After Party with Emily Jashinsky - “Happy Hour”: Emily Answers YOUR Questions about Escaping the “Doom Spiral,” CBS in the Bari Era, and Why Arabs Trust Trump

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

This week on “Happy Hour” Emily Jashinsky answers your questions about geographical sorting and how Covid accelerated it, why the algorithm rewards disagreement, and how we get out of the “doom spiral.”  She also talks about her thoughts on the libertarian movement, social conservatism, and the free market economy. The podcast also touches on recent stories in the news including the Israel-Hamas deal, why the Arab world trusts Trump more than others in the West, and her recent chat with Glenn Greenwald.  On the political front, Emily explains why she believes Hakeem Jeffries is the worst man for the moment for Democrats, California Gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter’s meltdown, and why she believes James Comey overcompensated for what he did to Hillary Clinton.  Emily also addresses how she views her job as a journalist, what happens to CBS in the Bari Weiss Era, Taylor Swift and feminism, the importance of language, her Trump impersonation that listeners are loving, and if she ever plans to write a book.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, hello, after-party listeners. Welcome to a new installment of After Party that we are calling Happy Hour. It's an even more casual version of an already casual show where I get to chat with all of you through the great questions and comments. You send in via social media and email. So let's get to this week's edition. Now, of course, the email address where you can reach me, and it is me, is Emily at double-makecaremedia.com. You can reach us on the After Party Emily Instagram as well. I started a couple of weeks ago deciding to read your.

questions live, like as I go through them. So this is obviously a taped version of the show, but I am reading your questions actually for the first time as I go through them here. So Paul Till sends in a question and says, I just watched and left your eloquent discourse on 90s rom-coms. I would like to hear a take on the two I've rewatched the most, sleepless in Seattle. And while you are sleeping, interesting. All right, here's my take on two Bill Pullman's sleep-oriented stories. Sleepless in Seattle is a lovely confection with a fake and brittle core. While you were sleeping is equally funny but tells the truth. I'm a high school teacher in some years when I have the time.

I show both films to my students to get them thinking and talking about what love might really mean. Meanwhile, you mentioned summer camps of Wisconsin. You must have been there about the same time we were raising kids north of Chicago. I wonder if your camp or camps were the same as the ones we sent our kids to north of the state line. Looking forward to your next episode. Paul, these are incisive perspectives. on sleepless in Seattle and while you were sleeping. Now, I will admit, these are sort of, these are rom-coms I enjoy.

They are not rom-coms that I have re-watched over and over again. I was caught off guard by how moving while you were sleeping was when I watched it for the first time, which was actually not that long. It was probably between five and ten years ago. It was really caught off guard. The same with the Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt joint, what was that, what women want. I always confuse it with the remake they did, which is called, I think, What Men Want. Maybe I have those reversed, but these movies are just so sweet and at least relatively innocent.

And I think Sleepless in Seattle both, and while you were sleeping, both qualify for that. Sleepers in Seattle, to me, has an almost literary quality to it. that's maybe my best description. I like it more than some people like it, though it feels maybe a little... That movie is... I find it actually that it makes me sad more than some other romantic comedies.

I can probably avoid not doxying myself. I can say that the camp that I went to, and I love it so much, it's still going. I was there the very first year. It's called Good Time Summer Day Camp in Wisconsin. I think it started actually in northern Illinois, but that was formative for me. and Waukesha. So it was a, yeah, it's a, it was a wonderful and wonderful place to grow up. I don't

have enough nice things to say about that wonderful spot. So many wonderful childhood memories. I keep using the word wonderful because that's really what it was. It was a day camp. So not overnight. I almost only just did like overnight basketball camps or whatever it was at the time. Okay. This question is from Drew. Thank you, Paul, for that question. Oh, this is so sweet. Drew says, your show rapidly went from one that I listened to on the weekend gaps between the podcast I normally listen to to, to regularly listening. I really enjoy it. Okay, so that, first of all, is just such a nice compliment. Thank you. One of the reasons we're doing this in a podcast format as well, first of all, I always say this, but I love the podcast format. I love audio, just you

and the microphone in the room. I still find that there's something romantic and just personally, for me, almost provocative. It helps me think through things, which is part of the reason I like doing it. and also just so that you have something else to listen to. Drew goes on to say, I agree with you regarding the geographical sorting of progressives versus conservatives, not sure exactly when it started, but for me it came at the beginning of COVID when I left California. It was disruptive to my career in the end, but I was increasingly of the mind that it was time anyway. And I love hearing that you enjoyed Dawson's Creek. I worked on the show for the last few seasons, and it was one of the best Hollywood jobs I ever had.

Oh my gosh, Drew. This is blowing my mind, just like when I learned someone who works on After Party, was working on Lilith Fair. This is like incredible news to me. I feel as though I'm, I have like one, what is the six degrees of Kevin Bacon? Like I'm one degree removed from what, that they filmed that in Wilmington, right? So the wonderful, uh, atmosphere that that must have been like, uh, I've heard great things about actually the atmosphere and just through things I've read over the years. I can imagine, uh, for especially the younger people who grew up on that said it must have been really something else. Now, on the question of geographical sorting of progressives versus conservatives, I think it began earlier than COVID. I think we probably would

all agree that it began earlier than COVID. And of course, there are geographical differences that are always going to, to some extent, create political differences. So, for example, if you're in land that's really great for farming or if you're on the ocean or, you know, anything like that. You're from an area, you're from New England where the Puritan legacy is still very strong. Or, you know, all of these things matter in different ways. So I think that was there to some extent before. But Charles Murray's coming apart really starts documenting how we started sorting by socioeconomic class. particularly around cities where the people who leaned left were increasingly concentrated. He wrote

that book in 2012. But I totally agree, Drew, and I'm actually waiting for someone to do a kind definitive study of what happened during COVID. And now that we're about five years with it in the rearview mirror, look at how durable these trends were. Because my experience when I travel for work, which is, you know, a lot. go to areas in, you know, like, I see this a lot in South Carolina, in Georgia, certainly in Florida, like in Florida more than basically anywhere else, it seems. North Carolina, you know, there was a lot made of the sunbelt during COVID, and there are a lot of problems that come with this migration. Prices go up. But Texas is another place where I've

noticed this. Actually, the Dallas area is one place where I've noticed this a lot. lot. And there's a lot of griping from from locals about prices and traffic and all of that. I noticed this in Spokane. This must have been like 2022. You know, all of the Silicon Valley people were leaving and going to Idaho, Cordillin area, Spokane area. And you probably had experienced this to some extent, you know, even wherever you live in the country, if you live outside of a major city, you probably found COVID expats who realized they could work more from home or they just valued living far enough away from the city that they were willing to do the commute, whatever it was. Yeah, COVID took trends, I think, culturally and then geographically and put

them into overdrive and accelerated. There's just this accelerated timeline, the shortened timeline. You know, what may have taken 10, 15 years took like two years. I'm just curious how durable this is because my impression of it is that it's actually here to stay. And I talked to Rod Dreher on the show about this week, because he wrote a wonderful, book called The Benedict Option. And I think that was, I think that came out like 2015, 2016. Maybe it was 2016. And he talked about it. It got misinterpreted as, you know, telling Christians to go live in caves. But really what he was talking about was Christians building up communities with really robust local, civic, social ties around people who share your

values and your faith as a type of shield from the kind of ravages of, you know, the world and of an increasingly secular hostile world. And I asked Rod, is it possible that's happening right now and it has a geographic element to it that people who are trying to build those Benedict Option communities are going, you know, instead of living in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., they are going to West Virginia instead of, you know, trying to make do in New York City. for example, people are going to North Carolina. They're moving to Charlotte. They're moving to Dallas.

I don't know, but I'm actually really curious about that. And I'm looking for someone to do some great definitive social science research on what these trends could look like in 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Because I've mentioned this before. I think my theory of the case is that we don't ever end up, you know, at least in our lifetimes and maybe our children's lifetimes, don't ever end up in like a hot civil war because it seems to me that technology, particularly social media, has kind of, I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, probably a good thing

in this context, but has sort of sapped us of the energy to be that willing to like stake your life on anything. I mean, if you look at the polling of. of how many people in the West, how many young people in the West would be able to, would be willing to, like, die for their country. They've actually, holsters have actually asked this question. And the number is very low, very low.

And so I use this, use that as a proxy for how many people would actually be willing to, put their lives on the line and fight, period. I just sort of see a sliding. And again, I think maybe this is good in this context. It's not good overall because we don't want a country that comes apart at it seems.

But I see what happens as, again, this gradual sorting where we basically don't share any government but the federal government, meaning people live in jurisdictions in the next 50 years that are almost entirely populated by people with their basic values, not all their values, but their basic values. So we just have fewer purple states and definitely fewer purple congressional districts. And it just becomes much more geographically polarized along the lines of political polarization. And that actually gives me some hope, to be honest. I know it sounds weird. Sorry, I just got a text message. But I'm very popular, as you know. But I know that sounds weird. It's just, to me, it's, that's a kind of best case scenario if things start to get uglier and uglier and the tensions get higher. It feels untenable that you can have the acceleration of these technologies that pit us against each other in ways where disagreement is rewarded, right? Like, disagreement is rewarded for, that's the wrong way to put it.

There's a, there's a gamification of disagreement, and there's a gamification of agreement, right? Like, on social media, you are, I talk about this way too much, I know, but you are rewarded for strong disagreements more than like sort of milk toast neutral disagreements. Or it's like, I see what you're saying. Have you thought of it this way? It's, you're going to get much more likes and retweets for saying you are a moral coward with the brain of a squirrel. Like that is what the algorithm rewards. It's just a fact. And so we've we've gamified our disagreements and our discourse. And I just don't. I mean, it's just is pulling us apart in ways that just feel completely untenable, like at the school board level.

I'm not talking even about the presidential level. I'm talking like the school board level. How does this continue into the future? I don't know. I'm not super optimistic about us all being able to share school boards together, but I'm also very aware that there's a bias that comes with living and breathing politics and culture as a journalist when it's your job. I know that all you out there are still having fairly normal lives that are, you know, often infected and more often than they should be infected with the ugliness of politics and cultural divisions. But, you know, when you spend all day living and breathing this because it's your job and you live in Washington where it's also your personal life, you know, it's, people have a tendency to be overly pessimistic

because of that or to have their perspective on the country color because of that. So I don't want to lose sight of how remarkable I still think the United States of America is. You know, for all of the like broader conversations about multiculturalism and the melting pot and all of that, what has been accomplished in America in terms of the blending of people from different backgrounds and communities with limited political violence? And as everyone's standard of living, at least, you know, until the last like 20 or so years. And I mean that, I mean, libertarians would disagree with me on this, of course. But, you know, people's, people's quality of life has almost always felt like it was on an

upward trajectory. And people in the United States live more comfortable lives on average than anyone throughout the scope of human history ever has. And that was done while also incorporating all of these different people from all over the country. And we talked a couple of weeks ago on this podcast, on Happy Hour about just like with the 90s, the peak of civilization was like 1999, the peak of civilization. And if you think about that time, especially before 9-11, everything was not perfect. We had many, many problems. And there were a lot of people who still suffered in the United States. But relative to anywhere else in the course of human history, nobody politically has ever accomplished what the United States of America did. I would say by like that point in time. And I don't want to lose sight of that. Again, I don't know how tenable it is, but I don't want to lose side of it. Jennifer asks, I am absolutely, or says, I'm absolutely loving happy hour. You're one of my favorite guests on Megan Kelly's show. I'm so happy when you launch your own show. I love your analysis and sense of humor. I appreciate the humanness you bring to the show as well. Any books on the horizon? If you did ever write a book, which topic would you focus on? Well, Jen, thank you. I also love that when I read these questions live, I include all the praise. It's important for me to include the praise so that you know I am loved. I am a woman of the people. I am a, what's the right word to use here? An American, maybe icon? I was going to say treasure, but maybe both are accurate. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm like beyond humbled by the kind of notes that

you all send me. It blows my mind that people listen. I just can't believe how lucky and blessed and grateful I am. To answer your question, Jen, I would love to write a book. I've always wanted to write a book. It's one of my highest ambitions. I've had a lot of book ideas. I briefly actually had a book contract. My best friend and I were writing a book for a while. But it for reasons that were outside, everyone's control became impossible to actually end up writing and publishing that. That was back first in the first Trump administration. But ever since I've had a lot of different ideas, I've talked to different people about different ideas. I've actually had conversations fairly recently about my different ideas with people in the industry.

So something might be coming relatively soon. I would hope so, but now it's also, you know, my schedule is absurd. It's like everybody has crazy schedules. I know even that, even with that point, I do have three different shows. So it's just like a ton of stuff to juggle. Imagine having three different emails in addition to your personal email. So I have four different inboxes, four different sets of meetings, four different sets of coworkers basically, which is amazing because I'm surrounded by the most interesting people.

It just takes up a lot of time. So that's something I have to think about. But I'm really desperate to write a book. So I hope that is something I get to do sooner rather than later. All right. This one is from Dylan. Dylan says, first want to say, congrats on your show. I've enjoyed and appreciate your work since the federalist days. Okay, that's awesome. It makes me so happy. I was I had the best time on Federalist Radio Hour, so I love that people have followed. It means a lot. Dylan says a couple questions. As someone who's worked in the conservative movement for a while, do you have any thoughts on the use of certain terms and phrases you need to the right? For example, the recent right-wing use of Democrat Party rather than the Democratic Party, which is apparently meant derisively, although on its face is fairly neutral.

I love that question. Another example is referring to what's happening on college campuses rather than what's happening at-in colleges and universities. I just don't think I hear lefties use the word campus so much for whatever. reason. Okay, incredible observation. I've literally never thought about that last point, Dylan, and I worked in the conservative youth movement on and off. So it was part of it. I've never noticed that. I have to think about that for sure because that's super interesting. I don't know why that might be. It might just be part of the lexical. Like, it just might be automatic. But I don't know.

I'll think about that. The Democrat Party thing is absolutely real. It's basically the style guy for some conservative journalists. And I, um, honestly don't like it. I don't know why. It just rose me in the wrong way. I don't think most like Normies quite pick up on that it's meant to be derisive, but it is. You're right, Dylan. And because of that, I've just never, again, I've never thought too hard about this, but it is always, because of that, it has always struck me as just a needless barb, although not one that comes from a place of totally, it's not entirely unprovoked, of course, because we're dealing now with decades of institutional media bias against the right, not always pro-left, but anti-right

over the course of decades, of course. So it's not unprovoked for whatever reason. It's probably because I'm too, my conservative friends, you know, make fun of me for being like way too conciliatory and for maybe the word that they would use is squishy. But to me, it's just like unnecessarily petty. But I don't know. I haven't thought that hard about it. I have a lot of friends that do that. So no disrespect. I just haven't thought that hard about it. It's just never been my go-to. It's always brush. It's always hit me a little bit the wrong way. Dylan goes on to ask, I'm also a millennial, but have resisted the allure of the NACCON movement and remained a Ron Paul libertarian like Ron Paul or Dave Smith. I'm saying.

sympathetic to many of the NAC-Con diagnoses of society's problems, like against David Frenchism, etc., though I still favor, the law as a general solution. I'm curious about where you'd say you differ from libertarians on an ideological level as distinct from understandable annoyance at CatoSuscious and pop shots at right-wingers. Yeah, that's a good point because the libertarian movement is fascinating. It's made up of people who are like half culturally left and half-culturally right. So while there's this broad agreement on economic frameworks, when it comes to like abortion, for example, is totally different. And sometimes we're in policy, but often, like, abortion is a great, this is a great example of where culturally things just go in wacky directions

sometimes. I mean, and that's, I say that with, with love, because the libertarian movement is a fascinating place. I have a lot of disagreements with the libertarian movement, and I'm way more in favor of industrial policy than, certainly than libertarians. And I think this is sort of a flaw baked into a lot of libertarianism, you know, unless you're a full anarchist or kind of a Randian, where you really believe that it should be a kind of survival of the fittest economy, which of course would also mean the survival of the fittest culture, unless you're sort of fully ideologically committed to that. I think basically you have to concede that there will always be some measure of an industrial policy. And I'm not in favor of, you know, Medicare for all. I actually,

this is health care is something I've tried to think about a lot more in recent years because I think there's a pretty decent argument from a conservative perspective that Medicare for all is better than the status quo. And again, my conservative friends are going to be like a gas draw on the floor. There's no part of me that wants socialized medicine in the United States for America. There's no part of me, though, that wants the status quo in the United States of America, which is horrific. So I don't want to make it worse, but I don't want it to persist either. And I don't see conservatives with a consensus position on a relatively free market health care system that also ensures preexisting conditions are covered and keeps competition in drug manufacturing and research and all of that, but also brings prices down. So this is an enormously complicated conversation, but like there are, I do believe that you should have the freest possible market when it's appropriate.

it's not appropriate, in my opinion at least, on chips, semiconductor chips, because when you're competing in a global marketplace, other countries are going to intentionally undercut you for national security reasons, and you can't just say, let go and let God with the laissez-faire economy. And again, this is just, in my opinion, people will disagree with this, and say, let go and let God, laissez-faire economy will take care of it. Anything that the United States tries to do in the realm of industrial policy will want to be. necessarily backfire. If there is a market for this to be cheaper and done in the United States, it will spontaneously bloom. But this has been proven. My position on it is that that has been proven

false. I know we don't have perfect free mark conditions in the United States, which again is the response that you get from libertarians. Just like, just deregulate, deregulate. And I think that's possibly true. I think there's a lot more that can be done deregulating our economy in various sectors. but I also don't think that solves the entire problem of having other countries undercut you when, for example, national security is at hand. I think as a social conservative, I mean, there's nothing that's more important to me. The only reason that I'm sort of like politically, ideologically conservatives is because I'm a Christian. And so there's nothing more important to me than social conservatism.

And I actually see some of this industrial policy, health care policy, as being in the realm of social conservativeism in a way that we haven't thought of it before, for example. And I didn't, when I was growing up in the conservative movement, it was the Tea Party years. And we were talking all the time about Obamacare and income inequality. And it's not that I've really shifted on any of those policy questions, except for maybe free trade, although that wasn't a huge topic of conversation. I definitely disagree with libertarians on that for the same reason on industrial policy, which is that you never have totally free trade. And you libertarians listen to me, right now, or you're ready to rip out your microphones and rip out your headphones and throw them

at the wall. But I'm not someone who wants like 100%, 200% tariffs. I just think that it's a little bit, I think even talking about, quote, free trade is completely misleading because nobody argues that there should be, unless you are full Randian, ideologically committed to that fully, nobody believes that there should be an actual, as Elon Musk talks about in this utopian sense, real free trade regime. And I genuinely don't believe Elon Musk believes that, by the way, because of his own relationships with these other countries through his various business means. So again, like in theory, it sounds great. But if in practice you don't believe in it, I mean, it just speaks to the implausibility of that ever coming true. That's a very common knock on

libertarians, of course, that it's all utopian and fantastical. I don't think that's true of everything. For example, we are going to see significant deregulation beyond what people thought was possible. It's not going to look like, you know, libertarian paradise. But, yeah, I mean, I am, like, very sympathetic to having the freest possible markets. It's why I'm, like, one of the things that sort of brought me over to, I guess, roughly, the new right, it's so hard to have these categories now. But one of the things that brought me over to that was the antitrust conversation. And I love the way that Matt stole.

and Elizabeth Warren and Lena Kahn and Rohit Chopra, these figures on the left, frame the conversation about antitrust and monopolies. And I know the Wall Street capitalists absolutely detest it and well-meaning people absolutely detest it. But I don't think you have competition without smart antitrust. And smart antitrust has to adapt in 2025 because it's not 1985.

It's certainly not 195. And technologies have, just as the railroad did, just as the phone lines did, have to, they confront us with these changes that have to be made to the way we conceived of what is a monopoly. So all of that is it comes from a place that is deeply sympathetic to competition and free markets. And I think the conservative movement was just on autopilot for too long. And I was in these spaces. So I have a pretty good idea of that.

It was just this reflex of, oh, no, we must not stop a merger. Oh, no, we must not have more government intervention here, here. Meanwhile, the establishment Republicans were lobbying for their own tax breaks and their own subsidies, their own handouts, their own foreign wars, all of that stuff. So I think there's a healthy rebalancing that's happening right now. Okay. This is from Mark, who says, when I listened to your segment this week with Glenn Greenwald, I was particularly interested in his take on CBS News, purchasing the free press. I was wondering how long his rant would take to get into his anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. However, he outdid himself and actually interested.

these detestable views in his opening diatribe, the man is obsessed with Israel. I think it's particularly amusing how he thinks that Larry Ellison grew attributing to the IDF should somehow be outlawed while at the same time advocating for free speech. He presents himself as some type of libertarian while ignoring the history of the Jews in their ancestral homeland, thinking that this heretofore nomadic tribe of Arabs who are now identified as Palestinians somehow have a right to a return. Now, the Jewish people should be evicted from a part of the world where they have resided from 16 plus centuries before any of the Arabs even settled in the region. Mark goes on to disagree with Glenn using the term genocide and says, love your show, but Greenwald is a conspiracy theorist clown. There's more

in the email, which again, I'm reading in real time right now, but Mark, appreciate your feedback, appreciate your feedback. Obviously, this is something that Glenn is used to hearing whenever he goes into conspiracy, to conservative spaces. And it's something that conservatives who host Glenn are used to hearing when he and others come in to conservative spaces. And I will say, I think Glenn and I actually talked about this a couple of days ago on the show, there was on the right this just utter disgust with Glenn that kind of disqualified anyone from having friendly, friendly conversations with him after the Snowden revelations. And this last question actually about libertarianism is so interesting in the context of this question,

because libertarians were sort of the only, like, wacky people you'd see at these conservative conferences like CPAC being concerned with Snowden revelations and sort of being more sympathetic to Snowden than to his critics. And that's a real divide, actually, I think just in general on the right, because the severity of the surveillance apparatus that reared its ugly head, when Donald Trump took office for the first time, actually even before he took office for the first time, awoke in a lot of, it awakened, I should say, this consciousness on the right about exactly how bad the situation had gotten, just how rotten the system of surveillance and intelligence had actually become. And people that had previously been sort of disqualified from the discourse, actually by like establishes, figures on the left and the right. Glenn is definitely one of those people, started to reconsider those things. And I honestly think that's healthy. I don't agree with 100% of what Glenn says. I'm sure he doesn't agree with anywhere near 100% of what I say. Though when I talk to

him, I try to hear him out and try to learn from him. And I just probably previously would have disqualified him reflexively and just sort of cast him aside as a like commie terrorist sympathizer or something like that in a previous era, which is why I'm somewhat grateful for the moment that I had my formative years in, you know, professionally. Obviously, I just mentioned I grew up in the tea party years, but, you know, these are these are very interesting times to be working on the right in. I should probably go faster here. Benjamin says, you are totally, totally spot on about Taylor Swift and using her feminism as a shield for the pain of uncertainty. And you're contrasting Benjamin, you're contrasting it with Brat.

You say it starts off as she is enjoying her self-indulgent superficial lifestyle of clubbing, drugs, sex, and celebrity, then dives into how insecure that whole life makes her feel and how women like Taylor Swift just stoked these insecurities. Then she meets her boyfriend, now husband, and how that centers her. And she can now, this is super interesting, Benjamin. You say Charlie and Brat are the best examples of what good pop music that artists are their most authentic self can make something I think Taylor has struggled in herself to find yes, yes, yes. To all of that, I actually have not listened to Brat. Charlie XX is, I think, just as a casual

observer of her, she's a very good writer, and she's an interesting artist by the standards of pop artists today. So I think this sounds sort of like something we were talking about, or I've been talking about this a lot, the Lena Dunham, Taylor Swift effect, that it's, it comes out kind of subconsciously in their art in a way that's much more overt, but They aren't aware of how overt that it is. Scott writes, you scared me today. That's the subject line. I had just put my earbuds in.

I heard you saying how great Hakeem Jeffries was. And now he was a great politician. I thought, great. Now I need to find a new podcast to fill up an hour each day. Plus, this is one of my favorite podcasts. Don't do that again, please. I am so sorry, Scott. I cannot for the life of me resist making fun of Hakeem Jeffries.

He has bungled the shutdown. I mean, what, this is like the worst man for the moment for Democrats. So I had to take a little, little barb at Hackeem Jeffries as he now seems to have a formidable primary challenger. Chelsea says, I started binging girls and you were so right about the trends and millennial culture. I'm on season five and loving it. However, my husband is not loving it at all. Oh, well, keep the references coming. Thank you, Chelsea.

I am not surprised that your husband is not loving it at all. A little inside baseball, though, when girls first came out, a bunch of older conservative men were watching it as the sort of like experience of connecting with the youth, like trying to understand the youth and came away really liking it, which is funny. I just remember hearing that at the time. Robert Kennedy, no relation says, I enjoy listening to the podcast, keep it the good work. You say if the Trump administration were really smart, Lindsay Halligan would hold a press conference doing her best comie imitation. She would quote him to every extent possible and say that we've got the goods on him, he broke the law, but no prosecutor in the right minor prosecution. Okay, that's hilarious because

that's of course what James Comey said about Hillary Clinton, which I think there is a very good argument is what started us down the doom spiral. I talk about the doom spiral all of the time, but I think actually there's a pretty good argument. That came from the original Comey letting Hillary off the hook moment because I feel like that is where Comey then felt as though he had to kind of make up for this. He got so much trash from the left that he ended up feeling like he had to compensate by going extra hard after Donald Trump by not charging Hillary Clinton. So I think that just was a mistake because it put him, I mean, I think it was a mistake obviously, but it also a mistake just for him because it put him in this like super self-conscious position where he was constantly

trying to compensate. And he just completely almost singular. slurally thrust us into this moment and doesn't get enough credit for being the source of so many problems. Demon Slayer. This is a question from Mick, NYC-99. Will you be watching Demon Slayer? Highly recommended. Evita's article is right. I probably won't. I don't. I think she's, I think Evita has very good instincts about all of this. I feel like I would have to like go watch the franchise and everything. I just have never been able to get into cartoons. I'm not. I I don't know. I sound like such a jerk. I'm not trying to be. I just am like, I'm not even good with fiction. I'm not good with reading novels. I don't really gravitate towards fictional

television shows. I feel like if I'm watching TV, there's so many good documentaries and docu-series and reality shows for whatever reason. It just feels more immediate and urgent and tangible for me to latch onto those plot lines. That's the best way that I can explain it. So I probably won't watch it, but I do trust Evita's recommendation. And I'm glad that she's watching it to offer that type of analysis. This is on the Dune spiral from Raven C.H.P. How do we get out of a violent doom spiral? That is the one question I think absolutely everybody should be asking.

Because I genuinely don't know. I think I remember the great Molly Hemingway, I don't know, like five or so years ago, saying at some point, we don't have statesmen anymore. We just don't. We don't have leaders. We don't have people who are genuine, you know, I'm paraphrasing Molly and kind of inflecting this with my own take, but like genuine paragon's, virtue, decent people, at least they publicly present that way, and take seriously the task of statesmanship, the art of statesmanship. And that's the only thing that comes to mind for me is that you have to have leaders, real, real leaders that pull you out of it. And maybe some people see that in Donald Trump.

I don't know. Donald Trump posting, he who saves his country violates, no law. Is that the Napoleon quote that he posted over the summer? I don't really see that as statesmanship. But I'm open to being wrong. I have an open mind about these things. This is from Fit by Amanda, who says, I just came to say, I appreciate you.

Well, you and I would disagree on a bit socially. You've given me a fun podcast to listen to throughout the week that gives me a conservative point of view. I'm by no means of a libertarian or any of the above, the above, just a gal who enjoys listening to your podcast and breaking points. Thank you for delivering information in a clear way with a different point of view. Well, thank you, Amanda, because that is a big part of, this is not like a woe with me, but it's genuinely very hard to do when you live in work in Washington and you are somebody with a clear viewpoint, then you get held to the standards, all of the usual standards by your own friends and allies and people in your professional

sphere. But your job is also to talk and to be honest and to be a journalist. And so that's not always comfortable for your own friends and allies and whatever. And the same thing goes for people who are open-minded enough to listen to me on the left, which humbles me enormously. And I find it very gratifying. And I try so hard to balance both of those things to on the one hand be someone who is doing what's right. My own principles. as a Christian, as conservative, as somebody who loves the United States, but then also to be completely open-minded to people who maybe hate the United States who maybe think the U.S. is bad in a million different ways, or people who are just on the left who are not Christian, who don't

think, who don't believe in Christianity, don't believe in a lot of my values. And it's just, I will say, this last month has been one of the hardest. So I appreciate that a lot, Amanda, probably more than you even know. Silly Stuff asks, you have a Impersonation skills. Maybe another channel for comically delivered news. I don't think I do. I don't think I have impressive impersonation skills. Thank you for saying that silly stuff. Thank you. I aspire to have impressive impersonation skills. It's just when Shane Gillis did that sort of definitive Trump impression, it sort of put it in my head in a way that made more sense so I can maybe do it better one than other people. But I wish it were better. I wish it were better.

Okay, John says, I don't much like Trump, but let's acknowledge what Trump has achieved in the Middle East in both first and second term. Harrison would almost certainly follow the same old rut with no real achievements. I don't think there's any other person. I think I said this on the show on Wednesday. I know there's any other person who could have achieved the deal that Donald Trump has so far in Israel or Gaza because he knows that Arab countries do business differently than Western countries, and he has no problem breaching those norms, right? He has no problem sending his friend and son-in-law who do business in that region. He has no problem with the conflicts of interest. And I actually think that's worth considering.

And I don't think it's necessarily a good thing. Obviously, I'm no fan of the Whitkoff and Kushner conflicts of interest and actually Trump conflicts of interest by the Trump organization. And I wouldn't want to see that necessarily replicated. But I do think the reason that this happened, we should be honest, but the reason that this happened. And it's because the Arab world trusts Trump more than they have other Western leaders. And Trump was willing to put himself as the head of this committee and the 20-point police plan. And for the Hamas negotiators, they said, okay, we got him to put his reputation on the line.

And we know that he wants to be this guy who's sort of a peacemaker. How many times does Trump's staff refer to him as peacemaker-in-chief? So I hope and pray that it lasts. I hope and pray that last. I'm so pessimistic, but there is something singularly Trumpian about this. This is J.C. White Cloud about Katie Porter. this illustrates the consequences that arise on a significant portion of any society endorses, bolsters, and nurtures both delusional narcissistic traits, as well as various other mental health issues.

Katie Porter exemplifies the outcome of such detrimental affirmation for affirmation from sycophants who inhabit a reality is destroyed as that of Porter herself. I find that to be a very compelling description of Katie Porter, Jay. And actually, there was this time period in democratic politics where the girl boss, this is sort of like the height of girl boss feminism when Katie Porter was. was being trotted out as some type of, like, impressive politician. And I think she hasn't adjusted to the post-2024 vibe shift and realized that even the media isn't patting that on the back anymore.

Even the media isn't sort of swallowing that whole cloth. All right, this is another one. I have two more to get through. Russell says, here's the big question. Will junk CBS be made better or even marginally improved by having them with merger? Will something that was better than CBS become drunk? Woody Allen's law of thermodynamics, sooner or later, everything turns to shit. suggest we shouldn't get our hopes up. Yeah, I mean, I think that is the big question. Does it get a little

bit better because Barry is willing to, you know, have debates with guys like Dave Smith, even if she totally disagrees with him. She just had, at the free press, a debate between him and Coleman Hughes a couple of days ago. Does that end up going to CBS? And is it outweighed by this kind of catch and kill mentality that like, okay, now we have this massive organ of independent media, new media, under our control. And does it like, is it outweighed by to the, is whitewashing the right word, indie washing? Maybe this is the term I just came up with, indie washing CBS, giving it this facade of

independence and this facade of trying to do something differently. I don't know. I think it's an open question. I hope that it's marginally better. But I hope it doesn't just look marginally better while also. in substance doing something that is just as bad as CBS was before, but with this illusion of packaging. Eric says, Emily, you're definitely one of the very best out there.

Right now, I love what you're doing. I actually ask myself, I wonder what Emily's political lean is. And I couldn't answer, which is a great thing. Objective, honest, not trying to convince the viewers of anything. Well done. Keep it up. Eric, thank you. I appreciate that.

Like I said before, I try really hard to balance this. but I think of myself as somebody who has, who is in journalism, because frankly, I just have more questions than I do answers. I'm not afraid to say that. I do just have a lot of questions. And I like asking people questions. I like learning from people. I don't like interjecting and going on diatribe. Sometimes I do it because I have something to say. And there's something I feel really, really right about. But, you know, those probably are not all right as much as I would like to think they are. So I really do appreciate that. And I am gratified that, you know, people see what I, like, the balance is just, I'll just leave it this way. The balance is is genuinely hard to pull off. And the way that I approach it is just to try not to even think about that, put that out of your head and just ask the questions that genuinely are interesting to you, say the things that are genuinely compelling to you and, you know, let the chips fall where they may. So that's my, that's my attempt. And I appreciate you for saying that. I appreciate all of you for sending in your questions. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's super helpful.

If you subscribe on the podcast feed, subscribe on YouTube, we appreciate it. Thank you again. We will be back with more after party on Monday and Wednesday and more happy hour next week as well. Stay tuned.