After Party with Emily Jashinsky - “Happy Hour”: Tucker vs. Huckabee, Gambling Culture, and the Never Trump Legacy: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

On this week’s edition of “Happy Hour,” Emily Jashinsky takes your questions about politics, culture, and media. The first question is a heavy one on abortion and Emily explains her thoughts on difficult pregnancy situations and how she came to her own personal views on it. She also offers her take on America’s gambling culture. Then Emily answers a series of questions about Tucker Carlson, including thoughts about his interview with Ambassador Mike Huckabee, as well as his Holy Land episodes. Emily also offers thoughts on the Candace Owens controversy and why she personally does not find Candace’s episodes compelling. Emily gives her take on William F. Buckley, if she thinks Never Trumpers will ever come back into the Republican fold, the East Palestine, OH disaster, and Epstein. Emily responds to a question about identity politics and race, plus the sad state of some of America’s great cities. Emily rounds out the show with some background on "After Party", some of our favorite guests like Rachel Bovard and Inez Stepman, and what really happened during Wednesday’s show when Emily suffered some tech difficulties.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All right, all right, everyone. Welcome to this week's edition of Happy Hour. Thank you so very much for tuning into what is already, of course, a special edition of After Party that we do every Friday, right around Happy Hour. Time is when those episodes drop. Do us a favor and subscribe if you haven't yet. It helps the show so much. It's always helpful to leave reviews on Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, comments and likes on YouTube. Also always very much appreciated. And you know what I just want to say? I appreciate all of you. If you were watching Wednesday's episode, It was the first time we had live tech difficulties. And our audience is so fun and just hung in there. So appreciate you guys a lot, especially now that you've been with us for months and we're growing and it means the world. So thank you, thank you. And as you know, on Happy Hour, what I do is this is my way of talking to all of you via the great comments that you send in to Emily at devilmaicaremedia. com and also to the at after party, Emily, Instagram. Quick plug for that, by the way. We post a lot of clips there. So if you want to get clips and you're on Instagram, we post a ton of clips

from each show. So if you want to see them or share them, give us a follow on Instagram. We are there. You can also send in your questions. And as a reminder, I answer these live because I think that really is the best way to do it. Otherwise, it's just more entertaining. Again, you know how much I love reality TV. This is my little slice of reality. TV. It means you can't like, it's good to have to think on your toes and all that sort of thing. So let's get to them. We've got lots and lots of emails this week. All right, here is one from Jennifer who talks about, so thank you for your positive disposition. I'm interested in your opinion about abortion for medical reasons and goes on here to tell an awful story

about Kate Cox, who was fighting to abort her pregnancy in Texas. Her unburn daughter was diagnosed with Edward syndrome. These babies often do not live to full term. When they do, they are missing vital organs and struggles to have basic bodily functions. Yes. So, so sad. Jennifer says, like her, I had a planned and wanted pregnancy with this diagnosis. Jennifer, I'm so sorry.

I can't imagine. Jennifer says, we had all but decided to terminate when the heartbeat stopped while it was heartbreaking. I was relieved that we did not need to make the decision that Kate did, although we would have ultimately terminated, which is legal in our state, our decision would have been to allow our son to die at a lower level of consciousness instead of possibly living painful hours or days at full term. Jennifer says, I feel like these situations often left out of the conversation. Kate's case is widely reported.

What are your thoughts? And just Jennifer adds, I listened to your episode with Marjorie Danenfellster, where she stated in reference to Mifristone, the only attention this abortion drug is to not support child after conception. This is not true. It is widely prescribed for a misconduct. miscarriage as an alternative to ADNC and Jen says thank you for being you I listen to you often I'm an independent moderate in Massachusetts it's so blue here that it's hard to be

purple I appreciate those who make an effort to hear both sides and for their productive discussions Jen I can't speak to the medical questions at hand here I can't speak in an expert capacity and I am just so sorry I'm so sorry that's heart-wrenching and it sounds like you've been dealing with it healthily. I just can't imagine. My position on life is, and I came to this probably later, but my position on life is we have to draw the line when you have a living, unique human.

So for me, that's implantation. And I don't personally, it's super unpopular and controversial. I pray I don't ever have to make this decision because I can't imagine how this weighs on you. And it can't imagine what I would do in this situation. But I think, of course, you know, in the same way that I'm against physician-assisted suicide, in the same way that I value the life of somebody who is in a coma, for example, or somebody who's in, you know, a Terry Shivo situation, I think that's the only moral place to draw the line.

Because if you start drawing that line elsewhere, whether really young or really old, you start bartering with who's more valuable than who. And to me, I think you have to just say, all human life is valuable. And when you have a new human life, So that is to say at implantation, you have unique human DNA that is living. And so that's where I draw the line.

So it's a very unpopular position. I think it's a very radical position. And it's a really, really hard position to, you know, emotionally defend when these stories are, they're so hard to hear. And I can't imagine living through it. But morally, I think that's the right position to defend. Now, I love debate and disagreement, so I'm totally open to that. And I haven't gone through this myself.

But yeah, that's my position. And I came to that later, but to me, it really has been a helpful framework for me morally to understand why we're here. And, you know, I actually came to it through Christopher Hitchens, like arch-athias. because he pushed the left really hard on this to say, well, then, you know, what is it? What is an implanted embryo? Is it alive? Is it a human? And if you're answering yes, to both those questions, hmm.

So I always tell people to kind of Google Christopher Hitchens has a good one. Actually, Naomi Wolf back in the New Republic in like the 90s wrote a really interesting pro-abortion piece on this. So that's worth checking out too. But yeah, that's where I come down on it. This is from Jacob, who says, first I wanted to say thank you and encourage you in your path. As a fellow Christian who works in media, I found your boldness and speak about your faith refreshing. I also grew up Luther and L.C.MS in the Midwest and I live in L.A. I enjoy listening to Breaking Points and I found your podcast to also be encouraging.

You have a joy in patience that is admirable. Thank you, Jacob. I had a question for you. How do you square your conservative values with some of the things that the current administration is doing around gambling and predictive markets? I find it to be predatory and very anti-conservative values, and it leads to the more concerning love money problem I see and what I like to call the new conservative hedonism. I see it in the our party looking forward to your thoughts. Jacob, I have to say that phrase, conservative hedonism, I might adopt. That's really, I love that way of putting it. Yeah, man, I've been incredibly

critical of the predictive markets and the gambling. I think it's, we covered a lot on breaking points. I've also been trying to get coffee zilla onto after party to talk about the Trump administration and crypto. So we're working on that because I'm, it's not surprising. But yeah, I find it predatory, exploitive, disgusting. I think it's a absolute balm for a grieved young men, desperate young men who are lacking hope, but not in a good way. I think it's very seductive and encourages people to empty their wallets. And yeah, I just, I think it's awful. I think it takes gambling to a totally new level, especially since So much of it is done on smartphones that are casinofied, little casinos in your pocket that you can never get away from.

So I think it's really gross. I also think it's, and we see this often with gambling, it has engendered a culture of corruption. You see that almost everywhere that gambling. Gambling culture is like part and parcel of corrupt culture. And I think it's because it's a vice. So I don't know if, yeah, I mean, I don't see gambling. like drinking alcohol or even smoking a joint. I see it as a, and maybe, you know,

I welcome discussion on this. I think conservative movement has punted discussion on this for a long time. It probably should stop doing that. I mean, it used to be, for a Republican to support gambling, used to be like a problem when you were trying to campaign. But that's totally out the window. I see it as something that is inherently corrupting. and that's where you see all the,

I think that's a position validated by all the corruption that springs up around it. So when you start gambling with public events, you're having these big whales drop in who obviously have public knowledge, like with the Venezuela raid. And that's, it's awful. And again, it's predatory and exploitive.

And it is, I'm not accusing, people in the administration have seen it this way, but I do think it's, it comes from this almost Nietzchen Ubermensch. If you watch Rope, rope handles it really well, the Hitchcock movie. You know, a way of just you're carving your own path. You're creating your own moral code as you go because you deserve to because you're on the top of the world. And I sort of see some of that mentality in all of this. I could talk about that forever. So thank you for the question, Jacob. I'll cut myself off. Ken says, Emily, happy February. what did you think of the Huckabee interview?

I thought the ambassador was awesome and Tucker is too weird to watch. I'll pray for him and I'm sure there's a reason he has veered out of control but it is a bad look. There's been a lot of interesting debate about the Huckabee interview. I saw, this sounds like a glass half empty,

glass half full, maybe difference between Ken and me. I thought it was a really bad look for Ambassador Huckabee to make such a glaring error as he did when he said basically like Israel can take the whole Middle East. He's ambassador to Israel. That was just a, he's not even a pundit. He's an ambassador. And that was punditry.

But I think it was honest. And I don't think anybody but Tucker would have gotten him to that point. And that is a really telling moment of sort of ideological or theological, I suppose, honesty from Mike Huckabee. And I've talked about this a lot, but I sort of grew up, you know, reading the left behind books. And my experience in Lutheran Church, Missouri, Senate was a little bit lower church than a lot of folks. So a pretty evangelical culture. And so I didn't know LCS theology on end times and eschatology. And actually, LCS has a very, very good stance on this that I basically agree with. It's not dispensationalism.

And I kind of grew up with that dispensationalist understanding of like a rapture and literally dispensations of time. And the more that I interrogated it, sort of asking myself the questions that Tucker asked my Huckabee, the more that I think it falls apart. Again, this is my experience. And so I experienced the Huckabee interview as Tucker forcing that theology to its logical conclusion. to some of its logical conclusions. And when you see those, like, for example, his position on how much of the Middle East Israel should at some point be able to take, that's difficult.

So for me, it validated some of my priors. But, I mean, Huckabee did a better job than others at staying calm. And his command of scripture is much better than mine. So it made for probably the best debate that we've had since, I would say like October 7th on the right about the correct direction to go in. So I pray for Tucker all the time too, obviously, after he mentioned his encounter with what he refers to as demons. I mean, Tucker's got a big voice, so that's why I definitely pray for him.

Anybody who's in that situation worth our prayers. Let's see. Let me take a drink of water here. Jesse says, I recently finished William F. Buckley Jr.'s memoir. It has me feeling a bit tradcon, Alex P. Keaton, nostalgic. Does Buckley still have a place with young conservatives? I know he got races and competition ponies are a tough sell in this more populous moment that said Buckley's got me at Yale.

It was something of a life preserver for me back when I was getting yelled at by PolySci professors for my more right-lating views. I'd hate to see the old chap lost of history. I'm not as down on Buckley as a lot of people on the, new right are just because I still think Buckley was a fascinating thinker and character. And I watch a lot of the old fire in line debates. Like I just recently watched one. It's like two hours long on the Panama Canal. And it's like Buckley and Reagan and Pat Buchanan and all of these big players in the conservative movement on I guess it probably would have been primetime television. Either way,

national television, having a conversation at such a high level and in the policy weeds about a really important and timely issue. So I think Buckley had an ability to carry on those conversations as a moderator of difficult discussions. And we definitely need more of that. We definitely need more of that. But you know, it's funny, Jesse. I would take issue with the TradCon slash Alex P. Keaton line because I think what's different from Alex P. Keaton and the tradcons is this is exactly where fusionism has crumbled in that the three-legged stool called fusionism that National Review and Buckley sort of sat upon was from Frank Meyer is you have your fiscal conservatives, your social conservatives, and your neo-conservatives. And I think Alex P. Keaton was first and foremost a fiscal conservative and maybe a neoconservative. well, maybe not neo-conservative, but something like that. And the Alex P. Keaton's kind of grew up to work at the places that were doing ESG and DEI. And that's what made the social conservatives and the national conservatives kind of end up tearing the three-legged stool apart and saying this no longer works.

So that doesn't have anything to do really with your question. But I still really enjoy William Buckley. yeah he's such an interesting historical figure almost Forrest Gump-like throughout the Cold War from it was CIA in Mexico he was translating books

yeah he has a very interesting you could listen to the pop into YouTube his firing line episode with Howard Hunt that's an incredible Cold War artifact let's see Craig says do you think the never Trump crowd will be

never MAGA in the next presidential election. Yeah, while there's no never-Trumpers in elected office, I know there's some pundits, journalists and ex-politicians that remain committed to never-Trump or have converted to Democrats, but might they come back to a Republican fold in 2028 or beyond? Super, super-interesting question. Will those never-Trumpers vote for J.D. Vance in the general election? Craig, I think the answer to that is mostly no. Like, I could never see Adam Kinsinger coming back or Bill.

Crystal or, oh man, who's a different example? Yeah, like, oh, maybe like Alyssa Farah, I could see not voting for Janie Vance, but if there's, like, say hypothetically, a John Kasich runs in a Republican primary. I could see them like an Adam Kinsinger or an Alyssa Farah getting behind like a Kaysick campaign. I think a lot of them, though, won't touch anything that they see. as being contaminated by Trump. And they say the entire Republican Party,

the RNC as being contaminated by Trump. And so they also have now created their social circle in left spaces. You know, Tim Miller, who I'm obviously friendly with, he's been on the show. I don't think Tim's going to vote for a Republican unless it's a John Kasich type. But I would see that type of person running

as an independent in all likelihood. And if they ran as a Republican and then used the RNC for the rest of the campaign, I think that would almost be disqualifying for a lot of people like Tim or Alyssa or Adam Kinsinger, Liz Cheney, that you would ever use the official Republican apparatus because they see it's contaminated by Trump. So that's a good question. That's an interesting thought experiment. This is, Ken, who says, you, Rachel and Nenez dancing around taboo subjects was so much fun. I'm having a hard time listening to my news podcast as it all seems a little heavy.

humor, love the Christian approach that comes through even with irreverent banter, and give you the gold medal. Thank you, Ken. I love having them on. It's when I'm like at my most comfortable. So it's very cool to see that the audience also loves Rachel and Anez, because what you don't want to do, and I'm so aware of this, I know people who have done this, you don't ever want to bring your friends on and just talk like it's the three of you unless you naturally would have very interesting conversations. And I feel like when I'm, we don't, we don't all three hang out that much because Annes lives in New York, obviously, but just last month, we all were at a wine bar, and it was just toxic millennial behavior, believe me, I know. But we were having a conversation

that easily could have just been one of the conversations we have on the show. They're both such interesting people. So I'm very wary of just like bringing my social circle as interesting and funny. as I think they are onto the show. But those two, it just works because they have a good rapport. And they're super, super smart people so well read. So I really appreciate that the audience appreciates them. Let's see. Oh, this is interesting.

I was listening to the last half of the after party while doing something around the house. Matthew writes, and I was wondering if the linguistic argument that was made around swear words is true, what kind of social shift would need to occur in order for identity swears to become as benign as damn and hell are today. So this is a point that Innes made, based on a point John McCorder is made, and I think,

especially in the New York Times, if you're looking to find it, would be McCorder in the New York Times, about how identity, politics words and the new swear words. We were talking about the BAFTAs and how somebody shouted the N-word where you had Michael B. Jordan, another black presenter on stage, which is embarrassing. You would never want that to happen to anybody. But then it turned into the... huge racial controversy where the man who has Tourette's and was there to celebrate a movie about his struggle with Tourette's, which I understand to be a very poignant movie, is being

humiliated even though he was there to be celebrated as a storyteller and somebody who's been through a struggle. So, I mean, I was so sad. And I wonder, what would it take to stigmatize? those words. Well, this is what always really bothered me about the, what's the right way to put this? The equity argument. Or maybe I could just say like progressive identity politics. I worry that it undermined the stigma against racism

that people spilled blood to build in this country. Like, I know people all the time talk about growing up the 90s, growing up in the 80s, but truly, I'm just so proud of the country that existed when I grew up in the way that we handled our differences, despite the ugly, ugly history of race in this country. And when you start doing anti-white stuff, you're intentionally restigmatizing racism. And you're doing it through this lens, this anti-colonialist lens, really, of saying that the oppressed can never be racist against the oppressor because of the power dynamic. And that doesn't carry water, in my opinion. I think that's like postmodern nonsense because treating people differently on the basis of race is racism. And it's wrong. So treating them as less than based on the basis of their skin color is wrong.

And so I worry that that. So I think what we need to do is restigmatize racism, like actual racism. We need to restigmatify. And the Baptist controversy is such a tangled knot of identity questions. Like it's good that someone should be. It's good that society was like, oh my gosh, you cannot call people the N word. You cannot call black people the N word. That's bad.

But it's inconsistent when they're also trying to show nothing but complete compassion towards this man's suffering, which makes him say things he does not want to say. He doesn't want to say that. That's the entire point of the story that you're telling. So, yeah, I guess my answer isn't super responsive to your question. It maybe went in a different direction. But I think the broader point about what would make it so that, you know, it's inappropriate, like, across the board and morally consistent, I think would be the moral consistency of resigmatizing racism, period, if that makes sense. That is a very good question. I have a little more water here.

All right. this is Rachel says had an issue with Spotify oh interesting doesn't get added to the autoplay keep with the good work and just know the people want more of the dramatic readings the company by the sunglasses and vaive I need more literary

political works of political acts of what's the right word literature political acts of literature I need more of that otherwise I'll just be scraping the bottom of the barrel. And I will absolutely look into the Spotify thing, Rachel. Very, very interesting. Mike says, do you think Cash was simply frame-mogging the hockey team, or do you think there are more sinister undertones that border on gesture-maxing?

Oh, that's a good question. Frame-mogging versus gesture-maxing. I think he was frame-mogging. I think to be jester-maxing, there would have had to be an intentionality that I don't think was there. in fact it kind of looked like he got caught on the stream because I forget which player's stream it was he took it down right away and it made it seem like FBI was like oops you nobody was supposed to see that cash was parting in the locker room with the bruise and then they rolled with it so I think for it to have been gesture maxing that would have had to be more intentional and orchestrated and it doesn't seem like it was so good question Mike frame magging I'm going to go with frame logging this is Hank who says, I love Kim Strassel. How can you not love a woman who raised demolition derby in high school with her mom? But it probably wasn't her best idea ever to pick a fight with Rachel about Senate procedures. I'm just saying. I too love Kim Strassel.

It was such a good point. I would never, ever, ever pick a fight with Rachel about Senate procedures is the only thing she thinks about. She's kids and she thinks about them. But other than her kids and her husband, all she thinks about a center procedure. That's like the last. Now, Strassel held her own. but man this is the last person last fight last person i would pick a fight uh on on senate procedure and yeah the it was an interesting exchange back and forth though

i like it when that happens uh sybil says please thank megan kelly for giving you a place to air your wonderful show now i don't have to listen to her any longer um No, Sybil, usually you shouldn't listen to Megan. Sybil, yeah, this is basically saying a lot of Nancy Guthrie coverage. I don't, I've heard a couple people say that they're just not interested in the Nancy Guthrie story. And I don't quite get that. I think it has huge political significance. And I think the world of Megan.

and I know most of you do. So I think, you know, of course, of course, Megan is the goat. And then Nancy Guthr's stuff to me has political significance because this is, I mean, does it look like there's any political or foreign policy motivation? No. I don't rule that out, though. You have one of the biggest political journalists. I know she's on the Today Show, but she does a lot of political interviews that are very

influential. So you have someone in a position of power, Savannah Guthrie, who is at the upper echelon, of media, her husband's at the upper echelon of the lobbying world, Democratic politics, and her mom lives very close to the border. And you have a generationally reformative, that's not the right word, reform-minded FBI that has this difficult task in front of them. So I do feel like pulling at all of these threads is important. I mean, you've had major corporations involved, like, what was it, Nest is Amazon? No, Nest is Google and Ring is Amazon. So some of these companies have been involved on the technological level. So I know that some people,

like, true crime just isn't everyone's thing. I love it, of course. But I just feel like there's a lot of political significance to this story as well. Gregory says, so very pleased to hear the trio back together, big fans of you all together, even the Bedford's come in second. Oh, I I love that. All five of you would be a showstopper. Now, I think Chris actually introduced me to Bovard. I think he was the, he, I've met a lot of people through Chris because he has a big network. He was a bartender. He knows everybody. He's worked at a bunch of different places. So he, he's been a journalist for a long time. And the longer you're a journalist, the more people you know if you're good at your job. But I think he's the one who first introduced me to Bovart. board. Now, Gregory's going on to say, I wanted to let you know and give you a chance to let your audience know that the George H.W. Bush grocery scanner incident you referenced in the show is a made-up media event. Gregory, yes, I did know this. It was a joke in passing. I thought about in the moment stopping and saying, well, here's the real story, but because it was just a joke about

George H.W. Bush being clueless. And in passing, I said something like, oh, I think it was a grocery scanner. I did not go deep into that. But this is, Gregory saying he was at a tech convention demonstrating new machines and such for stores. And this particular scanner was a prototype that could be redamaged, torn, or partial UPC symbols and barcodes on products. And then Gregory goes into the whole story and says it's not the only thing the news coordinated on. They also coordinated on pushing the fact that we were in recession on the country. The only thing was the recession ended in 92. And we were all well out of it in the start of what would be a huge boom for the next eight years by the fall.

But going into election day, the news frame the economy is weak. And if you didn't subscribe to WSJ, you never read the economic reports coming out, showing the famous, showing the recovery. So, yes, I think that is the, I think there's a helpful update. Gregory, thank you for sending it in. Yes, appreciate that. I doubt, to be fair, George H.W. Bush would have been able to say the price of eggs. Maybe I'm wrong.

It's hard to go back and appreciate that. maybe he answered that question. But at that moment, I doubt he would have been able to do that. I think the point of the joke was that he was, if I remember incorrectly, because I did think of this over in my head, was more just that, like, George H.W. Bush was a super wealthy kind of anti-populous guy. And that is true, even if he was experimenting with a prototype of a grocery scanner. But in retrospect, if you make that joke, you should explain that joke. So helpful, helpful, Gregory. I appreciate it. appreciate it, appreciate it. Let's see. Someone asking my position on Candice, I think this is kind of a longer email. Will I truthfully talk about this on my show? So far you haven't. And I'm left to wonder if there's

more to this than we know. And I'd love to give you the benefit of doubt. It's possible you're instructed not to speak about it or perhaps there are other factors at play. I promise you. promise you. Nobody gives me instructions about what to speak about. I actually have talked about Candace. I feel like I've even said too much about it, to be honest. I want to just underscore something Michael Knowles said this week about, it's sort of challenging to a lot of folks right now because Candice is saying like just completely insane stuff. And I've mentioned before, because I've talked about this, I feel like last, like around Christmas, We did particularly a couple happy hour episodes where I addressed this.

I think I even said in one of the episodes, like, we've talked about this for too long. But my position on it is that you have to defeat with argument, facts, and that sort of thing. And not just say, you know, someone is, like I literally just said, I think she's been saying some crazy things. but if I were going to do like a whole segment on it you know you would want to build it into a big big factual picture and the like and even that probably wouldn't be super persuasive to people who are you know pulling at these struds with her to be honest and maybe some of you find it compelling I have watched a ton of the like full episodes of Candace and it's true like there are kernels of compelling, what's the right way to say?

There are kernels, they're compelling kernels that get built into these, sort of get built into these big webs that go off in myriad directions. But if you're going to argue against her, you have to be extremely substantive and deliberate about it. And I do not think, honest to goodness, I do not think that is a good use of my time. I don't think it's going to persuade many people. And as Knowles put it, if you want to defeat, or if you don't agree with what Candace is doing,

do you think it's a good use of your time to constantly criticize Candace? That's publicity for Candace over and over again. It's publicity for Candace. So, you know, like, if people want to go down those routes, I just think that it's giving a ton of oxygen to her and is making her show more and more popular probably. And honestly, I feel like people in this country right now are struggling in myriad ways. And we're on the brink of war. We just changed out the leader of the most oil-rich country in South America.

and we are still in like there's still a war raging in Ukraine. Consumer confidence keeps declining. We seem to be in some type of bubble. Marriage rates are unsatisfying. Happiness, life satisfaction. All these things are going down. I think people have better things to do with their time, to be honest. I'm happy to take time every once in a while.

they'll be like, eh, listen, I've gone into it, watched her episodes, and I always try to approach these things with fair minds and not let them be colored by my perception of whomever's hosting it, and I've really found it to be not compelling at all. So I'm happy to say that, but I don't think it's a particularly good use of my time, respectfully. Maddie, who asks that. I just don't think it's a good use of my oxygen, or my manpower at this moment. But I get it. I get it.

But I think we're talking about her way too much, to be honest. And I think that's sort of self-perpetuating at this point. The more you talk about her, the more power she has, not the less. And, you know, I don't want more and more people to think things that aren't true. I think, you know, I want as many people as possible to think things that are true. That's why I'm in journalism. And so I don't feel the need. with everything going on in the world to do condemnations over and over again.

So anyway, that's my perspective on that. I actually have talked about it, Maddie. So if you go back, I want to say like December, there were a couple after-party episodes. We're kind of just like this right now. I probably talked for too long about it. That's my good faith position, is that it doesn't have to be. A journalist loves to talk about other journalists. They love to talk about people in media, people who follow.

media, really love to talk about media, like, who are news obsessives. They love to talk about the news and the people doing the news, especially if you're in the news. So I try pretty hard not to get sucked into it unless I think it has some really huge national importance, like the utterly corrupt media. And the media is overwhelmingly corrupt in one direction. And so, you know, to me it just seems like it's worth my time to talk about other things. but I'm happy to say what I think when I'm asked. But I don't think it's helpful to go around flinging insults. I just think that does more harm than it does good.

I really want people to think about being persuasive to people who disagree with them. I think that is how people should be spending their time. And, you know, especially, especially if you want things to change. If you want things to change, you have to persuade people. So, I mean, I just find that a more interesting challenge anyway, but I do think we have better, bigger fish to fry, if that makes sense. And again, good faith answer. I appreciate people who disagree with me on it. But that's my take here.

Marlowe says, did you realize the furry giraffe at one of the author didn't say the union addresses was the same guy, terrorizing the people to Minneapolis church was Don Lemon? I didn't. I thought as I was looking at this email that Marlowe was going to tell me it was Don Lemon. I thought Marlow was like, did you realize that Don Lemon sometimes dresses as a giraffe? No, I didn't realize that. That's very interesting. This is, Marlowe says, Annes really stood out when she expressed her thoughts on Bonnie Blue's pregnancy. She was right, the best chance for a child to prosper is a biological family unit.

Striving for the best possible situation should not be shunned. Mark Hemingway discussing the current state of Portland is sad. I'm glad I saw Seattle when in 2017, maybe it was just the beginning to be sat with camping tents dotted under the beautiful site. I appreciate trees. Myel says, I'm praying the country doesn't get lost to the far left. So sad what's happened

to our great cities. So sad. Some of them are on the upswing. DC has gotten significantly better since COVID. So be beautified a bit by the current administration as well, which doesn't hurt.

And, you know, we'll see what happens in Mamdani's New York. It had gotten better since COVID as well. But, yeah, it's just thoroughly depressing. I feel like our

cities really are, are jewels. And they are like New York City. It's the best city in the world. Chicago. That's one of the best cities in the world. And they're really, they're struggling so much right now. It does make me very sad. Especially like people don't realize how wealthy and huge those Rust Belt cities were like Cleveland or even like Baltimore, Milwaukee. Pittsburgh's made a pretty good comeback, as I understand it. But it's so sad, I feel like, to walk around some of those cities and just see the blight. Oh, it really depresses me. So, yeah, it was interesting to hear from Mark on that. Watching After Party, Howard says, last evening with the small technical problems at the beginning and your program from the road may be curious. I don't know anything about how this new modern media works and would be fascinating to learn how the shows are made. Do you go into a studio somewhere? and do the show like at CBS or CNN, or do you do it from home on a phone? You should always seem so spontaneous and based on your knowledge and the subject of the day with your thoughts and the questions for your guests.

It doesn't seem contrived at all, but maybe it's like Hollywood. Maybe you have a staff of 20 people to plan everything. You just present it with great skill. Natural emily or smoke and mirrors, thoughts. That's a really interesting question, Howard. I'm always interested about how other people do it too. That really is just my office. So I have a camera set up on my desk.

I have a microphone set up on my desk, the normal after-party setup. That's what it is. I use it, same thing, the same setup for everything that I do. MK Media did a great setup in my office. It's one camera with a nice lens. And then it's hooked up to a, it's a teleprompter, but I use it just to see the show. So I literally see a Zoom on the screen. And that's how I see what's happening with the guests and the graphics and all of that.

I do have a button that lets me put stuff from my laptop up on the screen, which you've probably seen before. That's kind of cool. But otherwise, it's honestly gotten so easy to do all of this, like just at your desk. It barely even disrupts the normal look and feel of my desk, to be honest. And I like it that way because I think it does, for me, it's sort of like inviting you into my office, which is where there's a couch in there. It's literally where all my books are. It's where my guitars are. It's where, like, my spare closet is, where all of my, like, old suitcases and old clothes are. So it's my living space. And I have a TV in there and, yeah, watch TV when it's cold out because it's warmer up there. And I have an old house. So, yeah, that's all it is. One camera with a

nice lens and a return. And so a little bit behind the scenes, I am obsessed unhealthily with, with microphones and cameras and setups. So I knew I had to go to this dinner in Florida, and I was really excited to do a new kind of setup. The camera and the iPhone is great. I usually when I travel, use a DJI Osmo Pocket, which I love. The DJI mics, I know it's a, you know,

unfortunately, it's a company that I don't know that I have total confidence in. I think it's like sanctioned or something. Like, you can't, because it's a Chinese company. I don't know how true or false allegations against DJI and its drones are. But anyway, I love the Osmo Pocket. I love the functionality of the DJ and Mike. But I was like, oh, I'm going to get a cool, easy road setup where I put a cage around my iPhone,

get a road boom mic on a shoe, and get this new, like, fancy Logitech travel light on a shoe, put it up on a cage, and then a suction cup it to my laptop. And I tested out this setup. I was super excited about it. Like, it was very satisfying. It's like finishing a puzzle. That's what it feels like. Or like, yeah, getting your wordel, whatever.

And I had a failed recording from AM update on Wednesday. So I had to re-record that. And by the time I finished doing that, it was almost time for after party. and I go and had tested my setup the night before, felt really good about it, and all of a sudden nothing was working. And that's how my whole day was. So if you were watching, you saw my camera fall down like three times. And my audio was a little iffy, even though I'm using the same microphone right now, because when it's working, it's working great. But I just ran out of time that night because I had this big dinner to go to down here in Florida. That was super interesting. But it just

time got away from me and the setup ended up not working, which was so disappointing because I thought I had such a great setup. I was so excited about it. Let's see. This is someone who sends the mayor saying Huma is mentioned in the public files as having met with Epstein. I will check in on that. That's interesting. Obviously Huma Abedin is who's being referenced there. Ricky says, I saw your post on Epstein getting a stock tip and info about BlackRock. What's remarkable to his information to this kind of, his access to this kind of information is that Epstein was a losing stock trader. Ricky sends me a substack that he wrote about it.

It looks like it's the substack is called Jeffrey Epstein was very bad at trading. The full trading record is here. His account $4 million. His Reds will be small. I forgot like Epstein, but at one point he was making 11 trades per day. It lasts about a million dollars and appeared to rage quiz. I think this record shows exactly why he was bad at investing, something that hasn't been covered much. Yeah, that's super, super interesting.

Thank you, Ricky. I just clicked the link to this substack and am excited to read it. I also find an email today where Epstein was talking about how his investment advice was going back and forth with Kathy Rumler, I think. Talking about how his investment advice was basically just park your stuff in a money market. I cannot play the stocks. So that fits perfectly with Ricky's reporting, which I am excited to read. All right. Let's get to, I think we have one more.

Let me find it. Here it is. Jane says, I'd love to hear thoughts on two wildly opposite topics that somehow managed to have Palestine in common. First, Tucker Carlson's Christianity in the Holy Land recent episodes. I found that to be eye-opening and truly genuine in second, East Palestine. settlement payouts or lack thereof. The lever recently came out with a story about the reality of the lawsuit settlements in current life for people living there, and it's infuriating. I worry the rust belt will continue to suffer in silence until the next disaster happens and the cycle will

repeat. I'm also disappointed in advance for not talking about it anymore or doing something now that he's in more of a position of power and influence. Lever is shown breaking points. Keep up the amazing work and please forgive my run on sentences. Jane, these are great. Really good questions. Let me start with the last one just because it's fresh. I just read it. Jady had a bill, I remember I spent a week digging into the bill trying to figure out if it was a good bill or bad bill because, you know, I'm like someone who finds themselves between New Right, an Old Right, you know, like many people. I don't think New Right is totally right about everything. I definitely don't think Old Right is right about everything. But do I think the New Right sometimes has too heavy-handed of a government approach? Yeah, of course. And so this is a bill on regulating trains and the sensors that monitor, I think it's like the rail heat.

This was like a couple of years ago. I spent like a week reporting on this bill. And J.D. was, his office was pouring their heart into this bill because obviously it was senator from Ohio. So they were working really, really hard on it. And it got defeated by the old right. and lobbyists. And after looking into it, I was like, this is a completely reasonable bill, given what just happened. They were asking for, it was something that made unions happy, yes, but they were asking for extra people per X number of train cars and more sensors and mandating that on the railways. Given what happened to East Palestine, again, totally reasonable bill. If we lived in a perfect world, you might not need a bill like that. but this is my memory of the situation. And that went down.

And I think that was really disillusioning. I think it was a really disillusioning moment for some people in the New Wright kind of in general. But yeah, I have followed some of the levers reporting and other people's reporting from East Palestine. And it's disgusting. It's exactly what people predicted what happened in East Palestine. I don't know. And maybe I'll ask the Vance office if there's anything else going on with that. It's a good question.

I don't know how much, how little or much he's addressed that. I haven't seen a ton of it or tried to help people get fair treatment. Yeah, that's an interesting question. I'll look into that. I have followed it a little bit and just one of my big takeaways from the last 10 years is that we should live in a country where the CEOs and executives of the these companies can't show their faces in public. And this actually happened eventually to a lot of people, historians you can write in, correct me if you disagree with this, but like Carnegie,

at a certain point, it was embarrassing for them to show their faces in public. People mostly went to church. People mostly had certain mole standards. And I'm not talking about like Jersey Shore being on television. I'm just talking about like, yes, our culture has gotten much coarser. But it's also not embarrassing anymore for Walmart to have its employees be subsidized by food stamps. I don't know if you've seen any of the research on how many Walmart employees are on food stamps. It's insane. And it should be embarrassing for a Walmart's executive team to show their faces in public. It should be embarrassing for the Norfolk Southern people to go to charity dinners and benefits and the like when this is what's happening in East Palestine.

but they're able to make donations. You see a good bit of this in the Epstein files, too, just how you ingratiate yourself with the other influential people in these spheres. It's really dark. It really sucks. But it's not stigmatized to be, you know, and there's a Burt Fulsom book called The Myth of the Robber Barrens, and I read it years ago,

so I'm not saying that all of the robber baron archetypes are true. But I think there was some obviously, fair criticisms of robber baronry in the gilded age. And what I worry about now is that, I mean, think about how these tech companies are what they're doing to children, what they're doing to all of us. And Zuckerberg just, you know, like a lot of people are mad at him. Yes. But he's still welcome in all of these spaces. The people who run Instagram, the people who run TikTok. You know, the Trump administration is bragging about TikTok. Elon Musk is bragging about X. I think it's great that you can now have an honest conversation about sex and gender on those

platforms. But I actually think what's even worse is how they're reprogramming our brains and gamifying culture, social life, politics, and all of that. And it's crazy to me that, not crazy, but it's very telling to me how we've just embraced the right getting a hold of these platforms and not structurally changing them to be better for kids, better for, I mean, even with AI right now. So anyway, I think we should, I think the much bigger than any of these political questions is the cultural question. Can we create a culture? As Sean Adams wrote, the Constitution is only fit for a holy moral, what was the holy religious and moral people. I always botched the exact quote, but something I'm paraphrasing, something to that effect is absolutely true. That's the operating system

of our software. That's what it is. And if you don't have that, things just don't work. And so I think we should think really hard about whether there is an interplay. Like political solutions can, you know, some culture is downstream of politics.

I don't want to say that's not true. I think that is true. But in general, we need to think more about creating a world where it's stigmatized to be, to treat people poorly, to treat workers poorly and the like. So, long, long answer to that. But interesting, and I will look into it. On the Tucker Christians and the Holy Landreason episodes.

Yeah, I watch this too. I do think they're interesting. I do think some of this has been undercovered. I don't know how accurate all of it is because what Tucker is doing is just interviewing people. And one of the things that is so hard for me. And shout out to Maddie Kearns, who's a great reporter who just did a very, very good deep dive on what's actually happening in Nigeria,

to Christians in Nigeria for the free press. I think it's great that Tucker is talking to these guys. I always take that as an interview with one perspective, one person sharing their perspective on the situation. If you talk to five, ten people, you're going to get a million different perspectives. I'm especially sensitive to this because as a journalist, you see it all the time. You know, one person, it's like the picture of whether you see a vase or a face. You know what I'm talking about, like the optical illusions. And so a lot of people can be looking at the same thing and talking about it differently or describing different aspects of it.

And so I think it's helpful. I'm really wary because so much of it gets told through different lenses and different experiences. And that's great. But I also feel like I need to accumulate a lot of perspectives to feel like I have a, you know, even trying to get into it on Nigeria. And to read what people are saying across the board to try to. understand the truth. I think Maddie did a really, really good job of this. So I would commend that article to everyone. But it's so tough in these foreign countries, especially where the main language is in English. They're culturally very different. There are all of these

tribal or ethnic or religious, sometimes racial differences that are hard for Americans to understand and you don't know what you don't know. So drawing conclusive. conclusions. You know, I wouldn't do it after like one interview. Not that anyone is, but I always try to look for as much information as possible. I never know exactly what's going on in those situations. But I do really appreciate Tucker highlighting those voices because, I mean, they don't get too much play. Although some of them, you know, I know, yeah, some of them will say the right thing about one thing. And then you go look to the other stuff that they're done. And like, oh my gosh. This person's theology is a little questionable. So anyway, there's my response to that I think we got through all of them this week. So appreciate that. Thanks so much for writing in, everyone. I was at the beach earlier, so I think that's why I kept having a swig water.

But yeah, no, it's like I said, I'm down here in Florida for a work event. A lot of travel this spring. It's just crazy. Spring for some reason it's always crazy. I think it's because there's a lot of campus stuff, but it's good to be out on the road and not in D.C. for journalists or you can talk to people and actually see the rest of the country and not just, you know, the National Mall, which is lovely. And you get a great cross-section of America on the National Mall. But anyway, these episodes always, it's like I like it because it's you in a room talking in the microphone, but

I feel like sometimes you like end up going down all of these little rabbit trails. I'll say rabbit holds, but I think rabbit trails is the better description here. It's like it's so easy to go off on tangents. And then five minutes later, like, what was I talking about again? But I appreciate everybody listening. Maybe I was going to say despite that, but maybe it's, you enjoy it in a sick way. You're like, let's see where this plane lands. Thanks everyone for tuning in.

We'll see you on Monday's edition of After Party in the home studio. Everything will be functioning. We'll be on time. Yeah, it'll be great. So we'll see you then. Hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful weekend. God bless.