Megan McCain has entered the chat.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to Megan McCain has entered the chat with your host, me, Megan McCain, and obviously here every day.

My amazing executive producer, Miranda Wilkins, Miranda, I just want to start out by thanking you and thanking our producer Kara Kaplan.

We've had an incredible first episode.

I have had such amazing feedback.

I feel so grateful and just overwhelmed with the amount of positive feedback we have had. And I just want to thank everyone

who has cared to listen, who has cared to download. It really has truly just been a wonderful

surprise. I think when you start something like this, you know,

I listen to a lot of podcasts and I feel like everybody has a podcast and you've just taken a leap.

And it's just been so great so far. So I just wanted to thank everyone. I was so excited to get

messages from like my family. My aunt was that I had the best morning walk with my dogs this

morning. You and Megan are my, like my new best friends, my best walking buddies ever. So,

uh, hi, Aunt Val. It was the best. It was very, very sweet to get all those like really lovely

messages from friends, uh, family people haven't even heard from in a while saying, oh my gosh, I heard you on this new podcast.

So very excited.

And we are literally just getting started.

And today we have a really incredible show.

We have Senator Ted Cruz, who really needs no introduction, but he co-hosts his own podcast, which is very popular called The Verdict, with my good friend Ben Ferguson, who is also a

longtime radio host and political analyst. So they are first guests. And then we have also someone

who really needs no introduction, Leah McSweeney, who is a reality television star designer,

political commentator, which I have an interesting story about how we met, which is actually

through politics before she was ever on the Real Housewives of New York. And I've been in constant

...