Episode Two Hundred Eighty Five: Hollywood Homicide

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3:55O sea, hay que proceduralizar un tipo de más o menos pretosos en arahén porque este es uno de los pocos simplemente adecuas. Hay que hacer algo sobre esto. Todos los expertos han dicho esto, tiempo a tiempo. Es increíble para ir a ser bajando en el strait, porque no hay que controlar el strait para hacer eso. Todo lo que es el traje de una de estos géneros o tanques de ser desbloqueado, no hay que haber la habilidad de hacer esto, o incluso, necesariamente, la inclinación de hacer esto. Es todo sobre la psicología y la percepción. Es un poco como... Es un poco de analogy, pero siempre me parece que la más efectiva de terrorista de todo el tiempo era una desbloqueada de terrorista. Estoy referiendo a la chubama.

4:57Recuerda, esa crazy guy, que creo que su nombre era RID, que ha intentado llegar a un plane con un chubama de la chubama, y se piden espectáculo. Pero por el próximo un poco de décadas, millones y millones de manáveres se los han perdido, porque estamos todos tomando las chicas en la preparación de tener en el plane. Ahora, eso se está afectando ahora, Pero, no sé qué hacer con si no hubo pasos, los bombos eran realmente going to take down airplanes. Se ha ido a hacer con la percepción de esto y la idea de esto. Bueno, lo que es simple es que es todo el ronismo, porque estos tankers son mucho más durados y los company insurance no van a ir a un tipo de risco aquí. que hay no risco de reward para ellos para intentar ir por el strait, con la confianza extrema que es que es OK.

5:58Así que esto es un problema económico. Y una de las otras pruebas que Trump no pensaba esto, es que se semanalmente ha ido ahora, en el caso de algunos de nuestros Nado allies, asking for help. Now, I totally understand why he would think that they would be eager to help because their economic interest might be even more on the line than ours when it comes to the oil coming from the straight of her moves. But so far, the Nado allies in general have not been stepping up to the plate and anything close to the way that Trump had expected. But don't you think that this would have been agreed to prior or that maybe if you're going to, if you know, let's say, okay, you can't tell them because you don't want to break the secrecy and they're not trustworthy. But if you know you're going to do this and you're going to know you're eventually going to shut down the straight of her moves and you know you're going to need help from your allies, maybe not shit all over Nado

6:59for the, for the couple of months before you do this because that's the way you would think about this if you were playing chess instead of checkers or whatever it is that Trump is playing. Now again, I'm still relatively optimistic that eventually this is all going to get straightened out. It seems clear though that we're trying to thread a needle here at least politically that can't be thread. And the vast majority of people are not going to be happy with the end result here. I mean, if you hate Trump, you're always going to be unhappy with the end result. But if you want to regime change, if you're extremely in favor of this, you're not going to be happy with the result because there's not apparently even attempted a regime change. Now politically I understand that but there's a segment of the, of especially the Iranian population that was very much hopeful that that would be the result here. And by the way, if you don't get regime change, isn't this like nipping the top off of a,

8:00of a dandelion? I mean, it's just going to grow back eventually. Yeah, we're taking out a lot of their leadership. In fact, Trump made a, to me, what was a very troubling statement where he literally said, we don't even know who to negotiate with because we keep killing their leadership. Now, I don't know how true that is because apparently the, the new Iatola is still alive. There have been reports that have been potentially very badly injured, but I'm not seen proof of that. The biggest story involving him is that he might be gay, which apparently amused the hell at a Donald Trump and of course it's rather ironic given the view of homosexuality within radical Islam. But the fact that Trump is telling people publicly, we don't even know who to negotiate with, is another indication that they didn't think this through properly. There was no plan. I'm reminded of the scene in the, in the Monty Python movie,

9:01Life of Brian, where Brian is pretending to be a prophet at his story is going nowhere and one of the onlookers says, he's making it up as he goes along. Well, that's what it feels like. That Trump may be making this up as he goes along, which is very, very troubling because that means we don't really have a plan. Again, though, I'm still somewhat optimistic. I don't know how long it's gonna be. Trump's, I will say this, Trump's temperament. It seems to be that of a very confident guy. Now, how credible that is, I don't know, but I don't sense any real worry in him. He seems exceedingly confident. He's already talking about taking over Cuba, which is just amazing on numerous levels. But so I'm not sensing any panic on the part of Trump. However, Joe Kent, the top counterterrorism official

10:02within the Trump administration, did resign his position. Of course, Trump is saying this is a good thing. There are those who are claiming, and I don't think this is irrational. The part, or maybe even the primary reason why Kent resigned is that a lot of his dire predictions for what was gonna happen with regard to an attack on Iran have not yet come to fruition. Now, he may eventually end up being right. Let's hope not. But he has resigned and there's a lot of speculation. He's now gonna end up doing an interview with Tucker Carlson, who's been a very strong critic of the war with Iran. And the Tucker Carlson issue, I don't really understand what's going on here. When it comes to Tucker, I'm often confused over the last several years. I will just say that I believe that the events of the last week have once again vindicated my view that I started to express about three years ago that something was very wrong with Tucker Carlson,

11:03that he was not the same guy that I once had great respect for, who I once thought of as the most eloquent and the funniest of all of the conservative commentators, maybe the smartest of the conservative commentators, but that's not that guy anymore. And it's not just because I disagree with him with regard to Israel and the Middle East and his seeming support for Putin and Russia. It goes way, way beyond that. There's something wrong with Tucker. Mentally, psychologically, is it possible that he's conflicted? I think that is, but it doesn't make sense to me because there's no evidence he needs money. And that would be the number one way someone like that, especially if they got fired from Fox News Channel, would be conflicted. He has claimed vehemently that he doesn't need money, not interested in money. That doesn't mean it's not true. Is it possible as financial situation is worse than we know? And he actually does need money

12:05and that that would be a source of possible conflict and explain some of this. That's possible. I have zero information or evidence leading in that direction, but I think it's a possible scenario. But he's been getting a lot of publicity over the last several days because he has claimed that the CIA is preparing a criminal referral on him regarding conversations that he has had prior to the war with people in Iran and that he believes he might be accused of being a foreign agent on behalf of Iran. Now, there's a couple possibilities here. Is he in big trouble and he's trying to prepare his audience for it or maybe try to set the narrative before that actually comes down? In a rational world, that would make sense. I think that's a possible scenario. With Tucker, he's become such a drama queen that it's possible that this is mostly bullshit. I mean, again, I really don't have a good handle

13:09on what's going on with Tucker. I just have known for a long time something is very, very off. And considering the fact that Tucker Carlson was literally as I referred to him many, many times, the MVP of Donald Trump's primary campaign for president in 2024. I mean, I'm not saying that if Tucker Carlson had gone the other way and supported Ron DeSantis as he should have, that the result would have been different. Tucker didn't have that kind of a power. But he absolutely, even while he was still at Fox News Channel, laid the groundwork for Trump's comeback. And Trump has been very, very supportive of Tucker, largely because of that. But we now have this incredibly bizarre situation where because Tucker Carlson has now said that he has been in communication with effectively the Iranian leadership or something at least close to the Iranian leadership. And that he met with Trump in the Oval Office five days before the attack.

14:11There are people, there's some of the crackpot theories. I mean, this is Epstein level shit that people have been coming up with in both directions. But my favorite is Maga people giving Trump the credit that he knew because the CIA obviously had Tucker Carlson's text, this is the theory. He knew that Tucker was acting on behalf of Iran. He pretended to be friendly with him in the White House. He gave him bad information that we were never going to attack Iran, that Tucker then went to Iran and told them the United States is not going to attack. And then we attacked five days later. And it somehow this makes Trump this chess playing genius. Well, first of all, this is not at all consistent with the Donald Trump that we have known for the last 10 years. And I think a lot of it's fantasy. I mean, there's never been a greater disparity between the way that a public figure actually thinks

15:12that acts and the way that they're fervent fan base fantasizes about the way that they think and they act. Then it comes to, when it comes to Maga and Donald Trump. They think he's a four dimensional chess genius. And I think it best he's playing checkers. And I think the evidence is overwhelmingly on my side. I don't believe that Tucker Carlson was being used as some sort of a fake double agent. And I will be surprised if there's some sort of a criminal allegation against Tucker Carlson. I'm not even sure I understand what this even means. A CIA criminal referral. I don't even know what that means. It sounds bullshitty to me. And because Tucker is such a drama queen and does tend to imagine things. I mean, he's imagined all sorts of things. Remember, this is a guy you cannot forget this who on video and in interview, talked about being attacked by demons in his bed

16:15because he had some sort of claw or bite marks when he woke up. No esperes. Cambiate today at Cox. Requiere Cox Mobile, gigante de garantía de presión, incluye impuestos y cargos, velocidad de datos moviles, reduce después de 20 gigas al mes. And never thought to connected to the fact that he sleeps with multiple dogs in his bed.

17:17His family pets. Gee, I wonder if there's another possible source of the claw or bite marks and whatever the hell they were. Then demons attacking him in his sleep. I mean, there's something slip in his mirror. Oh, if there's something wrong with Tucker Carlson, but I'm open to any and all scenarios on that situation other than Tucker Carlson being used by Donald Trump as a fake double agent to set up the war in Iran. But the Tucker Carlson issue has really put a lot of focus on this MAGA food fight that we've discussed many times in the past on this podcast. But there's no question that Tucker is at the center of what I call the alliance of lunacy, which I describe as Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly

18:17and Candace Owens. And they have been taking on other elements of the MAGA media, specifically Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin. Now, obviously Shapiro and Levin are big supporters of Israel, and therefore they are supportive of this Iranian war. Kelly and Carlson clearly are not on that side. They're on the opposite side of this. And in a rational world, I'd say, OK, that's fine. Healthy disagreement. I can totally understand why you would be in favor of this. I can understand why you'd be against this. I can understand why you'd be in my position where you're hopeful that this is the right thing to do, but you're skeptical about it, where you're somewhere in the middle. So I don't have a problem with the substantive disagreement over such a big issue as going to war with Iran and all the negative economic impacts of it and the potential political ramifications of this. But this thing has gotten way out of control.

19:18Way out of control. And it is even resulted. I can't even believe I'm saying this. It is even resulted in Megan Kelly, a woman who I have had a very complicated view of, because I think she is, at least I used to think she was smart. She's very articulate. She's obviously beautiful. And that might have had an influence over my perception of her as a red blooded American man. I can admit that a woman's attracted this may cause me to overrate other elements of her personality and characteristics specifically of her intelligence. I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out why was I wrong about Megan Kelly, but I have also been exceedingly correct in describing her as a shapeshifter who will do and say whatever it is that she perceives to be in her own self-interest at that moment. I've taken a lot of heat from people, because there are a lot of people, even in my very small fan base, who like Megan Kelly

20:21or at least used to like Megan Kelly, who have had a difficult time with that. And to me, all you really need to know about Megan Kelly is that she used her feud with Donald Trump in 2016 to get a very lucrative gig at NBC. She tried to sell out Mac as she tried to sell out Trump. She tried to sell out politics in general claims she was done with politics. She bombed terribly at NBC. And then in an effort to try to justify her, explain or rationalize why she bombed at NBC. She attacked my friend Matt Lauer, lying about him, got exposed as lying about him, no ramifications there. And then she slowly but surely somehow worked her way back as an independent journalist into being one of the leaders of the Maca movement. How the fuck does that happen? But she's a shapeshifter and she's been very good at it, very successful at it. But now here she is going after Mark Levin for having a micropenus, not make it that up. And by the way, she did this on multiple occasions.

21:23She and Levin got into a spat on X. And here she's going after Mark Levin for allegedly having a micropenus. Now of course the hypocrisy here is off the charts. I mean, if a man ever went after a woman in that kind of way, they'd be done for. But I guess it's okay when you're a hot chick like Megan Kelly, you can go after a short Jewish guy like Mark Levin and he claims he has a micropenus. I doubt she has an inside knowledge that he has a micropenus. As far as conservative commentators and micropenuses go, I mean, you might want to ask Laura Ingram about Dinesh D'Souza, but that's another story for another day. But here we have Megan Kelly going after Mark Levin for allegedly having a micropenus. By the way, Kelly and Ben Shapiro have been going at each other pretty hard as well

22:24over the last several days. And she's going after Shapiro for his height, which I guess is halfway to getting to micropenus. And Donald Trump for his part in all this came out and very strongly backed Mark Levin, which of course I've found to be particularly bizarre because I wrote about in Mediaite back in the Dark Ages, back in 2016, about how I had an interesting exchange with Mark Levin at a radio conference, because I had previously written a column where I described Mark Levin as one of the smart conservative commentators who appears to be caving in to Donald Trump. This was during the primary campaign of 2016. And Mark was very nice about it, but he basically said, I don't know if I deserved to be on that list. And I'm like, okay, Mark, I hope that's true. Well, it turned out obviously I was right because he did the full sell out to Donald Trump.

23:26And now here we are in 2026, 10 years later, and Trump is publicly backing Mark Levin in a battle with Meghan Kelly, although Trump was silent on the issue of whether or not Mark Levin actually has a micropenus, which I'm sure some people were disappointed about since, based upon the testimony of Stormy Daniels, Trump might be an expert on that particular issue. I can't believe we're even talking about this, but this is where we are when it comes to the state of the Maga media and the food fight that is ensued. And the war in Iran has sparked another outburst in this whole situation. And of course, the whole thing is insanity. And it's not just because we've gotten to the point of going after alleged micropenus, it's because of all the things that are going on in the world right now, of all the challenges we face, of all the things that the conservative media

24:26should be focused on this any in the top 1,000. I mean, here we have, forget about the war in Iran, which I'm hopeful in a month, we're gonna have a hard time, well, we'll remember it, but I mean, hopefully in a month this is all gonna be back to normal. I'm still hopeful that that's where we're gonna be. I could be wrong about that. I could be being overly optimistic, but I still think that's the most likely scenario in all this. Will we have achieved enough to have justified the war? I have no idea. I have my doubts about that, but I do think that in a month or so, this thing will be over with and we'll be back to some semblance of normalcy. But the conservative media should be focused on among other things, AI and what that's gonna do to us, and Gavin Newsom, and whether or not he's gonna be president, that should be the focus right now. And the midterms, obviously.

25:28The midterm elections, AI and Newsom, not Megan Kelly going after Mark Levin for allegedly having a micro penis. And as far as why is it, there's so much dysfunction within the media. And to me, this is a pretty simple situation. I mean, there's a reason why the media is so dysfunctional, because everyone in it inherently, by definition, sold out to Donald Trump. So it's not that difficult to understand. The pool of people we're talking about here, first of all, they're all ego-mediax. They're all extreme narcissists, and they're all sellouts. Because if you weren't a sellout, you wouldn't be in the magma media group to begin with. Not to mention, a lot of these people are crazy at the start. I mean, Candace Owens is a completely insane person. At best, she's a fraud, at worst, she's worse than a fraud,

26:31and she may be completely loony tunes. I do believe that Tucker Carlson has lost his mind. Meg and Kelly is saying things that are absolutely ridiculous, some of the things that she's done just in the last week on the Epstein story, claiming now that there's evidence that he was, I guess, killed in prison, which is just completely ridiculous as I exposed in the last episode of the podcast. But there's dysfunction here, because in order to get into this club, you had to sell out to Trump. It says, we're going to be crude about all this. I think the primary cause for the lunacy within the magma media is, it must be related to Trump's semen. Because if you suck Trump's cock, the semen appears to be brain poison. I'm sorry for that analogy, that metaphor, that image, but that's the best I got if we're going to talk about Mark Levin's micro penis.

27:31And to me, Ben Shapiro is still the best of a bad bunch because it seems to me as if Ben draws the line at hand jobs for Trump. Ben will give a hand job on a drop of a hat, especially if it relates to Israel with Trump, but I don't think he's ever really taken Trump's dick in his mouth like ever all these other frauds have. And so there must be something to that. And obviously I'm talking figuratively, at least I hope here. But that's the reason. That's the reason why there's so much dysfunction within the magma media. They're all a bunch of crazy egomaniacs who sold out the Donald Trump. Gee, I wonder why there would be dysfunction in that group. Because they don't actually believe in anything, except their own self-interest. They don't really give a shit about the truth or the country. And this is obviously a source of passion for me, because I've been trying to tell people about this since 2012. I actually had a book proposal with a legitimate book agent

28:35and told me this was going to be a slam dunk where I was going to write a book about the conservative media called a business not a cause. It would have been a great book, but we never got it sold. Well, it would have been pressured itself because obviously in the next presidential cycle in 2016, that's where everything fell apart. And Donald Trump took over the Republican Party for good. And so this is not where the focus should be. And as I said, one of the focuses should be on Gavin Newsom. And nobody hates Gavin Newsom more than I do. I think my record on that is exceedingly clear. We're just on the sixth anniversary of Newsom shutting down the state of California during the COVID panic, which I will go to my death believing was the most impactful act and the worst act by a governor in the entire history of the United States of America. I've gone through why that is many, many times before.

29:35I was pressuring about that the day that had happened. I wrote a column for Mediaite the next morning saying that this was a catastrophic error and that it was based upon a completely ridiculous projection on how many people were actually going to get COVID in the next eight weeks. Newsom was completely and totally wrong about that. And I believe he was at least partially politically motivated. And now here he is by all accounts, one of, if not the favorite, to be the next president of the United States. And it's clear to me that Donald Trump understands that Newsom is the clear favorite at this point to take over for him because Newsom has been the subject of a lot of attacks by Trump, some of which I completely agree with. This one I did not, because Trump decided to go after Newsom in the Oval Office in a press conference for having dyslexia, which he referred to as a learning disability, which it is.

30:38But he also referred to Newsom as being dumb, seemingly because of his dyslexia and that dyslexia would be a disqualifier in Trump's mind for being president of the United States. Now he did this in part because he referenced a clip that I played on this podcast several weeks ago where I later acknowledged I did not give proper context to it. And Trump clearly is one of those that did not understand the proper context, the full context, which was this event in South Carolina where Newsom was on stage with a black interviewer and no one saw the crowd, but it was presumed, I think, for understandable reasons, that the crowd was majority or at least mostly black, if not entirely black, and that Newsom was telling that crowd that they're no smarter than, he's no smarter than they are. In other words, he's dumb just like they are.

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32:44media norms, if a conservative says that to a black audience, they're toast. So Trump was combining that event which apparently the audience was not anything close to 100% black and therefore in theory, you could argue that Newsom wasn't at least subliminally talking about someone's race or shouldn't be attacked for making this into a racial issue that he was really talking about his learning disabilities, specifically his dyslexia. And Trump made this statement that I thought was completely and totally inappropriate, wrong, and factually inaccurate. And here's what that sounded like from the Oval Office. You know, because Gavin Newsom has admitted that he is learning disabilities. Honestly, I'm old for people with learning disabilities, but not for my president, I don't want. I think a president should not have learning disabilities, okay? And I know it's highly controversial to say such a horrible thing.

33:44The president of the United States, Gavin Newsom, admitted that he is learning disabilities, dyslexia, everything about him is dumb. But then he looked at the audience and said, what, I'm smarter than you or something like that that was pretty similar. So now, on top of everything else I call him a racist, because it happened to be a black audience, I will tell you this. I think it was the worst interview I've ever seen of any human being in my life, okay? Anybody else have any questions? Now, my first reaction to that was, first of all, dyslexia doesn't make you dumb. Number two, he's got his facts wrong on the event in South Carolina. Three, it's totally inappropriate for the president of the United States to be condemning all people with dyslexia because you're going after Donald Trump, especially when that president, Donald Trump, has numerous psychological issues

34:44that international world should disqualify him from being president. He's a malignant narcissist. He's a megalomaniac. I believe maybe most importantly, he has the attention span of a toddler. I mean, they probably have to put the daily briefing in cartoons for him, and that's not an exaggeration. His attention span alone onto disqualify him from being president. I've always said he is uniquely unqualified psychologically to be president. The reason I knew this was because I watched the apprentice on NBC on a regular basis. Anyone that watched the apprentice and the final decision making in the boardroom at the end of all those episodes would realize this guy can't be president. I mean, who, the last person to speak to him always wins because he has no attention span. This is the exact opposite of what you would want

35:45from a president, and in a rational world, those things would be disqualifying. But instead, he's been the Republican presidential nominee three straight times, and he's going to get to pick the nominee for the fourth time. So I had a huge problem with what Trump said there, especially since my almost 14-year-old daughter, seventh-grader Grace, has severe dyslexia. And I showed her the video, and as I've discussed many times before, she's a big Trump fan, and she immediately said to me that she wanted to make a video response. So I said, sure. And she almost entirely on her own. She got her props, her mac-at sign by Charlie Kirk, and her Trump teddy bear, and she put on her Charlie Kirk shirt, and she asked me to record a video to post online in response to Donald Trump, specifically referencing him.

36:46So I said, sure, fine. And so I posted it and people seemed to like it. There were some people who thought I was using her for some sort of political agenda, which I don't even know what that would be because I don't think these people understand that I'm an anti-Trumper. So I think they perceived me as having brainwashed her into being a Trump fan, but it's actually exactly the opposite. So I have absolutely nothing to do with Grace being a Trump fan, other than the fact that I don't influence her thinking. I mean, I will express my disagreements with Trump, but I'm never gonna tell her what the thing of course is a teenage girl that's not gonna have any impact on her anyway. But I have absolutely nothing to do with Grace being a Trump fan. I try to let her come to her own conclusions and hopefully she'll be able to figure it out on her own. But I thought it might be interesting to play the clip that I posted online. This is to be fair. I think this is really only the second take that she did on this.

37:50The first take got ruined because her mom slammed the, not slammed on like she wasn't angry, but she went out to take a jog and closed the door and a way that distracted Grace. So we stopped that. So I think this was like the second, maybe the third take, it's about three minutes long. And I think you'll appreciate it. So here's seventh grader, almost 14 year old, Grace Ziggler addressing Donald Trump, regarding his comments on Gavin Newsom and dyslexia. Hello there, President Trump. My name is Grace Ziggler. I live in California. And I am a seventh grader who has been dyslexic her whole life. I've always struggled with it. And although reading and writing aren't my best things, I still think I'm smart. And a lot of people with dyslexia are smart. I've been a Trumper my whole life. I got a MAGA hat signed by Charlie Kirk himself, Charlie Kirk shirt, which I know you love Trump.

38:52He was one of your friends. And I got a happy Trump pin and the best of them all. I have a Donald Trump bear. But to get that out of the way, I think I can prove that I am a Trumper, pro America as well. And also to add on to the pile, since I live in California, I really know that Gavin Newsom, more like Gavin Pusom, weeks of two. If anyone should not be president, it should be Gavin Newsom. He will drag this country into a trash bin. He is definitely not the right candidate for this president, see. And all that aside, even though he's dyslexic and even though he is not the best candidate for president, it does not mean that those things go set hand in hand. Just because he's dumb,

39:53does not mean that dyslexia triggers that. It's just another thing to add on to the pile really. Of course he shouldn't be president, but that's not because of dyslexia. dyslexia is a condition where people can't understand letters properly. They just don't mix well on their head. One word could be one thing one day and another word could be another thing another day. I know that. I struggled with the till I was in third grade. And all that aside, just because you're dyslexic, doesn't mean that you struggle with other things. I know, even since I'm making this video, I'm pretty good at speaking. It's a talent I've had for a long time. And I'm good at art and all sorts of things and dealing with crowds. Now of course I have the spelling to deal with, but I think I'll get the hand of it one day. And I think having a dyslexic president would be wonderful.

40:53They think in different ways than other people outside of the box. Heck, maybe they could be one of the greats just like you Donald Trump. And I just need to have everyone's know that dyslexia, even though Donald Trump thinks it's dumb, which it's not, is a strength. And Donald Trump maybe should think before he speaks sometimes. I love him, but you should think. Thank you so much, Sean, Sean, for everything you've done. Just letting you know that dyslexia is not being dumb. I thought Grace did a really nice job with that. And I don't think Donald Trump has seen the video. It's not gone viral, although it's gotten a lot of comments, a lot of comments, a lot of very positive comments for how Grace did. I thought she did a really nice job. And I do think the point is very valid. I mean, it was completely inappropriate for the president of the States to say that.

41:54And I was glad that Grace stood up against it, but still is a Trump supporter. I mean, I thought that was, that was good. I mean, she didn't get emotional about it and say, oh, I'm never supporting Donald Trump again. She was trying to be constructive in her criticism. I've been trying to help Trump understand reality. Of course, that's a very high ill decline, but I admire her effort. When it comes to Gavin News, I'm going to keep the Gavin News and Fear factor at 7.0, but I feel like it's rising for a number of reasons. I mean, we're very close to getting it back up to 7.5 out of 10 when it comes to the fear of Gavin News that becoming the next president of the United States. I want to turn now to the Academy Awards, the Oscars. And I find this to be a difficult subject to discuss because I actually have a lot to say about this, but my sense is that no one wants to hear it, not because of me, just because I now believe

42:55that there's not just apathy about this once great cultural event, the Academy Awards. In a large portion of the population, maybe half the population, there's extreme animus almost hatred towards the event. And what I mean by that is when I comment like on X, either prior to the awards or during the awards, which I was watching partially because I felt like I need a comment on it for this podcast and too, because my girls, including my wife, were all at Disneyland this past Sunday, so I was a bachelor and I went over to my friend Cyrus Narasta's house. Cyrus is a movie director and his wife is a screenwriter and they've done many, many movies together and some of which I've consulted on. So we decided to have dinner and watch the Academy Awards. When I post about it, I get that you're going to have conservative say, ah, I'm not watching.

43:56No, I don't care, that's fine. But what I've noticed is I get a lot of comments and people saying, why the fuck are you watching? Like angry at me for watching, including our own executive producer, my guy, Confeta was like, why the hell are you watching this thing? And that was not an aberration. And Mike's comment to me, I was like, wow, people really fucking hate the Academy Awards now, which to me is sad, because we have so few communal events in our country and the Oscars are no longer one of them. In fact, it's maybe the opposite of a communal event. It's a divisive event and it's never going to be anything close to what it was before. I mean, it is remarkable. There has not been, in my view, an annual cultural event that has disintegrated more dramatically or more quickly than the Academy Awards. They have lost now at least 60% of their television audience

44:58in just the last 12 years. That's all it took, 12 years down 60%. This past weekend, Sunday night, ABC had less than 18 million viewers for the Academy Awards. Let's put that in perspective. The average Sunday night football game during the regular season, during 2025 for NBC, averaged 23.5 million viewers. That's the average. And there were some clunkers on Sunday night football this year. Average 23.5 million versus 17.9 million. There was only one Sunday night football game this past season that had a smaller viewership than the Academy Awards. And that game was up against the World Series, which was the best World Series in many, many years,

46:01maybe in the modern history of the sport. So, I mean, this is a pathetic number, given all of the attention, all the energy that gets put into it. I mean, the Academy Awards, I'm amazed as someone who's lived in Los Angeles now for like 22 years. And so I've seen this up close. There used to be an entire economic ecosystem surrounding the Academy Awards. I mean, all these other award shows, the only reason they exist is to preview or to get people ready or to promote the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which is the Oscars. I mean, it's a lot like using the NFL. The NFL's pot of gold is the Super Bowl. So because that pot of gold is so rich, so deep, so lucrative with 125, 130 million people watching to national holiday, everything the NFL does leading up to that

47:06inherently has value, credibility, importance, significance. Well, that used to be the way it was with the Hollywood ecosystem. But now that's completely dried up. I mean, there's a drought. I have no idea how the rest of this system even exists today because there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I mean, the Academy Awards used to survive on big box office, which got people invested in how a particular movie that they liked might do in the awards, stars who would show up where you didn't see them all the time on commercials or social media or podcast interviews or whatever. You might only see them a couple of times a year, but now there are no stars. And the few stars that still exist, they're not even there. I mean, this particular Academy Awards had one suddenly aging star and Leonardo DiCaprio didn't win anything

48:07individually and one budding star and Timothy Salomeg. That's about it. I mean, nobody else that people would tune in to see, except during the immemorial. I mean, when more people, way more stars are dying in the immemorial, or obviously being shown to have died in the last year, then are actually at the awards. That's a massive fucking problem. And that's absolutely what happened this year. And it's going to continue to happen because the entire star system, star creation system is broken.

49:10Not just a little broken, it's kaput. And by the way, the Academy Awards is part of that. The Academy Awards used to be able to create stars. Well, now it can't. A great example, probably the best moment from the standpoint of a winner's speech by far was from this Irish actress, Jesse Buckley, who won the award. And he was the one who made the most of the stars. He was from this Irish actress, Jesse Buckley, who won for best actress. This was like a throwback. I mean, here she is, a, you know, young, attractive, unknown from a foreign country. Excited to win. She gives a speech about motherhood, not just a little bit about motherhood, but the most pro motherhood speech you're going to see on network television in this decade, probably. And in the olden days, she'd be an instant star, especially in Red State America.

50:10She seems likeable. It was real, but no one watched, certainly not in Red State America. So, you know, while within Hollywood circles, her career will probably be improved. It's not going to be the same life-changing experience that it would have been certainly a decade ago, because the show wasn't big enough to create a star. So, when the imamorium, which was very good, although it was greatly expanded this year, because of all the high-profile deaths, I did think the Barbish trishand tribute to Robert Redford was a bit weird and narcissistic on trishand's part. But in general, I thought the imamorium was very, very good. I also thought that there was a great bit that Conan O'Brien did, where he kind of mocked the Netflix MO for making movies for people that are watching their cell phones while they're watching movies at home. And therefore, you have to keep repeating yourself constantly.

51:12They did a bit about what Casa Blanca would be like in today's era, where you have to repeat the plot every two minutes. And it was hilarious. And very, I thought, important, especially for that audience, to understand what's happening here. You can't make a great movie under those rules. You also can't make a great movie when you have to adhere to a ridiculous DEI standards just to get nominated for an Academy Award, which you absolutely have to do, which was proven once again this year when sinners won all sorts of awards, that they never would have won, that movie never would have won. I don't care how good it is. I haven't seen it. Some people love it, some people hate it. It's a horror movie, which generally would never get awards in an Academy Award ceremony. But it did very well, didn't win best picture, but it did very, very well because it's a black movie. There's no chance that if that horror movie was mostly wider,

52:12Asian or even Hispanic, probably, that it wins nearly the same number of awards, but because it's a black movie, Michael B. Jordan wins Best Actor, and it wins all sorts of other awards. And it's because of the whole DEI element of the Academy Awards, which is partially why Red State America has become so adverse to the Academy Awards. It's the antithesis of everything that Red State America believes in. I mean, it used to be that the Academy Awards was a celebration of movies with life-changing drama on the line, because Jesse Buckley's life might change forever. If she somehow won an Academy Award, well, it's no longer a celebration of the movies, except for the people that died in the past year, that there's a little bit of a celebration of what they did, but it's more of a celebration of wokeism and DEI, or in the case of this ceremony in the last couple,

53:16it's also a celebration of antitrumparism. Antitrumpism is a huge part of the content, both from the standpoint of Conan O'Brien, and Jimmy Kimmel came on and took some shots. I mean, everybody took their Trump shots without actually trying to name his name. And so I totally get why Red State America is completely turned off by the Academy Awards. It's a lot like, this is partially why I'm fascinated by this, as the host of the Death of the Journalism Podcast, the death of the Academy Awards is so much like the death of the mainstream news media. It's incredibly similar. The business model shattered at the very same time where trust was lost. If trust was not lost within a huge portion of the population, a huge second of the population, then they might have been able to survive the breaking, the shattering, the destruction of the business model.

54:17But when you have the business model imploding and you've lost the trust of a massive portion of the public, now you're in big, big trouble. And the theater experience is dying. Hollywood is dying. It's gonna get worse with the merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery, assuming that goes through, which seems to be a done deal because Trump so much likes the Ellison family that owns Paramount, which is a massive conflict of interest that if it was happening under a Democratic administration, and you had a liberal that was a rich dude that was about to buy a company that owns Fox News Channel, which is effectively what's happening with Warner Brothers and CNN. People would have their hair on fire in the right wing media, but we're not hearing anything about that because of the massive hypocrisy, because it seems like it's good for their side, at least in the short run, although I'm not convinced that once Trump has gone,

55:17that Paramount isn't gonna turn into something very, very different politically. But there's no question that Hollywood is in huge, huge trouble. It might be even worse than people are finally starting to realize. And I wanna take a moment to talk about the theater experience since movies are intended to be put into theaters. That's where the magic happens. I always talk about, you gotta protect the magic at all costs, right? And it's amazing to me how many times when institutions get magic, they take it for granted. And the theater experience is what separates, it's really the only thing that separates a movie now from watching something on your phone or on YouTube. And in the younger generations, they don't seem to give a shit other than with the really big blow them up, blockbuster superhero movies maybe.

56:18They don't really care about going to the theater because they become used to watching everything on their phones. Technology plays a huge role in people's perception of media. I mean, let me use newspapers as an example. Newspapers have died in unbelievably quick death, similar to Hollywood. And I don't know that newspaper outlets, media outlets, fully appreciated the power of having that newspaper in your fingertips or having that magazine, that sports illustrated cover in your fingertips. That was the magic of it. I think they thought the magic was in the content. And while it was, yeah, that's too bad that we're gonna lose the newspaper, but we still, you know, people are still gonna read us online. It's still gonna be the same thing. No, it's not gonna be the same thing. You know why? Because now the difference between you, the New York Times,

57:19and some crackpot who is telling people what they want to hear on an internet page that can be made to look pretty much as polished as the New York Times internet page, especially in this day and age. The difference between those two to the average person is non-existent. That difference was clear when there was a newspaper because the crackpot in their basement couldn't put out a newspaper to millions of people every single day. They didn't have the magic. Now to the average person, they can't tell the difference. I really don't think media outlets fully understood that. I know this because I've talked many times about the interaction I had with the head of photography at Sports Illustrated who thought going online was gonna be great for the magazine. I told him it was gonna be the death of the magazine. And I was 100% right about that. And the death of the Washington Post is a great example. Effectively the death of the Washington Post.

58:21And by the way, the Washington Post has lost a ton of subscribers since they laid off over 30% of the workforce and got rid of their sports section. And so relating that to the theater experience, I will at least say that there are some people within Hollywood who understand that that's where the magic is and that that needs to be somehow maintained, although they don't have a clue about how to do it partially because they don't understand that they've destroyed the trust of the public, at least a huge portion of the public that would still, I believe, like to go to the movies. I believe that people would still like to go to movie theaters. The numbers are terrible in comparison to what they used to be pre-COVID, but they're not catastrophic yet, especially given the crap that is the product. I mean, I truly believe if there was a good product, people would still go back to the movie theaters, maybe not in the numbers that they used to, but at least in a reasonable facsimile. And I want to play this clip,

59:21which I found interesting on a couple of levels. I hope you will as well. It was put out by SAG after the actors union, after it's actually the union that I'm technically a part of, although I haven't worked in after many, many years. Supposedly, I'm going to get some sort of a pension from after, I believe it when I say it, but the head of the union is actor Sean Aston, who was most well known for his role in Rudy, which is a movie that's very close to my experience, one because I was a huge Notre Dame fan, and two because it somehow became an integral part of the whole Mike McQuiery story in the Jerry Sandusky Joe Patero Penn State saga, and also because I know personally, from having researched that the movie Rudy is a fraud. But anyway, Sean Aston is the head of SAG actress, and he's doing an interview with Harrison Ford, obviously legendary actor. And here we have two old white guys, I mean, this is the saddest, I wish you could watch this video. These are two old white guys lamenting about how screwed

1:00:27Hollywood is, especially when it comes to the theater experience. And I agreed with almost everything that they say here, except for their lack of acknowledgement of Hollywood having broken the trust with the theater going audience. But here is the head of the SAG after a union in Harrison Ford discussing this issue. The culture has changed, and the business has changed remarkably, and we don't have the support of movie theaters as much as we used to have. And that is a damn shame. That community experience produces positive effects, I think, in the culture. We've been disaggregated into serviceable economic units. But there's not the general feeling of community that we used to have when movies were more,

1:01:28they had captured the Zig Heist of the culture, and they were feeding that Zig Heist. They were needed. They were needed. And they were telling a story that was needed. And that story was a positive contribution to the culture. It's still possible you're doing it. You're doing it. You're breaking through to reaching other people. I mean, maybe they're working their phones to see it or they're something. I mean, I know so many families were. But when you're home, you're home. Yeah. You're not in a dark room with people that you don't know. Who you begin to know because your experience are common humanity. That's a very powerful effect. Now, to me, that was a really interesting and important discussion. Again, they leave out the breaking of the trust and the responsibility that Hollywood needs to take

1:02:28for why it is that so much of the audience has abandoned them, specifically when it comes to the theater going experience. But here's how little power and influence Hollywood has in this modern media era. So the clip that I just played for you was posted on the SAG after X slash Twitter page, right? This is an interview with Harrison Ford. This is exclusive content that they have. Harrison Ford doesn't do that many interviews. That clip has less than 3,000 impressions. Now, I know you're probably not aware of what that means. The my worst post, my worst post, my worst performing post on my ex account, which has 71,000 followers will get around 3,000 impressions. Here's the SAG after a union with an interview with Harrison Ford

1:03:31talking about an incredibly important issue, less than 3,000 impressions. To me, that was an indication of just how totally screwed they really are. And of course, I haven't even mentioned AI yet. I mean, AI could be a crushing blow, crushing blow to what is still remaining of the last vestiges of Hollywood greatness, which was joked about several times during the Academy Awards by Conan O'Brien. I'll give Conan O'Brien at least a little bit of credit. He does seem to understand what's willing to acknowledge just how totally screwed the whole system is. In fact, at the very, very, very end of the broadcast after the awards were over, they did this bit that I'm sure most people didn't even understand because it was relating to a scene in the movie that won the Academy Award that, as I did the calculations, only six million Americans had seen in the theater. So about 98% of the adult population,

1:04:34I'm not saying 98% of the audience watching the Oscars, but 98% of the adult population had no idea what the Al Conan O'Brien was doing, which is, I think, another indication of just how totally broken everything is. Once movies don't reach the threshold of everyone knowing about them, then you can't even make a joke about it without turning off an enormous number of people watching. But anyway, the point of all this is, at the very, very end of the bit, Conan O'Brien's name is taken off of the door as the host for life for the Academy Awards and replaced with Mr. Beast. Now, I don't know if you know who Mr. Beast is, but Mr. Beast is the guy who has the most followers on YouTube by far, like tens and tens of millions of followers. And he's kind of like the poster child for this changing media world, where most people over the age of 35 have no idea who he is,

1:05:35but if you're under the age of 35, he's probably the biggest celebrity in media. So this is the world we're now living in, and I do think that AI is gonna further accelerate all of these problems, because I think Hollywood is gonna totally sell out to AI. They're talking a good game right now. We're seeing this in radio, where some people are talking a good game. I mean, I heart radios says guaranteed human. The reality is the business model is broken. So the moment that these assholes realize that they can make three more dollars for the next quarterly statement for their shareholders, they're gonna sell out to AI. They don't give a shit about humans. They don't give a shit about the way things have been or maintaining some semblance of Hollywood's former greatness. They're gonna go and sell out if it makes sense for them economically. The only thing holding the back right now

1:06:35is that AI isn't quite ready, but when it becomes ready, assuming that it does, we're gonna see it explode. And then once the first movie does well that is mostly AI, they're not gonna do totally AI right away. It's gonna be slow, they're gonna ease you into it. You know, they're gonna lubi up first before they really go full AI, but that's what's gonna eventually happen here in one way or another. And so I'm a pessimist by nature, but I'm generally inclined to try to see some sort of an optimistic path, some way to get something salvageable out of a bad situation, and I'm really struggling when it comes to Hollywood. And I'm more in the death of Hollywood and this death spiral that it's in. I realize that most conservatives seem to be taking joy in this. Look, I totally get that many of these people

1:07:35richly deserve their demise. These are people I don't like, I don't agree with, that have done some really bad things and have taken this tremendous American institution and destroyed it. But I think if Hollywood really does die, that's bad for America. It's bad for America. It is from the standpoint of our entertainment and communal moments. My God, think about if you're over the age of 40, think about how your life would be different without all the most memorable movies and all the movies that in the 70s and 80s, virtually everyone who gave a damn was at least somewhat exposed to because we had that communal experience of all having seen Rocky or Star Wars or ET or whatever it was. I mean, these are iconic movies. I saw a video the other day on TikTok that was really well done. The top 100 movie lines in Hollywood history.

1:08:39Now, it's impossible to make a list that's comprehensive and fair and complete of the top movie lines. But this video was pretty darn good. Someone had done a really excellent job. There were a few omissions and a couple in there that I wouldn't have put in there. But by and large, this was really good. And I don't think any of them were from the last 20 years. I don't, if there was more than two or three from this century, I would be surprised. And that's not a coincidence. That's not just someone who was a boomer creating the list because it's just not possible anymore to make a movie that qualifies. You can't make a good movie. You can't do anything that's truly artistic or groundbreaking or dangerous. And there's no chance that a movie's gonna become iconic enough for people to remember the line so that it becomes one of the top 100 in the history of Hollywood. But I think this is a terrible thing.

1:09:40And I also think it's a cautionary tale. I would love to know whether or not anybody at the NFL is at least a little concern about the Super Bowl. My guess is not. I don't think they have the self-awareness. And I get that the Super Bowl is at a level that the even the Academy Awards never were. I mean, the Academy Awards topped out at like 60 million viewers during a time period with a slightly smaller population than today, actually fairly significantly smaller population. But let's just say the Academy Awards probably never got to much more than half of what the Super Bowl audience currently is. The Super Bowl has become a national holiday. And it seems inconceivable that the Super Bowl could ever fall from that perch. But I don't think it's impossible. I really don't, the reality of the Super Bowl and why I think it is vulnerable.

1:10:41It's not just because we've seen other situations. I mean, not a good example really, but take New Year's Eve. New Year's Eve is nowhere near the event that it used to be culturally. Certainly the Academy Awards is not. Christmas seemingly has hung in there and the Super Bowl has hung in there. But I think that the Super Bowl is somewhat vulnerable, not because of the wokeism and there's a parallel. There's some parallels here between what happened with Hollywood and what's going on with the NFL. They abandoned their base. They've become woke. They've embraced the political agenda that's very liberal. Those are all very similar situations and circumstances to what happened with Hollywood in general and the Academy Awards in particular. But and the bad bunny halftime show and Frederick Lamar, I mean, there's a lot of comparisons. I think irrational that the NFL is so far gotten away with,

1:11:42which is why I'm not sure that they're even aware that they're in this situation. But here's why I think that the Super Bowl actually is vulnerable. I would suggest at least half, at least half, maybe more than that of the Super Bowl audience is only watching because it's the thing to do because their friends are doing it because they got invited to a party because it's what you do on Super Bowl Sunday. It's like a holiday. They're not really interested in the game or even the halftime show at all. They just do it because it's the thing to do. Well, what if all of a sudden it was no longer the thing to do like the Academy Awards are no longer the thing to do? I mean, here, even in Los Angeles, in my time living here, just over 20 years, the Academy Awards used to be mandatory watching and everybody had parties for it

1:12:43because obviously Los Angeles is a movie town. So it's like having our local Super Bowl. That is long gone. And if it can happen in Los Angeles to the Academy Awards, I think it could happen to the Super Bowl. I'm not suggesting it's gonna happen next year or the year after that. I'm just saying that when you don't protect the magic and the NFL has done a really lousy job of protecting the magic, protecting the shield, it is not inconceivable at all to me that 10 years or now, the Super Bowl is not the event that it once was and then once it falls from that perch, once it falls from the perch of basically being Christmas or the 4th of July, there's a long way to fall, just like what happened with the Academy Awards. Once it was no longer must watch, then a whole lot of people who were on the fence decided,

1:13:43I'm not gonna bother with it anymore. And then it's a death spiral because now it no longer has the ability to change anyone's life, all that significantly, like a Jesse Buckley. In fact, I would argue that winning an Academy Award in recent years has actually not been a positive for many people's career. I mean, take just to go for yourself and look at the winners of Best Actor in Actress or Supporting Actor in Actress. There's not a lot of evidence that it's great for your career. Oftentimes it can be bad for your career because I think, this is my theory, I actually think that people are still living in the dark ages about what it means and they overestimate their value or their management overestates overestimates their value after they win the Academy Award and then they make really bad decisions going forward. They basically overplay their hand, thinking that we're still living in an era where, oh, I'm an Oscar winner, now I'm at a completely different level. No, you might not be.

1:14:44In fact, you now may have overestimated your worth and you may be unemployed for a couple of years. So anyway, that's probably more than you want. Based upon my social media reaction, it's more than you wanted on the Academy Awards, but I actually could have talked about this for probably two hours. So you might want to thank me that I decided not to do that. Thanks for listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated show. If you're interested in listening to the entire show, you must become a patron. Please go to patreon. That's PATREN.com. patreon.com slash the death of journalism with John Ziegler, my name is J-W-H-N-Z-I-E-G-L-R. That's patreon.com slash the death of journalism with John Ziegler. Good luck to you on that, but that's how you can subscribe.

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