Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders Gets the Last Laugh Jul 18, 2024

Show notes

Beautiful, elegant, strong—when Sarah Huckabee Sanders glided out on stage on Night 2 of the Republican National Convention, I could not help but think of the film Carrie. In it, the shy wallflower emerges as the beautiful prom queen moments before she’s sabotaged by two mean and bitter people who want nothing but her total humiliation.

But of course, they don’t realize what they just stepped in as Carrie turns to them, flips the switch that turns on her supernatural powers, and enacts her revenge.

It’s one of the best scenes in film history made when Hollywood could still make great movies, and Stephen King wrote great books rather than endless anti-Trump tweets.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t need to set the place on fire. Her success is her best revenge, as she’s now the Governor of Arkansas, the first woman to hold that position. Take that, bitter leftists.

What a moment that was. They did everything in their power to crush her, to humiliate her, to shame her, to destroy her. And guess what? It failed spectacularly, just as it has with Trump.

I remember back in 2018 when Michelle Wolf told unfunny jokes, selling a version of Sanders that doesn’t, in fact, exist. Her words stung, and Sanders’ reactions reflected that. Even though I was a loyal Democrat back then, I loudly criticized Wolf and my Democrat friends for defending her.

And when she was refused service at the Red Hen, a thing that happened in the Jim Crow South or Nazi Germany, Stephen Colbert did his usual sociopathic ranting disguised as humor.

I always thought we were the guys, I said. Are we the side that now mocks the way women look? Oh, she’s supporting Trump; they told me back then. She is normalizing a fascist. She deserves what she gets.

It was blatant hypocrisy from the side that proclaims tolerance and love. But there they were, as mean as Nancy Allen in Carrie.

That’s who you are now, I told them. You’re the mean girls. It was verbal abuse disguised as comedy, but it still wasn’t enough. Look at how far they had to go in an attempt to destroy her, destroy Trump, and defeat the grassroots movement known as MAGA.

Maybe that assassin wasn’t killing Trump because he thought he was Hitler. But did it matter that much? It seemed to manifest their collective hatred, with nowhere to go except pulling the trigger. Too bad you missed means two different things, depending on which side you’re on.

If you can imagine, we’re at the moment where people on Twitter are arguing over whether it’s cancel culture to fire someone who said they were upset that Trump was almost assassinated but happy that one of his supporters died.

For the record, no, I don’t support firing some dumb woman who works at Home Depot because she wrote a disgusting Facebook post. But I also would not want someone with a dark heart like that working for me.

We should never let them off the hook for who they were and what they did, especially to people like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who did nothing to deserve it except work for Donald Trump.

I heard her tell the same story about Trump she recounted at the RNC on a podcast a few years ago—I don’t remember which one—and it humanized Trump in my eyes. It made me think differently about him, and I understood their relationship better. For Sanders, Trump is a ride-or-die, as she explains here.

That wasn’t the only bright spot of the night, but it was the most remarkable. Nothing has ever felt as satisfying as watching her living her hot girl summer phase - an invisible EFF YOU to the haters.

It was a night for powerhouse mama bears who have lost their loved ones either to high crime or the fentanyl epidemic, something the Democrats seem to care nothing about. Oh, those people in the red states, they don’t matter, the racists.

Like Madeline Brame, who blew the roof off the joint and earned the rare standing ovation from Trump.

And Sara Workman:

And Anne Funder:

Real people, real problems. Your move, Democrats.

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The Courage to Change Your Mind Jul 16, 2024

Show notes

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” ―George Bernard Shaw

Last night, at the RNC Convention, Make America Wealthy Once Again, Donald J. Trump walked into the room like the Gray Champion he is, battle-scarred but standing tall. Teddy Roosevelt would be proud. His supporters gave him the hero’s welcome he deserved. There was not a dry eye in the house.

It was apparent to anyone watching that this wasn’t your grandfather’s Republican Party anymore. The head of the Teamsters Union, Sean O’Brien? Big Tech whiz kid David Sacks and a former model named Amber Rose? Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.

It’s Donald Trump’s party now, and he’ll build it the way he wants with what Steve Bannon calls “inclusive, participatory, nationalist populism.”

If the party could leave it to Trump, he’s got this. He’s got this so hard.

A clip with Pastor James Roemke doing a great Trump impression before the blessing.

And a powerful new Trump campaign ad:

Unfortunately, we know the Republican Party, right? We know they can’t just take the W. They will mess it up somehow, as James Lindsay says:

There’s an old joke that used to cycle around Hollywood. A filmmaking crew walks through the desert and comes upon a beautiful oasis. The writer can’t stop talking about how beautiful it is. The director envisions ways to bring it to the big screen. The producer? He whips it out and starts taking a leak. “What are you doing?!!” the others cry out. “Don’t worry,” the producer says, “I’m making it better.”

And so it goes with some of the old-guard Conservatives who are now grumbling about the MAGA takeover of the GOP. They want the party to be what it once was. But those days are gone, brother, and they ain’t coming back. It’s millennials and Zoomers from now on.

Welcome to the Fourth Turning. Once the dust settles and it’s all over, we’ll hopefully have a freer country that feels brand new. We’ll have rescued the country from the grips of the bloated leviathan that now rules over it with an authoritarian fist. It will be a country for the people, by the people, and of the people, and oh, how sweet it will be. If only the GOP could get out of their own way.

The Changing of the Minds

There is no chance I would have ever been accepted or invited into the old GOP. I lived my life exactly the wrong way, according to them. I followed the feminist lie and believed that the only thing I needed to do in life was serve myself. I had casual sex, I never got married, I had a child out of wedlock, and I had abortions. I’m not proud of it. I would take it all back if I could. I promise not a day will go by that I don’t mourn the loss of what could have been.

I did not see my life differently because I found religion or because I’m now a Conservative (I am in some ways but not in others). I see my life differently because I changed my mind.

There is nothing wrong with changing your mind. It’s healthy. And it’s brave. It took guts for the beautiful Amber Rose to take to the stage at the RNC and explain how and why she changed her mind. Her father, who served in the military, loved Donald Trump. She told him he was a racist, and her father said, prove it. But don’t listen to me, let her tell it:

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Oh, the Inhumanity Jul 15, 2024

Show notes

When I found my way to Trump’s rallies in the Summer of 2020, I felt like I had crawled out of a desert searching for signs of life. No one could know my discovery. I had to keep it a secret. If anyone found me out, I would be MAGA. I would be a Trump supporter, and that would be the end of my career and most of my relationships.

Despite how often I’d become the target of the fanatical mobs that rule over social media and the Left writ large, I’d knew not to cross the Trump Line. That would be the last straw. I would be shunned, I knew.

Yet, every time I got that notification from Right Side Broadcasting’s YouTube channel that Trump was about to take the stage, even now, four years after I first began watching them, my mood was immediately lifted.

I love those people, I would always think. I didn’t belong anywhere but I somehow belonged there. They still had their senses of humor well intact. They loved this country and were proud of their heritage and patriotism. They were every skin color, every gender, even gay and trans - all under the same tent, an Island of Misfit Toys - all MAGA.

Once I figured out what great people they were, how their time with Trump was precious, I began to worry. What was going to happen them, I wondered. My side had all of the power. They were the Empire and they wanted nothing but the total obliteration of MAGA and especially Trump.

I thought, if only they could thaw out their systematic dehumanization campaign, if I could somehow break the spell cast upon them by the media and their social media feedback loops, then they could just shrug and move on with their lives.

But that isn’t what happened. We summoned a hungry beast that needed to be fed. It was anger at having a political enemy, but there was more to it than that. It was a sadistic, indulgent bacchanalia of hatred that united the Left and became its main form of entertainment.

Who are Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert if they aren’t sucking on the bones of Trump night after night? Whatever audience now remains to watch their terrible shows or the MSNBC power lineup is there for one reason and one reason only. The beast is hungry, and the beast must be fed.

I too once felt the hate within me. It connected me to my community online. It seemed like nothing else mattered all of a sudden except this rising hysteria none of us could manage. We began purging anyone accused of assault or racism. There was no due process. It was simply a matter of tossing them out of utopia.

We’d be fine after that, at least for a little while. But the beast always got hungry again; sooner or later, it would return to Trump.

We were winners when it was just us, Obama, and our online paradise. Now, we were holding back the inevitable pendulum swing, desperate to cling to the past, unable to relinquish our war on Trump. If only we could stop him for good and destroy him forever, things would return to normal.

But they never did. For me, the hatred began to feel like toxic sludge in my veins. I couldn’t take it, not for one more minute. I knew enough about history to know what we were doing was wrong. Yet, how do you convince the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, Hollywood, and the entire Democratic Establishment that what they’re engaging was not just bad for our country but dangerous?

It didn’t occur to me until much later, long after I escaped the bubble of the Left, that they needed to hate Trump because it was the only way they could feel something, anything.

Their addiction meant they needed a stronger and stronger hit. It wasn’t enough to call him a rapist or racist. It had to get all the way to dictator, all the way to a threat to end American democracy as we once knew it.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 2001 that “newspapers of Utopia … would be terribly dull.” And that’s what’s happened to culture on the Left. It’s boring without Trump. They kept dragging him back to their cable news shows daily, dragging him back to the headlines in the New York Times. On X, Trump humiliation was the only fun they seemed allowed to have.

Trump, then, was their release valve. They were dancing with the Devil and they liked it, they liked it. It became an abusive relationship for them, with Trump’s defiance keeping them engaged in the fight. The more he fought back, the more satisfying it was to see him crushed.

Here is Megyn Kelly:

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All the News that's Unfit to Print Jul 12, 2024

Show notes

Dear New York Times Editorial Board,

In your haste to make nice with your paying subscribers—I am one, too, by the way—you decided to swap out journalistic ethics for fear and hyperbole once again. Trump, you declare, is “dangerous” and unfit to lead.

Now, I know it’s been hard on you folks lately, with your otherwise reliable audience turning on you once you spoke the truth about Joe Biden. You had to show them that you’re still on their side. But in so doing, you fail to make the case for why Trump is unfit and end up looking like Goldilocks, who can’t decide which bowl of porridge is just right.

The one thing we know for sure is that your commitment to destroy Trump remains unshakable. Even a president with dementia or possibly Parkinson’s isn’t as big of a threat.

With a desaturated, billowing United States flag bathed in a sea of darkness, we get three definitive statements:

How so? Are you referring to when he said, “march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol to have your voices heard”? Or the time he and his supporters chanted “Lock her up” but then didn’t? Or is it his threats to deport immigrants who flooded the border by the millions under Biden’s watch?

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Oh, That Sweet Sweet Schadenfreude Jul 10, 2024

Show notes

“Schadenfreude can’t get much better than watching the Republican Party self-humiliate with an abject inability to win while controlling the House, Senate and White House.” - Daniel Henninger, WSJ

Oh, I beg to differ, Mr. Henninger. It most certainly can get better. How about a political party that rigged the game in its favor and had nearly all of the legacy press in its pocket suddenly in the spotlight for the biggest political cover-up in modern American history?

The puppet masters are mad that the puppet has gone rogue! If that isn’t sweet, sweet Shaudenfreude, I don’t know what is.

Democracy keeps getting in the way of saving democracy!

The New York Times has now published not one but two op-eds to force Old Joe out of power. According to the Times, “Donald Trump’s candidacy for a second term poses a grave threat to American democracy.”

What exactly is Trump's threat to democracy? They never really say. Maybe it’s something different for everyone. For Black voters, the mean old Republicans want to strip away their voting rights. For women, it’s abortion. For people like Molly Jong-Fast, it’s ideological. They can’t get Trump to accept the rigged election of 2020. Say it! Say it! Confess, witch!

For those who don’t know anything, it’s Project 2025, the biggest “threat to democracy” of all, even though they have no idea what’s in it.

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They've Been Hidin' Biden and Harris Since the 2020 Election Jul 04, 2024

Show notes

Team Joe wasn’t a popular place to be back in May of 2019 when I was invited to a fundraiser in Hancock Park at the home of wealthy donor Cynthia Telles. The Democratic Primary had only just begun, but it was wide open then and almost no one wanted Joe, an old white guy.

For four years, the party had lost its mind and lost its way over Trump. They seemed to believe he was such a bad president they could reach for the sky. Big structural change! A democratic socialist! The first gay president! But I knew that a one-term president with a strong economy doesn’t get voted out.

Maybe they’d swap out for someone like Joe Biden, some of us believed. What harm could he do? He could be a one-term stop-gap measure to bring down Trump without rocking the boat too much. Calm from chaos, the adults back in the room, rolling the country back to the last time they felt safe under Barack Obama.

Indeed, Joe Biden was old, white, and male—not the future the Democratic Party wanted—but Joe could win. The Vice President would be where we’d find our dynamic candidate to step up once Biden’s first term was over.

Even Biden seemed to understand his role in the coup. He wouldn’t have to do much, and he wouldn’t even have to campaign at all. There was a massive, unprecedented alignment of power ready and willing to win the election for him.

I sensed he knew this after he emerged from the mansion with the donors who paid more to sit down with him. He reminded me of so many celebrities I’d seen in the past who knew they would be getting nothing but favorable coverage. They aren’t worried. They’re confident.

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Donald Trump, Taylor Swift and Me Jun 28, 2024

Show notes

It’s hard to believe I’ve become a completely different person than I was four years ago. Not only am I a Trump supporter now, which in and of itself is hard to grasp. But I’m also a Swiftie. Who would have ever thought it? Not me.

In March of 2020, my one and only daughter was sent home to live out the last few months of her senior year at college. She would end up having her graduation on my balcony in Burbank. Everything shut down. Half of the restaurants would eventually go out of business.

No parties, funerals, church, movies, or school. The clouds rolled in, and the darkness came, which never lifted because, for the Democrats in power, they liked it dark. How else to justify their endless manufactured crisis, their “existential threat” of a man who doesn’t exist?

After the Summer of protests and riots literally unmasked the lockdowns for what they were—social justice was more important than a global pandemic, said the experts—I followed the yellow brick road into the belly of the beast. When the curtain was pulled back for me, I could finally see the deception, the delusion, the lies.

But that’s only part of the story. That’s how I found my way to Trump and MAGA. I did it because I needed to know if it was true. Was Trump the next Hitler? Were his supporters “Brown Shirts” and frothing, angry “white supremacists.” By then, I’d already been swarmed online and called a “white supremacist” myself by my colleagues for reasons that are too absurd to recount.

It would be easy to say that “what happened to me” was that I was isolated for too long and gravitated toward the wrong kind of people. That’s probably how my friends and family explain it. Or maybe they think I had some kind of mental breakdown, that the trauma of lockdowns broke my brain.

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Hollywood Can't Save itself, Let Alone Joe Biden Jun 21, 2024

Show notes

When Barack Obama gently took Joe Biden’s hand and led him offstage at a $30 million fundraiser in Los Angeles, it was hard not to see the whole thing as over. Like over over. Like the Fonz jumping the shark over.

Fonzie wasn’t the guy who jumped sharks. He was the King of Cool. There was nothing cool about jumping sharks, just as there was nothing cool about being on a stage with Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Jack Black, and Jimmy Kimmel.

It was all so yesterday. Oh sure, no one in the bubble of the Left would ever admit just how over it all was, but take it from me, someone who has been covering Hollywood for over 25 years. These celebrities can barely get people to watch their films because they no longer fill the necessary role of entertainers. They have elevated themselves to high positions of power and still think they can use their celebrity to influence voters. Maybe a long time ago, that was true. It isn’t true anymore.

In 2001, Julia Roberts and George Clooney paired up for Oceans Eleven, which made nearly $200 million at the box office. Last year they starred in a romantic comedy called Ticket to Paradise, which made only $68 million.

If the Democrats are counting on Hollywood to save them, they might be in for a shock. Hollywood is barely surviving. Everyone is terrified. No one is working. With layoffs, buyouts, and studios collapsing, the once-mighty empire has become a shell of its former self.

We’ve passed through some kind of gate of history where even celebrities don’t rank. No one watches them on awards shows, nightly talk shows, or SNL. Anyone can be a star on TikTok or YouTube, so it’s harder for celebrities to stand out.

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The Deep State Meets the Honey Badger Jun 13, 2024

Show notes

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” - George Orwell, 1984

Rick Wilson thinks he’s won - throw Steve Bannon in Federal Prison on July 1st; that’s one less mover and shaker in MAGA world. A party, a celebration, as yet another scalp is claimed to lay at the feet of the wealthy libs who pay him the big bucks to go Trump hunting.

Four months is a long time to take out one of the most important voices in the MAGA movement. That people like Rick Wilson are celebrating tells you everything you need to know about the opposition, not to mention the people running this country.

They don’t believe in democracy, not really. They believe in rigging elections, jailing their opponents, silencing dissent, and forcing voters to be represented by people who are nowhere near up to the job.

We saw the Lincoln Project as knights in shining armor riding in to protect my demographic of unmarried career women from Trump. Save us, we cried, as we paypal-ed fat donations to ease our fragile nerves. We spared no expense to rid our otherwise pristine village of that toxic masculinity and virulent racism.

I began my journey toward Conservatives by listening to guys like Rick Wilson. I read his book, Running Against the Devil. I wrote about and praised him for being smarter than the Democrats. I listened to Charlie Sykes at the Bulwark and made friends with Joe Walsh on Twitter. Even just that, I had my friends screaming at me: how could I be friends with racists?

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Joe Biden's Eternal Nightmare Jun 05, 2024

Show notes

Don’t let Joe Biden’s creepy grin fool you. He’s not confident. He’s terrified. They all are. Imagine being them right now. Imagine having all of the power, all of the culture, all of the institutions, and most of the administrative and security state; imagine the impeachments, the indictments, the endless attacks against Trump for eight years, and he’s still the frontrunner to be President of the United States in 2024.

Biden knows the system might help him win in 2024 just as it did in 2020. He has to keep the threat of Trump alive, and he may convince low-information voters to pull the lever for Joe. Nothing makes that easier than calling Trump a convicted felon. Yes, they finally got there.

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