After Party with Emily Jashinsky - “Happy Hour”: Dumb Politicians, Mass Deportation Red Tape, Don Lemon, and 2028 Hopefuls: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

On this week’s edition of “Happy Hour,” Emily Jashinsky takes up issues of politics, news, and celebrities. It opens with a question about her recent appearance on “The Megyn Kelly Show,” focusing on celebrity reaction to ICE, Megyn’s disturbing mental image of Katy Perry and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and if that’s the hardest Megyn has ever made Emily laugh. Emily also takes up Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s masterful communication skills and a preview of the 2028 White House race. Emily addresses the ideological engine of the Democratic party and why it’s fiercely supportive of open borders, the bureaucratic nightmare of mass deportations, why elected officials are dumb, why Ilhan Omar has not been investigated for campaign fraud, thoughts on changing the census rules, Scott Bessent’s ties to Soros world, Soros’ links to justice system, Emily’s view of the Marxist left, why she believes Cenk Uygur is operating in good faith, if it would be awkward for Megyn Kelly and Ryan Grim to meet, and if she thinks Breaking Points has changed. Then Emily addresses the role of women in media, living in the D.C. bubble, data centers, and cars with kill switches. She wraps up this episode with her take on Don Lemon and if his personal life is relevant to the conversation about the church protest, plus Emily’s favorite person on earth. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Happy Hour. This is our special edition of After Party. Every Friday, we post a new Happy Hour where I get to talk to all of you through the great questions that you send in to Emily at Devil Maycaremedia.com. If you haven't subscribed over on the YouTube channel, please do. It helps us so much. Of course, if you're listening to this, you probably are already a podcast subscriber because we only released this for our podcast listeners in the audio feed. I love listening to podcasts like, probably most of you. So I want to do something special for people who subscribe on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Now, as a reminder, I am looking at all these questions live. I think that's the only way to make it fun. Otherwise, you know, it's too easy to self-censor and to screen out questions you don't want to look at. So I mark everything for a happy hour in my inbox and get to them while we are on the air. So let's do it. Eddie says,

what is the hardest Megan Kelly has made you laugh and was it when declaring Katie Perry and Justin Trudeau stick strictly to missionary? That is something she did on Wednesday's edition of the Megan Kelly show. We were just rounding up all these celebrities who were saying crazy things about ICE that they never extended this level of concern or showed they never extended this level of concern to the. the people caught up in the humanitarian crisis on both sides of the border during the Biden administration. And you'll be surprised to know Katie Perry is among those. Megan had a clip of them like Perry and Justin Trudeau like blinking and looking lovingly at each other across the room at Davos. And that's when she made the missionary comments. So maybe that is the hardest that I've ever laughed.

Sometimes I just am like such a I just find Megan to be so like what gets her fired up makes me laugh sometimes because it's such an amazing like when she gets fired up I just I love it so much that sometimes I laugh about that or she says really hilarious things like missionary with Justin Trudeau and Katie Perry I didn't see that coming. All right. This one is from Z who says wow just to finish her. experiencing Thursday nights podcast here on Friday morning 5 a.m. Oh, that must be Wednesday nights. Prattie, Spencer Pratt, Sidney, Brezier happening on the Hollywood sign, Nikki Minaj, and not a single mention of how healthy it is to drink cow afterbirth juice. What a great way to start the weekend. Take care and have a great weekend. Emily, thank you for all you do. Hey, Z. Yes, I haven't been doing the liquid gold voice in the cowboy colostrum commercials.

The liquid gold part isn't actually in the script anymore. so I could still be doing it but you know I was thinking when I was doing it like every show at some point this is going to have to end so I took it being you know no longer the script as an opportunity to wean myself off of it even though you know I was doing for months so all good things must come to an end

which I believe was the title of the Dawson's Creek series finale they like to use song titles for the Dawson's Creek episodes Okay, enough about that. Hank says, E.J., I like J.D., but I might have to switch my support to Rubio. That boy can talk an owl out of a tree. Rubio was testifying in front of the Senate yesterday. So that's probably where Hank is coming from here. He always does a good job testifying in front of the Senate. He is masterful at communication. He is on a Ronald Reagan level of communication excellence. And yes, he had that funny moment in the one like 2016 debate with Chris Christie where it seemed like he got stuck as a. robot. But, you know, I think it's, that was more, that was a long time ago. And he was a good communicator then. But I think he is, you know, now he's been secretary of state. And he's been on this like intellectual odyssey, you know, looking deeper into Catholicism and, and thinking about the common good and has, has now been elevated to what he's also head of the NSA. He's like acting

NSA director, Secretary of State, head of the National Archives, I think, technically, too. Others to say, he's getting even better, especially as Republicans have taken license to totally flip the script on the corporate press and on the messaging of the left and kind of lean in rather than lean out and apologize and quibble and all of that. Rubio has become, that didn't really happen until after Trump won the 2016 election. And Rubio has proved to be one of the best at doing that. All right. Marlowe says, do you believe the Democratic Party and the mainstream media need massive illegal immigration to survive? If not, why are they supporting it so fiercely? And if so, how are the rest of the country who don't support it ever going to stop it? I think the ideological

engine of the Democratic Party is why they so doggedly pursue. That is what pushes them so far to the left on immigration. And I think that that ideological engine is fiercely in favor of open borders, which again is fine. Like I have friends who have that opinion. I think it's dangerous and don't agree with it. But I have friends who believe in that. But I think the kind of like centrist Democrats get duped by the ideological engine because they are so susceptible to the activist base talking about, you know, the humanitarian angles and all of that. They're just dumb. Like a lot of elected Democrats are just dumb and cowardly. I mean, that's true of basically all politicians. Not everyone, but basically all of them. They're dumb and they're cowardly. And the ideological engine is really in favor

of very, very, very, very, very, very lax borders, like minimal borders. And that's an honest argument if you make it. But otherwise, you're pushing policies that basically, like Joe Biden is not an open borders guy. If he asked Joe Biden when he thinks about open borders, he'd probably like, ah, or I don't know. That was my Joe Biden impression. You know, he'd say no, even privately, I think. But he was duped. He was totally duped into having open border policies because he thought that they were compassionate. He thought that he was acting, you know, in a merciful way towards migrants and refugees. And at a certain point, you could be, you could accept all of the desperate people of the world into the United States. And it would obviously, obviously affect the American citizens.

And at some point, you have to have mercy and compassion towards your own citizens. That should always be paramount. It should always come first. And you should be weighing the mercy and compassion that you have for the rest of the world because there are a lot of desperate people around the rest of the world with the well-being of your own citizens who should come first and foremost. And I think a lot of those Democrats just got duped or they were too scared to say no to the open borders ideologues. So that's my take. Thanks for the question, Marlowe.

Let's see. Oh, Chris writes in to say, I was looking, I was trying to remember whose yacht. Gail King had been partying on with the Obamas while still covering the Obama's. It was David Geffin's yacht. That's right. Thank you so much for that. That was from the episode with Jenk. Let's see.

Oh, yes. This is an interesting point. Thanks for helping me recall that Scott Bessent used to work for George Soros, making the trains run on time, and helping to keep the money rolling in, apparently. It's how Scott made his money. And he says, I hope some investigative reporters working on a book about Scott and his time with George Soros and lessons learned.

I would be very interested in reading it. Yes, sir, so would I. That is such a good book idea. I'm sure some, like, journalists, like lib journalist, is probably doing that. But the problem with whatever a lip journalist cooks up is that they might not give fair shake to the possibility of that,

Scott Bessent was so deeply enmeshed in Soros world and Davos world and globalist world that he is the best possible critic of it from a sincere vantage point because he had so much of it that he was disgusted and lost faith in the system. I don't know if that's true. But I would expect, you know, the likely depiction to just be, it's all cynical, and maybe it is all cynical. I have a very hard time trusting Scott Besson because of his background. But Besson has written a decent bit over the last couple of years, but what he thinks of the American economy and interest rates and all of that. He certainly knows what he's talking about way more than I do, but he also, you know, the Argentinian bailout. This wasn't, so what, $20 billion? So in the scheme of things was a ton of money, no. But it's still a ton of money.

And it also seemed like he had some investor buddies who were going to benefit from it. So it's hard to kind of trust that it's all in the best interest, especially when you spend so much time and flip so quickly. You spend so much time in Soros World and flip to the anti-Globalist camp so quickly. He has a very good, he has very articulate defenses of his positions. he's obviously incredibly smart but I'm still you know I still think part of the story has not been polled and I'm not going to rush to judgment in one direction or the other just to say that I sort of remain skeptical but interested in Scott Besson

Mary says love your show I've wondered for years whether Democrats and Soros have insisted on putting money in liberal judges who let career criminals out with little to no consequences how is this a winning message for American citizens, seeing the anarchy in Minneapolis, I had an epiphany. The reason is so they can selectively enforce laws. That's an interesting point. That's an interesting point. Is it, you know, did they,

they definitely invested in the criminal justice system. I mean, this is one of Soros's absolute pet projects. Investing in the justice system down the, you know, the conservative movement has invested a ton in, judges, but a lot in federal judges and Supreme Court justices. Whereas it seems to me, at least, Soros has put a lot of money into the local judiciary system and criminal justice in those communities, so like municipalities and the like, state level, that sort of thing. And it was a transformation. I mean, it was an attempted transformation. We saw it in California.

and voters during the COVID era rejected it. Now, is California going to keep rejecting it? Is Philadelphia? I mean, Krasner survived, right? Are these places going to keep rejecting it? Or was that kind of a 2021 thing? I don't know. But it's kind of a sad commentary.

I mean, I feel like all law enforcement is selective at this point. And, you know, that's always been true to some extent, right? Like jaywalking, I don't think any of us believe. that, you know, should we get rid of J-lock walking laws? I probably would say no, but I would also probably say, don't lock me up every time I jump out into traffic when there's, you know, there's no one coming, right? I step out, I live in a city, so I do that all the time.

Don't lock me up every time I do that or don't find me every time I do that. But the politicization of that selective enforcement, that feels much more widespread now. And that's part of the reason I've never gotten fully on board the lawfare train unless it's warranted. Some of my friends on the right will tell you I'm weak. We'll have good fights about that. Probably some of you think that too. But I just don't want the doom spiral to proceed a pace. And I don't think the only way out is through.

I understand that, though. I think it's a good argument. And I've just never agreed with it when it's. It's when you're stretching the law, then I don't think it's fair. But on the other hand, if you're going after James Comey, go the heck after James Comey because you can find a lot of different ways that he's, you know, that he is vulnerable to prosecution. Don't, it's selective to not go after Hillary Clinton. It's selective to not go after James Comey, right? Like, it's selective either way.

So anyway, I think because you can pick some cases. there has been a lot of bad, bad, bad behavior. Because you can pick and choose those cases, you don't necessarily need to be doing the ham sand or prosecutions, as I say. Anyway, just some thoughts there. Oh, Seth Myers, who says, not that Seth Myers.

I'm older and funnier, but I have not got a TV show. It says, first off, thanks for your content. Like most people, I contain multitudes, why I pretty much strenuously disagree with you about many things. I absolutely agree on others. Also, although I am basically a Ryan Grimman, Marxist. I'm on your team regarding abortion. Go figure. That's amazing, Seth. I love, I mean,

that was, that's kind of, I have so much respect for people in that position because Christopher Hitchens was super interesting on this. Naomi Wolf has been interesting on this. Yeah, the, the, gosh, I forget what the name of the group is, like the feminist against abortion. I have, like, so much respect for people on the kind of old. old school Marxist left who have come to that conclusion on abortion. It's, it's, you, you're probably very fascinating and well read and also intellectually have a spine of steel. So that's awesome. Seth goes on to say, anyhow, you guys are great, BP, after party, et cetera. However, adverse, I am averse to truffle oil. I have an adverse reaction to it. And aversion is a dislike or feeling

of repulsion. Adverse and adversity describe opposition. I faced adversity in my career because I don't have, because I have an aversion of bullshit. Sorry, I don't mean to be pedantic. respectfully, Seth Myers. I would, like, in defense, I always am happy to take an L. I would have to see where I mixed up adverse and averse, because I'm actually skeptical that I did indeed mix up adverse and verse. I am an editor, after all, and one of my favorite aspects of journalism is editing. So, Seth, if you write back in and you find a timestamp, I will gladly take an L. I'm sure, I've, you know, I talk however many hours a day into the microphone. So I'm sure I've made mistakes. Although this one to me seems, I'm skeptical that I made this mistake. Seth also

tax out the question, have Megan and Ryan ever met? Would it be weird and awkward colliding? Would it be a weird and awkward colliding of your worlds? Ryan and I did a spot on Megan's show for which election was it? Was it? It might have been the 2022 midterms. I remember it was election night because we were in the Breaking Point studio. And Megan asked Ryan and I to come on together. And so we jumped off BP for like 20, 30 minutes and went to a, you know, a little quiet room. And we were on with MK.

And it was great. It was super fun. So I imagine, I don't know. I don't think they've ever met in person. But I imagine MKC's Ryan kind of like a similar to a Glenn Greenwald. And I was with Megan and Glenn together in San Antonio. And I think it was the first time Megan and Glenn had never met in person, which was fantastic. Like, that was awesome.

So I don't think it would be awkward at all. I think it would be great. If you're the type of person that just likes ideas and arguments, no better person to hang out with than Ryan Grimm and Megan Kelly, honestly. I really mean that. This is from Richard, who says, I think you. you for your good work. I find you on breaking points, but I had to stop listening there. I'm sure they can see how they've changed over the years. I don't know. Richard, obviously, I'm completely biased on this. I don't feel like there's been a change at breaking points. But Richard says, now I look for your own content or when you're on MK. Just a couple quick thoughts. In the 80s, when a news channel was depicted on movies or TV, it was always fictional. Now, for the sake of realism, it seems, journalists and news channels gladly show up. It seems this fuels their desire for fame rather than just doing great journalism. I assume that also means they have to, to get SAG membership, which then can influence them. Any thoughts on this?

Second, why is no one really reporting on the UN Resolution 2803? Formation of the Board of Peace seems like more than a ceremonial move. Thank you again for your great work. You know, there has been, the coverage of the Board of Peace has been more muted than it probably should have been. And actually, that probably includes me. I am not super familiar with the bureaucratic ins and outs of UN mechanics, like what it, what one thing means versus what another thing means because, you know, the UN is a tangled, tangled not. But the Board of Peace is obviously, with all of the players that have already been brought in,

has potential to be enormously significant. So I think that's a good point. The 80s, regards to the 80s news channel on movies or TV, this is a really good point. They don't have to get SAG membership, but there are a lot of, a lot of the legacy outlets, like the Post and the New York Times are unionized. And I think that does actually affect their coverage of organized labor because virtually everyone, it's hard to not be in the union. And folks who've worked in shops know that. Many of you probably know what that's like. But I think that does probably affect their coverage of organized labor. and then the Democratic Party,

although I don't think they need to be swayed too much in that direction because then again, they're all enthusiastic members of their white-collar journalism unions. So just a point on that, I don't think it's SAG. That's it.

I might have to double check on that. I don't know anybody in broadcast who's a SAG member. At least I've not heard of that. But interesting. I assume some of them are in broadcast unions, but I don't think it's specifically SAG. Anyway, I can look that up.

Your point about the depiction in Hollywood, I love. When I was, you know, growing up all the chick flicks, it was like, not all of them, but so many of them, the heroine, the protagonist was a journalist. And you loved it. Like, the TV shows did the same thing. You look at it now and you're like, oh, my gosh, these apartments in New York City, this lifestyle, it is so hilarious. But what it was reflecting, I think, was, you know, women entering the workforce and finding professions that were attractive to women. And journalism, you get to communicate and talk to other people and solve things.

Like, you're, you know, that's where I can see why it became so female-dominated. It's one of those careers that was written about by Helen Andrews and then in that wonderful compact magazine essay that went so viral. The vice president commented on it back in, what was that, December. It's one of the professions that has been very, very much feminized. And that is just to say, more and more women have entered the ranks. And that would include me, of course. And I'm in it because I like writing. I love writing. And that's, you know, a lot of women love, love, love writing. And it's just less blue collar and less male than it used to be. And it's more college graduates, more women.

And it does, I feel like there is this, definitely there's this romance about the job that people who enter are enamored with going on television, being the protagonist, right? Like they see themselves as the hero of the American political story because that's the depiction so often in Hollywood. It would be great, actually, to do a movie. What was that one? Shattered Glass about the New Republic scandal in the 90s. That's a fantastic movie, by the way. There should be more movies about journalistic scandals and bad journalists, actually. Someone should do a new version of all the president's men that isn't based on the bullshit.

That's actually a great idea. There's an idea for the Daily Wire Film Studio. Someone should do that. But, yeah, there's a, you know, I talk about a lot liking the, the Roman, of media. But for me, it's just I grew up obsessed with television. And I love just to see how things work, like behind the scenes, the lights, the audio, like that kind of production stuff is fascinating to me. It's the same thing of newsrooms. But I think a lot of people have that romanticization of the character of a journalist, which, like, listen, I've been doing this

long enough to have absolutely zero romanticization of the character of a journalist. Like, just by virtue your profession, it becomes very easy for people to get caught up and lying and gossiping and stretching the truth for the scoop or the headline. It's just, it does skew the type of person that goes into the profession, I think. That's a really good point, Richard. Appreciate it. Nice email here from Howard, who asks, just looking through this here. here, some nice words. I have a question for you. Who are the nominees for president next time going to be

and who will win? I would love to hear your opinion. I don't think J.D. and Marco will both run at the same time. I think, and Rubio has already said as much, they will, if Vance runs, which seems likely, Rubio will not run. If Vance does not run,

I think Rubio will absolutely run. I would not be surprised to see Mike Pence or Nikki Haley jump in again, I think they see themselves as like the tip of the spear of the resistance against Trump populism. I could see Rand Paul

running again. I don't know. That is a good question. It's early. Probably some governors, right? Like on the Dem side, I definitely would assume Josh Shapiro, Andy Bashir. Yeah, those are pretty obvious ones.

Shapiro Bashir, obviously Newsom, that goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Maybe like Letitia James. That's crazy, right? Could be. I'm hearing it's not insane to think maybe AOC would jump in.

She's got that Senate decision to make coming right up, but could potentially make both decisions. So we'll see. We'll see. But yeah, on the Republican side, I just think so much of it depends on what J.D. Vance does because if J.D. Vance jumps in, what's Ron DeSantis going to do? Is he going to try to be the anti-Vance? The sort of

MAGA alternative to Trump when J.D. Vance, who's the mega heir to Trump, is running, I don't know. I could see if Rubio runs DeSantis getting in the race. I could definitely see Pence or Haley, giving it another go. I think that's why Pence is kind of in the background, raising a lot of money for his new think tank advancing America's future, trying to be a rival to heritage, but that also keeps you in the donor circles and in the media. So I think there might be another presidential run in Mike Pence. Just some quick thoughts on that. M says, I like your show exactly for, quote, filling in the gaps, as you said, as well as your thoughtful approach to the issues.

Thank you. For the Dana Centers, so many have been built in Prince William. county VA, I and many others thought those monstrosities would cause our property taxes to go down. Nope, our taxes have increased. Oh, I hate to hear that. And then M goes on to say pre-immigration, I'm all for criminals and predators being deported. However, once they get to the rest, I hope to see a bit more mercy. Yes, they may be illegal, but they were handed an invitation by Biden, whoever was running the government during his incapacity. I think a lot of people are in your camp on that one. And Tom Holman said today, as I'm recording this Thursday afternoon, that it's true you have to go after everyone because otherwise you create a magnet where people know if they can just get across the border. It's going to be almost impossible to deport them. And that's not good for anybody. It's not good, frankly, for the migrants, you have to pay the cartels to get trafficked up to the border and take a chance and then have children in these tenuous, precarious legal situations in the United States. And it's not good then, of course, for America.

citizens, for jobs with their kids who are, you know, citizens if they're born in American soil and all of that. But I do agree. First of all, I think that comment is representative of a lot of people who do want to see deportations, just not absolutely everybody immediately. Or absolutely everybody, even, you know, they don't necessarily want to see the moms being, you know, torn out of their homes and cars and that type of stuff. I think that's probably a majority opinion and even a pretty popular opinion among people who are supportive of deportations overall. Now, on the first point, it is, well, the data centers, I am thinking about like the predicate for why so many need to go up so quickly. And that to me is, well,

so we can expand this LLM, AI, and we're told we have to do that. Dario Amadei of Anthropic had a long, long essay that I would encourage people to take a look at where he confronts this question of whether you can just take the pedal off the gas on AI and let China go. And he's like, well, probably not, because the technology is very democratized. So if you don't do it, the bad actors are absolutely going to do it. And even non-state actors are definitely going to take advantage of it. And I think that's right.

And that's a point the accelerationists have been making. But if the focus is just on national security, we don't actually have to be integrating LLMs into literally everything. And maybe we don't need all of these data centers in Prince William County. What they're doing is getting big tax breaks to build there and subsidies to build. I don't know specifically about Prince William County, but I did go through a list of some of them that META put up on its website. website. And it's like going to create some of these are going to create like 70 permanent jobs,

not nothing, but not like a factory at all for the amount of land that they're taking up, the amount of subsidies that they're getting. So I'm, I'm skeptical of them and, you know, Republicans are showing great skepticism, like Republican voters. The polling is going very much in the wrong direction on that for the accelerationist wing of MAGA. So very, very interesting point on that. let's see here a quick addition to your January 22nd this is from Sue January 22nd discussion on the perceived death of wokeism at our family

Thanksgiving gathering my 28 year old niece announced at the dinner table Mondani was elected and woke is back perceptions are interesting until they become the reality for those who agree reality is great for those who disagree reality is not so great yeah that's a good point that's a good point. And we're all splintering into these new silos where we see less of these. We have just a lot fewer touchstones. And so we're seeing less of the same stuff.

And so if perception is reality, we're all going to be in different perceived realities. Yeah. In the near future. Ryan says, I would like to thank you for being a commentator willing to take the time to speak with your audience. It makes us that listen feels as if we're a part of the conversation. Thank you, Ryan. and I hope you feel like you're part of the conversation because as far as I'm concerned, you are part of the conversation. I appreciate it. And I just, that's truly what I believe. I think it makes sense to be in constant communication and conversation with your audience. I like it when you all hold me accountable, when you tell me what's going on in your neck of the woods and add some perspective to the conversation. It's hard. I've lived in D.C. for a long time now. I'm not from here at all.

And I remember, you know, when I was growing up, you just see how impenetrable the bubble in places like D.C. and New York City and Los Angeles are. And, you know, I can't be, I can't be outside D.C. half the week and half the time in D.C. unfortunately. So the best I can do is, you know, be in conversation with all of you. And it's super helpful. But also, I just, I like hearing from you. And you have a lot of really smart points to raise. So, thank you all for being part of the conversation. All right. This is a point from Hank who talks about in Minneapolis. If someone on the right comes across like you

and has some questions about how ICE is operating, that's fine and reasonable. We should all be opening the idea that administration can become abusive even when we voted for, but the rhetoric coming from someone on a libertarian conservative right, like Amanda Carpenter, David Frum, Kathy Young, Caitlin Flanagan, being prime examples, leaves me suspecting they are uneasy with the idea of I supporting anyone, regardless of what crimes they've committed, committed.

And then ends by saying even if they've previously criticized open borders, it's hard to trust them now about anything. Yeah, I don't know if with, I really like Caitlin Flanagan. I don't know if with Flanagan, it's a matter of bad faith. It probably is with David Frum, no offense. But I think a lot of people, I think people underestimate the, what a monumental, massive challenge it is for the Trump administration to deliver on a mandate of mass deportations. And that absolutely was a mandate. I mean, even if you look at the voting, it's one thing, but public opinion polls when Trump was elected on mass deportation until like July-ish.

Steadily, people were in support of it. Now, they might not like the way the Trump administration is doing mass deportations. But I think what people underestimate is the bureaucratic nightmare, the logistical nightmare. I think you can kind of appreciate that on paper. But I don't think you can fully, like, I think you have to really be digging into a lot of the legal cases. Like, even just taking a zooming or zooming in on the Kilmar-A-Bregal-Garcia case, the way that has ping pong back through the courts, one person. And the way that in Minneapolis you have the license plates being tracked and people on the scene immediately. to do all of this in an orderly, peaceful, constitutional way, there are going to be mistakes,

and people should call them out when they happen. I have no problem with that. But then you have to zoom out to the macro picture and say, okay, are the mistakes representative of a big picture pattern trend, or are they, you know, parts of the process, like sort of understandable mistakes that are going to happen in any monumental massive process? this. And I think there's a swirl of information right now about what's really going on. It's hard to keep perspective. And so I think there's some good faith people who are having, like my argument would just be like some of it is about maintaining perspective and these swirling news cycles of mistakes

from the Trump administration, obvious mistakes from the Trump administration or ICE, maybe not even the Trump administration, ICE officers who are saying, we're making a database and putting you on it like that guy in Maine. Yeah. So it's just hard to keep perspective, especially when you're like me, skeptical of the administration and all politicians to begin with.

All right. Let's see. Here is, oh. This is from Sabina, who says, hello, Emily. I still enjoy your podcast, but I was close to turning off the interview with Jen, you go, I pressed myself to follow your lead and be open to folks with other and opposing views.

I was surprised that when Jank is not spinning out due to his TDS, he actually makes some good points. I do prefer listening to Anna Kasparian and she's a better communicator despite her political opinions. Keep up the good work. I got a lot of negative comments from you guys about Jank. But I have to say, I agree with Sabina. If you listen to Jank like 10, 15 years ago, he's much more open-minded now. And even if you don't seem as particularly open-minded, I think he's actually been one of the people, he was on the populist left, who is actually willing to criticize Democrats,

but from a populist perspective, and he's done that for a long time, but also then, like, have those conversations in good faith. My witness test for whether or not I should talk to somebody is whether they're in good faith or bad faith. And so I responded to some of you over email saying, I do actually think Jank is operating in good faith. I've talked to him many times, and he's willing to have a conversation. He's super boisterous, and, you know, his opinions are very deeply held. And I would argue rigid, but that doesn't, you know, having a rigid anti-Republican perspective doesn't mean that you're operating in bad faith. So anyway, I just like getting, I like getting populist perspectives in the mix, people who aren't unpartisan talking points.

And Jank after, you know, Charlie died was, I think you just saw him be shocked and willing to get out there and talk even more. And I respected that. And, you know, I'm still conservative. But for me, it's just fun to talk to people about what's in the news and what's going on. And always sort of talk to Jake. James asks, I don't understand the questions about her sudden wealth accumulation in regards to ill. I thought it was pretty clear and I've never understood why she wasn't immediately investigated for campaign fraud. In the 24 election cycle, she was pouring campaign contributions into political consulting firm, all while quietly dating the man that owned that firm.

After the election, she married him and all that money became hers also. He subsequently started investing the money. She paid him with an almost perfect record of return, a la Nancy Pelosi. She literally was stealing money from her contributors. So the broad strokes of this are accurate. That is what happened with Ilhan Omar. The only thing that I would say to the reason she hasn't been investigated for campaign fraud is that you can fleece campaign donors as a politician. Like, it's all such a racket.

You can take campaign money and put it into a consulting firm that you're super well connected to and end up marrying the head of. And it's not really illegal. Your contributors should be furious. I mean, there are some different ways where it probably is illegal. but your contributors should be like, hey, what the hell is going on with this? And say, like, this is unethical and shameful and all of that. Sometimes there's good reasons. You know, that person's group actually is the best or whatever.

I don't know that that was the case in this one. It seems like this was all self-dealing. And, boy, have they invested spectacularly. Her financial disclosures have been wild recently. Wild. Okay. Let's see. This is a question from Nicole, who says,

please listen to Brian Dean Wright's podcast, The Right Report. He's former CIA and former liberals, amazing insights on foreign and domestic policy, and he has a substack. Yeah, Nicole says, thank you for all your hard work, been listening to you since your Federalist days. I actually had Brian on Federalist Radio Hour shortly before I left Federalist, so just a couple years ago. I've tried to get him on shows a couple times since then. It just hasn't worked out, because I think it's been like I asked last minute for breaking news. But yeah, he said, I've been, he's on my list of people that have back on. So I hope it works out again soon.

All right. Now let's get to your Instagram questions here. Okay. Tom says, what do you think about changing the census so non-citizens don't count toward house seats? To me, it seems like if states couldn't boost their representation that way, it might also take away some of the incentive for sanctuary cities. Hell yeah, I'm all for that, Tom. That just, yes, yes, and yes. voters, people are eligible to vote or will be eligible to vote their citizens. I just think

that makes more sense. Anyway, Erica says, well, all the madness was happening in Minnesota, the House quietly passed a bill that makes kill switches mandatory in vehicles. This is government overreach to have the ability to turn our cars off at any point and just to start of a bigger issue regarding digital ID. Why is no one talking about it? So that, my understanding is that was passed in the House Senate and Biden signed it several years ago. I did a podcast at the time with Matthew Mehan, who is a professor at Hillsdale College here in D.C. He is one of the most brilliant people that I know. And he has been tracking this since that happened. So it's possible that I missed an update. But my understanding is that has already been, I think it's like 10 years into

the future cars will have to have that type of like quote unquote kill switch. And I think it is as dystopian and horrifying, as Erica suggests. And it's wild how it's happened under everybody's noses with so little attention. There are a few issues like that every year. You just can't believe how we're hitting the accelerator into dystopia with so little media coverage. And so Dr. Mian was pushing me to cover that a couple years ago. And, you know, maybe I missed an update. I haven't been, I haven't been on it as much in these, these news cycles, but that is, that's happening. I think that's happening, unfortunately, unless someone can get in and reverse it. It just seems like one of those things that'll be impossible to turn

back around. It's the, as we've been talking about, the security versus freedom dilemma, the age old security versus freedom dilemma, and many of our fellow countrymen, I don't think everyone. I think God bless the United States of America, there are fewer people who choose security over freedom in some of these tougher equations here than there are in the rest of the world. But more and more, that was one of the big lessons from COVID for me, is how many people are willing to choose security over freedom, you know, in closed churches, for example, or, you know, force mask mandates and all of that. Yeah, it was, I think that's a real wake-up call.

Not entirely surprising, but still shocking to kind of live through it. And I think we need to be prepared that as some of this technology accelerates, and the government has more power in its hands to preside over a true nanny state, a whole lot of people are going to demand it. I mean, it's like that Kier-Starm or press release that I covered on After Party a few months ago. And this stuff, by the way, doesn't even really get clicks, but it's so important that I'm going to talk about it no matter what. but his, it was like a press release, like promising to do digital ID, like boasting about how we are bringing you digital ID to crack down on illegal immigration.

Oh, thank you, Sir Keir. Thank you so much for protecting everyone from the people that labor and Tories, just brought on in to the country. create the problem, then demand a surveillance state to keep everybody safe. All right. I'll go check in on that, Erica. Stephen says, Megan's words talking about Don Lemon, how can you work for her? His personal life is relevant. This is a quote.

Stephen says, Megan said, he has no children. He has a gay man and a gay marriage with no children. How the fuck is that relevant to the fact that Don Lemon is a douchebag, racist idiot, who's dorm a church? Stephen, I think it is relevant because she was saying he doesn't understand. This was in a conversation with Knowles about the crying kid in that city's church Baptist service that Don Lemon was in. And there was, you know, the kids were scared because people rammed into the service and stood up and started shouting, hands up don't shoot. And people are like, they don't know Michael Brown, whatever. The hands up don't shoot doesn't mean anything to an eight-year-old.

So you understand why kids are crying. and I think she was saying, if you don't have your own children, you don't understand exactly how scary that is for a child and exactly what you're doing to a child because you haven't had to deal with a fallout as a parent. You haven't had your own heartstrings tugged at seeing your kid crying or shaking in fear. So I don't think that's irrelevant. I think it was perfectly legitimate thing to invoke. I, you know, for example, when we talk about men and women's sports. We talk about men and women's locker rooms. I think it's perfectly fine to say men don't understand the fear that women have when you got a big dude around them in a vulnerable position. So I think our backgrounds and experiences do matter. It's like why I agree with some people on the right on this question of like quote unquote representation. I didn't even know like this was when Brett Kavanaugh was being considered for the Supreme Court. Amy Coney Barrett's name was circulate.

I wrote a column in the Washington examiner saying, if conservatives believe men and women are different, then yeah, it makes sense you would want a female conservative Supreme Court justice because that means men and it's not identity politics in a bad way to say that. And by the way, people just trashed me for this. But what I was saying is that women understand motherhood differently. Women understand like their bodies differently. Women understand their bodies differently. Women understand. Women understand their bodies differently. Women understand like the process of having a baby in your body differently than men. So it makes perfect sense to say, well, we want a conservative woman. We want her to be the very best woman, not just someone that checks the box, which is how you end up with Katajibra Jackson from Joe Biden. But if you can find an extremely qualified conservative woman who is better than the other candidates. and she happens to be a woman. You don't have any conservative women on the bench, then it makes sense to say,

it's good to have a conservative woman there, all things being equal. And so anyway, all that is to say, I think the point about someone lacking experience with a child or whatever, I don't mind when people throw that back at me either. You know, I think that's totally fine. So anyway, just an answer to that one, Stephen.

Braden says, who is your favorite person? Favorite public person or favorite private person? My favorite person is definitely my boyfriend. He's great. Let's see. Public person? I don't know. Who's my favorite person?

This is a tough one. Santa Claus? I don't know. I don't have a good answer to this. My job is basically to cover people that I don't like or trust. So I'm having trouble coming up off top of my head with people that I really like, which is a sad statement on what I have to think about day in and day out. Favorite person?

Man, I don't know. I've been really, well, let's see, favorite person. There's got to be someone like obvious, like some artist or something like that, like spiritual leader. I don't know. I'm going to punt on this one. I'm, I'm, it's lame, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to punt. I'm so sorry for punting on this, but I don't like a lot of people. That's another personal shortcoming. I'm introverted and skeptical. So anyway, anyway, there are lots of people I like, I guess. I won't waste your time while I think about this on air.

This is the double-edged sword of answering the questions live. Sometimes I just have to think through the answer, and it's not that entertaining for all of you, probably. And then you also get kind of brain freeze because you're, like, thinking about how to fill the airwaves while also trying to think about the person or the answer to your question, which is why politicians sometimes slip into those, like, talking points, whatever, because they're so rote.

You can just recite them while your brain is doing something else. But also it becomes the like brain freeze where you can't, you're under pressure so you can't do it. This would happen to me all the time in basketball practice. Like I could absolutely run a play. But when I'm being told to run it in front of everyone by the coach, I'm going to mess it up like 10 times out of 10. So double edged sword, like I said. Anyway, thanks so much, everybody, for tuning in to this edition of Happy Hour. Lots of fun to be with all of you virtually through your questions.

You can email me, Emily at double-maycareupmedia.com. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe. If there's another storm coming your way, if the storm is still hampering your access to power or roads, man, it's been freezing and icy here in D.C., even by D.C. standards. These roads are a disaster.

So hope everyone is staying safe and warm. And we'll see you on After Party Monday, live at 10 p.m. and then afterwards wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. See you, everyone.