After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Barkley Gets Political, MAHA Revolt, and What the Legacy Media Exodus Exposes, with Shelby Talcott and Jason Willick

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Emily Jashinsky opens the show with a look at the identity politics that continues to infect our discourse with a peak example coming over the weekend out of Canada’s NDP convention as activists get into arguments over pronouns and “equity” procedures. Emily argues this makes it harder for the left to connect with average voters. Then Emily is joined by Shelby Talcott, Semafor White House Correspondent, to discuss reporting that Donald Trump may be signaling potential ground operations in Iran, despite public messaging focused on diplomacy. They also talk about a new POLITICO poll that shows frustration among MAHA-aligned voters and what Emily and Shelby’s own sources are saying, and NBA legend Charles Barkley sparking debate after using a March Madness broadcast to criticize how immigrants are being treated. Next Emily is joined by Washington Post columnist Jason Willick to discuss the importance of deterrence in both Capitol Hill politics and war, PLUS Washington Free Beacon reporting on Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed saying he needed to stay silent on Khamenei killing because many of Michigan’s Muslim voters ‘are sad.’ Emily rounds out the show with a look at the wave of legacy media figures leaving for independent platforms and whether that model is sustainable long-term.   Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/AFTERPARTY   PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229.   PDS Debt: You’re 30 seconds away from being debt free with PDS Debt. Get your free assessment and find the best option for you at https://PDSDebt.com/EMILY 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. I'll keep trying out my new tagline. It's the show for people who like their news a little lighter and a little later. I don't know. Maybe I'll stick with it. Tonight's guests are Shelby Talcott of Semaphore and Jason Willick of The Washington Post. We'll get to them in just a moment. Please support our journalism by subscribing on YouTube. That helps us so much or wherever you get your podcast. And remember to like, comment, and review as well. That helps us keep bringing you our independent coverage free, which we love to do. And it also boosts us in the algorithm so others see the content too. Now, on the show tonight, like I mentioned, my friends, I like them. They're smart. I think you'll like them too.

We'll start with our friend, Shelby, talk at a seminar, semifor who's back. She's very sourced up on Iran, has some new details to share. Plus, we're going to talk about a shocking new, Make America Healthy Again poll. And Mark Wayne Mullen's start during a pretty tumultuous time at the Department of Homeland Security. what can people expect to see from Mark Wayne Mullen, especially as the Sheridan Gorman tragedy continues to play out. We will check in with Shelby. Now, Jason Willick of The Washington Post is a really brilliant writer. He's particularly brilliant on national security and the judiciary. So we're going to talk with him about his recent column on what the filibuster and the Iran War have in common.

That one you're going to want to stay tuned for. We are also going to go through how another, quote, unquote mainstream journalist has decamped for substack. Where else? So I have a roundup coming of how this trend is revealing a lot of these like quote anchors, people who present themselves as straight news reporters and journalists are actually just libs, which is fine by the way. But maybe maybe it reveals that we were being lied to all along. Maybe. I don't know. It's hard to say whether all these people just suddenly have viewpoints that lean dramatically to the left. Who knows? Who can say? All right. So let's start, though. Could not, could not do the show tonight without going through clips from Canada's New Democratic Party Convention over the weekend, which a couple of

people were graciously clipping. They're watching the live stream and pulling some moments, then posting them onto social media. As a reminder, this is the year of our load, 2026. We are not in 2017. We're not in 2021. We're not even in 2024. But the activists gathered at the new Democratic Party convention where they elected a new leader named Avi Lewis. It's a crazy time in Canada, of course. Big, big hockey losers, men and women. So things are tense. And that tension clearly boiled over. Let's watch the clip. My pronouns are Shi'i Day. I'm from Ontario. Right now, there's discussions of 10,000 American men and women being sent to Iran being deployed just to be part of this bloodbath.

Canada cannot and will not be part of the legacy of blood. Your point's quite well-made speaker. I'll again thank delegates not to call me Madam Chair or Madame la Presidants. I'm a non-binary person. My pronouns are they, them, and there. Chair is sufficient. It's hard as a racialized and transgender delegate to sometimes use this card and speak up,

speak to somebody in front of me in line and ask, hey, this pertains to multiple intersecting parts of my lived experience. I'd like to speak. I was rejected. I hope that in the future the federal NDP will also have a broader interpretation of the equity cards for speakers. That's all. Thank you. I have a question about the video we just watched, the tribute to Jugmeet Singh. I want to know how much money it costs.

I want to know how much time it wasted out of the convention. And that comment is so, so harmful in this space. I think the people that are here that are racialized, that are people that have not ever been seen before, deserve the space and our leader that look like us and changed the politics for us as new Democrats, as Canadian, as Ontarians, as people from all across this world, as people that have survived genocide deserve goddamn respect in this house. Okay, this reminds me of the segment actually we did on Lindy West a couple of weeks ago, maybe it was last week time as a flat sort of but I was listening to the Red Scare on Lindy West just today, because it dropped like five hours ago or something. And I forget whether it was Anna Adosh, but they talked about how essentially her entire ideology is cope, right?

It's cope for pain and suffering, which by the way, I think are real. But this is what happens when your worldview is built on identity markers. And by that, I mean, you're always incentivized to go further and further because you're looking for something more, right? You're always looking for new ways to explain your own suffering, if that makes sense. So new ways to, new copes that manifest in a political ideology. And it's actually like, it's very sad to watch. You know, it's hard not to laugh, but it's also very sad to watch so many people. because I think actually what we're going to find is that this is stickier than many people realized it would be.

We've been covering that on the show since we started last year, but this ideology is stickier than people realize because it's actually not just an ideology. It's an entire personality for particularly millennials, elder millennials. we were talking about Lindy West as kind of a proxy for the elder millennial who found their entire identity kind of in the project of identity. There's this question like Christopher Lash, we were talking about this in the Lundy West segment too, wrote culture of narcissism in like the 70s or the 80s. And so it's not new that people are building political ideologies out of sort of victimhood narratives.

It's a natural human thing to do. It is not just the left. It's not just the right. It's a natural human thing to do. It transcends a political divide. But social media has just absolutely fueled its popularity on the ideological left. And I think that it's, again, conservatives are not immune from that. But it's been particularly significant on the political left because you had a lot of people

who were finding in victimhood or identitarianness. actually a sense of purpose and meaning. That's really, really powerful. It's really, really powerful. So it's not easy to just transition out of that. No pun intended, actually. But it's not easy to leave that behind when your entire worldview and identity and personality

is built on top of it. Because this is how you've understood yourself. This is how you've understood the world. And again, do I think a lot of Gen Z rejects that, Except for some people who grew up in bubbles and remain in bubbles, probably, yeah, I think it's starting to become clear that at least young men are rejecting it. Young women, on the other hand, that's part of the problem of sexual dynamics right now is that young men and young women are drifting apart on major cultural questions. We also talked about that last week. But when I watch a video like this, I can't not laugh, but it is also really sad because I think what you see in it is a lot of people.

clinging to politics as a cope for their own personal suffering, they would find answers, fulfillment, and happiness probably anywhere else more easily than they will in politics. But they're groping for some sense of meaning, some sense of identity in politics. And that's just not going to work. It's certainly not going to work for the Democratic Party. And even like, listen, I know that this is Canadian politics, but I think it reflects a pretty similar attitude among a lot of progressives who are not really leftists. I mean, they might think of themselves as leftists, but progressives whose politics are caught up.

I mean, even the Lindy West saga reveals that even through all of the tumult of her personal life, where her husband, who I guess is also non-binary, asks if they can bring a third and have threesomes and basically be in a three-person marriage. And Lindy West's husband said that as a non-binary person of color, he was, I think, I think her husband goes by he pronouns, but is consider considers himself non-brinary. I don't know. It makes my head hurt. But that is, as a person of color, non-binary person of color, marriage feels too much like ownership. And this was how Lindy West was conned into deciding that she could be happy in a three-person marriage and is obviously not happy. But this is my point is people cling, cling to this pain-inducing, suffering, exacerbating ideology because they

think it's really all they have. And they go so deep into it over many years, it becomes a foundation. And if that's what your roots are planted in, I don't think you're going to be particularly happy, but it's really, really hard to uproot that. And that's why I think it's a problem for Democrats in the United States, too. We're still seeing this show up on the left. And I wanted to highlight something that Roy Tachara wrote at the Liberal Patriot, which is sadly, actually, they shut down the Liberal Patriot. Roy is he's coming on the program but they they shut it down because he said it was hard to make money and to sustain a publication when you're going against the grain but here I pulled the article up right now the quote in question from Roy is where he says down here he raises

all kinds of problems he's a if you don't follow him I highly recommend that you do he's he's on X, but he's been an analyst of Democratic electoral politics for a long time. And he's kind of like a Clinton-era Democrat. Super interesting. He writes, indeed, for many, many voters, the Democrats embrace of radical transgender ideology and its associated policy agenda has become the most potent exemplar of Democrats' lack of connection to the real world of ordinary Americans. For these voters, Democrats have definitely strayed into the, quote, who are you going to believe? me or your own eyes territory. And if they're not realistic about something as fundamental as human biology, why should they be trusted about anything else? It's a reasonable question to which

Democrats currently have no effective answer. And no, calling the question a billionaire-funded distraction is not an effective answer. Now, let me pull up the clip that I believe Roy is alluding to there, which is Grant Platner, who, if you follow Breaking Point, you know, I find to be pretty impressive as a candidate. Here it is. He gets asked, or he's talking at a local event up in Maine. He's obviously the Democrats leading Senate candidate in Maine. He's leading current governor Janet Mills by double digits in a lot of polls.

It looks like the race is his to lose. He's talking about the culture war at a recent stop in Maine. Here's what he says. He's for getting dragged in to, frankly, culture war issues that are being invented by the people that don't want us talking about raising their taxes. That's why it exists. I mean, I just have to pause there and say that that is, with respect, absolute bullshit.

Absolute bullshit. Have there been some, like, kitty litter in the public school stories that are either invented or mostly fabricated by people who don't want their taxes raised where people aligned with people who don't want their taxes raised. Yeah, absolutely. But I wrote a comment the Federalist about this years ago. It is utterly absurd for progressives who buy their actual moniker, the name they go by. Their entire movement is built on movement.

It is built on, and taking them at their own word, progressive, progress. And progress means what? Going away from what? The status quo. So all of these cultural issues, for the last. most part, not every single one. I think, you know, it's obviously fair to say that there are plenty of opportunistic conservatives, Republicans, who will sometimes cynically deploy cultural issues as a distraction to divide average Americans, totally agree with that, would never, ever deny that.

What it is absurd to deny is that the culture war more broadly, if you take something like trans issues, to say that that was pushed by the right is, absurd, it doesn't land with most voters, and it's not helpful for Democrats who do have a real, who are you going to believe, me, your lying eyes problem, as Rachel Chara says, with this issue. Because most people who hear Democrats talk about trans issues don't believe that they believe it. They don't believe that they believe men can literally become women and have all of the same abilities. A woman has all of the same abilities or a man who's become a woman. woman, says they've become a woman, has all the same abilities as a woman. People don't believe

Democrats believe that. That's a really big problem for Democrats. Now, it can be solved, I think, potentially by people like Graham Platner, who like a Donald Trump, Trump benefits from the weaknesses of his opponents. Susan Collins is perpetually underestimated, but of course there are weaknesses as a Republican candidate in a place like Maine when Donald Trump and the Republican Party are struggling with popularity. So there will be some real challenges for Susan Collins, and Graham Platner may benefit enormously from that. And he could handle this by saying, listen, I know a lot of people don't agree with me, but I'm not changing my mind on this. I believe a hundred. And he is, he is by all accounts a cultural leftist. And so if he believes that,

he should say, listen, I know a lot of people don't agree with me. I'm not changing my mind on this, and I'm also not going to lie to you about this. But there are a lot of Democrats who, you saw what happened to Seth Moulton in Massachusetts. He dared breathe one word against the or against his party on the issue after Trump won in 2024. And he had staffers quit. It's still a problem for him. There was recently a story in the national media about how it's still going to be a problem for him going forward because of what he said after the 2024 election. Why is that? Well, the activist class and the base are, have built, it's a whole generation that has built their identity around postmodern moral relativism. And in that structure, you are a progressive or a bigot.

And if you are a bigot, of course, they're going to do everything they can to run against you, campaign against you, destroy your candidacy, you're closed down to them. So that's, I know it's a funny clip, but it's also very sad in many ways. And I think it's still an underappreciated obstacle. Republicans will have plenty of problems and they'll have plenty of things. I mean, from Iran to the state of the economy to artificial intelligence and big tech, Republicans are going to have plenty of things dragging them down and making this, you know, quote, lesser of two evils voting in November helpful for Democrats, but that's still a serious obstacle. So I'm going to bring in Shelby Talcott in one moment. Stay tuned. First, this spring, if you want real results, better gut health, glowing skin, stronger hair, and steady energy. Start with colostrum. When your gut is balanced, everything else improves. Today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum, offers premium bovine colostrum sourced entirely from American grass-fed cows. No Canadian grass-fed cows.

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and you feel a difference all day long. I like the strawberry flavor. For a limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order. Just head to cowboy colostrum.com slash after party and use code after party at checkout. That's 25% off when you use the code, Emily, at cowboy colostrum.com slash after party. All right, let's go ahead and bring in our friend Shelby Talcott. She is the Semaphore White House correspondent. Shelby, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me back.

Oh, my gosh. Of course. You have a big story over at Semaphore right now that I want to start by discussing. First, Shelby, our friend, Stephen Nelson, asked a question to you. Caroline Levitt today at the White House briefing about President Trump's timeline, which will kind of frame up the conversation about your article. So let's go ahead and take a list of that first. On Iran, on the timeframe, President Trump initially said about four weeks. Secretary of State Rubio on Friday reportfully said it might be another two to four.

It's two to four the current ballpark that the administration is thinking. With respect to the timeline, again, the president, commander in chief, the Pentagon has always stated four to six weeks estimated timeline for Operation Epic. Fury. We're on day 30 today. So again, you do the math on how much longer we, the Pentagon needs to fully achieve the objectives of Operation Epic Fury, which I will reiterate, destroy the Iranian Navy, destroy their ballistic missiles, dismantle their missile and drone production infrastructure, significantly weakened their proxies throughout the course of this operation, and then, of course, preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.

So something to just bank in your head, Shelby, because I'm going to come back to it, is that Caroline Leavitt there, as I know you noticed, is very clearly going through those objectives, bullet point by bullet point, because you can feel the White House's frustration with the media saying they aren't being clear about their objectives. Caroline has intentionally put out that list of objectives many times at this point, but wanted to bring that up in light of F2. This is another New York Post writer on uranium. Quote, Trump considers high-risk rage who sees 1,000 pounds of Iranian uranium inside the country. We had Brian Dean right on a couple of weeks ago who said it's possible that like a Delta Force would go in and recover that uranium and it would technically be boots on the ground. Shelby, you have a new piece, F1 over at Samofore, headlined why Trump's latest Iran moves may signal ground troops. This was an exclusive. Can you break it down for us, Shelby?

Yeah, I think it's pretty simple. Honestly, there's a few aspects of this. But I think the biggest thing is you see how the administration is messaging about this, right? They're saying that the president is talking to Iran, that he's negotiating, that he prefers diplomacy. And I think all of those things are true. But you also have to look at what the administration is actually doing. And what they're actually doing is they are sending thousands and thousands of troops to the Middle East. And if you look historically at this administration in particular, the president doesn't,

typically do that and then do nothing with that, right? And it is a huge haul to send these people over to the Middle East. And they're not just sending sort of your standard folks who might be there all year round. They're also sending these special operations teams, these guys who would be responsible for some of these really elite ground operations. And so I think when you look at what the administration is actually doing, which is sending all of these troops to the Middle East, it signals that, you know, a ground troop operation is very much a possibility on the horizon. And in fact, I've talked to people close to the White House who know the president pretty well, who argue that it's their theory because of this, that that's what's going to happen.

Okay, so that's an important point because people who know Trump well would be able to or are often aware when the tone in the White House, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Shelby, but if the tone in the White House is that Trump is negotiating. We've seen this happen with tariffs. We've seen this. We're almost on that Liberation Day anniversary, by the way. So happy first year of liberation, Shelby. But we also have this with the Gaza deal.

People can sort of sense when it's unclear. But if they're sensing him becoming comfortable with that, meaning he's receptive to the arguments, seriously receptive to the arguments, and he's not indicating to his close circle of advisors that it's a sort of ploy, it's a public relations campaign, but he's really seriously taking those arguments to heart. I would imagine that explains what you're hearing, Shelby. Yeah, and you talk to anybody inside the administration, and they stress that, you know, the Pentagon's job is always to provide all of the options for the president, which is true. And they've planned for a lot of this for decades, right? We reported

earlier this month, I think it was. It's hard to remember if it was a few weeks ago or like a few months ago. But one of the aspects we reported was the fact that these ground operations, one option on the table is to go in and secure the uranium on the ground and sort of secure this nuclear, Iran's nuclear capabilities with special operations teams. And this has been a plan by the Pentagon for decades since, you know, the Obama administration considered it, the Biden administration considered it. And so I think that's important to emphasize is these aren't plans that are just now oftentimes coming to fruition. These are

things that the Pentagon has planned for usually for a really long time because they plan for all scenarios. But again, when we're talking to people close to the White House and people who know the president, you know, one thing somebody close to him pointed out to me was look at Venezuela, right? The president sent a bunch of troops to that region, and we started off by, you know, taking out these alleged drugboats by the ocean. We did that for a month or two. But that ultimately ended up with a ground operation in which we captured Maduro. And so they're sort of pointing at that and saying, you know, that operation alone, this is kind of similar. We're sending all of these troops. There's a slow buildup, all the while we are negotiating with Iran, right? And Iran, by the way,

senses this too, because, you know, they had the before this 12-day war when we bombed their nuclear facilities last year, the U.S. was negotiating with Iran. And so this time around Iran's like, hold on, we've seen this rodeo before. But that's also how a lot of people close to the president are viewing it, which is, you know, he hasn't made any final decisions. But yeah, he is seriously keeping this on the table as an option. Yeah, it's interesting because nobody right now is talking about like boots on the ground in Venezuela. I mean, obviously we have boots on the ground in Venezuela, American diplomatic representatives on the ground in Venezuela. It's a very different operation than like, quote, boots on the ground looked like in Iraq or Afghanistan. So perhaps the president

thinks there's a way to avoid that in the Middle East this time around. Shelby, I want to circle back to that question about Caroline Levitt laying out the objectives with, I would say, a noticeable frustration in her voice because it does keep happening that the media will say Trump's objectives are unclear and the White House has put forward this list of objectives since like day three of the war, day two of the war. But at the same time, the messaging is obviously mixed, not just from the White House, but from the entire administration. So I'm curious if if you've noticed an effort to be a bit more coherent, or if the president, because he's chopping it up with reporters on Air Force One, as he was doing just 24 hours ago last night, if the president's

casual conversations in public about negotiating negotiations in the war itself, it's almost like everyone's just kind of following his lead. Is that what's happening on this, Shelby? I think we've talked about this before. One of the, things that people who have worked with the president for a really long time have always told me on the campaign trail in his first term, you know, these people have been with him for years now. And they've always pointed out that you can do your best to sort of manage Trump. But ultimately, he is one of those people who loves to talk to the media. He says what he wants. And oftentimes that results in his team sort of adjusting based on what he is telling.

whoever is calling him at 10.30 at night or whoever is calling him at 6 o'clock in the morning, right? Or what he's saying on Air Force One. So I do think there is always with Trump this idea that, you know, his team can be really on message. I think Caroline is very on message, for example, right? She has been saying, as you said, the same thing since day three of this war. But then you have the president sort of muddying the waters, I think. You know, he talks about having to secure the strait of Hormuz. That's not one of the administration stated four goals. He talks about regime change the other night on Air Force One, right, saying, well, we have gone through regime change.

That wasn't one of the stated goals. So there are sort of a muddying of the waters. And I also think even with the administration stated goals, it's hard to gauge when you're successful, right? How do we know that we have completely taken out Iran's nuclear capability or their missiles? And so I think that's the other aspect of it. So I do think that there's certainly people on Trump's team who are very on message. But I think he is so online and so willing to talk to press that that's where the waters get muddied.

So interesting. All right. Let's talk about Maha next because Politico released a poll this morning that I don't know if this was your experience. It was everywhere. I saw this everywhere in the Beltway today. It was rocking around the internet. And you can understand why because we could put this up on the screen, F5. This is the graphic of the poll results.

They actually polled self-identified Maha voters. They polled Trump supporters. And I'm going to read a bit here. I wrote about it. So I'm going to read a little bit from my unheard article. And I really, really, really am curious what you're hearing. internally, Shelby. So the political poll found, quote, a majority of Americans associate Maha with the Republican Party, but not overwhelmingly and most believe the Trump administration

has not done enough to, quote, make America healthy again. That includes a 41% plurality of Trump's own 2024. Voters, adults who self-identified as Maha were relatively split on whether Trump has, quote, done enough to, quote, make America healthy again. 47% say he's not done enough. 45% say he has, that's just outside the margin of error. So it's a very, very even split. And a source close to the Maha movement told me in response to the poll that Trump should let RFK Jr. loose. They said bringing in the Maha voters was brilliant coalition building, but you have to follow

through. These voters don't want aesthetics about raw milk or even the childhood vaccine schedule changes that the medical community will largely ignore without penalty. They want real and meaningful change to how our food has grown, process, and marketed. This will put Republicans at odds with beg ag and big food, arguably two of the biggest lobbies in town outside of the defense and pharma lobbies. But RFK Jr. promises courage and Trump promised to back him. So let him loose.

The perception that Trump has tied RFK's hands on challenging the interests that are poisoning America's kids is not helping. One last bit of data here, shall be before I turn it over to you. Politico actually polled about the system itself. They said respondents in the poll, quote, were more likely to say the Democratic Party can be trusted to make the country healthier and is more eager to improve health in America, while fewer said the same of Republicans. And Republicans, on the other hand, were seen as more likely to be influenced than Democrats

by lobbyists for the food and pesticide industries, which is the founding principle of the Maha movement to oppose. What response did you pick up on from Maha world, which I know you've covered? The White House is staffed by people who are Maha, but they're also, at least, my understanding, hearing a lot, getting an earful from lobbyists and ag and food. Did this ring true to you, shall we? Yeah, I think what's most interesting about this is there, it kind of pulls at that tension that you just mentioned between sort of big ag and the Maha movement.

And that's really interesting because when I was covering the transition, this was one of the things that some of Kennedy's allies were worried about. is they were saying, you know, he's going to come in here. He has all of these ideas. But there's also this huge conglomerate in D.C. who has had a real hold on the White House for decades, not specifically Trump, but just sort of this town. And so I think that he's running into that. But I also think that there is an aspect of this of at the beginning of the Trump administration, he certainly got into some hot water with some of his comments, particularly when he was talking about things like vaccines, etc.

Trump was a little bit nervous about that stuff. He's not totally bought in on that line of commentary. And so I think what's really interesting is you've seen how he really doesn't talk about that that much anymore. And I think that's intentional. I think that's a concerted effort. But I've also spoken to people close to the administration who have expressed exactly what you just expressed, which is essentially we really hope that the administration unleashes him. I talked to one person in particular just generally about the midterms.

And unprompted, they brought up, this was maybe a month ago. They were like, you know, what I really think is going to happen and what I hope happens because this is how you win is you have to take this very messy. conglomerate of people that you got to vote for you, which is the Maha movement, the traditional Mago Republicans, like very different groups all came together and voted for Trump. And you need to lean into sort of, for example, the Kennedy aspect. You need to let him go on the campaign trail and talk and get those people out to vote for Republicans. And so this person was like, this is what they should do, essentially, whether or not they'll do it, who knows, but that's what needs to be done to have a chance in the midterms. Yeah, Alex,

Clark has been covering this constantly on her show, there's clearly a demoralization of Maha that really was most exposed during the glyphosate roundup meltdown of the last month. And it's a huge electoral problem for Republicans because the coalition that Trump put together in 2024, we historically haven't seen his coalition nationwide and in big state races extend when he's not on the ballot. And so if you're trying to get that coalition, to turn out again. And you have like a disillusioned mom in Ohio who is, has the Sherrod Brown election in front of her. Polls are very close in Nebraska and Iowa in Maine. It's early, but those are pretty tight polls and those would be flips for for Democrats. And if you're that

mom who's really busy and has to decide on election day, whether or not to go and, you know, in the middle of your morning and your errands interrupt that and pull the, ever when you're actually for Republicans, when you're like kind of disillusioned by them, makes a big difference. It makes a really big difference if they actually tried in high profile ways to get your vote back. I could see how sending RFK Jr. out on the trail would would be helpful, Shelbur. I also think an aspect of this, and I've talked to administration officials who will acknowledge, is that it's kind of similar to the, you know, we're not talking about the economy enough, which is foreign policy, like going back to the war in Iran,

has taken such a front seat over this past year and a half that even when some of these other groups do stuff, it's just not breaking through. And so voters aren't really hearing about it because, you know, the president isn't necessarily highlighting some of these efforts. He's not bringing up Kennedy as maybe he could be. He's not bringing up, you know, Besson as much as he could be. It's all focused on foreign policy. And so there's been a challenge for this administration, I think, to figure out how to talk about all the other things. that helped them win in the election. So interesting. Speaking of places where there have been friction,

I wanted to get your take on the Department of Homeland Security. We're in Mark Wayne Mullen's first week, and the Sheridan-Gorman tragedy continues to play out on a national scale, although the story isn't getting too much coverage in the legacy media outlets. It's being covered intensely in conservative media, as I would say, rightfully it should. But Mike, I was going to say, For some reason, yeah, just ignore what I was going to say. But I have all kinds of things that shouldn't end up coming out.

I'm having my Modello in honor of Maha. Hell yeah. I mean, isn't it the best selling beer in America? It's great. I love a Mexican lawyer. You know what? It's all we had. I'll take it.

That's actually shocking because Shelby's fiance is a fellow Wisconsin guy. He's a Miller Light devotee. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We've only got medellas, so. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Suspicious. I'm wondering where his loyalties actually lie, Shelby. But Mark Wayne Mullen, first week in office, and there's this tension I don't think was well understood until Christy Noam's last week's in office that people saw internally a divide between Noam and Tom Holman, Noam and Lewandowski and Tom Holman. And when they left, I had a lot of immigration hawks privately complaining that it might mean the administration is modering. moderating on, quote, mass deportations on these enforcement activities that we saw blow up in places

like Minneapolis. And I wanted to play this clip of Charles Barkley on a recent March badness broadcast that might be characteristic of the type of criticism that the Trump administration is now sensitive to and get your sense of whether that's accurate because it may or might not be. Let's go ahead, roll the clip. I want to be very careful with my words right now. I love that kid and his family. But the way some of these other immigrants are getting treated in our country right now is a travesty and a disgrace. I think there's a difference between amazing immigrants and criminal immigrants.

And I think what's going on in our country, what we're doing is some of these amazing immigrants, is really unfortunate and it's really sad. And that's a great immigrant story. We have a lot of great immigrant stories out there who they stories need to be told. But immigrants built this country. And we should admire them and respect them. That was like actually a great moment for the, sir. This is a Wendy's meme.

Like he's literally, if you're listening to this, he was on set. Everyone tunes into March Madness to hear about the hot. topic of immigration, actually. He's got, like, the Yukon mascot behind him. He's, like, randomly... He's, like, randomly dipping it to this very, like, emotional. And, you know, I think resonant, tangent on immigration. I don't know how you go back from that.

Like, did the rest of the broadcaster just be like, and, uh, up next? No, it's like that great Vince Scully clip where he just goes, anyway, oh, and two. He's like talking about how the niece of Hugo Chavez is the richest woman in Venezuela because of socialism. And then anyway, oh and two. Yeah. I mean, I do think, I think that the topic of immigration has become, I mean, I think it was always a very kind of sensitive topic for people. But people did vote for Trump because the border was out of control because their, you know, illegal migration was. out of control. I think that there are a core group of his supporters who knew what they were voting

for, who said, yes, you know, we, we want all of this gone. We want to completely stop illegal immigration. And then I do think that there is a group of voters who are a little bit more moderate who maybe didn't vote for Trump all three times, who, you know, kind of held their nose and voted for him because Biden was the alternative. And also they were frustrated with some of the things going on. I think those people are uncomfortable with some of the scenes that we've seen play out in public. I also think the president is uncomfortable with the scenes we've seen, right? We heard. Which is interesting, by the way, because he's the, he was entirely comfortable with the optics of mass deportation because it was polling really well.

And it still polls, like, as a split with the public. I think the big thing is, though, he is, remember where he came from, right? He's a TV guy. He watches a lot of TV. He came from TV. He knows how to put together a show. And so he doesn't like when he turns on the TV and he sees, for example, the Minneapolis situation, right? These shootings.

Like that's when he starts to think, okay, this, like, I don't like what I'm seeing. I don't like how this is visually playing out. This is not good. And I think there are a lot of voters who agree and who are saying, well, hold on. Maybe we're going too far. And you'll hear the administration say, you know, I think Caroline Levitt said it today, that the Trump administration's immigration policy has not changed. But at the same time, you've heard behind the scenes some sense of moderation, right?

We heard during a closed door chat with lawmakers, one of Trump's top aides was saying, you know, focus the conversation on. criminal illegal aliens. And that doesn't necessarily mean that their whole immigration tactic is shifting. But I think that's important because it shows how, that they're aware how the messaging matters and how, right, their argument is you should focus messaging-wise on the criminals that we're deporting, not on, we're going to deport every single person. We're going to deport your neighbor who your kids play with, right?

which could maybe just mean doing that stuff more quietly. So if you're, again, an immigration hawk, like say you're one of those people who voted for Donald Trump because you wanted mass deportations, are you going to just be happy about like a Mark Wayne Mullen because now you think the strategy, he's now the face of a worst first, as Tom Holman would say, public relations campaign and a Christy Gnome

style hawkish deportation regime, just not as high-profile. playing out on everyone's TV screens. Yeah, I think that's what people hope. And honestly, we won't know. I think there are some people who honestly, like, don't care about the public messaging. And they're saying, who cares, right? We said we're going to deport everyone to deport everyone.

Stephen Miller would be my guess. Yeah, why are we like moderating ourselves, even publicly? But I do think that my sense is that Mark Wayne Mullen agrees with the president on a lot of issues, but he also is a D.C. person. He knows how this world operates in a way that I think, Christenome didn't. And you saw that with some of the decisions she made, some of the comments she made and sort of some of the troubles that she got herself into. And so I think that they're going to be much more careful and low key about what they're doing than the DHS under Christy Knoem. And I think, you know, you talked about the drama between Christy Knoem and Tom Holman. I think Tom Holman is like a pretty hard line immigration person. But you also, he's been tapped to sort of calm down. He was tapped to calm down everything in Minneapolis.

He was also brought in for DHS negotiations on Capitol Hill. I think that shows you how the administration sees him. And it's as somebody who, despite being a hardliner, knows how to talk and message and sort of compromise on these topics. Well, Shelby, I am going to send you out on the Vince Gully clip because I obviously know it's worth it. Amazing. O and one. Perez, 25 years old. Originally drafted by the Tigers.

Lives in Venezuela. Boy, can you imagine you're a young kid playing in the United States? You're from Venezuela. And every time you look at the news, it's a nightmare. A butt attempt is missed. Runners from holding O in Tud.

A butt attempt is missed. Socialism, failing to work as it always does. Just leaning in Venezuela. Like, I might as well go all the way. It's talking about giving everybody something free and all of a sudden. It's no food to eat. And who do you think is the richest person in Venezuela? The daughter of Hugo Chowell.

Hello. Anyway, oh and two. I mean, that's literally, that's the perfect example. I mean, it's a, I mean, Charles Barkley got pretty, pretty damn close to that. Yeah. It was amazing. Oh, my gosh. So much fun to have you here. Shelby Talcott is a White House correspondent over at Semaphore. Thanks so much, Shelby. Thanks.

Amazing. Well, we got the Vin-Skelly clip in, too, which was unplanned and a total bonus. We're going to be back with Jason Willick in just one moment. First, over the years, I have been clear about this. I'm not just pro-birth. I am pro-life. And being pro-life means standing with mothers, not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that's exactly why I partner and partner very proudly with pre-born. Reborn doesn't just save babies. They make motherhood abundantly possible. They provide free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel with women in need and in crisis, and then they stay with real practical help, including financial support, get this, for up to two years after the baby is born. That is what true Christ-centered compassion looks like, not just for the baby, but for the mother, too. And here's where you can make a difference. Just $28 provides a free life-saving ultrasound. One chance for a mother to see her baby, and this is a real figure, when she does, she's twice as likely to choose life. Preborn is trying to save 70,000 babies this year, so don't just say you're pro-life.

Live it, help save babies, and support mothers today. Go to preborn.com slash Emily, or call 855-601-229. That's pre-born.com slash Emily. We're joined now by Jason Willick, who is a wonderful columnist over at the Washington Post. I've known him for a long time. Jason, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, Emily. All right, let's start with your column that I read and thought was so brilliant connecting

the filibuster to the war in Iran. It was like a Stefan S&L moment. This Washington Post column has everything, the legislative filibuster, the war in Iran. But really, it did. And this is a very smart point, Jason. We could put F7 up on the screen. The Senate filibuster debate has lessons for Trump's war on Iran. So true, King.

Tell us what they are, Jason. Well, it was a little bit of a provocation, but it's not a coincidence that the filibuster, as people may know, is the 60 vote requirement to pass most legislation, and breaking that requirement is sometimes known as the nuclear option. So there's kind of martial metaphors here with the nuclear option. But basically what I was saying was the Republicans think basically are arguing for nuking the filibuster on the grounds that the Democrats will do it first. So it's an exercise of deterrence. How do you deter the other people from not doing, not escalating? And I think there's a lot going on there in Iran. I think specifically, basically, John Cornyn, who's running for Senate in Texas, says, I used to support the filibuster, but now the Democrats tried to nuke it in 2022 to try to pass this voting bill. So now I think that they're just going to nuke it when they come in. So there's no point in my opposing it anymore. We need to.

strike first, basically. Because Mansion and Cinema were sort of the bulwark in 2022. Neither of them is in the Senate anymore. It doesn't mean that tells us what a Ruben Gallego or whomever would do. But Jason, what is the Mansion and Cinema of Iran? Exactly. So the Democrats were trying to pass this legislation with 50 votes, Mansion and break the filibuster with 50 votes.

Mansion and Cinema voted against it. They're both now were basically run out of the party. Wasn't that also a voting bill? Am I correct? Was that also a vote? It was going to rewrite sort of state voting laws across the country to have mail-in ballots and the Democratic wish list for voting. So John Cornyn says, basically, we can't be suckers and let them hit us first.

We need to strike first. And so in Iran, there's a lot going on with deterrence that I think is kind of similar. I think one problem is we've already tried to decapitate Iran's regime. We, you know, did this all-out attack in which we killed or the Israelis. has probably killed the Ayatollah and many other senior leaders. So if you're Iran, you might be thinking similarly to John Cornyn, where you think, you know, why should I de-escalate if they're just going to, why shouldn't I just do the nuclear option? Why shouldn't I go to get a bomb because I can't trust them not to escalate? They've already escalated as much as they can. So it's a, it's a, one

one problem I think with this war in Iran is that we escalated maximally. So how are we going to get the, how are we going to get them to abide by a new sort of detente and a new balance of power? If they figure we'd be suckers to do that, they just tried to kill us all in the regime and they'll do it again. Hmm. And so I guess I don't know if this is the perfect description, but it's almost like there becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy mechanism where you say this is going to happen so many times. that it becomes normalized. At least I'm thinking of with the filibuster. Now you have so many Republicans saying Democrats are definitely going to do it. Democrats are definitely going to do it. And over the years, you get a permission structure for Democrats to do it. I don't know exactly

what the parallel to that is in Iran, but it does sometimes feel like in foreign policy world, you talk something up to the point almost of inevitability. It creates an incentive structure for your, quote, enemy to do exactly what you're expecting your enemy to do. Yeah, there's really, I've been thinking about it a lot in the Iran war. There's a self-fulfilling nature to a lot of foreign policy. Like I think the Israelis were sort of thinking, this is our last pro-American president. We've got to do this now. This is our last pro-American president.

And I think with the filibuster, you're right. Republicans are saying, this is our last chance before they go and nuke the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court. And so maintaining deterrence, it requires that it's in both people's interest to do it. The Democrats say we won't nuke the filibuster because that would be bad for us. Ultimately, if Republicans did it. And Republicans say we won't nuke the filibuster because that would be bad for us if Democrats did it. It's in both of our interests to maintain this sort of mutual deterrence. In Iran, I sort of think we had that going.

We could deter them from closing the Strait of Hormuz. We were preventing them from getting a nuclear weapon or at least setting them back. But that's all broken. Once you go for the jugular like this, once you go and do an all-out, attack intended to annihilate a regime, then they're, then they're, how are they, how are you going to deter them anymore once you've already escalated to that degree? So I think that's, that's a tricky thing. It's not a perfect analogy. It's a little bit of a provocation, but both things are going on at the same time. And I think people are not thinking so clearly about deterrence and there,

and deterrence is going to fail as a result of that. Well, and this is a way in which Donald Trump himself is an anomaly and almost the Kiss and man figure in foreign policy, which is that he doesn't always set expectations very clearly, and that's intentional. At least it seems like it's typically intentional because he's doing exactly what he wrote about in Art of the Deal when it pertains to business deals, which also, by the way, often have international government components to them. But he's negotiating in public. He's using the media as part of his negotiation. And that is a little bit different than Barack Obama setting a red line in Syria, which kind of is similar to what we were.

were just talking about actually in terms of foreign policy. But then on the flip side, the muddling means that Iran is not just preparing for one expected outcome, but like a bunch of them, probably. And that's, I guess, perhaps makes it even more difficult for us to anticipate what they're serious about. Yeah. Yeah, he negotiates in a special way, for sure. He puts things out there the most recent is going to blow up the desalination plants. other infrastructure, and he's as much right doing that to put it out there and see what the response is as it is a real threat. And you notice sort of that he's sort of lost the ability, I think, to control the markets. Like there was this joke, you know, at the end of every,

or at the beginning of every week when the markets were going to open, he would give some de-escalatory gesture and the markets and oil prices would fall again. I think he's sort of losing that ability. So at some point, you know, people get on to your, people, out what your strategy is. I was thinking that recently, too, with the markets, like, what comes next? Because so much of him, like, even with back to Liberation Day, which we're almost at the one-year anniversary of, so much of that was him trying to mitigate market consequences. And part of that is what he's trying to do now as well.

Yeah. No, it's very similar. This is similar to Liberation Day in that, for one thing, You know, he was elected on reducing prices, and both tariffs and this war in Iran put upward pressure on prices. But it's also, you know, him at the height of his sort of executive power. I can set the import rate at whatever I want. I can bomb whatever I want. The biggest constraint on him has been the markets.

In these circumstances, he is sensitive to the to how the markets respond. So he's trying to juke them out. But, you know, we're seeing the limits of that. And it did, you know, I think the term taco originated from the, uh, the, the Liberation Day tariffs. And he did ultimately back down. And he could ultimately back down here or not. But I sort of think, you know, back to the, back to the deterrence point, it's going to be tough to get back into a modus of Vendee where we have deterrence. That's why the Iranians want security guarantees. They're sort of like Ukraine. They're like, we think

you're just going to attack us again. Ukraine thinks Russia is going to attack them again if they end the war. They probably would. Ukrainians think the U.S. and Israel will attack them again if they end the war. So they're looking for guarantees. Is it going to be China? Is it going to be Russia? You're getting into a very complicated sort of set of negotiations to reassure all parties that they can stop. That's a really interesting point. I also wanted to ask you about this new audio, the free beacon, got their hands on the Washington Free Beacon got their hands on. This is an Alana Goodman's story. The headline here is, quote, there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad. Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul al-Sayed said he needed to stay silent on Hamini killing because many of Michigan's

voters, quote, are sad. I think this is a really significant story, Jason, but not for the reason that a lot of people are calling it significant. I think you'll set aside, we literally just had Abdul al-Sayed on breaking points on Friday, and I take him at his word that he is sincerely against the war based on his sincerely held ideological position. It might be something that we could all disagree with, but I think he's entirely serious about that. What this reveals, at least from my perspective is that people who are utterly sympathetic to Kamenei, even by Abdul al-Said's sort of private standard, are a significant electoral force in Michigan. That's very interesting because we're constantly told that we don't have to worry about having, you know, people who would be

like, like, quote, sad about a radical Islamic cleric. In Dearborn, people who would be sad about his death in Dearborn. We're constantly being told that's not the case. But here we have somebody who is a Democrat, who's on the left, who's saying, no, that's a real electoral force when they're not in public. Am I reading too much into this? I think that's kind of a significant admission. Yeah, I mean, one tough thing about these Iran war is it's a bad regime. It's a wicked regime.

It does terrible things to people. To be critical of the war should not imply that you have sympathy for the regime. And two, you get no credit for starting a war. a war against a bad regime that can go badly just as much as if it wasn't a bad regime or whatever. So I don't give, I don't, you know, when I'm calculating is a war good idea, whether the regime is wicked or not is really a secondary consideration. It has to be more about your interests and your strategy. But of course, there are people who, you know, not only don't think that it's a bad regime,

but then are sympathetic to it. I mean, yeah, that's true and that's unfortunate. And the anti-war political people have to get. their support too, apparently, or at least are trying not to alienate them in this case. In this case, the Democratic primary, obviously a successful Democratic politician who is opposing the war would have to say, you know, I don't shed any tears for a totala hominy. But, you know, Dearborn is one of the most, you know, Muslim, the highest Muslim populations. And, you know, these are how demographics and political opinions, you know, work regionally.

So which of course you can have a huge concentration of Muslim voters and Muslim Americans and Muslim immigrants without then worrying you're going to offend Muslim voters being sad over the death of a deeply anti-American leader. I mean, we're talking about the death to America regime, which is still in power, even though Khamenei is not. And I'm just reading into this. It's interesting because it's a really close Democratic Senate primary and they're all trying to kind of outdo each other on some of these. questions. The base is obviously furious about what happened in Gaza, and that's been a real problem for people like Alyssa Slotkin in the state. But it is, it does seem to me like that's fundamentally a serious problem for the country if candidates are changing their talking points. So as not to make people angry who might be sad over the death of just an explicitly anti-American leader. That seems like a really difficult position as a country to find yourself in if it continues to build. Yeah, although I do think Democrats overestimate this. I mean, remember that Joe Biden, you know, in 2024, what we're told are sort of the narrative of Biden's evolution

on the Gaza war in Israel was, well, we're going to lose Michigan. We're going to lose Michigan. They probably overstated how much supporting Israel would cause them to lose Michigan. And it probably made them make worse political decisions, frankly. So, you know, this candidate could be, misreading. And to be fair, you know, even if it's a bad guy, you can think you shouldn't be assassinating heads of state, you know, and that sets a, that's a bad press to then. So, you know, I'm not, I'm not frankly so. That's a fair point. No, that is a fair point because, I mean, there's some chatter about how insane it is and

blah, blah, blah to just execute assassinate. There's like an interesting legal debate that I know you followed, Jason, on assassinating even oppositional heads of state. Now, I don't think that's really what Abdul, I'll say. was referencing. Yeah, he was saying people have sympathy. Yeah. Right, but that's, but that's entirely possible that, you know, for some people, it's just a pure objection to the way the United States conducted the first strikes, which were to decapitate the regime. Yeah, and I listened to some of the recording and they were complaining about the Maduro raid as well, which that I actually

support and think worked fine. But, you know, you can have questions about this, this sort of strategy of decapitation, which we're now able to do much better thanks to technology and precision weapons and very sort of high quality surveillance and all this technology that allows you to just decapitate. Although, of course, if the sun is taking over, they don't even need to change the Twitter handle. It can still be hominy. It can still be the sun. Although Trump said we've already changed the regime. A friend of mine joked because there were some reporting that the sun is gay. they said, well, it's that LGBTQ regime in Iran. There's been regime change.

It's been a radical, radical change. From father to son, one generation to the next. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, we haven't heard much from the son. But, you know, I don't, yeah, I think Democrat, yeah, there's obviously a faction in Michigan and in Dearborn that's like, you know, that has these political views and that this guy's trying to cater to.

But we'll see, I guess the ultimate test will be how it affects him in the primary and what the Democratic voters say. Right. And how he responds to the next few days as well, because his opponents are going to use this up as much as they can. Jason Willick, such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Emily. Great to have Jason here.

As I mentioned, a columnist with The Washington Post. Make sure to follow his writing. It is always super interesting. One of the best there. All right, we have a little bit more coming up. First, though, a fresh start as possible. Debt can feel like it's getting worse every month, but that only continues if nothing changes.

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two major cultural questions that I've yet to weigh in on. First of all, there's a raging debate right now about whether the season of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hill is boring. That is ridiculous. You people have Jennifer Tilly, Rachel Zoe, on your screen with Kathy Hilton, just those three. And you're complaining about the season being boring. It's true. It's true. I think Bose now has a little bit too much main character energy. I think Doreet's story is deeply boring.

I think some of the women in the cast could give a little bit more. But, oh my gosh, it's driving me insane. I have not been this compelled by a Beverly Hills housewife season in a very long time. So I just wanted to quickly say, what are you talking about? That's crazy to me. even if it was just Jennifer Tilly, Rachel Zoh. Rachel Zoh was doing the work of a million housewives. She has them all on her shoulder.

She's the weight of the show on her shoulders. And then you have Kathy Hilton and Jennifer Tilly adding so much comedic relief that it's astounding to me. I think sometimes the housewife social media echo chamber gets a little, I don't know. I think it gets a little to a little to a little. in the weeds and loses the forest for the trees. So also, the comeback has returned to HBO.

That is not something I thought was happening. I had forgotten there was another season of the comeback coming to HBO with the great Lisa Kudrow. That show is one of the great cultural artifacts of the aughts. When it came back, like 10 years later, it was fantastic. And its comeback is very interesting right now as well. They're kind of grappling with sitcoms and artifacts intelligence, but it's not for everyone. It's a really, really, I think, brilliant window into

the cultural plight of, like, affluent women in coastal bubbles, though. It does a great job, and it has from beginning to end. So those are just a couple of things I wanted to mention. Now back to the regularly scheduled programming. I just decided to go on that tangent, because I wanted to. And why not? All right. So Fox News had a great story. Shout out to Brian Flood and Joseph Wolfson over there, just counting up all of the legacy news people who have decamped for like substack because the news hook here is that someone you may recognize, he's a CBS news reporter named Scott McFarlane announced Monday that he was going to be a like correspondent for Midas Touch. Midas touch right now, by the way, is thriving because they recognized that there was this massive

audience that had not been served on YouTube for kind of center-left stuff, basically doing what MS now wants to do and is trying to do, but on YouTube with a much lower budget, much more nimble schedule and editorial abilities. So they were originally, you probably might remember back in 2020 a pack. If you're on social media, you saw it might as touch constantly in 2020 during the law fair heydays. They've gotten a little bit more, I would say, like a little bit less lowercase ill liberal since then a little bit more progressive, might be one way to put it, like anti-establishment, because that's where the base who's looking for this content on YouTube is. And now you have Scott McFarlane just leaving CBS News where he was a reporter.

For my distouch, for my distouch. I mean, incredible, incredible stuff. It's another, like, one of many examples. I'm going to put the article actually up on the screen here. It just goes through. This is a trend that absolutely deserves attention. So we started with McFarland. You probably know Terry Moran.

Terry Moran was actually thought to be center-right, like privately center-right for all of the years that he was at ABC News. And obviously he had that crazy situation with Stephen Miller. This was like last spring. So it's been basically a year. But he's now, I think he's on substack. He's like gone independent. And pretty quickly, yeah, he's on substack, pretty quickly said that legacy media is, quote,

failing the American people. And he said that Mike Johnson, quote, is worse than the pedophile Hastert, referring to Denny Hastert. He obviously hates, hates, hates Donald Trump. But again, I'm just going as I go through this trend, remember this hatred of Donald Trump and these like for the case of McFarlane, these clear progressive biases, these clear like liberal biases didn't spring up overnight. You don't wake up and say, oh, I work at Midas Touch now.

And I've discovered that I'm actually, you know, virulently anti-Trump Democrat, Katie correct. This is another example from Fox News. Also, like, independent now, which is incredibly funny. She says she feels more liberated. Quote, I think that for so long, I had to appeal to this mass audience, you know, on the Today Show. And I think we all, especially women, contort ourselves into that, you know, desire to be likable. And I think at some point in my career, I just realized not everybody is going to like me. Well, that's very self-aware. So points to Katie Kirk for that. By the way, I loved watching Katie Kirk. My mom always had the Today show on. And I'm sure she's watching right now, so shout out mom. But I always had the Today Show on. And I've really loved Katie Kirk. And I feel like it was healthier for the country when Katie Kirk was focused on what she was good at doing. But anyway, let's move on to Don Lemon. I'm not even going to go deep into Don Lemon because we were all very familiar with his inspiring arc.

He has given birth to a new generation of independent journalists covering these stories without fear or favor that will enter the industry inspired by Don. over the course of the next decade. And we thank him for that. Appreciate all the work you're putting in here. Don. Who can forget Jim Acosta, the savior of the independent media, the savior of the free press in Trump 1.0, who over and over again, like Don Lemon,

basically insisted that he was just calling balls and strikes. This is what Terry Moran and Scott McFarland's drops, by the way, were like explicitly to do. And they just suddenly like took the mask off, off again overnight. Basically, Acosta leaves CNN because CNN is trying to adapt. And he said in his closing monologue, as the Fox article points out, don't give in the lives, lies, don't give into the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope. Even if you have to get out your phone, record that message, I will not give into the lies. I will not give in to the fear. Post it on your social media

so people can hear from you too. Okay. He has since just again gone totally mask off. He is clearly an ideological anti-conservative figure. That's how I would describe a lot of these people, by the way. It's not even to say that they're pro-progressivism. A lot of them are just, like, deeply anti-conservative. They just don't, you know, maybe they're moderate on some issues.

They're certainly not, like, leftists for the most part, foreign policy or on economics, right? Like these are people who generally like low taxes and low crime and, you know, aren't super into experimenting with criminal justice reform or like anti-imperial foreign policy. They're not really into that stuff. But that's why they go wherever the never Trump wind blows. We see it over and over again with these folks. A couple of other examples that I wanted to bring up.

Dan Rather. Dan Rather now is sadly kind of an aging joke, but Dan Rather, when he left legacy media, he has since become also virulently not just anti-Trump but anti-conservative. Soledat O'Brien, another one, and Chris Cuomo's or Don Lemon's handoff buddy, Chris Cuomo, again, who were on apples and bananas CNN during Trump 1.0 where CNN was saying some networks, This is an Apple. Some networks might try to say it's a banana. I think this is one of the most important cable news advertisements or marketing campaigns ever produced. CNN was claiming to be different from Fox News by intentionally not like both siding the news. Both siding is always a little bit of a misleading pejorative for what happens in the news because you should actually just be doing all siding, meaning all perspectives that are within. it's the hardest thing for any news organization, within the kind of spectrum of belief among the American public. So is this a significant force in electoral politics? People who are skeptical of this, skeptical of that. And often it's not a both sides thing. Often it's you find

some like progressive Democrats and hardcore Republicans who are against this campaign in Syria, for example, but they don't even get to that side. They'll just say, this Republican says, you know, it's that Biden is a bad commander in chief and this Democrat says, no, this is important. And we trust President Biden. That's not both sides. That's like, I mean, I guess it's like both sides of the political establishment. But that's where the kind of pejorative reference to both sides always fails. But what's so fascinating about all of these people. And Soledadadale, O'Brien, there's another one, all of these people is that right now, they position themselves as champions of independent media and a new media. Like Katie Kirk talking about how she's been liberated

is true to some extent, right? They are living the life that Jake Tapper wishes he can live where you have your shirt untucked and you're just in your office with a microphone and you're chopping it up with your guests on a couch. Like this is what they're trying to do at CNN, but it's also, yeah, has Jim Acosta found an audience? I guess like Chris Saliza seems to be finding something of an audience. Yes, but what their model is is really low overhead and a niche of subscribers. And if you're able to, like Stephen Colbert did, that's how we started after party back in June, talking about Stephen Colbert being the least funny and the most political,

but the top-rated host in late night for much of Trump's first term. Why did that work? Well, again, it certainly wasn't a low budget. hence some of his problems now, but it was for a, it was trying to cultivate a loyal niche. And you can sometimes do that with partisan appeals, right, to people's tribal loyalty. And I actually think that's why you see so much kind of banal never Trumpism from a lot of these folks. They don't really display open minds. They aren't really exhibiting a rejection of the political establishment.

They kind of think they are because some of the establishment has flirted with Trumpism from now big tech to, from big tech to some of the media companies like CBS being a good example. I'm sure that's why Scott McFarlane felt comfortable ditching CBS for new media because Midas Touch is now like literally rolling in gold, presumably. So all that is to say, is it successful competing to really be a significant player, stream of information in the long run. I think that's a question that some of these guys really, really, really have to ask themselves because I suspect actually that they're still operating in many cases on speaking fees. Like they get some of their income or a lot of their income from speaking fees.

And also that the subscriber base isn't super, super durable because at the end of the day, what people want from their media is honesty and transparency. And if what you're doing is just this faux version of honesty and transparency, It is the symbolic untucked shirt from Jake Tapper, which I think is also what you get from like a Jim Acosta. Do I believe that Jim Acosta is this passionate about things? I mean, maybe he is, but they're also just kind of performatively gesturing constantly to anti-Trumpism, never Trumpism. You can see it in the guests that they have on for the most part. And, you know, you don't sense that they have a lot of independent thought that isn't still,

the programming from big corporate media outlets that was ingrained in their minds for decades. And it's not interesting. It's honestly not interesting. And you don't really fully believe that it's transparent and that it's, you know, on the one hand, it's like kind of desperate and ideological. But on the other hand, I don't know that they're really capable of independent thought. It's just you sort of see more honestly what they talk about at the cocktail party circuit in New York City and in George here in DC. Like, you're just getting that. And frankly, what we're learning is it's, it's really uninteresting. And I don't think that's super sustainable. Some of them are doing great. I think Jim Acosta's sub-sac is like fairly successful. But will it be successful,

will it be an enduring force in politics and media? Unless there's a change, I highly doubt that. I mean, it's enough with the low overhead and it's based around. It revolves around one person, essentially, for him to probably make an okay living. And you can supplement it in other ways that you probably can't at Legacy Media, but is it lasting? I mean, they have convinced themselves there in the zeitgeist that they have their, that they're fingering the pulse. Was that a Colbertism back during the Colbert reporter? Was that John Stewart fingering the pulse? Comes to my mind that that was something in the odds in the 2010s. They really think they are. They really think they are. And that's just because they're continuing to exist in these same echo chambers, the same cocktail

party circuits, where everybody's always patting each other on the back. And, knocking everyone else over the back of the head as being stupid and toothless rubes. And they're still part of that. So some happy thoughts to end the show tonight. Thanks so much for tuning in, everyone. Appreciate it. Emily at double-maycare Media.com is where you can email me. Make sure to subscribe on YouTube.

It's super helpful. Like, comment, subscribe on your podcast feeds. And we'll be back here on Wednesday, live at 9 p.m. Eastern with more happy hour. Have a good one, everyone.