After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Hollywood's Odyssey Rewrite, Cover Girl Ketanji, Mamdani's America, w/ VDH, & Taylor's Wedding Spectacle

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the forthcoming book, “The Counterrevolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement.” They open by examining the backlash over Christopher Nolan's upcoming adaptation of “The Odyssey,” and discuss Hollywood's approach to the Western canon, identity politics, and cultural heritage. The conversation then turns to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's vision for the Democratic Party, Steve Bannon's critique of globalization, and what the rise of democratic socialism says about America's political realignment. Then Emily and Victor take up Mark Kelly's shifting rhetoric on immigration, the debate over birthright citizenship, and why border security remains a defining political issue. They also weigh in on the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson’s cover shoot, and discuss how Americans are growing weary of identity politics and symbolic representation over substance. The show concludes with Emily's cultural commentary on Taylor Swift's wedding, exploring the tension between celebrity spectacle, commercialization, faith, and the search for genuine intimacy.   SelectQuote: Compare top‑rated life insurance options. Visit https://SelectQuote.com/emily to get the right coverage at the right price.   Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/afterparty   USAFacts: Demand government accountability by signing the open letter for reliable public data at https://USAFacts.org/supportdata Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back to After Party, everyone. It is a pleasure to have you here. I'm coming at you live from Sunny, San Diego, California. We will be joined by Victor Davis-Hanson in just one moment. Please do subscribe here on YouTube. If you haven't yet, subscribe, subscribe wherever you get your podcast. As a reminder, we do a Friday episode of the show.

You can only catch it on the podcast feed. Totally free. But just make sure you are subscribed over on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. All right. Now, on tonight's show, as I mentioned, We're going to have the great Victor Davis Hansen here in a very, for a very timely conversation, because right now, the culture conversation du jour, as the Odyssey is getting ready to premiere,

the Christopher Nolan Odyssey, the celebrities are making their media rounds. And Lupida Njongo saying all kinds of goofy stuff. So lots of controversy swirling around the Odyssey. Perfect day to have Victor Davis Hansen here. We also have Iran War updates. We have Mark Kelly, Senator Mark Kelly, wearing eight. Mexican soccer jersey cheering on Team Mexico last night, obviously. I'm sure he's quote-unquote cheering on Team USA tonight, but I want to get Victor Davis Hansen his take on that. Of course,

he wrote the book on citizenship. So that's a good one, especially as we have updates from Capitol Hill on efforts to mitigate the fallout from the birthright citizenship Supreme Court ruling. Also, new Mamdani video, July 3rd, I guess it's not new anymore, but a lot of new conversation about it. Steve Bannon is basically warning Republicans that they have to have a smart approach to mandamiism and Katanji Brown Jackson is a cover girl. She's on Essence magazine. So we're going to talk about that. And of course, I'll end the show with some thoughts on the Taylor Swift's wedding spectacular. All right. That's a lot. That's a lot of show for one night. But let's go. Let's do it. We're going to be joined in after just this quick break in one moment.

by Victor Davis-Hanson. We'll see on the other side. Life insurance, we all know we need it, but we just keep putting it off because it feels complicated, expensive, or like something that can wait. Stop waiting. Take care of it today with Select Quote. In just 15 minutes, high-quality coverage can be secured to fit any life and budget. Here's what makes Select quote different. Their licensed insurance agents work for the consumer, not the insurance companies. They compare options across multiple trusted carriers to find the right coverage at the absolute lowest priced. Unlike other brokers who push policies that pay them the most select quote agents actually shop around. With nearly 40 years of experience and over two million

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of course, a Californian, so not too far away, not an entire continent away this time. He's senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Sanford University, an author of the forthcoming book that I'm so excited to read. It's called Counter Revolution, The Rise and Fall of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Victor Davis Hanson, welcome back to the show. Thank you for having me, Emily. It's such a pleasure to have you, especially on today, on today, where there's this timely conversation, controversy swirling over the Odyssey film premiere,

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey is expected to be out soon, and the celebrities are due, their media rounds, including the Peter Njango, who plays Helen of Troy. She stopped by Jake's Takes and the DC Film Girl to talk a little bit about, I mean, one of the questions she was asked actually is what question she would ask Homer, if she could ask a question of Homer, and of course, went straight to identity. Let's go ahead and roll these clips. I'd be like, so Homer, how do you feel about this screen time given to these women, considering how little you spent with them?

Oh, okay. And then do you lean forward and look at him like that? Yes, like, hmm? Remember us? When you read the Iliad and the Odyssey, very little time is spent in the perspective of the women. Right. Right?

It's told from a very masculine side of things. But this film takes a lot of, it takes time to really consider things from the female perspective. And so we see in Helen and Clytemnestra how this war has affected them both. And they respond to it very differently because their experience of it is very different. And so for me, that was very enriching to take the time to kind of like humanize them and consider what this time could have looked like for them.

So, Victor, we're verging on critical theory, I think, maybe a vague, at least, or a hazy command of critical theory there from Lupita and Younggo. But if I'm not mistaken, you actually helped on the film 300. You have some, I guess, experience with the historical rendering of these, or the Hollywood rendering of these historical events. What's your reaction to hearing Lapid and Young goes, one question to Homer? Well, I'll do respect to her.

Almost everything she said was on true. Feminist scholarship in the 90s. It was very cachet. It was really the thing to do in universities. And they've interpreted the Odyssey as a feminist. Homer. And the reason they did that, I don't think it was feminist or masculine, it was just Homer. But they made the argument that Penelope was manipulating all the suitors with her intellect. That's true. She is. She's much more powerful and smart than the suitors who are trying to take over

the palace in the absence of her husband Odysseus. And then, of course, there's certain women like Calypso or Circe that are half gods, and they have their own islands. And they they define their own sexuality, they're promiscuous, they have they wrap men around their little fingers and of course the whole reason the Greeks were there is because helen of Troy was irresistible and she seduced Paris who left and left her husband menelaus so the feminist scholars said wow all these women what happened later in Greek literature they they run the whole odysseys world so that was kind of ironic. A lot of people have been saying that it was this big argument over cultural appropriation. And first of all, there's no evidence, of course, that Helen was African-American.

She wasn't. And Martin Bernal, who wrote Black Athena, I saw that he was quoted by Sonny Hoson the other day on the view. He was completely, I don't know what the polite word, ridiculed, completely debunked 30 years ago by Mary Lefkowitz in a book called Not Out of Africa. All of his linguistic etymologies were wrong. He was finally reduced to saying things like Socrates had wide nostrils. He must have been black. Things like that. It's completely bogus.

And then the larger question, I don't think anybody has any problem. Even in a historical piece of literature like this, if somebody who is black wants to play, a white character, but if you accept that, then it has to go both ways. And it seems to me that any time that Hollywood, and they had a long history of whites playing Native Americans or blacks, vice versa, then the other side, the minority side says you can't do that. It's almost like the other day somebody was describing to me how white women who braid their hair and dreadlocks are culturally appropriating.

black women's hairstyles. And I just said, well, I see all of these black women that have, you know, wigs on that are straight and blonde. Is that appropriating white culture? But it doesn't work both ways. Until it does, it's kind of a mess. But that's been the issues about Christopher Nolan's casting of a black woman for a role that was historically, historically, if in the myth, she is clearly white by the description. in the hexameter verse of Homer. And then a Homer had no intention. And the other thing really quickly is the blacks were,

are treated very well in classical literature. And Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, they're called the noble Ethiopians. And long ago, Frank Snowden, a very famous black classicist, he wrote a whole book about how blacks were described by classical Greek and early Greek authors. And it was always positive. There was no racial prejudice. That came later in the age of discovery, when Europeans went to Africa for the first time,

and they discovered that in terms of monumental cities and infrastructure, that it was less impressive. And then they extrapolated during the age of Darwinism. This was because of some defect. But not in the ancient world. There was none of that. Right. And it can't go the other way around, according to critical theorists, because power is the central element. of that dynamic. So if you are the race and power to take the cultural Marxist perspective,

you can't culturally appropriate by wearing a blonde straight wing or anything like that. But this is created, it's created such a tangle. There's this telegraph article from yesterday. Actually diving into the controversy in Greece, they have, so over the course of the Odyssey's production, Telegraph reports, Greek and Greek Cypriot media platforms wrote open letters to Christopher Nolan's team in Hollywood, stating that Greek people, quote, did not vanish. And we're, quote, still here as a, quote, living people whose story has never stopped being written. Quote, we are not asking for exclusion or limitation, wrote one such letter in Greek City Times. We're not arguing against diversity nor against reinterpretation.

Greek culture itself has always been shaped by exchange, migration, and encounter across centuries. What we're asking is something simpler and more human that when Greek stories are told on a global stage, Greek people are not rendered invisible with them. That seems to add quite an interesting element to the representation. conversation, Victor. It does. And they have a long history of ethnic pride when they have been culturally appropriated. In the last two films of Cleopatra, for example, I don't know if you remember, but there was a black actress. And then the black intellectual community made the argument Cleopatra was black. We know even more definitively than Helen that she was not black.

She was a Hellenistic Greek from a family from Macedon, the Ptolemy family, that were the hereditary monarchs of Egypt. And the Greeks got very angry at that, really angry. And then they got very angry when we had the Alexander The Great movie that made him overtly gay almost. And they said, you know, there was some bisexuality, but that was not his primary identity. So they're very, you know, I lived in that country three years,

and it's a small country, and it's had a very checkered history of Turkish occupation. It's a very dangerous location in the Mediterranean. And they're very proud people. And maybe they come off as chauvinistic. But if you're actually in the, they've been kind of shortchanged in Europe. And this is one thing they really prize is their classical roots in the language. It's basically the same language with Byzantine Greek or Catheravis or Greek.

But it is the same alphabet, the same language that goes all the way back to the 8th century BC. So they're very proprietary about that. It's understandable. indigenous, dare I say. That's another good word that people are using. I see in Ireland and Britain that they are indigenous people. I said that in an article, some people got angry. I said that our Obama, Mandami was a settler colonialist because the Indian community had no history as indigenous people in Uganda.

And they came as a part of British imperialism and they make up 1% of the Ugandan population and they control 60% of the GDP, even today, this tiny little community. And so I said he was a very privileged settler colonialist that was exploiting the natural resources of Uganda. And then he came over here as another settler colonists to the United States. And then he was talking about going into wider, you remember whiter richer neighborhoods? I looked the other day at the survey and the census of the wealthiest ethnic communities in the United States. Whites are number nine. Indian Americans are number one, both in per capita. per family income and then the percentage of people with degrees.

So really, if he wanted to be honest, he should have said, we're going after richer communities like my own Indian American community. And he, I mean, the New York Post was all over the story. When he got married last year in Uganda, it was lavish security, all of that. I remember that. Yes. He was a settler colonialist. We'll continue to talk about Mom Donnie in just a bit.

I did want to also get your reaction to this time. Thomas Chatterton Williams essay, Thomas Chatterton Williams essay from May in the Atlantic, where he criticized right-wing identitarians for, quote, being quick to condemn progressive hysteria about racial representation and cultural appropriation. Now they're aping the flawed thinking they claim to despise. The Nolan controversy seems to inspire particular fervor because of the Odyssey's exalted place in the Western canon. Some progressives dismiss the canon as a collection of dead white men, yet another result of hyper-racialized line drawing. Today, though, he says, or then he says, by contrast, many in the right have tended to emphasize that it speaks to the

universal human condition, regardless of race. The canons champions have seen clearly how works such as the Odyssey revealed the perverted logic of racial line drawing. Today, they would do well to heed their own wisdom. So he's saying, actually, that it's critics of the Nolan interpretation and the Nongo interpretation here who are being race hyper racialist identitarians i think that's fallacious all all people on the right are doing this asking for consistency and they're just basically saying get rid of the marxist binary and fukodian centers of power machinations and just say is literature universal and can if that is true can you violate the author's original intent when they do delineated characters of a certain type or race, you know, can Scrooge be black when Dickens

had no conception of that? And would that change that? And they have a pretty good consensus on the conservative side. They said if it doesn't change the intent of the author and the race is incidental and not essential to the character, then we have no problem with a contemporary person of a different race than the author intended, Homer included, playing that role. And then they add the corollary. But of course, the left doesn't believe that. The left believes that if it is a minority role like a fellow, only black people can play it.

And when you are, if you're going to do cochees or Geronimo, only Native Americans should be able to do that. And so when white people wear makeup and are indistinguishable, as you know from the 1960s, Charles Bronson made a whole career of playing Native Americans. And then the left gets angry. So they always want it both ways. Like very adolescent, their emotional anger.

And it's very funny. I'm Swedish American, and there's a school not too long, where a city, Kingsburg, California, about three miles from here. And it was all founded by Swedes, including my ancestors, and they're the Vikings. So when my children were playing them, we're in Selma, I went over there, and a Mexican-American woman with a Viking sweatshirt, and dyed blonde hair said to me, you can't sit on the Kingsburg side, you're not a sweet.

You're not a sweet. And I said, well, I'm Swedish. Well, you don't belong here. So I said, well, you're culturally appropriating my ancestry. And she got very angry at that. She goes, no, I'm a Viking. And then I thought about it. I said, this is great. This is America. You can be any identity you want if you're on the conservative side. you're a leftist, it's whatever identity is useful at the time. And there's no consistency. Of course, we haven't seen the film yet because it's not out. But I'm curious what you make of the significance overall. Like, is this kind of a right-wing, hysteric panic type reaction? Or is it because we're talking about the Odyssey? We're talking about foundation, almost of the

Western canon itself. Or maybe we would even say that. That is the foundation of the Western canon itself. They don't have to categorize it, I guess, of that dramatically. But is that, I mean, this is probably the rendition of it that a generation will know, especially as younger people move more and more towards oral history and away from written history, which is happening before our eyes. So how significant is it that we're seeing this ideological, I guess, intent here? I think it entirely depends on the screenplay and the intent of the

director, but especially the actress. And if she makes her race incidental to the character, and the character is well portrayed and well acting, that will enhance the story of the Odyssey. However, if either the screenwriters add things that are not in the Odyssey to accentuate her black identity that she's being, I don't know, rebuked or not treated right at the court, or they want to bring out racial prejudice, then it's going to destroy it because that didn't exist. There's nothing in the Odyssey about racial prejudice and there's nothing in the wider Greek world of racial prejudice. And that's something that I think even left-wing deconstructions will admit in moments of candor that at the birth of Western civilization,

there was no racial prejudice. At least we know from Greek literature and pottery. The Ethiopians are treated as noble people. They always have a hexameter epithet, the noble are godlike Ethiopians. And so we'll see how it's portrayed. I'm not optimistic, however, given Hollywood. But we'll give it a fair shot. Well, since you mentioned Mamdani and settler colonialism, he actually was talking about the colonial history

of the United States on July 3rd in a pretty interesting taped address to New York City. and some varied reactions to it, but very dour setting, sort of sad-looking new citizens, newly minted citizens to his side. The text itself, I found to be quite a, quite an interesting perspective on where the new DSA generation is trying, he's trying to lead them in that direction. So let's go ahead and actually just listen to a little bit.

This is Mayor Mom Donnie from July 3rd. There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped it. American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West. And yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth

that they were anything but exceptional. For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent immigrants from whom power was something someone else had. We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional

because here nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed. We may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures. And it belongs to us all. He's sitting behind George Washington's desk. He actually told some stories from America's colonial history.

It's very different than the Mom Dani, who was flipping off the Christopher Columbus statue in his COVID glove. He posted to Twitter back in 2020. So before you respond, Victor, I also wanted to roll this of Steve Bannon, who had this to say about Mayor Mamdani over the Fourth of July holiday. Almost 40% of people eligible to work are. out of the labor force. Why do you think the Marxist jihadist are getting traction? And Mandami's not 10 feet high.

Don't believe that at all. You can't take a copy of Milton Friedman and throw it at him. Or Atlas shrugged. You're going to go back to the Paul Ryan and to all the playbook of Ted Cruz and his entire crowd. This is how he got in this jam.

The elites in this country have sold the country out. all this garbage and talk about free trade and free trade and free trade and you had a mercantilist system run by real hardcore communist in China of which the American business community and most of the Republican donors underwrote to take your jobs. This is why this entire situation is like a Greek tragedy and that the great strength of our hero turns out to be his core week. weakness. You, the working class and middle class in this country in the United States of America, you underwrote your own destruction. So, Victor, he's talking both about the messaging strategy and I suppose the substantive policy strategy. What do you make of that? Well, I think he's reiterating what got Trump elected. In Trump's message, there was, he basically said that the

millennium, when we were globalized, the coast, west and east, where all the universities were, where the corporate headquarters were, where all the media were, where all the big law firms were, they inherited seven, six billion people of a new audience, new consumers of their products, and they made money like nobody's ever imagined. And I say that as someone who works right next of Silicon Valley that has $14 trillion of market capitalization. And then the people, people in the interior, farming, minerals, timber, assembly construction that were muscular, that was outsourced or offshore. And then they invented a vocabulary of, you know, you need to code or you're an irredeemable

or deplorable or a clinger or dregs, all that Biden, Obama, Clinton stuff. So that part is right. And I think laissez-faire capitalism was, you know, it went way overboard. But that being said, a lot of the things he said are just inaccurate. China doesn't have a communist system. It has a crony capitalist system. And if he's saying that capitalism shorted its people, well, the reason that China is an existential threat,

it went from a command socialist communist communist economy, not politically, but in the short term, it emulated our capitalist system. And that was, you know, that's true. And then I think he doesn't realize that when he says 40% of the people are out of work, the labor participation rate, Emily, has been 62 to 64% for 30 years. And everybody who's looked at it said it doesn't really accurately incorporate or absorb people who go in and out of the, you know, mothers that have children, they go back and forth, retirees that go back in.

And so part of it is our entitlement industry where I know in my community, a lot of people get cash. We have one of the biggest black market economies in California in the world. So we have a lot of people working. You can't get any of your wiring or plumbing or sheet rocking on a weekend unless you pay somebody cash. That's too bad. So there are people in the workforce that are not reflected in that number. But if he was accurate that that created the socialism. than we would have had this earlier

because it was 60% almost under every president. I think what's caused the rise of socialism is, first of all, they are primarily in blue states and blue cities. Denver, New York, New Jersey, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle. We haven't seen a statewide candidate yet really appeal to everybody. I don't think Tala Rico is going to win Texas. I don't think Grant Pletner, I know.

he's not going to win. That just got a lot tougher today. Yes, it did. And I don't think El-Said is going to win in Michigan. So I'm waiting to see where this, it looks to me as someone who was 20 years old and watched this same phenomenon with the McGovern hysteria of 72. It was the same setup. They looked at 68 and Humphrey almost beat Nixon. He was closing.

He only lost by 150,000. But just like Harris didn't lose by that. much in the popular vote and even to get where she was she went and renounced most of her left-wing socialist ideas she said oh i'm for the wall i'm for fracking i don't want to stop deportations remember all that i'm not going to i want to pump oil and she almost won so just like humphrey almost won they said no no you didn't win because you weren't left enough we've got to get a real socialist like mcgovern and we've got to pay everybody and we've got to cut the and it's It was the biggest popular vote landslide in history.

And so now they're saying that socialism lost in 2024, but communism will win in 2008. I just don't think that's. So I think a lot of it's exaggerated, but if you look at the profile of most of these candidates that are in the news or elected officials, they're mostly urban, they're mostly young, They mostly have degrees, and they represent two or three constituencies. They tend to be affluent, mostly white, urban, metrosexual-type people who are frustrated that they got degrees that, to be frank, are not competitive, public policy, environmental studies, sociology, psychology, and I'll confess literature and things.

And they see wealthy people around them, and they think, I'm educated, I'm glib, like, I'm articulate. Why don't I have that? and they can't live in those urban environments. They could live here in Central Valley of California, I think, but they would die, whether die, then come someplace like Fresno or Vyselia. And then second, they tend to be overwhelmingly,

what I would call the DEI community, minority communities. And three, they're either first or second generation. I looked at almost the ones in the news are either the children like Talib and Ocasio-Cortez or their first generation like Ileon Omar or first generation like Mondami or Chevalet or all of these people. And they come from failed states. They either come from the Caribbean or Latin America or Africa or Asia and places are not doing well, mostly because of socialism that destroyed their economies.

So then they come over here at a time where we have no civic education. We don't believe in the melting pot. and they put their antenna up and they think, you know what, the more that I identify and emphasize that I'm not white, I'm DEI, I'm oppressed, there's a whole bonanza of entitlements in this crazy country. And they almost have a contempt. I talk to a lot of people who are first and second generation here in Central California, and they'll almost tell you that all of the welfare, 50% of all bursts in California. or on Medi-Cal. But they almost say to you, well, if we came illegally and you didn't even ask,

and we just got, we have five EBT cards, well, then what does that say about you? You're stupid. And that contempt, you really get a sense of contempt from the Somali community and the people involved in this $10 billion fraud in California. It's almost, yeah, we're the immigrant community, but if you're going to give us stuff,

we're going to take it, and we're going to look at your magnanimity is not kindness to be reciprocated. but stupidity to be mocked. And that's what, that attitude is very defiant. That's what's really bothering people. And I think it's a big danger now. Everybody's convinced now that illegal immigration was a disaster,

12,000 people a day under Biden and earlier, even under Obama. But now they're questioning legal immigration. And I think they're saying, if we're going to have legal immigration, it's got to be diverse, it's got to be limited, it's got to be merriocratic. The people have to have some wherewithal and they have to have some fluency in English and they have to come here to be acculturated,

assimilated, and integrated. No more ethnic enclaves, da, da, da. And I don't think these people in the Socialist Party understand that. And I would imagine if in the Senate races, you're going to see a lot of money spent with the quotations from all these people, you know, that these are stupid colonial women

that date this person. monsters and richer neighborhoods and Jews or vampire, all that stuff is going to be out there. And it's not going to sell well with the majority of America. Yeah, if Abdul al-Sayyad wins that Michigan primary, that race, the culture clash, the class-based culture clash on immigration, for example, is going to be fascinating to watch. One of the people who is now claiming actually that the Biden border was bad is Mark Kelly. we're going to talk about him right after this quick break. We'll be right back with more Victor Davis-Hanson.

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cowboy colostrum.com slash after party. We're back with Victor Davis Hansen, who is the author of the forthcoming book. It's going to be called the Counter-Revolution, the Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Victor, I wanted to get your take on Mark Kelly, who just, I think it was last week, came out and said, Biden did a bad job on the border. He was posted a picture of himself. I was going to say he was spotted,

but no, he actually actively posted this picture of himself in a Mexico jersey, watching the World Cup in a Mexico jersey. Absolutely amazing to see a U.S. senator do that, at least in my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong here, but it comes as Speaker Mike Johnson is now saying there may be legislative opportunities to mitigate the fallout from the Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling. Let's take a listen here to S8.

Well, I used to litigate constitutional law cases, so I really enjoyed Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent. It's everybody should read that, must read. And he explained that the 14th Amendment, the original intent, was to enhance and really value citizenship. And it's been devalued because of birthright tourism, which is what we have now. It's a threat to the rule of law and national security. We do need to address it. We're looking at all angles. If there's some legislative fix, we'll advance that immediately.

If it's a constitutional amendment, as you know, it takes a little more time. But we've got to address this. It really is a serious, serious issue. So that was Johnson on Fox News Sunday. And, Victor, you wrote a book literally called The Dying Citizen. And it feels like the Mark Kelly picture is like a physical photographic representation of that. Yeah, it is. answering the second part first, there are things that Trump can do.

He can issue an executive order as a stop-get measure and just say that we don't have the resources and we're worried about the health of the mother, so we're not going to let people in after the seventh month of pregnancy. And he could do it tomorrow. Or he could, or in addition, he could say we're going to put a hold on the numbers of people who come in from China or Mexico. Those are the two areas and India as well. We're going to look at three countries and we're going to say, you know what?

We're not able to handle this birthright issue, especially this anchor baby technique. So your countries are going to have to have a much smaller number of people coming in until we can ensure you're not trying to abuse the system. And that would be why we're trying to re-address the constitutional questions. As far as Mark Kelly, it's kind of sad because he had always. He was elected and he said that Arizona was a purple state and he was a non-ideological warrior. He talked about being a Navy pilot, an astronaut, and then Trump just broke him. He just completely shattered him and he went kind of crazy. And remember that video he clipped where he basically appealed to U.S. soldiers to disobey an order,

which is a violation of Article 82, I think of 88 of the, of the, uniform code of military justice and Pete Hex-X said, we could, you know, we could try you as a felon for that. And he didn't really mean that literally, but what he was saying is we could take your pension away because it's right there in the code that no officer, flag officer, either retired or an active duty can insult not just the president, but he cannot call for a soldier to disobey an order. And yet he did in a video. And he was very, very, sensitive about that he kind of got and now he was a big proponent of the but Biden open borders he never said a word in his own state it don't his state was

the most impacted along with Texas now nobody now that Biden has been discredited kind of a tragic fallen figure nobody nobody defends him they all did but one time and now he wants to remake himself as a border hawk but he really doesn't know yet hence the Mexican flirtation because he doesn't know where the party is going. So he has one foot in, I'm going to be a Clintonite and enforce the borders because 70% of American people want that. But I'm afraid of these jacomans are going to take over the party and then I'll be out cold. He'll primary me. So I'll play both sides. Worth noting 9% of births in 2023 were to non-citizen mothers. It was hundreds of

thousands a year during the Biden administration. I'm sure, I mean, it was a massive increase in recent years. And so once you close the border, obviously, take care of the future element of that. But it's a massive problem already because you now have all of these parents who are, we've heard the sob stories of parents being, quote, separated from the children because they were not, did the children weren't deported. They didn't want the children to be deported. They tried to leave them with other people. That little boy in Minneapolis was an example of that with a father. So that's a political and just logistical nightmare for any citizen area or republic. Especially here in California.

I mean, I live in rural California in an area that's predominantly Hispanic. And I can remember a woman knocking on my door at one or two in the morning, pregnant and ninth. And desperately handing me a piece of paper. And it was the name of a O-B-Y-N doctor in the local hospital. And I said, in broken Spanish, where did you get this? I got it from Waxaca. This is where everybody goes. And I knew the doctor, so I asked her.

And she said, yeah, they know me in Wohaca, Mexico, a thousand miles away. They know every doctor in Fresno, Sanger, Rysalia, and they come across the border two weeks before delivery. And it's a $30,000 or $40,000 delivery. Things go wrong. They haven't had prenatal care. And then they're here for two weeks. And then the baby is a citizen. and they go back until they can come back again and be anchored by this U.S. citizen.

And we foot the bill. And 50% of all births here in California are on Medi-Cal, 40% of the people in California are on Medi-Cal. So it's a big problem. And it's kind of a taboo subject. If you talk about, you know, you earn that invective racism, nativist, all that stuff. But it's not sustainable. And I think even the left knows now that the state is going broke. and that's one of the reason.

Right. Well, speaking of the Supreme Court, before you run, Victor, I couldn't help myself. I had to get this cover from Essence magazine, dubbing Katanji Brown Jackson, the quote, People's Champion. The People's Champion. That's what they call her on the cover of Essence Magazine. Incredible.

They posted that they were proud to have her as the first black woman to serve on the nation's high court, quote, there is no better moment to celebrate her extraordinary legacy. Well, her legacy, actually, I went to SCOTUS blog, just to check and make sure this was still current. Her legacy is of talking incessantly, despite being the most junior member of the court. Once again, according to SCOTS blog, she leads the aggregate chart at 53,299 words across cases. She is distantly followed by Sotomayor at 34,967 words, Kagan at 30,000. So the liberal justices or the Democrat appointed justices far ahead of the conservative Republican appointed justice, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were under 28,000, and then Alito 24,

Amy Coney Barrett, 23, and Clarence Thomas. And, well, John Roberts is at 16, Clarence Thomas, at a characteristic 7,200. She also, oh, in opinion, this time she wrote like these weird colloquialisms wait for it understood the assignment she put them into court writings that's i i feel like that's actually really the legacy and reputation of katanji brown jackson the cover girl victor davis hanson well i i think she speaks i i think i read 54 or 53 percent of all of the words that are uttered is by her and unfortunately she's not an accomplished judge, and she wasn't when she was appointed. She doesn't write well.

I thought she would have good staff, but her opinions are poorly written. She can't articulate it what her points are, and they're almost always contemporary politics. They're always in reference to the binary. This particular group is victimized. This particular group is victimizer. And so there's no legal there or there. And that's really hurt the left because those two appointments, Sotomayor and Katanji Brown, are not the best left-wing judges they've had. They're actually the least educated in the law and not very well.

They're not analytical and they don't write well, and that's hurt their cause enormously. And especially when you're up against people like Gorshich or Alito. And so, and, you know, they were, let's be honest, they were DEI appointments at the time. I remember Sotomayor said we need somebody like a wise Latina. She used that word, I think, 20 times in one speech. And she said that I think a wise Latina can be, we'll understand problems better than a white male. Katangi Brown had a series of that type of lecture. And I think part of the problem that they're encountering is,

in the public sphere, people are fatigued. I really, you really get that feeling that for all the controversies around Trump, the wider landscape is just, they, here at the anniversary, they think, you know, if this identity politics and this grievance and this constant whining continues, the country, it's not sustainable. It's, we're breaking apart. And it's coming at a time when the people who are whining, whether they're of a, Dami type immigrant or whether they're Katanji Brown or Jory Reid or Sunny

Hosson have never been more affluent, never been more fortunate. And instead of just offering a little bit of gratitude, it's always bad, bad, bad, terrible country, it's unfair. I'm so victimized. And I think people have just psychologically and intellectually exhausted. They're just kind of like a mission, you know, a monastery of the mind. So many people are just checking out. They don't watch the Grammys, the Oscars, the Tonys.

They don't go to movies. They just said, I've had it. And I think the pollsters, that's one of the things they didn't really pick up on. They don't want to talk to a pollster. And that's why, you know, NPR had Kamala Harris four points ahead the night of the election. And she lost by a point in a half. So they were five, they were five and a half points off. because they can't calibrate that.

That's why I'm not as pessimistic as everybody on the midterms. I think there's a lot of people who don't report to pollsters and they're quiet, but they're adamantly that they're tired of the whole progressive project from A to Z. Victor Davis-Hanson, what a treat to have you on the show tonight. Thank you for having me. Oh, my gosh, of course. The new book is called The Counter-Revolution, The Rise and I'm sorry, the fall. and rise of Donald Trump. That's an important sequence and the macro movement. Thank you so much, Victor.

Thank you, Emily. Appreciate it. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored by USA Fax, a nonpartisan organization making government data easier to access and understand, which is a very important goal. I'm partnering with them on a campaign called the data we depend on. The idea is simple. If the government is going to spend all of our taxpayer money and then make massive decisions, it should have to show its work. that? This starts with reliable public data. Government data helps track the economy, spending, and education. You probably heard me citing sources like the BLS, the IRS, or DHS. But when that data is slow, incomplete, or hard to access, as it often is, lawmakers just have less to work with, journalists have less to check, and then the public has a harder time finding the truth. So if you care about accountability, you can't measure if programs are working or call out

failure if the basic facts are buried. USA Facts is asking Americans to sign an open letter to lawmakers in Congress. The ask is straightforward. Use data to legislate and then fix the data when it falls short. This is not a partisan issue. Whether you want more government, less government, or just a government that has to show its math, you need reliable facts. Read and sign the letter at USAFacts.org slash support data. Welcome back to AfterParty, everyone. We had a hardout with a great Victor Davis-Hanson, but one of the things I did want to mention, actually, before we move on to more important topics like Taylor Swift, is that there is new polling, kind of along the lines of what he was discussing, which is exactly

why I thought Mom Donny's address on July 3rd was so interesting. This is from the Cato Institute. They found overwhelming majorities of Americans are grateful and proud to be American. So 86% say that they are grateful. 79% say they are proud to be Americans. Most also believe America is a land of opportunity. They say most feel positive. 76% are positive about the nation's founding, and 70% believe its founding principles remain relevant today.

So to Victor's point about the negativity that's come out of this next generation, even building on the previous generation, the AOCs, regarding DSA-style candidates, DSA-aligned candidates. One person who's never really done this, actually, is Bernie Sanders. I think probably to some people he comes across as overly dower, but he was getting huge crowds in Iowa, Wisconsin. He beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 in some of those rural states with big blue-collar working class populations.

And so there's a way for this message to be pretty potent. And I don't know, that's why I played that banning clip. I don't know that Republicans are totally prepared for the direction that Mamdani is clearly trying to steer DSA world. I don't know that he can do it, first of all, because if you're Dario-Lisa Avela Chevalier, you have this ex-history saying things that you're wiping your, you didn't have a napkins, you're wiping your hands on the American flag and being incredibly negative about the project,

referring to yourself as a communist. Clearly, we actually have this from the Washington Post. Republicans are pivoting now to specifically talk about communism. Washington Post has been tracking mentions of, like, influencers and people on the right when it comes to communism. It first hit me over the weekend as Trump was mentioning, communism in his Fourth of July speech really intentionally and clearly strategically. And the post reports that communism has been mentioned in the statements, well, here, I'll just read the whole thing.

They say right-wing influencers and Republicans are talking about communism more than they were a year ago, according to a WAPO analysis of public statements from high-profile figures on the political right, including social media posts and podcasts using data provided by the national conference on citizenship, which is a nonpartisan group, they say, from January to June. They use the words communism or communist in an average of about 626 posts per week. This is for numbers. They're so specific. Up from around 439 per week during the same stretch last year.

That's a 43% increase. They also report that communism has been mentioned in those statements more often than socialism in recent or in most weeks this year. So just adding to that, they mentioned Pew Research polling, which found about 17% of Americans reported a favorable view of political leaders who identify as Democratic Socialists in January. That was about the same as it was in 2022, but the percentage of those with a negative view has fallen by about eight percentage points from 45 to 37%. And the percentage of those with a neutral view of such candidates has increased by a similar

margin. So realizing, I suppose, that the socialist label has been blunted for various reasons in recent years. My explanation for that, by the way, is people are frustrated with the status quo. So the strategy for me would be if people are upset about the status quo, you can't just label people socialists. And I think this actually extends also to just labeling people communists, because you can label people socialists and communists all you want. The problems is that voters might think you're then representing or defending the status quo instead of offering an alternative to A, the status quo, and then B, socialism or communism,

I think it's hard to make people believe, with the exception of like Darius Avales Svalier or any of these DSA candidates have openly called themselves communists, that somebody who's only talking about Medicare for all and free college and free everything, whatever, that that's communism. I think it comes across really more as, like, Scandinavian Nordic Democratic socialism to the average American now.

So I'm not sure that there's, the communist messaging shift is going to be an effective one because it can become a crutch, just a sort of pejorative smear. And it should be a pejorative, calling somebody a communist should be a pejorative, given the clear track record of communism in the 20th century and into the 21st century. That's a topic for another day, of course. But yes, I mean, you have to make a proactive argument for what you're going to do to smash the status quo, to oppose the political establishment to undermine political elites. And that has to be new. It can't be a defense of the broken status quo. And so when people are offering something different from that, you can't rest

on your laurels by calling them communists or socialist without also then building an argument at the exact same time. Every time you call someone a socialist or communist, you should be making in the same breath an argument for what you would do. So there's a little political analysis. God forbid anyone take my political advice, but that's what it would be. If someone were to take my political advice, that's where I'd come down on it. It's just enormously frustrating to hear some of the reactions get increasingly unhinged and not come with, packaged with new ideas. And to just be like, it's what Bannon was talking about.

You can't throw Milton Friedman and Paul Ryan at Mamdani. It's not going to be persuasive. And in many cases, it's also not more. because they're talking about a system that actually is overly consolidated, economic sectors that actually are overly consolidated. So you need new solutions and you need to talk about them in the same breath. All right. That's enough of that. Let's talk about Taylor Swift.

So I did want to just take issue with part of the coverage of the Swift Kelsey Wedding Spectacular, which was held at Madison Square Garden. And the coverage keeps mentioning how intimate it was. Intimate. Because there were like a thousand people there. Listen to Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos, who were at the wedding for some reason. By the way, that's how intimate this wedding was. Close personal friends of Taylor Swift, Robin Roberts, and George Stephanopouls were there to observe the noxules. Let's take a listen.

You can confirm that? We can confirm that. Yes, Stevie Nix did perform. But it was so, it really was intimate, wasn't it guys? As intimate as it could possibly be given it was Madison Square Garden. Really this garden inside the garden, it was just so beautiful. And it was, it's hard to imagine that a place that big and a wedding with such stars could feel so personal and so intimate. Because they had their neighbors, their high school friends.

It was like any wedding that you would attend. It was their dream wedding, and it was really what it made. Congratulations to both of them. Oh, and their vows. All right. They wrote their own vows. Little bucks. Yeah. You would expect nothing less from Taylor Swift.

That's true. And on top of congratulations, thank you for inviting us. Yeah. Thank you. That was very nice. Really, really appreciate it. Oh, apparently the entire cast of Good Morning America was invited. You know, I do hope at some point we get to hear Travis Kelsey's self-written vows.

That does sound incredible, just as incredible as the moniker, Travis Kelsey wedding guest, Lena Dunham. If you told me 10 years ago that Travis Kelsey's wedding, would be attended by Lena Dunham. I guess I would have had to assume he was marrying Taylor Swift. That's the only possible explanation for why those worlds would collide in such a beautiful, beautiful, moving way. Lena Dunham apparently gave a hilarious toast comparing football to gay porn at the

wedding of a football player attended by a bunch of football players, just back on her bullshit. No question about that. But in the vows, apparently Travis Kelsey promised to protect Taylor Swift for, which is very sweet and I think does speak to the nature of the relationship that Taylor Swift ended up in, the nature of the forever relationship that Taylor Swift ended up in feeling so betrayed, publicly betrayed by other wealthy, in many cases, older, famous men with whom she had relationships in the past. What she found in Travis Kelsey was something actually very masculine and she, her new album, we covered it here extensively.

I had some really like trad undertones. It's obviously not trad. There's no way to spin it like that. But it had some undertones about just wanting the simplicity of a kind of traditional husband, wife, mother, father type relationship. And that's underscored by Travis Kelsey saying in his vows that he's going to protect her forever. I thought that was actually a very interesting detail from some of the reporting. But what you just heard there about the garden within the garden and that making it feel into. actually makes me feel a little sad for Taylor Swift because what she did was basically get married

at a Taylor Swift concert. According to TMZ, she actually walked down the aisle to one of her own songs. It was a string rendition of one of her own songs. We actually, as of right now, don't know what it was. But she's at an arena. She does arena tours, obviously, walking down the aisle to one of her own songs and she made basically sets. So the CEO of AMC theaters, a guy named Adam Aaron, posted this weird narrative of the entire ceremony and he actually ended up deleting it. But he wrote at one part, the party, actually he wrote it this way, then the party on an even larger stage set of a secret garden that was just exquisite with five-story tall, lit trees, superb food and drink, an A-list audience to fete the young couple, and music, music,

apparently Stevie Nix and Paul McCartney. That's how intimate and personal it was, by the way. But listen, she just, right in that statement, she had a stage set of a secret garden. So she's getting married in an arena in front of the media, by the way, of the entire cast of Good Morning America. They can't be that close. These folks who get invited to an intimate personal wedding that wasn't intended to. result in some kind coverage or some reaction on Good Morning America. Taylor Swift's not dumb, of course, but she's in an arena walking down the aisle to her own music,

and she's made arena sets. Of course, it's a thousand people versus tens of thousands of people, but she got married on sets, basically. She created sets. You could argue, I guess, to some extent, most fancy weddings are done on a set. But I actually just think this speaks to this effort to create a happy medium between commercialization and genuine intimacy. This is going to sound really quaint, but as far as I can tell, they got married by Adam Sandler, which is honestly kind of awesome. But as far as I can tell, and I did a scan of all the media reports, I even had clawed to a scan of all the media reports, there really was no mention of faith or God or religious.

and marriage is a sacrament. It's a commitment before God. And yes, of course, as a sort of lowercase O Orthodox Christian, I'm going to take issue with marriage ceremonies that don't center God. They also reportedly, though, have a wild prenuptual. It's like supposed to be one of the, like, most serious prenupt arrangements in history, like in legal history. No surprise there. But when you have this like legally complicated prenupt, you're getting married. at Madison Square Garden. They lit up the Empire State Building blue for something borrowed. I don't know whether that was initiated by the Swift Camp or just by the Empire State Building that was happy to be included if it could be included. But that is actually not intimate at all.

None of that is intimate. But I think what Taylor Swift wanted was intimacy. And that's what makes me sad, right, is that she tried to have a facsimile or she tried to have a simulation of intimacy. But she also wanted to have all of the A-Listers, the Good Morning America people, she wanted to get married on a set. I have no idea whether it was her idea or Travis is to walk down the aisle to her own music. Charitably, I'll just say I don't know whose idea that was. Some people might just assume it was hers.

Who knows? But she got married at a Taylor Swift concert, basically. And some people have this theory with Swift that she was forged, because she got so famous, It's a theory that people have about a lot of celebrities, that when you get famous, you are basically preserved in amber at the age where you really become a mega celebrity. Like, it's hard to unfreeze yourself from that age. And it's a criticism of Swift that I've always been kind of neutral on that she has this childlike innocence that she tries to maintain. And it's naivete. It's also kind of cringe. You know, it's the girl who's always raising her hand with the answer in class,

but also kind of wants to seem like she's too cool for school. She's got that combination. And she wants to fit it with the cool kids, but she also isn't actually like going to have the courage to go out and drink and do a bunch of drugs. And not all courage is good courage, for the record. That's not an endorsement of doing a bunch of drugs. But she also at the same time does want to seem edgy.

and like she's subversive, but she's ultimately kind of frozen in amber at this teenage part of her life. And that's, again, part of what makes us a bit sad. I honestly do hope for the best for them. I think a lot of people get this wrong with their weddings. Marriage is a sacrament. You are making a commitment before God. You are entering into a contract with God and with your spouse. And you really, I mean, if you can afford Madison Square Garden and a thousand people, whatever, fine.

But it's just so off-putting to hear George Stephanopoulos describe this as personal and intimate. That's a word that was used in a lot of the media coverage, by the way. It was quoting some people that were describing it as intimate. And that is, again, it's supposed to be a compliment to Swift. to be like, wow, you transformed Madison Square Garden into this personal and intimate venue. And I suppose from a stage managing perspective, that is quite an achievement that anybody had the thought that this was personal and intimate despite inviting all of the anchors of Good Morning America and doing it Madison Square Garden to your own music and whatever.

But the real intimacy should be with God and with your partner should be with your family. That's another thing that people get wrong, obviously, in wedding ceremonies, is that you have your family and friends there, per a lot of people's faith, is as a measure of accountability. This is a community that you are enhancing, improving with your commitment, and they can hold you to account for it as well. It's like two-way street. And when you create a ceremony that has this garden aesthetic built up as a set, like you're in a production. It's not really intimate. It's, it's simulated intimacy. And again, I don't have any idea what their private relationship looks like. They seem really happy. They do. They seem really happy. As far as I can tell,

which is not very far because I don't know them. But Taylor Swift has always been very open about her personal life. Kelsey's pretty open. This is this podcast. And you get genuine glimpses into their life as calculated as they are, but they do seem happy. And I hope that they have a long and happy marriage. I think Swift's last album shows she wants something that a lot of people want, and that is very healthy to want as well. So maybe that'll help steer them, guide them in a genuinely healthy direction. But it was bugging me that this kept getting described as intimate, because from all the reports, it was just an utterly simulated intimacy. So I'll leave it there for tonight's edition of After Party.

It's a pleasure to be with you all from Santa San Diego, as I mentioned in the opening. Really appreciate you tuning in. Please do subscribe on YouTube. If you haven't yet, it's such a help for the channel. Like, comment. All of those things are big help. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. That's also where we do a Friday edition of the show.

And I'll see you back here on Wednesday with more After Friday.