← After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky
Dark Networks Pushing ICE Protests, and Epstein's Media Ties, with Peter Schweizer, PLUS Super Bowl Culture Clash
01:16:50
Emily Jashinsky opens up the show with a wide-ranging discussion about immigration and anti-ICE protests with #1 New York Times bestselling author of “The Invisible Coup,” Peter Schweizer. They discuss how recent violent protests are part of a coordinated effort that are backed by foreign governments and radical activist networks. Schweizer explains how these groups help undermine American immigration enforcement and why. Then the two discuss the latest reporting on the Epstein scandal from Semafor’s Max Tani detailing how Epstein used the media in an attempt to rehab his reputation. Emily and Peter also talk about Epstein’s ties to the Clinton world and how elites were willing to look the other way to protect money, power, and status. Then Emily reacts to the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny’s performance, Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show,” and she explains how the dueling performances serve as further proof of monoculture’s demise. Next, Emily breaks down how comedian Hannah ...
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Commercial Narrator
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Emily Vilmick
All right, welcome to After Party everyone. I'm not sure if the graphic rule something something on my end. The return might have been messed up on my end, but welcome to After Party everyone. Don't worry about it. We're live. That's what's great about Afterparty. Live, Live, live. Love doing it. It's 10pm it's late night and we are here as always on Monday and Wednesday at 10pm Eastern. Of course you can catch us later on YouTube. And wherever you get your podcast, please do subscribe. It help much. Your reviews have been so kind on Apple. That helps a lot as well. Thank you. And again, if you subscribe on the podcast feed, you get our special bonus edition of the show on Fridays called Happy Hour where I talk to all of you via all the questions you Send in to emilyvilmickairmedia.com so excited about tonight's guest. Peter Schweitzer is here in just one moment. He has a new book out called the Invisible Coup. Let me tell you, you're going to want to stick around for this. I'll of course be covering the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny gate, whatever we have to call it. We'll we'll dive into that. I did go back and look at the viral 2001 Super bowl halftime performance that excerpts of were going viral last night as a contrast with what was happening on stage at the halftime show. I watched the full Turning Point halftime show and am ready to talk about all of it. Also going to touch on the new Real Housewives of New York City franchise because Jill Zarin, who you may remember from the original Real Housewives franchise, also has a lot of thoughts on the Bad Bunny performance. And another podcaster, comedian podcaster is on the hook for making an ice joke. So we're gonna get into all of that on tonight's edition of the show in just one moment. Peter Schweitzer will be joining us. But first we gotta sell some Masa chips. They are absolutely the best. You don't have to overhaul your whole life in 2026. Remember that. Start with simple swaps like upgrading your snacks. Masa chips are made with just three real ingredients. You know I love this because you can see them right on the bag. They've got that great organic corn, sea salt and 100 grass fed beef tallow which makes a huge difference. No seed oils, no fillers, no mystery chemicals, just seriously good tasting food. Unlike regular chips, Masa leaves you feeling satisfied and energized, not bloated or sluggish. And because they're more filling, you won't find yourself mindlessly snacking and still feeling hungry after My favorite masa flavor is lime. If you can't tell from the ridiculous tan that I have, I was on vacation and realized when I was eating restaurant tortilla chips how spoiled I am with all of my masa chips at home. So if you're ready to give masa a try, go to masachips.com afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY for 25 off your first order or simply click the link in the video description or scan the QR code to claim this delicious offer. If you don't feel like ordering online, Masa is now available nationwide. At your local Sprouts supermarket, stop by and pick up a a couple of bags before they're gone.
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Emily Vilmick
Happy to be joined now by Peter Schweitzer. He's the President of the Government Accountability Institute. He's the author of four number one New York Times bestsellers. His latest book came out on January 20. It is called the Invisible How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigran Operation as a Weapon. Peter is also the host of the Drill down with Peter Schweitzer Podcast. Peter, it's great to see you.
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Peter Schweitzer
Hey, great to be with you, Emily. Thanks so much for having me.
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Emily Vilmick
Of course. And in the spirit of full disclosure, Peter and I are both members of the Young America's Foundation Board of Directors together. So Peter is a friend and I have been looking forward to digging into this book and talking with you about it. Peter, for a long time. I want to start with something you actually mentioned in your introduction. You take us back to those scenes in Los Angeles that many people probably remember early and anti ice riots in this second Trump administration and you say quote. On the surface these scenes painted a jarring picture of the consequences of an open border policy. However, a deeper look exposes something far more alarming. The weaponization of mass migration as a tool of subversion against the United States by foreign governments and organizations as well as their domestic allies. As we will see, the LA and other violent protests were encouraged by foreign governments. Now Peter, I imagine. In fact I know based on the publication date this went to print before the mayhem in Minneapolis totally took off. And on that note, I want to bring some video to viewers from over the weekend lest people think this is over with. Because Tom Holman arrived in Minneapolis, there were still seems of scenes of mayhem over the weekend. Let's roll. S1 you are under arrest. Be seated where you are and follow the directions of officer where you are and follow the rest of Officer. So, Peter, still clearly an organized effort to subvert ICE activities in Minneapolis. And one of the questions that had, as I was reading the book is so many native born Americans, white, Hispanic, black women, whoever, are part of these organized anti ICE groups. And I was wondering if you could just explain a little bit about how there's this balance between ideological Americans or maybe even well intentioned Americans. And are they not aware perhaps that some strings are being pulled behind the scenes?
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Peter Schweitzer
Yeah, that's a great question, Emily. And it's always hard to get into the mind of individual people. But we know a couple of things, as you point out, there are, you know, regular Americans, so to speak, who go to these protests who are opposed to what ICE is doing. There's also a group of hardcore activists, hardcore activists that don't just want protests, don't want just wave signs. They actually want conflict, they want violence. And these are the groups that I think are most interesting to focus on and most important. And a lot of them have foreign ties. So, you know, to begin with, you have, in the case of Mexico, the Mexican government, this network of Mexican government officials who actually live inside the United States, even though they work for the Mexican government. They're either advisors to the Foreign Ministry, or some of them serve in the Mexican parliament or Senate. Others work for Mexican consulates. And as we saw in Los Angeles in 2025, some of the people fanning the flames of these protests, organizing them, spreading the word about them, are these Mexican government officials. One Mexican official named Alejandro Robles, who lives in Ontario, California, described how he went to all these meetings across the United States to quote, unquote, organize the militancy, in his words. So he was meeting with antifa groups, he was meeting with others, and this was to organize the opposition to the Trump administration's immigration policies. If you look at an adversary like China, you also find fingerprints here. There are two groups I would point to in particular, one called the Party for Socialism and Liberation. You'll see a hardcore group of them at a lot of these violent protests. A lot of their signs will say PSL on them. The other one's called Freedom Road Socialist Organization. This is actually based out of Minneapolis. These two groups have pledged their allegiance to the CCP in China. They have fraternal relationships, which means they exchange information and ideas. The Chinese government tracks their activities. There's even been some hints at financial ties. These are hardcore groups that want violence. They wanted violence back in the BLM protests in the 2020, and they're doing the same thing today. So this is what I mean about these foreign networks that are tied to these protests that often end up violent.
- [10:25]
Emily Vilmick
I mean, the reporting you just shared about a Mexican government official conducting meetings with Antifa. I would imagine the Trump administration. And Peter, you would know this. You're, you're well sourced and a fantastic reporter, one of the best in the business is anything being. I would imagine even the Biden administration would be enraged to hear of such engagements. Are you aware that there's any effort right now to stop that sort of activism on behalf of Mexican government officials living in American soil?
- [10:56]
Peter Schweitzer
It's a great question, Emily. About a week before the book came out, I actually had a 55 minute meeting with the President in the Oval Office. He also had Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, and Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State there. We briefed him on the issues in the book. The political network that the Mexican government has in the United States, some of their activities, these violent protests, also their involvement in partisan American politics, which they're not supposed to be doing as diplomats. So I anticipate we're going to start seeing some movement there. We also had meetings on Capitol Hill with the Senate and I've been asked to testify now before two Senate committees in March on our findings. So my hope is we're going to see some action here. The good news is, is when it comes to, say, the Mexican consulates, you can simply shut them down, Right? You can shut them down and saying that these diplomats are Persona non grata, they need to go home. And I think that is long overdue because there's a long established pattern of this kind of interference in our domestic politics.
- [11:58]
Emily Vilmick
And one of the things you report on is the effort to use migrants as activists. And it's amazing how benign so much of that sounds. I was shocked to read your reporting on Mexico sending textbooks into American schools in this obvious, strategic, concerted effort. Again, you can see how on the surface you'd look at that in a local news clipping from the LA Times or whatever and think, ah, how lovely. But when you put all the pieces together, Peter, tell us about, tell us more about this sort of grand strategy as it's evolved over the years.
- [12:36]
Peter Schweitzer
Yeah, you know, it's funny because when you think of the Mexican government, you tend to think they're corrupt, they're kind of hapless. So we don't give them a lot of credit for having any kind of vision when it comes to migration. But I think that's unfair and it underestimates them. The strategy is one that they describe. So these are not my words. I have dozens of quotes in the books from senior Mexican officials who say that mass migration is a means of exerting sovereignty in the United States. It's a way of retaking the territories that they lost in the 19th century to the United States. Now that sounds a little bit crazy. And I don't think that they literally mean that California, California, New Mexico are going to become part of Mexico. But they say this repeatedly. And what they mean is exerting some form of sovereignty in the United States. And they're already doing this. So one of the things I found and when I shared on Capitol Hill and in the meetings in Washington, nobody knew about and was shocked about is the fact that Mexico has more than a dozen officials that live in the United States who serve in the Mexico Mexican Senate and in the Mexican Congress or Chamber of Deputies. These are elected Mexican officials who live in the United States and their job is to represent Mexicans living in our country, which to me is a massive intrusion into our sovereignty. And this is their view and they talk about the fact, I quote them extensively, that they are now exerting authority and influence in American politics. They brag. And some of the transcripts of meetings in Mexican consulate in Oklahoma City, they had a broad discussion with Democratic Party activists where they said, look, we've helped turn California from red to blue. We turned Arizona from red to blue. Let's turn some other states from red to blue. So they're quite confident that they're having an effect with regard to the textbooks. Again, it seems so good natured because you'd think, well, we have migrants that are in schools in the United States, they don't speak English and Mexico gladly donates a million textbooks a year for these students in school districts from Los Angeles all the way to Orlando and in between. The problem is when you look at these textbooks, they're really horrible in their presentation of history and the reality of U.S. mexican relationships. They're horrible in their presentation of American history. Even worse than the sort of woke tech books that, that people complain about. But the Mexican government says the purpose of this, Emily, is to expand what they call Greater Mexico to flourish and encourage loyalty to Mexico for Mexicans living in the United States. So it has a national agenda for the benefit of Mexico, certainly not for the benefit of the United States.
- [15:29]
Emily Vilmick
I was just going to ask about your writing on Greater Mexico because that gets to what the end goal is here, whether it's ideological or practical or a Combination of both. Obviously for Mexico, it bodes well if they have more leverage over their very powerful neighbor to the north by having this, like, I think it would be inappropriate to call it a sleeper cell, but maybe that's how some people cynically think of it in Mexico, based on your reporting, PETER but on the other hand, is it merely remittances? Their economy is propped up by remittances from migrants who make more money in the United States than they could in Mexico. And then people are able to spend more money in Mexico and, and you know, their government doesn't have to take care of their own populace as much. Or finally, is it ideology, this anti colonial ideology, liberation theology, all of which is very, very popular in Mexico. It's maybe it's a cocktail of all three. What's the goal?
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Peter Schweitzer
Yeah, I think it's all three. I mean, you know, they get, I think it's more than $60 billion with a B in remittances from the United States. But there are a lot of things, things that they're doing that, you know, clearly indicate they have another agenda. They started this thing called Migrant tv, Magrante tv, funded by the Mexican government. It's kind of a slick news channel that they stream, but it's a news service for migrants living in the United States. And it's the worst kind of propaganda that you can imagine. It's not designed to inform, it's designed to rile up. And then you have, have this network of consulates and these elected officials in Mexico who criticize and attack Mexican immigrants who want to assimilate in the United States. I mean, you know, my parents were immigrants from Europe. I think we all believe that at some level we should have immigration and that we want immigrants to assimilate, adopt American values, learn the language. If you do that as a Mexican migrant, you are going to be victimizing, viciously attacked by this political network. This guy Robles I was mentioning earlier gave an interview and said that anybody who does that is a traitor and that Sheinbaum agrees with him. And Sheinbaum even had created this song called the Migrant Hymn, which she plays at all of these meetings that she has. And the Migrant Hymn talks about that the border doesn't really exist and that if you're a Mexican going to the United States States, you are carrying the colors of the Mexican flag, you're not carrying the colors of the gringo flag. So I mean, this is very nationalistic stuff. It's not just about economics. It is a civilizational clash that is how they describe it and that is how they view it. And I think we should take them seriously. I don't think we should dismiss it as just bravado because they are exerting a lot of time and effort to actually do this. It's, it's quite fascinating.
- [18:18]
Emily Vilmick
There's a comment in the live stream from someone named Barry Peter, who says, I have no questions, only confusion. Put that to you, Peter, and ask if over the course of your reporting you were ever just sort of slack jawed in thinking so much of this is happening out in the open and with so little attention from the government, which actually has paid some attention recently to China, as you write in the book, but so little with Mexico. Same thing, actually, with the sort of immigration from the Middle east which you write about in the book. With Mexico, it's different. And I can see why that would be confusing.
- [18:57]
Peter Schweitzer
Yeah, I mean, I have to say, Emily, when I first started working on this book and I ran across all these quotes, there was a government report in December of 2024 by one of Sheinbaum's top aides where she writes, quote, There are now 39.9 million Mexicans in the United States. We are retaking the territory that was stolen from us, end quote. And I'm like, what are you talking about? But I kept running across these quotes from, you know, a prominent senator, one of the senior senators for the Marina Party, the ruling party. He sits on the National Defense Committee. And he said that, you know, migrants are in our states. He says our states, California, Nevada, Texas. He lists his whole during the states and he says, we are retaking the territories that were stolen from us. I mean, the quotes go on and on and on. And so then the question becomes, is this just bravado? Are these just politicians kind of popping off or is something else going on here? And I don't mean something else in some kind of like deep, sophisticated dark conspiracy. I mean, are they actually trying to weaponize migrants and migration? And I think they are, and I think there's sufficient evidence to it. And again, they've created this infrastructure in our country to politically organize migrants and to use them as a strategic tool in their language, against the United States, when it's to their benefits. So I think we need to take that seriously. You know, when you look at the China equation, people find that a lot easier to accept because of the, you know, the ccp. You know, the view of the Chinese is that they're very sophisticated and smart with their subversion. So that's easier for people to grasp and understand. But I think they're both a serious problem, that we need to recognize them for what they are and not create a mirror image that, well, this is the way we look at immigration. So they obviously look at it the same way.
- [21:00]
Emily Vilmick
Peter, I imagine in your reporting, one of the questions that you sought to answer was whether there's cartel interaction with any of these schemes. Obviously, cartels are a national security concern this administration takes very seriously. You would think that would sort of make it easier to see a potential threat from Mexico along the lines of something that's a threat from China, for example, or other hostile foreign actors that are more openly hostile. Is there anything there that we should know about?
- [21:30]
Peter Schweitzer
Yeah, there is. The first thing is when you look at the Sheinbaum government or Amlo Lopez Obrador, who is really her mentor and predecessor, they are both neck deep with the cartels. I mean, there's a lot of great reporting that's already been done on this that I include in the book that points to the financial ties between the Morena Party and the cartels. But the other thing to be said is that the cartels have really started to move north of the border in terms of their political influence. And it's come by groups like Progressive International. This is a group that was formed by Bernie Sanders in 2018. And the goal here, Emily, was to sort of unify the. The Latin American Progressive Movement with the North American Progressive Movement, something that Bernie Sanders thought was a great idea. And so this group is headed by his former foreign policy advisor. He's participated with it. AOC has been involved, Craig Cesar, a whole bunch of members of the Progressive Caucus. The problem is, when you look at the leadership of this organization, about 30% to a third of the leadership is made up of people that are directly tied to the drug cartels. I mean, I name them in the book, and it's indisputable that these people are tied to the drug cartels. And what's happened with American progressives, and I think part of it is this sort of attempting to bring together Latin American progressives who are tied to the cartels with the North American progressives is they've embraced some of the key agenda points of the drug cartel. So what are they? Number one, the drug cartels love open borders. They actually make more money. They made more money during the Biden years from human trafficking than they made from selling drugs. So they love open borders. It's enormously profitable for them.
- [23:21]
Emily Vilmick
Contrary Libertarian friends, that is, Libertarian friends would say, Peter no, no, no. They open borders. These are. These are the safe way to do it.
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Peter Schweitzer
Right, right, exactly. It's just like when you legalize marijuana in California, you get, you know, illegal sales of marijuana actually have gone up because it's not taxed. But that's the first part of the agenda that's been embraced by now, Bernie Sanders, AOC and Progressive International is open borders. The second thing they've embraced is they want to end the military operations against the drug cartels in Latin America, which is another thing the drug cartels want. So you have people like AOC and Craig Zazar pushing legislation that says, we're going to stop conducting military operations against the drug cartels in Latin America. So the drug cartels are absolutely very present in this. They are tied to a lot of the progressives down in Latin America, whether that's Petro who runs Colombia, or Sheinbaum in Mexico. But they've also started to infiltrate and move into progressive circles in North America in the United States. States as well, which should be a very, very serious concern.
- [24:31]
Emily Vilmick
And speaking of libertarians, actually, one of the questions I was most excited to ask you about, Peter, is that I look at what's happening in the UK and the Starmer regime, which is now in really big trouble for other reasons. They have suggested and then dropped this plan to use digital ID to deal with all of the migrants that they led into the country. They're like, oh, we let all these people in, but now we will keep you safe and surveil you. They're actually bragging about it. And we know that mass migration often is a pretext for the surveillance state. So I just want to ask how you're thinking about what could be a widespread effort to subvert the sovereignty of the United States. Sheinbaum is very concerned about the sovereignty of Mexico, and apparently, you know, going about this effort in the US at the same time as she's concerned about the sovereignty of her own country. So. So how. How have you thought about what steps could be taken that also respect, you know, the rights of Americans not to be surveilled en masse when there was literally mass migration that created a potential threat here?
- [25:35]
Peter Schweitzer
Yeah, I think, you know, look, I believe in immigration. My parents were immigrants, and I believe that it's an important part of America. But I think before you discuss and determine what that level of legal immigration should be, you have to deal with what I call weaponized migration, and that is what we're dealing with. This is not like the immigration. I love libertarians I have great libertarian friends. They think the immigration today is like the Irish from 120 years ago. And it's not because the migrants that are coming now bring with them these extensive political networks, whether they're criminals, whether they are radical movements, and the migrants that are coming now are not really interested in assimilating. And so the question becomes, how do you deal with weaponized migration? I think you do that by keeping the border closed. I think you deal with the political networks themselves that are engaging in this subversive activity. And I think only when you deal with weaponized immigration can you go back and say, okay, we need to have some legal immigration. I believe, because you just look at our lack of population growth. What should that figure be? But until you deal with this weaponized component, which is subversive in its nature, that's not my word. That is what they say in Mexico. That's certainly what they say in China. That's certainly what the Muslim Brotherhood says. Until we deal with that, there's no point, I think, in having a broader conversation about immigration. So God bless my libertarian friends, but I think they're living in a fantasy world. We should take very seriously the words of what the Chinese and what the Mexican officials are saying and what the Muslim Brotherhood are saying. They are saying this is civilizational warfare. They are saying they have weaponized migration. I think we should take them seriously enough to take them at their worst.
- [27:30]
Emily Vilmick
Before you run, Peter, you are one of the very best reporters on bipartisan corruption. You have a wonderful book called Throw Them All Out. All of your books get into this. But I wanted to ask you about the unfolding Epstein scandal and there's a media angle to this as well. You've been in media a long time. We can put this new Max Tawny piece from Semaphore up on the screen. Some emails here showing how Jeffrey Epstein used the media to rehabilitate his reputation. Business Insider basically acquiesced to a Team Epstein request to soften a picture. I believe it was. There was, you know, Scientific American, the EIC of Scientific American at one point trying to meet with him. There's all kinds of stuff. He had media parties. You can see the email invite lists, Katie Couric on his Rockin Lasagna and the like. Peter, how are you thinking about all of this as somebody who has a very detailed and vivid understanding of the wealthiest and most elite among us efforts to co opt powerful people, whether they're Republicans or Democrats?
- [28:36]
Peter Schweitzer
Well, you know, Emily, you've done a lot of great Reporting over the years as well. And you know, in following your career and what I try to do is you try to follow the story and you try to follow it to its logical end. And I think what the Epstein saga shows is that the bulk of the mainstream media, it's really a closed loop. It's about relationships, it's about friends, it's about doing favors for people. And that is not the same as the sort of journalism that they profess to be practicing. So I think it's another example of how the mainstream media has failed us. It demonstrates that, you know those reporters that we saw in the old black and white movies in the 40s and 50s, you know, those sort of hard, hard boiled guys who left the whiskey in the bottle in the drawer of their desk, they've been replaced by social climbers. People that want to have the social relationships. Why else would Peter people cater to Epstein other than the fact that he had money and he could make money for people and he had the kind of relationships and ties that journalists wanted to have. So what our country lacks is a vibrant media that is fulfilling the role that it should be filling, which is informing the public of what's going on in the world. And the mainstream media is not doing that. It's the reason that their approval ratings are even lower than that of Congress and rightfully so. So I think the days of, you know, people reading the New York Times and other mainstream outlets think, thinking they're going to get some semblance of reality, that is gone. And I don't think that's ever going to come back. And this is just another nail in that coffin.
- [30:21]
Emily Vilmick
Finally, Peter, the Clinton angle. You wrote Clinton Cash and we're one of the first and most detailed people to start reporting on the connection of wealth with the Clinton Global Initiative. The Clinton's public service as it related to the Clinton Global Initiative. Some very interesting emails between Doug Band, a name that not many people know, but I know, you know, Peter and Ghislaine Maxwell have surfaced in this latest tranche. So what do people need to know? I know we don't have a lot of time, time left, but just some new details coming up. Peter wanted to get your reaction to. In the scope of all your reporting in that.
- [30:55]
Peter Schweitzer
Yeah, Doug Band was really the heart and soul of the Clinton Foundation. He's one of the people that convinced Bill Clinton to take it in the direction it was going to go. He's the guy that really set up the network of, of of global revenue for the Clintons. You know, Bill Clinton, when, when Hillary was Secretary of State, was pulling down $750,000 for a 20 minute speech. This was, this was something that Doug Band arranged. So he turned the Clinton foundation into an influency peddling operation. So it's not surprising in some respect that he shows up in these emails because again, these concerns serve the interests of Epstein. And I think that again, it shows that even these philanthropic organizations, which is what the Clinton foundation caters itself, as I would notice, by the way, there's several universities that show up in these emails as well. It just shows, again, the extent to which members of the elite are prepared to go and who they're willing to deal with in order to advance their own commercial interests. It's a disgrace. And I'm glad that the information has come out. I think more of it needs to come out. You redact the names of victims and, you know, any personal identifying information like phone numbers. But as far as I'm concerned, bring it all out, every little shred of it, so that people can see even somebody like Noam Chomsky, the man of the people, the feminist, was pooh, poohing his behavior and saying that the charges against Epstein were unfair. People need to know that stuff and rip the mask off.
- [32:33]
Emily Vilmick
There is a wonderful Clinton nugget in this book that maybe I was too young to be aware of, Peter, but about a voter operation that people absolutely need to buy the book. It is called Invisible Coup to learn about. I learned so, so much from it. So, Peter, thank you for taking time tonight to come on afterparty.
- [32:51]
Peter Schweitzer
It's, it's great to see Emily and congrats on the new show and the work you're doing.
- [32:55]
Emily Vilmick
Appreciate it. Thanks so much. All right, so good to have. Well, I think a real hero of my industry on the show with us, Peter Schweitzer. Make sure to check out the Government Accountability Institute and Peter's podcast, of course. The book again is called Invisible Coup. Learned a lot from it. Highly recommend it. We have super bowl thoughts coming up next. But first, this year, I am probably, like many of you, focusing on small changes that will make a huge difference for me. Some of that is planning ahead so that I can live in the moment, especially when enjoying, I don't know, a few drinks with friends or after a long week of shows and deadlines. So a trick for staying balanced while enjoying social outings is zebiotics pre alcohol. Here's how it works, and I have done this. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct. In the gut. It's a buildup of this product, not dehydration, that is to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you will feel your best tomorrow. I don't know if my friends are watching, but we were just Again, we spent a couple days on vacation. I really should have brought this for them because they needed it. I've used it before, so if you're ready to try it, go to zebiotics.com afterparty now. You'll get 15% off your first order when you use after party at checkout. Plus it's backed by a 100% money back guarantee, so there's no risk. Subscriptions are also available for maximum consistency. Remember to head to ZBiotics.com afterparty and use the code AFTERPARTY at checkout for 15% off. Don't be like my friends and have a hangover on vacation.
- [34:34]
Commercial Narrator
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- [35:18]
Emily Vilmick
Are you my dad now?
- [35:21]
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- [35:34]
Emily Vilmick
Okay, more to come. Super Bowl, Washington Post I mean, there's just. Just I. The mind reels. Jill Zarin if you don't know who Jill Zarin is, I'm going to get to that in just one moment. But let's talk about the Super Bowl. There's a lot to talk about. I did go back. I don't know if you all saw this, but there were clips from the 2001 halftime performance going viral, at least on X But people probably saw them elsewhere too. It was Aerosmith, NSync and Britney Spears that year. And people were marveling at, as our friend that Rachel Bovard posted on X, the last gasp of monoculture. And it is interesting to look at, you know, it may not have actually been monoculture for even like the older generation at the time, but it is interesting to look at how sort of tried to cover demographic bases, right? So you had kind of baby boomers, Aerosmith fans, that world. You had, well, Britney Spears and NSYNC for the younger people. And then Mary J. Blige and Nelly popped in for like hip hop fans. So you could sort of see what they were trying to do in a show like that. And you could see how, I mean, listen, that was hardly a pure family friendly piece of entertainment. It was tame by today's standards. But yes, they did walk this way. And Britney Spears was in this like skin tight outfit with a crop top. So again, not exactly this like wonderful family friendly affair, but by today's standards. I know a lot of people were like translating Bad Bunny lyrics last night. There are some wildly raunchy lyrics and I think he avoided a couple of them. But I mean, like, like it was, it's Bad Bunny. So it's not exactly the same thing as NSync, like Justin Timberlake doing a goofy dance off with, with Steven Tyler and then like Britney Spears coming in and all of that. So we actually have, let's, let's run this VO of Bad Bunny's physical performance here. This is. Yeah, okay, so we have, you know, we've got the, the dancers for the listening audience. We see Bad Bunny coming out. He's, he's doing a little bit of crotch grabbing. I mean, again, Britney Spears was kind of dressed like these, these dancers back in 2001. And obviously Justin Timberlake himself is of nip slip fame. So there we go. He's, he's doing the crotch grabbing. But you saw it. I'm sure everybody saw it. Unless you were watching the Turning Point show instead of Donald Trump himself said the super bowl halftime show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst ever. It makes no sense, is an affront to the greatness of America and does it represent our standards of success. And I think actually probably a lot of people who have no idea who Bad Bunny is had a similar reaction because almost none of that performance was in English. And that I think is getting conflated with some I, what I would argue are, are maybe like cringy fainting couch reactions. You know, interestingly on the. The Megyn Kelly wrap up show that we do on SiriusXM every day. Someone called in today and said they didn't like that I was laughing about Bad Bunny because this is so serious. And like you, you shouldn't want to. You shouldn't laugh at this because, no, this is not a world that anyone should want their children to grow up in. And I thought to myself, I'm laughing because to my generation, again, expectations, especially if you're like a Christian conservative of the secular world, secular culture, popular culture are at rock bottom. And so the idea that we're all self seriously discussing a man named Bad Bunny on a Monday morning is a little bit funny because again, what else do you expect from the super bowl halftime show at this point in time? This is the America of wap, which, by the way, we export to other countries. That's our cultural export. Now it's wap. And as much as Walk this Way is and Kid Rock, by the way, have some seriously objectionable lyrics, and WAP is, I would say, pretty clearly more objectionable than both of those artists. So that is our. Our cultural. Our main cultural export. Now the. The coarsening has happened like the frog in the boiling pot. That is generally how these things happen. So there's nothing surprising about this whatsoever. And I think conflating that with the question of whether the halftime show should be in English is actually an interesting. And different like that to me is a distinction. And it doesn't help to conflate both of those points. But a lot of people who share both of those perspectives, or let's say a lot of people who share one of the perspectives, share both of the perspectives. So it's. It's important, I think, to kind of take them apart. Now, as many people have pointed out, obviously this is a business decision on behalf of the National Football League. There's no question about that. They're trying to reach out to more and more audiences, whether it's in Europe or in Brazil or with Hispanics here in the United States of America. So again, makes sense. Bad Bunny is massively popular, massively popular. Clearly one of the most popular pop artists of all time at this point. So again, obvious business, Pretty obvious business decision to be made here. But let's also look at. We can put F12 up on the screen. This is my friend Megan Basham Googling some of the lyrics. Yeah, I mean, I'm not even gonna read them out. You can go look at. You can Google Megan's. Google Megan's tweet. If you are in the listening audience, and you can't pause and look at a little bit here. Some of these things were altered, but some were not. And boy, Sean, our friend Sean Davis, said, quote, he had to perform in Spanish to prevent the SEC for banning the entire plan performance outright for its obscenity. Spencer Clavin, it's gonna be F14. Said, my friends aren't gonna want to hear this, but the Bad Bunny shows a work of lefty genius. Aggressive display of Latin American vitality with a vigorous, straight marriage at the center at a delicate moment for immigration law. Very smart, whether you like it or not. Meanwhile, the quote unquote conservative alternative halftime show, however good it may be, is in its very essence an exemplar of all that's wrong with the right when it comes to the arts. If you're in the business of alternatives, you're already losing Big L from the jump. Conceptually. I have a little bit of a disagreement with SPE that I'll get to in a moment. Spencer says if you can't look at that Bad Bunny halftime show and recognize its success independent of its political utility, then I regret to inform you that what you think of your. Of your artistic. As your artistic taste is actually your politics in an aesthetic form. Okay, I'm going to unpack that a little bit more. I talk about the Turning Point show, but just to focus on his point. The production of the Bad Bunny show was fantastic. I think it is one of the most well produced halftime shows ever. The set was. Was fantastic. The cinematography, if you can call it that, was fantastic. The pacing, the motion, the colors, the design, it was all really, really well done. So I think that's an important part of why so many people just generally liked it and weren't in the mood to hear people rag on it. But at the same time, this question of English, which is mostly held by people who, you know, like me, would object, kind of. Of would object puritanically to the. The course, the coarsening of the content, although you would have to apply that to basically all of pop culture, which many of us do. But just to point out that is different from whether or not a halftime show as a cultural event should be spoken in the language. The. The language of the country at hand, at the country that made this possible, at the country this is. Is ultimately tailored for at the end of the day, or it's ultimately targeted at at the end of the day. This gets into deeper conversations about whether English should be the official language of the United States. I do think English should be the official language of the United States for the simple reason that it's important to have a common form of communication. And a common language is that common form of communication. And I think it's a huge problem that we have people, whether it's Spanish or another lang who, we saw a preview of this in enclaves of Western Europe, no go zones outside Paris and the like, where people don't have the same urge to assimilate. You hear that with a lot of modern immigrants to the United States who say this is. Or you hear that from immigrants of another generation who look at modern immigrants to the United States and say there was a drive to assimilate, to learn English, to celebrate the culture that you left and maybe meld it into American culture, but not to ever try to impose your cultural dictates on the culture that has invited you to join it. And a lot of that was learning English and, you know, striving to be a good faith invitee, a good faith participant in the system of Republican government that we have in the United States. And learning the language is a serious show of that, that. And so listen, I enjoy Spanish language music. I, I think Spanish is a beautiful language, as does pretty much everyone. But to have the halftime show be incomprehensible, with the exception of Lady Gaga for the vast majority of viewers, is so obviously weird. It's so obviously weird. It's okay to say that. It's okay to say that. And if it's reflective, as I think it is, of a trend among elites, corporations, NFL being one of them, the corporate entity that is Bad Bunny, to try to downplay the importance of a shared language, for example, to ideologically make that point, then I think actually it is pretty obviously a bad thing. Do I think it's the biggest deal in the world? No. Bad Bunny is one of the most popular artists, period. And that shows there's an English speaking audience for his Spanish language music. Does that mean it needs to become one of the, I mean, this, the super bowl is the single touchstone of monoculture that we have left. The NFL in general is the single touchstone of monoculture that we have left. And they have no incentive, you know, not to do the black national anthem at the beginning of the super bowl because they know viewers, they have a total monopoly. People aren't gonna go start watching arena football instead so they can do whatever the hell they want to do. And that's how they, they, they chose to do it. I think it's a little ideological. I think it's a little practical and a little bit of a, a business move, but. Or a lot bit of a business move, of course. But all that is to say it's I think important to, to disentangle these, these separate concerns. On the one hand, there's a, a good and, and fine concern about the coarsening of the culture. But at this point that feels quaint to me. Is it worth saying. Sure. Is it worth expressing anything that implies your expectations were for the NFL to do better? I mean, this is not a truly. It is not a majority Christian conservative country anymore. You don't live in the monoculture of 1956. And so Roger wrote a book about that. Rod's of course been on the show back in. What was that 2016 called the Benedict Option about how to adapt and how Christians and conservatives should see themselves in this new postmodern United States and arguably the broader West. And I think it's just adjust your expectations. But to expect the monoculture to reflect you Christian values other than, you know, some basic stuff along the way, the likes of which Tom Holland has written about in Dominion, you know, sort of the, the ethical tradition of protecting the vulnerable, which Tom argues is woke as kind of an extension of that. But to expect like these traditions to somehow be mirrored by the culture anymore, these, these kind of political traditions or these, these political ideas to somehow be mirrored by the culture anymore, again, it's, it's quite ridiculous. And that brings me to the turning point halftime show, which the best thing I saw on this was a meme from that movie Civil War. I think actually Sean reposted it and it was the guy who was asking like with he's got his gun and he's asking which halftime show did you watch? It was perfect and why it was perfect. There are a lot of different reasons it was perfect. But I thought the Turning point halftime show is probably no secret that I've. I've found TPUSA's productions to be a bit cringy from time to time. I was surprised by how well produced their alternative halftime show was. I thought it was actually very well done. The production, as you can see on the screen if you're watching this, I thought was competitive with like a Grammys level production. Kid Rock was the worst lip syncer that I've seen since like American Idol contestants at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. That was atrocious. It's prison level lip sync failure from, from Kid Rock, of course. But it's an unpopular opinion. It's an unpopular opinion. But I watched the halftime show, the Turning Point halftime show, which was, which was long. It was probably too long for a halftime show, but as I was watching it, I was thinking to myself, like, these Lee Brice songs are bangers. Dirt Road Anthem, Can't Beat It, Don't Drink and Drive, but it's a great song. I'm not a particular fan of Kid Rocks, but these songs were actually popular. And if I look around and think about the folks that I went to high school with, like, this is the stuff that we grew up on and it's super popular. And you would be, if you're from middle America and you a country music fan, you'd be like, absolutely jazzed to hear these songs live. That'd be really exciting. And there was some great production. Kid Rock, massive superstar, really popular. And when Lee Bryce sang Drinking Class to me, that tied it all together because he talks about how if you, if you're unfamiliar with the song, he's a member of the blue collar class, the drinking class, and that's what he sings about. And you could feel the crowd going wild. And again, this is middlebrow, right? Like, this is the type of entertainment that people in D.C. media think is gross and cringy and corny. And maybe it is all of those things, but it's also popular music. And now popular music is not just popular, I keep using this word, but monocultural, right? Like popular music is all kinds of different little niches. There are some superstars, and by the way, Bad Bunny is one of them. But people are, are clustering in these, these taste based silos more and more. And with that, it's, it's class based. It's like the Charles Murray who's also been on the show, his quiz, you can still find it on the PBS website. It's outdated now, but these trends have only got worse where he figures out your socioeconomic status by asking you questions about popular culture. And this Charles documented in his great book Coming Apart was what started happening over the last 50 years is that class differences became cultural differences in a way they hadn't in the past. And that's because people were living in socioeconomic bubbles that were rarely overlapping. So you weren't going to church with a lot of the same people or bowling with a lot of the same people. About borrow from Putnam as Murray does, who maybe come from all different cohorts of socioeconomic strata. You are basically socializing with people who have the same amount of education and income as you. And that means if you are above a Certain level, you are not going to Cracker Barrel. You're probably not going to Chili's. You don't even maybe know what Chili's is, but you are going to different movies. And again, you can look this up. It was, it was brilliant socioeconomic research. But that's what I was thinking about with these halftime shows that the right now. I mean, think about how many times the. The Turning Point halftime show opened with electric guitar national anthem. Think of how the left loves to own Jimi Hendrix and his Woodstock performance of the National Anthem on electric guitar, which Dick Cavett asked. I think like two weeks later. I pulled a quote from the New Yorker just a few years ago that was reminiscing on, quote, the mongrel machine that Hendrix made into a medium for a new kind of virtuosity. In the Woodstock performance of the National Anthem, we find that an electric guitar can be made to convey the feeling that the country's history could be melted down, remolded and given a new shape. That's very obvious, obviously, a perspective from the left. And what we saw in 2026 was an electric guitar performance from. Of the national Anthem at this alternative halftime show from the right. From the Christian right, arguably. Yes, I get all of the objections about Kid Rock, about Brantley Gilbert. I hear you. But I think what's interesting actually is that that Kid Rock himself is on this journey right now as he sang about the Bible needing some dusting off. Maybe in. In your houses. That's where there's this, to borrow Murray's phrase, this coming apart. You see the right not being like the. The right now very firmly. I mean, there's. There's hard hat riots in the Nixon era and all of that, but the right now very, very firmly being the party of like middle America, lower income America and lower education America. That's a total flip. And I think that's actually what you saw in the difference in these halftime shows. Yes, Bad Bunny is just super popular. I get that. Kid Rock is also just super popular. Maybe not anymore, but he's pretty popular with people across the spectrum, whether they're Republicans or Democrats. He's just popular with working class. And I get Bad Bunny, very popular. But he had an immigration message that was mostly popular if you look at polling with, or more popular if you look at polling with affluent Americans with educated higher income elites. When you're looking at his kind of pan Americanism that he presented, I think we have the clip of this one that we can roll. You probably caught it, him saying God bless America. Awesome. But then listing off all the other names in the North American continent, basically to make a different sort of statement. God bless America. So he goes to South America. He's gonna do Canada at some point. United states. Canada.
- [56:38]
Peter Schweitzer
Puerto rico.
- [56:45]
Emily Vilmick
So a couple things about that. Puerto Rico and the United States, not just the United States States that you probably heard him include there, started with America. And so it's the repetition of this. It is clearly trying to advance the ideological concept that America is not just the United States. And obviously there's North America and South America. But that is most often espoused by people who wish to see a sort of blurring of borders and oftentimes people who object to the idea that. That that's the United States of America and the United States gets the America label. So there's all of that bundled up with it, in addition to considering Puerto Rico separate from the United States. But if you watch that and you're not somebody who's super political, you probably thought, fine, that's lovely. We all. God bless everyone. Although you may also watch that and be like, this is a Super bowl in the United States of America. It's our thing here in the United States. Everyone of all stripes, all races, all creeds and backgrounds loves the National Football League. Again, it is our one point of monoculture. Can we please just own something for the United States? So I could see how it may have landed both ways with people in the audience, but it's clearly. That was. That was clearly overall a message from the left. And to see the, I think the like sonic embodiments or representations of those ideological. Of the ideological drift or the real alignment, as some people call it. That, to me, was the big story coming out of this. And just a quick note on crudeness. I went and pulled this Camille Pollia quote because I love it. It. She always writes about how the Hayes Code, the Production Code, which was voluntary, super interesting, created more interesting, or these. These sexual morays being different, created more interesting art. This is from Paia in the Hollywood Republic. She wrote A Cat. A Catholic backlash to Norma Shearer's Free Love Frolics and May West's wicked double entendres finally forced strict compliance with the. With the infamous studio production code in 1934. But ironically, those censorious rules launched Hollywood's supreme era, when sex had to be conveyed by suggestion and innuendo. Swept by thrilling surges of romantic music, the movies have always shown how elemental passions boil beneath the thin veneer of civilization by their power of intimate close ups. Movies reveal the subtleties of facial expression and the ambiguities of mood and motivation that inform the alluring rituals of sexual attraction. And that's just a great quote and a great point that the more mysterious and understated sex, but also I think general coarseness has to be because of the cultural environment. The more clever and artful, often, well, let's say the more clever and skillful artists have to be in their art. And I think that's always a good, A good point to take away when again, going through like Bad Bunny lyrics. I mean he's got some. He's got some bops, no question about it. But I was thinking as I was listening to the Arrowhead jaded performance in 2001. Not exactly the NSYNC performance, but like listening to jaded or don't want to miss a thing. It's just obviously those weren't eras when people were stifled. I mean Steven Tyler himself was gender bending before many others were. But there's something about that. It was. It was still a different time. Right. Like this is wildly pre woke, you know, probably at least. Yeah. So 10 years before that. And so it just was. It wasn't a totally postmodern culture. And I think it produced more interesting art. But maybe as again, we are all in our silos, people who find themselves and you know, bouncing between those worlds will produce more interesting art than wop in the near future. So some thoughts on the Super Bowl. Aren't you lucky that you got to hear them? Thanks for hanging in there with me. That's kind of what I wanted to say with. With Clavin when he says, I regret to inform you that what you think of as your artistic taste is actually a politics and aesthetic form. Form. Yes, yes. But Spencer, you don't have to be regretful. We should just get Spencer back on so he and I can talk about this. But he, he's scheduled, I guess to come soon. But that's I think exactly the point that our politics are now aesthetic sensibilities. And if your aesthetic sensibility is Libre Brantley Gilbert, Kid Rock and electric guitar, national Anthem, you're probably on the right now. And there are. That's actually like kind of folksier than whatever the sort of like highly produced pop of. With. With leftist sensibilities that Bad Bunny is producing. So I can't say I was exactly scandalized by the halftime show. I actually expected it to be much more political and much more sexual, to be honest. But my expectations were already in the. They're already pretty low for that. So hard to be be hard to be scandalized. All right, gonna take one more quick break and then bring you a Podcaster controversy and a Bravo controversy. Even if you don't want watch Bravo, I hope you'll be interested first. You guys know I am skeptical about just about everything but especially food. We talk about it all the time here. Those so called healthy cereals, they're always loaded up with dyes, seed oils and of course those chemicals that you can't even pronounce. Big Food has turned breakfast into a profit driven science experiment that hooks your family on sugar cravings. Lovebird cereal though is different. Started by a dad who wouldn't feed his daughter the usual junk. Only seven clean organic ingredients on the front of the box. No refined sugars, no fake flavors and no high potency sweeteners. I like the cinnamon flavor. The ingredients are just buckwheat, cassava, coconut honey, coconut sugar, cinnamon and sea salt. Well, that's it. I just read all of them. Real food grain free, gluten free, prebiotic fiber for gut health. Glyphosate free Verified big brands cannot say that. And unlike corporate giants, Lovebird is family owned, donating 20 of profits to fight childhood cancer. And that matters. So head to lovebirdfoods.com and get some for your family. Ready to take back your breakfast? Go to lovebirdfoods.com afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY for 25 off your first order. You can also find Lovebird cereals at Walmart, Whole Foods, Sprouts Sprouts and other major retailers nationwide. Lovebirds Cereal Join the real food revolution and take back our country's health from Big Food box by box.
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- [64:22]
Emily Vilmick
Why have I asked my H Vac.
- [64:24]
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Guy I found on angie.com to change my grandpa's trachea tube? Because I was so amazed by how quickly he replaced our air ducts. I knew I could trust him to change Pop Pop's tube while I was.
- [64:33]
Emily Vilmick
On vacation make your quick young man.
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Commercial Narrator
Aw see Pop up trusts you.
- [64:41]
Peter Schweitzer
I think we should call a doctor.
- [64:43]
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- [64:53]
Emily Vilmick
All right, let's talk now about podcaster Hannah Berner, who apparently told a joke at a set over the weekend. She's Giggle squad, I think, with Paige from Summer House. I'm not a big Summer House viewer, but of course as a follower of the Bravo Universe, a close follower with Bravo Universe, I'm aware of Hannah Burner and Paige and Giggle Squad. And so people on X were actually posting this Reddit thread from the Summer House Reddit where Hannah was at a set in Chicago and made a joke about calling ice. She was talking about how her husband DEZ speaks multiple languages and how she can't read his texts that are in Mandarin and followed it with quote, I should call ICE on him. The Redditor went on to say, so disgusted and disappointed, left early and was not the only one still in disbelief. Not sure if I can ever look at her the same. That was actually the top comment on this Reddit story that was going around according to the Reality by Ashley account. I can't confirm that independently because I was not at the Chicago Theater show over the weekend, but this was absolutely going viral and it reminded me so much of the Bowen Yang Las Culturistas segment we did a couple of weeks ago, where the point, the big picture point about it was Bowen and his co host Matt apologizing for saying people shouldn't give their money to Jasmine Crockett because it's going to turn out the same way that people giving money to Sarah Gideon in Maine did years ago. They apologized from that. They apologized for that, for making a perfectly defensible and in fact important point for people on the left. They walked it back because they got angry comments and they like pledged to do better. A lot of the criticism was racially slanted. Was saying this was that they were engaged in racism in one way or another through their comments and they responded to it in a way that implied they agreed. Now, also happening in the Bravo universe is Jill Zarin, who was on the original Real Housewives of New York City and has just been recast on E's version of the show. It's not going to be part of the Real Housewives franchise, but it's going to be called something like Golden Age, golden era with the A lot of members of the early cast. So Ramona, Jill, luann, Sonia, Kelly, Bensimon. And I'm forgetting. I think I'm forgetting who else? I won't go there, but that's in the works. And so they're all over social media, and Jill makes these comments about the Bad Bunny halftime show that we can play here. You'll see why they got her in trouble.
- [67:50]
Jill Zarin
It was the worst halftime show ever. And it's 250 years that we're celebrating right now. And they're United States. And I just don't think it was appropriate to have it in Spanish. And quite frankly, I didn't see him grabbing his, you know, G area. I think it was totally inappropriate. You've got all these young kids watching the super bowl, and he doesn't have to be grabbing himself every five seconds. Is he so insecure? Seriously, I didn't understand. I don't speak Spanish. I would have liked to have known the words he was saying. To me, it looked like a political statement because there were literally no.
- [68:24]
Emily Vilmick
White.
- [68:24]
Jill Zarin
People in the entire thing. I think it was a political statement. And I'm not taking aside one way or the other.
- [68:31]
Emily Vilmick
I just do.
- [68:31]
Jill Zarin
I think it was an ice thing, and I just think that the NFL sold out, and it's very sad.
- [68:37]
Emily Vilmick
Did she miss Lady Gaga? I mean, obviously there were white people in the entire thing. But that aside, the. Obviously, the original cast of the Real Housewives of New York City is. Is from. It's based on boomer New York City socialites, many of whom, or I should say some of whom, interacted with Donald Trump. Sonia Morgan, of course, over the years, and some of them, Ramona, you will find at Mar a Lago, Mar a Lago in Palm beach every now and then these days. So it's no surprise that they have a pro Trump Trump bent. I wouldn't necessarily even call it Republican or conservative. They're probably pro Obama, to be honest. But this gets in the conversation we were having earlier about class and. And how it's seen as sort of subversive and class traitor type behavior to be a wealthy person. I mean, there was an entire season in 2016 where Dorinda, whose husband had relationships with the Clinton administration. Carol Radziwill, who's obviously in the Epstein files because she was friends with Ghislaine Maxwell. There's tea that you can go read. Marine has great segments on Cowrad's At Will and has covered that. But because they were pro Clinton and it seemed obvious that a couple of the others were pro Trump, it was this incredible clash and they were looked down upon and it was wild. But that's what I mean. This really demonstrates is that Bravo's affluent fans see, still see reality stars as people who should adhere to like the same moral code as politicians. And I wrote about this for the Federalists all of the time from like 2018 until, I don't know, like a year and a half ago, but especially in 2020, there was this idea that reality stars should again adhere to the same moral code as lawmakers, that they should behave themselves like politicians, which completely misadvent is the purpose of reality television, which is to cast these women as gestures. And in the case of Hannah Burner, who is literally a comedian doing a comedy set, to cast her as a jester. You don't have to be on reality TV if you're a comedian to be a jester. But you are missing the point of reality television if you believe that the women who are cast on Real Housewives series are anything but the cultural equivalent, the modern cultural equivalent of jesters. You're just completely, completely missing the actual point of it. And you don't actually have any business watching reality television if you believe it's crazy for Ramona Singer and Jill Zarin to be pro Trump and that somehow means they shouldn't participate in the project, or you should be disinterested in the project or you should be unhappy with the, the final product. That's a crazy way to look at reality television. They're not going to share your beliefs. If anything, I look at the Real Housewives as Great Gardens. And there was this season again where the Real Housewives of New York City were talking about themselves as Gray Gardens. They want to be in on the joke, they want you to be laughing with them, but you're actually really laughing at them because you see Sonia and Luann living together and joking about, haha, it's Gray Gardens. But they're not happy people, they're not fulfilled people. They're very sad about their divorces. They are struggling in different ways, different significant ways. And the world is, is laughing at them and not quite with them. And you get that if you watch the show, but if you are. So I think this is the point that connects both the Burner story and the Zarin story. If you are drifting for purpose and mooring and some sense of moral, moral direction, you will end up trying to find it in unfortunate places, as in you are flexing on the Internet, Internet about reality television stars and comedians missing the moral mark. What that really shows is that you are trying to project onto them standards so that you can comment on the standards. Would people be upset by any of these things, genuinely upset by any of these things, if they didn't have an outlet to publish their disagreement? I genuinely mean that because I think so. I mean, there's, there's no real reason for Bow and Yang or certainly Jill Zarin. I mean, E is picking up Real Housewives of New York City after these women were deemed too problematic for Bravo years ago, which was always ridiculous. I'm. Without getting into anything, I know people at Bravo thought that that was ridiculous, but it's always been a. A space where unfortunately, I mean, you could, you can talk about the ethics of laughing at these women instead of with these women. I think that's a perfectly valid question. But you could also look at them as cultural artifacts and very sad cultural artifacts that, you know, you can at least enjoy as the ship sinks. But fair question on the ethics point. And. Yeah. Yet this idea that you have to see, I, I'm convinced this idea that you, you have to see these people as moral figures, paragons, is pushed on publicists, public relations executives and people, and that the reality stars themselves by people who are using social media. It's a very small piece, slice of the overall audience. People who are using social media to virtue signal. And the virtue signaling is a projection of something being lost and empty in their own life. Like, I think that's why you post that you're upset at Hannah Burner. I think that's why you post that Jill Zarin is foolish. Like, yeah, that's the point of Jill Zarin. The point of Jill Zarin is that she has too much money, too much time on her hands, and too big of a platform. Like that is why she is an interesting figure to women who watch the show, because she's sort of a ridiculous exaggeration of this archetype in the same way that Gray Gardens was this ridiculous exaggeration of an archetype. And so it's, I'm honestly convinced it's. It's these platforms themselves that seduce people into virtue signaling to convince themselves that they have a purpose, that they are doing something good, because so often they don't feel like they have opportunities to do that in their own life. I mean, we spend more time alone as a culture than we ever have before. There's a lot of great research on that. We are spending less time in civic engagement than we ever have before. Obviously, there are, there's, there's rates of singledom that are historic in some cohorts. And it's obvious to see why people would be looking for purpose and be looking to feel like they are doing something, anything and doing something, anything that is good for the greater good. And I think posting thing gives a lot of honestly young women an opportunity to do that. So sad thoughts on the whole Hannah Burner, Jill Zarin situation. I'm very excited for E to pick this up though. And what that speaks to is this cultural rejection, but this splintering, right? If Bravo is going to be for people who need their reality stars to check a lot of different boxes, a lot of different sort of political boxes, then there will be someone else to pick up the scars that people have zero political expectations of or zero moral expectations of and are watching as satire or even just like catharsis or whatever. So that's something that is in a way reminiscent. Boy, did I just do a weave. Unintentionally. But reminiscent of having two super bowl halftime shows, the Turning Point USA show. I know some people are, are dunking on forgetting. Like we probably won't have the final numbers for a day or so, but like, you know, in the single digit millions, by some estimates it might be higher than that. Whereas the super bowl halftime show is like the last gasp of monoculture is like around 100 million somewhere in that ballpark. Nobody ever said that the Turning Point USA halftime show was going to be competitive with the actual NFL halftime show. Nobody had that expectation at all. My expectation was that Kid Rock would be slightly better at lip syncing, but nobody's expectation was that this was going to, you know, have any. It was gonna like make the executives at the NFL sweat. But I think there's, there's a big takeaway that people are dissatisfied enough with the offering that they will actively go seek out another product and that now, now there's that because that market has been recognized. There are people who are producing what is not. I would not call it an alternative. I know Spencer Clavin used that in his posts about it, but I wouldn't even call it an alternative because no. Lee Bryce and Brantley Gilbert and I forget the girl's name. I hate that I then I hope he cheats song. Sorry. I think it's Gabby Barrett. Right? I've always hated that song. That's topic for Another day. And Kid Rock, they're not as popular as Bad Bunny is right now. I get that. But they're actually very popular people. Like, they're very popular singers, especially Kid Rock, especially Lee Bryce. They have huge organic audiences. It wasn't like, no offense to some of those other folks, but like it wasn't as though you were just throwing a an F lister out there to compete with an A A plus lister. It was, you know, literally an alternative in the sense that it was something you could watch another at the same time. But to Spencer Clavin was making the point that it was like sort of the it was in some ways inherently inferior because it wasn't the main thing. And like the the goal should be to have the main thing, but I just don't think that we're going to have many main things anymore down the road. Code and like I said, I recommend Roger's Benedict option for people who are trying to temper maybe their expectations or thinking about what our expectations of this culture should be. So like I said, quite a weave was actually unintentional, but it's a little wound up about this one. All right, so I will do a little Washington Post segment on Wednesday. Didn't get to it this time around, but I have a feeling feeling there will be more developments by Wednesday. Will Lewis was spotted at the super bowl when the layoffs happen. Oh, maybe I'll try to work the phones a little bit, see if we can dig up some information on what's going on over at the Washington Post. But in the meantime, I'll leave you at it for this wonderful Monday night. We're back Wednesdays Live at 10pm make sure to check out the happy hour podcast. Emily Dev is where you can get in contact with me. Lots and lots of emails coming in these days, so those happy hour episodes just feel like they're getting longer and longer. All right folks, we'll see you back here on Wednesday. Have a great night.
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