After Party with Emily Jashinsky - The Truth About Epstein's Connections, and Walz Bows Out, with Ryan Grim, Plus Shock Mary Cosby Docuseries

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Ryan Grim, her co-host at Breaking Points and a reporter for Drop Site. They discuss his outlet’s detailed findings about Jeffrey Epstein and what emails really show about Epstein’s political, financial, and intelligence-world ties. Then Emily and Ryan discuss the arrest of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, the controversy surrounding new NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tenant advisor who called home ownership ‘white supremacy,’ and Tim Walz’s decision to bow out of the governor’s race in the wake of Minnesota’s massive fraud scandal. Emily wraps up the show with a look at CNN’s wild New Year’s Eve, and the shocking TLC docuseries on RHOSLC’s Mary Cosby and her church. Masa Chips: Ready to give MASA a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to http://masachips.com/AFTERPARTY and using code AFTERPARTY Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/AFTERPARTY Stash Financial: Don't Let your money sit around. Go to https://get.stash.com/EMILY to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to After Party. It's really the show for people who can't get enough of these awful news cycles. Thanks for being here. Everyone appreciate it. We're, of course, here every Monday and Wednesday live at 10 p.m. Eastern. You can, of course, get the show afterwards, but it's fun to hang out live as well. Make sure to help us out.

Subscribe on YouTube. subscribe wherever you get your podcast. It really does the show a ton of good. Thanks so much for all of your wonderful emails. I hope everybody's new year is off to a great start. As a reminder, you can always shoot me an email at Emily at devilnakehaermedia.com. I'll do my best to answer every single one of them. And I'm excited to be joined for tonight's show by the one and only Ryan Grimm, who will join us in just one moment because there's breaking news seemingly everywhere. Honestly, we're talking about Caracas right now. There's gunfire in Caracas right now. Obviously, Maduro was in court earlier today. So a lot of unsettled developments that are

happening right at this moment. But if you've been following Ryan's work lately, he has been going so deep on the Epstein emails, Epstein reporting. So he's going to answer, I think, some just basic questions, but with depth that we've gleaned, honestly, just in the last couple of months from some of Ryan's reporting that I think it helped reset the way people have thought about the story. So I'm very excited to get to that. Also, Tim Walls dropping out of his bid for a third term as Minnesota governor today and controversies swirling over a mom-dani appointee. So it's a great night to have the one and only Ryan Grimm with us. I'm, of course, also going to top us off with some thoughts on Bravo.

Again, why not? Sorry for everybody who hates Bravo. I guess I'm kind of sorry. Kind of not sorry. First, though, before we bring Ryan in, it's 2026. So like many of you, I'm focusing on those practical changes. You got to focus on the practical changes. Nothing too extreme. And an easy win is replacing processed snacks with masa chips. It's clean eating that doesn't feel restrictive.

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They have these amazing three ingredient potato chips. I'm honestly all about the original or the barbecue. I love, love the barbecue flavor and I love chips. So I think of myself as something of a connoisseur. If you're ready to give Masa a try, go to Masachips.com slash afterparty and use code afterparty for 25% off your first order. or simply click the link in the video description or scan the QR code to claim this delicious offer. And if you don't feel like ordering online, Mossa is now available nationwide at your local Sprout supermarket. So stop by and pick up a couple of bags before they're gone. All right, without further ado, let's go ahead and bring in my friend and colleague, Ryan Grimm, co-host over at Breaking Points. And of course, one of the men with Jeremy Scahill behind the great website DropSight News.

Ryan, thanks for coming back. except one correction you said the one and only there is the marquette police cheat wait marquette michigan yes yes there's also a what's the uh what's the race what's the racing league under nascar it's like not quite nascar but it's like there's a ryan grim in there too so there's at least three of us yeah but you were the one and only ryan grim as we know at drop site news and at breaking points yes yeah the the personality that comes with the name. It could only be you. We should, although we should have the Marquette police chief on.

Just for the hell of it, because I bet he gets a lot of angry emails. And I would be curious to see what his inbox looks. That's amazing. Dude, what's going on with Epstein? I bet people do that. All right. Well, speaking of that, let's actually start on Epstein because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer today posted on X, actually about this very real question of the delayed release of files from Donald Trump's to

Department of Justice. Schumer said Trump's DOJ has failed to submit a report to Congress, which is required to include a list of all government officials and politically exposed persons named or referenced in the released materials without redactions. What are they trying to hide? It's been 17 days since the Trump DOJ first broke the law and failed to release all the Epstein files. He goes on to say, which is somewhat amusing coming from Chuck Schumer, quote, I will do everything in my power to ensure all the files come out. has Trump shaking in his boots, no doubt, to hear that from Chuck Schumer. But this is a serious question of the timeline.

And Ryan, people who have not been following your work, I mean, people have probably been following your work, even if they don't realize it because it is trickled into the, oh my gosh, it absolutely is, to the greater Epstein discourse. And we can put this on the screen. This is the latest from you guys over at DropSite. Epstein and Leviathan, this is the headline, how they're, the financier opened doors to Netanyahu and Ahud Barak amid Israel's offshore gas flight. So if you could start, Brian, just by talking to us a little bit about the process you've

undergone in the last, what has it been a couple of months now, where this new information is coming from. And what, if you could catch us up to speed on what you've learned, there's too much to just given one answer, but kind of the bullet points of what we've learned from drop sites reporting over the last month or so. In some ways, we lucked out on the timing because, yeah, it was about four months ago. And we had a reporter internally who was able to figure out a way basically to make Ehud Barak's emails that had been hacked.

Some people think it was by Iran. Other people think that there are some other suspects. His emails have been out for a while, maybe a year or two, in fact. He's the former prime minister, former defense minister, and very, very good friend of Jeffrey Epstein. But the e-mails, as they were released, were very difficult to sift through. And with the passage of a little bit of time, you could look back at their correspondence and start piecing together a lot of what they were up to. And with the help of basically this, and actually, I think you searched through some of it,

this kind of searchable inbox, which then the people behind J-mail, which if people haven't seen, it's J-mail.world, we teamed up with them to kind of bring our technology together so that people could search Jeffrey Epstein's Yahoo inbox, the emails that are out through the House Oversight Committee, the other ones that are out, as many as we can get out at once. And that really... Here's what it looks like. People can see it on the screen. And that really unlocked... It's incredible.

That really unlocked some answers to questions that people have had. You know, what was his... Did he have a relationship with the state of Israel, for instance? And the emails show, yes. He did, in fact. And was able to, you know, create actual advantages for Israel when it came to, whether it was negotiations with, like, one crazy one with, like, Mongolia. We did that one first because it was kind of an easy...

It was so locked down, some African countries, setting up meetings with Putin and a back channel through the Syrian Civil War. And then, you know, this one where he helps J.P. Morgan get a meeting with Netanyahu as J.P. Morgan is hoping that they're going to be able to finance and ultimately do end up financing this massive pipeline operation, which just in the last few weeks, Egypt cut of some $35 billion deal with Israel to, to, to, to, to, you know, buy gas through that, through that pipeline. So without that, without that kind of searchable inbox, the work probably wouldn't have been possible. But so then we are rolling these stories out. And then as we're rolling them out, the, the House and Senate get enough, you know, they get enough votes to kind of push through.

And then Trump completely capitulates. I'm not saying the two things were connected, but the, we already had the momentum heading into that and so then that's why I say we were lucky when it came to the timing then all the house stuff comes out and we knew what we were looking for because we had a bunch of stories in the work where we needed just like one or two more pieces of confirmation one place or another whether it's a calendar from a particular week-long stretch or whatever and then a lot of that emerged through the house either the house oversight releases or then the Department of Justice releases because while I think they're not trying to be transparent there's so much in there

but it's very hard to hold it all back. And you might not know what you're releasing when you're releasing it. And I wanted to ask kind of a dumb question on that point, because there's a huge difference between the government disclosures and the hacked emails or likely hacked emails of Ehud Barak, who he likely never thought that anybody would see. The government, I think both of us are skeptical, would release any type of smoking gun willingly,

even though this law was passed. They got their discharge petition, Roe, Kana, Thomas Massey, successful. They have all the Justice Department lawyers going through these files, scraping them with a fine-tooth comb, making redactions. I'm personally very skeptical, and you can speak to that as well, Ryan, that they would, that a smoking gun, quote-unquote smoking gun, hasn't already been destroyed and would ultimately be released without them invoking national security, whatever. On the other hand, they had Barack inbox and other emails that are coming from leaked sources.

obviously are not being called by the government. So on that point, do you get the sense that there's been any manipulation of this inbox? You get the sense that there have been, that Ehou Barak, maybe himself, had been deleting emails. What's your sense from that? It does seem like in Epstein's Yahoo inbox that there's a lot deleted. Like, there are stretches that there's stuff missing. Now, you can't, you really can't fabricate affirmatively. fake emails. Now, AI could, but like if you have the entire original cash, you can delete from

it, but you can't add to it. So there's, I think, I think there was probably, yes, some editing by omission. One funny, people kept, people kept signing up for random accounts under Jeffrey Epstein's emails. So, like, even after he died, he just keeps getting like, one fitness and like all kinds of other stuff and random people will email i'm like glad you're dead dude um because now that people know what his email address was so they can go you know sign up for stuff with it um it's one way to have fun but you're right that the baroque emails are special in that sense because nobody nobody at least like whoever had them did not i don't think they i don't think they deleted anything from because they it's in their interest to you know to get at

to get as much out as possible. Well, and on that point, actually, it's going to be, I think, very important for us mentally, not you and I, but like as a society, to mentally delineate between the emails we weren't supposed to see or the information that we weren't supposed to see and the information that we are supposed to see. And that may sound stupid and kind of fuzzy,

but I'm just thinking about what you've reported in terms of the commingling of geopolitics, money, and Jeffrey Epstein in the last couple, of months and maybe you can, again, like, walk us through some of the basics because one of the questions that you answered right as we started a couple of minutes ago was, yes, he was working with Israeli officials, Ehud Barak. Maybe let's just start on that point, Ryan. What does it mean? I mean, you've gone into great depth, thousands and thousands of words recent days about this relationship. Point blank, bottom line, what does it mean that Jeffrey Epstein was so deeply commingled

with the Barak and the various projects and endeavors that they were undertaking. Yeah, and one interesting point on what we've gotten from their inboxes is that Barack and Epstein, one of the main things that they did was go and build like Israel's cyber weapons industry and their cyber surveillance industry. Let boys be boys. And so, and Epstein sometimes will say to Barack in emails like, no, this is too hot for email like we need to this needs this needs to be face to face so what we're getting from them in email and also Barack has been a spy since the 80s like he was the head of like military intelligence

back in the 80s like so these are not unsophisticated people even if they might seem like it sometimes and is that like in the United States I mean this is going to be an obvious answer but it doesn't you know once CIA always CIA it doesn't really right yeah and right exactly and the sort of cyber surveillance industry in the cyber weapons industry is kind of an expansion of that kind of state project. So what we're getting in those inboxes is only the tip of the iceberg. Like it's the things that they feel like they can say in email without it being too incriminating. Now, why it ends up being useful in the future is that at the time, even if, like, they were under surveillance.

And actually, a lot of these Israeli officials probably were when they were in the United States. And Jeffrey Epstein, I think probably certainly was, even if he was an intelligence asset, he's obviously a rogue and untrustworthy one. Well, he was pinging constantly to people around the world, which you would think NSA would be. Including Putin and all kinds of, yeah, exactly. So, yeah. So what does it mean? It's like it kind of depends on where you want to take it because just as an individual.

Because in some ways it means nothing. It's like we know that there are spies, we know there are assets, we know that there are people who operate in these shadows in this gray area. We know that there are pedophiles and creeps and that elites are engaging in this sort of behavior all the time. What makes this so salient, I think, to people is that particularly in 2019, people thought for a second, like, we're going to get a window into this world that they've been trying to keep from us. This world that is a combination of like these two things that they find deplorable. One is the sex child sex trafficking. And the other is the fundamentally undemocratic nature of like a global elite who are setting the agenda for people. And when I say undemocratic, I mean just completely disconnected from any will of the people.

Other than to go to Davos annually and say that they're going to do nice things for, you know, they're going to be our greatest. And literacy, there's climate change, they're going to, yeah, they're going to, they're going to do all these great things. So at least they feel enough heat that they feel like they have to say those things, or at least they used to. But nobody likes an unaccountable global elite, and nobody likes child sex trafficking, and you had it all in one. And then people think, how are these people getting away with this? And so I think that's why what he was doing and who he was doing it for becomes so important to people. Because then you find, oh, those are the people who let him get away with this. And I've read every single word of what you guys have reported at DropSight and been on the edge of my seat reading game.

That's kept you busy. It's kept me busy because it's kept you busy. Just as a reader, it's kept me busy. So I can't imagine what you've been through, Ryan. But all for the good. That said, I'm wondering. It's a big team we've got, you know, working on it. True.

I'm wondering what your perspective is on if we've learned from your reporting more. about how Epstein made his money, because that's this lingering question mark. And I'm wondering, as I'm reading through these stories, as I'm reading through these emails, he's clearly helping other people make lots of money. Have you stepped into any areas? And you imagine, obviously, there are kickbacks. I just haven't seen a lot of the money trail. And I'm wondering if you have kind of seen more than maybe I have, or if there's stuff

that we can dots that should be connected here you know oftentimes people find things that he will have said as like boasts in the past and they'll kind of chuckle at it and then he's like oh wait that actually was true there's one quote from him where he says he made his a bunch of his money from what guns drugs and diamonds or something like that and same it's like actually we can like that that kind of tracks like the story that we did on his his involvement in Iran-Contra, I think, is really instructive. Because it's this really, it's a watershed moment for kind of this formation of a global elite intelligence apparatus that is, you know, that involves the kind of right-wing Latin

American diaspora, the Israeli intelligence agencies, the CIA, and then all sorts of players around the world whether you know we talk about this on the show this week whether it's the you needa the Angolan insurgents whether it's the Mujahideen whether it's Iran buying the weapons from Israel you know Israel a lot of people don't know that Israel was the middleman in Iran contra which is comical like Israel was literally giving weapons to Iran and then we were replenishing Israel's stock and then and then the money we got from Iran was going then to fund the Angolan rebels, the Mujahideen, and the Contras.

And Epstein was buddies with Adon Khashoggi. Epstein was business partners with Stan Pottinger, who was the lawyer who set up a lot of this structures around this, and then was also a protege of Douglas Lees, who was a British arms trafficker, who also had connections with the Chinese and the Chinese play an interesting role in this. We'll probably talk about this this week, where they often, because they were, they had fallen out with the Soviets, were willing to help the U.S.

Where we couldn't fund people because Congress or, you know, other Boy Scouts are like, don't fund them. We're like, well, how about the Chinese? British will go to the Chinese. The Chinese will fund it and then we'll back, we'll pay. And so I think, so you, when you have all of this unaccountable off the book's money, it's easy to siphon a lot of it. And Epstein around that period where he's involved in this with this milieu becomes very rich, very quickly.

And then as we as we talk up, as we write about, when the CIA's planes are done transporting Iran-Contra weapons and the, you know, the diamonds around Angola, he ships them to Columbus, Ohio. It's insane. This story is insane. So that people have it right now. So Les Wexner can use them to bring in, like, lingerie and fast fashion from Hong Kong for several years for his little Abercrombian Fitch and Victoria's Secret Empire and, you know, gives power of attorney to Epstein. So Epstein helped relocate the CIA's airline. Yeah, called Southern Air Transport. Yeah. Yes. And if you've read a lot about the drug stuff, which is actually sort of salient now because of Venezuela, that's what they were using.

Right. He helps relocate that to Columbus, Ohio. As one does, yeah. And then what, it shutters within, I don't know, a few months. It shuttered on the day that the Senate Inspector General or the CIA Inspector General put out its report confirming that, yeah, they were doing all this stuff. On that day, it declared bankruptcy. Right before that, they sold half of their planes to a UAE-owned company. that was trafficking diamonds out of Angola, blood diamonds out of Angola.

And the UAE becomes an increasingly important player. And behind the scenes, you know, pre-ABA Abraham Accords, a tight ally with Israel, and really helps to reshape the Middle East into what becomes the Abraham Accords. And Epstein was way ahead of his time in ushering that. And even Ahu, Barak at one, he's trying to, in a story we'll have out soon, he's trying to cut a deal between this top Emirati official and the Israelis. And Barack is like, around 2015 or so. Brock's like, a little early for that. Like, let's keep this, let's keep this going, this good stuff.

But not quite at that level yet. But Epstein very much saw where it was going and was a kind of driving force behind it. And tell me about the incidental relationship. as you're going through the inbox and flushing out all of this reporting because Ehud Barak one is huge. Obviously, the Les Wexner one is huge, obviously. But when I'm

reading your stories, I'm also seeing officials from all of these other countries as well. In communication with Jeffrey, I've seen, you mentioned Putin earlier. Obviously, Epstein had connections enough to broker that meeting. And so you just get a glimpse that

Epstein was also very close with people all over the world. Maybe it's because of his money or power or both. But what are we learning just as we get this kind of step behind the curtain about how he operated, not even just with some of these principles? Yeah, I think all of these principles, they like to have people who are off the books and don't play by the rules and can get things done. And that's like a fixer type.

And that very much was what Epstein was good for. And whether you're the Clintons or Putin or Bill Ruffalo. Richardson or whoever, like, oh, that's a throwback, Bill Richardson. You know, there were two incidents that we found where he turned down meetings with presidents. One was Putin, where Putin's folks reached out and said Putin wanted to meet him at the sidelines of this conference. And Epstein told him, if Putin wants to meet, like, it's got to be at the palace and like, we need to set aside like 90 minutes because we've got like a lot to talk about. I'm not doing like some sideline meeting. And instead he sets him up with

Barack. Meet my friend. He's got some he's got some stuff for you. And the second was he connects a Swiss banker, Sarkozy and Ajo, Barack had for dinner in Paris when Sarkozy is, now Sarkozy is in prison at the time he was president of France. And at the last minute, Epstein's like, I don't feel well. I can't make it. Just blows them off. I suspect that he felt fine and just spent his time in Paris doing other unmentionable stuff. But there aren't many people out there in the world who are turning these, who are like saying no to these types of people. And I think that's something that actually was his appeal.

Like people at that level have been told yes by everybody for decades at that point. And to have somebody who tells them no, speaks bluntly to them, refuses to use proper grammar or spelling, and just treats them like a normal person or even a person who was like beneath them. I think there was something attractive to people about that. And it was a kind of secret source of his power in a weird way.

What do you make of... So in this inbox, it's a very, very dark place. That was actually one of the questions. I think I've asked you this before, but you've spent so much time mired in this inbox now that I'll just ask it now actually mentally what is it like to spend so much of your time as a reporter in a place as dark as Jeffrey Epstein's inbox and I can combine these two questions actually because it's that along with your sense of how the allegations of sex trafficking fit into the documented

pattern of geopolitical influence training that you're I mean that that that that that That part is no longer, you cannot deny it. He was doing it on behalf of an Israeli official. He was doing it on behalf of Israel. That's his ideological pull that you can see pretty clearly. That's where his heart is, however, whatever that actually means when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein. So as you're spending all your time in the inbox,

I imagine you're coming across scraps of evidence that point to the sex trafficking as well. What's your sense now? Since we weren't, and I've done a decent amount kind of reporting over the years and it's yeah it's not pleasant um we're not because we're not focusing on that element of it because i think it is you know fairly well established we're focusing more on what he was doing um business wise you know professional wise outside of that because that's the question that people seem to keep asking like what what did he actually do

like why would why were people putting up with all of this um so but you still come across some of it just because there's so much of it, you know, kind of filtering, filtering through there. And you see that, like, and you see that people who keep hanging out with him have the same kind of similar purviness to them. And what people have said to him, said, like, normal people who've met him, many of them say, yeah, he's gross. Like, your gross radar went off, like, immediately. and that anybody who like hung out with him a second time

um should be given like no quarter for on that just because your radar should go off that he's like this is a foul person who's into gross stuff um and a total creep and creature um and so and so then people like have wondered about the nature of the of what a blackmail operation would look like we don't and we don't find anything that's Jess, like, that, you know, that is like a smoking gun proved like, hey, I have this video of you, so I need you to do X, Y, Z. Most of the things that he's getting people to do are, are in his interests and in their interests. Like, he doesn't need to blackmail them. But also,

if they've been hanging out, like, they've done gross stuff together. And he knows it, and they know that he knows it. So it just sits there and kind of implied in the background. Mm-hmm. Oh, that's so interesting. And last question I'll ask on this, sort of what I was already asking, is just, you mentioned you've done this type of reporting before. But it's also, the Epstein inbox is such a strange place. And so how are you even keeping, I know you have a decent-sized team working on this, but how are you even keeping it straight? Like, how do you keep these? It's just such an overwhelming volume of emails. How are you kind of keeping narratives. How are you piecing to go in narratives from all of those? Yeah, trying to break them off. And, yeah, it's, without the team that we have working on, it definitely would not be possible. And just trying to break off very discreet stories. Right. You know, the stories, some of them go fairly long, but we're trying to keep them pretty, you know, pretty tightly organized around an individual theme.

But I think that's kind of what's setting drop sites reporting apart two, though, is that, like, the Iran-Contra story is a really good example. You're not just synthesizing what you're finding in the inbox. You're synthesizing it with this, again, overwhelming volume of historical evidence. And that, I mean, I bet a lot of it is what's already kind of downloaded into your head and Jeremy's head and everyone's heads from covering the stuff for so long. But that, putting together these pieces, I mean, there are names of people you would not know are connected to Jeffrey Epstein unless you're already really, really familiar with the story. If you're familiar with the Cold War, if you're familiar with Israeli history.

And that is, you don't know what you don't know. Yeah, and I think we've got a lot of curious people that work for us from all over the world. And so, like, everybody brings some of their own kind of expansive, like, historical knowledge to it. We're like, oh, that organization actually, if you look at the board, there's this person on it. that because you're right it like I think what look it's probably beyond what one person would be able to do but kind of pulling it together um it's it becomes a little bit more manageable yeah that makes sense all right well we have more with Ryan grim so Ryan stick around we'll be back in just one moment first if you finally want to fix your stomach make your hair healthier and stronger and add some glow to your skin in 2026, you need to add colostrum to your daily routine. Today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum offers the highest quality bovine colostrum that is available in the U.S. Cowboy Colossum is 100% made in America from 100% American grass-fed cows. Unlike other

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It's good stuff. But 10 years ago, 10 years ago. Yeah, put the read on the prompter. I'll do it. Yeah. Ten years ago, this would not have been... It sounds like... Well, never mind.

But you know, like, I feel like you have been a make America healthy again guy for much longer. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I'm all for like healthy, healthy foods. Did you interview RFK Jr. before Trump era? Like, you must have actually. I don't actually think I did. He's been in that world. I remember his 2004. piece for Rolling Stone, I think it was, where he... The famous one, infamous one. The DeBold had stolen the election from Kerry. Yeah.

Which now that he's in the government, he should go check that out, man. Like, go figure that out. Well, let's actually use that point to jump into Venezuela. Stolen election. It was Hugo Chavez, it did it. Now, this is... Somehow for Bush. Weird. I will say, this is a theory that has traction.

on the right, that Maduro, because there are, what it was Smartmatic, if I'm remembering correctly, there are real ties between Venezuela and Smartmatic, and I think Dominion via smartmatic. Because of that, Maduro may have something on the 2020 election results that could end up with him striking a deal. Ryan, you have been following this conservative subplot. As your guy Saga and I reported in DropSight, actually, that Rubio used that as an argument to Trump to get the green light for this. That, hey, man, this guy threw the election for Biden. If you're going to let him get away with that? First, he tried, like, human rights and, like, he's a socialist, and Trump is, like, unable to pay attention through the entire sentence about those kinds of arguments.

And so then Rubio's like, oh, he stole the 2020 election from, and Trump's like, wait, wait, the Venezuela election, no, no, no, no, the U.S., U.S., you, man, you. And he's doing fentanyl, which is not. So those are the two arguments that that plus he's looking at him dancing in your face, like those, that combined and boom. So serious point on that, what you can know. almost for certain, based on that reporting, is they are fishing with Maduro now in custody. In New York, you can bet your ass that the feds are fishing for that kind of information. Maduro would, I'm sure, love to give up whatever smartmatic executive he can, if it's going to get him out of prison. Can you imagine being Maduro and being like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what?

What? Why am I here? You know who will be hardest hit. What? Lindsay Graham will be hardest hit. If the vindication of Sidney Powell is what comes of the Maduro. Do they let him go then? Does he get to be president again? Is that how that works?

Does he get an Eric Adams treatment? But I actually like, we're saying this in jest. But you're reporting is real. American ambassador to Venezuela. Yes. You're reporting is real. And so I think it's actually probably true that our prosecutors are now currently fishing for anything like the girl may want to give up. What's his name?

He was like DC attorney DC prosecutor, but couldn't get confirmed. You think about Ed? Ed, yeah, yeah, that guy. The January 6th guy. Yeah, he responded on Twitter to, I think somebody. was just joking with like an exclamation point like oh yeah we're going to prop for this guy well uh we will see what comes from that same guy who went after sandy hook parents on behalf of alex jones like and then had to like they walked it back and like apologize to the parents

but like ed martin that's his name yeah okay but i mean again like the report in this is serious so if there's a way from maduro if he's learned from eric adams uh if there's a way I'll be like, yeah, I stole it for Biden because Biden made me do it. Right. Even though, of course, the Biden administration put the $25 million dollar. You are so strong that I knew that if you were reelected, I would be ruined. And Venezuela would be made great again. And I couldn't have that happen.

I needed Biden because I knew he was weak. And we would be able to then steamroll him. And so we stole it. And I'm very sorry. And it honestly worked for Eric Adams. Genuinely worked for Eric Adams. Now, if you're being charitable to Trump World, they would say it worked for them as well, meaning they had cooperation is good if you can get away with it.

Great. They would say that it was a small price to pay for New York City cooperating on immigration, I suppose. But actually, Brian, you've covered Maduro. You covered Chavez before him. what is the like what should people expect so he pleads not guilty today his wife pleads not guilty today he says i'm still the president of venezuela what we know from reporting is that he seemed to have conversations with trump in the lead up to this oh brian's cat has joined the party always fun uh he seemed to have he seemed to have conversations with um maduro there were offers on the table he wanted to

stay under conditions. All of this stuff was going on in the background. So what should people expect to see from Maduro and his legal defense, potentially from his allies that are still on the ground in Caracas going forward? Well, he's got Julian Assange's lawyer, just took the case on. That's very interesting. I was just reading the superseding indictment. The original indictment calls him the head of the cartel de los solis which

we have said a bunch of times on the show is a made up thing like it doesn't exist it's kind of like there's a combination of the CIA making it up and then it becoming

sort of like a joke like it's a reference to the sun patch that is on the military uniforms and so it's it's sort of like a joke like what cartel

took that oh the cartel of the sons um being like oh corrupt basically that means that like yeah corrupt military figures you know were involved somehow in that drug shipment which is like i mean the corrupt military figures are absolutely corrupt in these drug shipments if you read um the fort brag cartel by set harp you'll find that delta force and the seals and all of them are like there's no no military that has ever been involved with drugs other than apparently the Taliban hasn't been like totally corrupted by it which is but should we pause on that like

when we're in charge over there heroin is flowing everywhere Taliban comes in goes away and you can even go back further when it was like the Mujahideen I mean not the Mujahideen when it was like the warlords

and then the Taliban comes in they squash it we come in knock out the Taliban heroin comes back now the Taliban's back they're killing heroin over there it's like turns out you can do it like we just didn't want to I'm not supporting the Taliban's move there but that is uh it's possible so yeah there's corrupt military people that do drug trafficking it was politically beneficial for it was it was boosting the Mujahideen they were getting money from it yeah yeah well some

some warlords and then the other Mujahideen started like the Taliban Mujahide we're like we're going to like run against this thing we're going to be we're going to be the people that clean all this up but yes lots of others were then we're trafficking and and buying weapons with it but so what what everybody I understand is that the cartel of Sons doesn't exist it's like a fake made up thing the whole indictment was calling him the head of this cartel it doesn't exist so now they just put out a superseding indictment did you see the superseding indictment by the way said Trende Aragua started in Venezuela I don't know if you caught that in Venezuela gang Gangs?

Yeah. Yeah. It also in the first line accuses Maduro of importing drugs when they meant to say exporting. It's like the first line, man. Good stuff. Good stuff. Jesus. Which, by the way, Maduro is obviously, I mean, both of these indictments, I have read in full both of these indictments and you don't need to even read in full both of the indictments to see that the Maduro government was in, you know, some obvious ways, corrupt and involved in drug trafficking.

A lot of people in it were involved in drug trafficking. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt about that. But in the superseding indictment, as I'm sure you noticed, cartel of the sounds is basically gone. It's like referenced, I think, twice in passing as in, and they describe it as a nebulous word that stands in for, like, corruption and trafficking. It's like, wait a minute.

Your whole thing, the whole. the whole original indictment that that you used to justify killing all of these people. And by the way, I think we're going to learn more about this massacre of the Cuban guards that were there. 32 Cuban guards killed and no American injuries, or if there were any injuries, they were minor, does not suggest a serious gun battle. So, like, what happened there? Like, how did all these people wound up killed? And if you read Seth Harp's book, there is a shoot first, ask questions later, even if people are attempting to surrender type mentality among Delta Force.

I think we might find out more about that. Maduro's wife, I don't know if you have thoughts on this, and I don't know if we have the sketch we can put on the screen, but she appeared in court today, according to the sketch artist with band-aids, basically all over her face room. Yeah, yeah, we had a reporter outside the courtroom, and she talked to people that can't come out. And she said, yeah, the face was all bruised up and the defense attorney was asking for x-rays and medical attention. So, anyway, so to what Maduro is going to do, like, I guess they could drag this case on forever, but like, reading the indictment, I think you can be like, yeah, okay, like, there's definitely Venezuela and military officials involved in. drug trafficking. I don't know what the statute of limitations is on some of this. Like some of the stuff that they've got people claiming was happening back 20 years ago.

I feel like it's going to be a fairly hard, in a normal case, it would be fairly hard to make. I'm sure that the government's going to do everything they can. And they'll find people that will go up and testify against Maduro if they need to. Maybe they get out Juan Orlando Hernandez. He's, uh, well, is there a chance? go back to prison. He could just come in and be like, yeah, that was my boss. Well, but I mean, is there a chance that's why he was actually pardoned? I mean, I know he had what he had Roger Stone working on the case.

I think it was just a Roger Stone crypto play. But once you've done it, why not throw them up there on the stand? I mean, this could be 40 chess. This could be 10D chess. Yeah, you've got like, look, this is an actual cartel guy. Last question on this. What is on the ground in Venezuela right now? I think people in the United States, maybe just because it's a different country, see it as a pro-Modoro and anti-Moduro political dynamic. That's not necessarily the case. And Ryan, you've covered the Latin American left and the Latin American right for a while.

There are factions, and it's also totally unclear what comes next. When you have Delci Rodriguez in charge, what does that mean for, is the U.S. serious about? that is there a coup to take delsi Rodriguez out what does that actually look like could you speak just a bit to how the politics could evolve in Venezuela yeah the the thing that seems to be going on now is this question of whether delsi Rodriguez was like kind of in on it and i've seen some our our um our drops like uh latin america desk chief down there uh hose louis granato sea His argument is there's no evidence for that yet. And I would add to that that there's a lot of incentive

for the U.S. to sew that storyline. Like, if you're the U.S., you want, you want a rift. The best you can do is have a rift within the regime and have top figures saying, wait a minute, I didn't think she was, part of this, but maybe she was. Mm-hmm. And tonight you even had like a drone went over the palace and it wasn't registered.

And so then like palace guards like shot at the drone and then other people shot at the shots. And like you had all this news like, oh, there's a coup at the palace. Right. And so like things are extremely tense. And then they figured out, oh, that was we were just shooting on our own drone. Whoops. But so with that level of tension, I think the U.S. wants to throw out there that, yeah, she's actually with us. She turned in her guy and she's going to do whatever we want.

And in a lot of ways, she could offer basically everything because they don't have a whole lot to offer. Like the oil industry largely thanks to sanctions and some disinvestment or some mismanagement, or some mismanagement. from Chavez and then Maduro is producing like nothing. The reserves themselves are, as everybody's noted by now, kind of heavy and, you know, difficult to process, to refine. And very well, maybe severely, you know, heavily exaggerated. And so it would take a couple years of, like, build out to really start. seeing, I think, seeing that flow. So, and you'd have to lift sanctions to do that.

Right. You can't, you're not going to get American oil companies to come in and make these massive investments. Also, Trump doesn't seem to understand. He has a kind of childish view of the oil companies. He thinks that they want more oil. And that would be intuitive, I think, for a child. but if you're thinking if you are in the position of a greedy oil CEO you don't want more oil you want higher oil prices for your oil and the way you get that is pumping less oil and

charging regular people more so the oil companies are like uh we're good what are you talking about we're doing great like killing renewables that was good for us we're happy about that but like you want us to go into this like fractured society that you just like barged your way into and on the back of an aircraft carrier we're going to like you know drop a couple billion dollars of investment into building you know refining and drilling capacity and higher you know higher like what really like they're like we're good like we're okay so it's a very weird thing It's like the first president, to do a bunch of things, one, to just straight up claim he's doing this for the oil. Yes.

Which may not even be true. He's like Halliburton. Like that might even be a lie. First president to falsely claim that he did a war for oil. To use oil as a pretext. To try to serve the oil companies and fail because he doesn't understand that their goal is to make money, not pump oil. So into that, you've got Rodriguez being like, all right, if I can get the sanctions lifted, then, okay, let's do that. Well, so last question.

I heard Tucker Carlson in this latest episode. He's reserving judgment. He's clearly not comfortable with it. But one of the things he said made him feel a little bit better was the Trump administration resisting the neo-conservative calls. from Elliot Abrams and others to install Maria Karina Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Konarino Machado as president, and actually allowing Delci Rodriguez, who is, as you mentioned, per drop sites reporting, close. An ideological ally and has been for a while to Maduro allowing the vice president to kind of take the reins during what they keep referring to as this transition

period. Is this a new kind of regime change, or is it just too early to say? this this feels like um the kind of non-interventionist right sort of grading trump on a curve of trump's own making it's like and it reminds me of the 12-day war with iran where like yeah it's true like it only went 12 days and he didn't do everything that nanyahu wanted uh that nanyahu wanted a regime change he wanted kind of an endless war there um and he and uh trump turned nanyahu's planes around and after 12 days he's like we're done so there was an attempt to like take a little win there but on the other hand he didn't have to do any day wars you don't you could just do a zero day war if you're if you want like that's that's an option we are currently in a zero day

war with lithuania there you go um and he in our time he wanted to you know so you can say like well this is a way a face saving way out of sending this giant armada down um um Like, okay, yeah, I guess, but you also didn't have to send the Armada down there. There was nobody, other than Marco Rubio, demanding that this happened. And Lindsay, don't forget Lindsay. Well, Lindsay, I think he's like, yeah, he probably calls four times a day with recommendations of Huda Bomb. Do you see how giddy he was on the Air Force One? Oh, boy, is he excited about Cuba?

So, so excited. Yeah. All right, let's turn now to Zora Mamdani's first week in office and now an appointee who you probably are familiar with Ryan, Ciel Weaver, who is in a... I don't actually know her. She's, so I was looking into her today and she has been on the like DSA aligned group circuit for a very long time. It seems familiar to a lot of folks in that world. But she, so C.O. Weaver is going to be, or she has been appointed director of the city office to protect tenants. And you know, I may disagree on this, actually, but let's take a look at a resurface video here. It was from the DSA back in 2021 that now, since Weaver is literally the director of the city office to protect. People are going to be, people are going to get burned by their 2021 quotes for the next 50 years. I'm so glad you said that because I literally just wrote a story. Like an act. hour ago, I followed the story on that in reference to Tim Walls, actually.

Pro tip for people out there, go into Twitter and do search and just do everything from 2020 to 2022 or whatever. Just mass delete. Don't do it. We need that. What kind of journalists are you, right? We need the timeline, timeline, receipts, screenshots. Little Housewives reference for everyone. All right, let's go ahead and roll the clip. I think the reality is, is that for centuries, we've really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good. And we are going to, and transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently. And it will mean that families, especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners

as well, are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have. So Sea Weaver's also said many, many other things, kind of along those lines, but I wanted to get your take on this post from Matt Taibi. And this is already very controversial on the left. Everyone's already kind of dragging Taibi on the left for making this point. But he said, I spent much of my career around liberal activists, generally in a sympathica relationship. But didn't hear things like this weaver idea of homeownership as a white supremacist project until recently i don't think these people realize how crazy they are taibi also went on to argue actually that what led to the great recession in 2008 was kind of proof positive uh that this is a new element

uh and and i have to say ryan i mean you wrote i've referenced it all the time but you wrote this great story back in what 2020 2021 called the elephant in the zoom And it's obvious to everybody that there was a migration of kind of faculty lounge politics really quickly. I mean, it just became more, the language became more normalized really quickly. The pipeline got really short for some reason between like 2014 and 2020-ish. And so the language did start to be a lot more normalized and people were a lot more comfortable kind of talking like that. So I just wanted to get your take on if, you know, let's say you're an apolitical New Yorker. You don't love socialism, but you're hopeful about Mamdani.

Ryan, what do you think that person should think? Maybe they've worked really hard. They've owned their apartment. They've owned their condo for 10 years or whatever. They're 50-something years old. What should they think about that? Well, they're not going to collectivize their condos. I don't think they have to worry about that.

I thought that was going to be worse than, like, that just seemed to be a statement of fact. I'm actually surprised to hear that from Taibi because his work on the financial crisis dug very deeply into the role that subprime lending that was very racially targeted at black homeowners played in producing the the subprime mortgage back securities that then blew up and actually actually were sold off into then like teachers unions and and you know they had these like private equity these investment banks and sell them to places that anyway that's that's a separate issue yeah the so like and housing like so clearly like the thing tyeevi made is bones about like there was a huge racial element to the 2008 financial crisis in in such a way that the the u.s like we blew ourselves up over our own racialized housing um policies and to go back even further like it's it's the It's like one of the like top three like indisputable examples of the of the connection in the US in the 20th century between race and class where coming out of literal systemic racism like two in two fundamental you know major ways GI Bill basically only being allowed to be used by white people coming out of World War II and the GI Bill and the suburbanization of America creates the American middle class and then you

layer on top of that redlining, which meant that black people couldn't get loans to live in the neighborhoods that were producing the middle class. And so then by the like 1970s, 80s, you have this massive kind of wealth divide that wouldn't have existed, were it not for the racist, like actually racist policies embedded in the housing policy. If your entire society's wealth production for the middle class is organized around housing. housing and you have actual racist policies around housing, like, you're going to accumulate more white home ownership than black home ownership. And so her point that if we start to think about it in a more collective way, that white people

are going to be hurt more by that because they have more housing than non-white people, like, that just actually seems like a matter of fact. I don't know what she, now, the collectivization of housing. like that that seems to be a place where like the left kind of gets ahead of itself with what they've sold to the public like that's the part where I think most people would be like what are we going to do we're to collectivize the housing that doesn't right like I haven't seen any campaign that's going to like make that that has made the case for that or has built a constituency for it I don't know and I just might not I don't I don't know what she was talking about about and I don't know how that fits into Mamdani's plans, you know, the left talks a lot about social housing and like as a means to get more affordable housing. Maybe that's what she means by that, but that doesn't like come at the expense of white homeowners and like. Well, that's and so I just which is what, Staten Island? Like they're fine. Like he's not,

he's not coming for Staten Island. He might be coming for Staten. But so here's a poster They'll get free buses. So Michelle Tandler on X went through just all kinds of posts exactly from that era you were mentioning, right? From C.O. Weaver. And this one says, impoverished the white middle class. Home ownership is racist slash failed public policy. Okay. So now we're getting somewhere.

Like that's the 2020, 2021 lingo that I'm, that I'm thinking of. Yeah. And there's more. I mean, there's more. And what political project is going to be successful saying, impoverish, like, the biggest segment of the population. This is one of which says shrink the value of real estate. That's the provocative Twitter stuff.

I get it, too. And also, I bet, like, anybody under 30, 35 is watching this. It's like, yeah, damn right. Shrink the value of the fucking real estate. She has her finger on a real problem that is benefits people like me. sitting in my home, which goes up in value for no reason. I don't do anything to deserve that. It just goes up.

And it hurts people who didn't have a chair when the music stopped. So anyway, but yeah, the left making no effort in those years to like sound remotely persuasive or reasonable. It's coming back to bite them a lot. I'd also be pretty pissed if I were a black homeowner. or a condo earner or somebody who did throw them in there she's like and some i what she'd say poc's or something yeah yeah um well finally let's end on tim wals because actually like i mentioned i just speaking of white men i just uh filed on the tim wall's question means i think when you look at you know casey magan for example has been writing for a minnesota reformer about the

somali frot samali american who was working on fraud issues in the office of the minnesota attorney general has written in the Minnesota reformer, which is on the left, for a while about how this problem metastasize. And I actually think some of the answer to it is in exactly what we were just talking about, which is those years, 2014-ish, 22-ish. The fraud was happening largely after 2020 to a 22-ish, actually. That matches the timeline pretty well. Tim Walls announced he's stepping down. A lot of it was pandemic-era stuff. Yes, exactly. So Tim Walls, announced today that he's stepping down from his bid to run again for governor. So that would have been a third term for Tim Wallace. He was feeling pretty good about it up until recently.

Let's take a look at what he had to say. My administration has been taking fast decisive action to solve this crisis. We'll win the fight against the fraudsters. But the political gamesmanship we're seeing from Republicans is only making that fight harder. We've got conspiracy theorist right-wing YouTubers, breaking into our daycares, demanding access to our children. We've got the President of the United States demonizing our Somali neighbors and wrongfully confiscating funds that Minnesotans rely on. It's disgusting and it's dangerous. In September, I announced that I would seek a historic third term as Minnesota's governor, and I have every confidence that if I gave it my all, we would win the race. But as I reflect on this moment, we're going to

with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can't give a political campaign my all. I'm proud of the way we treat our neighbors. I'm proud of the way that we welcome people to this state. I'm proud of the way that we innovate, and I'm proud of the way that we are optimist for the future. No one's taking this away from us, not the fraudsters, certainly not this president, not on my watch.

Tomorrow, I'll be back with you. I'll give you an update on America's best. paid family medical leave program that is now a week into it and at that time i'll take all your questions thank you all so he convened what was a billed as a press conference there and then didn't take any questions he's saying he's going to take questions on tuesday but brian uh there is something interesting in tim walls who had this kind of straight white dude military background hunter packaging with cultural progressivism inside of it. And that kind of PW, capital PW, peak woke era of cultural progressivism inside of it. He leaned super hard into immigration

and trans issues. And he was seen as that. I think it's fair to say a rising star. But I don't know. That is, I'm actually genuinely surprised that he stepped out of the race and didn't fight. Yeah, he was surging on the back of Minnesota legislature, you know, implementing just a sweeping set of progressive agenda items from, you know, both cultural and material and economic. And then he's, you know, vice president. And then that was like just quite a base plan of a campaign. A lot of people are still angry at him for being too nice to JD Vance. in that debate. Really? People are mad about that?

People were mad about that. Yeah, because they're like, look, we're trying to run a campaign that these guys are fascists. And you keep being like, yeah, he's cool. We just have a slight disagreement on this. It's like, well, it kind of undercuts our whole thing that they're fascists. It's like Trump and Mom Donnie. Yes, yes, exactly. That was the original.

Yeah. I love that Mom Donnie called him to complain about the Venezuela strike. That really happened. Do people have a question, but? I mean, of course it happened. He said it happened. Hey, I believe. He's got the number.

Maybe he left a voicemail. Trump picks up when you're 90%, he picks up like 90% of calls. That's like a true thing. If you talk to reporters who have his number, they will call him. He'll be in the middle of something. He will answer the phone, talk to them for 10 seconds. Give him a juicy quote. I don't think we should.

Did you see that Adam Friedland? That was amazing. That was really good. You're doing it. I can see you on your phone right now. I'm worried. Let me see if I can get his number from Adam. Call him.

But on that note, the allegations in this case, and here, let me actually just put this up on the screen. I find it helpful. This is a piece from Casey Magin and J. Patrick Coolican over at the Minnesota Reformer, which, again, has been covering this for a very long time. they're running down all of the ties that are difficult for people in the Democratic Farmers Labor Party, Farmer Labor Party, from Keith Ellison to Omar Fata, to Jamal Osman, to Jacob Frye. What they're saying about Allison? Well, Ellison, I don't know if you've seen the tape, but he's on tape about what, like a month before feeding our future got busted, like a month before they were charged, basically telling them he was going to take care of people who were put. putting the breaks on some of the requests. And the minister or former take on this,

I think is actually very helpful. They're saying he sounds like he just has no idea that these complaints are legitimate. And that's a charitable spin on it, but I think it sounds right when you listen to the tape. He really seems like he thinks this is just about racism or xenophobia when in fact there were much more serious concerns. But that's kind of the point, Ryan,

is that tell me if I'm wrong, if this is just like a right wing theory that I'm throwing your way. But to me, it does really seem like people were tentative about asking questions. And it's coming back to bite them in the ass. Well, yeah, I mean, yes. And it's it's a fact that some of the fraudsters, like, affirmatively used that their, that, you firmly used that to cover, to cover their fraud. Like, we know, we know that for a fact that they said, how dare you accuse me of that?

just because I'm Somali American you're coming after me over that so we know that some fraudsters did that and it worked now what I would add Trump's meme coin alone I think has bilked like 2.5 billion

dollars worth out of people it's like 80% of his net worth is from the meme coin in the last year plus yeah which is I think a hundred times the fraud in Minnesota like and he's just one guy you throw in the fraud you throw in the whitcoffs one man's fraud is another man's salvation from fiat currency

so he if you gave him a X amount of if you bought X amount of Trump coin you would get to spend time with him and ask him for political favors like that was the deal that is like just a straight up crime and nobody expects that they're going to ever cash in these Trump coins. I'll tell you that much. Did you ride the wave on the Trump coin? I have not ridden any wave. I think I have some Bitcoin somewhere, but not old Bitcoin. That's a shame. Anyway, yes. And I do think that progressives should

be much more willing to call out fraud. It's not just with, it's not just around cultural or political concerns. It's anybody who is remotely sympathetic. They're okay calling out Rick Scott for fraud. Which you do basically every day, every chance. I mean, yes, the Medicare, the amount of Medicare fraud that he did, far outstrips. He's a senator from Florida, far outstrips, the entire collective fraud in Minnesota, in Minneapolis. but yeah it's corrosive to

the social democratic fabric that you need to stitch together these programs if you want support if you want the public support for those programs people have to believe

that they are being administered and doled out fairly and then if people think that they're too easily gamed then that undermines public support for them and everybody loses them so

yeah I think you got to go after these folks But those folks are often the ones that end up accumulating wealth and political power. Yeah, it's a vicious cycle, and that's a wonderful indictment of our system, which is a great place to leave it here with Ryan Grimm. Obviously, this has been a giant advertisement for DropSight, but if you don't read DropSight, you need to read DropSight, go get on the email list. It's fantastic. They have a newsletter that gets sent out every day in additional all of this great reporting. And Ryan, I actually have to get to bed soon because Sager called in sick tomorrow.

Oh, that's right. And I could be up early. Are you going to be in Wednesday? Yeah, I'll pop in for sure. But not for the show, but for the after interview with Parenti. Yeah, that's going to be really good. I couldn't miss that. Christian Parenti is joining us to tape an extra right on Wednesday.

I don't know if it'll be on Wednesday's show, but it'll drop soon. Yeah. All right. Well, I will see you Wednesday then. Perfect. All right. Well, thanks for being here, Ryan. All right.

See you later. Sounds good. I have a little bit left for everyone. So stay tuned. First, though, listen up. You don't need to overhaul your life to start investing. Just automate it. With Stash, your new year money goals can quietly run in the background while you focus on everything else. Stash isn't just another investing app. It's a registered investment advisor that combines automated investing with expert personalized guidance. So you don't have to worry. about gambling or figuring it out on your own. Stash is simple, smart, and stress-free. Choose from personalized investments. Let Stash's award-winning smart portfolio do the work for you or pick a combo of both. Stash is there to guide you every step of the way. Just $3 per month gets you access to world-class financial advice and personalized guidance so you can start investing in your future today. Don't let your money sit around. Put it to work with stash, go to get.stash.com slash Emily to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock

purchase and to view important disclosures. That's get dot stash.com slash Emily. Get dot stash.com slash Emily. Paid non-client endorsement, not representative of all clients and not a guarantee. Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor, investing involves risk. Offer is subject to terms and conditions. All right, we're going to wrap up tonight's show by a couple of fun little culture stories here. Have you seen this clip of the always entertaining CNN New Year's Eve broadcast with Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper? This one features Amy Sedaris. I wanted to. I know it's an old story now because it was several days ago. That's old in this business, at least. But I really wanted to watch this clip because

it took me straight back to Comedy Central, circle like 2007 strangers with candy. And these guys are really good friends with Amy Sedaris. So it's no surprise that on New Year's Eve, their boozy New Year's Eve special. She felt comfortable with this one liner. But let's go ahead and roll the clip here. New Year's Eve, Amy Sedaris. Best place to meet a man in 2026. Oh, really? Well, I Where's a good place to meet a man? I'd say in the ladies' room, but I don't know. Where can you meet a man? Live on CNN.

Live on CNN. Right now, according to new reporting, at CBS internally, there is a debate about whether to use the appropriate, as the transgender community sees it, appropriate lingo, assigned sex at birth versus biological sex. Honestly, I don't think either turn of phrase is journalistically correct. Just say sex. You don't even need to say biological sex?

It is implied in the word sex. But that's currently a struggle session going on behind closed doors at CBS, according to new reporting. And here's Amy Sedaris, just going full Strangers with Candy, full comedy central circle like 2007 what was the character's name jerry right uh just all in live on cnn jerry blank am i right on that uh all in on cnn with incredible joke anderson and andy looked uncomfortable but of course of course if you are somebody who's i mean there are a couple of layers to this right first of all saying that and

recognizing why it's funny. It's funny because some dudes be hanging around ladies' rooms. Some dudes be hanging around ladies' rooms these days. And that's just how it is. There was another horrifying video posted by the

inimitable Tish Hyman just a couple of days ago of this happening. It happens all the time. And, man, if you can't laugh at it, it's not funny in every circumstance. There's no question about it. It's a dangerous situation is not good, it's crazy on just so many different levels. But if you can't laugh at it, if you can't at least laugh at it, then we have nothing but misery. So props here to Amy Starris

for letting that one fly, a lot on the New Year's Eve broadcast. If you're somebody who's on the left and, for example, has enjoyed drag for a really long time, there have been some quite interesting, rather interesting analyses of what the trans movement did to drag. There have been some rather interesting analyses about the trans the trans movement did to lesbian bars. That's a famous one. You can Google it. There's some real complaints that have been boiling among people on the left for a long time that nobody's been comfortable enough kind of airing, let alone me Chappelle was doing this on Netflix, but it was seen as like sort of a

unspeakable. His specials were seen as like these just crazy, unspeakable sets that could only happen from Chappelle and Netflix was super brave for airing them. It's all crazy in and of itself. But see it on CNN was, dare I say, a bit refreshing. All right. Finally, I want to end on a Bravo note. I want to talk a little bit about the new HBO docu-series on Mary Cosby. I think we can put this article up on the screen about that docu-series because I watched all of it over the break, obviously. And this is a response that Mary Cosby has offered on Instagram to the docu-series. It's very vague. She says in a hashtag, don't believe the lies, but basically just reading from this rundown, I'm sorry, this is a TLC documentary.

I watched it on HBO because you can watch TLC on HBO. But it's a, it's a, you know, It's a really serious glance at Mary Cosby. It was one of the real housewives of Salt Lake City. That show goes back, so I think it was 2020. It's five or six seasons in at this point. But the allegations against Mary Cosby, who is the head of a Pentecostal church that was started by her grandmother. She's the head of this church now in Salt Lake City, predominantly black congregation in Salt Lake City, very charismatic. You can see that from when it airs on the show. So these are, again, like, I'm just, they're very, very serious allegations. There's a Christian angle to this, and then there's a broader angle to this.

Like, as a Christian, this woman's tagline, I think this was the last season of Housewives, was, quote, if you come from me, I will send Jesus after you. Like, she was invoking the Messiah in her tagline as though she could, quote, send Jesus. I mean, it's heretical. Her entire, her entire worldview, from my perspective, is, you know, she's often exuding heretical teachings, which is super dangerous if you're the head of a flock and you're on national television purporting to be a pastor like Mary Cosby is, the head of the church like Mary Cosby is. It's called Faith Temple Pentecostal. As this rundown says, in the production, Cosby's family members and former churchgoers opened up about. their alleged experience under the Star's leadership. One former member claimed that Cosby and her husband pressured the church into giving large sums of money at, quote, heave offerings. At another point in the series, Cosby's first cousin,

alleged that the TV personality once had an affair with a church member, goes on, all kinds of accusations along these lines. But basically, it's that the church is, in some cases, framing Mary Cosby as a figure, a prophet-like figure, who if you don't listen to Mary Cosby, you are disobeying God. And that is used to pressure people into giving very large sums of money that they can't afford. These are allegations in the docu-series, which Cosby is obviously denying and has denied for a very long time. And Cosby was initially a very splashy addition to the cast because as the docu-series goes through, after her grandmother died

at the age of 65, Mary Cosby married her grandmother's husband. So she married her step-grandfather. She has a son with her step-grandfather, who, as you can imagine, is significantly, significantly older than she is. And as a major player in this church, there are allegations of kind of physical, not sexual, but physical abuse of some people who grew up in the church being made to do activities that were physically abusive, like physical activities that were straining them in undue ways when they were young boys. It's a really, I mean, it's clearly a very ugly atmosphere. And I feel pretty comfortable. You know, I can't verify all of these allegations. I just feel very comfortable as a Christian looking at this and saying it's not

sound, it's not theologically sound, that much is obvious. But I want to just comment from the sake of, from the sake of Bravo, because I think it gets in this interesting cancel culture discussion, which is that all of these real housewives back in 2020, Ramona Singer, a really good example, were being castigated and made to apologize for their various ideological transgressions. And there were these on-air just forced conversations about politics. political correctness in the different series. People were demanding that imperfect, you know, ideologically, possibly conservative or reactionary or Christian, Bravo stars who didn't share, everyone knows what I'm talking about, even if you don't watch Bravo. People who didn't share

the sort of fully progressive worldview were kind of being dragged on social media. And there was this idea that they should actually leave the show. And I was writing a lot at the time for the federalists saying this idea that your reality television star needs to be a moral hero is insane. That's not what reality television is for. It's certainly not what the real housewives for. You are out of the joke. You are missing the joke completely if you're taking the shows so seriously that you need moral figures to be cast in these roles of antagonists. And that's what you are if you're on the real housewife. You're, you may be in on the joke, but people are laughing at you. They're not laughing with you. And that is definitely the case for most people

who watch Mary Cosby say the most bizarre lines. They're funny because they're so weird. But they're so bizarre. And I think the question, you know, there's a major difference between somebody who believes something that you don't like. You know, maybe they're anti-BLM or they have questions about the trans movement, whatever. And somebody who is actively perpetuating an abusive scheme, as these allegations paint the picture of, based partially on their fame from the Bravo show. And that is the case with Mary Cosby. So I don't excuse myself from the people who find these discussions about where the boundary is interesting, because I do think those are interesting questions. I do think, you know, the discussions about whether Louis C.K.'s

alleged transgression should change the way you view his art. I think it's interesting. I watched, I Love You Daddy, because the friend got their hands on a copy of it, like, while Louis C.K. was being canceled. And I thought it made the film, sadly, it made the film more interesting. And that's, you know, what artists do. And, you know, the commercialization of art has made it so that people sometimes have to think about whether patronizing an artist who is as imperfect as any other human being, if not more imperfect, because they are an artist. I'm not saying the housewives of art. artists, but some of them are. The point is they're cast because they're bananas. And people are artists oftentimes because they're bananas. And the commercialization of that does, I think, raise some interesting questions. Do you want to, you know, for me, my answer is always, I don't, for the most part, I'm not drawing the line. I think the question for Bravo, though, I mean, there's obviously huge, practical, prudent liability questions that are now going to be raised about Mary Cosby.

But I think there's a serious, genuine moral question as to whether allowing Mary Cosby to promote herself as a good mother on the show, which she does, as an upstanding community member, what she does on the show. I mean, this is somebody who is dripping in designer outfits constantly. And as an evangelical Christian, you're familiar with that,

or I'm familiar with that because of the entire prosperity gospel narrative. She's showing off her closet that is studded with these designer clothes and shoes and everything, under the sun while people are alleging that she was, and the church leadership was coercing money out of poor parishioners. So I think it's like a question for Bravo right now

is to whether her ongoing participation of the show, which did stop for a year, whether or not that's something perpetuating the alleged abuse that this church, Mary Cosby's church and Mary Cosby in particular, seems to be perpetuating perpetuating allegedly on a lot of a lot of people. So anyway, my two cents on the Bravo Mary Cosby story. Appreciate everybody sticking with me through that one, but I thought it was a

pretty interesting cancel culture discussion. We have the great Glenn Greenwald scheduled for Wednesday, so make sure you're tuning in live at 10 p.m. Eastern for that. You can shoot me an email over at Emily at devilmaicaremedia.com. Got a lot of fun emails over the break that I will certainly get to on this week's edition of Happy Hour. I'll apply to as as many as I possibly can. But as a reminder, subscribe on YouTube, subscribe wherever you get your podcast and those Happy Hour episodes pop in your podcast feed. So if you want to get those where I talk to you through your questions, subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And I will see everyone back here again on Wednesday.