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Speaker 1: Pig Mike did my taxes last night, one big beautiful

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Speaker 1: bill head on. I got an extra six grand back

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Speaker 1: because I camped down on the overtime.

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Speaker 2: And uh, I don't like to see a time slide.

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Speaker 1: I can't listen to the show for yours or kind

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Speaker 1: of after yours house, so I have to flip plump

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Speaker 1: around one no good day. Well, with that six thousand

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Speaker 1: dollars that you got back, you could you could go

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Speaker 1: buy a phone and put the podcast app on there,

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Speaker 1: or you could put the iHeart app on there and

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Speaker 1: you could stream or listen to the podcast and you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have to flip flumb.

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Speaker 2: Hey, isn't that the free to you I heard app?

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Speaker 2: Isn't that a free to you?

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Speaker 1: Yes? Free to you? Yes. We always like to mention

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Speaker 1: free to you because somebody paid for it, but you don't,

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Speaker 1: so yes. Or yesterday was the six year anniversary of fouch.

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Speaker 1: You met cabal deciding that they were going to bury

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Speaker 1: the lab leak theory because they were it really had

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Speaker 1: had something to do with communist China, yes, but had

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Speaker 1: more to do with protecting their reputations, protecting the secrecy

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Speaker 1: of what they were doing. The money laundering scheme with

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Speaker 1: eco Health. It had to do with all of that,

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Speaker 1: and to this day we still suffer from the consequences

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Speaker 1: of that. So I went through and it's obvious. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if you think we were a stupid nation before, we're

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Speaker 1: a stupider nation today, dumb and dumber, dumb and dumber.

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Speaker 1: So we went through those, But have you thought about

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Speaker 1: the economic and the workforce consequences of that phone call

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Speaker 1: and everything that emanated from that phone call we had

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Speaker 1: the In fact, I was just talking to one of

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Speaker 1: our salespeople that used to be here is back and

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Speaker 1: we were talking about the changes out there in the pit,

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Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, they've slowly tried to bring people back,

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Speaker 1: but you know it's still not as of course, I

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Speaker 1: know a lot of people are gone too, but there's

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Speaker 1: not quite as many as what used to be. So

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Speaker 1: you'll you'll find it's a little quieter than usual, so

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Speaker 1: you might actually be able to do some work. But

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Speaker 1: what they really did, the whole work from home in

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Speaker 1: Richmond created a bifurcated economy because if you're a knowledge worker,

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Speaker 1: you got flexibility, but if you're a service worker, you

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Speaker 1: couldn't get that flexibility. So that contributed to the kind

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Speaker 1: of the hollowing out of the urban core the central

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Speaker 1: business districts. In most cities, commercial and real estate collapse.

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Speaker 1: And so what you really have is a a resentment

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Speaker 1: between what I would call the laptop class and the

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Speaker 1: lunch pale class, and that continues today. We got the

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Speaker 1: supply chain fragility. We discovered, Oh, just in time. We were

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Speaker 1: always talked to about, all, it's so efficient, we have

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Speaker 1: just in time inventory. Well, just in time inventory has

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Speaker 1: zero resilience. So we've We've reshored some and Trump is

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Speaker 1: trying to reshure even more, but we're still vulnerable. And

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Speaker 1: the Infamo, the baby formula crisis of twenty twenty two

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Speaker 1: showed that we really didn't learn anything. The labor force

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Speaker 1: participation rate. Millions of workers, particularly women and older workers,

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Speaker 1: just left the workforce and they haven't come back. Some

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Speaker 1: took early retirement, others became long term caregivers, and some

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Speaker 1: are dealing with long COVID. The participant the participation rate

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Speaker 1: still has not recovered to what it was in twenty nineteen,

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Speaker 1: just fewer people working now. I know that part of

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Speaker 1: that also is because baby boomers are aging, and baby

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Speaker 1: boomers are starting to leave the work force. But still

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Speaker 1: it accelerated everything, and it caused some on the margins

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Speaker 1: to go ahead and leave anyway, and think about small businesses.

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Speaker 1: Cam and I went to a little place, a little

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Speaker 1: hole in the wall barbecue place for lunch yesterday, and

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Speaker 1: even she noted how, in fact her calm it was

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Speaker 1: something to the effect, how pathetic this little strip mall

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Speaker 1: has become over the years. Well, well, you know the

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Speaker 1: large corporations too big to fail, they got bail outs

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Speaker 1: and they thrived. The government picked winners and losers, and

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Speaker 1: when they picked the losers, count the small businesses ended

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Speaker 1: up closing permanently. The mom and pop restaurant, the bookstore,

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Speaker 1: the dry cleaners, they didn't come back, and those spaces

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Speaker 1: are still vacant, or they become some sort of corporate chain,

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Speaker 1: or come Halloween time they'll fill up with Halloween or

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Speaker 1: Christmas time, it will be Christmas crap. It changes the

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Speaker 1: community character, all of that because that stupid phone call.

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Speaker 1: Then think about what it did to us socially and culturally. Now,

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Speaker 1: all the others bugged me, but this one really kind

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Speaker 1: of bugs me the most. Beyond the lack of trust

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Speaker 1: now in public health, trust in media, government, trust in

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Speaker 1: so called experts has cratered. The pandemic became the ultimate

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Speaker 1: Warshock test where people's priors were confirmed and hardened. So

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Speaker 1: now we're more siloed, we're more tribal. And I know

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Speaker 1: that politics was already driving that, but COVID just accelerated it.

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Speaker 1: A mental health crisis. I think the entire country needs antidepressants,

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Speaker 1: we need ketamine, we need something. We all need a big,

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Speaker 1: giant group therapy of some sort because anxiety depression suicide rates,

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Speaker 1: particularly among teens and young adults. Why, because of isolation

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Speaker 1: during their formative years had profound effects on those kids. Therapy,

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Speaker 1: weightless doctor, weightless, months long. And we're seeing the consequences

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Speaker 1: and behavioral problems, substance abuse, social withdrawal, everywhere. It just

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Speaker 1: it just cut it just cut the guts out of

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Speaker 1: a well functioning society. And in terms of social skills.

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Speaker 1: Oh maybe this is a function I clearly admit. Maybe

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Speaker 1: it's a function of we're Last week the word curmudgeon

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Speaker 1: came up. Where'd they come up? Dragon? We somehowped curmudgeon

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Speaker 1: came up in our conversation.

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Speaker 2: It was like National Curmudgeon Day. Sometime last week.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so I had a national holiday. Why didn't I

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Speaker 1: get that day off?

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Speaker 2: I told you about it, well as you walked in, Well, why.

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Speaker 1: Can't you tell me about it before? Because that was

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Speaker 1: probably my work day, That was probably a day off

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Speaker 1: for me, and I didn't know it.

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Speaker 2: Because I wanted you ask to come in exactly.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, so I know that my curmudgeonous whatever it is,

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Speaker 1: probably has been exacerbated by everything. But still, we have adults,

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Speaker 1: peoples that are adults who spent one or two years

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Speaker 1: barely interacting with anybody else. In fact, some of them

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Speaker 1: even reports they forgot how to make small talk, how

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Speaker 1: to navigate social situations, how to even maintain a friendship.

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Speaker 1: Dating became most almost entirely app based for a generation

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Speaker 1: that missed all the crucial in person social learning. What

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Speaker 1: are they going to be like when they get to

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Speaker 1: be may you had marriages that got postponed, pregnancies delayed,

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Speaker 1: career moves frozen, that compressed everything, which means that services

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Speaker 1: and infrastructure are now dealing with bulges. Suddenly everybody wants

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Speaker 1: to get married, everybody wants to have kids, everybody wants

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Speaker 1: to buy houses simultaneously, and now we look at the market,

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Speaker 1: and then remote everything got normalized. It's kind of funny

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Speaker 1: how even in this business, remote everything became normalized. I

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Speaker 1: can remember pre COVID, if I wanted to do my

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Speaker 1: weekday program or the nationally syndicated weekend program from the

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Speaker 1: House of New Mexico, Oh my gosh, had you get

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Speaker 1: like fifteen thousand approvals? And then it was like, oh,

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Speaker 1: the ringing of hands, of the nashing of teeth, oh early,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Now it's just kind of like, oh,

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Speaker 1: are you underday? Oh yeah, whatever, It doesn't mean the difference.

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Speaker 1: What does that do though? Not for me? But what

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Speaker 1: does it do if you remote? If you normalize everything

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Speaker 1: being remote, well, that means we accept isolation as the default.

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Speaker 1: Doctor's appointments, telemedicine, therapy, job interviews all on screens. Now,

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Speaker 1: it might be efficient, but you're losing the human connection

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Speaker 1: and in doing that, you lose the ability to read

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Speaker 1: non verbal cure use. If you could see me in

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Speaker 1: this studio when I'm when I'm doing what I'm doing

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Speaker 1: right now, dragon will tell you that my facial expressions,

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Speaker 1: my eyes, my hands, everything's moving all at once, because

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Speaker 1: that's just the way that's the way I do normally.

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Speaker 1: So I had a I had a team's call with

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Speaker 1: someone last week that within the company that I haven't

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Speaker 1: talked to in quite sometime, and one I was shocked

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Speaker 1: by her her inability to kind of come through the screen.

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Speaker 1: It was just as if there was there was a

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Speaker 1: screen between this. It was really odd someone that I

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Speaker 1: know pretty well. It's just like, wait a minute, come on,

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Speaker 1: break out of your shell. Break out of your shell.

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Speaker 1: So that's affected us in our day to day lives.

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Speaker 1: Now let's go to something else that really bugs me.

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Speaker 1: Government and civil liberties. Think about the precedent that was

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Speaker 1: set when it comes to emergency powers. All of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: governors and a bunch of bureaucrats and health departments discovered

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Speaker 1: they had extraordinary powers. And by golly, when you got

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Speaker 1: extraordinary powers, we're going to use them. So the precedent

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Speaker 1: for the lockdowns, to close businesses, to pick winners and losers,

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Speaker 1: to restrict movement is now established. Now, whether you support

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Speaker 1: those measures or not, this isn't making any difference to me,

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Speaker 1: because we've crossed the rubicon, and next time they'll be

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Speaker 1: even quicker to implement it, and probably even stricter in

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Speaker 1: trying to enforce it, and that will lead to even

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Speaker 1: more civil discord. All because of that stupid, dumbass phone

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Speaker 1: call six years ago yesterday, and the deficit. We've spent trillions,

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Speaker 1: some necessary, granted I some of it may have been necessary,

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Speaker 1: most of it wasteful. And then the combination of stimulus checks,

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Speaker 1: the Payroll Protection Plan program, that fraud that was at

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Speaker 1: least two hundred billion dollars or more. We expanded unemployment.

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Speaker 1: That created massive depth. It will be servicing for decades.

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Speaker 1: That constrains our future policy options when it comes to

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Speaker 1: monetary and fiscal policy. It just goes on and on.

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Speaker 1: And then you got the regulatory state, the deep state

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Speaker 1: agencies like the CDC OSHA. They claimed authorities that were

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Speaker 1: legally dubious. Now, of course, eventually struck down some of

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Speaker 1: the ocean vaccine mandates, but the inclination to use emergency

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Speaker 1: declarations to circumvent a normal regulatory process is now a

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Speaker 1: muscle memory for those bureaucrats. Criminal justice policing, deferred justice.

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Speaker 1: Where do you think all of the current no bail policies,

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Speaker 1: no jail time, where do you think that came from?

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Speaker 1: Do you think that came because they really care about

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Speaker 1: illegal aliens, or do you think that came about No,

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Speaker 1: what it did was it gave all of those liberal

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Speaker 1: numb nuts that were already buried within the system. It

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Speaker 1: gave them the opportunity to implement their own personal political philosophy.

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Speaker 1: Courts shut down, trials got postponed. Backlogs are massive. Criminal

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Speaker 1: defenders waited for years for the day in court. Civil

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Speaker 1: cases are backlogged into twenty twenty six, and some jurisdictions

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Speaker 1: they're just now starting to catch up. The twenty twenty

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Speaker 1: crime surge wasn't solely because of defund the police. COVID

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Speaker 1: disrupted intervention programs, It closed the w rec centers, It

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Speaker 1: eliminated mentorship opportunities for at risk use. Those kids are

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Speaker 1: now deeper into the system and they'll probably never escape

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Speaker 1: the system, and we pushed them there prison release early.

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Speaker 1: Remember before I go into the prison, I should have

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Speaker 1: said this at the beginning when I talked about criminal justice.

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Speaker 1: When I use the term muscle memory. It made me

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Speaker 1: think of this. Once a bureaucrat, just like a government program,

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Speaker 1: Once a bureaucrat learns that, oh I can flex this

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Speaker 1: and I won't get any pushback, they'll be more prone

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Speaker 1: to flex it again and again and again, and every

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Speaker 1: time they flex it, they'll flex that muscle memory just

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Speaker 1: a little further, just a little bit, just a little bit,

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Speaker 1: till it hurts until somebody pushes back. And that's what

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Speaker 1: happened with prisons early release programs. So we got to

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Speaker 1: prevent COVID from spreading in prisons that put thousands on

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Speaker 1: the street, and put thousands on the street, and there

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Speaker 1: was no support system. There was no re entry program

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Speaker 1: because those were shut down too, so recidivism predictably skyrocketed.

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Speaker 1: Having gotten international relations, China began its ascendancy while we

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Speaker 1: were fighting over masks and and locked down. China rebounded faster,

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Speaker 1: They expanded their belt and road influence. The pandemic accelerated

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Speaker 1: the shift toward a multipolar world where American leadership is questioned,

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Speaker 1: Supply chain vulnerabilities, dependency on Chinese manufacturing became undeniable. The

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Speaker 1: friends shoring and decoupling policies that were now pursuing our

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Speaker 1: direct responses with implications for trade policies, costs international corporate cooperation,

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Speaker 1: and they'll go on for decades now. Science, macademia, non

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Speaker 1: cos of research came to a halt. Cancer trials, Alzheimer's research,

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Speaker 1: physics experiments all posed. We probably lost I don't know,

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Speaker 1: at least two years of progress on thousands of important

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Speaker 1: medical questions because all the money suddenly went to Oh

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Speaker 1: we got to go put it into stars gourv too.

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Speaker 1: It's just like what it is exactly parallel to what

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Speaker 1: I experienced post nine to eleven. Post nine to eleven,

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Speaker 1: we had all sorts of programs to help state and

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Speaker 1: local governments to mitigate and prepare for disasters. But post

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Speaker 1: nine to eleven everything got focused on terrorism. So all

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Speaker 1: of that money dried up. And so what did people do? Well, oh,

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Speaker 1: now we got to put ballers in front of federal buildings. Right.

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Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's not a bad is a good

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Speaker 1: thing or a bad thing. I'm just saying that suddenly

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Speaker 1: people's priorities changed. And now with mitigation. Oh so if

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Speaker 1: and we don't, but if we had more frequent storms,

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Speaker 1: and if we had rising sea levels, and if we

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Speaker 1: had a changing climate, which we do because it always will,

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Speaker 1: there's no money to mitigate against that changing climate, because oh,

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Speaker 1: we spent money on other things, just like you know,

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Speaker 1: cancer research has been put behind, all Zheimer's put behind,

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Speaker 1: all the physics. Things have been put behind. So the

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Speaker 1: through line here is pretty simple. We made a series

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Speaker 1: of emergency decisions based on that phone call. Now, a

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Speaker 1: few might have been necessary, but most were and a

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Speaker 1: lot was politically motivated, and we're now living with second

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Speaker 1: and third order effects. Policymakers, Congress, state legislators, they won't

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Speaker 1: consider it, they don't care about it in the moment,

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Speaker 1: And in fact, I would I would venture that many

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Speaker 1: Republicans and certainly almost all you know, communist, socialist Marxist Democrats,

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Speaker 1: actually see what they were able to do and subtly

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Speaker 1: try to expand that into every area of our lives

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Speaker 1: that they possibly can. We borrow from the future in

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Speaker 1: dozens of ways, and that bill will come do in

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Speaker 1: a less educated society, hired that institutional distrust, social fragmentation

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Speaker 1: that will take at least a generation to repair. And

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Speaker 1: I would add if it can be repaired at all

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Speaker 1: simply because of a phone call, a phone call in

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Speaker 1: which bureaucrats unanswerable, well not completely unanswerable, because Congress could

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Speaker 1: have held them accountable, This Department of Justice could have

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Speaker 1: held them accountable. Their superiors could have held them accountable,

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Speaker 1: but they didn't. They turned to follow the science idea

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Speaker 1: into a conversation end as I said in the Last

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Speaker 1: Hour Starskov two, and all of the ramifications event became

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Speaker 1: the equival of the word racist or racism or sexism

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Speaker 1: or any sort of phobia. It was meant to shut

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Speaker 1: down debate. So they didn't just lie about the origin

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Speaker 1: of the virus. They built an entirely new kind of religion,

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Speaker 1: and they excommunicated any of us who questioned that new religion.

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Speaker 1: And it's now becoming better in our society. So if

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Speaker 1: you have a chance, I read Matt Ridley's on X

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Speaker 1: who ever everybody has to say February one, twenty twenty

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Speaker 1: a teleconference that well, just a basic scientific cover up

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Speaker 1: that we're still suffering from. First, I'm buying more guns

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Speaker 1: and amba with my six strand. And secondly, I do

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Speaker 1: have to add have a great day and you're listening, yay.

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Speaker 2: But it's difficult for it, Michael. So go back to

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Speaker 2: your old time slot, would you now?

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Speaker 1: I love this time slot.

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Speaker 2: Great for me too. I don't get to see you

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Speaker 2: till almost nine.

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Speaker 1: O'clock and for an hour less than normal too. It's

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Speaker 1: a win win situation for everybody, for everybody exactly on

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Speaker 1: I don't know where I was going yesterday. Oh I know,

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Speaker 1: I had to go pick up I had to go

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Speaker 1: pick up something at the mall. And the news story

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Speaker 1: was about the documentary Milania, which is about Milania Trump.

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Speaker 1: And I don't have that SoundBite, but in essence, it was,

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Speaker 1: the numbers are really really bad, seventy five million dollars,

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Speaker 1: which was production and marketing costs, the whole basket of costs.

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Speaker 1: It was about seventy five million dollars. And it was

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Speaker 1: released I guess over the weekend and the box office

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Speaker 1: pulled in seven million dollars. And they say that means

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Speaker 1: it is a dud. Okay, let's break that down because

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Speaker 1: here are here are two stories, same numbers. The bare

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Speaker 1: facts are this, Amazon MGM Studios paid forty million dollars

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Speaker 1: to acquire Millennia twenty Days to History, and then Amazon

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Speaker 1: MGM spent another thirty five million dollars to market the documentary.

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Speaker 1: So that's seventy five million dollars total investment for a

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Speaker 1: documentary that follows the first Lady through twenty days before

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Speaker 1: the twenty twenty five inauguration. Now, that does make it

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Speaker 1: the priciest documentary in history by a country mile. An

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Speaker 1: opening weekend, as I said, seven million dollars from more

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Speaker 1: than seventeen hundred theaters, landing at number three behind Iron

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Speaker 1: Lung and Send Help. But what do those numbers mean

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Speaker 1: without any context? That is the strongest opening for a

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Speaker 1: non concert documentary in more than a decade. You've heard

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Speaker 1: of Angel Studios. So Angel Studios is this i would say,

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Speaker 1: Christian based production company that has kind of gone from

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Speaker 1: the sappy, kind of cheesy Christian movies and doing some

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Speaker 1: really quality, you know, good wholesome stories. So the documentary

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Speaker 1: Millennia twenty Days to History beat Angel Studios After Death.

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Speaker 1: That was a five million dollar production done back in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. But when you spend seventy five million dollars,

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Speaker 1: a seven million dollar opening truly is a financial disaster

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Speaker 1: by any traditional metric. But of course, Amazon isn't a

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Speaker 1: traditional studio. That's a trillion dollar company that can afford

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Speaker 1: what one insider in some of the Hollywood papers says that, well,

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Speaker 1: that's just a rounding error to them. But let's compare

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Speaker 1: Matt Walsh, who is a online He's very active with

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Speaker 1: his own website, very active on x He's a conservative influencer.

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Speaker 1: He did a documentary. I think it was like last

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Speaker 1: maybe it was last Fall sometime, am I Racist? It

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Speaker 1: opened to four and a half million dollars, but it

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Speaker 1: was only a three million dollar budget, and it went

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Speaker 1: on to gross twelve point three million dollars total. That

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Speaker 1: became the decades's top grossing documentary. Now Fahrenheit nine to eleven,

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Speaker 1: Michael Moore still holds the record for documentaries with twenty

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Speaker 1: three point two million opening on just eight hundred and

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Speaker 1: sixty eight screens back in four So that's about twenty

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Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars per screen average versus Millennia's three nine

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty dollars per screen. But here's where it

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Speaker 1: gets interesting, because if you break down the audience, who went,

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Speaker 1: who paid, you will get well what you might predict,

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Speaker 1: but with some pretty revealing statistics. There's a red state

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Speaker 1: dominance now despite Amazon programming more seats in blue areas,

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Speaker 1: Cheryla said Amazon deliberately programmed more seats in blue areas.

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Speaker 1: Fifty five percent of the seats were in theaters in

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Speaker 1: blue areas versus forty five percent of the seats in

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Speaker 1: red areas, So the film overperformed massively in red counties.

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Speaker 1: Of six hundred thousand total admissions, fifty three percent came

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Speaker 1: from red zones versus only forty seven percent from blue zones.

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Speaker 1: So the top markets read like a Trump rally tour. Dallas, Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta,

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Speaker 1: West Palm cities you never see in top ten box

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Speaker 1: office lists. Fort Myers, Naples, Florida. They all made the charts.

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Speaker 1: So what was the target demo? This played like a

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Speaker 1: faith based film, just like something Angel Studios would do.

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Speaker 1: The audience was seventy two percent female, seventy two percent

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Speaker 1: over the age of fifty five, seventy five percent White

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Speaker 1: women over fifty five represent seventy two percent of opening

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Speaker 1: day audiences, and self id Republicans made up almost fifty

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Speaker 1: percent of ticket buyers conservatise forty seven percent. Rural theaters,

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Speaker 1: which typically account for less than thirty I should say

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Speaker 1: for about thirty percent of box office, delivered forty six

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Speaker 1: percent of Lania's gross, So they overperformed. Oh, you don't

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Speaker 1: think there's a rural urban divide in this country. Look

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Speaker 1: at that number again. Rural theaters account for less than

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Speaker 1: a third of box office, but they delivered forty six,

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Speaker 1: almost half of the gross of that documentary over the weekend. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: major blue cities empty seats. Duh, shocker, right, there were

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Speaker 1: screenshots taken of Washington, DC theaters that went viral. Los

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Speaker 1: Angeles underperformed. One reporter over the UK was the only

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Speaker 1: person in the theater and he made sure that everybody

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Speaker 1: knew I'm the only one in here. Africa South Africa, well,

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Speaker 1: they just pulled the film entirely, didn't even show it

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Speaker 1: before opening. This film has created the most extreme critic

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Speaker 1: audience split that I think I've ever seen. You know,

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Speaker 1: Rotten Tomatoes divides reviews up between the critics and the audience.

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Speaker 1: Here's the critics verdict. Rotten Tomatoes got eleven percent from critics.

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Speaker 1: That's worse than the forever running Cats. The Metacritic four

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Speaker 1: out of a hundred, so that's classified as overwhelmingly disliked.

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Speaker 1: Here's some sample reviews The Guardian. They called it pure

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Speaker 1: endless hell. Variety Magazine, the Bible of Hollywood, a documentary

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Speaker 1: that never comes to life, barely rises to the level

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Speaker 1: of a shameless infomercial. The Hollywood Reporter fawn so lavishly

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Speaker 1: over its subject that you feel downright unpatriotic not gushing

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Speaker 1: over it, and The Atlantic magazine declared it a disgrace

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Speaker 1: and a quote protection racket. Rolling Stone reported that two

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Speaker 1: thirds of the New York crew didn't want their names

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Speaker 1: on it. Oh, well, but you wanted to get paid, didn't.

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Speaker 1: You don't put my name on there, but make sure

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Speaker 1: my name's on that paycheck. So that's the critics review

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Speaker 1: on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience reaction Rotten Tomatoes ninety nine

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Speaker 1: percent audience score, So the audience that actually went to

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Speaker 1: it gave it a ninety nine approval rate. And there

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Speaker 1: are more than five hundred verified ratings on there right now,

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Speaker 1: send them a score. Gave it an A grade. Post

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Speaker 1: Track gave it five stars, eighty nine percent, definitely recommend. Now,

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Speaker 1: the industry will tell you that anything on Post Track

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Speaker 1: this above seventy percent is outstanding. And there are reports

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Speaker 1: that some sold out screenings with standing ovations and shouts

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Speaker 1: of Trump twenty twenty eight. So where does that leave us.

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Speaker 1: That's a ninety two point gap between critics and audiences.

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Speaker 1: So let me, get me, let me give you some

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Speaker 1: perspective real quickly, that never happens, that virtually never happens,

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Speaker 1: even polarizing films. Maybe see a twenty to thirty point spread.

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Speaker 1: So what does this mean? Well, now, let me let

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Speaker 1: me say that. I'll tell you what I think it

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Speaker 1: means when we get back.

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Speaker 2: Happy Brownhog's Day where Mike and Michael is going to

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Speaker 2: guarantee us six more weeks of dumb assery.

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Speaker 1: What is it that you If he said he's a shadow,

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Speaker 1: than springs around the corner.

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Speaker 2: No, No, if he sees his shadow, that means more winter.

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Speaker 1: So he saw his shadow in philadel or Pennsylvania. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and why is it him? Why not the groundhog that's

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Speaker 1: somewhere else because he's famous. Oh so once again just

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Speaker 1: celebrity culture. Okay, all right, what does the Old Farmer's

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Speaker 1: Almanac tell us? Huh?

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Speaker 2: I don't know?

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Speaker 1: What is? What? What? What? What is? What does Dave

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Speaker 1: Fraser and all the people at KDVR.

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Speaker 2: Tell us we could certainly use the moisture?

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Speaker 1: I agree, I agree, and sucks to be a skier.

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Speaker 1: But if we hit the moisture, let it be rain,

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Speaker 1: not snow and ice or sleet was the whole documentary

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Speaker 1: political investment. For any other film, according to a rider

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Speaker 1: over at Frank, for any other film with seventy five

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Speaker 1: million dollars in cost and limited foreign potential, it would

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Speaker 1: be a problem. But this is a political investment, not

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Speaker 1: a for profit movie venture, and if it helps Amazon

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Speaker 1: with a regulatory taxation, tariff, or other government issue, then

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Speaker 1: it will pay back. But that timeline might be a

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Speaker 1: little damning because Amazon acquired the film in January twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty five, just last year, shortly after Bezos dined with

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Speaker 1: Trump at mar Lago. At the premiere, a New York

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Speaker 1: Times reporter asked Trump directly, Amazon paid seventy five million

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Speaker 1: dollars to make and market this film. Many Americans think

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Speaker 1: this is maybe Jeff Bezos trying to get in good

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Speaker 1: with you, and they would call it an act of

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00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: corporate corruption, to which Trump said, that's fake news. But

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00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:56,040
Speaker 1: Amazon's business model doesn't need box office profitability. Their calculus

430
00:29:56,080 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 1: is about prime video subscriptions, ad sale, and probably most importantly,

431
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 1: regulatory goodwill with an administration that could but has given

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00:30:06,440 --> 00:30:12,360
Speaker 1: no indication of impacting their business operations. Then all the

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00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:17,080
Speaker 1: social media live up talking about all these organized efforts

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00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: try to boost attendance. Free popcorn at regal cinemas in

435
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 1: some places, uh, with commemoratory popcorn boxes. Well that's why

436
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 1: I want to keep hanging around the house. Is a

437
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:33,920
Speaker 1: commemorative popcorn box after spinning, filled with buttery, greasy popcorn.

438
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 1: But six hundred thousand people actually bought tickets. The cinema

439
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:43,000
Speaker 1: score and the post track numbers I gave you earlier,

440
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 1: those are actual attendees. Those are not online bots. So

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00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:49,120
Speaker 1: the fact that eighty nine percent of the six hundred

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00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:54,600
Speaker 1: thousand real people that went definite recommend that truly is extraordinary.

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00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:57,080
Speaker 1: One story cooted a sixty year old guy from Staten

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00:30:57,120 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: Island that told The New York Times he rarely goes

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00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: to theater that bought a ticket to see it. Quote

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00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:08,200
Speaker 1: kick Hollywood's ass close quote. I think that's probably a

447
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: very real sentiment. Now, the film performed similarly to how

448
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: conservative documentaries have historically performed. It just had a bigger budget,

449
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: and my racists showed there's a hungry audience for a

450
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: counter narrative documentary that the cabal is going to ignore

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00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: or dismiss. I think the mainstream media was so convinced

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00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 1: that this would bomb that they essentially had already written

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00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 1: the obituary before the opening weekend. They already had screenshots

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00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:43,600
Speaker 1: of empty theaters that became Twitter fodder. Well when and

455
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 1: where were those screenshots taken? And of course anybody had

456
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:50,520
Speaker 1: a brain can see us coming. But the critics who

457
00:31:50,520 --> 00:31:52,880
Speaker 1: had to buy tickets to review it because it wasn't

458
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:57,959
Speaker 1: pre screened, emerged with reviews that were so scathing that

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00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:01,880
Speaker 1: I think they were just personally offended. Over at the Bulwark.

460
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:06,160
Speaker 1: Sonny Bunch, no Trump fan called it fascinating to see

461
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: pure and naked an instrument of graft and propaganda deployed

462
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:11,920
Speaker 1: the great effect on an audience happy to lap it up.

463
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:16,680
Speaker 1: That's cultural condensation. That's not being a film critic. And

464
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 1: by the way, it just take that line and apply

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00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:24,200
Speaker 1: to what we see fat to us by the networks

466
00:32:24,280 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: or the cables, or the newspapers or anybody else. Fascinating

467
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:33,800
Speaker 1: to see so pure and naked, an instrument of graft

468
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:38,360
Speaker 1: and propaganda deployed to great effect on an audience happy

469
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:41,800
Speaker 1: to lap it up. Oh, let me just tune to

470
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:47,240
Speaker 1: MS NOW, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times

471
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, I'll see the

472
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:58,280
Speaker 1: same drivel, same thing. So bottom line is this is

473
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 1: not about a documentary in a tradition since and pretty

474
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:05,600
Speaker 1: sure I right about that. Well, what's interesting is whether

475
00:33:05,600 --> 00:33:10,240
Speaker 1: it's a great documentary. It's what its existence, it's financing

476
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 1: its reception, and the gulf between critical and audience response

477
00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 1: tells us all about one how corporate America's trying to

478
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 1: navigate the Trump era, and how completely bifurcated this country's

479
00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 1: cultural consumption has become. And there's apparently an audience out

480
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:36,040
Speaker 1: there that feels ignored or mocked by mainstream entertainment and media,

481
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:42,240
Speaker 1: because I haven't heard one single word from anybody about

482
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen writing the whatever that stupid song was that

483
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 1: he wrote about ice. And now his threat literally a

484
00:33:50,600 --> 00:33:54,960
Speaker 1: threat to keep writing songs anti Ice until they disappear

485
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:56,120
Speaker 1: or get defunded.

486
00:33:56,720 --> 00:33:57,280
Speaker 2: Huh.

487
00:33:57,920 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 1: A bifurcated culture, absolutely