A million-dollar waterfront mansion belonging to Circuit Court Judge Diane Goodstein burned to the ground in South Carolina over the weekend.
Goodstein had recently ruled against the Justice Department, which led some on the left to reflexively blame the right for the blaze as media outlets painted her as someone who had been criticized by the Trump administration. As it turns out, authorities in the Palmetto State said Monday that there is no evidence to suggest that the fire was deliberately set – yet there has been no backtracking from those who didn’t wait for the facts to come out.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review to discuss the lies that have gone uncorrected in the story.
The Fire
The Post and Courier reported that a massive fire broke out Goodstein’s Edisto Beach home around 11:30am Saturday. The judge was walking her dogs on the nearby beach when the blaze began, but her 81-year-old husband, former South Carolina Sen. Arnold Goodstein, was injured after jumping out of the back of the house to escape. The local fire chief said two other people were also hospitalized with injuries.
The State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) confirmed over the weekend it was actively investigating the incident. SLED Chief Mark Keel updated the public on Monday that the fire did not appear to be intentionally set. On X, Gov. Henry McMaster said he echoed the chief’s call for “everyone to exercise good judgment and avoid sharing unverified information while the investigation continues.”
The word of warning was necessary in large part due to the snap judgement of leftist politicians and commentators in the wake of the blaze. Many tried to seize on the fact that Goodstein ruled against the Trump DOJ in early September in a dispute over voter data with the South Carolina elections commission. She was later overruled by a higher court. Megyn said the ruling “wasn’t a big deal.”
“She temporarily blocked the state’s election commission from releasing its voter files to the DOJ. The DOJ is looking for voter files because they’re trying to comply with Trump’s executive order to stop noncitizens from registering to vote,” she explained. “She didn’t want to turn over the information, and she said, ‘I’m going to temporarily block this.’ That was later reversed by the South Carolina Supreme Court… To me, that’s your bargain variety legal dispute. She did rule against Trump, but whatever.”
At the time, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon called out Goldstein’s ruling on X, saying she would “not stand for a state court judge’s hasty nullification of our federal voting laws.” She went on to write that she “will allow nothing to stand in the way of our mandate to maintain clean voter rolls.”
Jumping to Conclusions
That series of events is seemingly what led Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) to blame “the extreme right” for what he unfoundedly branded an arson attack. “Trump, @StephenM and MAGA-world have been doxxing and threatening judges who rule against Trump, including Judge Goodstein,” he wrote on X. “Today, someone committed arson on the Judge’s home, severely injuring her husband and son. Will Trump speak out against the extreme right that did this??”
White House Deputy Chief Of Staff Stephen Miller, wasted no time excoriating the lawmaker, calling the NY Dem “deeply warped and vile” and accused him of continuing “to push despicable lies, demented smears, malicious defamation, and foment unrest.”
Democrat operative Neera Tanden, meanwhile, retweeted a post connecting Dhillon’s rather benign rhetoric to the fire. “That’s how [Dhillon], according to the left, somehow incited an alleged arson that didn’t take place,” Megyn quipped.
And then there were the countless news outlets that tried to tie “criticism” of Goodstein’s decision to the fire before a single thing was known about what actually happened.
On Defense
Megyn said it speaks to the desperation on the left. “That’s the state of America today, where you’re seeing figures on the right… being actually assassinated or assassination attempts,” she noted. “And as conservatives run around saying… ‘We really would like you to just put some sort of a cap on the incendiary talk about very prominent right-wing figures, especially right now when we’re in danger of copycats,’ we just keep getting told it’s ‘both sides’… And now they rush to judgment because you could feel the excitement on their part that they thought they finally had one.”
In Lowry’s view, the arson claims were wild from the start. “It’s very unlikely someone’s going to go commit an act of arson at 11:30am… with people in the home. It doesn’t make any sense. And then there was no perpetrator or suspect,” he explained. “So, you’re leaping to the conclusion that it’s arson, and then you’re leaping on top of that conclusion that it was politically motivated arson, and then you’re leaping on top of that that it was MAGA, politically motivated arson?”
“The only reason you do that is because you’re feeling extremely defensive because there have been these hideous acts of political violence that your own side has committed, and you want to engage in ‘whataboutism’ or ‘both sides-ism’ and use this terrible house fire as an example,” Lowry added. “[Goldman] should be humiliated… and apologize to everyone he misled and apologize directly to Stephen Miller. Of course, he’ll never do it.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Lowry and Coke by tuning in to episode 1,166 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.