“Happy Hour”: SPLC Fallout, Eye on 2028, Obama’s Chameleon-Like Qualities, and David French: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Happy Friday, welcome to another edition of Happy Hour.

This is, of course, it's all this special edition of Afterparty that we do here every Friday evening. I take on Thursdays and go through my inbox, Emily and DoubleMakerMedia.com. Live to see all of the great questions that you've sent into me over the course of the week. So let's get to it, yes, as a reminder, I do this live.

It's just podcast only, audio only, which I love. So if you're having it subscribed on a podcast feed, Apple Spotify, wherever you get it, go ahead and subscribe here. And if you're already here, and you haven't subscribed on the YouTube page, please go ahead and subscribe over there.

It helps us so much. All right, now on to the show. This is a message from Steve. It says, Steve, this is a pretty long email. Thoughts here about Federman.

Democrats continue to strongly support policies that seem out of step with broader public opinion, aside from a few figures, like Federman, who appears more independent, most Democrats remain aligned.

“This raises the question, are these positions driven by personal belief or by a party pressure?”

Overall, my takeaway is that Democratic politicians are unlikely to break from party direction, while Obama remains influential, interesting. Federman may be an exception, but most appear to stay aligned, potentially out of political necessity. And Steve also mentioned that there's an interpretation about Biden staying in the race about Obama and party leadership consolidating this support behind him in 2020.

And then Obama's influence was extending beyond his presidency as he was maybe helping sway Biden in a more radical direction. So yeah, that's interesting. I do think so Obama has kind of broken with tradition and lives full time in Washington, DC.

I've actually never seen him out here in Washington, DC.

So I'm sure he's kind of all over the place, but his main home is here in DC. That was itself sort of seen as a gesture to Democrats that he was very serious about continuing to have a lot of influence over the Democratic Party. Obviously, he went and did that photoop was on Mamdeni at a daycare center to promote Universal Childcare this week, and I wrote a piece about that actually and unheard saying,

“I think it's remarkable that Obama went up to his or on Mamdeni after all of those years”

Obama spent trying to convince everyone he wasn't a socialist or a communist or a marxist. Here he was. And I think it actually was a bigger sign of respect and deference to Mamdeni than it was the other way around. If anything, Mamdeni had at one point talked about like, well, he was in college.

Obama being evil on Twitter. So if anything, it was a bigger gesture for Mamdeni to accept Obama, then it was for Obama to go up and kind of kiss the ring of the new socialist mayor of New York City. I don't know how much they're who had some really good reporting on this at the time. Was it, I think it was, yeah, I'm pretty sure it was David Sammills in Tablet.

This was an article called The Obama Factor in 2023 and it was a Q&A with David Garrow who is an Obama biographer and the contention was that Obama was really influential over the Biden administration and we're still calling a lot of shots behind the scenes. So it's possible.

“I honestly don't have any original additions to Steve's theory, just that Obama is still”

pretty powerful and he still clearly wants to be pretty powerful into the future.

What's murky to me is where Obama is ideologically, right? And that's kind of his, I guess, political genius over many years as if you wanted to see someone who had a more radical worldview that was restrained by kind of normal party politics you could. If you wanted to see someone who was just kind of a normal party politics guy that played

up this radical worldview, maybe flirted with in college or during his community organizing career, you could see that too. And I really, I mean, Obama governed in ways that are, you know, he'd drawn on while a lucky and he was pretty, he did not get out of Afghanistan.

state.

On the other hand, he did start the process of opening the border arguably during his second

term, especially he pushed the limits constitutionally of executive power and started the entire Title IX gender identity controversy via his education department towards the end of a second term. So with him, you really can just, he's chameleonic. Whatever the moment calls for, he'll make himself the type of person, you know, that camouflages

himself into one side or the other, based on how he wants to be seen at that time. So it's an interesting thought, Steve, I really, I can't say too much more, I think probably the biggest factor sending Democrats in one direction or the other is that the grassroots, I mean Seth Molten comes out against the excesses of the Biden era trans policies. And within a couple of days, his staffers quit and he walks it back, Gavin Newsom, same thing

happens. So I think what really drives him in that direction is the managerial elite, professional managerial class, however you want to put it, because they are the staffers and they are also the grassroots voters, the type of people that organize and phone bank and run them on profit sector.

And I think that's even more powerful than Obama himself.

“So I think that's probably the most important response I could give to the question because”

to me, the professional managerial class is just what drives, dens and one direction or the other. Anyway, great question. Curtis says, oh, this is a response to Dave Smith from last week. It's a pretty long email, so I'm trying to cut to the chase here.

People who claim the US is the, quote, real terrorist because of its foreign engagements, this is a basic truth, the far greater horrors that happen when America does nothing or stays on the sidelines, look at World War II, the clear, to example, what US involvement

achieved versus what isolation is involved, and then Curtis ends by saying fast forward

to today, and we see the exact same choice of the run. Critics who scream that the US is the real terrorist for sanctions, the Soleimani strike, or 2025 strikes on nuclear sites, ignore what doing nothing would unleash. All right, so this is a great point from Curtis.

“I don't agree with it in the case of Iran definitively, and I think that's part of the”

calculus here is whenever you are doing a preemptive war, and this is a huge, you know, I'm not Catholic, but this is a huge part of just war doctrine, and it's a raging debate right now, actually, among some Catholics on the right, in particular, as the president has gone back and forth with the Pope, but whenever you have a preemptive action, you have to be reasonably certain that you were going to be attacked, and it was going to be

really bad. Now, when you have a country that chants death to America, and has this, and death to Israel, and has this just longstanding hatred expressed over and over again within its government of the United States of America, whether or not that's justified, we don't even have to get into that to say, yeah, there's a good likelihood, you know, any country that wants to defend

its civilians would say if they have a nuclear weapon, they will -- there's a non-zero chance that they try to obliterate American civilization. But the problem with Iran is that they didn't have a nuclear weapon, and the question is, did they have the capacity to create a nuclear weapon or, as Marco Rubio said, very clearly within like 48 hours of the conflict breaking out, they were close to getting past the

point of immunity, meaning if we would have wanted to take their weapons out, their weapons would have been developed beyond a point where it would have been as simple as it was.

“And again, you'll always do have to come up with counterfactuals, and I think we actually”

talked about this on last week's happy hour, because I was getting into -- we've got lots of emails about Dave, and Dave and I obviously debated his point about terrorism. In one of my obsessions, just in politics, in fact, as I tape this, I'm kind of arguing against Hassan Piker on X. He's not like tweeting at him or anything, but he kind of now is going viral for giving this interview to the New York Times for saying people

quote, "understand the killing of Brian Thompson because Thompson was guilty of quote, "social murder." And this is why I started to debate Dave on the definition of terrorism, because I think when you conflate physical murder with social murder, or terrorism with violence, it reminds

in 2020.

I think rigged, speaking of which, we had Molly Hemingway on the show this week, is

an acceptable and a very meaningful distinction from stolen. If you think that Congress is literally stealing an election out from under your noses, a whole lot of people are going to say, "Well, it's rational to try and get into the capital and fight back against that."

“And that's why I totally -- I mean, it was controversial as Ben Sass was, well, he was”

in the Senate. He had a really good comment afterwards in a Facebook post. He said that Trump was, quote, "playing with fire after the 2020 election." So, yes, there was funny business that went on in 2020, but for the President of the United States, that rhetorical distinction is really, really important. And it's very important not to be reckless with these words in the way that academics kind of have the luxury of being reckless with,

you know, Judith Butler and Chomsky. And it's different when you're the president or you're an influential podcaster and you're making arguments based on inflated definitions. I mean, it was the whole thing with calling it. The Senate Poverty Law Center, calling everything hatred or racism. It incites violence. It happened multiple times. They put Charlie Kirk on a hate map or Trampoy USA on a hate map. Shortly before Charlie was killed,

when the alleged assassin was citing his hate, saying, "Some hate can't be reasoned with

“and paraphrase again." So, anyway, I do think these definitions, that's why I quibbled”

with Dave on the Terrorism point. And to Curtis's point, you have to build up counterfactuals in order to be confident that not doing something was more just than doing something. And that's impossible. Again, I think we talked about this on last week's Happy Hour with the Cold War. You know, I can say that we shouldn't have metled in Guatemala. We shouldn't have metled in Honduras, Al Salvador, Nicaragua, Indonesia in Korea. You go down the list.

Chile, I can say that. What I can't tell you, Cuba. What I can't tell you is that the

Soviet Union would definitively never have used a nuclear weapon from one of these footholds

if we hadn't rigorously backed the anti-communist forces. I can't tell you that there wouldn't have been a chain reaction. I can tell you what the benefit of history, what I think, but I can't tell you for sure. And that's when you look back at the history of the Cold War, it's difficult. And that's actually partially why I have such a hard time with pre-eminent action. This is very indirectly pre-eminent, right, because they were

multiple steps away. If you're literally one step away, and you're saying death to America, there's a little bit different. But tells you, Gabber testified what a year ago, multiple steps away. That was our best intelligence, intelligence after midnight hammer, and it's a little bit different when you're talking about nooks versus ICBMs. Their ICBM capacity as we know already goes into Europe. The nuclear capacity of North Korea, as we know, covers

us about the whole world. So does their ICBM capacity? So should we be out war with them right now? They hate us. It doesn't necessarily give us a clear answer to the question. Not necessarily. It's an argument. I just don't think it's the definitive argument. So great point Curtis, I really do appreciate it. And I think that distinction between terrorism

and second order violence, you know, in a lot of cases, the violence is secondary to some

action that we've taken. I'm trying to think of a good example here. So like they rock were a lot of direct violence, but then also the indirect violence of ISIS filling the power vacuum, and then civil wars taking over other countries, and then asking about them. Those civil wars, and that's part of, again, why I'm really careful with these types of pre-eminent

“actions, because they have unintended consequences that you have to weigh against this counterfactual”

of what would have happened. So anyway, Max says that he has a backlog of questions. Let's see, why do people platform Dave Smith, seriously? I know he kisses up to Ryan Crim and Chris LePaul with his anti-israel tie tribes, and Joe Rogan seems to like him. But what is talent?

to stand up in quote-classic comedy. They're not once and over two decades of the words, Dave Smith has been uttered. Frankly, a laugh-mortenic phrase is on your show. Dave is not a journalist. He's not particularly knowledgeable on anything that I can discern. Ooh, Max! Not a fan of Dave, I take it. I actually do think Dave is funny. I liked it when I said thanks for dressing up or something. He was like, well, I respect the happy hour. He had as he was like a sweatshirt on the show. If you were

“watching and he was wearing a sweatshirt on the show, I think Dave is super funny. And I think”

Dave comes to these conversations, kind of like an every man. He doesn't pretend to be an expert. So it's not really a great argument to come back with him, come back at him with Steve

never been in Israel, for example, because he's not pretending to be somebody like that. He's

pretending to just, he's not pretending. He's literally just somebody who's doing his own research like the average American and then talking about it in the way that you would talk about it at a bar. And so I think that's where that comes in. And he's really, he's a great, as somebody is interviews people for a living. Dave's a really great interview because he keeps up a great pace. He stays on question. He's really reliably entertaining and dynamic interview. He keeps up

the conversation really well. And he always has something interesting to say, even if people

“disagree with him and you know, I've just talked about disagreeing with him. I don't love the word”

platform. I know what you mean. I don't love the word platform. But anyway, Matt goes on to say

something like, okay, on Rogan, he started to rant based on how there was quote not one

tread of evidence that the Iranian regime had harmed any protesters. That was an exact quote. It took Joe's producer less than 15 seconds pull or it goes by independent international health organizations that verified protesters had been killed. He had response, well, anyway. So I'd have to go back and look at that. Obviously, it's true that some number of protesters were clearly killed in January. Max, as I just wish, y'all would call him out on his BS once in a while.

But then he didn't even win Rogan does it. He ignores and steam rolls. I still love the show. And we'll keep liking it beating the algorithm. Thank you, Matt. You know, it's just only

“if I did not be a fan of day. I think Dave would be the first to tell you. He is an acquired”

taste that is definitely not for anyone which is sort of the point of being someone who's

extremely opinionated and very aggressively opinionated to put it mildly. So anyway, maybe I'll go back and take a look at his Rogan episode. Like I said, I did quit both of them on that terrorist point. But he actually was the one who initiated that. So I don't know. I'm not like a big debate person. I just like getting like eliciting interesting thoughts out of other people. And then sometimes like testing where they go or what they would say to a kind of factual or

something like that. But yeah, I actually like actively try not to fight people. But I probably should pick fights more I guess. I probably should. They can be fun when you have like built in trust with someone. And you know, it doesn't turn into a shouting mat where you can't hear anyone. This is another one on Dave. Tiffany says, "Listen to your episode with Dave today. It was a good conversation. I also read a bit of your happy-art question on Apple podcast

earlier. I'd like to say I'm glad you had Dave on. I don't listen to a show. But he's a good guest on your show. Megan's and Tucker's. I like different perspectives. I like listening to Anna Kasperian as a guest on the show's too. I used to be a full-blown conservative. But since President Trump's elections and getting older so many of my thoughts and opinions have changed. I'm a Christian so I doubt I will ever vote Democrat. Their sentence hills I will die on like being

pro-life. I didn't vote in 2016 or 2020. I did vote for Trump in 2024 because I couldn't imagine Kamala running the country. I'm so disappointed and a little angry about this Iran war and his rhetoric. I agree with you that our politicians these days are the lesser of two evils which just sad. Keep up the great work. Well thank you, Tiffany. I appreciate that and I agree with that. It's just, you know, there's some people right now who are saying, look, conservatives were

wrong about Trump and Tucker has come out and said just this week in that episode with his brother Buckley that he feels like he has this sort of stain on his conscience that he is sorry that he was wrong. You know, Megan has held the line on that and has said no Kamala Harris would be much, much worse. I just think some of these criticisms also misunderstand why people vote for Trump and that's really annoying because the big reason is often because

some of these same people have led the Democratic Party down a horrible path towards like

Harris, maybe it peaked. You know, I don't think it's ever going away, but it may have peaked in the

“physical embodiment of that ideology which was Kamala Harris. And that's why so many people voted”

for Trump. And so to say that it's irrational for people to have voted for a closed border when you had the largest surge immigration surge in American history. And to be honest, I hate saying how I voted said think it becomes distracting, but I just didn't vote for president in 2024, but to say that people who looked at the border and said it was irrational or say it's irrational for people who were looking at the border and saw the largest surge of immigration U.S. history

under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Like on that issue alone, it was so lawless, so dangerous so many

people have been hurt and victimized, including by the way millions of migrants who were trafficked

and filled the cartel coffers. I mean, voting on that issue alone, you can make a rational case for voting against anybody who had anything to do with that. And man, where did I hear it the other day? Yeah, it was Russell Brand who brought this up with Megan. Megan was kind of making these points and was saying, you know, voted on immigration and trans issues. And Russell Brand

“was like, well, then you have to balance that with what it means that, you know, a potential”

to be on a global nuclear conflict. And that's true. You know, it's voting is a, it's the end of a kind of personal equation. And you're weighing so many different factors and coming from different experiences, I don't like the whole black or white, we voted this way or that way, evil or not, because there's so much corruption and rot and incompetence and failure in both parties that people are almost all making lesser of two evil, lesser than two evil calculations. And those can be

really close and really dicey, depending on where you're coming from. So anyway, it's a lesser than two evil calculations, not to vote too. So I don't like this conversation around, you know, whether people should be sorry or they were wrong. Tucker was saying not that he was sorry for voting for Trump, but for endorsing him and speaking on his behalf enthusiastically, which is different than voting of course. But yes, some thoughts Tiffany, I appreciate it. Adam says, just finished tonight's

edition of Happy Hour, listening to how you navigated in the very scene that was about the tapesmith interview not only was great, but I knew I had to go listen to that interview, which I had missed. And like the space you've created here is great. And so desperately needed. I found myself drifting away from news and political podcasts, seeing how they negatively affect me and ultimately my personal relationships. But hold out for you and Mark Helper. And I adore you both and just want

to say your interview with Dave Smith. It's exactly what I needed tonight. Thank you for modeling

grace and curiosity so well. Adam, that is incredible. And seriously, I, that's one of the nice

things that you could say, like, as far as I'm concerned, curiosity. I think is really the most

“important thing. When I'm listening to podcasts, for example, I think that's one of the most important”

things that an interviewer can bring to the table. And it's really hard to to kind of genuinely be curious when you're somebody who has a big picture ideology and to make space for questions and curiosity. And you know, unpopular opinion, I think someone who does that really well is Tucker Carlson. And I was thinking about the Nick Funtez interview he did, obviously in the fall, that was so controversial. When I listened this week to his interview with someone that I can pretty much assure

you, Tucker Carlson thinks is engaging in evil. And that would be, I think his name is Keon, said that G, said they he, the CEO of nuclear economics, doing designer baby work. And in my own mind, I wasn't even doing this intentionally, just popped into my head while I was listening to the interview in which Tucker was so kind and gave this man so much space to explain himself, despite being engaged in something that Tucker thought was evil, Tucker was was happy to give him time and,

like I said space, oxygen to make his argument and pushed him in different directions and really grilled him, but did it with a smile on his face and while allowing his own priors to come into question. And I do think there was, you know, I've said many times I wouldn't have handled the Funtez interview the same way, but I think there was a kind of misunderstanding of what Tucker does on his show, back in that interview, which is he tries to just talk human being, human being,

like it was before clips were bouncing around algorithmic social media, where if you watched that

you wouldn't have thought it was super out of the ordinary. You would have been like, "Oh, can you maybe push a little bit on this or that?" But he also did push on this or that.

It's never enough for a lot of people, but the designer baby interview reminded me of that

“so much that he finds benefits and asking questions and this is honestly not to glaze Tucker,”

it just Adams comment made me think of this because there's such a benefit to just giving people a space to respond to different questions and explain themselves. And, you know, I'm much more in that category than in the debate, bro category, so I really do appreciate it, Adam. You know, it can be hard and thankless work because people do really want to see debates and shouting matches, not everyone. The silent majority, I think, doesn't like that, but it's definitely what's

rewarded on algorithmic social media. So, you know, you're always going to have a little quieter presence if you're not doing that, but I think it's totally totally worth it. Appreciate it, Adam. All right, Hank says you described yourself as sort of a hippie on this subject of nuclear weapons, do support their entire elimination. So, any thoughts on how democracies would defend their people from Hitler's Dalin Mowtives armed with large conventional forces. In Western democracy,

there's much greater citizen pressure on leaders to reduce defense budgets, which would make us vulnerable to predators. There's a great question, Hank. It really is the question.

“Yeah, I'll just reaffirm. I did say a hippie on nuclear weapons. I think I said that on last”

week's happy hour, but there's no practical solution on the table right now because we've introduced them. They are global and they're in the hands of countries that are not Western democracies. Probably hard and problematic enough, already, if they're in the hands of Western democracies, but the journey is out of the bottle, and I don't think there's any real way to put it back in, put the toothpaste back in the tube. I mean, again, pie in the sky, love the idea of coming to

some sort of global disarmament agreement, but that's totally pie in the sky. There's no way you can see unilateral disarmament happening. It's almost impossible to envision. Now, that doesn't mean, we shouldn't, you know, hope and pray for unilateral disarmament someday to take this, to take us, to take the horrors of civilian catastrophe, suffering, worldwide.

I mean, we just always constantly live with a thin border between us and that.

And that has just poisoned geopolitics in regular politics. It's really the entire reason we're talking about all of these countries in the Middle East, Israel or Iran period, because technology has evolved such that there are no borders between nuclear states. And there are limited borders between states with long ICBM ranges or chemical weapons, biological warfare, that sort of thing. And it feels like it's only game worse as these technologies adapt. Maybe you could say if

you're a glass-half-full person, they're getting better because deterrence is getting shrugger and shrugger. But that's just not how I see it. So I agree with your Hank. I don't think there's any reasonable off-wrapped to disarmament. You're a lateral disarmament. So I think we're sort of stuck for now. Howard says, "Happy Sunday." So I just read a new story about your home state that has me laughing and thought I would share. Evidently, there's something called the US Turkey hunt, a three-year-old

boy with a shotgun blessed to fellow hunters. Oh my goodness, because he thought there were turkeys. Oh my goodness. Okay, I don't know about the story that sounds terrible. Hunting accidents are

“absolutely terrible. And you should never give, and me it goes with that saying, you should never give”

a three-year-old boy a shotgun. But I guess I'll have to look this, I guess I have to look this story

up. I've never tricky hunted. It did have a couple of times a fresh turkey that my grandpa shot

for Thanksgiving. But no, I've never tricky hunted myself. So, and I haven't seen that story. I'll have to look it up. Damien says, "Greetings again from London." I appreciate that you explain to your audience what you have guessed like Anna. And Dave on the show, personally, I'm not listening. Listen to anything involving Dave, but it is no reflection on you, totally fair, Damien. My question is about the Republican candidate for the 2021 election. Even though I'm British, I find the mere prospect

of a president, Harris, or even Newsom, very alarming. I've noticed there seems to be a shift recently, where there's no longer clear cut that JD events will be the era parent to Trump. My thought recently is that from a strategic perspective, it may be better to have Marco Rubio's the Republican candidate instead of JD. Goes on to say, "Do you think I'm completely off the mark here?

Republican." Also, I know this is a really old topic, but as a fellow Dawson's Creek fan,

I completely dispute the notion that the show was really pasty story. Yes, thank you, Damien. So true. It was Joey's story. We all know that. I mean, I guess at the end of the day, it was Dawson's

“story. But to the marker versus JD question, this is what I think this is actually real. My”

assessment is that the internal deliberations over this are actually real, just based on the sourcing and the scottle, but it does seem like there are people inside the administration that are really having this conversation. Whether they're super, super, super high-level people are not is an open question, but this is something that's definitely being talked about here in town.

I could see JD van Interesting. He's had enough of politics. He's not a career politician,

like Rubio, and he could get a huge payday in the private sector, racist kids, write books, do media. I don't think that's another question. If he senses that Trump may be favoring Rubio, and that donors may be favoring Rubio or something to that effect. You know, we'll see marker Rubio's really been on this journey or an evolution. And I say that not

“directly because I think he's sincerely changed his mind on a couple of things. I think that's”

something the left really really gets wrong about Rubio, and some of the populist right, too. But emerging from a job as Secretary of State, I would have to see what kind of candidate marker Rubio is to assess what it would mean for a Rubio presidency. Trump obviously thinks he's been a very, very strong Secretary of State. I think it's kind of hard to dispute that from the perspective of his political performance. He's been a strong Secretary of State. He's

managed to walk that tightrope between serving Trump and being appealing or having at least a good viable best as possible political message more broadly. So there's a lot that could happen for Rubio in the next couple of years. You know, also I keep saying, I bet Nikki Haley runs again, wouldn't track me. My pens runs again. I bet Ron to Santa's runs again. He might be more formidable than people realize if the tech backlash is strong and if the kind of mega corruption

backlash is strong, we're not going to know that yet, but obviously he would have his hands clean, having not been in this administration and having been kind of knocked down a peg by Trump. We just don't know how the Trump administration ends. So I can't assess totally the political climate and what it would be like at that moment. So interesting question, Damian. I do think a lot of people are thinking about it. Oh, another Dave Smith email. Think fan here. This from Olivia

I have been following you since you joined Breaking Points and here in an MK show, I'm 32 years old and grew up in and I see where left Rubel was the norm, but I found myself on the Bernie to Trump pipeline and growing more conservative in the wake of COVID/trans/left cultural stereo and accesses, but nothing brings me back to my leftist roots like a little US foreign intervention. I'm also a big Dave Smith fan and find myself agreeing with nearly everything he says, particularly when it comes

to American foreign policy. I was disappointed to hear that so many people had a negative response to his appearance on the show and having what seemed to me is very emotional responses, analysis of history goes on to point out to the Stroke's Coachella performance. I have seen that. Olivia

“and folks can go watch it if they haven't seen it yet. I think it is on YouTube and Olivia mentions how”

they put up a montage from CIA interventions back to most of the day in 1953 and Iran and then goes to Lemumba in Congo and the Olivia says the Stroke said also included an image of MLK Jr. along with text reading, US government found guilty of his murder in civil trial. Some food

for thought. I really value listening to your thought processes and you're always considered

way of explaining them. Thank you, Olivia. I thought the Stroke's video montage was really interesting. This is a great email. I'm so interested in stories like Olivia's because I hear them a lot. I don't think it's like a majority of the voting public, but that burning to Trump pipeline is also totally misunderstood by the media downplayed by the media and the left doesn't understand it. They have not come up with a response to it at all. Just look at how they treat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

was of course polarizing a controversial, but the left has not realized that many people see him as a symbol of what they have experienced politically and thus they look at the way the left treats him as the way the left would treat them or how the left looks as a sample of how the left looks at them and yeah, I think that's something they're getting wrong. I have just totally mixed feelings about the Strokes thing because and this is a little bit also where I disagree with them, but I also

picture matters too and it's so often from people like the Strokes that you just hear about the

“U.S. and never about the Soviets and never about the reality that Lenin and this was obviously”

huge disagreement, but that the Soviet Union was basically started on this idea of initiating the era of world socialism and toppling capitalist democracies around the world, capitalism around the world and then suddenly yes it was Lenin to Stalin, but suddenly that country is led by someone who comes out of that world and has a nuclear weapon and is you know you can

peel back a million different layers but after World War II the meddling started by both the

U.S. and the Soviet Union pretty instantly and people have different opinions on who started that but it started and from there it just kept escalating and escalating and so I do sometimes think it it's I don't know that Dave actually does this I shouldn't say that but I do sometimes feel like it's opportunistically punching the U.S. without considering the bigger picture of that makes sense like I feel like some people are just picking on the U.S. and in a way that's a bit

misleading or dishonest so maybe that's the gut reaction that I had to the Strokes Montage

maybe that explains why I don't like it because yes I disagree with a lot of those interventions

but also it was happening in this context of nuclear annihilation being brand new and having an enemy country or at least a country that was a stated enemy of world capitalism at its inception a couple decades earlier, suddenly with nuclear weapon in its hands so I do go back and forth on that and it sometimes it just hits me the wrong way because it's like the United States it's like a lot like the slavery discourse like the United

States is not the unique force of evil in world history there's some ways in which we're

unique but in terms of like being the unique force of history and and force of evil in world history

I just don't think it's close and I say that as somebody who thinks we'd downplay a lot of the bad that we've done it's it's just hard when you're in the kind of the the when you're in the daily American political space to have the kind of bigger picture conversational at the times you do actually just talk about the you just have to talk about America as it is right now so

“yeah that's it's it's a tough conversation but I appreciate that Olivia because I think we totally”

downplay a lot of the interventions that the strokes highlighted in that montage but yeah just sometimes it hits me the wrong way this person says it's kind of hard to understand this one it's from an a non had you guys on breaking points cope with the exponential dissonance of reconciling the things you were taught to believe with the hard truths of reality this is like tell Chris like authorized her to order every piece of ordinance the military has an inventory we immediately dropped on

Israel no I don't think crystal it's as if she wishes I think she's there no I don't want to speak for crystal but nobody wants a mass civilian casualties there's a lot of dissonance I think in the country right now post-COVID especially to Olivia's point you know people realize that the lessons of trusting institutions and authorities were leading them in bad directions so I think everyone's experiencing some dissonance right now not on that level let's see here Hank says Emily like a

Ness I used to respect David French so did I did by the way here's a national review piece from when he was sane not sure if we're open let's see it is yeah it's David French on authorities this was I remember this was a kind of a long magazine piece from 2015 Wisconsin Shane quote I thought it was a home in invasion this is after the crazy actin stuff there were Wisconsin conservatives who had their personal spaces invaded by authorities law enforcement it's a really crazy story like

“law fair basically against people who were in that space so yes I remember that I used”

follow everything David did all right Eddie says January 6 was an undeniably historic day not to diminish those events but I felt at the time January 8 the day Trump was banned from all social media would end up having a more long term impact I can so remember MSNBC and CNN even in April

carrying any speeches or interviews live your thoughts on the backfire of those de-platforming decisions this is a really really really good question Eddie it's how out of touch the belt way is with the public you know I remember you could like audibly hear the sigh of relief across Washington DC and January 6 because people like Mitch McConnell thought that they were

finally rid of Donald Trump like actually that is what people thought and it was always I think

ridiculous if you understand where the American people are on these things but I think actually what really changed it more than anything was the law fair that's the moment was it the I mean I can't even keep all of it straight but I think it was the Alvin brag filing you can pinpoint that that moment in the chart between the Santas and Trump and all of a sudden if you look at RCP it

“becomes like a yawning alligator mouth that's how Ryan Graham described it once between Trump and”

the Santas the Santas numbers start going down Trump's numbers start going up and he you know it started it I think one of the reasons Trump is really powerful is that he tells everyone they're wrong they're lying to you these authorities and institutions the media is lying to blah blah blah and then people will start implicitly trusting him because he's accurately diagnosing that and he benefits from that enormously and I think when a law fair started it really vindicated his

point that authorities were trying to use the legal system for political ends and so he starts looking right and more and more right and like he's onto something and is the only one because he's the premiere victim of it that can you know fix the country and and stop this so I feel like that it was it wasn't just the banning I think a lot of it was also the law fair that's really interesting

“I hadn't thought about that in a long time but thank you back to those days while it's crazy”

Duns says good to see Rachel and Annette's back on they always make for a good show

look like the live audience was about 150 I've seen it in 500 to 600 range after the switch to nine PM see a guest suggestion was it higher lower before I'd like to see you with more folks tuning in oh I would love to have more folks tuning in live yeah I don't I don't I actually don't really look at the numbers too much to be honest I think it is usually around like 400 sometimes if the guest has a big Twitter and they tweet it I'm trying to also get us live streaming on Twitter because we can just throw the

YouTube feed into X and so I'd like to do that too because some of our guest like Molly has over a million Twitter followers so you can get a lot of live viewers from that and yeah I think I mean it's it's super fun that the show is live and just the fact that it's being recorded live

“I think gives it its own energy and that's what I really like about it it doesn't necessarily matter to”

me that it's being consumed minute to minute to minute as it's airing so much as I love the energy that being live brings like even when we were trying to remember trying to air the Trump speech and we had these actual first technical difficulty with playing video that we've ever had and it was the one night we needed to play video live like it has worked for a year seamlessly but the one night we actually needed it because it was the entire like first half of the show

that because Trump you know made the speech he scheduled the speech right during the show

it was like the one time that it wouldn't work of course but you just always have that

you're as kind of an edge when you're alive because something had gone wrong or someone could say something really funny or really brilliant and so you just get these organic reactions and so to me yeah it'd be great if more people watch live but I just you know the bigger the audience the better in general to me I just like the energy of of taping live Ryan says do you follow any Wisconsin sports if so which would be your favorite team to follow I do follow Wisconsin sports

it's harder to follow baseball when you're out of market you know I'm not a I'm not like a diard baseball fan enough to pay for watching all the brewer's games but yeah my my dad never missed the brewer's game but for me like most Wisconsin I just will never miss a packer game that's a follow that I usually see the brewers when they're here in DC but packers always got to watch packers don't get to watch a lot of badger games but I will as a kid again those

badger basketball badger football never missed those my dad always watches every single one of them and probably I would say he probably would catch like depending on the year like 30 to 50% of the bucks games went to a lot of bucks games went to a lot of brewers games some badger games but yeah when you're out of market it actually is really tough unless you pay for like big sports packages so and you know there's not like people to talk about it with when you're

out of state either unless you're like around message boards or something but I definitely

every game we're oh wishing for the best for the rest of them though here's another one from

done with good midterm turnout in Virginia is a possible that Republicans could actually gain house seats that's interesting about the redistricting. Dems have diluted strength and nova to push strength through Republican areas if Republicans are perform can they hold their gain seats. I don't know because yes that's roughly true on the other hand a lot of those places those like rural areas some of them are more like suburban that have gotten caught in that

district because Northern Virginia is kind of it's kind of small and the districts are big enough to span more than just Northern Virginia but there are a lot of wealthy people even as far out as like loud and county and kind of like almost all the way down to Richmond to be honest I'm sorry to Charlottesville to be honest lots of Charlottesville talk this week because you're within

“distant the distance if you need to get there in a couple of hours or in an hour and a half if you”

need to get up some people just live further away and work from home two days a week or three days a week I've known people that have communicated from Manassas and West Virginia up to DC so I think there's still a lot of like rich lids in those other districts like I remember I was like Prince William County reporting in 2024 the week and before the election on early voting where I thought it was really going to be a battleground area and I'd have to look and see if this is if this

got jerry-mandered into like a Northern Virginia spot but it was a lot of let's say like affluent suburban-ish voters so I don't know it's a good question Hank said you did the nation of service by having Molly on tonight everyone should have her book on cavern all with Terry Severino on their required reading list yes so so true thank you Hank Eddie says one of my hobbies is to spite listen to left-rate and center truly awful public radio podcast itself right justly claims to

be heterodox but is anything but oh that sounds exactly right former NPR host David Green sits in the

“center chair I think I've heard this before you can imagine just how far left it tells that is so true”

so true uh it's always the the person who considers themselves center that is like so obviously actually

left um Eddie says my question is that the breaking point so there are any truly quality heterodox offerings out there why is it so hard to do this the right seems very open about participating on these shows but is really invited hmm trying to think of another one um honestly one of the reasons I love Megan show is that she's got people from left and right on and really like let's some kind of air it out like I thought the just on Iran the discussion with rich lorry and

Charles C W Cook that Megan had on I want to say it was Tuesday show um that was one of the if not the single best I think it was the single best uh debate discussion that I've seen on Iran since the

war began among conservatives like smart conservatives so I always like that um breaking points

“I think the secret sauce is that we're populist so what we fundamentally agree on is that the system”

is broken the system is corrupt uh and I started you know I was at the University of Chicago last weekend talking to some students faculty um and you know one of the one of the one of the things I was thinking of is that in the long term it's almost like you have it's almost like you'll have liberalism be the center um and then whether people are like anti liberal from the left or from the right is I mean let's so I'm trying to figure out how to describe this without saying left right and it'll

be sort of liberalism versus post liberalism if that makes sense and that's a kind of better distinction and the liberalism is really the centrist and you can be lorry case l liberal uh it sounds like this podcast pad cast host is like that um and be really far left on cultural things because they're not necessarily illiberal cultural things um you know if you if you pass the the democratic system some of these insane bills like in California um about crime and sex and gender uh it's

technically liberal and a lot of centrist who are just fundamentally lorry case l liberal classically liberal uh consider themselves to be centrist because they see the things they see the world that way but if you have liberal and then post liberal and reluctantly post liberal those might be

attributed to the right which is interesting because you think maybe pre liberal is the better

term for that but the and then the reluctant post liberal liberals are the people that are like why I'd love to liberal live in a liberal society but we simply do not it has failed therefore we need democratic socialism or we need um uh you know I have your handed moral apparatus um and one way or the other uh so anyway that was just a random thought that I didn't know

“was not at all well fleshed out it's probably the best way to put it is it'll be better to say”

illiberal liberal and post liberal more so than left writer center if that makes sense um and you know

I sort of I sort of consider myself relatively classically liberal because classically liberal

gets used by uh no if that's guys annoying libertarians who are sort of smug about all these different things and can bury their head in the sand but you know I think the founders were lowercase illiberal and uh I think we can put that's that's great I think it's a wonderful system it's not what did Winston Churchill say it's a terrible system but it's the best of the worse or whatever it's the best we have or something it's the the Churchill quote anyway um it is it's

really hard now because of algorithmic social media to do shows like mclockeling grip for example

just because everything gets clipped and your quotes get made up or taken out of context and then

someone gets social heat immense social heat for talking to you and then they get immense professional heat for talking to you because everybody is expected to react in the algorithm and I think so I can crystal just built up a really really thick skin um and they share that same foundation which all four of us share which that the system is broken uh and that our elites are corrupt

“and so when you show that foundation it's strong um and then you have to just also be you have”

to have a really really thick skin I mean the amount of stuff that crystal and Ryan get for talking to us they amount of stuff we get for talking to them uh it's really really really have to get get used to it and say I'm not gonna please everyone and there'll be a lot of people who say terrible things so uh I think that's probably wise is you it's really really really have to have a thick skin um okay Lauren says Lauren has a story about the DMV um this is that he

wanted to take a driver's test in Mandarin this is in Pennsylvania uh in someone then came out and spoke to the man in Mandarin um apparently to go take the driver's test I have no idea if that happens it would not surprise me if that happens I think it's insane that we don't expect language assimilation anymore and that we accommodate people who hire a story of someone who's saying they didn't want a particular person to uh face deportation

and this person I later learned I'm not even commenting on one direction either but this person but in the country for like 15 years and didn't really speak English it's like how does that happen it's only in like 2026 America uh because you can live in communities that you don't have to this is Spanish speaking person uh in a lot of parts of the country you can just live in communities where you don't really have to interact with only English speakers so anyway oh I don't know I

haven't heard that before it would not shock me but that is a real I mean that just drives me insane because to be a citizen a citizen uh you know did I talk about this in last week's happier this is a rant that I've found myself stuck in recently but to be a citizen means something it means that you are you have the privilege of participating in the constitutional republic that you have been blessed with entry into that gives you a voice it might not be perfect but that is a

“privilege and a responsibility to care for your fellow man and in order to do that you need to”

be able to communicate like most basic level communicate with your fellow man and you should work over time uh to be able to read the original language of our founding documents and of our laws and obviously for driving that's another question entirely uh and it's really frustrating you know to see non-English fluent people getting CDL's commercial driver's licenses and then ending up in racks that heard Americans but you have to I mean that's just the language element of it is so

S.P.L.C. have destroyed my own has been challenged because the framing of conservative ideas is hateful and more likely to subscribe to the late Dave Mason lyric there ain't no good guys there are no bad guys there's only human mean we just disagree yeah that's great but the constant conflation of conservatism by liberal media with ignorance hate fascism and racism racist the temperature of fever even in personal relationships that's a really good point can it's a

really really good point and I just want to linger on it for a moment to say um this is the experts right the S.P.L.C. were treated by the media as the experts in hate and extremism and so if you're in a personal relationship with somebody who is saying that you are fermenting or supporting or endorsing hate and extremism they could then turn to the experts and say well this is what

“the experts are telling us trust the experts sometimes you have to trust the experts but sometimes”

the emperor has absolutely no clothes and with the S.P.L.C. that was a bonnet nuclear even liberal journalists like Ken Silverstein pointed it out early as 2000 but especially in the 2010s so that's important that is a really really important point and I can see how that would have affected people's personal relationships um okay let's go here to the all right this is our Instagram questions Kyle hey my fellow Wisconsinite how about them brewers will they actually

go all the way this year fingers crossed uh have had my hopes up many times many times uh thanks for the question Kyle let's hope so I'm excited to see them play and then your future

here Tom says first off you're seriously one of the coolest people I think you mentioned you

in turn to work at the Ronald Reagan Ranch on California what was that experience like and what did you think of at California um so I worked and I'm selling the board of young America's foundation young America's foundation acquired the Reagan Ranch in the late 90s directly from the Reagan family and uses it to bring students up to the ranch to get to know Ronald Reagan like on a historical personal level and you know whatever you think of Ronald Reagan's politics Ronald Reagan is a human being

was fascinating had this depth that got completely um it's the right word to put it flattened by the legacy media and our institutions Ronald Reagan led a quote revolution uh Ronald Reagan was a

“a radical in some very good ways I think uh against the uh malaise um of the kind of post-neutral era”

the Carter era of the late Cold War and so I would yeah help give tours uh for students man it was like once they're twice a month uh for the couple years at least uh that I worked at yeah if I go there maybe once a year now um just for like different speaking things uh the ranch centers in downtown Santa Barbara it's right on state street uh so if you find yourself and like lower state streets so um really really close to uh the worth so if you know Santa Barbara if you

don't know Santa Barbara you got to know Santa Barbara it's the most incredible place in America um I stepped off the plane at the Santa Barbara airport for my first time in California it was like

2014 I'd always wanted to go to California and I was with my bus friend who's from California

we stepped out of the airport it's one of those tiny little airports we stepped out you look at the mountains and it was the perfect climate everything I just turned to her and I was like why would you

“ever leave this place just like trust me there are reasons uh but I think California is the”

most spectacular place in America uh I also the Florida and I love the heartland I love so much of the country uh and I think most Americans do like it's just it's just it's an amazing beautiful country but California is incredible and it has incredible history and and culture sadly horrible politics right now but yeah that was part of my work at yeah for the first couple years that I was on a college um it's a student organization founded out of the Reagan Revolution era uh acquired

young Americans for freedom about 2012 um I literally was a spokeswoman and you know you just go and Fox News talking about yeah for the like so I have some of this memorized uh that's why the the dates are so specific but uh you know I I left for journalism after a couple of years because I just can't stop myself from asking questions no matter for whom they're convenient it's maybe it's a problem it's a pathology um no I think you know I think it's a good thing to do

and so I'm always you know I can't just like stick to anyone's script basically even if

I really like those people or whatever it is um just I didn't I'm constantly questioning everything so I just always really wanted to be a writer and love media and so I left there a couple of years

the the history of the conservative movement and of Ronald Reagan who was really a very humble person there's a lot of misinformation when it comes to Ronald Reagan you know I didn't agree with Reagan 100% but some some things that really get glossed over about Ronald Reagan that you

can learn uh from a trip to the ranch uh which is just again it is always totally stunning you're

in the mountains the sand and as range and you're overlooking the Pacific mountain of the Pacific Ocean so uh it's good stuff love California um this is from constitutional libertarian who says I know you're not a constitutional lawyer even a lawyer but seeing how the democrats just passed the bill to the craziest redistricting ever when that is implemented after the next election I'm assuming do you think there's any chance of Virginia Republicans could have some kind of legal

standing for taxation without representation um this is a link you love the show and by the way in Dave Smith is 100% correct I don't know I doubt it I doubt it I don't think that's possible you know I don't think there's a good mechanism for that unfortunately interesting question Marlos says love Rachel and it is I can remember 67 year old Madonna desperately trying to be young truly sad now I'm trying to forget it my Hemingway is very insightful and must say I'm a bit bothered

when I hear her express that supreme court justice is her now made that seems as tone deficit so to my or calling out cavern off her being out touch many many citizens would consider their compensation and benefits life changing the SPLC indictment is a hopeful step in the direction of accountability yes yes yes yes maybe SPLC faced the same consequences they inflicted on the groups they harmed they really damaged their country now that is where I disagree because you know

what I don't want any violence to come to the SPLC and that is something they inflicted on the groups that they harmed but yeah no I don't think you were saying that but I just wanted to make that

point um it would never ever wish that and it was just truly despicable how they refused to

“pivot now on the point about supreme court dresses I think what Molly was saying and this is actually”

true of Congress it's like the least popular argument to make but um for supreme court dresses they could be making you could leave and make millions and millions of dollars elsewhere and so to really get public servants I actually think this is I really think it's some of what clearance Thomas did was wrong I think the media was hypocritical to freak out just over clearance Thomas but I think also some of it is totally normal when you're in the upper upper

echelon of success in American society you are surrounded by people who are literal billionaires who are for them like doing a favor with like an RV or whatever it's nothing and they make it seem like nothing um so some of that stuff is just like you don't even like necessarily think twice because they're not thinking twice I've seen that culturally happen um because to them it's just no big deal and when you're really successful you've just been a lot of time with those types of

people like look at all the academics that were hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein for example

“um and so I think the point that Molly was making is that they really compared to what super”

successful attorneys make they make nothing I mean probably like like a tenth of what they could be making in the private sector and they're constantly surrounded by people who are making that

or more and so to really I think first of all it would it would crack down on corruption in

Congress and in the Supreme Court if their pay was bumped up especially staffers it would create less incentive to go into the lobbying revolving door now you can only pay them so much you have to think of yourself as a public servant first and foremost you're not going to be making what you make in the private sector and that's to have the privilege of working on behalf of the public but um I do think that was the the bigger picture point she was making and that's I think that's

relevant because it is like absolutely nothing compared to the people who bend your ear when you're Supreme Court justice and the people that you're talking to and the like so I totally see

“your point uh Marlo I think the point Marlo Molly was making is that in the the big picture”

it's it does disincentivized people from staying in public service and people I think it's just it's part of the culture being really successful in America and even public servants themselves can can when you're in that environment it can disincentivize you from taking those positions I think that's very true about members of Congress if you have a bunch of kids or you live in a really expensive area there's something AOC has mentioned about having to have two

residences on I think she probably is at 180 or 200 thousand dollar a year salary one of which is in New York one of which is in DC two of the most expensive places to live now you can do it obviously you can do it um or you can sleep in your office which I also don't like for like obvious me too reasons that have actually happened because members sleep in their offices but they who

and they should probably pay them a little bit more too especially staff so that not a lot more

“but so that they're not constantly incentivized to go and lobby uh to just raise a family um”

you know it's DC's just really expensive to live in so in new way uh anything to to stop the

corruption to crack down on that thanks a lot for all your emails this week everyone appreciate it

“and some really good questions today thank you for listening I hope you have a wonderful weekend”

and god bless [BLANK_AUDIO]