After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Madonna’s AWKWARD VMAs, Why Ben Shapiro’s Wrong, Ms. Rachel’s SNAP Rant & Meryl Streep as Aslan

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

Emily Jashinsky reacts to Madonna’s awkward appearance at the VMAs and what it reveals about celebrity culture and aging, plus Dave Portnoy’s hilarious response and Taylor Swift’s night at the awards. Emily pushes back on Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin over what’s driving President Trump’s declining approval ratings and Americans’ economic frustration, including the impact of the Iran war on energy and gas prices. She also breaks down the close Texas governor’s race and what Gina Hinojosa’s effort to distance herself from the culture war could mean for Republicans. Then Emily responds to Ms. Rachel’s criticism of conservative Christians over changes to SNAP benefits and examines what the new work requirements actually do. She digs into the latest developments in the death of Tasia Fortune and the troubling way the media is reporting on it. Emily rounds out the show by reacting to Greta Gerwig casting Meryl Streep as Aslan in “The Chronicles of Narnia” and explains why she believes the decision reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of C.S. Lewis’ Christian worldview. PreBorn: Dial #250 and say “BABY” or visit https://Preborn.com/EMILY Cozy Earth: Visit https://www.CozyEarth.com & Use code EMILY for up to 20% off Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/afterparty Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everyone, welcome to After Party. I told you it would be looking and sounding a little new around here. Thanks so much for joining us. Subscribe if you haven't yet. We're obviously hitting our stride because now you're hearing smooth jazz as we open the show. So please do make sure to subscribe on YouTube, subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And we always do a Friday show over there. So subscribe on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. But welcome. Happy Monday. We're glad to be here a little bit earlier in the day because there's so. much to discuss. We're going to talk about some of the commentary suggesting that it's the economy, it's really the tariffs that are making the economy uncomfortable for people so much so that they're taking on Republicans in the midterm election cycle. I'm going to take a look at a Ben Shapiro clip and respond to some of the argument that he gives and go into some of what the data actually looks like. So hopefully it would be a helpful breakdown. Going to talk about the Texas governor campaign. I'm going to talk about Ms. Rachel now going after Christian conservatives. We're talking about the awful, awful case of Tazi of Fortune and the media coverage of that case.

And then I will get into female Aslan, Lady Aslan, obviously. If anything, I'm way too late to the story. Should have done a breaking news report on it as soon as it came out. But let's start with the VMAs because the VMAs happened last night. VMAs. We're still doing the VMAs, I guess. still making them about Madonna and Taylor Swift. All of these years later, the VMAs are coasting on nostalgia, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. But it might be helpful to ex-suppose the tribute that Casey Musgraves did to Daly Parton with what we saw from, I think, 68-year-old Madonna on stage last night.

Can we roll? I'm going to start here by rolling a bit of Madonna's performance. Portnoy recorded his own. They Portnoy of Borse-Barsall recorded his own, like, commentary running over as you watched it. So we're going to watch that, and then we're going to watch her being part of an award presentation process. And again, keep in mind that Dali Parton used to say

it takes a lot of money to look this cheap. If Madonna said something like that, maybe some of this would be more forgivable. But let's turn it over to Portnoy here. I left the football game on the channel and the VMAs are on now. And Madonna, who's like 70 is dancing around with some sort of giant contraption in her ass. It looks like she's just like,

it's disturbing if we're being honest. Hopefully it comes back to her. There she is. What is going on with those pants? You're 70 and it looks like you stuffed your pants with... Yeah, we can't call it there. It's just like, what are you doing? Here's her presenting an award.

And some people thought she was drunk. Some people thought she sounded old. Here it is. First of all, I just want to get this thing out of my ass. Just pulled something, pretend to pull something over... It's been in her all night. Anyways, now I can party in the park. Why are you guys so far away?

Get over here. My microphone is too short. Safety in numbers. That was really. awkward. I'm kind of unclear what this award is for. I guess it's for the short film. Wait, hold on. It's confession to the film. Okay. Well, I feel good. Well, that's kind of funny, but it's like if you're listening to this incredibly awkward when she calls Charlie X, X, X, and the other guy over to her, and they just are very confused

and apparently scared of her or ostensibly scared of her, which I don't blame them for being a little bit scared of her. But like there's no problem with being a dolly parton and aging in a way that is cartoonishly resistant to the ravages of age. With Madonna, she doesn't own it, right? She's not out there saying it takes a lot of money to look this cheap. She seems to really not believe that she looks cheap. And I saw such an interesting post last night. And I want to give credit to whomever did it, but they said basically we're never going to see Madonna like age. We're just going to see different versions of her face, different versions of like a plastic Madonna face until she leaves her mortal coil. And I do feel like that's kind of accurate. But that's a deeper,

it gets to this deeper question of why it's harder for people to just age gracefully. There's nothing graceful about Madonna stumbling through a 68-year-old Madonna stumbling, through her presentation and pretending to pull something out of her butt, seeming like she's wearing like padding in her butt. The whole thing, again, I don't have any problem with nostalgia. I don't even have a problem with people trying to look good. But when it's on this level where you're like genuinely trying to be a different human being than what's actually under all of it, it starts to look gross.

It doesn't look normal. It just looks disgusting. And so it's Madonna's been doing it. Like every time Madonna steps foot in public, we do the same thing. Like it's a lot of conservatives being like, ew, what is she doing? And it's every time for a reason because the average person looks at that and it's like, oh, ha ha, this is fun. But maybe it's not so fun to be her.

Maybe it's fun for the person who watches for three minutes and gets to relive the 80s. God bless you, Jen X. But I don't know that it's so much fun to be her. And doesn't that kind of take the fun out of? watching her a little bit, a little bit, just feels so sad. Whereas, again, with Dali Parton, you know she was comfortable. There's something about it. She was like in on the joke.

She was comfortable in her own skin. And for Madonna, it just seems like she's actually really not because she's not satisfied with being 68. She has to still be wearing that. I don't know. I was going to try to describe it. And then I just decided not to describe it. it because I don't know how you would.

Whatever that was, whatever that was, she's into it. I have to say they clearly invented a reason for Taylor Swift to be at the VMAs during football season, of course. And I always say something nice about Taylor. At least she cares about making something beautiful, right? Like she debuted her Patient Zero music video with Dakota Johnson. And it was good. Like, was it the work of classic literary brilliance that the Swifties think it was?

No, but was it good? Yeah, it was fine. It was fun. It was interesting, provocative. But it was also beautiful. And again, you got to give it. You got to hand it to Taylor for that because the standards are so low. There is as low as Madonna's underwear.

Like, that's where this is. And so you got to hand it to Taylor for at least recognizing that people like pretty things. And they like beautiful things. And so I got to hand it to her for, I guess, being the anti-Madonna last night. She's not quite old enough to be a foil to Madonna. But there is a way to age gracefully and to still care about yourself, to put effort into it. And even to be a weirdo musician. Like, I want a musician to be kind of weird.

It's sort of the problem that Taylor Swift has. She's almost not interesting enough to make good art. So I don't really mind Madonna being provocative and weird. It just doesn't have to be that gross. It really doesn't. All right. We're going to take a quick break, and we will be back with midterm updates in just one moment. Well, for 20 years, preborn has stood in the gap between fear and hope.

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Well, I saw this clip of Ben Shapiro circulating on X, and so then I went and watched the full segment in, I think with respect to Ben, he's making an argument that's really worth picking a part here because it's suggesting that perhaps the tariffs are more to blame with economic for economic dissatisfaction with Trump and the Republican Party than the Iran war is. I don't not think that is accurate. And I don't think it's a particularly helpful way to approach voters right now. So let's first start with this clip that I saw circulating and then we'll go into the full segment because it actually is a fairly accurate rendering of the full segment.

It's not an out of context clip. Let's start here. I know President Trump right now is very unpopular. And a little bit later on in the show, I'm going to get to why President Trump is indeed unpopular, but it is not because of this stuff. It is not, in fact, because of the stuff that he's saying at the UN. There is an op right now to pretend that the real reason for President Trump's unpopularity is foreign policy.

That is not true. By the polling data, it is not true. The reality is that Americans have affordability concerns. President Trump came into office saying he was going to alleviate the affordability concerns. He has not, in fact, alleviated the affordability concerns, and therefore, his polling numbers have consistently slid since Liberation Day. I mean, it's kind of fascinating to look at those polling numbers. And we'll get back to that in a second.

But the stuff that is not responsible for that is, in fact, his view that America ought to be strong and powerful in the world. So I'm obviously against the war completely, but I wanted to hear Ben out because if there's polling data on this, it's interesting. So let's take a look here at Ben's analysis of the data. Next clip. The really big reason that Republicans are in bad shape right now

is the president has horrible approval ratings. Right now, according to the Nate Silver polling average, Donald Trump is underwater to the tune of 38% approval rating, 59% disapproval rating. But what's most interesting about President Trump's chart is if you look at President Trump's net approval rating, what you see is a fairly consistent downward line since Liberation Day. You don't actually see the sort of step function

that you see normally with presidents that events are shocking the system. So, Real Clear Politics has a, line chart just like Nate Silver does and it has the exact same trajectory. And it's absolutely true, absolutely true that since Liberation Day, it has been steadily, Trump's approval has steadily been going down. His job approval has steadily been going down. But if you zoom out, his job approval was steadily going down since he took office. So that's like pointing at something midway through a graph and being like, well, it must be this thing that happened midway through that caused it. And actually, even more problematic for this argument is that a,

weirdly, around late April 2025, so after Liberation Day, you saw a weird climb. It was like one of the only times this happened in the Trump administration so far, a weird bump in his approval steadily from it's about late April, mid-April to late May of 2025. And I think it was really a lot of the ICE enforcement stuff that picked it back up and reversed that trend, which seemed to momentarily be reversing the decline. But that's problematic for this theory that it was all about tariffs. Yes, Trump was relaxing tariffs after Liberation Day, but if you remember those news cycles, they were incredibly chaotic. Nobody really knew what was going to happen. So if this were just about tariffs, this was mostly about tariffs, that argument doesn't make a ton of sense. I'm sure if you flesh it out, what Ben is saying is that as tariffs started affecting the economy over time, people started questioning Trump's commitment to affordability. But I want to put this chart from the Cleveland Fed up on the screen. screen. This is the 12-month growth rate in inflation. And what you can see, again, here is if you look at the,

just to get us kind of on the same page about what inflation looks like, you see starting in February of 2026, this massive jump in inflation, even though it starts to go up a bit after Liberation Day and then when you hit about September of 2025, it had started going down again. So that argument also doesn't make sense because month to month inflation had been going down. If you're looking at the 12 month, 12 month growth rate of inflation, it had started going down before the Iran war happened. So that doesn't really work either. Now, let's go to this St. Louis Fed article. they know, they tried to disentangle how much of current affordability problems, current inflation

was tied directly to the war versus tied to the tariffs. And here's their conclusion. As the figures indicate, through February 2026, a large fraction of excess inflation came from the estimated effects of tariffs. However, since March, other factors appear to be the main drivers of excess inflation, likely reflecting among other things the recent increase in energy prices. These findings are driven by estimated coefficients of tariffs passed through to PCE. prices, which have stabilized since February 2026, combined with lower effective tariff rates, our estimates show that the effect of tariffs on inflation appears to have leveled off in the last few months or even declined slightly. So that saying is not only does much of this appear to be

coming from the other sources, energy prices, but inflation tied specifically to the tariffs was stabilizing. And that's pretty much understood across economists. If you look at the last, I don't know, year was that they weren't having the dramatic effect. Paul Krugman, of all people actually just wrote about this. The tariffs weren't having the dramatic effect that many people predicted. And it's true that a lot of the tariffs were walked back. A lot of the tariff policy itself was stabilized. But certainly not all of it. And certainly it did not create the economic catastrophe. There's still some pretty high tariffs in place, much, much, much higher than they were before Trump came into office. And so looking at, this is from the St. Louis Fed. What was happening

before the war started is a really useful way to say how much of the affordability concerns that people are feeling is tied directly to inflation versus directly to the war. Now, Mark Levin also made this argument on his show the other night. And then actually he had been on his show to both of them make the same argument. But I want to take this clip of Levin flushing out his perspective on this and dive more into some of the problems here. Let's roll of them. And if you live in California, my son, our son, took a picture of the prices at the pump. They are unbelievable. You got 72 cents a gallon sales tax in California, the highest in the nation by far, other expenses that they add on to gasoline and oil out there. It is nuts. And they want you to blame Trump.

And they want you to blame the Iran war and on and on and on. No, I've said it before and let me underscore it again. The prices for gasoline, the prices for everything when it comes to energy is higher due to what we call Democrats. This is a completely crazy thing to say, that the prices are higher because of Democrats, period, overall. Do I think there's some price gouging happening among oil executives? probably. I think the president probably has a point about that. But if we take the cheapest state for gas in the country right now, it's Indiana. And I think we have this graphic from NBC News, which has been tracking. Indiana is the single cheapest state for gas right now. And so if you look at how much

gas is in Indiana, now it's about $3.89 a gallon. It's pretty expensive. Before the Iran War, it was over a dollar less. You cannot blame Democrats for people paying a dollar more a gallon in gas in Indiana. In Indiana, that doesn't work. Obviously, that doesn't work. Yeah, it's true. Gas prices are higher in blue states because of policies by Democrats, period. But prices went up after the war started because

there was obviously a crunch in the supply. It's almost not very conservative to deny that the supply crunch due to the Iran war affected the price of gas. This is not a particularly conservative economic argument to make whatsoever. And yet, everyone who questions it, their conservatism is being challenged. Let's go to Mark Zandi. He's the chief economist at Moody's Analytics. He told NBC News, quote, that the war is costing the average household more than $1,200, According to Zandis calculations, the price of gas is costing the average household $360.

More groceries are costing the average household, an additional $240, he said. Meanwhile, other modes of transportation are costing $110. More higher interest rates are adding another $205 to household bills, he said. That is the chief economist from Moody's not me. He's a chief economist from Moody's who specifically is saying right there, right there, that it's related to the war. And that's obvious because when there's a crunching gas supply, oil and gas diesel, all of that, you end up with higher prices, even if they're still too high in a place like California because of policies by Democrats

that maybe Mark Levin and I would both agree are bad policies. But it's not particularly constructive to say that this war that was per Mark Levin's case about Western civilization. If he wants to make that argument, he should absolutely keep making this argument, that the sacrifices are worth it. You're sacrificing at the pump, and it's worth it because there was some imminent nuclear threat. Now, I disagree with all of that, but that is a much more consistent, coherent, and moral argument to make that this war is worth paying higher prices at the pump. It's a case that has been made in other wars. But to deny that the war is causing the high prices, to deny that Trump's decision to get into this war, despite the reporting that's, suggests many of his top advisors were against it. To say it's not Trump's fault is not a

particularly constructive argument. It makes much more sense to say Donald Trump had the moral vision and clarity to tackle this intractable problem of the Iranian regime. And so you are going to pay higher prices and it's going to be worth it. Now, again, I think that's still a bad argument, but it's a much better argument than telling people, you're only paying high prices for gas in California because of Democrats when they could see with their own eyes exactly what happened to the prices at the pump before the war and after the war. There's a much clearer version of this argument

that doesn't involve stretching to, for example, blame tariffs, which we're stabilizing according to the St. Louis Fed, we're stabilizing in the economy because, as free traders desired, some of the tariffs were walked back. I think that's actually probably true that some of the reason that the tariffs were stabilizing the economy is because some of them were, the reason that the economy was stabilizing is because some of the tariffs were being walked back and they weren't nearly as radical as the president threatened on

liberation day itself. They were working out deals. They were the court obviously intervened, but it didn't have the economic catastrophic effect that even, And if you had told someone on Liberation Day, if you had on Liberation Day, just explained the tariffs as they are right now and said, these are the tariffs we're going to have. There's still, we're going to have, there would still be plenty of predictions of economic catastrophe. And what we saw was stabilizing. And so people are blaming the war. They are correctly blaming the war. They can see that when you have those high gas prices, it ripples throughout the rest of the economy to food prices and the like, because that is the lifeblood of our economy is oil and gas. It's how we

transport just about everything. And so people understand that. And I wanted to go through, again, some of these numbers showing that A, Trump's job approval was going down before Liberation Day. And even by those charts that Ben put up on the screen, you can see that there's a decline happening before Liberation Day. And in fact, what you see is a little bump in the immediate month or so after Liberation Day. And then B, economists and just the raw numbers itself support that this is caused directly by the war. So part of this is, I think, just bad arguments from pro-war pundits. But I also think it speaks to why Republicans are having a hard time making this message or taking this message to the voters in the midterm election cycle that is now increasingly

panicking top Republicans. I don't know if you saw Mark Halperin's reporting over the last couple of days, but even Steve Deese and Iowa. Let me pull up Steve Dees's post on X. because that actually makes a lot of sense, or that actually, I think, is in the context of this argument useful. He posted, yesterday Iowa House Republicans were informed by their own pollsters that if you are in a plus 15 district, you're within the margin of error. If you're in a plus 10 district, you're underwater. And that this might end up being in, end up being an even worse midterm, midterm environment than 2006.

He said, I slept on whether to share this publicly because I don't want to cause anyone to black pill. But this morning, I ultimately decided the truth should be shared, well, there's still six weeks left to do something about it for the good of the country. Because if the environment is this bad in my home state where Trump has been the most popular political figure over the last decade, I can't imagine where it is everywhere else. And instead of confronting that by making a clear argument for the war, Republicans are trying to act like it's all Democrats' fault. Or as we talked about last week, trying to talk about some of these really politically powerful

and morally wrong positions that Democrats like James Telerico are trying to walk back now on culture war issues, those hit different when gas is $4 a gallon, depending on where you are, when gas is a dollar more a gallon in a state like Indiana, those arguments hit different than they did in 2024 when inflation was cooling a bit, still too high, but cooling a bit. Now people are worried that it could get even worse. So if you are trying to defend the Republican Party, if you're trying to win, you need to have some moral clarity about the fact that the president is sacrificing at least in the hundreds of dollars out of the average Americans pocketbook for the sake of waging this war. And there are a lot of people who can't afford for the president to

sacrifice hundreds of dollars out of their own pocketbook, let alone Mark Zandi's $1,200 number. And they're going to take it on Republicans at the polls either by not voting when they would typically go support a Trump endorsed candidate, something like that, or in some cases, by if you're an independent, maybe voting Democrat. There were some Trump voters in this focus group that Kristen Sulz-Anderson did for the New York Times in the last few days who were genuinely considering voting for Tala Rico. And it doesn't make sense to a lot of people in D.C. or in the kind of political chattering class who see things through a very binary lens that's very different from how many average Americans see it. We have a record number of Americans who identify

as independent, about 45 percent, according to Gallup's polling. And they are willing to think about things just through a different lens. And so it's very telling to try and point the finger at tariffs and Democrats when all of the evidence suggests that this is squarely related to the president's decision to launch the war, the much better line of defense is to defend the war. But because a lot of Republicans can't or don't want to, they're turning to other things. And if this were an easily, morally defensible decision, then we should just hear more of that. But I think it speaks to Republicans having a hard time, even Republicans who have wanted to go after Iran for many, many years, having a hard time defending this version of that, despite the fact that they've

broadly supported it. They then have to defend supporting this particular version of the war. that's much more difficult to do. All right, let's move on to Texas, since we're talking about the midterms. I want to talk about the Texas governor race. This is a really interesting race that's getting a little bit less attention in the shadow of the Tala Rico-Paxon race. So I want to roll this clip of Gina Hinojosa, who's Greg Abbott's Democratic opponent talking to Politico about how Democrats and Republicans have handled the culture war. Let's roll it. Democratic elected leaders have been spending a lot of time responding to allegations in the culture war. And we have taken the baines.

This campaign is a back-to-basics. We're not doing the culture wars. We are talking about how we're going to deliver for Texans, how we're going to make life easier for working families. One of your recent ads included the line, my pronouns are mom, Texan, and soon-to-be governor. Now, that did draw some criticism from some LGBTQ advocates, But what were you trying to communicate with that?

What I was trying to communicate is to both Greg Abbott and to the culture wars. You can shove it with their culture wars. He had just accused me of working with teachers to try to trans kids. It's just ridiculous, right? Okay. So if we put this all pass of Times, Tereshire up on the screen, it says the Abbott's campaign, quote, claims Sino Hoso supports, quote, the gender mutilation of children. citing her 2023 vote against protecting minors from dangerous experimental and life-changing

medical decisions as outlined in SB 14. Here's a quote from the ad. It says radical Gina would rather, or this is from the Greg Abbott Press Secretary defending the ad. Radical Gina would rather change their kids and protect them, educate them, or prepare them for a successful future. It's disgraceful from prosecuting parents who misgender their own child to voting in favor of Texas public schools transitioning kids behind parents' backs.

He now has a rubber stamp for the socialist Democrats and their gender insanity. So here you have a very crude effort to tie, quote, socialist gender, socialist Democrats to gender insanity, which is, I think, at least a little bit better than what we've seen the Paxton campaign try to do. But that's, we talked about this in the context of Tala Rico last week. We just talked about it earlier in the show. If you want to talk about these culture war issues in a tough economy for Republicans, you do have to tie it to the top down question, right? Talarico was talking about how this, all of our problems are top down and we need bottom up solutions. And that's actually a pretty good line. It's what Hino Hoso was trying to do here by telling

Greg Abbott to shove his culture war as grading as I find that because going back to like 2018, I was personally writing stories for the federalists about how that is the equivalent of the ref flagging. The guy who punches back is the exact equivalent of that. like Hassan Piker calling Republicans weird for being obsessed with kids genitalia. It's like, I actually agree that it's weird to be obsessed with kids genitalia. This was a problem that the left started by being obsessed with kids genitalia that this contingent of hardcore LGBT activists voiced it on the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party was too afraid to shut a lot of it down, went along with it.

Went along with it. in the Obama administration by posting a dear colleague letter one day that said every K-12 school would lose federal funding if they did not read gender identity into sex in Title IX. So responding to that is not the weirdest thing to do here, though there are some weird responses to it, of course. The weirdest thing to do here was to start that fight in the first place. Now, nevertheless, let's go to the record, Al Paso Times writes, as a former Austin ISD School Board President, Hinojosa has challenged Republican legislation targeting LGBTQ plus youth. During hearings for a bill aimed at banning pride events in schools, Hinojosa criticized the

legislation and defended the events, stating that the explicit goal of pride events is to help all students feel included. In committee hearings concerning bans on schools socially transitioning students such as HB 1655, Hinojosa pushed back against regulations that would penalize educators, characterizing such measures as a mechanism for, quote, prosecuting teachers again. So she's now doing the thing where, which I think politically does work because of the tough economy, but she's doing the thing where you are the ref flagging the guy who punches back. And being, whoa, hey, why are you so obsessed with this? This is your side. This is your side.

Let's look at this RCP polling on the race, though. It's working. It's working. She's still down in the RCP average. Abbott's up about 2.3 points. That's about the size, if I'm remembering correctly. That is really close to the margin that Tala Rico has on the other side. I'm pulling it up here.

Yeah, Tala Rico's up plus 2.9 in the RCP average. Abbott's up plus 2.3. So that's pretty interesting, but almost a mirror image. But she has led in a couple of polls. Ameris pole, she was leading in mid-September. a Texas A&M poll in mid-September, she was up four. The Marist poll had her up three. Now, a couple of other polls have found Abbott with a lead. Other major polls throughout September found Abbott with a lead, which is why the spread is plus 2.3 via real clear politics. But it's a close race.

And I think where Republicans are totally missing the ball on all of this, there's a lot of conversation, I think rightfully so during like peak woke capital P, capital W. First of all, Republicans can't defend their stewardship of this economy if they are Republicans who are defending the war, unless you want to do, as we talked about earlier the show, an absolute morally clear defense of the war itself, which is hard to do. But if you want to do it, by all means, go for it. That's your best bet at politically defending this economy and morally defending this economy, too. But you have to be able to make the case that the reason we're talking about any of these

issues is in and of itself, an economic question. It is because, as Democrats are going around the country campaigning right now, Talley goes out there talking about how billionaires want to buy the election. Well, he has billioners backing him, too. The question should be, or the narrative should be, that we're having to talk about this because billioners back to all of these stupid NGOs, celebrities tried to mainstream it, and Democratic politicians went along with it. And that's why we're even having to talk about a Texas gubernatorial candidate being against legislation that pushed back on all of that. and her having the political advantage when she blames the right for the culture war. That's why we are where we are. But without making that connection, politically, this argument has very little power in a bad economy.

You have to be able to connect the wacky culture war stuff to the elite billionaires and multimillionaires. And affluent, educated Democrats who came out of academia, pushed this stuff into boardrooms, classrooms, and newsrooms, despite against the will of the average hardworking Texan who didn't want any of that to happen. So you see them kind of trying to do that in calling her socialist. But if you want to make that actually have some power, tie those two things together, there's a much better way to do it politically. And I have seen so little, so little about it, that Gina Hinojosa is going to have a decent amount of success at saying things like this. We're seeing people say things like this all the time.

Like the left is blaming Republicans for being obsessed with the culture war. And when there's a bad economy and all you want to talk about in the race is the culture war, that's actually not politically advantageous to Republicans, even though some of these issues are like 70, 30 issues because people are voting on gas prices. They're voting on interest rates, which the president was so. so I think correctly obsessed with before the Iran war, he was willing to like upend the norms going back a few decades with the Fed, really was willing to upend those norms to try and get interest rates down.

I asked him about this. I said if this is hurting the average family so much so that you may just consider getting rid of Jerome Powell some point in the future, then why don't you do this now? And he said, well, I don't think it's really gotten that bad yet because he really thought that he would be able to get Kevin Worshyn and the interest rates. would start going down right around midterm year, and things would be much better. But that's how much Trump understood the problem of these interest rates before the Iran war. And that's what's happening. But it's giving Democrats the ability to turn these issues around on Republicans. So I thought

it was pretty interesting from Hino Hoso to hear her say, go shove your culture war, Greg Abbott. And then we'll look at our numbers and realize as ridiculous as I think is on paper, when you talk about who started the culture war, whose ownership of the culture war matters most. If you are progressive, it is baked into your ideology that you are trying to change the status quo. You then, when you successfully change the status quo, should own that your ideological goal was to change. some might even say radically transform the status quo. So if that was your goal, by all means, own it. You were the one that was upending the status quo because you thought it was bad. You thought it was bigoted.

You thought it was harmful. Own it! But I can't make that argument if you're a Republican politician right now who's having to defend this economy, gas prices, war, all of that, without having a great case to make about how imminent the threat from Iran was here in the homeland. and how absolutely necessary this war was, especially as Trump campaigned against no new wars, verbatim. All right, let's go ahead and talk here about Ms. Rachel. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. So I've been sleeping in coziers, bamboo, stretching up pajamas, and changing into them is honestly the best part of my night. Sometimes I just keep them on all day. I love how silky smooth and buttery soft. They feel the second you put them on.

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that you heard about cozy earth right here. Miss Rachel stopped by Elena Glazer's podcast for some reason and had this to say about Christian conservative attacks on the SNAP program food stamps. Let's take a listen. The rights of children here, SNAP benefits being taken away. That was so psychotic. And Rachel, it's like, is in the name of Christianity too. Let's be a more Christian nation and take away SNAP benefits. Let's be a more Christian nation and put our neighbors in the stranger, which is in the Bible, I was like, welcome the stranger,

put the strangers in detention centers. And like, it's just... It's so psychotic. And let's make more and more money and not help others. And let's deny people's health care. It's like, but the SNAP thing, I mean, that just breaks me. You're going to complain about a child having enough food and like I'm so excited that I heard from Troy who's running for Senate and Maine that they have free lunch at the schools.

And I'm like, yay, because it was always like if you had free or reduced lunch, people were like. And we have that in New York, right? Oh, I don't know. I think we do. Yeah, free breakfast and lunch. I know. I just love that. Like, let's just give kids free food.

And you know what? If somebody wants to get Cool Ranch Doritos with their snap, get a birthday cake and Cool Ranch Doritos. They're allowed to use the wrong with the time. I had ice cream and cookies for dinner last night. Just to be clear, when you let people use their snap benefits on Cool Ranch Doritos, that is a massive subsidy to the evil corporation that is pumping you full of Cool Ranch Doritos. That is why Coke lobbies for massive food stamps, just as you're advocating for. Coca-Cola is lobbying exactly for that. They're spending millions of dollars to lobby for that in the farm bill. because it's a massive subsidy to them. It is a massive government subsidy to them.

But this is basically the oldest argument in the world against conservative government policies or conservative stewardship of some of these government programs. I actually have no problem with free breakfast and lunch in public schools. If you can make it work fiscally, fine. But these are like some of the oldest arguments in the world that is just, it is simply unchristian.

And there have, there's been an enormous amount of ink spilled over the years rebutting it. But I thought because some of the snap stuff is actually in the headlines right now, it was useful. Now, a lot of people like Ms. Rachel because she spoke out in support of the kids in Gaza and some basic ways and that caused everyone to freak out. And so now she has become something of like a moral political voice for the left. Not that it's just the left that has obviously humanitarian concerns about what happened in Gaza, but she's really been embraced by the left, which is why she's on a line. Alana Glazer's podcast talking about politics. But to live in a world where average Republicans

are so eager to take away SNAP benefits from kids, hungry kids, that they're willing to let kids go hungry in the name of Christianity. If you genuinely believe that that's the world that you live in, you're uninformed and that is sad. But, but let's take a look at what's actually happening here because the SNAP policies she's referring to, we can put this PBS, tear sheet up on the screen are real. This is a real thing that came out of the one big, beautiful bill. So an expert talking to PBS recently said there are three main reasons why SNAP caseloads would decline, which is what we've seen. One is that the economy improves since SNAP is designed to get smaller when the economy gets better, but the economy has not measurably improved since HR1 passed in July of 2025. And we can all

probably agree that affordability, including high cost of food, remain an enormous challenge for families in this country. Yes, absolutely accurate. Agree with that so far. Let's go to reason two. The expert says snap caseloads could decline because the rules change. And as a result, eligibility is constricted. That has happened. There are stricter time limits, meaning that folks have to prove there are working 20 hours a week or 80 hours a month to receive benefits. And the number of people subject to those time limits has gone up a lot. And that greatly increases the paperwork burden since each month, individuals have to document their hours and then the state has to certify it. The expert goes on to say the third reason that snap case loads could decline is that states take actions which contract

eligibility. So this is really all about eligibility. It goes on to say, so states face an enormous fiscal penalty if they don't get their payment error rates under control. So that refers to how much a person is under or overpaid for their monthly SNAP benefits. Those were two things that were in HR1, the one big, beautiful bill. So yes, there were work requirements in the one big beautiful bill. And if your parent is not meeting the work requirements, then yes, the SNAP case loads are going to decline. If you think it is unchristian to say there should be work requirements for people who are using the taxpayer pool taken of other people's hard-earned money, if you think that's unchristian, I mean, there's a perfectly valid argument to have about the way that we do

welfare programs in the United States, a perfectly valid argument. But if you drill down to the actual details, it's not evil Republican Christians taking snaps. benefits away it's people not make not making the more stringent work requirements that's it there are some of course like cartoon villain libertarian billionaires out there um who are okay with people having to seriously struggle and they have their like randian reasons for it and could debate you until the cows come home of course this isn't what's happening here is that Republicans implemented stricter work requirements and people who are not meeting those work requirements to have access to that pool of their fellow countrymen's money.

If you're not meeting that, then yes, the caseloves are declining. Again, totally valid debate about how we distribute money. But to argue, I mean, again, this is something that has been argued a million times there's been so much ink spilled on this idea that it is categorically uncrishian. or let's just even take that out of it unkind and uncompassionate. I mean, that is a really difficult argument to follow because it means every time you add an eligibility requirement, maybe you have to verify that you are unemployed. And because you add those verifications that you're unemployed,

some people can't verify that they're unemployed. Is that unkind that their kids might not eat because they didn't meet that requirement of proving that they were unemployed? it's a really expansive way to define cruelty, which is having basic protections for the program. It's also just a really, I think, I think it's a really sinister characterization of a lot of average Christian conservatives. Let's look at this meta review of charitableity from 2021. There's also a lot of research on who gives more, blah, blah, blah. But this was a meta review from 2021 of all the studies on charitable giving that do you. that do compare the left and the right. And so it looked at all this research over time and found

political conservatives and liberals differ in many aspects in the U.S. The inconsistency of the findings regarding the association between political ideology and charitable giving motivates this meta-analysis. Our meta-analysis of 31 original studies reporting 421 effect sizes demonstrates a small, positive, yet statistically significant relationship between the two variables. That is, political conservatives are more charitable than political liberals at the overall level. That is a matter of 31 different studies, just to be clear, that shows those evil Christian conservatives who just want to rob people, rob kids of their food, are actually also giving much more money to charities than political liberals are.

SurveyMonkey, we can put this tear sheet up on the screen. They found this was around 2018, overall giving levels rise as incomes grow for both groups, but Republicans give slightly more at each income level. To offer one example in households with an annual income over $29,000, 36% of Republicans donated $100 to $1,000 compared to 26% of Democrats. The trend continues in this direction across all brackets, as seen in the graphic below. Even the poorest Republicans are giving more than the poorest Democrats. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that is correlated with faith.

Or is connected to faith, I should say. Here's a chart from AEI that has done a lot of, of research on this, though it's been baked into some of those meta reviews. The graphic above is from the interactive chart, volunteerism in America based on data from the BLS and Census Bureau and shows that volunteerism is highly correlated with political philosophy. Volunteer rates are higher in states heavily favoring Republican presidential candidates in elections from 1992 to 2008 and in states heavily favoring Democrat candidates during those years. That one's a little out of date, but here's another one from ABC News in 2012. The most generous states, this is the headline.

the most generous states, Republican and religious. So rather than operating on this cartoonish caricature of the average Republican Christian as like Ebenezer Scrooge who just believes everyone should fend for themselves in the streets, there's a much more charitable and accurate way to see your fellow countrymen, which is that they believe that there are more efficient ways to augment people and to come and uplift and support and walk alongside people who are suffering and need some extra help. And they believe that it's one way to do that is through charities that's going to be more efficient and more helpful than the government. So you may think that it's cruel to tighten eligibility requirements because, you know, they know some people

just aren't going to meet the work requirements. We could have all these debates about the validity of the work requirements, the efficiency of the work requirements. I think those are, there are actually some valid debates to be had there. But you could do all of that. And still, to characterize this as some sort of perversion of Christianity is wrong. First of all, wrong. It's ignorant. And it's a really sinister way to see your fellow countrymen. To see greed, avarice, and just plain self-interest.

And maybe even to see a lack of compassion for the poor. to see a undermining of Matthew 5 in the sermon on the Mount, to see a discarding of it in all of this, rather than to see people who have a genuine good faith disagreement about the best way to help the poor, the best way to help prevent kids from going hungry. It's very sinister to choose to do it the other way, very sinister to choose to do it the other way.

And also, again, just ignorant of what was actually happening with the big beautiful bill. But it's sad to see whenever I say I always think it's worth pausing on that. I know it's been this is like the thing that has happened for decades goes back to like the early days of the modern conservative movement with Barry Goldwater and the like. But Miss Rachel has some has some real political platform right now. And to even go as far as far as to say let them have ice cream and Doritos? Let the corporations get the government subsidies to pump the kids full of poison? Or you hate the poor? Or you lack compassion for the poor? Or your Ebenezer Scrooge?

That's backwards. That's really backwards. And tellingly so as well. I want to talk now about this awful case of Tazi of Fortune and the way the media has handled the story. If you aren't familiar with the case of Tazio Fortune, I am going to read a little bit here from National Review because there was news in the case on Friday. You may have seen over the summer this meme about several lynchings happening in the United States. So National Review reported investigators believed Tazia Fortune was killed in a drug dispute before her body was hanged from a tree in Jackson, Mississippi last month, in a crime that shocked the nation. Fortune's death sparked widespread outrage, with many people drawing comparisons to lynchings

that occurred historically in the South. In light of Fortune's death and other recent cases of Black people found hanging, 59 Democratic lawmakers signed a letter to the Department of Justice and FBI demanding federal investigations into the incidents, citing concerns about possible racially motivated lynchings. Police have arrested two men on murder charges. There's a warrant out for a third suspect's arrest. In this case, the two suspects in custody and the victims are all black. The two men arrested in connection with the case, a 51-year-old Jarquez Ratliff, who pleaded not guilty, and 25-year-old Ernest Lloyd Jr., who was arrested earlier this week. Ratliff currently remains in custody without bond. So the evidence right now suggests, actually, unfortunately, tragically, that when Fortune was found hanging, that was staged after she was killed.

Shockingly, and I do mean that because it's still not being sarcastic, it still should shock her. conscience to see posts like this from the Associated Press. This is on next. Police in Mississippi have arrested a second man and the death of a black woman found hanging from a tree and have issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect. That's just a flavor of the corporate media headlines. We have another. I just went into, I opened a private browser so that there would be no cookie contamination of the evidence here. Put Tazi Fortune into Google yesterday. And the headlines here are what I saw. Tazi Fortune's hanging was, quote, staged after her death in a drug dispute, Mississippi police say. Mississippi hanging was staged

after drug dispute, investigators say. Third suspect arrested in death of Mississippi woman found hanging. Mother of woman found hanging in a tree shocked as police say body was staged. Their person arrested in death of Tazi Fortune. And some of those are the partial headline. But you get the point. They're all basically saying the same thing. And it is really inflammatory. Like, all of this is technically accurate, right? You can say a lot of things that are technically accurate, but if you're in the press, you know what you're doing here. You're playing along with the hanging narrative,

making it sound like it was a staged hanging, a staged lynching, maybe staged to look like a lynching, which we heard about after the body was discovered over and over again. This was, the two suspects here are black. And so to continue going along with this narrative, without adding in the headline, there's no evidence this was some racially motivated lynching or hanging when we now have evidence that the two suspects are black. And I think the most defensible headline here is the New York Times one that says Mississippi hanging was staged after drug dispute, investigators say. but that still could give you the impression that the staging was to look like a historic Mississippi hanging.

Everyone knows when you see Mississippi hanging what the media is directing you to think about. And so it's helpful, I think, for the perspective of people understanding the story from like a journalistic perspective, to add that it was a drug dispute, because that to some extent undercuts what people may be thinking about race. but there's also a way to provide a more accurate picture. And this is one of the things that the people who demand journalists are neutral and objective get completely wrong. Even choosing which stories to cover is necessarily involving some editorial bias in one direction or the other. Choosing what headline to give the story is exercising some editorial discretion,

some, you're injecting subjectivity, right, into the active news. gathering and news delivery one way or the other. And so there's no such thing as like the mythical capital objective or capital and neutral active journalism. So you're always choosing what's important to cover and you're choosing how to give it a headline. You know, most people are going to see, more people are going to see the headline

that are going to read the story. And these headlines could easily provide the full picture here, which is that there is no, evidence of a racial element because the police now have two black men as suspects. Probably useful to put that in the headline, which again, more people are going to see, especially after there was a month of commentary. I think this was even cited in a letter from congressional Democrats concerned about recent possible hangings. There's a lot of conversation on the internet about this, although not even just in the internet,

in the public about this. And now that you have evidence that this was a drug dispute and not a hate crime, it's wild to leave that out of the headlines. And the Associated Press has been a particularly bad actor in all of this. I think we can put this next tweet up on the screen. This is the Associated Press, September 21st, 2026. The death of Tazi Fortune, a black Mississippi woman found hanging from a tree on August 3rd, has stirred distressing memories of the grim history.

history of lynchings across the U.S. South. Then you have the Associated Press reporting on the evidence that this has nothing to do with the quote, grim history of lynchings across the South without including that evidence in the headline on social media. We can put that element back up on the screen. Compare what you just saw in that tweet to this tweet from the Associated Press. So there's that one. And then let's go to the first Associated Press tweet.

Police in Mississippi have arrested a second man and the death of a black woman found hanging from a tree and have issued an arrest warrant for third suspect. They stoke concerns by covering these concerns that didn't have evidence other than skin color. They stoke those concerns about the, quote, grim history of lynchings across the U.S. South. And then they have close to definitive evidence that this is not a hate crime that should stir distressing memories of the grim history of lynchings across the U.S. South. And they leave it out of not even just the headline here. They left it out of the entire summary of the story on X, police in Mississippi, have arrested a second man and the death of a black woman hanging from a tree and have issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect, comma, both the first and the second man are also black.

That takes all of the air out of the idea that this is, which the Associated Press has covered, that there is significant evidence that this is some type of racially motivated hate crime that stirs memories of the grim, history of lynchings in the South. You do it with three or four words. You do it with an extra sentence. You can certainly do it in the headline. And to not do it needlessly Stokes, needlessly Stokes, racial divisions. If we ever have a good example, because hate prejudice and bigotry will always exist with us, and I'm sure it certainly still exists in Mississippi, I'm sure it still exists in many corners of the United States, if we have a case that forces us to, to confront bigotry and racism. That's not needlessly divisive.

It may be divisive, but it's not needlessly divisive. It may be something that we genuinely do have to confront and to ask why this person in 2026 was still clinging to racial hatred and bigotry. There's nothing wrong with confronting it when you have to. But when you don't have to, because there's no evidence, that is needlessly pitting Americans against Americans on the basis of their,

skin color. And it's really reckless and irresponsible. Take one more quick break and we'll be back with the Greta Gerwig Aslan controversy in just a moment. It's fall. And if you want to feel your best heading into the colder months, not just bundle up, cross your fingers, hope you don't get sick. It starts with your gut. September is here. I'm getting back into my routine. And the one habit that can make the biggest difference is this, cowboy colostrum. If you add it to your routine, you might notice less bloating, better digestion, clear skin, and even hair that looks thicker and fuller. You can mix the vanilla into your coffee in the mornings.

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That's 25% off when you use code afterparty at cowboy colostrum.com slash after party. Well, Greta Gerwig's much anticipated rendering of the chronicles of Narnia, as you may have heard, cast Merrill Streep as the voice of Aslan, the lion. And, man, there's a lot to break down with this. Gerwig explained it to Empire by saying, I wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not morose self-seriousness, someone who could communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight. I wanted someone who was older than 70, so there was a wisdom of experience, but who also had the

capacity of fresh wonder like a child and also to be one of the greatest actors to ever do it. That list is not a long one. She's totally right. If you're looking for people who meet that criteria, Merrill Streep is about as best, about as good as you can do. And again, if that's your criteria, I think that's actually a pretty good list of qualifications for somebody to step in and be the voice of Aslan. There's one problem, of course, which is that Merrill Streep is a woman. And Aslan was very much Jesus, not just a symbol, not merely a symbol for Jesus. Lewis had a lot of thoughts on this himself.

In a letter back in 1954, this was to schoolchildren, he explained it this way. I did not say to myself, let us represent Jesus as he really is in our world by a lion in Narnia. I said, let us suppose that there was a land like Narnia and that the son of God as he became a man in our world became a lion there. And then imagine what would happen. If you think about it, you will see that as a quite different thing. Author in the free press also picked up on this quote from Lewis, who said of Aslan, he would really have been a physical object, as he was in Palestine, and his death on the stone tablet would have been a physical event no less than his death on Calvary. There's actually a new book out on Lewis's approach to sex and gender, and an author named Rochelle Peterson was reviewing that book in First Things and wrote,

When Lucy steps through the wardrobe, this is a really good point about how Lewis treated gender in Narnia. When Lucy steps through the wardrobe into Narnia and runs into the fawn Mr. Tumnus, he explains, excuse me, I don't want to be inquisitive, but should I be right in thinking that you are a daughter of Eve? Mr. Tumnus has never met a human, let alone a girl, yet he recognizes what Lucy is. Of Narnia, we soon learn, has been on the lookout for two sons of Adam, and two daughters of Eve, who are foretold to topple the white witches rule. Lewis believed sex and gendered to be real, Peterson wrote, unchangeable things, neither social constructs to be discarded, nor physical impediments to be overcome. That's abundantly clear.

from even this great poll in the beginning as Lucy steps through the wardrobe into Narnia and is immediately recognized as a daughter of Eve. You can, in a liberal arts seminar, play with that, stretch it, have fun, making an interpretation. If you are a major director turning a Christian classic into a blockbuster, You have just decided to trample on an essential element of the author's intent. The Lewis family is reportedly upset about this. Not entirely surprising. But this isn't really about being mad at Greta Gerwig.

There are a couple of elements here. I think if a major director like Gerwig did this to another religious figure, another faiths, messianic figure. sort of a white liberal, wealthy woman doing this to another faith. I think Gerwig would be facing some backlash. I'm not really even talking about that, though. I just want to talk about, I think, the mindset that believes the sex here was so immaterial that it's no big deal and actually kind of laudable to swap Merrill Streep in.

And I fully understand the temptation because I think that is, again, Gerwig's criteria for the person who should voice Aslan is excellent, and I think does understand Aslan in some fundamental ways. But it's really telling to miss that for Christians, the masculinity of Christ Christ is important. I genuinely don't think Greta Gerwig was trying to insult Christians and subvert in some sinister way a classic beloved Christian tale. The Christianity of Chronicles of Narnia is the point of the of Narnia. It is not a secondary, downstream, symbolic value. This would be like taking animal farm and treating it as a film about the wacky dynamics of some barnyard animals on a farm

to downplay the importance, the religious importance of sex for Christ to Christians. And I don't think it's intentional. I don't think it's some like sinister liberal Hollywood plot, but I think it's very telling of what the elite left does not understand about Christianity, which is that we don't get to change the book. If you believe that Jesus Christ was a man who died and rose again, we don't get to change that. He was a man.

It's not up to us to change what actually happened. because we believe it actually happened. And so a tale that captures what actually happened in a beautiful, literary, powerful, moving and persuasive way, as Lewis did, one of the most famous Christian works of art in history, one of the most famous Christian writers in history, and his Christianity was his most important characteristic. He wasn't just a great writer and storyteller.

Lewis would tell you that was his most important characteristic. And so it should be treated as such. the only correct thing to do if you want to faithfully interpret his work for new generations is to treat it as that that was the most important aspect of what he did unless again you're in some weird subversive liberal arts seminar where you're all gazing into your own navels about what sex really is and if lewis was a repressed man and was pretty like you can find do all that if you're trying to do it a faithfully interpreted blockbuster film to not understand that for Christians, men and women, and the differences between them are essential and important and beautiful, beautiful. It just shows a very fundamental misunderstanding of why Christians take that stuff seriously,

which because we believe we don't get to change scripture because it actually happened. And that is the, we talked about this last week in the context of Talley Rico's pastor being like, well, maybe the disciples moved Jesus, Bobby. Maybe there wasn't really a resurrection. It's immaterial because it's symbolic. It's not symbolic. And that is the fundamental difference between lower-case-o-orthodox Christians, and I suppose uppercase of the orthodox Christians, and many of the ideologically progressive Christians. And that's why it manifests with political differences. Because if you really believe in the historic event of the Son of God coming to Earth and dying and being resurrected, then of course you believe the fact that he's the son of God

is important. And Lewis telegraphed that just by having Lucy walk into the, walk through the wardrobe and immediately be identified as by Tumnus as a daughter of Eve. It's right there in the text. So I think in a way it's even more interesting that Gerwig is not intentionally trying to, as is often the case in colleges, like quote unquote queer Lewis, I'm like, queering C.S. Lewis, quering, like, insert, popular book or a television show or anything here. I don't even think she's trying to do that. I think she should just fundamentally miss something that matters to the text, that mattered to the author, and that makes the entire story of Aslan really difficult to interpret faithfully without. It's more interesting than it being

some like covert subversive plot to undermine Christianity. It's just a very telling example of not understanding Christianity. And it is true that if this happened to another faith, there would be, if she wasn't picking specifically on Christians here, I think there would be backlash from Greta Gerwig's peers about the decision. So somewhat telling that it's just Christians. who are upset about all of this. I thought that was well worth spending just a moment on because there's, these books matter a lot to Christians and they matter a lot to a lot of non-Christians too,

but it mattered to Lewis that they were Christian books. And I expect actually this rendition from Gerwig will probably be beautiful and might be a really stirring, narrative, but if you miss Aslan, not just as symbolic Jesus, but as, let's get this Lewis quote again, this is such a good quote. He would really have been a physical object, as he was in Palestine, and his death on the stone tablet would have been a physical event, no less than his death on Calvary. If you're missing that, you might tell a good story,

but you're not telling the story that Lewis told. And that's sad, because it's a really beautiful story that has moved many, many people for a very specific reason. All right, I'll leave it there for today's edition of After Party. So I appreciate you all tuning in. Like I said, I told you it was going to look and sound a little different. I'm really excited. We're going to be here, hopefully, even more often earlier in the day. Getting on top of the news, I feel like always there's so much to keep up with.

And I hope you all subscribe, join us on the journey. You can email me with your thoughts. Emily at Delamacaremedia.com. I answered just about every single one of those emails on our Friday shows on the podcast feed, so subscribe on Apple and Spotify as well. Let's see you back here Wednesday with more, or maybe even in between if there's breaking news. Have a great afternoon.