2-23-26 Afternoon Rush - Blake Lively Evidence Corrupted? & Another Epstein Arrest!
The Rush Hour With Dave Neal
Dave Neal
4.5 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rush Hour – Afternoon Episode
Go to rushhourwithdave.com for tickets to my upcoming Asheville NC, Stamford CT and Boston shows!
The headlines are moving fast, and we've got you covered.
This afternoon on Rush Hour:
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The latest in Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni as questions swirl after some of Blake's submitted evidence appears to have changed. What does it mean, who benefits, and is this case getting even messier behind the scenes?
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Donald Trump calls into the United States men's national ice hockey team — and the reaction is anything but celebratory. We break down the optics, the politics, and why social media erupted.
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Public outcry after Kash Patel is spotted in the team's locker room celebration. Who invited him, and why are critics calling it inappropriate?
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Another arrest connected to the Epstein files. What we know about the suspect, the charges, and whether the net is widening.
It's politics, pop culture, and power plays — all in one chaotic news cycle. Buckle up.
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. |
| 0:13.9 | Good afternoon, everybody. |
| 0:15.2 | On this Monday, it is February 23rd, 2026. |
| 0:18.7 | I have all of your news for your rush hour ride home, or maybe you're |
| 0:21.8 | already at home, snowed in, nestled up to the fireplace or the hot cocoa. If you're on the |
| 0:26.9 | East Coast getting battered by a blizzard, we'll discuss the blizzard. But first, Blake |
| 0:31.2 | Lively and Ryan Reynolds, did they add some extra demands to the demand sheet they sent Baldoni after he had already previously agreed to his demands. |
| 0:41.8 | We're going to discuss the manipulation that may have been going on. |
| 0:45.6 | Again, this will all come out in the upcoming trial if they do not settle. |
| 0:49.6 | Would be pretty smart to settle right now, but that takes two to tango. |
| 0:52.8 | So that'll be our first story. |
| 0:54.1 | We're also going to discuss the Olympics, the phone call going viral, where Donald Trump called |
| 0:59.5 | into the U.S. men's hockey team. And we'll have a little bit updates on the Epstein files, |
| 1:03.9 | lack of transparency, and Trump appointed judges that are stopping one of the special investigations |
| 1:10.1 | from receiving its transparency. How about |
| 1:12.9 | that? All this and more starts right now on the rush. So we're going to dive into Blake |
| 1:17.0 | Lively right away. And Blake Lively sent this list of demands to Justin Maldoni in order to resume |
| 1:24.8 | work on the set. This was seen by Wayfair Baldoni's camp as a sort of place of leverage. I'll come back if you stop doing X, Y, and Z. And they were saying, well, we didn't even do X, Y, and Z. We're contesting that, but we want them to come back. Do we sign? And she used that leverage. And again, ended up using that as kind of her main evidence when |
| 1:45.5 | it came to the New York Times article that completely blew Baldoni out of the water. Well, |
| 1:51.1 | now there's a lot of information circulating that Blake lively thought she was going to get away |
| 1:57.0 | with adding 13 points to the 17 point agreement. So here are the points that are in this, |
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