After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky

Left’s State of the Union Freakout, Trump’s Media Strategy, A New Path to Citizenship, PLUS Don Lemon Sued, with Mark Hemingway

7d ago1:12:4213,087 words
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Emily Jashinsky opens the show with a look at what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is saying about immigration and a possible pathway to citizenship for roughly 11 million people. Emily argues th...

Transcript

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All right, everyone, hello. Welcome to Afterparty. If you do me laughing, that's because I know the live viewers are probably

experiencing for the first time ever.

Afterparty is going live late. It's 9.07 PM. I'm traveling. I have to tell you for the sheer volume of work travel that I do. It's shocking to me this the first time it happened.

But the team here at Afterparty guys, I'm telling you, they are total proes, they worked with it. And here we are 9.07 PM, so grateful to them on nights like tonight. Grave talk of you as well. Hope that you're able to subscribe on YouTube wherever you get your podcast.

We will have a brand new edition of Happy Hour, of course, this Friday. And I am so excited if you see the guest already to bring in in just one moment. Mark Hemingway, I can't wait to have Mark here. He's got a big new investigation into Portland from his home state of Oregon.

We're going to get into all of that in just one moment. The state of the Union fallout has been absolutely wild.

As we were prepping the show, producer Kelly said, I think this is the highest number of

videos that we've pulled on any other afterparty show. And I have to agree. So a lot of firsts happened here tonight before we bring Mark in. I wanted to jump speaking of the Sydney Union to this clip of Chuck Schumer. The reason I wanted to cover this, obviously, sent up my noority leader Chuck Schumer.

There is no one to cover this is because on afterparty, just recently, you heard me say, ask yourself, what immigration policies, Democrats would replace the Trump immigration policy with. They all were happy to go along with the Biden immigration policy for years to support it and to criticize any critics of the Biden immigration policy.

So now that they have a closed border, but a president who is doing an admittedly very harsh nasty portation scheme, and one that I think has had its flaws, of course we've covered

that here many times, what is the Democrats' counter policy?

What would they do if they got power? Would it be better or worse than what we're seeing now? Here's Chuck Schumer talking about the Democrats plan to tackle illegal immigration. What would an immigration deal look like between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate? Well, we had a good model in 2013, as you may remember, by partisan, John McHale and I

headed the gang of eight. We had four Democrats, four Republicans, including Marco Rubio's now gone to the other side on this, but we could come up with a bill like that. It toughens up the border.

It gives a path to citizenship, a long tough path to citizenship, for 11 million people

who are here. It allows high-tech people who are needed in our industries to come in. Roger said his plan is the gang of eight bill from 2018, so my camera is freaking out as I told our production team tonight, everything that's gone wrong has everything that could go wrong, possibly is going wrong, so just one second folks who are going to get

it fixed in all of you listeners are like, what is I'm only talking about?

Everything's fine, but all right, so Chuck Schumer there is saying the gang of eight bill from 2013 that electrified the Republican base, because it basically would have been a policy like we saw with the Biden administration. He's policy that creates myriad poll factors, people that there we go, folks, there goes

the camera one more time, we're having fun tonight, give me one second, so what happens

we do live shows on the road, all right, we're back, we're telling what's I going to take the camera and pump it down a little bit, all right, so Chuck Schumer is his entire plan for the border is to do the gang of eight, the gang of eight bill, I'm going to recalibrate the camera here where we talk a little bit, everyone knows my passion is life streaming, but listen, we do a very professional version of the show, just one in the middle of the

Chuck Schumer rant, we do a very professional version of the show, one that's more like traditional media, I could be that they're doing a sonpiker twitch every day, lower production value, but this type of stuff, it's water off the ducts back, oh, let's say though, Chuck Schumer's integration plan openly, so the 2013 gang of eight bill, which has done the water with Republicans, would be dead in the water with most voters right now and completely, completely

predated the Biden surge and the Biden surge was the experiment where we saw like

Policies of those nature actually canned out, like they got to experiment wit...

cell policies, albeit not through legislative bodies, but they got to experiment with that during the Biden administration, and it was a crisis, it was a disaster, so I wanted to cover Chuck Schumer saying that because when Democrats are actually pushed and forced to explain

what their alternative to Trump is, I think a whole lot of voters end up in this terrible

cost benefit analysis situation where they're like, well, that doesn't sound like it's much better to me, so let's actually on that note, go ahead and take a look at this Daniel Dale fact check, I'm going to pull this up for you all, he is, you remember him CNN, he had this crazy post state of the union fact check where he said this is media, it's right up, CNN fact check, Daniel Dale dismantled President Donald Trump's explosive claim that former

president Joe Biden's open borders led an 11,888 murderers using the federal government's

own data and noted those numbers include people who entered the country under Trump's first

administration. Okay, I guess that's a fair point about the precision of the language, but this is what Trump actually said, under Biden and his corrupt partners in Congress and beyond, it reached a breaking point with the green new scam open borders for everyone they poured in by the millions millions from prisons, from mental institutions or murderers, 11,888 murderers that came into our country, you allowed that to happen. So it actually was not just addressing that at Biden,

if we're being very technical, that was also addressed at Congress more broadly and I think it's entirely

fair to say Congress allowed that to happen. Congress could have passed the bill, Biden was begging Congress to pass the bill and the bill they came up with was a super liberal children horse. We've covered that here on the podcast many, many times and so again, Dale goes on to say CNN that Trump's use of the 11,888 figure was quote a wild distortion of federal data. The number he explained, according to media, refers to non-citizens who entered the U.S.

over several decades including during Trump's first administration and not just under Biden, people who were convicted of homicide, Dale said at some point, usually in the U.S. after their rival and then replaced on what ice caused the non-detained market, usually because their home countries wouldn't accept them back, and even they're actually in prison or jail right now. Okay, did you hear that fact check? The fact check is literally, yes, they're here, but they're in prison.

That's fact check. Yes, they're here in the country, but they are in prison. You're paying for their entire life, but yes, this is a, this is a, this is a big gacha again. So I wanted to cover this before we bring Mark in because we've been talking a lot on the show about, and in questioning, raising, I think, questions about the ethics of the Trump administration policy, immigration policy,

and about the process. But it's always important to remember that what Democrats are going to

revert back to is going to cause so much more suffering is going to cause another mask humanitarian crisis because of the poll factors like citizenship from the gang of eight bill. If you remember all the way back to 2013 as Chuck Schumer was just talking about. So it's, it's more of keeping all of that in mind. All right, we're going to bring the great Mark Hemingway in just one moment, but let me first say small businesses are the backbone of the American economy, but getting

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are pulling in $20,000 a month in revenue, apply now for up to $500,000 in same day business funding at Cardiff.co. So Cardiff.co/emaly, again, that's Cardiff.co/emaly, real growth, real funding, Cardiff, Barrow, better. All right. Time now is to bring in the great Mark Hemingway, of course a senior writer over at real clear investigations. Mark, thanks so much for being here. Hey, glad to be back. Um, are have you enjoyed my technical difficulties?

I've never had technical difficulties in my hands, so I can't imagine what you're going to

make for me, Pearl. I know. It's one of those things that Mark, you just can't relate to, but you know, I'm actually out here. I won't say where, but with your lovely wife. So that's fine. Very nice. She's a nice lady. Yes, yes. I almost went with her, but, you know, life gets on the way. Wait, Mark, that means we could have been doing this live in person. All right. Well, you know, how do I know? That's so funny. Okay. Well, we have a lot to get through with the city union and actually

One part that I want to start with is Abigail Spanberger because Mark, you're...

attention to the Spanberger administration, although it's only what like two months or what like a month and a half old at this point, she gave the Democratic Party's response to the state of the union address a very, very interesting, a very interesting choice, given the way that she's chosen to govern over the last month and a half as we just mentioned. So, Mark, I want to point your post up on this screen. This is F1. Mark, you tweeted, this Spanberger speech can basically be summed up as I am a Democrat

who's moderate and normal. He's believed I am moderate and normal. Before we take a look at the clip, give viewers just a little taste of why you point out, Spanberger is utterly desperate, desperate to convince people she is moderate and normal. Well, you know, that was how she sold herself

for governor. I mean, at the end of the day, I think solidly a blue state because of northern

Virginia's growth, you know, the previous Republican governor was a bit of a COVID fluke, basically. But at the same time, it's not like a crazy progressive state at all. You know, people in northern Virginia are very educated and very much concerned about the property values. You know, this isn't like some big urban, you know, environment where you can get away with being a Democratic socialist

in Virginia. So, she sold herself that way, but the problem is is that, you know, even though the

voters in Virginia, I think are for the most part moderate Democrats, the interest groups in the Democratic Party are such that you can't govern that way. There's so much pressure to do radical things in migration on taxes, on all this other stuff. And I see no evidence whatsoever that she's trying to resist that, but she's also very ambitious, right? There's talked about her running

for president, right? And this was a big, highly profile spot. And, you know, as we saw at Davos,

where Hillary Clinton and other people were saying, well, maybe the Democrats went to foreign immigration and stuff. Spanberger very much wants to be seen as a moderate, even if she's not governing that way. And she gave her speech in a very sort of forced way trying to highlight, you know, kitchen table issues. And I don't know how convincing it is. Yeah, because I'm just trying to think like a normal human being, watching Abigail Spanberger,

who is calm, and by normal human being, I mean, somebody doesn't work in journalism. Uh, she's just trying to project the sense of calm. It was a really normal atmosphere behind her flags, podium, and the like. But there's also something that's just a little off about Abigail Spanberger. She's a little bit of a charisma vacuum. Let's take a look at this clip. This is going to be S3 Abigail Spanberger. Oh, I'm sorry. Not S3. This is going to be S10 Abigail Spanberger.

He's enriching himself. His family, his friends, the scale of the corruption is unprecedented. There's the cover-up of the Epstein files, the crypto scams, cozying up to foreign princes for airplanes and billionaires for ballrooms, putting his name and face on buildings all over our nation's capital. This is not what our founders envisioned not by a long shot.

So, I'll ask again, is the president working for you? We all know the answer is no.

Uh, what do you think Mark is the president working for you? This is CIA's Abigail Spanberger.

Well, if you have to answer your own question, um, which she did throughout the speech, you're like,

is the president working for you or is the president or so that? And she would always answer it in the context of the speech. The answer is, and I just feel like if you're that forced in terms of, you know, writing a speech, then it doesn't come off as terribly, you know, confident or anything like that. It was a weird because it was following Donald Trump, who was this, you know, whatever you want to say about the guy you may not hate him or love him, but he's kind of this master of stage craft and

presence and everything. And she responded by giving the most ordinary milk with toast for getable speech, basically, like, you know, this could have been democratic party rhetoric from 20 years ago, which I guess she sees as an advantage because she's trying to just think of herself as somebody who's not, you know, a radical progressive. Um, but it's also true that you're just right about the, you know, in order to sell, you know, a speech like that that has a lot of, you know, milk with toast content,

you're right. There's this charisma vacuum there. In fact, I've been interacting with, uh, I've been interacting with Abigail Spamber as a constituent, I guess, primarily through the press and reading about her and things that she's written, uh, the things that she was, she's

reading about things that she had said and things that she had done. Um, but I had never, like seen

any sustained video of her until last night as crazy as that sounds living in Virginia and following these things closely. And I think Abigail Spamber has a real Hillary Clinton problem in that, uh,

Another one.

But like, repeal the 19th Amendment. Yeah, um, no comment. Um, but, um, I think she has that same

problem that Hillary Clinton ultimately has, which is that there's something about her that reminds

people of like a junior high-vice principle, um, you know, telling you to eat your spinach or whatever and, you know, what to do and this and that. And I just don't think that she plays well in terms of charisma and, you know, I don't know. It's, there's something about her that I find sort of very, sort of off-putting and, and, you know, and sort of, it's like she's talking down to you basically. Yeah, and I know we're going to get into this and the segment where we talk about your new Portland

investigation, but, um, my friend came to Katie Pavlich posted, as Virginia Governor Abigail Spamber claims Democrats with a party of quote of fortability. Democrats in her state have proposed the following taxes for course costs on regular Americans, dog walking a grooming tax, got an ammunition

tax, new income tax brackets, storage facility tax, drive food tax, home repair tax, new personal

property tax, on electric leaf lowers and electric landscaping equipment. Like, if I were a Hillary Clinton trying to sell on the agenda like that, if I were her strategist in 2016, I would have been like, we're cooked. Like, this is crazy. This is Janet the Spamberer agenda is crazy outside of Northern Virginia, which is so densely populated that she gets away with it. And then Demes want her to give the city the union response? Well, I think maybe she's hoping

that she'll appear modern because she, you know, she, she can maybe kill some of this craziness

or whatever, you know, at least I think that's what a lot of Virginians are hoping. I mean,

when you look at this like, you know, it's a joke among Trump voters, you know, I voted for this because, you know, the voters are so aligned on policy, you know, even some of the stuff that Democrats receive is radical. And voters are largely aligned. Trump voters are largely aligned on say immigration policy, whereas with Democrats, it's like Abigail Spanberger gets elected and it's like, who's the constituency for a new tax on gym memberships? I mean, seriously.

Like, that's a real proposal right now. Like, who voted for that? You know, Virginia has this thing called a car tax. Um, that they basically tax you on the value of your car. It's been hated for years. The legislature, both end Republicans and Democrats have talked about getting rid of it. The Democrats under Spanberger are talking about extending the car tax to lawnmowers. I mean,

it's, it's bizarre. Who voted for this? That's incredible. Well, but here's the, here's the

real problem for Democrats. Spanberger triggered blue sky. We could put F2 and F3 up on the screen.

Some selection. I think Tim Carney pulled this from the examiner, a selection of blue sky reactions

where people are complaining that Spanberger, why is it the colonial capital? Incredible stuff. Like, just, I'm trying to find a good one to read. I mean, they're all pretty good. Here's one from someone named Jack. The more I think about this choice for Democrats to robot SOTU was Spanberger and Colonial Williamsburg. The more it reads, it's just an intentional kick in the face that just about everyone who has voted for Democrats in the past and a direct appeal

to maga light. It's incredibly insulting. Mark, did you find that to be a direct appeal to maga light? Again, it is America's 250th anniversary and Democrats are trying to appear normal. So a Democratic governor in Virginia giving a speech from colonial Williamsburg to highlight that it's the 250th anniversary of our country. The idea that that is triggering to some significant percentage of the Democratic base and it upsets them is just absolutely insane. Look, I don't

know what is going to happen in the midterms. Midterms are often just, you know, low-turn out elections where you drive out your base and maybe Republicans will get clobbered but when you look at what Trump did at the state of the Union last night where he's highlighting like genuine American heroes like that Coast Guard swimmer who saved 100 some people in the Texas floods or the Special Forces helicopter pilot who, you know, completed that Venezuelan mission with four bullets

and number whatever and you look at how, you know, Trump is out there celebrating me like the absolute best of America, USA hockey, you know, you know, coming down the aisles. I mean, when you get into a truly national election like I don't know how Democrats are ever going to win a presidential election again as long as they have the significant part of their coalition that absolutely hates the country and it doesn't take, you know, doesn't miss any opportunity to

let other people know that this country is rotten and they don't like it and they want to rebuild it completely from the ground up. I just don't see that as a winning proposition.

Yeah, you know, I think the midterms are just in, that's just the politics of the midterms are

different, of course, the politics of the state of the Union or state of the Union response. Obviously, both are to some extent geared at clarifying party messaging going into the cycle

These are based turnout types.

normian independence but you also really have to electrify your base and so that's where, you know,

if you're going with Abigail Spamberger, you're not necessarily checking either Fox but she's

like they're, they feel like she's the best option. I don't know, I wanted to get this clip of Joe Scarborough rolling for your reaction mark because here's how Scarborough reacted to the Trump State of Union. Or a couple of things that I thought were extraordinary that you wouldn't see

in the other state of the Union. Unless they were Donald Trump's. The first, of course, was just

the unrelenting bigotry, the lies, the attacking of one group specifically, the Somali Americans. That's the sort of thing that, oh, you know, I'm not going to talk about fascism or Naziism. You just read history and see what type of regimes will pick one or two groups and blame all of America's ills on those groups. That's one of the things that the president did. Another thing that he did was it's generally talking about immigration. Again, it's un-American. It goes against

what the Republican Party is always stood for. It's gone against what Ronald Reagan's stood

for and this continued lie and it is a continued lie by this Republican Party and they know they're lying when they continue to suggest that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than those who were native born Americans. Okay, so there is dispute on that last figure mark, but we don't even have to get into it to say that him characterizing the argument as big it is exactly why Trump succeeds. It's exactly why Trump succeeds. You react to the state of the

Union where Trump is calling for in front of the entire country. It's not like he's just talking to the base on Joe Rogan or whatever a Tucker show. He's literally making a completely condense pitch that Democrats would have embraced 20 years ago on immigration and the fact that

the opposition party oversaw a billion dollars per one estimate of fraud in the state of Minnesota

perpetrated by a relatively new immigrant group. Incredible. Yeah. Well, and the other thing is this, it's such an insane straw man that the media have erected that keep going back to this talking point about, well, illegal immigrants actually don't commit as much crime or a crime at a rate of the same rate that regular citizens do that's actually less. That's completely beside the point and completely misses everything that people object to, which is that any time, any illegal

immigrant commits a crime, it's a crime that didn't need to happen because they shouldn't have been here in the first place. It's such a simple thing to understand and this applies to so many things across the board, whether it's car accidents or whether it's taking up public resources, all these things where people understand that illegal immigrants are not exactly an unalloyed good. In fact, there's a strong argument that they take a lot more than they've given to this country.

You know, and further, look, nobody's against immigrants. I mean, it's totally insane. I mean, the Trump administration is still very much, you know, allowing people to apply to immigrate to this country. It's just that there's a process and we don't let 10 million people cross the border, which is a whole thing that, you know, people on MS now or what of the heck they're calling it now,

have, you know, never bothered to atone for. It's just totally insane. What did they think was

going to happen when Joe Biden let in 10 million people? It was going to, I could have told you, it was going to cause a lot of problems, and it was going to cause a political backlash. And here we are, and you're screaming that it's bigoted to complain about this, just makes you look further out of touch. Yeah, no, that's a really good way to put in. It's like they're stuck between the rock and the hard place of their own making. The fact that the base is characterized by people who would get

upset about Abigail Spanberg or for a number of reasons by the way, you know, people are even, like, leftists are predictably mad at Gavin Newsom because, again, we're going to talk about this when we talk about Portland, but they're, they've gone so radical because Democrats have normalized a

lot of that. Like, that's what the trends pill was. Like, if we're using the matrix metaphor,

like, that was a sort of blue pill that you can go fully post-battern. And now a lot of like 20, 30 somethings in the party have, and their leadership positions, and they work in the media. Let's roll sunny Austin on referring to illegal. That's 17. Language matters. Keep, you know, saying that people are illegal. illegal aliens. That really matters. We haven't used that term for so long. Now it's back in Vogue. You are not illegal as a human being,

just because you're undocumented. And so that for me felt dehumanizing.

I, I disagreed with you yesterday, Joy, when you said, you know, the Democrat...

They shouldn't dignify this type of performance. And I disagree with you. And now I agree with you,

because like you said, someone like Ilhan Omar, who fiercely protect is protective of Minnesota's and Somalians. In particular, she gave him that moment that he wanted. Mark, I'm just going to roll through two more clips. So people got to full some sense of what the response was here. Joy Reed was the MC of an alternate thing. I have to watch more of the

view. Oh, you get to. Don't say you have to. You get to watch more of the view. Mark, this is a privilege.

It's, it's not going to be the view, actually. I'm going to enjoy Reed. So even better. I know it's sort of more up your alley. There's Joy Reed at the alternate event where Congress and Democratic Congress people actually attended this alternate alternate event. That's why you saw some empty seats if you're watching the city and in the last night or saw the clips. S 14. Attention all mega trolls. And with apologies to the pastor who gave the invocation,

your bullshit is not welcome here. And to paraphrase one of my favorite actors in the world, Robert De Niro, I'm going to slide in paraphrase him. Oh, y'all. We're here to hear the truth and to hear from impacted people, not to see or hear from you. So go back and pay attention to your orange line friend. Okay, we're back to doing the orange thing. It's 2017. We're back

to dropping the F word. Like it's really subversive and edgy. And finally, Mark, I'm going to

make you watch because you're an Oregonian. Representative Maxine Dexter was Portland Frogs, the blowup frogs that you saw at some of the NT for demonstrations against ice and against cops and recent years. As 12, let's hear Dexter. I'm a mother. I am a physician. Oh gosh. I have a few listening to this. You're missing out. And I am the proud representative for Oregon's third congressional district. Yes, thank you. Thank you. And tonight, I defied Trump. And his

authoritarian project by standing in joyful, radical, peaceful resistance with the Portland

Frog Brigade. Yay. Okay. Well, this is, I think it's true of Bulls or Publicans and Democrats

and I'm curious to get your take on this that they're both thriving right now because of lesser of two evil politics because people are going to the polls. And you have pretty, pretty steady bases. You know, the fifth avenue voters for Trump and the blue no matter who voters for Democrats. But also, there's so many voters who are like, I'm going to be voting against the craziest people that I'm seeing right now. And I have no idea why so many thought it was a good idea to put

texture and joy reading out there. Yeah. I don't know. I'm in basically at the risk of you

batting me into more sexism. What I got from those clips is that the progressive movement really needs more in preparatory harpies just to really, really seal the deal to win over the public. Yeah, I don't even know where to begin. I mean, it's a whole group of people that don't realize how out of touch they truly are. You know, the frog costume thing again, if you're listening to this in the podcast and you weren't, you know, privy to that, is really just, you know,

it's so ridiculous. And I don't know why they think it's fun. I don't know what their deal is. By the way, if you know anything about the real story of how the frog costume started, there's literally like a violent anarchist that wears a frog costume. It has hurt people and has like a criminal record or something like that, if I recall correctly. So the idea that that would be a thing on stage with the Democratic Congress is, you know, very questionable, especially

if you know anything about the, you know, the fall of downtown Portland essentially. And in the same time, this notion that it is somehow shocking or upsetting to refer to legal aliens, which was, you know, the term of art for decades and decades before, you know, very recently, you know, in the last ten or fifteen years some news organizations decided, you know, responded to pressure from activist groups, not to use it in favor of undocumented, whatever that means. And it's just,

it's ridiculous. You know, you don't get to like, you know, constantly change terms just because you're losing the debate. But that seems to be sort of a democratic strategy right now, and it has been for a long time. Like, they're not offering any substantial policies. It's like, look at what they're saying here. Like, Trump is a mean bad person for deporting all these

legal immigrants. Well, what's their counter proposal for actually dealing with these people?

They're afraid to say it out loud. You know, they know it is deeply politically and popular to

Say we want to naturalize ten plus million people that are here.

Trump. But, you know, they'll never say what they're actually standing for. And that's what all

these clips are about. There's a lot of condemnation, condemnation, condemnation, condemnation,

well, what is the popular part of the Democratic agenda that they're actually selling?

And we're going to keep this conversation going because actually Maxine Dexter represents like a part of the country that we're about to dive deep into. That would be the deport lens, the greater portland areas. So everyone, stick around. But first, ladies, if you have been feeling exhausted, anxious foggy or like your gaining weight no matter what, and your doctor's shrugs saying, that's normal for your age. You're not crazy. You're being ignored. The medical establishment

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for 50% off your labs and 20% off all supplements. Joy and Blokes, healthcare that actually listens to women. All right, I'm joined now again by Mark Hemingway who's a senior writer over at real clear investigations and has a monster investigation into the devolution of Portland that we're

going to get into, but first local news did us a huge favor in the form of a news hook mark.

By in the last five days, airing this tragic segment, it's hard to watch. I can't imagine Mark

for someone like you who's from this area. And I think it was this area. I don't want to put words

in your mouth, but it's a beautiful part of the country. This was a local news report on a CVS store closing and if you're listening to this what you're going to miss is that not only is the CVS store closing, but you can see all of these border-about businesses in downtown Portland. It looks like a ghost town. This is S-22. It's hard to miss the abandoned store fronts in four lease signs in your Pioneer courthouse square. A CVS spokesperson told me March 5th will be

the last day for this story. People I spoke to today who were going in and out of the store tell me they're frankly not surprised it's closing. So I'm not surprised and everything's locked up in there. Like you want certain, they're under locking key. You're like, oh my god, in 2023 a target store also left this part of town citing crime in theft as reasons why. It wants you to have more people just stealing from these stores eventually. It's just going to lead to them shutting down because

it's like, how can you run a business in those situations? March has a new article over on RCI, real clear investigations. It's titled "Model City, Portland's Journey from Symbol of Sheek to Shabby." March, can you tell us a little bit about your reaction to the closing CVS in the broader context of everything you went deep on in this piece? So actually, I can tell you something specifically about it. My sister lives in Portland got into a car accident last year and I went out there to check on her.

And when I got on to hotels.com, whatever the book my accommodations, I noticed that every four star hotel in downtown Portland was available for under $100.9. And so I thought what the heck, I'll just stay downtown and I stayed about a block from that CVS. And let me tell you, there really can't exaggerate how bad things are once you actually see it in person. I mean, basically, 10 or 15 years ago, downtown was just thriving. I mean, it was one of the hottest cities in

America when New York Times was doing a travel piece on it like every other month it seemed like, people just couldn't stop talking about it. Portland, one of the best food scenes in the country, you know, it was just doing, you know, going gangbusters. And it really was just a situation when they just voted themselves into oblivion, basically. Ever, you know, the city went from being, you know, stock liberal to radical progressive in a way that, you know, even San Francisco is sort of

pulling out of its tailspin, whereas Portland is still, you know, firmly in it. You know,

Just to give you something like, you know, basic numbers here, Portland has t...

real estate vacancy rate of any major city in the country right now. And they have the second highest

crime rate after Memphis, Tennessee. Portland, Oregon, the widest major city in America with no history of like civil rights issues or, you know, civil rights creating an underclass or big projects or anything of that has the second highest crime rate of any city in America. If you told anyone

important that that was going to happen 10 or 15 years ago, they would have said, you're out of your

freaking mind. But no, that is exactly what happens when you have terrible policy. And, you know, as a result, you know, businesses are fleeing downtown Portland and frankly, they're, they're fleeing the whole state. You know, on a few note, Dutch brothers is, it's this huge coffee chain west of, you know, in the western half of the United States. Well, I guess they're, they're spread

even further than that now. But it's a $12 billion business. It started in Grand Spass, Oregon.

It's all over Portland. The entire company left Lockstock and Barrel, you know, last year. And, you know, other major companies are either pulling out or talking about pulling out on the CEO of Columbia Sportswear. So one of the largest, you know, companies in Oregon said on a stage in front of the governor a few months back that his advisors had, you know, told him to move to move his company out of state. I mean, like, it's pretty bleak. What's going on there. And,

and just to be clear, you know, when I talk about, you know, people pulling out of the state, what they're really pulling out of his Portland. I mean, the problem with Oregon right now is that it's a state of four million people. And about two and a half million of them live in one metro area that, you know, is, you know, radically progressive and dragging down the entire state of economy and dragging down the entire state with it. It's, it's really quite shocking. And if you,

you go to, if you've been to downtown Portland at any point in the recent future, recent history, you know, exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, you interviewed a man who substacks from Portland. He has a very interesting substack. And you mentioned what David Sedaris recently wrote about

Portland. And in the piece, you write eager. This is the, the substack. What's his first day mark?

Jeff Eager. He's actually in the, he's the former mayor of Bend, Oregon, which is my hometown. Oh, that's right. So that's so interesting. Okay. So he, quote, says one key reason why the city's massive crime problem goes on address is that it's largely self-inflicted and driven by ideology. Eager says hardcore progressiveism has destroyed what old school Oregon liberals built. Farmers markets, parks, walkable communities, transit, and all the good kind of Portland yet.

You're a liberal lifestyle stuff. This brand of progressivism is just so against the rule of law. It's ruined all of those institutions that made Portland a cool trendy, quirky place. It's not really quirky anymore. It's dangerous. And so mark my question is, these labels are tough. But is this a case of leftists and leftism, old school? And I'm talking about like, like old school leftism, being hijacked by the project they gave birth to in kind of postmodern millennial progressivism,

or is it something different than that? No, I think that that's largely it. I mean, there's some

other weird factors we'd probably don't have time to get into. I mean, the history of the anarchism and the Pacific Northwest is a thing going back a hundred some years. And I'm sure that is some part of what's going on there. But by and large, what happened is, is you had a bunch of normal Democrats, or what were liberal Republicans when I was growing up 30, 40 years ago, running the state. But even their pumpkins then had very socially notable tendencies. And that

has been completely hijacked by this brand of progressivism that doesn't basically believe in

rule of law or in door public order. And I don't really know how to even explain it. And frankly, a lot of liberals in the state are appearing from people that are Democrats or liberal and people that live there, tell me they hear from their liberal and democratic friends that they're really fed up with what's going on. And they're really fed up with the current leadership. And yet, you know, for 15, 20 years, it's just been electing nothing, but in not just Democrats, but hard

core progressives and no other moderate faction can prevail in the state as long as Portland is as radical, the Portland voters are as radical as they are. And it's really crazy. That said, the governor right now, there is fantastically unpopular. She committed this massive blunder by passing this deeply unpopular tax cut. I mean, sorry, tax hike in the state. It amounts to the largest tax hike in the state. And she only went her election by three and a half points state wide.

So in theory, there is an opportunity for a political rebellion, but I don't know whether the national political environment, you know, the fact that Donald Trump exists and they get the campaign against him means that, you know, there's no hope of moderate Republicans trying to think in the state.

There's the very least, you'd think to be a faction of moderate liberals that...

take back their party because the Democrats aren't. -The whole school left us. -Right.

Well, the Democrats I grew up with in the state of Oregon were hardcore environmentalists and yet

every park in Portland is full of crazy, homeless people leaving piles of trash everywhere. Like, like, what is the liberal rationale for this stuff? It's just absolutely crazy. You know, in some of the stuff is like, it will admit as when a wishlist of liberals for a long time.

Like the thing that really destroyed Portland was this measure where they basically decriminalized

all hard drugs. And drug legalization is something a lot of liberals have wanted to try for a long time. And I can almost see why they allowed it to happen, but the results are so obviously terrible in terms of the crime rate and everything else that, you know, it's pretty clear that you need somebody who's, you know, public order-minded to take the reins again, whether that's a Republican or a Democrat, it could be either. You know, there's the average Democrat in this country

and certainly the average Democratic mayor and almost anywhere else wouldn't stand for any of this,

but in Portland they get away with, you know, like everything short of literal murder in terms

of policy. -Well, and there's the business component of it and the cultural component of it,

and that's because you can have, you and I would agree that old school leftism is going to be bad on an economic level and all likelihood if you're doing high taxes, your businesses are going to flee and the like. On the social justice level, that's where when you combine the bad business policies with these insane, we have this clip of Maxine Dexter, represented Maxine Dexter from the area, talking about whole milk as a, like a dog whistle of white supremacy. Let's just

do more of that right now. -Please ask for the science-based regiments, not whatever our cage in areas getting kickbacks on or whatever whole milk, white supremacy, dog whistleing that's happening right now. I'm getting a little too political, but, um, whole milk, white supremacy dog whistleing. You can't combine those two things, Mark. You can't combine the cultural craziness business craziness. -Again, the thing about this though, that drives me so crazy is there's no

ideological rationale behind this brand of progressivism. It is purely reactionary, which is the thing

they've always accused the hardcore right wingers of, they have become themselves. Like I grew up in

Oregon, it was full of hippies, liberal hippies, who were all in favor of things like unfiltered whole milk straight from the cow. Like, arguably those things as a matter of health. And then the moment this mahu thing pops up and it becomes even a tinge right coated, all of a sudden, drinking whole milk is white supremacy. Like this is utter and absolute insanity. Um, I, I just don't know what to say about it anymore. I mean, just because clearly it's not coming from a normal, rational place

and clearly it just, it can't be reasoned with. I mean, every business leader is screaming from the high heavens, you know, that something needs to change and they seem utterly unresponsive to this. And at the same time, I don't see Maxine Dexter, you know, losing an election any time soon. It's just absolutely crazy. I mean, the far leftist in the city and Tifa, and Tifa has they, they, they, they, they fire bomb, one of the city council members cars, um, who is pretty

liberal. But he wasn't liberal enough for them. So they fire bombing the cars. The, um, I forget her name. The woman who is the, uh, Democratic Congress woman in southern Washington, her district goes through Vancouver, which is the, the Portland suburb on the other side of the Columbia River. It's in Washington state. Um, and Tifa fire bomb her husband's automotive business. Uh, again, because they, she's, she's, she's a Democrat, but she's not liberal enough. I mean, it is just a

purity death spiral at this point in time. And there's got to be some serious pushback from voters, if not politicians in order to fix this. But what I find really interesting is going back to our earlier conversation about the state of union and like, you know, what, what, how are Democrats represent even themselves nationally? The entire subtext of Ezra Klein's big abundance book last year was Democrats can't govern. Democrats can't build anything. Democrats can't run anything. And every

American who's been to a city, uh, uh, major blue city in the last, you know, decade realizes this and it's become a problem for their national reputation. You know, as long as people are going to places like Portland or any of the major west coast cities, they're all disasters. LA San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, they're all disasters and they're all run by crazy progressives. As long as

people see those people is having influence in the party, I think it's going to have a huge,

huge impact on their, their national political fortunes. Yeah, let's stay on this point actually.

Uh, the wrong milk point is or the whole milk versus wrong milk.

things. I think she might have even meant to say wrong milk, but incredible stuff, casing means

who has a background that if she were affiliated with a Democratic president, which she easily could

be, uh, for my vantage point, just like politically. I have no idea what she believes on a host of issues that have nothing to do with health. She's testifying in front of, uh, the help committee today, so Senate Health Education Labor of Kenshin for confirmation as search and general. She dropped out of her residency, went to med school, dropped out of her residency, uh, because she thought we were treating people poorly, um, and doing a lot of symptom management that's

great for Pharma and not dealing with food, for example. Uh, and so here is how that was greeted by

someone who would have fit in great in the Portland of Mark's youth Bernie Sanders S24.

We are the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care or all people as a human right. Dr. Means is health care. A human right should the United States join every other major country and say to everybody whether you're younger, old, rich, or poor, you are entitled to health care as a human right. Yes, no, maybe. My focus is on ensuring that Americans have access to the best health care in the entire world, which as you talked about as I talked about, as everyone who's

spoken is talking about is the pretty much the opposite of what we have right now. We spend two of every other country in the world and we have the worst of our lives. I agree, but is health care you might, will you join me in fighting for a national health care program? I will be by your side trying to get Americans access to the best health care in the world. We also have Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, Republican of Oklahoma, and Bernie Sanders going back

and forth during the hearing. This is S25. Yeah, everybody we bring up here. You guys, Chastise for trying to make changes. God forbid, we change and go out to try to fix our broken system. Anyways, I ran to too long. Let's talk about something. Yes, you did. I'm sorry, I didn't ask your opinion on that. And if I care about you, I would ask you, but I don't care about your opinion. You're part of the system, you're part of the problem.

You've been setting here longer than I've even been alive. This is your problem. You should have

fixed this a long time ago. You've been well on it so long. What are you decided not to run for

surge of general? You're the nominee. That is definitely something we would never accept.

Oh, okay. Mark, I feel like Bernie Sanders might be a little sensitive on this because again, he's somebody who was friendly with RFK Jr before RFK Jr became Trump. And I think RFK Jr's ideology on environmental issues and corporate power is basically anti-Republican on everything except for health. And Bernie Sanders, I just wonder Mark, I don't see that question as being incredibly deeply hostile, but overall, I also just the way he's treated RFK Jr in those hearings,

and now Casey means it's a wonder to me that he's not celebrating them for being these agents of disruption, even if he doesn't agree with them across the board. This guy is a socialist. He should be cheering, the happening of the contradictions. Right. I mean, it's really kind of insane to me that Trump is the guy that is so upset liberals. And some extent, to some extent,

I think it's because Trump is more liberal than almost any other conventional Republican

has been in my time. And I really think that the fact that he's co-opped at a lot of these issues really seems to bother them. I mean, the Mahah thing is a very good example. I mean, yes, there are things about Mahah that you can point to as conservatives are against big centralized control of things like the food system or other things like that, and would encourage localism or whatever. But it's also true that historically, these kinds of health issues that

exist in sort of the less scientific more sort of natural realm shall be say, we're definitely the domain of liberals. You know, on gay rights, Trump is far and way more liberal than almost any other Republican politician that has come before him, like Trump came along and Trump has a much less hawkish foreign policy. That was the indictment of the Republicans for as long as I can remember from Democrats. And now all of a sudden, they're all talking like newcons. Again, I just don't

understand how Democrats allow themselves to become so reactionary at this point in time. You know, you can say what you say what you hate about Trump, but the fact of the matter is is he has clear objectives and clear policies. You know, build a wall is pretty easy to understand. You know, and he says him over and over again, I do not know what the National Democratic

Agenda is on anything, really.

purity death spiral. And that, I just think, is a really good way to describe how algorithms have infected our politics. And that, because we get trained in a lot of cases unintentionally, it's a perform for the algorithm. It prizes extreme emotion in one direction or the other. And even if you're not on social media, I don't think Bernie Sanders is like scrolling x or a TikTok every night, but even if you're not on it, it's changed the way that we approach politics

completely. And I sort of think that's what this is, that if you're not a pure leftist or if you're

not a pure liberal, if you're not a pure maga or if you're not pure never Trump, you are just the

incentives aren't to build up. They're to tear down. Yeah, no, I think that's that's exactly right. I, you know, I don't necessarily know how to fix that issue, but that is sort of the crux of the problem. And I mentioned that as a client of abundance book right now, I mean, it is this idea that you know, it's impossible to govern in America anymore. I mean, it's primarily a democratic problem, but it's probably Republicans as well. It's impossible to build anything or do anything

big. And part of that is simply because we can't come together on stuff. And it's, you know, again, people should look at the fact that RFK is in the Trump cabinet and this woman is nominated with a, you know, more liberal background is nominated for surgeon general of, you know, Democrats should be looking at that as a positive step forward and figuring out how they can they can work with it and not necessarily arguing for the most maximally insane position, like,

you know, completely redoing our health care system overnight and making that the surgeon

general's business when it's never been the surgeon general's business. If we're ever going to

implement a national health care scheme, I'm sorry, that's going to be the Senate and houses job. The surgeon general, I mean, you know, why would Bernie Sanders make that an issue there other than it's just something that he alone, you know, wants to make an issue of. But, you know,

everybody's, you know, shrinking responsibility. And I think that goes right down to the voters.

You know, it's probably been looking in the mirror a lot more as well. If this is our leadership and we're so divided, you know, maybe we should start building bridges with each other. Oh, wow, Mark, sounded a little poetic. Well, I had to redeem myself for being so sexist at the beginning. Women are great. They're beautiful. They're perfect. All right. Let's end on Don Lemon Mark. Lemon is now being sued. F7. Yeah, I'm happy. No, Don Lemon is being sued

over that Minnesota church protest. He lives dreamed. Someone who says they're a parishioner at the church is suing him for emotional distress, because he disrupted the worship service. Obviously, he is already being tried by the Trump administration over a face act violation. But now, Mark, I mean, the face act thing, it is a little bit harder to connect lemon to the face act than I know harming Dylan and many other people experts in the space Megan, legally, has been able

to build that case. And I think pretty effectively, I don't particularly love the face act,

because I think it has some constitutional speech problems, exactly the reason. But this to me seems like possibly a better way to get lemon legally liable, given that you could understand how if someone comes in and starts live streaming a church service, even as a journalist, not even as a part of the protest. You don't even necessarily say he was part of the protest. You could just say if someone does that, it would cause you emotional distress. You're in a private place of worship.

I can see how that actually might even be a better way to hold him liable.

Yeah, there's a lot to be said about the face act and the first amendment implications of charging

don't lemon and whether that's a good thing. I have some pretty mixed feelings about that particular issue. What I don't have mixed feelings about is it was spectacularly terrible judgment on lemon's fault on lemon's part to participate in this thing. The way that he did to block the doorway to shove microphones and parishioners faces when he was uninvited. He went on a podcast like after the whole thing was over and basically justified what he did by, like, slandering the

whole congregation repeatedly. Who's that, that Skeletor looking woman that's very popular? Yes. I believe it was that podcast, which, you know, speaking of imprecatory harpies. I mean, I just don't understand, like, like, what is the point of, you know, that kind of political discourse? I mean, she's had it. Mark, she's had it. That's the point. It's literally just like a hate fest, you know, and I don't understand.

And anyway, the point, though, is it's like when politics becomes a hate fest, it encourages things like don lemon storming into churches. And, you know, whether that's, you know, against the law, we can argue about that, but whether or not it's incredibly destructive to the fabric of this country. And incredibly destructive to our politics,

Like, that's not debatable.

I mean, if, if I were on that jury, I would basically, you know, give that woman everything

that Don Lemon Owens because he really showed terrible judgment. And I think it is really,

really horrible to invade churches, um, invade any private property, frankly, and her situations like this, but, but a church, especially, um, or is it that people, like, the secular law doesn't necessarily understand anymore? What a church is to people who are there on a Sunday. That's part of this, I think. Yeah, I think that's a huge, huge part of it. I remember, it, it's like, they've gotten so out of touch on religion, you know, it's hilarious.

They're so excited about this Talarico guy or whatever. They think that just because he can

quote the Bible that all of a sudden, he'll win over people never mind the he's, you know,

they can put the manipulative and doesn't know what he's talking about half of the time. But at least, you know, he's trying to represent himself's Christian, which is a step forward. But, you know, during the Obama years or whatever, I remember like, Obama used to just openly disparage churches. I mean, I was a recall. There was some attempt in the Obama administration to, like, start taxing churches, you know, they've, like, floated that as an idea. I mean,

it's really, really insane. Most people have no idea what churches do for their given communities, unless that you're part of it. But the fact of the matter is I guarantee you, you know, and almost anywhere you live in the United States, there is a church in your neighborhood, you know, forget the politics that is out there doing charitable works, taking care of people,

never mind that all the stuff that churches do that you never hear about.

You know, some guy comes home, my wife's dad just died, and he was a Lutheran pastor. And like, when, you know, I went to the funeral, the stories you hear of that man did, you know, two AM, and, you know, some guy's coming home to his wife's drunk again, and the pastor gets a call,

you know, is a better that a pastor shows up in deals with that, or is it better that we call the cops, you know?

You know, there's so much that people, the churches do that people take for granted that it just makes me, I mean, it makes me angry, ironically. It's not a very Christian response, right? But at the same time, it's people have to understand that these are literally sacred spaces for a reason. These are where people go to bear their souls, these are where people go to try and be better people. You know, it's a disrupt that space and say, no, we're going to judge you, even though we don't

believe in anything you believe, and we don't believe in any sort of, you know, redemption in a secular context. We're going to judge you for trying to be better people and believing in forgiveness, that just drives me insane. Well, also on top of that, lemon put them all on a national broadcast. I know he's not on CNN anymore, but he's then yanking this really personal sacred moment for a church community, and then literally broad casting it out to a national audience line.

So that is a, I think the emotional distress argument may even be more compelling than the

face art one, because he's putting all of these people, he's taking them in a private place and making their private sacred worship public. Yeah, well, that's a whole other ball of wax, isn't it? I mean, one thing that's destroying the fabric of this country is that the moment anything happens in this country, you know, be it good bad and different people whip out their phones so we can all, you know, pass judgment on some, you know, bar fight nationally,

and it's so unhealthy, you know, there are so many things that become viral or memes or, you know,

whatever things, because there's video that online that, you know, you never, in a million years,

would have ever heard of, you know, 25 years ago before smartphones were a thing. Yes, I agree that people need to be very, very cautious about, you know, making, you know, local issues into national ones, and there should be some sort of, you know, judicial, you know, remedy for that. In fact, if you actually look at the history of First Amendment jurisprudence, the biggest thing that has been, you know, legally speaking, there was a great

book written by a former, to Lane Law Professor who's now, I think, Yale, Amy Washington, I'm forgetting her name, but she went in the entire book about how the thing that was most they threatening the First Amendment and might, you know, cause the repeal of New York Times versus Sullivan and a lot of journal protections was being news, news organizations had been so disrespectful of people's basic privacy. It wasn't like political bias or any of these other issues

we're dealing with or whatever. Like, there's all these, like, like, the whole Cogan sex tape that had no news value and it did eventually take down Gocker, right? You know, there have been all these, like, news reports, like, you know, women on film wearing at Mardi Gras, you know, right? There are all these things where news organizations decided just because someone does something in public that it is, you know, worthy of being on the news when the reality is is that people should

Have some expectation of privacy, even in public or semi-public spaces, let a...

Brandeis was grappling with this legally when the camera came out. He was like, whoa, and we just

got so numb to it so quickly. Now the same thing is happening with AI. That's another rabbit hole, but Mark, anyway, I mean, to do at any point, let me last point, so long. No, no, I don't. You're not going to become a neo-brandeisian right now. No, no, no. Brandeisian is an impressive ball for you. I have to say, sorry, impressive ball for you makes it sound like you're, I was otherwise not, yes, right. That's a woman. And you know what Mark, I can vote. And that's something we should

put back on the tape. Oh, I hope you don't get in trouble. Mark is joking. Mark's a great guy. Mark has two to hunters. Frank. Oh man, Mark, I'm away. I see you're rather at real close investigations. I keep baiting you. I won't do it anymore. Mark, I'll let you get on with your evening.

And I'm going to see if your wife is still at the bar. What do you have a bat on that?

Oh, I bet she's tired, but she's probably a woman. She's probably not. All right, right. Thanks so much for coming back. Oh, thank you. Oh, man, I love having Mark here. Great to have Mark here on a night two where I had all these technical difficulties because the famous going to roll with those punches is going to be the great mark. Hemingway and, of course, are lovely audience. If you're not listening to this live,

you're probably like, what is, what's the deal? What is everybody talking about? Or if you're catching clips, you're really, it's all fine. Don't worry. We have more to come. I want to make a big point about media, one line's about Mark was just saying, yeah, sure. I had a sminching reflections. Not on the substance of the said, the union so much as the way that it was written.

So I'm going to get to that in just one moment. But first, if you want to finally fix your

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their entire order. Just head to cowboy colostrum.com/afterparty and use coder afterparty at checkout. That's 25% off when you use coder afterparty at cowboy colostrum.com/afterparty. All right. Well, we'll wrap up tonight's show with some reflections on the city of the Union. I want to say I was on, I had a thought while we were doing the breaking points live streaming last night about weathering heights and trumps longest ever city of the Union, longest in American history.

By word count, I think Jimmy Carter probably hasn't the Carter did one that clocked in at 33,000

words, but he didn't deliver it verbally. So that's interesting. It's like longer than novels. But he didn't deliver it verbally that year. So Bill Clinton in 2000 had one that was 20 minutes shorter than Trump and then Trump's joined a dress last year, which wasn't technically a city. The Union was still not as long as last night's city. The Union addressed. And as we were watching it, I was thinking it wasn't really linear, right? Like we talked about linear TD,

where people were sitting down and experiencing something in some of those part, a whole chunk. You sat down and watched the evening news. You were watching the evening news broadcast. You were consuming it in a whole for the most part. That's kind of how it went. And that's what we call linear TV. And there was a linear characteristic to the format. And then all kinds of interesting analyses, you can do about how streaming got rid of commercial breaks and changed the way that TV shows are made.

The Netflix now has people repeating the plot points over and over again. You've probably heard some actors talk about this because so many of us are scrolling on our phones. Well, we should

be watching the show that we intentionally put on the screen that they found you have to. I think

Ben Affleck was talking about this on Rogan recently with Matt Dane and like you have to keep repeating plot points. Otherwise, people are completely lost. So it's Marshall McLuhan, right? Like the format, the medium changes the message itself. It's not just a different way of saying x, y, z. You're actually saying something totally different. You're not saying x, y, or z. You're saying ABC. So that with the state of the union makes a lot of sense to me. Right now, a lot of the

criticisms of weathering heights, the technical criticisms of weathering heights, are based on this idea

That it was a movie for TikTok.

But basically that it was a clip show, strong together, in our memeified imagination,

you know, to play to what could become a meme or a viral clip. And then you put this, I mean, your source material is the classic novel and you pull from that into something that is essentially made for TikTok and people who are used to linear cinematic storytelling are, which is still almost everyone really turned off by that. People should ask themselves what is the future of movies and whether that's good or bad. But I just wanted to look at this new pupil that came

up. They did a big study on how Americans use media that has gotten very little coverage. This was just a couple of weeks ago. And again, basically a few people have talked about it,

and the most interesting part for my perspective was how many people, I think I've mentioned

this on the show before, but how many people say they seek out news and who just come across news. So it used to be that more people said they are actively looking for news and fewer people said they just happen across it. So if 39% of people say they just happen to come across it in 2019,

60% of people said they were actively looking for it. Now, that's basically a tie. So that's

50% said they're looking for 49% say they happen to come across it. And even that tie, I think is a little bit misleading because if you happen to come across an Instagram, but you followed a news outlet on Instagram. Well, then you're looking for it, right? Or you followed a very political celebrity for some of their takes on Instagram, then you're looking for it, but you also kind of happened to come across it. So both of those things are kind of true, but this is a huge difference

that used to make us very distinct from each other. There were just people who really tuned out the news, maybe it was you, maybe it was people that you know and love, people who had other things

to do with their life, it was never interesting to them, politics weren't particularly interesting

to them, maybe their dissolution, about the whole system, etc. But if you're at social media now, you can choose not to follow the news. The news is going to hit you anyway. And if you follow the news, it's going to hit you in your algorithm constantly because it keeps you scrolling because it makes you really mad or it makes you really excited. Maybe you're a live in Texas and you're stoked about Talarika, okay, you're going to keep getting these Talarika messages or maybe you

find these conspiracy videos about it. I'm okay, I'll throw it a very, very interesting. Well, it's going to keep hitting you with those. And you're just before you know it, your algorithm is always going to be pushing news content to you when you scroll. And especially if you're younger, you scroll in constantly. That means news is penetrating your day constantly. So that's something

I think about because I ran the Wuthering Heights theory by somebody who, somebody entompled.

And they told you it was basically correct that the state of the union was really long because it was a hotspodge of different things for different audiences that don't exactly feel cohesive in a linear format. You're watching this hour and it was a 47-minute speech on cable television or a live stream, cease band, whatever it is. It might not have the exact same build. I thought it actually ended pretty abruptly, which is an interesting point too, in this context.

But the reason is that you can take this clip about arenas of Rutska. And you can blast that all over the Charlotte area where it's still very, very raw. You can blast it to a very specific cohort of people on Instagram and Facebook because you can geotarget. You can target by age. You can target by sex. You can target by political affiliation. You can target by whether people are interested in crime stories. And so what you do then is create this string of different targeted material

basically that can be spit out in different ways. And Trump is a media master. So it's no surprise

to me that I think he's actually kind of here in the space already. So I mean that's what my big

takeaway from the city union was, honestly, is that, yes, Trump likes to speak for a really long period of time. He'll do these monster rallies, but this film was part was scripted. He did a lot of ad-libbing. I think it was his most ad-libbed to state of the union type speech that I've seen him do, but I think it went so long. The text of the speech was really long itself. Not quite Carter 35,000 words length, but it was long. And I really, again, I asked someone and told that

my theory was basically correct that what you're doing is stringing together all of these different

Targeted messages.

to a new media ecosystem. A lot of Washington just has not caught up with yet. You can have a

conversation about whether that's good or bad. You know, obviously he's still had a linear audience

that he played to to, but it was just not like, it wasn't the type of state of the union that

that sort of builds through a crescendo quite like what you saw in 1995 for example. So that's a big

takeaway because the way we're consuming this information is changing and it's actually changing the information that's getting out there. If you're appealing to the broadest possible audience,

you're going to have a speech that's not exactly what Trump did yesterday. I thought it was a fairly

fine speech. I don't know that it's going to make a huge difference for him. I think it revealed or

it reminded us from the problems he has and some of the the solutions he has for Republicans is expert baiting Democrats on 80/20 issues or 60/40 issues and the like. I mean, that's masterful. He's good at it and a lot of other Republicans aren't, but he also I think is really, really early

and his team is really, really so understand where all of this is going and to make it work in

their favor. So I'll leave it there for tonight's travel edition of Afterparty. If you're watching Slime, thanks for hanging in there with us. Well, we're on the road. I appreciate it. The iPhone camera, I have an on suction cup hold and tested all of it for I went to dinner and then came back in an off-site part. I've had one of those days where everything is going wrong. So a little bit of a lemony's think it's a but I appreciate you all tuning in. I'm going to report a happy hour

episode to get your questions into Emily. I don't want to compare media.com. That will pop on Friday evening around 5pm just in time for a heavy hour. Thanks so much. Hope you all subscribe and we will see back here on Monday of another edition of Afterparty.

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