After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Kimmel-Colbert Crossover Fail, Jeffries Can't Take a Joke, and the Elite Effort to Control Speech, with Rachel Bovard and Inez Stepman

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Emily Jashinsky breaks down the shifting landscape of late-night TV. She contrasts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert’s overtly political approach with Jimmy Fallon’s “Carson-style” comedy and how Fallon is thriving in the digital landscape.  Then Emily is joined by her friends Rachel Bovard, Vice President at the Conservative Partnership Institute, and Inez Stepman, Legal analyst for Independent Women’s Forum.  They discuss President Trump mocking of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Jeffries’ reaction, NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani supposedly changing his tune on police, why conservatives believe the CATO Institute’s political violence study is deeply flawed, how President Trump’s reported deal to end feud with Harvard is poetic justice, and the new offering from Chelsea Clinton that nobody asked for.  Finally, Emily rounds out the show with a look at Jane Fonda relaunching a McCarthy-era committee to supposedly defend free speech and where Emily believes Fonda and others should REALLY be focusing their efforts. Masa Chips: Go to https://MASAChips.com/AFTERPARTY and use code AFTERPARTY for 25% off your first order. Cozy Earth: Visit https://cozyearth.com for up to 20% off with code EMILY.  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. We have a great show lined up for you tonight. My two friends, Ednaz Stetman, and Rachel Beauvard, are here. We will get to them in just one moment. I'm going to make them wait first, obviously. By the way, get your questions in for this week's Happy Hour. That's going to come out on Friday. If you send questions to Emily at Devil Maycaremedia.com

or to the After Party Emily Instagram account, we will get those as many as we possibly can answered on Friday's Happy Hour show, which, as a reminder, or please subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. Maybe it's Apple, maybe it's Spotify, maybe it's neither Apple nor Spotify, whatever it is. Make sure to subscribe there because that version of the show comes out on Fridays and it's just audio,

which I love, of course, because there's something different about just talking to a microphone. It's almost like therapy. But I won't do that here. You can't do therapy when you're looking at yourself through a camera lens, but you can do it on Happy Hour. So make sure, send those questions in. get them answered. Tonight's show is going to cover developments in the late-night comedy battle.

Kimmel Colbert, they're teaming up. Jimmy Fallon is going on CNBC. Nobody knows what's happening. We're going to talk with Annes and Rachel about the government shutdown, Democratic leaderships, just stunning bravery during the Democratic shutdown. We're going to look at how a Kato Institute study is being attacked actually by other conservative groups. And, you know, Rachel herself. We're going to get into that. There's a great clip of Zora Mundani talking about New York, talking about the New York Police Department on The View that just came out. Big news on the Harvard front.

And tonight, Chelsea Clinton announced that she's launching a podcast for some reason. And Jane Fonda got a bunch of celebrities to sign a letter whining about free speech. So we are going to get to all of that. Hopefully I'll have somewhat surprising comments on the Jane Fonda free speech battle and sort of the history behind it. we will get to that towards the end of the show. But first, I did want to touch on the late night comedy battle because it is still raging. I actually have some graphics I want to go ahead and put up on the screen in just a bit.

But before we do that, let's take a look at this clip of Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert talking to each other. Just the, what do we say, the most ambitious crossover of all time? be the least ambitious crossover of all time talking to each other about each other. Let's go ahead and roll it. My executive producer comes over and he goes, hey, I just got this text from Carrie. She thinks she should, I think I'm right to show it to you. And so, and that's how I found out in front of the audience with my mic up. So we, I brought, I brought a clip. Okay.

And I've just set it up. Is there something we need to know? Did we land on the moon? It's crazy. Carrie told me that you know. Okay. Jimmy Kimmel's show has been pulled indefinitely by ABC. Wow.

Wow. Hold on one second. I'll be right back. I want to find out what this is about. I'll be right back. So there's no signal in the Ed Sullivan Theater. So it didn't tell me why. There was no rationale given, just that you had been yank.

You figured I did something stupid, right? I generally assume that it's your fault. Yeah. All right. We have one more clip of those two. This is going to be S2. I mean, that son of a bitch, you know, is... Really unbelievable.

Mr. Son of a bitch. I mean, Mr. Son of a bitch. His royal... Yes. No, I never imagined that. We'd ever have a president like this, and I hope we don't ever have another president like this again.

I never even imagined there would ever be a situation in which the president of our country was celebrating hundreds of Americans losing their jobs. There's somebody who took pleasure in that. That, to me, is the absolute opposite of what a leader of this country is supposed to be. Okay.

Now, I want to compare that with this clip of Jimmy Fallon on CNBC to tee up a bigger conversation about what Light Night tells us about the future of media, the past of media, and our relationship with the media. So let's go ahead and roll this clip of Jimmy Fallon on CNBC. I think this was actually today. So all of this is happening within the span of just a few days of each other. Kimmel Colbert joined forces in different venues that you have Fallon coming out on CNBC and making this very interesting point, S3. I am wondering how you're thinking about what you can put in a monologue,

what it's like being on an FCC licensed avenue of broadcasting right now. You know, our show's never really been that political, you know, we, we hit both sides equally and we try to make everybody laugh. And that's really the way our show really works. I mean, our monologues are kind of, you know, the same that we've been doing since Johnny Carson was doing the Tonight Show. So really, I just keep my head down and making sure the jokes are funny. I have great writers, clever, smart writers. And we just, yeah, we're just trying to make the best show we possibly can and entertain everybody.

Well, that sounds like Fallon has been listening to After Party, of course, where since our first show, We have been making the point that his entire strategy in terms of content in business and the marriage of those two things is following a Carson model. And it actually leaves him behind in the late night ratings over the course of the last decade. And I actually have a graphic I'm going to put up that's super helpful to this extent. This is from the New York Times back in looking at these numbers back around like 2017. I'm going to zoom in here and you'll notice something very interesting, which is the, that Fallon had the highest ratings and is then overtaken by Colbert after the 2016 election and inauguration when Colbert sort of became the go-to anti-Trump late-night comedy show.

And other than Greg Gutfeld, which is a huge story in and of itself, how he was able to overtake the broadcast networks on a cable network, something that nobody ever would have thought possible like 20 years ago, Colbert on the broadcast networks really was dominant. Even so, it's worth noting. I'm going to put another thing up on the screen here. This is from Deseret News that wrote this week, quote, overall, late-night viewership fell 9% year-over-year among total viewers, and 18 to 49 numbers, so that's the critical demo,

dropped 21% the demo for advertisers. Fallon show has taken the biggest hit down 16% among total viewers, and 2019, 29% among 18 to 49-year-olds compared to Q2, 2024. That's according to Nielsen. Now, it says, while traditional Nielsen ratings show a decline, this is really crucial and it gets left out of a lot of the coverage, quote, late-night hosts are still finding audiences online. Kimmel has 20 million YouTube subscribers and his three most recent videos earned more than 3 million views. Fallon has over 32 million subscribers, Colbert just over 10 million, and Seth Myers around 5 million. So why is Jimmy Fallon

doubling down on the method that has him behind the other hosts over the last decade or so. Well, because it's much more important to focus on digital right now, obviously much more important to focus on digital right now. And if he's able to get a bigger slice of the digital pie, which is just a bigger slice of the media consumption pie, period, then he's actually probably going to help NBC take this old dinosaur and move it to a different car. This is just like terribly mixed metaphors, but you get what I'm saying, which is that the juggernaut that once was the Tonight Show, the sort of traditional broadcast television, those FCC licensed airwaves, are no longer the best vehicle for his content to get out. And so actually NBC is the one that's kind of adapting in this case where CBS obviously got rid of Colbert.

At the end of this year, his show will end. and actually it's not just Colbert, they're ending the show all together, the historic franchise, they're ending it all together, not just canceling Colbert, as some of the coverage indicated. And that's because they haven't been able to translate this hulking juggernaut in a way that gets enough of the digital pie to keep going forward. So take a look at this. It's from Morning Console, and it found Jimmy versus Jimmy for America's favorite late night host. But even so, this is favorability among all adults, Democrats, and Republicans, broken down in different categories for Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, it goes to Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert, James Gordon. Do you remember that guy? Carpool karaoke, edgy, edgy,

edgy stuff. This is in 2021. So Fallon has the highest overall. So he's at 53%. Overall, all Stephen Colbert is at 40%. So that's favorability. Their favorite late night host, Jimmy Fallon, 53%, Colbert, 40%. So there you have Fallon with a double-digit lead in favorability on that question. He was slightly edging at Jimmy Kimmel at this point. But Colbert had a 60% approval with Democrats. Fallon was actually even higher than him with Democrats. And Kimmel was even higher than both of them with Democrats. So what does that mean? Basically, the type of people who are watching TV on the broadcast format is different than people who are consuming the content of these late-night hosts overall. And what you're seeing on broadcast television night after night is no longer

really reflective of, you can't analyze it in the same way that, for example, you would analyze Johnny Carson, who has the Desiret article I just read from, points out, at his height was averaging 9 million viewers a night. Nine million viewers a night. That's appointment television for a much bigger swath of the country and it gives you a cultural influence that is much more significant than anyone has now. Most people are now going for these sort of fractured segments

of the audience. And that explains why the content for somebody like Stephen Colbert is more political. And that explains also why CBS is just getting of the entire franchise because that show was losing money, according to Puck News, tons of money, according to Puck's News report back when Colbert was pulled off the air originally. If you can't translate to digital, because your content is appealing to this demographic of like the resistance wine moms that you can get in tuning into your show night after night

because they're super loyal. They're used to late night comedy because they tend to be older from a generation that had appointment, TV, late night comedy shows, but that's such a niche. You can no longer support that on broadcast television. This model is coming to the news overall. It's coming to media overall. It's going to come, I mean, if you look at what is happening in streaming versus the few big blockbuster movies that are coming out, yes, there's still going to be some people who have ambitions, some content that has ambitions of appealing to a wide swath of the American public, but increasingly a lot of money is going to be dispersed, and a lot of resources are going to be dispersed into content that appeals more strongly, more intensely to a smaller

group of the public so that you can be sure you get that group of the public in the seats, subscribe to your website, whatever it is. And that's going to change the content significantly, and the question for us is whether we adjust to it. So what you heard from Jimmy Kimmel in that last clip we played was him being like, well, I just don't think any American president should be taking delight in people losing their jobs, referring to the government shutdown. But again, that remark is political. It may be shared by people in the country who say, yeah, I guess that's true. But it's the equivalent of saying, you know, I look at the Democratic Party and I just wonder who would shut down the government and do it because they, in some part, don't want to cut subsidies for people

who are either here on asylum or visas, or they want the federal government to continue subsidizing hospitals that are using emergency Medicaid funds on illegal migrants. Now, that is not a great punchline. I'll be the first to admit it. But the point is, what Kimmel said, he tried to package it in this sort of neutral framing. But he's not a neutral guy. He's a partisan actor. And that just doesn't want. work in the business model anymore. So everything, unless you go like all in, it doesn't work in the business model. And unless you're curating it, not just for the next five years of whatever will happen on broadcast television before the total takeover, you're useless to these giant

corporations. I'm going to talk more about the bigger free speech fight at the end of the episode. So stay tuned for that because I do have maybe a little criticism for the Trump administration on that point, even though I'm going to be talking about Jane Fonda and will likely be much more fixated on what the hell is going on with Jane Fonda. So we'll get to that at the end of the show. Before I bring in, Annes and Rachel, let me tell you about masa chips. You know that I love masa chips. If you listen to the show, you also probably know that chips and fries were once cooked in beef tallow until the 1990s when corporations swapped it for cheap seed oils. And now those oils make up 20% of the average Americans daily calories and are linked to

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the spicy flavor. I love the lime flavor. Basically, I just love Masa chips. It all hits just right. So if you're ready to give Masa a try, go to Mazachips.com slash afterparty and use code afterparty for 25% off your first order. That's Masa Chips.com slash afterparty and code afterparty for 25% off your first order. Don't feel like ordering online. That's fine. Masa is now available nationwide and your local Sprouts supermarket. Stop by and pick up a bag before they're gone. All right. On that note, let's go ahead and bring in Rachel Beauvard, Vice President at the Conservative Partnership Institute and Innes Stetman, legal analyst for the Independent Women's Forum, where in full disclosure, I am also a senior fellow. So welcome back to both of you. Your job titles

are so serious. It's not like host of after-party. You have a good business card. And, you know, it's all aspirational in the end. That's one way to look at it. Okay. I want to start with Hakeem Jeffries, because he's, first of all, a friend of the show, of course, and a champion of the American spirit. of the American public and has been absolutely torching his own party, meaning he's not criticizing his own party, but he is bringing significant criticism upon his own party. By just being a total clown, this is S4.

He posted another video, a.I video. I'm sorry, I can't not watch that at last. Sombrero once again. This time he's in the background. You see the audience. It's so funny with Abby Phillips speaking over it. Mariachi band. I love that they showed it.

It sounds like this meeting that you had this week has only resulted in trolling and not in any serious conversations. Well, that's exactly the point. We just don't have serious negotiating partners right now on the other side of the aisle because they're engaging in this erratic behavior posting racist, fake AI videos,

and it speaks for itself in terms of the American people concluding who's serious and who's deadly unsirious. When he had, When he tried to hand you that Trump 2020 hat, what was your reaction? She's acting like this is a matter of war. Leader Schumer and I, the Trump 2028 hat. They just randomly appeared in the middle of the meeting on the dance.

It was the strangest thing ever. And I just looked at the hat, looked at J.D. Vance, who was seated to my left and said, don't you got a problem with this? And he said, no comment. And that was the end of it. He paused for like 10 seconds after he said, don't you go? had a problem with this after acting like this was some serious point that he'd made some really profound observation that he had said to jd vans jump in i love how they pointed out that this is

a i as though it was possible but he actually had twirled moustachios and a sombrero on let's put this up this is f3 this was a great peter hasson post he's like i like how abc news put up quote a i generated image in giant letters just in case any of their viewers thought hakeem jeffreys was actually sporting a mustache Well, to be clear, Hakeem Jeffries looks like that now to me forever. It will only ever do that. In my inner eye, he will always look that way with a mustache in the sombrose. I actually have the photo saved on my phone.

Good. Oh, it's your background. Rachel, you love shutting down the government. So I'm going to go to you first with this question. But in all seriousness, I think the way I look at this is this shutdown. It's never great when the government shuts down. Nobody loves it. Nobody says this is the ideal state of the republic. At the same time, right now, Democrats definitely need to show the base that they are, like, fighting for them.

Republicans have this great talking point about migrants, people who are here on asylum, which is millions of people, having access to the ACA exchanges, and then federal reimbursements of hospitals and emergency Medicaid payments for people who are here illegally. So Republicans have no incentive to come to the table because why would they, so long as Democrats are insisting on those provisions? All of this is to say, I think we're in for a fairly long shutdown, but Hakeem Jeffries has actually like this opportunity politically on a silver platter handed to him. I can't believe that he is wasting any breath on racism. Bernie Sanders and AOC just put out a video that smoked Hakeem Jeffries. They didn't mention him, but it was all focused on health care, healthcare, healthcare. They didn't talk about anything else.

They didn't talk about AI memes because most people watch that and are like, I'd rather not be coming from the president of the United States, but it's pretty funny. So they have learned nothing despite like 10 years of Republicans energizing their own base with these shutdowns, which, by the way, Rachel, you saw up close and personal. Yeah, lived through a few government shutdowns. Live through, caused, stirred up, fomented. Yeah, amongst the torch bears, yeah. But I will say when you have a successful shutdown, the only way to really have a successful shutdown,

I think if you're the party responsible for it is if you have intense party unity around one or two messages that everybody in the party can get behind that you can clearly communicate and that resonate. And to your point, you could be making, if you're a Democrat, right, you could be making an argument about health care. I don't think it is that compelling because the system they're trying to sell is just like pretty crappy. And you are also dealing with this issue of all of this health care going to illegal immigrants, which, you know, is a hot button issue. I think for a lot of people in the base. But all of that being said, Hakeem Jeffries just can't help himself, right? The entire party has been trained

to just lean into everything is racism, everything is an attack. And it's kind of funny because, well, let's just get it out there that what Trump just did with that meme is objectively funnier than anything Jimmy Kimmel has done in 10 years. And everybody knows it.

But the thing is, contrast, He doesn't even have writers. I know. It's just him and Dan Skavino finding shit in their, mentions. But it's like contrast Hakeem Jeffrey's response to the other like most memeable person in America, which is J.D. Vance. Mames abound. And you see J.D. Vance like leaning into it. Right. Like he posted the blueberry head J.D. Vance. I can't remember what tweet he was responding to.

But he just was like, ha ha, and like leaned into it. And everyone was like kind of humored and charmed by it because that is the way that you respond when you were a self-confident person. But you have Hakeem Jeffrey is just out there with a victim complex, totally stepping all over his own narrative, because that's the only thing they've been trained to do. And it just goes to show, and the last thing I'll say about it, is this is the Democratic Party. They don't have a policy platform anymore. They just have finger-pointing. Like, they're the Spider-Man meme. You know, you're a racist, you're racist, you're racist. And you're seeing it right now on full display. Well, and as we're going to talk about your millennial kings are on Lumdani in just a moment,

but he's somebody who stunned Democratic Party insiders, Andrew Cuomo supporters, for overtaking Cuomo in the Democratic primary on a platform where he very conspicuously tried to never talk about the culture war. Now, of course, he still did, and he had a lot in the past, but he was conspicuously making an effort not to do that.

Why is it not trickling to Dem leadership and why are they still so clumsy at just talking to their own voters? Look, I really think that the culture War is, one, famously, I said it was the big tent for a lot of people. It is what comes into politics. The second thing is that the culture where actually matters to people. It's not an invention of whatever I've seen on the left.

I say it's, you know, the billionaire fat cats making the MAGA and woke people fight in the cage, right, while they're collecting the dollars. But on the other side, there's a similar meme, right? It's essentially saying you shouldn't care about the culture, but people do care about the culture, right? They do care what their children are learning in school. They do care about that at least equally as they care about their health care bills being too high. Those are both really legitimate concerns. It always comes back to variations on the what's the matter with Kansas theme, right? Which is that essentially, especially in particular, working class people and middle class people don't know.

They're not allowed to care about what they care about. If it's not, you know, a direct materialist issue, then it's the watch being spun in front of their eyes, right? They don't know what they really care about all the way back in the Bush era. It was, oh, they don't really care about gay marriage. Really, what you have to care about is only dollars and cents issues. And that's just not how people operate. It's not how the people do politics. And frankly, it's not how elites do politics.

They only pretend that they do politics that way, right? And we'll get to libertarianism and Cato and all of that at the end. But they pretend that they care first and foremost about fiscal issues. And then, you know, a lot of people who sell themselves as caring only about fiscal issues always end up on the side that where their knee-jerk cultural reactions are. So I feel like people who are engaged in the culture war are just being honest about what they care about in politics and not pretending that they have only materialist concerns or that anything but materialist concerns.

It's just not real politics. It's not worth, you know, thinking about what the culture of the country you live in is, whether, you know, it's a patriotic country, whether you can trust your children's teachers at school. like these are really, these are kitchen table issues. They're not just dollars and cents around the kitchen table. It's those issues as well. Well, right, Ben, this is the rock and hard place that the dens find themselves between right now

is that they have conditioned some of their voters. And I don't, that actually is not the right word because it implies a lack of agency. There is a hardened core of the Democratic Party's grassroots that actually will continue to pressure Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders to talk about the culture war in ways that hurt them because people do care about the culture war. And the more Bernie Sanders talks about the culture war, the worse off it is for him generally. That's not always been true. It didn't used to be true when he talked about immigration, for example. But now Democrats find themselves having to maneuver this hardened grassroots that wants the culture war and those voters that they've lost

to Trump and Republicans who the more Democrats talk about the culture war because of where they're pinned into on those questions. We're also going to talk about Harvard, which we'll get to that. But yeah, go ahead, Rachel. Well, you're seeing this right now. now in the Virginia governor's race. I don't know. I mean, people have a lot more things to pay attention to than that. But I think this issue is like playing out very clearly because Abigail Spanberger, who's running as the Democrat candidate, is supposed to be the next vanguard of Republican Democrat moderates. She has talked about as presidential material and she cannot, and this has been very clear this week, cannot answer a question about if boys should be able to participate in girls

sports. I mean, this is a baseline issue in Virginia, especially in northern Virginia where there's This happened in Maine, too. Yeah, and there's like three or four court cases pending about this issue in northern Virginia of men wandering into locker rooms with little girls, you know, in public settings, not just in schools, in, you know, YMCA's in public locker rooms. And she fumbled it so badly. And again, this isn't the progressive wing of the Democrat Party. This is supposed to be the moderate.

The CIA wing. Can I call up on that? New Jersey is turning out the exact same way. Cheryl there in the governor's race is supposed to be a mom. moderate. And yet she is unable to talk about this issue in a clear way because she's stuck between her base on the one side that will not accept any retreat from a man who dresses as a woman is a woman. And the fact that New Jersey moderate voters, even leaning Dem voters, really don't like it. We did at IW. We did a poll on this in New Jersey explicitly on

moderate voters and like real moderate voters, right? Because a lot of times I feel the, we talk about moderate voters or swing voters. People assume that people are in the middle when, in fact, they may be criticizing their own party from the left or from the right. But we had a batch of voters, likely voters in our poll that had voted, you know, basically had voted for Republicans and Democrats in the last five years. And so they were like legitimate swing voters who were choosing between Republicans and Democrats. And this issue swung like the majority of those people, a substantial majority, like close to

60% who said they would vote for Cheryl and then said they wouldn't vote for Cheryl if she couldn't answer this question. And unfortunately, she like the rest of the Democratic Party is on record voting multiple times in her case in Congress against a bill that merely defines and merely makes the very baseline kind of common sense, a demand that only girls participate in girls' sports. So there is no retreat from the woke culture war. It's just a messaging, you know, kind of papering over to say, well, let's not talk about that. And then when they're asked questions about it, they just satisfy both their base and moderate voters because they can't give a straight answer. It's why you don't want to talk about it. Yeah, so this is a perfect segue into Zoraum

Donnie's appearance on the view where someone we know, Lisa Farah, asked a decent question of Aenez's millennial king. This is S-9. So Zoran, back in 2020, you called for defunding the police, something you've since walked back. You also called the NYPD racist and anti-queer and a threat to public safety in 2020, but now agree they deserve an apology. You initially refused to denounce highly charged rhetoric related to Israel, then later said you would discourage its use. How can New Yorkers trust you and not be concerned that consultants are getting in your ear to get you elected, but you still hold all of those positions? Well, they can rest assured that it isn't consultants in my ear.

And can I ask, have you formally apologized to the NYPD? These are conversations that I'm having individually with officers. And I've appreciated that because it's through those conversations with rank and file officers that I've learned more about the difficulties of this job. Okay, I mean, I don't need him to apologize to the NYPD because somebody who tweets that queer liberation is defunding the police is not probably undergoing a sincere evolution on the question of NYPD. But, Annes, you are, After Party's New York correspondent. I guess we haven't announced that yet, but here it is. Add that to your fancy business card. I'm a New York correspondent. Yes.

Yes. So, but no, tell us, you know, is this going to, is he going to pull it off basically while walking this tightrope? Well, I think he's going to get elected. I don't think that he's pulling off his tightrope very well. It's very obvious that even in this, he can't bring himself to actually walk back any of his comments. That's what the headlines are because the media wants that to be true because they know that it's additionally good for his campaign, just like moderate Democrats. know that that is good for his campaign to the extent that we just discussed in the last segment, those moderate Democrats actually exist at all. They do know that this is bad to say in public.

But no, he hasn't walked back anything. Just, you know, two or three days ago, he refused to disavow a DSA tweet about Asada Shakur, who was a famous cop killer, right? So he's continuing. By the way, she didn't just kill one cop. She also threw grenades into a cop car, successfully set it on fire. She was involved in another officer shooting. It was a long history of trying to kill cops, which was a... Of liberation. Yeah, this was a black liberation army they had as one of their goals was kill the cops. So this was not like a one-off incident the way that all of the glowing New York Times profiles.

And we can talk about political violence, which will be an interesting topic in that, you know, sort of context. But specifically with regard to law enforcement, nobody is actually fooled by this. The reason he has to even try to sort of assemble around his. views is because there is basically one route to beating him. And that's the fact that over and over again, in polls, New Yorkers say this is their top issue and that they're worried about Mandami on this issue. They like everything else, all the socialism, all the, you know, I'm not, I'm not a rosy-eyed about my fellow New York voters or imagine that they're, you know, even common sense, let alone actually right of center, right? This is a deep blue city. But they are concerned about crime.

And that that's why he keeps getting asked these questions. That's why he's trying to avoid these questions because I'm pretty sure those consultants, he says, are not whispering in his ear. They're saying this is the one thing that can bring you down, actually. This is the one issue where you're weak. This is the one issue where New York voters are not sure about you. And it's because of all the crazy stuff that you've been saying for years and years and have now just not even really disavowed so much as just pretend don't exist. It's very much the Kamala Kamala. I've already forgotten how to pronounce her name. Kamala. Mahala Harris model, right? You don't actually disavow. You just pretend you never said anything, and the media goes along with it. Well, Rachel, pick up on that point because Asada Shakur was also celebrated by Chicago's Teachers Union in the last several days upon the news of Asada Shakur's passing.

So it's not just, like we were talking in the last segment about trans issues, but it's actually not just trans issues. It's also going to continue to be a problem for Dems on race and policing. And I would argue especially millennial Dems, who for five to 10 years got sucked into a lot of virtue signal ideological posturing on social media that's going to be hard to run away from and that they may actually not even want to run away from because it's part of their worldview. No, it is. And I watched that whole exchange between Mondani and Alyssa and what really set my teeth on edge and I think makes this point in particular is the fact that when he he opens his answer

on the NYPD by referencing Michael Brown, Sean Bell, and Eric Garner, three, people who were part of very high profile alleged police brutality cases, which were all proven to be false. All three of those cases were investigated by DOJ civil rights offices across Democratic and Republican administrations, and the officers were found not to be liable. They did not violate civil rights. Famously, in the case of Michael Brown, it was Obama's DOJ, who said not only was the officer behaving appropriately, but Michael Brown was the aggressor in that case. And then in the Sean Bell case, you had the officers charge and then acquitted in state court with Eric Garner. A grand jury failed to indict because, again, they found that he was resisting arrest and the officer

did what he was trained to do. But by continuing and perpetuating the myth, that this was somehow, these cases were the fault of the NYPD and that there is, you know, building this empirical case somehow, that there is an epidemic still of race-based violence and policing at the NYPD. He is continuing to, again, stoke this race war in this race narrative. This is not moderation. This is perpetuating a lie. Well, just to that last point that you made, Rachel, the narratives were that these were killings based on racism. And that is particularly, like, I think you can have a decent argument about the training of the police and whether that was, we could go into all of that

and have, like, conversations about what happened in the lead-up. And they did. They did do that after Eric Garner died. Like, they, they, they, changed how the police were trained as a result of that, which may have been the appropriate thing to do. Right. But this idea that there were racist police officers involved in every single one of those cases is that has, I think, pretty thoroughly been debunked. And in the case of Michael Brown, which is arguably up there with Trayvon Martin and George Floyd, but that was one of the, I mean, that led to years of discord in many, many cities. So on that note, since we're talking about political violence, unfortunately, Rachel, I want to just go.

back to you for a moment about a letter you through together on that Cato Institute study. Almost everyone who was online after what happened to Charlie Kirk saw this Cato Institute study that claimed right-wing political violence was more prolific over the last 50 years. It started in 1975 than left-wing political violence. And obviously just that starting point of 1975, choosing to use the last 50 years and to start in 1975 is probably already setting off alarm bells for a lot of people who saw the study. But Rachel, you are actually rallying other conservative groups to push back, to ask Cato to retract this study that was put out by one of their vice presidents, we should add. Tell us a little bit. Give us a little bit of background, because as

you dove into it in this letter, it was a pretty thorough fisking of the data. Yeah, I mean, people may be familiar with this study because, of course, as soon as the Charlie Kirk assassination happened, you know, all of these groups were quick to put out, well, this is, you know, this might be an instance of left-wing violence where they acknowledged it at all. But right-wing violence is the one that's really on the rise. And joining this chorus was the Cato Institute, who put together a study under the director, well, the person who did it was Alex Naraste, who is a vice president at the Cato Institute. And he put out this study with the lead claim that right-wing violence is on the rise. And normally, it's like, okay, a tree falling in the forest. But this study was picked up on

by Time magazine. It was tweeted out by Ian Bremmer because it fit the narrative that the mainstream media was trying to perpetuate, which is that, oh, no, it's the right wing that are the baddies. But if you start to peel back and look at this study, it is, and I say this, you know, in all sincerity, a dumpster fire. It is as a work of research and just as an empirical fact, it is all over the place. It pulls from some insane sourcing, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had put Charlie Kirk on its list of hate groups shortly before he was murdered, the Anti-Defamation League and a host of other sources. Which also included Charlie and wrote about him being hateful. But it also just made, he made bizarre choices. For example, he decided to, you know, as you mentioned, he started the study in 1975 after all the weather underground violence of the left.

but he chose to leave out the 3,000 deaths from 9-11 and the World Trade Center attack because that might, you know, dominate the data. But he did include the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people and classified it as right-wing violence. He made a lot of other bizarre choices. He left out the Waukesha Christmas Massacre in Wisconsin, where, again, that was, we know, was motivated by left-wing reasoning. And he all, but he also includes things like, you know, You know, the killer who went on this misogynate shooting spree of sex workers and had no obvious or documented political reason to do this.

He was at a mental health issue, but Alex just throws that in the right wing category because why not? So it's a lot of choices like that. And, you know, people with other, you know, backgrounds sort of went through it and showed that he left out so many other instances of violence just didn't include them at all. Or miscounted some of them. It was crazy. Yeah, some of them he miscounted the number of victims. And so, you know, ordinarily, again, this wouldn't necessarily rise to the level of the conservative movement saying, like, hey, buddy, stop doing this. But the Cato Institute is, you know, at least affiliated with the right in many cases, not on every issue, but Alex. A lot of conservative thinking donors, right? You would know this. People who probably give to all kinds of different conservative groups, they get swayed by development people who say this is going to get your taxes lower. It's going to deregulate. it's going to push deregulation, all that stuff.

Yeah, and their analysts are frequently called by Republican members of Congress to be, you know, witnesses on committee hearings. And this is something where it's, one, an incredibly poor research product, just as a matter of scholarship. But two, again, in addition to being a poor product, you are contributing to an overtly false narrative that is putting other Republicans at risk. I'm sorry, like one of the signers of this letter calling for the study's retraction is Tony Perkins, who is the head of the Family Research Council, who that group, you know,

over 10 years ago at this point, because they were put on the SBLC hate list, a man with a gun walked into their lobby with the intent to shoot up the entire building. And thanks to the heroic actions of their security guard, he only shot the guard, right? And the guard managed to take him down. But you cannot perpetuate this lie. This is what is getting people killed. And so we've asked Kato to pull the study back. No response yet, obviously.

No response. That's super interesting. Can I add something to please. Rachel's excellent layout of the facts of this atrocious study, honestly, they should be embarrassed about this study just on the basis of scholarship quality.

It's, I mean, it's a shonda, it's a shame. Like, they should not have put out this study with so many errors and relying on sources that they themselves in the past have criticized. It's just like a blatantly partisan product. And it does show to,

I mean, I guess libertarians are also a little bit infected with this leftist idea. I would call it a fetish, really, for putting their partisan sort of suppositions into bar graphs or pikes or, quote, unquote, objective. That is a fetish. As though that, like, actually changes the fact that you're making a partisan argument, if you make it a bar chart or a bar chart, that's somehow different. You see that with the graphs about fascism is directly increasing on the Republican Party, right? The line that goes up. It's like when people walk into a meeting, right. When people in a meeting walk in and they're like, see, I've made this Venn diagram.

And everyone's like, oh, a Venn diagram. This must be a part. It's serious. I love Venniagram. No. But the other part of this, of course, and the more important part, honestly, to me, than the tallying up of how many often, like, it's often hard to categorize motives. Sometimes it's not, but it is often difficult to categorize motives because you are dealing with

people who are a population to say the least, not always. By the way, I don't think, for example, the shooter, Charlie Kirk shooter falls in this category. I think he's very, very clear about the ideological motivations. And we shouldn't say that ideological hatred, right, is in itself a mental illness. I think that's the wrong way to go down the road. But there are, obviously, there are people involved in these shootings frequently have other issues going on or they have garbled politics, right? So actually, more than the tit for tat who has more violence, I think the more, the more important metric is our institutions or elected officials, right, are they endorsing this in some way? Are they excusing it or to use Molly Hemingway's great phrase? Are they creating the sort

of permission architecture for this? And this is where the point about Asada Shakur, we were talking about Kimmel earlier on, right? He had public enemy on his comeback show, right? What's the shirt the guy is wearing, right? It's, you know, RIP Asada. It's the other guy, Mumia al-Jamar, I think, but he was responsible for killing police in police officers in Philadelphia, you know, in the 80s, right? So another cop killer. So of course, he's going to a company late night television studio with security. Yeah. Well, it's just direct endorsement of political violence.

So is the fact that Angela Davis continues to, you know, tour college campuses in 205. Wasn't it like the Vladimir Lenin Prize for Peace that she won? I have to remember the for horrible name of. it, but she, like, went to the Soviet Union to accept it in the 80s. Do you remember it? And as you would remember this. Yes. Yes. She did, she did accept. I don't remember the name of the award, but that sounds about right, right? Like, this is like, you know, the, I want a Lenin. The Victorian Award for Big, for Best Barbecue kind of situation. The Lenin Award for Peace. But, but, but yeah, like, you know, Bill Ayers, obviously,

famously was Obama's mentor. There has been the law. Because in Rosenberg. Right. Who bombed the Senate. Right. Now raises money for Black, it's like. Like, kind of violence in the 70s, by the way, something that Rachel points out in the letter she's circulating, this study conveniently leaves out all about 70s leftist violence as well. And, you know, chooses a start date that exempts 9-11 somewhere in the middle, but right after the waves of violence from the left in the 60s and 70s. But again, the point is not even the tit for tat. I think we have a good argument on the tit for tat. Don't get me wrong. But the point is how is this being treated by mainstream organs, either at the party or, you.

of media or people who are actually supposed to be responsible with their public presence. And the reality is that the left has institutionally accepted political violence. They praise political violence on university campuses. They invite politically motivated terrorists who have conducted bombings into, you know, lauded positions with nice sign of ciner cures and allow them a position of teaching young people, right? There is no comparison to that on the right. No.

Nobody is inviting Uncle Ted, okay? Nobody has... Who's not even really on the right? He's not even really on the right. No, it would be like taking a militiamen from the like 90s, like somebody who was running around with Timothy McVeigh and putting them in a position at Hillsdale. Like, it doesn't happen.

It doesn't exist. There's no right-wing media prize for Oklahoma City bombing, you know, political violence. Right. And that's what the left does every day. And Jimmy Kimmel just did it. after saying, no, no, I just said out political violence, but I should be able to make a joke, which was not the problem. The problem is not the joke. The problem is that you could repeat it false information about the assassin, right? That does make me, like actually, this is a suggestion

that I have, Annes get the David Koresh chair for political studies at Bob Jones University. That's my idea. Bob Jones is not ready for it is. That's all I'm saying. Well, actually, so speaking on education. I was in recent recently, and I found out that I'm one of the more right- people at Regent University. It's time for you to join a megachurch. The water is warm.

Okay, calm down. Bradcats are calling. I know she likes the fog machines. Okay. And this is a great segue to talk about Harvard because Donald Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday, quote, they will be paying about $500 million and they'll be operating trade schools. They're going to be teaching people how to do AI and lots of other things.

he also said, quote, their sins are forgiven. That came a day after the White House, according to Harvard Crimson, quote, launched federal suspension and debarment proceedings against Harvard, a highly unusual move that would cut off the school from access to federal grants and contracts. The trade school for $500 million seems to look like the Brown deal for $50 million that happened earlier this year. What's going on with this? and as education is your specialty area,

is this good or bad? I think I say raising universities is my specialty area, which would be more accurate these days. The General Sherman of academia. Yeah, I like that. You know what? You can, instead of the whatever, the Uncle Ted Prize or whatever you're talking, David Koresh.

Yeah. No, so obviously, so top line, this pressure on universities works. We saw initially this attempt to carve out the narrative, especially among those hopeful on the left, that Columbia had knuckled under, but Harvard was going to be the resistance to this, right? And they're both coming to the conclusion that I've been writing about for a decade now, which is that universities can't say no to federal money. Their entire business model is built around federal subsidies, federal money,

taxpayer benefits, okay? That is how they've amassed so much money. It's how they have huge endowments. It is literally their business model. And the only thing stopping the right for all these years from having influence over universities when we're in power has been essentially the refusal to use power. And I always love Rachel's analogy here where there's so many Republicans and I think she was talking about Mitch McConnell, but it applies to a lot of people.

Believe that winning elections is just putting a trophy on your shelf. Like, hooray, we've won an election. Like we don't have to do anything with this political power. Consulting contracts go up. Yep. They don't like to polish the trophies, but that's it. this kind of pressure on universities was always possible. It was always just a matter of political will.

And the reason that they're having to settle is because they're guilty as hell. Of all counts, they have been breaking federal law and civil rights law for decades. And they've expected to get away with it because, one, you know, ideology said they should. And two, Republicans were allowing them to get away with it. Right. Republicans never use the levers. They will knuckle under it. They will eventually go through enough presidents where one of them is going to sit, all of the faculty around the table and say, look, we have a choice. Either we can do 80%

reduction among you guys, or we have to listen to these demands. In terms of the substance of the settlement, look, I'm happy about any pain that's being caused to Harvard by a $500 million settlement. It's poetic to make them, you know, run trade schools. I think it's a good little class touch on this, especially since the value of a Harvard degree, since they don't actually teach much of value to most of their students, some majors accepted. But for the most part, they don't actually teach anything. The value of a Harvard degree is for elites to network with each other so that they can get fancier jobs from each other after. So there is a nice touch there, a poetic touch by the Trump administration of forcing them to fund and run these kinds of schools

because their entire business model, aside from the taxpayer paying for it, is the taxpayer funds elite networking, right? That's what Harvard degree is now. So I like that. To me, I'm more interested in what ends up being in a specific deal and whether or not they go under consent degree. like Columbia. I want to see them reporting data on their admissions, right? Them reporting back to the federal government about whether or not they continue to violate the Civil Rights Act and discriminate against white people, against Asians and their admissions, whether or not they continue to hire on the basis of race and call it something else. I want to see that data reported back to the federal government. That's a really important piece of all of these sort of settlements to me is not just

the dollar amount and the nice little touch of making them fund, you know, the working class pores that they've been keeping out of Harvard at the expense of the taxpayer. But I do, I want to see that consent decree actually reflects the fact that they're not going to continue to flagrantly violate civil rights law going forward. Because that's what ended up the, that's the reason they're on the hot seat is because they're just guilty of everything that the Trump administration has accused them of. Rachel, I realize you're very much the wrong person to ask this question, too. But has it gone too far? I am the worst person asked that, too, because I am an accelerationist. You get the Lenin Prize.

You're ready to heighten the contradictions. It isn't too far until we're over the cliff and we're looking at each other asking where the parachute is. Then we know we've done something cool. But, no, I mean, look, I was just going to say to Anz, like, are we happy about trade schools? Because I feel like it's not violent enough, right? I feel like they need to be made to pay in some way. Like, you know, Innes may be correct that running these trade schools will sort of have the effect of balancing some of the ideology and the backgrounds that are like brought into the school. Not really.

I just think it's going to make them embarrassed because all they have is prestige, right? I just think it's a nice little humiliating touch for them. I actually do love the idea of like someone graduating with like a, as a master electrician from Harvard. I would hire that person. That's literally all of my grandfathers were electricians. Yeah, if you're on thumbtack with that degree, I'll hire you. Okay, that sounds good. Well, Anez, you predicted some of this, actually.

You've been rather prescient. Tell us how you manifested this higher education take down. I didn't manifest anything. It's just that the Trump administration is like Santa Claus to people on the right and on this issue in particular. I just, the only thing I did was scream for 10 years that this was possible. that we didn't have to actually continue to fund people who hate us. That is a completely political choice. And it's a totally legitimate choice to say,

you know what? They're giving us ample grounds to defund them because they're flagrantly in violation of civil rights law and other federal laws, literally constantly everywhere on the books, right? And the only thing that was missing was the political will to actually enforce it. And, you know, that's what Trump has done, I think,

for the right in a lot of different contexts, right? And to answer the question about have we gone to, far. No, we haven't, the danger is not going far enough for the right, I think. To me, the big lesson here is the Spanish Civil War. Oh, boy. Yeah. Well, the general Franco is, if you don't stop, it's a great general. Don't stop institutional leftists from like, for example, just creating permission structures for violence that is then carried out by their fellow travelers over and over again, actually, every solution we have under the law, and I would argue that all of these solutions fall even within the confines of small ill-liberalism. This is merely about choosing

where the taxpayers are going to spend their money, where you spend the mechanic from Ohio's money. Are we going to spend it on Harvard University? Are we going to spend it somewhere else, right? For the American people. And that's a solution that's firmly democratic. It's firmly liberal, but if we don't apply it consistently and we don't actually end up dismantling these institutional networks of the left under the Trump administration, the next iteration will be something more like Franco, because people just won't tolerate forever, you know, being shot at at the end of the day, just like the right in Spain would not ultimately decide, wait, we can't actually tolerate the fact that there are roving bands of leftists, you know,

burning Catholic churches and raping nuns. And you give me a choice between that and Franco, A lot of people in Spain were like, well, I'll go with Franco then because, you know, the moderate right did not stop that. They didn't stop it. And because they had this, this false notion of kind of a fair play when the left was essentially totally disregarding that and moving to political violence, politics is a substitute for war at the end of the day, right? A great example of this right now and the danger, and as it's talking about, is, you know, you have, we're in the middle of this show. You've seen Russ votes say and the president say, you know, okay, Democrats are going to shut down the government. I will use my authority at the Office of Management Budget, not just to furlough federal employees, but to fire them. Right. And everybody was cheering. And the three of us were talking about it earlier today. Like if Russ vote is able to do this, he will have done more in a week than 50 years of the conservative movement who have been talking about dismantling the administrative state for decades, literally decades. What do so many symposia. So many offense. That did create the permission architecture for Rustopia.

What did you think dismantling the administrative state would look like? Papers, essays, vibes. This is the question though because within hours, this question was put to Senate Republicans. Are you pumped about, do you support Russ Vogue doing this? And Senate Republicans, Kevin Kramer. Kevin Kramer. Yes. Literally we're like, oh, oh, I don't know.

We might lose the moral. high ground, it's like, you people, like you have run on this issue. You campaigned. I guarantee you on their websites under the issues section. The lead issue is dismantling the administrative state, cutting regulations, shrinking the bureaucracy. And then when confronted with the ability to do it, the well, I'm assuming, well thought out, you know, legally architected plan from Russ Vaux and Mark Payle at OMB, they can't find their fainting couch fast enough. This is what Inez is talking. This is what she's talking about. Right.

100% in agreement with Rachel, as almost always. The high mind is always. Kevin Kramer of North Dakota and Tom Tillis of what, North Carolina? Red states. Yes. Red states. Just keep that in mind. Just keep that in mind.

Yeah. There is a lot of hysteria going on about what Russ is doing. And a lot of it misrepresents to average people what's actually happening. I think if it was presented fairly, which is obviously not going to be in the establishment press, there would be a different, I mean, I think people would see it as much more like lowercase D Democratic. But Rachel, like, and as both of you have done a lot of talking and writing about that over the last few years. So I wanted to get your take on a more important thing before I let you go. I'm going to read a quote from a new podcast description.

And this podcast comes out tomorrow and want you to tell me who you think is going to be the host of this podcast. Quote, is it just us or are things actually terrifying right now in the world of public health? Every day brings another scary and confusing headliner far-fetched claim. Childhood vaccines are suddenly up for debate. Fluoride is being described as industrial waste and feels like everyone is talking about raw milk. Who is it? And as if you have any idea? I just assume that it's some like crunchy, like, crunchy, left-wing.

but I honestly do not consume that market. Crunchy left podcast is not. Crunchy left wing. Yeah. Okay. Let's go with that. I'm going to continue reading the description. Quote,

join Dr. Chelsea Clinton and a group of doctors, dietitians, and parenting experts, is they shine light on what's true, what's misleading, and why it all matters. They'll give you the tools to debunk misinformation wherever it comes up from Lemonada Media and the Clinton Foundation. New episodes out every Thursday. Lemonada Media. Can I ask a question? Is Chelsea Clinton in the medical field?

I feel like I wouldn't know if she were. She's a doctor. But if this was a doctorate in something else, it would be especially funny. I'm going to look it up right now as you guys pounce. Also, no one is asking for this. No one. No one. The good people of Lemonada Media,

who also have brought you the podcast of Megan Markle and Samantha B. would disagree, Rachel. They seem to have their finger firmly on the pole. No one asked for the Megan Markle thing either. this is like i'm convinced that this is how god makes me do penance for things is when i'm forced to listen to me just the same thing as is constantly going on in dc with really boring politicians writing memoirs ghost writing them yeah and shoving them out the door it's just a way to pay off people right isn't it just a direct payoff too in the same way the book advanced they never they never have

any hope of making back the whatever it is two million dollar book advance for the latest you know, ripping memoir by Chuck Schumer. Nobody reads it, but a bunch of institutions buy a bunch of copies. But even so, they don't make the money that they expect to on the book. The publishers don't. But it's a way of paying off people. And this is the exact same thing. The left is paying off, you know, all of their sign a cure. Look, all I can say is at least Chelsea Clinton has not actually bombed Congress. So in that sense, it's a step up from all the other people that the We've offered Sonic Gear Sue. Well, on that note, I'll give you guys an opportunity before you run to guess what Chelsea Clinton's doctorate is in.

Women's studies? Global economies and, I don't know, foreign development. Now, remember, she's hosting a medical podcast, so just keep that in my doctor, Chelsea Clinton. Oh, gosh. Andez, go ahead. I know you don't want to guess. Communications. That's the closest. Her doctorate is in philosophy.

It reminds me of the great joke. She needs to go to a Harvard trade school. Come on. A doctorate philosophy degree in international relations. I would definitely rather read or listen to a medical podcast by somebody with a Harvard electrician degree. It's from Oxford. Yeah. I mean. I think that makes it worse.

It's all bad. There's no, there's, there's, there's no, uh, glass half full, uh, to this. But listen, she's going to tell us what's true, what's misleading and why it all matters. So I expect it to be an absolute smash hit. Um, any, I mean, any final thoughts here on, on Chelsea Clinton? No. I was thinking nobody was asking for this, but maybe, maybe the libs on blue sky. This might be for them.

I think people, I'm telling you, it's people who wanted bribe the, the Clinton Foundation. who's asking for those. Yeah, advertisers probably. Yeah, that's a good point. Chelsea. Oh, Chelsea. Godspeed, Chelsea. We will not be listening.

Right, yeah. So that's, yeah, the Congress alumina media on landing this big fish. We look forward to hearing her thoughts on why childhood vaccines are suddenly up for debate. Rachel Beauret and Annette Stepman, thank you for coming back on the show. It's always so much fun to have you here. I saw you were both drinking red wine, so cheers. Cheers. All right, have a good night.

Go tuck your kids in. They're probably already asleep. They're young. All right. On that note, let's get two. Well, I want to talk about Jane Fonda, obviously. What else would we be talking about? But before that, I've mentioned this before.

It's really hard to go to sleep after the show. Maybe Rachel and us are going to experience that right now. After you have all of the adrenaline of a live broadcast, falling asleep is difficult when you read. rapid 11. And I really mean this, though. Those cozy earth bamboo sheets, I look forward to sleeping. It makes it much easier for me to jump into bed after the show. Cozy earth bamboo sheets and bubble cuddle blanket are fantastic. You get excited to jump into bed even after the high of partying with Rachel and Inez, at least virtually. These bamboo sheets aren't next level,

buttery soft, breathable, and they keep you cool all night. You'll sleep a few degrees cooler and wake up genuinely refreshed. And the bubble cuddle blanket is like a warm, luxurious, hug, midweight, plush, foe, for equal parts nap worthy and stylish. There's a reason Cozy Earth offers a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty that says it all. They know you'll fall in love. So visit CozyEarth.com. Use my code. Emily for 20% off. That's cozyEarth.com Code Emily. And if you get a post-purch survey, let me know you heard about Cozy Earth from After Party with Emily Jishinsky, because home is not just where you live. It's how you feel. Let's go home with Cozy Earth.

I promise thoughts on Jane Fonda and thoughts on Jane Fonda you shall have. So it was announced today that Jane Fonda, and let me just read from this variety report, if I can find this variety report, quote, Jane Fonda has relaunched the Committee for the First Amendment, a McCarthy-era initiative founded in the 1940s by her father, of course, Henry Fonda, to protect against attacks on free speech. The committee has already received the support of more than 550, list names, just to be clear, they're not 550 A-list names in the world. They say it includes

Gracie Abrams, Quintana Brunson, Carrie Washington, Natalie Portman, Aaron Sorkin, Aaron Sorkin. Of course, Aaron Sorkin, Spike Lee, Viola Davis. I'm not going to read this full list because, again, it is very long. Oh, Rosie O'Donnell. I just noticed Rosie O'Donnell, our friend is on the list. I hope she asked her therapist if it was a good idea to sign per the conversation we had the other night. But Variety goes on to add, the McCarthy era ended when Americans from across the political spectrum finally came together and stood up for the principles in the Constitution against the forces of repression, Fonda said in a statement. Those forces have returned. And it is our turn to stand together in defense of our constitutional rights. This just makes my head hurt because comparing

what just happened to Jimmy Kimmel to the decade of, of actual McCarthy-era callbacks, and we can have a separate debate about the merits of Joe McCarthy's crusade. Read Stan Evans book. I think it's called Blacklisted by History on that. We can have another conversation about it. I'm sure Ness would actually love to have that conversation.

But anyway, Jane Fonda is comparing what just happened to Jimmy Kimmel. That's what the gist of this letter really is. Comes after what happened to Kimmel. Who's back on the air, by the way? He's back on the air. Colbert is on the air until the end of the year. They didn't just cancel him and replace him with a right-wing host. They canceled the whole show. Okay, so the idea that creeping McCarthyism is represented by what happened to Kimmel and Colbert

at an emergency level when that same concern was not extended to the many, many people. In fact, it's not just that those concerns weren't extended. It's not just that a lot of the same people who signed this letter weren't, we're just quiet. They were active participants in cancel culture for about 10 years. And it started before woke was really even a word, quote, woke was really even a word. But obviously picked up and hit a crescendo after 2020. This letter, I would have taken seriously then. I would have taken it seriously then.

just like, by the way, we had Brendan Carr on this show and asked him about whether maybe the entire law just needs to be changed so that the government doesn't have the power to yank potentially broadcast licenses in the question of, quote, public interest. Carr's argument is what we talked about on today's show that Innes and Rachel made, which is Republicans, while the levers are there, should use the levers of their power. But again, I just will remind everyone, Jimmy Kivill is back on the air. And in all likelihood, the reason he was polled indefinitely for what was it like two to three business days is that there were boycotts from smaller companies who had smaller local markets to worry about. So personally, I don't enjoy the government jawboning late night comedians. It's not something that I think is like a great use of anyone's time. I think it would be probably better to build out a full case of how ABC violates the quote public interest or to just say, hey, I prefer to get rid of these standards, but they're here now. And we have to talk about that and come up with a plan for these technological changes.

Of course, that's where I am on this. But the idea that you would extend this level of concern and this hyperbolic comparison to the most, McCarthy era right now after what happened to Jimmy Kimmel when you said virtually nothing for the last decade. In fact, in many cases, you said way too much in the other direction, encouraging these insane, when you go back a look at some of these stories, which were just tornadic forces on social media, a lot of the same people were cowardly staying silent or actually encouraging this because some artist had a thought that fell out of light. Think about Winston Marshall, Winston Marshall and the Mumford and Sons. He said something nice about Andy No, and he got kicked out of his band.

Artists should have been at the forefront of shutting that shit down before it even escalated to the point that it escalated to. And even now, you're starting to see a couple of people starting to larp, like they're once again marching for free speech in Sprow Plaza, Berkeley. Probably one of the only people who deserves credit right now, honestly, is Joan Baez, who I think was at, like, 1964, one of those Sprawl Plaza demonstrations. And when Berkeley was trying to cancel Anne Coulter for speaking, this was been like 2017, somewhere around there, John Baez stood up and said, let her speak. She said something like, Ann Coulter's awful or whatever, but she said, let her speak. That was not repeated by anybody.

She was alone. And it actually, because of that, took some courage to say the baseline sentiment that artists who should be uncomfortable, which put with pushing those kinds of boundaries and should certainly be, should certainly be comfortable with making others uncomfortable by defending free speech that pushes the boundaries. They were nowhere to be found. They weren't leaders at all. They were followers and they were complicit. and they were leaders against free speech.

So it's completely laughable that Jane Fonda is now organizing the committee for the First Amendment. The First Amendment after the mini violations. I mean, this isn't even getting into the Biden administration, the Quiet Sky's revelations that came out this week. Have you seen those? Go check out Matt Taeebies reporting at Rackett for that. Check out the new revelations that Aaron Sabarium reported on Sissah under the Biden administration. this week? Where were these guys during that time period? Absolutely nowhere, absolutely nowhere,

telling us actually that I think Joe Biden was okay. He was the healthiest president that we have ever had in some cases. Now, to be totally clear, if Jane Fonda is truly concerned about some of these mergers that look like they're in the works and are under the thumb of one particular man slash family, that would be Larry Allison, the co-founder of Oracle, who, who, for what it's worth, as the Quincy Institute posted this week, is the single biggest donor of the Israeli Defense Force, a very powerful technological figure, geopolitical figure, and domestic political figure. He is, looks like going to be one of the big investors in Donald Trump's TikTok deal. His son just was behind the merger of Paramount and Skydance. That merger was done with Larry Ellison's

backing, and they are right now apparently prepping a Warner Brothers bid. So that would put, what, It's CBS, CNN, HBO, and TikTok, all under the control in some not insignificant part of, or in some cases, a very significant part. But, you know, in a serious, significant way, under the control of Larry Ellison and his son. That is too much power for one human being. And I'm hearing a lot of the conversation focused just on the news media. But if Jean Fonda is concerned about the movie studios that are getting wrapped up into this, she should be.

She should be. If this happens with Warner Brothers, Paramount, all of those different companies coming under one roof, I'm here to hear it. I doubt that we'll see many artists go in that direction, though, because they know where their bread is buttered. So I'm with them. If they want to stand up on that, I think that is an absurd amount of power for one human being to have. have Larry Allison is right of center, so he'll probably get more criticism, slightly more criticism than some enormously powerful left of center folks have gotten. I mean, just think about when a lot of these billioners were anti-Trump, the way that the media treated them when they were anti-Trump versus when they kind of flipped on Trump. That's a fun case study in media coverage if you want to go back and look at it.

But if that's what Jane Fonda wants to talk about, I'm all here for it. but what we're actually lurching towards is a social media fueled, dopamine machine-driven, virtue signaling cycle, where people are seduced by the promises of the algorithm into posting things that don't need to be posted, emotional thoughts that maybe change 10 hours later, but then you have to dig your heels in because you've already posted it publicly. there's just a horrible, vicious cycle happening when it comes to free speech. And there's a lack of consistency that's to be expected because that's what partisans do. It's the word partisan. It's in the word partisan. It's part of the concept. But not everybody in this country is a partisan. And artists should not be partisans on free speech. Journalists should not be partisans on free speech.

And so I think some of these issues are way more complicated than the legacy. media makes them out to be. And I'm here to explain that as best I can. But yeah, I think it's a crazy amount of power to be concentrated in the hands of one person. I don't think the government should be complaining about late night lines. You know, we've talked about the nuance in that case, but no, it's not like an ideal situation. But these people have no credibility whatsoever. And I think all of us should think about how to preserve our own credibility on these questions in an age where every thought we have, we are seduced to think of as a product that gets us dopamine feedback in the digital casino that is social media. That is what creates a lot of pylons.

It's what creates this awful incentive system to virtue signal things publicly. Question, like, are you posting this because you want someone to know that you know something because you want someone else to see that you think something, that you are something, maybe that you are good, or maybe that you are part of this team or that team, doesn't need to be posted. What is the purpose of posting it? Is it something that too few people are saying? Are you raising a new point? Like all of these things, I'm not perfect and I'm certainly not claiming to be, but the systems

are designed to keep us that way, to keep us imperfect. And that's where cancel culture comes from. And that's where we're going to continue to see it. It is not going to die down. It is going to happen. indefinitely because we're all being manipulated to be a part of it for the sake of profits in Palo Alto. Okay. That was a lot.

That was a lot. I'll probably hang it up for tonight at this point. Maybe I'll have another one of these offshoot beer company VIA ha loggers that they sent. These are great. Appreciate it. But remember, happy hour comes out Fridays. So Emily at double makeairmedia.com, hit us up on the after Friday, Emily, Instagram, send us questions. I'm going to answer as many as I possibly can for this Friday show.

Make sure you're subscribed on Apple or Spotify, wherever you get your podcast to get those episodes. I'll see you back here live next Monday at 10 p.m. Eastern. Have a great weekend, everyone.