After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Fauci Pleads the Fifth, Newsom’s New Problem, WNBA’s Culture War, with Jennifer Sey & the Banned Book Myth

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Jennifer Sey, founder & CEO of XX-XY Athletics and producer of the upcoming documentary “Generation Covid,” to react to Anthony Fauci's appearance before a Senate committee and his decision to repeatedly invoke the Fifth Amendment. They discuss Fauci's newly released diary entries, offer a reminder on what he really did to Americans, his treatment of dissenting scientists, and why the media continues to defend him rather than reckon with its own failures in covering the pandemic. Jennifer also reflects on how opposing COVID lockdowns upended her career and ultimately drove her away from the Democratic Party. Then they discuss Gavin Newsom's presidential ambitions, his governing record in California, and why they believe authenticity remains one of his biggest political liabilities. They also react to the backlash facing WNBA star Sophie Cunningham after she defended women's sports, including an incident in which two teenage girls wearing XX-XY Athletics apparel were verbally confronted by a Seattle Storm co-owner. Emily rounds out the show with a look at Dua Lipa's new "banned books" campaign and argues that it falsely equates age-appropriate school library decisions with censorship, and more…   Lean: Discover why LEAN is becoming the choice for real weight‑loss results—shop now at https://TAKELEAN.com use code EMILY.   Cozy Earth: Visit https://www.CozyEarth.com & Use code EMILY for up to 20% off   Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/afterparty Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All right, everyone, welcome to After Party. Tonight's guest is Jennifer Say of X, X, X, Y, Athletics. It's a great day to have her here because we're going to be talking about Anthony Fauci, Anthony Fauci, and more Anthony Fauci. Also going to get some WNBA coverage in, which we've been doing a lot of recently. But I think for good reason, so much of this guys, I'll do a little conversation about Duolipa's spreading the stupid banned books lies, which I actually find to be insidious and dangerous. So that's on the table.

But most importantly, Anthony. Fauci is going to face a vote for contempt of Congress, according to Senator Rand Paul. Next week, we have all of the highlights and low lights from Anthony Fauci appearing before the Senate today and deciding to plead the fifth. Can he do it legally? We are going to break that down as well with Jen say in just one moment. As a reminder, I'm so bad about doing this at the top of the show, but please do subscribe. It's the best way to help us continue doing the independent journalism we do here on after party. Subscribing on YouTube is enormously helpful. It's a small thing. really appreciate it, but if you subscribe to the channel, it really does give us a boost,

likes, comments. Those are all great for the algorithm and subscribe on the podcast feed too, where we do three shows a week, Monday, Wednesday, and an audio-only show on Friday where I answer the questions you send in to Emily at devilmaycaremedia.com. With all that said, let's dive into it because there's just so much to get to from the Fauci hearing. We'll take a quick break and be right back with Gen Say. Well, everybody's talking about those weight loss injections because, let's face it, the results are so dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar and also reducing appetite. So what if you're looking to lose weight, but you're not interested in, let's say, painful weekly injections, especially when you start hearing about some of those

very intense side effects. That is why doctors created a weight loss supplement called lean, and the results are remarkable. The studied ingredients in lean have been shown to lower your blood sugar, burn fat by converting it into energy, and curb your appetite and cravings, so you're not as hungry. But listen, lean is not for the casual dieter with only a few pounds to lose. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created lean for frustrated dieters with 10 or more pounds to lose. So let's get you started with 20% off and free rush shipping. So you can add lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit takelein.com and enter Emily for your discount.

That's promo code Emily at takelein.com. Happy to be joined now by my friend Jennifer Say of XXXY Athletics. That is such a great company. She's reping it right now. And Jennifer, I was also reminded by our friend Sarah, you are the producer of a documentary called Generation COVID. This is a huge part of your personal story, your professional story. And I'm very eager to dive into your reaction to the Fauci hearing today. First, thanks for being here.

I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's going to be fun. I don't think I've been on this iteration of the show. Maybe I have. It's hard to keep track. Yeah, I don't know. I definitely chatted with you on some show in the past. Yes, and just a quick plug for the film, it has not been released yet.

So this is, I am somewhat known, I guess, for being very outspoken about the need to open the public schools and to end all restrictions to children from the very beginning of lockdowns in March 2020. That didn't go particularly well for me in speaking up. I won't go into the ugly details of it, but I lost a lot. There is no reward for speaking up early. And, you know, if you speak up in Deep Blue San Francisco in March 2020 to say this is going to harm our children when you write op-eds on that and go on the local news and say it at school board meetings, well, you're not very well liked in the city of San Francisco. You might get chased down the street and called a murderer and a racist. You might lose your career that you spent 30-plus years building.

I fled the city. I went to Colorado so that my kids could go to school. You might say Colorado's pretty blue. It is, but the schools were open, and I will forever be grateful for that. Yeah, I found myself, you know, all my friends, basically, who I had had for 30 years gone. Boof, don't answer me anymore. There's been a split in my own family that persists because of this. So it's very difficult to read these diaries and watch this hearing.

That said, I made a documentary film called Generation COVID. It'll be out this fall. So just stay tuned for more details there. It will be out this ball on Salem. And it is really about the human face, the loss to children and families, the way children suffered, the isolation, the learning loss. the developmental loss, in some cases, suicide. Families lost so much. And so to see this little power-hungry man, this weasel, sit up there and, well, first

of all, right in his diary, make light of all of this. I'm trying really hard not to curse. I'm so angry. Or cry. I can curse. Okay, I'll curse so I don't cry. It's infuriating. I tried really hard not to read the stuff at first, Emily, because I knew it would

be so upsetting to me. I myself lost so much. I don't want to make this about me. But I really did. My life was transformed and, you know, not in a way that I planned or intended merely because I stood up for children, all children. It was never just about my children, though I do have four kids, all public school students, but it was never about them. I could have pulled my kids and put them in private. That's not what this was about. This was not about me. This was about kids. And I lost everything, you know, and there are families I know that are much. I know. And there are families. I know that much worse off than me. People lost small businesses. Twenty-five million people lost their jobs in 2020, Emily. Half of the nation's public school children were kept out of school for an

entire year. In San Francisco and California, it was almost two years. It was 19 months. Think about what that does to a child. Sorry, I'm ranting here, but it's just so enraging to read how flip he was in these diaries. And the thing is, it was so obvious to anyone paying attention that he was just a power hungry little troll. I don't know how people didn't see it at the time, but it's all laid bare in these diaries

and he's gloating about meeting Julia Roberts and Barbara Streisand and having dinner with all these CNN reporters. And meanwhile, he's locking kids down and telling families they can't have Thanksgiving. I mean, he's such a little shit. I can't control myself. Anyway, the film is coming.

I can't stand the man. I hope that more than anything, know, people are calling for imprisonment and all of it. You know what I hope the most is that he just is left with his reputation in tatters, because that is all he cares about. That is what he cares about. It is so well said. And thank you for setting the table for us here, because without context, with all of that context, is easy to sort of just see this as another circus in the Senate. And we have some media reactions we're going to get to in a bit that kind of lament, you know, just that everybody uses these Senate hearings to grandstand now. And it's like, well, in the

at Anthony Fauci, there's some grandstanding that needs to happen. And let's show people why. We have clips. Anthony Fauci just days after Senator Rand Paul, based on documents that HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., lifelong Democrat, who really was catapulted into the MAGA movement because of the pandemic, now identifies as a Republican, he found these on government servers. It appears to have been done on Anthony Fauci's government email address on a government computer. This is public records that we have a right to see. There is nothing that shouldn't be seen through all of this. So Anthony Fauci comes in. He's testifying in front of the Senate today. Rand Paul delivers some opening remarks. Anthony Fauci gives this brief opening statement, proceeds to plead the fifth

throughout the next couple of hours. But here's what he said at first. During and after the COVID pandemic, I have appeared multiple times for hearings. the Senate and the House, usually under oath. However, given Senator Paul's obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason, he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something. Anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words,

quote, behind bars, unquote. Therefore, although it pains me to do so, because of the respect, I have for the legislative branch of government. And my decades long... record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions. Jen, I think he might be telling the truth about one thing there. His lawyer was kicked out, of course, and that's another topic. Yeah, because his lawyer kept trying to interject. Can we

I was going to say, I was going to say, I think he's telling the truth about one thing, which is that it does pain him to not be able to talk in front of the Senate because that man loves the sound of his own voice, whether it's typed or whether it is being delivered in person orally. And so that probably was hard for him, but it's hard for you, Jen, to watch that without interjecting, which I was loving the interjections. Tell us why. Well, first of all, what kind of person keeps an 1100-page diary on a public work computer? And by the way, in this diary, and I've not read the whole thing, your updates have been illuminating. So thank you for that.

I thought he was so busy. I thought he was out saving the people and the lives. No, he's sitting there like a teenage girl writing in his diary about all the famous people he met. There's nothing in the diary about the science or the, like, nothing. It's all about stroking his own ego and who he met and how he's the most famous person in the world. And like, there's no science in there. There's not. The mentions of the science are about how dumb everybody who disagrees with him on the science are.

Or like, yeah, it's probably a lab leak, but I'm not going to say it. Or, you know what I mean? Or maybe the vaccine is working or there's, I can't really figure out why even when we're locked down, it keeps spreading. What's the key there? I can't really figure it out. But there's no deep scientific analysis, right? I do find it interesting. The piece in the Washington Post, this is an aside, or at least the first piece in the Washington Post, was all about at least the first 75% of it how Fauci found Trump annoying.

Right. Like that was the theme. That was the takeaway. Are you kidding me? Like that is not the takeaway here. That's not the news. But of course they have to say that they were complicit. All the major news organizations were complicit in writing his dumb talking points as if it was investigative journalism when it was pure proper.

That's all it was. No one dug in. They had dinners with him when everybody else was locked at home. But he does this poor me routine about his private diary being exposed and how mean that is. You wrote it on the work computer. Everyone knows whatever you do at work, and I assume it's even more intense if you work for the government, whatever you do at work on the computer there belongs to your work. That's the rule. That is the rule. You work for the taxpayers. And in this case, it belongs to us. I worked with someone I was remembering, this is sort of a tangent, but funny, once he was very high up in the company I worked for. On his computer, he had videos of himself doing unspeakable things, which his assistant found, and he was fired immediately. It wasn't invasion of his privacy. He was using a work computer to make porn, basically. You don't get to do that. That's not allowed.

And so he kept an 1100 page diary. It was a type of porn that found you with doing. Good point. It's a type of masturbation. So don't try to get us to feel sorry for you that this is an invasion of privacy because you're so utterly embarrassing. That's the first issue. Right.

But then, I mean, I think we all knew he would plead the fifth, which, you know, if you are so confident in defending your prior stance and your ideas, why would you do that? The only reason he would do that is he would either have to lie under oath or contradict what he'd said in the past, one or the other, and both destroy his reputation. Well, lying under oath is even worse. I think at the end of the day, though, I want to say this. He's not going to jail despite, he's an 85-year-old man. They're not going to send him to prison. I think we have to be realistic about that.

But he can go down as a terrible, evil, horrible. person. And I think that cuts him deeper. Because look how he loved the limelight and the fame. It's all going to be destroyed. Although I would even caution us against that. And I know we're going to get to some of the people defending him. You know, the people who decided, or are currently deciding that I should still be canceled and not allowed back into polite society and not allowed to get a, you know, a job in corporate America. They don't even know about this. That's so true. They're in a bubble. They don't even know about it.

And if they do get snippets, it's like what I just told you about from the Washington Post or, you know, some of the clips you're going to play. And they retain this poor Fauci was doing the best he can. Did he make some mistakes? Maybe. But this man sacrificed his life in public service and he saved so many lives. None of that is true, but that is what they believe. And they will cling to it for D.O.

Right. No, that is such a good point because what we're going to do right now play to Republican interactions with Fauci. Democrats were woefully disinterested in the whole proceeding or they were interested in it to the extent that they could do their own grandstanding about how noble Fauci is and how terrible these, you know, toothless Republican MAGA mouth breathers are for holding his feet to the fire. By the way, Jen is a great person to talk to because she's not MAGA. She is someone who does not come from the right wing. I don't, but I am a registered Republican now. Wow. All right. So interesting. Let's roll then. Senator Bernie Marino, Republican of Ohio, who had his own personal professional experiences with the pandemic

laying into Fauci. It was about six years ago today that I decided I'm going to give up my businesses, sell them all, run for office, run to the United States Senate. Here I am sitting in front of you six years later saying, who the fuck do you think you were for doing that? It is a total disgrace what you did to this country. And if my Democrat colleagues are standing there defending you, I hope the voters, the United States of America, watch the clips of every one of you, doting on a guy who was more interested in being a celebrity

than saving American people. You may have had a 50-plus year legacy of public service. Destroyed. But it ends in total and complete. complete disgrace. So let me ask you an opportunity to answer one question. Will you apologize? Just apologize to the people who you harmed through your actions. Will you say, do you have the dignity to just say you are sorry? Nope. On the advice of counsel, I respect for the client to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

All right. Who is that guy? Bernie Moreno. Love that guy. If he can say who the fuck are you, then so can I. That's so true. Unfortunately, for many of us, we were saying that in real time. You know, in 2020, 2021.

I was more diplomatic than that at the time because I have like a nice corporate lady voice that, you know, I have to kind of adopt. But that's basically what I was saying the entire time. So, you know, I am very grateful to see it being said to him directly. I would like him to have to sit in front of parents who lost a child. We have a family featured in our film Generation COVID, which if I didn't mention up front, I directed with my partner, Andrew James,

not my romantic, my filmmaking partner. There is a family, the Cuscoes in Connecticut, Fairfield, Connecticut, who lost their son to suicide in February of 2021. He was a young man. He was a straight-A student, all-American kid, played multiple sports, just fell into a deep, deep depression about a year in. It actually started much earlier, but he couldn't make it pass. I would like him, Fauci, to have to sit and look Kevin's parents in the eyes and say that he sorry. Not even talk. Just listen. Will he plead the fifth? Just listen to their story. That's what I would like. I would have to, I would like him to look these people in the eye. I have another friend here in Colorado who lost her daughter to a drug overdose, a 14-year-old girl who just went off the rails during COVID and just started hanging out with all of the wrong people. If you don't get your validation in school where you're supposed to get it, you're going to seek it out in other ways. And this poor girl just

went off the rails. I would like him to have to sit in front of her mother and answer for what he's done. He's just such a little shit. I don't know who's to put it. I was on a show last night, Katie Padletch's show with Dr. Scott Atlas. And, you know, Dr. Fauci was obsessed with, by the way. He accuses Rand Paul of being obsessed with him. He was obsessed with Scott Atlas. Well, he was obsessed with Atlas. He was incest with Dr. Jay Batacharya and all the great Barrington declaration folks. I mean, he said we're going to do a takedown. He and Francis Collins initiated a takedown to smear these well-respected scientists. I mean, Emily, we're not talking well-respected. We're talking top in the world. Dr. Jay from Stanford, Sunetra Gupta, from Oxford and

Koldor from Harvard. Like, these weren't like second-rate scientists. These were like recognized as the best in their field in the entire world. And he and Collins initiated basically an entire, not a hit piece, like a whole hit program to smear these doctors. Now, thankfully, they have gotten through it. And Jay now leads NIH, which is incredible. Now I lost my train of thought. I get so angry. Well, this will restore your train of thought.

We should watch Josh Hawley because this is another example of what Democrats could be doing if they were in touch, especially from like swingy states, purple states, if they were in touch with the many people like Jennifer say, who had COVID experiences that they feel Fauci embodies the absolute worst of, the injustice and the arrogance. So Josh Hawley made Fauci's decision to plead the fifth look utterly absurd. Let's take a look at Sat 3. What day the week is it today? So good. On the divisive counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. What color tie you're wearing?

On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. This isn't about the Constitution. This isn't about the law. This is about contempt. Contempt for this body and contempt for the American people. But I think I know why you're doing it. It's because during the pandemic, you got, rich, didn't you? You got rich while people were dying, hundreds of thousands of Americans over a million in the end, and you were getting rich, and not only were you doing that, you were using federal employees with taxpayer money to apply for and solicit cash prizes for you, personally. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the

Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. You were supposed to be the nation's doctor, and your playing one on TV, but this is what you were doing with your time. Isn't that true? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. No, no, no. You could sit for in-style magazine. But you can't answer questions for the American people. You could sit for in-style magazine. Yeah, and you did that cover on in-style. Yeah, that was a culmination. Yeah. Let's go, Jen. So, first of all, I do think it's important. You said this before the clip, Emily. He's the embodiment of all of it, the censorship, the coercions, the lies, the power hungriness, the narcissism, the disregard for human life,

disregard for children. He thought of us as kind of clogged in a wheel and models in his little, you know, little cogs in his little model and totally neglected our humanity. We aren't just pieces to be moved on a board. We need people. We need to see people. We need to see people. people. We need to see our families. We need to be with our loved ones. This is where I'm going to get emotional. Women gave birth alone. Old people died alone in the last weeks of their life. They were on an iPad. They couldn't hold their daughter or their son's hand or their grandchild's hand. He didn't care about any of that. He cared about his little model and doing his little media hits and being famous. He never thought about what it could what it would do to a child, how developmentally

stunted they would be. He bragged about the fact that he got Bill de Blasio and Gavin News. him to close the schools while publicly saying he had nothing to do with it. I had nothing to do with it. But he was not the only one. He is the embodiment, as you said, but there were so many that were a part of it. He's just sort of like the most obvious reflection of it. They were everywhere, Emily, and they crushed anyone in their path, right? They crushed Dr. Atlas and Dr. Jay. But Berks was in on it, and all the governors were in on it. And all the local public health officials were in on it. I knew the names of the public health people in every blue state in the country. I never want to know that shit again.

Like, I just don't want to know that shit. They were all in on it, and everyone was going like this, right? The public health officials were going, I don't close the schools, but the people who were responsible for keeping the schools open or getting them open were saying, well, I'm just listening to the public health person. And the governors were saying, well, I'm just listening to public health. And public health was saying, well, I don't make the decision. They were all doing this.

So no one was held accountable. So Fauci is not alone in it. any of this. I think it's really important we remember that. And by the way, I'm leaving out the entire media machine that demonized and vilified and got people canceled for just saying, what about my kid? What about my kid? But the last thing I want to say, I don't think, you know, Holly's pointing out the money, and I think money does matter to a lot of people. I mean, I'm trying to crawl inside this demonic man's head, so, you know, make about what you will. I don't think he's driven by money.

I don't think he can't. There are a lot of people that are. That's all they care about. I don't think money is what drives him. I don't think he would have stayed in the public service for 40 years or whatever it is. I mean, he is a highly paid government official. I think he was the highest paid in the government. And he now, I think, collects a pension of $400,000 a year, which is obscene.

Please take that away from the man. We can do that, can't we, at the very least. But I think he's driven by the attention. and the adulation adulation power is not quite the right word because he's not like he doesn't want to be king he wants to be the guy that moves through the halls and pushes all the buttons and makes it happen that's who he wants to be i can't really describe what that personality type is because i'm not as psychiatrist but i'm sure it has a name and it is narcissistic and it is ego maniac he thrives on being in the halls of power. He thrives. You can see this from the diaries on knowing the president, all the presidents.

He thrives on that. That is narcissism, really. He doesn't want to be the president, you know. But it does seem this was the moment he waited his whole life for, and he was not letting go. He was not going to fucking let go. That is such a good way to put it. That is such a good way to put it. And there's barely any attention in the diary. I read all of it paid to lockdowns. Unless he's bragging about getting lockdowns to happen. I'm just going to mention that in a moment. But also very little about overdoses, addiction spiking, very little about the dark side of the consequences.

They shut down AA meetings. That's a lifeline for people. They shut down churches and places of worship for people struggling. That is community. I mean, when you want to talk about blaming, like, why did they go along? Honestly, if you're a leader in your community, if you are a leader of a church, say no. Yeah. Yeah. I think people, there are some people who really wish they could have a do-over,

but at the time, and this is worth revisiting, I'm going to make you even more irate, Jen, because right now we're going to play a game of Fauci versus Fauci. At the time, we had people that are supposed to be in positions of public trust saying things that sounded dubious then, but were being said with such great authority and echoed by the press. So let's start with this clip of Anthony Fauci, who wrote in his diary that he knew the wet market was not the source, but the amplifier. That's what he said. And now that would be up for debate as well. But that's what he was saying privately in January. The next day, this is what he says publicly. And now in the novel coronavirus, we don't know exactly what that.

animal was, but some animal probably in a wet market where they bring in a variety of different types of wild game and people sacrifice them particularly around holidays like the Lunar New year. It is totally not surprising that you're seeing the facilitation of this jump from the animal species to the human. Even more ridiculous, Jen, and this is going to really get you going, is how he handled the question of schools. And let me just tee this up because he said in the diary, March 15th, 2020, a very crucial time during the pandemic. He writes his diary and says, Big Day, that was in red. I'm sure he put that in there.

I spoke with Bill de Blasio and convinced him based on what I was saying publicly in my conversation tonight to close the NYC schools. he had already decided based on what I was saying on TV. Then he says, I had a similar call with Anne O'Leary, the chief of staff for Governor Gavin Newsom of California. And said that based on my TV appearances today and yesterday, the governor decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants. Now let's go ahead. Roll the clip. Here is what Anthony Fauci said to John Carl on ABC News, October 16th, 2022. They always come back and say Fauci was responsible for closing schools. had nothing to do.

I mean, let's get down to the facts. Yeah, well, that's why he's pleading the fifth, John. Yeah, of course. I mean, I guess he could argue technically. He doesn't announce the closure. He made it his mission to close. Why you wanted all the school's closed? Like, he knew it wasn't dangerous.

He knew it was a tenth as dangerous as what he was saying publicly. I mean, oh my God, I have so many thoughts. I don't even know where to start. First of all, can we go back to the school? First of all, can we go back to the wet market for a second? Yeah, yeah. I unlike some others and not as interested in the whole lab leak thing. I mean, I think it's obvious it was a lab leak.

I think it was obvious from the beginning. I think whether it was or wasn't, I think Fauci would have done the same thing. I mean, I think the argument is it's a lab leak. He funded the experiments. And so his behaviors were to cover that up. I think he would have done this, this. I think he would have done the same no matter what. I just, like we said earlier, he waited for this moment.

I think so. I think so. I mean, it is emblematic of the lies and the smearing and the censorship and the media coercion. I want to get back to the media in a second, too, please, because I think my... I've got some clips to get your reaction to it. My very special disdain is for the media. We had no fourth estate. They really were the ones, I think, more than anyone that fell down on the job.

But this whole web market thing, like, that wasn't the most racist. theory under the sun. Like that was, it was racist to say lab, like, remember, I want to take you back. That was, we were all accused of anti-Aid racist. Yeah, everybody was a racist, anti-Asian racism. We were responsible for violence against Asian people. Meanwhile, he's out here saying these primitive people eat bats and spread disease. Like, that just seems, uh, whatever. That's you think a problem to me. He just, I think he just got so caught up in it. It was like it's snowballed, right?

Like I don't think, I think he loves the attention, and it's like the more attention and got, the more he wanted, the more governors he talked to and influence, the more he wanted to, the more stars he met. And he wanted to just prolong that as long as possible. He was so, as I said before, disconnected from his actions and what the real implications were. all he cared about was how it made him feel

that he was getting all of this attention and adulation and he couldn't give a shit about the children and the families that were destroyed and the people who lost their jobs and he would sling any kind of dirt and mud at anyone and that's why it's so hard for me to read because I was one of those people that was vilified and chased down the street

and canceled for anyone that says cancellation isn't real it's totally fucking real and I am here to tell the tale and you don't get uncanceled. Emily, you never get uncanceled. Even if this all gets reversed, you don't. The stink, it sticks to you. It does.

It just does. You stay. I mean, the real issue is I proved myself to be disobedient, and that is very unsafe in corporate America. And so even if I was right about everything, they pretend they want courage, but what they want is obedience, so you just don't get the calls because it's risky.

Oh, what's you're going to? to say. What's she going to say? Who knows what she's going to say? So, you know, that's what happens. Everybody pretends they want courage. Nobody wants anything of the sort. Anyway, but these governors, I mean, Gavin Newsom is going to run for president. And he was your governor at the time. He was my loser asshole governor. And I want to say, I always despised that man, even when I was a Democrat. Now, I'm not saying my voting record was much better because I often voted for someone further left than him, but I always knew he was a slime bag. And I never, I didn't vote for him for mayor. He's so obvious, like to me, Emily, gosh, I'm so not coherent today because I'm so angry.

It's beautiful. It's poetry. His sliminess is as obvious to me as Fauci's. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, totally. I am confounded by the fact that people don't see that. How do they not see that Gavin Newsom's slick back hair and his weird hand movements and his just, he was known in San Francisco to be like a drunkard who went to this one area in town in the marina and hit on all the young girls even when he was married. Like everybody knew what a slime bag he was.

Like why? I don't get why not. You can see it. But I mean, whatever. They didn't see that Biden was completely demented. They just believe what CNN tells them, I guess. I don't understand it because to me it's so obvious that Gavin's a slime ball. Fauci's a narcissistic little turd.

But we need to, like, Fauci's done. He's 85. Let's make sure he doesn't get his pension. Let's go make sure he goes down and disgrace. But Gavin needs his career ended. California was closed longer than any state. The schools were closed for 19 months. 19 months.

the private schools were open. His kids were going to private school. Let me be clear about that. Gavin's kids went back to school in October 2020. Everyone else's kids didn't go back to school until September 21. Yep. And you know, Jen, you mentioned your special disdain for the media, but we have, rightfully so, that's fair. Rightfully so, we have a higher expectation of people who tell you that their job is to put facts first, which is what the media was doing so sanctimoniously over the course of COVID. And right now, I'm sensing panic in the press because they see from some people. So let me roll. We have a couple clips.

We've got TMZ. We've got CBS. And then we've got Stephanie Ruhl on MS now. So let's actually start with the CBS Mornings clip. in our group. Yeah, I know, right? It's like dream blunt rotation. Okay, Celine Gounder, who on CBS, I think it was this morning. Here's the quote, who here has not taken a selfie with a celebrity who has been here in the studio. Let's roll this one. The diary entries sometimes indicate that Dr. Fauci is reveling in his fame. So one of the risks, as you know,

of celebrity in politics is people start making decisions with an eye towards the camera. Does that happen in medicine? Does that influence the way of perhaps the public health official or doctor makes decisions and recommendations. So I want to say I've actually read all of the pages of the diary. Most of his comments are actually about the pressure it was creating and the harassment and death threats and what that led to in terms of situation. Who here has not taken a selfie with a celebrity who's been here in the studio. Right. And I'm not, yeah, I'm going to say it's basically everybody, right?

Yeah, it's human nature. It's human nature. Right. It's human nature. He had it. He had it. But if you look at the, the, the, The preponderance of his comments, most of them are actually concerns about this is making me really uncomfortable.

I'm uneasy. This is leading to these security issues. It's, you know, the occasional comment about Barbara Streisand is not the headline here. No, nobody's saying, but also nobody is saying that Barbara Streisand is the biggest headline out of all of this. No. Go ahead. You know what's so annoying is really an understatement. You know, if you're me and during this time, the accusation, besides,

being a murder and a racist. You shouldn't have killed people and you shouldn't have been a racist. I shouldn't have been. And to make it clear, the reason you're a murder is if you want the schools to open, you don't care if teachers die or children die. And the reason you are a racist is you don't care if black children die because it's the black kids that go to public school. It's not that you're a racist because you think the private schools should open and the black kids have to sit at home. That seems pretty racist to me. If you ask me, just got me all spun out again i knew i would what were we talking about please remind me because i just lost my train of thought again i

no no no it this will no it's good i love it i mean i don't love it but yes selene i remember what i was going to say sorry well not at my best today um having trouble sleeping lately oh so the accusation in addition to being a racist and a murderer which i was accused of by my own family set aside that my own children aren't white, but like whatever, is grifter, right? Like that's the one. They love that term, right? You're a grifter who's paying you, you're an astro-turfer, you're all these things. I want to tell you, my income is one-tenth of what it used to be.

Yeah. The grift would have been keeping my mouth shut and going along and pulling my kids out of public school and sending them to private and letting all the low-income kids suffer and not saying anything. That's the grift. The grift is going along and singing the dumb song about staying home and saving lives. The grift would be marching to the drum of Fauci. That's the grift. There is no grift here. No one has paid me. I've decimated my income and my income potential. And so to then hear this Celine Grounder dismiss it as, oh, that's just, what people do, they like celebrities and they like the limelight. You know what? Some of us had a

limelight, maybe not like Fauci's, but, you know, within our little sphere of fashion and music and corporate, some of us had a limelight and we threw it out the window to do the right thing because we cared more about children and doing the right thing and defending free speech than the limelight. So no, not everybody does that. Not everybody does that, Dr. Grounder or whatever your name is. I remember her from before. I've forgotten all the characters I was obsessed with. We don't all do that. Some of us do the right thing. Right. Let's do Harvey Levin, who compared this to McCarthyism, and then we'll get stuffy ruling too, just to get the gang all together.

Watching Anthony Fauci before a congressional hearing, taking the Fifth Amendment, is just one of the most heartbreaking things I have seen in government in my lifetime. And now we are at a at a point where members of Congress, and yes, you Rand Paul, are on a witch hunt. We are in a Senator Joseph McCarthy climate. You have Rand Paul, who's a second generation nut. His father was a nut. He's a nut. He's a nut who has an obsession, some sort of like,

Jody Foster obsession with Fauci. what we're seeing here is a replay of the Joe McCarthy hearings. I didn't end up well for McCarthy. I don't think this will end up well for Rand Paul, but it's still a very sad day. Do you think it's going to end up on well for Anthony Fauci? Yeah, it's so sad to see this man up there who's done so much good. It's dedicated his life to him to saving lives.

Oh, Stephanie also expressed her sadness about all of this as well, Jen. I just want to tee you up by saying the pejorative word obsession, like Jody Foster like obsession, et cetera, if you believe that somebody has done something gravely unjust, wrong, then you are a senator, then it is obviously your job on behalf of your constituents and the taxpayers to be obsessed with seeking justice. So that insult doesn't actually even make sense. They're arguing against a straw man, not actually what Rand Paul and Republicans are doing here. Yes. This is not a witch hunt. This is finding the people who did us wrong, who harmed a generation of children. That is justice. That is not a witch hunt. A witch hunt is accusing people of things that

they didn't do. Accusing women of being witches. Let's go back to the original means. of the actual word. He did these things. He shut the world down. He reveled in it, as we can now see. He had no evidence that any of this, any of it, lockdowns, masks, the lethality of COVID itself, school closures, and no evidence for anything that he said and did. And I think the point, the other point I would just make, Emily, is we're not just talking about the United States here.

We have to consider the fact that the United States is a world leader and other countries followed suit. Now, some didn't. Sweden famously didn't. Europe opened their schools in the spring of 2020. We always seem to the left likes Europe, but I guess not in that case. And third world nations locked down at the lead of the United States. That is devastating. These are people living on pennies and dollars a day. They can't not work. they only have enough food for that day.

We shut down the means of production. People were starving to death. Like, our obligation is not just to American citizens, but to set an example for a world. And he fucked that up too. I'll just say that. One point I want to make, which I think if you have never been a Democrat,

you might not know or understand. And just as far as my affiliation, I've known you for a while now. I was a Democrat for many, many years from the time I could vote. I raised in a Democrat family. I was a proud Democrat. I believe I haven't really changed very much.

I think my values are still very much the same. I care about children. I care about the disadvantaged. I care about free speech and individual liberties. Like, I'm still the same. I'm the meme. I'm the Colin Wright meme, you know? That's me.

I'm like, what happened to my people? I care about women's rights. You know, I still care about these things. But Democrats, so I was a Democrat. I became unaffiliated for quite a few years because right at the beginning of COVID, I was like, these people are nuts. I cannot be affiliated with this party anymore. And then I register as a Republican the day after Charlie Kirk was murdered because I did not want the Democrats to think I was getable as a vote anytime soon because they think independence are getable.

But the way Democrats think is they are de facto the good people. And so if the behaviors don't match goodness, that's just like an accident of fate. They're good. They are good-hearted. They're well-meaning. And so even if he did all these things, it had to be from a good-hearted place. That's what they believe. Republicans are evil.

They don't care about anyone but themselves. They are selfish and greedy. And Democrats are good. So even if Democrats do bad things, they're still the good people. I don't know if that makes any sense. No, it totally does. That's the orientation to the world. And it's not as though there are no Republicans who think that way either, but it is with certain people on the left, it's become the progressive or bigot binary.

You are necessarily a bigot if you are not fully progressive on every single issue. And just before we run to a quick break, Jen, I want to mention that legally whether Fauci can be held in contempt of Congress is an interesting debate. So Paul ended with a question that was. was limited to the period of his, of Fauci's presidential pardon. So he said at any point between January 1st, 2014, January 19th, 2025, did you destroy any federal record or tell anybody else to Fauci pleaded the fifth? And so Jonathan Turley on Fox earlier said he thinks that's the strongest way that Paul can pursue any kind of legal path to really holding Fauci and contempt of court because if he doesn't have fear of prosecution, he still open to state prosecutions, by the way.

But if he doesn't have fear of prosecution, he would be open to new prosecution. which is again why he's pleading the fifth, but that's where you could get him on contempt. So we will see what happens legally, but I think it is, to Jen's point, much more important that he faces enormous social reputational consequences. And I hope that process is starting to happen. We are going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more from Jen Say. Summer is officially in full swing. It's almost August now, believe it or not. And if you're looking to upgrade your warm weather routines, Cozy Earth has you covered. I have completely refreshed my home with their incredible products and the different.

is night and day. Their bamboo sheet set, which I have been using for years, is buttery soft and temperature regulating. It's completely redefining a hot summer night's sleep. And again, as I mentioned, it's almost August. So we know how hot it gets in August here in Washington, D.C. I am very thankful for the bamboo sheet set this time of year. But Cozy Earth also just introduced their brand new resort beach towels. They are so great. The colors they come in are genuinely beautiful. They're so soft. They're perfect for the pooler beach. They're ultra-plus. They're highly absorbent, and this is actually probably my favorite part. They're designed to pack light without taking over your bag if you're going to the park or the pool.

So Cozy Earth stands behind everything they make. That includes a lifetime warranty and 30 days of hassle-free returns. That is confidence. And this month, their bamboo sheets and new resort beach towels are the standout essentials worth checking out for elevated everyday luxury. Do it. Summer lives here, and honestly so does cooling comfort. Head to CozyEarth.com and use my code, Emily. for an exclusive 20% off.

That's code Emily for an exclusive 20% off. And if you see a post-purchase survey, mentioned that you heard about Cozy Earth right here. We're back now with more of Jennifer Say of XXXY athletics. And Jen, you mentioned Gavin Newsom because we were talking about Anthony Fauci and COVID. And you already sort of teed off on Gavin Newsom, which was perfect because we have another opportunity.

Gavin Newsom's former mistress, Ruby Rippy, wrote in Vanity Fair on Tuesday. accusing Newsom of misrepresenting the length of their affair. This sounds like a tickey-tacky story, but it's a good jumping off point into problems that Gavin Newsom will have in his presidential campaign. He has such a messy personal life, which he obviously believes, makes him almost like masculine.

Weirdly, you see some people on the far fringe right being like, that's awesome. Newsom's a chat. He's such a bro. He's got the energy. But she wrote In Vanity Fair that when she read the pages of Newsom's memoir, quote, a familiar feeling returns, the one of being written about by someone who assumes I won't answer. He describes it as, quote, unquote, the briefest of affairs.

His sister, he notes, observed that I was, quote, unquote, hanging a bit too close. He also says, I think that it was her husband who came clean about the affair when she says that it was her. The New York Post wrote, the affair nearly derailed Newsom early in his political career, which Jen probably remembers, after he famously confessed to it during a 2007 press conference at the time. Ripley was married to Newsom's close friend and top aide. Alex Torque. Well, Newsom had yet to finalize his divorce from Kimberly Guilfoyle, now the U.S. ambassador to Greece. And Jen, you were talking earlier about how he's such a slimy character. And he has so far tried to cast himself as the kind of Dem Trump, which is weird, right? Like, he's the only,

because he is so slimy, this is the implication. He's the only one who can actually, like, punch maggot in the face. That's what I'm getting from his strategy with all the weird tweets. I don't know. What do you make of this? the trolling and trying to see him Trumpy. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, I think I hadn't really thought about it. It's a good point. I think he's trying to be down

with the youngsters too. You know, like he's trying to operate in like an internet world and not seem like a stuffy old governor. You know what I mean? He's trying to he's trying to be with it. I think. It's so funny to hear you say that. Again, right, he starts the podcast.

He gets Charlie Kirk on. and he has, he tries to chop it up with people who are like popular culture figures. Yeah, but what makes it a, he's trying to be cool, for lack of a better word. You know, I think he's trying to be cool and he's trying to be a part of like internet culture. And because remember, he's competing against the likes of AOC. Right. Who he thinks has some like hip credentials. He doesn't quite get that Trump in some circles is cool because he just says whatever,

Bucky things. Mm-hmm. And so it's Gavin's inoffenticity that is what can mean he's never going to be cool. I mean, that's the height of cool is to be totally authentic and totally be yourself. Like, that's why people thought Bernie was cool for a long time, even though it was super old. It's not age. It's authenticity. Now, I don't think AOC is particularly authentic either, but she's got the swagger and she's

pretty and she's young and she does. the accent. I mean, I think she's a tool, but he's trying to be down. I think that's what he's trying. Remember the interview he was doing about it? I was playing basketball and eating wonder bread. Do you remember that one? Oh, my gosh. Yes. That was so bad. Oh, my gosh. That's his thing is that he can't authentically be authentic. He can kind of ape authenticity. He can play the role. Like, he's a Hollywood actor. It's the worst. Gross. First version. And cringe. And he can't see the difference between like someone who's cool and authentic. Like people responded to Spencer Pratt.

Granted he didn't get, you know, in the whatever, but they responded to him because he's just being himself. Like you can like the things he says or not, but his authenticity was undeniable. And so Gavin's trying to mock some of that internet culture vibe. But he's a tool and he's not authentic. So anyway. No, no. I was actually going to ask, I mean, you were in San Francisco for a while.

And you know California, oh my gosh, you know California really well. What is your impression as a former Democrat of the real Newsom record? It's horrible. I mean, he ran for mayor in whatever year it was. I can't remember back in the before 2010, the 2000s to end homelessness. I mean, it's like a gazillion times worse since then. He didn't end homelessness. Even though the wealth of San Francisco exploded at that same time.

the wealth exploded the homelessness have you been to san francisco in the last five years oh actually you know a little bit or last time i was there was 2017 and it was an absolute dystopia more than i expected it was people who live in normal places i mean i got a little numb to it i'll admit you just get so used to it there's a person sleeping on your doorstep oh there's a person who's shit on your doorstep and you wake up in the morning oh there's someone shooting up outside the playground You become a nerd to it. And then it got so much worse during COVID. But even back in 2017, I got married then and people came in from out of town.

And I didn't even think it was bad then. And they were horrified. They're like, well, how could you have me here? This place is awful. These are all Democrats. My whole family is Democrat. So it's kind of unimaginable what San Francisco and Los Angeles are like. It is like there's people just dying on the streets, lying on the streets, lying on

the streets, sleeping on the street, shooting up with their kit lying right next to them on the path that you walk your child to the playground. During COVID, we would jump the fence into the playground. The police would be called on us. My three-year-old daughter would jump over the fence. The police would come. There'd be a guy shooting up right outside the gate, and he'd come to us. Not the guy shooting up. It's, you know, so no, his record is horrible. I mean, forget about his train, the train to nowhere, like the increased bureaucracy, the home. Like, what has he done? Nothing.

People are fleeing the state. 7% of the population left San Francisco in 2020. The tax base is collapsing. It's impossible to run a business there. Hollywood is collapsing. It's a shit show. But they're going to keep... Look at what happened in L.A.

With the mayoral election. I mean, they're... Why? Why do people keep choosing these guys? Because Democrats are good and Republicans are bad. It's not more complicated than that, Emily. It really isn't. I was just back in San Francisco and I was having lunch with the two people that I remain friends with from, you know, the hundreds of friends and colleagues I had.

And that's it. They can't. They see my point on a lot of things, but they just fundamentally believe that Trump is a uniquely evil character, that anyone who voted for him is uniquely evil. I somehow get a pass because I, well, we didn't talk about the fact that I voted for him this last time. And the Democrats are good and they're well-meaning, even if problematic sometimes. They're good, well-meaning people. That's why. So anyone with the D next to their name in California is going to win.

Now, I suppose something could happen. Look at, here's an interesting point. Colorado where I live used to be a deeply purple state, right? It is now deep blue. And poll is won in Colorado, our governor, by as much as DeSantis won in Florida, which also was a purple state and now is deep red. Things can shift.

Those states have shipped. Both those states were purple. Now Florida's reliably red and Colorado is reliably psychotically blue. So things can change. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a Republican. Gray Davis was the Republican. That's not, that's in my recent memory. I voted in those elections.

It's not impossible, but it's not going to be right now. they're really locked in. They're going to vote for whoever the Democrat candidate is. And if that's Gavin Newsom, that's Gavin Newsom in California. It just is. Yeah. I mean, when you say it like that, it makes sense. But from the outside perspective, it's just, I mean, it's maddening. Let's talk about the WNBA because XXXY is in the middle of a real controversy right now. It shouldn't be a controversy. But let's read this Brandon Cruz post on X. Seattle Storm co-owner, Celeste Keaton, cursed out two girls, for wearing XXXY athletic shirts, calling them fucking insane. One of them was left in tears. I tried to get security involved and was told I should email the front office. This happens as if we can put the next element up on the screen. Fox News is reporting that just days after Indiana Feeder, Fever Guard, Sophie Cunningham, found herself under fire for defending women's sports.

Seattle Storm Center Stephanie Dolson appeared to offer a statement of her own, arriving for Tuesday's night's game wearing a shirt reading trans rights, human rights on its own. The shirt might have been dismissed as WNBA activism, but the timing made it impossible to ignore it. No kidding. Now, the Seattle Storm posted an image, actually, of her wearing that shirt, of Dolson wearing that shirt, basically endorsing it. So, Jen, then you have these girls being cussed out for the crime of wearing the X, X, X, X, X, Y shirts. Can you, do you have more insight? What happened? Yeah, so there was a game last night, Indiana Fever in Seattle.

Seattle Storm is the worst team in the Western Conference. I think they're ranked eight. They lost the game by 10 points, maybe more than 10 points. Seattle's obviously deep blue. A group of people, some of whom I know, although I did not orchestrate this. They are fans of the brand. I know some of them. They showed up to do a rally in support of Sophie.

They wanted her to know that her voice matters. You know, she made the statement that she thinks girls shouldn't have to share locker rooms with boys. and that girls should not have to compete with boys on their teams. She was challenged on it the next day. She said, I said what I said. She did not bend to Nate. We love this girl.

She's a total badass on the court and off. So girls across the country are so grateful. There are young girls, teenagers, who've been fighting this battle alone. And to have a famous currently competing pro athlete, famous, not some, you know, third-rate player, famous for her play, but also for her sask, to have her stand up and not. back down. They wanted to know we appreciate you, Sophie, because they knew she'd be booed, and she was booed in the stadium. And I will tell you, the rally outside, her side, 10 to 1. So the ground is shifting under our feet, Emily, that is the good news. They were worried there'd be

violence. There is sometimes in Seattle at these types of things, but we outnumbered the gender ideologues at the rally outside. That said, these two teenage girls, one of whose names is Annalie Wilson, and she's a member of our athlete team at XXXXY. She wore a shirt. She had a sign that said something and appreciation of Sophie. And this old crotchety woman, yeah, cursed out a 16-year-old girl. We have the video. Let's watch Jen.

It's this is the, here's sound from it. Well, we were just sitting there with her signs that said, like, we love Sophie, like, thank you so for speaking up. And so we were holding on just watching the game again. We were being super great. We hadn't said anything to anyone else. We were being super respectful. We're just holding our signs and sharing for both teams.

And this lady, older lady, comes up to us. So great. And she comes with us and at first I think she's gonna be nice and she asked like, what are you guys doing? Something like yeah and then it was like, Jesus loves everyone. That's what she told us and I was like, oh I know like I'm really just like I know like I know like I know yeah and she's like oh I hope Jesus can forgive you for what sin you've done and like something like that and then she told us that we were effing insane and she's like and she went like you have you better stop this shit yeah and for you guys to come here and say you can save you. Yeah. Nobody around you spoke up for you. No. No. I will say, honestly, when I came over, you were in tears. Yeah, I've never been yelled out like that. I mean, I've had people hate on me on the internet, but like it doesn't really affect me. It's just people online, but that just took me surprised because I thought she was going to be nice and then she started screaming at us and cussing at us. So yeah. So what was your reaction when I texted you that that is the owner of the team? It's just sad. We were like, what? Yeah, we were shot. It's disappointing, though, too.

She's also a woman and she just kind of cussed out to 16-year-olds that were just trying to have fun. Yeah. We weren't trying to be political. You're just trying to support Sophie. Teenagers, not trying to be political, Jen. Sorry, I interrupted you, but I thought it would be great to hear from the girls. Yeah, that's Annalie Wilson. She actually was awarded.

We have an award called the Courage Wins Award for young people that speak up in defensive women's sports. She's a track and field athlete in Washington. She went to the game. She said, I talked to her mother this morning. She was cheering for both sides. Like, she just loved sports, you know. She was cheering for the fever and the storm. It's like the Rob Lowe NFL.

She was just, yeah. She was cheering for everybody. She wanted to show Sophie some support because let's be real. Sophie's standing alone right now. Like, I want to be clear. There's movement, right? She's not suspended by the WMBA. She would have been two years ago.

She has lost no endorsements. In fact, Adidas is choosing to profit off of her fame, but they won't stand with her. won't say, yeah, we support Sophie. She's got a lot of endorsements. She hasn't lost any, but no one stood with her either. And there are players who have passive-aggressively done things like, you know, what you showed earlier, the shirt, Brianna Turner, another player made comments on Twitter right after.

So, and these women will go after you on the court. Like, she's putting, I mean, she's shown she can get in a fight and she can hold her own, but she's putting herself at risk and she's standing her ground. So I just, I want to be clear, like, the way. world is shifting. There's more support. Like, the fact that this rally could happen and there was no violence against the people who were standing up for women's sports and that we outnumbered the other side 10 to 1, huge. Yet, Sophie stands alone. There's been no cascade of support for her amongst other professional athletes in any league. There's been no support from the league. There's been no

support from the brands. There's just been an opportunity. There's just been the recognition that they can make money off of her. That's what Adidas is doing. I know, like I can monetize this, but I'm not going to support her, right? We're not going to support her. So the world is moving. It's changing in a good way. But what Ollie and her friend, who I don't know, had to endure, like, what is wrong with these people? What is wrong with that old lady? Keep your shit to yourself. You don't like it. So what? We have to look at your shirts and all your dumb shit that you wear all the time. Like, we're not afraid anymore. We're going to wear our shirt, too, which is the whole point of in a sense this brand is to make it normal and cool to stand up and say women deserve

their own sports and it's not a merch company and we're not an advocacy organization we make athletic apparel that rivals loo lemon and nikey but we get to have a brand that takes a stand and it gives onily a way to sit there and not have to say anything but to say what she stands for it makes it makes it easy everyone can wear the shirt she took the sign too good for her and she obviously is not afraid to peak her mind, but I want it to be normal because the other side has all their brands and they have all their movies and they have all their dumb content that normalizes this fucked up scenario. I just want our side to have something cool. So that's what we've been trying to do. I'm so proud, Annalia, I'm so proud. I know her and her whole family. She is so brave

and courageous. And that woman is a coward and a loser. I don't care how much money she has. What do you think is going to happen with Sophie Cunningham? She's going to stand her ground. I think what remains to be seen as will other athletes join her. You know, this whole thing, it's going to end right. The question is when. I really believe that. The truth will out. Everyone knows this is lunacy.

Like, of course men should not be competing in women's sports. It's the dumbest thing ever. Of course men can't be women just because they wave a wand and say their women. Like, we're going, the fever is go, no pun intended, but the fever is going to break. The question is when and how fast. utterly unpredictable, but every rally, every athlete that stands up, every celebrity, which we don't really have any yet, like, it all puts a crack in the wall, and it's going to come crashing down, and everybody is going to pretend they never thought men could be women. They're all going to

pretend, because it's so dumb, it's embarrassing. Yeah. I mean, it's embarrassing. They're all going to pretend that they're just like they're going to pretend they never wore masks or they never really believed a Paw Patrol mask could stop a deadly virus. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. So most of them will do it quietly, but they'll just sort of slide on over to the other side, you know. But there's true believers like that crazy lady. Yeah. And Jen, I just want to end by saying, I saw you posted on X. It was really poignant. You mentioned, you know, everyone says it's worth it because you stood up on COVID and you've also stood up on sex. And you were like, that sounds funny. Right. Yes, it does. But you were like, I don't know that I don't know that I don't. know that that's actually true at the end of the day. And I just think this is an important bit of perspective, which is that like some people have lost so much. They will never get it back. It's hard to know how these things end. And so then it's hard to gauge, you know, on what level you were able to make an influence. But you really have been able to make such an influence.

You have been so brave. And, you know, if it's any consolation, I think, you know, from the outside and what you've been doing is really worth it. I appreciate that. This is my third time at this kind of rodeo because I stood up first for abuse in sports too and endured a good solid decade of abuse for that and was pre- Larry Nasser reckoning. 10 years before Larry Nasser

and was called all these same names. So I obviously do it anyway, but I think it's too pat of an answer to say, well, you have your integrity, and so it was all worth it. It's hard. I mean, that's how I'm made, so I will keep doing it. But it's really hard. And it's too pad of an answer to say, well, they weren't your real friends anyway. I don't know. I knew them since I was 18. We went to each other's weddings. We went to parents' funerals. We were there for the birds of our children. Like, they were.

They were, my friends. It's a loss. And it's hard. And it's sad to endure. And every time a birthday comes up, for many years, I sent texts on the birthdays and got no answer. And I stopped doing it to not humiliate myself anymore. So it is hard, but it's who I am. So I think it would be easier, and I think you'll probably agree with this if I was a person of faith, and I knew that in the end, you know, that in the end it would be right. I am not for better for worse. And so I just do it because I can't not stand up.

for kids. Well, it's amazing, Jen. And I think it's especially, you know, it's just been to watch your journey from the outside, it's just been so impressive. There aren't, there are people who have gone through, you know, different versions of what you've gone through, but the specific arc that you've gone through, it's just amazing. So I hope everyone goes out and buys more X, X, X, X, Y. And I hope you'll come back, Jen, because it's such a pleasure to talk to you.

I love talking to you. you've been a good friend to me over the last few years. I thank you, Emily. Thank you. God bless. If you want to actually feel confident this summer, maybe feel less bloated, feel more energized, not just to look like it on the outside, but to really feel like it. That starts with your gut. People might think being bloated every day is normal. It's not. Once you fix your gut, everything changes, your digestion, your skin, and your hair. The one thing that can make a huge difference, the biggest difference is cowboy colostrum. If you start taking it gut health, you might actually find the unexpected benefits surprise you more than anything.

Cowboy also ran a clinical study showing 83% of participants reported improved gut health, 79% experienced less bloating and inflammation, 72% saw improved digestion, and 62% reported fuller, thicker hair. It is made right here in America from American grass-fed cows using true first-day, whole colostrum with no fillers or artificial flavors. They have a new flavor called cookies and cream. It tastes like a nostalgic milkshake, and that makes it an easy daily habit that supports your gut while also helping you look and feel your best. For limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order.

Just head to cowboy colostrum.com slash afterparty and use code afterparty at checkout. That's 25% off when you use code afterparty at cowboy colostrum.com slash after party. Well, we are going to talk about Dua Lipa going down the band books route, but just first I wanted to address why we covered so much Fauci on today's show. obviously Fauci is at the center of the headlines right now, the diaries, the testimony, and the upcoming contempt of Congress vote. But honestly, I don't think the pandemic figures as proportionately, I should say, I don't think it figures proportionately into our conversations about politics and culture. And there's a consensus in the media that, quote, unquote,

COVID doesn't rate. And that may be true for the entire country. Like, if you're running some big newsroom, it's not a great excuse to ignore genuine scandals like the Fauci emails. But I actually I know that that's not true. I counted recently how many different campus events I had done just so far this year. I think it's like eight. And it's a lot of different campuses. I was working with students during the pandemic, in the thick of it with students during the pandemic. And what I hear talking to some of those people now and talking to current students who were teenagers or even in middle school, I suppose, when the pandemic was happening, is just how powerfully it still influences their day to day, how often they feel. think about it. This was a seminal experience. This was a formative experience. And more and more, they're voting. More and more, they're influencing politics and culture. And their parents, of course, still exist. Their loved ones still exist. And because the media doesn't provide a lot of an outlet or doesn't provide much of an outlet for people to still think about and talk about the injustices that happened during COVID, which does embody so much of the transpartisan

discussed with American institutions. I remember the first piece I wrote around COVID for the Federalist was so naive, thinking back on it. But it was, we're about to enter a pandemic. Look at these poll numbers on institutional trust. Like, it's cratering. So we're now hitting, this is why institutional trust matters. It's why good journalism matters. It's why honest journalism, transparent journalism.

It's why transparency in the federal government matters. And I don't care if we're talking about Republicans or Democrats. This is why it matters. And now looking back on it, you know, I was just pointing out that this was a problem, but had no idea how bad it was really going to be. I think that was from mid-March of 2020. And now that we know how bad it was, we ignore the latent anger, resentment, and distrust that is specifically tied back to COVID at our own peril as a society. And so there's, you know, we don't cover COVID every single day here.

but when there's a breaking news story that is relevant to it, I think people in the media do such a disservice by not addressing it and airing out some of these serious problems that were revealed over the course of the pandemic. So I just wanted to put that out there, explain a little bit of why we're covering what we're covering. I just think it is so very important. So on that note, another story of the media gets wildly wrong that enables celebrities like Dula Lipa

to go down this quote-unquote banned books narrative where they tell everybody that, of course, the toothless rubes on the right are banning books like in a fascist pile pouring gasoline on our books in the middle of the National Mall, the town square, just lighting it all ablaze

and saying, don't you dare touch this Tony Morrison book? Duolipa, Duolipa, a bookstore owner apparently in Portugal. Let's take a little bit of a listen to Duolipa now, explaining why she is selling banned books. Hi, I'm Duolipa, and this is the Manifesto Library. Leveria Lello has been a source of inspiration for over a century. Dreamers, radicals, and artists have passed through these doors. In this library, you will find 100 books that ask questions or have been

The collection is organized into four chapters, power, control, voice and memory. You're probably not surprised to hear that George Orwell's Animal Farm was considered anti-communist propaganda and banned in the USSR by Stalin. But maybe you are more surprised to learn that 1984 was considered pro-communist and banned by a parents group in 1981 in Jackson, Florida. A book removed from a shelf becomes a decision about the questions that are asked. whose stories are carried forward and which lives are believed to be worth understanding. So take your time, look closely, and decide for yourself what belongs on these shelves. So I just want to say those are both good books, obviously books that are both threats to an overbearing state at any point in time. That's sort of the beauty of Orwell.

But they're not banned. She had to reference something that happened in what, 1981 in Jackson, Florida? did she say? Other examples we could put up the Instagram from Service 95 Book Club are the Handmaid's Tale. My pen is the wing of a bird and patriot. The Handmaid's Tale was made with millions and millions of dollars into like a extremely popular television show. This is not a banned book because some parents at a few libraries around the country. And some of them, by the way, could have been wrong in all of these cases. It's probably a handful of cases in the Handmaid's Tale of genuine cases I'm talking about.

But other cases might just be like, do kindergartners need access to the Handmaid's Tale? Probably not. Do third graders need access to the handmade sale? Probably not. Should we maybe have a better system in the library for doing this? Our teachers may be using it for partisan ends against Donald Trump. That's so often how these stories shake out. at the end of the day, when you look at them, so many of the band books, I one year went through

Penn Americas, it's just a hilarious organization, but I went through their list of band books one year and the top band books that they were discussing and proudly saying, we oppose these bands, were extremely sexualized, graphic books that were accessible in libraries to kids who were way too young to understand any of it over and over again. Those were the best example. And those were the most banned books in the country. It was like genderqueer. I forgot the name of the couple other ones. But they were back when this conversation was even hotter than it is right now at the front and center of all this.

And every time you peeled back the layer, not every time, but most of the times you'd peel back the layer, you'd be like, this is why, like, when the issue comes up locally, you have parents being like, I'm sorry, what are we talking about right now? This was also a huge COVID-era story when the book lists. were coming out and parents were because their kids were in front of them seeing some of the curriculum as they were in school on their laptops learning they were like i'm sorry what are you teaching right now what are you talking about so let's put this daily wire article up in the screen because the author did a really great job of um going over the duelipa line about banned books so duelipa the article says tells her 650,000 and book club followers that her initiative opens up, quote, conversations around censorship

resistance and the importance of preserving voices that challenge power and refuse to be silence. There's only one problem. None of the books in her library were ever, quote, unquote, banned or quote unquote censored in the first place. Among the other titles in Duolipa's Library are 1984, a book that is sold over 30 million copies as of 2024 and J.D. Salinger's, the Catcher in the Rye, a novel that is read in virtually every single high school English class around the country. I don't necessarily disagree with Dula Liva that we should, that we all should read these great books, but calling 1984 the Catcher in the Rye, band books is like calling Game of Thrones, one of the world's most widely watched TV shows, a band show. As I pointed out

the other day, the author writes, you can call anything a banned book as long as it was removed from an elementary school library that one time in 1978, one more chunk from the piece, which is great, you should go read it. The author says, because the same people crying so vehemently about banned books when the books promote leftist ideologies are the very people quietly banning conservative-leading books from ever hitting. our shelves in the first place. You can lament the removal of, quote, gender queer. That was the name of the book I referenced earlier from an elementary school library, all you want. But the fact is that the novel continues to enjoy mainstream institutional backing. The same goes for Sally Rooney's

Marxist BDSM Fantasy Normal People. It was a great description of normal people. And Carol Claire books yesterday year, the internet's latest literary fad attacking conservative Christian tradwives. Other recent celebrated titles include Pulitzer Prize finalist Stagdance, which depicts quote, a Vegas trans feminine gathering in NPR's best book of the year. Belly's a trans romance that everyone's favorite celebrity Elliot Page is called Smart, hilarious, and deeply moving. The piece is such a good breakdown of how actually there are literary agents who are openly advertising themselves as people who will not do business with certain types of books. And we're not even just talking about conservative books, really.

We all know that you see it very clearly in the Duelipa video. This is a fashion statement. the band books trope is a fashion statement and at the heart of it is actually a really interesting conversation about how we shape the overton window and we know that elites want to shape the overton window squarely towards whatever they think margaret atwood stands for at that moment in time with henmate's tail but they're less interested in you know looking at books that might challenge that narrative, whether they're from the right or the hard left. Remember it was actually like the Socialists, like the Trotskyites, who were pushing back on the entire 1619 project to the

point where they raised issues. It was like Gordon Wood in the World Socialist website raising issues with the 1619 projects conceit about why the country was really founded the way that was founded. It's not just conservative ideas that get banned. We were talking to Jen Say. She didn't come to questions about COVID and sex as a conservative. She initially came to them as a Democrat. And that's why, at the heart of it, what we're really talking about is what should be considered within the Overton window, what should be considered mainstream, what should be treated as appropriate or inappropriate for children, what should be taught as part of the canon in schools around the country. This is something that just virtually every society has to deal with. We don't live

in a neutral society as much as there might be some like genuinely libertarian fantasy about that. And as much as progressives believe that they are the neutral ones who don't support the banning of books. They just don't want, you know, of course, anybody who has bad ideas to find mainstream publishers. But as much as libertarians might believe that the system of constitutional republicanism is, is neutral and progressives believe that they're the ones who are just calling balls and strikes, that they're fair-minded, and they should be the ones to determine what's bigotry and what's not, because they're the ones that are coming to this with the human rights perspective. Human rights itself is not a neutral concept. Lowercase L liberalism itself is not a neutral concept.

It is predicated on this idea that, for example, freedom of speech and expression is a good thing. That is not the norm in human society. That is a, I was going to say technology. I mean, I guess you could call liberalism a technology, but that really is a recent system of government that people should have the freedom to think through these things within reason. Now, we have a very broad First Amendment here in the United States. We have very broad free speech protection, and that is a wonderful blessing, and we should be very grateful for it. It is in many ways absolutely exceptional. If you look at what it's happening in Western Europe and Canada right now, we see that very clearly. It's still something that happens in Muslim countries in different ways.

And so that's what I'm saying here is that fundamentally it is not wrong for societies to say our values stipulate that X, Y, and Z should be implemented into curricula. Our values dictate that if we're going to have public libraries, X, Y, and Z should be included in the public library for the good of the public. And obviously, the public should have access to bad texts in order to understand and debate why those texts are bad. It is the elites who believe they should now control the flow of information because the people can't be trusted to understand what is good or bad,

what's true or false, what's bigoted or not. And this question of a book like genderqueer being in a high school library, it is very, very explicit is often about not politics, but the appropriateness of the content. And so has it technically been banned if it's getting stripped out of curriculum? Well, it's not banned in the sense that you can't buy it anymore. You can buy it if you have an iPad and you're a teenager. You can go to the app store and I'm sorry, you can go to the Apple Library and probably get it right away. It's not banned in that sense.

And so the word just gets used to employ. that one group or the other is censorious, right? And it happens, of course, on both sides, but what you don't have is a bunch of like conservative celebrities who are beloved by the mainstream making this argument that people who oppose the Handmaid's Tale are like all banning books. So often it is just a misrepresentation of what's actually happening. And I think when you have elites like Doolipa, you have celebrities, you have wealthy, powerful people, people in the media. I mean, if you want to watch a satisfying Smackdown, you've got to watch Joy Reid on with Tiffany Justice. She had Tiffany Justice on her school, on her show to talk about

some of these exact questions several years ago. And Tiffany Reed made mincemeat out of Joy Reid, because Joy Reid clearly didn't understand what was actually happening wasn't, quote, unquote, banning, but just saying you're moving this to a different part of the library, or this book is so wildly explicit that it is inappropriate for people at this age. It has no room in curricula, for example. That's what's actually happening. And that's a perfectly reasonable conversation to be having. And frankly, I think sometimes conservatives get on the wrong side of it. Historically, of course, we remember it was Tipper Gore, conservative Democrats, but also conservative of Republicans who were seeking to, I mean, we've seen bands on communists and socialists,

of course, but seeking also to control obscenities in mainstream pop music, culture, television. That's always, of course, come from conservatism because the idea of progressivism was that our progress will look like opening it up to absolutely everything until we decide that you can't call a man or someone who's identifying as a man. can't call that person a man, right? Until we decide that, then we want all openness. And technically, that's also still openness in lowercase L liberalism because it's just a matter of human rights. This person has a human right not to be misgendered and in their conception of what rights and liberalism is, that all makes perfect sense. But the fact of the matter is,

we are having a hard time as a society, just coming together on some basic questions of whether, for example, sexually explicit content should be available to certain children through, for example, school libraries. And that's what this is really about at the end of the day, or whether content that's being really used for political purposes should be used in those political purposes, or should just be in a certain part of the library you can check it out, but it's not implemented in the curriculum. That's what this entire fight about whether books are getting quote-unquote banned is actually about at the end of the day. And I do think it's genuinely dangerous to have people who are rich and powerful like Duolipa spreading these lies about what's happening because it builds resentment

towards people who are trying to genuinely hash out these questions and think they're being perfectly fair-minded. And on the other side of it, they're being called book banners. They look around, they say, I'm not trying to ban a book. I'm just trying to take it out of a third-grader's curriculum. It's not about banning anything. And it builds and builds and builds and builds resentment. And they look at people and I'm not even just talking about Dulepah now who tell them you're a book bander banner for being mad about gender queer and at the same time they don't want you to be able to say something politically incorrect about for example COVID like we couldn't have done this entire

episode on YouTube in the height of COVID like the channel would have gotten demonetized and suppressed we wouldn't have been able to do it it certainly would have lost advertisers I'm sure at the time And thankfully, that was fought back against and genuine progress was made. But there are real speech suppression efforts. And we've done episodes here with Glenn Greenwald and others about how some of that has absolutely come from the Trump administration. At the same time as the Trump administration is getting rid of things like the global engagement center, the GEC, which was connected with our state department. And they were pushing blacklists against conservative media outlets meant to destroy us.

I remember it well. I was at the federalist at the time. I saw it up close and personally. That stuff was happening. It is happening with the Trump administration. It's bad, but I think it's also helpful to just see sometimes the political football for what it is and the fashion statement for what it is. Dula Lippo wants to wear banned books as a fashion because it is something that is seen

as fashionably intellectual, fashionably enlightened. But it's not accurate. And it's the one side that the media insists is. accurate, even though it's balanced, that is building resentment, that is misleading people, and that is tearing us apart. And it's the side that is center left. And again, it's just building resentment. It's not healthy. And I thought it was worth taking a moment to just look at the Dueliap of Band Books list and give a shout out to that Daily Wire article, because it absolutely nailed the situation. All right, everyone, that's going to do it for us on

tonight's edition of After Party. Thank you so much for tuning in. As a reminder, I'm going to be taping our Friday edition of the show Happy Hour. Thursday afternoons is usually when I tape it. So get your questions into Emily at double-maycaremedia.com. Before that, if you are late, no problem. I'll answer them on next week's edition of the show. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. It helps us keep staying independent here on the program.

We'll be back soon with more. Have a great evening.