After Party with Emily Jashinsky - “Happy Hour”: The Epstein Emails, Death of Monoculture, PLUS “After Party’s” Next Move: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

On this week’s edition of “Happy Hour,” Emily Jashinsky answers several thought-provoking questions about politics and life.  She opens the show with a question about politicians and if they should moderate their positions to be successful. She also takes a number of questions about immigration, including if Trump actually ended Senator James Lankford’s immigration bill, American crime levels, the erosion of civil liberties, and virtue signaling amidst the protests. Emily also addresses the Epstein emails and irresponsible reporting on them. Emily discusses Bad Bunny’s controversial Super Bowl halftime show, thoughts on Puerto Rico, and when monoculture ended. She also offers some career advice to a young listener and explains how to successfully network and offers thoughts on overworking. Emily responds to some less serious questions about her favorite foods, if she’d like a private jet or private yacht, why she enjoys having her friends on the show, and if she’s make a Spotify list of favorite music for listeners. She wraps up the show with a tribute to James Van Der Beek and she reminisces about the beauty of Dawson’s Creek. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to After Party, everyone. This is, of course, our special edition of After Party Happy Hour that drops every Friday right around 5 p.m. and it's audio only, which you know I love. It's my opportunity to answer your questions that you send in to the inbox at Emily at Devil Maycaremedia.com. That is actually my real email. And most of you know it because I've been going back and forth with you for a while now. And I have so many emails this week. Last week was like the longest ever episode of Happy Hour. So I'm going to try to keep my answers a little bit. briefer this time, but who knows if I will actually be capable of achieving that. I'm not optimistic at this point because I, you know, when you're when you're just talking in a microphone, it's only you, I'm here in my office. It's easy to get lost in your thoughts, lost in the sauce. So, all right, let's go all the way back to the beginning. Also, some of these questions come from Instagram as well, the after-party Instagram. Make sure that you follow the account. You subscribe on YouTube. If you haven't subscribed on YouTube, that helps us so much. And of course, subscribe wherever you get your podcast, but probably already do since you're here right now. All right. First question is from

Chris. He says, I am very curious to hear your thoughts on a trend. I am seeing among Democratic candidates around the country. I am seeing moderates gaining traction, especially in big Trump districts. I just finished reading up in the Tejano singer Bobby Pulito. He is very right-coded running in a Republican district on a moderate platform. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on whether you think Democrats will find more success moderating in this upcoming midterm. Or do you think Democrats should try to align themselves with more progressive ideas? I understand the strategy will differ by district, but based on national trends? What do you think has the best chance of gaining traction? Also, do you feel like Republican candidates should do the same? Are we about to enter into a centrist era?

Or have I been listening to Too Much Realignment? I'm a big fan of all you do. Keep up the great work. This is a really, really good question, Chris. And by the way, I should mention I am looking at all these questions live. I just flag them in my inbox when they come in. And so I think that's way more entertaining and it means that I can't filter anything out, as you've probably noticed in the last few weeks. questions about absolutely everything. All good, though. Happy to talk about anything. Chris's question is excellent. I think it is the big, big question in, let's say, mass media electoral politics, high-tech electoral politics. That sounds a little crazy, but it's totally, let me explain a bit. I think it's totally the same question for Republicans and Democrats. And it just becomes difficult

to define what centrism or moderation is. And Chris, if you're a realignment listener, You probably know that. I mean, there's this conversation about is abundance moderate? Is it conservative, right? The Ezra Klein Derek Thompson book that basically said, hey, let's slash regulations. Well, you know who had a conversation with, I think it was Derek? Zara on Mamdani. And do you know who has made a big deal of slashing some regulations? Zoran Mamdani. Now, of course, I wouldn't expect the Mamdani administration to be slashing regulations all over the place. But the question of efficiency, I mean, it's sort of right-coded, but does that make it conservative if it's for progressive ends? I mean, these questions are pretty interesting, but I think what it comes down to is that it's the word of the decade, authenticity, and it's becoming so cringy to say that in politics and in media. But I mean it in the sense that people want to believe that you believe what you're saying. And I think this is really, really true of politicians. Like, one of my pet theories, which everyone will laugh me out of a room for a saying. And it's probably

not universally true. But it's that one of the reasons Republicans struggle on abortion is that they waffle all of the time. And they're in favor of exceptions for rape and incest, which, of course, is a very common position among the American population. But I think it gives people pause when they really consider the issue because they're like, well, you're saying this takes a life. And so you're saying it's okay to take a life because of the circumstances around its conception. So you're saying it's a life, but you're saying it's okay to snuff out this life because it came to earth in one way or another. And basically all I'm trying to say is that looks to a lot of people like it's dishonest. And I think it's very hard to be persuasive when you are making these concessions, like persuasive on the

the core fundamental issue when you're making concessions like that because it makes people think, do you really believe what you're saying? And so I think a better tack for a lot of politicians is to say what they believe and then to say, but that's not feasible in this country. And so I'm not going to, you know, make it a huge part of my agenda. I want you to, you know, have a healthy, happy family. And I want you to be able to pay your bills and have a reasonable just health care system. And this is why I'm not a political consultant. But to Chris's question, I don't know what it means. Like, is Graham Platner or Dan Osborne? Here's a good example. Dan Osborne running as an independent in Nebraska with help definitely from Democrats. And I think Dan Osborne is the most

interesting candidate in the country. More interesting than Graham Platner, though they're both very interesting. Is MAGA more conservative? Because MAGA is fairly moderate for Republicans on abortion. Is, you know, is it MAGA to, like Josh Hawley, for example, went out to the picket lines. Now, most of MAGA hates that. I think it was Teamsters. I think most of MAGA does hate that. but a lot of MAGA voters like it. So now that there has been this realignment, is it, it doesn't, I don't know what moderate or centrist is because I don't know if it's moderate for a Republican to be MAGA on labor or on entitlements. I don't know if you could consider that like some people would say it's MAGA progressivism, but I don't know if it's progressive or centrism. So what I'm trying to say basically in response to this question is I think the successful.

candidates are not necessarily going to be like quote unquote moderates in the vein of Alyssa Slotkin. I think that's what third way and a lot of the dem groups think is about to happen. I just believe it's going to be a combination of like a John Ossoff or a Dan Osborne, maybe a grand platinum. If he can get, you know, far, I don't, I feel like Susan Collins kind of has a lock on that state, but we'll see. I think that the successful demonstration, Democrats of the future are going to be, and Mamdani, another good example, are we calling him centrist because he agrees with some of the abundance agenda? Are we calling someone moderate because they believe what some of the far left does on labor? These are, like, everything is

scrambled right now. And I just think the big principle going forward is, is do you stand against concentrated power. And do you really believe that you're against concentrated power? And you might have policy prescriptions in one direction or the other. You know, maybe you can make the the Rubio case for this Venezuela operation, but you do it, or advance, actually, but you do it through this lens of, well, the power is actually known in the hands of our enemies, and we're defeating that. I'm rambling right now, Chris, but this is really actually how I think of the issue is that like what people want to hear is that you are not a part of what they feel like is a broken system. And successful politicians are going to be able to believably persuade

voters that they stand against the broken system. And so I'm just saying that's where I think you're seeing the particular explanations about Venezuela and Cuba coming from the administration now. It's very interesting. And you're seeing it on the left, too, even from quote unquote moderate centrists like Alyssa Slotkin. So I'm trying to be brief, but it's just clearly just not going to happen. I just love that question. I think it's one of the most interesting ones out there. Here we go. This is a question about career advice from Josh. He says, what should I be doing as a 24-year-old to end up where you are? Don't end up where I am. Josh, as you mentioned, you talked to young people or students often. I don't know what kind of

students, but I've met incredibly driven people in undergrad who are straight up built different. They're formal, unrelatable, and very impressive. It sounds like a lot of your early career experiences were guided by mix of intuition, belief, and opportunity with the economy making unpaid internships competitive even for grad students, how do you get ahead while maintaining your curiosity and who you are? Thanks for the question, Josh. You just have to be who you are, of course. That's, it's the one thing that, I don't know, I feel like sometimes in school people get trained out of. But if you want to be in media, you know, you just, you can only BS for too long, unless you want a career in, like, legacy media, then you could BS your way all the way to the top. But that's becoming, you know,

a dying business. And people want you to be able to react, you know, contemporaneously in the moment on a live stream or whatever it is to breaking news, to world events. And, you know, You can't act that for a long time and have it be matched by your presence on every social media platform and live streams and those sorts of things. You just got to be who you are. Otherwise, it'll be picked up on very, very quickly. And I think that's a good thing, by the way. Just working really hard. I don't, you know, the best advice that I have to people is to come to D.C., particularly to D.C., if you want to be in political media, or in politics at all, come to D.C. and be totally genuine, be yourself. Don't ever, you know, be looking over people's shoulders at parties, happy hours to see who else is coming in

and who else you can talk to, who else you can introduce yourself to. I know that's tempting for a lot of non-interverts like me. Most people I feel like are extroverts. And they're constantly looking over the people's shoulders to try and figure out who's the next link that could maybe get them higher up on the ladder, get them up that next run. And, you know, that I think burns people out pretty quickly, first of all. But secondly, you don't make good, deep connections. So in terms of, like, networking, I just stress quality over quantity, quality over quantity. Like, if you want to follow up coffee with someone, you need to actually want to talk to them.

You actually want to learn from them, hear from them, so that you don't look like you're faking it when you're in coffees. Like, oh, oh, okay. But what you really wanted was them to give you the email address of three other people or five other people. No, do the ones that you're actually interested in. You might actually be friends with the person. Make genuine connections and be genuinely useful. It's a big part of it is just building up trust. I think this is true across the board. Whatever, if you're early in your career, you need to build up trust. You need to be the type of person who is trustworthy and has a lot of banked good faith with people who are higher up. And you don't do that by like sucking up and faking it, but you just are genuine. I have a good sense of human. and work really hard. You know, telling people to work hard is kind of funny for me because I actually do genuinely believe that America, this is contra a lot of conservatives, has an overworking problem.

I think society in general has an overworking problem. Microsoft did such an interesting survey recently, and I don't have the exact results off the top of my head, but it was just looking at how much time we spend on email and work outside of working hours and how rapidly that's increased. So it reminds me a lot of how Mary Harrington wrote about, she was a great book called Feminism Against Progress. She wrote about how we even see feminism in this post-industrial world in the way that we do. Like, because now people work outside of the home.

And for a lot of people over the course of human history, there wasn't an outside of the home to work. you had your land or your family. And your job was to protect that, be a part of the tribe, be a part of the community, and all of that. And this idea that, you know, the dad goes off to work, he's Don Draper, and then you've got Betty Draper staying at home. And she needs to be liberated by that by going and doing what Peggy does at the ad firm. That's not, I mean, that's just like a new thing. And so I think we have a lot of, I think actually, in America. We're just really bad about thinking about these things. And so this is totally off topic.

But I do, I tell people to work hard, but it's in the context of, I think, us generally being overworked. Yes, there are a lot of lazy people out there. But the cultural, the dominant cultural trend, I think, is towards overworking or thinking incorrectly about work. COVID did some of that. But anyway, work hard. You can't expect to slack off. You have to, like, work harder than everybody else. And you don't necessarily have to be competitive about it. But yeah, you just have to show that you can be trusted. And a lot of that is saying that you're going to show up when it's not easy. So good question, Josh. But I would say, yeah, just like really, really, if you're talking about journalism in particular, nobody cares about your opinion until you prove why they should care about

your opinion. And that means you have to become an expert in something. Maybe you're an expert in journalism. Maybe you're an expert in, you know, a language. Maybe you're an expert in being a 22-year-old who's trying to make it in the working world. Write about that, report about that, learn about that, read everything about that, interview people about that, go to this place that you want to talk about and cover. But yeah, it's, you really, really, really got to do other stuff before you go into opinion and be really artful, whether it's in speaking or writing. I do talk to a lot of students, so I have a lot of thoughts on that. I'll cut myself out here, though. Eddie says, oh, this is a great question. Did Trump really tell the GOP to pull the so-called bipartisan immigration bill?

That story always seemed too bad to me. My conspiracy theory is McConnell knew it was DOA and got a two-for with getting to blame it on Trump. I don't remember Trump ever once even referring to it publicly good or bad. Love these Fridays and the quick wisdom you snap off. Thanks, Eddie. I love this question. It sounds like something Rachel Beauvard wrote. I think your conspiracy theory is pretty close to accurate. It continues to defy anybody's understanding of why James Langford would have even worked on this, quote-unquote, bipartisan immigration compromise bill. What was that, 2023? It was towards the end of the Biden administration. Senate Republicans clearly, I think, inspired by leadership or clearly nudged by Mitch McConnell, who was Senate majority leader at the time. to, or just getting off of his time as Senate majority later, was prodding them to engage in these negotiations with Democrats that produce a truly insane bill.

Would it maybe have been better than the status quo during the Biden administration? Sure, maybe because it was so bad. But as the conservatives were saying, this doesn't need a bill. Joe Biden did everything by executive action. It can be, or even just administrative procedure, it can be reversed literally right away without a bill. He created this situation. and you are now asking us to, quote-unquote, compromise to fix a situation. This gets me very fired up.

As you can tell, it is so ridiculous. There was a report at the time that Trump said, if I'm remembering correctly, at a closed-door fundraiser, that people shouldn't vote for the bill because it'll hurt the election chances. My memory of that is it was just a report. It wasn't Trump publicly speaking about it. But I promise you, I reported this out at the time and was talking to different Senate offices. That bill was, to use Eddie's word, DOA. It was going nowhere. There wasn't a chance in hell. Senate Republicans were going to compromise in enough numbers with Democrats to pass that piece of legislation. It was over with. It was poison-pilled by Dems. It would have, it had huge caps. It had huge exceptions that the president could take advantage of administratively and continue letting tons and sons and people into the country. So it had absolutely nothing to do with the election. Donald Trump may have made an offhanded remark about that. It wouldn't have surprised me. at all. But whether or not he told Senate Republicans to vote against it, Senate Republicans were going

to vote against it. So great question, great question. Hank asks, do you have Lexis Nexus, either at home or at work? If so, do you know what version of what it costs? I don't have Lexis Nexus. A lot of journalists do, and it is really helpful. I've used it at different points in my career. Like, I think one of the newsrooms I worked and had it, and I think I tried to get it at another one, but it was so absurdly expensive for a small organization that I worked at. It just wasn't, it didn't make any sense. So Lexus Nexus is great, but no, I don't have it. Unfortunately, this is from James, who says, I know the nerds wear you out with Lord of the Rings questions and such, but I'm here to make a case for you to read, do you like politics, do like religion,

do you like philosophy, then do? I have some books for you. This is, wow, this is a really strong recommendation for Dune. James says it has a big-ass worm, so it's got that going for it. I love what you're doing and keep it up. But James also wrote the story is amazingly applicable to our time as about the blending of political power and manipulation of religion and more. Yeah, that's another one my boyfriend loved that there's about a 0% chance of me reading. I have a really, really, really, really, really hard time reading novels, period, just because I'm just always kind of on work mode. So it's hard for me to pause that.

I love reading nonfiction. So even just to get me to read a novel is hard enough. The idea that I would get into a big novel like Dune that is, I don't know if you consider it science fiction or fantasy, maybe some combination. I just, it's too hard. The odds are low. I find them books like that to be very male coded. And I think they're, now, that doesn't mean some women don't enjoy them. They do. I know they do. But that's already a knock against it. It feels to me like one of those books that's really written for the male brain. Okay. Jim has a response to another response from last week's episode of Happy Hour, it looks like. He says, Katie wrote it and compared a death of a citizen caused by an illegal alien and a death caused by an ICE agent. Here's where the leftist mindset always gets it wrong. They do not compare the correct parts of each circumstance. In the case of a civil.

getting murdered by an illegal alien as a result of a crime against that civilian. The civilian did not likely put themselves in harm's way and, in fact, expects our civilization, the USA, to do its part in law enforcement to keep our society as safe as possible by arresting violent criminals to keep them off the streets. I think this is a reference to a comparison that Katie made if I'm remembering correctly between Lake and Riley and Alex Preddy or Renee Good. Jim goes on to say, whereas in the case of the Prettian Good case, the two who are dead specifically put themselves in harm's way. They had a choice to not be there if they were. weren't, they would not have gotten into a situation to be shot. They're not the same. The leftist

mind only goes to a person is dead in situation A. A person is dead in situation B. Therefore, they must be they must both be a crime by the party of force. Your answer skirted at this, but didn't quite get to this reasoning. I'm going to send another email about a happy hour. If you can give me reply to that one, watch for it. Oh, Jim's from Wauksha County. Awesome. Hey, Jim. Now, I will say, they are not apples to apples. I agree with that. I don't think that a somebody who is not violating the law. This is a question of justified use of force, right, in the predi and good cases.

And I don't think a citizen who is acting unwisely but not breaking the law necessarily, categorically, deserves to be shot by federal law enforcement. Now I know that's in question in the predi and good cases was Renee Good breaking the law with the car, impeding federal officers? So that's a sort of different conversation. But just to zero it on the Lake and Riley point, all crime committed by non-citizens is preventable. All crime committed by non-citizens is preventable.

We have plenty of problems with American citizens preventing crime. Whether or not the crime rate is higher or lower among non-citizens, doesn't matter. You're still bringing in additional crime. And that is something that has to reasonably be weighed. If you can keep crime levels, you know, to the point where you don't have American citizens getting hurt over and over again, and society, of course, as well, with emergency hospital spending, Medicaid spending, spending on children. And we have just completely prevented ourselves from even having that conversation. But yes, I think it's important to just all crime committed by non-citizens is preventable. It did not have to happen. Did not have to happen.

And that's an important part of the conversation that just drives me crazy how little the media focuses on it. It's just, it's maddening. We talked to Lionel Shriver about that on this week's show. Let's see. Casey says, Hamley, love your show. I first time saw you on breaking points and out of the four hosts, you're the one that I'm most aligned with. I'm so happy if on your show, you should do a little bit more self-promoting on breaking points. I only found your show because Ryan mentioned how hard of a work you were and how we would get up very early to do your show, their show, riding, whatever else you do in your busy day. Ryan's actually even, I think Ryan's probably even a harder worker. He always says that what he does, he does beats work because he loves it. But he's also a bunch of kids and a wife and manages to run drop site and do breaking points. So he is pretty impressive. Casey says, my question is, how do you think the Republican Party would react if Trump decided that he wanted to run for third term? In this situation, I imagine, he would find some questionably legal loophole to try to run again. Do you think the party would stand with him or turn on him and say he is declining mentally or challenge his legal claim to run. I imagine every day he gets close to the last day of his presidency. His power wanes more and more. But if he wants to run again like he has joked and like Israel would like him too, we may see him try to stay captain the ship. Thank you for your time. I didn't know that if there isn't an Israel angle to that. I didn't know it. I would think that they would have an even more compliant potential candidate. I mean, Ted Cruz barely breaks with Netanyahu ever and is clearly seriously thinking about running for president. So I don't even know that they would necessarily want to trump third term unless they just, you know, kind of have come to know what to expect Netanyahu and Lakoud. But is this a fascinating question? I haven't thought about how the Republican Party itself would react. I thought about how the public would react. But how How would the party react?

Maybe a lot like 2024 where, you know, even part of MAGA starts rallying around future MAGA, right? And says it's time to get behind the future and get behind Ron DeSantis. I could see something like that happening. And then you have, you know, your hardcore Bannon types staying and coalescing around this loophole saying this is only a modern standard, right? This is just post-FDR that you can't serve more term. So this loophole is perfectly fine. And because we're so polarized and because, you know, a lot of other Republicans are just not trusted by voters, I think it would look a lot like Trump versus DeSantis with maybe a little bit more juice in the DeSantis or whomever takes that place in their camp going forward. Super interesting question, Casey.

Let's see. Matthew asked, do you think Bad Bunny is actually one of the least divisive options available in our post monocultural world? who else besides maybe Taylor Swift would appeal to 90% of Americans or even 50% maybe even core American institutions like football will have to start catering to niche audiences in order to stay profitable. These are such good emails. Matthew, what a smart point. That is probably true.

And I think actually you just said what I was trying to say. Like, I was groping at that point, but I couldn't put it into words. I think that's totally true. And Bat Bunny is enormously popular, enormously popular. I could see maybe somebody who Bridges Generational Divides or doing a show that Bridges generational divides. Like Lady Gaga is pretty obviously one of those types of figures. She already did a halftime show, I think.

Like a full half-time show. Beyonce, there are some people that are popular with younger audiences, middle-aged audiences, and probably even with some older audiences. Like, there are probably some figures from when monoculture still had legs that everyone everyone recognizes. But yeah, that's an interesting, interesting question. I mean, doesn't even matter that Bad Bunny is so popular when being popular is not the same as it was when the Beatles were popular. It doesn't have the same kind of umbrella quality of covering, you know, most of the sort of listening public.

Man, super good question. And I do think that's true, by the way. And the NFL is an interesting example because it's a monopoly, so they're able to get away with political stuff that a lot of its audience isn't like because they're stuck. So I don't know. I mean, I think your instinct is correct on this. I'm trying to think of a good example. I wrote a story in, I want to say, 2018 about Billy Eilish. And it actually was on Dredge Report after it published. It was in Federalist. And I was trying to make sense of some of the numbers. because it just struck me that Billy Eilish was one of the top artists. And my sense was that, like, a ton of the country had not heard of Billy Elish. And that's probably still true. And I was thinking back to, like, Britney Spears.

I was like, that is just not, it wasn't, like, everybody's parents knew about Britney Spears. And now a lot of parents obviously know about Billy Eilish and Chapel Rhone. But I still think it's not the same. Like, I would love to look at a survey of name recognition in 1998 of Billboard. of billboard top 10 versus now. That would be a super, super interesting experiment. Great question. Here's a question from Eileen, who says,

I love your show. Always feel a little smarter after listening to a podcast. Thank you. How do we as Republicans get our voters out to the polls for every election? We seem hinder by the fact that our voters tend to stay home for elections, local and special ones. How do we get our voters out for each election to go and vote rather than staying home? Do you think that initiative's like what Charlie Kirk did will pay off for the future and get the up-and-coming Republican voter out to the polls for every election, big or small. Would love your take. Thanks for being amazing. Thanks to that question, Eileen. First, I should say, qualify this by saying I don't think of myself as a Republican. I think of myself as a conservative. And I just, somebody was, you know, it's probably true that the Republican Party is the best vehicle for conservative values and ideas.

But it's such a broken system that, you know, a lot of times I don't find it's, people will disagree with me. I don't always find that it's worth voting. But I do, you know, sometimes go out and vote. In D.C., I voted for Democrats who, for example, are like pro-school choice because, you know, but even that's a controversial decision, but it's better than the alternative. And it's really the only option. So that's how I thought about it in the past. Now, in terms of voter turnout, there's a great piece in Vox after 2024, which,

where a very preeminent political data analyst looked at voter turnout and said, actually, now, Republican voters are the low turnout voters. They're the low energy voters, low propensity is the political science term for it. And that used to be totally different. And what that means is if turnout had been higher in 2024, Trump would have won by a bigger margin according to these calculations. So, so interesting. I think Republicans have a real problem with now having voters trust elections and voters be excited about the Republican Party. Now, Republican voters are more excited about the Republican Party than Democrats are right now.

If you look at polling last I checked. But even if you have a core, group that's not turning out that could be turning out, that's a problem. That's a real problem in certain states, in certain places like that. I think it's particularly a problem among less affluent voters who are just already so distrustful of the system and aren't even going to come out when it's not Trump on the ballot or going to be, like to get them to turn out when Trump is not on the ballot is going to be really, really hard. I assume that's what Scott Pressler and other folks are doing. It's not one of the beats that I pay closest attention. to. But yeah, I mean, I would think you have to be, you have to be really serious about those,

like, non-college graduate, um, lower income, like lower middle class, rust belt, uh, Trump voters, getting them excited about other Republicans. That is one of the biggest challenges. So that would be my answer to that question. Um, Jesse says, I actually enjoyed the bad bunny half time so. Uh, I listen to punk music so I'm used to baby boomers griping about not being able to understand lyrics that said it struck me that much the imagery from the performance played to stereotypes of Latin culture that loom large in the fantasies of white liberals. It seemed like it was intended to conjure visions of ice-rating neighborhood bodegas and nails the lawns as kindly a boil as cook in the kitchen. I've worked providing services of important, ethnically diverse

communities. I can tell you firsthand that the average white savior is very disappointed to discover that humans are complicated. People can't be reduced to stereotypical mascot straight from a Hollywood film. Maybe I'm over analyzing this. Again, I say this all as someone who enjoyed the performance thoughts. That's a really interesting point, too. I mean, again, I just want to say, I thought, I saw Ben Shapiro say this too. I thought the production was fabulous, like one of the most well-produced halftime shows I've ever seen. It was whimsical.

The pace was great. It was visually just beautiful. It did a really good job and had a sort of folksy vibe to it. I wonder how some conservative Latinos reacted to. to the Bad Bunny show. I mean, people, again, people love Bad Bunny, but to Jesse's point, you know, there are a lot of conservative Hispanics in the United States who are horrified by the prospects of like encroaching socialism and who support deportations and who see people coming in the wrong way and get infuriated by it. There are people who don't want Dems to get

an inch in places like Puerto Rico because they, you know, that's the type of thing that would prevent a Republican from being elected. So, yeah, that is a very interesting question. That was a very interesting question. Also, I had another thought, which was when you're talking about colonization and Puerto Rican culture, like, I just don't, if you're anti-colonization pro-P Puerto Rican culture, it doesn't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. or self-contradictory. You know, you can say, you love Puerto Rican culture, but you wish that colonization had never happened on the island.

I suppose you can make that argument. I think it's maybe a little difficult to make. But Puerto Rican culture is, like a lot of aspects of broader American culture, beautiful because of what's blended in it. And that is a bit, I do think that's a bit frustrating from the perspective of, like, the half-time show. I actually do. I love Puerto Rico. It's, you know, I'm just like a, your average white tourist in Puerto Rico, although I've been, um, a few times. I just, I love old San Juan. I love the architecture. I love the food. It's, I love the music. It's so,

it is really so beautiful. But part of what makes it beautiful is that it's Spanish, plus American, plus indigenous Puerto Rican in a way that is so, so cool and historically fascinating. And so to be anti-colonial in that aspect while also embracing the language of colonization, which is beautiful, by the way, it's absolutely beautiful language. There's something interesting about that, too. I'd have to think more about it. Let's see. Let's see. We've got one here from Richard, who says, when I left Minneapolis after the 2020 Summer of Love, I ended up in Las Crucese, New Mexico. Something interesting I noticed while riding Highway 70 through the White Sands Missile Range

is the Army's high-energy laser systems test facility. Maybe that is something to do with the closure of the ELP airports. So that's the El Paso Airport. There's actually a lot of interesting military installations around here saying we should check into that. Very interesting. Very, very interesting. I'm really trying to get to bottom those. Like, Sagar is all over that story. If you watch breaking points, he's all over that. So yeah, I think there's something, something interesting going on there. John says, do you have any plans to have any guest deep dive into the Epstein files? I'm having a hard time understanding the factual basis with a child trafficking blackmail operation is rooted. I was watching Breaking Points a day, and Saga reacted to a clip by saying something lines of,

there you go, 10-year-olds, that puts to rest this thing about them being teenagers. But does it, based on one mention. Some guests on Pierce Morgan was talking with such conviction about the thousands of little boys and girls trafficked and most of the panel not along like it was common knowledge. Is it? Have I been bamboozled by people like Mike Benz and Matt Taibi who cautioned not to get swept up in another rush gate who seemed to think the international dirty dealing is the real story? With something is salacious and conspiracy riddled as this, I haven't gone too far afield and research. I've stayed with the sources I trust and you're one of them. I'm hoping you can set me straight in a future episode. This is a great question.

I had an idea to do an episode fully on Epstein with Ryan, Ryan Grimm, based on his robust drop-set reporting on the international dirty dealings. And I think we might be doing something big on breaking points in the future. We'll see, like, comprehensive. But I personally, I don't know. I don't know what reference to 10-year-old Saga was looking at specifically there. I have seen some people go over the top with, like, are there tons of mentions of pizza and the Epstein files? Yes. I looked through a ton of them. A lot of them are like pretty clearly, literally about going to pizza restaurants or bringing pizzas in and all of that. There are a couple of mentions of pizza and grape soda. I want to say it's like two people who individually referenced that,

separately referenced that. I think there are a couple of them from the doctor, Harry Fish, who I think was Epstein's urologist. So weird, and in very weird, bizarre mentions, there is a picture. Again, if I remember correctly from Harry Fish of him eating pizza and grape soda that he sent to Epstein. So I don't know what to make of all of that. I do think some of the moral panic is ridiculous. I kind of hate to say that I agree with Michael Tracy on Nome Chomsky, although I think some of Chomsky's defenders are downplaying exactly how bad the emails he sent to Epstein were. But to say, you know, somebody, you know, there, I've been going through the emails for like, in detail for weeks now. And there are a lot of people who, you know,

this was post-original sweetheart deal, time served. And then. pre-arrest in late Trump won. And a lot of people who were just, you know, clearly being opportunistic and cynical, like the Nellie Bowles thing. Nellie Bowles actually did a great video or wrote a great piece about how she's in the Epstein files as a New York Times reporter. So she was at the Times. She's obviously at the free press now. And I thought it just was a good example of people going a bit over the top. That said, there's so, so much weird sex stuff in the emails.

And I agree with some people that it's important to disentangle the weird sex stuff, the sinister sex stuff, like torture videos from the underage sex stuff because those are both bad, but they're also separate and distinct and should be treated as such. So it doesn't mean that it makes one thing better than the other. It just means that they're different. And as a journalist, you have a duty to be precise. So my problem, though, is with a lot of people making those arguments, I find they're also downplaying the severity of the allegations and the likelihood that there was underage stuff. Because a lot of it is just, you could tell that they were picking up the phone and stopping email chains and having conversations not in a recorded fashion, or not in a written fashion, I should say. So I just think there's a lot of smoke there. People should be careful with it.

I do think the international dealings are probably the bigger story. And I think there's probably some way in which the salacious sexual stuff fits into that. Obviously, I think that's the case. But, no, I agree that precision in language is important. I agree that some of the language people are using is irresponsible. But the problem is I think some of the people who are making those arguments are now so determined to be heard and make those points that they're going over the top and downplaying some of the other stuff. Here's a question from James. I hate politics right now. Some more interesting question. What's your go-to dinner

cereal? I think I did say on the show not long ago that I have cereal for dinner a lot. I'm trying not to, but I do like the Lovebird cereal. They're one of our sponsors. I really like have a great cinnamon flavor, chocolate flavor. So they sent a bunch. So I've been having that a lot recently. Otherwise, before that, I'll do Raisin brand. It's really filling. My favorite, like, I haven't eaten bad cereals in forever, but my favorite bad cereal, probably fruity pebbles. It's incredible. I love fruity pebbles. I love honeybunders of oats. It's not the worst, but it's got a lot, got a lot of sugar, and it's still not great. And Reese's puffs. Hurts the top of my mouth, but I can't stop myself around Reese's puffs. I like Coco.

Pebbles. I like, man, I just like all. I love cereal. Like many of us, I even just lovable Cheerios. So it's cereal to me is one of the great modern foods. All right. This is from Nate, who says, reaction to the Lionel Shriver interview. I've listened for a while but never wanted to write it until today. I just finished listening in the episode that wrapped with your Lionel Shriver interview. I think Lionel mischaracterized something really important. Lionel makes the argument that the protesters don't really care about the immigrants, but rather that it's all about them and their self-aggrandizing theatrics. I don't want to make generalizations about why all protesters are doing what they're doing. Some probably out there to protect immigrants, some that they may know,

some might be out there for the reason why and all articulated by a large, but a large contingent, and I think this became more true as out there because of what they and I see is a serious escalating threat from DHS against our civil liberties. And Nate goes on to make some really good points about civil liberties and says I would argue DHS and the administration are using their policy of mass deportation as a Trojan horse for degrading civil liberties, and frankly, that is worth peacefully protesting, absolutely worth acknowledging in any way in every conversation about this topic. Amen, Nate. I think that's totally true. I actually remember in the moment disagreeing with Lionel when she said that, but for a different reason, I actually do think

that most people out there care about the immigrants. I think one mistake that people on the right make is to think all of this as virtue signaling and sincere because even if it is virtue signaling, like it's heavy on the signaling, it's rooted in this idea that they believe they're doing something good, right? Because that's virtue signaling to me I see as a signal, or I'm sorry, as a symptom of, you know, the disease of purposelessness. That's like, you can diagnose someone as feeling adrift when they do heavy virtue signaling, morally insecure, when they do heavy virtue signaling. So what that means is I think people do, in a lot of cases, get caught up in some cases some really bad behavior, like Alex Prattie kicking the taillight out of

a federal immigration vehicle, enforcement vehicle, because they actually do really care. And that's interesting to me. Like, that's the entire, like, quote unquote, woke phenomenon was heavy on virtue signaling. And I think that was a symptom of people feeling morally insecure, morally adrift. So, you know, of course there are some people who are all showboating and care more about themselves than the migrants. But I do think a lot of them care. So that was my disagreement. Now, your point, I obviously agree across the board.

I've said it many times. I do think mass migration is used as a pretext for a crackdown on civil liberties, for eroding civil liberties. I think we've seen it happen to Western Europe. But what's tough is that when you have mass migration in such a short period of time like the Biden administration, then you also need mass enforcement. And how do you do that part? How do you respond to mass immigration?

in a way that doesn't erode civil liberties. I don't trust either party to do it, period. I think we've seen the Trump. I mean, like, why does DHS have license plate readers in, like, Gary, Indiana? Why do they need these vast Palantir databases that I do think raise serious civil liberty concerns? There's a lot going on. I mean, even down to, like, how ring cameras are being used, facial recognition, everything being, like, buying data from, TikTok, the loopholes, that you can get super customized GPS information that advertisers use and the

government can just buy it. And that's happening right now to do immigration enforcement. So I am not at all in disagreement with UNA on those things. And I think that's true. I have also, though, this would be maybe a point of disagreement. I haven't been out with ICE watchers. Like I haven't gone to any of those riots or protests and peaceful protests, which there have been many, many, many. Minneapolis has had many just normal people going out into the streets, which is part of my response to that lineal point you raised. There's something bringing people into the streets, and it's not all, you know, it's not

all insincerity. But I don't know that I've seen a ton of sincere civil liberties concerns from, like, I would actually be curious for the breakdown. And maybe you know, because maybe you've been out there. and I do have a couple people I know who might be able to give me information on this, and that's because they've been around it. That's a good point. What is the breakdown of people who just don't want deportation or immigration enforcement period

versus people who are upset about civil liberties and how would they break down their level of concern? The reason that I haven't really taken that seriously before is all of these protests are organized by people I know who would be protesting, even if all of the civil liberties were being protected. For them, it is about mass deportations. They do not want it. They ideologically support open borders. That's why they were chanting at one of the protests in L.A. From Palestine and Mexico, border walls have got to go.

So that's where I'm skeptical that people out there, especially because many people out there couldn't have cared less during the Biden administration's encroachment on civil liberties and, in fact, wanted encouragement on civil liberties. is through disinformation and disinformation monitoring and suppression and all of that. I just am skeptical that there are a lot of really sincere civil liberty advocates out there. I think it's mostly about mass deportation, but I could totally be wrong, and I appreciate you writing in, Nate. Let's see, let's see. Marlowe writes in, do you think President Trump's efforts have made a difference that you can see in D.C.?

at first, definitely. I think there's a little bit of backsliding happening now, but it's still better than it was before. The problem that's hard to separate out is that it was already getting better, so I don't know to what extent it's part of a continuation of that trend. Our mayor here, Merrill Bowser, freaked out when particularly sports teams,

we're thinking of leaving what is now Capital One arena It used to be the Verizon Center right in downtown D.C., Chinatown, if you've ever been here. And businesses were fleeing, never able to come back after COVID because that area was so crime-ridden and dirty. And it was very dangerous. And when businesses threatened to leave, she snapped into action. This was 2024, I want to say. It might have been 2023. She freaked out.

And that was the moment when things started to turn around. But yeah, I mean, one thing that I really like that the Trump administration is doing is beautifying some of the federal land in D.C., even just like monuments. You can tell they're taking that very seriously. I think every administration should take that seriously. But anyway, Dun says Emily Primetime Jashinsky, can the show still be named after party to meet AP Standards? Should not be primetime party? inquiring minds of rabid fans have to know. Seriously, congrats and best regards. Thanks. This is a reminder. Someone else said I'm bad at self-promotion. I'm so bad at self-promotion that I didn't even remember to plug at the beginning of this episode of After Party that after-party itself is moving to 9.m. If you didn't catch the end of Wednesday show, I made that announcement, which I looked up in Nielsen. They say prime prime time is between 915 and 930. So that was my excuse to say we were moving. to prime time by switching to nine. I know a lot of you actually are catching up the next day anyway. This is part of your morning routine. So that might not change much for you. But I do just want to say it's very fun to watch the show live. Well, I mean, I'm doing the show and I have a

lot of fun doing it live. I think it's more fun than pre-tapes. But also, we're having fun in the live chat. I'm answering questions as we go. So I love the idea of doing something live, especially when more people are awake. It turns out, I'm such a night owl, but it turns out people got a bed early these days. Here's another question from, here's another question from Marlow, who says, what moral codes do you think our lawmakers operate under? It was part of your real housewives leave. I don't know. I feel like lawmakers' moral codes are so driven by electoral politics, especially in the House of Representatives. It sort of breaks their ability to disentangle re-election from baseline moral fundamentals.

That's a good question. Let's see. Let's see. This is a nice note from Peter who says, loved last night's episode more than usual because your interjections in general messing around with your friends of Bedford's were at times hilarious

and made things even more fun to watch than usual. Doing something live together with them and your other friends at Nez and Rachel would make for an entertaining jumble of a show. It's funny you say that. First of all, I actually thought last night's show, so this is Wednesday night's show and coming to you on Thursday afternoon.

I thought it was one of the most fun shows too. I thought it was an especially fun show. I had been at a work dinner beforehand and had like three or four drinks over the course of several hours. So not binge drinking by any means. But I was like maybe a little looser. Usually I think it's better when I don't drink, actually, ironically, before or during the show. Because you just, you have to keep a certain pace and rhythm when you're hosting. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

Maybe I have to rethink it. Chris, Sarah, and Ness and Rachel, we all know each other. And Annes lives in New York, but definitely the D.C. crowd. We're definitely at stuff together all the time. And so they're a fun group. Maybe something live all at once would be fun too. Really funny. That's a really funny point.

And then Peter send me a recommendation of someone to check out. And I will do that. And then let's go to our Instagram questions here. always some fun ones on Instagram. I've got to navigate over to them. All right. Danielle says, when Lionel Shriver said, quote, these people are beyond parody, cry laughing emojis and hands raised emojis.

Thank you, Danielle. I thought that was interesting from Lionel because she doesn't consider herself a satirist, which she mentioned in the interview. But I have to imagine it just makes it hard to do fictional. renderings of real events. Because sometimes things feel beyond satire. I mean, even to Nate's point about civil liberty violations, like so much of that feels beyond satire.

It feels beyond fiction now that I really admire writers who are able to still make art out of this. I feel like it's got to be getting, maybe it's getting easier. Texan says, when do you think the fall of monoculture started? Because I would argue it started around 2015, 2016. Yeah, this is. one of the more interesting questions of our time. Now, I think everything in general started to go downhill after the turn of the millennium. I think it's maybe true that Western civilization or civilization

peaked in 1999 or 2000, and I'm not joking when I say that, just in terms of quality of life. Technology hadn't become hyper-novel to the point where we were fully incapable of keeping up so that we get the benefits without being drowned in the costs. I think that's what's happening to us now. I think, yeah, I don't necessarily think we should be frozen in 1999, but some of the rhythms of daily life and global politics and all of that were just better. Now, the other argument is that civilization peaked right before nuclear technology, that if everyone could live like, you know, middle class Americans lived,

before nuclear technology was invented, like right before, and have everything that was up to that. Maybe that is the best time to have been alive. I don't know. There's still a lot of disease and all of that. But then also, at the same time, you know, we have much less friction, or we have much less friction between our daily lives and suffering, most of us, on a daily basis, that it makes suffering even harder when it happens. So that's another part of it that, you know,

sometimes even the good comes with a little bit of bad. So I don't know. It's almost impossible to say when civilization peaked, but that's my impulse. I mean, we had such great medical technologies and we were eradicating a lot of diseases and we weren't as obese. Like it hadn't turned around and reversed at that point quite yet.

It was happening. But the scale hadn't totally tipped. This is, so, but the fall of monoculture, yeah, I mean, 2015, 2016 is pretty good. And maybe even like 2014, because I think what Trump, Trump is a monocultural figure who understood that we're, there was a big chunk that wasn't being served by the monoculture. And he could still, you know, appeal to enough of the public to serve that underserved market that he could split the Republican vote. And, you know, when you're up against Hillary Clinton, I guess you, maybe it's not as hard as people thought it would be. So it's such a good question.

But yeah, I would think it was when most people's options, like the internet, democratized entertainment and news options to the point where that was pushing us even further into silos about where we live and eat and how we live and that sort of thing. And that probably is right when streaming comes out and when streaming, you know, TV and movies comes out so that you don't have to be changed to cable or even DVR or whatever. People aren't listening to the radio because Spotify is really taking off Apple Music is around then. Yeah, that's probably a really good estimate. Like maybe between 2014, there's got to be a way to measure that. I don't know what it is, but maybe I'll ask Claude. That's a good question. Corey, Corey says, would you rather on a private jet or private yacht?

Corey is a friend of mine. Thanks for the question, Corey. A private jet. I love being on the water. I love boats. But with a jet, you can get anywhere so fast. I've never flown private. And even, like, a lot of journalist friends, they're not, like, super wealthy.

But they end up flying private at some point because they interview, like some rich person they're interviewing is like, you can interview me, but only on my plane while I'm going from New York to D.C., something like that, because it's the only time they have free or whatever. Or a politician. A lot of times it happens where a politician is like in Iowa, and they'll take a private plane from one place to another. They're not always super fancy private planes. But anyway, never on a private plane.

I think that's the coolest thing in the world. And I just like that as somebody who travels a lot, the ease of just being able to get and get out, I think would make the whole experience. as enjoyable as it should be when you're zooming up over the air and as cool as it as it should be, like feel as cool as it should. Part of the reason it feels so annoying to do this amazing thing of like flying around the country or even the world is that it's such a pain bureaucratically and logistically. So I would say jet, I would say jet, Corey.

There are a lot of places that I want to see that a jet could make more efficient than a yacht. Nick says, no question, I just think you should make a Spotify playoff for us for us with, for us with your favorite music. That's a good idea. Actually, maybe I will. I've thought about doing something like that before and just never gotten around to it. It feels a little self-indulgent, but maybe if enough people ask, I could be motivated to. Ryan says, will Trump respond to Zionist Dan Patrick attempting to pressure Catholic carry pre-Jean Boler off of President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission? she seems to have put the ball in Trump's court. I feel like Trump is going to stay out of this one. So Dan Patrick, I believe, is the lieutenant governor of Texas. And if you didn't follow the story, Carrie Prejeon, who's been on Megan's show, what was she, Miss, I miss America. I never know the difference between the two.

But she was very successful. Very successful and I believe converted to Catholicism and was on this religious. Liberty Commission got into a back and forth with some pro-Israel folks about the concept of Christian Zionism. And she definitely came down in like a Tucker lane on that question. I didn't agree with everything she said, to be honest, but it's amazing how rigid and hysterical the response was to her. I think it did. The response said more harm than go. by far, and that was, it was just so unfortunate to see. So I don't know. It seemed like Laura Lumer was driving the backlash to her. And my assumption is that Trump is definitely going to stay

out of it. I would imagine that Trump doesn't want any part of this squabble over his religious liberty commission. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. Here we go. This must be the last. I think this is going to be the last one. Erica says, Emily, your show just now. I'm listening to the episode you dropped last night. Thank you so much for putting into words as eloquently and as only you can my exact heart regarding James Vanderpike and his portrayal of Dawson Lerie. It was popular show starting when I was 16 even at that age because I grew up in a fundamental Christian bubble. I was not allowed to watch that show. I did not get to watch until I was 21 and it was in syndication. Yes, same. That's exactly what happened to me. And oh, this is

spoilers. Spoilers. Oh no. Erica's Team Pacey. No. I sort of alluded to Team Pacey yesterday when I was saying a lot of people didn't see Dawson as the protagonist of his own show. I think it was a pretty good argument that Joey was ultimately the protagonist of the show. But a lot of people saw it as Pacey, that Pacey was the better man of the two and was the real driving force of good. And I just never saw it that way. I kind of, as I've gotten older, I kind of understand why people do, which is interesting

to me. I kind of try not to rewatch Dawson's Creek because I feel like I'm afraid I'll be sucked into Pacey World. I probably wouldn't. But no, I don't think I would. But anyway, all that is to say, I understand it a bit more as I've gotten older. There was just something so romantic to me when I was younger about I'm about to reveal myself as a loser. There's this line in an episode I think is called Escape from Which Island? my memory is at season three or see yeah it must be season three uh and at one point

joey or joey refers to them as star-crossed lovers torn apart by their own something like that okay maybe i'm not as big as a loser as i think i am because i don't remember the line exactly it stuck with me for a really long time um because i thought it was so beautiful and i just there's something so romantic about going back and forth across the creek going up into the bedroom to watch movies and then sneaking back home climbing up the ladder. Oh my gosh, I just loved it so much. And it felt so disruptive. Pacey felt so disruptive to this, this fate. But yeah, I mean, when you're younger, I guess you see things in maybe a needer way. Erica says, I was so heartbroken yesterday when I found out cancer had beaten James.

I'd begun following his journey as political development the past couple of years, how he'd moved his family out of Canada and Texas, so on and so forth. I really enjoyed all of his stories on Instagram. He built up for himself a wonderful life of family and faith to see the mark that he left on celebrities as such a treatment to his character, testament to his character and is God. He will be very missed. Well, I mean, the reflections on him from people who knew him have been so universally.

just universally reverent. And I feel like he's one of those people that did really come across. You know, I just remember even wanting on on breaking points. Like, he didn't have to do that. He did not have to speak out and very politely and civilly suggest that Democrats have debates. Didn't have to do that, but he thought it was right. And he wanted to speak out against the broken system.

So what a guy. I just think that spoke to his character. And it makes me believe a lot of the nice things that I've heard about him since. I didn't know him personally, but boy, it just seems like he was wonderful. So rest and peace, James Vanderbeek. Like I mentioned, his family has a go-fund to me. If you know anything about Dawson's Creek, I don't think they were getting a lot of residuals, and his cancer treatment was very, very expensive, six little kids.

So I think it makes sense that they have a go-fund me, but it's doing well. And I'll be praying for him, his family, his kids. Appreciate you all. for your questions. You can send them in at Emily at Double-Macare Media. Getting so many these days, I might have to like start picking and choose me. But I appreciate it so much. Emily at Double-Macaremedia.com or the after-party Emily, Instagram. And we will see you back on Monday at 9 p.m. live on YouTube.

Of course, you can still catch it afterwards. Make sure you have a great weekend. Please subscribe and God bless you, everyone.