The Chaser Report - Carry On USA-ward Son

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Charles seeks parenting advice from Dom after his edlest son makes a shocking confession. Anyone with kids who might be listening, best keep them away from this episode, unless you want them getting ideas.---Order the 2025 CHASER ANNUAL: https://chasershop.com/products/the-chaser-and-the-shovel-annual-2025-preorderListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to a very somber episode of The Chaser Report. Oh, Charles, what's wrong? Dom, I've got a bit of a parenting problem. Really? My son said to me this morning. Oh, no.

Was it one of those conversations? Yes. And it's kind of shocked me to my core. Yeah, you look really upset by me. I'm shaken. Which child was it, the oldest one? About 17-year-old. Said, right, okay, so that's, I mean, stuff gets real.

Yes, yes. And I never, to be honest, I mean, he's a good kid. He's silly little boy in so many ways, but he's 17. I mean, he's almost old enough to vote. Yes, so I don't know how, I don't know how to talk to him about it. So I sort of want your advice. Tell us, look, we all knew you were going to become a grandfather, eventually.

Like it's, it's in the, it's not that. It's not that. That's not that. He wants to go into politics. What's going on? No, it's way worse than theirs. No, no, no, no. This is, no, this is, no, this is serious.

No, no, got it. He wants to subscribe to the Petitra ad. No, no. Okay. Let's just take a break and regroup. Okay, I promise, I will somehow find some compassion during here. Yes. No, because this is serious. I'm here for you.

I'm here for you because that's the format of the podcast. We can't. It's too late to change it now. Right. No, seriously, what's happening with you? I know your son. He's a lovely, lovely. I know. And it's so weird because it was so casual the way he brought it up. But basically, he came down. He was on his phone, of course. And he'd obviously watch some video or something. He's one of the three favorite members of mine of your family.

And he says, Dad, I want to go to the US next January. Oh, Charles. Yeah. I think the grandfather thing would have been less stressful. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I was hoping it was going to be like I'm on heroin or, you know, I love that fentanyl. I'm getting arrested chip off the old block. Yeah.

Oh, yes, okay. So, all right. I'm sorry. And the thing is, it's not, I kind of understand. I mean, I don't understand it. Obviously, I don't understand it. But I kind of understand it. Because what he wants to do is he wants to go to Las Vegas and go to the CES.

conference, which is like the consumer electronics. He's a chip off the old box. So he loves tech. Yes, he loves America. I mean, you're the man who made the series Mr. Firth goes to Washington after all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a different Washington, of course. There was very different.

Different times. It was back in the day when America was just a rampaging, militaristic, imperialist country that invaded tin pot dictatorships. The normal America that we knew and loved. We sort of loved. You know, we just sort of embraced. There were lots of good sites back there. He'd go to New York City and pretend that the rest of America wasn't there.

You could fly over it, you know, fly over states. Yeah, yeah. But Charles, and they didn't complain? This does worry me, though, because this suggests there is one big different between you and your son. I wonder, you know, how closely you're really related. Does he not read the news, Charles? Does he not? Is he so oblivious to the news cycle?

This is the thing. He knows the news. My son, he's aware of everything that's going on. He's aware of the news. And he wants to go to Vegas. It's like, it's like, you know, your son, maybe in a previous year, as saying, oh, dad, I want to go to Liberia and join the Lord's, what was a Revolutionary Army.

What was it called? To become a child soldier. Yeah, I want to become a child soldier in Liberia. Team Coney. Yeah. In Angola or whatever. Yeah, like, you know, you know what I mean? Like, or I want to go and fight for Russia against Ukraine.

Back in the days, Charles, when a young man wanted to go to Vegas, you thought it just meant he wanted to party, Campbell. Yes, you're right. You're like Matt Damon. Yeah, just do dubious things. Yes, have a whole lot of sex and rock and roll and drugs. Yeah, like Prince Harry going and getting nude. Yeah, dressing up as a Nazi.

Although actually, dressing up as a Nazi might actually be quite sort of politically correct. I'm not sure that's as on the nose as it used to be. Yeah. Okay. But now, you must go to Vegas for, um, for the, for the, for the, for the, for the tech fair. But Charles, I mean, also, not only all the stuff going on in America, but is he aware of what's going on in tech?

I mean, you know, it used to be, and when I were first into tech, it was about a better life and amazing gadgets and stuff. And now it's basically creepy surveillance powered by AI and everything. No, I think that's why he wants to go. That's why he wants to go. He wants to find out how to do better targeted ads in his TikTok stream. He wants to become an influencer. Oh, dear.

He wants to use AI to leverage people's brains. Right. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I think he actually, to be honest, I think it's more innocent than that. I think he really likes, like, mechanical keyboards and, you know, because he's into video games.

That's how they get you in. I know. Mechanical keyboards. Yes. And before you know it, you've got a neuralink chip in your brain. Yes. And or your red pill and posting on X. You're a paid subscriber to X charge.

Oh, my God. This is what might happen. The embarrassment. Okay. So, all right. Well, so, okay, I'm trying to be caring here. It's difficult. Yeah.

What do you say? Do you talk him down from the cliff? Do you say over my dead body? No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. You can't, like, and Dom, you should learn this because, you know, your kids will grow up. Oh, no, my kids are, you know, 10 years younger or something. Yeah.

But, you know, you can't just go blanket, no. Right. Because that immediately puts them offside and. It's only a few more months before we can. He's 18, he can go on his own. You've got to, you know, be their ally and talk through why you would possibly want to go to America. And, you know, like, and so I did. I went, oh, well, that's an interesting thing to want, you know, since when have you had these feelings?

Do you want to talk to somebody, a professional about this? You know, like, should we book an appointment? Yeah, this is a judgment free space. Yeah, lean in. Yeah. We all, look, there's a lot of ways of being in the world. If the way he chooses is to be someone who wants to go to America, we can work on that. Like, there would be pamphlets available, presumably, at the school.

There'd be support group for other people who want to go to America. Yeah. And, you know, A.A., America files anonymous. You can go to a 12-set program. Yeah. But Charles, look, I do have some good news for you. I don't know how closely you've been following the news cycle. Oh, yeah.

But I don't like his chances of getting in just now. Oh, yes. Because, look, the first surname is related to you. Yes. You're not getting in there. I'm not getting in there. Yeah, I was told that the other day, actually. I mean, there's many reasons.

We've been getting lots of death threats, a lot of death threats. Some of the commentary on the, you know, chase the social media in recent times. Yeah. If they were to search for your name, they'd find some things. And guilt by association, I mean, Would America visit, you know, guilt by association upon the children of Charles Firth before? No, but now I think it's very likely. Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, the problem may take care of itself. Right. So maybe just let it play out. It's sort of like, you know, that time that he wanted to experiment with heroin. And I just went, yeah, go for your life. So what happens if you go down that part? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what, I mean, nothing will kill a great love and fascination.

Love of fascination with America than America. More and more America. Yeah. I'm probably sorry. Middle East. Maybe what I do is I just lean it. Maybe I start putting pep on. It hasn't worked on Chaz yet.

On as a podcast. And we just listen to four hours of Chaz every night. Yes. To sort of go, oh, you're getting into the mood. Yeah, find out what's going on. And just sort of like saturate him with America. And maybe start wearing like a Trump hat and start talking about how. Well, if you start wearing a Trump hat, you'll get in.

Men are better than women. and that women should just have traditional roles. Well, you can just change your socials. They won't look back more than a few weeks, presumably. They won't do the job thoroughly. So you could just have a few mega hats. Charles, I've got a better idea for you, though. There's another place that you can go in January, which is much better.

It really scratches each of mechanical keyboards and all that kind of stuff. Oh, okay, yeah. And it's much less of a creepy surveillance state than America, fortunately. We're. Ads. None of the medical advice contained in the chase a report should legally be considered medical advice. The Chaser report.

I mean, Charles, where, read on me this, where do the mechanical keyboards come from? Where do you walk the streets? And there's just one giant mechanical keyboard factory after another. And also amazing Android robots walking around. Delivery robots that come and deliver things to you. We're talking, of course, about China, mainland China. Mainland China. It's actually easier for Australians to get in than ever before.

It's a, you know, communist freedom paradox. Yes. Yes. With, I mean, yes, there's surveillance, but it's not as extreme as they're not looking through all your posts on social media, I don't think. Or maybe they always were. I don't know. But Charles, that's where the mechanical people are. They own my social media posts.

Yes, that's right. So if you go there, I mean, it's amazing. Have you heard what you can do? You can go to, I think there's some cities where you can go and there's like a kiosk in the park and you order a drink. And a couple of minutes later, a drone copter brings you the drink, Charles. Oh, that's pretty good. A 17-year-old would love that. I've seen TikTok videos of the delivery services in those major cities.

So not even, you know, obviously Shanghai has this, but even the sort of second-tier cities have this now, which is a lot of the, if you live in an apartment in a built-up area, which is a lot of those cities, and you order something off the equivalent of an Uber Eats-style service, it will be delivered by a delivery robot. And they're just little things on wheels. They don't look like a sort of Elon Musk robot.

They're just little... No, there's little carts on wheels. And they know how to not just go into your apartment, but go up the lift and to your door. And apparently it's unbelievably quick. Like, so you literally, you order and 20 minutes later... Yeah. Or there's a copter that comes through in the apartment.

I've seen the videos of these things. They're amazing. But Charles, okay, it's a surveillance date, sure. Yeah. Okay, there's the... you know, the Chinese, the People's Liberation Army around the corner all the time. There's set crackdowns on social order.

There's likely troops in the streets with weapons. But that's the same as America these days. Yeah, no. But the difference is in China that there's public transport. It all works on time. The streets are clean and safe. Yeah. I mean, once upon a time.

Like a good fascist state. Once upon a time, I would have been saying that's the tradeoff between, you know, freedom in places like America. They're not as well run, but hey, it's the land of the free. But nowadays, I think if you're going to visit a place where you can't, as a tourist, have any free speech at all, where everything's completely locked down and regimented. Yes.

May I as well go to the one that works. Go to the one that's got clean toilets. And better still, after this episode drops and the transcript gets scanned, even more impossibility of getting to Vegas. So do you think you can tell him? I think a trip to China would be delightful in January. Well, my plan was to just say to him,

you can go. Right. But just take your brother with you. Oh, I see. Yeah. Right. Okay. Lovely. The other thing is Charles, you may never see them again, too, because the way that things are going over there,

I don't know whether you saw. I just randomly come up with these articles from an Irish newspaper the other day. One of them was discussing someone who'd lived there for 50 years, and at once, like, in a moment of weakness, passed a fake check for like $25 or something like that years ago. Yes. And it had made good, had paid it back and whatever. Went back to Ireland to visit her relatives. Yes.

Came back to the statute. It wasn't that they didn't let her back in. they locked her up. She is still locked up after 100 days. She was detained by ICE at the airport. Yes. And so that's what's happening to her. And there's another guy, I think he was British, maybe another Irishman.

He overstayed his visa because he got sick. So he overstayed his visa by three days, straight into immigration detention as well. So depending on what happens when they're over there, they may only realize in mid-flight. Yes. Yeah, that they're related to you. And the red flag goes off and then they're in immigration detention. Three weeks. of not having to...

I think they feed them eventually. Yeah, no, actually, have you heard about the South Koreans who are to have them? That's pretty horrible. I mean, we can't even really joke about how... Those workers, so they were the really high-value, were they high-undi workers? Oh, yes, that's right.

Who were taken away. They were setting up the factory, and their job was, they'd come over, they were the sort of high-value employees who were setting up a new factory to train the American workers. And Trump's Ice Brigade went and raided. They locked 400 of them up. They marched them out in chains. It was like a chain gang.

Wow. And then they locked them in these cells, which had a fist-sized hole for sunlight and shared toilets where there was only a sort of screen to sort of hide your private bits. But basically being amongst 400 colleagues that you've known. At work. Yeah.

I don't want to be in the cell next to you, thank you very much. And then people were, like, made to lie on the ground as they were being rounded up and everything like that. And it's funny because Trump then apparently tried to beg, you know, Hyundai to sort of make them stay so that they could train up the human American workers. And Hyundai, to their credit, just went, no, look, if our workers want to go home, they're allowed to go home. Yeah. We're chartering flights. We're getting them out of here. And they all went home.

They all in home. Who's going to train the American workers? Well, it doesn't matter. Just tell Hartley, don't go in here. Because you know Subaru is also exiting America. Oh, same thing. Like the whole place. So, but actually, I've got an update for you while we're talking

U.S. immigration, a little bit off the side here, on alligator architraz. Oh, that's the other thing we were going to talk about. It was going to be closed down. Yes. The federal appeals court said that it could stay open because it didn't have any federal ties. So federal law didn't apply, even though, clearly Donald Trump is sending people there. Yeah.

Yeah, except that the week after that ruling, they applied for federal funds. Oh, brilliant. You know, too late. So, do you think you can make the case to your, to your, I mean, mechanical keyboards are well and good, but you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to give Hartley a taste of American-style freedom. Wow. And just say, nah, you can't do it.

Fuck off. Just lock him in a room. It's my rules on the leader of this household. Actually, you've got a kind of creepy basement. Just lock him in there. Yes. And then it'll just be like being in America. Yeah, just lock him in there until after CES in January.

Yes. And then the problem will take care of itself. Pretty much the same thing. Yep. Love it. Okay. Great. Glad I'm going to help, Charles.

I'm always here if you have any trouble. Problem's going for it. We're part of the Iconoclass Network. Catch you tomorrow.