After Party with Emily Jashinsky - “Happy Hour”: Inside The White House Press Corps, Separating Art from the Artist, Big Tech Troubles: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

On this week’s edition of “Happy Hour,” Emily Jashinsky takes questions about covering The White House, her first time in the Oval Office and Briefing Room, and she explains why it’s good the press corps is not too big.  She also details her recent debate with Ryan Grim against Reason’s Robby Soave and Elizabeth Nolan Brown on the value of Big Tech and dives into the question about whether there will be a resurgence of liberal Republicans or progressive conservatives. Emily also answers some questions about why she thinks you can separate art from controversial artists , “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” her work-out routine, and discusses one of her close friends (and “After Party” guest) Chris Bedford’s amazing cocktail skills, and more… Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All right, everyone, welcome to another edition of Happy Hour. This is, of course, our Friday special after-party episode where I get to talk to all of you through the great questions that you send in. Quick note, remember to subscribe if you haven't subscribed yet on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. And you know what, it also helps us a lot if you give us a subscribe on YouTube, like, comment, all that stuff's great. Subscribe helps so much. Thank you for being so supportive. I appreciate it.

And thank you for all of your great questions. Now, let's dive in. As a reminder, I look at these questions with fresh eyes when we do these episodes of Happy Hour. I try not to read the questions first. I just look and see if it's a Happy Hour question. I flag it in my inbox. then move right along with my day so that I can look at them fresh. I think it makes it more

entertaining that way for all of you. Okay. Let's start with this one from Andrew. This one was sent from Instagram. Andrew says, do you think there will be a resurgence of liberal Republicans or progressive conservatives like we saw in the first half of the 20th century? More importantly, do you think the secret lives of Mormon wives is a good show? You know what's interesting right now is it's so hard to define what constitutes a liberal Republican or progressive. conservative. So I'm trying to think about that question in this context. Like, is Trump a liberal Republican? Because he is more moderate on abortion, but he's, you know, more conservative on, let's say, immigration. I don't know. I think that's a really interesting question. I'm pretty

interested, especially on the left, about what that might look like. Do you end up getting, I don't know. Someone who, you know, someone who, And this is what we haven't fully seen fleshed out yet on the left. Someone who is totally opposed to what happened with sex and gender, what happened with the 1619 project, doesn't believe in equity and affirmative action and all of that, but is also against sort of lowercase L liberal economics. I don't know. This is a very, very interesting question. And I think a lot of it is just, it's hard to answer right now because our definition of liberal, progressive, and conservative right now is sort of scrambled. I don't know. I don't know. Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. I watched the first season. And I don't normally do this. Like usually when I don't like a show, I do not force myself to watch it. I immediately disliked Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

I see it similarly to why I don't like The Bachelor, but I like The Real Housewives. I think there's a sort of a more documentary aspect, as silly as it may sound, to the Housewives. It reminds me all of the franchises just fundamentally remind me of my favorite documentary, Grey Gardens. There's a season of The Real Housewives of New York City where they explicitly link themselves to Gray Gardens and it's wild. But I think Bachelor and Secret Lives of Mormon Wives are designed differently. Like they just have a different goal. I'm not saying I think the housewives are like real, but I think they are a bit more human and a bit less scripted, at least the good ones and the good seasons and the good housewives, a bit less scripted. So I found Secret Lives of Mormon Wives to be very, I don't like it when I feel like the women are performing for the show.

They're performing because they know how this works now. They kind of know how to play the game. It's becoming a problem on Bravo, to be honest. But for them, it was like they so desperately wanted to be famous. I could just smell it off of my screen. And that I typically don't like. So I would say it's not a good show. but I also did not tune into the second season, and I know people who love it, so I say that

without judgment. All right, Xander asks, what is your workout routine and favorite cheat meal? I do not work out, so I don't have a cheat meal. No, I mean, I really, I like, I hate saying cycling, you know, especially more in the summer, but I do like riding my bike a lot. I've got a lot of great bike trails. here in D.C. I try to walk a lot, but honestly, I just have so little time. And that's a terrible excuse because there are people busier than me. But someday I hope to have a nice,

you know, less, less busy schedule where I can build in more time for all of that stuff. Favorite Cheatmeal, I don't know, I'm also pretty bad about like, you know, I had Taco Bell this week, and I cheat a lot. We'll put it that way. I love Deep Dish Pizza. That's up there. Let's see. I love Taco Bell.

And a Meatball sub. I love a Meatball sub. I could keep going with this. It's probably best that I don't. Let's go into the email inbox here. All right. Mike Nason says, regarding your glorious reference to Arcali remix of Fiesta

featuring Cassidy. Do you think ex-commuting an artist's work is appropriate when they have not been? I still love listening to R. Kelly, but I am okay with no more diddy music, but that's just my preference. So I said on Wednesday's edition of Happy Hour, or after-party, that was actually my second after-party on Wednesday because I had just come from this reason magazine debate where Ryan and Grimm and I squared off

with Robbie Suave and Elizabeth Nolan Brown, the debate had an after-party. So I went to that after party very briefly, and then I said on after party, technically it must be the hotel lobby, because that's what's after the after party. Couldn't call that that day's edition of after party. After party, it had to be hotel lobby. Because that is from one of the greatest songs of all time ignition. After the shows, the after the party is the hotel lobby. Round about four, you've got to clear the lobby. And I'm not going to go any further after that. Because we all know. how the song goes. Now, I think this is a very interesting question for Mike. Um, I really don't mind. I, I've never had a hard time separating art from artist. Um, I do think we should, you know, to the extent that we know about an artist's sort of moral conduct, um, whether it's in their art or outside of their art, I think it should weigh on us. Like it should, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with operating in the world, real world, and having events outside of a piece of

art influence the way that we see a piece of art. That's part of what the artist is, you know, that's part of what the artist is working with themselves when they go to act or when they go to make music or whatever. Now, I don't think, like Woody Allen is a really good example. this you can see woody allen working out all of his uh different moral failings in his movies um and i remember when louis k k was going through the me too stuff um a friend of mine got a copy of the movie that was being banned from theaters like at that point because louis k got me too it was called i love you daddy if i'm remembering correctly and it was a play on woody allen it was fantastic. It was just like a great movie. It was made 10 times more interesting by the Me Too accusations against Louis CK. And for me, that's such a clarifying example of why, you know, it's important not to treat artists like politicians. Camille Pahlia has a great line that the, seeing the artist as, you know, a moral standard bearer is, quote, a sentimental canard of Victorian moralism. Oh, it was so good. She wrote that during

me too. But I do agree with Mike that sometimes it just is impossible to enjoy, I think, like, frivolous art from people that you look back on and you're like, ooh, that's kind of gross. Depending on the subject matter, sometimes that does happen. I agree. And I would think, yeah, I think that's true. A really, really interesting question. We should have a conversation about that on the show. I like that one. all right let's see what is this one um yeah this is a this is an email um anonymous one but it's about personal issues um affecting the how the kind of trans um question has personally affected someone. And I know a lot of you have stories like that. We've all seen it. We've all seen it.

All right. Let's keep going down the list here. Joanna asks, Dear Emily, I was wondering, given the laid back cool nature of your show, are you by chance going to do a Christmas after party featuring a countdown of your favorite cocktails, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic for the non-drinkers, and maybe even a few wine slash spirit food pairings, or perhaps have a virtual Christmas or New Year's Eve party with some of your favorite guests and friends. Or perhaps invite a cool bartender to show us out of mix and multiple drinks and a few new ones. It would be so much fun for us, fans of your show.

Cheers. We are prepping Christmas content. None of it's going to be live. And New York. Well, some stuff that's for the break between Christmas and New Year's. I don't think we're doing anything live between Christmas and New Year's. I used to do before Christmas with the great. Chris Bedford, some stuff about cocktails and food. You could probably still find one of them on

the internet. I'm sure they're out there somewhere. But it's actually a good idea to have Chris come on and do some mixology. He was a bartender for a very long time while he was a journalist, which you know somebody's a good journalist if that's part of their background story because that means they did it for the love of the game and made absolutely no money. at first and had to get a second job, but they wanted to stay in the biz. And so Chris is a fantastic bartender. Like if you're in D.C. kind of conservative circles, that's kind of a known fact. He makes great drinks and great food as well. It would be fun to do that. That might be a good idea for next year. We haven't planned. So we already have it sketched out because basically

there's a, as people probably know, there's a team behind the show. And we want to make sure that everybody has, you know, a couple of weeks to chill at the end of the year when, honestly, there just aren't a lot of people. Maybe you're different. I don't know. But there aren't a lot of people that are listening to their kind of regular podcasts because they're out of their routines or watching the regular YouTube videos. People are spending so much time with family. They are out of their normal routines into which they integrate podcasts and YouTube. So it's just kind of a down time, and we want to, you know, make sure that's a good, good reason to get everybody some rest. But fun idea, Joanna.

All right. This is from Matt, who says, his question is about the coming robot age and says, are humans going to be able to handle a world involving daily interactions with humanoid robots? I think technologists are underestimating people's ability to cope with this. I have a vision of the first time I'm in a stoplight, look over to see a robot in the car next to me. Ooh. Yeah. I worry about that all the time. I remember very clearly when Robbie Suave, man, this must have been a second book, came out.

It was on big tech. And funny, that was the debate that we had, the reason debate with Robbie and Elizabeth Nolan Brown. Ryan and I debated that big tech does more harm than good. They debated the opposite. we did win so that was exciting but remember interviewing Robbie for Federalist Radio Hour and he has a section in his book about the watch and about sorry I just dropped my phone but about the moral panic some people had when the watch was invented and he goes back and finds writings of people really like again like having them

panic over folks looking at their watches all the time. And it's funny. But I remember that was, I don't know, this was a while ago. This might have been, we're coming up probably on like 10 years ago when that book came out. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, that actually is a really, really, really significant change for the human race. And there's probably still a recording of Robbie and I talking about that. But I think after that point, I started to see what Brett Weinstein and Heather Hang have referred to as hyper-novelty. One of my favorite books the last 10 years is their book called The Hunter Gatherers Guide to the 21st Century, and they're evolutionary biologists. And they define hyper-novelty as technology evolving so quickly that

human evolution is not able to adapt, right? And, you know, you've seen, again, as evolutionary biologists, you know, there's evidence of the human race adapting over time. very slowly, you know, for example, like having less body hair, those sorts of things. But as technology snowballed, you know, the watch was a big change. Were we able to keep up with that big change? Arguably, yes. But it was a really, really significant change that people suddenly could mark the seconds. It just changed the way that we organized our days. There's some very interesting history on that. But it just changed the way that we, our relationship to time changed when you were constantly able to check in on it and know hour by hour, minute by minute, second by

second. But it's an, it's an example of a change that we were able to sort of digest and then move on. And, you know, nobody now knows the time before, no pun intended, the time before we had watches. Nobody alive knows what that was like, basically, except for maybe. be some, you know, very, very distant tribes, very, very remote tribes. And so, yeah, that's, I think of it as a lot of this stuff, we started to move forward so quickly that we're disoriented by the motion. And some people interpret that as a steadiness, right? Like, well, when I was younger, we didn't have smartphones. We didn't have Wi-Fi. We didn't have cell phones. You I hear that a lot from people.

And it's like, yeah, that's, we did, we do all have those now. We've gotten fairly used to it, but we really haven't gotten used to it. Like our society, our bodies, you know, we're sort of used to it just in practice. Everybody knows that they exist. We have integrated them into life. And that makes, I think that gives some people more comfort than it should because the question is more, do we adapt to these things as a species? And I think the jury is quite obviously out on whether we're able to do that quickly enough post. I would say like the Industrial Revolution was, you know, that changed life in many, many very good ways and in some very bad ways over time.

But then there's a period, I mean, I don't know. Is it, you know, the Internet and the widespread adoption of the Internet? I tend to think actually what it is, Wi-Fi smartphones, and then algorithmic social media. Algorithmic social media, to me, is the big one. And I think that's the point at which we stopped being able to respond in time to kind of adapt healthfully. But, you know, we weren't adapting healthfully to other things before that. You know, obviously the obesity crisis, the health crisis is downstream of. living more sedentary lives, computer jobs, all of that. It wasn't perfect before that,

but we were picking up on things, at least, and doing nervous to kind of address them. Great question. All right. Let's see. What is this one? Oh, this is a guest suggestion from Rodney. Carrie Smith from the deprogrammed YouTube channel. I don't know Carrie Smith. I will go ahead and Look up, Carrie Smith, Rodney. Thanks so much for the email. Ryan asks, can you please describe your first experience in the White House press briefing room? Hmm.

Would have been the first Trump administration? Yeah. Yeah, it would have been the first Trump administration. This is a little known story. Actually, this is a little known piece of my biography. actually, I was working on little known even among friends and family. I mean, I was working on a book back in like 2017 with my former roommate, my closest friend, and it was related to the White House. We ended up not doing it because the news cycle changed as soon as the

Russia collusion stuff happened. The new cycles changed and all of that. But I was in the, my friend was a White House reporter, and we were in there, I think the first time I was there was for a meeting with Kelly and Conway. And if you're a reporter and you go into the White House, my friend at the time had what's called the hard pass. And I do have a hard pass now because the Trump administration has given hard passes to, like, new media outlets. that's just a huge help if you're a journalist. And the WHOCA, the White House Correspondents Association in the White House before the second Trump administration made that very difficult. And it was really something that daily White House reporters would have to go through a long period to get. And I mean, maybe not that long. But, you know, it's been very helpful.

for my coverage to have a hard pass to be able to do pool duty, a new media pool duty that is and ask questions and briefings when I have something to ask the White House, covering something based on the White House, going to talk to the White House press team, that type of thing. But if you're a journalist, you're going into the White House, that you usually go in through the press room because that's what the press team works. And if you have a hard pass, then you're going through. that part of the White House anyway, because you're getting in with your hard pass. You don't go through the whole rigmar roll.

I actually don't know what type of security, people who aren't there for people who aren't press that go there for a meeting arcs. I haven't been in that situation, but you walk in and everyone says the same thing at first. So you get past security, and then you walk to the doors of the briefing room, which is obviously attached to the West Wing. And so you see the White House lawn in front of you. you see all of the camera crews where the people do their hits for, you know, nightly news, all of that.

Wherever you see that White House backdrop, that means that person has like a little booth. It's outside, and they have them rigged up. I mean, someone should do a story about how they rig up those boots. Like, they have space heaters. They have those, like, Dyson fans in the summer, what you need here in D.C., chairs, everything it makes it like a little uh just like they make them like cozy little spaces but they are outside uh so you walk past that you kind of see that and that magic and i've talked about this before but for me that's really cool because i love you know i i've always found something like very

romantic about the media and tv particularly i'm just a tv obsessive so uh for me that was you to see it in person and see how the magic is made you get that little behind the scenes look that makes it almost adds another dimension to your understanding of it. I love that. And then when you walk into the briefing room, it's different because it's, everyone says the same thing. It's really small. Like, it's really small, way smaller than it looks and on TV. And that's a good thing, to be honest, because I think if it were much bigger, this sounds a little silly. But I think a lot of people would work from there every single day. And for now, mostly just the people who have seats in there. There are assigned seats. So you could go up on the internet and look at the

chart right now and see where each of these outlets is assigned. It's like probably 30 that have assigned seats. That's a real privilege that now the White House is in charge of it. It used to be the White House Correspondents Association. But I think it's now the White House. They took a lot of stuff back from the White House Correspondents Association, which, by the way, have pretty much zero problem with. because WHCA was and is so misbandaged. And I would have no problem if the Biden White House had done that either, to be honest. It's their White House. So anyway, it was an odd power sharing agreement that probably needed some rebalancing.

But if you have a chair, that means you have a desk for the most part. And if you expanded the room, I think you would just have people who take advantage of that expansion and not in a good way, people who just say, oh, I'm working in the White House and they're not actually covering the White House and all of that sort of thing. Like, they're not covering it daily and yet they work from there anyway. So I feel like it's actually not a bad thing that it's small. You know, if you go to a briefing and you don't have a seat, you either have to camp out for hours and take the seat of somebody who's not there and just hope that you get lucky and they don't show up or, you know, you text them ahead of time or something. But for the

most part, you're standing against the wall, like, hoping, hoping that the press secretary comes to you, that whoever's answering questions or taking questions can see you, can see your hand, and is deciding to go beyond just those seats. So that's a tough one. But I think if you opened it up, it would be, it's, it's, you really only do that when you have to do that, the standing stuff when you have to do that. But people who don't have, you know, real reasons, they're not, maybe not covering the White House closely. Like, I only go there when I have something to do with the White House. If I have a story with the White House, that type of thing. But I wouldn't, if they made it comfortable, I could see people who don't, like, showing up every day and making it

impossible. So anyway, this is a long-winded, a little behind-the-scenes tour, but it's very small. And I just remember I was waiting for a meeting with Kellyan. And, and, I just remember, I was waiting for a meeting with Kellyan. And, It was so hot in humid that day. And I was sitting in the seats looking at the podium. And the meeting got canceled. It was like 5.5.30 p.m. And the meeting got canceled, like 2017. But it was, you know, I didn't care that the meeting got canceled.

We went back and I think we went a second time. And I want to say that meeting also got canceled. Then we went back another time. And I think this was under Sean Spicer. We were in, we had to go in the press secretary's office. which my friend did all the time because, again, she's a White House reporter. But, yeah, it's like being in history. You know, you sort of can sense it.

I was in the Oval Office for the first time recently. And again, this sounds silly to some of my friends in journalism here because they go in there all the time. But for me, I was really, like, I'd never been in the Oval Office and was just being an absolute, like, uncool loser. to be so excited about going in the Oval Office. And I don't know about you, but I've had a lot of experiences in life where you're, you go somewhere on a tour or whatever. And you're like, oh, okay, it almost is like you're looking at props. And it's, it's interesting and unique. But then you go into some places and there, you can feel that they're charged, like historically charged. And the place where I've had that the most is the Oval Office. You know, there's,

Yeah, there's like the Vatican. You can definitely feel it there. I'm trying to think of another place. But like, maybe there isn't. Maybe it's just, I've never been to Jerusalem. I really want to go to Jerusalem. I'm sure you feel that all over the place there. But you're not going to the Oval Office. And it's just not only do you have that strange experience. And it's very meta, right? Because this is where movies take place. It's where all of these historic photos take place. And you're in the midst of history and television while you're there, right? Which is a sick way to think about it because I'm a sick television addict. I'm kidding. But I actually think it's an interesting way to think about it, that like the history you see on television, the history that you see on screens or in physical

pictures, history books, all that sort of thing. You're in the middle of it when you're in there. and then also those images and moments are being reproduced for the screen and the books while you're in there too. And then it has this like accumulated historic memory. It just feels very heavy in there, not in a bad way, but you just, that's one of the places that it has felt most like it just historically charged is the best way that I can put it. It's just historically charged is the best way that I can put it. very, very cool. It's also, I don't know if they, I doubt they, like, really ever take tours there unless you're, like, I don't know. I doubt they ever take tours there. But maybe that's what's different, too, is that you're in there for a press conference or whatever. That one feels,

that one feels heavy. The briefing room is very, that's the nicest way to put this. The briefing room's kind of drab. Is that it a, it's a little rundown. Definitely, like, the kitchen and stuff. I think Tucker talked about this. I want to say it was in his podcast with Sager. I think that was over the summer. He did a podcast with Sager and Jetty, and they were talking about White House reporters,

and Tucker at one point was like, they eat out of vending machines. They're miserable. Yeah, every time I'm there, I'm eating out of the vending machine. Because if you want to go somewhere else, you have to leave campus, go back through security.

It's kind of a pain. So you mostly do eat out of vending machines. Yeah, it's a little run-down is probably not the right word, but it's definitely not fancy or luxurious or anything like that. It's a little rough. It's a little rough. And there's like mosquitoes. One of my friend had like a citronella thing at his desk last time I was down there. And I'm like working at someone else's desk.

and I'm like, dude, this whole place smells like we're on a camping trip right now because you're Citronella going because you're too upset by the mosquitoes. So it's not, it's not like working in a fancy office or anything like that, but you are just casually milling about the White House. So it's very cool in that sense. But otherwise, the briefing room is a fairly underwhelming place. to anything else, like, that stuff's underwhelming asking questions is, I don't know how people do that every day. It would fry my nerves. You know, I talk to people who do that.

It's like, man, your questions move markets. And I think there are some people who are way too casual about it. You know, it's not like I think very highly of the White House press corps, but there's some, you know, great, great people in there. And it's just, it's an interesting situation where these briefings are mostly carried live. They affect markets. They affect world affairs. And all of that is like for a kind of routine that's not like out of the Constitution or anything.

It's not something the founder said had to happen. It's just something we do. And that we added cameras to it. Didn't always have cameras. And so would that be different if you took the cameras out? Yeah, of course it would be different. You know, you'll often see that the, the networks and the big players in the front row ask versions of the exact same question,

and you wonder, why are you doing that? Why are you wasting this question? Why are you wasting our time? And it's because they want to get their own soundbite for a story that they know is going to lead their nightly news. So their nightly news wants their White House correspondent asking the version of that question. So that's, you know, it's, those briefings are frustrating. Those briefings are frustrating. I think on net, it's, I suppose, that you have the White House taking questions on camera, often taking questions on camera. That's probably a, I think that's probably a good thing, even if it gets like a little entertainment here, entertainmity here and there. But, yeah, yeah, it's, that's probably

enough talk about the White House briefing room, which, by the way, I'm not a White House reporter. I don't know that much about it. I've just been able to go. I have a lot of close friends who work as White House reporters who have worked as White House reporters for a very long time. So I've also been around, you know, some, I'd like to think some good ones in the White House Press Corps. And I've gotten to hear a lot of the lore from some of the old guys, too, which I love. This one of the cool things about being in journalism is the older journalists all have Forrest Gump's stories. They all have these. And it's one of those things that makes you want to stay in the industry. They all have these, you know, incredible timelines. Like, they have been around, whether it's the White House, foreign travel, campaigns. They all have these stories that they all have these lives that are like Forrest Gump lives. And to, you know, again, I like to think I hang out with the good ones. But to talk to a guy like Carl Cannon, Forrest Gub. I mean, it's incredible. The stories that this guy has are, like, below your mind. And he's a great journalist. Megan has him on a lot. She has the RCP crew on this week. She had the Real Clear Politics crew on. And Carl, you know, has covered many presidential administrations. He was head of the White House Correspondents Association. I want to say under Clinton, when a pool report that's now emailed out, If you're the pooler that day, you keep track of the president's movements of behavior.

That used to be something that was, like, nailed to a bulletin board, which Carl would laugh at me for laughing at. But his stories are just unbelievable. We should do an episode of After Party where I just make Carl drink wine and tell his stories because they're crazy. So maybe we'll do that. That would have been great Christmas content, actually. That would have been great Christmas content. So, yeah, it's a wild place. D.C. is a wild place.

very, very crazy place, even just in the last, like, decade that I've been doing it, you could kind of see where it's going, just because, like, you just end up, like, I was at the Zoron thing. I covered January 6th. I've been to the kind of Biden border crisis in Mexico, like, all of these random things that you're just doing for work. that you look back on you're like, there's something historic about that. And in some cases, it's extraordinarily historic. And yeah, you just, you end up seeing a lot of history up close.

It's one of the cool things. One of the things that makes the job worth doing. And hopefully, you take that privilege seriously and then convey as accurately as possible what happened to people who rely on. truth tellers to be the intermediaries. We can't all be in the Oval Office, so someone has to convey accurately what happened. So a lot of people don't take that seriously enough in my humble opinion. All right, that's enough of my humble opinion. Thank you so much for sending your questions in. The email address is Emily at devilmaicaremedia.com. It helps a lot if you put a happy hour question in the headline or mention that you're reaching out the happy hour question. But no worries. If not, you can also DM the After Party Emily Instagram.

We'll be back on Monday with more after party, Wednesday with more after party. And then a week from now, next Friday, with more happy hours. So send those questions in and have a great weekend, everyone.