After Party with Emily Jashinsky - "Happy Hour": 2028 Predictions, Fauci's Legacy, and Why Moral Clarity Matters: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

On this week's edition of "Happy Hour," Emily Jashinsky begins by responding to an email about Megan Rapinoe and gender ideology before diving into a thoughtful discussion on Christianity, Stoicism, and why moral clarity is persuasive. She also revisits the Shiloh Hendricks case, explains why free speech remains one of the defining issues in American politics, and reflects on why writing continues to be her favorite form of journalism. Emily shares her thoughts on the 2028 Republican presidential race, whether JD Vance is President Trump's political heir, and what questions remain about a potential Vance presidency. She discusses the current state of America, including downward mobility, inflation, organized labor, and cultural resentment. Emily also offers her take on Wisconsin's governor's race, DSA candidates, and rounds out the show with some final thoughts on Anthony Fauci's legacy following his appearance on Capitol Hill. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back to another edition of Happy Hour. Thanks for being here with us, everyone. As always, Happy Hour is a special edition of AfterParty. We do every Friday here on the podcast feed. I answer actually live, your questions, life to tape. I should say, the questions you send in to Emily at Doublemaycaremedia.com throughout the week. And I think it's just more entertaining that way. As I always say, you can kind of hopefully hear the wheels turning for better or for worse.

for worse, and sometimes I should say it is indeed the latter, but I appreciate it. As always, if you haven't subscribed over on the YouTube feed, that is one of the most helpful things you can do to assist the show. Help us keep doing our independent journalism. We really appreciate

it. Comments, reviews, those all go a really long way, more than you would think, actually. So it's all greatly appreciated, as is your ongoing support for the show. So let's dive in to this week's emails. All right. This is from Amber, who says,

Megan Rapino is an idiot. It's already a requirement in Washington State for any student that wants to play in school sports to have had physical within the previous 12 months. A doctor confirms sex at that checkup. There's no, quote, unquote, extra test that has to be administered. She's a terribly lost person. I'm kind of sorry I called her an idiot,

because I don't want my... I don't let my kids use that word, but it's a technical term, so I'll allow it. In the 1800, she would have been marked insane, imbecile, or idiot on the census, woke mind virus or TDS milk, most likely both. Thanks for the email, Amber. I think this is probably in reference to the conversation we had on last week's Wednesday edition of the show about Megan Rapino on The View talking about extra tests that people have to go through. I don't know if she was talking about Washington State or the Olympics or those sort of

professional league requirements. I'm not sure. But your point about Washington State certainly makes sense. That's a point well taken, well taken. She does seem like a terribly lost person. She seems like, I think we mentioned this on the show, to me, she seems like a true believer in gender theory. And maybe that means she's mid to low IQ because she just is incapable of grasping the incoherencies.

Or maybe it just means she's fully postmodern. and has a belief in differing versions of truth and differing versions of identity that aren't rooted in one single capital T truth. That's probably the more charitable explanation. But your sentiment is understandable. This one is from John who says, a week or so ago, you made a comment that Christians who lose their faith often migrate to stoicism. And I think that is often true, but it doesn't really work that way. The metaphysics of stoicism is what justifies the moral code. and without the metaphysics, you have something like Christian morals without Christ, and Stoicism, as originally conceived by Zeno and Chrysippus, and later consolidated by epic.

Oh my gosh, I'm so bad about this. Epictetus. You can tell I went to public school. Seneca and Aurelius, there is a logos, the word shades of John 1-1, yes. The logos in stoicism is the order and structure of the universe, the meaning in existence. In stoicism, we are required to accept our fate because we explicitly acknowledge that we don't know the master plan. We don't know the big picture. We can only try to live virtuously.

Side note, you should just, I am embarrassed to say how long it took me to learn how to pronounce Escalis. I'll keep going here. If you try to remove this metaphysical logos, you are left with a modern self-help version of stoicism. Crush LinkedIn and get waterboard abs. The Marcus Aurelius way. Keep an eye out for volume two, how Seneca can help you meal prep like. a trad wife. This is hilarious, John. Some great modern stoic advocates have revealed this, although not always intentionally, one of the men responsible for stoicism's 21st century

resurgence is Massimo. Paglucci, however, as an atheist who was always struggling to justify stoicism without the logos in a material world with no metaphysical realm. For many years, he maintained that you could, but in the end, there's no reason to choose stoicism's version of virtue over any other. If you remove the metaphysical structure, just as Christianity is dry and hollow without Christ. He has now abandoned stoicism and endorses skepticism as a philosophical approach. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that if a Christian loses faith in the divinity of Christ and this moves towards stoicism, he or she will either face the same problem or adopt the self-help version, then gruel indeed. John, you said that clearly much better than I could, but this is,

I believe, a response to Nietzsche, when we were talking on last week's episode and the week before about Nietzsche because somebody wrote in about whether Christianity is possible without Christ. And obviously, I said that as a Christian, I have to answer no. But I think went into how some atheists particularly look to the Stoics and say that actually Christianity is built on Stoicism and you can have natural law with Stoicism. You don't need Christianity or Judaism, as some folks would argue. But I think you're right, John, that. that when you peel back all of these layers, you do end up in exactly the same place.

As you mentioned, Paglucci, quote, was always struggling to justify stoicism without the logos in a material world with no metaphysical realm. I think you put that really, really well. And this discussion over, I think, three or four weeks now, has, through your emails, has just been so rich and deep. I appreciated everyone. John, that answer is fantastic. Thank you so much for writing in. Jack says, you did a fantastic job talking about this. Oh, this is about the Shiloh Hendricks case.

On your Monday show, you've been getting fantastic questions as of late, so please feel free to skip this and answer someone else. Oh, I see. There was another email here that asked questions on the Shiloh Hendricks case ruling. Whereas Khan Inc. I see a political class unbothered in a podcast class that's more interested in foreign countries. Old Tucker would be all over this in New Tucker's MIA. Huh, that's interesting.

I think Tucker is scheduled to come back on After Party in the next few weeks. So I don't know if it'll make sense to talk to him about Shiloh Hendricks, but maybe that's worth a question about sort of how he determines what's worth conversation on his show on a kind of weekly or monthly or even daily basis. Because it is right now really heavy on foreign policy, really heavy on tech policy, faith. So that's actually kind of an interesting question, just in a meta sense. I try not to do too much questions, too many questions, I should say, about media to people in the media, because it's not as interesting to people outside of media as it is to people inside of media like me. And I try to be really conscious of how that bubble influences the way incorrectly. I think a lot of journalists approach their job. You get involved in so many meta stories.

It's easy to get involved in so many meta stories that just lose their potency with the public, the more you kind of probe through different media layers. So I try not to do too much for that, but sometimes I think it is genuinely interesting and useful for everybody. So that might be a good question. And it's interesting because the response that I read on what was that Monday show was from the foundation for individual rights and expression. So it was from fire, which, you know, in times of. there's a lot of left censorship gets pegged as a right group. And in times when there's some right censorship gets pegged as a left group, the Trump administration cases like Rumaesa Oz Turk and unfortunately some overreaches after Charlie Kirk's tragic death meant that it was

getting pegged as kind of a left group. But that is interesting because they had a great explanation for where this failed legally and the dangers of allowing it to fail legally. I think Shaila Hendricks has a great appeal case, pretty obviously has a great and important appeal case about the quote-unquote fighting words. But we'll see. I mean, I didn't see a lot of people in the conservative nonprofit space. And this was the point Matt Walsh was raising that we talked about on Monday show. And I think maybe that is because, you know, you genuinely want to make sure it's still stigmatized to go around calling little kids the N-word and anyone the N-word, of course. On the other hand, you want to make sure that it's stigmatized for prosecutors to pursue cases that threaten our free speech. So it's not an easy one, but what is easy, genuinely is easy, is to say what fire said. That's not hard. And it is important. So it's an interesting point, Jack, an interesting point.

Let's see here. Hank says, I just read your article on Susan Collins' political survival skills. Good job. It made me wonder whether your preference was for television podcasts or the written word. My media experience is limited to local newspapers. So that's all I know. You seem looser happier on after party, but more serious with your columns. Is that because writing seems more permanent to you? Just curious. This is a great question, Hank. And I have a very honest answer. I prefer writing to everything else by a country mile. It's not even close. If I could organize my day to day, it would be around writing. Because I actually do agree with Neil Postman that the print-based epistemology leads itself to, and leads you as a thinker to a more structured and rigorous form of reporting and argumentation. And with podcasting, you can write scripts. Like, people may remember on breaking points and then back at the hill rising, I used to do way more monologues. And that's because at first at Rising, I was basically doing that job full time. And then I would adapt them into columns for the Federalist.

But that can translate. The problem is right now, it's not good on podcast to be overly scripted because people want to hear, I think, more and more, exactly what we're doing right now on this show, which is, talking through the tough questions without being overly scripted. So the happy medium is kind of to prep a lot and research a lot and have the information in front of you as best you can. Another reason why I like doing this, honestly, without the camera is that as we go through, I can be, you probably hear me doing this. You can probably hear me typing. I go and pick up articles that I think are useful and redirect quotes from them. And so I think that's the happy medium. I don't think it's perfect, But just me personally, I got into journalism.

There are two kinds of people in journalism with a rare third category. But there are people who get into it because they love reporting. There are people who get into it because they love writing. And then the exceptional third category is people who love both and are good at both. I very much fall into the category of somebody who's in this because I love writing. And so in an ideal world, all I would be doing is writing. If I were just doing the writing, I would certainly miss the talking and some of the broadcasting too, because that's fun. I find conversation really invigorating, and I like kind of talking through

tough issues, so I don't mind doing it at all. But if I had my preference, I love, I just genuinely love writing. It's not that I don't love podcasting. But I think the form of writing is healthier, even though it's going out of style. That's fine. We'll find ways, you know, people who want to do things responsibly will find ways to do it. The question is whether the, how big the market is for that going forward and how big the market is will determine the cultural influence and the political influence that has. So we'll see. But yes, my reference is definitely writing. I'm also really introverted, which people don't know. That's true of actually a lot of people in media in a way that would surprise, I think, folks. But for me, I'm super, super, super introverted. So it takes a lot of

the like social battery to fire up and and do podcasting and talking. So anyway, let's see. Casey says, what do you think will be the most likely outcome for Republican nominee for 2028? Vance, Rubio Trump, or one of his sons, maybe even Tucker. If J.D. Vance were to get the nomination, what kind of politician do you think he would be? Would he go full tech bro with his palantir connections? Would he be a good Republican president? What do you think of his character based off what Sager has told you? I know they used to be friends and now they're not based on what he said, do you think J.D. Vance is just doing everything Trump tells him to and never insulting Trump in order to put himself in the best position to be president or an upcoming

election? What do you think of the potential nominees at this point in time? And what do you think of unions? Thank you so much, Casey. This is a question that everybody's talking about here in D.C. I was just at a lunch today where we were talking about this. I think the people who are in the know understand that Donald Trump sees J.D. Vance as his heir. He's having fun questioning people right now about Trump versus Rubio. He personally gets along with Rubio better than Bance because they just kind of come from a slightly more similar worldview and J.D. comes from this sort of weird tech world that doesn't. And it is really, really policy focused and kind of scholarly in a way that, you know, Rubio is a very deep thinker and he's, I think, very high IQ. But he also is more

of a politician than Vance is. But I don't think it's serious right now that Trump is really considering. And Jonathan Swan said as much on Ryan Gurdowski's piece this week. Jonathan Swan is probably the most informed reporter on Trump in the world, to be honest. And I know he's at the New York Times, but he's actually also one of the best reporters in the business. He's very fair and honest. And I can just say that from personal interactions. The guy is deeply aware of what's happening in the White House, which is unusual for people in positions like the one he's in. But he confirmed as much in his conversation with Ryan Gurdaski on Ryan's podcast. So I just, I think it's being overcomplicated by people who are wishcasting onto Rubio because they feel like they know what to expect more

from Rubio. I think some of those people actually downplay the amount that Rubio changed after 2016. I mean, people forget he wrote a whole book about the lessons that he learned about the electorate, about the American political system. I think it was called Decades of Decadence. I did a podcast with him at the time that I should go back and listen to. But on that book. But yeah, it's being played up, I think, to a degree that is disproportionate to the actual debate in Trump's mind. Now, with the electorate, I continue to think DeSantis is the sleeper candidate right now

because he's been quietly working on distinguishing himself with, tech issues, anticipating advanced candidacy, and just on domestic policy issues in general. But, you know, trying out really specific innovative policy ideas in a state laboratory, essentially. I think that's a conscious effort, particularly on tech stuff, protecting kids and looking at data centers differently. So anyway, I think he is a dark horse right now that could, the problem is he has the stench of losing to Trump in a pretty embarrassing way back in 2024 on him. And with that comes the baggage of some of his closest allies also being really critical of Trump at different points of time that gets him pegged as kind of a

establishment or anti-Trump type. You can make that argument about him or you can build that argument about him. So he has plenty of problems. Don't get me wrong. I just think he's been carving out an interesting lane. And we don't know. I always say it depends on how the Trump presidency ends, right? God forbid, there's another Butler situation. But if that were to happen, God forbid, Trump becomes a martyr for a generation or more. And MAGA becomes impossible to squelch. and there are still some people who think they might have a chance at dividing MAGA in a way that squelches it for the nomination in 2028. But even if that happened, what you're not going to do is end populism. If anything, you know, if the MAGA base or Republican populists are splintered and you end up with an establishment GOP person in 2028, that builds resentment.

And that resentment keeps building and building. You're not going to deal with it by suppressing it. It has to be dealt with through argumentation and through a kind of serious, rigorous political debate process. And it just seems to me like the opponents of Republican populism are not prepared to win that debate. So my guess is that it would be a more populist person to emerge. my guess right now, if I were depraved enough to bet on Kalshi, I would probably go in the Vance direction. I think Rubio is a more talented politician. I think he has a better shot in a general election than J.D. Vance, to be honest. But yeah, I don't know. On the Vance

character question, I know a lot of people who know Vance very well and speak very highly of his character. I know even Rod Dreher on Jeremy Boring's show this week was saying he believes how J.D. dealt with Turning Point USA after the death of Charlie Kirk was nothing short of very admirable. And the support that he offered to Erica and the organization was nothing short of very admirable. And they're no longer friends. So, you know, I think there are some indications that Vance is a sincere and decent person.

I've only met him once or twice personally. but I do know a lot of people. I don't actually know. I haven't even, I'm sure Sagar has talked about on the show. I don't know what the extent of his personal relationship with Vance is. My experience with him is that he is very serious. He's a very serious person. This is a near person.

But at the same time, it's always jarring to see public versus private. And some people can remain good while making really bad decisions publicly that defile their character. And so that, to me, is still an open question. Still an open question. I don't know what would happen. It does concern me that the accelerationists would have way too much influence on advanced presidency at a time when we can't really afford to be slipping on things like IVF policy,

just as American Christians, frankly, or on the safety of, you know, generative AI, those sorts of things. So that definitely concerns me. The same thing with, like, crypto regulations. I find that to be really concerning as well. And I don't know what would happen in advanced presidency. I think he would, or also even like H-1Bs, which, you know, tech people tend to be pretty bad on. So I don't know, to be honest, it's always hard to tell from a vice president what the president would look like. what the presidency would look like because their job right now is to to represent the president. And that was, you know, Kamala Harris is big problem.

She fell apart in a question from Sunny Hosten, which seems impossible to do. With Kamala, all things are possible, apparently. But when you represent the president, it's just, it's hard to see through. You know, his Senate record was promising. He was genuinely brave and heterodox in the Republican Senate Congress. So on the other hand, he's been in a position of enormous power and surrounded by people with enormous power and in high stress situations. And that changes a person too.

So his Senate record can only go so far because we also now have a person who's been through four years at that point of a vice presidency. So a lot is just, I think political prognosticators have a tendency to say things are black and white or categorical. I always think it's more helpful to talk through what the questions are. So those are some of the questions that I think are outstanding. Unions, I probably mentioned this before. My dad was in a public sector union.

He was an engineer for civil engineer for the state. That was his job, like literally since he left college and in Wisconsin, those public sector engineers are part of the union. And so I was in high school when I was a senior in high school when the Act 10 got stuff happened and always had an interesting perspective, especially because my mom was a corporate HR. So I always had interesting perspectives when those, I heard interesting perspectives when those topics came up. I'm, I've written, especially back at the Federalist in support of, how do I put this? Like rank and file union members and the, I'm trying to think the best way to put this. Marco Rubio, actually this was one interesting thing he did in the kind of interim period

between 2016 and 2024. He was supportive of Amazon union workers at the Bessemer plant. And some of it was coming from the idea that Amazon workers didn't want to, rank and file Amazon workers didn't want to have to deal with Jeff Bezos's top-down DEI stupidity. Billionaire DEI nonsense. And there was no real mechanism other than finding another job for them to push back on some of these conscious conscience questions. So I always say to people on the right who are reasonably skeptical of organized labor, big labor, which I remain very skeptical of. If CEOs, people on corporate boards, human resources executives

are so depraved as to shove radical DEI policies down the throats of rank and file workers why do you believe they're not so depraved as to be exploiting and taking advantage of those workers? I think that's clearly what happens at Amazon on both sides of the coin.

And so I don't think at major corporations in a super consolidated economy, that workers have enough power. I don't think big labor has provided a great answer to that because they are also often very aligned with the cultural left on DEI and those sorts of policies. And that's been a problem for them. And my friend Bill McMorris wrote a great piece about that at the Free Beacon years ago. That's still worth reading. So, I have a mixed take. You know, I just have a really low opinion of the character of our corporate class

because, frankly, I am a Christian and I believe that wealth is corrupting. Typically, on average, wealth is corrupting, and concentrations of power with fallen man will lead to corruption and evil. And whether that's big government or big, big, business, I do think you need to have checks in place. But then that also extends to big labor, big government, big business, big labor. All the bigs, as Andrew Breitbart would say, deserve intense skepticism. So, Oren Cass, and American Compass have done good work reconceiving of the American model in ways that might resemble a little bit more of the union structure in places in Europe.

I think those ideas are interesting. I don't think the system right now is ideal by any means. But I also think in some particularly localized cases or particularly localized cases, then the unions have a point. So I'm not like broadly supportive of big labor, but also not broadly supportive of a big business. And I do think there have been times where the conservative movement is overly dismissive of organized labor representing rank and file concern. which are very real, like Amazon delivery drivers, for example, have very real cases.

So anyway, let's go on here. Steve passes along some diversity metrics about WNBA teams. Steve says, it is I, your listener who is also a huge fan of the WNBA. That's hilarious. Steve, thank you so much for continuing to keep me informed of the WNBA because I know nothing about it. And now there's so much news about the WNBA. and I'm trying to understand it as I go.

So it was great to have Jen say on the show this week. Steve says that the Golden State Valkyries ranked number one in attendance with an average of over 18,000 per game. With the Indiana fever number three at 16K per game. Wow. The value of the Valkyries as a franchise is about twice that of the fever. Valkyrie is number one at a billion dollars. Fever number three at $560 million, but they're not even in the top five WNBA teams as far as social media engagement go. and Caitlin Clark's jersey outsells LeBron James and other NBA stars with Sophie Cunningham now number two in the WMBA.

Man, this is a fascinating new world I'm becoming acquainted with. George says, thank you for answering my question last week about God and Man at Yale and academic openness at universities. It was telling that you mentioned the unofficial alliance between conservatives and classical liberals that the past decade of campus protest forge. Actually, the more classically liberal stance that conservatives took endeared me to them, seeking university students at faculty or seeing university students at faculty. faculty shut down and threatened conservative speakers. I knew at once that conservatism was a cause worth fighting for. I don't want to accuse William F. Buckley or Michael Knowles, whom you mentioned last week and who actually wrote the introduction to my copy of God and Man at Yale of hiding the ball. They state very clearly and argue in good faith that they want a good deal more of a certain

kinds of censorship. But I wonder if this kind of conservatism might backfire. Are there many people sympathetic to conservatism now only because conservatives were the recent underdogs in campus protests? In the same way that freedom of religion is the best way to protect religious practice is a strong respect for freedom of speech, the best way to protect conservatives on Democrat-dominated college campuses. Yeah, George, this is such a good question because it raises the barstool conservatism issue where you had a right coalition in 2024 bringing together social conservatives with anti-traditionalists that would be considered the kind of Dave Portnoy libertine pro-gambling pro-weed types.

And this is a political coalition, not necessarily an ideological movement coalition, like a conservative movement type coalition, because I don't think the conservative movement is going to have room for libertine pro-gambling types. But the Republican Party, if it wants power, obviously should, but then the question has to be, you know, where do the politicians on a moral level make decisions, you know, in one direction

or the other? And that's, you know, a tough, I don't know, what's the best way? A tough square to circle with any political coalition. It's, and it's always a tug of war. So in an electoral sense, if Republicans wanted to win in 2024, they obviously had to kind of make common cause with the Libertines but if this question is more like about persuasiveness that's really interesting too like what is how do you bring people into the door

of conservatism who are anti-left but not pro-conservative and that's where I don't know I mean there's a pragmatic and moral question here

about free speech right you know the the knolls take in particular is that free speech was never intended to include all obscene speech or much obscene speech it was a tool to a virtuous end that free speech is a tool to come to truth and obscenity is not a useful exercise of that tool I don't necessarily agree with Knowles on that. It sounds like I'm more aligned with you on this question, George. And I think, you know, just pragmatically in 2026, where we live in the dark world, the negative world,

as Aaron Wren would say, I cite him a lot. It's pragmatically a question of persuasiveness to say, the conservative movement should just go down X, Y, and Z and say, well, this shouldn't be allowed anyway. But in the same time, I also believe in the real. The real thing, I also believe in the concept of painting with bold colors, not pale pastels, in terms of what's actually politically persuasive. And I think right now, moral clarity is persuasive. I think right now people are looking for new structures to build, right? There's a tear it all down mentality, but I think people also want something to cling to that feels permanent and enduring. And Knowles definitely offers that. there's a real moral clarity as opposed to the kind of muddled, and I'm accusing myself of this,

anything goes approach, which is much more difficult to articulate as moral clarity, because in practice it doesn't look much like moral clarity. It looks like a kind of cacophony, or it sounds like a kind of cacophony. So I actually don't, I'm sort of torn on what's more persuasive, to be honest, because I think there is something really persuasive, especially for younger people, about offering limits. And Pollyar writes about how limits create better art.

And I think there's so much truth to that. The shots, the cinematography of the Hays Code era, astoundingly beautiful in a way that you just don't get. And she would say astoundingly, she would actually say not just beautiful, but arousing in a way that intellectually, sexually arousing, in a way that hardcore pornography could never be. And so there's something about that extended to even like speech and debate.

Now I'm really rambling. But this is a very, very tough question that George asked, just because there's so many different levels. Like, is it the pragmatic question, the moral question, and where those interact? So, you know, I always tend to fall on the side of what I think is moral, then must be made pragmatic in interesting ways, new ways. And so I'll defer to that here as well.

But as you can tell, we're thinking through this, and I'm happy to do it. Z says, oh, sends a Wall Street Journal link, says, scroll down to the part about DSA voters having a high proportion of college degrees, but also high proportion of low to midling salaries. I'm beginning and have worries about the future of America, although in the upcoming election, the Republicans holding the feet to the fire of the Democratic candidates over whether they support the DSA positions will be interesting to watch. Yeah, so this is a really interesting point, too, because those numbers, Josh Barrow posted some recently. I'm trying to pull them up. It looks like, especially if AI ends up taking out a certain number of white collar jobs, significant number of white collar jobs, it does look like, you know, as Roger A writes, a Wimar formula. Here's Nate Silver. Income and education are usually positively are usually positively correlated, but sometimes the relationship breaks down. What's the most democratic voting group in America? People with postgraduate degrees, but lower to middle incomes. Lower to middle incomes. And so you have this, yeah, and here is Derek Thompson. I was thinking of Barrow, but it was, it was Derek Thompson. Mamdani beat Cuomo by 24 points among

college voters and lost non-college by 22, a 46 point education divide. El-Sayed leads by seven among college in this poll. It's a Detroit news poll. Down 22 among non-college, 29-point divide. Platner led by 37 points among main college voters in New York Times polling, but was down 23 to Collins among non-college, 60-point divide. That is so different than the media narrative, by the way. But I think this is speaking directly to downward mobility.

Downward mobility. And that's what, to me at least, and I say this not pejoratively, just descriptively, a lot of boomers don't understand. This idea, whether you agree with it or not, it is a widespread belief among people my age and younger, that if you did the right thing, quote unquote, right thing, as you were told to do for your ticket to the middle class, you worked hard, you got into college, graduated college, that would be your ticket to the middle class. You would be able to live not just paycheck to paycheck, but pretty comfortably, and have, you know, the same kind of house your parents did and the same kind of neighborhood your parents did, hopefully

better, because that's what the American dream was conceived of, or conceived as by people my age, was always getting a little better than the generation before you. And the feeling of getting worse, even if you have a bigger TV, you feel worse if you are, you know, not able to get married at an age, that means you can have as many kids as you ultimately want to have, and then you're not able to provide for the kids in the way that you want to and have that vacation without going into debt that you were able to have as a kid. And again, you can debate the figures. I'm just saying that is the sense that people have.

And I think the reality of it is genuinely, like we were talking last week about that famous AEI chart, it is those industries that have been heavily. subsidized by the government, higher education, healthcare, where the price tag has gone up and up and up over time, housing, up and up and up over time. Meanwhile, TVs, bigger, cheaper over time. And so there's some truth that materially people are better off. And I do think there's still a path that works for many, many people. We still have agency. And if you do grind, you can often still achieve a better life, but it's not happening for everybody. And it might involve working twice as hard, which if you have a kid, you might not want to

work twice as hard. And you shouldn't necessarily have to if we care as a country about upward mobility and preventing downward mobility. And downward mobility, culturally, by the way, does build resentment. And some of that resentment is fair. Not all, but some of it. So it's just a recipe, as you say Z, for something kind of ugly. Let's see. Hank says, check out Liz Wheeler's episode 282. She does deep dive into Tucker's Evolved Thinking on Islam. Let me see.

I've watched some of Liz on this. Yeah, okay, I did actually watch this episode. I really disagreed with this episode, but I would have to go back and listen to find out why. Will said maybe you should recite some of the Fauci Diary tomorrow night. Oh, this was on Sunday, I think, in your beatnik persona. That would have been funny, actually. We did recite the Barbara Streis ad note, which, to my knowledge, I think I was the first to pull out. It jumped out to me right away.

I'm always reading these things with an eye for the weird popular culture stuff, sometimes to my great discredit. But that one, hard to ignore. This is, says, Hello, Emily. First, let me say I love your show. You're very thoughtful in your arguments. I was just watching a four-hour video by Keith Knight that outlines 64 points against socialism. The rights should really be promoting this gentleman. He's very thorough and intelligent in his points. I hope you have a great day. I have been and will continue to support you. We mean more like you. Emily, thank you so much. I appreciate that. And I can't pronounce your first name, so I'm not going to try and butcher it. But I really appreciate the note. And I will certainly respond in just one bit. Let's see here. Abe passes a lot. along some links here. Oh, it looks like one of them is unavailable now. Okay. Let's see. This is from Paul, who says some time ago when I was listening to Mike Ben's talk about the censorship industrial complex, I heard and mentioned something I hadn't heard of and looked it up. It was the McCollum memo, and it contributed to a major shift in my perspective on how and why

the citizenry is prepared for war. Robert B. Sinit's FOIA work on Admiral Yamamoto's communications did too, although I guess 9-11 had already opened the door. My question for you is, have you ever dug into the McCollum Menimo or Yamamoto messages and if so did they change your perspective. What are your thoughts? Love all your work. I followed you. Ever since you joined BP and B2, I just clicked out of the email accidentally. And between you and me, you're my favorite cast member. Thank you, Paul. I don't think that I have gone into the McCollum memos from 1940. No, I should. I'm going to keep this link open in my browser so that I can appreciate. the recommendation there. Paul. Mike says, this is a note on Fauci and skiffs. If you go into a

skiff for a briefing and then make notes in the unclassified, those notes may be fine depending on the security classification guide for the topic, which explains the restrictions, but you need to avoid collecting enough unclassified info that collectively makes inferring the classified info trivial. If you make notes that contain classified info, even if you rephrase it, you are required to do a proffer derivative classification where you group the info into paragraphs and give each paragraph a classification according to the security classification guide for the top. topic, then the notes need to be properly stored on the basis of the derivative classification you gave it. Crucially, though, those notes and that whole process about the notes need to

happen in the SCIF, but it is quite common in that sort of environment for people to bring notepads and make handwritten notes, but they're required to understand the rules. Most people, mostly people keep notepads to remind themselves of their to-do, etc. Yeah, so I raise the question of whether Fauci will be in any legal jeopardy for going into a SCIF. You can see him do this in the diary. And then seemingly outside of the SCIF, when he He is writing his email diary to himself, putting notes from the classified briefing into the diary, which was on a government computer, we now know from Robert F. Kennedy saying his people were the ones that dug up these files. But Mike's point is a good one and reveals a depth of knowledge I don't have because I've never dealt with classified information as a government employee. So the processes are really bureaucratic, and that's come up through the Trump case, the Biden case, and the Hillary Clinton case as well.

But I was just raising the kind of broader point that this could create potentially issues for him based on what was actually happening. And we don't know what was actually happening. To me, it seems like there may have been improper storage of classified information, but I actually don't know. If you're at the NIH, for example, what you're allowed then to put in your own email account, it seems obviously very hackable, and that you wouldn't want notes from the skiff there. But I also don't know if there were classifications removed when we got the emails. There are all kinds of questions. So thank you for the note there.

Mike, with some information. Let's see. Brandon says, I want to share a point I rarely hear discussed, why so many Americans feel squeezed, unable to catch up and why this is unlikely to change soon and why so many fringe political parties are catching on both sides of the aisle. The post-2020 surge in government spending and Federal Reserve money creation drove major inflation. New money flowed first to asset owners and financial markets, the classic Canelon effect, boosting wealth at the top, while consumer prices, especially shelter, rose sharply for everyone else. Real wages for many have barely recovered

or remain essentially flat after inflation. Compounding this, the unprecedented wave of illegal immigration since 2021 increased labor supply and housing demand. This holds back wage growth for competing workers, which already traditionally lag inflation while adding roughly 20 to 30% to rent and home price growth in many areas. Together, these policies created a vicious cycle. Inflation erodes purchasing power while mass immigration prevents wages from keeping pace and inflates the biggest household costs, housing, and food. I'm just going to stop right there, Brandon, and say, well said. That is concise and accurate. Brandon goes on to say, this explains why so many feel squeezed despite strong headline job numbers. Meanwhile, continued government spending only makes

it worse with seemingly no end in sight. More voices like Ray Dalio's warning about unsustainable deficits and the need to rein in spending deserve attention. People feel lost and desperate and feel let down by the establishment and the right. I'd love to hear your thoughts on air, especially why more are not paying attention to this. You know, Brandon, this raises a really good point, which is that I think more people aren't paying attention to this because the populist left is dominated by people who want more spending. They are fundamentally Keynesian, if not believers in MMT, modern monetary theory, which has lost, I think, some purchase on the left in recent years, but I do believe some of the kind of genuine, genuine people in the Barney camp aren't just Keynesian, but they are MMT

believers, especially in kind of intellectual circles, which basically means you can print as much money as you want. In short, that's an unsophisticated rendering of it. But I think that's where the populist right, I think Tucker had Ray Dalio on recently, actually, if I'm remembering correctly, let me look this up. Because the populist right, yeah, he did. Within the last year, it looks like, because the populist right then has an opening, or I do think the populist right has an opening to talk about. But it has to, again, I'm just thinking, if I were like a political consultant, God forbid, what that would look like, because it has to be careful, right? One thing we learned about the Tea Party is that it was people who were not, were

frustrated about freeloading and the way that could affect their entitlements, but did really want the government to lay off touching their Medicaid or their Social Security. And for obvious reasons, by the way, especially with Social Security, especially with Social Security. especially with Medicaid, as these healthcare prices are going like crazy. And especially after the Great Recession where people were frustrated. And the Rick Santelli point about, you know, what did he say mortgage freeloaders? No, that's the losers who were in too deep on their mortgages in the speech that spawned the Tea Party. I actually don't think the Tea Party was ever really focused on that.

I think that's what the kind of Rick Santali, Santali, CNBC media class was focused on. But I don't think your kind of grassroots Tea Party person was upset about people who were underwater on their mortgages. I think they were upset about the bailouts to the big banks, to the big guys getting the bailouts. And those sorts of policies. So anyway, all this is to say, I think the Popular Strait has a real opening to talk about how the elites and potentially even Marxist elites, if there is a new class, of DSA leadership that pushes heavy spending. I don't think you can really tar Bernie Sanders as an economic Marxist.

But some of the new ones you might be able to. Anyway, all this is to say, how the elites have spent us into a disaster that benefits the corporate freeloaders, basically, or that benefits the asset class. And it's not an easy argument to make because it's kind of wonky and you don't want to

sound like you're pushing austerity because first of all people's eyes glaze over and second of all that sounds like you're I mean it just has such a cultural connotation of anti-populism rather than and I don't know that all that's fair

some libertarians are real populists Ron Paul is a real populist but it's just that that connotation is tough to overcome. But I think this is a really good argument, Brandon, and I would be surprised if we don't see people start experimenting with it on the populist right. That's hopeful, too. Let's see. Hank says, I agree with you that Shiloh Hendrix using the racial slur in an eight-year-olds beyond the pale. No question your fears about turning her into a martyr or legitimate, but the impulse to defend her doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Many people believe with good reason that if the races were reversed, the reaction by many in media podcast world would be decidedly different. and many believe that a black mother would never have been prosecuted. The narrative then would have been more about a brave black mother defending her toddler from evil white racists. And if a white man followed that black mother to her car race baiting her, you would have been excoried as a bigot. In modern America, no honest person denies this to be true. I'm not going to list all the dishonest portrayals of racial incidents in media because it would take all day. People are tribal and they tend to defend a member of their tribe they think is being treated unfairly. It's one of the oldest human instincts, whatever the situation.

Yeah, thanks, Hank. I actually meant to, after I did that segment, I was like, ah, I should have also mention the double standard because the double standards do build resentment. I stand by my broader point about the, you know, about resisting the urge to create a martyr out of Shaila Hendrix, but at the same time, the double standard is worth mentioning because it does just breed enormous resentment. Ryan says, what are your thoughts on Jessica McBride's reporting begging Republican voters to cross over to vote for Francesca Hong in the Democratic primary because she thinks that Hong would be easier for Tom Tiffany to beat.

Jessie McBride is the owner of Wisconsin right now publication. I hadn't seen much of that. I don't know this is clear cut. I think right now I would say Tom Tiffany beats Francesca Hong. I've interviewed Tom Tiffany and actually Francesca Hong. I think Tiffany is a boring enough candidate to be the perfect foil for Francesca Hong. And I know boring sounds like an insult, but I think he comes across as kind of steady and predictable. And if Francesca Hong were more of a, let's say, what's the best way to put this?

Trying to think of a kind of more of a Bernie Sanders that doesn't have this baggage of a lot of cultural, radicalism, that then because she does have that to fund the police, et cetera, that becomes much more, and also immigration. I asked her about immigration this week and was pretty unsatisfied by her answer. And I think most Wisconsin voters would be as well. I think that just then, you know, how I, you all know, you all know that I normally think one thing Republicans are getting wrong right now is appealing to crazy people, or I'm saying, or just invoking the fact that DSA folks or whatever seem crazy and radical without offering

their own solutions. But that is a political mistake in many races. I think Andrew Cuomo made that mistake. I think Haley Stevens is kind of making that mistake in Michigan because I think voters are erring on the side of uprooting, upending the status quo right now because the status quo is not working for them. So if you tell them this other person is nuts and they're radical and they're going to change the status quo, that's not necessarily a bad thing if your other option is defending the status quo. But with Hong, and again, I'm just talking about the politics of this, not necessarily the policies, but on the politics of it, I think because she has that deeply unpopular cultural baggage, the upending of the status quo,

is not just going to come across as upending the economic status quo and the kind of political system itself, it's going to come across as like getting rid of things that people really like about the United States. So that's, I do think that actually ultimately gives Tom Tiffany an edge in a state that's tough for Republicans in a cycle that's going to be tough for Republicans. It'll probably take a lot of money. And I expect, after Hollong wins the primary, which I expect she will do,

I expect a lot of money to come in to shape her into a kind of polished Mom Donnie style candidate who is a sophisticated DSA type, rebranded, you know, like Mom Donnie, never talked in his campaign about cultural issues ever. And again, he was in a blue city where this was much easier to get away with than a purple state like Wisconsin. But that's going to be, for her, it's going to require a lot of money and a lot of polish to avoid answering those questions or to answer them in a way that does satisfy people, walking away from some of those old tweets, et cetera. This is going to be one of the most interesting races, like period in the country is going to be Hong versus Tiffany because the stakes are really high, the left really, really, really is going to want to see a DSA governor. And someone in such

a big position of power to kind of run a progressive experiment, not a progressive experiment, but to run a, like, I don't know, Marxist experiment on a statewide basis. And so it's going to be a huge deal. You're going to see Bernie Sanders probably in Wisconsin a lot. But that's a different iteration of the movement than what Sanders ran on in 2016, even though he had problems. with kind of succumbing to the pressure of the groups. I just think that cultural baggage is going to be really, really tough for her to overcome. Juxtaposed with somebody who, you know, Tiffany is an interesting bridge character in the kind of populous sense. I think he'll probably benefit from seeming a little bit more boring and maybe steady is the right term.

Anyway, I could go on about that. But Marlowe says, this episode seems to be all about the show, all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, as you like at Shakespeare, last episode 109 was peppered with Mark Halper and frustrated about the suggestion from your producers to be fun. There's a brief moment when I saw Fauci as the logical voice speaking through the fog of COVID, but I quickly sided with a Great Barrington Declaration, a stark reminder of how manipulated I was by fear and the media marketers. I hope to never be so fooled again.

I disagree with Mary Margaret O'Lahan on Trump like Imam Dani. I wonder if Trump had the gut wisdom as he is the consummate showman to appear to embrace Mom Dany in the Oval Office, knowing the rise of socialism was both horrible and a great foil for conservative values. Mom Dani was being played in the Oval Office to be held up on the campaign trail as the enemy. I can't help but wonder what if Hendricks and her child were black like the person who took the applesauce and the same appetite hurled. Would the man even had noticed or filmed her where charges be filed? Would it be going around the internet? I guess we'll never know. Can Hendricks sue to clear her record? Thanks, Marlowe. There's some really good questions here.

It sounds like you agree with Hank on the Shilohenrich's question. And it just emphasizes I should have mentioned the double standard point. Yeah, I mean, I think we know the answer to those questions mostly. But I think Hendricks is going to have a good appeal. On Mamdani, I think it's a little bit of both. I do agree with you that Trump was being strategic with Mom Dany in the Oval Office. I definitely, definitely agree with he was being strategic on that point. Yes, absolutely.

On the other hand, I think he does have a respect for Mom Donnie being clever and strategic and anti-establishment and defeating Andrew Cuomo. You know, Trump's a New York guy. So to see Mom Donnie take down Cuomo, I think he has a genuine respect for Mom Donnie. But I think he also, you know, it was kind of a game respect game moment where they were both trying to manipulate it in their favor. It was fascinating. I was there for that. It was fascinating to watch. let's see.

Oh, this is an email from James who talked to, this is about a segment we did on breaking points about the allegation that AI is buying up books essentially to plug them into the models and then shred and destroy them. And I read a tweet from somebody who said they were an owner of a used bookstore in Houston who said actually what it looks like is on their end, AI is being used to do bulk orders of books that could then be resold on Amazon for a profit. And this person said, actually, what happens in many of those cases is when the books aren't sold, they're shredded. So it ends up just as bad. So let me, with that said, read James. James's message who says, I was very involved

in the used book business a few years ago. I spent seven years running one of the bigger used online textbook sellers and have some insight about the issue with AEI companies. Buying up books. For starters, yes, it's real. I know people that are actively involved in sourcing books for developers, also, yes, they are probably going to all get shredded. Selling books is a very niche business that requires a lot of institutional knowledge to do at scale. Most of these books will be rare, but that doesn't mean they have any value. Most books don't. If they don't have value, these would be like travel guides to the greater Cincinnati area in 1996, by the way. Just an example off top of my head, but that's what James means when he says that they're

rare, but not necessarily valuable. The only practical way for the developers to make these books go away after they're done is to ship them to a recycling center. You have to wrap your head around the scale. Bulk books are often shipped in a Gaylord box. This box can hold anywhere from 800 to 1,500 books. It is physically possible to put 48 Gaylords on a 53-foot 18-wheeler trailer. If they don't weigh too much, then that number of 48 begins to go down. Let's say you average 50K books at truckload. Pretty good, right? I have been told that over the years Amazon has had 28 million individual book listings. Just one order that I know happened for a developer would have needed to be between 20 and 25 full 18 wheelers to deliver. Oh my gosh, that's crazy.

they're probably cutting the spine so they can feed the books into scanners and then recycling at all recycling books at standard practice in my career i probably recycled over a thousand trucks of books i'm no defender of big tech but i don't think they're doing anything outside of standard practice with books super interesting james i really really do appreciate that because um you know it's a niche it's a really niche topic that i definitely am curious about because there was some real and i think understandable hysteria about it. So that's that's really helpful information. All right. Let's see. Dylan says, what do you think about using government titles for people who are no longer in office? EG. calling Andrew Cuomo, Governor Cuomo, understand the concept of showing respect

for the office, but it also seems offensive to me that politicians are supposed to be public servants and they should not be entitled to a lifetime of deference from us, the mere common folk. Relatedly, Who do you think is the dumbest politician in Washington and if it's Hakeem Jeffries, who's the second dumbest? It's got to be a Hakeem Jeffries, right? It's got to be. I mean, both in terms of his politics and, or I'm sorry, both in terms of his substance and his style. His style is a great window into his substance. If you have a style that egregiously bad,

it just follows that the substance is going to be ridiculous too. So I think Hakeem is a good answer, but dumbest politician in Washington, it's just, it's honestly impossible because the House of Representatives. Well, I don't know. I mean, senators are dumb in their own way because they're so out of touch. And yeah, that's a tough one. Like if I ever to say lowest IQ, I mean, maybe it is Hakeem Jeffries. I don't know. It's too tough. The House of Representatives is a jungle. It's such a wild place.

And for good reason, by the way, because you know my perspective is that the House of Representatives should genuinely be representative. And the American people are wild. So there should be some kind of representatives of, you know, if it's a really rural district in West Virginia, I like that there's a wild representative. I think AOC is probably a representative, at least when she was first elected,

a representative example of people in her district. And again, that's when she was first elected against Joe Crowley, the downwardly mobile educated elite. But anyway, let's see. Yeah, I don't have a good answer to that because people are just, Washington also makes you dumber or at least Capitol Hill also makes you dumber

Dylan says finally I love the paragonal of the prodigal son merciful father and find it endlessly fascinating but I've also seemingly jokingly developed an economic interpretation of the parallel is about what happens when the older generations control all the resources first you have two adult children still living with them

working for their father who controls the family property in response one son decides to spend his life screwing around and blows through his resources on fleeting pleasures and the other son works hard in hope of reward from his father but becomes bitter and resentful towards both his father and the prodigal son. We can perhaps see a similar split in how young people can either choose to put their noses to the grindstone to try to achieve the same life as their parents and become aggrieved that circumstances often prevent it or spend all their time on social media,

video games at porn. I'm only half serious with this one, but would love to hear your take. No, I think that tracks on. I think that maps on to the example in a modern way. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I have to spend some time stewing on it, because that's obviously a sort of deep example to try to modernize. And of course, nothing can modernize the Gospels. There's, nor should it.

But just trying to think about it kind of structurally in the modern economy, what does it look like sometimes today. It seems fair at first blush, Dylan. Thanks for the email. Marles says, great exchange with Jennifer Say. Bob says, when I enlisted in the army in 1962, I found myself in basic infantry training during the Cuban missile crisis

and convinced we were going to Cuba. Then came the Vietnam years, where the only thing that stopped my going there was the end of my six-year term. I voted for McGovern. It was a war hero, but against that war. I remained convinced of the spirit. of most wars. For years after that, I wound up as a supporter of Republicans, which made sense for me economically. As my career progressed, I voted for Donald Trump. His advances stance on war

was part of it. Today, I will vote for every Democrat I can find come November, though I believe that party has also lost its way. Yet the Republican Party must be punished for allowing Trump to prosecute this insane war. They must be punished to send a clear, clear message. Sorry for the rant, but first I lost many of my Democratic friends for supporting Trump, and now I am losing many of my Warhawk, Republican friends can't win. Bob, I hear you. First of all, thank you for your service. Second of all, it is a tough decision for people who came into, and Tucker Carlson would fit in this bucket,

came into the Trump movement primarily because they believed he was the best, not a definitive, but the best shot at preventing a war with Iran. And we don't know how this war is going to end yet. What we do know, very clearly, is that it has not gone the way the president planned or supporters of the war have planned. And that's even by some of their own emissions, right?

That, you know, the regime wasn't as fragile as was initially thought. The Kurds did not have a chance of really coming in, although some people would debate that and say we just didn't give them enough. But anyway, on top of that, there are even supporters of the war, many supporters of the war, are really disillusioned with how it has gone and believe that the Trump administration has not prosecuted it in a way that actually made sense. And to that, I would say, how did you think Donald Trump was going to prosecute this war? It wasn't going to be like, you know, Lindsay Graham, if he were president, would have prosecuted

the war because Trump is not an ideological hawk and he's a pragmatist and so it was you know to push for a war under Trump is a different thing than pushing for a war under Lindsey Graham certainly and it's it's taking a gamble so anyway that's it's kind of a frustration that I have um but I hear you blah it's these are tough times and you know it's people are are absolutely correct to have deep personal sensitivities around the war in either direction. You know, maybe you served in the post-9-11 wars

and your friends got blown up by IEDs and you had to see it. And you want to bomb around back into the Stone Age because of that. Or you want to, you know, neutralize the current threat. That was not zero, certainly.

And is not zero, certainly. because of that, and that's fair. Maybe you come to it from a different perspective, having served, and now seeing, you know, around 20 dead Americans, gas price is getting higher, the people opposing all of this,

the regime's still in power, and you're deeply sensitive about it for those reasons. I think these, you know, it's just, it's a nasty time to be trying to have these arguments publicly and even personally. So I hear that, Bob. Let's see. Matt writes it and says, I wanted to respond to a question from last week's happy hour, which referenced Buckley's God and Man at Yale. An underappreciated part of that book comes in Buckley's 1977 introduction. He writes that in response

to the original printing, Yale organized a committee to look into his claims and recommended that Yale should educate its students on many different political and moral stances without necessarily promoting any of them. He then referenced a legal case in New Jersey, AP Smith manufacturing v. Barlow AP Smith had donated money to Princeton, and some shareholders sued the company saying that the company board had overstepped its mandate with its philanthropy. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that AP Smith did have the right to donate to Princeton because universities ensure that their students will respect American institutions and industry. Therefore, it's in AP Smith's corporate interest to donate to Princeton. Ironically, Irving Olds, the head of U.S.

Steel, sat on both the committee that recommended Yale not sponsor any particular stance and testified during the AP Smith case that universities indoctrinate students to be paid. patriotic pro-capitalist Americans. Does it seem to you as it does to me that for all the talk about campus policies, what universities actually care about is their status? When it's in vogue to not to not take a firm stance on an issue, they'll adopt a moral relativist position. When money is involved, they suddenly have a firm moral position. I think we see the pattern repeated in the tent encampment protests and ensuing political fallout from a few years ago, or am I being too cynical? You're not being too cynical, Matt. I think that's really accurate, actually. And it's kind of what I was

getting it with a duolipa segment on Wednesday show about the fashionability of coming out against banned books, actually revealing that what we're struggling to do as a country right now, as a society right now, is set appropriate boundaries for what should be mainstream, what should be in the public domain, what should be in the private domain. There were times in American history where that was easier. and I think a lot of it had to do with the post-war monoculture and mass media, you know, that's what this is actually about even thinking of God and Manate Yale as we were talking on last week's Happy Hour episode about the role of a public university.

It obviously involves the public interest, right? You would have a public university to contribute to the public good in the interest of the public. And, you know, does that involve saying that a university should necessarily create good American citizens who are invested in the United States? And then let's get back to the question, I think it was from George earlier in this episode. Are people going to be better American citizens if you cultivate an atmosphere of true free speech, including obscenity and the like, because or or you know you restrict some of that even though it's been normalized does that turn people off the system these are really difficult questions right now because we no longer agree on some of these like basic foundational principles of what a university exists to do what speech exists to do what for example

example, sexual education exists to do, thinking back to the banned book segment. So what schools are supposed to do versus what parents are supposed to do? That just used to, we used to take for granted that we agreed on some of those foundational principles or that we inherited some of those foundational agreements. and I think right now often both status and money are the wins

that blow the elites right so that's where you do see you know some universities being eager to look like they're cooperating with the Trump administration yes money was on the line but also they want to have influence and there were some genuine elite donors think of like a Bill Ackman

who were supportive of Claudia and gay and then took out took back their support of claudian gay became horrified at claudian gay because they started paying closer attention and so there was money and status on the line because uh elite circles became a bit more mixed on some of this stuff and for better and worse so i think it's you know it fills a vacuum of first principles and that's really scary right like when you have fashion filling the vacuum of first principles. It's just not as deep and powerful of a foundation. So that's another really, really interesting question. I'm sure the God and Man at Yale dialogue will continue for weeks to come on Happy Hour. Eddie says, I'm still seething over the Foucher hearings.

I'm just going to thank you for great covers this week and wishing you and your fine listeners a better weekend. Thank you, Eddie. And shout out to Jen Say for channeling a lot of people's rage. I actually thought that was kind of healthy exercise talking through some of this with somebody who shares the rage based on shared experiences with and of many people around the country. Bob says, my census fouchy is confident he won't face actual prosecution, but I can't decide if his attitude is one of mocking the committee, or if he fully believes the fantasy world, he's been selling likely both. Honestly, I thought he seemed kind of nervous.

or kind of nervous isn't the right word. I thought he seemed kind of scared. Did anyone else sense that? I sensed that. To me, he just seemed to be a little bit more... He is usually... He was smug, right? But it didn't have the same confidence

that it had in prior testimonies. Maybe that's just because he wasn't speaking, honestly. I don't know. But... He should be, I think he should be afraid of his reputation just being dragged through the mud. I doubt he expected they were about to release these files until recently. Maybe he caught wind of it somehow, or maybe he didn't know until what Friday or Saturday when they started coming up from Rand Paul.

So that would be jarring for absolutely anybody. And he's been getting all kinds of shows of support from the media as we covered. And what you're seeing privately probably pales in comparison to what he's getting publicly, probably pales in comparison to what he's been getting privately from people sending him emails and there was a paparazzi outside of his house showing him smiling and picking up flowers that have been left on his doorstep. But just having your emails revealed, your diary revealed like that is profoundly embarrassing. Again, it was public property. He's stupid enough to put it on public property. So no sympathy for him on that point whatsoever. But, you know, that would be

jarring and unsettling to anybody. And I sensed a bit of that. So even if he's not afraid of prosecution, I think there are now real going to be as hard as people try to control the narrative about COVID. I think there are now real footnotes. There's real reason for people who doubted Fauci in the past. Of course, what we've seen is the partisan doubling down on Fauci from Democrats and media. But at the same time, now they're just things that have to get covered by the press. Like, they were written up. I mean, they weren't given great attention. But that means when people go to write the history books, there are going to be New York Times articles and CBS News articles in the record about these emails and about the contrast between public and private when it came to Anthony Fauci.

And he knows that. It's not like he's getting universally great press. Those write-ups will be damaging to the narrative in the long run, to his legacy in the long run. And I think he knows that. So again, fear of prosecution. The legal stuff is really complicated. He might not be super scared about that. But I bet he is less certain of his legacy now. So anyway, another great week of questions. Thank you all so much for listening.

It means the world to me. Thank you for sending in these awesome questions. I appreciate it so much. And we're going to be back with another great week of shows on Monday. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. God bless. Thank you.