President Joe Biden doesn’t do a lot of media, but he found time to grab ice cream and talk about ‘threats to democracy’ with late night host Seth Meyers on Monday.
The 81-year-old incumbent traveled to New York City for a pre-recorded interview to mark the tenth anniversary of Late Night with Seth Meyers that was filled with plenty of fluff (an ice cream run, questions about a possible endorsement from Taylor Swift) and, as Megyn pointed out, very little fact.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Mary Katharine Ham, host of Getting Hammered, to discuss the sit down and fact-check some of Biden’s claims.
‘The Biggest Hack’
Given the scarcity and rarity of Biden’s media appearances, it is always noteworthy to see who he chooses to talk to. “President Biden finally gave an interview,” Megyn noted. “He didn’t want to do CBS and Gayle King, so he decided instead to go – forgive me – balls to the wall Seth Meyers.”
Megyn, for one, was not impressed with the selection. “I think I can safely say [he is] the biggest hack at NBC,” she said. “It’s a fierce competition, so right on, Seth. You’re number one. Yay. You won.”
But she does believe it tells you what you need to know about how the White House was approaching the interview. “We knew this about [Meyers] beforehand, but that’s why [he] was chosen,” she explained. “So, congrats.”
Fact-Checking Biden
When it came to the content of the conversation, Megyn joked that it was a “scintillating exchange” that lived up to all the journalistic standards you would expect from NBC. “Don’t forget, as Rachel Maddow has explained to us many times, NBC is a place you go for truth and for fact checking when something false is said,” she shared. “That’s the principle they live by. That’s why they cannot even air Donald Trump.”
And yet, as she pointed out, they had “absolutely no problem” broadcasting this exchange between Biden and Meyers:
MEYERS: He talks about how he wants to be a dictator on day one and only day one. You are someone who has dealt with dictators over the years. It does seem as though democracy, in vague terms, somehow is not easy for us to grasp. Having dealt with dictators, what do you see in a world where democracy is actually at risk in a way it might be in this election?
BIDEN: The first thing they do, dictators do, is they disregard whatever the rule of law is. They just disregard. Here’s a guy who says he wants to– he thinks he can change the Constitution and the court, just ignore portions of the Constitution. Here’s the guy who talks about retribution.
Here’s the guy– look, you have the guys, the thousands of people who stormed the Capitol, stormed the Capitol. They’re insurrectionists. Two cops died. Other people were badly hurt. And what did he say? They got convicted and/or they pled guilty, and he said they’re patriots. Patriots. And he says he’s going to forgive them all. He’s going to– and you’re going to– every one of them is going to be released. What does– I mean, that, that’s what happens in Eastern European countries. That’s not what happens in America. We’re– and the idea that he thinks he can do that. The idea–
He talks about things like, for example, the idea that he said the Congress wants to pass an overwhelmingly, a border provision that would allow us to control the border. The first bill they introduced called for that. And here they’re saying, he’s saying, ‘No, don’t do that because that will help Biden.’ Help Biden? It’s about– not about Biden. It’s about the United States of America.
And look, it just– [pause] I don’t want to get started. I really don’t. Democracy is at stake.
While Meyers may not have been in the business of fact-checking the president, Megyn was more than happy to. “‘Trump wants to disregard the rule of law’? You mean like what you’re doing in these federal prosecutions, breaking norms that we never crossed before in our 200-plus year history,” Megyn asked. “‘He wants to ignore the Constitution’? You literally just bragged about doing that with respect to student debt forgiveness. ‘They told me I couldn’t do it, and I did. I didn’t listen to them.'”
But that’s not all. “‘[Trump] is about retribution’? Look at what he’s doing to Trump, not to mention that FBI informant who turned out to be, they say, not credible and is getting treated like no one else who double-crossed the FBI and gave false information,” Megyn added. “‘They stormed the Capitol and cops died’? That’s not true, either. They’ve been telling that lie over and over.”
And then there is the immigration debate, which Megyn said Biden got all wrong. “It is about the United States of America,” she noted. “But you say we need to be more humane, which is why you opened the border and your proposed border bill was full of holes and was actually totally feckless.”
Ham, meanwhile, took issue with the president’s mention of non-democratic nations. “He notes ‘that’s what Eastern European countries do’ – well, you know what a nefarious government might also do,” she asked. “They might call the duly elected president a foreign asset, and use national intel wrongly against him, and use a compliant media to say that he was a Russian asset, and then pretend that never happened. That’s a thing that might happen in one of those countries, and that is what happened to Donald Trump.”
Ultimately, Megyn said she and Biden are at least partially aligned on one thing. “Democracy is at stake,” she concluded. “But not for the reasons he says.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Ham by tuning in to episode 732 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.