The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3605 - Republican's Losing the Shut Down & Fearing No Kings w/ Heather 'Digby' Parton, Film Guy Matthew

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

It's Casual Friday at the Majority Report On today's show: On Wednesday night Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders held a townhall in Washington DC hosted by Kaitlin Collins on CNN. At the townhall Sanders and AOC used the opportunity to call out Russ Vought and the Trump administration's attack on "democrat programs". AOC and Sander's both highlight the differences between them and Trump is that they will fight for all Americans, not just the ones that voted for their party. Columnist at salon.com, proprietor of the Hullabaloo blog and Majority Report favorite, Heather 'Digby' Parton joins the show to wrap up the week's news. Filmmaker and friend of the show, Matthew Film Guy joins the program for a catch up. Sign up for Matthew's online film appreciation class In the Fun Half: We take an in-depth look at the NYC Mayoral Debates. ICE continues to wage violence on American citizens, this time ramming a truck in the middle of street only to release the man with no charges. All that and more The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors:   SUNSET LAKE:  Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use coupon code “Left Is Best” (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt’s show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon’s show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.co    

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. We are every day is casual Friday. That means Monday is casual Monday. Tuesday, casual Tuesday. Wednesday, casual hump day. Thursday, casual thurs. That's what we call it. And Friday, casual Shabbat.

The majority report with Sam Cesar's. It is Friday. October 17th, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA.

On the program today, Heather Parton, Calmness at Salon.com, you may know her as Digby, publisher of the UberBlog, hullabaloo at Digby's blog.com. Also on the program today, Matthew Film Guy, filmmaker, film guy. Also on the program today, the head of the U.S. Military Southern Command steps down and wake of the multiple killing of Caribbean boaters and revelations of a CIA coup planning in Venezuela. Also on the program today, day 17 of the shutdown, Democrats stay united as Republicans begin to fear a health insurance tsunami.

John Bolton surrenders to authorities as Trump again gets his wet. one of his bet noirs charged. Trump to hold a Putin meeting in Budapest as Zelensky seeks more weapons. Hackers docks hundreds of DHS, ICE, FBI, and DOJ officials looking for their supposed Mexican cartel reward. Domani Topps, New York City mayoral debate as Curtis Sliwa undress. This is Andrew Cuomo. No Kings.org.

That's not a good image, Sam. No kings.org protests around the country on tomorrow, as Republicans fear they'll be filled with millions and millions of Hamas. New report, ICE has detained or arrested more than 170 U.S. citizens, including 20 children, Two of whom have cancer. Republican congressman says he was deliberately fooled into hanging a swastika-laden U.S. flag picture in his office. More investigation to follow.

Another one who's just a kid, all right? A youthful Republican congressman. All this and more on today's majority report. welcome ladies and gentlemen it is casual friday casual friday uh thanks so much for joining us uh at the end of the week uh obviously a lot of stuff to get through i would say that every day um because it's it's true uh we're getting a lot of like uh curtis leewa comments he was fun in that debate he is a like so representative of a new york republican that you can't even hate on it like what he's he's such a long shot that he's not open to corruptibility really or like actually

within any of the republican apparatus so he can just act like i don't know every guy from statin island and that's his whole energy i i think he's also really just interesting in beating Cuomo. I think that's what he really wants to do. Everybody hates Cuomo, and that was obvious last night. Zoran continues to be very smart and basically didn't even go after Sliwa, which he shouldn't. And it caused this like towards the end, basically, this team up thing between the two of them, which was glorious to watch. It was also interesting, too. I mean, we'll play some clips later in the fun half, but Slewa in the middle. Really, I think, change the dynamic between you can really get the sense that Cuomo was planning one of those

things where he walks over to Mamdani or something like that blocks his show yeah looks like a tough guy but he really looked weak and we'll get to it but he made some comments like it's not getting enough attention where he said the Zoran was not an observant Muslim or like wasn't the right kind of Muslim, can there, like, can people who are like, it's really just Zionists, can Zionists stop telling Jews and Muslims who what kind of Jew and Muslim they are? Like, leave it alone. You're not, not your, not your, not something you need to be concerned about. Well, I, if I remember correctly, though, isn't Cuomo a Muslim and a Jew and a Catholic and a black and a woman and a gay.

I seem to remember that, but... He's all things. He's God. He's all things to everybody. In the meantime, let's look back. This happened two nights ago. There was a CNN town hall with Bernie Sanders and AOC hosted by Caitlin Collins. I mean, you got to wonder,

The Democratic establishment seems so angry with the idea of progressives in their ranks. They are fielding a – they're fielding a 78-year-old candidate who will be 79 years old on the day that she is sworn in in Maine, despite the fact that Graham Platner has – as she enters the race, is still outpolling her directly and in terms of Collins, you got to wonder why there's no sort of like Democratic establishment figures who are out there making this case about the government shutdown. We are on day 17.

And here is Bernie Sanders and AOC. Let's start with the first one. the idea of Russ Vote, who if you listen to this program for any amount in the run-up, particularly to the inauguration, you heard a lot about Russ Vote and Project 2025's plans. Listen to this clip.

Crisis that they've created. Okay, so you think Republicans will come to the table sooner rather than later. The White House has not indicated as much, and today the budget director, Russ Vote, said that north of 10,000 federal workers could be laid off during this government shutdown. Does that make Democrats rethink their strategy at all? I don't think so.

I think that what Russ Vote just announced today in the laying off the federal workers, we learned today, a judge has put a temporary restraining order because it is likely illegal what he and the Trump administration is doing. The problem is that this administration, the Trump administration, folks like Russ Vote, they think that destroying our health care, making sure that housing is too expensive to live in, that jacking up the costs of our groceries, they think all of this is about hurting Democrats. What they are doing is hurting Americans, and they are hurting this country. And if Mike Johnson wants to say that this shutdown is going to last a long time,

it is because he is choosing to punish the American people. and we cannot stand for it and we cannot allow it. And we also cannot enable it by acquiescing and enabling the behavior of bullies. So it ends today. If I could just add to something, Alexandria. Go ahead, Senator. This is the cynicism of the Speaker of the House.

Where are your Republican colleagues tonight? The back here in Washington, negotiating? That's an excellent question, Bernie. Right now, House Democrats are in Washington, D.C. Senate Democrats are in Washington, D.C. Even Senate Republicans, I believe, are still in Washington, D.C. The only people who are not in Washington, D.C., are the over 200 elected Republicans in the House of Representatives. Because Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, refuses to call the House in session.

Yeah, that's a great point, bringing that up. All Democrats should be screaming about that. And also anybody who's interested in the idea of getting these Epstein files released. I mean, this is a two for Mike Johnson, and he is terrified, and we'll talk more about this with Digby. She's written a piece on this. But he's terrified, I think, of the government shutdown ending because then he loses his excuse for having dismissed all of Congress so that he can pretend like you can't swear in Gravalha, the new, I mean, the elected congressperson from New Mexico, Arizona, sorry.

But she also, the attorney general in Arizona is threatening to sue the government because on the basis of fair representation, because right now her constituents have no representation and that is unconstitutional. And by the way, they'll use this example of Nancy Pelosi not seating somebody during the COVID era. These were COVID era restrictions that caused that delay. It's not what they're actively doing here, which is to keep the Epstein cover up going. And just a reminder, the reason why this protects the Epstein files is that a couple of Republicans and all the Democrats are willing to sign a what is known. is a discharge petition, which can force a bill to the floor without the approval of the Speaker of the House.

So that's what's going on there. Here is a second clip from that AOC Bernie Sanders Town Hall talking about what's going to happen with the ACA in just a really, uh... matter of of weeks at this point in terms of like massive increases in health insurance that's going to bleed through the entire system i mean everybody's going to see we're used to health insurance uh... rising in cost each year but uh... the rate in which it rises is going to go back up here is uh... part two uh... on the issue of health care a lot of the clinics and hospitals that are

negatively affected the most under the one big beautiful bill are located in rural, mostly Republican areas. A lot of the increases in Affordable Care Act premiums that Democrats are fighting to prevent are concentrated in more rural Republican areas. If the Republicans are so insistent on sticking it to their own voters on this issue, why don't the Democrats just let them?

I think Alexander touched on this before. And that is, we are, you know, one of the things, and this really annoys me about Trump, he's dividing this country. Why would I not? You know, when we hit the road, we were in Idaho, right? It's the most conservative state in America, I think. We had many thousands of people coming out.

We are Americans. What, you think I would feel okay if somebody in a Republican state died because they couldn't get health care? I would hope not. I hope nobody feels that way. And I think it also speaks to a big difference between someone like Trump

and someone like me. or someone like Bernie, which is that Trump believes that if you don't vote for him, he doesn't have to be your leader, that if you didn't vote for him, that you don't deserve good things to happen to you. I don't care if someone voted for me or not. I don't care if someone is a Republican or an independent or a Democrat. I don't care if someone likes me or not. That will never change the fact that I'm going to fight for them to have health care. I want MAGA to have health care. I want this is just such an improvement on messaging in the past. And frankly, a lot of liberals after Trump got elected said things like, well, maybe

they just have to feel the pain. And this is a big problem with the constituency that the party has developed really since 2016. We've talked about it ad nauseum. Chuck Schumer saying that for every suburban Republican we pick up a next or rural voter we lose, we'll pick up a suburban Republican. They have tried to cultivate a base of professional class, upper middle class, upper class liberals that are largely insulated from the effects of these kinds of things. And it's created this disconnect where there are regular folks who feel like the Democrats aren't fighting for them. And they've also sideline voices like Bernie Sanders and AOC. And you hear Graham Platner embracing this as well, where this is what can transcend the

darkness of fascism, which is the principle of neighborliness and of standing up for your fellow American. And that was amazing. Yeah, it's well said. I'd be curious. I mean, I wish there was a way to sort of get like a focus group. and get a sense of how people are reacting to this. But this is, you know, this is what the progressive wing of the party has to do.

It has to both assume a leadership role in the context of the party and also simultaneously expand the base of the party and show an opening. And in many respects, you know, that's what a Mamdani win will do, just purely on a, narrative basis. That's what a platinum win in Maine will do. It will create space and oxygen

essentially for both for progressives and for sort of like, you know, moderates and even conservatives will have to tact left in some way because they will see that's where the energy and the party is. And the fight

is and the winning is, right? Like we've talked about this too. The winning is as important as anything, because the myth that like the moderate centrist is going to be the defeating the Republican, that had been

internalized by the Democratic base for 30, 40 years, and unwinding that is a longer process than it should have been. But I feel like we're finally here now. And that's why Zoron's victory is more than just New York City,

commie blue area, whatever. It was the first moment where you see that this politics actually expands the base, it's a winning message, and it's something that creates a snowball effect where people want to be on the winning team. There is like a, the, the democratic propaganda about Bernie made it so, like, people were like, oh, I don't want to get my hopes up because he could never win. Well, now maybe these people can win, and that gets people energized. And to your point.

And you have the record of losing from the folks who have been in charge. Right. Well, I mean, that's that, yeah. I mean, to that specifically, in Maine, I think it's been four candidates in a row, five. I'm thinking that have been hand-picked by the Democratic Senate campaign committee. And they all have lost despite, like, having a tremendous amount of resources. And so that's what makes that main race so important as well. But we'll see.

We should really try and have Platner on again. In a minute, we're going to be taking a break and talking to Heather Digby Parton about the news of the week. First, a word from one of my favorite sponsors. That is, of course, sunsetlake sabade.com. Use the code left is best. You'll get 20% off. 20% off white, you say. Sam? Well, you'll get 20% off of tinctures, tinctures that help you sleep, tinctures that help you relax, tinctures that help your pet relax.

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Just a reminder, the a.m.quicky, amquicky.com. You get three days of emails in your inbox at 9am with the biggest stories of the day from a decidedly lefty-ish of center perspective. It's sort of a corrective for those other news emails that you might get. And for a couple of bucks, you can also get it five days a week, amquicky.com. Check it out. You will not be disappointed. Very quick five-minute read, but all the information you need for the day.

And why not join our Discord at Majority Discord.com. We got well over 15,000 now, I think, in that Discord. It's massive. And a great place to get resources. As this No Kings is happening, great place to find people who might be going to one in your neighborhood. But we'll talk more about No Kings with Digby. Quick break. We'll be right back with Heather Part.

Thank you. I don't know. I like, are you ready for some creepy. I like it, yeah. I always remember this in the, uh, that's come from that time. Thanks me back. Yes, to a more, a much more innocent time. Heather Parton, Digby, always a pleasure.

We're back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, and back with us, Heather Parton, the proprietor of Hullabaloo, and, of course, the columnist at salon.com. Heather, there's like probably like 12 things that we could talk about on any given Friday. over the course of the past, I don't know, certainly 15 years on this show and the 20 years we've been talking about, any number one of, any one of these would have been a full discussion. But that's the nature of the Trump administration 2.0.

The assaults on our government, our laws, like I'm just thinking, like, as we went over stuff at the break, we didn't even mention like, oh, we're probable. planning an invasion of Venezuela and we're just unilaterally

blowing up boats in the Caribbean of what appears to be at least by reports from the you know Venezuela and other places

just you know for the most part fishermen we really don't know but let's let's start with the government shutdown this is I have to say that in terms of like the messaging

and in terms of Democrats maintaining some cohesion and unity and also getting out the message, you know, we just played a clip of AOC and Bernie from their town hall Wednesday night. And there was an opportunity to talk about how Russ vote is illegally firing all of, you know, the 10,000,

the latest tranche of, employees, which of course has been going on for eight months, but hasn't gotten the sort of like the urgent coverage that it deserves. And now we're seeing that. What's your sense of how this is going? Well, I think, I mean, I just wrote a piece about this. I think so far the polls have been showing that people are blaming the Republicans at least slightly more than the Democrats. And that's logical. They're in charge of everything. the, you know, the Democrats of ciphers, you know, up until now. So you can understand why people, even, even, you know, Republicans would say that.

So, you know, I think that it's, you know, amazing but wonderful that the Democrats have decided that they needed to actually take a stand on something and that they are pulling together and that they're doing that and that they're messaging pretty effectively, I think. You know, when they, we heard that they had chosen this health care, you know, framework for their, you know, the ACA subsidies and the Medicaid, for their, you know, for their reasoning, for their rationale for shutting it, for refusing to vote for the continuing resolution, I was a little skeptical because I thought, you know, it just didn't seem big enough. It seems too ordinary. It seems like something that happened, you know, this could have been 10 years ago talking. And it was in 2013. We had a shutdown over the affordable care. Act. And it was, it lasted 17 days. I mean, this, you know, it seemed like, you know, a little groundhog day to me. But I'm realizing as I'm watching this go on, that it's actually have, there's a different resonance now. And it has to do with what you said, Sam, about the fact that these layoffs, which we've never seen anything like this before in a, in a shutdown, the idea

of we're just going to, you know, fire everybody. We're not going to, and Trump even out there saying, it's going to be all Republican programs. We're going to get rid of them permanently and stuff like that. That, you know, no one ever said that before. But it's more than that. I think one of the reasons why the healthcare thing, aside from the grim reality of these subsidies going up and people starting to get notices that are going to say, you know, these gargantuan price hikes that they're going to get on the ACA subsidies, and the notion that there's been more press, I think, than we realize in the local level about the effect of the Medicaid cuts on rural hospitals and things like that. That word has been kind of seeping out ever since the big bill was passed. So I think that that's all to the good, but I think there's something bigger than that. I think a lot of this is just the dysfunction, shouldn't even say, call it dysfunction, because it's really not the chaos of the Trump administration so far is starting to make its way into the public consciousness. People who aren't paying a lot of attention, people who are just, they're going, wait a minute,

what the hell is going on here? And I think that some of that, in terms of health care, has to do with what I'm calling the RFK effect. What he's doing, I mean, this is no longer just about health insurance. It's no longer about your bills. You know, you like your kitchen table issues. There's a kitchen table issue out there, you know, called cancer research, pediatric, you know, cancer research. Things like Donald Trump going out in front of the standing behind the podium and screaming, don't take Tylenol. Like, you know, what the hell is he talking about?

This weird stuff like what they did yesterday with Dr. Oz and Trump out there saying, have more babies, you know, and I think this stuff is starting to sort of look like. It's not just about health insurance. It's about the whole health care system. And that makes people very, very nervous because as much as people hated the American health care system in terms of lack of access, they're really going to hate it when they find out that it's really a terrible, terrible system because we no longer have the best and the brightest doing research, the universities. They're all there's, you know, research centers are being shut down.

So I think it's a subtext, this chaos, the fact that they're tearing down the whole health care system, the fact that you have this Russ vote thing. I know that everybody's, you know, the press is being terrible about explaining the Russ vote gambit, I think, because we knew, we talked about it, all of us talked about it, before the election, that Project 2025, what it was. And this was the main thrust of it, was the, you know, what Steve Bannon used to call the dismantling of the administrative state, right? This was what he said, and this is going back to 2016.

And Russ Vote wrote it all out on paper. We all read it. And it was in, you know, very accessible English. And any reporter could have read it too, which said that they were going to do exactly what they're doing. And they started off with Doge. Russ Votes carried it on. All of this idea that somehow this has something to do with the shutdown is nonsense.

Russ votes been doing it. He's going to continue doing it. And right now they just think they're being cute and they're blaming the Democrats for the shutdown and it's their fault that people are being fired. But I don't think people are buying it. I wrote a thing, it hasn't published yet for Salon, where in the AP Nork poll, the AP story about their poll, they quoted a woman, Trump voter, big Trump supporter. said, well, you know, they're all the blame and blah, blah, blah. She says, but, you know, I expect the Republicans to do this. I mean, Donald Trump, he's the strong leader,

and we depend on him to go down there to the Congress and tell them exactly what he wants and make them do it. Well, that's interesting to me, though, Heather, because I'm trying to pull it up, but it's from a few weeks ago. Here it is, actually. There was a poll from UGov that showed that only 22% of Republicans are buying the party's argument on why they're they're shutting down the government. And the prompt was to expand Medicaid benefits to immigrants who are, sorry, why the Democrats

are, to expand Medicaid benefits to immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. And only 22% of Republicans agreed that that was their goal. Like, in the voting base. Didn't worse, did it? Right. No, and they've stopped using that. I mean, I don't see as much, and partly, I would imagine, is also because of the sort of flood of images of ice going after and report out today, 170 U.S. citizens have been arrested by ice. That's just what they could find because nobody's keeping data on this.

That was just what ProPublica found in public, you know, publications and what happened. Right. But that just means, right, like, the voter that you're talking about sees Trump as the fixer of even the own Republican Party. This is the thing we've been saying for years on this show. And Sam's really been on this about the separating of Trump from the Republican brand. Yes. The Trump voter thinks, like, he's going to get Republicans in line from cutting your health care. That's insane. And so the, but the ACA thing is, is fascinating because, like, I wish they're. we're pushing for more, but why I think it's creating the, like, the tension you're describing is because House Republicans are panicked. Yeah, they are. They're all up in 2026.

And if at the start of the year, these ACA tax credits expire, that's 4 to 5 million people who could lose coverage, let alone when we're looking at the increase in premiums that would go, like, crazy. So they time those Medicaid cuts after the midterms. this is the pressure point, and it seems like at the very least Schumer and Jeffries understand that. They do seem to understand it, which, you know, it's surprising. I mean, I, well, you know, look, what happened last spring, and we were all, you know, our hair was on fire over what they did by, you know, not doing this the first time they had the chance. The logic was, and I think it has worked out, although I doubt that it was planned this way.

What happened in the interim, of course, was, you know, all the Doge stuff, really people understood the Elon Musk weirdness that happened in the first months. But it was also the passage of the one big, beautiful bill. And I think that that really kind of focused the Democrats. But the big thing that focused the Democrats was Russ vote doing the pocket rescission and just saying, I don't care what you guys appropriate. You go ahead. You do you. But I'm going to do me. And what I'm going to do is rescind whatever I feel like. I'm going to reappropriate money in any way I want. And when he did that, he showed the Democrats. And this argument, I'm seeing it in the media. And I think it may be starting to, you know, maybe, I don't know, I have no proof of this, but it may be starting to penetrate what this really means. We can't make a deal with these people because they don't honor agreements. They don't even honor. laws that we pass and that Donald Trump signs. They won't even. So how do we make a deal here?

How do what's the point of any of this if they won't do it? So they're standing there and going, no. Ross Vote is out there saying, I'm going to cut whatever I want. What are you going to do about it? And they're kind of going, well, then we're stuck. Because unless you rain this guy in, we're going to have a problem. And, you know, they have, they have not been able to score. this circle, it seems to me,

fully. I mean, I think we're headed in that direction you're talking about, but there seems to me to be such an opportunity to say, you know, Russ vote says he wants to traumatize federal workers.

And when he traumatizes federal workers, he's traumatizing the people they serve, and that is the American public. That, in me, seems like a very easy connection to make. And then, what you're also doing in that is you're able to tie it into, you know, never mind the cuts they want to do on the ACA, there aren't going to be people to work on health care. They're going to, they're

traumatizing Medicare officials. They're traumatizing social security officials. Like, you can go forward with this, and particularly at a time where they're putting AI versions of Chuck Schumer saying stuff that he had not said, maybe it was written in an article, you know, I don't think so. I think they made that. Well, either way, it doesn't matter. Like, they don't seem to understand that the rules are off there. And it is not a big leap to say that Russ Vote wants to traumatize everybody working in the federal government. I mean, he's literally said that.

It's on film. They've got footage of him saying. And it's so, there's such an opportunity to roll this into any pain that people are feeling from. the government shut down and roll it into a situation because look, in the event that we have elections in 2026 and that they're representative of how people vote, and by that I mean, you know, redistricting, et cetera, et cetera, and in the event that we have a 2028 election, and in the event that Democrats take some power over some part of government, they're going to have to the the work done here this is not going to be this is not you know Biden coming in uh during

covid and passing one bill the the amount of work that's going to need to be done it you know our government is in rubbles and in tatters and you need to now start to build a narrative that government is important in people's lives and you have a perfect example right now of of a Republican Party that wants to assault government and thereby assault the American public. They're doing it. They're immigrate. We just had the Fed chair.

I don't know, two days ago, on top of like the Fed chair was out there saying that the immigration policies are hurting the economy. Goldman Sachs is saying, you know, that the immigration policies are taxing, Americans an extra 88%. And incidentally, that tax money is being sent

$40 billion is essentially being sent to Argentina. I mean, there just seems to be a lot of material to work with. And I look and I just like, why is AOC and Bernie Sanders the only people who seem to be

able to like seeking a national platform to make this argument? I mean, I guess Hakeem, Jeffrey, has said that he would debate Mike Johnson, but frankly, I, you know, despite the fact that

the facts, I'll be a little bit nervous about that. Yeah. Although I give, I give Jeffrey's credit this morning, he came out against, you know, talking about Carolyn Levitt's crazy commentary yesterday. And he said, she's out of her mind. There's something wrong with her. I mean, he really

used some very direct language to describe her. And I thought, But isn't it, yeah, like, but isn't it like four months too late? I mean, it just feels like he's reacting to the pressure. Yeah. They leaked, just to put that, Chiosay, who is like a New York, I forget, is he in the city assemblymen or not an assemblyman? He works in the city, city councilman.

Either way, he's floating a primary challenge against Jeffreys. And they put out a poll about how he, he's 50 points behind already. But the point is, like, why are they already polling internally for Hakeem Jeffries? Against a council member. Against a council member, yeah. So, sorry, Heather. No, that's a good question.

I hadn't heard that. But, yeah, it shows that there's something going on. Let's play this clip of Caroline Levin because I'm curious as to what your feelings are as to why they are so, like, what is it, what's their angle on the no-kings thing? thing you know like george bush famously when we had millions of people in the street in the run up to the iraq war he said you know i'm not going to decide on a um on uh some type of uh what do you call it like uh focus group testing on whether i should go to war or not i mean of course the other way to say that is like well we live in a democratic country and um you know if the

people aren't uh interested in you know you avenging your father's honor maybe we might we should do this. But they seem to be very, very worried about this no-kings rally, or they think they can make something of it. Here's Caroline Levitt, White House Press Secretary, yesterday on Fox News. Proved that the Democrat Party's main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals. That is who the Democrat Party is catering to, not the Trump administration, and not the White House and not the Republican Party who is standing up for law-abiding Americans not just across the country but around the world

and that proved that the Democrats Okay, first off, they're standing up for Americans all around the world the expat constituency or she just like, you know, she's just like in overdrive. Maybe she wants to open borders. They have been spending a lot of times saying that it's all going to be Hamas, people are showing up at the No Kings.

And Chippa Hamas and terrorists. What is your sense of their angle with this? Well, it's clearly a talking point. We know that much because every single reader has come out and used this kind of incendiary language. So, I mean, it's, you know, first of all, let me just, the rank hypocrisy, and I know that hypocrisy no longer applies, shamelessness is their superpower, et cetera, et cetera, But the idea that after what they did after the Charlie Kirk murder, going out and, you know, ordering their, you know, foot soldiers to docks and, you know, track down and inform on anybody who said something sideways about Charlie Kirk and get them fired and do all that because, and then with their big sanctimonious, you know, payons to civility and how we have to stop the terrible language, the fact that the whole leadership of the Republican Party is out. they're calling Democrats, not the politicians, the actual people, you know, the protesters,

the voters, people like us, we're all Hamas now. We're all terrorists. We're all Antifa. That's basically what they're saying. It's, I mean, the overwhelming, you know, hypocrisy of that is beyond, especially after the, you know, just don't call them deplorables. That's the only thing you, the word you can't use. But in any case, why are they doing it? I think there's possibly two reasons. The first is I think that they may be trying to intimidate people into not coming out by saying, you know, making it into this big thing. The second is, you know, I don't know what there might, there might be some plans. I mean, I know that Greg Abbott said today that he's sending in the National Guard to Austin for the, for the, no king's protest.

I got to say. Am I being paranoid? No, I got to say, and we were talking about this before the show. The likelihood, I mean, look, we know, we know they have that we have seen in the past. We saw this even during BLM. You will get agitators, instigators, who will be in these crowds at times. I've seen images of like conservative influencers, you know, all dressed in black. like they're going to do you know like cat burglar's going out there to represent antifa you know soldiers or something the idea that there would either be a concerted effort to infiltrate these protests and create and make them violent or the idea that

there are conservative sort of self-appointed warriors who would go in there and attempt to make it violent, seems to me to be more than likely. They did it in Trump 1.0. Trevor Aronson had great reporting on FBI agents or undercover informants being sent into Black Lives Matter protests and trying to get them to incite violence. You think that with this FBI, Cash Patel, they're not trying that many, many times over. So if you're going to one of these protests, I just want everybody to be extremely careful. If anybody is trying to incite you to do anything violent or illegal, definitely don't. It could be a provocator.

And make sure also that you're videotaping what's going on there. You got your phone and whatnot. But I mean, our adopted catchphrase for the show, left is best, which was started as a joke. because in the wake of Trump's victory in 2016, some dude from Connecticut went to a school and vandalized the school and wrote all over it like, you know, anarchy and left his best. And, you know, the day that was done.

Like a yearbook thing. Yeah, we started laughing because that is not a, that is not. And Matt, I think you're, you know, looking it up, but we can pop that up there. And so this is a an impulse by these people, even if it's not the

FBI, there is an impulse amongst these people. Oh, think of the proud boys or the Boogaloo boys are these kind of pit folks, and they're still out there. In fact, they're re-invigorated. Here we go. Yeah, here it is. A grown man in Connecticut says he graffitied a playground to embarrass liberals.

Left is best was the slogan, which is a, of course, the credicur of all leftists around the world. It gets me going every time I hear it. He vandalized a free library. But this is the impulse that these people have. And, you know, I want to encourage people, go to these protests, they're going to be, they are, if they're anything like the last one, they're just going to be, you know, a very chill, uh, protest. A lot of people are going to get

out there. You're going to hear some speeches depending on, you know, where you go. Uh, somebody was asking, would you go to a, um, uh, protest at a capital versus a small town? And my answer is probably, I would probably go to where there's, you know, more likely going to be media. Obviously, if you can't drive, it's still good to go out to your local protest because you're going to build, you know, within that community of more people. But either way, you know, I think that I think they're nervous about this idea because, and in part too, because of there's a lot of authoritarian, uh, stuff that's going on and authoritarian uh regimes do not like there to be sort of like

the opportunity to protest them i mean we're watching right now they're they're they're installing at the irs the failed so-called whistleblower who had the uh hunter biden yeah go ahead tell us a little bit about that guy because they've been active in in in the They've been seen, they have no compunction in saying the IRS is going to go after Act Blue. It's going to go after all sorts of... In the municipal, the group that's, I mean, they're not sponsoring the No King. All they're doing is organizing online, the providing the mechanism for people to sign up for protests and to see where they are. That's really all it is.

And some messaging coming out every once in a while, I get some text. But it's not, that's all it is. Of course, you know, Trump says they're Antifa. This is the Antifa network that Stephen Miller is going after as indivisible, which you'll recall was put together after the women's march. And it was basically just an upstart grassroots organization that, you know, one of those that came up after when Trump was elected that was about to get out the vote. And it has it has grown into this organization, which organizes protests, around the country. I mean, it could not be more, you know, innocent. There's absolutely nothing about indivisible. It's mostly, and it was started, I think, by a bunch of suburban women,

if I'm not mistaken, that came out of the women's march. So this guy, Shabbly, it was an IRS employee who blew the whistle on Hunter Biden, and he was a big mega hero. They put him in, And shockingly, when Trump came in, they put him in as the IRS commissioner. And everybody went, holy, what? Are you kidding? And he only lasted three days. And I don't know that anybody has ever figured out exactly what happened there. But he's back.

And he's in the IRS again. And he is apparently going to be running this operation, which they say will include thousands of agents from the criminal investigation unit. But these are IRS agents who, you know, like carry weapons and stuff. I'm surprised they're not rousting, you know, immigrants in Chicago. Because they are literally out on the streets, you know, patrolling D.C. at different times or, you know, tearing mothers away from their kids. Exactly. They're going to have a full plate. Let's put it that way. And of course, and then you have Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, he's also saying crazy stuff.

I mean, right on those same talking points we were just talking about. He was going, he went on CNBC and I think it was some podcast, maybe it was the Charlie Kirk podcast, I think, that he went on and started talking about the Antifa and the, you know, the terrorists and how they're going to go after him like they went after Al Qaeda and they're going to use the IRS to do it. I mean, you know, so he's totally bought into this strategy, whatever it is. And, you know, I think, I think they're fairly serious about this. they talk, who are the things they name? It's what you said, Act Blue, George Soros, of course. I mean, the poor guy. He's 95 years old, but, you know, whatever.

You know, he's the leader of our resistance movement. Act Blue and Indivisible and, you know, some others. Well, here's the real kicker, and it just cracked me up. Apparently, the FBI went to Glenn Beck and asked him for advice on who they should go after. And I don't know. I don't know, Emma, I don't know if this goes back. before you were, you're paying, you know, close attention as it goes back maybe 20 years. But Glenn Beck, it wasn't even that long ago.

No, it was about 15. Yeah, maybe 15. You're on CNN, right? This is when he's CNN, or was it on Fox? I can't remember where he moved to Fox. And it was super popular. His show was like, it was the big one. I mean, it was like the Tucker Carlson of his day.

And he would do this thing where he had, he would do called the puppet masters. He had a blackboard. where he would write the name. Yep. Oh, I'm enough of a sicko to remember that, even as a 12-year-old or whatever. If I'm not mistaken, it involved, like, he thought, like, you know, in Rockefeller's Center, there was a mural that laid out all the plans. And back then, back then it wasn't, you know, Antifa, as he calls it, it was Saul Olensky.

And everybody was in a lynchiaite. Everybody was in a lynnciite. And that was, do we have this. video let's play this video um i know we have it it's very long but uh i think uh do you have the one with the puppets because he you know you called it the puppet masters and he would have these marionettes come flying down from the what do we got what's what number is it uh brian i didn't add it on there but we're pulling it up right now okay uh from the hollablu blog oh yes yes i guess i found it the other day john stewart did a

whole parody of this that was just hilarious. He did this whole Glenn Beck thing. So, I mean, it's nuts, right? I mean, it was crazy. Do you think the FBI actually showed up at his, at his, uh, yeah, actually I do. This is Cash Patel's FBI. Right. That's true. I think they probably did. We need to. Um, there's probably cash himself raced over on the private plane, you know. Oh, and that's right. Uh, I'm getting reminded that Glenn Beck was, was obsessed with the acorn. And for people who don't know, I mean, this is one of the sort of like forgotten failures of the Obama administration and of that era. You know, people talk about don't criticize Obama now, blah, blah, bah. There was a lot to criticize contemporaneously.

But in retrospect, too, the loss of democratic lawmakers on a state level was just massive. governorships state houses on and on it was a massacre it really was and there was a whole attitude of like every person for themselves and so when acorn which was a key organization that would organize low income people particularly through like tenant organizations and community organizations acorn was targeted by um uh what's his name o'keefe from Project Veritas, and they just folded the entire government. Wasn't that the thing where he dressed up like a pimp? I think that was, and I think it was Lila Rose, the anti-abortion, you know, activist.

She dressed up like the street prostitute. And they went into one local, like, I think, like health clinic. Yeah, some of New Orleans or someplace, yeah. And Acorn was grotesque. was completely decimated. The funding for these organizing groups was destroyed with the complicity of the Democratic Party. And it really fundamentally undermined. It was to get out the vote organization and fundamentally undermined the get out the vote process and getting people who are underrepresented.

actually get to the polls. Do we have that? Yep. We have that. Let's play some of this. Walk us through some of this, Heather. I want to show you just, I mean, this was just off the cuff, okay? This is how hard it really is. Okay. So let's just speculate here for a running. Let's call it a starting point for people at the FBI or Justice Department as they begin investigating leads. For far too long, the people potentially.

potentially supporting Antifa have remained in the shadows. That's what Trump is going to end. Is Antifa more than just a decentralized and leaderless organization? Well, I've split Antifa up into three different categories. Street groups and soldiers, that one, support groups and funding sources. But let me start right at the top with the street groups and soldiers. We should just say you can keep them up there. But we should say, you know, kudos to him for actually calling it Antifa.

as opposed to Antifa. That's how you know, he's done his research. He does his own research, yeah. He knows how the indigenous Antifa people pronounce it. It's anti-fascist. Maybe we should just get the Antifa Paulyp Bureau to change the name to anti-fascist. I like how to just pull it. Go ahead.

I'm sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. No, I have a very stupid remark, except to say, like, this whole aesthetic is like it looks like CSI, right, where they're about to say, you know, where, how they're going to go after the bad guys. And it feels like he's trying to evoke a police chief as some sort of authority figure for his very elderly audience. Exactly. And I didn't even know Glenn Beck was still around to tell you the truth. I mean, I, I mean, where's he been? He, I know he started his own, his own media company that kind of has, you know, has. you know, sunk into oblivion. It's the blaze. I don't, does anybody, you know, do anything with that? And the Antifa part, I think, is really interesting because it used to be that Antifa was

a bad, was a good thing, right? In fact, they used to, you know, they used to call the people who went over to Spain to fight in the revolution against Franco, they were sort of put down as kind of calmy, lefties, whatever, and they called them premature anti-fascist, which was, which suggested that being an anti-fascist, they just did it too early, but anti-fascism was a good thing, right? Because we beat the Nazis, et cetera, et cetera. Now suddenly, it's bad to be anti-fascist. Go figure. Interesting, don't you think? Considering who's in charge and who's saying that? I mean, you know, just don't call us fascists. Okay. Well, you sure ain't anti-fascist.

Because this is where the politicians, the media, and the think tanks say, you know, that's the investigation. You just can investigate these guys. Nothing else. Don't look here. But the groups are all over the news, going back to around 2016, groups like Rose City, Antifa, Portland, Elm Fork, John Brown Gun Club. What happened around 2016? Eugene Antifa, Oregon, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Anifah, Refuse Fascism, Jane's Revenge. Now, you've seen the carnage of these groups all over. It sounds like bands. We continue to see it every day in places like Chicago in Portland, but this is where we're supposed to stop looking.

I mean, they can't find anything because trail goes cold there. Antifa is decentralized theater. I see a cop. Well, if that is true, are these guys who don't work? A lot of them are on drugs, crazy. Are they self-funding? All of these? things? Because how do we get to the next category, which is

support groups? For instance, the National Lawyers Guild. This is the legal arm for Antifa. If you've been in a riot or seen anything on TV, you're watching on the side, there are people standing on the side and they're wearing the green hats. That's the National Lawyers Guild. They openly brag about how they provide. The best way to stay.

Come shadows. Sleeper's hell. I didn't plain sight what they're They're using the law. We wanted camo. They're making sure that people are following the law.

Good. Legal support to the street soldiers. Uh-huh. But there's no organization in that. No. Next we have Antifa International. This one's kind of hilarious because the people who describe Antifa is decentralized and literally.

You have an Antifa International. I mean, it's like BLM, Inc. From an Antifa fundraiser, and again, who do you write the check to? They're described as, quote, an international anti-fascist collective with years of experience managing the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund and other anti-fascist project. So you have no central control, no base of operations or anything else. but you have years of experiencing managing. Really? How about Antifa International?

Antifa International helped fundraise the legal defense fund for the militants that attack the ice facility in Texas. And while we're at it, take a look at Community Justice Exchange. Can you pause it for one second? Yeah, come on now. Like the, he is. Funding the legal defense, funding the legal defense is, very, very different than funding them to protest. Like, there are nonprofits.

There are things like pro bono work, although the Trump administration has waged war against that. Yeah, thank you for all that pro bono work for me. Like the ACLU, they sometimes defend people who have done hate speech or back in the day. They were protecting the free speech rights of people, even if it was stuff that I would think is racist or reprehensible. They defended Nazis.

They defended Nazis, and that is a very equivalent service to the one that he's describing. But apparently this is some international network. I mean, everyone who has looked at any footage of these protests knows that we actually should have people there monitoring the people cracking heads so that they can, so that people aren't just victimized by them willing to. I'm sorry. Did you say the ACLU? Yes. But you also notice that is the first and last letters in Antiphon. And then also, Look at that. Emma.

Interesting. Go ahead. Just go, keep going. Let's keep going. National Bail Fund Network. They were bailing people out during the summer of rage of George Floyd riots. They're probably worth looking into, specifically due to their major partner, which is, oh my gosh, the Tides Foundation, our old friends at the Tides Foundation.

Look, these connections, these organizations are legions. we are legion yeah that's probably what they say anyway get it christian remember as per all the politicians media experts no centralized organization okay but you have the support groups

that are supporting them with no organization and then you have this funding sources now this is interesting again who do you write to check to this is split between non-profits and foundations also crowdfunding sources Now, I already mentioned the Tides Foundation, one of the darkest of the dark left-wing radical money funnels on the planet.

You know, who knows all the trails that lead back to Tides. But just for starters, let's look at these. Tides Foundation funds an organization called Alliance for Global Justice. Money for them here. They refundal money to groups. This is just a big list of all the groups that Glenn Beck has been freaked out about for. Like the entire career. It is finally come together.

It's fine. They've finally been written on a blackboard next to the word antifa. And the FBI is listening at long miles. They are putting their faith in the man who did the work and did the research. He's one of those volunteer sheriffs. He's like those volunteers, you know. Like Herschel Walker or whatever. Yeah. And Dean Cain.

Whatever happened to him at ice. Is he still there? I think he was the guy who watched fall. Fall over. And his gun went flying on down the street. Yeah. Well, um... Yeah. So this is the state of where we are in the, in the Antifa, um, the Antifa investigation.

And they put this guy, Gary Shapley in the IRS, which I would say he's just, maybe, a step below Glenn Beck as far as credibility is concerned. That doesn't mean that they're not going to do something because they will. I mean, I don't think there's any doubt that they can, you know, they'll get rid of anybody who objects to breaking the law. And the law is very clear that they're not allowed to do any of this stuff in terms of investigating people just because of their, you know, whatever their political disposition is.

But they're going to do it anyway. And, you know, I think mostly it's a PR, thing. I think they're probably going to, you know, maybe they'll go after an indicter or audit some of the groups, but mostly it's just a matter of threatening people and threats and intimidation, which is what they're doing across the board. I mean, a lot of this stuff is just standard authoritarian playbook, you know, just get some examples out there, arrest James Comey, arrest Letitia James, you know, threaten people with IRS audits, you know, and a lot of that is Just that on this, at the same time, though, they actually have a police state in action in the Department of Homeland Security, which has been given a blank check, apparently, to do whatever they want.

And they are cracking heads. They are hurting and killing and shooting and killing people in the streets of America. That is happening. And so you put that combination together of all these threats of using the Department of Justice, the IRS, and then what's happening in the streets. And we are, we're there now. I mean, you know, yeah, that's, it's, it's FAA of Antifa. It's full Faw. We're full Fah now.

Heather Parton, always a pleasure. Well, this was fun. Yes. Good to laugh, right? Yeah, getting some Glenn Beck in there. It's been a while. So that was kind of fun. But as always, thank you so much.

Thanks. We will link to your salon.com columns. and, of course, Hullabaloo. Really appreciate your time today. And folks... See you all in the streets tomorrow. Exactly. We're all going.

All right. Take pictures. We're going to take a quick break. Yes, take pictures, folks. We're going to take quick break when we come back. The triumphant return of Matthew Film Guy. We'll be right back after this. Thank you.

You know, I'm going to be able to be. Matthew the film guy is choosing your streams Casabettys on Netflix and other such themes Maybe you'll watchmen and learn a few things Please recommend me a movie to stream Matthew Matthew Please recommend me a movie to stream

Matthew Matthew Matthew Film Guy! Film Guy! Yes, ladies and gentlemen. It has been way too long. Emma Viglin, Sam Cedar, on The Majority Report. And joining us is Matthew Film Guy.

Matthew, it's been a long time. Yeah. How long? Over here. No. No. No. Are you serious?

I think it was May of 2024 was my last appearance. You're kidding. Wow. Yeah, a lot of shit's gone down since then, so I can't stand, believe me. Well, I'm sorry. It didn't seem that long, to be honest with you, with all due respect. Time is a flat circle at this point. A lot of shit's happening.

Yes. What was it that the Sernovich said that got him kicked off of Info Wars? Like the... Time is delayed. Time is delayed. Yeah, time is definitely time to die. We are in the singularity now. Matthew Film Guy, what have you been up to over the past, over a year?

Well, geez, since the last time I saw you, I edited a feature film that's going to be making the festival rounds coming up soon called Act 1, directed by Sophia Ticall. Whoa, okay. Since then, honestly, I've just been reading a lot of scripts from my agents, and no projects have landed quite yet. But meanwhile, I've been doing my amazing online film appreciation class, which I don't know if you know, but your system is it fully online now? Yes, it's fully online. I guess it's been that way for the past five or six years. Yes, since the pandemic, we moved to fully online. And that's why I can offer it to every viewer that is listening to the sound of my voice.

You can go to the length that's hopefully in the description and join us. We're halfway through the, I guess it's the fall session right now, but you can jump on at any time. time we watch challenging movies we watch movies that require a little bit more concentration a little bit more effort and then we meet on tuesdays at noon and have an hour and a half to two hour discussion about the movies that i well that's why you're called a matthew film guy and not matthew movie guy even though the alliteration would have been better yeah i mean you you coined the term sam so i'll go with whatever you decided but you called me mat well that's why i coined it that way because you're a film guy.

That's right. Sinist guy would have gone too long. I was going to say we could have gone Matthew Sinist guy, but that would have been too, like, it just, I don't know how to spell it. I wouldn't. Yeah. Oh, Sinomathieu. That's maybe like my wrestling name or something.

Cinemathieu Addie. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, Matthew film guy, it works. It's what my letterbox is called. People can follow me on letterbox. and see all the various movies that I watch and give little caps.

And your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a lot of, like, um, uh, you know, boomers, right? I mean, I mean. Well, it started out as, uh, it started out as a, a, the greatest generation. I think it was. And extended education class. Yes, that was the original impulse. So there is a, a healthy, uh, proportion of them are of senior citizen age but they're all extremely nothing wrong with that

i mean yeah do we get a discount because i'm like i'm right on the edge of uh of getting a discount yeah you know what if you say that you're uh you you heard about it from the show you can get the member price oh okay uh yeah so all right tell us about this movie though before we go uh you know before you give us some ideas of what we should be watching at this time, tell us about the movie you edited. It's called Act 1. It's about a girl who joins an acting class. She's a high school girl.

It joins an acting class, and the woman that runs it is somewhat of like a Spengali, and she sort of is putting her at odds with her family. It's kind of an interesting sort of take on the sort of teen drama. It's very weird. It gets sort of esoteric and sort of darkly sexual, I want to say. She starts to sort of push her into these sexual realms.

So I don't want to give away too much about it, but it's definitely... Typical Hollywood degeneracy. Yeah, typical Hollywood digeneracy. I mean, no, it's definitely an independent film of the highest order, but yeah, yeah. That's exciting. Now, am I ruining Opsack by saying that you are, I think you're a constituent of Zoroamandis? Is that correct? Yeah, I am, actually.

Yeah, he is the assembly member. His office is right above my grocery store. So I walk by his office every other day when I go buy some more half and half for my coffee. And actually, there was a protest outside his office a couple months ago that was pretty exciting. It was a bunch of Sliwa supporters chanting, you're a communist and go back to the Middle East and all this crazy crap. And so I had to endure that for a second. there but yeah he is he's definitely my representative my assembly member um all right did you watch the uh the debate i mean how are you excited for mom dani or i'm totally excited for mom dany i'm voting

for him as many times as possible and i i you know i didn't watch it live but i watched a lot of the clips a lot of the repeats there's nothing he could say that would make me like him anymore and there's nothing uh that um quomo could say that can make me like him any less so i didn't necessarily need to watch it live. Well, you did miss them asking about if they've ever been to a cannabis dispensary. Yeah. I saw that. We have that and Zoran very sheepishly

admitted it, although I don't know why in 2025. This is some sort of issue. They were chanting go back to the Middle East. It's really annoying me that people, he's, he's from Uganda. Right. And his family is ethnically Indian. I know. It's like,

what the difference is driving me crazy they just what the racists genuinely want him to travel they just genuinely want him to travel and because after they said go back to the middle east they also said then also visit ontario it's nice to you realize how important haj is to your religion yeah i think that's what they had in mind the hodge make the hodge buddy um so matthew how have you been like what how is your state of my like do you uh yeah i'm losing it bro are you losing it yeah i'm losing it bro i mean listen i listen to the show practically every day so i'm well aware of the tic-tok of the destruction in this goddamn country i'm losing it bro exactly that is where i'm at i mean honestly i if it wasn't for my

ability to consume cinema i would be absolutely a wreck uh you know i i'm I'm clinging. I mean, this class, it gives me so much. Honestly, it's not just what I'm giving to the students, what they're giving back to me in terms of an analysis of the state of the emotional, the heart of humanity. You know, I always love quoting the famous quote from Ezra Pound. He said that literature, although I apply it to film, is news that stays news. And it just feels to me like if it wasn't for my ability to explore the deeper realms of human, human consciousness, I would absolutely be basically standing on a ledge, ready to jump. No matter how. Okay. Well, hang in there. But no matter how depressing, like, someone said this to me or maybe I saw it on Twitter, which is even more depressing.

But like the idea that even if life gets so bad, there's always a new movie to watch. That's like a good way to look at things. And honestly, for me, not even a new movie, but the whole history of the realm of cinema, which is at our fingertips now in this day and age. You know, you can look at my diary on Letterbox, and I'm watching things from all over the globe, all over the timeline, from silent movies of the teens,

to, you know, actually a great movie that we just watched in class two weeks ago, the latest movie by Mike Lee, which is called Hard Truths. It's just an amazing humanistic portrait of a woman going through anger issues that really, you know, it expands your ability to sympathize and to have a conscious connection to your fellow humans. And that's something that I think is missing from politics in general.

It's all about beating the other person and domination, even when you're a partisan for the left, you know, it has this kind of antagonistic tone to it, whereas film, the best films are empathy-creating machines, you know, putting you in simple. with your fellow humans, even the ones that are maybe prickly or sort of a dark or negative, you know, and that to me is, it's a lifesaver, believe me. That's what I felt when I watched the MI7, the final of the Mission Impossible series.

You know, I have yet to get to that. That is on my list. But yeah, listen, I consume the brainless Hollywood entertainment as well, you know, the Marvel movies and so on. So I have a spot in my heart for just disconnecting my conscious brain and enjoying that as well. So I can see you. I mean, okay. That sounded a little backhanded, but that's okay. You know, I have a 12-year-old. You know, as you know, I have, I have an inner 12-year-old, right, that I'm still in connection with. Matthew, what is, before you get to suggestions for us as to what we should be watching in this era, which is a pretty unique. era in terms of

I think American well it's somewhat unique in terms of American history I don't want to overstate it but in terms of the authoritarianism that is I guess it's really more

its victims are more widely distributed let's put it that way or potentially could be what what's the most recent new release that you have watched. Oh, my God. You know, I'm so, I get so turned off by trying to catch up on the newest movie.

So I don't know, the newest movie that I've seen. The Sting? No. A woman under the influence. Yeah, exactly. No, that is my favorite movie or one of my favorite movies. But no, that's 1974. So I've seen something newer than that.

Actually, it might be Mike Lee's Hard Truth, which just came out last year. That was a 2024 movie. So it could be actually that one, the one that I just mentioned. I think I also saw, I saw this comedy called Friendship. I don't know. I saw that. Yeah, that was pretty funny. That was pretty dark and twisted.

I like that one. I love that. Yeah. Paul Rudd, right? Who's that other dude? And Tim Robinson. You didn't see one battle after another. We got a IMs about it.

no i have not seen that yet i you know it's not the paul thomas anderson one yeah it's not a secret that i'm not the biggest paul thomas anderson fan i i sort of see him as a a film school fabulous guy playing with the genre more than making a sort of deep connection to the human condition but i didn't start kicking i just tapped my foot slightly yeah but i've heard i've heard how amazing and everything is did you see the new superman movie because emma thought that was great too. Yes, I didn't. I won't. I, by the time I'm done with this career, I don't think I'll like anything anymore. But I'm not, I'm not here to dump on anybody's taste, really. I'm here to support what I like and try to be a champion for something different, but I'm not,

but you haven't seen it, but you don't like it preemptively. No, no. I didn't say, okay. Honestly, the movie of his, yeah, Sam put those. words in my mouth. I saw that earlier. You and I share a similar, like, um, uh, skepticism of Paul Thomas Anderson along those lines. Now, I haven't seen nearly as many of his, you know, films like I think there was one or two in there. I remember liking punch drunk love, actually.

Yeah. Movies incredible. I love that movie. Boogie nights is incredible. There will be blood is like one of the best like movies about America, American capitalism ever made. But it was sort of, I don't know. None of these movies thrilled me, to be honest. They're impressive on a craft level. And as a technician, I think he's really remarkable and extremely slick.

And honestly, give him credit for being more intelligent than the latest Marvel movie and whatever. Like, thank God we have a guy like him making mainstream movies. So I appreciate him on that level. But honestly, Punch Drunk Love, I didn't. It was so, it seems so funny to me. Adam Sandler was actually pretty good in that. I think maybe that was what it was. I mean, I haven't seen it in probably 15 years.

It's amazing in that. When Adam Sandler wants to be dramatic, it's actually quite good, I would say. Matthew film guy is not having any of this. Honestly, the movie of Paul Thomas Anderson, if you want to talk about a movie of his that I love, was the master. That movie was legitimately weird and legitimately esoteric in a way that I don't think he's ever approached before. it certainly was thematically rich in a way that I you know it didn't make necessarily conceptual sense like a lot of his movies are sort of quoting other movies and sort of repackaging other cinematic touchstones but that one to me felt genuinely legitimately

authentic and sort of reaching for something personal from him that I hadn't seen before so that one I really loved okay phantom thread is very personal too in a way that I thought that was daring I don't know if you've seen that's my favorite I have that's one of my favorites You know, again, it was technically proficient, but I didn't really connect with it. I have to say. Matthew, so let's get to your picks. Before we do, before we do, Andor, have you watched Andor? Yes, I have watched Andor.

All right. What do you think? Awesome, right? I mean, super cool Star Wars story. I mean, I love the whole. Wait, why did you get to do it that way? Because it is a super cool Star Wars. It's part of the Star Wars franchise, but it really is, really is really.

It stands on its own. Yeah, no, and I appreciate the sort of... You don't need the Star Wars part of it at all, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, no, there's no force using, there's no lightsaber, so it sort of avoids all of that sort of side of the world. So, yeah, no, I didn't mean to denigrate it. It's just, that's, I'm telling you how I feel. Okay, all right, we'll say how you feel. I got thrown off when you said Star Wars.

Look, I appreciate it's sort of a fascist storytelling and the sort of, anti-fascist yeah anti-fascist yeah that you know showing how they lure everybody into the square and then they start shooting them not to be a dude what the heck hey if you haven't seen it by now i'm sorry but it's it's a great uh it's a great sort of metaphor for our current time so i give them credit for being able to produce such a thing at disney so that to me is a yeah i i think it's a good i like i you know me i like a sci-fi that it has like some type of interior stuff going on.

Yeah, like Battlestar Galactica. Like Battlestar Galactica. Thank you, Matthew. I appreciate you. I appreciate you remembering that. All right. So, Matthew, now for what everybody has been waiting for while we go on all of these detours

and distractions, what movie? I should tell people, you are one of the, like, one of the first guests on the show, probably. uh 15 or 16 years ago um and the idea was i i you know my kids were much younger at that time and i could never go out to see a movie uh it turns out i still don't go out to see movies but um but i could never go out and they had this new fangled thing uh called streaming

by netflix and so uh and then of course over the years you know we were able to see DVD and stuff like that. Do you still get like Criterion DVDs or no? Or do you like a, are you like a, all streaming? Okay, interesting. No Blu-ray disc? Occasionally, a filmmaker will have a Kickstarter that will help them fund an independent film

like Hal Harley just had an independent Kickstarter to fund his new film. So I bought that Blu-ray that way. So the rare occasion do I buy a Blu-Dick? Okay. And so you would give suggestions. What do you use? suggest that folks watch that is relevant in this era. Okay, now, I just spoke about how I'm watching all these films that uplift the human soul.

So I'm going to make a left turn here. Talk about a movie that is extremely dark and challenging to watch. It's a movie from 2012 called The Act of Killing. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's a documentary. I don't know if anyone here has seen it. But we watched it in class. it's streaming on Peacock

and I recommend you watch the full length version. There's a truncated version that they had to cut down for domestic audiences here in America but the full length version it's about two hours and 40 minutes but it's an absolute

mind fuck of a movie. It's basically following two of the murderers of the Indonesian communist purge of the early mid-19 60s in modern day times. And the filmmaker has sort of in a kind of Sasha Barron Cohen-esque way

tricked them into recreating the actual murders that they've committed. So they're staging them as these big cinematic tabloes. And they're making references to all these other movies like gangster movies and westerns. And it's this surrealistic sort of mix of celebrating. they go through town and they try to cast people to play the communists and they're all super scared because the current atmosphere, at least in 2012 in Indonesia, was such that anyone even associated with communism was absolutely feared for their lives.

And basically, I don't know if you know the story, but in Indonesia, in the 1960s, there was this huge mass murderers could be up to a million people were killed under the guise of fighting communism. And they use these gangster, basically. And the main character in this movie is this guy, Anwar Congo, and he's now this older grandpa kind of guy, and he's still venerated as this hero of this purge. And his sidekick is this guy, Herman Cato, who's a current gangster. And he's in this group called the Pancasila Youth, which is

basically a paramilitary group that was instrumental in carrying out these murders. And it's just a remarkable look into the psychology of this guy, because everywhere he goes, people are like, oh, you're this great hero, you did this stuff. And he's actually recreating these murders. And he slowly, very slowly starts to feel some remorse. And it's very twisted the way he starts to understand the violence that he enacted. And it just, I can't describe how surreal it is, because they put them into these tabloes where they're, like, dressed up like movie gangsters. The original name for these guys were the movie gangsters. They actually called them movie gangsters because they started out hanging out outside movie theaters

and selling bootleg tickets, scalping tickets, and they got hired to basically be these thugs, these, you know, sanctioned murderers. And he demonstrates how he chokes them. He said, I used to beat them in the head, but there was too much blood. Then I figured out, oh, I learned in the movies that I could choke them with a wire and he demonstrates it. It's absolutely horrific the way you're asked to sort of enter into the mind of this murderer. And it actually is a wide picture of the entire system because they go through all these other different officials. There's the governor of North Sumatra that they interview.

There's a newspaper publisher who was part of the sort of the killing pipeline. He would sort of rat on people and call them out. And people are giving these speeches about how we need gangsters. Gangsters are what keep this country free. And God hates communists. And one of the major scenes is they go on this talk show, because apparently word got out that they're remaking this movie, which is depicting the heroic acts of murder of all these communists. and they go on this talk show and the talk show host is going oh he made a good way of killing

communists he's he's such a hero and it's like it's so chilling to see the sort of end result and this is what i sort of relate to what we're going through now the end result of naked absolute authoritarian violence and the the sanctioning of violence similar to what we're seeing with ice but on a much more overt level of these paramilitary sanctioned gangsters just enacting the political will of the majority and just killing anyone who's even associated with being a communist or a trade unionist or a leftist of any kind. And it's absolutely still reverberating till today the effects of this extreme purge. And this documentary is just so, he gets such access to these people. And they're sort of proud of what they did. And they're

going around sort of being celebrated by the local populace some of them you can see are very afraid of these people but um there's all this sounds like a perfect movie for me to watch with my son yeah exactly definitely watch it with the family get a big bowl of popcorn pull up a blanket and cuddle up with this movie no there does there is going to be there is going that sounds that i remember hearing about that film and i wasn't it it was either in the conversation for oscar documentary or something like that like it was getting awards buzz at the time. And what it is when Sam and I went to that Zateo documentary like a year ago, right? It was obviously it was a short. I don't think it was a full length feature, but it's similar

territory of like Zateo interviewed a lot of basically Israeli soldiers about the crimes that they had committed. And like it just when you're describing this, of course, all I can think about is the genocide in Gaza too. And what future documentarians are going to have. endless footage to choose from to see people explain their crimes in chilling detail but the intimacy of what you're saying might be even harder to find as well where you see somebody eventually start to have a bit of remorse like that is probably that's cinematic in a way that we may not even have with this genocide i mean this is going back whatever 60 years so it's it's a sort of um there's and maybe enough time for this guy.

You know, at the end of the movie, this isn't necessarily spoiling anything, but at the end of the movie, he's watching footage, and the filmmaker films the guy watching footage that they shot of him in this movie set sort of world where they think they're making a movie. He tells him,

we're making a movie celebrating what you did, but obviously he's peeling the layers back on what he did. And he's watching the footage of it, and he says to his grandson, come here, watch Grandpa getting choked. Watch grandpa, watch. And the filmmaker's like, should he be watching that? He's like, yeah, it's fine.

And then that's when he starts to sort of choke up and sort of realize like, oh, now I understand what they went through. And the filmmaker says, well, you don't really understand what they went through because they were actually going to die. You know it's a movie. So it's such a twisted sort of extremely complicated foray into this man's psychology that I cannot recommend any more highly, but it definitely is a challenging watch.

It's not necessarily a relaxing watch. But it can, it's a, it's a warning for where we could be headed, actually. That's how I took it to. Matthew Film Guy, great recommendation. I'm going to put it on my list. I have 10, 12 years of lists of movies of yours that I got to catch up on. But I'm getting there. I'm getting close.

kids you know the kids going to age out of this era of action films all the time so by the time you get to this movie he should be old enough to appreciate it wonderful Matthew film guy always a pleasure

we got to do this again soon definitely Sam thank you guys great to talk to you great to talk to you all right folks we're going to take quick break head into the fun half it's a reminder it's your support that makes this show possible.

You can become a member at join the Majority Report.com. When you do, you not only get the free show, free of commercials, you also get the fun half. Don't forget, A.M. Quiki, our Discord, and justcoffee.coop,

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Madison, Wisconsin. Matt, Left Reckoning. Yeah, Left Reckoning. At patreon.com, so's Left Reckoning. If you sign up, you can hear the Sunday show this weekend where we're going to get into Graham Platoners, Reddit posts, and why it looks like desperation for Janet Mills, who is going to lose that prime.

It's early to be that desperate, but she's getting there quick. She doesn't have much time. Pull the lever. So patreon.com says left reckoning for our patrons. That should be her angle. I will act with urgency. because I don't have a lot of time left. Although the filibuster stays.

Yeah, for some reason. The Reddit post, I'm sorry, but just want to say, like, they are dumping that way too early. Did I say this earlier? It's been a lot. No, that was before the show. Okay, okay. Yeah, like, they are freaked out

if this is the APO research that they're already putting out there. Okay, see you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now, and I don't think it's going to be the same it looks like in six months from now, and I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to

look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for, hold on for a second. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. Fun pack. Matt. Drew. Fun. What is up, everyone. Fun. No, Miqui. You did it. Fun rap.

Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Fun rap. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false.

No, I'm sorry. Women's... Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this? Seven and eight? Yes.

Hi, is it me? Is this me? Yes? Is it me? Is it me? It is you. Is it's me? I think it is you.

Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to go like. Libertarians. They're so stupid, though.

cents says of course. Gobbled e-cook. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge met. I'm positively clivering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857. 210. 35. 301.

1⁄2.3-8s. 9-11 for instance. $3,400, $1,900. $6.5,4, $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making me think less. But let me stay this. Poop.

You can call it satire. Most satire. On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we've seen you. All right, folks. Folks, folks. It's just the week being weeded out, obviously.

Yeah, sundowns out. I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it.

I do love that. Look, got to jump. You've got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So, screw him. Sent to a gulah?

Outrage. Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Bye. Love you. Bye-bye.