After Party with Emily Jashinsky - “Bad Guy” Comey, Rowling Fires Back at Watson, and NYT Lies About Charlie Kirk, with Mark Halperin

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Mark Halperin, Editor-in-chief of 2WAY and host of “Next Up with Mark Halperin.” The two start off with a discussion about President Trump’s peace plan and meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the chance Trump could win the Nobel Peace Prize if the war in Gaza ends.  They also discuss “bad guy” James Comey, how the Washington Post is attempting to rebrand itself, Kamala Harris’ awkward book tour, PLUS Mark’s must-listen reaction to Ta-Nehisi Coates labeling Charlie Kirk a “hatemonger.”  Mark also gives a surprising take on the separation of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.  Emily then gives a lesson on journalistic integrity and does a paragraph-by-paragraph breakdown of a New York Times article on Charlie Kirk, talks Rosie O’Donnell’s therapy session with Nicolle Wallace, and J.K. Rowling’s must-hear response to Emma Watson, and more. Cozy Earth: Visit https://cozyearth.com for up to 20% off with code EMILY. Masa Chips: Go to https://MASAChips.com/AFTERPARTY and use code AFTERPARTY for 25% off your first order. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to After Party, everyone, coming to you on the tail end of a very long newsday with an absolutely packed show. Mark Halperin is going to join us in just one moment. First, coming up, you can expect us to dive into a little bit from that Netanyahu press conference. It actually turned out not to be much of a press conference. Trust me, I was there standing in a very overcrowded room with other reporters for two hours. And then there were no questions. but actually the fact that there were no questions, I think tells us some interesting stuff about the deal.

We're going to get to that with Mark Halperin. In just one moment, we're also going to talk about whether or not we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to potential charges against James Comey. Connell Harris continues to make the rounds earning a rebuke from the Washington Post editorial board. Tana Hassey Coates has called Charlie Kirk a hate monger, believe it or not. The Washington Post, speaking of which the Washington Post's first, interview given by their new opinion editor. I have some tea in that direction that I might be willing to spill if you stick around for the rest of the episode. Was given to Fox News. Rosie O'Donnell is losing her mind. That's not fair to say. Rosie O'Donnell lost her mind a long time ago, but she's revealing new

tidbits from her conversations with her therapist, and so was Nicole Wallace. I am going to at the end of the episode, deconstruct a New York Times article on Charlie Kirk, just bit by bit. I'm going to dissect it. So that'll be fun. It'll be a sort of academic exercise. We'll make a night of it. And J.K. Rowling is reacting to those Emma Watson comments that we reacted to last week. But without any further ado, let's go ahead and bring in Mark Halperin, who of course is the editor-in-chief of Two-Way, the host of Next Up with Mark Halperin. I'm Megan Kelly's MK Media. And apparently a night gym goer, because if you're listening to this, you're missing that Mark has a treadmill behind him with some exercise equipment. So kind of embarrassing. I picked out an outfit for the show weeks ago.

And then over the weekend, went to boardwalk in New Jersey, ate a lot of funnel cakes. And long story short, the only way I could put on the outfit I wanted to wear was if I went to the gym for about three days before the meeting. And I back time to poorly, Emily. So I'm still here. But it's all good because the pants are on. You can't see it, but they fit just fine now. Well, that's what counts. Not time poorly at all. In fact, I actually think this is very perfect for after-party because this is after the new cycle. So you can be in the gym. You can be at the bar. I truly don't mind. Mark, speaking of this crazy news cycle, the press conference that turned into not so much of a press conference as an announcement in the White House between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Donald Trump raised, I think, more questions than answers. But we definitely started to see what might look like. Donald Trump's vision for the future of Gaza and what it might take to get both parties on board.

I want to go ahead and roll just a clip from that presser and get your reaction to it, Mark. They don't want the life that they've had. They've had a rough life with Hamas. If the Palestinian Authority does not complete the reforms that I laid out and my vision for peace in 2020, they'll have only themselves to blame. We're giving them an amazing footprint. And they have amazing support from the leaders of the Arab War. world and the Muslim world are great leaders.

These are great leaders. These are unbelievable leaders that have built great countries and very wealthy countries. What the future holds for the Palestinians, no one really knows, but the plan that we put forward today is focused on ending the war immediately, getting all of our hostages back, getting everything back. Hard to believe when you even say it.

And creating conditions for durable. Israeli security and Palestinian success. So, Mark, this was not a very, quote, explosive press conference, but this is a daily mail headline F4 regarding something that you said recently, which is the truth of Trump 2.0 as the president's aides are not too afraid to restrain his explosive instincts. It's that they share them. And I found that to be actually pretty interesting framing for what happened today, which is this historic generational attempt at taking a step forward.

I know what you're talking about there was Comey. but Jared Kushner was in the White House today. Jared Kushner from Trump 1.0 organizing Abraham Accords, talking about how Gaza has valuable waterfront property. And it looks like they're kind of doing the damn thing. Am I wrong? Well, first of all, I'm glad you didn't have to fly all the way to Anchorage to go to a press conference where there were no questions

because that would have been longer. And the other thing is, you've ever been to the Hall of Presidents at Disney World? You know what I'm telling you? Yes, of course. I feel like today's Trump was like the robot. Trump doing all the greatest hits of like the digressions and jokes and ad libs and side bits. I thought it was right for the time capsule. The Abraham Accords, Mark?

The Abraham is saying like that because, yep. That's the way the people in the know say it. Yeah, that line is the kind of line I'm talking about. You know, this is one of these things. And it is following on the Abraham Accords, which is this is one of the things Donald Trump is done in the first term and now is on the precipice, it appears, of doing again that tests the medal of people with Trump derangement syndrome. Because if Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Bill Clinton did the Abraham Accords, the press and the Democrats would just be celebrating that

masterful achievement of what for all other presidents has been unachievable, which is sustained and lasting peace in the Middle East. Now, it may not. pan out. Of course, the Abraham Accords have been in place since we've seen a lot of violence, so it's not like they're cure-all. But this is quite something, and it's, and it's textbook, it's

the hard work of diplomacy. And you've seen, you know, Whitkoff and now Jared and Tony Blair working with Jared, you've seen them do what you need to do for peace deals, including in the Middle East, which is shuttle diplomacy going, flying around,

being on the phone with folks. So, I don't know that this will happen, but just the, this is, the paradox to me is most of what Donald Trump does is completely unorthodox, not by the book, and something that Democrats can say, you know, look at that. That's outrageous. This is just, this is incredible what they've done and they've done it the old-fashioned way, not in some newfangled Trump way, but old-fashioned. This is how you make diplomacy work. And although even as that's the case, there are. are these flares of Trumpism that are unmistakable, meaning his son-in-law, who has a lot of business interests in the Middle East, including with the Saudi royal family, sitting in the front row

next to Steve Whitkoff's whose son, according to recent New York Times reporting, was trying to get Qatar investment in U.S. real estate deals. And that is, again, I'm just looking at it through this frame of how unusual this almost, I don't know if it's a, shamelessness isn't quite the right word, but this disinterest in Washington's sort of bullshit standards. It's just, I do wonder, I mean, Trump and Netanyahu both thanked Kushner for his involvement in all of this. So I wonder if there is any conceivable way that Obama or a Clinton or Bush gets close to something like this, because it just to me looks like Trump pragmatism that is moving the ball forward as he sees the court. Well, I definitely would say it's suboptimal to have people who have, you know,

huge financial stakes in the region at the center of it because it's just going to give people the impression that it's not legit. But the reason Jared has such close relationships, besides working hard in the first term at the Abraham Accords, is he spent a lot of time in the region hanging out with people who are rich and influential. So it's not, it's not perfect. But I think of all the of all the downsides to the buck raking done by the Trump family

in conjunction with his time and power, this one has kind of reased the skids a little bit. So I think this one's probably, we could probably live with this one. Well, to me it's just the double-edged sort of Trumpism, which is that a lot of these, you know, if we found out that a Jared Kushner with

relation hypothetically to the Obama administration had been working on this deal, he would never have been in the front row at this press conference because it would have been so shameful. And for some good reasons, of course, because there's an obvious conflict of interest. On the other hand, Trump sort of openly embraces the conflict of interest, whether it's Wittkoff's, Middle East real estate deals throughout time, or Jared Kushner's, as the way that you do the deal. And that is still, it's still sort of unusual. Yeah, this illustrates one of, I've not had many insights in my life about Donald Trump or anything else,

but this illustrates one of the few insights I've had, which is, and this comes from talking to Donald Trump about the American presidency going back to when I first started talking to him in 2011. Donald Trump's view is he's not going to be the sucker who underuses the office of the presidency. So he says, okay, what did LBJ do when he was president? He got rich in the office by trading on his power to make money. So Trump's attitude is, I'm not going to be the sucker who doesn't do at least what LBJ did and maybe a little bit more to get rich while he's in office. So you see that also with the indictment of Comey. Trump would say, well, Nixon used the Justice Department to go after his enemies. I'm not going to be the sucker who leaves power on the table, who doesn't use the office to my maximum advantage. As long as a predecessor president did something, I'm going to do it too.

And I think that's his attitude towards making money as president. He looks at Nancy Pelosi and LBJ and other people who got rich on office. And he's like, you know, I'm not going to be a sucker. I'm not going to leave the money on the table. That's such an interesting insight. Before we leave this topic, Mark, I haven't heard a lot of people mention. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 10th. And part of me feels like there's an urgency in the White House.

There was a leak to Reuters from Norway, people saying they don't think that Trump is really in the running, that it would be ridiculous, just predictable stuff. But I also wonder if part of Trump's plan, even knowing he's likely not to get the Nobel Peace Prize, whether or not he thinks that, but there's an easy opportunity for him to say, they're out to get me. They hate me. Not suggesting that his foremost interest here is a Nobel Peace Prize, but I do think it's on his mind. What do you think? I think it's on his mind, but a couple weeks ago, I read an article. There's like five people who get to pick who wins it. Yes. Given their political profile, I think he's more likely to be named like Randy Weingarten Man of the Year.

Like, I just don't think it's in the cards. It's not the right electorate for him. Does that exist? Randy Weingarten Man of the Year, it should. But I mean, I'm trying to think of another metaphor slash joke. Like, I think he's more likely to be. made president of the Mamdani fan club? I don't know.

He's just, just the electorate's not lined up here. A bunch of really liberal Europeans are just not going to honor Donald Trump with a high honor. I just, I think he's, I think he, to the extent he amused about it, I think he hadn't done the research on who the voters are. Yeah. And I think he'll relish and actually, to some extent, not getting it despite what he sees his accomplishments. Oh, no, he wants it. Don't be, don't be no relishing the snub this time.

Don't you think he'll enjoy to some extent saying the haters will never, they'll never appreciate me? There's nothing that I can do. I can solve peace in the Middle East and I can never get a noble peace prize. Normally, yes, but in this case, it's a badge of honor he actually wants rather than wants to wear the snub badge of honor. So now I don't think he'll relish this. Although I take your point as a general matter. I take your word for it.

Mark, let's move on to Comey, since you brought Comey up. I know all you can think about is Comey. Mark, it's just... I have intense feelings about Comey. So, all right, let's get into that because Catherine Harage posted on X that... I think it was actually kind of an interesting point. She says, in her experience, quote, a thin indictment suggests a holding charge with the potential of a more complex

superseding indictment that adds more charges and that the Arctic Hays records, which were revealed recently, quote, reveal several FBI senior leaders in Columbia law professor Daniel Richmond said they coordinated media leaks at Comey's direction. Meanwhile, there are people like Andy McCarthy over at National Review, who's, I think, always worth reading on these big legal questions, whether he's in agreement with the administration or not. It's always interesting.

Who's saying headline, with more scrutiny, the Trump DOJ indictment of Comey gets worse. So, Mark, which do you think is more likely the case here? Is it possible that McCarthy and Herger are both correct, that maybe this is the tip of the iceberg, but because of that, it looks bad. What's going on? I contain multitudes on Comey and on this case. I really, the trajectory of Comey's place in our national psyche makes me mental because he's a bad guy.

He's an egomaniac. He breaks the rules for his own advancement. he treats people horribly. He lies with impunity. And yet he was a hero of both the left and the right, you know, and was treated and still is treated by the media to some extent as this great hero, as this great principled. Yeah, Boy Scout principled opponent of all that's evil about Donald Trump. And I just think it just, it's not like I do have some reporting on it that maybe hasn't

been public yet, but you don't need inside reporting. Just look at the public record. The guy is so unprincipled, and he cast himself as the last honest man. In this case, I don't think there's any doubt. And again, I think it's all in the public record. Comey through Richmond and others, leaked information to the New York Times in particular, to advance Comey's point of view, Comey's place in the world, not in the public interest. But I don't like indictments and political prosecutions for, for,

retribution or based on political enemies. And the case is filed was weak, two pages with no specifics. So I think if they don't file a superseding indictment with more detail, the case will be thrown out. And I don't normally make predictions about judges, juries, or justices. But this thing is flimsy. But I don't have any doubt that if Comey didn't break the law, he violated his ethical code of his position. and he should be, you know, he should be publicly censured for that. But I'm not sure that they can come up with an indictment that's going to produce a conviction. Maybe they can, but I think it's unfortunate because this was a selected prosecution. This was done to please the president who wants retribution on the people who've done him bad.

And I understand why he's so angry. And I understand the theory on the right that the only way to do justice is to pay back and deter. But I'm not a big fan of Comey, and I'm not a big fan of this indictment. You started that answer by saying you contain multitudes and what remains so I think there's irksome that understates it, but about the media at large is that they're incapable of not fully embracing Comey, despite what appears to be pretty clear evidence about him telling Congress, there's going to be all kinds of legal ways for his team to parse this, but telling Congress. He did not authorize media leaks and then reconfirming what he said to Senator Grassley

in his conversation with Ted Cruz five years ago. So there are all kinds of ways to your point about the indictment itself that that will be parsed. But I think at this point it's very obvious that James Comey authorized or encouraged or was complicit in leaking to the media. So he's not the Boy Scout. And yet explain this to me, Mark. You know these people. You've been around these people. Why does the chattering class in Washington insist on lauding him as a hero because they see what Donald Trump is doing to him as bad. Because anyone who opposes Trump in this kind of resistance way is lauded by the press because they just hate Donald Trump so much. What's confusing about Comey, of course, and I think history is pretty clear on this.

If Comey hadn't done what he did with Hillary Clinton, Trump would never have been president. And so one of the – my favorite moment in – and I read about this in the thing I wrote the Daily Mail, was the day Comey was fired by Donald Trump. And right after Comey was fired, Stephen Colbert, sorry. I had a little brain freeze because I was thinking of Jimmy Kimmel. Stephen Colbert was taping his show. And, of course, his audience is a bunch of liberals.

And he comes out in his monologue. And he says, just a few minutes ago, Donald Trump fired James Comey. And the audience is confused about what to do. Because on the one hand, most of them, when they thought James Comey, they thought, well, this is the guy who helped Trump get elected. So great that he was fired. On the other hand, if Trump fired him, you know, he must be a good guy. And the audience is kind of paralyzed, cheering, stunned silence.

They don't know what to do. And Colbert's confused, too. Like, he thinks it's bad that they're firing Comey. but on the other hand, Comey's the villain. So my point is that even back then, even before the indictment, just in the beginning of the Trump administration, like in May of his first term,

even back then, Comey confused everybody because the press, you know, knocked him down after he helped Trump win the election. And then, you know, the press rallied to him after Trump fired him as FBI director. He's a, he's a confusing guy, and a confused guy, but the through line of the whole thing is he's a bad guy.

And he's lauded, and partly by himself and his PR efforts, he's lauded as some hero. He's also an incredibly weird guy. Mark, I'm sure you saw his clip about Taylor Swift on his substack recently. He's deadpanning right to camera in front of a wall with the lens, like an inch away from his face, seemingly about how he's a swiftie, his social media posts about there's like the 86 one he just posts random pictures of trees he seemed to be flirting with the idea that he could run for president at one point he's extremely strange and i wonder how he lasted so long in washington even before the trump clinton race these are these are framed this is framed perfectly you know it takes a lot to creep me out

his his his instagram videos they creep me out i just i want to turn away it's like watching it's like watching like the horror movie freaks. It's just there's something about like this, the color of his skin, it's uneven. I don't know. It's a frees a freaky guy. And he needs like a best friend to tell him to do another take.

Like Robert Mueller. Yeah, don't pass that version. Back away from the camera, do another take. Let's look at it together. But he just, he posts take one, I guess. Yeah. You know what will be really sad as we find out he's posting take like 34? It's not impossible. Yeah, but he's sitting there with his friend who's like a Hollywood director. It's like, yeah, that's the best take. Post that one. That's the winner. No, they're creepy. Yes. Yes, they sure are. All right. Well, let's go to a quick break. We'll be right back with Mark. I have to get his take on what Taunahasi Coates said about Charlie Kirk recently.

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And if you get a post-purchase survey, please let them know you heard about Cozy Earth from After Party with Emily Jashinsky, because home isn't just where you live. It's how you feel. Let's go home with Cozy Earth. All right, I'm back now with Mark Halpern. Of course, editor-in-chief of two-way and host of Next Up with Mark Halperin on Megan Kelly's MK Media.

And I really, Mark, wanted to show you this clip. If you haven't seen it yet, you probably have, because it was pinging all over social media today. But this is Ta-Nehisi Coates. I think making a lot of people's blood boil in conversation with Ezra Klein, who now sort of infamously penned an op-ed about how Charlie Kirk had been doing politics the right way, exactly the right way. He then had Ben Shapiro on and talked more, fleshed out those feelings before the interview

with Ben, which was taped before what happened to Charlie Kirk. And he's gotten an enormous amount of heat for the left, just absolutely pile. It's just a total pile-on of Ezra Klein. And he sort of hashed it out with Taunahe-Nehisi-Cote. And this is what Ta-Nehasey Coates had to say, and what I would argue is the critical moment of a very long conversation in podcast. Let's roll it. I don't take any joy in saying this, but we sometimes sue ourselves by pointing out that love, acceptance, warmth, that these are powerful forces. I believe they are. I also believe hate is a powerful force. I believe it's a powerful, powerful, unifying force. And I think Charlie Kirk was a hate monger. You know, I really need to say this over and over again.

I have a politic that rejects violence, that rejects political violence. I take no joy in the killing of anyone, no matter what they said. But if you ask me what the truth of his life was, you know, the truth of his public life, I would have to tell you it's hate. I would tell you, I'd had to tell you it is the usage of hate and the harnessing of hate towards political end. Mark, that was on a New York Times podcast with a Vanity Fair contributing editor. That's what Taunahosa Cote says. He's also a professor at Howard University.

You knew Charlie Mark, and you're in this business of determining when to talk to somebody, when not to talk to somebody, when is someone beyond the pale, someone whose ideas you shouldn't quote, platform as the internet likes to talk about. And, you know, of course, there are some lines that need to be drawn as much as we should be talking to as many Americans as we possibly. can. It's understandable that you pause sometimes and say, well, is this a person I should be treating seriously? And usually the pause that you experience in a case like that is, are they even representative of a wide south of Americans, or are they just a sort of fringe actor that

has no power and likely will not have any power? Am I over amplifying their views? But in the case of Charlie Kirk, Mark Halperin, a hate monger, a racist, somebody who was against trans individuals, that's what Ta-Nehisi goes on, Tanahasi Coates goes on to say, what did you make of this? I like to come on and joke around with you, Emily. I can't joke around about this. You know, I didn't know Charlie all that well, but I'm very touched by and moved by and upset by his being assassinated. And so inspired by Erica Kirk's forgiveness, capacity for forgiveness. And I've been dealing with what a lot of people we know have been dealing with,

which is going on responding to emails and going on social media and writing, fuck you to people. And I cried on a conference call today talking just about the last couple weeks. So I'd like to extend the presumption of grace to people. And, you know, that guy was not speaking on teleprompter. He was speaking off the top of his head. So maybe he regrets saying what he said, but fuck him. Because this man was not a hater.

Just not, just manifestly not. And there's so much evidence on the public record. You didn't have to know him personally to know that he wasn't. Disagree with him. He said, Charlie said some things. I didn't disagree with. He said some things I didn't particularly fancy. But he was not a hater.

And he's got a widow and two young kids. and so many friends who loved him. And this guy's on the National Town Square talking bullshit about someone he didn't know and saying really hurtful things. And the reason it matters, besides that it reflects that the New York Times will give a microphone to someone so ignorant, is because this is what's wrong with the desire for people to make money and get a claim off of saying false, negative things about people they don't know. It's a real fundamental problem that's existed throughout human history, but now in the digital age, you can do it and you can reach millions of people. So fuck him. I take no issue with the New York Times, quote, platforming Taunahasse

Coates for this conversation where Ezra Klein challenged him and, you know, publishing Nicole Hannah-Jones, although my issue with that would be she's factually challenged. And that should be a no go for a newspaper, of course, but Nicole Hannah-Jones also penned an op-ed, basically calling Charlie Kirk a racist in the New York Times over the last couple of days. And I just have to ask, Mark, I mean, again, you've been in these spaces. You know these people. Nicole Hannah-Jones lists out all of these things that Charlie Kirk said that, you know, could have come from the mouth of, you know, let's say hypothetically, like a Clarence Thomas, or Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell, things that have in cases come out of the mouths of actual black conservatives who are alienated

and ostracize. And it seems to me so obvious. And this is going to be a criticism of Ezra, who's had me on his show and I was grateful and thought we had a good conversation. But it seems to me what he didn't do in that conversation with Taunahasi Coates and what people now in newsrooms around the country where the, what little appetite there was to sort of do a kumbaya moment after one of the most prominent conservatives in the country was shot in cold blood on a college campus during a debate, um, that's all gone. And it seems to me it's because they fundamentally have not learned the lesson. Like, Ezra Klein in that conversation should have said, I take issue with this idea that Charlie Kirk is actually a hate monger, is actually a racist. That is what the source of division

is that because he disagrees with you, this is where Charlie Kirk is the next generation of Ben Shapiro. You know this, Mark. You've seen this with conservatives who tiptoe, around some of these conversations during the Bush years in the early Obama years, they know that their arguments are what's going to be called racist. It doesn't matter how you make the arguments. So they're making them more and more bluntly because they know they're going to be called racist

by the New York Times, no matter what they do. That's where we are. And still, even after this, there can't be a pause to say, that's not necessarily racism because you disagree with it. They're still not getting the central point. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. I think it's an important point in the moment and an important part historically.

But what makes me so angry about this, and I wish I weren't. I wish I would be just forgiving and calmer and not use profanity. But what makes me angry about it is it's more simple than that. The profound point you're making is absolutely true. But for me, it's just the guy just was assassinated. His assassination has traumatized tens of millions of people. and to go out and call that person a racist, which again is just demonstrably false, I just find it, I find it inhumane.

It's not about ideology. It's not about hypocrisy. It's not about, you know, extreme leftism using cultural dominance to stamp out competing ideas. All those things are important to true. But for me, it's just more human and basic. Like, what motivates someone to say something false and defamatory? about someone who was just assassinated at 31 years old. I just have a visceral reaction to the lack of humanity.

It's very interesting you use that word because as, Ezra Klein was questioning Ta-Nehisi-Koz and why he doesn't think it's okay to have olive branches, essentially, I'm paraphrasing, but to extend all of branches to people you disagree with, he said, if you think, this is Ta-Nehisi-Cote, if you think it is okay to dehumanize people, then conversation between you and me is probably not. possible. So he is accusing Charlie Kirk of not being one of those, quote, those of us who believe in equality, those of us who believe in respecting the humanity of our neighbors and of everyone. He is accusing Charlie Kirk within three weeks of his assassination of not believing in the humanity of

everyone. One of the most undercover stories going on since Donald Trump won, and it's put in sharp relief by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, is how the left is handling all of these paradigm changes. Right. Like, like some of them are very practical. Like the purchase of CBS by someone who's friends with Donald Trump. The, the dismantling of, it's to some extent, the liberal monopoly over universities, right? The firing of government workers to remove this entrenched deep state of liberal orientation within the government. All these things that are happening. And then the dismantling of DEI program. You know, I'd send it for the fasting, I would have expected we'd have seen mass protests at Harvard and in Columbia of saying to the administration, don't cave to Donald Trump. We're not, right? And then of course, just Trump's victory and the popular vote victory. Like the story of how the left is handling these things is a fascinating story. And this is a manifestation of it. For some reason, the assassination of a 31-year-old. old lovely man is the occasion for the empire to strike back, for the left to suddenly try to reassert

all the things that they, that made, gave them cultural hegemony for so long. And again, I just, I find it bewildering that this is where they're making their stand. This is where they're coming back and saying the things that they said about so many conservatives for so long when they were allowed to say it because they, because, because the, that they had the cultural or hegemony. Now that they've lost it to a large extent, this is where they come back. And I just, again, I just don't, I don't understand the humanity of it. And to some extent, there are things happening that suggest others on the left or looking at it a little differently. Let's talk about Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post.

Now, Jeff Bezos, I don't know if it's fair to pin him to the left or to the right. I mean, he was pretty supportive of Obama. He was very supportive of the Washington Post's approach to Trump 1.0 and the Democracy Dyes in Darkness tagline until that all started to go very poorly for the Post. But the new opinion editor over at the Washington Post is Adam O'Neill. They have announced they want to go in a more libertarian direction, but mostly pro-American direction, is how they phrased it, free markets, free people, which is the Wall Street Journal editorial boards or the Wall Street Journal's mission. I forget whether it's from their editorial board or their Papers General mission in the past, but that's basically what they do.

this is to say, the Washington Post is embarking on this very expensive project to write the ship as Bezos sees it. And they're trying to do kind of what CBS seems to be trying to do with a potential free press acquisition. And what the New York Times is definitely not doing based on what we just discussed from Taunasikos to Nicole Hannah-Jones. So I wanted to get your take mark on this interview that Adam O'Neill gave to. This is the first interview. interview as opinion editor of the Washington Post, and he gives the interview to Joseph Wolfson of Fox News, of Fox News, believe it or not. And one of the things he says here is our readers are overwhelmingly located in blue states and just a few blue states and they're overrepresented on

the coast. And so one way to look at it would be to say, well, if you're not partisan, if you highly partisan readership, they may be offended by that. And maybe that's true. But looking forward, as I rebuild, I just want to see there's an opportunity to expand our reach. He says, frankly, a lot of people don't trust the post and they don't trust the mainstream media broadly. It goes on to say, it's possible highly partisan readers may not want to subscribe to the Washington Post or read the Washington Post anymore. Just as a business decision, what do you make of this on the business front and then on the content front, Mark? Yeah. I mean, I deal with this every day and building the company I'm trying to build where we want all voices on two-way. We don't want just people in the mushy middle, moderate, centrists, and independence.

we want the people on the farthest left to the farthest right so people can learn from each other. And when I put a liberal person on, I hear from many, not all, but many of my conservative audience. And they say, I'll never watch again. I'll never watch again. That person was so liberal. And then the same thing. I have somebody conservative on, the liberals will say, I can't watch your platform. And I say,

you should be thanking me for giving you the opportunity to listen to a well-c curated list of people who are telling you what half of the other half of America is thinking. And you have an opportunity on our platform to question them. The Washington Post, like all papers on the news side, not all but most, was liberal. They didn't say it. They claimed they were fair, but they covered conservatives and Republicans in a much different manner than they covered Democrats. Their editorial board was all liberals.

And Jeff Bezos said what the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Patrick Sunshung, with whom I host a show on Tu-way, what he said, which is in effect, I'm not quoting him. And the Washington Post, Beezas said the same thing. Why should everyone on my editorial board be liberal? It doesn't make any sense. Now, the post editorial board under the, was a gentleman's name who passed away. I'm blanking on his name. They were left of center, but they weren't far left.

But they were still left of center. And they had far more liberal columnists than conservatives, although they had some somewhat conservative, although not really too many MAGA. Although Mark DeSson writes on that. page. And I think I think what what they're doing is going back to the Michael Jordan adage about why Michael Jordan, a Democrat, didn't endorse candidates because Republicans buy sneakers too. Republicans, conservatives are interested in news too. And so why would you want to have a business that says, we only want to sell a half of the customer base. We want to we want to not try to sell the other half. And I think I think this guy, from what I've read about him, is going to make an effort

to try to expand the number of people who are willing to open to reading the one. Washington Post. That's good business, but it's also good editorially. It's good journalistically to say in a country where more than half the people who voted voted for Donald Trump, maybe our product should reflect that. Yeah, I can speak to this a little bit. I don't know if I've ever said this before, but earlier in the year, I was in talks about potentially this job with the Washington Post or other jobs at the Washington Post, and I ended up taking myself out of the running for it. Basically, what people can take from that. is that, well, I think there's some really laudable ambitions happening at the Washington Post,

and some really interesting people over there now. I really wonder, Mark, if what you just described about the Michael Jordan model in 2025 into the 2030s is feasible, given how we have polarized into a very democratized media landscape where niche followings, you know, like, two ways is actually a really good example. Like that is an underserved part of the market. These are people that want to hear the clang and the messy noise. So maybe that speaks to what the Washington Post is doing. But they have a lot of overhead.

And they want to put a lot of money behind this. And I kind of wonder if, you know, sort of doing a USA Today for 2032 is feasible. Well, I don't, I think the key is to not be bland. Again, it's not to say we're going to try to smooth everything out in just. just be bland. We're just going to have kind of centrist positions and centrist voices. You know, I have Laura Lumer on two-way. I'll have, I have, you know, people who work for Bernie Sanders on two-way. So I don't want to, I don't want to take those voices away. I want everybody under one roof. And I'll say, again, the most successful red or blue media

reaches millions, but not tens of millions in both cases. And we're a big country. My anecdotal experiences matches up with the data. The biggest group is people who are not superpartisan, people who say they do want to find sources of information that tell them the truth rather than a point of view. And so two-way is betting, and I'm betting, and it looks like the Washington Post seems to be trying to bet on the concept of let's reach everybody rather than a niche.

Definitely. That's absolutely what they're doing. Mark, speaking of, which, let's go ahead and put up this moment of Kamala Harris at Howard University. She actually recently got panned in the Washington Post by the editorial board for, here's the quote. The former VP has managed to put on a book tour even less compelling than her presidential campaign. That's well said. Let's take a listen to what she said at Howard. The history that you are being taught. This is a moment in time in our country and the world.

where I hope everything that you are seeing tells you we need you. We need you to leave. We need you to be strong. You are leaders right now. You are born leaders. And what this place will do is nurture that and let it nurture that, nurture it in each other. Because I am counting on you as a very pride, proud bison. I am counting.

So Kamala Harris is, of course, a Howard alumna. Mark, did you find that inspirational? Are you nurturing? Will that reach you? Fred Hyatt was the name of the Washington Post. Ed board editor who passed away. A very good good guy. It looks like Mark might have just briefly frozen. It's like Kamala Harris's brain.

I can just vamp about Kamala Harris's frozen brain. I want to see how it sells over the long term because books like that, you know, sometimes burn out after a week or two. She just, as Bill Clinton once said about Mitt Romney, that's a person who shouldn't have a job that requires them to speak in public. She just, I mean, no, I don't think it's inspirational, but I think it's also just like it's word salad and unfocused and awkward. And she's had plenty of practice. It wasn't her first time. She just not that good at that.

shocking given her choice of career but it doesn't appear to be winding down at all if she has her way going forward she seems to have pretty clear political ambitions into the future mark before i let you run i'm told that you have a pretty strong take on the awful news that came out of tm z today about Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban separating after 19 years of marriage. Now, the report is that they've separated, not fully divorced, but Mark, it seems like it's been a tough day for you on this front. Well, I don't wish them any unhappiness, of course, but I'm a big student of their marriage. I used to watch with fascination.

You know, first of all, we're dealing with a woman. I'm exercising my inner Maureen Callahan here. Incredible. We're dealing with a woman who was married to Tom Cruise. Okay. So let's just stipulate that, like, you know, maybe her personal choices aren't the very best. She put a little weird. Yeah.

And then, I don't know, I'm going to go back and pull the clips. But every time I saw them an award show, it just seemed spooky. But the energy between them seems spooky. So count me down as not the least bit surprised that this marriage did not go on forever and ever. And I'll be curious to see who she dates next. because maybe the third time's the charm. Mark, that is a crazy take. I think you're one of the only people who's willing to say right now.

They're not surprised by what's happened in the Urban Kidman marriage. He very movingly has credited her with helping him with his addiction issues. And they've always been seen as such a steady couple. They do each other's events a lot. But you saw this coming. Go look at the clips of them at their award shows. They look like two ghosts holding hands. Now, just to be clear, I'm a huge fan of hers.

I think she's a spectacular actress. And I love his music. I think they're great artists, but I just always got a really bad vibe from them when I saw them in public. Fascinating. Go look at the clips. I think others will see in retrospect

what I saw like Inspector Clouseau in real time. Who knew? I'm eager to hear Marines take on this as well to see if she agreed with you. Mark Halperin, editor-in-chief of Two-Way, host of Next Up with Mark Halperin on Megan Kelly's MK Media, live from the gym. Yeah, I'm going back to the stairmaster, if you'll excuse me.

Let's go. All right, Mark. Well, you get back to your stairmaster. Thanks for coming back on. We'll talk soon. Likewise. Incredible. He's going back to the stairmaster.

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On the rest, on the docket for the rest of the show, Rosie O'Donnell, more New York Times, and J.K. Rowling. I think because we just left off talking with Mark in some detail about media changes, The Washington Post, the New York Times. We obviously talked to him about what Tonnecasi Coates had to say in regards to Charlie Kirk. I think it's a good time to dive into this New York Times article on Charlie Kirk. I'm going to put this up on screen. And what we're going to do is walk through it a bit. I mentioned a tease at the top of the show. It's a little, it might be a little academic. This is the type of thing I used to do with my students at the National Journalism Center. But sometimes it just,

helps to take apart different paragraphs of an article so you can see the full picture that's very intentionally being built in a piece itself. So here it is. The headline here is the debate style that propelled Charlie Kirk's movement. And this is an attempt to deconstruct all of these different videos of Charlie Kirk over the years and try to come up with the individual pieces of the big puzzle and explain to New York Times readers how Charlie Kirk did what he did. But you'll soon see why it's worth taking issue with it. The first line, Charlie Kirk may be best remembered for arguing in public. Nothing really wrong with that. But they go on to say by tackling hot button issues like abortion and trans rights, Mr. Kirk created content that became perfect fodder

for brand building on social media. Curated clips, highlighting his wins, promoted with captions describing him as destroying liberals have racked up tens of millions of views on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Since his assassination, Mr. Kirk has been lionized, mostly by those on the right, but also by some who did not share his views as a champion of free speech and an interrogator of viewpoints that spanned the political spectrum. And here's where they do a little bit of bragging. The New York Times reviewed more than four dozen of Mr. Kirk's debates, stretching back to

2017 and discuss them with four debate coaches and university professors. They say the Times review reveals how Mr. Cook used the debate to deliver a consistent hardline message while orchestrating highly shareable moments. Now, what they're doing, you're already seeing it in this paragraph, is trying to make this more about style than substance. So they're trying to, it's actually an interesting new cope. I think it's probably the best way to put it that we're seeing from some on the left as they react to the legacy that Charlie Kirk leaves behind. rather than deal with the substance of why Charlie Kirk was so impactful and influential over young Americans and over the conservative movement in the Republican Party, they are going to chalk it up to clever media techniques. And yes, Charlie Kirk was a fairly clever strategist.

But I think you're going to see why this is probably more cope than anything else. So they say this genre of debate, which Mr. Kirkhawk pioneer is now a template that other social media personalities across the spectrum have increasingly adopted. Here's a look at how Mr. Kirk constructed his viral confrontations. And all right, we'll go on. I have more to say about this. But here you see they take out an example in their subheading is hyperbole and go-to quips. This part is actually really, this part is just funny. It's also kind of weird.

But they act as though it's some type of scoopy bit of information that they found four times where he referred to North African lesbian pop. You guys needed to sit through hours of Charlie Kirk debates to bring your readers that he, like every public speaker, uses canned lines. Okay, so he used this line about North African lesbian poetry five times. He used the exact same line in the past two years, five times. They found at least four other examples of it. He's a speaker.

This is what public speakers do. And they're acting like this quote, go-to quip for Charlie Kirk, is some type of like, listen, it doesn't say this in the story, but we're talking about what they're implying and what the sort of point of the entire story is. Because don't tell me that someone at the New York Times pitched a story about how they're going to find the quips that Charlie Kirk used five times over the course of two years. No, they're trying to imply that Charlie Kirk was up to no good, that he was being intentionally manipulative, rather than that. actually just being a good debater. They say he's engaging and subduing the audience. So they say by restraining his audience from shouting down his opponents, Mr. Kirk insulated himself from seeming like a bully to many viewers of clips shared on social media. Insulated himself from seeming like a bully. You could also just say he was not a bully.

There's another way to communicate the point that you're making. But of course, the New York Times is conveying this point, which is from a reporter, by the way. This is not in the opinion section, but it's conveying this point in a way to suggest that it was, it was all an act, it was all a clever manipulation and not just that Charlie Kirk genuinely wanted to hear from other people because he was fully confident in his own beliefs and also knew, unlike readers of the New York Times, that people on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube want to see the clash of ideas, the sort of clanging noise of debate. That's actually what happens. So they go on to say Nazi analogies and playing to the crowd. This is another of their subheadings trying to capture what's what made

Charlie Kirk a clever strategist here. And this one, man, they say in this one example of the University of Tennessee, Mr. Kirk, who opposed abortion responded by proposing a cesarean section as a better alternative and then ask the student if she know what the procedure was, knew what the procedure was. This is a New York Times. Quote, it was a tactic Mr. Kirk frequently used asking opponents to define a term so he could score easy points by making them appear uninformed if they could not. Again, that is meta as hell and avoiding saying that Charlie Kirk, who did not go to college, was just raking these college students over the coals in the debates because they couldn't define terms like Cesarian section.

even though they purported to have great arguments and points about it. So as we're deconstructing this article, I hope it's becoming clear what the New York Times is trying to do. This is, again, maybe a perfectly fine, acceptable piece for a lib to write in their opinion section. For this to be published under the news section of the paper by a reporter is completely insane. And you would not see treatment of somebody on the left in this meadow way,

because it's a cope. That's what this fundamentally is in the pages of the New York Times. So they say in this case, the student knew what a C-section was. So Mr. Kirk quickly pivoted to another common strategy by addressing allies in the crowd. This is for you guys with advice on how they should respond to the question if they ever came up in their own lives. Mr. Kirk claimed that C-sections are safer than abortions is widely disputed by medical professionals. The rate of medical complications during C-sections is more than four-time set of abortions, according to research, public blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Again, this is a new. New York Times fact check of posthumously of Charlie Kirk. I'm sure you would have significant

rebuttal's what the New York Times is saying right there. They say later in this debate with the same student, Mr. Kirk shifted to more extreme rhetoric calling abortion, quote, worse than the Holocaust. Then they cite a professor of rhetoric at Southern Methodist University saying, quote, discussing forbidden topics and upholding forbidden arguments, quote, is a muscular and emotionally resident strategy to which Mr. Kirk regularly returned. A strategy? I mean, you have to be kidding. You have to be kidding. Of course, it might have been part of a strategy. But on the left, we would, in the media, people would take that as what they, as their sincerely held beliefs. I'm telling you, somebody on the right, that is the sincerely held belief of many, many people on the right.

They're not people that the New York Times often comes into contact with, but they are real people. with real views and beliefs. And even in death, the New York Times is publishing an article in which they're posthumously analyzing all of this as a clever strategy more than it was these sincerely held beliefs of Charlie Kirk. So I say after more back and forth, Mr. Kirk laid a rhetorical trap

when the student replied human to his question about what species and embryo is, he claimed victory, saying that implied embryos deserve human rights. Again, like, it's just, Do they listen to themselves? Seriously, do they listen to themselves? They're chalking this up to a rhetorical trap rather than just allowing it to be Charlie Kirk believing he had won an argument, and Charlie Kirk's allies believing he

had won an argument, because if you look logically at what the student just said, which is that an embryo is part of the human species, again, we don't often hear that in the pages of the New York Times, not from the opinion side, not from the news side, but it's possible also that Charlie Kirk maybe just won some of these debates and it wasn't a dark op. It was just him being better at debating despite the fact that he did not go to college. Now, we're seeing a lot of this stuff repeated over and over again. They quote a professor of speech and debate who says this approach is trying to, quote, trivialize his opponents as an out of touch member of the elite while, increasing his own ethos as the defender of the regular working class people because he once

accused his opponent in a debate of insulting quote the working poor by suggesting there's a correlation between poverty and violent crime. So just over and over again, rinse and repeat, same time. It just keeps going. More of these quotes that we've seen taken out of context about the Civil Rights Act. The New York Times, I think, does a slightly better job, a slightly better job treating it with more context. It's still not great. But they also at this point talk about a debate

that Kirk was winning with a student. And they say, because his opponent was unable to fact-check Mr. Kirk in real-time, she was forced to concede and debate in a framework that was no longer grounded in reality. Well, was he fact-checking in real-time? They're acting like because she didn't have her laptop up. and was able to fact check in real time. But that Charlie Kirk, she approached Charlie Kirk. She had all the time in the world to prepare to have a good answer for this question,

just as he prepared to have an answer for the question. So again, like, it just, it's cope over and over again. They next accuse him of unprovable generalizations. Basically, you get the point of all of this. There's really no need to read the article. But they end by saying debate videos are now a widespread source of entertainment information, particularly for members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Yes.

Yes, because they don't get this in the pages of the New York Times, and they certainly didn't until relatively recently. But that is something that Charlie Kirk strategically was smart about understanding. And I saw this happen from behind the scenes. I've mentioned this before. My first job out of college was working with a group called Young America's Foundation that was sending Ben Shapiro to campuses after particularly, sticks out in my mind is you may not remember this, but there was a really nasty dustup at the

University of Missouri that I think ultimately led to their enrollment numbers going down significantly, at least for several years. I haven't checked back on that. Lots of schools are losing enrollment, but this seemed to be a pretty clear correlation. And we sent Ben Shapiro to that campus with a camera crew and we're starting to clip this stuff for social media. And Ben was really eagerly debating people particularly on the left. And then he started doing that at more and more schools. And people like Charlie Kirk learned from that about the appetite for moral clarity and debate. I've said this a bunch of times. But what the New York Times here is accusing him of doing is having a sense of moral clarity on a lot of issues that other people are sort of timid about.

And that's another thing I wanted to say about the Ta-Nehisi-Cote's quote, calling Charlie Kirk a hatemonger. a hatemonger. First of all, Ta-Nehisi Coates is a terrible leftist. To say that in corporate media, listen, yes, he doesn't need me conservative to call him a terrible leftist, but I genuinely mean that because he is encouraging the division of working class people, middle-class people along racial and gender lines. And that should be anathema to anybody who cares about the material circumstances of the middle class and the working class. These are often distractions. This idea that Charlie Kirk was necessarily a hate monger is more divisive. And if you're a leftist, you should see that as something that is dividing people from being

able to come to the table on questions of material prosperity. Maybe you would also say that Charlie Kirk did that, but I'm talking about Taunahasi Coates here who purports to be a leftist. So that's part A. Part B gets to why this continues to happen, which is that Charlie Kirk saw the examples of other conservatives who went before him and had very timid conversations. I mean, think about how many people on the right, Republicans, reacted to the Duke Lacrosse case. People were terrified in real time to, other than Stephen Miller, who, by the way, I think there were clips of him on Fox News at the time talking about the Duke lacrosse case. How's that for full circle? But people were timid.

And many, many, I mean, Mitt Romney was, I would say probably one of the more timid voices in a very racially fraught time period, 2012 on that campaign. And Joe Biden still came out and said that Republicans want to put y'all back in chains. Mitt Romney was accused of being a racist. And people like Charlie Kirk saw that and realized that their arguments were going to be called racist no matter how they were packaged. And so they realized also that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are swimming in a. a pool of information that is from varying sources. It's hard to parse through. It's just sort of everyone's adrift in the information C

and in the argument C. And what people value is those who come to the table and make their arguments or boldly leaning into it, whether they're on the left and the right, because as Mark said earlier in the show, that allows you to compare right and left a right-wing voice, a left-wing voice, and you can say, well, in this case,

case this guy's wrong, in that case, that guy is wrong, but you've had the opportunity to compare and contrast. And yes, it's true that Charlie Kirk understood that Gen Z was interested in that kind of content, and actually that a lot of Americans are interested in that kind of content. But to act as though he was an evil genius engineering it specifically, like he was the Monsanto engineering these crops of argumentation is completely insane and it is a cope that I'm increasingly seeing on the left so that they don't have to reckon with why Charlie Kirk was winning so many of those arguments and winning over when you look at polling particularly young men but we have seen shifts towards the Republican Party and shift towards cultural conservatism on many different issues and

rather than I think at first there was this moment Ezra Klein's initial column was a good example And what he's been doing in the last couple of years by talking to people on the right is a good example. There's this initial reaction that this young man was doing something laudable by going out to campuses and having these conversations where he brought the people who disagreed with him to the front of the line and sent these debates bopping around the internet so that people could make up their minds for themselves. And that has now evolved into him basically being only successful because he was some type of strategic genius and not. actually somebody who was making good arguments and doing it in a way that the audience felt was helpful. So those are some thoughts on that insane New York Times article. For some levity, I thought we would listen to Rosie O'Donnell talk about publicly about conversations she has with her therapist on Nicole Wallace's podcast, which I believe hilariously is called the best people.

You can't make this stuff up. Let's go ahead and roll the clip. He has a cult-like control thanks to Mark Burnett's Apprentice Show. that lied to the American people. Oh, now it's Mark Brennett's fault. That sold fiction as fact, and people were confused and lied to. Yeah, it's reality TV.

And they listened to Fox News. And they were more lost. So when people say, I changed my mind, we have to say, welcome back to reality. And when the Medicaid cuts go in, old people are going to start to die.

To die. And if he's not stopped now, we have lost our country. And I don't know, Nicole, how it is that some people cannot see it. My therapist said, why are you so upset? And I said to her, why are you not? Yeah. Yeah, I have that conversation, too, because the gaslighting that I think you're

alluding to, if you're a thoughtful, informed person, you do stop and say, well, maybe it is me. I mean, what a beautiful moment of self-awareness, this glimmer of self-awareness from Nicole Wallace. The gaslighting that I see in that clip is Nicole Wallace having a podcast called, quote, the best people. That is the ultimate form of gaslighting. If you ever get a chance to talk to somebody who worked on the McCain-Palin campaign, ask them about Nicole Wallace. Try to get some insights. Even people who aren't particularly fond of Sarah Palin to this day about how Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt treated Sarah Palin when they were working on the McKin.

campaign, the best people. That is just a really perfect name for a podcast that features Rosie O'Donnell talking about, a conversation she has with her own therapist. And let's just pause on this because Nicole Wallace, there was her quote, quote, if you're a thoughtful, informed person, you do stop and say, well, maybe it is me. Incredible. I couldn't have put those words in her mouth in a better way. But of course, it's not her. She believes it's everyone else after she spent years at MSNBC cheering on lawfare, cheering on the Russia Collision hoax, as the former press secretary to the George W. Bush administration, after people who voted for Trump, of course, in many cases, were former Democrats who voted on an anti-war basis

for Barack Obama and then voted on an anti-war basis for Donald Trump because of what, quote, the best people did to their friends and family and their communities over the course of many, many years. You almost don't know what more to say because this is a decade now of Trump coming in, exposing exactly why people like Nicole Wallace should have no claim to the moral high ground. Rosie O'Donnell is a different question. I'd love to be a fly on her wall. on the wall in her therapy sessions because I imagine the specter of Donald Trump haunts her psychologically and not for let's say I don't necessarily blame her for being psychologically tormented by Donald Trump's stinging rebukes of Rosie O'Donnell over the years in

very public formats. So she might actually have a good claim here to being upset that Donald Trump continues to be the president of the United States. but they're looking around and wondering, why don't people, why don't people see what we see? Why don't people agree with us that the apocalypse is nigh? Well, because they've seen you do what they think is worse. They've seen you do what they think is worse. I feel this with Comey, too. I'm not saying this is a perfect reaction, but with Comey,

the idea that we should have sympathy for James Comey and fear of Donald Trump's, this narrow question of Donald Trump's retribution, just lands on deaf ears with me. I'm concerned about the doom spiral of retribution that James Comey started. This particular indictment is one of the least concerning political retribution lawfare acts that, over the last. last like 10 years. Now, do I think it's great? No. But the fact is, James Comey, there's a pretty good case to be made that James Comey, by first saying Hillary Clinton violated the law, then he wasn't going to charge her. And then, you know, coming on and making the announcement he did late in the game about the Wiener laptop investigation to kind of cover his ass for what he did with Clinton earlier in 2016 and then getting so deeply involved in the Russia collusion hoax allowing his deputies to get so deeply involved in the Russia colluding host, misleading the public, abusing his position

and public resources to target a political opponent. A lot of people want to point the finger at Donald Trump for starting us down the doom spiral. I think there's a better case to be made that while they are both participants in the doom spiral, it came down to James Comey. And Nicole Wallace and Rosie Donald treated the guy and his ilk, like Boy Scouts, for the better part of the last decade in ways that they've yet to reckon with. Because a lot of these claims about rush collusion, that's a really good example, just have been proven false. A lot of the ways that they gaslit throughout the years about rush collusion, COVID, all of that. So I think this is great for MS now. I think this is great content for MS now, creating this, carving out this new tunnel in the echo chamber of like never trump world.

I think this is actually really perfect. So congrats to them on a job, well done. And before we run, let's look at what JK Rowling said about Emma Watson's comments that we discussed last week. By the way, my J.K. Rowling pronunciation was corrected. I started reading the Harry Potter books when I was like, I don't know, probably like five or six, somewhere around there. So all of the pronunciations in my head, maybe I, yeah, maybe I was like seven or eight, but all the pronunciations in my head of J.K. Rowling, whatever, they're wrong. Like, in my head, I pronounce the character's names in completely butchered ways that a seven-year-old would pronounce them in her head.

That's my explanation of why I referred to J.K. Rowling as J.K. Rowling. But after Emma Watson said that she's trying to hold space like Ariana Grande, who apparently posted something about Donald Trump today as well, did you guys see that? She apparently went off on Donald Trump. But she was saying she held space. Emma Watson held space. I really distracted myself by bringing Ariana Grande into this. that's okay. Emma Watson was saying she was holding space for reckoning with J.K. Rowling's position on transgenderism and the J.K. Rowling that she knew as a child who was supportive and created this beautiful world. And I reacted to that last week by saying it seems like

a moment of cultural maturity, maybe personal maturity on behalf of Emma Watson just for being able to say what should have always been able to be said, which is that you can disagree bitterly with people, and this goes back to Taunahasi Coates and Charlie Kirk, without also saying that they're racist hate mongers who are putting trans people's lives in jeopardy when that's not the case. Like, that is not a fact. You may think it's a fact, but it's a tenuous fact at best. It's not really a fact. But even if you think it, you should recognize it as an opinion and an argument you have to make, not a fact that just exists in the world independent of your ability to build it into some type of argument. So, Rolling reacted on X by saying, I'm seeing quite a bit of comment about this.

So I want to make a couple of points. I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. Goes on to say, Emma Watson and co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity, ideology, such beliefs are legally protected. And I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work or violence or death because of them. However, Emma and Dan in particular, have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right and the obligation to critique me in my views in the public.

Years after they finish acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created. If you're JK rolling, that must be infuriating. Point taken, for sure. When you've known people since they were 10 years old, it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness until quite recently I haven't managed to throw off

the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through the dialogue in Big Scary Film Studio for the last few years. I've repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma, specifically, most notably on the witch trials of J.K. Rowling. Ironically, I tell the producers that I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said. That's new information and interesting information and assuming that it's true, I think, very commendable. The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's all witch's speech,

which if you follow this stuff closely, you know. Rolling continues to say, in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone do pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence, quote, I'm sorry for what you're going through. Rolling says she has my phone number. This was back when the death, rape, and torture threats against me were at their peak. At a time when my personal security measures had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety.

Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one-line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness. She goes on to critique Emma Watson on a really interesting class basis. She says she'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's ever been in a high street charging room since childhood. Her public bathroom is a single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she ever had to strip off in a newly mixed sex-changing room at a council-run swimming pool? She goes on to say, I wasn't a multimillionaire at 14.

I loved in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. The greatest irony here is that, and I'm just reading chunks of this because it's very long, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me a change of tech, I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed, this is the interesting part. Full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was. I might never have been this honest. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public, but I have the same right, and I finally decided to exercise it. So you can see the frustration pouring out. You can sense the pouring out of JK Rowling here. And I do not blame her one bit for this reaction. In fact, I think it is entirely fair. Because, and maybe this is a mistake that I made last week, I actually try to celebrate these moments where we see that shifting culture that JK Rowling herself just mentioned, where she says, she suspects she's adopted this tack quote because she's noticed full-throat a condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was. That doesn't mean, um, I guess I don't think I did this last week, but that doesn't mean anybody has to be lauded for their bravery and intellect when they failed to act courageously, boldly for the last 10-plus years, and when they still appear to be on the wrong side of an issue. And Rowling is right that people like Emma Watson are on the wrong side of this issue in many cases for class reasons, because they don't understand that this is happening at homeless shelters, at women's shelters in the locker rooms. of kids whose parents can't afford fancy lawyers.

This is real. It's hurting kids who need scholarships and track for example. And those scholarships are their ticket to success in higher education or debt-free higher education. I mean, these class concerns are absolutely real and her frustration is so raw and I think well placed in this case. So Rowling's reaction to this is eloquent

and entirely within the the bounds of reasonable, I would say like a reasonable rebuke of Emma Watson for years, not wanting to say exactly what she said in 2025 when it's easier to say it because, especially in the UK, I mean, we talk about the quote vibe shift that's come here to the U.S. and about Donald Trump's Kamala's for they, them, ad being something that really changed the election. But if you followed the Cass report story in the UK and how actually in some sense, because they had a centralized place in the Tavistock Clinic to track the treatment of transgender identifying individuals, they were actually able to study much more closely and put the lie to a lot of claims from dubious studies that have been pushed for the left by a really long time about self-harm and what happens if people go without treatment. And that was a sea change in the UK on this particular issue. So it is opportunistic.

It is not a, I mean, it's still a slightly brave act, giving the circles Emma Watson runs in personally, but professionally it will make her more palatable. There is an opportunism to that. There's no question to be asked. I still, my instinct is still to celebrate a moment when we see public pressures catching up with cynical, craven celebrities who are inching towards a better position because they've realized maybe that

they made a mistake in the past. I wonder actually if Emma Watson, like many members of the public in the UK or the U.S. actually will change their minds on the issue entirely. I sort of doubt it partially because of those class reasons that Rowling herself outlined. Thanks to anyone who wrote in and corrected my pronunciation of Rowling. That was nice of you. We did another episode. of Happy Hour last week, which was a blast. If you haven't been listening to Happy Hour, that's where I go. Audio only. Just riff on all your questions about all kinds of different topics, politics, culture, personal, Lilith Fair, whatever, truly whatever, it is a complete grab bag. You can find that on the podcast feed on Apple or Spotify, wherever you get your

podcast. Please subscribe over there. You get all these live episodes. They're posted on the podcast feed and also happy hour is there just for podcast listeners and I love doing it because there's something fun about just you in a microphone so those come out on Friday nights you can continue to send in your questions to Emily at devilmaycaremedia.com that's where you can reach me I'm doing my best to keep up with the email I try to answer everyone we will be back on Wednesday with more with more after party happy hour on Friday but more after party on Wednesday live at 10 p.m. Eastern. See you all then.