← After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky
“Happy Hour”: Radicals vs Normies, Right-Wing Influencer Divide, and Harvey Weinstein Cover-Up: Emily Answers YOUR Questions
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Emily opens this week’s edition of “Happy Hour” detailing her one and only time working on a political campaign, she discusses what motivates voters, the Trump Administration’s messaging on Iran and why the President acted, Neocons, and offers thoughts on Bryan Dean Wright’s appearance on “After Party” and what he told Emily about the possibility of boots on the ground in Iran. Emily takes questions about the dangers of conspiracy theories and algorithmic rabbit holes, the exploitation of people’s curiosity, and takes up a question about Candace and public condemnation, if there’s a right-wing influencer group chat she’s a part of, and how Tucker strategically deals with President Trump. Emily also addresses several questions about Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico of Texas, including his comments on the Virgin Mary, consent, and what it means if he wins a Senate seat. Among the other topics she goes over: her take on corporate gambling, faith and the LCMS church, how she ...
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Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com foreign. Hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of Happy Hour, which is of course itself a special edition of Afterparty. We do here on the podcast feed every Friday right around 5pm it drops. I'm taping these Thursday afternoons and taping them live live to tape going through these emails for the first time. As the week goes on, I set them aside in my inbox and then dive on in in. So let's get started. Heading on in here into my flagged inbox. That's how I do it. Let's see. This is from Abe, who says thank you for interviewing Mr. Massey. I believe he is one of the few people in American public and political life for which truth is his highest loyalty, even as what he does about it may not favor the political party that he is in and that I typically vote for. Really important point here. Abe goes on to say regarding voting, I do believe that the most important voter motivator is anger. I'll give a few examples. Abe says, when I lived in Milwaukee, I went to church with Scott Walker and was modestly acquainted with him. Goes on to say here, this is a long email so I'm trying to get to the gist of it talks about how Governor Walker won the recall election that was in 2012 by people getting angry about the occupation of the Capitol building, which as Abe says, did not sit well with normies. Yeah, Abe, I actually have a personal a little story about that I was working. The only time I ever literally worked in politics was an internship in 2012 for the Eric Hovdi primary campaign in the Senate. Now former Governor Tommy Thompson went on to win the Republican nomination and lose to Tammy Baldwin in 2012. But that was my only experience actually in politics and I really did not like it. Never went back into politics. Pretty much focused elsewhere after that. But I thought Hevdi was a pretty solid candidate. It wasn't, didn't really have anything to do with that. It was just the whole political process is so disillusioning and annoying. But that entire campaign was recall season. The recall happened in June so I was calling voters knocking on doors as an intern during that time period and I think what you're saying, Abe, is totally true. Totally true. I do know Governor Walker as well. I'm on the board of Young America's foundation, which he is the president of and I think he would probably tell you there was something similar that normal people were just so disgusted with the conduct of radical protesters. Now there are, you know, very normal people who were on both sides of Act 10. I've talked about how my own family was on both sides of Act 10. My dad was a in a public employee union in the state of Wisconsin, so saw a lot of this up close. But there was, there was some real radical the radicals were very high profile the throughout the recall case and the Act 10 controversy and I just generally think that's a helpful reflection ape that people should bear in mind there's something normal people don't like seeing with chaos and they, they do punish people at the polls for it. It's not just that they don't like it. It can be a very animating source of anger and disgust. So I think that's, that's not a bad point. Abe says regarding Iran, I'm about where Matt Walsh is on this. If there's an actual America verse argument to be made for doing it, the strongest would be that it weakens China. I see a lot of Trump propagandists making it about the administration directly making that argument is probably a very but the administration making that argument directly is probably a very bad idea. So they kind of make up a lot of almost non such justifications and hope people go along with it. Super interesting. Abe says the voters don't want it and the incumbent supporting it will likely be punished severely. This will probably lead to impeachment and removal of Trump. Ain't history grand? Well, if Dems take back the Senate, they have a better chance of actually doing impeachment. But impeachment is 60 votes, so I don't know that they'll ever have enough to to impeach him. But they'll have enough to do proceedings like it puts a whole Senate trial on the table, and that's that the, the extent to which that holds up the Trump agenda and becomes damaging for, you know, Republicans is who, who might be facing a re election in a purple state in the not so distant future. Yeah, that, that can get messy. Nobody really wants that. I think a lot of people are probably right where, where you are, Abe, and where Matt Walsh is. I think a lot of people are giving the President some trust and some grace. I do think the messaging was born of muddled strategy in the beginning. I think it wasn't quite clear exactly what the precipitating or what the precipitating factor for the president himself was. And that's where you heard House Speaker Johnson and Secretary Rubio going out and saying, well, we were told Israel was going to do this. And Trump said something similar. We were told Israel is going to do this. We were going to do it anyway. But that explains why we did it on that Saturday morning in particular. But that in and of itself is just a mixed bag. Like, it doesn't, that's a hard thing to explain because it doesn't exactly. It distracts from your overall reason, which was the point of them saying we were going to do it anyway. And it then forces people to ask why then that Saturday, like, was that Saturday the best time to do it? Was it just done? Because it had to be done. There. There was a lot of, and there has been different messaging. You know, I can't say this enough about whether it was about nukes, whether it was about missiles, whether it was about, as Trump once said, the freedom of the Iranian people. They've been all over the ma. And I think, again, that's because Trump himself has a lot of different reasons for doing this, and nobody knows quite the exact calculus. And that's damaging. I mean, again, even if you're supportive of the war, I think it's pretty obvious that the reason hasn't been articulated. Well, even some people who are saying it about China are explaining, ultimately, the Chinese factor is not something the President wants to mention because he's about to go to Beijing and he doesn't want to, you know, look overly antagonistic. That's an explanation I've heard. And maybe that's it. I mean, maybe it is that they don't. The real explanation is China and they don't, or their approach to China, and they don't want to say it. But I actually think this is a, an Occam's Razor situation. I think Lindsey Graham won the Argument, honestly, I think Lindsey Graham won the argument. And this was a generational project of neoconservatives or hawks is probably a better way to put it in the Republican Party who have wanted to launch this war for a long time, that we can have plenty of debates about whether they're right or wrong or what the reason is. But I think they saw an opening and took it. And their argument went out with Donald Trump that this was that Iran couldn't have 4,000 missiles, it couldn't have all of these missile launchers, that we could easily get rid of them, we could easily set their nuclear program back even further and, you know, potentially weaken or change the regime with a fairly large lowcost operation war. And I think that argument just honestly won out. Do I think that there's a, an argument from support. Do I think Lindsey Graham is, is arguing because he supports Israel? Yes, but he thinks that supporting Israel supports the United States. A lot of people think that. And you know, there are some people that do it because they, they want a strong Israel. Of course I'm not going to argue that, but I think there are a whole lot of people on the right who just believe that this was better for the United States. And I, I don't want to, you know, dress up that argument into something more sinister than it is. I just think it's wrong. I think it's easy to say that it's an incorrect argument. And that's what I plan to argue. That's what I hope I've been arguing because, you know, the, certainly the administration didn't do a great job on the Israel messaging. And certainly there are people who I think are really eager to help Israel, even if it's at a high cost to the United States that most people would disagree with. So I'm not saying that isn't the case and that's not what happened. But I also just think there's an Occam's razor explanation here that people think this is good for the United States. They won the argument with Donald Trump. You know, Tucker Carlson was in there making his points. Lindsey Graham was in there making his points. Netanyahu was making his points. And I think they, you know, NETanyahu, Lindsey Graham's one out and convincing Trump this was the best thing to do for the United States. So anyway, there's a lot more we could get into with that. You know, but that's, that was a really long winded way of saying, I think that's basically what happened. Let's see. Daniel says Is everything a psy up? This is a long one, so feel free to ignore it. No, I won't ignore it, Daniel. I'm just going to skim over a bit to see what the question is so we get right to it. Okay, so. Oh, this is sort of what we were just talking about. Ultimately, I've become convinced the ideological divide on the right is the result of a psyop and not from the side you might think a year ago as firmly in the anti Zionist crowd. I watched the decay of online discourse into the equivalent of an insane asylum whenever Israel, the J. Q, which is of course what Nancy Semites call the Jewish question was brought up. But this never really pushed me away from being anti Zionist until Charlie Kirk was killed. The immediate reaction to blame Israel by so many was strange. Even stranger was how Candace handled it. As we are all well aware since that time we've watched many left wing voices and I am a libertarian, useful idiots embracing to promote her theories, theories. Watching the absolutely feral response of the anti Zionists after the outbreak of war has only convinced me further. It's a psyop. Now I'm extremely skeptical of this war, but it's pretty clear to me this is just as much about China. Okay, so this is what we were just talking about, about and the greater game of geopolitics as it is about Israel. This is funny Daniel, because I was just literally I was just talking about this and went straight to the email. But Daniel goes on to say, but who benefits from fomenting this divide besides China and Iran, the global soletes in Europe and the neocons of the US Notice the surprising response from the uk, John Bolton and Bill Crystal. They don't truly support this war and there's a reason for that. Whether you agree with this war or not, there's a wider angle here that is being willfully ignored. Interesting. Thanks Dan. Yeah, I mean I think again I believe it's the Occam's razor. I think that's the right explanation. As to your point about maybe conspiracy theorists, anti Israel conspiracy theorists. You know there are a lot of things that are called conspiracy theories and Dan didn't use this term, but that aren't really conspiracy theories. They're things that are said openly. But there are, there is something about the Internet I think in particular that makes it very easy to build cases based on people's digital footprints that, you know, when you take anyone's digital footprint you add it all up. You can string it into a weird story because you have all of these disparate moments in their life where they're posting inside jokes on social media or whatever, or, you know, doing stuff 15 years ago. And, you know, you can make odd connections on the Internet because of the way social networks work. There's just a. There. There's so much opportunity for rabbit holes that I think it always affects people on either side of a weird debate. Not weird is not the right word, but of a what's the right word? Maybe esoteric or niche debate. So that's part of what's unfortunate, because I think it was Tucker who said this. He. He theorized that the reason there were some unredacted things and unverified tips stuffed into the Epstein files that the government did release is, is to discredit conspiracy theorists, knowing that people are going to see these unverified tips, and because they care about this case, they care about victims, they care about the truth and justice, they're going to see this and blow up these unverified tips. And I actually think there's probably something to that. We still have many, many documents that have not been released. So why release the ones that have been released? Why redact the ones that have been redacted and released Again? There's maybe an Occam's razor explanation to this, that it was rank incompetence, this was a gargantuan task from the government. But. But they are clearly choosing for national security reasons, as part of the bill, for example, not to release certain things. So there is strategy involved in picking and choosing what's going public and what's not. And I don' insane that the decision to put those tips in there and hold back other things. They are holding back other things so you could get away with holding back things was to send people further down rabbit holes that, you know, we're already inclined to do because of social media. So, yeah, I would encourage people to be careful with some algorithmic rabbit holes or just. Just being careful when things are being strung together. You know, it's. There's an effort to block people who are really trying to get to the truth and to play on our instincts as humans and actually our desire to get closer to the truth and to, for example, just know what's happening behind the scenes with this war. Just have an explanation why, why, why, why, why now? Why were there different explanations at the beginning? And it's very easy to get caught up in playing games that I think benefit people who are. Are still designing the rules. And by that I, I simply mean, you know, people in, in top positions of the government and who have big voices in media and the like. So I see what you're saying, Dan, that there's just a, there's really a way to exploit people's curiosity and their, to exploit the democratization of, of information and the like. And I think it's just very easy for people who may come to a problem with a serious and decent and good faith desire for truth and justice to be caught up in the, the way these information delivery vehicles take us down, you know, routes that aren't helpful. And I think that just kind of happens across the board. So. Interesting note, Dan, very interesting note. Hank says there are probably more than a few woke office seekers Talarico's age trying to delete tweets from five to six years ago. You know, though, it isn't just Tall Rico's tweets. I mean he's on video over and over again saying a lot of the same stuff like God is non binary, that it's not just twee for him. So he, he couldn't really delete that stuff because he's on tape saying it. And I don't think he could even get away with saying he disagrees with it. Hank is recommending some books. The Cold War, A New History, Also Blacklisted by history. That's the Stan Evans book. Venona. Yes, and Stan Evans obviously uses Venona. And another one here is American Betrayal. The only ones I have read here are blacklisted by history and. Or is blacklisted by history. I do like blacklisted by history lot. I think it's the counterweight to a lot of Cold War history told mostly by people on the left or critical Cold War history told mostly by people on the center or the left. And Stan Evans comes in and does some real rehabilitation. Not of McCarthy himself. Evans right at the off the bat in this book is critical of McCarthy, but actually of the broader McCarthy project. Because the Venona files did reveal high level, prolific infiltration of the US Government by many Soviet agents. And the Whitaker Chambers case and Alger, his case obviously is just one example of what was happening on a wider scale. And it was real. And when you have the nuclear age, the dawn of the nuclear age, plus, you know, we were infiltrating the Soviet government, like that is, that is a recipe for paranoia. And I think in, in McCarthy's there was absolutely paranoia, but there was also something rational about trying to prevent infiltration at the dawn of the nuclear age. And, and the infiltration was very Real. We had very good reason to believe that it was real. Part of it was that it's so easy to infiltrate society in a global world where you could take planes and use phones and the like. So anyway, great email, Hank. I might have to check out the other books, but I do definitely recommend Blacklisted by History. Jen says, I love your show and I've been listening to you since you were frequent guests on Megyn Kelly. However, I do have an issue with to how dismissive you were of the importance of consent in relation to the Virgin Mary. Well, the point Talarika was making was false. Mary's fiat, which means yes in Latin, is of time honored importance and considered necessary in the Catholic tradition. I converted to Catholicism ten years ago after growing up Presbyterian and a large part of my conversion related to free will being acknowledged and revered in the Catholic tradition. To believe God would impregnate Mary without her consent would make God a tyrant and is not coherent with a loving God who created humankind to be in a loving, meaningful relationship with him by choice. Similarly, God does not force anyone to believe in him. That would make him a puppet master, not a father. The error Tarlarico made was not to elevate consent, but rather to imply that the absence of consent therefore validates having a portion an abortion. Thanks for hearing my concern, Jen. So my response to this, Jen, would be, I think thank you for the email. Thank you for listening. I think you, you touched on it at the end, which is Talarico is using the word consent in a very different way than you are using the word consent. And this, this broader con. Conceptual importance of free will. Talarico is talking about, he's talking about it in a. To. To justify modern sexual relationships. Right. Or in the context of modern sexual relationships. And that's where he's using it as a case study that parallels abortion. That's gross. And it's just a biblical as I think you're. You're agreeing with, Jen. So I think some of it is definitional. I don't know. I mean the dismissive. Let's see. I'm trying to figure out if I think it's fair to characterize my disagreement with that is dismissive. It may be. And if it, you know, if it felt unduly dismissive. I appreciate you calling that out, Jen, but I am pretty confident that we're, you and I, Jen, are sharing a definition of consent that's different from what Talarico is using. And the, the idea that there was a consensual I mean, like the, the idea that Talarico says you can pull a pro choice position from the book of Luke because God allows Mary to exercise her free will in an immaculate conception. The idea that that has any relevance to consent in the abortion context is bizarre. And of course, Catholic doctrine has a long tradition of Marian doctrine that elevates women and is complementarian. And I think a way that Catholics are actually probably underappreciated as Catholics are often derided and Christians are often derided for being just, just sexists and misogynists and the like. And I think that does go, you know, under, under notice and underappreciated. So I don't disagree with that. I think the, the Talarico deployment of consent or invocation of consent is, is different than how you and I are both talking about free will. Interesting point, interesting point. Hank again says Christy Noem was out of her depth. The reaction to the ICE killings in Minneapolis was amateur hour. To respond immediately by calling the woman a domestic terrorist was unforgivable. Hank? Yeah, thanks for the email. I, you know, said it at the time, I think she just lost the trust of the public in order to carry out mass deportations, which were polling pretty well and are probably still, it's probably still half the country says you should deport people who are not here legally. But in order to do that, it's a very difficult, controversial task. So you have to have the trust of the public. And I think that was just breached in a way that did feel especially like flamboyant amateur hour. Ish. So agree with that one, Hank. Jesse says, with March Madness approaching, I found myself going full in jetty on sports gambling. I'm grossed out with how mainstream sports TV programs tried out attractive hosts to instruct men on how to bet their money. I'm fed up enough that I'm not even participating in a bracket pool this year as googling stats and scores these the beast. What is your take as a Christian evangelical? My own Catholic faith doesn't have too much to say on the subject. I'm not familiar with Catholic teaching on gambling. My take is that industrial scale like corporate gambling is destructive. We all could have seen this coming. Many of us did see it coming ahead of the Supreme Court decision, which isn't to weigh in on, you know, the decision itself, but the, the outcomes of it were predictable. And yeah, soccer has been just a voice crying out in the wilderness for years, for years on this. And it's just a good example of how numb we've become. To the wisdom of previous generations, you know, that we're wrong about totally wrong about some things, but you're tossing the baby out with the bath water right in postmodernism. And we're just numb to the, like, numb to how destructive some of these behaviors really can be. And, yeah, it all feels. The Atlantic has a very long piece by McKay Coppins, who's Mormon out just this week on. They gave him ten grand to gamble with as a research project for a story. And the plan was, you know, it was none of his own money, but he would split the winnings 50, 50. And he seems to be implying that he. He pretty much became addicted and it was. It was an easy slippery slope to stumble onto. And, you know, that's, of course, true. It's like as high as 90% of the earnings from 10% of the people. The gambling companies say they have barriers to prevent this. They don't want people to become addicted because that's not good for the long term of their business model. But. But when you have gambling call hotline surging even a small percentage of people getting addicted to gambling, when you expand the pool of people who are doing gambling on smartphones so dramatically and so quickly, that is a lot of people. Anecdotally, I think we've all seen this. It's really gross that people profit off of this. Buy houses with the profits. Oh, man. Buying their mansions and private jets with the profits off of the poor people who are just trying to maybe get a little bit of extra money for rent or Christmas presents or are working hard for their own money and get, you know, taken in by these flashy commercials and the like, making it seem normal and cool. We all have agency, and we should all exercise our agency and, and be more vigilant. It doesn't. That's not an excuse for the companies to act, like, so disgracefully. They shouldn't be able to show their faces in public, let alone be lauded and, and treated like celebrities or just, you know, other members of the rich and powerful. It's so gross. So, yeah, I do not like it. I do not like it one bit. Very predatory. And I just wish there was more backlash earlier because a lot of, you know, if. If there's enough backlash to, to end this grift or to minimize it, mitigate it, scale it down, great. A lot of people's lives were already upended and destroyed in the process. It's probably fertile ground for some politician to come in. I saw Jim Messina from the Obama administration, who I think is Taking money from. I think he's, like, on the board of some crypto company or whatever. But he was talking about how Democrats are perceived as unfun because they're against gambling and they're against crypto. I actually think there's probably a lane for someone to be in. Maybe it's like a Josh hawley In a 2028 primary, Republican primary, where you're talking. Maybe it's Ron DeSantis where you're talking a lot about the. The dangers of gambling. I think that resonates with a lot of people. So just a thought on that one also. It ruins. I do think it. One of the things that's always driven me crazy about watching sports with people who gamble is it's the same thing with, like, fantasy baseball. Fantasy. I'm sorry, Fantasy football. Fantasy baseball. I think it's harder to just enjoy the game for what it is because you're cheering for, like, you're cheering for other teams. You're cheering for the players on other teams, and. And sometimes they're playing your team, and it's like, the point of this team is that it is a source of community and entertainment and pride, and there shouldn't be anything like. This is. This is low stakes. Right. It's sports. Relatively low stakes. Of course, you know, there's. There's a lot of money involved, and communities are, you know, built around this. I mean, you should see what Milwaukee looks like now that the. There's the Deer district and the Bucks are. Are doing great. It was helpful that the Bucks were doing very well. But, yes, these. These are relatively low stakes, so you should just be able to relax and watch the game and root for your team. So open to other arguments. But I've. I've never enjoyed it that much. I always. When I do a bracket, it's Badgers all the way every year. I've never. Even when the Badgers are terrible, I take the Badgers all the way to the end because I don't want to root against them. All right. Mike says, I recently got my haircut. He asked me what we were going for this time. I said, I want to look like Bob Seeker. It turned out great. But it also made me look a little deeper into Bob Seeker, someone who grew up in Northern Alberta. I'm definitely influenced by Midwestern culture. I'm just curious if Bob Seeker is someone who is renown in your world. Yeah. I. Yeah. Renowned in your world. Yeah. I don't have much to say about that, Mic, but I hope it's a Good haircut. Howard says, very enjoyable program, straight from Harvard. You were certainly operating from enemy territory there. The CIA guy was fun. And information about the Muslims proclaiming religious purity while drinking and drugging and chasing women was spoton. Interesting. Yeah, he did. We got into that. I wanted to spend more time with him on that. Sometimes I wish I could go for like two hours with people. Just those things come up and you want to keep pulling at the thread. And Howard goes on to say it's. It is like preachers here, such as Jimmy Swagger to scream about morality while doing coke and chasing hookers. Yeah, I know it's many such cases, many such cases. But yeah, the, the, the Sultan Suleiman Suleim in the Epstein files. Those were. Those emails back and forth to Jeffrey Epstein. That was, that was really something else. I don't know how it's played, like on a political level in the uae. I'd be curious about that. I should look into it more. Much more here from Howard, who says his questions about Taiwan. With America in the March, why not think ahead? I understand from Rubio and Graham that Cuba is next. But, but Taiwan by Christmas. If China were to invade Taiwan, what is your opinion? What we should do? Step in or stay the hell out? We do know those do need those computer chips for PlayStation 5. 2026 promises to not be boring. The Taiwan question is scary right now. Given the depletion of our supplies between Ukraine and now Iran. I, I think we could be surprised by a move that Xi Jinping makes at some point when we're not expecting it, and that's frightening. I think the possibility is there. I think the risk calculus for him is there. You know, most people don't think it's going to happen for another couple years, but we aren't building chips here fast enough. It's, it's. I don't have the answer to this question. It makes me feel better that Bridge Colby is in the Pentagon right now because Bridge understands this. Someone actually reposted an interview I did with him on Federalist Radio Hour a couple years ago. And I really appreciated whoever re upped that because it's just a reminder of how strategic and intentional his philosophy is, particularly about Taiwan. Now, can Trump pull off a Nixonian feat of containment, or what's the right word to put it? Can he pull that off? I mean, if anyone can, it's probably Trump because he's pragmatic, he knows lots of business people who are deeply tied to China. And he also, though, is concerned obviously about the industrial workforce in the United States. That's really his constituency. It's the Republican Party's new constituency. His legacy is tied to that in some extent. So if he could pull it off, if, if he can pull off a negotiation for avoiding violence and I don't know, I don't know what it would look like. I have no idea what it is. I'm. I am frightened about it, though, so I think that's a good question. This is from Robin, who says, what a treat to have my two favorite podcasters all together. Together. No one I trust more than you two and Matt Taibbi for news analysis and commentary. That was. Thanks for the great work. That was about Brian. Yeah, Brian was interesting. It was so fun to have him on the show. He's. He's definitely more hawkish than I am, but he's knows much more than I do in this sense as well because he literally worked for the CIA. It's interesting. You know, anyone, anytime somebody is former CIA and is doing lots of media, Brian talked and has talked a bit about what that's like. And so he, I think, I mean, I don't know. Let me pull this up. Scott Horton is. Some of you probably know who Scott Horton is. He is@antiwar.com super interesting website. And he posted earlier today. This is Thursday. Let me find the exact post. So, yeah, again, remember the Sun Thursday. Oh, Scott tweets a lot. Let me find it. He says, I'm not sticking my neck out making a prediction. I'm just telling you. I know a guy who knows people who say they are preparing for a ground attack. Not clear where, probably Hermuz or Isfahan. A very, very bad idea. So again, Scott is with Anti War.com that tells you where he comes from on this. But. But Brian said it would be possible for, I think he said Delta, Delta Force to go into a place like Isfahan. And fairly, it would be feasible for those guys who are pros at this and have been prepping for this to dig up nuclear material and be in and out. And that would technically be boots on the ground, but technically boots on the ground, but not in the sense that a lot of people think of it. So maybe Brian understood what the likeliest outcome would be. And that's where, again, people who are in, who have been in the middle of this can sometimes give you a clear understanding of where things are going to go because they understand how people think and what they've been prepping for and how this stuff works. So I thought that was like super Interesting. When I saw Scott's post, I immediately thought what Brian said on Monday's show. Definitely want to have Brian back soon. This is Richard who says, let the rehabilitation of Gavin Newsom to Brown people begin. And he says, spoken as a Brown person, expect ESPN's Mad Dog Chris Russell to play a big role in normalizing Gavin Newsom's odd physical characteristics. Let the pandering continue. I'm tuning out of espn. Can't take it. ESPN should air the View, Morning Joe and all award shows. Just put it on one bucket. That's a great idea. ESPN should do a version of the View in Morning Joe. They're already close enough. They might as well. I really don't watch a lot of espn, but I'm continuously surpr by how brazen they are sometimes about politics. It seems like maybe it's less than it was around 2018, 1920, like Pete Kaepernick era. It does seem like it's gone down a bit. But Gavin Newsom, you know, people, his, his. I think people who meet him feel like they know him. And that is really how a lot of politicians curry favor with people in the media as they think like, oh, this person's a friend. And it's like, well, they're playing you like a fiddle. Playing you like a fiddle. But Newsom is having people on his podcast. He's doing other people's podcasts, and that does buy goodwill because someone feels like they've had a good faith conversation with, with you and you're very important and you gave them time and you came on their show. So that can go a really long way. I think Newsom is the type of guy who understands that Casey says, hey, Emily, is there a big right wing podcast slash influencer group chat? Does it get awkward when there is a fight between two of them like Ben and Candace? Why do some podcasters, like tuck it it Tucker, find it so hard to directly criticize the president? I appreciate your ability to call balls and strikes in the president and not always scapegoat his bad moves. Thank you for your time. Kasey. There isn't a group chat that I'm aware of. There may be a group chat that I'm just not in and if I happen to just not be in it, I. Maybe it exists. I have no idea. I do know that there's one of like heterodox kind of lefties that I've heard about, but I think it's like a DM thing. Yeah, I think that's. I think that's what it is, people don't want to add me to their group chats. This is just my advice, because I am a meme fiend. I send so many memes to the Breaking Points team that I think they want to, like, kill me some days because we, of course, have a team chat. And I can't help myself. Like, when I see a funny meme, I just have to experience it with other people. So if you ask my friends, yes, I'm. I'm an absolute menace in. In a group chat, but there isn't one that I'm aware of, but it's entirely possible that I'm not in it. And part of the reason I think Tucker is very strategic. I can't speak for him, but I think he's very strategic about how he discusses bad decisions from Trump in the administration. The reason is that Donald Trump. Trump is prizes loyalty, right? And I think Tucker prefers to make his disagreements privately because he thinks that it's more powerful and useful. So I think people who know Trump. I do not know Trump. I think people who know Trump tend to be more strategic about it if they're smart. And I think Bannon is very strategic, too. They try to be persuasive to the president. They try to make a case in his language in case that clip makes its way. Way to him and the like. So if you know him, in order to avoid him totally tuning you out, like, he totally tunes Marjorie Taylor Greene out. And for her, it was just too much. She. She just had to. She. She was. She was pushed too far. She was literally in Congress having to take votes, which is different than being on the outside and just being able to talk, which is a total luxury compared to having to take votes. I tell my friends that who work in the political realm, whether it's on the left or the right, I tell them that, like, what I get to do is a luxury, right? I know you have to make different decisions. I'm not in those rooms for. Because I don't want to have to make those decisions because I have a hard time with it. I'm just so, just so paranoid about the way power corrupts and the sort of moral compromises that it forces us into. And I don't know the president, so I don't feel any burden to, like, be strategic or clever. I'm sure it drives friends that I have on the right who work in politics crazy because it does look like a podcaster luxuriating on the air in this privilege to just say what you think. But I know how difficult the decisions that they have to make are. I don't, I don't take that for granted. I get that. But my job is to say what I think. My job is to tell the truth. My job is to find the truth as best we can under some very difficult circumstances. And so that just requires me being honest 100 of the time. And by the way, you have to be honest 100 of the time in new media anyway, because people talk so much. So there, there are going to be probably increasingly unrealistic, expect expectations put on, on journalists from their sources of the future. You just can't care about it. You can't. You just have to do what's right. You just have to say what you think you gotta, and you have to keep it in perspective. I think that's probably one thing that I struggle with the most, because when you're in a business where your job is to be critical of people in power every single day, I always want to communicate in a way that's still filling a hole left by the mainstream, by the legacy outlets who are constantly bashing the right more than the left. And so I always, like, I struggle with that because my job is just to call balls and strikes, to criticize what's going on. And I want to do it in the big picture sense. You don't always have some balance, because if you're just getting things from the headlines every day and you're just criticizing what's happening in the moment without adding the broader perspective of what came before it, then, yeah, you're, you're going to miss some things totally. So, I mean, there were a lot of people who were really upset about what Hunter Biden was doing, who weren't talking about what Jared Kushner had done in the first Trump administration beforehand. It just left the admin, got tons of money from, I think it was the Saudi fund, right into his own new fund. And that's gross. I think that's trading on your insider or your public service. I don't like that stuff. And again, with perspective, that could have. There could have been more pressure on Trump. I don't know if it would have mattered, but not to bring Kushner back into the administration, not allow him to continue being a force policy negotiator, given all of these conflicts. But anyway, that's just a. I struggle with it probably most when criticizing the right, which I was literally just doing, because there's so much the media misses where you have parallel examples of Dems, the left doing the same thing. The media itself constantly getting stories wrong and then criticizing conservative media for getting stories wrong, often on a small scale comparatively to like Russiagate or Hunter Biden, another great example. So it's. That's one of the, I think most important things wrapped up in all of this that I struggle with. But I do, I, I promise I try. But when. Yeah, your job is just to poke holes in. In what powerful people are doing. I don't really care if they're on the left or the right, but I do care about communicating it in a balanced way. Hank says Maureen is always a great guest. You both have interesting theories about powerful men and their impulse to be sexual predators. But in the case of Harvey Weinstein, the motivation might be a little more commonplace. He looks like freaking Quasimodo and without the power and influence, couldn't get laid in a two dollar whorehouse with a fistful of twenties. It's like Buffy once told Principal Snyder, you never got a single date in high school, did you? That's my boomer take on the matter. Did boomers watch Buffy? I'm about to get a bunch of emails. I did not watch Buffy. I'm a little too young for Buffy, by the way. I tried probably sometime in the early Augh. To go back into Buffy. Just not. I'm not a. It's not my thing. Not my thing. I'm not super into fantasy or sci fi or actually really even. I said this many times. But I'm much more into non fiction than fiction in general. But anyway, I do get why people like Buffy. That's quite a universe. Maybe that's true of Harvey Weinstein. I think he's part of a culture though, that, you know, the. One of the big parts of the Weinstein story that I remember writing about so much I was at the Washington examiner at the time is how many people in media knew this was happening and couldn't get their stuff published. Couldn't get their stuff published because Harvey was so powerful. And you know, it's like, why would you give up on these scoops? Why would you do that? If not, you know, to. Because you think it's worth preserving this friendship to not expose mistreatment of women. And so I think that actually two of these things can be true at the same time. Hanging out. Think. Good question OR Good point. MacKenzie says, Love the show and all that you do. In your last Friday episode you talked about lcms and the way you were talking about it. I took it as you were a Lutheran. If so, what books or media do you Recommend to learn more about the Lutheran religion. I grew up in Alka Church where I have many disagreements with. I recently moved down the street from an LCMS church and I'm wanting to learn more and get back into the religion. Thanks for your time, Mac. Mac yeah, I did grow up. I grew up lcms. So that's Lutheran church, Missouri Synod. Wonderful, wonderful experience. You know, I've been thinking about this this week because there's been a lot of conversation about eschatology and end times vis a vis sort of dispensationalists that are in the pro Israel camp and often agitate for a very particular pro Israel policy because they believe we have a duty on earth to prod the end times along, to participate in the the sequence of events necessary to happen for the end times to take place, which I totally dis agree with. But the church I grew up in didn't teach any of that. I don't even remember really talking about end times and stuff. But I think in the, the 90s and the early aughts, if you were in middle America Protestant world, there really was this soft cultural power that evangelical world wielded over a lot of middle American Protestantism. And so, so my church was fairly like low church, like gym, rock band and the like. And I go to other LCMS churches and they're very different than that. So I think I just had a different LCMS experience and can't speak to the broader LCMS experience. I do though. I mean I definitely grew up like reading Left Behind. I've mentioned that. And you know, like it was a long like I was an adult when I went into the scripture and was like, huh, I don't believe in the Rapture. That's embarrassing to say, but it's true. So all that is to say, I think LCMS is a wonderful denominational choice. I'm non denominational now, but I, you know, if I, if I had to pick, I, I would be lcms. Not just because I grew up in it, but I think it is the closest to being the correct manifestation of the faith. So I really recommend it. I don't really have any book recommendations. Molly Hemingway though is, is lcms. Mark Hemingway, who's been on the show lcms trying to think of other people. But Molly and Mark definitely talk about the denomination a good bit. It's not a very big one, but I think it's a fantastic option. Elka, on the other hand, don't even get me started. Don't even get me started. If you have an Alka Church near you. You know what I'm talking about. Paul sends a link about something Maureen said but the link didn't work. I just clicked on it. Sorry about that Paul. Sam says sup and Emily Wednesday show with Maureen was fired. Today was great because Megan, you, Maureen and Link Lauren uploaded brand new episodes. Oh, there you go. Synergy. Cindy says, I hope you're well. Love your podcast and a fan since you're one of the EJ's. I've written to Megan several times times and didn't know on her tour and I adore her as tough as she is. I'm protective of her actually. It's a soft spot. We both lost our beautiful dad so young. Oh I'm sorry about that Cindy. And suddenly from heart attack etc I just love her. I think on the Ben thing Cindy says I hope she makes up with him. I don't think his actual issue is Israel, it's his frustration and perhaps hurt about Candace. If you see what her podcast has been doing slash saying about Erica Kirk on that Ben is right. Candace has very heavily alluded to Erica being involved in her husband's assassination and even veering off to the crazy pedo stuff too that Megan doesn't up on Candace, even at this point when it has become demonic Slap has converted people to hate Erica makes no sense and is hard and sad for all of us hoping for Megan to defend her friend's wife in his memory. Candace doesn't deserve the grace. This is demonic. So I can't speak for Megan. I will say there was a Megan did say, I think it was around around Christmas that she had been working in the background to try and diffuse what was obviously going to be and I'm, you know, again, I'm not trying to put words in Megan's mouth. This is just my paraphrasing of and I have not talked to Megan about this so I really can't speak to her. But the fact that Megan was in the background trying to operate to, you know, make this better for Erica, getting the two of them together and trying to diffuse the what I think people saw as a ticking time bomb with Candace, the direction that she was going to, I would not be surprised. And again, I don't know, I would not be surprised if that's still happening in ways that might be constructive and productive in the background. I think we get the impulse now. I actually think a lot of this is downstream of algorithmic social media. We get the impulse to want people in public to condemn or endorse and my experience personally is that often it's much more constructive to not do that publicly. I think Knowles was talking about this recently too. Much more constructive. Candace is obviously in a place where she takes public attacks, often as evidence of someone's. Someone else's involvement in a conspiracy. So the reason that I try not to talk about this too much, it's usually just here on afterparty because you guys are on happy hour, because you guys send in a lot of questions about it. But the reason I try not to do it too much is I just frankly don't think it's that constructive. I think it for the purpose of, you know, what I've seen become an irrational thought pattern around her theories. I've always said I think she's been enormously traumatized by seeing someone who was once her very, very close friend get to be crude but honest, his head blown up in a cloud of blood on television, on social media, on raw video. And I. That's not something people just get over. So I assume that's driving some of what's become a very irrational thought pattern. But I don't think necessarily the best way to be persuasive is to always jump to, like, public condemnation, especially if you have other ways to go about it in private. And again, I do not know, but I would defend that decision all day, every day because I see this up close. You know, it's also a great way for people to just write you off and say, oh, well, you're part of the conspiracy. You said X, Y or Z. You're part of the conspiracy. Why are you doing this? And that's not super productive or constructive either, because then you immediately lose credibility with a bunch of people who you're hoping to be persuasive towards. So I hear you, Cindy. What I've seen from Candice, and I do watch a lot of Candace because I'm curious. What I've seen from her is frustrating and bizarre. I've always been in the camp that. That she was going to ultimately end up being frustrating and bizarre from the very earliest part of her career. You know, I definitely didn't think it was a great decision for Daily Wire to bring her on board to begin with for some of those reasons. So it's. It's sad. I think it's sad and I think she's struggling and I'll pray for her. Thanks for the question. Marlo says, happy belated birthday to your dad. I have no other recollection. Recollection of branding. Right. But what I took away was his openness about CIA operations, seemingly with connections to active operations. Maybe the good side of algorithms and new media is forcing transparency. Oh, that's an interesting point. That even just that people who had been in CAA before, like Brian and I were talking about this. Howard Hunt and many others used to write these like, kind of thinly veiled fiction books. Even James Bond, right where you like, you can't quite tell what's truth and what's fiction, what's fact and what's fiction. But you know, there's a mingling of both. But now because of podcasts and everything, you're just out there. Anyway, I thought that's, that's pretty funny. Marlo. Marlo says, I love your time with Maureen Callahan. I would really enjoy Deep Dive into Bravo and reality TV as a case study into the treatment of women in popular culture. Yeah, interesting, Marlo. I, I want to do that as well. And I definitely mentioned at the end of the, the end of the interview with Maureen that I would, would love to do a full episode with her on that. I don't know how much interest there is in the audience for that. So I don't want to like turn people off and think this is all just silliness and gossip and tabloid coverage, when in fact there's something really deep and rich. That's the word. Marine news. I agree with it. Plumbing the depths of not just Bravo, but reality television in general. We were talking about Polly Polya has done some fascinating criticism, like art criticism of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. I highly recommend Googling that if you have never checked it out. And definitely reading Sexual Persona, especially the first chapter. If you hadn't. If you haven't. But it's the, the sexual dynamics, the class dynamics tell us so much. And I'm not saying that as somebody who's kind of a reluctant viewer of all of the franchises, except for a couple of. I think it's, it's genuinely interesting and I would hope if we, we did a full episode with Marine, who's in this space and knows a lot of these folks, man, that would be, that would be. I think that would, I think that would be fun. So I would hope you would stick around for it. Let's see, what else do we have here? All right, Instagram. Questions? Thoughts on the future of Texas if Talarico wins as a Texan, if he wins, I think we might be screwed. Honestly, I wouldn't be so black pilled. This is from Texan 316. I wouldn't be so black pilled Texan because I think Talaria go winning would engender significant backlash to Tellarico ism to be honest. So that might might be a short lived Texas experiment in a Dem senator much like we saw in Alabama. Texas probably a little bit more purple than Alabama but it might be a short lived experience for or experiment for Texas because the experience of seeing him in action I, I don't know. I just don't, I don't think he's going to win. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think it's going to be particularly close. I would say the gap would be 3 to 5. That's my prediction election day 3 to 5 he loses by 3 to 5. Could even be more again maybe I'll be wrong, maybe he wins but anyway that's my I, I don't, I, I wouldn't, I honestly would not worry too much. The, the problem would potentially be the bigger problem would potentially be if Dems win Texas and then maybe they win Maine. A couple other places you could see DC being added as a state, Puerto Rico being out as a state, the court being packed because Dems would get rid of the filibuster. I think it's pretty clear they already tried to do that but basically had mansion and cinema standing in the way. It's possible that a Dan Osborne would be like a mansion in cinema and stand in the way of that. I don't know. I think he would probably be more inclined to toss out the filibuster. A lot of Republican senators are inclined to toss out the filibuster first. I don't think that they're going, I don't think they, they have the votes to do it. But we're getting closer to closer, closer and closer to that. And as in Rachel and I talked recently about how it actually might be better to have less friction between people's legislative promises and the legislation itself south because then you people see the consequences of their votes more clearly. So maybe there's something to that. I don't know but I wouldn't, I really wouldn't worry too much. I mean again Alabama had a Dem senator for a while and it didn't in Doug Jones and it didn't, you know, really change the state too much. So I don't know that Talaria would be indicative of some big broader change in Texas that isn't already happening happening. I don't know that he individually would be indicative of that as a senator so much as symbolic of it. Sam says is there a recording of the debate you and Ryan did about Big Tech versus two other people? Oh hell yeah, there is. That was, that was from Reason. And we debated Liz Nolan Brown and Robbie suave, two very capable opponents. It's on YouTube, you can just google it. I think it was called Does Big Tech Do More Good than Harm? Ryan and I were arguing more harm than good and we pretty handily. That was a triumphant night for us. I bought Ryan a shot of vodka afterwards and then came back and did afterparty. So you can see me slightly tipsy on that episode of Afterparty right afterwards. I think this was like November, December somewhere around there. It was a ton of fun. It was a great debate and of course I'm going to recommend everyone go watch it because we won. But I thought it was really an instructive conversation too with some great contrast and good conversation. Frank says hi Emily, what do you make of the alleged Samson option? Is real still with Israel willing to nuke key European cities if it ever quote falls? Is this real? Could this explain why the US and allies are so willing to let Israel act with impunity vis a vis Gaza and Iran? So it looks like that's from a cyhersh book in the 90s. I have not read the cyhersh book and I have not read much about the Samson Option. I've heard it discussed. I don't know how real it is. I do know that I think we often lose sight of the fact that Israel was founded in a reasonable rational state of existential terror by Jews who had just survived an industrial scale genocide. And because of that there is always, especially given that we are still within the living memory of people who survived that industrial scale genocide who were victims of the industrial scale genocide. I mean just don't blame the nation of Israel and certainly American Jews, Jews around the world for living in a state of fear because we are still at the dawn of the nuclear age. We're not at the the crack of dawn. We almost have 100 years under our belt. But that's nothing. That's the blink of an eye in the scope of human existence. So if you are a minority group, global minority group that has always faced waves of bigotry, now you have your own country that is situated around countries that are now hostile. There's always going to be deep seated fear and terror and I don't know how that ever ends really. I don't know how that ever ends. And sometimes because here in the United States we have have oceans separating us from most of the rest of the world. We are the most powerful country on the planet militarily and the like. Our foreign policy isn't rooted in that same experience. We are a, you know, heterogeneous country on a different scale and we're very powerful and we're around the world. So of course the foreign policy, policy objectives are going to conflict but of course the United States and, and all people of decency want to prevent any further nuclear obliteration or industrial level genocide against people for their immutable characteristics. So it's not that it's a very very very what's the right the, the matrix of objectives for different countries is hard square to circle. When you think about the kind of what's, what's the America first policy, what's the Britain first policy, what's the Israel first policy, what's the Mexico first policy. There are always going to be conflicting interests and so I don't know particularly about the Samson option. I do know that I, I There's not always overlap between you know, the interests of people who think for of Americans who want America to come first and Israelis who want Israelis is really Israel to come first. That's nationalism. I it's, it's just the way of the world and if you're a voter in a particular country, you're protected by the military, the particular country you get the benefits of, of your taxes going into a particular country, you want that particular country to come first. Now you may also want to prevent horrible outcomes, horrible evils in other parts of the world and that has to be balanced with horrible outcomes potentially happening at home which again in a nuclear age. This is the paranoia of the Cold War in a nutshell. This is where people were, were very eager, eager to HEAR what Joe McCarthy had to say at the time. This is really bringing the episode full circle. It's like a poetic ending. So I have no idea the veracity of it. I think Cyhersh has been correct in some important moments. Despite many conservatives not particularly having a fondness for Sire. The new documentary about him on Netflix is rather interesting. I recommend checking that one out. But anyway, great question Questions this week. Thank you so much as always. I love these discussions. EmilyEvilMaycareMedia.com is where you can reach me. I do record these Thursday afternoons so get questions in and I will do my best to answer. I think I answered just about all of them today so I do my best to get to them. Appreciate you all listening. Share with a friend if you can. We love those subscriptions on YouTube. Obviously it's totally free. You just go over the afternoon party page hit subscribe likes and comments Also helpful reviews wherever you get your podcasts also helpful and we will see you back here on Monday with another live edition of afterparty. I know many of you listen to it after the fact. We have a lot of fun in live chats but appreciate you listening however you're listening. Have a great weekend everyone.
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