After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Trump’s Middle East Victory Lap, MTG’s Reality, and Thiel’s Private Lectures, with Spencer Klavan

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Emily Jashinsky begins the show with a look at President Trump’s victory lap as he declares the Gaza War over, Israeli hostages are freed, and hundreds of Palestinians are released.  She also discusses Georgia Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s break with Republicans on immigration. Then Emily is joined by Spencer Klavan, Associate editor for Claremont Review of Books and Author of “Light of the Mind, Light of the World," to discuss topics including the viral exchange between Vice President Vance and MA Senator Elizabeth Warren on Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day, and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s latest pandemic warning.  Emily and Spencer then take a deep dive into The Washington Post’s coverage of Peter Thiel’s private lectures.  They debate whether Thiel is exploiting Silicon Valley’s spiritual revival in his remarks on AI and the antichrist. The conversation then takes a lighter turn as they discuss CNN’s article on the ‘male gaze’ comeback.  Finally, Emily wraps up the show with a reality check following Hilaria Baldwin’s ridiculous claim that she was bullied off ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ Aware House: Visit https://awarehouseshop.com/discount/PARTY & use code PARTY for 15% off your first order. Masa Chips: Go to https://MASAChips.com/AFTERPARTY and use code AFTERPARTY for 25% off your first order. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi everyone. Welcome to After Party, a show where we talk about the news. Then we also drink a little bit about the news. I'm obviously wearing my Milwaukee Brewers had tonight because we are live while the Brewers are playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. And man, this could be a rare winning season for Milwaukee. So paying very close attention to all of that. Just want to remind everyone, first of all, thank you and remind everyone to also subscribe while you're at it. It helps us a ton liking, adding comments, subscribing helps a bunch on YouTube. It helps a bunch over on whichever podcast platform you use.

Of course, we do podcast-only formats on Friday. So we're not just technically two days a week. We do podcasts for you on Fridays now. You can send in your questions to Emily at Devil MyCare Media or the After Party, Emily, Instagram, and I do my best to answer just about all of them. Many of them actually live while I'm taping the show. I read through them spontaneously and hopefully you get some good stuff out of that. Another reminder, I am going to be. with Glenn Greenwald on the Megan Kelly tour, October 24th in San Antonio, Texas. You can get your tickets over at megankelly.com. If you want to come join us for that show, we are super, super excited.

Now, there's a lot to get through. These news cycles are absolutely packed, not just a lot to talk about, but a lot to drink about as well. Maybe one thing to raise a glass to is, seems to be momentarily a reprieve from the war that has consumed the Middle East for the last two years. Incredible images of hostages being returned. And in Israel, of course, families being reunited in Gaza. And Donald Trump, of course, was in both Israel and Egypt today. Taking something of a victory lap, we'll have a little bit of that right off the top of the show.

I have some thoughts on Marjorie Taylor Green. I've been talking a lot about Marjorie Taylor Green lately, but I want to go into a little bit more depth. and, of course, the great Spencer Claven is joining us tonight. I'm told he has a very special scotch. So we'll hear all about, I'm sure, Spencer's special scotch. We're going to talk to him about Columbus Day. Happy Columbus Day. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that.

We're going to talk about Anthony Fauci coming out on PBS, and, oh, spoiler. He thinks there might be another pandemic. Peter Teal, this is a perfect subject for the great Spencer Claven. Peter Teal is giving a lot of eyebrow raising lectures on the catacon and the Antichrist that are getting covered, I think, sort of poorly in mainstream media. And Spencer identified a very funny article on CNN about how the male gaze has returned that we are going to dive into as well. I would be remiss if I ended the show without getting into Ilaria Baldwin.

I said Ilaria, her name is Hillary Baldwin, but we'll get into all of that. Of course, let's start with Donald Trump's victory tour in the Middle East today as these images of hostages being returned, as these images of families being reunited in Gaza are coming up very, very moving and emotional to see what's happening over there. Trump gives a speech in the Knesset today. He says Marco Rubio may go down as the greatest secretary of state in history. He takes some jabs at Miriam Adelson. It says at one point he's not sure whether he once asked whether she loves Israel more than America and she didn't answer. Sort of an awkward moment in the Knesset when he did that. And then he, he was. Then he

He had it over to Egypt for a ceremony where he had some very kind words for George Maloney of Italy. We can't roll this. We have a woman, a young woman who's, I'm not allowed to say it because usually it's the end of your political career. If you say it, she's a beautiful young woman. Now if you use the word beautiful in the United States about a woman, that's the end of your political career, but I'll take my chances.

Where is she? There she is. You don't mind being called beautiful, right? because you are. Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate it. She wanted to be here and she's incredible and they really respect her in Italy. She's a very successful, very successful politician. I mean, listen, I'm sitting here in a baseball cap, but that woman is also incredibly well-dressed. She never misses. So you see what Trump's going. Maybe he read the CNN article about the return of the male gaze, decided that he was no longer hiding his appreciation for the female

form, although I'm not sure he ever heard about the end of the male gaze that it ever became taboo. Let's go ahead and roll this clip of Donald Trump also talking to Mark Carney of Canada, who, by the way, he just met with at the White House last week. I'm glad you upgraded me to president. It's good. I started this. Did you already said there? He taps Cardi on the shoulder, and Cardi says,

Thank you for upgrading me to president. And Trump says, oh, did I say that? He kind of taps Carney back and then goes, at least I didn't say governor, right into the hot microphone. Just another incredible moment. He was also needling Kier Starrmer, obviously prime minister of the UK as well. So he's feeling good on this victory tour. And it's sort of easy to understand why politically, because Biden and the Democrats are really unsure of what to do in this moment. Joe Biden finally responded to the peace deal.

actually just earlier this evening we can put Biden's reaction up on the screen. He says, I am deeply grateful and relieved that this day has come for the last living 20 hostages who have been through unimaginable hell and are finally reunited with their families and loved ones and for the civilians in Gaza who have experienced immeasurable loss and will finally get the chance to rebuild their lives. He goes to say, goes on to say, my admin worked relentlessly to bring hostages home, get relief to Palestinian citizens and end the war. I commend President Trump and his team for their work to get a renewed ceasefire deal over the finish line ends by saying now with the backing of the U.S. and the world, the Middle East is on a path to peace

that I hope endures in a future for Israelis and Palestinians like with equal measures of peace, dignity, and safety. This sentiment seems to be, I mean, inescapable is maybe the right word for it. It's kind of hard for Joe Biden to react in this moment because obviously there was a ceasefire secured literally on the eve of his presidency. Back in January, that ceasefire turned out to be temporary, and obviously that was the Trump administration, pushing it over the finish line, even by the admission of the Biden administration at that point in time. And so it's a very unsteady moment right now for the left. There's no question about that. On the one hand, there are many people who don't trust this peace deal and are pessimistic about the prospect for

long-term hope in the Middle East, particularly for the people of Gaza. And I think that's a perfectly defensible position. In fact, I think it's such a defensible position that basically everybody feels right now, everybody feels right now uneasy about how durable this is, how long this is able to endure, how long this lasts. But it's obvious, and we'll put this cover of Time magazine up on the screen if we have it. Donald Trump, just this afternoon, is now gracing the cover of Time magazine. The article says, quote, the living Israeli hostages held in Gaza have been freed under the first phase of Donald Trump's peace plan, alongside had a Palestinian prisoner release, the deal may become a signature achievement of Trump's second

term, and it could mark a strategic turning point for the Middle East. So that last part is obviously critical. It could mark a strategic turning point for the Middle East. That's where you see the Joe Biden's and the Elizabeth Warrens of the world, who we'll talk about in just one moment because, of course, it's Indigenous People's Day. That's where you see them struggling to grapple with the politics here because everybody has to admit that this genuinely is new. This is a historic sweeping peace plan. We are in phase one of it right now, as was discussed on last Wednesday show, just while the details were coming down, we talked about how phase one of a very, very fragile peace deal that could be littered with tripwires and all of that. But

if it lasts, if it lasts three months, if it lasts. six months, if it lasts a year, what we've just entered is a new chapter in the Middle East, because right now these negotiations have brought together a coalition. And that coalition, including Donald Trump, who is the head of this peace board, by the way, is now responsible for trying to hold this peace together. And the war is over. I have to tell you, just before we went live tonight, I finished watching the new October 7th documentary about the Nova Music festival on Paramount. And it just underscores the depth of the security failures that day, before, during, and after. And there was a lot of suspicion around Netanyahu's long-term objectives

and intent on prolonging the conflict. And I won't weigh on one direction or the other except to say that many people believed he was in some ways afraid of what peacetime could bring. a reckoning politically for himself, perhaps, because again, when you revisit October 7th, now that the hostages are returned, bodies, living hostages, that conversation about those failures, of course, there's all of Netanyahu's own problems with corruption scandals and all of that that are going to bubble to the surface. But the security failure, I think, is now going to creep back into the discourse in a way that is absolutely critical, absolutely critical, stunning. essential for the future of the country as well to dig into what exactly went wrong on that day.

And Netanyahu is now going to have even more questions to answer. He's been answering these questions for two years. But now that the war is over and it feels like the dust has settled in the new chapter has been opened, those questions are really going to mount for Netanyahu. Just a shocking documentary too. I don't necessarily micro-un watching it because the raw footage that spliced together between Hamas' body cameras and Nova Music Festival goers on their iPhones puts it all into such dark relief.

All right, let's move on to Marjorie Taylor Green, who went on Tim Dillon's podcast over the weekend for honestly a fantastic episode, riveting content, I have to say. Shout out to you, Tim Dillon, for this conversation with Marjorie Taylor Green. Megan's conversation with Marjorie Taylor Green, I think that was a month or two ago, was also just incredible insight into someone who I think is truly one of the few normies. And that sounds funny here in D.C. to call Marjorie Taylor Green, somebody who was elected

with this baggage of former conspiracies, all that type of thing, to call her a normie. But if you spend time with normal people outside of D.C., Marjorie Taylor Green is a suburban, small business, Facebook mom. And everyone in this country right now has lost trust in the government. And so a lot of these conspiracies, we all know that. If you look across the board at Institutional Trust, have become more and more attractive as people have gotten more and more skeptical.

It's not to say any individual conspiracy theory is correct. And Marjorie Taylor Green has made interesting sort of, I don't want to call them apologies, kind of apologies, but more explanations for why she said what she said in the past. And now people are acting as though it's some major surprise that Marjorie Taylor Green amidst this government shutdown is saying, hey, the administration seems, to be going in a direction that those average rallygoers, she spoke in great detail about

how the administration should be focused on the people that she knows very well. She's basically one of them who waited in the freezing rain, in the scorching heat, in lines outside Trump rallies for the better part of the last 10 years, who don't get special dispensation, who aren't, you know, Javier Millet, who's getting the better of this soybean deal at the moment because of the bailout. And they aren't, she made this point as well. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, who worked very, very hard against Donald Trump for a long time, decided to start saying nice things about Donald Trump and seems to be reaping rewards

in the form of favorable government treatment. And she says, she's been making this argument about health care. I'm going to roll the clip first, but I think it's really interesting. and I think it tells us something about not just politics but media. So let's go ahead and roll S-1, Marjorie Taylor-Green on Tim Dillon. As a conservative and as a business owner in the construction industry, and as a realist, I can say we have to do something about labor and that needs to be a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person

and deporting them just like that. Right. And I'm going to get pushed back on that, but I'm just living in reality. from here on out. Yeah. And if I'm, if anybody's mad at me for saying the truth, then I'm sorry.

Marjorie Taylor Green, ladies and gentlemen, our next president, sorry, J.D. Vance. Well, I mean, these people are saying it.

I go to dinner parties. Yeah, I heard you. Well, by the way. I heard you on Joe. Okay. So what she's talking about there

has gone super viral with people who are allied with President Trump right now, wanting Republicans to hold the line on the government. government shutdown, looking at it and saying, this is a betrayal of your party and your team. And Marjorie Taylor Green very clearly comes out during that interview and says, I no longer want to wear the jersey of the Republican team. Now, she is an elected Republican. So obviously,

there's some reason for consternation if you're a partisan. If you're a partisan Republican, who sees the Republican Party as the premier vehicle for your preferred policies, to look at that and say, hey, Marjorie, maybe another time. As a journalist, of course, course, that is not how I look at it and certainly not how I see a politician's job. So I probably have a different perspective than some Trump allies who maybe wish that she saved this until after they got Dems to cave on the question of health subsidies for non-citizens, which absolutely is on the table. There's some nuance, but that absolutely is on the table. My prediction is that Dems will cave on that. They will come to the table. And then they'll try to act like the adults in

the room who always said, we only want citizens to benefit from health care subsidies. so Republicans now come to the table with us on, guess what? Premiums exploding as Biden-era 2021 tax credits, I just said extended expand. Neither is true. The word I was looking for was expire. Expire at the end of the year. And that's what Marjorie Taylor Green has been breaking with the party over.

It started with Israel. It is now these tax credits, and that is opening, I'm sorry, these healthcare credits, and that has opened up a new universe for Marjorie Taylor Green to step into and basically break with a party. talk a little bit more freely about, for example, immigration. That clip is Trump allies posting it all over and say, now Marjorie Taylor Green is worried about cheap labor. Now that wage costs are rising, Marjor Taylor Green wants the cheap labor back. And that's not necessarily true. What she was saying in that clip is that she supports deportations. She supports a hawkish immigration policy, but she feels as

as though the administration needs an off-ramp. And I think it's actually pretty fair to look back on the first, what, 10 months of the Trump administration, second Trump administration, and say these are gargantuan policy tasks in front of the administration. But whether it's Doge or some of these immigration raids, for example, that have pissed me off when I see U.S. citizens being detained, no matter if I like their politics or not, it pisses me off to see because right now, Kier-Starmer is implementing digital ID in the United Kingdom, partially because he is exploiting his citizens with legitimate concerns about illegal immigration in the country. Well, guess what? He's saying, here you go. We're implementing digital IDs so that we can crack down

on illegal immigration. There's a massive Palantir contract that is being worked out just over the course of the second Trump administration with DHS. It may specifically be with ICE to sweep up all kinds of surveillance data. Palantir doesn't collect the data. Palantir organizes the data, collulates the data essentially for the government. But if you think U.S. citizens are not being caught up in that dragnet, I have news for you. So if you are a podcaster or a journalist, you are much more free to say these things than if you are a literal partisan like Marjorie Taylor Green. But this is where we bring Spencer and I just wanted to mention, it's very, very interesting. Marjorie Taylor Green is breaking with her party right now because I was reading amusing ourselves to death by Neil Postman,

over the weekend. And he really laments Reagan at the time in the mid-80s that Ronald Reagan is a television president. And he talks about how William Howard Taft would never be able to get elected in the age of television. He was simply too fat. And that's again, it's a lamentation. It's sort of nostalgic for a time before television.

The argument fundamentally, he's explicitly building on Marshall McLuhan. We talk about that a lot on the show, the medium being the message, but he's saying the substance of politics is being lost in the distraction of performance and the distraction of aesthetics. And imagine where this is about to go when we hit sort of peak smartphone politics,

where now the most important or the most prolific form of communication is smartphone videos, vertical smartphone videos. And those vertical smartphone videos feel very intimate. And the incentive for politicians is to look, they're not all going to be, but to look much more authentic. It's not enough for Chuck Schumer to talk into an iPhone camera and read off of a script. This is how the medium is changing the message. Chuck Schumer thinks, oh, the medium changing the message,

I need to talk on Instagram without much production. No, it doesn't matter that you're just talking on Instagram without much production. Your message itself has to change, and your message has to sound a lot more intimate and authentic. And what that's going to mean is the parties, at least on the surface, are going to look like they're losing control. Will they devise new ways to seize that control back? perhaps. But Marjorie Taylor Green is a really, really, I think, good, if you see it in a bad sense, canary in a coal mine. I don't know that it'll necessarily be worse than the status quo at all. It's a good canary in the coal mine for the parties about their loss of control. This is not going to last much longer for them. And if anything, Republicans should be taking this as a gift and a way to

sort of, from a partisan perspective, work with the new medium and learn lessons of the new medium. We'll see. We'll see. All right. Before we bring Spencer Claven in, the great Spencer Claven, the legendary Spencer Clavin, let me tell you about a warehouse. Things are very, very heavy right now. Politics is divisive. The news can be depressing. And it often feels like we, just as a society, have more pulling us apart than bringing us together. But here's something simple that unites us. Shopping small. Everybody loves to shop small. When you choose to buy from a small business, you're not just getting a product. You're helping someone's dream grow and you're investing in values. We all share honesty, craftsmanship, and community.

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Visit a warehouse shop.com and use code party for 15% off your first order. That's a warehouse shop. com code party. Now let's return to the mythical, legendary, great Spencer Claven. He's associate editor over at the Claremont Review of Books. He's the author of Light of the Mind, Light of the World, a wonderful book. And he is what, had how many scotches so far, Spencer? One, two, three. You've been talking for a while, Emily. I know. I know. I had to keep myself entertained somehow. I was watching you in the Zoom box. Yeah, yeah. I was getting increasingly hot into the collar because I was hearing you talk about the great Spencer's

Spencer Claven, the legendary, the mythical. And I think there's been a terrible mistake because I'm just the standard issue, Spencer Claven. I don't know if you ordered the legendary one online on Amazon, but this is, this is, yeah, exactly. You're getting the Timu version. I'm afraid. But I ordered, I very much did not order the Timu version. So here I am. Yeah.

I'm afraid this is what happens when you drink and shop online. I never make those mistakes, Spencer, actually. No, of course not. You know, this bigger conversation about how things have changed since 2024, like the last year since 2024. Zora Mamdani, for example, posted, I think it was in 2020 wearing a glove, like a medical glove, because it was COVID-era flipping off a statue of Christopher Columbus back in the day. And now we have the vice president in the United States posting F9 here. In response to Elizabeth Warren, who reacted to the hostage release, in a way that J.D. Vance found objectionable. He quote tweets that and says, the president told me he did this on Indigenous People's Day in honor of you.

Spencer, how's that for a vibe shift? I mean, this is not 2020, right? Like, this is new. And I think that that period you were writing about very eloquently at the time of, and we were all talking about it constantly, of these heightened tensions. that felt like they felt linear. It felt like we were at the beginning of something and certainly not at the end of something. It turns out maybe we were in the middle

or maybe we were at the end. Now that we're looking at the vice president trolling Elizabeth Warren, a well-deserved troll over her claim to indigenous personhood on Columbus Day. Yeah, this is Vance, 2028 is what this is. This isn't 2024. This is looking ahead to the next presidency.

But I think the thing you ended your monologue by talking about is actually the real, vibe shift, and that is the transition from pre-digital to post-digital media. And that sense of authenticity, whether it's genuinely authentic or just the ability to convey that, that's what Donald Trump is actually a master at, even though he's an older guy. He is a person, just by sheer virtue, I think, of being kind of unhinged. She's somebody that can make you believe that he's really kind of typing on his phone. And you hear people close to. saying we had to take his phone away or we wish we could take his phone away. But in reality,

that's what makes him fit for this moment. And I think this scuffle that's going on with Vance and Warren and everybody kind of, you know, fighting gloves off politics about Columbus Day and October 7th, et cetera, et cetera, this is indicative of the world that we're living in now. And I don't think we've lived through the last five shift. I wish we had. I wish this was like forever into the future, Woke is over, and now everybody is just going to happily build the J.D. Vance future or whatever. And we have that opportunity in front of us, but really, I think we're entering into a whole new era of politics. And the fact that that tweet you showed is about both October 7th and the hostages being released and Indigenous People's Day or Columbus Day is actually bizarrely perfect,

Because one thing I was thinking on this Columbus Day is that the whole indigenous people's thing, the whole wretched of the earth, oppressor-oppressed way of understanding the world, is actually the exact same idea that the far-left, which is now the part of the left that's in control, it's the same idea that the far-left has about Israel. And they take this same rubric and they apply it to everything, right? that all conflicts are mapped onto who is the powerful, quote-unquote, white man and who is the downtrodden, quote-unquote, indigenous person. And it doesn't matter how ill-fitting that is for the relevant situation. It doesn't matter how complicated or nuanced or multifaceted the actual

reality is on the ground. That's where the energy is on the left, is with that way of, that singular way of understanding the world. And I think what we're doing really as what we're living through is we're moving away from whatever the politics of kind of post-World War II America and the world was into a fight over whether that's how we're going to view things. Are we going to live in a world of endless grievance and recrimination? Or are we going to face up to the actual challenges on the ground as they as they really are, which is I think kind of what Trump stands for, better or for worse, whatever else you may love or hate about him. Well, or let me try this out on you. Do we descend into raw power politics in a way that departs from the post-the post-war

neoliberal era? And you don't have to be. I mean, I should actually probably not even say neoliberal, but classical liberal era. The kind of industrial, global, classical liberal era. Maybe that's too many words, Spencer. But you read about this in your book to some extent, Tom Holland at the end of Dominion frames wokenness as a hyper-Christian worldview, this sort of steroid version of the sermon on the Mount where it elevates people who fall into oppressor oppressed necessarily if they're in the oppressed category

and assigns virtue to them in a way that's polar opposite from, of course, how Nietzsche saw. I mean, this is sort of the same criticism that Nietzsche leveled at Christianity. And, you know, as you were talking about the Indigenous People, October 7th connection, in a way being oddly perfect, I look at that too. And I think the intentions behind both of these movements, not always, not categorically, but there are a lot of decent Americans who wanted this war to end and wanted to stop to the suffering. There are a lot of decent Americans who look at Christopher Columbus and they're like,

Oh, I so wish some of that wasn't a part of his legacy. And I guess the alternative to that is the era we came from or raw power politics. And here's Trump himself talking just yesterday about how he doesn't think he's heaven material, something like that, right? We have a very secular but very sympathetic Christian president, right? It's a strange time. And I don't know if you think there's symbolism to that or if it's more than a symbol, it sort of reflects something very real. Oh, Emily, it's time for a drink.

I'm going to take it my... Cheers, Spencer. Cheers. Last time I was on here, I had a martini because I have this delusion that mixing cocktails makes me look cool. But I was watching those hostage release videos, and I thought, it's time for a really celebratory sniffter of Bonob and Whiskey from the island of high. Ayla. Yeah. Okay. So yeah. I'm drinking raw campari, by the way. That's my fall drink. Raw

Kampari. That's for George Maloney. It's for George Maloney. I almost like you said raw hemp. And I was like, this is a very different sort of situation than I expected. Very different. Okay. So you raise a profound point. Evergreen sentiment, Spencer. Welcome to the show. Yeah. You want to just paste that on your points every time I open my mouth, man. Pin it to the Zoom screen, baby. Try. Get used to it. This is like your third time on the show.

Yeah, I know. That's true. At this point, I shouldn't even pause to mention it. But I have to because I'm gathering my thoughts. I have so many interesting ones that I need to just like vamp for a second and flatter you. Okay, so some of our oldest Greek texts in the corpus. some of the most ancient Greek writing there is written in this writing system called linear B kind of before the alphabet that we now use for for Greek and that the Greek, the sort of

classical Greeks used. Emojis, right? Precisely so. Actually, just, yeah, just TikTok videos. They were kind of like drawing out individual vertical screen. It's remarkable how things can full circle. But some of the tablets that we have in Lanier Bee contain, among other things, the name Erinyes. You can spell this out.

It's one of the oldest things you can spell out in Greek. And the erinies are the furies. They're the goddesses of blood guilt. And this is one of the reasons why we think the furies might be some of the oldest Greek goddesses, maybe pre-Greek. They might have inherited them from even older societies. Why do I bring all of this up? It's to say that. Because I'm such a dog.

You read way too much. Because you really, listen, you knew what you were getting into. You knew what you signed up for. You were on Timu. You can't lie to me. You were on Timu at two in the morning. You closed down the after party. It was the after after party.

And you said, I really want to hear about some ancient Greek goddesses of vengeance. Yes. Power politics and the politics of vengeance, which is to say, blood feuding, family feuds, Hatfields and McCoys. that tribe took my goat a hundred years ago and now we kill them. Clavens versus Knowles. Precisely so. That is the oldest form of politics in the world.

In fact, that is the default state of humanity. So when you ask, like, are we going to move past neoliberalism, globalist, whatever, into power politics, my answer is that really is the only other place to go. I mean, the story that the Greeks told was that they put the furies away in order to create democracy. Democracy and representative government and like deliberation and justice and these sort of impersonal rights that people had in ancient Athens,

that was the alternative to the thing that everyone else was doing everywhere. which is just like your ancestors which killed my answers, and now I kill you. And I really do think that Christianity and Republican government represent two actual advances over that default state. And it might be that the only place to go is back. And this is kind of one of the things that Holland's book, which you mentioned, reveals,

is that Christianity is a radical break with pagan ethics. to reject it or get rid of it is really just to go back to paganism. I was just watching the wicker man. You were the original wickerman? Not the Nicholas Cage one. I haven't too neutral. Okay, I hadn't either.

And it's a wildly, the movie's wildly ahead of its time. And it is about how the free love culture of the 60s and 70s is actually just child murdering paganism. So I do think, yes, the only, other option ahead of us, besides kind of christened them, besides the West and figuring out how to do the West in the 21st century in the age of the iPhone, the only other possibility is a

kind of regression into what I have called zombie paganism, right? It's like it's not the original thing because that was sort of natural and healthy. This is digging up an old, old form of politics out of its grave and letting it roam around wildly and like, decomposing in real time. And also sort of slapping modern clothes on it. Like that's the kind of, the metaphor sort of works there, Spencer, like putting a bucket hat on the zombie of paganism. That's right. Well, I hadn't started drinking when I came up with the metaphor. It's okay now. Well, actually, let's go ahead and talk about Anthony Fauci and then get to Peter Teal because these are all connected. So I want to play this clip of Anthony Fauci on PBS, a recent PBS interview.

This particular clip went viral and caught, I shouldn't say a lot of attention because I went and searched Google News for how much coverage it got literally no major news coverage, but it went viral on social media. So let's roll this S2. And then there's the transformative, if I might use that word experience that we've all had now in year five of COVID. So the thought that we won't have another pandemic, I think is, is naive at best and just not completely unrealistic at words. So to rephrase your question, I'm convinced that there will be another pandemic. And that's the reason why we have to be perpetually prepared to prevent the terrible impact of a pandemic.

So Dr. Fauci's perpetual preparation was gain of function research, which he described in different ways, when it came to light that gain of function research was likely behind this pandemic. But gain of function research has been supported by, I don't know, maybe half the scientific community. It's long been really controversial, but has been a controversial debate because we've framed it and couched it in these sort of Western liberal terms that we must gain the function. literally we must gain the function in order to prepare. And if this is, I mean, if what we all surmise about the pandemic at this point actually is the truth, which is that a lab that was getting American funding despite its lax security created a virus that killed millions of people around the world, Spencer, it puts us in this very interesting

moment of evaluating neoliberalism through the criteria of the sort of dressing of post-war, Christianity that so much of the neoliberal world brought about. Am I wrong? I'm wrong in many ways, I'm sure, but tell me that I'm right. You're right about everything. It's amazing. I've never seen anything like it. I'm still stuck on why won't Anthony Fowtree go away? I mean, that is to me the perennial mystery of our time. Just like talk about failing upward. This is a person who not everyone remembers that before he screwed up the COVID epidemic, he also screwed up the AIDS epidemic by telling people they could get it by like, I forget exactly what he... How dare you?

I'm so sorry to tell you this. To my knowledge, the AIDS epidemic did not leak from a lab in Wuhan, but it was not the result of gaining functionary research. But this is kind of amazing, right? The perpetual preparedness, it's like the Kantian perpetual piece, right? This is just the end of history state where we're always going to be on perennial alert against the merest possibility of infection. And it really is. And you and I talked about this back when it was happening when we were in the height of COVID, right? It did represent a kind of vision of the end of history. It was like we are going to just achieve stasis. We're going to grind down not to like a kind of balance or equilibrium, this dynamic negotiation, which is the Western tradition

of deliberative politics and prudence and Republican government. But instead, we are simply going to reach absolute zero, right? We're just going to find the lowest possible point where no danger is ever incurred. We're going to minimize risk. And this idea has no natural endpoint, right? And this is why people like us were saying it's not going to matter when they get the vaccine, right? They're telling you that you just have to do all of this until somebody comes up with a COVID vaccine and then they'll finally let you out of your house. But actually, that's not going to be enough because even vaccines don't flatline human life in the way that they're looking for, right? They're looking for a state of perfection, a state of safety and security and total

planning that can only happen basically in death or after death, right? I mean, Christians believe, that this perfect human life where we shall be, you know, free from the hands of our enemies, that's something that never will be achieved this side of paradise. We can kind of approximate toward it. We can hope for it. We can look prophetically into the future. But here and now, we are in an imperfect world where our knowledge is imperfect and our souls are, you know, are not yet fully what they shall be. And so we just have to muddle along as best we can and accept that death is in the world and that there are dangers, et cetera. When you hear Fauci talk about perpetual preparedness,

always being prepared, constantly being on alert, he's right, there will be another pandemic. There will be more wars. There will be more rumors of wars, right? This is the state of the world. And the idea, the kind of weird, like eschatological vision that we're going to close off the danger of that and we're just going to escape death

and we're going to be free of it all, I actually think that is like much, much more dangerous than anything that we like any, any pandemic that we might face down the line, much as many of the COVID responses were more dangerous and harmful than COVID itself was. Spencer, I'm going to take that as an incredibly poetic and artful transition that you did deliberately into this next subject about Peter Thiel. Whatever. If it's good, I did it on purpose. Anything that is bad, I, it was the bots. It's good to sort of establish those parameters. But while we're translating Greek, let's talk about the catacon of Second Thessalonians,

because Peter Thiel, obviously co-founder of Palantir and TechMogal, one of the tech moguls, really, not just TechMogal, but one of the tech moguls. One of the most important historical figures that is living right now has been giving a series of lectures around the world about the Antichrist. He sat down for a two-part interview with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institute, and has basically been giving a version of that. He went to Ross Douthits podcast. He was in San Francisco recently,

and The Washington Post wrote up some leaks from the San Francisco lecture. The headline here is Inside Billionaire Peter Teal's private lectures, warnings of the Antichrist and U.S. destruction. The question of the catacom is enormously complicated, and Spencer, you and I could talk in very weedy and useless ways about Carl Schmidt. and all of the different elements of this cauldron over the last 400 years.

Congratulations, audience. Here we go. Well, but I mean, this gets what, when you were talking just now about Fauci and this idea of perpetual preparedness, that does sound not entirely unlike the description of the Antichrist from the Bible. And Teal's lectures on the catacom have been based. I have a very cynical perspective on the Spencer, basically pitching our generative AI, not just AI, but generative AI, L-L-L-M type of stuff, as the catacan that is holding back the Antichrist, according to what Paul wrote in Second Thessalonians, which you may actually have, you may actually know that by heart. You may have committed that to memory. I have not. But the catacon basically is what Paul says is holding back the Antichrist. Schmidt saw. in that communism, one-world communism. Peter Thiel has been talking a little bit about that as well, but he's also positive that somebody like Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist, and that it may be

generative AI that re-injects dynamism into the world and allows humans freely to posit their own solutions or to create their own solutions with agency as individuals that holds back the Greta-Tenbergs from their positions as the Antichrist. Now, you can correct my interpretations of the Spencer if you've seen it go in a different way. My concern is that Peter Thiel has seen a Christian revival in Silicon Valley, which I know you know is very real because you literally wrote a book kind of aimed

at that exact audience about this very phenomenon is sort of in the vein. I suppose that's true. Oh, interesting, right? Yeah. But my cynical interpretation is he saw that happening and said a lot of Christians are hearing from these creators of LLM's generative AI saying,

we're worried that this is a portal to hell. We are worried that LLMs are conjuring demons, and we think maybe the world is going to end because of generative AI. And this is sort of a pitch for Teal, who is sort of a Gerardian, not so much a lowercase orthodox Christian, to reassure Christians and to sort of have them buy into,

get their permission for generative AI, because he feels like it's not gonna come from Democrats or the left. So all that. Stop worrying and love chat GPT. Yeah, I love the machine. Yeah. So I ask you again, Spencer, am I wrong?

I think you may be half right this time. Tell me. I know. This is not why you have me on your podcast. No, it does. That's exactly what. I'd like to start perhaps with this Washington Post article, which really tickles me because if you read the legacy press, there is truly nothing more.

sinister or threatening than an arcane right-wing intellectual. Like the way that these people report on Curtis Jarvin, my colleagues at the Claremont Institute, and now these teal lectures, which really are like, talk about dorky losers sitting around and talk. I mean, like, these are my people, right? This is like. This really are. Right.

I'm talking about the catacom. We're getting in the wheat. And the way that these pieces portrays this. portray this as always as like a dark smoke-filled backroom where everyone rubs their hands together and talks in code about taking over the world. I've been in some of these smoke-filled backrooms and I promise we're way, way less cool than this makes us sound. If only, right, if only we had that power. But basically I think what's going on here is I'm working my way toward saying, I don't think that Teal is opportunistically taking advantage of a surge of Christian

sentiment among techies. I think Teal actually represents one wing of that surge. And that in that capacity, he's been helping organize it. Yeah. He's been leading it. Yeah. And that in that capacity, he has an interpretation of these passages, not just about the catacom, but about the Antichrist and the mark of the beast and there's a lot of, you know, very, to me, arcane language in those texts that I think we're only supposed to understand basically in retrospect, right? I don't think that we're supposed to use this. In fact, I think that Jesus actually forbids us from using this to try and calculate when the world is going to end or like headed off at the past or whatever. And as I'm talking, it's probably becoming clear that like my interpretation of these passages is somewhat different from Teals, right?

Thiel thinks that these are warnings about a constant threat to humanity that always we are being tempted to veer between two extremes. One is maximal safety and the other is maximal recklessness. And I'm kind of like, I'm paraphrasing here a little bit. But like. But enter Fauci again. Exactly. Right now he's saying your, your antichrist. The antichrist of the moment is Greta Thunberg, right?

is the person that wants to, like, freeze all human activity and innovation for fear of destroying or offending the old gods, right? Mother Nature will be angry. Another person he mentions is Eliezer Yudkowski, who's like a big AI doomer, thinks that, you know, Grock is going to turn us all into paperclips. But one of those people who was instrumental in the design of sexes. Exactly, right, right, right. He's the guy that's basically saying, oh, no, we have let Cthulu out of the sea or whatever it is. and now we must roll this back as quickly as possible. And Teal is basically saying, no, in order to write the ship as an antidote,

we need to be like AI maximalists. I'm like, you can take that or leave it. It's not a plot to take over the world. It is a pitch for AI that is slightly more optimistic than I am, right? I mean, my take, I don't know if we've talked about my take on AI, but my take is basically Psalm 115, which is about what happens when you, carve idols and then pray to them as if they were gods, right? I think that this stuff is inherently of some use, that the tech itself, you know, I've seen it used well. I've used it myself, I think,

with some success, but that the real threat that the Bible warns us against is treating things that only look like humans as if they had souls, right? Eyes have they but see not, ears have they, but here not, and those who make them are becoming like them, right? Like, it's really about the way we look at our machines. Anyway, that's my take on this. Teal has a slightly different one, which is, like, in order to counterbalance, I think, in order to counterbalance the Greta Thunberg, Antichrist, we must go all in on American innovation and take AGI to them.

No regulations, basically. Exactly. This is why I have a cynical perspective on it. It just, it seems to me like there's, he's very smart and clever and shrewd. And he notices that part of this Christian revival is that there are people like you and I talking much more openly about faith who bring a faith-based skepticism to some of these very, very powerful new tools. And because of that, do I think Teal is insincere? No. But I think Teal might be working from point A to get to point B by sort of using the catacomb idea to say, we need to deregulate. You think it's motivated reasoning, basically.

Like you're reading your preferred policy back into the... If I were Peter Thiel and I needed a grand strategy to convince this one group of people who may hold back the Republican Party for being supportive of opening up regulations on AI, I actually think this would be a pretty smart approach. Yeah. I mean, I think all I'll say is we are all always in danger of doing that, right? I mean, everyone, I think, needs to be checking himself about whether he started with the kind of thing he wants to do or the life he wants to live and then has read it back into the Bible. People accuse me of doing this, by the way, with homosexuality all the time, which I, you know, obviously. I probably would accuse you of doing that, but we don't even need to have that debate. We don't have to get into it.

Right, right, right. But, like, this is a thing that, yeah, exactly. But, like, this is a thing that, this is a danger that is definitely real. And I think guys like me and perhaps like you are always frustrated, frustrating to innovators because our point of view on this is basically that human nature isn't changing anytime soon. And that we're essential, whatever tech we may invent, we remain essentially in the same spiritual condition, which is like wretched and in need of salvation. And also maybe you'd agree with this. Maybe you wouldn't. But I think that whole thing about like, nobody knows when the end of the world is coming.

Not the angels in heaven, not like human beings, not the son, but only the father. Right. Like there's this just a real kind of, to me, veil dropped on this. That makes me really skeptical of like, oh, the end of the world is coming. And in fact, like, at the end of the day, it's less sexy but probably more true just to say. you know, repent and believe in God and in Jesus Christ whom he has sent and you shall be saved. Like that's basically where we're at. I love that.

I obviously want to talk about the CNN article that you highlighted, but before we do, just because you particularly have good knowledge in the space, can you give us a little bit of a truncated kind of historical context for the catacon itself? I mean, obviously going back to Nero, there were people reading into Paul and Schmidt talking in the age of one world's communism. about was the 1920s, so it was probably Stalin. It's a recurring theme in the Christian world. Well, okay, I promise I really am speaking up the top of my head,

so you are getting Timo, Spencer Clayman, right now about this. But if I remember correctly, there's two figures. The catacom, which means the one who holds back or restrains, and then the Antichrist, who is the one that ushers in or is, you know, as far as you take the market. Well, and this is actually a better part of the, this brings up a better way to ask the question, which I'm meant to do. Okay. Which is the, I'll think gets to this in this T.L interview. Should Christians want to hold, want to identify the Antichrist?

Is the catacomacomacomacist, a Greta Thumburg figure? Is the catacon a Christian figure? Like, that's why I think it gets to your point about the sort of, futility of trying to read into all of this, but as we're just thinking about the historical context, how have Christians thought about whether they should be someone who is like trying to defeat the catacon, focus on the Antichrist? Like, who is the catacon a good figure? Because they're holding back the Antichrist. Well, right. I think that's a really good question. Like my perspective on this is another place where I differ from Teal is Maranatha, right? It's in

it's in the epistles, Lord come quickly. And I think many of the early Christians basically thought that what Jesus was talking about was the destruction of the second temple, right? Which, like, so really soon, basically, after the resurrection. And so it has been a perennial feature of the Christian church to think that the world is always on the verge of ending. And for my money, that may always be true. Like, there is something about, there's something for the point of view that

prophecies do refer to a specific time in the future, but also describe a pattern that is constantly recurring throughout history. So I think salvation history is like this. Like if you read Isaiah and the prophecies of the suffering servant and all of the things that seem to refer to Jesus, I think he is also describing the liberation of the Jews from their exile in Babylon, which happened before Jesus, and he's describing many, many acts of liberation that have happened in Jesus' name ever since the resurrection.

So it's possible for kind of these texts to be so described patterns that are so deeply ingrained into the structure of the universe that they recur and repeat themselves in larger and smaller ways kind of throughout history. So now you're a Gerardian too. I mean, yeah, I think that I really like Gerard. I think he's got a lot to say for himself. But the short answer to your question is like, I don't think actually that it's our job to stop the apocalypse from coming.

And arguably the Lindy Trad Christian view is that we should all be very eager for the apocalypse to happen or at least for, you know, we're not supposed to want to live, I guess, in the moment when it happens because that's when everything is really going to suck. Right. Jesus says, like, pray that you will not be around to see this. But I do think that ultimately, since we think that we win in the end of this, we do, like, holding back the apocalypse isn't necessarily the obvious Christian thing to do. And it's possible that by trying to hold it back, you're really just playing into God's hands because he's got this whole, like, drama orchestrated that includes both the catacon and the Antichrist and kind of balances them against one another. or that would be, that would be for my money, like Lord Gum quickly.

Right. Okay, so that's really well said. And no small, I mean, it's no small matter when we're talking about how to think in the terms of how Teal is thinking here and how to evaluate what Teal is saying here. It's a fairly important bit of nuance, Spencer. Yeah, your eschatology really does affect, I think, the way that you, for example, do politics, right? Because if you think that it's possible in the words of, was it Eric Vogelan to immanentize the Eschaton, right, to like bring about the conditions.

I mean, you were going to do it. Yeah. I'm going to say immunitize the Eskaton. You couldn't, right? You'd say, like, drink, is it on your, is it part of the drinking game? That is it. Yeah. Well, so it does, it does matter very much.

And like people, like Teal would accuse people like me of quietism, right? Because my point of view is basically like, nope, we're just doing, like, the reason that deliberative Republican politics is kind of the best option is because it doesn't. envision a future end of history where we will achieve some perfect state. It's just like, we're just here, right, trying to do justly and love mercy and build just societies in the context of a world that will eventually end, but we're not trying to like make that happen or bring it about or whatever. And so we get, I am like very kind of complacent about this sort of stuff. Like people say, oh, AI is going to end the world or it's going to bring about.

the utopia and I'm like, eh, you know, it might, but that's not really, you know, it's kind of above my pay grade. Yeah, that's, that's more of an Andrew Claven question, maybe. No, precisely, it's from him that I learned to kick back and not, not worry about complacency is a great inherited trait. Okay. Spencer, you drew my attention to this incredible article from CNN about the male gaze. And I want to read a quote from it.

The recent rise of weight loss medications coincided with social media influencers sharing ways to get smaller and no longer celebrating bodies of all size. Advertisements followed suit, making men's desire, once again, a dominating factor in how stories are told. Making men's desires, once again, a dominating factor in how stories are told and how women are portrayed. How had these discarded ideas made their way back into circulation? These discarded ideas, which by the way, Spencer, will obviously always be with us because they're fundamental to human nature. Didn't we all agree we were through with them? The culprit I have learned is the male gaze. It was always there.

But now it has stepped back into the spotlight. This written in such casual language on CNN is incredible, especially in the context of this big conversation we've just been having about modernity, Spencer, because it is so. almost laxadaisical about discarding fundamental elements of human nature, but doing it in this sort of TikTok news of the day. I mean

TikTok in the sense of like 60 minutes, like news of the day. That was great. Could you do that again, please? That was really, I really liked that. Spencer would prefer not to. Oh, really? You don't perform. Yeah, I'm not, what do you think? I'm like a zoo animal, Spencer.

Yeah, okay. Yes, but And it's like, so back in 2020, of course, people like Lizzo were, it is true that the elites were trying to get rid of the quote, male gaze by promoting Lizzo as healthy at any size. That was glossy magazine coverage, wasn't just Lizzo all over the place. Now that Ozmpic exists, we're sort of like vibe shift, magazines are hot again, allegedly, I don't know. But there's something kind of interesting there. Well, speaking as a male gay, I, too, find it really objectionable when men daze at me with such design. I mean, I'm sorry.

I've been waiting to tell that joke. Right. Yeah, yeah. It's like I too hate being beautiful and desirable. Cat called the construction workers. I mean, this whole line of thought. has really always seemed like protesting too much to me. Like, oh, no, it's so awful how all the men they look at me and they find me so beautiful.

And it really just hurts my little heart. Oh, stop, don't do it anymore. But on top of that, yeah, there's the whole vibe shift kind of angle to this. I'm not so sure that the Ozempic thing, how much that's going to wash. Like, it was not Ozempic that caused people to get fed up. with looking at like, yeah, exactly, with looking at like obese rappers spilling out of their underwear, right? Nobody was ever okay with that, just to be clear. This was all, right.

The Women's Studies Department of Oberlin was overjoyed about that. It was pretty much relegated to the faculty lounge. Well, that's the part of it that really, that I find actually most interesting. You know, there was just this study, I think it was an internal study done at Harvard about how, basically great inflation and political grandstanding has taken over the school, has like eaten it up from the inside out. And now a Harvard degree, you know, you might have learned something if you went to Harvard. You might equally just have spent four years learning to disguise your true sentiments and tamp down any spark of originality that might occur to you because... Everyone's got a little Pete Hegset in them.

Everyone wants to go off on the fat generals. but at Harvard, you talk to resist that. I too. Unlearning, the Pete Hexeth and all of us. That's right. We need to be trained, reprogrammed, even, out of our fat phobia. Right.

So I did not look up who the authors of this article are because life is very short and I have important things to do. But I can only presume that these are two, I think it's two women that are writing, a think piece based on their women's studies degree. Oh, my. It could have been anyone that I went to school with.

I think it took two people to write this article, if you can believe it. And what's really, to me, what hurts my sensitive scholar's heart just a little bit is to reflect on the fact that, like, if we lived in a society, outlets like CNN could be running pieces by actual scholars, informing the public about some matter of... Nobody wants that. This is like, it was like going to cut the fee. And so I started talking about this. But, you know, like, there was a time, I'm old enough to, actually not old enough to remember,

but, like, there was a time, I'm told, when guys like Tom Holland would have, say, a regular column in The Guardian, right? When you would have this idea of the public intellectual, it was not a news of the day story. Maybe it had a bit of a news hook. Maybe it was attached to some news story. But really, it was a way for the people who had invested time and energy. in becoming experts in some field, and in whom the civilization had also invested resources

and education is a way for them to give back to the world, right? That was kind of part of their obligation as people that got to spend time thinking. We've now basically, like everything else, the left has taken this and worn it as a skin suit, hollowed it out, zombified it, and turned it into a decreed, rotting shell of itself, so that you end up with these articles about concepts about nothing,

right? This is literally not, no word in this piece refers to any underlying reality. There are like three at least degrees of remove from any concept in this article and anything that's actually true to what's going on in human nature. Basically, if you translate the piece, the subtext is the campaign. of intimidation and lies that we managed to foist upon the American public for about five years has now disintegrated, and we are dismayed that people aren't ashamed of their natural inclinations anymore, right? That's what the piece is about. And so if you consider the layers and generations

and decades of social failure that have to go into creating a situation where people like this can become credentialed at major institutions for talking absolute rot, not just while talking absolute rot, but they have degrees in talking absolute rot, which then is published in our ostensibly major news outlets. That part of it, if you think about it too much, actually does make you want to drink yourself into a stupor, because it's just like very shameful that this happens. I mean, ostensibly, you've just said a lot of smart things, but I also am of the great suspicion that was a loquacious, thickly veiled pitch for your own CNN.com, Spencer Clayton. Put me in, coach. I promise never to talk about the male gaze. No, I want to post it CBS, right?

I always get them mixed up, but CBS is the one that just got taken over by Barry Wise, right? That's right. Who knows? Maybe that'll fix things. But I think really Spencer, where they need you is CNN at this point. That's true. Yeah, it's a good point. All right. They're already writing about the male gaze. I need to apply my male gaze to some sensitive issues of national politics. As a matter of representation, it's only right. Spencer Claven, associate editor over at the Claremont Review of Books, and author of Light of the Mind, Light of the World, which is wonderful.

It was such a pleasure to have you on the show tonight. Thank you so much for coming on. A true delight, Emily, always. Anytime. Thank you for having me. The best. We look forward to having Spencer back very, very soon. Now, I have thoughts on Ilaria Baldwin in just one moment. But before that, did you know, I know you know this, chips and fries were once cooked in beef tallow until the 1990s when corporations swapped it for cheap seed oils. Now those oils make up 20% of the average Americans daily calories and are linked to inflammation and metabolic issues. Somehow, of course, that got sold as, quote, healthy.

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That's Masa Chips.com slash after party and code after party for 25% off your first order. And if you don't feel like ordering online, good news, that's fine. Masa is now available nationwide at your local sprouts supermarket. Stop by and pick up a bag before. they are gone. Maybe Ilaria Baldwin wants some Masa chips to celebrate her Hispanic heritage and to wallow after getting voted off, dancing with the stars. Now, I don't think I've ever seen an episode of Dancing with the Stars. I'm not opposed to watching Dancing with the Stars. I understand that it's a fairly addictive television. I like the communal aspect of it, by the way,

but I'm going to read from an e-news article here. Oh, that's a spoiler alert. I'm going to share this tab first. Okay. So e-news reports. I can't read this first line. I'm sorry, I can't read it. I think I have to read it.

Ilaria Baldwin is two-stepping toward the haters. Who wrote that? This is why you need to put Spencer Claven in, whether it's CNN or E-online. Someone's got to put him in because this cannot continue. This is a crime. Ilaria Baldwin is two-stepping toward the haters. Following her elimination last week from Dancing with the Stars,

the 41-year-old shared why she believes she and her partner, Glebs Savchenko, were booted from season 34 of the competition series. Quote, I did get bullied off the show, Elaria said, in an October 12th, Instagram Live, referring to the criticism she received online throughout her four weeks on Dancing with the Star. I did. That's for sure. That's for sure. This is interesting because I think Ilaria Baldwin has fundamentally not reckoned with the fact that she is unlikeable to everybody outside of Manhattan.

Like just profoundly unlikable, her public persona. As her real, like as a real human being, she may actually be nice. But if you watch the reality show that they put out, oh my gosh, it was a travesty. And if you've paid attention to her entire career, she's been acting, literally, as just a human being in her public life, seemingly her private life as well, as Illaria, when her real name, her real name is Hillary. Maybe you remember this controversy from just a couple of years back. It was pretty incredible. Here is a pop crave. Now, this is what I didn't want to spoil earlier. Here is Pop Crave posting this video back in, so this was from 2025, but this first started going viral. I want to say it was like 2021 or 22. Everybody was

like cooped up because of COVID and started just snooping on Ilaria Baldwin's life. Her real name is Hillary. She's from Boston. She kept pretending to be Hispanic. And this is how far that jig went. I learned this from when I was a kid. Don't look it up online because you'll learn something different. Are you listening to that accent? This woman is from Boston. It's about to get worse.

But this woman is from Boston. And she is complaining that she was bullied off dancing with the stars in 2025 because it couldn't possibly have just been that people don't like her. I know this from when I was a kid. He learned he learned it before. Hold on. Eliuk, please explain what your... There we go.

I don't know what that one is, but I can tell you that my tortillas is potatoes, you have to not cut them too tiny because they're not going to have the right texture. And then... Does that sound like a woman from Boston? Potatoes, like, you know, here we go. My husband hates um, onions. I forgot it. Okay, so he hates the onion.

How was they did say? She pretended just then that she forgot the English word for onion. That's what just happened. in this cooking video. She straight up pretended, this is from somewhere in the last 10 years, Ilaria, who's actually Hillary from Boston was putting on such a facade that she actually pretended to forget the English word onion

because she was in such a zone speaking her native tongue, of course, which is Spanish. And it turned out to be sort of classic, diagnosable case of study abroad syndrome, where a worker from Boston really wanted to identify with another community to make yourself look more interesting and exotic, despite again being Hillary from Boston. And now she wonders, or she blames bullying.

By the way, listen, she's a very wealthy, powerful person. It's hard to argue that any online mob of average people who just don't like this woman and find the whole thing kind of amusing is actually bullying her because of the power dynamic that's implied by the word bullying. I don't think that by talking about this, I'm bullying Eilaria Baldwin. This woman is like extremely wealthy, very famous, very connected. I hardly think that somebody in a spare bedroom wearing a baseball cap at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday is bullying Elaria. So take that for what you will. But the power dynamic is obvious that she thinks

average, the idea that she thinks average dancing with the stars, viewers and voters would have any ability to even bully her is kind of speaks to the level of victimization that she sees herself at here. Now, to be fair, I'm talking about her right now, right? Like this woman does get a lot of online criticism. It is directly a consequence of her inviting a lot of online criticism by being publicly obnoxious and objectionable for over a decade now. And some of it goes wildly too far. Of course, some of it goes wildly too far. Some people are outright mean, some people are nasty, some people are just awful. And we talk a lot of them on the show about how the internet incentivizes that type of behavior. But to blame bullying rather than just sit with and cope with the reality that the public just really doesn't like you, Ilya Baldwin, because you lied to them for a very long time about something very stupid. Maybe they thought they got this reality show in head. reframed themselves with the public, even though nobody watched this reality show. I did watch it actually, but I only made it through a couple of episodes. So it's another, it's like a classic case.

The theme through tonight's episode is that 2020 is over. Some people are just now realizing it. This era where we all had to pretend to be ridiculous, most of the country's done with that. Not everybody's done with that. It'll still be with us for a really long time. But some people are having a harder time coping with it than others. Okay. As a reminder, I will be joining Megan and Glenn Greenwald in San Antonio Texas on October 24th for the wonderful Megan Kelly live tour. Go to megankelly.com for ticket information. Of course, you can shoot me an email over at Emily at double my care media.com. I read all of them respond to as many as possible on Happy Hour or actually over email as well. So we will be back on Wednesday with more happy hour.

Excited to see you then. Gobers. Have a great night, everyone.