After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Fauci’s ICK Diary Exposed, Biden Audio Reveals Decline, & Trump Trolls Kaitlan Collins, w/ Mary Margaret Olohan

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

Emily Jashinsky breaks down Anthony Fauci's newly released COVID-era diary entries, arguing they reveal a striking level of self-regard, cozy relationships with prominent journalists and celebrities, and private comments that raise new questions about his public messaging during the pandemic. Then Emily is joined by Mary Margaret Olohan, White House correspondent for “The Daily Wire,” to react to newly released audio from Joe Biden's interviews with his ghostwriter, discussing what the recordings reveal about Biden's cognitive decline. They also weigh in on the media’s uproar over President Trump's joke about CNN's Kaitlan Collins at the recent White House Correspondents' Dinner, arguing the controversy misses the bigger story of an elite media establishment increasingly disconnected from the public. Later, they examine Katy Perry's criticism of the White House for using her music in a military-themed social media post, debate whether her outrage is selective, and discuss the Trump administration's aggressive messaging strategy and renewed focus on socialism as Democratic Socialists gain political prominence. The conversation also turns to Chelsea Handler's viral child-free video and what it says about modern attitudes toward family. Emily closes the show by examining the Shiloh Hendrix case, arguing that while her comments were offensive, punishing speech itself sets a dangerous First Amendment precedent. She cautions conservatives against confusing a defense of free speech with a defense of Hendrix's actions. Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/afterparty   Cozy Earth: Visit https://www.CozyEarth.com & Use code EMILY for up to 20% off   Lean: Discover why LEAN is becoming the choice for real weight‑loss results—shop now at https://TAKELEAN.com use code 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. Tonight's guest is Mary Margaret O'Lehann, White House reporter at The Daily Wire. And Donald Trump himself just finished up a speech as we're coming to you this evening. So we will get Mary Margaret's reaction to things happening in the White House. She was actually at that White House Correspondence dinner that went safely this time, at least, but that proceeded on Friday. So we'll chat to her about the controversy now, I guess, swirling around Caitlin Collins and Dylan Mulvaney and Donald Trump and CNN. It may indeed have been the last year of the White House Correspondent's dinner, but we'll get into all of that with Mary Margaret in just a bit. So much to talk about tonight. As I just mentioned, President Trump just gave a speech.

Now, the DSA, well, let's put it this way. The Democratic establishment is coming up with new strategies to combat the DSA. So we have a clip from David Pacman that I think is going to be illustrative of this, just as Trump himself is leaning more into a fight against or framing this as a fight over communism. So we'll get Mary Margaret's perspective on that. Katie Perry, very mad at the White House for using firework in a video. And I'll do a little breakdown in the Shiloh Hendrix case. But we're coming to you tonight with some real breaking news, as we often do. Right now, we just got the audio of those Biden tapes with his ghostwriter that Robert Hur, referenced when he declined to charge Joe Biden with improperly storing classified information.

We have the audio. We're going to play it for you. It's just been released in the last couple of hours. The Heritage Foundation had to sue to get it. It's out released to CBS News. So in a moment, you're going to hear a little bits of that. And we are going to start with the Anthony Fauci Diary emails, because I spent six hours mired in those emails yesterday and have a lot to say about them. please do subscribe if you haven't yet the best way to help the show help us keep doing the independent journalism that we love to do here on after party is to uh subscribe on the youtube channel like comment all that stuff is so helpful tell a friend you can subscribe wherever you get your podcast on the podcast feed the show is actually three days a week because we do a friday edition of the show for podcast

listeners only where i read the emails that you send in to emily at devilmaicaremedia.com all right uh like i said we are going to start with anthony Fauci, though, this evening because I spent six hours going through Anthony Fauci's COVID diary, starting in January of 2020, and then ending during the Biden administration. And I want to cover them in a way I don't think people quite have, which is the breadth of what Anthony Fauci decides to talk about, how he decides to talk about it, and what we learn, or the depth we can add to our understanding of the person that Anthony Fauci is. Now, of course, the significance of Anthony Fauci is that he was at the helm of the COVID Task Force,

basically, is probably the most high-profile member of the COVID Task Force, and was, we can tell from the diary entries, going back and forth in a bit of a tug of war with a camp in the White House back in 2020 that was growing increasingly skeptical on a couple of measures. first of all, the wet market and that Wuhan Lab and our involvement with it, but then also, of course, lockdowns, masks and the like. So you get the story, at least from Fauci's perspective, when he thought nobody else was reading his diary that he was apparently emailing to himself. I have put in a request with Rand Paul, Senator Rand Paul's office, released these diary entries. Anthony Fauci is testifying before Congress on Wednesday. I put in a request just confirmed

that this was from his government email. That's an interesting distinction here because he goes into a skiff multiple times and then comes out of a skiff where you get classified information. He's getting CIA briefings in a skiff. He comes out and immediately within that day writes a diary entry

that could be hacked, puts in writing what he just heard in the skiff and then puts it in an email inbox that of course could easily be hacked. So here's classified information in a classified, proper classified setting, and then immediately writes it down in a non-classified setting, presumably. So I'll update everyone if we hear back from Rand Paul's team on all of that. But you just get such a window into this man's thought process

because presumably he thought nobody was going to read this. This is Fauci writing about Fauci for Fauci. And it's incredible insight. I really, if I was still teaching journalism students, would assign it as insight into how Washington works. There's 1100 pages of these diary entries, and again, they're from Trump to Biden. And you see him repeatedly, for example, going to pick up pizzas in a neighborhood in northwest Washington, or, you know, passing by chef Jeff's on his way to pick up pizza in northwest Washington. And he makes note multiple times of how everybody applauds him, of how all the,

the students as he's walking through the American University campus at one point, who are, I think he refers to them illegally being on the lawn, line up to ask him for selfies, right? It sounds like what he's talking about is pandemic restrictions cut them from gathering together outside on the lawn, and he just had to take so many selfies. They just loved him. They couldn't get enough of him. Seemingly, every time he's getting public acclaim, he makes note of it. He's constantly, apparently for a memoir. You see him refer to the diary itself, kind of break the fourth wall a couple of times, but he also references like this should be in the memoir. So apparently what he's doing is keeping notes in case he has to have, who wants to write about it at some point. Actually, just as we're coming to you, Rand Paul, within the last several hours, released more emails, this time from the Obama administration, the early 2010s around 2013, 2014. I haven't had a chance to go through those yet, but they seem to be showing this very same. version of Anthony Fauci. All right. So let's get into the emails that Rand Paul released. This one, as I said, these are two emails. This is Fauci on Fauci for Fauci. Keep that in mind.

Now, at one point here, he is writing about how Mark Meadows claims he doesn't know anything about this White House effort to discredit Anthony Fauci. He says this, Fauci says, this is tough to believe in that multiple news outlets have been given a list of my quote-unquote mistakes and errors directly from the White House. Personally, I hope that's true because Anthony Fauci was making mistakes and errors, even though the insight you get into him through these emails is that he didn't believe he made mistakes and errors. One of the interesting, I think, undercurrents is how disinterested he is in any criticism that might be valid. He does not believe that there are valid criticisms of Anthony Fauci. It is Manichian. Everybody is with him or, again,

him and if you are against him, you are a toothless, rub, anti-vax freak. This is how essentially he talks about Peter Navarro, who sounds like he was genuinely very hostile to Fauci. I would say that is to his credit at this point, whether it is J. Badacharya. He is unforgiving and totally uninterested in free inquiry. And this is the man who once said that he represents the science to the public. There's very little interest in considering alternative viewpoints. He really dismisses them, at least in his diary entries to himself, off the bat. Crazy. Crazy. So he talks about this meeting with Mark Meadows. He says, ah, it seems like the White House really is trying to discredit me.

Meadows says he doesn't know anything about it. In all likelihood, Meadows, Chief of Staff at the time, was just trying to play nice with Fauci. But then Fauci writes, to himself, of himself, major, major show of support for me for multiple and varied sectors. Most people expressing outrage that the Trump administration would be so bumbling and incompetent to try to discredit the most credible scientist in the world. He's referring to himself as the most credible scientist in the world. In notes to himself. Now, he is deposed as part of Missouri v. Biden at one point in 2022

and writes to himself of himself. I must say I did extraordinarily well, and the DOJ lawyers said that that was one of the best performances and the deposition that they have ever seen. Literally the note that your mom gives you after you nail three blind mice in the piano recital in kindergarten, like the fake piano recital in kindergarten. It is Jill Biden after the debate. You answered all the questions you knew, all the answers. He is doing that to himself. Let's get into some serious stuff. Here is Fauci explaining Alexa to Barbara Streisand.

These emails are checkered with his self-satisfied notes about many celebrity interactions that he had. And they were numerous. You have to give him that. He developed a budding relationship with Barbara Streisand. And to my disappointment, Joan Baez, who gifted him, him a portrait, came over to his house for dinner. Here he writes, had great call with Barbara Streisand. She called myself 6.05 p.m. She has recently had Zoster with lesion on hip slash buttock. She has post-zoster neurologia down her leg, but the primary lesion had healed. She wanted to know

if it was okay to get the mRNA vaccine. I told her yes. We then started discussing life in general. I told her that I work listening to her songs on Alexa. She really did not know what Alexa was. I accidentally but called her later in the evening, and she said that she was going to call me anyways, and she wanted to know if there was any difference between the Moderna and Pfizer product. I told her none. I then explained to her more about Alexa.

I brought the phone over to Alexa and asked to play songs by Barbara Streisand. When the song came on loud and clear, she started laughing and absolutely loved it. What a grand time. Just a day in the life of Anthony Fauci. More importantly, I found this email. He back-channeled questions to Jake Tapper for one of Tapper's interviews

with at the time the man who was Trump's assistant secretary for health. Now he had recently been over to the Tapper House for dinner and of that encounter he wrote quote friendship building. Tapper had been texting Fauci his private thoughts on Deborah Birx. Pulled this up here. This is going to be really tough to say. Let's say I can zoom in Jake wrote me a text, this is April 26, 2020, after this press conference, this is the bleach press conference, and said, quote, Berks has lost her way, I fear. She has chosen to focus on defending the president and attacking the press. Odd. Wildly, wildly inappropriate thing for a, quote, neutral journalist to be sending to a source.

But, as we know, they became fast friends. Jake Tapper woke me up at 1123. AM, I think he means PM. I went to better. really furious at POTUS for tweeting about the fact that Jake severely questioned Brett Gerr on State of the Union CNN show today. Jake was really pissed at the craziness of it all. Then he says at one point that he had dinner over at Jake and Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper's home in DC, terrific couple friendship building. As Stephen Miller, the pundit pointed out on X, that was well they were telling people to cancel Thanksgiving dinner. Fauci was going over to have dinner in October with the Tappers and in July with the Tappers. He says, had dinner at my home with Jake and at his house.

He invited them to the Fauci home with Jake and Jennifer Tapper. Relaxed, good time. Jake clearly believes that Trump is totally nuts. Tapper at one point attacked another journalist. As much as he dislikes her, he attacks another journalist to a source and says that Laura Ingraham, Hard to believe if Laura Ingram went to Dartmouth, isn't it? All of us alumni are very proud. Now let's get a little bit about Fox. A little more about Fox. Fouchy wrote that while at Fox News, Chris Wallace, quote, empathized greatly with me about the attacks that I'm under by the far right, and he fully understands what is going on.

Chris Wallace called him to get some medical advice about whether he should go to Oxford and do a lecture over at the Oxford Union. and then they had a conversation that led Fauci to write that Wallace offered his empathy for Fauci being attacked by the quote-unquote far right. That is Fauci saying basically only the people attacking him are on the far right. They're only on the far right. None of them could be people of good faith with whom I disagree. Here is Fauci claiming that Chuck Todd helped give him advice on whether or not he should respond to criticism from Fox News and Tucker Carlson.

Chuck is an excellent, really excellent journalist, and although he must maintain his objectivity in reporting, it is very clear that he's really being a friend in understanding the difficult position that I am in. Let's roll SOT 1 now so everyone can see how the media covered Anthony Fauci at the time. So just to say, these emails don't necessarily review anything new, but what they do is give us insight into exactly how glowing and inappropriate the relationship was behind closed doors, though we could see that it was already inappropriate in front of the public. The single most respected voice in the pandemic. There's Chuck.

It's Dr. Anthony Fauci. The man who's become known as America's doctor. The nation's top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci. You are seen to many as a superhero. Dr. Anthony Fauci, American hero and New York Yankee fan. You've done so much for this country in terms of this crisis, so I really appreciate your insight. Who better to give us answers that we can trust than Dr. Anthony Fauci?

perfect person to answer our questions today, joining us now, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Anthony Fauci, appreciate your candor. Dr. Fauci, appreciate the candor. We appreciate your service to this country. We appreciate your service. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. Greatly appreciate your service to America.

Thank you for your 37 years of service, I believe, to seven presidents, and thank you for your work over the past year. The great news is you're sticking around in the Biden administration. We are so grateful to you, Dr. Fauci, for everything you do. Thank you so much for everything you do. Thank you very much for everything that you do. Thanks so much for the work that you do. Thank you very much for the reassurance.

And as always, for all of your public service. Thank you, Dr. Fauci. Thank you for all your guidance this past year. And it's greatly appreciated. Dr. Fauci, on behalf of all of our viewers here in the U.S. and around the world, thanks very much for doing what you're doing. Thanks very much for joining us. Please thank your entire team as well.

We are all grateful. Get your rest because we need you. You are one of the busiest scientists in the country right now. It is an honor to have some of your time. to help us understand what is going on. I know a lot of people have a lot of questions, so we appreciate your time, sir. We need people to continue to have faith in science.

So thank you for your time, sir. Thank you for being straight with us. Thank you for being able to come on. You will always have your show as a platform. Sir, whenever you can be here, it's will have you. It's always an honor to have time with you. Thanks for being here. Good enough for you, sir.

It's good enough for me and my family. So thank you, Dr. Fauci. Thank you for keeping it straight. Thank you for fighting the good fight. I am sincerely appreciative that you are not walking away from this post. You make us smarter and safer and better every day. Thank you so much, Dr. Fauci. Yeah, shout out to Tom Elliott over at Gravian for putting that compilation together.

It's hard to watch, actually, because it's so disgusting, knowing what we know now about addiction rates, knowing what we know now about learning loss, knowing what we know now about the many people who had to say goodbye to loved ones without having the chance to hold and hug once more, what we know about the masking, efficacy, all of that. It's hard to watch the people who held themselves up as the responsible adults in the room, slobbering over Anthony Fauci, knowing that he was personally behaving in such a grotesque and corrupt way, which you should always, if you're a journalist, be suspicious of somebody. in an enormous position of power

because you never know how they're behaving. But they actually don't care because they think they do know Anthony Fauci because they text and call him, Chris Cuomo on the phone with him. Let's put up once again, Andrew Cuomo apparently was begging Fauci basically to quit the government in protest

and was promising to give him a high-paying private sector consulting gig, according to Fauci's diary. Let's look at this one. Fauci won something called the, so you can see it here, he won the Dan David Prize, and you can see his special assistant emailed, quote, quote, congratulations, you're rich. That was April 10th of 2021.

It was a month after he supported maintaining guidelines for schools that said you had to social distance at three feet. And you had to keep masking. This was a month after he criticized red states for lifting mask mandate. and facilitating business openings, his assistant is emailing him. Congratulations, you're rich, and you can see the bank transfer there for $900,000. 10% of this prize went to a scholarship fund, $900,000 went to Anthony Fauci. Congratulations, you're rich, is what his assistant told him. Now, again, these diary entries, he's talking about getting gifts from Jill and Joe Biden,

flowers from Julia Roberts, he's talking about all of the applause he gets, He's talking about how dumb Rondosantis is. He is talking about how much the celebrities love him. He shows faux humility sometimes. He's like, oh, it's all just too much. But he's writing about it in his diary for himself and referring to himself as the most credible scientist in the world. He's talking about how Hillary Clinton comes up to him at one point and says,

Now you know how it feels and offers to sit behind him in Congress as a sign of support. It's really gross. It's really gross. just to put our, to put a fine point on it, I just want to say, we should also not lose sight of the nuts and bolts here, which is you can see what he is saying privately. We already have some insight into this, but you can see what he is saying privately about the idea of the lab leak. So the free press and an editorial wrote, in public, Fauci consistently dismissed the lab theory, this is from today, even mocking it at one point as a quote-unquote circular argument.

Now, he says, the free press says, in fact, there was no unanimity among scientists. Two of the scientists believe the virus came from a wet market. Fauci writes in his diary, quote, the rest thought deliberate insertion was possible. That is, that the virus had been inserted as part of a chemical sequence in a lab and had somehow escaped. Internally, Fauci argued that the issue needed to be investigated. We could not let this go, he said. The free press notes, that's exactly the opposite of his insistence in the public.

that it could not possibly have been caused by a leak from the Wuhan lab. 1100 pages. And if you want some of the best insight into how Washington works, where again it is mannequin, you are with them, or if you are against them, you are dumb and you are ignorant, this is the best insight that you could ask for. We're going to be right back with Mary Margaret Ollahan. Stick around.

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I just want to reiterate what I texted you while I was in the middle of the opening. I'm going along and I'm so sorry. but thank you for waiting. No, this is so worth it. This is a crazy topic and I could talk about it all night. So loved the intro and excited to get into it. Well, you covered the Biden administration as well. And we do have breaking news on that front tonight. So we might as well just start there. We have a lot of Trump stuff to cover. But just within the last couple of hours, finally, we had tapes released as part of the Heritage Foundation's lawsuit to get those tapes released. they were first referenced by Robert Hur in his investigation and really his decision not to charge Joe Biden with improperly handling classified information. And so CBS News got its hand on the tapes.

We do have a little bit from the tapes to share with people. This is Biden talking to his ghost writer because he's working on a memoir about finding classified stuff downstairs in his home, S-9. In 09, I just found all the classified stuff downstairs. I wrote the president of the handwritten 40-page memorandum arguing against deploying additional troops to Iraq, I mean to Afghanistan. He's just referencing all the classified stuff downstairs. Let's take a listen to the next one so folks get a sense of how, let's say, weak Biden sounded.

This is before he even runs for president. So keep that in mind. This is before his 2020 run for president. Let's take a listen. I had all those presidential notes. I know you gave me this much from the... Actually... Separate from presidential.

I wonder where those... Do you have separate notebooks of the... Yeah. Every... After every lunch, I would dictate to... I would dictate to, I'd call in, and I dictate to her what the lunch was about. And they'd call her, I had all those at the house in a safe. I don't know what they made me do with them.

Hi, Margaret, it's like watching the Diversity Day episode of the office for the first time where the pauses are so uncomfortable. That's, I mean, were you hearing what I was hearing there? He just was bumbling. Oh, yeah. And admitting right then and there, years before we were all, you know, years before the legacy media was actually acknowledging how serious his condition was that he couldn't remember these pivotal details here, talking about these recordings of the calls and he

thinks these papers might be here, might be there. I mean, it's so painful. and uncomfortable to listen to, I have to say, I'm a little impressed at the patience of his interviewer because, oh, my gosh, that's just, it's stressful just to hear. Well, he's probably getting paid a ton of money to babysit Joe Biden for that. Apparently there are 70 hours of these tapes, 70 hours of these tapes. So if you're the ghost writer, you're talking to Joe Biden for 70 hours, probably getting paid a ton of money to do the ghost writing on the book. So I guess you're probably willing to just sit there while he's like the, you know the thing, we beat Medicaid, whatever he's saying. He says at one time,

he, Biden told reporters at the time, quote, I did not share classified information. I did not share it with the ghost writer. And then on the tapes, you hear him talking about potentially classified meetings, as the CVS news write-up mentions, including, quote, a big meeting with the CIA and everyone, a big meeting in the situation room and a long meeting where DOD brief poutis. And then he says on, October 10th, 2016, because the memoir, Promise Me Dad, came out 2017. He says, I have extensive notes over this period of time. They didn't know I have this. And then, of course, as people already heard, I just found all of the classified stuff downstairs. So that seems flatly to be, at this point, incorrect, that he didn't have, he didn't take classified information to share it with

his ghostwriter. Oh, absolutely. And I mean, I think after all this time, you know, knowing what we know about the former president, we'd be naive to assume. that he actually was fully even aware of what he was saying at that point. Of course he was sharing information he wasn't supposed to. He routinely said things that he wasn't supposed to say. He routinely didn't even know where he was. I mean, this president we know was in a very serious state of cognitive decline, which everyone, including his wife, knew and still put him in that position.

And, you know, I feel like every couple months we come back to this fact and just dragged through it anew, the fact that Joe Biden was seriously cognitively declining throughout that entire period and everyone just pretended that that was not the case. So yes, it makes complete sense that a man in his situation is, of course, going to be sharing information he's not supposed to, and is of course going to misrepresent that later on. And I actually don't even mean to imply that his cognitive decline should be to blame for all of this. I think that he wasn't necessarily too worried about sharing classified information in the first place. But obviously, his cognitive decline had a very severe impact on that as well.

No, you cover this Trump White House. What do you expect? Maybe you already have been talking to sources or you've heard through the grapevine what we should expect. But what do you expect this White House and this administration? Obviously, now Trump is in charge of the Justice Department under his strong ally, Todd Blanche. So what could we anticipate to come out of the White House? Well, look, I mean, the legacy media will describe anything that ensues here as vengeance or revenge. But President Trump has been very clear since before he came into office that he believes it's justice to take action when it comes to, you know, investigating these sorts of things and exacting, you know, justice on someone like Joe Biden if he did, in fact, mishandled classified materials.

Of course, the former Justice Department went after President. Donald Trump for the very same thing, right? This is not new, would not be new to see the Justice Department going after a president on this point. And I think if you ask the President Donald Trump about this, which I would love to do tomorrow or later this week, my guess is he would talk about how the former Justice Department was rifling through his wife's underwear drawer and how, you know, there's nothing wrong with the Justice Department investigating this and whether Biden has handled these files in this way. But at the same time, again, this is going to be one of those stories that the legacy media uses as their revenge tour narrative. It's so funny to be,

Emily, I'm with them all day long. And there's always a narrative that gets them really excited. And I think the revenge tour, retribution tour narrative is one that really does get them going. So I have no doubt this will be the main focus of the day, at least for tomorrow. in spite of all this stuff going on at the White House. And hats off to the Heritage Foundation and the oversight project, Mike Howell and their whole group for seeing this through because that's quite a victory in and of itself. It's so funny you say that about people latching onto a particular narrative every day

in these elite media circles. It's totally true. You kind of do get to see the hive mind in action. And on that note, let's talk about the White House Correspondence Dinner, which actually went off successfully. Thank God on. Friday, although I was joking at the time, the worst possible outcome of the White House Correspondents Dinner back in the spring was scheduling another fucking White House

Correspondence dinner. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. But it's true. And you were at both, Barry Margaret Ollahan. So what has emerged and what was the big story that had elite media a buzz over the weekend, believe it or not, was a joke that President Donald Trump made at the expense of Caitlin Collins. I think we both know. Let's go ahead and roll it so people know exactly what happened. But I want to personally congratulate CNN's

Caitlin Collins on receiving her award. It was all about me. It's a fake. She shouldn't get the award. It was a fake. But I didn't mind. I said, Caitlin, congratulations. But it was fake.

There's no question about it. But she's a young, attractive woman. She never smiles. I said, Caitlin, do you ever smile? smile you have a nice position you're at CNN fake news you should be a happy person so smile katele just smile but we attack and i thought katelyn had really made it big with a major new sponsorship but then i informed her that it wasn't her on the butlite can it was dillian moldaney my gosh okay very margaret we will just acknowledge a

front that we were talking about Donald Trump and whatever Joe Biden or J.D. Vance or Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom or Marco Rubio would say from the presidential podium about a woman, a woman's looks. I probably wouldn't like it. I also, in this case, think the reaction to Donald Trump, who has been doing this day in and day out at people who are not reporters. Yep. Reporters too, certainly. But everyone, for years, It is not the top story. It doesn't rank within the top 10 stories of what the average American wishes that the media they pay for or give their data, pay for it with the data that they give via cookies, should be focused on. And tell me if I'm wrong. What did you glean? I don't know if you were at the White House the last few days, but you were at the dinner. What did you glean from the reaction to just that line itself in the mockery of Caitlin?

Yeah. Well, I think a couple things there. First of all, you know, being in the audience was actually pretty often. because if you think of the whole room, nobody was laughing. You know, I chuckled. I know there were plenty of cabinet officials in there like Pete Hagsett and Stephen Miller and, you know, Mark Wayne Mullen. I'm sure they all chuckled. I'm sure the Fox News table chuckled in random conservative media, whatever. But the majority of that room was legacy liberal media who did not find it amusing.

Now, did Caitlin Collins go into that dinner expecting to be the center of attention? I think so. you know, you look at her career, she has made most of her, most of her fame stems from the fact that she has contentious relationships with Trump. And I think, you know, personally, as someone who kind of enjoys, you know, getting into it, you know, whether if I'm doing a man on the street or something like that, you enjoy the contentious interview, not only because it's interesting and it's good content, but also because it's good for you. It's good for people to see you in a contentious situation because it shows your grit. So she knows it's good for her. It's been good for her career. It got her a primetime show during President Joe Biden's administration.

So all that aside, I don't love it when the president tells her to smile. I think it's leaning into a trope that is unnecessary to lean into. However. He's like the guy at the end of the bar. Smile more. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've had it said to me.

No woman likes it. But I think what he's getting at is every single time she asks him a question. Every single time she asks Caroline questions anywhere she is in the White House. Her tone is that of the de facto fact checker. Her tone is, you know, I am coming from a place of criticizing you of a negative view of this administration. I'm going to show the world why you're wrong. And so my take on all of this was that is the attitude that he's pointing out to her. Could he have said it more gracefully with less of those undertones?

Definitely. Does the president worry about undertones? really. So I wasn't really surprised by that. But again, I think, you know, if you think about every single question she asks the way she does it, it's always, even in the press briefings with Caroline Levitt, Caroline's pretty gracious. She takes everyone's questions. She goes to Caitlin, even though I don't think she particularly enjoys taking Caitlin's questions. Every time Caitlin asks it, though, it's as if she's on her own show. It's as if she's, you know, being the fact checker, taking Caroline to task. And I would have less objection.

if there were some fair questions mixed in there that genuinely were news seeking questions. But no, it's just incredibly slanted, very anti-Trump. And I'm sure if I said that to her, she'd say, well, this is just coverage of the administration. It's fair. Well, if you look at how she covered President Joe Biden's administration, first of all, she pieced out halfway through to have a primetime show because it was so boring back at the Biden White House. There was nothing to do. So she came back to the White House as a White House correspondent.

When President Trump took office because CNN knows it's good for them. She knows it's good for her to be in this White House and to be interacting with the president. So I think she went into that dinner expecting that kind of criticism. I don't think she even hated it. If you think about it, she's coming out of this with half the media world and even celebrities applauding her and saying, you know, you're so strong for braving the criticism from the president. She got an award. She's sitting pretty right now.

So I don't think she particularly even minded it. And I think she honestly went into the evening expecting it. I bet Caitlin thought it was funny. I'm sure she didn't crack a smile, but I bet she would have thought it was funny about some of that. Anyway, all right. Without getting into too much of that, Wolf Blitzer did a very dramatic, like, monologue and support of Caitlin.

And now let's put the semaphore report up on the screen. Max Tanny is saying now CNN leader. was furious about Trump's comments at the White House Correspondents Center about Caitlin Collins and other CNN talent. Some executives discussed whether the network and its leaders will scale back their presence at the dinner next year or skip all together. Now, yes, it is, you know, a kind of fair point to say, we paid all this money to the WHOCA. We come here and the president takes this national audience as an opportunity to attack us. Now, on the other hand, Mary Margaret, that's just looking at this in a very myopic way. The amount of times that comedians have said very scandalous things about the right during the White House correspondent centers, during the Trump administration the first time about Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

For them to suddenly want to do the right thing here, by the way, which is pick up their ball and go home and say no more White House correspondence dinners, there should be. not be White House Correspondent centers as they are now. If they do exist in the future, they should be as small, if not smaller than this one, just for White House correspondence, not with the red carpet, not with the multiple parties in the Hilton going on at the same time where lobbyists and celebrities are schmoozing with each other, not with the stupid brunches where lobbyists and celebrities are schmoozing with each other. A lot of schmoozing. It's insane and boozing. All of that. All of that. have been ended 20 years ago. But of course, it was too much fun for them to give up until they

wanted to act like they were standing up and defending Caitlin Collins and the integrity of the press. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, this is the White House Correspondence Dinner. And I should caveat this by saying that I was grateful this year because Ouija Zhang, who is the former outgoing president of the White House Correspondence Association, she's been very good to me. She made sure that myself as a member of the new media was included in this video that they played at the dinner. Reagan Reese, my friend from The Daily Caller, also was included in the video.

And I really appreciated that because, you know, it would be very easy for them to overlook the conservative press or new media. They could have just, you know, highlighted the legacy media or these older institutions, but they didn't. So hats off to Ouija for that. I'm very grateful for that.

And she's also been really cool to me behind the scenes. That being said, a lot of the time this dinner is really just legacy media patting itself on the back, right? This is, we've seen this over and over a year after a year, like you're saying, the parties and the events. You've got like George Clooney and hit the likes of him going in and out of these events and schmoozing, as you said, with all these politicians and reporters. And it doesn't, it has come with a lot of fanfare that has elicited a lot of criticism. And I would say a lot of merit. criticism, especially from the right. Now, the other night, that was a really interesting display

where there were people like all of these reporters at the Wall Street Journal who got awarded for coverage of President Donald Trump. That had to be awkward too. Yeah, it was, it was a really interesting moment where he shook hands with all of these reporters who wrote a negative piece about him. I think they didn't totally know what to do with it. And I think he was kind of enjoying the weird dynamic there. He threw up his hands at the end after he shook hands with Josh Dossie. And it was a funny little moment

in the whole room appreciated. It got some good laughs from all of these reporters. So that dynamic is interesting. And I think if you have someone as charismatic as Trump that has such a confrontational relationship with the press, it does make for some interesting vibes for the night. But, you know, let's say we have a Democrat in office

next time around. We have our president, Newsom, and the media goes back to congratulating itself for, you know, covering a Democratic administration favorably. I mean, that's not something that I would particularly enjoy, I don't think. And I'm just trying to think of it from the Daily Wires perspective. Would I still want to go and get a table? I think off the top of my head, yeah, I think it would be fun to be there. I think it would be good to have conservative media, new media represented in that room. But do we, would we expect that we or other conservative outlets would get awarded for our efforts?

Probably not. I think that's just the name of the game. Yeah. And some of it you just, you play it by ear in the moment because it's a constant tug of war. And if you're not playing, you're totally losing and you don't want to completely give up the fight. So I absolutely understand that. My final thought on all of this is just if what I want is a conservative movement that has a genuine populist understanding of the problems with the way Washington works and then doesn't just ape. some of those problems when it finds itself in positions of power. But let's take a, it's been a lot, you know, all the crypto money pouring in over the last couple of years.

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right here. Mary Margaret O'Lehan, Whitehouse correspondent at the Daily Wire is back with us as promised Katie Perry. Let's put her ex post from July 25th, I'm sorry, up on the screen. Apparently the White House used her song, Firework, on a TikTok account. And she said, I'm deeply appalled and angry to see Firework used on the White House TikTok account as a backing track for video footage of military strikes. I did not approve this. I was not asked, and I absolutely do not condone it. I wrote the song to be an anthem of hope, healing, and inner strength for people going through their darkest personal moments to see a message of self-worth and

upliftment, weaponized to soundtrack destruction and violence is a complete violation of everything my song stands for. My music is for bringing people together, not celebrating warfare. Well, I saw this post on X, Mary Margaret, from Basilean Thought, who said,

to Katie Perry, you were straight up doing Department of War propaganda during the Obama administration, and indeed I found a great San Diego Union Tribune had from September of 2016. It literally said, Marines say Katie Perry video is good publicity. Quote, when she wanted to get tough for a latest release, the young singer picked up an M16 and trained with actual Marines at Camp Pendleton. Perry's part of me video released Wednesday

was shot over three days in February at Pendleton's Camp Elmo area and at Red Beach, the Sandy stretch off Interstate 5 where Marines practice. And, Margaret, with Katie Perry, you can see this video here. they are doing actual training, it looks like, for war in the video. Granted, we just talked about Trump's Caitlin Collins, Dylan Mulvaney joke. I think both of us came down on the same position. It was like, in a perfect world with the president of the United States be saying these things. I think we were both like, no, in a perfect world, would the White House be releasing Drone Strike videos with Katie Perry music in the background?

No. And yet, here we are. We understand. This is how the Trump White House operates. The Obama War Department, the Obama Defense Department, and its drone striking habits were known to Katie Perry in 2016. And yet she's just mad about this one, Mary Margaret. Yeah, it reminds me of the drama over that deportation video that was set to the tune of closing time. Oh, yes, that's right. Yes. And I am too terrible with music to remember the artist of course.

closing time. Semi-sonic. Oh, my. Thank you. Okay. All right, right. Yeah, you got to spare me. I was homeschooled.

I missed out on some social. That's right. That's right. But that drama was very similar in that, you know, it was, oh, how could you this, you know, how could you use this song in this depraved video? Well, very similar situation in which, you know, that song was used on a very viral video and the video amassed millions of millions and millions of views. and then was brought to the attention of the artist

who decided they had to make a public statement. I mean, look, Katie Perry, she's dating the former Prime Minister of Canada, right? Who is now her fanboy simp and follows her around the world, which honestly good for him. I'm happy that he can enjoy some days off with his new celebrity girlfriend.

But at the same time, she's in no place to be pretending she's some unbiased arbiter of what is right or just. And her video, the music video that she did in days past, it reminds me of the girl from She's the Man. You ever see that? No, yeah, of course. I saw that in theaters.

Yeah, I mean, it's the same vibe, right? And she was more than happy to be part of what she would consider propaganda then. But now it's too much for her because it's Donald Trump, which honestly is reminiscent of the last administration. and I feel like we see less and less of that these days, really only see it from Hollywood and from the music industry at this point in the game. It seems like the White House is not backing down

on the social media trolling either, despite they've had these back and forth with Rodrigo with Semi-Sonic, apparently, with Katie Perry. It's not slowing them out at all. Yeah, no. I mean, I had a really interesting conversation with Stephen Chung about this in the fall, I think it was. I did a piece on the Trump administration and what makes it different from last time.

And one of the things that we really got into was these videos. And, you know, I think there's a shock factor for a lot of them when you see a man that's shackled, climbing the steps of a deportation plane and closing time. He's, you know, wailing in the background. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. There is a moment, at least for me, as a woman, where I was like, oh, well, okay, this is how we're owning this now. As a woman. I mean, you know, we're really sympathetic.

We're emotional. We get upset when people are mean to people, right? And I actually said that. I was interviewing Caroline Levitt about it. And she was saying the reason that they're taking that approach this time is that, A, they kind of have a campaign strategy to this administration. So rather than just settle into policy, they're still very much on offense. They're very aggressive.

They're still viewing things through that lens. And then at the same time, Stephen Chung was saying, we are very proud of our policy. And we are very excited about it. So we want people to see it and grapple with it and understand that this is what we're doing. So they're very unabashed about it. And I think that's part of the reason that they're so fearless because they're like Katie Perry, who? We don't care. We're getting our message out.

And I mean, it's resonated for a while thus far. I mean, it seems to have worked decently for them. There might be an internal reckoning given how the midterms go or the end of this administration. but so far, at least on my end, I'm not seeing any interest in backing down from any of the White House on this point. Well, yeah, let's keep talking about their aggressive messaging. So right now, we can put this Guardian headline up on the screen. The Guardian wrote about this yesterday. Others have written about it in the last couple of weeks.

Quote, in a series of high-profile addresses, Trump has identified an ideology that millions of Americans are too young to recall as the U.S. biggest threat. The U.S.'s biggest threat. Quote, a generation after we fought and won the Cold War against the menace of communism, there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. He said in the speech at Mount Rushmore on July 3rd on the eve of the U.S. is 250th birthday. The Washington Post recently did an analysis of how many times the conservative, sort of

conservative, what's the best way to put it, the right, generally the right. So including like podcasters, not just politicians, have been talking about socialism and communism recently, it's definitely going up. Obviously, some of that is because self-described socialists are winning primaries and are on track to win general elections just tonight. Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens are debating up in Michigan. And David Packman, who's kind of a normie YouTuber. It would sort of be put into like a centrist category, but he described himself in a recent video as a social Democrat and tried to make a very interesting distinction between a social democrat and a democratic socialists let's take a

little bit of a listen here to david packman's video from the weekend i am a social democrat as a reminder social democrat and democratic socialist are two completely different things i support getting everybody health care strong unions in support of labor affordable education that is of high quality progressive taxation where the wealthiest are taxed the most serious corporations regulation and a very strong social safety net. I also support markets, private businesses, private ownership of property. We don't need government planners deciding, for example, which restaurants should open. It's completely fine to let companies compete there. Socialism and

communism in turn usually want to replace private ownership of making. major industries with worker, public, or state ownership. Social democracy, which I subscribe to, recognizes corporate power can become abusive and state power can become abusive and both need democratic limits. Okay, it's not often you hear Mary Margaret from somebody on the left, even somebody who describes himself as a social Democrat who wants progressive taxation. And I think you've described serious corporate regulation, which Okay, that could mean a lot of different things, which is sort of why, right?

Like his explanation is a bit useful. He's getting trashed by the left for this, by the way. But he came out and said, made an argument affirmatively on behalf of private property. Fascinating. That needs to happen from like a normie influencer in 2026, but here we are. That is not going to matter to the White House one bit, whether it matters to voters and whether some of these days, DSA candidates or others try to make this argument. And Mary Margaret, the White House is just going to call them all communist, right?

I think that's clear at this point. Yeah, I mean, you already see it really interwoving into the president's messaging. I was with him last week. And where were we? We were in Georgia. Right. And we lose track, right? You're all over the country.

And he was working this messaging into his remarks. And it gets a pretty strong response from these MAGA crowds. You know, this stadium or high school that we were at in Georgia was pretty packed. A lot of Americans, a very diverse array of supporters for the president that day. And his lines on communism and socialism resounded very strongly with the crowd. That's not the first time I've heard him do that either. And it's consistently been worked in. I think that messaging and the Trump administration's efforts to combat fraud,

Those are two major themes that I think they're counting on to help them get through the midterms, especially given that, you know, Trump really does like a real enemy. So, you know, you think about how he messaged on transgenderism, for example, during the past election. We heard that over and over and over and over, you would think that that would have gotten a little tired. But his analogies, his reference to isn't this crazy resonated with the people so much. kind of gave them a place to channel that anger and frustration that they'd felt for so long about a very real issue. And I see similar themes with how he's leaning into this. It's the kind of conversation that, you know, if I go home to my hometown, pretty red area, I see people at church,

they're going to pull me aside and be like, what do you think of these communist candidates up? You know, who knows where? They're ready to talk about it. They're angry about it. They're posting about it and I think he recognizes that and he has a really good gut intuition when it comes to issues like this. So this raises an interesting point, which is a great piece in first things recently about how the anti-woke, it was by Matthew Schmitz, the anti-woke coalition has basically fractured because, well, a lot of different reasons, but basically as that the high time of wokeness obviously has faded a bit into the background. I think it's going to resurge. I think we probably both agree on that at some point, but it's going to be with us for.

forever. But all that is to say, that was a glue for this coalition of people on the center, center left, and then going to the right and even to the like traditional Christian right. But this opposition to communism was the glue of the fusionist movement, of the actual conservative movement for the last basically 80 years. And it was losing that glue that fractured fusionist. right, the three stools of effusionism that brought together traditional right with the fiscal right and with the conservative hawkish right. I guess maybe that glue is back. I mean, is there a sense, as you're talking to people, Mary Margaret, in the White House that it might not

be about foreign policy, but at least opposing communism here, socialism here is giving them juice politically at a time when that's difficult? A thousand percent. I mean, in my view, it very much is, a recognition that these candidates exist. And, you know, from a messaging standpoint, a radical candidate is a boon to Trump. It's a boon to the Republican Party because, again, like that messaging on transgenderism, you can say, this is just crazy. Like, we do not support this kind of thing. You know, we're hearkening back to something that many people, even, you know, millennials don't even understand that well because they didn't necessarily live through it. And they maybe weren't educated well on it.

So this for Trump is a boon because he can say literally look at this candidate, look at what they're advocating for it. That's so extreme. You don't want that here. That's what you'll get if you don't vote for me. And I think that's going to be a very powerful message. And they're already, like I said, they're already leaning into it. So I'm curious to see which of these candidates he'll land on because he'll always pick one. then he'll choose that one as the example of what would be done to the country.

He actually was that way about Zoran Mamdani for a little while. But then, you know, they have a relationship now. Zoran comes to the White House every once in a while. Trump just likes him. So he's dialed it back on that. He's one of those guys. You know, he decides that you're a bro, and then he's like, we're good. We're going to stay in there.

So he's really dialed it back against Mom Donnie. but he will fix state on a candidate soon, I would highly expect. And then he'll be highlighting how radical that candidate is. Much in the way that he's criticized Ilhan Omar, for example. Yes. I could see that line of attack. Good point. We'll see which of the 2026 candidates becomes his new favorite example.

It won't be, it won't be Zoran. Not that he's on the ballot, but you're right. He really does have such an affection for Zoham. Donnie. Before you run, Mary Margaret Olai, you are a fan. famously from a large family. And so I wanted to see if you could help us react to this Chelsea handler clip that she posted in the last couple of days on her Instagram. It is really sad and really wrong for a number of reasons. I mean, it is just like absurdly wrong in one particular way

that I think people, it'll stand out to people as we watch it. But let me get your reaction. We'll take a look here. Oh, bonjour. It's me, Chelsea. I decided five minutes ago that I'm going to Switzerland this afternoon. Guess why? Because I don't have children. That means I can pick up and go wherever I want, whenever I want. If my girlfriends want to go to the Bahamas on a Tuesday, what would I do if I had kids? Leave them in the car? Being child free means you can travel the globe without anyone holding you back. Spain? Ola. Germany, Guten Ta. Iceland? My point is, if I want to do mushrooms in the middle of the afternoon on a beach in Avifa, I can. And so can you. Just say no to kids. Kids.

They're not that great. Girl, that's not because you're childless. That's because you're rich. Does she think that every childless person can just take mushrooms in Ibiza? In the middle of the day, their girlfriends decide they want to go to Bahamas on a Tuesday. They're like, yep, let's get in the PJ. No, that's because you're rich and your friends are rich. Nobody can afford to just say, I'm going to Switzerland today.

If they're childless, unless they're absurdly wealthy and a major celebrity Chelsea handler, Mary Margaret, though, on the other hand, this is cope too, right? This is cope. Absolutely. I mean, look, first of all, I had missed that very last line, just say no to kids. That's a, I'm a little surprised she went that far, to be honest, because it's so out of touch to not understand that that would elicit a very negative response from most people who love their children, who are happy to have a family, who understand that the point of life

is not self-gratification, but actually doing things for the people. people that we love, self-sacrifice, laying down one's life for others, ideally, in small ways and in big ones. So I'm from a really big family. Emily, as you know, I have 10 siblings. I'm an oldest daughter. Too big. Mary Margaret.

No, I'm kidding. I got six brothers and four sisters. And one of my sisters actually just wrote a piece for USA Today about the other crazy viral video we're seeing where this celebrity famously. accused parents who homeschooled being stupid and Jennifer Welch. Yes. Yes. Weird as F, I believe she said. One part of resistance diamond and silk, yes. Yes. So, you know, for weird, she calls these parents, weird as F for wanting to spend all day with their kids. My sister wrote a beautiful response to this USA Today, but basically articulating our mom spent a lot of her past 20 years,

taking care of us, educating us at home. And we actually love her. much more for doing that. We're so grateful for all the time that she spent with us and all the energy that she put into us. And I mean, I have to say as a member of a big family, my siblings are the greatest blessings in my life. And I'm so grateful to my parents for having them. And I'd argue that we've made my parents a lot better people, too, toughen them up and giving them as Catholics would say, we're helping them work off a lot of purgatory time because they've really put in the time themselves. So we're very grateful for them. I knew you'd have a good answer to that. I mean, just the mindset, this reveals for someone to post, go out of her way to post this video and not realize that literally everything she's saying has nothing to do with the fact that she's childless and everything to do with the fact that she's absolutely loaded. Like, ma'am, you could have kids and just leave them with the nanny. That's how rich you are. You could keep going to the Bahamas on a random Tuesday, Switzerland on a whim on a moment's notice. You just leave them with the nanny. That's how we know this is cope.

Right. Well, and if you're such a self-centered person anyways that you're going to claim that this is why you're living this kind of lifestyle, you probably would actually benefit from having a kid that you just leave with the nanny and still enjoying your life. And then you can have your cake and eat it too. But maybe that's judgmental. I don't know. What could have been? Anyway, Mary Margaret Ollahan, White House correspondent at the Daily Wire. Thank you so much for taking time staying up late tonight. I know how busy you are. Thank you for having me. So much fun. All right. Well, we're going to take another quick break. We'll be right back on the other side with some thoughts on Shiloh Hendricks and the verdict in that case. Everybody's talking about weight loss injections because let's face it, the results are so dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite. So what if you're looking to lose weight, but you're not interested in painful weekly injections, especially when you hear about some of those intense side effects. That's 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 then 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. 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. All right, everyone. Let's talk about the Shiloh Hendrix verdict. I'm going to read a little bit from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. We've had Greg Lukianoff on the show, of course,

to talk about the work that they do on behalf of free speech and free expression over at fire. But just so you know what happened in the case, the video may be familiar to you. So if you're watching this, we'll play a little bit of the video while I go over the basics of what happened in the Shilohenrich's case, just so that it's, we have all of the accurate information. Fire wrote, in April of last year, Shiloh Hendricks was at a playground in a public park in Rochester, Minnesota, where her toddler, with her toddler, when an eight-year-old black boy allegedly took an applesauce pouch from her diaper bag. Hendricks allegedly chased the child, repeatedly calling him the N-word before retrieving

the pouch. The incident drew the attention of a bystander who began recording Hendricks on his phone. In the video, Omar confronts Hendricks about her language. She responds that it's none of your fucking. business and begins walking away. Omar, who is also black, then challenges her to repeat the slur. Hendricks turns around and says, F you, N-word, N-word, N-word, N-word. After the two exchange some more words, the encounter ends with Omar saying, okay, we'll see about that what the internet has to say about you. Again, on a legal level, Roch Fier says Rochester prosecutors charged her

with three counts of disorderly conduct, two of which proceeded to trial. Yesterday, the jury acquitted Hendricks on the count involving the child, but convicted. her on the count arising from her interaction with Omar. She was sentenced to probation, community service, and a $1,000 fine. Now, what fire gets into here is why the conviction, quote, cannot stand under the First Amendment. Here's what they say. And by the way, fire pulls, no punches, left or right, they call balls and strikes. Quote, the video merely shows a heated verbal exchange between Hendricks and Omar, no threats, no violence, nothing beyond words. However, much offense they cause, that simply does not justify the government imprisoning,

fining, or otherwise punishing the speaker. A public argument does not become a crime because a speaker used a particular word. The fire write-up, which you should go check out, goes into the fighting words, doctrine, whether or not it still, quote, has a pulse and whether or not it would apply even to Hendricks's comments. And they conclude, whatever you feel about how Hendricks said, quote, the proper response to objectionable speech is counter speech, of which there was plenty after the video went viral or to simply ignore it and walk away, but allowing a position of criminal punishment erodes the important limits on the government's power to police speech. So basically what they're saying is she was not charged with anything that didn't relate to her speech. And her speech,

obviously, this is my opinion, was objectionable and bizarre, but the charges stemmed strictly from the hostility, the intensity of the hostility in the speech. And that is clearly a problem. That is clearly, as Fire says, a violation of the First Amendment. The conviction is clearly a violation of the First Amendment. And they say even the, quote, fighting words doctrine wouldn't apply in this case because she is not saying anything that is obviously intended to, quote, provoke an immediate violent reaction.

That's not what's happening. It's not like, you know, saying exactly what, what the fighting words doctrine. I mean, it's already vague enough, but, you know, saying, I'm going to, like, why don't you beat the, whatever, like, I don't even need to get into the specifics because I'm not a legal expert, but you know what I'm saying with the quote fighting words, as it's called doctrine. That's not, we read all of the quotes that's not involved in what it says there. So it probably, even as far as says, if it had a pulse, would not even apply in the Hendricks case. So let's then put Matt Walsh's reaction up on the screen. He's been tweeting a lot about this. And he said, I've noticed a lot of conservative influencers

not saying much about the Shiloh Hendrix case, even though it's one of the most flagrant and clear-cut First Amendment violations we've seen. I guess they're afraid they'll be called woke right or whatever, really pathetic display. The reason I thought this was a useful post to discuss is that I agree and disagree with Matt Walsh. On the one hand, you just saw there. Fire is not afraid of being called woke right. They're a speech organization. They came out and said the speech is objectionable, but it is protected and it is important. It's not just protected, but it's actually important that we point out its protected speech so that we don't slip away from our speech rights in this country and become what's happened to the UK, become what's happened to Canada, become what's

happened in a lot of parts of Europe. We don't want that here in the United States. This is precious, and we should guard it jealously. I totally agree with that. And I don't know if there are people on the right avoiding the Hendricks case because they don't want to look with their quote unquote woke right. They don't want to look like they are kind of white

identitarians. I don't know if that's the case. But I did also want to say, we don't have to make a martyr out of Shiloh Hendricks. Right. And I have seen some coverage of the case from the right. that's honestly gets way too close to the line of treating Hendricks herself like a martyr,

as though, you know, there's something that in some way she is sacrificing for a greater good, not just on speech issues, but on like assimilation and cultural issues. And I think that does honestly a real disservice to the people who are dealing with some genuine assimilation issues. this was Rochester, Minnesota, you know, Minneapolis, Minnesota, St. Cloud, Minnesota. There are all kinds of places where there are real assimilation challenges and have never in their lives thought of uttering this word in public to a black person. And you don't have to take this as representative of that problem unless you're saying it's going to become inevitable that more

situations like this arise because human beings are bad. And when they are frustrated about bad things happening to them and injustice, then sometimes they turn to injustice and to doing bad things to other people. That's a different argument, though. So again, it's not really a disagreement with Matt so much as it is to say, I don't know that this case necessarily needs to be a let's say I don't know that this case necessarily needs to be treated as one where Shiloh Hendricks is a martyr so much as it is clearly a canary in the coal mine and a dangerous precedent if it's not overturned and an example of exactly what we don't want to happen in the United States which is that you have people because of what they literally because of what they said

getting probation and a $1,000 fine, and what they said was an offensive slur, not even provoking, not even close to intentionally provoking violence or anything in that ballpark. It's not in that ballpark at all, not a close call on that front. So it's troubling.

There's no question about it, but it's not easy because of social media to kind of hit that nuance, which is why I think podcasting is great, but this is part of the, strangeness of living in 2026 that this interaction in a park in Rochester, Minnesota, in a very meta sense, as you hear the person in the video recording it, saying, well, let's see what the internet has to say about all of this. They are jerked out of this physical moment in Rochester,

Minnesota and into international debate, certainly national debate, and then into the court system, but into the court of public opinion around the country. And nobody knows them, will ever meet them who's talking about this case, nobody has the neighborhood context, the community context, nobody particularly cares all that much about the characters here. It's internet follow. for another day. And it's also the type of content primed to go viral, as you can tell the man in the moment understood, because it plays on our extreme emotions. He sort of knew probably that some people would be so disgusted, extremely disgusted, and it would get retweets because of that. It would pick up virality because of that. And other people might respond then by saying,

well, the baby stole her applesauce. Or do you know what's happened in Minnesota? Do you have the assimilation problems that they've had in Minnesota? And what gets lost in all of that is, I guess, it's really hard to convey priorities on social media, right? Like, how big of an issue should this be? Because you can't convey, it should be a moderate issue and have any kind of audience.

for saying that. It's still the right thing to say if that's what you believe. And I guess that's what I'm doing here. So this probably won't do great on social media, but the point remains. I think there's sometimes a really difficult line between martyrizing a person he gets caught up in a case like this, and then saying the case itself is disgusting and wrong. And I'm not actually accused of Matt Walsh of doing any of this. This is reactions I've seen from some other folks that sort of tow the line of valorizing Shiloh Hendricks. And I think that's wrong. I think the assimilation problems are totally understandable. Most people aren't reacting to them by shouting the N-word at a little kid and then saying it right into the camera. My interpretation of why Hendricks did that

is she kind of knew she was caught and guilty and was lashing out to sort of prove, you're attacking me, but I was the one who had something stolen from me, so I don't care, right? Like, that's where I think it came from. But to call a little kid, I mean, it's just so many people are dealing with these challenges without resorting or letting that hate kind of bubble up and spew out from them in a way like that. So I also don't want to do a disservice to the people who are reacting in much more. more kind and charitable ways, even while intensely fighting injustice and wrongs, like the rampant fraud in Minnesota, the abuse of taxpayer funding in Minnesota, the abuse of people's

charity and kindness in Minnesota, the efforts to downplay it. You can do it both at the same time. But it's really hard to do that on social media because it's not a great place for nuance. All right. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to tonight's edition of After Party. We're going to be back on Wednesday with Michael Malice and that is always fun. Thanks so much for tuning in. Please do subscribe if you haven't yet. It's the best way to help the show. Subscribe on YouTube, like, comment, all of that. Thank you so, so much. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast and we'll see you back here with more After Party on Wednesday night.