Eliana Johnson critiques legacy media's Democratic bias and "incestuous" DC ecosystem, highlighting how outlets like the Washington Free Beacon exposed Yale Law School's misconduct and Harvard President Claudine Gay's plagiarism while mainstream press remained silent. She argues that anti-Zionism on campuses functions as modern anti-Semitism, a political issue independent of election cycles, and notes how Trump leveraged bias accusations to fracture audiences. Ultimately, Johnson asserts that conservative journalism must compete in hard news rather than opinion to challenge the ideological capture of elite universities and legacy institutions. [Automatically generated summary]
There's a tremendous amount of groupthink in mainstream media newsrooms.
And one of my takeaways from covering the White House at a mainstream organization was that they're really motivated to cover the president or lawmakers.
When it's a Republican, they don't quite feel the same motivation when it's a Democrat because largely they're sympathetic to these people when they're Democrats in a way that they don't feel when the president's a Republican, particularly when it's President Trump.
Where do you think the future of media and journalism goes?
Does social media kill off a lot of the legacy news publications and give rise to more of some of the independent outlets where people are?
I think we're seeing like a much more fractured media environment where, you know, somebody like you, Katie, can say, I'm going to start up a podcast and give people an offering and where people can really curate media according to their taste.
You know, as a conservative, this is what drives us crazy is that at the beacon we say we're conservative, we love freedom.
Our beef is that at the New York Times, they're pretending they're down the middle.
We make fun of ourselves, we make fun of other journalists because we're not doing brain surgery.
Hi everyone.
Welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller Podcast.
We're so excited to be in Washington, D.C. today, joined by Eliana Johnson of the Washington Free Beacon.
It's a great question.
Thanks for having me.
So tell the audience a bit about yourself.
How long have you been at the Free Beacon and how did you get to be editor-in-chief of what I'm going to consider a major news publication?
Thank you.
That's generous of you.
And so I have been in journalism for about the past 20 years, maybe 15 years.
And I've been at the Beacon for six years.
Prior to that, I covered the White House at Politico for a few years.
But before that, I really grew up in conservative journalism, both in television and in print.
I worked at Fox News as a writer for Sean Hannity and then went into print where I did reporting at National Review.
I started out in New York and moved down to DC covering the 2016 election from here.
And from there, I ended up at Politico.
Spent some time in the mainstream and as a political analyst at CNN.
And Politico is actually in the same building as the Washington Free Beacon.
I'd known those guys forever and would often ride the elevator up to the beacon and talk to them.
And so when my predecessor, Matt Contanetti, who is now a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, was moving on, we started talking about kind of what the possibilities might be.
And I just switched offices within the building from Politico to the Beacon.
So working at a legacy news publication, what were some of the incentives there for what gets covered versus what doesn't?
I was there during the first Trump administration and what I found at Politico and Politico is a particular type of publication was that, and I should say I had a wonderful experience there, learned a lot.
It's a privilege to cover a president where you travel on Air Force One with these people.
You are a front row witness to history.
That being said, there's a tremendous amount of groupthink in mainstream media newsrooms.
And one of my takeaways from covering the White House at a mainstream organization was that there's a lot of, you know, the White House Press Corps travels as a PAC.
You travel on these foreign trips together, you're in the White House briefing room together, and people talk alike, think alike, they're covering the same stories.
And while these people should be fierce competitors, and they are for micro scoops, people aren't really holding each other accountable when they make mistakes.
And there really is a tendency toward groupthink.
And all of the incentives sort of push in the same direction for book contracts and television contracts.
And in the first Trump administration, obviously there was like, as there should be, there should be hard negative coverage of a president, but we don't see that as much when it's of Democrats.
And I use this like Jewish term where reporters, I think, feel it in their kishkas.
Like they're really motivated to cover the president or lawmakers when it's a Republican, but they don't quite feel the same motivation when it's a Democrat because largely they're sympathetic to these people when they're Democrats in a way that they don't feel when the president's a Republican, particularly when it's President Trump who's made a big political issue of taking on the press, the bias in the press, and of attacking individual reporters because there's nothing more that conservatives love than hearing people talk about media bias.
I think he recognized that and has used it to his advantage.
Where do you think the future of media and journalism goes?
Does social media kill off a lot of the legacy news publications and give rise to more of some of the independent outlets where people are?
Do you think that they're sick and tired of that same leftist group think as you kind of alluded to?
I think we're seeing like a much more fractured media environment where, you know, somebody like you, Katie, can say, I'm going to start up a podcast and give people an offering and where people can really curate media according to their taste.
And what the Beacon has really strived to do is to say that I think we've recognized that on the right in conservative media, it's been over-indexed towards opinion.
So conservative media has had enormous success, like Fox News has been enormously successful, and they're pretty much indexed towards opinion.
Their prime time is filled with opinion programming.
Conservatives have been hugely successful in talk radio.
And now they're quite successful in podcasting and elsewhere.
Where conservatives have not been as successful is competing with the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal.
I would have said the Washington Post, but they seem to be self-defeating.
Yes, self-defeating in the realm of hard news.
And we believe that reporting and hard news moves the needle, that it matters.
And so what we're trying to do at the Beacon is to actually train right-of-center, conservative, right-wing young people in the skills, traditions, and the ways of reporting, how to do it, how to write a story, how to talk to sources, how to cultivate sources, and to report on stories that simply aren't being reported by the mainstream media.
So the media landscape is changing, but we're actually at the Beacon doing something quite traditional that we think is important and impactful.
And we are still seeing it move the needle.
For everybody else, I think it's like, you know, people are creating their own buffets of there's so many options out there that you can put together something that is suited for your particular tastes and interests.
You can get your sports podcast here and your cooking app there.
And you don't have to tune in to the CBS evening news at 7 p.m.
Are you finding that there's less young people who want to be in conservative journalism now?
Or should I just say what used to be mainstream journalism, this right down the middle sense of journalism, and now they're all kind of left-leaning since the first Trump administration has really, I think, turned the tide of journalism?
I actually, on the right, I don't think there's been a turning of the tide.
I think there's a more systematic problem.
And I compare our sort of the issues we face to the success on the right of the Federalist Society, where I think that there were institutions on the right built to cultivate conservative lawyers.
And now we see a flourishing all the way up to the Supreme Court of conservative lawyers that started in law schools and that's gone through law school into law firms that's recruited and cultivated talent and shown people that you can have a thriving and successful career in law as a conservative.
What I don't think that the right has done as well is to recruit, cultivate, and retain people and show them, come be a reporter.
You can have a thriving long career on the right as a reporter.
And that's partly because the institutions don't really exist.
Sure, there's the Washington Free Beacon.
We've got 25 or 30 people, but there aren't that many other institutions that are devoted to reporting.
I mentioned a lot of other institutions, like tons of people want to go work at Fox News that are devoted to opinionating.
And so we see, and I should mention the great success of the Daily Wire, which is in entertainment and also opinion and is building out reporting.
But there are just fewer institutions, I think, devoted to competing against the major cultural institutions of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal when it comes to hard news reporting.
What's your case for why more conservative outlets should compete in breaking news and investigative work and not just, as you mentioned, sticking in this like opinion, you know, opinion space?
I think the world we live in, everything we're talking about, whether it's podcasts or television or, you know, anything else, is a war of information.
And the thing that really moves the needle is new information.
And time and again, be it in political elections or day to day, like it is news stories that are driving the day.
And what actually motivated me to go from Fox News where I was working for Sean Hannity and writing scripts, which was, I had a blast doing that.
And the reach of Fox, you know, it's a privilege to work at a place that has such an enormous platform, was actually that when I was writing scripts, I saw like, you know, it's actually print news and like news stories that I'm cultivate, that I'm pulling every day.
And it'd be a lot of fun to actually be breaking those and writing those and impacting what gets on these big opinion shows.
And that's my case.
Like these news stories are impactful.
And there are politicians, you know, governors, potential presidential candidates who simply aren't being scrutinized because the prevailing political opinions of the vast majority of reporters are, you know, all flow in one direction.
So the scrutiny that President Trump gets and that he should get, he's the president of the United States, is simply not the same as what the previous president got.
Like we didn't hear a lot of people asking questions about his senility because the prevailing political opinion of the White House Press Corps was one way.
We see governors, the Free Beacon has just done a series of stories on Governor Wesmore, the governor of Maryland.
You know, where was the Washington Post on these stories?
Scrutinizing his public statements.
You know, it is because the political opinion are, you know, they are one way.
And these newsrooms could use political diversity or we could use more outlets like the Beacon.
It's important.
How do you balance the Free Beacon's ideological perspective with your commitment to accuracy and sourcing?
And how do you uphold standards while still having that center-right perspective where, for example, if I read the Washington Post, I don't take very seriously what they're saying because I know that their sourcing is such a way.
It's a great question.
And I think that we demonstrate every day at the Beacon that having a point of view does not mean sacrificing accuracy ever.
If we make a mistake, we're going to go out and tell you we make a mistake.
But our reporting is thorough and scrupulously accurate.
And the difference between the Free Beacon and the New York Times, and I say this a lot, and of course, you know, as a conservative, this is what drives us crazy, is that at the beacon, we say, we're conservative, we love freedom, you know, we don't like the mullahs in Iran, whatever it may be.
We're open about our ideological priors, but our reporting is scrupulously accurate.
Our beef is that at the New York Times, they're pretending they're down the middle.
Like, we're not doing that at the beacon.
We're totally open about it, but you're going to get accurate information, accurate reporting, and also a dose of fun and a sense of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously.
We're not on Twitter, you know, like the rest of reporters calling on Jeff Bezos to save democracy and lose $100 million a year, demand that he lose $100 million a year on the Washington Post and, oh my gosh, it's the end of the world if he, you know, fires some people.
Like we make fun of ourselves.
We make fun of other journalists because like this isn't, we're not doing brain surgery.
Then how does your bias contribute to your reporting?
If you're open and honest about being a biased news source, then how does that bleed into the reporting?
I wouldn't say a biased news source.
I would say we have ideological priors that inform our reporting, our sense of which targets are important in the same way that the New York Times and the Washington Post and all these other people do, but they're hiding it from you.
They are pretending otherwise.
And for us, because they are the way they are, because they're going to cover Republicans, you know, at an 11 and Democrats at a 4, that leaves a tremendous amount of white space for the Free Beacon of politicians that aren't being scrutinized that we go out and then cover.
So, you know, that's how it informs.
And let me give you an example.
In 2020, 2021, I came to the Beacon in 2019.
We noticed, and you can go back and search.
At one point, I don't have any notes with me today, but I had a list of headlines about Harvard that the New York Times had written at this time in the Wall Street Journal.
It was like, Harvard endowment soars to new heights.
Harvard professor wins Nobel Prize.
You couldn't find a negative story about Harvard or Yale or Princeton.
And we started hearing murmurings of things happening on these Ivy League campus.
And we thought, okay, here's an example of a white space.
These elite institutions are not being scrutinized by the major reporterial organizations, newspapers in our country.
We had a story in 2021, came to be dubbed Trap Housegate, but we actually had a tape of DEI officials at Yale Law School calling in a student who happened to be Native American, but also a member of the Federalist Society.
We had them on tape berating and bullying this student.
Scrutinizing Elite Institutions00:09:43
Turned into an enormous scandal at Yale Law School that bled into several other scandals and shed light on what the DEI regimes on these elite campuses were actually like.
That later led into our reporting on Harvard University President Claudine Gay's plagiarism.
And we were one of the first outlets to see and report, nobody ever challenged one of the facts, that something was amiss on these elite college campuses.
Culturally, politically, they were not being scrutinized.
And not only that, they didn't understand how to respond to scrutiny because you know what?
The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, none of them had ever pressed these leaders about anything.
What is the story or things you're covering that you're most proud of being in editorial control of a paper?
In my tenure at the Beacon over the past six years, it would certainly be our coverage of higher education.
I think we really exposed the rot.
And again, this preceded the second Trump administration, which has decided to focus on this, but really exposed the intellectual and ideological rot on these university campuses, along with some of our major political stories.
And I would point people right now as an example to the reporting that we're doing on Governor Wesmore of Maryland, blowing up some of the inflated claims he's made about his biography, just as a representation of the type of reporting that the Free Beacon does and the places that we go that other mainstream media outlets simply do not tread.
Do you think universities have become this microcosm for the larger political battle we're seeing throughout the country?
And did they lead the way kind of in what you're saying with DEI, wokeness, gender?
It's a great point.
And I think what we heard from the left was there was an acknowledgement for many years like, yeah, things on campus might be a little crazy, but like it's kids.
It's kids.
And then in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd, we saw a lot of that explode, not only onto the streets of our country, but into the corporate world.
And so much of what happened in corporate America led a lot of people to acknowledge that what happens on college campuses doesn't stay on college campuses.
In fact, many of the elite institutions in our country are a leading indicator of what's going to happen elsewhere, both at less elite institutions, at state schools and elsewhere, but also what's going to happen in your workplaces and around the country.
And I think it's, you know, it should have been a warning sign for Democrats.
You know, what they decided to say, hey, it's just some crazy kids and we're not going to speak up about what the far left is doing.
And we saw Kamala Harris do this in 2024 and be skittish about condemning much of what was happening, both on campuses and in the party's own left flank.
And then voters took a look at it and thought, like, that's weird.
And so I do think like that's the case for covering, because I've had a lot of people ask me, like, who cares what happens at Harvard?
That's the case for covering scrupulously like what's happening at these places and for asking real questions of university leaders.
Why do you think legacy media outlets shied away so much from covering these universities?
For a lot of reasons.
I think, number one, they share ideological sympathies with these people.
They're all on the left.
Number two, they're friendly with many of these people.
These are their alma mater.
And while, you know, I'm a Yale graduate, so you could say like Yale's my alma mater.
I look in horror at what's happening on the campus.
I think there are, you know, plenty of other grads who don't feel that way.
They have a lot of, you know, I have affection for the school and I'm very grateful for the education that I got, but I feel a lot more desire for accountability there.
But I will say the mainstream media followed our coverage on much of this.
And I think that's because there were a lot of adults in these newsrooms who saw kids coming out of these schools and coming into their newsrooms and bullying James Bennett out of the New York Times and throwing a hysterical fit or saying, you know, Tom Cotton, the publication of Tom Cotton's op-ed saying calling the troops endangered their lives.
And I think there were people at the times, not an insignificant amount, who said, this is crazy.
These kids are crazy.
What they're learning on campuses is crazy.
And there was a contingent of people who began to say, like, we've got to cover this stuff.
And they're doing a better job of covering what's happening on these campuses now.
But it took like beating them over the head with this.
And I think seeing the product that the university was producing come storming into their newsroom to torture them, you know, to drive home the point.
Do you think Barry Weiss was also right to leave the New York Times during this time period to start the free press?
Who could say Barry Weiss was wrong to go start a $150 million company?
I think that was like a real achievement.
And I think we talked about the groupthink in the mainstream media.
She obviously saw that, acknowledged that, went off to start her own thing.
And the hysterical resistance that you're seeing to Barry trying to turn around a third place CBS news, which is similar to the hysterical resistance that you're seeing to some of the changes that Jeff Bezos is trying to make of the Washington Post.
Hey, maybe we shouldn't be democracy dies in darkness, resistance, because that, you know, didn't work in the Biden administration when we started bleeding subscribers.
These people are met with temper tantrums and resistance by the whole, okay?
The whole of the mainstream press.
It's not people at the Washington Post are complaining and people at CBS News are complaining.
It's the entire mainstream press mounts attacks against them because they will not brook any kind of ideological diversity in their midst.
Why do you say the mainstream media instead of the legacy media?
No reason.
I had a good reason.
I'm happy to refer to it as the legacy media.
Because I would argue that you're more of the mainstream than they are.
You know what?
I should adopt that and put mainstream media on the masthead of the free beacon.
I would argue.
I mean, they're the dying legacy media and you cover more of what mainstream America actually thinks and feels these days.
I think that's absolutely right.
And I think that that informs why when the country sees actually what's happening at the New York Times or on these college campuses, the country revolts against that.
Yes.
As editor-in-chief, how do you balance creative editorial instincts with the practical realities of running a business?
I would say the practical reality that I think about is how do we have, you know, X number of top-notch stories to put out every day.
Like that's really the practical reality I think about.
And how do I make sure that we have several impactful pieces ready to go?
But my sole focus really is on where should we focus our reporting?
What will be the most impactful?
How do we get it to the level that it needs to be at such that it's essentially bulletproof when we're going after subjects?
And then do we have enough of it to spread over the weeks and months?
And then I would say, you know, business-wise, like understanding that people are really getting their news mostly through newsletters now and shifting us from, obviously we have a website, but putting major resources towards the newsletter so that people can receive the beacon in their inbox every morning and also get our breaking news stories in their inbox as well.
Do you guys use AI at all?
We've experimented with AI.
I would say it's fantastic for graphics.
And we've had a lot of fun experimenting with it, asking it to write in the voice of the Washington Free Beacon with news that's already out there.
I would say one thing AI cannot do is investigative reporting.
AI cannot cultivate sources.
It can't visit news sites.
You know, we did a story last week on a homeless encampment that's on the site of an apartment complex where the people living in the homeless encampment are breaking into the apartment complex and making it unlivable for the residents.
AI like can't go there and interview members of the people living in the apartment.
It can't go find in a library or an archive historical documents for you.
Career vs Personal Life Choices00:10:29
So our core offering like AI can't really do, but we've had fun, and I personally have had fun, particularly with graphics and for our sort of humorous sensibility, experimenting with it on the margins.
And it's quite good.
What's been the hardest lesson you've learned since taking the leadership home?
I would say like the hardest lesson that I've learned is I find it challenging to balance demanding high standards and excellence from a staff.
And like people do have to like you and find you approachable and respect you.
Those aren't the same thing.
And I would certainly lean hard naturally towards demanding excellence and high standards.
Do you think there's been any trouble with you specifically being a woman in a leadership role?
I think I have to say I've always found in my career that being a woman has benefited me.
I think when you're in the leadership role and you are demanding, it's like a little bit more difficult to be demanding and a hard ass.
And like things just come off a little bit differently when you're a woman and it's just the way it is.
Like I've not found a ton of sense in fighting against that.
I've just tried to accept that because I also think I've gotten benefits out of being a woman in this field, in this career.
And I would never say, oh, I've experienced so much sexism.
But I do think that if you're going to, A, to succeed, like you have to be driven, demanding, like, you have to expect excellence from people.
Do you think women have a harder time with having a woman leader versus a man having a woman boss?
I don't think so.
Like, I don't think I've run into a lot of people who are like, I don't want to have a woman leader.
And I, like, I would say the people who feel that way, like, they have other problems of which that is a symptom.
Like, the problem is not they just don't want a woman leader.
I really feel like this, this thing gets a bit overhyped.
Of course, like it's different to be a woman than it is a man in the professional world and this and that, but there's a lot of ways to lean into it.
I think women don't talk a lot about the benefits they get out of it.
Women are better at a lot of things than men.
And I think they're better at, often they're better at public speaking, better at messaging.
I think they're better at delivering messages to men.
And there's a lot of talk in DC and New York and liberal cities about the oppression of it.
Not a lot of talk about the benefits women get out of it.
I also think women hear a ton about like leaning into your career and career advice and how to get ahead and young women in particular.
And they don't hear a lot about the importance of family and relationships.
And like people have a lot of trouble, especially nowadays doing that because of like the lack of social interaction among younger people.
And I think there's a lot of women who need to hear that like, hey, you're going to have no problem in your career, but you might have problems in your personal life.
And like you've got to pay attention to that.
Like that's on a clock.
And if you don't, you're going to have a lot of unhappiness because like if you wind up at 38 with no kids, like you're going to have issues.
You're the mom of two kids.
Yes.
And you're also an editor-in-chief.
How do you balance your responsibilities as mom with responsibilities to running a publication?
I have a lot of help.
So I have an amazing husband, an amazing nanny.
I think that's just being real with people that doesn't all just happen.
And there's no such thing as perfect balance.
And I like at a certain point, like you learn.
I would also say like I have turned down career opportunities because it's not the right time for my family.
When conservatives talk about the importance of moms staying at home and being more of the hands-on parent, how do you respond to that as a working mother?
I think everybody's different and that for some people, that works great.
Like hearing that like doesn't doesn't affect me or offend me at all.
And I think I personally find it much harder work to be at home, much more challenging.
I've had two maternity leaves, obviously.
Did you take full maternity leaves?
I took three months and I would say I was working part of the time on both of them, but from home, like I was with the babies.
And for me, I think to be the best like mom that I can, I need the intellectual stimulation of a job.
But that's me.
And so I think it just everybody's different.
Do you think, and I want to go down this rabbit hole just a bit because in my opinion, even as a working mother myself, you know, there is this massive push amongst conservatives to increase the birth rate and to talk more about the declining birth rate, not only in the United States, but across the world.
And how do we do more to encourage young women to have babies when most mothers are now also in the workplace and most women feel they have to go to the workplace?
And so where I'm going with this is to say that like as a working mother who has a great career and who's having children didn't hamper that career, what would kind of be your blueprint for other young women who would want to come into journalism and come through the beacon?
How should they handle that similar career path?
Because there is that clock, as you mentioned.
You know, I can only really speak to the problems I confronted and the things I wish I'd been told.
And I remember I always knew I wanted to get married.
I wanted to have kids.
That was important to me.
Like, I made a lot of mistakes.
And so I'm not saying this as anybody should listen to me and think I did things perfectly.
I didn't.
I didn't get married till I was 35 or 36.
I didn't have my first kid till I was 37.
And I wish that had gone different.
I'd like to have more kids.
I'm 41 now.
Like, it's not going to happen.
So I say these things having made mistakes and wishing things could have gone differently.
So part of the reason that I tell young people who say, like, how do I have a career like yours?
Or how do I, you know, do this, that if you want to get married and have kids, and again, just like I say, stay, like, if you want to be a stay-at-home mom, that's great.
Like you may not want to get married and have kids, but if you do, that should get as much, if not more, focus from you about how you're going to make that happen.
And that takes like, I think, self-awareness.
Like, you have to understand yourself to understand what kind of, how to date, what kind of person works for you, what to look for in a partner.
And then if you want to stay home, like how to find somebody who has the type of career that's going to enable that.
And then to do it young, if you want to have a lot of kids.
I encourage people to think about that at quite a young age because I would have liked to get married a lot younger.
I did not have myself figured out or understand the type of person I really should be with.
Like I was sorting all that out through my 30s.
And the result is like I have two amazing children, but like I won't have that third kid or fourth kid that I would have had had I gotten married in my 20s.
And there was a lot of like loneliness and hardship and flailing around in a way that by the way, I never really did in my career.
Like that was, you know, smooth, basically smooth because, you know, I was a good student and went to an Ivy League school and that all went smoothly.
Where I didn't have a lot of advice and guidance was like on the personal front.
And that's what I tell people like to, if you want all these things, like you should work on it.
Do you think the beacon covers motherhood and family issues now differently since you've become a mother?
No, I would say like my views on, I hear a lot of people get asked like, oh, have your views on motherhood or fatherhood or kids or anything changed since you've become a mother?
And no, it's not like it gave me some revelation.
It just basically confirmed the things that I've thought.
Do you feel like it's changed?
Not to turn the table.
No, no, no.
I mean, I do think I've changed in a lot of ways in a, in like a better way.
I think I'm more patient, more understanding of others.
That's great.
I think don't let things trigger me as much.
I also think it's like when you have three kids constantly yelling, you're better at tuning out unnecessary noise.
Like my house is very loud.
I would say that I also now care more deeply about other people having kids than I cared about before because of how much joy it's brought me outside of just my career, similar to you.
When I think about having, you know, a career and keeping my mind busy, that's very important to me.
Like on a scale of one to 10, it probably is like an eight or a nine.
But also being home with my kids is also an eight or a nine.
So finding that right balance has been difficult and challenging because they both bring me equal amounts of joy, but I can't do one all the way to a 10.
I just can never get to one out of 10 because then I feel awkward and terrible about it.
But like my kids are going to be my greatest joy when I'm older.
So why not keep having more of them?
That part I agree with.
Like the kids are, they're a ton of work on the front end.
The DC Humidity Dilemma00:04:28
Yes.
Although a ton of fun too, but then I just think endlessly rewarding the older they get.
Yes.
Someone had said this to me, and I think this is true.
It's like to be a mom of a toddler, which like I'm a great mom of a toddler, not a great mom of a newborn.
You have to like go through the college years to get to like grad school, which is like so much better.
And to get to your like career, which is so much better, so you got to go through schooling, which I feel like Newborn Life is schooling.
It's challenging.
Yeah.
How would you describe the DC media ecosystem in one word?
Incestuous.
What's your DC ick?
Is it like when someone calls the DMV?
They quote Axios.
They order beer flights.
Like, what's the ick?
Oh, that's a good one.
What's the best one you've gotten?
I haven't asked this from anybody, but I know what mine would be.
It's really good.
What's yours?
What do you do for work?
Oh, God.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like so icky.
I just like walk away after someone asked that.
I think my DC ick is when someone asks me to get together for coffee or a drink and then they expect me to make the conversation.
Ask me anything.
That's so true.
DC is such a coffee town.
But you asked me.
Like, I don't want to make the conversation.
Do you still go to the coffees though?
You know, we had a little place in our building that's getting renovated, and I really miss that place.
What's the most overrated spot in DC?
Oh, Bourbon Steak.
Oh, you think it is?
I like to get a drink there, but the food is the most overpriced.
I've never seen overpriced food like that.
And not that great.
Interesting.
I would have gone with Diplomat.
Oh, I love La Dip.
Really?
Yes, I love La Dip.
What's the real reason everyone goes to Cafe Milano?
People watching?
Who's more dramatic?
Campaign staffers or cable newsbookers?
Cable newsbookers.
Okay, now our famous section of Would You Rather play this every episode without fail.
Would you rather break a campaign ending scandal or get the first ever profile of a sitting president?
Are you kidding me?
Campaign ending scandal.
That's so easy.
Would you rather moderate a presidential debate or host a gossip dinner with every DC power player?
Well, I did co-moderate a presidential debate, so I'd have to go with the latter.
I've never done that.
Would you love gossip?
I love gossip.
Would you rather be early to every story or late but always right?
Late but always right.
Would you rather your phone die during a major scoop or have your blowout ruined before a live TV interview?
Oh, my hair ruined.
Would you rather live with DC humidity all year round or have your full text history leak online?
Oh my God, I'll live with the humidity.
Like I have no career.
I'd have no career.
My career would be over.
Who is your dream interview subject, dead or alive?
Catherine Graham would be a wonderful interview subject.
It's fascinating.
What shows are you binging right now?
I just finished, I just finished the three-part documentary series on the ice dancing pairs called Glitter and Gold.
Because I'm getting in Olympics and I'm watching the, there's one, only one American team on there.
But I'm also watching the documentary on the 1984 Olympic hockey team, which I highly recommend.
But Glitter and Gold is really good for the ladies out there.
My husband was like, uh.
What's your favorite DC political drama?
It's not a DC political drama, but like, can anything get better than the Anthony Weiner sexteen scandal?
What's your guilty pleasure news source?
Daily Mail.
100%.
Yeah.
What's your least favorite media cliche, breaking news, influencer sources say?
Oh, the all caps use on X, like breaking or news, anything that these people write in all caps, and then anything that the legacy reporters are writing about like each other's publications.
Like you're at the Atlantic, but you're mourning something happening at the Washington Post, or you're at the New York Times.
Anti-Semitism on Campuses00:03:23
It's like, oh, you know, it's horrible that the journal is doing this.
Like, you guys are all supposed to be competing and hating each other.
Like, try not to let us all in on the secret that you're all playing on the same team, okay?
Do you think people not supporting the state of Israel gets conflated with anti-Semitism?
No.
I think that there are many anti-Semites who would like to camouflage their anti-Semitism by saying, I'm just an anti-Zionist.
I just don't believe that the world's only Jewish state shouldn't exist.
Because I think we both know that there are lots of Jews who have lots of criticisms of the Jewish state, including plenty of people in Israel, but that, you know, anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism.
This is a phenomenon that mutates in shapes and forms, and this is the current shape and form.
Have you covered a lot of that at the beacon?
We've devoted a ton of coverage to the way this has presented itself on college campuses across the country.
Columbia University, of course, became the epicenter.
We've covered quite a bit the Trump administration's response to it.
And we've seen exactly how this problem presents itself and develops into violations of civil rights against Jewish students on campus.
Where do you think this ends?
I actually think we're sort of seeing, it depends what you mean by this, but I think we saw lawmakers on Capitol Hill, led by Elise Stefanik, followed by President Trump, who was then candidate Trump, turn this into a potent political issue.
I think we saw where the country stood on this.
And I think it will remain a political issue.
Democrats may, once they will, at some point, win the White House once again.
But I think the state of our college campuses, the vicious anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism that is displayed and it will pop up again and again and again because of the prevailing views on our campuses.
But the issue isn't going away.
And President Trump's demonstration that we can and we will pull funding from this, whether or not it's restored, he showed that it can be done, means that this is not going away for universities as a political issue.
What's the conspiracy theory that you believe in?
I suppose a lot of people would say that it's a conspiracy theory to think all these newsrooms are far-left political operations masquerading as news outlets, but I believe that.
What extent do you think they're funded by like the same left-wing crazies who fund the same left-wing NGOs, who fund the same left-wing campaign operations, et cetera?
It depends on the newsroom, but mostly we know who's funding these places.
Far-Left Newsroom Conspiracy00:00:48
If you could host a dinner party with three people that are alive, who's at the table and what are you eating?
I'm just going to limit it to people who are alive.
I think we get, got to get Elon there.
Like, he seems fun and interesting.
Abraham Lincoln.
Okay.
General George Patton.
Yeah.
I think we got to get Patton there.
That'd be cool.
And what are you eating?
Can't do better than a great steak, I don't think.
Not from bourbon steak, though.
Not from bourbon steak, no.
Thank you for doing this.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for watching this episode of the Katie Miller podcast with Illian and Johnson.
We're every Tuesday night at 6 p.m.
We'll see you next week.
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