After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Mamdani Manhandles Cuomo, Senate Tattoo-gate, and Jeff Daniels Serenades MSNBC, with Dave Smith

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Dave Smith, Comedian and host of “Part Of The Problem” Podcast.  They open with a discussion about the NYC Mayoral debate and a key moment when Zohran Mamdani managed... to humiliate Andrew Cuomo.  The conversation turns to the divide in American politics, and the Maine Senate candidate who showed off his bare chest after covering up his “Nazi” tattoo. Emily and Dave also discuss foreign policy as the Trump administration bombs alleged drug boats, Steve Bannon raises concerns about what the CIA is really telling President Trump, PLUS they react to a hilarious clip of actor Jeff Daniels serenading MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. Emily wraps up the show with a look at Morning Joe playing the ‘sexist’ card when it comes to America electing female politics, Tim Dillon confronting Bernie Sanders on the transgender issue, and why Savannah Guthrie should not be apologizing for asking Khloé Kardashian a personal question. Vandy Crisps: Get 25% off your first order | Use code AFTERPARTY at https://vandycrisps.com/AFTERPARTY Golden Age Fats: Go to https://Goldenagefats.com/AFTERPARTY and use code AFTERPARTY for 25% off your first order. Aware House: Visit https://awarehouseshop.com/discount/PARTY & use code PARTY for 15% off your first order.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:07 Welcome to After Party, everyone. It's 10 p.m. on Wednesday night. So where else would you be? Maybe you're watching the New York City mayoral debate, or maybe you were watching the New York City mayoral debate, but we're going to have reaction to some clips that are coming out of that debate between, obviously, Curtis Leeuwe, Andrew Cuomo, and Zaraamamam Dani. Coming up with tonight's guest, Dave Smith, in just one moment.
Starting point is 00:00:29 We'll, of course, also get into all of the details, all of the nipples involved in Tattoo Gate. Sorry, you probably are going to see some nipples tonight. That is an early warning because Senate candidate Graham Platner is showing his nipples. I mean, that's the best that I can say in previewing what's to come. But we are going to dive into, I think, some pretty interesting aspects of the entire conversation surrounding Plattner. Bernie Sanders went on Tim Dillon and Zora Mamdani went on Flagrant with Andrew Schultz. So we have some clips to break down from those appearances.
Starting point is 00:01:03 We're going to talk a bit also about why Donald Trump seems to be at war. with the libertarians in Congress, all kinds of things to talk about. And I'll break down a little bit. I'm not going to force Dave to talk about this, but there's a make-nice moment happening between Savannah Guthrie and Chloe Kardashian. This is a feud you didn't know existed until today, actually, when they squashed their feud. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what that says about our media. Without further ado, though, let me just start here by saying, saying subscribe. Make sure to subscribe. If you haven't subscribed yet, subscribe on YouTube, subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Send us an email at Emily at devilmed caretmedia.com.
Starting point is 00:01:45 We do happy hour every Fridays. That drops around 5 p.m. on Fridays. I answer your questions and you can send them into Emily at devilmaycaremediat.com. You can also make sure to drop us a DM question over on Instagram, which is after party, Emily. And before we get to Dave, I just want to tell you about what is under my desk right now. It's Vandy Crisps. I'm telling you, they're literally under my dust right now. I'm looking at them. Did you know that chips and fries were cooked in tallow until the 90s when big corporations switched to cheap seed oils? Now those oils are 20% of our daily calories and studies link them to inflammation and metabolic issues. That is not okay. Obviously it's not okay. Vandy Crisps is fighting back with a chip made from three
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Starting point is 00:02:54 I love them so much. I love barbecue chips in general, but these are the best I've ever had. So if you're ready to give Vandy a try, go to Vandycrisps.com slash afterparty and use code after party for 25% off your first order. That's vandycrisps.com slash afterparty and code after party for 25% off your first order. All right. I'm happy to be joined tonight by the one and only Dave Smith comedian
Starting point is 00:03:15 and host of part of the problem podcast. Dave, how do you feel about chips? Happy, good, sad? I love chips. I love Vandy chips. They're great. They are good. They really are.
Starting point is 00:03:27 Dave, I have to get your reaction to this clip from the New York City mayoral debate. that's happening right now as we're speaking. And Zerun is just neither of us is a fan of socialism, fair to say. Neither of us is a fan of Andrew Cuomo, fair to say. Zoroamam Dani is just absolutely cooking this guy. And I want to get your reaction to one moment in the debate that, again, is literally happening as we speak. We pulled this, it's S-Zero.
Starting point is 00:03:57 Shame on you. It is always a pleasure. to hear Andrew Cuomo create his own facts at every debate stage. We just had a former governor say in his own words that the city has been getting screwed by the state. Who was leading the state?
Starting point is 00:04:14 It was you. Governor Hockel. You were leading the state for 10 years. Screwing the city. You cut homelessness funding. You as a legislator. You cut funding for the MTA. You did all of these things, that's the past four years.
Starting point is 00:04:29 It's the past four years. I mean, Dave, again, neither of us a particular fan of socialism or rent freezes. Why is Cuomo so bad at this? Well, you know, so I just saw this clip like seconds before we were recording. I mean, literally, I was on the Zoom link here and was looking on my phone and just saw this clip. And, okay, a couple thoughts that I have here is, and it's, look, obviously you're right. Cuomo is really bad at this. I've had this experience in debates that I've been in before.
Starting point is 00:05:02 I've had this experience the other day in a debate that I was in, which my latest Pierce Morgan episode that just came out earlier today. And on high-profile political debates, I've seen this before, I think Jeb Bush toward the end, when Donald Trump was clearly surging in the polls in 2016, and it had just already gotten way past the point where this guy wasn't supposed to be here. You know, I was supposed to be the frontrunner. And Cuomo, in the last debate and in this one, it seems like he's quit.
Starting point is 00:05:37 Like in terms of his energy, it just seems like he doesn't want to be there. He's almost a little resentful and bitter that he's even in the position of ankle biting at the guy that's supposed to be ankle biting at you. And I've experienced this before myself. I've seen this in a lot of different debates. There's something about the energy of when someone's kind of already given up and they're just a little bit bitter that they were supposed to. to be winning, but they're not winning.
Starting point is 00:06:03 He's got that written all over him. The other thing, and this is something that Donald Trump really obviously rode to success, but when you think about what a huge advantage it is in politics in America today to just not be in the establishment. Like all the energy is always like how much we're all getting screwed by whoever, you know, whoever the powerful people are. It's always the state or the, you know, in this case, they're running for a city position, so they're blaming the state, then they're all going to be blaming the federal government,
Starting point is 00:06:38 and he gets just turned there exactly as Donald Trump could to Hillary Clinton and say, what, you're complaining about health care? Well, you have all this time to fix it. You're complaining about the corrupt government here? I mean, come on. You're Andrew Cuomo. And, I mean, I don't know. This whole race, like you said, man, I definitely would never vote for a socialist,
Starting point is 00:06:59 Even more than that, I have a problem with like the woke tweets that Mom Dani. Queer liberation means to fund the police. That's the best one. It is the greatest woke madlibs of all time. I'll grant you that. But it is, but anyone who's weak enough to have said that at one point, I would just never support. It's just like a test of your character. You fell for a social.
Starting point is 00:07:21 You know, does that make sense to you, Emily, though? Oh, yeah. You know, it's like you have these things like wokeism or COVID or the latest push. for a war and it's like oh you you weren't strong enough to not fall into the hysteria during the latest completely artificial you know mass hysteria thing but anyway but the fact that they ever thought Andrew Cuomo could run for office in New York again is just they deserve to lose I'd be lying if I said I wasn't kind of like enjoying this it's such a pleasure to watch truly I mean I don't understand how anyone ever thought that getting behind Andrew
Starting point is 00:07:59 Cuomo was a good idea. But part of it also is that, and I've tried to disentangle these two factors, Cuomo is a horrible candidate. Mom Donnie is picking up on something that a lot of Democrats haven't in that the 2020 mom donnie that was doing woke bad libs on X is basically nowhere to be found. You can't like, you can't find this guy anywhere. He's apologizing to NYPD. And being pretty careful. He also went on Flagrant with Andrew Schultz today, and I want to roll this clip for you, Dave, and get your reaction to it because I just think he comes across as a normal human being, as much as people want to, like, cope and seed about socialism. It's not working for a reason. And it's because he's a new kind of Democratic candidate. And I don't know if I'm
Starting point is 00:08:47 right about that or not, but let's take a look at S2 here. So I don't think anybody's moving, and I honestly feel that way. I'm in the tax market. We're going to tax more. Like, dude, if you're going to deliver all this shit for 2%, give it, I'm 100% support. I'm 100% support. It makes life easier for New Yorkers. This is my one identity in my entire life is a New Yorker. It's the thing I care the most about. But I think that there are going to be people in government that are going to try to restrict you from doing that.
Starting point is 00:09:09 And I know that you're aware of that. What the fuck do you do when special interest groups are going to be lobbying like crazy? I mean, you have to do that. You have to be ready to take on these fights. There is a reason why we haven't had progress. There are people making money off the status quo. And so there will be a lot of interest in retaining that status quo. Right now, the city of New York,
Starting point is 00:09:29 will pay McKinsey a few million dollars to design a trash can. McKinsey's not going to be happy when I say we don't need you to design that anymore. We can actually design that ourselves. You're right that we're going to have to transform the inner workings of government. And that means ending a patronage politics. There are a lot of people who have jobs more to do with who they know than what they do. And Dave, Republican and Lee Stefani is out there calling this guy a jihadist. Like they want him to be a woke lib at the same time as they want to call him a jihadist.
Starting point is 00:09:55 And that's not a good attack either. Yeah, it's been very interesting to see the inability of all these guys to deal with Mom Donnie. And then the way that they've attacked him, it's just so, I don't know, it's very removed from, very tone deaf, very removed from the current reality that we live. It was like, it was going to be a huge, I mean, I'm talking back at the first debate. Cuomo thought it would be a huge gotcha that you, you don't support. Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Like that's the big, oh, you, you know, you support a one state solution rather than, like, it's just so weird that they thought that as if, and this is even back when it was in the
Starting point is 00:10:44 Democratic primary, but as if they thought that was an albatross around his neck, that you're not bringing in all the baggage of supporting this policy that is overwhelmingly unpopular amongst, you know, the base here. And so they've been going at him in all these very strange ways. And no one seems, you know, no one seems to be able to actually respond to what he's doing. And I will agree with you. I think he comes off very good in that clip. I do think that it's all fundamentally wrong, you know?
Starting point is 00:11:16 Like, even, I mean, Andrew, I love Andrew. I've known Andrew for 20 years and is an old friend of mine who I love dearly and will always be on his side about everything. But when he says, you know, right, like, yes, Andrew Schultz isn't going to leave New York City if you raise taxes 2%. But like that's not the way to think about these things, right? The way to think about these things is will a lot more people leave than otherwise would? And actually, yes, 2% is a big difference, right? And so it's when you're like very, very successful and you're rich and famous, yeah, all these things don't really matter to you. And in fact, you'll probably, you know, even in.
Starting point is 00:11:57 in like a high tax, high inflation environment, you'll probably be just fine with your assets taking care of the values that you'd lose on your taxes going up. But the question is like, you know, the family making 400K who's like right above, you know, the top of that top rate, like, is that enough for them? It might be and probably will be for more than otherwise would be if you didn't raise the price. And the idea that you're going to get those services back from government that it's going to be well worth it, well, please point me to the, example of that, anyone, like, just anyone point me to the example of where like, man, for your taxes, you just get an unbelievable deal for that money and almost anything. And certainly it's
Starting point is 00:12:39 far, there's far fewer examples of that than there are examples in the opposite direction. But yeah, I mean, he's, of course, he's just, he's able to just destroy these guys because the system is so rigged. And that's, like, there's such a, again, it's a perfect microcosm there, right we're like somebody defending capitalism should be able to win the argument against someone defending socialism because just theoretically it's a much better system empirically it's like what do you need after the 20th century just look around it'd be like look obviously like this is a better system for people and for prosperity and and to as a hedge against tyranny than socialism is but the problem is that our version of capitalism is so corrupt and bloods,
Starting point is 00:13:26 soaked and obviously just full, like, it's like, I don't know, it's like propped up by like some type of satanic pedophilic ring or something. So you're just like, okay, who can, who can defend this version of capitalism under this thing? So you're like, oh, these people don't want to raise taxes. But yeah, they're all just bought and paid for cronies. So screw them. And this is, I think, the answer of how, you know, socialism ends up being sold today. Yeah, it's, it's Andrew Cuomo forced to defend crony capitalism, also known as a version of, Democratic Socialism, but he's calling it capitalism. Well, think about this, right?
Starting point is 00:14:01 You have in the truest sense, right, like capitalism is what, like lazy fair, restrained government and private ownership, right? And socialism is a government ownership of means of production or something like that. So if you're arguing for the capitalist side, you're arguing against, like, government control of industry. and who do we have up there to argue against government control? A lockdown governor. Yes.
Starting point is 00:14:31 Like imagine a lockdown governor ever looking at a socialist and going, that's a slippery slope. You know, government, too much government authority could lead to negative outcomes now. It's great stuff. I mean, you can't write the script. But actually, I'm curious what you make of Andrew being, I don't want to, I think Charmed is maybe too much, too strong of a word, but being intrigued by Zorn on Mom Dani. And also like Bernie Sanders was on Tim Dillon today, they seem to have a good conversation. Tim had a great conversation with Marjorie Taylor Green not too long ago.
Starting point is 00:15:03 Mamdani mentioned McKinsey in that clip we watched, which is interesting because you know who's taking a hell of a lot of contract work away from McKinsey is the Trump administration. And so there's obviously like some horseshoe theory at work here. But I think David gets to the point you made earlier just about if you're the anti-establishment candidate and the person on the other side is the establishment candidate, that's how you get a Joe Rogan on your That's how you get a Tim Dillon on your side. That's how you get an Andrew Schultz on your side because they're not sort of attached to partisan loyalties.
Starting point is 00:15:34 They basically just want to blow up the political establishment, metaphorically, of course, like most Americans right now. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the, this is the central issue of our time. It has nothing to do with left versus right. And it does, you know, it's like the whole issue is, and this is what's so crazy about, the Donald Trump moment as we sit here, you know, nine years after he first became president,
Starting point is 00:16:04 is that like what should Donald Trump have been for everyone? Like a huge wake-up call. Wait, how did we get to a point where this guy could run this campaign and win the presidency? And it's because people are this furious at the establishment. Because like they're just so, I don't know, they're just so transparently corrupt. they've been caught. I mean, like, in just the 21st century alone, it's just been crisis after crisis after crisis.
Starting point is 00:16:34 And every one of them has, like, exposed the government for being complete liars and complete. And not like they got things wrong. Like they intentionally lied because they were trying to do something that they were trying to hide from people. And it's just bubbled up to a point where what most people are concerned with isn't whether you're left or right or socialist or capitalist or any of this. It's just like, are you not corrupt?
Starting point is 00:17:01 Are you honest? Are you actually against this corrupt regime? And, you know, I think one of the things that's really interesting to me, I know I've seen you talk about this and like all you and Ryan and Sager and Crystal have all kind of like talked about this a lot because it's like a major theme. It's really interesting. I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime. where Donald Trump, so Donald Trump starts his, his second term with record high approval,
Starting point is 00:17:30 for him, record high approval ratings. And then his approval ratings have gone down since then. A few things really seem to have heard him. And like, now he's like, you know, but the Democrats are still in the, like, even when he goes down, the Democrats don't go up. It's not like, you know, it's like people wanted this administration because they hate the establishment so much and know that the whole thing is rigged and corrupt and and you know awful and then when he messes up they're like well now we hate you too like it's not but they're not bouncing back it's
Starting point is 00:18:02 not like they're going like oh okay so now we'll support you know no matter how upset with Donald Trump Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson or Theo Vaughn or Andrew Schultz or any of them get none of them are going now we're going to support Gavin Newsom right you know they're looking for the next thing And there's just something really interesting about that, like the two-party duopoly system breaking down. It's lesser of two-evils politics, and it just becomes a doom spiral. But the people who are attractive to normal voters are the ones the Democratic establishment is trying to shut down, Cuomo, for example. And that's how you end up with the anti-establishment voices being socialists. So this is a good segue to talk about what's happening in Maine, Dave, because
Starting point is 00:18:49 Maine Senate candidate, Democratic Senate candidate, Graham Platner, who's genuinely a pretty interesting political case study, and we'll get into a bit about why, is still battling with his past. Now, this is a guy. He's a combat veteran, four tours of duty, Marine, served in Fallujah, comes back, is sort of just bopping around, bartending, ends up going to GW, my alma on the GI Bill and is now running for Senate in Maine on a populist sort of Bernie-style platform. Turns out he got a tattoo in Croatia when he was in the service that sure looks like a Nazi symbol. He got it covered up today right away, right away after the story came out. CNN also reported last week on his Reddit history where he was saying that black people don't tip well,
Starting point is 00:19:45 all kinds of stuff. In his Reddit history from the pandemic, let's watch this video as one of Platner addressing the tattoo. I have lived a life dedicated to anti-fascism, anti-racism, and anti-Nazism. I think that racism and anti-Semitism are a long scourge on our society and a long scourge on our politics,
Starting point is 00:20:08 and I think it has no place in our world. For that reason, I have gone and gotten it covered up. I went to a tattoo parlor and I got this to cover up the skull and crossbones. It's a Celtic knot with some imagery around dogs because my wife and Amy and I have two wonderful dogs that we love a lot. This far more represents who I am now than even the skull and crossbones did, which I thought that it was. Okay, Dave, here's how I'll toss this to you.
Starting point is 00:20:40 Janet Mills is the establishment candidate in this race. He is a 77-year-old Democrat current governor of the state of Maine. In lesser of two evils politics, the Beltway is going to be really surprised to look at Grant Platner's X-Feed right now and see that he drew a crowd of 600 people in the small beach town of Agunkwit as all of this CNN, Reddit, Nazi tattoo backlash was playing out here in D.C. Am I wrong that he's probably a more appealing candidate than 77-year-old Janet Mills, even with having seen his nipple? Listen, I know nothing of this situation other than this video.
Starting point is 00:21:17 So I just want to disclaim that, first of all. But look, yes, come on, Emily. Look, we've all gotten some accidental Nazi tattoos in our day and then had to cover them up, had to make a video raising our shirt up to show you that we covered over it. But I just, no, but there is something really interesting about, I don't know, this kind of like broader dynamic that for a, very long time, there was this very weird, fake, like, just like this artificial dynamic in the world of politics and media, where even when, if you wanted to be a reporter, Emily, then you had to like open your show by being like, good evening and welcome to the shows and shows.
Starting point is 00:22:02 And I'm outraged, you know, and there always be like these men in suits like pretending to be outraged. I'm appalled by this thing, you know. It's always Nazis. Someone's always acting like a Nazi. But even when it was just like... You know, I had a joke about this years ago. But Jake Tapper, I remember, when the Donald Trump... Is there language restrictions?
Starting point is 00:22:27 No, how no. When the grim by the pussy tape came out. And Jake Tapper was talking about it on CNN. And he goes, it was just so in the old school vein of what you do on the news. But he goes, he goes, you know, I played a lot of sports. in my day and I was in a fraternity in college. I was in a lot of locker rooms
Starting point is 00:22:46 and I never heard men talk like that. And there's just something where you're just like, oh yeah, that's the type of thing you say on the news and I don't know, maybe like women look at that and go, yeah, good Jake Tabber. But like every dude on some level is like, oh, you liar, you liar. Like, what do you talk?
Starting point is 00:23:02 Like, maybe you could say you've never said anything like that, but you never ran across it in the wild. You never heard like a man in a locker room. room would never talk about a lady's private parts you understand Emily like that's and so anyway I guess there's just this incredible phoniness where they're always like churning out the new outrage and they'll make it like just anything that might just be a regular thing and so even someone being like I got an embarrassing tattoo and I have to cover over that I'm not sure I buy his story you know but also also you know people have crazy views when they're younger and
Starting point is 00:23:41 and grow out of them. And I just think, like, I just hate the whole kind of like, gotcha culture where I'd just rather be like, all right, dude. Like, I wish it would be a comfortable environment where he could just go, yeah, I got this tattoo. It was stupid. I don't really believe that anymore.
Starting point is 00:23:56 And then we could just be like, okay, so what's your plan for if you get elected? I mean, if you drunkenly walk into a Croatian tattoo parlor and you're in the service, I do understand that part of the story. I don't totally buy that he just found out. It was a Nazi symbol because there's some. reporting to the fact that he was walking around kind of joking about it.
Starting point is 00:24:16 We have, I think, this video of him singing at his, this is him singing at a wedding. We can watch this. He was singing Rocking Ball by Miley Cyrus. It's a voiceover because we can't, you know, God forbid we violate copyright infringement. But there he is in his underwear, no shirt, no pants. He's ready to go. He's rocking a wrecking ball. And I don't know, Dave.
Starting point is 00:24:38 What's kind of funny to me about this whole situation is now people on the left who have been engaged in this week's long outrage cycle over the young Republican group chat and said that Elon Musk made a Nazi salute at one point, like definitively, objectively, it was a Nazi salute back in those early days of Doge, that heady time, are now sort of like coming around to, hey, maybe normal people who end up running from. political office are going to have some baggage that they bring with them if they haven't been trained up in the DNC laboratory. It's kind of, I don't know whether to be mad or glad to see some people on the left coming around to that, even if it's like inconsistent. Yeah, I think, I think that's, well, I think there's a few things that are going on. Like, one of them is that we are now, like, as a civilization, living online and with 4K cameras and everyone's phone. And that's, you know what I mean? Like, this is just a new world.
Starting point is 00:25:40 I'm kind of lucky in a way, like, I'm 42. And when I was young, that was just not the reality. And if it was, there might be a whole lot of stuff on me that I wish there wasn't out there. I'm, you know, so, but I do think, like, just in general, we have to start, we have to find a way somehow to, like, allow a little bit of grace and go that, like, you know, when I was young, when I was in my 20s, if you said a wild, offensive joke that just kind of died at the bar and now that might be in a snapchat or whatever and and are we really going to ruin young people over what sometimes are just like sarcastic comments now in this case he's a little bit older than that but i the other thing i think that's going on is that people are and i think i'm a part of this as well like reassessing what exactly
Starting point is 00:26:33 you know like if we're going to decide that there's some type of offensive view or behavior that is must be penalized to this level, well, then why exactly do I always have to outsource the hierarchy of moral outrages to someone who has a completely different worldview than me? Like, it's just like, I don't know how many people in polite society are there who were advocating, let's say way back four years ago that like child mutilation ought to be legal and encouraged. Now, many of them have walked that back, but like, we got a lot of tape of people saying some pretty wild things that they may not be very comfortable with. Like, even all the guys,
Starting point is 00:27:18 like, I don't know what Mom Donnie ever said about it, but all those guys like none of a, mom, Donnie ain't saying defunding the police is queer liberation today. You know what I mean? Like, a lot of these guys were saying stuff a few years ago that they would not, but why are you not ruined over that? And actually, like, and I mean this. And I say this like, as, somebody who's not a big fan of Nazis, like a Jewish person and a libertarian, I don't particularly like that. But why is it an automatic given
Starting point is 00:27:47 that if someone goes, hey, Adolf Hitler was awesome, and then someone else was like advocating for child elective surgeries, I'm not so sure I'm more offended by the first one than the second one. And like, I kind of think I get to make that up for myself. Like, what are my moral outrages? And in fact, I kind of think that anybody who supported lockdowns, I'm pretty morally outraged by them. That was a pretty big chunk of the population just a few years ago. And so I don't know, there's just this weird new time we're in now where I don't even know what does it mean to like cancel someone or get them in trouble for what they're saying.
Starting point is 00:28:24 But let's actually really have a conversation about what ought to get you socially penalized. And I don't know. I mean, I think, you know, like again, back to the Cuomo situation, I'm actually kind of fine with a lockdown governor being like, oh, yeah, you never show your face in this town again. Yeah. Get the hell out of here. I can't bet that a lot more than a tattoo. It's so insane, again, just going back to Cuomo that they, anybody thought that they should put money behind his candidacy. Yeah. Completely going back to the primary, insane.
Starting point is 00:28:56 Speaking of insanity, we are going to get to what's happening in foreign policy, which I am. I'm aware Dave has thoughts on from time to time. Just one moment. First, though, I want to get real here for a second about what is in your kitchen. Ooh, I want to get real about this. You might not realize it, but cooking with ultra-processed oils like canola means using industrial byproducts once deemed unfit for human consumption. Yes, these oils were even used as worship lubricants.
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Starting point is 00:30:04 just Midwest beef tallow from grass-fed cows. So if you're ready to go back to the basics, give Golden Age beef tallow a try. Go to goldenagefats.com slash after-party and use code afterparty for 25% off your first order. That's goldenagefats.com slash after party and code after party for 25% off your first order. All right, back now with Dave Smith, comedian and host of part of the prize. problem podcast. Dave, we hit another boat off the coast of Venezuela today, bringing the death total around 35 people, just in what I think is like the last seven weeks, with very little explanation of those strikes. Let's put this picture up on the screen of Thomas Massey and Rand Paul,
Starting point is 00:30:50 who are now very much on Donald Trump's bad side for criticizing not just his foreign policy, but also some of the Trump-era policies, not in unsurprising ways, but they were not invited to the White House Rose Garden lunch yesterday and Randapal posted, but that's okay. I had a previously scheduled Liberty Caucus lunch with Thomas Massey for Kentucky. Massey first really started to get hit hard in his upcoming primary over his politics on Israel. No surprise.
Starting point is 00:31:21 There are millions flowing into a primary race over Thomas Massey, particularly because of his stance on Israel. But Dave, before we get into some of the broader policy, let's just stick on these Venezuela strikes because Rand Paul, Drew Trump's ire again over the weekend, Rand was on Meet the Press, just attacking the idea that these are legal, but maybe I'll toss the question to you with that. We have so much executive authority at this point that things that shouldn't be legal probably are defense pulling courts, so I don't even know. It's crazy when you lay it out. that there would be any legal justification for this. And the administration really is just ignoring those questions for the most part
Starting point is 00:32:01 and saying they're legal, trust us. So what do you make of today, once again, Secretary Heggseth coming out and saying, we got them, we got them now up to around what, like 35 deaths? Oh, man. Well, I mean, look, obviously I'm completely with Rand Paul and Thomas Massey on this. And of course, they're being targeted because, you know, they're, whenever there's anybody who's opposing the warfare state, aka the state always,
Starting point is 00:32:30 whether it's Democrats or Republicans, just always in search of the next war. It's such a like sickness in our society. I mean, the way we've just accepted permanent militarism and permanent war and that we would even be thinking, you know, like imagine, imagine, Emily, that we elected, right, in the late, in the late winter of 2000, or the early winter, I should say, of 2001, we elected to not just
Starting point is 00:32:59 fight al-Qaeda and try to take out their cells in Afghanistan, but that we were going to engage in a regime-change war against the Taliban. And that took us 20 years. For 20 years, we occupied Afghanistan, trying to overthrow the Taliban. And at the end of it, we left with the Taliban better armed than the Taliban who we started trying to overthrow in late 2000. And then months after finally ending the longest war in American history, with troops still in Iraq and Syria and Somalia and all over the place, right? Like, not like we didn't have other conflicts still going. Then we get into backing the proxy war on Ukraine. And after the years of that, Ukraine's going to get a worse deal than they would have gotten if they had just made a deal at the very beginning when we started backing them.
Starting point is 00:33:45 And then, of course, in the middle of that, we decide to back Israel's destruction of Gaza and just fund them. all the way through that, turn global opinion against us and Israel and lead to all types of instability domestically, politically. And now what? We're just looking for enough. Now that we might have a ceasefire that's maybe sticking like the loosest of loose teeth like by one thread over in Israel and Gaza. Now we're just searching for another obvious war of choice for absolutely no strategic reason. I mean, just, you know, total nonsense that there's saying about.
Starting point is 00:34:21 about, you know, whatever they, it's about drugs. It's like nobody even thing. Venezuela isn't the problem when it comes to drugs. Not when it comes to fentanyl. Yeah, well, and well, certainly not when it comes to fentanyl at all, but just drugs in general. I mean, it's not like Columbia and Mexico and there's obvious, everybody knows this. And not that it would make sense to attack any of those countries over it either. But, you know, if it's a strict fight, like you said about the law, like, you know, and I guess this is my,
Starting point is 00:34:51 like libertarian insight on this, but the thing about the law is that it doesn't exist. It's not real. It's all a figment of our imagination. It's like when someone goes, you know, when you see one of those YouTube videos or something, where there's a police stop and someone goes, I know my rights.
Starting point is 00:35:09 Do you? This is an idea. You know, reality is that there's a man with a gun outside your window right now, and the courts are probably going to take his word over yours. So that's great that you have something written down. Listen, if you have you, Look at the Constitution.
Starting point is 00:35:22 I mean, I bet you've read it once or twice. It's actually very clear. The Constitution expressly says that any authority that has not been explicitly delegated to the federal government is left to the states and the people. It clears that up. You know, okay, 90% of what Washington, D.C. does is illegal. Every war since World War II has been illegal. the only legal war is if Congress declares a war.
Starting point is 00:35:54 So legal is all Fugazi, you know? Like, it's not real. Well, look, if you're speeding, right? Like, let's say you're in a 65 and you're going, but they don't pull you over unless you go over 75. Then the speed limit is 75. It doesn't matter what the sign said. You're allowed to go 75 and then there are repercussions.
Starting point is 00:36:17 The law is when are there repercussions? Well, when are there repercussions for an American president? I mean, it seems to be, as far as I can see, when they maybe start saying they might end some wars. That's illegal. You know, like, if you say you're going to end some wars, they might frame you for being a Russian spy. See, that's actually illegal. Ending wars is illegal. Starting wars is totally legal.
Starting point is 00:36:42 In fact, it's incentivized. Yes, it's tough logic. But it is how we are governed. I think you just landed on your mess. title, by the way, legal is all Fugazi. That's pretty good. A memoir by Dave's not the worst. It's not the worst. But actually, so Trump, speaking of Ukraine, Trump authorized more escalation, more weapons to Ukraine just this evening. And I want to roll this clip of Steve Bannon talking about this very fragile peace deal in Gaza because all of this, the strikes on the cartel, the
Starting point is 00:37:19 alleged cartel boats, which the administration, again, it sounds so quaint to talk about. They just are not supplying information, even to Congress, which is why Rand Paul is pissed, to justify these strikes. It does harken back to Obama drone war eras, which conservatives have been critical of. So all that happening against the backdrop of escalation in Ukraine and peace in Gaza, fragile peace deal in Gaza. But as Steve Bannon explains it, in this clip, he believes that the CIA was essentially trying to undermine. Trump's peace process. Let's go ahead and roll S-4. Whitkoff is briefed three times a day by the CIA, and they lie to him.
Starting point is 00:38:00 This is not some marginal mistake in intelligence. He sat right there. They lied to him three times a day. Hamas doesn't want to do the deal, never going to do the deal. That's the Mossad talking. That's Netanyahu talking. Ratcliffe should resign today, or let's just have a congressional hearing, right, on national television, and let's just put it out there exactly about what you told these people in the negotiation,
Starting point is 00:38:27 and let's go back to what you told the president of the United States about the beginning of the 12-day war, because that was a lie also, as now we know, by the times of Israel putting out the cabinet minutes of the war cabinet of Netanyahu. They were two years away, not two days, not two weeks, two years. Okay, Dave. What do you make a Bannon's claim? Well, I mean, it's, you know, it's interesting. That tracks right to me. You know, I know I've read at least a couple pieces over the last two years by Ryan Grimm. You know, Ryan Grimm, you're familiar? I've heard of him. He's a handsome young fellow.
Starting point is 00:39:09 A handsome hangman, jihadist, like Zoran. He's a jihadist, but he's got a real future, much like Zoran, real future on both those jihadists. But he's had a few pieces about this And I know Jeremy Scahill They've interviewed him a few times About like you know Where Hamas is and what they're willing to do And there's been reports like over the last years
Starting point is 00:39:29 That Hamas is actually very willing to make some of these deals That almost any normal person would look at And be like hey that's actually pretty They're willing to do that. Okay like oh wait you're saying from the beginning of the war They were willing to give up all the hostages and relinquished power Okay that seems pretty good And of course then you've seen all this contrary
Starting point is 00:39:46 claims out of D.C. that no, Hamas won't negotiate and all this stuff. And then it was pretty interesting to see both Jared Kushner and Whitkoff. You know, I mean, Whitkoff say what you will about him. He clearly seems to kind of be a different figure who's in the middle, who's been trying to, you know, negotiate PCR. But Jared Kushner is Jared Kushner. I mean, this is the Jewish family friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, who was essentially viewed as the Israel Schill who came in
Starting point is 00:40:14 and like messed up the whole first Trump. administration. Even he's saying, yeah, Hamas was totally willing to negotiate as soon as we talked to him despite the intelligence we were getting. And I do think that this is, I think it was, man, I'm sorry, it's late and I'm drinking a whiskey, but I'm pretty sure it was Daniel Ellsberg who had written about, of course, Daniel Ellsberg, the famous, you know, whistleblower who broke the Pentagon papers. I think he had written about the top secret clearance, syndrome that people get into when they're in D.C. And you kind of feel like, ooh, I have this special information,
Starting point is 00:40:53 which is the top secret information, right? Like, okay, so I know stuff that nobody else gets to know. I'm kind of special. Obviously, there's a human thing that feeds into. But then you almost get caught relying on the top secret stuff that no one else gets to know about. And then you're very right to be manipulated. And you're not necessarily reading Ryan Grimm's latest article
Starting point is 00:41:15 or reading Aaron Matey's latest article, Jeremy Scahill's latest. You know, so you're not actually reading like the good journalists who are breaking the information. You're going to the CIA. And then, you know, just imagine how much worse this problem is
Starting point is 00:41:31 with someone like Donald Trump who never reads anything anyway. It's just if it's not on Fox, it didn't happen. Well, that's right. I mean, look, I make this joke all the time that the real issue with Donald Trump is that he's never read a book about anything. There's not one topic he's read a book about.
Starting point is 00:41:45 And I don't know if you ever saw, there's an old clip, I think, on a crossfire where Pat Buchanan asked Donald Trump what he's reading. Like, it's like back in the day, Donald Trump's just a private citizen. And he's like, so what are you reading? And just watching Donald Trump struggle trying to answer what the last book he read was. So Donald Trump is, this has always been the problem with him. He's totally a slave to what anyone around him is telling him is the truth. And so if somebody is telling him, this is the intelligence, that's that. I mean, it's that, and then he watched Sean Hannity's show or something,
Starting point is 00:42:18 and that's all the information he has. So this sounds right to me. And I know that there's been several points in modern American history where, of course, the CIA is feeding bad intelligence to the president, always on the side of, you know, fighting another war. It's crazy, and it seems like in this case, one of the only reasons we're learning these reports have been vindicated is because people like Kushner and Whitkoff,
Starting point is 00:42:42 who are not career politicians and don't care. some of the, you know, for better or worse, they don't carry some of the typical politician routine into the job with them. And they're just like, yeah, screw it. Hamas wanted to make the deal. So we've pushed Netanyahu to make the deal. And here we are. I think that speaks to, some of it speaks to the media culture. We were just talking about if Trump doesn't see it on Fox News or traditional outlets that he's familiar with, it didn't happen. But this is a glimpse. I have to get reaction to Dave. This is a glimpse into, I have to get a reaction to Dave. This is a glimpse into how the spinoff of MSNBC is going.
Starting point is 00:43:18 MS Now, I think by the end of the year, we've got just a couple of months of the MSNBC brand left. This is Jeff Daniels. On the set of Nicole Wallace's show playing a song, I don't even know how to describe this. Let's just, I'm just going to,
Starting point is 00:43:35 I'm just going to let Dave cook. This is S3. This is a song I wrote called Crazy World, which is how I cook. I've seen a dog's tail wagon. I've seen a grandchild run. I've sung along to a day break and dawn and a hundred thousand set in suns.
Starting point is 00:43:57 It's crazy world's gone crazy. It's crazy world's going crazy. It's nice to know in a world for a hate. There's someone out there. I don't hate the song. We needed that. We all need of that. Come on, Dave.
Starting point is 00:44:21 No, listen, it was incredibly cheesy. Look, okay. Look, I like Jeff Daniel. He's a great actor, you know? And I was like, hey, he's a little bit better at playing a guitar and singing a song than I would have thought. It is, again, the thing. I mean, Emily, it's just so wild. It's like how removed from the new reality they are.
Starting point is 00:44:43 Yes, right. It's just so, it's so stuant. stunning. Like you just can't, no matter how much you see it, you can't go, oh, they think this will help. They think this will work. And they still don't even like, I don't know, there's just, there's such a weird thing where, you know, all the MSNBC guys, the thing that's, that's characterized so many of them for, for years has just been, you know, the elitist nature of their entire analysis of America that like they're they're always just kind of like they always feel like you should you should judge something that we say is this is offensive and off limits over like bread
Starting point is 00:45:30 and you know meat and potatoes issues that regular people care about and like that a bunch of multi-millionaires will lecture regular people about how even though your grocery prices have been going up by 30%. You should really care more about hate and love. And here's my little song that I sang. And the real issue is racism or whatever it is. It's just so, it's just strange that after so many signals, they still haven't been able to adjust and at least pretend that they get it.
Starting point is 00:46:02 Pretend that it's not just about what my, let me just sing you a song about my feelings. You know, I'm really offended by what's going on. I'm like, okay. But that's actually not really anyone's number one priority right now. And then to have like any, any supposed news anchor just sit there with their time going, oh, beautiful. A Bush press secretary. A Bush press secretary.
Starting point is 00:46:27 You have this boomer doing the like Woodstock Larp. We saw a lot of that at No Kings over the weekend. It just feels so, it feels like play acting. Well, it is, right? It's all just a big show. And yeah, right, like you said, like you couldn't, it's just unbelievable that someone like Nicole Wallace or, you know, you could sit there and go, okay, well, why do you think, you know, even if it is like, it kind of reminds me, like, if it's, if I was like, I don't know, if I was just like a horribly abusive husband and then I like, I left my family and everything just went terrible. And then I came back years later and my kids were a mess, you know, they were grown up now and they were a mess. And then you're just like, I'm outraged that my kids are such a mess.
Starting point is 00:47:13 Like really, Nicole Wallace, did things go bad in the wake of your rule? What might have led to that? And to cover it the whole time with not ever even a sense of I even have to grapple with what we may have done that led to this. Like to think about how unprecedented it was in American history that in 2016, Donald Trump got on the South Carolina debate stage and said your brother lied us into war and then won. Like how bad do you have to screw up
Starting point is 00:47:49 that eight years later a candidate could win your own party's nomination by calling you a war, not even a war criminal. Lied us into war is worse than a war criminal. That's almost like saying you're guilty of treason, something like that, something like you should be put to death. That's not saying like you killed innocent civilians when you shouldn't have.
Starting point is 00:48:09 That's saying you misled an entire nation into war when you knew better. That guy won eight years after you. You don't have any self-reflection? And that's the answer. No. The answer is no. She has none. Dave, when the show started and we were thinking of guests, you were like top of the list.
Starting point is 00:48:28 So I'm really excited that you stayed up late. Do you sleep in those headphones? Because I've forgotten what you look like without those headphones on. I do, I take them in bed with my wife when the lights are out. I'll take them off. With no one looking directly at me. Yeah, only then. Dave Smith, thank you so much for coming on.
Starting point is 00:48:49 Appreciate it a ton. Thank you, Emily. I had a lot of fun. Awesome. Love it. All right, everyone. More on MSNBC after this. But things do feel very heavy right now.
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Starting point is 00:50:14 It really is incredible when you have Abigail Spanberger, Mikey Sherrill, her background, all the different jobs that she has held in the military. And also like Alyssa Slotkin, I mean, my God, these women are incredible. Spanberger and Slotkin, both CIA for what it's worth. Fight, fight, fight. Because we need them. Yeah. We need them.
Starting point is 00:50:36 This is something that a lot of Democrats are grappling with right now. So they've nominated women two of the last three elections for the presidency, lost both. There are some who say, well, we can't do that again. The stakes are too high. But of course, that does fall into the same misogynistic trap. Other countries have no problem electing women. Oh, a misogynistic trap. Spamberger's opponent is a woman.
Starting point is 00:51:03 Spamberger is running against Winsome Earl, serious. who not only is a woman, is a black woman. And here you have the geniuses over at MSNBC using their, like, classroom language to discuss the misogyny in this particular case of Virginia voters if they do not elect Abigail Spanberger. Now, Abigail Spamberger is on track to win this gubernatorial election for what it's worth, but it's incredibly real.
Starting point is 00:51:36 to hear the journalists on Morning Joe, whose last couple of candidates, again, this is Morning Joe, were basically Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, the two most high-profile female candidates for higher office in this country. The problem isn't really that they're women. The problem is that they're terrible candidates, but let's even set that aside and go more basic. If you are crediting misogyny with taking down advocacy,
Starting point is 00:52:06 Spanberger, I don't know what to tell you. I really just don't know what to tell you in this case. So we had to cover that incredible moment on Morning Joe because they are so removed from reality that I think they're forgetting. Because it's just such a dumb thing to say. They have to have forgotten that Sears is the other candidate in this race. They have to have forgotten that. Of course, by the way, there are other female governors. In fact, we're talking about the main race where Janet Mills is a Democrat female governor of Maine. It's not as though America has a problem electing female governors. Sorry that two Democratic women candidates have lost because they were historically bad candidates.
Starting point is 00:52:49 Both of them beat by the former host of Celebrity Apprentice, and you want to blame misogyny and not their awful lack of appeal, lack of Riz to the American people. Just an incredible work here. Once again, we were 10 years into the Trump era, and the cope is not getting any better. It's really not. Bernie Sanders went on Tim Dillon today and had a very interesting conversation, not entirely outside the genre that we've seen.
Starting point is 00:53:19 When Bernie Sanders goes on flagrant, Zora Mamdani was on flagrant, populists who bring themselves to speak in some of these spaces that were previously sort of forbidden, right? When Bernie Sanders had gone on Joe Rogan, it was used against him. in the presidential primary. Other Dems attacked him for it. It became a literal no-go zone. The Joe Rogan experienced, like arguably at the time the most popular podcast in America, no Democrat could go on it because of these montages that would circulate of Joe Rogan, a comedian being politically incorrect, my God, for over a decade on a comedy podcast. And here, Bernie Sanders, who's generally been willing to go into these spaces,
Starting point is 00:54:02 gets pushed by Tim Dillon. And otherwise, I think pretty interesting. I mean, actually the entire conversation is pretty interesting. Dylan just had Marjorie Taylor Green on his show and is very populist curious. And it's no surprise that in podcast spaces where you have people who are willing to just kind of say it like it is, they don't have to worry about upsetting like a corporate pharma advertiser or something like that can sit down and have conversations with a populist on the left and a populist on the right. But Bernie Sanders actually got pushed for the first time in genuinely a long time that I've seen by Tim Dillon
Starting point is 00:54:41 on trans issues. And I really, I don't think it's a surprise to anyone think this is, continues to be the populist left's Achilles heel. We've been talking about Graham Platner today. We've been talking about Zoro Mamdani today. We were talking with Dave Smith about how Mamdani isn't running on, how queer liberation means defunding the police and all of that. within Democratic circles right now, you're seeing Karin-John-Pierre and others talk about how some are throwing the trans community under the bus for the sake of political expediency and all of that, when in fact what's really happening is that the fever is breaking, and people are realizing these ideas actually are not popular, and they're not correct. Plenty of research has come out,
Starting point is 00:55:26 even from W-Path, which tried to hide its own research. The Biden administration was complicit in trying to get what W-path to hide its own research from the UK with the Cass Review and from a mounting body of research that the fevered claims of the early 2020s are falling apart as the experiment goes further and further. There's now signs showing Gene Twenge, a great youth researcher, has crunch the numbers, as has Eric Kaufman, another great researcher, that trans and non-binary identification among younger demographics is declining. And so it remains to be an Achilles heel for populists who went so far left on some of these cultural issues that they are the people now trying to take back the voters who were turned off by those cultural issues, but do agree with
Starting point is 00:56:22 more populist platforms on economics and on foreign policy. So here is Bernie Sanders, with Tim Dillon on his policy towards transgenderism. This is S8. I mean, these are unpopular issues. Fair enough. Biological men and women's sports, it's just an unpopular issue. You know, child sex changes, no one wants this. Very few people, very radical people.
Starting point is 00:56:46 And I understand that people have trans children, and I get it. But, you know, this has tremendously hurt the electability of Democrats. But I think the answer is, yes. But the answer also is, why are we talking, are we not talking about some of the issues that I raised earlier? Why are we not talking about the fact that we are the only major country in Earth not to guarantee health care to all people? Because the Republicans are demagoguing this one issue because it was handed to them on a silver platter by Democrats. Okay, so that's Bernie's best possible answer politically. That's the best way he can answer that.
Starting point is 00:57:30 question if he's not going to change his personal opinion on what the Democratic Party or he as an independent what he would like to see the Democratic Party do when it comes to policy on biological men and women sports as Tim broached right there and also sex changes for children which is the other thing that Tim broached there so if Bernie Sanders still believes that the Democratic Party's policies of like 2022 are correct on that front the best thing that he can do is do what Zoroamom I think learned from Bernie Sanders, what Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez learned from Bernie Sanders, and what so many other Democratic candidates, Andrew Cuomo, is a good example, have failed to learn from Bernie Sanders, which is that people will give you grace if they don't agree with you on every single
Starting point is 00:58:15 issue, if they feel like you are being honest and authentic. And Bernie, trying to take the conversation back to affordability, this is how Mamdani beat Cuomo in the general election, or I'm sorry, in the probably in the general election, with all of the myriad cultural baggage that he brought in, even though New York is a very blue city and this was a Democratic primary, you know, he said all kinds of stuff in the past that Cuomo just kind of expected would take him down. But Mamdani was constantly, constantly bringing the question back to cost of living and affordability. And that is the best way for Dems to deal with this if, I mean, obviously the best way is to re-familiarize themselves with the basic truth of how men and women's bodies are different.
Starting point is 00:59:06 But, you know, maybe I have too low a bar and just can't see that coming in the foreseeable future. But Bernie Sanders is doing the best he can there. And it still falls short of what populist Democrats are going to need to do. Now, Bernie Sanders is fine because he's an independent, very popular in Vermont. He's probably not running for president again. He's probably stepping down from Senate. He's signaled all of this that he is at nearing the end of his career and he's very clearly trying to pass the torch to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zora Mamdani, and others. There's a Democratic candidate running in Nebraska, and his name is Dan Osborne. He is a union guy, worked in, I think it was a Kellogg factory, and got involved in politics around organizing
Starting point is 00:59:54 just in the last five years. He's a Democrat who has, I think, worked on these cultural issues or come to these cultural issues with much less difficulty than somebody like Bernie Sanders who was in politics when this cultural fever was peaking. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was certainly a big part of it. Used to have those pronouns in her Twitter bio and was constantly posturing about these issues. It's going to be really hard for them to walk away from it because is they genuinely believe in it. And they genuinely believe in it. And they're going to resist all of the evidence
Starting point is 01:00:31 that comes out to the contrary. It's ideological. But all that is to say, the best way they can handle it is what Bernie did with Tim Dillon. And even that is not going to be good enough. Now, we were talking with Dave Smith earlier in the show about how we see the lesser of two evil politics
Starting point is 01:00:49 basically emerging from this era. And that's what I see with Graham Platner, versus Janet Mills and potentially Grand Platner versus Susan Collins is that people might not like one person, but they might not like either candidate. They might not think that Grant Platner was being totally on the up and up about his tattoo or his Reddit posts or whatever it is. But they feel like everything's too expensive. They feel like the system is failing them. And I feel like Susan Collins represents that system. Now, I think Collins will probably be fine. against either Janet Mills or Graham Platner.
Starting point is 01:01:26 But I just wanted to underscore Dave Smith's point. One of the reasons the trans issues started to lose its power on the left is that it became clear the public was rejecting what was a top down effort by major corporations and a small handful of elites in newsrooms, boardrooms, and classrooms who was pushing this on the country, and the country was rejecting it.
Starting point is 01:01:53 And so when it became clear that this was a failing top-down effort, it sort of started to fade. And you started to see some pushback. Now, Ed Markey was wrapping himself literally in the trans flag flag at No Kings Day over the weekend. So there's still plenty of this going on. It's not the end of it for Dems. There's no question about that. But they're trying, they're being dragged into this new. era. And this is going to be the tactic that we'll see going forward from people who are at least
Starting point is 01:02:29 smart enough to run populist-oriented campaigns. I'm not saying they have to be believable populists. That's a different question. When you talk about Bernie Sanders, we could talk about Grant Platner, we could talk about Zora and Mom Dani and their backgrounds, their net worths, all of that. But if you're at least clever enough right now to run a populist campaign in this low institutional trust environment, this is going to be a really, like this is still going to be a hurdle going forward. And I think we're seeing the next chapter of how those populists handle the question. Okay, before I leave, I want to make sure we get to the story about Chloe Kardashian and Savannah Guthrie. Why not, of course? But basically some background. Savannah Guthrie, House of today,
Starting point is 01:03:17 recently apologized to Chloe Kardashian for in 2012 asking Chloe Kardashian about rumors that Robert Kardashian is not her biological father. Guthrie made an apology and then Chloe Kardashian responded and said, quote, it takes a big person to take accountability in an Instagram post. So let's get a little bit here, S-9 of the Savannah Guthrie responds. You may be wondering why I think any of this is relevant. I'll explain that after we watch the clip. I had a, I think I told you about this before. I asked Chloe Kardashian, like 10 seconds before we were going to break about the rumors that her father wasn't her father. And she was, I was so embarrassed because I felt like all this pressure I just started and I felt like the producers
Starting point is 01:04:05 wanted me to ask this dishy question, but I didn't want to. So I let the time be running out until we were up against a hard break. So at the very end, I'm like, and Chloe, like, what about this rumor that Robert Kardashian is not really your father? And they were were like 10, nine, eight. And I was so embarrassed. And she was such a class act and she's like, ah, nothing to it. And it was like, we made the break. And I forever asked the question.
Starting point is 01:04:27 I asked the question. I didn't want to. Chloe was a total class act and a doll. Okay. Don't need to get into those rumors. Although at the time they were really strong. And that's all I have to say to just make the point that it was fair game for a journalist to ask a reality star whose entire.
Starting point is 01:04:47 livelihood, celebrity is predicated, and celebrity is predicated on her personal life. That's why Chloe Kardashian was on today in 2012, because her career is built on her freaking personal life. So her personal life is fair game for a journalist. Now, again, Chloe Kardashian responded, it takes a big person to take accountability on an Instagram post and said something, quote, I just love her. Now, I think Chloe Kardashian is maybe the more likable of the Kardashians has probably always been one of the more likable. Matt has been one of the more likable of the Kardashian orbits. And her handling of this both in 2012, both in 2012 and now is a good example of why she did really brush it off pretty breezily when Guthrie asked
Starting point is 01:05:35 the question back then and said, I guess I don't know who my dad is sort of jokingly. And here was pretty classy in response to Savannah Guthrie. But if you were listening to this, what you didn't see was the Chiron in the clip on the Today Show was an ask. me anything, like they're on Reddit or a podcast or something. So here you see Legacy Media being dragged, kicking and screaming into the future, forcing their anchors to sit in chairs outside and to ask me anything's incredible stuff. But the reason I think this story is just worth a moment's reflection is that she's, again, like entertainment journalism should have the same, entertainment journalism should have the same mentality.
Starting point is 01:06:17 as political journalism because people in the entertainment sector are just as powerful as people in politics. And no, Chloe Kardashian is not passing legislation, even though Kim will come every once in a while and lobby on a bill. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about what they, the norms they set for the country, the things that they say. They're not individually as powerful as any individual senator, although you could argue in some cases that they're probably more powerful than certain people in Congress. But they are very, very powerful. They make extremely high dollar business deals.
Starting point is 01:06:53 They are in themselves, like massive corporations, basically. And they have an effect on the country and on the culture. And every time I see someone who does entertainment journalism groveling to a celebrity, I'm just reminded that they so badly, want to be on good terms with the subjects that they cover, which is something that happens in political journalism a lot too. And again, it's somewhat understandable. You have to operate in the same spaces, go into the same rooms. And Chloe Kardashian obviously didn't want to be asked about this extremely painful personal situation in her life. These rumors are very annoying to her.
Starting point is 01:07:39 all of that, be it as it may. Chloe Kardashian's fame and money is built on top of being a Kardashian. If she is not literally a Kardashian, as rumors were swirling and suggesting at the time, it is perfectly fair game for a journalist to ask that question. And what we see here is Savannah Guthrie putting herself in the shoes of Andy Cohen, who is sitting next to her, who's in a different capacity. He's not a journalist. He's not an anchor. Savannah Guthrie has interviewed the presidential candidate
Starting point is 01:08:16 and done really high-profile interviews with major celebrities. And it's just a, like, it's not a big deal, but it's just a good reminder. I always like to talk about some of the problems in entertainment journalism whenever it comes up because it's just a good reminder that celebrities feel truly entitled
Starting point is 01:08:34 to positive coverage because of situations like this. They can say, well, this was my, this was my personal, or this is a sensitive topic. It was so rude, et cetera. I don't know how Claire Kardashian responded after the interview back in the day, but they can retreat to their fainting couch and say, how dare you? And entertainment journalists, it's like how everyone was bullied out of covering Joe Biden's age in D.C. they want access and they want to, you know, be at the same parties and they want to be on good terms with the agents and the agencies and all of that. And again, like it's not life or death, but it was just a somewhat amusing example of, I think, a real problematic mentality among powerful players who cover Hollywood and cover celebrities. So there you go.
Starting point is 01:09:32 You didn't want it, but I gave it to you anyway. You're welcome. Thank me later. Okay. Thank you so much for tuning in, genuinely. We have a happy hour episode coming on Friday, which I'll also be in San Antonio on Friday with Megan Kelly and Glenn Greenwald for the Megyn Kelly Live tour.
Starting point is 01:09:49 Tickets at Megan Kelly.com. If you want to come see us, make sure to do that. Emily at devilmaicaremedia.com is where you can submit questions for happy hour where I do an AMA, just like the great Savannah Guthrie, you can really ask me anything. And I answer it. I read them all live as we're doing the taping. So send questions over there and also at the After Party Emily Instagram account. I will see you Friday on Happy Hour, Friday in San Antonio, and next Monday right back here for After Party.
Starting point is 01:10:18 Have a good one, everyone.

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