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Welcome to After Party everyone. It's episode 73 if you can believe it. Tonight's guest is going to be Griffin Davis. He's our executive producer over at Breaking Points. This is going to be a fun one. We have lots of Oscars and culture talk to get to, so hang in there. Griffin will join us in just a couple of minutes. There's so much to go over. New video of Joy Reid that I'm going to talk about. You're going to want to hear what Joy Reid has to say about, I mean this, this was a wide ranging interview to be sure, but Joy Reid on women in Iran versus women in America. Spoiler. Little spoiler here. She says it's basically only a marginal difference. Incredible. We will get to that. Like I said, a lot of Oscars content to get to. Jimmy Kimmel made an appearance. Jerry o' Connell had some wild takes about his own personal life on Bill Maher's club. Random. That sounds like a fake sentence. And a horrible story about Polymarket in this recent Iran war. It's astounding. Should be one of the most talked about trends right now in the world. Period. Jim. Even Stephen Colbert, who I almost just confused with Jimmy Kimmel. Stephen Colbert is even being panned by critics now for his long drawn out exit year. We're going to talk about that with Griffin as well. First though, please remember to subscribe. It's very, very helpful and I'm very, very bad at reminding people to do it. So if you get a chance to throw us a subscribe on yout, we really appreciate it. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. That's where you get our Friday only edition or our Friday audio only edition of the show Happy Hour. You can only get that on the podcast feeds. We just drop it there. So Likes, comments, reviews, all that help appreciate it, everyone. I want to start tonight with a story I've been thinking about a lot just in the last couple of days, putting this up on the screen. Jimmy Kerk dropped this opinion piece for the Washington Post not too long ago. This was, it was, it was about a month ago and it started to really pick up steam just late last week. And Ro Khanna, Democratic Representative Ro Khanna was getting a lot of heat and the debate was over this term, the quote, Epstein class. You've heard Ro Khanna use the term Epstein class a lot. You've heard Representative Thomas Massie, who's been on our show just the last couple of weeks, use that term a lot. It's clearly the intentional kind of public relations term of the anti Epstein effort. Right? Like, this is clearly something they thought about. It's clearly something they thought communicated the anti Epstein campaign well. And it's caught on certainly among Democrats, many of whom were not interested in talking about Epstein at all when it was a right coded story. And if anything, it was dismissed by many of those folks as a conspiracy theory. And they're now, of course, eagerly, eagerly making the most out of it, talking about the Epstein class at every possible turn. But the line in this piece that I think is most egregious is, let me just pull this up. Yeah. So kick wrote that Ro Khanna, politicians such as Representative Ro Khanna have begun to talk about the, quote, Epstein class. The phrase can be taken as an association of exploitative wealth with Jewish identity. So if you use the phrase Epstein class, as many Democrats have done, Republicans like Thomas Massie, it can, quote, be taken as an association of exploitative wealth with Jewish identity. Like I said, over the last, I don't know, like five days or so, Roe has been taking a crazy amount of heat for the phrase Epstein class. And people were seriously accusing him, as Kirchik did here, of wielding an anti Semitic phrase in his quest to get maximum transparency in the Epstein case, which is something, again, that was right coded for a very long time because it was about this group of global elites who were operating an anti lowercase d Democratic effort in the background of the daily news cycle. They're operating on their own outside of, again, the lowercase D Democratic control of their governments to change world affairs. So there is plenty of reason it is eminently reasonable for Jews around the world to be constantly vigilant about anti Semitism, just as I think it is eminently reasonable for black Americans to be constantly vigilant about racism, Jim Crow is in. Is within living memory of some people, very elderly people, but some people who are still alive. The Holocaust, the industrial effort to genocide the Jewish people happened within living memory of people who are still here. That constant vigilance, especially in an age of nuclear power, is again eminently reasonable. What is also reasonable is constant vigilance against word policing and censorship and suppression. And to say that use of a phrase like Epstein class has any overall undertone of antisemitism is absurd given the way that Epstein class has already been wielded for weeks and weeks. Of course there are anti Semites picking up on the term. You'll notice the Iranian regime itself is having a field day in its propaganda with Epstein related attacks on the United States. Of course anti Semites are using it. But who are the two most high profile? So when conservatives talk about the Epstein case, who is the most high profile of the Epstein himself, person accused of wrongdoing or most high profile person conservatives believe is seriously implicated in the scandal? It's Bill Clinton. When Democrats talk about the Epstein class, who is the person they think is most seriously implicated? It's Donald Trump, it's Prince Andrew, it's Adnan Khashoggi, Peter Thiel, Peter Attia. But just in the most basic sense, the biggest target of partisan attacks on the Epstein class from the left is Donald Trump. And the biggest tack, the biggest target of attacks on the, quote, Epstein class from the right is Bill Clinton. So in this case, constant. You have to balance, of course, your constant vigilance against very real and enduring forms of bigotry with constant vigilance against very real and enduring forms of speech suppression. I talk here all the time about what I call definition inflation and it's very easy to happen for partisan purposes. It's very easily, it's very easy to get caught up in. When you're on algorithmic based social media and you have an ideology, as I do, it's very easy to get caught up in definition inflation because the algorithm prizes extremity, condemnation or endorsement. And in this case, calling someone an anti Semite, our brains are, or saying a phrase is anti Semitic, our brains are conditioned to see that as a better way to get engagement. And you're not thinking that consciously as you do it, but you've been wired to go towards one or the other. And this isn't new to algorithmic based social media, but it is, it's. It's humanity, but it is being fueled and intensified by it. So it's easy to engage in definition inflation, but that's where the definition of something like racism goes from just saying, oh, you are arguing a person is less than because of their race, or you are arguing a person is less than because they're Jewish anti Semitism, to you are arguing that a person is going to have a disparate outcome because of this policy. And I think that's discriminatory and racist. Right? Like that's different from saying somebody is acting on the belief that a person of another race or ethnicity is less than on the basis of that. The definition in most people's minds is what I just described, thinking somebody is less than because of their immutable characteristics, because of their race, their ethnicity. But you can inflate the definition. When you do inflate the definition, what you're often talking about is disparate outcomes or you're talking about giving a weapon to somebody who could use it for racist purposes. It doesn't make it categorically racist. You may say, be more careful with that because it's advancing a trope. But to call it categorically, what is it? Here, let me, let me re read this line. Something that can, quote, be taken as an association of exploitative wealth with Jewish identity. Epstein class. It's two words, Epstein class. And again, it's mostly used against the Clintons and the Trumps. There's the two most high profile partisan targets of the Epstein class as a pejorative. Some people may remember not long before Charlie Kirk was killed, he did a kind of focus group at a Turning Point conference to get to the bottom of why younger conservatives seemed to be less and less supportive of Israel as the Gaza war went on. And what he heard, you can go back and watch it. It's on YouTube, it's on social media. What he heard was people felt like they were being told in many cases they can't say this, they can't say that. So just on a practical level, I mean, I feel like I've already made my moral argument for why it's wrong. But even on a practical level, I understand balancing constant vigilance against bigotry and constant vigilance against censorship. I think that's what we have to do. And in this case, I don't think there's factual basis for the claim, but also it is making it very difficult to talk to young people who are even more vigilant about suppression because of the time period they grew up in the speech environment that many conservatives rightfully diagnosed as a poor one and were dismissed by people on the left for a long time because they grew up on under that they're extra, extra sensitive to it. And so pragmatically, again, having already covered the moral question, pragmatically, it is making it much more difficult for people who support Israel to find what's the right way to put it, to find open minds among younger people and to successfully make their argument. So pragmatically, it's not even a good use of argumentation. It's not even a good use of, of capital, political capital. So I want to talk about that because it's, it's really been grading the last couple of days. I mean, for example, let me put this up on the screen. Senator Ted Cruz reposted this AI clearly AI drafted screed by an account called Insurrection Barbie on X. And Senator Cruz said, read every word of this. It's the best and most comprehensive explanation of what we're fighting. Catholics were really upset about this. Many Catholics that I know were really upset about this. Many Catholics who are generally pro Israel were really upset about this because it gets into some weird conspiratorial musing. But it doesn't present it as musing. It presents it as a matter of fact about where criticism of Israel is coming from on the right. And it is like, it's really like Russia. It's, it's, it's Rachel Maddow in the middle of Russia gate level conspiratorial thinking. It's like Steve Bannon met with Alexander Dugan in Russia for four hours and everything is downstream of that. I'm paraphrasing it it a bit, but just this one section, not even talking about Catholics, but this one section jumped out at me. It said, you cannot dismantle evangelical political power without first delegitimizing evangelical theology. The movement's entire political architecture rests on a theological claim that God made an eternal unconditional covenant with the Jewish people, that the modern state of Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy and that Christians who, quote, bless Israel are obeying a direct divine command. Remove that conviction, you remove the moral engine that has driven evangelical political engagement for half a century. This is why this is. I don't know what Insurrection Barbie's faith background is, but that jumps out to Protestants, evangelical Protestants especially, as just factually ridiculous to say the entire political architecture of American evangelicals rests on the theological claim that the modern state of Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That is utterly absurd. Is it an important part of evangelical political activism? Yes, it absolutely has been. I think some of it, unfortunately so, because I'm not a dispensationalist, but I think even dispensationalists would object to this characterization that the movement's entire political architecture rests on a theological claim, quote, that the modern state of Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. There's just a lot of imprecise information flying around and it's not easy for anybody. I'm not perfect, don't take me as saying that. But I absolutely think some of these ill conceived bludgeons are backfiring from people who are trying to make an argument in support of Israel. And I think partially that explains why we're not seeing improvement, that we're not seeing that their argumentation is, is successful in the polling. And I think because some of it is the sort of, it is not the, the pragmatic approach you would take if you fully understood where the criticism is coming from. And I think nobody is, not nobody. But I think few people are fully understanding where the criticism is coming from because they've closed their minds and dismissed a lot of where it's coming from as bigotry. And of course, some of it is. Of course some of it is. But you can't dismiss a lot of the well meaning, well intentioned, decent people who did not like what they saw over the course of the Gaza war and don't like what they're seeing right now. And that might be tough to grapple with. And you may think that it's being fueled by anti Semites, but to categorically dismiss everybody who's finding themselves uncomfortable with the foreign policy direction as anti Semitic, you will not make your argument as well as you could. So I want to make that point because it's driving me crazy. It's driving me crazy, crazy. All right, going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with Griffin in just one second. 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