2-17-26 Afternoon Rush - Blake Lively Calls Justin Baldoni A CULT In Wild New Texts & James Talarico Cancelled From Late Night TV!

The Rush Hour With Dave Neal

Dave Neal

Society & Culture, Relationships

4.5 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rush Hour – Afternoon Update

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The drama keeps escalating in Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni as newly unsealed text messages reveal Blake calling Justin a "cult member." We break down what was said, what it means for the case, and how this could shift public opinion in a major way.

Meanwhile, the political world looks just as chaotic. We unpack what critics are calling the "cult of" Donald Trump, as Trump reportedly turns on one of his own — blasting Marjorie Taylor Greene and labeling her a traitor. What's behind the fallout? Power play or panic?

Plus, rising Democratic voice James Talarico faces backlash and cancellation attempts — we look at what sparked it and whether it sticks.

Hollywood feuds, political fractures, and cancel culture chaos — let's get into it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the rush hour. Your daily dose of pop culture for your rush hour ride.
0:07.7	Buckle up and enjoy the drive with your host, stand-up comedian Dave Neal.
0:13.7	Good afternoon, everybody, on this Tuesday, February 17th, 2026. I have all of your news for your rush hour ride home. First story of the day will cover
0:22.7	Blake Lively versus Justin Baldoni as new text messages have been unsealed, revealing Blake
0:28.7	lively, basically telling everybody she knows that Justin Baldoni is in a cult. And she smears his
0:35.7	religion, all because she calls him a faux feminist and so much.
0:39.8	I'm going to share these messages with you. It's insane. Even after a year of covering this,
0:44.1	I'm still surprised. Back half of the episode, we're going to cover some more insane things that
0:49.4	are going on at the detention facilities in Texas, at Dilley Detention. Apparently, they're scooping up the letters that the detainee children are writing to the
0:59.4	outside world.
1:00.5	It's dystopian.
1:01.5	It's a nightmare, but we're here to expose it.
1:03.7	We'll have all that and more.
1:04.8	It's coming up right now on the rush.
1:06.6	Okay, so first things first.
1:08.4	Let's dive into these text messages.
1:10.4	The attack on Justin Baldoni and his Baha'i faith. You know, we've been covering the Baha'i faith, and I have to say we've had a lot of Baha'i folks reach out saying, oh, you're doing a pretty good job of trying to like understand what it's all about. And, you know, the more I hear about the Baha'i faith, the more lovely I think it is. It, you know,
1:28.3	essentially says that all of the different religions all served a purpose at their point in time, and they're all about bringing together the common good with a shared purpose of love and not, you know, hating people because they have a different God they preach to. It's actually, I think, what we need now more than ever.
1:44.6	I'm not here to sell you on the Baha'i faith, but it seems as though Baldoni and all those around
1:49.7	him were operating with the backing of that faith, operating with the idea that they wanted
1:55.8	to make projects that shared a positive message. Blake Lively wasn't buying it.
2:02.2	And of course, Ryan Reynolds wasn't either,
	...

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