After Party with Emily Jashinsky - America’s Political Violence Problem, Spencer Pratt’s Surge, and the Joe Rogan Backlash

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

Emily Jashinsky breaks with the norm to host a solo edition of “After Party.” She opens with a look at new evidence about America’s spiral into populist violence and points to recent commentary from Hasan Piker and Charlamagne tha God. She draws on Professor Robert Pape’s findings and how political violence increasingly is not driven by fringe outsiders. Then Emily dives into the L.A. Mayor’s race pitting Reality TV star Spencer Pratt against the Kamala Harris-endorsed Karen Bass. Emily explains how Pratt is using his social media savvy to turn Bass into a villain. Next Emily breaks down Graham Platner’s rise in Maine and how it signals a warning for the establishment. She also touches on Michael Rapaport’s recent attack on Joe Rogan. Emily wraps up the show with some recent viewer questions, and more…   Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/AFTERPARTY Beam: Visit https://shopbeam.com/AFTERPARTY and use code AFTERPARTY to get our exclusive discount of up to 40% off. PreBorn: Transform Mother’s Day for a woman in need by providing a life-saving ultrasound at https://preborn.com/Emily or by dialing #250 keyword BABY. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back to After Party, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us on this Monday evening. Tonight's guest is someone that I would say needs no introduction, celebrated in many different ways, many different people, award winning. It's me. And so I thought I would start off on a note of humility about what that all means for you to be graced by my presence tonight. Actually, I am the guest on tonight's show. No guest, no guest. We thought it'd be fun to kind of try it like that.

Like my mic is crooked. It's already reacting. It's like, it's like, why don't we have a guest? It was weeping silently. But I thought it would be fun to do a show where I just get to talk. Doesn't everybody think that would be fun? But actually, you know, I have a good rundown of topics to get to. And I think we're going to have a lot of fun.

I'm going to get to actually some of your emails. Normally we do that on a podcast, episode of the show only on Fridays. I'm thinking about maybe incorporating a bit more of that into the Monday and Wednesday show itself. Nothing's changing with Happy Hour. Don't worry about it. We're getting so many emails now that I thought maybe it would be fun to add some of them into the main show itself. So Emily at Double MakeCare Media.com, we're going to go through some of those emails towards the end of today's show. But you can always send me your questions, concerns, feedback.

I'm sure you're all going to be very upset about the guests today. And I'll probably get emails about that as well. But in all seriousness, fallout reaction to the White House Correspondence dinner continues. And the debate rages on actually about who is the source of political violence in the country right now. If it is one side or the other, who is it? We're going to get into that. We have some clips from Charlemagne the God and Jonathan Capehart on PBS that we're going to dive into. Graham Platner pushed an establishment Democrat candidate out of the primary in one of the

most hotly contested Senate races in the country. That's going to be regarding Maine, of course. Spencer Pratt's bid for mayor of Los Angeles seems to actually be going very, very well. And Michael Rappaport has some thoughts on Joe Brogan that I found to be worthy of a little bit of time in all of this. So let's go ahead and first, I want to just say we're going to start with the White House Correspondence Center Fallout. I think it's really one of the hottest topics in the country right now is the source of the New York Times Daily today and all of that. We're going to break it down in just one moment, so stay with us. But first, this spring, if you want real results, real results we're talking about here, ones that actually matter. Better gut health, glowing skin, stronger hair, and steady energy.

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You just have to add a scoop to your coffee or smoothie and feel the difference all day long. For a limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order. You just got to head on over to cowboy colostrum.com slash afterparty and use code afterparty at checkout. That is 25% off when you use code Emily at cowboy colostrum.com slash after party. All right, let's get into the continued debate right now over what happened at the White House Correspondence dinner. and actually what's really happened in the country over the last year or so, two years. This is what Professor Robert Pape, whose thoughts on the war in Iran, you may have been following closely,

but he refers to it as an age of populist violence. He was just on the New York Times, The Daily, today, one of the most popular podcasts in the country, fleshing out his theory and his research that suggests we really have entered a period of populist violence comparable to other times in American history. But he said what different. differentiates it from other moments in American history is that you're starting to see justifications of violence from so-called both sides, meaning the political left and the political right. Well, as this conversation has gone on in the media since last week's third major attempt to take Donald Trump's life at the White House correspondent's dinner, we're getting more

surveillance video, trying to understand exactly what happened with Secret Service. You've seen the video of the dog picking up on something where the shooter goes down a hallway, just in front of the barricades that are being taken down, which seconds later this shooter would storm, this attempted shooter would storm or wannabe shooter would storm. We're still also trying to figure out who fired which shots and who injured Secret Service. There's a lot unsettled at this time period. But what we can say is that it does seem as though high-profile episodes of political violence are increasing. And this became a subject of conversation on PBS. This was on Friday, I believe it's the show where David Brooks and Jonathan K. Part talk through the news of the week.

Let's start with how Jonathan K. Part responded to this raging question right now of who's more to blame. And if you look at who thinks violence is justified, it tends to be younger people by a lot. Most progressives and most conservatives oppose violence, but you get two and a half times as many progressives say it's justified than not. Excuse me, I'm not going to just let the comment that, you know, progressives, you know, more than folks in the far right are, you know, think that violence is justified. And to me, the bigger issue here is gun violence. why was I not surprised that this had happened? And I'd been to that dinner at least a dozen times since 2000. And so, yeah, there's an issue of, you know,

people feeling that political violence is the way to go and that we are in a highly charged atmosphere. But what's been sort of a specter over all of us for even longer is the scourge of gun violence. Okay, a couple of things there. First, Jonathan Capehart is saying, I'm not just going to let it go, that this is progressives, and then tries to change the conversation to one about gun violence. I will also add the alleged attempted assassin in this case was also carrying two knives. So something worth noting in the context of that point Capehart attempted to make. Now, Shalemane the God in Andrew Shultz on their show, got into this a little bit as well. And you'll remember we talked last week on the show about Hassan Piker, just several days before the event, on a New York Times podcast discussing social murder, invoking angles to talk about the assassination of Brian Thompson and the kind of

valorization of Luigi Mangione, which is, again, this happened just three days before the attempted assassination and has been a big part of the conversation. And let's first, before we revisit any of that, listen to how Charlemagne and Schultz discussed that part of the debate. Do we ever think, Chris, do we think about Doge and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that Doge got rid of last year, all of these federal workers still haven't found work? People have lost houses. People have had loved ones that have died because they don't have health care. Even when you think about, am I a person that believes they need to be border security?

A hundred percent. Of course. Think about their brutality of how some of this border policies have gone down. Of course, of course. But the question is, are you saying that it's justified because of it? No. So then it's not.

No, no, no. So it's like, so you, so that's how it's going to be consumes. Like, I don't think you're justifying it. But if I was someone who doesn't know you, I would go, oh, he's saying that he deserved this and he made people get this radical. I think we have to deal with the reality that some of these policies have hurt people so much that some folks are willing to risk it all. Well, now, now you're justifying it. I'm not just a reality.

It's just a reality. But now you're justifying it. It's just a reality that you have to deal with. This is really, really interesting. And I think what they're coming up on is how fine the line is. It's basically what we were talking about, Rhe Hassan Piker last week, because there, is between an excuse and an explanation a fairly important distinction. And it is possible to do both at the same time, right? It is possible to try to explain why we seem to be seeing more of this

and also excuse it and to do so intentionally. There's an unintentional excuse that could be part of the explanation, or you can just fully excuse it, which I think in the case of Brian Thompson, you've seen people on the left and maybe some on the like sort of the fringes of the right try to justify and excuse it as a kind of trollish meme. And that's not me excusing that. That's, I think, a descriptor of where some of those excuses have come from that, you know, it's, hey, everything is, what did Trump say? Everything is computer?

Everything's just a meme now. Everything's just a meme. And so it's all, you know, for the, It's all for the lulls, however you want to say it. But the fact that that's where the conversation went is really interesting because I'm putting this up on the screen. This is a transcript of the Daily from today, from Monday, which was an interview with Robert Pape, obviously professor at the University of Chicago who studied not just Iran, but also political violence, in the context of threats to the American homeland, basically, for a long time, has a new book coming out on it.

And it did not realize, to be honest, this was part of Professor Pape's portfolio. you, but here we are. This is the part that really caught my eye. It gets exactly to what both of those clips, the heart of both of those clips. So the host, Natalie Kittreff, says, if I understand what you're saying, it's not just the violent people who are implicated in this. It's the broader social acceptance that they are finding in a significant portion of American society. So it's not just them. It's many of the rest of us. In a way, this acceptance you're saying fuels the violence itself. He says, that's exactly right. We have conducted 20 nationally representative surveys of Americans over the last five years. We conduct them at the University of Chicago project

on security and threats. And we started doing it in the summer of 2021. And then the most recent one was in the end of January this year. So we understand quite a bit about the attitudes of Americans on political violence. He says from 2021 to the end of the Biden administration, our surveys found 10% of the body politics supported political violence to restore Donald Trump to the presidency. Then we did focus groups. And we did further survey research. What do people think they mean by the use of force. And what we found is 55% of the people who say the use of force is justifies think that means, think that the use of force means assassination. So the host says, what is that percentage now? He says, it's roughly double. It's now between 14 and 21%. So what you saw is almost immediately

after the election of President Trump is that doubled and it has stayed that high. It has not gone down. He says, another example of this is we asked a key question in September 2025. Do you find it acceptable that Charlie Kirk was assassinated? Do you find it acceptable that Nancy Pelosi had the attempted assassination? It was 10% for each, 10% for each, which means 20 million American adults found that acceptable on each side. Okay. So the other part of this is, he says the most important fact about political violence in America Day is this. Tens of millions of Americans on both sides of the aisle see political violence as acceptable. And once you have tens of millions of Americans, not a fringe, not a few militia groups who see violence as acceptable.

This changes everything about the risks of attack. Okay, you see now why that's important to both of the clips we just talked about. First of all, what David Brooks in that conversation with Jonathan Capehart was referencing, I believe, is a poll that we talked about last week from the Economist and YouGov. This is a reputable poll from September 12th to 15th of 2025. These are started the hours in the hours after Charlie Kirk was assassinated and then went for a couple of days after. It found by far in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's killing, by far, people who were young and self-identified on the left were much more likely to say that political violence is sometimes justified. It was not even close in any other demographic cohort.

What Robert Pape is saying is that when you measure this over time and not just that that one particular poll has been replicated, there are other findings of it. But what he's saying is that their survey, when they've repeated it several times in recent years, has found equal numbers, basically, of people saying, whether they're on the left or the right, that political violence is justifiable. And listen, people can doubt the survey research. I do think it stands out enormously that that economist UGov poll, the hours after Charlie Kirk's death, saw most people, or I'm sorry, saw a huge jump among people who are young and on the left say that political violence can sometimes be justified. But I actually don't doubt what Pape is saying overall, which is that Americans more and more are starting to see an existential element to politics. And what's very interesting about his results, and I'm just going to sort here. I'm going to find this, make sure we get this. Okay, so he says, he's asked by the host, what you're really talking about is a shift in power and influence for certain people.

And for many people on a really large scale, seeing their future prospects change in a sense that they're losing power. He says, another way to put it is we often think of the support for political violence among the losers of society, those marginal people that have little to lose. so they take a fling at political violence somehow. He says, this is not the case. That's exactly what you heard from Charlamagne in the clip, right? Is that people are getting more and more desperate economically, precarious economically. Pape says no. He says in our surveys, what you're seeing is large numbers of educated people,

large numbers of middle class people, large numbers of upper middle class on both sides are supporting political violence because they're the halves. And they're worried they're going to lose even more. in the future. Now, that is an interesting description of Luigi Mangione, who didn't seem to have any economic precarity other than a real problem with the health care system. Their own, his own experience with the health care system appears to have been terrible, but also upper middle class by any definition, successful upper middle class plagued by chronic pain. But that would be a potential category you slot Mangione into and potentially this attempted assassin would be

assassin from the White House correspondence dinner as well. So it's interesting that Pape says those fit the profile actually even more than the sort of weirdo fringe person who has nothing to lose. And I just want to pause on that because it's very easy to say people who take matters into their own hands are going to be the ones that are economically precarious. I might have even the set a version of that at some point. People who are drowning in student loan debt are utterly desperate to pay their health care bills. They can't afford houses. Well, that's actually, in many cases, people who might fit as upper middle class or middle class, certainly as middle class right now. People who got college degrees, they have some debt. They're making over six figures. And, you know,

live outside of a major metropolitan area where they can't afford, they can't afford to buy a house, they can't afford to pay off their student loan debts because the cost of living and rent is already so high. So it doesn't necessarily preclude people from economic precarity that they're now in the middle class or the upper middle class, but what's also interesting about that is the more that you start to see the existential question. as what's on the line in American politics, I think the more likely, the more likely it is that more people are going to start saying, hey, political violence could be justified because you're heading off a cliff that's going to hurt people, right? It's almost preemptive.

It's what we talked about on last week's show is poll after poll, finding Americans are no longer, they no longer have the belief in their own agency in the political process that has actually changed over time. And this is what I think is so important. And it's actually what Pape is saying you're seeing show up in some of the research here, is that people don't feel as powerful. They don't feel like they have agency. They don't feel like politics without violence, or they're more likely to say politics without violence is no recourse. That peace is no recourse. And again, this is why on last week's show, people can go back and watch it. I did like a long dive into Martin Luther King and the theory of nonviolence as political action

because I don't think it's obvious to people anymore that that is a noble route. And King argued that it was both a moral and efficacious route to political victories, that nonviolence is precisely powerful because it forces the predator, the perpetrator, the wrongdoer to confront the innocence of the victim in any given case. So you go back and watch that if you want to, but I made that argument specifically because I do not think it is any more, I don't think it is obvious to people anymore that nonviolence as political recourse is both powerful and moral because we all feel more and more existentially threatened in this political system. And there are a lot of people at the top who are to blame for thrusting us into a society

where we do feel more and more precarious. We do feel less empowered like we have less agency. And that doesn't excuse any of us saying that we are going to take our lack of agency or a perceived decline in an individual's agency as license to commit violence because you believe that, for example, Brian Thompson is guilty of mass murder. That is an argument you should make in a court of law. Still, an argument best made in a court of law. That is what makes successful and healthy polities. And yes, it feels difficult to advance the question of Brian Thompson's guilt in a horrible blood-soaked system to the court of law. But it is just because the slope gets very slippery as soon as you stop doing it. And this is the argument that needs to be made,

but it's the argument that's extremely difficult to make because so few people in charge of the system itself have empathy, true, real empathy for those who are suffering because of the system they built. Why? Because it implicates them. They are implicated in that suffering. And that's why, frankly, they don't particularly want to grapple with it. They don't want to confront their own failures. If you look right now at what's happening in Iran, for example, oil executives are making a lot of money. Lobbyists in D.C. are making a lot of money. If you're someone who benefits in the short term from stock markets going up, which Donald Trump keeps trying very hard to ensure happens overall, it was the same thing with tariffs.

if you're someone who benefits from that, and it's not just a matter of your 401k, then you're probably not too troubled. And everyone else sees that and is like, maybe I'm doing fine, right? Maybe I can afford rent, maybe I have an okay job, but it's not fair, right? It's not fair.

And everybody knows that life isn't fair. But when you keep getting slapped in the face over and over again and told that the problem is you by the people who are rigging the system and saying that it's not rigged and it's all great, you feel gaslit, you feel angry. And what Professor Pape is arguing by some of his own research is that essentially this is creating a bigger pool of people so aggrieved that they think political violence is sometimes justified. And the bigger that pool is, the more likely it is that some people just snap. And this is the period, as he would describe it, of populist violence that we find ourselves in right now. So those insights, I think, you know, he talks about two major structural changes that are happening that are driving some of this. He says income inequality since the 1980s, the increase of income inequality since the 1980s. And he says the transition from America as a white majority country to a white minority country to a white minority country.

is the other part of that that he highlights. And he's not even talking about either of those two things in partisan terms. He's talking about what that does when a population kind of undergoes two big changes. Again, he's not making ideological a partisan point. He's just saying that those are two huge trends that can, you know, really spark this sense of existential, people finding themselves at existential breaking points, right? right, that if we do not do something now, it is all gone forever. And so the pool of that type of person increasing is bad for all of us.

And what worries me, Pape says he thinks this could be the most violent midterm cycle in modern history, in living memory. What worries me is that everything is still so tickey-tacky when we hear about political solutions from politicians. The Republicans don't even want to talk about the health care system. Democrats don't really have an answer to what they would do if they got immigration policy back in their hands. You can understand why people feel like nothing's going to change. The answer to that is not to start us careening down the slippery slope of sporadic political violence, which actually Hassan Piker. I think we were one of the only shows that pointed this out last week, went on to argue is not actually even as as wrong as I think he is on certain things. He was arguing that look to a Zoran Mamdani if you're a leftist and you feel like you're at wit's end and you want to take political violence into your own hand or political change in your own hand to do violence. Look to Zoron Mamdani and say it is possible.

There is a better way. and to just go back to Martin Luther King, that way is the way of nonviolence is both more effective and more moral. So certainly scary times. There's no question about it. No question about it whatsoever. Let's talk about Spencer Pratt. Since we were just talking about Zora Mamdani, I want to talk about Spencer Pratt. Spencer Pratt is obviously running against Karen Bass for mayor of Los Angeles.

And just in the last several days, Pratt has on leave. a chain of mega viral videos that have started to, I think, really shift the tone of the conversation online, and you're starting to see that trickle into media coverage as well. It's already started to show up a bit in polling. So let's go ahead and listen to this latest video where Spencer Pratt actually talks about NGO grifting in California that is spreading right now rapidly on social media. Hey Los Angeles, are you aware that socialists in LA City government are stealing your money. We just finished doing a tour of the site with the Bureau of Engineering and the Bureau of Contract Administration and our contractors to check out the installation of the 16 new modular homes that will include 64-in-term housing beds.

Northeast New Beginnings is only possible because my team and I have worked to get a grant from the state. $16 million to build 64 new beds in Council District 1 of Interim Housing. I'm sorry, what? $16 million for 64 beds? $16 million built 64 new bed. That's $250,000 per bed. Why not just give them the money? I'll tell you why, because these corrupt DSA politicians can't steal it if they just give it as direct aid, just like the fire aid scam.

They'll never give an individual direct financial assistance. It always has to be laundered through one of Austin Millers or Nithia Rahman's NPO's so their friends can do God knows what with it. It's goblins like Yonis. are gobbling up all your tax dollars and they're coming for more. This is how socialism starts. Vague platitudes that feel nice and soften the language so the real problems never get addressed. It's the velvet glove for the iron fist.

These are just people experiencing homelessness. People experiencing homelessness? Why do they always talk like this? Why can't they just talk like a normal person? Well, I'm reading right now from a Newsweek headline. This one says, you can see it on the screen, Karen Bass's chances of beating Spencer Pratt as Kamla Harris endorses her. This was just published as I'm coming to you now.

Let's read the lead here. Karen Bass received the endorsement of Kamala Harris as polls show Bass in a potentially tight race in her reelection bid. Bass, a Democrat is facing a challenge from Spencer Pratt, a Republican reality television star, as well as several other candidates from her own party. Harris announced her support for Bass on Monday. Polls show Bass with less than the required 50% support to avoid a runoff with a significant portion of the electorate remaining undecided. So Harris's endorsement could carry weight among undecided Democrats. Okay. So Karen Bass gets Kamala Harris's endorsement,

says that she is, quote, deeply honored to have the endorsement of Karen Bass, of Kamala Harris. And all of this is happening while she's polling around a number that is, here's, let me just read it from Newsweek. They say the most recent public poll of the race showed Bass leading with 25% support, followed by Pratt at 11% progressive city council member at Nithia Rahman polling at 9% and then Ray Wong, an entrepreneur, Adam Miller, each at 3%. 40% of respondents said they were undecided. 40% of respondents said they were undecided. I just need to put that 40% undecided with what time there is left in this race. And Kamalaher, Harris is coming in thinking that's going to support or that's going to boost who Spencer Pratt is referring to as Karen Basura, Karen Trash, basically, in this race. Now, if you don't know who Spencer Pratt is, you're not my age in all likelihood. Spencer Pratt was on the hills. I forget whether Spencer was ever on Laguna Beach, but Spencer Pratt was reality star on the hills back in the early aughts, which was kind of like a reality version of the OC, which was

massively successful on primetime television. It was on Fox, I believe, actually, in the early aughts as well. And on the O.C., I'm sorry, on the Hills, it was this, like, very striking example of scripted reality, which has been transitioned out in the industry to some extent. The level of scripting that happened on the Hills was insane. But Spencer Pratt was the villain. Spencer and Heidi, Spidey, cover of every tabloid, villain, villain, nobody saw them otherwise. Basically, they were like the people you loved to hate if you watched the show. And Spencer Pratt's home was burned in the Palisites fire. And he'd continued to have a kind of interesting social media presence geared towards this kind of, it was eccentric and I think it was like clever. He's having played a villain on

reality television, you kind of get the experience if you're smart enough to see what sticks, what makes people tick is a better way to put it. Because you experience that just in your everyday interactions with people while you're going through the airport, I imagine, when you're out in the street, I imagine, like you get these very visceral reactions from people. You know, it happens online, obviously, of course, too, but you get some of it in person. And you're hearing it from the network probably who's pushing you in certain directions and you start to understand, again, what makes people tick. I think Spencer Pratt has realized that Karen Bass can easily be turned into a villain. He watched how people produced him, and now he's producing Karen Bass. If you watch reality TV,

you know that's become a little bit of an insider critique sometimes. It's often uses a compliment, too, of how people are producing themselves or they're trying to produce other people, because you can usually tell. It's mostly pejorative, right? It's like people are getting in the way of the plot by producing it. But you can see, I think Spencer Pratt is producing Karen Bass as a villain because he knows he has control of the media narrative because he's very good at social media. And Karen Bass is a normal politician who is terrible at social media and continues to make terrible excuses for where she was when the fire broke out for her piss poor reaction and the state's piss poor reaction, state Democrats, horrible reaction after the fire and why people like

Spencer Pratt are, I think he's like living in an airstream trailer now, which those are pretty nice these days, but why they don't have their homes back, why they haven't been able to rebuild. He's figured out that he can totally go around the media and start to

drive a narrative. And I think we have this article about Pratt that we can put up on the screen. It's a headline about how it's in this is in the Hollywood reporter, I think, today headline, why Spencer Pratt's grievance.

politics are more LA than you think. This is what I mean by how his total authority over new media is starting to trickle into like traditional media, like the Hollywood reporter, and a little bit into polling because he's keeping bass from that 50% level. And honestly, just people's skepticism of her is keeping them away from that 50% level. Like Spencer Pratt could run a terrible campaign where he didn't have command of new media. And still, Karen Bass could be in real trouble. But it's amazing to watch this happen in real time. I'm seeing people who certainly aren't traditional Republicans or conservatives

start to kind of nod at Spencer Pratt and give him some attaboys, being like, man, you didn't think you had it, didn't think you had it. But here you go. Like that video we played earlier of him being. very specific and actually also very entertaining and attention grabbing in explaining exactly how some of these NGO griffs happen, how democratic opponents have allowed them to happen. I mean, here's, let's put this up on them. This is a Fox News headline about Rashida Talib's big new plan. Rashida Talib's big new plan, a new quote, unhoused bill of rights to protect homeless

camping. This is the big new plan from a star of the left to deal with the real scourge and tragedy of homelessness that has overtaken many of America's cities. Now, from my read of what that legislation wants to do, it is create a million care in basses, right? Let a million care and basses bloom in every state in America. I mean, that's basically already happening in in blue states and blue cities. But to take the same approach that is failing over and over and over again. My understanding is that there's some new stuff in it, but if you want to protect, just take an example, if you want to protect camping, what that does is create a huge vacuum for some of these grifty nonprofits to step into, some of which are populated by people

with good intentions. You can see it on the street of blue cities, people out in the cold, trying to make sure they're handing up blankets and the like. But the nonprofits, I remember once in D.C., it was freezing cold. There was a massive encampment under a bridge right next to where I used to live. It was tragic and it was dangerous. Dozens of people in really close quarters with open fires, open-air drug market. It was horrible. But one of the homeless non-profits in D.C.,

I remember talking to Michael Schellenberger about this at the time, was actually protesting. To let the people stay on the streets in the freezing, freezing weather, as that being the compassionate answer to the problem. That's what happens when you protect the camping. You get into the problem of your compassion leading to the least compassionate solutions imaginable, which is rather than trying everything you can to get people into shelters, to get people treatment and help. You let them literally freeze to death on the streets in the name of compassion. This is what is going to create Spencer Pratt. And by the way, Graham Platner is not particularly on the homelessness issue or the non-profits issue. Set that aside.

I just mean people who are taking down these legacy establishment candidates who are really, really, they looked kindly upon in Washington, D.C. It will be the toast of a happy hour held in their honor in Washington, D.C. But, I mean, Janet Mills had to drop out of that race. We're going to get to it in a second. Janet Mills had to drop out of that race, basically. So it's because there's just a total lack of curiosity, a total lack of understanding of how bad the situation is and an unwillingness to change course because they're implicated in that. And it's going to be really powerful for Spencer Pratt, who we talked about it here weeks ago,

I think actually has a real shot because of his command of new media where he's seizing control, seizing total narrative control with all of these very clever attention-grabbing videos that unveil corruption with the system in a very persuasive way, provide people new information, which is the currency of new media. new information. It's not just, and I think that's where a lot of legacy politicians get it wrong, too. You have to move the ball forward. Otherwise, nobody cares. Like, your silly little ads, nobody cares about them if they're these like typical political ads. These are not moving the ball forward. You're not sharing new information. So they might work to some extent still on TV,

and maybe if they're playing before a YouTube video, they'll raise name identification. But that's kind of it. All right. Let's talk about Graham Platner since I brought him up. I'm going to take a quick break, but we're going to be back with more on Graham Platner in just one moment because I do have a lot to say about Graham Platner. First, though, if you have not heard of Beam's dream powder, let me tell you, this powder is different. It's not just because it'll change how you sleep, also because of the people who are behind it. This might be the most important part. Beam is American made by real people. who are focused on creating something that actually helps,

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That's, it's just tough to take on Susan Collins. She's a very good retail politician. So it's not going to be easy. Not going to be easy. But Graham Platner is now the presumptive nominee because Janet Mills, who was supposed to be the easy, pick for that seat, for that nomination, actually dropped out of the race. And Janet Mills is the sitting governor, the sitting governor of the state of Maine. And man, Janet Mills, that is brutal. Janet Mills, by the way, has been horrible. And I think this is going to be sneakily. I think this is

going to be one of the most important issues of the race. I'll tell you why in just one moment. but she's been sneakily bad on men and women sports. If you're on the right, you probably know that. But this is going to be a real question and a real issue now that it is Platner versus Susan Collins. So let's start here. I just want to take a look. I'll put it up on the screen at what we're looking at in some of these Senate polls. Let's see if RCP has their map.

Okay. So in key Senate races, you can see Ohio. So look at that, 48 to 45. So Republican 48.3, Democrat, Sherrod Brown, he may remember, 45.7. North Carolina, you have Michael Watley, the Republican candidate, 42.2% to 49% for Roy Cooper. This is North Carolina. Georgia, it's looking like Asaf hangs on there, but they're still runoff to get through. actually really don't think is on the table. But the other one I would watch closely,

there hasn't been a lot of polling in it yet, is Nebraska. So the big ones right now on my map are to really watch are Nebraska and Ohio. I think it's going to be tough to unseat Susan Collins. But if anyone is going to do it, it was not going to be Janet Mills. Janet Mills, sitting governor, establishment favorite. And Janet Mills had so much money and support that it was basically thought to be a joke that Graham Platner, a combat veteran with all kinds of weird Reddit posts in his past, and that Nazi tattoo, which by the way, Graham Platner has conceded was a Nazi tattoo because Graham Platner covered it up that he got well on break during deployment, I think in Eastern Europe, like somewhere like that. After a drunken night out, now there's some debate over whether

Graham Platner is telling the truth about when he knew that it was a Nazi tattoo and was he joking about it to people when he was tending bar here in DC at the at the tune-in. He is now an oysterman. Is his background populist? That's up for debate as well. Is his background really kind of hard scrabble? His grandfather was a very famous architect. His dad was basically like a country lawyer. And so conservatives, the line of attack so far has been he is.

a fake populist and he's a Nazi. So there are two layers here. We'll talk about the left. We'll talk about the right. I want to start with the left. We can put this article that I wrote for unheard not long ago up on the screen. This is Graham Platner. My first reaction was Graham Platner is forcing Democratic leadership into retreat. The question then is whether they are conquering the populists like Platner and Mom Donnie or whether the populace, or whether the populists like Plotner and Mamdani are conquering them, right? Are they going to push the democratic establishment more in their direction or are the centrist's going to push the populists more in their direction? Now, people debate this in the figure of AOC just alone. Like, is she an

example of somebody who successfully brought the party further left or has the center of the party co-opted AOC? We might not have the exact answer to that question yet, but we do know. that Grand Platner was just trouncing Mills in the polls, despite everybody on the Democratic centrist side saying that he was a Nazi. He was a misogynist. Janet Mills ran an ad about how women hated Grand Platner, all of that. And it didn't work. He was still drawing lots of people to town halls. He was wildly out-polling her.

And we all know that's true now, even though doubt was being cast on the polling and the like, because Mills dropped out, which tells you her own internal polling was probably, a disaster. And so how did Platner do it? Well, people might not agree with him across the board on some of these things, Democratic voters. But the guy just goes in front of a microphone. We've had him on breaking points and talks like a normal human being. He was being asked by David Serota on the lever just in the last like 24 hours about whether he would go on Tucker Carlson's show because Tucker told the New York Times and the big podcast everyone's been discussing that he's hoping to connect with Platner.

And that's, I mean, Platner responds to it and says, basically, okay, he's like, I'm thinking about it. He's like, I don't have an answer to that right now. He's like, I've been wrestling with it. And he just says that he didn't have a talking point ready to go. He openly didn't have a talking point ready to go. And he brought the audience, i.e., the voters, in on his process.

Now, again, I just wanted to put any ideological debates that you would have with grand platinum aside i would have many we'll get to that in just one moment but that is what voters want that is how you beat the party establishment it's how trump beat the party establishment you didn't have talking points or one-liners ready to go it's how he beat the republican establishment again in 2024 uh because people still hadn't picked up on that he's literally if you look at this rhodoclip just sitting there talking to him like band a man normal unrehearsed and openly bringing people on his process as he thinks through the question of whether or not to go on one of the biggest podcasts in the country. And his thoughts were interesting.

You can see him wrestling with it in an interesting way that's an actual argument. So now, on the other hand, the people of Maine are going to have some questions about cultural issues, which Grant Platner has accurately called a distraction. He said that in the past, we played the clip on the show a couple of weeks ago. And it's right that there are elites at the top of the system. This is what he talks about. This is what Dan Osborne, who's an independent with backing from some prominent people on the left, who this is what he talks about in Nebraska. It's what James Tolerico tries to talk about, kind of. But that it's really not about left and right. It's about top versus bottom. That's the Telarico line. They're all coming to get you, right? And so that's, you know, that you are being, as we talked about earlier in the show, that this system is being rigged. I shouldn't say they're all coming. to get you, but that this system is being rigged by people who are profiting off of it while they make it harder for you to succeed in ways that are unfair. That is really, really powerful.

We're going to start seeing successful Republican candidates talk like that, but you also have to package it in the new media format, which is what Platterner is doing successfully. How is he going to talk about immigration? How is he going to talk about, again, women's sports, which has been a really hot topic. Title IX has been a really hot topic in making. because Janet Mills has been in a protracted battle with the Trump administration over it. So it would have been a problem for her as she defends the far left position about it. But it's going to be a problem with Platner. As I've said many times, the litmus test is basically, one of the big litmus tests in politics right now

is if you believe that a boy, a child can become a girl, should become a girl. It's another element of that. And if a man can become a woman or should become a woman. And if you answer that yes, someone can legitimately change who they are because the biology of it isn't that important. So they can actually change because you can, you know, fool the biology with hormones, whatever else. That you will fail that litmus test with voters if you say yes and you don't seem like you actually believe it, which is for most people going to be where they fall. Platner might be one of those people who actually is far left enough. he really does believe that the biological imperatives are, they are so secondary tertiary

that it can basically be changed to the point where it's almost meaningless how you were born. If he says that and he really believes it, it's going to be more successful for him than if he tries to say something that he doesn't really believe in. And that's where it will be interesting to see who's co-opting whom, right? Is he controlling in Democrats or they controlling him? But that's where I think, yes, it's true that elites use the cultural. culture war is a distraction, sometimes, absolutely. But where I disagree with that vehemently is that the left has constantly forced these cultural conversations where literally nobody was talking about changing Title IX to mean gender identity in addition to sex. Then the Obama administration just did it. And expected schools K through 12 get federal funding around the country, just change. And you were causing a distraction if you were a, a, let's say a lesbian feminist who didn't like that, or you were a Christian conservative who didn't

like that, or you were just an independent parent who didn't like that. You were told that you were a distraction. No, you weren't distracting anything. That was a distraction from the left. So it absolutely goes both ways. It is baked into the definition of progressive, that as you change things, of course, people are, as you, quote, progress, people are going to react when they don't like that direction of progress, which is not categorically, progress is not categorically a good thing. And so sometimes people are going to be unhappy with it. And you can't say that they're creating a distraction by reacting. You can't say some people are overreacting. But you can't say that they're manufacturing distractions to peel attention away from these structural economic questions. So I think that'll be a problem for Platner, but it's a huge, huge wake up call. Spencer Pratt, Zora Mumdani, Graham Platner, huge, huge wake up calls for legacy politicians right now who are looking around and wondering, how does Janet Mills, drop out before you even get to the primary. That's how. All right. I'm going to take one more quick break and then we're going to play a clip of Michael Rappaport reacting to Joe Rogan. I'm going to

react to Rappaport reacting to Rogan. Why not? But first, happy Mother's Day, everyone. It is one of the most beautiful moments of the year to share life-changing news. Maybe you've seen it, a family gathered around the table when someone stands up and says next year, there will be a brand new mom in our family. There's just nothing like that. But for some women, Mother's Day feels very, very different. Instead of celebrating, they're carrying a secret. They're afraid. They're unsure.

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slash Emily. Okay. Let's close here with Michael Rappaport getting very mad about Joe Rogan. Now, they've fallen different sides of the Israel divide. That's basically what you need to know about this conversation. So Rappaport posted a montage. Well, actually he posted a clip that was circulating from a new, what do they call it, Protect Our Parks episode of Rogan where it's like Gillis and Norman. And here's the clip, you'll see it. And then we'll bring in Rappaport's thoughts. America does that. Yeah, we're like not the best people to handle stuff and we're like still like, we should handle it. You know who else does it? Who? Israel. Blame everything on Israel. I'm not blaming everything. Yeah. They're part of it. It is amazing how many

high-profile Jewish people just they have an opinion about everything but when it gets to this like they just avoid that or come up with some random way to justify annihilating an entire city yeah it's just funny to me when Americans are like hey

this other countries overstepping yeah we bomb the bad twice yeah we were pretty brutal a second Afghanistan Iraq those fuckers had it really come up they were Jews twice the second one was just going hey

check this out Russia. I guess so. But yeah, whatever. Well, that was a long time ago. That's true. Everybody did that's dead. But based on today, oi.

Oe vee vei. Yeah. It's a lot. Like Lebanon? Bro, they're doing a Lebanon right now. It's crazy. Well, they're looking for Hezbollah. They've got to look under rubble.

Okay, so Rapaport. Let's put his reaction up on the screen here. This is how he responded. Talking shit in Gallo's humor doesn't make you racist or hurtful, I guarantee you Joe Rogan makes jokes about gays, blacks, Asians, I think he says Latins and everything else off camera. But Big Bad Joe Rogan only makes jokes about Jewish people on camera. He's totally comfortable doing it weekly on camera and has pigs like Tim Dillon, et cetera, et cetera, join him doing it. Only Jewish people. Why? It's because the last

form of acceptable hate and one of the reasons it's still acceptable is because gay, blacks, Asians, Latins, and everyone else hasn't said anything about it. All right. So the point that Rogan was making there. And Rappaport, by the way, if you don't know Rapport, also kind of comes from a comedy background. He's an actor. But Rogan is talking about the Jewish state. And so it's not irrelevant in that case to make an argument that he believes, which I actually don't think it's true. But I like Joe Rogan. I don't have a problem with him making this argument. I just don't think it's true, that a lot of high-profile Jewish people don't have anything to say about the situation. Now, I think what he actually meant is about atrocities and what's happened over the course of the war.

And that actually is a different position. So just trying to be charitable with how Rappaport was interpreting what he heard from Rogan. But I wanted to respond to this because it is so insane. It's such a crazy point. Joe Rogan has famously been under fire for years for all of the things that he says about race, about sexual orientation. The same goes with Tim Dillon. I would actually expect Rappaport to know this because he is in that space. If you don't watch Joe Rogan, if you don't listen to Tim Dillon, if you only encounter some of these comedians, Shane Gillis, from clips, you should probably not talk

about them, period, unless you preface everything you say with, quote, I only watched the clip. Then you have license. Go ahead. Then you have license. Fire away. Say whatever the hell you want because everyone then knows your exposure to these comedians is just from clips. But it's not at all, like what Rapid Ports is saying is not at all true. And anybody who remembers Rogan's history, this is why Bernie Sanders was so bad for thinking about going on Rogan. Couldn't do it. Dem candidates couldn't go on Rogan. Kamala Harris couldn't go on Rogan because he was so politically incorrect. Nobody wanted it to happen. actually wanted it to happen. So that is just a really, I think, a really uncalled for smear. I said this on Megan's show earlier today. However, people disagree on these issues, just on a human level, think before you smear people. You should use your social media platforms if you're like getting in arguments to engage and not rage. And I'm not just saying that because it rhymes. Persuade and not rage. Like otherwise, what is the point? Is the point that you are getting likes and retweets because your likes and retweets don't translate into a better country.

I'm just sorry they don't. So if you are posting on X, not because you're trying to persuade or engage with somebody in good faith, but do something else, right? Are you just trying to make a point? I don't apply this to like jokes necessarily because they're jokes. But if you're, I'm talking about people who are trying to make political arguments on X, if you're doing it to to rage instead of persuade. Not as good of a rhyme. A little bit of an off rhyme there. Don't forget about my degree in poetry.

But that is not making the country better. And often because algorithms incentivize extremes, it polarizes the country further into these extreme camps, meaning I hate this or I love this. I endorse this or I condemn this. And it ends up with ad hominem so often. And it's also not always accurate because you're racing to get likes and retweets.

I don't know if that's what Rappaport was doing here. But again, like, if you had stopped and just thought about this for, I don't know, 30 minutes, 10 minutes, you could find information to the counter on Google, like literally in a minute. And Rappaport should know this. Maybe Rappaport does know this and he's acting in good faith. But even if he is, and he's acting in bad faith, but even if he is acting in good faith, just don't have to do this. Like, on a human level, smearing people in this way, nums,

us to bigotry. It numbs us to bigotry. And it's making people crazy. It's driving people insane. It's making them very angry. And sometimes that anger turns into something even less constructive and can go in really dark directions. People check entirely out of society or they are attracted to more fringe stuff because, again, they feel disempowered and like they lack agency because no matter how many times they try to make an argument. You have people, not Michael Robert Ford, he's just an example of powerful people who are going to smear them as one thing or another, that they're not. And so that can be a gateway drug. All right, I'll stop ranting on this and take one happy hour question here. This is from Nate, who emailed Emily at devilmaicaremedia.com to say, are we in a state of

perma crisis or does it just feel like it? Nate, I can go on this question for a couple of hours, probably, we are in a state of parma crisis. And I believe that is directly downstream of nuclear proliferation of nuclear technology, which basically erased borders. Much of our technology has done this from the internet to smartphones to social media loaded with the internet in our pockets. It's just put us all in closer, more immediate proximity on a daily basis. And so that state of parma crisis, humans thrust into close proximity. I don't know if people know Dunbar's number, but with more human beings that you could ever conceive of knowing the names of being able to talk to, let alone instantaneously, that is a recipe for perma crisis. There is no shire at all, which actually

goes with another question I was going to respond to from Gregory, who says, Emily, just a quick note, I haven't been able to read the Lord of the Rings either, because I said on a happy hour episode, which is the podcast version of this show that we do on Fridays in the podcast feed. So subscribe there. If you're not a podcast sub, you get it in your inbox every Friday. I'll probably start taking a couple of them on these shows more and more in the future because they're fun. But Gregory says, in response to me saying, I just could never get into Lord of the Rings, but I loved The Hobbit.

He said, I haven't been able to read Lord of the Rings either. And I also adore The Hobbit, C.S. Lewis, et cetera. Same goes for Chesterton. Now I'm in my early 50s, one child and another possibly in the works. And perhaps it's just a season for some. But I'm believing I can do it now. I crack the books, read some Chesterton, a bit of Lord of the Rings and thought, I'm ready for this. Finally, I'll report back successful or if diluted.

Gregory, I'm glad to hear it. I do look forward to hearing back from you on that point because I do think, I think about the Shire a lot as somebody who loved the Hobbit but couldn't quite get into Lord of the Rings. I mentioned on last week's happy hour that there's this line from Frodo to Gandalf. Basically, I'm paraphrasing it, but saying, like, why did this have to happen in our? time in my time and Gandalf says we can't control that but we can control what we do with the time that we have and I feel like that's the the misery of the parma crisis but also the upside and the glass half full view from Gandalf of course that no you can't control what happens in your time you can't control that you were born into a world that was trying to adapt to the catastrophe

of erased borders and I don't mean that in just a political sense. I just mean that people from all kinds of different places who live different lives with different religions and backgrounds are now thrust into a constant state of political conflict because of nuclear weapons and obviously also because of social media, our ability to hear speak, talk to each other, see each other that quickly. Of course, we're going to be in what feels like a state of perma crisis. But we can't control that. We can control what we do in the state of permacrisis. So again, that could be a two-hour discussion. But I want to thank you all for listening to this Emily-only-only-only edition of After Party. Love it, hate it, Emily at double-maycaremedia.com.

Let me know. We'll be back here on Wednesday. Got some good guests lined up for the near future. So make sure you stay tuned. Please, please, please subscribe. If you haven't yet, that is the best way to help us on YouTube. It's the best way to support the show. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. We'll see you back here on Wednesday, live at 9 p.m. with more after party.