FBI Secrets Revealed, WaPo Hemorrhages Staff, & NYT’s Need for Fake Words, with Talcott & Klavan

Summary

After Party with Emily Jashinsky – Episode Summary

Title: FBI Secrets Revealed, WaPo Hemorrhages Staff, & NYT’s Need for Fake Words, with Talcott & Clavin
Host: MK Media (Emily Jashinsky)
Guests: Shelby Talcott (White House Correspondent for Semaphore), Spencer Clavin (Associate Editor of the Claremont Review of Books)
Release Date: July 31, 2025

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of After Party with Emily Jashinsky, host Emily Jashinsky teams up with Shelby Talcott and Spencer Clavin to delve into a mix of high-stakes political investigations, media upheavals, and cultural commentary. The trio navigates through the latest developments in the Russia collusion investigation, internal tensions within the Trump administration, significant staffing changes at the Washington Post, and critical analyses of gender discourse in mainstream media. Additionally, they touch upon recent pop culture events, providing a comprehensive overview for listeners who may have missed the episode.

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1. Russia Collusion Investigation and White House Dynamics

Shelby Talcott kicks off the conversation by highlighting a groundbreaking report from Fox News, where sensitive documents related to the Trump-Russia probe were discovered in burn bags within the FBI. These documents include the classified annex of the Durham report, a pivotal piece in understanding the depth and origins of the Russia investigation (Shelby Talcott, 04:45).

Spencer Clavin analyzes the implications of these findings, suggesting that figures like Cash Patel and Dan Bongino are leveraging this information to demonstrate loyalty to Trump amidst mounting pressure from ongoing investigations. He raises concerns about the feasibility of prosecuting former President Obama, pointing out the complexities posed by presidential immunity standards (Spencer Clavin, 07:49).

Shelby Talcott ([04:45]): "This is a big, big deal."

Spencer Clavin ([07:49]): "The ultimate question is, how are you going to get there?"

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2. Internal Tensions within the Trump Administration

The discussion deepens as Shelby explores the internal frictions within the Trump administration, especially concerning the handling of the Epstein case. Spencer notes that while the administration appears unified in pursuing these investigations, significant tensions remain. Cash Patel maintains a public facade of confidence, whereas Dan Bongino is more openly frustrated and vocal about his discontent, hinting at deeper divides (Spencer Clavin, 10:51).

Spencer Clavin ([10:51]): "They're working together on one thing, but there's still a lot of anger."

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3. Media Critique: Washington Post Staffing Changes

Shelby Talcott shifts the focus to the media landscape, particularly the Washington Post's recent exodus of high-profile journalists like Glenn Kessler and Eric Wemple. Spencer criticizes the Post's handling of fact-checking and editorial biases, suggesting that these departures signify a shift towards a different editorial direction under new ownership (Spencer Clavin, 35:35).

Spencer Clavin ([35:35]): "People inside the Washington Post don't want to go along with new leadership... It just reflects that the media right now is not really swallowing its criticism."

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4. New York Times and Gender Discourse

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to critiquing a New York Times essay titled "Why Women are Weary of the Emotional Labor of 'Man Keeping'." Spencer Clavin, whose upcoming book delves into the role of language in defining humanity, expresses frustration with the NYT's approach to gender issues. He mocks the term "man keeping" as a burdensome neologism that oversimplifies real problems like male loneliness and the erosion of traditional male camaraderie due to societal and legal pressures (Spencer Clavin, 24:50).

Spencer Clavin ([24:50]): "It's a raft of think pieces about like, oh, maybe men need to go to therapy more... It's quite amazing."

He further argues that such media narratives fail to offer practical solutions, instead providing vague recommendations, reflecting a broader disconnect with men's social needs (Spencer Clavin, 29:07).

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5. Pop Culture Reflections

The conversation veers into pop culture with discussions about Sydney Sweeney's "genes" advertisement and the Naked Gun reboot. Shelby and Spencer analyze how these cultural products mirror societal tensions and the ongoing "vibe shift" towards rejecting overly progressive social policies. They critique the backlash against these representations, viewing them as attempts to reconcile outdated social norms with contemporary expectations (Spencer Clavin, 35:59).

Spencer Clavin ([35:59]): "This is path into something so out of touch about this and about the discourse."

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6. Humorous Interlude and Personal Anecdotes

Towards the end, the hosts engage in light-hearted banter about pets and personal anecdotes, maintaining an engaging and humorous tone. This segment showcases the hosts' personalities and rapport, offering listeners a break from the intense discussions.

Shelby Talcott ([22:36]): "Spencer, yes or no? You cat. You're a cat person."

Emily Jashinsky ([22:58]): "My cat's name is Tank... he likes lifting weights."

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Conclusion

Emily Jashinsky wraps up the episode by reflecting on the discussions, emphasizing the importance of objective journalism and the need for media outlets to balance biases while addressing complex societal issues. The hosts agree on the necessity of moderating responses to societal changes to prevent falling into the same extremisms they critique.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Shelby Talcott ([04:45]): "This is a big, big deal."

• Spencer Clavin ([07:49]): "The ultimate question is, how are you going to get there?"

• Spencer Clavin ([10:51]): "They're working together on one thing, but there's still a lot of anger."

• Spencer Clavin ([24:50]): "It's a raft of think pieces about like, oh, maybe men need to go to therapy more... It's quite amazing."

• Spencer Clavin ([29:07]): "The left is really losing the culture because they've shut themselves off from the sort of natural wellsprings of just normal human life."

• Spencer Clavin ([35:35]): "People inside the Washington Post don't want to go along with new leadership... It just reflects that the media right now is not really swallowing its criticism."

• Spencer Clavin ([35:59]): "This is path into something so out of touch about this and about the discourse."

• Shelby Talcott ([22:36]): "Spencer, yes or no? You cat. You're a cat person."

• Emily Jashinsky ([22:58]): "My cat's name is Tank... he likes lifting weights."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of After Party with Emily Jashinsky offers a critical and insightful look into the intersection of politics, media, and culture. With sharp analysis and candid discussions, Shelby Talcott and Spencer Clavin provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of the current societal landscape, making it a must-listen for those keen on unraveling the complexities of modern American discourse.

Transcript

[Emily]

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[Shelby Talcott]

Hi friends. Welcome to Afterparty. It's 10pm On a Wednesday, so you are in the right place. We are live here Mondays and Wednesdays at 10pm Eastern. Thank you for joining us. Whether you're joining us live or you're catching up afterwards on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, we appreciate it. Today we are going to be joined by a couple of great guests, both my friends, Shelby Talcott of Semaphores, White House COR correspondent for Semaphore, and the great Spencer Clavin. They're going to fill us in on all kinds of different things. Shelby, we're going to start with some some serious stuff and then Spencer and I are going to talk about some serious stuff. But I suspect the discussion will be let's just go off the rails. He posted a tweet a couple of hours ago that he had already started mixing his drinks. So I'm actually doing the Douglas Brunt margarita with rum, of course, because of my embarrassing tequila allergy. And that's what we're rocking with tonight. We're gonna go over new details in the Russia collusion investigation, but also some tensions maybe behind closed doors in the White House. We're going to talk about a new again, I say this every week, a new New York Times essay that says crazy things about men and women. It's like they do it every day. I think they're doing it for the show. And also we're gonna talk a little bit about Sydney Sweeney. We talked about that on Monday, but we have to keep talking about it. It's so big. We're gonna talk to Spencer about his take on Eddington. We're gonna talk to him about his take on why not. And Jamie Lee Curtis speaking out against a genocide. Perhaps not the subject area that you're thinking of. She's actually talking about plastic surgery. So, so much to go over this evening. I have also some below deck news that we're going to get to let's start though, of course, by bringing in the lovely Shelby Talcott, my friend. Shelby, it's so great of you to stay up. I know you have your own regimen, but thank you so much for. I appreciate it.

[Spencer Clavin]

Happy to be here. I've got my High noon tonight, so that is my drink of choice.

[Shelby Talcott]

You do? Of course. Well, cheers, Shelby. And I just want to start with this report actually in Fox News that had some interesting details from Kash Patel world. This is about the Russia collusion investigation, but obviously I think we can't talk about it in a vacuum, as though Kash Patel himself is not getting significant criticism when it comes to the Epstein investigation. But Brooke Singman reported over at Fox News that sources has told Fox that documents, a trove quote of sensitive documents related to the origins of the Trump Russia probe buried in multiple burn bags in a secret room inside the bureau was discovered. Now, sources told Fox that this burn bag system is used to destroy documents that are designated as classified and that one of the documents FBI officials stumbled upon in this burn bag situation happens to be the classified annex of the Durham report, which if you are in deep in the sort of Trump Russia collusion world, you are very familiar with the Durham report. If you are not in deep, just know that you probably remember the name John Durham, who could keep track of all of the names in this sordid tale. But that's a big, big, big deal. So, Shelby, apparently Cash Patel has turned these documents over to Chuck Grassley. There's some anticipation, it seems to be on the right, that more could be coming from this. But I wanted to ask you, because you covered the dynamics behind closed doors so brilliantly in the second administration first, as you were the unofficial Doge reporter over at Semaphore, and now that do, and now that Doge is gone, there's still all kinds of stuff to cover behind closed doors. So am I right to suggest this can't be viewed outside of that vacuum or it can't be viewed within a vacuum, that there's something here happening where Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, people who talked a lot about Jeffrey Epstein before the Pam Bondi memo just a couple of weeks ago are going overboard now, I shouldn't say overboard because that implies that these disclosures aren't in and of themselves significant, but they are working very hard now to sort of prove loyalty to Trump and to the cause. Is that right?

[Spencer Clavin]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a fair take because I think you can't underscore when this all started coming out, right. It was sort of at the height of the Epstein files, when everybody was mad at Donald Trump and the Trump administration. They were mad at Cash, they were mad at Dan Bongino, they were mad at Pam Bondi. And then Gabbard came in and kind of swooped in to. With this big story that is sort of red meat for the base. Not to say whether it's legitimate or not, but it is something that the base is notoriously interested in. And it's just interesting that it came at this time. And you know that they've been looking into this because you had Cash Patel a few months ago on Joe Rogan's podcast, and he mentioned this sort of finding a bunch of documents in a room.

[Emily]

So.

[Spencer Clavin]

So you know that this has sort of been something that they've been looking into for months. This isn't something that just came about over the past few weeks, but it's notable that it is just now coming to the public eye, and we're just now talking about it.

[Shelby Talcott]

Yeah. And so where do you see this going? Because Donald Trump has been hitting it really, really hard. And, you know, that's not surprising, obviously, because it's a significant. Maybe we could say it's a significant. It's a distraction. He almost put it explicitly last week that way. He said the witch hunt you should be concerned about is over here. So, Shelby, with your knowledge of kind of MAGA world and the machinations behind the scenes over at the White House, if you were talking, let's say that I was Barack Obama, not a. Not a role I often stepped into, but I'll do it here for the sake of this conversation. Would you be telling me, like, yeah, this is real. Like, they have every intention of pursuing this as far as it goes for them.

[Spencer Clavin]

I think that they do. I think that they're genuine in trying to take this as far as it goes. I think the question is, is it possible to take it any further? Right. Obama was president. It's been pretty well established, this presidential immunity standard because of Donald Trump, in part. And so I think the question is, how would they prosecute him? And I don't. I haven't gotten that answer. And maybe that is they're keeping it private or they don't know. But I think that is a really important question is where does this ultimately end? Because you're talking about Obama a lot, and he was president of the United States. That matters. So that, I think, is the most important question of all of this, is regardless of what comes of this, whether it is, you know, you have people on the left saying this is all kind of BS nonsense, that it is a distraction from Epstein. You have people on the right who are really ginned up about it and really excited and say that this is a big, big news cycle and that Obama should be convicted. But the ultimate question is, how are you going to get there? And so I don't see where this ends because I don't see how you, how you can do that to a former president. Because we've been down that road with, with Trump, basically, in a different way.

[Shelby Talcott]

Right. The Supreme Court, as you mentioned, the Supreme Court's immunity decision is there. So do you have a sense, because this might be, you know, if you were, again, hypothetically talking to Obama, this might be helpful for Obama or John Brennan or Clapper to hear. And it's just helpful for all of us, I think, to know. Do you have a sense of how the White House sees the politics of this story? Like, are they. Is it your sense that they are very excited about the political juice that can be squeezed out of the story? And again, for the sake of this, we're not talking about the substance of the story. We're talking about how the kind of internal dynamics at the White House are approaching it. So is it your sense that they're actually very excited about this and want to, like, really be milking it for the next couple of years, maybe even more?

[Spencer Clavin]

Yeah, I think. I think they are excited about it. They see this as politically advantageous, both because it is something that the base has been interested in, because it is something that targets Democrats, because it is coming at a time when they're taking a lot of heat from Epstein. And you can tell that they're really interested in it because you were at that briefing last week when they had Tulsi Gabbard come out. That's unusual for them to have any guest, let alone, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, dni And so you've heard Donald Trump talk about it. Whenever he's asked about the Epstein files half the time lately, he sort of reverts back and starts talking about Obama now. And so this is certainly something that they want to keep in the news. They want to keep focused on it. When I talk to people who are involved in this effort, they sort of indicate to me also that it is just starting, that it is something that is sort of in the beginning of, in terms of investigating, in terms of sort of potential criminal proceedings. I think that this is sort of maybe step three in 50 in the administration's ideal world.

[Shelby Talcott]

Okay, so that's fascinating. And you have better sourcing than me, so I'm curious to test this out on you. I sensed that after the uproar over the Bondi Epstein memo, there were real tensions and fissures in the administration that kind of threatened the cohesion. That stands in stark contrast with Trump 1.0, which was not coherent or cohesive, I should say. The people were constantly fighting. They weren't on the same ideological page, they weren't on the same political page. This has been completely different than that. And I did sense everyone who was chasing down leads when the rumor that Dan Bongino was actually going to leave his role as deputy FBI director probably sensed there actually were some significant attentions over the Epstein case. And so two part question for you then, Shelby. One has, has this news cycle or this kind of new referral over to the DOJ for investigations into Clapper, Comey, Brennan, and particularly now Obama, has this sort of satisfied or brought people back to the same team in any way? And are some of those still part two here is, are some of those tensions still percolating in the background or have they all kind of gotten back on the same page?

[Spencer Clavin]

I think that for this specific investigation, the team of the Trump administration is united right in sort of trying to find out more information. But to say that because of that there are still not Fishers would be inaccurate. I think that Cash Patel and Dan Bongino are still extremely frustrated over the handling of the Epstein files. I think that there's still a lot of anger at Pam Bondi. I don't think that that goes away just because they're kind of working together on this Obama stuff and Russiagate. I think both things can be true at once. They're working together on one thing, but there's still a lot of anger. And one of my questions that I have is long term, how are they all going to be able to work together? Because there's real, real significant animosity. I mean, to the point where Dan Bongino was literally ready to resign a few weeks ago over the Epstein files, and he's still really frustrated. And Cash Patel is also really frustrated. They're handling it in different ways, but the frustration is certainly still there.

[Shelby Talcott]

Well, can you tell us more about that, how they're handling it in different ways? And even just because again, if you're not someone that's super well sourced in the White House and in the administration, you actually might not be seeing any of this because Bongino and Patel have done a fairly good job of making any of those tensions kind of look invisible to again, somebody who's not well sourced in the White House or in the administration. But your point here, what you're saying is that this is still real and still simmering. So what do we know from your reporting behind the scenes of what's going on there?

[Spencer Clavin]

Well, I think in terms of how they're handling it differently, you have cash. Patel is a little bit more measured. He was pretty quick to come out with a statement on Twitter that kind of contradicted what everybody was hearing. Basically saying that he is confident in everything and that he stands behind the President. That is not what I was hearing behind the scenes. There was real frustration there. Whereas you had Dan Bongino, who really let those rumors about his frustration fly. And he's come out since then on True Social on X, there's too many social media platforms and basically said sent this cryptic message about how since becoming deputy FBI director, he has sort of uncovered all of this information and all these sort of nefarious things without going into detail. And so he's much more public, I think, in his sort of maybe not overt criticism, but his complaints. And he's more willing to kind of let some of those rumors fly than Kash Patel is.

[Shelby Talcott]

I gotta ask you, we can put F2 on the screen. This is a really interesting dust up between Josh Hawley and Donald Trump. And it's one again, we could say this, you know, over and over until the cows come home. Or maybe there's the single cow comes home. But this is Trump going after Senator Josh Hawley, who is one of the staunchest mega populists in the upper chamber and frankly in the entire sort of Republican elected Republican Congress group. And so Trump lashes out over this stock situation, the stock training trading ban that's being punted back and forth in Congress right now. Why would one Republican Trump says Senator Josh Hawley from. He put Republican in quotes, by the way, from the great state of Missouri join with all the Dems to block a review sponsored by Senator Rick Scott and with the report of almost all support of almost all of the Republicans of Nancy Pelosi stock trading over the last 25 years. He keeps on going and going. Accuses Josh Hawley, it says Dems are using him to. And he got him elected twice as a pawn to help them. I wonder what Holly would pass, why Hawley would pass a bill that Nancy Pelosi is in absolute love with. He is playing right into the dirty hands of the Democrats. And he calls Hawley then a second tier senator. This is, I mean, again, Shelby, I don't think it's completely surprising because what we're hearing is that the White House doesn't want Hawley's ban to include people at the executive level. So presidents, vice presidents, all of that. And so it's not shocking that Trump would be upset with Josh Hawley for pushing it. But it also doesn't go into effect for a couple of years, so Trump presumably wouldn't be president anymore. I think it's 2029, something around there when it goes into effect by the bill. And Hawley has been a champion for the Trump agenda, although he was very frustrated with the Medicaid cuts that ended up in the one big beautiful bill. He voted for it and he didn't really raise much of a fuss, even though he could have over the bill. He raised a little. So on top of that, another thing going on in like deep policy world is what's happening with Gail Slater and antitrust world over at the Department of Justice. So we're kind of doing a tour here of all of the different divides in MAGA world at the moment right now, Shelby. But MAGA antitrust world that had Gail Slater's back, now feels like she's really genuinely threatened at the Department of Trust Antitrust Division, Department of Justice's antitrust division, where she's been sort of going against the corporate world and it's just all a complete mess. But I think, I'm curious, Shelby, if you're hearing people in MAGA populist world like populist populist, not just kind of MAGA vibe world, but MAGA policy populist world. Are people getting depressed? Is it still too early? Like, what the hell is going on with all of this?

[Spencer Clavin]

I think it's a little early, but I think that from people I've talked to, they're certainly viewing all of this as sort of warning signs. I think one of the things, the big sort of pluses that Trump folks will cite in this administration versus the first administration was the first administration was literally nonstop chaos, right? You had Donald Trump hiring people, firing people. There were fights breaking out. They did not really try to hide was drama all the time. And one thing that this administration has done really well in part because you have Susie Wiles, Donald Trump's chief of staff, who is very sort of rigid in having a no nonsense team. Plus you have Donald Trump, who has picked loyalists this time around, people that he truly trusts is there's been a lot less drama. And so when I talk to people, there is concern that this is sort of starting to bubble over into sort of the Trump 1.0 type drama. I think with the Hawley situation, people were especially confused because the stock bill specifically would, at least according to Hawley, would not apply to Donald Trump and J.D. vance. And so I don't know, I've heard theories from these folks that Donald Trump didn't quite understand that and sort of just looked at this bill that Josh Hawley and several Democrats voted for and said, okay, right, if this is a bill that a bunch of Democrats support, it's got to be bad. And sort of immediately took that as this is a personal attack against me. I'm curious to see what he says tomorrow about it because I have a feeling in the next few days he might either drop it or he might be asked about it and sort of say something very different. Because before he came out with that post also he had said that he liked the Holly bill conceptually, like that he was okay with it. So it's kind of a confusing thing that makes me think and based on people I've talked to, that he might just not fully understand this specific incident. So I'm not sure that that's going to become sort of a long term drama.

[Shelby Talcott]

That's very interesting. There are a lot of fun facts about you, Shelby, but the one that is most fun is that you were a professional tennis player. And I know that people probably use that as the fun fact about you all of the time.

[Spencer Clavin]

Wash that now.

[Shelby Talcott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wash washed up tennis pro. But so this was, I was going to ask now that you have the high noon, do you ever have some high noons and hit the court? Like, does that make you better? Does it make you worse?

[Spencer Clavin]

It makes you worse.

[Shelby Talcott]

No, not you for sure.

[Spencer Clavin]

Actually, though I will say, I think, I mean, I never did it when I was like training or playing a tournament, but some, you know, every once in a while late at night after a tournament was over, we'd have a drink and then maybe do it. I do think it helps a little bit with your mental, you know, if you're like two in your head and you have a beverage or two, you kind of relax a little bit. But I can't say it helps your like physical tennis game necessarily.

[Shelby Talcott]

Yes, but, but as we all know, 90%, 99% is mental, only 1% is physical.

[Spencer Clavin]

Maybe I should have been chugging high noons before every match.

[Shelby Talcott]

You don't even need to chug.

[Spencer Clavin]

Potentially not be here. I would have been at the US Open in a few weeks.

[Shelby Talcott]

Yes, this is actually, I think we might have just landed on something. You could put it in one of those Camelbacks. You don't even need to chug it. You could just consistently drink it.

[Spencer Clavin]

Nobody needs to know.

[Shelby Talcott]

I think I just gave you like billion dollar idea.

[Spencer Clavin]

So I'm quitting Semaphore. This is my comeback tour.

[Shelby Talcott]

Shelby Talget, White House Correspondent at Semaphore. Go follow Shelby. Read her newsletter, follow her work. Shelby, thank you so much for being here and for staying up late.

[Spencer Clavin]

Thank you.

[Shelby Talcott]

And having a little drink with us. See you soon. Okay. Let me tell you a story about a guy named Leo Grillo. While on a road trip, Leo came across a Doberman and this dog was severely underweight and clearly in trouble. Leo rescued that Doberman and named him Delta. Sadly, Delta was just one of many animals that needed help, which inspired Leo to start Delta Rescue, the largest no kill care for life animal sanctuary in the world. They provided thousands of dogs, cats and horses from the wilderness. Rescued thousands of dogs, cats and horses from the wilderness. And they provide their animals with shelter, love, safety and a home home. This dedication and everlasting love to animals is Leo's mission and legacy. Delta Rescue relies solely on contributions from people like us. And if you want caring for these animals to be part of your legacy, speak with your estate planner because there are tax saving estate planning benefits too. You can grow your estate while letting your love for animals live well into the future. Check out the estate planning tab on their website to learn more and speak with an advisor we call a dog man's best friend for a reason. You can help those who need it most. So so please visit Deltarescue.org today to learn more. That's Deltarescue.org this summer buckle up for.

[Emily]

A wild ride with the pickup where the plan goes sideways and the laughs hit hard. Streaming August 6th on Prime Video. Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson star as Russell and Travis, two armored truck drivers who think they're on a basic cash run until everything goes off the rails. They get ambushed by a crew of ruthless criminals led by mastermind Zoe, played by the one and only Keke Palmer. Now Russell and Travis have to survive the chaos, clash with each other, and somehow make it through one very bad day that just keeps getting worse. Directed by Tim's story, the pickup is packed with action, comedy and a cast that delivers every single time. Think car chases, big laughs and even Bigger personalities. If you love a high stakes message with wild energy, this is the movie you don't want to miss. Watch the pickup only on Prime Video August 6th.

[Shelby Talcott]

Spencer Clavin is with us now. I actually don't know how Spencer feels about dogs. Spencer, yes or no? You cat. You're a cat person. I think you're a cat person.

[Emily]

Well, I currently have a cat, but Emily, what do you take me for? And all good Americans are dog people at heart. I feel if the Brits are cats, then Americans are our dogs spiritually. I do currently though have a cat. He's very dog like.

[Shelby Talcott]

So if the Brits are cats and the Americans are dogs spiritually, and yet you have a cat and purport to stand up for the United States of America.

[Emily]

It's a black mark on my record, I can see, but I'm a well known Anglophile and you know, I make no apologies for that. So I guess that's part of it.

[Shelby Talcott]

To say the very least, that's a black mark. Now, what's your cat's name?

[Emily]

My cat's name is Tank. Although online he goes by the moniker Chad Cat, and that's because he likes lifting weights.

[Shelby Talcott]

Now I guess I should properly introduce Spencer instead of just calling him a cat lover. I will.

[Emily]

That's it. That's my lower third, actually.

[Shelby Talcott]

Cat lovers.

[Emily]

Spencer Clayton. Cat haver.

[Shelby Talcott]

Yeah, cat. No, cat lover. And cat haver. Anglophile, Associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books.

[Emily]

I'm really not endearing myself for the audience. Yeah, great.

[Shelby Talcott]

He's also author of a wonderful book called Light of the Mind, Light of the World, Illuminating Science through Faith, which. Which I highly recommend. So, Spencer, thanks for joining us. Thanks for, I guess, taking care of your cat.

[Emily]

Oh, yeah, my cat appears in all of my books, including Light of the Mind, Light of the World. So if you want to know more. And he's in a footnote in the next one that I'm working on now.

[Shelby Talcott]

Oh, I didn't know you were working on another book. Can you tell us anything about that?

[Emily]

Yeah, I can. It's called, actually the title I can't yet reveal, but it is about how language makes us human, which is an ancient philosophical idea, but it now has this new importance in the age of AI, when large language models are starting to maybe produce the kind of language that humans produce. So it's all about our humanity and how language defines it.

[Shelby Talcott]

Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, I'm excited to read that. All of your books are great. Let's start actually getting Your take by getting your take on this wonderful New York Times article. Speaking of. Well, actually, I'll just. I don't even want to set this up too much. The headline is why women are Weir of the emotional labor of quote unquote, man keeping. And Spencer is somebody who's currently working on a book about language. Please explain to me, for the love of God, why the New York Times feels the need to keep injecting fake words into our discourse.

[Emily]

Okay, well, I was told that I was allowed to drink on this podcast and I. Yeah. Required.

[Shelby Talcott]

Yes, sir.

[Emily]

Okay, Right, good. Well, I definitely. It's required, I think, to. To have a very stiff drink to get through most New York Times articles. I personally am weary of the emotional labor of reading New York Times think pieces by women about men. It's not.

[Shelby Talcott]

It's not good for men. It's not good for men.

[Emily]

It's a problem. It's really. I'm going to take a quick sip of this martini.

[Shelby Talcott]

Please do. I can keep talking about how bad the New York Times is for men all day.

[Emily]

I mean, it's fantastic.

[Shelby Talcott]

It should come. This is what RFK Jr should be doing. You should put health warnings on New York Times articles written by women about men, because that seems. Get that through.

[Emily]

Absolutely. The problem with men is they're being subjected to think piece after think piece about the problem with men in the New York Times. Yeah. Man keeping is, I think, what technically we call a neologism, we linguists, a new word. And it's probably part of the larger category known or the smaller category known as algo speak. Have you ever heard that term before? Okay, yeah. So you know about this? I think Taylor Lorenz was the first to popularize this. Maybe a fellow scholar. That's right. Yeah. A serious thinker and linguist if ever there was one. Yeah. Man keeping is not keeping your man, which you would think would be the problem of the kind of person who would write this article. But it's tending to your man as a la. The illustration of this piece. Right. That women feel put upon by the necessity of supporting the men that they're with, emotionally encouraging them to get. Go out and do things with their friends, providing for their emotional needs. Other. In other words, being in a relationship and. And. Or a marriage with a person. I mean, this is really quite a remarkable piece. It's one of a number of pieces that have come out in the Times recently. Kind of it's like anthropological fieldwork done by New York Times reporters into this strange phenomenon called masculinity. It's like suddenly we've realized that after Trump's reelection, there's some sort of problem with. With men. And men don't have enough spaces where they can congregate altogether. They don't feel that they can be their authentic self. Why might that be? Oh, I know. I have one suggestion. Maybe it's because of the decades of New York Times berating men ceaselessly for hanging out together, the legal campaigns that have been waged against all male spaces, the fact that even organizations like the Boy Scouts now are being forced to ADM women. I mean, this is like a category of peace that I think of as here's a problem that we caused. Now we're here to solve it. Right? I mean, it's really an amazing article.

[Shelby Talcott]

But they're not even trying to solve it. I guess they're trying to diagnose it. Well, I guess maybe you're right. They're trying to solve it in the most, like, bizarre possible way by giving it a name. I guess the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. But what was it last week? They tried to mainstream the word heteropessimism, which they pulled from some corner of some faculty lounge, presumably deep in the Oberlin campus. And it's like, I have to imagine. So I have the definition here in front of me of man keeping, which is, you know, it's kind of interesting, says women's partners have become their unofficial therapists doing all the emotional labor. I just hate the phrase emotional labor. And that particular role now is named man keeping, the term coined by Angelica Ferrara, postdoctoral fellow at Stanford. Okay, so I stand corrected. Not Oberlin, but Stanford has taken off online. It describes the work women do to meet the social and emotional. Also another phrase that is just loathsome needs of the men in their lives from supporting their partners through daily challenges and inner turmoil. Again, let me just read that sentence one more time. Supporting their partners through daily challenges and inner turmoil to encouraging them to meet up with their friends. Does that sound unusual in any way to you? Spencer?

[Emily]

This is like the. The funny part about this piece, if you read into it, is that most of it, like I would say about 60% of it, is just a blow by blow of, like, one fight that a couple had. It's even Glenn. And I guess Eve got a little miffed because Glenn was relying on her to set up their whole social calendar. The really galling part about this to me is this is an actual problem. Male loneliness is a real thing. Loneliness in general, in the age of the Internet, the kind of decline in friendship, the replacement of a real in person friendship with these like, commoditized likes and social media clicks. All of that 100% real and especially real, I think, for men. But part of the reason that men are having a tough time with this is because, and I know that this is a really radical thought that you probably, you know, aren't permitted to, to say on this show, but men and women tend to be different. They tend to behave differently, to act differently. And this is one of the strange anthropological facts that the New York Times is like, trying to get its head around but not really succeeding. And so now the idea that men are lonely, that men have these issues is suddenly impossible to ignore. It's been aggravated so badly. Kind of like the problem at the border or Biden's age got, got, got bad enough that finally we had to say maybe, maybe this is an issue. But all of the relevant ways that you might address this problem are off limits at the New York Times. Like you can't discuss the ways in which men might, for instance, prefer to focus together on an activity rather than directly on socializing. There's, there's some social science, I think, to, to back up the idea that, you know, there, there are different ways that men connect. They tend to be really driven and goal oriented, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe it would be good if they had some social clubs. Like these are all completely taboo subjects. So you're left with this raft of think pieces about like, oh, I don't know, maybe men need to go to therapy more or something, something, something. It's, it's quite amazing.

[Shelby Talcott]

I'm so glad you said that because they did talk. A quote from Richard Reeves, who wrote a decent book on the subject a few years ago. It was, he's also, it was called Of Boys and Men. And he's the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. And he acknowledges, and the New York Times acknowledges in the piece that some of these are totally real problems, that many of the institutions and spaces where men used to organically make friends and have, have eroded, said Reeves, like houses of worship, civic groups, and even the simple workplace. And it occurs to me, Spencer, that as you were talking, the New York Times spent the last decade plus eroding the distinctions biologically between men and women. And that had myriad downstream consequences. There were all kinds of things that, from serious to funny that happened because they started eroding these distinctions and they seem not to be aware that mainstream, quote unquote, mainstream Media, academia, which we are now increasingly filtering men through, really did change the culture and in ways that have made men more lonely. So as a lonely cat having man, could you please walk us through what some of. Kidding. Walk us through what some of those actually problems that have stemmed from this eroded distinction between men and women that's had real life consequences. What does that look like in the real world? It looks like having a cat, I guess.

[Emily]

They just biting, die alone and my cat eats my eyeballs or whatever is supposed to happen. Many such cases after they die. Many such cases, yeah, it's. It's been known to happen. No, but you know, if I think about the, the really deep, valuable male friendships in, in my life, and I am lucky to have many, they have all evolved out of shared endeavor and sometimes, though not always shared endeavor in all male spaces. So I was in college, true to form, I was part of an acapella group that was all male, has since gone co ed. But a lot of those, those friendships, right, it's like you were together, you're doing things and as you say, those in person kind of male coded activities like barbershop quartets, for example, but you know, more seriously, sports clubs and boy scouts and these sorts of things have become completely unacceptable and in fact have been often legally challenged on the basis of civil rights law and other legislation.

[Shelby Talcott]

Great point.

[Emily]

To like take these things apart on purpose. And so now what you end up with is basically like, men, we want you to express your feelings and make friendships. Oh, no, not like that. Men, we really need you to get together and gather in, you know, in friendship groups. Oh no, no, not like that. Right. Having shut off all of the routes to natural male friendship, all these people can do is attempt to kind of manufacture it in this really stilted way. And I think this is one reason why for the first time probably in my lifetime, the left is kind of losing the culture because they've shut themselves off from the sort of natural wellsprings of just normal human life. You know, I know we're going to talk about the Sydney Sweeney thing maybe a little bit later in there, the freak out.

[Shelby Talcott]

Let's do it now. Let's do it.

[Emily]

Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, let's do a new join alive. Call in an audible. That's when the martini gets into me. Just throw the script out the window. Well, you know, the Sydney Sweeney ad comes out for genes. And the pun that it makes is, you know, Sydney Sweeney has good genes because Sydney Sweeney is a smoke show. And this is like clearly a Joke about how she is beautiful, but also she has these good genes that she gets from I guess, American Eagle.

[Shelby Talcott]

Not mid. That's the joke. Not mid.

[Emily]

Absolutely not mid. Well, that's already like three steps into sweeneygate discourse, which we are on day three by my recollection of public nationwide. It's true we have not yet discussed Sydney Sweeney's genes to their full extent.

[Shelby Talcott]

No, we've not yet peaked. When we're on month three of sweeneygate, then we can revisit this. So Spencer, this is how, you know.

[Emily]

It'S summer, the silly season as they call it in news cycles.

[Shelby Talcott]

So keep going with this point.

[Emily]

Here's this ad. Okay. Right. So here's this ad. Completely unobjectionable ad. Very similar to in fact even probably taking off on an ad from the 80s with Brooke Shields that made the same pun pretty obvious pun and there's no rocket science involved. Jeans talks about her genes like you're trying to tell your product. There is this still very dedicated coterie of opinions whose whole.

[Shelby Talcott]

We. We might be losing Spencer because of his Internet, but I just absolutely cracked up at the way he said coterie. Coterie. It looks like Spencer's back. So keep on telling us about the coterie.

[Emily]

Sorry about that. This is the interference of the anti Sydney Sweeney contingent that are, that are. They're trying to stop me from getting this point out. But this is Abercrombie. So there's this, there's this. That's right. They knew that their competitor was starting to gain traction and so they said we must shut this podcast down. Right. So you know, this, this coterie of opinion, Havers lives off of freaking out about totally normal and making other people feel bad about them. And so they pounce on this because the culture is moving back toward a kind of normal. What is. What is has been normalcy in American life for decades and decades and what most people consider to be frankly unremarkable. Like nobody would have commented on this had not people said this is about eugenics. This is about an unapologetic shift toward whiteness and Trump 2.0, whatever else you want to say about his reelection as a cultural moment, it really did explode the kind of cloud of fear that was suffocating people about this sort of thing. And so now you have like age 3, 4 and 5 of this of this discourse is like city Sweeney's not even all that good looking and she's really just there to dog whistle to Trump loving maniacs. But I, I don't know that this Is. Is really carries any water anymore. Like, I. I just think that once that spell is broken, people look at this and rightly say, are you on crack? Like, what are you even talking about? Like, and there's something so out of touch about this and about the discourse that I think the best reaction to it and probably in some ways the trumpiest reaction is just to laugh and say, like, what are you on?

[Shelby Talcott]

Oh, I thought you were gonna say.

[Emily]

To drink and to drink.

[Shelby Talcott]

That's what we'll do here. So actually, on that note, I wanted to get your take. You've written about this at New Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem subsack, which people should also follow. Such an interesting discourse that you have going on with your father. And just a novel concept. That's lovely. But you've written on Eddington. I also want to ask you about Naked Gun. Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson together in Item. But Pamela Anderson doesn't wear makeup anymore. And there's all kinds of sex and gender stuff to dive into. Let's first though, take a look here at the Eddington trailer. This is S3. Is that praying?

[Emily]

Where that air and the antelope. How can we get here? And even worse, is it worth it at the cost of being at war with your neighbors?

[Shelby Talcott]

That's why I'm learning from Mayor.

[Emily]

Mayor of Eddington.

[Shelby Talcott]

Thank you super duper very much.

[Emily]

I used to think that you were some big deal, but I am a much better, better human being than you.

[Shelby Talcott]

So, Spencer, conservatives are loving this film. Obviously, so much of what we just discussed in terms of sex and gender exploded during the COVID years. And it's exploring some classic American Western themes against the backdrop of the pandemic. I actually have not seen it yet. I'm very excited to see it. But tell us kind of what you took away from the movie in that broader context of where the culture is going to.

[Emily]

Well, exactly as you say. This is a Covid retrospective, and we haven't really had that many of those. In fact, I think people are really happy to forget about those deranged years for the most part, especially the timeframe of this movie, which is May 2020. So it's the George Floyd explosion and the summer of love that ensued. The mostly peaceful summer of love. And I think what has happened, caught on about this movie is that it's not a right wing movie by any stretch of the imagination. There's plenty of criticism of right wing conspiracy theories. You might even say that the right wing character in it, played by Joaquin Phoenix, ends up being kind of the villain, if there is one. But it portrays accurately the fact that, that this was a moment of national derangement. And the primary source of that derangement was the reaction to Covid and then the sort of knock on effect of the George Floyd mania. And my own take, I don't think this is Ari Aster's take. And I wrote at the New Jerusalem a little bit about why I think Ari Aster kind of tends to not stick the landing in his movies. But, but my own take about this moment is that this was our first national confrontation with the inescapability of death in quite some time. We live in this very comfortable, hyper technological society and we had fooled ourselves into thinking that there, that we were progressing toward a moment where all risk would be eliminated. And that was the philosophy that drove the COVID reaction, was here is this fatal thing. It's unacceptable that anyone should, should die of it. Therefore we have to shut down our entire lives to keep any person from, from dying of, of this disease. And the first truth of all religion is like you ain't going to get there in, in this life that, that they're actually, we live in this fallen world and there are terrible things that happen. And to be confronted with that and with the impotence even of our best technology, our best central planning, bureaucratic norms and et cetera, the fact that we, we couldn't stop Covid from happening, in fact we made its effects worse in many cases, especially for kids, especially in schools, drove us insane. And yes, there were some right wingers who also then went insane in reaction to the, the crazy leftist response. But fundamentally this was a kind of psychotic break, triggering not a nice way.

[Shelby Talcott]

To talk about Michael Knowles.

[Emily]

I've said it, I'm kidding. So say it here. Yeah.

[Shelby Talcott]

Well, yeah, on that point. So the impotence of technology even I think is a good way to put that as sort of a driving factor of what ends up so surprised that kind of Maha comes out. And I wonder what your thoughts are on how 2024 seemed to be the moment when a lot of people in elite spaces caught up with the culture itself and realized that there was this vibe shift happening between their, under their noses that the public, even not the like Republican public, but the public more broadly, was really starting to reject this buildup of peak woke capital P, capital W and say no and maybe Spencer, this is going to be a bit of a Trumpian weave. This is where we end up getting a new naked gun. Let's roll. S4 over here. Lieutenant I think someone murdered my brother. Please take his chair. Thank you.

[Emily]

I'll find him.

[Shelby Talcott]

This is what I do. Sundays you serve 20 years for Man's laughter.

[Emily]

You mean manslaughter order. Must have been quite the joke.

[Shelby Talcott]

They're going to shut down Police Squad if you do not solve this case. Do this by the book. Show a little respect. Why?

[Emily]

Who's going to arrest me? Other cops?

[Shelby Talcott]

Yes. Is she serious? Is he serious? He's.

[Emily]

No. Seems Mr. Driving might be more of a problem than we thought.

[Shelby Talcott]

There was a moment before COVID where everyone was pining and actually in the early days of COVID where everyone was pining for the slapstick comedies of Millennial Spencer. And obviously Naked Gun is older than those kind of hangover stepbrothers type flicks. But is Hollywood picking up on that message? I mean, Eddington is obviously an example of a Covid retrospective wanting to re. Explore some of this and wanting to kind of take the, the strictures off and to say we're. We're going to be a little bit braver than Hollywood would have been in May 2020 and explore this with. Without fetters. But is that also what's happening here with Naked Gun? I think it is actually, yeah.

[Emily]

I mean, this is a normal people's revolution. And I think Trump called it that at, at one point back in 2020, I think I wrote a piece called the Party of Normal People and it was basically just saying it's, look, the future doesn't actually belong to these crazy woksters. It doesn't even belong to guys like me who writes right wing takes online because we're also too brain rotted from the Internet. It belongs to people that want to live in the basically normal world of basic realities. Like there are men and there are women. They're the same species, but they have many differences. You know, we want to keep deaths to a minimum, but we want to live life, you know, even in the midst of our problems. All of these sort of, of very, very general and widely popular ideas that have suddenly become completely beyond the pale. And what I think is so interesting about the Naked Gun nostalgia and the Sydney Sweeney nostalgia for like the Brooke Shields era and even Eddington to a certain degree, is like the thing that's being hearkened back to is not actually trad. Like, it's not even trad. It's not, you know, like Homestead Cottage where we churn our. But like PA comes in with the hides from the farmstead. It's like, you know, 1980s American culture and And. And that culture was itself. Yeah, Top Gun. Exactly. It was, like, full of sex. It was full of violence. You know, it was. It was liberated in all of the ways that at the time, the left was arguing for. And. And I don't think people are nostalgic for anything other than that, because I think that that's basically where the center of gravity in American culture is. And for a while, we lived in this artificial world where that was forbidden. But now you're having people, young people especially, who haven't been here for all of the deranged fights that we've been having. They're looking around and being like, wait, the Sweeney City? Sweet. I don't get what's wrong with that. Like, explain to me what's wrong with that. Explain to me what's wrong about, like, observing and laughing in a friendly way about racial differences. Explain to me what's wrong with, like, joshing your gay friend and your gay friend joshing you back, you know, and. And we can't. We can't. Nobody explains.

[Shelby Talcott]

Are we allowed to explain that?

[Emily]

It's not. Not allowed. Required.

[Shelby Talcott]

I need, like, a permission slip.

[Emily]

Absolutely. I wave my magic gay wand over this. Over this podcast to. To endorse all gay jokes. No, seriously, like, you know, and. And the reason the left hates that is because that's how people. And I hearkening back to the men issue, that's how men especially make friends, is with. With friendly joshing and ribbing. And that has been forbidden. And now you have all these. All these people who are looking around being like, wait, why? Why is it forbidden? Again, what's. What's wrong? And. And we can't explain. Nobody can explain why there is anything evil about the Sydney Sweeney ad. Nobody explained, for that reason why there is anything evil about America, which is really the central claim behind all of this, is that America is a fundamentally racist nation. And you look around and you say, well, why? How? Exactly? And. And I think that, like, this is what. One of the things that gives me hope, cautious optimism about Gen Z is that they. They lived in the world of. Of COVID madness. And now that is the orthodox they are questioning. And that's a completely irrational orthodoxy. So there's. There's no defense for it. And it's. It's, yeah, normal people's natural impulses that. That will tear it apart.

[Shelby Talcott]

I think, yeah, your normal people revolution coincides well with your point that the center of gravity is sort of what many people, Matthew Walther first described as barstool, conservatism. And that's vindicated in terms of like where the country is and where the center of gravity is, which is sort of libertine social ethics, anti woke, anti socialist, but, you know, different sort of priorities as to where they rank. And we could debate that. But I also wanted to disagree slightly and maybe this isn't a disagreement. I'm actually curious because the center of gravity with the Barstow conservative, sure, there's something very interesting and I think both of you and I agree on this happening in a concerning way with some reactionary stuff. I don't see reactionary as a pejorative like a lot of people on the left. But there is something interesting happening that's, that's rejecting more than just it's. It sort of goes beyond rejecting Covid era leftism and has started questioning the entire predicate for Covid era leftism. That is still the predicate for the center of gravity, barstool conservatism. So let me roll this clip of Pamela Anderson talking about not wearing makeup. Talk about someone, by the way, who's been through the ringer based on that predicate of like peak woke leftism. We'll talk about this more. Spencer. But here's essence. But it was just me challenging myself thinking, why am I sitting in a makeup chair for three hours when no.

[Emily]

One'S looking at me?

[Shelby Talcott]

Like, what am I? And even if they were, why am I doing this? Because this just seems like a habit. And not that I'm opposed to makeup because I love getting dressed up and glammed up. And I just felt like it was time to. I had nothing to lose. And I felt I'm not trying to create a Persona right now. I'm not trying to be, be famous. I need to use my position to experiment and open up conversations. Okay, so two other elements to get to here. Pamela Anderson is dating Liam Neeson. Apparently this is F5. I think they confirmed it actually today. Spencer. Which is such a fascinating couple. Liam Neeson, like this high octane action star, highly regarded actor, and now in slapstick Naked Gun reboot, certainly somebody who's had a wonderful sense of humor throughout his career, but is absolutely like a Hollywood, a rare staple of Hollywood masculinity, maybe a dying breed. We'll see. And also Jamie Lee Curtis, as she is promoting Freakier Friday, has condemned the genocide. Spencer. Not the one that many people might think of when you hear that, but actually the genocide that has eliminated or eradicated a generation of women. And I have to say, Spencer, it's tough language. I kind of agree with her.

[Emily]

This is my personal. Afghanistan is what they did to Madonna, you know, like it is.

[Shelby Talcott]

Wait until they come for Gaga.

[Emily]

Oh, my goodness. I can't. No, I, at that point, I'm just going to retire into my, into my cups. I. Yeah, like, the language is overwrought. It's a classic example of how these terms get, get cheapened. I think they call it concept creep, right? You start with actual genocide and you end up with like, it was genocide when, when like, you know, Chris Evans wouldn't take my calls or whatever.

[Shelby Talcott]

But Spencer said.

[Emily]

I'm not saying, I'm just saying that, like, you could at least text me back. No, but like the, the. I also am with you that there is something to this, that clearly Instagram face and plastic surgery has gone so over the top that women genuinely are under a kind of pressure to look perfect, to constantly be upping their game and so forth. And I think that one way that this ties in with your earlier point about the backlash is that if what we're living through is enormous normal people's revolution, then I think by definition it's non ideological. And this is something that's true to a large extent of Trump also, that he represents an impulse. And the impulse is, as they say, directionally correct. The impulse is anti woke, anti socialist. It's. Let's just shrug off all of these speech codes. But the thing that makes it non ideological is also the thing that makes it potentially a little bit dangerous. Because if we know that we're against too much makeup and we're against too much plastic surgery, we know that we're against woke speech. Then the next question, what are we for? And there are a lot of people out there who are question in various ways with, well, we're for the opposite of the thing that we hate. And I think that you see this in the, to me, appalling return of anti Semitism into the mainstream of American discourse on the left and the right. You're seeing this in all sorts of kind of hyper trad reactions. You see it in the, in the Andrew Tate reaction to feminism. And what the opponents of the normal people's revolution will then instantly say is, look, see, we told you that this was really always just about hatred. And the task, I think, of people who are in favor of living a kind of normal American life who like America and who like people as they tend to just generally be cats who like, well, those people should be deported immediately. But everyone else. The dog people. Yeah, the dog people and the People that, like, are in favor of normal life have to insist that just because there are sort of extreme, radical distortions of, of our point of view doesn't mean that our point of view is the same as those radical distortions. The, the sad reality is every movement, every deal in human life has negative extremes, right? If you push anything to the nth degree, it's going to become hideous. If you say, well, you know, carrots are good for you, so I'm gonna eat 300 carrots a day, you'll get fat. Right? Like, this is just a basic rule of life. Like, and I think that we, we do have this overreaction, predictable but lamentable overreaction. And, and the task, as always, this is the political task of prudence. The ancient would have described it as, is moderating our response so that it doesn't fall into the same kinds of extremism that the left extremism has been so visibly falling into.

[Shelby Talcott]

It just all sounds so gay, Spencer.

[Emily]

Freaking gay.

[Shelby Talcott]

I always feel like I need three hours to do podcasting with you, Spencer, so sometime we'll have to just do maybe one time. We'll do just a marathon because, you.

[Emily]

Know, three hours, three martinis. Let's make it happen.

[Shelby Talcott]

Oh, no more than three. One an hour. Okay. All right. Spencer Clavin is an editor over at the Claremont Review of Books and he has written a wonderful book called Light of the Mind, Letter the world. Check out all of Spencer stuff. Follow him on social media. And Spencer, we'll do this again soon. Thanks for being here.

[Emily]

Can't wait. It's a pleasure. Thanks very much.

[Spencer Clavin]

Much.

[Shelby Talcott]

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[Shelby Talcott]

Now let's get to the real news. The the Fed and interest rates. Kidding Below Deck so Below Deck I actually have a conflict on Monday nights when we do the show. So the show starting Monday nights live at 10pm Means that can't really watch Below Deck Live. I love Below Deck. I was a late comer to Below Deck. I'm very protective of what Bravo is and the Housewives and for a time, Vanderpump rules, although it probably ended even later than it should have. I could maybe we'll do a rant about the Valley in a couple of weeks next week. I have a lot of thoughts, but we'll get to that on a different date. Below Deck has had maybe the wildest ish, the wildest episode in the history of Below Deck on Monday. So I finished broadcasting the show. We all went to bed. Everything's good. Assuming everyone in the audience went to bed. Not me. I stayed up to watch Below Deck and holy smokes, this Below Deck clip that we were about to roll for you. A guest got so obliterated that she not only talked about her cats like Spencer Clavin. Kidding. She actually didn't talk about her cats. She talked about how her family was FBI. She just got completely hammered it was concerning and went off on Democrats. Let's roll. S7 are not Democrats. Democrats.

[Emily]

Democrats. Some people don't have been told what.

[Shelby Talcott]

To do, you know. And you see scratch me like a wall and just crowd Democrats. She was calling the crew, I think only one of which is actually American Democrats because she was so hammered she jumped in the water when the captain told her she couldn't. She had to put a life vest on. It was just a disaster. So the good folks at the Daily Mail obviously got to the bottom of this situation. Thankfully, somebody had to do it. So you see this up on your screen. Truth about Trump supporting below deck guest who was removed by police after drunk meltdown. I should have given you a spoiler report, spoiler alert. But yes, she was removed by police. Kelly Fury, she was on this charter in the Caribbean with a reap stick. Pete, charter, guest, family. And I mean, this was just incredible stuff. I'm trying to see if we can load this picture of her. Yeah, here it is. Come on a yacht. Come on a yacht and then you get no fun. Isn't that the worst when that happens? Relatable, relatable problems that Kelly had on this edition of Below Deck. But in a strange way, it does sort of relate to the vibe shift we were just talking about with Spencer, which is that. But if on Below Deck you have the elite, wealthy, wannabe famous guests going off on the Democrats, you have a problem. And I'm not saying this looked good for Kelly. I wouldn't argue that it looked good for Kelly, but she's got the, the cameras are all rolling, they're all in her face. And this woman chose to go off on the Democrats. Now, there is something funny in all of this. From the Daily Mail article, the people who were on this charter with her say this is a quote. This is incredible. Her friends just totally toss her over the under the bus in the international press. She says, this is from the Mail. Michelle also revealed that the below deck charter wasn't the first time that she had seen questionable behavior from Kelly. Kelly, quote from Michelle, if you were at the viewing party with us last night, she was the same way. It's just like incredible. Like she was a horrible person who was drunk to the point of potentially needing to be hospitalized last night. So don't worry, this is just who she is. Hopefully we never get to that point on this podcast, but they also, I wanted to mention this before we move on to the Fed. Of course, she said, said, quote, that was the thing that bothered us the most, bringing politics on the boat. You know, that is so true. Worse than disobeying, disobeying the captain's orders, diving into the water without putting the life vest on, wanting to drive a jet ski after you've had 7,000 drinks. How dare you bring politics onto the boat. That's not what boats are for. It's not what politics are for. Politics are for having 25 drinks, getting on a jet Ski, of course that's a joke. Don't do that. But letting loose, having fun and the worst thing you could do was bring politics onto the boat. Just incredible. So to all the below deck fans out there, man, congratulations to us on getting an episode this incredible. It really, really was excellent. And I also have more congratulations in order this time to Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister Justin, as I call him, no longer, of course, but former Prime Minister Justin and the one and only Katy Per. I'm just doing gossip at this point and it's that time of night, so there's nothing else that we should be talking about except for the Fed. I promise we'll get to the Fed in just a second. Here is some TMZ footage of Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry at dinner in Montreal, where Katy Perry is on tour right now. Prime Minister Justin and Katy Perry were also. This is actually incredible from the TMZ report report. They went on a walk in a park before the dinner. So as TMZ says, quote, the duo had security trailing them as Justin, all smiles, dropped Katie and her pet pooch off at the Ritz Carlton, presumably for a quick freshen up before they swapped outfits and headed out for their dinner session later. Just incredible stuff that Justin Trudeau disgraced. Justin Trudeau, who left office embarrassed, or let's say, being shamed by people both on the left and the right in his own country, not being, let's say, from both the right and the left, people saying, why'd you go down to Mar a Lago and take the smiling picture with Donald Trump? Are you enabling fascism from the left or people on the right saying, why are you making us look weak? Why are you undermining, undermining Canadian nationalism, which I will personally reserve my thoughts on for the time being. But Justin Trudeau's rebound from Canada. So Katy Perry's rebound from Orlando Bloom is Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau's rebound from Canada is Katy Perry. Trudeau, obviously, of course, was, I think, separated from his wife in 2003 or divorced formerly from his wife in 2023, not 2000, 2003, 2023. So just a couple of, I think, updates that were important to get to ahead of talking about the Federal Reserve, which. I'm kidding. We're not gonna talk about the Federal Reserve. Why would we do that when the Washington Post is hemorrhaging talent like you wouldn't believe? This is another just incredible story. The Washington Post has lost Glenn Kessler. Glenn Kessler, storied fact checker over at the Washington Post, gone from the PA These buyouts are absolutely taking so many different high profile people from the Washington Post down. And I want to talk about this because I do think it's important that Glenn Kessler is being swept out with this buyout. Fox Reports quote, other high profile writers who have taken the buyouts include columnist Jonathan Capehart, Katherine Rampel, Philip Bump and Joe Davidson. Capehart, Rampel, Bump, some of those high profile people at the Washington Post. And I'll include in that, actually, just a couple of hours ago we learned that Eric Wemple, who does a media column for the Washington Post, is also taking a buyout. These are Post Bezos buyouts, of course, and that's always worth mentioning. But basically people inside the Washington Post don't want to go along with new leadership at the Post. And we're on the cusp, genuinely on the cusp of seeing a totally different Washington Post. And the jury is still out on whether that's good for the Washington Post or bad for the Washington Post, because I think whenever you have a billionaire take over a media organization, you have to be deeply skeptical of where that's going, even if, you know it's supposed to be the editorial position of the opinion page is supposed to be in favor of market, of free markets and American individual values and rights. I should say, as Bezos has said, the new line of the Washington Post is you, of course, always have to be skeptical of that. But Kessler just want to share some of Kessler's greatest hits. This is a thread actually from Greg, Greg Price who works. Greg is like a Republican. So again, you take that with a grain of salt. But these are actual screenshots from what Kessler gets up to, what he got up to in his history at the Washington Post. This is a good one, I fear. Ted Cruz tweeted Glenn Kessler missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus jump from the lab or the many interviews with actual, actual scientists. We deal in facts and viewers can judge for themselves. We in the Washington Post deal with facts. And the lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory. There you got that from the fact checker Glenn Kessler, who is now going, by the way, to the New York Times. Where else? I'm sorry, Eric Wemple is going to the New York Times. Glenn Kessler, I don't know where he's going. That's a good question. Actually. Glenn Kessler famously, famously before Joe Biden crashed and burned at that debate, was fact checking, quote, unquote, cheap fakes, which it cannot be noted strongly enough, was a talking point from the White House that was the Biden White House that was putting out press releases that were basically then just regurgitated by people like Glenn Kessler who was debunking a cheap fake video of Biden that quote unquote, unwrapped right wing media. Here's another one. Tim Scott often talks about his. I can't even read this. Tim Scott often talks about his grandfather and Cotton. There's more to that tale. My God, Glenn Kessler and your editors. What on earth were you thinking? Is this the death of fact checking? I don't know. I think probably what this really is is the media, the sort of dyed in the wool major outlet journalists in Washington D.C. and New York City revolting against a billionaire, telling them that their paper should be more right wing than left wing. When Bezos had previously been content with a paper that was more left wing than right wing when Bezos was doing an anti Trump shtick and allowed the leadership to slide slap Democracy Dies in Darkness on their masthead. People like Glenn Kessler and Eric Wemple, who by the way, has done one of the most definitive takedowns of the Russia collusion narrative that was spread by the Washington Post to his own credit. You should go back there. It makes for great reading. There's a whole page of Wimple debunking Russia collusion on the Washington Post website. Although of course, their coverage of it still suffers from seemingly not having read their own coverage that was criticized as their own coverage. But all of this is, I think, representative of or it's symbolic of people who perceive themselves as the arbiters of what's fact and what's fiction. Glenn Kessler says we deal in facts. He doesn't say, I'm a liberal who deals in facts. He says we deal in facts. He doesn't say, I'm a progressive, I see myself that way. And my views may be colored by my ideology, but I really try to deal in facts. He says, no, we definitively deal in fact facts. These folks are having a difficult time with the vibe shift, with the changes in the industry, with what's happened with even Colbert, for example. I think we have. This is F10 we can put up on the screen. This is David Ellison. There's a lot. Larry Ellison, son, by the way, there's a lot going on with this Paramount merger. But basically saying the headline here is what began as a Hollywood studio merger has become a test of how far corporate America will bend to the President's will. But David Ellison again, son of Larry Ellison. So you can take all of that for what it is, is saying that they want CBS to be a better version of the media. There's been all kinds of talk about potentially Barry Weiss of the Free Press going over, getting a buyout, potentially even from cbs. There's lots of scuttlebutt, lots of reporting going around on that point. Basically what you're seeing are people in C suites recognizing the, recognizing the profit potential of actually trying to serve consumers who want news that they can trust because there's transparency about the biases or because there's what they see, what they perceive as a real effort to be objective. And the real effort to be objective, that's the harder lane to run in. If you're a media mogul right now, try trying to convince your readers that you're actually just calling balls and strikes is going to be really difficult. Trying to convince readers that you are actually calling balls and strikes from a very particular perspective and being honest with them about that is much easier to do. I just wanted to put this on the screen. This is something I caught in the New York Times. Their coverage of a Daily Wire story, a story that the Daily Wire broke that Luke Rosiak over at the Daily Wire broke about, about counsel at the NSA leaving. So April Falcon Doss, that's a hell of a name, left the NSA seemed to have been pushed out of the nsa. Here's the New York Times coverage of it. They say the top lawyer for the NSA was removed from her job on Friday and had been appointed in April 22 during the Biden administration. On July 23, the Daily Wire, a conservative website, wrote about Ms. Doss and her former work for the Senate Intelligence Committee's Democratic staff. Later that day, Laura Loomer, a far right conspiracy theorist, amplified a social media post critical of Ms. Doss that cited the Daily Wire article. So I actually read the New York Times coverage before the Daily Wire coverage and was trying to figure out exactly what had happened with the top lawyer at the nsa. And I got to the end of the piece, which is co bylined thinking by top New York Times reporters, thinking, okay, I still don't understand exactly what happened. So you click through the link to the Daily Wire and Luke Rosiak, great reporter. Wouldn't you know it, he's got the actual answer. Just months into Trump's first term as president, Luke writes she took a high level job working for Senator Mark Warner on the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating supposed Russian interference in the 2016 election. Doss was the Democrats senior counsel for the committee's Russia investigation, which conducted hundreds of interviews in his field attempt to find evidence of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia. So just pausing right there. She was the senior counsel for the committee's Russia investigation, the senior counsel for the Dem committee's Russia investigation. Period. Now, why couldn't the New York Times have taken this exact sentence from Luke Rosiak where he says, quote, investigating or this, it's not even, it's a fragment of a sentence. Why couldn't they have injected this into their coverage, quote, investigating supposed Russian interference in the 2016 election? Why can't the New York Times use that exact same language, which is fair, which is genuinely calling balls and strikes, and it's from an openly conservative website. But you needn't be an open conservative to write about the, quote, unquote, supposed Russian interference in the 2016 election because that supposed Russian interference was considered to both be. You had Hillary Clinton flirting with the idea that was, it was the voting machines themselves. And what we know is true, and nobody, by the way, in the Trump administration is denying is true that Russia ran this silly, foolish meme campaign. Why couldn't you use language like that? Why couldn't you tell your readers what actually happened in this case? And maybe that's why the Times is smart to hire Eric Wimple, somebody who actually, for all of his faults, went and reviewed the paper's coverage and the major media outlets coverage of the Russia collusion investigation. But I'm not optimistic, to be honest, because I think what the Washington Post losing so many of these high profile, real D.C. celebrities, you know, they're not celebrities to any of you out there. But here in D.C. when you use names like Philip Bump, who had that infamous interview on the Hunter Biden story, you should go look up if you haven't seen and Jonathan Capehart and Eric Wemple and Glenn Kessler, I mean, here in D.C. those names have some weight to them, I'm sorry to report when the Post is just hemorrhaging these people. First of all, it's probably exactly what Jeff Bezos and the new leadership of the Post wants because they're trying to steer the ship in a different direction. If they'll be able to do that is an open question. And two, I think it just reflects that the media right now is not really swallowing its criticism, swelling criticism of it, and reflecting internally on what went wrong, because there still seem to be some of these really high profile, highly paid celebrity journalists are still digging their heels in. So that's your Nightly Report on the, the, the media and it was such a blast to have Shelby and Spencer here, two good friends. I really appreciate both of them staying up late and having a little drink on the show. Shouldn't mention just that, you know, with the Washington Post and all, like Wemble's going in the New York Times. Like all of this, the stuff is just so insane. I think it underscores the point that we make here on the show all the time, which is that there's a premium right now. And the great Megyn Kelly is fantastic on this and just asking good questions, doing good research, doing good journalism, but being open about where you're coming from. I think that's what people, including myself, want to see from a lot of journalists. Now we, we recognize that we're probably smarter than Glenn Kessler and can make up our own minds without having to say ideal. In fact, therefore, the lab leak is ridiculous. All that stuff is just, it's so tiresome. It's so 2020. It's, you know, that's what Eddington really is about. I'll update everyone when I see it. Still haven't gotten a chance to see Happy Gilmore too, by the way, which I'm bummed about. But that's. It is true that corporate America is noticing. People are tired with some of the things that were trending about 10 years ago and then culminated in 2020 and I think finally were kicked out the door in C suites. And some of it is going to be profit motivated in a bad way. Some of it will be profit motivated and the result will be a better version of the Washington Post that, for example, doesn't have Philip Bump on staff. So congratulations to the Washington Post on that. That. But some of it will also, you know, it could go in a bad direction. And that's what we're gonna do here. We're gonna call balls and strikes and I'll just tell you where I'm coming from. So thanks for tuning in to another lovely after party. I always say the hardest shows are Wednesday nights when I know I'm not going to talk to you all until Monday because so much happens in the interim. Appreciate you staying tuned. As a reminder, I, I'm Emily at Devil May Care Media. I've gotten a lot of great notes. Try to reply to every single one of them over there. So hit me up. Emilyvel May Care Media. I will do my very, very best to respond. Appreciate everybody tuning in. Great, great guest next week. So make sure that you are with us. 10pm Eastern live Monday and Wednesdays right here. We'll see you back there soon.

[Emily]

Hey, everybody. Conan o' Brien here with an ad about my podcast. Conan o' Brien needs a friend. I've had so many fantastic conversations with people I truly admire. People like Michelle Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Maya Rudolph, Tom Hanks. New episodes are out every Monday, and we have a really good time. So subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.