“Happy Hour”: WHCD Shooting Chaos, D.C. Party Secrets, and Reckless Rhetoric: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Afterparty that we do every Friday here just on a podcast feed only so if you aren't a subscriber on the podcast feed to please do go ahead subscribe get every episode here if you'd rather listen to the podcast then watch clips or video on YouTube or X or Instagram or TikTok then it's great to subscribe to the podcast feed. I'm a big podcast listener so this is where I go through all the great emails you send into Emily at doublemakermedia.com live. I flag and my

inbox and then come back to them here so that it's kind of organic as I go through all of your emails and some of the comments that you sent in to Happy Hour all right let's see oh this is funny

“so this is from last week still about Dave Smith David writes and I think this came in just after”

I recorded last week's Happy Hour. I always recorded on Thursday evenings barring someone for

seeing a circumstance and sometimes I get emails right after the buzzer so David says after feeling like the last two Friday shows have mostly been people tracking crashing Dave Smith I figured there might as well be one submission that sends in their support for him you know there maybe I spent more time on the emails that were crashing Dave because I was trying to kind of talk through my own thinking but we got a lot of emails to people being like love Dave so much fun

having them on and of course I agree with that so David says for some reason the tax on Dave tends to be personal in nature or they are they straw man him and then the truth there's there's no such thing as an interviewer quote unquote platforming someone like Dave because he already has a following because people like him not because he goes on other shows sometimes people like him because it takes him to be proven correct and he stays consistent in his arguments

his message about midnight hammer lied about the reasons for oh wait he says his message about midnight hammer oh I'm sorry he says anyone with eyes can see that the war mongers and DC have lied through their teeth about midnight hammer lied about the reasons for us starting this war

“and lied about the trajectory of the war thus far the idea that you should only have people on your”

podcast that agree with your audience is insane and everything wrong with the world right now keep bringing on interesting people on your podcast because even though I don't agree with them and everything at the end of the day I might learn something and says this is like whoa cancel culture snowflake type nonsense I think all of us are conditioned to kind of act like snowflakes now and we have to constantly decondition ourselves to act like snowflakes and I say that because

I always talk about the social media based the algorithmic social media based epistemology like

in contrast to what Neil Postman described as the television based epistemology and contrast to the print based epistemology that he found superior I think we have been sort of treated like lab rats to talk to each other on social media and react to Dave and just basically when we're in virtual spaces to behave in virtual spaces with these really perverse incentives towards the extreme right so that's where platforming in theory you know I actually think that word has become so like it

makes me skin crawl when I hear the word platform because it has just been used and abused by honestly mostly people on the left over the last 10 years in relation to campus stuff but then it's come up from people on the right in relation to podcast stuff and it's just almost

always illegitimate but in theory right if you have your own platform now my platform is not as big

“as Dave's but if you have your own platform you should want to use it in a way that is conducive”

to the true the good and the beautiful right that's what your goal should be so for me that means I'll bring on people who I think talk in good faith like lots of folks don't like jank and Anna but you know most of the people that I bring on the show I've I've talked to like off camera and personally and I'm you know even if they turn people off when they're on screen depending on who it is I think they're coming to these conversations in good faith that's usually like

my kind of litmus test and you know not I won't be kind of prone to won't be prone to ad hominem or disruptive conversations that are distractions and and the like I'm just not into that stuff I think I've said this before but I've been asked to do peers more again a few

and part of me thinks it's at least good that we're yelling at each other now because for a long

“time you know everything was was very very siloed other than maybe Tucker's show on Fox News there”

wasn't a ton of left-right crossover you know there were sort of centrist stems like just Katar love but there weren't you know that you didn't have a lot of like real serious cross-pollination happening on any of these cable networks I used to watch tons of MSNBC and now I mostly watch CNN I go through phases to just kind of gauge what's happening over the long periods of time and it was it was like basically zero cross-pollination like MSNBC

would have I don't know like build crystal on or something like that and so I'm kind of on one sense like okay I'm glad that we can at least you know shout at each other and people are willing

to do it and they're not turning up their noses and being like oh never platform this person

therefore I'm not even gonna yell at them on TV but at the same time it's just not for me

“I just don't have that in me here is Katie who says I think you're getting ahead of your”

skis in your coverage of the SPLC indictment and indictment is an accusation that has yet to be proven you can indict the hand sandwich as they say and this is Trump's DOJ going after an organization he is beef with I'm not saying there's no there there but we're a long way from quote hard evidence the FBI pays informants and sometimes they help create terrorist plots in order to foil them so I have no trouble imagining a scenario where the SPLC was making themselves

look like they have a reason to exist because they're greedy how to read the indictment it doesn't claim a single act of violence or that the intelligence they gathered was false it alleges they paid informants through protected channels and didn't disclose that and they're fundraising you list as a complaint that they are accused of quote infiltrating other hate groups and stealing their documents why is that not reasonable action for a paid informant

not one of the single and green walls take on this he admits to hating the SPLC but he cautions again celebrating this indictment well Katie first of all I definitely like as we were doing the segment last week I had the indictment in my hand all marked up and I said that

absolutely read every word of it before we did that segment as you know I always tried to do so

absolutely read every single word of that indictment and again was referring to my verbatim copy on my desk well I did that segment and if you're a paid informant quote infiltrating other hate groups and stealing their documents that's illegal that is illegal that is not a reasonable action for a paid informant unless it has been sanctioned by the government now Katie's absolutely right that the FBI pays informants this was a huge conservative complaint about the

Gretchen Whitmer plot and about January 6 now this is controversial when I say it I was

“reporting live from the capital grounds on January 6 and I do not believe the FBI I believe”

without FBI informants let me put it this way I believe without FBI informants January 6 would have proceeded as it did now we know that there were FBI informants in different capacities on the ground on January 6 and having infiltrated the groups that were there leading up to January 6 so I'm really not confident or comfortable just calling it a fed plot or a fed selection because I was there and I saw a lot of you know very normal people who were definitely not

informants I talked to them I was in the middle of the throngs of people for a very long time and it was not manufactured it was organic and I think we cheat ourselves to think anything else about that because we should understand that there is a very organic rage on the right about what happened during covid with you know Pennsylvania voting for example in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court people were really really mad and a lot of that was natural did not need to be stoked by the FBI but I don't support

the FBI infiltrating groups period there isn't an interesting possibility that the SPLC was potentially working on behalf of the FBI when it was orchestrating these paid informants conduct we have no evidence of that right now at all the only reason I say that is the FBI historically does infiltrate extremist groups or quote unquote extremist groups sometimes it's people who are doing the Latin mash at their Paris sometimes the FBI decides it should

infiltrate Latin mash parishes that did happen during the Biden administration but typically the FBI does that and as the FBI is under Biden and I think probably early in Trump 1 maybe

started to more closely resemble the very partisan definitions of those ideologies that the SPLC was

embracing doesn't seem impossible to me that the FBI would have kind of tacitly or covertly outsourced that to the SPLC. Now I have zero evidence of that it's just possible now if that had happened I imagine there would be evidence of it that cash betell Todd Blanche were aware of before bringing this indictment and I kind of think if that's true it's unlikely the indictment would have been brought unless they're trying to burn the Biden DOJ and the Biden FBI but Patel has been

pretty intentional about saying they were going to infiltrate Antifa with informants

during Trump 2 so I don't know I really don't know and that segment you know I was abundantly

clear I did a whole section of that segment on what the government still needs to prove because the indictment doesn't connect the dots between the money being transferred and then the SPLC's intentions right it alludes to the intentions but it doesn't kind of connect the dots it's very strong in my opinion because of the bank records um now the SPLC's is denying that this was you know in moral or was on a order in any way and they're saying it's being taken out context

by the DOJ maybe they'll have a case to make there's it's really hard to believe there are a lot of

“there's a pattern over more than a decade of transactions going from secret SPLC bank accounts”

two people who were part of these extremist organizations which it appears that the DOJ has pretty solid proof that the people were called field informants and we're in this group that group and the other group they name the specific groups they show the specific fake bank accounts and they track the payments going from those fake accounts to the people affiliated with very specific groups on the dates so that is really strong evidence what it's not it is really strong

evidence legally of the why element and it's interesting that the DOJ lawsuit here is specifically focused on fraud right like this this pattern makes it unlikely to me that the SPLC was just kind of had people on their payroll who turned out to secretly be part of extremist groups like in a weird way maybe extremist groups had actually been infiltrated in the SPLC and that's because they they think pretty clearly reconstruct this bank account scheme and it's over many

“many years so I think it's a pretty strong case that the SPLC was up to no good whether they”

can legally prove fraud is going to depend heavily on what we hear from the SPLC and I just want to reiterate the respectfully of course that I did make that point in the original uh the original episode and kind of went out of my way to say what the government has to prove because that is certainly part of this but for my perspective it's you know I actually hadn't listened to what though I haven't listened to guns up to so I listened to most of what Glenn says but I haven't

gotten around to that one yet um he's a is a constitutional attorney so it's I'm sure we're listening to but I have seen a lot of people saying you know it's not it's not strong legally uh evidence of fraud until we kind of see more of what the government has I tend to agree with

“that on the question of like fraud but on the question of whether the SPLC was up to no good I think”

it's actually pretty strong evidence of that all right let's go to Hank who says after the twisted reaction of so many educators to Charlie's death no one should be surprised that the White House Correspondence Center shooter turned out to be a teacher I fear this isn't going to end well Hank thank you and just thank you to the number of you who immediately after this correspondence center assassination attempt emailed that night to say hope you're okay hope you're okay

that was I mean it was really cool so many of you reached out so quickly so thank you

I do appreciate it I was not at the dinner um I always kind of refused to go to the dinner

it wasn't bite into the dinner um but I just kind of oppose it in principle uh I'm also not why that's corresponded but I I kind of oppose in principle what the dinner has become as the sort of spectacle of inside inside or DC politics and elitism so I always resist going to

a professional benefit to being there you see it's so many powerful people uh kind of in one

fell swoop so like for networking purposes great stuff but I was headed to that sub-stack party but as I got in like car uh hey my brother text maybe being like whoa um and just asking if my boyfriend was okay so my boyfriend is a White House correspondent and he was he was there and uh the reception was terrible in that ballroom because it's on the lower level there's so many people in it and uh it seems

“like wherever you're close to secret service there's really better reception I assume has”

something to do with bandwidth um I don't know but people were having a hard time communicating and getting out that everything was okay so it was a scary couple of minutes but pretty quickly we realized everything was all right got to uh the entrance to the sub-stack party actually got like a black away from it and the entrance had just been closed because it was right across the White House and I was saying on X this week it was like truly my dream to be locked in that party

for hours with an open bar because it was like Michael Tracy fighting Jim Acosta like just

incredible stuff that if you sort of appreciate uh the media industry as someone at a zoo

appreciates you're looking at a zebra for example then it would have just been a dream come true just open bar and uh Jim Acosta fighting with people so I was a little bum to miss that but uh Ryan Grimm uh tell me he was holding up at a bar uh I don't know a few blocks away so the whole 17th street was all closed here in DC so I had to walk like five blocks north and then five blocks south again to get around what was like one block away uh to meet up with with Ryan um and his wife and a

couple others actually but there were there were a few minutes where it was uh or it was touching go thankfully we knew pretty quickly that everything was was all right in terms of uh you know the

the shooter being apprehended the president being okay the cabinet being okay uh everyone there

being okay uh so that was a blessing absolutely um the teacher part of it is interesting because we've seen a good number of kind of white collar um self perceived vigilante vigilante is like um acting in these ways I mean the the whole discourse around this guy has been that he's like a centrist shooter and and something just doesn't quite sit right with me about that because yes the guy was uh on blue sky for example re-tweeting kind of what would you call it establishment

liberals like it's like Jim L. Booey didn't seem to be a leftist leftist but at the same time you know anytime you kind of a point yourself John Brown which this quote unquote manifesto

“which is really just like a extra long iPhone message I think it was literally an email um”

you're you're you're kind of issuing the centrist label when you decide to be John Brown because there's there's something ideological about embracing vigilante justice that obviously it's an interesting mix with kind of centrist complaints like manjioni just sort of impossible to describe politics but I feel like maybe that's actually the take away here is that more and more American politics are not left or right and that just means more

more of the people who are radicalized are not going to be neatly left or neatly right you know like the anarchists who goes for McKinley like very easy to kind of classify that um but that's that's maybe my sense um and the white collar part of that is is interesting as well to Hank's point here is John who says I wonder what do you think of the idea of debanking the SPLC we saw this happen in the U.S. Trump's family and allies after January 6th and if I recall and Canada after the

protests there seems like the SPLC cases an example where this may be justified unlike those cases I cited although the moral crimes the SPLC perpetrated in funding racist hate groups are getting all the airtime the actual crimes seem to be the financial crimes involved setting a bank account's tied to fake businesses to pass the money along to the hate groups um why would any reputable financial institution want to be associated with them after this both for who they

were paying and the fraud there accused of committing in regards to banks and to donors to Banking seems to me to be justified here uh John goes on to say late to the party on this but I'm no Dave Smith family since I saw him listed as a guest I skipped that up his own muscle on the opposite side of a lot of things from an exparian but we'll listen to her when she's on the difference being she's not smart me it doesn't hide behind the facade of being a comedian when

“challenge that's why I had to stop watching all the fake news shows like the Daily Show”

way back when they were pretty funny in the beginning until they began to take themselves seriously when convenient to them and completely became completely one-sided that's such a

report mean co-bearer it's now such a good example of this but they always wanted to say

“conservatives would point this out all the time back in the bush era but they always in the”

Obama era they always wanted to say oh I'm just a comedian and then um hide behind that when it was convenient but when they were being treated like statesmen like great thinkers of our time they were always Kenny or or I shouldn't say that because comedians are always great thinkers like good comedians are at least but when they were being treated like heroes um political heroes they were happy to kind of accept that praise now I don't think Dave does that but you know it's due to their own

on the SPLC debanking point I just don't I think banks should be like telephone companies now certainly if you commit financial crimes there should be the due consequences to that and if there is evidence if the SPLC is convicted of financial crimes then they should face whatever

“the consequences are of that absent a guilty verdict it's probably the best way to put it I believe”

that banks should be like common carriers right like internet companies and phone companies they I hate the ideas especially that big big banks would have the um prerogative to just say well no we're done um again especially big banks who you know essentially have from the FDIC to the way that they're uh to the way that dot frank set up actually many a lot of this has been the banking infrastructure but but to the way that they're set up now that uh they basically have you know some

federal guarantees like it all kinds of government privileges I don't I think they should function basically is common carriers um as Clarence Thomas suggested for big tech um so I would say no unless there is a a guilty verdict um I wouldn't want to encourage that but this is kind of the big question on the right now it's like you know if if Republicans let Democrats off the hook forever for not using the broadcast airwaves and the public interest then why shouldn't

bring in car go in there and say all right well this is on the books like you know no Republican has really gotten mad at Democrats before for spreading false information on a broadcast

network that almost always benefits the left so why aren't why shouldn't Brendan Cargo in there and

uh you know talk to Colbert and Kimmel or Kimmel particularly in the wake of the Kircus assassination implying that the shooter was a conservative in a joke I don't know I don't particularly like any of it but the politics of that um it's you can see where people are coming in this like kind of blood loss um Eddie says thanks again for this little show exclusively for podcast listeners it's such a great way to start my weekend and for some reason feels really intimate I love that Eddie

uh Eddie says Emily my very first thought upon seeing the comments of the WHCA shooter manifesto was of your campaign for the accuracy of language the quote rapist pedophile trader line and it was jarring I remember the importance really hit me hard during your clarifying explanation of your presser question about alistophonic con mom Donnie age of hottest just wanted to congratulate on your wisdom and urge you to keep going and it feels more important than ever and he that is an incredibly

kind email I can't even tell you how kind of that is because um you know it's a lonely point to make

it's definitely like a both sides point and I always try to use my questions uh you know when

you have the privilege of speaking to the president I try to use it in a way that's I remember explaining this at the time uh that other journalists who kind of have blob group think in one direction of the other won't and this question of alistophonic calling Zara Mamdonia Jihadist

“hadn't really been talked about much uh and so that's why I ask that question because it really”

drives me nuts um it's especially drives me crazy when conservatives who spent the better part of the last decade rightfully deriding the left cascading the left for inflating the definition of what is racism what is bigotry what is sexism and what is violence right silences violence speeches violence and the like then turn around and say I'm gonna inflate the definition of what a jihadist is to include this muslim mayor of New York City who you know is is constantly

and not asians it constantly but is is intentionally has intentionally whether you like it or not spoken out against anti-semitism and going to synagogues and had Jewish outreach programs

talk about the kind of red green alliance but uh typically that would be a hard thing to square with

“jihad so uh I just this is one of the most important things I think in all in politics I think”

it is a symptom of the algorithmic social media based epistemology as we already talked about earlier in this episode and I've talked about it all the time I think social media drives us to use extreme language because we are being programmed uh to use because we're being programmed to respond to the incentives of the algorithm which are uh it's a price extremism right and so extreme language hot or cold um is how we're starting to be programmed to talk in campaign speak in media speak

both of the both of which take place and on social media and I really really hate it and uh you know the the rapist pedophile stuff it's just I mean it's just I don't know like I don't like Trump's relationship with Epstein I don't like certainly don't like the way Trump has talked about women in the past um but yeah the the I guess evidence of of rape and pedophilia is certainly far from definitive to say they're very least and for so many people I guess to confidently adopt

“that label I do think that's been uh absolutely uh mistake of course I think it's absolutely been”

a mistake and as we use that language more more when it's sort of thinly predicated uh you know it's now become acceptable I think because of social media to use the thinly predicated extreme labels uh yes you're gonna be more more likely to justify Luigi style Luigi Manjee style vigilante justice against people like Brian Thompson and I should probably just stop saying

Luigi and always refer to him as Luigi Manjee owner you're maybe not even used this name but uh

at this point uh I can't control how popular his name is so uh for the sick of clarity it's probably still worth it so thank you Eddie very much for the email I appreciate it uh Hank says Thomas Massey's on my ex page right now talking about an amendment he has to a bill that would defund the kills which is mandatory after 2026 remember you doing a better old radio hours

“segment about this a while back maybe you should revisit the issue a man Hank thank you um you could”

probably still find it on the internet there's a brilliant professor at Hillsdale College named Matthew meen brilliant one of the most brilliant and fascinating people I know and back when the Biden White House passed this bill Democrats in the Biden White House passed this bill might have been 2022 if I'm remembering correctly and one of their big legislative packages there was indeed a provision that mandated new cars I think it was after 2027 have a kill switch

installed in them and meen was only one of the only people who noticed this and we did this sort of his a professor this is a very deep philosophical episode trying to sound the alarm about how profoundly anti-american it liberal and sort of anti-human this was and I was just enraptured by Dr. meen the entire time and I'm so grateful to him for raising the subway back then. Matthew was one of the only people talking about it back then. Chip Roy has been

on it forever they were two of the loudest opponents of it this week as it was raised again I'm

always always happy to revisit it we did a breaking point segment on it uh Ryan and I did a breaking

point segment on it um yeah you know the tech stuff isn't always what the after party audiences is most like keyed into but feel free to send me emails a few think I'm wrong about that I try to make sure that I'm hmm what's the right way to put it um make sure that you know if I guess an issue is is I don't know I guess I guess we we talk about very deep things on after party and I can't stop myself from talking about tech stuff I just sometimes worry that I overdue

the tech stuff everywhere that I am uh and so I try to be too careful about that but for me it's almost impossible because everything I think about I think about through the prism of uh technology so maybe we should get a guest on that maybe we should try to get Chip Roy on uh that would be great. Mary sends um an essay that says we live in a world of liberal privilege I would really like liberals to understand what they're putting us through in the two different countries we live in I am

not seeking dominance for conservatives but a country where debate is open to sentence protected and my son can grow up speaking his mind without fear Mary writes about how her husband's family has a story of immigration from Greece that her great-grandfather came from uh what is now Slovakia that her husband um is an engineer and that they live in a democratic district

basically now live in two different countries well I certainly agree that we live in in two different

“countries now uh Mary I think that is a very good point and what Mary is really bringing up uh I”

think is best described by Erin Ren who I love uh Erin Ren's sub stack is excellent food for thought so if you if you haven't subscribed it's it's Erin a a r o n Ren r e n n brilliant christian thinker and writer and Erin has what he calls uh the positive world and the negative world and this is really a formulation for christians um the the negative world which we live in now and I'm not going to be able to remember Erin's verbatim definition of this but the negative

world is basically a world where christian cultural norms are no longer dominant and I think about

this a lot because my perspective of as a christian is that christian history is the history of uh sort of being minority and persecution uh minority status and and persecution I mean

“scripture is a bonnet and clear that you should not be um you should not love things of this”

world that you should stand out uh salt right of course light um that you should you should stand out from darkness and you should be different from the world because the world is falling so I think that's really the history of the christian faith and of individual christians and I think what we went through just in the last uh I'd say maybe like a couple hundred years um maybe more than a couple of hundred years but it's been kind of an aberration uh from that history worldwide obviously

there's you know constant in and then uh what happens when christians conquer Europe um although much of the christian world was under Islamic conquest uh kind of at the same time uh and and the remain you know a huge number of christians in africa now um and in china uh some many in the Middle East still that are are persecuted today but in the the west um we became accustomed to the sort of positive world where christians were in the driver's seat of government and that was abnormal

and being in the negative world is sort of the normal condition for the christian um uh and that's

“a very interesting way to look at it and I think it's a very helpful way to look at it um and the kind”

of classical liberalism that merriest demanding I feel like it's like it's a great baseline right like we just want tolerance um we want liberal tolerance classical liberal tolerance and and that is a great baseline um I'm just sort of pessimistic or maybe I would say like realistic about human history and I don't necessarily expect that we will get back to a baseline level of tolerance for a lower case of orthodox christianity and that to me you know it's I what is there's this line

and the Lord of the Rings um which by the way I haven't led or I haven't read I'm sorry I have only seen uh but it is a funny line I'm trying to find it I just asked for it um yeah here it does I wish it need not have happened in my time said Frodo so do I said Gandalf and so do all who lived to see such times but that is not for them to decide all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us and I love Tolkien I love CS Lewis I love Tolkien and Lewis I love

the Hobbit for whatever reason I found Lord of the Rings impenetrable um and I think that's a male versus female thing and every time I say that I get a couple emails from women being like I love Lord of the Rings um and that's wonderful uh I love the Hobbit and I'm sure Lord of the Rings

is great too but I always have to watch rewatch the movies this is my boy friend is a Lord of the Rings

aficionado and that line was like a gut punch the last time we watched I think it's the first movie I wish it need not have happened in my time but Gandalf replies so do I and so do all who lived to see such times but there's not for them to decide all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us yes I wish it need not have happened in my time but I suppose we can all be Gandalf and say so do I but we have to do but the question is what we do with the time that has been

given to us thank you Mary um Richard says I really something last week we need to bring back the purple walk in the 80s and 90s those were big it gave people a sense of closure even if the person didn't get convicted most were fine with seeing a person quote get what they deserve today's new organizations push the trial of the verdict in the incarceration they need the content uh we can't

embarrassment if the American people can't get through the real justice give them what they really

“crave great television video clips and a great story to tell the next generation so what's”

interesting to me about that uh I can't coincide that Richard but what's interesting to be about that is just from a media angle we were kind of even doing public you know people in the stocks or public executions public hangings for many years leading up to like televised per box like

Lee Harvey Oswald right um that's it it's there's always been sort of not always but there's a history

of that being the public shame it this exercise a steeper public shame being baked into uh the the punishment that we definitely don't really have anymore I don't know whether that's uh good or bad but it's an interesting point Scott says I'm interested in your thoughts on pod taster Jordan Berman started out as Jordan is my lawyer before rebranding as unbiased uh I don't know Scott I have never heard of Jordan Berman may have to look Jordan Berman up Howard says I certainly enjoyed

your latest program with Michael and Abida Alfonso as with many of your guests I'd never heard of them before but what a nice looking and sensible young couple a wonderful change from the images you see of so many young people at college protests who look like complete psychos uh I don't know what has changed the direction but I hope you wins Congress could use more normal people the place seems to be filled with lunatics yes aside from the drama this year is wondering if you have ever

been to one of those White House correspondent centers and if so were you thoughts fun or annoying um I love the guy this way you kept enjoying a salad and bothered by the chaos those no surprise to find you was a New Yorker this has surely been a bizarre week uh I don't know what is where dangerous the woods was gone so the party circuit in DC definitely the party circuit in DC um

no I've never been to the dinner itself um I do always go to like one or two

sometimes more uh of the kind of ancillary parties the parties that are held around the dinner mostly the conservative ones there aren't a tonic conservative ones but uh sometimes you know you'll get like I guess maybe not conservative right word I don't know but like I was going to the sub-sac one this year that wouldn't be called conservative and I did go to a YouTube one this year but no I again I said this early in the program I I don't go to the dinner um just doesn't feel

right to me um the some of the parties can be can be fun but a lot of them I mean it's one of the times where the embassies have good parties um I wanted to go to one of the Irish embassy this year but uh the debate that we aired on Wednesday with Ryan Graham and Scott Jennings was kind of at the same time so unfortunately uh please take out your tiny violence for me um I didn't get to go to the Irish embassy and have what I'm sure was uh similarly wonderful beer

“and worshiping but that's what it is I mean it's like journalists lobbyists and politicians and”

their staff at these embassies or like venues that cost tens of thousands of dollars to rent sometimes in black tie but you know dressed up eating canopays whatever that I think I'm using that we're correctly I don't really know um and citizenship pain it's just it has gross so I know people that go to like probably 10 parties over the course of three days I already feel bad enough going to like to so I try to limit it but you know sometimes like you they're so many like

just really gross social events in DC year round that again if you're journalists you really sort of have to go to them to make it worth it living in DC like you you have to kind of meet people who you can talk to and get an accurate sense of what's happening in Congress or what's happening on K Street or what's happening uh in the freedom caucus or in this world of that world corporate world whatever uh and if you don't do it you're frankly out of the you're out of the loop I mean

there are ways to compensate for that but uh it's also really serious work so I'm not going to complain if people want to like throw me a free drink everyone's in a while uh but you all probably know that about me anyway uh let's get moving here uh some of the parties are good though like they're amazing venues and you're just like wow like the sub-sac party was going to be at um a museum and I was like thought it's just so cool a great team of some amazing museums here in DC

and people who live in DC never go to them so anyway uh that's my justification for

partying all right Hank says good show last night with a video a Michael you ran at the end making it clear the person who committed terrorist act was a person blame that someone else's rhetoric was spot on uh as you said speech is not violence and defining it as such not only does enter the language but leads us down that slippery slope to government censorship yes yes yes sir uh Hank was on

“to say I think it's worth looking at the problem of political violence to the lens of what's known”

as a key part of the entrapment defense a defendant is judged not guilty if he she can prove but for the actions of government the crime would have never been committed uh can we show

would have never happened probably not impossible to prove the counterfactual uh Hank says but I

fully believe it's be true and it's approach all of us should consider when launching a rant about one issue or the other uh you know it's interesting like this is kind of what I was getting to at the end of the episode it's that two things can be true individuals can be blamed and probably should be blamed uh for inflammatory rhetoric that creates an unduly tense political climate and people who contribute to an unduly tense political climate are not responsible for inciting the violent actions

of any individual even if uh you know it's it's like Trump on January 6 who said to go march peacefully but also said that the election had been stolen uh you know like I did not think that Trump uh quote incited I don't think you can say that he incited legally incited violence

“I can say though and somebody may disagree with me but I can say that I think it was it was reckless”

the way that he described the election and I was actually at his speech at the ellipse um I didn't find that particular speech to really even be what caused uh the the riot on the other half of on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue um I think that had been brewing over many many weeks uh thanks in some part to his rhetoric but uh you know that Trump literally said don't

be violent so he's a peacefully so anyway I do think these distinctions are critical because

as soon as we get away from them uh then you can say like on the left I think you can make the argument that the left is responsible for quote social murder over climate alarmism and I made that comparison uh to the the brine Thompson case uh as as Hassan was talking about social murder um it's people quibbled with it but uh if climate alarmism is you know causing uh the mass displacement of farming livelihoods across Europe for example and farmer suicides um that

that logic goes through some really really really dangerous places because you're creating down

“the slippery slope of broad definitions rather than narrow definitions uh and so while I think”

as I said in the episode the people primarily to blame uh you don't get to sit at the top of a broken system and then blame the people who are acting out about the system being broken for acting out without changing it right you can blame them be like this is a immoral violence uh but then you still have the uh you're talking about a spec and you have the plank in your own eye um so two things in me true basically is where I come down on that here is another one from Katie who says

one of you caught Greg Boven's recent interview with border hawk news quote our culture is definitely in jeopardy by those hundreds of millions of foreigners that as you say don't care about your culture that's means a greater threat than a violent criminal or a terrorist Greg Boven until the

New York Times that before he was fired he had a plan to deport 100 million people I wrote

to you about this before but I think it was worth noting that this image is still up on official data just Twitter account no one has apologized and it seems to me that we need to reckon with this

“as an official White House policy uh so Katie I do remember going back and forth on this I think it was”

around the Minnesota ice uh controversy and I remember at the time saying I don't think that this weird meme DHS put out it's a guy in a car or it's a car literally parked on a beach and it says after an old car like a mid-century car it says America after 100 million deportations and in I remember at the time I think saying I don't think that's official White House policy I don't think the president has ever said that I don't think anyone's ever introduced legislation to that point

now Boveno uh you know was a representative of this administration um and the administration was certainly treating him as that before he was before he was fired so I don't think it's unfair Katie to point that out um I still think it's it's probably a fair distinction because you know any individual lieutenant of the president can say whatever a hundred million I don't know what the hell they're doing with that to be honest I think it booms everyone to use precise rhetoric at all times

let's do open uh fair policies up to criticism unnecessarily so the hundred million number would would would involve like denaturalizing probably millions of Americans and people make arguments for that um I do not like making arguments for that at all um but yeah I I don't here a serious Trump administration policy like Boveno freelancing is one thing and I think it is Katie entirely fair to your point uh to be like that is coming from an official before he was fired

and he's repeating it and he's kind of popular on the immigration hawks among the immigration hawks

I guess mainstream adjacent to it I don't know if that's that counts because he was uh let go

but um there's someone who's who's kind of popular in mega circles uh saying something like that

“so I think it's entirely fair to say that people have to reckon with it uh I don't think it's smart”

to talk like that at all I also don't think it's official government policy um this uh looks like it's one more from Katie who says it's hard to listen to this couple I think referring to Michael and Evita talk about political violence as if it's a problem specific to the left the example she gives is Stalin and Mao let's not even leave this country and let's talk of the political violence at the sixties you could talk all day about whether political violence is

on the left wing or the right wing and you're going to come down to the fact that it's both crazy

is on every side but it is especially hypocritical to defend someone from political rhetoric when

they're easily the person in our society with the most violent political rhetoric of all Trump's rallies in 2015 were violent and he spoke on camera promising to pay the legal fees for anyone in his audience who can knock the hell out of anyone who booed he raved about a congressman who body slammed the reporter in a debate he told the proud boys to stand back and stand by the guy you're interviewing compares Trump's speech from January 6 to the crowds outside the

correspondent's dinner seeming to forget the crowds at site congress had a hangman's new setup Trump kidnapped Maduro planning to take Cuba next to his fisherman blown up in the water he threatened to end a civilization forever killing over a hundred pretty school girls quote tweets a suggestion that anyone who does not agree with his conditions in a wrong talk should be murdered from blam bram rarer runners murder on the fact that he made people angry

his followers cannot clutch their pearls when someone says something nasty piss the guy notes they have a big Somalian population nearby there's no accusation fraud that he's aware of but there's a daycare center nearby wow so despite no accusation defraud their race in fact they need daycare enough to make him think it better be checked out catered to that point I would say no the massive Somalian fraud worrying right next door I mean if you know northern Wisconsin

you know what he's talking about it's really close to Minneapolis and so there was this obviously massive Somalian fraud ring vast majority of perpetrators were Somalis were talking about a single digit non-Somalian but you know what were talking like 70 Somalians that have been or Somalians have but I think charged not just indicted but charged in these cases so no I don't think that that's just the fact that they're Somali is evidence enough and there's

“daycare there's evidence enough I don't think that's what Michael was saying at all I think he was”

saying they're literally within you know a quick drive of a historic fraud operation run by their own immigrant community which is very very very close net so that I take zero issue with at all I don't think it's it's fair to impune any il motive at all I think it's it's important for the left to reconcile with the kind of tribal politics that were brought into the Minneapolis area you will hear Somali say this openly and critics within the Somalian community of what happened

Casey Magen I think is his name who worked in the who worked on fraud in the governor's office and was writing about this years ago saying that you know some of the the tribal politics that were brought over they're just different from the American system and caused the the welfare

system to be abused basically so I think that's I definitely don't think that's fair it's political

violence question I'm definitely against I've been against the Missouri of South the Cuba South the Fisherman stuff the ending civilization forever the the school that was immediately struck on the first day of the war um the robberiner stuff was super gross now does this take away the ability of the right to critique the left no I don't think so actually because of a poll that I discussed which shows the the economist you go full from September I was taken September 12 to 15th

2025 and it found by far young liberals believe it is quote sometimes justifiable to use political violence

“and it's not even like not even close among conservatives so I just don't think yeah I think”

everyone should be able to and and should be fair in evaluating Trump's rhetoric I have no expectation that politicians will be or people right for office it's just not how politics works and it sucks and yeah I don't like it I think everyone should I don't expect them to be but I think the moral thing to do is to evaluate Trump statements fairly across the board with statements on the left I get the literally versus seriously stuff Trump's supporters Trump's critics take him literally

Trump's supporters take him seriously I get that I don't think that really isn't excuse

is that Trump's fault because you know he was engaging and again I don't like it I don't

think it's particularly becoming of a politician to say like go beat that guy next door up but

“or whatever I think that's you know small potatoes compared to some of the other stuff that's”

that's mentioned here but I was just having a conversation before I taped this happy hour about what I think might be one of the big differences between 20th century communism and fascism and I think with fascism a lot of the state violence was external so it was perpetrated on other countries and in communism a lot of the state violence was internal and committed against its own civilians so Lenin and Mal being really good examples of people who said it is necessary to sacrifice

x percentage of the population in order to move to the next level closer to the utopia right closer to defeating capitalism and I actually think I mean like there's it's not a perfect comparison obviously fascist sacrifice a lot of their own in war but I do think that's a I don't know that's that's my working theory of the day because I was literally just in conversation on another podcast

“before I jumped on this one and I think that's maybe we'll get more emails about it an interesting”

distinction this is Eddie emailing about the podcast left right in center I guess apparently Beauvard in Rich Lowry were panel members but then we're deemed too far right for the show I haven't heard about that I'm not sure I'm not sure maybe I'll ask Rachel about it Chelsea says back in 2020 I remember seeing the insufferable governor crunching Whitmer Michigan having a little eight six four five charged key on a table in her office when she was doing interviews

I found it so gross back then it's clearly something she'd either made or at least purchased swine no scrutiny for her I'm attaching a photo I have not seen this before not that I remember at least I guess it would have been six years ago roughly so I'm not sure interesting question yeah the eight six stuff has been it's interesting because like the origin of it the origins of it go back to like restaurant

lingo but I guess people have had different exposures to it like the only context I've

I've never worked in a row I guess I worked at a concession standard a day camp but I've never

worked in like a restaurant restaurant restaurant and so I've never heard it used in the restaurant parlance but I've heard it in the context of like kill take this person out and so they're just people have had different experiences with it and anyway so it's still a wildly goofy thing for the former FBI director to be posting he knows to some people that means kill anyway let's see how it says don't they usually declare a winner at debates I thought

Scott was the winner for sure but he's part of my view so I guess I can buy us what do you think I must say your debate was very civilizing pair some of the more firey ones for the two people obviously hate each other buck laborers of a doll I hope you will do some more of these Ryan and I moderated a bunch of debates over on breaking points like a couple years ago we were doing it almost a debate a week and I love moderating debates it's one of my very favorite things to do

because as I always say I have more questions than answers so for me it's really fun to be in a position

where I am trying to test stress test people's arguments I really enjoyed doing that so I appreciate

“the words Howard the kind words Howard I hope we do more of them who do I think one you know I”

think Ryan made deeper points so I think Ryan won on some of the deeper points and I think Scott won on some of the more like contemporary political points if that makes sense I think Scott Ryan could have been stronger on like policies like current policies like what does his rational immigration policy look like you know why then isn't the 8 million people in three years during the Biden administration a rational immigration policy that's a I think a question that I'm increasingly sort of distrust

politicians on the left to answer because I don't think they have a good answer for that and I think Ryan kind of openly is like it's he had a great line in the debate that I thought is a really honest way to approach the question that it's it's not an ideological or principal based question it's it's kind of an epistemological not epistemological it's it's a what's the word he is he had a great word for it but it's it's kind of a practical pragmatic question about population of the country

but it still leaves a sort of policy question on answered whereas with Scott I don't think you fully answer the deep question in the same way that Ryan did about what it means to be an American and participate in the American political project I do think Scott stumbled with the student

“deportations because I do like that it's I'm a conservative I think the administration's policy”

on that with Remesa asked for asktirk Khalil's a different story asktirk I mean someone on a visa

I think she was on a visa either way a student who criticized investment basically said that

tough should do BDS I've asked for Mizzreal as many you know anti-Israel students have been doing for a long time and then got detained like just pulled off the street if you've seen those curly footage of it it's is somewhat chilling by mass agents of the state and put into a card detained and then prepared for deportation I do think that's kind of hard to defend and gets at this question of why shouldn't somebody who has that belief why is that a threat to national security because then that means basically that

other people who have that belief who are American citizens are a threat to national security or could be a threat to national security just by virtue of holding that belief or if not then that needs to be explained and not just like well we already have enough problems in the States why would we bring in more people who don't like the United States but it doesn't prove that Austria of course doesn't like the United States and so you can you can see how that sets a precedent

that would then apply to US citizens and I just don't think that that kind of core question of Americanism was quite answering the same way that Ryan at least said questioning everything basically is the American way so may disagree with that but I just think Ryan had a kind of big

“picture take on that question where is the policy question I think it was sort of the other way around”

but it was a ton of fun again I love debates and I think Ryan is really one of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life he is so well read his historical knowledge is just

always he always has sort of surprising historical parallels at the ready because he

reads so much and I really really enjoy that and he's always open-minded so just anyway I think the world of Ryan so Scott was a there's a particular phrase I want to use but Scott was a total team player and came ready to do good out in good faith and I really appreciated that so and we all had great conversation backstage so it was all good so David said take on Scott Jennings to the extent that each of them have to have an indefensible arguments they struggle for Ryan as far as the

topic was related to the boat by an immigration surgeon especially the case of violent crimes

“supply illegals his only option was to dodge the question for Scott as far as he defend is defending”

Israel's capture of the U.S. government immediate hap versus whole argument of quote is this good for America that is his throughline for the rest of the debate interesting David says unfortunately for Ryan this is a debate mostly by the immigration where the liberal position recently has been pretty weak if this were a debate about Israel for example Scott's neocon position would probably do pretty poorly you know I kind of had a sense that we were going to end up talking about

the the student deportations and I actually think it was fair for Ryan to bring that up in context of the immigration because again I do see some of that as like a chilling precedent for U.S. citizens right if it can be made in the context of foreign citizens the proper argument would really be to make some type of argument that student visas are for I don't know are just like not for protesting the government that allowed you to come to the country and that's a hard argument to

make because a lot of times these people are just criticizing the Israeli government but if you can find people criticizing the government I actually think that that gave them you know entrance to use its systems and to use its its many wonderful resources I'm totally open to talking about that but it's not quite the argument that was made so I was okay I actually think it may perfect sentence in that context to bring it up all right let's see we got a couple more here my list says

where are your thoughts of some of the attendees at the correspondent striker trading drinking straight from the wine bottles isn't that classy I thought it was awesome I thought that was fantastic

because they were kept there forever you never know when you're in one of those situations when you're

actually going to get out because of secret service it was unclear whether Trump was going to

just stuck in limbo everyone scared or has to like everyone scared people need to kind of calm

their nerves and you've been in a room cooped up in black tie and you don't you have no certainty

“about what the rest of the night's gonna look like I think of for it so so good on them I thought”

it was funny that was funny Erica Kirk sort of was like horrified that there were 10 bottles of wine at each table I don't know if that's true but truly I mean this no if that's to Erica Kirk that is I thought it was sort of funny that Erica was like wow horrible that journalists had 10 bottles of wine at a table I was like man I would have been horrified that maybe journalists have a 30 bottles of wine at a table for three hours but if you find 10 journalists at a table for

three hours you know it's that's standard so it's not that she's wrong it's just that journalists are well I was gonna say bad people I think that's kind of fair oh my goodness

but anyway that I'm I'm joking about that but it's one of the first things I noticed was

just the extent to which in in D.C. the extent to which the city revolves around alcohol so much of your work in D.C. occurs after 5 p.m. and that's certainly true if you're a journalist that it's certainly true if you're a lobbyist and of course because that's when lobbyists and politicians spend their quality time together you know it's just true across the whole city so you know it's really exhausting to constantly I know it sounds crazy but it is really exhausting to constantly

have to you push yourself to go to this rubber chicken dinner to meet these people you don't after certain point you can you know start saying no but you still have to do some of it and you just notice how much of it is booze fueled and it's definitely not healthy so I don't think like I said I don't think Erica's wrong um did you hear representative Gill asking abortion activists their favorite method read the face act to broke my heart but it was very effective

“amen uh I think I get branded Gill on he's he's had some real moments of of courage and if you”

haven't seen this clip yet they have abortion activists in congress and Gill uses his time to ask them what is their favorite method of abortion and does not let them slip out of the question instead uses his platform to go through examples of abortion methods very graphically in a way that the public is not often exposed to and the clip went pretty viral and I thought it was very effective uh how about Spencer Pratt's commercial drop of Karen Bass's house in his I thought

it was very effective it was effective although air streams are pretty bougie now so I I was wondering how much that air stream was I don't know if it's an old owner new one but uh Marlos has a feeding her husband give me hope that young conservatives can stand for issues that impact Americans the most like I said at the beginning of that episode sort of hopelessly biased when it comes to them even though I'd detest politicians sort of across the board and and parties but uh you know I personally

know if you'd like to beat a lot and I haven't spent a lot of time with Michael um but Evide is a deeply good person um and back when Evide was going to connocia we referenced this in the episode to do reporting back in 2020 uh I remember I dealt a little bit as her editor with Evide and Michael

“and I remember one time I was on the phone I think they were driving to connocia and I remember”

being a phone and just being like Michael if you need to take care of her I don't want you know like just take care of her I'm very glad you're there but take care of her and um if memory serves I was very impressed uh by Michael Marlos says that the debate was very interesting I'm a big fan of Scott Jennings not so much for crying Grimm I thought that Scott was prepared for an Alice's past Dito's a presence and planned for the future if Elf Ryan was in the weeds of sub-stories

of individuals maybe he will be better prepared at the connore earth minerals debate time will tell that's hilarious Marlos we'd to talk about uh sort of sarcastically uh we'd to talk about a connore rare earth mineral debate because we somehow uh wandered into a discussion of that let's pull up and we have a Instagram question um I think shania says I love to hear your thoughts on Lena Dunham's fame sick I love your analysis on HBO Girls TV show and we totally love it if you did a rewatch

podcast I'm scared to rewatch girls um this is a great question thank you for sending it

I'm scared to rewatch girls I've wanted to do a rewatch for a long time but uh I'm I always

sort of procrastinate things that I think will overwhelm me uh and this is one of those because I feel like it's just for the type of coverage that I do going to be a variable buffet of uh kind of fascinating um I'm sorry like data points almost about what's happened in the sort of politics and

things where I I don't feel like I was right about everything but I sort of feel like I nailed the

“girls at the time um and so I've been a little bit like hesitant to open up uh this Pandora's”

box again and it was just it was so good it was so good um and it also aired at the time of my life where I was kind of at the Hannah Horvast stage of life meaning I just like it was on when I was late college and then graduated college um and so it was you know like a lot of people who it coincided with that sort of time in your life it's just very uh I just have really good memories of kind of watching with my roommates and I have memories of a uh kind of being the um what's the way to

put it the atmosphere of my early 20s like the kind of climate of that coming of age period and you know I've still lived in a big city uh graduated college and it was working in media um so there there was a lot going on and uh it's not that I don't want to like disturb those memories but it's sort of just like I genuinely feel like I'll be um overwhelmed with nostalgia and uh overwhelmed

with you know data points basically as to what's happened and that's always uh for me at least it's

like all right this is gonna be a big thing if I do it it's gonna be a big thing uh so yeah a rewatch podcast would be awesome but so many people have done it I actually before other people were rewatching girls uh I at first thought it was too early but I was literally on the cusp of doing a rewatch podcast uh back when I was at federalist with uh someone who I can't say it was but we were so close to actually doing it like a week away um and uh this person got another job whatever so it didn't happen but

before anyone was doing the rewatches we were literally about to do one so uh I was kind of regretted not doing that because then everyone else flooded the zone but maybe maybe I'd love to do that I haven't read famous like yet yet but now I know I have to because one of my uh normal friends who doesn't work in politics or journalism told me that they were reading it and that it was very good and at that point I was like okay well now I have to uh so I will keep everyone posted

I guess I'm I thought it's on un-famed sick because I'm really excited to uh get into it now there aren't a lot of great millennial writers unfortunately and it would not surprise me one bit to find out that Lena Dunham was our great millennial writers some people get really mad when I

“praise Lena Dunham I think Lena Dunham's like an amazing human being I'm saying Lena Dunham is an”

interesting person and that her her art sort of effectively and artfully conveyed a representative experience millennial experience and I find that useful and of course I find it moving so it I'm not saying that it's like perfect I think it's unconsciously conservative and I

think that's what I've always found so compelling about Lena Dunham is that as she is trying to

advance the cause of progressive feminism unconsciously what seeps into her work is this conservative naturalism almost again I'm not gonna spoil the last episode but I talked to somebody the other day a zoomer who had just finished like within 24 hours the finale of girls and I was like pretty conservative right and they were like blown away they were like yes I couldn't believe it but you do sort of see how the show builds up to that and I don't think it's intentional

“and I think that's what's so interesting about Lena Dunham is that she writes really good”

she's very clever and she can write a great joke that show was cast really brilliantly just everything was great writing was great acting was great casting was great and she's super clever like technically it's it's good it's it's awful in a lot of ideological ways but then there's this kind of unconscious beating heart of the plot that is unintended again like it's it's unconsciously conservative not even anti-liberal but or anti-progressive but

conservative so anyway that'll do it for today's edition of after party as always thanks for

hanging in there with me I really enjoyed doing these episodes for the podcast listeners it's fun for me to not have to worry about the screen and the production and all of that and just it really is I think Eddie said it feels intimate I hope so because it's literally just my laptop is open my microphones on and I'm here in my office and I've got a couple coffees so that's probably why I want extra long today because I have a lot of coffee all right thanks

of everybody for listening the email address is Emily at levelmakermedia.com we will be back with more after party on Monday see you then have a great weekend god bless