Ryan Grimm (2:34)

That's right. Yeah, yeah. Burning it on both ends.

Emily (2:38)

I was gonna say. I don't know if we've ever done something that early in this light, so this is a first.

Ryan Grimm (2:43)

There you go. Yeah.

Emily (2:45)

I wanted to talk just a little bit as we started, just about, I mean, how Drop Site came to be, how you ended up at Breaking Points. There's a lot of talk right now about msnbc. In fact, we covered it on Breaking Points this morning. Becoming Ms. Now, talking about themselves as independent and insurgent and against corporate media. But once upon a time, Ryan, you were a contribut msnbc and you've been in this business a long time now, but mostly in new media. I mean, even when Politico was new media, you were at Politico. So tell us about the path kind of to, to Drop Site for you. As you look back on it now, that dropsite's about a year in the works.

Ryan Grimm (3:23)

I mean, if you. I mean, I'm so old that MSNBC was new media when I was getting into it. Uh, yeah. And then I also started at, at the Huffington Post in like basically end of 08, early 09, before they were basically hiring journalists. I was, I was basically the. It was the first reporter they'd hired who already had a job doing reporting at that point. Sam Stein was already there, but they had hired him out of journalism school. He's now editor of the Bulwark. He's doing great. And that, so that, that thing, you know, as you remember, like you were in college then, right? Or not yet, but.

Emily (4:09)

Dangerous question.

Ryan Grimm (4:10)

We're headed towards college.

Emily (4:12)

I may have been around the college age frame.

Ryan Grimm (4:14)

Yeah, that like there, you know, there was a period during the Obama years where the Huffington Post was, you know, dominant when it came to kind of setting the tone for like whatever we decided to put up on our, what we called the Splash. They still call it the Splash. The, basically the banner image, it was, it was a, it was deliberately mirroring Drudge. An hour later or maybe two hours later, you'd see cable start to cover it. Like you could just, you could just watch it happen like clockwork. And we knew the cable producers, like, they were, they were watching Drudge and they were watching HuffPost and, and that's where they took Their directions, which is kind of a wild thing to think about. And then. Yeah, so then after Trump won, I end up over at the Intercept, which is where I was when I started doing breaking points.

Emily (5:04)

I would.

Ryan Grimm (5:05)

I would fill in for Crystal back then.

Emily (5:07)

It was rising.

Ryan Grimm (5:08)

Still do, right? Yeah, rising. Then it was rising, you know, whenever she needed to take a day off or was needed to take a week off.

Emily (5:16)

Crash a golf cart. Yep.

Ryan Grimm (5:17)

Crash a golf cart. Did you ever. Did you ever fill in? Because I. I would only be a side saga then because they wouldn't both be gone at the same time, right?

Emily (5:26)

Yeah, I filled in a bit for saga, like maybe once or twice, but we didn't start hosting together until they left. And we were temporary, but really liked working together. And that's been, I think, four years.

Ryan Grimm (5:38)

Five years, something like that. Yeah. I remember they told me two weeks, and I was like, okay, same. Yeah, I can do. I can do two weeks.

Emily (5:47)

But see, the breaking points to dropsite pipeline, or the rise in a breaking points to drop site pipeline, I think is important because I bet when you were thinking about leaving the Intercept, it was on your mind that something had fundamentally shifted. Even as someone who was in new media, it felt like being at breaking points. We felt, I think earlier than a lot of people, the floodgates had totally opened.

Ryan Grimm (6:12)

Yes. And also around that time, you start to see social media failing in what it used to do, which was, like, where people talked about news and distributed news articles. Like, at the Huffington Post, the rankings would always come out from Facebook, and we'd be, you know, we'd always be fighting to be at the top of the most shared articles. You know. What's his name from.

Emily (6:44)

Ben.

Ryan Grimm (6:44)

What's his name?

Emily (6:45)

Oh, Ben Shapiro.

Ryan Grimm (6:45)

Yeah, Ben Shapiro. He's. He'd always be up there, and we'd be up there.

Emily (6:51)

But.

Ryan Grimm (6:51)

And it was like the main source of traffic for news sites. And then around, yeah, 2015 or so, they literally started paying news organizations money to make video. And you started getting this giant pivot to video, I think the Huffington Post, the first year, they gave him like a million dollars. It was like a disastrous, like poison chalice, because then they got. Then they're like, out. This isn't working anymore. After the. After Trump was won, they basically closed off news. Like, you know what? Forget this. This is. This is a mess. We're so. Let's just not do news at all. And so then there's still Twitter by 2020, but you could see that fading, and you could also see people.

Emily (7:39)

It Lost its greatest poster by early 2021.

Ryan Grimm (7:42)

Right. And it wasn't. People weren't. Right. He'd been kicked off and people just weren't reading it like they used to like it. It. I. I'd like to go back and like in the 2010s, like, you, writing mattered. Like, you know, you, you had all those kind of sharp, like, Gawker style.

Emily (8:08)

The personal essay boom.

Ryan Grimm (8:09)

The personal essay boom. Like, stuff read and people enjoyed reading. You don't get that much anymore. Unless. Unless I'm missing it. I think with an audience like we, we still send out our stories by email and that's a way to hit people that are like 40 and up and they still read. And that's great because I think if you're not reading and writing, like, you're not. You, you're not thinking like you're. You're fundamentally losing something about what it is to be human. At the same time, I think that, I think the loneliness crisis and the like, collapse of community played into, you know, the rise of YouTube because, like, you know, this, these shows become companions for people and it becomes like a stand in for socializing. You don't have time to socialize, but you're stuck in the car. You know, at least you can, like, get a facsimile of it. So, yeah, that. So all those things combined. We're suggesting that, like, if you want to continue reaching people, you're going to have to do it in a different medium.

Emily (9:20)

Yeah, that's really interesting. I saw a Pew survey today, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to ask you about this, that found 49% of people who responded thought that journalists were losing influence. And the survey was questioning members of the public basically on what is a journalist. And there was a lot of disagreement about whether someone who sends out a newsletter or makes videos on TikTok or whatever is actually considered a journalist. As a podcaster, a journalist. And I think you and I, I mean, my, my simple definition of a journalist is anybody who is engaged in the. And is the one who is, you know, communicating the news. So you're not in the business side, but you're communicating the news. And the news is new information. That can be new analysis, it can be new opinion. But that's sort of the way that I think about it. How are you thinking about what a journalist is and whether journalists are losing influence or whether our definition of journalism is just expanding or contracting right now? Yeah, you're on TikTok.

Ryan Grimm (10:16)

Yeah, exactly. I think it should I think it needs to expand and it needs to include anybody who has an audience. And I think that's a key point of it. Like, if you're, if you don't have an audience, you can do journalistic activity, but, like, it's not really, you're not really doing journalism. You have to create the newspaper or the news or the podcast or the.

Emily (10:39)

Show or Jimmy Costa, hardest hit.

Ryan Grimm (10:42)

They gotta have something. Like, you have to, have to have people reading it or, you know, the tree falling in the woods. But I, I think that the people. And if you're talking about news and if you're sharing information, you're a journalist. And I do think all of our, all of these comedian buddies of ours have to understand that. Like, and if, if you're gonna be presenting news, if you're going to be a source of news to people, that doesn't mean you have to follow all of the different, like, co. Like ethics that are written down in, like, the AP Style Guide.

Emily (11:18)

Do you have an AP Style Guide next to you? Is that what you were reaching for?

Ryan Grimm (11:21)

No, I was knocking the cat off the shelf. I actually just did.

Emily (11:25)

I thought you were reaching for an AP Style Guide, but instead it was your cat.

Ryan Grimm (11:29)

Wait, I literally did stumble on an AP Style Guide the other day.

Emily (11:32)

Ancient. Now you can just ask Grok. I just realized that, like, even I'm young and even I had to pull for an AP Style Guide when I started, but now you could literally just type into Grok, what's AP style for this or that.

Ryan Grimm (11:45)

And there's a 80% chance Grok will tell you the truth.

Emily (11:49)

69% chance.

Ryan Grimm (11:52)

So, yeah, so those are, those are journalists. And also I, I think about this too, in terms of First Amendment, like the First Amendment, that freedom, Freedom of press is in there, but so is freedom of speech, and freedom of speech. And it doesn't say freedom of the press. It only applies to licensed journalists. Like, it applies to everybody. So we want all, we want those freedoms and we all need to protect those freedoms. But then if you're part. Then if you're going to accept the privileges of those freedoms, there's some responsibility to it too. And so you have to, Then I think just, just, you have to just absorb that. Like, yeah, you call yourself a comedian, but, you know, you're, you're getting like, you're sharing news with people, right?

Emily (12:37)

Yeah.

Ryan Grimm (12:37)

No, I mean, so you gotta, you gotta try to be, Gotta be, try to be as accurate as you can is what I would mean.

Emily (12:44)

It seemed like that hit Joe Rogan, at a certain point. Remember he said about a year ago that he was pausing, like he wasn't going pedal to the metal on politics anymore. And he seems to get really uncomfortable with having to talk to candidates. And I don't know when it hit him. I think the Bernie Sanders thing hit him really hard. And you were kind of in the middle of that. Like, you literally wrote a book about. It's right. The covers are behind you. It's called the Story.

Ryan Grimm (13:06)

I got a couple pages on that.

Emily (13:08)

Yeah.

Ryan Grimm (13:08)

On that moment.

Emily (13:10)

And. And that was fleeting, though, because the demand is really there for podcasters to have these conversations. And the left right now is waking up to the reality that there's an audience, there's an appetite among just normal people, whether they're independents or swing voters who want that. They just want. They want that blend. Which is weird because I feel like news used to be much more segmented. It was, you know, you got your political at the top from Cronkite and then you moved on and then the local was after what. But people obviously want that. And it just, to me is sort of head spinning how Democrats went from almost canceling Bernie Sanders, fully canceling Joe Rogan, and almost canceling Bernie Sanders for talking to the guy, to now desperately trying to figure out how to recapture that.

Ryan Grimm (13:57)

Right. But not him.

Emily (13:59)

Yeah, of course.

Ryan Grimm (13:59)

Although there are some. I've noticed media matters lately, if you've checked their Twitter feedback.

Emily (14:06)

Hmm.

Ryan Grimm (14:07)

They will. They will take a Tim Dillon comment and clip it and share it.

Emily (14:12)

Interesting. About, like, negative about Trump, something. Yeah, very interesting.

Ryan Grimm (14:16)

Which, which in the past they would not have done because they would. The left generally would say he endorsed Trump, therefore he's a bad person, therefore anything he says is bad. Anybody who shares anything he says is also bad. So they would just completely cordon it off. So the fact that they're now sharing it, I think shows that that rubric is broken down and they're like, oh, we actually need to engage here. This whole thing where we tried to completely cordon things off and shut down debate and cancel everything outside of this narrow bound, that didn't work. It doesn't mean they have principle, Principled objection to it. But it didn't work. So now, so. But it's smart. Like, like, you know, a drop our dropsite at our feet whenever any of those popular figures say anything about, you know, restraining American adventurism abroad or, or, or talk about how awful things are in Gaza, like, we clip it and share it. And as a result, like the More people are aware that, like, there's this deep view in this podcast world, whereas, like three, four years ago, nobody would do that because you're like, yeah, they're, they're bad, they're bad on this. So we can't. If you elevate them now, I would do it and like, Glenn would do it, but, like, there wouldn't be a enough of a, like, concerted effort.

Emily (15:52)

Well, that was actually what I was going to ask you about next, because if you spend enough time in journalism in Washington, D.C. you kind of lose your, I mean, you're in a bubble, even if you try to get out of your bubble. But I feel like your background has been particularly helpful and you've been in a lot of spaces where, you know, conservatives definitely are not overrepresented, that's for sure. But you've probably seen part of the reason, which is because class dynamics and as the parties and the class allegiances have shifted, that's really affected newsrooms. But I feel like you, I mean, you grew up on the Eastern Shore and this is, this is just like, this is your life. This is not that dissimilar from you. No offense to Sam Stein, but you talked about him being plucked out of J school and going to the Hut Post. But that's, that's a lot of people's stories. And I guess I'm curious, Ryan, if, as you think about it, one of the reasons you were sort of ahead of where some people on the left are looking at now, like pod, Save America guys, for example, is your own, your own background and your own understanding that for a lot of people, institutional trust is, is so low that they consume their news, I think partially from like an Andrew Schultz or Joe Rogan, because they just can't stand the sight of a guy telling them this is the way the world is when they don't trust him.

Ryan Grimm (17:08)

Yeah, that could, that could be some of it. Yeah. Because the, the place where I grew up, there are tons and tons of right wing people who were also good people, even though they're wrong about X issue. Almost like most of the issues, all the same things. I'm wrong.

Emily (17:27)

Yes, yes.

Ryan Grimm (17:29)

Although back then they were even like, you know, they're for the first Gulf War. They're for the, that's when I was in seventh grade, I'm like, what do we go, go to war with Schwartz? Was it fifth? Was it fifth grade? It's like, what do we, what do you mean? What, what Kuwait have to do with us? What are you talking about? There was a lot of Moral Majority stuff. It felt even more salient almost. Even though.

Emily (17:56)

Yep.

Ryan Grimm (17:58)

You know, now they've actually gotten Roe and. But like, at least where I was, like, the Moral Majority community was. It was like dominant. And I hated that stuff. But I like the people, so I. So, yeah. And also then I always hated, you know, not hated, but like, you know, I was one of those people that thought both parties were awful. And I mean, I still think both parties are awful.

Emily (18:28)

I was going to say.

Ryan Grimm (18:28)

Funny to put that in past 10. Also ahead of the game, I do think. I don't know. They're both pretty terrible. Good Lord. And so when I came into covering politics, because I was like, yeah, I wasn't liberal. I was like, left. Ironically, a lot of the Republicans in Washington were able to work with me better, probably because I was like, I wasn't supporting Democrats either.

Emily (18:57)

Right.

Ryan Grimm (18:57)

I didn't like either of them.

Emily (18:58)

Right.

Ryan Grimm (18:59)

I remember talking to one guy in Boehner's office when I was thinking about going from Politico to HuffPost. I was like, you guys still going to talk to me if I go over to HuffPost? And he's like, graham, we've always known you're a communist. What are you talking about?

Emily (19:17)

That's awesome.

Ryan Grimm (19:19)

Yeah. All right, I'm doing it.

Emily (19:22)

And there was, you know, like five years where nobody laughed at that stuff anymore. But you wrote a book. We were just talking about the Squad, the book that you wrote. But you also wrote a book called We Got People. And that's particularly why I wanted to bring up this really deep New York Times investigation. I actually knew I could ask you about this because I saw the tab open on your computer earlier this morning. I was like, oh, Ryan, read that. And this is F3. You can put it up on the screen. A post from Tom Bevin of Real Good Politics, who quotes this Times article that reports the Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls. Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections, and often by a lot. That four year swing toward the Republicans adds up 4.5 million voters. A deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out of. And I think we have a forum map. Yeah, this is the map of changes in registered voters. Just really, really stunning how you see the upward trend for Republicans and the downward trend for Democrats. So, Ryan, I imagine your take on this is that it's Democrats or Maybe it's mostly because Democrats have given the middle finger to the left and the movement that you've covered for years. I just will preface that with this quote that Matt Bennett, a Third Way, gave Axios yesterday, saying that what the Democratic Party needs is, quote, combative centrists. So it is a little bit of an oxymoron. They need centrists who talk like populists is what I think they mean by that. It seems to me like that's a recipe for more of these types of problems. But what is your take on, like, actually what's happening on the ground? I mean, I.

Ryan Grimm (21:03)

Hey, I'll take that. I'll take combative centrist, because they would get trapped, actually, I think, in their own rhetoric. Because if, like, there is no such. That's an oxymoron. There's no such thing as combative centrism. And if you're going into combat, so either that means they're going to go into combat with the left, which is Third Way's historic approach to politics. But the last three, four years, they've actually dropped that and started to try to work in coalition with, with the left, Third Way in particular, and combat Republicans. And so if, if they actually do.

Emily (21:44)

That, did that start during the resistance, like 2017?

Ryan Grimm (21:49)

Yes.

Emily (21:50)

Interesting.

Ryan Grimm (21:52)

Ish. It took a while for the hurt feelings about the whole Bernie Hillary thing to work its way through. But Third Way is. A lot of Third Way's shop comes out of Schumer's office. And Schumer. Schumer made a turn after 2018, and now what he's done the last couple years is different. But from 2018 on, like, Schumer was, like, he wanted Keith Ellison. He endorsed Keith Ellison to be DNC chair. Like, he put Bernie Sanders in Senate leadership. He had like, 10 guys in leadership out of 50 senators.

Emily (22:39)

Everyone gets a trophy.

Ryan Grimm (22:40)

Everyone gets a trophy. But still, like, like Mark Warner, like, had a conniption fit, like, so it was, it was like, meaningful on that level that it caused problems. And, and Third Way, at that round that time starts working in genuine coalition and friendship with the, with the Bernie wing. And so if they then start talking in a combative way, like, at some point they're going to have to pick a villain. Now it'll, it'll descend into, you know, partisan silliness because, like, Third Way is also funded by, like, Big Pharma and, like, so they can't, they're not going to pick, like, the normal villains that Sanders would like to pick. But still, if that if, if all they did is like say mean things about Republicans and they were like a minor coalition party to a Sanders type wing, that's an interesting party, but I don't think they'll actually do that. Like, I think they'll the like if I think that they'll just that not they, but like the broader kind of abundance movement within the party is just going to go back after, do what they're comfortable with, go back after the party's kind of left flank.

Emily (23:57)

Republicans have always been envious of the Democrats ground game. And I think they look at, you know, the community organizing network, for example, like the, everyone remembers the Obama Bill ayers stories from 2008, but that really was the way that people on the right looked at the left's organizing power, that people on the left were more inclined to be activists. Therefore there was this larger network of sort of grassroots door knockers, community organizers on the left that would make sure voter registration, for example, was always ahead of the right. And I'm curious what you make of the New York Times numbers or analysis of the numbers. Is that because maybe there's a shift and you have grassroots populism getting traction on the right? Are Dems doing something to hurt it on their side? Is there something nuts and bolts wise that's happening that we aren't aware of?

Ryan Grimm (24:47)

Well, Republicans were methodical in, in at least two places. And when you talk about, you know, organizing a community and getting them to support a party, it's because, you know, you are doing something for them. You're, you're showing up on a regular basis showing that you're fighting for them, making their lives better. And then when it comes time to go to the polls, they, they go to the polls for you. Democrats had two, you know, major ways that they were doing that for, for their base, for their, for people. One was acorn, which was, which, which organized tenants around the country to fight basically to fight for better, better living conditions, fight for, fight for rent control, fight for better, you know, more tenant friendly laws around what landlords have to do. And then when election time came around, it was a massive voter registration and get out the vote operation because what they were actually improving their material conditions every, you know, on a month to month basis they're like this, this organization is organizing the tenants in this building to fight for these rights and they also want you to vote for these people. And they're like, all right, cool. Nobody else is fighting for us, so we're going to do that. The other was Planned Parenthood Right. Which not, you know, even. Even setting aside abortion services, having, you know, free or affordable care for millions of women around the country was coupled with. All right, now it's, you know, when you, when it's time to vote, right.

Emily (26:40)

You funnel it.

Ryan Grimm (26:41)

We're going to register. We're going to register people to vote, and you're going to go out and you're going to support people who support this. This, you know, healthcare facility. That is one of the only things that's, like doing anything for you. Everything, everything. Everything else in your life is designed to, like, make things harder for you. This is designed to make your life a little bit better.

Emily (27:05)

It's where you get your birth control, it's where you get your OB GYN checkups, that sort of thing. And then you funnel that into voter registration.

Ryan Grimm (27:12)

And so these were two, you know, fundamental on the ground operations that.

Emily (27:19)

The.

Ryan Grimm (27:20)

Party generally had that were making people's lives better and that they could then translate into party registration. And Republicans quite effectively destroyed them both. And Democrats just rolled over on acorn, you know, like, in a really shocking.

Emily (27:40)

And pathetic way, like an early new media scalp. Really. Yeah.

Ryan Grimm (27:44)

Like, James o' Keefe comes out, Andrew Breitbart, and, you know, catches a couple ACORN staff saying, like, embarrassing things, and they shut the whole damn organization down. It's like, what are you. Like, what. What are you doing?

Emily (28:00)

Right. The morally consistent thing for Demps to do would have been to fight bitterly for acorn.

Ryan Grimm (28:05)

Yeah, Fire. Fire. The staff say, like, we're gonna, whatever, whatever's going on here, it's not gonna go on anymore. We're not going to shut this operation down. I think. Yeah. And I think this was 09. So this was Obama.

Emily (28:21)

Yes.

Ryan Grimm (28:23)

I think, showing some real fear around being a black president and, like, the rising Tea Party and like, being just being unwilling to fight for. For acorn. And I think about it, like, he came up, as you said, as this community organizer, and he oversaw the destruction of the most effective community organizing operation that probably was, like, ever built. Like, it, like, any organization that, like, has tens of millions of dollars and, like, operates in, like, most cities around the country, there's going to be some, you know, problems with it. But, like, it's a pretty impressive effort.

Emily (29:09)

It'd be interesting.

Ryan Grimm (29:10)

They just. And they just tossed it in the trash.

Emily (29:12)

Well, I was gonna say it'd be interesting now that, like, Trump actually has been doing disproportionately well for a Republican with Hispanic and black voters. How Dems would handle ACORN if You're registering a bunch of people who are then turning around and actually same. At the same level supporting Dems. I don't know if that's, if that would be what was happening.

Ryan Grimm (29:31)

Well, the idea is they would. The idea is there is a connection between. It was not a coincidence. It was not a. It was not a coincidence that these folks that Democrats were helping make their lives better were then going out. I mean, at the time, you know, you. There's a lot of other things going on that made it easier for Democrats to hold that population. But if, if Democrats had an ACORN like operation that was organizing, you know, Hispanic workers along the Texas border.

Emily (30:04)

Right.

Ryan Grimm (30:05)

They're gonna vote for the. Over. Gonna vote for them.

Emily (30:07)

Right. Or the Nexus is. It's, it's a tighter bomb, a tighter bond, I suppose. Right, that's, that's super interesting. Before you run, Ryan, I do want to get your reaction to this clip of Stephen Miller. So apparently J.D. vance, Pete Hegseth, and I guess Step were out serving the protests here in D.C. you've lived in D.C. for a while. Let's roll S1 and get your reaction on the back.

Sean Davis (30:32)

We are not going to let the communists destroy a great American city, let alone the nation's capital.

Ryan Grimm (30:39)

And let's just also address one other thing.

Sean Davis (30:41)

All these demonstrators that you've seen out here in recent days, all of these elderly white hippies, they're not part of the city and never happen. And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington D.C. are black. This is not a city that has had any safety for its black citizens for generations. And President Trump is the one who is fixing that with the support of the Metropolitan Police Department, the support of the National Guard, and our federal law enforcement officers. So we're going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old. And we're going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington D.C. ryan.

Emily (31:24)

You'Re neither elderly nor stupid. But as a white hippie who lives in D.C. i did want to get your reaction to that.

Ryan Grimm (31:30)

Like, Stephen Miller has been in and out of D.C. for most of his life. What is he talking about? I just googled it real quickly. White population of D.C. is 262,000. The city's population is like 700,000. Like, there's not. None of us. Like, that's, that's like one and three or something.

Emily (31:53)

The city did shift. Like, I think it, it that marker was, was changed. It became not a majority black city recently, like in the last 10 years.

Ryan Grimm (32:03)

Yeah, right, Because. Right. So I don't, I actually don't. What's his point?

Emily (32:10)

You're.

Ryan Grimm (32:11)

That there's not enough. That there's white. There's, like, no white people here. I mean, therefore. Oh, therefore, don't listen to the white hippies.

Emily (32:21)

I guess the white hippies are the ones saying queer liberation is defunding the police. That's a Zoran quote.

Ryan Grimm (32:27)

If they're in dupont, they've been there for a very long time. This is for sure. It's not new. Yeah, well, I don't, I don't. What. What is like, I, I, I just can't believe this guy's not in prison. Stephen Miller. And instead is like, one of the most powerful people in the country.

Emily (32:46)

He would say the same thing about you. This guy's not right.

Ryan Grimm (32:50)

Except the difference is he can, he can change that, like, tonight.

Emily (32:53)

That's a good point.

Ryan Grimm (32:56)

Yeah.

Emily (32:57)

Ryan, I saw you. What did you have? The heady top. Is that what you're drinking?

Ryan Grimm (33:00)

Yes, the heady topper.

Emily (33:02)

That's a good beer. People love that beer.

Ryan Grimm (33:03)

You can, you can only get it in Vermont. I smuggled it down.

Emily (33:08)

Oh. See, this is what Stephen Miller's gonna lock you up for. He's like.

Ryan Grimm (33:11)

He admitted he's been running toppers.

Emily (33:14)

You're just like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but with beer.

Ryan Grimm (33:19)

Toppers.

Emily (33:21)

Ryan Grimm, thank you so much for staying up late. We had an early morning, so thanks for hanging out later tonight.

Ryan Grimm (33:27)

All right, good. Good luck finishing it up.

Emily (33:30)

Appreciate it, Ryan.

Ryan Grimm (33:31)

All right. See you.

Emily (33:32)

So. Yeah. All right, we've got Shaun Davis coming up. Before we get to that, just want to talk a little bit here about Masa chips, which I love so very much. Did you know that all chips used to be fried and cooked in tallow? Up until the 1990s when big corporations switched to cheap, processed seed oils. Disgusting. Today, seed oils make up 20% of the average American's daily calories. Recent studies have linked seed oils to metabolic health issues and inflammation. Masa did something about it. They created a delicious tortilla chip with just three ingredients. Ingredients and no seed oils. Organic corn, sea salt, and 100% grass fed beef tallow. You get the bags, you eat them, they're delicious. And you look at the back and you see there's, like, three ingredients. It's incredible. These chips really do avoid all the bad stuff. And they taste incredible. And that's really the most important part. In my opinion, Masa is crunchier, tastier and doesn't break in your guac. Snacking on Masa chips is nothing like eating regular chips. With Masa, you feel satisfied and light with no crash or bloat afterwards. And the beef tallow really makes the chips satiating so you won't find yourself uncontrollably binging. Still feeling hungry afterwards. I just had some before we went on air. Masa Chips is beloved by tens of thousands of customers and have been endorsed by industry leading health and nutrition experts. So if you're ready to give Masa a try, go to masachips.comafterparty and use code AFTERPARTY for 25% off your first order. That's masachips.comafterparty, and code AFTERPARTY for 25% OFF your first order. Bring Masa chips to your own afterparty. It's a lot of fun.

Ryan Grimm (34:59)

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Emily (35:27)

All right, we are joined now by Sean Davis of the Federalist, my former boss. And you know what, Sean, I still kind of think of you as my boss, to be honest. So thank you for being here.

Sean Davis (35:38)

If only more people in the media understood that we'd have a much better environment.

Emily (35:43)

I was gonna bow to you that.

Sean Davis (35:46)

It is good as good and proper for you to do so.

Emily (35:48)

I think so too. Okay, John, a lot to talk about, but I want to start with Trump's truth social post that has created. If people are sort of in the right wing media silo like you and I probably spent a lot of our time there. But if you are in the left wing media silo, basically all you've been hearing about for the last 48 hours is Trump allegedly saying that slavery is so let's go ahead and put this truth social post up on the screen. This was Donald Trump weighing in on August 19th about the Smithsonian, which he says are out of control. And I want to read this truth in its full context because he says the Smithsonian is out of control where everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been. Nothing about success. And how unaccomplished the downtrodden had been. Nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future. We're not going to allow this to happen. If I have instructed, directed my attorneys to go through the museums and start the exact same process that has been done with the colleges and universities where tremendous progress has been made. So, Sean, this is a New York Times headline, F6 We Can Put up on the screen. Headline, Trump says Smithsonian focuses too much on, quote, how bad slavery was. And that then led to this moment on CNN with Laura Coates and Michael Eric Dyson talking about Trump's fascism. This is us four. Why are we back here with a conversation from the President of the United States wanting to curate red eliminate the history of slavery?

Sean Davis (37:27)

Well, as Professor Naftali just indicated here, the reality is that. That museums are bulwarks against collective amnesia. Fascists are interested in deploying museums as extensions of propaganda. Remember in Italy under Mussolini, that's how the museum was projected to further the notion of Romantica, the Roman ness. And what's happening now is that a president extends that fascist impulse to use the museum as a footstool for his personally chosen artifacts of history, as opposed to the independent, rigorous assessment of what we have in this nation. That's what museums are for, and he is destroying it.

Emily (38:15)

So, Sean, really two accusations there that this is Orwellian and it is racist. I just, I know that I can throw this softball right down the middle for you, and you're gonna smack it out of the park, so I'm just gonna let you do that.

Sean Davis (38:29)

Yeah, I like how his accusation was actually an admission that whole time, like, hey, Mr. Trump, you're not allowed to let your propaganda get in the way of our propaganda. We took over those museums to, like, propagate our propaganda. You're not allowed to go in there and change that up. And the thing that anyone who's literate, who's a literate person and not a moron knows about that truth tweet is that Trump is saying, you know what? Maybe our museum should focus on more than just how awful America has been forever and how America is the worst and it's a bunch of colonial racists, and all they did was slavery this and slavery that. Because if you actually think that's what the full and total history of America is, you're a moron. And so I actually love that he's going in there and saying, you know, What? We should tell the whole story of America. We should talk about the great things we did. It was America, by the way, that ended slavery in the bloodiest war in our history. Cost a lot of lives to do that. Maybe we talk about America inventing the car, inventing the Internet, inventing the plane, going to the moon, inventing winning World wars and going 2 0. Like maybe we talk about that stuff instead of all this other nonsense.

Emily (39:38)

Well, I don't know if you saw this, but Joy Reid, I'm trying to pull it up on the side here.

Sean Davis (39:41)

Says that you're gonna make me listen to Michael Eric Dyson. He totally sucks. They named him after a vacuum because he sucks so bad. And now you're gonna make me listen to Joy Reid.

Emily (39:52)

I wasn't going to make you listen to Joy. I was just gonna quote her, but.

Sean Davis (39:54)

She'S a very dumb lady.

Emily (39:56)

Did you come up with that Dyson bit off the. Right off the dome?

Sean Davis (40:00)

I have the best words.

Emily (40:03)

That was genuinely very impressive. Joy Reid says that white people don't invent anything though. So but she also, I mean, of course white people also invented slavery in her telling. So it's sort of an incoherent. She just went on a rant about that recently. So it's just hard to know what the truth is about the whites. Sean.

Sean Davis (40:22)

Well, I would like to know who invented the time machine that she alleges the Russians used to go back and write her blog post where she bashed gay people because that was like, did black people invent that time machine? Maybe the Russians did. I don't know. We'll have to ask her.

Emily (40:37)

It was probably the Russians. Yeah, that's the best response. But yeah, I mean, so Trump's truth was very clearly like whether you love Trump, you hate Trump. The full context of the truth social post is that he thinks, and this is consistent for him, America is too negative about itself. That there's the self loathing streak that progressives will eagerly cop to that has left the sort of fringe faculty lounge and migrated into public institutions in a way that's frankly inappropriate and downplays the good of the country and has contributed to this sort of malaise about who we are and what we've done, what our history is. And that's just so obviously what he's saying. Like how the museums are focusing extensively on how bad slavery is. We've all been to those museums, we've all seen those museums who talk just ad nauseam about that. And you're like, well, tell me about what Frederick Douglass actually did, because it was amazing and incredible and contributed to the actual cause of social justice. And you get so much of one and so little of the other. It's just a feeling I feel like a lot of Americans share. And yet that's not how the media takes it.

Sean Davis (41:50)

Yeah. And it's obvious what they're doing. The goal is you have to deconstruct America's history. You have to tear down its founders, you have to destroy its legends so that you can put something new in its place. With the ultimate goal, of course, being destroying the Constitution, which is kind of like this last thing we have, regardless of the damage they've done to it, it's the last thing we have, really preventing them from taking total control over the country. And so they see him, they're like, no, you're not allowed to go and change our museums. We've been using that to radicalize the people against their own country, and we can't have that. But at the same time that they're telling us how awful America is and how racist it is, they also tell us that we need to have open borders because the rest of the world wants to come here. So at some point, they're going to have to figure out which story of America they actually want to tell.

Emily (42:35)

I've told this story before, but when you and Molly sent John Daniel Davidson and me to the border 2021, we were talking to a group of Haitians, and they were speaking, you know, in. In French Creole and talking about. They were trying to explain, because John speaks French, embarrassingly.

Sean Davis (42:55)

Of course he does.

Emily (42:56)

Why they wanted to come into America. And at one point, we were having translation issues, and I just said, oh, the American dream. And they lit up and they were like, yes, the American dream. The American dream. They've been living in the streets of the. This, like, cartel town for six months or whatever, for the American dream. And I told that a prominent Democrat who shall remain nameless. And the person replied, they want to come here. Don't they know what it's like to be poor here? I thought, don't they? Don't you know what it's like to be poor in Brazil or Argentina or Port au Prince? Like, you've got to be kidding me. I mean, all the perspective is out the window.

Sean Davis (43:36)

Yeah. And, you know, it's. I'm not saying it's easy to be poor anywhere. It's not. But if you look at. At the bottom 20% by income in America, they generally have cars, they have houses, they have Television, they have phones. The poorest people in this country today live better than the richest kings on Earth did 500 years ago. And it's easy to forget about that because we spend so much time comparing what we have to what other people have. We think more about what we don't have than what we have been given. I think that's a particularly American affliction because we have been so wealthy and prosperous for so long. But, yeah, this is the greatest country in all of history. This is the greatest time to be alive in the greatest country of all of history. We're doing amazing things. And what I like about what Trump's doing is he's not just making America great again. He's making the story of America great again. He's making people believe in the country and in the fact that we can do great things again. Because it's been a rough, you know, 10, 20 years in this country. And it's just nice to be told by our leaders, by someone who you can tell truly believes it in his heart that this is the greatest country on earth where anyone can do anything.

Emily (44:51)

Well, speaking of those last 10 years, the Federalist has obviously been on top of the story of Russiagate since day one. And Tulsi Gabbard announced yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced yesterday that she was stripping security clearances from 37 current and former intelligence professionals who, quote, have abused the public trust by politicizing and manipulating intelligence, leaking classified intelligence without authorization and or committing intentional egregious violations of tradecraft standards. And we can look at the list. This is going to be F9. We can put it up on the screen. Sean, you are much more familiar with some of these names than I am because they're the weeds of the Russiagate story are so tangled. God bless you and Molly and Matt Taibbi who have done the impossible work of untangling them and many others over the last 10 or so years. But you posted this F10 in reaction, Tulsi Gabrin, and wanted to get a little bit more from you on this point. Included on this list is Mahar Batar, the chief counsel for Adam Schiff on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Batar also worked for Schiff at HSPS HPSCI during the first Trump admin, when committee Democrats were illegally leaking classified information to fuel their Russia hoax conspiracy. This is one of the biggest stories to come out of the last couple of months of disclosures. Tell us why.

Sean Davis (46:15)

Well, I think we're all learning now why the deep State why the establishment was so scared of Tulsi Gabbard taking over the, the National Intelligence Directorate because they knew that she was going to go in there and clean house. And we have been lied to so many times, times by so many different intel officials, people who led these agencies, people who we were told were the ultimate authorities, you know, the, the John Brennans and the James Clappers and the James Comey's, the Andrew McCabes. But below that top layer, there's, you know, this middle layer of just awful, awful people who were likely the ones doing the leaking, spreading the lies, pushing the false narratives. And so when you see Bitar's name on there, this guy who's worked for Schiff for years, who is almost certainly one of the redacted names in a recent whistleblower complaint and FBI write up about many of Schiff's leakers and this conspiracy from Schiff and his staff to illegally leak classified information in ways that wouldn't be traceable to them. You see that, you think, yes, it's great that Tulsi is doing this, because it absolutely is. Why did it take eight years to do this? Why did it take her? Why did it take a second Trump Trump term to do this? And I think the rot there is so deep, you have so many people embedded like ticks in these institutions that getting in there and rooting them out and digging them out is actually really, really difficult. And so kudos to her for taking on this awful, corrupt deep state head on and just rooting out this nonsense because it was deeply, deeply overdue.

Emily (47:46)

And what's the cause? So the media will portray this and left will portray this as just venture vengeance. Like this is just sheer revenge politics. But what is the sort of substantive danger of someone like this person and others on the list retaining their security clearances? Because there is a substantive danger. And I feel like you can explain that better than a lot of people.

Sean Davis (48:06)

Yeah, there is. I want to take your first point though. The idea that it's vengeance. Okay, so what? So what? You raided the man's house, you tried to put him in prison, you tried to bankrupt him, you tried to make him die in prison, and you sat by and deliberately allowed him to get shot in the head. And you're shocked, you're upset that he might use the same power that you used to try and destroy him, to go after the people who were part of that. Tough luck. Welcome to power. Welcome to politics. This idea that we are just going to sit back anymore and tie our hands behind our back and say, you know, the left does that, but we on the right don't do that. We're just going to be content to losing. Those days are over. So, number one, you want to say it's vengeance, fine. I don't care. Number two, as far as the substantive reasons to do it, having a security clearance is a privilege. It is not a right. It's a privilege generally that you need while you're serving in government, serving the American people, doing it legally, and trying to make the country safer. I don't think cooking up a bunch of lies about Russia hoaxes to overthrow a government that beat the lady you wanted to win, when in reality she lost because she was a drunk who couldn't find a way to Wisconsin. I'm sorry you're upset about that. I don't care. And this idea that once you get in government and you get a security clearance, that you get to have it forever to go get massively overpaid jobs in the defense sector because you did time for a week or a month or a year in the government. I don't care. Welcome to the new politics. The days of the left running roughshod over the right and the right pretending, oh, we can't fight back is that's not how we do things. Those days are over. And I hope you like the new rules, because at one point we were trying to tell you this is a bad idea because if you keep doing this, we're going to do it to you. And they said, well, tough. We don't care. This is the new world. It's not the world I wanted. I wanted the old one where we didn't have people leaking and lying and running coups on the government. They rejected that old world and we've adopted their rules and now they're going to deal with it.

Emily (50:00)

Yeah. And I mean, when people may not know, you worked for the great Tom Coburn in the Senate for a long time, you were in D.C. for a long time. Those security clearances are a big deal. Those security clearances help you make more money. They come with you after the government. So there's value, actually, that you. You carry with you wherever you go in Washington with the security clearance itself. It's not just sort of. Even if it's revenge, it's not just sort of like petty. You're actually preventing people from potentially. And you'll know more about this than I do, Sean. But potentially leaking other information and getting access to other information, even if they're no longer in these positions.

Sean Davis (50:37)

Yeah, well, Number one, it's a career golden ticket. People will often go into these positions just to get the security clearance so that then they can leave after a year or two of work and go get paid five times as much for a defense contractor. The other thing they do with these clearances that's interesting, and it's why I never actually got one when I worked on the Hill, was they use them to hide things, and they use them to hide things that they really have no business hiding. It's. It's called over classification. They do it all the time. They will leak illegally, stuff that they want out there that makes their opponents look bad, but then they will also classify anything that might exonerate people or contradict those leaks. So once they do that and you see that information and you're an honest person who doesn't want to break the law, then you're cooked. You can't do anything, you can't say anything, you can't refute it. So now I was on the Hill, I said, no, thanks. Thank you. I don't want any of that nonsense. Nothing you have under there I care about. And I'm gonna be. I wanna be free to say whatever I want when I want and talk about whatever I want for any reason I want, without you holding some clearance over my head.

Emily (51:42)

It's time for what everyone I think, has tuned in to watch, which is Sean teeing off on the new Cracker Barrel logo. You know, Sean, this is a more serious story that I think people are prepared to give it credit for, because beneath. Beneath the sort of superficial conversation about the logo itself, which is. I just mean superficial in nature, it represents something happening in corporate America more broadly that a lot of people thought was maybe over. So this is Julie Falma, Sino on Good Morning America, talking about the big Cracker Barrel rebrand, which has actually been very controversial, not just in the Davis household, but among others as well. So let's go ahead here and roll out S8. Honestly, the feedback's been overwhelmingly positive that people like what we're doing. I'll give you another soundbite. I actually happened to be in Orlando last week with all of our managers. We bring them together and once every other year. And the number one question that I got asked, Michael, was, how can I get a remodel? When can I get a remodel? How do I get on the list?

Ryan Grimm (52:41)

Oh, really?

Emily (52:42)

So, because the feedback and the buzz is so good, not only from our customers, but from our team members, they want to work in a wonderful restaurant. So we're doing everything for our guests and our team members.

Ryan Grimm (52:52)

Well, Julie Messino, it's wonderful to have you here.

Emily (52:55)

Pleasure to be here.

Sean Davis (52:55)

Thank you for having you Again answering those questions. For all the Cracker Barrel fans out.

Ryan Grimm (52:58)

There, a lot of great changes.

Emily (53:01)

Thank you so much.

Ryan Grimm (53:01)

All right. Thank you. Robin, can I get in writing that the peg game is going to stay?

Emily (53:06)

The peg game is staying. So are the rocking chairs, fireplace, vintage decor. It's all there.

Ryan Grimm (53:11)

All right.

Emily (53:12)

Okay.

Ryan Grimm (53:12)

Because that would be a deal for breaker.

Emily (53:16)

Resisting all urges to make a joke about the peg game. Sean, this is the logo juxtaposition between old and new cracker barrel. F11. We can take a look at it. You. You've had several reactions on Twitter in the last couple of hours.

Sean Davis (53:33)

I'm furious.

Emily (53:34)

Let's go. Let's hear it. What's up, Sean?

Sean Davis (53:38)

All right, first off, it's Land O' Lakes and Aunt Jemima all over again. They call it Cracker Barrel and they took out the cracker and the barrel. It's unacceptable. I don't want to sound.

Emily (53:53)

He really did that.

Sean Davis (53:54)

I don't want to sound melodramatic. We need to throw that woman in a volcano. It's awful. And by the way, when she talked about the little peg game, the little triangle peg game, she lost, okay? So she said, we're not changing the peg game. They did change the peg game, the old peg game. Because I was a very big fan of Cracker Barrel, I believe I dragged you and the rest of the staff there for one lunch during a retreat. It used to make fun of you. Okay? It said you're a genius if you get it down to just one peg. But if you have three left over, you're just plain dumb. And if you have four more leftover, you're an eggnoramous, I believe. Is that how it was spelled? They changed it now so it says, oh, one, you're a genius. Two, you're pretty smart. And if you have three or more, it's okay, don't be embarrassed. You can try again. They even changed the frickin peg game. And I know you said it's kind of superficial, but brands mean something. And you have a legendary brand here that means comfort food in a safe environment that reminds you of a simpler time. It's why they had the old tools on the wall and the old ads and the old artwork. It was comfort food plus nostalgia. And now it's like somebody just punched in to chatgpt. Like, give me some warmed over Joanna Gaines soulless off white shiplap designs with vague nostalgic connotations, but strip out all the soul and all the character and then we'll, like, feed that schlock to the people. And I just find it so insulting and stupid and lame.

Emily (55:32)

Yeah, it's Joanna Gaines ihop. It's like they had Joanna Gaines design an IHOP and they said, this is our idea for the new Cracker Barrel. This is. I actually want to put this on the screen, though, because there's something somewhat serious behind this. Some, like, lib pundit was going off not long ago about just being offensive about Cracker Barrel. It's like, am I really offended by it? No, but, you know, it's a little. It was. There was a sort of classism to her comment. And so I went up and looked just a few weeks ago. And I think this was known to us at the Federals because we reported it a couple of years ago. But there's like crazy DEI stuff all over the Cracker Barrel website still. So if you're not. If you're listening to this and not watching. They have their LGBTQ+ alliance. They have their neurodivergent alliance. They have all kinds of different, like, groups inside Cracker Barrel. This is. Yeah, the. They have Be Bold for the black community. Hola. For the Hispanic and Latino culture. They have all kinds of stuff going on on the Cracker Barrel website. It talks about their culture of inclusive, engaging work environments and all of that stuff. Exactly what you would expect to see from bud light circa 2020, whatever that happened. 2020 Mulvaney. And now, now, Sean, it's come for the actual brand itself. And that's not insignificant because you see the connection between A and B. You see how that works.

Sean Davis (57:07)

Yeah. And just like we talked at the beginning about how they wanted to take over the museums and deconstruct America's history to replace it with something like the fake and gay makeover of Cracker Barrel is being done for the same reason. And like, I want to go in there and I either want to shove a whole bunch of pancakes into my stupid fat face and love it, or I want to get like, chicken fried steak with some mashed potatoes and gravy. I don't need queer chicken fried steak, okay? I don't need, like, blm fried okra. I just don't. I just want comfort food and I want to look at old farm equipment, all right? And not get nagged by some, like, stupid woke white lady with the dumb prop glasses. Can we stop it with the dumb big prop glasses, those are the things that they used to have where you'd put them on and it had like the big nose and the fake mustache on it. And they're like, yeah, this is a new fashion trend now for middle aged ladies. I don't get it. We need to stop it.

Emily (58:03)

In Manhattan, of course. Yeah, very fashionable in the sort of corporate offices. But this is, even the way she talks, you can hear it in her voice. It's like media training for white, white female CEOs. It's all the same. And you can hear it when she's trying to describe this transformation. But Sean, my last question is, I think a lot of people believed this was over. There was this sense when Donald Trump won reelection and it was real, that a vibe shift had happened because it had genuinely had. We saw people in Silicon Valley waking up and realizing that the world had changed and they hadn't taken it seriously enough. And people in other sectors, powerful sectors, realizing the very same thing. And I think people realize, okay, or people thought woke is over. Like this, this excessive cultural leftism that somehow migrated from the universities and the country socialists and communists to corporate boardrooms and the most bizarre Gramshian migration ever was done. But I just like that's clearly was never true, don't you think? I mean, isn't that what this shows is it's still going to be in these institutions for years to come?

Sean Davis (59:16)

Yeah, I actually think it's a fantastic reminder about the nature of the left and the nature of this new Marxist American enemy is they never ever stop. So a lot of people comforted themselves falsely. I think after the election, with Trump won, we're ascendant. You know, Johnny Bones is doing the Trump dance at ufc and we've won. And the thing about political battles and certainly about cultural battles, battles is they're never actually won. The war is never over. And the left understands that better than anyone. So what they're doing right now is they're regrouping. They still control a ton of institutions in this country, probably most of them the biggest and the most powerful ones, in spite of Trump controlling some of the federal government right now. And they're not just going to stop because they lost an election like the last election they lost. They decided they were going to spend their whole time trying to overthrow the president. It'll be beat him. So, like, I actually think to your point, it's a really, really good reminder that the left doesn't stop. It has to be crushed, it has to be destroyed until there's nothing left of it, not even a memory. And that's something I think that thankfully the right is finally beginning to understand is that you don't beat the left because you won one election. The war rages on and if you don't understand the true nature of your enemy and what they're trying to do then going to crush you every time.

Emily (60:38)

Sean Davis man, was this perfect timing to have you on to just lay into Cracker Barrel, which no longer has crackers or barrels so. Shaun Davidson, the Federalist thank you so much for stopping by.

Sean Davis (60:51)

Thanks Emily. Take care.

Emily (60:53)

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Emily (62:25)

I want to talk a little bit about Marjorie Taylor Greene because Marjorie Taylor Greene sat down with Megyn Kelly, the one and only Megyn Kelly, earlier this week and had what I thought was an absolutely Fascinating conversation. So one clip in particular that I wanted to roll here is a little bit of the conversation about Israel. Although honestly, I thought that was basically the least important part of the conversation. But if we roll it, I think it'll explain a little bit why I found the entire thing to be so compelling. So let's go ahead and roll S7 here for members of Congress every single year, annually Israel receives, and we have to vote on it. It's a yes or no vote. $3.8 billion in funding for Israel. We're $37 trillion in debt. Israel is less than 400 billion in debt, less than. If you're an Israeli citizen, you have government funded health care and you have government funded college. So why is America having to give Israel $3.8 billion? So for me, it's not. I'm not anti Israel, I'm not anti any country. I've turned radically and unapologetically for America. Just flat out for America. I'm like, I'm sorry, we don't have time to fund what you're doing. No, we don't. You guys.

Sean Davis (63:53)

We have the extra.

Emily (63:55)

Totally. Yeah, but we don't. We don't have the money. So you could extend that, obviously, based on the conversation, to potentially Ukraine, brave fighters in Ukraine, awful invasion from Putin. But you could understand Marjorie Taylor Greene making the exact same version of that argument about Israel to Venezuela, where there's a troop buildup happening right now, could potentially expand to Mexico as the Trump administration is considering strikes on targets, related targets in Mexico. So we'll see where all of that goes. But the point is, there's so much attention dedicated to Marjorie Taylor Greene's position on Israel that I think some people lose sight of the fact that it's part of this much broader worldview for Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, who, by the way, Marjorie Taylor Greene, very, very supportive of Israel itself, but has a different opinion on what's happening right now in US Policy right now. And there's entirely different question or conversation to be had about American policies towards, again, Venezuela, Caribbean, Latin America in general, Ukraine. Huge conversation to have about American policy in the lead up to the war in Ukraine and whether that means we have responsibility to help seek peace. That's not an unimportant part of this, but I think it's just really important. And I thought Megan's interview with Marjorie Taylor Greenery was so well done because she brought out Marjorie Taylor Greene's story. And Marjorie Taylor Greene's story is that she is the daughter of a Vietnam combat veteran who had a family business, mtg, bought out her parents family business. Watching them pour everything into it for years and years, successful family business and watched them struggle after Obamacare and the mandate created problems for small businesses. If you are familiar with small businesses at all, you know, know that that was a struggle whether people loved Obama or hated Obama. You know that that was a struggle for people in the small business world. And then she watched Republicans say they were going to repeal and replace it and failed to do that. And I thought Meghan bringing that out of Marjorie Taylor Greene was a testament to how important it is just to have these conversations and not ostracize and shut people out because you have been told they should be relegated to the fringes. And that's where Marjorie Taylor Greene in particular is interesting to me because my own her started to change a few years back and I'd initially kind of dismissed her like a lot of people as unserious, but started to think sort of differently about that because no matter how often you get out of dc, no matter how often you get out of New York City, you can't really live entirely outside of the bubble. It's just, it's impossible. No matter how much you do it, it's impossible. And I think that really colors the way. This is like a bugaboo of mine. The media covers the House of Representatives, in particular the House of Representatives, which is literally supposed to be Representative. If you go back and read what the founders wrote about their intentions for the House of Representatives and right or wrong, by the way, you know, Representative right or wrong. And the reason for that is so that a Republican process, small R Republican process can play out. This is sort of the genius of the American system, the Western conception of what small R Republican government should look like that deals with those disagreements in a just way that allows public sentiments to be reflected in the legislature, but also dealt with in the cooling saucer right of the Senate and then in the executive position as well. So DC just has no tolerance though for people in the House of Representatives who are literally representing the American people that are by the way, the journalists, consumers who they claim to be covering in many cases. And what first started to change how I saw Marjorie Taylor Greene was her explanation of why and how she got sucked into posting, particularly 911 conspiracy theories. Other conspiracy theories too. And the definition of conspiracy theory is overly broad and much abused. But with 911 in particular, a huge chunk of Americans, this is according to an American Enterprise Institute survey back in 2020. It was like one in six Americans believes that the Bush administration had advanced knowledge of the attacks. Separate conversation tabling that. But one in six Americans believe that. You may think that position is totally wrong. You may think that position is utterly disqualifying, but it is not an unusual belief and it is not relegated to insane asylums. And that again may be terrifying to you. You may think the fact that that's not relegated to people in insane asylums is awful. And statements on that poorly aged essay by Hofstadter, the Paranoid American Mind. But we should talk about that sometime. How poorly that essay aged. But the fact of the matter is that we live in a very low institutional trust country. And the low institutional trust is rational. It is rational to have low trust in your institutions Right. Right now. That can then manifest in some ways that are irrational because in a low institutional trust environment, people have no idea who to believe. Jamal Bowman of the Squad, by the way, also dabbled in some of these theories about 911 and interestingly enough, has since kind of walked away from them. And populists come from communities of low institutional trust. There was a survey that a lobbying firm did actually a couple of years ago that found the Squad, and particularly the Freedom Caucus, but both of those. So the Progressive, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Freedom Caucus, members of those groups represent some of the poorest congressional districts in America, and moderates represent some of the wealthiest districts in America. It was a fascinating survey, but these are people who have lived the reason reasons that institutional trust is low in this country. Marjorie Taylor Greene is not herself somebody who's struggling financially, but she definitely is from an area of the country where a lot of that is the case for many different people and has seen it. And by the way, you don't have to be from a disadvantaged community to know that it's rational to have low institutional trust right now. And that's another thing that the left has struggled to understand and why it's lost, for example, some of the Maha moms and people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. But Marjorie Taylor Greene, I think, has been humbled in some ways since coming to D.C. and I'd argue also since realizing what I and many other people have realized after spending enough time here, which is that not all conspiracy theories, of course are false, but the real source of much evil is that this corruption begets laziness and that laziness begets incompetence. Right? There's almost sometimes an incompetence to evil, even orchestrate something as devious and evil as many people will often accuse the government of doing. Don't get me wrong, I mean, I think there is evil corruption here. I actually think it's worse than people realize. And the city just gets sort of numb to it and it starts to feel banal. But it's just sort of petty corruption. In many cases, that becomes laziness. And that laziness then begets incompetence. And. And again, MTG told Megan that she grew up the daughter of a Vietnam combat veteran, bought at her family's construction business, watched Republicans say they were repealing, replacing Obamacare. Never do it. Got involved in the party after she saw Donald Trump. And I think this was such an interesting part of her conversation with Meghan, which is that it was love at first sight for Marjorie Taylor Greene and maga, that she saw MAGA and that just sort of put words to what she'd been feeling about the Republican Party, saw Trump, and that just put words to what she was feeling about the Republican Party. And I just, I've spent some time in, like, the, you know, county party Republican headquarters, Republican Party headquarters where I grew up. And when you talk to the lovely volunteers who bake cookies for people and spend their weekends making calls because they, you know, believe in, they'll tell you, America, America. A lot of times they detest Republicans. Even though you'll find them at the Republican Party headquarters, they detest Republicans as much as Democrats detest Republicans because again, they come from communities of low institutional trust. They've been lied to. The entire country at this point is basically a community of low institutional trust. And I just really, really think that Marjorie Taylor Greene is the closest person in Congress to the actual MAGA base. And when they were having that conversation, not just about Israel, but about American foreign policy versus American domestic policy, maybe that horrified you. But the worst thing, if it does horrify you, actually, I mean, the worst thing you should do is ignore her. And actually, it shouldn't horrify you. It should be a source of great optimism because now if you disagree with Marjorie Taylor Greene, you can defeat her in the congressional arena. But people are suffering and she is genuinely listening. You might not like her answers, but she's genuinely listening. So to ignore her is to ignore the suffering. Basically. That's what a lot of people ultimately end up doing when you ignore people like Marjorie Taylor Green. So I just, I wanted to weigh in on that because I thought the conversation was really, really helpful. And, you know, we started the show with Ryan and we ended with Sean Ryan Grim and Shawn Davis on the same show. And the last like five or so years of my career has been, you know, as, as someone on the right who, you know, comes from that strain of the right, the conservative movement who detests the Republican Party as much as a lot of Democrats detest the Republican Party because they're as useless and as corrupt as a Democratic Party. As someone who comes from that strain, you look at the way people have reacted to Marjorie Taylor Greene or even someone talking to Marjorie Taylor Greene, and it's just the most unconstructive thing that is the most unconstructive reaction to try to shut down that conversation rather than have it. And, you know, I get that all the time. I'm sure Brian's gotten that all the time just for talking to me or talking to Sagar and Jetty. And, you know, if you. Someone in media right now who's willing to have those conversations, you do put up with a lot of nonsense. And we have, you know, pretty cushy jobs. So that's not really the worst that can happen. But it does try to create these disincentives from talking to people you disagree with. And often when you talk to people you disagree with, you learn, and sometimes you learn that you actually are going to maybe change your position on something. And it's cliche, but it's true. And so I thought Marjorie Taylor Greene, I just wanted to say I think she's actually truly representative, more than anyone else in Congress, of where the average MAGA Trump base voter is the type of person that goes to rallies, the type of person that puts the MAGA FL flag in their yard, the type of person who's doing the grassroots activism. And that person is not insignificant. And that person is not categorically bad by any means. And there's a, there's something rational about their reaction to institutional failure. So I thought it was a great conversation. Just wanted to, wanted to make that point before we run. I do also then want to put up this, this one thread that caught my attention. This will be pretty quick. This is a thread for, by an Episcopal priest, Episcopal priest whose name is Christopher Poor. We can throw this up on the screen just because it reminded me there's this, this huge conversation happening right now about enchantment in the church and, and people going back to church. And this is one of the more interesting threads throughout culture right now in the West. Throughout culture in the West. You have really, really interesting, a really interesting strain or a really interesting trend in the UK in the United States of people just going back to church. Just. Just going back to church. And the trend is that people are going back, in a lot of cases to traditional churches. And not the sort of what everyone said would be the future or not everyone, but many people said, said would basically be the future of the church. Here it is. Which is, you know, I'm saying this again as somebody who goes to an evangelical mega church with rock bands and blue jeans, but that was sort of. This is the future. That was. The idea is like, you are turning off millennials and young people in general if you are, you know, doing really traditionalistic services. And the reason I think this is a big deal is because it's not just about the style. Right? The style is important and intertwined with the substance, but it also speaks to you, the. The substance being important as well. And so this is from Father Christopher. He writes, worried that young people are coming to church for the wrong reasons, nervous about the quiet revival. Well, okay, but have you asked some young people why they're coming to church? I did, and here's what they told me. He says that in his experience, basically, they. He's found the power of sacraments. There are three reasons basically, that people are coming back to church. He talks about the power of the sacraments, the idea that the physical world can be transfigured to bear the weight of God's glory. He talks about that it's connected to the possibility of real community. Like, literally, people talking to each other face to face, investing in one another's lives, looking out for one another, destroying the loneliness that is crippling our mental health and corroding our public sphere. Ryan talked about how, in some cases, the loneliness crisis has boosted the popularity of podcasts, maybe even like this one, because people are looking for almost someone to hang out with that they know and they get to love and trust over a period of time. And then Father Christopher says, also the reality of the Holy Spirit. Spirit. There's this enormous attraction to the idea that the Spirit is poured into our hearts, transforming our perceptions, infusing us with virtue, strengthening us for works we did not know possible. And I went back and looked because I've been trying to remember this poll forever that I saw in the Washington Post, like 10 years ago. It turns out it was from 2014 and it was from Barna. And what they found basically, was that millennials at the time, so this was a survey in 2014 of 18 to 29 year olds greatly preferred. I highly recommend looking at it because it really, really well done survey. And even just like Showed people images of more traditional altars, divided them into really helpful subgroups, whether they're churched, unchurched, or marginally churched. And. And just tried to get some of their preferences on all of this. But this church and this chart in particular is helpful. If you're listening to this, it says, select the word that describes your ideal church. 77% said sanctuary. 23% said auditorium. 67% said quad. Quiet. 33% said loud. 67% said classic. 33% said trendy. Now 64% said casual. And 36% said dignified. That one might be a little outlier here. And 60% said modern. And 40% said traditional. I actually think those numbers would be different today. But quiet versus loud, sanctuary versus auditorium, and classic versus trendy, those back in 2014, for millennials, not even zoomers. It was very clear, I think, even back then that this is what was percolating to the surface. And there's, you know, Rod Drear just wrote a super interesting book on all of this. So you could spend a lot of time pouring ink into what's happening and how hyper modernity is nudging people into, or nudging people back into this question of enchantment that the physical world is. Is enchanted by the supernatural, by the spiritual. And we're hopefully going to have a couple of interesting guests on around Halloween season who explain the. The good and the bad of that, the. The dangers and the benefits of that. But that's what we're. What we're seeing is that if you are taking the time to get out of bed, maybe you're hungover and go to church on Sunday. What you don't want is somebody who is truly treating it like it's just another. Just another Sunday morning concert or just another lecture that you got in college. What you want is, you know, you've gone to the effort, you're going to church because you're looking for purpose and meaning, right? That is like the prerequisite for every adult who voluntarily goes to church is that they're seeking out purpose and meaning. And so if you're looking for purpose and meaning, you want people to treat it seriously, and you want the church to treat it seriously, and you're looking for gravity and depth. And so it's no wonder that in a time of hyper modernity, where everything is bureaucratized and sort of everything is data, everything is computer, in the words of Donald Trump, the immortal words of Donald Trump, in a time when everything is computer, that people are. Are looking back and again in some bad ways, turning to astrology and other sources of enchantment and the supernatural and dabbling in some legitimately, I think, dangerous things that bear a much greater supernatural power than people even realize, but also looking in some good places for that too. So just some quick thoughts on that thread that went really viral and was very, very interesting. Interesting. Before we wrap up, I say this every Wednesday. It's very sad for me. On Wednesdays I, I turn off all my equipment and just have the next several days to come up with a million different ideas for Monday's show. So that's what I'll be doing. As a reminder, my email address is actually emilyovelmadecaremedia.com you can email me there. I'm doing my best to respond to all your messages. Appreciate you tuning in today. Has so much fun tonight. Thank you. Thank you. We will be back here Monday if you're catching up on the podcast. We appreciate you. We appreciate you very much. And if you're not watching live on Monday at 10pm, we hope you're enjoying it too. Again, emilyoulmaycare media.com and we'll see you back here Monday with more afterparty. I've never felt like this before. It's like you just get me. I feel like my true self with you. Does that sound crazy? And it doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous. Okay, that's it. I'm taking you home with me. I mean, you can't find shoes this good just anywhere. Find a shoe for every you from brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and more at your DSW store or dsw dot com.