After Party with Emily Jashinsky - “Happy Hour”: Online Weirdness on The Right, Book Recommendations, and Women in the Workforce: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

On this week’s edition of “Happy Hour,” Emily Jashinsky opens with thoughts about Black Friday then answers your questions on topics including Thanksgiving food, and the government agencies that need consolidation. She also discusses the recent Helen Andrews article on women in the workforce, online weirdness from the right, authors and books she recommends, thoughts about having conversations with figures like Tommy Robinson, and what’s happening with Candace Owens. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, hi, after-party listeners. Happy Black Friday and happy happy hour. That's what we're doing here on Happy Hour. It's our weekly show where I get to talk to you in the podcast format, audio only, and we get to go through all of the great questions you've sent in over to me at at Emily at devilmaycaremedia.com and over on the after-party Emily Instagram. questions. I really do check that email myself. Many of you know that because I've corresponded back and forth with you a bit. People send in great questions, great suggestions,

great feedback. Always happy to answer those questions. If you put Happy Hour in the subject line, that's super easy too. No problem. If you forget or if you don't want a question on Happy Hour, you can always reach me at Emily at Devil Maycaremedia.com. All right. So it's Black Friday. I am recording this a little bit before Black Friday. So I'm not quite in the Black Friday spirit. Maybe some of you have thoughts on whether the Black Friday spirit is still with us, whether it's right at all. I've thought about that over the years, too, as many of us have. Is it sort of the pinnacle of American consumerism in a good, fun way?

At least it brings family into American consumerism. Those people who were like camping outside Best Buy. Nobody does that anymore, though, because this. the internet. Then there was Cyber Monday and all of that. So Black Friday has changed quite a bit. So it's not, it's different. You know, it's, it's not the same. It's a little bit different. All right. So Kleinstine 9 asks, one side dish and one fed agency that should be thrown into the dustbin of history this Thanksgiving. I don't like when people serve salad at Thanksgiving. Sorry, mom. I know you're listening to this and you're probably eating leftover salad right now. It's just,

it feels wrong. Thanksgiving, I feel like is about carbs. Like, we even load up like vegetable dishes with carbs. I'm a big fan of green bean casserole at Thanksgiving. There's a lot of Thanksgiving food and I'm actually just, I don't like to eat when it's not Thanksgiving, like a big turkey or, I mean, I love turkey. Don't get me wrong. I love turkey. But what did Mitt Romney say? My favorite meat is hot dog. My favorite meat is turkey sandwiches. That is a real Mitt Romney quote, by the way. You could go look it up. Someone asked him something like that. I think it was when he was running for president. It might have been after. But anyway, his favorite meat is hot dog. I would say, yeah, I don't like it when people make salads. I'm trying to think of another one. You know, I'm just,

I'm bad at vegetables, but I think Thanksgiving vegetables are pretty good usually. Like, I love I love it when people do like nice carrots. I like green bean casserole, even like, you know, some green beans with some butter, pretty good. And I'm excited to have all of that as leftovers as well. You know, but some Thanksgiving food, I just, I like it for Thanksgiving. And let's leave it. I like to compartmentalize things so that they feel special. Maybe that's why I don't like the incursion of salad into the Thanksgiving dinner. All right, one federal agency. that should be thrown into the dustbin of history Thanksgiving. You're talking to me at a moment when I just read a story from the Associated Press about how Border Patrol is putting license plate readers in the Chicago, the Greater Chicago area, to track people in Gary, Indiana. So right now I'm feeling like the Department of Homeland Security. But I don't know that I really mean that because DHS, obviously,

I've got some friends working over there right now. DHS obviously does some really important work, but it is frightening to me. how some of these agencies, I mean, you know, the Postal Service even has like an intelligence agency. Some of these agencies probably could be consolidated and their powers would stop metastasizing and sprawling if there was some consolidation because right now nobody has the ability to pay attention to how all of these different agencies are using and abusing their powers in these new technological ways. So DHS is probably not a good answer. My answer used to always be the education department. And right now, as we speak, they are moving the parts of the education department absent a vote in Congress, which will have to happen to formally shudder it. But they're offloading, off ramping some parts of the education department to Treasury, for example, student loans.

That's really great. I'm happy to see it. But that was my normal answer. So now I don't even know what to say. I mean, I would be in favor of consolidating. the energy department and the EPA, but I'm open to arguments to the contrary. That's a good question. That's a funny question. All right. Let's see what else we have here. Lots and lots of emails this week. Man, lots and lots of emails this week. Here is one from Shannon, who says,

forgive me if I missed it, but have you commented on this Helen Andrews article yet? I feel like I keep getting it forwarded to me. I know where I stand on her conclusions, but would be curious to hear your point of view. That's so funny. And Shannon is from Waukesha County. That's awesome. All right. Great. I grew up on the western edge of Waukesha County. And it looks like Shannon has a little bit of hesitance towards Helen, maybe alienating women right now at a time where the GOP is trying to be a big tent. So Helen, who I know, and I also know Leah LeBresco Sargent, who did a debate with Helen on the New York Times podcast, Interesting Times, which is hosted by Ross Douthit. Ross is doing some crazy interesting stuff with that podcast,

not to overuse the word interesting. It happens to be in the title of his podcast. That is, I mean, he is, the fact that that conversation happened on a New York Times podcast is, insane. So a little background for people who haven't had this article forwarded to them, which, yes, when this article came out, everybody in like right wing circles, it seemed like everybody was getting this forwarded to them. I thought it was really well done. I mean, Helen, I think, made her argument very well. I am always, just I reflexively sometimes have a, I get defensive like a lot of women do when you read articles like that that are very critical of women in the workforce. So this is the background.

Helen argued this thesis called the Great Feminization, which is that actually, wokeness is not itself what caused our institutions to go mad. It was the great feminization that created wokeness that created the madness of our institutions. So basically putting the, putting wokeness downstream of the great feminization. And Helen goes through some really shocking numbers of, for example, professions like the law that have become majority women in a very, very quick period of time. And that a lot of these toxic feminine traits, as opposed to, you know, the problem with toxic masculinity wasn't that there are, you know, that men have some bad innate tendencies, right? that women have some bad innate tendencies. It's literally what the movie Mean Girls is about. It was that toxic masculinity was being used constantly to demonize healthy masculine behavior.

And it was being used to write off men as a group as a whole without ever talking about positive masculinity. And what Helen's really talking about, I think, in many cases, is toxic femininity and how some of these feminine traits came to dominate workplace culture. And, you know, the theory when you read it, again, Helen did. a really good job. When you read it makes so much sense. I do think she got the better of Leah in the conversation with Ross on interesting times. And I think Leah made some great points. I like both of them. But it is very difficult to argue with the numbers. And Helen is careful to say, I know correlation and causation do not equal one another. It is not necessarily true.

but I think a couple things could be going on here because I do know men who bought into a lot of the silliness and I think there were the leaders of ESG for example like Larry Fink this is where I would have gone if I were Leo and I was Leah and I was arguing with Helen on Ross's show I probably would have pointed to people like Larry Fink and you know another really, really good example. What's his name? Who used to be the head of the world economic forum, um, Klaus Schwab. These types of people who were pushing what is quote, quote, unquote, wokeness. I mean, the definition of that is sort of hard to land on a consensus with, but it's basically I would define it as cultural progressivism. But I think wokeness has something to do with also

cancel culture, this idea that there should be this intolerance for disagreement. And you can also conflate that with cultural progressivism because I think cultural progressivism has this progressive or bigot binary baked into it, where if you do not agree fully with the concept of equity, for example, you are not just a good faith disagreeer. You are actually a bigot, right? you are a you are complicit in a racist system and that makes you racist right like they will default to those words does it necessarily have to be cultural progressivism no i think you know ryan grim wrote a great piece called the element the elephant in the zoom back in his intercept days it's so well done i mean i wish you would have just done a whole book on it he kind of some of

his books do touch on this but it's such a good essay if you haven't read it you have to it'll feel like a fever dream now because it's really from that capital p w peak woke era But, you know, there's a lot of cancel culture that came to actually be kind of anti-progressive. And there's a pretty good argument that, quote-unquote, wokeness on trans-is issues was anti-progressive. Like, these are the arguments that the turfs, the trans-exclusionary radical feminists, as the trans-inclusionary radical feminists, like to call them derisively, that's the path. Or there's obviously an opening for that argument as well. So where these men in those positions emboldened because their workforce became more and more female to push their own far-left cultural progressivism, which is, again, hilarious to think of Larry Fink and Klaus Schwab as these types of people. But there were a lot of male CEOs who were actually very eager to embrace this.

It wasn't just that they were being pushed kicking and screaming. Some of them were. But there are others who very eagerly embraced all of this. So I guess maybe it depends on how you define wokeness, right? If you define wokeness just as cancel culture, that might be a little bit different because there is something very, no offense, there is something very feminine about, yeah, there's something very feminine about, you know, wanting to, and Helen puts it, again, in very persuasive, terms. But this in-group chasing that women have. Whereas as men are, you know, they sort of have like the hunting tendencies that you just, you have different average behavior. I recommend you go ahead

and listen to Helen make the argument because she does such a good job with it. But it, I agree also. I mean, I think right now, for example, people are debating if all of the like all of this foreign policy focus in like online right wing spaces and all of this like bro culture and right wing spaces and meme culture in right wing spaces is alienating to women and minorities. I don't know the answer to that. I think actually what's more alienating than political incorrectness is just being weird. And I do think some of the political incorrectness has just become weird. And I think because the right was in the outgroup for so long, it's just really used to being transgressive. And when you are actually in power, being transgressive isn't always

like funny or cute anymore because it's like, you're in power, man. Like, don't be so weird. So I think there's just been some online weirdness over the last, maybe I would say like 10 months, 11 months. Like since Trump was inaugurated and the right came in on such a cultural high, I do think there's been some weirdness that's taken root. Just people getting way too into online debates and meme culture. And these are people who were forced into online debates and meme culture because they were excluded from institutions during the peak woke era who now find themselves in positions of power. So there's an adjustment going on. And so I think some of what does genuinely alienate women and minorities, I mean,

Trump has lost his lead with young people. According to polling, I mean, it's different when people actually go and vote. But according to not just one poll, there's a number of polls right now that show all the gains that Republicans made with Trump, with black voters, Hispanic voters, and young voters have been wiped out basically just in this first year of his presidency. He's still got three years to go. That's a long time. But when prices aren't going down and people, you know, jump on the, they jump on social media and see conservatives just, like, being weird and not talking about the things that matter, but, like, talking about the Heritage Foundation, like, it's the most important institution on the face of the earth and yelling at each other about it and meaming about, it's just like, it gets self-serious and it gets weird. And so I don't know if, if, I think people like Helen should still be able to write these really bold and polemical essay. in places like Compact, which I love, I read like almost everything Compact publishes, and people like Leah then can come back and debate in the New York Times and Ross can moderate it.

Another thought I had about that conversation, by the way, because there's no offense to my friends on the left. But one of the problems with the Democratic Party having such a, or the left, and when I say left, I mean like the liberals having such a monopoly on these mainstream media institutions, quote-unquote mainstream media institutions is that their strongest soldiers aren't really at the front lines to put it that way because cable news like Washington Post for a long time these places were elevating like actually people who first of all some of it was DEI some of it was just the most vociferous resistance Trump voices that were getting to the

front of the lines. And I couldn't fathom, honest to goodness, I like Ezra Klein, by the way. And Ezra may be an exception to this, but like I really couldn't fathom three people from the left that had a conversation as brilliantly as Ross, Helen, and Leah had a conversation that was so deeply rooted in philosophy and well-rounded, too. They were speaking the same language, fluent in classic text fluent in philosophy and i just that was one of my big takeaways as somebody who listens to so much stuff on the left uh you guys need to retrain those strongest soldiers and send them to the front lines because man i just i haven't heard a conversation of that caliber um from the left in a sort of elite space for a long time it's not that people aren't

capable uh but i do really think that's been a problem it's a problem in academia too because, you know, if you're somebody who's left of center, you come out of academia, not constantly being confronted with people telling you you you're wrong and you're racist and you're bigot, et cetera. And, you know, younger conservatives, that was just the norm. You know, Hollywood was arguing that you were terrible in every movie and TV show at any given point and your school was and sometimes your church was. If you live in a big city, your community was. So quite, quite interesting. Quite, quite interesting. Joe writes in to say, I'm in Phoenix with my wife. I took some flowers to the headquarters of Turning Point USA and set a prayer. Just paying my respect.

Joe also says Sirius XM, big platform. You're doing an exceptional job with it. And Joe, sending a prayer your way. I hope that I'm just reading this email now. I hope that your surgery went well. And God bless you, Joe. I'm sure the Turning Point USA crew really, really appreciates you paying your respects. And, you know, it was great to see Blake Neff on with Meg and he was on with Andrew Colvette, but Blake is someone, yeah, he was on last week. And he was, he was really good. He's, Charlie Kirk was, I think Blake has talked about this, but really so helpful to him personally. So to see Blake thriving has been awesome. All right. Scott asks for Christian books are authors. that I recommend. Scott says he's read C.S. Lewis. And yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. I mean, the C.S. Lewis book, I always recommend, is screw tape letters. So if you haven't read screw tape letters, I'm assuming Scott probably has read screw tape letters, but that's one. I always recommend. I actually keep copies of Reason for God by Tim Keller in my car. And I've gotten into, you know, arguments with friends of mine like Megan Basham before I love Megan. But I'm just like not, I can't bring myself to be on the anti-Tim Keller train as much as I'm also sympathetic to a lot of the points

that people like Megan make. I just live in a, listen, I live in a big, deep blue city and spent a lot of time in a secular world with a lot of secular people. And I just, I think because I come from that background, you know, the last however many years of my life in a big, deep blue, highly secular city, spending time with a lot of people who are just, you know, it doesn't matter if they're left or right. Like a lot of just secular people. I just have a lot more empathy for what Keller's project and, or a lot more understanding and patience for Keller's project and understand where it was coming from, even if I didn't agree. But reason for God, that book, I just think the content of that book, if you are looking for some thoughtful

but digestible, quote, reasons for God. I keep copies of that in my car, to be honest. That might horrify some of you who are like maybe a little bit more based than I am. But I think that book for my friends who are very secular, you know, I'm talking about people who like vote for Hillary, but don't follow political news that closely, just normies. I think that book is actually really helpful. I'll defend that book. But it's also a great read. You can kind of cut some of the political stuff out.

I want to say it was written in round like 20. 15, the edition that I have has a forward that's like around 2015. I'm going to look it up right now. So there's a little politics in it. Yeah, it was originally published in 2008, and the copies that I have, the editions I have, I think have a foreword from 2015, 2016, somewhere around there. But the basics of the book are excellent. And I think really do hold up. It was published around 2008, 2009. So I'm researching this on the fly as I've responded. But I really, really recommend that. I also recommend Dominion by Tom Holland, which the New York Times, I think, called the galloping history of Christianity, so I'm paraphrasing it, but Tom Holland, after writing that book, has become, has started going to church. It has started becoming more and more actually Christian, but he wrote this book about the history of Christianity as a non-Christian, as a non-believer. And it is really a definitive history of the Christian church. And you, I mean, some people I know, like my friend John Daniel Davidson has some disagreements with his conclusion about how, like,

wokeness is an outgrowth of Christianity itself because we a lot of values we take for granted human rights. For example, Holland argues wouldn't be possible without Christianity. And there's a lot of bitter disagreement with that. Some people say you can get it from the Stoics. You can get it from Ten Commandments, et cetera. Tom disagrees. And I think he makes a very, very good case that it comes from Jesus. And again, controversial, but I think Tom makes a really good case. And he made it as a non-believer. So I think that was very powerful, very, very powerful as well. There was, so I like Dominion a lot. I like Air We Breathe, which kind of picks up on some of the themes from Dominion by Glenn Scrivener. Super interesting. I listened to his podcast,

but he is, yeah, he's very, very interesting. And that book, is also really digestible, really digestible. And it just, it's a quick read, but it covers a lot of the basics in a very thoughtful way and in ways that are super, super countercultural. So I like that Glenn Skrivener book. I'm probably going to forget some of these. I like Randall Sullivan's book, Devil's Best Trick or Devil's Greatest Trick. Here, I have it behind me.

I'm going to turn for one second. Yeah, Devil's Best Trick. I had it right. It's on the bookshelf behind me. really like that. That was a Rod Dreher recommendation. I read so many books that Rod Dreher recommends on Rod Dreher's diary. Also, Rod Dreher's books, Benedict Option. That's a very good book for Christians and was super prescient when he wrote it before really that time of peak wokeness, as I keep calling it, capital P.W. Peak Woken. I don't really have a better way to describe what happened to America

around the time of like 2019, 2020, 2021. So that's the best that I can do. But Benedict Option, you know, he's written some books since then lived not by lies and his most recent life and living living in wonder that is a great book too um but benedict option i really like because i think even though felt like we had a vibe shift about a year ago i don't know i just think the the arc of the west clearly seems to be headed towards um this weird secularism that's not really secular it's still based on you know as as Holland writes, some of these very Christian ideas about equality and human dignity and human rights, but is kind of anti-Christian in some interesting ways. And I feel like Benedict Option is a very thoughtful reflection on some of those trends, but also a thoughtful projection as to

where this could go and how Christians can deal with it. Now, Randall Sullivan's book, Devil's best trick. That does this very counter-narrative history of the satanic panic, which we think of as a great example of a moral panic. There's no doubt there was some of that. But this book is one of the most challenging books that you will read. It's really something. It's really, really something. If you, I know people who couldn't get through the whole thing because it was tough. I mean, it's just a, it's a serious, serious book. I mean, there's a lot of, it also goes and talks about sort of the, the mythology of Mexico, but the, like the black magic, the black masses that happened in Mexico and it talks about some of the original colonization by the Spanish

Cortez in Mexico and how Catholicism mingled with pagan religions and how a lot of those religions are much, much worse than mainstream historians are willing to admit. And we don't talk about it in a spiritual context. But when you do think about it in a spiritual context, you actually have a better understanding. One that's more similar to the understanding the, like, cartels themselves have or that Satanists themselves have about what they're up to. So I think those are, those are some good examples. Or that that book is like extremely, extremely provocative. It's one of my favorite books that I've read in recent years, John Daniel Davidson, my colleague when I was at the Federalist, my friend John Daniel Davidson, has a good book called Pagan America that also sort of follows

up on Dominion. It's very, very interesting and also very provocative. So I recommend that one a lot. Just trying to think of any more off the top of my head mentioned. Oh, Abolition of Man. that's another one. It's another C.S. Lewis book that I recommend that one because I see almost everything now through a technological lens because I think it's impossible to divorce anything from the technological delivery systems, anything in politics from the technological delivery systems that our conversations are happening in. And abolition of man is a really, really good one. And that's in that sense, from C.S. Lewis. Now, Rodney Stark wrote a book called The Victory of Reason, how Christianity led to freedom, capitalism, and Western success. I feel like it's sort of subtly anti-Prottsin. It's a pretty famous book for a Christian apologist. I feel like it's, there's some anti-Protestism in the book, but it does a really good job overall. And of course, read, you know, there are a lot of people who have debated the premise that Rodney and Glenn Skrivner and

Tom Holland. I mean, Holland's done a number of debates. There are a lot of people who disagree vehemently. And I think, watch all of those debates. Read these books and watch all of those debates because, you know, I feel like Holland, Tom in particular, handles them so, so well. And you learn more from the other side. And you can sort of poke holes in the argument. And I think, you know, Tom in particular comes out looking really good. So honestly, those are, you can tell that I'm into apologetics. You could tell that I'm into apologetics. There's, let's see, I'm trying to think of, like, non-apologetics. I probably should be better about reading books that aren't just apologetics, but that's where my brain always goes, because I think some of those books are the best, also for, like, personal prayer life and that sort of thing.

Let's see. Gosh, there's just so many. I like delighting. This is another one, delighting in the Trinity, that's about the Trinity. It's kind of apologetics. It's a short, quick book, but it goes into the Trinity and the nature of God and Jesus. So that's a good one as well. I could keep rambling about book recommendations.

I feel like that's probably a lot at this point. Dunn writes in asking for merch. I don't think we have after-party merch. Odden says, finally able to obtain some masa chips of them, after weeks of them being sold out. Better than advertise? I'm telling you, they really are good. They really, really are genuinely. Monster chips are good. I feel like that actually might be a good Christmas gift, too. Is that weird? I don't know. People are like curious and want to try them. So that might be a good one. All right. Let's see what we have here. Ooh, Damien. This is a good one. Damien says, I'm loving the show as usual, especially the recent episodes about Arctic Frost and the January 6 pipe bomb. Your guests were entertaining, but also give me a lot to think about. I really appreciate your comments about Candace Owens in the last happy hour. I stopped following Candace a while ago because I found her content had become quite dark, even before Charlie's murder and her spiral seems to be getting worse. I'll pause here

and say, Damien, I think that's a good way to describe it, but we'll get back. Put a pin in that for now. I'll read the rest of this message. However, I do agree with you that she seems traumatized and still suffering from Aftershock from Charlie's death, and she genuinely thinks she's doing the right thing in questioning the circumstances of Charlie's death and going on the attack with people who are close to Charlie. Also going to pause right there and say, I agree with that too, Damien. I'm going to keep going here. My question is there seems to be a lot of talk recently on the right and in conservative circles about policing others and setting boundaries about who can be seen in, who can be in our team. Do you think it's ever acceptable

or necessary to do this and that it's important for conservatives to have a consensus on the likes of Nick Fuentes or be as inclusive as possible and allow freedom of speech, even if the person's views can be damaging to a cause or movement? The reason I ask this is that the British campaigner Tommy Robinson has been purposefully excluded from right-leaning media in the UK in groups like Nigel for Rogers Reform Party. Well, I'm definitely not a fan of Robinson. I do question whether it's the right thing to try and silence him when he has such a large audience. I hope this question makes sense. That question makes so much sense, Damien, and there's a lot to talk about.

And one of the problems with media and social media is that just the nuance about Candace, such a good example of the problem with social media is like all of these things can be true at the same time. And I'll start with Tommy Robinson and go back to Candace, work my way back because these things are definitely connected. Tommy Robinson's interview with Triggerometry with Constantine and Francis, I really, really liked. I really thought that was an excellent conversation. And I've been aware of Tommy Robinson for a long time.

And many people on the American right have been as well. His history is super interesting, especially in light of the new found concern the British left has developed over the grooming gang scandal, kind of. I am a columnist over at Unheard and did a podcast there for the last year. It was a, the DC correspondent there for last year. So I consume a lot of UK media and UK news. But going back years, I've been aware of Tommy Robinson like many people have. And him talking a bit about his career on Triggerometry, I thought was fascinating. And it does raise this question as to whether, you know, if you're CPAC, right,

if you're considered this central gathering place for the mainstream conservative, movement. Do you invite somebody like Tommy Robinson? Or I think at one point they invited a member of the Le Pen family. And if I'm remembering correctly, I've wrote a scoop about, it was like a microscoop back in 2017, about them disinviting. I don't even remember what it was. But that's obviously a question on their minds, like Orban or, you know, more European kind of post-liberal conservative figures. And I don't know. I feel like it's always appropriate to have conversations. That's why I liked the Trigonometry conversation. I think it's always appropriate to have conversations with these people. And again, I've said this, and I don't want a Monday morning quarterback Tucker. But, you know,

somebody like Nick Fuentes, in theory, is totally fine to have a conversation with. I think the Patrick Pet David interviewer, PPD confronted him. I mean, Fuentes does all of this kind of revisionist history about how he ended up coming to be on the fringes of the right and how he ended up kind of getting pushed to the right. It wasn't just all because he was criticizing Israel, and that's how he likes to frame it. That's revisionist history. But I don't think in theory there's anything wrong with having conversations. You know, I actually like and think we should have valued more as a society. This is a very hot take.

Some of those nasty confrontations that used to happen on like Jerry Springer and Oprah between like neo-Nazis where you just, you know, there was some. something that I would think is almost a positive outlet. Like, it's a, it's a, it's, there's something about seeing a Nazi get, like, slapped on daytime television. That was, like, cathartic for us as a country. Um, because they would just be saying the most hateful, awful things and they're getting slapped. Now, I'm not comparing Fentz, uh, or saying that we should have, like, a modern opera, uh, where people get, get slapped in the face. Um, and I'm not saying you should ever slap anyone in the face, although I'm also not saying there's no time when it's appropriate to slap somebody

in the face. I am not going to make that case. But getting a little far afield here, I do think conversations are always appropriate. But if you're, and the right in these spaces should be willing to have conversations, but it should just sort of be, you know, obvious. It shouldn't even be a conversation, right? Like the left wants to say, the right, needs to apologize. The right needs to apologize for being racist and bigoted, et cetera. But I've been in these conservative spaces for a long time. Like, it's just, the boundaries are obvious. Like, if you're a racist, you get kicked out of CPAC. Like, I literally saw it happen to Richard Spencer. This was probably the same CPAC. It was probably like 2017. As soon as CPAC found out that he was there, he's now, like, I don't even

know what he's doing now. He's now, like, not the same Richard Spencer, I guess, of 10 years ago. but he was chased out of CPAC by CPAC immediately when they found out he was there. Like immediately, it should be obvious and conservatives should, you know, be clear that conservatism is downstream of the concept of human dignity, right? That universal human dignity, which is baked into the founding documents of the United States of America that were intended to create a more perfect union. Of course, as Frederick Douglass would say, it wasn't perfect when it was started, but the roadmap was there. The blueprint towards a more perfect union was there towards equal recognition of equal dignity and universal human dignity was there in our founding documents. And that was the receipt. What is that the Martin Luther King comment? That was, they're cashing the check, right? That's what we did as a country is we cashed that check and we continue to strive for it more and more. So I think that's pretty obvious. it should be, you know, the right should be constantly making it clear that's obvious, but not in an obnoxious virtue signaling way, but just that's sort of like, yeah, come on in. Universal human dignity, that's kind of the whole thing here. And that's hard to do

when the left is constantly forcing you to say this other person, for example, doesn't believe in universal human dignity. It's like, so you're constantly being forced to answer for things you have nothing to do with. And that's really, really tough. It's really tough. And people like Candice, I think, you know, she's someone, I will say that I never, I always wanted the best for her. I never fully trusted that she was going to be kind of a responsible actor in the youth movement space. And maybe this is going, this might get me in trouble.

But this is actually, you know, I was in the youth movement when Candace started to be ascended. And I just felt like she had a lot more reading to do. And you can tell she's clearly done the reading ever since. But she's a very, like, eccentric person. And I think that makes her politics very eccentric. And right now what she's doing is like literally reading random people's emails on the air and asking for more tips in one direction or the other direction about her friend's murder. And sometimes those emails implicate other people. And I've watched full of the show, for what it's worth, because I knew I was going to have to talk about it. And she's also very entertaining. No denying that. And I really think, you know, talking about dreams, I feel so badly for her because, I mean, they were like, Candace and Charlie were, they had so many formative experiences together. And I mean, I just agree with the, with Damien, with the email, because she just, she seems like she's trying to, to make sense of a really traumatizing and painful situation. And I also agree that I think she had

been, you know, going more, spiraling a bit more right before it happened. And I think that's something that also happens when I watched it happen to Sarah Palin, by the way. We all watched this happen to Sarah Palin. I think it happens when you get attacked over and over and over again and you're not super firm. Like, she didn't come into the conservative movement, a super, like, firm. she was curious, right? Like she was looking for more and more information. And I think really grew in her faith and all of that sense. And what she converted to Catholicism, all of that.

But yeah, I don't know that she's like necessarily conservative. I think she's anti-left. We're all having a hard time defining what it means to be conservative right now. And that's totally fine. But yeah, that's, I don't know. I mean, it's tough. tough. I feel badly for her. And I never, to be honest, I always thought that she was, she, she got put in, on a, on a pedestal as a kind of conservative thought leader when she was more sort of like an entertainer

activist type. And I was always kind of nervous about her ability to really execute on being like a good leader for young conservatives because she, she does just sort of jump around. round and it's fine like intellectual curiosity is great you should always change your mind when the facts force you to change your mind all of that absolutely true don't disagree with it i do though just feel i feel badly for her and i think um when she was called crazy and racist and was hanging out with conier west that does something to people um that just it changes you that's what i mean when i say i saw this happen to sarah palin i've seen it happen to conservative women. Really nice, decent people who become really high profile, they end up, you know, just

going a little off, you know, not in a good way, sometimes in a good way, but not always. Because to endure the amount of criticism that you get as a conservative woman or as a black conservative woman, as a black conservative, you really does make people crazy. The way that you're treated, I mean, I don't know what that's like. don't constantly get called an Uncle Tom by people on the left who are taken seriously as rational actors by our elite institutions. And you are there making perfectly reasonable non-racist, indeed anti-racist arguments and getting called the worst possible names in the world by people who are in positions of power. That's really, really, really, really tough. So I feel

badly for her. I really feel badly for her. And I hope, you know, I think she's maybe a little older than me. She's roughly my age. So, you know, I'd say this with all humility. But yeah, I hope she finds something solid to cling to. And I hope other people don't get kind of caught up in the blast radius here because people are being implicated. And I think, again, the nuance in the reader's email is why it's not helpful to be like, condemn Candace Owens, condemn this person, condemn that person. It's like, do you want me to condemn a specific thing that was said or say a specific thing that was said was wrong? I'll happily do that.

I don't know Candace Owens. I don't know her. And I think she's in a lot of pain right now. And I actually think like some type of like formal condemnation would be weird and unhelpful. So it's one of those things that, like, Candace right now is going to be skeptical and suspicious of anybody who's going to, like, issue some type of formal condemnation because they're demanded to by the left. And that's not helpful. So those are the ways that I've been thinking about it. And yeah, I think, you know, I'm continuing, especially with the holidays to pray for people who knew and loved Charlie. Don't want to forget them right now because the empty seat at the Thanksgiving dinner. Man, that's so tough. especially how everything transpired is so tough

so praying for all of those folks one last e-bill here I will take from Richard who says you're going to get so much shit for that vape but I thought the bit was funny ignore the haters this is in reference to the Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza dramatic reading from last week

I didn't get too much shit for the vape I got to say I did have to buy it I don't just keep vapes around when I was younger the vapes were like just coming out so they're much more popular um and i'll admit to doing a little little vaping back in the day but it was a blue it was one of those blue e-sigs that again used to be really really popular and then kind of got displaced by jule uh did you notice that it was interesting kind of got displaced by

by jule and now jule has gotten displaced great story of government uh government regulations having unintended consequences the regulation of jule created this huge hole in the market for like unregulated Chinese vapes or poorly regulated Chinese vapes. So this is one of the old school blue, I shouldn't say old school, but blue tobacco flavored e-cigarettes. We're very popular when I was in college, but also I thought it was the right look because I was wearing

all black and the blue e-sigs are black with that brilliant blue light on the tip. Also, by the way, I'm not a big vapor, but I've always thought that the blue sigs were, the blue e-sigs were better than Jewel and better than the Chinese vapes. I like the tobacco flavor. So anyway, that's enough of rambling for me today. Thank you so

much for your questions. I'm really thankful to everybody who takes the time to listen to happy hour, that takes the time to watch and listen to After Party. I hope you know that it blows my mind that people listen. I'm so, so grateful, thankful for all of you. Thank you of all of you, praying for all you this Thanksgiving, and if you're still having time with friends and family, hold them close and have a great rest of your weekend. We'll see you back on After Party on Monday. Thank you.