China Spy Guilty, SCOTUS Wins Big, Trump in Beijing | Conn Carroll, Curtis Houck

[00:00:14] Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. The mayor of Arcadia, California, just pleaded guilty to being a secret agent for communist China, and she did it from inside her own city hall. Elaine Wang spent roughly two years working for her then-fiancée to spread Beijing's propaganda directly from her elected seat in American local government.

[00:00:36] She resigned yesterday. The Justice Department announced the charges the same day, and she now faces up to 10 years in federal prison. I'm Jenny Beth Martin. Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show, where we talk about constitutionally limited government. Let's get to it. Elaine Wang was quietly doing Beijing's bidding in a Southern California suburb. What makes the story even more chilling is that President Trump is wheels up today for China,

[00:01:04] headed to the Great Hall of the People to sit across from Xi Jinping himself. He's going to be talking about trade, tariffs, artificial intelligence, Iran, Taiwan, and Chinese operatives are in our city halls. Now the president has to negotiate with the regime that has sent them. Washington examiner, commentator, commentary editor, Conn Carroll is here with what America must walk away with and what Xi will try to take.

[00:01:33] The Supreme Court yesterday dealt another major blow to racial gerrymandering activists. The 6-3 ruling vacated a lower court order that would have forced a new majority-minority district into Alabama's map, citing Louisiana v. Calais. Plaintiffs can no longer just point to statistical disparities. They must now prove intentional discrimination. That is a significant legal wall that will reshape the way that redistricting is fought through 2030 and beyond.

[00:02:03] And speaking of redistricting, Virginia Democrats just got caught playing an audacious game. They rushed through a constitutional amendment designed to hand themselves 10 of Virginia's 11 congressional seats in a state where Republicans represent nearly half of the electorate. The Virginia Supreme Court struck it down. Conn Carroll has been all over that story, and he joins us with the full picture in just a moment.

[00:02:28] Then the New York Times has been running what looks like a coordinated campaign to undermine the credibility of the Supreme Court. The Washington examiner has the receipts on what the Times has got wrong and what their real agenda is.

[00:02:42] Since a White House Correspondents' dinner shooting, CNN and MSNBC have appointed themselves defense attorneys for Cole Thomas Allen, the man who rushed the security checkpoint arm with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives, and who authored the manifesto calling himself the friendly federal assassin. It's really such an awful description for him to have called himself.

[00:03:07] These networks have been minimizing his actions, questioning his culpability, and expressing concerns for his treatment behind bars. Curtis Houck, managing editor of Newsbusters at the Media Research Center, is here with a full picture on that and a finding that should alarm every American. The engine driving viral anti-Semitism online may be flowing straight through your Google News feed. Plus, why are young women moving so far left?

[00:03:35] Con Carroll's book, Sex and the Citizen, how the assault on marriage is destroying democracy, makes a sweeping argument that conservatives cannot afford to ignore. And the Washington examiner is launching its new series called Right Way Forward, a direct challenge to the movement. Are some of the economic ideas gaining traction on the right actually just liberal policies wearing a red hat? That is their first in the series.

[00:04:05] Con Carroll is a commentary editor for the Washington Examiner, one of the sharpest voices in conservative media on constitutional law, economic policy, and political strategy. Con, welcome back to the Jenny Best Show. It's a pleasure to be here, Jenny. So, Con, you wrote that Virginia's gerrymander was foiled by Democrats' own election math. Walk our audience through the constitutional flaw that blew up their own plan. What did Democrats get wrong?

[00:04:31] Yeah, well, basically in 1970 when the state of Virginia rewrote its constitution, it made it very difficult on purpose to amend the constitution. So it requires the Virginia legislature, the General Assembly, to pass a proposed constitutional amendment, then have a completely intervening general election for that same General Assembly before they have to pass it a second time.

[00:04:58] The thinking being is that the authors of the constitution wanted to make sure that voters had two chances to hold their General Assembly responsible for the proposed constitutional amendment. But what they did is they only passed the first proposed amendment on October 31st of 2025, which was only four days before the actual final election day.

[00:05:27] But Democrats had for so long extended election day that voters had been voting in that same election for a full six weeks before that proposed amendment was posted. So over half of all voters had in fact already voted in that general assembly election before they had passed the proposed amendment.

[00:05:48] And so what the Supreme Court says is that you guys violated the process because you did not allow a full election period between the two votes of the proposed amendments. So they kind of got hoisted on their own batard because it's their own laws that extended election day, you know, past even a month into like two months. And it's because they made election day so long that they did not get the proposed amendment passed the first time in order for there to be an intervening election.

[00:06:18] So it's pretty remarkable that the party who claims to care so much about democracy was willing to violate their own rules and their own laws to shove through change districting. And to somehow think that that four days left in a 45 day election cycle, which they choose to vote for 45 days in Virginia.

[00:06:45] Most states don't do that. That somehow with four days left. I mean, my goodness, Khan, that's that's barely 10 percent of the number of days left in voting that that was acceptable and would be considered a full election cycle. Well, what we're finding out now is that there was actually division among the Democrats. You know, you had some of Abigail's governor, Abigail Spamber's own lawyers who are saying, look, you know, this isn't necessarily right. The Supreme Court might not sign off on this. Maybe we should wait.

[00:07:15] But then we had a state senator, Louise Lucas, who actually pro tem of the Senate. She's she's in charge of the Senate Democrats here in Virginia. She insisted to push through the map anyways, despite the legal concerns. And of course, we later found out about her respect for the law because she was just arrested by the FBI last week for corruption in association with state legalized marijuana. So it turns out she's been on the take and corrupt for years. She was the driving force behind this redistricting.

[00:07:44] It is really remarkable. I'm thankful that the Supreme Court in Virginia decided to do the right thing and to uphold the rules and the laws in Virginia. It certainly seemed to me to be pretty clear cut. But even though it was clear cut, I think that people thought the court might just make up new law from the bench. Yeah, I think that was the Democrats plan in that they wanted to.

[00:08:10] In fact, they argued that the Virginia Supreme Court should not rule on the procedural issues until after the vote had taken. And then, of course, after the vote happened, they then switched arguments and said, oh, well, now that the votes happened, you can't overturn the will of the people. So they were trying to put the court into a damn-to-do-do situation. And the court simply had had enough. They said, no, we're not going to play your reindeer games. These were the rules. You didn't follow them. And you were the ones that forced this election through. It's irrelevant.

[00:08:38] And if you listen to the oral arguments, they actually had forced their lawyers to admit. It's irrelevant when the votes happened. So it was nice hearing the lawyers admit before the court that the fact that the election happened was completely irrelevant to the underlying legal issues. But, you know, fortunately, the court didn't rule on the law and the books. And that's why these maps are no longer going to happen. And I think that that is a good thing. It doesn't exempt Virginia from being able to go back and attempt to redistrict again and to gerrymander.

[00:09:07] But if they're going to do it, they need to play by their own rules and laws. That's what basically the state Supreme Court is saying. And yet we have Democrats across the country right now who are saying that somehow the Supreme Court, the Virginia Supreme Court, wasn't doing things properly, wasn't doing things fair.

[00:09:27] And now even the Democrats are saying, well, maybe we'll just change the retirement age and force the people who are on the court to all retire so they can be replaced. I'm kind of blown away by the reaction that some of the Democrats in Virginia have to this. It is certainly doing everything they can to rig the election in their favor. Yeah, well, it's not just Democrats in Virginia.

[00:09:53] I mean, the guiding force behind this, behind the idea to set those new retirement limits to push everyone currently on the court off. That actually came from Hakeem Jeffries, who, of course, is the minority leader of the Democrats. And he's, of course, from New York, which is not in New Virginia. But, you know, this has become a national issue. And Democrats nationally spent $70 million to read all these maps.

[00:10:15] If you lived in Northern Virginia, you'd know that Barack Obama was on TV constantly for a full month before the election pushing this illegal redistricting project. So this is something that national Democrats are really united on and are pushing very hard. Yeah. And then we come to the United States Supreme Court. Just yesterday, it vacated the Alabama order, citing Louisiana versus Calais, requiring plaintiffs to prove intentional discrimination, not just disparate impact.

[00:10:44] So what exactly does that mean in plain English? And how do we remain intellectually honest when we're talking about what the Virginia Supreme Court did versus the United States Supreme Court? Well, I think everyone most importantly has to recognize that every state has their own rules. So even though Virginia has this very convoluted, intentionally slow process to amend their constitution in order to pass redistricting, other states don't.

[00:11:13] So Florida doesn't have the same constitutional barriers to redraw their map that Virginia does. You know, I think what a lot of people forget is that Virginia just six years ago in 2020 had a constitutional amendment to put in this new map process. And Democrats were trying to undo what they had done actually on a bipartisan basis just six years ago. Not every state has that same history or has that same procedural steps.

[00:11:39] And so it's going to be up to each state, whether it's Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, whether or not they want to, whether or not the leaders in those states want to go ahead and push to redraw their maps. But what the Supreme Court is saying is you can do that if you want. And the Supreme Court is saying you certainly can do it. You just cannot do it based on race, period.

[00:11:57] And that's what we've seen with so many of the congressional districts that have been drawn, especially in the southern part of the country, trying to make amends for things that happened during the segregation period. And they're saying, no, you just can't look at race when you're doing it. But you also can't be racist towards a group of people.

[00:12:22] So you can't use race in drawing maps, but you also can't be racist towards others. Right. I think the funniest example is Tennessee, where you have one district that is represented by a Democrat. And it's a minority-majority district. It's a district that is majority of black people, but it's actually represented by a white man. And, of course, in the upcoming election, he's facing a Republican who is, in fact, black.

[00:12:48] So if Democrats are so upset about not having a black representative in the Tennessee congressional delegation, they should go ahead and vote for the black woman who just also happens to be a Republican. That is exactly right. Right. And sometimes it just—the story writes itself, doesn't it, Conn? It does. Democrats spent $60, $70 million on Virginia redistricting. They still lost.

[00:13:14] The attorney general has filed an emergency appeal to the United States Supreme Court with several typos in it. What are the odds and what does a defeat there—what is it—how likely is that to succeed in the United States Supreme Court? And then what does it mean more broadly for the 2026 Democrat-United States Congress House strategy?

[00:13:35] I think Hakeem Jeffries is very desperate, especially if he's talking about changing the retirement age, and he's the author of that convoluted idea. Yeah. I mean, there's a 0 percent chance that the United States Supreme Court is going to go in and tell Virginia what Virginia law is. Virginia Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what Virginia law is.

[00:14:00] If there was some other federal claim or civil rights interest, maybe you could see the Supreme Court stepping in. But it's a very clear-cut case of the Virginia Supreme Court saying this is what Virginia law is. This is what Virginia procedure requires. Democrats did not meet this procedure. That's in the story. And the Supreme Court has never come in and said—told a state what state law was. And that's just not going to happen here. Go ahead. No, go ahead.

[00:14:26] I mean, as far as the consequences largely, I'm actually still a little less bullish on Republican chances. I think the overall climate is still against Republicans in this House. But people forget that if Virginia had won, if the Democrats had won and pushed through this map, this map would have been used not just for this 2028 elections, right? It would have then been used for 2030 and then even 2032.

[00:14:54] And so that's why it was so important to win this map now, because it would have affected two more elections ahead, not just this 2026 election. I think that's a really good point. Now, before we take a short break, there's another attack against—since we're talking about the Supreme Court, there's an attack against the Supreme Court. And this one is being run out of The New York Times.

[00:15:16] You wrote about this and that the New York Times reporters Jody Cantor and Adam Liptak are specifically targeting Chief Justice Roberts to demonize him and undermine the court. Why are they attacking Chief Justice Roberts? What's their strategy? And is it working? Well, I mean, I think unfortunately it is. I mean, it just—since I wrote this, John Oliver on The Daily Show—not The Daily Show, though, this week tonight, he had his whole show basically going off the same argument about the shadow doctor.

[00:15:46] And so what they're doing is they're trying to take something that is procedurally necessary. The Supreme Court has to come in and decide whether or not the status quo is going to stay during litigation or whether or not an entity can go ahead and implement whatever policy they're going to do while the litigation is going on. So someone has to win or lose here. And you have conflicting decisions at lower court levels. One court saying they can go forward. One court saying it can't.

[00:16:15] The Supreme Court has to step in and say what the final resolution—not the final resolution because these are just temporary until the final litigation is done—but what the policy is going to be while everything is litigated. So there's nothing nefarious here. The reason why the court can't fully litigate this is because they will be deciding on the merits later and they can't tip off their hands.

[00:16:35] So this is something where the court has to come in and act, and these Democrats, the New York Times, journalists, they're trying to undermine the Supreme Court's credibility so that if a Democrat is ever in the White House again and if they control the Senate, they can then pack the court and destroy it forever. When we see shadow docket, when you're explaining that, explain—just break it down for people who haven't been to law school. Sure, absolutely. So let's take the case that the Supreme Court or that the New York Times talked about.

[00:17:05] So you had President Barack Obama, who was part of his pen and phone 2014 strategy, decided that he was going to legislate as president. He was basically going to abuse his authority and create new law out of congressional delegations. So he passed a clean power plan administratively through the Environmental Protection Agency. And then you had West Virginia and a whole bunch of other states sue and say, look, no, you are overstepping your authority.

[00:17:34] You're breaking the law. These new regulations are illegal. They then went to the Supreme Court and say, we want you to stay the implementation of this regulation. So basically, because it takes so long for the case of deciding whether or not those regulations are legal or not to get through the court system, West Virginia wanted the Supreme Court to say, look, Barack Obama, you can't enforce these regulations while this litigation is going on. And so the Supreme Court said, yes, we're going to stay this regulation.

[00:18:03] We're going to enter a stay so that Barack Obama cannot enforce his regulations. And of course, West Virginia and these other states eventually won. If the Supreme Court had not entered that stay, all these power plants would have been forced to adhere to these regulations, spend millions, 100 millions of dollars. Everyone's electricity costs would have gone up. And then even if they had one, it would have been moved by then because they would have already made the upgrades, already conformed to the regulations that the Supreme Court said Obama couldn't implement.

[00:18:34] So they were making that decision, erring on the side that if they happen to agree with the power plants and the power plants weren't out additional money for something they wouldn't have agreed on. But they weren't saying when when they make these pre the I don't know what you call it. OK, when they do this before they have their final ruling, they're there. They're they're just trying. You have when there's such contention, you have to kind of set the stage somewhere.

[00:19:03] You've got to say, OK, this is where we're going to hold everything until we have the final ruling. It happens in every court case. It's not it's frustrating that that is the attack, because that is the kind of way anyone should want the Supreme Court to be acting. Right. The legal term they use is irreparable harm, is that basically the power plants were going to suffer irreparable harm.

[00:19:27] Because if Obama was allowed to implement the regulations while the litigation was ongoing, they would have had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars that they wouldn't have others otherwise spent on what turned out to be illegal regulations. Yep. OK, that makes sense. All right. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

[00:19:44] Before we bring Concaro back, it's time to make today's calls to the Capitol.

[00:20:17] The switchboard number is on your screen right now. It's 202-224-3121. When they answer, ask to speak to your representative, to your congressman and tell your congressman two things. One, thank them if they're a Republican for voting for the Save America Act and urge them to have the House pass the Save America Act yet again, and this time attach it to must-pass legislation.

[00:20:44] That way it'll go back to the Senate and we have the opportunity for the Senate to take it back up and vote for it. Next, the second item is to call these—to stop the so-called Dignity Act. Tell your congressman no amnesty, not now, not ever. The Dignity Act is being sold as a compassionate solution to illegal immigration, but it is not. It is amnesty, plain and simple.

[00:21:11] Tea Party Patriots Action's own polling shows that more than half of Americans support deporting illegal aliens, not giving them a path to citizenship. Legal immigrants who waited in line, who did everything right, who played by the rules, they deserve better than watching Washington hand out the same prize to the people who cut in front of them and broke the law. Again, the number is 202-224-3121.

[00:21:38] Tell your congressman no amnesty, no Dignity Act. Now, before we get back—well, actually, we're going to go right back right now to Con Carroll, who is the Washington—who's with the Washington Examiner. And, Con, let's talk about what's happening in Beijing this week. Here's what the Washington Examiner has been reporting on. It says that China wants concessions on artificial intelligence, export markets in Taiwan.

[00:22:07] What does America actually want to walk away with from this visit with President Trump in China? And what does a good outcome look like for the American people, Con? Well, I think a good outcome for the American people right now is made into the status quo. You know, I think you have, with the United States already embroiled in both Iran and, of course, you have China looking towards Taiwan.

[00:22:34] I think what you want to make sure is that, you know, China does not further help Iran or Russia with their war in Ukraine. And, you know, you don't want to have Trump basically affirm Chinese claims to Taiwan. So just, you know, Trump being able to come home and say that he did his best to increase agricultural sales,

[00:22:57] and that he said no to giving them more chips and more AI technology, which, of course, they are pressing for. I saw at the top of the show you mentioned that Mayor of Arcadia was recently convicted. But they're also all over, you know, Silicon Valley and other AI firms like Anthropic constantly asking for code there. The more we can deny them that technology, the better we position are to compete with them in the future. And then let's talk about one other thing.

[00:23:27] And as we mentioned this, let me just say there's some breaking news, and that is that Marty McCary is out as the FDA commissioner. This ties a little bit to FDA, what I'm mentioning, and we'll follow that story with the FDA commissioner and talk about it in future episodes. But the Washington Examiner Board wrote that President Trump would have a strong hand going into this summit with a—and it would be even stronger with a stronger industrial base.

[00:23:54] Does President Trump have enough of that leverage right now? And I also think there was a piece in the Examiner talking about the importance of being able to manufacture pharmaceuticals in America. Yeah, absolutely, both of those. I mean, we can take the pharmaceutical one first. You know, Senator Tom Cotton actually has some great legislation that targets both China specifically. But, you know, during COVID, you know, I think a lot of us realized that a lot of the pharmaceutical supply chain is dependent on China.

[00:24:22] And this, of course, leaves us very vulnerable when you have a globalized pandemic to the Chinese Communist Party. And so we need to both invest here at home, you know, but also overseas in non-China areas to make sure that we are resilient and can get the ingredients we need for life-saving drugs. And the same is true with the defense industrial base.

[00:24:44] You know, as Trump goes over to China, it's no secret that we've been spending a lot of patriot missiles, a lot of guided munitions, a lot of cruise missiles in Iran. And, you know, every time we shoot a missile or drop other types of ordnance on Iran, that means we do not have those munitions to the status quo in Asia and the Pacific to possibly defend Taiwan.

[00:25:12] And so the more we build up our industrial base, the better we are to faster replenish our munitions, the more credible we are to be a deterrent both in the Pacific and in the Middle East. Yeah, that is extremely important. Being the deterrent is important. I think that we see some of that with what's happening in Iran right now as well.

[00:25:36] We—and so just being able to set the stage with China to make sure that they understand that we're serious about making America not just great, again, from our own standpoint, but for the world to know that we have a president and we have an American people who wants to make sure that America is first when it comes to policies that affect America.

[00:25:59] But I think it's important for people from the rest of the world to know that doesn't mean we don't care about the rest of the world. We don't want to help the rest of the world. It's sort of more one of those put the oxygen mask on your own face first so you can still help other people. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, President Trump loves making deals with other countries. There's nothing that makes him happier than when he can find a situation where both America and another country is better off.

[00:26:26] But for far too long, we've had presidents where they were able to look at a deal and say, you know, look, as long as the other country does better, I'm able to take some hits. Maybe we'll have America suffer a little less. And Trump is moving away from that. He's saying, I'm happy to do business with other countries, but only if it means that America is also getting stronger at the same time. OK, and then there's one other topic that I want to get your take on. It's much closer to home.

[00:26:54] So coming back from China and and focusing here, you recently wrote about how American women have the young women are moving left at a historic pace. And you've been writing about it. You also wrote a book about marriage and family. And the book is called Sex and the Citizen. So explain to us first what you were talking about when you said that American women are moving left.

[00:27:23] And then does it tie to the book that you wrote as well? Yeah, absolutely. So basically, Gallup comes out every year with a poll showing what each generation subset of age groups identify as politically. And so if you go back to 2001, only 28 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 29 identified as liberal. And about 25 percent of men also identify liberal.

[00:27:50] Fast forward to today, the number of percentage of women, young women, 18, 29, who identify as liberal is now way up at 40 percent. Whereas the percentage of men who identify as liberal is at the same exact 25 percent. So it was a three point gap between the sexes has now rocketed up to a 15 point gap. And there is no other generation that has as large a gender gap as the youngest generation, as the youngest generation whose ages are 18 to 29.

[00:28:17] And so connecting this back to the marriage book, you know, one of the big reasons why you have women, young women in particular, moving so far left is the decline of marriage in that marriage makes women more moderate. You know, I'm not even say more conservative, but just more moderate. And a large factor of that is how they identify themselves.

[00:28:37] When women are single, and especially if they go to college and, you know, go to a liberal school where they learn about intersectionality and they learn to view the whole world through a lens of racism, discrimination. They send themselves not as, you know, Christians, not as women, not as part of the family, but as part of an oppressed group, as a part of women, and increasingly as a part of, you know, lesbian or gay sexual women.

[00:29:05] The percentage of young white women in particular that have identified as bisexual has skyrocketed in recent years. And it's because that makes them feel more of like an oppressed minority. Marriage counteracts that because marriage helps women identify with a larger family closer to themselves. They're more likely to identify with their husband, with their possibly sons and daughters.

[00:29:26] And this basically takes away, causes them to identify less as a woman and, you know, basically tribal women and more as part of a cooperative relationship with the family, with the man, with the community. And identifying, you know, most often as Christian as well. Two things that you just said.

[00:29:46] First, when you said that if the woman goes to a liberal university, a liberal college, the chances of that happening are probably like 90 percent that that's where they're going to go. There's Hillsdale. There's Liberty. There's, you know, conservative options out there. Grand Canyon University, TCU. But there are, but you have to actually seek those schools out. Absolutely.

[00:30:09] I know this because my kids who are now adults and I had to seek out colleges where they weren't going to be having that kind of indoctrination shoved down their throats. I didn't want it. They didn't want it. And I didn't want them to go away to college and do what I've seen so many happen in so many other families where they send their children off and they've raised them well and think that they're well grounded in the family values.

[00:30:36] And then they just go completely sideways while they're in college. And that's part of what you're talking about. If a woman feels completely oppressed and is told that she's oppressed over and over and over and is hanging out with other young women who are her age hearing the same thing, you become what you think. And it will have a real influence on you. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:31:00] And I think, you know, I mean, I don't want to aspire to your age, but I think for some of us that went to college a generation ago, the professors in the community have just gotten much far left. We see this in a whole slew of surveys where, yes, when you and I went to school, colleges were or professors were leftists. But now they're just so much further left at the indoctrination that our kids are getting so much worse than what we went through. Yeah, it is actually just quite crazy.

[00:31:29] You know, Khan, you went to law school. You're an attorney. My son is actually in law school right now, and he said that one of the classes—he's finished his first year. And we were talking about this recently. I hope he doesn't mind that I say this. I'm not telling where he went or any of his professors or anything like that. But he said that he took a property law class, and the professor pretty much was like, yeah, we have all these laws, but really, I don't think we need them.

[00:31:58] And the implication, I guess, the way that I understood what he was saying is that the professor didn't even really think we should own property. So you don't need property laws because if you don't own property, you wouldn't need all those laws anyway. Well, actually, on the law school front, I actually went to the Antonin Scalia School of Law. Speaking of finding conservative schools. Even before it had Scalia's name on it, it was known for a law and economics perspective.

[00:32:28] And so, I mean, I would say that's even kind of more of a libertarian bent versus a conservative bent. But, you know, I had professors like Todd Zwicky, who's become a very active in the movement, and he taught me contracts. I got an A in that class. But, you know, when you do have – and that really was the first time in my entire academic career I went to a school that actually had conservatives teaching. And it was a breath of fresh air.

[00:32:54] But I think it, you know, is very important for law, especially for something you mentioned like property. Like the first property case in my property text, but I actually just actually have it right here accidentally, you know, goes back to the founding of the country. And that, you know, property comes from conquest. And that, you know, when you come down to who owns property in the United States, it first comes down to the government.

[00:33:18] The government was the entity that won it from Britain, and they're the ones that basically decide who, you know, had the property. And so once you – you know, you have to have that basic claim of what human history was about and what economics is about. And if you don't have that grounding, if you're taught that property is meaningless or it doesn't come from anywhere, everything else gets lost. And then it's easy to see how you can have AOC saying on a podcast that you can't earn a billion dollars, right?

[00:33:44] I mean, if you don't believe in property to begin with, then yeah, sure, you can earn a billion dollars. And so that grounding is very important. And it's too bad that so many of our young children are not getting that educational background. Yeah, it is. And I think that going back to the article that you wrote, that it's just important as parents that we're preparing our children and especially our daughters

[00:34:07] and making sure we're doing all that we can to help guard their hearts and minds when they leave home so that they remember what their roots and their values are. And they're confident in it regardless of what's going on around them. And no matter what, whether they go to a liberal school or a conservative school, once they're out of college, they still are going to have to be able to defend their ideas.

[00:34:29] But that takes it to the next point that you were saying about marriage and the importance of marriage. And I am divorced, so I'm no longer married. But I think that marriage helps you be more sacrificial. It helps you figure out how to put another person before yourself. And so you don't think as much about, am I oppressed or not?

[00:34:55] Because you're looking out for another person other than just yourself. And then when you have children, I mean, man, once you have children, most moms I know would sacrifice anything and would run in front of a moving bus and lay down their life for their children. So I think that that also helps pull you back from the left and at least to a more moderate centrist position,

[00:35:23] just whether you have religion in your life or not, just that innate, almost instinctual love and care that you give to your children. Yeah, I think it's really impossible for parents to explain to non-parents what that feeling is like. My best attempt is I remember when I first held my oldest son in the hospital, I felt so vulnerable, right?

[00:35:49] Because I think we choose as adults who we let into our lives and who we love and who has claim over our emotional well-being. And, you know, as much as I love my wife, it's a process where I worked at it and, you know, repeatedly chose her again and again as someone I trusted to invest with. But it's the exact opposite with a newborn. This is a person who literally didn't exist until yesterday, and yet they own you completely. They own all of your emotions.

[00:36:16] And it's not something you chose or gave over. You're just all in from the beginning. And that really emotional ownership that your children have over you is unique and hard to explain unless you felt it. Yeah, it is. And I have not read your book, but I need to go buy it and check it out because I'm sure it would be very interesting. OK, before we leave, the Washington Examiner has launched a new series aimed at conservatives.

[00:36:45] And it genuinely, I think, is wanting to help challenge us to think about conservative values. The first article or the first, I guess it's an article in that series is called Liberal Policies Don't Work Even When Rebranded Conservative. So explain what this new series is about, why you're doing it, and then touch on this article. But we'll all need to go back and check it out. No, absolutely.

[00:37:11] I mean, so I think even before the Trump era, you had competing think tanks within the conservative movement, whether that's the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Cato, you know, had different takes on different issues. I mean, AEI has plenty of takes on issues within the same house. I think that has only become more true in the Trump era when you have, you know, the America First Institute versus America Freedom. You have Mike Pence's shop. You have Donald Trump's shops.

[00:37:38] You have lots of other competing think tanks out there that have well-respected scholars with researched opinions on all kinds of different issues. And so the Washington Examiner really wants to be a forum where these think tanks can come together, explain the ideas, make the case as why they're white, and voters can then decide which is the correct position. Very good. Very good.

[00:38:03] And I think it is important for us to be thinking about these values and to remember what our Constitution is about, why we have a constitutional government, why we are standing up for the Constitution as conservatives. And that's what the series is trying to do and to help challenge us to make sure we're remembering what our conservative values are. And that's—it's very important, not just today, but as we look towards the future. Very, very important. Absolutely. Khan Carroll, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:38:32] Everyone, be sure to follow him at KhanCarroll on X and go to TheWashingtonExaminer.com to find the articles and the pieces that we talked about today. Khan, thanks for being with me. Thank you, J. Beth. All right. Next up, we have Curtis Hawk, who has spent more than a decade watching the liberal media so the rest of us don't have to.

[00:38:52] As managing editor of Newsbusters at the Media Research Center, he's logged over 1,000 media appearances documenting exactly how the networks frame stories, who they protect, and who they go after. Curtis, welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. Thanks so much for being with me. Yeah, good to be back with you, Jenny Beth.

[00:39:11] So, Curtis, the man who rushed the White House Correspondents' Dinner at the security checkpoint with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives called himself the friendly federal assassin in his own manifesto. That is not ambiguous. Yet CNN and MSNBC have been treating this story like he's a victim. Let me show this B-roll. Just—let's watch this. Oh, there's no audio. Okay, so I can't show—I have no audio for it.

[00:39:40] But, Curtis, how is it—what is the—what are we seeing from CNN and MSNBC when it comes to this alleged shooter? Sure. My colleague, Bill DiAgostino, put that video together. You can check it out at his socials, band underscore bill, and at Newsbusters on X and the Media Research Center and Newsbusters on Facebook. And it really kind of goes to show how, you know, they've kind of shifted now.

[00:40:06] You know, when the shooting took place, they weren't sure who the target was. So there was a lot of concern and obviously wanting to kind of stick to the facts about—and keeping an open mind about who this—who the shooter was and who they may have gone after. But now it was clear that he was going after the president and the president's cabinet. They're now looking to, I guess—I don't want to sympathize with, but at least provide his perspective on things.

[00:40:29] And taking cues from a not-surprising liberal judge in the Washington, D.C. area who apologized to the suspect for being put in solitary confinement thus far during his detention as he awaits the first kind of steps in his legal proceedings. So that's kind of where that video goes, talking about the judge commiserating with him.

[00:40:53] And they also cast doubt on whether he actually fired a shot, whether the gunshots were only from members of the Secret Service and other law enforcement, you know, which kind of then I think once you start wondering whether—we don't see a muzzle flash, which again, as you know, Jenny, the media know nothing about firearms. They know nothing about guns because they hate the Second Amendment. They wish no one had guns.

[00:41:17] Once you start opening that door, you then kind of can start moving down the line towards where the far left and some on the far right are, where the lunatics out there that say this whole thing was staged because you kind of open the door to some aspects of this don't make sense or they might not have happened. So the media are doing all kinds of things with the story, commiserating with him, but also then kind of opening the door to conspiracy theories.

[00:41:42] Yeah, it's kind of remarkable that during COVID wouldn't let anyone talk about whether a mask was effective or not. And yet when it comes to this man who had a manifesto where he called himself the friendly federal assassin, I am so offended that he would call himself that. You can't be friendly and be an assassin. It's awful.

[00:42:31] It's awful. But with this kind of reporting, who knows what kind of jury he might get. Yeah, and that definitely was a fear of mine. And I'm sure a lot of people in the moment, even that Saturday night, that regardless of who the target was, the fact that the president was there, that it was a strong possibility that this person was targeting the president and or members of his cabinet, that you get into a situation where this obviously will be a trial in Washington, D.C.

[00:43:00] The jurors will be Washingtonians. And as we know, the left has engaged in all sorts of jury nullification moves to let different people off, people who've attacked cops or deep state crooks that the president in his first administration had tried to bring up. John Durham, various prosecutions there as well. So and that these liberal organizations are teaching people this.

[00:43:27] So you just wonder and you fear that this could be the case. But you have to hope that President Trump and his Justice Department are able to make such a rock solid case about this guy. And as you point out, the proliferation of hate. This guy was very active on Blue Sky, the Blue Sky Brigade. He was all sorts of following all sorts of accounts, promoting all kinds of deranged hot takes and very dangerous kind of rhetoric about the president, who he was.

[00:43:57] You know, and then this was this entire story, Jenny Beth, is a lesson that just calling somebody Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao Zedong, you fill in the blank dictator throughout human history. And if you say it enough, some crazy person is going to, A, believe it and B, then decide I have a chance to take matters into my own hands. Yeah. And and we already have people. We have enough people who are trying to take matters into their own hands. It needs to stop the left.

[00:44:28] There's such complete and total hypocrites. But there's no leadership from from the left. Instead, you've got Hakeem Jeffries doubling down on on the rhetoric that I think is is not the right kind of rhetoric. He had the the big poster of President Trump the week before this assassination attempt. And it said maximum warfare after he after the assassination attempt.

[00:44:57] He said he wasn't going to apologize for that. And he was basically doubling down and saying people have he didn't give a damn about the people who have problems with that. It just it's it. We're very fortunate in this country that no one died at the White House Correspondence Center. And the fact that the left doesn't understand that is just incredibly disturbing to me. And there were people in that room. Some of the media, they're not my favorite people.

[00:45:26] Well, they're probably people who don't even like President Trump. It doesn't matter. No one in that room should have felt like they're they're not just should have felt like their lives were in danger and that was wrong and never should have happened to them. And the fact that the left in the media can't see that it tells us where we are in this country. Yeah, that it's not a two way street when it comes to empathy. I mean, Jamie, you and I were both around.

[00:45:51] I mean, you've devoted your entire career to the Tea Party movement and what President Obama was doing with this country. This were it was vociferous and strong policy disagreements that we all had with him and his administration. And we made that very clear what he was doing with the border, what he was doing with spending, what he was doing with Obamacare. But that wasn't wishing death on him, you know, or members of his administration.

[00:46:17] And we've reached a point now where, as you point out, people like Hakeem Jeffries are pressed on this matter. And their answer is that of a five year old to say, well, he started it or President Trump is that dangerous. And it's just irresponsible. It's childish. And it would just be childish if it weren't so dangerous, because we should be able to disagree with each other.

[00:46:41] It's what makes us different from like the UK or Germany, where if you say the wrong thing on social media or as we learned in the UK, if you pray in your house, the police are going to come visit you. Or where the president's going in China, you know, that too as well. Right. That is exactly right. And it's what Charlie Kirk urged people to do, to be able to have communication when you even when you don't agree to ask questions and have conversations.

[00:47:07] And Erica Kirk, after that White House Correspondents' Dinner, was reposting videos of Charlie Kirk saying that, reminding people we I didn't speak to Erica Kirk. And I don't actually know her, but it sure seems to me she's trying to remind people we need to be able to communicate. This kind of dangerous violence is not OK.

[00:47:30] Let me let's shift gears to something that connects directly with with what we're talking about, with China having operatives inside of the American government there, which we're talking about earlier in the show. There is another area of concern, and that is the algorithm. And you have researched and found that the algorithm is winding up pushing anti-Semitism,

[00:47:58] and it seems to be the anti-Semitism engine in America, and it may be coming from the Google News app. Yeah. OK, so as the headline says there on Moss News, as we've come to call Google News, my colleagues over at Free Speech America point out all the time that every Android phone, which I have, is preloaded with Google News. Every iPhone is preloaded with Apple News. And I think I've talked about this with you last time I was on here.

[00:48:27] You know, if you're watching this show, you're probably not getting your news this way, but a lot of your family members are. And that is the issue here. If we've learned anything in the last 20 years, every 25 years, every election, major election is razor thin close. And so the information that goes in to our brains or the brains of others is really important, and it could be helpful. It could also be damaging. And that is exactly what we're seeing here with Google News.

[00:48:56] Google News in particular, we have found, has been very eager, very trigger-happy, pun intended, to push Hamas news, which is Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera back in the day, during the Al Qaeda days of Osama bin Laden, they were the ones that Al Qaeda and others would send execution videos to because they know that this Qatari-based Al Jazeera network is the official network of all sorts of propagandists out there.

[00:49:27] And so, obviously, they have a worldview that is incredibly negative towards the state of Israel, its existence, its people. And it has become, as the prime minister brought up on 60 Minutes this past Sunday, a kind of runaway train of sorts where young people now get a lot of information from their phone. They thrive off of what they see on their phone, and it's a lot of emotion.

[00:49:55] It's a lot of emotional blackmail, I would say, actually, instead of actually kind of reading a book like The Great Dennis Prager's Why the Jews or any book explaining what happened with the Holocaust or the creation of Israel. Michael Oren, former ambassador, has written a few really amazing books about the state of Israel. So, instead, you're getting, you know, all sorts of pro-terrorist or terrorist-like news from Al Jazeera.

[00:50:22] You just mentioned what Netanyahu said here. We're going to pull up a clip of that. Well-versed in American politics, the prime minister is keenly aware of declining support for Israel. According to a recent Pew survey, 60 percent of U.S. adults reported having an unfavorable view of Israel, up nearly 20 points in four years. One of the big reasons, the war in Gaza, where, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, more than 70,000 people have been killed.

[00:50:52] That includes civilians as well as Hamas terrorists. Netanyahu attributes the reputational harm to Israel almost entirely to social media, which he calls the eighth front of the war. Because it's this. This is yours, right? You're not immune either. Because you can penetrate this machine. You can penetrate this little instrument.

[00:51:19] And you can say about Major Garrett anything you want. And I can paint you as a monster. And if I say it often enough, enough people will believe it. Do you believe Israel is at risk of losing this war on that social media front? And this is particularly, I believe, important in America for younger Americans, Republican and Democrat,

[00:51:43] scrolling through images and they would use words like barbaric in Gaza and in Lebanon. Israel has gone to unbelievable lengths to get innocent civilians out of harm's way. We text message millions of text messages to them, make millions of phone calls to them, pamphlets, leaflets, you name it.

[00:52:04] OK, we have seen the deterioration of support for Israel in the United States almost, I would say, correlates almost 100 percent with the geometric rise of social media. And that by itself is not what caused it. And I don't believe in censoring them or anything. But I'll tell you what happened. We have several countries that basically manipulated social media.

[00:52:33] And they do it in a clever way. And that's something that has hurt us badly. Curtis, the media research center, there was a study that found that Google News highlighted Al Jazeera 15 times in one month, while other major—every other major aggregator ignored it. And then we hear what Benjamin Netanyahu just said about Israel's declining popularity in America,

[00:53:03] saying that it's the result of social media misrepresentations. And he was talking about how what we hear, if you hear it often enough, it will affect you. I was saying that earlier in the program about a different topic. He's making the case it's not the algorithm. It's that it is the algorithm. It's not the facts on the ground shaping opinion in America on Israel. Is he right?

[00:53:30] Do you think that your Google News finding has evidence to support this? And also, what do you make of the fact that they're quoting Al Jazeera so many times? Yeah, I'm not surprised by it. I will say, when it comes to issues such as AI and news aggregators, yes, there is an algorithm that's created,

[00:53:52] but it in part is what we put into it and what big tech, Silicon Valley liberals, put into it as well. So, especially when it comes to the news side. My colleagues, through the first 50 days of the war, looked at Google News, Apple News, Yahoo News, and MSN, and they found 634 stories from left-of-center sources, including Al Jazeera, and only 41 sources from those considered on the right. That's according to allsides.com for the metric of the political spectrum.

[00:54:22] So, we weren't making judgments necessarily for ourselves to kind of use an independent metric to that. And from what I see with the broadcast networks, you know, again, it goes off of the visual and the emotional. It's not necessarily based in fact, and I think that's really where it loses a lot of young people. They tell them to go read Tom Friedman, liberal New York Times columnist, or Nick Kristof,

[00:54:48] who has a very graphic and bizarre column out about what he claims is going on in Israeli prisons, in poor sections where Palestinians are being held. That is completely without merit and evidence. It's almost cartoonish if it weren't such a serious subject. It goes to our education system as well. So, to all this I say, Jenny, that, you know, it's important for each and every one of us. It starts with each and every one of us doing our own homework and becoming educated to the point where

[00:55:17] such important facts, in this case about anti-Semitism and Israel and Iran and so on and so forth, are in our minds. It's committed to muscle memory. So, it's come upon us as news content creators to provide them those kinds of facts and those kinds of outlets to stay away from so folks know when those things come up, chances are it's not only wrong, it's propaganda and also then the ammunition to rebut that as well.

[00:55:46] Yeah, I think it is so important that you're helping be able to rebut that. And it is propaganda. And we have to be smart enough to understand it's happening, what it is, and how to arm ourselves to defend our minds against it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the fate of Western civilization is at stake. And I don't think you can think of something bigger than that.

[00:56:09] Or when it comes to the genocide of an entire group of people, as a lot of these radical fanatics want to do, it can't get much bigger than that. And thus, it's paramount for each and every one of us to do our part instead of just waiting around for someone else to do it. Absolutely. Curtis Hawk, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been just an absolutely essential conversation. And I think that everyone should go and check out what Media Research Center is doing,

[00:56:39] read the reports that they've put together, learn more about what's happening, especially when it comes to the algorithms and the apps, so that we are able to defend ourselves against it. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jenny. All right. Now, before we close out for today, I want to come back to that phone number one more time. It's 202-224-3121. Again, 202-224-3121.

[00:57:08] That's the United States Capitol switchboard. Call that number if you haven't done so already today. Call your congressman and deliver two messages to your one congressman. First, especially if they're Republican, thank them for passing the Save America Act. And then, regardless of whether they're a Republican or not, tell them that you want to make sure that the House passes it again and that it is attached to must-pass legislation,

[00:57:34] so it heads back over to the Senate, where hopefully the Senate will pick it up. So, make the phone call about the Save America Act to the House of Representatives. Second, the second message to deliver is to tell your congressman to stop the Dignity Act. No amnesty. Not now. Not ever. The Dignity Act is amnesty, plain and simple.

[00:57:57] Tea Party Patriots Action's polling shows that more than half of Americans support deporting illegal aliens, not granting them a pathway to citizenship. Legal immigrants who waited in line, who followed the rules, who did everything right, deserve better from Washington than watching Washington hand out the prize to the people who cut in line in front of them and didn't even follow the law. So, again, that number is 202-224-3121.

[00:58:26] No amnesty. No Dignity Act.

[00:58:29] No Dignity Act.

[00:59:23] No Dignity Act. You can click through to see that. I'm Jenny Beth Martin. Thank you so much for being here. We'll see you tomorrow on The Jenny Beth Show. If you enjoyed today's conversation, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about liberty and the Constitution. You can find this and other episodes at JennyBethShow.com, as well as Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, X, and your favorite podcast platform.

[00:59:52] The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org.