After Party with Emily Jashinsky - “Happy Hour”: Radicals vs Normies, Right-Wing Influencer Divide, and Harvey Weinstein Cover-Up: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Emily opens this week’s edition of “Happy Hour” detailing her one and only time working on a political campaign, she discusses what motivates voters, the Trump Administration’s messaging on Iran and why the President acted, Neocons, and offers thoughts on Bryan Dean Wright’s appearance on “After Party” and what he told Emily about the possibility of boots on the ground in Iran. Emily takes questions about the dangers of conspiracy theories and algorithmic rabbit holes, the exploitation of people’s curiosity, and takes up a question about Candace and public condemnation, if there’s a right-wing influencer group chat she’s a part of, and how Tucker strategically deals with President Trump. Emily also addresses several questions about Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico of Texas, including his comments on the Virgin Mary, consent, and what it means if he wins a Senate seat. Among the other topics she goes over: her take on corporate gambling, faith and the LCMS church, how she views her own job, her recent debate with Ryan Grim, Robby Soave and Elizabeth Nolan Brown about Big Tech, Harvey Weinstein’s bad behavior, the dynamics of Bravo and Reality TV, and she rounds out the show with a question about Israel and why she believes it’s understandable for Jews to have so much fear right now. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Happy Hour, which is, of course, itself, a special edition of After Party. We do here on the podcast feed every Friday, right around 5 p.m. It drops. I'm taping these Thursday afternoons and taping them live, live to tape, going through these emails for the first time. As the week goes on, I set them aside in my inbox and then dive on in. So let's get started. Head on in here into my flagged inbox. That's how I do it. Let's see. This is from A. who says, thank you for interviewing Mr. Massey. I believe he is one of the few people in American public and political life for which truth is his highest loyalty, even as what he does about it may not favor the political party that he is in and that I typically vote for. Really important point here. Abe goes on to say regarding voting, I do believe that the most important voter motivator is anger. I'll give a few examples. Abe says when I lived in Milwaukee, I went a church with Scott Walker and was modestly acquainted with him. Goes on to say, here's a long email, so I'm trying to get to the gist of it. It talks about how Governor Walker won

the recall election that was in 2012 by people getting angry about the occupation of the Capitol building, which, as Abe says, did not sit well with Normies. Yeah, Abe, I actually have a personal little story about that. I was working, the only time I ever literally worked in politics was an internship in 2012 for the Eric Havdi primary campaign in the Senate. Now, former governor Tommy Thompson went on to win the Republican nomination and lose to Tammy Baldwin in 2012. But that was my only experience actually in politics. And I really did not like it and never went back into politics. Pretty much focused elsewhere after that. But I thought Havdi was a pretty solid candidate. It didn't really have anything to do with that. It was just the whole political

process. So disillusioning and annoying, but that entire campaign was recall season. The recall happened in June, so I was calling voters knocking on doors as an intern during that time period. And I think what you're saying, Abe, is totally true, totally true. I do know Governor Walker as well. I'm on the board of Young America's Foundation, which he is the president of. And I think he would probably tell you there was something similar, that normal people were just so disgusted with the conduct of radical protesters. Now, there are, you know, very normal people who were on both sides of Act 10. I've talked about how my own family was on both sides of Act 10.

My dad was in a public employee union in the state of Wisconsin, so saw a lot of this up close. But there were some real radicals. There were radicals who were very high profile throughout the recall case and the Act 10 controversy. And I just generally think that's a helpful reflection, Abe, that people should bear in mind. There's something normal people don't like seeing with chaos. And they do punish people at the polls for it. It's not just that they don't like it. It can be a very animating source of anger and disgust.

So I think that's not a bad point. Abe says, regarding Iran, I'm about where Matt Walsh is on this. If there's an actual America-First argument to be made for doing it, the strongest would be that it weakens China. I see a lot of Trump propagandists making it explicitly about the administration directly making that argument is probably a very, but the administration making that argument directly is probably a very bad idea. So they kind of make up a lot of almost non-session certifications and hope people go along with it. Super interesting. Abe says the voters don't want it and the incumbent supporting it will likely be punished severely. This will probably lead to

impeachment and removal of Trump ain't history grand. Well, if Dems take back the Senate, they have a better chance. I've actually. actually doing impeachment, but impeachment is 60 votes. So I don't know that they'll ever have enough to impeach it, but they'll have enough to do proceedings. Like it puts a whole Senate trial on the table. And that's the extent to which that holds up the Trump agenda and becomes damaging for, you know, Republicans who might be facing a re-election in a purple state in the not-so-distant future. Yeah, that can get messy. Nobody really wants. that. I think a lot of people are probably right where you are Abe and where Matt Walsh is. I think a lot of

people are giving the president some trust and some grace. I do think the messaging was born of muddled strategy in the beginning. I think it wasn't quite clear exactly what the precipitating or what the precipitating factor for the president himself was. And that's where you heard House Speaker Johnson and Secretary Rubio going out and saying, well, we were told Israel was going to do this. And Trump said something similar. We were told Israel was going to do this. We were going to do it anyway. But that explains why we did it on that Saturday morning in particular. But that in and of itself is just a mixed bag. Like it doesn't, that's a hard thing to explain because it doesn't exactly, it distracts from your overall reason, which was the point of them saying

we were going to do it anyway. And it then forces people to ask, well, why then? That Saturday? Like, was that Saturday the best time to do it? Was it just done because it had to be done? There was a lot of, and there has been different messaging, you know, I can't say this enough, about whether it was about nukes, whether it was about missiles, whether it was about, as Trump once said, the freedom of the Iranian people. They've been all over the map. And I think, again, that's because Trump himself has a lot of different reasons for doing this. And nobody knows quite the exact calculus. And that's damaging. I mean, again, even if you're supportive of the war, I think it's pretty obvious that the reason hasn't been articulated well.

Even some people who are saying it about China are explaining ultimately the Chinese factor is not something the president wants to mention because he's about to go to Beijing and he doesn't want to look overly antagonistic. That's an explanation I've heard. And maybe that's it. I mean, maybe it is that they don't, the real explanation is China and they don't or their approach to China and they don't want to say it. But I actually think this is an Occam's Razor situation. I think Lindsey Graham won the argument. Honestly, I think Lindsay Graham won the argument. And this was a generational project of neoconservatives or hawks,

is probably a better way to put it, in the Republican Party, who have wanted to launch this war for a long time. We can have plenty of debates about whether they're right or wrong or what the reason is, but I think they saw an opening and took it. And their argument went out with Donald Trump, that this was, that Iran couldn't have 4,000 missiles. It couldn't have all of these missile launchers that we could easily get rid of them. We could easily set their nuclear program back even further and, you know, potentially weakened or change the regime with a fairly low-cost

operation war. And I think that argument just honestly won out. Do I think that there's a an argument from support. Do I think Lindsay Graham is arguing because he supports Israel? Yes, but he thinks that supporting Israel supports the United States. A lot of people think that. And, you know, there are some people that do it because they want a strong Israel, of course. I'm not going to argue that, but I think there are a whole lot of people on the right who just believe that this was better for the United States. And I don't want to, you know, dress up that argument into something more sinister than it is. I just think it's wrong. I think it's easy to say that it's an incorrect argument. And that's what I plan to argue. That's what I hope I've been arguing.

Because, you know, certainly the administration didn't do a great job on the Israel messaging. And certainly there are people who I think are really eager to help Israel, even if it's at a high cost to the United States that most people would disagree with. So I'm not saying that isn't the case. That's not what happened. But I also just think there's an Occam's Razor explanation here that people think. this is good for the United States. They won the argument with Donald Trump. You know, Tucker Carlson was in there making his points. Lindsay Graham was in there making his points. Netanyahu was making his points. And I think the Netanyahu, Lindsay Graham's, won out and convincing Trump this was the best thing to do for the United States. So anyway, there's a lot more we could get into with that, you know, but that's, that was a really long-winded way of saying, I think that's basically what happened. Let's see. Daniels. says, is everything a siop? This is a long one, so feel free to ignore it. No, I won't ignore it.

Daniel, I'm just going to skim over a bit to see what the question is. So we get right to it. Okay, so, oh, this is sort of what we were just talking about, ultimately. I've become convinced the ideological divide on the right is the result of a sciop and not from the side you might think. a year ago as firmly in the anti-Zionist crowd. I watched the decay of online discourse into the equivalent out of an insane asylum whenever Israel or the JQ, which is of course what Nancy Semites called the Jewish question was brought up, but this never really pushed me away from being anti-Zionist until Charlie Kirk was killed. The immediate reaction to blame Israel by so many was strange. Even stranger was how Candice handled it, as we are all well aware. Since that time, we've watched many left-wing voices, and I am a libertarian, useful idiots embracing promoting. her theories, watching the absolutely feral response of the anti-Zioness, the outbreak of war, has only convinced me further. It's a sciop. Now, I'm extremely skeptical of this war, but it's pretty clear to me this is just as much about China. Okay, so this is what we were just talking about. And the greater game of geopolitics as it is about Israel. This is funny, Daniel, because

I was just, literally, I was just talking about this and went straight to the email. But Daniel goes on to say, but who benefits from fomenting this divide besides China and Iran, the global elites elites in Europe and the neocons of the U.S. Notice the surprising response from the U.K., John Bolton and Bill Crystal. They don't truly support this war. And there's a reason for that, whether you agree with this war or not. There's a wider angle here that is being willfully ignored. Interesting.

Thanks, Dan. Yeah, I mean, I think, again, I believe it's the Occam's razor. I think that's the right explanation. As to your point. about maybe conspiracy theorists, anti-Israel conspiracy theorists. You know, there are a lot of things that are called conspiracy theories, and Dan didn't use this term. But that aren't really conspiracy theories.

They're things that are said openly. But there is something about the Internet, I think, in particular, that makes it very easy to build cases based on people's digital footprints. that, you know, when you take anyone's digital footprint, you add it all up, you can string it into a weird story because you have all of these disparate moments in their life where they're posting inside jokes on social media or whatever, or, you know, doing some 15 years ago. And, you know, you can make odd connections on the internet because of the way social networks work. There's just a, there's so much opportunity for rabbit holes that I think it always affects people

on either side of a weird debate. Weird is not the right word, but of a, what's the right word? Maybe esoteric or niche debate. So that's part of what's unfortunate because I think it was Tucker who said this. He theorized that the reason there were some unredacted things and unverified tips. stuffed into the Epstein files that the government did release, is to discredit conspiracy theorists knowing that people are going to see these unverified tips. And because they care about this case, they care about victims, they care about the truth and justice, they're going to see this

and blow up these unverified tips. And I actually think there's probably something to that. We still have many, many documents that have not been released. So why? Why? release the ones that have been released? Why redact the ones that have been redacted and released? Again, there's maybe an Occam's razor explanation to this, that it was rank incompetence. This was a gargantuan task from the government. But they are clearly choosing for national security reasons as part of the bill, for example, not to release certain things. So there is strategy involved in picking and choosing what's going public and what's not. And I don't think it's insane that the decision to put those tips in there and holds back other things.

They are holding back other things. So you can get away with holding back things was to send people further down rabbit holes that we're already inclined to do because of social media. So yeah, I would encourage people to be careful with some algorithmic rabbit holes or just just being careful when things are being strung together. You know, it's, there's an effort to block people who are really trying to get to the truth and to play on our instincts as humans. And actually, our desire to get closer to the truth and to, for example, just know what's happening behind the scenes with this war.

Just have an explanation. Why? Why, why, why? Why now? Why were there different explanations at the beginning? And it's very easy to get caught up in playing games that I think benefit people who are still designing the rules. And by that I simply mean people in top positions of the government and who have big voices in media and the like. So I see what you're saying, Dan, that there's really a way to exploit people's curiosity and to exploit the democracy. and to exploit the democratization of information and the like.

And I think it's just very easy for people who may come to a problem with a serious and decent and good faith desire for truth and justice to be caught up in the way these information delivery vehicles take us down, you know, routes that aren't helpful. And I think that just kind of happens across the board. So interesting note, Dan, very interesting note. Hank says there are probably more than a few woke office seekers, Tala Rico's age, trying to delete tweets from five to six years ago.

You know, though, it isn't just Tala Rico's tweets. I mean, he's on video over and over again saying a lot of the same stuff, like God is non-binary. It's not just tweets for him, so he couldn't really delete that stuff because he's on tape saying it. And I don't think he could even get away with saying he disagrees with it. Hank is recommending some books, The Cold War, A New History. Also, blacklisted by history, that's the Stan Evans book. Venona, yes, and Stan Evans obviously uses Venona.

And another one here is American Betrayal. The only ones I have read here are blacklisted by history. Or is blacklisted by history. I do like blacklisted by history a lot. I think it's the counterweight to a lot of coldlysmouth. war history told mostly by people on the left or critical Cold War history told mostly by people on the center or the left. And Stan Evans comes in and does some real rehabilitation, not of McCarthy himself. Evans right off the bat in this book is critical of McCarthy, but actually of the broader

McCarthy project, because the Venona files did reveal high-level, prolific infiltration of the U.S. government by many Soviet agents. And the Whitaker Chambers case and Alger Hiss case, obviously, is just one example of what was happening on a wider scale. And it was real. And when you have the nuclear age, the dawn of the nuclear age, plus, you know, we were infiltrating the Soviet government. Like that is a recipe for paranoia. And I think in McCarthy's case, there was absolutely paranoia, but there was also something rational about trying to prevent infiltration at the dawn of the nuclear age. And the infiltration was very real. We had very good reason to believe that it was real.

Part of it was that it's so easy to infiltrate society in a global world where you could take planes and use phones and the like. So anyway, great email, Hank. I might have to check out the other books, but I do definitely recommend blacklisted by history. Jen says, I love your show, and I've been listening to you since you were a frequent guest on Megan Kelly. However, I do have an issue with to how dismissive you were of the importance of consent in relation to the Virgin Mary. Well, the point Talarika was making was false. Mary's fiat, which means yes in Latin, is of time-honored importance and considered necessary in the Catholic tradition. I converted to Catholicism 10 years ago after growing up Presbyterian and a large part of my conversion related to free will being acknowledged and revered in the Catholic tradition, to believe God would impregnate Mary.

without her consent would make God a tyrant and is not coherent with a loving God who created humankind to be in a loving, meaningful relationship with him by choice. Similarly, God does not force anyone to believe in him that would make him a puppet master, not a father. The error Tarlerico made was not to elevate consent, but rather to imply that the absence of consent, therefore validates having an abortion. Thanks for hearing my concern, Jen. So my response to this, Jen would be, I think, thank you for the email, thank you for listening. I think you touched on it at the end, which is Talariko is using the word consent in a very different way than you are using the word consent in this broader conceptual importance of free will.

Tala Riko is talking about, he's talking about it to justify modern sexual relationships, right, or in the context of modern sexual relationships. And that's where he's using it as a case study that parallels abortion. That's gross. And it's just abiblical, as I think you're agreeing with, Jen. So I think some of it is definitional. I don't know. I mean, the dismissive, let's see, I'm trying to figure out if I think it's fair to characterize my disagreement with that is dismissive. It may be. And if it, you know, if it felt unduly

dismissive, I appreciate you calling that out, Jen. But I am pretty confident that we're, you and I, Jen, are sharing a definition of consent that's different from what Tala Rico is using. and the idea that there was a consensual, I mean, like the idea that Tala Rico says you can pull a pro-choice position from the book of Luke because God allows Mary to exercise her free will in an immaculate conception. The idea that that has any relevance to consent in the abyss. abortion context, it is bizarre. And of course, Catholic doctrine has a long tradition of Marian doctrine that elevates women and is complementarian. And I think a way that Catholics are actually probably underappreciated as Catholics are often derided and Christians are often

derided for being just sexists and misogynists and the like. And I think that does go, you know, under notice and underappreciated. So I don't disagree with that. I think the, the Tala Rico deployment of consent or invocation of consent is different than how you and I are both talking about free will. Interesting point. Interesting point. Hank again says, Christy Noem was out of her depth. The reaction to the ice killings in Minneapolis was amateur hour to respond immediately by calling the woman a domestic terrorist was unforgivable. Hang, yeah, thanks for the email. You know, said it at the time.

I think she just lost the trust of the public in order to carry out mass deportations, which we're polling pretty well. And are probably still, it's probably still half the country says you should deport people who are not here illegally. But in order to do that, it's a very difficult controversial task. So you have to have the trust of the public. And I think that was just breached in a way that did feel especially like flamboyant, amateur hour-ish.

So agree with that one. Hank. Jesse says, with March Madness approaching, I found myself going full in jetty on sports gambling. I'm grossed out with how mainstream sports TV programs trot out attractive hosts to instruct men on how to bet their money. I'm fed up enough that I'm not even participating in a bracket pool this year as Googling stats and scores. Fees the Beast. What is your take as a Christian evangelical? My own Catholic faith doesn't have too much to say on the subject. I'm not familiar with Catholic teaching on gambling. My take is that industrial scale like corporate gambling is destructive. We all could have seen this coming.

Many of us did see it coming ahead of the Supreme Court decision, which isn't to weigh in on, you know, the decision itself, but the outcomes of it were predictable. And, yeah, Saga has been just a voice crying out in the wilderness for years, for years on this. And it's just a good example of how numb we've become to the, the wisdom of previous generations, you know, that we're wrong about, totally wrong about some things, but you're tossing the baby out with the bathwater, right, in postmodernism. And we're just

numb to the, like, numb to how destructive some of these behaviors really can be. And, yeah, it all feels, the Atlantic has a very long piece by McKay Coppins, who's Mormon, out just this week on they gave him 10 grand to gamble with as a research project for a story. And the plan was, you know, it was none of his own money, but he would split the winnings 50-50. And he seems to be implying that he pretty much became addicted. And it was, it was an easy, slippery slope to stumble onto. And, you know, that's, of course, true. It's like as high as 90% of the earnings from 10% of the people, the gambling companies say they have barriers to prevent. this, they don't want people to become addicted because that's not good for the long term of their

business model. But when you have gambling call hotline surging, even a small percentage of people getting addicted to gambling, when you expand the pool of people who are doing gambling on smartphones so dramatically and so quickly, that is a lot of people. Anecdotally, I think we've all seen this. It's really gross that people profit off of this buy houses with the profits. Oh, buying their mansions and private jets with the profits off of the poor people who are just trying to maybe get a little bit of extra money for rent or Christmas presents or are working hard for their own money and get, you know, taken in by these flashy commercials and the like, making it seem normal and cool. We all have agency and we

should all exercise our agency and be more vigilant. That's not an excuse for the companies to act so disgracefully. They shouldn't be able to show their faces in public, let alone be lauded and treated like celebrities or just, you know, other members of the rich and powerful. It's so gross. So, yeah, I do not like it. I do not like it. One bit.

Very predatory. and I just wish there was more backlash earlier because a lot of, you know, if there's enough backlash to end this grift or to minimize it, mitigate it, scale it down, great. A lot of people's lives were already upended and destroyed in the process. It's probably fertile ground for some politician to come in. I saw Jim Messina from the Obama administration, who I think is taking money for, from, I think he's like on the board of some crypto company or whatever, but he was talking about how Democrats are perceived as unfun because they're against gambling and they're against

crypto. I actually think there's probably a lane for someone to be in. Maybe it's like a Josh Hawley in a 2028 primary, Republican primary, where you're talking, maybe it's Ron DeSantis, where you're talking a lot about the dangers of gambling. I think that resonates with a lot of people. So just a thought on that one. Also, it ruins. I do think it, it, one of the things that's always driven me crazy about watching sports with people who gamble is, it's the same thing with, like, fantasy baseball, fantasy, I'm sorry, fantasy football, fantasy baseball. I think it's harder to just enjoy the game for what it is because you're cheering for, like, you're cheering for other teams. You're cheering for the players on other teams. And sometimes they're playing your team. And it's like,

the point of this team is that it is a source of community. and entertainment and pride. And there shouldn't be anything like this is low stakes, right? It's sports, relatively low stakes. Of course, you know, there's a lot of money involved and communities are, you know, built around this. I mean, you should see what Milwaukee looks like now that the, there's the Deer District and the Bucks are doing great. It was helpful that the Bucks were doing very well.

But, yes, these are relatively low stakes. So you should just be able to relax and watch the game and root for your team. So open to other arguments, but I've never enjoyed it that much. I always, when I do a bracket, it's badgers all the way every year. I've never, even when the badgers are terrible, I take the badgers all the way to the end because I don't want to root against them. All right, Mike says, I recently got my haircut. He asked me what we were going for this time. I said, I want to look like Bob Seeker. It turned out great, but it also made me look a little deeper into Bob Seeker. Someone grew up in northern Alberta. I'm definitely influenced by Midwestern culture.

I'm just curious if Bob Seeker is someone who is renowned in your world. Yeah. Yeah. Renowned in your world, yeah. I don't have much to say about that, Mike, but I hope it's a good haircut. Howard says, very enjoyable program. Straight from Harvard, you were certainly operating from enemy territory there. The CIA guy was fun.

And information about the Muslims proclaiming religious purity while drinking and drugging and chasing women was spot on. Interesting. Yeah, we got into that. I wanted to spend more time with him on that. Sometimes I wish I could go for like two hours with people. Just those things come up and you want to keep pulling at the thread. And Howard goes on to say it's, it is like preachers here such a Jimmy Swagger to scream about morality while doing coke and chasing hookers. Yeah, I know.

It's many such cases, many such cases. But yeah, the the Sultan Suleiman, Suleum, um, in the Epstein files, those were, those emails back and forth to Jeffrey Epstein. That was, that was really something else. I don't know how it's played like on a political level in the UAE. I'd be curious about that. I should look into it more, much more here from Howard who says, his question is about Taiwan with America on March, why not think ahead? I understand from Rubio and Graham that Cuba is next, but Taiwan by Christmas of China were to invade Taiwan. What is your opinion on what we should do? step in or stay the hell out, we do know those, do know those computer chips for PlayStation 5,

2026 promises to not be boring. The Taiwan question is scary right now, given the depletion of our supplies between Ukraine and now Iran. I think we could be surprised by a move that Xi Jinping makes at some point when we're not expecting it. And that's frightening. I think the possibility is there. I think the risk calculus for him is there. You know, most people don't think it's going to happen for another couple years, but we aren't building chips here fast enough. It's, it's, I don't have the answer to this question. It makes me feel better that Bridge Colby is in the Pentagon right now because Bridge

understands this. Someone actually reposted an interview I did with him on Federalist Radio Hour a couple years ago. And I really appreciated whoever re-uped that because it's just a reminder. of how strategic and intentional his philosophy is, particularly about Taiwan. Now, can Trump pull off a Nixonian feat of containment, or what's the right word to put it? Can he pull that off? I mean, if anyone can, it's probably Trump because he's pragmatic.

He knows lots of business people who are deeply tied to China. and he also, though, is concerned, obviously, about the industrial workforce in the United States. That's really his constituency. It's the Republican Party's new constituency. His legacy is tied to that in some extent. So if he could pull it off, if he can pull off a negotiation for avoiding violence, and I don't know, I don't know what it would look like. I have no idea what it is. I am frightened about it, though, so I think that's a good question. This is from Robin, who says, What a treat to have my two favorite podcasters all together, know and I trust more than you two, and Matt Taibi for news analysis and commentary.

That was, thanks for the great work. That was about Brian. Yeah, Brian was interesting. It was so fun to have him on the show. He's definitely more hawkish than I am, but he knows much more than I do in this sense as well, because he literally worked for the CIA. It's interesting.

You know, anyone, anytime somebody is former CIA and is doing lots of media, Brian talked and has talked a bit about what that's like. And so he, I think, I mean, I don't know, let me pull this up. Scott Horton is, some of you probably know who Scott Horton is. He is at anti-war.com, super interesting website. And he posted earlier today, this is Thursday. Let me find the exact post. So, yeah, again, remember the sun Thursday.

Oh, Scott tweets a lot. Let me find it. He says, I'm not sticking my neck out, making a prediction. I'm just telling you I know a guy who knows people who say they are preparing for a ground attack, not clear wear, probably Hermuz or Isfahan, a very, very bad idea. So, again, Scott is with anti-war.com. That tells you where he comes from on this. But Brian said it would be possible for, I think he said, Delta, Delta force to go into a place like Isfahan and fairly, it would be feasible for those guys who are pros at this and have been prepping for this to dig up nuclear material and be in and out.

And that would technically be boots on the ground, but technically boots on the ground, but not in the sense that a lot of people think of it. So maybe Brian understood what the likeliest outcome would be. And that's where, again, people who have been in the middle of this can sometimes give you a clear understanding of where things are going to go because they understand how people think and what they've been prepping for and how this stuff works. So I thought that was like super interesting. When I saw Scott's post, I immediately thought what Brian said on Monday show. Definitely want to have Brian back soon. This is Richard who says, Let the rehabilitation of Gavin Newsom

to Brown people begin And he says, spoken as a brown person Expect ESPN's mad dog Chris Russell to pay a big role in normalizing Gavin Newsom's odd physical characteristics. Let the pandering continue. I'm tuning out of ESPN. Can't take it. ESPN should air the View Morning Joe in all awards shows

just put it on one bucket. That's a great idea. ESPN should do a version of The View and Morning Joe. They're already close enough. They might as well. I really don't watch a lot of ESPN, but I'm continuously surprised by how brazen they are sometimes about politics. It seems like maybe it's less than it was around 2018, 1920, like Peac-Cappernick era. It does seem like it's gone down a bit.

Gavin Newsom, you know, people, his, I think people who meet him feel like they know him. And that is really how a lot of politicians curry favor with people in the media as they think, like, oh, this person's a friend. And it's like, well, they're playing you like a fiddle, playing you like a fiddle. But Newsom is having people on his podcast. He's doing other people's podcasts. And that does by goodwill because someone feels like they've had a good faith conversation with you and you're very important and you gave them time and you came on their show. So that can go a really long way.

I think Newsom is the type of guy who understands that. Casey says, hey, Emily, is there a big right-wing podcast slash influencer group chat? Does it get awkward when there is a fight between two of them like Ben and Candice? Why do some podcasters like Tucker find it? it's so hard to directly criticize the president. I appreciate your ability to call balls and strikes in the president and not always scapegoat his bad moves. Thank you for your time.

Casey. There isn't a group chat that I'm aware of. There may be a group chat that I'm just not in. If I happen to just not be in it, maybe it exists. I have no idea. I do know that there's one of like heterodox kind of lefties that I've heard about, but I think it's like a DM thing. Yeah, I think that's what it is. People don't want to add me to their group chats. This is just my advice because I am a meme fiend. I send so many memes to the breaking points team that I think they want to like kill me some days. Because we of course have a team chat and I can't help myself. Like when I see a funny meme, I just have to experience it with other people. So if you ask my friends, yes, I'm an absolute menace in a group chat. But there isn't.

one that I'm aware of, but it's entirely possible that I'm not in it. And part of the reason I think Tucker is very strategic. I can't speak for him, but I think he's very strategic about how he discusses bad decisions from Trump in the administration. The reason is that Donald Trump is, prize is loyalty, right? And I think Tucker prefers to make his disagreements privately because he thinks that it's more powerful and useful. So I think people who know Trump, I do not know Trump. I think people who know Trump tend to be more strategic about it if they're smart. And I think Bannon is very strategic too. They try to be persuasive to the president. They try to make a case in his language in case that clip makes its way to him and alike. So if you know him in order to avoid

him totally tuning you out, like he totally tunes Marjorie Taylor. green out. And for her, it was just too much. She just had to, she was, she was pushed too far. She was literally in Congress having to take votes, which is different than being on the outside and just being able to talk, which is a total luxury compared to having to take votes. I tell my friends that who work in the political realm, whether it's on the left or the right, I tell them that. What I get to do is a luxury, right? I know you have to make different decisions. I'm not in those rooms for a reason because I don't want to have to make those decisions because I have a hard time with it.

I'm just so paranoid about the way power corrupts and the sort of moral compromises that it forces us into. And I don't know the president, so I don't feel any burden to be strategic or clever. I'm sure it drives friends that I have on the right who work in politics crazy because it does look like a podcaster luxuriating on the air in this privilege to just say

you think. But I know how difficult the decisions that they have to make are. I don't, I don't, take that for granted. I get that. But my job is to say what I think. My job is to tell the truth. My job is to find the truth as best we can under some very difficult circumstances. And so that just requires me being honest 100% of the time. And by the way, you have to be honest 100% of the time in new media anyway, because people talk so much. So there are going to be probably increasingly unrealistic expectations put on journalists from their sources of the future. You just can't care about it.

You can't. You just have to do what's right. You just have to say what you think. You got it. And you have to keep it in perspective. I think that's probably one thing that I struggle with the most. Because when you're in a business where your job is to be critical of people in power every single day. I always want to communicate in a way that's still filling a hole left by the

mainstream, by the legacy outlets, who are constantly bashing the right more than the left. And so I always, like, I struggle with that because my job is just to call balls and strikes to criticize what's going on. And I want to do it in the big picture sense. You don't always have some balance because if you're just getting things from the headlines every day and you're just criticizing what's happening in the moment without adding the broader perspective of what came before it, then yeah, you're going to miss some things. Totally. So, I mean, there were a lot of people who were really upset about what Hunter Biden was doing who weren't talking about what Jared Kushner had done in the first Trump administration beforehand. It just left the admin, got tons of money

from, I think it was the Saudi fund right into his own new fund. And that's gross. I think that's trading on your insider or your public service. I don't like that stuff. And again, with perspective, there could have been more pressure on Trump. I don't know if it would have mattered, but not to bring Kushner back into the administration, not allow him to continue being a foreign policy negotiator given all of these conflicts. But anyway, that's just a, I struggle with it probably most when criticizing the right, which I was

literally just doing, because there's so much the media misses where you have parallel examples of Dems, the left, doing the same thing. The media itself constantly getting stories wrong and then criticizing conservative media for getting stories wrong, often on a small scale comparatively to like Russia Gate or Hunter Biden, another great example. So it's a that's one of the, I think, most important things wrapped up in all of this that I struggle with. But I do, I promise, I try. But when, yeah, your job is just to poke holes in what powerful people are doing,

I don't really care if they're on the left or the right, but I do care about communicating it in a balanced way. Hank says, Maureen is always a great guest. You both have interesting theories about powerful men and their impulse to be sexual predators. But in the case of Harvey Weinstein, the motivation might be a little more commonplace. looks like freaking Quasimodo and without the power and influence couldn't get laid in a $2 horror house with a fistful of 20s. It's like Buffy once told Principal Snyder, you never got a single date in high school, did you? That's my boomer take on the matter. Does boomers watch Buffy?

I'm about to get a bunch of emails. I did not watch Buffy. I'm a little too young for Buffy, by the way. I tried probably sometime in the early aughts to go back into Buffy. Just not, I'm not a, it's not my thing. Not my thing. I'm not super into fantasy or sci-fi or or, uh, or actually really even, I said this many times, but I'm much more into nonfiction than fiction in general. But anyway, I do get what people like Buffy. That's quite a universe. Maybe that's true of Harvey Weinstein. I think he's part of a culture, though, that, you know, one of the big parts of the Weinstein story that I remember writing about so much, I was at the Washington Examiner at the time, is how many people in media knew this was happening and couldn't get their stuff published.

couldn't get their stuff published because Harvey was so powerful. And, you know, it's like, why would you give up on these scoops? Why would you do that? If not, you know, to because you think it's worth preserving this friendship to not expose mistreatment of women. And so I think that actually two of these things can be true at the same time, Hank. Good question or good point. McKenzie says, love the show and all that you do.

In your last Friday episode, you talked about LCMS and the way you were talking about it, I took it as you were a Lutheran. If so, what books or media do you recommend to learn more about the Lutheran religion? I grew up in Alka Church, where I have many disagreements with. I recently moved down the street from an L-CMS church, and I'm wanting to learn more and get back into the religion. Thanks for your time. Mack. Mac, yeah, I did grow up.

I grew up L-CMS, so that's Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Wonderful, wonderful experience. You know, I've been thinking about this week, because there's been a lot of conversation about eschatology and end times, vis-vis sort of dispensationalists that are in the pro-Israel camp and often agitate for a very particular pro-Israel policy because they believe we have a duty on earth to prod the end times along to participate in the sequence of events necessary to happen for the end times to take place, which I totally disagree with. But the church I grew up in didn't teach any of that.

I don't even remember really talking about end times and stuff. But I think in the 90s, and the early aughts. If you were in Middle America, Protestant world, there really was this soft cultural power that evangelical world wielded over a lot of Middle American Protestantism.

And so my church was fairly like low church, like gym, rock band, and the like. And I go to other LCS churches and they're very different than that. So I think I just had a different LCS experience. can't speak to the broader L-CMS experience.

I do, though, I mean, I definitely grew up, like, reading Left Behind. I've mentioned that. And, you know, like, it was a long, like, I was an adult when I went into the scripture and was like, huh, I don't believe in the rapture. That's embarrassing to say, but it's true. So, all that is to say, I think L-C-MS is a wonderful denominational choice. I'm non-denominational now, but if I had to pick, I would be L-CMS, not just because I grew up in it, but I think it is the closest to being the correct manifestation of the faith.

So I really recommend it. I don't really have any book recommendations. Molly Hemingway, though, is L-C-M-S. Mark Hemingway, who's been on the show, LCMS. I'm trying to think of other people. But Molly and Mark definitely talk about. about the denomination a good bit. It's not a very big one, but I think it's a fantastic option. Elka, on the other hand, don't even get me started. Don't even get me started. If you have an

Elka church near you, you know what I'm talking about. Paul sends a link about something Maureen said, but the link didn't work. I just clicked on it. Sorry about that. Paul. Sam says, SEP Emily, Wednesday, show with Marine was fired. Today it was great because Megan, you, Marine, and Link Lauren uploaded brand new episodes. Oh, there you go. Synergy. Cindy says, I hope you're well, love your podcast, and a fan since you're one of the EJs. I've written to Megan several times and did know on her tour and I adore her as tough as she is. I'm protective of her. Actually, it's a soft spot. We both lost her beautiful dad so young. Oh, I'm sorry about that, Cindy. And suddenly from heart attack, et cetera, I just love her. I think on the Ben thing, Cindy says,

I hope she makes up with him. I don't think his actual issue is Israel. It's a first or perhaps hurt about Candace. If you see what her podcast has been doing slash saying about Erica Kirk on that Ben is right, Candace has very heavily alluded to Erica being involved in her husband's assassination and even veering off to the crazy peddle stuff too, that Megan doesn't speak up on Candace. Even at this point when it has become demonic slop, has converted people to hate Erica, makes no sense and it's hard and sad for all of us hoping for Megan to defend her friend's wife and his memory.

Candace doesn't serve the grace. This is demonic. So I can't speak for Megan. I will say there was a, Megan. did say, I think it was around Christmas, that she had been working in the background to try and diffuse what was obviously going to be. And I'm, you know, again, I'm not trying to put words in Megan's mouth. This is just my paraphrasing of, and I have not talked to Megan about this. So I really can't speak to her. But the fact that Megan was in the background trying to operate to, you know,

make this better for Erica, getting the two of them together and trying to diffuse the, what I think people saw is it taking time bomb with Candice, the direction that she was going. I would not be surprised, and again, I don't know. I would not be surprised if that's still happening in ways that might be constructive and productive in the background. I think we get the impulse now. I actually think a lot of this is downstream of algorithmic social media. We get the impulse to want people in public to condemn or endorse. And my experience, personally is that often it's much more constructive to not do that publicly. I think Knowles was talking about this recently too, much more constructive. Candace is obviously in a place where

she takes public attacks, often as evidence of someone's, someone else's involvement in a conspiracy. So the reason that I try not to talk about this too much, it's usually just here on afterparty because you guys, or on Happy Hour, because you guys send in a lot of questions about it. But the reason I try not to do it too much is I just frankly don't think it's that constructive. I think it for the purpose of, you know, what I've seen become an irrational thought pattern around her theories, I've always said I think she's been enormously traumatized by seeing someone who was once her very, very close friend get to be crude, but honest, his head blown up in a cloud of blood on television, on social media, on raw video. And that's not something people just get over.

So I assume that's driving some of what's become a very irrational thought pattern. But I don't think necessarily the best way to be persuasive is to always jump to like public condemnation, especially if you have other ways to go about it in private. And again, I do not know. but I would defend that decision all day, every day, because I see this up close. You know, it's also a great way for people to just write you off and say, oh, well, you're part of the conspiracy. You said X, Y, or Z, you're part of the conspiracy. Why are you doing this? And that's not super productive or constructive either, because then you immediately lose credibility with a bunch of people who you're hoping to

be persuasive towards. So I hear you, Cindy, what I've seen from Canis, and I do watch a lot of Candace because I'm curious, what I've seen from her is frustrating and bizarre. I've always been in the camp that she was going to ultimately end up being frustrating and bizarre from the very earliest part of her career. You know, I definitely didn't think it was a great decision for Daily Wire to bring her on board to begin with. for some of those reasons. So it's sad. I think it's sad. And I think she's struggling and I'll pray for her. Thanks for the question. Marlowe says, happy belated birthday to your dad. I have no other recollection of branding right. But what I took away was his openness about CIA operations, seemingly

with connections to active operations, maybe the good side of algorithms and new media is forcing transparency. That's an interesting point. That even just that people who had been in CIA before, like, Brian and I were talking about this. Howard Hunt and many others used to write these, like, kind of thinly veiled fiction books, even James Bond, right? You can't quite tell what's truth and what's fiction, what's fact and what's fiction, but you know there's a mingling of both. But now, because of podcasts and everything, you're just out there anyway. I thought that's pretty funny, Marlowe. Marlowe says, I love your time with Maureen.

I would really enjoy deep dive into Bravo and Raleigh. TV as a case studying to the treatment of women in popular culture. Yeah. Interesting, Marlowe. I want to do that as well. And I definitely mentioned at the end of the interview with Marine that I would love to do a full episode with her on that. I don't know how much interest there is in the audience for that. So I don't want to like turn people off and think this is all just silliness and gossip and tabloid coverage, when, in fact, there's something really deep and rich. That's the word marine views. I agree with it. Plumbing the depths of not just Bravo, but reality television in general. We were talking about Pahlia. Pahlia has done some fascinating

criticism, like art criticism of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. I highly recommend Googling that if you've never checked it out. And definitely reading sexual persona, especially the first chapter, if you hadn't, if you haven't. But it's the sexual dynamics, the class dynamics tell us so much. And I'm not saying that as somebody who's kind of a reluctant viewer of all of the franchises, except for a couple. I think it's genuinely interesting. And I would hope if we did a full episode with Marine, who's in the space and knows a lot

of these folks. man that would be that would be I think that would I think that would be fun so I would hope you would stick around for it let's see what else do we have here

all right Instagram questions thoughts in the future of Texas if Tala Rico wins as a Texan if he wins I think we might be screwed honestly I wouldn't be so blackpilled this is from Texan 316 I wouldn't be so blackpilled Texan because I think Tilarigo winning would a gender significant backlash to Tala RICOism,

Tariadas. So that might be a short-lived Texas experiment in a Dem senator, much like we saw in Alabama. Texas is probably a little bit more purple than Alabama, but it might be a short-lived experience or experiment for Texas because the experience of seeing him in action. And I don't know. I just don't think he's going to win. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think it's going to be particularly close.

I would say the gap would be three to five. That's my prediction. Election Day, three to five. He loses by three to five. Could even be more. Again, maybe I'll be wrong. Maybe he wins. But anyway, that's my, I honestly would not worry too much.

The problem would potentially be, the bigger problem would potentially be, if Dems win Texas and, then maybe they win Maine, a couple other places, you could see D.C. being out as a state, Puerto Rico being out as a state, the court being packed, because Dems would get rid of the filibuster. I think it's pretty clear. They already tried to do that, but basically had mansion and cinema standing in the way. It's possible that a Dan Osborne would be like a mansion and cinema and stand in the way of that. I don't know. I think he would probably be more inclined to toss out the filibuster.

A lot of Republican senators are inclined to toss out the filibuster first. I don't think that they're going, I don't think they have the votes to do it. But we're getting closer to closer, closer and closer to that. And as in Rachel and I talked recently about how it actually might be better

to have less friction between people's legislative promises and the legislation itself, because then you, people see the consequences of their votes more clearly. So maybe there's something to do that. I don't know. But I really wouldn't worry too much.

I mean, again, Alabama had a Dem Senator for a while, and it didn't in Doug Jones, and it didn't really change the state too much. So I don't know that Tala Rica would be indicative of some big, broader change in Texas that isn't already happening. I don't know that he individually would be indicative of that as a senator, so much is symbolic of it. Sam says, is there a recording of the debate you enrable?

Ryan did about Big Tech versus two other people. Oh, hell yeah, there is. That was from reason. And we debated Liz Nolan Brown and Robbie Suave to very capable opponents. It's on YouTube. You can just Google it. I think it was called Does Big Tech Do More Good Than Harm? Ryan and I were arguing more harm than good. And we won pretty handily. That was a triumphant night for us. I bought Ryan a shot of vodka afterwards and then came back and did after party. So you can see me slightly typical. on that episode of After Party right afterwards. I think this was like November, December, somewhere around there. It was a ton of fun. It was a great debate. And of course I'm going to recommend everyone go watch it because we won. But I thought it was really an instructive conversation,

too, with some great contrast and good conversation. Frank says, hi, Emily, what do you make of the alleged Samson option? With Israel willing to nuke key European cities, if it ever, quote, falls. Is this real? Could this explain why the U.S. and allies are so willing to let Israel act with impunity vis-a-vis Gaza and Iran. So it looks like that's from a Sy-Hersh book in the 90s. I have not read the Sy-Hirsch book, and I have not read much about the Samson option. I've heard it discussed.

I don't know how real it is. I do know that I think we often lose sight of the fact that Israel was founded in a reasonable, rational state of existential terror. by Jews who had just survived an industrial-scale genocide. And because of that, there is always, especially given that we are still within the living memory of people who survived that industrial-scale genocide, who were victims of the industrial-scale genocide, I just don't blame the nation of Israel and certainly America. Jewish, Jews around the world for living in a state of fear because we are still at the dawn of the

nuclear age. We're not at the crack of dawn. We almost have a hundred years under our belt, but that's nothing. That's the blink of an eye in the scope of human existence. So if you are a minority group, global minority group that has always faced waves of bigotry, now you have your own country that is situated around countries that are now high. hostile, there's always going to be deep-seated fear and terror. And I don't know how that ever ends, really. I don't know how that ever ends. And sometimes, because here in the United States, we have oceans separating us from most of the rest of the world. We are the most powerful country on the planet, militarily, and the like. Our foreign policy isn't rooted in that same experience.

We are a, you know, heterogeneous country on a different scale. And we're very powerful and we're around the world. So, of course, the foreign policy objectives are going to conflict. But of course, the United States and all people of decency want to prevent any further nuclear obliteration or industrial-level genocide against people for their immutable characteristics. So it's not, that, it's a very, very, what's the right? The, the matrix of objectives for different countries is a hard square to circle when you think about the kind of, what's, what's the America first policy? What's the Britain first policy? what's the Israel first policy? What's the Mexico first policy? They're always going to be

conflicting interests. And so I don't know, particularly about the Samson option. I do know that there's not always overlap between, you know, the interests of people who think of Americans, who want America to come first and Israelis who want Israel Israel to come first. That's nationalism. It's just the way of the world. And if you're a voter in particular country, you're protected by the military of the particular country, you will get the benefits of your taxes going into a particular country. You want that particular country to come first. Now, you may also want to prevent horrible outcomes, horrible evils in other parts of the world, and that has to be balanced with horrible outcomes potentially happening at home, which, again, in a nuclear age, this is the

paranoia of the Cold War in a nutshell. This is where people were very eager. to hear what Joe McCarthy had to say at the time. This is really bringing the episode full circle. It's like a poetic ending. So I have no idea of the veracity of it. I think Sihersh has been correct in some important moments, despite many conservatives, not particularly having a fondness for Scy Hersch. The new documentary about him on Netflix is rather interesting.

I recommend checking that one out. But anyway, great questions this week. Thank you so much, as always. I love these discussions. family at devil makecaremedia.com is where you can reach me. I do record these Thursday afternoon, so get your questions in, and I will do my best to answer. I think I answered just about all of them today,

so I do my best to get to them. Appreciate you all listening. Share with a friend, if you can. We love those subscriptions on YouTube. Obviously, it's totally free. Just go over the after-party page. Hit subscribe, likes and comments, also helpful. Reviews, wherever you get your podcast, also helpful.

And we will see you back here on Monday, another live edition of After Party. I know many of you listen to it after the fact. We have a lot of fun in live chats, but I appreciate you listening. However you're listening, have a great weekend, everyone.