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Host (Emily Jashinsky) (13:41)

All right, I'm happy to be joined now once again by Rachel Bovard, vice president of the Conservative Partnership Institute, and Inez Detman, a legal analyst with Independent Women. Welcome back, guys.

Inez Stepman (13:52)

Happy to be here.

Rachel Bovard (13:53)

Emily, you look great.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (13:54)

Oh, so true. Thank you. Yes, yes. I have a lot of things I'm eager to get your takes on. I want to start with immigration, actually, because Mike Lawler, obviously congressman from New York, went on FOX News and brawled with Tommy Lahren over the Dignadotta Act. We've seen some of these flare ups, particularly with Lawlor, who seems to be happy to go and defend this bill, but it's starting to cause a real rift, depending on how serious it is. And you two may have interesting insights into that. Is this just something that's circulating or is this seriously on the table for Donald Trump? I've heard competing points on that. So let's watch the clip. This is again, Mike Lawler, Sunday on Fox News, S4.

Mike Lawler (14:43)

I have always said I am against illegal immigration. I have always said I want secure borders. I want people to come here legally and lawfully. TPS is intended to be temporary, primarily related to humanitarian relief. And in the case of Haiti, it has been significant. They've had multiple earthquakes and hurricanes. They've had political unrest. You have gangs in charge of the entire country.

Rachel Bovard (15:11)

But correct me if I'm wrong, it

Inez Stepman (15:13)

sort of sounds like you're saying that

Rachel Bovard (15:14)

we must keep the world's people protected in this country until the world's problems are solved or until we go and solve problems of other countries. You said that we need to manage the hemisphere. We need to fix Haiti before the Haitians go back.

Mike Lawler (15:30)

No, President Trump is saying we need to address the problems in our own hemisphere. The State Department itself is saying it is unsafe on the ground. In Haiti, you have over 100,000 people, people working in our health care system to support Americans. This is not like they're just sitting here doing nothing.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (15:52)

Okay, so that was actually about the TPS that was extended for Haitians by the House of Representatives. Now, Lawler has also been brawling. I think it was most recently with Laura Ingraham over Dignidad, which is technically a separate bill. Daniel McCarthy wrote it, quote, makes a joke out of Trump's efforts to deport anyone who's in this country illegally beyond the illegal populations that get amnesty. This time it sends a message that anyone who wants to break the law to come here in the future will probably get amnesty sooner or later, too. And I just want to say that's exactly what we heard in his clip defending TPS for Haitian migrants. Little bugaboo, a lot of the Haitian migrants, if not most of the Haitian migrants that came over during the Biden surge had not lived in Haiti since the earthquake in 2010. They were living middle class lives, fairly decent middle class lives in Argentina, Brazil and other places, Mexico, Tijuana. Some of the Haitians that I spoke with and they literally just wanted to come to the United States. They were like willing to sleep on the streets and give up those middle class comfortable lives in other countries because they wanted to come to the US that badly. But they were like not in Haiti. They were not in like war torn, war ravaged Haiti. So Rachel, let me start with you. Given your Capitol Hill experience and you work on Capitol Hill, is this is Dignidad serious? What were they doing? Is the TPS vote a sign that Digna Dot is serious and there could be amnesty coming down the pike soon?

Rachel Bovard (17:15)

I always take it seriously because this has always been the bottom line divide in the Republican Party. And it's, oh, it's why, you know, the power of Donald Trump and his rhetoric and his mass appeal got us to this point where we could do a significant number of deportations, we could encourage self deportations, we could do all these things. But at some point there was going to be part of the Republican Party that was going to say enough. And it was always going to be big business, which you've seen them at the White House, you've seen them lobbying across the government for expansions of work visas. And it was always going to be kind of these, the sort of sob story elements, which TPS is a huge one, right? And the joke of tps, you know, even though it's a serious program, is it's not temporary. People know this. You know, Trump, to his credit, has ended it. He's ended it for Venezuela, for a number of countries. But there's always been this belief that if you can get a TPS classification, Temporary Protected Status, which comes with a work permit, that you are in the end going to be either be given some sort of legal status or TPS will just last forever. And some of these programs that Trump ended did last for decades. But this has always been the fundamental divide in the Republican Party. And honestly, it is probably the biggest issue in which the elected Republicans diverge from their base because for 30 years more than that. At this point, base Republican voters have been voting for what Donald Trump ran on in 2024 and in 2016, which is enough, enough unfettered illegal immigration, maybe even tamping down on legal immigration. Get, you know, these, these work visas under control. All of these things are, are what Republican voters have been asking for, not amnesty. And yet every single time the Republican, the elected class of Republicans says, hey guys, what about amnesty? What about that? And every time, like, we have to, we have to take it seriously because it's so predictable. And so I don't think it's something you can turn your nose up at because every election cycle, every midterm, this, this is a discussion Republicans always have.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (19:23)

Yeah. And as the suspicion is actually that Trump endorsed Maria Alvarez Salazar after she advanced Dignidad, which people are saying, well, is that a signal that Trump has been positive about this, that Trump wants to make some sort of deal on this in his first term, he was open to making a deal on DACA with Nancy Pelosi. He said that they were openly negotiating over that. It never actually happened, if that's comfort to anyone. But do you think that, I mean, the House passed this on Thursday. They passed the TPS for Haitians extension for three years. Obviously that means a lot of Republicans voted for it. So do you agree with Rachel that it would be foolish to rule out something like this happening?

Inez Stepman (20:04)

I'd be very surprised if Donald Trump renegs on the central premise of really all of his presidential campaigns. Rachel's right that this is a long term issue for the Republican base. But she's. I don't want to say wrong because I'm sure she.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (20:18)

Say it. What I'm about to say it. Say it.

Inez Stepman (20:21)

It'll figure out, really. I'm sure she agrees with the extension I'm about to make, which is it's not just the Republican base. Immigration restrictionism is very popular and has been very popular with the American people, at least restrictionism on the restrictionist side of the policy that we have had for the last 30 years, for the last 40 years, it's incredibly popular, even with independents. It's more popular with Democrats than you might imagine. There are plenty of Democrats who also believe that we need to restore some kind of rule of law, that even legal immigration has gone too far in recent years and we need to have some kind of slowdown and let the republic digest culturally some of these issues. Look, if we're going to have TPS visas for Haitians for as long as Haiti is a sorry to quote Donald Trump here, an asshole country, right? We're going to have it forever. Haiti has never basically since independence been able to govern itself without mass bloodshed and serious political turmoil. So I mean, this is just another. I can't believe the Republicans, honestly, I mean, I can, but I can't believe that Republicans would fail to read the room in this way, that they would think that advancing amnesty at this point when the Republican base has been loosey in the football for 40 years on immigration plans. And let's not forget the Republican base, even the Republican base forgetting it for a moment about where independents have been headed. The Republican base was very reasonable about this question for a very long time. There was a Reagan amnesty. It was supposed to be paired with enforcement law and an end to the flood of people. It was supposed to be, that was supposed to be the Lucy and the football deal. And every single time, as Rachel said, right, that the deal is, yeah, you'll get some enforcement, it'll come after, but in the meantime, let's allow people to continually come to the United States with very little betting. I have one more point to make about this, which is that overall the Trump administration has been the reason I'd be surprised if Trump capitulated on this is that the Trump administration has been incredible on immigration and not just on restoring order in the border. They have been denying all kinds of visas from H1B to State Department visas across the board. It has gotten much, much harder to get into the United States legally and much harder to stay in the United States illegally. And I think that's a very good thing. Overall, he has been delivering on this promise. If he reverses himself and what the administration is doing, I think that would be a very bad move. But I really, I, I don't, I hope that won't happen. I don't believe that it will happen.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (22:51)

So the center for Immigration Studies, which is obviously a pro legal immigration, I think that's how they describe themselves, very anti illegal immigration. Conservative research group on this says that basically 4% of the population of Haiti came to the United States in a two year period during Biden. I mean that's how significant these numbers are. Additionally, Dan McCarthy on the Dignity act says it would grant legal status to as many as 10.5 million illegal immigrants while expanding eligibility for yet more newcomers to receive temporary or permanent visas. And Rachel, one of the things I wanted to ask you about that Lawler clip is generally I try to read between the lines and here he's as is anyone's job I suppose, but he was particularly citing health care workers. That sounds to me like he's getting lobbied. Like they're like, calling up his office and being like, list we will. The elderly will be in dire straits if TPS isn't extended.

Rachel Bovard (23:49)

That was the biggest giveaway of the entire clip where he said the quiet part out loud, which was, yeah, I mean, like, we can't deport that our entire healthcare sector, you know, all of the assistance that we have from them. That's because at the end of the day, that's what this is. It's an economic argument, and it's always been an economic argument. We cloak it in humanitarian language to make ourselves feel better about it, but it's an economic argument. And I think what, you know, I want to take Inez's white pill, that the Trump administration is not going to step back on this. But the thing that gives me a little bit of pause is that, you know, we are back to the rhetoric of we're only deporting criminals. Right. We're not doing necessarily mass deportations, although I would give them a ton of credit. Right. We are far and away better. And I think Ryan Graduski makes this point. There's been so many deportations and self deportations that it's actually going to impact the census and that's going to have huge long term ramifications, which is great. But they are dealmakers, this administration. They're dealmakers. And you've seen employers already at the White House, you've seen Big Ag at the White House getting expansions of H2A visas and some of these, like, you know, worker category visas, and that's what they want. We also haven't seen a lot of employer enforcement and.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (25:00)

Right.

Rachel Bovard (25:01)

Ultimately, like, if you want to get rid of the, the pull of illegal immigration, which is that employment, you're going to have to start enforcing unemployment sites. And we saw that at the beginning of the Trump administration, but they've since backed off it a little bit. So I think we're in a sort of liminal phase. I hope we come out at the right end. Trump sometimes does this thing, I think, where he throws out tests, you know, into the ether, kind of what feedback comes back. And so I hope that he's getting robust feedback that, no, no, Donald, that's not what we want.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (25:31)

That's so true. That is such a good point, like a trial balloon to see if there's any way that this could move the needle in a positive making direction for him. And it's really Gotten tough coverage on Fox. Laura Ingram's made a point of giving it tough coverage. Obviously, Tomi Lahren, you saw it in that clip, has done the same. And as I'm trying to rage, bait you here with this research from Pew that came out late last month, about 9% of US births in 2023. So this actually lags the full Biden surge because that's still in the middle of the Biden surge. So in 2023, our most recent numbers, about 9% of births were to unauthorized or temporary legal immigrant mothers. So non citizens, people without permanent legal status. These are not even people with permanent legal status, like Greek. These are temporary legal immigrant mothers or unauthorized. They're illegal, documented. However you want to put that one in every 10 babies that's born essentially in 2023. I'm sure that number shot up in 2024, maybe 2025. It might dip. I don't know where it's going to go amidst the deportations. Obviously, people have a higher birthright in some of the countries that come to the US but that is utterly unsustainable. And that is a crisis the likes of which the media was entirely, entirely ignoring for the better part of the Biden surge.

Inez Stepman (26:52)

Yeah, I mean, that's national suicide because we're not even talking about the sort of slow cultural change that we have, a high level of legal immigration. We're talking about here. I saw this number circulating in an even craz, crazier way that, that I was skeptical of initially and had to look into it and show, yes, this is, this includes the huge number of illegal aliens who are here. That's what, what the bulk of this number is made up of. Because when I first read this number with the headlines around, it was like that 9% of our births are the equivalent of Chinese birth tourism. That would truly be. I mean, anyway, that's hard to believe. That has been. Yeah, that has been circulating online and that is not true, fortunately. But this is still like a jaw dropping number and it's something that's unsustainable. It's the reason that the Trump administration has teed up this case. I don't think they're likely to win, but has like, will maybe make some ground on birthright citizenship. I like birthright citizenship. I think birthright citizenship is a unique feature of mostly New America. Right. It's mostly America and Latin America, South America. This is something where we're divorced from the old world. We have changed our citizenship rules for good reasons from the European citizenship rules. But this is an abuse of the system. And I'm hoping that there will be at least a decision from the Supreme Court that even if it strikes down what Donald Trump's done specifically with on birthright citizenship in terms of executive order, will leave open the possibility for Congress to regulate. Now we know how, you know how Congress works, and Rachel's rolling her eyes at me right now, but at least you know, to be able to leave the possibility that this is not a constitutional question because there's no reason for it to be a constitutional question. Around the edges, we have this Wong Kim Ark case from the 19th century on green card holders. We, we have a footnote extending it to people who are not legally in the United States have never supposed to be here. In, in the United States. It is crazy to continue to extend citizenship to people who are never supposed to be here, the children, people who are never supposed to be here. And in addition, people are who are here for a week to have a C section in some island, which apparently is like doing this as, as its main source of economic, you know, it's his main economy is having Chinese women fly in, stay in a nice hospital, have a C section, get American citizenship for their children, and then fly back. These are people who are not only not domiciled here, they have no intention of ever domiciling here, they are merely abusing the birthright citizenship of the United States. And this is obviously something that is untenable long term.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (29:25)

Well, in the, the Chinese birth tourism has gotten some attention in the press recently, but it's obviously not relegated just to Chinese birth tourism. I want to put this Theo Wald post up on the screen. This should be F13. He's reacting to a truly wild New York Times story. And we're going to get into the story. I want to get into the story. I'm excited to get into the story. But just to tee it up here, what Theo noticed, he says the New York Times tells us the story of an illegal alien couple from Honduras who are expecting their first child after being deported last year due to a charge for drug possession. They snuck back across the US Border, which is a felony when you sneak back across the border after deportation to ensure their son would be born an American. They were then deported yet again, but their son is now an American citizen with the same rights as you and I. And Theo says this is why the Supreme Court needs to overturn birthright citizenship, contra Inez's point. But you don't even have to agree with birthright citizenship to see the obvious abuse here. Let's put the New York Times headline up on the screen. It's. She made sure her baby was born in American. Then federal agents separated them. It reminds me so much of the New York Times's major profile that we covered here on the show in November about how, quote, thousands of undocumented workers rely on fraudulent Social Security numbers. The headline of that story was, two men, one identity. They both paid the price. They both paid the price. So technically true. Egregious framing. Egregious framing, Rachel, to the story of this Honduran woman who I'm sure wants the best for her child. Her baby is super cute. This is not any way to run a country.

Rachel Bovard (31:09)

No. And it's like, oh, then they. Then they were separated. Well, what did you think was going to happen? Like, you. You broke the law not once, but twice to have a baby in a country that you. You illegally entered. And then, you know, the laws enforced in a way that you don't like, and somehow it's. It's a massive humanitarian crisis for the New York Times. You know, I don't. I don't have an educated legal take like Inez does on. On birthright citizenship, but I think from a philosophical standpoint, it's like, look, what does citizenship mean in America at this point, Right. If you have Chinese women who can fly in and, and transact for it, then it is a. It is a privilege that is for sale and which means it is no longer a privilege. It's just for the wealthy. It's just for people that can transact in it. And, you know, it goes to, like, what is being an American really mean at the end of the day? What are. What. What are my. Are my rights so sacred that people go die for them? So some, you know, Chinese birth tourists can also birth a baby with the same rights as they raised them in Beijing. It just.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (32:06)

People deported for drug possession.

Mint Mobile Advertiser (32:08)

Right.

Rachel Bovard (32:08)

No, this is the thing. It's like, whatever. The Supreme Court, whether they overturn it or not, at least clean it up, right? Like, this is point, not a way to run a country. You. You culturally can't coexist with people who haven't bought into the. The American project. If they're going to treat it as such as basically a transaction or something that they can commit a crime. You know, to have your son here and then, you know, be on the front page of the New York Times about how your rights were somehow, you know, trampled upon.

Inez Stepman (32:36)

It just makes sense because, yeah. Jump in and say the same People who make these arguments also say there's no ideological content to citizenship. Right. There was the Shadi Hamid piece, I don't know, two, three weeks back in the Washington Post about how immigrants have no obligation to. To assimilate or. And he was talking about Muslim immigrants in particular. But these people, when they're talking about birthright citizenship, they say that it's. It's just, you know, about where you were born and not, you know, and. And that anybody can become American. And they almost make an ideological argument about it. Right? Like anyone can come here and become American because we're about ideas. But then when you actually push them on the ideas, they say, well, actually. Actually you don't have to agree with any of the ideas. So Rachel's right. At that point, if you've closed off both avenues of what citizenship actually means, either it's about where you were born or it's about the creed you hold. Right? You've closed off both avenues of having any content in what citizenship or the being an American citizen actually means. And so these people are sort of, in some sense, they're neither creedal. They're neither in favor of the creedal name nation, nor are they the. The blood and soil or the. The Julie nation. That. That, by the way, that's how every nation in Europe operates. It's not scary, it's not weird. It's the way that every European nation operates. Right. So they. They sort of close off the meaning of both of those things at the same time, and they hope that you don't listen to them talking about both of them in the same conversation. Right. Because what's left is nothing. There is no content to American citizenship whatsoever.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (34:10)

Yeah, that's an important point. And it's. None of us is saying these stories are not heartbreaking and awful. What we are saying is that the United States has an incentive system that is making these stories more and more common. That is needless. There's absolutely no reason for this to be something that people can do to abuse the system or try because they think they'll have a good chance because the goodwill of the American people is. Is constantly being extended because Americans are wonderful and. And know that many of us came from immigrant families. Probably not Rachel. She was probably like a Mayflower East Coaster.

Inez Stepman (34:50)

No, no, I still remember our Thanksgiving discussion. Right. Rachel is a. I apologize on Thanksgiving. Italian invader who has. For Thanksgiving.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (35:00)

Oh, my gosh, I forgot. Yeah, I forgot about that. Okay, well, this is depressing. And as. Do you have a prediction about what happens Obviously, the Supreme Court is considering birthright citizenship right now, so could get a ruling on that as soon as, what, June? So did you, based on oral arguments, feel they were going in one direction or the other?

Inez Stepman (35:21)

Well, I think conservative media has sort of downplayed the uphill battle that Trump has. Right. Because it's not just about arguing that these obvious abuses need, you know, need to sort of exist outside of the constitutional understanding of birthright citizenship. He's also doing this by executive order. Right. And, and so there are two layers to this argument. There's a very easy out for the court to essentially say, well, you can't do this unilaterally. You can't do this by regulatory means. You have to actually go through Congress and change the law if you want to, because Congress apparently has has ratified, quote, unquote. So it actually duplicated the language of the Fourteenth Amendment again in the 19th, 1950s in immigration legislation in terms of birthright citizenship. So arguably, Congress has already spoken and, like, duplicated the language and didn't change anything, which you could argue that means that they basically bless this situation. So what I'm looking for in this decision is not so much that the Trump, complete Trump triumph on what he's actually arguing, but one, how many of the justices actually buy into a, a constitutional view of birthright citizenship that is a little more narrow than it has been since the 1960s? Meaning excluding the children of illegal aliens and excluding the children of birth tourists are things that are on the table for Americans to decide about without a constitutional amendment. That what I would consider that a victory, because you have to remember I was, I went back and listened to Akhil Amar, who's one of the foremost scholars on the 14th Amendment. He's on the left, but he, he has worked plenty of times and with Federalist Society. He's not like some, you know, sort of guy who's out there on a limb. And even he, a mere five years ago was calling this a complete crank position that had absolutely no backing in law. And now we're looking at it getting maybe three justices of the Supreme Court fully signed on. And then maybe like, I imagine this opinion is going to have concurrences and dissents and, like, a million different, like, features to it. So it's not going to be a clean decision. But I think it's a starting place. And what I would like to see is leaving that open, at least leaving the question open for the American people to decide, hey, do we want birthright citizenship to include Chinese women who Fly to an island for C section tourism? Do we want it to include millions of people against clear indication from the American people who are let across the border by Joe Biden and just released into the interior of the country, who are illegally in the country? Is that what we were thinking about as citizens? Is that what we want our citizenship to mean, that somebody can, as in your example, flagrantly violate the law twice in order to abuse that system? I think I would like. I would consider it a soft victory in the Supreme Court if we leave that question to the American people and not constitutionalize it and make it impossible by virtue of requiring a constitutional amendment.

Rachel Bovard (38:14)

So we're left with having a functional Congress. Well, that's dark.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (38:18)

Yeah. Rachel's like bleak. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back, obviously with Madonna's 67 year old legs. Why not hang in there? If you're listening to this, don't worry, I will describe those legs. So stay tuned. 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 back doors 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. Well, Unplugged set out to do something about it. The upphone by Unplugged is the smartphone designed to restore your rights 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 unplugged@unplugged.com Emily. That's unplugged.com Emily. Welcome back to Afterparty. I'm joined by my friends Rachel Bovard, vice president over at Conservative Partnership Institute, and Inez Stepman, legal analyst at the Independent Women's Forum. Independent women, I should say. Now I know everybody canceled their plans on Saturday Friday, whenever this dropped the Alibi Stuckey versus David French debate on relatable with Alibeth Stuckey over at the Blaze. Everyone dropped their weekend plans. Am I correct?

Rachel Bovard (40:29)

Naturally. What, what else do I have to do?

Inez Stepman (40:31)

I just love David French's voice. I want to listen to it. I know that I also have an irritating voice, so I'm not a hypocrite in this. But like, David French's voice is not. He really. He has a voice for tv.

Rachel Bovard (40:44)

Well, you forget about it too because, like, you look at him and he's like a, like relatively like tall stature and then you just, you're used to the written word and then you hear him speak and it's like, ha. It's like, it's a little much.

Inez Stepman (40:57)

There are better guys whose arguments are, you know, I don't find them convincing in either format, but it's worse when he says it out loud. Better in a written format, I think, than there are people who are the verse, by the way.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (41:11)

So David has written before on Ali Beth's Toxic Empathy book and others have advanced similar theses to Ali Beth, basically. And she's been on the show before. But basically the way that empathy is weaponized to elicit toxic outcomes from people of goodwill who are trained to rightfully be empathetic to their fellow man. And, and David, as I think the three of us would all agree, given a very uncharitable version of Elipeth's argument when he has argued against it in the pages of the New York Times. Now, if you have no context on who David French is, he worked for. I think he actually worked for fire right. And as financial rights expression. I think maybe he also worked with ADF or for ADF at one point. Alliance Defending Freedom. Anyway, he's, he's been sort of a constitutional, constitutional lawyer for 20 plus years, probably closer to 30 years at this point. Was with National Review for a long time. Kind of a stalwart of the conservative movement. Seen as somebody who was a defender of conservative values. Very, very anti abortion and forgot failed

Inez Stepman (42:24)

presidential candidate or attempted presidential.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (42:27)

I did forget about that. I did forget about that.

Rachel Bovard (42:29)

I forgot for.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (42:31)

I'm just realizing what, what a get for Ali Beth to have former presidential candidate David French on the show. Great point, Inez. Now his. He was getting. He was very anti Trump, very never Trump 2015, 2016. He got lots of hate for it, as did most people who were anti Trump, never Trump and people who were pro Trump. For what it's worth, in 2015 and 2016 it seems to have permanently colored his view of the right in a way that's made him, rendered him relatively incapable of open mindedness and charitableness towards his alleged former conservatives. He took a job at the New York Times where he now kind of writes splains evangelicals for a secular liberal audience. And Saurabh Amari, my editor over at Unherd, famously had this piece called Event against Frenchism that went mega viral in 2018 and 2019. They debated. It's a long story. And if you're outside of the conservative movement, it's really in the weeds. But what you need to know is that David French, I'll put it this way, basically does the bidding of the left for the pages of the New York Times in spending most of his precious ink going after conservatives and in very uncharitable ways. And that's happened with Ali Beth. So in this conversation, Ali Beth called out David French for his writing in the paper of record, if we could still call it that, on her argument. So let's take a listen.

Ryan Reynolds (43:58)

In the articles, I'm talking about not just your book, I'm talking about other books. I'm talking about all sorts of stuff.

Mint Mobile Advertiser (44:03)

The phrase toxic empathy, you said, for example, in 2025, you said, for example, if people respond to the foreign aid shutdown and the stop work orders by talking about how children might suffer and die, then they're exhibiting toxic empathy. That's not what I say toxic empathy is.

Ryan Reynolds (44:18)

Well, it's absolutely what I see a lot in the public discussion, that this has been a cultural phenomenon, especially in parts of like what I would call MAGA Christianity, that if you talk about human suffering that results as a product of policy, that the reference to human suffering is referred to as, well, that's what toxic empathy is.

Mint Mobile Advertiser (44:39)

But if someone used for the title of a book or for the name of a concept, toxic love, to describe, for example, the overbearing love that a mom has for his son so that he has a failure to launch, you would understand what they're talking about and you would understand the point that they're trying to make, that they're not saying that all love is bad, that there's actually a healthy way to do it, but that it's turned toxic.

Ryan Reynolds (45:01)

I have seen you online talk when people talk about the plight of others, the plight of immigrants, et cetera. I have seen circumstances where you bring up, then again, this example of, you know, what we were talking about with toxic empathy. And I think that maybe.

Mint Mobile Advertiser (45:14)

Can you give me an example?

Ryan Reynolds (45:15)

I Don't. I don't have your Twitter feed in front of me.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (45:20)

Okay, perfect. Mr. New York Times walks into elaborate studio preparing to cook. Not prepared by the way, she has her notes in front of them. Presumably he could have had notes of these tweets that he found so egregious in front of him as well.

Rachel Bovard (45:35)

He could have looked it up.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (45:35)

Well, there you go. Could have looked it up. So Rachel, to me this is so similar. I mean I've seen this happen to so many people over the years where it's like he clearly had come to Alabeth's work with a closed mind. And his flamboyant announcements of quote, toxic empathy, the title of her book where he would invoke her name were clearly about tone policing Christian conservatives in the pages of broadly secular center left newspaper. Which is if that's how you're using the arrows in your quiver as a, as a writer, as a Christian writer to do that and, and then not even to be charitable to your, your fellow Christian, your fellow conservative, your fellow countrymen, but to have them act as though you're the one with the moral high ground when you're the one who's lacking the open mindedness to take seriously somebody. It's sort of like Rachel, maybe that's the best way to put it. He just finds Ali Bestecky icky now because he is no longer has to go and, and lower himself into the conservative movement. He's up in Manhattan working for the New York Times. He lives in Tennessee, but he writes for the New York Times, so he doesn't really have to deal with the icky cultural conservatives.

Rachel Bovard (46:53)

What David Frenchism amounts to now, the David French of the New York Times is that the left deserves every ounce, every benefit of the doubt you can possibly muster. But maga Christians, well, they deserve generalizations and ridicule. And that is how he walked into that podcast studio. And every argument he made was from that position. And I will say his argument that compassion and kindness and empathy required in, in political discourse. Like I don't disagree with that.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (47:27)

Exactly.

Rachel Bovard (47:28)

Yeah, but to David French they are.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (47:30)

But that's in her book.

Rachel Bovard (47:31)

Well, right. And he never gets to the point where these are necessary but not sufficient. And that's been Ali Beth's entire point. And he never acknowledges that his, his end all be all, his entire political purpose has devolved into, well, is this nice enough? And I think you get to it now where he like refuses to even called James Talarico not a Christian right.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (47:55)

He said that's what he said. But that's. And this was another part of their debate, actually. I wrote it down because I remembered this as I was listening to it at one point. They are. He's. He basically accuses her of being emotional and not intellectual, which was another one. I'm sure he would call that sexist if someone else was doing it, which

Rachel Bovard (48:12)

is so funny because it was reversed.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (48:14)

But, yeah, yeah, hilarious. Okay. But then he also moved the goalpost from saying that. He was like, I'm not going to sit here and claim that James Talarico is not a Christian. But what Ali Beth was arguing is that he had called James Talarico, like, a model Christian.

Rachel Bovard (48:29)

Yeah, no, and I think it. There was that. And I think it's fascinating because even the atheists, right, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens could look at James Talarico and be like, yeah, that guy's probably. That guy's not a Christian. Because, you know, basic things like believing that Jesus is the exclusive way to God, like, basic Christian beliefs he doesn't believe in. He's a universalist. Like, he doesn't even believe that, you know, Christianity is the exclusive path to heaven. So, like, the atheists probably have a better bead on James Tall Reko not being a Christian than David French, which is very ironic. But I also found it really interesting that the focus for Ali Beth was much more, it seemed to me, on, you know, natural law issues like civilization, foundational issues like, you know, marriage and. And gender and biology, the things that you build a society around. David French was more focused on, you know, foreign policy, you know, and issues like that.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (49:25)

And he literally cited Ukraine. It was his first. It was like when he was talking about why he voted for Kamala Harris.

Inez Stepman (49:31)

Right.

Rachel Bovard (49:32)

And I think that that's, again, the fundamental divide between where David French sits and where a lot of conservative Christians sit. They just look at these. The disintegration of what the French and the left will dismissively call culture war issues. And they're like, no, these are the foundations of civilization. And if you cannot get human dignity, right, if you cannot get the. The sanctity of life, right, if you cannot get basic, you know, things that the society built itself on, then we're doomed. We are sawing off the limb that we're sitting on. And, you know, that's why conservative Christians engage these issues. And David French, again, just is. Resorts to calling them bigoted or hateful because, again, for him, feelings are the end all be all, where the rest of us are like, yeah, you should be nice about it. But truth is truth and feelings are necessary, but they are not sufficient in these arguments.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (50:20)

That's a really good way to put it. Inez, I want to roll this Kamala Harris conversation or bit of their conversation and get your reaction to it on the back end.

Ryan Reynolds (50:27)

I had two motivations in supporting Kamala Harris. One, she had multiple policies that I felt were much more in line with foreign policy, wise foreign policy, rule of law, et cetera. Much more in line.

Mint Mobile Advertiser (50:39)

From her history, what rule of law looks like. It means targeting pro lifers, the very pro lifers that you have defended in court. Kamala Harris would go after. She did. I mean, under the Biden administration, she did. As AG of California. She did. Like, her history is lawfare against pro lifers. So when you say the rule of law, are you only talking about J6ers? No, I'm talking about these pro lifers, The Trump administration. Administration.

Inez Stepman (51:03)

Pardon.

Mint Mobile Advertiser (51:04)

Praise God.

Ryan Reynolds (51:05)

Yeah. There were a lot of things about Kamala Harris in. In normal circumstances, that is not somebody that I would consider voting for, but against this particular president, who had both transformed the Republican Party in a way that I find to be just morally abhorrent. And then the migration of Democrats to be stronger against Russia than the Republican Party, to be stronger on public corruption than the Republican Party, in my view, they were moving towards me in some pretty important ways. And the Republican Party has been sprinting away from my conservatism, just sprinting away. Fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, national security conservatism.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (51:46)

My brother in Christ, they covered up Biden's senility for years. But, yes, the. Okay, and as. Give us your take, please. I'm. I'm eager to hear it.

Inez Stepman (51:56)

David French might be the one exception to what I generally refer to, I guess as Inez's rule, which is that people always fall down on the side of their cultural commitments in every political split right. So libertarians, so often, even though they center, to use the leftist phrase, they center limited government and low taxes, they will always come down on the side of social libertinism, because that's actually more important to them. David French made his bones in the conservative movement, not only defending cultural conservatives in court, but also repeatedly writing. I remember encountering David French's writing for the first time when he wrote against integrating sex, integrating, you know, military units, and why that was a bad idea to have men.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (52:42)

He's a veteran.

Inez Stepman (52:43)

Yeah. So, you know, he was a social conservative. And I guess, you know, the caveat to the Inez's rule about people always ending up on the political divide that happens to align with their cultural commitments is you can just abandon your cultural commitments, because that's what he's done. I mean, somebody really. And people have done this and side by side of all of the beliefs that he's renounced over the years because. And it is. It is that Donald Trump ability to draw out his opponents and just make them sort of humiliate and renounce everything that. That they've ever stood for, because Donald Trump has done it. And that's, you know, that's. That's the real problem here. I'll say one other thing about this, and then I said something similar about Bill Kristol, which is that this. This game of being the conservative who denounces the right. It's not that you are obligated, because you're on the right, to always and forever agree with everything that any Republican president does on. I certainly haven't myself. I've criticized Donald Trump. I've criticized previous Republican presidents. I've certainly criticized Republicans in Congress. It's not that you're obligated forever to sort of tie yourself to the mast at every single one of their beliefs, but once you start finding those leftist mainstream papers and start the game of essentially selling your voice to condemn conservatism, being the conservative against the right, I only have one warning for all the people who do this, because there's a lot of examples of it. There was one in New York magazine just, you know, whatever, like, a month or two ago, about condemning the women who are leaving the New Right or whatever. The first time you open the kimono is the one they pay you for. And everything else is of diminishing returns. Okay?

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (54:25)

You.

Inez Stepman (54:25)

Your career trajectory is very similar to that of porn stars, all right? It's really the best. The first time that you do it, and then you're just repeating yourself and debasing yourself more and more, and you have to, like, renege on more and more of your former beliefs just to stay relevant, because your entire, like, purpose. The New York Times doesn't care about what David French thinks about 90% of politics. They care about the 10% of his politics. Right? That has to do with condemning the right. And the second that he finds himself repeating himself in those condemnations, he will become useless to the New York Times. That is actually what they're paying for when they hire him. That's what, you know, Anna Navarro's entire career is about. And I just. I think it's A very limiting one. I actually don't think you get a lot of intellectual independence or security or honesty out of people, because once your paymasters just want you to condemn the right, you're just stuck in your own kind of private, you know, endless hell of future, you know, degenerate acts and denouncements. And I just, it's never the right way to it do it is going to the New York Times is never the right way to deal with your disagreements with the right.

Rachel Bovard (55:34)

Yeah, I mean, you're left with a David French who, you know, supports Kamala Harris because of the money that she wants to send to Ukraine while she's putting pro life grandmas in jail and suing nuns for not buying birth control.

Inez Stepman (55:47)

I mean, he was a social conservative.

Rachel Bovard (55:49)

That was his, that was his identity,

Inez Stepman (55:51)

writing about putting the nuns in jail. And in fact, he was fighting in the four corners of court, which, by the way, I knew that David French's worldview, this is before, like, I had deeper disagreements with him, but I just, I always knew that he doesn't understand something outside of the four corners of the courtroom because he was able for the straight face. And this is, you know, I don't know, five years ago, seven years ago, at the height of censorship and where you have 65% of students on campus saying they, like, they won't speak their views in public, you know, reaching Soviet levels of newspeak and double speak and not being able to, like, express your opinion. And he had the gall to say that this is the golden age for the First Amendment. And it's because he had won a few of these court cases, which literally universities would turn around and ignore until they were sued again and settle for 200k, which was worth it for them to continue violating your constitutional rights endlessly and just settle with the one kid who went to fire or whoever and had, you know, David French would call that a W and mean, in the meantime, it was literally the worst environment for free speech or for the First Amendment, in my view, in American history. And because he had such a blinkered view of what was going on. So I, I, you know, that's my real big beef with, with David French is that he, he is blind to everything outside of his small bubble and he just continually demonstrates it. And this is another one, another demonstration. But I, I still, I still, it still pains me to hear David French say certain things because I used to read him and respect him, and it still twinges me to hear him sort of sell out his previous beliefs like this. Because he doesn't think he has like, he thinks that we're all just a bunch of whatever it is the opposite of empathy. We have no empathy at all. We've just decided that we don't care about babies halfway across the world. Like, that's how he, he now orders his thinking.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (57:47)

Yeah, I think that's right. And just to like, kind of say the quiet part out loud is that it becomes, I think we all suspect that the more plaudits you get from elites, as a conservative who's often been ostracized by those very elites, the more tempting it becomes for the David French of the world to give in to those plaudits. And even as somebody who should have, as most conservatives do, sort of steel themselves from the possibility that that may happen one day, it's interesting that Trump was kind of the breaking point for him, but that's exactly how this goes. Just final thought for me, the against franchism con from Sohrab, which he's, he's has mixed feelings, he's written about, he has mixed feelings on that now. But it was essentially David French became this proxy battle over small l liberalism between liberal and post liberal. And French was raised up as this example of liberalism, conservative liberalism, that was content to fail gradually because it was principled and saurabh at the time. And the post liberals were really inspired by the against David Frenchism column because. Or they were galvanized by that column because they said that's exactly the perfect illustration of what we've been talking about. He's also a good proxy for struggles in evangelical Protestant world that have really, they predate Trump, but they have really fallen around along Trump lines. And French is with the kind of Russell Moore camp on, on those questions. So he's not, you know, an insignificant, random New York Times columnist. And I think he, he really got cooked by Ali Beth, which was to see her, her level of preparation and her, her ability to just absolutely take apart his arguments gracefully was a wonderful thing. Now, and as mentioned, open kimonos and pornography. So we are going to talk about the Sabrina Carpenter Madonna set at Coachella on Saturday, which was good. We had already canceled our plans to watch Ellie, Beth and David so that we could segue right into the Madonna Sabrina Carpenter Coachella set. Let's take a look here at a little bit of the video from the set. I think this is when they were performing Like a Prayer. Now, Madonna has been really excited because she put out a statement saying, quote, that was such a thrill for me. So you can imagine what a thrill it is for me to be back 20 years later in the same boots, the same corset, the jacket I had on earlier, the same Gucci jacket. So it's like a full circle movement moment. Very meaningful to me. You can see that they're basically wearing the same outfit. If you're in the listening audience, they're basically wearing the same outfit. Sabrina Carpenter is who I think is in her 20s is also in the like corset situation. And Madonna, we should mention is 67 years old. So first of all, let me say good on Madonna for looking like that. At 67, body wise, her face looks a little. It looks rough. And I just say that in reference to the amount of work and surgery that's needlessly been. Been done on a very beautiful woman. Why? Why? I mean, I've seen the, the media celebrating this all day. I don't think anybody wants to see Madonna.

Mike Lawler (61:07)

Am I wrong?

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (61:08)

Does anybody Want to see 67 year old? We do this every time Madonna comes out in a skimpy outfit. But here she's like intentionally talking about replicating her outfit from 20 years ago at Coachella. Intentionally on stage looking like Sabrina Carpenter. Who wants it? Who is this for?

Rachel Bovard (61:24)

I'm not really sure, but like not you, I guess. No, not me, but no, to your point, like clearly doesn't skip leg day at the gym. So like props. But she's unrecognizable, right? Completely. And I think we've talked about this, I think the three of us before, but there's this fear of looking like your age or aging into sort of the modern sort of older woman. And Madonna is peak this. I mean, at 67, wanting to look identical to. How old is Sabrina Carpenter? Like 26, 27.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (61:59)

Yeah. Here, let me look it up.

Rachel Bovard (62:00)

I mean it's. That's like a. It's pathological at this point. And, and her face is just. I can't. It's whoever 26. Yeah.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (62:08)

Should. She was born in 1999.

Rachel Bovard (62:10)

Okay, well that. You didn't have to say that out loud.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (62:14)

I was speaking of women aging

Rachel Bovard (62:18)

well.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (62:18)

And as it strikes me as Rachel says, that actually that Madonna is very intentionally trying to draw this comparison based on her statement between herself and Sabrina Carpenter. Like that is sort of the point of the shtick. Right?

Mint Mobile Advertiser (62:34)

You asked who this is for.

Inez Stepman (62:35)

I think it's for Madonna. Right. I mean, isn't that obvious conclusion here we have a real issue moving in the different stages of life. It's a little bit cliche at this point. But moving from maiden to mother to matriarch. Right.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (62:53)

We don't have Shout Out Louise Perry.

Inez Stepman (62:55)

Yes, exactly. We, we don't have a script for moving beyond the sexual power of a woman at the peak of her sexual appeal, which is, I'm sorry to tell you, 25 or 23 and it's not 67. And you have to. I think that all becomes much less scary, at least in, in some ways. I mean, look, the scary thing about aging is that we're all like decaying and dying and we'll be in the ground. That's, that's, you know, the really just you and me and as should be afraid of Emily is a youthful flower.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (63:32)

I'll be at your funerals, toasting.

Inez Stepman (63:35)

But in terms of moving through those stages in your life, I think they become. Not that it's pleasant to, to say goodbye to certain things and sure it's sweet to be in your, your twenties no matter what, but you know, you, you lose the fear of those things because you replace it with the responsibility and with wisdom. And what we've seen is especially, I have to say it, I'm, I'm, I know that bashing boomers is once again a cliche, but especially with the boomer generation, we've seen the inability to let go of being it. And by the way, millennials are going to be just as bad. We're going to be awful. It's going to be just a toddler tantrum about how 60 is actually the new 25. It's going to be this.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (64:19)

But they're be doing proms at the nursing home.

Inez Stepman (64:22)

Yeah. There is something deeper about it. The inability. Nobody likes to age, but the total inability to accept getting older and that you're, you're sort of satisfaction and meaning and joy in life should come from other roles other than the maiden, the sexpot, whatever, is. Yeah, it's not pleasant. And I frankly, I think it terrifies younger women too about getting old. When they see older women trying to cling by the skin of their, you know, teeth and by like their claws. Right, their well manicured claws to the vestiges of a youth that has clearly passed them by. It just, it's, it's desperate and pathetic instead of what it should be, which is you should see contentment and wisdom in exchange for getting those wrinkles. And we just don't see that anymore. And that makes it very terrifying more than even it should be.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (65:14)

Well, and Rachel, it's, I think the big challenge of the next century of human life. Is going to be accepting limits where they're necessary, determining the limits of humanity that make us better, even if they involve some measure of suffering. Right. Isn't that what we're. I mean, this is silly. Like, it's Madonna wearing a corset at Coachella. But that's the transhumanist. You know, that's, that's hypernovelty. That's transhumanism. And that's basically what every new technology right now, as it moves faster, the rate of change gets faster and faster. That's what's. It's demanding that we confront.

Inez Stepman (65:47)

Yeah.

Rachel Bovard (65:48)

I mean, it's all, you know, it is at the end, transhumanism. But it comes in the form of biohacking and, you know, optimizing and everything. Every element of your aging process can be optimized so that if you, you, you know, do look your age, if you do have wrinkles and gray hair and that you've done it wrong because there are a million ways that you don't have to look like that. And I think that, you know, and I think that's a little bit of what Madonna is doing, right? When Inez says it's for her, well, it's for her to flaunt it too, in front of every other 67 year old who doesn't look like that to say, like, you know, look at me, I've done it. Right. And there's a little bit of that, like, I don't know, in your face vibe about it. But it is like, from a philosophical standpoint, it is about how do you, you know, accept the process of moving into these different phases of your life without excessive implementation? Excessive, you know, again, optimization. Are we a species to be optimized? Or what is, you know, being a human mean at the end of the day? And that's the question that the transhumanists are forcing us to grapple with, which again, is a little bleak.

Inez Stepman (66:55)

Just to pick up on what both Rachel and Emily, you said, look, Madonna just doesn't want to get older. We can all understand that. There are a lot of people in Silicon Valley and I think, Brian Johnson, where you grew up, they don't want to die, okay? And they believe that they're going to accomplish this by whatever, some stack of vitamins. They're, they're not just not going to get wrinkles, right? They're not going to die. And I, I wrinkle to inform everyone, I'm sorry, you're going to be disappointed if that's your goal in life.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (67:26)

Yep. You're setting yourself up for that one.

Inez Stepman (67:28)

Setting yourself up for failure on that one.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (67:30)

Don't want to spoil it. But yeah, that's. No, I think that's right. Like the. They're trying to make transhumanists out of all of us, but without getting people even to identify with the name transhumanism, they're trying to just normalize transhumanism as part of our culture. And I think they're doing a really good job. Now, some of it, like, is understandably, people can put wrinkle reducing face cream on whatever, but obviously that's where the challenge comes, is where to draw the line. I want to give a shout out to you guys. As some of our viewers may not know. You all have study hall in the morning at like 8am They're 14, right? Yeah. Because I know you're like, maybe they're like, what are they, like 20, but they're actually 14, and they took time to stay up late. I guess you guys probably already finished your homework.

Rachel Bovard (68:20)

Yeah, we're really wise teenagers here.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (68:22)

Onto us.

Inez Stepman (68:25)

Oh, well, thank you nicely to all the other shows where you call us old repeatedly.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (68:32)

Yeah, you know, that's. I thought tonight I should try something different. Rachel Bovard is vice president over at Conservative, the Conservative Partnership Institute, and as is a legal analyst with independent women. It was so great to have you guys back. Come back again soon. You're obviously the most frequent guest at this point, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Rachel Bovard (68:53)

Always have to be with my favorites.

Inez Stepman (68:54)

We'll always answer the call. Emily.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (68:57)

Yes. Queens. All right, you guys, go get some rest. Go get some rest. Okay? We'll be back with more in just one second. Oh, I can't take myself seriously sometimes. All right. One of the best ways to just relax at home, especially after a late show like this. You're wired. You want to go to bed. For me, at least it's cozy Earth. If you haven't tried their robes or slippers yet, you're missing out. Their robes are super, super soft. They're great for those slow mornings, great for after a shower or even just relaxing at night when you're trying to decompress and fall asleep after a long day at work. The fabric is very breathable, lightweight, and incredibly comfortable. A lot like the sheets, too. It's the kind of robe you put on and immediately feel more relaxed, which I love. And their slippers be the best part. They just slip on instantly. And they have this plush shearling lining with very supportive footbeds so they're warm, comfortable, and also easy to wear around the house all day. Now, with Mother's Day coming up, Cozy Earth makes an amazing gift. Look at that. It's something your mom will actually use and appreciate every single day. So here's the best part. Cozy Earth backs everything up with a 100 night sleep trial and a 10 year warranty. So you 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 this show. All right. Lest it seem like I'm obsessed with Coachella, I should mention I don't really care about Coachella. I've never been to Coachella. But what Justin Bieber's been doing. Steve Krakauer is correct. Producer Steve Krakauer is correct, is fascinating. Steve is, is one of Megan's amazing producers and is one of the best in business. He, he pushed Bieber and here we're going to talk about Bieber and I'm happy to do it because I'm not a believer. But obviously Bieber's like roughly my age. He might be. It's like I was realizing today that Zoron, Justin Bieber, Charlie Kirk, actually they're all roughly my age. There's something right now where people born in like 92, 93, 94, like peaking coming into their, their power, I'm sorry to announce, including me, obviously. Here I am peeking and coming into my power. But Justin Bieber was at Coachella week two doing these really interesting sets where he's basically on his laptop, he's bringing up guests as well and doing different kinds of performances. But he's also going through his own music alone on stage at a table with his laptop in front of the Coachella crowd. Super interesting. He brought Big Sean up on Saturday. I think of Bieber. I always have thought of Bieber as kind of a tragic figure because you could tell immediately after he got really, really famous being discovered on YouTube, by the way, that it was going to be difficult. That, you know, even in the, the best of family situations, it would be enormously difficult. We still don't exactly know what Justin Bieberhood's youth was like, which is interesting because we saw so much of it, we gawked at so much of it, but obviously there are things that were happening behind closed doors that we don't know about, obviously. He also denies that what people suspect about Diddy potentially abusing him. He says that didn't happen. That is a mystery that we may never solve, but just one piece of this puzzle that we don't have in front of us right now. What was happening behind closed doors. Just as a person who was experiencing this transition from monoculture to microculture in real time, which is what happened in the last, what, 15 years as Justin Bieber rose to fame and stated just about as famous as he's always been. So he's now a father and a husband. Let's take a Look. He's. He's 32. Let's take a look at how Big Sean addressed him on stage at Coachella on Saturday.

Big Sean (73:11)

You know, God has his hands on you. I think I speak Revlon, I just gotta say so.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (73:17)

Thank you, bro.

Big Sean (73:18)

Cuz in directly or indirectly, I think you taught all of us to believe in ourselves. You taught us all, showed us what purpose was. I'm not trying to name your albums, it's just a coincidence, but when you look at your family, you know, I've seen your beautiful child,

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (73:38)

your wife who

Big Sean (73:40)

loves and supports you so, so much. Your family, you know, you're, you're blind behind the miracles you've seen. You're like me and you live in faith, bro. And I just got to say, I'm so proud, cuz I've seen a lot of the things you've gone through. I have. You know, I've seen you at times where it wasn't always beautiful, but you fought through it. And in a world where everyone's trying to take over the world, you give over the world, bro, people are taking advantage of you. They have taken and taken and never once have you turned into them.

Inez Stepman (74:11)

Sean, that, that was, that was beautiful, bro.

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (74:14)

Thank you so much for saying those words, man. That means a lot to me. Now, what you saw behind Bieber, if you're listening to this, what you saw behind him was a pause YouTube video on the giant, surely multi, multimillion dollar Coachella screen in front of thousands of people. It was something as simple as literally Justin Bieber having paused himself, he was screen sharing his laptop with the YouTube still behind him. As Big Sean addressed him now Bieber, the particular significance of him going through like he's just looking up himself on YouTube and going through his own videos. The significance of him particularly doing that, he was discovered in the early days of YouTube in the period of democratization that led to the microculture. Right. He is somebody who bypassed the traditional gatekeeping system. And I think it was right Scooter Braun himself was trawling YouTube for new talent and found Bieber. The point is that Bieber himself was discovered in one of these new mechanisms where people could go around the usual pathways to success. You know, going through the farm team system basically and playing all these particular clubs, meeting all of these, these people. He really was just a little kid on YouTube who had a really sweet voice. And from there it was history. This image stuck out to me. I want to put this one up on the screen. This is. I paused the screen at one point while I was watching the Beaver Cella set and I saw this picture. Now again, if you're listening to this, what I'm looking at is an ocean. This is Bieber at a table performing at Coachella with his laptop in front of him and a camera woman in front of the laptop. Kind of looks like he's on a zoom video. He's singing. And you see in front of him a sea of hundreds of iPhones. So they're at Coachella now. You have. It's almost like giving me chills to think about. I don't know why, but it is. People experiencing Bieber through their screens, recording for posterity. And Bieber himself is looking at his own screen. I think he's watching the Beauty and a Beat music video here, which obviously had Nicki Minaj in it from like 13, probably 13 years ago, somewhere around there, 2012, 2013. And. He's watching himself on a YouTube video as people take videos either for YouTube for their own consumption, all through iPhones. And now actually some people are filming music videos on iPhones now. When Bieber became ultra famous, the entertainment industry looked very, very different. The Hollywood Reporter had a big tick tock piece on the process that changed everything. Since 2014. They wrote a piece basically surmising that 2014 was the year that monoculture died. And I want to put this up on the screen, a chart from that article. This is the award show audiences since 2014. If you look at the Oscars, they were in 2014 at 43.74 million, roughly 44 million people. They're now at 17.86 million. That's still a good number for the Oscars, by the way. That's how far the entire linear television industry has plummeted. Grammys are down from 28.5 million to 14 million. That audience has been cut in half since 2014. And interestingly, the Hollywood Reporter wrote this piece. As you can see now on the screen around this hook of the selfie, Ellen DeGeneres you may or may not remember this took at the Oscars in 2014 with Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Kevin Costner. I'm just realizing. Or I'm sorry, Kevin Spacey. Not Kevin Costner. Apologies. Kevin Costner, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep all squeezed into, maybe Channing Tatum all squeezed into this selfie. And it was a really, like, dumb joke, if I'm remembering correctly at the time. It was like, extremely cheesy and, like, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. But it's not crazy then to look back at 2014 in particular, which is about halfway into Justin Bieber's career as a time when YouTube itself just changed everything forever. Forever. And Bieber's career is cut in half by that. So he also reminds me a little bit of Lena Dunham. And hear me out. Her new book is called Fame Sick. We talked about this last week. Famesick is a really good way to describe what happens to celebrities. I don't know if it's an original Dunham or not, but it's actually a really good way to describe what happens to celebrities who are never, ever normal again because they have been irreversibly thrust into the upper echelon of recognizability and cultural influence. They've put their stamp on history. And obviously, we know some celebrities kind of fade into the background and, you know, become D listers, if anything, like Z listers, really, who nobody recognizes 30 years down the road and nobody may know Justin Bieber's name 100 years from now. I don't know, maybe 10 people who are, like, super into music history will know the name Justin Bieber 100 years from now. Or maybe many. Maybe he'll be like Mozart. Maybe Lena Dunham will be like Shakespeare. I don't know. I mean, I think I do. But the point remains that their power will obviously fade, but not in their lifetime, significantly. Right. They're always. There will always be celebrities in their own lifetimes, and they can never get away from what's been done to them, which has included both riches and all of the many problems that come with them. Bieber obviously seeks consolation or comfort in Christianity and in his faith also, I'm sure, in his music. And Lena Dunham does it in her writing. But you have millennials whose lives just were. Whose lives in the public eye were cut in half by the transition from a time when a good Oscars rating was around 50 million people in the country watching to a time when it's like 20 million. The first time I noticed this, I wonder if I can pull this article up was with Billie Eilish. It's funny because Eilish was a believer. Bieber bought Eilish, brought Eilish up onto the stage in this really kind of sweet moment on Saturday. But yeah, here it is. Okay. Oh my gosh, I just found this article. I have a very vivid memory of writing this article. This is from April of 2019. That pop up ad, by the way, that just showed Molly Hemingway. She's on the show Wednesday, so that's a good reminder to tease. I wrote this in April 2019. In the era of niches, pop culture is starting to feel more mysterious than ever. Specifically because I was looking at what was going on with Billie Eilish and at the time I wrote Old Town Road is the top song in the country right now. Billie Eilish has the top album. We still have decent metrics for measuring the popularity of music, but the waning importance of radio means listeners can scatter and the gatekeepers have less control. Does Eilish, for instance, enjoy the same level of celebrity someone of equal accomplishment would have had 15 years ago? I don't know. They're SoundCloud stars, Instagram stars, YouTube stars, Twitter stars, TikTok stars. Some artists like Eilish and Lil Nas X transition from success on a platform like SoundCloud to broader reach. Bieber is also a really good example of that with YouTube. And this is when TikTok is new. I wrote TikTok has its own celebrities. So do YouTube and Instagram. We'll always have George Clooney and Lady Gaga, but it almost feels like we might be lurching toward a future with fewer superstars and more stars in. The monoculture still has, you know, a sort of pulse. A lot of people know who Sabrina Carpenter is, but I think the point stands that it's a little like Sabrina Carpenter. Just as much as people in Gen Z know Sabrina Carpenter, the whole country knew who the pop stars were in the 80s and 90s, right? Like Madonna being a really good example, standing there next to Sabrina Carpenter. And now in the influencer economy and with total democratization with, you can just see those award show, award show ratings are just such proxies for the entire industry and how those numbers are down. Success now comes at a much, much lower level. This is even at the box office. I'm putting this up on the screen. You can see box office numbers are down. So this is the domestic box office by year. Last year was like around 9 billion. But it was reliably higher than that in the years leading up to Covid. No huge surprise on, on that front. But the numbers are just down across the board. Basically most watch TV series. This is a really good window. Big bang theory 2013 to 2014, 23 million for seven day viewers. Right now it's tracker. 14 million. 14 million. Again we're talking about almost a 50% decrease here. Even when Roseanne was doing really well. 2017, 2018, that was 20 million. So already decline of like 3 million from you know, 5 plus years ago with Big Bang Theory and now it's down. The biggest shows today are down so much lower. So we don't share a culture anymore. Bieber is. Sabrina Carpenter will never be as famous as Justin Bieber was and probably will continue to be just because he's recognizable to people across so many demographics, given where he came from. That's not to say Sabrina Carpenter isn't popular kind of across the board with many different demographics, but not in the way that recognizability of Justin Bieber was and will continue to be. And I just think that's true. I don't think that we will, I don't know that we will ever see a Justin Bieber again. And I don't know if he, he was in this time period where you could kind of have the old guard gatekeeping you a little bit like publicists and agents. But also when social media was becoming really popular, people had smartphones and could take pictures of him with his when he was speeding in his car or whatever it was. I mean we've all seen. Didn't he like piss in a mop bucket and say f Bill Clinton at one point in la? Pretty sure that happened. Unless it's a dream I had, which is even more concerning. But I'm pretty sure TMZ got video of that like around like 2012 somewhere in there. But you know the point when you're a celebrity, the Panopticon is more aggressively conspicuous. And it's, it's really, I think Bieber right now what we're watching is him try to come out on the other side of that. And we've seen this happen with celebrities before social media. Obviously there are tragic instances like Marilyn Monroe and at the time, you know, film and television, even radio were fairly new. Basically happened in the lifetimes of the people who made Marilyn Monroe famous. So there was a grappling with it then and now it's just constant exposure and you can't put the genie Back in the bottle. And I think what we're seeing is Bieber actually inspire other celebrities to deal with that. I feel like part of what Big Sean was saying was, was rooted in that there's so our digital footprints. And if you're somebody like Justin Bieber, you've just been on camera basically constantly in a way that even Marilyn Monroe wasn't because of smartphones, because video is our medium now. The, the print based epistemology, as Neil Postman has said, it's faded into the background. We're now in the, the algorithmic. The social media. Algorithmic social media based epistemology, which means that most people's encounters with Justin Bieber are now through social media and have been for many years. And that's a really unhealthy place to be. And I think, think what we're seeing with him is somebody who was like a guinea pig in the experiment and other people really respect him for going through that. And I don't know that everything's great. He, he seems like he's in a nice marriage and has a wonderful baby and is doing okay. I don't know, hope for the best for him. But obviously he. And when you look back on it, it's like he was, he was the guinea pig in an experiment that just put him as the frog in the boiling pot of water. And we can look back at it now and be like, that must have been incredibly difficult. And it seemed difficult at the time, but not in the ways I think we're starting to fully understand, which is that camera phones and algorithms and the sharing that happens on social media. I mean, if I'm remembering correctly,

Inez Stepman (87:40)

if

Host (Emily Jashinsky) (87:40)

I'm remembering correctly, there were at the time social media, like social media posts about his relationship with Selena Gomez. For people who were involved, like all of that, it's just a thing that people now post to the public. It's part of the culture he's really been through, through the ringer. And I think to see him, it was a really smart move for him to. It was controversial at first. Like people were disappointed in the set, were like he's not putting in enough effort. But to see him kind of replicating what probably he does sometimes in quiet moments alone, which is go back and, and look at himself and look at his own growth because so many of our own lives are on camera, especially if you're a celebrity. To see that like he is, to see that, to experience that and to do it on stage in front of so many people, it's basically what he's been doing forever. But now these people were like right in front of him and in person and they were there with him for those moments. So really interesting stuff from Bieber. Really interesting stuff from Bieber. Very mature moment from Justin Bieber this weekend. I hope we see more. It's kind of meta, right? But I hope we see more along these lines. All right, that's going to do it for me this evening. Thank you so much for tuning in to After Party. We'll be back on Wednesday with a great of piece. Molly Hemingway here live at 9pm Eastern. Please do subscribe if you haven't yet. It does really help us keep our independent journalism going. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We're grateful to all of you for watching. Emilyoublemaycaremedia.com is my actual email address. You can reach me there if you have any comments or questions for happy hour. We'll see you back here soon with more.

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