After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Who Failed Jason Arday? The Fertility LIE, w/ Inez and Rachel, PLUS Hayden Panettiere’s Tragic Story

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Emily Jashinsky is joined by her good friends, Inez Stepman, legal analyst for Independent Women, and Rachel Bovard, Vice President at the Conservative Partnership Institute, to discuss the death of former Cambridge professor Jason Arday and the backlash against journalists who scrutinized his academic record. They also react to DSA leaders refusing to call Cuba a dictatorship, debate America’s growing affordability crisis, and examine what Allison Janney and AOC’s experiences reveal about women, fertility, and egg freezing. Plus, they break down the controversy over the DOJ’s independence from the White House before Emily reflects on Hayden Panettiere’s tragic life and the dark side of child stardom, and more…   PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or dial #250 keyword BABY   Ghostbed: Discover how GhostBed’s cooling, pressure-relieving design can help you sleep more comfortably and wake up feeling refreshed, plus get an extra 10% off their lowest prices of the season at GhostBed.com/EMILY with code EMILY.   SelectQuote: Compare top‑rated life insurance options. Visit https://SelectQuote.com/emily to get the right coverage at the right price. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to After Party, everyone. I regret to inform you our guests on tonight show. And as Stepman and Rachel Bovard are back. We're doing this thing again. I'm kidding, of course. Very glad to have them here. And on a show, packed with news. So we will be starting on the Jason R-Day story, the Jason R-Day tragedy. Really, I'm eager to get both of their take on this R-Day. Sadly, was found dead. Apparently took his own life late last week amidst the controversy. see. Now, unfortunately, fingers are being pointed at those who were skeptical of our day's story and particularly of Cambridge. So there's a lot to say, and we're going to get into it. We're also going to be talking about new polling that finds Democrats are indeed much more favorable to socialism than

capitalism. And I was going to say, I'm going to force an as-in-Rachel to weigh in on the terrible burrito debate we covered a couple of weeks ago, but they want to. They want to. They want to. That's the kind of people they are. So nobody's going to be forced to talk about it. I think it's going to be a great conversation. They both have super interesting takes that I think challenge both sides. So we're going to get into that. We are going to get into between Alice and Janney going on Monica Lewinsky's podcast

and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez starting to freeze her eggs, going about the process very publicly influencer style of freezing her eggs. We are going to get into what that means, or if it means anything, actually, for women, for culture, and Todd Blanche said he would not act, quote, unquote, independently from, would not act independently from the president now that he is Attorney General, not just acting Attorney General, and there's an absolute meltdown happening that's very instructive about how both the right and the left see the government. I'm also going to cover this tragic story about Hayden Penitieri toward the end of the show,

so please stick around for that. If you haven't subscribed yet, the best way that you can help the show and help us keep doing independent journalism here is to subscribe on the YouTube channel. It's so helpful. Like, comment, all of that stuff. Helpful in the algorithm, of course. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We are a three-day-a-week podcast or a three-day-a-week show on the podcast side because, of course, I answer all of your questions that you send in over the course of the week to Emily at double-maycaremedia.com on the Friday edition of Afterparty, which we informally refer to as happy hour. All right, like I said, much to discuss. We're going to get into all of it in just one moment. First, a quick break. Hey, everyone, I want to pass along a heartfelt thank you from my friends at Preborn. You all know how much I love Preborn, how special I think preborn is. So I'm honored to pass along this message from their president, Dan Steiner,

who asked me to share just how grateful they are for faithful supporters like you. So far this year, because of generous partners, more than 50,000 babies have been saved from abortion. So think about that. 50,000 lives changed, 50,000, and generations impacted along with that. Every tax-deductible gift is used to rescue babies and share the hope of Jesus Christ with their moms. In fact, this year alone, more than 8,000 women have made decisions to follow Christ, all because someone like you helped provide a free ultrasound. It costs just $28 to provide one life-saving ultrasound, and $15,000 can place an ultrasound machine

in a pregnancy clinic where it can save countless lives for years to come. Dan's message is simple. Thank you. Your generosity is saving lives for both earth and eternity, and today there are still mothers waiting for that same life-changing moment. Would you help? Your gift of $28 can provide one life-saving ultrasound to give, dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby, that's pound 250, baby, or visit preborn.com slash Emily. That's preborn.com slash Emily. Hi, everyone. We are joined, as I mentioned, by Innes Stetman of Independent Women, and of course, Rachel Beauvard of the Conservative Partnership. Conservative Partnership Institute. I saw you guys smiling. It just made me laugh. Sorry. Anyway, it's your lovely faces. You're so cheerful and excited to be here. Thank you both for slumming it with me. Staying up late. I know we're a couple hours past your bedtime here. So as always- real though. No, I know. I know. It's always great to feel older when talking to you, Emily. Honestly, you're not that much older these days. So no offense to me, but it's true.

Let's get into the news. There's much to discuss. Now, this awful story about Jason Ardey, the Cambridge professor, the youngest black professor in Cambridge history, who had been taking a lot of heat in recent weeks for being exposed as a plagiarist and a fabulous in some really flamboyant ways. And Arde, unfortunately, appears to have ended his own life late last week. And it's a terrible story. It's a tragic story. But the finger is now being pointed back. There's no introspection, apparently, happening among the kind of cultural progressive class in the UK. The finger's being pointed back at people who criticized Jason Ardei as a high-profile, powerful professor at Cambridge, a celebrated professor at Cambridge, for asking so many questions.

And I just want to start by saying the backlash is being characterized by the minority of genuine, racist, bad actors that glommed onto the story. But if you're characterizing the backlash as that and not as a serious series of inquiries into someone who was elevated to a very powerful position, then you're completely missing an opportunity for genuine introspection. and to mitigate the suffering of other people down the line, because most of the backlash was focused on genuine examples of plagiarism, genuine examples of fabulism. There are many breakdowns.

You can read the breakdowns in the New York Times and the Guardian if people have missed. These were not right-wing outlets going after Jason Ardei. It became impossible to ignore at a certain point. And I don't want to cast aspersions on him right now. It was a father, two children, a husband. And I think it's plenty appropriate to focus on Cambridge for enabling this. So let's start with Ibram X. Kendi. The disgraced Ibram X. Kendi weighing in in the emancipator by writing,

I've seen other prominent black scholars face these attacks time and again. And if you die from all the attacks, the media still calls the attacks on you accusations, in quotes, to wash their hands of the blood. Your lynchers announce your death as if they had no role in your lincoln. But you know what your lynchers won't announce when you are cleared of wrongdoing. We won't be seeing a media pile on for that news on Jason Rdei or other prominent black scholars. The media will bury its culpability while we bury it Jason. I hope he finally receives what we have never received as prominent black scholars piece.

That was in an essay titled The Media Lynched Jason Rday. Now, BBC is reporting public figures and friends of Jason Rade have called for a public inquiry into media coverage surrounding the former Cambridge professor before his death. Labor MP Diane Abbott and actress Jamila Jamil are among 30,000 signatories of a letter to the prime minister, which claims Arde's death followed two weeks of relentless harassment. The letter issued by Group Good Law Project, which had been representing Ardei after he stood down from his Cambridge role amid a plagiarism row, said many of its signatories had warned media outlets about the project, which had been representing Ardei after he stood down for, okay, sorry,

I repeated that, said many of its signatories had warned media outlets about the intensity of the reporting. Lord Wully, principal of Homerton College at Cambridge, said Arde had been subjected to a, quote, vicious witch hunt. And finally, before I toss it to you guys, I'm going to quote Matt Taibi, who wrote, to get the media angle out of the way, Ardae should have been a one-day story. After allegations of plagiarism surfaced publicly in July, Cambridge should have just done what they did eventually, announcing an investigation into his appointment. Instead, the school denounced the story, which they'd known about for nearly a year at least. as a, quote, vile campaign to undermine his credibility while inviting accountability. Ardei 2 threw down at gauntlet, saying, I think the cruelty that I've experienced and the positioning of me as this kind of liar and fantasist is totally unacceptable.

So let's pop the Steve McGuire post up on the screen on the Ibermix Kendi post. McGuire commented the title says Jason Ardei, but Kendi is really writing about himself. Here in the United States, Jeff Bennett, who is a co-anchor, not an opinion pundit, a co-anchor at PBS. said, a man dies at 41 after weeks of relentless public scrutiny, the New York Times the next day, he was underqualified for his job, for his job. Whatever the merits of the underlying questions publishing this now is ghoulish. Now, I just want to be really clear. What we see in this response from the Good Law Project is to define this investigation as two weeks of relentless harassment. right? Is there true that there was some relentless, let's say, harassment probably, I'll even give

them that in some corners of the internet, almost certainly. But the investigations into his plagiarism and fabulous and into Cambridge cannot be properly characterized definitively as harassment, but asking perfectly legitimate and important questions. And as, am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. And it has the moral causality backwards. The reason that Jason Ardei is a public figure and his fabulism became a matter of public interest is because Cambridge handed him a series of honors and sinecures that for which other people were passed over, for which other people were more qualified because they weren't making up, you know, a huge part of their resume in a way that would have been extremely obvious. to anybody who actually wanted to dig into any of these things. And it is also equally obvious the reason that they didn't was for ideological reasons. They wanted to have the youngest

black professor at Cambridge. And so the DEI structure is highly relevant to this entire story. I don't, it's not that I think that there's anything less tragic about his suicide. As you point out, rightly, the real victims in this situation are his children who are now without a father. But it makes the causality arrow going backwards here. If anything, there is some culpability to this entire system within Cambridge that gave this man who was clearly, like, the kind of lies he was telling were not just, oh, like, I'm spinning up my resume. They were pathological, you know, probably related to somebody who is not particularly stable. And, you know, if anything, they have some capability here in putting this person who is clearly

unstable and making up stuff in a very obvious way in a public position of power, which would make it so that we would then have to scrutinize him, have to scrutinize his resume long, long overdue. If this had happened in the first meeting over these obvious lies, neither Jason Ardei nor the public would have ended up in this position. So the culpability here is clear. By the way, just to your audience, I'm not trying to downplay the tragedy of this by looking around.

There is a bee flying around in my room right now. So if I start looking up, I'm really not trying to downplay the tragedy of suicide in this. It's Iber Max Kendi. He's there listening over your shoulder at all times. Rachel, do you want to pick up on the point Inez just made because I wrote in my notes when I was prepping this segment, we are more likely to abuse the mentally ill when we validate their mental illness as ideologically virtuous. That was just something I popped in that I put in my notes because I wanted to make sure we covered it. It does seem like the type of lies that our day was telling. I really agree with what Ines just pointed out were pathological and reflected a mental

instability, like a genuine mental instability, not neurodivergence that's been, that had been his defense of himself. But we're talking about insane lies about running certain amount of distance and a certain amount of time, being mute until a certain period of his life, which the people who knew him during that time were able to very easily say was not true. It looks to me, it looks to me like a pretty tragic case of a mentally ill person being validated in their mental illness and exploited for it. Yeah, the New York Times article is damning in that regard, you know, when it interviews people who, child psychologists who were asked about, you know, his claims, Jason Ardae's claim that, you know, he didn't speak until he was 11 or 18 or something ridiculous like that, and then went on to get a PhD

immediately after. And they said it just has no precedent in the medical literature, I think, was the quote. Like it's these multiple times there were instances where Cambridge could have stepped in. And it was at the beginning, it was in the high. It was in the high school. It was in the hiring panel when the article notes that his thesis was full of grammatical errors and identical quotes attributed to different people. And people, different publications, you know, when he was hired, did look into this and presented evidence of plagiarism to the university. And the university simply said, you know, we don't care. And Jason Arde himself hired major law firms to try to shut it down and then turned the journalist into the police. A later, at a later incident, a colleague of his at

University of Cambridge raised some issues, and he accused that colleague of racism. And so I just think again and again, and to Anessa's point, the article even claims that the University of Cambridge was on the hunt, you know, for additional black professors. This is something that was crucial to their hiring decision. And it has resulted, as you point out, in someone who had delusions, you know, literal delusions. Not only did he say, you know, he didn't speak until later and then got a PhD, I think You were referencing he said he ran 30 marathons in like 38 days or something like that, which would have put him in the top endurance athletes in the world.

And no one stopped to say maybe this wasn't a great idea. So multiple times they could have stepped in and they did not. Yeah, that's a good point. Just a small update here. Andes has sent a note to the chat saying she has trapped the bee in a cup. So maybe a metaphor for something. I don't know, Annis. But I did also.

A dull moment. Truly. The B just wanted to be in the party. All right. So Musa Al Garby is a academic, a brilliant academic who wrote a fantastic book a few years back. I think it was 2023. It was called We Were Never Woke. Works at Stony Brook University wrote again back in 2023 about the connection between ideology and mental well-being, which is so interesting. And it's kind of a difficult subject to talk about because you don't want to go full boomer and be like, all these libs are just stupid and mentally ill. What the research shows is worth getting into. Al Garby wrote, investigations consistently find that people who identify with liberal ideology

are significantly more likely than others to be depressed and anxious. Liberals are also much more likely than conservatives to be diagnosed with mental illnesses or disorders. And then he goes to what's called the dark triad characteristics at a different part in this article. says other studies have found that people who score highly on dark triad characteristics, narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism may be especially likely to gravitate towards certain strains of social justice ideology and activism. Al Garby writes, insofar as certain strains of leftism may be pernicious to mental health. If those ideologies rapidly grew more prominent or suddenly began to exert significantly more influence over U.S. institutions and culture, this would likely

have a significant adverse effect on Americans' mental well-being, including and especially among those who most eagerly embrace these views. And as reading the Abram-X-Kendi essay, it's just striking how, and not surprising, but striking nonetheless, how utterly disinterested Kendi is in grappling with this. I think the McGuire post that he sees this as really being about him is a great example of the narcissism and psychopathy that in a normal workplace, and eventually this happened to Ibermax, Kendi, whose grift think tank, and I think it was Boston University, got shut down because it was exposed as a grift.

Matt Taibi was pulling parts from the way that Ardei wrote about himself, which was also very clearly narcissistic, talking about how they knew he was special when he was born, those sorts of things. In a normal workplace, that's stigmatized. You are treated as somebody who's characteristics or whose character traits need a meeting. You say your colleagues are getting really irritated and uncomfortable with this. I mean, I guess it's academia, so that's a different question. But it does seem like there's something

on the left that is afraid to so afraid of stigmatizing mental illness that it ends up perpetuating it in political and ideological spaces. Well, two things here. One, even genuine mental fragility and mental illness, which I don't even like that phrase because it's so bloodless. And I think compresses, and that was really going to be my second point, is it compresses things that are pathological into a spectrum with just normal human suffering and normal reactions, human reactions to things that are genuinely either perplexing, anxiety inducing, depression-inducing about human existence. So I don't like that term generally. But even if you are genuinely very much suffering mentally or have a genuine pathology, that's not a political veto. That's how it's

being used that and it reminds me very much about the trans child quote unquote debate, right? Because the veto is always, well, you know, I'm going to harm myself or in Jason Ardae's case, I'm actually going to hire myself. Well, that just doesn't make it illegitimate to examine public political ideas on whether and to determine as a body politic whether or not they're true and should be enacted into law. If you are so fragile mentally that you cannot participate in that process, in that like truth-finding process, then that is on you to withdraw from political life, not to step into power. And that's that paradox at the left that, you know, valorizes fragility, valorizes mental illness. There's some combination, these results that you're pointing to,

where you actually have the literal majority of young self-identified as liberal women saying they have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness, the majority, 54%. there's obviously multiple reasons feeding into that number and part of it is that it has become chic to get a diagnosis on the left. So some of this is not even real. But much of it is actual real mental fragility, but that is not a reason that we should essentially give you a political veto. That's a reason you should withdraw from the political process. Jordan Peterson is kind of correct here. If you cannot, you are so fragile that you cannot make your own bed without the help of, you know, diagnoses and medications. It's not that I have no sympathy for that. It's that I definitely don't

overweight your voice in the political process. If anything, I would underweight your voice in the political process because you have declared to the world that you don't have sort of sound mind and mental judgment to participate. Rachel, do you make your bed? Do you force your children to make their buds? It's funny that you raise that. This is actually the new chore on my four-year-old's chore chart. So bed making big, big moves in this house. Okay, but this is where I actually was going to go next. It's basically, you're saying this is for four-year-old.

This is the soft bigotry of low expectations, right? Like, you can't, it's okay to expect a four-year-old to make their bed. And it's certainly okay to expect a celebrated academic to answer really difficult questions about obvious glaring examples of plagiarism or fabulism that had been raised internally for quite some time. And then when they want to use race as a shield, which is creating problems for other black academics and is perpetuating a system that is going to do the same thing to perhaps other people in the future as anez raised. Like, you're putting him and others in this position to then answer these difficult questions because you elevated them despite the record. Yeah. And I think what was so striking to, I think, about this story is how everyone participated in the lie. It was almost everyone was in thrall, or obviously a better explanation probably is they were too scared to say anything.

Because there was a quote, I think, in the New York Times piece of a colleague that had emailed the leadership of the University of Cambridge saying, I think Jason really needs friends who are critical, not sycophants. And he never got a response. And then when the university did start looking into these things, you saw all the other black academics stand up and say, these are systematic attempts to erase black scholarship. And it's this, you can never get out of his system when it's like that. When everyone is either too scared or too, you know, pathologized to understand what's really going on, you are going to have this situation where someone who is deeply unstable, you know, gets,

valorized in a way, you know, that I think just makes the situation worse. It makes him unable to cope with the consequences of his own actions, which is tragically what I think we've seen here. and, you know, leave a wife and two kids without a dad. Finally, just because you've done so much work on higher education policy and you've taken very specific looks at what's happened here in the states in the second Trump administration, is this the type of thing, this culture that the incentives are shifting against because of federal policy right now? Like, do you think that there could be a sea change, at least here domestically,

because universities are being forced to answer, in some ways that I like, in some ways I don't like, by the way. but are being forced to answer for some of these kind of absurd policies and structural incentives right now. Is some of that changing, do you suspect? I am quite optimistic about the, I would say, medium-term future of higher education in the United States, ideologically and otherwise. I think the ideological piece is going to be the hardest piece of the puzzle to actually

crack. Obviously, we have an out-and-out rebellion against, the very basic enforcement that the Trump administration is doing, for example, on the Civil Rights Act, telling universities that actually it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of race and admissions. Actually, it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of race when you hire somebody like Jason R. Day, essentially for racial spoil system reasons. That is, in fact, illegal in the United States and always has been since 1964. So, you know, on the one hand, I'm optimistic, even though there is this huge, they're obviously just like mass rebates. alien against this. And I don't think they've incurred enough legal punishment to really change trajectories. That being said, I think it's coming at a time that is a perfect storm for a lot of

reasons for higher ed. We're essentially a demographic cliff is hitting college age. So we are going to see a shrinkage of the university sector no matter what, just there aren't going to be enough students. They're already scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of admitting people who are completely academically unprepared for the work at university. Well, that problem is. going to get worse. And I think we're going to see universities essentially close, shrink and close because there just aren't that many young people anymore. We're seeing the results finally among adults of essentially the slowdown and the fertility slowdown and having babies. Right. So, and then on top of that, their model is completely dependent on taxpayer money. And that is not going

to change. And they really have to, I think, incur enough enforcement, punishment, potentially defunding, threats of defunding followed up on from the Trump administration and potentially any future Republican administration to finally get down to it. Maybe it's a little similar problem as Trump has with the Mullahs in Iran, right? Like, you had to essentially fire. Not what I thought you were going to say. Yeah, it's in this case firing, not decapitation by like, you know, military strike. But essentially, you know, you have to get down to somebody who's got like the practical self-reservation

to negotiate. And I think in universities, you're going to get to a certain number of presidents who just say, look, I can keep doing this ideological stuff, but I'm going to have to fire half of you because we just won't be able to fund the budget. And at the end of the day, I'm quite optimistic that there are enough people who are self-interested

that we will see a shift in the higher-ed landscape. I want to, can I just say one thing about the whole mental fragility thing that we're having this conversation? It is a very difficult thing to deal with because, like, I think about this question a lot with regard, for example, to the detransitioners who are now such important voices on the right. On the one hand, they are such important voices and the stories they have to tell are very real and very important to the public deliberation on this, this, you know, political public issue, right? On the other hand, oftentimes you're

talking about 18 or 20-year-old, you know, people who admittedly, self-admittedly have a lot of mental issues surrounding that. And I just think it's a very delicate thing, how we even use or talk about their stories, how much we want to essentially freeze them publicly in this moment in time, this very tumultuous moment in time in their not perhaps adolescence, but like young adulthood. And I just, I think that these problems are legitimately complicated, how you balance essentially, and I sound like a leftist now, but telling people's genuinely true stories, which should add to the public deliberation on certain issues. And on the other hand, not enabling or making, you know, sort of making worse these underlying fragility issues through, you know,

either, you know, flattery or adulation or promotion into positions that are not deserved on the merits. And here, and our day case, it's not, it's not even a hard call, right? They obviously just, for ideological reasons, ignored the fact that this guy was an unstable, pathological liar. because they didn't want to have one fewer young black scholar at Cambridge. And that is condemnable and we should condemn it. Yeah, I think that's well said. And it actually doesn't remind me a bit about the childless cat lady debate and the fertility debate we're going to get into later. But let's turn now to this new polling from CBS news.

I'm reading from Mediite here. They reported, according to a new CBS news poll out on Sunday, Democrats have a dramatically more favorable view of socialism than capitalism. The poll found that among Democrats. 58% have a positive view of socialism, well, just 18% have a negative view. Conversely, the poll found just 32% of Democrats have a positive opinion of capitalism, while 50% see it negatively.

That gap becomes even wider when narrowed down to those with a college degree among that demographic, 71% view socialism favorably compared to a paltry 16% who see it unfavorably. And I think that explains this clip I'm about to show both of you, where the co-chairs of the DSA went on with Jorge Ramos and his daughter,

who host a podcast together that is typically, I think, aptly characterized as solidly left. And because Jorge Ramos is Cuban, he had some interesting questions for the DSA co-chairs who couldn't really bring themselves to, from their imperialist American perspective, offer a serious criticism of democracy in Cuba. Let's take a listen. Do you believe that Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, that they are dictatorships? For us expanding democracy,

the small-D Democratic part of democratic socialism is core to what we stand for. Is Cuba a dictatorship for you? I think in the United States, it's hard for us to judge other countries being dictatorships when we have Donald Trump as president. But let me go back to Cuba.

Do you think Cuba is a dictatorship? There are things that the Cuban people themselves would want to change in their own system, but it's hard to do that when the blockade. Megan, I don't know if you want to. I can jump in. So I've been to Cuba three times. I was not talking to people who were like, you know,

big advocates of the Cuban government. But they did say the issue is the blockade. But clearly since 1950s, they haven't had multi-party elections, their censorship, political prisoners. Do you believe that Cuba is a dictatorship, Megan? I believe that Cubans have access to their democracy in a way that we do not. For example, I think the family's code was just sort of an incredible demonstration of popular democracy. And also, no, they don't have multi-party elections, which is a real problem. I also think we don't have access to our Constitution in ways that are really problematic.

We're on like 50 years of the ERA not being passed. We haven't passed the ERA, so we can't judge Cuba is the take in that clip. And I'm being a bit fisticious, but it is interesting to see because I think this younger generation of Democrats or people who vote Democrat, maybe they don't consider themselves Democrats, maybe they consider themselves socialists or democratic socialists. The poll was just of socialism versus capitalism, which is interesting enough. Ramos, by the way, he did this really famous interview with Fidel Castro. He's Mexican, though. He's not Cuban.

I said he was Cuban earlier. But he's covered Cuba for a really long time and has confronted Castro. And then here he is in front of two young leftists that are chairing the DSA. And they can't seem to clearly, like some, I'm friends with leftists. A lot of them will tell you, like Cuba has its own. They are jailing dissidents. Honest people can admit that. It's really, really not that hard.

But I think this new identitarian democratic socialism, which isn't as materialist, but it's more identitarian, because they're coming from the imperialist perspective, Rachel, they are uncomfortable. They're uncomfortable criticizing Cuba. Is that what you're taking away from this? Am I off base here? Well, I think it's because anti-Americanism is core to their identity, right? They cannot, they have to, nothing, everything is worse, or sorry, everything is better than America

because we are the absolute worst and that is built into the identity of the DSA. Because I think there is a very critical threshold question when you are looking at another regime. Can you vote the ruling party out of power? If you cannot, it is not a free country. And you saw in that last clip, the sort of cognitive dissonance where the woman is saying, you know, well, you know, they don't, you know, their elections, our elections, aren't free, but in their democracy, and it's like, I'm sorry, lady, you just said they don't have elections, but you also called them a democracy. Like, there's just a ton of sort of semantics

being thrown around, tethered to nothing, except in anti-Americanism and regime solidarity that they cannot admit kind of what's directly in front of their face. And as I just went back and pulled this CNN article from, it was 2020, a controversy that Bernie Sanders found himself in, where he talked about the classic literacy in Cuba trope. And he said, he responded in a way that I actually think is kind of different than what we just heard by saying, I have been extremely consistent and critical of all authoritarian regimes all over the world, including Cuba, including Nicaragua, including Saudi Arabia, including China, including Russia. I happen to believe in democracy, not authoritarianism. I look at that. I'm like, it's actually really not that hard to say, I don't believe in authoritarianism. And they say they have the answer from one of the DSA co-chairs there was they have access to democracy in ways that we don't. That's what they're going with? I was going to say, Rachel is declining to parse the very clear difference between access to democracy and elections. Yes.

They support the Save America Act, I think. Naturally. I think Rachel's right to say that Rachel's right to say that anti-Americanism is the core of this. It's the same core of the left. And to me, just with my personal background, it brings very funny. think the same thing when I know your esteemed co-host Ryan Grimm talks. I often think the same exact thought, which is it's very funny. We talk a lot about, you know, boomer cons or whatever repeating sort of Cold War slogans on the right about fighting communism. But the same thing is true

on the left where they're just repeating defunct propaganda from the USSR and from some of these regimes, even after they've fallen. Like, I mean, when you listen to these people talk, the talking points are the same as regime propaganda from like this aging, decrepit regime that's almost certainly going to be in the ash heap of history in the next few years

just by the death of its caretakers, its most strident revolutionaries, right? So, but that's often what I think is these are just like talking points that my parents grew up with in communist Poland with regard to, especially with regard to Latin America, with regard to like sort of, you know,

I don't know, it's just, it's funny to hear the same Cold War talking points. It's just from the other side, right? It's just from the fact that the American left has never confronted and never been forced to confront the highly, you know, let's say friendly relations between the communist international and the domestic left in America after 1960

and even before back into the 30s and 20s. But that's probably a history list and it's unnecessary at this point. But yeah, I mean, it should be very easy to say that Cuba is not a democracy. because once again, it doesn't have elections. I will point out that the DSA, the same DSA, put out a bulletin on Fidel Castro's death, you know, essentially lauding him.

And then now puts out a bulletin when it talks about Cuba, it actually turns the conversation into Marco Rubio and Donald Trump being genocidal. So I guess that's the new term that we're, you know, hollowing out of any meaning on the left, especially with regard. you know, maybe it started with, again, the trans kids thing where it was about the transgenocide, or maybe it started with all eyes on Gaza, right, and stretching the definition of genocide beyond what anybody would, you know, objectively take seriously. But this seems very similar to me. So Marco Rubio is genocidal and Cuba has access to democracy, okay? I mean, this is sort of the

upside-down world in which the only thread, Rachel, is correct to pull, is that America, is always the great Satan. America is always in the wrong. America is always the imperialist power that has caused every ill in the history of the world and continues to cause it. On the, in fairness, Ryan, I don't think you have any problems with Jorge Ramos's question. I will say that the ERA, and as you've written about the ERA extensively, they lost the battle in the court of public opinion. The public decided they didn't want the ERA, which is why it's stalled. They should be, they should be championing Phyllis Schlafly as a democratic icon. So, no, but this is, I guess there is a real tension here between liberalism, liberal democracy, right?

Direct democracy. We have seen, you know, we've seen in the era of the deep state how those two things can come into conflict, right? And in cases like, for example, Viktor Orban, who was voted out of power, right? but and was very clearly a democratic system by by rachel's backwards definition of being able to vote political party and power out of office not unsophisticated definition um but but yeah these these two things do have sometimes some tension um you know but with imperialist NGO involvement on the behalf of his opponent by the way we should add which that doesn't get called out yeah well we never call out the imperialism of the uh the great american empire when it comes to just you know imposing

our quote-unquote leftist values about, you know, whatever, gay marriage and all the rest on our vassals in the Great American Empire. Yes. So the capitalism versus socialism framing, I actually question how far that goes or how much that actually tells us right now because I think both of you have waited into the stupid burrito debate, which actually I don't even think is stupid. I think it's been one of the few constructive online conversations that we've had as a kind of, as the broader right in recent months. Like this one is genuinely somewhat meaningful and there have been fairly persuasive arguments being made. And one is from Inez. I want to put this one up. You wrote, this entire debate is frustrating because it consists of two sides basically arguing over ideological

gloss. I love that turn of phrase you used. Well, the reality is that most, not all, but most of the core costs driving the affordability conversation, housing, health care, child care, of one income, education are not free markets. There's actually quite a lot of room for traditional conservative prescriptions here in these sectors, but people insist on calling others socialists for noticing this reality for middle-class families instead of being productive. And just bringing it back to the duality of capitalism and socialism, people are rejecting capitalism right now. And we've had these conversations on the right that capitalism is not a good in and of itself. Capitalism is a tool for the good. Capitalism is a tool that can be wielded justly, that should be

wielded justly for the common good. But it's not as though we say, oh, well, we just are doing this for the sake of capitalism and free markets. No, free markets exist for, or free market should be tended to for the betterment of society. And when you look around and the right has branded the free market as the pre-Oabomacare health care system or as what else, like all these other heavily subsidized industries, because any encroachment or rolling back of regulations will then be decried as socialism. And as that is giving capitalism bad branding. Yeah, I mean, look, I do think people are fundamentally talking past each other on this affordability conversation because what happens is somebody points out that the essential cost of living for the basic middle class life or the

upwardly mobile life that most generations of Americans, especially since the 1950s, have become accustomed to that that cost calculation is changing, whether it's, you know, median income versus the median cost of housing or whether it's the fact that, you know, Chipotle burritos that used to be very much in the affordability range for your average white collar worker to have, you know, a couple times a week across the street from his office, those things are increasingly putting pressure on the budgets of the middle class. And what I find frustrating is getting back sort of a lecture of how to be more efficiently downwardly mobile. And that's not really answering the same question. And everybody knows that it's cheaper to make a burrito home.

Okay, nobody is under, and I'm not even saying there is no real issue with sort of, you know, the zoomer defenses of like, I can't cook because I have one of these diagnoses that we were talking about. And actually, it's impossible. I can't cook because of, yeah, mm-hmm, because the- I talk actually for my mental health order, the $20 burrito taxi to my house. So, you know, I'm not even saying that's not a real problem. It's just, it's sort of orthogonal to the common. conversation, which is these are core middle class costs. The burrito not so much, and I'll get to that,

I guess, in a minute, but the core middle class costs, which are housing, healthcare, education, increasingly, K-12 and higher ed, saving for higher ed for a lot of families, and then the entire, you know, two-income trap, one-income versus the incredible cost of child care conversation. Those costs are not negotiable for a lot of people in the middle class. They're like, the basics of what makes someone middle class, unquote, like doing all right in America. And those costs are increasingly eating up basically the entire median income just by themselves. And so what's happening to a lot of families is that they don't have the cushion,

whenever there's a price shock, for example. Let's say we go to war and gases $1.50 more a gallon for six months than it was. if you have no budgetary kind of cushion to absorb that cost, it's going to become increasingly, like immediately a five alarm fire in terms of quote-unquote affordability. And the same thing is true with short-term shocks in food prices, right? When like the thing you were able to do before where you have to, like, there's a lot of middle-class families who have to, for example, stop buying beef because we're having a short-term price shock on beef. And the reason that people are so sensitive to those price shocks is because the core costs,

of American middle class life are increasingly just eating the entire median salary. And so that so many people are on the edge that whatever the shock of the day is becomes an increasing sort of problem and a topic of endless discourse, which often brings more heat than light to any of this. But yeah, I mean, I don't think that Republicans are going to get very far until they acknowledge that those core costs are going up. But the good news for, I guess, traditional Republicans is higher ed is not a free market. Exactly. It's entirely funded and subsidized and regulated by the federal government.

Neither is health care. These are not like some kind of mythical Milton Friedman-esque markets that we must sacrifice our principles in order to save the American middle class. Like that's not actually what I see when I look at the situation. What I see are these heavily, heavily regulated, subsidized and controlled sectors that are simply getting out of whack with the median income in this in this country. And that's a real problem. And we need a real solution for it. Right. Like what is our free market housing system right now? I mean, people who are opposed to J.D. Vance is this like a symbol in the proxy war are mad about

the ban on institutional investors that Congress passed. Trump did sign it passed anyway. But Rachel, like that is a very good example. It's like if you are defending the status quo right now. And yes, some of those same people, I want to be fair to them, are making a case for a deregulatory agenda. And I think there's absolutely plenty of room for that. I think Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson made some good points in abundance about that. But so did Matt Stoller about consolidation and monopoly in the housing marketplace. And you've worked in this space. Like, you were on the hill during the Obamacare fight, if I'm remembering correctly, old.

But seriously, it's crazy that we're now in 2026. And I feel like the Republican response to this, there's so many kind of free market conservatives' response to this has not been to recognize that people are struggling because of some of what they were fighting against for a long time, which is the subsidizing of these industries to a point where it would choke competition. For some reason, they have decided that they cannot admit this. Like there's two basic responses to this debate, which make me kind of apoplectic. I just like can't even deal with it. one is oh well you know how much better you have it than people who lived in 1850 like let me show you the cost of living right and this is the best generation that is ever you know you have access to more things than are before yes that is that is fact but it exists alongside the fact that anez raised

which is that again the core economic functions of the middle class family are eating up they're almost their entire paycheck they have no price flexibility so those two things exist in tension but one is acknowledged and the other is not depending on who you're talking to. But the second issue, I think, is that a lot of these free, and I think this is very true among sort of the Gen Z view of this, is that a lot of the people sort of finger wagging about, well, don't you want to protect the free market? We're the same people arguing for the 2008 bank bailouts. Oh, good point. Free market to, you know, bail out Lehman Brothers, to bail out, you know, all these Wall Street banks and not punish the people. Were you in Congress then, Rachel? You saw this up close. I was staffing the

financial house financial services committee during tarp which dates me aggressively but you know when people are like how did you end up like this it was watching that you know when it was when it was all of your you know if you were raised on on um milton friedman and and frederick and then you watch it all play out in the real world you're saying this isn't a free market this is the government aggressing actively to insert itself in their free market and then all the people on the right saying no no no this is how capitalism works well yeah so of course you have a whole generation of kids who are now skeptical when they're being told capitalism is the best system ever. When it props up, again, these massive corporations, our banking sector has just become more concentrated and consolidated since then and much more,

you know, hyper fragile to anything like 2008. God forbid it ever happened again. And Democrats, by the way, now looking at favorable Democrats of socialism, more than capitalism, past Dodd-Frank. And they have themselves to thank for that on the left. Anyway, sorry to interrupt. No, I just think we have to be able to talk honestly about this. But instead, we are now reaching into calling absurd thing socialism, right? Like if you, if you recognize the fact that it is now more expensive to be a middle class family in America, well, what do you think about that socialist? Like, we've stretched the definition of these things so much that to Inez's point, we're talking past each other because we don't even have meanings of words anymore when we're talking about

these things. No, I think that's well said. And I like Anez's point about the ideological gloss, too, because that's what so much of this is. It's just kind of getting lost in the sauce of whether you're criticizing JD openly or like this, what is that signal? Are you part of this group or that group? And so much of it is like we could actually be talking about the substance of the question instead of the question of whether this is a proxy. Yeah, can I just add to that I think what frustrates me is as a sort of a student, a professional student of the conservative movement, these things we're discussing are well-worn territory on the right. You know, the idea that the family should be at the center of our economic decision-making and not simply, you know, line-go-up GDP kind of

decision-making. That is extremely Kirkian. I know I just triggered Inez by mentioning Russell Kirk, but it is, you know. Robert Nisbet wrote about this. You know, we have a lot of our intellectual tradition rests on this idea that, again, the market doesn't serve itself as a means to an end. The market serves the social well-being, right? It serves the American family. And if the American family is your benchmark and it's not doing well, something is off. And maybe we shouldn't be penalizing marriage in the tax code or all of these things are open for discussion, but instead we can only have this extreme binary, right? Like you would defend the status quo, otherwise you're a socialist. And it's just exhausting. Well, and it's also true. Rachel's saying is

also true about policy, right? Like there is a active debate on the right about tariffs. I think it's fine that we have this debate. I'm somewhat unconvinced in either camp myself. But what I don't find credible is hysteria over tariffs when we had tariffs for most of the country's existence. And similarly, like, Reagan was not a perfect free marketer. Reagan also used tariffs and negotiation. Like, there is, there was a disconnection, I think, ideologically after, and I actually don't like tarring the Reagan administration with this. I think it happened after that. I think the conservative movement got completely ideologically ossified. To the point where there was just like a grid spitting out the, you know,

the policies for every input. And that grid did not recognize some very long-term and important structural trends in the country. And Donald Trump kind of had to wrench that entire grid sideways and maybe because he is such a non-ideological person. Like he doesn't, I think he deals actually the worst with ideologs or people who are like extremely principled. Right. He just like doesn't understand them. Everything is always a negotiation. But, but even aside from that, right, that there, This is not, a lot of these policies are not new. They're not in America, not in communist, you know, in Cuba, okay. In America, they're not new policies. They're policies that have gone back and forth in popularity, even in the last 50 years, let alone the last 100 years. So I just, the hysteria I find

sort of unbecoming on questions like this one, they are really about, you know, providing solutions because what's been happening for the last 30 years are these long-term trends in affordability. Rachel says, you know, GDP line goes up, but like the affordability crisis is a line going up over time. Housing versus, you know, average income. That's a line.

Line goes up, okay? And it's been going up since the 70s. So those are some hard problems that demand some actual political solutions and I guess the ideological gloss stuff. It doesn't, I don't, I don't really care if those solutions come from the Reaganite box or from the like new right box or whatever it is. I'm sort of ideologically flexible on some of these questions because I genuinely feel like these are difficult problems to solve.

But I mean, the hysteria because there's a tariff. Okay. America has always had tariffs. Sorry to break it to you. Well, yeah. And this capture, I'm not trying to open up a can of wormstress. We have to go to break. But one of the things that I actually realized that may be helpful to do.

dealing with some of these, but one of the things I realized that we were kind of propagandized isn't the right word because that implies something more sinister than what I'm referring to, but on Citizens United particularly, any criticism of or any suggestion of future limits on campaign spending was, I was taught growing up on the conservative movement in the 2010s. That was anathema to literally free speech itself. And that was how things were for many, many years. And so anyway, I just I thought about that as you were explaining exactly what you were just explaining and as about what started in the decades, the last five or so decades in this country for squeezing the middle class.

It's off topic, but a point I wanted to make none the less because I'm really open to having a new conversation about it. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be back in a moment with more. Well, you may not remember every time you toss turn or wake up hot during the night, but guess what does? Your body never forgets. And I've noticed a real difference when I sleep on a mattress.

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Let's get back to it and watch this clip of Alice and Janney on Monica Lewinsky's podcast, wild sentence to say. But Alice and Janie weighing in actually before AOC, if my timing's correct, this episode of the Lewinsky podcast came out and it started going viral. It came out a few days before AOC now famously lifted her shirt and jabbed herself in the process of freezing her eggs, asking people not to be weird about it. She is a sitting congresswoman, though, of course, who just exposed her middrift. to the world, but let's take a listen to Alice and Janney on that process as she experienced it. I knew I never wanted to have kids. I just, that just is something that I, I, I've always known. But then there was a period where you did or you just thought like, well, I better, I should just try at least right here. I went to a fertility person and they were like, oh,

you're really, you're pretty kind of over the hill to, I was like, oh, really? I thought women could have kids till I was sort of under the impression that women could have kids until they were 50 or something. I don't know why. I thought that. This is not something we're taught, like to be in charge of our fertility. Yeah. Yeah. No. I didn't, I didn't know until a friend of mine went into early menopause at 40, I didn't even know, I didn't even know that was possible. Yeah, they don't, they didn't teach us anything about our bodies growing up. I mean, it's both bonkers and then you look at all the misogyny in the world and you go, yeah, I understand why. Yeah. Yeah. I never, I mean, the first I heard that I wouldn't be able to have a kid at,

40-something was in this fertility doctor's office. She was like, the odds are not in your favor. My true love in my world besides my friends and family are dogs. That's animals and especially dogs are my heart. I could not love dogs more. So that was a rerun of a podcast. I think they did last year, but it re-ran on August 11th and then started going viral afterwards. Here is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talking about. about her or responding to some of the criticism that came her way, mostly from the right, after she decided at the age of 36 to freeze her eggs. We don't totally know what her romantic situation is, but it seems like she's maybe not

with her longtime boyfriend, once fiancee. We don't know. Anyway, here's her responding to critics on Instagram. Kids at a young age, beautiful, like, love that for you. A lot of these people who pressure women. into having kids at a young age or trying to create hysteria around being too old, etc. What they're trying to do is rush you into having a relationship with a loser. Okay. Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller, waited on this by saying,

we have historically low birth rates worldwide. If one woman wants to preserve her right to have children, which means more than having none, we should celebrate that. If she inspires other women to have babies, we should celebrate that, basically offering words of encouragement to AOC. And I think, thought Katie Miller offered that in response to some of what she saw from others on the right, maybe Matt Walsh. I don't know if that was a sub-twin of Matt Walsh, but I say all of this, because here we have the Allison Janney example that I think is familiar and resonant with a lot of women. The AOC one probably sadly is as well, but she's presenting it as either or that like she's happy for you if you find the right person, get married and have kids at a young age,

but anybody who's criticizing you for not doing it wants you to marry a loser. Like that's, I think, a really unnuanced dichotomy. Am I wrong, Rachel? No. And, you know, I find that clip of Alison Janney in particular, just very sad. But I think it does reflect this reality that many millennial women in particular, I mean, I think she's, I don't know how old Alison Janney is. I don't think she's a millennial. She's pretty a boomer. What's that? I think she's probably a boomer, to be honest. But I think, you know, it reflects this idea that this sort of feminism that took root that said,

you know, you can have your career. put off children as long as you want. You can just have them whenever you want. And the way that that lie took hold was there was never any discussion of, you know, for the fertile years for women, which really aren't that long. That isn't, you know, that's just a reality that people never talked about. And so the result is, I think you have this multiple generations of women, I think at this point, that are in that position where they want to have kids or they decided they want to have children later in life and they can't. And I think the culture, really stole that from women.

And so it's just deeply, deeply sad. And I think there are a lot of women that are just, I've called it before when we've talked about this, like the primal scream of a generation that was completely misled and told a lie, which is that, you know, just freeze your eggs in amber and you can unthaw them and have kids whenever you want. I mean, to go to the AOC point,

I didn't look it up, but simply freezing your eggs does not result in a successful conception. many of the there it doesn't work all the time and the percentage is actually quite low but we're not a lot to talk about that right we're only allowed to sell this perpetuate this narrative that while you can freeze your fertility and have your girl boss life and then when have kids on your terms human biologist just doesn't work like that and i kind of disagree i think with katie miller's approach which is well you know babies are good however we we come to them well i don't support surrogacy, you know, and I'm very Catholic about the beauty of conception and life begins

at conception and all those things. And so I just, I think we need to change the discourse around these things, or we're going to end up with a lot more Alice and Janies who are very sad. You know, I think people want to laugh at her and say, well, ha ha, she should have known better. There's a lot of women in her position. Mm-hmm. And as did the right botch the response to AOC in a way that creates more more future Allison Janies or was it all pretty fair, tough love? Look, I mean, I think the right should not fool itself. We are living through an era where the highest percentage of women, who are voters,

will be hitting 45 unmarried and childless, at least in recorded American history. and almost certainly in all of American history, but we shouldn't fool ourselves about the political consequences of that. The political consequences are that unmarried women vote 68 to 70% Democrat, and to such a degree that they flood out the votes of married women, married men, and unmarried men all to varying degrees, but much less than 68 or 70%, go Republican. So this is a political reality.

It's why I defended J.D. Bance, when he talked about the child as cat ladies, I think on this program, among others, that doesn't mean that we have to be completely callous in discussing this. And I'm sure there are people who have crossed the line. But again, this is a problem of public import, right? It has an influence on our politics. And I think we'd be foolish to imagine that AOC does not seem relatable to a huge chunk of the electorate. right now. And I frankly think she's kind of cynical. I think she actually is putting this out here in a way that she thinks will bolster her political prospects. And I think she's right about that. That being said, Rachel is completely correct. These are not guaranteed. These are not technological

kind of trump cards over biology. We can talk about whether or not it would be ethically good, even if we could trump biology and what the consequences of, for example, splitting the concept of mother into three are. Right now we have genetic mother, natal mother, and social mother. And I do think that will have profound consequences. The profound cultural consequences on the order of the pill, for example, of not only now separating sex from the necessity of life coming into the world, so product of that by, you know, sort of mass and easy contraception,

But now going the other way and separating babies from sex at all. I mean, sex is sort of under assault these days with Gen C and the loaning of the crisis. I mean, this may be the final nail in the coffin. We may become a sexless species. You know, we'll just use the Feles as Brave New World introduced or idiocracy, right, the bait and the bait and machine with the VR on our heads. And when we want to have children, we'll grow them in a lab, right? These are actually things that are going to transform the landscape of not only the human trajectory,

but of love, of sex, of that mystery of bringing a new life into the world and the kind of loss of control that comes with that. I think there are all, there would be profound cultural consequences to these technologies, whether it's IVF, whether it's freezing your eggs, whether it's surrogacy, and ultimately, what's coming is just peer eugenics, right? orchid style eugenics where we're going to be choosing our genetic children and potentially cutting some of the links between the different generations genetically. I'm way more nervous about all of that ethically and what it means for who we are in our culture than AI. I'll put it

that way. But I've also like a, you know, one has to see realities that one doesn't like. And the reality is that I think actually things that AOC is putting out there are things that are incredibly relatable to a larger and growing sector of the electorate. We need a Rachel Carson for surrogacy. Now, I don't know if one or both of you is a DDT truther, but I'm just using that as an example of something that once you introduce it, it can have unintended consequences in nature. Introduce a new chemical compound that you think is going to be great because it's going to do X, Y, and Z.

And you don't know what you don't know about the ripple effects that has biologically and then further down the chain in the fragile human ecosystem. So I'll leave it at that. There was a speech in Jurassic Park about this somewhere. Yes, you're right. That's a good point. We need a new Jurassic Park for this, although we actually don't need it

because there's so much science fiction that already covers topics like this because it's 2026 and it's been happening for like 200 years. People have been writing on things exactly like this. But let's move on to politics. I like it. Here on this show, we end on politics. Let's talk about Todd Blanche on Meet the Press yesterday, where Kristen Welker asked him about independence at the Department of Justice. And I thought you two would both be, you would both get a real kick out of this. I'm sure you've seen it already. But let's first take a look at the clip, new Attorney General, Todd Blanche, no longer acting attorney general, but Attorney General Todd Blanche on with Kristen Walker, Meet the Press just yesterday. Can you pledge that the Justice Department will always act independently of the White House? And act independently of the White House?

No, I'm not going to pledge that. And no Attorney General should ever pledge that. The president, I mean, if I were to pledge, I will be independent of the White House. What that means is that if President Trump says, I want the Department of Justice to go after every violent criminal in this country, which is what he has said, what you're saying to me is I just say, no, sir, not going to do it. So I will act with integrity. Our prosecutors will act with integrity. We will prosecute without fear or any sort of favor. Well, I guess big picture of the president asks you to do something that you feel crosses an ethical or legal line.

Would you do it? The president will never ask me to do something unethical or illegal or illegal. He never has. He never will. Here's how Richard Blumenthal reacted. Well, that didn't take long. He's responding to a Washington Post article about this answer. Press, proved that Todd Blanche would continue to be Trump's political hack and personal henchman.

Crystal Clear is Blanche campaigns for the Republican nominee in New York and improves a special grand jury in D.C. to do retribution under U.S. Attorney Piro. And this is actually a pretty interesting point or a pretty interesting case study in how the left sees the administrative state and the cabinet industries, cabinet agencies, versus how the right sees the administrative agencies. which is that the left believes in this myth of executive agency independent, independence, both a legal myth and a practical, pragmatic myth, as if the FBI's conduct over the last 15 years, well, 20 years at least, is any indication.

We should already know that myth has been smashed to bits. But isn't it kind of funny to see the freak out over Todd Blanche saying that? I mean, it's Richard Blumenthal is saying he's going to be a Trump political henchman because he's saying he's going to act for the president, basically. I don't find it funny. I find it sad that civic knowledge, understanding of our system of government is so in short supply among not just the left, but most of the political class at this point. You don't want an independent justice department. Independent in this case means that people who you have no control over via elections are making decisions about law enforcement in this country.

And let me make it very clear for our friends, quote unquote, on the left, okay? Do you want a local police department over which the mayor has no control or like the chief of police is not subject to some kind of election? Do you want an unelected police department with no superior officer over it, over whom you have democratic control? No, then you shouldn't want it for federal law enforcement either. You shouldn't want men with guns who are tasked with enforcing the law in this country to have no supervision that includes, somebody that you vote into office. That's not how our system works and frankly is anti-democratic. Rachel, you were on the other side of the independent Department of Justice under the Biden agency, just simply acting as a neutral arbiter of justice itself, capital J justice, lady justice.

And how did that turn out over at the Conservative Partnership Institute? Yeah, I was going to say, did we think Merrick Arland was independent? Yes, he was a man of nothing but principle. Yeah, Eric Holder, totally independent. No, Merrick Garland did exactly what Joe Biden told him to do, exactly what the Democrat agenda was, which is to inflict lawfare on all of his political enemies, including groups like mine,

groups that didn't even exist, all under the guise of January 6th. So this idea, I think, it only applies to Republicans, apparently. Well, Republicans are the ones that are supposed to be independent. But again, to Anez's point, you do not elect a president to simply sit in the White House. You elect a president who selects his cabinet, who then executes his agenda. The one thing I am glad about this Donald Trump term is that we have been able to dispatch with the lie that somehow, oh, these agencies, we just hire the best people and they just do the best work in the interest of the American people.

That has never been true. And I think we've convinced ourselves of the fiction because, you know, we're still operating under this national narrative of Wilsonian progressivism, which just says, oh, you know, the happy, healthy bureaucrat who has. has, you know, nonpartisan and just makes decisions in the interest of the best interest of the United States. That has never been true. And for the first time on the right, I think we are acknowledging that the people in charge of the executive branch agencies and now even some of the independent, so-called independent agencies are tasked with carrying out the president's agenda. And that is because as the president of the United States, he is accountable for that because if people don't like those decisions, they can vote him out of office. This is how democracy works. This is how laws work. And indeed they might. People might not, like, we may see this hash down the Republican primary in 2028. People don't like the way the Trump administration, like it may come up for if J.D. Vance runs.

Maybe he'll have to answer for these January 6th decisions. I don't know. But that's exactly, like, it's under this conspiracy umbrella of unitary executive theory. But it's, I mean, you could have a different conversation about the CFPB or whatever. And I'm sure Rachel's head would explode. And she would be so happy to talk about the CFPB. But this is literally how the system is supposed to work. I don't talk it after 7 o'clock at night. Not about the CFPB. That's your hard and fast rule.

And everybody knows it. Everybody knows. Never. 7.1 p.m. Nope. It's over. All right. And as Nes Stemann of Independent Women,

Rachel Beauvard of the Conservative Partnership Institute. Nothing better than having you guys on the show. Thanks so much. Thanks, Emily. All right. We'll be right back with more after this quick break. Life insurance. We all know we need it,

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on August 16th, so just yesterday, she was 36 years old. Now, of course, most people remember her both as a child star and an adult star. As a child, she was the little girl and remember the Titans, incredible, sweet, beautiful role. She was Princess Dot in The Bugs Life. She then went on to be in Heroes, in Nashville, and scream, just a really, really talented person. And unfortunately, her life was cut short on Sunday. She was with her boyfriend who we believed was her ex-boyfriend. More on that in just one moment, but let's first take a listen to this call. Here everyone, incident two or son for cardiac arrest, just Milboff, 701, Easley Bridge, Redress. Care everyone, engine three years from for cardiac arrest,

Justin Milbaugh, Joseph 1, Minute 29 responding. Spahn in place of Medic 29. Easley Bridge Road, overdose, CPR is in progress. Overdose CPR is in progress. Now, Hidden Pentier wrote a memoir that I actually flipped through today, just trying to understand a bit more what happened here because clips of her promoting her memoir were going viral in the wake of her death, kind of helping us get some more pieces of the puzzle just to understand what happened. And it does, unfortunately, so far, appear to be one of these almost archetypical child star tragedy. And it seems when somebody like Hayden Pedantier has the early success that she had and then the success that she had later in life as well, and later in a very young life, that is to say, didn't really even make it to middle age. These arcs feel inevitable. They're so sickly familiar to us, and they always seem to end the same way. So let's listen to this one clip. this is from May 11th of her on, I think his name is Jay Shetty, his podcast, talking about an

experience she had that could be plucked straight from the very early days of the Me Too movement where a lot of women in Hollywood were sharing genuinely horrifying experiences they had at the hands of predatory, rich above the law executives in Hollywood, executives and celebrities in Hollywood. So let's take a listen. I realized that I was in danger, but by the time I'd realized I was in danger, I was quite literally out to see. And I had been having a great time. There was no hints of anything like that happening. So it took me, I was shocked. It took me by surprise. And it was somebody led by somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector and somebody who

had my back and to be walked down, you know, down the stairs. And it was, it was as like a surprise presented as though it was like a surprise. And it was this very small room. And she, she physically put me in the bed next to this, this undressed man who was very famous and, um, and had his hands like this, like, this was just, you know, an average day for him. This is something that happens all the time. And I waited for her to leave. And I mean that lion in me, that fire in me, that my hair stood on end. And I became ferocious.

I was like, this is not happening. But I had nowhere to hide. And I bolted and I hid wherever I could think of to hide on a boat. on a boat. There was no jumping off and swimming away and there was nobody who was going to, I realize that there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation. And flipping through the pages of her memoir, you know, it's clear that Panetteer was chewed up by this industry. Now, speaking of the boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, I'm reading from E-Online. right now. In 2019, Hickerson was arrested after an alleged confrontation with Penitier. At the time, a police spokesperson told E-News that Hickerson was detained at a Los Angeles

residence and booked on suspicion of felony domestic violence. He pleaded not guilty to the charge of felony domestic violence and the case was later dismissed. There's much more, unfortunately. The following year, E-Online reports on Valentine's State 2020, Hickerson, a real estate agent and actor was arrested for domestic battery in Wyoming after a physical altercation with a woman later identified as Penitier. Hickerson, Us Weekly confirmed, pleaded not guilty in April of that year. Three months later, in July 2020, Hickerson was arrested in Los Angeles with a source telling e-news that he was booked on eight counts of charges that ranged from domestic violence and assault to witness intimidation, incidents that took place during his

relationship with Penitier. That same month, she got a restraining order out against him. In April 2021, he was sentenced to 45 days in county jail. Now, when she released her memoir, he did an interview with TMZ in which, you know, legally he's not admitting guilt to every particular incident. But what he is doing is saying basically he wasn't taught about domestic violence early enough, what it is as though somebody needs to be taught specifically not to abuse a woman. So the new update, just as we're recording this now, that hit TMZ, is Brian Hickerson relationship was bad for business. Dot, dot, dot, kept rekindled romance quiet. So reading from here, Hayden Penitier and Brian Hickerson kept their rekindled romance to themselves in order to protect

her career, TMZ has learned. A source close to Brian tells TMZ, the couple didn't break up as many times as the public was led to believe and were actually together while she was promoting her memoir, this is me, a reckoning, in the months before her death. Our source says Hayden was advised by her team to distance herself from Brian, at least publicly, even though they were still romantic and private. The reason Hayden's camp felt Brian was, quote, bad for business while she was promoting her book. We're told their complicated history was perceived as being bad for book sales, but they were still in constant communication during the promotional tour. A separate source close to Brian confirms they've been dating consistently for years,

and reports of them going their separate ways were false and were spread as a way to help her career. In fact, we're told people in their inner circle would laugh at media headlines claiming they'd split because they were still a couple. First responders were called to a resident Sunday afternoon around 150 p.m. to help a woman who was in cardiac arrest. They attempted life-saving measures, but ultimately pronounced hate-in-dead at 2.32 p.m. Dispatch Audio mentioned a possible overdose and Narcan was found in the apartment where she died. The medication is typically used for opioid overdose victims. All right. As I was flipping through the pages of her memoir, even in the prologue, there is a line that will haunt you.

The prologue is signed Hayden Penitier Spring 2025. She writes, I'm like Dory. the resilient little fish in finding Nemo who just keeps swimming, even when she comes face to face with a bunch of sharks. It just gives you chills. The book begins with Hayden's very early memories of her mom, coaching her and really almost breeding her to be a celebrity. She talks about being eight months old. Obviously, she doesn't remember this, but is writing about going on a Michelin audition. She was eight months old.

She writes, my advertising jobs piled up, and I appeared in about 50 commercials by the time I was five. That conditions you. Just imagine. By the time you're five, 50 commercials, that conditions you to see yourself as a commercial product. By the time you're five years old, that's your early childhood. How could you possibly avoid? seeing yourself as a product, when you're constantly being treated as a product. When she needed to cry, this was in a soap opera roll.

She was really young. She remembers thinking of this imaginary guinea pig named Christopher Robin the third. She said, I held him my tears and I imagined his funeral. I'd make a little headstone for him and bury him under a tree in our yard. I felt the pressure inside me building and the tears welling up. Hold it in, Hayden, hold it in. When I felt like I was about to pop, I let loose and turned it on. just like mom had taught me to do, that led to her getting a long-term role on the particular soap opera.

You're teaching your kid to, for commercial purposes, for monetary purposes, psychologically torture themselves into experiencing the pain that kids experience when an animal dies. A beloved pet dies. That's sick. And that's what happens to child stars. And I don't know that we've fully learned the lesson. You can't possibly raise kids in that business. Because first of all, the business is big business, meaning people get chewed up and spit out.

They get abused. And really successful ones learn to tolerate it and become numb to it and become conditioned to abuse. And I think sadly, in this case, you can probably draw a direct line between from that to being domestically abused. and staying with somebody who's abusing her. Because you get conditioned by the business into accepting abuse. Because you're taught that the goal is fame and money.

And you're conditioned to see the end goal as fame and money. It's a really just conditioned to take it. Even when mentally you don't think, you're not thinking all I want to do is be rich and famous. You think, yeah, I want to be fulfilled and I want to get through life and be happy.

And she had a little daughter born in 2014 who lives with her father in Ukraine because her father's Ukrainian. And she writes about so lovely in this memoir. And as a mother, hearing her reflect on her own childhood and her own mother is tough too because she's somebody who seems to have a lot of lessons for us to learn. But I call her on the serious exam wrap-up show that I do every day after. Megan's show made a great point. And I think he's name was Jason in Indiana, made a great point and said, now we have a whole generation of YouTube and TikTok and Instagram influencers who are doing this on

another scale. Yes, for many of them, you get 15 seconds of fame, not 15 minutes, the Warholian 15 minutes of fame. You get something much more fleeting. But think of all of the kids whose childhoods have been mined for content over the last 10 years and will likely be for the next 10 years, we'll always have that in their background, we'll always see how their parents exploited them for clicks. They're embarrassing little moments that people will now always see publicly. We definitely have to learn the lesson. And that is really sad. And hopefully Hidden Penetieri's memory can help other little girls and their parents who

find themselves pursuing similar careers or not making the decision whether to pursue similar careers. So on that very sad note, I appreciate you all tuning in. Thank you so much. I had to talk about that one. She's just such a beautiful person, talented person. Appreciate you all. Thank you. We're going to be back here on Wednesday with Michael Schellenberger. Really looking forward to that one. Subscribe if you haven't yet. Otherwise, have a wonderful night. We'll see you back here on Wednesday.