← After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky
Don Lemon’s Disgraceful Antics, The Truth About Immigration in America, PLUS Dangers of Data Centers
01:20:32
Emily Jashinsky opens the show with a big picture look at America’s immigration problem, how the larger media is missing key statistics, and the civil-liberty concerns with ICE. Then Emily is joined by Matthew Spalding, author of “The Making of the American Mind” and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C. campus. The two discuss how today’s immigration and citizenship debates reflect a deeper crisis over what it means to be an American, and why some on the left view America as illegitimate. They also dive into Don Lemon and Jennifer Welch framing the church disruption in Minnesota as pushback against ‘white Christian entitlement.’ Next Shane Cashman, investigative journalist and host of “Inverted World Live” at Timcast, stops by the show for a deep dive on AI Data Centers. The two discuss how these centers have quickly become a political flashpoint with big tech and government selling them as job creators, but locals aren’t buyin...
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- [00:00]
Julianne Moore
Hi, I'm Julianne Moore. I learn a lot from every role, but some things stay with me more than others, like the impact of Alzheimer's disease. It's important to think about brain health now because there's so much we want to do. Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment. Learn more@brainhealthmatters.com this is a paid partnership with Lily.
- [00:30]
Commercial Announcer
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- [01:09]
Emily Jashinsky
To the Inaugural Edition of the Don Lemon Fan Club show this is the official broadcast of the Don Lemon Fan Club. I am your host and the president of the Don Lemon Fan Club, Emily Jashinsky. Thank you so much for joining us on a cold January evening. We are live here on After Party. Sort of kidding about the Don Lemon Fan Club, but I have to say what's going on in Minnesota is not funny. But Don Lemon absolutely is. So we will be enjoying every second of Don Lemon's odyssey through the Twin Cities on tonight's edition of After Party, where our guests will be Dr. Matthew Spaulding and Shane Cashman. We are going to bring them in momentarily. As a reminder, please DO subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe on your podcast feed wherever you are listening to the show or watching the show. It helps so much if you subscribe. Of course, it also helps to leave a review over on Apple and to leave likes and comments on the YouTube videos as well. Now, on with the show. I wanted to start tonight's show by zooming out a little bit, broadening our aperture and going deep into what the macro situation on immigration actually is in this country. Because like many of you, some of you are on one side, others of you on the other side. It's one of the cool things about this show. But know as a civil libertarian, to the extent that definition actually makes sense, I do have conflicting feelings about what's happening with ice. But I did want to start by just going through some big picture Big picture stuff peeling back. Going to the, the big picture question here. This is an article that I reference often and it was written by David Leonhardt of the New York Times and I'll pull it up right here. Here David Leonhardt of the New York Times, Right on the eve actually of the, it was right on the eve of Trump's inauguration. So this was December of 2024, his second inauguration. What you're seeing in this headline is recent immigration surge has been largest in U.S. history. I'm going to read a little bit from the lead. The immigration surge of the past few years, wrote David in 2024, has been the largest in US history, surpassing the great immigration boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s, according to a New York Times anal of government data. I'll scroll down here to the chart what you're seeing and for the listening audience, what's in this chart is immigration by percentage of the total population all the way back in the 1850s and then into the 2010s and 2020s. And yes, the comparable decade is the 1850s where you had 0.6% of the total population in net as a share of the foreign born population. So this isn't net migration. This is the share of the foreign born population that's 1850s. The only time it becomes comparable at that point 6% level is 2020 to 2023. So not even a decade for what it's worth, but a three year period where as as David estimates, and I think this is at the lower end of the estimates about, of the estimates, about 8 million, 8 million. I'll scroll and use his exact language here. He says that's a, this is a faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record, that is including the peak years of Ellis island traffic, when millions of Europeans came to the United States. And he says yes, it was an average of 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023. That's annual net migration. So that's why the 8 million is on the lower end of the estimates, because we're looking at 2021, 2022, 2023, average 2.4 million annual in net migration. So that is historic. And there are no country, I mean, in history you'd be hard pressed to find a country that is as heterogeneous as ours, where you have that level of immigration in such a short window of time, a lot of which, you know, bureaucratically was a nightmare. And the left and the right both admit that and you're squeezing that into a three year period roughly, that is a lot of new people as the population of multiple states put together in a very short period of time. And I know I sound like a broken record on this, but we're going to get into some more specifics of the debate about why this is such a huge part of the picture that you just rarely, rarely hear the media acknowledge. Right. Like this is all about ice. ICE ISIS as large as it's ever been. It's now because of the one big beautiful bill, extremely well funded, massive force. And we have seen some things that I think from a civil liberties perspective have definitely raised my ire and made me uncomfortable. But when I zoom out to the big picture, it has to be considered in that balance. It doesn't make it right, but it does mean that we have to have the full perspective of this historically significant surge. I mean what we are able to do in the United States of America, just in terms of like functioning with so many different people from so many different parts of the world, is historically unique. Again, you would be hard pressed to find any other civilization that does what we do in, in recognizing the worth and human dignity of every single individual. I guess this Martin Luther King day, regardless of the color of their skin. I wasn't going to that, but that' actually true. Historically you would be hard pressed to find another civilization that put people in such close quarters from so many different backgrounds and still upheld a fundamental level of basic humanity. And that is historically rare. It is a remarkable thing that we do in the United States of America and it was obviously tested over the Biden administration and in the years leading up to the Biden administration when you had immigration increasing, increasing foreign born share of the population increasing, that would test any civilization. Again, we are not perfect, but here we are, are and I think that's an important part of the big picture to zoom out to. And it means I'm going to put this from the Cato Institute last November up on the screen. So just a couple of months ago, headline here from one of their foremost voices on immigration, David beer. He writes 5% of people detained by ICE have violent convictions. 73% no convictions in media. This is what is often called burying the lead. Because let me just tell you from my perspective what, what I often think the media should be leading with. It's not that this fact isn't on its own relevant to the conversation. It absolutely is. The Trump administration is saying that it's, it's prioritizing going after violent criminals who are non citizens I think just about everybody in the country agrees with that. But what the, the lead is here. Let's scroll down. I'm going to show you a chart and for the listening audience, I'll read the numbers out. This is the, the chart titled ICE is primarily detaining people without serious conv. Criminal convictions. It's a snapsh. October 1st to November 15th. So again, just a couple of months ago, this is detentions of people with criminal convictions. Criminal convictions. Let me zoom in. Okay, so violent criminal convictions within this one month period, 3200, 3200. Property crimes, 1800. Traffic is the highest, that's at about 4000. Immigration crime, 3100. Vice, that's 2000. So drug, drugs and the like. But even just those violent criminals, let alone property criminals, let alone people who are non citizens and are committing traffic offenses, which I'm not willing to say isn't serious either. But let's just say with, with immigrant or I'm sorry, let's say with vice and violent crime and property crime in one month. This is thousands and thousands and thousands of people. So do I think that bigger statistic that the Cato Institute led with is the 5% of people detained by ICE have violent convictions, 73% no convictions? Do I think that's a relevant fact? Sure. Do I think the more important fact is that 5% comes down to thousands of non citizens. Thousands of non citizens were in a position where I detained them during that time period. Now, one more thing that my friend in a steppen actually pointed me, pointed out to me over the weekend. This is December report from a left progressive organization. It's called Prison Policy. It's the Prison Policy Initiative. The website is prisonpolicy.org and right here you can see this is a, again a study from the left explaining how some of these deportations are happening. And I think you're going to get where I'm going as soon as I start talking. Local jails and police departments, they write, are key to the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda because they facilitate ICE arrests of people who are already in police custody. In the first year of Trump's second term, the administration has intensified the criminalization of asylum seekers and immigrants by pushed immigrant detention to all time highs and indiscriminately rated city after city. Just a note on the criminalization of asylum seekers. What the Trump administration is actually doing is narrowing, narrowing the acceptability or the narrowing the, the, well, acceptability actually is probably the right word of asylum claims. So if people are coming. And if you go to. If you went to the border during the Biden years, what you saw were lots of people being told to claim asylum, and they were openly saying they were claiming asylum and then also openly describing themselves basically as economic migrants. They wanted better lives for their families. They didn't like the country they're coming from. Well, maybe they love the country they're coming from, but they didn't like their circumstances, and they wanted to make better lives some money Back home, they would tell you this, not realizing that it could be considered asylum fraud, but certainly what they were petitioning the United States for was not a legitimate asylum claim. So the Trump administration is making it easier to get through the overloaded asylum docket. And I think that's another important part of all of this. The Biden administration, I had a pit in my stomach when you would talk to some of these people who were trying to come into the United States knowing that as soon as there was a Republican president again, a lot of their hopes and dreams were going to fade away, and the lives that they tried to build in sanctuary cities and the like were going to crumble because this was not sustainable. This was not a legitimate, lawful asylum case, and it was not sustainable. It was not tenable. But here goes the prison policy initiative. They say despite all of this, the Trump administration remains well behind their mass deportation goals. And here's the key part. In large part due to state and local efforts to protect immigrant communities and limit cooperation with ice, Border Patrol, and other federal agencies. Now, go back to the first sentence of that paragraph. Why might that be? They put it right there. They don't want to say it all in the same sentence, but they basically do. Local jails and police departments are key to the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda because they facilitate ICE arrests of people who are already in police custody. Okay, so that means there are people who. In police. Who are in police custody. That's what the complaint is here. There are people in police custody who are being turned over to ice. That is the crux of what sanctuary city and state laws, the likes of which are being enforced in Minnesota, in Minneapolis in particular, by Tim Wallace and Jacob Fry. That is the crux of it. That is what they're about at the end of the day. And that is why, fundamentally, there are people who are impeding ISIS function. At the end of the day, you have a ideological opposition to actually having people who are being arrested, in some cases convicted of crimes. If you go to the DHS website, you can see people Just, you can, you can narrow it down to just people in Minnesota of just who have been convicted of crimes that DHS has apprehended in Minnesota during the Trump administration. You could go look. Dozens of people, convicted criminals who are in the state of Minnesota. And fundamentally what these protests are about, they do not want deportations, period. It's either. What they want is a pathway to citizenship for, for virtually everyone. And if Democrats were serious, as some of them had said, have said in recent days, you know, let's all get that we agree on getting the violent criminals out of there. If they were serious, they would be changing some of these laws. DHS said, quote, the crisis in Minnesota. This was in a video. They said the crisis in Minnesota is a direct result of Governor Walls and leaders in Minneapolis intentionally deciding to take these known criminals who have violated the law and release them back into the streets. Okay, so I sent an email to the city of Minneapolis today asking if that was true and saying, please just explain it to me. Like I'm more than willing to be walked through what's going on here. This was hours ago and I never heard back from them. Today. I hope I do still hear back from them. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm, I'm going to hear, but I'd love to hear their side of the story because every time I get it from Democrats and every time they talk publicly about this, what they're not willing to do is cooperate. And that leads to exactly the situation that we find ourselves in now. So this is a. I just wanted to step back and give the broader context for what's really happening when, you know, I don't think ICE has been perfect. And I'm happy to say that I'm happy to call balls and strike strikes and criticize ICE when they have done things wrong. Zoomed out. The other part of this is that there are families in the country who get very little attention. People in the country who have been victims of crimes committed by non citizens who should never have been here, should never have been here, who should never have been let back out onto the streets. And they get none of the narrative from the media. Conservative outlets do it. The President talks about Lake and Riley and Jocelyn Nungare and some Democrats voted for the Lake and Riley Act. But when they talk about immigration, it is all about the mistakes that ICE has made. There have been mistakes that ICE has made. It is all about the plight of non citizens of the country, undocumented migrants in the country. And you never, I mean, it's so rare that you hear the framing actually flipped. And the framing when you flip it is that you have citizens in the country who have been victimized by non citizens and there are thousands of them around the country. So much so that in one month, one month, literally 3,000 violent criminals were picked up by Donald Trump's ICE. According to DHS, that is, and we all know that's true. So I wanted to, like I said, just zoom out a little bit, give some broader context. Two things can be true. ICE can be doing some stuff that I don't find particularly defensible from perspective of civil liberties. And the broader picture can be if you want immigration enforcement in this country, if you want a fair system, they have an almost impossible job ahead of them, a daunting task, an overwhelming task. And when the doesn't mean that you have to support the Trump administration and their immigration enforcement every step of the way. But it does mean that if you want any serious system in this country, a just and lawful system for the citizens of this country, it is going to be enormously difficult and it's going to require tough choices. It is going to, it is going to be hard, it's going to be emotionally difficult, it's going to be logistically difficult and we're going to see a lot of unfortunate circumstances. There will be a lot of mistakes made because ICE is just making more efforts than it has in the last 10 years to do this stuff. So that's again, zoomed out perspective and I wanted to go through that a little bit because it's been what's on my mind over the last couple of weeks as this story has been at the forefront. So I'm about to bring in our first guest but before we do, I just want to tell you about the skin care industry. You know this listeners, they have been gaslighting women for decades. They're pushing these like 200, 300 and even 400 jars really of like chemical sludge that barely even gets into your skin. And I am done with it. You should be done with it too. Van Man's Pearl Ice eye Cream. I almost said ice cream. It just goes right together like that. Do not eat it. Well, maybe you can eat it. Is skin care that harnesses the best of nature at an affordable price. They ditched the garbage and went straight to grass fed tallow. So you probably can eat it combined with wild caught pearl powder, one of nature's most nutrient dense anti aging ingredients. This isn't just about vanity either. Pearl powder has been used for centuries to support eye health and vision and deeply penetrating emu and castor oils. Royal jelly, organic green tea, frankincense and rose. You've got some serious skin tightening and collagen support from ingredients you can actually pronounce. When you add all of that up, no mystery fillers and no lies give your eyes the care they actually deserve. Go to Vanman Shop afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY for 15 off your first order. That's VANMAN. Shop afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY for 15 OFF your first order. VAN MAN real ingredients, no exceptions. I don't recommend, however, googling Van man after party. That might be dangerous. Go to Vanman Shop afterparty. Google those two things together. You might not get the best results.
- [19:27]
Julianne Moore
Hi, I'm Julianne Moore. I learn a lot from every role, but some things stay with me more than others, like the impact of Alzheimer's disease. It's important to think about brain health now because there's so much we want to do. Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment, learn more@brainhealthmatters.com.
- [19:55]
Commercial Announcer
This is a paid partnership with Lilly. Cash Flow Crunch. On Deck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pric and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today@ondeck.com funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes. Your business loan may be issued by On Deck or Celtic Bank. On Deck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans in amount subject to lender approval.
- [20:28]
Emily Jashinsky
All right. We are joined now by Dr. Matthew Spalding. He's the author of the new book the Making of the American Mind, the Story of Our Declaration of Independence. He's the Vice president for Washington operations and the dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College's Washington, D.C. campus campus, and one of the foremost authorities on this period of American history. So, Dr. Spalding, thank you so much for joining me.
- [20:52]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Great being with you. Thanks for having me.
- [20:54]
Emily Jashinsky
And what a time for this book. Dr. Spalding. I want. I was just talking a little bit about citizenship, which is obviously an important question as people are out in the streets basically debating citizenship. And the left has gone fully pedal to the metal pathway to citizenship. Basically, like, what does citizenship mean anymore? It's faded out of the public debate. And I wanted to ask you actually about that in the context of this book about the Declaration of Independence, because at one point in the Declaration, the authors refer to their fellow citizens, and that sounds almost. What's the right word for it? Like casual cliche. Yeah, or even just like we call ourselves citizens. But I wanted to ask you what they meant by that.
- [21:44]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
No, no, sure. Well, a general comment first, based on what you were just talking about. I mean, you know, so on the one hand, people think that, oh, we're going to now talk about American history as if it's somehow separated from all of that stuff. But I would go so far as to suggest that all of the debates going on today, immigration being chief among them, but all of these questions having to do with various aspects of the rule of law, all go back to our beginnings. America's defined by its beginning. And the Declaration is our epic poetry, if you will, about that moment and history, everything we're debating, the nature of citizenship, what it means to be a people, consent, who gets to consent, who's a citizen, who has a right to vote. Excuse me. I mean, all of that goes back to precisely those questions. So these are centrally important and keys to all that and everything about this thing we call the founding, which is the beginning of America, which still guides us and it's still, I mean, at the center of our politics. Every important aligning election is about what it means to be an American. I mean, that's what the Trump election was about. But President Obama campaigned on his version of that. Go back to Reagan, go back to Lincoln, Jefferson, very beginning. America is largely centered around defining what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be an American, and what's different about America and why this is an important question is it's just not another ethnic question. It's not the equivalent of, say, a European country where it depends on what an ethnic German is or what it means, what it is to be a Frenchman or a Russian or whatever it might be. America works differently. We have this concept of citizenship as opposed, say, to subjects or, you know, subject to the king or a member of the aristocracy or a particular class. Here there's this notion that going back to the Declaration, we're all created equal. There's some basis upon our equality, but because of that equality, we are self governing. Because we're self governing and we're self governing around a set of principles. We are a people. And that's how the Declaration defines it. It's not just physically anybody that's here. It's not people of a certain historical tradition or a particular race. What it might be, it has something to do with a particular place, a particular people. Yes, but it's a particular place in a people dedicated to a set of ideas that have to do with self government and liberty and the rule of law and consent and all of the things that are in the Declaration in the Constitution. And that's clearly what they meant when they talked about the concept of citizen. It's extremely important. It's centrally important because if you've lost that and we have no sense of what it means to be a people, then what the heck are we here for? What's. What's the. What's the point of all this? And I think that's actually what we're debating, right? The. The modern kind of postmodernism and deconstruction and radical progressivism and, you know, whatever. Whatever terms we want to use to call this is based on the notion that there is no. There should be no distinctions like citizenship and a people. It's just a matter of our own will and whatever we want. And wherever that will. That ever. That subjective will wants is what. What goes.
- [25:24]
Emily Jashinsky
Your colleague. Oh, I was just gonna say your colleague at Hillsale, Victor Davis Hanson, talks about how we blur the line now between residents and citizens. And that would be. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think that would be sort of odd to the founders as they were writing the Declaration of Independence. That.
- [25:42]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Absolutely. Look, the idea of nations, which is a gatherings of individuals who decide to live together, govern themselves and have a particular way of life, and there are various forms of this all around the world, is centrally important. This goes back to Aristotle in the very beginning, the Greeks and the Romans. It's the essence of the Western tradition, including the Christian tradition. What's different about America and the culmination of the Western argument is that we have this other idea that. Well, it's not because you just happen to be here. It's not because you can claim that this is somehow tied your ethnicity. It's something that we as a people define. And we define that through the rule of law, in particular the constitutional system, the federal constitution and a bunch of state constitutions. In the heart of that, though, the thing that defines our citizenship, our senses of people, is these common principles that the nation is dedicated to, which we find most famously enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. Which is why we constantly go back and debate precisely that thing. And what I worry about today is that the left gave up on these claims some time ago. They don't believe that it's all subjective. There are no such things as, say, self evident truths or the idea that we are created equal or rights that we possess by nature. Their kind of moral relativism and whatnot is kind of given up on that. And I think we need to remind the American people of the importance of precisely those principles which is the basis of our citizenship and everything else for that matter. And I think this anniversary is an opportunity to do that. Which is why, among other things, work on what I work and teach at Hillsdale and why I wrote this book. I think it really is. These ideas are really central to all of these debates in a way that I think sometimes we don't quite realize.
- [27:54]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, no, I think that's so right. Well, let's actually, since we set the stage, this is a good time to bring in Ilhan Omar because Ilhan Omar has raised eyebrows once again in recent days for some comments actually about this very issue, obviously from the area. So let's roll this clip of Ilhan Omar talking about what she's seen in Minneapolis in the last couple of weeks.
- [28:17]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
The one place where we thought we would never experience this is the US goddamn states.
- [28:25]
Emily Jashinsky
Ooh, the US GD states. Dr. Spalding, what make you of this?
- [28:33]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
The first thing I thought was odd about it, it's just illiterate. I mean, it's not even actually a good use of the acronym usa. I mean, it doesn't quite. I mean, come on, you can at least get it right. I mean. But yeah, the point is that the. All these are various versions of the same thing and every few weeks, every few days, we find an example of this. But this is no longer the old left, the old left think of Martin Luther King or kind of the liberalism, FDR for that matter, it was still pro American. It was liberal and progressive and we might disagree on policies here and there, but it still believed this was a pretty good country and worth fighting for. And it had principles that we aspired to and should stand up for, as Martin Luther King famously said. But the modern left, the deconstructionist left, the post moderns, which is what Omar and others really represent, is a rejection of all that. It's a radical turn to a view that America is actually the problem and it's something to be. Not only should we kind of try to make it more liberal, but actually we want to radically turn away from it. It's not worth defending or celebrating in any way. It's an inferior country. Whether that's some systemic racism to go to, say, the 1619 Project, or it's because they think that enforcing immigration laws is inherently racist and bigoted and mean spirited and all these things. But, but the country itself is the problem. And we're. These are just kind of various, various forms of that in various rantings and, and, you know, hateful things and cursings and whatnot. But the reflects, they really do, some disagree. They don't like this country. And, you know, I don't know about you, but I was, I was in middle school in 1976 for the bicentennial, and I remember all those things and the tall ships and whatnot. You know, one thing I remember, I grew up in California, and the local talent, where I grew up, the local talent was a guy named Merle Haggard, great troubadour.
- [30:58]
Emily Jashinsky
Oh, you're from Bakersfield?
- [31:00]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Bakersfield, yeah. And his big hit was, if you're running down my country, you're walking on the fighting side of me. And, you know, if you don't love it, leave it. There's a, you know, there really is a lack of, not only is there lack of patriotism, but there's a, there's a real hatred for the country. I fear, I don't know, I don't think that's where all the left is. I think there's still old liberals there that think this is a decent country and they don't like this stuff. But the radical left, I really fear, has really gone off in a very, very different direction and is a full, you know, kind of a full, full frontal rejection of these ideas.
- [31:43]
Emily Jashinsky
Let's also bring in Don Lemon and Jennifer Welch, who were talking earlier today on a podcast about what's going on in Minneapolis. Don Lemon has been reporting from the scene. We'll have more on that later in the show. But Welch brought him on her podcast to talk a little bit about it or brought him, him onto a podcast. They were together to talk a little bit about it. And because Dr. Spalding, you mentioned Christianity, Welch is going to bring Christianity into this conversation as well. So let's roll the clip.
- [32:15]
Don Lemon
And there's a certain degree of entitlement. I think people who are, you know, in religious groups like that, it's not the type of Christianity that I practice, but I think that they're entitled and that that entitlement comes from a supremacy, a white supremacy. And they think that this country was built for them, that it is a Christian country when actually we left England because we wanted religious freedom. It's rel freedom, but only if you're a Christian and only if you're a white male, pretty much. And so, Yeah, I absolutely, 100%, but it's an intimidation tactic. And, you know, I said, I don't understand how I've become the face of it. When I was a journalist, I do understand that I'm the biggest name there. And I'm also, as. As I was on with my producers this morning, you know, you and Kylie talk all the time. My producers were saying, I said, how did I become the face of this? And my producer said, don, you're a gay black man in America.
- [33:01]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, that's it. That's it. So Jennifer Welch, I should add, also had some. She was talking about. I'm going to find the exact quote. She was talking about how white nationalism, because it's. They're flirting with charging Don Lemon under anti KKK laws in addition to potentially the Face Act. And Jennifer Welch went on to say, so, Don, it's abundantly obvious to me that if they do charge you, you're going to lawyer up and you're going to get. They're going to get humiliated, blah, blah, blah. And she goes on to the rest of the broadcast to talk about how it's actually the white nationalists. I'm trying to find the exact quote here. She. She refers to Harmeet Dylan, who's at doj, as talking about a, quote, black man with a cell phone and a microphone, because the white nationalists at the white megachurch got their feelings hurt for being called out, for being hypocrites. I'm just going to turn it over to you, Dr. Spalding.
- [34:03]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
It's actually getting difficult to follow some of these arguments, to be perfectly honest. There's a certain absurdity to them. And we should recognize the absurdity about this whole argument. It really shows the extent to which what goes for modern liberalism has completely rejected the liberalism of the American founding. I mean, what is it that gave rise to the liberalism that really is America? America is the most successful form of a liberal nation in world history, and yet they're rejecting its principles. I mean, the thing that makes for America, upon which everything is built, including the religious liberty that has been referred to here, is human equality. Human equality that we are all equally have equal status before the law. We're also equal in the eyes of God, but equal before the law, that's the basis of religious liberty and all of our liberties, for that matter. And yet modern liberalism very famously is turning much of our popular discussion today back on racial questions. White nationalism, racism, diversity, equity, inclusion, you name it. That's the language they always want to go back to. Why is that?
- [35:25]
Emily Jashinsky
Well.
- [35:28]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Once you've rejected the philosophical moorings, if you will, of American liberalism, which is the founding, which is the Declaration, which is the kind of comes out of that whole Western tradition, if you reject that, what's left? Left, what's left? All it is is what C.S. lewis called the poison of subjectivism. It's whatever you want, it's relativism. It's, you know, I can be a helicopter today in a, you know, a Jeep tomorrow. I don't know what it, what is it? And you. And everything has to be categorized based on other things. And it's oddly going back to kind of pre American ideas of feudalism and race and all the, all the particular, the exact same things that the American founding rejected. We turned away from those things because we were in a nation based on liberty. And that requires the rule of law and equality, consent, all these principles that are associated with American founding, which they're now openly rejecting, they want to claim them to some extent. They want to claim them as they've redefined them to be completely subjective to their opinions. And anybody who suggests otherwise is, you know, pick your category of evilness. And so religious liberty means you have to be open to anything and everything that someone says is their opinion. It doesn't actually mean having religious opinions of any, of any worth, of any standard, of any standing or doctrine or religious meaning. It means being value free. And so I think more and more Americans on the right in the middle, in kind of what I would call, what I call the old left, find that to be just patently, obviously absurd because that's not the American liberal tradition that they've always learned that we've always upheld. And that's been the center of the interpretation. And today that argument itself is considered to be kind of right wing and bigoted, if not racist. And it's all about Christian nationalism. And all these kind of certain point I've run out of. We run out of terminology to criticize. I mean, what else can they call us? What's left? I mean, they go on Nazis where that doesn't do the trick anymore. So I guess Christian nationalism is the flavor of the moment.
- [38:13]
Emily Jashinsky
That's what I was. So just what I was going to ask you about next is kind of this obvious question that the Declaration of Independence in and of itself was an act of protest. And we've been talking here about protests and citizenship, and all of that is tied up itself in the Declaration of Independence, which of course you've written about in this book that people should go out and make sure to read. And so I'm wondering, you know, Martin Luther King, on his mountaintop speech, right before he's assassinated, he says, all we ask of America, what is the quote? All we say to America is be true to what you said on paper. And Frederick Douglass had made similar points, but promissory note and all of that. So what. How should we. I mean, one of the interesting parts of the Ken Burns American Revolution documentaries, he talks about how there's a lot of descriptions of what was happening at the time as civil war. And, you know, that's an interesting question because it gets to what's protest? What's what, what's. What's war? What's actually, how do we define these movements? Because it seems like what these protests are, is, is beyond obviously protests. We're, we're verging into a different territory. So how should we think about all of that as we look at the Declaration?
- [39:22]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Yeah, no, that's a great question, but it's a very different thing. I mean, you mentioned Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, and of course Lincoln and the whole fight against slavery in the Civil War and the understanding of slavery at the time of the Declaration itself, for that matter. I mean, look, the problem is that, broadly speaking, the modern left does kind of look at history backwards. They want to argue that America is racist today, so therefore they just go back in history to find what they want. But it's not very good history. The argument of the Founding and the claim of the Founding are these principles. America is not a perfect country. That's never been the claim. We are imperfect people, all of us, and there are all sorts of things I would point to in American history that, you know, you can, that are cringeworthy and if not barbaric, in the case of slavery. But that doesn't mean the whole thing was somehow flawed from the beginning. It set out a set of principles, and we've always lived up to those principles and tried to live up to them. That was Frederick Douglass's point. When he realized what the Declaration actually said. That was the ring bolt, he said of the American Constitution, which itself is a liberty document, to quote him Martin Luther King. The Declaration is a promissory. More live up to your promissory notes. Yes, I agree with that. But the left has decided that's not good enough. Any existence of any problems that existed are somehow systemic. Well, that's just not history. And I think it's a deep misunderstanding of the nature of politics. I mean, politics is about putting out what are the principles you stand for, right? This is what a. An agenda is, an election. What do you stand for? How are you going to get there? And how are you going to aspire towards it and lead people in that direction? That's what the Founding is. That's what the Declaration is. And so part of it is that not only are we getting the history wrong, but we've lost. We've kind of forgotten how to think about politics in the way the Founders did, which I would argue is kind of the way the Western tradition teaches politics, which is about aspiring to principles. What is true? What can we say about man, about the nature of man? What does that teach us about politics in principle? And then, as the Declaration says, how does prudence dictate how we should actually operate now that politics is often imperfect. It takes a while to figure things out. It takes a while to solve problems. The Continental Congress, a few weeks before the Declaration, abolished the slave trade. But obviously we had to fight about a lot of those things. Soon after the Constitution, the cotton gin is invented. That changed the whole economics of the south. And it's. And then, then, you know, pretty soon you've got. In the antebellum south, all of a sudden, you've now got positive defensive slavery. So we need to get the history right. Yes, we understand the nature of how history should be understood. And I think that the left just wants to use history as the cudgel. And I think that's. That's deeply misleading, problematic. What most Americans want and what we're supposed to be doing in the classroom is not teaching them ideology, but teaching the facts of history, the real stories of history, the actual narrative, warts and all, as I like to do in my classroom. But the overwhelming story is this noble story of accomplishment and moving towards those principles, trying to be better, a more perfect union, as the. The Constitution says. So it's a much greater thing. And I think the prominent voices in today's left have really just completely rejected that. And I think our hope in this anniversary year is that a lot of Americans right, center in kind of the old left, as I call it, the liberal generation of, you know, our parents and those who have been educated in that form of American liberalism, still think this is a good country worth defending. And don't think this. You aren't going to continue to support this nonsense, especially as we see it coming out in these egregious cases.
- [43:40]
Emily Jashinsky
Dr. Matthew Spalding is the author of the new book the Making of the American the Story of Our Declaration of Independence. He is, as you can tell, one of the most brilliant people and that I've had the opportunity to get to know. And of course, he's over at Hillsdale College, which you should send your kids to. And go ahead and check out those courses online. They're amazing. Thank you, Dr. Spalding.
- [44:00]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Great being with you. Thank you.
- [44:02]
Emily Jashinsky
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- [46:47]
Emily Jashinsky
All right, let's bring in Shane Cashman, who's an investigative journalist and host of Inverted World Live over at Tim Cast. Shane, thanks for being here.
- [46:56]
Shane Cashman
Hey, Emily, thanks for having me.
- [46:58]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about data centers. Why not? There's big news in the data center front. It's actually much less boring. And I think the country is coming to realize this. It's much less boring. Like the name data center sounds banal and inoffensive, but as they've come to communities in states from from coast to coast, it's become obvious these are not just banal local municipal questions. So let's put F5 on the screen. This is a very interesting metric from someone who tracks this information, Don Johnson. He's looking at, quote, already 25 data center cancellations and postponements this month. So in January, expecting to see a 100 plus month towards midterms, which excludes local county moratoriums. And Shane, you've been tracking this too, very closely. One of the sneaky sleeper issues in the midterm election cycle is 2026 that we are now in. But very interesting to see what looks like a bit of a reversal. Do you buy these numbers? Are you seeing this, too?
- [48:00]
Shane Cashman
I, I think it's positive that people are definitely pushing back on this because they were like this abstract idea, these data centers, but then they started invading communities around the country and it became a kind of bipartisan issue where people are like, oh, we don't like this. It's eating up our farmland. So I do think people are pushing back. It's still not enough. Like, there's still a lot of, like, data centers that are being put up everywhere. I'm in West Virginia and There's like a giant one being put in that goes across Jefferson county and Berkeley county. And the people are furious. And West Virginia passed a bill last year that basically makes it so no one can say no to these things. So these people are furious because it's eating up all this farmland and no one wants to have this eyesore. I mean, there's a million reasons why, like, you know, they don't know what it's going to do with the sound, the water usage, what kind of energy use usage, all that kind of stuff. But there are people pushing back on it there seems like there's places that have been canceling them, but I think we have a long ways to go.
- [49:04]
Emily Jashinsky
Well, so let's get back into that. Why question. You just mentioned farmland and all of that. We'll put F6 up here. This is Donald Trump's crypto czar, David Sachs, just a couple of days ago saying narrative violation. The largest AI data center uses roughly the same amount of Water as two burger joints. There are over 200,000 fast food restaurants in the US so this is a tiny amount. He posted an article where this analysis had been done. I've seen other analyses. Pirate Wires has some information on this, but Shane, is the water question here a red herring? Is that something where it's like, it's easily.
- [49:37]
Shane Cashman
It can be.
- [49:38]
Emily Jashinsky
You follow this closer than I do. Yeah. Is it something where it's like easily kind of. Okay, you, you're making the water a really big issue. Let's talk about the water. Well, we can, we can debunk your water claims, but if we were, if our conversation was focused on, for example, what you said, farmland, jobs, that type of thing, it would be harder for them to debunk. Is this one of those? Yeah.
- [49:57]
Shane Cashman
So David Sacks, first of all, is a propagandist. Like, he wants.
- [50:00]
Emily Jashinsky
He literally works for the government.
- [50:02]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Right.
- [50:02]
Shane Cashman
Like, he wants this to be the narrative.
- [50:04]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
But he had.
- [50:05]
Shane Cashman
They do have a point. I read most of the article where, you know, they're saying that it doesn't take up as much water as people say, but all in and out burgers, like, if you read that article, they're basically the same. They're identical. If you look up burger kings or different, you know, fast food joints, they're all pretty much the same and they don't use that much water. Compared to. Even the smaller AI data centers can use tens of thousands of gallons of water a day. And some of them, like Google's, can use millions of gallons of water a day. And there's other people in the tech world, like the rainmaker CEO who goes around saying he wants to seed the clouds so they can help farmers. But his real goal, which he has stated is to create water for data centers because they use so much water. So I get what they're trying to do because he's a propagandist and he doesn't like any negative questions about AI, clearly. But it's certainly something that isn't always like 400 million gallons of water in every data center. But it is something I think we should worry about because there are people right now, I'm not too far from Northern Virginia, and they're up by AI alley. Right. Data center alley. So they're seeing their water bills and their electricity bills double in two years time. And it's because of what they're funding, the data centers. And the data centers are using that much electricity and water. And that just happens in the last decade. 10,000 acres of land stolen by data centers in Northern Virginia alone, you know, and that's happening across the country.
- [51:34]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah. And when you say stolen, what's interesting about that is it's partnerships between local governments. And sometimes this is what we're just talking about. We can put. Actually, this one is F7 on the screen. As Shane has been explaining municipalities, people are pushing back on their local governments for letting this stuff happen. You can see on the map app that Robinson Meyer of Heat Map posted here what Shane was just talking about. And like the. The Northern Virginia area in particular, which explains why this is becoming like a sneaky midterm election issue. And Shane, as I look at some of this, you know, there's a lot of that goes into the claims tech makes about bringing jobs. You know, it doesn't bring that many jobs. All these jobs are important, but it's like 100 jobs or whatever. It seems to me like this is becoming a, I don't know, scapegoat is not the right word. It's becoming a proxy war for like pro human and anti human. And that sounds kind of crazy.
- [52:32]
Shane Cashman
No, it is.
- [52:32]
Emily Jashinsky
But could you, like, give us the big picture on what's going on with this, like, goofy policy question of data, data centers, like, why? What's going on?
- [52:40]
Shane Cashman
First of all, let's go back to like almost a year ago, second day of Trump 2.0, when they did Project Stargate. You know, that was the day I'm like, oh, they sold out the American people. That's it. This $500 billion shrine with Oracle and OpenAI and all these people to build lots of data centers, because we're in like a Cold War type scenario with.
- [52:59]
Emily Jashinsky
It was basically a federal. What Trump did was codify a big federal effort to accelerate data center construction, ease regulations, that sort of thing.
- [53:08]
Shane Cashman
Yep, yep. So cut a lot of red tape. And now they're building huge ones like in. In Texas, Oregon, Virginia, obviously West Virginia. So then they're saying, well, this is going to be great for jobs because we're going to create lots of jobs. But in my opinion, this is what I think a lot of people agree on who are in these areas, where they're coming, where they're invading, is it's going to kill the local community. So, first of all, let's just take West Virginia, for example, because I think it's fascinating they signed that bill I just mentioned earlier. Part of that bill also states that they get all these great tax breaks, but they also, most of their property taxes don't even go back to the community like most other data centers in the country. It goes to the state. Right. So that's like a huge issue that people are having because they're like, West Virginia is a pretty fairly poor state and the communities do need help. So they're like, first of all, that's crazy. I imagine a lot of states are going to adapt that if data centers continue to boom, which we can talk about that a little more later. But anyway, the jobs, all the contractors that are coming to build the data centers are from out of state, so they will have jobs, but they're temporary. And it might help the local area for a little bit, whether it's hotels, Airbnbs, restaurants. But then they go away. These things are built. They've mutilated the farmland because it's not just putting a warehouse on top of land. It's like they're drilling and burying things 10, 15, 20ft underground. You can't reuse that land. Right. So all that's happening, and then they're not going to hire locals to come run them. And most of these, like, even bigger data centers only have 20 to like, 50 employees inside them. It's mostly automated. Right, Right. So I don't imagine it really giving any jobs to anybody. Maybe like H1B people when they come in, you know, or people from Silicon Valley they send out to other states, but it's not going to help the people, right?
- [54:55]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, like, that's what they say. And that's, you know, it's a tell because they're going to be hundreds of people involved in the construction you can look at their numbers and then permanent jobs, it's sometimes like 70 to 100. And a lot of them are janitorial. Great new jobs. But for the, like, longevity of these data centers fueling the AI boom, that's, I guess, the next question. Shane. We are actually not you and I, but to accept the premise here is to accept that it's good to have an AI boom. That's sort of the underlying principle here. And as somebody who's, you know, obviously dissatisfied with this administration's approach to technology and the kind of. We were talking about David Sacks earlier, the crypto czar, He's. He's a good example of the E ACC like the accelerationist win of maga. What does. What troubles you about the kind of open embrace the. The close embrace of accelerationism?
- [55:52]
Shane Cashman
They're anti human, like you said, they're anti Earth. You know, they. They pretend to be. To help you. They want to help you, they want to help make jobs. But the whole E ACT movement, like Andreessen and all them, it's all fake. I mean, I. I don't like AI, But I think we can coexist with it. It might not be as apocalyptic as a tool. I think it's going to be terrible for the surveillance state. And so that's one of the aspects that I really don't like is the fact that Trump is now funding that crazy dystopian surveillance state. And he's surrounded by the worst people, in my opinion, like a teal. Like an Ellison, you know, Altman, Like, I don't like Musk either. I've never been a fan. And I just, I wish, you know, there was two movements within the Trump 2.0 campaign. The Maha and the tech guys. And the tech guys won out, in my opinion. Maha's done some stuff, but most of the things they promote are anti mah, you know, on that. And Project Stargate to go back to his second day in office, this last go around, they announced these mRNA vaccines that they'll design in 48 hours that will be personalized. Like that is antithetical to Maha. So it's that. It's the fact that I think they're anti human. And so again, like Andreessen and Thiel Hoffman, they're also trying to create these private cities, which is why they're going around building or buying up all this land, not just for data centers, but like Andreessen, I think they just built. They just. Him and hoffman just bought 70,000 acres in northern California for their private city. It's called Forever California. And it went on for years, this process, because the farmers refused to sell, and then they sued the farmers for refusing to sell sell. And so the process was so damaging to the farmers because the lawsuits and the money, they got so poor they had to sell. I think almost all the farmers sold. And the ones who were saying two years ago we would never sell. So I really hate that, especially after, you know, I was really into Trump doing things like in 2018 when he was helping farmers in California get more water because that smelt fish, right? They had that weird issue, really, we can't send water this way because the smell fish. And now we're undoing all of this stuff. And I really like farmers. You know, I like farms. I like real food. I like that stuff. And you can see by them erasing all of this organic life, the world, the nature, it gives them and their cronies the ability to do these crazy things they want to do. Like Bill Gates making fake meat. You know, he's doing that because they're expecting to not have farms, right? They're gonna. They're trying to, like, turn the night into day. That was a serious story I read today on my show, where they're trying to send mirrors in outer space. So, like, everything they're doing is just so anti earth, anti nature. I think it's gonna have a lot of unintended consequences that we're not really ready for.
- [58:44]
Emily Jashinsky
Well, Shane, you're gonna be familiar with this clip, but let me. You mentioned Larry Ellison. I'm gonna put this up on the screen. This is Larry Ellison on the quote, AI powered surveillance that is in our future.
- [58:59]
Don Lemon
The police will be on their best behavior because we record. We're constantly recording, watching and recording everything that's going on. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on.
- [59:14]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Oh, when you come to government and what government's doing, they're obviously, oh, it's artificial intelligence tools. And some of them, I know that Oracle have developed around that financial management for government.
- [59:25]
Emily Jashinsky
But also. So we don't even need to hear the rest. I mean, that's the key part.
- [59:30]
Shane Cashman
There's a part in that before, like, I think it's just before that where he's talking about having, you know, these cameras on cops and how they'll even be played while they're in the bathroom. But I swear, we'll turn them off or we won't.
- [59:44]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
We won't look at it.
- [59:45]
Shane Cashman
We won't look at it is what he says, but it will be recording even in the bathroom. And then he goes into this thing about citizens being on the best behavior. That man is, I think, just an evil man. And he doesn't like people. And you know that for those I'm sure everyone knows, like his son just bought cvs. So we're in for a wild ride with these guys.
- [60:02]
Emily Jashinsky
We. So Larry Ellison is obviously in Trump's orbit and huge donor to political causes. So Shane, they're saying this stuff out loud and it seems odd. I mean, it's, it's historically, I guess, makes sense in the sweep of the last 100, 200 years that we're like frogs in the boiling pot. That because there's a sort of banality to everyday life. You hear a billionaire saying some crazy. You just wake up the next day, move on. It seems bad, but it, it feels like it all happens slowly sometimes with, with like social media, algorithmic social media, smartphones. It happened fast and still nobody really woke up until the pandemic. Totally. That was like the, the wake up call for so many folks. They're doing this in plain sight. I mean, they're doing this in plain sight. Is. And, and Republicans are going along with it. That just, it all seems unbelievable.
- [60:59]
Shane Cashman
Yeah, no, they're, they're all into it. Everyone. I mean, it is the right now, but the left was funding this, you know, under Biden. You know, like Palantir has been making money through every administration since Bush.
- [61:10]
Emily Jashinsky
Alex Karp is a huge Dem donor. Yeah, he gets pegged as a Republican.
- [61:14]
Shane Cashman
But yeah, so now it's just Trump's friends. And Trump has had teal in his corner since 2015. So advance is obviously kind of like mentored and created by teal. So for me though, I just think they don't care about being open with it. They were five years. A lot of these guys were open about up being happy for censorship for anyone who was subverting the lockdown narrative. So I think why would you trust them now all of a sudden? Just because they're getting a lot of money from administration that a lot of us voted for. But you know, we're seeing it. They're not only just talking about it openly. A lot of their death machines are being operated right now around the world, you know, and things they create like, like within Gaza, you know, what they're doing with AI Lavender and the way it uses AI to basically find out who they're going to kill. And there's very minimal human oversight. They're Doing it in Ukraine with a lot of facial recognition and drones that will get you. So it's like. And in. In the uk, they just last year started a predictive homicide unit to see who is most likely, based on their Internet usage, to commit a homicide. So, I mean, this is insane stuff. So they're open about it because everyone's bought into it in terms of. Of the authorities, the governments around the world. They want to use this because they think it's going to make a safer world, but it's going to be a world that is completely anti God, anti human, anti anything natural, which I. I oppose that.
- [62:39]
Emily Jashinsky
When it feels what they're to them, it makes them feel comfortable because they're in control. And actually, one of the things that frightened me during the pandemic, there was this kind of coming apart of people who preferred comfort to freedom. And I think what we learned during the pandemic is that is actually a big chunk of our fellow countrymen. And that's. I find, I think there are a lot of people who would watch what Larry Ellison just said. Shockingly, even in the United States, there's some chunk. It's not most of the country, but there's some chunk of the country that would listen to that and say, great, bring it on.
- [63:11]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Yeah.
- [63:11]
Shane Cashman
And there's also. I know there's a bunch of people out there who consider themselves dissidents from, like, the right. During lockdowns, but now they're. I see a lot of them saying, well, we'll just use it on the bad guys now and then it'll be fine. I'm like, that's not how it works because they're building it for the next administration and then one after that. And they always redefine who's an enemy, whether it's in this country or outside of this country. Right. Like Biden said, half this country was, you know, bad people that should be, you know, whatever arrested for J6 and stuff like that.
- [63:43]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
That.
- [63:44]
Shane Cashman
So I think we should be very worried about what they're building with AI. I'm not so much worried about AI, Although I don't like it. I don't use it that much. I'm worried about the people who are building it and that this administration has completely embraced them and that they can't be trusted. And you look up things that they're saying, whether it's in, you know, in public forums like that or things they write like Mark Andreessen's. I almost called it. What is it called? Called something manifesto. It's kind of like Ted Kaczynski's manifesto, but it's like the opposite. It's the opposite. And it's like, it's this very happy outlook on the future of, of technology and AI, which I don't, I don't think is possible if we want freedom, honestly. Because they don't want, they want total control at all times.
- [64:31]
Emily Jashinsky
Right? Oh, Shane, this has been depressing. She is the host of Inverted World live over at Tim Catch. Thanks for stopping by, Shane.
- [64:40]
Shane Cashman
Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.
- [64:42]
Emily Jashinsky
Appreciate it. We will bring you Don Lemon's odyssey through the Twin Cities in just one moment. But first, over the years, I have been clear about this. I'm not just pro birth, I'm pro life. And being pro life means standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that is exactly why our I partner and partner very proudly with preborn. Preborn doesn't just save babies. They make motherhood abundantly possible. They provide free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel gospel with women in crisis. And then they stay with real practical help, including financial support for up to two years after the baby is born. This is what true Christ centered compassion looks like. Not just for the baby, but for the mother too. And here's where you can make a difference. Just $28 provides a free life saving ultrasound. One chance for a mother to see her baby. And when she does get this, she is is twice as likely to choose life. Amazing. Preborn is trying to save 70, 000 babies this year. So don't just say your pro life, live it. Help save babies and support mothers today. Go to preborn.com emily or call 855-601-2229. That's preborn.com emily we all take good.
- [65:58]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Care of the things that matter.
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Emily Jashinsky
Our homes, our pets, our cars.
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Emily Jashinsky
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Emily Jashinsky
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- [66:22]
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- [66:58]
Emily Jashinsky
Are we going to close out the show today with Don Lemon? His. His misadventures in Minnesota? And I said this at the top, what's happening in Minneapolis is not funny, but Don Lemon absolutely is. Don Lemon is incredible. I am living for his trip to Minnesota. He looks like he's would rather be in Davos. He's dressed for Davos, but you know, he, he'd rather be in Davos, but he finds himself in Minnesota inside a Baptist church. You may have already seen these clips if you hadn't haven't seen the clips. We have some, some of them to show you, but they resulted in first Nicki Minaj going to war with Don Lemon. Nicki Minaj newly. What should we call her? New ambassador for the Christian church. Calling him, quote, this is F10.
- [67:55]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Don.
- [67:57]
Emily Jashinsky
Lemon, who she said in all caps is disgusting. How dare you. I want that thug in jail. He would never do that to any other religion. Lock him up. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. Obviously there needed to be four. This is hopefully Nicki Minaj in transition to Christian life. I, I don't know what's in Nicki Minaj's heart. She says she believes in Jesus. I don't know that it's the right move to go with Don Cox sucking Lemon, but here we are. It happened. And listen, directionally, she's accurate. Directionally, this is correct. He would not ever do that to another religion. And we know that because I'm about to play the clips. You've probably already seen them, but let's watch the clips in sequence. So we are going to get into the storming of the church because as the Washington Free Beacon had, this was in Minneapolis, of course, city's church. This is the Free Beacon Tik Tok on the account. So, like, I mean the minute by minute account, not the Tik Tok. And Don Lemon is doing a live stream from Minneapolis yesterday, Sunday. And as we go through these videos, you're going to see exactly what Nicki Minaj is reacting to. So let's go ahead here and roll. This is going to be S1. This is Don Lemon. He's reporting on what the organizers have told him. And this is critical because the Trump administration Harmeet Dillon over at The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division has said she is now planning to investigate Don Lemon for a violation of the FACE Act. Clinton Air Face Act. The FACE act is something that actually people like Mike Lee, folks on the right, have said has been abused to come after pro life protesters. It absolutely has been abused. I think it is a huge constitutional question. It has been used against pro life protesters. So politically, of course, Republicans are going to turn that around on people storming into. It was totally abused by the Biden administration. So of course Republicans are going to turn that around and charge people who storm a church service in Minneapolis. Don Lemon seemed to know that this was about to happen, which is why he's in hot water with Harmeet Dhillon and the Trump administration. Here's S1.
- [70:17]
Don Lemon
I've been surprised, pleasantly surprised, to see the community coming together there. Diverse community. If you see this, when we first pulled up, we're like, wait a minute. Operation are we at? And as it turns out, because we're like, well, this is kind of MAGA coated, right? Saw the American flag or whatever. But these are resistance protests. Planning an operation that we're going to follow them on. I can't tell you exactly what they're doing, but it's called Operation Pull up, where they surprise people, catch them off guard and hold them to account. And so that's what we're doing here. And then we're after that. After we do this operation, you'll see it live.
- [70:54]
Emily Jashinsky
It's like he's in Fallujah. He's like Brian Williams at Katrina. That's what we're seeing from Don Lemon now in a parking lot of, like, a big lots in Minneapolis. He clearly seems to have been clued into Operation Pull up going into the church. I don't know if we're going to find that out definitively for or for sure. Personally, I don't support charging journalists in acts of journalism, even if what Don Lemon did appears to have been atrocious, which, let's just say it, pretty, pretty confident in that assessment at this point, because roll S2. You're about to see this Baptist church in Minneapolis, it's called Cities Church, be disrupted by these, quote, protesters who were told one of the pastors works for ice. Let's take a look.
- [71:45]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Just like Jesus did.
- [71:46]
Emily Jashinsky
We went into that church and we flipped tables peacefully. Yep.
- [71:53]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Renee, good. Are you.
- [72:08]
Emily Jashinsky
Where are you?
- [72:08]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Where are you?
- [72:09]
Emily Jashinsky
Where are your people?
- [72:11]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Why are you not at Whipple every day fighting for the humanity, standing for our people? Where are you? You drink your coffee you got your jewelry. You have your nice clothes, but what do you do? What. What do you do to stand for your Somali and Latino communities?
- [72:26]
Emily Jashinsky
I'm not going to comment.
- [72:27]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
You have no comment.
- [72:28]
Shane Cashman
Exactly.
- [72:33]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
Duty to win.
- [72:33]
Shane Cashman
We have a duty to win.
- [72:39]
Emily Jashinsky
Another.
- [72:42]
Shane Cashman
All right.
- [72:42]
Emily Jashinsky
And now let's take a look at Don Lemon confronting the pastor. This is S3.
- [72:48]
Don Lemon
What do you think of it?
- [72:49]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
I mean, this is unacceptable. It's shameful. It's shameful to. To interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship.
- [72:59]
Don Lemon
But there were folks who will say.
- [73:01]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
I have to take care of my flock. Okay, but listen, we live in a.
- [73:04]
Don Lemon
There's a constitution in the First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest.
- [73:09]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
We're here to worship. We're here to worship Jesus because that's the hope of these cities, that's the hope of the world, is Jesus Christ. I'm gonna be very respectful.
- [73:16]
Don Lemon
Please don't push me, though.
- [73:17]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
We're here. We're here to worship Jesus. That's why we're here. That's what we're about.
- [73:24]
Don Lemon
You think Jesus would be understanding and we're about love. These folks.
- [73:27]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
We're about spreading the love of Jesus.
- [73:29]
Don Lemon
But did you try to talk to them as a.
- [73:31]
Shane Cashman
As a Christian?
- [73:31]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
No one is willing to talk. Okay. I have to take care of my.
- [73:34]
Shane Cashman
Church and my family.
- [73:35]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
So I asked that you actually would also leave this building. You don't want us to worship? You're here to worship.
- [73:41]
Shane Cashman
I'm always worship.
- [73:41]
Don Lemon
I'm a Christian.
- [73:42]
Dr. Matthew Spalding
We're here. Well, we're here to worship. We're here to worship. Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
- [73:47]
Emily Jashinsky
Okay, so arguably trespassing because the pastor asked him to leave. But. But a lot going on there. Obviously a lot going on there. You know, when Don Lemon and I've heard actually this from many others, because, you know, in the west, it's true that. Because we live comfortable lives, I think Christians have been accustomed to, especially for the last, you know, until 20 or so years ago. But there was a time period in American history where Christians were the cultural. I mean, there's a long time period in American history going back to the founding, where Christians are the dominant. Dominant part of society, the dominant culture. And Christians became totally accustomed to that, and I think are jarred by what's actually been pretty normal for Christian history, which is being relegated to the fringes, right? Being treated differently and being on the outskirts of society, being ostracized. And Roger wrote the Benedict Option, and I think an important time, and I Always recommend that book. I think it probably was pression about what the future of the church actually is going to look like. But it's true. Christians have gotten very comfortable and very used to being part of the kind of cultural mainstream in a way that's clearly we're transitioning to a period where it's, it's flip flopped and there's nothing wrong with that. It's. It's normal for Christian history in the scope of, of Christian history. It's going to be perfectly normal. You know, I obviously wish it, it weren't the case that, like the ethics of believing in human worth, human dignity, universal human dignity. If I didn't feel like that was losing ground in the United States of America, I wish that weren't the case. But I think it is the case. And all that is to say it's Minneapolis obvious why people. You know, there's a video of a child crying. If you haven't seen that yet, there's a little boy crying in the pews. Well, there was a mass shooting during mass, the beginning of the school year in the same exact community. There have been attacks on churches and synagogues. That's a, a thing that if you are worshiping on a Sunday, you're very afraid of. We can have another conversation about church security, but, you know, unfortunately, that's, that's something that's happened. And so when a group of people barges into a church and starts shouting and screaming, of course people are going to be scared. Of course children are going to be scared. And, and really, you know, Lemon goes on to talk about. He said he had, quote, conducted some reconnaissance. Incredible. Incredible. He conducted some reconnaissance. He says, quote, these are resistant protest, resistance protesters that are planning an operation that we're going to follow them on. I can't tell you exactly what they're doing. And you heard him say they're going to surprise future people, catch them off guard and hold them to account because they are strategizing. I don't want to get too much of their information there. And he admitted that he, quote, turned my camera off at one point. According to the Washington Free Beacon report from Chuck Ross that I'm reading from here now, when Nicki Minaj went off on him, he responded, or, I'm sorry, when Harmeet Dylan went off on him, Lemon responded to say, quote, I had no affiliations with that organization. I didn't even know they were going to this church. Church until we followed them there. Why don't you talk to the actual person who is in charge of the organization and whose idea it was to have the protest at the church. Before you start blaming me for stuff for which you have no idea, Don, I think she is going to talk to the, quote, actual person who is in charge of the organization. Something tells me that's in the works if it hasn't already happened. So it's. It's very, very possible. I'll put the text of the Face actor up here. So part one is about, quote, reproductive health services. It's about abortion. And part two says by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates, or interferes with, or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the first amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship, quote, shall be subject to the penalties provided in subsection B, blah, blah, blah. So if you're looking at the text of the face act, two things. First of all, you may see why people like Mike Lee clearly have constitutional problems with the Face act, myself included. Second of all, you would see a pretty obvious violation of part two of that law. Law attempting to interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the first amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship. Well, we all saw that in the clips, so I would think that Harmeet. Dylan, this is F6. We can. Or I'm sorry, this is FS that we can put up on the screen. She says a house of worship is not a public forum. F1. I'm sorry, a house of worship is not a public forum for your protest. It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil lawsuits. Nor does the first amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service. You are on notice. It's incredible. We're gonna see what happens with that one. They're looking into actually also the, like, violation of anti KKK laws from the 1870s that were implemented to enforce the 14th amendment. Again, do. I think I probably disagree with Harmeet on that. I think it's probably not a good idea to charge her, to charge Don Lemon in this case. But just a broader point on. And you'll probably. Many of you may disagree with me on that. That's fine. As a journalist, I have a slightly different perspective. But on the broader point of. We heard the protesters talking about one poster saying, we. We went and flipped the tables. We did it peacefully, obviously comparing themselves to Jesus in the temple and Don Lemon multiple times saying, well, shouldn't you show them love? Shouldn't you show them love. And what I saw was Christians turning the other cheek at that service, interacting politely and peacefully with people who had stormed in screaming and shouting and disrupted a sacred space seemed like perfectly reasonable Christian behavior to me. And the, the bigger picture, just to tie this beautiful weave together from the beginning of the show to the end is, listen, I bring this up a lot and I, you know, Republicans talk about Lake and Riley a lot and I talk about Lake and Riley a lot. But the left has this dominant narrative in, in quote, unquote mainstream media, which is Christians are hypocritical. Hypocritical. Don Lemon said that these Christians were going to be held to account. Held to account. The protesters were going to hold people to account. That Christians are hypocritical. As that one protester is saying they're in their nice clothes with their lattes. That it's somehow hypocritical that they are not at Whipple protesting with the anti ISIS activists. Now, there's obviously reasonable disagreement between people on, on whether I should be embraced or protested. Right? Like that's. We can, we should be able to talk about that, have difficult conversations amongst each other about that. But the reason I think these, these disagreements are, are actually fair is that having compassion and believing in, in universal human dignity does not equate necessarily to open borders. And it's fine if, Chris, it's fine if Christians want to make open borders arguments, but those arguments should be made obviously with the knowledge and the intent, the knowledge of, and the intent to protect innocent life anywhere it's found. And, and what we've seen is actually innocent life being victimized by the agenda of people who want a more lenient immigration system in this country. And that is why you have more conservative Christians not out protesting ice because many of them have seen the way a reckless and lawless system can end up up taking innocent human life, preying on innocent human life. And so no, it is not, oh, in a totally obvious leftist w. In this case, that Christians are completely hypocritical for sitting in their pews and worshiping on Sunday. First of all, Christians worship a God who believes in universal human dignity. There is no Jew or Greek as, as the Apostle Paul who is right behind me here on the shelf, as he wrote, there is no Jew or Greek universal human dignity. I can't recommend Tom Holland's book Dominion Enough, that's also behind me on the shelf. That is what people are doing. So if you want people to uphold universal human dignity, you should want them in the pews in a sacred space worshiping on a Sunday. That's a great place to stay start actually. But if you believe that universal human dignity means open borders, fine. Understand that people who have seen the system of the last 10 years, where there are, there are people legitimately victimized women who are raped and sexually assaulted by non citizens, understand why they, they may not be out in the streets with you. It's pretty shameful to categorize them necessarily as, as hypocrites. So a little some thoughts some thoughts on what's been going on in in Minneapolis in recent days. Thanks so much for tuning in to today's show. Appreciated it, some fun guests. We'll be back Wednesday, 10pm Eastern with more. Please subscribe on YouTube leave some comments, leave some likes, leave some reviews. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can email me at emilyevilmaker and you can send your questions for happy hour, which I of course record on Thursday afternoons. They release on Friday at Happy hour around 5pm I'll see you back here everyone, on Thursday with more after party.
- [84:32]
Julianne Moore
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- [85:00]
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Julianne Moore
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Emily Jashinsky
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