After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Scott Pelley Spirals, JLo’s Viral NY Take, PLUS Karmelo Anthony Trial, with Delano Squires

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Emily Jashinsky opens the show with an epic response to Scott Pelley’s performative interview with “The New York Times” on his ouster from CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Emily breaks down his un-nerving take on his role, how he claims he didn’t know who Bari Weiss was, he couldn’t fathom anyone viewing CBS as biased, his take on the coverage of Renee Good’s death, and his insulting suggestion that he’s “been in combat for this country.” Then Emily is joined by Delano Squires, author of the new book “The Vanishing Black Family: How Welfare and Feminism Made Marriage Optional and Children Vulnerable” and Director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing at The Heritage Foundation. Emily and Delano discuss his remarkable trajectory from Queens, NY, to working in Washington, D.C., and finally as a writer and commentator focused on family and marriage issues. They also discuss the case of a teenager on trial for fatally stabbing another teenager at a high school track meet, the media’s coverage of the murder British university student Henry Nowak, what’s really going on with crime in D.C., and Gwyneth Paltrow recent comments about feeling politically independent. Then Emily reacts to Jennifer Lopez's viral claim that only people born in New York can truly call themselves New Yorkers and Emily details why that’s the perfect comment for a time like this, and more…   Unplugged: Switching is simple, Visit https://Unplugged.com/EMILY and order your UP phone today!   Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/AFTERPARTY   SelectQuote: Compare top‑rated life insurance options. Visit https://SelectQuote.com/emily to get the right coverage at the right price. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back to After Party, everyone. If I do say so myself, I think we have a very interesting show for all of you this evening. My guest is going to be Delano Squires, one of the most interesting people. I think here in Washington, D.C., has a new book out called The Vanishing Black Family, How Welfare and Feminism made marriage optional and children vulnerable. He's one of the few people who really knows this stuff. You'll get to hear him in just a bit on the show. But we have some great topics for him, including the Carmelo Anthony trial, the defense. started today. And it did not go well. I don't think that will surprise. Many people have been following this case closely. But we also still have the awful Henry Novak case to talk about absolute disastrous coverage from the BBC. They had to apologize to Nigel Farage. Their coverage was so bad. We have video of that coming up in just a bit for you. So make sure you stick around. It's going to be great to get Delano's perspective on it. We're going to have clips from Gwyneth Paltrow. Her husband thinks she's a Republican. If you hadn't seen this clip yet, And also Jennifer Lopez, who just walked into it. You're going to see. I guess she rode into it.

She was on the subway, but just zero self-awareness whatsoever. Like I said, we're going to get to all of that, but very excited to have Delano here. Now, I think what we're doing here at After Party, we're almost at our one-year mark is really exciting. I think we're giving you coverage that you don't hear in a lot of other places. I really do think that it's unique. So if you haven't subscribed yet, please do us a huge favor. The most helpful thing you can do is subscribe on YouTube. It's also very helpful to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Of course, if you subscribe where you get your podcast, you get our Friday episode of the show, which is audio only. It's where I answer your questions over email. Emily at double my caretmedia.com

is my real email address. We have great conversations back and forth. So please do feel free to hit me up there and make sure to subscribe on the podcast side. If you want to catch those episodes where, again, I get to go back and forth with all of you. Lots to get to, as I mentioned, I have to start, of course, with Scott Pelly. Scott Pelly, after being pushed out of 60 minutes by the new leadership, helmed, of course, by Barry Weiss, who brought in this new guy, Nick Bilton, from the New York Times documentary area. The New York Times Documentary Unit, I guess, would be one way to put it.

She brings Nick Bilton in. Immediately it goes poorly. Scott Pelley tries to make a stand against, the new CBS leadership, a fairly political stand against the new CBS leadership, gets pushed out after what, almost 40 years at CBS News, which is one of the clubbiest, clickiest places in all of legacy media. We talked about this last week, of course, but Pellie has continued to be insufferable. He put on a display of egotamania in an interview with Lulu Garcia Navarro of the New York Times shortly after being pushed out of 60 minutes. That is really,

really unbelievable in a couple of different ways. I mean, I think even for an egomaniac like Scott Pelly, this interview is unbelievable for the lack of self-awareness that you see. And one of the reasons I'm really excited to bring this series of clips to you all is because this is exactly the attitude that as we covered last week, I really believe is running legacy media into the ground. Now, technology is also running legacy media into the ground, but it doesn't help that these dinosaurs like CBS News are powerfully controlled by people like Scott Pelly, who you're going to hear him say. You're going to hear him on the one hand say he doesn't understand why people see CBS News as being biased and at the same time say that Barry Weiss put her thumb on the scale in the case of Renee Good. And this sends me through the roof. It really sends me through the roof because to hear the sanctimony dripping from Scott Pelley's voice,

He does this kind of faux humility thing, and there's nothing worse than faux humility. I'd actually rather someone be arrogant than fake humility. There's nothing worse than that. It's this big theater kid energy from Scott Pelley, who takes all of these very dramatic pauses, and we all know now about how he poses with his glasses in his teeth. So before I get too deep into this, I do just want to roll the clips. Let's start now about him talking about the reneged,

Renee Goodcase and what he sensed, the new CBS leadership, which, again, as we have covered here, has a serious bias problem. Do not get me wrong. They have a serious problem when you have the billionaire, the son of billionaire Larry Allison buying the network, intimating that there were political motivations behind it and then acting in ways. They're carrying, for example, the new UFC fight that's going to be on the president's birthday. What is that in just a week? So intimating that there are reasons, there are business reasons, personal, political reasons for making this acquisition. Don't get me wrong. We've covered that here since day one. But Barry Weiss has the worst enemies, the worst enemies. And Scott Pelly, I guess, is enemy number one now. So again, before I

work myself into a lather, let's go ahead and roll Pelley talking about what was happening allegedly behind the scenes as they covered the tragic story of Renee Good, who was, of course, killed in Minneapolis not long ago. Barry Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon, Renee Good's car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer. This is not what you see on the video. And you clearly see Ms. Good's wheels turned completely as far as they will go,

away from the officer. But he shoots her in the head, kills her, and says something about her in that moment that I can't repeat in polite company. To be clear, there were lots of videos that showed different moments of that interaction. The video that I showed in our piece clearly showed the officer's feet.

So if he's standing in front of the car, you can't see his feet. And I went over the vehicle. video of the Renee Good killing over and over and over again and realized that the event was not, as the president said, and not the way Barry Weiss remembered it. And so it's late. Our deadline was noon. It's now almost five o'clock. That's dangerous as hell. And so I decided. I just that I wouldn't do those things. Yeah, okay.

So he's actually correct that it wasn't how the president saw it. But you can see that's exactly what's coloring his response to Lula Garcia-Navaro, who raises a very important point. There are lots of different angles. And many people saw an angle. And actually, we can probably roll some of those footage right now. This is going to be the VO. And you'll remember this very well.

We don't have to reopen this can of worms. But there are different angles of the video that do appear absolutely do appear, not to show exactly what the president said about Renee Good, but do appear to show that this is the classic glass half full, glass half empty trap that as journalists, we deal with all of the time. People looking at the exact same image, taking different things away from it. And again, you're watching in slow motion here, the car clearly accelerate toward the officer. And I am not even. You can go back and look at our coverage at the time. I think this is a very complicated story.

I am not even right now putting my thumb on the scale, as Scott Pelley accuses Barry Weiss of doing. We don't have to in order to say exactly the point, which is that you see different things based on different angles. And there is an absolutely objectively fair case to be made that that officer felt the car was accelerating in his direction. And you are doing a massive disservice to your audience, to your audience. If you don't make a note to them, if you just present it as fact, that didn't happen. Because guess what? People then go out and see clips that appear to show it happening. And so instead of presenting both sides or all sides that are within the mainstream of public opinion on the left and the right in the middle of what people saw in that video, you Scott Pelly are putting your thumb on the scale by saying to characterize.

this metaphor forward, the glass is either half full or the glass is half empty. He is the one saying the people who see it as half empty are definitively incorrect, so much so that I'm going to use my platform to refute that point. That is anti-Trump activism, period. And Scott Pelley clearly could do everything in his power to present a fair version of that in a way that would actually also speak much more powerfully about whether or not what Donald Trump said in regard to Renee Good was accurate. It is not Scott Pally's job. Everyone everywhere is putting their thumb on the scale, right? But Scott Pelley believes it was Barry Weiss, right? He would never admit that it was him who was putting his thumb on the scale by choosing which side to take in that. But exactly,

precisely, this is the perfect case of why these people in the media who see themselves as neutral arbiters of fact versus fiction are actually spinning their own fictions as fact, rather than saying, here's what one people say it, well, here's what one side says is fact, here's what the other side says is fact, here are both angles, make it for yourself. That is what Barry Weiss, in this case, apparently was doing according to Scott Pelley himself. That is according to Scott Pelley himself, who says that is what Barry Wice wanted. That is what Barry Weiss wanted to see. Again, this is according to Scott Pelly.

So he's so blinded by his own bias that he doesn't even realize it makes him look bad. This is a clip that should literally be shown in journalism classes. And I want to roll right now, Scott Pelley being astounded, astounded that anybody would believe he's biased S5. She, I am told, said something to the effect of why do you think the country thinks you're biased? But she didn't offer any kind of a metric. You know, what's your metric? Why do you think so? Do you have a poll?

Is there market research? What are you talking about? Because we certainly didn't believe that. Well, yes, sir, there is a poll. Gallup does trust in mass media. I talk about this polling almost every week on the show. Because, again, trust in mass media is tied for a record low once again. This is a decade after Donald Trump wins the presidency over the secretary of

State, former Secretary of State, who everyone expected would win and be just fine. They are not moving up in a better direction. Trust and media is once again tied at a record low. And Scott Pelly, there are polls that show ABC and NBC are preferred by more Americans than CBS. And it is precisely because of the entire record of CBS and other CBS news stories that took place over the last decade plus. I mean, last week, we went back really far with Scott Pelly, and you can go watch that show and saw examples of him exactly doing what he accuses Barry Weiss of doing, which is putting his thumb on the scale when it comes to COVID, when it comes to Joe Biden, when it comes to Andrew McCabe, who he said he was, quote, impressed by his command of the facts. That is putting your thumb on the scale to say that you were impressed by how careful Andrew McCabe was. another person would watch your interview with Andrew McCabe, Scott Pally, and say they were completely unimpressed because he's leaving out so many facts and he is conveniently spinning his

own version of the facts and you are lapping it up credulously because you so detest Donald Trump. And not just that, but because you are generally the Moms for Liberty clip. I mean, you are generally more aligned with the cultural left. I'm not talking about his foreign policy or position on taxes or whatever. He is anti-Trump. He is culturally center-left. And he actually, in that interview, you can see what a bubble he's in. He admits he didn't even know who Barry Weiss was, which whether you hated Barry Weiss, had an ambivalent opinion on Barry Weiss or loved Barry Weiss. Maybe you were a lukewarm on her. If you were not out of touch in your Darien, Connecticut bubble, you would know who the hell Barry Weiss was before she got plucked to run CBS. She was, there were profiles

written about how she was the future of media, she was the talk of Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, and New York. In fact, she moved to New York recently because of what she was doing with the free press. She very famously, I mean, again, these are things that have been assigned in journalism classes over the last five plus years. She famously resigned from the New York Times with a letter that rocketed around the media, but it somehow didn't penetrate the bubble of Scott Pelly, unless he has a liar, it didn't penetrate his bubble, because he is so comfortably ensconced in his multi-million dollar Darian mansion that, okay,

to be fair, I don't know what house he lives in now. I did look up, this is F2, the Architecture Digest story that was written about his house is so wonderful and nice. Look at this, if you're listening. You just see he lives in like Downton Abbey in Dary in Connecticut, like a $4 million home. Again, this was, I think he sold it in 2017. But you get the point.

This man is ensconced in a truly remarkable level of wealth, and that is why I don't think that these dinosaur institutional legacy media corporations can be reformed, period. Even if somebody was totally well-intentioned and untethered from conflicts of interest, which Barry Weiss is not in this case, I don't think they could turn this around because it is truly a class issue at this point. Look at what Scott Pelly, honest to goodness, posted. I can't believe he did this. This is truly like a comic book. This is his Instagram post. He posts himself on a boat. On a boat. Like it looks to be a sailing, it looks to be a sailboat. It could be a sailing yacht. I don't know. But it's clearly a very

nice boat with this beautiful wooden steering wheel. He's got the American flag off the background. He's probably sailing off the coast of Connecticut. He's in a crisp white shirt and his khakis with his life jacket on talking about how people are the wind behind his sails. Whatever the hell he's talking about. I don't know. But you couldn't possibly be more cold. as a coastal elite than Scott Pelly, who, again, is saying he didn't know who Barry Weiss is and then kind of does the faux humility. Well, maybe that says more about me than it does about her. Oh, ha, ha, Scott. Yeah, it does. It says that you're terrible at your job because you're in such a thick bubble that people who are criticizing with good reason your coverage, reflecting the

opinion of the American public, he's asking for a metric that people don't trust 60 minutes in CBS News. I mean, you've got to be kidding me. I think he wants like a specific metric that says CBS News plummeted and lost trust. And maybe that is out there. Maybe that exists. But the institutional media, which CBS is consistently appealing to, their branding. I think this is actually some of the problem with the new leadership's branding, is that it is appealing to people's nostalgia for the institutional trust that CBS News once had.

That is gone. That is gone. And unless you are making structural reforms, there's nothing you can do because the problem, as Charles Murray documented in the most important book about journalism that has absolutely nothing to do with journalism coming apart written in 2012, we are sorting on socioeconomic class bases. And Charles was on our show talking about this not long ago in ways that are unusual for American history. The wealthy used to share the same schools, churches with people in their community, PTA meetings, with people in their community. grocery stores, that's happening less and less, because we have sorted, the ultra wealthy have sorted into what Murray documents as super zips. And this is not just a right-wing author making this

point. His research was then picked up by PBS and the Washington Post, and there is a lot of social science on this. That is different, right? And the media didn't realize that. But what it comes with, as Murray and others have documented, is a ton of cultural preferences and practices and behaviors that now separate the working class from people who have college educations and make over a certain amount of money a year who now, on average, are much more likely to live amongst each other. And so it doesn't even occur to them. People might not trust 60 minutes. He'd never even heard of Barry Weiss. It's astounding. It really is because Barry Weiss's name was also all over elite circles, people were like, hey, what's up with this? What's this thing? And we now know people

like Jeff Bezos were paying attention to it. Mark Injuries and we're paying attention to it, etc. This man is insufferable. He is everything that is wrong with the industry. And now, in an effort to prove he is exactly everything right with the industry, he is proving the case against him with not an ounce of self-awareness. And if anything, just a flamboyant zeal for elitism that he thinks makes him a man of the people like Walter Cronkite because he has absolutely no idea what life is like for the average American right now. Just to make this point, I have to show you S3. This is how Scott Pelly sees himself. You may have already seen this clip already, but it's another one that just sends me through the roof. S3, let's take a look. He also said you were part of this gang of stupid,

crooked people that don't care about your country. Um, stupid, I can, uh, I can take that. stiff yeah probably um don't care about the country uh i've never worn the uniform but i've been in combat for this country in afghanistan and iraq Kuwait been shot at spent nights in foxholes

filling up with water in the desert I'm not aware that the president of the United States has ever done any of those things for his country. Please correct me if I'm wrong. You become a journalist because you love the First Amendment. You become a journalist because you love the country. And while all the other descriptions that the president used about me might be applicable, not that one. This man was going to say something else. This man just said he has been, quote, in combat,

alighting the distinction between serving as a combat journalist and literally being in combat as a soldier. When you say, quote, unquote, in combat, I don't care if you prefaced it by saying I've never worn the uniform. You just said you were in combat. There are different rules of combat for journalists, right? Journalists are treated differently when they are in combat. combat, and yes, our enemies do not always pay close heed to that distinction. But it is different.

You are being paid millions of dollars to cover the combat that the journalists are in. You are in a combat zone. It is dangerous. And God bless anybody who does that work because we absolutely need it. But Scott Pelly, you were not in combat. And you know damn well what people are going to think. when you say that you were quote unquote in combat, it is different. Soldiers are in combat, journalists cover combat. And the fact that those words even came into his mind the way that they did in that New York Times interview to say everything you need to know about how self-important Scott Pelley is, even through his faux humility, you can see it when he says, although other things the president said may be applicable.

But not that. It's choking back tears. What an incredible insult. No journalists who cover combat talk about themselves that way because they see the people who are actually in combat who don't have special rules of protection around them. I didn't even need to play that clip to make my case. It's not my case.

It's a lot of people's case that Scott Pelley is insufferable egomaniac who ran the industry into the ground, helped run the industry into the ground as one of the premier faces of a failing industry for a decade plus. He is part of the problem. And in his effort to prove he is not part of the problem, but part of the solution, he is proving why he's part of the problem in flamboyant fashion, as though he has zero self-awareness because he does not about why he is such a significant part of the problem. and that is because he is ensconced in a bubble of wealth and privilege and money. And yes, I said privilege because even as a conservative, I believe that is very much the case.

I don't care if you're divorced from the interests of the inner city or of rural America. It is a privilege to live in a mansion and go sailing in your spare time. If you are Scott Pelly, that totally divorces you from the reality of the average American, and that has destroyed his ability to treat people like the Moms for Liberty fairly, to treat Andy McCabe fairly, to treat Joe Biden fairly. He is everything that is wrong with the industry, and he is proving it with zeal and zero self-awareness. It is a sight to behold, and I hope that people understand.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump or Barry Weiss, you don't need to be a conservative, you don't need to support Barry Weiss to see what she's dealing with internally, somebody who was untethered to some of the, I think, genuine ethical concerns that Barry Weiss finds herself in now at CBS News, the most well-intentioned person in the world. We could put Glenn Greenwald in there at CBS News. he would not be able to turn the ship around. And there are perhaps temperamental reasons for that. Shout out to Glenn.

But let's say you could put, who's somebody that conservatives would want to see in there? I mean, you could put Brett Bear at CBS News. You could put somebody from the left, right, center in there who has, let's say, good intentions for the network. I'm just trying to find examples that might help people say that this is not partisan in one direction or the other. it is class-based, there's social science behind it, and Scott Pelly is putting that on parade.

Incredible stuff. I could keep going for the entire hour about this. I'm just looking at the clock now and realizing I've spent like 25 minutes on it because I'm so disgusted and frustrated that anybody is defending this behavior from Scott Pelly. And you know what? I'm disgusted by some of the new moves of CBS leadership too. You can hold both these things in your mind at the exact same time. But let's keep the show moving. We're going to bring in one of the guests that I've just been excited to have on the show for a very long time, someone who I always love to talk to, Delano Squires. He's got a new book out. It's called The Vanishing Black Family. He's going to be back right after this quick break. Well, for years, legacy media, government, and big data companies

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set out to do something about it. The Uppphone by Unplugged is the smartphone that's actually designed to restore your rights. When it comes to blocking third-party trackers from shadowy data brokers, the Upphone by Unplugged outshines every device on the market, truly. There's even a battery disconnect switch. So off really means off on the upphone. And all of this is independently verified and tested so you can be confident in knowing your upphone is the most private smartphone that you can possibly buy. Check out upphone from Unplugged at Unplugged.com slash Emily. That's unplugged.com slash Emily. Welcome back to Afterparty. Everyone excited to be joined now by the one and only Delano Squires. He is director of the Richard

and Helen DeBoss Center for He. human flourishing over at the Heritage Foundation, and he is out with a new book on June 16th. It is called The Vanishing Black Family, How Welfare and Feminism Made Marriage Optional and Children, Vulnerable. I have it right in front of me. Excellent, important book. I really think it's going to make a big impact. Delano, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me, Anna. Yeah, I just was hoping you could start by telling us a little bit about your story. You have a really interesting experience. Because a lot of people kind of in conservative world, especially think tank world, have a similar story, no offense,

but have a kind of similar story to how they got where they were. But yours is a bit different. You have a lot of first and an experience in the field that you write about. So just tell us a little bit of how you ended up where you are, Delana. So I grew up in New York City,

grew up in Queens. My parents have been married almost 45 years now, right? So my parents emigrated from the Caribbean, late 70s, early 80s. And I grew up in what people people often talk about takes a village to raise a child. I grew up in that type of environment.

My mom is the youngest of 10 kids. My dad is the second youngest of six kids. I had, you know, cousins and aunts and uncles all around. And then we had church family all around. So I grew up in an environment, even though it was in New York City in the, you know, 80s and 90s. I grew up in an environment where I was surrounded by people who love me and who care for me. You know, we went to church on a regular basis. And the other man, my friend's dad,

as well as some of the other guys there, always kept us in line. So as we were growing up, we would often, my friends and I would say, well, what makes our lives different? And they would say, okay, well, our dads are around, married to our moms, sort of raising us according to their Christian values,

went off to college, went to the University of Pittsburgh, studied computer engineering, wanted to be a consultant. That didn't work out. Ended up in D.C. as a leasing consultant, different type of consultant, obviously, renting people apartments. And that's how I ended up.

I rented an apartment to a guy who was working for D.C. government about to start. He told me, hey, we're hiring, come out to this job fair, got a job. And in 2007, I moved over to D.C. government. And I was there for about 15 years. So I worked in local government in a number of sort of capacities, but mainly almost always in community-facing roles in low-income neighborhoods. I ran a program called Connect DC where we addressed the city. digital divide and ran programs in public housing, converted a bookmobile to a mobile technology lab,

you know, did classes for low-income residents, for senior citizens, did STEM classes for kids, did all hands-on tech where we brought the techs out, who worked in the schools and the government, brought them to the rec centers and libraries on the weekend and fix the communities, you know, machines for free. So, you know, sometimes grandma might have a brand new iPhone that our kids gave her.

She doesn't know how to work it. You know, a computer has it. She clicked on the wrong thing, and now the computer has spyware. So bring it out to the rec center. We'll fix it for free. So I did that type of work. And in my last year in D.C. government,

I worked in the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which is a different type of job, but still public-facing. But through that entire time, I was always interested and passionate about issues around marriage, family, culture, faith, race. and I started writing for a website called Black and Married with Kids

before I was married with kids. I didn't know that until I read the book. It's super interesting. Yeah, and I actually met my wife at the couple who started it. They also did documentaries, and I met my wife at their third documentary screening. We sat on the same row.

You know, we got talking, you know. I hit it with the Riz, as the kids say. You did it with the Riz. And we've been together, July of 14 years that we were married. And how many kids?

Four kids. So I wrote for Black and Married with kids. That opened up opportunities to write for the Root Negrio, two publications that have African-American audience. I had my own blog for a little while. Decommissioned that because I wasn't writing enough

to justify the expense. And when I pop back up on the scene, the types of pieces that the Root Negrio would run, they no longer were interested in because they had moved to the left politically. So then I started to write for the Federalists and then for the Blaze. I spent about five years writing for the Blaze. And that opened opportunities to go over to heritage. So I tell people, Emily, I feel confident saying I'm the only person in the country

who's ever had both Jason Whitlock and Joy Reid as an editor. And that is actually true. So I've sort of run the gamut. And the entire time I've sort of dispositionally small C conservative, because that's just how I was raised, people who raised me. But I think my political outlook started to change probably somewhere between 2008, 2012, you know, during the Obama presidency. It changed way before I got the Heritage Foundation. And I think you would appreciate this. When I saw, and I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

But one of the things that always stuck out to me is he was asked whether he would put his kids in D.C. public schools when he came into office. He said no, which I completely understand because that would have been a nightmare logistically for parents in the city. So he put his kids in Sidwell, which many people in Washington do. But one of the first moves he made is to try to kill the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, which is the only federally funded voucher program in the country. and it certainly was at that time. So it struck me that there were low-income, single black moms in Ward 8, right, in the poorest parts of D.C. in Anacostia, who were celebrating the opportunity to vote for the first black president, not knowing one of his first moves was to cut the very program that allowed her kid to travel from Anacostia to Georgetown

to get the type of education that she felt he needed to get out of, you know, his environment, his circumstances. That's the thing that really radicalized me. Well, and you must have been seeing people who were personally affected by that at the time, too, just in your capacity in D.C. government. Oh, yeah. I knew some of them, right? We did. Unlike the white liberal journalists covering this. And actually probably some of the black liberal journalists covering this. Right. And that's the thing.

I have, you know, equal, I don't want to call it disdain or contempt. Those are very strong words. But that type of progressive mindset, right, the people who fight against vouchers, but whose kids would never dock in the door of a school where only 1% of the kids can read at grade level, only if they're doing a service project that they can put on an Ivy League application. Those are the type of people who frustrate me the most because they claim to speak for the least and last and the loss. But all of their work is about using the racial disparities that occur among the masses to argue for a set of benefits to be extracted and give to the classes. So it's like, okay, you know, you, you, you might be in a teachers union or you might

be a nonprofit executive. Oh, I'm against, I'm against school choice and voucher programs. Now, your kid goes to $20,000 a year private school, but you will talk about how the kids, let's say you're in Baltimore or even D.C. You'll say, oh, look at the racial disparities in reading and math in D.C. This is why we need affirmative action at Harvard and Yale. But the kids in Southeast D.C. are not the ones who, who, who, get those benefits. It's your children who benefit. So it's really the reverse Robinhood effect of race where these people extract narratives, stories, failures, you know, disparities from the poor, and they use them for the benefit of the rich and the middle class.

Now, I wanted to get your take on this case of Carmelo Anthony, spelled with the K, of course, not the basketball player, Carmelo Anthony, in Frisco, Texas, where People may remember this case from last year, but obviously he stabbed Austin Metcalf, a white kid at a trackbeat. And this has, you know, predictably been racialized by the defense. Actually, the defense started today, started making their case today. We can throw this element from X up on the screen, reading the coverage pretty closely. And yeah, it's true. One of them said, quote unquote, I told him not to put his hands on me, referring to

to Carmelo said that there was nothing really indicating a credible fear of death or injury. And people are looking at this saying, man, I heard Megan Kelly's coverage of this earlier today saying it went very poorly for the defense based on my reading of the coverage. That is also true. But you know, Delano, I looked into Carmelo Anthony's family

because I knew we were gonna have this conversation. Here's a quote from his mom just last year. She said, quote unquote, our son deserves the same rights under the law that everyone is afforded. He's been raised in a two-parent home with structure, stability, love. And we put God first in everything we do. Now, race has been invoked by the defense, actually, to say that this was racialized in one way or another.

There are some, like, really icky white nationalist that I've seen cling on to this story as well. But when the defense is making the argument, I think it, you know, shows that they're jumping to this particularly in the court of law. And I was just curious what you make of this because here we see somebody who ostensibly was actually in a two-parent home, structure, stability, love, who in this altercation with Austin Metcalf, they're at a track meet last year, they're teenagers. Carmel Anthony goes into the tent that Metcalf is in and appears to start rustling up kind of a fight. He seemed like he was gunned for a fight. has a knife and stabs this kid to death. You know, you have some allegations he was, he was sort of pushed by Metcalf, but then meets that with clearly lethal force. So how are you thinking about this case that is really captivating the country right now? Yeah, I mean, the comments from his mom are actually really interesting because I think a lot of

people tend to look at these situations and assume, you know, a kid like Carmilla Anthony comes from a fatherless home. I mean, that's not the case. But to me, what it says is that life is far more complicated than what we tend to get on social media, right? So I remember when the case first happened, everyone jumped, as is often the case, to sort of racialize it. Because in my opinion, we, this is like the Peter Griffin era of social media, you know,

that meme where he holds up the color swatch and there's a light part and the dark part, and he sort of, you know, determines what's good or bad based on, on, you know, where people fall. And I feel like that's the way social media is operating now. If you are on the progressive left, you are interested in black victims and white perpetrators. If you are on the conservative right, you are interested in white victims and black perpetrators. If you are a regular person whose victimization does not fit in one of those color combinations, then good luck to get anybody to care about.

what's actually happened to you. So my thing when it comes to these cases, and I think, and I've learned from many sort of instances to let the legal process play out. Oftentimes, the initial reaction is wrong. Things are proven in court. Things are proven with evidence. So I think we have a legal system, though imperfect,

is the best in terms of the process. to get to a verdict that is reflective of justice. So, I mean, I was 17 once, and I know when teenage boys start to get into it, you know, even at that age, egos can become in flame. Sometimes people do, you know, unwise and stupid things. It doesn't always necessarily speak to someone's intent, right? It's possible to be raising a good home and do something that's really, really dumb or criminal. So it's not, it's not in, it's not a sort of neat and easily packaged narrative. I'm glad he's not doing, I remember, I'm sure you remember this case, the kid, I want to say he was in Texas as well,

who killed some people, I think he was driving drunk, and his mom said that he suffered from affluence, which is the, the social dysfunction where your kid is raised in too much affluence, and therefore does not have a working sort of moral compass. I'm glad his parents are not going for that one. But I think, you know, ultimately, I would hope that the jury would consider the evidence that's before them and make a decision that's in accordance with justice. And I just hate the way these things get picked apart on social media

in terms of the narrative construction and tribalism. Because, Emily, I remember one of the, this might have been the third piece I wrote from Federalists. I talked about the case of Jasmine Barnes, a little black girl in Houston, tragically shot and killed in a Walmart parking lot. It became a national story because at first, the local news said that the shooter was a 40-something-year-old white male.

They put up a sketch. You know, Bernice King talked about it. Sean King tweeted about it. A bunch of racial justice activists tweeted about it. Then they ended up arrested two black guys for capital murder. And none of the people who spoke about it the first time had anything to say in the follow up. And to me, that was. just indicative of this notion that the victims of these crimes aren't really the main story.

It's how can we use something about the perpetrator to advance a narrative that fits within our political worldview. And I hate to see that happen because as a human, you grieve for the parents who have lost a child and you want justice, you know, to be done in these cases. So that's my hope as I sort of observe this from the sidelines. Yeah, the defense rested today, and jurors were told to stay off social media. No surprise there, but obviously an important part of all of this now. Because you're so right, I mean, the algorithm incentivizes extremism. So saying it's racism in one direction or the other is going to keep people scrolling. So the algorithm's going to put it in front of more people. And it has totally, I mean, I tell the story a lot. I actually think it was the Trayvon Martin case. I remember I was in college. It was 2012. After that, you know, I was raised in the 90s and early 2000s. I just for some, reason had a pit in my stomach. And that's when I really started you paying close attention to social media and Twitter and people were starting to get smartphones and they were loaded with social media. And for whatever reason, I couldn't put my finger on at the time, but I just felt like

something had changed. And I look back on it now, Delano, and I really do feel like that's the case. You're right. I was really glad to see in the book, Vanishing Black Family, you have an entire chapter on media. And I think part of what complicates these stories now is that you have the meta frustration. And let's talk about the Henry Novak case, too, in this context, because what we're seeing now, Vice President J.D. Vance weighed in on the Henry Novak case to say we can pop it up on the screen, that Henry Novak in the UK, quote unquote, died in the same way that a civilization dies, abandoned, handcuffed by authorities, well, neither trusted nor cared, who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of a hate crime that he did not commit the vice president.

went on to say in the BBC, obviously just for some background of people who haven't followed this case very closely, but Henry Novak obviously was killed not long ago in the UK by two Pakistani brothers. They were found guilty. Well, the one who stabbed Henry Novak was found guilty last week. He had immediately called the cops. The 911 call came out just in the last like 24-48 hours where you hear him saying that this was a racialized attack, that Henry Novak attacked him on racialized grounds, and the cops let Henry Novak bleed out when they got there and didn't believe his story. He said, I'd been stabbed. And they said, I'm sure you have me. It moved on, very cold and casual. And meanwhile, Nigel Farage came out and said something similar to what

the vice president ultimately said. The BBC reported on it in a way that was so egregious. They ended up actually apologizing. And I want to roll this clip because it can. gets to the media chapter in your book, Vanishing Black Family. Let's take a look. Before we start tonight, we want to apologize for an error we made on last night's program. In an interview about the murder of 18-year-old Henry Novak, we mistakenly quoted the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as saying people should respond to his death with a white, cold rage.

To be clear, Mr. Farage actually said pure cold rage, as had been stated earlier in the program. We apologize to him for this mistake. Last night's news night has been removed from iPlayer and BBC sounds. And conservatives in the UK used to this, just like conservatives here are used to this. But what you see is them jumping to a conclusion to pin this racialized rhetoric on Farage that he didn't actually use because it just kind of sounded right to them. It was too good to check. And so they were sloppy and they went with it.

This is BBC. I mean, that's different than like a blog or a podcast. So this BBC is a big deal for them to get this so wrong. And Delano, I'm just thinking in both of these cases, Carmelo Anthony and Henry Novak, that what I'm seeing on the right, it's kind of hard to separate because there's this total meta-angor at elites, whether they're in the media or in political parties for ignoring what so many people feel like they've been saying for so long. And then the problem is they get mad at the press, rightfully so. and the kind of court of public opinion,

it's like you have to disentangle the anger at the press for the double standards from the case itself. And I think people on the right are correct about this case, and I'm eager to get your take on it. I'll shut up in just one second. But it's sort of, these are two things, but they're not always the same. Like the reaction to the Anthony family,

racializing the case, is a bit different from saying, you know, what Carmel Anthony did himself, was he being racist towards a white person? that's a different question from whether or not the media had a double standard. And what happened on the ground with Novak, again, I think conservatives are right to say. I think I agree with that most of that tweet from J.D. Vance. But it's also different from being mad at elites for ignoring this the whole time. People, I guess, would agree that that was baked into the justice system in the

UK, these double standards. You write about this sort of in the book Delano about how some of this reverse racism, if we can call it, that's kind of a crude name, can sway things. But let me just stop there and get your take on how we look at media coverage, our reaction to the media coverage, and then disentangle it from what happened on the merits in any given situation. Yeah, sometimes it's hard because the people who sort of shape the political narratives use the media to do that, right? So it's one of those things, whether it's in the UK or the U.S., these things almost sort of feed on one another. So when situations like this happen and a conservative speaks up,

then the media will move from addressing the actual crime has been committed to talking about how someone who's from one of the communities that is of the same ethnic background as the person, as a perpetrator, but now that community might feel a certain amount of harm because of the backlash. So, I mean, I get why people are disgusted

and frustrated with the media. And I mean, we see it, again, even stateside, I remember, what was the guy's name? I think Darrell Brooks, the guy who drove into the parade. Yes, Waukesha, where I grew up. Yep. And I think the media coverage was, you know, car rams into, car kills people at, you know, local Wisconsin parade or something to that effect. And it's just they are so disingenuous.

And one of the things that I remember, you know, Glenn Lauer, Professor Glenn Lauerry talking about years ago is that the racialization of police shootings would inevitably create a boomerang effect that progressives would not be able to deal with. Because he said, if you keep making an issue, let's say it's a legitimate issue of police misconduct, but you keep making that a race issue. It's the white cops. It's the white cops that did this to a black perpetrator. It's the white racist, systemically racist police officers. It's white privilege. It's white fear. then you shouldn't be surprised when people turn around and say, it's the black perpetrators, right?

It's the, you know, insert ethnic minority or insert, you know, disfavored group, you know, on the political right. And I think we're starting to see that. And what complicates it is that you have the narrative construction of the traditional media that is running in parallel with the narrative construction of social media, where you have content creators, who now have their own platforms.

Some of them are doing actual journalism, but some of them are just saying, look, this is not being covered on CNN or Washington Post or NBC, and they will tweet and retweet and comment in such a way that it raises the profile of a particular case. So now they are part of that media ecosystem

and what I've seen, I don't spend as much time on X as I used to, probably for my own mental health and clarity, But what I see is that the new media ecosystem with content creators shows no better judgment or restraint or discernment than the traditional old media. It's just they show it they are overcorrecting in a different direction. So it can be hard to sort of cut through the noise and to figure out what's the actual signal. but I hope more people are doing that. And I think part of what helps it is that there is such a large media ecosystem

where you can get diverse voices if you're the type of person who can listen to a range of different, is willing to listen to a range of different people and try to sort through all of it to figure out what's really true. I have so many more questions based on actually class, that we have another story that actually goes really well with what you're just talking about and what you write about. and your book, which again has a whole chapter on this.

So we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Delano Squire's, author of The Vanishing Black Family. Well, this spring, if you want real results, think better gut health, glowing skin, stronger hair, and steady energy, too. Just start with cholesterol. When your gut is balanced, everything else improves too. And today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum offers premium bovine colostrum sourced entirely from American grass-fed cows and made in the USA.

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and feel the difference all day long. I like the strawberry and a glass of milk. For a limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order. You just head to cowboy colostrum.com slash afterparty and use code afterparty at checkout. That's 25% off when you use code afterparty at cowboy colostrum.com slash after party. We're back now with more of Delano Squires. He is, of course, author of the forthcoming book. It is out on June 6th. It's called The Vanishing Black Family, How Welfare and Feminism Made Marriage Optional and Children Vulnerable. He's Director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing over at the Heritage Foundation. It is a great book.

Please make sure to pick it up. I think it is going to be very influential. Delano, thank you so much for sticking around. Absolutely. All right. Well, I mentioned, I teased before the break that I have a lot of questions for you, kind of about class. And this one's going to be right up your alley. You have a chapter in the book called Reject Destructive Media, which I just want to get, like, tattooed on my forehead.

But also, it strikes me because we were talking earlier in the show about Scott Pelly, and I really think probably the biggest problem in modern journalism isn't political bias. It's class bias. And one of the places this shows up, I mean, I don't care if you're talking about rural America or inner city America, it has to be in coverage of some of the serious problems that plague inner city America, urban America. And on that note, I noticed today, because I knew you were coming on. And I know about your experience, of course, in D.C. government dealing with gun violence and such. Take look at this.

This is an Axios headline about a study that came out from the Niscannon Center. The headline here is National Guard didn't reduce D.C. violent crime, comma, report says. Well, I looked up. I also found similar headlines from NPR and from the Hill. And there was local news that did the same thing. They put in the headline this finding from the Niscanon Center that it is correct. It is true that the report from the Discanon Center found that Trump's National Guard deployment did not reduce violent crime in Washington. But what it did find was a 24% drop, a 24% drop in auto-related property crime and non-auto property crime.

We can put this from the survey up on the screen or we can put the Niskanon survey up on the screen. I'm just going to quote from this report. Auto-related property crime tells the clearer story. In the weeks before the guards deployment, D.C.'s auto theft rate was running right at its 2022-2020 norm without any evidence of an anticipatory change. Then immediately after the deployment, it drops sharply and stays there. Non-auto property crime tells almost the same story. Both breaks are clean, large, and fall precisely at the deployment date.

Robbery and other violent crimes do not follow the same pattern. The robbery panel displays a pre-existing downward trend, referring to the data, that predates the deployment, part of the broader 2025 improvement visible throughout DC's data, but with no visible break in August and a mean reversal pattern after then. Other violent crimes barely registered discontinuity at all. Memphis and New Orleans have similarly seen drops in violent crime. It is hard, as experts have written to disentangle what was happening before the National Guard deployment with after the National Guard deployment.

But here you have a 24% drop that just gets erased from the headlines as though it doesn't exist, even though, again, this is just my immediate judgment, Delano. That seems hugely significant here in D.C. to have such a correlation between the time of the deployment and a quarter, 24% drop in that level of property crime. Yeah. It's one of those things where, you know, the violent crime is always sort of the headline. And it's understandable, right? Because you can fudge crime numbers, some types of crimes, but you can't fudge homicides because there's always a body. and somebody else has to account for it. But the thefts, you know, carjackings, robberies, those are things that I think people feel on a day-to-day basis.

And I could see the National Guard being effective in helping to bring those down, not because they're necessarily doing enforcement actions, but just to show of force, when they in a particular area, it sends a signal that law and order are returning to this particular, footprint, right? So, and I, I mean, I work, I work a block away from Union Station, and I,

and I saw it in real time, right, just walking to Union Station. There weren't as many homeless people in Camp, you know, walking, outside Union Station or walking through Union Station or sleeping, you know, in a restaurant or something to that effect. So there was just a general sense that order was returning. To your point, some of these trends were already happening, on a violent crime. And you see it in other places, right? There have been steep decreases in homicides in shootings in Baltimore and some other cities, but I'm not surprised that that show of force had had an effect when it comes to some of the property crime. But again, going back to your point, one of the things I learned, and I sort of knew this intuitively, but it was made clear

to me when I worked in the officer gun violence prevention is that the people who have the loudest bullhorn when it comes to, you know, criminal justice reform, mass incarceration, all the preferred terms on the left are completely disconnected from the day-to-day realities of the people who have to deal with that on a regular basis. And it probably doesn't matter if they're black or white, Delano. That is correct. They're journalists who make over probably or make around six figures and they have college degrees. They're journalists. Some are journalists. Some are activists. So some are disconnected because of economics. Some are disconnect. Some are disconnect. because of ideology.

But I remember distinctly interacting with residents and them saying, no, we want more police. We want more of a police presence in our neighborhoods. We want them on foot patrols because that, you know, apartment building across the way these guys shoot at each other. And it terrifies us when you have bullets coming through our walls and our windows. So that was clear. That was my last meeting in D.C. government was helping to facilitate. a conversation between, you know, police leadership in that particular part of the city

and the residents who were complaining and wanting more. But you don't get that either from the professional journalists who don't care about crime unless it's, you know, a shootout on U Street, you know, during Sunday brunch or the activists who are police abolitionists and think, okay, if we fund the rec centers to operate 24-7, 365 and give moms universal basic income or universal high income, then we could get rid of all crimes. So these are people who are completely disconnected, and that's why it always pays to listen to the people who are in those communities. The only thing I'll say is this.

Even there, you can have sometimes different stories. Right. Because what the moms and the grandma say when they want to walk to the laundromat and peace and the safety is different than what the young men say when they feel like they've been harassed for the fifth time this week by the police who, who, who, who, when they show up, as you can imagine, don't say, oh, hello, my fine chaps. What a, what a pleasant day today. May I speak to you for a quick moment?

That's not the way they tend to respond to some of these guys. So I get their complaints, but I tend to listen to those people who live in those neighborhoods, more so than the journalists or the activists. Yeah, and I think if I'm remembering correctly, I think you and I talked when the National Guard was deployed initially on the unheard show at the time. And I don't think, I think both of us were like lukewarm about it to, to say the least, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I just wanted to ask, you know,

as we kind of put a bow on everything you've just explained, what is it? I mean, your book is sort of about this. What is it that is not represented in the coverage from journalists in the activist class and the commentary from the activist class? Because you write about marriage, you write about family formation. We hear so much about economics,

and we hear so much about racist policing, which again, I think you and I can both agree has some role, some role, some role, both have some role in all of this. But there's so much silence, a deafening silence, really, on some factors that you outline in the Vanishing Black family that have huge, huge, you can look at this in the research effects on what's happening. So what big picture is getting missed by people who just are, what is not being represented in this bigger conversation? I think this goes to the heart of the book. When you, when you take,

talk to progressives and they are focused on racial equity. And they want racial, you know, equal outcomes, whether we're talking about who's reading in the schoolhouse or who's getting locked up in the jailhouse. But the one building that they never focus on is the home. So they act as if people, all people, just spring up out of the ground and are not formed by someone. And in D.C., we're, you know, in the lowest part, lowest income parts of the city that are majority, but the non-marital birth rates there are close to 80%. I mean, in D.C. as a city, just nation's capital, 77% of black children are born to unmarried parents. And 93% of white children are born to married parents. That is a 70%

point gap. And for a city that has a racial equity plan that has indicators that include the percentage of monuments and public statutes. that depict BIPAA people, the fact that there are no indicators that are tied to family, marriage, family structure, household environment is a shame, right? But I think part of it is that the left demands equality in every structure except family structure, and it's completely focused on every institution except the institution of marriage. So what's missing is the acknowledgement that family inputs drive social outputs. And that's where you see the family structure fraying and coming apart the most in D.C., that is where you also see the highest rates of violent crime, right?

Robberies, carjacking oftentimes are sort of spread out across the city. But when it comes to violent crime, that tends to be a very hyper-local phenomenon. So that's part of why I wrote the book is to say, look, if progressives are really honest and they really want to address issues of racial equity and racial disparities, Ground zero for that has to be the household. And I know it's not going to be a comfortable conversation, but it's a conversation that has to begin. So that's part of the reason, because I want this book not just to be a great read,

you know, a great summer read when you're on Moffis Vineyard or wherever it is. It's your summer, right? You summer as a verb. I want this to be the most, I wrote this book to be the most consequential book on the most consequential analysis of the Black family since the Moynihan Report. and the most consequential book on race in the 21st century. That's why I wrote this book.

And I wanted to be actually a playbook for the most important institutions, the church, HBCUs, elected officials. And that's why I recently sent a model bill to the two D.C. council members who represent the poorest parts of the city that would create a commission on racial equity and family structure. Because I know that if I just said a commission on marriage and family, some people might say, well, how do you define marriage? And what type of family stuff are we looking at?

Is it how to get more resources to the family? No, I want to focus on the racial inequities in family structure in the nation's capital. And part of what this commission would do would be ultimately to recommend some, you know, policy changes that will help create a culture of marriage and strong families in neighborhoods where one has not existed for decades. Well, it's very consequential. And before I let you go, Delano, I needed to torture you with something that I was interested in, which is Gwyneth Paltrow on the Gouk podcast, having the co-founder of Anderol on and talking about how Gwena says her husband thinks that she's a Republican, but she's more independent-minded. And actually, it did, I think, fit this segment, Delano, because I think there's like a mass awakening to how poor. we are being served by some of these distinctions on certain issues, not on every issue,

but on some of these issues. So let's go ahead, roll the clip. I want to get your take on it. I notice with my own husband, who's the best person ever in the world, he's so progressive. Like, he has such a sweetheart, and he wants to, like, make sure everybody's looked after. I'm pretty centrist, and my husband thinks I'm a Republican. Which I'm not a Republican. I mean, I don't feel anything right. now, to be totally honest with you, I feel like I'm completely an independent. So just first of all, the concept of a defense contractor coming on the Goop podcast is perfect, first of all. But Delado, Spencer Pratt right now seems to have slipped into third place. It looks

like he's not going to advance to the runoff. Don't need to get into what the heck is going on in that election just to say that Pratt, even getting, let's say, 20% of the vote in Los Angeles is, I think, an accomplishment for somebody who said he was running not with really an R and exos name, even though he's a registered Republican, but an independent who wanted to focus on some common sense solutions that never get talked about by activists like Nithia Rahman and Karen Bass, who come from the left. And I just feel like that's the ground swell right now. That's some of this momentum that's starting to come to a boil is people who say, yes, I see that people are progressive and they have sweet hearts, as Gwyneth Paltrow just said there.

but that's not always compassionate. And that label doesn't necessarily denote compassion. It's just, it's interesting to hear that from somebody like her who is so, I think, affiliated with the left. Yeah, it's funny because, you know, my book doesn't touch on politics a whole lot. Right. I mean, it touches on policy because I have an entire chapter on how the rise of the welfare state displaced black men from their rightful position, you know, as providers in their home. But one of the things that I do talk about, because I actually do think that this is important.

I'm not, I don't tell anybody who to vote for. But there is a section where I engage in political analysis because I argue that the most consequential interracial marriage in American history is not the one that's covered by Loving v. Virginia. It is the union between black feminists and white liberals that's powered the Democratic Party for the best. better part of 60 years. And that union started in a paternalistic fashion, right, where you had an iron triangle with low-income moms who benefited from the expansion of welfare. You had elected officials who got sort of a baked-in, you know, support from their voters because they say, both for me and I'll give you more stuff. And then you have the unelected bureaucrats who manage the poverty economy. So everyone gets something out of the way.

with the deal who's left on the outside are the men who are displaced from from their rightful position in the home. That was the 1960s, right, where you have welfare and feminism rising at the same time disrupting household dynamics. One, as I said, displacing men, the other deceiving women into believing that marriage is oppressive, the home is a prison and children are a burden. But you roll that forward 60 years. And the same party now has a much different relationship with,

you know, the black women who are at base. And I would describe this as still paternalistic, but more of a patronage relationship. So it's when Democrats will say black women are the backbone of democracy, backbone of the Democratic Party, black women save the country. They saved the world, save the galaxy, right? Very affirming. They say, vote for us and we'll make a black woman the vice president or we'll put her on the Supreme Court. We'll make her a federal judge. We'll patronize her DEI consultancy, we'll do run ads with her media company. But when they speak to black men, it's either chastisement or scolding. How dare you consider voting for Donald Trump?

You're a traitor to your race, your grant, you're shaming your granny and your mama. Or it's vote for us and we'll keep you from being George Floyd and Jacob Blake. So the party's relationship with the black community is one where it actually foments and exploits the divisions between men and women. And again, it has served as a substitute father in many millions of low-income households for the better part of 60 years and does not want to give up that control and access. And that is why when progressives talk to white women, they chastise them for voting along with their husbands. But when they talk to black men, they chastise them for not voting

along with their wives. So it inverts sort of the natural order within the household. And I only bring that up to say that is one of the reasons that it's going to be difficult. That is one of the dynamics

that will make marriage revival and family reconstruction more difficult than it ought to be. Because a lot of black voters are going to think, oh, the party is full of allies and they're going to be supportive of the family. And it's like, no, The feminists in the party are not going to be supportive of that.

They're not. The big government liberals, the paternalists are not going to be supportive of that. Their deal is more programs, more resources. They're rolling out programs. Every other week I'm seeing a program, a guaranteed income program for moms, where it's pitched at it. This is for moms and babies, moms and babies. And dad is always on the outside.

So, yes, again, I'm not telling people who to vote for. I'm not telling people they vote Republican for the next 60 years. that the black family is going to suddenly be made whole because I don't believe that. But what I am saying is that there is a dynamic in which politics has driven a wedge between black men and black women, and that has to be removed

in order for actual reconstruction to take place. I mean, it's also actually perfect in the context of Paltrow, who's very famous for saying that she wasn't divorcing her first husband, Coldplay is Chris Martin, but that they were consciously uncoversely uncoversely consciously uncoupling, which people interpreted, I think rightfully so. Delano's hanging his head as a way to normalize or soften the blow of modern divorce. So just an interesting, actually,

I hadn't even thought about that until you started talking. I'm so glad I asked you that question. Delano's book is called The Vanishing Black Family. It is out soon. It's out on June 16th, right, Delano? Yes, and available for pre-order now. So yes. Please pick up this book. Please do it. I really, really appreciate you staying up late and breaking it down for us tonight, Delano. Thank you for having me. The kids are asleep, so I have some extra time. But yeah, thank you for having me, Emily. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

You're one of my favorite people in media today, whether on the left or the right. So it's always a good time where we get to chop it up together. You're one of my very favorites, too. So God bless Delano. Thank you so much. Thank you. Take care. You too.

He's the best. All right. We're going to take a quick break, and we will be back with more in just one moment. All right, everyone, it is time for some life talk, life insurance talk, that is? You probably have it, but do you know how much you were paying for it? The truth, you likely pay too much for too little. Plus, if coverage is tied to your job and you're laid off, you're left with zero protection. It's scary, but it's actually simple to fix with select quote.

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Get the right life insurance for you for less, and save more than 50% at selectquote.com slash Emily. Save more than 50% on term life insurance at selectquote.com slash Emily today to get started. That's selectquote.com slash Emily. And actually, you know, just we said goodbye to Delano Squires, but I wanted to make one point that we were touching on at the end of the interview. It's true, and I've actually written about this, that you see a lot of women in media who we would maybe classify in a social science perspective as elite, affluent, coastal, elite. who have tried to normalize things like divorce, which we have seen, are often much more difficult

to deal with if you are socioeconomically of less privilege, like if you are lower down the socioeconomic rung. So that's just a kind of, again, I didn't think about that until Delano started talking with Paltrow in particular, but kind of an interesting point, actually, with you try to kind of bridge what he was saying about the marriage between, what did he say, black feminists and white liberals, that, yes,

there are some of these, I mean, divorce is kind of a different question, but there are some of these norms that the progressive feminist left has for a long time sought to change. And they actually have been more detrimental. I think they've been detrimental kind of across the board, but they're actually harder for families with less resources or fewer economic resources to deal with. So anyway, that's beside the point. I want to talk about J-Lo. Jennifer Lopez went on subway takes on June 5th. And there are some moments going viral from it, but this one in particular I saw and just it's so perfect. She's talking about who qualifies as a New Yorker. And honestly, just substitute the word New Yorker for American.

And you can see how quickly J-Lo would get in enormous trouble if she had just substituted American for New Yorker. Just hypothetically pretend as you watch this clip, she'd done that. you're going to know where we're going with this. Let's take a look. So what's your take? You have to be born in New York to be a New Yorker. Yes. I know everybody wants to claim the city. No, I know.

Everybody wants to claim our city, but you have to be born in New York. You have to be born in one of the five boroughs to be a New Yorker. Let's say I've been here for 50 years. I'm 90 years old. And you go, are you a New Yorker? And I go, no. I have to say no. You live in New York.

You take on characteristics of New Yorkers, probably by that time. You have a New York sensibility. I pay New York taxes. You pay New York taxes. But I can't call it. When you're born in New York is when you're really in New York. So if I've been here for 50 years. What did I just say?

Do I need to say it? See, this is very New York right here. I said what I said. Not it meant it. Okay. I'm not even particularly hardcore on one side of the birthright citizenship argument or the other, which, by the way, we are waiting for the Supreme Court decision on, likely not going to go the Trump administration's way, but we will see.

There's a pretty complicated constitutional argument about the birthright citizenship case, but nonetheless, whether or not you think somebody is born in the United States and that just automatically makes them an American. You can hear Jennifer Lopez saying, making this case that to call yourself a New Yorker, she's obviously not talking about like the legal case as to whether somebody can be a voter in New York City. That's not what she's talking about.

I get it. But in this like cultural context of what makes an American, we had a whole debate about this between Ryan Grimm and Scott Jennings on the show. And it was a really interesting debate. But you can hear her saying, you know, to some extent you can assimilate. But if you haven't kind of struggled through your whole life as a New Yorker, well, you don't qualify as a New Yorker. And I think actually one of the

cool things about America is that you can come from anywhere and you can't necessarily say, well, I'm French, right? I moved to France, so I'm French. I mean, maybe people do, or you could say, I moved to Ireland, so I'm Irish. But you might not be like, if I moved over to Ireland and in 10 years started calling myself Irish. People might be like, no, that's stolen valor. You're not, you're not really Irish. So in America, though, it's one of the only places in the world where you can, I mean, in world history, where you can come here and say you are an American. And we respect that. We've had a lot of fantastic people who have become Americans, not just legally, but who love the country, just like Jennifer Lopez would say they love the city or maybe hate the

in certain ways, like taxes, and then have this sort of skin in the game. This shared, and everyone, by the way, is blasting J-Lo for this. Let's put the Max Tanny tweet. Our friend Max Tanny over at Semaphore made a good point. He was like, this take is bad, but it's good that J-Lo came with one that's controversial enough to get written up in the New York Times. Too many celebs don't bring real takes like Kamala, quote-unquote, bacon is a spice, horrible.

Austin Butler, quote-unquote, I've never been invited to a bachelor party. What? Yeah, he's right about that for what it's worth. But she is getting absolutely blasted for this take because people are like, no, if to the point that the subway takes guy is making, like, you've lived in New York City for 90 years, because you didn't live there for the first two years of your life, you're not literally a New Yorker. So kind of taking, like, again, the birthright citizenship argument to its absolute extreme. But I think it is funny to hear Jennifer Lopez, who I think is pretty. clearly progressive make this argument about what it takes to be a New Yorker that she would never apply to the United States. Never in a million years apply to the United States. Oh, you're not a

real American. And yes, it's tongue and cheek, but she's so serious about it. She goes straight to camera for the listening audience. She went straight to camera for it. She leaned into this argument. She reveled in this argument. You would never ever make that argument the other way around, of course. And it's funny because the subway takes a dude is like, okay, but what if you assimilate? It's like, well, listen, if we're applying this then to the immigration system more broadly, I think that's a great point, sir. Would you apply it to the immigration system more broadly? I would love to know. But it's funny sometimes how you like swap out the concept and something is fine. And then you kind of take that first principle and apply it elsewhere. And it's just as frustrating.

Again, it's apples and oranges, yes, but it was someone amusing to hear Jennifer Lopez so zealously, vigorously make that argument. And at its core, there is something really similar, right, which is what does it mean to be part of a political community? What does it mean to be part of a city, to be part of a nation? And she's saying is birthright. Her interlocutor is saying, no, but you can assimilate. But what we hear so often from progressives from the left is that an economic reason for migration is enough to be an American right now, including during a massive surge of the Biden administration, which then did, I think, of course, put stresses and pressures on people in the lower rung of the economic ladder who were Americans, whether they were born here or became American. Americans through naturalization, that is like it creates obviously a kind of hierarchy, right? And it puts the Americans second to people who want economic migration into the country,

whom, by the way, don't always assimilate, who don't always learn the language, who don't always truly buy into the system or have any intention of doing so. And again, just a very interesting, I think, provocative experiment to see it applied to the city of New York versus the United States. Not apples to apples. I get it. But I think some of the first principal question does apply. All right. Thank you so much for tuning in to tonight's edition of After Party.

We'll be back on Wednesday coming up on our one year anniversary. So please stay tuned. Some fun stuff is in the works. Emily at devilmedcaremedia.com is where you can reach me. I hope you all have a wonderful night. God bless. We'll see you back here Wednesday with me.