The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - The Far Right is in for Major Backlash with Free Press Reporter River Page

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

River Page is a reporter at The Free Press. Previously, he worked as a staff writer at Pirate Wires, covering technology, politics, and culture. His work has also appeared in Compact, American Affairs, and the Washington Examiner, among other publications.

This is Live From The Table, the official podcast of the world-famous Comedy Cellar. And we are available wherever you get your podcasts. We're available on YouTube. And this is Dan Natterman. I am a Comedy Cellar comedian. Here with Noam Dwarman, the owner of the world-famous Comedy Cellar. Hello, hello, hello. Perrie Lashenbrand is here. She's an author, comedian, and producer of Live from the Table. And with us remotely via the miracle of Zoom video conferencing, we have River Page.

She is a writer at the Free Press. On most days, he writes the daily newsletter, The Front Page. And you can find him on Twitter or X, I guess it is now. But I still call it Twitter. I also still call the Tappan Z the Tappan Z. Always Twitter to me. Pardon? It's always Twitter to me.

Yes, because Twitter can be used as a verb, like you tweet. X, how do you? It was ill-conceived. There's no verb there. Anyway, you can find him on Twitter slash X at River underscore is underscore nice. River is nice. That remains to be seen. We really don't know him, but he seems nice so far.

Welcome, River. Coming from the Florida panhandle, I believe. That's right. Yeah, I am moving to New York next month, though. So we'll see how that goes. Well, we could have had you on then, but then your article that we want to talk to you about wouldn't be quite as current, so we're doing it what did the name river well river phoenix i think was the oh yeah it's funny so um my mom actually so she was 16 when she had me and she was in class like in

her biology class or something and uh she was like well everybody knows i'm pregnant now she hid it for like six months because she was a baptist preacher's daughter in like rural east texas so she hit it for like six months uh bailed out on an abortion last minute and then she was like okay i'm coming clean i'm pregnant all right what am i gonna name the baby and so the teacher was like taking suggestions from the class and let them up on the uh on the whiteboard or the chalkboard or whatever. And yeah, somebody suggested River. I later learned at my grandma's funeral after River Phoenix.

And she was just like, yeah, I'll go with that one. So my first day of high school, I go and I meet this teacher and she's like, oh, we named you in my class. Is this for real What do you think? Is this for real? Are you pulling? That's an amazing story. What town was this in? A little town called Huntington, Texas.

So Huntington, Texas. An hour and a half north of Houston. This is why they wanted to abolish the Department of Education. Where's Dojo? We need it. the Department of Education. Where's Dojo? So the teacher is taking suggestions for your 16-year-old mom's... That's hilarious. It's a cool name.

And she backed out on the abortion for religious reasons, you said? Yeah, yeah. For religious reasons. They passed around the hat. I was in my grandma's wake, okay? So I'm sitting in my grandma's wake. It's like a Scotch Irish like wake. So you stay at a church, traditionally a home, but like in modern days, you stay in a church all night and you sit up

with the body. Right. And so we're sitting like three feet from my grandmother's corpse. It's like 11 PM. And one of my mom's friends from high school comes up to me and she was like, you know, we passed around a hat for your mother to have an abortion. And I'm glad that she didn't do it. And I'm like, I don't know what to say. I was like, did she give you your money back? And she was like, you know, she didn't. I was like, well, now's your time. And your mom is still with us? Oh, yeah. She's, I mean, she's only 16 years older than me. I'm 29.

So she's in her 40s. 45. So we should get your mom on the show, too. She literally just called me. I forgot to put my phone on silent. Should we send her a Zoom link? We'll call her back. Don't, please.

She would hate that I told that story. I want to meet your mom. And your dad oh my god uh like my mom so i said call homecoming king what is he no um he so my biological dad became a uh like a drug dealer like a meth dealer and then he also married my mom's cousin at one point. So I have a half brother who's also like my second cousin on my mom's side. It's a real like redneck, like, you know, these are not usually the type of people who become journalists, but you know, I shit tweeted a lot on Twitter like five years ago.

When you read Hillbilly elegy uh did you identify like i haven't read it but i i just i just in my own bigoted way i assume this is like a similar like uh you know yeah story like i actually yeah go ahead oh i wrote a piece save me for myself go ahead yeah no i wrote a piece about it um the Free Press, and I was basically saying that I think it's kind of, I don't know, it's kind of gross to like air out your family's dirty laundry to make the political point that J.D. was making at the time, which is that basically if you're poor, like a poor white person, it's because of your own moral misgivings. And that, yeah, like a lot of things has happened, but like, look at me, I'm, you know, a, you know, Ivy League educated tech bro. And if I can do it, then these people can too. They're just not trying.

And I don't know. I mean, I am somebody who came from a pretty similar background and I've found, you know, I don't have tech bro money but you know like I have like a career in media and that's not usual but it's a lot of it was luck and being in the right time in the right place and like you know there's like three things that could have gone wrong in my life and I'd be like in prison or like dead of an overdose so um i i don't know i think i think he's you know sort of changed his opinions now but um i don't know i don't like that book i like it well the

argument the argument i did it so other people can do it too while there can be something to that of course it's also like a uh very vulnerable to all sorts of biases because, first of all, a certain number of people get lucky. But also, for instance, Glenn Lowry, who's a friend of mine and I'm a big admirer of his, but he's a black conservative, And the self-help somewhere within him, you know, is the self-help message. And I've said to him, yeah, but Glenn, you're a genius. Like, you know, the fact that you're a genius obviously has something to do with that, that you made it. So it may not be so easy for the average Joe to make it given all things being equal. It might be legit to say, you know, you can do it too.

Or it might just be, well, I'm an outlier because I'm so gifted. Nothing could have held me back. You just don't know. Yeah, I mean, I think about, you know, my success. I'm not really like that. Definitely people I grew up with who are smarter than I am, who are, you know, working on oil rigs.

Periel has the same experience. Go ahead. And yet here I am. That's a good job, though. Isn't it working on an oil rig? It's good money, but it's not. People, even though they probably make more money than I do, honestly, like a lot of them anyway. People perceive white collar, sort of professional, creative class work, however you want to put it, in like a different way than that sort of thing.

And like I got, you know, if it weren't for the internet, I wouldn't have a media career. And a lot of people like me, like who have a similar background to me, wouldn't have media careers because I didn't go to an elite college. I would have never met like Barry Wise if it weren't for the internet, right? Like I would never have met really anybody who, um, who's like given me an opportunity in this industry if it weren't for the internet and, you know, really like Twitter, just like being able to, um, express your opinions and like audition almost, uh, like for, uh, publications just with an internet connection. A Quick question. Do they sleep on the rig or do they commute back and forth? My stepdad who raised me, I call him my dad,

he worked on an old rig for two years. He's a log truck driver. But he wrecked his old truck like two months after my younger brother was born. And so he had to go work on an old rig and whenever he was doing it you had to you didn't stay on the rig um which he was on on he wasn't offshore he was on like uh it was somewhere out in west texas but it was like on land but they had to sleep in like these sort of like trailer house sort of like it was basically like a big like-wide trailer house

with a bunch of bunk beds in it. And so it's just like 30 dudes sleeping in there for two weeks at a time, and then you get two weeks off. We're not here to talk about oil rigs. I know Noam's probably upset that I changed the subject. No, I do find it interesting. It is interesting.

And of course, there are certain echoes of the movie There Will Be Blood, where the oil man picks up the stepchild and not an oil rig, but, you know, oil drilling. That movie somehow, you've never seen it? It's one of the few James A. Lewis movies I've never seen. I don't know. I was going to watch it the other day because I just watched, what was the one where he

plays like the tailor, like the fashion designer guy um the invisible thread or something like that the phantom thread so it was really good so you you you saw that there was a daniel day lewis movie very acclaimed about a um oil man that raised a step son and uh you said you know i'm gonna watch a american pie what it's about i just like vaguely heard of it like it saw it on my suggestions while I was watching The Phantom Thread and I was like, oh, yeah, I should probably watch it. It's one of the great movies.

In my opinion, one of the great theatrical or cinematic performances. I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis is phenomenal. That movie is just phenomenal. All right, so and Paige, what's the original Jewish name? He's no Jew. He said you work for the free press. All right. So, River and Page, what's the original Jewish name?

He's no Jew. He says you work for the free press. Thank God. Yeah, well, they did circumcise me as part of the onboarding process. You wrote a column here, or whatever you call it, an article. The online right is building a monster. The subhead is their increasingly extreme rhetoric is eventually going to freak the hell out of ordinary people. This was published recently, February 19th, 2025. So go ahead. Give us a synopsis of your argument.

So I'll give you the short form and then we can get into it. So the short version of my argument so i'll give you the short for a minute form and then we can get into it so the short version of my argument is that around the 2010s the cultural left was ascendant um and then it all sort of like you had all these ideas these crazy ideas building and building and they were mostly manufactured like through the internet. There's like some academia involved and other things. It was mostly on Twitter. Things that were happening on Twitter in like 2015, you know, four years down the line would end up in corporate HR policy in mainstream

TVs and movies, in government policy. And that freaked people out. Once the give us an example give us an example of what you cut something like um non-binary right this is something that like really only existed on the internet for like 10 years and then all of a sudden it becomes there are non-binary characters in movies um you know non-binary people have like a special designation for passports like it becomes there are non-binary characters in movies um you know non-binary people have like a special designation for passports like it becomes like a part of whatever you want to call it like the public private administrative state and culture and um when you say it only

existed on the internet you mean that uh you don't mean that it didn't exist in in real life or maybe you do mean it doesn't like or you just just meant we were only aware of it because on the internet. I mean, I don't think that like non-binary to me is kind of like. It's neither here nor there. Yeah, I don't, I'm not really convinced that this is like a real thing. Like it has no defined meaning. Like, what do you mean you're non-binary? And it's just like, I don't feel like a man or a woman.

I'm like, I don't know, but you could just be a gay guy you could be like i don't know there's to me like you know if you're if you say like i'm trans and you it's like okay you used to be a man and now you're like living as a woman like at least that definitionally kind of makes sense non-binary it's just kind of like i don't even know what that means because you meet non-binary people who to me just look like regular women usually or like gay guys yeah um and i'm a gay guy so i can say that but to me um so like that's an example of like something that reached a sort of like cultural geek and then people are like what what's going on a A lot of the weird rhetoric around race, this sort of Robin DiAngelo,

you can't even really be friends with a blank person because you should just feel guilty about all the time. If you're a white guy, you can't really talk about anything without declaring your privilege. All of these sort of weird things that used to be part of internet subcultures, really, like on Twitter and Tumblr became mainstream now and there was a backlash to that which i think culminated in trump's re-election now the same thing is happening on the right where where the right is getting, they have a sort of like a newfound cultural ascendancy.

They've completely taken over Twitter, which're all on Twitter all the time. The intelligentsia. The intelligentsia. And so that is how the ideas got sort of introduced to the masses on the left. I think that's going to the same thing is going to happen on the right. And like, it's concerning because every time you log on, like, just what I don't know if you've you've been on and maybe you've peaked your algorithm and like you don't actually see any of this stuff. I don't know how you don't. I see it constantly. I don't follow any of these people. But it's, you know, crazy anti-miscegenation means like people don't want interracial marriage anymore.

Hold up, hold up, hold up. I have never seen an anti... I see it all the time. Anti-miscegenation? What kind of evil stuff are you guys into that your algorithm is feeding you anti-miscegenation? Because I took on Dave Smith. That's number one. But so did you. What does he have to do with anti-miscegenation. Because I took on Dave Smith. That's number one. So did you.

What does he have to do with anti-miscegenation? Because some of the people that follow him and some of the people... Just for prayer's sake, it means that white people and black people shouldn't get married. I'm quiet right now, but don't poke the beat. Or even mate, probably.

Well, because, Noam, you know that a lot of people that came at you, came at you from called you anti-Semitic stuff. So you know that when you take on Dave Smith, you know that a lot of people that came at you came at you from called you anti-Semitic stuff. So you know that when you take on Dave Smith, you're going to get some of that. But anti-miscegenation, it seems like a non-sequitur to all. Well, those are the same people because they blame Jews for promoting miscegenation. There's all kinds of memes saying, you know, that the Jews are responsible for. Well, some people go as far as to say the Jews are responsible for bringing slaves to the United States.

Okay, but there is something, it would be interesting to reverse engineer it, there is something different in my algorithm and you guys, because I have never seen an anti-miscegenation, anyway, it doesn't matter. I was teasing about accusing people. Probably because I also at times respond to these people, and so maybe that's the thing. I'm dumb enough to try to argue with this. I mean, is it possible that your porn category is creating a pixel on your internet? I don't use Twitter for porn, although one could.

I suppose there is porn on Twitter, but that's really not the main place to go for that. I don't think. I mean, I think the point is that these accounts are not small. I guess you could miss them if your algorithm just goes really far in the opposite direction.

But they have millions of followers. I'm afraid to look at it. How do you not get Jake Shields shit popping up on your feed? I see Jake Shields from time to time, but not anti-miscegenation. But with Jake Shields comes, among other

things, anti-miscegenation. With him, it's Holocaust denial all day long. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, but as he was saying, the Jewish stuff gets wrapped up in that because they're like, oh, the Jews want the Gentiles to dilute the white race or whatever.

But they promote race mixing for other people but not for themselves which i'm like i don't know i feel like every other jewish guy i know is like married to an asian chick so i don't know we don't even consider them but no one went the other way and married a puerto rican chick yeah that's miscegenation yeah um but anyway i mean it's you get a lot of like the anti-jewish stuff you get like homophobia and this is like one of the ones where I feel like it's gotten kind of more

mainstream where you don't have accounts that maybe wouldn't tweet like Nazi stuff but they will treat crazy stuff about gay people specifically gay men there's this whole moral panic right now I don't I don't have any of you seen this but there's this whole moral panic right now i don't i don't have any of these saying this but there's this whole moral panic right now about uh it's basically a conspiracy theory that says that

gay guys are doing surrogacy um to like buy male children to then sexually abuse and like sam altman there's like a tweet i had like i don't know like a hundred thousand like likes or something like millions of impressions which is like uh accusing sam altman uh the head of open ai just had a baby via surrogate with his husband and um it was a boy and they were accusing him of basically what i just said like having a child via surrogate so he can abuse it later on in life. Like it's this crazy thing that like all of a sudden everybody believes that I had never heard like a year ago. Um, I had heard people criticize surrogacy and like, I think some of those criticisms are like somewhat valid, but it was never, um, this. And I, and I think it's partly

because like, we can't just go after surrogacy it's like okay well we're going specifically after gay guys because none of them are going after Elon for having you know whatever like 12 kids half of them via surrogate so it's just stuff like that you have

all these crazy things being developed and then I think like it's going to reach like a cultural maximum and then once it does like people are going to start to get freaked out in the way that they they were before like when you start talking about things like no fault divorce or like earnestly overturning gay marriage or even like some like quasi-racial stuff stuff about jews whatever i think like it's it's going to to freak people out and when you have people like politicians people who work in um in not just the trump administration but like in sort of like

the right-wing intelligentsia just like enmeshed in this stuff all day it's really easy like i know that like some of the stuff is going to rub off on them because i saw it rub off on people on the left and i was on the left i was um like a big bernie sanders supporter and i like you know i grew up in a working class so i was like and i mean when i was like volunteering for the burning campaign i was making like 14 bucks an hour like i didn't have any money um and i like didn't i i had like health insurance but it was like such a like it was so burdensome like it was like i i almost wish i didn't have it because it was so expensive i just couldn't go without it with a brutal deductible right right yeah and and it was um just have this like constant anxiety like when you're living on the edge like that and so i was really supportive of like bernie

and and his movement and i was like finally like there's like a political project that could actually materially improve my life in some way and i just saw it like completely overtaken especially in like the 20 when he ran again in 2020 by people who were like oh he can't go on joe rogan because uh this is aoc so that's like oh bernie shouldn't go on joe rogan because joe rogan said that trans women shouldn't play women's sports. And I'm like, I don't think they should either. And also like, you know, if you want to appeal to working class people, like most working class people are not, they're not,

I don't think super right-wing or racist or anything like they're not, you know, NYU gender studies graduates. Like they don't like, they don't even think about this stuff really. And it was just like a complete distraction. And then there were other things with like, they, you know, people kind of forced Bernie to reverse his position on immigration, which, you know.

And tariffs. Bernie was all about tariffs. And tariffs. Yeah. Yeah. They were like pushing him into abandoning all of these positions that he had held for decades um because he had this sort of like class first position which is that you know all supply and demand if you increase the labor supply for blue collar workers which is what massive illegal migration does it's going to drive wages down

like this is basic economics and so no it's not i mean just to be fair it's um it's it's it's a contested in one ass from from one point of view is basic economics but then there's from another point of view um when you bring in these talented and energetic people, there are responsible economists who say, actually, no, it's win-win. I'm agnostic on the reality of it. I think it probably depends very much on the subset of people you look at and maybe even the geographical location but uh i i don't i i am not convinced that wages are depressed necessarily by a certain number of immigrants coming in at some at some amount i mean i suppose it's probably inevitable at certain jobs i don't know i don't know yeah i mean there's like studies showing that illegal migration specifically um in really high numbers suppresses the wages of non-college educated voters, especially like black. I mean, you can imagine a scenario where there's such a shortage, the wages go very high up and then businesses actually can't survive because there's not enough workers, right?

So then, I mean, yeah. There's also the argument that a lot of these immigrants start businesses, you know, a lot of these stores and these bodegas and these, you know, types of operations. I mean, you know, I don't really mean to disagree with you. Like, right

after COVID, when it was a huge labor shortage, yeah, wages were going up. Like, so there's not like people definitely offer more money when they can't find workers. So, you know, but I don't know that it's, I think it's, I think it's quite complex. That's all I think. But go ahead. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that like, there's this like big argument that, you know, there's just certain jobs that americans won't do and what you find like for example if you take uh slaughterhouses this is one of the jobs that

supposedly americans won't do and so they recruit all these people many of them illegal immigrants from places like mexico and central america and they come here and every couple of years all these big you know slaughterhouses will have some sort of immigration raid and they'll come in and you know half of the the staff will be deported and the first thing they do is they raise wages and then they meet the like they are able to hire people you just have to pay them more right but and but then you have to raise your prices sure but i mean i don't think like like i don't think i think it's worth paying like an extra 50 cents or whatever for check-in if it means that like people actually are able to find meaningful work in their own country you I think there are some things more important than low consumer prices.

Yeah. In that particular example, if it's 50 cents per, I mean, I don't even know. I could see that. There's other jobs like childcare child care where um you know at some price of child care you can't many people hiring child care in order so they can go to work you know so the differential becomes not worth working or you really can't you just can't do it i you know like i said it's complex every industry every geographical location has its own reality. Kind of beside the point. Yeah, not the point. The point was just, you know, I supported Bernie Sanders.

I thought I have, I'm in sort of like a quandary where I don't really affiliate with either party or really the right or the left at this point. Because, you know, I would be considered to the right on things you know, things like immigration or on trade. Miscegenation. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I'm socially liberal to an extent, you know, and I support, you know, big government for lack of a better word. You know, I think we should have universal health care like through a medicare for all program ideally um you know i support you know raising taxes to fund things like social security and all that i support like big government-led infrastructure projects so like i'm not you know i i probably might if i

had been born in like 1950 or something i I just would have been like a New Deal Democrat. But like that doesn't really exist anymore. Right. Except for like Bernie Sanders, kind of. Point is, I was warning all these people that like your cultural politics on the left. Your cultural politics are going to alienate working class people. And I know this because unlike most of the people who were on the left at the time, like in the Bernie Sanders left, like I actually grew up working class. I actually grew up around these people. I know who they are. I know that like Bernie Sanders is like the only

Democrat I've ever heard my mom say anything nice about, you know. And it's not because of his position on trans issues. It's because he's like talking about the actual like lived realities of like working class people and offering solutions. Even if like they don't agree with like every single one of them. It's like, oh, he actually does. You actually get the impression as a working class person that he actually does care about you, which is something that people have not felt in a very long time.

And I was like, if you need to focus on that, all this other stuff, you know how Bernie feels about it. It's not that Bernie was anti-Kranz or anti-gay or anything. He's culturally left--wing more left-wing than I am probably and like has been since the 90s but for some reason they wanted this to be the focus of the campaign and like I think it's because you get when you end up in a bubble and that's what old quarter was it was a bubble because they banned all the right-wing people um you end up with people pushing an increasingly extreme party line trying to root out

you know dissent within the ranks and that produces a political ideology that is unpalpable because you're not talking to normal people you're not talking to anybody that disagrees with you um and i think that the right on twitter is like in a similar situation now because so many people have just you know if i mean i think about getting off of it sometimes because it's just gotten into like a weird cesspool and like, it's just all this like slop and like, it's gotten really bad. So, so I think that the right is in danger of basically making the same mistakes as the left. Like that's the whole thing. So a lot of this of of course, is, I mean, anti-miscegenation notwithstanding, a huge amount of this stuff is absolutely insane anti-Semitic stuff that we're seeing going around Twitter now. Stuff, I have to admit, I wouldn't have thought it was possible. I mean, millions and millions and millions of,

I mean, I don't know how to judge the ratio of impressions to people who actually are reading something, but there is some ratio. Let's say it's even a third. It's probably higher than that. Let's say it's a third. It's still millions of people reading this stuff, right? And the most crazy anti-Semitic ideas, all that echo in like age-old tropes of Jewish control,

Jewish manipulation of the world into war. I mean, you name it. Candace Owens is, you know, the Jews are, Israel was created as a pedophile haven and Theodor Herzl wasn't even Jewish and the Jews killed JFK. Although I think maybe today we finally learned that the Jews are too clever to leave fingerprints on that one. And what are the, I mean, there's just so many of them, right? And then you have what's particularly disturbing to me, if anybody's probably sick of hearing me say this, but but that it's not you can't really decide who's crazy and who's not anymore because uh you know if the toe of the if the if the nose of the

camel is kind of like joe rogan who's kind of you know acceptable in the tent you know but if you start going back where he goes you know he's attached to this one that one or that one that one and the asshole is you know j Jake Shields and Dan Bilzerian. And you can't have you can't have the head without the ass like like they're all attached to each other. They won't say anything bad about each other. And then I will say, because I've been agitating, you know, I don't see many of the important voices, many of them Jewish, not all of them Jewish, who would be screaming bloody murder about this stuff if it was coming from the Joy Reid show. If it was coming from the left, this would be not even worth discussing.

They'd be salivating and pouncing all over it. They find themselves in a dilemma, you know, about how to handle this stuff when it's coming from the podcasts that also help Trump get elected and stuff like that. And I'm very disappointed in what's going on. I mean, I think that there needs to be a full-on civil war on the, I don't know if I want to call it the right, but on the people who hate the left. That group of people who have kind of

mobilized against the left and found themselves holding their nose and either voting for Trump or kind of like kind of happy that he won because of the stake through the heart of the left, that group of people that needs a label, they cannot live together in peace. They should not be living together in peace because you cannot tolerate this kind of anti-Semitic, conspiratorial nonsense within your ranks.

You just can't. No serious intellectual school should be able to tolerate this. And obviously they are tolerating it in some way. Do you agree with my spiel just now? Yeah, no, I being like you're an anti-semite you're crazy blah blah blah for just you know people who were on the left who were criticizing israel some of whom were like jewish and like it's like i don't know i think just let the record just hold up just i'm sorry i'm telling you but just let the record show i'm not really talking about israel here

although israel certainly is an issue. Obviously, anti-Semites are attracted to anti-Israel, but I'm really not talking about the people who are criticizing Israel or anti-Israel. I'm talking about the people who are saying much more deeply serious things about the Jews. They're not objecting to israeli policy i'm talking about people who are saying that the the jews like like you know uh was on uh tucker that the jews installed winston churchill to be prime minister to pursue jewish interests and push the world into war right this is this is hamas the hamas charter says the same thing by the way go ahead right yeah no like i think what the point i was trying to make is i think like in the left like in in america there's kind of like left-wing anti-semitism or right-wing anti-semitism and like i think the left-wing version which is more just kind of is more like focused on israel i think

some people like just don't like jews and like show that sometimes um but that's gonna i feel like that's gotten a disproportionate amount of attention when like the most like blatant fucked up stuff i've ever seen about those about jewish people are from people who are like on the very far right who also like they don't like black people they don't like gay people they don't like you know like they don't like anybody and like it's a lot of these people don't have any problems with gay people but go ahead go ahead yeah uh maybe maybe so i don't know but um some of them do some of them are very you know libertarian quote unquote some of them are more religious but is can i ask is this monster that you qualify is being created on Twitter,

is it an anti-Semitic monster, a racist monster, a homophobic monster, all three in equal measure? Which is the dominant thread, the dominant? I actually, like, refer to it in the piece as, like, a Frankenstein's kind of monster. It's just this like conglomeration of like all these like different off putting things. So it's like you have like the racism, you have the asymetism, you have really retrograde views on like women, you have some like extreme religious stuff that's not like you know not just like we should have a nationwide abortion ban but they also think that but also like birth control should be banned which like you know like i grew up protestant a baptist like that's not even a thing like you're allowed to use birth control you know um you have really extreme

religious stuff you have anti-ism, racism, homophobia. It's like all these like different things taking on this really weird form. A lot of stuff about women, like just like demeaning to women. The sort of Andrew Tate thing where it's like, you know, it's this weird building where you have like conservative catholics who want to ban the pill in league with like andrew tate who's like this was like i don't even what is that what is this ideology like islamo decadence or something like that who is this i mean i know i know andrew tate is but i've never heard him what is he what does he stand for what why is he famous so he was a mma fighter he was the only big brother of uk um and he was uh well he runs like a sex cam business in romania and he kind of rose to

a sex what sex cam like he had like all of these girls who were like basically enslaved to working for him. And he does this like whole spiel about how he gets the girls to fall in love with him. And then he like kind of like controls them. And how do we know they're enslaved? Well, I mean, well, that's the allegation from the Romanian government. I see. But he's also been like, he's been accused of rape by like a lot of different women.

There's like lawsuits going out. There's like a video, supposed, claimed alleged video. I don't know what I need to say of him like beating a woman. He like bragged about

punching a woman at a face at a bar in a video one time. Like he's just, he's not a good guy. You know? You mean like Kamala Harris's ex, I mean,

what was Kamala Harris's husband's name? I quickly forgot. Yeah, I know, right? What was his name? Not Doug. It was Doug. Doug Emhoff. Yeah, Doug Emhoff was accused of punching his girlfriend in the face, spun her around. But go ahead.

Sorry. No, this guy, I mean, I don't, I'm not familiar so much with the story, but this guy's like, like at like a Weinstein level, like there are so many allegations against him. And you just watch him talk. I mean, he says horrific things about Jews, about women, about. I saw his brother talking to Candace Owens about Stalin and Lenin being Jews, but I haven't seen... Lenin was a quarter Jewish, I believe.

No, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure. I'll look that up. Go ahead, finish your thought, River. But yeah, so you have this weird movement where you have Andrew Tate and conservative catholics

you know on the same team and so it's like well what are they going to find in common because like now these people are like in a group together and like the things that they're going to find in common are like he said there's a hating jews chat gpt says there's no historical evidence that vladimir lenin was one quarter jewish natterman that's what it says it's somehow i knew that you were the go ahead go ahead sorry so they're gonna like come together on like you know varying but different like retrograde views on women they're gonna come together on anti-semitism they're gonna come together on like you know homophobia things like that and like it's gonna

like i don't know like it's just like it's all of these things like accumulate right it's like there's you can't say it what an exact point then it says it might be true sorry it didn't there is something i don't want to go ahead i'm reading it sorry sorry go ahead are we talking about lenin being yeah but we're getting i hate i don't want to you know i don't want to purvey a disinformation or misinformation so i want i like to get it right so go ahead yeah well i mean you can go to red square and we can do like a little 23 and maybe we can swab his mouth oh we should we should yeah um no but, you know, you really can't say when like wokeness, you know, freaked out the public, you just know that it happened. Like it was this growing sort of building thing where like, it's just one weird thing on top of another weird thing on top of another weird thing that that builds and builds over time, where all this and then at a certain point, people just say like, yeah, I'm not on board for this. And then they freak out and there's a backlash.

And then they swing in the opposite direction. It's this oscillating sort of thing that happens. Go ahead. No, I think what you said before really resonates that like they took these issues that in and of themselves are important like that people should have like safe bathrooms to use or you know whatever and they made those like these huge issues that you did it too well i still agree i mean i do think that everybody should have the bathroom that is safe for them to use. But I can also recognize for the vast majority of Americans, this is not like the main thing that they care about in their lives. I think the pushback wouldn't have been so, so forceful, right? I mean, the concept of first, the concept of first world problems

really doesn't get enough attention. Like really at some point, the things that we turn into our major issues, they really do. You really can't infer from them a certain level of prosperity in general because, you know, during the Depression, there's just no way an issue like that could rise to the top. People have too many more important things to worry about. You know, it's a problem of psychology to lose perspective, but in many ways, we have trouble keeping perspective on just how wonderful life is in America for huge numbers of people, you know, which is not to say that people are not struggling. Like, don't get me wrong, but there's no way, especially in a party like the Democratic Party, that they could spend all their time focusing on these, you know. When, like, people can't. Boutique issues. If the groundswell was, no, we need better wages. We need this.

We need that. We need health insurance, right? Like, we can't afford, afford like cancer medication for our children. Like those things are really important to all people. The problem is that all those things, which are all real, they now all seem to be reduced to a small enough percentage of the population that they don't rise to become, you know, kitchen table issues anymore. There's not a critical mass of people anymore who are suffering these problems, which then

we are responsible to be more attuned to these things because as their numbers diminish, we still need to look out for people who are suffering, you know, but somehow things in America are quite good. River, I guess you say, do you predict, so I guess you said you predict a backlash, but another possible result would be that these ideas filter into the mainstream. And I guess the third possibility is they remain on Twitter, which as you just said at the beginning of the podcast most americans aren't on and there it stays so so i don't think it ever stays on twitter nothing's ever stayed on twitter because all of the people who create culture are on there and so that's how it becomes part of mainstream culture and that's when you have a backlash like there

wasn't a backlash into against the massive like cultural backlash against some more radical trans stuff like trans kids until it reached like a cultural mass where all of a sudden it was like no like we're gonna put it like a trans child on tv we're gonna do like all this we're gonna do all that and like then all of a sudden people were like this is weird i don't like this and then like that's how it happens it's like it has to actually reach, in my opinion, like the cultural culture is like cyclical. And like, there's these massive oscillations that happen over time and they have to reach like a critical mass.

And then once they do people in like inner mainstream culture, that's when people start to be sort of weirded out and then sort of like start oscillating back the other way. But the difference is, the difference is I don't see filmmakers making movies that reflect these crazy conspiracy theories, racist ideology, et cetera. Or maybe they, I mean... Well, there was this

conspiracy theory that Snow White wasn't actually white. Have you seen this movie? She Jewish? No, there's a new Snow White movie. Let me just say. What's that? She's like Colombian, I think? I don't know. She's Latina. Yeah, she's Latina. Now listen, just for the record, I couldn't care less.

Like, it's such a- Isn't Snow White a cartoon? I don't understand. There's a new live action movie, and the Snow White, I saw ads for it in the airport, the lead actress is clearly not white. So what? Who cares? Well, of course, so what?

Who cares? Well, of course, so what? Who cares? Except that the name of the character is Snow White as if she's nicknamed that because she's so white that it's just trolling in a way. I don't care because it's

who cares? If the movie's good, the movie's good. But there's something. It's like when they wanted to make James Bond black. It's like, okay, I don't really care, but? If the movie's good, the movie's good. But there's something, it's like when they wanted to make James Bond black. It's like, okay, I don't really care, but James Bond is a particular character with a particular demographic profile and Snow White is named. Maybe I haven't read the fairy tale lately.

Maybe there's some other reason that maybe her last name was White. I just think it's funny. Maybe they should be calling her- Well, Steve White, the comedian, is black. Yes, a lot of black people name was White. I just think it's funny. Maybe they should be calling her. Well, Steve White, the comedian, is black. Yes, a lot of black people are named White. But anyway, so I was, but getting back to that point, there was a backlash against wokeism.

It's like I used to think they should remake Pinocchio, and Pinocchio should say, I want to be a real girl. Like just to troll everybody. Like Pinocchio presents as a male puppet, but actually he wants to be a real girl because he's trans. I dare you to complain about that, Perrielle.

Why can't Pinocchio be trans? Why can't Snow White be Hispanic? I just like the idea that Snow White's name might be so white instead of Snow White. It's just silly. It's like Snow blanca or whatever no like there was a there was a backlash of that like the daily wire tried to make i don't know if they're still making it i don't know what the status is on that but they were

like we're good after it was announced that rachel zegler was going to be in this movie and that they weren't going to do the seven dwarves they were going to do like seven i mean it was like a woke movie they were going to do like seven magical creatures i don't know they casted these people they all look like crackheads it's it's really weird you just have to look it up but the daily wire was like we're going to do an unwoke version we're going to produce an entire feature-length film which is like a different non-work for woke version of the new live action snow white movie from disney that hasn't even come out yet like that that's the level of like reaction and counter reaction that we're living in now and that's why i'm saying like there's going to be like a backlash because there's a backlash to

everything like it's this thing that like keeps going back and forth and back and forth for there to be a backlash the the the the monster that you talk about has to find its way into mainstream culture. All right, wait, stop the presses. I did a deep search, deep research on ChatGPT. Lenin's maternal grandfather was Alexander Dmitrievich Blank. That means his father was named Dmitry. A physician in the Russian Empire.

Blank was born with the Jewish surname Srul Mosiovich. Blank. In the early 1800s, in his youth, he converted from Judaism to Russian Orthodox faith around 1820. Adopted the name blah, blah, blah. He did this to access educational and career opportunities. And Lenin was raised as a Christian 100 Christian but yeah technically uh if you if you believe in the blood uh Lennon has one quarter Jewish blood Dan is correct you are correct thank you thank you yeah there you go

um the way that it so the thing is is like i think people have like a really old idea of like what mainstream culture is so like joe rogan is mainstream culture right and he like just had a guy he just had two guys on in the past like two weeks who have said the the guy who was talking to tucker who was talking about winston churchill uh being you know the actual villain. Like Daryl Cooper. Daryl Cooper, yeah. He was on Tucker. Tucker also had a guy on who is like, promoted the idea that

Israel did 9-11. It's like the whole dancing Israelis thing. Who said that? Ian Carroll, was that? Ian Carroll, yeah. He didn't say that on the Rogan show, did he? That he's, I don't think he said

that on the Rogan show. I think he alluded to something about Israel in 9-11, but like it's like other videos he's like specifically talked about with the Dane Singers originally. He said definitely that Jeffrey Epstein was a Israeli honeypot operation that controls world leaders. Right. Yeah. And like Theo Von, he had like you know candace owens on it was like two weeks ago i mean like and these guys have bigger audiences

than the average cnn broadcaster the average like network tv show or you know whatever so like this is mainstream culture and this is how like it entered you know the sort of like crazy far right stuff there's mainstream culture and I'm saying like Rogan's a Nazi I don't think that but no I don't think nobody thinks Rogan is a Nazi

I mean I know people who know him I don't know him and I would you know I'm sure he's not a Nazi or any I mean that's an extreme or that he's some kind of seething anti-Semite. I think that Rogan believes these conspiracies. I mean, that's the Occam's razor explanation of what he's doing is that he is open to many conspiratorial ideas. I believe he, I hope I'm not getting this wrong, is that he is open to many conspiratorial ideas.

I believe he, I hope I'm not getting this wrong, but I believe at one time he was even open to the idea that we hadn't landed on the moon. Mel Gibson was on saying that they found a cure for cancer, but they're keeping it under wraps. And he seemed to not, he didn't push back on it. He seemed to sort of agree with that. Yeah, he's extremely open-minded. So, and he curates his show obviously and and he uh you know he believes that some of

these theories are true but you know that's not okay with me because you know when you're when you are um putting your stamp of kind of approval on historically very, very dangerous ideas and the people who you are presenting and creating obviously big followings for them, even if they limit their presentation on your show to the narrow confines of kind of a more innocuous or more believable. I mean, I know, I'm sure it's not true, but that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad plant. Well, like, even if that is somehow considered to be, you know, more believable as conspiracies go,

you've created a fan base for these people. And then they get to present these much more dangerous ideas to their fan base. And, I mean, it's very, very dangerous. It just is. It's filtering down to my kids. They're aware of it. But by predicting a backlash, that's sort of relatively good news.

You're saying that most of America rejects this kind of stuff and is not going to be uh persuaded by it are you talking to me yeah i'm sorry yeah but um yeah no i think i think there will like i don't know when exactly will happen i think it'll probably be a gradual thing but i think it's just there's going to be a point where it's not just like one thing that it's like oh it's like yeah that weird guy on rogan whatever like people can like you know i don't think that's enough to bother people i think it's when it's one thing on top of another thing on top of another thing and then it becomes associated

like pretty directly with the republican party that's when you have like a real political problem um in the way that like all the woke stuff became associated with the democrats even though joe biden like was never you know he wasn't like aoc right you know he's like a moderate that just became so associated with the democrats that it took them down i think that's going to happen for the republicans because and probably more quickly because i mean all the stuff that's happening on um twitter elon owns the site and he's like one of the most powerful people in the government now and it's not as if he's like ignoring all this stuff he um cited in the article he react he like fire emoji quote tweeted um something calling tom hanks a pedophile like

that's like a crazy thing to say right um and that was like the day before i wrote my article i was like i wasn't even looking for stuff it just popped up on my timeline um he also you know they a wall street journal um reporter found that one of the doge employees had tweeted you know normalize asian hate or sorry indian hate had um said that like you couldn't pay me to marry outside my race said like i was racist before it was cool like all of this like you know racist stuff and um and they rehired him and

J.D. Vance went on TV and like was like scolding the journalist for you know reporting they were like you're trying to ruin a young man's life I'm like he's a government employee like I don't know like if you were working for the government you if you're old enough to work for the government and like make decisions that affect millions of people like you're old enough to be named in a wall street journal article of course i mean

and he can certainly explain himself and maybe you know he can explain himself and we say okay he was a kid but you know like but yeah of course if you're representing the the people um you shouldn't be associated with stuff like that. I was racist before. It goes without saying. People have lost their minds. Can we, do you want to talk? Yeah, and I think people sort of lose touch

of all these Republican politicians and like the Republican, the influencers and stuff, even the ones that aren't like, and maybe would never be like super far right like you know tweeting about you know scientists occupied government at 3 a.m the ones that would never be that type of thing like you grow you you like build up a tolerance to that sort of thing where it doesn't really bother you anymore and so then you become like you know yeah i'm two degrees removed from some somebody who

says like this crazy stuff and like i don't even really think about it i mean you know k i'm two degrees removed from some somebody who says like this crazy stuff and like i don't even really think about it i mean you know kash patel uh the director of the fbi now in between like his last job and like what he was doing now he was going on like straight up q and on like real actual like q and on podcast and being like you know i think q had some good points i'm like what areon podcast and being like, you know, I think Q had some good points. I'm like, what are you talking about? Why are you even like talking about this shit?

So I said, we had to wrap it up. But there's part of me that says, well, good, because if these people are also associated with enough like prima facie nutty ideas, it does dilute the effect that maybe some of the ideas that I'm more concerned about will have. Did you want to discuss? I'm kind of happy that Tucker Carlson talks about aliens and being mauled by demons, because then at least when he says that the Jews did this,

the Jews did that, a certain number of people will say, you know, I'm not really going to take it. You want to talk about Rogan, who recently sort of alluded to or didn't allude to it. He said that, well, if China can be Chinese, then why can't Poland be white? And Elon on on Twitter said that that was a good question. I don't know if you want to dive into that. I want to talk about two things, but I got to go. First of all, I want to say about that. I don't know if Rogan spoke carefully there.

If by that he meant that China wants to be Chinese and Poland wants to be Polish, I get that. I don't think, and Jews want to be Jewish. Like, I think this is not hateful for people to love their own the culture that's imprinted upon them

through childhood. I think this is a part of being human and it's almost ridiculous to pretend that that's hateful. If he meant white, then that's more problematic. But I don't know that Poland wants to be white.

I don't even know. So I, you know, I don't know. Like the French want to be French. I mean, yeah, people want to be, culture is real. Like, you know, like anyway. um of course the subtext also is that the polls are looking out upon europe and in a very practical way which i think deserves even more respect is like this is not working out for italy France and Germany and Sweden. Like, what do we need these problems for?

What country would make the decision and say, yes, let's go in that direction and bring a lot of migrants from all over the world? Look how famously it works out because the ugly little secret is that the people you're bringing in don't want to be Polish either. That's really the problem. And that's that now America has been, was for forever. The one exception to that were the people we brought in deeply did want to become American. And although there were bumps along the way, that did work. It did work that people, Italians and Jews and Irish or whatever it is, who were fighting each other overseas, although they had certain resentments when they got here, they did somehow form. There was a melting pot and they formed a nationality in common. And that's real. I've been worried about whether or not that is still happening with modern immigration based on things we hear said and American flags being burned.

And even today I heard some woman at Yale or something, I'm going to work to defeat America. It's like, this is very disturbing. I don't know if it's fair to amplify these anecdotal stories into a trend. I've spoken to my own employees a lot about this the answers were not comforting actually in terms of how they feel about america but no one said like death to america i mean that's that's number one number two is i just want to say one more thing before we go river i'll tell you this dave smith we had a whole fight with dave smith and he really fucking was mean to my friend Dan. And it's been bothering me now for days.

And I feel like Dan should not have taken this lying down. You need to stand up for this because, you know, the fact is, Dan, if you were to wear a wire or if you were to send somebody out wearing a wire to speak to our peers, the comedian world, and ask them, what do you think about Natterman as a comedian? What do you think about Dave Smith as a comedian? I think you would be very happy with yourself in terms of what your peers would say about you behind your back. They'd say, Natterin's crazy. He's on the spectrum. But you got to give it to him. He's fucking funny. He's a great joke writer. Not one person would say anything negative about your comedy. Not one.

I just can't. I can't imagine it. I mean, I've spoken to people a million times about comedians in general. You are one of the most respected comic minds there is working in our industry. Yes, you may not be a household name. What can I tell you? But Dave created a tremendous glass house for himself on the issue that he chose to try to humiliate you on. And I think you should take a fucking sledgehammer and smash that glass to pieces. Well, it sounds like you're doing it for me.

Well, I just want to say, because it really bothered me. It really bothered me. You know, you made a comment about him personally, but it was a personal comment based on the issue, which was him personally. It was, why is Dave Smith criticizing other people? And Dan said, well, I think maybe he's, you know, audience capture, which is not, you know, the most horrible thing that anybody's ever said to each other.

It's not like, it's not, you didn't humiliate him. You didn't try to bully him. quote tweets, this ugly stuff about you being a failure or whatever it is, to activate a cadre of bullies, fucking bullies, just to pile on, you know, and just stomp their heel all over you like you had it coming to you or something like that. This is this, you know, above the fray guy. What kind of fucking shit was that? And the assumption is, well, I mean, Dave would never do something like that if he were not, you know, just like by acclamation, one of the best comedians in the country.

Well, like I said, I think you did, you you know you defended me far better than I could it really bothers me well thank you thank you for your vigorous defense all right we're going to wrap it up River you're coming to New York at some point right I am yeah we're here in Greenwich Village the heart of gay America so I'm sure you'll find yourself

down here at some point and we'd love to no offense I don't know what you can say anymore the heart of gay America. So I'm sure you'll, you'll find yourself down here at some point. And, uh, we'd love to, no offense. I don't know. I don't know what you can say anymore. No, no, we,

we actually, we met one night. Oh, we met it. Yeah. You do look familiar. The, the party,

um, that we had at, uh, the cellar and I was outside and I was, uh, smoking a cigarette. I gave a cigarette to Susie and you were like scolding her for smoking. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm anti-smoking and anti-ing her for smoking. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm anti-smoking and anti-miscegenation. All right. Um, uh,

very nice to see you again. I'm, I have like face blindness sometimes, but I look as I think I know this guy. Um, all right. So when you get back to New York, let's,

uh, let's meet up, um, and, uh, keep fighting the good fight. Uh, thank you very much.

River. I wish I had, I wish I had a name like yours, River Page. It's such a fucking great name. All right. Take it easy. Bye. All right.

Thanks, man. Bye. And podcast at comedyseller.com. Bye.