Speaker 1: You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
Speaker 1: you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, welcome to the
Speaker 1: Buck section Show. This episode, we have Amanda Milius with us.
Speaker 1: She is a filmmaker. The Plot against the President one
Speaker 1: of her films which got a lot of acclaim A
Speaker 1: lot of you, I'm sure have seen it. She also
Speaker 1: was an appointee at the State Department under the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: so she has stared at the deep state. She knows
Speaker 1: what it is like. Amanda, is there a swampier agency?
Speaker 1: I know everyone the FBI is trying hard these days,
Speaker 1: but I know from the CIA side of the house,
Speaker 1: the State Department a nest of commis and.
Speaker 2: Useless ones too. I mean, at least at CIA. I
Speaker 2: mean I could eat my words on this, because I
Speaker 2: fight with the concept of CIA all the time. But
Speaker 2: State Department is just it's like a playground for people
Speaker 2: that don't they don't need to be there. You could
Speaker 2: cut that place by the twentieth and run it out
Speaker 2: of a van in the parking lot, and you do
Speaker 2: better than what they've got. I think it's like seventy
Speaker 2: thousand people or something. I mean, it's absolutely insane, and like,
Speaker 2: you know, the I actually went there because I was
Speaker 2: so dumb to think we still did diplomacy, and then
Speaker 2: I got there and I was like, oh no, it's
Speaker 2: just programs for people that want to work in the government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what does the State Department really just for everybody
Speaker 1: out there? I mean I could say, as as a
Speaker 1: little context for a State Department CI side of the house,
Speaker 1: I was there for but five five years in change,
Speaker 1: and ten percent of that building does cool stuff. Ninety
Speaker 1: percent of the CIA just sort of shows up analyst side,
Speaker 1: operator side, you know, you name it, like case officer side.
Speaker 1: Very few people do a vast majority of the work.
Speaker 1: So you could go full Twitter on this thing under
Speaker 1: Elon and cut it from you know, eight thousand employees
Speaker 1: down to a fraction. What really goes on at State
Speaker 1: in general same.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could you could cut every single embassy
Speaker 2: down and the entire main state down, because it's it's
Speaker 2: the Yeah, it's the exact same thing. It's like ninety
Speaker 2: percent dead weight of because once they create a program,
Speaker 2: I'm sure you're really familiar with this, Once they create
Speaker 2: a program, and if that program at least your guys's
Speaker 2: programs were kind of like you know, at least they're
Speaker 2: kind of I mean, I assume.
Speaker 1: That some of them more interesting, legitimate interesting, but like.
Speaker 2: Ours, you know, state department programs would be like you know,
Speaker 2: women's bead making empowerment, like economy building in Botswana, and
Speaker 2: like that would be a program filled with fifty people
Speaker 2: and it will exist forever. You'll never kill it no
Speaker 2: matter what, Like Botswana could become like the most like
Speaker 2: perfectly well run country in the world that needs no
Speaker 2: bad making classes or whatever, or how to sell artisanal
Speaker 2: pots or I don't know what these people do, but
Speaker 2: like it could be they don't ever change. And I mean,
Speaker 2: especially when you looked at this stuff and read that
Speaker 2: were actually important, like when you look at what was
Speaker 2: going on in Afghanistan and we used to make the
Speaker 2: joke or the good appointees and the good the good
Speaker 2: guys would have this framed joke because it was real. Though,
Speaker 2: of lesbian puppet shows for countering violent extremism, now that
Speaker 2: to me is a state department program that's the perfect
Speaker 2: like LGBT puppet shows to encourage countering violent extremism that
Speaker 2: was perfect. That's State Department.
Speaker 1: I do remember when they went from the g WATT,
Speaker 1: which had a nice ring to it, the Global War
Speaker 1: on Terror a little vague, fine, but kind of people.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew what we're talking about. Two yeah, programs to
Speaker 1: counter overseas extremism or something. It would be. It was so.
Speaker 2: Violent extremism and anything could fall under it. That's why
Speaker 2: I'm saying, like you could put if you just put
Speaker 2: CVE at the end of your program idea, it would
Speaker 2: get funded.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing, because I sit here, we've seen
Speaker 1: recently obviously that the indictment of Donald Trump by the DOJ,
Speaker 1: the total sweetheart deal for a hunter. Sweetart deal doesn't
Speaker 1: even cover it. I mean it is. It's a cover up, right.
Speaker 1: There's there's low level charge and then there's actually low
Speaker 1: level charge that ignores the real charges that are already
Speaker 1: provable because those charges would also lead to you know,
Speaker 1: the president of the United States. So it's it's full on,
Speaker 1: full on cover up mode. But everyone keeps saying, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna drain the swamp, and then they
Speaker 1: ask me, how do we do that. I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: that to you because I'm actually curious how anyone who thinks,
Speaker 1: because you know, you were there on the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: how does the swamp get drained? Can it be drained?
Speaker 1: I'm not convinced.
Speaker 2: I'm we got to. Yeah, a couple of things. A
Speaker 2: I learned a lot since I left, one of which
Speaker 2: is that I prefer to call it the administrative state
Speaker 2: because and we get you know, I know, it's fun
Speaker 2: to call it the deep state and the swamp and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, but it allows us to rely kind
Speaker 2: of lazily on this idea of the they as though
Speaker 2: this were something that was like run by a few
Speaker 2: competent people, which I don't really think it is. I
Speaker 2: think it's a ghost ship that runs itself. And that's
Speaker 2: fifty years of administrative changes and administrative law that turned
Speaker 2: what was a constitutional republic into a bureaucrat run ghost ship,
Speaker 2: which is what our country is at this point. So
Speaker 2: it's basically, you know, whoever knows where the levers of
Speaker 2: the ghost ship are, like the Bidens and the Democrats.
Speaker 2: You know, there's there's an order and the Democrats are
Speaker 2: above us, but the bureaucrats are still above them. Like
Speaker 2: that would be what would be deep state about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we saw that in the Afghanistan
Speaker 2: pull out. That was the only time I ever SEU
Speaker 2: because you know, I consider CNN or or most of
Speaker 2: these stations to be the Comm's department of the Intel agencies.
Speaker 2: So when you see you know, Anderson Cooper for a
Speaker 2: whole week playing in color TV on everybody's TV screens,
Speaker 2: the disaster that was the Afghanistan pull out, that is
Speaker 2: not in the white that current White House's interest. So
Speaker 2: that was the there's a there's a few times I've
Speaker 2: noticed the admin State going away from even the Democrats
Speaker 2: and kind of swatting them when they get out of line.
Speaker 2: And so I think it's like a hierarchy more more
Speaker 2: than anything, and we're at the bottom, like the Trump
Speaker 2: administration was at the absolute bottom, because I mean, these
Speaker 2: people wouldn't even uh. I've made this point before too,
Speaker 2: which is that the real problem with like, for example,
Speaker 2: the Russia Gate thing, which is my sort of wheelhouse,
Speaker 2: is it wasn't just everyday Americans that we're hearing this.
Speaker 2: All the bureaucrats of Washington, DC went home and watched
Speaker 2: CNN and were like, oh, I don't have to listen
Speaker 2: to these trump because they're probably getting their orders from
Speaker 2: Putin or something. So you couldn't get anything done because
Speaker 2: you were either like either they would just outright just
Speaker 2: you know, oss manual you to not do. You know,
Speaker 2: the stuff we used to deliver to the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: like how to not how to not do something in
Speaker 2: an organization. I mean, they got that down and or
Speaker 2: they or they just would be like no, they'd be
Speaker 2: suspicious because they they'd honestly think that you were like
Speaker 2: an agent of Putin. So to put it, how do
Speaker 2: you how do you get rid of that? I mean,
Speaker 2: you have to have full willingness to when we finally
Speaker 2: came up at the last year with Schedule F, which
Speaker 2: was a way to redesign government employees to avoid the
Speaker 2: which should be absolutely illegal unionization of them if they
Speaker 2: deal with policy at all, which is the Schedule F EO.
Speaker 2: And again that's an executive order. It's not legislation, it's
Speaker 2: not it's not something that couldn't be As with all
Speaker 2: executive orders, they're written in sand like we have to
Speaker 2: do more. It really comes down to having like an
Speaker 2: Actualcongress that's willing to take the country back to the
Speaker 2: way it was supposed to be run. But the first
Speaker 2: step would be to do something like that, an executive
Speaker 2: order that makes it possible to fire government employees because
Speaker 2: as of right now, you can move them around, you
Speaker 2: can reshuffle the deck, but it doesn't matter. They're still
Speaker 2: there and they're still just wasting.
Speaker 1: I was told I was told by an honest and
Speaker 1: in the case of federal government that increasingly just means
Speaker 1: funny when I think back to it, conservative, but an
Speaker 1: honest manager within the federal bureaucracy. At one point he said,
Speaker 1: he said, buck, if you showed up and refused to
Speaker 1: do anything, but you didn't break any laws, and you
Speaker 1: were here when you were supposed to be here, which
Speaker 1: goes into up breaking laws because of time and attendance fraud. Right,
Speaker 1: But He's like, if you sit in your chair when
Speaker 1: you were supposed to be here, refuse to do any work,
Speaker 1: it would take me almost two years to get you fired.
Speaker 1: I've said, I saw something worse.
Speaker 2: Than that, which is so now you've got the telework thing.
Speaker 2: So when I first heard the word telework was when
Speaker 2: I first got to State and I was like trying
Speaker 2: to run my team, which was a content team and
Speaker 2: you know, the world moves in twenty four hour increments, right,
Speaker 2: it doesn't go from nine to five. So I was like, well,
Speaker 2: where's the night team? And they were like, we don't
Speaker 2: have a night team. And I was like, so you
Speaker 2: just put out like messaging during America like East Coast
Speaker 2: nine to five, Like that doesn't make that's not even
Speaker 2: we're talking to the global audience. That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: Like I'm not that smart and that doesn't even make
Speaker 2: any sense to me. And and then and then I
Speaker 2: was like, all right, we'll find where's the where's the
Speaker 2: graphics guy? And they were like, oh, he's teleworking today
Speaker 2: And I was like tell what and they were like, teleworking.
Speaker 2: We have a really great telework program in this bureau.
Speaker 2: And I was like, do you know what my boss
Speaker 2: would have done to me if I said one of
Speaker 2: the independent production companies I used to work at that
Speaker 2: I was going to telework that day. I would be
Speaker 2: like telefive. I mean it's there. There's in the film industry.
Speaker 2: Like I actually got a lot of gained a lot
Speaker 2: of respect for it because I was like, they're hardcore,
Speaker 2: Like there is no not showing up, there are no
Speaker 2: sick days. There's no, there's no like, you're every minute
Speaker 2: is a million dollars, so you're not you're not wasting
Speaker 2: any time. But no, it's not only could they they
Speaker 2: not get fired. I think someone could walk up and
Speaker 2: punch their own boss in the face and it would
Speaker 2: take five years to fire them. When I found out that.
Speaker 2: When I came down, we merged the bureaus. At one
Speaker 2: point I went down to the broadcast unit, which was
Speaker 2: in a different area than my bureau, and I was like,
Speaker 2: all right, cool, we got a broadcast unit. Let's let
Speaker 2: me meet all the editors. I was like, I bet
Speaker 2: I'll like these guys because they were older, and you know,
Speaker 2: I used to work in traditional broadcast when I worked
Speaker 2: for Network TV. And I was like, all right, let
Speaker 2: me talk to these guys. And they were like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: only two of them come in the office of like twelve,
Speaker 2: and I was like, well, where are the other ones?
Speaker 2: And they were like, they can't come into the building,
Speaker 2: but they're still getting paid because they're in litigation with
Speaker 2: the department because they all got caught watching porn on
Speaker 2: government computers down here, and it's like in the basement,
Speaker 2: so the whole and this this thing. This broadcast unit
Speaker 2: handled the broadcast for like I think most American agencies satellite,
Speaker 2: and there were two guys running in and we couldn't
Speaker 2: hire any other you know, young contractors to come in
Speaker 2: and just like fill the gaps until we finally fix
Speaker 2: that because it's like again ghost ship. It's like you
Speaker 2: try to move the machine and it takes like a
Speaker 2: year to do anything, and it's so it's super frustrating.
Speaker 2: So that's that's one of the things I've kind of
Speaker 2: mouthed off on Twitter about. You know, like a lot
Speaker 2: of people are like, we're just going to drain the
Speaker 2: swamp because we're just going to do it, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we get a lot of people that were really really willing.
Speaker 2: It wasn't about It wasn't a question of will, It
Speaker 2: wasn't a question of intelligence. You're up against fifty years
Speaker 2: of pretty much unconc institutional law that's just been passed
Speaker 2: under our nose, and we live in a bureaucracy run
Speaker 2: country now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is the fourth branch of government. I think
Speaker 1: there's no question about that. I want to ask you
Speaker 1: more about the Plot against the President, which was your documentary.
Speaker 1: What brought you to it and how current events you
Speaker 1: feel like perhaps are reflected of it in some of
Speaker 1: the messaging and some of what you had in the documentary.
Speaker 1: But just quickly a word from our sponsor, Chalk, take
Speaker 1: the guesswork out of where you're going to find the
Speaker 1: energy and focus to make every day a solid one.
Speaker 1: Rely on Chalk's Male Vitality Stack as the solution. This
Speaker 1: is a supplement set made with only all natural ingredients.
Speaker 1: The leading ingredient has been proven in studies to improve
Speaker 1: testosterone levels and men's bodies by some twenty percent in
Speaker 1: the first three months of usage. That's a source of
Speaker 1: energy in a man's body testosterone. There are many more
Speaker 1: benefits that come from daily consumption of Chalk's Male Vitality Stack.
Speaker 1: Each one of them sets you up to maximize your
Speaker 1: day energy, focus drive. You're going to find Chalk products online.
Speaker 1: You can buy them directly. That's the way to do it.
Speaker 1: This Texas based company is all about purity and results.
Speaker 1: They're prepared to give you thirty five percent off your
Speaker 1: Chalk subscription when you order. Now go online to Chalk
Speaker 1: dot com. That's c Hoq dot com. Use promo code
Speaker 1: Buck that's my name buc K for thirty five percent
Speaker 1: off when you go to chalk dot com. All right,
Speaker 1: a man to the plot against the president. You made
Speaker 1: the movie a while back, but the plot against the
Speaker 1: president continues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's uh. I mean, the main thing that's
Speaker 2: frustrating is okay, so we Lee Smith wrote the book, right,
Speaker 2: Lee Smith, the great, great journalist and author.
Speaker 1: Interviewed him many times. Really really sharp guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the guy is amazing. So he he
Speaker 2: was the one that was actually, you know, got the
Speaker 2: story down in such a way that it was following people,
Speaker 2: not documents. I have publicly made my opinion known about
Speaker 2: a lot of conservative content because I think a lot
Speaker 2: of conservative and you know, I really want there to
Speaker 2: be more culture war stuff.
Speaker 1: Are you suggesting, Amanda that when conservators make a movie
Speaker 1: it shouldn't look like a high school film project.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of I'm kind of saying that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So basically I have a problem with homework on video.
Speaker 2: I don't consider that cinematic or film. And being somebody
Speaker 2: who was raised in that world and worked in it
Speaker 2: for as many years as I did, and then went
Speaker 2: to the best film school in the world, I can
Speaker 2: really see it when I see it, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: it makes me want to bar so I tend to
Speaker 2: call it out even though I want to applaud and
Speaker 2: say we should have more voices, not less right Andrew Breitbart.
Speaker 2: But there are a lot of good up and coming
Speaker 2: conservative or right wing or whatever you want to call
Speaker 2: it film directors that I am looking forward to working
Speaker 2: with that are actually really really good. And you know
Speaker 2: a lot of guys that worked with Tucker for example,
Speaker 2: a lot of people just on their own. IM not
Speaker 2: super fond of the homework assignment on video vibe. So
Speaker 2: anyway to do why I was attracted to Lee Smith's
Speaker 2: way of telling something so complex as Russia Gate, which
Speaker 2: is extremely complicated, Like you got to make explaining to
Speaker 2: a general audience what a FEISA warrant is interesting? Okay,
Speaker 2: Like that's that goes to like you know, when they
Speaker 2: had Margot Robi naked in the bathtub with the champagne
Speaker 2: explaining the stock market in the big short, that's that's
Speaker 2: that's a cinematic tool of like you have to get
Speaker 2: through some really dry exposition, like how do you do
Speaker 2: it well? With us? What we did is we had
Speaker 2: the most charismatic people explain it, and on that one
Speaker 2: in particular, we broke it down. Mike Cernovich did it.
Speaker 2: We had deep throats lawyer from Watergate, and a lot
Speaker 2: of the people who were affected by it, like you know,
Speaker 2: Don Junior and people like that. So so basically we
Speaker 2: we put this movie together based on Lee Smith's book.
Speaker 2: Because Lee smith book is a noir spy thriller, which
Speaker 2: is what Russia Gate is. It should be like our
Speaker 2: version of All the President's Men, which was the you know,
Speaker 2: classic nineteen seventies movie about Watergate, which sort of created
Speaker 2: the lore of these like detective journalists, like the Washington
Speaker 2: Post detective journalists. And so we're sort of we sort
Speaker 2: of did the opposite of that, right, I mean, we're
Speaker 2: dealing with undoing that work, but it's the same creepy vibe.
Speaker 2: I mean, Washington, DC really is a noir city. The
Speaker 2: streets are always wet, it's dark, bad things are happening,
Speaker 2: you don't know who to trust, everyone's two faces. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you study film noir like I did in college,
Speaker 2: it's the perfect city for a noir movie. So that's
Speaker 2: what I tried to do, is bring that aesthetic to
Speaker 2: the concept of Russiagate, and it worked really well. We
Speaker 2: were really lucky. I mean, we filmed it during the
Speaker 2: beginning of the you know, COVID shut down and everything,
Speaker 2: so conveniently, all the streets were empty and everything was
Speaker 2: just like kind of at our disposal, and we had it.
Speaker 2: We had a grand all time. But yeah, and we
Speaker 2: got it out before the twenty twenty election. And the
Speaker 2: frustrating thing now is is that I'm watching this Durham
Speaker 2: stuff and the hearing yesterday. I was so entertained by
Speaker 2: Matt Gates just tearing up Durham because we've been told
Speaker 2: that Durham was going to spend four years finding new
Speaker 2: information and there's not one single thing in his report
Speaker 2: that isn't in our ninety minute movie where I'm like,
Speaker 2: I could have saved you four years. And there's this
Speaker 2: one part in the in the hearing where he's whining
Speaker 2: about how he had to spend four years away from
Speaker 2: his family to investigate all this stuff, and You're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: well I could have saved you that you could have
Speaker 2: sat down with your family and watch a plot against
Speaker 2: the president and you wouldn't have had to do anything
Speaker 2: because you didn't do any when he's talking about how
Speaker 2: he couldn't find misfued. We could find him, right. But
Speaker 2: I'm I'm me. I'm not hired by the Department of Justice.
Speaker 2: I don't have the power of the state behind me.
Speaker 2: I can't subpoena anybody. I can just call them and
Speaker 2: ask them if they'll be interviewed in my movie, and
Speaker 2: most of the bad guys are gonna say no, Like
Speaker 2: unsurprisingly James Comey was not interested in being interviewed by me.
Speaker 2: But you know, this man had the power of the
Speaker 2: DOJ behind him, right, like he had an assignment, and
Speaker 2: it's unbelievable that he got the same interviews I did.
Speaker 2: I mean cash Pttel tells the story of the sixty
Speaker 2: five people coming in, all of the heads of agencies
Speaker 2: who would have known about the Russia collusion had there
Speaker 2: been any how under oath, every single one of them,
Speaker 2: when asked, have you found any evidence of the Trump
Speaker 2: administration or campaign colluding with Russia? Every single one of
Speaker 2: them said no, you know, behind closed doors under oath
Speaker 2: until it was declassified by Rick Ernell. And the fact
Speaker 2: is we've known that we so Lee put that book
Speaker 2: out in twenty nineteen at least in manuscript form when
Speaker 2: I optioned it. We put the movie out in twenty twenty, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, that's an insane turnaround time that I'm
Speaker 2: never doing again. I'm never making a movie in less
Speaker 2: than a year again. So no one asked me. It's
Speaker 2: just it's crazy. You're not supposed to do it that way.
Speaker 2: But we did, and it went really well. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like still like, it's the number one documentary on
Speaker 2: Amazon per reviews, still doing. Really it's just it's it's
Speaker 2: broken through to people because it's not conservative. It's not
Speaker 2: just conservative red meat, right. It actually explains the story
Speaker 2: that you get engaged with. That's how you change hearts
Speaker 2: and minds. You don't just tell them facts. Don't care
Speaker 2: about your feelings. Here's the facts, and we're conservatives, so
Speaker 2: we're correct because here's the facts. Like I don't know
Speaker 2: if anyone studied propaganda, but that doesn't that doesn't work.
Speaker 2: You have to change people's hearts, like it's not it's
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm more attuned to that because
Speaker 2: I started in the arts or I'm a chick or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I don't ever start out with
Speaker 2: here's the PAISA warrant, and here's what was wrong with it.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, here's the man whose life was destroyed
Speaker 2: and his family and his kids and this and that,
Speaker 2: and this is why this matters. If this can happen
Speaker 2: to him, it can happen to you.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget the first time I met Carter Page,
Speaker 1: you know, the target of one of the FISA warrants.
Speaker 1: And he's for anyone who hasn't met you know, well
Speaker 1: not met, but remember he's you know, when he sat down,
Speaker 1: he's like, hey, it's like, you know, I hung out
Speaker 1: with your dad for a day at the Harvard Club
Speaker 1: once and I was like, wait, I'm interviewing him on set.
Speaker 1: It was like a social setting, like right before the
Speaker 1: cameras turn on, and I was like what. And then
Speaker 1: I'm like I'm like wait hold on. He's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: your dad's so fun, like you know, he's just really
Speaker 1: like matter of fact that kind.
Speaker 2: Of nonsout, like.
Speaker 1: Oh guy, But I remember I called my dad that.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Dad, did you He's like, I think I
Speaker 1: did hang out with the Carter I know. It's like
Speaker 1: this whole thing. I'm like, Dad, that's the guy like
Speaker 1: you were talking to the Russia Gate guy at the
Speaker 1: Harvard Club, like this is before all that stuff happened.
Speaker 1: But I was like, you guys are you know, they're
Speaker 1: at some event about US China policy, you know, one
Speaker 1: of these things where guys show up whatever. And my
Speaker 1: dad was there, you know, because he likes to learn
Speaker 1: about the world. And anyway, it was just kind of
Speaker 1: funny because I was like, Wow, the world's a very
Speaker 1: small place. I want to ask if you're gonna make
Speaker 1: another movie like this or what the next project is.
Speaker 1: But first I got to talk to people at Gold, Amanda,
Speaker 1: because precious metals very important out there. All right. If
Speaker 1: you're worried about the disruptions I could hit the global economy,
Speaker 1: how do you diversify I own I've got some right
Speaker 1: here with me. Exactly. She's got some gold, She's got
Speaker 1: some bling on her hard gold. I'm talking about the real,
Speaker 1: actual physical gold. Because it's a great way to hedge
Speaker 1: against inflation and also to protect value even if the
Speaker 1: dollar gets into really rough shape. Gold and silver can
Speaker 1: be a protection for your portfolio. So why not have
Speaker 1: gold and silver on hand? Try the Oxford Gold Group.
Speaker 1: That's who I trust, That's who I go to call
Speaker 1: is free, and the people on the receiving end of
Speaker 1: the call are knowledgeable and trustworthy. Eight three three four
Speaker 1: three zero buck. That's a three three four three zero
Speaker 1: b uc k A three three four three zero buck.
Speaker 1: Call the Oxford Gold Group. Get some gold, Get some silver.
Speaker 1: Take action today so that you're ready, because I think
Speaker 1: the economy is actually gonna get really ugly for the
Speaker 1: latter part of this year. All right, Ms Millius, Why
Speaker 1: can't we just make really cool movies about stories that
Speaker 1: people care about on the right anymore? Like why is
Speaker 1: it like I sit here like I can just tell you.
Speaker 1: I know that I'm a civilian, so you can tell
Speaker 1: me I'm silly, But I'm just like, why, you know, fine,
Speaker 1: I don't know these things, But like Ridley Scott making
Speaker 1: a movie about the Great Siege of Malta or something like,
Speaker 1: there's so many awesome concepts out there, and instead like
Speaker 1: Disney is giving us fire and water because fire is
Speaker 1: being racist against water or you know that just happened, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's elemental, that's what just happened. Why can't we
Speaker 1: get good stuff made anymore?
Speaker 2: I talked about this since I think before I went
Speaker 2: to film school because I saw it. Look Hollywood first
Speaker 2: of all, a couple of reasons. Hollywood was the first
Speaker 2: industry that China purchased. It was their toe in the
Speaker 2: water of the American market. Granted, they were messing around
Speaker 2: with a bunch of land stuff for a long time,
Speaker 2: but people, you know, when I was at State Department again,
Speaker 2: I remember getting briefed on China's involvement in Hollywood, and
Speaker 2: I was like, uh, yeah, bro, I know. I remember,
Speaker 2: like my dad made Red Dawn and then they did
Speaker 2: the remake. They had to change it to North Korea
Speaker 2: as to not offend the Chinese markets. So okay. One
Speaker 2: of the reasons is China.
Speaker 1: Owns Wait, can you tell the audience real quick who
Speaker 1: your dad is, just so they know because they may not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, my dad is John Millius. Great film writer
Speaker 2: and director. I mean really the greatest writer of our generation.
Speaker 2: I feels weird saying that, but I leave it. He's awesome.
Speaker 2: He did. He wrote Apocalypse Now, wrote and directed Conan
Speaker 2: the Barbarian, Red Dawn, wind in the Lion, the TV
Speaker 2: series Rome, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1: I love that series.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I watched it once every two or three years.
Speaker 2: Because I just have to.
Speaker 1: I think, I'm sorry, I'm actually now fan boying a
Speaker 1: little bit. I think that is the most underrated scripted
Speaker 1: series that I have ever seen. Not that people didn't
Speaker 1: realize this, but like it just didn't get it was
Speaker 1: too expensive, so they didn't make the third season whatever,
Speaker 1: but like that's a phenomenon.
Speaker 2: They changed HBO had a female CEO come in. That
Speaker 2: this is people. Some people are like, oh, they canceled
Speaker 2: the last because Rome could have gone on for ten seasons, right,
Speaker 2: because my dad could write Roman history for every single Caesar, right,
Speaker 2: every single leader all the way to the decline of
Speaker 2: Rome and beyond. Probably my dad's a massive history buff
Speaker 2: and he'll throw and all kinds of wacky stuff from
Speaker 2: his own personal point of view that is really fun.
Speaker 2: But they they canceled it because he really didn't get
Speaker 2: along with them. You know. That show was probably the
Speaker 2: second hour long drama that did really well because I
Speaker 2: think it was around the time of the Sopranos, which
Speaker 2: this is when I mean those pre mad Men, so
Speaker 2: it had it was. It was really before people got
Speaker 2: to this point where they were like the quality storytelling, acting,
Speaker 2: and production is in this hour long drama on either
Speaker 2: HBO Showtime, you know, certainly not Netflix at that point
Speaker 2: or anything like that. Netflix didn't kick that off until
Speaker 2: House of Cards. But all of that stuff was new.
Speaker 2: That was a new format. High high quality, hour long
Speaker 2: programming was not a thing until the Sopranos. So it's
Speaker 2: it just it was really ahead of its time. And
Speaker 2: between that and Conan there certainly wouldn't have been a
Speaker 2: Game of Thrones, but there were many There were quite
Speaker 2: a few years between those shows, but yeah, they had
Speaker 2: they changed CEOs. My dad was politically. I mean, people
Speaker 2: say I'm to the right of him. I think he's
Speaker 2: to the right of me. It's hard to tell. We
Speaker 2: just sort of trade off, but we're both pretty right wing,
Speaker 2: and you know, things were starting to change. Like in
Speaker 2: the seventies, nobody cared. Like all his best friends were
Speaker 2: all the film school of brats, right, like Steven Spielberg,
Speaker 2: George Lucas, Francis Koppola, all these guys, like, they didn't
Speaker 2: they they didn't think about politics. In fact, nobody really
Speaker 2: thought about politics, at least from what I could remember,
Speaker 2: until like twenty fifteen or sixteen did it become a
Speaker 2: defining part of who you were. It was just like
Speaker 2: unless you worked in politics or in the government, it
Speaker 2: wasn't nobody cared really. But anyway, so you know, you're
Speaker 2: coming up onto the era where people start to care.
Speaker 2: Hollywood cared before most. So there's another reason why it sucks.
Speaker 2: They don't just care about making money. If they did
Speaker 2: just care about making money, they would have made a
Speaker 2: gazillion versions of American Sniper, because that was one of
Speaker 2: the most profitable movies that was appealing to the entire country.
Speaker 2: Top Gun, even from last last year, I think, was
Speaker 2: fairly unpolitical and did very very well. I don't they're
Speaker 2: not making action movies like that. They're making female James Bond,
Speaker 2: which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker 2: I think I talked about that on Breitbart for like
Speaker 2: an hour. I just like exploded with rage about like
Speaker 2: the death.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, they they kind of ruined Indiana Jones
Speaker 1: just by making a really bad version or you know,
Speaker 1: addition to it, and now they've got a female lead
Speaker 1: and apparently it's like they've exhumed the body of Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones after they killed Indiana Jones and are now lighting
Speaker 1: it on fire. And some kind of like ritual post
Speaker 1: mortem sacrifice, like the Well kid, that's the British shit's.
Speaker 2: That's what they're doing to all of our favorite That's
Speaker 2: what they're doing to our whole culture. I said that
Speaker 2: about the James Bond thing, where I was like, they
Speaker 2: had to take the ultimate masculine. The whole point of
Speaker 2: James Bond is he is the male fantasy of a
Speaker 2: guy with cool gadgets, guns, a license to kill, always
Speaker 2: in a cool foreign country, doing sexy stuff, always waking
Speaker 2: up next to a new chick, like whatever. Whatever. The
Speaker 2: male fantasy of this sort of dapper character was part
Speaker 2: of part of the whole culture, and they had to
Speaker 2: make him a total cook in the last before they
Speaker 2: finally kill him. They had to they had to ruin
Speaker 2: who he was as a character, because you're not allowed
Speaker 2: to think like that anymore. You're not allowed to That's
Speaker 2: no longer an acceptable fantasy. And that's what they're doing yet.
Speaker 2: I mean Indiana Jones, like again, like the Adventurer, the
Speaker 2: the discoverer, like this thing boys would dream about of being, like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to be an archaeologist and find
Speaker 2: weird cool stuff and swing from ropes and dah da
Speaker 2: da dah, Like all of these male fantasies have to
Speaker 2: be murdered before they put them to bed, before they
Speaker 2: change these characters over, and it's it is an assault
Speaker 2: on our country. I think this is this is kind
Speaker 2: of where I started to go. I did a speech
Speaker 2: about this at nat CON, comparing something like the current
Speaker 2: James Bond to the Searchers or something. You know, great
Speaker 2: movie that really meaningful. In my family, my dad's favorite movie.
Speaker 2: He named my brother Ethan. I didn't get any cool names,
Speaker 2: but but his sons did. They were older than me,
Speaker 2: so they got all the cool names. But they you know,
Speaker 2: it's you compare the movies that were made at that time,
Speaker 2: and these a lot of those movies, you know, in
Speaker 2: the thirties, forties, fifties, you know, even in the sixties
Speaker 2: were made by immigrants, a lot of Jewish immigrants, a
Speaker 2: lot of German immigrants, a lot of just a lot
Speaker 2: of of people who were just so pro America because
Speaker 2: they were getting the hell out of where they were,
Speaker 2: and so they made some of the most patriotic movies
Speaker 2: of all time. Italian Oh, well, you've got the Sergio
Speaker 2: Leoni Ones, which was just an homage to the American
Speaker 2: West as a concept. I mean, Sergiolioni is awesome. Like
Speaker 2: just I copied so much of that for my student
Speaker 2: my thesis film, my first one. But anyway, so yeah,
Speaker 2: the film and the reason this matters, it's not just
Speaker 2: culture war stuff. It's because my argument is that this
Speaker 2: is the most important export America had. Right the Cold War,
Speaker 2: we could argue was won by blue jeans, rock and
Speaker 2: roll in American.
Speaker 1: Films, not by ICBMs.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, Like so so now when we're only exporting
Speaker 2: things that tell the world that were a racist, terrible place,
Speaker 2: that sexist, and all of these other awful things. I mean,
Speaker 2: the only benefit to it I can think of is
Speaker 2: maybe it'll stop people from constantly trying to immigrate here
Speaker 2: and like across the border. But it doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: be working. But that's not China's not telling mythology to
Speaker 2: its itself. That's terrible about itself. We're the only ones
Speaker 2: doing that.
Speaker 1: Like, China is actually delusional about its recent history as
Speaker 1: a country and does not allow anyone to talk about
Speaker 1: When I tell people that forty to sixty million people
Speaker 1: died in the middle of the twentieth century, in China
Speaker 1: in a man induced famine. They're just like, no way,
Speaker 1: your numbers are right, and I'm like check them. How
Speaker 1: do they not know that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Great, I mean that you know they know the way
Speaker 2: I learned that was so my dad's last script that
Speaker 2: he wrote was Genghis Khan, and Genghis Khan has mentioned
Speaker 2: in almost every one of my dad's movies, and so
Speaker 2: of course he's obsessed with Ganghis Khan and he thinks
Speaker 2: he is Ganghis Khan and he wrote this amazing, amazing,
Speaker 2: just epic script can't get made for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 2: like most of my dad's unmade scripts. But I do
Speaker 2: remember when I was a kid, the first time I
Speaker 2: saw this is he walked out of a room full
Speaker 2: of Chinese dudes because one producer had somehow secured funding
Speaker 2: through China. This is the beginning of all this. This
Speaker 2: is like many years ago. I was like a kid,
Speaker 2: and my dad was like, I wouldn't take notes from
Speaker 2: American executives about my scripts, Like screw these guys. I'm late,
Speaker 2: we're leaving, and we just left. And they were trying
Speaker 2: to correct the Ganghi's con story to match their version
Speaker 2: of that history, and that was the beginning of my
Speaker 2: exposure to China. Just absolutely purchasing Hollywood, and like I said,
Speaker 2: I go on about it because no culture or nation
Speaker 2: can survive if the mythology they're telling itself about itself
Speaker 2: is that is as bad as what Hollywood is saying
Speaker 2: to us. It's it's it's bad for women, it's bad
Speaker 2: for men, it's bad for all racial categories, it's bad
Speaker 2: for everything. So it's yeah, it's it's a I That's
Speaker 2: why I'm like, Okay, fine, I'm not going to pick
Speaker 2: on the conservatives making movies too much, like make more movies.
Speaker 2: It's good. Yes, it's all conservatives. We need to be
Speaker 2: making movies, but.
Speaker 1: Like I also think there need to be more more.
Speaker 1: You know, we've we've lost some even it's not even
Speaker 1: necessarily overtly political, although there's some of this and stories
Speaker 1: in good vies, just good stories that aren't woke crap
Speaker 1: meant to brainwash people into hating themselves in the country
Speaker 1: that they live in. I mean, I even put you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, like some of these authors,
Speaker 1: I mean, Crichton turned very hard against for example, climate
Speaker 1: change really, because you know, he's a Harvard trained MD,
Speaker 1: and he's just like, this is idiocy, Like all these
Speaker 1: people walking around saying this, he's like, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm a smart guy, I'm super rich. I don't care.
Speaker 1: The climate change stuff is crap. And they went bonkers
Speaker 1: on him, of course. But I you're you're really in
Speaker 1: the NBA, right am? I right about this?
Speaker 2: I'm into the very into basketball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right in the NBA. Yeah, Like, we're gonna tell.
Speaker 2: Me not college basketball were really good. You're gonna let
Speaker 2: me talk about basketball.
Speaker 1: Just how we're gonna close the show out. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna ask you tough questions. I used to be in
Speaker 1: to the basketball until I realized I was never gonna
Speaker 1: be more than scraping the bottom of six feet like
Speaker 1: five eleven and three quarters. But we will tell you.
Speaker 2: You missed out. You could have stuck through it because
Speaker 2: this is the era of the You could have been
Speaker 2: the Steph Curry of your college. How do you know?
Speaker 2: I mean, you could have been suddenly the best three
Speaker 2: point shooter of Like I don't I don't know where
Speaker 2: do cia guys go to college?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you, uh, I mean you know, like
Speaker 1: more CIA directors went to amhers where I went than
Speaker 1: any other school, which is kind of a funny fact
Speaker 1: about Amherst. Yeah, so there you go. We've got we
Speaker 1: got three of them. We'll get to basketball in a second.
Speaker 1: But this is not as fun a topic, but it's
Speaker 1: important topic. Life insurance. My friends. People are relying on
Speaker 1: you to be there for there's no way to not
Speaker 1: do that. As a hard tournament. People are allowing you
Speaker 1: to be there for them. Look, I got married this year,
Speaker 1: is telling a man before and so I have to
Speaker 1: do all these things. And I like, you know, if
Speaker 1: to put the documents in the will together, and you
Speaker 1: know you need to have life insurance too. This is
Speaker 1: just a reality. It's an adult thing you gotta do.
Speaker 1: And you want to get a great policy for a
Speaker 1: great price. That's where policy Genius comes in. You can
Speaker 1: find life insurance policies that started just twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: per month with a million dollars of coverage. Some options
Speaker 1: offer coverage in as little as a week and avoid
Speaker 1: unnecessary medical exams. Policy Genius has license agents who can
Speaker 1: help you find the best fit for your needs. They
Speaker 1: work for you and not the insurance companies. Your loved
Speaker 1: ones deserve a financial safety net. You deserve a smarter
Speaker 1: way to find and buy it. Go to policygenius dot com.
Speaker 1: That's policygenius dot com. Go check it out today, all right?
Speaker 1: Our final topic on this pot am end of the
Speaker 1: and does that work if you.
Speaker 2: Want to take a policy out on your spouse without
Speaker 2: them knowing, just asking for a friend and sorry, keep grying.
Speaker 1: Which I'm sure I don't know. So the NBA I
Speaker 1: grew up, I don't know. I don't know how old
Speaker 1: you are. I'm gonna guess you're twenty five, because I'm
Speaker 1: told now that all all young ladies are you know,
Speaker 1: if you're on TV with them to say they're twenty
Speaker 1: five because they can't get mad at you. But yeah, right, exactly,
Speaker 1: So I don't know how old you are. You maybe,
Speaker 1: though slightly in the same generation. What's up? It's classified classified,
Speaker 1: right you? Maybe? Though not too far away from my direction.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say I think you're a fellow millennial. How
Speaker 1: about that, you're fellow millennial. I'll put that out there.
Speaker 1: That sounds probably correct. So yeah, right, yeah, that covers it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that covers it, right, because I grew up watching the
Speaker 1: New York Knicks when they were this like fun and
Speaker 1: honestly been watching on TV. I would go. I had
Speaker 1: an uncle who had season tickets a few years. So
Speaker 1: I didn't go all the time because I'm out of
Speaker 1: some but I would go till some of the games.
Speaker 1: I went to, I don't know, probably twenty or thirty
Speaker 1: Knicks games growing up, which is not a ton, but
Speaker 1: for me that was a lot because I have them
Speaker 1: into like a basketball game, and god, I don't know
Speaker 1: now twenty years so I don't go anymore. I can't
Speaker 1: stand the NBA because of its politics.
Speaker 2: Okay, let me let me fix you.
Speaker 1: You gotta help me with this because I used to watch.
Speaker 1: I mean, I go back to Charles Oakley and Ewing
Speaker 1: and Anthony Mason and the bomb squad and the whole thing,
Speaker 1: like I was all about it.
Speaker 2: Michael Michael Jordan's saying Republicans buy sneakers too is the key, right, Okay,
Speaker 2: So here we go the year in the bubble. We
Speaker 2: don't count that because it is And I say that
Speaker 2: as a diehard Lakers fan. Okay, I'm willing to give
Speaker 2: up that flag, right, I could give a crap about
Speaker 2: the bubble year, it doesn't count. I don't accept Lebron
Speaker 2: as a Laker. I it's very conflicting for me because
Speaker 2: I still want the Lakers to win. I just want
Speaker 2: him to be on the bench and out of my sight.
Speaker 2: But I you know, I grew up in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: so I am about basketball is my sport, Like that's
Speaker 2: just how it is. We have like ten basketball teams
Speaker 2: in California. So and I grew up watching Kobe, and
Speaker 2: I'm I'm I don't know if anyone who's been on
Speaker 2: my Twitter knows I'm oked with Kobe Bryant. Like Kobe Bryant,
Speaker 2: I've read every book that he's involved and related to
Speaker 2: the Mamba mentality surmises what my dad used to teach
Speaker 2: me as a young girl. How to be you know,
Speaker 2: brave enough to be hated by people, and how to
Speaker 2: direct that energy into something that's productive and unbeatable, and
Speaker 2: how to be the best and this whole thing about discipline.
Speaker 2: Like the other day I was doing we were doing
Speaker 2: a film review on this other podcast, The Backwall, which
Speaker 2: is the cinema sports cast that I do with my friends.
Speaker 2: We're doing he Got Game, you know, Spike Lee's movie
Speaker 2: from nineteen ninety eight. Amazing period of time, amazing message
Speaker 2: in that movie. By the way, I encourage you to
Speaker 2: revisit that movie. The message about parenting in that video
Speaker 2: is absolutely gone from American culture. It's incredible. Anyway we
Speaker 2: ignore the year of the Bubble, even if the Lakers
Speaker 2: won a championship this year. I returned to the NBA
Speaker 2: because I am so sick of the political infighting that
Speaker 2: was going on on Twitter that I was like, I
Speaker 2: just want to watch something purer. Sports I always loved
Speaker 2: because it was pure. As long as they continue counting
Speaker 2: points and there is a winner any loser, and they
Speaker 2: don't give trophies to everybody. As far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 2: it's still pure. They don't have the BLM stuff written
Speaker 2: on the court anymore. Now you gotta worry about baseball.
Speaker 2: Basketball has cleaned itself up completely. There is no politics
Speaker 2: in it anymore. That was like one year where yeah,
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't watch well. When I was in government,
Speaker 2: I didn't have time to watch anything. So I missed
Speaker 2: four years with the movie five years of Basketball. So
Speaker 2: I literally at one point asked the guys that I
Speaker 2: do the sports cast the sports Ball cast with I
Speaker 2: was like, whatever happened to Anthony Davis? He's on the Lakers, dude.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, awesome, all right, we got Anthony Davis. Cool.
Speaker 2: So like, I'm not, like, you know, trying to be
Speaker 2: some absolute expert, but by the end of the season,
Speaker 2: like I can, I can out bit basketball talk anybody,
Speaker 2: because I mean, it's just my it's my blood. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's I just live for it. And as long
Speaker 2: as it's like the comforting sounds of a of a
Speaker 2: game on in the background, would you rather hear that
Speaker 2: or the news? Like, I don't want to hear the
Speaker 2: news anymore. I know all those people that sounds. It
Speaker 2: sounds like being in a room full of people I
Speaker 2: know arguing with each other. I just want to hear
Speaker 2: the squeaky shoes and the low, steady voices of the
Speaker 2: announcers with the occasional excitement about a three and and
Speaker 2: I'm good. Like that's that. Basketball is just beautiful to me.
Speaker 2: It's my It's like my favorite art form. I can,
Speaker 2: I can, I can watch it.
Speaker 1: One we're compelling pitches for it I've heard in a
Speaker 1: long time.
Speaker 2: So I mean, and look you men have strip clubs
Speaker 2: to go to. I gotta watch professional sports like I
Speaker 2: don't know how to explain that any better.
Speaker 1: I'll take it. Amanda Milius, everybody check out her on Twitter,
Speaker 1: uh you know. And and Amanda, we gotta get you
Speaker 1: come back some time. You gotta get you on the
Speaker 1: on the radio show with Clay by the way, we
Speaker 1: would have a lot of fun with three of us
Speaker 1: talking about things you will. That would be really good stuff.
Speaker 1: So we'll set that up. Thank you so much, and
Speaker 1: everybody will talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thanks for having me on