the day, but like what do you make of that news this morning?

56:55 He's had a fixation with this. Right. His his critique of the Iraq war was in part we didn't keep the oil. Right. So the idea

57:02 he doubled down on that this morning to Scarbor. Yeah. So he likes the idea of gaining assets and benefiting from any transaction. So I'm not a huge fan of this in that the oil in Venezuela is for the Venezuelans. If we're going to help them develop it and have American companies there in investing for the good of Venezuelans and our companies are going to benefit too, that's fine. And maybe that's ultimately what would happen. But the way he presents it, I I think is counterproductive. The same thing with running Venezuela. We're not running Venezuela, right? you had the vice president running V Venezuela and we're hoping to coers her into doing what we want and I think we'll probably have some success with that at least in the short or medium term but we're not running Venezuela and usually when you're not running a country you don't go out of your way to say you're running the country but Trump again he likes his

57:51 name on he likes the idea of running things and then Marco Rubio's like no no no didn't mean it like that just coerced with the oil and then Trump's like no I'm running it and then the question for the reporter was who specifically and Trump goes meact. He's like my deputies because they all have different areas of expertise but ultimately me.

58:10 Yeah. And Marco, of course it's Marco. Marco is running everything. But look, Panama is

58:14 okay. But what speaking about Marco? Yeah. You I just say Panama is pretty good analog. But even compared to Panama, Panama, this is more minimalist because we go in on the ground for weeks with troops in Panama. We already had an extensive troop presence there already because of the canal obviously. and we swear in the new president after we grab Noriega on a US military base. So, we're not doing anything of that nature in in Venezuela. So, it's a combination of extremely and the word that's been used so much about it audacious operation with a with a with a high degree of of caution or trying to minimize downside risk as well.

58:51 And it isn't bad to see to show China, Iran, and Russia the capabilities of the US military because I mean the the whole operation was to use a technical term extremely badass. I mean they

59:05 I heard you guys talking about this on the editors, but it was really incredibly impressive. I realized people did die on the other side, but not a single US service personnel uh was hurt. Well, some were hurt, but no one was killed

59:17 and no no leaks in the dark of night. got it done. Reminded me of a bad rich. Yeah. But I think even harder than that because Osama bin Laden has some security, not the security that comes with being a head of state. And also this wasn't a shock, right? Bin Laden didn't know we were coming. Maduro knew we were coming probably or there's a high chance that we would at some point. And still this was so highly uh proficient and it does send a good message to China and other malfactors around the world. Now, China has a big huge military. Taking on China would be nothing like this, obviously. But China hasn't done a military operation, I don't know, since 1979 when they lost a border war with Vietnam. So, they have to be highly aware of just how good and practiced we are at this.

1:00:04 Yeah. You don't, you know, it's the old um line from Braveheart that could be my head in a basket. Like they no one wants to be on the receiving end of the Maduro treatment. What of the argument that speaking of China, this is not going to help when they invade Taiwan

1:00:20 and we say, "Hey, that's an independent nation. China's a lot more closely aligned with Taiwan than we are with Venezuela."

1:00:27 Now, granted, we didn't like swoop in and say Venezuela is officially part of the United States as a 51st state, so it's not totally analogous, but did we undermine our, you know, moral virtue in trying to tell them to stay out of Taiwan? Yeah, maybe there's a little something to that, but I they're they're going after Taiwan no matter what. We we we could be the most high-minded moralistic um have the most high-minded moralistic foreign policy imaginable. You know, Woodro Wilson on steroids and China still going after Taiwan. I do think there's a moral difference here, right?

1:01:02 I think a sovereign people have the right to govern themselves. But Venezuelans weren't governing themselves because this guy stole an election and was a dictator and now perhaps we'll get a new election. They'll actually actually have a chance to govern themselves. But where I think you'd get more into an analogy that might serve as a bit more of a permission slip to to China would be if we went and annexed Greenland, which which I don't think we're going to do, and I hope we're not going to do, but they're talking about

1:01:31 unclear. unclear. Well, I heard you guys bet whether we will. Most of the editors thought the chance at the end of first terms um of of us having an ex Greenland was in the 10% range. Rich Lowry put it out at a 40%

1:01:44 chance. I have to say I'm with you. Like he's really focused on it. And what we're learning about Trump is he he's actually not saying things he doesn't mean when it comes to these again to use the word audacious plans around some of our neighbors.

1:02:01 Yeah. He doesn't do everything he says, but everything he does do, he says openly beforehand. So, and I just think if you really wanted to force the issue and said, "Look, the 82nd or Airborne's ready to go. Are you going to cut a deal with me or not?" He'd get the deal. Now, I hope he doesn't do that. I think we could get everything we want out of Greenland without going to any extreme measures. It it has a lot of critical minerals. If we want to go mine them, you know, it's controlled by a NATO country. You think NATO would be in favor of that and we could cut a deal to to do that? But I would just urge the the Danish prime minister, if she's she if she's an MK listener, go have a dinner at Mara Lago. Don't clap back at him at social media. Go and try to win him over and persuade him in private.

1:02:46 Well, and this is another method that Trump has used effectively where he says, "I want a 10. I I expect a 10. Give me a 10 or else."

1:02:55 And the whole game is about winding up with a five or a six. Absolutely. So, we'll see. We'll see on the right. And the Panameanian said, "Okay, no, we're actually we'll kick the Chinese out. We'll give you a better deal on fees." And he hasn't talked about it since. So, so the Dane should be thinking about that model, I think.

1:03:14 Yes. Okay. Um, also I just like our chances in general against the dance. Enough said. Um, let's talk about Mdani. What a mess. So, he not only did he get inaugurated, whatever, sworn in and said the nonsense about we're going to enjoy the warmth of collectivism instead of the the frigidity of of individual rugged behavior or rugged individualism. Um now he, it turns out he's got a director of the office to protect tenants. And New York is all about the landlord tenant situation. I mean, the high-rise buildings are filled with people leasing their apartments, rich people, poor people, middle class people. It's the dominant thing in New York. and he has an office to protect tenants, which sounds good because as between a tenant and a landlord, most people think of themselves as the renter and you think, "Yeah, protect the tenants."

1:04:13 Unfortunately, he's hired a lunatic. Her name is CIA Weaver. And um I'll get the name of the wonderful woman online who tracked Sea Weaver's accounts before she started deleting them all. And this woman did a great job. Michelle Tandler is her name who pulled the screenshots of some of her most egregious posts like okay I'm just going to read a couple. There's no such thing as a good gentrifier meaning people who move into like poorer neighborhoods and have a little bit more affluence and are responsible for raising the property values and bringing nicer businesses in.

1:04:52 Uh only people who are actively working on projects to dismantle white supremacy and capitalism and those who aren't. Here's another one. Rent control and public housing for everyone. Massive government interventions to solve gentrification. Here's another one. Um, she writes, I agree with you unless you're talking about rent control. Rent control is a perfect solution to everything. She goes on to write, I think pass really strong rent control is a more effective way to shrink the value of real estate than reducing reasoning applications. So what she wants is to shrink the value of real estate and she thinks the best way to do it is to pass really strong rent control. Then we get to the racial stuff. This country built wealth for white people through genocide, slavery, stolen land and labor. White supremacy built the north and the south. Then she goes on to say endorse, she endorses endorse a no more

1:05:47 white men in office platform. And then she adds and no more reality TV stores for that matter. Obvious reference to Trump in 17. Then she writes, "Impoverish the white middle class. Home ownership is racist. Failed public policy. Impoverish the white middle class is the stated goal of our new tenant ZAR in New York. Rich, which tells me it's just as bad, if not worse than we expected. Your thoughts on CIA?" Yeah,

1:06:18 the new tenant Zar. Yeah, it it's just it's comically bad. Now, the ultimate problem is not her, it's mom Donnie. And these are mom donny's views as well. Although he's a good politician, so he did as much as he possibly could to obscure them prior to the election. But private property is not just a core individual right, it undergurs every liberty in uh western civilization. And rent control wherever it's been tried, has been an abject failure, including in New York. You know, the famous phrase, "Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning," which is supposedly said during a World Series, excuse me, broadcast uh in New York in 1977, wasn't actually said, but there was a huge fire visible from the stadium and so notable that the broadcasters talked about it because all these buildings were burning because they were dilapidated or the owners didn't want them anymore because they wouldn't weren't making any money off of

1:07:11 them and they couldn't possibly make money off of them. So they didn't invest in them and didn't have any incentive to keep them up. So what you do when you rent control a bunch of apartments, you ensure that they their their their stock their value goes steadily down and then meanwhile everyone else who's not in a rent control department has to pay even more because th those uh you you've constricted the supply. So it's just been a abject failure everywhere. So on top of just these hideous immoral views she has she knows nothing about economics and nothing about the history of her own city.

1:07:45 Here's a little more on camera this time from CIA Waver uh Weaver in Sat 9. democratically controlled public housing is really important and that's why when Raquel is talking about the communities and that she's describing um that you know that's a it's a created community where the people who are living there are like setting the agenda and and so you know people like home ownership because they like control and that's been perverted by like deep racism and deep classism in our society. So like we have to not have a racist inclass of society. And so that's like something we need to think about like deeply. Um but you know um we it's about to me it's about control. And why rent control is really important is because rent control alters the dynam the power dynamic between renters and who who owns the building.

1:08:39 We have to think deeply about the deep racism and classism behind homeownership. Rich, that's our assignment from CIA.

1:08:48 You know what she reminds me of? This is what people say is being done to South African farmers, right? You get a a government that is racist against white people and seeks to oppress them in order to supposedly make up for past injustices. Home ownership. Wait, can I just say sorry to interrupt you, but literally in his acceptance speech, Mum Dami said, "South Africa is our model."

1:09:15 There you go. Yeah, I I missed that. But home ownership is a universal aspiration and it's good for everyone. And you want more people to be homeowners, not to to punish people who happen to have enough resources to own homes. And to really reduce the value of of housing and to make rents lower and the price of houses lower, you need a greater supply. So you need to encourage developers and landlord to landlords to build and invest more and this is the exact opposite approach. So, not only does she think that housing is racist, um she actually thinks that white New Yorkers are going to have to have a different relationship with property. CIA doesn't think you should really have your apartment uh under the terms that you and your mortgage broker or the seller negotiated. Here she is in the clip that made a lot of uh a lot of people un unhappy when it hit yesterday.

1:10:14 study. I think the reality is is that for centuries we've really treated um property as an individualized good and not a collective good and we are going to tr and transitioning to treating it as um a collective good and to towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently. And it will mean that um families, especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well, um are going to have a different relationship to property than than than the one that we currently have.

1:10:51 Yeah. What does that mean? What does that even mean? Yeah. A different relationship to property. Does that mean your property is being taken from you or or you can no longer own it? And I don't know anyone whether they own own like the smallest little postage stamp property or the the biggest mansion in the country. Everyone is proud of their property. Everyone's highly invested in it. No one wants anyone to take a step on it without their permission. This is a fundamental part of human nature. And that's why systems based on this worldview always and inevitably fail.

1:11:26 So, Harit Dylan, who's running the uh civil division at the Department of Justice, she saw that and tweeted out, "Hey, reminder, hey, FYI, we're watching you." And it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of race in housing policy. Sorry, but you're going to get sued if you try this Thank God for Har. She's truly like one of the MVPs of the Trump administration, and she does it quietly without fanfare, but she's a badass. Um, speaking of DOJ policy, let's move to Minnesota for a moment where the Department of Homeland Security is now conducting raids. Um, I think that's the right word, but a full-scale investigation unleashing some 2,000 agents all over Minneapolis in the wake of Nick Shirley's independent journalist explosive report that hit on December 26th and some of the reporting that came before of before that. Here's one video of DHS that they posted showing uh Homeland Security investigations in

1:12:27 Minneapolis. They're going from business to business. Um then Christy Gnome's convoy um was in the news as well uh in Minneapolis checking out some of these areas that were unearthed by Nick Shirley as allegedly having daycare centers with no children. And um it does seem this is smart to me, Rich, because a we need to crack down on these people, but b it's good politics because Trump doesn't want the narrative to be all of his attention is in Venezuela

1:13:00 when we've got real problems here and he is proving you can walk and chew gun gum at the same time.

1:13:05 Yeah. So these rays are fine. Maybe they're even helpful. I I do think they're they're in large part for show and I think the the real action here, let me back up. I think the the viral content we've seen from the City Journal and Nick Shirley very helpful. You don't blow Tim Waltz out of the water without him, but I do think they've created a mis impression that this this scandal just broke 3 weeks ago when actually it's been an ongoing thing for years and the federal prosecutors have been heroes there and exposing this and nailing some of the malfactors to the wall. So the most important thing I think get them more resources. I think they have maybe five people in this office led by this guy named Joe Thompson who's been a total hero. Give him a couple more fantastic top-of-the-line prosecutors and some more investigators and and let him keep going at this. I I think I think that's where the rubber really

1:13:54 meets the road because the exposure is fantastic, but you need to nail every single one of these people to the wall. One of the infuriating things about this, I tweeted out

1:14:05 um after the Nick Shirley piece broke, where was the Minneapolis Star Tribune in breaking this story? Because they've written countless stories defending Tim Walsh's insane trans policies on children. They're very focused on defending tampons in the boy's bathroom,

1:14:19 but not so much on unearthing the Somali fraud. And it's come out that part of the reason is

1:14:25 they're worried about being called racists. The Democratic lawmakers didn't want to be called racist. I'm sure it applies at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, too. And their defenders were responding to my tweet by by showing articles in which the Minneapolis Star Tribune covered the Fed's criminal prosecutions of some of the Somali fraudsters. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about actual investigative journalism where you as the reporter unear the fraud where your reporting drags the government to the problem kicking and screaming or willingly.

1:15:01 That's what actual investigative journalism looks like. Not okay, now the feds have actually gotten a bunch of convictions of 80 Somali. I guess we're going to have to cover this. Instead, what we saw the media do, Rich, in the wake of Nick Shirley's report and City Journal and Walter uh Kern Walter Kernite, as he called himself on uh on our show yesterday, County Highway uh that reporting is to all over the reporting. You know, we pulled a couple of these um of uh the headlines. This is courtesy of Drew Holden, who we follow on X, and he does a great job of sort of collating things. Um, the New York Times, who seemed positively insensed, he writes accurately, that this video from Nick Shirley caught fire, accusing him of being quote, "in search of politically charged footage while burying whether there were any actual kids at these childcare centers in the first place." Um, he mentions next AP

1:15:55 saying, uh, this was perhaps the most awful defense of these child care care centers. the AP relying on the head of the now famous and allegedly closed ABC learning center that didn't have the N uh to suggest that this criticism is quote a political campaign against Somali motans. Okay. It was a campaign against the poor Somali. I could be here with you all day going through them. CNN we covered yesterday as well as CBS. That's where their focus has been.

1:16:24 Yeah. So you're absolutely right. Journalists should be seeking to advance the story. Instead, they focus very often on attacking the guy who advanced the story. Right? So, the story was Nick Shirley. The story wasn't the underlying scandal. CNN sent someone to confront Nick Shirley and then they only covered the story in that they were trying to debunk Nick Shirley. And he got some things wrong, but he also, it was so compelling because it's just so shocking to the conscience to show up to see him show up at this place when a scandal has been going for years and they're still operating and getting millions of dollars from the state and there's no one there. is obviously a bogus um story. Go and do that yourself rather than attacking the guy, you know, the YouTuber who had the gumption to do it on his own with the with the a local guide.

1:17:10 So, part of the reason I mentioned is they they're all worried about being called a racist because the fraud appears to be committed by a bunch of Somali. Um, their lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanigan, is an idiot. And here she was on December 26th um, in Minnesota reacting to some of these reports. His report hit on the December 26th. Let's look at look at her.

1:17:37 Salamkum. Uh, my name's Peggy Flanigan. Uh, I am the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota and I'm really honored and humbled to be here with all of you uh, today. I am incredibly clear that the Somali community is part of the fabric of the state of Minnesota.

1:17:57 She's in a hijab. Yeah. I mean, if these people are on the up and up, they would have said said, "Nick, Shirley, thank you. You know, you you've you've uncovered some fraud that is terrible and shouldn't have happened. Thank you for doing it. If you can find more, great." You know, and we'll go right behind you. we'll see whether they they're appropriate or not and we'll cut them off and we'll prosecute them. Right. That that's that would be the up and up response. But instead, they've been desperate to cover for the scandal and minimize it from the beginning.

1:18:26 Yes. The accusations of racism clearly uh even though various bureaucrats in Minnesota thought something was desperately wrong, clearly helped convince them to to let it go. And they're still in that still in that mode. And look, this is a huge culture.

1:18:41 Look at her rich. She's got her big black liberal glasses on like the Rachel Matto huge glasses that all the libs wind up wearing from Mark Cuban to Oberman to Rachel M. She's got her her code her coated glasses on. I'm a liberal. I'm a progressive. And her hijab. She I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to wear that if you're not actually Muslim. So Peggy, I think you've you've culturally appropriated. She looks like an idiot. And this is why the Minnesota taxpayers have paid I who got God knows how many uh millions in fraudulent dollars to this community.

1:19:15 Good luck. Uh I believe in the feds, but I do not believe in any min Minnesota law enforcement. And Tim Walls has now ended his political career as a result of all this. So farewell to him. Now, in a not totally unrelated story, it hit the news late yesterday that ICE agents who were booking their trip to Minnesota to go check out some of these businesses were rejected. They made the reservations at this Minnesota Hilton and then the Hilton front desk, whatever, the people managing the reservations, but you know, site at the at the local site. It wasn't like on the 1-800 number for Hilton. Called them back and said, "We're cancelling all of your reservations. We're not having ICE people here. It's in writing. It's it's you can people take a take a look at it themselves." Um, but they made clear they didn't want them there. And now, hold on. I'm trying to find it. Okay.

1:20:12 Now, this is all broken by Nick Sorder, I should say, a journalist on X, another independent journalist who went to the Mini the Minneapolis is the mil the Minnesota Hilton. Okay, so the controversy hit. DHS called attention to it, saying, "What kind of BS is this?" And then the Hilton chain apologized uh for banning DHS agents. They didn't deny that it happened. and um they they issued a statement claiming that they'd been in touch with DHS to accommodate the impacted agents and that they do not discriminate against any individuals or agencies. But now Nick Sorder breaks that there was no such attempt to reach DHS or to make it right, citing assistant DHS secretary Trisha Mclaclin and says even the front desk manager says that he had spoken with the owner shortly before Nick Sorder walked in.

1:21:07 Again, this is Nick Sorder, not to be confused with Nick Shirley around 10:50 p.m. and confirmed that the anti-ICE policy remained in effect. Here is Nick Sorder going to the Hilton Sap 27. Uh, do you have any rooms for tonight? Uh,

1:21:25 we should. Yeah. Okay. Uh, like how many could we get like 10? 10? I Yeah, I know. It might be

1:21:32 What agency is it for? Uh, using the government. They'd be Department of Homeland Security.

1:21:38 Uh, so we're not accepting people from immigration, ICE agents, DHS into our property. It's just a management ownership. Okay. I thought that changed today. Was that

1:21:52 uh I just talked to to my um the owner of the building and uh he didn't say there has been any changes.

1:22:01 They lied. Hilton and uh and the Hampton in out here in Ever Peak Hospitality lied. Full of They almost got a a little bit of a pass the first time, right? You thought they may have learned their lesson. This is why I said that their talk is it means nothing. You know, people were saying, "Oh, well, no, they said that they're going to change their policy." They lied. They didn't do it. They didn't do it. So, they're now going to get bud lighted. Congratulations Hilton.

1:22:34 Yeah. The the name of the property was Hampton Inn which was owned by Hilton but it's this particular uh outlet is owned by a group called Ever Peak that was used to purchase this hotel. It's owned by four partners Parit Singh Aman Pit Hyundai Karandep Nagra and Moinderjet Cower according to public records filed last June with the Minnesota Secretary of State. Now, Hilton Corporate has responded to Nick's video saying, "Hold on a second." Teeny tiny type saying, "Rich, the independent hotel owner had assured us that they'd fix the problem and published a message confirming this." A recent video clearly raises concerns that they're not meeting our standards and values. As such, we are taking immediate action to remove this hotel from our systems. Hilton is and has always been a welcoming place for all. We're also engaging with all of our franchises to reinforce the standards we hold them to across our system to help

1:23:33 ensure that this does not happen again. So, harrah because ultimately sounds like Hilton is doing the right thing. This particular hotel was humiliated. And the Nick Shirley video on the daycarees in Minneapolis, I think has unleashed

1:23:49 an inspo amongst many independent journalists like Nick Sorder, Rich, to go out and just do what the Minneapolis Star Tribune will not.

1:23:59 Yeah. So, first of all, if you're Hilton, you think you'd just be glad that anyone wants to come to Minnesota in January, right? You think you'd welcome any booking, but clearly this is an out of control franchisee who's trashing the brand of the entire business. The Bud Light reference from Nick there is is well taken and the Hilton Brass apparently is aware of it or actually just doesn't hate federal law enforcement. So, hats off to them to doing the right thing. But you're right. I think the the Nick Shirley example is empowering and catalyzing a lot of this.

1:24:31 And I think we'll see more of it in other states cuz we need to kick the tires of every single welfare state uh program in every state in America. And if mainstream so-called legacy outlets aren't going to do that, I think we're going to have independent guerilla journalists doing it. It's a very good thing.

1:24:48 It's great. It's great. Even if there are errors in the initial reporting, like what Nick Shirley did, which was seen over 150 million times, his video, which is 43 minutes long,

1:24:59 it's of value because it insisted that other reporters get there. It insisted that the feds get there. It it made it impossible to ignore.

1:25:08 Yeah. And that was a deep deep public service. Rich Lowry, as are you. Thank you, sir. Great to see you. Thanks for being here.

1:25:15 Talk soon. You, too. All right. coming up. I mean, I've never I've never said this before. A clarinetist with a story you have to hear. Do not go away. The new year hits and suddenly you might want new everything, including a new wardrobe. Does that resonate, ladies? Well, our sponsor, Daily Look, makes that wardrobe upgrade way too easy. Daily Look, is the number one rated premium personal styling service for women. With Daily Look, you get your own dedicated personal stylist to curate a box of clothes based on your body shape, preferences, and lifestyle. This is not an algorithm. This is a real personal stylist. And you get the same stylist every time. And when you head over to dailylook.com, you can use the code Megan to get 50% off your first order.

1:26:03 That's 50% off with my code Megan. Just fill out their style quiz and receive up to 12 hand selected items delivered to your home. Buy what you love, send back the rest. You will get free shipping both ways. Head to dailylook.com to take your style quiz and use the code Megan for 50% off your first order. That's dailyook.com for 50% off. And make sure you use my promo code Megan so they know we sent you. My next guest is making major headlines right now after filing a lawsuit against the Knoxville Symphony in Tennessee, claiming that despite winning a blind audition, in which they cannot see who is trying out, they can only hear the music being played. They refused then to hire him once they realized who he was over his past opposition to DEI policies at a different orchestra. A blind audition is when a musician plays for a panel of judges behind a curtain to prevent any bias in the selection. It's

1:27:00 supposed to mean that someone will get the spot strictly based on merit. James Zimmerman started playing the clarinet in 1991 and then professionally in 1997. For over 12 years, James was the principal clar clarinet of the Nashville Symphony. He played principal clarinet for the Nashville Symphony. His work has been featured in commercials and video game soundtracks and movies. He also happened to perform at President Barack Obama's second presidential inauguration. Here's a sample of James' talent.

1:27:58 was beautiful. Reminds me of myself back in 1980 when I was first chair at the Bethlehem Central Elementary School. Nailed it. My one advantage was my earlier school where I had gone in Syracuse allowed the clarinet that allowed you to join band in fourth grade. So I came and I was ahead of everybody else who had never played before and that's how I became first chair which lasted for exactly a year until the others caught up. Just I mean it's like looking in a mirror really. Okay, back to James. He says his career started to unravel in 2019 as he began to oppose DEI measures at the Nashville Symphony which were becoming more and more common in the music world. His story is complicated. He didn't just oppose a DEI initiative and call it a day. It happened over months and at one point he admits it nearly drove him mad as DEI policies can do. James is here now to explain his story, his lawsuit

1:28:51 that he's just filed and why the Trump administration may be getting involved next. James, welcome to the show.

1:28:59 Hey Megan, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's great to see you and congrats on achieving so much and on your natural talent. It was very impressive uh to listen to. So let's start back. So, what happened was, I guess we'll start with the current controversy. You go to the Knoxville blind audition and you're a hell of a clarinet player and you're behind the curtain. They can't see that it's you and you are the best, right? That like they told you it's it's yours. Like before they actually had like revoked it or done any investigation on you, they were like you you were the winner. You're you're the best.

1:29:34 That's right. So, the blind audition was a two-day long process that uh started on a Monday morning. They listen to people one after the another all day long and uh they keep whittling it down like a sports try out and uh after the first day they asked me to come back the second day. I passed another round the morning of uh Tuesday the 16th of September. They put me into the finals that afternoon and uh after the final round they declared me the winner. Came to my dressing room and said, "We'd love to have you on the payroll in 2 weeks.

1:30:04 We'll call you tomorrow." And uh I guess instead of calling me the next day, they dug into my sorted history and found enough reasons not to hire me. And Rachel Ford, their CEO, called me and said, "Thanks, but no thanks, and we're not going to talk to you about any of this, so good luck to you."

1:30:20 And it was clearly based on your experience with the Nashville Symphony back in 2019.

1:30:26 That's right. That's what the email says. It says a number of items have come to our attention regarding your employment in the Nashville Symphony, which there are some uh some stinkers in there, but there's a lot of advocacy that I did on behalf of my black colleagues and for the process of blind auditions. So, like you said, it's complicated, but uh people love to zero in on your worst moments in times like this. Mhm. And but what what the 2019 incident at the Nashville Sympathy Symph Symphony seems to boil down to is you tell me if I've got it right. You stood up for a black obo player who was potentially about to get the shaft. You stood up for him. Then the person running that symphony kind of overcompensated and started bending over backwards for this black obo player. you started getting the short end of this relationship and ultimately you and he when you clashed, they took his side,

1:31:30 they didn't recognize any of his bad behavior toward you, but when you finally started to like get back in his face, they shamed you for being the problem and you got booted. Is that basically it?

1:31:41 That is exactly accurate, Megan. Um what happened was there was a botched blind audition for a black oboist who had been playing on a temporary basis in the orchestra. Sometimes when an orchestra needs to fill a gap and doesn't have time to host a national blind audition, they will just appoint someone on a temporary basis. So this oboist was hired uh without an audition based on his qualifications. He was a pretty good player but uh not necessarily up to the standards of everyone else. But I took him under my wing, became his friend. I coached him for free leading up to the national blind audition that he had to win to become our permanent principal oboist. And I said to him what none of his friends had ever dared to say, which is, "Look, man, it's not so much this racism you're talking about all around you. It's the fact that you're paranoid and you are not taking accountability for your shortcomings, but I believe in

1:32:33 you and I believe you can win this thing and I'm I'm gunning for you. I got your back and the best possible outcome here is a U- win and we have the first principal oboist of color in the United States in a major orchestra. And that's what was about to happen in his blind audition. He was the last man standing after days of uh difficult competition. But accidentally we found out it was him during deliberations and our conductor and the rest of my colleagues who were on this blind audition panel said, "Oh, I don't want to play with this guy.

1:33:04 We're uh what do we do?" And uh the conductor says, "All right, we're going to declare this a no- win situation. We're going to send him home and we're never going to speak of this again." And I said, "Over my dead career, can you do that?" So I took a stand against the conductor and all of my colleagues and said, "We are going to march back into the conductor's office and tell him how despicable that decision was, and we're going to give this black oboist a chance to prove himself." And we did that. He crumbled. The orchestra management hired him unilaterally with no vote of his colleagues. So he can now never say that he was hired based on our qualifications, our vote. He was stamped a DEI hire forever. And when I protested, he made up a Jesse Smileletike narrative about me that I was a stalker and a racist and a nasty person and a white supremacist. And

1:33:53 let me stop you there. What What did you want to have happen? What? Because when we like I'm with you on the story. You're advocating for him. Then they tried to stop him from getting the job even though it was a blind audition because they found out it was him

1:34:07 and you were like, "That's not cool. That's that's not okay." But then what did they do? They then they gave him something more than you wanted them to give him. What What was it that upset you on the permanent hire?

1:34:18 Well, then they gave him another probationary year so he could prove himself and prove that he was going to get tenure. That's uh maybe a piece of the detail that you were missing. After a player wins a blind audition, they're typically given a one-year probationary contract where the player is evaluated on whether or not they're a good fit. Because a blind audition doesn't tell you everything about somebody. It doesn't tell you what their personality is, what kind of a colleague they are, if they show up on time, if they're a good listener, if they're they take correction easily. This black obo player was very bad at all of those things. So, what do you do? We either hire the guy or we kick him to the curb and he sues the orchestra for racial discrimination for trying to fire him illegally. A suit that in 2019 he absolutely would have won. We all would have gotten crushed.

1:35:06 So the management of the orchestra says, "Well, we can just fire this one player and pin the whole thing on him." And that's what they did to me. And I knew they were going to do it. My only recourse was public opinion. And I thought if I played the long game

1:35:20 Wait, wait, let me stop you again cuz I just I still got I got confused again. So, they're at the point where they have to decide whether they're going to give him the permanent offer after the one year of probation. And what what did they want to do? And what did you want to do?

1:35:34 Well, they wanted to hire him no matter what because they wanted to avoid litigation. I

1:35:40 So, they didn't really want him. They just wanted to avoid litigation. Correct. That's They will never admit this, but we all know this

1:35:47 and I'm the only person saying it out loud like and everyone's trying to say he's doing a great job. He's a great player. And I was and I'm thinking that's an insult to our audience. Everybody can hear that this guy's all over the place. And everybody is tired of the struggle sessions that he's putting us through. All of his extra social media that he does declaring that orchestras are racist. Nobody wants to hear that. We just want to come to work. We want to play with the best players and leave. It's a simple job. It's a fun job. And his presence and his advocacy sucked all the fun out of it for everybody. This is not a job you're going to get rich doing. And can Can you just explain to because I didn't know this James but the apparently like principal oboist is a rather important role in an orchestra.

1:36:32 It's the most important role in an orchestra. When you go to an orchestra and and it gets quiet when the lights go down and we all tune up to that one note, that's the oboist giving that note. The oboist gives all the best solos. All the most beautiful solos in the repertoire by Brahms and Beethoven and Debutc are all given to the first obo. It's an amazing instrument and it can have more artistic influence on the sound of the group than any other instrument. So this was not some job where the guy was could be covered for by everybody else around him. He was setting the tone quite literally for what we were doing.

1:37:06 So you you fought to get this guy a fair audition and a fair chance at the orchestra, but having worked with him as a fellow musician for a year, it was clear to you he didn't deserve the job. he wasn't up to snuff and that they the only reason the orchestra was not about to acknowledge that publicly and let him go as they would have in your view a white man was because of the color of his skin which you also objected to. All of this sounds like principled behavior on your part and when you raised that objection they fired you.

1:37:38 That's right. I mean I believed in him. I thought he was very talented which he was. He has great natural ability and let's not take away his achievement of winning a blind audition against a national pool of candidates from all over the place. This is a major position. Principal clarinet of the Nashville Symphony. This is music city and a position like that can lead to jobs in academia in recording studios. This is no small potatoes. This is not a hobby. This is not something that people do outside of their regular job for fun.

1:38:03 This is a career. This was the stakes were high. And I thought this guy had enough talent, but he was just broken. You know how some of these wokesters get? They can't think. They don't see reality for what it is. They start seeing racism in everything, every interaction. And it

1:38:21 So, I was thinking maybe we can disabuse him of these horrible notions of what's going on around him and convince him to just tone it down and do your playing. but he was not able to be convinced that the world was anything other than what he said it was. So I thought, well, we got to kick this guy to the curb. Nobody wants to work with this. Forget it.

1:38:40 He had his chance. So other players were complaining about that behavior. Oh, yeah. In our um in our meetings that were leading up to the decision about whether he should get tenure or not, he had no support whatsoever from any musician. The conductor didn't like him. None of us liked him, but management liked him. The CEO liked him because he was his golden child, his DEI ticket to success. He's like, "Look, we're going to parade this guy around everywhere and show everybody how righteous we are." He's a human virtual virtue signal, which by the way is quite racist to tokenize somebody and do this. Parade them around for their skin color. And I objected to all of this.

1:39:14 Oh, no. The the respectful thing to do to any musician, black, white, or other, is to treat them just the same way you would as if they were a member of the majority group. Like, that's the respectful thing. That's That's like me not going after a black journalist who says something completely inane because she's black. I would never do my fellow journalists that disservice. I'll criticize you no matter what your skin color is, which is a sign of respect. Stand by. There's much more to this story. We'll pick it up on the back end of this quick break first. James, don't go away. A new year means new financial goals like making sure your savings are secure and diversified. Will this be the year you decide to talk to someone from Birch Gold Group? They use an educational approach with a deep understanding of macroeconomics.

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1:40:47 When last we left off, James had explained to us how he had helped a black oboist get a fair shot at making the Nashville Symphony, despite the fact that the conductor of the orchestra, upon learning who was the oboist trying out, said, "I don't want him." And James said, "That's not going to fly. You're going to have to give him a shot." He got this black oboist his shot, which led to a one-year trial period. And at the end of the year, James says those who were in the orchestra and pretty much everyone other than the brass, meaning the corporate brass, not the actual brass in the symphony, wanted this guy gone, that he wasn't pulling his weight, that he was annoying talking about DEI issues all the time, and that he wasn't particularly talented as an oboist, which is a very important role in an orchestra. Um, but this guy was not going to be criticized by James without a fight. and the uh people

1:41:43 running the orchestra did not want to fire their one black oboist. So things started to get ugly and now all of this is being used against James. James says by the orchestra in Knoxville for which he just tried out and made it he was the best in the blind audition but then they said we're not going to hire you alleges James because we took a look at what happened to you at Nashville. So that's why we're deep now in what happened at Nashville. And all this to me is is just my opinion is utter what happened to you, James. I can see exactly what the motivations were. They were pissed that you wouldn't just go along so that they could look like virtuous people with the black oboist.

1:42:22 And they didn't like you objecting to him mouththing off about how white supremacy was everywhere, which was an inconvenient thing to to object to back in 2020 and 2019. And they were but they were fine bismerching you. Now, you admit you wrote one weird email that they used against you or whatever, however you want to use the whatever word you want to use for it, but things got contentious and this is the one thing that they've been able to like hold against you. And even when I said you were coming on today, people online were like, "Well, ask him about his email in which he referenced a gun."

1:42:54 Okay, we we'll get there. So, we're setting We're gonna get there in one second. Let me let's just set it up for the audience. So, I'm reading here from the Free Beacon report that broke your story back in 2020 and it says as follows. Okay. Tensions in the symphony were rising and the oboist lodged a human resources complaint against you. It described an incident that had taken place over a month before the oboist's botched audition. Now, after the botched audition, you went to bat for the oboist, but here he is saying, "Oh, you're some sort of a racist because an incident that happened before the audition in which they claim you asked him whether it would be okay if you, a white man, used the n-word in your rendition of a rap song." The oboist said, "Sure, but you, James Zimmerman, nonetheless apologized after singing the slur." Quote, "The n-word did not feel good." James recalls telling Underwood.

1:43:49 And now at this point in the story, the the oboist is trying to use that against you. Do you recall that where suddenly he brought up an old incident that seems to have been long under the bridge to try to paint you as a racist?

1:44:02 Yeah. I mean, that was stupid of me. We were both hip-hop fans. We He's the only other orchestral musician I ever met that grew up listening to people like Snoop Dogg and the Notorious B.I. He knew I liked them. He knew I had uh at a party a couple days before that had um like wrapped along with some biggie and he was like, "I wish I'd been there to hear that." And I had told him, "Dude, I'm not going to say the N word in front of you." But then we were just like listening to some music after concert one night and I was I said, "Yeah, remember when you said you wanted to hear that? Let's go wrap it in my car."

1:44:31 And he's like, "Yeah, sure. Say the N word. It's no big deal." And I was like, "This is it was so stupid." But I handed him the golden dagger. And 3 weeks later after he won the blind audition and I stuck up for him, he stabbed me right in the back with it because he was so desperate to find some sign of racism and distract from the fact that after 2 years of playing with us and winning a blind audition, we still tried to get rid of him. I mean, have some sympathy for the guy. How humiliating is that? After 2 years of playing with somebody, you go through the meritocratic process of a blind audition and your all of your colleagues except me and the conductor are like, "Yeah, I don't want to play with this guy. That's got to hurt." So, he took it out on me. Simple as that.

1:45:14 Mhm. It was stupid. Well, then you found out that he and another player um who was sympathetic to the DEI worldview, one of them or both had filed a secret HR complaint against you in which they were accusing you of stalking like behavior that you were not just quote racially insensitive, this is the Free Beacons reporting, but potentially predatory. The narrative was seated behind James Zimmerman's Your Back, beginning with an unofficial HR complaint about which the clarinetist was never notified. And what they allegedly told HR without telling you was that you seemed obsessed with this oboist and his new buddy who's sympathetic to DEI that you had been asking detailed questions about these two and their living situations. And the oboist alleged as did the other guy that you were deliberately driving by their homes. The Free Beacon reporting it was half true. Zimmerman often drove down

1:46:27 the one-man street to avoid late afternoon traffic, as did several of his colleagues. So, you find out they're trying to paint you as a crazy ass stalker because you drove down the one guy's street in order to avoid traffic just like half the orchestra.

1:46:45 I mean, you're looking at me like this is too ridiculous to be what happened, but that's exactly what happened. The guy moved into my neighborhood. This other player, not the oboist, another DEI, a social justice warrior type, a viola state, a very troubled young man. Um, and I asked him the same question that I ask every new person that's joined the orchestra. Hey man, welcome to town. Where'd you move to? And he moved right around the corner from me. I drove by his house every day before he even lived there. And uh, he reported me as a stalker for that. You think I'm kidding? But this is how desperate these people are. And when I heard that they so they reported that to management and management didn't even waste my time.

1:47:19 They they didn't even bring me in for that. They said this is so preposterous what these guys are doing to James. We know James. He's been here for a dozen years. He's a star employee. We use him for all kinds of media. He's a great ambassador for the Nashville Symphony. There's no legs to this thing at all. These kids are crazy. I'm sure it'll just boil. I'm sure it will just go away. That's the management style at the Nashville Symphony. If you just ignore something for long enough, it's just going to go away. But that is what happened. They they said when I drove by this kid's house on the way to work um they claimed I was stalking them. So I wrote that email after work after I found that out. I was very heated,

1:47:52 right? You were mad. I was I had enough and I was like, you know what? If management's not going to protect me from this, I'm going to quit the orchestra. I was teaching full-time at Vanderbilt at the time. I had plenty of session work. I had other orchestras calling me to come in and play as a guest. I was able to leave the symphony. And I said, I I want to quit if you're not going to stand up against these freaks against me. But management uh fired me before I could quit so they could uh further their story. This Jesse Smlette-l like story that I was some kind of stalker racist who uses the n-word in front of black people.

1:48:23 It's all context. Right. Right. So what not the oboist, but his other friend who plays the viola had said to you earlier something about his dog. He had mentioned that he he was kind of rebuffing according to the free beacon your efforts to get to know him because he was buddies with the oboist. And when you mentioned his dog, this guy responded, "Yeah, and he'll anybody up." And you didn't much like that comment. You kind of read this as, "Wow, this violist is threatening me with his dog." It's like, "F me up."

1:48:58 And so that leads me to your email when So then you find out this guy who's threatened you with his dog, according to you, um, and this other guy who you helped but now is playing the race card against you have filed the secret HR complaint. You're mad. You send an email and here is the portion of it uh in part that that is being used against you. You write okay uh you you write an email to the the guy who played the viola and you write and you CC HR. It's not like you were trying to make this secret. But you write never mind the fact that you originally told me your address was this particular address. So I checked it out on my next commute and when I described the house to you said something to the effect of oh I'm actually at a different address.

1:49:38 I thought it was odd you'd forgotten your address because who would lie about that? But you're new here, so I let it slide. Also, never mind the fact that at the end of our backstage conversation, when I asked if you have a dog because of the sign on your fence, you affirmed that you do, you began walking toward the door to the locker room and said over your shoulder, "He'll anybody up." "Cool. Certainly, you weren't threatening anybody because who does that?" "I'm terrified of dogs," he wrote. "I have a wife and children, and in my family, we have a firearm. I don't know how to use it, but I'm glad my wife does. It used to belong to her father who is now fighting stage 4 lung cancer.

1:50:12 But I digress. And then you go back to, you know, your your email to him and just sort of these two guys hashing this stuff out. And the Free Beacon reports that the next day, well, why don't you tell me what happened?

1:50:25 Yeah. I mean, the dog comment was so ridiculous that this kid made that. It was at the lunch table one day. I was waiting in line for lunch and I said to him like, "Yeah, man. that doggy gots huge or something to that effect. And he's like, "Yeah, and he'll anybody up." It was it was pretty threatening. And um you know, I was getting concerned after they started reporting me as a stalker that they were ready to show up at my house and do some damage. You could I was just making a judgment call. You could tell these kids were really out of their mind. And uh people like that at the time are willing to do violence to get rid of white supremacy.

1:50:57 So I did not want it to escalate to that point. The whole email that you just quoted from is deescalatory and copied to HR because I wanted their help in deescalating this situation. It had been going on for more than

1:51:08 Clearly, you weren't you weren't trying to hide anything. You CCed HR on it. Exactly.

1:51:12 Um, by the way, who filed a HR complaint? Was it both of them? I'm not sure there actually.

1:51:18 Okay. It was it was the obo player and another girl that he had kind of co-opted into being his henchwoman who's now gone from the orchestra. She joined another orchestra. But that's a

1:51:28 Well, the Free Beacon spoke with a bunch of orchestra members, all of whom said, "This is ridiculous. James is amazing. James would never stalk anybody. James would never harm anybody. That it is absolutely impossible." But notwithstanding that, um, less than a week later, what did the orchestra do? Well, they put me on probation first because their uh my biggest ally in management, the chief operating orchestra, the chief operating officer, I should say, was out of town. He was uh on my side of this whole fiasco. And uh you know, I this is this is the crowning detail of the whole story. They suspended me and I I called my my buddy in management and saying, "I want to come back. Tomorrow's my mom's 70th birthday. She has tickets to the Beethoven Heroica Symphony. I would like to come back and play. It's her 70th and he said, "No, you can't come back and play. Everyone's afraid of you. We've

1:52:22 got these these kids in safe houses. We got armed security in front of the building because they think you're about to murder them."

1:52:28 So I said, "All right, in that case, if it's getting this bad, I want to quit. So give me a refund for my mom's tickets and I'll be on my merry way. Thank you very much." And he said, "Okay, um, I'll get you the refund." So he goes into the ticket system. He looks for tickets under my name. He looks for tickets under my mom's name and cannot find them because my dad bought the tickets for my mom as a birthday present. Which leads them to conclude, "I made up the story about my mom's 70th birthday. Therefore, I am insane and out of my mind and not to be reasoned with." And they fired me because they can't find tickets in their own system. It sounds like I'm making this up, but this is how ridiculous these people are. They're totally incompetent. And I got hung out to dry.

1:53:08 I lost tens of thousands of dollars over this and my entire career and all future prospects because these jackasses can't use their own ticket system. It sounds like I'm making this up, but it's all out there. I have all the receipts from all of this. I mean, I wish I could say it sounds made up, but I've covered so many of these cases where honestly like the white guy or the white gal gets railroaded because of some DEI obsessed person who is usually white who who's like the the most ardent enforcers of this bizarre regime tend to be crazy white liberals um who want to make themselves feel better by making you suffer because you don't buy into their same ideology. Um so now what happened to you? like what what have you been doing from 2020 to now when you auditioned for the Knoxville Orchestra?

1:53:55 So 3 weeks after this whole thing culminated, the pandemic hit. So everyone was fired essentially and this whole scenario with me got swept to the back burner and the orchestra spent the entire pandemic um trotting out the black oboist as a hero. He got all kinds of social justice money. He went on all kinds of programs and got all kinds of appointments at uh universities and boards of directors at conservatories and he became a superstar on this. I on the other hand spent the entire um pandemic in this basement learning to write computer software. I learned to code. I went out and did the meme and now I work in big tech where I've been for the last 5 years. And when things opened up after the pandemic, I went back to playing sessions. There's quite a few uh session contractors who wouldn't hire me for a while, but I have one really loyal contractor who believes in me and knows I'm the best player. So,

1:54:46 on the side of my tech job, I do, you know, I teach a little bit and I I play sessions all the time, which is how I've been able to get my playing into the movies and onto Netflix and at Barack Obama's second inauguration. You know, it's all that's my recorded playing everywhere. There's a much better chance, Megan, that you've heard my playing than you have not heard my playing. So, that's what I do now. I freelance and um I do tech until this last summer when a friend from Knoxville who I've played with, a violinist, he said, "Hey man, I don't know if you're looking to get back into the game, but I know your story. I've been following you. It's insane and we're looking for a principal clarinetist, so you should come out." And I thought, hm, that's an interesting proposition cuz Knoxville is kind of a smaller regional orchestra. I think I could keep my tech job. I wouldn't have to move. Okay, let's see

1:55:35 if I can get back on the horse, get back into Olympic shape because Megan, you got to practice for these blind auditions like hours and hours a day. And I've got an I got a nineto-five tech job. I've got a wife. I've got three kids. I've got a life. So, I'm practicing all night. My kids are going to the bed to the sound of me practicing. They're waking up to the sound of me practicing all day long on Saturdays. You know, I put all my landscaping projects and other endeavors on the side to practice for this audition. and I showed up and won just to find out that I'm unhirable. So, I'm kind of back where I started. I'm doing tech, playing sessions, and talking about how ridiculous the whole orchestra business has become. Putting meritocracy to the side for DEI. It's just a damn shame.

1:56:20 So, and how much was this job going to pay? So, it was going to amount to like a thousand bucks a week, you know, which in my situation

1:56:28 should. I mean, it's it's not like you're not going to get rich off of it, but at least you're getting paid for doing what you love.

1:56:32 Exactly. It was going to be fun and it was going to be my foot back in the door. And I didn't really think um too far beyond what's going to happen if I actually win. I just said, you know, the only thing I can control here going into the competition is get my best playing back because I don't play as much as I used to. When I was the principal clarinet of the Nashville Symphony, I'm playing hours and hours a day. Now I I go weeks without practicing sometimes. So I'm sort of out of shape. This is the major leagues these auditions.

1:57:00 But you but you tuned up. Yeah. Literally. And got and got back in shape. And then this happens. And they make no secret of the fact you say she said right to you, the the woman running the Knoxville Orchestra that given the past issues at the Nashville Orchestra, she wasn't going to give you the job. Even though they'd already told you you were the best on the blind audition, you won, which is really, I mean, it feels retaliatory. And so you decided this time not to take it lying down and you filed a lawsuit. And by the way, Harit Dylan, she is the hero of our show today. This is her second mention, who heads up the civil rights division of the DOJ, has already expressed interest in your case because it's illegal to discriminate against white people on the basis of their skin color, too. And if this woman is retaliating against you for you exercising your rights um back when you were at the other orchestra and saying

1:57:59 you don't have the right to fire me just because I have white skin and I'm not going to bend the knee. They could be in some trouble. So that's your theory. What has the Knoxville orchestra said since you filed your claim? And what are you what are you hoping to get? So, I haven't heard anything from Knoxville yet, but I'm sure their phones have been ringing these last couple days. Um, I stayed silent after I lost the audition because right or after I won the audition and lost the opportunity to get the job, I started, you know, talking to my friends that I've made on X and I got a lot of connections because of my Nashville story and I was led to a foundation in Washington DC that takes on cases like this. I picked up some local counsel and we're suing on two counts. One of them is called Tennessee Tennessee's Promisory Esapel doctrine in which I had reason to believe

1:58:45 estoppel estoppel. Sorry, I'm just a clarinet player. Glad you clarified that. Um, so they they gave me reason to believe that they were going to hire me. I sent my resume. My resume shows that I was gone from the Nashville Symphony since 2020. My story is out there. They could have done some background checks, but they were too lazy to do that. But I had every reason to believe that they knew who I was. Um, and they were willing to hire me if I won the audition. So, I'm suing them for, you know, the 25,000. I'm I picked $25,000 for my time spent practicing and a year's salary. So, that's what I'm hoping to get um in terms of financial compensation. But big and my second count is that they discriminated against me because of skin color and hired a non-white player who was my runnerup in the audition. Um, now that's a big accomplishment. of all the players except me, he he bested them all, but he

1:59:41 happens to be non-white. So, it's not so obvious whether it was a DEI hire or not, but you can think of these people like Rachel Ford saying, "hm, if we just kick James to the curb, we can get a non-white player in the orchestra and that'll up our diversity numbers since this is all these people apparently care about." It does have a little bit of the stench of DEI on top it on top of it. But how would you like to be this kid who's still in college? He shows up to the audition and all of his colleagues say, "Hey, congratulations. None of us voted for you at the audition. We all wanted James Zimmerman, but I'm sure you're going to do just fine." And by the way, there's this huge lawsuit about this situation, stinking up the joint.

2:00:19 Like, that's a terrible situation to put somebody in. So, I really feel for the kid. You know, we clarinetist have somewhat of a brotherhood. So, I'm rooting for him to do well and get out of that.

2:00:28 I know. I'm part of it. No, I'm familiar. How about that? If we're ever in the same city, we should play some duets. I'd love to I'll play uh I'll play first. You can play the second part, but uh you know,

2:00:39 I accept. I accept. I I will be the one faking the clarinet movement so that anybody has a shot of thinking your playing is mine. There we go.

2:00:45 Um I what we needed here was someone with courage and this woman who runs the Knoxville Orchestra did not show any courage whatsoever. You should be brought back. you should be given the opportunity to do the thing that you're great at and that you love. And this ridiculous incident that was happening right before but as we built up to George Floyd of Palooa when the nation was suffering from a temporary insanity should not be held against you. That's very clear. And if it has to happen via a lawsuit or a civil rights department investigation, so be it. But it takes guts for you to make a deal out of it, James, because I know no one ever wants to be the squeaky wheel.

2:01:27 No, that's why, you know, kind of go along to get along so that you you don't get fired and that you can get the next job, but this can't keep happening. Can't keep happening in general. Can't keep happening to you. We deserve to be able to hear you. The people in Knoxville just got robbed. The people in Nashville got robbed. And I I want to leave the audience with this. Um, someone who goes by violinophile on X retweeted your story and offered this comment. An important point about this story I'm not seeing mentioned is that what James pulled off was a sort of miracle. He had achieved a highlevel principal position, rare enough, got cancelled, then slugged his way back and won another principal position. It was a real hero's journey.

2:02:13 That was of course until it was ruined again by another orchestra director who had no spine. I hope it works out for you, James. Thank you so much for coming on and telling your story.

2:02:24 It's been great, Megan. Thank you so much. All the best. Wow. H it's just to me it's just it's heart-wrenching to hear these stories. We've talked to so many people to whom this has happened. They they they drove him nuts by this nonsense obsession with race. He sent one email which wasn't even that was not threatening. He's saying, "Hey, you got a nasty dog. We happen to have a gun." He's basically saying, "You you're threatening to mess with me. Don't." Um the other guy didn't get fired for the dog comment, right? Like only James.

2:03:03 Why? Because the one side, this is how how it appears, was supporting DEI and he wasn't. This is just it's ridiculous. And honestly, Knoxville, you're the most ridiculous of all that you wouldn't hire him six, seven years after the fact because of this. This woman should have to explain herself. Why? What is it? Is it because you saw somebody who was who was not white who was behind James and that's a much safer hire for you as he alleges? Where where is the orchestra conductor with balls to do what's right? I I look forward to finding them because James Zimmerman should not be left on the sidelines. Thanks to everyone for listening.

Questions about this episode

What is "Kohberger Family Whitewashing, Maduro Dancing, and Symphony DEI, w/ Greenwald, Lowry, & Clarinetist" about?

Megan Kelly discusses controversial topics including the influence of political advocacy in New York City, updates on Venezuela under Maduro, and a clarinetist's allegations that his non-hire was due to DEI initiatives that overshadowed merit. The episode features insights from journalist Glenn Greenwald and offers a critique of diversity policies in orchestras.

What is mentioned in this Megyn Kelly episode?

21 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Celia Maduro, Nick Shirley, Nashville Symphony, Brian Coberger, James Zimmerman, Rich Lowry. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Kohberger Family Whitewashing, Maduro Dancing, and Symphony DEI, w/ Greenwald, Lowry, & Clarinetist"?

The episode runs 2 h 4 min; the transcript is about 23,685 words in 219 timestamped sections.

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