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Emily Jasinski
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Ryan Grim
All right, this is a special holiday edition of Breaking Points. We're coming to you from the past. We have no idea what is going on in the world in which you are currently living. We are recording this way back in the middle to early month of December, year of our Lord 2025. Hope everything is going well for you today. We're gonna be joined by journalist Emily Jaszynski. Emily, thank you for joining us.
Emily Jasinski
To be clear, this is part one of a series we're doing where Ryan is going to interview me and then I'm gonna turn it back over to Ryan, and we're gonna interview Ryan. Ryan appears to have Googled me in preparation for this, and I did not do him the same courtesy, because I've probably Googled you before. I don't know. I'm sure when we first started hosting, I'm sure I was like, isn't that the guy who beat up Jesse Watters?
Ryan Grim
Actually, right around the time that I was fighting with Jesse Waters is when you were fighting with the big LGBTQ lobby, which is what we're going to get into first. And then I do want to, you know, hear about more of, like, what. What got you into this world. But I think this is actually a good place to start. So we do have an actual element that I Googled. There's a whole bunch. But I just grabbed one from Raw Story. So the headline here, and this is the year 2015. Love the photo that adorns this headline's so funny. If you're only listening to this, you need to go find the video, because there is a picture of two. Two women making out next to the headline. College group hosting. Rick Santorum demands, quote, sensitivity training to teach gays, quote, respect. And so this came from a GW Hatchet article while Emily was at George Washington University and was the head. Is that right? Of Young Americans found. Yaf, Right?
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
This is the Buckley Organization, right? William Buck. William Buckley created this, like, youth organization, Young Americans Future, or something like that.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, it's confusing. I can get into it if you want.
Ryan Grim
But, yeah, so, yeah, that's. That's what. That's what I want to do. And so then GW mandated that they were going to do, like, you know, DEI stuff like sensitivity. Sensitivity training, particularly. I think it was. I think this one, correct me if I'm wrong, particularly around trans issues. Pronouns, pronouns. And you were quoted as saying, forget it. We don't want to do this. And interestingly, in the Raw Story article, they have the College Republican throwing you under the bus.
Emily Jasinski
Oh, of course. That's what always happens.
Ryan Grim
So the head of the College Republican says, look, it's just a little. Just a little training. Little sensitivity training.
Emily Jasinski
That's how it used to be.
Ryan Grim
Don't be so sensitive.
Emily Jasinski
That's how it used to be.
Ryan Grim
All right, so I've been vindicated. So you're a. So that. So when did you graduate high school?
Emily Jasinski
So 2011.
Ryan Grim
So 2011. So you start GW senior year. So this is your senior year of college.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
So what is. What is this? Buckley group. And then we're going to get into the controversy because it became like a little national thing. You payment, you pay him like a punching bag for the kind of left wing, Raw Story. HuffPost. I wonder if HuffPost did anything on you.
Emily Jasinski
If I'm remembering correctly, I think HuffPost did, but, you know, it was. It's actually very interesting and I think telling story, it's a little thing, but like the dust up kind of, it brings in a lot of different. I don't know, it does bring in a lot of different trends that started to pop up, especially after 2015. But basically in college, I was the president of the YAF chapter, that's Young America's foundation, which had just merged in 2012 with young Americans for Freedom, which is the Buckley group that was created with the sharon statement in 1960 at the Buckley estate. And Ronald Reagan kind of comes out of Young Americans for Freedom circles. He was not a young American, of course, but that was part of the Reagan revolution. Guys like Roger Stone affiliated with GAFF and all of that. But when I got to college, that was the conservative group on campus that I got involved with. And the LGBT sensitivity training story is a funny one because it was, I don't know, like a snow day, if I'm remembering correctly. And I got a call from the student newspaper. The hatchet thatched job incoming. Yeah. And they asked, does GW YAF oppose this bill that the student association passed like last night that mandates sensitivity training? And it was such a trap because I hadn't given any thought to the question of the student association sensitivity training bill. And I think actually what they asked is if we would be requesting a religious exemption to the thing. And I think the quote that I have in the hatchet is like, well, I'm sure we would be, because it doesn't sound very tolerant of other people's religious beliefs. Because the sensitivity training was going to for leaders of student groups wasn't a huge deal, but it did mandate that you go to preferred pronoun sensitivity training.
Ryan Grim
We have the receipt right here. You said mandated training is not really being very tolerant of all religious beliefs. The way that people who are deeply Christian behave is for a reason. And if you're training them to change that behavior, there's obviously a problem with that. So they were going to have every student just if you were the leader.
Emily Jasinski
Of a student group. So if you're the head of a YAF chapter or even the Muslim student group, you all would have had to do it.
Ryan Grim
Right. Let me see if I can find the Republican one. He said, regardless of Alex Pollock. What's he up to now? He's the head of the College Republicans at gw. He's got to be like, lobbyists or something by now.
Emily Jasinski
I think he works in publishing and.
Ryan Grim
Wow. Flamed out.
Emily Jasinski
I have to double check.
Ryan Grim
But you. Because like, College Democrats and College Republicans like College Democrats less so now. It's. They're. They're more activisty. College Republicans, certainly to this day. Like, those are. Those are people who are just gunning for internships on the Hill and trying to figure out a way to.
Emily Jasinski
Yep.
Ryan Grim
Run for Congress and.
Emily Jasinski
Right. And YAF gets, by the way, in disclosure. I'm actually on the board of directors at YAF because that was my first job out of college. I was the spokesperson there and owe a lot to them because as a nonprofit group, I got a lot of experience, went to conferences, and they were the group that paid for Rick Santorum to come to our campus. And it was a very, very, very interesting experience. Having Rick Santorum come was the reason that groups like YAFF are different from College Republicans is because there's that sort of populist element to it. And that's the forgotten part of the Reagan revolution. It's the forgotten part of Buckleyism. It was a revolution against the establishment Republican Party of the time, against Gerald Ford. That's what it was against. And so that's what I've always liked about YAF as a conservative student group. So anyway, yes, they were trying to mandate sensitivity training.
Ryan Grim
I was like, so Alex Pollux said, quote, regardless, this is the college Republican's head, regardless of your views on LGBT people, LGBT people exist. He said it should be mandatory from a sensitivity perspective, which is definitely not the Republican position anymore.
Emily Jasinski
Elephant in the zoom.
Ryan Grim
And so. So how did this. So how did that experience of becoming a momentary kind of national figure in the sense that you're. It's got to, you know, it's not as if, like, you were a household name or anything, but like, if you're a college senior and all of a sudden your name is in, like, national publications.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
With people hating on you.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
What was. What was that like? And how did that shape your. Who you are now? Is this origin story stuff or were you. This was just like you were on the same trajectory either way.
Emily Jasinski
No, this is absolutely origin story stuff. I had a job already lined up for when I was graduating at a Republican consulting firm that was going to be doing, like, oppo research, and I ended up working at yaf. Instead, because after this happened, they were like, whoa, Things on campus are actually even crazier than we had quite realized. Come work for us and do some PR stuff. So that was my first job, and I took it because I was very interested in media. I always wanted to be a writer, and this job would let me write columns and do that sort of thing. But it was horrible. Truly, it was horrible. They wanted me to go on Fox News. I said no. And of course, after that, ended up doing a decent amount of Fox News until about five years ago when we started hosting together. It tapered off, but it was truly horrible. I had people yell at me from across the street. I went on spring break.
Ryan Grim
Like students or like a student.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, I went on my friends, by the way, I have many gay friends at GW who were like, whoa, what the hell? The Allied and Pride group on campus. I would have to go look this up, but they put out a statement, if I'm remembering correctly, that said we had committed an act of violence against the transgender community.
Ryan Grim
Yeah, I think they called you a hate group or something.
Emily Jasinski
They called us a hate group. They tried to get us pushed off campus. Literally tried to get us pushed off campus. I think people were agitating for us to get suspended. And this is again, not because we said anything other than we think that mandatory sensitivity training on preferred pronouns is not tolerant. That was the statement. So, yeah, they tried to push off campus for that. And it was very proto woke, I guess you would say. But it was horrible. It was genuinely horrible. And a lot of people. I'm sure there are a lot of people on the right who would love that. But for me, I. I hated it. And I don't have, like, literal PTSD from it, but thinking about it feels still really.
Ryan Grim
Still raw.
Emily Jasinski
I still. I still feel kind of panicky. Yeah. Because it was an early experience with a pylon, and I've never been comfortable. You know, when you. When you're a journalist, even when you do a show like this, you know, it's. Every once in a while, something you say gets clipped or what? And it's horrible every time. I hate it.
Ryan Grim
Yeah. The headline. Here's another headline. Conservative club labeled, quote, cancer hate group for requesting to opt out of LGBT training.
Emily Jasinski
Come on.
Ryan Grim
Interestingly, I just noticed that the original hatchet article has a list of corrections that is almost as long as the article itself.
Emily Jasinski
Oh, does it?
Ryan Grim
Actually, yeah.
Emily Jasinski
Oh, that's awesome.
Ryan Grim
And one of them. And I wonder if this played into the pylon. It says the hatchet incorrectly reported that the sensitivity trainings would include information about sexual assault. The focus of the trainings would be LGBT issues. We regret these errors. And so it may have initially been reported that you also wanted to opt out of sensitivity trainings around sexual assault, which would. But I mean, clearly it was originally reported that way. Like that's why they had to correct it. That would be even more egregious. Probably to the public say, like, how dare you? How could you not? So I wonder if that like played a role. What really in the pile on.
Emily Jasinski
What really started. It was the Allied and Pride at GW statement and that started going viral on our campus circles. Like Facebook was big back then and I think they, yeah, they put out the statement on Facebook and when that happened, it was just everything from there. National media picked up on it. So like raw story, whomever else picked up on it and it became a just a total nightmare. We got like hauled into a meeting with the student association. It was it's origin story stuff. Just for the fact that this was, you know, I would say the point of this being mandatory and then having like a pretty, I think reasonable request to not have to go to a mandatory like reprogramming training. I feel like that was kind of reasonable. Then you have the College Republicans throwing us under the bus and you have the Allied and Pride group freaking out. And this is about like three months before Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner. And it's just all of this stuff was happening in the spring of 2015 that was pretty interesting because Trump was literally about to come down the Golden Escalator, like a few months later.
Ryan Grim
Right, right. Yes. This is, this is definitely in, this is definitely an interesting time. I could imagine some people coming out of this with a, with more of a. More of an axe to grind. Like you have a. You know, you're pretty firm in your culturally conservative politics, but I haven't noticed you with any kind of hardcore like vendetta and probably much more tolerant rhetoric than a lot of people who have your same politics. How did that come about?
Emily Jasinski
I would say, yeah, it's kind of, for me it's the opposite because one of the things that. One of the reasons that I came to D.C. is I grew up like in the woods in Wisconsin. Not a super rural area, kind of the exurbs of Milwaukee. But you know, my family definitely was like in the woods.
Ryan Grim
Could you see your neighbor or like, what was your situation?
Emily Jasinski
No. Yeah, no, you can shoot on our property, all that good stuff.
Ryan Grim
And we hopefully that means your neighbors were really far away.
Emily Jasinski
Yes, well, it's also just that even they have a lot of woods, so they have a bunch of property. And anyway, so all those say the. You can see them now because all the trees are down. But anyway, going on, going forward.
Ryan Grim
I grew up like, why are the trees down?
Emily Jasinski
What happened? It was a. It's a. The cycle of the forest. They're old. And also my dad has just been like deforesting taking him down for come on. Well, because they're dead and yeah, anyway, also good excuse to use the chainsaw, but grew up like hunting, fishing. My mom was from a very rural area. My dad's from very blue collar background and going to church every Sunday. And it was just like. One of the reasons I came here is that I was so frustrated by what I was seeing on TV and in movies. Just the way that culture talked down to people. I always felt like I just wanted to prove the point to elites that these are decent people. I just am so annoyed by this assumption that you are bad if you come from a culturally conservative background for whatever reason. That has just always really, really, really gotten under my skin. And that's why I came here. And so I hate feeling misunderstood. Like, it just drives me insane. And so I like having conversations. And that's where I think I don't have an axe to grind. I just genuinely have a point to prove and I like having those conversations. Like I want people to see that I might disagree and really disagree on difficult stuff, but I don't hate anyone. It's really the opposite and that's just frustrating.
Ryan Grim
Were your parents conservative? When did you get a political awakening?
Emily Jasinski
So my mom definitely is conservative. My dad votes for both parties. He worked for the state. He was an engineer for the state of Wisconsin his whole career. He's retired now, but he was in a public employee union and so went through the kind of Scott Walker era, which is funny because Scott Walker's president of Yaffna, but you know, they would.
Ryan Grim
Oh, really?
Emily Jasinski
Yeah. My mom was in HR for years at some big corporations like Johnson Controls and they would argue about Walker and unions. She was in HR and had to deal with a lot of that. So a little bit of both. My dad's Catholic, my mom's Lutheran, so it was a little bit of both. But for me it was just kind of this cultural. I wasn't always like hardcore conservative. And I don't think I'm, you know, I'm not like MAGA or Republican now. I just am kind of a limited government, cultural conservative type person.
Ryan Grim
I pulled up another 2013 article.
Emily Jasinski
This is another hatchet article.
Ryan Grim
Another hatchet article. I'll read from this one. It says sophomore Emily Jasinsky said she grew up in a strict Lutheran household and is also morally opposed to same sex marriage. But after honing her political views as a libertarian, she doesn't and she'll be doing well. We did the reason debate already. She does not think the government should be taking a stance on the issue at all. She will not head to the Supreme Court this week where there was going to be a protest around marriage equality, ruling Republicans do not need to get caught up in social issues, she said. Jasinsky, a member of the Young Americas foundation, said she is inspired by new voices in the Republican Party that are more libertarian, like father and son Ron and Rand Paul. She called them the future of the gop.
Emily Jasinski
Amazing. That seems so. I, I can.
Ryan Grim
Hopeful future.
Emily Jasinski
I can guarantee that was like a six month phase to aim with libertarianism, although.
Ryan Grim
But the limited government that you still espouse is.
Emily Jasinski
But.
Ryan Grim
So this was hardcore libertarianism.
Emily Jasinski
You were like, no, I mean, yeah, kind of. It was becoming that. I mean the sophomore year, that's around.
Ryan Grim
When people try on libertarianism.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. And it was, it was definitely short lived. But the reason that I was attracted to libertarian is because I've always been a populist. And at the time Ron and Rand Paul were populists, the Tea Party movement was populist. And so the thing that I was wrong about, and Charlie Kirk was wrong about this at the time too. I think I just came around a little earlier was that the Republican Party did need to get caught up in social issues. Not in the way that a lot of people wanted it to get caught up in social issues. And Rick Santorum is an interesting figure in this respect too. On the one hand was talking about Charles Murray's coming apart and cultural elitism. Then on the other hand was talking about a pretty unappealing worldview that Americans were moving away from that wouldn't fit on a populist platform. So anyway, yeah, that was, that was short lived. I don't think I've ever really considered myself a libertarian. I still really like Rand Paul because I think he is a populist. I like Ron Paul because I think he's a populist. But at the same time I'm kind of a economic populist in a way that they aren't Like, I believe in industrial policy and protectionism and all that fun stuff.
Ryan Grim
So, Ron. Yeah. So Ron Paul ran in 2008 for president when you would have been. What year did you graduating? 11.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, I was in high school.
Ryan Grim
So was that kind of the first campaign you paid serious attention to or.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, yeah, because I was in 2004, it was 12. Or. I'm sorry, it was 11. Yeah. So that was definitely the first major one.
Ryan Grim
Did he do better in 2012? I'm trying to remember.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
So 20. So he runs in 2008. 2012, he comes out. This is post Tea Party, and. Yeah, he almost. Did he almost win Iowa or win Iowa? Like, he.
Emily Jasinski
He did incredibly well.
Ryan Grim
He. He was shocking the Republican establishment.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
And the people who got behind him in 2012, I think, ironically, you could say many of them became Trump supporters. Like, Ron Paul was the. Like.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, I know some of them.
Ryan Grim
He was the avatar for challenging the Republican establishment.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, exactly. Yes.
Ryan Grim
And so it feels like people were more interested in challenging the Republican establishment than whenever that person was saying.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
And so that's why you're like, okay, if it's going to be Ron Paul, then I'm going to learn about libertarianism. It's going to be Trump. I'm gonna do this other thing.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah. And after 2012, Ron and Rand were treated as the future of the Republican Party by the media. There was that Time magazine cover that was like the libertarian moment, if I'm remembering correctly. And it was all the rage in, like, young conservative circles. Like, nobody wanted to be connected to the Santorums and young Republican circles because there was this sense pre Trump that the culture war was dragging everybody down. And to the extent that the pronoun sensitivity training thing is orig story and lore, it's that for me, that is an early point where I reversed that 2013 hatchet quote where I was like, oh, no, actually, the culture war is where this is like the big tent. The culture war is the big tent. And I'd always been more interested in the culture war than most people who were, like, in college Republican circles. But that's, you know, to me, I was like, this is getting so wild that kids are being chased off a campus for saying, like, they're being called a hate group for saying they didn't want to do mandatory pronoun training. Like, it's getting a little crazy. Things are getting weird.
Ryan Grim
And so then, how long were you at YAF after college?
Emily Jasinski
Almost two years. Almost two years. And my college job, I was. I'm probably the longest American Enterprise Institute intern ever, because I Worked for, not in foreign policy. Although I would be like standing in the lunch line behind Paul Wolfowitz, wild.
Ryan Grim
Architect of the Iraq war.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, yeah, wild stuff. But I worked for Christina Hoff Sommers who is like, she was very favorable to Bernie in 2016 but was at AEI writing about feminism. She wrote that book from in 1994, who Stole Feminism? And she wrote the War Against Boys. And my job was to fact check the original War Against Boys, the footnotes and make sure the research hadn't changed. And in fact what I found often was that it. Some of these trends had gotten worse about young men in schools and all of them.
Ryan Grim
When did the War Against Boys come out?
Emily Jasinski
The original 90s. 2000.
Ryan Grim
2000.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, yeah. The re release was 2013, I think.
Ryan Grim
How did, how did Christina Hoff Summers shape. Shape your politics? Working with her?
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, I mean Christina's amazing. I just wrote in the Washington Post this month about my experience working for her. She, she's amazing. Like she's brilliant. And it was for me more of like an awakening along these same lines that I had. You know, I felt it in my gut, but I didn't have the language or the research or the experience to kind of back it up, which is this is a person who's eminently reasonable, brilliant and had leftist critiques of the feminist movement when she was. Her courses were cross listed in the women's studies department at Clark University, I think it was in Massachusetts in the early 90s. And she had leftist critiques of the feminist movement, got kicked out of the women's studies conferences and everything when she wrote who Stole Feminism? And ended up at AEI making I think a lot of the same, like leftist critiques, feminist critiques of the feminist movement in ways that aren't easily categorized as like necessarily leftist or reactionary. But she was so misunderstood and that I think I haven't even thought about that until now. But like that I think really resonates with me is that this, these elite distortions of well intentioned people who are just trying to engage in conversation.
Ryan Grim
Who did steal feminism? Like what was that?
Emily Jasinski
The feminists.
Ryan Grim
And for what purpose? Like what's her? I haven't read that. What's her?
Emily Jasinski
That's where she, that's where she goes through some of the statistics that the feminist movement has often relied on that aren't great. Like, so, for example, overstating the wage gap, overstating the prevalence of domestic abuse and violence and in ways that further like victimize women. It's like the learned Helplessness, but applied to women in the feminist movement. But also she was very early in saying that erasing sex distinctions was going to hurt women's spaces, it was going to undermine Title ix, it was going to create serious problems. She was very early on Gamergate, which is funny. I think I've told the story before of ending up at a Gamergate meetup while I was a Christina Internet at a bar on U street here in D.C. that got like a bunch of bomb threats called in. And it was all of these Gamergate people, Milo was there who came from around the country.
Ryan Grim
Like, and what was Gamergate for people who like, if, if you're under 30. Yeah, that's probably doesn't exist to you.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, that's true. It's seen as like Trump lore as 2014. Yeah, 2014, it's seen. It's sort of seen as like Proto Woke. It was a bunch of men getting mad about the femin or the feministization of video games and some of them channeling that in really awful ways. And some of them channeling it in ways that was just like, stop encroaching on our spaces. Like we have to let some stuff be for guys. And some of the feminization feministization of the video games was like Proto Woke. But anyway, yeah, I was at that Gamergate meetup and it was like a bunch of. I say this is.
Ryan Grim
Steve Bannon cites that as his origin story. He like saw the energy around Gamergate.
Emily Jasinski
Right.
Ryan Grim
So there's a lot of angry young men here. We could channel this into a publication and a presidential campaign and a political movement.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah. And some of that went to. Some of that energy went to Trump, some of it went honestly to things like Charlottesville and some of it went to, you know, just Jordan Peterson and early Jordan Peterson, like some really good stuff. So. Yeah, but I was like, I say this respectfully, like in a party of like sweaty basement dwellers who had traveled. It was the worst smelling part I've ever been to, who had traveled from around the country and were so nervous and they didn't have a lot of money and they put everything into getting to this meetup and it was like the highlight of their year. And it was in a way, you know, there were some of them who were clearly fringy and off, but in a way it was like also some of them were well intentioned and it was very kind of touching. I don't know.
Ryan Grim
Any of them talk to you or were they all afraid of you?
Emily Jasinski
They were afraid of the women. That is for sure. But yeah, they were really excited and then they were really excited when the leftists called them bomb threats and they had to evacuate three times because it made.
Ryan Grim
They would go out in the street. Renegades and.
Emily Jasinski
Right, exactly right. I mean they feel kind of alive. Yeah.
Ryan Grim
Which, and so you, you being at the Gamergate basement party goes to a question I've seen a lot of people ask. Now I've wondered about like the, the how, how do you square you in the public space? You work harder than almost anybody that I know. Like the day that we're taping this, you're up early in the morning, do breaking points. You're then recording some episodes for the holidays. You'll then have maybe four hours to go do other work. The SiriusXM show at 2, SiriusXM show at 2. Then you're gonna do the reason debate. It'll be there at 5:30. And then you're doing your after party show on Megyn Kelly's network at like 10, which will go till when, like midnight, 11.
Emily Jasinski
11:30.
Ryan Grim
Right. So that's.
Emily Jasinski
It's a long day.
Ryan Grim
It's a fun day. I don't want to say that like, like the way I always think about it.
Emily Jasinski
I love how you say this.
Ryan Grim
It beats working.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, you always say that.
Ryan Grim
It's not real work. It gives me perspective because it's fun, but it's a lot. That's a lot.
Emily Jasinski
That's a lot.
Ryan Grim
6Am to like, that's a lot. 11:12pm we can acknowledge that. That's like a long day. Even if it's fun stuff.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, it's a long day.
Ryan Grim
On the other hand, from the cultural political perspective, it's like, well, women shouldn't be working or I don't even know exactly where. Obviously you wouldn't ban them from working, but how do you square that?
Emily Jasinski
That's a good point. No, that's gone back to. People have asked Phyllis Schlafly that for years. And actually another one of my form of experiences was we brought Phyllis Schlafly to campus. I went to a Bertucci's and sat next to Phyllis Schlafly when I was um. And you know, she was 89 at the time. And I just remember still working, escorting her down this narrow hallway at GW and the protesters, she's 89 years old, were like shouting in her face and calling her like the most awful things. And again, I actually do understand where some of that comes from directed to Phil Schlafly because there's a lot of, you know, There's a lot of angst from, like, the sexual revolution and LGBT stuff, feminist stuff that then comes out, and actually probably Israel stuff, too. That comes out when you have a kind of somebody like Philip Schlafly as an avatar for that movie. Anyway, yeah, watching the hatred and vitriol was quite an experience. I'm not one of those people that has ever thought that women should not work. My mom worked probably 70 hours a week. She was flying to, you know, for a lot of my childhood, she was flying to, like, China and Germany because she worked for, you know, auto manufacturing company. No, no, no, no. She wishes. She wishes. But no issues in human resources, which would be a horrible CIA cover or maybe a great CIA cover. No, but I've never thought that. I think we have. Mary Harrington has this really interesting point about how the separation between home and work is actually industrial. It's post industrial. It's only something that we think about. This idea that women should stay home and that home isn't work is, like, very much a. And Mary comes at this from, like, a Marxist perspective that, like, men and women shared the work of the home until industrial society came along. So I think some of these are, like, artificial distinctions. I think if you look at surveys, it's true that most women want to work part time with their kids and be home for part of the time with their kids. That is the plurality of what women want to do. So I think women should. Should be treated that way and, you know, shouldn't be talked down to for choosing to work part time or stay home with their kids. But I don't really buy into the artificial distinctions between.
Ryan Grim
That is an interesting point, because the whole, like, women should be at home is a post World War II. Like, in the 19th century, like, yeah, everybody was working at home, especially because energy production was such a significant part of home life.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
Like, going out and, like, basically getting coal or chopping wood and making sure that you had, like, enough to heat the house occupied. Like, like, men. Men had to do that and were doing it on top of whatever their job was, otherwise the house is cold. And that gave them an out. Then, too, they're like that. They're, you know, if they're shirking other duties because they're not shirking anything because they're like. Like, literally, they got to be out there chopping wood.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, exactly.
Ryan Grim
An enormous amount. Because it burns so fast.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
And. And interest. So energy production being taken care of now by just the house has freed men up, and so men have Filled that time with not as many as Gamergate. Right now it's back to being wildly unbalanced back at home.
Emily Jasinski
It's a good Christmas book recommendation. Feminism Against Progress by Mary Harrington. She goes into some of this.
Ryan Grim
What's her take?
Emily Jasinski
Just what I like. It's actually very fascinating. At the time, I don't know if she would still define herself this way, but at the time it's a very Marxist critique of the feminist movement. It's really interesting.
Ryan Grim
That's interesting because. Yeah. It's like, I guess a lot of it. They grew up in the 40s.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
And 50s.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah. And it's. Right.
Ryan Grim
That was their perspective rather than a long historical one.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah. It becomes like corporate academic feminism.
Ryan Grim
So then how do you wind up with a Federalist?
Emily Jasinski
I was at the Washington examiner working for someone, you know, Tim Carney, on the commentary desk for a couple years. A job opened on the commentary desk at the Examiner. I jumped at it right away because I really wanted to do writing and I told Yaff that when I started working for them, that's what I ultimately wanted to do. So I jumped at that. But Tim was insistent, and rightfully so, that if you're a 24 year old and you have an opinion writing job, you're actually going to be doing reporting. So like you can do your blogs, but you need to bring new information to the table. And so that's where I hate reporting. I always say there are a couple types of journalists. There's the journalists who get into the job because they love reporting and talking to people and they hate writing. There's the journalists who get into the job because they love writing and hate reporting. There's the rare person who likes both and is good at both. But I'm the type of person that I'm in it because I love writing. I don't like reporting, but Tim forced me to do it and that was incredible. So the Federalists plucked me from there to sort of do that. But. But with more at the time like considered elegant kind of cultural writing every day. So my job was to write one piece on culture a day. It was like the dream job, which because the Federalist is very small, quickly turned into a lot of other things. I was doing a lot of editing, read the submissions every day, which was fascinating. The federal submissions from like 2018 to 2024 were very, very interesting.
Ryan Grim
Not bad.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah. And the Federalist model was publishing non professional writers from around the country, which I think any leftist publication, that is a model that they should take because we were publishing. Most of our staff was in the rest of the country. Our politics editor was in Texas, executive editor in Indiana. Everyone was elsewhere. But most of our writers were non professional writers either, just like people with normal jobs, like small town lawyers, stay at home moms, that type of thing. So that was very, very interesting to see the difference between like the DC hive mind and the submissions every day.
Ryan Grim
So now you went to college with two interesting people. Graham Platner?
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, I think so, yeah.
Ryan Grim
Sagra and Jetty.
Emily Jasinski
Yes.
Ryan Grim
Did you, did you know him in college? And is that how you first started doing, like, how did you first start doing Rising appearances? So actually before then doing the show.
Emily Jasinski
Sagar and I definitely met each other without knowing it in college, is my theory, because he was in a frat that I would occasionally like, be at the parties. I had a friend of a friend who was like, in that frat.
Ryan Grim
You partied with Sagar?
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, probably. He was a year.
Ryan Grim
Sagar was getting high in the.
Emily Jasinski
He was not getting high, but Sagar used to be a much better time. Much better time. It used to be a much better hang. Yeah. So Sagar's a year ahead of me and GW Platner was just going through GW very slowly, the GI Bill. And we found out recently that we overlapped with him. I don't think either of us knew him, but Sager had a really similar circle of friends to me. And so when we met at an event that he was covering, he was covering a YAF event. We, like met in person.
Ryan Grim
And you were at YAFF at the time.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, this was. Right. It was like the week of the 2016 election. And we met in person. We were like, oh, yeah, we have all these friends in common. And then our friend circles, like, became totally intertwined because one person started, like my best friend started dating one of his best friends. And there you go, There you go.
Ryan Grim
And so then he starts asking you to do like weekly. Were you doing Weekly Rising things?
Emily Jasinski
You know, it's. It's funny. It's even funnier than that. Sagar was really interested in starting to do like on camera stuff when he was at the Daily Caller. And I at the time was doing a decent bit of on camera stuff at Fox. And so we were talking about, like, what that's like, if it's worth it, all that sort of thing. And so when he was at the Caller, we were kind of strategizing on those types of things. And then he would come and like, I think you too would be on the Panel on Rising when he got that job.
Ryan Grim
Yeah, I think we had, like, maybe you had this, too. I think it was like, Tuesday, I'll be. You'll be on, like, Tuesdays.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
And whatever you want to talk about. Yeah, Tuesdays.
Emily Jasinski
Something like that.
Ryan Grim
Up.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
So then. So you help Sagar with the whole Fox thing.
Emily Jasinski
I don't know if you'll admit it, but. Yeah.
Ryan Grim
Well, we'll interview Sagar.
Emily Jasinski
We were at the. On Connecticut Avenue. Yeah, we had a little conversation about that, but. And I was also on the daily college softball team, so I was, like, hanging out with all those guys.
Ryan Grim
The team any good?
Emily Jasinski
Oh, hell, yeah. That year, we beat the State Department and the championship.
Ryan Grim
Wow.
Emily Jasinski
Awesome. Yeah. That's Hillary's state. Well, not Hillary's, but Obama's State Department.
Ryan Grim
I played on the House Ways and Means Committee team for several years. The craziest stories we had, like, four. Four Huff, four or five HuffPost people. And then Ways and Means.
Emily Jasinski
So inappropriate.
Ryan Grim
We literally were going to bat for them. So then Sagar and Crystal leave. They go do Breaking Points.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
And you come in for a couple weeks and do Rising and then end up doing it for a very long time. Like, how did. How did that fit into your. How you had seen your career going, I guess. And we got to wrap up pretty soon.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah. People probably kick us out of here. I know I've said this before. People probably know this. Like, I. On camera stuff is not my favorite. I don't love it. I'm happy to do, like, radio stuff, but I really hate doing on camera stuff. And so one of the reasons I didn't want to. I didn't jump at the chance. Among many other reasons, soccer and Crystal kind of filled us in on. On what was going on at the Hill. So there were a lot of reasons. I think both of us were skeptical. It was great money, though, at the time. It was. It was great money. And so, yeah, just like, you know, was also kind of trying to help them out and was, like, trying at the time. I was trying to do less on camera stuff, to be honest, because FOX had, again, tapered off for various reasons. But it started to become really fun. And I think you and I both experienced the obvious reaction that audiences had to crystalline Sagar, which was awesome. Like, just. It was so cool. It's cool to see how that's blossomed. But yeah, that's. I didn't really.
Ryan Grim
And around that time, Reading has been steadily declining, and audiences are moving here. So if you want to share the.
Emily Jasinski
News that Was so cool.
Ryan Grim
Kind of go where they are. Here we are.
Emily Jasinski
Well, yeah. And I don't know. I mean, I don't know that I would want to co host anyone else. I mean, there's obviously also Crystal and Saga. They're great. But. Yeah. Be no fun. But I just mean if, like, we hadn't initially been paired up together. Yeah, I don't think. I don't know if I would be here because I feel like that was really crucial.
Ryan Grim
Yeah, it's. It's. That's the limiting factor in a lot in. I think in these shows actually, is that it's.
Emily Jasinski
I think that's right.
Ryan Grim
There's an. There's an audience for much more of this type of news.
Emily Jasinski
Right.
Ryan Grim
Than is produced.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah. Yep.
Ryan Grim
But people can't produce it because they can't get along and they can't.
Emily Jasinski
Right.
Ryan Grim
Or they don't and not.
Trashy Advertiser
Or.
Ryan Grim
But. And they don't know what they're talking about. So it's. It's hard to find people who, like, know what they're talking about and also like the other person if they don't agree with them on. On everything. Right.
Emily Jasinski
It was really hard. I mean, I mean, the fact that we got through Peak Woke, that Crystal and Sagar and all of us got through Peak Woke and, like, should make T shirts. Yeah, we should. We survived the cancel culture wave. I actually think it is an amazing achievement. And the last thing I'll say is.
Ryan Grim
Just gonna be downhill from here.
Emily Jasinski
It's gonna be downhill. And also. Yeah, I mean, we certainly have disagreed on Israel stuff and probably definitely still do, but that has been an interesting journey for me too. But the last thing I'll say is I think algorithms are reprogramming our brains, especially in media. And this is just also audience directed. And you guys have probably see just the amount of people that react to Ryan and me and Crystal and Sager with total, sometimes extreme like, you can't talk to that person, you can't talk to this person. People would probably be surprised at how much that we get constantly, like, this is disqualifying. You should never talk to this person again. How can you host a show with this person? How can you host a show with this person given what this person, that this person is friends with. Thanks. It's just crazy. And so I think one of the reasons there's a demand for this type of show that doesn't get done is because the algorithms are like, reprogramming so many people to give in to those pressures and to fight or to dig in their heels and not continue to learn from each other and whatever. So that's one thing I think we do well.
Ryan Grim
Yeah. And I think if you push past those people, like, we're winning.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, I think that's true.
Ryan Grim
Because there are more people who are like, no, actually you should talk to each other. Other. Yeah. And I want to hear like, a lot of people will watch both FOX and cnn. It's like, why are we making people do that?
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, exactly.
Ryan Grim
Just give it to them. Yeah, just give it to them right here. And it also creates more honest news because it fights audience capture.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah.
Ryan Grim
Like you, you know, if you just have one perspective and then you're all. Then you build an audience that wants to hear that perspective. And if you want to change direction or if you have a position that differs from what they think, which you have to because times change.
Emily Jasinski
Right.
Ryan Grim
We move on. Like, we get new information.
Emily Jasinski
Totally.
Ryan Grim
You can't. Or you lose your audience. Whereas our audience very much expects to hear things they don't agree with.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, that's so true. And I hope people see that we, like, learn from each other. I think journalists should have more questions than answers, you know, and that's where I get a lot of times people being like, well, what do you actually think about this? It's like, because we're used to having people in media who have a rock solid opinion on every single thing. Because that's how you were taught. I mean, I always talk about how when I did media training before I went on Fox the first time I answered I don't know, to a question in the media training, and the woman was like, just don't ever say that.
Ryan Grim
Just don't ever say that again.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah, right. And now it's like a lot of times I'm just asking questions because you don't have to have a prefab ideological conclusion for every question that comes up. And shows that are in the habit of giving you that are bad. And I think people are getting sick of them.
Ryan Grim
Well, Emily Jasinsky, co host of Breaking Points, co host of the Emily Jasinski late night hour on the Kelly Show. Still ongoing. Writer at Unherd.
Emily Jasinski
Yeah. Columnist. And Ryan Grim.
Ryan Grim
And host of the show. Ryan.
Emily Jasinski
I'm Ryan Grimm's biggest fan. I. I swear, other than maybe Alisan.
Ryan Grim
There you go. So thanks so much for joining me.
Emily Jasinski
Thanks for having me, Ryan.
Ryan Grim
Hope everybody's having a wonderful holiday.
Emily Jasinski
Now it's my turn to turn the camera on.
Sagar and Crystal
Ryan.
Ryan Grim
Uh oh.
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Episode: "12/23/25: Ryan CONFRONTS Emily On College Campus CANCELLATION"
Date: December 23, 2025
Hosts: Ryan Grim & Emily Jaszinski
This special holiday edition is the first part of an interview swap between Ryan Grim and Emily Jaszinski. Ryan takes the lead, interviewing Emily about her college origins in campus conservative politics, her brush with "cancellation," the evolution of her cultural and political views, and her career in media. The conversation weaves through key moments shaping Emily's outlook, focusing on debates around sensitivity training, being labeled a "hate group," the development of "woke" politics, and the distinctive challenges and resonance of independent media today.
The episode is conversational, candid, and at times self-deprecating, marked by mutual respect despite ideological differences. Both hosts maintain a tone of earnest reflection, humility about their past miscalculations, and a strong belief in cross-cutting dialogue. Humor threads through the chat, notably in recollections of college antics, "sweaty basement dwellers" at Gamergate, and softball team stories.
This episode is a rich deep-dive into the personal, political, and professional evolution of conservative media personality Emily Jaszinski. By retracing her path through early campus controversies, ideological shifts, and her current role in independent media, the conversation frames the rise of cancel culture, the transformation of the conservative movement, and the enduring value of civil disagreement. For listeners interested in the human stories behind ongoing cultural battles, it’s essential listening.