00:00:08
Speaker 1: On iHeartRadio.
00:00:10
Speaker 2: I've talked about this subject a lot and I hadn't done a monologue in quite a while and wanted to talk about this again because I got a note in my email about this and also today Kat Rosenfield on X posted, starting to think the plummeting birth rate might have something to do with millennial women being immersed in these motherhood as identity annihilation narratives for the entirety of their fertile years.
00:00:36
Speaker 1: And I tweeted, I.
00:00:37
Speaker 2: Talk often to counter this persistent messaging that motherhood is the end of your life about the fact that my career took off only after having children and my identity and my purpose crystallized because of them. Having kids was the beginning, not the end. I also got a note about this recently. I wasn't sure if I was going to answer this because it was a short note and it's not Like when they don't have a lot of details, it's tough for me to really give an answer. If you're going to write to me for advice, as much detail as possible, as much detail as you feel comfortable giving me.
00:01:09
Speaker 1: Would be great. This is the note. Hi, Ms. Markowitz.
00:01:14
Speaker 2: You spoke at my school a few years ago and I had asked a question about how you balance family and career. I'm now 23 and still don't see how you do it. I'm not dating anyone partially because I'm afraid that adding a relationship to my life will be too time consuming. I don't have a high pressure job, but imagine I will one day. How do I balance everything? The thing is, you just do it is the easy answer. But the other thing is you're 23 and you're not dating anyone. So you don't have a picture of what your life actually will look like. Part of what gave me the space to grow in my career and do what I wanted to do was marrying the right person who Let me explore things and let me try out things. And that made me able to succeed at another level than I ever would have without him. So if you're 23 and you're not dating anyone and you say you don't have a higher pressure job, but imagine you will one day, you might not.
00:02:14
Speaker 1: You don't know.
00:02:14
Speaker 2: I would say don't put the roadblocks in your way in advance. See where you end up on this. A lot of women are just given this message that marriage and kids are the end, when in fact, for a lot of women, it really will be the beginning of you being able to do things. You have somebody who contributes to your household, maybe doesn't support the entire household, but at least half of it. You are given the ability to try things that you might not have been able to try otherwise. So this whole thing about women's identity being destroyed and their careers being over as soon as they have kids, just makes no sense to me. And I feel like a lot of this is just messaging made to ensure that women.
00:03:00
Speaker 1: Don't have kids.
00:03:01
Speaker 2: And I think that it's on purpose. It's to say, you can't live a life that is enjoyable with children, don't have children.
00:03:10
Speaker 1: It's scary.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: And I know that it's aimed at liberal women, but I think the woman writing to me is a conservative woman. I am assuming this because I spoke at her school. I speak to conservative groups. I can imagine who this person is even though she didn't say or what kind of person this is. And it's not the blue-haired liberal girl on the college campus. This is somebody serious who wants children and wants to hear that it's going to be okay. And this idea that it can't be okay if you have kids and that your life will be altered for the negative is one that is just pushed on them so hard. This girl is saying, She doesn't even have a boyfriend or a high-powered career, and she already doesn't know how to balance them. You are told that it's going to be so hard, but in fact, it's not. In fact, when you're with the right person and you have a career that you care about and you know how to do well, it's not the image you see online of the devastated woman who doesn't have what she actually wanted. I think people who have the marriage that they want and the career that they want, It happens often and they just don't tell you about it because it's hard to be like, hey, my life's really great. I have this marriage and career that I really like and really works for me. I don't think that message gets spread enough and I'm here to spread it. Thank you for listening and stay tuned for my interview with Jennifer Van Laar. Hi, and welcome back to The Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Jennifer Van Laar. Jennifer is the managing editor of Red State and an investigative journalist.
00:04:53
Speaker 1: Hi, Jennifer. So nice to have you on.
00:04:56
Speaker 3: So great to be here.
00:04:58
Speaker 1: So how did you get to this path?
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Speaker 2: Where did you decide to be a writer and how did you end up at Red State?
00:05:06
Speaker 3: So I'd always enjoyed writing.
00:05:08
Speaker 4: That was kind of my best class, you know, growing up and going into high school. But outside of college, I became a court reporter, like a stenographer in courtrooms, depositions. And I worked for the state of North Carolina and did about more than three dozen criminal first degree murder trials from jury selection through verdict. So that was what I did for 20 years while raising my kids. And that really gave me such an insight into how people build cases, which is really what you do as an investigative journalist. So after I got divorced and I moved home to California, I couldn't do court reporting there because I used a different method than our regulatory scheme allowed. So even though I had been the president of our state association, all that, They wanted me to go back to school.
00:05:54
Speaker 3: And I said, forget that.
00:05:56
Speaker 4: So I kind of got involved in political consulting, doing some comms work for different candidates. Then I started writing at Red State in 2016, right after that election and just kind of moving from there.
00:06:09
Speaker 2: So I associate you very much with investigative journalism. Is that your true love? It is.
00:06:19
Speaker 4: And it took me a little while to find it because I liked doing more of the analysis or just even the hot takes, you know, because there's so many things, especially as a mom, you see people writing things and you just want to go off on whatever their take is on things. But once I started doing that and my first big story ended up being kind of the biggest story of my career so far, which was about now former Representative Katie Hill and who was sexually harassing her staff. And she also had issues with prescription drug abuse, alcohol issues. She ended up resigning eight days after my first report in that. And then I thought, okay, maybe I might be able to do some of this stuff.
00:06:57
Speaker 3: Right.
00:06:58
Speaker 1: I was going to ask what your favorite story has been.
00:07:01
Speaker 2: Is that your favorite story that you've worked on?
00:07:04
Speaker 4: No, no, because that one brought so much terrible things personally on top of like, even though it was a great professional win. But I think my favorite one that I think has made the most change was basically a year and a half long examination of Ronna McDaniel's spending at the RNC that resulted in President Trump firing her and us getting a whole new RNC and then President Trump winning.
00:07:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that very well, that those stories. Did you get into a lot of trouble because you were going after, quote unquote, your own side?
00:07:36
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
00:07:37
Speaker 4: And they tried to get us to not be able to publish it. But, you know, I credit the late, amazing Charlie Kirk. He kind of saw the writing on the wall and I had been communicating with him what I was finding. He said, well, come on my show first and we'll give your findings. And that was before the story was even published. So that whole night after that, the people at the RNC were harassing me and my publisher to not publish it. But really, you know, that horse was already out of the barn. And I credit Charlie for doing that.
00:08:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was brave.
00:08:07
Speaker 2: He really, I think, took chances that some people don't take when attacking, you know, again, his own side.
00:08:13
Speaker 1: I think that was something that he did very, very, very well.
00:08:18
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:08:19
Speaker 1: What would you have done if this hadn't worked out?
00:08:22
Speaker 2: If you hadn't left court reporting and got into writing and, you know, it doesn't work out for everyone, what would have been the plan B?
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Speaker 4: I didn't even have one. It kind of had to work. I was a newly single mom of a teenage boy that had a learning disability and also taking care of my dad who had had a stroke, which is why I moved back to California.
00:08:41
Speaker 3: So it just, it had to work. It's funny for people listening.
00:08:44
Speaker 2: A lot of people say I had no plan B and this had to work. And I wonder if there's something to that when you don't have another option, when there is no other possibility and this has to work out. I wonder if that makes people kind of more motivated to make it actually work.
00:09:01
Speaker 4: I think so, because my option was trying to find some kind of secretarial job driving in from the suburbs of L.A.
00:09:08
Speaker 3: And to West L.A.
00:09:09
Speaker 4: And being in a car four hours a day and not just I was not going to.
00:09:13
Speaker 3: Allow that to happen.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: Right.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: What are you covering right now?
00:09:16
Speaker 4: So a lot of stuff on the Palisades fire and watch my space over the next few weeks. There's some deep dives into Gavin Newsom's personal finances. And let's just say that he runs his personal finances the same way he runs the state of California's finances.
00:09:32
Speaker 3: So it's pretty messy.
00:09:33
Speaker 1: So not that great.
00:09:34
Speaker 3: No.
00:09:36
Speaker 1: Do you root for California, though? I mean, you live there, right? You you wanted to succeed. Did you have any hope?
00:09:43
Speaker 3: I do have hope and I absolutely want it to succeed.
00:09:45
Speaker 4: I think in Gavin Newsom touts, you know, the fifth largest or sixth largest economy, you know, based on whichever year he's talking about. And what people don't realize, it's that in spite of Gavin Newsom, it's that in spite of the Democrats and their terrible policies, there's so many natural resources, so many human resources there with the brain talent. And I've always said that the people that come to California are the dreamers, the people who, you know, the confines of the East Coast, were not for them and they had a bigger vision. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's just, they were different. They weren't going to fit in there. And so they go out to California and the thing, they do things that maybe, you know, a stricter society wouldn't allow. And that's how we've came up with so many great inventions in California and really changed the world. And I'd like us to get back to doing good things for the world instead of being the incubator of bad ideas. Right.
00:10:37
Speaker 3: But you are optimistic that that could happen.
00:10:40
Speaker 2: I mean, that's saying something because I left New York and I love New York and I root for it, but I'm not optimistic about their future, you know.
00:10:50
Speaker 1: In the near future or in the far off future right now.
00:10:53
Speaker 2: Right.
00:10:53
Speaker 3: I mean, we might or might not have hit rock bottom yet.
00:10:55
Speaker 4: There might still be a rock bottom to hit. But yeah, every the pendulum always swings back.
00:11:00
Speaker 1: You're a lifelong Californian. You grew up there.
00:11:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:11:03
Speaker 1: So what do you love about it?
00:11:05
Speaker 4: 1850s.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:11:07
Speaker 1: What do you love about it?
00:11:09
Speaker 3: I love the wide open spaces.
00:11:10
Speaker 4: It sounds like a weird dreamy thing, but just, you know, when I lived back in North Carolina, which I love North Carolina, but I felt so hemmed in by the trees everywhere that were so tall, I couldn't see.
00:11:19
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you mean.
00:11:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:11:22
Speaker 3: And I love that.
00:11:23
Speaker 4: And I just love the, just kind of the attitude of California, of the old school California, not the new weirdos, but the old school where you're just an adventurer and everything's possible. And you just love being in the outdoors and just partaking in everything that it has to offer.
00:11:39
Speaker 1: Did the fires shift people's opinions?
00:11:42
Speaker 2: It seems like people who are natural, say liberals, woke up after the fires and realized that the kind of governance they had been living under just doesn't work. Are you seeing that or is it just I'm looking for it and that's why I'm seeing it?
00:11:56
Speaker 3: Now, I'm definitely seeing it.
00:11:57
Speaker 4: It's difficult for people to say it out loud still because there's still so much societal pressure. But I saw it when I was at Spencer Pratt's mayoral kickoff last week.
00:12:08
Speaker 3: He was saying something.
00:12:09
Speaker 4: He was even getting cheers when he was talking about cooperating with ICE and cooperating with federal immigration enforcement and just talking about how things have to change in the way that Los Angeles is governed.
00:12:21
Speaker 3: Got so much loud cheers. And they were not.
00:12:23
Speaker 4: I've been to Republican events in California for a long time, and it's usually a very old and white crowd. This was a very young crowd and very diverse crowd. They were not your general Republicans. And I think they felt safe coming out of the closet at this event and being among like-minded people. So I think that that's the hope is And he's going to bring in this whole new generation of people that maybe aren't your traditional conservative, aren't social conservative, but who are like, OK, this isn't political. It's common sense. We just have to have common sense. So red state has been around a really long time.
00:13:00
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember the red state table at the 2004 Republican National Convention. I mean, they've really the site has been through a lot of time periods in.
00:13:11
Speaker 1: Our political history.
00:13:13
Speaker 2: How do you keep it fresh and new and kind of moving in the direction when things keep changing so rapidly? I mean, the Republican Party today is so different than it was back then.
00:13:24
Speaker 1: How does Red State stay relevant?
00:13:26
Speaker 4: Well, as managing editor, and then I have a great editorial team, we try to make sure that we're not enforcing any kind of groupthink.
00:13:33
Speaker 3: Among our people.
00:13:34
Speaker 4: I hope that people that maybe haven't read Red State in a while maybe have Some ideas of what we were in the past will come and look again because on our page, I publish routinely things that I don't agree with that opinion, but it's still a conservative opinion.
00:13:52
Speaker 3: And I don't.
00:13:53
Speaker 4: Feel like it's right to kind of censor that. We do a lot more breaking news than we did in the past because just the marketplace has evolved that way. And I think big tech censorship really changed the way we did some things in a good way, because now we're forced to, unlike the left, really back up what we write so that it doesn't get taken down by the fact checkers.
00:14:16
Speaker 2: Do you feel any pressure to fall in line with what the conservative opinion is right now? Or do people come there for the difference of opinion still from a conservative perspective?
00:14:28
Speaker 3: Obviously, we always feel pressure, mostly from our commenters.
00:14:31
Speaker 2: Which, oh, yeah, the commenters are the only ones who can comment.
00:14:36
Speaker 3: But still, you know, they they get really upset. And it's funny. Sometimes I'll say, you never print.
00:14:41
Speaker 4: Such and such, you know, opposing opinion when we just like if they looked on the front page. Sure. An essay to that effect that they just haven't read. Everyone gets this tunnel vision of that. Everything has to agree with every bit of it. talk about, but I try, it's tough, you know, because we're all human, but I try to say, okay, well, we still just, we need to be intellectually honest. And even sometimes if it's criticizing things going on in the administration, you know, we try to not just pile on, but we try to, what I've told my writers is criticism is fine.
00:15:13
Speaker 3: Don't just say orange man bad though.
00:15:15
Speaker 4: You have to have like an actual constructive criticism of why you think this certain policy isn't helpful or what you think the effects will be that maybe they're not taking into consideration and list that out.
00:15:28
Speaker 3: Don't just, it sucks.
00:15:30
Speaker 4: Right.
00:15:30
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:15:31
Speaker 2: My favorite is when I post something, a link to an article I wrote, and somebody will comment like, why don't you say blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I literally, in the piece that you did not read, say blah, blah, blah. And it's, yeah, it's tough because I think that the criticism comes no matter what. And a site like Red State that's been around for so long, I mean, I imagine you get, you know, your.
00:15:56
Speaker 3: Share of it. Yeah, it's funny.
00:15:58
Speaker 4: The other day, I posted something about Google still throttling our domain. And someone said, well, you know, you would think as lefty as Eric Erickson is like that they would have that in the bag. And I'm going, my gosh, Eric has been with the site for 10 years. So I know you don't read it if you don't know that.
00:16:15
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, people just associate it with him. And that's, that's it. They just run with it. Plus lefty as he is Eric Erickson. Come on.
00:16:22
Speaker 4: Right.
00:16:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, super lefty right, right there.
00:16:25
Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break and be right back on The Carol Markowitz Show.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: What are you most proud of in your life?
00:16:35
Speaker 4: I thought about this a long time because I obviously the first thing I want to say is my kids. I have three sons and they're all grown and two of them are married and I have two granddaughters.
00:16:44
Speaker 1: Oh, amazing.
00:16:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:16:45
Speaker 3: But then I'm thinking, I don't. I feel like God.
00:16:48
Speaker 4: Just gave me three amazing souls to be my children. And I really didn't have to do a whole lot. So I don't feel like I can be super proud of them.
00:16:57
Speaker 3: I hear you.
00:16:58
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:16:59
Speaker 4: But I am proud that they are each other's best friend. My two older boys are just over two years apart. And they fought like crazy when they were kids. And I thought they're never going to talk to each other when they're grown up. You know, my younger son is nine years between him and my oldest. So he's the He never really got beat up on by the other team.
00:17:19
Speaker 1: Right, right, yeah.
00:17:20
Speaker 4: But the older two, they talk to each other all day, every day. They have a podcast together focused on hockey.
00:17:27
Speaker 3: They're best friends.
00:17:29
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
00:17:29
Speaker 4: They're still best friends. And I'm going, okay, so I am proud that they're each other's best friends. And they help each other financially. Yeah, so I'm very proud that they are each other's best friends and that we just all love to be together.
00:17:45
Speaker 1: That is such an amazing outcome.
00:17:47
Speaker 2: That's really all that I'm rooting for, for my kids to grow up and get married and have kids and be friends with each other.
00:17:53
Speaker 1: And what else really is there? And when their.
00:17:56
Speaker 3: Spouses get along too, it's perfect. It's huge.
00:18:00
Speaker 2: But my 10-year-old, I was telling him that I have three questions that I ask all of my guests and I change it. I change the three questions every year. And this is my third set of questions. But I said to him that one of the questions is, what are you most proud of in your life? And I asked him, what are you most proud of in your life? And he said, my parents. And I was like, you had nothing to do with who your parents are.
00:18:18
Speaker 1: What are you proud of?
00:18:20
Speaker 2: But I realized it's the same thing as when I say I'm most proud of my kids. Like you're, you know, did you have an effect? Maybe, hopefully, you know, it couldn't just be presented. Give us a five year out prediction and it could be about anything at all.
00:18:39
Speaker 4: I'm really bad at any political predictions or even on my own life predictions because so many times I've looked back and said, if someone told me five years ago, this is what I'd be doing, I would have not believed them. So I think I'm going to say that the Dodgers will have another world championship in the next five years. Hopefully a couple more. I know people love to hate the Dodgers, but, you know, they're my teams.
00:19:01
Speaker 1: I'm from Brooklyn.
00:19:02
Speaker 2: So I have, even though, you know, obviously my family wasn't even in America yet when the Dodgers left, but I grew up with a sense of like, we have been betrayed by this team who left us.
00:19:12
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:19:13
Speaker 4: I feel it because when the Rams left LA for St. Louis for those years, like we were not allowed to talk about them in our house.
00:19:19
Speaker 3: And now that they're back in LA, you know. Yeah.
00:19:22
Speaker 1: When did the Dodgers last win?
00:19:24
Speaker 3: This year. Okay. Yeah.
00:19:26
Speaker 1: So what do you... Please, you guys with your Dodgers....
00:19:31
Speaker 4: I don't know how many people have teams that three-peated in baseball.
00:19:35
Speaker 3: I mean, I know basketball, there's been a few, but. Okay.
00:19:38
Speaker 2: I'm not, I don't follow baseball that closely, but so you, you guys have won two years in a row and now your prediction is a third one.
00:19:45
Speaker 4: Jennifer at some point in the next five years i'm not gonna say this next year but some all right.
00:19:50
Speaker 2: Five years starting to sound like the patriots who like you know had a few years off from going to the super bowl and really bitter about it but you know yeah all right maybe the dodgers come back in the next five and win another one yes i don't know if i'm gonna be rooting for that or not but.
00:20:07
Speaker 1: I'll think of you if it happens.
00:20:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:20:09
Speaker 2: All right.
00:20:10
Speaker 1: I've loved this conversation, Jennifer.
00:20:11
Speaker 2: This has been really great getting to know you. Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
00:20:20
Speaker 4: So it goes back to your question about what was my plan B. And around that time that I started writing, I realized that all the things that I'd done in my life that were most successful had to do with storytelling, whether it's laying out an investigative thing or even writing something more from a personal perspective. So I've told myself I'm a storyteller at heart and to just stay in that lane. Whatever I'm going to do has to be involved in telling a story. And that can take so many forms. So my advice for success or one tip for being happy is to find what it is that you're really good at that you feel like you're called to do and stay in that lane. Don't be influenced by what other people are doing or try to be somebody else.
00:21:01
Speaker 3: Be yourself and stick with that.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: I love that.
00:21:05
Speaker 2: I love the idea of sticking in your lane and do what you're really good at and don't let other people get in there or dissuade you from it.
00:21:13
Speaker 1: She's Jennifer Van Lark. Check her out at Red State. Thank you so much for coming on, Jennifer.
00:21:18
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: On iHeartRadio.
00:00:10
Speaker 2: I've talked about this subject a lot and I hadn't done a monologue in quite a while and wanted to talk about this again because I got a note in my email about this and also today Kat Rosenfield on X posted, starting to think the plummeting birth rate might have something to do with millennial women being immersed in these motherhood as identity annihilation narratives for the entirety of their fertile years.
00:00:36
Speaker 1: And I tweeted, I.
00:00:37
Speaker 2: Talk often to counter this persistent messaging that motherhood is the end of your life about the fact that my career took off only after having children and my identity and my purpose crystallized because of them. Having kids was the beginning, not the end. I also got a note about this recently. I wasn't sure if I was going to answer this because it was a short note and it's not Like when they don't have a lot of details, it's tough for me to really give an answer. If you're going to write to me for advice, as much detail as possible, as much detail as you feel comfortable giving me.
00:01:09
Speaker 1: Would be great. This is the note. Hi, Ms. Markowitz.
00:01:14
Speaker 2: You spoke at my school a few years ago and I had asked a question about how you balance family and career. I'm now 23 and still don't see how you do it. I'm not dating anyone partially because I'm afraid that adding a relationship to my life will be too time consuming. I don't have a high pressure job, but imagine I will one day. How do I balance everything? The thing is, you just do it is the easy answer. But the other thing is you're 23 and you're not dating anyone. So you don't have a picture of what your life actually will look like. Part of what gave me the space to grow in my career and do what I wanted to do was marrying the right person who Let me explore things and let me try out things. And that made me able to succeed at another level than I ever would have without him. So if you're 23 and you're not dating anyone and you say you don't have a higher pressure job, but imagine you will one day, you might not.
00:02:14
Speaker 1: You don't know.
00:02:14
Speaker 2: I would say don't put the roadblocks in your way in advance. See where you end up on this. A lot of women are just given this message that marriage and kids are the end, when in fact, for a lot of women, it really will be the beginning of you being able to do things. You have somebody who contributes to your household, maybe doesn't support the entire household, but at least half of it. You are given the ability to try things that you might not have been able to try otherwise. So this whole thing about women's identity being destroyed and their careers being over as soon as they have kids, just makes no sense to me. And I feel like a lot of this is just messaging made to ensure that women.
00:03:00
Speaker 1: Don't have kids.
00:03:01
Speaker 2: And I think that it's on purpose. It's to say, you can't live a life that is enjoyable with children, don't have children.
00:03:10
Speaker 1: It's scary.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: And I know that it's aimed at liberal women, but I think the woman writing to me is a conservative woman. I am assuming this because I spoke at her school. I speak to conservative groups. I can imagine who this person is even though she didn't say or what kind of person this is. And it's not the blue-haired liberal girl on the college campus. This is somebody serious who wants children and wants to hear that it's going to be okay. And this idea that it can't be okay if you have kids and that your life will be altered for the negative is one that is just pushed on them so hard. This girl is saying, She doesn't even have a boyfriend or a high-powered career, and she already doesn't know how to balance them. You are told that it's going to be so hard, but in fact, it's not. In fact, when you're with the right person and you have a career that you care about and you know how to do well, it's not the image you see online of the devastated woman who doesn't have what she actually wanted. I think people who have the marriage that they want and the career that they want, It happens often and they just don't tell you about it because it's hard to be like, hey, my life's really great. I have this marriage and career that I really like and really works for me. I don't think that message gets spread enough and I'm here to spread it. Thank you for listening and stay tuned for my interview with Jennifer Van Laar. Hi, and welcome back to The Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Jennifer Van Laar. Jennifer is the managing editor of Red State and an investigative journalist.
00:04:53
Speaker 1: Hi, Jennifer. So nice to have you on.
00:04:56
Speaker 3: So great to be here.
00:04:58
Speaker 1: So how did you get to this path?
00:05:00
Speaker 2: Where did you decide to be a writer and how did you end up at Red State?
00:05:06
Speaker 3: So I'd always enjoyed writing.
00:05:08
Speaker 4: That was kind of my best class, you know, growing up and going into high school. But outside of college, I became a court reporter, like a stenographer in courtrooms, depositions. And I worked for the state of North Carolina and did about more than three dozen criminal first degree murder trials from jury selection through verdict. So that was what I did for 20 years while raising my kids. And that really gave me such an insight into how people build cases, which is really what you do as an investigative journalist. So after I got divorced and I moved home to California, I couldn't do court reporting there because I used a different method than our regulatory scheme allowed. So even though I had been the president of our state association, all that, They wanted me to go back to school.
00:05:54
Speaker 3: And I said, forget that.
00:05:56
Speaker 4: So I kind of got involved in political consulting, doing some comms work for different candidates. Then I started writing at Red State in 2016, right after that election and just kind of moving from there.
00:06:09
Speaker 2: So I associate you very much with investigative journalism. Is that your true love? It is.
00:06:19
Speaker 4: And it took me a little while to find it because I liked doing more of the analysis or just even the hot takes, you know, because there's so many things, especially as a mom, you see people writing things and you just want to go off on whatever their take is on things. But once I started doing that and my first big story ended up being kind of the biggest story of my career so far, which was about now former Representative Katie Hill and who was sexually harassing her staff. And she also had issues with prescription drug abuse, alcohol issues. She ended up resigning eight days after my first report in that. And then I thought, okay, maybe I might be able to do some of this stuff.
00:06:57
Speaker 3: Right.
00:06:58
Speaker 1: I was going to ask what your favorite story has been.
00:07:01
Speaker 2: Is that your favorite story that you've worked on?
00:07:04
Speaker 4: No, no, because that one brought so much terrible things personally on top of like, even though it was a great professional win. But I think my favorite one that I think has made the most change was basically a year and a half long examination of Ronna McDaniel's spending at the RNC that resulted in President Trump firing her and us getting a whole new RNC and then President Trump winning.
00:07:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that very well, that those stories. Did you get into a lot of trouble because you were going after, quote unquote, your own side?
00:07:36
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
00:07:37
Speaker 4: And they tried to get us to not be able to publish it. But, you know, I credit the late, amazing Charlie Kirk. He kind of saw the writing on the wall and I had been communicating with him what I was finding. He said, well, come on my show first and we'll give your findings. And that was before the story was even published. So that whole night after that, the people at the RNC were harassing me and my publisher to not publish it. But really, you know, that horse was already out of the barn. And I credit Charlie for doing that.
00:08:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was brave.
00:08:07
Speaker 2: He really, I think, took chances that some people don't take when attacking, you know, again, his own side.
00:08:13
Speaker 1: I think that was something that he did very, very, very well.
00:08:18
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:08:19
Speaker 1: What would you have done if this hadn't worked out?
00:08:22
Speaker 2: If you hadn't left court reporting and got into writing and, you know, it doesn't work out for everyone, what would have been the plan B?
00:08:29
Speaker 4: I didn't even have one. It kind of had to work. I was a newly single mom of a teenage boy that had a learning disability and also taking care of my dad who had had a stroke, which is why I moved back to California.
00:08:41
Speaker 3: So it just, it had to work. It's funny for people listening.
00:08:44
Speaker 2: A lot of people say I had no plan B and this had to work. And I wonder if there's something to that when you don't have another option, when there is no other possibility and this has to work out. I wonder if that makes people kind of more motivated to make it actually work.
00:09:01
Speaker 4: I think so, because my option was trying to find some kind of secretarial job driving in from the suburbs of L.A.
00:09:08
Speaker 3: And to West L.A.
00:09:09
Speaker 4: And being in a car four hours a day and not just I was not going to.
00:09:13
Speaker 3: Allow that to happen.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: Right.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: What are you covering right now?
00:09:16
Speaker 4: So a lot of stuff on the Palisades fire and watch my space over the next few weeks. There's some deep dives into Gavin Newsom's personal finances. And let's just say that he runs his personal finances the same way he runs the state of California's finances.
00:09:32
Speaker 3: So it's pretty messy.
00:09:33
Speaker 1: So not that great.
00:09:34
Speaker 3: No.
00:09:36
Speaker 1: Do you root for California, though? I mean, you live there, right? You you wanted to succeed. Did you have any hope?
00:09:43
Speaker 3: I do have hope and I absolutely want it to succeed.
00:09:45
Speaker 4: I think in Gavin Newsom touts, you know, the fifth largest or sixth largest economy, you know, based on whichever year he's talking about. And what people don't realize, it's that in spite of Gavin Newsom, it's that in spite of the Democrats and their terrible policies, there's so many natural resources, so many human resources there with the brain talent. And I've always said that the people that come to California are the dreamers, the people who, you know, the confines of the East Coast, were not for them and they had a bigger vision. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's just, they were different. They weren't going to fit in there. And so they go out to California and the thing, they do things that maybe, you know, a stricter society wouldn't allow. And that's how we've came up with so many great inventions in California and really changed the world. And I'd like us to get back to doing good things for the world instead of being the incubator of bad ideas. Right.
00:10:37
Speaker 3: But you are optimistic that that could happen.
00:10:40
Speaker 2: I mean, that's saying something because I left New York and I love New York and I root for it, but I'm not optimistic about their future, you know.
00:10:50
Speaker 1: In the near future or in the far off future right now.
00:10:53
Speaker 2: Right.
00:10:53
Speaker 3: I mean, we might or might not have hit rock bottom yet.
00:10:55
Speaker 4: There might still be a rock bottom to hit. But yeah, every the pendulum always swings back.
00:11:00
Speaker 1: You're a lifelong Californian. You grew up there.
00:11:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:11:03
Speaker 1: So what do you love about it?
00:11:05
Speaker 4: 1850s.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:11:07
Speaker 1: What do you love about it?
00:11:09
Speaker 3: I love the wide open spaces.
00:11:10
Speaker 4: It sounds like a weird dreamy thing, but just, you know, when I lived back in North Carolina, which I love North Carolina, but I felt so hemmed in by the trees everywhere that were so tall, I couldn't see.
00:11:19
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you mean.
00:11:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:11:22
Speaker 3: And I love that.
00:11:23
Speaker 4: And I just love the, just kind of the attitude of California, of the old school California, not the new weirdos, but the old school where you're just an adventurer and everything's possible. And you just love being in the outdoors and just partaking in everything that it has to offer.
00:11:39
Speaker 1: Did the fires shift people's opinions?
00:11:42
Speaker 2: It seems like people who are natural, say liberals, woke up after the fires and realized that the kind of governance they had been living under just doesn't work. Are you seeing that or is it just I'm looking for it and that's why I'm seeing it?
00:11:56
Speaker 3: Now, I'm definitely seeing it.
00:11:57
Speaker 4: It's difficult for people to say it out loud still because there's still so much societal pressure. But I saw it when I was at Spencer Pratt's mayoral kickoff last week.
00:12:08
Speaker 3: He was saying something.
00:12:09
Speaker 4: He was even getting cheers when he was talking about cooperating with ICE and cooperating with federal immigration enforcement and just talking about how things have to change in the way that Los Angeles is governed.
00:12:21
Speaker 3: Got so much loud cheers. And they were not.
00:12:23
Speaker 4: I've been to Republican events in California for a long time, and it's usually a very old and white crowd. This was a very young crowd and very diverse crowd. They were not your general Republicans. And I think they felt safe coming out of the closet at this event and being among like-minded people. So I think that that's the hope is And he's going to bring in this whole new generation of people that maybe aren't your traditional conservative, aren't social conservative, but who are like, OK, this isn't political. It's common sense. We just have to have common sense. So red state has been around a really long time.
00:13:00
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember the red state table at the 2004 Republican National Convention. I mean, they've really the site has been through a lot of time periods in.
00:13:11
Speaker 1: Our political history.
00:13:13
Speaker 2: How do you keep it fresh and new and kind of moving in the direction when things keep changing so rapidly? I mean, the Republican Party today is so different than it was back then.
00:13:24
Speaker 1: How does Red State stay relevant?
00:13:26
Speaker 4: Well, as managing editor, and then I have a great editorial team, we try to make sure that we're not enforcing any kind of groupthink.
00:13:33
Speaker 3: Among our people.
00:13:34
Speaker 4: I hope that people that maybe haven't read Red State in a while maybe have Some ideas of what we were in the past will come and look again because on our page, I publish routinely things that I don't agree with that opinion, but it's still a conservative opinion.
00:13:52
Speaker 3: And I don't.
00:13:53
Speaker 4: Feel like it's right to kind of censor that. We do a lot more breaking news than we did in the past because just the marketplace has evolved that way. And I think big tech censorship really changed the way we did some things in a good way, because now we're forced to, unlike the left, really back up what we write so that it doesn't get taken down by the fact checkers.
00:14:16
Speaker 2: Do you feel any pressure to fall in line with what the conservative opinion is right now? Or do people come there for the difference of opinion still from a conservative perspective?
00:14:28
Speaker 3: Obviously, we always feel pressure, mostly from our commenters.
00:14:31
Speaker 2: Which, oh, yeah, the commenters are the only ones who can comment.
00:14:36
Speaker 3: But still, you know, they they get really upset. And it's funny. Sometimes I'll say, you never print.
00:14:41
Speaker 4: Such and such, you know, opposing opinion when we just like if they looked on the front page. Sure. An essay to that effect that they just haven't read. Everyone gets this tunnel vision of that. Everything has to agree with every bit of it. talk about, but I try, it's tough, you know, because we're all human, but I try to say, okay, well, we still just, we need to be intellectually honest. And even sometimes if it's criticizing things going on in the administration, you know, we try to not just pile on, but we try to, what I've told my writers is criticism is fine.
00:15:13
Speaker 3: Don't just say orange man bad though.
00:15:15
Speaker 4: You have to have like an actual constructive criticism of why you think this certain policy isn't helpful or what you think the effects will be that maybe they're not taking into consideration and list that out.
00:15:28
Speaker 3: Don't just, it sucks.
00:15:30
Speaker 4: Right.
00:15:30
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:15:31
Speaker 2: My favorite is when I post something, a link to an article I wrote, and somebody will comment like, why don't you say blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I literally, in the piece that you did not read, say blah, blah, blah. And it's, yeah, it's tough because I think that the criticism comes no matter what. And a site like Red State that's been around for so long, I mean, I imagine you get, you know, your.
00:15:56
Speaker 3: Share of it. Yeah, it's funny.
00:15:58
Speaker 4: The other day, I posted something about Google still throttling our domain. And someone said, well, you know, you would think as lefty as Eric Erickson is like that they would have that in the bag. And I'm going, my gosh, Eric has been with the site for 10 years. So I know you don't read it if you don't know that.
00:16:15
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, people just associate it with him. And that's, that's it. They just run with it. Plus lefty as he is Eric Erickson. Come on.
00:16:22
Speaker 4: Right.
00:16:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, super lefty right, right there.
00:16:25
Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break and be right back on The Carol Markowitz Show.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: What are you most proud of in your life?
00:16:35
Speaker 4: I thought about this a long time because I obviously the first thing I want to say is my kids. I have three sons and they're all grown and two of them are married and I have two granddaughters.
00:16:44
Speaker 1: Oh, amazing.
00:16:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:16:45
Speaker 3: But then I'm thinking, I don't. I feel like God.
00:16:48
Speaker 4: Just gave me three amazing souls to be my children. And I really didn't have to do a whole lot. So I don't feel like I can be super proud of them.
00:16:57
Speaker 3: I hear you.
00:16:58
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:16:59
Speaker 4: But I am proud that they are each other's best friend. My two older boys are just over two years apart. And they fought like crazy when they were kids. And I thought they're never going to talk to each other when they're grown up. You know, my younger son is nine years between him and my oldest. So he's the He never really got beat up on by the other team.
00:17:19
Speaker 1: Right, right, yeah.
00:17:20
Speaker 4: But the older two, they talk to each other all day, every day. They have a podcast together focused on hockey.
00:17:27
Speaker 3: They're best friends.
00:17:29
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
00:17:29
Speaker 4: They're still best friends. And I'm going, okay, so I am proud that they're each other's best friends. And they help each other financially. Yeah, so I'm very proud that they are each other's best friends and that we just all love to be together.
00:17:45
Speaker 1: That is such an amazing outcome.
00:17:47
Speaker 2: That's really all that I'm rooting for, for my kids to grow up and get married and have kids and be friends with each other.
00:17:53
Speaker 1: And what else really is there? And when their.
00:17:56
Speaker 3: Spouses get along too, it's perfect. It's huge.
00:18:00
Speaker 2: But my 10-year-old, I was telling him that I have three questions that I ask all of my guests and I change it. I change the three questions every year. And this is my third set of questions. But I said to him that one of the questions is, what are you most proud of in your life? And I asked him, what are you most proud of in your life? And he said, my parents. And I was like, you had nothing to do with who your parents are.
00:18:18
Speaker 1: What are you proud of?
00:18:20
Speaker 2: But I realized it's the same thing as when I say I'm most proud of my kids. Like you're, you know, did you have an effect? Maybe, hopefully, you know, it couldn't just be presented. Give us a five year out prediction and it could be about anything at all.
00:18:39
Speaker 4: I'm really bad at any political predictions or even on my own life predictions because so many times I've looked back and said, if someone told me five years ago, this is what I'd be doing, I would have not believed them. So I think I'm going to say that the Dodgers will have another world championship in the next five years. Hopefully a couple more. I know people love to hate the Dodgers, but, you know, they're my teams.
00:19:01
Speaker 1: I'm from Brooklyn.
00:19:02
Speaker 2: So I have, even though, you know, obviously my family wasn't even in America yet when the Dodgers left, but I grew up with a sense of like, we have been betrayed by this team who left us.
00:19:12
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:19:13
Speaker 4: I feel it because when the Rams left LA for St. Louis for those years, like we were not allowed to talk about them in our house.
00:19:19
Speaker 3: And now that they're back in LA, you know. Yeah.
00:19:22
Speaker 1: When did the Dodgers last win?
00:19:24
Speaker 3: This year. Okay. Yeah.
00:19:26
Speaker 1: So what do you... Please, you guys with your Dodgers....
00:19:31
Speaker 4: I don't know how many people have teams that three-peated in baseball.
00:19:35
Speaker 3: I mean, I know basketball, there's been a few, but. Okay.
00:19:38
Speaker 2: I'm not, I don't follow baseball that closely, but so you, you guys have won two years in a row and now your prediction is a third one.
00:19:45
Speaker 4: Jennifer at some point in the next five years i'm not gonna say this next year but some all right.
00:19:50
Speaker 2: Five years starting to sound like the patriots who like you know had a few years off from going to the super bowl and really bitter about it but you know yeah all right maybe the dodgers come back in the next five and win another one yes i don't know if i'm gonna be rooting for that or not but.
00:20:07
Speaker 1: I'll think of you if it happens.
00:20:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:20:09
Speaker 2: All right.
00:20:10
Speaker 1: I've loved this conversation, Jennifer.
00:20:11
Speaker 2: This has been really great getting to know you. Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
00:20:20
Speaker 4: So it goes back to your question about what was my plan B. And around that time that I started writing, I realized that all the things that I'd done in my life that were most successful had to do with storytelling, whether it's laying out an investigative thing or even writing something more from a personal perspective. So I've told myself I'm a storyteller at heart and to just stay in that lane. Whatever I'm going to do has to be involved in telling a story. And that can take so many forms. So my advice for success or one tip for being happy is to find what it is that you're really good at that you feel like you're called to do and stay in that lane. Don't be influenced by what other people are doing or try to be somebody else.
00:21:01
Speaker 3: Be yourself and stick with that.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: I love that.
00:21:05
Speaker 2: I love the idea of sticking in your lane and do what you're really good at and don't let other people get in there or dissuade you from it.
00:21:13
Speaker 1: She's Jennifer Van Lark. Check her out at Red State. Thank you so much for coming on, Jennifer.
00:21:18
Speaker 3: Thank you.
