After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Golden Globes Snub Lie, Meghan Markle’s PR Move, with Maureen Callahan, PLUS 'Narcissistic' Crockett Campaign

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Maureen Callahan, Host of "The Nerve with Maureen Callahan," and they open with a discussion about the phony scandal involving the Golden Globes and conservative podcasts, explaining how the award shows really work. Then the conversation turns to Sydney Sweeney’s ultra-sanitized PR statement responding to backlash over her American Eagle ad, entertainment journalists’ desperate attempts to win over celebrities, and what’s going on between Taylor Swift and Blake Lively. Next Emily and Maureen take on the sad story of Meghan Markle and her estranged father and Maureen then reveals the sick story that’s being discussed behind the scenes, plus the new Netflix docuseries, “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” and RFKJ’s latest Olivia Nuzzi drama. Emily rounds out the show with a look at Texas Rep Jasmine Crockett’s ‘narcissistic’ Senate campaign, and why Americans need to worry that U.K.-style mass tracking could be coming to a city near you.Masa Chips: Ready to give MASA or Vandy a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to http://masachips.com/AFTERPARTY and using code AFTERPARTY PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229 Unplugged: Switching is simple, Visit https://Unplugged.com/EMILY and order your UP phone today! 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. I almost actually started head-banging to the music tonight because this is technically my second after-party of the evening. I mentioned on Monday's show that the great Ryan Grimm and I were going to be debating Robbie Suave, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, and the reason crew on Big Tech tonight in D.C. Just want to thank everybody who came out. some after party fans in the audience appreciate it we did win the debate i stopped by the after party i made ryan do a shot of vodka with me uh and so this is i guess if it's after the after

party it's the hotel lobby so we're in the hotel lobby tonight not just after party make sure to give us a subscription if you haven't yet subscribe on the youtube channel subscribe wherever you get your podcasts you can only get happy hour on the podcast feed that's where i talk to all of you via the questions you send in to emily at double maker media dot com or the after party, Emily, Instagram. The great Maureen Callahan is here tonight. I'm so excited. I'm going to bring her in in just one moment.

We do have a big show. There's a ton, a ton of news, as always. Megan broke some news, actually, on the Megan Kelly show today, talking about the media narrative that somehow Megan was snubbed by the Golden Globes. That's not true. We're going to bring you the real story, and I'm really excited to get Maureen's reaction to the first. facts in that case because I think there's a broader conversation to be had here about how these

things still matter, whether these things still matter in 2025. We're going to talk about Sidney. We're going to talk about Diddy. I'm very excited to talk about Diddy. And you know we're going to be talking about Megan Markle, who is back in the news because it's a day that ends in why. I'm going to talk a little bit about a great Jasmine Crockett appearance on CNN, true masterclass 10 out of 10 from future Senator Crockett. And we're going to get into a crazy biometric story out of the United Kingdom. Now, before we bring in Marine, I have to talk about my favorite thing in the world. You know what that is.

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All right, we are joined tonight by Marine Council. Callahan, host of The Nerve with Maureen Callahan, who I have been waiting to get back on After Party for so long. Maureen, thank you for spending the evening here on After Party. Thank you for having me, Emily. I brought my cocktail of vodka, well, vodka and club soda. You said you made someone take a vodka shot. What's your vodka?

I'm a Tito's person. Same. Titos? Yeah. I like a bite. American vodka. Yes. Yes. Now, to be fair, I think they gave me a real vodka because I ordered a shot at

karaoke bar. What's real vodka? Is that just like... Like the shittiest that they had at the bar. Ooh, that's like well vodka. Like yeah, ooh. You don't want it. Like lower shelf, bottom shelf. Emily, you need to make friends with the bartenders. It was a random karaoke bar in my defense. I don't really hang out at karaoke bars, Marine. I don't know about you. It's not my thing. Not my scene. It's not my scene either. But let's start with Megan. I don't think a karaoke bar is probably Megan's scene either. Neither are the

golden globes as it turns out oh you're talking about the good megan megan with a why you're so right i should clarify because we're talking about megan with a why and not the duchess of sussex the former duchess of the artist formerly known as the duchess of sussex which we'll get to in just a moment but i actually think to set the tone for this conversation starting with the good megan um megan kelly's news on the golden globes today is a really interesting place to start because because it gets at this conversation more broadly about Hollywood's waning power. And I'm very curious to get your take on this, Maureen, because the media was reporting. I saw an entertainment weekly headline, for example, that said Megan and others had been

snubbed by the Golden Globes. Turns out, as Megan explained on the Megan Kelly show today, it wasn't a snub. They withdrew from contention because Megan wanted nothing to do with the Golden Globes. Let's go ahead and wrote this video. It was brought to my attention by someone, connected with this whole system, that if you want to actually be considered, you have to go talk to the Golden Globes people. The whole thing was so bizarre because, number one, I had zero interest in their stupid awards. I've made the point repeatedly on this show that I came up under the Roger Ales era where we at Fox were not even allowed to submit for any kind of an award. And he just

didn't believe in the system because he knew it was run by leftists and that it was for leftists. What we had our producers do was withdraw our name from consideration. So it was no mystery to us that we would be not actually nominated because we told them thanks but no thanks. Now all the headlines because they hate conservative media is snubbed. Snubbed, no, no. Hey, Marine, so if the nerve were nominated for a Golden Globe, which of course it should be, but if that were to happen. is this the right call? And we can have this conversation because I think, you know, Megan and Andrew Claven were talking about Ben Shapiro's decision to seek the award, you know, getting a billboard and all of that and respectfully disagreed with it. I think it's just genuinely an interesting conversation about whether it's worth it for people kind of outside the gatekeepers control to want the gatekeepers sort of prestige awards. That's an interesting question, Emily. You know, first of all, thank you, as always, for the kind words about the nerve.

It explains, you know, I was in L.A. a couple of weeks ago, drive, get in my Uber going to L.A.X. And I saw this enormous billboard for Ben Shapiro's show. Like, Emily, enormous. And it literally, it was like on the side of like a huge building, what passes for a skyscraper out there. And it was just, it said like Ben in like big red, like B-E-N, all lowercase in his face. And I was like, what is this? This is so strange. Like his podcast has plenty of, like, visibility.

He doesn't need to be doing this. I didn't know it was part of a Globes campaign, allegedly, I would think. And, you know, it's funny because we were talking on the nerve this week. The Globe Awards were announced, the Globes, rather, were announced on Monday. And it was kind of like, first of all, I used to, I was the kind of person who every Oscar season, I had a friend every year we would go, he and I to the movies, and see all the nominated movies. Like, it was a thing. It was like a real cultural thing.

It felt like it mattered. And then it was like, on Monday, it was like, what? The Golden Globes are happening? They were announced today. Oh, let me go take a look. I haven't heard of 90% of these movies. And I consume an enormous amount of culture. Enormous.

And what's funny to me is like one of our current woodshed residence is one Timothy Shalameh, who we call Timothy Shama Lama Ding Dong. and he really wants it. He wants the globe and then he wants that Oscar and he's going after it in a very desperate way and this is the best performance

he's ever given. He says it's in Marty Supreme his movie about underground ping pong trust me, it's this campaigning. Can I actually stop you on that point? Because I find this is interesting because we were doing Megan Kelly

wrap-up show in Sirius XM today and a lot of people were calling in being like they didn't know about the campaign element. And Megan kind of started explaining that but nobody's in a better position to explain what that actually means to you Megan referred to it as a dog and pony show but it's this kissing of the ring you have to pay money to get a table you have to like really go to all the parties rub all of the elbows of the

celebrities and Megan felt like uncomfortable this puts you in a position where you're like sucking up to powerful people that you cover and that is such inside baseball that i feel like it's a story that doesn't get told a lot but you've seen that up close well with with the golden globes in particular it used to be really like pay to play you know You know, and you used to be able to pretty much, like, purchase your award, and it was kind of a big joke, and that was the whole thing. And now people really, they take it seriously because the Globes have sort of positioned themselves as the Oscars little brother or little sister. But listening to her talk was very interesting because she, because really, she said something that was also adjacent to this. Because to campaign in that town to get an Oscar means you have to sort of play ball with them politically.

you have to sort of sidle up to their ethos, their way of thinking, their values, or what passes for their values. And she was saying something about, you know, she's been in those rooms. When she first came on the nerve, she told a great story about having been at the Met Gala and going into the bathroom and being disgusted with what was going on in there. Like, why am I here without a wind towards like drive-by attempts to see if Megan could like, you know, hack it with her bunch of bullshit, you know, because like Megan was fighting with Trump at the time. And then she said, you know, it's a dangerous thing and you'll never fully be embraced

by them. And she said, I think MTG, Marjorie Taylor Green, this is not going to end well for her because she's currently having her sort of quote unquote embrace on the left. Now, if what passes for an embrace on the left is sitting down with 60 minutes and having the octogenarian Leslie Stahl scold you and say, I'm going to need you to do these three things. Like, Rosamund Pike at the end of Gone Girl to Ben Affleck. Like, you want to avoid the electric chair? I'm going to need you to do these three things in front of our Nancy Grace Monkeh to get through that.

You know what I mean? Like, MTG is sitting there like, I'm supposed to apologize to you. So I thought Megan's encapsulation of the whole thing was perfect. I mean, I couldn't. She said it. She said it all. You have to go in there. You have to act like you want it.

before you know it, you probably really do want it because you've put in all this emotional energy and time and money and you've convinced yourself that it actually matters. All that matters is cultural relevancy, which is something that Megan Kelly has and the Golden Globes do not. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And it reminds me of the Sydney Sweeney story I wanted to talk to you about because Sydney Sweeney gave a, what's the right word for this, like, antiseptic PR statement to People magazine that people ran as an exclusive, uh, saying, you know, Sydney Sweeney

weighs, weighs in on the backlash, the American Eagle, jeans ad. And the headline is quoting Sydney Sweeney saying, I'm against hate. We didn't know that. Uh, Sydney Sweeney says, quote, many have assigned motives and labels to me that just aren't true. Uh, and it's the most, like, you can just tell every single letter has been workshoped by lawyers and PR types. But, um, It also just reminds me to ask you, Marine. One of the things I think you're so sharp on is like, this speaks to the relationship between Sydney, Sweeney and Hollywood, I think,

that she felt compelled to come out. And again, I kind of kissed the ring because this is Sydney Sweeney Inc. This is a business. And they're trying to sell jeans to teenage girls who are pretty liberal. So she comes in a couple months later and is like, listen, don't worry about it.

What's going on here? Well, she's had two movies that tanked, and one of those movies was supposed to be an Oscar-Bate movie. Because she gained a lot of weight, she put on some ugly prosthetics, and she's playing a lesbian boxer. You know, she maybe should have, like, had another kind of prosthetic or played, like, I don't know what she needs to do, but she was completely snubbed. Everybody knows why. Secondly, she's dating Scooter Braun. Yes.

And that guy knows his way around this industry. And I would bet he probably had something to do with this. But thirdly, now that I'm thinking about it, I kind of feel like Sidney Sweeney's statement to people is a bit of a troll. Because really, think about it, Emily. Her statement is I'm against hate. Right. Right. Who isn't? Right.

That's a good point. And she's not saying I renounce X, Y, Z, or I apologize, as far as I'm seeing, there's no apology here. We're just sort of making a sort of. of trollish, obvious thing like, hey, Hollywood, don't kill my career in the cradle. I'm still a young woman with a lot of talent and, you know, don't cancel me. Let me ask me about this. This might seem to inside basebally, but we were talking about earlier, Megan's decision not to go for a Golden Globe. And I mean, I'm just kind of fascinated by this question of how entertainment journalists in what's seen as kind of a lower stakes industry than like being a war correspondent and i guess maybe rightfully so

although i still think entertainment has really high stakes um and your reporting proves that but it's so easy in entertainment to like slip into like people magazine running this as an exclusive like give me a freaking break like it's so they're just putting it on a silver platter and running a press release for sydney sweeney even though i agree with you marian that i think this might have been a troll it's like how do entertainment journalists um maintain a distance. They don't, right? Like, the mainstream ones don't. There's no, there's no distance whatsoever. So there's no skepticism. I'm going to take a little bit of issue with your comparison to entertainment journalism and war correspondence. Because I like to say

over at the nerve that I put on my flack jacket. Yep. And I go out there in the trenches and I come back so that the troublemakers don't have to engage in this bullshit. But so like I keep my hands in on like everything that is really difficult to watch, such as the Access Hollywoods, the Entertainment Tonight's, the Today Shows, I read all the tabloids, I read all the blogs. Tabloids or tabloids, real tabloids are a little bit more oppositional, but if you watch an Access or an Entertainment Tonight, you see these correspondents who are often failed actors themselves.

Yep. Like catalog models who got a job because they can look into the camera and read Promptor and they really, really, really want to be friends with these people. And you can see this very uncomfortable dynamic, constantly going on, where it's like, hey man, hey man, I see you on the red carpet, right? But like, in real life, like, you know, it's really, it's kind of like watching those tears of high school where it's like, you know, the popular kids, the cool kids sort of abide the kids who really want to be in with their group for a minute

because people are watching, but then they're going to move on to their private, private after VIP party. And that's why the nerve exists really, because we're the real talk about fake people. We're the real talk about why Timothy Shama-a-Ding-dong is probably campaigning himself right out of that Oscar, you know? Does that happen if you go too hard in the paint? Yes. Turns people off. Yes. And you can, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio had to wait quite a long time for that Oscar.

And to get that Oscar, you know what he had to do, Emily? Not be directed by Martin Scorsese in any number of films or give an outstanding performance in The Departed that to this day breaks my heart. He had to leak a fake story that while shooting the Revenant, he was actually raped by a bear. That's right. Wait, he leaked that?

Yeah. Allegedly, I mean, it came from his camp. It got electrified, drudge report. The entire country was really curious. How did this rape happen? Where? Where was the crew? Exactly how is Leo violated?

Was he airlifted out? I mean, I have a lot of questions about it still to this day. What do you read into? I had the same thought about Scooter Braun when I saw the statement, but what do you read into a Scooter Braun and maybe the broader Sydney-Sweeney-Inck team thinking that in 2025 they still have to kind of grovel after the controversy? Is this about selling jeans? American Eagles seemed to be perfectly happy with Sydney-Sweeney.

and they didn't seem to suffer a ton of backlash. Their stock price went up, although they quickly then released a new campaign starring Martha Stewart, I think, to sort of scrub those decks. So what's going on? I mean, it's 2025. I mean, Scooter Braun is a PR animal. What is he doing, groveling on this? Or trolling?

I think that they're reading the tea leaves. I think they're, you know, looking at the weather veins. I think that in the wake of two flops, and in the wake of backlash that depicted Sidney Sweeney as a eugenics master, Nazi adjacent, refusing to renounce her Republican family, that I think that they think that her career, which really has yet to fully get aloft, like to fully, for her to fully realize her potential that they had to do something. They had to make some sort of a gesture.

And I am sure they are also trying to position her as a high profile presenter at the Oscars. You know, it's rare, you know, it's, it's increasingly rare, Emily, and these are the smart ones, the celebrities who refuse to get political. I can think of, I mean, often Tom Cruise does not get political. And it's incredibly smart. I think Matthew McConaughey, really has not gotten political. As far as I can tell, he's come out after, you know, the mass shooting at Evalde, that tragic school shooting. Yeah.

And he sort of makes a little bit of- He flirts with politics, but in turn, he's not going to let it jeopardize his acting career, no way. I don't know how Sandra Bullock votes, I could guess, but I've never heard her say. Oh, that's such a good point about, and that's just like a generation prior, which is very interesting. Yeah. Now, this conversation about Sydney Sweeney reminds me of the Rolling Stone story that published today about Taylor Swift being potentially the victim of what Rolling Stone says. A media firm, it's called G-U-D-E-A, which maybe you pronounce it Goudier, I don't know. They note that online discussion of Taylor's new album, quote, turned extreme in ways that many found bewildering.

There were social media posts accusing Swift of implicitly endorsing the MAGA movement, tradwife, gender norms, and even white supremacy, dog whistle references. And that last part in particular, also kind of what Sidney got. And Rolling Stone reports that this research firm says, quote, a behavioral or they're a behavioral intelligence startup. They said in a white paper examining more than 24,000 posts and 18,000 accounts across 14 digital platforms between October 4 and October 18, shared first with Rolling Stone. The firm concluded that just 3.77% of accounts drove 28% of the conversation around Swift and the album during that period. This cluster of evidently coordinated accounts

pushed the most inflammatory Swift content, including conspiracy theories about her supposed Nazi illusions, callouts for theoretical amygotize, et cetera, et cetera. So, Marine, what do you make of this report? Is this legit? We're journalists getting duped by this? Is this astro-turf? And if so, have you seen it before?

What do you think? Yeah, we've seen it before. I mean, I think the FBI should open an investigation and trace that URL right over to Blake Lively's, Tribeca penthouse. That's what I was thinking, right? Yes. Who better? Wasn't it down to Blake? I'm trying to keep my scandals on track, but it was it Justin Baldoni who claimed that Blake orchestrated a smear campaign against him that began with the New York Times, unfact-checked allegedly, right? Okay, so that's suspect number one, number one. It's also a wild thing to do given that, um,

came out in 2024 for Kamala Harris like we know where she stands she made it quite clear she actually a white supremacist why why it seems it makes no sense to me none of it makes you can't listen if everybody's a white supremacist then nobody is a white supremacist right but it's catnip for people magazine who I'm sure covered this and covered all the complaints about Sidney Sweeney and before Sydney Sweeney groveled to them like I'm sure they were you know happy to pimp out those headlines. Sure, because Sidney, they believe is MAGA. They think Sydney's MAGA, so she's got it coming. They know that Taylor is a dyed-in-the-wold dem, you know, and so they're just going to be friendly to her. And also, Taylor's just, like, Taylor Swift,

Inc. dominates everyone. Like, you can't alienate her. But if you're Blake lively, you would know that one way to make people uncomfortable about giving Taylor Swift good press would be to make her seem MAGA. Oh, that's a great point. That's a great. great point i love that i love it i i think this theory of the case is bang on emily oh well it's my honor to have proffered at then let's talk about the bad megan megan markle because she's in another sad sad situation with her father i hate when the uh dad's storyline gets brought up in the megan markle context because it's just awful uh this is f1 this is a people magazine headline Megan Markle gets a letter safely in hands of her dad, Thomas Markle, after his emergency leg amputation spokesman confirms.

Again, this is so sad. Apparently, there's been a daily mail journalist posted up whose friends with Thomas Markle. You're going to know way more about this than I do, Maureen. And the daily mail journalist says, hey, we're genuine friends. Megan Markle didn't want to send a note, I guess, to her father who had a leg amputation. Because there was a daily mail journalist there, they said they finally got it. What the hell is happening in this story? Is it another case of Megan Markle turning on her father?

What is happening? So we've been covering this, you know, a TikTok over the nerve. What's going on with this? And so first of all, that people headline, which I love. The letter arrives, quote, unquote, safely in his hands. Can confirm. So he didn't have his hands amputated. It was a leg, number one.

He's laid up in a hospital bed. How else would it arrive in his hands unsafely? He wouldn't lose it. He wouldn't drop it, right? How far could he drop it onto his tummy? Get out. I love it. The florid Megan Markle statement, you know, through a battery of systems, we managed to, you know,

get that correspondence from Los Angeles over to the Philippines safely. It is now in his hands and he can do it. First of all, this is so antitherto. like any actual human being is like you like what are they taught what's going on here you hear that your father is had an emergency amputation in a hospital in the philippines right um i would think your first thing would be you would reach out via text the immediacy of a text message now if she's that worried about digital security surely she is familiar with WhatsApp isn't her dimwit of a husband like the heads of like better up or something some online

mental health, like thing that companies use or something. I don't know. So there's that. And then, you know, so I'm just going to, I'm going to jump to what I think is really going on because about eight days elapsed before she sent that, that note. And in those eight days, she was the subject of an unrelenting drumbeat of public repudiation and media scorn that was like, what the F is wrong with this woman. The only thing this man really did, as far as we know, was staged some paparazzi photos.

he's lost a limb in a hospital and I'm sorry but if you're a disgraced royal living in America and you can pick up the phone and anyone's going to answer the call. If I'm her, I've got the top medical specialists in America on the phone with my father's team over in the Philippines and then I'm finding out when he's safe enough to fly and then I'm bringing him back to America where he's going to rehab here and I'm going to make sure even if we don't get along that because I have the means, he's going to live out the rest of his days comfort with 24-7 nursing care. That's what I'm going to do.

I'm not going to send a bunch of carrier pigeons over to the Philippines with my note written in calligraphy, which surely contains some really bad puns, like, hope you're back on your feet again soon. You know what I'm saying? Oh, no. She would. She would. And then so our theory that we're working with on the nerve is the thing that media people are

discussing amongst ourselves behind closed doors, which nobody's been saying out loud, but over at the nerve, we're saying it out loud. I think Megan's game plan all along has been to wait until her father dies and then come out and say, guess what? He sexually abused me. And that's why I can never speak to him. And don't you guys all feel really bad now? Now I can say my truth.

And we're saying if that's true, which none of us believe over at the Nerve, say it now while your father is still alive and can defend himself. Because, you know, Kinsey Schofield, who's one of our regular guests at the Nerve, who is an extremely well-sourced American Royal Correspondent, It tells me that Megan's mother had kept up a speaking relationship with Thomas Markle well after Megan cut him off. So if there's any, if this is her plan, she better think twice, just my opinion. Do you think, has she alluded to that?

Is there truth to it? What makes you go there? I've been talking to many people about this. Lady Colin Campbell, I don't know if you're familiar with her. She has her own YouTube channel. written books on the Royals, she herself is an aristocrat. She says that when she was writing her book on Harry and Megan, she was approached by, I'm going to say, quote unquote, emissaries from Camp Sussex saying that this was implying, I'm going to say implying that this was the reason why

Megan had no relationship with her father, that she had been, quote, unquote, interfered with by him. And Lady Colin Campbell dismissed this out of hand and refused to print it. Oh. Oh, well, that's very interesting. So picking up on the tea leaves a bit. So, you know, and this is a woman who has a history, in my opinion, of telling whoppers, of telling lies. The Royals are racist. I was suicidal and pregnant, and I was told I couldn't get mental help.

Is it that much further of a leap, really? Hmm, that's super, super interesting. Oh, what a sad, sad story. Speaking of sad stories, actually, I have to get your take on the Diddy documentary that is, I started watching it. It's pretty interesting. What's fascinating is how 50 Cent who produced the movie got his hands on this video footage. Now, if people need to refresh their memories, I actually had to refresh my memory. own memory on this. They have a long-standing beef because 50 cent has been throwing barbs at

Diddy forever about Biggie, about having something to do with Biggie. And that is a focus of the documentary. And I'm wondering, Maureen, if you can kind of bring us in a little bit on what might be happening behind the scenes, because this is wild. Well, 50 Cent has always had it out for Sean Combs. He gave an interview, I think right before the trial or during the trial. And he said, you know, I'm working on this documentary about Diddy and he's not going to like it. And I never wanted anything to do with him because when I first got in the game,

Sean Combs was suddenly like cold calling me and being like, want to go shopping with me? And 50 Cent was like, and you know, no offense to the gay community. But he was like, that's some gay shit and I don't want to do it. Yeah, he called it fruity. Yeah. And, you know, he was basically like,

we all know Sean Combs loves gay sex. You just read the court testimony. It's all over the place. Clearly hates women, beat the shit out of Cassie all the time. But, you know, it's been conventional wisdom in the hip-hop community for many, many years that Sean Combs was behind the killing of Tupac Shakur and behind the killing of Biggie Smalls, who was about to leave him, leave Bad Boy Records. Is there smoking gun anywhere?

I mean, I'm not talking about the documentary, but. I mean, the documentary is building a pretty persuasive case. I haven't finished all of it. But 50 cent getting his hands on this is interesting in and of itself. Do you think we'll ever know the answer to these questions? I don't think so. I think Sean Combs is a very dangerous guy. I can't believe the sentence he got.

I cannot believe he got like two and a half years tops. He was trying to intimidate witnesses from behind bars. I think it is completely within. You know, actually, Violetta Wallace, Viola Wallace, if I'm saying it correctly, Biggie's mom, she died not too long ago. And she, before she went to her grave, said, I think Sean Combs had something to do with it. Oh, wow. Yeah.

That's fascinating. I mean, the documentary is very, very interesting. Is it worth it? Because, you know, our producer Marlena started it. And she said she was having trouble with like the beginning because it's, it's, it felt like we were starting at like, Sean Combs was born in, you know. And like I personally prefer biography where like you're dropping me down in the middle of the action, you know? How is it?

Well, it definitely starts with a, uh, in media res. It starts with found footage. I should say, quote unquote, found footage from, uh, him like on the eve of the trial talking to his attorney and really laying into his attorney about his bad PR strategy. So I feel like you would, you would like it, Maureen, of anyone, You would like it. You know who should call Sean Combs, who's got plenty of time on his hands? Sidney Sweeney. I was going to say Scooter Braun.

He probably already has. He probably already has. Actually, the Scooter Brun-Din-Ditty relationship might not be so great because of Justin Bieber. Justin, poor Justin. Not that we know anything, but I mean, yeah, that was one of the more heartbreaking things to witness. Justin Bieber's sort of public decompensation as all of this stuff about Sean Combs was. was coming to light. Yeah.

Well, last in a room, before I let you run, I got to ask you about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., getting a question from the New York Post about, with the post headline up, about Olivia Nezzi while he was at the Reagan National Airport, Sean, not Sean Combs, but Sean Duffy, event where they were doing pull-ups. It was a sight to behold. I mean, Sean Duffy's daughter, Paloma just, like, whipped out 10 pull-ups. It was unreal. I don't know how you can do pull-ups.

I've never been able to do pull-ups. do one and in an airport i mean my goodness uh but they're not at all they're they're totally secure in their masculinity clearly uh the post headline said that uh rfk junior shunned the reporter and glared at the reporter uh he's not going to get away with not answering these questions i mean Cheryl's still on a book tour uh and has been you know getting some questions about her disappointment with the kennedy or has been giving answers about her disappointment with the family and all of that this is i mean you're beat maurine what's Oh, it is my beat. It's my beat. You know, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. has taken the, there's a

playbook that Kennedy men have. And what you do when your mistress becomes inconvenient is you first you call her crazy and then you call her a stalker and then you say you have no idea what the F she's talking about. And, you know, he's able to get away with this, I do think, because Olivia Newsie, her book has tanked. Vanity Fares dropped her. She's made herself radioactive. And her ex-fiancee, Ryan Liza, buried her in his substack, as did her other ex-keith Olberman. But Liza more consequentially because it went to her lack of ethics as a journalist and he basically accused her of using her position to get Intel from Trump, give it to Bobby during 24.

He alleges that she commissioned an illustrator for a New York magazine profile of Trump and had this illustrator smuggle in a tape recorder as the illustrator was working with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. You know, all manner of things that make her completely unhirable as a journey. journalist ever again. So yeah, he can totally get away with it being like, who's that never heard of her, you know? Is it true in Newsie's case, Nessie's case, that she might be a stalker? Like, what's your read before you run? Like, what's your read on the truth? My read is that everybody involved in this story is terrible, and it's wonderful that they all found each other. It's a good read. Yeah, it's beautiful, actually, when you think about it.

That's nice. It's a fairy tale ending. Yeah, good. Stay among yourselves. Stay amongst yourselves. It's truly an American ganto. America, the title, oh, my God, Emily, have you read the book? Hell no, I haven't read the book. Do you have the book? No, should I? I kind of want to. I feel like as a media person, you got to have the book because you never know down the line

when you may have to pull it out and quote from it. Like, it's just a good thing to have on hand, you know? Like, I don't know if you, I see your books behind you. I don't know how you organize them, if they're by genre or alphabetized. Oh, really? Yeah. No. I have a whole celebrity memoir section.

I don't think this would be celebrity memoir. I love that. This would be more in like I would put this book next to like the politician by John Edwards' former like campaign manager. I forgot she wrote a book. I think it was a dude. I think it was a guy. Oh, manager. Oh, I was talking about the, the, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, Riel Hunter, the mistress.

Yeah. Did she write a book? No, no, but Elizabeth Edwards also write a book? Oh, I'm sure she did. It's got to be. in the campaign manager's book where I will leave with this. It is the unforgettable scene where Elizabeth Edwards, who apparently really was a monster,

like she was sick, but she was like a monster to everybody on the campaign. Not saying she deserved what happened to her at all. She discovers that her husband, the used car salesman running for president, has been having an affair, which is videographer who he met on the sidewalk in New York City. Very Bobby Kennedy Jr., always getting mugged in New York City. Anyway, he like exits the vehicle and she goes flying after him down the road and she like rips open her shirt and exposes like her breasts.

I don't know whether she was wearing a bra or not. She's going like, look at me. Look at me. Like this. I mean, this was a political book beyond. To John Edwards. To John Edwards in the middle of the street. You know, he's cheating on you and you have cancer.

How you can stay emotionally invested in that. I have no idea. But yeah. Anyway, that's where I would put that book. I put it next to the politician. John, mother effing Edwards. All right. I didn't realize he had that level of game.

Maureen Callahan, host of the nerve with Maureen Callahan. I can keep doing this for three hours. Thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me, Emily. Amazing. All right. By the way, if you Google and Colter, Elizabeth Edwards, Chris Matthews,

you get an incredible result. Pop that into YouTube. pop that into YouTube, you get a great episode of Hardball, which was like outdoors on a college campus. And Elizabeth Edwards calls in to confront Anne Coulter. You'll never see anything like it. Okay, before there's more. Over the years, I have been clear about this.

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announcement. She is entered, as you already know, the Texas Democratic Senate primary, hoping to take on John Cornyn or possibly Ken Paxton. There is a Republican primary in this race, but she goes up against James Tala Rico, also a very splashy candidate that a lot of, let's just say, Democratic consultants think might be their answer to Trump 2.0. He talks about scripture, he alludes to populism. I think the real story of this is that you have roughly two corporate-aligned Democrats, one that is throwing the norms out the window, the rhetorical norms out the window, just like Donald Trump has, but we'll see how Jasmine Crockett can pull it off. Nobody can really pull it off. And then you have Tala Rico, who's running a Biden-esque campaign about how

important it is to, you know, maintain the norms of civility and whatever, you know, Biden's case that was obviously the yes, but, you know, it's a, it's a lane to run in. And that's the lane Tala Rico is running in. So Jasmine Crockett goes on CNN. Talks to Jake Tapper. Here's what happens. Let's watch this. In a December 2024, Vanity Fair profile, you talked about quote, and I'm going to read a lot of the quote, just to put it in the context, Quote, all the complexities between the Latino community, the immigration thing has always been something that has perplexed me about this community. It's basically like, I fought to get here, but I left y'all where I left y'all, and I want no more y'all to come here. If I wanted to be with y'all, I would stay with y'all, but I don't want y'all come into my new home. It almost reminds me of what people would talk about when they would talk about kind of like slave mentality, and the hate that some slaves would have for themselves. It's almost like a slave mentality that they have. Now, about the time that that was published last year, around a million Latino voters in Texas were voting for Trump.

Do they all have slave mentality? No, and that's not what that said at all, to be clear. It did not say that every Latino has that type of mentality. No, no, but the ones that vote for people who believe in strong or Trump's immigration policies. So I don't believe that the people that voted for Trump believe in what they're actually getting. She doesn't believe that the people who voted for Trump

believe in what they're actually getting. So what she's saying is that you Latinos are too dumb to know that that Trump is playing you. You guys are just all idiots. Jasmine Crockett, Congresswoman, she's got this under control. She's telling you what you're actually getting, but you, and you can't actually even parse the language there because it doesn't make sense. She's saying they don't believe in what they believe they're actually getting. borderline indecipherable. But let's give it a go here and assume what she means is that they're getting something different from what they say they believe in, what they believe they believe in. Donald Trump is delivering something different. That is not a winning message

in the state of Texas where a whole lot of Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley. For instance, hated being called Latin X by establishment Democrats found it very paternalistic, hated being told that they weren't supposed to like Trump because they had to vote Democrat, hated being told, for example, that they must love illegal immigration because they're Hispanic. This is just one great example. There are many, but one great example of Jasmine Crockett being honestly a disaster. I mean, a story broke today from notice, which is kind of funny if you haven't seen it yet, covered that Republicans astro-turfed Jasmine Crockett into the Senate primary. I confirm the story today. This is true. They knew that if they started asking pollsters

to include Jasmine Crockett when they were questioning people about who should get into the Senate primary, she is a known quantity, right? Like she has higher name recognition than other people in the state, certainly more than in Tau Rico. And so when you know you have, those two things together, you toss Crockett into the mix and you know she's going to get high poll numbers and that as a narcissist, obviously as a narcissist, Jasmine Crockett is going to be very persuaded, very persuaded by these numbers. Indeed, Crockett in her announcement speech said she was persuaded by these numbers. She went on a podcast with Aaron Parnas and he asked, you know, why she thinks she's the better pick to take on Tala Rico. This was for

yesterday, why she's the better pick than Talarico to take on Cornyn or Kempaxon, whoever it may be, this is part of Jasmine Crockett's response. There was a reason that I entered the race, and it wasn't because of James Tala Rico. It was because of Jasmine Crockett. I mean, you can't, you can't argue with it. You can't argue with it, but clearly the Republican establishment played Jasmine Crockett like a fiddle, knew that she would be an albatross to hang around vulnerable Democratic candidates for the rest of the cycle, asking them to answer for wild stuff that Jasmine Crockett says, like Latinos have a slave mentality. The Republicans ran a campaign in 2010 that was like Fire Pelosi. And it actually matters in

swing districts. If you can start making candidates have to answer for maybe it's mom Johnny, although Trump maybe made that a little bit difficult, but Jasmine Crockett, make them answer for Nancy Pelosi is San Francisco elite liberal. Do you stand with Nancy Pelosi on this? Nancy Pelosi said that. Now, Crockett isn't exactly the same as a House majority leader or speaker of that, right, like she's not on the same level as Nancy Pelosi. So who knows how helpful it will be. But here you have a high profile Democrat who is now going to be all over the media for the next 11 months saying stuff like Latinos have a slave mentality, then trying to clean it up in a way that is arguably more hilarious than the original mistake. So welcome to the race, Jasmine Crockett.

Already going super well for you. But I thought this video my friend Ryan Graham put out was very, very interesting too, because Crockett's rhetorical norm breaking, has made people think of her as kind of squad adjacent. Think of her as a populist because she's kind of a rhetorical populist. She talks like some people will associate with populism, right? Because populism is about kind of challenging the system and the establishment. And she does that with the way that she's willing to say crazy stuff about the right in particular. But that's true of Marjor Taylor Green, you know,

calling Nancy Pelosi at one point a bitch, right? Like, Marjorie Taylor Green did that. She broke a lot of norms. Rhetorically broke a lot of norms. She was a populist in substance as well. So is Jasmine Crockett? No, let's take a look at Ryan's video. I covered her first race in 2020.

Crypto guys are going around the country. They were going after anybody that they thought was going to regulate them. And they were supporting anybody they thought would be friendly. And multiple people on her campaign told me, that she just said, look, what do I have to do? Just tell me. And they're like, well, if you sign this policy statement and post it on your website, you know, they won't go after you and they'll probably give you a lot of money.

She's like, cool, do it. That same campaign, she also attacked her Democratic opponent for taking corporate pack money, bragging that she had taken no corporate pack money. Within months of that, she started taking corporate pack money. And since then, has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars on it. She went to visit Israel. on a trip paid for by APEC. There she is. And has overwhelmingly just voted the party line when it comes to sending weapons to Israel. So when it comes to corporate power, crypto, Israel,

she's a very standard Democrat. We do, by the way, we should add. So all kinds of fun stuff happening with Jasmine Crockett that are going to make this primary. I think really fascinating. There's probably an argument, Tala Rico is more Bernie Linder can make the case that he's more Bernie aligned. I keep referring to Tala Rico. I mean to say Timu Richie Cunningham, his formal name at least on this show. But he probably is,

I mean, I'm going to give him the edge at this point. Name recognition is very powerful in low turnout races, like a Democratic primary. But this is going to be a there's going to be a lot of money spent in this race for sure. And Jasmine Crockett is going to be all over media. I mean, she's done a media tour just in the last

24 or so hours. So that's really going to be everywhere. And the story coming down to Republicans goading Jasmine Crockett into that race with polls. And then Jasmine Crockett coming out and saying, I didn't get into the race because of James Taurico got into the race because of Jasmine Crockett tied up with a bow. I mean, it's perfect. Stick a fork in it. So it's so perfect.

It's so perfect. She is so transparently narcissistic that Republicans can play her like a fiddle to the detritory. to the detriment of Democrats. So enjoy, I hope the Democrats enjoy this primary bid. It is going to be a fun one to watch, though, because I think of that Talarico, Crockett clash on rhetoric is going to be fascinating. Now, I'll be remiss if I didn't talk about the biometric story

out of the United Kingdom. I want to combine it with a broader conversation about digital ID as well. I don't know if you've seen this. We might as well just start with the headline. headline here. Let's go ahead and put this BBC headline up. Facial recognition could be used more widely by police under plans. All right, what might those plans be? I have a lot, a lot more on this, including a truly hilarious press release for the UK government. But before we continue,

I do want to show you something fascinating on this very topic. So this is the upphone from unplug.com. I've been to it for the past week, actually really for the past month. If you see this dashboard here, let me pull it up on the screen. It's got a privacy dashboard like literally right on the, let me put it up towards the camera, right when you open it up. And I can see right now that it's blocked 10 trackers today. And it's awesome. It's literally right there. It doesn't show up super well on the camera, but I'm looking at it right now. And it's fantastic that you're actually able to see that. That's 10 people, 10 apps that were trying to harvest my data, build profiles,

track my location. Now, if you imagine that you are a political journalist, but don't just have to think of yourself that way. Every one of those block trackers is someone who could potentially trying to be trying to build intelligence on you, what you're reading, who you're talking to, what campaigns you're researching. Think about that. And then think about it, you know, of its matters to a political journalist like myself, right? But think about that for the average person, too. Think of the various ways that could be weaponized down the line in circumstances that we don't even think about right now.

I mean, this is data that's going to be accessible 10, 20 years into the future by the government or somebody who buys it from private data brokers. And there are many of those private data brokers. So like I said, every one of those black trackers is someone who's trying to build intelligence on me. Let's just like make it even personal here. What I'm reading, who I'm talking to, what campaigns I've been researching, and the Upphone shows you exactly which apps are trying to spy on you, and then it blocks them in real time.

It lets you track them. So if you work in this business or you care about what could happen with your data, just go to unplugged.com. Visit unplugged.com slash Emily and get $25 off a phone case with a purchase of a phone. And look at these things. They are so sleek. They're very, very easy to use as well, easy to transfer from an iPhone. Learn more and order your up phone today.

That's unplugged.com slash Emily because your life should be yours, not theirs. Speaking of which, I have to put this press release up on the screen. I find it so profoundly disturbing. This is from, I found this on the website of the British government. You can see there, it's from the home office.

It was published on December 4th, 2025. This is about the BBC story, the headline that we were just talking about, but it's the press release the government put out. Government pledges to ramp up facial recognition and biometrics. Just, I'm going to stop right there. The operative word in that press release is pledges. The government of the United Kingdom is pledging to ramp up recognition and biometrics. That is a headline right out of Brave New World, right? This is, uh, Rod Dreher often makes a between Orwell, 1984 and Brave New World.

Brave New World is the people being coaxed into a state in which they willingly submit themselves to levels of tyranny and surveillance, for example, control, state control. And when you have the government not even hiding, not even hiding their plans for mass surveillance, but actually bragging about it and pledging to, quote, ramp it up, that is a sick society. You know that the society is sick when the government brags about that. So let me go back here a little bit to the BBC stories. You have all the details on what's actually happening with the biometrics. So it says the government, quote, has not made clear what situations it was considering expanding facial recognition use into.

But these may include locating illegal migrants on the run. officials believe the technology could also help to identify and arrest prisoners released by mistake and would only be used in time-limited focused deployments. Yeah, that's what they always say. Any new laws informed by the consultation would take about two years to be passed by Parliament, the Home Office said. So it's not as though this is happening tomorrow, but this also comes amid Kirstarmer's push for digital ID. And I don't know if you have been following that, but he says it's going to be encrypted, don't worry about it. Here's the Electronic Frontier Foundation talking about this a little bit.

They explained the scheme, according to the PM, quote, cut the FAF and providing people's identities by creating a virtual ID on personal devices with information like people's name, date of birth, nationality, or residency status, and photo to verify their right to live and work in the country. Now, EFF, which does great work on this stuff, accuses him of mission creep and says, according to Starmer, quote, you will not be able to work in the UK if you do not have a digital ID. It's as simple as that. Now, this is a problem that a lot of libertarians have brought up with E-Verify, for example. And I don't think those claims are entirely unfounded, although it's a bit different than this level of digital ID. But I do want to just, again, point out that Starmer is bragging about this. And in both cases, the digital ID and the biometric ramping up, what are they doing? They're talking about this in the context of stopping illegal migration. That is chilling in the context of American politics, where over the course of a few years of the Biden administration, at least 8 million people came in, largest surge, as the New York Times has written since Ellis Island, extremely rapid and extremely. high volume. There is no way for us to know right now exactly who got into this country.

And of course, theoretically in the right hands, who wouldn't want the government to have very powerful tools to figure out exactly who came into the country, how to track them down and get them out if they're bad? Who wouldn't want the government to have the ability to get the bad guys out of here? This is a trap. let as many people as possible into the country in just a few years time and then demand access to digital IDs and biometrics. In fact, brag about it because you have scared the population into what sacrificing their freedom for the sake of convenience or safety. And that's what they're talking about in both of these cases. Oh, how great it is to have your digital ID just at your at your fingertips.

You don't have to carry all this stuff anymore, get in and out. And this technology is going to get even more sophisticated. Facial recognition, eyeballs at the subway, you have no idea where this is going and how quickly it's going there. But that's what I think particularly frightening is the UK government is not hiding this. The UK government is, quote, pledging to do this. They're promising you they're going to keep you safe with this completely, you know, sci-fi Orwellian technology that I do think makes Dreher's point very well about us living in

Brave New World rather than living in 1984 because we're all being willingly coerced or we're being coerced, that's an oxymoron, but we're being coerced into willingly giving up our own freedoms because we want to make this, we're so scared and the threats are so significant that we choose, because you're people who love your children, love your communities, want people to be safe, don't want to be inundated with horrors, you choose security and convenience over freedom, and then you're the frog in the boiling pot, right?

You wake up one day, you look around, you're like, wow, all of this power is concentrated in the hands of. So if you're a few people, and it's a public-private partnership, and, you know, here in the United States, we have the Fourth Amendment, that I would argue our government is just like routinely, brazenly numbing as to violations of every single day. But that's just like with NSA privileges. Imagine when this escalates to the government promising, promising that they're going to ramp up biometric tracking, promising.

Don't you worry, digital ID is coming. We will know where everybody is at every time. We'll be able to match it. I mean, American big tech companies have actually been like marketing. Reuters did a great investigation on this in September, have over the years marketed their own technology to China as perfect addition to the surveillance state, as a utility in the Chinese tool belt

to monitor its own civilians. And so don't think those companies wouldn't make that money here. Right? They want to make that money here. We know that. They're in already deep public-private partnerships with the government. What does that mean? If you're a defense contractor and you have a lot of business with the government,

what are you going to do to keep that business with the government when they come asking for this keystroke data? For example, we don't know what Google is doing with keystroke data because they're not transparent about it. In the U.S., that is. And that's all being built up into our vast reservoir that creates the contours of your daily life for these massive corporations that work in partnership with the government. I mean, it's just, it's happened very quickly. And I think this story out of the UK highlights how it's escalating further at a rapid clip as well. So it's something to watch, be aware of. It is absolutely coming for the United States.

States. At some point, we're going to be asked even more forcefully than we already have been to sacrifice our freedom for the sake of security. And some of it will be because elites already made us less safe and then tried to force us at the metaphorical barrel of a gun. It's not so metaphorical for some people, you know, Lake and Riley, for example, and her family to choose between security and freedom and to create conditions that make it easier for us to choose security and convenience over freedom. It's happening. It's going to come here, hopefully never in the sense that our government is pledging and promising and bragging about doing this to us. Thankfully, the U.S. is different than the U.K. That's kind of our whole thing, of course.

So hopefully it doesn't come to that, but this stuff is happening very quickly. And we all to be very, very vigilant and aware and ready to push back against it. Thank you very much for tuning into this edition of AfterParty. It was my second afterparty. But make sure to shoot me an email, Emily at devilmaicaremedia.com. We've got a happy hour that I'm going to record tomorrow, and it will be out on Friday on the podcast feed. So subscribe to the podcast feed. If you want to get happy hour right in your feed, subscribe on YouTube. We appreciate it. It helps us so, so much. We have some great guests coming up for you in the next few weeks. Thanks for tuning in.

We will be back with more after-party on Monday. See you then.