The Daily Signal - The Daily Signal Presents "Problematic Women" - Trump Shocks DC Streets While Taylor Swift Shocks the Podcast-sphere | Emily Jashinsky

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

President Donald Trump c⁠racked down on crime⁠ in the nation’s capital this week. On Monday, he declared a state of emergency in Washington, D.C., through an executive order, temporarily placing the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control. He also deployed more than 800 National Guard troops, resulting in over 100 arrests so far. ⁠Trump’s move⁠ has us wondering: Has it always been this easy to clean up our city? We break it all down on today’s episode of “Problematic Women," and share some of our own wild encounters with crime in D.C. This week wasn’t just heavy on politics—it was packed with pop culture wins. ⁠Taylor Swift⁠ made her podcast debut on “New Heights,” hosted by NFL stars Travis and Jason Kelce, crashing the livestream in the process. One segment in particular has us buzzing about the political implications of the ⁠“trad” trend⁠, and if Swift could destigmatize that. Meanwhile, ⁠Demi Lovato⁠ surprised fans by joining the Jonas Brothers on tour—an epic Camp Rock reunion. More than that, her appearance exemplified what being clean from the woke-mind virus looks like. Not long ago, she was a short-haired feminist using they/them pronouns and battling addiction. Today, she’s a healthy, happy, straight newlywed—back on stage and performing at her best.  We’re joined by Emily Jashinsky, D.C. correspondent for UnHerd news site, host of “After Party with Emily Jashinsky,” a new podcast from the Megyn Kelly podcast network, and ⁠pop culture⁠ aficionado. She shares her take on Trump’s crime crackdown and gives her unfiltered thoughts on these big pop culture moments. Follow us on Instagram for EXCLUSIVE bonus content and the chance to be featured in our episodes: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/problematicwomen/⁠   Connect with our hosts on socials!   Elise McCue X: ⁠https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=EliseMcCue⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/elisemccueofficial/⁠   Virginia Allen: X: ⁠https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=Virginia_Allen5⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/virginiaallenofficial/⁠   Morgonn McMichael: X: ⁠https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=morgonnm⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/morgonnm/⁠   Check out “Afterparty with Emily Jashinsky” HERE: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AfterPartyEmily Keep Up With The Daily Signal   Sign up for our email newsletters:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.dailysignal.com/email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠     Subscribe to our other shows:    The Tony Kinnett Cast: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2284199939⁠ The Signal Sitdown: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2026390376⁠   Problematic Women:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL7765680741⁠   Victor Davis Hanson: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9809784327⁠     Follow The Daily Signal:    X:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=DailySignal⁠ Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Facebook:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Truth Social:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, this is Virginia Allen, and I'm excited to share this episode of Problematic Women, one of the Daily Signals, other podcasts. Each episode, we navigate the biggest stories in politics and culture, and we have a lot of fun doing it, too. If you like what you hear today, make sure to subscribe to Problematic Women for weekly episodes. Welcome back to Problematic Women. Today, we are going to be talking about Trump's DC crime crackdown, and it really has us asking, has it always been this easy to make DC safe? and we're going to share some of our craziest crime experiences in D.C. because there are so many we can pull from.

The Jonas Brothers brought out a surprise guest on opening night of their tour. You know who else brought out a surprise guest? Travis Kelsey and Jason Kelsey on their podcast. They brought out Taylor Swift, and she made a huge announcement, and she told us some of her secrets. And we have the perfect person to talk about all of this today. We have Emily Jashinsky, host of After Party with Emily Jashinsky, DC correspondent for Unheard, pop culture, aficionado,

and we're so excited for today. So thank you. And welcome back to Problematic Women. Welcome back to Problematic Women where we talk about the pulse on pop culture and politics. I'm Elise McHugh. I'm Morgan. And today we have Emily Jashinsky. Like I said, she is the host of After Party with Emily Jishinsky on the Megan Kelly podcast network, also the DC correspondent for unheard news site. Welcome, Emily. Thank you so much for joining. I'm so excited to have you here today. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Emily and I go way back. She was my intern supervisor. my first internship at the Federalist. That was one of the podcasts that you've hosted before,

your podcast with Megan Kelly, Federalist Radio Hour. And you just have such an interesting career and a career path to D.C. But first before, we talk about everything with your podcast and everything that you've done and talked about and all the people you've had on, we have to talk about D.C. Trump's crime crackdown.

Emily, you said that you've lived here for 14 years now. How has this been this past week seeing everything that's happened with Trump's crime crackdown. So I've been telling this story actually all week because I happened to be in the motorcade, the presidential motorcade on Saturday, going to the Sterling golf course because I was in the press pool. And we were going through Foggy Bottom, so I went to George Washington, and it's almost 14 years of the day since I moved here. And there's a tent encampment as you're in the presidential motorcade.

And there's trash on the side of the road. And it didn't really occur to me. me that that was remarkable until I sat on it a beat. And I was like, oh, Trump is talking about like actually doing a federal takeover here. I wonder if he's looking out the window. And sure enough, the next day, Trump posted a picture on true social of that exact encampment and the trash on the road. And it could have been from Sunday. He went golfing that day as well. But either way, it was the exact same scene. And that tent encampment or versions of it and all of that trash that's been here since I can remember. Like since I moved here, those tensive boys been there.

And it's made me think all week basically why we treat D.C. Like it's just any other city in the country. And of course, it's worse by some measures than other cities in the country. You know, worse homicide rate than New York City, for example. And we've just grown numb and accustomed to the fact that this is our nation's capital that we have allowed to look so filthy. We have allowed people who are living in the federal city and working in the federal government to you have to put up with levels of crime and filth that they shouldn't they shouldn't have to that no country as powerful as us should tolerate. Trump said something actually very poignant in his speech about this or during the briefing on Monday. He said my dad used to tell me don't go into a restaurant if the

I think he said the front window is dirty because it means the kitchen's dirty too. And in America, our kitchen is dirty. There's just no reason that our window should be dirtier even than the kitchen. That's crazy. So that's what I've been thinking about this week is just how, you know, all of the left right now is saying, well, crime's going down, crimes are going down. We don't really know that because there's serious allegations that the date is being cooked. So we don't know. But second of all, even if it is, the level is.

the level is way too high for what our nation's capital should be and how it should look and how it should feel for people who are coming to visit. I mean, you step off at Union Station and your first glimpse, if you're a tourist, of D.C. is awful. It smells really bad, too. It used to be very different. And you know that growing up in the region. And if you step out of it now, there are tanks. And I don't particularly, I just drove by Union Station.

I don't particularly like seeing military vehicles outside of Union Station either. But what we got used to was horrible, horrible. And we never should have been this numb. I don't think, you know, a lot of people were. But our leaders shouldn't have gotten numb to allowing the Capitol to look like it did. Absolutely. And the tanks outside Union Station actually remind me of Mission Barbecue, how they have the Mission Barbecue tank outside.

They're not tanks. They're Humveys. Yeah, yeah. They're like military humveesies. I thought of that when I saw it. And I was like, is anyone else? else thinking this or am I just hungry? But to catch everyone up on what's happening if you aren't caught up, Trump declared a state

of emergency in Washington, D.C., because it's just so unsafe crime is rampant. And he federalized the police, and they are under the jurisdiction of the federal government metropolitan police department is being run by Trump. Pam Bondi has jurisdiction over that. And we've just been seeing so many police cars around national. Guard, I think 800 National Guard troops. 800 National Guard troops are now surveying D.C. to keep the crime down. And even in Navy Yard, they declared a juvenile, what's it called?

Curfew. Curfew, thank you. A juvenile curfew passed, I think, 8.30 and 11 o'clock at night to where you can't be out in night, especially since there's been a rise. We've seen shootings in videos of a lot of young kids gathering in large groups and having fights, carjackings have been going on in D.C. And while I do think we need to clean up the city, it really makes me sad that it took President Trump coming in, declaring the state of emergency for anything to get done to remove the homeless encampments to actually clean up the city and make it a safer place. And I was kind of thinking, okay, out of all of the major cities in our country, I feel like it's not just a D.C. problem, but it's the American people who have just gotten numb to the homelessness, gotten numb to the dirt and the drug abuse, to the trafficking in our country. I mean, you look at a city.

like Phoenix, Arizona, Austin, Texas, you go to Chicago, you go to Philly. All the cities are almost identical when it comes to how dirty they are and how much crime is happening. Sure, there's, you know, different governors like Greg Abbott, I know, has been doing a good job of trying to clean up, you know, Austin. But I would argue that a lot of these cities, most of the ones that are run by Democrats, are continuously just getting dirtier and unsafe every single day. And, you know, I'm hoping that by Trump,

declaring the state of emergency and by cleaning up the city in D.C. to where, you know, when travelers come and tourists come, it is a safer place that this really shows the rest of the country, like, hey, maybe we should clean up our own backyard too and not just the nation's capital. I feel like that there's kind of like an overarching issue of the whole country's cities and not just D.C. We have cycles, generational cycles of, and I think this is probably the most important way, especially for the right to look at it, because sometimes we forget about it. we're so angry about what's happened that we forget how incredibly unjust it is to the people living in these conditions of generational cycles of poverty. Yeah. In our inner cities, not just in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. has a real problem in Ward 8, word seven. This is very, very serious. And there are people who died in the last 10 years during Washington's experiment with progressive policing that might not have died, that might still be alive, kids that might still be alive because if that experiment had been, you know, stopped in its tracks, the city would have been safer. There are people who are traumatized as victims and people who committed crimes as teenagers and young people that are traumatized and carried the trauma with them of that. There are people who live in poverty beneath the stations that they could if we unleashed them from these generational cycles of poverty. And I think the reason the progressive policing experiments,

which are so counterintuitive. Like not enforcing the law, really? Yeah. Okay. They're so counterintuitive. The reason we saw those experiments play out in this tragically vindicating way, but the reason that happened is because everyone is at a loss for what to do, right? People feel like they throw their hands up in the air and they're like, well, just do something.

But our cities are, to our great shame. Like I said earlier, our kitchen actually is dirty. These cities are a disaster, and certain cities have really beautiful parts. of them. DC is gorgeous, gorgeous places. Yeah, in New York, you can go to places where you're really not going to fuel some of the crime and the dirt. But then there's places that even when there are high times in the city, you know, even when you have, you know, Giuliani's New York or Bloomberg's New York, it still feels the same as Oblasio's New York or early Eric Adams, New York. You know, it still feels the same in some of those places. They've never been touched by these

trends and it's just a complete shame we talk about what's happened to the white working class a lot on the right because they were ignored for a really long time but the the black working class of the inner city had it's the same thing with the white working glass in appellation generational cycles of poverty let's talk about that progressive policing that you mentioned because a lot of people the narrative that the left is really clinging on to with this whole dc federal trump takeover is that it's really inhumane. It's very incompassionate that they're just rounding up all these homeless people who don't have any other option.

But like you said, it is very incompassionate how they've been treated with this progressive policing project. What are some aspects of that project that have really done them a disservice? Like you said, they just don't prosecute them, but what are the other aspects of that?

Yeah, so a lot of it is, and I think you see this very much in D.C., where we have an insane truancy rate in D.C. public schools. So tolerance for that is a good example. But the Washington Post just sort of sweeping deep investigation into that a couple of months ago that nobody's talking about right now in the context of the Trump like partisan battle over D.C. But there's just not been enforcement on things like truancy. Parents, for example, who have difficult circumstances, but you have to obviously punish things when

they happen. And that's where then you see teenagers not being prosecuted to the fullest extent. of the law when they're committing crimes, which begot more teenage crime. Navy Yard, you had that example. They imposed a curfew a couple of times over the last few months, so even before Trump, because literally hundreds, the local media reported on this, probably should have been national news. Literally hundreds of teenagers were swarming Navy Yard to the point where it was anarchy because the cops didn't have the manpower.

Because again, there were hundreds of teenagers, brawling, throwing Roman candles, shooting Roman candles at apartment building windows. It was a complete takeover of this neighborhood of the city and the cops were outnumbered. Well, why are teenagers involved in so many carjackings, so many shootings, so many murder, because they have not faced prosecution to the fullest extent of the law because progressive policing was restorative justice, right? And we all like the sound of restorative justice that you can help get people on the right track. But, you know, decreasing the level of penalty and punishment for people who are,

doing heinous crimes is going to, of course, create an incentive structure for people to do more a heinous crimes and then for themselves to be traumatized in addition to their victims for the rest of their life. So we saw a lot of stuff like that, not enforcing, you know, first decriminalizing marijuana and then not enforcing marijuana laws. Like there was outrage in some of the local blogosphere's because someone was smoking a joint. I think this was in Logan Circle and this was like a week ago when Trump was already pressuring the D.C. government to do something. and this person was arrested. It's like, you're mad about the law being enforced.

Change the law if you want the law to be changed, but you can't stop enforcing the law because then it is really a, it's a slippery slope, right? You stop enforcing one thing, and then you stop enforcing a lot of different things, and it just becomes chaos. Well, it's like the shoplifting that we've seen in Georgetown, where stores are looted, honestly, weekly, and now a lot of stores have been closing or moving their location.

and not wanting to even be there where Georgetown is a really nice neighborhood, arguably one of the nicest neighborhoods in the D.C. area I was there today. And I even saw a rise in homelessness of just feeling there were more homeless people in Georgetown because they're being pushed out different places or not really agreeing to or wanting the help that's being offered to them, not wanting to get clean. And that's like another program. I'm not sure about D.C. specifically, but just like the clean needle programs that are happening all of across our country of incentivizing drug use when there are programs. for homeless people to get out of their situations, but they have to be clean.

But then you go to some places and they are encouraging your drug use to where then, how are you supposed to get clean and get help if you're, you know, continuing to abuse drugs and then commit crimes? It's like this vicious cycle that I agree we need to continue to push back and the police, we need to encourage them to do their jobs and enforce the laws because we can't live in a lawless society in D.C. and the entire country. You guys may remember this. There was actually an inquiry. campment across from Heritage for a really long time during COVID.

Yeah. And encampments were a great example of the progressive policing failures. There were some that grew, for example, where I used to live in Noma. I think I counted 50 tents under a bridge at one point. It may have been more than that. All packed in really tightly, huge fire risks, open our drug markets, basically. The amount of time that it took the government to deal with that encampment across from heritage was truly unbelievable.

In the meantime, the people in the encampment are. are, you know, consuming fentanyl at crazy levels. They are hurting themselves. They're being allowed to live in these awful conditions and not being forced into a shelter or into treatment that, you know, we should look into different ways to provide. We should, you know, have a lessening of the standard that it takes to get somebody committed.

That was a big mistake. But this is a neighborhood that should be, I mean, it's Capitol Hill staffers, people who are working in our federal government. In turn so many young 18 through 22 year olds. Yep. And then the SEC, a bunch of nonprofits. That's all right here.

And you can't have a filthy, dangerous open-air drug market homeless encampment in the middle of it. And that was there forever. I mean, just months and months and months and months. And nobody could do anything about it. Everyone felt powerless. And it's because there was just this idea that it would be cruel. to do anything about it. And talk about police not even enforcing the law

and doing their job. They actually kind of do the opposite. And we found some really bizarre examples of things that the police have told residents of D.C. to do to increase their chances of not getting stabbed or shanked in D.C. They said, you know, leave your car door unlocked. So when you do get carjacked, they don't break your windows. Not like if it happens.

Like when it happens. And you actually pulled up a few more examples of this. It's just crazy. My favorite DC police tip was do not wear Canada Goose jackets in the winter because they can get stolen off your back. If you ride the metro, you might get your Canaan Goose jacket snatched off of you. Actually, teenagers. Teenagers were doing that. Yeah.

They'll come up to you and take off even like Golden Goose sneakers. Don't wear nice fancy sneakers. Take off your watches. Apple watches even. Those might get snatched. It's like truly it feels like nothing is safe to wear. Like any name brands, leave it at home. And I saw a trend, too, of young women, not even just in D.C., but I did see it a lot on the D.C. Metro where they were like, okay, I'm going out tonight with my friends. But in my purse here is my Metro outfit. And they would put on like a big t-shirt, maybe like running shorts. And they were like, I need to get a bigger purse so I can stuff that in there. So when I'm wearing my tank top and like, you know, short shorts, I don't get harassed on the Metro.

And some of this is just, as we were saying, it's not distinct to D.C. Other cities have had the Canada Goose problem too. And it just speaks to. what we were talking about, how we've all come to accept this. And D.C. shouldn't be like any other city. It shouldn't be a city where I feel like the coat's going to get ripped off your back by some 15-year-olds who should be in school, but instead is doing armed robberies to get a jacket to sell, to resell. I mean, it's just, yeah, it's really, really sad. Right up this street, actually, it's been a mile up this street. This was during the pandemic, there was a trash can by the trailhead of a path. it was overflowing with used needles, like dozens of used needles. So unsafe.

Dog, kid, anyone could have stepped on one of these needles and contracted some type of, yeah, I mean, it's a serious thing called the cops. They were still there hours later. I mean, needles, like used needles, dozens of them on the sidewalk. And we're not going to treat that as an emergency. Biohazard. Biohazard. A woman who was overdosing, collapsed, also.

right near here on the crosswalk in front of myself and my boyfriend one Sunday morning on our way back from church. And so I had to stay and help her. Didn't have to, of course, but have to. You have to. You can't. And she was in the middle. And it's just, I saw a man beat a woman in the face right over there. The cops didn't really do much around at state and watched the cops. And there's only so much they can do when the laws are what they are. So how do you contain? you know, people that are turning to violence that are even will come after and charge at you and even like the general public. Like I'm glad that you were able to be there with that woman, but I feel like a lot of Americans, they're so fearful of that of seeing somebody who is a need

of help or a homeless person who is overdosing. Like, what do you do in that situation? And you call the cops. They don't come. Even Navy Yard with the groups of teenagers gathering. It's like, how do you feel safe? And Navy Yard is not a sketchy neighborhood in D.C. Like it is considered like a pretty nice place to get an apartment. It was very popular. I feel like in the last couple of years, it's gone down now, but. It was like down that it went up a little bit. I mean, it's funny that you guys think, because I feel like Navy Yard has always, like, it's gentrified and they tried to make it really fancy and luxurious, but like it has always been rowdy and grimy. And that's pathetic, right? Because you have the Department of Transportation. The Federal Department of Transportation is

there, the Marine Barracks, that Navy Yard itself, the ballpark. And then, all of the developments that have come in since. You know, luxury apartment buildings, all of those things, nice restaurants, the Lulu lemon closed. Wait, there was a Lulu Lemon there? There was a Lulu Lemon. There's still the one in Georgetown. Because it had been robbed. Wow.

And so I'm sure the Georgetown one's been robbed, too. I saw a video a couple months ago of smashing grab. I know that the urban outfitter's in Georgetown, the whole front window. Yep. And it's a huge story. It's like entirely cracked. And honestly, it kind of fits the vibe. Oh, I thought that was always on purpose.

I think that was an original. Well, I feel like it wasn't like that. And then it was like that during COVID. But regardless, yeah. That was all smashing grabbed in Georgetown and city center. All of those shops, whether it's urban or luxury places, were completely smash and grabbed. Truly, no store, no person is safe. Do you guys have any crazy experiences with DC crime?

I know you shared your experience. Morgan, do you have anything? I know someone who had a knife pulled on them. And luckily they had a knife, so they were able to fight back. But I mean, that is a real. threat like, you know, like, robbery style. Your friend was carrying a knife. Yeah. So I was like, okay, we're safe there. But that's like pretty scary. Me personally, I've never particularly felt unsafe, but I also don't go in D.C. like out at night when it is like unsafe. And I also

make sure like I'm protected or like with a group of friends. I also am not a metro user. I'm honestly really scared of the metro, especially by myself. But I mean, there's been sort of times where I've just like been around like a more homeless people or like you're walking past union station and there's like the encampments like yeah okay you're a little bit more on edge and aware of your surroundings but I don't really have any personal crazy story but I'm kind of thankful for that yeah I think one of my crazy stories actually happened this past weekend I was in Navy Yard when that viral video happened of the teen meetup I was on a rooftop bar also the past two times I've been to Navy yard, there's been some sort of like shots fired.

I think that's my sign not to go back, but I was on the roof of a bar with my friend. We were sitting overlooking that little grassy area. And then we hear, pow, pow, pow, everyone disperses. Everyone at the bar, like goes to the edge, looks at it, and then just goes back to normal. Just another Saturday night in D.C. And the last time that happened, it was 4th of July when they were shooting the Roman candles at each other. That really is just another Saturday night in Navy yard.

Like that is, yeah, I have a very close, close to this couple who was on the patio of a restaurant at the wharf. And a couple of years ago, not even during the pandemic, got caught in crossfire and had to duck and hide under their chairs because there was a shooting on the wharf on Friday or Saturday night. Yeah, it's just like there's so many I can't even think of all of them. The wharf is nice. I wouldn't think. Yeah. Yeah. I have this phenomenon.

My fiance and I were talking about safety of where you choose to live. And obviously we're in a city, so there's a lot of high. high rises, you hear gunshots every once in a while and you hear a lot of sirens. But when you hear sirens or you hear gunshots, your immediate thought should be, oh my gosh, is my neighbor okay? I know, Jill and Jack next door. And that's how you can kind of reassure yourself and know like, are you in a safe neighborhood? How often are you hearing sirens? And if you're hearing sirens, do you know the people around you to be safe? And as I kind of was living more in the city, I realized I hear sirens almost every two hours. I have heard occasional gunshots when in D.C., you know, and it's like, that shouldn't be

normal. And I feel like so many people who are like, oh, there's crimes going down. It's like down 30%. But then you go on Twitter this past week, every single person has a story. Even people who are like, I actually don't think that there's that much crime, but also I live in Northern Virginia because I moved out of D.C. I didn't want to live in D.C. I didn't want to live in D.C. because there's crime. So like everybody has a story. And speaking of that, I'd really, want to get into your story beyond crime in DC. As a criminal in DC. As a smooth criminal in DC.

But before we get to that, I just want to say that the Daily Signal is funded by viewers like you. If you'd like to support our honest reporting and commentary from a conservative perspective, activate your tax deductible monthly donation today. We'll put the link in our YouTube description, our Rumble description, and the description of all of our audio-only podcast platform. So thank you so much. We'd really appreciate it.

And also, if you're not watching this with us, we are doing problematic women. video on YouTube, Rumble, and we have exclusive Instagram-only content. So please follow us on Instagram. We'll have all of this information down in the description box. But Emily, you have been a D.C. resident for 14 years. Beyond the crime, how has D.C. changed since you've been here since 2011? Yeah, so four of those years we're in college, so I probably wasn't technically a resident. But how has it changed?

Well, in the, and you're from the area, so you've probably seen some of this, too. but the Obama years, D.C. was becoming cool, right? Like, it was the talk of, you know, the East Coast that D.C. had all of these, like, Jose Andres places opening up, and he had the momentum. The Obama was going to his restaurant, as restaurants. And a lot of tech came in. Obviously, there's been a lot of money coming in, unfortunately, since 9-11. During the war on terror, the defense industry, it's been very, very lucrative.

And so there's just, D.C. has become very glossy and very hip in a way that a lot of the places feel more like Brooklyn or like a West Hollywood than they felt like kind of sleepy, old school townhouse D.C. My family is actually from D.C. going back years and years, I grew up in Wisconsin. But, you know, some of my family from D.C. has like a southern accent, you know. It's not what it used. very different than what it used to be and in some ways that are amazing like restaurants seen here got really big and COVID halted a lot of that cultural momentum in its tracks obviously Trump coming in that to me in the media was the biggest change people used to hang out together whether it was like we used to do this happy hour when I was at the Washington examiner with guys at the happening post right by the White House and that stuff really just stopped you know used to be at parties with people from all kinds of different outlets and some of it was bad right because you know people would be hobnobbing to get cocktail party invites and to get at the white house correspondent center so it wasn't all good but actually it was good in the sense that you were allowed to talk to people who sort of thought differently from you

and so your bubble was popped especially on the left I mean the right has no problem hanging out with a lot of those people hearing from them and talking and then I'm mixing it up but that stuff really did stop and go away. And I think the social scene here is just like for for uh, politics. If you work in politics, the social scene here just is, is not, uh, as dynamic as it used to be because of some of those cultural reasons, cultural reasons and because D.C. lost some of that pop cultural momentum, um, after Obama and then what trip came in. Uh, so, you know, I was like, I don't, I didn't like the new D.C. vibe so much because it didn't, it made the city feel less like D.C. and it was almost like they're trying to feel like Brooklyn, like Williamsburg. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard that

comment honestly from a lot of people of that even within the press pool and different outlets, like not getting along as much as they used to kind of in old DC world and even how people would meet up at the Trump Hotel and like that was the hot spot every day. It was everyone met up at the Trump Hotel and you got drinks and you hung out. And now there really isn't necessarily a place where everyone goes every day after work to hang out, get together, chat about the day. Do you feel like the left and the rights echo chambers have become more exclusive in D.C. And that people just aren't talking or willing to hang out with each other? Like, how do you think we bridge that gap?

Yeah, I mean, and that's definitely, D.C. sort of mirrors the rest of the country in that respect. Trump Hotel was interesting in and of itself because that was a place where it really became it was an early example of these bubbles starting to form socially. You know, you'd have like lib reporters haunting the halls just to spy on people. Literally, they would write down who was there, which was fine. Spotted. Some of it was like lobbying. It's like gossip girl.

Yeah, but it was also like some of it was like, oh, who's spending money at the president's hotel? Like what big parties are happening here that cost, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to put on. Some of it was interesting. But that was an example. It was like, wow, we're really sorting on ideological lines in a way that, there used to be a bar called town hall that wasn't affiliated with town hall but people kind of was like oh that's a republican place there used to be places like that but it was sort of more i mean like busboys and poets is obviously like a progressive place but it was you know more of a

fun thing right like it was sort of goofy to go to the the left place at the right place and people just kind of got over it but now um you know Washington DC was on the cutting edge of of socioeconomic sorting that Charles Murray wrote about in 2012 and coming apart, superzips. Most of the superzips, so the highest concentration pockets of wealth in the country, and so you do that by income and education level, which is a great proxy for class. Of the top ten, tons of them are right here outside of D.C. And what's come with that, as Murray demonstrated in the book,

is people actually living their social lives in different ways based on socioeconomic strata. And D.C. really was on the cutting edge of that. And so you see it big time here. I mean, the places, even just like the black community in D.C. and the like upper-educated, upper-income educated, woke white people in D.C. Not a little overlap there between where people spend their time. And that is a really sad trend. And D.C. is representative the rest of the country, unfortunately.

These astute observations, I feel like every time we have a conversation, I feel like so much smarter after talking with you. I wouldn't think to like, oh, reference this one book and this one school of thought from back then. But these are the exact things why I totally believe that you have had such a prolific career over the past few years doing podcasts, especially before podcasting, really blew up over the past few years. But this year, you started a new podcast after party with Emily Jashinsky, which it's been one of my favorites ever since it started because I just am here for all of the culture, politics, the intersection of both of them. Tell me how that experience has been. It's a blast. I mean, last night, we were on at 10, so we're live at 10 Mondays and Wednesdays,

and they had just dropped the new Heights episode with Jason, Travis, and Taylor. So it was, from my perspective, a good, like a really fun opportunity to come in and have a conversation before a lot of people got in the arena and were in the, like, tailored discourse about what some of this means. And that's, it sounds sort of foolish, right? Like, what does it mean? But it actually meant, I think it means a lot. I think there's a lot of things that we can learn from what happened about where our culture is going and all of that. So it's a good place to just kind of be, I like to think of it as after the news cycle.

So the news cycle is the party. Then this is the after party where you can be a little bit like button down, more relaxed. And just, you know, these new cycles are so crazy. there's something different about looking at the news between news cycles, right? Because you can sort of see what happened and what's coming and be a little bit more relaxed and calm. So I like that. I think it's fun. It kind of feels like when I come home from work and I take off my blazer, kick off my shoes, I made dinner, I'm eating dessert, ice cream with my roommate.

So listening. We just chat about like, oh my gosh, did you hear this thing that happened today? And it's been really fun to listen. of the day. How did you get to work, obviously, with Megan Kelly's network and before you were with the Federalist, correct? What has been kind of your DC story in a nutshell coming from going to GW and college to where you are today? Yeah, I moved here when I was 18. I think my freshman dorm was like three, four blocks from the White House, plucked out of, I grew up mercifully in this house that was in the woods and just dropped, you know, in Foggy Battle when I was 18. The concrete jungle. Yep. And so I was

involved with the Young America's Foundation chapter that was just how I know Elise, because I got to know her sister through that. And when I was about to graduate college, our little Liof chapter came under fire because at the time, the student government had passed a bill about mandatory, if you were a leader of a student group, you had to go to mandatory sensitivity training, which involved, this was 2015, pronoun training. And the student newspaper called me up and I was like, I, let's, you know, do you want a religious exemption of this for Yaff? And I was like, I guess, like sounds like it's not very tolerant. And I blew up into national news.

It was ridiculous. They called us a hate group. The LGBT student group on campus freaked out. So Yaf hired me after that, actually. That's awesome. And I was a spokesperson there for a couple of years. And after that, which I was working with Elisa's wonderful sister, after that I always knew I wanted to write.

I started doing Foxwells at Yaff. the spokesperson for what was going on on campuses and that type of thing was working a lot with Ben Shapiro and some of those really early college campus tour lecture tour things so I went to the Washington Examiner as soon as a job opened up on the commentary desk and I worked for Tim Carney there and for Tim he made us do reporting not just a vinyan which is what you should be doing when you're 24 and so he yeah he really pushed us to cover the Trump White House from first Trump White House, the midterm elections and some of those things that were going on. And Ben Dominic saw that I'd been tweeting about the real housewives a lot.

And I hired me at the Federalist after a couple years of the examiner to be the culture editor. And that was just a blast. My job was to write one story every day about something happening in the world of pop culture. That sounds like the dream. Basically the best job ever. And then I ended up stepping into his shoes at Federalist Radio Hour and a host of Federalist radio up for a while and Megan Kelly was a listener in Funrose Radio Hour, which is how I got on her radar.

And she was a listener. She was a listener. She was a that's so cool. She was so supportive. And it just has gone out of her way to be supportive. So that's really how it started. And when she kind of created this new network, they were super kind, reached out, and took us a while to figure out exactly what we wanted to do because you got to do something different.

and new in the space. And the world of podcasts is so saturated right now. Problematic women has been around for a long time. Before, like, a lot of people were getting in the podcast world. But if you're a new podcast, you've got to really do something different. So we launched in June and just been having a lot of fun. What can people expect when they tune into after party? At Desjardin, we speak business.

We speak startup fun. and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear-off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business.

Fun, right? I like doing these type of, I like. like taking a cultural artifact. I'm a big Camille Polly a fan and Camille Polly will look at something like this Instagram from Kim Kardashian and she's an art critic so she'll compare it to like Venus of Willendorf and like do these and I could never ever you know never ever do anything on the level of Camille Polly but I do like often taking these moments I love criticizing media or just studying media. So we do a lot of, you know, what the heck is going on on CNN? Why did the Washington Post lie about this and whatever? So we do a lot of that. But also, I like taking an artifact like Taylor going on

the Kelsey Brothers podcast and then really studying it from the perspective of where we are as a country, as a society, as a culture. So a lot of that type of thing. It ends up becoming really generational. Because right now I think there's such a stark line between millennials and Gen Z. So that's, stuff too we get into. In your opinion, when it comes to pop culture and culture, this is kind of the first time, at least I can remember, and probably the first time most of us, Gen Z, Millennial, can remember that the right is actually kind of winning a little bit, but also I'm a little unsteady because I feel like, in my opinion, the right doesn't really know how to take the wins that well. What do you think is the key to like maintaining this grasp on the culture for the right?

The polling right now is unbelievable. I mean, I worked in the conservative youth movement, and if you told me 10 years ago, this is what the polling would look like. A, the youth vote for the Republican candidate in 2024. If you showed me those numbers, I would have been like, you're lying. What happened?

Genuinely, was there an asteroid? What happens? The population wiped out and rebuilt? Like, this doesn't make any sense at all. And it just, I think, speaks to how quickly culture moves now because of these technologies, TikTok, social media. And these trends happen so much fast. master. And so I think some of it's that. And I think, you know, for the right, there was this big

push for like the hashtag pro-life generation. Like people were putting lots of money into basically evangelizing young people, and they still are. But I think what people learned was all the money in the world can't compete with Donald Trump and can't compete with Donald Trump creating this force culturally where he made it just sort of this guy's not a politician right you know conservatives wanted somebody like marco rubio who was polling pretty well i mean i remember looking at a poll in like 2015 uh the only republican candidate at the time who beat hillary clinton with young people was marco rubio according to this one poll so like there's something to it right but there's nothing like trump just coming in and um challenging the political establishment that was

just steroids. That was youth outreach on steroids and Dems are going to have to match it. Like that's how they lost Joe Rogan was they didn't want to criticize their party establishment. Republicans didn't either. But Donald Trump said, you have to.

Too late. Like, we're doing it. You're doing it. Like, you guys have destroyed the country or been complicit in the spiraling of the country. And I'm coming in and saying exactly what you did.

And I don't care if I'm doing it as a Republican, he said. It's happening. And that is what was so attractive to young people, I think, because there's this institutional distrust at really high levels. And they want to see people who are critical. And that's where you get the pop cultural momentum back. That's where you finally get like singers, mainstream people being like, screw it. I come with that guy.

Yeah. I mean, I think there was also a lot of humanizing that was necessary. Like Donald Trump was a very relatable character, even though he is like a billionaire. Relatable billionaire. And like it has all of the things in the world. Because he was honest. Yes, it was the honesty. And I think that we're seeing that a lot with like even our congressmen and women,

like getting a lot more clever and strategic with their social media and reaching out to young people like, hey, I'm a person too. I'm not just this like old white guy in politics. And I think that is so necessary to continue the culture shift and not alienate the young voters in our country. But I will say I think we need to. to cool it on the cringe because I do think that Republicans and Democrats can be a little bit cringy of taking a trend almost too far. And so I do think we need to be cognizant of that.

And, you know, where we put the pulse on the culture and we're seeing what's going on in pop culture, using that to our advantage and continuing to push the movement, the conservative movement in the culture direction and showing America, you know, we aren't stopping. But, you know, not to be too cringe to where our generation is like, I don't want to be with that anymore. You should have seen the cringe 15 years ago. Oh, it was very good. It was so bad. It's so much better now.

It's better now, but I think what you're saying is important because Republicans cannot be Donald Trump, right? Like, not every Republican can be Donald Trump. And no one will be him ever again. What they should take from it is, you know, Mitt Romney was campaigning in 2012, terrified of his record in private equity and as a multi-millionaire. And he would go to the Iowa State Fair, roll his slews up and talk about how much he loved hot dog. like hot dog is my favorite meat. That was probably after 2012, but that was a real not relatable.

Quote, hot dog is my favorite meat. That is a real Mitt Romney quote. It's going to be the name of this podcast episode. Yeah. But really, like, you know, there was these multimillionaire politicians that were running away from their wealth and trying to act like they were just your everyday guy,

super relatable. And Trump was honest about it. He went to the Iowa State Fair and gave kids helicopter rides. And they love it. Right. And so that's, I think, one of the lessons, is that like you can't fake authenticity. And they still try, of course.

But that's really important. And it comes across when people are trying to like do the social media stuff that Donald Trump does. I can think of members off the top of my head. And it's like you're not Trump. Cut it out. Yeah. Gavin Newsome. He tweeted in the style of Trump today.

Did you see this about his own? He's been doing it so much. I'm like, you look like a crazy man. Also, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So keep going. You can't, you can never be him. Try as people may. I'm so excited to continue the conversation on pop culture.

And before we get to Taylor Swift, because I'm actually really intrigued about your take on this, we have to talk about the Jonas Brothers, reuniting with Demi Lovato. We do have to talk about it. This is your generation. Wait, you didn't listen to the Jonas Brothers? No, no, no, no.

I'm like, I have a friend who went to the first stop, and she said it was a blast. Absolutely loved it. But I do think that's a little bit. I think if you're my age, you're a little too old, no offense to your sister, to be watching the Disney Channel. Did you ever, fair, fair, because I mean, I was in high school, well, middle school, high school growing up, like, religiously watching Disney Channel, Camp Rock till I die. Like, I was a die hard. If you don't know who the Jonas Brothers are, I was a little tour.

Fair. If you don't know who the Jonas Brothers are, I feel very sorry for you, but they are a boy band. They are three brothers from New Jersey. They were on Disney Channel. and they were just like massive superstar rock stars. They are so cute and they had a lot of drama. They dated Miley Cyrus. They dated Slana Gomez, Demi Lovato.

They were in Camp Rock. They were just like powerhouses and they were really that like 2000s Disney pop culture powerhouses. And they reunited after being broken up since 2013, a few years ago. New tour. And now they're doing a bunch of tours. I feel like a groupie whenever I go see them with Lauren. Well, you are one. Yes.

It's not like you feel like one. Listen to yourself. Yeah. And it's just so much fun just hearing them now. They're married, have kids. Well, they have kids. Some of them are not married anymore. And just seeing them come back to their fans all the time. And they had their new album come out called like litter to your hometown. And they had the first stop of their tour was in New Jersey. And they brought out their family to sing with them. Very wholesome. Loves to see the family unit together because that's really what propelled them into fame. Their family supported them, funded them, drove them on tours together. and just being brothers together. And also, more importantly, they brought out Demi Lovato. They started Camp Rock together and they sung their camp rock songs together. And I just know. Morgan texted me.

You were like, I texted you. I think the minute that I found out, I was like, at least Thursday show is going to be so good. We need so much to talk about. Demi Lovato just came out on stage. But the reason it's a big deal for me is my first ever concert. I was, I think it was an eighth grade, was Demi Lovato's concert.

And I loved her, my best friend in middle school, like we were obsessed. And so seeing this and also being Cam Brock fan, I was like, wait, my like younger self is healing. And it's just so amazing to see an artist like Demi Lovato that I feel like has really gone through like genuinely the mental health trenches. Themy. Rized to the surface.

And now she's married, looks more beautiful than ever. She's going by she again. She is. just going back she. Embraced who she is and is making new music. She's in the studio. She came out with a new single, Fast earlier this month.

And it just seems like to me. Are you guys being paid by the label? No. Came up with a new single? Fast. Fast. But I'm just thinking, I mean,

it seems like she's just reverting back to normalcy in reality. System settings. It's great. I just love to see it. So no, this is really interesting to me because there are a couple of other examples. I think that's what my take on Taylor Swift is going to be,

first of all. And second of all, we've seen this with Jojo. recently as well. Yes. Jojo Siwa. Oh, Betty DeKis. Famous sort of woke lesbian Jojo Siwa says she's happier than ever after having a boyfriend.

Discovering men. Wow. Yes. So there's a couple, like Jojo Siwa really was the poster child like Demi Lovato. Yeah. For this particular, I would say like, millennial. Very true. And we can talk about this in the context of Lena Dunham and girls as well.

But like there was this flavor of millennial lifestyle trend setting among certain celebrities. And Demi Lovato fell squarely into that. She is one of the trailblazers and has walked back from it. And so has Jojo Siwa, who was like poster child for this like, I don't know what you even call it. I was just like rainbow pride. Like it was like her entire brand. And even seeing Jojo come back. It wasn't just that she was gay.

It was her whole brand. It was everything. identity, being a child pop star, and like now coming out of that, and even like revealing some of her contracts of just stepping away from what she was basically signed up to do for her whole life is really eye-opening that I feel like a lot of these female celebrities that have just bought into the feminist lives are like, wow, not all men are toxic. We see even Taylor's will have dating Travis Kelsey, a very seemingly masculine man football player and she's, yeah, we'll talk about it, but like, you know, baking bread on a daily basis.

I just think it really shows the culture shift is happening beyond normal people, but even celebrities are starting to get a little bit of a clue of what's going on and not buying into just the Hollywood garbage anymore. Absolutely. And that's what people want to hear about. That's what people, like grabbed their attention. They're like, oh my gosh, they're just like me. I feel like the past 10 years, whenever celebrities have been like, oh, I use these pronouns

and like, I'm cutting my hair short like this. I'm like, that's not what most of your fan base looks like. Right. And the Jonas Brothers, as you will remember a brother than I do, debuted as these Christian... Like a Christian band. Promise ring wearing Texas kids. And, you know, they were working really hard to maintain that image, like many previous generations of child stars.

And there just came a point where culture kind of gave up on that, right? Because the gatekeepers, you know, Jojo Suba became famous on what, like, Viner TikTok. I don't even remember. I mean, she was on dance moms. Yeah, she was on dance moms and then Nickelodeon. So, yeah, so she's a reality television star who was exploited as a child for cheap profit by a network, by parents, like horrible.

And it clearly messed her up and sent her on this awful journey. And, but like, what was her, the platform in the last few years she was using was TikTok, right? Yeah, she had her own, like, music and dancing. Karma. She had that weird dance that went with it. It's just, it's so sad, but I feel like it all happened. The gatekeepers just lost power and gave up on trying to maintain the image of like being a clean pop star, which, you know, was always kind of a joke, right, with Britney Spears, for example. She was almost traumatized by being forced to maintain that image.

And, you know, with that, though, we lost our aspirations to be good people, right? because it's not even worth modeling being a good person. Just do you live your truth? Don't worry about how it affects kids. And I feel like we're looking back in the last 10 years, not us, but like as a culture, what were we thinking? Like it actually did affect kids in that way. And that's something that I think Taylor Swift has been so good about in her entire career

because she's never really tried to be like this like very straight-laced presenting like promise ring goody two shoes like we know that interesting you say that i don't think that's true i don't think she's tried to present like that because if you listen to her earlier music especially in like speak now and all this stuff i'm like but that's not her earlier music okay keep going back it's country i don't listen to country that much talk about debut but no taylor swift her first album was called taylor swift and it was it had that song um that's still the like it had picture to burn obviously the lyrics were changed yeah in picture to burn what was You're gay.

I don't even know what it was. Yep. Yeah, the lyrics were changed in picture to burn. There was this, with Taylor, there was this intense image maintenance that was happening. Maybe I just don't remember it. Well, you're a little younger, yeah. Yeah. When she first came out.

Yeah. When she first came out. Because that was 2006, so I really would not have a recollection. Yeah. I'm like squarely in Taylor's demo. Because even your sister is younger than me. I'm squarely in her demo. And I remember she was being packaged really intensely by the label, which obviously came to be problematic.

But she was this, you could just feel the PR campaign around her as someone who was being, like, presented as country Barbie. And she was treated as somebody who lived in, was from Tennessee. And they joked about that on New Heights. Yeah, you're from Pennsylvania. That she was kind of, she used to talk with an accent, like a southern accent. Again, she's from Pennsylvania. It was very funny. But clearly it was something that the label would push her to do.

So they were trying to treat her as this all-American southern songwriter, singer songwriter. Yep, exactly. And I think she wanted to be that. You know, she really had much. She loved the Dixie Chicks. And those examples, if you go back and listen to how she talked about that sort of thing. And it was, you were being beat over the head with the fact that Taylor Swift wrote her own songs. which she co-wrote her own songs.

A lot of that first of them is like, the woman's name's Liz Rose, Big Nashville songwriter, but like, was Taylor Swift really writing her own songs? No. She was kind of, she was half writing your own songs, right?

But it wasn't the idea that you were, that you were being beat over the head with was that Taylor Swift sat in her bedroom and these songs appeared. You have this image of her, like, feet kicked up. She's in her diary.

Yeah, and I think she was a big machine from the beginning, and Big Machine was literally a big machine. Like they were taking artists and spitting them into these, and doing a great job, presenting them, packaging them as country Barbie or whatever it was. And I think Taylor's just really wanted to be that image. But she never really was.

You know, she never really was. She was from the daughter of like a finance executive from Pennsylvania. And that's okay. She's super smart. Like she's, you know, she always felt pressured to be an archetype. And, you know, at one point she was trying to be Joni Mitch. She wants to fit into these ideas that she has in her head because she's a student of media. She grew up in pop culture.

And at a certain point, she was doing this sort of like post-Disney Bad Girl, you know, just I think right now she's like just being comfortable being herself. And it's interesting you said that like she's been in media her whole life and she's adopted these, you know, country Barbie, Joni Mitchell, just like just from New Girl eras. but now she's done with her literal eras tour. She's, you know, reset to factory settings. She's just living out domestic life with Travis Kelsey on her podcast. Something that I really thought was interesting and kind of spoke to me was her talking

about, you know, baking sourdough, coming up with funny bread pun names. Sowing. And these are things that a lot of people are like, oh, that's trad, that's Christian. Like that's a Nazi dog whistle, some person said on Twitter a few months ago. And I'm like, Taylor Swift is doing it. it's just normal. When I was actually normal about celebrities doing and having more grandma hobbies is you would be shocked if you saw the lack of social media that celebrities actually consume. The Kardashians aren't scrolling on TikTok for five hours a day like you are sitting at home.

You know, they may be listening to some podcasts or blogs or, you know, reading and writing things. But Taylorship does not consume a copious amount of social media. Like she turns off her phone. She turns off her comment. She's not really engaged in what's going on the rumors that are being spread about her and Travis. And I honestly really respect that. And I honestly think that the American people need to kind of look into what was being said on the podcast of her and Travis have no idea what's really even being said about them. Like, oh, somebody said this. Like that would be so horrible if your entire relationship was focused on like rumors and what things are being said about you. Like, no, actually focus on your

relationship. And I think the American people need to kind of take a step back and be like, oh, I actually consume way too much media on a daily basis and TikTok trends. And celebrity gossip of like what am I actually doing to live my own life. I am a fan of the sourdough. Like yeah, I think it's great that Taylor's spent probably five hours a day baking and hanging out with her friends and her family. Like live your life to the most normal capacity that you can. I mean, it's not like she can necessarily control her fan base of what they're saying and not saying. But I thought it just really normalized a lot of not just, I don't want to say domestic activities, but normal life that it's okay to enjoy these things.

She used to be hyperactive on social media. She and used to have that sort of like grandma chic thing going with her cats. And it was like millennial irony about how. It's like the Tumblr days. She was obsessed with Tumblr. So she would pour through her fans tumblers and talk to them on the live streams and reply to their comments. Right.

And she used to use social media to leave all of these famously, all of these Easter eggs. And she was deep in it, obsessed with it. And was clearly living life for the Graham. Like a lot of people were, those Fourth of July parties with, like, Haim sisters and Carly Kloss and in Newport. Like, they would always come with the Instagram filters and the, you know, carousels. That was like circa 2014, 2015, 2012. 2012 even earlier. Yeah.

And so she went through. in the same way that I think you're right, Demi Lovato did. She went through the culture like the rest of us and has come out on the other end talking to the Kelsey Brothers just last night about how unhealthy social media is, how she's not on it. That's coming from a woman who used to be hyper, hyper online. I could do it as a day that I like that. Everyone was in 2013, especially when like just social media started,

everyone was just so hungry of like, oh, what is this? I can connect. I can post. I can talk about my life. it's become so normal. But she was really obsessed with curating her image. And she did it in this very ironic millennial way where it was like, I'm not too cool for Tumblr or I'm not too hot to have a cat.

Like I'm not too hot to be over a cat. Like a quirky selfie with a cat. At that point, she was able to do it herself without a label too. I mean, yeah, she still had a label. But I feel like as her eras went on, we really got to see her personality so much more. And she even described it last night. And she's talked about on her eras tour about how each. album really is a representation of where she is in her life.

And like when tortured poets came out, like that was very cathartic and like long poetic album and very more like Solomon's sad in a way versus like folklore and evermore during COVID. And then midnight. Like each album really does, I feel like represent each season of her life very well. And like even going from like her social media era as like she could represent what was going on in her life in that way.

But I don't feel like the fans were like, like, yes, still crazy, but you could do that without receiving as much backlash and be able to connect with your fans more personally, where now I feel like that's been lost. She was constantly, I mean, feminists really detested Taylor Swift in her early years. There was like Jezobel, you can probably find like thousands of entries in Jezebel about how Taylor Swift. And this during Trump, the reason she came out with that documentary, Miss Americana, was because she was being hounded by the feminist left to say something about Trump because they were saying she was engaged in these Nazi dog whistles.

Some white supremacists were, like, claiming Taylor Swift and saying that she was sending them these dog whistles. It was all insane. And like a great example of how social media has poisoned us. But that was, I mean, she felt such immense pressure that she started putting out songs like, you need to calm down, which is, like,

the fact that I'm saying any nice stuff about Taylor Swift now blows my mind. I was like on the, like, the upper fold of the drudge report calling that art. I wrote us something for the Federalist right away. And I went on Fox News and talked about how that song was elitist garbage. And it was horrible. It is.

It is a piece of trash, that song. I feel like no one actually likes that song or me with Panic of the Disco. Like, Lover was arguably, oh my gosh. It was, I'm serious. It was ironic at first. And then I was like, wait, what's this coming down? But that was that time with the Miss Maricana, the lover album being so controversial in those songs coming out.

She was feeling so much pressure, which is why I think she ended up just going to London at one point. Another person we've seen do that is Lena Donham, because there's so much pressure on you as a kind of icon, a pop culture icons, and he's held up as an icon and treated as an icon and invites that. She felt so much pressure that it be, she just turned into this completely pretentious, inauthentic actor. And I was really disappointed. You know, coming from someone who, you know, she was happy to be kind of packaged up when she was younger.

She was young. Yeah. But, you know, it turned into this, like, pretentious, I'm actually a tortured poet. Like, oh, my gosh. It just was, it was, I couldn't do it. I don't know what her new music's going to sound like. Well, I am very excited for T.S. 12. It is produced by Max Martin and Shellback, which she hasn't worked with them in years. And she was

talking about it on the podcast last night, on New Heights, because the songs that they produced together were like 22, uh, blank space. A lot of like the like red 1989 anthems, pop girl anthems. And I feel like a lot of her fan base, me included, has been waiting for this Taylor. Like the reputation, the 1989, the red Taylor to kind of rise again. So, and she even said that this is her most excited album and like she's so proud of this album like when they got together it was just them three shellback max martin and taylor and then the artist uh the photographer who captured her cover art was the photographer from the reputation album so this is really like i feel like it's a return to of the taylor minds it's interesting that you bring up lena dunham because i am also a fan of the show girls but i think

lena dunum's career path in taylor swift's career path it's when you compare them in my head i i see it as Lena Dunham really stuck with these kind of unpopular ideas from her youth that we saw on display in girls and just like, you know, sleep around. You don't have to like settle down with anyone. And even if someone's there for you, like just cast them aside, just like all these kind of things that don't really empower women. And then Taylor's stuff, you know, she also kind of embraced some of those ideas. But now she's like returning to something a little bit more normal. Lena Dunham hasn't. And I'm just trying to see like who has more of a cultural stronghold these days.

It's Taylor Swift. I think they're friends, actually. It's interesting, too. I know she was at the 1989 tour, Lane to the Dunham. Weird. What you just said is interesting that this is an exciting, an album she said she's most excited about, and also combine that with her saying that her albums

reflect these different chapters in her life. So why is she most excited about this chapter of her life? Well, because Contra, the lie, that you can be fulfilled and happy outside of, like a normal, male-female relationship. Hello. The average woman.

How dare you say that, Emily? It's just so funny. And it's ironic, right? And it's sort of vindicating for the right in a way that's trying not to be cringed thing. Yeah. With her, she was trying to say, I'm on the left.

I am a feminist. I'm not like these uncool, Marsha Blackburn-loving Southerners. And I was like, you know, the capitalist. Yeah. We just don't have to put on the act, right?

Like, do whatever, like, think whatever you want. Like, engage with these ideas and arguments, whatever. But, you know, Travis Kelsey is toxic masculinity in human form. Yeah. Doesn't matter how many Pfizer commercials he dies. Like, that is what they detest. Every, like, yeah, because that's what they, that was their definition of toxic masculinity. Like a high tea football playing an all-American dude who says the dumbest stuff because he doesn't

care. Right. So anyway, other than to say, Taylor Swift was finding love in the arms of the guy on the chiefs is just poetic, like truly in a way that she didn't try. That's the real poetry. She was trying to go out with these like hipster dudes who were like emo. Yeah, emo hipster dudes, right? And it does feel really poetic. And it feels poetic that she's happy about it.

And it does feel like, again, another human manifestation of the vibe shift. Maybe we'll see a big vibe shift culture shift of way. women just like being normal again from this. Oh, I was just a hundred percent. I think we've already seen that and it's coming. Well, I'm sitting on the right, put on the left. I'm like, please.

It's not, yeah, because that's what's current just acting like, wow, big dub for conservatives with Taylor Swift. No, it's just, it feels like the culture's, the vibe shift isn't like, it's clearly not just a pro Trump vibe shift because we've seen young people's numbers with Trump start to change and to go down. And so it's not like this is a partisan vibe shift.

It had partisan implications, but what it is, is a return. to like, I would say the pre-2015 cultural baseline. Which is common sense, like normalcy. Like, you don't need to shave your head and, you know, wear fish nets to be liberal. Like, you can just be, like, you know, be liberal. You can just, like, you know, have, like, Democrat ideas and, like, that's fine. Like, we live in America.

Everyone's going to disagree. Like, you're not going to agree with everybody. I also don't think the entire country will ever be a utopia where everyone's conservative. Like, that's just not realistic, never going to happen on the right or the left. But seeing just, like, normalcy and Tammy, Vado, Jonas brother is on tour. Taylor Swift, just like, JoJo CELA.

I just think it is so interesting, because I have noticed that liberals have become less crazy. I mean, of course, there's always going to be like the crazy, crazy left, but they're slowly getting there. They're getting there.

As much as I would love to keep talking about this, because you know we could go on for hours about this and just dissect Taylor stuff. We have to get to our previous question of the week from last week. So every week we ask a question of the week, and if you want to answer this week, and get a shout out in our episode.

Go on Instagram, answer it in our stories when we have this posted. But last week, our question of the week was, would you join ICE? Because that was a big story last week. I'm going to say ISIS. Oh, would you join ICE? New question. No. Would you join ICE Immigration Customs Enforcement?

And we had a big array of answers. Someone said, yes, absolutely. Amy Pham said, not in the field, but behind the scenes slash desk job. Fair. Yes. Okay. Sure. Me too.

Coco Lacey 89 said they'll pay $50,000 in student loans off too if you'll get hired right now. Oh, okay. So that's just a fact. Oh, that's cool. Well. Kleinstine 9, one of our regulars, says, only if the pay was like my current job. I like my current job. You know, me too.

So maybe if it's... I get a raise. Maybe. Would you join ICE? No. There's still too much like surveillance. There's too much like sketchy surveillance stuff. that I'm uncomfortable with, but I have friends that are over at DHS. God bless them.

Same. Yeah, couldn't do it myself. I forget who it was, but I listened to like a snippet on Instagram and someone was like, ladies, I know that there's a dating crisis. So just like park outside of an ICE recruitment center. That's where you're going to find the men at the room. The women are going to be in the Home Depot's for another reason. Yeah.

Just conspicuously look around. And I know there's a lot of crime that's still happening, not just here in D.C., but all across the country. So for this week's question of the week, we really want to know what is your crazy crime story? Do you have one in a city? Let us know. Well, thank you so much, Emily, for joining us today. And I'm so glad. When can we listen to After Party with Emily again? Monday's and Wednesdays live at 10 p.m. But it's not just live. You can listen to it like a normal podcast. And where can we listen to this? Anywhere you get your podcasts. We're live on YouTube. So check us out. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was so much fun. And thank you so much for watching, listening along. And we'll see you.

back next week.