Dem Establishment Failures, with Ana Kasparian, and if Bieber Launched the Trad Movement, with Evita Duffy-Alfonso - "After Party with Emily Jashinsky"

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Speaker 4 Hey everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly, and today I want to bring you an episode of our latest MK Media Podcast Network show, After Party with Emily Jashinsky.

Speaker 4 You know, Emily from this show, she's the best. She's one of our favorite EJs, and I think you're going to enjoy this episode.

Speaker 4 Go ahead, don't forget to subscribe to her show wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 It's free.

Speaker 4 Welcome to After Party, friends. Thanks for being here.
It's 10 p.m. on a Wednesday, so you know where you need to be right here at After Party.

Speaker 4 As a reminder, we are here on Mondays and Wednesdays live at 10 p.m. You can, of course, catch up with the show afterwards on podcast platforms and YouTube.

Speaker 4 And if you throw us a subscribe, that's always so helpful. Tonight's show is an exciting one.
We are joined first by Anna Kasparian, who is the executive producer and host of The Young Turks.

Speaker 4 We are also joined by my friend Evida Duffy.

Speaker 4 We're going to start to talk with Anna about some very interesting developments on the left and then maybe compare and contrast with what we're seeing on the right.

Speaker 4 Gavin Newsom is still on the podcast circuit, of course. And now Hunter Biden has joined the podcast circuit as well, as of today, at least.
So we have all kinds of good stuff to get into.

Speaker 4 Avida is going to speak with us actually about the new Justin Bieber album. And then I'm going to take us home, land the plane, whatever you want to call it with the imminent threat to NPR and PBS.

Speaker 4 So Anna Kasparian, host, executive producer of The Young Turks. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 6 Thank you for having me, Emily.

Speaker 5 I'm a big fan of your work. Um, and I'm super excited for your new show.
Congratulations.

Speaker 4 Oh, well, thank you. That's certainly mutual.
And I want to start actually with the because you're really the perfect person to talk to about this.

Speaker 4 You've been in left media spaces for a long time and have been sort of feasting on the Democrats' ability or lack thereof to really recapture some of these cultural institutions.

Speaker 4 The podcast space is one really good example of this. And we can put

Speaker 4 F1 on the screen. This is really true.

Speaker 4 It was reported in Semaphore that the Jamie Harrison podcast at our table, Jamie Harrison, obviously formerly the head of the DNC, this is Dem's answer to losing Joe Rogan.

Speaker 4 That's how Dave Weigel put it in Semaphore. We can put F2 on the screen.

Speaker 4 And to make matters even more satirical, if you were trying to like rip this from the pages of satire, Jamie Harrison is saying of Hunter Biden that a lot of people don't know how smart he is, don't know his background, don't know the stuff that he's worked on, they only know what either his allies or his enemies have put out there, and he's been defined by that.

Speaker 4 So, and I have to ask you,

Speaker 4 on its face, it seems ridiculous that Jamie Harrison is the answer to this, that anybody thinks that's a good answer to this.

Speaker 4 But secondly, that they think the right first guess is a sort of uncritical treatment of Hunter Biden. What did you make of the news today?

Speaker 5 Well, let me just first say, I think it's pretty funny how people in political spaces who have no experience in broadcasting at all think it's like not a big deal to just like launch a podcast.

Speaker 5 Of course. I mean, I might be the most uncharismatic, uninteresting person on the planet, but who cares? Anyone can do it.
It's just laughable to me. Look, you can't manufacture a Joe Rogan.

Speaker 5 And that's what the Democratic Party is currently trying to do. with Jamie Harrison, really, of all people.

Speaker 5 The reason why Joe Rogan resonates with so many people, especially young men, is because he's a real person. And whether you love him or hate him, he's pretty authentic and he means what he says.

Speaker 5 Now, I might not agree with everything he says, but at least I know it's coming from a place of sincerity. He's not someone who's bought.

Speaker 5 He's not someone who can be paid to say something he doesn't actually believe. And he's got a broad range of interests.
And so that's what kind of makes his podcast as interesting as it is.

Speaker 5 I don't think that the former chair of the Democratic Party is going to resonate to the same extent that Joe Rogan does.

Speaker 5 And to your point about Hunter Biden, you know, that episode has already made some news, even though the entirety of the episode hasn't aired yet.

Speaker 5 And it's because of the fact that Hunter Biden was essentially scolding Democrats for not being, you know, sufficiently loyal to his father.

Speaker 5 who was lying to the American people about his cognitive decline. And the entirety of the Democratic establishment seemed to be in on this cover-up.

Speaker 5 Voters don't really appreciate being lied to. And so this effort to kind of rehabilitate the Biden's image or rewrite history, I think, is not going to work.

Speaker 5 And more importantly, on one hand, you have members of the Democratic establishment chide Trump voters for being cult-like in their loyalty to Trump.

Speaker 5 On the other hand, in the context of this interview with Hunter Biden, basically you have this like weird commentary about like, you know, if only Democratic voters could be as loyal to their Democratic leadership as Republicans are to their leadership.

Speaker 5 No, no, I don't think voters should be ridiculously loyal to any politician. In a democracy, there should be accountability, including from members of your own party.

Speaker 4 You know, one of the reasons I've admired your work for a long time is that when I was, you know, growing up and like coming of age, like late teenage years, college years, I was watching a lot of young Turks and it reminded me sort of what I was seeing at the same time on the right, which was the Tea Party movement.

Speaker 4 You had Occupy, you had Tea Party, and on the right, some of these new Tea Party era media outlets started to spring up.

Speaker 4 And for whatever reason, I think it took National Democrats a really long time to look at what you all were doing and say, hey, there's something here. They're connecting with audiences.

Speaker 4 And that, I wonder if they're still not doing that.

Speaker 4 Because frankly, the reason that you guys resonate, and this isn't to do an apples to to apples you know with young Turks and right-wing media but it is to say the reason right-wing media resonate I think one of the reasons you guys resonate is because you're very critical of establishment Democrats so to me the idea that Joe that the answer to Joe Rogan would be having a former DNC chair who is not like dishing and spilling on corruption or diving into how they

Speaker 4 totally bungled the Bernie Sanders movement or like getting Hunter Biden to talk in some detail about mistakes that he's made, but instead giving him this platform.

Speaker 4 And Jamie Harrison has intimated in the semaphore interview, for example, that he agrees with Hunter Biden's analysis that, and of course he does, that had Democrats just doubled down on their loyalty to this alien president, they would have been fine against Trump in 2024.

Speaker 4 I just can't imagine how frustrating it has to be to watch all of this play out and say, guys, you're completely missing the story, which is that voters don't trust you.

Speaker 4 This is not the way to rebuild the trust.

Speaker 5 That's exactly right.

Speaker 5 And if you kind of back up and look at the full picture and what the actual thinking of these Democratic leaders and, you know, creatures of the Democratic establishment really think,

Speaker 5 it's this sense that the American people, their base, their voters are really there to serve them. When in reality, these are individuals who signed up to be public servants.
Like, I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 I have enough trouble focusing on my own career. It is not my job to build a politician's career, but that's the way they behave.

Speaker 5 They feel that we as voters owe it to them to build them up, even when they're lying to us in our faces. And so for me, I have...

Speaker 5 I don't know if this speaks poorly of me, and I don't really care, but I have no loyalty to any politician.

Speaker 5 You either do things I like or you do things I don't like. And I'm going to speak out about it regardless.
And that goes for politicians that I generally like. I generally like Bernie Sanders.

Speaker 5 You know, some of what he said following October 7th in Israel, I didn't agree with. He eventually came around, but it took him a while to see what Israel was really up to in Gaza, for instance.

Speaker 5 But I'm willing to speak out about things like that, even though on the whole, I see Bernie Sanders as one of the better politicians in Congress.

Speaker 5 But if you don't have accountability, if you don't have an electorate that

Speaker 5 you know, doesn't consist of partisan hacks who just root for their team because it's their team, if you have voters who don't want to engage in any accountability for their own side, well, we're going to we're going to find ourselves in the situation that we're currently in, if you ask me.

Speaker 5 I think election after election, we're usually presented with two terrible choices.

Speaker 5 And it's because if you just cheer for a team and you don't really care about anything else, I mean, you're going to create an environment of subpar politicians who are more interested in their political careers, more interested in serving their their donors as opposed to serving their constituents.

Speaker 5 And we're seeing that across the board, Democrats, Republicans, they both have low approval ratings right now, and that's for good reason.

Speaker 4 And that's the core of what was happening simultaneously, I think, during Occupy and the Tea Party movement that so many people just didn't put together.

Speaker 4 And one of the people who did was Donald Trump. He sort of heard something similar, I think, from both movements, whether it was conscious or otherwise.

Speaker 4 And Dave Weigel from Semaphore notes that his line about Joe Rogan was a joke, but to Jamie Harrison, it's not.

Speaker 4 I mean, Jamie Harrison like clearly thinks that this is some type of serious competitive product to make Democrats compete in the podcast space.

Speaker 4 In the meantime, maybe they should be actually even more introspective, which they seem to have zero interest in doing, because let's go ahead and roll this sought of Harry Enton talking about Dems actually lagging from where they were in the 2018 midterms when they picked up seats.

Speaker 4 We can take a look here.

Speaker 7 The bottom line is this. Democrats are behind their 2006 and 2018 paces when it comes to the the generic congressional ballot.
What are we talking about here?

Speaker 7 All right, the Democrats versus the Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, the margins. Look at where we are now.
Democrats are ahead, but by just two points.

Speaker 7 Look at where Democrats were already ahead by in 2017. They were behind by seven points.
How about 2005 on the generic congressional ballot?

Speaker 7 behind excuse me ahead by seven points ahead by seven points and now they're only ahead by two points their lead is less than half less than half of where it was in either 2017 or 2005 in july of of those years, the year before the midterm election.

Speaker 7 Yes, Donald Trump may be unpopular, but Democrats have not come anywhere close to sealing the deal at this particular point.

Speaker 4 You know, here in Washington, D.C., you could practically sense the giddiness among Democrats when Donald Trump and Republicans passed the, quote, one big beautiful bill because it did pay for tax cuts to the rich, partially by cuts to Medicaid.

Speaker 4 And Democrats saw that as a significant political gift and all kinds of other sort of things that were stuffed in it as political gifts. So what explains these numbers as of right now?

Speaker 5 Well, I think that Democrats aren't, you know, enjoying high approval ratings yet because enough time hasn't passed where voters forget about the pretty gross games that were played by the DNC, the Biden campaign, all of that leading up to the 2024 presidential election.

Speaker 5 But what the whole of the Democratic Party seems to have done so far in Trump's second term is take James Carville's advice to heart.

Speaker 5 And his advice was play dead, do nothing, just let the Trump administration hang itself.

Speaker 5 Which, look, if all you care about is allowing the pendulum swing to go from Trump right back to ineffective pathetic Democrats, okay, great. I guess we have that to look forward to.

Speaker 5 I don't really care about that though. I don't care about Democrats winning.
I care about the right Democrats winning.

Speaker 5 Democrats that actually stand for something, want to fight for their constituents, and, you know, engage in necessary reforms.

Speaker 5 And if you remember, this omnibus bill, yeah, you're right, is actually pretty unpopular with the electorate.

Speaker 5 Polling indicates that most people are not in favor of losing, you know, funding to Medicaid and SNAP food assistance for the needy. in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

Speaker 5 But at the same time, when Biden came into office, he had promised all sorts of things. Oh, I'm going to get the corporate tax rate

Speaker 5 back up to 28%. No, no, no, no, no.
Trump cut it from 35% to 21%.

Speaker 5 Biden's starting offer was 28%.

Speaker 5 And by the way, he didn't even accomplish that. So

Speaker 5 can I curse? I don't know if I can.

Speaker 4 Please, you must. It's a necessity.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 democratic establishment candidates are full of shit. And I need people to understand that.

Speaker 5 And we need to get out of this like vicious pendulum swing cycle where we go from one terrible administration to another terrible administration. They just have different branding.

Speaker 5 But in the end, they do nothing for ordinary people. And that's what people are hungry for.
I think that's part of what explains the popularity of Zoran Mamdani in this mayoral race in New York City.

Speaker 5 You know, he's running as a Democrat, but he's very different in his messaging compared to other establishment Democrat candidates.

Speaker 4 It's funny you say like, I was just going to ask you whether you think that partially explains the success of Zoran Mamdani, because he was up against this perfect foil in Andrew Cuomo.

Speaker 4 I mean, you couldn't have almost a more perfect coil, perfect foil in Andrew Cuomo. And that's a good, I think, point also to bring in this clip of Gavin Newsom going on the Sean Ryan show.

Speaker 4 Newsome, I'm really curious what you think about this, Anna, strikes me as someone who is smart enough to know where the winds are blowing, but not honest enough to sort of pull off the strategy.

Speaker 4 Like he knows what the strategy should be, but he can't quite execute on it because he is such a career politician who's driving forces power and ambition rather than any sort of first principle.

Speaker 4 So we can go ahead and roll S3 here. This is Gavin Newsom on the Sean Ryan show, which is obviously very popular with the right.

Speaker 8 About people being outside even.

Speaker 8 And we realize then after the fact, what the hell are we doing? Shutting down the beaches and open areas and, you know, and not understanding that early on.

Speaker 8 And so I think that of all issues, looking back, I remember Florida, that was a big issue too, even there.

Speaker 4 He's so cool and relatable in his genes.

Speaker 4 But, like, between Cuomo and Newsom, these are actually two really good examples of people who represent the Democratic Party establishment who have not fully reckoned with their unpopularity during the COVID crisis and are now sort of trying to be, you know, as powerful as they were before without, I don't know, know, maybe actually even being seriously introspective as opposed to whatever the hell that was.

Speaker 5 You're absolutely right. Okay.
In your analysis.

Speaker 5 And let me just say, you know that I like you when I'm willing to sit through a podcast episode featuring Gavin Newsome just to prepare, to prepare for this. Okay.

Speaker 4 God bless.

Speaker 5 I can't stand him. I can't stand his raspy voice.
And it's not for any superficial reason other than the fact that I live in California.

Speaker 5 I've had the displeasure of experiencing what his leadership actually looks like. He's a snake oil salesman.
He's a terrible person. Look into the campfire.

Speaker 5 Look into PG ⁇ E, one of his major donors, and how he shafted Californians who lost everything as a result of PG ⁇ E, refusing to upgrade their 100-year-old equipment, including a $10 hook that was suspending electrical lines.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that hook finally... just gave out.
Electrical lines fall onto dry brush and that caused one of the most devastating fires in California's history.

Speaker 5 There are people who lost their homes who are currently still living in these, like, you know, RVs or trailers parked on their land, hoping to rebuild, but it's insanely expensive to do that.

Speaker 5 And they're still not getting the settlement money that they're entitled to. He's just a really bad person.

Speaker 5 On the Sean Ryan show, one of the other things that Newsom said that I really want to just mention,

Speaker 5 he was like doing this faux,

Speaker 5 taking responsibility and ownership thing.

Speaker 5 And I can see right through it because he lies, even in that context. So for instance, he was like, you know, I really did something terrible.

Speaker 5 I got caught having dinner for my friend's birthday at the French laundry when I told people, you know, don't get together with your family for the holidays and whatever because of COVID.

Speaker 5 No, no, no, no. No, no, no, Newsom.
You didn't get together for your friend's birthday. That was a meeting with your donors at the French laundry.
He's a liar. He's a snake oil salesman.

Speaker 5 So, like, if there are any Democrats watching this right now and they had hope in Gavin Newsom, I'm sorry that I'm telling you things that are making you upset and angry. But take a look at my state.

Speaker 5 Take a look at the homeless homelessness. Take a look at the fact that $24 billion that were allocated to help the homeless, nowhere to be found.
Gone. That's taxpayer money.
Gone. Okay.

Speaker 5 The drug epidemic, overdose epidemic. I mean, things have fallen apart in this state.

Speaker 5 He's starting to finally take his role as the governor seriously, and things have gotten like a tiny bit better.

Speaker 5 But make no mistake about it, California went from being one of the best states that has, you know, just a tremendous amount of resources, natural resources,

Speaker 5 industries that were doing really, really well. All of that has been decimated due to the terrible decisions that he made as the leader of this state.

Speaker 5 And I just, honestly, I cringe at the idea of him winning a Democratic primary to become president of the United States. I don't even.

Speaker 5 Gavin Newsom cares about one thing and one thing only, and that's Gavin Newsom, period.

Speaker 4 And you know, what's interesting is I wonder too, the extent to which the Bill de Blasio years in New York City, which

Speaker 4 a lot of average New Yorkers came to see as failed social policy and like the policing front, and we can all debate that, but I wonder to what extent that ends up haunting Zoron Mamdani, because Newsom was doing this half-baked attempt at, and this is another, this is something that you follow really closely, this half-baked attempt to like sort of give some stuff to the left and make it look like he was this full cultural progressive while also being totally corrupt crony capitalist in his relationship with PG ⁇ E, for example.

Speaker 4 And so I know that's that's kind of a sort of nebulous connection between Zoron and Gavin Newsom and Bill de Blasio, but there's something there like the left also has to grapple with the class dynamics of some of those cultural shifts as well.

Speaker 5 Yes, actually, that's a really good point. And I'm, look, I'm excited about Mom Dani.
I don't live in New York City, so the people of New York City will decide who their next leader will be.

Speaker 5 But I'm excited about him because he is out of the box and I want to see him succeed. I do.

Speaker 5 One of the things that I do have reservations about, though, is he's very much in line with that whole like reimagine policing, defund the police. And look, I think policing absolutely needs reforms.

Speaker 5 And I thought that's what I was signing up for when I was going along with BLM back in the day.

Speaker 5 I didn't realize that there was a massive contingent that actually just wants to abolish police, which is disastrous.

Speaker 5 So I just published an investigative report about what has happened in Los Angeles following the city council cutting $150 million from the LAPD back in 2001.

Speaker 5 And that has actually had lasting consequences for our city because when you start eliminating positions for sworn officers, well, you can hope and pray that crime won't be an issue and you won't need those officers, but that's not what's happened.

Speaker 5 So right now, the city is dealing with a lot of fiscal issues because of the fact that, you know, especially lately, there's been more of a need for LAPD as a result of demonstrations and social unrest in response to Trump's immigration policies.

Speaker 5 And the city had to take out a $5 million loan just to pay for police overtime. The police had racked up over $17 million in overtime alone during the anti-ICE protests.

Speaker 5 And so it's really starting to hurt the city financially because the overtime, of course, costs a lot more money. It's a time and a half

Speaker 5 for the average hourly rate for a sworn officer. We literally have a detective who raked in over $600,000.
His name's Nathan Corey. Other detectives have also raked in over $400,000.

Speaker 5 I think it's about three dozen sworn officers have now made over $200,000 in overtime pay alone last year. So this is an expense, it's ironically.
more expensive.

Speaker 5 We're spending more money on the police department than ever before, record amounts, after cutting $150 million from the police budget, eliminating some of the positions.

Speaker 5 And sadly, our city council has learned no lessons and they're continuing to do this.

Speaker 5 In the meantime, as taxpayers locally are paying more for less, they're also experiencing slower response times when they call the, you know, call 911 for help. I mean, it's been a disaster.

Speaker 5 So, my hope is that Zoran Mamdani ignores the activists and just really does

Speaker 5 a real autopsy of what has happened in the aftermath of some of these,

Speaker 5 you know, BLM, reimagining police policies.

Speaker 4 This has had to have been, and I know you've talked about this before, but I'm curious. It just has to have been very disillusioning to watch so much of this play out.

Speaker 4 And then also, I think back, you know, five plus years ago, the media was so uncritical of some of these Democratic.

Speaker 4 I mean, I want to say like they're, gavin ism was playing political football the entire time basically and in many cases he was getting cheerleaded by the national press that just has to be enormously frustrating well i mean i i kind of had a big wake-up call because i hate to admit it but i think this is true of most people right you think you support certain policies

Speaker 5 and then

Speaker 5 Once you experience what those policies are actually like, how they play out, well, you you kind of have to admit, well, this isn't really working. Can we tinker with it? Can we recalibrate?

Speaker 5 And what I've noticed is, no, people don't want to recalibrate.

Speaker 5 Like, when I came out and I finally started talking publicly about some of the ramifications of these policies, oh, I got purged from the left real quick. I lost a lot of friends.
It was very public.

Speaker 5 But I have to be honest in what I do for work. I'm not going to lie to my audience.
I'm not going to lie about my real opinions and perspective.

Speaker 5 And what's been really, really harmful is the fact that, you know, legacy media really is dominated by liberal ideology.

Speaker 5 So, yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all that they provide cover for the likes of Gavin Newsome. And in fact, cheerlead for him.

Speaker 4 I was going to say, this is actually really interesting because Bernie Sanders, for example, and like Noam Chomsky have carried this criticism for decades of the media being a bastion of right-wing propaganda.

Speaker 4 And it is true that the media is generally biased in favor of, for example, war. They get all kinds of money from defense contractors and advertising dollars.

Speaker 4 And so they, of course, are not going to disclose when somebody who's on their news program is on the board of Lockheed or whatever it is. And yeah, there's some element of if it bleeds, it leads.

Speaker 4 And it's similar with Pharma. They get a lot of ads from Pharma, a lot of money from Pharma.
And they're just friends with those guys. They go to all the book parties and

Speaker 4 fun events with those people in the cocktail circuit. But what seems to have shifted to me is that it was this elite cultural leftism.

Speaker 4 And it's not leftist, it's sort of progressive. I don't even know what you call it.
What do you think?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I actually don't think there's much love for leftists in the media. There was a little bit of that

Speaker 5 in 2020 after there was all this unrest following the murder of George Floyd. But in reality, I think the media is dominated by liberals, and liberals are different from leftists, right?

Speaker 5 Leftists typically

Speaker 5 adopt socialist ideology and are way further to the left than liberals are. Liberals represent the democratic establishment.

Speaker 5 And I think if you pay attention, I mean, why do you think Jake Tapper was like, oh, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. It turns out that Biden was lying about his mental decline.

Speaker 5 It's like, you know, even if I want to be generous to Tapper and say that, no, no, no, he wasn't part of the cover-up.

Speaker 5 He was just totally shafted by Biden and crew and he was tricked by them, whatever.

Speaker 5 Obviously, Tapper has some sort of bias, right? That's more favorable to the Democratic establishment. So when he's willing to ask tough questions of Republicans, that's great.

Speaker 5 I want him to keep doing that. But I also want him to be prodding in his interviews of members of the Democratic establishment as well.

Speaker 5 Because if you don't have media that's giving the American people accurate information about both parties, I mean, do you really have a democracy?

Speaker 5 Are people really going to be able to make the best decision for themselves when they go to the ballot or when they, you know, submit their ballots? So I just, I'm sick of it.

Speaker 5 And I think that's part of the reason why you're seeing this popularity and this emergence of independent media. Like, I love watching counterpoints and breaking points.

Speaker 5 I love the fact that you're getting raw opinion and you guys don't try to tinker with the facts. The facts are the facts.
You can't change that.

Speaker 5 But you also want sincerity, you want authenticity, and you do get a lot of that in independent media.

Speaker 5 You get a lot of robotic garbage, though, when you're watching, you know, cable news or, you know, reading a lot of these old school legacy media outlets.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I have some friends that are really disillusioned with independent media, like actually some people in independent media who are really disillusioned with it.

Speaker 4 And that's a good question for you, Anna, as well as somebody who is like a founder of independent media in this chapter.

Speaker 4 Do you, are you worried about the direction that it's taken where things, you know, maybe are getting like a little dicey, a little propagandy, propaganda-y in directions that can sometimes be hard to, for an average viewer to be like, is this person working for the Republican Party or Democrat?

Speaker 4 Like, does that concern you greatly?

Speaker 5 It doesn't concern me greatly because I have faith and trust in the American people. right? And I think that they can identify inauthentic nonsense.

Speaker 5 And a good example of that, honestly, is Charlie Kirk. So Charlie Kirk is obviously running cover for Donald Trump following this whole Epstein cover-up debacle.

Speaker 5 And there was that big news story about how Trump called all these right-wing influencers, people like Charlie Kirk, and basically told them, please stop talking about the Epstein thing.

Speaker 4 Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 5 And then he announced, I'm not going to talk about this anymore, got a ton of backlash from his audience, to the credit of his audience, by the way.

Speaker 5 And the next day was like, oh, when I said that, I just meant specifically that day. I'm not going to talk about it anymore.
So it's hilarious. My point is.

Speaker 5 You know, for the longest time, the media has treated Americans like they're morons and they've gotten away with it because you didn't have as much competition as you have now.

Speaker 5 Now there's a ton of competition. And guess what? Americans aren't stupid.

Speaker 5 So I think that there is this trend trend of more and more voters kind of seeing that both parties, they're getting shafted by both parties and they want something more.

Speaker 5 And I'm hearing Uniparty a lot more these days

Speaker 5 among people that I would never expect that commentary from.

Speaker 5 So I'm actually kind of excited to see where this all develops because there is this like growing number of Americans who actually want accountability.

Speaker 5 And just compare the reactions to Trump's first term among the MAGA base to what we're experiencing today. The backlash over this Epstein thing is incredible.
And I love seeing it.

Speaker 5 I love seeing it not because I'm not a fan of Trump, but because you have people who voted for Trump standing up and saying, nah, we're not going to take this. And that's great.

Speaker 4 Yeah, like the line in the sand has been fully exposed.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 4 Anna Kasparian, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for stopping by the show.

Speaker 5 Thank you for having me. And again, congratulations on your show.
I wish you luck.

Speaker 4 Thank you. Appreciate it.
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Speaker 4 I'm excited to be joined now by my friend, Evita Duffy Alfonso. Evida, thank you for being here.

Speaker 6 Thanks for having me, Emily.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm drinking Mexican beer for you. I thought that might make you feel more at home.

Speaker 6 Maybe, but I'm not a beer drinker. But I do appreciate the Mexican vibes.

Speaker 4 Are you in Wisconsin?

Speaker 6 I am in Wisconsin. It was, Emily, 55 degrees today in Wisconsin.
It's not even summer here. It's awful.

Speaker 5 awful.

Speaker 4 I don't even feel badly for you. That actually sounds so nice.
It's so bad in D.C. that if I'm like 55 degrees, I could wear a winter coat, be content.
So I don't know, Avita,

Speaker 4 you haven't dissuaded me that your situation is really all that hard.

Speaker 6 Well, my husband's enjoying it. He's like obsessed with cold weather.
We were living in Florida for a while and he was miserable. He felt like he was being.

Speaker 6 So he's like enjoying it. I'm putting on a coat, going into Walmart.
Like it's, it's, it's bringing back old memories of never having warm weather here as growing up.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and for people who don't know, you're like way up north of Wisconsin. We're not talking Milwaukee action.
You're up there, you're in it, and you're basically an Eskimo.

Speaker 4 That probably offended someone.

Speaker 6 Probably, but that's okay. No,

Speaker 6 but it's beautiful here. Like I will say, Wisconsin is a wonderful state.
The nicest people in the entire continental U.S. live in the northwoods of Wisconsin.

Speaker 4 Of course.

Speaker 4 I mean, I'm not going to disagree with you on that. Let's maybe talk about some things we will disagree on.

Speaker 4 We've got Justin Bieber to get to, but we're going to sort of go on a journey until we talk to Justin Bieber. And that journey, people can follow this along, I swear.

Speaker 4 This is going to be like Charlie Kelly at the meme of Charlie Kelly at the like, what is it, like a corkboard, right? Where he's doing the peppy silva from It's Always Sunny.

Speaker 4 We're going to take this all the way from Maureen Comey being fired to the new Justin Bieber record. So strap in, Avida.
Let's start with this story. I'm going to put it up on the screen.

Speaker 4 Here you see, actually, Maureen Comey, federal prosecutor in Epstein case, fired from U.S. Attorney's Office.
This just broke after 8.30 p.m. East Coast time.

Speaker 4 Interesting timing, of course, given the Epstein news, but also, Evida, given the... Diddy news.
So I have a lot to ask you about this.

Speaker 4 Maureen Comey has been in the Southern District of New York for a long time. I think a lot of people would agree prosecutors seem to have botched the Diddy prosecution, the Rico charge.

Speaker 4 Now, in retrospect, with the benefit of hindsight, sort of looks like an overreach and maybe a bad way to get convictions.

Speaker 4 But also, Donald Trump has been talking all day about how Comey created, James Comey created the Epstein hoax.

Speaker 4 And then on top of that, the FBI announced an investigation into Comey and John Brennan just last week.

Speaker 4 So of all of those various factors that are sort of swimming around Maureen Comey, what do you think actually happened here?

Speaker 6 Well, listen, I think that Maureen Comey should have have been fired a long time ago.

Speaker 6 I think that this was a long time coming.

Speaker 6 I think it was our former boss, Sean Davis, who I first heard make this connection like months ago.

Speaker 6 That, hey, isn't it weird that this woman who is connected, the daughter of one of the most corrupt men ever in Washington, James Comey, who's this guy that orchestrated the Russia collusion hoax, trying to steal the vote away from the American people, a duly elected president, dethrone him in this deep state coup.

Speaker 6 So his daughter is connected to these these really important cases in the southern district of New York. You have Epstein, then you have Sean Combs.

Speaker 6 And it's bizarre that she's been able to keep this amount of power for as long as she has. And I think this was again a long time coming.

Speaker 6 But it would be interesting, I think, to revisit some of these cases because, again, this is somebody that I don't think is to be trusted given her family connection.

Speaker 6 There is a conflict of interest if potentially Diddy is the Jeffrey Epstein of the Hollywood world, right?

Speaker 6 Somebody who is collecting blackmail, potentially, this has been a theory on Hollywood elites at the behest of the feds.

Speaker 6 And if that were true and it was authorized under James Comey, well, that's a huge conflict to have his daughter prosecuting Diddy.

Speaker 6 So these are really, I think, questions that need to be looked into, not just that she needs to be removed, but that we need to revisit some of these trials.

Speaker 4 Okay, so can I ask, I mean, she was also one of the lead prosecutors in the Ghelane Maxwell case, and Ghelaine Maxwell has been telegraphing that she's, you know, there's an anonymous source in in the Daily Mail saying, for example, Ghelaine Maxwell is ready to speak.

Speaker 4 Obviously, Ghelaine Maxwell has appealed the decision and

Speaker 4 the course decision in her own case.

Speaker 4 So does this have anything to do? I mean, like, basically, I'm just trying to get all of the various factors that could potentially be going into this on the table.

Speaker 4 Is this potentially Pam Bondi cutting someone loose who could blow the whistle? Is this Pam Bondi finally making a good decision and getting Comey Comey out of the Southern District of New York?

Speaker 4 Is this purely Diddy related, purely Epstein-related? Like of all of those things happening, did she maybe just, I mean, I don't know. What's your read on this?

Speaker 6 Well, I don't know. I don't know either.
I mean, I think it's hard to tell at this point. It is interesting that I mean, again, like she has these bizarre deep state connections.

Speaker 6 She has all of this power. She also in 2024, interestingly,

Speaker 6 asked petition to the court that Epstein files remain remain under

Speaker 6 on seal because she thought that it would potentially affect a Ghelene Maxwell retrial in the future. This was in 2024.

Speaker 6 The judge said, no, I'm not going to keep every file on Jeffrey Epstein under wraps, but some of them I will. So this is also somebody who's petitioning.

Speaker 6 strangely to keep Jeffrey Epstein related information secret for a future potential Ghelaine Maxwell case. Again, like maybe this is, maybe she has good reasoning.

Speaker 6 I'm not really sure what it is, but it's kind of, again, bizarre given the deep state connections that she has. I don't know what Pam Bondi is doing in the situation.

Speaker 6 I have to say, I'm a little unclear on what her, what her, what her goals are, I guess what her decision-making has been. and from the get-go in this administration.

Speaker 6 I mean, this is somebody who said, we have the Epstein files. They're sitting on my desk.
She had Epstein phase one with bindergate. And now she's saying there's nothing.

Speaker 6 So I think all of us are a little bit confused about what's coming out of the DOJ via Pam Bondi.

Speaker 4 Yes, let's actually keep pulling at that thread for just another moment because I have another theory to float by you, which is that as the president himself, I actually think people are underestimating the importance of the argument he's been laying out over the last couple of days, which is now that

Speaker 4 the Epstein files are a hoax that were cooked up by Comey. And, you know, Ann Coulter, I think, had a great line.

Speaker 4 She was like, most of what we knew about Epstein came from the Palm Beach Post and the women themselves.

Speaker 4 But all that is to say,

Speaker 4 if he is trying to start putting the pieces together to make it look like, and there may be some truth to this, I should also add,

Speaker 4 people like James Comey left little breadcrumbs leading to Donald Trump for some reason in the files.

Speaker 4 You know, Megan Kelly has had some reporting to the extent that people say the files may be currently arranged in a way or may be currently organized in a way that points to Donald Trump, and that may be intentional.

Speaker 4 So now Trump is trying to plant the seeds of this idea that the deep state concocted an Epstein hoax pointing the finger in Trump's direction.

Speaker 4 And so in a case like that is the firing of James Comey's daughter the day that Trump really rolls out this strategy in earnest and starts saying this is a deep state hoax from James Comey.

Speaker 4 Trump named James Comey on television today to reporters and said that he was part of the Epstein hoax.

Speaker 4 I wonder if this has something to do with that, if this is setting the the stage for an even more vociferous effort on behalf of the Trump administration to start trying to convince

Speaker 4 dissatisfied Trump supporters that the Epstein case was in some ways cooked up to undermine Trump, just like the Russia collusion hoax, which he himself invoked today.

Speaker 6 Well, I think that's possible, Emily. And I also think it's possible that there is information in these supposed files that's fake, that's trying to smear President Trump.

Speaker 6 I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if massive amounts of information on Jeffrey Epstein have been destroyed over the last few years.

Speaker 6 I mean, we, I mean, this is, and also, I think it was, it would have been in May, or it was April or May that we heard that there was actually like a secret back door that the

Speaker 6 FBI had where they were hiding Russia collusion, Russia and collusion information.

Speaker 6 And we have no idea what else has been hidden through this back door that's just been completely unaccounted for via the rest of the federal federal government FOIA requests.

Speaker 6 Who knows what's being hidden? Who knows what's been destroyed? What's been cooked up?

Speaker 6 And so I think that the answer, I think, what the American people want is just full transparency. Like, okay, maybe some of it's fake.
Maybe some of it's cooked up. Just release it all.

Speaker 6 We'll decide for ourselves. There are a lot of amazing citizen journalists out there.

Speaker 6 I think this idea that we're protect, that we're being protected by not releasing the information, whether that's on JFK, MLK, 9-11, whether it's on MKUltra or the Jeffrey Epstein files, is very false.

Speaker 6 The American people just want transparency. That's all we've been asking for.
That's what Trump's entire movement was about in 2016, right? It was this revolt.

Speaker 6 against a corrupt state that we all realized was not the America that our grandparents thought it was. And yeah, I think that it's possible some of it's cooked up.

Speaker 6 But again, we just want transparency.

Speaker 4 Well, and while you're here, I have to give a shout out to your lovely mom, who's been massively viral in the last couple of days because of a question she asked Donald Trump on the campaign trail on Fox News about whether he'd released JFK files, 9-11 files, Epstein files.

Speaker 4 And he said, well, maybe less so, because then in those cases, there may be some phony allegations and people, you know, who are wrapped up in this because they're named in maybe a Jeffrey Epstein's like black book, for example.

Speaker 4 I think Trump himself was in the black book, and it was just a list of contacts. I mean, there's something to that, of course, but you don't need to

Speaker 4 be totally like, you don't need to get

Speaker 4 unredacted raw files, thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of them. They could just be even like modestly more transparent and it would go a long way.

Speaker 6 Right. And this is, this is the thing.
Like we know that they have this information. I mean, the Jeffrey Epstein, when his house was raided in New York, people saw the FBI carrying out boxes of tapes.

Speaker 6 Like there was a testimony of an agent. She said that, yeah, we did this.
We carried tapes out. His entire house was bugged.
The same code goes for Diddy as well, right?

Speaker 6 The FBI raided his home and carried out boxes of tapes. It's like, what happened to this information? Like, where are they now? Who was in them?

Speaker 6 These are important questions that, again, just for some reason go unanswered. And we're told, oh, well, it's for our safety or it's for the integrity of a future case against Ghillaine Maxwell.

Speaker 6 Whatever it is, no one cares anymore. We just want the truth.

Speaker 4 Well, and people feel sort of similarly about the Ghelane Maxwell prosecution and the Diddy prosecution. Let's move on to Diddy because

Speaker 4 that was,

Speaker 4 not only was Diddy sort of, I think at this point, obviously botched in terms of the prosecution, but the Ghillaine Maxwell prosecution raised a lot of eyebrows because what wasn't part of it.

Speaker 4 And that was Maureen Comey as well. So I said to strap in at the top of the segment, I know we now have the Charlie Kelly meme we can put up on the screen because this is what's happening right now.

Speaker 4 This is what I feel like every time I talk to Avita.

Speaker 4 Actually, we kind of are, we get each other, we get each other maybe a little too riled up on some of these things, but let's just keep on going along with the ride because Avita Justin Bieber is out with his new album, Swag.

Speaker 4 It dropped last Friday. Critics are mostly trashing it.
He got a pretty positive review in Rolling Stone, but the fans, I mean, it's doing well on Spotify, for example. It's kind of many such cases.

Speaker 4 It's like the Rotten Tomatoes phenomenon where you get a bad credit score and a good audience score.

Speaker 4 But I think some of the reviewers are particularly having trouble with Bieber's vacillating between kind of pro-God, pro-family,

Speaker 4 like reactionary cultural messaging. He's married very young.
He now has a one-year-old son, obviously with Haley Bieber. And then some of the more like racy lyrics in his songs.

Speaker 4 And let me put this review from the Independent up on the screen, actually.

Speaker 4 And I sent this to you, Avida. So you, I think you read it.
Justin Bieber's swag is a god-fearing hyper-sexual slog.

Speaker 4 Listen, that sounds like a good time.

Speaker 6 Whatever that means.

Speaker 4 Well, but okay, so the Diddy connection here is that Bieber,

Speaker 4 the way that you could look at this is that Bieber is

Speaker 4 maybe like free

Speaker 4 of the psychological weight of Diddy. I mean, in May, Bieber's team came out and said that he was not one of Diddy's victims.

Speaker 4 At the same time, there are all kinds of accusations swirling around their very close relationship when Bieber was very, very young.

Speaker 4 And between Scuda Braun and Diddy,

Speaker 4 you know, Bieber has, he's not with Scude Braun anymore. He's long, long, long, long, long time manager.
He's obviously seemed like he's struggling.

Speaker 4 But what do you make of all of this happening with that backdrop?

Speaker 6 Well, I think that it's pretty obvious that Justin Bieber was victimized by Diddy.

Speaker 6 I mean, like, there's video evidence of it, and I mean, you can look it up. I'd suggest not looking it up.

Speaker 6 But he's definitely somebody who was taken advantage of by Diddy, but by a lot of people. I mean, he was, I mean, he was little.
I mean, he was 12 or 13 years old when he was discovered on YouTube.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 his parents weren't in the industry able to protect him. And so, this is the first time that he's really broken free from his manager, from control, really, in Hollywood.
This is music that's his own.

Speaker 6 He's saying it's authentic to him. I listened to it.
I did not think it was as bad as the reviews are saying.

Speaker 6 And I also have to wonder: like, is part of the reason why we're seeing so many negative reviews about his music? Because he has separated from Scooter Braun.

Speaker 6 They came to a settlement. I think it was like $30 million that Justin has to, Justin Bieber has to pay Scooter Braun's company just to be free.

Speaker 6 There was a financial dispute relating to not fulfilling a concert that he had in 2022. But the point is, he is free now.
This is his music.

Speaker 6 And I think it's really telling that this is the time that the media has come out and said, the music industry media has come out and said, oh, this music is trash, just as he has freed himself and become independent.

Speaker 6 And I'll say from that review, Emily, I was expecting a Megan The Stallion song. Like I listened to songs.
It was not that bad. I thought it was fine.

Speaker 6 It wasn't life-changing or wonderful, but it certainly is not as bad as the music critics were

Speaker 6 making it out to be.

Speaker 4 Well, it is really interesting with him because he comes from

Speaker 4 the sort of hyper-sexual,

Speaker 4 you and I would probably say, like demonic world of Hollywood, where there is so much exploitation. The Diddy, the entire Diddy case, I think, put that on full display.

Speaker 4 You referred to him as the Jeffrey Epstein of the music music world. And I think what you saw was just patterns of similarly

Speaker 4 cover-ups, you know, people who were taking money from Diddy,

Speaker 4 who were staying quiet because they were scared of him, because he could influence their careers and their own power. And Bieber was very much in that world for a long, long time.

Speaker 4 He comes from that world. He's almost native to it because he was so young when he was plucked from obscurity on YouTube and thrust into Superstardom.

Speaker 4 And his grappling with faith has been super compelling. It reminds me, and this is not a good comparison, it's not a charitable comparison, but it does remind me a little bit of Kanye West.

Speaker 4 And Kanye West ended up going down a horrible direction

Speaker 4 after first putting out that great, like fully Christian record.

Speaker 4 It didn't end well, right? A lot of people were like, Kanye West is saved. His life is, you know, this is his future.
And it didn't go in that direction at all.

Speaker 4 So I I don't know if you have any thoughts on that as it pertains to Bieber, because since becoming, you know, more and more openly Christian, he's also continued to struggle really immensely in his marriage, as a father, uh, and all of that.

Speaker 6 Well, I think if you, if you look at this man's past, I mean, first of all, as like, I, I can't hate Justin Bieber ever. I mean, he, he really is like a cultural icon for a Zelennial-aged female.

Speaker 6 Like, I, you're such a loser. The first music video I had ever seen was Justin Bieber baby.

Speaker 6 It was. It was.
And I thought it was so good. I was like,

Speaker 6 he's so cool. He's at a bowling alley.
I thought the girl's outfit with like the skinny jeans, like a sparkly top. I was like, this is amazing.
This is so cool.

Speaker 6 So yes, Justin Bieber is a cultural icon. He is beloved.
He has also been in the limelight since he was at a very young age. And I once, I knew this girl once.
I actually met her at a YAF event,

Speaker 6 which Emily, you know.

Speaker 6 um but it was she she lived in california her dad was in the music industry and she had met justin bieber once at an event and he was being swarmed by people and he just said you know like just basically i'll take this picture but like please leave me alone like i just space and we see this constantly for justin bieber like there are always these viral videos coming out of people swarming him and him just asking like please can i have some space i the the most viral one was recently where he said you know i'm i'm standing on business and then it just went mega viral people made fun of him but the point is that this is somebody who has been in the the limelight for a very long time and who also has demons from his past.

Speaker 6 If you look at what's happened with him and Diddy and the way that Diddy clearly overly sexualized him, potentially abused him, it is very obvious that he is dealing with a traumatic childhood.

Speaker 6 And so to try and come to Jesus while also having the spotlight on you. continually from when you were a young age up until now, it has to be really, really difficult.

Speaker 6 And I can understand why a lot of people in his position, Connie West, Justin Bieber, others, struggle to actually come to Jesus, given the circumstances, the temptations, the attention that is surrounding them.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and you know, he also,

Speaker 4 I feel like this was almost, I'm really interested in your take on this, because I feel like for people your age, he was almost the beginning.

Speaker 4 This must have been pre-COVID because he got married in 2018.

Speaker 4 I think a lot of people think the sort of trad movement started during COVID, but I mean, you and I remember because we were probably talking about it at the time.

Speaker 4 There were a lot of signs that it was picking up momentum before then.

Speaker 4 And Justin Bieber getting married to Haley Bieber at a really young age and speaking about it, framing their marriage in overtly Christian terms,

Speaker 4 going to church and all of that. Like, I actually feel like his example was one of the earliest big cultural moments that made it clear.

Speaker 4 a sea change was happening from on the last episode we were talking about Lena Dunham and girls and the legacy of girls.

Speaker 4 She talks about how, you know, circa 2012, when that show was on, there was this movement where the culture was opening and body positivity was happening and people were moving away from slut shaming and all of that.

Speaker 4 I actually think she's right about that. There was this moment where progressive, cultural progressivism was ascendant.

Speaker 4 And, you know, it was treated as ridiculous to say, you know, that Lena Dunham on girls was behaving foolishly, at least on a sexual level, and all of that.

Speaker 4 And then Bieber gets married really young in 2018. We start to, it's not like he created this trend.

Speaker 4 He's not the Regina George here, but it did, there was something happening that was a backlash, I think, to

Speaker 4 that wave of feminism that was most exemplified by Lena Dunham. And I sort of see him as playing a big role in that.

Speaker 6 No, I think you're right about that, Emily. And

Speaker 6 I also think, well, I'll just say, I thought Hailey Bieber was a little bit of an icon for a while too. Like this, she's just kind of almost embracing the

Speaker 6 the vibe shift that you and i are talking about to the right even though she's not right wing and then she did a collab with planned parenthood a couple years ago no haley bieber she's not it i'm not i'm not i'm no longer a fan um but yeah i do think that they contributed to that i'll say this also emily that Justin Bieber has always been a part of the the mega church uh crowd right like the these like oh here we go if you just getting started on protestantism sorry i have to say i knew she was gonna do it i have to say it, Emily.

Speaker 6 It's just this, a lot of times these megachurches, they are not grounded in a lot of doctrine. Things can get kind of wild and

Speaker 6 you have staged performances and it's, it's just, there's not, there's not their tradition. There is not the doctrine that keeps you grounded in your faith and gives substance to it.

Speaker 6 This is what the Catholic Church offers. I'm a Catholic.
I'll just say.

Speaker 6 There are other Protestant sects that do a better job.

Speaker 6 Oftentimes, these mega churches do not. And I think that's also a contributing problem here.

Speaker 6 At the same time, Emily, you are seeing a lot of young people embrace Catholicism, an authentic tradition and ritual.

Speaker 6 And so, yes, Justin Bieber is kind of part of this cultural moment. And there are others who are discovering the full truth at the same time.

Speaker 6 And maybe Justin Bieber and Haley Bieber's wedding was like the gateway into all that, which I think is a positive thing ultimately.

Speaker 4 Well, I think it normalizes it. And yeah, you're right.

Speaker 4 I mean, like the Hill Songs and those other sort of evangelical mega churches, which I go to an evangelical megachurch, so I'm obviously not a post categorically, but they are sort of feeling centric, right?

Speaker 4 Like it's a postmodern approach to Christianity where it's they may disagree with this, but it's sort of my truth and

Speaker 4 exploring the gospel through your quote-unquote truth, right? Like there's this sort of relativism. uh to it that leads people into a really like bad situation.

Speaker 4 So I don't just disagree with that at all. It was, there's a reason it was popular in Hollywood with the Kardashians and the Beavers, and it's because it didn't particularly challenge you.

Speaker 4 It was sort of more therapeutic on the surface and ultimately not as therapeutic as it probably could be.

Speaker 4 But I think it's offensive either.

Speaker 6 I think it was, it's it's a it's a type of Christian brand of Christianity that is acceptable to the Hollywood friends that they have, right? It doesn't make them quite as uncomfortable.

Speaker 4 Do you think some of that is why critics

Speaker 4 who, I mean, if you're a music critic, it's getting published in a major outlet, you're, I think it's fair to call you sort of elite. You're at the top of your game.

Speaker 4 If you got the job of reviewing the new Bieber album for these publications, do you think that's sort of why critics are grossed out or aren't willing to like embrace

Speaker 4 the new Bieber record? I think that was true of Kanye's Christian album, which by

Speaker 4 objective standards was really well done.

Speaker 4 Critics were uncomfortable with it. Do you sense any of that now with Bieber?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, I think it's possible. So I would say probably most of it has to do with him leaving the industry.
Like that's, that's my sense. Like people are just mad.

Speaker 6 He's no longer controlled by Scooter Braun and there's this massive controversy between the two of them. I do think that that could potentially be part of it.

Speaker 6 And if we're just being honest, I mean, this is always how Christians are treated in Hollywood.

Speaker 6 And it comes through not just interpersonally, but in the type of content that they put out in the world.

Speaker 6 I mean, mean, when have we ever seen a wholesome show that portrays Christianity in a good way? I mean, the last time I saw Hollywood

Speaker 6 put a highlight on Catholicism was Spotlight, where they were accusing Catholic priests of all being rapists, which obviously that's not true, right?

Speaker 6 But this is the kind of representation that Christianity is getting in Hollywood.

Speaker 6 So the fact that potentially there's some animosity there for Justin Bieber being a Christian and trying to live out that lifestyle is definitely a possibility.

Speaker 6 I also think, though, though, the biggest issue here is him separating, going on his own and being independent, which you really don't see very often for a reason in Hollywood.

Speaker 4 Hmm. Yeah, that's pretty interesting too.
There's just something in me that senses he normalized this stuff for people.

Speaker 4 So Bieber's a year younger than me and was mostly popular with people, I think, your age, like roughly five years younger than me.

Speaker 4 And I feel like the millennials were caught up in Taylor Swift, Lena Dunham world, and Zoomers kind of

Speaker 4 had this different era where things were normalized.

Speaker 4 Like if Bieber had, yeah, anyway, I don't know, I feel like he did help normalize and change some of these standards in a way that opened the doors for the trad movement.

Speaker 6 Well, I think that if you look at just where Gen Z is at compared to millennials, men, women, black, brown, white, doesn't matter.

Speaker 6 Every single Gen Z demo is more right-wing than their millennial counterparts. Like, this is just what the studies studies are showing.

Speaker 6 And there's a reason for that. I mean, there is a vibe shift that's happening.
It's mostly happening online. It's being driven by the online world.

Speaker 6 And you're seeing just a lot of influencers, cultural influencers, internet influencers.

Speaker 6 trending in that direction for whatever reason. I mean, and I think it makes sense.
I mean, we've been living in the Obama era, right? Of like the hipsters with the Starbucks and the like King.

Speaker 4 The hipsters with the Starbucks and the flannel. It's like such an old description of like hipster dumb circa 2008.
Yeah, they're reading vice.

Speaker 4 But actually, Avita, you are a literal lumberjack. So the lumberjack moment must have been great for you and your family.

Speaker 6 Those, they were fake lumberjacks. Those guys, like Pajama Boy and the hipsters, like they weren't climbing trees and log rolling.
So they were.

Speaker 4 Which you actually, people don't know this.

Speaker 4 If you don't know this about Avida, she is a champion lumberjack.

Speaker 6 Log roller, yes. And my Oh, whatever.
Champion speed climber. Yeah, no, it's true.

Speaker 6 So that was cultural appropriation on behalf of millennials that I take deep offense to, and I'm still upset about it.

Speaker 6 And they, they continue, I think, to appropriate lumberjackism, and they also continue to poison us with their voting habits.

Speaker 4 You, you really tied that up with a bow, Avida. Well done.

Speaker 6 Thank you, Emily.

Speaker 4 Let people know where they can follow you.

Speaker 6 Avita Duffy underscore one on X and on Instagram. Emily, congratulations on your new show.
It's really awesome. I'm so excited.

Speaker 6 And it was so like, and I have to tell you guys, before you let me go, Emily, I literally had a nightmare last night. I woke up.

Speaker 6 I had a nightmare that I, your show was last night and I just slept through it. I'm like, this show is so late.
It's so fun, but I'm going to sleep through the show.

Speaker 4 I made it, but I had a nightmare about it. What is wrong with you? It's not even 10 p.m.
in Wisconsin.

Speaker 4 Like, are you 85 years old?

Speaker 6 I'm trying to get my sleep schedule back to normal. I used to go to bed at at 2 or 3 a.m.

Speaker 4 and now I know.

Speaker 4 I remember getting text messages from you at 1.30 in the morning being like, did you know this about Jeffrey Epstein?

Speaker 6 Yeah, so you'll get those texts from me now, but it'll just be earlier in the day.

Speaker 4 All right. Well, Avita, I can't wait to have you back.
Thank you for being so kind, for your kind words. This was a blast, and we will see you soon.

Speaker 6 Thanks, Emily.

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I'm using my iPad because my printer wasn't working.

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We can make all kinds of things, but for some reason, not a functioning printer.

Speaker 4 Let's talk about NPR. Actually, you know what? I've been saving this.
I think we're going to do Stacey Abrams first

Speaker 4 because NPR is, you know, we're going to get to that in a second, but Stacey Abrams actually told NPR today that she has not ruled out another run for office. Check this out.

Speaker 4 So Stacey Abrams is promoting her latest novel.

Speaker 4 And I should say, Governor Stacey Abrams is promoting her new novel. People think she lost the Georgia's governor race.
She

Speaker 4 obviously

Speaker 4 the election denialism is strong with Stacey Abrams. So it's only proper to refer to her as Governor Abrams.
But she has an interesting career as a novelist going back years and years.

Speaker 4 She's now writing under her own name. But in this interview with NPR about her novel, look at this, this is amazing.
We're actually going to talk about it.

Speaker 4 I just got a pop-up on NPR, npr.org that said, you count on public media for stories that help you understand your world, voices that bring us closer together.

Speaker 4 People like you, power independent media. We're going to talk about that in just a moment because NPR is truly freaking out about their funding, which is pending in Congress at the moment.
So

Speaker 4 it's no wonder that they're disrupting my efforts to be informed about Governor Abrams with these desperate pleas.

Speaker 4 But towards the end of the interview, she gets asked whether she'll run for office again in 2026. And she says, I truly have not made any decisions.

Speaker 4 And that is in part because there's an urgency to 2025 that we cannot ignore. My focus right now is on how do we ensure that we have free and fair elections in 2026.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of hope being pinned on the 26 midterms.

Speaker 4 So Stacey Abrams right now is saying that she's worried about the lack of free and fair elections after sowing immense distrust in electoral integrity by claiming that she actually really won the Georgia governor's race.

Speaker 4 And at least we can give it to Governor Abrams for being consistent. Now, it reminded me when I saw this

Speaker 4 back in, man, this must have been 2018.

Speaker 4 Incredible stuff.

Speaker 4 I was tasked at the Federalist,

Speaker 4 and I forget why, I think it was because,

Speaker 4 so I had covered in 2017 Netroots Nation, which is like the Libs CPAC. And there was this big fight over Stacey Abrams versus Stacey Evans

Speaker 4 and like protests and very typical sort of lefty stuff. And I had...
That sort of piqued my interest in Stacey Abrams, and she went on to become more successful in politics. But

Speaker 4 because I had started looking into her, I knew that she had a career as a romance novelist. Many people aren't aware of this about Stacey Abrams, but I,

Speaker 4 back in 2018, sacrificed my mental health, sacrificed many, many hours of my life reading, skimming really, all of Stacey Abrams' romance novels, and they are fucking disgusting.

Speaker 4 I have some excerpts from them that I pulled out. This is not child-friendly, but this is actually prose written by Governor Stacey Abrams, Georgia Governor Stacey Abrams.

Speaker 4 She used to write under the non-deplume Selena Montgomery, which is spectacular. And I applaud her for coming up with that non-deplume.

Speaker 4 It's like basically the best writing that she's ever managed to do. Like the peak was just coming up with her pseudonym.
And then from there, it's all downhill.

Speaker 4 So this is an exchange between someone named Sebastian Kane and Dr. Caitlin Lida in the Selena Montgomery thriller, Secrets and Lies.
Again, very much not child-friendly. I can't read this.

Speaker 4 I don't want to.

Speaker 4 He thrust deep, control broken, shattered, again and again, deeper, not hotter, and further than fantasy. With urgency, she accepted, I'm done.
Okay, I can't even get through it.

Speaker 4 It's too much. It's too much to read aloud.
It was one thing reading it silently in my head, but reading it aloud. I don't want to do that to you.

Speaker 4 And more importantly, I don't want to do it to myself. I'm re-traumatizing myself.

Speaker 4 Here's one. This is Dr.
Ethernet Stewart and Mara Reed in the book called Hidden Sins. Watch me love you, he commanded silently.
Know that I will always be a part of you.

Speaker 4 By design, he flowed over every inch of Gosamer's skin in voracious, tender assault.

Speaker 4 Voracious,

Speaker 4 tender assault. assault is sort of like how Stacey Abrams has approached political leadership over the state of Georgia, a voracious and tender assault.

Speaker 4 Let's go on to NPR at this point, because I can't quite keep doing this to myself or to you. I think it's rather funny that NPR, while it's begging for money,

Speaker 4 is writing these articles about Stacey Abrams that are just pure favorable

Speaker 4 like reputation, boosting public relations that even Stacey Abrams, like publicist, couldn't dream of,

Speaker 4 while NPR is trying to tell Republicans that they're worthy of public funding. It's just incredible stuff.

Speaker 4 So, this is,

Speaker 4 I'm going to share a Daily Beast article on the screen because it includes, I think, some pretty good framing from Republicans who, right now, as you may have heard, are working on a rescissions package that's going through Congress that's trying to take back some actually already appropriated congressional funds.

Speaker 4 And some of that is $1.1 billion for NPR and PBS.

Speaker 4 And so I want to read this quote from Eric Schmidt, who's really a senator, Republican senator from Missouri, who has really, really championed this because I think the way he frames it makes it so, so very difficult for NPR to make the case that it is making.

Speaker 4 And actually, before I get to that quote, I'm going to, let's roll this clip of Catherine Marr on CNN this morning. She's the head of NPR.

Speaker 4 She's been making her case against the Republican efforts here.

Speaker 4 Last ditch type of campaign to save what's actually only 2%

Speaker 4 of NPR's budget, according to the New York Times. It'll have effects.
You know, they'll probably make sure that it affects the local stations, the most sympathetic stations most.

Speaker 4 But private donors will also surely step in and make up some of the gap. Again, 2% of the funding.
So let's roll Catherine Maher this morning here.

Speaker 9 As far as the accusations that we're biased, I would stand up and say, please show me a story that concerns you because we want to know and we want to bring that conversation back to our newsroom.

Speaker 9 We believe that as a public broadcaster, we do have an obligation to serve all Americans and we need to make sure that our coverage reflects the interests and perspective and we hear from Americans across the political spectrum.

Speaker 9 That's important to us and we want to make sure we live up to that.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Catherine. I would like to submit for your consideration the aforementioned article about Governor Stacey Abrams, in which

Speaker 4 barely any scintilla of criticism about the doubt that she sowed in election integrity was mentioned or any of her other various positions over the years, which would easily be mentioned in any article promoting, let's say, a conservative politician's novel.

Speaker 4 Does that exist? I hope not. But if it did exist, we all know what that article would look like.
So for your consideration, Catherine Moore, let's take a look at that maybe.

Speaker 4 Just something that was published on your site today. Let's go to Eric Schmidt here.

Speaker 4 This is Missouri Republican Senator Eric Schmidt, who put it, framed it in a way that is just, what is Catherine Maher even supposed to do?

Speaker 4 He said, while the actual American people are working long hours to afford groceries and gas, their government has been writing checks to left-wing propaganda outlets and spending billions overseas on countries that hate us.

Speaker 4 So Catherine Maher's best defense in that situation is actually just that.

Speaker 4 So for example, this is something certain Republicans have pointed out.

Speaker 4 Actually, Matt Taibbi, not a Republican, who was on the show last week, pointed it out too, that Catherine Maher complained Donald Trump's efforts, it was an executive order at the time to take back funding from NPR amounted to viewpoint discrimination.

Speaker 4 Oh, well, that's interesting. Which viewpoints might he be discriminating against? Huh.
It's a concession, right, that

Speaker 4 her viewpoint is not just quote unquote neutral, that NPR is not doing what it pledges to do, what it tells its viewers to do. And I actually think that's sad.

Speaker 4 I don't have like an ideological opposition to like well-funded, well-run public broadcasting, whether it's PBS or NPR. I listen to a ton of NPR

Speaker 4 because, you know, I think I mentioned this the other day.

Speaker 4 I would drive an old car and sometimes you're going like, I think 20 minutes in the car and you don't have time to like hook up your phone, do the whole thing.

Speaker 4 And so you just default to what's on the radio. And when you're listening to NPR, it's not a secret.
I mean, it's so obviously just written.

Speaker 4 This is what Annika Sparan was talking about earlier on the show: it's written and produced by liberals.

Speaker 4 And that doesn't mean they're necessarily pro-Democrat, or anti-Democrat, or pro-Republican, or anti-Republican. They don't necessarily think of themselves that way.

Speaker 4 They think of themselves as pro-truth and pro-decency and pro-civility. Because to them, they are clustered in these bubbles.

Speaker 4 So much of the programming from NPR, that's like mainstream stuff, comes from Washington, comes from Boston, comes from New York.

Speaker 4 That's where a lot of their big shows come from. And those shows are written and produced by people who spend time with the same people.

Speaker 4 NPR, the same people who have the same like cultural lifestyles and backgrounds. Charles Murray documented this very well in the 2012 book, Coming Apart, about elite sorting.

Speaker 4 And this is what makes me sad. That's actually new.

Speaker 4 americans did not used to be so clustered by socioeconomic status and what we've lost by spending time with each other in those spaces

Speaker 4 is a mutual understanding so as we have sort of separated into these clusters i mean washington dc is one of the best examples i think three four of the super zips of the top 10 with the highest concentration of wealth in the country are right out here outside of Washington, D.C.

Speaker 4 is disproportionately, you may have noticed, where a lot of the most important decisions in the country are made.

Speaker 4 So they're increasingly made by people who don't spend time outside of their socioeconomic bubbles, which just means that they lack an understanding of what happens outside of those socioeconomic bubbles.

Speaker 4 I've lived in Washington, D.C. for years.
It's actually very hard to do

Speaker 4 when everyone else is college educated and making a certain baseline to live in a city.

Speaker 4 The example I always mention is how journalists, this must have been like 2013, were like shocked on Twitter to discover that the Ford F-150 was the like top-selling car in America. It's incredible.

Speaker 4 It's like if you go like, I don't know, an hour outside of your major metropolitan area, you wouldn't question that at all.

Speaker 4 It's truly all you had to do was like take a nice drive, go find a Dairy Queen somewhere and hang out in the parking lot for five minutes.

Speaker 4 It'll be like, okay, yes, this is the number one selling car in America. By the way, it was my first car, 2002 Ford F-150, which I took the wheel of probably in

Speaker 4 2010, something like that. Great car.
I love that car.

Speaker 4 But the point is, if you're not outside of your socioeconomic bubble, you just have zero idea what's going on, what people care about, how to connect with them. And NPR does gesture in that direction.

Speaker 4 Like they will sometimes put people who come in through their app

Speaker 4 and raise comments that are critical of the left. And so they go through the motions, but the actual

Speaker 4 do that sometimes.

Speaker 4 And they, you know, they invite Republicans on and they had I was listening in the car today to a debate that they were having actually on NPR itself and they had someone like from the Cato Institute on

Speaker 4 but so it's not as though they don't make any effort to present both sides it's just very clear that their editorial line is that one side is right and one side is wrong

Speaker 4 and that's what Yuri Berliner wrote for the free press when he acted as a whistleblower after years and years of high-level journalism at NPR he said This is what's happening inside.

Speaker 4 People don't treat stories that are critical of the left as seriously as they treat those stories when they are about the right.

Speaker 4 And so now we're in a position where we can't have, this is like the meme, right? Like, this is why we can't have nice things anymore.

Speaker 4 We should be able to have consensus public broadcasting. I don't actually have ideological opposition to that.
I do think it's helpful in rural areas.

Speaker 4 There are now people like Catherine Maher holding hostage basically these emergency alerts saying people in rural areas rely on public broadcasting for emergency alerts. How dare you cut our funding?

Speaker 4 After doing years and years of clear ideological bullshit, they're now saying, how dare you cut 2% of our budget?

Speaker 4 We need it for emergency alerts as though that's some type of persuasive argument that they are the people with the moral high ground in this debate. It's all completely ridiculous.

Speaker 4 So it's not just that they're about to get a taste of their own medicine.

Speaker 4 It's that we are in the media, all of us are about to get a taste of our own medicine, which is this is what happens when you lose the trust of the American people.

Speaker 4 Nobody has sympathy for you because you haven't done a good job. curating or tending to this this garden.
Like if NPR is a public garden,

Speaker 4 they have let all of these weeds sprout up in it and now they're saying, how dare you?

Speaker 4 Like people need to eat this grass or they'll go hungry. Brilliant stuff.
Just a 10 out of 10 strategy.

Speaker 4 And I think actually this bill is about to pass. It's going to be a close vote.
JD Vance had to break the tie just to get into the sort of procedural start of defunding NPR and PBS.

Speaker 4 Again, I'm not happy about any of this. I think it would be great to live in a world where we can do NPR and we can do PBS well.
I like PBS and NPR's like historical content

Speaker 4 as much as the next person, even though, yes, I object to a lot of the ideology in it.

Speaker 4 But we can't do this stuff together as a country anymore. And I think that really sucks.
But I think it's true that NPR and PBS don't deserve this money. And I think Senator Schmidt put it well.

Speaker 4 Before we leave you tonight, it has come to my attention that Shane Gillis is hosting the SBs, and it's been going great.

Speaker 4 All kinds of viral videos are already popping off the internet. I want to start with this one

Speaker 4 because,

Speaker 4 well, this one's really something.

Speaker 4 The last time he staged a fight in D.C., Mike Pennett's almost died.

Speaker 4 I just did some great technical work there. Apologies for the slight delay, but we have Shane Gillis now.

Speaker 4 All right.

Speaker 4 No, you don't have to do that. It was fine.
I didn't write it.

Speaker 4 Actually, there was supposed to be an Epstein joke here, but

Speaker 4 as it got deleted,

Speaker 4 must have probably deleted itself, right?

Speaker 4 Probably never existed, actually. Let's move on as a country and ignore that.

Speaker 4 He's been doing some great Balichek jokes and Caitlin Clark jokes as well. And at one point in a sort of

Speaker 4 the middle of his Balichek shtick, he says, yeah, shouldn't have done that one. I think he was saying that a bookie is what Bill Belichick reads to his girlfriend at night.

Speaker 4 And he said he reads him, he reads her titles like Goodnight Boobs. And the audience had a rather muted reaction.
Gillis said that was his favorite. And then he threw in a line.

Speaker 4 He's like, this is Disney. Like, Disney let me do this.
And it's actually pretty interesting because as... Benny Johnson put it when he posted that video we just rolled.

Speaker 4 He says, comedian Shane Gillis calls January 6th staged and makes a Jeffrey Epstein murder joke that has crowd roaring at the Esbies. We control culture now.

Speaker 4 Now, in fairness, Shane Gillis kind of gets lumped in as like MAGA.

Speaker 4 I don't think Shane Gillis is actually MAGA, but I think that's what makes Benny's point about who's controlling culture now actually even more accurate, which is that people who aren't partisans and aren't really even ideologues.

Speaker 4 Like if you've heard the term barstool conservative, that's sort of your socially liberal, fiscally conservative, anti-woke, Dave Portnoy type who was swayed by Trump in 2024, was excited about the tech momentum for the Trump campaign, and just really

Speaker 4 dislikes the left. And maybe someone who doesn't love Trump so much as they bitterly hate the left.
I think that's probably what Shane Gillis is.

Speaker 4 And this comes full circle with what we were talking with Anna Kasparian about, which is that the culture is in a position where it has no more patience

Speaker 4 for these

Speaker 4 stilted,

Speaker 4 uncomfortably sort of elite,

Speaker 4 self-congratulatory award shows or

Speaker 4 media outlets like CNN, for example. There's just not room for that anymore.
People don't want it. I mean,

Speaker 4 a small group of people probably want it, whatever. Who the hellever is still watching Stephen Colbert probably wants that.
So I shouldn't, you know, minimize the existence of those people.

Speaker 4 God bless them.

Speaker 4 Can't be doing, I don't want to be guilty of Colbert erasure on this program because that would be a serious sin. But in all seriousness, most people just have no interest in

Speaker 4 the stilted, self-congratulatory performances that we see from media and Hollywood. And it's not just MAGA types.

Speaker 4 Now it's really everyone who sort of has, feels like they've been given permission to say we deserve better than Catherine Marr's version of NPR

Speaker 4 and whatever else.

Speaker 4 So Gillis has been, I thought it was funny that he poked fun at Disney and said, they let me do this, because there's really a lot of truth to that being why Shane Gillis is up here saying that Caitlin Clark, for example,

Speaker 4 you know, and I'm not going to spoil the joke because actually he did it better than my delivery would. Go look up what Shane Gillis said about Caitlin Clark.
It's hilarious.

Speaker 4 But he's up there making Jeffrey Epstein jokes and poking at Disney, the corporate parent.

Speaker 4 And so that does, I think, signify a real cultural shift. Just Gillis's popularity signals a real cultural shift.

Speaker 4 Lastly, my hot take on Gillis is that when he was canceled from Saturday Night Live because old podcasts in which he was doing some like mocking, I think a lot of it was like mocking impressions of Asians.

Speaker 4 When he was canceled for that, I actually think he got a lot better.

Speaker 4 I think it just pushed him to prove that he was legitimately funny and he became really a pioneer in this new media space and in this cultural shift that happened and he was smart enough to see where the wind was blowing and unlike Gavin Newsom who at least he knows where the wind is blowing but he lacks the talent or principle to pull it off.

Speaker 4 Gillis does. So you didn't think this episode was going to end with me saying that Shane Gillis is

Speaker 4 more talented than Gavin Newsom and more astute than Gavin Newsom. That's a fairly obvious fact, but I don't think anyone could have predicted that's where we would be landing the plane tonight.

Speaker 4 And yet it is. So as a reminder, Emily at devilmakeairmedia.com, you can shoot me your thoughts over there.
I'm

Speaker 4 trying to answer most everyone's emails. So pass along your thoughts, feel free.
We have some fantastic guests lined up for the next couple of weeks. So do not miss a live stream.

Speaker 4 They're so much fun Mondays, Wednesdays, 10 p.m. live.
You can catch up on your podcast apps. You can catch up on YouTube afterwards.

Speaker 4 Make sure to subscribe, turn on notifications for the channel, and we'll see you back here with more After Party next Monday at 10 p.m.

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