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All right, this is a special holiday edition of Breaking Points.
We're coming to you from the past.
We have no idea what is going on in the world in which you are currently living.
We are recording this.
Way back in the middle to early month of December, year of our Lord, twenty twenty five.
I hope everything is going well for you.
Today we're going to be joined by journalists Emily Joshinski.
Emily, thank you for joining us.
To be clear, this is part one of a series we're doing where Ryan is going to interview me and then I'm going to turn it back over to Ryan, and we're going to interview Ryan.
Ryan appears to have googled me in preparation for.
This, and I did not do him the same courtesy because I probably googled you before. I don't know, I'm sure when we first started hosting, I'm sure I was like, isn't that the guy who beat up Jesse Waters.
Actually, right around the time that I was fighting with Jesse Waters is when you were fighting with the big LGBTQ lobby, which is what we're going to get into first. And then I do want to, you know, hear about more of like what got you into this world? But I think this is actually a good place to start. So we do have an actual element that I googled. There's a whole bunch, but I just grabbed one from Raw Story. So the headline here and this is the
year twenty fifteen. I love the photo that adorns this. If you're only listening to this, you need to go find the video because there's a picture of two women making out next to the headline. College group hosting Rick Stands Forum demands quote sensitivity training to teach gay's quote respect and so this came from a GW hatchet article while Emily was the.
At the at George Washington University and was.
The head is that Right of Young Americans found hy af right. This is the Buckley Organization, right William William Buckley created this like youth organization, Young Americans Future or something like that.
It's confusing. I can get a note if you want.
But yeah, so yeah, that's that's what that's what I want to do.
And so then GW mandated that they were going to do like you know, DEI stuff like sensitivity, sensitivity training particularly I think it was I think this one correctly wrong, particularly.
Around trans issues.
Pronounce pronouns, and you were quoted as saying, forget it, we don't, we don't want to do this. And interesting in the raw story article they have the College Republican throwing you under the bus.
Oh, of course that's what always happens.
So the head of the College Republican says, look, it's just a little just a little train, that little sensitivity training.
That's how it used to be so sensitive.
That's how it used to be. All right, So I've been vindicated.
So you're a so that So when'd you graduate high school, so twenty even, so twenty eleven, so you start sor year, so this is your senior.
Year of college. So what is what is this Buckley Group?
And then we're going to get into the controversy because it became like a little national thing. You pay, you pay him like a punching bag for the kind of left wing raw story huff Post.
I wonder ifuff Post did anything on you.
If I remember quickly, I think huff Post did, but you know it was. It's actually very interesting and I think telling story it's a little thing, but like the dust up kind of it brings in a lot of different I don't know, it does bring in a lot of different trends that started to pop up, especially after
twenty fifteen. But basically in college, I was a president of the YAFF chapter that's Young America's Foundation, which had just merged in twenty twelve with Young Americans for Freedom, which is the Buckley Group that was created with the
Sharon Statement in nineteen sixty at the Buckley Estate. And Ronald Reagan kind of comes out of Young Americans for Freedom circles, who's you know, not a Young American of course, but that was part of the Reagan Revolution, guys like Roger Stone affiliated with YAFF and all of that.
But when I got to.
College, you know, that was the conservative group on campus that I got involved with. And this is the LGBT sensitivity training story is a funny one because it was I don't know, like a snow day, if I'm remember incorrectly, And I got a call from the student newspaper, the Hatchet, and.
That's your job in coming.
Yeah, And they asked, does GW.
YAFF oppose this bill that the student Association passed like last night that mandates sensitivity training. And it was such a trap because I hadn't given any thought to the question of the Student Association like sensitivity training bill. And I think actually what they asked is if we would be requesting a religious exemption to the thing, and I think the quote that I.
Have in The Hatchet is like, well, I'm sure we would be, because it.
Doesn't sound very tolerant of other people's religious beliefs. Because the sensitivity training was going to for student leaders of student groups, it wasn't a huge deal, but it didn't mandate that you go to preferred pronoun sensitivity training.
We have the receipts.
Right here, you said, mandated training is not really being very tolerant of all religious beliefs. The way that people who are deeply Christian behave is for a reason, and if you're training them to change that behavior, there's obviously a problem with that. So they were going to have every student just if you were the.
Leader of a student group.
So if you're the head of a YEAF chapter or even you know, the Muslim student group, like you all would have had.
To do it.
Right.
Let me see if I can find the Republican one, he said, regardless of this is Alex Pollock. What's he up to now he's the head of the College Republicans at GW. He's got to be like lobbyists or something by.
Now I think he works in publishing.
Wow, flamed out double track.
College Democrats and college Republicans like college democrats less. So now it's there, they're more act TAVISTI. College Republicans certainly to this day like that. Those those are people who are just gunning for internships on the hill and trying to figure out a way to run for Congress, and.
Right and and YAF gets by the way, in disclosure I'm actually on the board of directors at YAFF because that was my first job out of college.
I was a spokesperson there, and.
You know, oh a lot to them because as a nonprofit group, you know, I got a lot of like experience, you went to conferences, and they were the group that paid for rick Anntorm to come to our campus and it was a very, very very interesting experience having rick Antorm come.
But it was.
The reason that that groups like Yeah are different from College Republicans is because there's that sort of populist element to it. And that's the forgotten part of the Reagan Revolution is the forgotten part of Buckleyism. So it was a revolution against the establishment Republican Party the time, against Gerald Ford. That's what it was against. And so that's what I've always liked about like YEAFF as a.
Conservative student group.
So anyway, yes, they were trying to mandate sensitivity training.
I was like, m so.
Alex Pollock said, quote, regardless of this is the College Republicans head, regardless of reviews on LGBT people.
LGBT people exist.
He said, it should be mandatory from a sensitivity perspective, which is not definitely not the Republican position anymore elephant in the zoom and so so how did that so how did how did that experience of becoming a momentary kind of national figure in the sense that you're it's got to you know. It's not as if like you were a household name or anything, but like if you're a college senior and all of a sudden your name is in like national publications with people hating on you.
Was what was that like? And how did that shape your who you are now?
Is this origin story stuff or were you this was just like you were on the same trajectory Either way.
No, this is absolutely origent story stuff.
I had a job already lined up for when I was graduating at a Republican consulting firm that was going to be doing like oppo research, and I ended up working at YAFF instead because after this happened, they were like, whoa, things on campus are actually even crazier than we had quite realized. Come work for us and do some PR stuff. So that was my first job, and I took it because I was very interested in media. I always wanted to be a writer, and this job would let me
write columns and do that sort of thing. But it was horrible, truly it was horrible. You know, they wanted me to go on Fox News. I said no, and of course after that, like ended up you doing a decent amount of Fox News until about five years ago when we started hosting together tapered off. But it was it was truly horrible. I had people yell at me from across the street. I went on spring break like
a student. Yeah, I went on with my friends. By the way, I have many gay friends at GW who were like, WHOA, what the hell you're the allied and pride group on campus.
I would have to go look this up.
But they put out a statement, if I remember correctly, that said we had committed an act of violence against the transgender community.
I think they called you a hate group or something.
They tried to get us pushed off campus, literally tried to get us pushed off campus. I think people were agitated for us to get suspended. And this is again not because we said anything other than we think that mandatory sensitivity training on perfect pronouns is not tolerant.
That was the statement.
So yeah, they tried to push off campus for that, and it was very like proto woke. I guess you
would say, but it was horrible. It was genuinely horrible, and a lot of people, I'm sure there are a lot of people on the right who would of that, But for me, I hated it and I don't have like literal PTSD from it, but thinking about it feels still really still I still feel kind of panicky, yeah, because it was an early experience with a pylon, and I've never been comfortable, you know, when you when you're a journalist, even when you do a show like this,
you know, it's everyone's been on something you say gets clipped or what, and it's horrible every time.
I hate it.
Yes, yeah, the headline.
Here's another headline, conservative club labeled quote cancer quote hate group, yes for requesting to opt out of LGBT training.
Come on.
Interestingly, I just noticed that the original Hatchet article has a list of corrections that is almost as long as the article.
It's oh it doesn't actually yeah, oh that's awesome.
And one of them, And I wonder if this played into the pilon.
It says the Hatchet incorrectly reported that the sensitivity trainings would include information about sexual assault. The focus of the trainings would be LGBT issues. We regret these errors. And so it may have initially been reported that you also wanted to opt out of sensitivity trainings around sexual assault, which would but I mean clearly it was originally reported that way, like that's why they had to correct it.
That would be even more egregious, probably to the public, like how dare you?
How could you not? So I wonder if that played a role. What really zip in the pile on.
What really started it was the Allied and Pride at GW's statement and that started going viral on our campus circles.
Like Facebook was big back then.
And I think they yeah, they put out the statement on Facebook, and when that happened, it was just everything from their national media picked up on it, so like raw storymever else picked up on it, and it became a just a total nightmare.
We got like.
Hauled into a meeting with the student association. It was it's origin story stuff. Just for the fact that this was you know, I would say, the point of this being mandatory and then having like a pretty I think reasonable request to not have to go to a mandatory like reprogramming training.
I feel like that was kind of reasonable.
Then you have the College Republicans throwing us under the bus, and you have the ad and Pride group freaking out. And this is about like three months before Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner, and it's just all of the stuff was happening in the spring of twenty fifteen. That was pretty interesting because Trump was literally about to come down the Golden escalator like a few months later.
Right.
Right, Yes, this is this is definitely an This is definitely an interesting time. I could imagine some people coming out of this with it with more of a more of an ax to grind, Like you have a you know, you're pretty firm and your culturally conservative politics, but I haven't noticed you with any kind of hardcore like vendetta and probably much more tolerant rhetoric than a lot of people who have your same politics.
How did that come about?
I would yeah, it's kind of for me is the opposite, because one of the things that one of the reasons that it came to DC is I grew up like in the woods in Wisconsin, not a super rural area, kind of the exurbs of Milwaukee, but you know, my my family definitely was like in the woods.
And could you see your neighbor or like, what was your situation?
No, yeah, no, you can shoot on our property all that.
Good stuff, and.
We hopefully that means your neighbors were really far away.
Yes, well it's also just that even they have a lot of woods, so they have a bunch of property. And anyway, so all I was say, you can see them now because all the trees are down. But anyway, going on, going forward.
I grew up like why are the trees down?
What happened the cycle of the forest.
They're old and also my dad has just been like deforesting and taking him down for.
Well because they're dead.
And yeah, anyway, I also good excuse to use the chainsaw. But I grew up like hunting, fishing. My mom is from a very rural area. My dad's from a very blue collar background and going to church every Sunday. And it was just like one of the reasons I came here is that I was so frustrated by what I was seeing on TV and in movies, just the way that culture talked down to people.
I always felt like.
I just wanted to prove the point to elite that these are decent people. I just am so annoyed by this assumption that you are bad if you come from a culturally conservative background for whatever reason. That has just always, really, really really gotten under my skin.
And.
That's why I came here. And so I hate feeling misunderstood, like it just drives me insane. And so I like having conversations. And that's where I think I don't have an axta grind. I just genuinely have a point to prove, and I like having those those conversations, like I want people to see that, you know, I might disagree and really disagree on difficult stuff, but I don't hate anyone, Like it's really the opposite, right, and that's just frustrating.
Were your parents conservative? When did you get a political awakening?
So my mom definitely is conservative. My dad votes for both parties. He's a He worked for the state. He was an engineer for the state of Wisconsin. His whole career is retired now, but he was a public employee union and so went through the kind of Scott Walker era. I was funny to Scott Walker's president if you have now, but you know they would really Yeah, my mom is an HL for years at some big corporations like Johnson controls,
and they would argue about Walker and unions. She was an HR and had to deal.
With a lot of that, so a little bit a little bit of both.
My dad's Catholic when mom's Lutheran, so it was a little bit of both. But for me, it was just kind of this cultural It wasn't always like hardcore conservative. And I don't think I'm you know, I'm not like MAGA or Republican now. I just am kind of a limited government, cultural conservative type person.
I pulled up another twenty thirteen article.
This is another Hatchart article.
Another hatchet article I'll read from this one, says sophomore Emily Jashinsky said she grew up in a strict Lutheran household and is also morally opposed to same sex marriage, but after honing her political views as a libertarian, she doesn't and she'll be doing well. We did the reason debate already. She does not think the government should be
taking a stance on the issue at all. She will not head to the Supreme Court this week or there was going to be a protest around marriage equality, ruling Republicans do not need to get caught up in social issues. She said Jashinski, a member of the Young America's Foundation, said she is inspired by new voices in the Republican Party. They are more libertarian, like father and son, Ron and Rand Paul. She called them the future of the GOP.
Amazing that seems so I can hopeful future, I can guarantee. That was like a six month phase with libertarianism.
Although but the limited government that you still espouse is But so this was hardcore libertarianism.
You were like, no, I mean, yeah.
Kind of it was becoming that. I mean the.
Sophomore year that's around when people try on libertarianism.
That's exactly right. Yeah, and it was. It was definitely a short lived.
But the reason that I was attracted libertarians because I've always been a populist and at the time Ron and Rand Paul were popular, the Tea Party movement was populist. And so the thing that I was wrong about and Charlie Kirk was wrong about this at the time too. I think I just came around a little earlier, was that the Republican Party did need to get caught up in social issues, not in the way.
That a lot of people, you know, wanted.
It to get caught up in social issues, and Rick Sntorm is an interesting figure in this respect too. On the one hand, was talking about Charles Murray's coming apart and cultural elitism. Then on the other hand, was talking about a pretty unappealing worldview that Americans were moving away from that wouldn't fit on a populist platform. So anyway, Yeah, that was short lived. I don't think I've ever really considered myself a libertarian. I still really like Rand Paul
because I think he is a populist. I like Ron Paul because I think he's a populist. But at the same time, you know, I am kind of an economic.
Populist in a way that they aren't. Like.
I believe in industrial policy and protectionism and all that fun stuff.
So yeah, So Ron Paul ran in two thousand and eight for president when you would have been what you're graduating eleven?
Yeah, I was in high school.
So was that kind of the first campaign you paid serious attention to?
Or yeah, yeah, because I was in twenty four it was twelve, or I'm sorry, it was eleven.
Yeah, so that was definitely the first major one.
Did he do better in twenty twelve?
I'm trying to remember, Yeah, so he runs in two thousand and eight to twenty twelve, he comes out this is post Tea party.
Yeah, he was almost mide he almost whin Iowa or when Iowa.
Like he did incredibly well.
He was shocking the Republican establishment. Yep.
And the people who got behind him in twenty twelve, I think ironically you could say many of them became Trump supporters.
Yeah, Like Ron Paul.
Was the like, yeah, I know some of them.
He was the avatar for challenging the Republican establishment.
Yeah, exactly, yes, And so it.
It feels like people were more interested in challenging the Republican establishment than whenever that person was saying yeah, it's so that's why you're like, Okay, if it's going to be Ron Paul that I'm going to learn about, libertarianism is going to be Trump, I'm going to do this other thing.
Yeah.
And after twenty twelve, Ron and Rand were treated as the future of the Republican Party by the media. There was that Time magazine cover that was like the Libertarian Moment, if I'm remember incorrectly, and it was all the rage and like young conservative circles like nobody wanted to be connected to the santorums in young Republican circles, because there was this sense pre Trump that the culture War was dragging everybody down and to the extent that the pronoun
sensitivity training thing is origin story and lower. It's that for me, that is an early point where I reversed that twenty thirteen hatchet quote where I was like, oh no, actually, the culture war is where this is like the big tent. The culture War is the big tent. And I'd always been more interested in the culture War than most people
who were like in coulege Republican circles. But that's you know, to me, I was like, this is getting so wild that kids are being chased off a campus for saying like they're being called a hate group for saying they didn't want to do a mandatory pronoun training.
Like this is getting a little crazy. These are getting weird.
And so then how long were you at YAF after college?
Almost two years?
Almost two years and my college job I was I'm probably the longest American Enterprise institute in turn ever because I worked for not in foreign policy. Although I would be like standing in the lunch line behind Paul Wolfowitz.
Wild exactly Iraq War.
Yeah, yeah, wild stuff.
But I worked for chrisino Off Summers, who is like she was very favorable to Bernie in twenty sixteen, but was at Ai writing about feminism. She wrote that, but from in nineteen ninety four, w hoostole feminism?
And she wrote The War Against Boys?
And my job was to fact check the original War against Boys, the footnotes and make sure the research hadn't changed. And in fact, what I found often is that some of these trends had gotten worse about young men in schools and all of them.
When did the War Against Boys come out?
The original two thousand, two thousand, yeah, yeah, the re release was twenty thirteen.
I think, how did Christina hoff Summer's shape shape your politics working with her?
Yeah?
I mean, Christie's amazing. I just wrote in the Washington Post this month about my experience working for her. She's amazing, Like, she's brilliant, And it was for me more of like an awakening along these same lines that I had. You know, I felt it in my gut, but I didn't have the language or the research or the experience.
I kind of back it up, which is this is a person.
Who's eminently reasonable brilliant and had leftist critiques of the feminist movement. When she was her courses were cross listed in the women Studies department at Clark University I think it was in Massachusetts in the early nineties, and she had leftist critiques of the feminist movement, got kicked out of the women's studies conferences and everything when she wrote
Who's Stole Feminism? And ended up at AI making it I think a lot of the same like leftist critiques, feminist critiques of the feminist movement in ways that aren't easily categorized as like necessarily leftist or reactionary. But she was so misunderstood and that I think I haven't even thought about that until now. But like that I think really resonates with me is that these elite distortions of well intentioned people who are just trying to engage in conversation.
Who did steal feminism? Like what was the feminists? And for what purpose? Like what's her? What's I haven't read that?
What's her?
That's where she h that's where she goes through some of the statistics that the feminist movement has often relied on that aren't great, Like so for example, overstating the age gap, overstating the prevalence of domestic abuse and violence, and in ways that further like victimize women. It's like the learned helplessness, but applied to women in the feminist movement.
But also she was very early in saying that erasing sex distinctions was going to hurt women's spaces, it was going to undermine Title nine, it was going to create serious problems.
She was very early on gamer Gates, which is funny.
I think I told the story before of like ending up at a gamer Gate meetup while I was a Christina intern at a bar on U Street here in DC that got like a bunch of bomb threats called in and it was all of these.
Gamer Gate people. Milo was there, who came from around the country.
Like it was gamer Gate for people who like, if you're under thirty, yeah, that's probably doesn't exist to you.
Yeah, that's true.
It's seen as like Trump lures twenty fourteen lore, yeah, twenty fourteen. It's it's sort of seen as like proto woke. It was a bunch of men getting mad about the feminization or the feministization of video games, and some of them channeling that in really awful ways, and some of them channeling it in ways that was just like stop encroaching on our spaces, like we have to let some stuff be for guys. And some of the feminization feministization
of the video games was like proto woke. But anyway, Yeah, I was at that gamer game meet up and it was like a.
Bus that as his origin story, he like saw the energy around game or Gate.
So there's a lot of angry young men here.
We could channel this into a publication and a presidential campaign and a political movement.
Yeah, and some of that went to.
Some of that energy went to Trump, some of it went honestly to things like Charlottesville, and some of them went to you know, just Jordan Peterson and early Jordan Peterson,
like some really good stuff. So yeah, but I was, like, I say this respectfully, like in a party of like sweaty basement dwellers who had traveled it was the worst spilling party I've ever been to, who had traveled from around the country and were so nervous and they didn't have a lot of money, and they put everything into getting to this meetup and it was like the highlight
of their year, and it was in a way. You know, there's some of them who were clearly fringy and off, but in a way it was like also some of.
Them were well intentioned and it was very kind of touching.
I don't know any of them talked to you or were they all afraid of you.
They were afraid of the women, that is for sure, but yeah, they were. They were really excited, and then they were really excited when the leftists called them bomb threats and they had to evacuate three times because it made the street their renegades, right, exactly right, I mean they feel kind of alive.
Yeah, Which, so you being at the game or gate basement party goes to a question I've seen a lot of people ask I've wandered about, like the the how do you square you in the public space? You work harder than almost anybody than I know. Like the day that we're taping this, you're up early in the morning do breaking points and then recording some episodes for the holidays. You'll then have maybe four hours to go do other work.
The Serious Exam Show, It Too Serious.
XM Show two, and then you're going to do the Reason Debate at be there at five thirty and then you're doing your after party show on Megan Megan Kelly's network at like ten, which will go till when like midnight.
Eleven eleven thirty.
Right, So that's it's a long day. It's a fun day.
I don't want to say that, like like it the way I always.
Think, what is it? Beats working? Yeah, you always it's not real work it because it's fun.
But it's a lot. That's a lot. It's six am to like eleven, twelve pm. We can acknowledge that.
That's like a long day, even if it's fun stuff. Yeah, it's a long day.
On the other hand, from the cultural political perspective, it's like, well women should shouldn't you know, shouldn't be working or I don't even know exactly where. Obviously you wouldn't ban them from working, but like, how do you square that?
That's a good point.
No, I've that's that's gone back to like people who asked, you know, Philish Slaughley that for years and actually yeah, another one of my form of experiences was we brought Philish Laughley to campus. I went to a Bertucci's and sat next to Phylish Lafley when I was like twenty years old, and you know, she was eighty nine at the time, and I just remember working, still working, escorting her down this narrow hallway at GW and the protesters eighty nine years old were like shouting in her face
and calling her like the most awful things. And again, I actually do understand where some of that comes from, directed to Phylish Laffey, because there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of angst from like the sexual Revolution and LGBT stuff, feminist stuff that then comes out and actually probably isn't real stuff too, that comes out when you have a kind of somebody like Philischlaffley as an avatar for that movie. Anyway, Yeah, watching the like Hatred
and Bitriol was quite an experience. I don't I'm not one of those people that you know, has ever thought that women should not work. My mom worked, you know, probably seventy hours a week, like she was flying to like you know, for a lot of my childhood, just flying like China and Germany because she worked for you know, automatic company.
No no, no.
No, she wishes, she wishes, but no is she was in human resources, which would be a horrible.
CIA cover or maybe a great no but I've never thought that. I think we have.
Mary Harrington has this really interesting point about how the separation between home and work is actually industrial, it's post industrial. It's only something that we think about. This idea that women should stay home and that home isn't work is like very much in Americans at this from like a Marxist perspective that like men and women shared the work of the home until industrial society came along. So I
think some of these are like artificial distinctions. I think if you look at surveys, it's true that most women want to work part time with their kids and be home for part of the time with their kids.
That is the plurality of what women want to do.
So I think women should should be treated that way, and you shouldn't be talked down to for choosing to work part time or stay home with their kids. But I don't really buy into the artificial distinctions between That is an.
Interesting point that because the the whole like women should be at home is a post World War two, Like in the nineteenth century, like, yeah, everybody was working at home, especially because energy production was such a significant part of
home life. Yeah, like going out like basically getting cold or chopping wood and making sure that you had like enough to heat the house occupied, like like men, men had to do that, and we're doing it on top of whatever their job was otherwise the house is called and that gave them an out then too, they're like that they're not you know, if they're shirking other duties, because they're not sharking anything, because they're like, like, literally they.
Got to be out there chopping wood.
Yeah, exactly, an enormous amount because it burns so fast.
And interesting, so.
Energy production being taken care of now by just the house has freed men up, and so men filled that time with any game or gate and like right now now it's now it's back to being wildly unbalanced back at home.
It's a good Christmas book recommendation Feminism Against Progress by Mary Harrington.
She goes into some.
Of those house what's her take?
Just what I like, Like, it's actually very fascinating. At the time.
I don't know if she would still define herself this way, but at the time it's a very Marxist critique of the feminist movement.
It's really interesting.
That's interesting because yeah, I guess, like I guess a lot of it.
They grew up in the forties. Yeah, in fifties.
Yeah, and it's it's right.
That was their perspective rather than a long historical one.
Yeah, it becomes like a corporate academic feminism.
So then how do you wind up with a federalist.
I was at the Washington Examiner working for so when you know Tim Carney on the commentary desk for a couple of years. A job opened on the commentary desk at the Examiner. I jumped at it right away because I really wanted to do writing, and I told yeah that when I started working for them, that's what I ultimately.
Wanted to do. So I jumped at that.
But Tim was insistent and rightfully so, that if you're a twenty four year old and you have an opinion writing job, you're actually going to be doing reporting. So like you can do your blogs, but you need to bring new information to the table. And so that's where I hate reporting. I always say there are a couple types of journalists. There's the journalists who get into the job because they love reporting and talking to people and they hate writing. There's the journalists who get into the
job because they love writing and hate reporting. There's the rare person who likes both and is good at both. But I'm the type of person that I'm in it because I love writing. I don't like reporting. But Tim forced me to do it, and that was incredible. So the Federalists plucked me from there to sort of do that, but with more at the time, like considered elegant kind of cultural writing every day. So my job was to
write one piece on culture a day. It's like the dream job, which because the Federalist is very small, quickly turned into a lot of other things. I was doing a lot of editing, read the submissions every day, which was fascinating. The Federal submissions from like twenty eighteen to twenty twenty.
Four were very very interesting, not bad.
Yeah so, And the Federalist model was publishing non professional writers from around the country, which I think any leftist publication is that is a model that they should take. Because we were publishing most of our staff was in the rest of the country, you know, our politics editor was in Texas, executive.
Editor in Indiana, like everyone was elsewhere.
But most of our writers were non professional writers either, just like people with normal jobs like small town lawyers.
Say moms that type of thing.
So that was very very interesting to see the difference between like the DC Hive mind and the submissions every day.
So now you went to college with two interesting people, Graham Platner, Yeah, I think sell Yah Soger and Jetty. Yes you did you know him in college? And is that how you first started doing like how did you first start doing Rising Appearances?
So actually before then doing the show, Sagur and.
I definitely met each other without knowing it in college, is my theory, because he was in a frat that I would occasionally like be at the parties that had a friend of a friend who was like in that frat party was Yeah, probably he was a he was not getting But soccer used to be a much better time, much better dive.
It used to be a much better hang. Yeah. So Sager is a year head of me and g W.
Platner was just going through GW very slowly on the GI bill, and we found out recently that we overlapped with him.
I don't think either of us knew him, but.
Sager had a really similar circle of friends to me, and so when we met at an event that he was covering, it was he was covering a yeah event, we met in person.
And you were at at the time.
Yeah, this was it was like the week of the twenty sixteen election, and we met in person.
We were like, oh, yeah, we have all these friends in common.
And then our friend circles like became totally intertwined because one person started like my best friend started dating one of his best friends, and there.
You go, there you go.
And so then he starts asking to do like weekly are you doing weekly rising things?
You know, it's funnier, it's even funnier than that. Sager was really interested in starting to do like on camera stuff when he was at The Daily Caller and I at the time was doing a decent bit of on camera stuff at Fox, and so we were talking about like what that's like, if it's worth all that sort of thing, and so when he was at the Caller, we were kind of strategizing on those types of things, and then he would come and like, I think you too would be on the panel and rising when he
got that job.
Yeah, I think we had like maybe you had this too.
I think it was like Tuesday, you'll be on like Tuesdays, Yeah, and whatever you want to talk about. Yeah, Tuesdays something like that. So then, so you helped Saga with the whole Fox thing.
I don't know if you'll admit it, but yeah, we.
Got well we'll interview Saga.
Were to him on Connecticut Avenue. Yeah, I mean we had a little conversation about that. But and I was also on the Daily Caller softball team, so I was like hanging out with all.
Those guys the team any good?
Oh hell yeah that year we beat the State Department in the championship.
Awesome.
Yeah that's Hillary's state, well not Hillary's but Obama stage part.
I played on the House Ways and Means Committee team several years.
It's the crazy story.
We had like four four four or five hough Post people and then.
Ways of so inappropriate.
We literally were going to bat for them. So so then Saga and Crystal leave, they go do breaking points. Yeah, and you come in for a couple of weeks and do rising and then end up doing it for a very long time. Like how did how did that fit into your how you had seen your career going?
I guess. Then we got to wrap up pretty soon.
Yeah, people probably chick here. I know I've said this before. People probably know this like I, on camera stuff is not my favorite.
I don't love it.
I'm happy to do like radio stuff, but I really hate doing on camera stuff. And so one of the reasons I didn't want I didn't jump at the chance, among many other reasons, Soccer and Crystal kind of filled us in on what was going on at the Hill,
So there were a lot of reasons. I think both of us were skeptical it was great money, though at the time it was great money, and so yeah, just like you know, it was also kind of trying to help them out and was like trying at the time, I was trying to do less on camera stuff, to be honest, because Fox had again tapered off for various reasons.
But it started to become really fun, and I think you and I both experienced the obvious reaction that audience has had to Crystal and Sager, which was awesome, Like just it was so cool.
It's cool to see how that's blossomed.
But yeah, that's I didn't And around that time, reading has like been steadily decliding, and like audiences are moving here. So if you want to share the news that was so cool, kind to go where they are here we are well.
Yeah, and I don't know, I mean, I don't I don't know that I would want to co host anyone else.
I mean, there's obviously also a Chrystal.
Sorry they're great, but yeah, but I just mean, if like we hadn't initially been paired up together, yeah, I don't think. I don't know if I would be here because I feel like that was really crucial.
Yeah, it's it's that that's the limiting factor. And I think in these shows.
Actually is that it's I think that's right.
There's a there's an audience for much more of this type of news than is produced, but people can't produce it because they can't get along and they can't or they don't not or but and they don't know what they're talking about. So it's it's hard to find people who like they know what they're talking about and also like the other person if they don't uhgree with them on everything.
Yeah, it was really hard.
I mean, I mean the fact that we got through peak woke, that Crystal and Saga and all of us got through Peak woke, and like.
My t shirts, yeah we should.
We survived the cancel culture wave. I actually think it's an amazing achievement. And the last thing I'll say is just.
From here it's gonna be downhill.
And also, yeah, I mean we certainly have disagreed on Israel stuff and probably definitely still do, but that has been an interesting journey.
For me too.
But it's the last thing I'll say is I think algorithms are reprogramming our brains, especially in media. So and this is just also audience directed. You guys have probably see just the amount of people that react to Ryan and Me and Crystaline Sager with total sometimes extreme like you can't talk to that person, you can't talk to this person. People will probably be surprised at how much that we get constantly like this disqualifying, you should never talk to this person again.
How can you host a show with this person? How can you host a show with this person?
Given what this person that this person is friends with, thanks, Like it's just crazy, And so I think one of the reasons there's a demand for this type of show that doesn't get done is because the algorithms are like reprogramming so many people to give in to those pressures and to fight or to dig in their heels and not continue to learn from each other and whatever.
So that's one thing I think we do well.
Yeah, and I think if you push past those people like, we're winning.
Yeah.
I think that's true.
Because there are more people who are like, no, actually, you should talk to each other and I want to hear Like a lot of people will watch both Fox and CNN.
It's like, why are we making people do that?
Yeah, exactly, give it to them, Just give.
It to him right here.
And it also creates more honest news because it fights audience capture.
Yeah, Like you you.
Know, if you just have one perspective and then you're then you build an audience that wants to hear that perspective. And if you want to change direction or if you have a position that differs from what they think, which you have to because times change, right, we move on, like we get new information totally. You can't or you lose your audience, whereas our audience very much expects to hear things they don't agree with.
Yeah, that's so true, and I hope people see that we like learn from each other. I think journalist should have more questions than answers, you know, And that's where I get a lot of times people being like, well, what do you actually think about this? It's like, because we're used to having people in media who have a rock solid opinion on every single thing, because that's how you were taught. I mean, I always talk about how when I did media training before I went to Fox.
The first time I answered I don't know to a question in training, and the one was like, just don't ever again. Yeah, right, And now it's like a lot of times I'm just asking questions because you don't have to have a prefab ideological conclusion for every question that comes up.
And shows that are in the.
Habit of giving you that are bad, I think people are getting sick of them.
Well.
Emily co host of Breaking Points, co host of The Emilyki Late Night Hour on The Kelly Show, Still ongoing writer Unheard.
Yeah calumnist and Ryan.
Host of the show Ryan I'm Ryan Grim's biggest fan, I swear, other than maybe Allison.
There you go, so well, thanks so much for joining me, Thanks for having me right. I hope everybody's having a wonderful holiday.
Now it's my turn to turn the camera on. Ryan