← After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky
“Happy Hour”: The MAGA Iran Split, Talarico’s Odd Theology, and Clinton Depositions: Emily Answers YOUR Questions
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On this week’s edition of “Happy Hour,” Emily Jashinsky answers your questions about politics, faith, media, and war. She opens with a question about the SAVE Act and explains why so many in legacy media won’t address it. She also talks about failures of the Cold War, the legitimate threats the Soviet Union posed, and why the conservative pundit class is split with President Trump on Iran. Emily discusses the importance of giving the President grace on foreign policy issues, while also maintaining a health skepticism of power. Emily also talks about her favorite feed for news, the murder of a mom in Fairfax County, Virginia, and her big takeaways from the Clinton depositions and why Congress had to go to them. Emily also answers questions about James Talarico’s progressive theology and if he can overcome his cringe posts from the past to win the Texas Senate Seat, Thomas Massie’s contrarianism, and a great question about whether it would be worth it to make members of Congress liv...
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plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com. Welcome welcome everyone to another edition of Happy Hour, of course itself a special edition of Afterparty where every Friday I get to talk to all of you through the great email send in to emilyevilmaycare media.com that is my real email address or one of several real email addresses I have. So you can go ahead and fire off feedback, questions, comments, concerns, everything right there in the inbox. I look at these emails live. I read them live. I kind of categorize them as they come in, but I'm reading them in full live for the first time every Thursday evening when I record happy hour episodes which pop Fridays around 5pm so let's go ahead and get started with the emails in to today. Let's see, we have this one is about the SAVE Act. This was in reference to the Rachel and Inez episode last week from Eddie who says often when the SAVE act is brought up, member sees members of Legacy Media act as if they are in the presence of radioactive material. Their commentary seems to be required to include a breathless declaration that, quote, it is already against the law for noncitizens to vote. Does this seem fishy to you? Well Eddie, this is a very good question because a lot of it is downstream of the Biden era, the Biden censorship era. And it wasn't just coming from the government. It was coming from big Tech and I think very heavily from Big Tech that was relying on groups unfortunately like Media Matters to say what was in line and what was out of line. Right? There were all kinds of crazy things going around at the time. People in the Trump camp were saying legitimately banana stuff, but that was then used as an excuse to shut down all conversation. And by the way, I know this acutely because as all of this was going On I worked at the Federalist and the Federalist was one of the few publications, I mean, Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of the Federalist, wrote the book Rigged, which has not been refuted substantively. The research in that book about Mark Elias, about ballot harvesting, it's real. This was an effort spearheaded by Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Elias, all of the marks, apparently. But you can read about it in Time magazine because Molly Ball wrote a whole piece about the well funded cabal. I think that's the actual word in the piece that was. Was looking to create conditions favorable to Democrats by changing the way in Covid people voted. So I think there's so much in the media, there's this built in assumption and I see it a lot, I still see it with Russiagate that because Trump world was talking about this, reporting on this, it must be a conspiracy theory. And therefore the standard disclaimers are just responsible and correct. Like for most people it is honestly because they're too arrogant to consider that maybe the people they see as breathless rubes, mouth breathers are talking about a real phenomenon and so they've just missed it. And they won't dig into it because they assume everything is Sidney Powell or the craziest person who was saying X, Y and Z and then just that is not what journalists are supposed to do. You throw everything out the window and say it's all conspiracy theory. That's not what journalists are supposed to do. Of course. So that is. It is true that nobody even wants to cover the SAVE act because, you know, I remember when we were doing Ryan and I were doing Hill Rising and I think this was with Robbie Suave as well. At one point I made a joke about the like 2020 election and because I didn't use one of these standard disclaimers, the channel got in trouble. I think that is YouTube has since changed its policies. I haven't tested it on that subject that I can think of. Or actually, you know, I haven't any problems talking about the Save act on YouTube, I should say so it seems like they probably have learned, but the channel like legitimately was penalized because of that. Like views started going down because of that. It's crazy. And that's if I'm remembering the story correctly. But the details of it, that's. There's the general gist of what happened. And so there was a lot of self censorship. It's like people didn't even want to talk about it because the incentive was that you'd get written up as a crazy person. And the like. And that's how self censorship happens. That's how people just stop talking about things or looking into things. So I think that actually is still affecting conversations about the SAVE act, to be honest. I think that's why people are always in the legacy media. They don't not only are they worried about getting written up or censored or whatever, I think it's even more that they don't want to be questioned by their in group. Right. They don't want to end up on the outside of their in group. So that's, that's often the most powerful reason. Here is Jesse, who says, I've had your thoughts about the, quote, Great Expectations discourse kicking around my head for about a week. How do you think the style of info consumption has affected messaging and coverage in the early days of the Iran conflict? My eyes went wide and my jaw dropped when the president called back nearly 50 years to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 as a justification for current military action. I'm writing this on Monday morning, so apologies if you already addressed something along these lines on this week's shows. I do think, I don't think we've reconciled ourselves or I don't think we fully reckoned with is probably the best way to put it, Failures of the Cold War. And you all know that I'm like an amateur student of the Cold War. I read about it a lot. And one of the things that struck me in the last couple of years, you always, you're reading these histories or you watch like the Oliver Stone show Untold History of the United States. And this is why, by the way, I think Roger Stone is an interesting guy because he doesn't do what I'm about to describe. He doesn't his cold, hard history is skeptical of, of government and the deep state, but from the right. But most of the people who talk about Cold War history or do Cold War history autopsies, right, like try to excavate the common stories we tell ourselves about the Cold War. They're almost always on the left and they're almost always downplaying the legitimate threat that the Soviet Union posed and struggle to put themselves in the mind not just of the right at the time, but kind of across the board people who were terrified of a nuclear Soviet Union. Soviet Union was obviously terrified of a nuclear United States. But all that is to say that paranoia pushed us in some unfortunate directions. And I definitely worry that we haven't learned, even just talking about the Kurds this week. It's hard not to Think about what happened in the Syrian civil war. I mean, Tulsi Gabbard was a huge critic of how we ended up funding through the CIA, both sides of the Syrian conflict at one point. And then you have to grapple with an armed group that is, you know, this is what happened in Afghanistan during the Cold War with the Mujahideen, for example, who was part of that? Osama bin Laden. So it's just about taking a kind of more realistic lesson from some of these experiences. And a lot of people who disagree with me on some of this are clear eyed about it. They know these lessons. But I think there's always this temptation to think you can do it better, you can do it differently and you can control it. This time or that time when, I don't know. There was a point where the Washington Post reported on this. In the 2010s there were still textbooks from when we were arming the Mujahideen that were radical, that were textbooks with radical Islamic teachings in them that we had funded and sent to Afghanistan. This was in the early 2010s. They were still circulating. It's very hard to control this stuff once you kind of let it out of the bottle. This kind of a long wind up, Jesse. 1979, you know, you can't talk about it without talking about 1953 because that's the answer that Iranians would give as part of their motivation. And whether you believe them or not, it's. That's what they say. So thinking that we can exercise full or we can exercise enough control over a lot of these situations without sacrificing a lot, a lot of ground troops makes me nervous. I don't know if that quite nailed the answer, Jesse, but that's what came to mind. Stevens says new pitch to change Congress college style. Dorm rooms, no pay, just per diem. Home bills paid. All stock trading and related money making options banned. One round trip flight per week to go home. Cameras in common areas. Being a connoisseur of reality tv, do you think it would be a hit or a flop at least. At the least it'll keep politicians in the game for love of country and service at the best we get the real representatives of dc. This is an awesome email, Stephen. Make like Big Brother out of Congress. They sort of already do because they have C span, but yeah, obviously not in their living areas. To some extent we're getting more and more of this because of the TikTok ification and because everyone, you know, even tourists in D.C. or people who are at the district meetings and the like, they have their cameras out at all times. So we're getting much closer to this. But I actually, on a serious note, your point about college style dorm rooms is such a good one. Honestly, you hear people in Congress who have been there a long time talk often about the camaraderie that's been lost. And some of it is good, right? Like I don't want you in the smoke filled back room cutting every single deal with Tip o' Neill because he's your buddy. At the same time there is. They'll often talk about so much rancor and just distrust of other members because there's so little socialization at this point. Everyone is, is back in the district all the time, which is good, right? It's good, but it's good to be back in your district. But you also have to have some collegial ability to talk and, and have some trust and be able to get things done. Actually, I mean, Congress just punts so much. I know it's crazy to say, but they do need to spend more time in Washington. They punt so much responsibility now to the executive, which is part of the reason that Trump is in a power vacuum and accepting some of the power that's been punted by Republicans and Democrats. So I actually really like this idea. I hate that congressmen sleep in their offices. I hate that some congresswomen and then they like to talk about how they're frugal because they sleep in their offices. It's inappropriate. There's staff walking around the buildings all day. There's staff in the offices early. It's inappropriate, period. It should not be happening. I love the idea of an equalized central ish space. It may, I mean, it may be a security problem. I think there are ways you would deal with that. You'd maybe have like five different residences or something to that extent. And senators would hate it because so many of them are so rich and have multiple houses in D.C. beautiful townhouses. You should see some of these places. They're incredible. But it's, you know, you just like walk past them. You're like, whoa. So I think they would hate it. They probably wouldn't want it. But it also is. Discourages people from running for Congress in all seriousness, because you can't afford to have two. AOC talked about this one time, she was right. You can't afford to have two different residences because rent in D.C. is insane. And that's especially insane if you're a place. If you're like four from a place Like New York City, it's hard for normal people to run for Congress. It's already hard enough because you have to raise money and be connected and some cases, self fund if you can't get the money because maybe you're heterodox and you're not a puppet. So it's already a bad enough situation. Then ask people to pay two different rents. It's not great. It's not great. Or two different mortgages or whatever it is. That's how people end up trying to do. Like Dan Crenshaw talked about. I don't make all that much money. I'm not living high. That's why I'm trading stocks. It's only $20,000. Well, $20,000 is a lot of money, first of all, Congressman. But also. Yeah, it's just. It's. It's not a good situation. And it's just hard, though. There's not a lot of incentive to give, like, congresspeople raises or better housing or whatever. So I actually think the dorm idea is kind of a good one. All right, let's move on here. What have we got going on this past week on Happy Hour? Jacob says you spoke a bit about your experience growing up reading the Left behind books, and that view challenged and reshaped later in life. I know you're not a theologian and your podcast is about politics and culture, but given recent events, I think it'd be cool to hear someone like you dive into this topic a bit. It's interesting to me personally that dispensationalism seems to be an almost holy American theology, whereas other Christians throughout the world do not hold to that interpretation, at least in my experience. Any books are the resources you recommend on the topic. Personally, my last year my Bible study group read a book called Revelation, Unwrapped by a theologian named John Richardson. Hard to find, but if you can, it's a fantastic walk through the Book of Revelations. That does sound really good, Jacob. Thanks for the recommendation. I might have to check that one out. The one thing I think I've recommended the wrong place to find this before, but I've recommended it in the past. It is. Let me look at my phone. I just had it pulled up on my phone because I was looking for it last night. It's from lcms, so that's, you know, that's how I grew up. Although, to be honest, I was reading like, Left behind, and it was such a, like, low church environment that I definitely was believing in things like the Rapture until I got more serious about trying to understand it as I got older. But LCMS has a really great document. I'm trying to pull up the name of this here. I literally just downloaded it last night, so I should be able to find it. You'd think I'd be able to find it, but it's called something like, it's like called Will I be Left Behind? Or something like that. Let me, I'll find it and then recommend it. Can tell that I'm doing this live, by the way. Let's see. I love the little downloads folder on your phone. Yeah, here it is. Okay, here it is. It is called a Lutheran response to the Left behind series. It's from April 2004. But it's really, really helpful actually kind of walking through all of this stuff not purely from a Lutheran perspective. I actually feel like if you're Protestant or a non dispensationalist, you'll find a lot to agree with in it. And it's a good explainer on what goes wrong. You know, I, I, I generally think, I mean, I was thinking about this this week. You know, if you're my age, if you're a little bit older than me, basically, if you were born after like 1960, so maybe even older than me, you know, maybe even like roughly my parents age. You are accustomed to this idea of Israel existing as a nation state, like living in a world with a country called Israel. And that was not true for many, many years before that. Many, many years before that. So it's interesting, right, that now we just, of course there's a country called Israel. But I think in America, particularly taking the helm after World War II, sort of the hegemonic position after World War II, this idea that Scripture was being fulfilled because you could substitute, you had a real country of Israel that you could read into scripture. And sometimes if you're reading political Israel, the modern country of Israel into prophecies, you can understand why it would hit people that way, especially in the last 100 years. I get it. I do. Because it looks like prophecy being fulfilled. And by the way, maybe it is. I don't know. I honestly don't know. And I don't know that anybody knows for sure. And I think to have that certainty that you must read political Israel into Revelation or Daniel, that exerts a level of confidence over the end times. Because you're reading political Israel as opposed to the nation of Israel, the lowercase N, like nation of the Jewish people. And does that mean the sort of supersessionist belief, what does that actually mean, I think, to politicize? Not to politicize. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I just mean to be confident enough in your reading of prophecy to say this must become a political prescription to support creating these conditions on the ground in the nation of Israel. That's where I have significant disagreement with it. But anyway, yeah, that's a great document. I definitely recommend it. This is Matthew who says, do you have any recommendations for a shorter format news update aggregators that can keep me in the loop while on the go without the addictive doom scrolling part of social media? Matthew says he deleted Instagram and Facebook for lent. Great idea. Yes. Actually everyone, or I guess maybe not everyone, but people might know I like the. I like the old idea of RSS feeds because it's not an algorithm that is designed to. First of all, it's not an algorithm, it's not driven by an algorithm. Second of all, it's not designed to keep you scrolling as long as possible by racing to the bottom of your brainstem, meaning feeding you stuff that's extreme in one direction or the other. So one place that I really, really like, I don't know if I've ever mention before, it's called Feedly. Feedly.com F E-E-L-Y.com this is often when I just feel like social media is snake pit, which is constantly. But some days it's worse than others. I will go here and look for the news to cover. It's a really great way to do it. You can build lists. So for example, I have a list of like all the outlets that I'm curious what they publish that gets really long and you get. It actually looks nicer than one of the old RSS feeds. They have a really great site design, but it's not algorithmically driven and it's just from the outlets that you pick. So I have a list for all of the news. So that's like every outlet that I read regularly. And then I have a list of targeted. So this is like if I don't have as much time, it's the outlets that I value the most to get updated on the news. So that's a great question, Matthew. Yeah, I appreciate it. This is another email from Matthew who says been a longtime fan of your work ever since your days at the the Federalist. Thank you so much, Matthew. I. I know your name, Matthew. You've been kind enough to give me feedback over the years. And speaking of which, just drop my phone every episode is that that's happened, like, three weeks in a row now. Dropping the phone. Matthew says I'll always hope for more episodes with Bedford. The cooking episodes y' all used to do looked so fun, though. The episodes with Inez and Rachel are always a treat since I don't get a lot of Ms. Stepman's views and she stopped doing her podcast with IWF. No, I agree. I loved Inez's IW podcast. We had a lot of fun on that one. Yeah, man, Bedford is probably itching to do more cooking videos. I should check in on that one. He's obviously busy with the baby now, but maybe we. Maybe we could do more cooking videos. Those were really funny. He's a great cook, by the way. Like, I think the best steak that I've ever had in my life was, you know what? It was prime rib. He made the single best prime rib that I've ever had in my life. So maybe that's one reason to do it. This is from James, who says, cannot tell you enough how much I enjoy you as a conservative Christian female pov. Why do you think the conservative pundit class is so split with Trump on the Iran issue? James, I think that's just a good observation, and I'm very, very conscious of this. My friend Bacha Unger Sargon will say this about Epstein as well, that the conservative pundit class is much more focused on some of these online social media debates than the average Republican voter and sometimes are just out of line with them on things like foreign policy and the like. I actually do think that's true in the case of Iran. I have more quibbles with it on Epstein, you know, that I don't need to get into that now, but I think this is a good observation. I think most. Well, I think the conservative pundit class is right now more split on the war, if I'm looking at polling than the average Republican voter is. And I do think for those of us who are more skeptical of it, you know, it would be a mistake to act as though the Republican bases, you know, with the skeptics. I don't think that's true. I do think there's something about being in media that I don't want to use the word scarred. I think it's too hard. But it might be the best word to convey what I'm thinking. I think there are people like Tucker Carlson, probably Megan, others who were in the journalism space during Iraq and Afghanistan who have enough distance from that now to have seen how the propaganda was kind of cooked up and are extra skeptical watching it happen again in real time. Just skeptical that it may be happening again in real time. I think it is. I think this is one of the things I want to talk to Matt Taibbi about. I think there are pretty obvious parallels happening. But it's interesting to me that even opponents of like forever wars and nation building on the right seem to be pretty willing to trust Trump, and that's probably many of you. I understand that his foreign policy instincts are definitely better than like a Jeb Bush's foreign policy instincts. And I think people just want to give the president grace. And I think people personally do not like criticism of the president or the country during times of war, when you have people, unfortunately coming back in coffins. So I understand that. I do want to say that, you know, for, for journalists, that's not my job. My job is to, of course, be praying and to be, you know, I think it's fair, it's not necessary, but I think it's. For me, the, the moral thing to do is offer support to people who are putting their lives on the line right now, of course. But my job is to be skeptical of power, period. I do it from a conservative vantage point. Hopefully, I do it from a Christian vantage point. That's, that's my goal. But my goal is not to be supportive of power, because my job is to be one of the people whose everyday life. There's my phone again. My everyday life is focused on skepticism of power. It's not a good use of my time to be supportive of decisions people in power make because there aren't a lot of journalists in the world. There are already too many journalists, but there especially aren't a lot of conservative journalists in the world who are, you know, spending their time asking questions. So I always say I have more questions than answers, and I think that's a good way to look at the Iran situation. I'm skeptical. I have a lot of questions. I'm not saying that I have all of the answers. And I hope everyone kind of understands that. That's at least how I look at it. You know, in times of war in particular, it's definitely important, I think, to be extra, extra skeptical. So that's where I think it's true. The skepticism level is going to be higher among the journalist pundit class, particularly because it's many journalists jobs to be skeptical and to ask tough questions. And I hope people are doing that. But to. It would definitely be a mistake to say that the conservative pundit class right now or conservative media is fairly representative. The breakdown of Republican positions on this now, some of this could change quickly. I know people trust that Donald Trump is not going to end up in a quagmire. And if it starts to look like that, yeah, this could change. So good question. Very good question. Hank says Talarico might be even more woke than you think if the tweets that are surfacing today are legitimate. Five years ago, he was talking about white people spreading a virus. Quote, we spread it wherever we go, although white people are apparently immune from the virus, whatever it is. Racism, I suppose, and we don't even need to wear a white hood or carry a Confederate flag. We're still contagious. Megan and I talked about this tweet. It was in response to Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed just before the George Floyd. Floyd thing blew up. And the Arbery killing, to my memory, was genuinely an act of racism. It appeared to be like one of the stories that actually the, the early, the left's early reaction to it bore out, which is very often not the case. But Talarico's response to it was to basically say that all white people are racist. Like that was this, this post that Hank's referring to. It's just in Texas, I mean, nationwide hopefully, but especially in Texas, that, these posts, that one in particular, I mean, I think he ran a very smart primary campaign that telegraphed he's in a better position than he should be going forward into the general, just given his history and his record. So I don't want to downplay the fact that he's about to run a pretty smart campaign, I think, but I don't think the smartest campaign in the world could. Unless you want to walk back all of these positions. I don't think the smartest campaign in the world is going to be able to overcome the sheer baggage of having talked about trans abortions rights and interrogating patriarchy and the contagion of whiteness. I just don't think you're going to be able to overcome that, no matter how good of a campaign you run. And that said, I'm not ruling out that he could run a good campaign or the best that he possibly can. This is a joke, though. It's, it's honestly so offensive. It's easy to laugh at because he's so earnest when he's saying these things. But it's such a joke. Such a joke. Okay, Cruz says, being a little over a year into the Trump presidency, do you think the conservative project would have been better off with four years of Kamala followed by eight years of DeSantis. It kind of feels like now we might be doomed to eight years of Gavin Newsom, someone who is much more competent and likable than Kamala. Just curious of your thoughts, I think, Cruz. It's an interesting question. I think it's an almost impossible counterfactual to consider. It's almost to me like asking like, what was that series that did the. It was a book series, then a TV series. It was a book, then a TV series. There have been many of them. But you guys know the one I'm Was it Man in the High Castle, where you're you're reconsidering what would have happened if other people won World War II. Or I just find these to be kind of impossible because what can always, I mean, Black Swan events just change everything. So if, you know, Butler had turned out even more tragically and Corey Comparator and Trump had both lost their lives or, you know, Richard Routh, whatever, had been able to pull off what he apparently was trying to pull off. Or I mean, there's just so many different things that I guess it would we would just be trying to do the math here and assuming no Black Swan events, what might have happened with X, Y and Z? But I mean, a year ago at this point, everyone thought the cultural momentum was with Trump and Doge and Elon, and that just changed so quickly. So I honestly don't know. I get why you're asking the question, Cruz. My point on this or my general take on these types of scenarios is I almost think they're pointless. I see what you're saying, though. Does it feel like we're building up to a very powerful Newsom presidency or Buttigieg presidency or Harris presidency? Probably unlikely on on that. But I don't know that you would get four years of Kamala Harris with eight years of Ron DeSantis, for example, because you just don't know what happens. You have no like, it's just, it's all so unpredictable now that I have a hard time even grappling with the hypothetical cruise. But thank you for the question. I do appreciate it. I see where you're going with it. It is interesting. Rachel says, I saw your reporting on the murder of Stephanie Minter. So horrible her family's and my thoughts my question below is not meant to politicize her tragic death, but simply to understand how the system failed. I live in Fairfax and have seen this is the county where it Happened have seen several posts saying ICE had the opportunity to pick up Abdul Jalo when he was most recently released in November 2025, but did not show up. I have no idea if this is true. Is there a way to confirm if an immigration detainer was honored or ignored? I feel like Fairfax county is intentionally confusing with their public communication regarding county jail cooperation with ice. Most people here don't want to get into a political debate. They just want to know exactly what is happening. There should be a way. I mean, this is going to be a problem. I know that some speculation already is circulating about whether ICE made a mistake in this case and did not, did not show up if they were given notice that Jala was being released and deported him properly. We're talking about a person who has 30 plus arrests though. So it sounds to me like obviously if they were all in Fairfax county, it's entirely fair to lay blame at the feet of Fairfax county because it can't possibly have gone that wrong 30 different times. But then maybe again, the immigration system is also failing 30 plus times. What it sounds to me more like though is Fairfax county not prioritizing getting this person out of the country. Even though they're repeatedly being arrested, charged with these things. They say that they couldn't get witnesses to testify. It sounds like he was praying, weighing heavily on other homeless people. So you can understand where there are difficulties. But for it to happen that many times, I think is insane. I do believe we're going to get an answer on what happened with ICE because ICE is inevitably going to have to answer that question. So I think I agree with you. It sounds to me so far like Fairfax is playing a little fast and loose here because they know that this is a big story. This is another Lake and Riley level story. It probably won't be as big as Lake and Riley because that happened in the height of the Biden surge and it was so vindicating, tragically vindicating, but vindicating to people who had been saying this is going to happen, this is going to happen. But in this case you have emails saying this is going to happen from local police and it's actually ending up happening. So it's, it's such a powerful story. Yeah, God bless the Minter family. But I do think we are going to get an answer on that with basically from ISIS side about what happened because Fairfax seems to be asserting that maybe it's ISIS fault. As of right now, that seems to be the line. All right, what I got here, Richard says this Is funny. If you watch some, if you want some fun viewing, watch the Hillary Clinton Epstein testimony and compare it to the Benghazi testimony with the sound off. Body language is so similar. Board face in the hand slamming desk. I was expecting her to say what difference does it make? Do you think the Clinton era is over? Oh my gosh, the what difference does it make Line I that had somehow slipped my mind. Also the what do you mean? Like wipe it with a cloth there. As history books have been written already about Clinton, it's abundantly clear this woman privately has a very bad temper. So one of my big takeaways from the deposition was watching her get so heated sometimes fairly like when Lauren Boebert I think it was took the picture. Oh my gosh. But you can just see her like gritting her teeth like furious. And Buzz Patterson wrote a book. I don't know what Buzz is up to now. I think he ran for Congress but he, he carried the nuclear football for part of the Clinton administration and wrote book shortly after leaving the White House. And some of the anecdotes about the Clintons, especially Hillary Clinton are absolutely wild. Richard says as an oh by the way, do I think the Clinton era is over? It's coming to an end. It's coming to an end. But I think they've been sort of buoyed by I think Clinton. Hillary Clinton now feels like she got another round of very sympathetic media coverage. You know, New York Times framed her as the victim once again of Bill's sexual exploits in a just like a news report. So I don't know, I think she still feels very powerful. I don't know that Chelsea Clinton ever is going to seek like some major political career but and as long as Hillary Clinton is alive, I think she is going to be trying to have political influence. Richard says as an American born Mexican male. Just a point to add to your analysis. Your most vocal Mexican wants disillusioned by life will always fall back to family and traditional. There is no loyalty to any issue that will surpass that. No one should count on them to show up the day after a loud rally. Great, great perspective there Richard. I appreciate it. Yeah it's. I think both parties get Hispanic voters wrong, especially Mexican voters wrong. I think you know, during the culture war Republicans thought oh we've made permanent in round inroads with, with Mexican voters in the Rio Grande Valley and the like. And I don't want to underplay how serious the left's problems still are on cultural issues in these areas. I think they are. But once the border's closed and if it's not a good economy, I mean, Republicans still need to make a pitch that they care about families and the like. Richard also says, love your work. I'm stuffing myself with masa chips. I actually just had some, I just had some of the churro flavors. Drinking heavily to enjoy popping zebiotics. Principally going into debt to get BDS, debt relief and pushing female hormone supplements, which again, as an American born Mexican is a leap and a big endorsement of you personally, Richard. Thank you. You, you, thank you for getting the, the female hormone supplements. You don't have to. You don't have to. Marlo says another two information filled shows. Love, Matt Taibbi. Roger Stone always looked like a cartoon character to me. Not sure about Massie though. I liked him. Maha wise but contrarian for contrarian sake. Consistent or not is tiresome. Massey gets that criticism a lot. I think he's consistent in his contrarianism though. I think he's, he's sort of. Those are libertarians at their most pure, you know, perpetual contrarians. And they play a really valuable role in the ecosystem. So that's what I would say to that. And Marlowe says, I lost some respect for Rogan when I saw that clip. Referring to Talarico on Rogan, Rogan said, hey, you should run for president at some point. And Talarico was explaining how in his view, the Virgin Mary gave consent to God. I mean, it's just such a disgusting way to read. He's referring to the book of Luke, he says specifically, and if you go and read the book of Luke, it's just an absurd way to try and spin what happens in that scenario. It's one of these like postmodern progressive theologies that tries to they the right of doing this all the time, of trying to project modern politics into scripture. And that is exactly what you're doing here to try and stretch that story. It's really, really gross and there's basically no evidence for it. His evidence is that Mary says, yes, like I will be your. I mean that's, that is if that's consent. That's a crazy, crazy way to describe consent. And even to think about it in that way, especially as we see in utero Baby John and Jesus in scripture. I mean it just, it is really, really disgusting. I think though, man, I wish I remembered who, wish I remember who posted this. I think it was Terry Schilling, my friend Terry Schilling over at the American Principles Project who said people shouldn't underestimate, you know, how Talarico's progressive Christianity lands on normal people. And by normal people he means like non Internet addicted Twitter conservatives, if that makes sense. Right. Like, and I think what he's trying to say is there are a lot of people who have different perspectives than conservative Christians or even, I would say, like lowercase orthodox Christians on things like abortion. You know, America is a pro life country in some respects. You know, not supporting, basically supporting more aligned with Europeans, supporting an abortion policy more aligned with Europeans, but also still, you know, wanting exceptions and being supportive of your first trimester and the like. And so to just say that everyone's going to hear Talarico and be like, oh, that's, you know, that's, that's bad, that's, that's bad theology. I, I, there's so many people who are just, they haven't been in church a really long time and they're especially post Covid, looking for some anchor and considering, you know, reconsidering faith and if you don't have to challenge too many of your cultural commitments, policy commitments, then I think it does sound good, if that makes sense. And I would put Rogan kind of in that category. He's of course willing to challenge his, his cultural commitments, but he just schooled Ste on Steve O was saying they're trying to put trans people in internment camps, like just, yeah, but Rogan went in on him, didn't take that at all, which was super interesting. So, but again, it's, it's just, it's easier to swim with the current than to swim upstream on some of the culture issues. So I keep that in mind for sure. Jesse says, why are so many people in denial about Trump's posture? Real Iran over the years, he's always been hawkish and a staunch pro Israel individual in every policy platform he ran on reflects that. The same people who say he's betraying his movement were praising his hardline stance against Tehran and his threat of force over the years. Now that he's using the force, they have the mentality of, wait, this isn't what we signed up for. As someone skeptical of this operation, yet trusting him due to his previous foreign policy decisions, for now at least, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Maybe everyone really is either a grifter, a panic, or just plain scared. What do you think? You know, there's a, I think for a lot of people there's a charitable explanation, which is that when you hear Trump say, I'm not gonna start wars, I'M going to end wars. You assume that the bluster toward Iran was a peace through strength approach. Right? Like, for me, I think there's always an argument that you audit the Pentagon and actually increase the Pentagon budget, like Ronald Reagan did, to determine other countries, and you can do it in a smart way. But right now, I don't trust the military industrial complex, including the Pentagon, to do that in a particularly smart way. So I'm not, that's not, don't take that as a prescription, but that Trump's rhetoric towards Iran was an attempt to do peace through strength and without, you know, to, to make deals without starting new wars, for example. And that's, that's how his success at ending the bloodshed as well, ending the bloodshed formally with the agreement in Gaza. That's what a lot of his team was framing it as. And I think they have been. I do think it's kind of a fair interpretation of Trump, though. I do think there are also people who are cynically using this to drive a wedge between Trump and his voters. You know, to, to say it's, it's all rank hypocrisy. But I also think, you know, it's not wrong to take him seriously when he says things like, he's not going to start new wars. And so I think there is a charitable interpretation for a lot of people who felt that way. On the other hand, yes, I think it's being wielded very cynically by other people who are just had forgotten how hawkish he had been on Iran or are willfully ignoring it. So I think the bottom line is, and maybe the best way to say it, is that Trump himself was trying to have it both ways, and it worked because people often project onto Trump what they want to and because he has a totally different communication style, to put mildly, they project onto him one thing or another. And sometimes he does that intentionally, I think, and you can argue in foreign policy that's a good thing, right? Is that it's sort of Kissinger's madman theory, a foreign policy. And maybe it works. I don't know. Maybe it works. He's right. Putin didn't invade Ukraine in his first term. So there are a lot of possibilities here. But I do think the President deserves some blame for talking about both sides of his mouth on that. Now, if his plan was to have heated rhetoric to avoid a war, then it's not the worst plan. But I also think when you're talking about decisions of life and death, people deciding whether or not to enlist, people Deciding whether or not to vote for you. I just think it's. It's a. It's such a sin to be misleading or dishonest. When it comes to war in particular, it's always wrong. But when you're talking about war, I think it's. It's egregious. All right, what else we got here? Just a couple more Deese says, Emily. Lots of complaints about cash being at the hockey game, use of plane, etc, where the complaints about the Clintons having their hearings in Chappaqua and the tremendous expense that will cause taxpayers. No complaints from Chappaqua residents for the security bill, all the members of Congress having to fly up to New York. Food, hotels, lodging. Where's the outrage? And why were the Clintons allowed to bring the hearings to them? You know, this is a good question, because I don't technically know how it works. My guess is those House oversight members were more than happy to agree to this because everyone wanted to get the Clintons on the record on this for political reasons, but I think also for substantive reasons, everyone just. Just wanted to get them on the record over the course of hours. I mean, we have, like, eight hours of Clinton depositions now, so I don't blame them for bringing it up there. I have seen that it did seem to cost the locals a lot of money so far. Yeah, I. I just think people don't hold the Clintons against the Democratic Party anymore. It's like they have been so disgraced. I don't know. I don't think it's necessarily fair because Bill Clinton got a prime speaking slot at the dnc. I think Hillary got a pretty good speaking slot at the dnc, too, last time around. They're still trying to exercise political power, clearly. So, yeah, I think everyone was just so eager to get them on the record. It was like, let them, you know, do whatever it takes to get the Clintons on the record. About Epstein, Victor says, what foundational issues are essential for our survival as a country? Foundational issue would be. I mean, I think the survival of the west depends on not a couple things, but first of all, not having a consensus, not having a thoroughly postmodern consensus. Right. I think that's what was really at risk in the 2010s and early 2020s, that there was this. This moment where everyone was. Was almost starting to get on board with it. It hadn't passed critical mass. That's where, you know, we saw a rejection of certain things, like, you know, men on women's teams. That's not Going away for Democrats, by the way, that's still. I talk about this all the time. That's still a part of their base. They're. They still have to be responsive to people who think that way. But it is. That was rejected as a country overall. And I think that's what you have to fight against is moral relativism, this idea that truth is relative. That's a foundational issue not just for America, but for the West. I don't know how you can survive in a constitutional republic without devolving into socialism, communism or anarchy. Complete, total kleptocracy. Getting away from any semblance of lowercase, dark democratic rule. That's not even the right word, lowercase. Our republican rule, constitutional republican rule, in order. If you, you can't agree that, for example, when mail is in a legal document, it means mail. Like when your legal system falls apart and your ability, of course, like the social fabric falls apart. And that's another part of this. You have to have. You have to have a country. You have to have a patriotic country, right? Because if you lose the will to support the country, what is the point of any of it, right? If you have nihilism, you'll probably end up with. If you have nationalism, what's the right way to put this? Nihilism rather than nationalism. And by nationalism, I really just mean patriotism, a belief that our politics should be for the betterment of the country, not, not the whole world. Because we can't please the entire world at once. We have to take care of our own people first. If you lose that, then you go into this, like, patriotic nihilism, right? Where patriotism doesn't matter because we're really here for the world. And listen, a strong America, they have a strong moral country, as strong and moral as it can be. A more perfect union. Not a perfect union, but a more perfect union that should make the world a more perfect and stronger place. But you have to take care of the millions of people in your own country so that they are prosperous, happy, healthy as can possibly be. And that will in turn make the world a better place. But you can't have happy, healthy, prosperous people if you are not prioritizing them, but are instead prioritizing the entire globe, which is full of countries with values that we just don't share, nor should we share. And it's okay to say that. That we don't have to share the values of China. I want us to be at peace with China. I want us to be at peace with the people. Of Iran. But we, that doesn't mean that we have to, to share their values. Right. And that we have to say that it's all relative. Right. We, we don't have to do that. And so I think that's a response to some of the. I think your question is a really good one, Victor. Like what foundational issues are essential for survival? That one. The only other thing I would add is we cannot agree to go on with these casinos in our pockets that are gamifying our social, political and professional lives. We can't do that anymore. And I don't know how you avoid descending into moral relativism and kleptocracy without getting rid of that. That is disrupting absolutely everything right now. It is hypernovelty, as Brett Weinstein and Heather Hying write about in A Hunter Gatherer's gu to the 21st century. An essential book. If you have not read it, I highly, highly recommend it. It doesn't get enough attention, to be honest. It's a, it's a very good book, a practical book, literally a guidebook. But this is a hyper novelty that our policy is not caught up to. Our social understanding of the world has not caught up to. And I don't, I honestly don't think that the, I don't know that humans can survive that. The rate of change is just getting faster and faster every single year. Smartphones are the best example of it. And that is the thing that is making us less human, personally, politically, professionally, every single day. And I do think a foundational agreement has to be. We don't want that. And maybe the way to deal with it is through government. Maybe the way to deal with it is through culture. Maybe it's a combination of both. I'm not saying that we all have to agree on the exact right policy prescription, but we should agree that we need to find consensus on a policy prescription soon because it's so, so dangerous. All right, that's going to do it for this edition of Happy Hour. So much fun to talk to all of you through emily@devilmaycaremedia.com I want to say a very sincere thank you to everyone. Really appreciate it. I know now that there's a war going on, it's even, you know, if it's hard to deal with things when you're not at war, if we're already in such a difficult climate when you're not at work, it gets even harder when you're seeing Americans die abroad. To continue having civil conversations and giving each other grace and coming to these conversations with open minds. So I really appreciate all of you for sharing supporting the show. I'm going to continue doing my best. I'm not going to be perfect, but I'm going to continue doing my best and I'm so grateful to all of you for listening. Please do subscribe to the YouTube channel. Tell your friends if you haven't yet. It's super, super helpful. Thank you for subscribing on your podcast feed so you can get happy hour. It's the only place to get happy hour, of course. And I will see you on Monday with more afterparty. Have a great weekend. God bless you everyone.
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What do the steam engine, electricity and AI have in common? They don't just change how we work, they transform entire economies. Where the Internet Lives is an award winning podcast from Google about the unseen world of data centers. This season we're going inside the AI revolution. From farmers using AI to analyze soil data to researchers discovering new medicines, a new era of AI innovation is here. Listen to where the Internet lives wherever you get your podcasts.
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