After Party with Emily Jashinsky - The Truth About Obama’s Role in the Russia Hoax with Tom Bevan, Plus NYT’s Unhinged Dating Advice

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Emily Jashinsky takes us inside The White House briefing room as DNI Tulsi Gabbard details significant new information about the Russia Hoax, and discusses with RealClearPolitics' Tom Bevan the claim that former President Obama led an effort to tie President Trump to Putin, and the chances Obama could face charges.  Plus the two discuss new polling that shows how President Trump compares to his predecessors, and the possibility Rahm Emanuel is getting back into politics. Then Emily takes a deep dive into the ridiculous New York Times Magazine Essay “The Trouble With Wanting Men,” and Stephen Colbert’s pity party.PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229.Delta Rescue: Visit https://DeltaRescue.orgto learn more Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What's up everyone? Welcome to After Party. As a reminder, we are here every Monday and Wednesday, live at 10 p.m. Eastern. So make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. It's so much fun when we're here on the live stream. Now, quick programming note before we dive into everything, the great Adam Carolla rescheduled for Monday. So make sure you tune in Monday to see Adam Carolla. Very, very happy to be joined by Tom Bevin of real clear politics. And then we're going to be. to get into a little bit of an absolutely bananas New York Times essay that I just, we have to talk about. So before all of that, though, I was at the White House today and had the opportunity to ask DNI, so Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a question. It's been a long day. I started with breaking points at like 7.30 a.m. and then went straight to the White House, and then from the White House went straight here to prep. But it was good to be in the new media seat today. I'll actually be back there tomorrow as well as part of the pool for new media.

So we all were waiting for the briefing today. And it was going late. They were reading the Co-Burger verdict, which obviously Megan and the whole MK True Crime team covered great today. I was watching that. I'm excited to catch up with some of the coverage. but waiting for the briefing to start, it ends up starting pretty late. And Tulsi Gabbard comes out and lays out a case from a newly declassified House Intelligence Committee report that was prepared mostly on the grounds of the CIA.

Matt Taibi has pointed this out about the 2016 election back in 2017, 2018. And Director Gabbard spends a good chunk of time going through this declassified report in detail. contextualizing it with the declassified documents or the newly disclosed document dump from last week. And then also, of course, CIA director John Ratcliffe's report from a couple weeks ago as well. Basically, there was this, there has been this wave of information that we've gotten just in the last month that paints a clearer picture of what really happened in 2016. Now, I want to make something very clear. I 100% believe the administration is milking these disclosures to distract from the Epstein scandal. And that, though, doesn't mean two things can't be true at the same time.

Both of these things can be important and both of these things can be significant. And the administration can be doing what politicians do and what government officials do and trying to suck all of the oxygen away from a damaging story by trying to change the narrative. And Donald Trump basically said as much in the Oval Office earlier this week. So that was actually just yesterday when Trump basically said, stop paying attention to this. I've seen witch hunt. The real witch hunt you should be paying attention to is over here.

And it involves my predecessors. It involves Comey. It involves Brennan. And I think, you know, from the outside, my perspective on that is both. Both of these scandals are scandalous. Both of these scandals are important and significant, and I'm really glad that this report was declassified by Director Gabbert because it does indeed paint quite an interesting picture.

So I'm just going to start. This is when you're in the new media seat, you get the first question. So you come in, you prep a bunch of questions. It's nice to be the first person to ask a question because it means you usually get the big question, the most important question, and you usually don't have to go down to your 20th question. because you're the first person to ask a question, but I scrap my questions.

I had every intention of asking a couple tough Epstein questions where I thought were tough Epstein questions. And then when Director Gabord came out, there was really no choice, but to react to what she was saying, which was, let's go ahead and roll S1 here. We'll start with our new media seat, as always. Emily, go ahead. Thank you. And Director Gabbert, this one is for you. Do you believe that any of this new information implicates former President Obama in criminal behavior? We have referred and will continue to refer all of these documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate the criminal implications of this. For even the evidence, correct. The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact.

Okay, so the details of this report and then to sort of zoom back and have the context of other declassified information, you have to zoom out, view this in the context of the Durham report, which many people remember, also the Mueller report, and all of this information that has come out on a steady drip since the pieces of the puzzle started to be put together by people like the great Molly Hemingway. like our friend here, Matt Taibi, you really, I mean, can't just look at any of this in a vacuum. But the report itself is quite significant. So let me just take a look so I can show you because there's a lot of downplaying going on. But this is the House Majority's report that says a couple of things. It says, on the one hand, finding number two is that the bulk of ICA judgments, so intelligence community assessment judgments on Russia's election operations were sound and employed proper analytic tradecraft. Okay. Well, when we go over here, we see finding number two. Significant tradecraft failings cast doubt on ICA judgments of Putin's intentions.

And this is where what was released today is very, very important. Because what is released today shows that there was this process, and we knew some of this, but we didn't see. some of the granular details. And I can go here to Matt Taibi, who, towards the bottom of his report on this, for the record, I am a racket subscriber. I just don't usually use Chrome. And I use my Chrome browser to put things up on here. So don't worry, I pay for my news. But Matt goes down and shows the intelligence that the report found was used specifically to cook up this idea that Vladimir Putin specifically was trying to help Donald Trump, which is obviously worth distinguishing because that was one of the important claims.

So as I was listening to Director Gabbard, that jumped out as, of course, the obvious question. They had a graphic with Barack Obama at the center of it and like literal tentacles branching out from that picture, trying to illustrate what they see as a broad conspiracy. And it is a conspiracy. The more we're learning about it, it is a conspiracy. And that's where, just to go back quickly to this tab,

the Obama question is really interesting because here, Obama put out a statement that said yesterday, through a spokesperson, that said, nothing in the document issued last week, referring to what Gabbert released on Friday, undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.

findings were affirmed in 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intel Committee led by then Chairman Marco Rubio. So that's arguing past the point. And I'll talk to Tom about this in just a second because I'm curious to get his thoughts. But that's not even what Gabbard is saying. Gabbard isn't disputing what Barack Obama said right there. What she is accusing him of is basically being involved in an effort to cook up intelligence that was not substantiated to, as she put it, undermine the will of the American electorate. And what that would look like criminally, I mean, there was a Supreme Court decision about immunity that we know very well regarding Donald Trump, presidential immunity regarding Donald Trump, you know, not that long ago. So we're all

familiar with that. So, you know, that's, what does it mean for Barack Obama? Does it mean Donald Trump actually is going to pursue charges or he'll have his administration pursue charges against Barack Obama? What is the legal standing? That is a question that the administration, what you heard from Gabbert is that she's referring this over to the Attorney General to the Department of Justice, and they will now face more and more questions. But what we do at least know, is that based on these answers, based on Gabbard's answer to me, here's how the Federalist put it in a headline. They said, Gabbard, we've asked DOJ to investigate, quote, criminal implications of Obama's role in Russia hoax. We know based on what Tulsi Gabbard said at the briefing today when I asked her that they are willing to say that.

And that is significant. I mean, this is, we sort of are numb to the history that we live through now because everything happens so fast. and there is, precedents are being shattered left and right, literally and figuratively. And that is significant. You have the administration. I mean, Trump was posturing in this direction. He's been, you know, Fingering Obama for the last several days in Comey and Brennan and all of that. We know they opened a criminal investigation into Comey and Brennan.

But it's, of course, significant when you have the presidential administration. You have the director of national intelligence suggesting that they have referred the form of former president of the United States, a member of the other party, to the Department of Justice for further investigation into potential criminal charges. So significant stuff, interesting stuff. It was a really, really wild day to be there. We are going to get to Tom in just one moment. Stick around. But first, over the years, I've been very, very clear about this. We just talked about it on the last episode. 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. So important. That's exactly why I

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Help save babies and support mothers today. Go to preborn.com slash Emily or call 855601.229. That's pre-born. com slash Emily. All right, let's bring in former baby, Tom Bevin. Nice, Emily. That was a long time ago. I'm starting to look more like one now. I've lost my hair. I'm sort of reverting back, you know.

We all, that you start as a bald, helpless creature. Yeah. Right. Exactly. But Tom, just can I get your reaction? because I was thinking, even just now as I was going over what happened at the White House today, how wild it is. I mean, we kind of knew that the White House was building up to something like this.

And so that took away a little bit of the shock factor, but to some extent, we should never lose the shock factor here, that we have the presidential administration now saying they've referred a criminal investigation over to the Department of Justice against their former president political enemy. You've been covering politics for a long time. That is stunning stuff. It is stunning stuff. But first, I have to say, congratulations on the new show and all the success.

And being at the White House today, I came armed with my red wine. So, cheers to you, Emily. Cheers on. Thank you. Thank you. And I mean, I love going on the Real Clear podcast. It's always a blast over there. No, so look, you know, as I was listening to you, and I listened to Megan's interview with Matt Taibi.

and it is easy to get lost in the dates and the names and all that. But if you step back and take sort of the wide view, right, the 30,000 foot view, it goes like this. And I think Megan and Matt actually did a pretty good job of laying this out. But, you know, so heading into after the election, so we're talking like early December, the intelligence community is ready to present a report to Barack Obama basically saying, look, Russia had, they really didn't do anything that they haven't done before, a little tinkering here and there, but it's to suggest that, you know, they were in this on behalf of Donald Trump or that he was colluding with them in any way.

And that report got pulled, basically. Obama said, no, you know, I need a new report. And that was on December 9th. And so they were going to, and they rushed this report and they didn't maybe a month or something. And they released it in January. But what happened was is that, and Megan pointed this out, so the narrative completely flipped on that day. And by that evening, they were leaking to the Washington Post, the New York Times. And the next day you had stories in the paper saying, Russia, you know, interfered in the election. And they were doing it on behalf of Donald Trump. And mind you, there was no evidence to support any of this. And so that, to me, is really, when you just look at those facts alone, and I said this on our podcast,

today too. You know, you look at the folks that were involved in this, right? James Clapper, John Brennan, who's who's who lied to the Senate, spied on the Senate. We now have evidence from what John Radcliffe released, you know, a week or so ago that looks like he perjured himself before the Senate committee by saying that the, you know, Steele dossier had, you know, was not involved in this in any way. And then we found out, oh, by the way, he made sure it was included, overruled his subordinates who didn't want to include it. So, you know, Susan Rice, James Comey, for God's sakes, was in this meeting. All these folks, right?

Do we have any reason to trust them? Is there any reason we should be skeptical of what they say? Obama himself, you know, released a statement, as you said, oh, this is a distraction, et cetera, et cetera. you know, and I know Obama was always lauded as having the most scandal-free administration in history. Well, you know, other parts of his administration, right? Remember IRS, Lois Lerner, was weaponized against conservatives, right? There are other examples to point to where, you know, Obama's administration was weaponized

in certain ways. And so I believe everything that is being said here is, you know, the questions that are being raised, the probes, this is not a distraction. This is a serious, serious issue. These are serious questions. They deserve serious answers. And, you know, hopefully we'll get there. Now, do I think Obama's going to get, you know, frog marched out of his Martha's Vineyard Estate? And, you know, like some MAGA folks want, no, I don't think that'll ever happen. In some ways, you know, everyone says nobody's above the law. I think perhaps, you know, Barack Obama might be above the law. But also, you know, he, I'm sure he has plausible deniability here.

he can say, well, I just ordered a new intelligence assessment. I didn't coordinate any of this stuff, you know, and it was kind of a wink, wink, you know, nod, they knew what he wanted and they went and did it. But it is a, it's an important story. It's a fascinating story. As you said, it's distracting from, you know, the administration is pushing it to distract from other stories that they don't like as much. But yes, it's been a bonkers few days.

And I'm sure it was bonkers in the White House press briefing room as Tulsi Gabbard was there releasing new information and laying the stuff all. out. Well, yeah, and so the real clear White House correspondent, Philip Wegman, had a great question into Director Gabbard about Barack Obama. So he said the Obama, he read the Obama statement that nothing undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence 2016 election and asked, you know, how do you respond to critics like Obama who said the admin is conflating apples and oranges here conflating allegations of actual hacking of voter machines and allegations of interference generally.

And Tulsi sort of unloaded after that question and said, I think it's a disservice to the American people that former President Obama's office and others who are criticizing the transparency that is being delivered by releasing these documents said that they were trying to deflect away from their culpability and what is a historic scandal. And then Caroline Levitt, by the way, stepped up to the podium after that and said there needs to be accountability for weaponization that we've seen and basically called for Pulitzer Prizes to be stripped from the media later in the briefing. So Tom, just on the politics of this,

the administration seems to think this is a real winner. I am a little, I mean, I think it's an extremely important story. And having worked at the Federalist, well, all of this was happening for the most part, I've seen it up close. and have seen the reporting up close, and I do think it's really significant, but I also know that it's incredibly granular and hard to follow, and it's the same basic story

that has been told and dismissed by the media over and over again for almost a decade now, and people are already kind of aware of it. So what do you make of the political impact of, you know, Gabbard seemed to think, when she really leaned into that question, and seem to think they have something powerful. Well, I agree with you.

I mean, this is one of those stories that, you know, it's two movies. We're living in two separate realities. And what you think about the story and what you believe is based on where you sit politically. I'm sure, you know, Democrats are fully in line with Obama's statement. They think this is, you know, just bullshit.

It's a distraction. It's a smokescreen. It's a smear against, you know, to try and hide. and changed the subject. And I'm sure, you know, all of Trump supporters believe very deeply that he's right. They've, you know, Obama was the one who directed this and sent his minions

to go gin up evidence, this sort of fake evidence that undermined his entire presidency, the first term anyway. And so, you know, do independence, you know, are they open-minded about this? Can they be swayed? Maybe, maybe not.

Who knows? And to your point, it gets pretty granular pretty quickly. And so I'm just not sure that, and as you mentioned, right, the media played a real or central role in propagating this narrative, right, in the beginning. And they show no interest in really sort of, you know, doing the same thing in the other direction now. As this information is coming out, yes, the New York Times wrote a sort of obligatory story about, you know, Tulsi Gabbard comes at Obama with new documents or something. but certainly not the sort of, you know, feeding frenzy and drip, drip, drip that we were subjected to with leaks about, you know, the Russia collusion thing for months and months,

years, actually, by, you know, all the major networks and all the major anchors and all the major papers. So there, because it's not getting that same, you know, yes, if you watch Fox News or if you, if you were in the sort of conservative media ecosystem, it's getting a lot of attention. But outside of that, I don't know that it's not. breaking through, especially with people who are maybe, you know, sort of not super ideological or super news-driven and they're focused on their lives. So, you know, the other issue that I would say is that the reason that the administration finds themselves in a bit of a, you know, sticky wicket is that here they're pushing for full, total, transparent disclosure about all

this stuff, get the truth out, right? And then you've got the other competing story, which is the Epstein files. And there it's kind of like, well, yeah, well, you know, we'll release. I've instructed Pam Bondi to release anything that is legitimate. But Barack Obama made everything up. So none of that stuff is real anyway. So, you know, I mean, it's not, they'd be on more solid ground if they were pushing for, you know, sort of total transparency across the board, but they're not. And so, you know, in that sense, people probably view it as maybe a little bit more political. Yeah, this is a big question because, you know, fundamentally, these two stories, as crazy

as this sounds, I think are about a similar basic issue, which is, or basic possibility, which is that unaccountable people in the intelligence community, unaccountable bureaucrats, basically in the intelligence community who are not elected unless we include Barack Obama in this, and maybe Donald Trump, are, there's, there's, there's, so much happening in the shadows with information trading that is affecting significantly our politics in ways that we don't we never get the information and if we do it's you know multiple years after the fact and we're forced to sort of put the puzzle pieces together and find the bigger picture ourselves for years into the future as we are still doing with the Kennedy

story and the MLK story and the RFK story and all of these different situations so on the one hand though, and this is, I think, quite interesting. So the Wall Street Journal drops a story this afternoon. This is F1. They say the Justice Department told Trump in May that his name is among many in the Epstein files. This contrasts with what Donald Trump himself told reporters outside the White House. Just a couple, I think it was just within the matter of recent days. So I think like the last few weeks, that no, he hadn't heard that from Pam Bondi. So that's a little bit. little bit of an issue for the White House, but buried in this story is the notion that Dan Bongino is deeply frustrated that Cash Patel and Dan Bonino had wanted more information to be disclosed

to the public. But Tom, now that Director Gabbard is like on this odyssey to disclose as much information about a potential wrongdoing on behalf of the Obama administration as possible, if anything that seems to me that, yes, it's taking oxygen away from the Epstein story. I myself was going to ask Epstein questions that didn't get asked during the briefing. I'll be back there tomorrow, so I hope to ask those questions. But at the same time, what it really has the effect of doing, it seems to me, is rallying people internally behind the president. It's sort of a morale boost for the MAGA movement.

Am I wrong on that? I don't know. I mean, this is the first issue where Trump supporters, I'm talking about the Epstein case, where Trump supporters disapprove of the way he's handling. I mean, normally, you know, you look at any issue, any event, they're all in, they support the president, you know, overwhelmingly. And this is the first time we've seen data suggest that Republicans, you know, and obviously lots of Democrats for political reasons. But the first time Republicans have said, yeah, I'm not really thrilled with the way that he's handled. this. And it, you know, because, and we've talked about this in the past, you know, the way that this administration, you know, Pam Bondi going out there's now, I've got it on my desk and we've got, you know, thousands of videos and all these things. They just oversold the idea. And then they tried to walk it back. And that just creates more questions. And so, you know, does it rally the folks internally who've been sort of, you know, under assault over the last couple weeks? The, you know, the Tulsi Gabbard stuff? Yes.

it does and it gives them an opportunity to, you know, shift the narrative. But look, this thing isn't going away. And, you know, Mike Johnson dismissed the house early and is hoping that they can go home. You sure did. Yeah, and hoping they can go home. And after four or five weeks, the temperature will get lowered. But, you know, I will be shocked if some of these Republican representatives don't go home and have town hall meetings and get an earful from their constituents about the Epstein stuff and why they, where the files, where is all this stuff? Look, I think some of this stuff is,

I think we know Trump's names are in those Epstein files, right? I mean, I think that's already pretty well established. And I think everybody kind of, that's baked into all of the political calculations. Now, how often he's mentioned and in what context he's mentioned, those are important details. And, you know, it'll be embarrassing for him if that information comes out and it doesn't shed a great light on them.

But at the end of the day, it is hard for them to fight this sort of dual fight and say, look, we want total transparency over here, not as much transparency on this. And like, stop talking about Epstein needs it old. I mean, the way that Trump has gone about this and trying to say, like, look, Barack Obama made up all those files and James Comey made up all those files. Well, I don't think anybody believes that. I don't think there's a, that's really passing the smell test with a lot of folks,

including a lot of his supporters. Right. Yeah, I think that's all generally true. And, you know, this is somebody that you caught from Politico. Let's put F3 on the screen. We're going to play Tale of Two Headlines. This is the best game that exists. And here's Politico, original headline.

House Dems find their mojo with the Epstein saga. Tom flagged that. And then the headline, today, you get, F4, Democrats are running circles around Republicans on Epstein. And Tom, what's interesting about that is they kind of are trying to. But like Hakeem Jeffries the other day, we played it on Monday show. He about fell on his face during a press conference when he was talking about how Democrats historically haven't cared about Epstein.

And this was his attempt to dunk on Trump about. Epstein. So yes, it's a political opportunity for Democrats, but the idea that they're actually making the most of it seems crazy right now. Yeah, I mean, that political headline is just silly, right? Is it a political boon for them? Yes. Are they playing it as best they can to their advantage? Sure. But you also have, you know, Pramia J. Paul was on CNN. Jamie Raskin was on Morning Joe and was like, this Epstein thing is so important. And then Joe Scarborough, to his credit, and I'm very critical, have been a critical of Joe said, well, if it's so important, why, you know, why didn't you do anything about it for the four years that you were running the entire government?

And Jamie Raskin literally had no answer. He just sort of sputtered like a moron for like 30 seconds. And that's the problem. They don't have the moral high ground here. This is purely political and transparently so. And I think everybody knows that. And so I think for that reason, they're not able to make as much of it and move the needle on this as much as they would. if they had been fighting for the release of these documents while Joe Biden was president. But they didn't do that. And so it's just disingenuous for them to be out there, you know, shouting from the rooftops about what an important issue this is and how critical it is that this stuff gets released. So the other thing, like the Republican Study Committee had a new media town hall last week.

And so I was actually talking a lot of House Republicans about how much they expected to hear from constituents regarding Epstein when they're, you know, back at home. And it was pretty clear to me that they all knew they were going to get questions about Epstein and that for, you know, people, I was framing it as explicitly as a matter of, you know, is it a kitchen table issue when people have bills to pay and you guys are trying to sell the big beautiful bill? One of the reasons they wanted to preserve as much of their August recess as possible other than the fact that they are lazy and titled politicians is that, who wanted to vacation, is that they see it as a time to go. sell the big beautiful bill back at home and to tell people all the wonderful things about the

bill. But this is interesting, Tom, because the Quinnipiac poll from last week found that Trump is right now underwater on immigration on the economy and on foreign policy. And you guys over at Real Clear, keep a very close eye on polling, obviously. Everyone knows that. So I'm curious right now how you explain this discrepancy between what Republicans, I mean, one of the reasons they're frustrated about the upscene stories, they feel like they are on a role. They feel like they have historic levels of momentum. They pass the big, beautiful bill. They have the border basically shut down. Trump's Iran bomb has not caused World War III. Bombing hasn't caused World War III so far and all of that. Why do, why is that message not breaking through with voters?

Well, I mean, it's, again, that's a story of the two realities that we're living in, right? Democrats think Trump's the worst president ever. And Republicans, by and large, think he's the best president ever, right? And independents are somewhere in between. Now, you have seen his disapproval rating tick up a couple of points in last week. And that's pretty much because, you know, Republicans, I think have, he's had some slippage among Republicans who don't like the way that he's handled the Epstein stuff. but he hasn't lost that much ground overall. And that's a factor of, you know, how tribal we are as a society and people are sort of locked in,

red team, blue team, that kind of thing. I mean, there's just not, another thing that we do, Emily, is we keep a chart that tracks presidential job approval rating during the second term for Trump, for Obama, and for George W. Bush. And it was interesting the other day, I posted this on X. I was, you know, I checked this stuff basically every day or every other day. And they were all at like 45.3%. They were within like one or two tenths of each other, which was crazy.

Because, again, you think about how the media and how everybody portrayed Barack Obama's second term and how great he was. And right? And he was at 45%. And here's Donald Trump. And the media portrays him. He's still getting almost universally negative coverage. And he's getting beat up by Democrats every day.

He's at 45%. Yeah, here it is. Just pull them up, Tom. Look at that. There you go. Yeah. So fairly interesting stuff. So, you know, I do think Trump has, he's lost a little bit of altitude on some of these issues.

But overall, he's still pretty solid. And this is going to come. This is why I think it is important. Republicans do need to get home and sell the big beautiful bill. I mean, that's what this, that's what this midterm is going to be fought over. Who wins the narrow? battle? Is it, you know, Republicans are taking away health care benefits from working people, or is it, you know, what, we put work requirements on Medicaid so that, you know, people who are here

illegally don't get them and people who, you know, Americans get them first? That's a hugely important debate that has to take place over the next year and a half, and Republicans need to get to selling that. And in that sense, I guess, you know, the Epstein thing is kind of a distraction, but it is one of those stories that it's just it's occupied this sort of mythological status in our culture because of you know his murder slash suicide and and all of these things and it's been part of the culture for you know a decade or more now that you know people are interested in it and they want to know they want to get answers to it so it's it's been back there in the back of the mind for a long time so republicans are going to have to deal with that too yeah it's such a high profile can

everyone has questions about it. Yes, of course. People care about it. People care about it for a lot of legitimate reasons. So Republicans are right to expect to get all kinds of questions, which is why adjourning the House without even taking like a symbolic vote on a toothless bill, just I don't know. I don't know what they're up to, Tom.

It seems like quite an unforced error. But listen, I think maybe what happened is I'm curious what you think. My theory is that Trump told Mike Johnson, No, you're not voting on this. It gives an inch to Dems. And then they keep taking an inch, an inch, and pretty soon it's mile. Don't give them what they want. That could be.

That could it be, actually. Look, I think Mike Johnson has done a sort of masterful job at managing his caucus. And, you know, he has pretty good political instincts. So, I don't know. Time will tell whether this was an unfortunate. error or maybe it was the smart move. I mean, again, we have to wait and see. But he's, I think you've got to give him credit for the way that he's managed a very thin majority thus far. Yeah, I mean, the big, beautiful bill, there's no question about that. That was a political

feat, but belongs in the history books. Tom, you're a Chicago guy. So before you run, I got to ask what you make of Rahm Emanuel's political, I can't say political reinvention because The only thing we know about Rahm Emanuel is that he's sort of not gender fluid, of course, because now he believes that men are men and women are women, but he's sort of generally fluid. Not gender fluid, but generally fluid. It comes to his beliefs. He told Megget on Megyn Kelly show this week, of course, that he, a man cannot become a woman, a woman cannot become a man, and said he was going to have to go into witness protection because of it.

But obviously he comes from Obama world. He comes from Clinton world. He's been everywhere and back again. and now seems to be serious about potentially running for president. And that, I imagine to people who have watched him very closely from Chicago is insane. Well, it's insane because, you know, he has this one big bag that he's been carrying around. And it was the shooting of Laquam MacDonald. He was a 16-year-old African-American kid who was shot, I think, like 16 times by the Chicago Police Department.

And Rom participated in the cover-up of that. And progressives have never forgiven him for that. And it gets brought up all the time. And it will certainly be brought up if he is to run for office. And it is run for a president. And so he's got to figure out how to get around or get past that. But you look at the arc of Rahm's career. He's been super ambitious his whole life.

And he's also been very savvy. I mean, he has, he ran the, you know, DNCC. I mean, he's been elected to office. he seems to have nine lives. I mean, he's smart, he's tough. And, you know, his theory of the case, as he laid out to Megan the other day, is that that's what Democrats need.

That's what they, that's what this moment requires. And he's clearly looking at sort of the centrist lane and trying to win back some of these voters who ended up switching and voting for Donald Trump or not voting at all. And I think he has, you know, that sounds somewhat persuasive to me. Is Rom the guy who can do that?

Yeah, maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's like Andy Bashir, who's in South Carolina this week. Right. Or, you know, somebody else. But I think he is serious about it. And I would not take him lightly if I was, you know, someone who's going to be running for president. Because, again, I think Rahm is a tough guy and a smart guy. And he's, he is politically savvy.

And I think he would run a pretty good campaign if he can just get, somehow figure out how to get around and defuse the issue of Laquois MacDonald because it's out there, it sort of looms over him. Yeah, and he'll also, I mean, we saw him wade into the cultural waters, but then he has to sort of do some way he would have to get through the primary by, you know, going right at the populists without losing. This is the thing that Joe Biden did, that nobody else in that 2020 primary could quite pull off. You can run in a lane where you sound populist, but you also sound, you're populist coded to populists,

and you are centrist coded to centrist. And that's a really hard thing to do. But actually, Rahm Emanuel, again, like, I get it. It all sounds insane. He's never actually held elected office outside of Chicago that I'm aware of. And that's kind of a crazy path to the presidency. But he might actually be the person to do it.

Well, we'll see. I mean, he was a congressman from Illinois for a little bit. When was that? That was like the... That was in the early stages. And then he left there to be, I think, Chief of Staff. But he is... Look, all the energy right now is with the populace.

It is with the progressives. It is with, you know... I mean, you look at what's happening with Mamdani and Omar Fata in Minneapolis. And you've got Bernie and AOC out there fighting the oligarchy. and getting 30, 35,000 people. You know, what we saw in 2020 was so unique. Joe Biden finished, you know, what, fourth or fifth in Iowa, fourth in New Hampshire.

We'd never have anybody finished that low and still win the nomination. The Democrats were so desperate to win and beat Donald Trump that you had, literally the race just sort of, they folded up the tent. Pete Buttigieg got out, Amy Klobuchar got out. They were Buttigieg won Iowa.

That's not going to happen this time because Donald Trump's not going to be on the ballot. So these Democrats are not going to just, you know, walk away when they've got a legitimate chance of winning and hand it to ROM because they think he's, you know, he's a centrist or something. I mean, it's going to be a total dog fight. And I just don't know that the energy is with the centrist in the primary.

If they can get through the primary, that's obviously where they need to be for general election. But, man, I mean, right now you look at where some of these folks are, and it's like they haven't really learned the lessons from 2020 when they all stood on the job. debate stage and raise their hand to decriminalize border crossings and provide health insurance for people who are illegally, if you got everybody together who's thinking about running for president and you put them on a stage and you ask them that question, I think a majority of them would probably

still raise their hands. Maybe they wouldn't, but there's not a ton of learning that has gone on this far that I can see. I think that's a good point. Last question, Tom, all-time worst person from Chicago. And I know there's a lot of competition. All-time worst person from Chicago? Wow, that's a good one. It should be easy. There's a lot of people to choose from. No, I mean.

Jesse Smalley. He could be. Wow, we do. We've had a lot of them. Yes, juicy Smolet is one of my faves, at least in recent memory. But gosh, you've stumped me here. here. Wow. I mean, we've had we've had so much corruption. And it's been bipartisan, by the way. You think of Denny Hastert. He wasn't really from Chicago proper. But, you know, Dan Rostinkowski,

you know, all of these folks. Mike Madigan, who ran the Democrat who ran the Illinois legislature for like 40 years, just such total corruption. I'm going to think on this, and I'll get back to you. But there's a, there's a long list of folks. Yeah, that's for sure. And when you're ready to give up on the Cubs and root for the Brewers this season, you just let me know too, Tom. You can get back to me at the same time. Best record baseball, baby. Oh, man. All right, we'll see, Tom. Cheers. Thank you so much for stopping by Tom Bevin, co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics. So excited to have you here, Tom. Have a great night. Great to be with you, Emily. Congratulations again. Thank you. All right. Let me tell you a story about a guy named Leo Grillo while on a real. road trip, Leo came across a Doberman. This dog was severely underweight and clearly in trouble.

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website to learn more and speak with an advisor. We call a dog man's best friend for a reason you can help those who need it most. So please visit deltarescue.org today to learn more. That's deltarescue.org. All right, those dogs are cute. And somebody, one of my friends who was watching the other day, told me that they, I'm basically doing a Sarah McLaughlin with those wonderful Delta Rescue ads. And that is high praise. I mean, wow, high praise. I realized actually a couple of weeks ago, speaking of Sarah McLaughlin, that some people, someone said in the chat a couple of of days ago when we were on Monday's show, I was in the live YouTube chat and someone said something

like it, you know, really you have to be careful with what books you put behind you or, you know, something implying that people who do shows with their bookshelves behind them put a lot of thought and effort into like trying to look smart with their bookshelves. Let me tell you, I accidentally realized a couple of weeks ago that my full ass Dawson's Creek box set is behind me and the shots. And I don't know if you can tell that's what it is. It's one of the big blue boxes on one of the lower shelves. And I realized it. And I was like, I don't even care.

Don't even care. Maybe I'll ask Adam about that, by the way, when he's on Monday show because he had a spectacular guest role on Dawson's Creek. Joshua Jackson and Katie Holmes have reunited. I don't know if everyone has seen those paparazzi pictures. There's so much happening. I'm looking at Ann Hathway as we did on Monday. show in the cerulean sweater from Devil Wears Prada in production for Devil Wears Prada, too.

And then Joshua Jackson and Katie Holmes are roaming the streets of New York together. It's all so much to take in. But speaking of things that are so much to take in, we got a look at this New York Times story. It's, I teased this up top. But this is F7. We can go ahead and just put the headline up on the screen because the headline, is just wonderful in and of himself. So the trouble with wanting men.

This is an incredibly long essay by someone named Jean Garnett. And it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, for the New York Times to run this, I think this is the type of thing that would be run in like, it's not that I have like the highest esteem for the New York Times, but just the quality of this essay is like, like something that would have been published in Jezebel, circa 2011. It's like a blog-level personal essay that drops all kinds of, you know, million-dollar words straight out of the, you know, the seminar sphere. And I've got to find some of them here, and I'm going to share them.

There's actually a lot. One of my favorites that gets used. and this becomes the whole basis for the story. Here it is. Yep. So I'm going to share my screen and you're going to see what I searched to find this word. I was looking for the author's use of the word heteropessimism. Heteropessimism.

Here's the paragraph. There are many routes to the species of disappointment I am circling here, but however we get there, the complaint is so common, such a cultural and narrative staple that the academy is weighing in. We now have a fancy word, hetero pessimism, to describe the outlook of straight women fed up with the mating behavior of men. Pausing right there, no, we don't have a word, because heteropessimism is not a fucking word.

Not a word. Just because some, quote, sexuality scholar named Asa Suresan comes up with the word heteropessimism, does not mean that we as a collective have the word heteropessimism. Now, according to the author, this sexuality scholar has later amended heteropessimism, actually to heterofatalism. And the author says that term seems at first glance to distill a mood that is no less timely for being timeless. I mean, again, like this is something that, you know,

Lena Dunham's character in girls would have submitted and complained about not getting published because the quality of it was so absurdly low. But here it is, 2025 in the New York Times. And this is the author writing about no longer being with their husband, all kinds of sexual exploits in the dating circuit, being in an open marriage, then being asked, about group, sex, and ultimately landing on just this concept of heteropatilism, which starts as, of course, heteropessimism. And I can't believe I even continue to say that word as though it's something real. But it's just basically landing on this concept of heterophatalism for the author is being tired of or stems from being tired.

of the bad dating behavior of men. And at one point, the author says, I don't want to feel, I don't want to fall into these traditional traps of waiting for a man to call me back. So this heteropessimism, this is just some helpful advice to the author, this heteropessimism is just heterorealism.

Men, until we no longer have such thing as a phone, I promise will continue to not call you back, even if they should call you back because they're interested in you. This is something she writes about in an experience with a lawyer that the lawyer is not texting. I think it was a friend, not texting the friend back. They've been out of dates. Dates have gone well. Your heteropessimism and heterophatilism is really just heterorealism. and to feel fatalistic about reality is such a fascinating glimpse into the progressive worldview.

Because I also want to mention that men right now, it's not an excuse. I mean, it's not an excuse so much as it's an explanation. Men right now actually behave extra badly, even worse than not as though. women have bad characteristics, right? So these men's, you know, natural bad characteristics, just like women have natural bad characteristics, are exacerbated right now because they've been under attack culturally for the better part of the last decade, for over the last decade. There are some policy explanations for this, starting with the Obama administration's manipulation of Title IX when it came to investigating. I was in college during all of this.

by the way, it came to the way that college investigated sexual assault when it came to the way college investigated rape. That changed the entire young, millennial dating culture, not just on campuses, but it became off of campuses. There were all of these new sexual politics and standards of consent that culminated in the Me Too movement with that sort of infamous Aziz Ansari essay.

And that kind of really broke the fever. I actually think that particular, essay and the conversation around it sort of broke the Me Too fever because it was so obviously wrong. The application of this philosophy was so obviously wrong that it seemed like that everyone kind of was able to think a little bit about what direction we were heading in. And so I suppose to an extent that was good. But for men, and I've covered this, I've covered this as journalists, even when I was back in college, I was reporting out stories based on the Obama shift of the Title IX guidelines and talking to people who had been falsely accused and talking to accusers that had real stories.

This was demoralizing for men because it stemmed from this broader cultural narrative that was splashed across the pages of every glossy magazine, every blog, and every major media outlet for years about toxic masculinity and about rape culture. And that was, I mean, of course, that's demoralizing to men, to be told that you are necessarily engaged in abusive women, or you're necessarily programmed to engage in the abuse of women because of who you are. It's a fine line, of course, between accepting, this is all happening, by the way, as the same people who are talking about toxic masculinity are trying to. to erase the distinctions between what a man is and what a woman is and saying,

well, this essential category of male and masculine doesn't even exist anyway. So look away. It's not a thing. So there's always an incoherence in it too. But this is all happening. And men from that and then also from this period, we covered this when Lena Dunham talked about it a couple of weeks ago, she said when girls came out, she felt like the culture, there was really this moment where things were looser.

You know, she was talking about like body positivity and sexual ethics that basically it felt like the pinnacle of the sexual revolution is something you could have extrapolated from what Lena Dunham said in that context. And she was really right. And that came with a really confusing set of expectations for men. women started reacting very negatively to the male sort of in the sexual economy. Men were like women were throwing themselves at men to have, you know, what they were told would be fulfilling relationships with one night stands and all of that. And then women were getting upset at men for not answering their phone calls. And it sounds like some of these same women are still getting upset with men for not answering. for not answering their phone calls,

while also insisting that these detached, emotionally detached relationships are possible and are in fact empowering, and also that men and women aren't really all of that different. So yes, men have been demoralized and confused. So women, by the way, but the idea that men sort of are right now behaving badly in the dating world, first of all, Men and women are like, we were just talking about, like, men and women always going to be a bridge, right?

Everyone's always going to have to find a way to work together. Men and women are different. And that does create all kinds of natural difficulties between men and women. But also, men now are coming to this, having been told that women wanted something, that women are slowly discovering they don't want. And is it anybody's fault in particular? There's no single sex that's guilty because a lot of this comes, I mean, if anything, it's an ideology that's guilty, an ideology that's guilty, an ideology that's sort of normalized so quickly, significant sweeping changes and told everyone that it was for the better. I think that's the ideology is really what's to blame because that affected men and women in their own different ways. You know, everyone has been running this experiment and realizing that it's actually not great for anybody in real time.

And so what was interesting to me about this essay is that it's like taking, I don't know, like 10,000 words to say this is the last. I'll just do the last paragraph here. The old way of mating is dead, said my friend. I can't. The new one has yet to be born. That's what this friend said. What is the new one? The author asks, pessimism may help us feel knowing, but really, we don't know.

For now, life has us pinned here. Quote, I like to make you wait. I truly don't even know what that means, nor do I think the author know what they mean what she means by saying that. But all of these thousands of words later, the final declaration is that the old way of mating is dead. And that's fairly obvious in an age of apps and the sort of total post-sexual revolution, the entire sexual politics after the sexual revolution. I mean, that's, of course, true, but saying the new one has yet to be born and we're, waiting for it, like a man makes a woman wait for a phone call. That basically says men are in charge.

I mean, I think that's the only way you can interpret the conclusion of this long, winding, New York Times essay. And that takes way too much agency away from women. That's, that's, you know, when women right now have, there's a total mismatch among women saying, and you can look at numbers on this that are actually terrifying, women saying that they want to be with someone who makes more money than them and is in a particular socioeconomic category, there's a mismatch of women to men. Colleges right now are heavily female. Enrollment is heavily female, so that tells you basically what you need to know about where that is all. going. And so some of this is, yeah, men need to step up, but women need to think long and hard about what they really want, what their expectations are, and they shouldn't just sit around and wait for dudes to figure it out because they have a role to play. I can't even believe I had to say that. I mean, it's just, it's all, it's also very, it's also very, very quaint.

Meanwhile, we have to, of course, cover before I leave. We have to, of course, cover. This is going to be S3. This is all of the comedians who rallied to the side of Stephen Colbert when he, you know, he's going through it right now and wanted to offer some moral support for their friend. And rallied to Stephen Colbert's defense at his show. earlier this week. A lovely, lovely montage. Let's go ahead and roll S3 here. He's promoting Happy Gilmore 2, which I'm so excited for. I think it comes out Friday. Shooter McAvins there.

Who else we got? Oh, John Oliver, John Stewart. Cool, edgy, virile. Oh, more cutting edge comedy. Trump. Yes. Guys, guys, I got it, guys, stop. Guys, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Oh, the men, I'm sorry, and weird Al. I think I'm doing a Mabwebs or like a Stefan bit

from Saturday Night Live. Your song has been canceled. What? Why? Why? I don't know, hold on. It says here, this is a purely financial decision. What does that mean? I think it means.

Okay, we can cut it. I mean, they're joking about how. joking about how it was a purely financial decision, which must come across as absolutely hilarious to the CBS executives who were losing $40 million a year on Colbert's show, according to Puck News. They must really be enjoying the pity party. And that's what it was like a Stefan, but it was like Stephen Colbert's pity party has everything. Shooter McGavin, animated Donald Trump and Weird Al. That's what we were treated to. Now, Stephen Colbert has a lot of friends in the comedy world because he actually used to be like a very edgy, funny comedian.

I think I mentioned this the other day, but like you go back to strangers with candy. You go back to the Dana Carvey show. There's a great bit that he used to do on the Dana Carvey show that I think it was called, it was called Maine Skinheads, if I'm remembering correctly. Don't, don't yell at me if I'm wrong about that. I'm pretty sure that was the name of the bit. And it was really something ahead of its time, we'll put it that way. So I don't blame people for supporting their friend Stephen Colbert.

But, you know, I doubt some of those guys are really watching all that much Stephen Colbert because it's sort of embarrassing to be affiliated with him anywhere outside of like the Upper East Side because nobody likes him. Like he is, we talked about this, like his business model is just absolutely cultivating a loyal audience among a very narrow slice of the public, which is like affluent, educated, resistance, wine moms who kind of get off on what you just saw, which was that animated version of Donald Trump engaging in, like, fallatio. I don't know what that was. I don't know why somebody would laugh at it in the year 2025, but here we are. And so, I don't know, like the comedy world, these, these, these,

guys it's actually interesting to wonder whether we will ever have like an adam sandler again 50 years from now is there an adam sandler of the american comedy scene um is comedy legal another question but would there be somebody who is he has someone who comes from the monoculture is someone who people watched on saturday night live and then saw at blockbuster after blockbuster for decades movies that got butts in the seats and, you know, were rented a million times. Like, I don't know how many times I rented Happy Gilmore when I was a kid. I probably was too young to be renting Happy Gilmore. But that's another story.

So he has a level of fame and he has a level of appeal that I don't know that our media ecosystem is set up to produce anymore. I like the Adam Friedland, Stephen Colbert dichotomy. And I noticed some of you all in the comments like that one too, because Colbert actually used to be on that level of actually like interesting and sort of avant-garde and you're doing something new that was genuinely challenging. And he hasn't done that for years. But now you can't really do that on a major platform. Like that doesn't make you into a massive celebrity. it just makes you appealing to a very certain slice of the public. And so I kind of think it's interesting that Adam Sandler was there.

I found that very interesting. Like even John Stewart, he just had a cable show that was really, really popular for what it was, but it was popular with a very particular type of person. He's not an Adam Sandler, for instance. So we'll see if there's another Adam Sandler 50 years from now. I hope so. I mean, there is only, there's only one Adam Sandler. I'm very excited about this, this Happy Gilmore movie.

And next time we're here on the air, we will have seen the new Happy Gilmore movie. I know that I will have seen the new Happy Gilmore movie because I think it comes out on on Friday. So lots more to talk about, like I mentioned at the top, Adam Carolla will be with us. So we will have all kinds of, there's no way I'm not going to talk about Stephen Colbert. There's no way I'm not going to talk about whatever the hell is going on with Ellen. And probably Dawson's Creek, too. He's not going to expect that one. So nobody tell him, but maybe I'll even get the box set.

I'll put it up here. If you don't remember it, it was a great cameo appearance on one. Geez, I want to say season five. And if I'm right about that, you're welcome to shame me. Because I bet that's actually correct. I feel good about that, guess, actually. Season five, because it's when they go to college. Anyway, don't tell them.

I want to catch them off guard with that one. Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope we have fun. I know I had fun. It's been a long day. I will be back to the White House tomorrow for new media pool duty. So I hope to ask some more questions and reconvene with everyone here live at 10 p.m. on Monday because we're here Mondays and Wednesdays. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, you can shoot me an email over at Emily at devilmaycaremedia.com. I'm reading all of them, responding to almost all of them. Appreciate everybody's thoughts. And I'm so glad. that you guys are tuning in and enjoying the show mean so much to me. Thank you. I hope you have a great weekend. Enjoy the new Happy Gilmore. We will see you back here on Monday.