After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Kamala Rambles, Hillary Rages, & Joy Reid Trashes July 4th, with Rachel & Inez, PLUS Rosie in Denial

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

“After Party” celebrates its 100th episode as Emily Jashinsky welcomes fan favorites, Rachel Bovard, Vice President at the Conservative Partnership Institute, and Inez Stepman, legal analyst at Independent Women, for a discussion on politics, culture, and friendship. The ladies begin with newly resurfaced comments from Texas Democrat James Talarico who suggested a self-described “TransQueer, Latinx” activist theologian is a major source of inspiration for his worldview. Then the conversation turns to former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s latest attacks on the Electoral College. The gals also react to Joy Reid, who suggested that many Black Americans are not excited about the 4th of July, and she claims it’s the celebration of slaveholders. They also examine a high-profile Chicago cross-burning case that isn’t at all what it seemed, plus the ladies explore the reported censorship of Armie Hammer’s new thriller, “Citizen Vigilante.” Emily rounds out the show with Rosie O'Donnell’s wild claim that she believes Kamala Harris actually won the 2024 election and Emily explains why that should be problematic for Jimmy Kimmel as O’Donnell prepares to guest host his show, and more…   USAFacts: Demand government accountability by signing the open letter for reliable public data at https://USAFacts.org/supportdata   Beam: Visit https://shopbeam.com/AFTERPARTY and use code AFTERPARTY to get our exclusive discount of up to 40% off.   Cozy Earth: Visit https://www.CozyEarth.com & Use code EMILY for up to 20% off 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. Our guests tonight are Inez Stepman and Rachel Beauvard. Why? Because it is officially our 100th live edition of After Party. That is one full year. It's kind of odd how that worked out. That 100 episodes perfectly brought us to one full year of After Party. It's been an incredible year.

So thank you to everybody who's watched the show. Subscribe me, by the way, is the best way that you can help the show out. Subscribing on YouTube is super, super, super. helpful liking, commenting. That is all enormously useful to us, but we just want to say how much we appreciate everyone for enjoying the show, for engaging over on Emily at double-micaremedia.com my email address. It's been tons of fun. Appreciate you all for being a part of the show's success. Also, a big shout out to our team here at After Party, Kelly, Grace. You have all been so helpful over the last year, instrumental. Everything you see on your screen comes from a

team. So, except for, you know, of course, what you can see me saying live. That's why we love doing a show live. So, of course, we are very grateful to them as well. Big, big show. We are going to take a tour of crazy things that you're hearing from Democrats, not just for the fun of it, but actually because they're lagging where they were in the generic ballot remarkably, where you have a low approval rating for Republican president, but they're lagging where they were in the generic congressional ballot by a good bit versus 20. So there's a lot to get to on that front. Rose O'Donnell is going to be filling in for Jimmy Kimmel while he takes a vacation.

And then we have some serious stories to get to as well. Man, there's new Tala Rico stuff. There's Father's Day tributes from the New York Times that must be seen to be believed. There is this cross-burning, like hate hoax that turned out to be from an anti-Christian, anti-Maga Asian in Grant Park. I want to break that down. write that down. And Army Hammer has a new movie that the director is saying is being suppressed because it's critical of migrants. So there's a ton to get to. We're very, very appreciative that everybody is here with us. Now, I do want to start the show just by giving a, I was going to say a little

tip of my hat, but I'm going to say a big tip of my hat to, it's the least I can do, to my wonderful grandfather who passed away at 94 last week. He was a Marine. He served in Japan during the Korean War, came home, had seven children he's seen here for the listening audience with what appears to be a Miller genuine draft and a tiny sailor, who is me. Probably like one years old. It's probably from like 1994. But he raised seven kids on an electrician salary, did so much hunting and fishing, but specifically hunting, a life. very well lived and we are so, so grateful my whole family, so grateful to my wonderful grandfather. So I didn't want to let the show go by without a massive tip of my hat to him.

He will be enormously missed. I know many of you have wonderful stories of grandfathers just like that. So appreciate you all being here. That was a heavy father's day on our end in Jershensky World. But I just wanted to make sure that we all, you know, took some time to think about people who, who had such amazing lives and just worked so, so hard, served the country, just very grateful just as an American, but also, of course, as his granddaughter. So without further ado, let's get on with the show.

We'll take a quick break and be right back. This episode is sponsored by USA Fax, a nonpartisan organization, making government data easier to access and understand. And I'm partnering with them on a campaign called The Data We Depend on. The idea is pretty simple, if the government is going to spend all of our taxpayer money and make massive decisions, it should actually have to show its work. That starts with reliable public data. Government data helps track the economy, spending, and education. You've probably even heard me citing sources like the BLS, IRS, or DHS, but when that data is

slow, incomplete, or hard to access, as it often is, lawmakers have less to work with, journalists have less to check, and 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 Fax is asking Americans to sign an open letter to lawmakers in Congress. The ask is straightforward. Use data to legislate and 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 usafax.org slash support data. All right, everyone. We're back now with Inez Stepman and Rachel Bovard.

And as of course of independent women and Rachel of the Conservative Partnership Institute, episode 100. Welcome back, kids. Great to be here. All right. So Rachel, I just wanted to mention lost power randomly and drove through a storm to her office to be with us on episode 100. So shout out to you, Bovard, for caring. Not only that, I hooked myself up to this studio all by myself by FaceTiming our studio director. So I am DIY and, you know, grandma got it done tonight. So you're welcome. I was pretty sure that wasn't going to happen.

Well, I'm told by the crew, told by the crew that we have a clip pulled from the first episode with you guys. I actually don't know what this clip is. So we're all going to watch it together. Let's take a look now. We've run out of time for the most important question I wanted to ask both of you, which is just name five things in order that I do better than both of you. I'm of course kidding. These two are very good friends of mine, and I happen to be slightly younger, and they like to give me guff for being young and inexperienced. But I appreciate.

I'm so happy that you guys were here on the first night. I was telling you I need a little moral support. Anything for you, Emily? Yeah, anything for you, Emily. And we think we're so excited to be here. And we're so excited for your show. We were talking actually just before you had us on, or up to her texting.

We're like, don't tell her. But she's incredible. She's doing an incredible job. So we're very proud of you, like two old crones. Yes, very proud. Thank you guys. I love you guys. I still love you guys.

And I believe we ended that conversation with me, giving you time to come up with five things that I do better than you. A year has passed. And I have yet to hear back from, either of you on that. Rachel, it's probably tech on your end. And Anez, I don't know. I was telling your producer before we got on the show that I'm shocked that you still let us come on 100% later. So, you know, we're humbled, Emily. Well, you guys are fan favorites, of course. And you guys, I said it in that first episode, but the moral, the moral support element

of this is very real because it's great to just be able to have conversation with people you trust and you've got another sense of humor. So let's dive in because speaking of sense of humor, I want to just take a little tour here of what's going on with Democrats. Now, we'll start just by noting, as I mentioned a bit in the intro, Donald Trump's approval rating, according to the RealClear Politics average, is at 40%. Democrats, though, are 4.8%.

They have a 4.8% lead in RealClear Politics's generic ballot, which is often used, of course, to gauge how well things are going to go in the House for any given party in any given midterm cycle. That is a healthy lead. There's no question about it. And I think it's still likely that Democrats have a very, very, very good night in November. But what's interesting is that their generic ballot lead on this day in history, according to Real Clear Politics, in 2018, was plus 6%. Again, right now they're at plus 4.8%. It was plus 6% back in 2018. and there's something kind of interesting about that. I think they're having a little bit of a post-2020, post-peak-woke identity crisis.

I don't think that. I mean, I think we all know that. So I want to start with this audio that was unearthed today. The RNC posted it, which tells me that they probably had that audio and gave it to somebody, where Tala Rico, according to the RNC, blames whiteness and masculinity for limiting his religious beliefs and looks to self-described, quote, trans-queer Latinx activist theologian Roberto Henderson Espinoza as his, quote, inspiration. We'll have more on Henderson-espinoza after everyone gets a chance to actually just listen to this clip. We can roll it now. My imagination is also just limited by my own,

my own background and identity, right? My own, my whiteness, my masculinity, all those things limit my imagination about what's possible. So I have to continually press against that to try to expand and the limits of what I'm dreaming of for our community. And that's where, you know, Dr. Robin, your book helps if you do that. Rachel, starting with you here, he's talking like somebody who should be running for Congress in Brooklyn. He's running for a Texas Senate seat. That turnaround from what he talked about back then to now. This was from March 2021, not that long ago.

remarkable. It's like he is now trying to show that he had a total, like, personality transplant. I don't think it's going well for him to show he had a total personality transplant, but you can't win in Texas unless you are successfully able to pull off. I would imagine that you sincerely had a personality transplant. And I don't think he's capable of that. Am I crazy here? I mean, winning in Texas by criticizing straight white men, like, very curious how he's going to pull this off. But it was funny because I saw Senator Eric Schmidt, who's from Missouri tweet this out, this clip out and say this is like woke AI. And it kind of does feel that way. It's like, you know, pick on white men, but make it woke and religious. And that's kind of what

it feels like. It's just like pulling these, you know, words, like imagination and like limiting our future and all these things like putting them together. He does really seem like he's, you know, it's Beto O'Rourke, but like through the woke AI bot. So, you know, good luck. Like I don't, I I will admit, I don't totally understand Texas politics as another country to me, but I still have a hard time believing the skin went in Texas. Yeah, so let's talk more about Roberto Anderson Espinoza. And as I'm curious to get your take on this, the New York Post reported on June 22nd. So today, Texas Democratic Senate hopeful James Tolariko once lavished praise on a self-described transqueer Latinx activist theologian as a major source of inspiration for his left-wing philosophy.

This is a quote from Tala Rico. Oh, it's hard to even read. When you started following me on Twitter, I couldn't contain my inner fanboy because I read your book last year and it continues to inspire me and y'all's work continues to inspire me. He told Henderson Espinoza on a March 21 podcast appearance. I told you I was a boring straight cis white man and I added Presbyterian to spice it up, Talarico added. My imagination is also just limited by my own background and identity. Henderson Espinosa, a PhD scholar, the Post reports, uses he they pronouns and self-describes. as mixed race, autistic, non-binary, transgender, and Latin X. In 2018, Henderson Espinoza penned a paper calling for transing religion as one approach

to methodologically dismantle the logic of the norm that grounds the reproduction of binarisms and theologies of complementarity. That somehow manages to make Judith Butler sound legible. I'm just going to read this one more time. This is who James Tolariko said has been important for understanding his belief system. This is a paper that calls for the quote, transing religion as one approach to methodological, dismantle the logic of the norm that grounds the reproduction of vinerisms and theologies of complementarity. This person, Henderson Espinoza, praises the Bible, is transpositive, described transgender

individuals as Easter icons. Just one more thing I want to add from this is going back to what Tala Rico said, when you started following me on Twitter, I couldn't contain my inner fanboy because I read your book last year and it continues to inspire me and y'all's work continues to inspire me. So, and as you live in New York, you should be able to translate that for us. Does it translate into Republican Senate victory? In Texas. Yeah. In Texas is the key point here.

First of all, there will be a huge movement on the left to dismiss all of this as irrelevant, right, to politics. We're not allowed to care that somebody on the left may not have a grasp of basic biological realities. That's just, you know, the billionaires making us fight in the comment section or whatever. Of course, not the way that ordinary people think about politics. They have a right to think about politics, for example, that these basic truths might be actually important to somebody's worldview or how they might govern. But I think Democrats have a larger problem here, which my friend Jeremy Carl called it the Platiner paradox, but I think it applies equally here, which is, especially in red states or purple states, Democrats realize that running like the very normy seeming straight, right, white, man, like that would be a good thing for them to do in this political environment. They understand that, or at least the consultants understand that. The problem is that for the last 20 years,

in order to be a member of good standing on the left, you have had to denounce straight white men. And so the people, the candidates that they're coming up with that fit that self-denunciation box are just very strange or out there people. They're attracting people with bizarre backgrounds, people. And that's because anyone who denounces themselves in that kind of self-humiliation ritual, I'm not going to say that every single one of them has something wrong with them. But it does select for people who have something wonky or strange going on. Tim Walts comes to mind as well, right? You keep having these very strange white male, straight white male Democrats who either

appear to be members of the LGBTQIIA plus plus community or just seem like, off personally in some way. And I do think that it's because they're selecting for people who are willing to denounce themselves and humiliate themselves for the last 10 to 15 years, 20 years, in a way that wasn't true. You know, of course, there are plenty of straight white men who like socialism or whatever it is. But this particular form of woke the woke left selects for people willing to denounce themselves. And that just goes along with a whole basket of traits that are off-putting and sometimes even quite disturbing. Yeah. So I want to pick up on this point because that's super interesting.

And we may disagree on Platner, but I think one thing we might not disagree on is just that, and when I say disagree, I mean, I think he pulls off the idea that his views aren't really quite as far as he would have, like, let's say, I'm trying to figure out how this person, I'm trying to remember how this person describes themselves. What is, uh,

I'm purposefully delaying here so that I get to the exact definition from the post. He they pronouns. identifies as mixed-race, autistic, non-binary, transgender, and Latin X says that the Bible is trans-positive, says trans individuals are Easter icons. It seems to me very believable that Tala Rico actually is that person, whereas, like, Platner's Reddit history, he's doing the whole, like, we could have a different debate on this, but like the victim blaming and the sexual assault thing, he said black people don't tip well. He comes across as a little bit more complicated than what I see with Tala RICO, which is, Timu Richie Cunningham, like Cunningham, a guy with like clearly soft hands who is now trying

to flip-flop on trans kids issues. And it's much less convincing, I guess. And as I'll stick with you on this point, because I like to where you were going with that, I just don't think he can pull it off because I don't think anybody is going to believe that he's not the same person that he was on that 2021 podcast. And I think it's really difficult for him. It makes him look untrustworthy and like a liar. Platner has some of that problem too. But I think it makes him seem like totally untrustworthy and in fact, creepy that he no longer espouses those beliefs because it seems like, well, why did you do such an about face, brother? Yeah. And I do think your advice generally. Actually, I've heard you give a few times the

Democratic candidates is actually just own the difference between you and the voters. I think that that's actually, even though a lot of people will rightly consider that disqualifying. I still think it's a better option than this kind of dissembling. I just, I don't know why, you know, this is clearly something that an entire consultant class has taught politicians to do on television. It's always come off as untrustworthy. I think it's, it especially comes off as untrustworthy in the current media environment. So I don't think it's really a solution. The through line between Platner and Tala Rico here is not that there's similar types of people, but actually they represent kind of two reactions to the condemnation of the straight white male on the left, right? There's the,

the Uber awoke who is strange because he, you know, actually believes all these negative things about straight white men, which is itself a very strange thing to embrace hateful rhetoric about yourself is just a very strange. Or they believe that they're just, they're the special ones. And it brings a whole set of characteristics, one set of characteristics. But the other one is just the guy who's a Machiavellian, who's a Machiavellian liar, right? Who's going to say anything. And I think Platner very much fits into that category where obviously this is not his real beliefs, but he was the guy who was willing to mouth the correct progressive platitudes about race and sex and so on because he was just a pathological liar. I mean, he's just gone back and forth on

all of this stuff in such a way that makes me believe that he doesn't believe half the things he says, right? So, but either way, I feel like that it tracks. There is a very negative subset of people who is willing to publicly denounce them, who are willing to publicly denounce themselves in that humiliating way. And either way it goes, I don't think it's a pool that Democrats are drawing from that is really giving them the kind of the best candidates that they hope for when they go for that sort of norby straight white straight white man image. And I wonder, Rachel, is it it has to stem from them fundamentally not being able to tolerate, like the activist class, the base, can't tolerate a, let's say, straight white man who doesn't say things like the border is,

should have a welcome mat on it. And I think he said that it should also be like locked or like it should have a lock on the door and a welcome mat out front, whatever it does. has a welcome mat up front, obviously undermines the lock part of that because of the asylum system and everybody knows that and it's very clever. But anyway, they can't stomach it because a lot of the like straight white male beliefs would come from, like they would just, it would transgress the progressive populist culture issues. And that's a combination that they just can't quite seem to nail down. Yeah. And I think the problem here too is that, you know, if you're on the left and you're a straight white man, there are only certain things that you are allowed to say and

believe, and that is constantly changing. And so you're seeing the pendulum shift a little bit. You're seeing Talleyco, you know, put on labels, take them off, get the new label, put it on, denounce the old one. And I think it's honestly just really hard to keep up with. And it goes back to the original point of why their approval rating is so low. There was a market for this on the left, you know, I think four or five years ago, six years ago at this point maybe. There isn't anymore, or the narrative has shifted and everyone's trying to figure out, you know, what goes again. And I think for straight white men, again, to Anez's point, like, yes, you have to engage in the ritual self-denunciation, but what comes after that? And that's, I think, the big question mark for the left,

and they kind of don't know how to navigate it. Because, again, the different factions on the left also have different demands on these people. If you're going in front of an LGBTQ plus IA plus audience, like you're expected to say certain things versus, you know, a group of, you know, army veterans or, you know, pick your demographic and you constantly see them shape shift to go into those places, which makes people look completely unauthentic, you know, and, you know, I think a little bit mentally off to some extent. Super good point also because I think if you look at Dan Osborne, who's running, has similar consultants and people behind him as Platner. He might even have Talley. I would have to double check on that. But he's running as an independent and not as

Democrat. And I think he is the one person that does kind of nail this balance better. But they're not really wrapping their arms around Dan Osborne, and he's not really wrapping his arms around them, because, again, he's running as an independent against Republican Senator Pete Ricketts. I think that's one of the most interesting races in the country, one to watch. But also, we talked about this on the show not long ago. This is a point that Pod Save America made. There's a huge trust deficit. It's a massive hangover for Democrats, not just on the cultural issues, but on the fact that

they told everyone Joe Biden was operating at his best. And his former Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the party nominee, is getting a tongue bath still from people like Don Lemon. She went on Don Lemon show on June 19th and said all kinds of crazy stuff. She said we need to look at the electoral college, but of course she wouldn't commit to saying what we need to look at exactly when it comes to the electoral college. She said we should be looking at Puerto Rico in D.C. statehood.

She agreed when Don Lemon said that we're being governed by a Christian nationalist minority, that the majority of the country is now being subjugated to a Christian nationalist majority. And again, all of that in a conversation about the electoral college and the flaws of the electoral college, which college was kind of hilarious in and of itself. But she's such a walking, breathing reminder. And Don Lemon was peppering her with questions on, is she going to run? Is she going to run? She put on a tour everywhere. Just a living, breathing reminder of that failure.

I wanted to roll some of this because, again, she's not ruling out of run for president. She's in the polls when people are asking or when pollsters are asking who Democrats might support. She does fairly well in the polls about who Democratic voters might support, probably because of name recognition, whatever. But this does, I think, really hang over a lot of Democratic candidates. Even people like, well, let's just say in the congressional ballot, I think some of this is probably still showing up in that, in those numbers. And it probably explains the difference between 2018. And now, let's roll Kamala Harris on Don Lemon Show just several days ago. I really truly believe this.

We each have light inside of us. Yes, yes. And we need to know that that is what inspires our hope as much as anything external to ourselves. And when we feel that and not allow an election or an individual to dampen that light, and instead light let that light kind of carry us in particular moments of darkness, that we not only act on that hope, but we inspire that hope in each other. and in particular at this moment, it is so important that we not only have hope, but that we understand that that should be a verb.

Anez, what the fuck is she talking about? I got some of this because I live in New Yorker because I grew up in California because it sounds more like the latter to me. It's got that woo-woo angle to it, you know. But so did hate. So did we are the change we've been looking for. And that one, that one landed with a huge part of the American. My question is, is how, is the light within her linked to how many glasses of chardonnay?

She's had prior to, like, is that the light? Because, you know, girl, I can get on that wagon. But like, let's talk about it. It's the light of the chardonnay, of course. Don't you know that? Also, Domlin's face so stoic through that whole thing. Kamla Harris, I will give her one thing, one piece of credit from, from me, which is I always love her.

Go on. Her blazer, her blazer, her blazer game is tops. She doesn't like Mao, like Hillary. No, no. They're always really well cut. They're nice colors on her. Like, that was a nice, nice blazer. So, if it could be lit with it from within, from Chardonnay, at least, like, she's, she's picking out

the nice outfits and everything. That's totally fair. I actually watched that entire interview. You're welcome, everyone. And it was all like that. The entire thing was like that. We pulled this part where she's, Don Lemon is going, on this rant about Christian nationalism. Kamala Harris agrees with him and the electoral college comes up in the context we were talking about earlier. S4, let's roll it. It's clear to me,

and this is me, I don't want to put words in your mouth, that we are being governed by a minority in this country. And it seems like we're moving into, because of this minority, into Christian nationalism and into, you know, having the majority of Americans' freedoms diminished or restricted because we're being governed by the minority. Yes. And, and And I think that there is some real shaking up that we have to do of the rules and the structure. And is that getting rid of the electoral college? I think that should be a discussion that we should have. I don't think we should eliminate that as a point of discussion for potential action.

Okay. So on the one hand, lamenting that we are allegedly now being governed by a minority, the majority is being subjugated by the governance of the minority of white Christian nationalists. But on the other hand, the Electoral College is an abomination. Andez, you're the legal one here. Make that one make sense. Well, all the arguments against the electoral college have been just directly disproven in recent years. We used to hear that it basically made it so that a couple states, a couple swing states,

were determining the election every single time for the American people when everybody else was irrelevant. except those swing states used to be Florida and Ohio, not, for example, Georgia and Arizona. So we've seen not just in our own political, you know, memory. We've seen that shift. And then, of course, there's, you know, the arguments that everybody on the right always knows and repeats about the purpose of the Electoral College actually being

to, you know, give a different type of representation to our election state to actually balance these individual states against each other to actually do. yeah, to bolster a little bit views of certain minorities to make faction against faction. That's the genius of our system. But those arguments have all been made before. I mean, the left is not persuaded

that the founders and their genius invented the electoral college. I think the larger sort of danger structurally here with the electoral college is that the states themselves, there's been a movement for decades now, for the states themselves to promise to give their electoral votes to the popular votes to the popular vote winner and essentially to switch us to a popular vote system.

Kind of on the sly, obviously there's a little bit of a game theory problem for the left in this, because of course, the states they persuade of this are more likely to be blue states, which means the blue state electors will be going towards a popular vote winner if it's the opposite of what the people voted for, right, Republican. So there's a certain amount of self-interest

in stopping that train, but nevertheless, it's been quite successful, in a number of blue states and then also some purple states. So if that happens, I don't think it'll be by constitutional amendment. It'll be by that movement in the states to kind of do an end run around the constitutional structure. Yeah, and Rachel, let's bring Hillary Clinton to this conversation since it was invoked. Actually, maybe I did the pantsuits. Not dressed like Mao in this appearance with Scott Galloway on his live tour recently.

This is, I think, Ed Ellison and Scott Galloway interviewing Hillary Clinton, and she had some comments on the Electoral College. Well, I personally think the electoral college is an abomination. Oh, this is the new Netflix stuff in the American experiment. For obvious reasons. Ha ha ha ha. Okay. So what we're seeing, the point of playing that clip is to augment this point that even

establishment Democrats are responding to this moment. Actually, on stage with Galloway, Clinton was praising Mamdani and saying, I don't really care what he calls himself as long as he can show proof of concept that his politics work and that she's rooting for him. etc. What we're seeing is a moving further further to the left rather than towards the center on some critical issues, key issues. And I don't think Americans are going to the polls to vote based on the electoral college, but it's sort of like what we were talking about with Tala Rico. It's these little insights into the worldview of your average Democratic candidate that voters get

that make them question, huh, is this a party that's actually focused on these abstract, intellectual questions, sometimes that go in really concerning cultural directions because they're straight out of the faculty lounge, or is this a party that's genuinely focused on what I want to see happen in my state, in my district, or wherever? And so this electoral college question is similar with court packing. I think Grant Platner is a court packer. I think Tala Rico has flirted with that as well. They don't have really moderate solutions on immigration. They kind of say they do, but it's not clear how it would be different from Biden. I actually made a list of this recently. I'm sure, based on Tala Rico's prior comments, it'll be hard for him to convince people he's a moderate on

abortion on the environment, that clip of him saying that he's proudly running a vegan campaign. It was actually in the context of him talking about moving away from meat. He's running in Texas. He was like trying to move the economy away from meat for the sake of the climate. this stuff is not great. It's not great for voters in red states or purple states who want an option other than like a MAGA candidate, like a Ken Paxson, for example. That voter is looking around and they're like, well, maybe I just sit this out. Or maybe that's so insane, I'm going to hold my nose and vote Paxton. Yeah. And I think with the Electoral College argument to you, I mean, this is an argument the left's been railing against for 20 years, right? Like, this is not something new that people are

dragging out and having a new innovation about the electoral college. It's again, oh, we can't win the argument. People don't like us. Let's drag this argument out. And I do think it's particularly rich coming from Hillary Clinton, of all people, who is married to Bill Clinton, who, like, won in 1992 through the electoral college after receiving only 43% of the popular vote. Remember that was in three waywheres. And he won 40 years. Well, I'm not as old as you guys. Yeah, right. You were probably not alive. But for the people that were, people in the cheap seats, remember that. And, you know, delivered her husband an election over H.W. Bush and Ross Perrault, who I think won, like, 19% of the vote in that race. And, like, but yet, you know, thinks it's an abomination, obviously, ha, ha, ha, because it didn't deliver her the presidency.

So not only are you just making, you know, a dumb structural argument, it's coming across as, like, you know, a Hall of Fame sore loser, which I think compels no one. So, again, it's like if the best you can do is make structural arguments that you're not winning because the system is rigged, and also that you're running a vegan. campaign. By the way, the best response that Talariko had to that was that picture he put on, I think, X of him gnawing on a leg of some kind that was incredibly awkward. It was the leg of a human child.

Yeah, I don't know what it was, but it's like pendulum swung totally in the other direction in a very awkward way as it seems he can only do. Can I have something about the electoral college? Yeah, please do. It's a very obvious thing, but of course, if we didn't have the electoral college, people would have a different

election strategy. You've laid out the rules of the game in advance. If you have no electoral college as popular vote, the goal is to run up the tally as much as possible in your biggest states. People would run differently. So it is just sour grapes in terms of after the election saying to try to say, oh, the rules were unfair because I lost under this set of rules. When your opponent would have behaved differently as well if they were playing under different rules. And the second point I wanted to make is that it is rich to hear the left talk about, you know, how it's institutionally rigged against them and they're a supposedly huge majority here

in the popular vote. I mean, almost everything the left has achieved institutionally and culturally has been against the great majority view. I mean, we were talking about the trans issue, right? They never held a majority on that view. Yes, yes. What they are actually very good at

is capturing institutions with a small and vocal and aggressive minority and pushing those institutional structures towards a, like, their political framework in a way that silences the majority and makes the majority feel like they don't have any representation in the institutions at all. So it's just like very rich from the left to say, oh, like, the things are essentially rigged against us. They're not rigged against the left. If anything, they have been rigged in favor of this specific woke left for decades institutionally. So, yeah, I mean, go ahead, complain about the electoral college. But we can talk about virtually every institution,

both public and private and American life that has been rigged for a view that never achieved a Democratic, small D Democratic majority. Yeah, and Ness has a great piece that I would recommend checking out in National Review about actually how deeply the Trump administration has started attacking the roots of a lot of this institutionalized racism or discrimination. And it's a very impressive piece. So check that out over at National Review. I wanted to say my suspicions were confirmed here.

James Tolariko himself has. has come out against the electoral college and the filibuster, and he has actually made that argument in the context of abortion now, he said. Women need abortion care now. So anyway, just a fun fact. Before we leave this segment, I did want to play a little bit of... It's like the tour of Italy at Olive Garden. This is the tour of the left in June 26. Joy Reid and Alex Wagner were on Joy Reid's substack live a couple of days ago. And Joy Reid, had this to say about the 4th of July? Because in many ways, and with apologies to my dear spicy white friends, because I know that my white brothers and sisters do love a 4th of July.

It is Independence Day. Everybody's barbecue and it's a thing. I can promise you, black folks, we will take that day off. We will barbecue because we off. But black people that nobody black I know is really excited about the 4th of July because it is a, it is what Frederick Douglas said it is. It is the celebration of slaveholders who, freed themselves from having to pay taxes to the crown for their slave empire. And that is what it is. Yes, yes. Okay. I spend most Fourth of Julys these days in a southeast D.C. neighborhood that many

white people do not. And let me just say that is not correct based on my recent Fourth of July's. But there's a Quinnipiac poll, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and white Americans, think the U.S. is not living up to the ideal of the founding fathers. That's some of the polling on it. But if you look at by race, there is only a, it's a pretty small difference between white Americans and non-white Americans, I should say, just had this poll up on the screen and it went away.

I'll read it, but first get Rachel to respond to that Joy Read clip. I just, when I hear clips like this, I'm like, who are your friends? are they like four people in an apartment in Manhattan? Because like the rest... The Columbia professors? Yeah, because like the rest of us are, you know, good red-blooded Americans going to be out blowing stuff up on the Fourth of July because that's what everybody likes to do on the Fourth of July.

So I just don't think there's a market for this kind of talk anymore, which, I mean, goes to show she's off the air kind of for that reason, I think, a little bit. But, you know, it's just nobody has time for this anymore. Come on, Levy. Yeah, and as this is a Gallup point. that says they find, quote, modest racial differences when it comes to national pride was 72% of white Americans and 63% of non-white Americans saying they're extremely or very proud to be Americans. White Americans are much more likely to say they're extremely proud than very proud.

Non-white Americans split about evenly between those two characters, those two categories, 30% extremely proud, 33% very proud. What that adds up to, of course, as Gallup reported, is 63% of non-white Americans saying they're extremely or very proud to be an American, means Joy Reid's reading of the room there has to amount to a minority of the non-white population either way. Yeah, that's true. And it's obviously not reflective of a lot of minority Americans, if I may coin that strange, hyphen it.

I don't, what I don't think is surprising about this view is that we've seen it repeated over and over again, actually in some much more offensive ways, I think, like, for example, Toneheese-Cote, right, saying that, um, we don't know. that for him watching firefighters run out of the collapsing Twin Towers, didn't stir patriotism because America has oppressed black people, right? This is a mainstream view. The 1619 project was published right in the New York Times by, you know, like just this entire part of the academic sort of community,

whether actually, I can think of several examples actually, who aren't black, the two examples I gave, claiming to speak for the black community on that. Tim Weiss also said, quote, there's a lot of dry eyes among black Americans on 9-11, right? He's a sort of white race huckster on the left. So this is not new. I am a little bit less optimistic, I think, than what Rachel said. I don't know if you guys have the same feeling. I really wanted this 250th anniversary to just be incredible to bring, you know, a tear to

a patriotic tear to my eye, but I genuinely think we are divided on this question of whether America was ever great, which is why the Trump slogan, I think, resonated so much with people and has resonated with people so much since 2015 when he jumped into the race. It is, we are divided on that question of whether America was ever great, whether it is the right thing to be proud, to be an American, whether America is a unique evil in the world, which has been a part of the radical left since the 60s, but is now, like, again, the institutionalized view of a huge part of the Democratic Party. I genuinely, I wonder how many Democratic candidates, and maybe Emily, you would know this better than me, but how many Democratic candidates could give

a unqualified answer when asked a simple question, what do you love about America? That wasn't just a listing of their political points, but was something, you know, deeper about our history, about our culture, about anything else about America, because I think all of those things are qualified from the leftist worldview, which, again, it's not identical to saying everybody who votes Democrat or everybody who's sort of left of center in the country feels this way. But I do think that the Democratic institutional class, in this case, Big D, Democratic institutional class, does feel that way. And they probably not big D. On the page in the New York Times all the time. Take it easy. That was a bad joke. Well, the left loves to cite Frederick Douglass as what to the

slave is the fourth of July around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, around this time of year. But of course, in which the slave is the Fourth of July, Frederick Douglass writes about the Declaration of Independence of Law is the Declaration of Independence and says, the great principles it contains and the genius of American institutions, because of that, my spirit is also cheered

by the obvious tendencies of the age, is very supportive of the constitution of that, and said this all actually leaves him with hope. So it's a kind of stark contrast, every time that's cited. And as you just said, it makes you mad. So tea off, queen. Oh, no, you said everything I was going to say. I just, I get angry the way that the left

miscites Frederick Douglass on this point, as though Frederick Douglass agreed with their, you know, hatred of the institutions and the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, everything in American history that is laudable and worthwhile and something that we should all be proud of. But, yeah, I mean, it is, it is the original leftist misquote. Before we leave our tour of Italy, I do want to put Matt Taibi's note about a New York Times editorial on Father's Day up on the last. the screen. It's just you have to see this to believe it. Incredible, incredible, incredible stuff. The T. T. Yabe B. wrote, Today's New York Times editorial in Father's Days in Alzheimer. Again,

don't know where to put it in the funny versus horrifying access. It's a cartoon, or there's a cartoon in it where it's like, you can't grow a beard. You're a girl. My dad did, and he was a girl. Like, these are the cartoons here. It says, it shows a little girl asking, how did you, How long did you have breasts for, dad? Just top-notch stuff. The editorial was by Zach Ellums to my daughter. My gender was never complicated. Rachel, finger on the pulse.

This is the media learning its lessons of the last 10 years, of course. Yeah, I mean, just like, it kind of was like a little bit nauseating. You know, it's just like celebrate Father's Day by not actually celebrating a father at all. And also, you know, just the pictures themselves. I just think like the hairy legs really got me. Like they made like a big deal of like the stubble on the face and like the leg, like the obviously transition. And then putting that on a child, right?

Saying to the child that the beauty of Father's Day is you, you know, owning and celebrating and trumpeting to your friends the transition that's going, you know, of the adults in your life and like taking an adult issue and putting it on the child. It's just like so many elements of it that I just, It was just sickening. And I think, like, you know, again, to your point, have they learned anything from the last 10 years? Clearly not. Clearly not.

Like, this is peak. You know, had this come out in 2020, 2019, maybe I wouldn't have been surprised. But we are, you know, years removed from that. And we're still pushing this out from the New York Times, you know, in 2026. This is kind of, it was actually unbelievable to me. And as this gets to your point about the minority trying to govern the majority of the country via the ivory tower perch of the New York Times. And what's interesting is that on some of these issues,

trans issues in particular, it's still not working. No, and they're not actually backing off from it at all. I mean, most of what they're doing is against your good suggestion, as just word salad of trying not to answer the question in an inconvenient context. But they clearly are, like their activist class, that their elected politicians cannot contradict. is clearly very much dedicated to the idea that a man can become a woman and that that is what they want to force down the throats of voters. Any step back or sort of temporary in their mind and maybe expedient or temporary, but this is obviously what they believe.

Rachel said this really reminds her peak, peak, even the illustration style, right? There's a code for that type of illustration style that always goes directly back to 2020, 2021. But I don't think the Democratic Party Center has actually moved from where it was then. It is just finding it more difficult to answer questions in a forum for that percentage of the electoral, whatever, the people running for office who believe that, or at least know that the way they want to answer the question actually is important to voters. And by the way, voters do care about this question. It's not, you know, sports, you know, trans individuals in sports or something like that. They understand that it's symbolic.

You know, people aren't stupid. They understand that it's symbolic of a larger inability to acknowledge a very, very basic truth. And they rightly find that disturbing. They find it code for a whole bunch of views that are important that do impact their lives, impact their children, their schools. And Rachel said something, I think, very important. which is the root of this trying to get children to essentially buttress adult delusions is an extremely immature and uncharitable and dangerous way to treat children who still don't know. Like they're still looking up to adults to figure out what is real.

So it is just, I think people are using that as a code for a whole host of beliefs that do absolutely impact their lives in a thousand different ways that are always go unacknowledged by the people who say, again, say, oh, the only real issues are economic and it's just the billionaires, you know, with the strings making the little people fight each other over the blue hair versus the MAGA hat. That's just a reflection of reality and voters know it. Right, that it's this like red wing, I'm sorry, right wing red meat. And it's not actually a kitchen table issue, but this does touch communities in a very material and immediate way, spiritual way too, but there are material concerns at hand. So leftists have failed to reconcile with

that. And that's why this aesthetic that Ines mentions is in this kind of childish pastel palette and is intentionally off-putting to bait you into being off-put by it, put off by it, and then be like, well, what do you mean? This is beautiful. This is normal. This is natural. So anyway, much to discuss. If the cultural issues are so unimportant to the left, I suggest that they surrender on them. Yeah. Seconded. Well, well, good luck with that. But this isn't to say that there aren't serious problems for the this election cycle. We've just spent a long time on the left, but there are many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many journalists and media outlets focused constantly every single day on all of the problems with the right, the Republican Party. So I thought it would be valuable to

take a little pause here in June and dig deep on what we are hearing from people on the left right now in 2026. So we are going to be back with this wild story out of Chicago in just one moment. But first, a quick break. I think we all remember those days in our early 20s where we could survive on four hours of sleep and just tons of caffeine, but that doesn't work for all of us anymore. Now, if I don't get quality rest, I am dragging for days, maybe even a whole week, but I don't want a sleep aid that leaves me feeling knocked out or groggy. I just want some real restorative sleep, and that's where Beam Dream comes in. Dream is made with a powerful blend of all natural ingredients, Rishi, magnesium, al-theonine, epigenine, and melatonin. Try the chocolate peanut butter flavor.

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This story out of Chicago is getting completely ignored. And now that we're back with an stepman of independent women and Rachel Beauvard of the Conservative Partnership Institute, Rachel, I have my CPI water go. Oh, you knew. Of course you did. Shout out. But, yeah, major shout out. So I'm drinking my bullet out tonight. But this story out of Chicago is absolutely insane. I wanted to get both of you to weigh in on this because the headlines were everywhere. The social media posts were everywhere last week.

We saw posts like this one from Governor J.B. Pritzker F.8. There was a burning cross in Grant Park last Tuesday afternoon. J.B. Pritzker weighs in immediately. Did not mean to say weighs in, but now that I said it, it's there. He says, let me be clear that hate has no home here in Illinois. The symbol has one purpose to start up intimidation and terror. We will not be silent. Those responsible must be held accountable.

All kinds of Democrats came out and were kind of eagerly using this case as an example of a hate crime, somewhat understandable when you have a burning cross. But at the same time, all of the facts were not known. And now we have this from a local NBC affiliate who interviewed the person who did it, whose name is Merlin Liu from Naperville, which if you know anything about the Chicago suburb, That is one of the nicest. It's one of the nicest, cushiest, fanciest suburbs in all of the country.

This is incredible. It sort of has to be seen to be believed. Turns out the person who burned this cross in Grant Park says he put a maga cap on the cross is deeply anti-Christian and is Asian. Let's take a listen. I don't want to wait until he may or may not get impeached. I want him gone right now.

I'm at video. Are you? Are you threatening him? No. You say that you think that he should be brought to an end. I think, no, I said, I said he deserves to stand trial to the American people, some paraphrase, I guess. But I think you use the word end. That's what I mean by end.

I mean, by end, I don't mean like a civil war. He showed the red ball cap that he put on the top beam and used lighter fluid and toilet paper to get it all going. I put a red hat to signify the mega hat. the Make America Great Again hat. So that was, yeah, that's what I tied on top. That's not visible in the one video that was taken by a motorist. Lou says he was protesting what he calls Maga Christian Nationalist supporters

and the Trump administration ruling class. Okay. So it turns out this is actually an anti-Christian anti-Trump hate crime. Merlin Liu has been charged with two counts of committing a hate crime, arson, property damage, and other offenses. The Washington Times did a great article on this. They wrote, Not Aging Well, where last week's comments from Democrats,

media outlets, and leftist groups decrying the incident as an act of right-wing racism. Pritzker said, the fact that it even occurred at all speaks to what happens when the seeds of racism and fascism grow unchecked in our country. Rainbow Push, this is the Jesse Jackson group, called the Burning Cross, a quote, gut-wrenching reminder that the forces of hatred

and racial intimidation remain present in our society. Brandon Johnson said, this act serves mayor. This act serves as a painful reminder that racism and white supremacy have not disappeared. They continue to threaten the vision of an inclusive and equitable society. I'm sorry, that was according to push. Brandon Johnson said, I can't speak to his lack of understanding or the gravity of what he is alleged of having done. Again, it's a painful reminder of how hatred toward black Americans still permeates in our society. Brandon Johnson said this is a reminder of how hatred toward black Americans still permeates in our society when it is an Asian man

speaking out against white MAGA Christian nationalism, burning the symbol of an entire faith in Grant Park in broad daylight. I don't think that anti-Christian hatred is what they meant by white supremacy and racism, although I guess it was also anti-white in some ways, Rachel. This is outrageous. If it were an actual racial hate crime, I think it would be covered wall-to-wall, as it was initially when it came out, Jesse Smollett style. And then when it was, it turned out to be anti-Christian. It's basically faded. I'm glad he was charged with a hate crime, but what the hell? No, it's, you know, again, it's narrative construction, right?

This has to be an anti-black hate crime, otherwise we're not interested at all. And by the way, my favorite part of that interview was when they were like, oh, were you threatening Donald Trump? And he was like, no, it's not a threat. Oh, oh, yes, because naturally you just burn crosses on the lawns of people you want to welcome to the neighborhood, obviously. But it just is, he has hatred toward Christians, nobody cares because it's crickets. It doesn't fit the democratic narrative.

And also, you know, God forbid Donald Trump be right about something, right? God forbid the Republicans might be right and say, you know, there is bias in public life against people of faith and also and including Christians. And that would force them to acknowledge that, which they will never do. So here we are with them painting a, you know, narrative on it that only they can accept, which is the words coming out of his mouth are, this is not about racism. This is about Donald Trump. It's an anti-Christian thing. And they're like, no, no, no, but you hate black people, right? Right?

Right? It's just, I mean, par for the course. I know. Merlin Liu, 21 years old, Zumer, clearly, Zumer here, who is claiming not to have known that the Burning Cross was a symbol of racism, which is also insane. I actually don't fault black Chicagoans for looking at that and being alarmed. I do fault people for, especially public officials, for jumping to conclusions publicly on the record. But, It's just all so bizarre and so, like, it's so zoomer. Am I wrong? Like, this is a very zoomer hate crime. Well, if it's true that he really didn't know that it became a symbol of anti-black hatred during the civil rights era, then, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be that shocked by the fact that that piece of history was just unknown. And as the lawyer? General, no, the general historical knowledge among our general. generation, frankly, Rachel, and then all of the, you know, all of the kids after us is, is just in the

toilet. That being said, it's obviously, like, even if it's intended in a straightforward way, then you have to take the conclusion that Rachel did, right, which is that it was an anti-Christian hate crime. I don't think any one of these, can I, maybe I'm showing my bubble here, but I don't think any one of these hate crimes did not turn out, the one national did not turn out to be a hoax of some kind or was committed by somebody who was not white and was, you know, like, I remember even in my own college days, there was a huge story that blew up into a national story because allegedly somebody had hung a noose in the library. Turns out it was like some Hispanic kid who said he was just playing with the rope and

obviously some kind of strange situation going on, but was not the, you know, anti-black, white racist narrative that the entire news media ran with. Duke Lacrosse. Right. Like, two across, all of it. It has gotten to the point where I immediately disbelief. I disbelieve these stories until proven otherwise, because the idea that there's some huge number of people out there

who are just itching to, you know, burn across on a black family's lawn. The only way I would believe that it was real is the SPLC funded it. I would like that's the only thing that would make me believe it. That was good. They better check that this 21-year-old's DMs, maybe somebody from the SPLC, has been sliding into his DMs, you know, recently. They gave him $1,000 to set that up. Yeah, well, for people who have not seen that story,

there was somebody at the SPLC who had a romantic relationship with one of the people she was funneling money, too, in one. It was hot as hell. Yeah, so. It was a burning love, actually, so. Don't have rich much. No, I can't take it any further. Yeah, I ruined that one.

All right, well, let's move on to this. I mean, first of all, I just want to say before we move on, It's crazy to me how little pickup the story is getting. I expect that to happen, but it's still, every time you see it galling. And it's just kind of when you have a case like this where there's such a clear contrast, amazing to see it play out in real time this way. As soon as it becomes anti-Christian, it's like local news will cover it and they are. But then national media suddenly loses interest in the story because it doesn't fit a broader narrative they believe to be true.

In fact, it challenges their broader narrative about how there is no answer. Christian bigotry in the country, but that's why it, of course, doesn't get all of the pickup that it probably should or that would be proportional. So let's move on to this Army Hammer story, which is wild and also not getting much coverage. So Variety wrote that this new Army Hammer movie called Citizen Vigilante. The, quote, rating system refused to give us a rating in Germany according to the director of Uwe-Bowel. So now you can only watch it if you bring in a Blu-ray from Austria or Switzerland, and I think that they did that on purpose. It was a deliberate censorship decision, Bull said to the Daily Telegraph.

I hired a lawyer to complain about it, but we lost in a 6-2 vote as I was told that the film was inciting violence against migrants. Citizen Vigilante, a variety reports, which begins with a mother being stabbed to death by migrant criminals in front of her son, features Hammer as Sanders, an ordinary man who is enraged by the breakdown of law and order and decides to deliver vigilante justice to criminals and the corrupt officials that protect them. his targets are mostly, but not exclusively, migrants. Citizen Vigilante, and this is important,

according to Variety, was inspired by a notorious case in Hamburg in 2016 when a group of teenagers gang raped a 14-year-old girl and left her for dead, only for the perpetrators to walk free with suspended sentences. Both told the Daily Telegraph, if you look at what happened in Hamburg where the rapists walk free without any penalty, the coverage in the media was like, oh, the poor perpetrators. It's as if we're living in a completely insane and absurd political environment, especially in Europe, where people have completely lost track.

there's a huge difference between so-called hate speech and stabbing people in the neck, but facts don't matter anymore. It's absurd how I feel politically. Now you're being told that if you're a conservative about anything, social, sexual, political, that you're a Nazi. But this is how things stand at the moment. If you question anything, such as hundreds of billions being pumped into Ukraine, then you're either a friend of Putin or a Nazi or both. When the telegraph asks him if he was a Nazi, bold laugh before answering, I am not a Nazi, according to variety. Let's roll this clip of the trailer and get your reaction on the back end. What was it?

Traumatic integration. We're really getting mental health now and support. We will be better in the future. I promise that. It's the right answer. The only problem is that on your social media, since the event, I've not seen any regret or empathy. In fact, I think you said that she deserved to be raped.

What I mean is... Did they dress wrong and just make boys horny with their mini skirts? They show their legs and breasts. You wrote that she deserved it. I will delete it. Are these the values you're teaching your children? I teach him the values from Koran and these values from our family. Well, if these are your values,

that women in America and Europe deserve to be raped because of a dress code, Why did you come here? You know that we have several war in our country and we have a dangerous life. That's why we are here. And I think you know that. Do you know what I think? Why? I don't think it was the good ones that got out of your country.

I think it was the bad ones. And I think you brought with you your archaic value system. Okay. So a lot going on there. It looks pretty cheesy to me. Maybe that's just me. The director is known for making sort of comically ridiculous movies. I checked rotten tomatoes.

On the popcorn meter, it's at 88% right now. It is 50 plus ratings. Not enough for a tomato meter rating so far. That's sort of interesting already. Army Hammer, we can put this Hollywood Reporter profile up from last week, got this big splashy profile in Hollywood Reporter, which says he is back. That was, again, it was, we don't have it no problem,

but it was just this big, big splashy profile of Army Hammer, making his return to Hollywood and citizen vigilante, walking through some of his cancellation, which people probably remember well. We'll get into that in just a moment here. But this alleged censorship is pretty interesting in the wake of Henry Novak, in the wake of Belfast, in the wake of the rape gang crisis report from the UK government. There was a UK government report, by the way. This was, I think it was a year ago. It found that at a local level for three police, forces. According to the BBC, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, there was enough evidence to show a, quote, disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst

suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation. So, Annes, I'll kick it to you first. This is exactly what you would expect out of Europe. No real surprise, but still a pretty damning indictment on speech culture in Europe right now. Yeah. But again, like you said, we knew that already about the censorship in Europe and particularly, I know this is about Germany, but the UK, I mean, the incident that you're talking about, I mean, the Novak incident was absolutely horrifying. And that's that knee-jerk reaction, right? That if you said something racist, right, we were, it was somehow justify violence. But the clip you showed, I mean, I also found it cheesy. I mean, it reads like an op-ed. And the things that are in it, I think, are true. But it reads like an op-ed that

doesn't read like a good movie to me. Although I do think, I've been saying for a long time that we do need some kind of taxi driver style dark, gritty movies. I feel like we are in that era with crime, both in the United States and because of the migrants in Europe. So I think that it might be a good idea to make a movie like this. This doesn't seem to be it to me. That being said, the data about, oh, one point I just wanted.

for audience, what Emily read about Asian, people of Asian background having extremely high per capita rape rates in these countries, it took me a while to realize that Asian in both the UK and in a lot of European media, Asian means South Asian is like Pakistani.

It sounds very in Congress. To America, you're talking about a bunch of Chinese or Japanese people that we don't associate with high crime rates. But, I mean, this is I don't know. I don't even have words. I don't know if you guys read through that the report,

but the kind of systemic lack of care. I mean, Rachel said everything about the narrative with a cross-burning, right? It is that on steroids. It is a systemic turning away of real suffering and real crime because it fits the per capita mold that everyone would expect instead of the opposing narrative that the left would like to hammer home. So I shouldn't use that word hammer home with that Arnie Hammer, huh? I didn't even notice before. Didn't even notice. Rachel, yeah, I just am thinking about Belfast as well where you had significant riots. And we talked to the show a couple of weeks ago, how this is the left always said it's the language of the unheard, which is structurally correct. It is not a justification or an excuse for rioting. Of course, it wasn't in 2020.

and it's not in Belfast, but the reason people feel like they can't be heard is that if you make a movie about something like this, it's considered to be inciting violence against migrants. Well, not only that, if you say anything about what you're witnessing on Facebook or social media in the UK, they will put you in jail. Like, it is that bad. And I think, you know, you can ban this movie all you want Western Europe, but I do think that country is, or those countries are in. So we can just call it one country.

Well, I think it's kind of a Tinderbox, right? They have a government that's not representing them anymore. They are seeing with their own eyes crimes of, you know, mass proportion, but also insane violence. You know, it was the rape report is stomach turning. You know, if you can tolerate it, it's worth reading to understand what people have been told to ignore. You know, but the incident in Belfast where you had, I think, a Sudanese asylum seeker, try to behead someone in the street. These are behaviors that are not compatible with Western values

and people are pointing this out and saying they are here because of a policy choice that was made. Can we have a policy choice about a deal with this? And they are being told to, you know, they're either being completely censored. They're being put in jail in the UK for speech crimes or for hate crimes on social media. Their elections seem to have no consequence.

I don't know how, as a country, these places continue to start. survive. The electorate is not heard in this way. People keep talking to me about, oh, civil war, civil war. Well, they're unarmed. What are they going to do? Knife crime? Right? Like, they've traded away their sovereignty and this is the result. And so I just think, okay, fine, censor the movie. But Western Europe is much closer to the plot of that movie than I think they realize. That's a good point. Again, that's very optimistic. As dark as what Rachel just said, I find it very optimistic because the more people come from these cultures,

to European countries, the more radical, any kind of change of political trajectory is going to have to be. And I'm not trying to be controversial or like sort of inflammatory by saying that. But I mean, if you look at the levels of people who are completely unassimilated from North African Muslim countries in the UK, they're already a massive political constituency. Yeah.

So it seems to me that they are very, very fast approaching a tipping point where any kind of expulsion of this culture would not just be a matter of, for example, preventing future migrants from coming or expelling migrants who are illegally or temporarily in the UK, but they would have to deport a large part of their native population. And they're not going to go quietly, right?

So some of these scenes, especially in London, to me, where the police just allow these kinds of demonstrations that do get violent from a particular part, of the population, but the second somebody shows up, you know, with a sign that the British flag, they get arrested. As censorious as I know them to be, it almost at this point seems a pragmatic thing to me, because what are the British police going to do when you have, I don't know, 500 young armed men marching in the streets very directly saying what they believe and that they believe that their religion and their perspective is going to conquer the UK. I mean,

at some point, you are talking about war instead of political solutions. So, I mean, I just, I see that window closing and I don't see British politics or any politics on the continent, frankly, catching up fast enough to what is necessary to do. I would not be surprised if my daughter grows up, you know, thinking of Riyadh as a, more modern place than London. Like, it may just be completely, a completely different geopolitical world than the one. Yeah, that's a good point.

David Betts, I find him very persuasive on this, controversial, but persuasive on this. Now, he's a Civil War historian. Folks can check out his work if they're curious. But the Hollywood reporter, well, the Army Hammer of this law is actually very interesting because people will certainly remember the Army Hammer, cannibalism, Me Too scandal.

Hollywood reporter says several women came forward with accounts of psychological and sexual abuse. Explicit messages attributed to Hammer had circulated online describing graphic sexual and cannibalistic fantasies. A woman with whom he carried on a four-year affair, all while married to his ex-wife, accused him of rape. He denied the allegations. An LAPD investigation was opened and later closed without charges.

For many, none of that settled anything. The messages alone were specific enough and disturbing enough that those who read them have not been able to unread them. The career already faltering ended entirely. He goes on to say he made these problems for himself. But they didn't happen to him by a fluke accident. He didn't do what people are saying he did. But I brought very dangerous and unsafe people in my life,

and I pissed off people in my life. And here we are. But this gets back into, let's tie a bow on the whole conversation. It reminds me in a very strange way of the Trans Father's Day op-ed that the New York Times ran. And our entire conversation about that minority trying to push, the minority in like the faculty lounge trying to push these abstract progressive cultural ideas down everybody's throat. And here, in an odd way, in America, you have actually like Me Too getting a little bit of a middle finger with Army Hammer making a comeback of all people, Army Hammer making a comeback. You could make a movie like this in the U.S. without being for now, without being censored or suppressed.

The border is basically closed. Most of the public supports that once the border closed. And here, this is kind of a helpful note heading into Fourth of July weekend in a very, very weird roundabout way because of the Army. hammered cannibal comeback. But it does show that there's a lot more artistic and political freedom here in the States for whatever reason, Rachel. Yeah, no, there still is. And we are still allowed to say, you know, what we want. We're not put in jail for our tweets yet, although I feel like we are pretty close to it in 2020 when people were just like socially canceled out of existence. Douglas Mackey. Yeah, for decades old tweets or literally, yes, put in jail for things that I think

could be First Amendment protected activities. So look, I think you look at a place like the UK, and I was saying this earlier today, you know, but for the grace of God go we, that is an object lesson in how countries can die. You know, it's a first world-filled state, in my opinion. When you were jailing people for speech, when you were jailing people for noticing things in front of their own eyes and trying to agitate for policies to change it,

and that's a problem. And when your government doesn't respond to anymore, I don't know what other conclusion you can draw. And as you support the suppression of the movie on purely artistic grounds, it appears to be an egregious violation of quality cinema standards. And it's not really the migrant thing you have issue with. Well, I remember getting skewered on Twitter for pointing out that Sound of Freedom was actually a terrible movie.

People may not agree with my thoughts on the aesthetic value of these kinds of things. But, no, I mean, yes, the First Amendment is actually an enormously protective. if there was a debate between Madison, you know, and like back in the day where they're passing, there's a debate about whether or not we need the First Amendment, whether we need the Bill of Rights, right, or whether the Constitution itself would be protective enough. I think Madison definitely definitively won that debate because I can only imagine how bad the censorship structures in the United States would be, but for the First Amendment. There is this kind of backstop in our law that doesn't exist in even the closest to us, right?

The UK system, they never had this written down constitution that has in black and white, what the freedom of speech is and why it's protected. So that is something that does separate us, both from the UK and the continent. That being said, I feel like the censorship industrial complex here is just different. As Rachel knows better than anybody, I think, it is the collusion. between public and private actors in the United States, a sort of technocratic collusion that did manage to censor, you know, a huge swat of political speech for the past five years.

So I'm not copacetic about that at all. But it is much harder to put people in jail in the United States for what they say. They'll just make sure that you can't say it. You don't have the reach to say it. You get banned from the platform. That is the way that our censorship industrial complex worked as opposed to the UK or Europe. But Douglas Mackey being actually, good point. the big exception, but was ultimately vindicated in court under the First Amendment, right?

Doesn't make what happened to him okay. But that is just, it's much harder to put people in jail, much easier to just make sure you're never heard at all. Yeah, also the existence of the Second Amendment, probably hovers over America in this sense as well where it hasn't quite got. What is the thing about that guy with the Sikh ritualistic knife? This is part of my culture. You can't ban it.

Yeah. wait until we start to do that way. It's part of American culture. You can't ban my culture. At this point, yeah, we'll be able to make that argument about ARs. All right. Well, both of you, thank you so much for being here on the 100th episode. Thank you so much for taking time out of your nights so often to be on the show.

Rachel drove all the way in because power went out and as his cat wouldn't shut up, apparently. So I know that you guys have real lives. And I just appreciate you being here so often and especially being here. here tonight. Thank you. Well, 100 shows in. We're still as proud of you as we were on the first. Emily, our little Padawan. So grown up. All grown up and headed towards Cronom. Yeah, it's actually so true. Yeah, what people don't know is you guys, actually, it's a neuralink thing. You put your thoughts into my brain, and then I just say them. So a big shout out. All right, guys, thank you so much. We'll see you again soon. Yeah. See you, Emily. We're going to take a quick break and

be back with a look at Rosie O'Donnell's facelift and actually some news on her as well. What does it feel like when your clothes actually feel good? This summer, Cozy Earth makes a strong case that what you wear at home matters just as much at what you wear out, maybe even more.

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vacation. NBC News reports late-night host Jimmy Kimmel will take a two-month break from hosting his eponymous ABC program, tapping comedian and frequent Donald Trump foe, Rosie O'Donnell, as one of several guest hosts who fill in during his absence. Well, you may remember that we covered here with Maureen Callahan before a lot of the media picked it up. I am proud to say Rosie O'Donnell's beautiful poem on substack about her decision to, and very, I would say, moving decision to get a facelift. She wrote in stanza form about her decision-making process, brought us right into the room with her as she was pondering this important life change. And I think Maureen and I both agreed it looked pretty good.

You'll be able to judge it because I'm going to roll this clip of Rosie O'Donnell on Jim Acosta's substack from June 17th, where we're going to play the like a full minute version of this clip. I also watched a lot of this interview, like the Kamala interview. I do it for you all, the audience. Someone's got to do the journalism around here. And man, this quote in particular, just we're going to contrast it with a little bit of what Jimmy Kimmel said about Donald Trump and the importance of free and fair elections. You'll probably pick up on what I'm putting down as you watch the clip.

but it must indeed be seen to be believed. Part of the reason that I left is I never in a million years thought we would put a convicted felon who tried to start an insurrection back in office. Right. How did that happen? I don't think it happened. I think Kamala won. I do. And I think that we're going to find all this out.

It's going to come out. Yeah, it's hard to believe, I mean, especially now that he won. I mean, it's, it is hard to believe that. I mean, I, I tend to, you know, maybe it's because I'm old-fashioned, you know, and patriotic and grew up in this country, you know, watching, you know, Tom Hanks and saving private Ryan. I would never think that something like that could happen. So I tend to trust it. But I do, I do worry he's going to try to steal the next one. Well, I don't think he's going to try to steal it.

I think he's going to come up with some big tragedy. We're going to have an event here in the United States in some capacity, maybe another, assassination attempt, and he's going to declare that the elections are off. That's what I think is going to happen because that's in the fascist playbook. Okay. So Jim Acosta left CNN in 2025, meaning he covered the 2024 election, which he just said, quote, it is hard to believe that Donald Trump won. But then he went on to say he does believe he won because he watched saving private Ryan as a kid. Great. A lot of people would say not for any other. reason other than the fact that Biden seemed to be senile in 2020. Let's put aside all of the

conspiracy theories and bigger questions about Mark Zuckerberg and the money that went into changing election procedures during COVID. A lot of people would have said in 2020, it's hard to believe Joe Biden won, right? Because the man seemed to belong in a nursing home, not 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But that's what happens in this country. We have entered the era of lesser than two evil elections. Institutional trust is enormously low. So of course, none of this is actually all that hard to believe. There is literally no evidence that Kamala Harris won the 2024 election. I sound like Jim Acosta, myself now, like Daniel Dale, whoever that person is on CNN who does the fact checking. But it's true. Like, there is actually

no evidence. I mean, Rosie O'Donnell is saying, to her credit, she thinks it's going to come out. But what type of evidence she is basing that on in and of itself, there isn't any that comment. Thomas won the 2024 election doesn't exist. By the way, I disagreed with Trump on the 2020 election. I thought the way that he handled those questions was disgraceful. And you can easily say both those things are true. Jimmy Kimmel, however, who is now giving a slot on his show. Actually, before I get to that, I do just want to mention Jim Acosta. It was hilarious how he was stuttering and sputtering to keep up with Rosie O'Donnell there without tipping his hat too much or tipping his, tipping off viewers on where he really stood on this too much.

Like, he didn't want to sound full blue and on like Rusey O'Donnell was proudly going down the path of. So he was just like, but, you know, it's hard to believe. I watch Save it Private, Saving Private Ryan, because he still doesn't want to be honest with his audience about what he thinks. And he does it in different ways, right? Because there's this, like, niche audience for, you know, prior stalwarts. of corporate press now pretending to say to be the same newsmen that they were in the vein of Walter Cronkite, but just repeating things and saying they are facts in a way that confirms all of the narratives that is not neutral or unbiased or whatever, but does sound neutral and unbiased in the

same sort of style and tone of a Cronkite of all of the like wine moms who will pay for Acosta and Don Lemon and Joy Reed at this point. So that's, that's what we're. why, you know, without all of the overhead of corporate press, they can be more successful. They probably are fairly successful. Some of them have the top substacks, and that's why, it's because when you have no overhead and you can corner a niche that wants to be a part of a movement like that, makes them feel good, right? It's like, you know, Dan Rather whispering sweet nothings into their ear about how righteous their cause is and how insane all of the other narratives that might undercut their own narratives are. That makes it feel really good.

so you pay for it. And Jimmy Kimmel, let's just talk about Kimmel for a moment here, who is giving his slot to Rosie O'Donnell on ABC. He said in October of 2024, the one thing that makes this country a democracy more than anything else are free and fair elections. He went on to say, how can we have an election if whoever loses won't accept the results and thinks CBS should have its license revoked for an episode of 60 minutes he didn't like, who sides with Russia over the CIA and sent COVID equipment to Putin at the height of the pandemic when Americans couldn't even get it. Not to mention the 34 felony convictions.

But here you have Kimmel himself saying the one thing that makes this country democracy more than anything else are free and fair elections. How can we have an election if whoever loses won't accept the results? Rosie O'Donnell does not have even a Mueller report to point to or that Senate, I think it was an intel report that came out in 2017. showing that, yes, there were these absolutely ham-fisted Russian memes. They put a modest, a very small amount of money behind on Facebook to allegedly try and drive people to Trump. Clearly, what they were trying to do was polarize the country. But they were memes, obviously, that, like, non-native English speakers who didn't live in America came up with these, like, crude American stereotypes in their heads about what gets us angry and how you could sway Americans to vote differently. she doesn't have anything like that to point to here in 2026. And Kimmel is giving her a seat at the table

as a guest host, despite saying the one thing that makes this country democracy more than anything else are free and fair elections. How can we have an election if whoever loses won't accept the results? That's Kimmel himself. He seems to think very, very clearly that it is enormously important for people to accept election results when they are processed by the states and certified and we have no reason, significant substantial reason to doubt them. And he believes in this so firmly, he's talked about it many times in recent years. And then Rosie O'Donnell, June 17th, like right before this was announced, is like, oh, no, no, no, Kamala 1, Kamala 1. To be clear, I have zero problem whatsoever with comedians having wacky and eccentric political beliefs. I think that's perfectly fine, And in fact, I would expect that from good comedians, which Camilla I would say once was.

Rosie O'Donnell once was, I suppose, more of a poet than a comedian. But that's totally fine. It's totally fine. They are the ones, though, who have slotted themselves into this category of holier than thou, sanctimonious political commentators. And if you're going to do that, then you don't get the comedian get out of jail-free card when you say something stupid. You have to be held to the sanctimonious, righteous standards that you're setting for everyone else.

Everyone else has to play by these rules. You have to play by these rules, too. And that's what makes this especially amusing. Again, comedians should probably have crazy political beliefs. I'm totally fine with that. They are good at what they do because they're creative out-of-the-box thinkers and they challenge authority and they're not always going to slot into these boxes very neat. or the two-party system very neatly,

and they're not always going to be the most responsible, you know, political, politician-like speakers or political thinkers. And often that's for the better, because they poke holes in authority in ways that are clever and creative and new and fresh and help us think in different ways that politicians don't, frankly.

But they set these standards for themselves. Jimmy Kimmel has set himself out as a moral arbiter, truly as a moral arbiter, and on this specific issue, on the specific issue. And I just hate to do the what aboutism, but sometimes it's clear as day that if Kimmel were giving this slot to somebody who doubted the results of the 2020 election publicly, to somebody who was questioning that, ABC would be facing a pressure campaign, an enormous pressure campaign from some like quote-unquote mainstream people. And they might actually give into it, actually, to be honest. doesn't seem outside of the realm of possibility, and maybe they wouldn't have even allowed it in the first place. So that's one way to just compare Kimmel's own comments on the importance of believing in our free and fair elections and people accepting the results of those elections with his decision to give Rose O'Donnell a seat at the rotating chair of guest hosts for him this summer.

All right, everyone, this has been episode 100 of the live. show is so great to have it, Nez and Rachel here. I just want to thank you all. You are the most important part of the show. It is the audience. It is the viewers. So please like. If you enjoy these videos, like them, subscribe to the channel. That's the best way to help us out. You can email me at Emily at double-maycaremedia.com. We'll be back here on Wednesday with Glenn Greenwald. See you.