Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone

"Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength."— Theodore RooseveltIn 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was on his way to deliver a speech when he was shot in the chest with an assassin’s bullet. James Strock writes:The history of 1912 leaves breadcrumbs if we summon the humility to look.In the moment Roosevelt was, to put it mildly, controversial. Seeking a third term as president, he split his political party. Longtime accusations of “Caesarism” were given new life.Nonetheless, Roosevelt’s undoubted courage under fire was acknowledged, including by political adversaries in the closing weeks of a hard-fought campaign.Trump was shot in Pennsylvania, but he gave his speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the same city where Roosevelt gave his 112 years ago.Politically, and in a variety of ways, TR and Trump are worlds apart. But they have one thing in common. They’re the Man in the Arena.As I watched Twitter watch the last night of the Republican National Convention, I felt something shifting inside of me. I don’t know if it was the vulnerability on Trump’s face, his sadness after his brush with death, or his courage to give his speech anyway and do it for 90+ minutes that elevated me beyond our usual politics and forced me to look at who we are.Strock does much of this in his excellent column on the failed assassination and how ugly things have gotten in the press to bring us to this point. That was only half of the story. The other half is how so many gathered around to “judge” how well Trump did and whether or not this means he will win in a landslide or whether it’s now a toss-up.They want Biden’s debate and Trump’s speech to level the playing field. There’s just one problem. They’re not the same things, and everyone knows it. Trump was polling ahead of Biden even before the debate. He’s still polling ahead because there is no fixing what the Democrats have done to this country. For now, Trump has the wind at his back, whether or not he gave a great speech. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“President Trump represents America’s last best hope to restore what — if lost — may never be found again. A country where a working-class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America.” - JD VanceTulsi Gabbard’s voice is greatly missed from the Republican National Convention. However, it still resonates profoundly in our culture, especially after Vice President Kamala Harris insulted JD Vance’s love of country and called her out as only Tulsi Gabbard can.So many of us, especially on the Left, don’t think much about the people who put their lives on the line every day in service of this country. However, in JD Vance, Trump found someone who can offer more than just empty words.According to Military.com:Vance, 39, is the first post-9/11 veteran to find a spot on a major party ticket and, if elected, would likely be the first Marine veteran to serve as the second-in-command… He is the first veteran on a major party ticket since John McCain in 2008.”That mattered when the Gold Star families took to the stage to “say their names,” a chant heard over and over again since the catastrophic exit from Afghanistan, the first real sign to the American people and to the world that the leader of the United States did not know what he was doing.What a difference eight years makes. When he was still green as a politician and not yet the leader he is today, Trump famously made fun of a Gold Star dad after he read out loud the Constitution at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. The press made much of it at the time, but they’ve said nothing about how our government memory-holed the deaths of 13 American soldiers.Say their names.Democrats and the media have repeatedly excused the disastrous military operation that would ultimately destabilize the global order — nothing to see here; move along, move along. It wrecked Biden’s approval ratings, and they’ve never recovered.Say their names.Up until Night 3 of the Republican National Convention—Make America Strong Again—there had never been any major ceremony or remembrance of the fallen. We saw their military funerals. There was a hearing in Congress.But their names, faces, and personal stories had never been properly memorialized in any major way, not in the State of the Union, and wholly forgotten during the first presidential debate of 2024.Say their names.The general public has never called them heroes. That changed last night.Before their appearance at the RNC, a short documentary played with interviews from the Gold Star families, all of them angry that the Biden administration had mostly ignored them while Trump hadn’t. He’d given them his time. He knew their children, they said. That matters if you’re the Commander in Chief, a job neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris are suited for.When the families finally appeared on stage, tears were already streaming down the faces of almost everyone in the hall, as they often are when we come together to talk about military deaths. We know they died serving their country. Some grown men could be seen openly weeping at the unimaginable loss of an avoidable tragedy./// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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.// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” ―George Bernard ShawLast 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 MindsThere 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: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“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, WSJOh, 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.// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“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, 1984Rick 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? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

As Trump wows the public at rallies, Biden seethes behind the castle walls, demanding that his nemesis be convicted and jailed.The next big news day for the regime will be Verdict Day! Oh, how they will celebrate.And lest you get carried away with the fantasy that maybe they’ll acquit Trump in the city that made him, think again. There is little chance that the jury will go home to their friends and family and confess they passed on the chance to save Democracy because they had a sudden case of reasonable doubt.Corrupt president, corrupt prosecutor, corrupt judge, corrupt jury. And Rachel Maddow will declare justice was served and Joe Biden will pretend that a bookeeping error was a big enough crime to warrant indicting a former president.Reasonable Doubt? It’s been eliminated, along with due process and the presumption of innocence. The only thing that matters is whether or not Bette Midler and Stephen King can sleep at night and that Joe Biden gets to sit in the Big Boy chair at the White House and stare back at us with his tiny, angry, squinty eyes and bark about bloodbaths, dictators and “good people on both sides.”But nothing Biden has done to Trump has helped move the needle in the polls.The Democrats and Never Trumpers probably wonder how it is that Donald Trump can still be this popular after everything they’ve thrown at him. They keep doubling down on the hyperbole and overblown attacks against him, resorting to lying outright to win over a handful of low-information voters. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

In 2024, the most radical act imaginable is telling the truth. Nellie Bowles has done just that with her new book, Morning After the Revolution. She lays out in painful but funny detail the madness we’ve all just lived through that almost no one will talk about. Bowles is too nice to humiliate the New York Times outright; she was their “golden girl,” after all, once upon a time. But her book humiliates them all the same, just by doing good reporting and telling the stories they refused to tell. In one riveting, tragic, hilarious passage, Bowles describes what happened at the Wi Spa in Los Angeles:“Wi Spa billed itself as “a convenient and affordable place to de-stress and be pampered,” but one summer week in 2021 it became a site of great stress because of one (allegedly, partially) erect penis that had manifested in the women’s room.”She continues: “The spa, in Los Angeles’s Koreatown, has separate men’s and women’s areas where people go naked. The penis went bobbing through the women’s space. The penis had been seen soaking in the women’s communal soak pools. Women enjoying their spa time were upset. One went to the front desk asking for help, saying there were children present and that there was a man in the bathroom. The front desk could not help. The person with the penis had a California driver’s license that listed their gender as “female.” The penis was white, and some of the women who didn’t want to see it were black Hispanic, which in the summer of 2021 might have helped draw knee-jerk public sympathy, but apparently did not.”For a movement afraid of harm being done by mere words, they seemed to be perfectly comfortable with real harm being done to young girls, to women in sports, and pre-teens sucked into “gender-affirming care.” Bowles doesn’t just describe what happened at the spa; she tracks down the sex offender himself and discovers that, yes, he’d done it deliberately, and, yes, he was erect while doing so. But was there ever any major reckoning in the press? No.I quickly searched the New York Times for “Wi Spa,” and of course, there was nothing about this scandal, even though it was such an interesting story. Why didn’t they want to touch it? Because it called into question their absolutism about “trans women” being women. The Times should be as thoroughly humiliated by Morning After the Revolution as NPR should be after Uri Berliner’s essay. They no longer care about chasing the story at all costs. They only care about serving the ideology at all costs. It shouldn’t be surprising that the Times and other “prestige” outlets would pan Bowles’ book and attempt character assassination on her. What else are they going to do? Admit that they gaslighted Americans and allowed themselves to be manipulated by a “Lord of the Flies” contingent of crybaby brats who felt unsafe around reporters like Donald McNeil? Will they come clean and admit they essentially work for the Biden administration as a slightly more sophisticated version of Joe and Mika? Not a chance. The publisher isn’t taking their criticisms seriously, nor should they. Instead, they celebrated their takes:The negative reviews read like a chapter in Bowles's book. The Washington Post’s Becca Rothfield disguises her resentment and embarrassment by casting Bowles as the condescending elite. The lady doth protest too much, methinks:She writes:The real question is not about whether there are “Narrative Enforcers” at the New York Times, as Bowles alleges, but why there is a market for so many books like this, even though they are all so predictably indistinguishable from one another. Bowles’s book appeals for the same reason that other conservative memoirs of political “growth” do: because they reassure their readers that progressivism is not a genuine political philosophy but an almost biological byproduct of youth, like acne. Bowles and her ilk are thereby absolved from contending with the principles of those who oppose them, or from seeing their political nemeses as rational moral agents.Then there is Laura Kipnis at the New York Times, whose CV reads exactly like Rothfield’s: academia, awards, universities, citations, more awards, more citations. They could be the same person. She writes, “By fringe, she means trans. She’s peeved that some trans women are trying to redefine feminism in ways that seem to her to be anti-woman, resents that lesbians risk being erased by trendy all-purpose queerness and fears that as a married lesbian mother she will have her own rights swept away by anti-trans backlash. Given the Dobbs decision, all precedents are possibly imperiled, but the culprit isn’t transgender-rights activists. It’s the religious right and the Supreme Court, both of which get a pass from Bowles, as do Donald Trump and every elected Republican.”And there it is, the message loud and clear: those bad people on the Right are the problem, not us, not the crazies who have destroyed nearly every great thing about American culture, and have

Bill Clinton once said, “Democrats fall in love, and Republicans fall in line.” We had to fall in love with him, that’s for sure, because by 1992, baby, we’d kissed a lot of frogs. Falling in love with him meant overlooking his blatant, unending womanizing. We believed, or we convinced ourselves to believe, that his personal life should be private.Our gold standard had been JFK, after all. His womanizing was seen not as a character flaw but as evidence of his superiority among men. He was so handsome, so charismatic, and such a great leader, why wouldn’t Bill Clinton want to follow in his footsteps?And he did. If Hillary Clinton didn’t care, why should we? The stoic, ever-stalwart wife took her place alongside other tolerant First Ladies like Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy.The two parties have switched places. The Republicans fall in love or have with their once-in-a-generation star, Donald Trump, and it’s the Democrats who fall in line. Unfortunately for them, they’ve spent the last four years consumed with hatred over one man who threatens their power.They readied their army for war once they realized America was on the precipice of dramatic change. That would mean blunting Trump’s win in 2016 - and failing. It would mean destroying his one-term presidency - and failing. It would mean raiding Mar-a-Lago, indicting him four times, impeaching him twice, and attempting to throw him off the ballots in several states, and now, a criminal trial in New York, that will very likely fail. Even if they squeeze out a conviction, most voters aren’t going to care.For the Democrats, it’s all come full circle. They are now trying to convict a former president on nothing more than a sex scandal. The thing they most feared once upon a time is now their most powerful weapon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

As college protests sprouted like mushrooms in Joe Biden’s America, the fanaticism of the Left seemed to catch many by surprise. How could it have gotten this bad? How could they seem so crazy, these educated college students? And why isn’t Joe Biden doing anything about it?It isn’t that it’s gotten this bad. It’s been this bad for a while. It was just covered up by the mainstream media on the Left, who were invested in only one narrative: MAGA supporters are the violent ones, the dangerous ones.Well, what a difference four years makes. Now that we’ve seen protests so violent not even NBC could ignore them, Democrats are scrambling, doing damage control for what looks like a big headache for Joe Biden’s embattled re-election bid. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Joe Biden has been a failure as the leader of the United States. There has never been one moment in the past four years when he has thought of us, the American people. He has only thought of himself and how badly he does not want to lose to Donald Trump, so he stands before the press at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and he lies.He lies about January 6th. He lies that Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost, a false media narrative that should have shamed every so-called “journalist” sitting in that room, and most of all, he lies about what threatens the American people. It is not Trump. This country is facing far more serious problems, and yet no one has apparently told Joe Biden.The past couple of weeks have been an unmitigated disaster for the Biden presidency, even if the press, the obedient sycophants that they are, won't admit it. Someone thought it was a good idea to free Biden from his gilded cage and set him loose on regular folks - to let Joe be Joe.In March, the New York Times laid it out:What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything.Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Biden did not just have a major brain freeze while reading off the teleprompter, it also wasn’t hard to see that most of the “Joe being Joe” events were staged.When Biden read the instructions—that he was supposed to pause so the crowd could erupt in rehearsed chants of Four More Years—his face froze, and for a minute, he looked lost and confused. Yes, that’s the President of the United States, in case you were wondering.Biden seems increasingly like a fake president, not a real one. And that’s just fine for the people at the top. What does Howard Stern care about real life? They’ve been detached for so long, they can’t see beyond the safety of their own bubble.That’s not true for much of America, which is so desperate for real leadership that they’re willing to disregard Trump’s failings as a luxury they can’t afford. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Dear Hillary,In 1996, you wrote:“The African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” summed up for me the commonsense conclusion that, like it or not, we are living in an interdependent world where what our children hear, see, feel, and learn will affect how they grow up and who they turn out to be.”That’s still true, Hillary. But now, you are no longer protecting children. You no longer seem to care what is happening to them at the hands of the Left and the Democratic Party. The release of the Cass Report, on the heels of the WPATH Files, leaves little doubt of what amounts to medical experiments on children with irreversible, long-term damage to their bodies.Here is Helen Joyce laying out the ugly truth:But what I want to know is this — what happened to you, Hillary? Why don’t you care? Why doesn’t it motivate you and other feminists like Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Amy Klobuchar? You’ve not only scurried off into the shadows, but all of you have been complicit in it.To give you the benefit of the doubt, Hillary, maybe you are just ignorant. Maybe you’ve been so cut off from normal life that you no longer know what is happening in America. This isn’t likely to land on MSNBC any time soon. Like you, they are obsessed with only one person, Donald Trump.But what the Democrats have been doing is far worse than anything Trump could ever do. History will not be kind, Hillary. You might not realize this but all of you will be to blame when the hammer comes down. You might want to know a little more about it. I would like to help you.Imagine yourself back in the 1970s when you first graduated college. Remember that? Remember the young, famous feminist Hillary Rodham? Now imagine she lands in the modern day, and sees this video on TikTok.A mother celebrating her daughter’s first day of “T.” In case you don’t know, “T” stands for testosterone. Why is the mother crying, you ask? Is her child sick? No. Her child believes she was born in the wrong body and “T” is going to make her feel like herself, like a boy.Her mother is very into this identity as the mother of a “trans kid.” She has a platform on TikTok which shows her child injecting herself with hormones. She wrote this on the celebratory day of her child’s journey toward irreversible harm. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Six years ago, I stood a few feet away from Joe Biden at a fundraiser and was certain he was the only person who could save this country from Donald Trump in 2020.However, by the end of the election, I would leave the Democratic Party for good. I saw them as corrupt, too powerful, and dangerous to the very democracy they now claim they want to protect.Now, I wake up every morning in a panic that our last best hope of ending the monopoly of power on the Left rests on the imperfect shoulders of Donald Trump.So I guess that finally makes me a Trump supporter.It was a long, slow slide that started with simply humanizing Trump and the MAGA movement and believe me, just that alone upset my friends and family. They’re evil, they believe, because that’s what the media tells them every second of every day.If you want to know how batshit crazy they are, those Good People of the Left, educated and seemingly intelligent, look no further than Heather Cox Richardson as she attempts to explain the MAGA movement.Meanwhile, Trump humiliates all of them by showing the people who he really is, as he casually strolled into a Chick-fil-A in Georgia. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

I’ve been wanting to interview John Nolte about his sublime and brilliant book, Borrowed Time ever since I read it. Well, the day has finally arrived. We chatted for about an hour about his book, his life, how he got into writing, what gave him the idea for his book, and why he may never write another one, and of course, our favorite topic, what happened to culture on the Left.Hope you enjoy the inaugural interview for this Substack. Some useful links:My review of the book—Here is a link to the audiobook:And here is the paperback. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

There could be an Election Denier right next door. They could deliver your mail, serve you a cocktail at the airport, sit next to you on the subway, or empty your garbage. They might be a grandma, a wife, or a son. They could be anyone. They could even be me.Yes, I am an Election Denier. I am someone you’ve been told to fear, someone you probably think has been captured by extremist ideology and THE BIG LIE. You might say that also makes me an “insurrectionist” and “domestic extremist.”I would say you’ve been watching too much MSNBC. The thing is, I grew up as an Election Denier because I grew up as a Democrat, and we never met an election we didn’t deny. That is, unless we won. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

A chill went down my spine in 2020 when I realized what I’d been participating in for the four years Trump was in power. I didn’t go along with all of it. I defended Melania Trump when Twitter slut-shamed her. I defended Sarah Huckabee Sanders when the Good People of the Left mocked her makeup. But I went along with enough that, at some point, I overdosed on hate.I always thought we were the good guys and that we didn’t engage in bullying, harassment, abuse, and dehumanizing. Don’t the lawn signs count for anything? Hate has no harbor here? No human being is illegal? Practice kindness?I was the kind of person who woke up with NPR and spent the afternoon with Terry Gross and Fresh Air, then All Things Considered in the afternoon. I read the New York Times at least once a day. It made me feel smart and well-informed.I hadn’t been involved in politics much before the 2016 election. That was when I started watching MSNBC. Rachel Maddow was the North Star for the Democratic base, older unmarried women like me, the Oprah generation, who had been living our best lives for decades. All that was missing was our first female president, which we were supposed to get in 2016. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Unlike most people in the media, Frank Luntz spends a lot of time talking to regular folks. He and can see the objective reality of where we are now, yet they have difficulty explaining that to people on the Left.To most of them, they’ve been fighting a war against Trump and MAGA since 2016. It’s unthinkable that anyone in America, let alone a majority, would not feel the same way.Here is how the polls are lining up right now on Real Clear Politics:Why is Trump polling ahead? Let’s get into it.The people in power now can’t solve the problem; they ARE the problem. No one lays it out better than RFK, Jr., who has also been demonized and discredited by them for daring to run against Biden. He articulates what so many Americans have felt for a long time now. It’s 9 minutes but it’s worth a listen.In 2016, half of America sent a clear message to the people at the top. They were unhappy enough to send an outsider, a Reality star and real estate mogul, to the White House. That should have been the moment the ruling class had enough self-awareness to address the problem.Instead, they went to war on Trump and MAGA, demonizing them as racists and white supremacists, treating them like enemy combatants at best and human garbage at worst. That was the first clue that the Democrats and the Left had become completely disconnected from reality.Do people in the bubble see it that way? No, they don’t. Trust me. I used to live in the bubble. Their only problem is that Trump and MAGA even exist. If they can get rid of them, One Last Cancel, they can have their Woketopia back. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

It took us decades, but we finally found religion on the Left. The counterculture initially seemed great: a big bang of movies, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, comedy, art, and investigative journalism, all in the pursuit of free expression and objective truth.My generation was raised on atheism, with the idea that if you pursue happiness, you will be fulfilled. But it doesn’t work like that. Making happiness the goal in life ultimately leads to dissatisfaction because nothing and no one will ever be enough.After the 2000 election that the Supreme Court ultimately decided, we started building our own private paradise on the Left, one that effectively shut out half the country.However, we didn’t come together as a movement until Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton faced off in 2008. What started out as a contentious battle for the first female president vs. the first Black president would result in a powerful coalition rooted in identity politics.We had in Barack Obama not just a political leader, the first US president to build his coalition via Twitter, but a spiritual leader too. Obama became not just sacred to us but Too Black to Fail. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

In the new podcast series, Finding Matt Drudge, Chris Moody wants to know two things: why Matt Drudge dropped out of sight and why he turned on Donald Trump.If it is still really Drudge running the DrudgeReport now, and not some paid lackey to push links, then it would not be unreasonable to think he’s hanging on for one last job, to do what Joe Biden, the Lincoln Project, Liz and Dick Cheney, Mike Pence and every other Never Trumper has been trying to do for the last eight years: stop Trump for good.I got online right around the same time Drudge did. For early internet pioneers, Drudge was our hero who forged a path to success by removing the middleman. Just start a website, and people will come. I was living in a guest house in Van Nuys, California, with a baby on my hip, a 1200 baud modem, and a really good idea.I launched my site, Oscarwatch.com in 1999, two years after the DrudgeReport launched. The Academy sued me in 2006, and I had to change it to AwardsDaily.com. But that was a sign I’d found success, five years after I started. For Drudge it happened instantly and almost overnight. He broke the story of the century: Bill Clinton was having a sexual affair with his intern, Monica Lewinsky.We all wanted to be Drudge. His success told us we could follow in his footsteps and maybe get that big overnight. It didn’t quite work out that way for most of us. There was only ever going to be one Matt Drudge. But everyone who came after him bit off a little piece of the Drudge legacy.We would crash the party and upstage traditional media, which was still scrambling to keep up with the fast-moving internet. Drudge was suddenly a reliable source for news. People like me pretended to be journalists, but because we had websites that reported the news, we became reliable sources, too. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Kara Swisher has a good strategy for Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump, which she shared on CNN. Just call Trump three things: Racist, Rapist, Fascist.There was a time when that would have worked. That time has come and gone. At best, Swisher will be ruthlessly mocked online and, at worst, completely ignored. For someone who studied propaganda, she sure has become good at peddling it. Maybe it will cycle through the Facebook feeds of whatever is left of the #resistance, a relic of the old days when CNN still influenced public opinion.This is the death rattle of legacy media and probably the Democratic Party as we once knew it. Or, as Steve Bannon says every time he begins a new episode of The War Room, “This is the primal scream of a dying regime.”By now, the CIA, the FBI, and the Democrats are waking up to the reality of life without their precious blue-checks on Twitter. They can’t control the media narrative to boost Biden and sink Trump as they did in 2020. There’s no COVID. Biden has no choice but to get out there and campaign.The Biden administration has been using TikTok throughout Biden’s first term. It was their strategy to mobilize young voters. That’s why they invited the transgender influencers to the White House. Remember that?// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Dear Mr. De Niro,I trust you had a wonderful evening at the Oscars. Watching you bask in the comforting embrace of the special people was a reminder of who you really are—a movie star.By the looks of it, the Oscars are back. They have a host now and they gave their top prize to a movie people actually saw. It won a whopping 7 Oscars. There were dance numbers and jokes, beautiful people in their finery—a grand celebration to revive the lifeless body of Hollywood.I was shocked that they kept politics mostly out of it—well, until near the end when Jimmy Kimmel just had to bring in Trump—not just to mock him but to show the country which side all of you are on and to let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they are not invited to this party.Turns out, Trump really did write that:But might I say, Mr. De Niro, none of you seem able to figure out if Trump is such a criminal/fascist/dictator/rapist/racist, why he’s kicking Biden’s ass in the polls six ways from Sunday? Funny, isn’t it, Mr. De Niro? Didn’t Bill Maher ask you this same question on Real Time? You didn’t have an answer except to say that Trump is a “monster,” a “mean, nasty, and hateful person.”And that if “We want to live in a world that we want to live and enjoy living in, or live in a nightmare. Vote for Trump, and you'll get the nightmare.”Let me get this straight. You said that you would never play Trump because there is “Nothing redeemable in him.”So, Max Cady in Cape Fear, Al Capone in The Untouchables, and William Hale in Killers of the Flower Moon had redeemable traits? They were all mass murderers, Mr. De Niro, yet you not only delighted in playing those roles but also earned Oscar nominations for two of them. And I’m betting a nice fat paycheck at the end of the day.Al Capone was connected to hundreds of murders, William Hale committed a near-genocide of the Osage people, and Max Cady, well, need we be reminded?Trump is not nice to you, Mr. De Niro. That is true. He isn’t very nice to Hollywood or Jimmy Kimmel, or to the establishment. But did it ever occur to you that so many people love him because he isn’t one of you? And that your crazy ramblings about him only make his supporters love him even more?You, like Hollywood, like the Democrats, like Bill Maher, have become so disconnected from the lives of Americans that you can’t possibly understand why Trump is by far preferable. You seem to think you have the right to tell them what they should want, what they should care about, and that your own personal happiness should be a factor they consider.Have you driven through any of our cities lately? Have you driven down to the border? Have you gone to a grocery store? Have you gone into Walmart only to see everything locked up, from baby formula to batteries to deodorant? Have you driven across America to see what this country is really like?I’m guessing not. Why would you? You go from the film set to your multi-million dollar property, and you turn on MSNBC and CNN and you RAGE RAGE against the man they keep telling you is a dictator and fascist who will never leave office, take Bill Maher off the air, and then hunt you down like you’re Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Guess what I’m doing on Super Tuesday? I’m registering as a Republican to vote for Donald Trump in the primary in California. They won’t allow me to vote as an independent for President of the United States, so for the first time in my life, I will be one of the people I used to judge and hate.I also plan to vote red straight down the line. Oh, I realize this is like spitting in the Pacific Ocean in my state. Still, if other residents in California are starting to see what anyone driving through Los Angeles or San Francisco can see, there’s a small chance the dark blue state might start to purple.I know I’m not the only American sick of the whining, the caterwauling, the temper tantrums because the ruling class isn’t getting what they want. WAAAAA the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on presidential immunity. WAAAAA Trump said something in one of his speeches. WAAAAA the New York Times wrote a negative column on Joe Biden.The only thing they haven’t done is prove to the American people that they’re the better option than the guy who promises to close the border, clean up the streets, crack down on crime, and get our economy back on track in a way Americans can feel, not just because Paul Krugman delivers yet another sanctimonious op-ed of Biden talking points.There are plenty of candidates for the most flattering magic mirror/propagandist for the Biden administration - Rachel Maddow, Stephen Colbert, Pod Save America, Lawrence O’Donnell but really, it’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski who has now decided to yet again beclown themselves by platforming a stupid book that looks a lot more like Mein Kampf than any revelation about Trump supporters. All so they can keep eating dinner with Joe and Jill. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.sashastone.comIt took me some time to consider an “extra” for paid subscribers, and I came up with a free-form podcast, not written as an essay but just an improvisational ramble. It’s meant to be casual so, of course, it is not perfect. I hope to get better over time. The first 20 minutes will be a free preview, and the rest will be behind the paywall. I hope you …

Fear is trickling down the walls at the White House like blood from a crime scene. They try to wipe it away with a Lawrence O’Donnell monologue here, a Stephen Colbert freak out there.Any other president at any other time in American history would be sweating. But Joe Biden isn’t.It reminds me of this scene from the movie Quiz Show where the investigator, played by Rob Morrow, corners the President of NBC, played by Allan Rich, in an elevator. We have finally got you, Morrow says. Oh yeah? Rich says. Then why are you the one that’s sweating?And so it goes with the Biden administration.But there is no hiding it. Nate Silver is worried. The New York Times is worried. Politico is worried. Rolling Stone is worried. It’s so bad that they’ve given up towing the party line and are actually speaking out for the first time since Biden took office. They’re desperate for Biden to step aside and give the job to someone, anyone who will stop Trump./// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Donald Trump isn’t Alexei Navalny. He wasn’t poisoned or beaten or tortured, then left to die in a Siberian gulag. We aren’t under the control of a dictator like Putin. But there is no getting around the ugly truth that none of this would happen if Biden weren’t trailing Trump in the polls.News of Navalny’s death sent shockwaves through both sides of the political aisle, as each tried to grapple with the many conflicts we’re now facing, the war in Ukraine and the war on Donald Trump, but it’s the Democrats whose actions of late were put into the spotlight.Only one political party is actively trying to jail its primary political opponent, has thrown political protesters in solitary confinement, and violated the First Amendment by censoring speech on social media.How would they shapeshift their way out of this problem? It’s easy. They don’t even respect the people enough to be honest with them. Instead, they rationalize it, “Trump committed actual crimes,” they said. “Trump’s the one who chanted Lock Her Up,” they insist, as if chanting is the same as doing.Similarly, most Russians believe Navalny committed “actual crimes” because that’s the power of taking complete control of the media narrative. Putin charged him as an extremist and with “fraud,” just as our government has done to Trump. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

A source tells Free Thinking what’s really going on.What old man in the White House? I didn’t see any old man in the White House. The President, you mean? Oh, that’s just Joe Biden. He’s fine. With age comes wisdom.Joe did nothing wrong, and even if he did, it was decided he could not stand trial. Hur is not a neurologist. He doesn’t know what’s going on in Joe’s brain. It was a stressful day. The attacks on October 7th were distracting. You can’t expect the President of the United States to handle that kind of pressure.Look at him now. He’s fine. He’s better than fine. He’s the Most Qualified Person to Serve.So what if he didn’t remember when he was Vice President. Who remembers stuff like that? He’s been in government since the 1970s. How is he to know what position he served and when. It’s confusing.Here he is eating fried chicken with Black people. Fried chicken. If Trump tried that the media would turn it into a National Security Crisis.This video alone has 26K views. People are ENGAGED. Do you think Trump’s videos get that many views? No decent person could ever support Trump. That’s why we offer them Joe. Joe. Nothing but Joe. Oh, and Kamala too.And anyway, we all know “Dark Brandon” is Obama, and Biden is basically serving his third term. I mean, why did we get rid of term limits anyway? Obama hasn’t ever left. He’s constantly influencing American culture - with his $30 million Netflix deal and his omnipresence on Twitter. If you have an entire country treating you like an actual God, and you have that big of an ego, how many people do you think would walk away from that? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

I don’t know what’s going to happen. All I can say is this: The man we saw speaking from the White House tonight, on February 8—that man will not be reelected president. Maybe Biden can become a new man. Maybe he’s had an off week. Maybe they can adjust his meds. Maybe. But probably not. Right? Probably not. —John Podhoretz, CommentaryThey’ve been lying about Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities since at least 2020. COVID allowed them to hide both Biden and Harris far from the prying eyes of the press and the public while the system won the election for them. They just needed to exist as more of an idea rather than a reality. Voters would choose them as the more moderate option. And, more importantly, take Trump out of power.But I’d stood a few feet away from Joe Biden in May of 2019. The man I saw give a speech that day and mingle in the crowd was not the man who emerged more than a year later to make minimal appearances during campaign season. He’d gotten through the primaries okay. He was old but hanging on.Heading into the election, however, it was clear something was not quite right. Now, he looked lost, with eyes that appeared vacant and unless someone was guiding him, he wandered around in a dream state.I told my friends I was worried that Biden was in the early stages of dementia, like my dad, who was consumed by it in 2018. They snapped back that Trump was a fascist, and it didn’t matter how incapacitated Biden was. They’d still vote for him.What did they know, and when did they know it?Besides ushering in a fanatical cult, the first real sign of trouble was the exit from Afghanistan in August of 2021. Word had it Biden had ignored his top brass and was arrogantly aiming for a 9/11 photo op.But with bodies falling off airplanes, 13 American soldiers dead, there was no way even the most skilled operators in the media could spin a visibly botched job. Even if it was barely a news story, the public took notice, and no doubt, world leaders did too.That “x” is Afghanistan. His numbers have never recovered.[source: Real Clear Politics] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“So you’re voting for Du-taxus?” a woman said to me in 1988. I was a lowly receptionist at a gym called “Women Only,” which was probably later sued out of business. I had to answer the phone with, “We have the way, Women Only, this is Sasha, may I help you?”I was undoubtedly blurting out this mouthful when the client noticed my Dukakis pin, because why wouldn’t she? I told her yes, I was, though I wasn’t “political” back then, and I had no idea why I was voting for Dukakis. He was a Democrat. Being a Democrat wasn’t something I chose. It was something I was. Some guy I was dating probably handed me the pin and told me to wear it, so I complied.Understandably annoyed, the woman said, “Figures. You probably never even went to college.” I remember this story all of these years later because it’s still surprising to me that a Republican would insult a Democrat’s lack of education. But it tells you everything you need to know about who had the power back then and who didn’t.After that, I was determined to cobble together my many city college credits and attend UCLA. I would graduate as a transfer student at the age of 29. I was older than everyone else, but I was the first person in my family to graduate. Now, I was prepared for any sudden encounter with an elitist Republican. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Joanna Parker paces in her office. The media narrative successfully sank the Republicans and their efforts to steal some of the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce energy. Amateurs.After all this time, they still haven’t learned that WE control everything. Making them look like fools, waking up a whole generation to how stupid the Republicans are, was worth all of the trouble it took to hire well-paid and well-placed social media actors to whip them up into a frenzy.The Pentagon? Please. Like they care about Taylor Swift’s fan base. She played to packed stadiums all over the world with adoring fans chanting her lyrics, every single word to every single song, now that is power.She was already on our side. We just needed a viral moment to wake up her fans so they would learn early who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Joanna thought they mostly did a good job. The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone and even CNN did their part in mocking the Republicans over the whole episode.James Carville never passes up the chance to call Trump supporters stupid. It’s practically his full-time job by now. And why shouldn’t he? What else has he got to do? We won the media narrative and maintained the moral high ground. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

This election year promises to be one long “October Surprise” as the newly weaponized legal system, and Department of Justice go to unprecedented and extraordinary lengths not to stop Trump but to damage him enough that one of the least popular presidents in history can be once again dragged over the finish line in November.It’s so blatantly corrupt it’s hard to believe it’s actually happening. Whether you like Trump as a person or plan to vote for him or not, there should be no question that the damage done to this country and its institutions in the effort to bring down Trump has been far more destructive, divisive, and harmful than a second Trump term ever could ever be.Some have suggested that the Regime might take the inevitable last step to remove Trump from public life permanently. I don’t think they’ll go that far. Trump is worth more alive than dead.The Democrats have more power now than they’ve had since before the Civil War. Since then, they haven’t had the opportunity to build the kind of empire they wanted. Thanks to the threat of Trump and the rise of extreme wealth on the Left, that dream is now a reality. They control almost everything. Almost./ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

I am not supposed to be rooting for Trump and MAGA. I’m supposed to be one of the million and change who huddles on my couch in terror, watching MSNBC as the results from Iowa trickle in. I’m supposed to somberly nod when Rachel Maddow tells her viewers they won’t show Trump’s speech.Shut down the speech! I am supposed to say, as if any of this is normal. I will not watch it. I will not listen for myself and think for myself and judge for myself. I will instead fill my head with what Lawrence O’Donnell, Joy Reid, and the Queen of media, the Multi-Million Dollar Baby, Maddow herself tells me!“Yes, turn it off,” Bette Midler says. “Yes please!” moans Barbra Streisand. “It’s the right thing to do,” says Rob Reiner, “to save democracy.”“This is a difficult decision,” Maddow told her viewers to justify censoring Trump’s speech. Somewhere deep inside, this must humiliate the journalist she once was. On some level, she knows this is as bad as what Vladimir Putin does in Russia to protect his people from bad news.Saving Democracy includes censorship, in case you didn’t know, along with throwing your political opponents in jail and removing them from the ballot, not to mention persecuting political protesters for thought crimes and using the legacy media as your own personal propaganda delivery device. Are we sure this isn’t Putin’s Russia?Is this really where we’ve arrived as a country, as a people, as the once-mighty Left? Yes, there is no point in pretending otherwise.We’ve watched the whole game play out this past week as they twisted what Trump said — yet again — about “poisoning the blood of our nation.” They decide what his words mean; replacing “illegal immigrants” with “immigrants” makes it racist. So here is yet more proof of the person you need to fear.Oh, the lies they tell. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

On January 6th, Trump will give a rally in Iowa. He’ll do what he’s done for seven years as a hunted man - reassure his supporters that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.Joe Biden, the President of the United States, will also give a speech that day and do what he has been doing since taking office: offer the people nothing but fear itself.Biden’s message? Be afraid. Be very, very afraid of your fellow citizens. The guy who works at the gas station, the waitress, the bus driver, the construction worker, the teacher, the pilot — all of them, and any of them could be a Trump supporter. Fear them, shun them, and help us remove them from our country. You are with us, or you are against us.They see their fight against Trump as something along the lines of the Civil War, World War II, and 9/11 all rolled into one. It would be funny if it wasn’t so terrifyingly real.It’s no wonder his approval ratings are in the toilet and that Trump is polling ahead, even after everything they’ve thrown at him. The Democrats have lost touch with reality and no longer know the country they lead.None of this would be happening, of course, if we had a legacy media that served any purpose other than to be what Devin Nunes called part of a “state-owned leftist enterprise” that also controls “everything—universities, nonprofits, bureaucracies, and the Beltway corridor.”Since Trump was elected, the stories in the mainstream press have been nothing but an advent calendar of lies.// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“Are you a Trump supporter now?” is the question my friends, acquaintances, and colleagues sometimes ask me. I know the answer to that question could end our relationship. So do they. Most of the time, they just don’t ask. They quietly assume that I might be, but what they don’t know can’t hurt them.Since 2016, being labeled “Trump supporter,” has given most people the green light to cut ties, publicly humiliate, attack, and dehumanize at will. What you will rarely see on the Left is empathy. What has become all too common is unfiltered, bottomless hatred. In too many cases, physical violence, and destructive protests, all justified and encouraged by the ruling class.2020 was the breaking point for me. I could no longer go along with it, especially after getting to know Trump supporters, and watching enough rallies to know the truth about who Trump really is. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Rob Reiner was jolted awake. Just minutes ago, he could have sworn he was holding his wife and sleeping soundly. Now, he could barely move.What was wrong with his feet?“Michele!” Reiner calls out for his wife. Silence. He glances around the room he is somehow trapped in. A small bed. Trinkets on shelves. A snowstorm outside. Where is he?Suddenly, the door bursts open, and none other than Annie Wilkes from Misery greets him, with her pig oinking behind her.Reiner stares in disbelief. He was now trapped inside one of his own movies.“Well, I see the patient is awake!” says Annie. “How are we feeling?”“Get me out of here. I directed this movie. I know what happens!”“Oh, don’t be such a fussy widget,” says Annie. “We’re just getting to know each other! I’m your number-one fan! I’ve seen every one of your movies like 100 times.”Reiner shifts uncomfortably in his bed. “What do you want with me?”“I’m the Ghost of Things to Come! Or the Ghost of Christmas future, I get confused.”“What’s wrong with my legs?”“It’s called hobbling,” she says.“Don’t worry, it won’t last long. Just long enough for me to explain how I happened to find myself in Washington DC on January 6th, 2021.”“No, come on, Annie Wilkes, is MAGA?”“Well, that’s the funny thing. I didn’t used to be. You see, I used to be Hillary Clinton’s number one fan too, bet you could never guess that. And Joe Biden’s. But the Summer of 2020 changed me. Should I hit your feet again just for fun?”“NOOOO,” Reiner screams. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

[Part One - Here]Rob Reiner wanted to sleep. But his thoughts swirled around in his brain like a cage full of butterflies. Make it stop, make it stop.Haunted by Archie Bunker just hours ago, something about how January 6th was like the JFK assassination made Reiner’s Christmas Eve a nightmare. Maybe it all finally got to him, all those months of research looking into the history of the CIA, rogue agents, false flag operations, gaining public support for a cause, or a war, a president who was at odds with the war machine.James Carville accused him of being a crazy conspiracy theorist, like people who thought January 6th was an inside job. He wasn’t one of those guys. He followed the facts. Facts our government covered up. Most Americans would be shocked to learn about the psychological warfare, meddling in elections in foreign countries, and, of course, the CIA assassinations of world leaders.The last episode of his podcast, Who Killed JFK, discussed just that:Back when Kennedy was shot, the public had no idea that there were secret operations planned to gain public support through things like plane crashes that killed American citizens. No wonder so many tin foil hat types thought 9/11 was one of those to get us into a war with Iraq.But January 6th wasn’t anything like that. It was just proof of what we’ve all been saying about Trump and MAGA for years. This is what we warned against. A coup, an armed insurrection of violent terrorists, white supremacists attempting to overthrow the government and overturn the results of the election.But something wasn’t coming together. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Rob Reiner holds his phone in front of his face, and doom-scrolls Twitter. One after the other, all about the coming apocalypse, Donald Trump's potential win.The monster. The fascist. The BEAST is outpolling Uncle Joe - how is this happening? He’s indicted for felonies, a twice impeached crook, conman, and dictator. He waged an armed insurrection to attack the Capitol to overturn the election; he’s worse than Hitler, worse than Mussolini. Who are these people that support him? Why do we have to share a country with them?Reiner was getting triggered by those he trusted and followed on Twitter, like the Lincoln Project, Liz Cheney, Marc Elias, Occupy Democrats. And Call to Activism:They ARE insane, Reiner thought, those who voted for Trump. We still don’t know what to do with them, or where to put them. Hillary is right. A deprogramming facility to help ease them out of their love for that monster is the only way we can have a Democracy.You know who protects all of us, he thought. Prosecutors like Jack Smith and attorney generals like Merrick Garland. Our great president. Sure, he’s old, but so what? He does what a president is supposed to do, like spend his whole life in government. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

[Profanity warning…..]There is a scene in David Fincher’s The Social Network where Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) has Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) set up a meeting to have the most sought-after genius in tech, deliver an important message: “Sean Parker says f*ck you.”That’s what you do when you have the money Mark Zuckerberg was about to have, or if you’re the richest man in the world, like Elon Musk.Our government, in complete alignment with the most powerful entities in the country and maybe the world, has been trying to destroy Elon Musk since he bought Twitter and turned it into X. Every decision he makes is proof, they insist, that the app is about to collapse and Musk will be humiliated, ruined, and destroyed.You might recognize the pattern. They’ve done the same thing, for seven years, to Trump. They’ve had no problem weaponizing the DOJ, raiding Mar-a-Lago, and indicting him on phony placeholder charges as the media runs with the lie that it’s for “inciting an insurrection.” They’ve even tried to remove his name from the ballot in several states for something he’s not even charged with. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

You wouldn’t know me if you met me in May of 2019, as I drove to a luncheon for Joe Biden sponsored by a big donor at one of the mansions in a wealthy pocket of Los Angeles. I’d been hand-picked as an influencer after rising in the ranks of Team Hillary on social media. I’d thrown myself into politics in 2015, panicking about climate change. “We have to win,” I thought.By the end of 2020, just one year later, I’d have left the Democratic Party for good, been yelled at by Neera Tanden on Twitter, and lost a good many of my friends and very nearly everything else, and now, by 2023, all I can think is that the Democrats have to lose. They have to be voted out.I’ve been trying to tell my story in a way that matters for three years. I have failed to convince or persuade anyone from my side. They still treat me like someone who has been radicalized online or is somehow mentally incapacitated. They still see Trump as an existential threat to “democracy” and the grassroots movement known as MAGA as domestic extremists, white supremacists and a threat to their way of life. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Everything you’ve heard is true. The Republicans are losing on abortion. They are not motivated to turn out the same way the Democrats are unless Trump is on the ballot, and even then, the GOP is losing at a time when they should be blowing the Democrats out of power for a generation.The war is over, and the GOP lost, at least for now. Just as they are on the right side of history with “gender-affirming care,” there is a chance that their desire to preserve life now might be well-regarded in 50 years or so, as fertility, sperm count, and population decline. Suddenly, future generations might think about how casually mothers aborted the pregnancies that are in such short supply.Maybe getting pregnant will be difficult, or carrying a baby to term, or male sperm will be ineffective, and everyone will have to turn to labs. Who knows where all of this is going, but convincing young women not to have babies when they are in their prime, fertility-wise, might backfire someday. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Ron DeSantis has every quality a presidential candidate needs - good looks, youth, a nice family, and a strong governance track record in Florida. What he doesn’t have, however, is more charisma than his chief rival, Donald Trump.To be fair, not many candidates, or people for that matter, have as much charisma as Trump does. It’s a once-in-a-generation thing that defies explanation. It’s just there. Even those who hate him can’t stop watching him. It’s not his looks, particularly, or his speeches — it’s the X-factor you can’t buy or attain. You have to be born with it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Our country, at the hands of the Left, is falling apart. There is no center. It is as though termites have eaten away the foundation as we allowed so many activists to dismantle their “systems of oppression,” otherwise known as our heroes, our history, our movies, our achievements, our books, our poetry, our art. If America built it, it is corrupt, say the Woketopians.We’ve seen them edging ever so close to violence as a means to an end. We’ve ignored the warning signs because it was so much easier to demonize and dehumanize Trump and MAGA, and now, I fear, we’re heading into the danger zone.We’ve been here before. Right around the time of the Manson murders in 1969, the silent majority was waking up to what the Left had become, something not unlike today’s Left.In March of 1970, as the Manson trials were getting underway, the New York Times wrote an expose of the radical Left’s Weather Underground:The outbreak of explosions at a variety of establishment targets— corporate offices, police stations, draft and induction centers and the like—underscores a new mood among frustrated radicals. It appears to have been intensified by the outcome of the trial of the Chicago Seven as well as the various pending Black Panther trials.One letter by the Weather Underground reads as follows:“To work for the industries of death is to murder. To know the torments Amerika inflicts on the Third World, but not to sympathize and identify, is to deny our own humanity. It is to deny our right to love—and not to love is to die. We refuse. In death‐directed Amerika there is only one way to a life of love and freedom: to attack and destroy the forces of death and exploitation and to build a just society—revolution.”Charles Manson parroted these talking points to brainwash his cult. His words are indistinguishable from theirs, though noticeably less articulate. When Manson had his followers scrawl the words “death to pigs” in the blood of their victims, it was meant to throw law enforcement off track and blame Black radicals.As horrific as that sounds, we’re seeing echoes of that kind of mindset in today’s young, whipped up into a frenzy they can’t quite control. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

A tweet about the Holocaust? Sorry, Gina Carano, you’re finished with Disney. A tweet about how violent protests lose elections got you fired? Sorry, David Shor, those are the consequences of your actions. You have to be held accountable.It’s not “cancel culture,” they insisted. It’s “consequence culture.” Intent doesn’t matter. Only impact does. Not even Thomas Jefferson was safe from the “Eye of Sauron” that sought to root out the thought criminals wherever they may have been hiding.If you wrote a headline that said “Buildings Matter Too” and lost your job? Too bad, your words caused harm. Said the “N-word” as clarification on a field trip, and your entire legacy at the New York Times goes up in smoke? Those are necessary consequences for your actions.Liked the wrong tweet, voted for the wrong candidate, praised the wrong movie, had the wrong opinion about Black Lives Matter, had a bad date, wore the wrong Halloween costume, and that was it. If you defended someone who wore “blackface” on Halloween once, you are a convicted racist, and you must apologize profusely or lose your job, sometimes both.Who gets to stay and who has to go has been the sick little game we’ve all been playing, like we’re trapped in an episode of the Twilight Zone and are one wrong opinion away from being wished into the cornfield. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

“And so shines a good deed in a weary world,” that’s the line that ran through my head as I finished John Nolte’s first novel, Borrowed Time. The truth is that I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to leave that imaginative world and have to face the reality of ours.I had already started it over just before the last few chapters to stave off the inevitable. Was it the book’s protagonist I liked so much? A man blessed (or cursed) with immortality who falls in love for the first time in thousands of years with someone who does get old and die, like the rest of us?Or was it something else: A distant call from the past, back to the days when stories were meant for everyone when we would all share the plight of characters so real we could almost reach out and touch them?I read, or listen to, dozens — hundreds — of audiobooks. It’s how I pass the time on long road trips, enduring agonizingly boring chores I can’t bear to face, or when I need to turn my mind off from the day's news. I read almost exclusively mysteries, thrillers, pulpy stuff, with the occasional non-fiction book thrown in here or there about the Salem Witch Trials or Lizzie Borden.I usually don’t touch literary fiction anymore. I can’t bear to. I know what to expect because I know that world all too well by now. There will be a “lesson” in there, one I can already see coming from a mile away. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

Once upon a time, there was a Paper of Record. They proudly claimed that moniker because they valued journalism. They valued getting the facts before broadcasting the headline. For decades, they built the most trusted newspaper in the land. And that newspaper was called the New York Times.Then came the internet. A gaggle of hoodie-wearing flip-flop dudebros moving fast and breaking things nearly put the Times and other outlets out of business. Now, anyone could have a website and report the news they wanted, like Matt Drudge, whose news shaped opinion rather than informed the public.The Times rallied and evolved, becoming the most-read newspaper online, where they have remained since the turn of the millennium. But clickbait changed the way news was delivered. Now, the headlines had to bring eyeballs to websites. The more outrageous the headline, the more likely the clicks, and the more ad revenue from Google and other traffic-based ad servers. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe