Mating in 2025 Is Totally Incomprehensible

Townhall 

I've been out of the game for about a quarter century. When I met Irina, it was the way normal people met their wives – at a friend's wedding. I think I went on one Internet date, and that was through some AOL chat room. No Tinder. No Bumble. And certainly no Grindr. It was the age when talking to a chick somewhere wasn't tantamount to assault. We were definitely not incels. We didn't know what the hell incels were.

That all changed during the ensuing quarter century. The current romantic nightmare for young people is the fallout of decades of leftist pathology in our society. It has essentially ruined the mate market for this generation. According to the statistics, kids don't go out much anymore. They don't party. They don't date. They can barely conduct a conversation with each other. That's not surprising because feminism teaches that anytime a man acts like a man and talks to a chick, he's channeling Ted Bundy.

But some of it has to do with chicks' attitudes toward guys – if you're not Instagramable, you're not dateable. You better be tall, you better be thin, you better be rich, and you better take her someplace exotic where she can do an awesome selfie. But that only seems to apply to guys. Apparently, body positivity, body modification, and a lack of body shaming have led to far too many women allowing themselves to become, frankly, gross. Many of them also become obnoxious – young men tell me a lot of women today are terrible. Not all of them – there are some great conservative ladies out there. There's gold in them thar hills; you just have to do a lot of panning. The rest? Yikes. Some are just skanky and have nose rings, while the whole girlboss vibe is one great big ED generator.

Let's not let the guys off the hook. Between Internet perversions, pot, and video games, we've created a generation of young males who don't feel compelled to go out and get themselves a chick like we used to do. We would totally talk to random girls in bars, at work, wherever. Sure, sometimes they shot you down, but who cares? There were two more coming along behind her, and they were probably hotter. We weren't emotionally fragile. If one girl didn't like you, who cares? She's someone else's problem. Start talking to her friend.

But apparently, young people don't talk to each other in person anymore. Fortunately, there is help. Unfortunately, it is coming from someone from our generation. And that's terrible, because our generation really has no idea what it's talking about. This is a very different world from the one we grew up in. We can be cavalier about how inept young people are today, but it's not clear at all that telling them just to do what we did is going to solve the problem. Guys acting like we did – hitting on girls was not a felony then – are going to get themselves Internet shamed if they don't get arrested. So, what do young people do?

Well, I hope they don't listen to Bill Ackman. You remember Bill, the billionaire liberal donor, who was stunned to find that his liberal friends all hated Jews and wanted them to die after October 7. He started paying attention and found that the institutions he had been giving zillions of dollars to were petri dishes of leftist social pathology. Now, he's no conservative, but the fact that he's not a complete woke leftist makes him code right-wing, and those nine zeros mean that people are going to listen to him. That's why his X feed gets play.

And what's his advice to young men? I'm not kidding about this. This is really what he said. Young men should approach women in bars and ask, "May I meet you?"

I want to repeat that because you just snorted at how stupid that sounds. He says young men should approach women and ask, "May I meet you?" I'm serious. Here's him saying it.

What kind of lunacy is this? What's the basis of his strategy? Is he targeting girls who want to be in a Jane Austin novel? Has a line this lame ever worked and recorded history to get you anything but laughed at?

Look, I'm sure it works for him. When you're a billionaire, you can say literally anything and it's freaking genius. "Would you like to come back to my mansion and look at my etchings?" is going to score him hotties. The only thing that Bill Ackman could say that could keep him from getting chicks is, "I'm going bankrupt."

To be fair, Bill points out he used this innovative technique when he was poor; of course, what a billionaire considers poor is likely different than what the rest of us consider poor. And who knows, maybe you'll meet a girl (or guy – he suggests women give it a try) who is into insane people and thinks this approach is great.

Now, for those who aren't billionaires, I'm afraid I don't have the answer. I wish I could share my wisdom and solve their problems, but I'm wise enough to know that young people really don't need to hear from me. I came from another time and from another America, and both were better than this one.

But if I were asked for advice, I'd probably tell them to be cool. Don't be a jerk. Don't be a creep. Be pleasant. Be smart. Be funny. And remember, if you can fake those things, you too might end up getting married to a hot girl just like I did.

Entertainment thread for Nov 19

 

Dreaming up something in your head doesn't mean you are crazy. It just means you are a dreamer.

Our Golden Age

Townhall 

We media types obsess about America's problems.

But we should acknowledge that today, life in America is better than life has been anywhere, ever.

For most of history, the norm was hunger, disease, illiteracy, slavery, and war.

There were a few exceptions (from some of those problems) -- so-called golden ages, Ancient Athens, Rome, the Renaissance, etc.

In our new video, historian Johan Norberg, author of the new book "Peak Human," looks at the miracle of the Roman Empire, which at one point extended throughout most of Europe, and parts of Africa and Asia.

Ancient Rome inspired our form of government, a republic with a system of checks and balances.

"There is a reason why we have a Senate and they meet in the Capitol," explains Norberg. "We borrow these ideas from the Romans."

The Romans were ferocious warriors, but so were many at the time. The Romans were able to create an empire because they tried new things:

"They gave people among the subjected the ability to have a second career in Rome," says Norberg. "They made them citizens and allowed them to do business, to have a career in the military. Some of the subjected people could even end up being emperors!"

"The conquered -- some became emperors?" I ask.

"The son of a freed slave eventually ended up on the throne of Rome. That tells you something about the power of meritocracy and of openness. You'll get the best brains if you're open to more people."

Rome thrived because the Romans took ideas and talent from all over the world.

They didn't do it to be kind.

"Tolerance was a weapon, often literally a weapon," Norberg explains. "They got their swords from the Spaniards, ships from Carthage, new business models from other groups. Because Rome was such a huge integrated free trade area, you could source the best material, the best technology from any part of the empire. Therefore, they could become the masters of the world."

Of course, eventually, Rome fell.

There were many reasons. Disease, barbarian invaders, and one reason that modern societies should fear: entitlement spending.

Norberg says Rome collapsed because of:

"Bread and circuses. The emperors wanted to become popular by handing out free stuff to people. Originally, this started small. You just handed the very poor means of subsistence. But it was popular, so the group that lived on the public's expense grew larger all the time. Emperors complained about this. Everyone from Caesar and onwards said, 'We've got to reform this system because it means that we have fewer people working and more people consuming.' But no one succeeded."

It reminds me of the unsustainable promises we see today: Social Security and Medicare in the U.S., absurd retirement promises in other countries -- welfare plans going broke.

"Once you have an ever-expanding system of entitlements that you can't afford," says Norberg, "that's often the beginning of the decline and fall ... Romans could conquer the world, but they couldn't do entitlement reform."

Instead, Roman emperors did what modern governments do: printed more money.

Actually, since they used coins, not paper money, they devalued their currency by putting less gold and silver in each coin.

"Inflation was much worse than barbarian invaders," says Norberg. "The emperor blamed greedy businessmen -- something that we hear today. He imposed price controls on 1,000 goods. But obviously, it all failed. Prices kept rising and undermined the Roman Empire completely."

Today, America is one of the richest and most inventive countries in the world. Will our "golden age" continue?

"One of the most worrying signs in history is you begin to take wealth and comfort for granted," says Norberg. "You forget what made it possible to begin with. I see a lot of worrying signs right now. We have a backlash against things that keep our society innovative, like trade, migration, unsustainable debts ... But that doesn't mean that we're doomed ... It's not automatic, this decline and fall phase. You can unleash new waves of innovation and progress. There is still time. We can still save this golden age."

Paid to Hate: CAIR Caught Handing Out $1,000 Checks to Campus Antisemites

 

By Teri Christoph  | 10:11 AM on November 19, 2025  |  RedState

If you've ever wondered how the hordes of antisemites who marauded across college campuses in the months after October 7 were able to afford being full-time haters and agitators, we have the answer for you: a radical Muslim group was cutting some of them $1,000 checks. Which radical Muslim group was doing this, you ask? The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), of course.

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RELATED: Don't Mess With Texas: Gov. Abbott Drops Hammer on 'Radical' Muslim Groups in Lone Star State

UK ‘Journo’ Who Cheered Hamas Massacre Gets One-Way Ticket Home Courtesy of ICE

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An explosive new report from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN) confirms that CAIR, and specifically its California chapter, was cutting checks to students who faced penalties or disciplinary consequences for their pro-Hamas campus "activism." 

Who knew being a marauding hatemonger paid so well? It turns out, unsurprisingly, that progressive Californians opened their wallets to help out the men and women who turned college campuses into violent, chaotic minefields of antisemitism.

The cash was awarded from a “Champions of Justice Fund,” set up by the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) as “institutional endorsement,” the report claims.

In California, the largest arm of the CAIR web of nonprofits, affiliates in San Francisco and Los Angeles raised more than $100,000 in donations for campus radicals, while the main group solicited $64,000 in donations, records show.

As is often the case, the devil is in the details. The money was offered as "interest free loans in grants of $1,000 to students" who, according to CAIR's website, lost "scholarships, housing or other support because of their advocacy." In other words, these were rewards handed out under the guise of loans and scholarships – the money was never intended to be repaid.

In October 2024, CAIR-CA awarded $20,000 in loans and scholarships to 20 student protestors from the “Champions of Justice Fund.”

The identities of the student recipients have never been revealed, but the institutions they attend were in CAIR’s literature, and included Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard.

What CAIR calls "advocacy," the rest of us call thuggery. And while we don't know the names of those who were on the receiving end of CAIR's largesse, we do know the chaos, fear, and intimidation they wrought on college campuses.

CAIR has been in the headlines quite a bit recently. They made a big stink last month when a British journalist they brought to the U.S. for a nationwide speaking tour was detained and deported by Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officials after it was discovered he had a history of making inflammatory anti-Israel comments. Their guy, it turned out, had gone to London mosque soon after October 7 and urged congregants to "celebrate the victory." 

And on Tuesday, as reported by RedState's Mike Miller, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) designated CAIR a foreign terrorist organization. That label is entirely warranted, judging by the group's history and this new revelation that the masked radicals chanting for intifada and menacing Jewish students on college campuses were its subsidized foot soldiers.

AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura

The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

The Democrat Party And The Death Of Western Civilization

American  Thinker 

Will the death of Western Civilization occur while the United States is the global hegemon and unquestioned leader of the West? Due to Euro-socialism and decades of unfettered Islamic immigration, virtually all the nations of Western Europe are swept up in seemingly irreversible death spirals. When combined with the pathological anti-American and anti-West mindset now dominating in the Democrat party, the answer to that question, increasingly, is yes.

The American Marxist fifth column has long been part of the global cabal of Marxists and their de facto Islamic allies, as both have a common objective: to destroy Western Civilization. As such, they have been determined to undermine the United States as the titular leader of the West, knowing that when it falls, so will all of Western Civilization.

They understood, due to America’s unique governmental structure and two-party political system, that a two-step approach would be required to achieve their twin goals of demolishing the West and transforming the United States into a socialist one-party oligarchy. The first and most important step would be to take over the Democrat party; the second, to destabilize America’s unique society, which would include altering the racial, ethnic, and cultural makeup of the native population by encouraging a massive influx of unassimilable immigrants from third-world countries.

That process began in the 1990s and was dramatically accelerated in 2008 with Barack Obama’s election. Obama became the American president as a man with a Muslim (Islamic) childhood, which was also steeped in the Marxism and anti-Americanism of Frank Marshall Davis. To that, Obama later added his biological father’s rabid anti-colonialism. This combination of influences effectively reinforced his manifest belief that America, as the current Western superpower, represents the evil nature of Western Civilization and capitalism’s exploitation of the masses.

The Marxist aspect of this mindset insisted that the intellectual, material, and military success of America and the West could only have come about through expropriating the wealth and labor of the world’s peoples. To right this wrong, that which is defined as Western Civilization must be destroyed and replaced. However, this can occur only if the United States is dismantled.

The mindset of Barack Obama and his ever-growing legion of ideological fellow-travelers is such that they must not only transform the United States but also destroy any vestiges of its accomplishments. By doing so, they, in their addled thinking, claim to seek revenge for the alleged transgressions of the fictitious “White Race.”

The ongoing chaos in the United States since Obama took office in 2009 is a direct result of Obama and his army of fellow malcontents unabashedly, aggressively, and successfully transforming the Democrat party. The litany of declared Marxist-inspired policies, the recent election of the anti-West Islamist Zoran Mamdani, and the explosion of “Democrat Socialist” candidates and office holders under the banner of the Democrat party attest to the reality that the party is irrevocably steeped in anti-Americanism.

The second part of the anti-Western grand strategy has been to attack America’s unique culture. Activists have experienced extraordinary success by employing the following tactics:

• tribalizing the American populace by race and ethnicity through an incessant drumbeat of the iniquities of the so-called white race and its attendant “white supremacy and privilege,” while also maliciously polarizing the citizenry by labeling as fascists anyone who opposes the Islamo-socialists’ agenda,
• infiltrating academia to indoctrinate the younger generations about America’s supposed role in the evils of exploitation and “colonialism,”
• collapsing the economy through the manipulation of unsubstantiated “climate change,” an equally fatuous “green agenda,” and utopian socialism,
• undermining the Judeo-Christian foundation of the nation while acquiescing to the demands of the Islamic population,
• manipulating the voting process to achieve permanent government power,
• flooding the nation with untold millions of illegal immigrants, especially from Islamic countries, who will refuse to assimilate and will create massive dislocations in society.

But by far their most potent weapon to transform America and decapitate the West is the takeover of the Democrat party. Due to America’s winner-take-all political system, federalism, and disbursement of governmental power, it can only function with two major political parties. It is impossible for a third party to achieve any political influence.

Therefore, by controlling the Democrat party and using any means fair or foul to demonize and undermine the Republican Party, as well as deliberately sowing chaos throughout the nation when the Republicans are in power, Islamo-socialists can be certain the electorate has no viable option except the Democrat party.

That has been the basis of their political strategy over the past eighteen years, including the increasingly hysterical and fictitious attacks aimed at Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Leftists know they cannot win elections based on policies or accomplishments, but they can win if they focus on fomenting anger and resentment against the Republican Party and its candidates, simply because there is no other option to turn to except not voting, which also plays into their hands.

The Democrats also count on those on the right side of the political spectrum who are obsessed with ideological purity and are, in many cases, single-issue voters who will either abstain from voting or, in a fit of pique, vote for the Libertarian Party (which only serves to aid the Democrats). Rather than resolve the issue of acceptable candidates by participating in the all-important primaries, the norm is that only 20% of conservative or Republican votersbother to show up.

The election of Donald Trump and a Republican Congress in 2024 marks what may well be the last chance to avoid the abyss facing the United States. Only a powerful Republican government for the next three years can stop the Marxist-controlled Democrat party from assuming power, either after the 2026 midterms or in 2028, and fully effectuating their plans.

As Democrats revealed by their willingness to create economic mayhem with a record-setting 43-day government shutdown to undermine the Trump presidency, it is virtually certain that they will end the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, establish more Senate seats, import untold millions more third-world immigrants, rig the 2030 census to create more House seats, and never relinquish power. (Regarding the filibuster, both Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, the only people blocking the last effort, are gone.)

Yet far too many conservative or right-of-center elected officials, so-called “influencers” and commentators, and thus, the bulk of conservative/moderate voters, blithely refuse to accept the reality that it is not Communist China or Putin’s Russia that is the greatest threat to the United States. Instead, it is the Democrat party. Either because of ignorance or self-absorption, they refuse to understand that, due to America’s political system, an anti-American Marxist Democrat party is poised to take over America permanently if the right-of-center citizenry does not turn out in massive numbers to vote for the Republicans in any general election.

Instead, these influencers and commentators, in their egomaniacal avarice, focus on ideological purity, rambling on about Jeffrey Epstein, initiating or promoting inane conspiracy theories, denigrating Christianity, wallowing in antisemitism, or conducting friendly and nonconfrontational interviews with malevolent self-serving malcontents such as neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and pseudo-historian and Hitler apologist, Darryl Cooper.

This is not the Democrat party of thirty or even twenty years ago. It is a party determined to transform this nation and destroy the foundations of Western Civilization. Because of federalism and its overwhelmingly successful 250-year history as a capitalist-based constitutional republic, they will never succeed in peacefully transforming the United States into a one-party socialist oligarchy. However, it’s very likely that they will succeed in violently fracturing the nation, fomenting civil conflict, and hastening the death of Western Civilization.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

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The Boys Are Back

Townhall 

Elon Musk was spotted attending dinner at the White House with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday night, in his first official appearance with the president since they bitterly parted ways earlier this year.

It is Musk's first appearance at the White House since his public feud with President Trump over the "Big Beautiful Bill," with the most powerful man in the world and the wealthiest man in the world trading blows on X. Musk even made threats to establish a third party, the America party, although that never materialized.

They were last seen together at Charlie Kirk's funeral in Arizona.

Elon Musk was called to head up the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which sought to uproot waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government. Musk left that position at the end of May this year, having only been allowed to hold that position for 130 days. He has since shifted his attention back to his company's, mainly Tesla and SpaceX, which took a major hit at the beginning of the year.

“He had a bad moment,” Mr. Trump said on Air Force One towards the end of October. “It was a stupid moment in his life, very stupid. I like Elon and suspect I will always like him.”

EPA’s Proposed WOTUS Rule Aims To Keep Feds Out Of The Puddle-Monitoring Business

The soon-to-be-replaced significant nexus rule meant a ditch in a rainstorm or pooling water that occurs only in the rainy season could be grounds for the federal government preventing land use.

The Federalist

The Trump administration is about to curb an overzealous Obama-era environmental regulation by revising the definition of “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) under the Clean Water Act.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin and Adam Telle, assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, introduced a proposed WOTUS rule change Monday that is meant to establish a clear, durable definition of the rule that won’t be changed every time a new administration comes in. There will be 45 days of public comment on the proposed rule once it is published.

A rule change was ordered in 2023 after the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Sackett v. EPA. The Biden administration issued an amended WOTUS rule that year, but that action did not allow for public input and failed to fully implement the court’s direction to conform to the court’s new, limited interpretation of WOTUS, according to an EPA press release.

To understand how all this relates to land use and puddles of water that develop during heavy rains, it helps to go back to 2015, when the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers promulgated the Clean Water Rule, which included the “significant nexus” standard. It called for protection of all waters with a significant nexus to “downstream traditional navigable waters.” The result was that a lot of land that was usable before the rule became useless.

In Sackett v. EPA, the Sacketts bought a residential lot but were prevented from building a house on it because the land had wetlands leading to a creek that led to a lake. The EPA decided the wetlands were considered a “significant nexus” of the navigable WOTUS. At one point, the EPA threatened the Sacketts with $40,000-a-day fines. But the Supreme Court ruled in their favor in 2023.  

The significant nexus rule meant that a ditch in a rainstorm, a tiny creek that only occasionally appears, or pooling water that occurs only in the rainy season could prevent land use. The definition of WOTUS has been unclear, and the consequences for landowners were immense, especially in agriculture.

“For too long there’s been a great deal of uncertainty about this term, Waters of the United States Rule. Unfortunately, it left many people holding the bag — farmers, contractors, small business owners — guessing whether their ephemeral stream or a backyard ditch was going to be classified as a Waters of the United States Rule, and potentially subject them to significant penalties,” West Virginia Gov. Patrick James Morrisey said Monday in Washington, D.C., during an event promoting the proposed rule. He called the old rule a “textbook example of federal overreach.”

According to a press release, these are the key proposed revisions:

•Defining key terms like “relatively permanent,” “continuous surface connection,” and “tributary” to appropriately delineate the scope of WOTUS consistent with the Clean Water Act and Supreme Court precedent;

•Establishing that jurisdictional tributaries must connect to traditional navigable waters either directly or through other features that provide predictable and consistent flow;

•Reaffirming that wetlands must be indistinguishable from jurisdictional waters through a continuous surface connection, which means that they must touch a jurisdictional water and hold surface water for a requisite duration year after year;

•Strengthening state and tribal decision-making authority by providing clear regulatory guidelines while recognizing their expertise in local land and water resources;

•Preserving and clarifying exclusions for certain ditches, prior converted cropland, and waste treatment systems; Adding a new exclusion for groundwater; and

•Incorporating locally familiar terminology, such as “wet season,” to help determine whether a water body qualifies as WOTUS.

Zeldin said Monday that he expects the proposed simplified WOTUS definition will bring relief and happiness to landowners who have been looking for a “simple, prescriptive definition that the whole country can operate off of, and would allow individuals to know whether or not there’s a Water of the United States without having to go hire an attorney or a consultant — having to pay someone to tell them.”

Jamie Raskin Gives Shameful Defense of Democrat Colleague's Collusion With Epstein

RedState 

Democrat Representative Jamie Raskin (MD-8) just gave what possibly could be the most disgusting and most shameful defense for his colleague, Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), who colluded with Jeffrey Epstein during a congressional hearing about President Donald Trump in 2019.

During proceedings on the House floor on Tuesday, the House considered a resolution that would censure Plaskett following the revelation of a string of text messages between the non-voting Virgin Island delegate and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2019. The revelation came following the latest dump of documents in relation to Epstein — obtained by the House Oversight committee from his estate. Keep in mind that at the time, he was a convicted pedophile and the allegations about him were all over the news, as RedState reported. 

Raskin spoke on Plaskett's behalf and said that she did nothing wrong when she was in communication with Epstein in the middle of the Trump hearing, taking his suggestions on questions. 

"Well, they want to give them another headline, which is that they've arraigned a Democratic member for taking a phone call from her constituent, Jeffrey Epstein, in the middle of a hearing. And of course I don't think there's any rule here against taking phone calls in a hearing," Raskin said. 

When it was Plaskett's turn, she used the same lame defense and said that Epstein was simply her constituent. The Virgin Islands is where Epstein's infamous island, Little St. James, is located.

"I got a text from Jeffrey Epstein, who at the time was my constituent," Plaskett explained, "Who...was not public knowledge at that time, that he was under federal investigation, and who was sharing information with me."

In the end, following the debate regarding the proposed censure of Plaskett, the House opted to postpone the vote. 

And just what kind of information did Epstein and Plaskett share? Let's look at just what that entailed, as my colleague Nick Arama reported following the Washington Post bombshell.

Arama wrote:

He's texting about "RONA" [an assistant to Trump named Rhona Graff], and then Plaskett asks about her. 

"RONA??" Plaskett responded. "Quick I'm up next is that an acronym," she added, suggesting she would question Cohen soon.

"Thats his assistant," Epstein replied.

Arama wrote that after Plaskett asked the question about "RONA," Epstein texted, "Good work." 

At 10:02 a.m., Epstein texted Plaskett: "Great outfit."

"You look great," he added at 10:22 a.m. "Thanks!" she replied shortly afterward.

At around 10:40 a.m., a broadcast feed cut to Plaskett, showing her moving her mouth as if she were chewing something.

At 10:41 a.m., Epstein sent this message to Plaskett: "Are you chewing"

"Not any more," she replied. "Chewing interior of my mouth. Bad habit from middle school"

At 12:50 p.m., Epstein asks: "How much longer for you"

"Hours. Go to other mtgs," she replied.

Following the release of the Post piece, Plaskett released a statement. The comments were similar to what she said on Tuesday about how she had "received texts from staff, constituents and the public at large offering advice, support and in some cases partisan vitriol, including from Epstein."