After Party with Emily Jashinsky - "Happy Hour": Karoline Leavitt's Unusual Mat Leave, Data Center Backlash, and Trust in Elections: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

On this edition of “Happy Hour,” Emily Jashinsky opens with an interesting question and observation about The White House’s strategy of having cabinet secretaries fill in for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt while she’s on maternity leave. Emily also fields questions about politics in the news including the Graham Platner sexting scandal, Thomas Massie’s beef with Israel, and election integrity. Emily also takes up pushback against Data Centers and how folks can get involved if they are concerned about having them in their own communities. Emily dives into a number of questions about journalism including Greg Gutfeld and Fox News, CBS’s ongoing problems, and if she’s ever gotten into a fight with her “Breaking Points” co-host Ryan Grim. She offers her personal take about the viral YouTuber story claiming they terminated a pregnancy after a Down syndrome test, her own outlook on life, her Christian faith, why she finds many stories she covers humorous, and more… Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to another edition of Happy Hour. Everyone is great to be here with you on what for you is a Friday as this airs. But for me, of course, it is Thursday afternoon, which is when I always tape Happy Hour. I get to answer all of your emails on our Friday shows, which is so much fun for me. Emily at Devil Maycare Media.com. That is my real email address. And as many of you know, it is where I go through just about everything that gets sent to me. And I'm looking forward to diving into this week's emails, just. I just want to thank everybody for being just such a loyal listener. I was talking with Steve Krakauer, who's Megan's executive producer on the show this week. And I love Steve. And we were talking about really how important it is to engage with disagreement and to just see where other people are coming from, what they're bringing to their opinions and their perspectives. and I love that. So it's just, you know, part of what makes journalism so fun for me is that if you're one of those people that has a million different questions about everything, you professionally kind of get to scratch those itches. So it's one of the highlights of my

week every week. As a reminder, if you aren't subscribed on the YouTube, that is one of the most helpful things you can do for the show to keep us doing our independent journalism here on After Party. Go ahead. Subscribe. It helps a lot if you interact. react with the show too if you comment like that's great for the algorithm which is in turn great for us but i appreciate everyone being here on the podcast side i try not to play favorites but i do love doing audio only show it's just like me in my office and it's a really i think cool opportunity to just hear from all of you so let's dive into this week's emails this one is from mary who says something i thought was interesting is the way the trump administration decided to use rotating

staff to backfill for Caroline Levitt. So she can have time with her new baby. I feel like that this had happened in a Democratic administration. It would be celebrated as the best thing since Hillary. Either way, I think it is great that her mostly male colleagues are willing to take on extra work. And she doesn't have to worry about being replaced. Mary, this is a great point.

And so often you just get a gut instinct about what would be happening if this were a Democratic administration. And I have a hard time believing anybody could deny that Mary is correct, that if this were Karin Jean-Pierre or Jen Saki and cabinet members were taking time out of their day to come and stand at the podium and answer questions from the press. Granted, if you're in the Trump administration, you're probably more likely to enjoy taking questions from the press. But nonetheless, I think we know how the story would play out.

You have all of these male cabinet members. Well, first of all, Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have all been up there answering questions, which is sort of remarkable in and of itself. I think that would be treated differently if it were a Democratic administration. It's one of the big storylines that, again, a lot of this comes from members of the press having, it's like a broken record. I apologize because many of you have heard me say this over and over again. But when we started sorting based on class as Charles Murray has documented, what you ended up with is a lot of people who were sympathetic to the center left in newsrooms, classrooms, certainly in

classrooms, and in boardrooms. And they live in amongst each other more and more. Again, there's a lot of social science behind this. And so they just have more understanding of and and empathy for other people generally in that class bubble. And that means when somebody, even from that bubble, like Scott Besson, for example, comes in and upsets the apple cart, there's immediate suspicion in a way that there isn't. If you're, for example, Jen Saki, you've been at a high level of democratic politics for a long time. they know you, they're very familiar with you, and you're making sense to them, right? Like, they would have a conversation with you at a cocktail party that there wouldn't be a whole lot of disagreement.

And, you know, even if you're, you know, center Republican, that type of person, that was even more so before Trump. But all that is to say, they just don't have a lot of, like, some of these things don't occur to them because these big stories don't occur to, like, assignment editors in media because, they're not really thinking about these people as empathetic characters in the same way they might be thinking about Carine Jean-Pierre, Jen Saki, who I think left partially to spend more time as a mom. That job is so demanding. You would just get a different tone, tenor, and selection of stories. So I think Mary is totally correct about this. And for my opinion, that's a little bit. Like, they even share social circles to some extent, right? Like, your average journalist probably shares the social circle. There's more overlap in their social circle with, you know, what it was, which Obama press secretary was that that came right from Time magazine? Jay Carney, right? They just share a social circle with center journalists and center left journalists. And sometimes that includes center right types of lawmakers, you know, the people who really care about low taxes, but don't often talk about abortion or sex. gender, those types of things. And they have the same perspective on foreign policy. And this is where I

agree with my friends on the left's Chomsky style class-based critiques of media. But some people get a little irritated when I say that the media is center-left. It's just objectively true at this point. Like, you can see people from the left saying that they're surrounded by center-leftists inside of all of this. So, yeah, it's incontroversive. It's incontroversy. at this point, but it doesn't mean that they're leftists, right? I think it's probably fair to say they're more like leftists than hardcore conservatives inside the media, but still a, you know, not as many leftists as they are kind of center left, cultural progressives, who generally still believe in kind of low taxes and a very robust foreign policy. Anyway, I think Mary is correct,

and I just spent so long on that question because I think it's such a good point. Thanks for the email. Mary. Brandon says, got a couple of questions, but I'll try to keep it brief here in my city Louisville. Also, I forgot to mention the top of today's show. If you're a first time listener, I do read these live. I flag them in my inbox and then if they look like they're for happy hour, I flagged them in my inbox. Sometimes I find out they're not for happy hour. And it's just a, you know, a question or a suggestion or something like that that someone doesn't want right on the air. But anyway, I read them live. hopefully not any that aren't meant for happy hour. But that's, I just think, makes it much more interesting to go through the emails this way. So you can kind of, we can all take part in the thought process. So Brandon says, here in my city, Louisville, Kentucky, they proposed a data center. Nothing new, right? It seems to be happening everywhere. The issue is that literally no one in the city wants this. There are a couple shady board meetings and zoning meetings that information in the local and the location of the meetings were intentionally and not very easy to locate.

that's very interesting. And of course, this was pushed through. I wrote to my congressman and nothing but silence aside from peaceful protesting, which I wouldn't begin to know how to organize. Is there anything we can do? Or are we just resigned to the fact that it is going to happen? The water company in the area has already proposed a 4% increase in our utility bill, which is fun. I'm sure the electric company will follow suit. I hear you guys talk about this stuff all the time on breaking points and on your show. I guess what I'm curious about is how did we not have some existential dread about the situation? It seems this was silently voted on against the group consensus and despite popular opinion. They're just going to send it. They're building this data center in the poorest section of the city. The land is cheaper, I'm sure, but the people in that part of town already really don't have a voice.

I was just curious if you had any suggestions or thoughts, huge fan. Thank you for everything you do. My wife and I love you and listen to you daily. Brandon, thank you very much for those kind words and for this fantastic question slash anecdote from Louisville. I haven't followed the story locally.

Nationally, there is a similar pattern playing out. It's definitely happened in my home state of Wisconsin. Charlie Barron's of Manitwack Minute Fame got involved, and eventually one community in Wisconsin passed a pretty anti-data center, a really kind of sweeping anti-data center piece of legislation, got that pushed through because people felt similarly that you had these big corporations coming in,

demanding so much land and then promising few jobs in return. Immediately some good construction jobs in many of these cases. But then ultimately, I heard of one in the D.C. area that was like going to have 12 permanent jobs. Some of them, you know, 70 permanent jobs, not like, you know, when you take up that much land or even less to build a factory. And you have a guarantee of literally hundreds, if not thousands of jobs coming in to revitalize the community. the tax benefits from some of the data centers are significant, meaning people save money on their property taxes. But then in other cases, they have ended up seeing price hikes in utility bills. There's some disinformation, or I should say, like, there's some incorrect information that's

floated around because I think partially people are so skeptical of the data centers that when something goes wrong after a data center comes in, it's natural to be like, well, we didn't have this problem before. And sometimes what's happening, you know, more broadly in the local area can be affecting it too. But I completely understand why people are furious about this. The data centers are hideous. They're not creating tons of jobs. And the big question you have is all of this is for what? For what? Is it for the military? Is this potentially creating a defense target, by the way, in a neighborhood, which is something we haven't spent much time talking about at all. But if you're doing military, if this is a primarily military-based data center,

or is this a military target now in suburban Cincinnati or wherever? What are the long-term noise ramifications? I saw a video of a data center in Texas. It was so bright and loud. I felt like I was in Eddington, the great film, if you haven't seen it yet, probably the best COVID film so far. Just you really have to trust. that these companies are going to tell the truth about what's happening.

And nobody has a reason to trust these companies. After so many of them have been elusive about what's happening with algorithms, with speech, and with their broader effect on society. I mean, you're just really, especially when you're giving them tax breaks, you're really to build in your area, which, by the way, they don't need. They don't need tax breaks. They can afford. Have you seen their valuations?

they're doing all right. Megan's idea is that actually they should be used to pay down the national debt, which I think is actually fascinating idea. There are all kinds of ways to get creative with this, but I've never been significantly involved in local political activism. And that's kind of a problem in D.C., actually. But so I'm struggling to do anything. better, come up with anything better than what Brandon has already done, which is right

a congressman. I would say, if you can, talk to your neighbors, because sometimes someone knows someone, and like, the more people you talk to, the more people you kind of take the temperature of, someone's willing to convey a message more strongly to someone they know, maybe on city council, maybe in state legislature, or is connected in some way to something. So I would say talk to your neighbors, see what they're thinking. If you drive through Northern Virginia, you see a lot of anti-data center signs. Maybe that's something that you can do to emphasize the will of the community. And it's tough, though.

People don't care until their power is threatened. So that would mean if any of this is being voted for, if any of these tax breaks are being voted for, you have to make it clear to local elected officials that they will have competition. And there may be ramifications from the public if this goes through. And there are some crazy data stories, data center stories that have made it into national news. So I would try to get local media involved and they can also help bring light to some of what's happening to. So that's my best advice. there was a

I was watching a Hulu series about squatters it's incredible last night and one of the stories I promise this will make sense in context was about a woman who got arrested for trying to kick a guy who was squatting

out of her own home and because she got local media involved not only were the charges dropped but there was a change to the law in the state so local media can be really powerful because that does send a message to politicians that their power is threatened, will be threatened because people are upset. So that's the best advice I can give, but it's so

tough. It's so tough. And the entire debate is really tough because it brings in or invokes the question of the U.S. versus China. What does it actually mean to beat China in the AI competition? I think that's a pretty important question that we've gotten kind of hazy, fuzzy answers on. Does it mean putting data centers all over rural America, sometimes in our suburbs? What does it, like, does that help? Is there, is there something that could be done on a scale that's actually smaller that is still more powerful than China? I don't know. But I've been sort of dissatisfied with the answers that I've seen to that particular question because a lot of people look at this and they're like, well, so we're taking up all this land, we're giving away all these tax breaks, we're dealing with some of these real concerns about utilities, noise, light pollution, and is it for rapid development of like chat GPT that helps or is giving people or being used very heavily for like personal therapy and is being developed without a lot of guardrails is being used in those kind of deep space.

spiritual way by many people in ways that are uncomfortable and in ways that the tech companies seem to genuinely be encouraging. Is that what we're rewarding and encouraging by putting all of this up? Is there a way that we can do this more constructively? Meaning, you know, you put up data centers and the technology has better guardrails. I mean, one of my big concerns about this is that we don't have to anthropomorphize chatbots. You don't have to be talking to Claude, or you don't have to be hearing a human voice when you're talking to chat GPT. They don't have to talk to you in complete beautiful sentences, beautiful in air quotes, of course. You can reprogram these things in ways that aren't designed to blur the line between human and machine.

And we're just diving in headfirst at the direction of the powerful. And I don't think anybody's wrong to be uncomfortable with it. And I think the data center question, you know, oh, it's all the opposition is being ginned up by China. Politico wrote a story about a new open AI survey. I talked about this on Wednesday's show. The headline, Open AI says China launched influence campaign to shape U.S. attitudes on AI data centers. You go and read the study. Second to the last page, it says, this is only on one platform and quote, most of the social media posts we identified generated little or no observable engagement.

little or no observable engagement. So it has Russia collusion vibes where the Mueller report comes out and finds, or the Senate report comes out and finds, yeah, Russia did try to sway people in one direction by posting the most crude, like, bizarre efforts at political memes and cultural memes. And they didn't have very,

vast reach like the narrative implied. And so I just, there's, there's so much money mixed up in all of this right now. There are genuine like communists who are on the side of trying to stop it and who might not be, you know, entirely accurate or fair minded. But I think I might be aligned with a lot of the far left on some of the deeper spiritual human questions, maybe not spiritual, but human questions at play here. And it does feel like, to Brandon's point, it's just, being shoved on everybody's throats. So we will see, David says, in reference to the Platner sexing scandal, it's hard to believe anyone truly cares about sexual promiscuity claims in politics anymore. To me, it seems very partisan and mostly hypocritical, like Trump or not voting for him,

and then criticizing anyone else about being a womanizer seems problematic. Conversely, it is interesting to see left-wingers defending Platner's physicality allegations like it's a non-issue. While in the middle of the Me Too movement, if a Republican was accused of twisting an ex's arm behind their back and locking them in a room. There would have been a major outcry for their imprisonment or a death. My brother loves to quote the phrase. It either matters or it doesn't about this kind of stuff. I personally believe that in a post-Clinton Trump era. It mostly doesn't. David, you are right on the money here. I think that's totally true. I think it's the double standard that's annoying. I think the standard and many people on the right and in the center and actually even some people

on the left, we're saying for a long time, the standard that was being solidified during the Me Too movement was wrong. And before the Me Too movement, by the way, when this was roiling college campuses when I was in college, you were saying the standard that is being pushed by the left is wrong. It is a bad standard. And they were saying, if you make that argument, you are doing it because you're a political hack, who's making excuses for Trump, or you are a reactionary, or or you are, you know, gross because you're providing cover for rapists and people who are guilty of sexual assaults. That was what people who disagreed with us were up against from some of the same people defending Platner now. And that is so maddening. It's so maddening. Trying to

keep my head clear on this one, because I also think these are not the be all and end all of the platinum campaign politically. I think most voters are beyond this, probably around the Clinton era, is when they went beyond it, because what was it, like Gloria Steinem and others making excuses for him. I do think a lot of voters have just come, have become accustomed to viewing politicians cynically, not as likely great people who you'd want to babysit your child, but as, you know, parts on a chessboard, right? You just kind of acknowledge there. a utility. You've lost confidence in the idea that they're going to turn out to be great, that they're not going to end up being John Edwards. And that's what I think gave rise to Trump,

is people were saying, we don't care. Most Trump voters are different from people at Trump rallies. Most Trump voters, and someone needs to do a real poll on this, because I haven't seen good polling on this, but it's just my experience covering this for 10 years. Most Trump voters don't tell you he is a moral paragon. They just say he's better than Hillary Clinton. He's better than Joe Biden. He's better than Kamala Harris. He's better than the alternative.

And I think a lot of people are going to say that with Graham Platner and other Democratic candidates. And it's these folks in Washington who aren't dealing with some of the real price crunches that people are feeling at the gas pumps right now or that they were in 2016 who are saying, I'm sorry, but I don't have time to do this song and dance anymore about how wonderful of a person Jeb Bush is because his brother sent people in my community to war, and they've never been the same. I'm not going to spend my time trying to figure out if this person is actually decent or not. I need the gas prices to come down. So I think it's generally correct, David.

And I mean, it wouldn't even have just been a Republican that the left would have accused of assault in the Me Too moment, like the really heady days. They did it to Aziz Ansari. He was called, what was it? I think the allegation in the babe. dot net story was actually sexual assault. And it was so thin, but it really ruined Aziz Ansari for a moment. That was the turning point, of course, in Me Too. But they were, I mean, it was everyone. That was, if you weren't alive, or like, not alive, but if you weren't an adult during that. I know that it was a topic of a lot of discussion and debate in high schools, because I've talked to people who were in high school at the time, but like in media, just seeing this

hysteria every single day in the different directions it went in. I've honestly never seen anything like it. Never seen anything like it. That was wild. Howard says, just listen to your latest happy hour. The programs are getting longer, which is a treat and your limitless energy continues to amaze. I do wish you would put the happy hour shows on YouTube. have a difficult question for you this time if you are up for it. Well, here I'll say just off the bat. The happy hour shows on YouTube, we put a couple up over Christmas, but part of the idea with happy hours to drive people to the podcast feed too, because, you know, I'm a podcast

person, so I like people subscribing on the podcast feed and getting the show there as well. It's a good, having a good podcast audience is really helpful because the algorithm can be fickle. but if you have a good solid base on the podcast side, it's enormously helpful, actually from a, like, business perspective. So anyway, that's part of the reasoning there. Howard says, well, I disagree with your position on abortion. Your point of view seems to be very pure, for lack of a better word, and I admire that. Here's yet another reason I'm glad I'm a guy. I read this new story about a YouTuber named Jesse Ridgeway, whom I've never heard of

and his wife was expecting a baby. They decided to terminate her pregnancy when it was discovered that the child had a 95% chance of being born with Down syndrome. My first thought was what a nightmare. My second thought was what would Emily think? I would absolutely do what they did, but it is apparently controversial and obvious decision to me. This seems like the perfect example of when a philosophical point of view meets a real-world situation in a brutal way. Thoughts. On a lighter note, I know you've said you've listened to all Megan's shows. You're my favorite, but I do also enjoy Megan. She's very funny. The two of you are so funny together. She recently did a show with Mark Halperin. And they played a clip from some guy named Tim Dillon on the U.S. v. China. Hysterical. And Megan's reaction was just as funny. I didn't see that, Howard. But it is like Tim Dillon is in.

incredibly funny. And Howard says, I wish I could add your wrap-up show to Miami programs, but I don't have serious X-Ebb. The wrap-up shows have been incredible since the Iran's war started in particular because people call in from around the country every single day. And the last few days, we've been talking about Henry Novak and everything Megan's been talking about Carmelin-Anthony, Belfast. We've had a lot of good discussion about that. But it's so interesting to hear from people who are like, who voted for Trump on the Iran war issue. And it's gotten, the wrap-up show has gotten some real media coverage recently because there've been so many interesting callers. Some saying, this is why they support the war. This is why they

don't support the war. They're willing to support it for this long. So it's given me some very interesting insight. And we had our first caller hang up that I can remember this week. Someone tried to make the argument that Trump was racist towards Kristen Welker in that Wisconsin interview they did really this week. And we went back and forward. That was great. I keep meeting to post the audio. So maybe I'll do that soon. But I still don't, I haven't firmly gotten an answer on whether this Jesse Ridgeway story is true. I've heard people saying that maybe it's not. It's hard to know with these YouTubers. If folks aren't familiar with it, Howard decided or Howard described it to my memory correctly. Awful, awful story. And God bless everybody who finds themselves in that

position. I have not been in that position. And so I don't want to convey for a moment that it's easy or that I know what you're going through. I don't know what you're going through. And I think part of the issue from an anti-abortion perspective, this is where I do disagree. We talked about this on a recent happy hour. I do disagree with like punishments for mothers right now. Because I think most people buy into the clump of cells idea. And I think that's genuinely different. If you really believe, as many people do, sometimes because it's a convenient fiction, right, that there's a value difference between a baby in the womb, my baby outside the womb, or a life that is. um, tethered to some type of medical support for an elderly person.

I, I, I, I, I, then it's a, it's a different calculation in your mind. Um, you don't see that as an a living human being. And so in, in your logic, it wasn't killing a living human being. Um, and I totally understand that people disagree with me on that. And, and for me, the reason that I disagree with decisions like the one the Ridgeways allegedly made is that or say they made. I didn't mean allegedly in a kind of judgmental way. It's just, again, hard to know with YouTubers. Why I disagree with this very real decision that's faced many people over and over again is that I think as soon as you have an entity that is living and human, we have equal. dignity under God and under the law. And some people will say, well, that is necessarily religious. I say, no, you should listen to Christopher Hitchens, who warned the left that even in the earliest

stages after implantation, you have new human, a unique human DNA that is also alive. How else would you describe it? Is it not human? And then is it not alive? That's a really hard argument to make. And so I believe when you have a new human life, it's alive, it's living, a new human who is living, then you just have to draw the line. And that leads to some incredibly painful circumstances that I pray I don't ever find myself in because they're difficult. But in response to the Ridgeway story, I was so encouraged on social media to see people posting amazing, amazing. videos, funny videos, lovely videos of their siblings and their children who do have Down syndrome and are the best part of their lives. And it is a stark contrast to say, to look at those and then

look at the Ridgeway video, kind of in the same feed at the same time and say that's what they just extinguished. So that would be my response, Howard. It's obviously complicated. We talk about here a lot, but that's where I come down on it. I just, I think you have to draw the line for universal dignity at living human beings. And I think that means you have a right to life. So, tough question, but there you go. This is, someone passes along the story about the Kushner, Ivanka, Family Resort Project in Albania. This is from Chris, who passes it along. I followed this, and it's such a weird story, such a weird story. I also, apparently the site in Albania has lots of bunkers.

Local Albanians are not happy about it, but it's a like a Cold War military site, and it does have lots of bunkers. So people are comparing it potentially to like another Epstein Island. But my understanding is also that they want thousands of like rooms or condos to be built there. So it wouldn't necessarily be super secret and private. I have no idea what to make of this. The funding is weird. the Chris I'm sorry Tom Elliott did a good job on his substack of walking through some of what's going on with this it's a crazy story wild wild stuff so check out Tom's sub sack if you're interested in that it's like honestly so convoluted it's been hard to follow but the funding is is shady from my perspective it's all weird but anyway interesting story Hank says Ireland just made

and to Israeli ministers from entering Ireland. The situations may be different than banning Jank and Hassan, but it will be interesting to see the reactions or a lack of reaction from people who excoriated the UK for keeping them out. Yeah, it's an interesting point, Hank. I hadn't seen that. Hank also says it seems that evidence presented by women against Platner is greater than what Christine Blasey Ford offered against Brett Kavanaugh

said from Ford's claims. There exists no evidence that Ford and Kavanaugh ever met each other. Yeah. Yeah. and Ford's friends denying the story. Now, what's different is that the Ford allegation is much more serious. It's a rape allegation. It's also different because it involves a teenager as opposed to somebody who was a fully formed adult.

But it is a much more serious alliation, so not quite apples and oranges. But there are plenty of allegations that came out over the course of Me Too that actually are more apples and oranges, or apples and apples where you can kind of see the double standard that is so infuriating. So anyway, it's the believe women standard that was set during me, too. Just, ooh. Hank says, this is about the USS Liberty with respect. I know you think highly of Thomas Massey, but I lost a ton of respect for him today. I could deal with his crack about not conceding right away because he had to find his opponent in Tel Aviv, sort of a low blow.

But given they just lost a seat in Congress, I can let it go. But the crap about the USS Liberty Day is just beyond the pale. Aside from the fact there have been numerous investigations with no findings that the attack was intentional and despite the fact that Israel immediately apologized and paid compensation to the victim's families. To bring it up now is the act of a cheap, tacky loser if he wants to speak out against the Middle East wars, have at it. But Massey has had ample time to bring the liberty tragedy to the public's attention in his career, never expressed the slightest interest. Many will absolve him of anti-Semitic bigotry. It's true that one can criticize Israel without condemning all Jews, but I think he walked right up to the line in this case, Hank.

So I did watch the Massey USS Liberty speech. I have listened to hours of debate on both sides of the USS Liberty story, and I don't honestly know what to think at the end of the day. And I actually also think it's okay to not say that you are judge, jury, and executioner in the case of what really happened with the USS Liberty. I don't, I'm not comfortable dismissing the stories of the veterans who believe the official narrative is a political one for the sake of keeping up what our leadership is an important alliance in the Middle East with Israel. I'm not confident dismissing their stories.

I'm not comfortable dismissing their stories. On the other hand, there is evidence in the other direction. So I just am in the middle of this. And I don't feel the need to come down strongly on one side or the other because I've weighed the evidence and tried as best I could to. come to a position where I feel as though I have the most information, reasonably the most information that I could get. So I'm not comfortable saying there's anything anti-Semitic or bigoted at all about Thomas Massey bringing up this story after he saw pro-Israel forces putting all this

money into his race. I don't think there's anything necessarily bigoted or tacky about them, him then saying, all right, if you don't want me to oppose our alliance with Israel, I'm going to use my remaining time in Congress to oppose our alliance with Israel. And so I don't think there's anything tacky or certainly not bigoted about doing it. I imagine right now he, because of his position on our alliance with Israel, which he believes covers up for bad behavior and things that are not in America's interest, being. done by Israel, which is not in any way categorically bigoted or anti-Semitic of an argument. There are bigots and anti-Semites who make that argument, unfortunately, but you don't have to,

I mean, there are people in Israel who will concede that. Israelis. There are Jewish people who will say that's the case who are not, you know, self-hating Jews, like the left calls women self-hating women. I've gotten that one before. They just happen to disagree. And so to me, it's sort of logically consistent with his position that he's come to a different conclusion on the USS Liberty case. It's popular among anti-war libertarians, actually,

and the kind of circle that he runs in. So, you know, I see where he's coming from. Personally, that's a tough one for me to like come to a definitive conclusion on, to be honest. All right, let's see. Here we have Daniel, who says the breaking points team has talked about why they do not do ad reads. I was wondering if they have ever challenged you on doing ad reads for your other work. And two, would potentially interview the Lindsay Lady from the Grand Platner article from this week. It could be interesting to hear some inside baseball on all of it. So first, I would say, that's a really funny question. No, I don't think anybody, but Gretia's different business models in independent media. Like, you just kind of have to, you know, find a way to keep indie

media afloat. And if I had to like pick which one I think is a stronger business model, I think the breaking points model is probably, I don't know though, because we do different things, right? Like the after party is a different show than breaking points. So I would say, I don't know. That's a tough question, actually, because again, it's kind of apples and oranges. I think it's great to not have to do ad reads and to have premium subscribers. I also think the market for premium subscribers has gotten sort of saturated. I think Chris on Saga jumped out of the hill at the right time and helped create this really encouraging boom. I think with the economy shaky right now, it's just, it's tough.

Ryan has a great model over at DropSite, but again, that's also a little different from what we're doing at Afterparty. They're doing tons of breaking news, written investigative coverage. So I can see the difference is there. But I don't think anybody big grudges anyone for doing ad rates. It's sort of the nature of news. And yeah, it's all good. Nobody's ever said anything that I know of. So, yeah, I like the breaking points model a lot, though.

I think it's really strong. And I'm trying to think, like, we do have a really good firewall with ads, which is always very important. So I'm not super involved on the business. side of after party, and that would be bad for everyone because I'm not a business person. So I don't know a ton of what goes into it. I try everything that I say. I try before we do an ad on it, which I think is important. And that's one of my hard and fast rules. But otherwise, yeah, it's not like, you know, Cozy Earth has editorial control over the content or anything

like that. The only thing that bugs me with ads is when people are taking money from like massive corporations and aren't clear about when they're doing an ad. So like when we had the unplugged, um, uh, uh, the, Joe on when we had him on from unplugged, we were very clear. He is a sponsor. And then we talked about news and he talked a little bit about the up phone. Um, we were clear about it. I don't like, uh, when things are just kind of like not clearly mentioned. Um, so like anytime we do an upphone ad, for example, that's integrated into a block, it's, okay, go here. Here's the, like, here's the website to get a discount. Like, it's very much an ad. But I think the, the lot of the, like, Beltway rags blur that line too much in a way that makes

me uncomfortable and also with massive corporations, which is weird too. So that's funny. I'm not in an interview Lindsay from the Platner article. I do know her a bit, not super well. We have some close mutual friends, so I just think it's not a good idea to be honest. We did a long, long, long discussion. Ryan and I, with a little bit of Crystal on last week's Friday breaking points episode, so if you're interested in how we kind of mix it up on this, I thought it was so interesting to hear Ryan's perspective and Crystal's perspective. So I would recommend taking a listen to that. Christine says, I love your positivity and your general outlook and willingness to listen to all opinions.

Even when people disagree with you, how do you stay so positive? I know the political arena is your job, but even people in the same arena as you do not have such a positive attitude and disposition. I follow politics simply out of interest and my thirst for knowledge, but I really do get very angry and frustrated with a lot of things going on politically in the country. Are you generally just always always always always always when the news is making me miserable that I can listen to your podcast and improve my mood. Thank you for that. Christine, that's really kind of you to say. I don't think any of my friends think of me as positive.

But I think probably people, I think it might come across it because I just think everything is funny. And I don't think if, like, I think literally everything is funny. It's hard to hit a subject where I'm like, oh, only rarely will it be like, unless it's in really poor taste, will I say something like, no, that's not funny? And so I think it probably comes across with positive. I'm just very pessimistic in general. but I guess you can come across as positive and pessimistic at the same time because, well, I worry enormously for the future of the country and for people living in this very, very difficult world that has been rapidly transformed in very difficult ways.

I think everything is funny. I try to think everything is funny. And, you know, honestly, it's not really self-care. It's just scripture, scripture, scripture reading every day as much as I possibly can and make you sure to pray. It reminds you what's most important is not what is in this world, but is what is in the world to come. A lot of friends of my left will say that's the problem with Christians because they've given up on this world. But no, you don't give up on this world. It just gives you hope that all of the pain that you fight against and the suffering and

the injustice that you fight against in this world is not the end because we will never, We are fallen. We are imperfect and we are fallen and we will never perfect this world. There is no utopia on this side of heaven. And so it's not an excuse at all to stop fighting against suffering and injustice and to throw Matthew 5 out the window, not even close. It's actually what anchors you here on this earth to do good and to do it because you're transformed through prayer and scripture. And so that's what, it's, it's a way. is the antidote to some of my material, my pessimism in the material world and in this world. So I guess that that probably helps too. Ryan says, congrats on your first year at MK Media. I continue to be amazed at how well you engage your audience and love your happy hour segment. Do you feel that Republicans are putting too much time and complaining about election integrity rather than focusing on the kitchen table issues that the average American voter is concerned about.

My feeling is definitely keep talking about how the elections are rigged. This rhetoric will begin to make voters. feel that their votes don't matter and won't go to the polls. That is absolutely something Republicans have to balance. Absolutely. No question about it. I think that's genuinely very tricky. I think that may have hurt Trump in 2020. Yeah, I don't know. I really don't know. It might have, I don't know. As you can see, I don't know. I also think there is an obsession in the MAGA grassroots with election integrity that is fair, but it does tend to demand Republicans pay a disproportionate amount of attention to the issue just compared with

the kitchen table issues that the average person in their district probably cares most about. But then moral ethical question is, well, if you don't make sure this is fair and just, then the outcome is not going to be fair and just. and all we have in a Republican, a constitutional republic is the outcomes of elections being fair. So I don't disagree with anybody that it is a kind of primary question. But I do think people have to be careful to understand that a lot of voters still see this as conspiratorial, weird. Not everybody. I mean, more and more people are coming to understand what's happened.

What happened, you know, is Molly documented and rigged. Mount Hemingway documented and rigged, you know, very meticulously and responsibly. But I do agree with Ryan that sometimes it's like, man, it's too much, it's too much because people haven't necessarily in mass been persuaded to the Republican point of view on that yet. Stephen says, would you ever do a Jubilee surrounded video? Do you think it's helpful to expand political discourse? And if you did one, who would you want to be surrounded by?

Hell no. I think I said this on last week's show, but yeah, any like big thing I really don't look forward to. Like I just want to stay like where I am. I don't seek out fight. It's probably a flaw. It's probably a toxic trait. But it's just nerve-wracking for me. And I think it's injects you into an unhealthy cultural moment because of it.

it's being mediated on social media. And that means Twitter and Instagram. And that's, I'm just not really strong in that regard. That stuff does really bother me. It could be hurtful, but it can also just like make you unnecessarily angry. Because, you know, when you're on the other side of it, you think somebody, you think of somebody saying that to your face, right? But when you're behind the keyboard, you kind of think of it differently. And I'm saying that as somebody who's been behind the keyboard. You know, I'm on X every single day. And, you know, you're, you know, when you're behind the keyboard, it's just different than the person who's receiving the message. And so I don't totally blame people for being keyboard warriors.

But when you are on the other side of it, you experience it differently. And I don't think it's helpful or pleasant. And I think on some level, yes, it's created accountability for public figures. And it's forced them to confront backlash and stuff more through a more like democratic system to the extent the algorithms aren't censoring and suppressing. different perspectives. At the same time, it's not my thing because I don't think it's helpful at all. I've come around a little bit on Jubilee.

I've watched a couple of the recent ones. I watched Glenn. I thought you did a great job. And I watched the Dave Rubin one. And it has changed my opinion on Jubilee a little bit. I feel like they've been kind of better at being a force, like a constructive force for public debate. So I've maybe changed a heart on whether or not, I changed hard on whether or not it's ultimately helpful.

But yeah, it's not for me. I'm not like a debatey person. I like to have long times to talk about things. Like I like having a show that's, you know, now pushes an hour and 90 minutes because I just like being able to flesh my points out and then having a guest who's able to flesh their points out. I don't like the race, the clock racing type format for those types of conversations. That's just personal.

It's definitely not my strength because again, I'm happy to sit down for anything that's like three hours long, two hours long, or even an hour long with the same person or a couple people where you have a human conversation. But this, like, I'm going to confront you until enough people vote me out thing. I don't love that. Although I've sort of changed my mind. I'm a little bit more ambivalent about whether Jubilee is good or bad now. Richard says when Trump made his allegation regarding possible corruption in Los Angeles Mayoral-Bowal accounting,

Kristen Walker just kept asking for evidence. From a journalist's perspective, what type of evidence absent a video confession from another elected official would have been able to satisfy her? I hear this a lot, but don't journalists realize that the public expects either an official agency or investigative journalists to research a matter.

Regardless of the allegations, the viewers just want all sides of their jobs and to show their math, blurting out something did happen is just as bad as saying something didn't happen, especially when at least from the appearance, the situation seems off. And then P.S. Scott Pelley's problem is in politics.

It's just another baby boomer saying the long goodbye to the spotlight. That's funny. I think Welker would say she does agree that investigative journalists should do this type of work, but that she hasn't seen investigative journalism produce evidence of fraud in the Pratt case. And that's kind of problematic in and of itself, because, of course, if you believe that the investigative journalists' assignment editors, and editorial decision-making is biased, then you're like, well, this is, you know, this is a, what's the best way, but self-licking ice cream cone

or like a vicious cycle. Like, you know, we don't trust that the media is going to come up with the right kind of investigation. So appealing to, you know, no evidence coming through investigations is not helpful. And the show the math term that Richard used is so important. I think that's partially why. new CBS that's trying to be like a little bit more balanced and friendly to the right,

certainly friendly to Israel and in ways I've been critical of just in terms of conflicts of interest, corporate conflicts of interest, and political conflicts of interest. But I think part of the reason they're having a problem is that they're still not willing to do the showing of the work. They haven't changed substantially the written or on-camera product. in a way that feels more transparent. And you can't just try to be more neutral. You have to really try to be more transparent. It's both of those things are important if you're trying to kind of compete with new media in this low institutional trust environment and to meet the moment.

So I do think that's kind of been one of their problems too. Yeah, it's funny whenever you hear journalists be like, well, there's no evidence. Or like this is a conspiracy theory that's so often used as a blunt force object to, and sometimes they really, really honestly believe it. Like, genuinely they believe it sometimes because they're in the bubbles we discussed earlier in the show. I don't know what else is going to come out about California. I know I think the DOJ is looking into the vote count,

so we'll see. I think the evidence, I kind of agree with Megan, I'm not a big election integrity policy devotee. Like I haven't spent a ton of time on it, but I do think just what happens over time is bad on its face. Like just having a process where regularly the candidate on the left does better over time is going to erode reasonably so people's trust in the process because it obviously looks like there's the space that's being taken advantage of

and for candidates on the left to find ballots. and presumably they would be pretty good at not making it obvious that that's what they're doing, right? So I understand the skepticism, and I don't know there's any way to get around it, like any way at all to get around it. So that'll be something for the media to like just deny that that's evidence in and of itself to many people is not helpful. And I think what she was probably saying is that, oh, it needs to be. Yeah, it needs to be like someone caught on camera doing this, this, or that. But I don't know what the standard of evidence would be otherwise. I mean, there was a lot of credibility given to Hillary Clinton's stolen election language over and over again. And that, you know, there were Democrats genuinely wondering aloud about if Russians hampered the voting machines. There was a lot of evidence of that either. So I think there probably is a double standard. I'm really careful on election stuff because there is a lot of funny. information that comes out immediately and then it does get debunked. This was a problem for Dinesh D'Souza in 2000 mules. So you do have to be really, really careful about it because I think

one of the most, I mean, we all agree, one of the most important things is faith in elections. And I don't ever want to have undermined that unnecessarily. When it's fair, I would hope that I'm not, you know, overplaying the integrity of the election unnecessarily. So I'm I'm just personally really careful about it because it's not my beat. And I just, you know, want to see things as they develop, if that makes sense. But, you know, they're beat reporters on this. Like, I follow Molly really closely and the Federalist really closely on all of this stuff. So God bless the people who care about it.

David says, re Jane Kim's interview on Wednesday's breaking points. Would love to hear your thoughts on concerns from a right-wing perspective about single-payer disaster insurance. first of all, I'm skeptical of the government's ability to accomplish anything. Look at California's voting system, real fraud or not taking 30 plus days to count the vote. And right skepticism makes you look inept. Lots of other examples here. Additionally, if I heard correctly, she said it would cover houses already built, but not new developments in high-risk areas. Isn't most of LA high-risk?

Wouldn't that mean no new builds? It feels like not an option. So, yeah, this is a Bernie endorsed candidate who made it to the runoff in the election for the California, I think it's called like insurance commissioner. it's a position they've had, I think since the 80s in California, a elected official that helps regulate the insurance or the insurance industry in California. And again, not being a Californian, insurance is never going to be a free market, right? Like, you can have the best possible or the freest possible market choices available, but it's never truly going to be a free market.

So I don't let people who just appeal to the free market. market system, not you, David, of course, this is a great question, but I don't love people who just appeal to, oh, we need free markets and the insurance. Well, there's no such thing, because if you truly have free markets, you are going to have a genuine moral, I think, catastrophe on your hands. And our insurance industry isn't really, like, how much is it really an insurance industry is another question. So I'm just generally of the belief that you're always going to have a mixture of government incentives that are problematic. and market incentives that are problematic,

and you have to mitigate them as much as possible. So, yeah, not being in California, and it's kind of hard to speak to that, but there are bad government incentives. You know, we asked her about exactly what David mentioned. I did a story on the National Flood Insurance Program years ago, like an investigation that took a couple weeks. And they're subsidizing people rebuilding in flood zones over and over again.

These houses get rebuilt like 20 times, and it's dangerous for the people. who live in them, but they rebuild there because it's subsidized by the federal government and the NFIP. So there are bad government incentives at play, and I think it's in the insurance industry, a matter of just balancing them. And I don't know that we're doing it right anywhere, but it's a good question. I wish I had a better answer to that, Dylan.

Let's see. Marlowe says, I enjoyed the past two shows, but I'm a bit burned out by the news as of late Carmelo Anthony, Northern Ireland, tragic attack of that poor man. I appreciate your takes. It always make me think. I can't come up with the question. Maybe next week. That's all right, Marlowe, it's been such a bad news cycle. Henry Novak, Belfast, Carmelo Anthony, things feel tense. We're in a midterm election year. You can just kind of, it's palpable. The tension is palpable. And it's tough. I'm right there with you. It's tough for sure. Eddie says, I love when we can hear you're processing your thoughts in real time during a question on happy hour.

another reason the show is just the best. You really might be the most honest person I've ever listened to on a podcast. It really does come through and how you question yourself and your priors. Please never change. I think that's one of the nicest things you could tell someone in my position. I really appreciate it. Part of what I like doing on the show is, I forget who used this term. Was it Richard? In an earlier question, show your work. I think more and more journalists are going to be expected to show their work. And I don't want it to go in a bad direction where people are just demanding the raw milk of journalism without maybe a little heat in the processing. You know, I think some of that's good just being a journalist. I know for sure that not dumping

just all of these videos without context or doing investigations before doing a story, for example, like just posting a screenshot without making calls. Like if you don't do some, of the legwork, you can still present the raw evidence to the public. It's just helpful if you do some of the legwork. And I consider that the heating up, right? You don't want over-processed milk that's disgusting. And I'm not a big raw milk person. So again, to just make this metaphor work, I don't particularly want raw milk either. But I think the good middle ground is showing your work so that people can trust the process a bit. So people aren't like, oh, I'm drinking this milk that's been heavily processed. They can see, okay, what happened is it was just heated up a bit, right?

You know, people weren't dumping contaminants in it or anything like that. And I have this weird dystopia idea that maybe one day journalists are going to be expected to just have like an AI algorithm hooked up to their inboxes that gives people some access to like what they're hearing and they're seeing and the calls that they're taking every single day. And I don't like that because I don't think it's actually a helpful context either. And that's just a weird idea or a fear scenario that I have in my mind that could possibly come to fruition. It probably won't.

But you never know where this stuff goes. I don't think it's great for journalists to have to wear like meta glasses all day and have a live stream that people can just hook up to. You know, Hassan Piker has some built-in trust from his audience because he's streaming for like eight hours a day, sometimes longer. And people can see his thought process, kind of like he's. here on Happy Hour in real time as he's getting questions and reacting to the news. And I just, I think some processing is good, right? If you're really a journalist and not just kind of a pundit,

nothing wrong with being a pundit, but if you're blurring the line between pundit and journalists, I'm not saying how Sond Piper is doing that, but I think some people do. And if you still consider yourself a journalist, I think that's a contract with the audience. And so that means you're doing your best to bring the right context, to first of all bring the right stories, the right balance of stories, the right context to those stories, to that information. And it's really hard to do. It's not an easy job. But I think kind of going through these questions is helpful because I hope it offers some insight into just how I think and what I'm thinking about and where I'm coming from on these issues. And anyway, I think that's a, the show your work phrase is a good one.

So I appreciate that, Eddie. Eddie loved the Sorkin segment too. But says that he did watch West Wing three years ago and actually really enjoyed it. And said that he did not like the newsroom. I actually haven't watched most of the newsroom, so I shouldn't even weigh in on that. But that's hilarious about West Wing. I probably would have listened to more of West Wing. but or watch more of West Wing but

maybe I should go back in at some point that's I I love the sappy like hopeful 90s rendering of politics and actually of American culture in general I tend to like some of my favorite movies tend to be from like 1995 to 2003 2004 for whatever reason maybe that was like peak Miramax too I don't know. But there was just this, sometimes literally, like, rose tint, a warmth, like wonderful scores came out of that time period in film and in television. And there's something about I really like. But in West Wing, I think it's too almost patronizing. And I can just, for me, it just felt like so, such thinly veiled kind of elitist sentiments, masquerading as populist sentiments. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't,

But maybe I should have given it no longer. Anyway, Stephen sends an email on, I think it's on freedom to listen. This is interesting. I'll take a look at this, Stephen. It's a link to a sub-sac piece. Dylan says, first I wanted to note that I think you do a better job of showing grace to people to him. You just agree the name and else in the media it does. I was curious about your take on a couple journalism questions, Ethan Strauss.

On Substack has identified the divide between the majority of mainstream sports reporters who want to be newsbreakers versus storybreakers. So a newsbreaker insider scoops access and the advanced copy of the press release, storybreakers discovering or explaining something new that people otherwise would not know. How would you say this applies to political media and as a sports and pop culture fan? Which segment of the media would you say it does the best job? That's a really good way to put it, actually, from Strauss. I hadn't seen that, but yes, that's true. I would put myself in a category of, like, story and news analysts. I sometimes do a little bit of newsbreaking and story breaking, but it's not the main focus

of my work. I think it's helpful when I can do it in a way that, you know, for me, I always will prioritize that if I think nobody else in the press is going to. So there's a story I was working on this week, actually, that didn't come to fruition. But I was doing it because I was like, I don't think anybody else is asking these questions to this person, so I'm going to try to get them. That's when I generally try to prioritize it. There are a lot of newsbreakers.

Storybreakers are too few of, and the storybreakers are often just so biased that what they do isn't helpful. It's regurgitating conventional wisdom in political media over and over again. It's like, wow, these people in the Heartland are really crazy for QAnon. It's like the 10th version of the story, and they're not really breaking news, but they're interviewing people. and bringing new information to the table, the core of news is always new information. So whether it's press release or a reframing of a narrative or a big picture enterprise story or fresh analysis,

the new information is the product always. And I hope we always provide new information by bringing in, here on the show, by bringing in new context, new perspectives, and different ways to think about things. That's sort of how I see us fitting into the new information, which news is literally short for, business. So that is interesting. I think that's a good dichotomy, although I would add that third category of analysts. And sometimes it just

becomes pure opinion and punditry without any effort to bring new information to the table, which is fine. It's just like here you're getting the kind of talking head perspective. This is what the right things. This is what the left thinks. But no effort to say like, well, I went and looked at this poll or I talked to this person. And here's the analysis based on that. So that's interesting. And then Dylan says, how do you evaluate when a story is credible or serious? For example, in criminal cases, unlike CSI or the TV shows, there's almost never actually reliable DNA evidence or a video of a person attacking person A, attacking person B. But it is deemed valid to use testimony and circumstantial evidence. Even a proverbial smoking gun is technically circumstantial evidence. Many so-called conspiracy theories are dismissed as lacking evidence. And maybe there may not be evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

but how should the theory be treated if A, the official story seems fishy, or B, the conspiracy theory would fit the known facts. And there may be a preponderance of the evidence supporting the conspiracy theory. That's a really smart question and an interesting one because the world of journalism is often purely relegated to the court of public opinion, right? What you're doing is not sometimes if you're like a legal reporter, you're reporting on a court case or something with legal ramifications, you're in both worlds. But if you're in the court of public opinion, talking about whether a political story is right or wrong, you know, a leak, maybe this big Epstein leak from the White House to Swan and Haberman about the situation room meetings between J.D. Vance and others in the White House on how to deal with the Epstein story over the course of the last year, that's a court of public opinion story. So how do I assess that it's credible? The co-by line is always tough for me when it's Swan and Haberman because I think Swan almost always is getting good information and Haberman often isn't. She gets a lot of, I think, gossipy stuff that's being wielded and in like politically motivated ways. And I don't think the political motivation show up enough in the stories. And so I think sometimes it's unduly misleading. But, you know,

when you have that many, like for me, it's just looking at the specifics of the sourcing. and the credibility of like a witness if it's a story that hasn't been reported yet. You have to ask for facts and documents. You have to talk to them, look at their life, what kind of life of they're leading? What do other people say about them? That's always important. But you don't necessarily have to, you know, put this in front of a jury and say the preponderance of evidence meets X standard.

It's just putting all the available information that's relevant on the table and then going from there. So, yeah, that's actually a really good. and tough question, to be honest. So this is one of the biggest biases in media is just working in media. I always say, meaning it's a huge, you read the news way different than other people read the news. And meaning like you kind of are paying obsessive attention to the bylines.

You've met some of the people who were at that paper or that news network. And so you have the advantage of having in-person conversations with these reporters to assess their credibility and with some of their sources to assess the credibility of the sourcing. And you're just consuming so much more media than the average person because it's your job that you have probably read more stories and have an even stronger baseline to determine, you know, what's going on with the sourcing of a story. And sometimes you hear off the record stuff that, you know, you have to personally assess whether it's true or false. you can't report it, but it factors into your view of something in a situation. So it's just a huge problem for journalists to, like, convey information to or when we're conveying information to. So, yeah, I mean, with like the Kennedy assassination stories, which maybe that's kind of along the lines of what Dylan was getting at about conspiracy theories.

You know, in that case for me, who was I listening to debate this recently? you know, it was Ross Dothet and Anna Paulina Luna. He had Anna Paulina Luna on, and he was suggesting that basically the evasiveness of the CIA with files and the like is likely, in his opinion, more related to the possibility more exposure would just provide more embarrassing exposure to the CIA, but not exposure that would implicate them in a broader plot. And what I would have responded to, in that situation is actually what I think makes the conspiracy credible here. The question of who killed the president, actually a conspiracy here, is that the information being hidden and the reasons for it being hidden, now we can see why some things were hidden. And it's not merely embarrassing. Some of the stuff that was being kept not public for a very long time,

It's not actually like really that embarrassing for the CIA in every case. It's information directly about them keeping X number of files at a very high level on Lee Harvey Oswald, the Joannidis file. As Jefferson Morley, who's working with Anna Paulina Luna and as a historian of this from the left, has done a lot of research into what we now know about the Joannidis file. And what we now know was known at the upper upper level. So I would say that what makes those conspiracy theories credible in the face of other explanations is that there's a pattern with the information that's being concealed. There's a pattern with who is trying to block the information and what their involvement at the CIA was. So that's kind of putting the pieces together that way is helpful. So yeah, Dylan, that's a good and interesting question.

Let's see what else we have. A couple more here. I have started an online course through a community college to fulfill a requirement for, ethnic studies. The following is copied from the introduction to the first module. In this module, I will introduce you to the key concepts that underpin this course. These are the theories, terms, and concepts that provide the context in which we will discuss race and ethnicity. The context is made up of geography, critical race theory, and intersectionality. As we progress through the semester, we will be looking at issues of race and ethnicity from these perspectives. Keep in mind,

there are other perspectives and contexts to study race that are beyond the scope of this class. this class is not intended to provide you with all the theories and perspectives surrounding race, so you're welcome to explore them on your own. Given this disclaimer, how would you characterize this course education or indoctrination? Well, the clear implication of that description is, yes, there are other theories out there, but these are the credible, salient theories. It doesn't outright say that, but I think that's the implication of their decision to particularly study geography, critical race theory, and intersectionality.

the geography component, it's just described as geography, I assume it's going to be heavily focused on ethnocentrism. So then you're looking at ethnocentrism, critical race theory, and intersectionality is the three pillars of this. And so if you chose these three pillars, you are likely doing that because you think they are the most salient and the most credible. I imagine the professor is going to treat them as the most credible. That's often the case with these courses. And so, yes, It sounds like if you're not going to provide criticism of those perspectives, which again, I'm just guessing from the description, maybe I'm wrong. But it sounds like the professor here is saying these are the most credible perspectives and I will treat them as the most credible perspectives. And I will not be bringing credibility to other lenses or critical lenses of things like critical race theory. And if that turns out to be the case, it's certainly indoctrination. And I would say, well, it's giving. It's giving. indoctrination, as the kids would say. The description there is giving the, is giving indoctrination. I can't say for sure, but that seems to be the suggestion. I have no problem

with critical race theory being taught as a theory. I have no problem with the concept of ethnocentrism being broached or even intersectionality being broached, although I think intersectionality of the three is really the flimsyest and least credible. helpful, serious. But what I would say is it's fine to include all of those theories, but then you should also include Thomas Sol. You should also include Walter Williams. You should also include black voices who were critical or Hispanic voices that were critical or, you know, in some of these LGBT classes, is LGBT voices who are critical of the predominant theory of critical theory, whether it's critical race or critical theory in general or intersectionality. And that's often what doesn't happen. And then

they'll say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're just trying to teach this academic concept of intersectionality here. And everyone's like, okay, well, some people will say, well, we don't want intersectionality taught. Well, intersectionality should be taught. Like, I hope conservative schools are teaching it, but teaching it fairly. You know, by teaching its, its criticisms as well. So that's an interesting question. All right, two more here. Tom says, you and Ryan make a great yin-yang black and tan duo, but have you ever gotten into a heated debate over a subject you're both passionate about? Also, I have a submission for a breaking points drinking game. Anyone says, do I fill in the blank? Think want, you have to choose quickly what side they're

going to be on. If you get it right, you just take a drink of beer. If you get it wrong, take a shot, love the show, have a good weekend. Great drinking ideas suggestion. Do not recommend that for the morning. If you're watching the show when it comes out often in the earlier hours of the day, you're taking your day into your own hands at that point. No, I can't remember getting into a fight with Ryan, like a real fight with Ryan that wasn't pretty respectful back and forth. There's a clip that goes around sometimes.

It was making the rounds, it was from like the first two weeks we ever hosted Rising together, which would have been like 2021. that it was trending on Twitter the time that it happened. And it was me making what I think is a legitimate point when Ryan was kind of down on the U.S. About the end of the Holocaust in World War II. And Ryan says it was the Soviet Union. And then the clip got cut off. And what gets cut off is me agreeing with Ryan about how we funded Al-Qaeda and that led to 9-11.

and agreeing. And actually, when I think back on it, that debate itself, we were just getting to know each other. And that debate itself, like Ryan's such a chill guy, that debate itself might actually be the most heated. And again, it was just like when we were getting to know each other for a couple weeks that we ever hosted a show together that we've been. But even that, it was like fairly conciliatory because if the clip didn't get cut off, the viral clip didn't get cut off, you saw that I was kind of agreeing. with where Ryan was coming from on some of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy. I'm just never going to agree that we were worse than the Soviet Union. I'm not going to make that point, and it's not exactly the point he was making,

but I don't have the kind of relativistic perspective on Cold War history. I think the right has done a poor job of telling Cold War history, and the left has in some cases done a better job of telling Cold War history, but I'm not going to see the point on the Soviet Union there. So anyway, that's a funny question. No, we really haven't. And I kind of love that question because I think for both of us, I don't want to say it takes a lot of effort because that's not true. It's not hard for me to give Ryan the benefit of the doubt. And I just respect so much that he and Crystal are willing to mix it up with me. And I know they probably get heat from their

side. I certainly get heat from my side, which I think is mostly unfair. And it takes a strong person and a principal person to push back on that. And I really, really, like, it just means the world to me that they are willing to keep doing this and to keep hearing each other out. And I, again, like, I know what they probably get from their side. And I just really have nothing but such respect and admiration for that and appreciation for that, gratitude for that. So it's not like it takes effort. But sometimes, you know, when you really disagree on things, You have to take time to flesh out the point. And I just love that Ryan is willing to do that.

So really, I don't think we ever really have. You know, and on breaking points, we do less cultural coverage. And my like strongest passions tend to be on the cultural stuff. So that's a kind of a difference too. Like I covered that stuff more. Like my job at Federalist for six years was Culture Editor. It's actually a lot of what I covered at the Washington Examiner, like Me Too, stuff. That's why the platinum stuff has been very interesting. And I've never been like a huge

policy or foreign policy person, although I've definitely been very deep in that in recent years and doing some coverage of that too in recent years. But just the nature of the coverage too, we often have a baseline of agreement on the kind of political class being corrupt on any given issue, which is helpful to kind of be coming from that same place. too. None of us are like defending. We're like, oh, how dare you? How dare you come after the, the, our important institutions rather than revering them. So that can be helpful at the end of the day. Finally, David says, we had a lot of people named David with questions today. Hi, Emily. Have you ever been on Greg Gutfeld? I think you would be a great addition to the show. The answer to that is yes. I was on with Pete Hegseth once hilariously.

I think I did the second day of Gutfeld. And the version of the show before it was Gutfeld, I'd done a couple of times, too, if I'm remembering correctly. It's a cool show because it has a live audience. And the panel format is awesome. Yeah, Greg said a super cool audience. And I enjoyed my time on Gutfeld. I think I've mentioned on recent happy hours. I watched Red Eye. And that was a very like kind of transformative experience because it was such a subversive show and it was bringing together politics and comedy in a way that was, I think that is still totally unbelievable that it existed. And I kind of still wish that Greg were doing Red Eye was such, that it was just so, I don't even know how to describe it.

Like it was such a strange and wonderful show and unusual. helpful show. But yeah, I've done Gutfeldt. It's fun. It's very fun. I haven't done Fox at a long time. Yeah, I have not done Fox at a long time. There's always a, you know, Fox is like a lot of networks. Or like networks used to be more like this, but like very competitive with other cable networks, very competitive with new media. and when you get critical of Fox, they really are, they don't want shows to have you back. And so, or if they think you've done something wrong in one way or another, yeah, they'll, they don't want to have you back. And my strong sense is that I'm on Fox's bad side, which, you know, do people get bigger audiences when they're on Fox to an

extent still now, probably. I used to do it a ton. But for me, I'll take that trade any day. So that's an easy one. That's an easy trade to make. I'd rather just say what I really think and be critical. So if it needs to be said, it needs to be said, especially if I feel like nobody is, you know, making a point that has an underrepresented perspective, like some of the conservative criticisms of Fox News I think are valid and don't often. get made. And so if it has to be said, it has to be said. All right. Well, I should say that I know some folks who work at Fox and a lot of the networks. You know, there's, there's, there's, there are good people working for just about every network. But the, the broader culture is a

different question. So, um, I'm pretty critical of, of corporate media across the board and the incentives, uh, structures and all of that. But anyway, uh, that's enough for this afternoon. Emily at double-micaremedia.com is where you can send your questions. Appreciate you listening. Thank you so much for being a part of our loyal audience here at After Party. It is so greatly appreciated. We're going to be back Monday with more and Wednesday with more and the next Friday with more happy hours. So hit me up, send questions in the inbox if you have them. Otherwise, we'll be back on Monday. We'll see you then and hope you have a great weekend. God bless.