Transcript: Alleged January 6 Pipe Bomber Arrested, and Trump on “Garbage” Somalia, w/ Michael Knowles

We’re expecting an FBI press conference later this afternoon. We are told it could happen within the hour. We are monitoring it, and we’ll bring it to you if and when it happens.

FBI’s Previous Description of the Suspect

Here in the meantime is the FBI previously explaining what happened when those bombs were placed that night.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

FBI SPOKESPERSON: The suspect’s height is approximately 5 foot 7 inches tall. The suspect wore a face mask, a gray hooded sweatshirt, and black gloves. They used a backpack to transport each of the devices. They were wearing distinctive Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes, which are black and gray with the yellow Nike logo. Fewer than 25,000 of these shoes were sold between August 2018 and January 2021.

The first time the suspect is seen is at approximately 7:34 p.m. at the intersection of First Street and North Carolina Avenue Southeast. This footage shows the suspect sitting on the DNC bench before placing the first bomb. Here we see the suspect place the bomb at approximately 7:54 p.m. They place the second pipe bomb at approximately 8:16 p.m.

The suspect then turns back onto Rumsey Court, walking east until the person is last seen on camera at approximately 8:18 p.m. wearing the backpack on their shoulders. The bomb is believed to have been placed shortly before this video based on how the suspect is carrying the backpack.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

How the Case Was Solved

MEGYN KELLY: According to the New York Times, the break in the case was not thanks to a new tip or any additional information. I mean, that’s remarkable. What they’re reporting is that they discovered a new lead within the FBI after reviewing previously compiled investigative files as the new leadership team there. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have made solving this case a priority.

Dan Bongino, when he was a podcast host, had said for a long, long time that he believed this case was solvable. He also theorized that it might be an inside job by law enforcement. But he’d long been saying this is solvable and had been asking questions about why it hadn’t been solved. And now here they are, six months in power and appearing to have solved it.

This is from the Washington Post this morning. They give some background saying more about how this is not based on a new breakthrough, but that the FBI sources have been going through the voluminous trove of material largely collected in 2021 and 2022.

They write the suspect’s arrest is expected to cause significant embarrassment for the bureau and the enormous team it assigned to the pipe bomb investigation, the two sources said—not meaning Kash and Dan’s team, meaning the team that was there under previous leadership—saying the suspect could have been arrested years ago if investigators had earlier connected the dots they already had in hand.

This is the Washington Post writing, quote: “This development could also be seen as vindication of Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, who has long focused on the pipe bomb case and has urged the bureau to redouble its efforts to solve it when he took office.” Wow. That must have been hard for you to write, Carol Leonnig.

Details of the Investigation

The timing of the arrest comes as Kash Patel’s under fire. The suspect placed the pipe bombs the night before January 6th. They were discovered 15 hours later on the day of January 6th. This is one of the largest cases in the bureau’s history.

The FBI subpoenaed big box store retailers for credit card transaction data to obtain the identities of people who bought the kind of battery connectors they thought were used in the bombs. They were actual bombs. Agents then compared the list of purchasers to the owners of phones located near the DNC and RNC party headquarters around the time of the explosives being planted. They concluded there was no match.

They focused on the clothing of the bomber. They believe they identified the shoe, as you heard in that little sound bite we played. Agents filed subpoenas for credit card receipts from shoe sellers like Foot Locker and others, obtaining a list of about 1,200 sneaker sales. They then compared the credit cards used to those used purchasing bomb components. That’s actually good police work from the sound of it.

In January, the bureau released new video of the unidentified suspect. And at that time, they said they’d visited more than 1,200 residences and businesses, conducted more than 1,000 interviews, reviewed approximately 39,000 video files, and assessed more than 600 tips about who may have placed the bombs.

And then they go on from there. It’s long been a target of scrutiny by House Republicans who accuse the FBI and Justice Department of failing to investigate it thoroughly.

Just to be clear—Carol Leonnig still writes for MSNBC now. She’s co-authoring this piece with Kendall Laney under MSNBC Now. So just to be clear, she’s with MSNBC now. But she’s a longtime Washington Post writer. Anyway, so it was MSNBC that I was quoting from, not the Washington Post. Forgive me for that.

Potential Antifa Connection

But here’s what’s interesting about this case, among other things. Since the beginning, the left has been trying to paint this as a Trumper, as a guy who is connected with the January 6th riots, that the January 6th-ers meant to sow chaos, and that this was some sort of MAGA guy who wanted to unleash hell on Washington D.C. when MAGA wasn’t getting its way on Trump winning. You know, this is back in 2020.

And this is unconfirmed, but it was reported by NBC today that this guy may have had links—this guy under arrest now, this Brian Cole—may have had links. Sorry, I said that this morning. Brian Cox is the guest we had on our show two days ago talking about the military strike down off our southern border. I almost fell out of my chair when I actually made that mistake in my head. Like, oh my God, what? Sorry.

It’s not Brian Cox. It’s Brian Cole who’s under arrest. Not related to our guest the other day at all. My apologies, Brian.

And unconfirmed—we’ll find out more—but MSNBC or NBC actually reporting today that there is a suspected link between this guy and Antifa. Now that would be very interesting. Hold your fire on that because that’s only one outlet, and we expect to hear directly from the FBI shortly on whether or not that’s true.

Interview with Julie Kelly

We were waiting on Julie Kelly to see if she could join us. She’s been all over the January 6th cases and everything around this controversy, including the pipe bomber, and she managed to make time for us on a busy morning for her. Julie, thanks for being here. Your reaction to this breaking news?

JULIE KELLY: I mean, it’s a welcome development in, I think, arguably the greatest unsolved mystery of January 6th, and that is who planted these devices apparently the night before. And this is the hoodie individual, as you have covered and showed the video. This individual wearing a hoodie, carrying a backpack, walking around Capitol Hill between 7:30 and 8:30 on January 5th, the night before, and allegedly placed these devices outside the headquarters of the RNC and DNC, where they were discovered within 20 minutes of each other after sitting there for 17 hours, right as the joint session of Congress was set to begin on January 6th.

So this apparently is the individual who’s in the hoodie, who the FBI believes set those devices that evening. Your reporting is correct. The name appears to be Brian Cole. Some of the corporate news outlets are reporting via their sources that this individual was tied to Antifa, which, Megyn, explains why the Chris Wray FBI, Joe Biden DOJ, Merrick Garland DOJ buried this in the spring of 2021, even though there was a very intensive investigation going on into the pipe bombs for the first few months of 2021.

And if correct, if this is accurate that this man is tied to Antifa or any of those organizations, it explains why this case went completely cold as of March of 2021, and really nothing else done on it, certainly.

MEGYN KELLY: But explain that. Explain why that would be.

JULIE KELLY: Well, think of what was happening in early 2021, Megyn. You know this. The creation, the development of the January 6th insurrection narrative, that this was a bunch of MAGA terrorists who stormed the Capitol at the behest of Donald Trump. And all of the chaos began when this first device was detected, discovered outside the RNC, just a few blocks away from the Capitol. Both of these buildings—outside the RNC at 12:40—redirecting resources, prompting the evacuation of nearby congressional buildings. And this started the panic that day.

So the pipe bomb was really the beginning of “insurrection.” Everyone was led to believe early on that this was a MAGA person. And you had representatives who were posting that early on that day as they were being evacuated. “I can’t believe we’re being evacuated from a pipe bomb set by a Trump supporter.”

So just imagine if by April of 2021, Chris Wray and Merrick Garland, as they were rounding up January 6th-ers, had to announce that this pipe bomber was someone connected to the left. Furthermore, it would have undermined Chris Wray’s own insistence that Antifa was not involved in the events of January 6th. He made that determination early on before he even could know of the thousands of people at the Capitol whether there were Antifa or not.

So this would have also undermined his insistence that Antifa was not involved in January 6th. As my friend Darren Beattie always said, the pipe bomb story unravels—all of January 6th unravels. So this would explain, if reports are true, why this was kept under wraps, why the case went cold for years until Kash and Dan got in there earlier this year.

Awaiting More Information

MEGYN KELLY: It’s really amazing, Julie. And just to underscore for the listening audience, we’re awaiting a presser from the FBI. We do not yet know whether there are ties to Antifa. That’s one report cited to NBC, and we have not matched the reporting. So when we do or if we don’t, we’ll report both of those things to you based on an NBC report right now on the Antifa connection.

We do know Brian Cole—that’s been reported at several outlets now—has been identified and reportedly arrested as the January 6th pipe bomber, the man we’ve been looking for now for five years, almost five years to the day in about 30 days or less.

And it’s really remarkable, Julie, these reports that the FBI did it based on documents inside the building, that they had everything they needed to solve this case all along.

JULIE KELLY: I’m sure we will find out at 1 o’clock, and also once the indictment is actually posted, we will get more details. And I’m hoping that we will get more answers as to exactly what the FBI has had all along. Documents. You know, we know that the FBI early on was trying to track purchases of those very unusual shoes, those Nike shoes. They were trying to find out the brand of the backpack and asking retailers about sales. This was very intensive. This is not like they just buried it right away.

And it appears that they did have a very strong lead. It could be this suspect, as a matter of fact, but they did have strong leads. They were interviewing people all over both of those neighborhoods outside RNC and DNC. So yes, this is why we are hopefully going to get some more responses from the FBI and law enforcement today as to why this has been not just forgotten by the FBI, the Chris Wray FBI.

Megyn, the media has ignored this as well. They’re forced to cover it today, but they have not covered any of the pipe bomb, any of my reporting, certainly, and other reporting showing, for example, the bomb-sniffing canines who we are told missed this device outside of the DNC not once but twice because Kamala Harris was arriving there at about 11:25 that morning. So there’s still going to be a lot of questions.

# Breaking: FBI Arrests Alleged January 6 Pipe Bomber

We still have to tie together whoever this individual is to the discoveries later that day and how this all came together. It’s really hard to believe, and I’m going to keep an open mind. It’s hard to believe that this individual did this on his own, that the device sat there for seventeen hours before they were miraculously discovered at this perfect timing during.

MEGYN KELLY: Very interesting. Here’s what we know from the Daily Mail that he’s this Cole is a resident of Woodbridge, Virginia, that he was arrested in the early hours of this morning.

The exact charges against him not yet clear. He’s expected in court later today, and this comes weeks after the FBI offered a five hundred thousand dollars reward for leads to identify the suspect. We don’t know, though, at this hour, Julie, whether that led to anything. In fact, what we’re being told is that there was no new tip. It was based on shoe leather reporting or shoe leather investigation based on what they already had, what had been culled together by previous investigations, we believe.

So they’ve been doing everything they can inside the FBI to amp up the investigation tips on this guy with the reward and so on. Whether they actually got any, we don’t know. Let’s say, I’m just looking for more on whether yeah. They’re saying this is the Daily Mail saying sources told MS Now that Cole is believed to be linked to support for anarchist ideologies. He just lives in this quiet Virginia suburb.

The heavy police presence outside of his home is what’s making headlines right now. So far we’re not seeing anything about a manifesto, about him having previous arrests, about weird social media. Normally, all that would have been breaking already. Although can I tell you, it’s very possible that the FBI has had a few days to scrub anything that they don’t want out there immediately from the Internet as law enforcement typically does?

JULIE KELLY: Correct. So I’m sure we will get some of those answers. But again, I mean, since this is such a cold, really was a cold case for years, to your point, almost five years ago that this happened. You know, if this person felt like they were surrounding him that his days were numbered, I’m sure he would have scrubbed whatever he needed to from his own social media, computer, etc. Of course, easy for law enforcement retrieve.

Questions About the Investigation Timeline

MEGYN KELLY: Well, I ask you about that though? There’s been not a hint that an arrest was coming in this case. You know, we had the Blaze report, which we just discussed on Kelly’s Court yesterday, saying it was a woman who was a female law enforcement agent, retired. And we just discussed whether the Blaze is going get sued by that woman, who according to CBS has an alibi showing her on camera with her puppies during the hour that those bombs were placed on January 5th.

But the FBI has not like, there had been no report at all that they’d identified this person. In fact, if Brian Cole really is the guy, he was probably sitting there reading that Blaze report going, “great, I’m off the hook.”

Yeah. Right? So I’m just saying, like, if they’ve known about this guy for days or weeks, they did a very good job of keeping it extremely quiet.

JULIE KELLY: Very true. I mean, I know that after that Blaze report came out, Dan Bongino posted something, think it was a few days later, debunking that, dismissing that report, that very sketchy report. Not sure why that was ever published, but, you know there’s definitely will be repercussions. As you said, the woman who they identified has an attorney called this false defamatory. They might have been waiting for an arrest before they file a lawsuit against certain reporters, online influencers, and The Blaze. We are expecting that lawsuit really anytime.

So, yes, but this has been very close hold except for say Dan Bongino posting that. Also, Kash has said in a few recent interviews that there was going to be some big news coming on this investigation. So we weren’t sure if that meant they were just going to give us new details. There were some talk about increasing the reward. To your point, they did repost the video at the end of October, and added some new footage apparently. So we know that this has been a top priority. We know that it has been a focus. But, yes, I think it came to a lot of people as a surprise the past today that there is an arrest made.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. Now, New York Post giving his full name as Brian Cole Junior, age thirty of Woodbridge, Virginia. He’s thirty now. Thirty years old. So he would have been okay. Yeah. You know, five, twenty-six then when the pipe bombs ended. Crazy.

I’m sure they know a lot about this guy at this point. I’m sure he had quite a morning, this Brian Cole. And better pray to God that he’s got some sort of airtight alibi if he wants to get out of this. This is a crazy development today. Again, now almost five years to the day, right, after this whole thing went down.

Congressional Frustration Over Lack of Progress

There’s the New York Post reporting out that Congress had just prepared this report assessing that, quote, “little meaningful progress had been made in the pipe bomb investigation” and charging that the feds had refused to provide substantive updates to Congress. So there’s been frustration on Capitol Hill about nothing being done in this investigation. And now we have left to ask ourselves why? Why? When we learn more about this Brian Cole, will the answer provide itself?

Thank you so much. You’re one of the best, Julie. You are the best on this subject. Nobody has matched your reporting from the beginning. You’ve never lost interest in it. People have mocked you. They’ve tried to diminish you. You’ve been right about it all. Intrepid reporting. Thank you, my friend.

JULIE KELLY: Thank you, my friend. Thanks for covering all of this. I appreciate it.

MEGYN KELLY: Alright. We’ll see you soon. We’re going to take a quick break, we’ll get to Michael Knowles. And, we are now awaiting an FBI presser, which we are told is going to begin at one p.m. Eastern. It’s twelve twenty now. Standby.

Thanks so much for watching. If you like what you just saw, hit the subscribe button for more clips and full episodes.

Michael Knowles Weighs In on the Arrest

MEGYN KELLY: Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly show. We’ll go now to Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles show. It’s pretty remarkable, Michael. Again, just to caution the audience, only MS Now, which is now separate from NBC, they’re two different news organizations with two very different news gathering arms, is the only one reporting that the suspect, Brian Cole, now in custody for the January sixth pipe bombings attempted, has any connection to Antifa. We’ll wait to see whether that’s true. But several outlets reporting that he is in custody. His name is Brian Cole. He’s currently thirty, at least according to one report in the New York Post.

And he was arrested in the wee hours this morning. Your reaction to it?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, any time that MSNBC Now, MS Now reports anything, I just immediately assume the opposite is true. So I’m willing to withhold and reserve judgment on whether or not—

MEGYN KELLY: So maybe he is MAGA.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He might be. Who knows, maybe he’s a member of the Trump family or something. However, with this report, it certainly matches Antifa’s MO, and I think that explains why this case has been unresolved for five years. Because I think even the left would have to admit in moments of candor that pipe bombs are not generally the instruments of the American right.

So from what little we knew about this pipe bomber, the evidence pointed to his being on the left or who knows, maybe part of some grander conspiracy, but he probably wasn’t wearing a MAGA hat. And so you have to ask yourself, especially with this key bit of information, that there was no new lead that led to his arrest. It was actually an old lead that Kash Patel and Dan Bongino just followed up on.

You say, why did the left not—why did the DOJ and the FBI under Joe Biden, that is to say the left, why didn’t they pursue this for five years? And the answer is simple. Because every little granny who was wearing a MAGA hat taking pictures in the foyer of the Capitol on January sixth, the supposedly worst day in American history. Every single one of them was a Trump supporter.

And so to go in there, arrest every single one of them, put them in solitary confinement for two years, three years, that made perfect political sense for the left. When it comes to the pipe bomber, it was far less clear who this person was, and it was much more likely there was going to be a person on the left, and so they just didn’t care.

January 6th as Political Persecution

January sixth, so called, was a political persecution from beginning to end, soup to nuts. Even the way that it was discussed as the worst attack in our nation’s history, and certainly the worst attack on the Capitol, is preposterous because we know there were at least four other violent attacks on the Capitol that involved shooting and blowing stuff up.

Going back to 1915, you had a left wing anti-capitalist Harvard professor blew up part of the Senate. You had Puerto Rican nationalists in the 50s shoot up the House. You had the Weather Underground in 1970s also set off an explosive. And you had a Maoist group in the 1980s also set off an explosive. All of those groups were on the left. Certainly matches what we know about what the pipe bomber was trying to do.

And it doesn’t matter. Was purely a factional, my side versus your side, kind of witch hunt. And the fact that we’re getting to the bottom of this, I think, really serves a major political purpose. It’s not just Bongino and Kash Patel tying up loose ends. It’s actually bringing some transparency back to our criminal justice system and how horribly it was abused over the last five years.

MEGYN KELLY: I mean, it’s going to be really interesting to hear this guy’s bio. You know, I just feel like it’s going to be so illuminating to hear because I would love to believe that even the Joe Biden FBI would not willingly hide the fact that they had identified the January 6th bomber just because he was Antifa or he was linked with some more left wing group. I would love to believe that they would never do that, but I don’t trust that FBI at all. At all.

And most Americans who’ve been paying attention to them over the past couple of years don’t either. I mean, it was a political operation. You know, it was the same group that was texting, “we have a plan to stop Trump. We won’t let it happen.” You know, it’s like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Like, that’s who the FBI has been for many years now. So it’s really hard to give them all benefits of the doubt that we might have some fifteen, twenty years ago.

The New FBI Leadership Under Fire

So I have no idea what they’re about to tell us. Like that’s the big challenge to Kash and Dan in going in there trying to get this ship righted. And you’re seeing the hit pieces on them drop even this week, Michael. There’s this former and current group of FBI agents that was going to report to Congress this week on how rudderless the FBI is and how bad it is and how it’s not going to get anything done.

Meanwhile, their arrests are up of violent felons, of gang members, of child predators, recovery of missing children, sex traffickers, like you name it. They’re actually they actually really are getting things done. That one stat that jumped out at me was they’ve already arrested four people on the ten most wanted list in their six months in office. Joe Biden’s FBI under Chris Wray arrested four people on the ten most wanted over four years they did that.

So it’s just they are getting things done, but the old guard is still in there. They don’t like the new leadership. They think they’re crass. They think they’re brash. They’re mad that they didn’t come up in the FBI. Bongino has a law enforcement background, and Kash has an intel background. So they are of law enforcement, but not FBI you know, not agents. And this is part of what they’ve been up against since the moment they walked in the front door.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. Look, obviously, the DOJ and the FBI have been corrupt for a very long time, not just going back to Biden, but going back to Obama. You know, Barack Obama is siccing the government agencies on his enemies too. I wanted to make clear that Joe Biden does not, and his DOJ, do not need to have actively covered up who the pipe bomber was in order to be guilty here of corruption.

Because, look, I grant you, Megyn, the same FBI that was arresting pro-life grannies for praying and that was infiltrating and spying on Catholic churches. Yeah, they might have just covered up the person that they thought was the pipe bomber. But it also might have just been malign neglect, not benign neglect, but malign neglect.

The Pipe Bomber Investigation and Political Implications

MEGYN KELLY: It might have just been that they knew, okay, if we prosecute all of these people taking pictures in the Capitol on January 6th, we’re going to get one hundred out of one hundred MAGA people. And the pipe bomber, we just don’t know and we don’t want to find out. And it doesn’t matter, the bomb didn’t go off, it doesn’t help our political persecution. So you know what, we’re just going to look the other way. We’re going to ignore leads that come in.

And who knows, if a Republican gets elected in four or five years, then I guess maybe they can uncover some of those leads. It looks like that’s exactly what Cash Patel and Dan Bongino have done. I mean, I want to know more details about the guy. I want to know, is he in some protected class? Is there, you know, some other reason why they might not have zeroed in on him?

We’re going to find out very, very soon. And look, right now, congrats to the FBI on making this arrest. Let’s hope it’s the right guy. Let’s hope we get a confession and that people are spared too much drama around this.

We’re going to put a pin in that as we await the FBI pressure because there’s no new information as it comes in. Believe me, my team is scouring the Internet for any updates, mugshots, etcetera, and we will bring it to you. But for now, let’s get in some other news because if this really happens at one, we’ll probably be all pipe bomber at that point forward.

Pentagon Controversy and the Venezuela Drug Boat Strike

The big story in the news this week has been something similar happening at the Pentagon, like an attempt by people who never wanted this leader to take him down. Now there definitely are people inside the Pentagon who hate Pete, didn’t want Pete, and want him gone and did from day one.

But it’s also very much on the outside with these lawmakers who can’t stand him, these Democrats who can’t stand him. And now it’s devolved into them accusing him of war crimes based on inaccurate, incomplete information, which by the day gets better for the Pentagon, not for his detractors.

It started last Friday when the Washington Post all but accused him of a war crime. Seth Moulton, citing this Democrat from Massachusetts saying someone’s going to jail for murder or a war crime. Someone’s, you mark my words. One of these people is going to jail. Okay. Because they said that they bombed a ship coming to America from south of the border carrying drugs, and that two people were clinging to the side of the boat having survived the first strike.

And they were devastated to see this because they wanted everybody to be dead. And Pete Hegseth gave the oral order to kill the people and drop a second strike to kill them.

Well, that didn’t turn out to be true. Most people agreed that that could potentially be a war crime, but there actually was ambiguity around it depending on the circumstances. But that’s not even what happened. Pete Hegseth, now we know, did not give any second order. He only gave an initial order to take out the boat.

And now we’re hearing that the boat was not destroyed after the first strike. It was only disabled, and that it was in enough good shape that these two survivors were on there reportedly using a radio to contact other narco drugs or boats in the water and listen to how Martha Raddatz reported exactly that.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

MARTHA RADDATZ: Tonight, new information. According to a source familiar with the incident, the two survivors climbed back onto the boat after the initial strike. They were believed to be potentially in communication with others and salvaging some of the drugs. Because of that, it was determined they were still in the fight and valid targets. A JAG officer was also giving legal advice. So again, David, that video will be key, and Admiral Bradley will be on the hill tomorrow.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: I mean, for ABC News to have to come out and say it, Michael, really must have hurt. And it’s not just them. You’ve got the Wall Street Journal now reporting citing three Pentagon officials that surveillance video of the operation did not reveal two survivors until an hour after the initial hit after Hegseth said he stopped monitoring the video feed altogether. And here’s what Martha said.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

MARTHA RADDATZ: Tonight, new information. According to a source familiar with the incident, the two survivors climbed back onto the boat after the initial strike. They were believed to be potentially in communication with others and salvaging some of the drugs. Because of that, was determined that they were still in the fight, still in the fight, which is a military term of art and valid targets. A JAG officer, meaning judge advocate general, a naval law lawyer, was also giving legal advice in the moment.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: And ABC said the source said the pair of survivors were later killed in a second strike because they were deemed to, quote, “be still in the fight” because they were in comms with other vessels nearby and were gathering some of the cargo of drugs that the boat had been carrying.

Brian L. Cox, who was on this show two days ago, Cornell law professor and twenty-two year service member, now retired, said hat tip to the journalistic reference “still in the fight,” which in legal terms is the opposite of “hors de combat,” which is the term meaning, like, out of the fight. It’s like you’ve been shipwrecked. You’re out of the fight, and you can’t be targeted. “Still in the fight” is exactly the opposite, meaning totally targetable.

It’s a complete exoneration, complete exoneration of Pete, his admiral, Mitch Bradley, who actually did give the order and gave the order to destroy the boat. And let me just show you the narrative that’s out there that has been proven completely wrong. We’ll wait for them to correct the record and apologize to the Pentagon and the military leaders they unfairly besmirched. Watch.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: There is no lawyer that I’m aware of who indicates that that second strike is not a war crime. These were individuals in the water who were wounded.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: As far as I’m concerned, there is a war crime involved here. He’s, you know, violated, he has committed war crimes.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: If the facts are as have been alleged that there was a second strike specifically to kill the survivors in the water, that’s a stone cold war crime. It’s the United States of America on our behalf, on your and my behalf, killing two individuals who were unarmed. And that’s just shocking.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: This is clearly execute survivors who are no longer a threat. Everybody understands that. I think that Pete Hegseth clearly ordered the code red here. And I also think that that would be a war crime. I think he must resign.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: Sunny Hostin, Rachel Maddow, there was a congressman of Smith before them. I mean, they were clear as day, Michael. They had this case solved from the moment they read the Washington Post report, which has now been contradicted by ABC, by the New York Times, and by the facts according to anybody who actually was involved in this thing. “Clearly a war crime,” they say. Clearly because of an unverified report over an oral order, not a written order, to have a follow-up strike on a legitimate military target.

And wow, it just shows you how desperate the Democrats are for anything to hit the Trump administration and specifically Pete Hegseth. They have been particularly focused on torpedoing Pete since the beginning. He was the one they most tried to boot out during his confirmation. He’s their Venezuelan drug boat. That’s what they would like to see happen to him.

And in order to take him out, they are literally taking the side of the Venezuelan narco terrorists. It’s very funny because Dan Crenshaw, who is a Republican, but obviously he’s not the Trumpiest of Republicans in the house, was asked about this by liberal media, and he said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “I’ve been in a lot of firefights, okay? And yeah, we generally try to kill them. That’s the point. That’s why we shoot them in the first place.”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s ridiculous, you know, total controversy. And to your point, what this hinged on is whether or not the people were “hors de combat,” were out of combat. And, obviously, in this case, from all the information we’re getting in the follow-up, they were not.

And I think really the thing that was clobbering the Democrats after this is, got to give a hat tip to Mays on X, pulled up a great clip. Yes, he’s great. This video of Joe Biden, 1989, giving a speech. I thought it was AI generated at first in which he defends precisely the Trump administration’s policy on these narco terrorists including using the very phrase “narcoterrorism” and calling for an international strike force to stop the drugs where they originate.

So this is something that everyone agreed on until about five minutes ago. The Democrats are in such a bad position arguing for their economic policies, their migration policies, their domestic social policies, really just about everything, even health care doesn’t really work for them anymore, that they are now taking the side of narco terrorists in a state that is a sworn enemy of the United States. And even that they can’t do right.

MEGYN KELLY: It really is incredible and how much they have attacked poor Pete Hegseth for something he didn’t do at all. And also admiral Bradley. Here’s the Mays posting from with Joe Biden yesterday. I’ll just read a transcript of what Biden says in part. He says, “Let’s go after the drug lords where they live with an international strike force. There must be no safe haven for these narco terrorists, and they must know it.”

That was him, Joe Biden back in 1989 saying exactly that in a televised message from the Democrat party calling on president H.W. Bush to do more to stop the flow of drugs into the country. It’s crazy. A strike force to attack the drug dealers before they reach our borders.

Now when that exact thing is done, because it’s done by a Trump administration and a Pete Hegseth who they can’t stand and dismiss as a Fox News host, it’s a war crime based on made up sh*t that I have no idea where it even originated. None of it has proven true.

Trump’s Comments on Somalia and Immigration

Alright. Let’s keep going. These same outlets are calling president Trump a racist today. That’s how my little friends over at NPR, where I begin my day, I do it so you don’t have to. Every day, I listen to their terrible morning podcast. It’s full of lies. They hate Trump. It’s kind of amusing just for that reason, to be honest. I listen to MorningWire, and I listen to my own show, a morning update with my husband, Doug.

Anyway, they’re very, very upset over Donald Trump sounding like a racist, they say, at the Tuesday cabinet meeting by saying the following.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country. I could say that about other countries too. I can say it about other countries too. We don’t want them to hell. We got to, we have to rebuild our country. You know, our country is at a tipping point. We could go bad. We’re at a tipping point. We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage, garbage into our country.

Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work. These aren’t people that say, “Let’s go. Come on. Let’s make this place great.” These are people that do nothing but complain. They complain. But when they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but b*tch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: In response to which the vast majority of Americans are like, “Yeah, tracks.” But no. If you listen to NPR, if you listen to MSNBC, if you read the New York Times, he’s a racist. And if you shook your head yes in response to that, you too are a racist, Michael Knowles.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I loved that clip so much. It was just after Thanksgiving. And for some, I am the crazy conservative uncle at Thanksgiving. I try to be put together, polite and accommodating. But you say, “Hey, hey, come on, don’t get political at dinner.” I say, “All right, I won’t get political, don’t worry.”

And then I have one sip of beer and I’m just like, “I don’t want them in our country, Ilhan’s trash, I want them out, they contribute nothing.” And most people agree with that. And I think it’s not even just to beat up on the Somalis in particular, even though they have taken over a major American city, defrauded the taxpayers, and funded terrorism overseas, and complained about it the whole time, and married their brother, and violated immigration law. And we could go on and on and on. But I don’t mean to beat up on this.

MEGYN KELLY: With our money.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: So, you know, the real issue here is, you have to ask, why did we bring them here? What is this immigration for? I mean, that’s really the point that Trump is getting us to. And, you know, he uses provocative language to get us to pay attention, and now that’s what we’re debating. What do the Somalis bring? They don’t really contribute anything. They have a sixty percent poverty rate in Minneapolis. They have, what is it, forty percent education rate. You know, just they don’t really contribute anything.

You say, “Okay, well, are they here because they’re suffering some particular persecution, and as a charitable policy of the U.S., we’re taking them in as refugees?” Not really, it’s just that their country is generally bad. Okay, well there are plenty of generally bad countries in the world, we’re not going to take them all in. Our country wouldn’t survive five minutes if that were the case.

Breaking Down the Arrest and Immigration Debate

MEGYN KELLY: Okay, are we taking them in because have we aggrieved them in some way? That’s sometimes an argument for bringing people to the country. No, we’ve only ever tried to help Somalia. We’ve only ever been nice to them. We can’t say that for every country in the world, but Somalia, yeah, we’ve basically only ever tried to be nice to them, and so we owe them anything in particular.

So what’s it for? And the only answer that the liberals ultimately can give is, well, because we’re bad and they’re different, and so we’re going to bring them in, and that’s it. And because we don’t like you, native American population. We don’t like you most voters. And that’s what we’re going to do.

Mean and some of them go even further than that and they say we want to bring in totally different people because that’s going to change the electorate and then we’ll win more elections. Okay, well that doesn’t work for me. Okay, And I’ll tell you, this is a really beautiful moment of clarity. Because when I was a kid, there were two views that you were allowed to have on immigration. You could either want more illegal immigration or you could want only more legal immigration.

But you had to want more migration. That was everything else that’s not. That’s so true. Now I think people are beginning to say, hold on, I don’t only care about the procedural norm of how the migrants come in. We have the highest foreign born percentage of the population ever. What if I just want less migration?

And let me say something even more verboten that you couldn’t say for many years. It seems pretty clear at this point that some people are easier to assimilate than others. If we share, I don’t know, the same religion, the same language, the same traditions, the same institutions, in some cases the same broad family because we came from England. Okay, maybe those guys are easier to assimilate, and I’ll go one step further. Maybe some people, as groups, contribute more to the country than others.

These were all things you were not allowed to say ten or twenty years ago, and yet these are all things that are true. They have been part of the conversation around immigration, going back to classical antiquity by some of the most moral and brilliant political thinkers of all time. And Trump’s bringing it back, and the libs can whine about it, but his message is resonating because he’s stating the truth. It should be harder to get into the United States than it is to get into Yale. It really should.

Trump’s Immigration Standards and Somalia Comments

MEGYN KELLY: We should be having that level of screening, like aptitude tests, background checks, assessment of whether they are paying contributing members to society in the place from which they hail. And other than that, only the most dire asylum claims should be even considered. And from people who were rejected for some other reason can’t go to a different country for asylum. I’m not sure why the United States would be the first place of refuge for virtually anyone other than a Canadian. That’s what Trump is trying to change.

And by the way, you can call it racist all you want, but what he said about Somalia is true. We just did a quick fact check on Somalian crime from the US State Department. Violent crimes common throughout Somalia, including kidnapping, murder, illegal roadblocks widespread. Terrorists continue to plot kidnappings, bombings, and other attacks there. They may attack with little to no warning.

Airports, government buildings, hotels, restaurants, shopping areas, public places that attract large crowds and tourists. Trump says they’ve taken billions of dollars from our country. Yep. They have. They looted taxpayers over one billion in Minneapolis that was intended for child food assistance, and they’re sending it back home to Somalia reportedly to al Shabaab, some portion of it, a terrorist group that’s doing some of that stuff I just ticked off.

Seventy-eight of the eighty-six individuals charged so far are Somalis. So just I mean, like, just stop with your stupid “it’s racist.” It’s true. And by the way, he wasn’t even saying that it’s every Somali. He was talking about people like Ilhan Omar, who honestly is awful and people who are committing fraud against us, who take advantage of our good graces and our nice invitation to have them here and give them taxpayer money and defraud us.

What is it what should he be calling them? Heroes? People look up to? I think garbage is more than fair for anybody. It doesn’t like, you’re not allowed to say it, though, because they’re black.

And under New York Times and NPR rules, they can’t be criticized. Well, in that case, then I’ll turn our attention to people who are not black but only slightly brown because I think it clarifies it too. When JD Vance was doing that famous interview in which he was arguing over importing Afghanis. And the liberal interviewer kept giving all of these justifications for doing it. And he said, “Look, frankly, Margaret, I don’t care. I don’t want these people in my country.”

And he was truly the voice of the American people particular at that moment. And he was ultimately tragically proven right just the day before Thanksgiving when the Afghan supposed refugees and allies shot two of our National Guardsmen. J.D. Vance was just reacting to the fact that our supposed Afghan allies and refugees plotted a terror attack on election day of 2024.

And so you can give all of the justifications in the world, dubious though they may be, on why we really must to bring in Afghanis and Somalis and people who are very very difficult to assimilate from third world dangerous places who pose a real threat to the American political order and to Americans in a very direct way. You can you can come up with all those rationalizations you want but frankly Margaret we don’t care. We don’t want those people in the country. We we’re Americans and we have a right to our own country. We’re supposedly a self government here.

Think don’t you guys always exalt our sacred democracy and how well, look, if we don’t have a right to determine who comes in who milks the taxpayer money hitting the dole and welfare who ultimately get on the voter rolls and certainly whose children get on the voter rolls and who fundamentally transform our government and our political society then you know what? We don’t have a country. We don’t have a democracy. We don’t have anything like it. So you can come up with all the explanations you want as to how Somalia is so great and it’s just been misunderstood for eternity. But frankly, Margaret, we don’t care.

That message is the one that’s going to resonate. Frankly, Margaret, we don’t give a damn. Back to the bombing of that drug vessel that came in. They’re having a hearing on it right now with Admiral Bradley, the guy who gave the order, and Dan Raisenkain, chairman of the joint chiefs. Listen to what senator Tom Cotton just says after having seen the video of the actual strike, the whole thing. Watch.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

TOM COTTON: Senator, you said that the strikes were righteous, that there were four of them. Would you have taken the same shot if you’re in that position?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: If I was Admiral Bradley and I’d been delegated that for you, absolutely.

TOM COTTON: And I did I’d do it again. Was there more than four shots?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Oh, there’s four. Absolutely.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

Senate Hearing on Drug Vessel Strike

MEGYN KELLY: He said “I’d do it again.” He expanded saying the boat strikes were entirely lawful. He would have conducted the second strike. The targets were not noncombatants, meaning they were combatants. And he said Admiral Bradley denied that there was any “kill them all” order by given by Pete Hegseth. The the entire narrative pushed by WAPO has fallen apart.

Hold it there, Michael. We’re back in just a couple minutes. We’ll see what’s happening at FBI, and, we’re going to take a quick break.

Awaiting FBI Press Conference on Pipe Bomber Arrest

MEGYN KELLY: Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly show. We are back with Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles show. And still awaiting now, we are told that they are on track for this one PM presser. It’s one PM exactly now East Coast time on the arrest of the January sixth accused pipe bomber who’s now in custody named by several outlets as Brian Cole.

There are some reports circulating about that he is Brian Cole junior and some reporting about Brian Cole Senior and what he may or may not do. I’m not going to get into it until we know it’s the actual guy. There’s no point. We’ll find out everything we need to know soon enough, but we are told he was arrested this morning. He’s in custody, and police are now on the scene.

We just got video in of search dogs roaming around the back of Brian Cole, the accused of his property. We’re showing it here. This is actually from Fox News where you can see not much really. It’s an aerial shot through the top of trees down into what looks like a modest backyard, a small patio. Maybe if you zoom in there, can see dogs.

I don’t oh, yeah. I guess I see one. I see people. Maybe people and dogs. According to my producer, there are there are both.

Okay. Want to tell you this too. Now we’re getting the thing that always comes out, Michael, the interviews of the neighbors, which sometimes they’re probing and sometimes are not, but they’re always mildly interesting. The New York Post reporting as follows. Calls relatives of coal listed in public records not immediately returned, but neighbors in this suburban cul de sac where he lives described a young man who shunned interaction and doted on a, wait for it, pet chihuahua.

Alright. Guilty. He’s guilty. I’m just going to say it. He’s he’s very antisocial. Very. A woman who said she had lived in the neighborhood for decades told the post, “He keeps to himself. He has a dog that he loves. He walks every day twice a day to seven eleven with his dog, and he wears his headphones.” “He seemed very quiet. He would never make eye contact, almost like he just didn’t see you,” added a second neighbor, a man who noted that Cole would, quote, “wear shorts all winter long.”

Well, so does my Thatcher who’s twelve. That doesn’t mean you’re a bomber and likes red Crocs. “I’m pretty shocked,” said this neighbor who lived in the area for seven years. “This is a very uncommonly friendly and neighborly place to live.”

The second neighbor said he doubted that Cole was the person recorded planning the bombs, claiming the suspect has, quote, “uncommonly short legs,” and a simple gait analysis could rule him out or confirm him as the culprit. Now don’t be too sure of that because that’s what the Blaze used in order to accuse some woman of being the perp. And it appears according to this FBI, that gate analysis is not all that accurate because theirs said it was something like a ninety-six percent chance it was the actual bomber now being told that’s not true by the FBI. So you always get the details. Red Crocs and a little chihuahua that he loves and pets all the time, but with humans, not so much.

Michael Knowles Weighs In on the Suspect Profile

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s always the quiet ones, Megan. You know, this reminds me, I react to so many news stories this way. It’s always the ones you most expect. You know, I know our culture tells us the opposite, but a good rule of thumb is it’s always the ones you most expect. Think that’s why look we could find out that this guy is a Republican, we could find out he’s a conservative I guess, we could anything we could find out he doesn’t have a political motive you know anything is on the table right now.

MEGYN KELLY: Or a Chihuahua.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah however the Red Crocs, the Chihuahua, he was such a quiet young boy and the pipe bomb does make us think it would seem likely that if he has a political motive, the political motive would be more on the left. That’s just in keeping with the patterns that we’ve seen. Patterns don’t, you know, predict everything, but they’re rules for a reason, you know, and exceptions prove rules. Also, the fact that there were pipe bombs planted at both the DNC and the RNC does suggest anarchistic behavior, which that’s very Antifa.

The Roots of Radicalization

Antifa’s MO without question. And so we don’t know if he was a quiet guy, if he wasn’t particularly social, then one wonders if there’s going to be a heavily online aspect to his radicalization, to his planning. That is also usually the case in left wing terrorism. So we don’t know for now. However, it is worth pointing out at this moment before the FBI has come out to speak, all of the details up to and especially including the Chihuahua do point to someone who will be on the left rather than on the right.

MEGYN KELLY: My friends listening to this who have Chihuahuas are writing in right now upset. We forgive you, and we don’t believe you bombed anything. Okay. Let’s keep going. There’s so much news.

Trump’s Comments on Somali Immigration

Let’s go back to Ilhan Omar. Okay? Because there’s more on her in Trump’s comments. Just wanted to get a couple of these in. Terry Moran, who’s now departed from ABC, he’s very upset. He’s one of the people who thinks Trump has been smearing the Somalis unfairly. Just want to give you some color on it. Here’s top six.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

TERRY MORAN: First, it’s a stupid thing to say. There are about two hundred thousand Somali Americans, refugees, immigrants, and American born kids too. And they came here because they believe that America keeps her promise that this land is big enough and brave enough to offer safety and dignity and upward mobility to hard workers and big dreamers from around the world.

Somali Americans are working hard. They’re starting businesses, paying taxes, raising families. Second, presidents should not talk like that. No decent person should call any other human being garbage. But Trump does it not just because he is that kind of man, but for political reasons. He wants to drag people down to his level, give them permission to become the worst version of themselves, and join him in remaking our country in his image.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: Okay, Terry. Thanks a lot. We appreciate that. He thinks President Trump is out of line and is very angry about it, Michael. Thoughts?

Michael Knowles Responds

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Listen, Terry, Ilhan Omar is not going to marry you, bro, because she married her bro. So she’s not going to marry you. It’s not going to happen.

Speaking of garbage, we can say about arguments that if you put garbage in you’re going to get garbage out. If you’re going to have garbage for your premises you’re going to have some garbage conclusions and his premises are just totally off. He says that Somalis are hard working. They’re not. They’re just not. I’m not saying there isn’t a Somali who is a hard worker, but as a group, they’re not hard working.

He says that they pay their taxes. They don’t really. They’re not net contributors to the government in any way. They’re largely on welfare. The vast majority of them in these American enclaves are in poverty and they just don’t contribute and now there’s been this massive scandal where they were actually defrauding the government. So, no, none of that is true.

But then the broader premise on America is also wrong. It says they’ve come here because they believe that America is going to live up to the promise that if you’re a hard worker from anywhere in the world, you can come here. That’s not the promise. That’s never been the promise. I don’t know where you got that idea that America said, “We don’t have borders. Everyone from around the world should come here.” That isn’t true.

The country was founded a long, long time ago. It was founded by some people on the Mayflower, which is a great cigar company, by the way. And they came here in 1620. They came to Jamestown actually a little earlier than that. And they said that some people can come here. But you got to believe certain things, you got to have certain disciplines, you got to kind of fit in a little bit.

And then when we had the American Revolution, they actually said that. Just to be clear, they actually said that exact thing. They worried about people who would not assimilate being let in. Did not want that.

MEGYN KELLY: Keep going.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: This is why we had like basically no Muslims in America until recent decades. And no, not on Islam, even generally. It’s just not how the country worked.

MEGYN KELLY: They don’t want us either.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Right. Right. This is just a fact of history. Okay? The only American engagement with Islam before recent decades was really in the Barbary Wars when we’re making war on them because the Muslims kept imprisoning and enslaving our sailors.

So fast forward to the American Revolution. In the decades after the American Revolution, we severely restricted immigration. Then you move into the middle of the nineteenth century, we opened up immigration a little bit, but it was still relatively restrictive and assimilation was difficult.

Now it is true by the end of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century, we loosened up immigration considerably and it caused a ton of problems. So many problems that in the 1920s, we greatly restricted immigration again. And that was the status quo until the 1960s when the Democrats opened the floodgates. And in that, even more recent years, then the Democrats opened up illegal immigration and imported millions and millions of people.

So even the claim that America is a nation of immigrants, that’s not true. And you’ll notice that whenever you ask for evidence on this, they don’t point to the Constitution, they don’t point to the Naturalization Act, they don’t point to any actual parts of American history, they point to this stupid poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty written by a socialist that says “give us your poor huddled masses.” That does not have the weight of federal law, first of all, like dumb socialist poems are not the constitution.

And two, that doesn’t even actually describe the American tradition on immigration. We’ve been by far the most generous nation in the history of the world when it comes to immigration. But there are limits, and I think history and the American tradition should be able to weigh in on it more than the bloviations of Terry or whoever that guy was.

MEGYN KELLY: I think less about the poem by the socialist and more about that brilliant sage, Homer Simpson, who in one of the episodes held up a sign, Norma Rae style, that read, “go home. The country’s full.” That’s really where we are today. As all matters, Homer Simpson has solved it. Brevity is the word that board tells.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: That’s right.

Terry Moran’s Track Record

MEGYN KELLY: So he thinks that Trump is hateful. I mean, just got booted from ABC for pretending to be objective when he’s not. It was surely after he posted this tweet about Stephen Miller in June. “The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he’s the brains behind Trumpism, though he is. But that’s not what’s interesting about him. It’s not his brains. It’s bile. He’s a man who’s richly endowed with the capacity for hatred, a world class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.”

This is the objective news reporter, allegedly. “Trump is a world class hater, but his hatred only is only a means to an end. And that end is his own glorification. That is his spiritual nourishment.”

So no surprise he’s at it again, trying to rip on these people. Now you made some interesting points about immigration and what the founders envisioned. It’s gone a different way, which is not only being acknowledged by people like you and me, two MKs, but by Wajahat Ali, who our audience may remember as being one of the three on that infamous Don Lemon clip with Rick Wilson of the Lincoln project and Don where they were mocking Trump voters like, “yeah, them smart people with their maps and, like, their history.” That’s their version of what Republicans and MAGA sounds like. Completely smearing elitist assholes.

Wajahat Ali’s Inflammatory Comments

He has a different thought on immigration, and here’s how it goes. It’s about ten.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

WAJAHAT ALI: You have lost. You lost. The mistake that you made is you let us in in the first place. There’s a bunch of us, and we breed. We’re a breeding people. And the problem is you let us in in 1965. There were a few of us beforehand, but once you let one of us, you know what happens with brown folks? Our grandmother comes, our grandfather comes, our uncle comes, our aunt comes, our cousin comes, our second cousin comes, our third cousin comes, then we have kids, a bunch of kids.

And then guess what? Some white women, you know, the Western civilization women, the pure women, the American women, quote unquote, the rust belt women, the real women, they like some of those brown folks. We don’t take them. They come to us. So we’re embedded. We are everywhere. I want you to realize this. You have lost.

Your story is a shitty story filled with misery. It’s filled with bland chicken. It’s filled with terrible, terrible dry ass meat. Your music sucks. All your culture sucks. Nobody, that’s why the kids, like, listen to black people and their music. That’s why the kids love Latinos. Your parties suck because they’re monochromatic. Our parties have better food, better music, better looking women.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: Then get out and go back to Pakistan since you seem to love it so much. No one will miss you. This is the son of two Pakistani Muslim immigrants. He was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied at University of California, Berkeley. He got a law degree from the University of California, Davis. He’s written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic. CNN as an opinion contributor.

And that’s his thanks to this country that has given him so much, given him his world class education, put him on TV. Obviously, he’s a man of means, is to tell us we Americans actually suck. Our country sucks. Our culture sucks. We can’t cook. He wants to take our women, the white women. Is that what he means? And make them what? Like, they want to use the white women to make more little Pakistanis. Okay. Great. See how that works out for you, Wajahat.

And by the way, his parents are a couple of hot messes. I had it in front of me the other day, but they’re ex cons. I’m going to get my facts. But they’re ex cons, and they’re deeply troubled. Hold on. Here it is. This is where he comes from. This guy who wants to judge the rest of us as, like, cultureless and problematic. Standby. I’ll get it.

Soon after 9/11, his parents, who sold academic software, were arrested and imprisoned for mail fraud, wire fraud, and other counts as part of a large Microsoft anti-piracy criminal indictment. They spent nearly five years in prison. What does he say about it now? He says that they were targeted for being brown, Michael Knowles. They went, they had a trial. They went to prison for five years, and he wants to say it’s down to skin color. And you know what that gets you? A job at the Times and an opinion writing gig at CNN.

The Tribal Nature of Identity Politics

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I find the clip delightful for this reason, Megyn, actually, because the, you know, the words they got clipped out, obviously, it’s a much, much longer clip. You only heard the highlights. But he says there, he says, “white people, you lost, and we brown people won.” That’s always the framing here. That’s why he’s talking about the white women and the brown people.

Says, “we Pakistanis were a breeding people,” which if we were to be specific, we would probably have to say inbreeding people because of the extraordinarily high rates of cousin marriage. Though, maybe that’s a conversation for another time. In any case, he, yeah, it’s a thing, but sure.

He makes the point though. He says, “look, I, Wajahat Ali, view politics as a battle between the white people and the brown people, and we brown people are going to win. We’re going to beat you, and by the way, your country sucks and everything about your culture sucks.”

It’s kind of funny because that last bit raises the question, you say, well, can’t help but notice you keep coming here. You know, there’s no crisis of mass migration to Pakistan. It all seems to be going in the other direction. Maybe it’s our forks.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. Is that what you’re, perhaps you’re really loving our utensil use.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I get it. Our working toilets.

MEGYN KELLY: It’s very tempting. That would lure me out of a country too.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: What I love most about the clip, Megyn, is the fact that you mentioned earlier. This guy, he was born here. He was born in California, and he is in many ways the perfectly assimilated Lib. He graduates from Berkeley, he writes for these stupid left wing publications, and he bloviates, he dresses sloppily. He, yeah, he is the lib par excellence, okay?

And yet, when you push him, he has this tribal, racial tribal hatred for the native population of the country to which his parents fled. And I think that that should arrest all of us for a moment, because what it means is that, actually we should give the Libs a little bit of credit here in the way they talk about immigration. It means that heritage is an important aspect of identity. And I think that’s true, you know, my great grandparents, great great grandparents came from Italy, and that does affect me a little bit. I do feel a little bit Italian, don’t I?

My great great great great great great grandparents came on the Mayflower and Amboel Cigar Company after it. That does affect me in some way. When black people sometimes say that they have difficulties with America because their ancestors were brought in chains, in a way, I kind of sympathize with that. It’s not an excuse for living a bad life today, but I kind of sympathize.

The Problem of Assimilation and Cultural Identity

And what Wajahat Ali is saying is, you can be the most assimilated person in the world, but you know, when push comes to shove, at least on the left, these tribal anxieties are going to reassert themselves. And that means that the old view of immigration is vindicated, which is that, yeah, identity is really complex and when you do take immigrants in, you have to be really cautious about it and you have to have, in the best of circumstances, all of the tools in place for people to assimilate.

I think it’s possible to assimilate. I don’t think assimilation is necessarily always harmful. You know Ruth assimilates. She goes from being a Moabite to an Israelite and she’s in the genealogy of Christ. So I think it can happen, but you have to do it in a really careful cautious way. And when the people like Wajahat Ali come out and tell you exactly what they believe and exactly who they are, we should listen to them. We say, you know what, Wajahat, you’re totally right about immigration. I guess it’s time for us to stop it.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah, you know, think about racism too, Michael, right to say that stuff about like, we brown men, we’re going to marry white women, like we’re going to marry them, we’re going to breed. Like, can you imagine if somebody like me were to say, you know what, Wajahat, we white women would never marry a man like you ever. We’re not going to marry the brown men from Pakistan. We’re only going to reproduce with white Americans, native born. That’s it.

Because we don’t want to make mixed babies. Can you imagine what he would do with that? What the left would do with that? It would be obviously racist. Everyone will be able to hear how racist it was.

This guy will get a total pass on the bullshit he just said. They don’t care. Like, we are threatening you, white women, by saying we’re going to take you. We’re threatening white men by saying we’re going to take your women. We’re going to reproduce with them.

We’re going to make brown babies. They’re going to be threatening all of you. Basically saying that you’re afraid of us. You don’t like browns. You’re racist, all of you, and we’re going to make you suffer by infusing your white women with brown semen and create brown babies.

It’s so f*ed up what he’s saying. He won’t be called out by it because everybody’s too afraid of people like Wajahat Ali because he’s a nutcase, a loon. And I’ll just show you one that clip I referenced just to prove my point and yours about the elitism. Because the same guy who’s saying things as vile as that has been scoffing at, mocking at, sneering at MAGA for years along with his pal, Don Lemon. Watch.

Elite Contempt for Trump Supporters

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

WAJAHAT ALI: Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it.

DON LEMON: Knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world.

WAJAHAT ALI: And so that’s partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience, the credulous boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump.

DON LEMON: That wants to think that Donald Trump’s a smart one, and they’re all y’all elitists are—

WAJAHAT ALI: You elitist with your geography and your maps and your spelling. Your math and your reading. Yeah. Your reading. You know? Your geography, knowing other countries, sipping your latte. All those lines on the map. Only the elitists know where Ukraine is.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: Go ahead, Michael.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: They can’t even, you know, I see the bit that they’re doing and some of it’s kind of funny, but it is, it’s also funny too. They can’t build on it. The only line they have really is just a joke about geography and you say hold on, if you were really the elites you’d bring in all these other things from literature and philosophy and so they fail on their own terms. But all they really have is resentment. All they have is contempt for their fellow Americans.

And we’ve seen that for a very, very long time. The irony of Wajahat’s commentary in particular is we have been told that one of the most dangerous, racist, evil, false conspiracy theories around is the great replacement conspiracy theory. Go look on Wikipedia, look anywhere, and what is the great replacement conspiracy theory? It’s that political elites are importing people en masse from around the world in order to displace the native population of America and change the demographics.

And Wajahat Ali comes out and the entirety of his commentary there is, we did the great replacement, the great replacement is real, you lost the great replacement. That’s it. But he gets away with it because he’s celebrating it.

So when you celebrate it, it’s not, it’s no longer false. It’s no longer racist. It’s good. It’s true. It’s wonderful. It’s only when you would object to it in any way that it suddenly switches and it becomes false.

So you know, I saw on MSNBC the other day, or MSNOW now, that awful woman, Nicole Wallace, she was interviewing someone and this woman accused Trump of engaging in ethnic cleansing with mass deportations by deporting illegal aliens who have no right to be here. Said that constituted ethnic cleansing.

And this, of course, raises a question for the viewers, which is, if it’s ethnic cleansing to radically change the demographics of a country by taking people out, what do you call it when you radically change the demographics of a country by bringing people in?

And it’s the exact same issue with Wajahat. It’s the same irony of the celebration parallax of the great replacement theory. It seems like they’re just telling us who they are, what they believe, and that all the things they’ve been calling terrible and racist and dangerous and conspiracy theories are actually true and they’re happy about them.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah, totally agree.

Trump on Ilhan Omar and Somali Immigration

So back to Ilhan Omar, who Trump did rip on in his remarks. Actually, didn’t play that piece of it, but I’ll play it now. It’s stop five.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

DONALD TRUMP: These Somalians have taken billions of dollars out of our country. They’ve taken billions and billions of dollars. They have a representative, Ilhan Omar, who they say married her brother. It’s a fraud. She tries to deny it now, but you can’t really deny it because, you know, it just happened. And she shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman, and I’m sure people are looking at that. And she should be thrown the hell out of our country. The Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country.

And all they do is complain, complain, complain. You have her. She’s always talking about the constitution provides me with, go back to your own country and figure out your constitution. All she does is complain about this country.

So Somalia is considered by many to be the worst country on earth. I don’t know. I haven’t been there. I won’t be there anytime soon. I hope.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: I love him. I love him. I do. I mean I love him. Where is he wrong? Like, truly, where is he wrong?

She did marry her brother, by the way. It hasn’t been confirmed. But there’s been reporting that they went in-depth on this and could not disprove it. That, if memory serves, was the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which is a far left newspaper, which would have had every incentive to disprove it if they could. They could not disprove it.

If you wanted to disprove that I married my brother, it would be very easy. It would take you about thirty seconds. The fact that they couldn’t disprove it is deeply problematic. She did it not to get herself in the country. She was brought when she was younger. But to get him into the country.

Of course, the reason we’re talking about Somalia is because these Somalis who are now living in Minneapolis who’ve taken over that city have committed all that fraud that I mentioned earlier, like seventy-eight of the eighty-six people arrested for scamming the government out of over a billion dollars in welfare checks are Somalis sending these checks back home, including to al-Shabaab, the terrorist group, according to City Journal.

And now Trump’s trying to get rid of them, anybody who’s not a natural born citizen doing this. And here’s Ilhan Omar giving an interview to Jake Tapper, I think it was. Listen to what she has to say about that scam by her fellow Somalis. Watch.

Omar’s Excuse for Fraud

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

JAKE TAPPER: Two hundred seventy-three is what I’m hearing. Okay. Can you shed any light on why the fraud got so out of control in Minnesota?

ILHAN OMAR: I think what happened is that when you have these kind of new programs that are designed to help people, you’re oftentimes relying on third parties to be able to facilitate. And I just think that a lot of the COVID programs that were set up, they were set up so quickly that a lot of the guardrails did not get created.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: It’s COVID. It was the guardrails. But in the same way if you drive your Porsche a hundred and fifty miles an hour down the highway and you go off an embankment, it’s the fault of the guardrails for not being able to stop you. It’s not your fault. You know, COVID ate her homework.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: This shows you that there is no defense for this whatsoever that Ilhan Omar kind of, oh no, it was these, there were these programs and you know, it was a really unfortunate, I mean, it was, you know, it rained that day and also I forget the power went out and so it was all a big miss.

Hold on, you’re telling me systemic community-wide fraud to the tune of an insane amount of money from the taxpayers going to fund in part terrorists overseas, that was all just like a big mistake? It was all just a big misunderstanding? No, this gets to guardrails. If only we had the guardrails.

This is what Trump was talking about. What makes Trump’s commentary resonate so well, other than the fact that it’s hilarious and true, is when he focuses on the ingratitude. Because the ingratitude to me is the cherry on top of this awful migration sundae, you know. This is what really pushes the issue over the edge for people.

Even if the Somalis were wonderfully grateful and happy for all the things that we’ve offered them or the Afghans, or, I don’t know, all the people that we’ve let into our country. Even if that were the case, there would still be massive, massive problems with all of the migration that we’ve had to deal with. The largest movement of people ever in recorded history into this country in the last seventy years.

However, the fact that they come in and we give them everything and we tolerate them and we tolerate in certain places the increase in crime and then we tolerate all of the chain migration that goes along with it, the Wajahat Ali coup too, and we tolerate the breakdown in social solidarity and we tolerate all of it and then on top of that they’re ungrateful and they defraud us and they whine about how evil a country it is and they whine about how we owe them more and they whine about how our country was rotten from the beginning. That’s what pushes people over.

You say look, we’ve been so freaking generous to you, we have harmed ourselves to be generous to you. And then you spit in our faces in such a particularly offensive way. We’ve had enough. No, thanks. We’re done. Don’t want to go there. You guys can go back to Somalia. I don’t want to go there. I hope I’m never going there anytime soon, to quote Donald Trump. That’s it. It’s just enough.

The Need for Tough Journalism

MEGYN KELLY: You know what needed to happen in that clip? Same thing that Adam Carolla did to Gavin Newsom in that very famous exchange they had years ago, where he just rolled him over his claims about homelessness in the city and tried to blame, like, racial disparity. And Adam just kept saying, what do you mean? Why? Why? And he said, well, they use check cashing places just the black people do. Why? Why?

He just kept trying to challenge these assertions of Gavin Newsom’s, and Gavin was wiggling. It was so wonderful. Adam’s great at it. And Jake Tapper needed to ask her, it’s the guardrails. Why did the guardrails not invite the Americans to commit the fraud?

What was it about the American neighbors to the Somalis in Minneapolis that made them not take advantage of the low guardrails? How was it the guardrails’ fault? What is it about this particular community that saw the guardrails and made a different decision than their neighbors who were American born? Can you imagine? Where are the f*ing balls to ask that?

Do that. That’s how you make news. That’s how you call out hypocrisy, lies, bullshit, nonsense. It was the dog, the COVID that ate my homework excuses. It would have been so gratifying to watch.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Megyn, you know, there was this awful story. There’s a million of these awful stories, but a story about a so-called refugee and a Somali refugee who raped a teenage girl. And so he was being booked on this and the local Islamic center wrote a letter in his defense and said, no, he’s great. We really like him. He’s a good family man.

Not a lot of good family men I know rape teenage girls, but no, he’s really great. And the key to it was, they said, and he’s just having trouble assimilating to this new culture, adapting to the new culture. And if your culture is such that not raping teenage girls poses a problem of assimilation, I guess we just can’t take that culture in. People who were brought up in that culture, it’s no. Sorry, sorry, we’re full.

Breaking News: FBI Announces Arrest in January 6 Pipe Bomb Case

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. Homer Simpson. On this subject of attacks on young girls, women, on this show yesterday, we featured Amelia Lewis, the NYU student who was attacked on Monday by that homeless guy when she was heading to class 9:30 in the morning in Manhattan at NYU. And her pal, who’s a family friend of ours, Summer Armstrong, went to the local liquor store in front of which it happened and asked them if they had tape. And God bless those guys.

Excuse me. They checked and they did. They put it online. I tweeted on X. Yada yada.

They caught the guy. Serial sex offender. I just got out of two years in jail for sexual assault. This could have been far worse. Now it emerges today.

He had been living, squatting in NYU housing. Look at this report from ABC 7 in New York.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: And what about news from police that the man was a squatter in NYU housing?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Oh my god. I did not know that.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: And had apparently, according to police—

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Uh-huh.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Broken into four other apartments to take things to live in the other apartment where he was squatting.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That is crazy. I did not know that. I literally dorm right on that street, and I walked that street every single day. And now to find out that he was living as a squatter, apparently, according to police, in NYU housing? Yeah. I mean, that’s just extremely shocking.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: Extremely shocking is right. Now we also find out he has a history of mental illness, failed to report to his parole officer, had multiple arrests, more than sixteen.

He committed four burglaries in the same building, all from around 1:00 AM Tuesday, cops said. She was attacked on Monday. The theft victims included a twenty year old man who woke up to find that his suitcase and backpack were missing. Another man, twenty nine, had his backpack, three laptops, and headphones stolen. A fifty eight year old woman had three grand in items taken.

A fourth victim, a fifty eight year old man, reported having his yoga mat and a water container stolen. Investigators tracked one of the missing laptops, discovered it was still inside the building. The laptop tracker led them straight to this guy Rizzo, who was alone in a vacant penthouse surrounded by the items that were stolen. Even the NYPD or not the NYPD, but even the DA’s office of Alvin Bragg should be able to prosecute that crime.

And then they said when he was arraigned on Wednesday night in Manhattan criminal court, his defense attorney requested that he be sprung unsupervised release, arguing this career criminal had long suffered from housing instability. Maybe his culture was making it difficult for him to assimilate. It’s kind of one of those things. No. His housing instability and mental illness made it difficult for him, and he was ordered held without bail. But your thoughts on the latest on your investigation?

Michael Knowles on Order and Liberty

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I was thinking instability. So he ends up at NYU. One of the more shocking aspects of the story that has a lot of them is that this freaking guy got some of the most expensive apartments in New York. Can you imagine how much that apartment must cost? That’s a nice area around NYU.

This guy’s just squatting. How many people in New York would kill to get any apartment like that? Anyway, that’s a symbol actually of the broader problem, which is that the New Yorkers are subsidizing the housing of people who do not deserve it, including notably many many foreigners. It’s just so pathetic.

And it takes us all the way back really to the Declaration of Independence. Why do we have a country? You know, it says so in the Declaration of Independence. Everyone always remembers that we have a country because we want to, you know, guarantee the rights given to us by God to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But actually, the founding fathers tell us why they launched the revolution. They say they do so in order to establish their own peace and security so that they can flourish. It’s about having a good country.

And you cannot have a good country. You cannot have liberty. You cannot protect life. You certainly can’t pursue happiness if you don’t have order. And when you have vagrants, people who are getting off on multiple crimes, who are being released after short jail sentences, who are squatting without any problems, who are committing minor crimes on the streets, no one even looks at them. When you have that sort of thing, trust collapses in your society.

It inhibits you from flourishing. It inhibits your safety. You just can’t—I mean this was why Giuliani was so successful in New York with broken windows policing is he said look we want liberty, we want flourishing, but first you have to have order and order has just totally broken down certainly in the American cities but in the country broadly.

So I just think the liberals who are opposing law enforcement right now, what they’re undercutting is not just, you know, one aspect of the law. They’re undercutting all of our liberty, all of our flourishing, the whole notion that we could have a country. And they’re giving expensive apartments to lunatic criminals like this.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. I mean, NYU, I’m sure, is doing a full throated investigation now of how this guy was able to squat in campus housing. And I will say this, Michael, because both Amelia and Summer were on the show yesterday. And Summer had also been attacked on the streets of New York last May, wailed in the face by someone.

And I know some of her family very well. I did not know about the story. And she told me it was because she was traumatized, but she was humiliated. And I think that’s the instinct of a lot of people. There’s like a shame when you get victimized.

Don’t know why that happens, but it happens. It’s backwards. Of course, there’s nothing to be ashamed about. But I get it. And I think even like the tape of it was jarring for her, was upsetting to her.

In any event, it was a different assailant. But both of these girls had been attacked and assaulted just walking around New York City. I realized New York, it’s not like going to college at the University of Alabama, which is amazing and pristine. But, you know, it’s a major metropolitan city, NYU. But still, New York City used to be—it used to be relatively safe.

Under Bloomberg and Giuliani, it was safe. And now what we see is you’re going to see Amelia on this tape in a minute. She circled herself in red after getting the videotape. You see the assailant come get her. Look at her.

It’s broad daylight. It’s a crowded sidewalk. He knew tons of people would be there. He runs up to get her and wails on her. And then when she goes down, pulls her by the hair.

And the people are horrified. And it is like it is falling apart of the basic covenant of just being a citizen in a free country that this isn’t supposed to be able to happen. And there is a way of stopping this. A serial criminal arrested fifteen times just out of prison. Mental illness yet again we see.

We have the police commissioner of NYC that is saying before all this, there’s really so much the cops can do about mental illness. And she’s right. We need to lock these people up in facilities from which they are not allowed to leave even if they haven’t committed a crime. I’m sorry, but the rest of us have rights as recognized by that declaration you mentioned that are not being protected. Hang on, Michael.

I’m sorry. I want you to respond to this. But the FBI press conference is starting right now. Standby. Standby.

Watch.

FBI Press Conference on January 6 Pipe Bomber Arrest

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Good afternoon. Good afternoon. As you all know now, early this morning, Brian Cole Jr. was arrested and charged with placing the pipe bombs at the RNC and the DNC on January 5th, 2021.

He has been charged with violating 18 USC 844, which is use of an explosive device. This investigation is ongoing. As we speak, search warrants are being executed. And there could be more charges to come. I’m going to let our US attorney discuss that shortly.

This was the work of multiple agencies working together. This morning’s operation was carried out safely and successfully. We know that there are so many issues when you’re issuing search warrants. Dangerous things can happen, and this was carried out safely and securely. Thanks to all of the people standing around me.

They have worked tirelessly on this. Today’s arrest happened because the Trump administration has made this case a priority. The total lack of movement on this case in our nation’s capital undermined the public trust of our enforcement agencies. This cold case languished for four years until director Patel and deputy director Bongino came to the FBI.

The FBI along with US attorney Pirro and all of our prosecutors have worked tirelessly for months sifting through evidence that had been sitting at the FBI with the Biden administration for four long years. Let me be clear. There was no new tip. There was no new witness. Just good diligent police work and prosecutorial work working as a team along with ATF, Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police Department, and of course, the FBI.

We are working every day to restore the public’s trust. We hope that today is a significant step towards that progress. We’ll share more information when we can and when it unfolds. I cannot stress enough how hard director Patel and deputy director Bongino have worked for months to make our nation’s capital safer and to make our country safer. I’d like to introduce now director Patel.

KASH PATEL: Thank you, general. When you attack American citizens, when you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack our nation’s capital, you attack the very being of our way of life. And this FBI and this Department of Justice stand here to tell you that we will always refute it and combat it. We will provide the safest country the nation has ever seen under president Trump’s leadership here. And that’s what we did here today with great resolve on a case of massive public importance as it should be.

An individual who’s now alleged to have placed multiple explosive devices to blow up multiple people and multiple officials, innocent civilians, is now arrested thanks to the brave men and women of the FBI and the interagency. I want to take a moment to thank the Metropolitan Police Department, the United States Capitol Police, our brave prosecutors of the Department of Justice and our leader Attorney General Pam Bondi, and US Attorney Jeanine Pirro whose relentless work on this case made this possible.

As the Attorney General said, we did not discover any new information. What we did, an investigation spearheaded by the Deputy Director and the ADIC of our Washington field office brought in a new team of investigators and experts, reexamined every piece of evidence, sifted through all the data, something that the prior administration refused and failed to do.

As a result of that, we generated numerous investigative leads, executed multiple legal process with our US attorney partners, and came to this conclusion today. And that is why we were able to safely secure this individual into custody. Remember, we are dealing with an individual who is alleged to have made bombs. We cannot do this sort of takedown in haste because it endangers the lives of law enforcement. And this FBI will never allow the lives of law enforcement and our prosecutors to be put in jeopardy.

This execution was flawless in terms of teamwork, resilience, and just a good old fashioned way of police getting the job done. When you let good cops be cops, this is what happens. I’m eternally grateful to the team behind me, to the leadership at the FBI who made this possible. But I do want to highlight when I introduce the deputy, he made this case and so many others, including Summer Heat, his priority to come in here and solve it for the American people.

And today, I’m proud to stand here before you and say, we solved it. He will have his day in court. The American public and the world will learn even more information through the legal process as we have committed under this Attorney General. We are the most transparent law enforcement operation in U.S. history, but we are also going to make sure accountability is delivered to its fullest extent.

And that happens in the courts of law with our US attorneys and our prosecutors. So we will divulge information when it is prudent and constitutionally permissible while upholding the safeguards of this case to make sure that the people that this individual intended to victimize get the accountability they deserve, and most importantly, to deliver on president Trump’s promise to secure our nation’s capital and the rest of the cities in this country to make sure that Americans are allowed to go out free and securely in their neighborhoods and that people around the world are allowed to visit our nation’s capital, and they now have that trust.

Thanks to the leadership of the FBI, the Washington field office. And I’m honored now to introduce to you deputy director Bongino who spearheaded this investigation.

DAN BONGINO: Thank you all for being here for this critical investigation we’ve been working on for a very long time. We deeply appreciate it. Thank you for the kind words, attorney general and director. I appreciate it. Folks, this is what it’s like when you work for a president who tells you to go get the bad guys and stop focusing on other extraneous things not related to law enforcement. This is what happens.

We had a great team. I know it’s said a lot in this business. It was a team effort. It becomes cliche, but cliches are useful for a reason because they matter. And this was a team effort. The director and the attorney general emphasized that it was not a new public tip this came from. This was our internal work at the FBI.

And I want to just, really express my since—

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

MEGYN KELLY: Everybody lost the feed. We’re trying to get it back. You know, Fox’s feed went down. Others went down. So we’ll try to get it back.

# FBI Arrests Alleged January 6 Pipe Bomber

MEGYN KELLY: But look, nothing was said. Nothing. There was a lot of back patting, which is, but it’s a good day for it for them. Let’s not begrudge the FBI a moment of celebration as they announced they have caught what they say is the pipe bomber, Brian Cole Jr., charged him under eighteen USC eight forty four with use of an explosive device.

More charges to come potentially, saying this cold case, Pam Bondi, attorney general, languished for four years until director Patel and deputy director Bongino came to the FBI. Ms. Bondi also saying that search warrants are being executed right now on his property, that we will share more info when we can and when it unfolds, suggesting that the legal documents submitted at his arraignment later will have the details of why they believe it’s him, I guess. We learned next to nothing new about him in that press from Michael. But notwithstanding the fact that the FBI did a lot of, you know, go us.

It is kind of a day for go us over at the FBI and they’ve certainly taken a lot on the chin since they got in there.

Questions About the Suspect’s Political Motivations

MICHAEL KNOWLES: They certainly have. The question on all of our minds is why didn’t they tell us anything about him? And there are two potential reasons for that I think. One is they might just not know. You know, just arrested this guy. They’re executing more search warrants. So they might not know. And that is without question, that should be the first place that we go to.

However, let’s say that they do know something and everyone’s going to try to speculate. Is the information that they have suggesting that he’s on the right or is it suggesting that he’s on the left? It seems to me from the fact that we haven’t really heard anything about him from the FBI, probably the evidence puts him on the left. Because if there were a ton of evidence, now I’m going to put on my real cynical politician hat, if there were evidence placing him on the right, I think it would probably behoove the administration to release any information whatsoever that could complicate the story and put him onto the left or make his political motivations ambiguous.

The fact that they’ve told us nothing, they say, look, we’re going to release the biographical information when it is prudent to do so. We don’t want to compromise the investigation. Me suggests if there is evidence about a political motivation, probably it is that he’s on the left and that we’ll hear about that soon enough. And that would back up all of the information we had even before the press conference, which was most of the information that we’re going to get period.

But let’s not forget we didn’t know anything about this guy for five years and it might be the case that we might not know anything about this guy for five years in a week or two weeks or two months or something.

Upcoming Interview with Cash Patel

MEGYN KELLY: I want to hear the building blocks of how they found him. Know like I want to hear exactly what they saw in those files that led them to this guy. And you know what? We may indeed hear all of that because as of right now, we are scheduled to have a sit down with Cash Patel on this show tomorrow. So he’s agreed to do an interview with us, and I’m going to ask him all those questions, and it will be post arraignment. So we should have more details, and we should be able to get all the little breadcrumbs that led them right to this guy.

Was it just a matter of sheer will and determination and, you know, good old fashioned police work? You know, why all I keep thinking about, Michael, are those burn bags of information they found in some old room that Comey had at the FBI. You know, like and then Chris Ray. Like, what why were those there? What was this a disorganized, dysfunctional group or just a nefarious group that was actively ignoring this case because they didn’t like where it was leading? We really don’t know.

But I mean, with government incompetence, ninety nine percent of the time is your best bet. We just don’t know yet here, and I’m fascinated to hear him explain it to us.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: There is this question as to how the US marshals were able to track down the cell phones of every single person who ever even had a thought about traveling to the Capitol on January 6th and you know arrest them in their showers six months later. But this guy we’ve just known nothing about for five years. I agree with you, Megan, it certainly could be incompetence but knowing what we know about the DOJ and the FBI under Biden, it’s, and I’m sorry, Democrats really for a very long time, it’s hard for me to believe that.

That’s a great interview tomorrow. That’s very impressive. I think the only way I could scoop you on ratings is if I could get Brian Cole to sit down for an interview. But otherwise, that is going to be a must listen. I can’t wait to hear it.

MEGYN KELLY: Thank you. You might be able to get Brian Cox, who actually was a very interesting guest and told us a lot about that ship. I literally almost fell out of my chair when I saw I saw the name in my in my head. I read it as Brian Cox. I’m like, holy shit. It’s just on the ship. He fooled me too. Wow. Yeah. Not it.

Brian Cox is a distinguished man of service who we really admire, not to be confused with Cole, who is now under arrest for use of an explosive device. Okay. The feed got back up, but they were still just doing a bunch more backpacking. Darren Cox, the assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington field office says they went through three million lines of data as part of the investigation. But again, nothing more specific than that.

What’s our timing, Steve? Do we have to go? I know Michael has to go. Okay. That’s what we’ll do. I know Michael, you’re going to have to leave. We’re going to go back to this presser and continue monitoring it. Thank you, my friend. It’s great to see you today as always.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Excellent to be with you, Megan. I look forward to that interview tomorrow.

FBI Press Conference Continues

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You keep hearing the words partnership and team, and that’s what we are. And we could not do this without our U.S. Attorney, Jeanine Pirro. Jeanine, from day one, has worked tirelessly for our country and for our nation’s capital. It’s my honor to introduce my friend, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Piero.

JEANINE PIRRO: Thank you very much, Attorney General. And you have been listening to a lot of thank yous and a lot of gratitude. The reason that we’re thanking each other to the extent that we are today is because we have seen, in this case, an incredible collaboration around the clock, in the middle of the night. It doesn’t matter. We call each other. We make contact. They need a warrant. They need something. Someone wants legal advice. These are the men and women who never give it up. You hear about government employees. But I don’t know if you really realize what it is that they do. They are incredible.

And this case is big. Four years, ten months and twenty eight days ago, an individual placed a bomb in the vicinity of both the RNC and the DNC. And for that amount of time, that individual evaded accountability. Today, as a result of the cumulative efforts of the men and women in the FBI and the police department and the Department of Justice, we are finally able to make an arrest of an individual by the name of Brian Cole.

As the Attorney General has indicated, he is arrested for transporting an explosive device in interstate commerce as well as the attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials.

The Investigation Details

JEANINE PIRRO: You know, folks, this case involved millions of pieces of data. And it is a huge win because it was like finding a needle in a haystack. So much of this evidence was very specific. But a lot of it was also very general. For example, there were two hundred and thirty three thousand black end caps of the type that were used in this case. I want you to think about the fact that the FBI had to go through the sale of every one of them to try to find commonality with an individual along with the purchase of the pipe itself, the cap ends, the wires, the steel and the nine volt batteries.

Every one of those had to be mined and remined to the point where we were able to then connect. And make no mistake, it was this administration, it was this president who made the decision that we were going to use all of our efforts to get it done. And get it done, they did.

Finally, let me say this. Today begins the formal process of accountability where this defendant will begin his journey through the criminal justice system. And I pledge to you that the United States Attorney’s Office will take this case across the finish line. Again, thank you to the incredible work of the FBI, to the attorney general and to our local partners as well. This is a job that I think was well done. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: President Trump’s directive to all of us was to not only make America safe again, but DC and to make it safe and beautiful. We could not have done that without our partnership with Mayor Bowser and Chief Smith. It is my honor to introduce Metropolitan Police Department Chief Smith.

Metropolitan Police Department Statement

CHIEF PAMELA SMITH: Good afternoon, and thank you, everyone. I am Chief Pamela Smith, Chief of Police of the Metropolitan Police Department. Thank you, Attorney General Bondi, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Puro, and FBI Director Patel for having me here today.

For nearly five years, the agencies standing here today have worked together under the leadership of the FBI to locate our suspect who is responsible for the two pipe bombs that were placed around our city. MPD members assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force have supported this case from the beginning. That supports include looking, reviewing, and going through countless, probably thousands of hours of CCTV footage from around the DNC and RNC headquarters. And they followed up on hundreds and thousands of leads from members of our communities.

What I will say today is that Washingtonians can rest easier today knowing that the suspect responsible for this act is now in custody. This morning’s arrest is yet another reminder that committing any act with the intention of harming the residents and visitors of the District of Columbia will result in your arrest.

The men and women of the Metropolitan Police Department, the FBI, the ATF, the US Capitol Police, and certainly the prosecutors at our US Attorney’s Office will go to the furthest length. I heard somebody say to the end of the earth, but thank God we didn’t have to go to the end of the earth today, that we were able to bring this subject into custody.

I want to commend the men and women of the FBI and the members of the Metropolitan Police Department and all of the agencies who are standing behind me today on a job well done. I will turn it over now to Attorney General Bondi.

Press Conference Q&A

PAM BONDI: We’re going to take some questions. Just remember, as I said in the beginning, this is ongoing. It’s very active. Search warrants are still being executed. Many charges potentially to come. So just keep that in mind when asking your questions.

REPORTER: Jake, Fox News. So you said it had been nearly five years, we all know that. And you said there had been no new evidence. So can you say anything about the evidence that actually did lead to this arrest? And then secondarily, you’re talking about additional charges possibly. Can you say what those you might be considering? Are terrorism charges or what?

PAM BONDI: We can’t discuss new charges, of course, yet. Ongoing. But what I will say is why this was so incredibly important more than any other case is this is in our nation’s capital where this happened. And now, thanks to the FBI, we know that this defendant was living just miles away from here in Virginia. So as to the evidence in the case, I’m going to let Director Patel take that. But it’s still very active and very ongoing.

DIRECTOR PATEL: Thank you, General. And as I stated earlier, as the General has already reiterated, our job is to provide full accountability in the court of law with Judge Piro’s team. And in order to do that we have to preserve the chain of custody and evidentiary value. What I will say generally is that when you go through three million lines of information, you all can think about the amount of cell phone data that has to be ingested and triangulated and dumped and received.

You also have to think of just sheer human ingenuity. We brought in a team of experts who are the best at what they do in their specific fields to reevaluate that evidence, to dive back in and to not come back with a no for an answer until they had found the suspect. And when you develop evidence, get a search warrant. And when you get a search warrant, you get an address. And when you get an address, hit the house. That’s what we did.

REPORTER: Sandy, Wall Street Journal. Hi there. So what can you tell us about this person’s motivations and whether they were driven by politics or any other reason why.

PAM BONDI: Right now, it’s ongoing. Again, we just executed the search warrant early, early this morning. It’s ongoing. But America’s safer, DC’s safer because he’s in custody.

REPORTER: Mary Margaret, Delaware. Thank you so much. So any theory on why Kamala Harris has never mentioned coming within twenty feet of being assassinated? And any news on why her Secret Service team took so long to find this bomb at the DNC?

PAM BONDI: No. But what I will tell you is that evidence has been sitting there collecting dust. This wasn’t a new tip. It wasn’t some new evidence. It was the hard work of President Trump’s administration, Deputy Director Bongino and Director Patel.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

FBI Announces Arrest of Alleged January 6 Pipe Bomber

MEGYN KELLY: I watched them from day one come in here and say, we are going to solve this crime. And they did, working hand in hand with US Attorney Piero and all of our great attorneys. Pierre, can you see? General Bondi, Director Patel or Deputy Director Buntino, can you describe was there a particular moment where the evidence is coming in and it’s starting to look like progress is being made? What was the moment that you knew that you were on the road to solving the case?

Dan, you want to take that? Yes, sure. I was smiling at you because I certainly remember the moment. Darren remembers it too. He said, “Are you sitting down?”

He called me on the phone. I said, “Oh boy, why is this bad news?” And he said, “I think we got them.” What exactly that tip was, we’re going to have to pass on that for right now while we’re still there’s obviously we’re in the prologue of a long book. This is just the beginning.

This is not the end of the investigation as you all well know, having reported on these for a long time. There’s interviews to be conducted. The search warrant processing scene is not even done. So we’re at the early stages. So that’s the only reason I hesitate to tell you what the exact tip was.

But yes, that was absolutely the moment and it was due to the diligent and incredible work of a team in the Washington field office that came in and just scoured through this over and over and over and over again. In general, was it forensic? Was it a phone call? Was it something about a vehicle I’d rather I we’ll just leave it generally forensic evidence. Yeah.

It’s fair enough to say. Excuse me? How long ago that was? I’d rather not say because of the ongoing interview process. I don’t want to I just want to add something to tell you how thorough this team was.

That that moment that was kind of like the moment, that wasn’t the end. This team continued to work and work and work to get every bit of evidence that we could get. We didn’t stop at that moment. And that’s a testament to the fact that the team wanted every possible evidence piece of evidence that they could gather. One more?

Questions About Evidence and Surveillance

One more. Kelly O’Donnell in recent. Thank you so much. Have you recovered the notable sneakers? Have you done surveillance of this suspect from that moment to when you suspect exercised the search warrants today.

And obviously, this happened on January fifth into January sixth. How should the public look at this case separate from all of the cases related to what transpired on January sixth and the President’s subsequent part of this? I’m going to let Director Patel take the evidence part. We have to be careful again. You’ve asked very good investigative questions, but this is ongoing, very active.

But America should feel safer today. We say a pipe bomb. These are bombs. These were live active bombs that were placed in Washington DC. Director.

DIRECTOR PATEL: Thank you. This shows you how much detail you and the American public have paid attention to this case. Of course we analyzed everything that you’re seeing on this poster board and information that you will see through the formal charging process and court process but we want to let that evidence speak for itself because again we do disrupt the accountability that we owe the American public.

Yes, you heard about the cell phone tower data. Yes, you heard about of course we surveil individuals who we think we’re going to blow up American citizens but how and when we do it and why we do it is not something we’re ever going to reveal unless the Department of Justice deems it fit at trial.

So we appreciate your attention to detail and your hardcore investigative work but you can just imagine some of those same skills are being utilized by this FBI, this Department of Justice, our partners, the ATF and everybody across the board. And this is an interagency win for the American people. Thank you all. And one more thing, this is the best birthday present I think Deputy Director Bongino could ask for today. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas. Thank you.

Megyn Kelly’s Analysis of the Breakthrough

MEGYN KELLY: Wow. An extraordinary day for the country, for the FBI, and for justice. Now being told that they do have Brian Cole in custody, that he is the alleged pipe bomber of January fifth, 2021. And we did that time get a bit more information, not a ton, but some, saying that they went through millions of pieces of data. They said it was like finding a needle in a haystack, pointing out that there were two this is Janine Perrell mentioned.

There were two hundred I think it was Janine. Two hundred and thirty three thousand black end caps, like the caps you put on a pipe that they had to look through, like the purchases of those. The nine volt battery she mentioned, the pipes themselves. We went through it all to connect the dots, she said. Then they go they went on.

Excuse me. Kash Patel adding three million lines of info, cell phone tower info. We brought in a team of experts to come back in and pour over all of this information. We told them we would not take no for an answer. Find the suspect.

Saying Pam Bondi saying this evidence has been sitting there collecting dust under Joe Biden. It was the hard work of Dan Bongino and Kash Patel that got it done. Janine Piro, saying this team came back and worked to get every possible piece of evidence. The question by Kelly O’Donnell, who what she’s still with NBC. I don’t I don’t watch mainstream media anymore, asking if they recovered the sneakers, if they recovered, if they did any surveillance.

And Kash basically saying yes without saying yes. He said, this FBI absolutely does surveil someone who wants to blow up hundreds of thousands of Americans and uses cell phone tower data too. You you can assume some of those techniques were used in this case. We’re going to learn more today. Believe that this I believe we’re going to see the we’ll have an arraignment.

We’ll have some court proceeding later today. We’ll see the supporting affidavit in support of the arrest by the arresting officer, the FBI agent, similar to the way we did in Brian Kohlberger. And that will spell out exactly how they got the arrest warrant for this guy. So we’re going to know a lot more by the time Kash, hopefully, will be sitting down with us this time around. He’s agreed.

Just, you know, you never know. He’s busy. Then there was that great moment where the reporter asked how to just tell was a clever question because they weren’t answering any of the substantive questions. So he said, can you at least tell us what the moment was like when you realized, OMG, I think we got him. And Dan Bongino telling the story about being called by, one of the fellow FBI supervisors who asked Dan, “Are you sitting down?”

Thinking it was going to be bad news, and the guy saying, “I think we got him.” Then they pointed out search warrant is right at this moment still being executed so they can’t share the exact tip or comment that followed that, but did say it was forensic evidence. It was forensic. That could mean anything. I’m not sure exactly what it means.

The Investigative Process

It sounds like it goes back to the analysis. They were taking the pipes. They were taking the the cap ends, the nine volt batteries, all these things that had had to be purchased. And they, I guess, we’re assuming was purchased in the metropolitan DC area. They probably started there.

And then you try to see whose credit card paid for what. You try to match up those receipts. There’d be millions of them, you know, two hundred thirty three thousand for the black end caps alone. Cross reference, trying to figure out whether, you know, one person is on more than one list. And before you know it you’ve got maybe a couple of profiles and then you see height, right?

You try to figure out who could I rule out. This person has died since then. This person whatever is six foot four. This person has a travel record stamped by immigration showing he was in Italy at the time. Right?

That kind of thing. I mean, that that’s old fashioned police work that could get you a very narrow list and then possible surveillance. I mean, one of the things they said they were concerned about is if they’re executing the active search warrant right now in this guy’s backyard, they’re worried about bombs. I mean, this guy clearly knows how to make them if this is the right man. And so everyone needs to be careful.

The agents who are on-site are potentially endangered, so are the dogs, so is the neighborhood. And, so everything has got to be handled just right. I think they handled this well because they needed to tell people that they made an arrest. It was going to leak anyway, but they didn’t get too far ahead of their skis by saying anything that could compromise the investigation prior to actually charging him in court. And then passing the baton to Janine Piro, the US attorney now for the District of Columbia.

Reflecting on the FBI’s Achievement

Look, it was a great day for the FBI, and I didn’t realize it was Dan’s birthday. Happy birthday to him, such a sweetheart. He’s had a rough few months down there too. I don’t think any of them really loving being in government. You can’t blame them.

Does it look fun? It doesn’t look fun to me. Dan had a great life, sort of Kash on the outside. They did this for all of us. They’ve received nothing but sh*t for saying yes.

I mean, nothing. Like people turned on them in an instant, suggesting they’d gone deep state because they came out on Epstein and said, like, we actually think he did kill himself. They like, they were not to be forgiven for drawing that conclusion. It’s been really crazy how people reacted to them. I think they’re trying to do their job as law enforcement officers.

Hasn’t been flawless, but it’s been very solid. Those arrest stats that we read the other day from Kash were really impressive. And this is amazing, assuming they have the right guy, and that’ll play out. But this is amazing. Thank God this person is under arrest.

This was a crime that should not have gone punishment free or in without identification of the suspect. Who knows what this guy would have done next? Who knows whether that would have been his alleged crime, his last alleged crime? And I for one can’t wait to find out exactly exactly what it was that led them to him. Okay.

I’m going to hand it over to my pal Emily Jasinski. She’s here. She’s going to be hosting the Megyn Kelly show wrap up program, and there’s so much to discuss. I don’t can I talk to Emily, is that not possible? We have figured out that technology.

I can’t talk to her. Only you can talk to her. So you can call in now and talk to one of the EJs, Emily Jashinsky, host of the MK wrap up show. Thanks to all of you for listening. Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow when we believe we will have Kash Patel live.

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