After Party with Emily Jashinsky - James Van Der Beek's Legacy, Pam Bondi’s Brawl, WashPost’s Pathetic Protest, & Media’s ICE Narrative, with The Bedfords & Lionel Shriver

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Emily Jashinsky opens the show with a moving tribute to actor James Van Der Beek who passed away following a battle with cancer. She shares personal reflections about him, his career, and the kindness he showed her. Then Emily is joined by her friends: Christopher Bedford, senior politics editor for Blaze News and author of The Beltway Brief, and Sarah Bedford, investigations editor for the Washington Examiner. They begin with a discussion on the absolute circus in Washington on Wednesday when Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before the House Judiciary Committee. Then the conversation moves to a grand jury’s refusal to indict six Democrats who told active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, plus new headlines about Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 election and why it matters. They also discuss a cringy new video of Washington Post Tech Guild members attempting to enter the newspaper’s office building in protest. Next Emily is joined by Lionel Shriver, author of the new book “A Better Life.” They discuss media framing of ICE data, and why Shriver’s new book is receiving such harsh criticism from the left. Emily ends the show with a big announcement about the future of “After Party.” Stash Financial: Don't Let your money sit around. Go to https://get.stash.com/EMILY to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase and to view important disclosures. Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/AFTERPARTY Cardiff: Get fast business funding without bank delays—apply in minutes with Cardiff and access up to $500,000 in same‑day funding at https://Cardiff.co/EMILY Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to After Party. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. We have three guests and a big announcement on tonight's show. We're going to be joined by Christopher Bedford, Sarah Bedford, and author Lionel Shriver over the course of the next hour plus. So thank you very much for being with us. It's like I said, a night where we will be bringing you a little special announcement towards the end of the show. So please do stick around for that. And if you do have any questions, I will be answering them. I record. the weekly edition of Happy Hour on Thursday afternoon. So if you want a question to get in this week, or if you want to get a question in this week, go ahead and email Emily at devilmycaremedia.com roughly before tomorrow afternoon, and I'll work through those in the inbox. It's a sad night for me,

and I know for many of you as well, we're going to cover James Vanderbeek's passing in just one moment. Pam Bondi was on Capitol Hill today for what has to be one of the wildest, wildest congressional hearings of all time. And that is a very, very high bar, of course. So we're going to talk a bit about that. Sarah has some reporting on Fulton County to discuss with us. The Washington Post is crumbling. And Lionel Shriver's new book is about immigration. So we talked to her about this fascinating debate, Katie Kirk had, with Senator Rand Paul and how the entire conversation needs to be reimagined and reframed for

just to the sake of, you know, the human element that's involved in it. We talk a lot about why the media gets that wrong and why the left gets that wrong. So we are very, very excited about it. And that was pre-recorded earlier in the day, which means I'm going to be in the chat. So make sure if you're watching this live, you head on over to the YouTube chat. I will jump in when we have Lionel with us. Now, as promised, I do want to talk about James Vanderpike, who passed away today at the age of 48 after a battle with colorectal cancer.

He has six children. He's leaving six children and a wife behind. The remembrances of James Vanderbeek are reflective of a man of great character, which is always very telling. I have a small personal remembrance of James Vanderbeek, which blows my mind that I can even say that, Like many, many women of my generation, James Vanderbuk was the A-plus list star of our teenage years.

Now, I'm a bit younger than the real, like, core Dawson's Creek era. I actually was not allowed to watch Dawson's Creek, though I have a very vivid memory of when I was like five years old, walking downstairs and seeing Dawson's Creek on the TV and being told I could not watch it, go back upstairs. And that, I think, piqued my interest. So by the time I was, I don't know, like middle school age, the reruns had just started. TBS played a rerun every day. And DVR had recently come out. So I would DVR, my parents, if they're listening to this, are going to throw a fit.

But I would DVR the episodes of two shows that I was not allowed to watch, Friends and Dawson's Creek. week and both of which had recently ended and watched them and delete them before my parents got home. I had a small window between like soccer practice and my parents getting home that I would watch and delete and they played them in sequence. So I got to watch both shows fully in sequence. And again, like many, many people, Dawson's Creek had a massive impact. And it helped me sort of map my own thoughts about the world and where you can go at after high school and as an ambitious kind of young person, what that can look like.

I just was so, again, like many people, this is not unique, connected with the character of Dawson Leary. And even if you didn't know James Vanderbigh well, or even if you didn't ever watch Dawson's Creek, or know of Dawson's Creek, there's a really important story to be told when it comes to James Vanderbeak. And my personal anecdote is that he was a huge breaking points fan. He was a very dedicated breaking points viewer. And he did us a great favor of coming on the show back in

2023 to make a very prescient point. He decided to speak out and ask Joe Biden to hold a Democratic primary debate. That proved to be so wise and prescient and brave. And it's obvious to many of us on the Right. But to people in Hollywood world, that's not such an obvious point. And now we know that James Vanderbik hardly had all the money in the world. His family does have a go fund me right now because they were doing everything they could to beat his cancer financially. You may remember he was auctioning off memorabilia from varsity blues. At one point, it's expensive. And I think that just speaks to the fact that this guy wasn't a, if you know much about Dawson's Creek, you know that there were licensing problems and all of that. This guy was not. you know, rolling in residual dough like a lot of other people are from that era. And I think that, again, just speaks to the bravery of him coming out and saying, Democrats need to hold the primary debate. It was a very unpopular thing to say at the time, very, very unpopular thing to say on the time, at the time on the left, let alone in a media forum.

And he did it. So it was brave and it was smart and it was wise. And I think before, after the interview, Sager and Crystal, told James that I was beyond excited to have him on the show and I was a huge fan. And he DMed Saga afterwards. And it just blows my mind. Like if you think of the person who was like the biggest celebrity to you when you were a kid and then imagine them even like knowing a scintilla about you,

he sent Sager a DM that said, please give Emily my best and tell her to keep up the great work. Mind-blowing. And he didn't have to do that. He didn't have to come on the show. he didn't have to speak out. But for me, it just is why, this is the explanation of why so many people connected with James Vanderbik is Dawson's Creek was this absolute love letter to monoculture at its most positive manifestation. Like the positive theory of monoculture, Dawson's Creek was

the saccharin love story too. It was about popular art that brings everyone together. And if you remember, Dawson idolized Stephen Spielberg. He famously in his bedroom set, there are Spielberg posters, Jaws, Jurassic Park, E.T., all over the walls. And he saw Spielberg as somebody who pioneered this new technology to capture these very ancient human emotions, the oldest human emotions, the most common human emotions. But he did it in these really groundbreaking ways, but for everyone, for everyone. And Dawson's Creek was a monocultural phenomenon, of course, right? This was for people in high school at the time, water cooler TV, appointment TV, you were out of the loop if you weren't watching Dawson's Creek connected with so many people while using a more elevated

dialogue that was so ridiculous. I mean, it was elevated to the point of being completely ridiculous. But I think what Vanderbue brought to the character of Dawson was just this awe and this innocent in the most all-American way, where he loved his family and friends, but he wanted to project that love. He was ambitious enough to kind of project that love to everyone via the magic of a film and monocultural film film that was like big budget appeal to everyone the kind of thing that like top gun too was the only recent movie to really really do and as he went through life uh banderbeak really came to realize that family and marriage would be more fulfilling to him than Hollywood or even work and this is so funny again from the man who played dawson whose character was known

for being ambitious and a careerist who's obsessed with making it big in Hollywood. Dawson wanted Hollywood, but eventually it seems like James Vanderbeek really just wanted family. And that's so fitting. I think that's so fitting. I think it mirrors an arc in the culture more broadly, especially for millennials. And those wide-eyed wonder that he brought to Dawson Leary, I think, mirrored a lot of our hopes for the American monoculture, that it would be full of Dawson-Leary's, who couldn't care less about really the money or the fame,

but had this idealistic belief in Hollywood and film, bringing people together in a way that was also beautiful and inspiring. So it did. It mirrored a lot of our hopes for the American monoculture until it didn't, and until we realized that often great art and a great life can speak to smaller communities and that truth can get muddled. sometimes on the global stage. And you can believe that Cape Side, Massachusetts is a nice place,

and you can make a story about your first love that resonates without even trying to, you know, turn it into Jaws. Although Jaws is also really an ancient story emotionally. Monoculture doesn't have to be this tired IP. It doesn't have to be the 25th Jurassic Park. It can be art, and we don't really have to be ashamed of that. That, to me, is one of the big, resonant messages. of Dawson's Cricker was when I was younger. I loved popular art and popular culture, and Dawson did too, and he was not ashamed of it.

And he would get knocked down when he was defending his favorite films by the critics or people in academia who were eager to say, well, no, no, no, this French film or this is really what art is. And he would stand by Spielberg. And I think he was completely right, and completely vindicated. And that's one of the things that really resonated with me in a very meta sense because Dawson's Creek itself was monoculture. And James Vanderbeek suffered. And he embraced really the truth of humanity through his wife and his kids and through his suffering. I don't know if that would be true of Dawson, but I think it actually would.

And what James Vanderbeek wanted at the end of the day is what Dawson wanted at the end of the day. It wasn't success or great movies. It was just love and fulfillment. And we saw that over and over again. So let's roll this clip here of James Vanderbeak recently on the Today Show. looking like he was suffering, and we know that he was, talking about God. Really, the biggest change I'd say would be this journey of self-love. What I realized was, is I'm still worthy of love.

My own love, God's love. It also sounds like this, the diagnosis, helped you find some sort of new perspective on faith. Before cancer, God was something I tried to fit into my life as much as possible. After cancer, I feel like a connection to God, whatever that is, is kind of the whole point of this exercise on this planet. I don't know what James Van derby's personal belief, personal faith was at the end of his life. But you can see what was pulling on him towards the end of his life. He talked a lot in his final years about really finding ultimate fulfillment

and his wife and his children. And he loved art. I remember in that breaking points interview he did back in 2023. He was worried about what was happening to it. And he talked about just loving art because it allowed you to work with other people and find the human element in life. We talked about the coarsening of our culture after the Super Bowl, and it is probably true that Dawson's Creek contributed to that.

You may remember the moral panic over Dawson's Creek at the time. I think they were like organized calls to the network, probably from evangelical Christian groups. And yeah, I think it's true. It was part of that slippery slope. There was a lot of challenging of sexual norms on Dawson's Creek. And many people are grappling with that now. Culture is grappling with that now. But wow, was it comparatively wholesome in the age of WAP or whatever else? we can't do we can't really do monoculture like that anymore we lost our ability to do that and um

I worry that the next generation won't have a a real positive fictional character like Dawson Larry and then somebody to bring the wide I'd wonder and love and goodness to the character that um

somebody like James Vanderbeek did so like I mentioned, they do have a GoFundMe. They obviously do need money. He has six children. They said they're trying to keep their house. You can go look up that GoFundMe. It's connected with his wife. He's got six kids. So prayers for James Vanderpique and

prize for his kids, praise for his wife, and prayers for the rest of us as well. On that note, we're going to take a quick quick break and we'll be back with Chris Bedford and Sarah Bedford right after the break. Investing should not feel like a gamble. With Stash's smart portfolio, your money is guided by experts, giving you peace of mind while it grows. Stash isn't just another investing app. It's a registered

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That's get.com.com slash Emily. Get. Dot stash.com slash Emily. Paid non-client endorsement, not a guarantee. nor representative of all clients, smart portfolios are discretionary managed accounts and subject to additional fees. See the advisory agreement and deposit account agreement for details, investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC, and SEC registered investment advisor. Investing involves risk. Happy to be joined now by Christopher Bedford, Senior Politics Editor for Blaze News,

and author of The Beltway Brief and Sarah Bedford, Investigations editor for the Washington examiner, both two huge Dawson's Creek fans. You couldn't find two bigger Dawson's Creek fans than Chris and Sarah. Thanks, guys. I'm glad to be here, Emily. You know, I actually like James Vanderbeek's two-episode arc in how I met your mother. That is what I'm the biggest fan of his. I'm hearing lots of people say that today. But you know, your husband, Sarah, is basically from Cape Side. He's from the fictional town that Dawson's Creek took place in. And this is his generation, because he's an old man. I think the TV shows that I sneaked growing up

were The Simpsons and Batman, the animated series. You had pink hair at the time, actually. It was blue. It's never a pinko. Not quite. I did spike the front because I saw Blinquin 82, contemporarily. Oh, Sarah. That's not a good look.

God bless you, Sarah. God bless you, Sarah. Well, while we're having fun here, I'm going to roll a bunch of clips of this wild congressional hearing. Both of you have covered politics for a long time and have been around Capitol Hill. You've seen these types of hearings. I don't think anybody was shocked by the tone of Pam Bondi's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee today. But this has to be in the history books. And I'll be curious to see if you guys agree is one of the wildest congressional hearings ever in the existence of the United States of America.

So here you have the Attorney General facing questions about Epstein. She has, as she did when she was in the Senate, prepared research on the, she's like a binder in front of her with prepared research, including possibly the searches that people like Primala Jayapal made in the redactions at the DOJ of the Epstein files, according to a photographer who caught a glimpse at what was in her preparation materials. And they're going back and forth. Obviously, Pam Bondi has a very serious job. and it's not all about Jeffrey Epstein, believe it or not. But we're spending a moment going through a little bit of what happened. So let's go ahead and roll this first clip. And guys, we're live.

We're on camera. Our mics are going to be turned on. So let's have a little fun and enjoy it while we're watching. Mr. Chairman, please, stop the clock and restart. Oh, okay. Here we go with these theatrics. The time belongs to the gentleman from New York. We will give you a few more seconds.

We will do that. But when you ask a question, the witness gets to answer. You may not like the answer, but she gets to answer. I'm sorry, I accidentally hit the button. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit the button. Let's go to the next clip. You got a flavor of that. That was Jim Jordan trying to hold down the fort as Pambandi was being, like, accosted by the Dems.

Next clip is going to be similar. Mr. Chairman, I would yield back. Gentleman, yield back. May I answer? Attorney General can respond? I find it interesting that she keeps going after President Trump, the greatest president in American history. And if they could maintain their composure, this isn't a circus, this is a hearing.

I find it interesting she keeps going after Donald Trump. She doesn't say how much money she took from Reid Hoffman, did you? And nor did she post anything. She posted nothing on her ex-account on her Twitter account during the Biden years. Gentle lady. Yet now, all of a sudden, question asked. It will be in order. There was no question.

Let's pause here for a moment and get your reactions. This whole hearing from start to finish reminded me a great deal of Sean Spicer's first press conference. Oh, that's perfect. When he just went out there and was like, Dadao Jones. Biggest audience. The biggest audience ever, he was like, he was ready to, he's like, well, I saw, I'm pretty sure I saw the boss throw a chair at Rand Paul on the, on the base stage. So I'm going to try doing that at the press.

And I'm going to yell. I'm going to talk about the stock market and audience sizes. And it's, I know we've got a lot more clips, but watch the, I think watch it with this in mind. There's a very good argument to be made that, well, transparency is good. cameras in congressional hearings or not. Sir, were you at that first Spicer, Presser? I don't remember. I might have been, because I was a White House reporter then. It's all together. I was certainly at many a Schoen Spicer presser. I was there for the one about

the Russian salad dressing. Oh, yeah. That's a classic. Infamous one, but I don't remember that one. But he's right. It's kind of the same vibes. Performing for an audience of one. That's better. It gets better. It does get better, But that's, I think what Sarah just said. Performing for an audience of one is very interesting because we saw Trump accidentally post his DM to Pam Bondi publicly on true social, not that he cared. He was happy to have done that. Right, Sarah? That's actually what happened. Yeah, it was about prosecuting people. Like, why do you get on these prosecutions, which is basically the only exonerating thing that those defendants, like, would need?

It'd be like, short of a DM from the president himself, you're not going to get off of this prosecution. But, you know, they actually got a DM from the president of itself. But that's a really important point because Pam Bondi is not just under fire from her own party over Epstein. Like that's actually, obviously it's a part of it, but there are a lot of people who would prioritize prosecutions of John Brennan, for example, over Epstein. So part of the performance is to show that she's a loyal foot soldier. And before we will, the clips, I want to get both of your reactions to that because you're very well sourced on the right and in the administration. I have to imagine that's behind her strategy. That's like the driving force behind her strategy.

She's pretty isolated at this point and the broader of American right. I'm sure she's got a lot of strong allies in Florida. One Florida allies in a very important position in this White House. She has some people who like her and trust her, but there's a lot of discontent with how the DOJ has been handled for this entire administration, the misfires, the embarrassments, the terrible rollouts, the... But we saw this presser, and just like Sarah said, it is an audience of one, and maybe it landed. Trump's obviously not going to give up someone.

He's like the opposite of the mob boss and the departed. He doesn't give up people who are going down. They're going down because of democratic attacks. It's kind of sides with them. They could be busted, having a bit of... very close relationship with Epstein, but that's someone was going to push him. I was just going to piss him off. And she's managed to survive, I think, in part because of that. But this press conference was like another job interview. I so admire you for not slipping into saying the

departed. That was impressive. Yeah. Well, I'm on my first drink. Oh, yeah, give it, give it halfway down. Guys, I had like three before we even went to air. I was at a work dinner tonight. So we're doing great. Let's roll the next clip. And then I have more questions, of course, for Chris and Sarah. They tried to impeach him twice, and you, Mr. Nadler, were one of the leads on the impeachment. I was on the other side. I lived that with you. During impeachment, you said the president conspired sought foreign interference in the 2016 election. Robert Mueller found no evidence, none of foreign interference in 2016. Have you apologized to President Trump? The American people need to know this.

They are talking about Epstein today. This has been around since the Obama administration. This administration released over 3 million pages of documents, over 3 million, and Donald Trump signed that law. And none of them, none of them, none of them, asked Merrick Garland over the last four years, one word about Jeffrey Epstein. The performance, I have to say.

say, there are people who perform better, right? Like, that is a, it's so obviously an act. Right. Okay, so tell me, Sarah, because Pam Bondi was known before she became Attorney General as being, I mean, yes, she like co-hosted Fox and, no, it was the five. Well, she was, uh, the AG of Florida. It was unusual, but she was known for being a fairly serious person who was also kind of hot. And, but it, but it was like, that was the secondary part of it. She was known as being like serious. And that was the novelty. This felt wildly in serious. And I just, I'm just curious, Sarah, it's not that she doesn't have a point, right?

She's right to call it the Democrats hypocrisy on Epstein. She's correct that this administration actually is ultimately the administration that released three million documents. True. But how did it get from pre-admin Pambondi to 2026 Pambondi? Like, take us on that journey. Well, she isn't a prison of her own making on Epstein. Because if she had not put out that memo in, what was it, July 4th weekend, 2025, saying we're actually done with Epstein here. We're wrapping it up.

We're never going to release anything else. Then we would not be here today because the outreach stemmed from her absolutely closing and locking the door on any further disclosures. There was no reason for her to do that, right? No other previous administration had done that. Like she could have continued to produce documents on some sort of rolling basis, kind of like they're doing now. except without all the drama. But she chose not to do that. And, you know, that was after she had the binders, right?

Oh, yeah. I do like that. You look to your husband for affirmation. Right? That's great. So the finders that she rolled out to the influencers, which are, by the way, the people who would know the most about whether you had new Epstein information or old Epstein information, right?

you gave that stuff to the most engaged audience that you possibly put. And so we won't be here if it wasn't for Bondi's own missteps. And while it is true that Democrats were not interested in this before Donald Trump became president, this is completely not an organic uprising on the left of desire for information about the Epstein scheme or his victims. This was avoidable. And I do think that she's kind of allowed herself to be led by the nose. by these Democrats into indulging the outrage over the Epstein scandal, it almost reminds me of the way that Jeff Sessions let his like entire short-lived

attorney general and Europe be bogged down by Russia because he caved and he lent legitimacy to a sort of mob outrage there that Camp Bondi never actually had to do. But for some reason she did that. And so I agree with you when you say that like it's a completely sort of mayor. manufactured outrage about the Epstein stuff, the Democrats didn't have when Biden was in charge. But she's also allowed that to proliferate. You know, and I look at her reactions. Yeah, let's get a man's take here.

Yeah, sorry, I'll speak quiet now. Yeah, it's time. You know, a friend of mine said this to me the day, and I know this is going to tick off some of my friends. He said, I'm extremely irritated how many of these left-wing goons and totally, botched liberals and people who are actually seriously partisan, they get up on that stage, whether they're representing the FBI or the Department of Justice or the U.S. district or whatever. And they look extremely professional.

They dress the part and they act the part. They may be doing completely insane democratic stuff. They may be, as one of the guys you pointed out on Twitter today, or on X, about to run for Democratic office. But when they're wearing that, when they're actually holding that office, they present in a way that presents authority and seriousness. I know he's extremely unpopular, a lot of the MAGA right, but I know this guy is extremely unpopular. I'm about to mention with the MAGA right. But I thought that Bill Barr's first congressional hearings were just a master class. He made them look stupid, deeply, deeply stupid.

I'm not raising his voice once. Scott Besson got a little ticked off, but there was no question of who is the most serious person in the room when he was going against these questions. And to the Attorney General's point here, the questions that she faced are unsurious questions from unsurious people. It was a clown show through and through, and maybe it's having covered these for 15 years that I don't give too hoots about televised congressional hearings anymore. You never get anything out of it except for a clown show on either side. People change their opinions based on who's the president. People change their opinions based on who's in the majority. People try to forget who donated to them on this,

who they backed on that or what they've cared about before, just to get those clicks, just to get on cameras and say, I represent my voters. I yelled on TV. And it's just so deeply exhausting by the end of it. Well, Chris, I heard you say that this is a clown show, but I need to remind you that this is not a circus. It's not a circus.

It's not a circus. The circus is more entertaining. I would like to watch the circus again. And we're going to this hearing and it's like, oh, man. Well, let's roll the next clip. The fact is ICE is running rampant and you are not investigating them. When they killed Mr. Prette, and Ms. Good, that was an execution. And you did not investigate it.

and you tried to investigate her Ms. Good's widow, and you tried to investigate Mr. Preddy. They were executed, like Christy Noam executed her dog. And that was wrong. And you should investigate those people, and you should investigate anybody that uses a weapon in federal official or not for civil rights violations. Justice for Cricket.

Justice for Cricket. Justice for Cricket. She should not have shot that dog. That dog was only, what, a year old? Ridiculous. Mm-hmm. You're not like dogs. Chris says I shouldn't tell that to people

because he says it makes me sound. a serial killer. It does. It's giving serial killer. But now she's the one who wants a dog and I'm saying no. Especially because you have so many cats. It's so much worse when you know. All the snow day is trying to find a place to work with a house

with as many living creatures, schools close, nanny's stuck in. It was a lot going on in the bed for home. Yeah, no, nobody doubts that. But this raises, the the bill bar comparison is super interesting. It's not something I would have thought of. And maybe the difference is that Bill Barr was not, as Sarah pointed out, isolated in the same way that Pam Bondi is. Chris, you noted that as well. He'd never had

that feeling of desperation. I mean, maybe in the last month of the administration, when he seemed to break with the president on the election, you could say he had that. But just today, here's the announcement in the DOJ's effort in Janine Perro, who's, of course, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to charge Mark Kelly and Alyssa Slotkin to Democratic senators, we could put the tear sheet up on the screen, in their insurrection or the alleged kind of insurrection scheme because they put out that video. And those, the grand jury didn't bring charges. Now, this is a D.C. grand jury. So there's nothing surprising about this at all. But I guess it also maybe speaks to the base being frustrated, not just with Pambandi on Epstein,

But with Pambandi's Justice Department on that question of like retribution, retributory justice, is that a word? I'm making it up, but I feel like it feels right to me. Yeah. But I think two things are true. The DOJ has a serious jury nullification problem in D.C. There are left-wing groups that are well-funded that are training D.C. activists, or if they happen to it, called for jury duty, how do you? return, you know, a no true bill? How do you reject these indictments? How do you

acquit people? I mean, the sandwich guy was like a funny thing, the guy who threw a hoagie or was a sub. There are murals to him around the city. Well, he's a hero. No pun intended. But, but it was, it was funny, but also it kind of showed that, you know, people who were swept up in the really aggressive January 6 indictments in Washington, D.C., they went to jail for arguably less. I mean, hundreds of people were charged with felonies that the Supreme Court later overturns that said, that's way too aggressive. You can't charge people with that. And that's a whole other bad. So it is true that the DOJ has a jury nullification problem in D.C. And also elsewhere, they've run into that in other blue cities. But also some of these side quests from the Bondi D.O.J.

That's about like redeeming Bondi maybe in Trump's eyes, whether you're talking about, doing subpoenaing Jerome Powell, the Fed, because he won't lower interest rates, right? These senators who put out this, I would argue, irresponsible social media video. Like, do you need to build, literally make a federal case out of it? I like the Department of War had the best response to that, which is, aren't you collecting pay and holding right? Well, we're actually in charge of that. But there are left-wing terrorist groups that are like organizing and insurrecting. in blue states right now against ICE.

I mean, you have violent attacks against ICE facilities. You have federal law enforcement officers being injured. Like, what are you doing spending DOJ resources going after these senators who like probably didn't break any actual laws, right? And so I think those, the side quests really undermine the credibility of the rest of the really important accountability agenda that the Trump DOJ needs to go on. to sort of write the ship on the weaponization that we did see over the past four years of the Biden administration. I guess eight years, if you include the sanctions neutered Justice Department as well.

And I don't know what. Bondi may be trying to save her own position is really undermining an agenda. Will it work, Chris? I agree with that completely. And like I said, I just, I think back to my favorite attorney general hearing, I think of all time, when they were yelling about the preist in charge of the church across from the White House complaining about Trump. And he just responds, was that before or after we put out the fire? And I wanted the bagpipes to just come in right behind them. Oh, Bill Barr.

Yeah, this is Bill Barr. It was back of the day. It was a far cry from this. And Sarah's right. There are, there's a literal insurrection going on in an American state. and it's not a universal thing it's not a mass uprising it's organized it's planned

it actually it takes some serious investigative work but this is available to private citizens to try to get into these groups and figure out what they're doing and how they're communicating and I guess ICE has arrested a few over 600 people in the last week involved

with this for what they're able to do but that's where I would like to see resources moving I'd like people I'd like them to following the money. I'd like them to be dismantling the nonprofits that are funding these insurrections and backing people up who are committing crimes. I'd like the January 6th level of investigation into that and not these, you know, if you're going to do a show trial, they're better at least being execution in Danavit, but they can't even get to an indictment.

Did you see what Ilhan Omar tweeted today? She said, at least in Somalia, they execute pedophiles. based or not based? It's not a bad law. Can we look at that? I mean, but I guess a rare good point from Elon. I think that whatever name is, Elon, the other point of it, who was she talking about again? This came across my friend.

I think it was Trump. Trump's not a pedophile. I don't know. Well, well, Well, we don't need to quibble over Ilhan Omar's fantasy justice system. But so that Ilhan Omar would not be so pleased about is the investigation in Fulton County, Georgia, which Sarah Bedford is very, very familiar with. And you know, both of you have done election reporting that's significant and the type of stuff that a lot of the media has turned a blind eye to or actively tried to. to undermine. But here's a headline we can put up F5. This is from Atlanta News First. Fulton

County amidst verifying 315,000 votes in 2020 without poll worker signatures, without poll workers signatures. Also a CNBC headline here. This is from February 10th. So yesterday, this says former Trump campaign lawyers sparked FBI probe of Fulton County ballots, according to an affidavit. I do want to get both of your takes on this. I will preface it just by saying that Chris and I both worked at the Federalist, which was the forefront of reporting out problems, Margot Cleveland, for example, in Georgia in 2020. And a story that a lot of people don't know is actually that there were ballots cast in counties where the people didn't reside enough that was more of the margin. Now, more than the margin in Georgia. Now, does that mean

it's fraud in the way most people think about fraud? Probably not. But Georgia had a disaster on its hand with its electoral system. Republicans were in charge of the electoral system at the time. And you've seen like Raffensberger, I think it's Georgia Secretary of the state back in 2020, go on to almost be vindicated, lionized by the legacy press. And there were like real legitimate problems in Georgia. So let me first go to Sarah, because she's a native, to explain a little bit of what we're looking at from these new headlines. Yes. I'm from neighboring Cobb County, but close enough. to Fulton. And the Democrats have succeeded so remarkably in putting any sort of questions about the 2020

election out of bounds of acceptable discourse, right? You were on loom if you raised any questions about the 2020 election from about January 2021 to like last week. If you brought it up, you were a crazy person. Molly Emmett's book did some good work. Yes. Yes. And but I think her book focused a lot on the way that they changed the rules

lead up to this election, right? I mean, what we're learning more about Fulton County, and some of this has been coming out over the past year or so was the state election board. It got some more Trump friendly, friendly members on the state election board had started looking more into this. And then, you know, the Trump Justice Department came last year and they filed a civil lawsuit and said, asked nicely, essentially,

like, hey, could you give us these documents? And Fulton County said, no. And then they said, all right, we're going to go get a warrant. And they did that. So, but Bowdoin County's election was a complete mess. And when Democrats or the media come out and say, this has been looked out, this has been adjudicated because they had a hand recount and then they had a machine recount. That's really true.

Out of the allegations of impropriety have to do with the way the recounts were handled, not just the election night count. I mean, there are sworn affidavits from election monitors who participated in the hand recap that said they saw mail and ballots that had never been folded or put into an envelope but were being counted along with the other batches of mail and ballots. They saw volunteers who were not following any of the procedures that the rest of the volunteers were following, right? They had boxes of ballots where the seals were broken. There were no chain of custody documents. Nobody in the State Farm Arena where these were being counted could tell where the boxes had

come from, right? I mean, there were all sorts of anomalies that sort of compounded over the different recounts, right? You have the election night count, which raised a bunch of questions. You had the hand recount about a week or so later where there were even more anomalies and allegations of ballots being counted multiple times and stuff like that. And then you had the machine recount where you had even additional allegations that in order to make the numbers match up from all three counts, more and more manipulation had to be done to get the numbers to line up to where you didn't see any evidence of fraud, at least in the top line numbers, right? They counted 528,000 ballots in Fulton County or thereabouts every time they counted.

And in order to make it 528,000 each time, some shenanigans allegedly had to occur. And that's you had sworn affidavits to that effect. The idea that this has been looked at and adjudicated, the lawsuits that were filed in court, most of them were thrown out for lack of standing, right? The judges were like there's never been a lawsuit like this. We don't know if you're the type of- You're threatening the election. We don't know if you're the type of plaintiff who's allowed to bring this.

Even if you were, like, what am I supposed to do about it? I'm a superior court judge. I'm a district court judge. Like, can't overturn the election. Like, what do you want me to do? So the courts didn't really look at it. They just said procedurally, we don't know how to advance this. And the recounts that supposedly certified that nothing went

wrong, she only serves deep in the questions. And I'm sorry that I'm ranting. I'm just saying there's so much here that has not been looked into. You get this woman some benzos. I'm sorry. The silence, though, of the media

and the Democrats, I think is telling. You don't hear a lot of people saying this is a conspiracy, like these are lies. I think there's a recognition. You know, what you hear is nothing. This is not.

Circus. Go on, Chris. Aren't there also a bunch of votes cast by machines that didn't exist with none of the receipts actually? At least there were 10 tabulators that, you know, count the ballots that they didn't have a serial number in the record as having, allegedly, according to some affidavits filed on the Trump lawsuit, 10 tabulator machines that they didn't have a serial number and record the Fult County received those machines. I mean, it gets complicated because some of the allegations has to do with like taking memory cards out of some machines. inserting them to others and sort of scrambling the chain of. So you put up a headline earlier about not having signatures on the tabulator tapes that

correspond with 315,000 ballots. So that's really important. The tabulator tapes are printed out at the end of the day of voting or tabulating. And it says, this is how many votes were run through this machine, right? And at the end of the day, the number of votes for Biden and the number of votes for Trump that are counted on the machine, they have to total the number of votes that were run through the machine. And that's how you know that you don't have, like, fake things that were stuffed into the machine after voting hours ended, right? Right. Those documents don't really

exist to show that the number of votes that came in matched the number of votes that were counted. And in fact, there's quite a bit of discrepancy over whether the number of votes that came in matched the number of votes counted. They did not have, so Hulton County is trying to say, we don't really have good records about how many absentee ballots actually came in. And the number happened to double after midnight on election night, which was an anomaly that they never could quite explain, right? At one point, I think they said from one location where thousands and thousands of them came, allegedly, according to the poll workers who were looking at all of this,

that, well, they came in slowly because we were verifying signatures. Well, later on in the process with the state election board and everybody looking at this, it turns out they never verified any signatures, which itself is a violation of Georgia election law. So they've never explained how they didn't really understand why they couldn't keep track of how many votes actually came in versus how many they counted. It's been a huge mess. I'm so sorry. I will stop talking about it now. Two things that make me think that Republicans and Democrats alike are kind of taking this seriously. is one, the presence of Tulsi Gabbard quietly there,

even though she's a member of the administration is under attack and could be out there screaming a congressman all day. Instead, she's tried to lower her profile a little bit and focus on things that don't obviously piss off the CIA. I think that's good, but her teams have been working on these questions a lot, and it's because it's become an intelligence matter in a lot of different ways. And the second thing is

Democrats are saying, I read today in Politico, well, the statute of limitations is up, which is kind of a classic all the way back to the Clintons. It's not happening. It's not happening. It's a right-wing conspiracy. You loombedat. What difference does it make that it happened?

The statute of limitations is up and this is in the past now. It's like, oh, that story changed. That's not saying this is an evil conspiracy. That's not saying this is evil retribution. And that's saying, well, it's already done. So why are you going to look into it? But it's extremely important to restoring American,

normal Americans trust in the elections is trying to fix what's become very obvious, which is that whether you're living in Washington, D.C., or you're electing the president or you're living in any one of these states, electing local government. Fraud is extremely real. And people have been afraid. It's been outside the over from the window. to try and look at this and say,

shouldn't our elections actually have some integrity as opposed to just new liberal laws being passed? Shouldn't they're actually... Why shouldn't you have to show your identification? Why should foreigners be allowed to vote? These are no questions. And they demand asking and they demand answers. I'm glad this is something that I'm actually really excited

the DOJ's been working on. Big news, Save Act passed the House just in the last several hours. It is a huge, huge. Again. But our friend Rachel Beau, Bov, is even in the pages of the free press demanding that the Senate do a make Democrats do a talking filibuster to call this Jim Crow 2.0 as Chuck Schumer has been out there saying. And I think that's we'll see if John Thune and Republicans have the stomach for that. It's obviously what the base wants.

It's obviously politically worth doing. Totally. Emily, everybody, it's an 80-20 issue. 70% of Democrats, right? I mean, it's most Americans. And you see people like, was it Lisa Markowski coming out and saying Congress can't do this. Well, yeah, it can. It's in the Constitution. These are things that the state legislature gets the first crack at except where Congress makes a rule or changes their decision.

Yeah. It's written out. Let her do a talking filibuster on that. That would be a hell of a time. Whatever Sarah has is diagnosable, by the way, but before we... My disorder? I can't say so. No, no, no, no. Your fixation.

Which has blessed all of us. Yes. It truly has blessed all of us. But let's talk about the Washington Post because we all love the Washington Post. We're also excited for the future of the Washington Post and so excited that the Tech Guild is standing strong in solidarity amidst the turmoil. Obviously, since the last we talked about the story here on After Party, Will Lewis got tossed out. He resigned technically. But the reporting suggests that Jeff Bezos,

was upset that Lewis was at the Super Bowl while people were being laid off. Absolute pro move didn't go so well for Will Lewis. It seemed like Bezos was starting to get heat. This is my theory from the Beltway, big business types that he spends time with and kind of needed a scapegoat slash scalp to say this was, whoa, beyond the pale. This is not the Washington Post that we want, even though Will Lewis, and I can say like in my conversations with the Washington Post

was the last year or so. I did another little thing about why I took myself of the running for a job at the Washington Post that people can go look up over the course of conversations with Will Lewis. So I really liked. He was taking directions from Bezos. So this was a really, really sharp turn. Maybe suggests that Bezos is more interested in or responsive to the pressures of D.C. Of course, this is Democracy Dizum Darkness, Jeff Bezos, who did a little turn in recent years. but the Tech Guild, I don't know that they're going to resonate so much with Bezos when this is their activism. We got to roll the clip. Our plan is to walk into the building and show our right to work.

Management has locked us out and let us show them. They can't just do it. Let's go. They can. They can just do it. Turns out. I'm sure they get. Look at that.

They're trying to get through the turnstiles. They're being rejected. They're their right to be in the building. It is a right to work and is a right to be inside the Washington Post and work that work means doing our jobs and they're refusing to let us in. They're not. This is ridiculous. Yes, sir. Jeff Bezos, formerly CEO, Will Lewis, Denise, and Matt Monaghan.

We deserve to work in this building. We'll be back. We'll be back. We'll be back. We're coming back tomorrow. Truly, our generation, Caesar Chavez, I've blown away by the power of what he did. Washington Post jobs are a human right. Chris, I don't think this is going to convince Mr. Bezos.

I loved the series of tragedies that befell them in this video alone, which they posted themselves. It's not like some journalists. It's not like James O'Keefe was their secretly filming them. we're coming into the building and immediately such scene. Turns out they're not and it's like we're staying in the next scene

they're not but they will be back if the comedian Ryan Long did a skit about the Washington Post reporters it would look like this I think it's it was hysterical you know

as a guy from Massachusetts I hate to make fun too much of the way somebody talks but the way the guy talks certainly added to the comedy of the whole thing. It didn't strike me as a coal miner, exactly. Or some of the kind of guys you're used to seeing on the lines protesting for their rights to take care of their families.

I wonder how many of them actually have families. But he was also kind of doing coal miner drag, right? Like he was in his Canadian tuxedo and like his red cat. I'm not cold today. Yeah. And this is the kind of content that they're put now. I'm surprised I'm not making a profit because I watched this video, a couple times in a row.

And I just picked up on new things I loved every time. Really? Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. It's like I spy, like one of those books. Sarah, my question for you is, basically I'm asking for you to agree with the statement I'm about to make. It's not a question, so at least I'll admit that.

Great. It's amazing how in the last week, the media, who again said that the Secretary of State was going to beat the former host of Celebrity apprentice in a presidential election, then said they got wrong, they're going to do better, and then trust in media has declined to, again, a record low, according to Gallup. They are blaming Jeff Bezos for this and not pointing their finger inward at all. Like, it is all Bezos should subsidize the post. Bezos is super rich. This was so cruel of Bezos and Will Lewis. That has been the only narrative coming from the press since all of this went down.

Well, it's always somebody else, right? It's Donald Trump. like making fun of reporters at the podium or it's misinformation or it's Bezos, right? And I got to preface this by saying like it's hard for me. Maybe call it like the soft part of a woman. But I don't like to celebrate when anyone loses their job, right? So soft. Today it's them. Tomorrow it could be me.

You won't find in the lobby of the Washington team. Yeah, but you're not going to act like that. She's for my job. No. I stand. You know? And you're a good reporter. You're a good reporter.

you're not you're not sewing distrust in the media I'm not saying that every individual fired was necessarily a bad reporter I don't know I just I don't want people to dance on my professional grave I just had to get that throat clearing out of my way thank you I will dance on your grave

your professional grave not your real grave that I would be sad about celebratory tweet if I'm ever fired learn to code Sarah Lear to code Anyway I think all of these like tweets and like lamentations from the people who are fired being like, well, Jeff Bezos is so rich, he should just absorb these tremendous business losses indefinitely, as if like the reason why he's so rich isn't that he doesn't absorb tremendous losses for like softhearted reasons, right? And so that was a little bit wild, but you're totally right. There's been no introspection. It is not confined to the Washington Post. It's most of the corporate media doesn't understand why they have no press.

but it is always a sort of external locus of control. Like there isn't anything they could possibly be doing differently to change that. And so it is hard to take seriously some of those. And then the right to work thing, like repurposing an anti-union slogan is somehow like very central to their pro-union push to go into the building. It was really rich. They're so entitled. It sort of shows like political illiteracy that brought us for this moment, you know? literacy of rights in their nature, the illiteracy of job performance, the illiteracy of reality

where you can just make losses. No, you're not in mom's basement anymore. You're not. And dad's mean sometimes. You've got to go outside. You play too many video games. You're not getting clicks. You've got to go. I'm sorry, find a different job. You don't have a right to be there. It's so unbelievably entailed. And I don't know. The one thing I'll disagree with my wife on is. I like it when bad things happen to bad people. It doesn't happen enough, honestly. Beautiful. Well, that's a great note to end on. I knew this was going to be a long show, because I can't just talk to you guys for like 20 minutes. It's always going to be longer than that.

So thank you to Christopher Bedford of the Blaze and Sarah Bedford of the Washington Examiner, also the cat that was tripping around in the background. Sorry. Thanks, guys. Thank you. That was awesome. All right. So glad to have them back on the show. So like I said, we have author award-winning author Lionel Shriver coming up right after this. But first, if you finally want to fix your gut, make your hair healthier and stronger and add

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bovine colostrum you can buy. Cowboy is easy to drink and is made with delicious natural in natural ingredients and no artificial flavors. You just add a scoop of their chocolate, Madagascar, vanilla, match or strawberry in your coffee or smoothie and feel great the entire day. I always say I like the strawberry and a glass of milk. So good. Not only will Cowboy Colostrum bring stability to your gut, the peptides and growth factors will make your skin and hair look amazing. For a limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order. Just head to cowboy colostrum.com slash afterparty and use code afterparty at checkout. That's 25% off when you use code afterpastroft. party at cowboy colostrum.com slash afterparty. I'm jumping into the chat because Lionel Shriver is up next.

Stay tuned. Very happy to be joined by award-winning author Lionel Shriver, who is out with a new book. It's called A Better Life, tackling the immigration issue in novel form. Lionel, thank you for being here. Oh, it's a pleasure. You know, one of the things I think this book does, and you can correct me if I'm wrong about, in the way that I'm thinking of it, but I feel like it really, frames the conversation on immigration from a different sort of human framing than a lot of the media coverage approaches the issue of immigration. You yourself have said, you're conflicted about immigration, that the book was sort of more conflicted even than you had intended it to be on immigration. So I wanted to play this clip actually of Rand Paul and Katie Couric because

it made me think of how you approach the issue in the book. This is a recent conversation they had about a new CBS News report, which we can put up on the screen that found 14% according to the Department of Homeland Security data. It said less than 14% of ICE arrests involved those accused or convicted of violent crimes, which, of course, though, means that 60% of immigrants who had been arrested, according to this data, were accused or convicted of crimes in general. only 40% were civil immigration crimes. But it was a lot of violent crime, but also things like drugs, those types of robberies, those types of things that don't necessarily fall into that basket. So let's roll Senator Rand Paul being asked about these numbers by Katie Kirk. Less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE and President Trump's first year back in the White

House that charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses. So isn't all this talk about ridding the country of violent criminals a massive overstatement? When you come to Minneapolis, if they have a policy that says, oh, we're not going to turn over from our jails, nonviolent prisoners, people who are, I don't know why you're in prison if you're not in violent, but maybe you have a drug crime that's a nonviolent. I think there are plenty of nonviolent people in prisons. The thing is, is that's not their policy. Their policy is we will turn no one over. So what about the 14%? Such a low percentage of 400,000 people. If your daughter gets raped by the guy that gets back out and he's one of the 14%,

I don't think you're in a quibble about whether it's 14 or 64. And Lionel, that last part when I read the CBS article, I just thought the lead had been buried in a very obvious way that seems common to me. throughout media coverage of immigration. The lead would be that's like 50,000 violent criminals who are not citizens of the country or in your country. It seems like a massive number. Anyway, all that is to say, there's so much of a human framing of this. I think that gets missed in the media framing. I wanted to get your thoughts on that as we start this bigger conversation about how you explored the issue in the book. Well, just turning to that particular statistical

breakdown. The Democrats are trying to minimize what Trump is accomplishing. Actually, 14% of that many people. I think he's deported about 700,000 now. That's a lot of people. That's, you know, making the world a safer place for Americans. But more to the point, we don't want any criminals of any sort. So what? Why are Democrats suddenly assuming that people committing fraud or doing human trafficking or running a shoplifting ring? What we want them to? No, we want to get rid of them. And furthermore, the truth is Trump actually didn't just promise to get rid of the worst of the worst.

He didn't just say he was going to get rid of criminals. He said he was going to do a mass deportation of people who don't have permission to be in the country. And even recent polls documented that over half the country still want to deport all illegal immigrants. Now, that's an unrealistic goal, frankly. It's not going to happen. But it's interesting that it's indicative of very strong feelings. And that's why I wrote about this subject, this strong feelings. I mean, that's what any novelist worth his or herself is looking for,

is an issue, a situation that arouses emotion because that's the real currency of a novel. Not just, I like throwing ideas too. The novel is a great form because you can use everything. It's an unlimited form. And I was especially keen to not just do a kind of global survey of the issues, but also for once in fiction to express some sympathy with the native population. Because fiction writers never address the experience of having huge numbers of people from somewhere else.

occupy your territory. And I'm of the view that while, you know, a small number of people coming in from elsewhere, really nice, they've probably got interesting stories. Maybe they'll establish a new ethnic restaurant. But when you have massive numbers of people coming in from a foreign country, it triggers something very anthropologically primitive that it's like hold it you know you're crossing the line who are these people this is not my home anymore it frankly it triggers resentment and hostility no those are not pretty emotions so they're hard to admit to and furthermore western or western native populations are

are told that though those emotions, however unattractive, are pretty much a human universal when their territory is invaded. Westerners are not allowed, they're not only not allowed to express those feelings, but they're not allowed to feel them. And really, nobody in the art space has tried to do this from that vantage point since, like, Clint Eastwood. and I was reading the Atlantic's review, which I'm sure didn't surprise you one bit, Lionel. You've been through.

You've been through this, but there was a passage. Yes, there was a passage that stood out to me where the author says, sounding like a cranky 60-something, the protagonist, Lionel's protagonist, complaints about the state of bike lanes. And Lionel, you wrote, in the voice of the protagonist, their overwhelmingly Hispanic riders didn't glance over their shoulders before overtaking or signal when they were making a turn, end quote. And the Atlantic author goes on to say, many of these bikers are out making deliveries, of course, and then ads in parentheses, it's unclear

why Nico thinks so many immigrants work these jobs when they are, according to him, given so many freebies by the city. And just reading that parenthetical, which is so smug, it's also so dumb, because it just reflects a basic lack of understanding of the lives that these immigrants live when they come to the United States. They're sending so much money in remittances, even when they're working their butts off. They are also getting freebies from the government that is absolutely accurate. Both those things can happen at the same time. And just I wanted to ask Lionel, if you think maybe some of the reason that an Atlantic author wouldn't get this book has to do with their complete misunderstanding of the situation at hand anyway. Well, this book has already

and it was only out, as we're speaking, yesterday, it has already attracted a huge amount of negative media attention on the progressive side. And this was completely foreseeable. I foresaw it. So I'm getting, I'm reaping what I sowed. I knew this would happen. the irony being that this is a novel that actually in many instances puts the progressive case for immigration very well.

The thing is that the wokesters have absolutely zero tolerance for reading the other side, and they're spoiled, especially in literary fiction, because literary fiction has almost universally, put the immigrant side of the story. That's the story that gets told over and over again, and especially in the American context, because, you know, nation of immigrants, et cetera. And it's, you know, it's very saleable. It reflects well on the country. Oh, you know, ultimately we welcome all these people.

And the native population in most of these novels that are told from the immigrants' point of view are just a kind of backdrop. And, you know, at best, they're warmly welcoming newcomers, and at worst, there are just a bunch of bigots who will get over it. And it raises, for me, as I was thinking about this book, raises the Minneapolis specter surrounding the awful deaths of Renee Good and Alex pretty because I think what the book does is ask us who is a victim and then how should they deal with it and it's people can be victims on both sides of a conflict hypothetically of course

I just wanted to get your sense of how you think about that and if you know that's maybe what animates so much of the organizing in different blue cities around the country what's animating the uh the blue state and blue city protest is is, you know, performative sanctimony. I just don't see a lot of real concern for the immigrants themselves. These protesters have, especially after these martyrdoms in Minneapolis, as they're being portrayed, the protesters have cast themselves as the main characters of this story. They're the stars, not the immigrants.

The immigrants are simply an excuse for this display of goodness and concern and bravery, you know, putting, and also, frankly, naivete because, you know, this business of putting yourself in the way of armed law enforcement is ignorant and foolhardy and expressive of a kind of however much these people, are being cast as, you know, the Gestapo. None of these protesters really expect to be shot. And therefore, they regard themselves as, you know, bulletproof. You know, oh, you know, I'm so good, nothing bad can possibly befall me because I'm on the side of righteousness. Now, what's frustrating about the whole ICE scenario is that, you know,

Okay, I also have concerns about the justice of those shootings. I'm not sure that they stand up scrutiny. And I also am not enthusiastic about the look of these raids, the way the ice officers are dressed, and the whole spirit of it is it looks too military. and too hot under the collar, not methodical enough. But there's no reason that criticizing ISIS methods should impugn their purpose. So it doesn't mean that just because there have been some serious and fatal misjudgments

on the part of individuals in the force. that does not mean that therefore we should never enforce American immigration law. And that is the way these incidents are being deployed to prove we, you know, we shouldn't deport anybody. And you know, if you don't deport anybody, you don't have an immigration law. It's impossible to seal people off completely, especially with, you know, airplanes and that. even sealing the southern border doesn't take care of visa overstayers, you're going to have illegal immigrants in your country. And if you're going to take your own law seriously, you're going to have to pick them up and put them somewhere else. And, you know, the appearance of these things

is never going to be kindly. It's law enforcement. The act of law enforcement, it's a law enforcement. It's about force. And using force is not attractive. It's not an exercise in charity. It can be pretty ugly. And that's just the nature of the animal. And I know that Americans support deportation in theory. And I understand having discomfort in practice.

And, you know, when this, when Trump won the election, I knew this was coming. That the Democrats would find all of these little heart-rending stories of very nice people with lovely families, being, having daddy sent back to Guatemala, and, you know, and he was working two jobs off the books. Which matters, by the way, because it's rule of law. Right? And using Medicaid. But that's what was bound to happen, that the New York Times would be Chaka Block with, you know, these are. lovely people. They're obeying the law. Of course, they're breaking the law. But no, they're otherwise, they're law abiding. And how dare you deport these lovely people who just want to be good Americans?

And that's, you know, that's what we've got. And it's been turbocharged by the shootings of these two protesters. And, you know, there's no question that the Democrats, have the upper hand on the immigration narrative right now. My favorite Lionel Shriver novel is Motion of the Body Through Space. And that book came out, I mean, you were paying attention to what came to be known as wokeness when it was sort of treated as a curiosity. But that book came out before the pandemic. It came out amidst the pandemic, meaning you had written it before the pandemic, is what I should

say. Because I remember doing it, I did an episode of Federalist Radio Hour with you about the book. And it was over Zoom, which was unusual for us at the time back in 2020. And I love that book so much because it captured the motivations behind woke in a way that I think you also tried to do in this immigration book. And I just wanted to ask if you think how you think about especially like female wokeness as people, you know, talk about the offals. and they talk about how white liberal women seem to be the, you know, seems to be unhappy, but also the most woke, if we could call it that. In the context of immigration where you have like a Renee Good, how are you thinking about some of the same people who you wrote about in motion of the body through space and saw very presciently, you know, more than 10 years ago? Well, already the mother in my novel, who is a, yeah,

I would say she's a pretty classic, progressive early 60s, um, nicoz supporter. And she's come in for criticism as a, you know, as a cliche or as a, you know, I'm making fun of her. And I don't, honestly, I don't think the book does make fun of her. I think it fairly represents her. And in fact, if, if anything, it's kind of. to her than my mind is when I watch these women who are protesting against ICE.

I mean, you know, they're talking about, you know, ostensibly their positions are all about empathy and compassion. But the emotions they're expressing are rage, hostility, contempt, aggression. They use terrible language. They're incredibly insulting to these officers. They actually spit at them. They kick at their vehicles.

You know, they look, they scream at the top of their lungs. They wear totally weird clothes. And, you know, these people are beyond parity. I basically my My character is way nicer than that much more reasonable doesn't scream all the time

and and and puts together plausible and and rational reasons for supporting the position she does including you know she's very

pro mass immigration so I I think I have gentled the portrait. I thought you did the same in motion of the body through space with gentling, but also explaining and exploring the reactionary impulse that so many people had to this cultural, progressive, like, you know, soft fascism, that there was something that really triggered in people that could be unkind and irrational.

But that, I mean, it's just, it has to be. so difficult to do, Lionel, and you do it so well. Well, one of my points of sensitivity these days is that I find that a better life, and in fact, a lot of my other work is often described as satire. It's true that my book, Mania, does have a very strong satirical side to it, but in general, I do not write satire. I write serious literary fiction, which is sometimes funny. one can be over-serious. And I think that calling a better life satire is an effort to diminish it and to suggest that, you know, my characters are puppets, that they are only walking position papers,

and that the drama is subsidiary to the politics that I'm merely trying to make a point. it suggests that the book is shrill and exaggerated, whereas this is basically a home invasion story, and it's perfectly plausible. This stuff happens all the time. So, you know, this book has been called a thriller. I'm perfectly happy with that category, because unlike most literary fiction,

this book has a plot. And something actually happens, and people do things. And I've been told it's a page turner. But it's also, you know, very specifically, trying to give people who are concerned about the radical transformation of their countries a voice.

And a story. I have actually centered the story of the native population. population. Linole Shriver, such a pleasure to speak with you. Everyone go out and buy the book that's making the Atlantic mad. It's called The Better Life. It's out now. Really appreciate you being here, Lionel. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I figured that any book that the New York Times and the Atlantic hate this much can't be all bad. Nailed it. What a great line from the great Lionel Shriver there. Thank you all so much for staying tuned. I do have a big announcement. about the show actually coming up in just a moment. But first, small businesses are the backbone of

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happen in minutes with same-day funding. Banks try to lock out small businesses, but Cardiff has the key. Big banks may not want to approve your business loans, but Cardiff does. If you've been in business for at least a year and are pulling in $20,000 a month in revenue, apply now for up to $500,000 in same-day business funding at cardiff.c-o-slash-emily. Again, that's cardiff.cote.com slash Emily. Real growth, fast funding, Cardiff, borrow better. All right, before we wrap tonight, I did say I promised I teased a big announcement about the show.

We've been going for a while now. We're going to come up on our, geez, it's February. So we're more than half a year into this. We're going to come up on our year anniversary before you know it, and the sun is going to be warm, and we're going to be enjoying the thaw, hopefully, around the country. But I don't know, I'm not up to it. It feels like the snow is never going to go away here in DC,

which we are not used to this far south. But all that is to say, we're moving to prime time. Well, technically we're already in prime time, but the show is going to be starting at 9 p.m., starting next Monday. And that is our plan for the foreseeable future live at 9 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays. That's when you're going to get your afterparty. Nielsen says, not that Nielsen is super relevant anymore because we're not chasing the same linear audience, linear TV audience. But they say the peak of prime time is between like 915 and 930. Maybe your television habits are translating to

YouTube. I actually think some of that is true. But that is all to say, I wanted to make the announcement about prime time and I tried to pull data that would back me up because I just wanted to say that. I thought it would be a fun way to announce that we're moving to 9 p.m. And I'm calling it peak prime time. P.P.T. All right, maybe that's what we'll call it. But so excited, so gratified. We have a big California audience. It's a huge chunk of our audience and that just actually made us think, well, maybe if we moved it up a little bit, we would be able to expand on the East Coast as well. Some people go to it early, unlike me.

I'm going about like one or two in the morning. As our team knows, it'll be like sending messages so late. But that is when I thrive, which is why we're doing a late night show here. Not so late anymore, still late, but not quite that late. So make sure 9 p.m. is when you're here for the live stream. I'm trying to jump in the chat a lot more. It's a ton of fun. And of course, nothing's changing.

You're going to be able to catch us whenever you want to catch us. It doesn't have to be Monday, Wednesday night, live. It is a lot of fun live. We are trying to, I think live is a way that a lot of people like to get news, whether they're watching it contemporaneously. There's something nice about having something that is recorded live. We're getting totally raw, authentic reactions. We don't have a top prompter on the show. We don't have scripts on the show.

And I think that's a really fun way to do the news. And a really, if you're like me, a helpful way to do the news. I like seeing, I still like seeing live coverage, even and especially when it doesn't look or feel like CNN, for example. So we're going to be doing it at 9 p.m. 9 p.m. Don't forget, live Mondays and Wednesdays, 9 p.m. Thank you all so very much for watching, for listening. Please do subscribe.

It helps us so much. And I'm really bad about reminding people to do it. So I'll be out and subscribe on YouTube. If you haven't yet or wherever you get your podcast, we'll be out with a happy hour. episode on Friday around 5 p.m. Emily at doublemaicaremediat.com is where you can send those questions in before tomorrow afternoon for this week's recording. Have a great evening, everyone. See you back here on Monday at 9 p.m.