After Party with Emily Jashinsky - The Minaj Moment, Vance vs Crockett, Creepy New Epstein Photos, and Charles Murray's Faith Journey

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

Emily Jashinsky opens the show with an explainer of stories in the news that she believes Democrats need to be wary of heading into the 2026 midterms. She shows the powerful moment when Nicki Minaj has an awkward flub with Erika Kirk and Kirk’s graceful reaction, Minaj’s powerful message to girls everywhere that got Vice President JD Vance’s attention, plus JD Vance and Jasmine Crockett’s war of words, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries lashing out on the Somali story, and Hunter Biden talking immigration. Emily then has fun playing the outgoing D.C. police chief’s meltdown. Next Emily is joined by renowned political scientist and New York Times bestselling author, Charles Murray to discuss his new book, “Taking Religion Seriously.” They discuss his gradual, intellectually driven journey from secularism to belief in God and Christianity, how science impacted his experience, and his message to skeptical intellectuals. Emily wraps up the show with a look at Dave Chappelle’s criticism of Israel and how he slammed Bill Maher in a new Netflix special, the stomach-churning new Epstein files, why Elise Stefanik really exited the New York Governor’s race, and more. PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229. PDS Debt: You’re 30 seconds away from being debt free with PDS Debt. Get your free assessment and find the best option for you at https://PDSDebt.com/EMILY Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everyone, welcome to After Party. It's Christmas week, but we're, of course, still working right now, at least. This is going to be our last show of 2025. We're excited to see all of you in 26. As a reminder, there will be happy hour episodes available this Friday and next Friday. So make sure you subscribe over in the podcast feed, Apple, Spotify, whichever podcast. feed you use. That's where I answer questions directly from all of you that you send to Emily at Devil Maycare Media.com and also the After Party Emily Instagram. I spent, I don't know, I think it was probably close to three hours, taping happy hours last week. So got some good stuff pre-taped. You sent in some super, super interesting and fiery questions, dare I say. So I take a stab and go through them live, actually. Today's guest on After Party is Charles Murray, one of my very favorite authors and thinkers, it is always a rare privilege to be able to pick the brain of somebody whose work you hold in such high regard coming apart is, of course, I think,

the most important book about journalism that is not particularly a book about journalism. So we are going to have Charles, we pre-taped this last week, so I'll be in the chat, which is exciting as well. I get to talk to all of you as soon as we tossed to the Murray interview, but we have a lot to get through tonight. Busy, busy, busy news week leading up to Christmas. Make sure you subscribe not just on the podcast feed, also the YouTube feed. We appreciate it. Now, just dropped.

Sean Ryan's interview with Hunter Biden. That's all a lot, but it just dropped. And as we were prepping the show, a couple of clips started popping. And so we're going to take a look at a clip of Hunter Biden talking about his father's immigration policy. Is he defending it? Not really. We're going to be talking about Nikki Menage at Amfest and her interview with Erica Kirk. J.D. Vance reacted to that. Jasmine Crockett reacted to J.D. Vance kind of in general. Just more stuff from, I actually think the theme of tonight's opening that I'm going to get to in just one moment is what should make the left

nervous about the Democratic Party going into 2026. Don't get me wrong. the right has a lot to be nervous about as well but uh we're going to talk a little bit about the dc police chief who's leaving her job uh incredible but if you haven't seen this yet just incredible compared herself to jesus so make sure you stick around for that one dave chappelle dropped a new special on friday where he actually talks about charlie kirk talks about israel so we're going to dive into that and i'm actually going to do a breakdown of some things i went through all of the new epstein pictures i haven't gone through all of the files myself yet i don't know that anybody could. And this is actually being in real time. I mean, even just tonight,

there are new developments as people get through files as Ryan Grimmer-DropSight gets through some of these files. But I wanted to pull out a few things just that I saw going through the pictures. Don't want to repeat too much the rest of the media's coverage of this, but just dive into a couple of the pictures. So stay tuned for those. And speaking of Ryan, he thinks that I ended Elis Stefanik's gubernatorial campaign. I strongly disagree. So we will have that for you in just a bit as well. First, let me say, over the years, I've been clear about this. I'm not just pro-birth. I'm pro-life. And being pro-life means standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that is exactly why I partner and partner very proudly with pre-born. Pre-born doesn't just say babies.

They make motherhood abundantly possible. They provide free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel with women in need, and then they stay with real practical help, including financial support for up to two years after the baby is born. This is what true Christ-centered compassion looks like, not just for the baby, but for the mother, too. And here's where you can make a huge difference. Just $28, just $28 provides a free life-saving ultrasound, one chance for a mother to see her baby. When she does, she is twice as likely to choose life. That is so huge. It's so easy. Preborn is trying to save 70,000, 70,000 babies this year. So don't just say your pro-life, live it, help save babies, and support mothers today. Go to preborn.com

slash Emily or call 855-601-229. That's preborn.com slash Emily. We love preborn so much. Support them if you can. We appreciate it. All right. I promised that the theme of tonight's opening would be things that should make Democrats nervous going into a 2026 midterm cycle. Let's roll this clip. This is going to be a little bit of a Trumpian weave. So bear with me. I'm going to start with Nikki Minaj, and I'm going to end on Hunter Biden. Along the way, we are going to have pit stops with Jasmine Crockett and Hakeem Jeffries and the D.C.

Police Chief. It sounds like a Stefan sketch. But stay with me here. Let's take a look at Nikki Minaj, who was the surprise guest at Turning Point USA's First America Fest without Charlie Kirk. Minaj, the surprise guest, was interviewed on Sunday with Erica Kirk on stage. Here's S-1. You have amazing role models like the assassin, J.D. Vance, our vice president. And when I say that, hmm. If you're listening, Minaj just realized she's...

Trust me. There's nothing new under the sun that I have not heard, so you're fine. Yes, we did. I love you. I love you. You have to laugh about it, truly. I have been called every single thing, and you know what? God is so good. You let it roll right off your back.

And this is what's so beautiful about this moment. because if the internet wants to clip it, who cares? I love this woman. She's an amazing woman. She has a soul and a heart for the Lord. And words are words, but I know her heart, and it doesn't even matter. And you say what you want to say because I know your heart. I do not judge that.

Thank you. Okay. Now, let's watch this next clip of Nikki Minaj talking a little bit about young girls and beauty standards. This is us, too. Why would we now need to make other people downplay their beauty so that we can feel, no, that's not how it works. I don't need someone with blonde hair and blue eyes to downplay their beauty because I know my beauty. Do you understand? It doesn't bother me that a woman feels and says that she's beautiful.

Why shouldn't she feel that? Why have we gotten to a point where certain colors or certain kinds of people have to be afraid of loving themselves and loving the way they look? Like, isn't that wild? And so for little girls, I don't want what was done to little black girls done to little white girls. I don't want it done to any girls. I want all the girls in the world to know that you are unique. You are beautiful. You are you.

And you can compliment another girl. You can compliment another woman and still know that you are epic and amazing. We need to nurture young girls. Yes, whether they are black, white, Asian, Hispanic, they still need to be nurtured. They cannot continue to pay for other people's sins. They haven't done anything wrong. Amen. Now, you probably didn't have Nikki Minaj giving a stinging rebuke of critical race theory on stage

at a Turning Point USA conference on your 2025 bingo card. I did not either. But Minaj is interesting because she's kind of slowly in real time been working out. Maybe heterodox is the right way to put it, heterodox political beliefs. She's pretty clearly started as somebody you could put on the left, maybe just kind of like mainstream Democrat, but she talked a little bit about what changed for her. And I have a quote right here. She said, I just got tired of being pushed around.

Sometimes you just get tired of it. At another point, she said, we're not allowed to think out loud anymore. She also said, we're the cool kids, meaning the right. She said, at one point, God, and she was praying, said to her, where have you been? I've been waiting for you, because she was talking a bit about returning back to her faith. And it raises so many different, there are a lot of threads that we can pull on here. So first of all, we start with the kind of CRT, and it wasn't really named. Nobody was

talking about critical race theory and a technical academic sense. But Nikki Minaj speaking from her heart and very graciously, by the way, I have a couple of other points to get to on that, but speaking from her heart graciously, eloquently, and wearing her heart very clearly on her sleeve with great production value, by the way, from Turning Point USA. Now, if I had to think about Nikki Minaj speaking at like 2011 CPAC, it's just, it's different now, right? Her saying, quote, we're the cool kids hits totally differently when it's coming from a person on the right in 2025, almost 2026, because Donald Trump is now the president. He has this whole vibe shift post-20204, so it makes more sense to see something like that.

And it does make it kind of, for me at least watching that, it underscores the shift in the culture and especially for younger people. But Nikki Minaj had the everyman's reaction to critical race theory in that video. And let's put up how J.D. Vance responded. He said, Nikki Minaj said something at Amfest that was really profound. I'm paraphrasing, but she said, just because I want little black girls to think they're beautiful, doesn't mean I need to put down little girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. Vance continues, we all got wrapped up over the last few years in zero-sum thinking. This was because the people who think they rule the world pit us against one another.

Nikki Minaj rejects that. We all should. And bundled into that package, actually, from Vance is this idea. that the people who rule the world were trying to pit us, or they think they rule the world, we're trying to pit us against one another. That gets to what Nikki Minaj was saying about being tired of people telling her what to think,

saying we are not allowed to think out loud anymore. And that is actually very profound as well, because we think now in published social media, she's been using X a ton, by the way, like, but we think in like these social media bites, or you have a thought, you post it because when you open up your social media to check in what's going on, it tells you to post what's on your mind. Literally, that's what happens when you open the apps. So it comes out on Instagram, it comes out on TikTok, it comes out on X, it comes out on live

videos, it comes out on videos that are published. And as you go through life, your thought process, your thinking is happening aloud. And along the way, you're not allowed to sort of be on that journey, right? And that was very interesting to hear Nikki Minaj say because she's somebody who has been absolutely getting attacked wildly getting attacked for, again, thinking aloud. She's clearly been on somewhat of an ideological journey. And you can see how at points in that journey, when she started getting this pushback, it was like pushed her maybe further in the other direction because she realized that the side she was disillusioned with was also trying to to get her, sort of clinging to her, jealously clinging to her, and trying to get her not even to

think freely. And that's, again, I mean, I remember 10 years ago people on the right saying, I think when I was in college, our conservative student group hosted a lecture that was, I want to say the title was like, conservatives are the real rebels on campus or something like that, which on an intellectual level was totally true at the time. Because if you're at a liberal college campus like I was, it was complete ideological, ideological conformity. The people who styled themselves as hipsters had the least interesting and rebellious worldviews imaginable. Now, though, that is not just on an intellectual level, right? Like, it's kind of cringe to think back on that in 2011 or 2012 when Mitt Romney was the GOP candidate, right? But now, it's a

It's not just intellectual, it's cultural, and it's hitting people in the heart. And I think that was very, very interesting to hear from Nikki Minaj, not just about the speech, creativity question, but also about the race question. Let's take a look now. I told you it was going to be a weave at Jasmine Crockett. Well, let's first play J.D. Vance on Jasmine Crockett. This is from Sunday S3. Oh, Jasmine Crockett.

This is the turning point speech. The record speaks for itself. She wants to be a senator, though her street girl persona is about as real as her nails. All right, so Jasmine Crockett then responded. This was also on Sunday, S4. The fact that he said I have a quote unquote street girl persona. I'm sorry, but anybody that you talk to knows my credentials. They know that I've gone to school.

They know that I'm educated. I never tried to put on some random story about where I came from. But at the end of the day, I am who I am and I am authentic. And that is actually what they are fearful of. It's my authenticity because it rings true with every single American, whether they're a Texan or not. Baby, let's talk about your record. Because the only reason you're the vice president is because the current president tried to have his last president killed. I have been a black woman my entire life.

I promise you, there are other people, just like J. Vance who have tried to do the same racist tropes my entire life and somehow I ascended and became a U.S. Congresswoman. It will not be different when I become a U.S. Senator. And we can have a conversation when I get to the Senate floor if he wants to talk. Okay. When I get to the Senate floor, now Jasmine Crockett, of course, is running in what I believe to be the most interesting Democratic primary of 2026 against Timu, Ritchie Cunningham, James Tala Rico, down in Texas. They want to take on John Cornyn, or to be fair whoever wins that texas republican primary and for crocket to say on the one hand it is a

racist trope to refer to her as a street girl uh from jd vance and then to say on the other hand she is just totally authentic you see the struggles of the nascent crockett senate campaign because she wants to pretend now that she didn't intentionally uh talk like she was on the street about Republicans and about other Democrats, which she did. I mean, I call it, I wrote a piece recently calling it stylistic populism, something like that. I don't even remember my own quote. And that's different from like policy populism. Crockett wants you to think that she's populist because of the way that she acts, but she wants to govern the way Hakeem Jeffries says, right,

the way the democratic establishment wants her to. that's not authentic. And I think people, the more she tries to be a different version of Jasmine Crockett, now that she knows she has to run statewide and not just in her district, are going to be able to see if she really wants to push that she's authentic. If that's going to be her message, people are going to be able to see pretty easily through it because it defies believability for many different reasons. Speaking of Hakeem Jeffries, he got asked, I told you this was a weave. I feel like if there are Pulitzer's for weaves, this should be a contender. Follow along with me here. Hakeem Jeffries got asked about the Somali investigation, and here's S6, how minority leader

Jeffries responded. Thank you, Leader Jeffries. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is accusing Minnesota Governor Tim Walts and AG Keith Ellison of not cooperating with the committee's investigation into some of the widespread fraud happening there with the social services in the state. They should cooperate with the committee's investigation and you have concerns about what's happening in the state. James Comer is a joke, an embarrassment, an unsurious individual, and a malignant clown. A malignant clown. That's actually not a bad turn of phrase there from Jeffreys, but it's his inability to just say yes. Just say yes. This is serious. serious investigation, just say, yes, you politically, I'm talking politically, you take it away

from Republicans if you just say, sure, we are happy to open the books, have them come in. If Tim Wals did something wrong, Tim Wals did something wrong, we should get to the bottom of this. To respond by calling Comer a malignant clown rather than addressing any of the substance at all, Jeffries is lucky that's going to get buried in the pre-Christmas news cycle because, again, they are genuinely struggling here to come up with a coherent substantive response to some of Republicans' best, most powerful talking points. Now, 2026 is a midterm year, as we've been discussing, and that's tough for the Republican Party. When Donald Trump is not on the ballot, And this goes without saying, the Trump coalition does not historically turn out for other Republicans.

We have 10 years of data, basically, at this point. We're looking at a decade of information at this point. Remember, those 2018 midterm elections were bruising for Republicans. At the time, Harry Anton said it wasn't a blue wave. It was a blue tsunami. And not without reason. It actually really was record high turnout levels for carried Democrats over the edge. That is because Donald Trump's base is lower propensity voters.

The Republican Party is being remade into a party with lower propensity voters that is less affluent voters. The Democratic Party is becoming the party of the affluent, which will benefit them in midterm elections. And historically, the party in power struggles in midterm elections, period. So the structural conditions in 2026 are as rough for Republicans as they were in that record bruising 2018. 2018 midterm cycle. So again, structural conditions, not super favorable to Republicans. But there are ways for Republicans to perhaps prevent the blue wave from becoming the blue tsunami and tying Democrats to the anti-manage perspective on this, tying Democrats to total complete and total nonchalance about what happened. with the immigration system, whether it's Somalia or whether it's the Biden administration, there are a whole lot of Democrats on the ballot

who supported that and voted for that are on the record chastising Republicans for that. So do I think Republicans should be nervous? Yes, but I do think we see examples also of Democrats still clinging foolishly to identity politics and not fully appreciating how powerful, how powerful what Nikki Minaj now see in the left, how powerfully that can be turned against Democrats.

I think Minaj's comments were the everyman comments. And I do just want to play a little bit here of Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden on Sean Ryan. This dropped right before we went to air. So I didn't have a chance to watch the full thing yet. But this is one of the interesting clips that popped from the interview. This is Hunter Biden on his father's immigration policies. We can roll it.

It's a vibrant immigration, but we don't want immigrants that are coming here illegally, draining us of resources and also being prioritized above people that are actual literal heroes that are coming home that are still recovering from 20 years of endless war or anybody else in our society, right? Right. Sure. He sounds like James Tolerico when he went on Jubilee and said the Biden administration's immigration policy was a failure. Now, this is how Democrats seem to be deciding to deal with the historic proportion of the Biden administration's immigration failure going into 2026. They want to just say that it was bad, that they need to distance themselves from. bad. The question then that you need to ask, every Democrat, is what is your policy? What would you have done differently? What do you believe a just immigration system looks like? What would your administration have done differently than the Walsh administration in Minneapolis? There are questions that Democrats will end up sounding, no matter how hard they try, more like

Jasmine Crockett than anyone else on if you pull poll at those threads because fundamentally their policy is not popular with the American people and it's not changing. We don't really have evidence of substantive shifts in these policies. And so that for as nervous as Republicans should be, some of this should make Democrats nervous as well because they are trying to work out what will be a politically palatable line of messaging in 2026. And again, if Republicans play their cards correctly, they should be able to neutralize some of that. Because at the end of the day, these issues, whether it's race or immigration, the right now has the cultural momentum. It's hard in a 2026 midterm election cycle that is probably heavily going to feature the

economy to do that and health care to do that when Republicans refuse to come up with a coherent health care plan, put it on the floor and vote, get it through the Senate and then get the president to sign it. So no excuse to them on that one. But there are ways, again, that Democrats' attacks on this can be neutralized because they're still not fixing some of the obvious glaring, glaring problems. Another thing J.D. Vance said in his speech is, quote, But we don't persecute you, this is TPUSA, Amfest speech, we don't persecute you for being male, for being straight, for being gay, for being anything. The only thing that we demand is that you be a good or great American patriot. Now, I'm talking about the politics of this, and obviously the substance and the politics overlap.

The middle of that Venn diagram is the most important part. But again, that's not the messaging that you hear from the left. And so if the right can pull that off convincingly, you have to be looking at, like, I went and looked back today at how Glenn Yonkin won in 2020. He was marrying class and culture in a way that Winsomwell Sears did not. And Yonkin won, Sears lost, Yon won in a better cycle, Sears lost badly in a worse cycle. But the way that you make these attacks on Dem Identity Politics stick is correctly address them as a class issue. And obviously, that's a different question on the economy and tariffs.

And we could open up that can of worms, but for now I'm just going to stick with this. If you are able to say, as J.D. Vance did in his speech, which you heard him say, the people who think they rule you think that they can control the way you talk. et cetera, or he put this in his ex post. This was quote, this was because the people who think they rule the world pit us against one another. You know who else says a version of that? Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders. And that is because it's effective. There's a reason Bernie Sanders and EOC were bringing people in red states to these massive fighting oligarchy rallies. And it's because rather than talking about the culture war, they were alluding to it in these ways by saying the people who think they rule the world pit us against one another, pit us

against one another. So if you can combine those two things in 2026, you can maybe, and obviously deal with health care, deal with the economy, no small matter, but just saying that the right still has these really powerful political tools in its arsenal because Dems are incapable of turning the ship around. It doesn't mean that some of the of them aren't trying. It doesn't mean that some of them have this kind of foggy inclination of what to do better and where they're going wrong. But they're struggling enormously because there are still so many interests deeply rooted that they have to be careful not to alienate. All right, I do want to play this video. I didn't work it into the weave. You can take my weave Pulitzer away from me,

but I really want to work this video of outgoing D.C. police chief, Pamela Smith. It's not just a good video because I live in D.C. and it is extra amusing because of this. Now, Smith's police department is, I think, pretty seriously, credibly accused of fudging numbers to make it look like crime was less of a problem, even before the Trump takeover. The police union, for example, had been crying foul for a long time before the Trump administration stepped in in Washington, in D.C. and took over law enforcement or stepped in and superseded D.C. law enforcement on some stuff. Augmented D.C. law enforcement on some stuff. So Pamela Smith is on her way out amidst some of these investigations. And here's how she did it. Here's how she went out.

Belays of glory. So I'm going to the Bible when I say this, to my haters. Okay. F you. No, it's not a drop-the-mic moment. Watch me in this space. Here we go. I forgive you. I forgive you.

Because the Bible makes it very clearly. When Jesus was hanging on the cross, when he slated to his father, even in the pit of agony, in defeat he said father forgive them for they know not what they do god bless you and god tube you it has been my pleasure to sign the district of columbia man this is a wendy's she's at an mpd press conference with the mpd logos behind her a formal press conference and is clearly working something out that is not merely professional but deeply personal on the crowd at that metropolitan police department press conference in which Pamela Smith compared herself in this beautiful Christmas season, sort of an Easter message, to Jesus on the cross.

There are no words, although I will say I feel much safer knowing that Pamela Smith and whatever the hell that was is not going to be the head of the police department. in our nation's capital anymore. That's sort of a heartwarming place to leave it. I have so much more to talk about Dave Chappelle, Jeffrey Epstein, and the New York Senator Race. I'll probably have to keep some of that a little pithy because I just went on so long talking about 2026.

It's coming up real fast, but I have to introduce this interview I got to do with Charles Murray, who is out with a very important new book that I read and I was going to interview him before, obviously before I read the book and read the book. And it is, it's called taking religion seriously. You're going to hear all about it in the interview.

I'm going to jump in the chat. So if you're watching this live on YouTube, I'll be right there. It is one of the most interesting, one of the most interesting analytical, analytical, what's the best way to put it, deep dives, as Murray tries to verify over the course of his recent life, Christianity. And boy, does he come to an interesting conclusion. So we're going to go to Charles Murray in just one moment before we do, though.

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Change your story in 30 seconds. Get your free personalized assessment and the best option for you at PDSdebt.com slash Emily. That's PDSdebt.com slash Emily. dsdebt.com slash Emily. Without further ado, I give you Charles Murray. I'm so happy to be joined now by one of my very favorite authors ever, Charles Murray, who is out with a new book called Taking Religion Seriously. He's, of course, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, the author of what I think is one of the most important books of the last couple decades coming apart. I reference it all

of the time. Charles Murray, thank you for being here. Oh, I've been looking forward to it. I just finished taking religion seriously. I'm absolutely going to to be ordering tons of copies for Christmas gifts. So I encourage other people to do the same. And I have a lot of questions, Charles. I want to start with this line. You write, The Big Bang gave me good reason for thinking that the creation of the universe was a mystery with a capital M. The fantastic brute facts of the Big Bang forced me to rethink everything. And I just wanted to start at that point because it seemed like that was maybe one of your starting points. Could you walk us through a little bit why that moment was so important for you?

Well, a little background to it is that I am no good at spiritual perceptiveness, which I consider to be a trait in human beings that runs from low to high. And some people have more than others, and I have very little. My wife has a lot, but I don't. And so when I started to get interested in religion, largely because of my wife, I was not going to have a road to Damascus moment in an ordinary sense of that term that's just not in my makeup

but I did have a road to Damascus moment when I read a little book called Just Six Numbers by a guy named Martin Rees whose astronomer Royal used to be in Great Britain and he made the point in this little book non-religiously, not a religious book that the Big Bang was accompanied by a variety of settings, if you want to think it that way,

if the physical settings, that if they all hadn't been exactly where they are, then we would live in a universe of black holes and nothing else or live in a universe of radiation and no stars and no planets. And of course, it's incorrect to say we would live in a universe like that because that universe would not support life. Well, I finished this little book. And by the way, the odds against all these settings being right by accident are literally trillions to one.

And I got done with that and I say, I can't believe I'm thinking this, but I think the only plausible explanation is that the universe was created with intention. That's a huge leap. Because once you say the universe was created with intention, that opens up possibilities of a way to. different kind of God than I had been willing to consider previously. A God who actually might be interested in human beings. Well, and you write about also the anthropomorphification of God in the Bible. And then obviously one of your hang-ups towards the end of the book we learn is the question of divinity, Christ's divinity. And that's interesting because the question of Christ's divinity is probably difficult from your end because it anthropomorphizes very deliberately.

God. And that's not just Old Testament, as you write about, but it's the foundation of the New Testament, too. So why, talk to us a little bit about why, especially at Christmas season, you know, despite, you know, finding the historicity of the gospel is fairly compelling. How do you think about that now and you're sort of where you are right now in your journey? Well, without knowing that I was changing my belief, I changed it. And that, by the way, Emily, a lot during the course of writing this book. It's not that at discrete moments in time, I would say I changed my mind about this. The Big Bang was that was an exception. Rather, it is that I realized 15 years later that I think differently than I did before.

And in this case, I came to believe that Jesus had a special relationship with God that is extremely hard for human beings to describe. but that I would feel a reverence were I to encounter Jesus that I would not feel for anybody else, even though I'd feel the utmost respect for other great religious leaders and teachers that he occupies a special place.

And I evolved from a position where I've considered him a great teacher but not divine to that substantially different, over 20 years, maybe? This is one line I wanted to ask you about. You write, for me, C.S. Lewis was the perfect example of a, quote, smart person who still believed that stuff. And that line stood out to me because there's something from coming apart, I think, in that line of itself, where when you're surrounded by so many other smart people who have this kind of conventional wisdom about,

about God and Christianity. The book is organized where you first start thinking about God and then about Christianity. Was that even just maybe culturally a brick wall that you kept hitting up against? Was there any part of that difficult for you? Well, you know, what happened to me, I think probably happened to a lot of people.

I know it happened to my wife. May have happened to you at some point. And that is you go off to college and you want to be a member of this tribe and you get there and you learn smart people don't believe that stuff anymore when it comes to religion and you don't learn that through courses and lectures

you learn that through the ambiance the zeitgeist, the new you in which you live. I went off to Harvard and none of my friends were religious, none of my professors were obviously religious. The topic was very seldom discussed, but if it did come up, it was just treated dismissively

because smart people don't believe that stuff anymore. And so I bought into a kind of secular catechism that looking back on it was so unreflective. And I actually give it in the book. I won't bother to do that here. But I had not examined the empirical reality and evidence for any of the elements of my catechism. That's just what the people who tribe I wanted to join believed.

And that's where you started thinking again about the Big Bang. The others, I mean, I was surprised by your explorations of paranormal phenomenon, near-death experiences, NDE's. What was that like, again, as somebody who maybe sees a lot of those, like, relegated, just, again, pop culturally, culturally to the zone of, like, evangelical weirdos like myself. But coming to this from an aggressively rational perspective, I just really enjoyed that section of the book. What was that like for you, Charles? Well, you have to understand that I am no more free from internal contradictions than anybody else. So whereas I was a wholehearted materialist in the sense of believing that consciousness exists exclusively in the brain. When the brain stops, you stop.

There's nothing after that. Okay, so if you'd asked me for a period of 20 or 30 years, I would have said, well, of course that's true. you know, how else is consciousness going to exist except through the brain. But all that same time, I'd always been interested in paranormal phenomena, been interested in paranormal phenomena since I was a teenager. And I read considerably on it, and I didn't discard it. On the contrary, I believed long before I became this eccentric Christian that I've become, long for then, I accepted the reality of ESP.

And you think it would have crossed my mind at that point, you know, if you accept the reality of ESP, it's really hard to reconcile that with materialist position on the brain. And then I also read early on of the NDE literature, near-death experience literature. I read the original life after life

that is it Moody, Brought in 75. And I didn't stop to think if NDE's are real, that sort of has a religious implication, doesn't it? So it took, it was a case of of not resisting that evidence, I thought it was very persuasive.

It was a case of recognizing the degree to which it was consistent with a lot of religious explanations that I had not taken seriously. That's very interesting. A lot of, and you address this a bit, a lot of people now would maybe say, they would give the multiverse explanation. And as we get higher tech, it seems like people are either going in one direction or the other, They're going back to lower tech or they're going higher, higher tech, and they're having all of these science fiction-like explanations for creation.

Did you flirt with that at all, Charles, as you were? I know you write about the multiverse and why that's not a satisfying theory from your perspective. Why it's not a satisfying theory? First place, it's all theory. Right. But there is no empirical evidence for it at all. It's just theoretically possible. And, you know, if you're talking about plausibility,

In order for this universe to have a reasonable chance of existing by chance, there would have to be not just two or three multiverse universes, there'd have to be a couple of million, just to have a decent chance of this universe existing. Now tell me, is believing in a million universes more plausible than believing in a universe that was created intentionally? You want to talk about a commitment to faith. I would say that believing the multiverse is one which is contradicted every time you walk outside into your backyard in a starry night and look up there and say, do I believe there are a billion of these? Nah, I don't really think so.

And I find the multiverse theory something that only super smart intellectuals can believe. Yes, that's well said. There's this section at the end of the book where you read, I was born in 1943 and have witnessed 100, and 80 degree flips in the secular received wisdom on child rearing, marriage, divorce, euthanasia, abortion, acceptable public behavior, responsibility for the consequences of one's actions and virtually everything about human sexuality. Many of these changes do not appear to have been for the better. Doesn't the evanescence of moral principles in the present age suggest a special need to seek moral bedrock? And I just want to ask you about that in the context

of Charlie Kirk's assassination spurring this massive sales of Bibles. The Wall Street Journal reported there was a huge increase in Bible sales. After that, we've seen a lot of conversation about the revival in the last couple of years, Christian revival in the last couple of years, people like Ayanne Hirsi Ali, even Tom Holland, exploring faith much more, Christian faith, much more seriously, I should say. And I wonder if some of this you think comes from people just being forced to confront those base level questions in the same way that you were. We thought we kind of had solved them, and it was like the higher, the more quickly the technology accelerated, the more it's forced some

people to confront those basic, basic questions. Is that off? What do you make about? I have a couple of thoughts on that. One is that the 20th century was in many ways anomalous. And it was anomalous in the degree to which intellectuals managed to avoid thinking about and writing about the basic questions of the human condition and human existence. It was an impoverished century philosophically, and I think spiritually as well. And that's unnatural. It is deep in the human instincts, and especially among people who consider themselves intellectuals, to think about these questions.

what college kids should be talking about until 3 o'clock in the morning when they're sophomores and juniors. And that we moved away from that was, I think, a kind of adolescence. And I like to think of the 21st century as sort of growing out of adolescence and realizing maybe our parents were right about some things after all. And this taking the greater interest in religion now, I think is a return to human beings behaving normally. I would also add one other thing to that, which is, as you suggest, the more we learn, the more we face a situation, not where science explains away the arguments for God, we have a situation where science is raising new findings that religion has answers for that science to start.

Yeah, and if folks are interested in that, Spencer Claven, this book does a lot of it, too, and Spencer Clavin wrote a book on that as well. Some really compelling stuff. Justin Breyerle has done great podcasts on it, too. The response I'm curious about since you've published this book, because Charles, one of the things that comes through in all of your work, especially this book, though, is that you are constantly testing your own beliefs, and you're genuinely driven by an interest in truth. So since the book has been out, since you... You've been talking to friends about it, receiving responses about it.

Has anything shifted in those conversations? Since those conversations, what's it been like? Actually, the most revealing interchange I had was after the Wall Street Journal op-ed, where I was talking about terminal lucidity, a phenomenon where severely demented people, dementia, advanced dementia, have a period of brief return to full consciousness,

a day or two before they die. And it provoked a response by Steve Pinker. It was sort of the ultimate child of the Enlightenment. He's written books, of course, with that in the title, in effect. And his response, I admire and like Steve, and I thought his response was silly. It was content-free. It didn't engage the substance of what I was doing.

It was sort of hand-waving. hand-waving about evidence that meets a lot of tests of scientific seriousness. And there was an interchange, not just my response, but there was an interchange with the leading scholar on Terminal Lucidity, where it just seemed to me that all the science and the hard thinking was on the side of that scientist, and that Steve, for all his other virtues, has a kind of invincible faith in unbelief.

Yeah, it sounds right to me. I want to put this poll from Pew up on the screen. This is F2. This is the Pew headline says, growing share of U.S. adults say religion is gaining influence in American life. More Americans also express a positive view of religion's role in society. This was in late October, Charles. And I wonder if you could speak to also as you were researching this book. I imagine you did this over the course of a while. And I'm curious also, though, if you noticed that the pinkers of the world are less and less as we go forward that as some of this evidence presents itself or i mean not presents itself that's like passive tense but as people discover new and new evidence that the the pinker religious commitment to being against religion is it fading yeah i mean look at the standing that richard dawkins and christopher hitchins had for example in 2005, 2006, where aggressive atheism was chic and it's not chic anymore. And instead, you have all of these harbingers that you mentioned earlier that speak to a renewed interest in religion not just as being socially useful, which I've always believed,

but the truth value of religion. And I find that encouraging. I also, well, I remember a friend of mine who lives in New York and went to his Catholic Church the Sunday after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. And he said, it had never been that crowded in his entire life that he'd been going to church there. And so something's going on, but it's early days yet, But the United States has a history of great religious reawakings.

And it's conceivable we are at the outset of another one. What is, in the book obviously addresses this, what was it for you? I mean, you talk about the C.S. Lewis trilemma that Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or the son of God. Was that question what separated, you know, you read a lot about Buddhism, Christianity from other religion? for you? I mean, I think you also write about how you sense that they're all kind of directionally maybe rooted in the same thing. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah. Well, I still believe, I believe that whatever God may be, he is unknowable. And I make the comparison that it's within my ability to understand God in the same way. It's within my dog's

ability to understand me. And he can't. He cannot know what I'm doing when I sit in front of my computer monitor and tap at a keyboard. And similarly, I am, I am, I and every other human being, I believe, is faced with the same problem in trying to understand God. But, and in that sense, I think that human beings in Judaism and Buddhism and Taoism and other great religious traditions have gotten hold of deep understandings about the nature of the universe and the nature of the beings in that universe. There are different parts of the elephant. And to me, Christianity presents the most comprehensive

and the most persuasive evidence for the outlines of a God that even though we don't understand him, And I shouldn't use the, I shouldn't use him or her to describe it. We steeped through a glass very dimly indeed. But I think Christianity's glass is a little bit clearer than everybody else's. That's so fascinating. Well, last question, Charles. I remember when Charlie Kirk's memorial happened, some folks in media had very interesting reactions.

And I'm paraphrasing, and I forget who posts with this, but it was someone saying, I would feel more comfortable. Oh, you know what? It was Thomas Chatterton Williams, who I like, who said something like, I would feel more comfortable at, you know, a European something something than at this event in my own country,

that there was something so culturally alien to Thomas Chatterton Williams about that giant revival with Christian rock and the like. And that is totally fair. And that's kind of what you write about and coming apart. I mean, it's exactly what you write about

and coming apart. So I wonder, Charles, what your message would be to folks who see that and say, that is not for me, that seems anti-intellectual, that seems kind of icky, that seems lowbrow. What's your message to those folks? Well, I reminded of me talking to Michael Novak, the Catholic social philosopher years ago. And I said, you know, I'll find a lot to admire about the Catholic Church, Michael. but why is it that you insist on retaining just absolutely unbelievable doctrines like transubstantiation?

And Michael looked at me with that gentle smile of his, and he says, God needs a church that can talk to everyone. And I guess I would say to William Thomas, Thomas William Chatterton, who I also like, I would say, Thomas, God also needs a way to speak to overeducated intellectuals like you. and so you go ahead and you figure out your way, but don't diss the way that God is speaking to other people because they can be equally valid, even though one is not to your taste.

Charles Murray, author of the new book, Taking Religion Seriously, pick up a copy for yourself, pick up a copy as Christmas gifts. Really appreciate you being here, sir. Thank you so much for your time. I've enjoyed it. Thank you, Emily. I was just telling everyone in the chat,

there's nothing worse than having to watch yourself do an interview. It's so painful. I never watched myself back. But whenever we pre-tape an interview, I'm forced to watch myself back. So thank you to everybody in the chat for going through that with me. Let's talk now about Dave Chappelle,

who dropped a surprise special on Netflix Friday night. He talked a bit about Charlie Kirk, and he opened up the Israel can of worms. Let's go ahead and watch this mashup of moments from the special that are going viral. online right now. And Bill Marr, the famous comedian, I've known Bill since I was like 18, 19 years old,

and I've never said this publicly. Language alert, of course. These motherfuckers act like, because I did a comedy festival in Saudi Arabia, I somehow betrayed my principles. Well, no, no, I know, I didn't, I know. They said, well, Saudi Arabia

killed a journalist. And rest in peace, Jamal Khashoggi, I'm sorry that he got murdered in such a heinous fashion. But And that was like, you know, period. And also. I mean, look, bro, Israel's killed 240 journalists in the last three months. So I didn't know y'all was still counting.

My voice has become more powerful than I intended it to be. And I cannot let these niggas do me like Charlie Kirk or even. worse than that he's wearing a con cappernic sure somehow co-op me and then make me say the things that they want me to say just in case

we need a coat but it's got to be something that you know what I mean that I would never say oh I know what the code is the cold word is I stand with Israel thank you very much and good night

he throws the mic Okay. So unlike D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith, that was a mic drop moment. You heard her earlier in the show telling him it's not a mic drop moment, but watch me in the space. Dave Chappelle does not need to tell people to watch him in this space. Now, he also, that was in D.C., made a joke about how he was prepared to come to D.C. and be very upset by the law enforcement takeover, Trump's law enforcement takeover. And he was like, yeah, it was pretty clean, everyone. This is what you get with. Dave Chappelle at his best, which is, you cannot in any way whatsoever pin him into one category. You cannot put the man in a box at all. He also referred to Bill Maher, you heard him there say, F that guy. He also talked about his cracker-ass commentary. Listen, there are two different things happening.

On the surface, there's the comedy. And then under the laugh lines, the punch lines, there's the substance of it. And some of the substance, like, is, you know, the Saudi Arabia stuff. Dave Chappelle doesn't want you to believe necessarily that he's some moral champion. He wants you to believe that he is saying whatever he wants to say, right? That's what he's going for at the end when he's like, we need a code. so that I'm not co-opted. Like what he wants to be judged by morally is not being told what to say. So if that's his standard as a comedian that he wants the public to judge him by, then he's obviously

passing with flying colors. He talked about how he wanted to bring, I think the way he put it was pussy jokes to the Middle East. Mission accomplished, Dave in Saudi Arabia. And that's the, he's trying to, If you want to judge him by what he clearly is saying is his standard, which again is not letting anybody tell him what to say, then Dave Chappelle is passing that. He's doing great. He's one of the greatest that has ever existed at being clever with going in any direction he wants, whether it's politically correct or not. On the other hand, the moral question of, Dave Chappelle going to Saudi Arabia and justifying it. I mean, what he's, what he's saying, basically, it's a little, it's a little muddled, which is okay because he's a comedian. But

on the one hand, he's saying he doesn't care. On the other hand, he's saying, well, maybe there's something good about Western comedians taking the Saudis money and making these jokes. There were guidelines. I think I forget who posted them. I think it was Tim Dillon who posted them at the time about what comedians could and couldn't say during that festival. They weren't allowed to criticize the government if my memory serves me correctly. And so that is, you know, if you're a comedian and you want to talk about American politics, Chappelle's saying that it's easier for him to talk about politics in Saudi Arabia. This is actually a claim that he's made than it is here. And it's true. Dave Chappelle has gotten

absolutely roasted here for saying completely normal things about American politics, men and women, sex, biology. It's true. He's absolutely gotten roasted for that. But on the other hand, is he justifying Saudi Arabia by saying his critics are hypocrites? Because that may be true, but it is not in and of itself a justification. Do I think he just pointed out correctly, a bit of hypocrisy with Bill Maher. Yes. I don't know what Bill Maher. Maybe we'll find out soon what his rebuttal would be to that point. There are certainly ways that you could address it. I don't know how Bill Maher is going to do it. Do I think that Chappelle just found a weak spot of vulnerability among his critics? Yes, absolutely. But that's not a justification in and of

itself. So he's not getting an A plus here on the moral scorecard, but he's also not asking to. And so I wanted to just, I wanted to address that because even when Dave Chappelle is saying things that I don't agree with, it's, what matters is if it's funny. And, you know, there are a lot of people on the left who thought Dave Chappelle was woefully misinforming people about biology. I know it's hilarious to think about for many years and that he was actively causing harm and potentially even committing acts of violence with his jokes and his words. So, like, even when Dave Chappelle is in uncomfortable territory for the right, maybe especially when he's an uncomfortable territory for the right, Chappelle is still doing what comedian should, which is transgressing all of the appropriate boundaries, but that doesn't mean you have to, you have to give them an A plus on the moral scorecard.

You can give him a plus for how he wants to be judged, which is saying whatever the hell he wants. And that's a perfectly acceptable way for a comedian to ask to be judged. All right. Speaking of moral scorecards, I went through all of the new pictures that the Department of Justice has dropped so far in the Jeffrey Epstein case that was in the document dump that was compelled by the bill passed through Congress just about over a month ago. So in that case, I am not going to tread the ground that so many excellent journalists have since the document started trickling out on Friday. What I will do is note a couple of things. Even tonight, as I'm coming to you with this report, things are changing. So Ryan Grimm of DropSight News, who, by the way, is going to be one of our first guests back in the new year. First show back in the new year, we are going to be doing an Epstein deep dive with Ryan.

who has definitively uncovered some obvious intelligence for geopolitical connections that Epstein or deals that Epstein was making with Ehud Barak and others over the course of many years. Ryan and I are going to do a deep dive based on all of his reporting after he has a couple of weeks here to go through all of these documents. And to be clear, that is what it's going to take. There are thousands and thousands of documents, even knowing what's old and what's What's new is a task for Epsteinologist. And as closely as I've covered this story, I'm not an Epsteinologist.

The Epsteinologists are the people who are at the absolute foreground of this. And with fresh eyes have already noticed some interesting things. First, there are redactions on these documents that can easily be unredacted. If you know how to just do some basic copy and paste, actually. You can copy and paste text that's redacted, pull it into another file, and some of these are improperly redacted or sloppily redacted. Another part of this right now is that there is at least one victim whose name, a Jane Doe, whose name is in these files unredacted and who is unhappy about it. So just some updates so far as this case is playing out. Secondly, Bill Clinton is now saying that the files should be released, despite many of the newly released photos showing, for example, how close Bill Clinton actually was with Epstein and Galane Maxwell, on the, in a hot tub, in a pool, just gallivanting around on trips with them, joking like he's their best pal, all of those pictures. You can go and look at them. You can Google them.

You can see he's not a random acquaintance. He's obviously a friend. And the birthday booknote from Clinton largely undermined that as well or went a long way, I think, towards emphasizing that. Democrats are now saying that they are going to, Chuck Schumer, for example, is trying to push through a bill that would sue the Department of Justice for not releasing the files. soon enough, Roe-Kana Democrat and Thomas Massey, Republican, are drafting inherent contempt charges against Pam Bondi for, again, not dumping everything because clearly, you know, Kana Massey, I think it's fair to call them Epsteinologists, particularly Thomas Massey. They are, there are documents that they want to see that they haven't seen in this batch so far, and they're awaiting more and more.

there are pictures that went up, then were taken down. Pictures, by the way, of Donald Trump that were up and then were taken down and then have put back up. There was a very bizarre video just tonight that people found of it looked like a weird reenactment of Jeffrey Epstein in his cell with a very strange timestamp. It turns out this was a YouTube video, like a CGI video, that got. got into the FBI files somehow. Many subplots playing out right now.

And just like with the JFK files and the MLK files, these have been out for 2448 hours, some of them very new, some of them a couple of days old. And putting together the pieces of this puzzle is going to take a long time. And my position on this is no smoking gun will be released. There will be guns that feel smokier than others. But I feel hotter than others.

Maybe that's a better way to pull at that metaphor. But that doesn't mean the government is likely to actually even have some of these documents in its possession that would it be incriminating, that would be a smoking gun proving definitively that Jeffrey Epstein was engaged in a sex trafficking ring to blackmail one country of the past of another. or vice versa. It's very unlikely that anything to that degree ever comes out just as with the JFK assassination, the files will trickle out over the course of decades. And by, you know, the end of the government's ability to release anything else will be left with a, you know, what, one million piece jigsaw puzzle. And, you know, the most important 10 pieces are always going to be missing. They're just not going to be there. And you will just be working really hard over many years to put these pieces together of the puzzle in a way that makes sense.

But in a way that probably is unlikely to result in a full, complete picture at any time. Now, there will be people who get implicated along the way. And on the one hand, you see Democrats now laughably trying to turn the screws to Republicans and say, and make this about Trump because it's a, it's a, it's a, It's a midterm year, and the Epstein line is, you know, so long as it's not like someone's entire campaign, it does matter to voters. It's sort of a litmus test towards honesty, right? Like, does this person, is this person willing to say something crazy was happening? And if the answer is no, then you look foolish because just about anybody with a brain checks out these files.

And even, you know, I know Matt Taibi and Michael Tracy right now are doing some. interesting work. Not that I agree with all of it. I may not even agree with most of it, to be honest, but they're doing some interesting work. And Tybee was on our show talking about how people need to pump the brakes and be careful not to fall for a Russia collusion narrative in the Epstein files. Again, I don't know that I necessarily agree with that, but they are uncovering some really, I think, sloppy language. I'm sure I've done it over the years. Just kind of buying whole cloth stories about Epstein and others that with more precise language as Taibi points out, are still weird as hell, right? Like, there's obviously weird stuff going on.

And so on that note, I'm going to put up here on the screen. Some of the pictures that I pulled out, I did go through all 4,000 of them. And so I wanted to be able to just go through, all right, so obviously, trigger warning here, these are pictures from Jeffrey Epstein's home. So what we have here, you know, try to make this useful for the listening audience as well, but I really do recommend you know some people have collated these images but you see here a naked woman the middle of a street this is a giant almost floor to ceiling size painting of this woman naked looks like she might have ties coming out of her out of her wrists in what appears to be a sort of the middle of a dangerous dangerous street and if you zoom in here there is

There is a clearer version of this image on the left, but that looks, it's Epstein and with a little girl on his shoulders, and it's also a very big cutout. That picture I've seen making the rounds, but one thing I wanted to note here is just its proximity to this other photo. I think that's extremely weird. That's, you know, if you're looking at some of the Epstein emails and such, you can see people do send him pictures, family pictures, that sort of thing. But here, what you're seeing is Epstein, little girl on his shoulders, and then just down the hall, this giant naked woman going on here. This is a picture of a bedroom. And I want to point out, again, if you zoom in here, you see what is pretty clearly a can. We've seen similar pictures released over the years, always worth noting that there is, in that case, a camera pointing directly at the bed, directly at the bed.

So it's not inconspicuous. Somebody would presumably notice it, but it's pointing straight at the bed. There's really no reason to have a security camera right there, let alone one pointing where it's pointing. Here's another one. You can see it in the corner, the top right corner in this room. Just another thing to point out. 24-hour video surveillance. You see this is a picture. There are several of these.

24-hour video surveillance, a sign that says that seemingly on a door from a hallway. And again, there are multiple signs that say this, but there are a lot of different things this could be. It is noteworthy again because part of the Epstein accusation, That, by the way, I don't think is out of the realm of possibility is that his house was sort of secretly wired up with cameras in a way that people would be induced to have a good time and, you know, have this like their Caligula festivities and not know that they were being filmed and then be blackmailed with the contents of it. So now, without knowing the full context of the house, I do just want to say that camera in that bedroom was not secret necessarily. And here you have a sign of 24-hour video surveillance. That appears to pretty obviously be for a security purpose. So it doesn't make anything impossible.

It's just, again, it's something that I noted. This is another disturbing mural. People are picking up on this one. You can see young boy, seemingly a young boy. It's hard. There's a lot of glare on many of these pictures that look like they're taken with a digital camera. But doves, naked,

naked, lots and lots of naked people. That's another and a seemingly young boy. Another theme that you pick up on is, there's on this one, I just wanted you to see this. It's a single leg of a ballerina tying up her ballet shoes, sticking out of the wall by a bathtub. There's a lot of bizarre art, and we've already known that about Jeffrey Epstein's multiple properties. There's a lot of bizarre art. One of the motifs is basically, faceless women. And I have some more examples of that. I'll get to it in just one moment. But here you see what appears to be a sailor uniform and a girl's school uniform and a sailor uniform is folded on a chair next to the girl's school uniform with what appears to be pretty

clearly, Jeffrey Epstein's, I mean, tell me that, that says J.E. That's pretty, I think that's pretty clear what you're seeing on that outfit. It could be a sailor outfit, could be another version of a schoolgirl's outfit because that looks like a skirt that's folded up next to it. So that's another bizarre thing. And this goes, this is just a bust. There are a lot of these all over the house or there are a lot of pictures of them. And again, what's interesting about this is there are similar versions of this. So where it's just the woman's breast, the neck is cut off and everything below, I mean, you can't even see the belly button, no arms, no belly button, or anything south of that. So it's just, you know, headless, faceless, legless busts of women.

Here we have a safe that has been opened up. We know that he's had safes that were, you know, files were collected from them. Here you see a passport. You see some CD-ROM discs. I haven't said that in a long time, and dusty, dusty binders. So we don't fully know what information, if any, has been made public from the contents of the safe. Here's another, what I want to point out here in a dining room, you have a gong, you have a magic eight ball on the table, and this is a bust of what looks like a young boy. Tell me if I'm wrong. Looks like a little boy to me. And then this bizarre sketch, And so I have a zoomed-in picture of this bizarre sketch.

I don't even know how to describe this. It looks like a young boy or girl in a dress seemingly. I'm trying to make sense of this just like everyone else is. And here is a baby photo, so a naked baby in a sink. And just for some perspective here, that's how big the printout is. This is in a kitchen area. And you get the context as you go through the pictures in full because you can piece together what everything looks like and there are different sections. But take a look at that.

A normal enough picture that someone would have of their own baby, very unusual to have it blown up in a kitchen slash dining area, even if it's, let's say, a niece or a nephew. Very unusual. And again, remember, Epstein has a lot of pictures of children. blown up, whether it's him with children or bizarre art in big fashion. Here he has NYPD uniforms in a closet. Pretty odd. Next one, and this is just an IDF t-shirt. So I wanted to go through a couple of the pictures that I flagged as particularly odd that I haven't seen and kind of contextualize them with everything that I saw in all 4,000

pictures. Now, again, to go through 4,000 pictures, I wasn't scrutinizing every corner of every single one of them, but you, you know, leave feeling like you were just on the weirdest episode of Room Raiders ever. It makes you queasy. Every slide is stomach churning because the art is so odd, and it's so palatial and decadent. And yet some of it is so rundown. there's just something clearly very weird going on. So I recommend everyone go and take a look at the pictures themselves because it helps you internalize what everybody's discussing.

And that visual context, I think is quite useful. So much more to come on this. We will be joined as I mentioned by Ryan Graham, the one and only of DropSight News and of course breaking points. Folks, before we go, that was a little bit of music. It's a little too early for the music.

too early for the music. See if we fade it back. No, I have one more thing to do. Okay, we're still doing music. So, last thing that I wanted to say here. Oh, well, we'll save it for the year. How about that? How about I leave everybody in suspense for the new year?

because we started wrapping the show so we will keep wrapping the show at this point. Appreciate everybody as a reminder. Fresh happy hours are going to be out this Friday and next Friday. The show will return the first Monday in the new year.

So that's all the way. January 5th, we will all be so different by January 5th. What will have happened? The last little bit that I was going to do was just to say, I genuinely don't think that I ended Elise DeFonix's gubernatorial

campaign with the question that I asked to President Trump in the Oval Office when he was flanked by Zerun Mamdani. I asked, Elis Stefanik has been referring to the man standing next to Zeran Mamdani. As a jihadist, do you believe that you're standing next to a jihadist? Trump said no. I think I just met with a very rational man. And Ryan then posted on X. This is the question from Emily that ended Elise Sophanik's and gubernatorial hopes. And I don't think it was helpful.

Oh, here it is. perfect. I don't think it was particularly helpful to Elise Stefani because she had been using the jihadist label over and over and over again on Mamdani and immediately put out a statement actually after that question saying she disagrees with the president respectfully that as on Mamdani, it is a jihadist. And I did a whole segment at the time explaining why I used my time questioning the president to ask that particular question. I don't consider it punching, right? I would have asked that question of anybody who was so laughably inflating the definition of a term like jihadist to include Zoroam Amdani. Disagree with the man. Think that he is

an Islamist if you want to call him. I don't agree with that. But you can you can call him all kinds of things. But to call him a jihadist completely numbs people to words like that. And so whether you're calling him, whether you're calling him that, whether you're calling him that, whether you're calling, you know, another person racist or bigoted or whatever it is, I just think we have to guard these definitions so jealously because we have rightfully stigmatized bigotry in this country with blood, sweat, and tears of people who have literally died or spent their lives, given their lives to the cause, of trying to change American attitudes. I mean, this country is incredible.

We should be so grateful as we go into Christmas for how we are able to coexist and as harmoniously, even though it feels tough and divisive, but to have so many different people in one country and living in such close proximity, it's historically unparalleled, unparalleled. And as tough as it is and as deeply as we need to make some, I think, changes in public policy and opinion, it's amazing what we're able to do in this country.

And we have to guard those definitions jealously, whether it's Republicans abusing them, weaponizing them for politics or Democrats weaponizing them for politics, which is what most of the last 10 years was, Democrats weaponizing them cynically for political purposes because their activist base wanted them to. And, you know, at least DeFonic, I think, realized that this was not going to be a winning cycle. I think that's pretty obvious. I don't think she wants to have the stench of loss on her at this point in her career. She actually ducked out of the house. She said she wanted to spend more time with her family. All of those things.

are fair. She should be jaded. She had a rough year. She's supposed to be UN ambassador. That got yanked. Then she was not really given her spot back in leadership. She was kind of given a spot back in leadership, but ended up falling down the rungs of the ladder after going from UN ambassador and was about to run a losing gubernatorial campaign. My sense is that Trump world is not really fond of Stefanic. And maybe that'll change. I mean, he put out a nice statement about her after she dropped out of the race. But it's an uphill battle to, obviously, win a gubernatorial election in New York, let alone when a lot of your strategy was fearmongering about Zaraan Mom Dani and the president, which, by the way, like on economic stuff, I think is totally

valid. But then you have the president sort of flanked by him in the Oval Office saying they share a lot of ideas. That was overall, I think, the dagger in the Stephanic Senate, or the Stephanic gubernatorial campaign. So now we can play the music. I'm excited to send everyone out into Christmas. You don't even have to wait for what I was going to talk about. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you for a great, great second half of 2025. We appreciate it. Make sure to subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe for those next two happy hours until our next after party on January 5th. Subscribe on the podcast feeds, Apple, Spotify, wherever it is. So grateful to all of you. And I hope you have a very merry Christmas. God bless you all. Happy New Year. We'll see you soon.

Thank you.