After Party with Emily Jashinsky - “Happy Hour”: Massie’s Defeat, Media Distrust, and the Botox Dilemma: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

On this week’s edition of “Happy Hour,” Emily Jashinsky responds to a number of viewer questions about politics and culture. She opens with a discussion about the SLPC and what parents can do if the curriculum is in their child’s school. She than discusses the importance of legal colorblindness, human dignity and protecting life. Several questions involve Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie’s recent primary loss, money in politics, concerns about the Iran war and when the conflict might end, the NYT prison abuse story, and why she believes Hakeem Jeffries is a feckless leader for the Democratic caucus. Emily also responds to thoughts about her recent comments on “After Party” about Amanda Peet and Botox. Emily rounds out the show discussing marriage in today’s society, mental health issues among progressive and young women, media credibility, 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 back to another edition of Happy Hour, which is, of course, itself, an addition of after-party. We do here every Friday just for podcast listeners only. I get to read all of the emails you send in to Emily at devil-makearemedia.com live. So I don't, basically the way that I do it, you've heard me say this before if you listen every week, but the way that I do it is I flag them in my email inbox if it looks like it's a happy hour message and then go back to it fresh while we're watching or while we're watching. recording the show. It's, you know, I say, well, we're recording the show. It's just me in my office, me and my microphone exactly the way I like it. So let's go ahead and get to this week's emails,

starting here with Marlowe, who said, reacting to the Dr. Drew episode, Marlowe says, I truly hope Spencer Pratt wins for mayor. I noticed Dr. Drew danced around questionable voting practices, paying homeless videos. Is there an overreaching body that can audit the voting processes of the individual states? Marla goes on to say about Katie Couric. Trust in media is lost. We did a segment on Katie Couric saying she can't cover Trump like a normal administration because of the ballroom, basically.

And my response, just to refresh your memory or if you missed it, was, okay, but you really downplayed a lot of the corruption that came before Trump. So not a lot of credibility. And Marla goes on to say, since no one asks my permission to insider trade or benefit from government work, I can only choose the lesser of two evils. If the Trump family benefits from fighting robot contracts, I don't like their benefit, but their involvement may help soldiers. And then Marlowe responds to the SPLC segment we did last week, just about the Alabama Attorney General now opening an investigation into them as well. Marlowe says, do parents have the right to question their school's curriculum? And if the

SPLC doctrine is present, can they push for its removal? Yes, yes, Marlowe. Good questions here. I'll just start with the last one first. We saw this happen over and over again in 2020 when parents were brought virtually into the classroom because of Zoom learning and saw up close a lot of the DEI-based education that had been implemented in curriculums, just sort of subtly. And I think that's really what's been happening with this SPLC curriculum, which the defending education conservative group, their research report showed it was at a lot of different schools. I think it was close to 200, if I'm remembering correctly. And that is, it's, it's really easy to do that. We explained a bit of that in the segment, but now parents should absolutely be alerted.

to whether or not they should check. They should be alert to check whether or not this curriculum has been integrated into their local classrooms, their kids' classrooms. You could go watch the segment or read the report over on the Defending Education website to see what you should ask about, what you should be looking for. But it's subtle propaganda that is very much taking a progressive ideological approach to questions of race, exactly what you'd expect from the SPLC. but something that is way too politically charged to be used as, you know, kind of neutral educational material, especially in, you know, public school classrooms and the like. So if you want to check out the report and look into your own school, by all means, I think you as parents are empowered to maybe raise some more hell, just like happened in 2020. Yeah, I mean, Katie Couric.

they burned the media to the ground and are now mad at people for not trusting it. It's like, okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this happened to you. But to get mad at people who are accurately diagnosing the problem, actually, I'm not sorry. You know, to burn the media to ground and then be mad at the people calling for a fire truck, it's just crazy. It's crazy. And it's nothing, there's nothing they'll do to get it.

I don't know about the voting processes of individual states, like an overarching body, a federal body. It's a good question. Part of it is with federalism, we let states run their own elections, which is why they are run differently around the country. It was a big part of the debate over the SAVE Act, you know, from a kind of libertarian perspective. Is it anti-federalist to have these federal regulations? I think even Thomas Massey, very libertarian. libertarian supported the SAVE Act because, you know, when you have federal elections, there are federal priorities that have to be, or federal demands, I think, that rightfully have to be met even at the state level. An idea is a perfectly reasonable version of that.

But in terms of like an overarching auditing group, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. That's a good question to look into. Appreciate it, Marlowe. Bob sends me, wow, some notes from 19 years ago. And it looks like this was from a meeting. Hmm. Oh, man. This is a, this is very interesting. I'll have to spend more time on this just to get a grasp.

But it looks like it was a meeting with Netanyahu. Thanks for the email, Bob. I'm going to look more closely at this and try to understand what you sent here, exactly, because it appears to be something that could be of great interest. Liam says, long-time listener, first-time emailer, I've enjoyed your coverage on breaking points since you and Ryan first joined, and I've really been enjoying the podcast. Yours and Tucker's are probably my two favorite political podcasts at the moment. Oh, thank you, Liam.

That's very kind. Liam says, I really liked your coverage on the SPLC fraud scandal you've done and how you covered the anti-white stuff. They pushed in education. Tucker has talked about DEI and affirmative action, a decent amount, and how it affects white people in the job market and education. My question is, how should conservatives address identity politics moving forward? There seems to be some momentum at the moment for a more radical right-wing approach, like the Nick Fuentes, quote, take-your-own-side approach, since every other race is.

I like how Tucker used his Christian faith to put back, pushback on Nick's more radical racial views, as I myself am a Christian, although I can't say I'm not worried about the, quote, browning of America, especially since it seems there's currently a lot of hostile views of white people, along with all the cultural changes it naturally brings. We don't want to end up like South Africa or Rhodesia. I know that's hyperbolic. Apologies, I know this topic is controversial. You know, Liam, even just the line browning of America,

my charitable interpretation of your point is that when you take a lot of refugees, asylum seekers, just a lot of immigration. from countries with different cultures in a short period of time. That can have an effect. But my response to this, or it can obviously have negative consequences and it's taboo to talk about and just the fact that nobody wants to talk about it makes it even more frustrating to people who say this is nothing to do with anyone's skin color being brown. It has to do with the cultures that they're coming from.

I will say, though, my answer to your first question is kind of a criticism of the second part of your question, which is I think conservatives should deal with identity politics by not being identitarian themselves, if that makes sense, not identifying as kind of anti-brown and responding, just as Tucker did in the middle of his interview with Nick Fuentes to this idea of, quote, blood guilt. If you've just seen clips from that interview, you probably missed something that didn't get clipped at all, which was this very rich, change right in the middle of their conversation, where Tucker made a very deep and impassioned Christian argument against Fuentes' implication or Fuentes' arguments about blood guilt for non-white people as Fuentes sees it. And so I just actually really do think it's become cliche and cringe on the left to talk about colorblindness. And I also kind of understand why, right? Because it would be foolish to act like people don't have different experiences in the United States based on what they look like. It's just it's not true.

And to say that is, you know, it's, again, shattering a taboo to put the light of that. But at the same time, you have to come to the conversation with a fundamental belief in the equal dignity of all people, which is what, of course, we believe as Christians. I think it is one of the beautiful contributions of Christianity to the world. I highly recommend people read Dominion.

But when I say colorblindness, I really mean that on a legal level, that there shouldn't be any efforts to do like affirmative action for white people or anything like that. And I don't know how serious that push is, but I really, really don't like being overly racial and identitarian in language that is focused on fighting identitarian racialism. I just don't think it's moral to fight one fire with that other fire, even though it may feel more effective in the short term. I don't think ultimately it is. And I also just don't think it's right. I think the American people believe in legal colorblindness. I think the American people believe in the equal dignity of all folks and everyone from every different background. I think we believe in their equal dignity as human beings. And I always like to say this. We take for granted how remarkable the American experiment is. Never before in history has such a big country

existed together with so many people living in such close proximity from so many different backgrounds. I know things feel tense right now. They weren't always this way. You know, it was never perfect, but they weren't always this tense. And it's remarkable even that things, even now, as things have gotten worse, that we're still able to function as we function in a society where polling shows that there's just a significant decline in racism, significant decline in prejudices. And so I would appeal to the American people's sense of wanting to get back to that, wanting to have a place where the equal dignity of everybody is recognized. And we're not constantly being pushed to think about each other in racial terms.

Because we all know that while race obviously exists, we all know that it's. nothing compared to the fact that we're all human beings, right? The human experience is common across any racial, ethnic, socioeconomic divide. We're all human beings with human DNA. And I think most Americans appreciate that. So I know it's kind of cringe on the left and on the right, but I think some of the stuff, we have a time period where we can see that the experiment was going well. And the racialism and identitarianism that was promoted by the elites

because it was being pushed by the left that they were overly sympathetic to, we can avoid that. And we can, you know, smother that in the crib if we're able to get back to a baseline of relative harmony next time it comes up. We can learn from our mistakes. I don't think it's inevitable,

but I think it's very, very difficult. I think the American experiment is always going to be very difficult of, you know, homogen, or I should say of heterogeneity. There are very few other countries that have that level that we have. It's always going to be difficult. It is always going to be a struggle, unfortunately. But I think it's possible. And I do think the good news, if there is any, is that most Americans are still decent and still believe

in equal universal dignity. And I really like how Tucker addressed that with Fuentes in the middle of their interview. And I just think, you know, refusing to constantly think with racial framework when it's not, you know, absolutely necessary appealing to people. I mean, look at how many Hispanic men, black men, Hispanics, and black Americans in general, were crossing over to vote Trump in 2024. And there was a reason for that. He was appealing to kind of the common sense of the human experience in the United States.

And it wasn't because they had racial grievances or they were races. It was because he appealed to questions like inflation that mattered to all of us. So anyway, that would be my answer to the question. It's a really complicated question. We could talk for hours about it. but that's how I would respond, Liam. Thank you for the email. This is Hank on that Nick Christoff article, very controversial Nick Christoph article. Hank says, I haven't read Christoph's article yet or much of the commentary about it,

so I don't claim to be an expert. But I think what prompted many to take issue with it as soon as it was published is the part about the Israelis training dogs to rape Palestinians. Maybe we'll eventually find out that it's true, but I doubt it. How do you even train dogs to rape anyone? It just doesn't pass the smell test. It's reminiscent of the UVA rape hoax. And yeah, I think, Hank, to your point, I think that's correct. I will say, I think I was asked about this.

We got into it on last week's happy hour if memory serves. My big take on it is when I read the article, it was much broader than the criticisms of it, meaning a lot of the criticisms were exactly what Hank mentions about the claims of dog rape. Now, Zed Jelani wrote, he's from the left, he wrote a subset going back and looking at some Judith Miller reporting on, I think it was Mengela, who was accused of, you know, having the, or having dogs sexually abuse prisoners during the Holocaust. That is something that was claimed by victims of Pinocce in Chile. So it has come up before. And now there's this, or last week, there was this raging, really nasty debate about the logistics of all of this, the plausibility of all of this. And my big picture takeaway is that Christoph had 14 individual sources he talked to for this article about what he would probably describe as systemic

abuse in sexual abuse against Palestinians in Israeli captivity or by settlers. And he had a lot of, you know, there was one NGO he referred to that a lot of people took issue with because it's, you know, from their perspective, very, very biased, like egregiously biased against Israel. But he cited many NGO reports. He cited 14 sources, human sources. So it was, It was a very big picture. The dog part was actually a small part of the article, as was this criticism of the one report that he included. So there's a lot more evidence he marshaled than just these two points. So I had a very different experience of sort of looking at the backlash and then reading the article. And the most important article I can recommend on it would be Javier Reddegger,

very pro-Israel writing in the free press, who said, yes, there's clearly a problem of sexual abuse in the Israeli prison system. But, you know, then went on to criticize Christoph sourcing in the New York Times for publishing this. I just think that's kind of the point, right? The point of the Christoph piece was not to put in these claims of dog rape and maybe he regrets that, I don't know. The New York Times has stood by the reporting or, you know, cite one particular report. He was trying to make a claim that this was a broad problem, not just something that's happened in an anecdote here or there. And so what Christoph and Haviv-Red-Gir, writing in the free press, both agree on, is that there is a broad problem. Now, Jav-Red-A-Gur makes a point,

that's worthwhile, that a lot of prison systems have serious problems with patterned sexual abuse of prisoners. And that's kind of the nature, unfortunately, of the prison system. And I think I agree with that, too. I just think it's then incumbent on people to not constantly try to pick apart every single claim or every single report, if there is a broad problem, I appreciated the Reddy Ger article for just kind of seating that point saying it's real. You know, that's, if the New York Times has further reports on some of those big picture, or I shouldn't say big picture, those more extreme claim. will probably see them reported in the paper, reported out in the paper soon.

I don't know. Christoph does a lot of reported commentary from around the world, and he has for years. He's on the left. Let me tell you, not my favorite writer. So far be it for me to defend Nick Christoff. But I do think it's interesting to see the overlap there between the Javreirae and the Christoph piece. What he is reporting out is not ridiculous fundamentally, even though some of the evidence,

two pieces of the evidence he cited, were considered. ridiculous fundamentally. And that should be, I think that should be the focus rather than a secondary media focus. That's a real problem. We can all agree that's a real problem. Or, you know, people on both sides agree that's a real problem. So the secondary media story is kind of a distraction from it in my perspective. But I do agree, Hank. I think that's what caught a lot of people off balance or caught a lot of people or got a lot of people. Let me put it this way. Got a lot of people pretty heated. Katie emails, I actually already responded to this one. This was a rare case where I got an email and responded right away. Katie said, I think this debate, subject line was abortion. Katie says,

I think this debate is a lot more simple than people imagine, and it comes down to religious freedom. I can acknowledge that a group of cells can be technically alive and of human origin and not have a right to continue. Scientists tell people that this group of cells is different than a human baby because that's true. The only reason you don't acknowledge this is because you believe it is quote, created in the image of God. For those of us who don't believe in God and were not required to believe in God, this does not enter the conversation. You are free to make decisions based on your religion,

but you're not allowed to make decisions from me based on your religion. And now I know why I responded. I'm remembering why I responded right away because that got me heated, Katie. I really appreciate the email. But what I was talking about is Christopher Hitchens' argument. Christopher Hitchens is one of the most famous atheists who ever lived, the king of the new atheists Christopher Hitchens made the argument

explicitly to challenge the left that said, basically, what is the so-called clump of cells if it is not a unique human DNA and it is not alive? If it meets those two criteria,

should not the pro-abortion groups concede that and say, we believe that the taking of a human life is not to be or remains the choice of a woman, rightfully so, because that life is in her body and the government should not interfere with it. That is a very different argument than the clump of cells argument. And it's, I think, a very, very critical distinction. So this is to say, my perspective on abortion is not, like my perspective on the sort of nature of what

What is a baby at that stage of development has absolutely nothing to do with religion whatsoever. Whatsoever. I can just read my response to Katie. I said, I don't believe a group of cells is valuable merely because it's based on the image of God. I believe it's value because, one, it's alive, and two, it's human. The only moral way to handle any living human with unique DNA is to protect all such life. otherwise you inevitably devalue the lives of the weakest among us like the disabled. That can be a perfectly secular argument, as the famous atheist Christopher Hitchens argued.

And I just feel like this is missing on the left. Naomi Wolf, when she was still a very popular feminist writer, published a piece about this in the New Republic in the late 90s that you should look up to. It's kind of hard. You can find it if you Google it probably within a couple minutes, but she made the same point that Hitchens makes. And it's a very, very important distinction if we're having this argument. And the more science advances, the more you can really understand early stages of a baby's development, how it is, one, alive, and two, a unique human being. I don't think there's anything religious about coming to that conclusion.

Now, to the extent that my religion affects my opinion on abortion, it's towards that last part, which is, I believe in universal human dignity. I believe that every life is inherently valuable. And I do believe that because of my religion. But I think if you pulled Americans on that question, is all human life valuable? They would probably give you, what, like, 95% agreement that's actually baked into the founding documents of this country imperfectly at first. But Frederick Douglas, Martin Luther King, referred to that as, you know, a promise that we are working to fulfill, right? And that's what's very amazing about our system is that, you know, in theory, there will be no utopian perfect society. But in theory, we can, we have the tools in this constitutional republic to get closer to justice.

And I don't think a lot of people have a religious perspective on universal human dignity. I don't think for many people it's rooted in Christianity. It is for me. And I would argue that Tom Holland is correct in Dominion, that it is for most of the West that you don't get to universally human dignity through stoicism. Holland would probably argue you don't even get to it through, he would probably say Islam, he'll probably say Buddhism. I shouldn't speak for Holland.

You can look at all of his debates on YouTube. I highly recommend them. And I can't recommend a book as much as I can recommend Dominion. It's such a good read. But all that is to say, many secular people. In fact, if you see our founding documents as secular,

you would say that this concept of universal human dignity has its roots in what came out of the Enlightenment. And so that's why I believe you have to protect all life because as soon as you make decisions that say one life is less valuable than another, you have opened a Pandora's box and that logic is then going to require you and your society to make some awful, unjust decisions. So anyway, that's how I responded to Katie. Thank you, Katie for the email. Katie always emails with some, if I'm remembering

incorrectly. Katie always emails with some rebuttals, and I appreciate it. Let's see. This is a interview recommendation from Rebecca. I will look into this. Thank you, Rebecca.

Hank says this was after Bill Cassidy lost. If Cassidy had any doubts about who runs the Republican Party, he found out over the weekend that it's Donald Trump and Lauren Boberts, tempting fate with her support for Thomas Massey. Massey obviously lost, as we covered on the show. And that was my big takeaway from the Massey loss is that all of the money that came in, largely on Gowryne's side from pro-Israel forces, was used to make this a national referendum on Massey versus Trump.

And when it became a referendum on Massey versus Trump, Kentucky's fourth district, like most red districts around the country, they went for Trump. Trump defines what MAGA is, whether you're talking about a moderate Republican in Louisiana or a hardcore libertarian in Kentucky. Right now, Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, and people are going to side with him over anyone who is cast as his enemy. And all that money, I mean, it was almost evenly split. Gow Rhein still had an advantage towards the end. but all that money made this about, it was used to talk mostly about massy undermining Trump and Trump's agenda. And it enabled them to make that case in a very robust way. And, you know, that's nine times out of ten going to turn out in one way or the other. Bob says,

many have articulated the view that it's almost impossible to see how either side prevails in this war, referring to Iran. That seems correct to me. What really frightens me is that one can think of this in terms of the old adage that is very dangerous to corner anyone who has, one, a bit crazy, and two, has the capacity to do tremendous damage in an effort to try to get them out of the corner. That's a good way to put it. That's a very good way to put it, Bob. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Like we've talked about in the show, part of my concern with this war is that we end up in a more dangerous spot because the American people don't have the stomach for another long, drawn-out, rock-style ground invasion, given that it created a power vacuum, which resulted in ISIS, which resulted in spending more blood and treasure in the Middle East. And basically, with the situation being as bad, some I might argue worse, some still argue better. I think that's a pretty hard argument to make because we don't know what the rest of the Saddam Hussein regime would have looked like had we not invaded. But all that is to say, it's definitely a fear of line, that now, according to Wall Street Journal reporting, the regime is more radical. When that

top layer was killed early in the war, the reporting that I've seen kind of across the board is that what's come next is assessed to be more radical. And if you don't do a full-scale ground invasion, if you don't even do that, are you left with a more radical regime, not collecting tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, leveraging that to get foreign policy concessions in many, many different ways with many different countries, not even just us, and secretly accelerating their rush to nuclear weaponry. Many people have also pointed out the deceased Ayatollah had a fatwa against using nuclear weapons. I mean, I don't know how seriously. To take that, obviously, Iran,

There were hardliners in Iran who wanted to move in that direction. So the question for me now is, do they have more influence or less? And so far I'm concerned that the answer is more. This is from P. who sends a link to, oh, yes, I've seen this. The Man Carrying Thing parody video of Breaking Points, which was absolutely hilarious. So thank you for this email. always worth rewatching. It is from the Man Carrying Thing channel.

P says, this guy did a video making fun of Breaking Points. I assumed it would be more attacking the show, but it feels more like an S&Lskate. The comment section is trying to get them to do you and Ryan next. You know, I'm not super eager to be parodied. I'll say that.

The Breaking Points audience tends to lean a bit more left. So I think they would probably, I think I might get a harsher treatment than anyone else on the show. But, you know, it's all good, good fun. This first video was hilarious and nailed it. There's one point where they're like, now we're going to cut away to Ryan Grimm talking about the absolute worst news possible in the world. So man caring thing did a great job. Shout out. Loved the video.

Thanks for the email. Abe says, evergreen headline, journalist brains function at a lower level than average study says, according to business insider. This looks like it's from 2017. Let me just read. I've never seen this before. Let me read the lead here. Journalist brains show a lower than average level of executive functioning according to a new study, which means they have below average ability to regulate their emotions. Suppressed biases, solve complex problems, switch between tasks, and show creative and flexible thinking. This is a study apparently done by a neuroscientist named Tara Swart

in association with the London Press Club. This is incredible, and now the rest of it is paywalled, but I'm going to keep this tab open so that I can read it more later. Abe goes on to say, I only wanted to send a quick note to commend you and appreciate your response to a Mormon commentator, the commenter that wanted to affirm their faith. I had a coworker that is Mormon come to me

and mentioned that he was questioning some aspects of his faith. We weren't close, but if it was a tough conversation, Unfortunately for him, it probably would have been detrimental to his family to discuss that with them. He ended up quitting and moving away, so I never did get to follow up with him. Everybody wants to be affirmed in their beliefs, the implication being that if you don't affirm them, that makes you the bad person, it's pretty much the same as the trans stuff and a lot of other closely held beliefs. Maybe it's a form of tribalistic signaling or a kind of psychological safetyism.

Anyway, you're doing very valuable work and sticking to your beliefs, and I appreciate and respect it. You can't please everyone. Speaking of which, I sure hope Massey wins his primary. Oh man, Abe. Oh, man. A bit of a disappointment for those of us in Massey's Corner, no question about it. Not entirely surprising, but this journalist link is hilarious. And, you know, I appreciate your response to that back and forth on Mormonism.

I enjoy having these back and forths in this format, to be honest, because I love, I don't know, I'm a bit of an introvert. I love communicating in writing. And so I think for many of us, having the ability to fully flesh out your thoughts in writing is a really good way to communicate. So it's much better than the comment section for the most part. It's much better than social media, which is character limited and algorithmic. So you have a different set of incentives. Whereas on email, you're probably just trying to get me to see your email in the inbox.

I responded almost everyone. So you don't really have to worry too much about that. And that's why I like to give the oxygen to people who are fleshing out their arguments in written form. And then I can respond to them in, sometimes I drone on and on forever. But, you know, with some ability to look at what you're actually saying, your real argument, not a comment section version of an argument on social media or anything. And without, you know, commercial breaks coming up or anything like that, a hard clock in front of me, spend some time just reacting live in the moment. That's why I think it's more interesting to do it this

way. And that was, I thought that was a good example of a constructive exchange. I hope everyone agrees, but in the words of Abe, you can't please everyone. It's true. We do all want to have our beliefs affirmed. At the same time, many of us want to have them challenged because we're aware we want to have them affirmed. So as we, you know, prioritize the truth over our own feelings, we see, out opinions that challenge our own. That's true of many, many people, not everyone, but many, many people. And even when you're seeking out the opposition and the alternative, you still catch yourself sometimes saying, well, oh, I trust this source more because it confirms my belief, or I distrust this source more because it says something I don't think is true. And it's just

a very difficult job. But the job nonetheless of anybody who is prioritizing accuracy, especially if you're a journalist, to constantly be pushing yourself. This is from Hank, yeah, on Massey, another one bites the dust. Yeah, yep, yep. Trump is still, basically Hank is saying, he emailed to say before the primary, Trump is still the big man on campus, he still calls the shots and this proved it. Tyler says, Theo of Golden, have you read this? book, one of the best books I've ever read and reminds us the importance of kindness.

Tyler, I have not read that book. I will make a note to look it up. Hadley says, I wish I'd been listening live to call in, referring to the Megan Kelly Wrapup Show, I assume that's where we take calls for an hour on Sirius XM right after Megan. This is in response to Megan's conversation with Jonathan Alpert and what you shared about what Harrison Ford said in his commencement speech, and that was from After Party. Hadley says, my oldest daughter just graduated from college this past weekend. I don't know why I expected something else, but when I walked into the chapel for the baccalaureate, I thought there might be some moments of grace or thanks to a higher power. Nope. Land acknowledgement, interpretive dance,

and each student speaker preference their speech with a disclaimer that their views were their own and not the schools. Who are they kidding? The school feels the same way. One professor went in to full TDS and brought up Minneapolis, kind of a long email, so I'll read some of the highlights as I go through it here, met some other parents. One mom proceeded to tell me she had to flee Idaho because of Trump supporters and moved to Minneapolis because her younger daughter is adopted from Africa. Interesting. The point I'm trying to make is what I encounter in real life is far more people on the left who are completely intolerant, the people with the yard signs. Well, Hadley, oh, Hadley's from Milwaukee. Oh, great. Well, thanks for the email Hadley. And Jonathan

Alpert did have a conversation with Megan about some of the social science into whether there's an overlap between mental health issues and progressivism. Hot topic, hot topic. But it is true. There is some research about young women on the left, particularly reporting higher levels of mental distress. And it would be foolish for the left to ignore that. I mean, there are people they could help who are suffering. And it would be foolish for the right to ignore that either. But obviously our society is failing young women who are pretty. or maybe, you know, you'd say they're failing themselves. But I think if you see it, if you see a pattern, it's always probably a little bit of both because there's been research

over many years that the more you see yourself as a victim, the less happy, satisfied with life you tend to be. And that's really, I mean, because you feel like you lack agency. And two things can be true. On the one hand, you can be less powerful over your own life than you should be, right? there may be intrusions from government or other sources, big tech corporations, over your ability to succeed. That can be true at the same time as, well, you still have some agency and you still have some power over your own life. And if you want to avoid unhappiness, figure that out, overcome the challenge.

And I think that's a good message to people who are feeling disempowered and and like victims. On the one hand, you might be a victim. On the other hand, great, overcome that problem. And so I think too many people kind of wallow in point one without then understanding point two. And I think some of that is ideological. Was it Abe who used the term safetyism? That's the early Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianov thesis. I mean, it had been circulating before they published the coddling of the American mind. But that book really popularized the thesis that there was a kind of combination here. This ideological safetyism, which is rooted, often in progressivism, was leading to hysteria,

unhappiness, and cultural chaos. And I do think, I do absolutely think that's true. and I think it's actually why, to use the kind of annoying phrase, woke, I think that's why woke isn't really dead. It's kind of in hibernation. I think it's badly damaged. And I don't know that it'll ever be as powerful as it was. But I do think it's so deeply rooted. This, woke doesn't do justice to what we're really talking about, this sort of safetyist progressivism. I think it became the foundation for the ideological mental houses a lot of people built. And I think it's sent them kind of into hibernation because they don't have the cultural power they once had, but they're still wielding it locally, like on a college campus or in their workspace in ways that show if the cultural pendulum swings again because there's a big backlash to the right, which is what happened during the first Trump administration, then maybe it'll people will be more comfortable starting to make some of the demands that led to the cultural insanity. of 2020 again. So actually, Hadley, your experiences on campus at graduation, hearing from other parents, hearing from these students and seeing the school, I do think that's a very, very good example. Actually, there was another example that I sent the actual group chat with Annes and Rachel. I'm trying to scroll up to find it again over the weekend that I felt very good about.

Oh, yeah, this was the booing of Jonathan Haidt. It's funny. It was literally about Jonathan Haight. He got booed when he said a particular line. It was a walkout, so I assume it was planned. But Haida is not particularly political. He's very opposed to Big Tech, which some people in the left think has created a world where, you know, if you do age-controlling, age-gating on Big Tech and the like, that hurts vulnerable people, LGBT people, that's a line that you hear sometimes from like Taylor Lorenz, that the real problem isn't the technology,

that the technology has helped vulnerable people and that all of this is just kind of ginned up non-traversy. But yeah, so this is a walkout, planned walkout of height, who was encouraging, so he said, quote, take control of your own attention, do hard things, what you pay attention to, shapes, what you care about, and what you care about shapes, what you become, some of the biggest corporations in human history.

they're not trying to earn your attention. They're not trying to deserve your attention. They're trying to take it from you. And it looks like a few dozen people. I'm reading from the NYU report about all of this. It does look like a few dozen people walked out. So not a huge protest, really. But those are exactly the people that I'm kind of talking about.

It sounds like that Hadley encountered who will carry this into the future. Because once you're, it's the foundation of your worldview. It's very, very, very difficult for anybody to change that. I mean, obviously it happens, but it's very difficult to change that. So I expect that it'll be with us in a damaged, but powerful form in one way or the other going forward. I think some of that is just the way our lives are structured. Tech creates a global community, and that breeds loneliness and alienation. and I don't think, I think it's hyper-novelty, as Brett Weinstein and Heather Hying wrote in 100-Gatherers Guide to the 21st Century, one of my favorite books, very underrated book.

And the human brain just can't quite keep up. The human body can't just quite keep up with the rate of technological change now. And I think that has found a lot of people seeking, has caused a lot of people to seek comfort in anti-human ideological tendencies. You see some of it on the right too, but certainly it was wielded very powerfully by the people on the left who were walking out of the height speech. Just the fact that he was giving that commencement speech, I think, shows you that they have been damaged. His enemies have been damaged. But they're, let's say, down but not out. Ryan emails, would you please tell me about your thoughts on the Massey election. I believe that if we vote for reps that consistently

vote for every policy that Trump wants, then why does Trump want a legislature? It's my belief that our founding fathers wanted the legislature to be a check on the executive branch and not a rubber stamp. The MAGA base is moving so far right now that constitutionalists are becoming left. Yeah, Ryan, I did a whole segment at the top of Wednesday's show on Massey. I went for like 20 minutes. I was supposed to go for like five minutes just because it was the show opener, five to 10 minutes. And just there was a lot to say, especially because I've covered him going back on 10 years. And I've always thought very highly of him. I do not believe that he has changed. I think his ideas have become more resonant with people on the left, center, and right,

not just on the right, because he speaks to the institutional distrust a lot of people have. But right now, MAGA still trust Trump. The Republican voters still trust Trump over any of his opponents. Now, let's not forget, 45% of voters in Kentucky's fourth district went with Massey. Yes, he lost by about nine points. He didn't win, and he lost by an almost double-digit margin. But that is still a pretty big chunk of people who went out and voted in Kentucky four. And that means, even in this district that was inundated with anti-Massie ads and the like, that Massey's resonating, that people wanted to stick with Massey. And I think that's significant, given historically how much trust that Trump has had from his base and how much support he's

had from his base. It's gone down a bit among both MAGA voters and Republican voters. It's still pretty high. And I think that's the big takeaway that it's Trump is still right now. He may be like the people we were just talking about. He may be down, but he's not out in the Republican Party. Now, I agree with Ryan. I don't think legislatures are meant to be a rubber stamp.

And this is the age-old question for somebody who is elected to be part of the Republican Party, elected as part of the Republican Party, and then goes into Congress to represent their districts. What do you do when you feel like your district's interests are not the same as the Republican Party's interests? Do you prioritize the Republican team over your constituents? Or do you say, I might have to vote with my team on this one? because ultimately it'll allow me to help my constituents more down the road. This is why I would never want to be an elected politician, period. Because these decisions, I mean, you have the luxury of a journalist to not have to make a

black or white decision yes or no and to be able to kind of analyze the situation, explain the situation, listen to both sides, the situation, understand both sides of the situation, and then not ultimately make a call one way or the other, which I think is a perfectly acceptable role for a journalist to play. And it's why I do one thing and not the other. Frankly, I would never want to have to make those decisions because you're constantly juggling all of these different moral questions that are very, very difficult. If Massey had gone along, had gone along to get along with Mike Johnson the way he did a bit with McCarthy, not entirely, but I explained this on Wednesday's show. I covered McCarthy very closely and interviewed him. I did a whole sit-down with

him at one point and profiled him for the Federalist. He was giving the Massey's, the Freedom Caucus guys, more. And so they were willing to give more because they thought they were going to get more from McCarthy down the line. And then Matt Gates kind of threw a wrench in that. And, you know, the margin was just so close. And it's the same with Massey now that when the margins are closer, him having some of the same disagreements with Trump that he did in 2020 over things like spending on the COVID stimulus, it just mattered more. The stakes were higher. And so MAGA was even more upset with Massey. That COVID stimulus passed easily. The Big Beautiful Bill didn't. I don't know how Massey would have voted if he was the deciding vote on the Big Beautiful

Bill. I actually don't. And again, I wouldn't want to have to make that decision if you are a debt and deficit hawk consistently since you got to Congress and you believe morally that people right now are being bankrupted and impoverished by the spending that continues to happen, do you rubber stamp a big spending bill that doesn't have requisite cuts? Do you do that? I think Massey acted admirably in at least getting some concessions as they tried to win his vote, getting them to take away the big tech regulation moratorium on a state basis.

Crazy. Crazy that any Republicans allowed that to get into the bill. and Massey leveraged his influence as they were trying to win his vote with Marjorie Taylor Green to get that stripped out. And I think that's a perfectly acceptable way to go about it. But then if you're faced with this scenario where if you don't vote for the bill, the president's going to come after you, people might waste all this money on a primary that wouldn't have otherwise had to happen. And you might lose your seat and your ability then to advocate for lowering the debt, taking care of the debt in Congress going forward. I mean, it's genuinely not an easy call. None of this is an easy call. Also, he wanted a secure border. Massing, we want a secure border. I believe in the SAVE Act. So if you don't vote for the bill, what happens to the president's ability to secure the border in the future? It's tough. It's not easy. So I absolutely understand why people in Kentucky's 4th District were persuaded that he was disloyal to the point of being out of step. with them. I obviously don't agree with it, but those are sort of some of my thoughts beyond even

just what we talked about on Wednesday. Thank you for the email, Ryan. Hank says Fox News is getting embarrassing. They're preempting regular broadcasting a show DJT giving a speech at the Coast Guard Academy graduation. I generally support the president, but this is too much. Isn't there some law? They have to register as lobbyists. If not, they should be. I haven't, I shouldn't speak because I haven't watched a ton of Fox News in recent years. When I put my cable news, when I put cable news on my TV, I usually watch CNN because I think that's the best glimpse into this sort of D.C. establishments thinking. And I find that to be a better use of my time.

I'm sort of familiar with how conservatives are reacting to different things. So I just don't watch a lot of Fox these days. I think it's normal to show president's commencement speeches on the cable chain. I don't know that for sure, though. I'd have to double check. I have those seeing some Fox coverage of Trump. It's just like, it's too much. It's too much. Not, I don't know about prime time, but even I've seen some of the news side, which often tries to prove how like oppositional they are to Trump. Not always, but sometimes you see that from, you know, there are people who cover the White House or Congress or whatever. But sometimes, yeah, I do see the host. And I think, ugh. That's maybe a little bit much, but I haven't watched a lot of it recently. James emails. Subject line is marriageable men, happy hour.

I think we talked about this on last week's happy hour. So James says, the very thought of this infuriated me for centuries men have never truly cared about what a woman did or how much money she made when it came to her being datable or marrable. Marigible, men didn't consider a good woman that was, quote, beneath him financially as off the table. Well, in today's evolution, women have flipped the script, both educational and economically. and are you telling me that the same rules still apply? If women still insist that a man has to be equal or above, then financially well, they will all be fighting for the same top 1% of men. And here's a hint for the ladies out there. Those men know they are the top 1% and aren't looking for marriage. Why should they? For centuries men married someone because they were attracted

to them and seemed like a good match. Well, why can't a successful woman marry a blue-collar guy that a good man, that's a good man, and will make a great father if they require the same rules to apply the rule of the three sixes, which I think is six feet, six figure salary, and six, well, I'll leave it at that. You can probably infer. Well, then the millennials in Gen Z are going to have a lot of unhappy childless, cat women, lack of marital women, what a crock of shit. There are millions of good men out there. I think I was going through some of the social science on this with last week's happy hour.

Megan talked a little bit about this last week on Megan Kelly's show as well. Just let me say, I don't know that it's true that men didn't care. for centuries, that there was no time when men only cared about a woman being attractive and a good match. I mean, obviously, the dowry was a huge, for some portion of kind of Anglo history, the dowry and in other parts of the world, was a pretty significant part of marriage calculation. So I don't know that I fully agree with that point, James. I do agree wholeheartedly with your sentence, quote, why can a successful woman marry a blue-collar guy that's a good, man and will make a great father. Amen. Fantastic point. I think that is totally true. And if any woman

sees that as beneath their station, well, first of all, they're probably underestimating the earnings potential of this blue collar man down the road, especially as AI is wiping out, or is being pledged to wipe out, you know, the head of Anthropic is saying it's going to wipe out 50% of white collar jobs into the future. Second of all, what you're able to provide is not just financial as a man. It's also protection and all of the benefits that come with having a male companion, the masculine benefits that come with having a male companion, as James says, being a good man and a great father. So there's a lot more to providing than just money. There's also resources being able to build your own house or your own deck and repair your

own equipment, not having to constantly be calling out for other people to come in your house. There are all kinds of different ways that are not purely financial that men are providing for women and for their families. So I agree with that wholeheartedly. I will say some of this has started to come up in social science research that women are out-earning men and that makes them feel uncomfortable. But the flip set of that research is it also makes men feel uncomfortable. And that has led, I think, some men to not all. I don't think it's a huge phenomenon, but obviously it has led some men to be like in cells or vall cells and to become very resentful and kind of to check out and give up. And again, that's not the majority of men. It's not the average man.

But there has been some of that, that we aren't just talking about a generation of good blue-collar guys who are a good man and are going to make a great father, but also men that have been, conditioned partially by women to expect, you know, casual sex and those sort of, what's the right word for it? Those no strings attached sexual encounters and relationships. And that can, as women get older, they don't realize that part of them making the decision to follow the guidance of elites, which was wrong, but to say that it was very empowering to have all this meaningless sex, they look around and they, oh, man, these men have not grown up. Well, maybe it's because you were putting out for so many years and made them think that that could go on forever. So it doesn't

take away blame from men or women, but we are just sexually dysfunctional as a country right now. So I think there is some truth that part of the male dating pool is, A, uncomfortable themselves with women earning more. In some cities, that's true. Women, on average are earning. more than men. And then B, men being some men, checking out of the system in a way that makes them even less attractive. But yes, there's certainly, there's so much blame to go around. I don't think it lies primarily with one side or the other. I think actually the blame lies with both sexes in the socioeconomic elite class who became addicted. to cultural leftism in a way that prescribed unhappy cultural norms for everybody else.

And they're less happy to. We're all less happy across the board. But they're coping with it because they have more resources too. And that's both men and women in the elite class. So that's my response, James, on that point. But we got a lot more to get through, and I'm going to keep it rolling. Let's go now to this email from Jesse, who says after the Kentucky for primary elections, I've seen a ton of people crashing out about Israel, Epstein, et cetera, as it relates to Massey.

However, this, in my opinion, is the exact reason he lost. He never once discussed issues plaguing his actual district. Furthermore, the guy he ran against was an excellent candidate. I know I have started to get legitimately fed up with the obsession on the topics Massey focused on, and I can't be the only one judging by the results. They feel so disconnected from average American experiences and concerns. nothing about the economy or helping his district or any of that, just a terminally online meme-brained campaign. I know there was a ton of money poured in, but that can only account for slight percentage changes, one would think.

Not a 10-point loss. Do you think the situation, the focus on these types of issues could pop up for people like Al-Sayed, Plattner, Fishback, and many others building their name on some of these issues. I admit Platner is the most main focus at the bunch and his other baggage of concern, but he nevertheless raises some of the same stuff. Thanks for answering. Thank you for asking, Jesse. I disagree with the premise. respectfully disagree with the premise. Thomas Massey has never been one to talk obsessively about Israel or, I mean, I don't know, he wasn't

talking about Epstein. This was some people's criticism of him, is that he didn't talk about Epstein until recently, that he'd only, I think, tweeted about it three times before he started going after Trump on the issue. I think the reason he started going after Trump on the issue is that the administration did something corrupt and tried to block the files that they've since released from coming out after mass. he pressured them. This is, if you go back through his career, all he has ever wanted to talk about is a debt and deficit.

He's wanted to talk about food, farming, agriculture. He has wanted to talk about liberty, you know, very libertarian focus on liberty, like as an abstract concept, but also in, again, food, farming, economics, regulations. His record on this is robust. And I don't think he's the one. This is where I disagree with your premise. I don't think he's the one that was bringing this stuff up constantly. I think he was getting asked about it constantly because it's what pissed Trump off.

And so he has talked about foreign policy a lot over the course of his career, but he's been a real equal opportunity critic of every country that is a recipient of foreign aid. Now, Israel is a country that gets a lot of foreign aid from the United States, so it's probably proportionate to that. But he's been against foreign aid across the board for a very long time. Ukraine, too. I mean, he was probably talking about that way more than Israel for many years. So I don't think he forced any of these issues. And I think it's a misread of the situation to say that Massey was campaigning on Epstein and Israel. The guy, I mean, I've seen him over the course of his campaign talking about glyphosate and the special privileges that the Trump administration granted to Bayer, which obviously merged with Monsanto and now has glyphosate, on a national security basis. I've heard the guy talk about raw milk. I've heard him talk about a lot of maha. I've certainly heard him talk about. about the debt and deficit. I mentioned this, I think, on the show this week, but the last time I saw him, he was really happy to talk, most happy to talk about the homemade debt clock that he had affixed

to his lapel. So I don't think it was Massey who forced any of these issues. I think his opponents forced the issues. And to the extent he talked about it, it was in response. Now, it would be foolish to act as though Thomas Massey has not leaned into his criticisms of the corrupt class of people in the Trump administration and former or in the business community who have been implicated in the Epstein files or that he has not been eager to talk about foreign aid to Israel. I think he has because he feels passionately about both of those things. But if you go back and look at the elections he ran, when he still had the same disagreements, ideologically, 2020, 2020, 2022, 2024,

2024, 26, I think he's been consistent on what he cares most about. He's a libertarian. He's a pretty standard issue libertarian, and his opponents were most upset about, he's getting all of this money flowing into this campaign in a congressional district from primarily sources that are upset about his stance on Israel.

That's where the money is coming from. And so if they're going to send millions of dollars, he's going to respond. And that's my read on the situation. I totally get what you're saying, Jesse. Honestly, I think if you zoom in really, really close to the ground level of the race, he was responding. It's sort of like when the ref flags the guy who hits someone back, right? Not the guy who throws the original punch. That's what I think of the situation. I, too, though, am so sick of talking about this stuff. Like, do not get me wrong. I hear you. I'm exhausted. I just don't blame Massey for responding to some of the attacks.

I mean, the American people polling is pretty clear on what people thought about the Epstein files. It was so wrong what Pam Bondi did with the binders. That's really what I think got Massey to become activated and involved, that even people in the Trump administration recognize it was a foolish thing to do. So I think he was right to be upset about that and to get more involved in the issue because of that. And pulling on the war is not super strong right now either. Pulling on Israel, not super strong right now either. So I don't think it's unreasonable for him to raise those issues. But I also don't think he's really the one that turned the race into kind of partially a referendum on those two issues. Mostly it was a referendum on Trump. But anyway, I think it's the ref flagging the guy who punched back. I do think it could be a problem for Abdul al-Sayed. I think it could be a problem. I don't know that it would be a problem for Graham Platner because I think he is, to your point, Jesse, more main focused. And he's aware of these issues.

He has this line about how the culture war is an elite distraction, which again, I don't really agree with. I think it is sometimes an elite distraction, but primarily it's not. That line is really good politics, though. And I think that's going to help him neutralize some of it. I don't know. I don't know that Abdul El-Sayyid is going to be able to do that. I definitely think that's a problem for fishback. So, yes, this is part of the problem of the microculture,

is that it's harder to speak to a monoculture now because when you run a campaign that's asymmetric warfare, meaning you're trying to have a really successful social media launch that draws attention. Maybe you don't have all the money in the world, you don't have the establishment support. So you're trying to do kind of what Trump did in 2015-16 and be excellent on social media.

that can create perverse incentives where you're overly focused. And it puts you in a bubble. You're overly focused on people who agree with you or on this particular, the issues in a particular milieu that you are most in conversation with. So that's a good question. Another one from Hank on Amanda Pete. One observation I have is that the high school classmates of mine who have had work done did themselves no favor. And they certainly had the resources to get the best plastic surgeon. but Miss Pete hardly needed to worry about her looks.

Yes, that's true. She looks great. Yeah, I've never super understood the Botox plastic surgery stuff. Maybe it's because I'm in my early 30s. My mom was texting me during the show, I think disagree with me a bit on that. But to me, I think we're going to look on some of us, I feel like we're splitting into two countries, one that love kind of transhuman tech and are leaning into it.

And some of us who are now questioning a lot of what was just seen as normal, but we are now associated with transhumanism. And I think that group of people is going to look at some pictures from these years and be like, oh, why were we trying to turn ourselves into creatures of this uncanny valley where it's like you look different and you look younger, like your skin is smoother, but you still look like an older person with smoother skin. And there are some people on the real housewives, for example, who have had, you know, obviously classy, elegant work done. but I overestimate their age because I now associate that look with somebody who is more in their 60s than somebody who's in their 40s. So it's very easy to get wrong too. Anyway, some quick

thoughts on that. Nats today says after the many recent primaries at the risk of sounding very simple, it is more clear to me than ever that there is too much money in American politics. What reference materials would you recommend books, articles, podcast, papers, etc., that I can read to educate myself on this topic's history, evolution, et cetera. Thank you. There's Not much from the right. And, you know, Megan had an interesting episode with Anna Kasparian recently. They were talking about the Massey primary. I think before it happened. And Megan said she thought she believed the Citizens United decision was rightfully decided, meaning the law was correct, but that she would support a constitutional amendment to rein in money in politics. I think that's basically where I am. So maybe go ahead, listen to that conversation. I think reading the Citizens United decision, is a good place to just be clear about the argument that was made. But then also to look at, you can Google sort of the increase in spending after Citizens United. The before and after is really, really stark with Citizens United.

There are a lot of arguments on the right. I mean, almost universally the right was in favor of the Citizens United decision, which, by the way, was about Hillary Clinton. This was about Hillary Clinton trying to crack down. down on scrappy outsiders who were criticizing her. A lot of people forget about that with Citizens United. But protecting that kind of exception has created, I think, an unfortunate new rule. And what's constitutional versus what is prudent is really tough on this. And I don't have a sort of fully baked opinion other than my instinct is that we desperately need something.

else. Maybe it's a cap. Maybe it's public funding. I don't have a good answer. There are a lot of problems with both of those points, constitutionally and prudentially. So I don't know what the right answer is to this. And unfortunately, there is an absolute dearth of conservative writing and thinking on the topic because there's been an instinctive embrace of Citizens United on, you know, understandable constitutional grounds. The only person I think I've ever heard on the right, other than Megan recently really question this, is Orrin Cass. So Orrin might have something on it that he's written that you can Google. But yeah, even just looking at the money before and after, the stats, it's shocking. And I did read part of a paper, an academic paper on the influence

of how money can change the composition of the electorate. I read that on the show, so you could go ahead and look that up. That was from Wednesday's show. I found that paper to be pretty helpful. full just saying what it can do. And this is where I do have a problem also with people taking agency away from voters and being like, oh, this election was just bought by X, Y, and Z. The voters made up their mind. It's kind of a question of who actually even voted, right? Did you, did you buy people with the money that sort of convinced them of something that was untrue? Because you just put a bunch of money behind it. And people are just, you know, they don't have the luxury of, it's not a luxury, trust me, of being journalists and spending so much time thinking about these things.

That you've got people who might not have voted to vote or people who were going to vote to stay home. So I would recommend that too. But if anyone has recommendations for good pieces of writing from the right or maybe even from the populist left, I'm open to them because I'm with you there, Nats. This is from Brian who says, thoughts on Hakeem Jeffrey suggesting that young black athletes send Southern universities withhold their athletics to send a message. I did not see that Hakeem Jefferies said that, but it doesn't surprise me that he said that. He is such a low-energy, factless leader of the Democratic caucus at a very important time

for the Democratic caucus. So this suggestion of like performative resistance that would actually just probably hurt kids is stupid and further balkanize us. Again, just, I haven't seen this, so I'm just responding here with my quick thoughts, but oh my gosh. Sam emails, as someone from the Midwestern perspective, feels a lot cleaner and less swampy than the standard in the political commentator ecosystem of DC. There aren't many Midwestern voices with the real media foothold, so it's genuinely refreshing to see. Thank you, Sam. I have been out here for a long time, so I probably, I can say my roots are in the Midwest.

But you Midwesterners out there have the real street cred. You're still living on the ground. There is a really big difference. I think there's a big difference culturally between the Midwest and the coasts. So I always constantly have to kind of be, you know, checking myself. So I'm glad that some people think it's working. Sam says that he would argue it's actually Massey's primary is more reflective of the bifurcation of media consumption by age, specifically the degree to which Fox News dominates the 65-plus

Republican audience, I think this is easily seen by Trump failing to deliver any campaign premise, and yet is still the darling of the boomer audience. If Massey had received the same level of Fox coverage as Gal Ryan, I don't think the race would have been remotely close. Oh, interesting. For most of the primary cycle, Massey was largely absent from Fox altogether. That absence matters because for a huge portion of all the Republican voters, Fox effectively functions as the gatekeeper of political legitimacy and is the keeper of many of their opinions.

This is some good points in here, Sam. First of all I'll say, that's true because Fox very wisely occupied this space. If you're a boomer, and even me, by the way, I grew up seeing Fox News as kind of this upstart challenger to the media establishment, even though it was corporate press in and of itself, it dared to do something different that made it very unpopular in a lot of elite circles. And I think because of that, a lot of us who don't know who to trust, this is Trump benefits from this as well. Fox correctly assessed the situation and told you that everyone else was lying to you about certain things and that the left was wrong about certain things, everybody else is telling you they're right about. And because of that, Fox has this kind of baked in credibility with people who came of age at a time when Fox really was this upstart challenger. And yes, it still challenges the media establishment. Don't get me wrong. It's still not super popular in D.C. But when the president in power gets so much pretty positive coverage from Fox overall in the aggregate, we talked about this earlier in the episode. So what I said there, I think, still stands. It does lend a lot. Their coverage lends a lot of credibility with people who, I think, rightfully, reasonably don't trust other sources, don't trust news sources. And now, to your point about bifurcation, the younger of us don't trust Fox or these institutional corporate media outlets because we feel

like they've failed. So we are going to look to people who are, you know, being lent credibility at places like Breaking Points, Megan Kelly Show, hopefully after party. And that's going to be a bigger problem than people realize. It shows up in a lot of polls. It shows up in a lot of polls, especially on Israel where the social media cable news war has been super pronounced. So I don't know. I mean, I had a caller today in the wrap-up show argued that Trump failed to deliver on campaign promises. And as somebody who's very, very critical of Trump, I just, that inspired me to make a list of some of the things he has done that are obvious conservative victories. And just a couple of them, I mean, the Title IX rollback, the federal DEI rollbacks challenging different things like the New York Times

in court on DEI, on racial discrimination, the closed border, you know, mass deportations of another story. But if we're trying to just, you know, go from the 30,000 foot view, almost totally ending the USAID, not totally ending it, but almost totally, that 10% tariff, summary shoring, really turned down the Ukraine funding to a trickle, ended some of those State Department censorship programs. It looks like, according to FBI numbers, there's been a significant crime decrease. Debatable how much of that can be ascribed to the federal government, debatable whether those numbers, we'll see. I mean, there are other sources we'll have to compare them with as time goes on, but also prevented a tax hike. Even though I wasn't a huge fan of

the tax cut bill, I'm glad that we don't have a tax hike. The tax cuts were extended. No tax on tips. So I don't know that he's failed to deliver on anything, but on some of the big things, like no new wars. many people would say mass deportations. Those are really important promises. And I think young people are feeling really disillusioned that they crossed, and releasing the Epstein files, by the way, which they did kicking and screaming. And still, you know, there's many documents that haven't been fully released. And there are lots of redactions and all that sort of thing.

But resisting that initially. So I do think there are a lot of people who are very, very disillusioned. younger people were very, very disillusioned because also bringing down inflation. Inflation right now on a monthly basis, the CPI has it actually higher than it was when Biden left, I'm sorry, yeah, when Biden left office and Trump assumed office in January 2025, gas prices so high. That's, I think that is disillusioning a lot of people, especially those who aren't watching Fox News, which, you know, if you're retired, the stock market is probably, more important, especially if you're on, well, yeah, I mean, the stock market probably is more

important if you're transitioning to a point in your life where you're living off of savings. And if you're not living off your savings at this point, and your savings are, you know, already smaller because you're younger, then it just, the day-to-day feels really, really hard. If you've paid off your house, different than if you're right now trying to buy a house. And so I just, yeah, I think this bifurcation, that's a great word for it, Sam, has separated us into these microcosms, and it's harder to bring us together because of this. Here we have email from Miss Chanandler Bing. Shouldn't that be Miss Chandler-Bong?

This is a friend's reference. But I think that should be, if it's accurate to the joke, you can email me back if I got it wrong. Chenander Bong is what I think the name was on Friends, but maybe it's just a play on the chenander part. The timing on your Botox story was pretty funny. thought you may enjoy reading about a case I investigated that was just convicted. Oh, boy, this is a California doctor convicted of a Medicare fraud scheme that funded luxury vacations and a 12K crossbow. Oh my gosh, this is fraud of Botox injections. This is wild. I'm going to read this

after we finish recording. Hank sends a response here to Roy Tachara with a link to an article that I will flag and read later. Appreciate that, Hank. Let's see if we have anything else here. Yep, it looks like we have a couple from Instagram. Donald says, I disagree with you on Massey. The truth is that Israel bought the seat, and as always, Israel gets what Israel wants, and Trump turned on him because Massey had the audacity to vote against him, and Trump is too much of a child to handle it like an adult. I mean, yet Trump turned on Massey when Massey voted against him in 2020 on the COVID stimulus. That was when Massey got a serious primary challenge. He was fine, 2020, 2020,

2024. But Trump had turned on him, and in a pretty big way. I mean, he had some very harsh words for Massey after that happened. I do think the big thing that changed, if we look at all the variables, it's not Massey. I think a lot of it is that there was a huge influx of money from the pro-Israel movement, which is, you know, calling this a victory now. So it's not like I'm saying something that they wouldn't agree with. And that's good for them. They spent the money. They got the results that they wanted, but they weren't really running on Israel issues, right? We talked about this. It was really about Massey and Trump. And voters made up their mind on that. So do I think the money changed the game for Gowryne? Yes. I don't like to say that Israel bought the seat,

because that implies that they bought the votes. And I think, you know, the people of Kentucky's fourth district made up their minds the best way that they knew how. I think the race was defined by the money that was spent on it. So I think they bought favorable conditions in the race. That might sound like a distinction without a difference. I think is a meaningful difference because I don't like saying that the media just manipulated the young people to be against Israel, for example. That's a line that a lot of the pro-Israel movement says. It's just all about TikTok.

I don't agree with that. And I would just say, sounds like maybe nitpicking, but that I think they bought more favorable conditions for Gail Ryan. So anyway, that's my response. Thanks, Donald. Ryan says, I would love your take on the Iran conflict. If you could predict an end date, when would it be? Oh, my gosh.

Well, right now there's just a trap. if Trump escalates to retrieve the nuclear dust and really go into hostilities, hostile conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, you are almost certainly risking more American deaths. And that would be an escalation that would require much more money. In a longer time frame, it's not going to be quick if you escalate. Those are big processes, maybe quicker than dragging it out. but he's at a total, he's in a trap. You can either escalate or he can capitulate.

And, you know, Mark Levin was furious when some possible capitulation terms came out, meaning, you know, it was a relief of sanctions and an unfreezing of billions of dollars that would go to Iran. And that was utterly unacceptable to Mark Levin and I think Netanyahu, who has been, pushing for the hostilities to reappear. So if you don't want to give that inch, then you have to escalate. And to the credit of people like Mark Levin, they are saying, yes, we want the escalation. I think at one point Levin even talked about like tactical nukes or something.

He might have been talking about Israel, but he's not been shy to embrace the idea of escalation. But if you embrace the idea of escalation, you are saying that, yes, Trump should expend more American blood and treasure in Iran. And whether or not that's worth it is what I disagree with completely, because I think a lot of this risks backfiring. And so in end date, right now my sense is that Trump is hoping something happens internally in Iran. The government actually faces a serious threat. The regime falls. And then the chain, or I'm sorry, the turn. right now, the framework right now, changes. That's my guess. That is my, let's say, educated guess at what's happening inside of the White House and inside of Trump's mind. He's kind of waiting it out to see if something changes and will eventually pull the plug and do one or the other. I don't think either is a good option. I don't think the pre-war status quo was a great option either, and I'm not saying that it was, but it's a question of degrees. Was it a better option? well, we don't know how this thing is going to end.

But, you know, it's looking like there are even worse options in front of us right now. So I know many of you disagree on that. And I've, you know, enjoyed going back and forth with you over the Emily at doublemaker.com media account. That's going to do it for us on today's edition of Happy Hour that keep getting longer and longer. And you know what? I kind of like it. So please do go ahead send me your emails. Subscribe.

If you haven't subscribed on the YouTube yet, it helps us a lot. also liking, commenting, helps us a lot. Sharing with your friends, helps us a lot. And of course, subscribing here on the podcast feed as well. We're off for Memorial Day, but we will see you on After Party next Wednesday. God bless you all. Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. God bless.