Podcast Wars and MAGA Discourse, Dr. Jesus Trump Post, and Eric Swalwell's Gross Exit, with Dave Smith

Summary

After Party with Emily Jashinsky

Episode: Podcast Wars and MAGA Discourse, Dr. Jesus Trump Post, and Eric Swalwell's Gross Exit, with Dave Smith
Date: April 14, 2026
Host: Emily Jashinsky
Guest: Dave Smith (Comedian, Host of "Part of the Problem")

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Overview

In this lively, far-reaching episode, Emily Jashinsky is joined by comedian and commentator Dave Smith to unpack the current state of MAGA politics, online media's disruption of conservative discourse, the unraveling Trump presidency amid international conflict, the surprising "Dr. Jesus Trump" meme-turned-controversy, and Eric Swalwell's abrupt resignation. The conversation, marked by witty banter and sharp social critique, touches on war, media bias, pop culture oddities, and the generational churn within both politics and entertainment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Islamabad War Crisis & Trump's Foreign Policy

• Background: Vice President J.D. Vance's Fox News comments on the weekend crisis in Islamabad and the U.S. response to Iranian aggression in the Strait of Hormuz.

• Dave Smith’s Take:

  • Calls U.S. policy "completely incoherent," likening it to self-harm:
    "It's on the level of being like, hey, you better stop punching me in the face. And then being like, okay, well, if you keep punching me in the face, I'm going to punch myself in the face." (05:57, Dave Smith)
  • Critiques the changing official rationale, shifting from the strait "not being our problem" to trying to control it.
  • Explains that Iran’s potential control of Strait of Hormuz marks a true strategic failure, transforming a "sanctioned, isolated country" into a regional powerhouse (09:10).

• On Prospects for Trump’s "Success":

  • Skeptical that any outcome will be seen as a win for Trump, even if hostilities halt:
    "The best case scenario is that it just stops here...but how do you spin that as a win?" (13:34, Dave Smith)
  • Points out that every potential exit ("exit ramps") leaves Trump as, or worse than, before the conflict (15:04, Emily).

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2. MAGA Discourse, Podcast Wars & Media Fragmentation

• Mislabeling "MAGA Podcasters":

  • Emily pushes back on establishment attempts to dismiss influential podcasts as simply "MAGA", clarifying that many hosts and listeners are independents or swing voters, not die-hard Trump loyalists (23:10).
  • Dave stresses the explosion of political independence and the mainstreaming of podcast discourse: "The amount of American voters who identify as independent has, like, exploded in the last few years. That is now the biggest voting demographic." (25:43, Dave Smith)

• On the Real Influence of Podcasters:

  • Challenges Mark Levin's claim that "the Internet isn't real life":
    "Is your show real life? But a show on the internet isn't?...The only thing that matters is who's watching what more. And then...they're watching these shows a lot more." (28:00, Dave Smith)
  • Observes that, according to polling, this is America's most unpopular war, and Trump's approval is historically low, suggesting podcast sentiment is aligned with popular opinion (27:22).

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3. What is Terrorism? The American Moral Reckoning

• Semantics vs. Substance:

  • Dave labels U.S. policy as "the biggest terrorist organization in the world," sparking debate.
  • Argues:
    "A fair definition of, of terrorism is intentionally targeting civilians in order to achieve a political outcome. And if that's what you're talking about...who's the worst at that?" (33:38, Dave Smith)
  • Emily distinguishes terrorism as a tactic to "instill terror" rather than exert power (33:10).

• Historical Context:

  • Both reference Cold War and post-nuclear era acts, with Emily noting how the U.S. justified harsh means as strategic necessity:
    "It's a sickness that has just been utterly corrosive to the Western soul over the last 100 years." (34:57, Emily)

• Implications for Iran:

  • Dave and Emily agree that Iran—like any nation—responds to foreign aggression as Americans did post-9/11:
    "Why do we think we have a monopoly on being the people who, when you get hit, would be like, well, no, screw you[?]" (39:14, Dave Smith)

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4. Dr. Jesus Trump Post – Meme and Outrage

• Incident: Trump posts (then deletes) an image of himself depicted as Jesus healing a sick man.

• Exchange:

  • Trump’s on-the-record defense: "It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better." (45:04, Trump via Emily & Dave)

• Emily’s Take:

  • Points to Christian supporters’ misplaced surprise, noting Trump "has never been a Christian beacon of morality ... there’s a zero percent chance he thought it was a doctor." (47:48, Emily)

• Dave’s Critique:

  • Notes the shift in Trump’s tone from his first to second term; from brashly countering media "ops" to responding with increasing hostility to basic questions (45:30).
  • Laments the lowered standards in public and political life, even among those tasked to "just tell the truth about this. Like, what is this? This is so despicable." (50:42)

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5. "25th Amendment" Speculation & Trump's Mental State

• Is Trump "Losing It"?
  • Emily: Not especially shocking behavior, just more of the same (52:23).
  • Dave: Believes something has changed since the "12 Day War" and Epstein file debacles; Trump lost some of his coalition, maybe shifted his priorities to retaining what’s left of his base (52:20–55:00).
  • Suggests that drifting with D.C.'s power structure keeps presidents in line: if you "swim with the current...the most powerful human being who's ever existed. ... If you want to (oppose) the military industrial complex, you have zero power." (55:00, Dave Smith)

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6. Eric Swalwell’s “Gross Exit”

• Timeline:

  • Faces serious sexual assault and harassment allegations.
  • Denies all, apologizes for "mistakes in judgment" (mistakes "between me and my wife"), then resigns from Congress as the scandal grows (59:00).

• Emily and Dave reflect on:

  • The quaintness of sex scandals ending careers, but also the disturbing power culture.
  • Dave’s "chad" take:
    "This is why only married men of good moral character should be involved in politics at all. ... keep that weird shit away from power." (61:10, Dave Smith)

• Parallels to Past "Charismatic" Politicians:

  • Dave pokes fun at how media tried to manufacture charisma around odd figures like Beto O’Rourke and Stormy Daniels’s lawyer, Avenatti (62:40).

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7. Pop Culture Break — Trudeau & Katy Perry at Coachella, Lena Dunham’s Media Tour

• Trudeau & Perry at Coachella:

  • Emily shares a viral roast: "Both being failures of liberalism who peaked in 2013." (71:12)
  • Dave lampoons "Disney adult" culture—disconcerted by politicians and pop stars acting unserious, e.g., "two grown ups to take pictures with Mickey Mouse" (72:19).

• Sabrina Carpenter’s “Islamophobic” Joke:

  • Woke outrage for misidentifying an Arabic call as yodeling, leading to public apology (75:29–76:00).
  • Dave: “WOKE has receded, but it's not gone. ... You can never just vanquish a complete [cultural force].” (75:52)
  • Emily and Dave agree: cultural tribalism is persistent, especially amplified by social media.

• Lena Dunham’s New Book & Feminism:

  • Emily recaps Dunham’s new memoir "Fame Sick" and her complicated legacy as a millennial feminist and artist, noting Dunham’s trajectory from public provocateur to peace-seeking semi-hermit (87:00+).
  • Observes how her art, especially "Girls," inadvertently critiques the very feminism it promoted: "It's almost eerie how prescient the end of Girls is … she’s found solace and monogamy and in a quiet life away from [fame]."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On U.S. War Posture & Iran:

• “If Iran can control the Strait of Hormuz, then we actually transformed them into a global power ... such a crazy thing to think.” (09:10, Dave Smith)

On U.S. as Terrorists:

• "The U.S. Government's the biggest terrorist organization in the world. … If anyone else did that, we'd call it out for exactly what it is. Pure terrorism.” (33:38, Dave Smith)

On the Jesus/Doctor Trump Meme:

• Trump: “It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better.” (45:12)
• Emily: “There’s a zero percent chance he thought it was a doctor.” (47:48)

On Political Media vs. “Real Life”:

• “Is your show real life? But a show on the internet isn't?...They’re watching these shows a lot more.” (28:00, Dave Smith)

On Why “Woke” Isn’t Dead:

• “Woke has receded, but it's not gone... norms that become so culturally ingrained are never just vanquished.” (75:52, Dave Smith)

Summarizing Lena Dunham’s Saga:

• "It's almost eerie how prescient the end of Girls is to looking ahead in Lena Dunham's life..." (93:55, Emily)

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Segment Timestamps

• War, Vance, & Iran: 04:36–16:38
• Measuring Political Wins & Losses: 07:22–13:34
• MAGA Podcasts & Media Fragmentation: 23:10–28:00
• Defining Terrorism & American Policy: 30:05–34:57
• Dr. Jesus Trump Post: 44:03–50:42
• Trump’s Mental State & 25th Amendment Chatter: 51:40–57:49
• Eric Swalwell Scandal & Political Morality: 57:49–64:01
• Pop Culture Absurdities: 70:29–74:04
• Return of "Woke" and Social Media: 75:29–83:09
• Lena Dunham’s Media Round & Generational Feminism: 84:26–end

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Conclusion

This After Party episode distills a chaotic week in U.S. politics and digital culture, using humor and frank analysis to highlight the rapidly shifting lines in American ideology and media. Emily and Dave critique the ineptitude of leadership, the dangers of tribalism, and the lingering effects of “woke” and anti-woke movements, all while weaving in the personal and generational stories that shape the public narrative. An essential listen for understanding the landscape of 2026’s politics, culture wars, and the fracturing consensus in American life.

Transcript

[Emily]

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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 at Mintmobile. Welcome to After Party, everyone, where we do the news a little bit later, a little bit lighter. Tonight we're going to be joined by Dave Smith. Make sure to support our independent journalism by clicking that subscribe button here on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. It does help us so much. First, we're going to start with updates on the war. Vice President J.D. vance was on Fox News just tonight sharing a little bit of what he thinks happened or his interpretation of what happened in Islamabad over the weekend. Also, Donald Trump does not see himself as Jesus. We clarified that today. At least he says he didn't see himself as Jesus when he posted that. Like a boomer Facebook meme of himself healing a sick man last night. We're going to get to that in just a moment. If you haven't seen it yet, you must. Eric Swalwell also just resigned, so we have details on that. Sabrina Carpenter had to apologize for a strange moment during her Coachella set. And actually, speaking of Coachella, Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry decided to have a magical experience and attend the festival together as well. Lena Dunham's also out on a media tour, which I have some thoughts on. All that and so much more coming up in just one moment with Dave Smith. But first, we are going to take a quick break. Stay tuned. We will be right back. Well, for years, legacy media, government and big data companies coaxed us into surrendering our digital freedom, giving lip service, of course, to privacy While leaving digital backdoors wide open for their own purposes. Sometimes they're blatant in conveying the idea that encryption is only for criminals or that if you want privacy, you must have something to hide. Well, how did we get here from cherishing our Fourth Amendment rights to giving them up so readily for convenience? We talk about this on the show all the time. It was engineered. Powerful people discovered that with the right incentives, people willingly surrender their data. Who profits? The same government agencies, platforms and media companies that want you exposed and compliant while Unplugged set out to do something about it. The upphone by Unplugged is the smartphone designed to restore your rights to when it comes to blocking third party trackers from shadowy data brokers. The UPPhone by Unplugged outshines every device on the market. There's even a battery disconnect switch. So off really means off. All of this is independently verified and tested so you can be confident in knowing your upphone is the most private smartphone you can buy. Check out upphone from [e-mail] Emily that's unplugged.com Emily.

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Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and [e-mail] all right, welcome back to Afterparty. I always feel like I sound a little bit intense in that ad. Nevertheless, we are joined now by Dave Smith, comedian and host of Part of the Problem. Dave, thanks for coming back.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, hello, young Emily. It's good to be with you. Thank you for having me in your afterparty.

[Emily]

Oh, it's truly my pleasure, Dave. And you know, it's great that we're on late tonight because Vice President Vance stopped by Special Report with Brett Baer to spin what happened the weekend in Islamabad as What did he say? Well, let's just roll the tape. People should listen carefully because he says he also thinks some good came out of it. It wasn't all bad. Let's roll the tape. Oh, it looks like we don't have the tape. So there's no tape to be rolled, Dave.

[Dave Smith]

But really an after party. All right.

[Emily]

It's. Well, yeah, exactly. That's a good, that's a good point. At what party do they have the tape ready to be rolled? Just like that. But so a couple of headlines from Vice President Vance. He said of the Iranians, quote, they basically threaten any ship that's moving through the shade of Hormuz. As the President showed. Two can play at that game. As the Iranians are going to engage in economic terrorism, we're going to abide by a simple principle. No Iranian ships are getting out of either. Which some people have interpreted to BJD Vance saying, oh, if they're going to engage in economic terrorism, we too will engage in economic terrorism. Well, let's stop right there then, Dave. Do you think that's what Vice President Vance said?

[Dave Smith]

None of it makes any sense at all. The whole thing is so ridiculous. It's on the level of being like, hey, you better stop punching me in the face. And then being like, okay, well, if you keep punching me in the face, I'm going to punch myself in the face. And then we'll like, on, on what level? First of all, if they're going to say, well, like, I don't know, Donald Trump went from saying that the straight isn't our problem, it's the rest of the world's problem, and then it was like, it'll just naturally open up. Like, it'll just, that's obviously what's going to happen. Then it went to, we're going to close the whole thing. And so if you're, if you're saying we're just going to stop the Iranian ships, which there's a lot of mixed messaging on this, but if we're just going to stop the Iranian ships, okay, fine, that could hurt Iran. But that was never really the issue. The issue wasn't that, you know, whether Iran can get ships out of there. The issue is whether they can pick and choose who else from the world can, because that is a new reality. That was not the case before this war and is the case now. And if that is true, you know, I've been talking about this a lot on my show, but, you know, it's a weird thing. You see how the debate right now is like, are we losing the war or are we winning the war? You see all these people like, like Douglas Murray was on Bill Maher's show the other day, and he's going, what do you mean we're losing this war? We destroyed the Navy.

[Emily]

Is that what he said? Did he say, what do you mean? Did he say just like that? Did he sound like he was from New Jersey or what did he say, Dave?

[Dave Smith]

Okay, he didn't say, by the way, you know, it's cool though. I appreciate growth. I appreciate growth where I can see it. And I thought it was cool that Douglas Murray had no problem doing a non expert comedian's show and didn't have to call him out for not being an expert. Because evidently it's cool. If you support Israel. If you support Israel, you're allowed to be a comedian who comments on Israel, but if you don't, you got to go, that's a real problem. But, so, but there'll be people. I saw, you know, a bunch of the Trump kind of sick offense are going like, well, no, look, we were winning. We're doing that. But okay, what do we really mean when we say that we lost the war in Vietnam? Or what do we mean when we say we lost the war in Afghanistan or Iraq? Well, like, look, obviously we killed a lot more of their people than they killed of our people. We destroyed a lot more of their stuff than they destroyed of our stuff. But the reason people say we lost those wars is because, like, well, I don't know, you fight a war in Vietnam with the explicit, you know, goal of not allowing communism to spread and you spend like hundreds of billions of dollars and kill millions of people and get hundreds of thousands of your own people killed, and then communism spreads there anyway. Even if you blew up more stuff than they blew up, you go, yeah, but that's a loss. Okay, but however you measure wins and losses, all I'm saying is we've never had a loss like this war. If Iran can control the Strait of Hormuz, then we actually transformed them into a global power, you know, which is like such a crazy thing to think of. We, we took a third world relegated, sanctioned, isolated country and transformed them into a powerhouse, essentially. So what? They're. So anyway, the only issue here is that what Trump wants to stop is their ability to dictate who can and can't go through this straight. But if you're only stopping Iranian ships, then that doesn't change anything. Then the other ones that can go through are still the ones that they said were allowed. Only way this play works is if you actually stop the ships that the Iranians gave permission to go through. But then your problem is you're in a direct confrontation with whatever ship that is. And as you know, I know Breaking Points was talking about this just on the last show, but like, okay, when that's a Chinese ship, what does that mean? And China Just sent out a message today like, yo, you can't stop any of our ships. Are you crazy? And you see that we're already struggling with just like a little mid sized country like Iran. You think we could just bully China around? Like, they have no leverage on us. They're, you know, they've already flexed a few times and gotten Trump to back down. So anyway, the whole thing, like the entire war is completely incoherent. And it's like I've never seen anything like this. I've never seen a government propaganda campaign where every sentence contradicts the previous sentence. Like everything they say makes the last thing they said make no sense whatsoever.

[Emily]

Well, it's actually on that point I was just going to mention I keep hearing from some people in the MAGA camp that the Iranian navy has been decimated. And it's like that does not make your argument any stronger for why they are still controlling us via the strait of war moves. That's even more embarrassing. Significantly more embarrassing. But JD Vance, the quote I was looking for, said I wouldn't just say things went wrong. I also think that things went right in Islamabad as the talks over the weekend fizzled. Dave, is there any way you think this can end to your point, about Iran becoming arguably a new global power after all this is said and done? Is there any way right now, based on what we know about how the negotiations went over the weekend, based on what we know about what the Iranians are asking for, what our government is asking for, that this can end positively for the Trump presidency to claim, like he's going to claim a victory no matter what. He's already done like 20 times. But is there any way that that's actually going to be believable for the American public?

[Dave Smith]

I mean, I don't see it. Maybe I'm wrong. And you know, I try to be really humble with predicting the future. Like, you know, I've gotten some things right. I've gotten some things way wrong. And I think I'm pretty good, like, I have a pretty good track record on issues. But on predictions there's just always so many variables and it's so hard to know everything that's going to happen. But I mean, it just seems about as clear as could possibly be on any issue that the best case scenario is that it just stops here. Like if we could just stop it here somehow and that would take a lot. And like we're, we're really, we got ourselves into a position where, and this is true with, you know, it's Part of the reason why George Washington's advice was don't get yourself an entangling alliances. You get into these things and all of a sudden you're outsourcing your sovereignty. That's the real problem with these entangling alliances, right? Like you give a war guarantee to another country. Now that might sound nice, hey, we're going to protect you, we're going to be the good guys, we'll protect you if you get attacked. But now you almost outsourced your war making decision to this other country now because if they provoke some type of conflict, you're on the hook for what they did. And in order to get out of this now, we really got to rely on the Israelis and the Iranians because there's two other major players in this. They got to stop too. Because if they don't stop too, then we can't really stop. But let's say hypothetically we somehow get them to all stop. We, you know, we're able to put pressure on the Israelis and go, you, you stop bombing Lebanon right now. Everyone stops. We're doing a ceasefire and let's just say Iran is cool and they go, okay, we'll open the strait of harm, you know, like that's the best case scenario. And the prospect of anything beyond that, like we've recovered the enriched uranium or like, I'm not even saying anything that I value. I'm just saying what the official stated goals of the war were. They don't, they agree to not have intercontinental ballistic missiles and they agree to not enrich at all, not even for civilian energy usage. And they stop supporting Hezbollah. And I mean the odds of any of that happening seems so. So the best case scenario is it just ends and we somehow get back to the status quo that we were at right before this conflict. Donald Trump will say this was a tremendous success because we blew a lot of stuff up. But does anyone really believe that, like at the end of this, when it comes out, just reasonably like assuming if, if it stopped right now, the toll ends up being 15ish Americans dead and like 700 plus wounded and 10,000 Iranians dead or whatever, it'll end up being at the end of this and who knows, a few hundred Israelis, I don't know, they won't report any numbers over there. Definitely. Like in the thousands of Lebanese and Maybe it cost $100 billion and it, and it damaged the world economy. How do you spin that as a win? Look, nothing was accomplished in Venezuela so far, but they could spin that as a win because like, nothing really bad happened. And we say we run it now, but, you know, I just don't think you can do that with this one. I don't even think Trump. I mean, even the, like, most hardcore Trump supporters, you're going to peel people away trying to convince them that this was some. Yeah, we did it. I don't see it.

[Emily]

Well, yeah, and all the plausible exit ramps are just leaving him either worse than he is now or exactly where he is now. And the public isn't buying it at the moment. Moment, according to the polling, which is, I mean, not surprising at all. Let's. Dave, roll this tape. We do have some tape to roll. It's not physical tape, but we'll take it. It's Benjamin Netanyahu who did at least say that he was consulted by Vice President Vance during this weekend's negotiations. Let's go ahead and take a listen. I spoke yesterday with Vice President J.D. vance. This is the translation.

[Dave Smith]

He called me from his plane on the way back from Washington. He reported to me in detail, as

[Emily]

the people of this administration do every day, on the development of the negotiations. In this case, the explosion in the negotiations. The explosion came from the American side, which was not willing to tolerate the blatant violation of the agreement to enter negotiations by Iran. Essentially, the agreement was that there would be a ceasefire and Iran would immediately open the crossings. They didn't do that. The Americans were not willing to accept it. He also conveyed to me that the central issue on the table from the perspective of President Trump and the United States is the removal of all enriched material and ensuring that there is no more enrichment in the coming years. And this could be for decades. All right, it's all about enrichment. Should be no problem, Dave, we can wrap this up tomorrow.

[Dave Smith]

I mean, it. You know, it's been going viral. The. There's the clip of Steve Witkoff, like, about a year ago, I think it was the spring of. Of last year, where he straight up said that, like, hey, look, you know, Iran was down to like three and a half percent enrichment. And then they went all the way up and like, that's all we're asking, is that they come back down to the. And it is so funny that his. It is so clearly the. It was the demand of Israel and the lobby that it be zero enrichment. It was not the American demand. And it's just so crazy to think about the fact that, like, all of this has happened, of them being able to just slip in this simple little poison pill in the whole negotiations, that if it Wasn't for that switch, we probably could have just had a deal last week. OFFSPRING Avoid the 12 day war. Avoided this war and all of that,

[Emily]

but when they won't even be public about their own nuclear weapons?

[Dave Smith]

I mean, yeah, yeah, it's like, it's just the craziest thing. Well, it's also like, I don't know, there's. There's a weird thing, like, because sometimes I'll even, even I'll make arguments that I know. Even I, you know, on some level, I still hear what I'm saying and I go, all right, look, I know this sounds like it's a pretty crazy thing to say, but, like, this, I think, is what's going on. You know, I. It was a big viral thing a couple of weeks ago when I said that the US Government's the biggest terrorist organization in the world. And like, I think in, in. In at least in my world, that's not even really a crazy thing to say. That's just an obvious, like, well, yeah, we all know that. And then we operate within that framework. But to other people, that was like, yo, that's a crazy thing to state. But you just think, like, even if you just some of the stuff that Donald Trump has said, like, if you, if, if 10 years ago I had said something like, you know, the way the President acts is that, well, this member of the Israel lobby gave them hundreds of millions of dollars and all they care about is Israel. They love Israel more than they love America. And all day long, they come to the White House demanding another policy for Israel, and the President gives them whatever they want. Like, that would have been something out of, like, the first half of American history, X. You know what I mean? Like, you'd be like, oh, that's the thing that. That's the thing that the bad guy in the movie thinks. And then obviously by the end of the movie, we've revealed that that's totally crazy because you're an evil Nazi. No one would think that way. But then it's like the President himself just says that. And, dude, I mean, that. That clip of Netanyahu is pretty incredible, but I have never seen anything in me being me. I was shocked when his tweet, literally, the meeting starts. This is maybe two hours into the 21 hour meeting or whatever they had. And so the Americans and the Iranian team have touched down. They start meeting because they want to negotiate a cease fire. Hopefully, Benjamin Netanyahu tweets, under my leadership in Israel will continue the war against Iran and Lebanon and Turkey we got our eye on you too. You're like, yo, what? That is just insane. It is so insane. Like, if, if you, you guys all want to kind of have your narrative, which is that people like me and the other podcasters, we're all crazy to make it out. Like there's some kind of thing here. It's like, you know, they always say, come on, America is the big brother, we're the little brother, we're the client state, we're the welfare country. You're the one calling the shots. But like, how is it possible that then the big brother goes, hey, we want a ceasefire, and you just unilaterally veto it and just go, no, we're not doing any of that. Oh, and by the way, also, we got our eye on a NATO country also, by the way, by the way, when we get done with these wars, let me just let you know, I got another one on the horizon, which you, you are under an Article 5 obligation to protect. Theoretically, if, if we were to attack them, like, I don't know, all of this is just too insane. It's too, it, it is, it's unbelievable. Like that. I, I feel bad at this point when I go on Piers Morgan and someone has to argue against how crazy this is. Like, what are they even left with at this point? Emily, did you see my last debate I had on Piers Morgan was so I had. Which I won't ever do again because he just interrupts the entire time. But I debated Ben Ferguson on Pierce Morgan, Ted Cruz's right hand man. Then I've been thinking for days about just how hilarious the universe is. This has nothing to do with me. I, by the way, I am not a particularly good debater. I'm not very good at that. Like there, now there are people who are like very good at the sport, the skill of debating. I am not very good at it. I just take positions that are undeniably, you know, like the correct position.

[Emily]

But you're not trying to build like a legal case, like a prosecution.

[Dave Smith]

I'm not very good at like, you know, Socratic questioning or like, I don't know, I'm not like a technically good debater, but. So the big controversy we had was that a couple of weeks earlier I had said that the United States of America's government is the biggest terrorist organization in the world. Then we have like this rematch, one on one debate. And the morning before we have this debate, this is what the universe hands me. The President of the United States of America has tweeted that we are going to bring hell down on an entire civilization of people and ends the tweet by saying Allah Akbar. That's what the universe handed me.

[Emily]

Praise be. Praise be.

[Dave Smith]

Okay, he gave the English translation, but yes, he said Allah Akbar. Like that's what they. And then someone's got a debate now. Dude, this is nothing like that. This is total. It's just the whole thing is too ridiculous. And, you know, Donald Trump could come out here and trash the top 10 most popular shows in America or whatever, and, you know, people can pretend that that doesn't matter. I just got a poll that says he's more popular than Tucker Carlson. But no, man, this whole thing is. This whole thing is tanking so fast. It's.

[Emily]

Well, I actually wanted to ask you about that. No, I wanted to ask you that because this is the last week it's been. The podcasters, the MAGA podcasters, which you and I both know is. It's a misnomer right from the beginning. It's a lot of people who, in a lesser of two evils election in 2024, felt sympathetic towards Trump, maybe, like, you know, made that type of argument. It's not that everybody is like, actually right wing MAGA in the space that they're saying MAGA is like, falling away from Trump. It's just ridiculous. But the people that they're pegging as maga, this is the classic mistake. They're not maga. I don't think you've ever considered yourself maga, Dave. What this is is actually the swing voter who has never considered themselves MAGA is generally independent and who pulled the lever for Trump in many cases because they didn't like Kamala Harris, they felt bad about what was happening with the Biden administration, immigration, etc. This isn't just to peg that to you, Dave, in general. And so it's actually a really important demographic and it's a huge misunderstanding to say that that is just maga. So what is your take on this discourse about how it's just a podcaster phenom? Don't listen to the podcasters. They're chasing clout. They're chasing clicks.

[Dave Smith]

Oh. I mean, I just, I, I struggle to believe that people are being sincere when they make this argument. Like, I, and, and there's people like, I, I really like Bacha. She was on trigonometry recently and she was making this argument to them. I was, like, fascinated watching it. Like, how are you actually making this argument? And what they all have to cite is, is the, you know, the MAGA Republican polls or whatever, which is already such a, you know, like, what does that even mean? We've never heard anyone even describe a poll this way before. Are you. Are you a Hope and Change Democrat? Oh, the Hope and Change Democrats still support Barack Obama. Like, what? You just. You put their slogan and then subject. But, but look, I mean, and I happen to know this, I think a lot of Americans actually are not aware of this, but because I'm a Libertarian, and I've been kind of involved in the Libertarian Party for, you know, not so much anymore, but I was for a few years, and so they would make a big deal out of this. But as I'm sure you have seen this, that, you know, the. The amount of American voters who identify as independent has, like, exploded in the last few years. That is now the biggest voting demographic is independence. And so it's a record.

[Emily]

Pew has those numbers.

[Dave Smith]

Right? So, like, as soon as. Then you start going into this, like, oh, well, MAGA Republicans. This is so misleading. You're talking about, like, actually at this point, a sliver of the total voting population and, you know, like, it. I am not a person who puts, like, tremendous faith in the polls. I think the polls often get it wrong. And it's something that I don't exactly understand. You know, like, I remember when it got reported that internal polls had Joe Biden getting absolutely blown out and he still wouldn't resign. And you're like, what do you mean internal polls? Because the external polls didn't have that as the situation. So why the hell do you have internal polls that are, you know, whatever. But all I'm saying is that the people making that argument always point to these very specific MAGA Republican polls. If the polls, broadly speaking, tell us anything right now, they tell us that this is the most unpopular war in American history, that Donald Trump is at his lowest approval rating ever. Donald Trump right now has an approval rating slightly higher than George W. Bush in 2008 after leading the country into lying the country into two disastrous wars and tanking the economy. And the longer this goes, and if there's no win at all to show for it, he might fall well below him. So it is like, look, again, it's true that most of the American people aren't watching podcasts or whatever. It's all, you know, like, there is a big, you know, base of Americans who aren't tapped in the way some of us are.

[Emily]

But you're my cronkite, Dave. I'll say.

[Dave Smith]

Well, I try. I mean, I. You Know, I think someone's got to fill that role, and I'll take it if I have to, but. Well, I'm just saying that all of the evidence would suggest that the podcasters have their thumb exactly on the pulse and that they're exactly where the people are. Like. And so, and then, of course, you know, all of these and, and, and there's, there's a lot of differences between a lot of these different shows. But if you're going to, if you take, say, the four that Trump blasted, right, which is, was Tucker, Megan, Candace and, and Alex Jones, those are big shows. Right? But then if you take also the Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn, Andrew Schultz, you know, whatever, all at Tim Dillon, all. Okay, you can say that, oh, they don't matter at all. But like you, you seem to think they mattered back in 2024. Why exactly don't they matter? Why does. You know, Mark Levin the other day said, you know, the Internet isn't real life. And you're like, but, but what is radio and, and 2005. But why. What, what do you mean? Is your show real life? But a show on the Internet isn't like if, if, if Breaking Points is on YouTube and Spotify and whatever, but the Mark Levin show is on Fox News, like, at this point. And I genuinely, Mark Levin may not know this. Donald Trump and mark Levin are 90. You know what I mean? Like, they, but the thing is, they're all things that we just watch. Like, they're all things, you know, we watch these shows. We watch them on our TV or our computer or our phone or our tablet. That's also how we watch tv. They're all equally real life. The only thing that matters is who's watching what more. And then they, you know, like, and then the obvious answer to that is, oh, they're watching these shows a lot more. So all of the evidence is, like, in the marketplace. These shows are the biggest shows in terms of the polls. This is how the people feel. Where do you pull out of that? That the coalition is completely fine and everything's okay. Yeah, a lot of Republicans still support Donald Trump. A lot of Democrats would have voted for Joe Biden even after he shit his pounds on national television. You know, that means.

[Emily]

Not such a good point. No, that's such a good point. It's because we're. Yeah. We're trapped in lesser of two evil politics, which, you know, I think people like you and I recognize that for a long time, but to the normie, average American, I think there, there's A record level of independence because the democratization of the media climate has opened up like even the fact that you said your point which I quibble with the. Like maybe it's semantics about terrorism or violence about the United States. We don't have to open up that can of worms. The fact that he said that on

[Dave Smith]

let's fight about that. What would you possibly. What would you possibly quibble with? Emily, You've sat next to Ryan Grimm for far too long to have any problem with me saying no. No. Yeah, well, well that's for personal. People don't know. People don't know about that. That's private. Ryan is a terrorist in his personal life but publicly he's against it. No, no, I think it's starting a

[Emily]

room what is not even a rumor at this point.

[Dave Smith]

What in what world are you going to really tell me that the, the level of like wars of aggression and choice and for whatever bullying reason we feel like we are so you know, like if you, if you were to sit down and read like the just war theory of Christ Christianity, how outside the realm of that the American warfare state has been. Forget even just just saying post World War II. I'm not even going to get into Dresden and nuclear bombs and all of that. Yeah but post World War II where there's never even been a debatable self defense conflict, you're going to say just lighting up innocent civilians like that. Is it really what we don't call it terrorism. If we don't then it's just actually, you know, people accuse me of making like an emotional argument but actually the only way to deny that is to have a purely emotional. But it's America and it's us and we can't really be the bad guys like that. If anyone else did that, we'd call it out for exactly what it is. Pure terrorism. Forget, forget. Listen, just think about. No, Emily, stop it. I'm going to talk over you and I'm going to. I insist we fight. And I insist. Insist I win.

[Emily]

I don't think you've ever been to the straight of Hormuz.

[Dave Smith]

Not I've. Ah, God damn it. You got me. All right, I'm gonna go. I was doing really good until that's. That is the checkmate point that you can never come back from. But literally just think about what Ryan was telling you just the other day about going to Cuba. I was talking about this on my show. I've been singing Ryan and Jeremy's praises for weeks because they're just, they're reporting over a drop, it's just been like phenomenal. But going down to Cuba and watching, you know that watching NICU nurses tell you about how they have to rush over to the babies on ventilators and start hand pumping them. And what is that? It's not an attack against a military target. It's not anything like that. No one in America is how sick our country is. How God, like, oh my God, we should all pray that the God of the Bible who judged nations collectively doesn't exist anymore, or he grew up since then and like, doesn't do that. The fact that our as a society, no one even ever attempted to even pretend to argue that Cuba posed some threat to us or that like we had to do this to them because reasons they just went, ah, this is Marco Rubio's bank shot. He wanted to hit Venezuela and then take out Cuba. So we literally just starved the civilian population of energy.

[Emily]

Well, this is the terrorism.

[Dave Smith]

What is terrorism? This is too, like, how, you know, how can you argue with that?

[Emily]

No, yeah, so what I was saying earlier is that it's like I was saying, it might be semantic, but I think terrorism is a very particular form of warfare that is, is. Is meant to wage war by instilling abject terror in a civilian population. And we can argue that the consequence of American violence throughout the Cold War and all these proxy conflicts had that. I think terrorism is waged not for power, but is waged to specifically use terror, fear as a weapon of war.

[Dave Smith]

So it's hold on the stated goal of the entire American sanctions regime. And I mean this entirely, which is, you know, on its own, probably the biggest warfare state that's ever existed. If you consider terror, if you consider sanctions an act of war, which we certainly would consider if anyone ever applied them to us, the entire stated goal of it always has been to put so much pressure on the civilian population, totally overthrow the government. And so if you're gonna split hairs between scaring the civilization or starving the civilization into being so desperate that they have to overthrow. I mean, I just think at this point, like, to me, a fair definition of, of terrorism is intentionally targeting civilians in order to achieve a political outcome. And if that's what you're talking about, you know, that's fair. It brings me, no, it brings me no joy to say this, but like, who's the worst at that? And that's just, I don't know, like that, that is, that is the entire thing with all, all of these military campaigns. They're not. And that doesn't mean every war ever, but every war that we've been talking about in my lifetime in America is that.

[Emily]

Yeah, no, I still think so. I still stand by the, the distinction of, of terrorism being waged, a particular like non conventional form of warfare. But actually I agree with everything that you just outlined and I think it goes back to what we're discussing with Iran, which is that Iran is downstream of cold war, post nuclear conflicts. And the reason that the United States has justified in Chile with Allende making the economy screaming, that's from a Nixon memo. The reason that's been, I just wrote about this last week. The reason that's been part of our accepted warfare for so long. And this is exactly what Tucker Carlson is now questioning, like in his monologue last Monday. This is what he's rightfully calling attention to. This is post nuclear politics. And in the United States we have just accepted that because Cuba might be a proxy of the Soviet Union and might obliterate Florida, the southern United States and maybe the entire country because the Russians get a foothold on this tiny island 90 miles off our coast, then it totally justifies starving civilians. It totally justifies making the economy in Chile scream because we want access to minerals and we don't want the Soviets to have access to those minerals. And it's a sickness that has just been utterly corrosive to the Western soul over the last 100 years. So I don't disagree with that at all, David. I actually think Iran is a great example of the problem that we found ourselves in because they remember 1953. You hear the boomers talk, oh, I remember 1979, I remember 1979. The Iranian boomers are saying, I remember 1953. And if you think this situation, however many civilians have already been killed, the ghouls girls school is going to make this situation better in the long run for the safety and security of Israel, for the safety and security of the United States. That to me seems completely insane and like we're refusing to learn a lesson from the last 80 years of history.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, yeah, it's so, it's also, it's so, it's such a crazy situation to be in. At least me, me personally, I feel this way and I'm sure a lot of us do. But like you're in a situation where, you know, I've been doing this for a while now and you know, with, you know, with more people listening lately, but I've been doing what I do for, for years and you know, basically arguing against the entire, you know the entire global war on terrorism and, and, and arguing. I mean, I've been arguing against the war in Iran for 20 years. Like, I've been. This was always the entire time I've been obsessed with all this stuff. This has been the war that the neocons were flirting with and all of this. And it's such a. You, you go through the whole thing where, like, the argument just becomes so overwhelming, and then you just win. And everyone kind of admits, like, yes, okay, this is. I mean, John McCain in his memoir wrote like, we really shouldn't have done Iraq. Like, even John McCain had to go, okay, this was a mistake. So it's like consensus. And you're like, okay, fine, we won. We got consensus. And then we're just gonna do another one.

[Emily]

And it's right, because they just keep taking their mulligans.

[Dave Smith]

Yes, like, but. And, and look, people can say, oh, this is different in this way and that way. Look at. This is different in a lot of different ways. A lot of bad ways up front. You know, there's never been a, an opponent in the global war on terrorism who could do what Iran's already done to us. Like, so there's. But there's many differences. And if the hawks want to argue that one of the differences is also that there's a big liberal base inside Iran who loves freedom. And okay, maybe, maybe I don't know. I don't know enough to really know whether that's right or wrong, but I do know that after winning the entire argument, all of these people will just completely forget the lessons that were embedded in winning that entire argument, which is like, look like, again, just try for a second to be a human being and understand that the people on the other side are also human beings and go like, okay, so, so think about it like this. Even in America, in our much more superior, much more, you know, Sam Harris rational society, other than these crazy Islamists or something like that. Okay, there were. Think about how right wingers felt about Joe Biden in America. Right wingers hated. Like, I think this is fair to say that the. Speaking for the average Republican voter in America basically viewed Joe Biden as essentially a criminal, someone who had been, like, incredibly corrupt and was paying off his son and doing all types of shady things, who was senile, who was a deep state puppet, and by the way, who was not legitimately elected, what had stolen the presidency from the rightful President of the United States of America. Literally, the majority of Republicans viewed him as that. Now, let's just say in the middle of Joe Biden's presidency. If China had invaded and attempted to overthrow Joe Biden and install a Chinese sock puppet government here, that same right winger would have picked up his gun and fought to his death to protect Joe Biden. Because there's no way some foreigner is going to come in here and tell us what our government is. That's just, that's the way America is. Why do we think we have a monopoly on that? You know what I mean? Like, why do we think that no other people are going to have that same. You know, there was, as you know, I'm sure, Emily, there was in the, in the 19. In the late 1930s there was. And into the early 40s, there was the America First Committee, which is a huge non interventionist, anti American involvement in World War II organization. They had like, I think like over 600, 000 members in like 1939. Like, it was like a huge organization and much of the country agreed with them. And then Pearl harbor happened and it was over. They all just disbelieve. Half of them joined the military effort because once you got hit, the conversation was over. We got hit. We are now at war with you. And think about 9, 11 and how crazy we went after that. Why, why do we think we have a monopoly on being the people who like when you get hit would be like, well, no, screw you. Whatever internal problems we have, we're. And so to me, I don't care. Any of these expats could say only 10% of people support the government at this point. I bet 90% of them support us not being involved.

[Emily]

Well, yeah, and this is what Tucker was getting to is basically the only way that you can justify this is by saying it's power, that the United States is more powerful. Therefore we can do this to the little guys because we are the. We are the power. And just before we go to break, I'll say that's why I'm a no nuke person. I'm not 100% that this is the best solution. But it's. The globe has shrunken to the point where because of the ballistic missile range and nuclear range, every single country in the world shares a border now with nuclear weapons. And so Iran looks at Israel, looks at the United States, looks at North Korea, looks at Saudi Arabia, and you're telling them, no, you can't have access to this powerful weapon. You know, you're, you can make the argument about the good guys versus the bad guys, but that's contingent on explaining to them why they're the bad guys. So good luck. Good luck. All right, Dave, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more. First, though, Cozy Earth. One of my favorite ways to relax at home lately has been with Cozy Earth. I talk about this a lot. It's hard to go to bed after having these conversations. They get you all hyped up and angry sometimes. But if you haven't tried the robes and the slippers over at Cozy Earth, you are missing out. Their robes are so soft. They're perfect for slow mornings after you take a shower or just relaxing at night. The fabric is breathable, lightweight and incredibly comfortable. It's the kind of robe that you put on and then you immediately feel more relax. Isn't that the best? And their slippers might be the best part too. They slip on instantly and they have this like plush shearling lining with actually supportive footbed. So they're warm, they're comfortable and they're easy to wear around the house all day. Plus, Mother's Day is coming up, so be nice to your moms. Cozy Earth makes a great gift, something that your mom will actually use and appreciate on the big day. Those are the gifts that make a difference, right? Here's the best part. Cozy Earth backs everything with a 100 night sleep trial and a 10 year warranty. So you or your mom mom can try it completely risk free. Go to cozyearth.com and use my code Emily for 20% off. That's cozyearth.com promo code Emily for 20% off. And if you see the post purchase survey, please mention you heard about Cozy Earth from the show A KFC tale

[Dave Smith]

in the pursuit of flavor. The colonel made his $10 Tuesday bucket so full with eight pieces of juicy crispy chicken or tenders that it might just last you2 Wednesday if you've got that kind of self control. I mean some people want leftovers, others are more into right nowers. The colonel lived so we could chicken. 10 bucks, 8 pieces.

[Emily]

One big deal with KFC.

[Dave Smith]

$10 Tuesdays. Prices and participation may vary. Taxes, tips and fees extra.

[Emily]

All right, we're back now with Dave Smith. He's comedian and host of Part of the Problem. Dave, I did want to get your thoughts on what do we have to call this like Jesus gate today? Donald Trump, he deleted the post. He deleted the post about it. We'll show it in just one moment. But basically Donald Trump posted an image. It was like a boomer Facebook meme of him. That sure looked like he had Inserted himself as Jesus into a painting of a sick person being healed. There it is on the screen. It looks. He's in, like, robes. He's got, like, beacons of light behind him. All kinds of good stuff happening in this picture. So there's all kinds of outrage, predictably. So here's how Trump explains deleting it in front of the. The press today at the White House.

[Dave Smith]

Did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ?

[Emily]

Well, it wasn't depiction. It was me.

[Dave Smith]

I. I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do it. Red Cross is a Red Cross worker

[Emily]

there, which we support, and only the

[Dave Smith]

fake news could come up with that one.

[Emily]

So I. I had.

[Dave Smith]

I just heard about it, and I said, how do they come up with that? It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.

[Emily]

Dave, how much did you cry about this post last night?

[Dave Smith]

Well, listen, man, I mean, it is just Donald Trump. There is something crazy that. I don't know, maybe I can't be the only one who's noticed this, right? But there has been this change, like, from Donald Trump at the very beginning his first term. You know, there'd be this thing, I'm sure you saw this a bunch, Emily, where, like, there'd be a reporter asking Donald Trump, like, the dumbest, most bad faith, dishonest question about, like, Russiagate or some stupid thing, and you'd be like, oh, this is totally, like, you're not even asking a question. You're, like, running an op against the president. It's such a weird thing. And then Donald Trump would just respond with like, you're a fat pig, and blah, blah, blah. And there'd be like, a thing where you're kind of like, yeah, like, just smack. But then in the second term, it turned into this thing where, like, journalists just ask the most reasonable question. And, like, is like, it's just constantly like, hey, you said yesterday you were going to release the Epstein files, and you said today there's no such thing as the Epstein files. And he's like, your husband isn't attracted to you. You're disgusting. And. And you're like, wait, what? This isn't cool anymore. Because that was kind of reasonable. And I don't know, it's just too, like, what? How is this supposed to even be the answer? How? I don't know. This. All of this is just. It's been a very surreal moment to live through. What are we what are you asking about the specifics of what he said there?

[Emily]

Well, I mean, I think, you know, to me it's like amazing to see some. I'm a big evangelical Christian. It's amazing to see some of my fellow conservative Christians look at that post from Donald Trump and have. These are people who support Trump. Any sense of, like, moral surprise or shock, because this is the guy. What did he say? That he hates his opponents. He said that at Charlie Kirk's funeral, he. One time he talked about his little wine and crackers. Like, this is back in 2015. He's done. He said he doesn't ask God for forgiveness. I mean, he's not a Christian beacon of morality. And so to be surprised by this, I can't. Or shocked by it. I mean, I guess I think it's good he took it down. But there's a zero percent chance he thought it was a doctor.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, I mean, that was a wild for him to go like, yeah, what? You got Jesus out of that? That's crazy. Where did anyone think that? I don't know. There's. There's a really sad thing. I, I remember watching through, through the rise of wokeism as, as that kind of swept through the, the like, kind of liberal establishment. I remember always having this really. It was like kind of like a sad feeling where I would watch all these people who I really admired, especially in the comedy world, because I had like been coming up as a comedian and there were people like, I know that young people, this is going to be the craziest thing to ever say to you, but like, Stephen Colbert was funny once.

[Emily]

Oh, Strangers with Candy. Holy.

[Dave Smith]

Dude. He was an amazing talent. Dude. The Colbert Report was Dana Carvey show, dude. Stephen Colbert on the, on the Daily Show. On the Stephen Colbert Show. On the Dana Carvey Show. He was just like an incredible talent. Like, there were a lot of people like this who are really good, but like, then, I don't know, some type of social force just kind of cast a spell on them and they just had to conform to this weird religion that they had like, become a part of. And in a lot of ways I, you know, it was like, it was sad and it, I don't know. And I feel like a lot of those people, like you're saying, like the Christians who will still support Donald Trump after this, I guess they've fallen into some spell where for so long they believe that he was their only savior. And obviously, you know, in terms of politically what Donald Trump represented, he was the greatest enemy of the Very anti Christian force in this country. And so I guess they feel like they have, but I don't know, at a certain point at least I feel like if you're in the world that me and you are in where we, our job is largely talking about these things publicly for other people to watch, then come on, we gotta just tell the truth about this. Like, what is this? This is so despicable. I mean, so like just disgusting. The, the President just being so flippant that on Easter he's threatening genocide and then making these kind of comments about Allah and then these posts about Jesus. Like, you know, again it's, it's weird because I know like the, in, in a way, like the knock on me is that I'm who the fuck am I? Which is a fair enough knock on me, right? Like that's the biggest knock on me is like you're some comedian. Like you're not an expert. Who the fuck are you? Like you're some shit talking comedian in a hoodie who wants to show up to like the biggest debate in politics. And like, okay, no hood today though.

[Emily]

No hood today.

[Dave Smith]

There you go. I, well, I respect the after party, but right.

[Emily]

You know, business casual.

[Dave Smith]

But like, okay, fair enough. That's the knock on me. But then okay, but am I the only one who goes, but like the President of the United States of America, the Commander in Chief, like, okay, even for me, I don't care about formalities. I'm not, you know, people I really, really admire. Like I, I'm a real student of conservative thought. Like I, I love all of that. I've read every Pat Buchanan book and like I, he would get real mad if you didn't have a big enough flag pin on or if when Obama took his jacket off in the, in the Oval Office, Pappy Chanor would be like, it's not, you know, I don't have any of that in me. But could the president not, you know, be the most vulgar, just horrible human being in the planet? That seems to be a reasonable request. And it's sad, it's sad watching this happen.

[Emily]

Oh, totally unreasonable. Actually, you mentioned.

[Dave Smith]

You are right.

[Emily]

Well actually before we leave there's, there was a lot of chatter last week. We were talking about Alex Jones earlier among there were some people, Alex was one of them calling for potential 25th amendment saying Trump is losing it. Dave, again, do I think there's something that seems to have escalated because we're now at war and maybe he's feeling extra defensive and desperate of his, his image Probably. Do you think this is a 25th amendment situation where he's like, he's slipped, his grasp on reality is slipping to me again. Like, I look at this, I don't think it's, it's not surprising to me. It doesn't shock me. I think it's really bad. It does seem like it's on another level. It doesn't seem to me like he's going insane.

[Dave Smith]

You said it does or doesn't seem like it doesn't.

[Emily]

I feel like he's always been on this level of crazy.

[Dave Smith]

No, I, I know. You know, look, I mean, I don't know. This is total, just speculation. So I don't know exactly what's happened, but it does feel like something is different, a flip has been switched. I, I try, I always try my best to like, find the least conspiratorial kind of like, answer to all. Like, what is the simplest answer for why all of this is happening? And I guess I would say that I think there was a big moment last summer when Donald Trump hit us with the 12 punch of the 12 day war and burying the Epstein files and he, that, that really, it shed off a big part of his base. And they try not to admit this, but the truth is that at that point a huge part of the Trump coalition went, yo, this is not what we signed up for. And perhaps, and maybe I'm guilty of some of this, but perhaps that changed the incentive structure for Donald Trump in a way that was not advantageous for any of us. Like, it was like, hey, I've already lost those guys, so I got to at least keep these guys now. I think there's also something about Washington D.C. like, you know, like, like, you know how, like, I don't even know if this is true anymore because like, politicians don't even pretend to have ever read a book anymore. But if you, and, and you're young, Emily, this is your problem. You're very, very young. But if you were around earlier, you know, they used to like, like congressmen used to talk about like, like, like canes maybe like we, like John Maynard Keynes and his school on economics or something like that. But it's not like any of them ever really sat down and read FA Hayek and then read Keynes and then went, oh, I think Keynes makes better arguments. The reason why he was a popular kind of like intellectual figure is because his arguments was that government should have a lot more power. And then so everyone in government went, oh yeah, we really like that argument. In the same way that the, you know, that all the weapons companies, you know, fucking fund all the NEOCOM think tanks. It's not because they really believe in greater Israel. It's just because they're like, oh, you said we have to fight seven wars. Interesting opinion. Let me give you a little bit more money to, you know, like, it's all business, essentially. And so, like, in the same way, I think when you're in Washington, D.C. right, like, there's this dynamic where a president. So the. It's very strange because people go, is, is the president the most powerful position ever, or is it not a powerful position? And the truth is that if you're the President of the United States of America and you want to swim with the current, you're the most powerful human being who's ever existed in the history of the world. You. You can touch anywhere in the world. You can launch, as we've seen, you can launch any war. The best thing Congress could do is write you an angry letter and go, within 90 days, you better report to us and tell us what you're doing. And if you don't, you don't, because it doesn't really matter. You launch any war. You could. You could bomb a wedding in Yemen or a city in any part of the world, right? If you're a president who wants to roll back the military industrial complex, you have zero power. Zero. You're not capable of doing it. So if you want to go with the warfare state, you're the biggest, baddest emperor of all time. If you want to go against it, you are just a failure in history. That's just. And I think at a certain point, Donald Trump, who is motivated by more than anything else being the most tremendous person who's ever lived, went, fuck it. I'm going to go with it rather than against it. And I think Venezuela was just, you know, the greatest disaster of Venezuela is that it worked out well. And then that just gave him the confidence to be ripe for Netanyahu to convince him. Now, that being said, there, I'm not against anyone speculating about more than that, because it still seems so hard to believe that he could possibly be fooled into thinking that this wouldn't happen. You know, I literally, I. Oh, I didn't post it, but I'm gonna post that first thing tomorrow morning. I'm gonna post, I found a Scott Horton article from 2005. Damn Scott Horton. Because at the time, the Bush administration is talking about how we should invade Iran. And Scott Horton in 2005 goes, but they will close the Strait of Hormuz and hit all of our military bases in the region. And they have the missile capacity to do this and this and this. And then it's just so amazing to watch like them today.

[Emily]

Like so look that antiwar.com Scott Horton. Yeah. Head over there.

[Dave Smith]

Just the absolute best, best foreign policy guy in the goddamn country. But so, you know, it makes you wonder really, no one would have told him. Even in that New York Times piece, everyone's kind of, no one really tells him don't do this. You know, like don't. And it is hard to believe. I don't know. It's very hard to believe that that's the case.

[Emily]

Yeah, it sucks. I can come up with. Let's move on to Eric Swalwell, who will not be governor of California, much to the disappointment of the the Golden State. Here's Eric Swalwell. We're going to go through a little timeline here. It'll be fun. So here's Eric Swalwell on Friday after this was a San Francisco Chronicle story had dropped. There was a CNN one who which had either just dropped or was on the cusp of dropping S3.

[Dave Smith]

These allegations of sexual assault are flat false. They are absolutely false. They did not happen.

[Emily]

It's like a Duke lacrosse.

[Dave Smith]

I will fight them with everything that I have. They also come on the eve of an election where I have been the front runner candidate for governor in California. I do not suggest to you in any way that I'm perfect or that I'm a saint. I have certainly made mistakes in judgment in my past, but those mistakes are between me and my wife. And to her, I apologize deeply for putting her in this position. I also apologize to you if in any way you have doubted your support for me. But I think you know who I am.

[Emily]

So he's battling obviously claims that range from outright rape to sexual assault and harassment. So there's, and there's a, I recommend Megan went through point by point on today's Megyn Kelly show all of the allegations and what we should make of them in the court of public opinion. Alvin Bragg did open an investigation into Eric Swallow because one of the, one of the allegations is in New York. And there was a House, House ethics probe opened, which is interesting because on Sunday, Eric Swalwell, after doubling down the video you just saw F6, he suspended his gubernatorial campaign. Then today the House Ethics Committee opens this probe into Eric swalwell. He announces F7. He's actually leaving Congress altogether. He resigned from Congress this evening. So, Dave, I Think in a way, this hearkens back to simpler times when sex scandals destroyed people's congressional careers. That's kind of quaint. On the other hand, some of these allegations, like, like, it's. It's very much the depths of me too. He said, she said. Both people were really drunk. It sounds like there are allusions to maybe there being a date rape drug, but that's never said. Clearly, it's a tangled mess. Obviously, Eric Swalwell is adulterous and gross and was hitting on employees and making moves on employees, sleeping with employees. So I guess good riddance.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah. I mean, it. Look, there's. I don't know what actually happened here, and I. I haven't even, like, looked into it enough to even, like, formulate an opinion on all this. I do think that, you know, I. I don't know there. I'm a real. You know, I'm much more chauvinistic than I let on in real life, and I really do. I just. This is why only married men of good moral character should be involved in politics at all. And that there just shouldn't be any of this. Like, listen, I'm not. Not. I'm a complete libertarian. People should be allowed to live whatever lifestyle they want to live, but keep that weird shit away from power. Like, nobody.

[Emily]

I love the idea of you saying that at a libertarian convention. Just. I love getting up.

[Dave Smith]

I'm a. I'm a libertarian, but I'm a day walker. You know, Like, I walk amongst the autistic libertarians, and then I walk amongst the normies during the day, and I try to bring the two together. It's not an easy job. Someone has to do it. But. But I will say there is something that. And I. I do think this is a big part of, like, the Epstein thing and just this. This cultural toothpaste that has come out of the tube that can never be put back in, that people just can't ignore how weird some of the. The people, like, the highest levels of power are. And, like, you're like, wait, what is this story? What were you doing? Even if it's not, you know, the worst allegation of it, you're like, but wait a minute. You're. You're a guy who's, like, passing moral judgment on everyone else all day on cable news. But then this is your life. You. And you just have to apologize to your wife publicly. But we're not gonna know what exactly that means. I think that, you know, there's. There's something where we. We find out that a lot of these people are really just very bizarre people with a lot of things that could kind of be compromised, you know, or they're ripe to being compromised. And.

[Emily]

And, well, he was literally compromised by the Chinese. I mean, the Fang Fang allegations. Like, he was like, actually.

[Dave Smith]

Well, and also before he was. I mean, it's just like on a very human level. Like, do you remember? Okay, so I remember, like, not that long ago. I don't know. I guess this was 2019 or something like that. But you remember when, like, MSNBC was trying to convince you that Stormy Daniels lawyer had the it factor, and you're like, this guy is just, ooh, he's prosecuting the case again. Then remember what was the guy who rode the skateboard out in Texas who they tried to tell you? Yeah, Beto o'. Rourke. He's. Oh, he's like in. He's like the guy who people want. And you just be like, are you a real person or are you an alien impersonating a person who would possibly think these are two of the most, like, strange, weird human beings ever? And you're trying to convince me that they're charismatic or something like that. I don't know. It's just very strange. This is not what normal people are with circular too.

[Emily]

Because Dems will say, well, you guys have Donald Trump to Republicans. And Republicans will say, yes, well, Eric Swalwell was Mr. Believe All Woman anti Donald Trump. And you just go round and round and round until you realize that there's something so broken with the system that no fewer good people ever want to enter it because it takes such a disgusting person to be part of the system.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, well, that's true. But, you know, could I just say on that. And I'm not trying to. I have. I think of all the people who voted for Donald Trump, Trump, like people with public, you know, or podcasts or whatever. I think I was amongst the first to like, straight up say, like, I apologize for that. I was wrong for voting for him. I called for his impeachment. I got at least back in the. On breaking points on the. When the 12 Day War first launched. I think. And even I think it was, if I'm remembering correctly, I think it was before we dropped the bunker busters. I think it was already just when Israel launched the war. I was like, screw, it's our. You know, I was the angry teenager that I always am. I hate him now. But I. You know, there's this thing where people would say forever that. That MAGA is a Cult or Trump supporters are like a cult like following. And I also see right now a lot of people, you know, who, who are, have been like, really calling people out who voted for Donald Trump or something like that. And, you know, so I say this again from the position, which I understand is a weak position to argue from where I'm already admitting that, like, yes, probably it was wrong to vote for Donald Trump, but also, I'll just say some names here, but I've gotten into some public arguments with Kyle Kalinsky and Mehdi Hassan and others like that, who, by the way, I'm not trying to fight with either of those guys. I, you know, like, like, I don't agree with them on everything, but we sure do agree on some really important stuff. And I'm not. But they're going around like, constantly going like, hey, you voted for Donald Trump. Well, look at you, Joe Rogan, you're criticizing him now, but what do you think you voted for? And just like everyone who's, and, and this is just infuriating me. And I, you know, I publicly went back and forth with Medi a little bit, and then we messaged privately a little bit, and like, we're cool and everything, but I just, there's something about this where, like I said, I said this publicly and I just, I'll say this again that, you know, when I remember I was so anti war, so hardcore anti war, and I never voted for anyone. The only presidential candidate I ever voted for was Ron Paul. Like, I have complete clean hands in terms of voting before 2024. And I remember just mourning the death of the anti war left forever. It was like as soon as George W. Bush left and Obama came in and the global war on terrorism just escalated and spread to multiple other theaters. Escalated in the own, in the theaters they were already in, he surged, like tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan, took out, you know, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, like, all of this. And they were just gone. And then when the destruction of Gaza started, they kind of all came back and I was like, great. You know, I never thought for one second that this would be the time to start lecturing everybody about how you voted for Joe Biden. And you should have known that Joe Biden was a lifelong Zionist and Joe Biden was obviously going to do this. And then, like, the people who voted for Joe Biden who admit that he committed a genocide are like, shaming everybody else for voting for Donald Trump. Like, like, yo, let's just take a look at what actually happened here. The entire media apparatus that supported Donald Trump and got him his election victory, turned on him over this war. So, hey, anti war leftist, take the win. You know what I mean? Like, hey, that's awesome. That's awesome that they're not going along with this. You called us all, or you called them all cultists for so long. They're not cultists. They're turning on him over this. Let it happen. Why are you, why are you taking this opportunity to, like, go, like I told you so?

[Emily]

Yeah, no, I agree with that. I mean, I didn't vote for president in 2024, but that's because exactly of everything you were just saying. It's this, like, completely complicated mess of. You're always evaluating the lesser of two evils. Like, none of those people were, you know, venerating Joe Biden and people like you weren't venerating Donald Trump and just saying no. People have kids and families that they love and they make decisions based on what they think is going to be the best. And nobody. I mean, there are some people who claim they're 100. Right? And if you're not with me, you're evil. There are many people like that, but that's not you. And that's not a lot of people. That's, that's certainly not Andrew Schultz and Joe Rogan and, and Tim Dillon. They certainly weren't in that camp.

[Dave Smith]

But also, if you're. Yes, I completely agree. And I'm just saying that if you're in the camp of really being against, like, if you really care that, like, oh, there's like, innocent people d. Dying and the world's going to be worse off because of this war, then if you look at people like Tim Dillon and Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn and Andrew Schultz and all these people, you go, wow, wow, they're really, they're, they're, they're giving more than enough permission to their viewers to go, hey, we can all oppose this thing. You don't have to. Just because we voted for this, like, still be on board with it even. Not all of their audience obviously voted for it, but, like, like, they're just like, so it's like, oh, that, that's great. Like, why, why would you be. I don't know. I just, I, I find that to be such a crazy take that. It's like, yo, when, when the destruction of Gaza was going on, I wasn't thinking about lecturing anybody because it was like, no, we just need as many people to be good on this as we can possibly get. Like, that's really important. And that's really important that, like, left wingers are good on war again. And, and, you know, like, I, I just don't, I, I don't see why anyone wouldn't make the simple calculation that, like, that's more important than me, you know, being like, hey, you shouldn't have voted for this person, or something. Which, again, maybe not. I mean, maybe we'd all be better off if Kamala Harris was in now. Or maybe not. We don't really know. But, you know, I'm, I'm still, even after. As, even as disgusted as I am with Trump right now, I still look back and go, now, the Democrats gave everyone more than enough reason to vote against them. It is what it is. We're. We're pinned in a situation where you got to pick one of two options. And the Democrats were pretty awful for a long time.

[Emily]

No question about that. Well, there's some good news about the left, though. I want to put up this post. This is F16. The cool, hip, chic, radical left is back. Dave. This is Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry. They were at Coachella experiencing some of the magic in the Coachella Valley. And this post is particularly wonderful because it's actually puts it perfectly. The. I don't. I want to give credit to the person who posted this. I think their username is Ohio. Jesus, Twink. The caption of these two, just like vibing at Coachella, is, they're so perfect for each other. It actually makes me emotional. Both being failures of liberalism who peaked in 2013. Why weren't you there, Dave? Where were you?

[Dave Smith]

I don't know what this is. I don't go to places like this, Emily. I'm an old man, okay? I'm not in the game of going to concerts. I go, I play with my little kids and then go to work. That's all. What a weird, what a weird thing. I just don't understand it. I don't. There's something about being.

[Emily]

It's like a Disney adult thing.

[Dave Smith]

Yes. Oh, can I tell you, I, I was at Disney a few weeks ago. You know, I brought my, my wife and my kids down there. That was a weird way to put it. We all went to Disney. I brought them.

[Emily]

You were with Lindsey Graham.

[Dave Smith]

I was going.

[Emily]

It was you and Lindsey Graham. You got some bubble wands.

[Dave Smith]

I had to have lunch with Lindsay on the Mickey Mouse Express, but I, I, I got some time with the family into. But. And we, so we were going to meet Mickey Mouse. Okay. You got to pay extra for this, we're going to meet Mickey Mouse. But this is the real one. You know, in Disney World. Like this isn't just like a Mickey Mouse. This is. No, no, no.

[Emily]

This is the midtown Mickey Mouse.

[Dave Smith]

This is the real Mickey Mouse. Now that midtown guy is some Mexican. He just got here today. But this is the real Mickey Mouse. And there was just adults in front of us. And I'm just sitting there with my wife and my, my 4 year old and my 7 year old and we're sitting there and waiting for two grown ups to take pictures with Mickey Mouse. And it is the weirdest feeling ever. Like you, you really want to go up to them and be like, hey, he's not real. Like this is a minimum wage worker you're taking a picture with right now. What are you doing? Like my 4 year old is getting fussy. Like can you just leave? It's insane. Anyway, yeah, it's a very unsear, we live in a very unserious time. And I do think I, it, it's crazy to me again. I'm not like some cranky right wing, you know, crazy old man. I mean I am in spirit, I am, but I'm also like, I'm, I don't know, I'm a stand up comedian. I got a lot of friends who live really wild, crazy lifestyles. I used to live a very non traditional lifestyle. I got married and had kids and now I, I, I, I, I, I live a different, you know, now my life is different and I, it's much better. But the fact that I'm not like too judgmental, I get it. One of my best friends in the world is Ari Shafir. I think he just disappeared into the rainforest for three months doing an acid trip and came back a different man. You know, like I'm not. But you're like, yo, we're going to have. Our leaders are like people in their 50s who are going to music festivals and getting taken pictures with them. And this is too just like bizarre. Like no, that's not serious. Grown ups shouldn't behave that way. That's all I'm saying.

[Emily]

Okay, well if you want to be judgy Dave, this is, I want to know, I want to know where they were during the Sabrina Carpenter set because Woke is back. Some, some good news depending on where you are. Maybe bad news if you're on the other side of that. But Woke is back. Sabrina Carpenter during her set that gets what she interpreted as a yodel. She ultimately has to apologize for the reaction. You're all about to see here in S5. Is that what you're doing? I don't like it. That's your culture is yodeling. Is this Burning Man? What's going on? This is weird. So, so Dave, some people pointed out that if it had been yodeling that she was making fun of like just the, the widest of the white art forms, it would have been fine. But it was the fact that she was actually had some issue with an Arabic form of expression that was the problem. This is F12. She did apologize for her reactions. She says, my apologies, I didn't see this person with my eyes and couldn't hear clearly. My reaction was pure confusion, sarcasm and ill intended. So yeah, WOKE is totally back, don't you think, Dave?

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, well, I guess it probably never left that world. Whatever that. No, you know, world is. But, but you know, WOKE is not.

[Emily]

She was called Islamophobic, I should say. Like this is it. It generated a write up in the New York Times. Like this wasn't just random. She, she got called Islamophobic in mega viral posts and ended up apologizing because of it.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, look w. WOKE has receded, but it's not gone. And so there's still a whole lot of stuff like that. Like if you had again, if she had been just making fun of some, you know, yodeling white, white Christian, that would have been fine. But this isn't. And that doesn't mean they're going to be pushing quite as crazy stuff as they were pushing five years ago or something like that. You know, like, okay, they've, they've backed off of like given your 8 year old the lap dance from a dude in a dress or something. But they're, you know, that didn't happen.

[Emily]

But if it did, it was good and it was a blessing of liberty.

[Dave Smith]

These. Right, right. Well these things don't, you know, forces or norms that become so culturally ingrained are never just vanquished. You know, like there's, there's people in Russia today who support Stalin. You know, like you, you can never just like vanquish a complete. There's, there's, you know, there's neo Nazis in Germany. There's, you know, now there. Some can be more vanquished than others. But you know, it's like you, you kind of. Even if there's a certain percentage. And this is one of the things that was really weird about the 2024 election and Donald Trump winning again is that a lot of people went like, you saw all the corporate Shills, just drop the WOKE shit. They all went, oh, okay, this isn't a winning issue anymore. Okay, we're done. Like, they didn't. It was. It was the same way that, if you remember in 2004, the neocons made gay marriage a big wedge issue because it was like 55% of people were against gay marriage. And so they. They made. One of the issues in the 2024 election was a constitutional amendment protecting the sanctity of marriage. It was stupid. They were never going to get a constitutional amendment. It was just like. Like, let's throw like, some red meat to the. But then you watched all those neocons, as soon as it became a 55 issue, being pro gay marriage, they all went, yeah, okay, whatever. They weren't pro gay marriage. Like, none of them actually cared about it. It was just. And. And you watched a lot of that with the wokeism stuff where they all, you know, people like Rachel, who is aoc, takes her pronouns out of her bio or whatever on Twitter. Oh, all of a sudden, now forget that we were. We weren't saying there's no such thing as gender. That was a different time. But, you know, you pump that message into so many people. You got millions of Americans who still believe in that stuff. And it's not as easy as it is for the corporate snakes to just abandon an issue when real, actual human beings made that a part of their identity, that they believed in this and they kind of thought they had it on some authority because you, an authoritative person, were telling them that. And so it's. I don't know. There's something so disgusting about the people who just, like, pushed these messages. But yeah, no, that's still. This is still a reality in the world is that a lot of people are going to go like, well, what do you mean? What do you. Oh, you're allowed to make fun of some person making a sound, but you got it wrong and they were browner than you thought. So whatever. It's just. It's so stupid. But it's. It's really toxic and bad that there's people who still believe in that.

[Emily]

Well, yeah. I mean, this is something you and the New York Times Zoomer panel apparently agree on. They did a recent, like, roundtable of Gen Z, and here's a part of that quote. In some corners of the world, I think WOKE is more alive than ever and it's getting more intense, and that's how they're transgressing. Quote. Another one adds, it's definitely coming back. And another One says, so it's sort of like these two completely different spheres then that you navigate between both, both when you're reporting on the MAGA right wing youth movements and when you're moving through Brooklyn, it's two completely different worlds. And Dave, just last question to you makes me realize how social media, it doesn't matter if you're like hyper right wing or hyper left wing, it's programming everyone to be totally Manichean. And I guess that's, that's maybe not the worst definition of woke.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, right, exactly. I think that's, that's true. And it's, it's, it, in some ways it makes it easier than ever to, you know, gauge the temperature of what's going on. But then in some ways it, it really, you know, does kind of reinforce you into your own little world and your own little bubble. And it's, you know, I, I, I, I think you, you, you have to like, you have to really have a curiosity for what's really going on in order to force yourself to think about things like that and to think about like, hey, okay, like, but what am I not seeing? Because, like, what's actually going on? What is the, you know, I, I think about this all the time and I try my, I'm kind of lucky in my life that like, I know, I know a lot of comedians and I'm from New York City and so I know a lot of people in New York. And then I, from being in this business, I know people in LA and I know people. So even though I am not, you know, I can kind of, like, there's a lot of people I can ask, like, what's going on with this group? Like, how are they feeling? How are they? And because I do wonder, I'm like, hey, so in my mind, like, all the COVID lies just got completely destroyed and disproven. And we all know that they all lied to us, right? And I do think that that's kind of like the majority view of the Americans. But then you go like, yeah, but what about that hipster in Brooklyn who totally bought into all of it, that how is he feeling about this now? You know, like, and, and I do think that the, the general trends of the country represent some of those people being peeled away. And I do think that at least from the gauge I can get that the younger people are a little bit more like there is like an attitude, I think, amongst the, like the younger people now, that the younger people five years ago were kind of gay. Like, it was kind of, you know, like, that seems to be the feeling. They were like, oh, dude, they were just like anything you said. Forget that. We want to be able to make jokes and we want to be able to go back to this. But I guess, look, I don't know if I'm completely right about this, but my feeling is that the left wing WOKE stuff has receded. It still infects a huge percentage of young leftists. And what the other ones have come out is a more, a less socially woke, more radically economically leftist kind of version of that. And I think that's, that's what's emerging right now is the Mamdani kind of effect. Like, Mamdani a few years ago might have been tweeting about how queer liberation means defunding the police. Police today. Yeah, he will only which is, which is true.

[Emily]

But they can fact check us. They're not going to be successful.

[Dave Smith]

It's honestly, it's about time people woke up to the fact that if you want queer liberation, you have to defund the police. And so I'm not saying, I'm not saying queer liberation is the go the goal. I'm just saying defunding the police is the way to get there. Anyway, the point is that the affordability crisis is what they're going to be talking about now. Like, I think they've, they've kind of learned in some way from these years that like, okay, this social program kind of didn't work. And also we're in this era of fucking everything being way too expensive. And, you know, they call that unaffordability, which people who have ever read a book about economics call currency debasement or, you know, price inflation, but they call it unaffordability. And that's what they're going to run on now. But, you know, since Donald Trump has completely committed to fighting forever wars and, you know, government spending levels that are higher than the Democrats, we're going to be printing a lot of money and there'll be a lot more higher prices for the Democrats to run against in the next few years.

[Emily]

Dave Smith, host a part of the problem. It's so fun to have you on. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for being here.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, thank you so much, Emily. I really, I always enjoy this.

[Emily]

Yes, likewise. We'll see you again soon. Thanks, Dave.

[Dave Smith]

You absolutely. Have a good night.

[Emily]

You too. All right, we'll be back with more in just one moment. But first, over the years, I have been clear about this. I'm not just pro birth, I'm pro life. And being pro life means staying standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that is exactly why I partner and partner very proudly with preborn. Preborn doesn't just save babies. They make motherhood abundantly possible. They provide free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel with women in crisis. And then they stay with real practical help not and this includes financial support for up to two years. Two years after the baby is born. This is what true Christ centered compassion looks like. Not just for the baby, but for the mother too. And here's where you can make a difference. Just 28 provides a free life saving ultrasound. One chance for a mother to see her baby. And when she does, she's twice as likely to choose life. That is a real number. Preborn is trying to save 70,000 babies this year. You can be a part of that. So don't just say your pro life, live it. Help save babies and support mothers today. Go to preborn.com emily or call 855-601-2229. That's preborn.com emily. All right, everyone. Rounding out the show with Lena Dunham's media tour. She was on the View earlier today. She's out with a new book that really apparently I haven't read the book yet, but it apparently is a very raw revisiting of the girl's years and her entire journey through the public or journey in the public eye. It's called Fame Sick, which she explains is a little bit of how the fame made her sick and what it was like being sick with the fame. It's actually if you even take the sort of political layer of Lena Dunham off of it, I think probably a worthwhile pursuit right now from somebody who's, who's lived in the public eye in the 2010s and now beyond into the 2020s millennial social media generation. This has transformed not just our daily lives, but also the way that we look outward into the world, the way that we look at celebrities, the way that celebrities look at everyone else. Politicians as well, since they're basically the same as celebrities now. That's TMZ's intention in covering DC. They just got Lindsey Graham. So but really, I mean that this is all connected because celebrities and politicians now have a new experience relating to people. We were told it would be a great democratization. We can communicate all in a kind of from the same flat level. And that's obviously not how it's turned out. But Lena Dunham's grappling with A lot of what that meant for her. I think Girls premiered in 2012, if I'm correct on that. It went from like 2012 to 2017, but around that time period. And so here's Lena Dunham talking about the particular, the particular experience of her own fame during that time period in a new long interview with the New York Times. I've annoyed people since I was so small. Like I was an annoying kid. I was a try hard, I was loud. I didn't always know how to like move through space with other kids in a way that wasn't a little bit off or disruptive. That's coupled with there was like the intense rage about the female sexuality on the show. There was the intense rage about my body, which is so crazy to look back on now. Cause I was this like little slip of a 26 year old. And had I known my own powers, I would have behaved very differently. And then like I would be lying if I didn't say that my own way of moving, whether it was through media or how I myself online or even in my writing didn't. Didn't quell it. The way that I was spoken about. I mean, that's what so many women's bodies look like. That's not what my body looks like anymore. But it was, I was like full of light. And it's interesting, as I looked at the photos over the course of the show, I could see it's such a cliche, but it was like the lights just went out. So I'm going to spoil Girls. Actually, I usually try not to spoil it, but for the purposes of this discussion, if you haven't seen Girls and you don't want it to be spoiled, I highly recommend everybody watches Girls all the way through finish the last season. But it does end with Lena Dunham's character, Hannah Horvath, having a baby and finding joy in motherhood. And it wasn't intended to be a rebuke of radical feminism, the type of radical feminism that Hannah Horvath, the character espoused and promoted throughout her young career and her young life. But it actually really did function as one. And this is what I think is so interesting about Lena Dunham's art. And she came of. Of age really at a time professionally when the culture because of social media was, was losing tolerance for artists because artists were using social media and their own platforms in ways that were more and more. What's the right word for this? Kind of cynical, but at the same time more ephemeral. Right. So we had to See Lena Dunham's awful 2012 Obama ad, like, comparing voting for the first time to losing your virginity. I mean, it was really, like, disgusting. Some of our. Some of it is, yes, it completely makes sense for an artist to behave that way. If you're. If you're a good artist, you're probably eccentric and you're probably wacky. And if you have so much contact with normal human beings through social media and interviews and Twitter posts and paparazzi figures, that weirdness is going to be projected and other people are going to react in a way where it's like, that's weird, that's bad. Your Brooklyn values are out of step with the values of this Iowa Obama voter. What do you think you're doing? But that's part of the challenge of social media, is that it's erased borders and it's brought us all much closer together and in constant communication. And I think somebody like Lena Dunham, who's. If you knew nothing about her and you just watched Girls in a vacuum, you never heard of Lena Dunham. You never saw anything from her public profile. I think actually a lot of people would have interpreted it as a pretty honest exploration of feminism and its effect on the millennial generation. You could probably do something similar for Gen Z. It was. It clearly had one side that it thought it was promoting, but I think that's what makes it such a rich and interesting show, is that because it was honest, you even saw these challenges to its own foundation. It really was an excellent show, and not always consciously was it making those challenges to its own foundation. So Lena Dunham is constantly doing this. Every show she does, every interview she does is she's constantly doing this. And what's interesting is that when she says there was so much rage at her body and so much rage at women's sexuality being presented in. In Girls, what they're. Of course, there's always bad actors, right? There's. There's people who are actually just mean and hateful, and social media brings those people to the forefront. But in terms of, like, political, cultural rage at her body and about female sexuality, either, there was immense discomfort from the public when Lena Dunham was genuinely normalizing. She was in the process of normalizing, as she talks about in this interview, in the process of attempting to normalize the radical feminism that had previously been relegated to faculty lounges. So, of course there's going to be rage about that from people who don't want to see the normalization of faculty lounge feminism for their children, their grandchildren, and in their communities. And you can even see in Lena Dunham, who is now by her own accord, happily married, has. Has left fame, has moved to England, as far as I know, but has found in marriage what she describes as a rock, and in mono, monogamy, presumably, at least what she finds as comfort. And in this, like, quaint and quiet life, which is exactly what Hannah finds at the end of Girls. I mean, it's almost eerie how prescient the end of Girls is to looking ahead in Lena Dunham's life, where she talks constantly about wanting to just leave the public life and be in bed with books, books and movies. It's basically in Girls how she ultimately finds what we're. We're pointed at believing is peace and sort of harmony with nature. It's this very sort of naturalistic feminism. It's. It's almost a. A nod to earlier generations of feminism. Some of the shots are like that, too. They're very humanist. And you hear that every time Linda Dunham opens her mouth, which is why I think she's one of the most interesting artists of her generation. She said in the View interview she did today that the Hannah Horvath line, I think I might be the voice of my generation. Very famous from the first episode of Girls that was taken seriously by many people. She said that was always supposed to be a joke. And of course it was supposed to be a joke, but it was a joke that came true. That's what's so wild and interesting about Girls. And I think in Lena Dunham, you see somebody who is struggling enormously still to be happy. She apparently, in this book, writes about sexual trauma. She's gone through. Some of that has been public, and some of it is very ugly. But here's Lena Dunham, who was. Was by her own accord, trying to normalize this promiscuity, this comfort with faculty lounge feminism. And here she is in 2026, all these years later, embracing limits, embracing the limits of her own body, embracing the limits of life, of promiscuity. And she's found solace and monogamy and in a quiet life away from. To again, go back to the end of Girls away from New York City, very intentionally away from New York City, which is, by the way, where she grew up, if I'm remembering correctly. So really, really interesting, sad, poignant recollections here from Reflections, I should say here from Lena Dunham, who always does this. She always just sort of dances in the direction of a really and very cleverly and artfully dances in the direction of a point that's even more profound than the one she thinks she's making. And I think it's reflective of, of our generation, certainly, and, and Gen Z now flailing between trad and anti trad and trying to figure out what's actually happening. And that's summarized so neatly in the end of Girls. Like it's not quite trad in the literal political definition of right now, but it's also definitely not feminist in the literal political definition of the left right now. So I, I, if you haven't watched it, I recommend watching it. Sad. Sad, but in a way, sort of. What's the right word? It's, it's, it's always sad to hear from Lena Dunham because she seems like she'll probably always be a sad person. Also common of, of artists and people who've suffered trauma in their lives. And her parents were artists and she talks about some weird stuff she saw as a kid because of that. But man, it's, it's sad to hear her talk about this. But in a way it's also, I sense she's, she's maybe getting closer to finding some peace and serenity in this life. So that'll do it for an extra long, maybe the longest ever edition of After Party. Thank you all so much for two back here Wednesday night with another edition of the show. So stay tuned for that. Please do like comment, subscribe. It helps us a lot. Have a great night everyone.

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[Emily]

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