Bulwark Takes - "The Death of Stalin" and Trump’s Throne-Sniffers

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Sarah, JVL and Sonny take on Armando Iannucci’s 2017 movie, The Death of Stalin—a brutal, hilarious satire about paranoia, sycophancy, and the scramble for power in the aftermath of a dictator’s death. 

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the bulwark for a show. We're definitely not calling the bulwark version of the rewatchables. That's not, that's, we're definitely not calling at that at all. It's we're, it's friends. We're getting together to talk about movies that are a little bit older sometimes that we've all seen and enjoyed. And we think other people have watched and enjoyed that we're, we're, we're watching for not the first time, as I like to put it. Maybe the watching movie club, bullwork movie club. Bullwork, bowlwork movie club. But I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, but I'm, I'm, but I'm, I'm, but I'm, but I'm, but I'm, but I'm, but I'm, but I'm, but I'm, but I'm I'm really happy to be joined by Sarah because Sarah is always like, I want to talk about movies. And I'm like, I would also like to talk about movies. And so I'm glad to get Sarah on. I talk with JBL about movies all the time. But this is, it's also fun to have JBL here. Today we're talking about the Death of Stalin, which is available on Hulu. If you have Hulu, a lot of people have Hulu.

It's integrated with Disney Plus now. You might want to check on those parental settings on Disney Plus. A lot of movies are popping up in my Disney Plus feed that I'm like, oh, my kids don't need to watch Strange Days, actually. That would probably, that would probably be bad for their development. But it's on, it's on Hulu. And it's, you can rent it on Amazon if you don't have Hulu. But it's, it's great.

It's from Armando Ian Nucci, who, of course, folks will remember from VEP. I think American audiences will best know him from VIP. He also made In the Loop and some other stuff. In the Loop. Oh, so good. But VEP is great. You're a VEP fan, right, Sarah? Yeah, I'm a VEP and in the loop.

And you know what? But I had not, I saw this movie when it came out and I had not rewatched it before. What a treat. What a treat to do. I'm so glad we picked this one because it is so fun. It is, it's so fun. And it's so, you know, I joked the other day about Naked Gun being an English teacher movie because it, like, has a lot of jokes that only really work on the page. And these, this movie has jokes that work both on the page and off the page.

Like, it's hard to imagine, I can now not imagine Nikita Khrushchev as anybody except. Steve Bouchemmy, like that is, he is, he is now Steve Bouchemmy to me. Cruzeb, heart is hit by that. But Chris Jeff, Chris Jeff really takes it on the chin here. Interesting evolution of the character throughout the movie. We'll get to, we'll get to that in a second, though. So I, you know, it's interesting, though, to think about the difference between this and Veep, right? Because Veep ran into this problem in the mid-2010s where a lot of people were trying to figure,

they were trying to figure out the politics of it. They were like, what's the, what is Selena Meyer? Selina Meyer, a Democrat, she a Republican? Is she like a, she one of those lady Republicans who is pro choice, but, you know, she gets into the Veep slot or she's a Democrat. She's just a straightforward Democrat. And one of the nice things about that, Stalin is that you don't, you don't have that issue really with the distance of history, the distance of country. You don't have, you don't have people arguing about that sort of thing. With this, you can just look at it on a broader, like more general level, which then I think helps people bring it back to the current. moment better. Right? Like I was watching this movie and I kept thinking like, oh, that seems familiar. Oh, that sure seems familiar. Well, you know what? I thought you were just about to say,

I thought you were going to say Veep ran into trouble because the world started to be as stupid as the show. And it became like our politics. There's no room for parodying the politics of Washington like Veep does when the politics of Washington looks just like Veep. Because then it's not a parody, it's a documentary. Well, remember there was always, remember there was always this fight between people who are like, is D.C. more like Veep or like House of Cards? Is it like the steaming house of cards or is it the ridiculous absurdist Veep? And Veep won that pretty handily. I think I think by the end of Veep's run, there was no question as to what was the winner. But I'll say,

and this will be my sort of central observation up front about Death of Style. And the reason I think this one works so well today. And I noticed it would, it came out in 2017, which meant it was in the works before Trump came on the scene. Yeah, well, based on a graphic novel, that's a comic book, Sarah. Is that right? Oh, I've heard of those. I've heard of those. Okay, interesting.

Maybe we could talk about them sometime. The thing that works about death of Stalin perfectly for this is that it blends murderous menace with buffoonery, which I feel like tracks for the moment about as well as anything else like is better than VEP is better than anything because VEP leaves you with like well we can laugh about all of it because it's just a light touch this doesn't well the reason the reason we can laugh at VEP is I this is one of the things I wanted to to prompt you guys to discuss propose VEP the world of VEP and the world of death of Stalin are identical with only one difference

and that is it in the world of death of Stalin Jonah has the power to make lists of people who can be abducted and murdered Jonah is the Berea figure Right.

Do you see what I'm saying? Like in a world of Veep where the state has the power to simply abduct and liquidate people then Veep plays exactly like the death of Stalin. That's the only difference.

Maybe. I know. what's interesting about the death of Stalin is that it does Ionucci does an incredibly good job of demonstrating in like the first 20 minutes the stakes of everything involved right which is

which is you know he kind of cuts between three different sequences one is a orchestral performance that Stalin calls up the performers and calls up the control room as like I would like to have a recording of this please

I don't think he says please we don't see We don't hear him at his end. He's like, I want a recording of this. And so the guy in charge, the head of the Russian BBC, whatever it is at the time, says, we recorded that right? And they didn't record it. So they have to get everybody back and re-record the thing, which leads to a whole different, they got to run out to the street. They got to get peasants in to fill up the seats to make the acoustics right. They have to convince the piano player to play and she doesn't want to play because she hates Stalin, et cetera.

That is cut, intercut with the scenes from Stalin's Dasher. where you have Stalin with his, like, crew of cronies, including a crew chef, Jeffrey Tambor plays, Malenkov, Leventi, Brea is played by, oh, who is that? That's Simon Russell, Simon Russell Beagle. And you see the menace from that side of things where even people who nominally have lots of power in this society are falling all over themselves to avoid winding up on one of the lists, one of the lists, one of the bad lists, one of the. because one of those guys is on the list at dinner. Which one, Molotov, of the Molotov Rippantrop Pack gets put on the list. On the cocktail? He gets put on the list and doesn't know it yet. Of course, he is played by the alum from Monty Python, Michael Palin.

Just fantastic, fantastic role there. And then all of this, of course, is intercut with shots from an actual purge, like the people going into apartment buildings and rousting people up and putting them in vans and taking them off to either be at the best sent to the gulag at the worst tortured for a bit and then at the really worst tortured for a bit and then shot like it's you know it's it's it's a it's a it's a masterful uh just 15 to 20 minutes of putting us back in time into a place that is absolutely terrifying. It is absolutely terrifying. Yeah. And this is where

this is a deft move because it is, it allows it to both play for laughs. Right. It's doing two things. As the characters are walking through and barking orders or having a side conversations, those are funny. Because they are behaving that, you know, everything that they're saying is synchophantic and silly

and over the top. And the backdrop as they walk, like if they're doing a walk and talk, which they are, is just people being shot in the head and screaming. And if you took out the walk-and-talk, it would look like a Schindler's List genre show in which people are being imprisoned, murdered, tortured, taken out of their bedrooms. But with the main characters in front of them saying funny things.

Faulty towers. Yeah, faulty towers in the front, Schindler's List in the back. Yeah. A movie, a movie it calls to mind for me, which, again, is another kind of Monty Python alum film is Brazil. I don't know if you guys have seen Brazil. But Brazil is also about a kind of police state where people are getting captured. But then there's also just like bureaucratic knife fighting and people making fun of each other.

But no, the conversation is in the background are the best part. My favorite is when they're coming out of the, they're coming out of Stalin's Dasha. And one of them is making fun of Malenkov because he was like, where's where's what's he been up to and everyone goes quiet they're like oh what about the czar where's the czar bin you know it's just like you can just imagine it you just imagine somebody coming out of the white house today being like what happened to mike pence where's pence you know and geoffrey tamber who is playing malincov as if he is oscar bluth said just sort of says i can't keep track of who's alive and who's dead he's like i'm very tired how am i supposed to keep

How am I supposed to do that? Yeah. And one of the things I find is it's wonderful. So in that, and in that moment, as they're coming out, Steve Buscemi, who was trying to help Malin Gav out, says, when you get home, you got to tell your wife all the things that you can remember saying since we're all drunk now because Stalin demands that everybody drinks. Yeah. And you like don't quite understand it until later in the movie, you get a scene where it's the morning. And Steve Buschemy, not Steve Buschemy, but Chris Chess wife is reading. back to him her notes of what he said and they're trying to, and he's like, I made a joke about

the army. He laughed. Okay, more jokes about the army. I made a joke about the Navy. He didn't laugh. Okay, no more jokes about the Navy. And it's funny. But she's also reading them back to him and he's like, what was I talking about? What did I say? There's one where she's like, Molotov. Molotov. No, she's like, chich. And he's like, chich. And he's a chich. What does that even mean? And he goes, oh, Molotov like that. Yeah. It's so that that whole sequence is so funny. And like, again, it's you have to reorder your world and your universe to meet the whims of this insane person, which again, it feels, feels about right. Well, that's what it, I mean, at the end of the day, that's what it is. Right. You feel as though you're trapped inside a mental hospital where it's an insane asylum.

Everybody, like the entire country is having a nervous breakdown because there's this one guy with ultimate power over everybody's life and death. And also, another hallmark of it is everybody thinks that every place they are is bugged. And so they think that everything they say, no matter where they are, could wind up being used to have them killed. And so there's a very funny scene in the, in the studio where they are, the producers are trying to, to make this recording happen. And somebody says, well, if we don't, if we replace the pianist, because the pianist doesn't want to, don't even play. If we get a new P&S, he says, even Stalin will be able to tell the difference. Everyone stops. What do you mean?

The pianist goes, even Stalin? Even Stalin? No, Stalin has a great ear. And his assistant goes, he has two great ears. because they all think there's a chance that he's that he's you know listening to them because everything is bugged and even when Stalin is first discovered being down the Politburo members all of these these guys they aren't sure if he's really dead or if he's acting and so they they are play acting and talking about oh great comrade right because they're not sure

wait is this going to be used against us and that is all of that stuff made me think about Trump's cabinet meetings yes yeah honestly well oh there was god there was Eger had a great uh Eger had a great observation the other day on on Twitter or someplace uh like there was Tom Rose it was Tom Rose who was saying like Donald Trump is too good for the Nobel Peace Prize they've given the Nobel Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat another assorted bad people we don't Donald Trump shouldn't even want that. He's better. He's better than all of this.

And God, what was it, what was it? I hear you say, the best way, this is, I'm quoting from our, from our friend and colleague Andrew Egger right now, the best way to distinguish yourself in right-wing politics today is by finding new and ever more theatrical ways to glaze the big guy, which is leading to real innovations in the form. Truly, it is a golden age of throne sniffing. And that is, that is exactly what is happening throughout this movie, is that they are trying to figure out, like, new and great ways to talk about the great father of the nation,

Joseph Stalin. I mean, remember the point where his attorney general says that Stalin saved 247 million lives? Oh, no, that was sorry. That was a cabinet meeting in America. That was Pam Bondi. That was different. That was different. No, it's like, it's doubly funny because Ianucci has this perfect ear for like both

high-toned ideas and low-toned vulgarity and language. Like, he paints with with vulgarity in a way that no. nobody in the world of TV or filmmaking is able to. But he also has these guys like kneeling in a puddle of Stalin's piss, as they're saying it. They all like bend down and like stand up immediately like, ah, God, got to look out for that. Because when he had the massive hemorrhage, he pissed himself. And then they've all got to kind of lean down to talk to him, touch him.

And then they all are like, ew, gross, my knee. What is this? This is urine? I do think when you talk about the high tone, low tone, to me, the way that this is the brilliance of it, and I'm going to try to explain this as best I can, is that there's a self-awareness among the characters. They both are being sycophantic because they need to while being both self-aware and aware with each other that they are going through a kind of pantomime of theatrics and display of things. their love for silence. So when they're out of earshot and they think they make fun of each other's different modes of synchofancy, but when they're together, they compete to see who can be the biggest synchophant. And so playing it off where you both are being a succubus like

of this while also being self-aware as you do it. Is succubis right? Am I making like that a succubus is technically, I believe, a sex demon? But, you know, a suck up, I think it's not, it's not, it's not a plant that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that's what you, is that what you, is that what you, sucks to you, sucks to you. Sucks to you. It's different. Can I Google this? I'm pretty sure I'm right. I'm sure I'm using it correctly. What's, what's funny, though, is, of course, that that is also how our current nomenclature elites perform, as we have discovered from some of the materials. uncovered during discovery of some high-profile lawsuits, where they talk about Trump in one way when it's in private, and they talk with each other about waiting to be rid of him in private, but that in public do this sort of over-report, again, like, this is just... What was it that Tucker Carlson was saying? Trump-Trump introducer Tucker Carlson was saying in the text messages, you know, I can't

wait to be rid of him. Can't wait to not think about him at all. I hate him with a passion, something like that. He's an idiot. Speaking of demonic force, uh, you guys are right. I don't know. It's a demon assuming female form to have sexual intercourse with men in their sleep. That's not what I meant. I meant sadness. I'm well aware of, I'm well aware of succuby. Don't worry, Sarah. Suck you by occupy way too much in my, my mental space. The, the, um, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, it always comes back to K-fabe aspect of it always, it always, it always, it always, it always, it always kind of I want to get a ranking. I want to get a ranking of best versus worst KFA, but before we do that, it's interesting to think about the characters who don't actually succumb to that, right?

Like Michael Palin's Molotov character throughout is so broken by the experience of having his wife taken and having to denounce his own wife. He has to denounce his own wife. And like, he never breaks character. He never breaks character and it's very confusing to everybody else in the film who are like

we're trying to vote on this thing is he done? Is he being serious? Is he not being? What is the, what is going on here? And Palin, again, Palin, of course,

for a long time, Monty Python guy has been in a ton of other stuff. But he does this kind of perfectly British thing of being both absurd and genuine at the same time that so few actors can pull off

and he just nails. And I would say the scene in which that has demonstrated the best is when Baria is, one of the funny things about what they do as soon as Stalin's dead is they're trying to figure out how to become the next leader themselves. And so they want to curry favor with the people by letting everybody out of prison, stopping the executions. Like, they're like, wait, quick, we need to stop murdering everybody. Like, we should quit this. We've been doing it this whole time for Stalin, but we should stop doing this. And so they get Molotov's wife out of prison where she is being held because you hear them say early on in the movie, he's on the list, we're going to kill Molotov, get his wife, shoot her first so he sees it. And it's like tossed off.

It's like this incredibly casual. Make sure his wife sees him shot, then shoot him. Or no, sorry, make sure he sees his wife being shot, then shoot him, right? They want to, they're inflicting maximum pain on this guy. and including his wife. And so Barry goes and lets the wife out. And you've got Molotov in his house. And they're asking him about his wife.

And he's saying they're trying to tell him that they're bringing his wife to him. Yeah. They're about like, you know, we have a gift for you. A fabulous gift. Do you remember your wife? And he's like, yes, that traitor is bitch. What a traitor. Trader to the party, to the movement, to the people.

And then they walk around and he's like, well, sometimes mistakes are made. That sequence, too, where Beria goes to her prison cell is really interesting. Because the way it's shot, right, you just see him at first. You just see him and he's clearly talking to, he's clearly talking to a prisoner and we can tell it's a female prisoner. And from what we have seen of Beria and his proclivity so far, you know, he's, he's like, he's a, he's a pervert. He's a rakey, he's a real rapist. He's sexually assaulting, like, young girls, et cetera. We assume that that is what is happening here.

And then the reverse shot is this kind of like old broken woman who is learning that she is about, she is, she is, I forget, does he tell her Stalin is dead? He tells her Stalin's dead and she cries out in, in just, you know, agony, anguish at it. And Barry is like, he put you in prison. You know, like, Barry, even Barry can't quite get his. head around how committed some of these people are to ideology, right? Because Barry is just about power. But it's not even, but it's not ideology. It's not ideology. It's not ideology. It's the cult of personality. It is, it is the, it is the idea of the great man, the one leader, the father of the nation, the person who we cannot betray because he is leading us all to greatness. And it is

interesting, too, because, you know, there's such a difference between these guys in their Cubs, Lithuanian Cubs, Ukrainian Cubs. It's so different, though, the reaction that these guys all have to Stalin and the people around him, because their power comes from Stalin, right? This is all about power. This movie is about power. It's about maintaining power. It's about accruing power. It's about maintaining power, finding a way to climb that, you know, greasy ladder or whatever, right? Greasy pole. And then, and then you, an hour into this movie, we were discussing this a little bit on Slack, but an hour into this movie, Jason Isaac shows up as Zhukov and just brings

an entirely different energy to it. You know, he like, like, all these guys are kind of wormy bureaucrats and like kind of like lame cockneys, et cetera, except for Buscemi. who's just playing Steve Buscemi, kind of. And then Zuccoff shows up and, like, throws off his jacket in slow motion. He's, like, total, like, the total frat bro, like, ball player jock. He's like, I'm here, I'm here, and I'm taking a, but that's because he has his own basis of power. He's got the Red Army.

He has the Red Army. And he can, for instance, punch Stalin's son in the stomach and tell him to man the fuck up and get, you know, get himself. straight because he is not, he is not subject to all of the political pressures and having to maintain the kind of cult of personality of Stalin as a way to consolidate and maintain their own power, which is just interesting. It's an interesting little insight into how these things work. Yeah, and it's not unlike Elon Musk. Now, granted, Elon Musk ultimately didn't have the same kind of juice, but he did have his own army of sorts, which led him to be more of a peer to Trump than somebody who simply works with him around the cabinet table and somebody who Trump

sort of felt like he had to deal with a little bit with kid gloves. Like remember when they were getting him out of there because they had to get him out of there, they still held that press conference in which he was fetid and lauded for his contributions. Again, you could see this having happened in death of Stalin. Yes. Right? Like that crazy press conference? Do you remember that with the metal that they gave or the whatever the key? Didn't they give? Didn't they give Elon a key and here Sear General Zuccove is a key to the Kremlin. You can come anytime

you like. He also had a black guy and no one has gone clear why remember Elon like everything about it was where but he had his own base of power which made him a different kind of person and that is exactly the because you're right

Stalin's son who is played by the guy from homeland Oh my gosh is he great to see he's wonderful but he plays Stalin's, you know, near-do-well son who's just drunk all the time. And yeah, he goes in and beats him up. But everybody else has to listen to Stalin's kids, right?

And you, and the kids thing resonates too, like with the Jared and the Don Jr. And the Ivanka because he's got a daughter and a son in the movie. Do you know the real story of the Stalin girl? No. No. So Stalin's door, the movie, so the movie plays. fast and loose with a bunch of history

in ways which I personally have no problem with. It does not bother me at all. I'm not even... I'm actually surprised how much of it was historically accurate. Like the part where people get trampled, that happened.

It was like 100 people, I think, not 1,500. I mean, unimportant. Yeah. Like, you're compressing time. You're compressing events. Like, this is, it has larger truth to it. It is not a documentary.

But her, so the, I've got to find the daughter's name. I'm forgetting it. I want to say it's Anastasia. Spetlana. Svetlana. Svetlana. Yeah. So the movie ends with Khrushchev telling her you're going to Vienna.

And she's like, but I would rather than Khrushchev's like, nope, you're going to Vienna. Because by the end, Khrushchev is in charge. Yeah. And he, and Khrushchev is the hero of the movie. I think we can all agree. Yes? Yes. So that is not what happened to Svetlana.

Svetlana stayed in the Soviet Union and worked as a translator until she was sent to India. And when in India, she decided to defect. Now, the Indians, she first went to the Indian government and they wanted no part of her because they did not want to anger the Russians. So she then walked herself over to the American embassy and said, I want to. out and she wound up coming to America. She became an American citizen. She lived in, where did she live? She lived, I think mostly in Wisconsin, but she did a little bit of time in New York City. She sort of bounced around. At some point later on, she went back to Russia in the mid-80s, like, you know, kind of like four years before the wall fell, got her Russian citizenship

back, then came back to America, wind up dying, you know, settling and living on her last years in America, and she seems like she was an absolute bad shit insane person. Well, I can imagine, yeah. But, but clear, again, just the movie has her right, if that makes sense.

Like, she was clearly, and I guess, how could the daughter of Stalin not become an insane person? Like, I don't know how. Well, and it's so funny, too, because there's that scene. She's played by Andrea Rysborough in this film, who's great. She's wonderful. Riseborough is so good. Should have been Judy Greer.

I can see Judy I can see Judy Greer in this role so good Yeah There's really only like two roles for women in this movie I know this is I was afraid Sarah was going to yell at me Because this is a this is a lot of guys in this movie But this is I'll yell at you a different time Because this movie's pitch perfect for the moment

So go ahead Okay But Judy Greer would have been good Andrea Reisbeller is so great But there's that great scene where she goes to Berea and was like hey I would like to have somebody brought back I would like I would like to have

From the Goulogs I would like to have a person brought back And he knows that this person is already dead And he is like Well she was still alive And she doesn't quite pick up on this You know she was she was and just not understanding That there's this there's this

Almost I mean I don't want to say innocence But there is this kind of childlike naivete About what was actually happening in the gulags amongst certain subsets of people, certainly like Svetlana. I think that naivete does not extend to just about anybody else in the movie, which is why you get scenes like the great shot of the old doctor running with his dog

trying to get away from the van. It's such a little moment, but it's so perfectly kind of like this guy realizes he's being followed by a van and he's walking his dog and he starts walking a little bit faster. then when the van stops, he just starts running. He starts doing his old man run and they get him immediately. But it is like, it is, you know, this idea of needing to kind of constantly be on your toes because God only knows when and where it's going to come from.

So, but this is, this is again why I thought and why I'm not yelling at you for the other reasons because I think this movie is getting something very specific about our moment, very right. because there's the great man, there's the people who, we were talking about the great man theory earlier. Stalin is seen by many of the people who they say, you can't tell whether they think he is a great man

and it is a cult of personality or whether the fear is so deep and pathological. Like the fear rules them so completely that they have devoted themselves to these fictions because that is how they keep themselves safe, right? And so you see them constantly like they come in to get a new conductor, a new conductor for the thing. And he immediately says to his wife as they're getting him, he's like, save yourself, you know, tell them whatever they want to know because he thinks they're coming for him for something else instead of just grabbing him.

So it's not just there are people, and I think this is really true of right now. there are people who think Stalin is a great man and an incredible leader and who love him for that. And then there are people who are aware of what he's capable of, aware of the level of power that he has, aware of the fact that he is. And I even like when you meet Stalin, he's sort of Trumpy like in the sense that he's a little bit of a goofball, right? Like he's not a menacing figure, really. He's a kind of a goofball, but they're putting together the best of a cowboy movie with me. Yeah, that's right. he's explicitly I mean again he has that cockney accent right he is explicitly like low class

british you know like kind of a thug but not without charm like he's he's he is it's hard to it's and this movie does not play up like charming Stalin at all this is not like uh what was the young Stalin movie that came out a couple a couple years back there there was a young Stalin movie. And I was just like annoyed the whole time watching it. I was like, don't do this. We don't need to, we don't need to do Young Sexy Stalin. But the

but the portrayal of him here by the guy who plays him is again as just like kind of low class British thug. And it's perfect. It's pitch perfect because those people are scary.

Like you I don't want to get cornered in an alley by a guy shouting cockney at me. Come on. That's not what I want. Can we just talk about the accents for one second? Because you're totally right that the British accent there is meant to convey something specific. But they're all supposed to be Russian. But one of the real deft touches in this movie is that everyone keeps their accent, whether they're American or British. I love that. Like, Jeffrey Tambour is just talking with his American accent. Like, he sounds just like he does on.

What? Jason, Isaacs is almost playing like he's Irish. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have a good enough ear for British accents to, to pick up on that. But it's, it's kind of a boisterous. It's a different accent. And it's clearly meant to mark him off as being entirely alien to everybody else we've met so far. Yes. I think. I do think that's true. Like, he is meant to be something separate and apart. And so his accent is different. But it's different. But it. It was interesting to me how much, because I just watched him in White Lotus, because he is the dad in this most recent season of White Lotus, but I'm also watching Harry Potter with my kids. And so he's sort of much closer to Lucius Malfoy than the character from White Lotus. Yeah, kind of imperious, but he's less, again, he's less imperious in this role and more just like, here's a guy I like, here's a guy I'll have a beer with. He's a horse of nature.

He's like a cowboy, yeah. This is maybe my favorite scene of the movie is as they're plotting the coup at the end where they're going to get rid of Beria. They ask, they ask Zhukov if he can handle it. He goes, I fooked Germany. I think I can handle a little fart in a waistcoat. A fat lump in a waistcoat. A fat lump in a waistcoat.

It's just like it's. Yeah. I was dying. I mean, this movie does have one of the best. I like the cast from star definitive like patty like patty concedon we haven't even talked about really as his role as the the the director of radio Moscow is just like this kind of perfect the moment where he is debating with his where he's debating with his assistant like all right was it 17 minutes from when the call started or 17 minutes from when the call ended that that you know Stalin says to call back in 17 minutes but they're trying to figure out what 17 minutes means beginning of when he called end of when he called that is straight out of Faulty towers you could see that conversation

between like Manuel and John Cleese and Faulty Towers I was just think of that guy as British butchin guy that actor John Cleese John? No the guy from the guy who Patty Considine

Oh Patty Considine yeah well he's also he's also in House of the Dragon did you are you a game of Thrones I watched Game of Thrones but I didn't go through I didn't couldn't take it to next level. Okay. All right.

So the other thing I wanted to mention is the, the fight, the institutional fight between who is going to be the muscle for the state, right? Because this has the NKVD versus the Army, which again, feels a little bit like our current moment, ICE versus the FBI. What is ICE even versus, though? Ice is just out there rounding people up. Right. Ice is just allowed.

to do what it wants, right? Ice versus the normal police, ice versus the state authorities. But there is a, again, like, because we are living through an actual authoritarian power struggle, like, part of it is about which agencies are going to be the favorite agencies in terms of the allowance of use of force on the part of the state. And that's a, that's a real fight we get to have here, yay, at America. Yeah. Woo! Uh, that's a very good observation about the, the nouness and what's in the movie. I've got another one, which is just going back to the, they, they stage a coup and kill Barrier. It's not a coup exactly because Barry is not strictly in charge.

I actually think one of the things I wanted to ask you guys that I wasn't quite sure of is that the way that they put, uh, uh, Georgie Malenkov, right, who takes over. And I looked this up. George he believes over, but he seems very much to, everyone seems to anoint him so that it's not them right away, like nobody wants to be the guy right then. And so he's this figurehead that they sort of make fun of and is a bit of a pawn, but they also need him to do things like sign off on the execution of Beria, because along with sort of Georgie and then Khrushchev, Barry is like the third most important, powerful person he runs the secret police. They decide he's got to go. They got to kill him. And partly because he's got dirt on all

of them, partly because he is the main, that's a power play, right? There's a, there's a power struggle between Steve Buscemi's Nikita Khrushchev and Beria. What's interesting is when they go to kill him, and they've, and this happens with Molotov too, right? He's going to die. They have that sense of not, hey, if you can do this to Baria, if you can do this to Molotov, they can do it to us, which is a thing I always think about when you're like, why does someone want to work for Trump? He is, he humiliates and fires everyone who's in his cabinet. He does nothing but drop derision and ridicule and awfulness. everything Trump touches dies. And yet, everybody still wants those jobs.

Everybody still wants that power. And in this movie, that's a really potent undercurrent of they seem to drift more toward the idea that it is better to get these people out of the way so that they have more power than it is to be fearful that that same fate could befall them. Well, and it's funny, too, because. Because Malenkov himself, the Jeffrey Tambor character, does not understand the moment he is in. Because there's this bit in the run-up to this where he starts saying he's one of us. Beria is one of us. He needs, we need to give him a fair trial. We need to give him a fair trial.

And he needs to, if he's committed crimes, he needs to answer for them. But he has to actually stand trial. And again, the idea, like, what is a fair trial even look? like. What do these people even think a fair trial looks like at this point in Russian Soviet history, right? Like what does what is a quote fair trial? But the, the, this thing that they are all struck by is that, and this is I think getting to your point, is that they all, none of them think that they are part of who is being governed here. All of them see themselves as the main character. We're all the main character of our own story. And these guys in

particularly think they're the main character of their stories. And I think as the kind of final coda really puts across, like none of them are the main character, really. There's always a guy right behind them ready to take power. Literally in the way that it's shot. Right. So this is, I do think there is a mix of personalities in the Politburo here. In the same way, there's a mix of personalities in our reality. There are true believers. Like, Molotov is a true believer. Molotov believes in the revolutionary will of the great people and that the Communist Party must express that will.

That's why there must always be unanimity in the Politburo, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Khrushchev is not like that, and neither is barrier. They are just realists, right? And they are there to try to get power. And they also both understand that one of them is going to die. Right? I mean, they're just clear-eyed about this. And, you know, when Georgie Malenkov starts having cold feet at the end,

Khrushchev puts it to him. But he's like, you sign this or he's going to kill you. Right? And this is, Melanchov hasn't even really thought of it that way. And Khrushchev is really like, you know, look at what time it is. Don't you understand? Like, we don't have to pretend in the communist stuff anymore. Because that's what everybody was pretending.

We got to be real about what the moment. is and where power is and who's going to have it. That's fascinating. And I think that's a lot of what, like, I think that's what J.D. Vance thinks, right? I think J.D. Vance is all about the power there. This is, did you see, by the way, that J.D. Vance in the last 24 hours really some statement about how, God forbid. God forbid. He's ready to take over. Anything would ever happen. Did he release a statement or did that just?

I think it was in an interview. I think it was an interview when he just said it. Like, God forbid it would. I mean, he's ready. And the last. two hundred days have been the best education he could possibly. I just thought, geez Don. I mean, between that and JD saying that people should give the president the benefit of the doubt,

who, dude. If you don't see what JD's got cooking, then you really have lost a step old man. Well, so, but this, this raises, this raises a secondary question, which is that none of the people, all right, so

if we're thinking of death of Stalin in our current moment, is, is Trump Stalin? Yes. Or is he somebody like Khrushchev? Because if he's Stalin, then there's no machinations that will be able to, like, nobody, none of those people would have been able to usher him out the door. He was there until he was dead. Right. And if J.D. Vance thinks of himself as somebody who can kind of nudge Donald Trump off the stage, I think he's making a very big mistake.

Right. is Stalin, because Trump is Stalin. Yeah. Is that where you are, Sarah? Because that's, I'm there 100%. 100%. I just think J.D. is in a world of pain. What the thing that I loved that the movie brought up for me, besides feeling deeply resonant to the political moment, was the allowing you to sort of say, okay, well, if this feels

very similar to Trump and his cabinet, what happens if Trump dies? How do people behave? Like, I think that is the question it begs when you do the, how does this relate to our current moment and jd is melanchoff i mean it's it's such a clear thing don't you think i do uh but tell me do did you have other parallels from other people i know a guy who has lists of people to round up that's stephen miller steven miller is barria yeah i think so that that was the the the stephen miller of it all felt because he's the sinister the real sinister plotting, like person who seems to...

And the guy with no political skills. Yeah. Right? Like, like, Beria, again, Beria is an institutional guy, not a press the flesh charismatic guy. This is true historically. He was just like the guy who could get stuff done.

Sound a little bit like Stephen Miller? I thought this, I thought Stephen Miller versus kind of J.D. Vance. But like, if Trump died and let's just say like in the middle of his term so he's in power um do they what part of what struck me is this idea that and they have a whole discourse about it where they say he was a i don't think the word is revolutionary but they say he revolutionized what politics was like he changed the game there's a word they use but i'm not conjuring it uh to the point of we could change

the game too. But by changing it. Really true to him. Really true. He, he, he pushed through radical change. He changed what everybody thought the status quo was. And then they're like, so for us to do that, the way we'll do that is by re-liberalizing. Like, we're going to stop shooting people. We're going to let people out of jail. We're going to free the doctors. And that's us. Let people get their COVID-19 shots. And so, but that was such an interesting turn where I think that we think that to be like Trump, to be the successor to Trump, you have to maintain Trumpism. But what if the second Trump is gone, the way that they curry favor is by sort of running from Trump really fast. Well, so here's one of the funny things about Russian history.

And I'm pretty sure our colleague Ben Parker will confirm me in this sense. Stalin was regarded by the Russian elites. even within the party as a tremendous mistake by the end. Like, Stalinism was seen as a like, holy shit, I can't believe we did this. And they all went along with it because they had to, you know, not get shot. But that's what, I mean, Khrushchev started, you know, releasing the reins. And from there on, I mean, it's almost a straight line to Brezhnev and then Andropov and then Gorbache. I mean, you know, it's them, everybody's trying to back out.

So the point where in Russia, I think by like the early 2000s, like, no, there is no, Stalin is no longer revered. But then they got poop. Today. No, no. That's the thing. When this movie came out, it's licensed to be shown in Russia as revoked. And so Stalin is now rehabilitated in Russia. But as Russia became more liberal, even before the Soviet Union fell.

Stalin, like, people felt the ability to say, yes, that's Stalin guy. That was no good, bad, bad idea. And now that Russia has moved away from liberalism again, Stalin has regained his place in Russian history. Yeah. I mean, the broader question here, and one, I kind of struggle with, I don't actually know what the answer is, despite having lived in this world for the last 10 years, is I'm still not 100% sure what Trumpism is beyond Trump himself, right? And I, there are elements of it.

We could talk about immigration. I think I've, I've long argued this, that his superpower was understanding that, like, people don't like immigrants. That's, you know, he, he, he, he bucked the two-party consensus on immigration reform, and that is what kind of swept him into power and has kept him there. So, like, as far as there is a, an idea of Trumpism, I really think that is kind of it. But, like, what do you, what do you jettison? What do you keep? I mean, I, it is bizarre to me, frankly, given all that we know about Trump and his feelings about germs and that sort of thing. The fact that he actually does think that the COVID vaccines were a great accomplishment and is, like, annoyed that he can't take credit for them.

He does actually seem annoyed by this, which is one of the kind of interesting undercurrents of his presidency. Like, is anti-vaxism a tenet of Trumpism now? I don't know. Like, he clearly feels like he can't tell those people to fuck off like he should. Speaking of somebody who has their own base of power, you know, he's got his own movement. He's got his own four letters, maha, right? And so it is adjacent to Trump, right? But he does have his own base of support.

And Trump made an unholy alliance with RFK. because he saw his big fear was that RFK would run as an independent and pull from him. Because, you know, as RFK's people are Trump leaners, but RFK is the pure heroin. And they want that. Do you think Trump could unperson him the way he did Elon? I kind of do. Yeah. I'm not asking if he will, but I've been like, and do you think he could win as decisively against Kennedy as he did Elon?

because I think he probably could do that. I think he could. But I don't, what I don't think he could do is I don't think he could do it over vaccines. Like Trump, Trump to some degree does have to pantomime a little bit the man. I don't know, the mandates for the vaccines were what was wrong with that or whatever because it has become such a deep tenant of. his supporters, which is an interesting and maybe slightly different element than Stalin, which is that there are a lot of voters for whom when Trump, when Trump says, this is what

I believe, like tariffs, he can get people to move to him because they don't feel that strongly about tariffs. Vaccines where they're very against them, they move Trump a little bit. Like he's afraid of them on that or doesn't want to buck them on. that. I think that's basically right. I think that's like I also, and it's weird because again, like I say, he seems like he wants to take credit for all of this and refuses to because he does it.

I mean, there's no way to put it other than like fear. I think he's afraid of losing that group of people. And I don't, I actually don't think he could do the same thing to RFK that he did to Elon. But like we were discussing with Elon, Elon got. very nicely moved out the door. Elon did not get unpersoned. Elon still has Twitter. He still has his car company and his rocket company.

Like, that, he does not get, he did not get, like, humbled and thrown out the door. No. And actually, that's a really good point. That's not what, because what happened was Elon over, overstepped what he thought his power was. He did have his own base of support. And that keeps him completely safe. He doesn't lose anything in the whole Doge fiasco. But the fact that he, the fact that Trump, like, he's the one who went after Republicans

and said, I'm going to primary everybody if they vote for the big, beautiful bill. He was going after Trump over me. He's the one who said Trump was in the Epstein files, right? He went hard at Trump, not the other way around. And then Trump was forced to do something. And so I do think that Trump could push out RFK Jr. And he should. I don't know why he's not because I do think he's annoyed about his like,

good legacy on COVID to the extent that he thinks he has one. But I don't know, this time around, I also noticed that Trump is very reticent to push out anybody who rode with him to come in. Like, he didn't go after Elon until Elon, like, came for him. But like, Bondi probably, if it was the first term and he was firing people the way he did in the first term, Bondi'd be gone. and like he would, he'd be throwing people under the bus, but Hegg Seth would be gone over Signal Gates, but he's not doing that this time. No, no, but it was interesting.

The difference between the first and second term is the first term appointees all felt like kind of compromised picks, right? Like a guy like Mattis, who was not a Trump guy, was like, all right, well, we'll have Mattis come in and he's the grownup in the room and Trump has, and like, but Trump never liked Mattis. That was not a, it's not like he was, it's, none of these people are compromised picks. They're all Trump people. I mean, even

Rubio. Like, there's nobody who's a bigger disappointment than Marco Rubio. Even Rubio is like, yeah, yeah, I'm here. I'm your guy. Give me more jobs. I can do it. I know, but they're, some of them embarrass him. Like, they make him look incompetent or whatever, and I guess he just doesn't care anymore.

So, we got to talk about Vasili. So, because one of the, one of the complications of Stalin and his reign was that there really was by design no succession plan and you couldn't even have a dynastic succession like assumed succession plan because vasili was such a total fuck up right i mean vasili was such a fail son that it it could not be even remotely plausible that you could be like well maybe vasili would take over right he was he was such a fail son that he fucked up the russian ice hockey team

Do you know how badly you have to fuck up to fuck up the Russian ice hockey team? It's all those people do. Yeah, but they all went down in a plane. No, no, there was no plane crash because Soviet planes don't crash. I know. That was a great scene. It's like, get me better data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So I don't think that's the truth with Don Jr.

This has been my pet theory, which is that if J.D. Vance's Malenkov, Don Jr., is not Khrushchev. But he might be a Vasili who's competent and who is interested in taking over for dad. Interested, yes, competent, no. Competent enough. I don't think he has, I don't think he has the personal appeal. I don't think people like him. I mean, this is the thing about Trump is that his voters like him.

His voters like him and they find him amusing and they think they like Don Jr. too. I don't think it's the same. I don't think it's the same way, though. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. I mean, Sarah, you talk, have you ever, have you ever talked to the voters about how they feel about Don Jr? I mean, I'm kind of curious. If they talk about the kids at all, they talk about her.

They talk about Ivanka. Ivanka. But not because they like her. They see her as a like deep state, right? No. I, people, I don't know if you've noticed this, but Ivanka is attractive. Ivanka is a physically appealing person. As her dad likes to say.

Yes, it's very gross. she also, I think she and Jared come off as the sort of responsible ones. And so, no, Don Jr. is the kind of person that J.D. Vance sidles up to. Like, he's in her circle for sure. And you've got to make them like you to some extent if you want to be, if you want to bro out with the, with the Trump team. But I don't think that the voters are clamoring for Don Jr. They don't like dynasties. And I do my, like, like, like, you know, Your theory counters my theory, which is that, to your point, it's not that Trump is sui generis in that he just appeared out of nowhere, right? There was a populist gene in the Republican Party that led to him, but he's also pretty

unique in that he lived in people's living rooms for 14 seasons on that show, playing a businessman who fired people. And before that, and before that, he was in the popular imagination. He was, he had bestselling books. He had, you know, his, he was on Oprah all the time. He was on today, right. Don Jr.'s had bestselling books. He's on TV all the time.

I mean, I just think his connection with the Republican base is deeper than you guys maybe give it credit for being. Not with the general public, like not with swing voters, but with a Republican base, I think if Don Jr. put himself. forward as the inheritor of his father's chair, I bet he can win a Republican primary. No. Well, I can you win a Republican primary? Well, that's a different question.

Then can he become president? Yeah, that's not what I'm talking. I just meant could he, could he be the one who claims the mantle? It depends on who he's running against. Melancho. I mean, if he's running against a bunch of mini-trumps, because let me tell you, I do think of the things J.D. Vance kind of has going for him is that he is ideological and he's not ideological in the same way Trump is. Like, he does have his own ideas. And if Trump is out

of the way, J.D. Vance is going to start talking about things in a much different way than Donald Trump does. Still quite a sinister one, I think, but he is going to focus on working class populism in a way that is more rooted in his Ohio roots than Trump. does, where he connects with people as something completely unrelated to politics. He does have that face, though. J.D. Vance? Yeah.

That's going to be hard to overcome. I think we're, I think, I think we're not always the best judges of this. Like, I find Trump unbelievably repellent and. Oh, see, I, I totally understand Trump's appeal. Like, I get why people think he's funny. Like, I, like, I just look at J.D. Vance and I think he's going to,

to make people's skin crawl a little bit. But he is inauthentic. Yeah. He makes my, he makes my skin crawl, I know, but I think, I think we are,

I think we're not the, the target audience. We're, I just can't, I can't, I can't read them because, I can't read them because I can, I can just never forget what he actually was in 2014, 15.

And then what he, what he changed into. He just, he didn't change. He was always that guy. I said that back then. The number of people, who were like, oh, what are you talking about?

He's so great. And I said, no, I was like the Joker. I always know a squealer and the TV. Well, all right. Fair enough. I don't know what else you guys want to talk about. As the son, Vasili, there, part of it is, like, part of what happens with kids in these situations is that they are, and of course, this is true of, like, the monarchs.

And there's always kind of a screw-up and then one that has sort of internalized the lessons of their parents. And so in this movie, she is the one who has more, she loves her father. She has taken on certain elements of him. Like she knows she's in charge. She knows everybody has to work for her. Whereas the son is just like a wimpy, mulling, you know, ne'er-do-well black sheep drunk. And I would say Don Jr. is kind of like that. And she is more Ivanka-like, but no matter what that second generation of the, let's call them great men in quotations, meaning that the big men that people fall in love with, that that next generation is always too diluted, I think.

George W. Bush, I do think there is a Republicans, or people are just over dynastic politics in America a little bit, too. yeah and also george w bush had a very different kind of appeal from his father yeah like hw had the kind of like uh i don't want to say academic but he had he had a different kind of appeal than george w bush who was like more like kind of down homie like going to go to the ranch and clear some brush you know that's not that's not what hw was i don't before we get out of here sunny you and i had talked a little bit about uh Jeffrey Tambor. Do we have time for a Jeffrey Tamber discussion? Or is that something that nobody is really here for? I care about it. Is this about his Me Too? Do you got Me Too? Well, it was just,

it's just kind of interesting because there was this, there was this controversy when the movie came out. He, so the movie, the like, the movie is about to come out, you know, Jeffrey Tambor is on all the posters and stuff. He gets Me Too, right? He gets, he gets fired from Transparent. There's a sexual harassment lawsuit. And then he gets airbrushed out of all of the promotional materials. From transparent. Kind of. No, for for death. Oh, for death of Stalin. Which is so perfect. Which is, which is literally, it's like, it's, it's the most perfect thing that could have happened with the, with, with the movie. He gets, he gets just like literally taken out of the posters and like off the DVD cover

and stuff, despite the fact that he is, I think, credited as the second lead after Steve. Busemi. I think it's like Steve Busemi, Jeffrey Tambor, then Simon Russell Beale, I guess. But it's, it, it was very funny. It was very funny. But this was, this was, I was thinking about Jeffrey Tambor in this, just because that, that period of time for, um, arrested development, transparent, this movie. Like, he was having a real thing.

Has he done anything since? Like, did that, did that put him that, that, that he was, it was a, he was a bad, I, I can't remember what he did he was he was accused of so i i believe it was on on the transparency that he was accused of uh getting getting too handsy and familiar with some of the uh actresses on that show uh is my is is my very half-assed remembering of of what happened there um but yeah no it was just very it was just a very funny kind of reflection of the subject matter in in real life which is, you know, a thing we have been discussing today. Yeah, I just bet when this came out,

there was an element of people at the time saying that it was resonant then. Well, this is, well, so this is, so this is what Ianucci, so Armando Ianucci did an interview with Scott Tobias in the Rolling Stone magazine, and he, Scott asked, was there something resonant to you about this story in our current political moment? And remember, this was, this was the movie. was written, I think, in 2015. They didn't start shooting until 2016. But this is what I Anucci said. Yes, I was thinking of democracy now and how it's going through this strange phase, the strong personality becoming elected and then amassing power. So that even though

they've been democratically elected, they start using democracy to just reinforce their own position and it becomes more and more difficult for them to be removed. So you've got the likes of Putin, Berlusconi, Erdogan and Turkey. In Eastern Europe, you have constitutions that are being change so they can stay in office for longer, things like that. I was also looking at the mass movements across Europe, nationalism, populism, the unpredictability now in elections, people really being disenchanted with politicians, new parties, and an extremism emerging. We shot the film in the summer of 2016, so it was before Donald Trump was elected and the whole Russia-America thing became news, but that in itself is also part of that trend that I'd been noticing anyway. So it's

Definitely, this is like, this is all baked into the movie. And this gets back to my, the point I was trying to make with Veep and this, which is that like, when you, when you watch a show like Veep, you inevitably get wrapped up in arguments about issue a Republican, issue a Democrat. And this movie, I think, is is a little bit better because it just kind of transcends all that. You don't get wrapped up in that. You just look at what's happening and you say, yes, I see that. I can see that. I see that happening now in certain places and in. in what we're going through.

All right. Can I have my say about Jeffrey Tambor? Or did you want to Sarah? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I did not really track the Jeffrey Tambor cancellation, the Me Too thing from transparent. It was all very complicated to me. And I, I'm sure that if I wanted to spend an afternoon, like really ironing it out, I could.

But who at the time? We have a republic falling all around us. I'll tell you what I did clock. it came out that Jeffrey Tambor was a dick on set to Jessica Walter and that is something I will never forgive because Jessica Walter God rest her soul

was an angel sent to us by heaven one of the funniest and most talented actresses of her generation a national treasure Jeffrey Tamber to like make her cry on set I am sorry F you dude that is a that is

unacceptable way if you can't be mean to jessica walter it's like being mean to betty white or something i won't have uh that is a great sarah you are a jesska walter super fan i'm a jessica walter uh fan but i also watch transparent i bet you guys didn't and i'll just tell you jeffrey tember got a lot of like you're so brave for doing this and blah blah blah i thought he was the worst part of that show like unlike arrested development where he is quite funny uh in transparent the children and Judith Light plays his ex-wife. Like, the surrounding cast is much, much better than he is. Fair enough.

That's fair. All right. Can we just quickly go around the horn and all agree that Jessica Walter in an arrest development, which is the great comedy of our time with maybe the best ensemble ever assembled in a comedic group? Very specifically. We limit this to the first time. That's all there was. I don't recognize.

There was never anything else, just three. I don't recognize anything past season three. But Jessica Walter was the ace in that unbelievable group. Yes. We all agree. Ooh, that's a great question. Over Jason Bateman? And I love Jason Bateman.

Believe me. Nobody takes a backseat. I take a backseat to nobody in my admiration for Jason Bateman as an actor. But Jessica Walter, man. Sonny, he's the straight man in that. So he just, he's fine. He's funny. but she

the lines the lines that you quote from that show still are hers and busters but like I love all my children I love all my children I don't care for Job

I don't I could not disagree I quote Jason Bateman saying I don't know what I was expecting a hundred times a hundred times a week that was looking in the dead pigeon bag the the no the best the best Jessica Walter role is her voice work on

Archer. Are either of you guys Oh, that's right. She did do art. I am not. But I caught that she was an intro part of it. It's on Netflix. You can watch the whole thing now. It's this kind of like pitch perfect James Bond spoof type show. It's very funny. It's animated. It's adult animation, which I know nobody really likes. But it's a, it's a very funny show and she's very funny on it.

I don't know about you guys, but when she passed, like I had a, like, a very real like oh i didn't want to live in a world without jessica walter in it all right great great bulwark movie club guys we should ask people what they they want to we should do episodes on because i have ideas but you know i kind of want to do that i want to do the 1970s uh invasion of the body snatchers the donald sullen one that sounds pretty on point as well certainly does not does not have any relevance to our moment uh and also a contagion i want to do a contagion episode here's what i would just say our audience. We would love to take recommendations. I do think we're going to put

like slight parameters around this where it has to be for now a movie. I think maybe at some point we'll talk about shows, but like I can't, we can't do French village. You can't do five seasons of something. So unless we've all just recently finished something or watch something, but mainly like let's go back and watch movies that have political

resonance or taught us something or are relevant today. So think about those and send us your recommendation. Yeah. And also you guys, you guys got to make this show happen. So like share it with your friends, leave comments, hit the likes, all those things. Please continue the discussion in the comments. We would like to hear what you have to say about the death of Stalin. Specifically, I would like you to go through and tell us which figures from death of Stalin are the figures in the Trump administration. That's your homework. All right. Well, thanks, thanks for doing the show, guys. I really

appreciate it. This is fun. We should do it in, we should do it next week. Do it again. See you again. See you next week, guys.