Bulwark Takes - Stop Waiting for a Happy Ending—This Is the Fight! (w. Richard Rushfield)

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

JVL joins Richard Rushfield of the Ankler to dig into the collision of politics, culture, and creeping authoritarianism.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, guys, it's JVL. I sat down with the anchor's Richard Rushfield today, and we talked about all of the stuff. We hit Jimmy Kimmel. We hit the Trump of it all. We hit fascism. A little bit on the F word there. And then we ended up in a long conversation about the differences between this moment and the 1920s. It's actually a pretty interesting talk. I think you might get something

from it. Here's the show. I think we have a quorum here. We may officially begin our proceedings. I am thrilled. This is somewhat when I started to lunch, who, on my very, very short list of people that I want to have in. And as it turned out, as the gods had pointed it towards that this could not be a more fitting day

as our two worlds collide. I'm speaking of the editor, one of my true heroes of this era there haven't been to come out of this era but what John in the last at the bulwark have done building up and

just being absolutely consistent in their opposition to what's happening here has been you know it has been my survival guide to the last how many years have we been

dealing with all this now? Yeah nine buddies Jesus Christ that's too many there's at least three and a half more maybe not for me but we'll see so I

it's fitting we had you in here today because with with the news last night about Jimmy Kimmel Hollywood including myself Jurocom that it is in something of a full-blown panic and freak out tempered by total

defeatism and catastrophism and then give up so I'm right here the man from Washington that you can tell us hey this is I know culture votes seem like a big thing but this is just

the process and and don't worry your pretty little heads about it it works itself out and everything's fine so you're here to reassure us that it's all going to be just fine right

I mean, sure, in the long run, everyone's dead. We're all food for worms. But this is what Hungary looked like a decade and a half ago, right? This is how it goes. This is, I mean, it just is fascism. You know, somebody, Molly White, who's a very funny tech reporter, put something out on social. And she's like, if only we had a simple one-word term, to describe anti-anti-fascism.

I'm like, yeah. But this is, you know, this is how, again, nobody should be surprised. One of the things people actually talked about in January of this year was, well, we'll see how our late-night comedians handle the term America's turn into authoritarianism. And two of the four of them have now lost their jobs. So, I mean, I should say that's not true. Kimmel may not. Maybe Kimmel survives. But I, like, his contract is up in 2026.

Does anybody think he can re-sign with ABC? I don't. I mean, very difficult to see him coming back and just happily leading the, the, the, the, the, the, the late night slot for ABC after this. And that would be awkward, shall we say. And I want to, what's really dangerous about this, Richard, I mean, the whole thing is dangerous. But I was going to say, what's really alarming is that. that the extortion didn't have to be done in the shadows, right? The FCC chairman didn't have to, like, do a dead drop,

you know, have a courier drop a message with a fish wrapped in newspaper to Bob Iger or something. She was able just go on a podcast and say, this is what we want you, the local affiliates, to do. This is what we want you, ABC, Disney, to do. and if you don't do it there are consequences and the fact that they are they feel as though they are able

and they are in fact able to carry out these threats in public shows how strong their position is they don't have to hide so what I wrote today is in all my sort of I'm a history person I've been making

concocting scenarios of when the fascists come to power for since I was a child here But, and none of them do all the good progressives and all the blowhards and everyone else in Hollywood just say, oh, all right. Oh, you want that? Yeah, sure. You got it. Turns out that's how it really does work, right? Yeah.

It's, you know, there'd be someone sending up a little barricade on some, on some, you know, second tier street there that, But no, in the Disney, Brencar made these insane statements, and the, this, you know, and it all, like, the next star people who, who, who provoked this, have this big, I think it's a $6 billion merger pending. now as a for you know chris for the last month and he's uh that so so it's the money it's the fealty it's it's uh it's everything i'm i'm searching for a a little ray of light but at least it's not i mean what so so what would you say would people say i'm sorry richard you have come to the wrong person if you're looking for rays of light buddy i know i know i were the sorry but what would you say, coming from watching,

there are people here who I, fellow columnist of mine, who I'm sure will write on this very day, look, and it seems like a big deal, but the late night shows weren't working out. They're really not,

in truth, I never watched them. You know, the average audience is 170 years old. And so in the damage that could be done from a big fight with the FCC and your affiliates is enormous. So if you're planning to remove these shows, what's the harm or just doing that

earlier than you were planning to? Yeah, well, I mean, the harm is that you either have to maximally capitulate or at some point you have to fight, right? And so every, every business has to decide, well, which is it, right? Are they going to, at some point, try to maintain independence from the regime or not? And many will decide there's no reason to have independence from the regime because the regime is so transactional. We can simply go along, get along, right? So long as we do what we're, as long as we like Tim Cook make up some big gold award and give it to Trump,

then we'll basically be able to get what we want. And if your company can do that, then you don't ever need to fight, right? But if you think that there are parts of your business that you want to control, like, for instance, the creative output of your animated film division or the hiring practices at your theme parks. At some point, the regime is going to want to have a say on those things, too. And so this is why I just feel like if you're Disney and you think that this is the easy way, I mean, you're fucking stupid.

Well, they, you know, like, you're going to have to fight this eventually. You might as well fight it over Jimmy Kimmel right here when everybody's, watching it. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And I think they thought settling the Stephanopoulos suit was the easy way. Like, we're settled. We're good with, we're good with these people. They know they know they can do business with us. It's fine. And I, you know, we, Hollywood, for the first time in its history, Hollywood has been strangely silent on everything that has happened. I mean, Hollywood, you know, goes to the ramparts like, every time, you know, someone misuses a semicolon in this world.

But for the last, for the last eight months here, they've had virtually nothing to say, certainly the other thanusion. And I have been, I have been writing that if you think Hollywood is not on the list of priorities, you're out of your, you're off your rocker. by your damn mind, right? And yeah, you're out of your mind if you think that. And the fact that Hollywood has been eaten by tech to the extent, which would you've been writing about now for a decade, and that tech has consolidated so much into, you know, the big four or five, although I guess you count open AIs among that now, right? David Ellison is now going to own a big part of Hollywood. It is unclear if he has like ideological sympathies with Mark Andreessen or if he's just looking to make moves on the street and thinks that this is the, you know, these are the guys who you have to accommodate at this point. But this stuff is all, it's all coming.

It's all coming down like mountains like, I would say this, looking for dissent is actually a pretty good proxy for how serious the threats are. are because when the threats are not especially serious, everybody dissents because it's free. Right. There's no price to be. And look, I am not a defender of George W. Bush. I didn't like George W. Bush. But the truth is that people were able to jump up and down and scream about George W. Bush because they knew that George W. Bush was never going to send mass agents to their house to

arrest them. Yeah. Right. And that's why you understood that you don't like it. You think things are bad, et cetera, et cetera. But you aren't actually in anything like fascism. This is not an authoritarian state. He's not going to stay in power for forever.

There is much less dissent now because people understand that there are stakes and it isn't free. You don't get to just say stuff and understand that your livelihood isn't going to be affected. Your freedom isn't going to be affected. You saw what J.D. Vance said last year, right? Yeah, yeah. You've seen what Pam Bondi said about how they were going to. what you're going to what was who who who no way i'm speaking off the cuff somebody said that they will take your property take your employment and if you've broken the law take your freedom

right this is you know that's just to next book authoritarianism right and they're saying this isn't even about the law right we'll use the law as a pretext to jail you if we can but we're going to use the power of government to to ruin your life in every other vector just because. And we can. How are you going to stop us? Oh, was it Stephen Miller? Yeah. Thank you, guys. God bless him. Native grew up, grew up a mile from now.

One of your people. Yeah. Yeah. Yikes. The, so for, for, for 30 years now, I've been saying, whenever Hollywood made a, made a stink about some cause, I've been saying, you know, my general advice had been to shut the hell up and write checks, because when Hollywood opens its mouth, it has an unnatural ability to do harm to its own cause. And certainly there's nothing that Trump would love more than make this a fight between him and some actor, some movie star. But, you know, for 30 years, they never took

my advice about this and and now they're taking my advice strangely but is is that I mean are we at the case seat are we at the place now where there is no like everything helps

and there's no silence doesn't doesn't do any good even if you know a given if Hollywood starts talking they will say some very some very stupid thing they're going to come out of their mouth so so what's the best

route for us. So, I mean, I don't know that there is anything affirmative that any of us can do to stop this train because the problem,

the root of the problem, is that the American people are rotten. The American people wanted this. They voted for it. Donald Trump did not hide the football. He did not pretend that he was going to do something different.

He talked about all of this shit constantly. I will be here. And half of the people, in a time where everything was great, we were not in a great depression, we, you know, unemployment, historic lows for like 36 months. We had 14 months of inflation, but that was long in the rearview mirror. Everybody had jobs. Everybody's stock portfolios were doing great. Was life difficult in many ways?

Yes. Is life in America difficult in many ways at all times and in all places? You better fucking believe it. Put on your big boy pants. This is like, this is a show. You know, like, these fucking people are like the price of eggs. That's fucking get bent. And in the case where there was no war, there was no depression, there was nothing like that.

The American people looked at Trump, having seen him, having watched a million people die the way he handled COVID and heard how he campaigned. And they said, we'd like that, please. And now, as it's all happening, his approval is still like 44, 42%. and this is why I say if the country is like that then there is no way out right I mean if people if 40% of the country wants this

then we are going to get why is 40% is not 51% why is that enough to say because you need 50% if you are waging war political war on accepted liberal democratic grounds if you are

attempting authoritarianism. History is replete with examples that, you know, you needed 20,000 communists to take over Russia, right, for the Russian Revolution. You do not, if you are using illiberal means, not mean 51%. 40% of America, hell, if it's 20% of America who wants fascism, they're going to get it because 20% of 340 million is a lot of fucking people. Yeah. And so, but here's what I'd say to people to answer your question.

does going out and protesting and making speeches and whatnot is that going to help i don't know maybe maybe not the only thing i can say is and this is the timothy snider thing do not surrender in advance and don't surrender when they come to push you make them fight for every inch of ground this is the big thing right and this is why i i just think if you're disney just from your own perspective, like, you have to think that history ends this afternoon in order to make the decision you made yesterday and think that that's where you come out on the black, right? If you are looking at all into like the next year, two years, three years, you have to realize that putting up a fight is where your advantage is, because that's the only way you have any

leverage, right? The only leverage you have is if you're fighting and pushing back. So, like, don't, don't surrender in advance. Do not be part of this. And the other stuff is to the extent that you can hurt individual people, like the Tesla boycott was enormously helpful. Like an incredibly successful operation.

To the extent that you can organize in ways that, so people, I see people saying we cancel Disney Plus. So what a Disney Plus Hulu boycott? Do you think that's? I don't know. I kind of think no, but I would not go to Disney World. Right?

And I think the theme parks are probably a little more, a little softer targets economically than streaming services are. But also, there's a hard because that's a corporation, right? It's a big, it's easier to hurt Elon Musk by driving down the stock, the price of the stock, which is the backbone of his fortune. If there are ways you can find to protest there, and I would say then the other thing is like mass mobilizations and protests, you should take part in those. So, like, the no kings protest, like the, you know, at the end of the day, history suggests that these things are only ever really stopped by just bodies, right? Masses of bodies. And so, you know, does it help posting something on Instagram, on Instagram or having an actor come out and says, like, I don't know, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't? But the other stuff, being part of mass movements, like people power, that's very important in not surrendering and enforcing.

the bad guys to fight. Very important. The, the, uh, that's, that's good to hear. Um, gives, gives, gives, gives, gives, give it a path to, uh, salvage self-respective. That's something else. I mean, but I, the, uh, I, I've suggested some alternative past Disney could have gone on. I mean, they have, they, they, they, they spent the last 10 years building up this giant

screening service or streaming service for, at billions of dollars cost and massive disruption. So if all their affiliates say they don't want them, just say, okay, we'll put them on Hulu. Great. Well, I will give them going there. Or they can alternately tell the FCC, go ahead, pull ABC's license. See, let's see who the American public likes better. I have it elementary or Brendan Carr.

Let's put that to a test here. I mean, honestly, usually I don't understand. If you're next are, right? You need Disney content much more than Disney needs your carriage fees, don't that? Absolutely, yeah.

So, again, this is Disney not understanding where their leverage lies is, I think, just a strategic miscalculation. And you're absolutely right. They should be used. I mean, the FCC doesn't have a lot of say

over, like, streaming, right? Yeah. It's not on spectrum. It's a, you know, so, But imagine Bernicard went through with this, and he said, we are canceling the broadcast license for ABC, and ABC goes off the air. And I have that fight. Where does that leave next star?

I would much rather have that fight if I was Disney than have this fight that they're having now, having caved. But the problem is, so we've had three incidents. They had the Stephanopoulos suit. We had the 60-minute suit. And then we had the Colbert thing. and every one of them, these CEOs who made the decision paid no price.

Like the people, there were a day of, there was a day of like, you know, blue sky hated them for a day. And if they didn't click on blue sky that day, they wouldn't have been noticed that anyone cared about,

about anything they did. So I just, we need to tell them that there's some sort of, there needs to be some sort of counterpressure. How about the progressive affiliate owners, if there's still any out there, threatening to, threatening to pull Disney or something like that?

I mean, there's no, but there's nothing on the other side. That makes some, I mean, part of it is that we do have a concentration of oligarchs who are, who are basically fascist curious. Right? Or at least who are not opposed to fascism because they believe that they can prosper under it. Right. I mean, Tim Cook does not seem especially alarmed about any of this. He seems to think that Apple is going to be able to operate pretty well. Mark Zuckerberg seems to have figured out how to work. Elon Musk was, you know, was allowed to run the American government for three months. And so this is, you know, a lot of this, I don't want to sound like a commie. The concentration of wealth is a real problem. like it's a real problem and I just don't know

that there's any way out of that you know at least not in the near term you know and I think people have a I think the sense of what Hollywood is that it's all these all these commies running around and running their film studios

and just sneaking in liberal messages is very I mean I kind of did it back on the envelope of all the cameras rolling today around the world paid for by Hollywood. I'm just 70, when you put Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and now Paramount in the tech thing, I'll a little bit 70% of them are funded by the tech world.

So that's, you know, we're a vassal state now. That's not. Oh, yeah. And for Disney, who I think is, I have predicted for years now, is considering going down that route or hoping to go down. down that route, you know, this is all, this is all part. They can't just sit that out. And then you have, then you're, then you will be left with two studios, Universal and Sony,

that will be independent of that. So the, the tech world's priorities are, uh, what we have to live with here. And my sense is those priorities are not very good. I mean, at best, they are purely mercenary and at worst, they are interested in a kind of feudalism that is antithetical to the American experience. I don't know what else can say about that. You know, like, is that crazy?

Is that a crazy thing to say? No, because it feels like they're in just like almost a the mopping up phase of the war. Like, like, I mean, all the different industry, I'm talking to Urban Met Solar, who's having a meeting with, with the dentist, uh, the dentist, they're buying up all the dentist's office and all the

dentists are going to become tech employees. It's like, I, I mean, I, the entire economy is on the road to being, uh, you know, under, under the control of 10 people. Yeah.

Well, and this is a thing which happens under fascism, right? Because so when you are in a liberal democracy, liberal democracies depend on robust capitalist free market systems that have lots of competition. And so because you need prosperity, right? And competition is the backbone of prosperity. And so there are lots of incentives in, and when I say liberal democracy, I just mean like everything in America prior to 2016. You know, I mean, under Reagan, under Clinton, under FDR, all of it. And when, so there's incentives to keep consolidation at bay, at least a little bit. Once you wind up in a fascist or authoritarian system, the incentives all go the other way because the authoritarian leaders need the business community to be loyal. They don't need prosperity. They need, like, a very bare minimum level of prosperity to keep people from having bread riots. What they need is loyalty from the business class.

And so one of the ways to get loyalty is to give away consolidation. And, like, this is just where we are. You know? And it's been speeding up. And I don't know if it's all very bad. I mean, we're going to have Mark Andreessen and David Ellison knowing TikTok.

I'm sure that'll be fine. Like, you know, how's that going to work going to the 2026 election? You know, so. Yeah, this hydra, their building, it feels like there's some sort of plan behind it that you can't quite get what it is except conquering the world. I want to talk to you, though, about your experience, because you were many of these people, these were your friends and colleagues and co-religionists or whatever you call it, a fellow wound. What is it like to see people just turn into the body statured, like, what has, what has that all been like? Like, how do you understand what's happened to these people? What is your, so, so it's weird as shit.

It's, uh, it's not a lot of fun. I would say for people who don't know me, which I assume is 98% of the people who are your audience. Uh, so I spent literally my entire. adult life with the weekly standard. I showed up there like in year three, I think, and I stayed there until it was shut down. I was never Republican, like really never Republican. I am not a joiner. I don't know. I'm voted for God knows, put it for John Kerry. And I was conservative, but my conservatism is really like deeply temperamental. You know, my view is that however bad things are right now,

they are probably going to get worse. And so we should try to preserve the status quo before, because whenever you try to improve things, you often wind up with unintended consequences. And in a Catholic, but also I believe in then all the social justice stuff about, like, you know, beating the hungry and clothing the poor and welcoming the prisoner and the immigrant and stuff.

So I always sat down like a weird, uneasy place in the way like social justice Catholics do. But what I mean, so I don't know, a lot of it is I have realized a bunch of things that were true about the world that I just didn't realize when I was younger, you know, one of which is like the centrality of race in understanding anything about American politics. How I miss that beyond me. I mean, it's just fucking stupid and sheltered. Do you think in the people who were actually around you who you work with who have gone over to that side, that was a. the sort of latent issue for them? No, I think that that was a latent issue that was bubbling underneath

that created a popular support for MAGA, is what I vent. Does your guests support democracy? Google me, Laura. Find that out. And, but the other thing is, I came to realize that for many of the people I knew,

and not all of them, And frankly, at the Weekly Standard, I mean, but, you know, my hero at the Weekly Standard is Bill Crystal. I've been working with Bill Crystal since I was 22. I'm 51 now. Bill wasn't like this. Like Bill, Bill has always believed shit, and his beliefs are sincere. And when he's right, he's sincerely right.

And when he's wrong, he's sincerely wrong. And Bill was exactly who I thought he was. And that has been incredibly reassuring. And many of my weekly standard colleagues were like that. A few were not. But in general, within the conservative world that I was sort of, you know, povalent with, a lot of those people turned out to not believe in anything. Like, for them, it was just like a job, I guess.

And when the job allowed advancement to, like, go and do something else, they were just happy to do that. And that has also been true of the voters. Like, voters turn out to, at least Republican voters, turned out to not believe any of the shit that they've been saying. And there are a lot of lessons for us here. One of which is, I mean, this is probably not of interest to your audience, but I'll say it anyway.

A big part of what happened has to do with the collapse of institutional power. And the biggest of those has to do. the political parties. Because it turns out that what the political parties did was they prevented people from being allowed to choose fascism. And, you know, I assume it being Hollywood, maybe this is prejudicial. I'm sorry if it is, that many of your people in your audience are not Republicans and have never liked Republicans. But the truth of the matter is that the Republican Party prevented Republican voters from being allowed to choose a fascist as president for a really long time. And this is because the party had various levers of power and ways to prevent

the Republican voters from fully expressing what they want. And then it turned out that, you know, and this happened, the party process starts getting opened up in 1976, right, with Carter. And it becomes more and more democratized. The parties being to lose power. As the party's lost power, it turned out that when you allowed Republican voters to have the full say over this and you really marginize the power of the party itself, then voters got to choose Donald Trump, and they really, really wanted it. I really, really, really wanted it. And that's, I don't know how you put that genie back in the bottle, right? Because all of the people in the Republican Party have, like, they got to. the message. They've seen what their voters want. And I don't think it's a one-off. If you want it to be

optimistic, you could say Donald Trump occupies a unique place in America because he was famous for 40 years and that this is more about celebrity and cultural muscle memory than fascism. Most people are stupid. Most people are not particularly engaged. They think he's a businessman, et cetera, etc, et cetera, et cetera. My workwife, Sarah Longwell, gives this as the bold case for America often. I don't think I buy that. Like, I'm not convinced it's wrong, but if you forced me to bet a dollar, I wouldn't bet on that proposition. I would take the opposite, which is that a determinative percentage of the Republican cohort

has now seen fascism and likes it in that fascist tendency. used to be equally distributed among the electorate in the same way that like conspiracy theorists were equally distributed among the electorate and like anti-vaxxer. The anti-vaxxers were equally distributed among the electorate. And those things, those three things,

both anti-vax sent up a conspiracy theorizing and affinity for fascism, have all now coalesced and polarized on one side in the Republican Party. And with that, like I just, how are you going to get them to choose liberalism again? Like, I just don't, they don't want it. It's not that they're deceived.

It's not that they don't understand. I think they do. They just don't like it. And, like, I don't know. I don't know where to go from there. Well, my, my unsatisfying response to that because it's probably much too late and much too little to be talking about things like this. But, you know, when you talk about how people that you knew, in the end, it was just a job for that. It was just about career advancement.

You know, similar in Hollywood, I thought we all loved movies. I thought we all loved entertaining. I thought that was the why you came here instead of going into pharmaceuticals or petroleum or God does what else. Turns out, people just wanted to build big companies and then hopefully self-love. And for a long time, I've been writing about this way before Trump, that, you know, stock price became, you know, it wasn't even a movie being a hit anymore. It was the stock price became everything to an entertainment company just became a, so it's the world lost its meaning. The people driving it had no sense of purpose or meaning. And this time of, like, just nihilism and, you know, I call it the fire hose that you just get stuff speeded over you, just to, so the new agey answer is somehow find a way to restore meeting to the world.

And, and that's where you build up from. I had no idea how you do that. But, but, yeah, well, I mean, the other, the other, the other. optimistic case, I'll try to be some optimism, is that we have been to a similar place once before in American history. There's a really good book called The Age of Acrimony. I would highly recommend you guys reading it. It's sort of that post-Civil War period when we actually almost fought another civil war. Things were very unhappy. We were at each other's throats. The America was very divided. And then it all just kind of went away. And this is

See, you know in Shakespeare in love that scene with Jeffrey Rush and Tom Lucasen when he, you know, he's like the, what is the inevitable path, the course of every production is inevitable, insurmountable obstacles on the way to inevitable ruin. Is that somebody in the, yeah, that sounds right. And then he says, what do we do? And Jeffrey Rush says, you know, funnily enough, we do nothing. He says, well, why, that how does it? It's a mystery. You know, we all works out as a mystery. And it is possible that you can just look at this from a system's point of view.

Culture is an ecosystem that is so big that there are no buttons really that we can push. There are no levers to pull. And that these things will just work themselves out. And that is deeply unsatisfying because that is a sort of like, well, we all fight as hard as we can and either it works out or it doesn't. Yeah. I don't love that as an answer. but I also fear that that may be the answer. I don't know.

What do you think? What's the, the church rules and God, God protects children. Children and drunks in the United States of America. That's America. I mean, that's kind of my hope there, that there's a divine providence that wants us to see it. And you talk about this a lot. I mean, there is something satisfying to, like, you talk about the hot. the hot stove scenario, telling people, no, you don't want to touch a stove, you don't want

to touch the saying finally like, okay, you want to find, you want to see it? Go ahead. Touch the stove. Let's see. Let's see. Yeah. I mean, I will say this also. In American history, we do not often solve our problems, right? We get a problem for a generation, and there's never really a resolution to it. We just sort of bulldoze over it and build our next set of problems on top of it, you know. So when I say, I look at this and I don't understand how it gets fixed, like, well, maybe it doesn't get fixed. It just sort of, we move on. You know what I mean?

Like, there's no Truth in Reconciliation Commission. There's no, like, things just go back to normalish. Maybe, again, this is, I'm grasping as straws here, Richard. Well, well, so the one, the one, one thing that I see in Hollywood where we're very interested in casting, I look at a conversation between J.D. Vance and Stephen Miller and just say neither of these BDI weirdos are ever going to win a national election, even a fixed national election for anything. And a party that's putting like a little Renfield person out like Stephen Miller out there in public

is it might be in a good place now, but they're not, that's not playing to win. And I just, and just, you know, what is it? Russia, they always depend on Colonel Winter would come. And for me, Colonel Winter is like their incompetence, like that they, everything they touch, they will, if they decide that they want to repaid crosswalks, they will screw it up somehow. They will, every crosswalk will go diagonally and the lines will, so that's my hope, that they will so deeply screw up everything that they come into contact with. Because even people, even very smart people with good intentions who try to do things in government usually fail. Yeah, so I think there's a lot to that.

And I would say the nature of their coalition has a contradiction. built into the heart of it, which is that Donald Trump is not a Republican. He did a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. He has spent most of his time in the public spotlight waging war against the Republican Party. We have seen in election after election that his voters will turn out for him, but they won't turn out for other Republicans. They view him as separate from the Republican Party and not part of the system. His voters are the least educated and the least engaged people may have the lowest propensity to turn out like it does so how does that transfer right and so my my thesis has long been that because it doesn't transfer the republican party will

understand that it has to run trump again in 28 and i promise you the supreme court will let them i promise you that and so if don't trump if don't trump wants to run then the supreme court will let him How it happened is that what the Constitution is what five people says it is. And that's how it happens. Why is John Roberts when you get down to something like that that is really just like day and night like we have? Because he is concerned about popular legitimacy. And if he was going to take the ability to choose Donald Trump out of the hands of voters, he had three opportunities to do it before now. You know, he's not going to do it in 2028.

And so, but the other option then, should Trump be incapacitated or do you decide that he can't do it again is, it's Don Jr. And I, again, if you've asked me to go bet a dollar who the next Republican nominee is, I would say it'll be somebody named Donald Trump, either with Jr. after his name or not. Because dynasty is the only other answer to this problem for the Republican Party. So you have a better. version of Don Jr., who's called Tucker Carlson. You do, but he isn't actually dynastic, you know, like, again, just have, again, history is replete with the perones, and, you know, if you have something with the same name, it's very powerful.

Is there a Trump that Carl Tucker can marry and then change his name to hers and, uh, or in the Roman Empire, the emperors would adopt, uh, adopt the name, of the old Caesar. Well, they would, no, they would adopt their young protégés as their child.

And they would, that would, they would be like, Augustus was adopted by, by Julius there. I think that's unlikely. I think it's unlikely.

Can I, can I give you, I have a few, uh, wild plans, but I, I feel like they could work and can I just bounce one of them to choose them down,

but if they're good, take them to Washington. Okay. Um, I was just up in, Toronto and Canada for the film festival and the proposition that I put

to my friends up there, some local film critics, was you know, when maybe you were a little quick to say no to that idea of joining joining the American Union here that if

we suddenly have Canada absorbed no that will tip the balance in a big way and no a person will ever win again and not to your interest to have a failed state of 300 million people to yourself. So, so maybe you, maybe consider taking him up on it. What do you think to that? I think unlikely that Canada would ever decide to do that and also unlikely that, I mean, look, we live in an age of minority rule. I do not believe, if Canada came tomorrow to the Trump administration and said, we're in, let's do this thing.

it will be gerrymandered in such a way as to make sure that it does not impact the long-term staying power with the Republican Party, I promise you that. I said the pill they should put in, and this will actually fix everything, is they should say, we will come aboard,

we'll join you, all government activities have to be held in French. From now on, the government is just to print, and I think that would end up fixing down the road. My other long-term, plan is, I'm sorry, this wouldn't help you, but you come to write us, is for Southern California

to secede and take with it Las Vegas, Hawaii, and Baja would secede from Mexico, and that we could be one entertainment and resort land. And I think that's a very viable country there. I think unlikely, but I would not, I believe that. I believe that, that if we get out of this fix that we're in right now, a bunch of very structural changes to the way the American political system works are going to have to happen. And I believe the expansion is from court is going to be part of that. And adding states is going to be part of that.

Because there is just no other way to have long-term stability until you reduce the power of the minority to attempt, authoritarian takeovers of the country and so California being split in two, absolutely on the table. D.C. statehood I'm sorry. I mean, D.C. state was just going to happen, I think.

If there is ever another case where we have Democrats holding power and maybe that won't happen. Puerto Rico becomes on the ballot. I just think there are a whole bunch of very big structural changes which people will wind up having to get their heads around.

because you can't run a free society where every four years this is paraphrasing whatever the French foreign minister where every four years whether or not you're going to attempt to become fascist is dependent on 40,000 people in Wisconsin you just can't you can't live like that is there something positive to that from that you know there's a lot of problems in the country

and you know and yeah I the the college admissions thing, which you and I have children that need to think about that is a profoundly broken thing. And I don't like the way Trump has attacked colleges, universities at all. But from the rubble of this, we can fix

these sort of intractable problems that seem like they're everywhere in our society, you know, when we get somehow to the other side. Is that a bright side we might look forward to? I mean, this is, like, this is what Mumdani is selling, right? This is the young, the young progressive pitch to America is, look, we got to focus on what we're going to build next. Because we're going to, we're out of the rubble, we're going to build something better and more sustainable. And I just don't think that that's a view of how mature societies typically work.

I don't think new stuff really ever gets built in mature society, right? It's like mature companies versus, you know, stage one companies. And so, you know, maybe we'll try. Maybe we'll make a run at it. Maybe we'll start taxing the highest, like, 50 people in America in ways to discourage the concentration of wealth. Maybe we will nationalize SpaceX, which is just something that obviously should happen. It was an enormous mistake to privatize the aerospace industry. in that way.

But I don't really buy that argument that, like, you know, oh, from the ashes, it'll get better. I think the best case scenario is just that we all find a way to muddle through. And that when you look back on American history, most of the time, what you're just, what you would describe, if you could describe it extemporaneously and not looking back through the long lens is things weren't great. but people found a way to muddle through. I mean, this is, so I, one of the reasons I say that, like, race, the centrality of race to American history was just utterly lost on me.

So I believed all of the shining, shining city on a hill bullshit. And I believed all of the, and so I, you know, when the Trump thing started happening, I was like, oh my God, I can't believe this. America's going to stop being free, you know, and it took a minute because, again, because I'm an idiot. like African-Americans are like, oh, really, welcome to the party. You know, we were slaves in this country, and even then after slavery, it was five minutes ago that we didn't have authoritarian systems of government systematically attempting to repress us in like violent ways attached also to legal structures through half the country, you know, it hasn't always been a Chinese. Like all of these, yeah, this is, I'm just like telling you two plus two equals four and you're like, yeah, sure, right, obviously. But because I'm an idiot, I didn't realize this stuff. And so things are always a little bit fraught.

And I feel like the best we can really hope is like Ed Harris in Apollo 13 when he's, you know, that scene in mission control when everything's going wrong and he just sort of puts his head in his hands. what do we got on the spacecraft that's good that's where I am like about America right now like you know everything is what do we got on a spacecraft that's good and what we have is an economy that is still functioning at a very very high level even though it's tipping into recession we still have pretty good R&D in education although that's all under assault right we still have excellent public health. That's a problem. I can use you. I'm saying like all the things that I'm telling you we have that are good are things which are currently today on September 18th under active assault

by the Trump administration. So like I don't know where it goes from there. What? Bring us home here. You've had to live with this every day for nine years and see your old friends, have their body stashed and all this. What? What? How do you stay sane during this if you have? What is the happy place you're able to go to to shake this off for a few minutes and keep going? Boy, I mean, I don't ever. I just don't, I don't turn it off. You know, I do this 18 hours a day.

And that's not, that's not true. I'm not doing this 18 hours a day. But like, you know, I do two things in my life. I do this and I do my kids and my family. And, like, there aren't, I don't do anything else. I don't build model ships, you know, and I don't have any hobbies. This is, you know, I, you know, my life. Baseball is some one you know.

Yeah, I mean, you know, we have it on in the, in the background, but it's like I don't get to a lot of, don't get to a lot of games anymore. And, and I just, I don't know, like, I, I feel like this is important. It's real. it isn't politics as game it's not a thing where we're in this bouncy house where the Constitution is going to protect us

and nothing truly bad can ever happen we have federal officers in masks without badges kidnapping people off the street I mean this is this is as real as it gets and I would say to this to your audience

think back have a real honest conversation with yourself and think back to January 20th of this year and what you thought the worst case scenario would look like by mid-September. So after 9, you know, what did you think by 9 months it would look like?

I'm a pretty dark guy, and I know what I thought it would look like because I wrote a piece about this. And we are way past, way past what I thought the worst-case scenario was. I would have said days 20s. They'll try to do a lot of things, but not really.

It will be more noise and in the end, they'll be just sort of foiling. Yeah, it's important. So I don't know what to tell people on how to nod. I would say, don't take a job where you have to do this every day like I did. That's my best advice, right? That's excellent advice. Final question for you, our big final question.

All our guests are given the opportunity to assign reading to everyone who works in the entertainment what these people should know to be citizens of entertainment and of America and at the world. This is required reading. They will be tested on this, or viewing, whatever you care to or it or can be a walkish take. I give the floor to you, your syllabus for Hollywood. Jonathan B. Last. I have an answer that you guys aren't going to like. Sorry.

the book Witness by Whitaker Chambers. So Whitaker Chambers is, and this is like a big 80s and 90s conservative touchstone. But let me explain to you why. So Whitaker Chambers is a guy who comes out of the communist movement. He is a member of the Workers Party. He is a red. He is sort of a Soviet-style agent. and he switches sides.

He's also a writer and an essayist. He switches sides and then goes, and this is at the height of the Red Scare, is naming names, and he names Albuhr Hess, as a high-level Soviet agent within the State Department. There is a long trial over this.

Chambers testifies, names his. We do find out later that Hiss was, in fact, Stone Cold Guilty, and Chambers writes his memoir about his life and his experience. Here's why I would tell you guys to read it, even though I know you are going to say no, thank you. Pass. I found the explanations of why he became a communist to be unbelievably compelling. And they all had to do with the First World War. I really believe that Americans are blind to the centrality of the First World War in getting us. to where we are now. World War I,

much, much more important than World War II, much more determinative than World War II, because the scale of the slaughter and the senselessness of the slaughter, it was an accidental consolation. It was like somebody set the entire

fucking world on fire because they just fell asleep holding a cigarette in bed. It made everybody, an entire generation of people, terrified that it could happen again, and they reached for anything they could grab onto. And this is why the world split into fascists and communists. It wasn't

because these were people who just naturally wanted authoritarianism, although we now know, some of them were, yeah. But the reason it became broadly popular, both fascism and communism at that moment in time, was because people thought, the old system didn't work. Millions of people just died in a blink. We can't do that again. We'll try anything to avoid doing that. And the reason I would tell you, I would tell people go and read that. And now compare that to right now. Because right now, we have people choosing fascism and authoritarianism not being under duress, but it's just had decadence, right?

Things are basically as good as they've ever been. And so that difference, the difference between the world, the chambers and the people lived in in the 20s and 30s, as they were going through this communist-fascist divide where you had, again, First World War, followed by a Great Depression, you can see why people would choose things that turned out to be dangerous. But over the last 10 years in America, to have the people of this country choose what they have chosen, it speaks to how totally different this moment is.

And the reason I would tell you to go read witness is that you can really meditate on the difference in the situations and that that that incongruity might help spark your thinking and understanding about why it is that we are, where we are now, who our fellow citizens are, what they're really looking for. I'm not saying I'll give you answers. If I had answers, I would give them to you myself, but I don't. But I think witness, and especially the sections leading up to

and then going through like 1940. So if you don't want to read the whole book, you don't have to. But the first half especially is very, very helpful for understanding today not because it gives answers, but because it provides contrasts.

There you go, Hollywood. That is required. This will be counted towards the final grade. So thank you so much, James L. for joining us. incredibly clarifying, not, you know, not the ray of sunshine, but, but, but, makes sense of this moment to us. And then best of luck there. And please keep yourself healthy and sane during, during, we need you. And everyone, everyone here should subscribe to

the board work. It's really indispensable for it. It's very nice to you to say, I, I would you say that I have been, I think I was probably one of the first hundred people to subscribe to the Anchler. I think you may have been, yeah. Before, before us. And I am so inspired by what you guys have done. And I just, it's great. I love having, I love that you and the Angler exist in the world. And I read it every day. And it makes me happy. You're too, you're too kind and very much back to you. Thanks for coming. And we will talk soon. Good luck, everybody.