After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Lindsey Graham's Legacy, Charlie Kirk Questions, and J.K. Rowling Hits Back

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Emily Jashinsky opens the show by reflecting on the sudden death of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. She examines his political legacy, addresses the conspiracy theories surrounding his passing, and explains why she remains skeptical of them. Then Emily breaks down the latest developments in the Charlie Kirk murder case and a new interview in which Vice President JD Vance discusses whether the accused killer may have been influenced by others. She also examines a new report detailing Secret Service failures surrounding the attempted assassination of President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Later, Emily explores the growing influence of the Democratic Socialists of America and the political vulnerabilities the movement could face in a general election. She also reacts to Amnesty International UK's clash with J.K. Rowling, influencer Clavicular's controversial trip to Israel, Mick Jagger's refreshing perspective on politics in music, and more…   Lean: Discover why LEAN is becoming the choice for real weight‑loss results—shop now at https://TAKELEAN.com use code EMILY.   ZBiotics: Go to https://zbiotics.com/AFTERPARTY and use AFTERPARTY at checkout for 15% off any first-time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.   USAFacts: Demand government accountability by signing the open letter for reliable public data at https://USAFacts.org/supportdata Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to After Party, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us here on this Monday. As a reminder, if you haven't subscribed on YouTube, that really is the most helpful way to keep us doing our independent journalism here on the show, likes, comments. Those all help us a ton in the algorithm. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast to. You get three episodes a week on the podcast feed because our Friday episode is audio only so that I can go back and forth with all of your great emails that you send in to my real email address, Emily at devilmaycaremedia.com.

Please do go ahead. Hit me up over there. responding to your questions. Now, I'm coming to you midday on Monday. I'm about to head back to Wisconsin and celebrate my wonderful grandfather's life. And, you know, it feels like if every day is drinking out of a fire hose in the news cycle, this is like two fire hoses. Today, it's just a barrage of news. So we have a lot to get to. We're going to talk about Lindsay Graham. We're going to talk about the preliminary hearing in the Charlie Kirk case. The co-chair of the New York City DSA was actually on Fox and Friends today. It's a crazy sentence. I never thought that I would say,

but you know, I'm kind of glad that I'm saying it because it's a really interesting back and forth. J.K. Rolling in hot water with Amnesty International, a ridiculous controversy, non-traversy, really. And clavicular's in Israel, also ridiculous, some stuff to break down on that. And Mick Jagger is pushing back on the New York Times or did recently push back on the New York Times in a new interview where he was nudged a bit to explain why he doesn't perform politically like Bruce Springsteen does. Fascinating answer. We're going to get to all of it in just a moment. Thanks so much for sticking around. Thanks for being with us here on this Monday evening. We really appreciate it. Can it take a quick break? And we'll be back with updates in Lindsay Graham's case.

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burn fat by converting it into energy, and then curb your appetite and craving, so you're not as hungry. But listen, lean is not for the casual dieter with only a few pounds to lose. the doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created Lean for frustrated dieters with 10 or more pounds to lose. So let's get you started with 20% off and free rush shipping so you can add lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit takeleen.com and enter Emily for your discount. That's promo code Emily at take lean.com. Well, Senator Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina, long time Senator Powerhouse in the upper chamber, passed away unexpectedly over the weekend, which you've likely heard already.

but as everybody was hanging on the updates in the Mitch McConnell health case, Lindsay Graham, 71 years old, which by the Senate standards makes him basically like in middle school, passes away out of really nowhere. He had just gotten back from Ukraine, actually, spoken to the president and was about to be on Meet the Press Sunday morning when he suffered what we're being told in a preliminary report from DC medical's examiner's aortic dissection, which was called by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. But the conspiracy theories predictably are already spinning. And listen, Lindsay Graham was enormously powerful, enormously powerful and in really major areas of American

government. So obviously foreign policy, he's known for being a foreign policy hawk. And actually, when he passed, as I mentioned, he had just gotten back from Ukraine. So I wanted to give you a flavor a little bit of where people are going with these questions about Graham. And again, he's very powerful. I'm going to break this down, but here's from Matt Van Swole who posted, I'm sorry, but Lindsey Graham dying out of the blue like this doesn't make any sense at all. We have him on camera yesterday looking perfectly healthy. None of this is making any sense. That post on X as of the time that this is being recorded has 65,000 likes, 13,000 retweets. And it came with a video.

And indeed, this is Lindsay Graham. I believe this was Friday in Ukraine. We take a listen here. I get back to Washington. I'm going to go with Senator Blumenthal to the Republican, the Democratic leader, to see if we can find time to move this Russian sanctions package that would give tools to President Trump to have. help end this war. So there you go. Actually, what you're seeing right there is Lindsay Graham advocating

for heightened Russian sanctions to end the war. And that puts him obviously in a very powerful position. He was the head of the Senate Budget Committee. Hugely powerful, especially when you're in the majority. He was on the Appropriations Subcommittee, if I'm remembering this correctly, for like foreign expenditures. So that put him in the Senate oversight position of monies going out to places like the National Endowment for Democracy, parts of USAID, lots of very powerful roles.

I think parts of the money that we send to the IMF. And of course, he was, he had the president's ear. I mean, President Trump called him to meet the press where Lindsay Graham was supposed to be on Sunday morning to remember his friend. A few people in the Senate. were closer to Donald Trump than Lindsay Graham, who famously ran against him in 2016, had a lot of negative things to say about him over the years,

and actually sort of fell out of friendships with people like John McCain and others over, I think Adam Kinsiger is another example who spoke about it recently, over his relationship with Donald Trump. And now, Lindsay Graham leaves this massive vacuum in the Senate. But I just want to be, like, in reference to these conspiracy theories, I want to be very clear. So again, aortic dissection, he is, was known to be a bit of a drinker. He was known to be a type of person who was working all hours.

He had been flying around the world from Israel, Ukraine, South Carolina, Washington, D.C. It's not at all unusual for this to happen to a 71-year-old at all. His father, I believe, passed away of also a heart incident at the age of 69. so there's some family precedent for it. And on top of that, again, he had just come back from a long haul flight. He'd been doing years of long haul flights. And if you saw him over the last 18 months, I actually pulled up some pictures on my own, just went back to what he looked like in 2024 when he was campaigning all over the country

for Donald Trump and what he looked like this last week. I mean, even in the video that we just played, you can see he had slowed down a lot. He looked physically diminished. At least this is just my opinion. I'm sure other people have their own opinions, but I thought it was pretty obvious. I thought it to myself privately over the last year or so. He didn't have any known health issues. But yeah, the conspiracy theories now are actually not just coming from like normal conspiracy theory quarters.

They're also coming from people who were ideological allies of Lindsay Graham who are saying, well, maybe it's the Kremlin, right? Because here he goes to Ukraine and I saw Mark Tieson post this. others have posted this and said, you know, we know, for example, the FBI was at his house investigating what happened immediately, like Director Cash Patel came out and said that. I think that's perfectly reasonable. I actually think it's perfectly reasonable for people to say, what on earth is happening here? He comes back from Ukraine. He's 71 years old, again, a middle schooler by Senate terms. He seems to be in good health. He's giving press conferences

the day before, flying all over the world, and suddenly he stops. And nobody had any indication. of it. But again, he's 71 years old. It's precedent in his family. He's flying all over the world. So I'm not in the conspiratorial mindset on Lindsey Graham. I'm going to talk a little bit about, I think, ways to consider the likelihood of various conspiracy theories, which is, of course, a pejorative. But it needn't be, because we know a lot of things that have been insulted, or a lot of people who have been insulted as conspiracy theorists over the years have been vindicated in different cases. Think only of things like MK Ultra or UAPs as an example of this.

But I think with Lindsay Graham, until there's significant evidence that this wasn't just an elderly person who had been flying all over the world having a heart incident, I'm not going to be particularly convinced by it. Now, of course, we've entered that phase of a public mourning period where people are celebrating Graham's death, good riddance, the like is what, you know, it's not surprising. It happened with John McCain, of course. And, you know, my approach to that is nobody thinks they're the villain of their own story for the most part. I think there are some, like, true sociopaths who do think they're the villains of their own stories. And the way Lindsay Graham talked about foreign policy, I saw a great Charlie Kirk clip from last year going around. I think this was around Midnight Hammer. Just talking about the way Lindsay Graham frames regime change. and all of that. It was, it came across in a really, I think, dark way often and made me deeply uncomfortable. It, I think, was inappropriate. It's how a lot of people talked about foreign policy in the years after 9-11. But with Lindsey Graham, there's something a bit different, I think,

from your average neocon or your average, like, Uber Hawk, in that this guy actually went out and argued his case constantly, constantly. And with people who discused, agreed with him, reporters, whatever, he would always go out there and defend what he said. So that makes him different. I think then your average, because I think a huge problem with the foreign policy establishment is that they're lazy and they smear their opponents constantly without engaging with their opponents. It's just sort of like everyone knows you're an anti-semite or everybody knows you're an isolationist. So why am I talking to you? Why am I even making this argument? And that is different with in Lindsay Graham's case. Another thing that's

different. And this is just to add nuance to the way that he's being remembered right now. He totally believed what he said. He might not have. There may be one exception to that. I don't know how much he believed what he said about Donald Trump, although he, there's a convincing argument he had become a true believer later in life and had a real friendship with the president and genuinely believed the president was doing something good for the country. But this guy, when it was not polite in D.C. circles to fight for Brett Kavanaugh, he did it. That also makes him different. Right now, he was, according to Trump, fighting for the Save America Act as the head of the Budget Committee, also not a polite position

to take in Washington. So where on the one hand, he gets remembered as this guy who was basically the pinnacle of old D.C., the establishment. I've heard some people mourning him, or criticizing him as this bridge figure between old Washington and New Washington, that is actually a really good way to remember Lindsey Graham or to think of Lindsey Graham, that he came from that Joe Lieberman, John McCain, three amigos era, where they were foreign policy hawks who could get along with Gene Shaheen, for example, who's calling for, I think, Iran sanctions, maybe even Russia sanctions, maybe both, I don't know, Democrat Gene Shaheen right now in Lindsey Graham's memory, right?

Trump was remembering him of somebody when he called in to meet the press on Sunday morning who could help him with Democrats. And yes, people want bipartisanship. They want both parties to work together. But typically what that looks like in Washington, D.C. is just spending and just shoveling money to the war machine, right? Often against public opinion, like right now with Iran, for example, if you look at public opinion, in a way that was, it's bipartisan cooperation that is out of step. with the public. And that is often what it looks like. And I get, like, actually this image of Lindsey Graham as the old Washington person who had adapted to New Washington. Well, first of all, if you're Lindsey Graham, that worked out better for you than it did for the Adam Kinzinger's or Steve Schmitz, who probably support most of Lindsey Graham's foreign policy. Well,

Lindsey Graham actually was part of convincing Donald Trump to do it. So there you have it. I mean, that's a referendum on who actually did what they, as much as I might not want it to happen, what they say they want to happen. Lindsay Graham made a calculation to try to befriend Donald Trump and try to advocate for his positions. And it pretty much worked. So I kind of think that's a stinging rebuke of his quote unquote center-right critics who are now really like smearing him as in the hours after his passing, Steve Schmidt put up a sub-sac post that was just vitriolic. And if anything, what we're looking at right now is the vindication of the Lindsay Graham approach. So that in and of itself, I mean, Graham, to the extent that he's an old Washington

figure, I saw there's this clip going around of him campaigning for Blake Masters. And somebody asks him, you know, Blake Masters doesn't agree with your foreign policy. this was in Masters Arizona race. And Lindsay Graham says, yeah, I don't care. If you have an R by your name, basically, I'm paraphrasing, I'm in a campaign for you. That is power politics in a very old Washington way that people like me, for example, look at it and say,

it's not really the way that you should go about things, but Graham believed in it. And if his positions on Kavanaugh, Save Act, even Trump himself, tell you anything, It's that Lindsay Graham realized something was changing. And at the very least, the guy was ready to try to be pragmatic and kind of operate in this new environment in a way that made his worldview more likely to dominate American government. So there's a lot of, I think, ways to look at Lindsay Graham as the figurehead of old Washington,

or somebody who was craven and cynical and just adapted to New Washington. But I will say to his credit, one thread along the way is that he was always willing to engage in public argument. If he was going to smear someone, he was happy to do it to their face. And he was happy to have that debate in public. And on top of that, he also did buck polite Washington in cases where he seemed to believe that's what was warranted. And it is an interesting thing about Lindsay Graham that, like, he clearly did often. If maybe, maybe with the exception being Donald Trump,

the guy really believed what he said he was believing in publicly. And that's also, I think, exceedingly rare in D.C. So, again, lots of analyses of the career of Lindsey Graham in light of his surprise passing. I think, you know, if there's some evidence as an autopsy goes through that we just have preliminary resists. assaults right now that you have a poisoning that's similar to what the Kremlin has done in the past, or you have some evidence of foul play, then by all means, we can dig into it.

Again, we're going to talk, we're on the anniversary of Butler right now, so we're going to talk about that in the next segment here. But right now, there's, I just want to say there's nothing implausible or unusual about a 71-year-old man who's been flying around the world and is known maybe not to have like the most healthy habits in life passing suddenly, as shocking as it is here in Washington, where he leaves a huge vacuum on the Budget Committee, Appropriations Committee, Judiciary Committee, Todd Blanche's hearing is this week. Acting AG Todd Blanche's hearing is this week,

and they really can't afford to lose one Republican vote now with Graham out. Tim Scott is pushing for Trey Gowdy to be his success, there's a whole battle happening now, of course. But I thought it was worth maybe going outside of the box a little bit to talk. That's what the good thing is about. This podcast format, like talk a little bit more. Don't just have 240 characters, whatever it is on X now. You can write essays and articles on X now.

So that's not a good comparison. But I think it's worth adding a little bit of texture to the life and times of Lindsay Graham because he did buck kind of the stereotype and the caricature in some interesting ways. And then he also did represent the stereotype. in the caricature in some interesting ways. All right, let's talk now about the Charlie Kirk preliminary hearing. Last week, I kind of wanted to wait to see what was coming out of it before weighing in definitively in one direction or the other,

and I still feel that way about the trial, to be honest. But Vice President Vance came out in an article on Sunday. He did an interview with Mary Margaret O'Lehahan of The Daily Wire, where he talked about his take after the preliminary hearing, obviously, like I said, this was on Sunday. This was on the 12th. And he talked a little bit about what he thinks happened or what lingering questions he has. Let's put it that way in the Charlie Kirk case. So you can see this up on the screen right now.

Vice President Vance says there is, quote, clear evidence that 23-year-old accused assassin Tyler Robinson killed Charlie Kirk. He shared in an interview with the Daily Wire, but that he, is, quote, always going to wonder who radicalized his friend's killer. The vice president, Margaret Wright, shared that he managed to follow parts of the Utah hearing for Robinson, though not all of it. And he told the Daily Wire that, quote, the evidence against Robinson is just really, really compelling. This is, I guess, an interview they did on Friday, and it was just published yesterday. Quote, do I think Tyler Robinson pulled the trigger and killed Charlie Kirk? Vant says, absolutely. I think the evidence is clear on that. But again,

He goes on to say, and this actually does confirm some of the reporting in the Jonathan Swan Maggie Haberman book, that, quote, his instincts told him there was a larger plot behind Kirk's murder. He, quote, went down countless rabbit, online rabbit holes, becoming so consumed by the videos and the theories that his wife Usha told him she was worried about him. That's according to the Haberman book. And now, this is Vance to the Daily Wire who says, I'm always going to wonder. I'm always going to wonder what was said and how many contacts he had beforehand. This is I'm referring to Robinson. By the way, it doesn't mean that Robinson's any less guilty, but do I wonder if there are other people who are more directly involved in Treli's murder?

Absolutely, because I don't think that it's possible for a young man to get radicalized that without somebody encouraging him, whether informally or formally. Now, I will say I disagree with that last part. I think it is perfectly plausible in today's environment that a seemingly normal person who spends a truly incredible amount of time on dark corners of the internet in this climate where basically the entire mainstream media, academia, and alike, are trying to condition the American public to see anybody who disagrees with transgender ideology as a bigot. I actually think that's, I mean, it almost undermines our point about how wrong it is on the right,

our point about how wrong it is for the entire mainstream media, academia, for a while, was corporate America, this drumbeat about the progressive or bigot binary on the trans issue, that you are either fully progressive on this issue or you are necessarily a bigot. We're going to talk about J.K. Rowling earlier in the show, a left feminist who has been called a bigot over and over again, still now, to this day, after the cast review being called a bigot. So I think it's entirely plausible, entirely plausible, that somebody alone could be radicalized in that case. But we also have all of this evidence of the people. in the immediate aftermath, or not in the immediate aftermath. I'm sorry, it's wrong to say that because

it was beforehand. People before the murder posting really cryptic, but also specific things. This is from the Washington Free Beacon, and I think this is really what Vice President Vance is alluding to. He goes on to saying this daily wire interview, by the way. I think there are a lot of people with blood on their hands in the case of Charlie Kirk, but of course the person most directly was blood on their hands is Tyler Robinson. The truth is that Charlie is dead because a bunch of left ring radicals have preached a message that it's okay to kill people you disagree with. And unfortunately for my friend and importantly for his family, there's at least one guy in Utah who took that message to heart and murdered a young innocent father. Okay. So just on that note,

let's go and revisit because I think it's worth revisiting right now after the trial. Let's go ahead and revisit the Free Beacon's original report in September of some posts. This one was from at Talley Hall album on September 3rd. It'd be funny if someone like Charlie Kirk got shot on September 10th, L-M-A-O. Okay. Here is Alt-U-L-L-I-G-E on August 6th. September 10th will be a very interesting day. Okay. One person, Cherubim 75, was followed by Lance Twigs and posted, quote, unquote, We fucking did it.

We fucking did it. Another account, Osamu bin Tizuka. You guys, I have something big coming soon. Looks like this was around September 5th. Just be sure to check the news. You'll know it when you see it. Quote tweeted it with, well, that's that. and then said, another chud bites the dust.

At Najra Galsh said, Charlie Kirk is coming to my college tomorrow. I really hope someone evaporates him literally. Then someone then follows that up with, let's just say something big will happen tomorrow. There was a post on TikTok the night before the shooting, according to the free beacon, someone who appeared to be transgender,

according to the free beacon, who said, quote, Charles James Kirk does not know what's coming tomorrow. I'm also perfectly open. to the idea that because there are so many people on the internet, Charlie Kirk was so famous, and people do this thing where they toss out random posts every once in a while about something going to happen vaguely saying something's going to happen, that you would have maybe one or two posts like this that could be questioned, but perhaps at some point dismissed. This is so many

posts, and we know about the Discord chats that I think it is entirely fair to continue asking questions about who knew what, just as it is in the Butler case. I'm going to get to that in a moment. I wanted to bring to you also from Tucker Carlson's newsletter, something that sounded similar to Vance. He said about the Kirk case. I'm just going to pull this up. Yeah, he said, who pulled the trigger does not tell the whole story or the author of the newsletter said this. Lindsay Graham's death has made us think about Charlie Kirk, he wrote. Both men were major figures in the Republican Party, each died while doing what they loved, and both passings came out of nowhere.

If last week's preliminary hearing serves as any indicator, then the Utah justice system is definitely going to find Tally Robinson guilty of Charlie's murder. Although not yet official, the 23-year-old's fate seemed sealed. But that does not mean the case is fully closed. The most important question surrounding last September's assassination is not simply who pulled the trigger, whether anyone else played a role in the crime is far more important. J.D. Vance pointed this out on Sunday. Tucker goes on to quote,

Vance, as we just did, and says Vance is spot on. The digital history of alleged butler shooter Thomas Crooks, which the FBI bizarrely likes to pretend does not exist, strongly suggests that a foreign actor put him up to trying to kill Donald Trump. He's talking about the Willie Teppas points or the Willie Teppis information where you have Crooks going from one political affiliation to the other in a quick time span where he does seem to be interacting with some. somebody who has been linked to foreign Antifa. That is documented at this point. Tucker did a documentary

about it, I think it was last fall, and asks now, could the same thing have happened in Utah, considering Joe Kent says federal law enforcement blocked him from investigating foreign connections to Kirk's killing. Anyone who insists the answer is definitively no, likely has something to hide. So I will just say, I'm waiting for the trial. And this has always been my position on what happened to Charlie Kirk, which is that the court of law is going to be much more value. in this case than the court of public opinion. I've paid very close attention to all of the evidence that's emerged in the court of public opinion. But when we get to a trial and we have evidence that is presented testimonies under oath, evidence that is presented in that forum in this controlled

setting of the court of law, and thankfully we will have access to it as members of the public, that will be much more valuable than us trying to sort disinformation, AI from non-AI on the internet, as we have been doing for, and understandably so, by the way, for the last year. This isn't a case where we need to have an answer literally right now because we have, I mean, we need to have an answer as soon as possible. Don't get me wrong, but we have a trial. And that's how we litigate these things in the United States, legal matters in the United States. That's exactly how it should be.

And we're going to see what happens through that. The preliminary hearing established a fact pattern that does overwhelmingly link, Tyler Robinson to Utah Valley University that day and to the person who pulled the trigger. And so there is then this broader question about what was happening behind the scenes that we don't yet have evidence of. And as for the Joe Kent piece of this, do I think it's completely relevant that Joe Kent, who was in a high-level intelligence position and was friends with Charlie Kirk, said that he was discouraged and blocked from investigating evidence. of a potential foreign tie. Yes, of course it's relevant. I would say bear in mind that could

range on a spectrum from flimsy evidence to really, really significant evidence. And we don't know right now how serious that piece of evidence is. It could be, like in the Willie Teppas case, a random Antifa person living overseas. It could be foreign government, although I really doubt that. But we don't know. We don't know. And it's important to keep asking questions and trying to figure out what that piece of evidence was. Kent is unable to say because he's now a citizen. He's not an intelligence capacity anymore and government can't tell us. So we'll have to see as this plays out in court if the defense unfortunately raises any of these issues so far. They haven't raised too much of it. It was odd how Lance Twiggs was seemingly, as the great Megan Kelly pointed out,

trying to downplay connections to the trans world during the trial last week, looking rather masculine in that video testimony that was played. There are some outstanding questions because, again, this was a preliminary hearing. So yes, there are absolutely some outstanding questions. The scene was paved over really quickly at Utah Valley University. Twigs is testifying that they didn't talk about politics. They'd never really talked about LGBT stuff, which is also also hard to believe. But again, the fact pattern last week was robust and compelling that Tyler Robinson did pull the trigger. We will see what happens in the court of law in the weeks ahead. And I think that'll actually be much more informative. Like, sometimes patience is

warranted and is good. And I do think that'll likely be much more informative than this back and forth with these types of theories. I mean, so for example, with Butler, I'm going to go ahead and put this up on the screen. It's getting like no play in the media. This was two years ago, two years ago. With Butler, what we saw was immediate or were immediate questions being raised about this guy, Thomas Crooks, who, I mean, the whole story is completely bizarre. I will say, it's, again, not surprising to me that kids get radicalized on the internet from all of this, but in all seriousness, it's still, it's just a strange, it remains a very strange case. And it remains a case where, I have to disable my ad blocker here, but it remains a case where

it's still like this random kid whose parents said he wasn't that political, but was a control. who, you know, liked to take different sides of arguments. Now we have this Inspector General report, which is getting so little attention. I'm reading from the Fox News right above it. That says two years after gunmen opened fire on Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, the security failures that nearly cost in his life remained under scrutiny as later alleged plots and reported threats. Keep presidential protection in the spotlight. Now, this was two years ago today. It's hard to believe, but it was two years ago today.

and I want to get to what they said here from the Inspector General Report. It was released earlier this month and, quote, found that the U.S. Secret Service, quote, missed multiple opportunities to prevent or disrupt the assassination attempt due to communication failures and other security lapses. The Secret Services, this is from the IG report, Secret Services' overall lack of policy and processes coupled with limited intelligence sharing and poor collaboration and communication with protectee staff

and state and local law enforcement set the conditions that led to missing opportunities to prevent and detect the attempted assassination, according to the IG report, which found Fox says failure to warn Trump's protective detail that Crooks had a rangefinder and a long gun and had climbed onto the roof of a nearby building. Okay. There's a journalist named Ken Silva who wrote a book about this that I recommend checking out because it does covalate a lot of the oddities and obvious incompetencies. that you can explain as just pure incompetency or conspiracy when it comes to the Butler case.

But they're all kind of there in one spot. He did an interview. He's done several interviews, but he did one with Tucker Carlson recently. And so did Steve Baker on the January 6th pipe bomb case, which again is getting totally buried. The more this information comes out, the less the corporate press seems interested in it. But the Butler IG report, which I went through last week, is damning. It is so damning, in fact, that I think it raises genuine questions about whether this can all be chalked up to incompetence or whether there was an effort very high up to sabotage the

competence of the Secret Service at that point in time. Now, I'm not alleging some, like, grand conspiracy of hundreds of people, but something where there was an effort to make Secret Service less effective in Butler than it might otherwise have been the idea that Crooks, I mean, listen, you've been around Washington for a long time, I'm always happy to ascribe incompetence to tragedy here or to bad decisions here. Believe me. So it's entirely possible that's the case, but when you connect all the dots between Crooks' online history, which the government has also been cagey about with the incompetencies, there are obvious questions to ask. But you know what? You don't have to jump to conclusions. And that's where I think the algorithm in general pushes us to say,

this happened or this absolutely didn't happen. But in reality, we live in this gray area where we don't often know definitively what happened. We can keep asking questions and we should do so responsibly based on real fact patterns. But we don't have to say, oh, I know this happened or I know this didn't happen. We don't have to say that. But because the algorithm incentivizes extreme emotion. That's what keeps us scrolling. That's what allows them to maximize our time on whether it's X or Instagram or TikTok. That's what allows them to maximize our time and to sell us more and to get more of our data. We are incentivized to say it's this or that. And then we get incentivized to think that way, right? It conditions us to think that way. And oftentimes the answer is

really that we can't know and that, you know, some things are legitimately worth questioning, but we're not necessarily going to get the answer to them. We can keep pushing for answers, and we must keep pushing for answers, but we're not always going to get them. Let me just, I'll just say finally on Butler and on the preliminary hearing, it is perfectly acceptable to ask questions. When those questions, are answered. We can't always have a hundred percent certainty that the answer we get is accurate, but at a certain point, we can look at a broader fact pattern, step back, and say, hmm, it looks like this or it looks like that, but we don't know. And that's the case with,

you know, so many times over the course of Cold War history in the United States. Oftentimes genuine conspiracies, I would add the assassination of President Kennedy pretty obvious. obviously to that list things like MK Ultra, which sound like conspiracies, because they are conspiracies, but not in the sort of fantastical pejorative sense. People who were chattering about them for years and dismissed as tinfoil hat folks, we have the facts now. We don't have all of them because documents were literally shredded in some of these cases. But it's not out of the question for people to abuse their power. And so it's not, again, insane to say something may have happened here. But, you know, at a certain point, we have fact patterns. And at a certain point, we have to,

well, I mean, I guess we don't have to do anything. That's kind of my point in your is that you don't have to do anything that you can just say, we will continue to ask these questions and draw, you know, the best conclusions that we can from them. But the Butler IG report is, crazy. And I am hoping that we get more clarity over the course of, and I'm not promising that we will, but over the course of the Tyler Robinson trial that is to proceed in the weeks ahead. All right. Let's take a quick break and then we'll be back with the New York City DSA chair, co-chair, going on Fox and Friends. Living in a big city means your life revolves around dinners, birthdays, rooftop parties, rinse and repeat. How do I keep it all balanced? Especially

because it's part of my job. As a journalist, you've got to meet these people and talk to them. Well, making sure my first drink of the night is Zbiotics pre-alcohol. Zbiotics is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic, invented by PhD scientists to tackle those rough mornings. And here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration. That's to blame for your rough days. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night, drink responsibly, and you'll feel your best tomorrow. My job is pretty intense during the week. So when Friday hits, I want to actually enjoy going out. The only problem is waking up the next morning, feeling completely wrecked.

Zbiotics has become my little insurance policy before a night out. July is packed with barbecues, fireworks, late weekends, late nights with friends, keep the good times rolling into the next day, drink pre-alcohol before you go out and wake up ready for whatever Sunday brings. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash after-party and use the code after-party at checkout for 15% off. All right, everyone, we're back and as promised, I have a clip here of Griff Jenkins on Fox and Friends, interviewing New York City Democratic Socialists of America co-chair Grace Mouser on Fox and Friends this morning, just a madlib of a sentence. But let's take a listen to Griff Jenkins

pushing Mouser on immigration. Do you really believe in open borders and not having deportations? That's just incredibly contrary to law enforcement and security. America has a really long history of welcoming working class immigrants. My grandmother and her mother

came throughout the island and worked from Germany and worked as seamstresses. I mean, we believe that... But we have criminal illegal aliens in the country. Don't they need to be removed? We believe that demilitarizing the border,

that violent oppression of working-class immigrants who come here is not something that most Americans want. And I think the backlash to President Trump's policies really show that. Do you really believe that- Okay, fascinating back and forth between Griff Jenkins and Mouser here because Mouser, you'll notice,

tries to shift the issue. And I think, you know, rather deftly, it reflects at least maybe some cleverness on Mouser's behalf. to shift the issue to what was unpopular about the Trump administration and what historically has been popular in the United States, which is this idea that you can, well, popular. That changes with times, of course, but historically the United States is popular in modern history to see the country as the melting pot or the mosaic as a country of immigrants. And that has changed, and there's a lot more backlash to that idea on the right now.

but I'm talking with the broader public, if you ask people whether or not we should have generous asylum policies that help refugees, for example, or people who are looking to pursue the American dream. What Mauser just described, people coming to the country with a dream, working class immigrants, I think is what she said. We all kind of have fond stories of our own families doing or following a similar pattern. But what's fascinating about this exchange is that Mauser doesn't want to talk about immigration enforcement, just as maybe some of the pro-Trump crowd doesn't want to talk about the unpopularity of Trump's enforcement in Minneapolis, for example, after which Christy Noem ended up getting sidelined in Mark Wayne Mullen, then entered,

and is now openly trying to do this much more under the radar with much more subtlety. As much as the pro-Trump folks might not want to talk about that, what the DSA folks really don't want to talk about is whether there would be any effort to deport people who are, first of all, criminals. Now, the answer to that, we've seen some DSA people say over time, basically like, well, that would be double jeopardy almost, right? Like you are then, in their mind, telling somebody that they, first of all, if you don't believe in, or if you believe in open borders, You're saying, you know, this person was already subjected to the militarized border. And then because of that, committed a crime because they were victims of capitalist imperialism.

They then came to this country, committed a crime because they were starving or they were desperate or they were pushed to the brink, to addiction, to violence by the imperialist capitalist system, which of course takes away agency from these people who are acting of their own volition. But we've seen some folks say from DSA circles, basically, that that's actually making a problem worse because they believe that the system itself is a capitalist imperialist system and you don't want to re-victimize people. And this is a very Russoian ideal of the human character, right? That man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. He is in changed. He's born into these chains of the system that make him act badly. And the Christian perspective, my perspective,

of course, is that man is fallen. Man is naturally sinful. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. That's John Adams, right? So this is a totally different worldview. And these worldviews are very difficult to reconcile, but that's what the DSA is going to have a serious problem with, whether it's Abdul El-Said in a Michigan general election. That's particularly going to be difficult, or whether it's having this conversation on a Democratic primary stage in 2028. That's going to be a problem. Because the answer, again, that I'm gotten in addition or I've heard, and I've actually gotten it myself as we've interviewed some of the the DSA candidates on breaking points, is that the normal cops can deal with deportation.

Now, or can deal with criminals who then need to be deported. That's normal law enforcement. You don't necessarily need to have ice in order to do that. But if you have open borders, just to be perfectly clear, if you have open borders, as Mouser just said, that is a massive magnet, a massive magnet pull factor. It's not a push factor. It's a pull factor. And it's not a pull factor that eliminates push factors, by the way.

It's a massive pull factor to have people coming into a country like the United States, which has more resources and has more right now available than, for example, Honduras, for the person who wants to come to this country, higher standard of living is probably a good way to put it. a higher standard of living here available to the average person. So that creates pull factors. You open the border, say you have a DSA president who comes in and basically does what Joe Biden did with executive order

and then claimed it would be impossible to undo without legislation, which was a total lie from the Biden administration. But anyway, say you have somebody come in. This is the Democratic Party's biggest weakness right now. What does Mark Kelly, who says the Biden border policy was bad? What does he do differently than Joe Biden? because the average Democrat right now, I have a hard time believing.

Just like Joe Biden campaigned as more of a, quote, moderate candidate than the others in 2020, though McClatchy still analyzed his platform in 2020 as the farthest left of any Democrat that had run in modern history. So even if centrist moderate Joe Biden, purported centrist moderate Joe Biden, and basically de facto opens up the border, de jure, I suppose to, with all of these executive orders, because he believes he has a mandate to push back on everything the Trump administration did, which the Obama-Biden administration had done versions of in some cases.

What would President Mark Kelly do differently? We know President DSA would say, we just need to demilitarize, right? And so it would do a lot of those exact same policies. and would do them openly, whereas maybe a Mark Kelly would try to be a bit cageder like a Joe Biden. Well, what's that going to do? It's going to create massive poll factors, unless you're running this experiment with open borders all over the world, you're going to have cartel trafficking.

Every person is going to be a payday for the cartel. It's going to create more violence. And then how are you actually? Are you actually interested in deporting criminal who came to this country claiming asylum or living in the shadows of a sanctuary city, I don't think Mouser actually really believes that it is moral or just to deport those people. Because if you believe in open borders, as the DSA agenda actually calls for, it's on their website, if you believe in open borders, or let's be even more charitable and say demilitarized borders where people can basically walk back and forth, say, hey, I'm in here, what is your mechanism?

for keeping track of people? What is your mechanism for free and just labor conditions for the working class here? Bernie Sanders used to be very concerned about that. How are you going to ensure there's not enormous pressure on low wage earners in the United States from people who are coming in with lower standards of living and are willing to work for close to nothing? I mean, I'm sure they have all kinds of answers about labor policies and the like that they'll throw at you. But in order to run that experiment, you have to have all of those variables in place.

Joe Biden certainly didn't. It's unlikely that anybody could have all of those variables in place. So if you just open up the border and run this progressive fantasy, demilitarize the border and abolish ice, you will likely have more human suffering, both of the migrants, and of low wage earners here in the United States. It will be harder to have a cohesive country, of course, which is what you need, by the way, to get buy-in for progressive policies. If you want the country to buy-in to Bernie Sanders' vision of America,

then yes. You need to work in a lower-case D democratic process where people see themselves as citizens of a constitutional republic and if there's going to be transformative, cultural and economic policies, you do need to have public buy-in. And that's much more difficult if everybody sees themselves as a citizen of the world

rather than a citizen of a country with real borders where we are all part of a republic. The fantasy is really, really difficult to envision anybody even being able to actualize in the near term. And so when you implement policies that are meant to function in this fantasy system, there will be suffering because not all of the conditions are going to be met to even try and realize this fantasy. So I thought this was a very interesting exchange because what they're trying to do here,

Politico had a fascinating article about Abdul al-Said and other DSA adjacent. candidates. The headline here is progressives think they found a way around their old social media posts. And you can see that even in the DSA co-chair and New York City co-chair going on Fox and Friends. Right now the DSA believes that it really has an opportunity. Unlike, I mean, you could see AOC is sort of the opening chapter in this book. And what we're getting into now is part two. Or maybe AOC's the prequel. And here we go with the bigger book, that now they have their opportunity to nationalize the DSA agenda because Donald Trump is. unpopular. We are back in an unpopular foreign war. Obviously, right now, Iran and the United States,

basically the ceasefire is over. Who knows what's about to happen to gas prices heading into the midterm elections, unpopular president, Republican Party that doesn't know what's going to happen after his term in office. Who's the leader that steps into the MAGA vacuum? The DSA sees this as a huge opportunity, especially because centrist Democrats like the Alyssa Slotkins or the Haley Stevens in Michigan, the Mallory McMorros in Michigan, who dropped out last week, are losing their popularity. They're losing their credibility with the public right now. And institutional trust is at rock bottom. Distrust of the Democratic Party with Democrats is low, or approval of the Democratic Party with Democrats as low. There was a great poll on that that came out

last summer that we covered that showed basically Democrats at Tea Party levels, just as Republicans were unfavorable towards the Republican Party during the Tea Party years. This is ripe. The DSA is basically the left Tea Party. And right now, they see this as an opportunity to get a public mandate for the DSA policies, unlike they've ever had in the past. And we've covered here, I think Republicans keep giving them low-hanging fruit to pick. Don't get me wrong. But it's going to be almost impossible to do as long as they don't have an answer on questions like this. So Politico says, candidates, quote, say a populist economic message that addresses affordability concerns will buoy them to victory. This is an Abdul al-Said quote to Politico, you can talk about my tweets if

you want to, probably referring to his like defund the police tweet, but you can't afford your health care, you can't afford your groceries, you can't afford your housing, and it's because of Donald Trump's absurd policies. This worked for Zoran Mamdani. He was able, and he has become the template. He is now the leader of the DSA. movement. He comes from hardcore DSA circles and was able to take that all the way up to managing one of the biggest economies, urban economies in the entire world. Abdu al-Said says, I've been to 400 plus public events and nobody's ever asked me about my tweets. His spokesperson for the campaign said he deleted his post older than July of 2023, quote, to prevent any old posts from being taken out of

context. You know, there's all the DSA candidates that have been, he, so Abdul Ossedad is a good example, he told the Detroit News that he, quote, actually never, never called for defunding in reference to the police. CNN, though, found him saying, quote, we do need to defund the police. That's a quote, in a June 2020 interview with Detroit Public Radio. So maybe in these primaries where Abdul Al-Said has been campaigning among Democrats, people aren't asking him about that. tweet, but when you get into a general election, you better believe this tweet about the police is going to be a huge problem. And you can't, if you are a populist candidate, one thing you can't afford is to look like you're lying. We covered that in the Platner case. I really think that's like

the kryptonite is if you are saying I'm better than the old guard, the establishment, the elite that's lying to constantly, you kind of have to own your old positions. But that's neither here or there. It's already a problem. But it's a problem for Republicans, that the economy is going to be bad, the president's going to be unpopular, there's going to have to be a new foreign war that they're defending on the campaign trail, especially once we get after Labor Day. We'll see, even if there's a more durable ceasefire at that point, it's still not going to be popular that they defended this for as long as they did. And so, and that they enabled the president by not voting or not pushing for a vote on the war, those sorts of things. So that's a real problem for Republicans. And in

lesser than two evil politics, which is where the record number of Americans who now identify as independence. That is a record. Polling is found. There's a record number of people now identifying as independence. The battle for them comes down to basically their calculation of who's worse, right? So Abdul El-Sayed might not be wrong that, and the DSA co-chair, Mauser and that Fox of Friends interview, might not be wrong to just try and neutralize the attack and to make it seem like, you know, listen, Trump is worse, right? Like, listen, I'm not actually going to defund the police. I don't really believe in that anymore.

And let's focus on how bad Republicans are. They might be right that that's a way to kind of coast and to get through some of these elections where people see it as a battle of the lesser of two evils. What's going to be much tougher, much tougher, is actually then saying, hmm, like actually saying, let's, let's, uh, what is your plan for the police? What is your plan for the border? What's your plan after abolish ICE? And they might have talking points on that. I know they have talking points on that. But are they satisfying to the public? That's a much

different question, different question for the Abdul L. Sayeds of the world. So I thought that was a really interesting back and forth on Fox and Friends. Let's talk about JK Rowling. All right. J.K. Rowling now in hot water with Amnesty International. Although what I should say is that Amnesty International is in hot water with J.K. Rolling, to be honest, because this makes Amnesty International look worse than anybody else. J.K. Rolling, obviously, is lumped in with the turfs, the quote, trans-exclusionary, radical feminist. She has been an absolute leader in that space long before things like the cast review made it much more acceptable internationally. But even in the U.K.,

to come down on that position. This was a great post and spiked online by Joe Bartosh about the situation. Bartasch writes, in a new report, quote, a growing threat, the anti-rights movement in the UK, its new report, this is referring to Amnesty International, was recently published and then, like a disfavored comrade, quietly disappeared from the organization's website less than 24 hours later. Before its abrupt vanishing act, amnesty warned that a, quote, anti-rights ecosystem was, quote, threatening, or was threatening, quote, the safety of women and LGBT people in the UK, it identified 117 organizations allegedly working to roll back human rights, lumping together American Christian groups with a patchwork of British feminist, lesbian, and gay organizations. Among these supposed extremists is

Barra's place, the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Center established with the support of J.K. Rowling, after Scotland's publicly funded Rape Crisis Network abandoned its guarantees of female-only services. All right, so here's where that went. J.K. Rowling posted yesterday, Amnesty International, she posted a screenshot of Amnesty International saying, we have temporarily removed this briefing while it undergoes an internal review. Amnesty International, UK, the group in question here, remains committed to researching and campaigning on human rights issues incorporating our longstanding and explicit commitment to gender justice, including the rights of women, LGBTQI, and trans people.

Rolling quote tweets that and says, translation, oops, didn't realize people outside our ideological bubble are this pissed off about the loss of sex-based rights. We remain implacably opposed to any organization fighting to retain them, but shove in the words rights of women to keep the bigot happy. Thomas Willett, who I believe, yeah, is an LGBTQ advocate self-identified, quote tweets Rolling and says, J.K. Rowling presents a direct threat to freedom of speech when a human rights body is forced to remove report on transphobia following threats from wealthy individuals. It sends a chilling message to anyone speaking up for trans rights. This is silencing and coercion. What an incredible

mind F from Willett. This has been echoed by others where Amnesty International, again, you have to have that frame of mind to see perpetually the victims as the people who for years had all of the corporate and institutional government support in the world. In the UK, government support. That is what the cast review was born of. The cast review that found the science was rushed and unsubstantiated with a review of the research that has now since been denied by people who have advocated for these positions and have really been resistant to accepting where some of the research has gone on this front. You have to have that framework that actually the people who had all of the buy-in from corporate America or global corporations actually from the UK government in particular,

the Biden administration, certainly here in the United States, Hollywood, you then have to say, those are, the people who are questioning, this blob are the ones that are threats to free speech because their criticisms, which were substantial and offered from their perspective in defense of women, that's the correct perspective, by the way, those are the problem here, those are the people who are chilling speech, those are the powerful silencing the weak. that is a wild way to see this debate, absolutely wild way to see this debate, because actually what happened

is that after a while, the stories of people who were powerless in the face of our institutions cramming down our throats, this idea that girls in high school should have to change in rooms or college should have to change in locker rooms with men, that women's shelters, like an Anchorage, Alaska, should force victimize vulnerable women to sit next to men or to lie down or sleep next to men in the shelter. After they have just been victimized traumatically by men, women's prisons. That was pushed on an omni-institutional basis for years. And if you spoke up, like rolling, you had your entire career threatened. How many of the Harry Potter kids came out and were like, no.

Harry Potter has basically only been able to. survive because it's Harry Potter. Rolling had been ostracized forever in the UK, even though rolling is a left feminist. It didn't matter. It didn't matter how much of an ally you were on all of the other issues. If you breathe the sigh of dissent on this particular issue, you were tossed aside. That is a wild way to frame where the debate has headed now, that the people who finally actually are starting to win in the Court of Public Opinion, despite the top-down effort to silence them for years, are the ones chilling free speech.

That is completely insane and backwards. I don't know if it'll work in this case, but it's also worth noting, as Joe Bartas points out in that spiked online piece, that the argument of rolling, and by the way, the millions of women, many of whom are not billionaires, her perspective represents,

this is actually about women. that if Amnesty International is a human rights group, the rights of women to be and to feel safe in same-sex, single-sex spaces, which were created in order for women to feel safe in them. Same thing. Single-sex sports, same-sex sports. Created in order for women to succeed

that they are, their rights, are subliminated to the rights of a tiny minority, who in many cases are genuinely mentally ill. Gender dysphoria is horrific. It's, of course, not a license to take away the rights of women. Hard-earned rights of women, by the way, in many cases. Like Title IX here in the United States. Also check out Scott Jenner's recent piece in Compact magazine

about reforms needed to Title IX, which conservatives used to talk about a lot before we got sidetracked by... Not sidetracked, but this massive distraction over whether or not men can be women and gender identity can be read into Title IX about what happens to sports and the collegiate level. Check that piece out. But it's amazing to see, I mean,

it's always been amazing to see human rights groups, feminist groups, abandon feminist victories. It's always been just upside-down world to witness that. But to go after a group, a human rights group, to go after a rape crisis network that's just saying, we work with women. I don't know at this point people are going to be persuaded out of that worldview. And we talk about this here all the time. I wrote a big long piece for Unheard about this about a year ago on how what we considered the vibe shift here in the United States after 2024, maybe the end of like capital P.W peak woke. What we're actually doing is going into another era where it's more dispersed, right,

where people whose worldviews were built on these, what I would say, houses of sand, of postmodern ideas about reality and truth. Some people will be able to walk away from that, but for most people, that was formative. It's when they were young. That's what was happening. in the world, and that's the house of sand that they built their worldviews on top of, or that's the foundation of sand that they built the house of their worldviews on top of. And so there are going to be a lot of people, especially as millennials age, even more,

no offense to us, and into positions of power, this tug of war isn't going away. It might not be what it was in 2020 when it was kind of omni-institutional, but it's not going away. And this is a reminder of this, of that. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be back, of course, with Clavicular. This episode is sponsored by USAFax, a nonpartisan organization, making government data easier to access and understand. I'm partnering with them on a great campaign called the data we depend on. And the idea is very simple. If the government is going to spend taxpayer money and then make massive decisions, it should have to actually show its work. How about that? That starts with reliable public data. Government data helps track

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All right, everyone, we're back. And as promised, updates from clavicular's trip to Israel, what else would we be doing here on a Monday evening but analyzing clavicular's trip to Israel? Now, it does appear increasingly as the, though this trip was organized by the Israeli government in one way or another. I know that that sounds insane, but clavicular went on, I can't even believe I'm talking about clavicular, but let me just put up actually first, this little bit from Dropsite, which was wrapping up the trip here.

There at 20-year-old Manosphere influencer Braden Peters, better known as clavicular, spent the weekend parting in Tel Aviv, where Israel's Channel 13 filmed in a nightclub with Topaz Look, a senior media advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu, according to Harets. Throughout the trip, Peters was closely accompanied by a young Israeli woman with whom he repeatedly displayed physical affection. Amazing description, guys. In a viral live stream clip, she claimed she had login access to the Israeli military's official TikTok. You can watch that. It is a really bizarre video. Now, he went on with Olivia Rheingold of the free press on live stream, and Rinegold asked, who paid for the trip. And he said, you don't want to ask that question. And claimed that the finance.

backing was, quote, confidential. Netanyahu's advisor, so the meeting with the Gen Z streamer occurred, quote, by coincidence. The Times of Israel also reported speculation that Netanyahu met Peters and could appear on his channel. Peters was filmed in January singing Kanye West Heil Hitler alongside white supremacist, Nick Fuentes. He later said, I'm not sorry. I would do it again. He got pushed on that as well by Israeli media, interestingly enough.

he had a pretty interesting response to Olivia Rheingold as well, who said in an extremely egalitarian term, clavich turn, clavicular has revealed himself to be an equal opportunity partier because he basically just said, it's a good time. All these women are good looking when Rheingold was asking about some of the criticism he had gotten from his fans.

Obviously, Gen Z is not favorable towards Israel whatsoever, which is why you could then see the Israeli government thinking perhaps it was a good idea to bring clavicular over to the country. You know, Netanyahu sat down with the Nelk boys. People probably remember that. That was clearly an effort to build favorability back with a younger generation. And again, if you're Israel, understandably so. But what clavicular quote tweeted Rheingold, he said, you essentially advocating with a 20-year-old to share his political opinions to the massive audience I have is wildly irresponsible. I'm very conscious of the influence I have, which is why I only speak about topics such as looks maxing,

which I spent, let me put this back up on the screen, which I spent years of my life researching, more influencers need to humble themselves and realize that they're ignorant politically or just generally fucking stupid. No disagreement whatsoever with that last line. I love that his years of amateur research about looks maxing, is what qualifies him to speak about it. Hilariously, amateur research about foreign policy is what qualifies people. By the way, both sides of this debate

to believe they have the credentials to comment on it on their live streams, just like he does on his live streams. But back to this question, well, let me just say, actually, I think that's kind of refreshing from clavicular. Like, I kind of understand what I kind of appreciate what he's saying, which is that I'm just here to talk about looks maxing.

Now, he did get questioned. This was on Channel 13 in Israel. And he gets questioned for, as he should, singing the Heil Hitler Yee song, which we should mention. We did a couple segments on this here about, for example, Senator Rick Scott saying, Kanye West shouldn't be able to perform at this facility in Florida because of an anti-Semite. Kanye West took out a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal and apologized to a rabbi explaining how his mental illness led him from point A to point B, from or to genuine anti-Semitism. So I don't know what more you need on the yay point, but I think it's entirely fair to ask

Clavicular. He's in Israel, this question. And Clavicular replies, we came here after a ceasefire ended in a very unstable state, technically to show that Israel is a safe place. So for you to start off in an antagonistic way, I'm very confused. The host says, why not clean the page? Well, why don't you clean the page and talk about how much I've done for this country's reputation because it's an under shambles?

You want any social media page, the amount of propaganda among Gen Zian misconceptions, that's what's doing the real damage, not anything that I've done. So it does sound from that, like clavicular is saying, without saying, that he's on some type of organized trip, also not telling the free press who paid for the trip.

It sounds pretty obvious that he's on some type of organized junket to Israel. He's streaming from Israel. And he literally has a pretty smart mandate from the perspective of people who organized it, not to talk about politics, but just to be like, wow, what an amazing country. That would be, I suppose, a much more persuasive way. If you're trying to engineer and manipulate public opinion, that is a much more persuasive way to try and rehabilitate Israel's reputation with young people is to show, look at this modern country with wonderful food, beautiful women, great nightclubs,

and then they believe that it'll just kind of necessarily be contrasted in people's minds with what it looks like in Gaza, although, of course, what it looks like in Gaza right now is not, it doesn't, that isn't like the organic culture of Gaza. It's been reduced to rubble because of the war in many cases, and I think a lot of people in Gen Z understand that. So I'm not sure that this is going to ultimately be persuasive, but it's much more persuasive than the robotic talking points trotted out by people who are just like, hey, we are so, like, the Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, which people aren't persuaded by anymore, and Iran is in the wrong, like the political talking points don't work. And so what they're trying to do, I think

pretty clearly with clavicular, whether it's the government or some interest group that organized this, although it seems, given the fact he was hanging out with this girl all weekend, you can see the streams yourself, who then on her phone pulls up for him to see, at least, the IDF's TikTok account. He then tries to call someone to see if he can get permission to post on the TikTok account. She says if they just do it, she'll lose her job. It seems like this was probably organized by the government. No idea. It shows, like, I think, probably a more clever approach to try to rehabilitate public opinion. But at least from clavicular's perspective, it's true he probably should just talk about looks maxing. I guess it's like hard to disagree with that.

And other influencers are now being used, of course, as like useful idiots for by people who buy a post from them, right? We'll buy this ex post. We'll buy this. In fact, let me even pull up this crazy, truly crazy pattern that Alex Brousowitz, who's a Trump advisor, recently noticed on X with Lindsey Graham, but people have realized they can rent out these influencers feeds, right, for a lot of money. And then basically, they'll just be able to have a bigger audience for, I don't know, probably a lot of money, but here, Brousowitz noticed this with, as soon as the Lindsey Graham news broke, there were these two influencers who posted really similar language about Nikki Haley succeeding Lindsey Graham.

This one is a Vance Langman, says, I'm still angry at her for running against President Trump in the primary, but she'd be guaranteed the whole deceit for Republicans in November. This other viral account, Reverend Jordan Wells posted, look, I'm still pissed Nikki Haley ran against Donald Trump in the primary, but facts are. fact, she'd lock down Lindsey Graham's Senate seat for Republicans in November. So you see exactly part A, I'm still angry. Part B should be a lock for the seat in both posts. And they both use the exact same picture of Nikki Haley. The exact same picture of Nikki Haley is so obvious and so dumb. I have to believe that we're moving away from this era of influencing because it's gotten

to the point where it's beyond obvious what's happening. And so that's probably what we're seeing with clavicular, like the next chapter in influencer influencing where they pretend they're really not trying to influence anything. People realize we can use them in ways that are less explicit. And then for the influencer, it's like morally, probably more palatable because they don't have to act like they know everything. Or if you might remember, what was, it was the Nelk boys after their Netanyahu interview got like reamed out and clearly felt badly that they had done it while taking some questions that were handed to them, and they felt like they weren't equipped to do that interview, because they weren't equipped to do that interview at all. So it's probably morally more palatable for the influencers just to get paid to show, you know, this entity that is under fire is good in ways that have nothing to do with politics.

Now, speaking of celebrities and politics, you have to see this clip of Mick Jagger on a podcast with the New York. times. So here is Jagger getting questioned. Basically on why he doesn't act like Bruce Springsteen. You could tell the interviewer was coming to this with a perspective, a particular perspective. Let's go ahead, take a listen. Bruce Springsteen, who clearly sees his job as engaging in a meaningful back and forth with his audience. It means something different to him. What does your relationship to the audience mean to you? What do they represent all those people out there? Well, first of all, it depends where you are and what kind of event it is. Like the New Orleans

event, that's a festival. They didn't come to see you necessarily. You know, they bought their tickets before they knew you were coming. Right. If you play the New Orleans Jazz Festival. You know, we played that. Then we do somewhere in the park in London. You both. those tickets you're glastonbury you buy those tickets because you like that festival you always think something's good's going to happen with you don't know so they're not necessarily coming to see they're not your biggest fans necessarily i'm not saying they hate you otherwise it probably wouldn't be there there's different levels of these kind of people and you have to treat them in a slightly different way my my the bottom line of my thing is really is that i

in the live music world is just those people that come is to have the best time they possibly can and for two hours or whatever it is to forget all their problems. That's a great answer, right? It's a great answer. And he goes on, he keeps getting questioned by this interviewer. He was like, I want to dig a little deeper. You're talking about what your job is, but my question about what meaning the job has. Um, Jagger goes on to say, what you're saying is when I get out there, what does it all mean?

It's a lot of joy for me. It's a huge adrenaline buzz. Then, um, says basically when I was starting out, people would show me how to do that. I toured for a long time with Little Richard. I had no idea that people could do what he did. Performers didn't do that. They just went out, play their songs and said hello and that was it. He was embracing them all, gave them all to go along with his version of the world, stand up, sit down, make jokes.

So for a small time, it becomes this community. He talks about how that's difficult to do in a stadium. he says, I'm not completely answering your question, but that's a lot of what I do. This is a great answer because, listen, I have zero problem. We've talked about this on the show before with especially musicians, but artists in general using their art for ideological purposes, not for partisan agendas. When you're doing it for a partisan agenda, it just diminishes the art because you're subliminating the value of what you're creating to.

a political partisan end. And that's just usually not entertaining because it's basically this awful zero-sum game that stifles free thought, right? Because you're on a team and when you're on that team, you have to necessarily stifle some of your creativity and your thought to remain loyal to the team, right? Like you can't be questioning the team if you're trying to win a zero-sum political game. And so I really have no problem with Bruce Springsteen. although I think what he does now is unsurprisingly performative politics that aren't persuading anybody. If anything, they persuade people that his ideas are as kind of old as he looks now on the stage. No offense to the Springsteen heads out there.

I'm much more of a stonesperson myself. But Jagger is saying, like, people come to a concert for different reasons. Like if you're at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, it's different than being in an arena, which is different than being in a small concert venue. And he's totally right about that. And for the performer to think about the audience, rather than to think about the headlines, they're going to generate is probably a better way to do it. Some of these guys know that they can keep selling out arenas and some people come to hear Bruce because they know he is going to start talking about politics of the day and they want to become part of that. That's fine. But for him, it's been over the course of decades. For a lot of

people, the problem comes in when you see yourself as a headline generator, as somebody who's perpetually working on your own public relations, and that is often out of step with what the audience wants to see from somebody like Mick Jagger. It would be ridiculous to say the Stones had no politics in their music. Of course, that's not the case. But just having some respect for the venue, whether it's a physical venue or a venue like this podcast, where he's very intentionally not trying to either dunk on Springsteen or, you know, say, make some political statement in and of himself, in and of itself. That's awesome. Like, that's actually why I think McJegger's had the longevity that he's had, and you can see in this interview how thoughtful and intellectual he is.

And it's just, again, I think a much healthier way to approach your job as an artist, to see it as maybe more ideological about good than about Team Red or Team Blue or Team Labor versus whatever else. That's a recipe for success. Springsteen is different because he has this pattern of many years. He's maybe not the perfect foil actually here because I think what the interviewer, the New York Times interview is really trying to get at is why are you not

using your politics to make a statement on Trump or Brexit or whatever in this very polarized time. I feel like that's what he's trying to actually do. He's trying to push Jagger on that question, which, whatever, fine. It's less interesting. But he ended up getting a really interesting answer out of McJagger, which is like, it's about the venue. It's about the venue. It's about what the audience wants.

It's about them. And success with your audience is how you have longevity. And Bruce Springsteen has had that relationship. with his audience, but there are a lot of people who don't have that relationship with the audience, where it also just transforms into this totally pedantic, tedious, cliche, and kind of anti-artistic, political campaigning. And it's different from what the audience came to see, from what the audience came to see. So that was a great answer from Mc Jagger. All right, we'll leave it there today. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's edition of After Party. As a reminder, please do subscribe. It helps us so

very much. We're going to see you back here on Wednesday with Tom Bevin. Have a wonderful evening, everyone.