Julie Kelly returned to the Seth and Chris Show this week to discuss U.S. Senator Cory Booker’s eye-popping, arm-flailing, “tears-of-rage” rant at Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Kelly wrote about it with Julie Gunlock, pointing out the double-standard in the way men on the Left treat prominent women on the Right. Nielsen isn’t the only woman Democratic Party politicians and the press treat like garbage with impunity. Listen to the interview and read the transcript.
Chris Buskirk: I am Chris Buskirk. Welcome back to the Seth and Chris Show. I know you’ve been waiting for it. I was teasing it all last hour. We are joined by Julie Kelly. Julie, how are you? Julie is a contributor to American Greatness, and she’s got another good one up today. What’s going on?
Julie Kelly: Hey, Chris. How are you? Thanks for having me on…
Chris Buskirk: Doing well. Boy, you are on a roll lately. Are you feeling it? Are you getting winded yet, or are you just getting started?
Julie Kelly: I can’t stop. I think I have like writing OCD or something, it’s . . .
Chris Buskirk: As OCD goes, that’s pretty good.
Julie Kelly: Yeah. Not much to do in the cold and snow but write, so that’s good.
Chris Buskirk: Now, hold on a second, you’re not telling me that come spring or summer we’re not gonna hear from you, are you?
Julie Kelly: No. No. Not a chance.
Chris Buskirk: Okay. So, you’ve, actually this was a really good one. They all are, but I really liked this one today about Cory Booker: “Bullying Booker and the War on Women on the Right.” You wrote this with another Julie. We’re gonna have to, I don’t know, what are we gonna start calling you, One, Two, and Three? Or just by initials? We’ve got a lot of Julies at American Greatness now.
Julie Kelly: We do. There’s three of us, so the original Julie, then me, and now Julie Gunlock is number three, we told her.
Chris Buskirk: So, you and Julie Gunlock wrote this. What was the catalyst? Well, tell us what the thesis is from this. Actually, hold on, here’s what I’m gonna do. Sorry. I’m gonna read your favorite writer back to you: you. So, you say, “At a January 16 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Cory Booker informally announced he’s running for president in 2020 by bullying Kirstjen Nielsen, President Trump’s DHS secretary. With eyes and neck veins popping, Booker pounded his fist, pointed his finger, yelled accusations of racism, and further accused the secretary of lying. She in turn could do nothing but sit in dignified silence as this went on. His posture was threatening, even scary.”
It’s amazing video, I mean you’re not exaggerated there for effect. He looks like a crazy person.
Julie Kelly: He does. And you know, I think that anybody who has seen the video knows. I saw it as it was posted the other day, well Tuesday it happened, and I was just livid, because not just how he was treating her, and first of all, let’s be clear. This was at a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting. He was not upset about a policy. He was not talking about anything that she has to do with. He was upset about Trump’s remarks that she said she did not hear, and he went on a complete tirade and accused her of being stupid, of being a racist, of being a liar. He’s been on the news the last few days accusing her of lying under oath when he has no evidence that the president ever said these things.
But the point in the piece is that this is just one more example of difference of how women on the Right are treated, and it gets accepted in the media and it’s accepted by Democrats and the women who are gonna wear their hats again this weekend. No one speaks up, and in fact, he was lauded as a hero by some of the very same women who have been decrying the resistance and talking about female empowerment and how we need to be respected and treated well. These very same women have lauded him as a hero the last two days.
Chris Buskirk: Julie, why is that? This is always the thing that pops into normal people’s minds is you see these women who are lauding Cory Booker for his behavior, which was just atrocious. I mean—and I’m being there nice there—but you see these women who are always, as you say, talking about female empowerment and all these sorts of things, and then they look at Cory Booker and go, “Yeah. More of that.” How do you hold these two contradictory opinions in your head at one time?
Julie Kelly: I just, I don’t know. I hear this a lot of the Republican women. I’ve heard this from Democrats. People legitimately asking me, “I don’t understand how you can be a Republican.” I just don’t think that they can grasp the fact that women number one, think for themselves, and that why we are Republicans, or conservatives, or wherever we are in the spectrum, they just feel like because of certain policies that we should just fall in line with the Left.
And it enrages them that you have a very poised, intelligent, smart woman like Kirstjen Nielsen presenting herself, and sat there and took it from him. I mean, she was so graceful, and poised, and classy. I would not have done that. So, I give her kudos how she conducted herself. And I just . . . they can’t grasp the fact that women are conservatives or on the Right, and they certainly cannot accept the fact that we voted for Donald Trump or that anyone, any woman, would work for him.
Chris Buskirk: What’s the argument, and how would you meet that argument, if somebody told you that? Or I guess people do say this to you. What do you say back to them?
Julie Kelly: I mean, I’ve heard it, I wrote a piece for you guys about this a couple of months ago. I’ve been called everything from an idiot to a racist, betrayer to my own gender. I mean, I just say, “Look, it doesn’t even have to be about Hillary Clinton anymore. This is a president who, with all of his flaws, is doing what a lot of people want done, and that is speaking up to the powers that be, whether it’s in Hollywood, in government, and academia that completely undermine our values all the time, do not listen to us, we still hear that. He’s not gonna do it in a graceful, elegant way. That’s not how it’s done. So, he’s smashing this. And it scares people on the—Republicans, too. We’ve talked about this as well. So, I voted within not just my best interests, my family’s best interests, but how I view it in my country’s best interest.”
And we would not be where we are today learning about the corruption of the Obama Administration, making the media accountable, calling out these hypocrites in Hollywood and professional sports if Hillary Clinton were president. I mean, that’s just a fact. This needs to happen, and this needs a man to do it.
Chris Buskirk: You know, I’ll tell you Julie, there’s no way to know, history does not reveal her alternatives, but I would, I think I would say that were Hillary Clinton to be president right now, God forbid, that we would never have heard about Harvey Weinstein. We would never have heard about all of these other, in some cases, rapists, abusers, harassers that by and large are mostly card carrying leftists, in the media or in the culture complex. Do you think that sounds right?
Julie Kelly: I think that’s true and I think there’s fact to back it up. I mean, Ronan Farrow’s story was buried up until Election Day. And so I think that he could peddle it out there after Trump was elected safely. And so, yes . . .
And look, there are people who are upset about that. There are powerful men in Hollywood, and in government, and throughout any sector that are angry that Trump has brought this really accountability to them despite whatever accountability he might have, they keep using that as an example, that doesn’t erase what’s been happening. And I think that people like Cory Booker, he’s so symbolic of the emotional, factless, ad hominem attacks that the Left take at everyone in Trump’s universe.
And you know what, Chris, for three female senators to sit there and let him treat not just another woman that way, but a high-ranking federal official the way that he did, and they sat there silent. So did the men. Lindsay Graham sat there. Dick Durbin sat there. Dick Durbin, who was so offended at Trump’s comment, sat there and let this man call her a racist, a liar, stupid, and did not say a word. That is unforgivable.
Chris Buskirk: Yeah. How about Lindsay Graham, right? I mean, you mentioned him, but I mean, there’s a great example. If Donald Trump looks sideways at somebody, he can’t jump to a microphone fast enough to find some type of criticism of the president, but has no problem with what Cory Booker does.
Julie Kelly: And Chris, they think the American people are stupid. And we know this. We know that people see right through that. They see what Lindsay Graham is doing. They see what Dick Durbin is doing. They see what people like Cory Booker [are] doing. They know that they are hypocrites and they are only in this for themselves, and they don’t care who they victimize along the way.
They want this presidency not just undermined, they want it completely destroyed because he is a threat to Lindsay Graham, he is a threat to Cory Booker, he is a threat to their power base. And you know, the people out there who think this is gonna get better, it’s not. This year is gonna be worse than last year, and it’s gonna be worse than 2016, because this is a battle.
I mean, I don’t want to use the word war, but when you have a man like Cory Booker get away with what he did yesterday, you have to realize what’s at stake. These people will use any tactic necessary to take down the side that we are fighting for.
Chris Buskirk: For all the criticisms we have of the Left, one of them is we can never say they don’t take their politics seriously, right?
Julie Kelly: Right.
Chris Buskirk: We gotta run to a break. You have another segment in you?
Julie Kelly: Oh, absolutely.
Chris Buskirk: Very good. Very good. Julie Kelly is our guest. She is a contributor to American Greatness. She’s written a great piece, which I commend to all of you, “Bullying Booker and the War on Women on the Right.” I’m Chris Buskirk. This is the Seth and Chris Show. We’ll be right back.
I am Chris Buskirk. This is the Seth and Chris Show. Julie Kelly is our guest. She is a contributor to American Greatness. Wrote a very good piece, another very good piece I guess is what I should say, for American Greatness, called “Bullying Booker and the War on Women on the Right.” Julie Kelly wrote it with Julie Gunlock.
You cite some great examples, Julie. Kellyanne Conway’s been in the cross hairs, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Betsy DeVos, Melania Trump, of course. One that occurred to me . . . is Ann Coulter. She took a lot of abuse from people like Rick Wilson during the campaign. She still does. And the things that Rick Wilson wrote on Twitter about Ann Coulter, I would not only not say them on the radio, I don’t think I would say them out loud in a basement closet alone at midnight. They were truly disgusting.
Julie Kelly: They are. I think Ann might be a little different than, say, Sarah Sanders of Kellyanne. I mean, Ann is out there. She’s a warrior and I know she gets disgusting things said about her. But I think in the piece today, when you look at, let’s take Sarah Sanders for an example. She is the first mother to hold position of White House press secretary. If she were a Democrat, she would be at hero worship status. She’d be on the cover of every woman’s magazine, there’d be glowing profiles of her everywhere.
Chris Buskirk: Oh my gosh, I mean, Vanity Fair would have her on the cover every month.
Julie Kelly: Oh, they would. She’d have the Michelle Obama treatment. She would be all . . . so, yes. Another example of the hypocrisy, but from day one, she has been smeared in the most despicable way by male columnists. I mean, we’re talking about Pulitzer Prize-winning columnists for the L.A. Times who called her “chunky soccer mom.” You’ve got New York Times columnists making fun of how [inaudible 00:12:18], how she dresses, how she talks, she needs a vocabulary lesson.
Chelsea Handler, her depictions of, Saturday Night Live‘s depictions of Sarah Sanders, you have never seen anything like that. So, if you wanted, I think the best example of the hypocrisy of how women on the right or Trump’s female officials are treated versus liberal or left leaning counterparts, Sarah Sanders is a perfect example.
Chris Buskirk: Oh, she is. I mean, they’re after her all the time. You cited an instance here, Mika Brzezinski mom-shamed her. Explain what that was all about.
Julie Kelly: So, Mika Brzezinski, who’s got her own personal issues with her now-fiance and co-host Joe Scarborough, she’s the last person who should be talking about how you should present yourself for your children.
Chris Buskirk: You mean, like not dating your co-host while he’s married to someone else?
Julie Kelly: Yes. Exactly. Not splitting up your own marriage and then his marriage when you both have children, and I mean, you know, going out in public together constantly. So, she’s got her own issues. So, she’s the last person who should comment about Sarah Sanders, who’s doing her job, who’s sitting for the president, speaking for the president like all press secretaries do.
She said on her show, “How can you look, basically how can you look, you’re the mother of three children. How can you go out there and do this? How can you look them in the eye?” And said that her relationship with Trump was sick. I mean, how can you say that about this woman who was up there doing the most difficult job, I would argue, in the White House. Doing it with such grace, such toughness, and attack her for being a mom in that position. It just goes against everything that they have been saying for decades, because she doesn’t believe in their ideology.
Chris Buskirk: Right. And then remember when she posted, well you cite this, but remember when she posted on Twitter pictures of some pies that she baked at Thanksgiving? Of course, that made her just an object of ridicule yet again.
Julie Kelly: It did. I mean, could you imagine if a female Obama press secretary who was a mom posted a pie?
Chris Buskirk: If she posted—right—the narrative, if it’s an Obama appointee or a Democrat posting a pie, then it’s, “Look, she can do it all. She’s a mom. She can bake pies and she’s a master of the universe, too.” No, if it’s Sarah Sanders doing it, then as you put it, “She’s an obese dumb Southern hillbilly.” That’s the way she is depicted on SNL, on Saturday Night Live.
Julie Kelly: Yes. And Chelsea Handler calling her basically, I mean, I don’t want to say on your show, but referring to her in the most just degrading, horrific terms. These are women who profess to be feminists. They’re not. They’re liberals, and quite honestly, they’re cowards. They’re cowards because they have a certain platform. Cory Booker, you’re a coward. If you’re upset about what Trump says, go say that to his face. But what does Cory Booker do? He attacked a woman sitting there on something she had nothing to do with, she didn’t say, acts like Mr. Tough Guy, calls her all kinds of names, goes on TV a few days later.
No report has called him out on this by the way. Chris Cuomo was actually going after the RNC chair today because she was trying to hold Cory Booker to account. Chris Cuomo couldn’t understand what the big hubbub was about. But I mean, you just can’t fully grasp, it’s not hypocrisy, because it’s worse than that. I mean, they’re out to destroy these women who are part of this presidency in the most ugly, personal, vicious way, and the media is sitting there letting it, not just letting it happen, but contributing to it.
Chris Buskirk: Do you remember about four or five years ago, it came out that Cory Booker had an imaginary friend, T-Bone? Do you remember this story?
Julie Kelly: I haven’t, but I heard the story since.
Chris Buskirk: So, you know, he was the mayor of what was it? Was it Jersey City or was it Newark? I think it was Newark, right?
Julie Kelly: Newark. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Chris Buskirk: Yeah. He had this story. He was another one of these people, wanted to present himself as though he’s a man of the people, he wants to present he’s comfortable on the streets with the real people of Newark and all this sort of thing. He’s got a very rarefied pedigree if you look at his résumé, and he made up this character, which he said was a real person, T-Bone. Drug dealer, but he was personally counseling him, and he would tell all these stories when he was running for mayor of Newark and while he was mayor about how he would always go and visit T-Bone, T-Bone was struggling, didn’t want life on the streets, was trying to get straight. All these just, I mean it was like a bad Lifetime movie.
But Cory Booker was there. He told all these stories. Well, T-Bone doesn’t exist. It was completely made up out of whole cloth, and then when he was pushed on, he said, “You know, I haven’t been able to get in touch with T-Bone lately.” Everybody’s like, “OK.”
Julie Kelly: Well, Chris, he pulled this the other day. He said how he and his family struggled to find housing. He was raised in an affluent suburb and went to his Ivy, he was a football star in high school. He went to Ivy League schools, and the idea that he and his family were walking around with their belongings, white people were turning them away in the ’80s is preposterous. The whole show is ridiculous. And I know some people were making light of it, like, “Oh, you know, just his theatrics,” but I thought it was more than that.
Chris Buskirk: Yeah. I mean, Cory Booker went to Stanford, got an undergraduate degree at Stanford where he played football. He had a masters at Stanford, and then he was a Rhodes Scholar and went to Oxford, right? Fine. Okay. Just don’t pretend to be something you’re not. I think that’s all anybody wants of people. Just be who you actually are. You got an elite education. Good for you. Just don’t pretend that you were raised on the streets. You weren’t.
Julie Kelly: With T-Bone, right?
Chris Buskirk: With T-Bone. Right. Julie Kelly, thanks so much for being our guest. We’ll have to get you back on more frequently. We’ve got to do this, this is always fun. Julie, stick with me. I want to talk to you, so hold on a second.
Julie Kelly: Okay.
Chris Buskirk: After this, we’ll have Michael Walsh. I’m Chris Buskirk, this is the Seth and Chris Show and we’ll be right back.