The Rest Is Entertainment - Trump, TikTok & NDAs

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Trump returned to the White House with some new special envoys. Which Hollywood hardmen has he chosen to watch his back? Allegations against Neil Gaiman have revealed the use of NDAs as a tool of power by the rich against those more vulnerable. What are NDAs and what would happens if you break one? TikTok shut down for a few hours in the US on Sunday night before being reinstated by President Trump. Will the ban come again and if so will anyone really care? Recommendations: Marina - Cue The Sun (read) Richard - A Real Pain (watch) Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from real Canadian superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Good morning slash afternoon slash evening Marina hello how are you rich yes I'm alright how is your half week been since I last saw you it's been agonizingly too long I have longed to get back in to this coliseum of chat please just just edit that out no but to be fair it is a coliseum of chance to see him if you're not watching on

YouTube we are in a coliseum if chat. If you're not watching on YouTube, we are in a coliseum. If you are watching on YouTube, shh. I want there to be an inserted background. Now what are we going to talk about today? We are going to talk about a number of things. We're going to talk about Neil Gaiman and the allegations against him and the rise of NDAs and how difficult they seem to make everything. We're going to talk about the shortest lived corporate ban in history, the TikTok ban and why Trump maybe doesn't want it banned.

The reasons that people are given all sorts of reasons. I think there's one very specific reason why he's brought it back. Trump has appointed three Hollywood special envoys, special envoys to Hollywood on his behalf. What does it mean? Does it mean anything? We're going to talk about that. And they're as fun as you'd imagine. I know we've said the word Trump there, but I promise

you we're talking about entertainment stuff. Don't worry about that. You do not need to switch off. Right. Well, let's begin with Neil Gaiman, partly a fantasy author who was the subject of a podcast by Tortoise last summer called Master in which various women came forward and alleged abuse, coercion and sexual misconduct by him. The follow-up, as it were, has taken quite a long time to come out and it came out in New York Magazine last week

under the headline, There is No Safe Work. And that featured eight women, six of whom went on the record. And I should say that Neil Gaiman denies most of the claims. He says he's never abused or coerced anybody. He also said he'd been quiet up until this point for all the previous months, out of respect for people sharing their stories, which seemed... Some of the people had shared their stories with police forces. I mean, I'm not going to discuss the allegations.

Some of them are just too horrible, but you can certainly read about them. And in fact, I wrote a column including one person's story, Scarlett Pavlovich, who's one of the women making allegations. I think this story particularly hits hard for many people because of the particular nature of his fandom. Yes, his fandom absolutely love him. And he's had a hugely long career, sold a huge amount of books all around the world. Sandman, American Gods, he did the Good Omens books

with Terry Pratchett. This is a guy who has made tens and tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions from writing. He's like a megastar of the fantasy literature world and has a fervent fandom, for sure. Yeah. One of the things that struck me apart from all the horrific allegations in the New York Magazine article was there was a former friend who was a fantasy author as well, who talked a lot about being at those conventions and meeting fans in general.

He said, or she, because I gave an anonymous quote, that the fantasy community is an inherently vulnerable community. And I do think that there's a particular sort of type of perhaps vulnerable young person that that kind of work particularly touches. But it also makes people very vulnerable to abuse, and in this case, alleged abuse.

All of the people who seem to have worked for, worked, I say, providing childcare, mostly unpaid as far as I can work out, for Neil Gaiman and his wife Amanda Palmer, seemed to be fans. And there was no distinction really between fans and friends and clearly people who provide services. Right, so they've been drawn from that world, people coming into the house. Which I think is very difficult. But one of the things that I think is interesting about the story

is at least two of the women say they were made to sign an NDA, which is a non-disclosure agreement. Now NDA seemed to... It's something we hadn't really heard of probably 25 years ago. And now there's barely a story that comes out, whether it's a corporate story, whether it's a personal story, a showbiz story, where someone hasn't had to sign an NDA or someone isn't breaking an NDA. They are a tool that can be used for completely legitimate reasons

in business transactions and personal transactions, but also something that could be abused as well, but they are, they're rife. It's really interesting. They originally came about for trade secrets, like the Coca Cola recipe was one of the first sort of NDA things. And it's very interesting that the tech industry, those kind of early big hitters in what became obviously a huge gold rush, there was a huge amount of openness and open source type stuff. And it was seen as part of its rapid growth. The idea of hoarding secrets was sort of anathema to the people who, by the way, now make all their employees sign NDHs, but was sort of anathema because they said, you know,

if you have a great idea, tell everyone that there was that whole kind of culture, but that is gone. And in fact, all of those companies who in so many cases took our privacy away in general, you know, by saying it's not a valuable thing or you know, you share all your life and you and really downgraded privacy as some kind of aspirational idea in the culture companies that are now saying, listen, we own your copyright, we can copy your books unless unless you tell us specifically you don't want us to. Yeah Every single person who works for one of those companies signs He's absolutely exhaustive and you read these stories about people who on a company retreat Were sexually assaulted and their NDA covers even that and that is an extreme example, but you can read these cases

I mean one of the other things I think is interesting that I don't just going to say this because DocuSign for as an example, DocuSign was this company that made it so easy for everyone to be signing legal documents all the time. It's the one where you get sent a legal document through an email, you open it up and you can just sign your name with your finger and it's legally binding. Everyone, even customers are now required to sign NDAs. It's made it so easy for people to sign documentation. You can sign it on a screen, you sign it as an iPad. I've read stories about people who have plastic surgery

and they have to sign an NDA saying they won't give a bad review. Wow, that doesn't feel legally... I'm no lawyer. Yeah, I'm no lawyer either. Doesn't feel legally enforceable. In entertainment, there have always been lawyers, as we know, and they mainly have dealt with contracting. But they are now being co-opted into this huge secrecy apparatus.

So, actors and agents are saying that NDAs are completely overused. When I had to sign the, see episode one of the Philip Schofield Cast Away documentary slightly before anyone else when I'm only doing this podcast on a Monday. I've got to sign an NDA even to be able to see that. Documentaries, I'm often asked, people write to me, we're making documentaries, we'd love to tell you what it's about because we'd like your contribution. You need to sign an NDA before someone rings you up.

And you think, okay, well, I just see what you're doing the documentary about. You sign this NDA and then they ring you up and ask you all sorts of advice. You think, so where's the NDA for what I'm telling you? Yeah. Where's my, why am I giving you free advice? By the way, any people listening thinking they want me to contribute to a documentary,

if you haven't signed an NDA before, I'm not gonna do it. Also, I'm probably not gonna do it anyway, but please, no more of these annoying requests. I'm not gonna sign your NDA so you can tell me what your documentary is about. This is complete overreach. And also, also, also the documentaries is like Britain's greatest coastal walks. Yeah.

Oh, that's fine. Whenever we, people would send ideas into production companies a lot and you would never ever allowed to open them. You just couldn't do it. But sometimes you get them through and people to say, um, send you an email saying we have the best new idea ever. If you sign an NDA, we'll send it to you. You think, no, but of course not. I'm with the early tech companies. Transparency is everything. If you've got a great idea and you're great,

just honestly share it out straight away. People know it's yours. You know, put your flag in immediately. Just let people know. So as soon as I saw an NDA, I knew I was dealing with people who were just thinking that this is even if it's a great idea, it is not going to be fun. Yeah, I now regard it as really Mickey Mouse. If you're making me do it. Having said that, I wonder whether Ingrid has a different experience because for actors, it's very, very, and agents are really up in arms about this. A lot of actors and the actors union equity are in up in arms because people don't know what they're auditioning for. I mean, actually, when Zendaya was auditioning for Spider-Man Homecoming,

she was told that it was for girl in movie. That's funny, yeah. That's how much she gets there. You've got to sign the NDA, then you get a script, you're like, oh, I see, I'm going to be, you know, I'm auditioning for Spider-Man, but you don't know. Your agent, therefore, that's fine, you're Zendaya, probably nothing terrible's going to happen to you.

But further down the food chain, your agent is supposed to be there to help you and to advise you with this apart you should even be reading for, but you're cutting agents out and in many cases they're supposed to get the NDA over email, you sign it via DocuSign or whatever it is, and then you're supposed to self-tape within a couple of hours and send it back. Now that process is totally open to abuse in my view. I mean someone like Taylor Swift has complained about NDAs but she has issued them. It's become something that everyone talks about. There was a wrestler in America who... Are you allowed to say this? Yeah, there's a wrestler in America who did something backstage, maybe they had some fight backstage, covered it up with an NDA.

That got out somewhere and the whole crowd was chanting, NDA, NDA came out. You know, Billie Eilish has got line in a song about them. We all know what they mean. But when that sort of language bleeds into normal life, it's extraordinary. They think that a third or a half, some different surveys say a third or half of Americans have been asked to sign one at some point. And so when we go back to Neil Gaiman, some of the people who they were employing are asked to sign NDAs as employees.

Well they weren't actually. They weren't. They were required. And this is what's different. Not being paid for childcare thing is rationally annoying to me. These people are incredibly rich. Just pay your nanny. I mean honestly, what is wrong with you?

But that's obviously not the thing that's allegedly most wrong with them. But pay your nanny What happened was in the case of the two that we know about one alleges that retrospective She was made to sign an NDA and she was paid nine thousand two hundred dollars in installments Another person was made to sign an NDA and was paid three hundred thousand dollars now one of the things that lawyers will tell you about NDAs is that they mean more if money is attached to them. There are parties in Hollywood, in the entertainment industries, where you are required to sign one before you go in. There are, everyone is under one, the assistants, the gardeners,

anyone who works anywhere. There are certain actors, they say every time they go on a date, the date is required to sign an NDA before the date begins. And that is not weird. There's a lot more... I mean, it is weird. I know what you mean. It is weird. Before they sleep with them, they sign an NDA. It's foreplay. Yeah. And it's not like I've heard this is true.

This is what, this happens because people are so... People have become corporations. And so they are behaving like corporations used to with trade secrets. So the fact I've gone on a date with you is a trade secret and also civilians who have been through a divorce are made to sign one at the end and it's rather difficult if you can't talk about any of your life because you're legally not supposed to and certainly within the entertainment industry what many people like who work for someone like Harvey Weinstein who used them absolutely repeatedly said you you've then got this massive hole in your CV that you have

to say, I'm not allowed to talk about what doesn't look great in your next job interview. If you say, I can't talk about why I can't talk about it. Cause you can't say I've signed an NDA. You're not supposed to even allude to the existence of the document. Although I will say this, if you do have a hole in your CV, if you're applying for jobs next week, then just when they say what's this two-year hold just go I'm afraid I can't talk about it I've signed an NDA well that and then they'll be done something amazing say I really say do that now

really people say I'm just gonna say I did an NDA so the people think I you know what in black ops you know Angelina Jolie or something but OJ Simpson made his family members sign one before they visited him on his deathbed. Yeah. Obviously, we know Trump made Sir Tommy Daniels sign one, which is what led to the whole hush money trial. But in terms of helping to break them. Now, woman I mentioned in the Neil Gaiman story, Scarlett Pavlovich, she was very young when she went to work for Neil. She was 24 and he was 61. She was a vulnerable and troubled person who didn't have, who was sort of estranged from her family and all

sorts of other things. And she became locked in quite a sort of toxic cycle, whichever way you look at it, with the people to whom she was supposed to be providing childcare. What happened was that as she became to regard it as alleged abuse, she was put in touch with one of Harvey Weinstein's assistants, Zelda Perkins, who herself had been subject to an NDA. She hadn't been abused by Weinstein, but she'd heard of another assistant who had, and they both resigned together 25 years ago, and then they'd immediately been placed under NDA. So they could never talk about it.

And she said it was, this is awful thing. So they've taught, so she is part of a sort of network and there are formal and informal networks of people advising people how to break NDAs and what to do. And the general view is tell your stories because there are so many people and by the way, as I say, this document has proliferated across 21st century life. We're not just talking about celebrities, although we are particularly in this podcast, but many, many people will have been asked to sign one and then will feel that, well, hang on, if I say what happened to me, then maybe they're going to take my severance away from me, which is what a lot of people do feel. It's contingent. You get

your severance, but if you say anything about it, it'll come and take it away. And people have discovered that actually if they do say what happened to them, there was a woman who worked at Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' company, although she wasn't talking about him, she wrote a long essay about what happened to her there, and they didn't come and take the severance, because what's going to happen then? The next thing you're going to say is, oh, they've come and taken my severance now.

And so, sunlight is in some ways the best medicine. I'm not advising you to break an NDA. You need to talk to experts if you do this. But many, many people have realized that actually saying things and breaking them, they are harder to enforce in some ways once if your story is something that may be regarded as kind of publicity worthy. Yeah.

This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer, but one of the things I do think is interesting that you think you're a lawyer, you've got a certain bearing about you that goes, listen, I'm not saying don't break them. If you do have one, I just saying come on. Well, the trouble is, is that is part of the legalization of the world. If you think about there are many, many more lawyers than there are doctors in the US. Yeah. So many of our politicians were lawyers beforehand.

I do think about this a lot. There was a very interesting column that Juliet Samuel wrote one in The Times. She wrote about kind of the legalization, international law and the Chegos Islands and all those sort of things. But it is a general sort of idea that the law is everything. And of course, what we always talk about the rule of law and it matters and et cetera, et cetera. Having said that, there is a huge class of secrecy lawyers that have sprung up. They launder oligarchs Reputations they shut down all sorts of things They issue lawsuits all the time and they keep they have built a much bigger culture of secrecy in a society that in many other Ways has divested itself of the idea of privacy and so privacy can be something that you can pay for if you are rich

Well, that's interesting Is it because we live in a world where every bit of information is available to everyone at all times and everyone is written about constantly that people are bunkering down and hunkering down and suddenly there's that whole new industry of Uber privacy. Yeah, and there are people like, storytellers like Neil Gaiman who's very much supposedly an ally and wanted everyone to share their stories and now you actually realise that they have, because they have the money, they can avail themselves of the secrecy apparatus and they can keep everything quiet.

I mean, I do slightly sometimes think as well, I was talking to a very, very successful barrister, a KC recently, about saying, are you not vulnerable to AI? Do you not talk about it all the time? Because first of all, the general public think about the law, I can't afford lawyers, and yet the legal system is unnavigable without lawyers. talk about it all the time because first of all, the general public think about the law, I can't afford lawyers and yet the legal system is unnavigable without lawyers. And something,

someone like a very expensive KC might cost you £800 an hour, but they're just drawing on, you know, I mean, I know there's for flourish and there's a bravado and there's a this and a that, but they're drawing on precedent and all sorts of things that surely the machines Yeah, they're not then they're not writing every single NDA afresh No the quill and surely the machine surely eventually as even further than legalization the world We will surround the machines will become in charge of lots of these things So maybe there'll be a judge that rules at the end and then the case they gave you an answer said however You're not allowed to tell anyone about that. Please sign here But I was asking about this person and they said no, we don't really talk about that

I said well, I think you should because I think you're very expensive and I think that ultimately Court cases and all of these things will be so expensive But that's even further sort of legalization of the world because it can all supposedly be Presided over by the machines But I do think that if you're rich and if you're famous You spend a huge amount of money on many of these lawyers that create that treat you're rich and if you're famous, you spend a huge amount of money on many of these lawyers that create, that treat you like a corporation, treat your every human interaction like a corporation, try and ring fence it and give you the privacy and privacy

for some of these people. They don't want privacy. If you want to be able to tell your story, if you want, if you want to be able to say, this is what happened to me, some of these are so completely draconian. Many, maybe most people listening to this podcast will at some point have been required to sign an NDA and they might not even realise that their contract contains one. Well by the very listening to this you have officially signed an NDA, you're not allowed to tell anybody what we've said. By the way we should genuinely say that NDAs often have an absolutely legitimate purpose and in business, you do need to use them.

And there are definitely times you need to use an NDA. It's just the fact that they have become so weaponized. And now they're used to things that they shouldn't be. They used to hush people and to buy silence. But also creatively, people are saying that the streamers started it because the streamers had huge amounts of money, which was debt at the time, but is now tipping into profit. And they sign every creative project came with NDAs, which you weren't, people weren't used to with their old broadcast contacts. They didn't have to sign an NDA at every possible opportunity.

And it began with, I don't know, Netflix and Amazon and all those people. And now it is, it is completely proliferated and everybody is signing them. Yeah, if you ever do something, you could do like celebrity escape to the country. And they say, you mustn't tell anyone you're doing this until the 16th of February. And often in situations like that,

I'll always just say it because you think, and I've yet to be sued. I've yet to be taken to court. But this- I'd love to see that court case. Just like- Yeah, Osmond versus celebrity escape to the country yeah you've set you have said in a pub yes you will be doing on on the on the on the third of February I haven't done

celebrity escape to the country by the way yeah although I loved it I will be able to talk about it if you had I well listen I would because I'm a maverick but in the case we're talking yeah exactly I want to share my story I want to share my truth but in the case of this Neil Gaiman story, as you say, tortoise covered it last year, New York magazine have covered it this year. He has finally made a comment on it. It feels like that is not going to go away anytime soon. And the one thing about people telling their story is it feels like it then becomes easier for other people to break NDAs because it feels like the story gets bigger than the NDA itself. And what are you going to do? Go to court

and make it an even bigger story. So it feels like maybe hopefully there'll be more information coming to light, which will show the truth or otherwise of what's going on and we'll all get a clearer picture. But it's a story that's not going to go away this year, I don't think. No, but that was the part of the problem with Harvey Weinstein. When he was exposed, it was a sort of huge thing. But people realized just how powerful NDAs were because you thought, my God, this man has been doing this for 25 odd years or whatever it was. And nobody has said anything. And the trail of NDAs behind him, thought huh well I guess you know I've don't be

silly of course I've never done anything like that but I very much like you my gardener you my this everyone then it was a great advert for the document for the legal document of our times I think the thing to do would be any time you do action and NDA you just just get a little score mark next to your name so we don't have no idea what your NDAs are. But if a particular individual suddenly has 75 NDAs, you might kind of think, well, that's unusual because he's just an actor. You should have to declare how many NDAs you've got. Don't you think? That's easy. If you can justify it. Yes. I would like, I'd love to see it.

Yeah, love to see it too. Could be in Who's Who next to your name. How many NDAs? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Should we have a little advert break? Let's have a break. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

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and it only costs the price of a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the episode notes. Calling all sellers. Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents,

winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. Hi, it's Cathy Kay here from The Rest Is Politics US. We felt at this time as America is heading into the Trump administration that we should look back on one of the darkest moments in recent American history. So we have done just that with a series on Trump's insurrection

and his attempts back in 2020 to steal the election from Joe Biden. There was an incitement of an insurrection. They stormed the Capitol. They literally have senators running for their lives. We break it down. We give an hour by hour of all the incidents, the fences smashing, the windows breaking, gunshots firing, Trump supporters smoking joints in statutory hall. Just imagine the bedlam and incredibly some of these people are going to be pardoned by Mr. Trump.

And so January 6th, I've never told Cady K this, but January 6th is my birthday. Okay, tune in and listen. Yeah, that's not the only extraordinary thing about the date of January. And so January 6th, I've never told Katty K this, but January 6th is my birthday. Okay, tune in and listen. Yeah, that's not the only extraordinary thing about the date of January the 6th, however. I mean, this is why this story in this series is so important and so gripping, because so many of these characters are coming back with us today. And so much has been forgiven and swept under the carpet. And America decided in the election last year that they

were going to reinstate Donald Trump. With that, there really is no better time to take a look at these events. To hear more, just search the rest is politics, US, wherever you get your podcasts, hear a clip from this mini series at the end of this week's episode. Hello, everybody. Welcome back. We're going to talk about the TikTok ban in a moment and the reason that Trump is bringing it back and there is a reason. But first, he's done

something else. I've got to say quite funny. This week with his the envoys that he is he is sending. It's quite funny. That's the trouble on Thursday. Surprising. Even those who were named in the announcement Donald Trump announced he was creating three special Hollywood envoys envoys for a great but troubled place I think he called it yes once great currently troubled they are Sylvester Stallone heard of him Mel Gibson and him and John Voight heard of all of them immediate thoughts imagine how gutted Chuck Norris is devastating devout and Seating. Devote. And Segal. But also, yeah, I know.

Well, that is tricky. I mean, I think he is an envoy, but just for another super power. Of course he's Putin. I think he actually genuinely is an envoy. Why didn't he call them the three Musketeers? It was right there. I want to call them the three. Chuck Norris could be the D'Artagnan in that case.

He could latterly draft. Oh, D'Artagnan like a fourth Musketeer. Yeah, like 84 years old, but still. And he could draft them in into this kind of- Well, John Voight is in his 90s, isn't he? He's old, Rich. I mean, but look, these are Trump's first DEI hires, aren't they? They are. The thing is that I suppose that rich, very rich, old white men just can't catch a break. Yes. Tough tough for them in Hollywood.

And they would be great, by the way way if they were just given a chance. And so somebody's got to break down that glass ceiling. Somebody give Mel Gibson a chance. Yeah, give him a give him a shot. Let him have a shot. So you give him the bullets, he will fire them. So Trump is saying Hollywood is in trouble. It's lost a lot of its business to foreign countries. And these three guys are going to sort it out. He says they're going to be my eyes and ears in Hollywood. John Voight is going to be his eyes and ears in Hollywood. They're going to report back to me and we're going to get Hollywood back where it belongs. My cataracts in Hollywood. No offence. My cataracts are coming in myself. So I feel

like I can say that because it's my truth. Now you're allowed to say it. I can neither confirm or deny that I have cataracts. I'm afraid I've signed a document with my optician, which my eye health is my own. What is their role supposed to be? We're back now in the world of saying yes But what did Trump mean by this? But we we are now officially back in that world So you might as well make a peace with it, but what is their role supposedly? Here's the interesting thing What does he mean by it? Nothing. It's a joke He's trying to rile all of Hollywood's and it I think it's got to the point with Trump where people go

Oh, I guess it's a gag. That's absolutely fine. So give some find out from the tweet, the truth social post. The truth social post. He said, yes, this is news to me. And his house had burned down last week. He said, look, I'm happy to do it. Does it come with a house? Yeah. An ambassador's residence.

Yeah, an ambassador's residence. The idea is that they are doing Trump's work in Hollywood, presumably, and having meetings with people. I'm assuming they're not going to be meeting SAG-AFTRA and talking to all the streamers and, you know, talking about Chinese distribution of Hollywood movies. I assume they're just going to talk about the personnel though. Can we, let's before we talk about what they might do, I would like to talk about the personnel. So we have three great, three amazing choices. We have Stallone who has a production company. In fact, hilarity, I've just, I discovered that

his, the forthcoming movie that he's co-written with that production company is literally called Working Man. Oh, clever. Statham Stars as a construction work. Someone, maybe he was in Special Forces, but he's gone back into the construction chain. This assumes so. Just to be a sort of the earth kind of guy. And I think he gets sort of pulled back in and a slightly taken style thing where he's got to go and track down his boss's kidnapped daughter or something like that.

But it's genuinely literally called Working Man. And by the way, I'm genuinely going to watch it. Oh, yeah, so am I. I watched Tulsa King, which is obviously the big show. Now that's one of... That's Stallone's show. That's a Taylor Sheridan show. So that's on Paramount and Stallone's the lead in that. And that's just been renewed for three, series three and four.

It's very, very successful. It's not terrible. So we've got Mel Gibson next, who after his outburst to the Jewish traffic cop and what I'll have to refer to as the sugar-titted traffic cop, had a period in the wilderness. Yes, it didn't last that long. No, 2016, he was back already

on the best director Oscar list for that movie, Hacksaw Ridge. He's directing a lot. He's got a movie with Mark Wahlberg coming out. I know which is called Flight Risk. And the the the strap line for it is y'all need a pilot again. Count me in. Yeah, that's that again. That's that someone taking someone in like he was about to testify against a mob boss taking them on a plane and shenanigans ensued plane, you know, fights on a plane

and big ensuing movie that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The ensue genre. So John Voight, I mean, the most fun of the three in a lot of ways. Angelina Jolie's dad. Yeah, he was in Megalopolis. Is it? Yeah. But he's obviously he's the only one who's got an Oscar. He was in recently a Reagan movie. Actually, Dennis Quaid, another one who'll be pissed off by this announcement, Dennis Quaid played Reagan. And I think he played a sort of Soviet agent, John Voight, in that. But it was a sort of red state movie that the critics hated, but it kind of broke even. It might be the record holder for the biggest difference between critics ratings of a movie on Rotten Tomato and customer ratings of a movie on Rotten Tomato. I think the critics ratings are 14% or something like that. And the customer rating is 98%. Okay. Well, as I say, it broke even just about.

He's a record holder. Yeah. I was trying to work out if they've worked together. Now they, Stallone and Gibson were in Expendables three together. Wow. Yeah. You know, Expendables, Sylvester Stallone leads a team of sort of government backed mercenaries and all these old action stars turn up in it. Hold on, this perhaps Trump is just doing Expendables 4. Yeah, I mean, in lots of ways. Mel Gibson played a guy, the villain, who was called

Conrad Stonebanks. Can't believe you haven't used that. And they have a physical fight. Which, yeah, Mel said it was like Godzilla versus Kong Which is a much more successful movie that they weren't in so that's the slaves and Mel's very fast and strong and it was great Being punched by him and Gibson said it was kind of like movie sex We do it actually do it and of course you're battling arthritis, but it was fun. That's funny It sounds more like anti-semitic versus rocky. Yeah. Well, I mean that was the other way to build it There's many ways you could build that particular fight, but Stallone's talked a lot actually about saying that I think that

the artists die, the artist dies twice. Once there's the career death and then there's the actual death, which is inevitable and the career death is much worse. But actually he's doing very well with Tarzan King, et cetera, et cetera. But as for what I think we have to, even though we're not taking this entirely seriously, I do think that we maybe have to talk about this, what we might call the Hollywood First strategy. I mean, there are a lot of people, you know, everyone's against tariffs unless it's for their own industry.

And there are a lot of people who... What's very interesting is that during the fires, last week, somebody reported, or maybe a couple of weeks ago, that when the fires hit, the following companies did not have a movie shooting anywhere on location in LA. Universal, Warner Brothers, Amazon, MGM, Netflix, Paramount, Legendary, and Sony.

Now, that tells you a very, very big story, which we talked about a little bit when there was so little in production anywhere. We don't talk about sound stages, but maybe Trump is sort of looking at Hollywood as like the new Rust Belt, which was, he wants to bring jobs back. And of course, everyone, if he says, okay, I'm going to tariff productions, because what's happened, as we've talked about before, is that lots of, and he does actually slightly allude to this in

his mad post, that production has moved to other countries, certainly to other states in America, particularly to other countries. If he says, okay, I'm going to tariff productions that are made outside the US, then Netflix would just headquarter in another country. So you're dealing with that. Having said that, a lot of people, you know, Congress is never going to vote to bail out Hollywood, his controlled Congress, which they think is a sort of den of iniquity and vice. I mean, it is, to be fair. I mean, it is to be fair. And I mean, I wish it was.

It's incredibly boring when you get there. Well, someone signed something. Yeah. Like nothing happens. Yeah. Like you go there and literally nothing happens. I just stayed in my room. But he could, he could do something to sort of try and bring business back.

He's not going to. He doesn't listen. He doesn't have to care about California because they're never going to vote for him. No. You know, the second that he, you know he moves every single thing to Atlanta, which is in Georgia, that ties up Georgia forever for the Republicans. So he doesn't need to do anything for Hollywood other than troll them by putting John Voight in charge of everybody. But the ones that still live there, and all of these as far as I know, do still live in the greater Los Angeles area. I mean, maybe they will be trying to suggest that everything should come back and the industry

should be how it was when they were in their heyday, when everything was made in LA and all these sorts of different things. Who knows? It's a joke. I think the fact they didn't know that they were being appointed as well means maybe they won't take their responsibilities. But Stallone says that Trump is the second George Washington. That's what he said. He introduced him at his victory speech at Mar-a-Lago. He was the sort of star turn. So listen, it's all, it's jobs for the boys as it always is. But yeah, it is a prank and it is nothing more than a prank as so much of what he says

is and covers up some of the other things that he is doing. Talking of which, can we talk about TikTok? Please can we talk about TikTok? Which went offline in America for about three hours. Yeah. There were, you know, wailing and gnashing of teeth as people thought they were never going to be on TikTok again. But Donald Trump has so often saved the day by bringing TikTok back. He was even named in the holding message.

Yeah, by TikTok saying thank you to President Trump. Thank you. Yeah, President Trump is going to be helping, you know, the little message that came on the screen. But bear in mind, he, as we've all said, he did originally try to ban TikTok. So, but this is what he does. He makes you sick so that then he can sell you the cure. So he can unban it. He actually reminds me a lot of Gwyneth Paltrow, who's, you know, she's always making, you know, she'll sell you like a really expensive, like fascia back massager to deal with the back pain that was brought on by, you know, Jade Vagina Reg, she sold you. And then you'll be like, you'll get bruised from the back thing, so you'll need some of her arm nacre.

And there's just, it's just like the endless sort of cascade of like, I can help fix, only I broke this and only I can fix it. It's like the painting, the fourth bridge of lifestyle. Yeah. There's always, you never ever get properly fixed. It had been banned by the Supreme Court, Biden wanted to ban it. And there are some legitimate reasons. There's two reasons they talk about for banning TikTok.

One is this idea that the Chinese use it for propaganda, which there's not really any evidence for. And were there evidence for it, you could ban it immediately. If in the next five years there's trouble with Taiwan and you can absolutely look at TikTok and if certain narratives are being pushed, you can ban it then. But at the moment, there is none of that. There's also this second idea,

which is much more of a technical idea of if it is downloaded on someone's phone, there are back doors into that person's phone and into that person's privacy. And so if you work for the American government, and in fact, if you work for the British government, you're not allowed to talk on your phone. Yeah, there was an FT journalist, she's a technology journalist, and she had an account in the name of her cat. And she was spied on via that. There's definitely, we know that MI6 and CIA obviously know that there is the

capability to do that. And so the worry is that ByteDance, which owns TikTok are essentially just an arm of the Chinese government and that this is a spyware situation. Now, a few things before we talk about why Trump has re-legalized TikTok. ByteDance, there are Chinese corporations which are almost wholly owned by the Communist Party if you really want to Do a deep dive into it and it or essentially if the Communist Party wants something done They could do it via that corporation bite dance is not quite so much that as other places are 40% owned by foreign institutions It's run out of Singapore by a Singaporean.

If you haven't ever seen the amazing Senate hearings where they're talking to a show to who's the chief executive and the American senator keeps saying, have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship? But he goes, well, no, I'm Singaporean. Yes, but have you ever, he just keeps saying, yes, but are you a member of the Chinese Communist Party? And he keeps going, Senator, I'm Singaporean, genuinely worth a watch. And again, it's not being naive He just keeps saying yes, but I remember the Chinese Communist Party and he keeps going Senator, I'm Singaporean, genuinely worth a watch. And again, it's not being naive saying that it's in Singapore and it's run by a Singaporean. It has fewer ties to the Chinese Communist Party than a lot of Chinese corporations.

Although definitively, you know, there's a reason why US and UK government people are not allowed to use it. There is some leverage that can be made, but by and large the Chinese are quite proud of the success of TikTok around the world, but it's not something that they, you know, they've sought out and indeed you can't use it in China. They got their own version, which is completely ring-fenced. When people say that Trump is re-legalizing it as a bargaining chip with China, because obviously there's going to be huge negotiations with China in the next few years, that I think is a false flag because China are not all that fussed about the future of tick tock is the truth then they say oh no it's it's it's to teach Zuckerberg and everybody else

a lesson but they've all knelt down in front of him now anyway all of the big social media bosses have this one main reason and an ancillary reason why he's brought it back the main reason is this is he did really well on tick during the election. It went really, really well for him. He got loads of followers, people loved it. You know, it really, really worked for him. And so he's not going to get rid of it because anywhere where he's popular is incredibly important. And secondly, this thing of, you know, even Biden said, look, you can operate in America if you have a 50% American co-owner. And so that's essentially going to be what happens. You're going to get a...

Perspective co-owners, Richard, because... Well, people keep saying it'll be Muscat Beard. It'll be exactly who Trump wants it to be. And this is the issue with having an oligarchy at the top of a country is we use it to make money. And by the way, that may be what people vote for and that's absolutely fine, but it will go to a Trump supporter and that Trump supporter will make billions upon billions upon billions of dollars. Yeah I saw it being valued in various reports as 50 billion I would have thought it was worth way north of that. And especially you know he can then yoke it to truth social and all that kind of stuff so it's been an

enormously powerful thing for him to have in his back pocket. My children informed me that Mr Beast was attempting to, I mean, I actually thought I will look into this. Mr Beast has put out, said, I've said, okay, I'll buy it. And they said, now I've been in a room with lots of billionaires over the weekend, basically. And I want to buy it. Yeah, that's not good. Mr Beast, God bless him, cannot afford to buy TikTok. But what my children also said to me was, well, how can they let all those people's jobs go? And I thought, how interesting that you already see this thing, which is the internet to you

in lots of ways, as above all an employer. And that, you know, you're losing America. They didn't say, how can he get rid of all those American jobs? Because they didn't like talk like ridiculous politicians at their age. But it was interesting that that's the first thought that, why would you do that? It was interesting that some people were saying when they said, okay, the band's coming into effect. Some Tik Tokers said things like, okay, I just want, I might as well say then I don't do any of these workout videos. This isn't my makeup routine. I've never done it, blah, blah, blah.

And sort of torch their whole, I don't know, their output just in the dying hours and then like three hours later. It's like the scene in father. I may have said, it's a scene in father Ted when they're on a plane that's about to crash and one priest declares his love for another priest. And then the pilot goes, actually, the engine is fine again. Now we're, we're all safe. Yeah. Yeah.

But one of the, one of the sort of cute things is when people thought that tick tock was going to go dark, they sort out alternatives. There's a, there's a Chinese site called red note. Yeah. And red note got very big, very quickly. Now red note, by the way, is sort of in the pocket of the Chinese communist party. I mean, that's, that's properly states owned, but lots of people went on that. Lots of Americans. You couldn't live without it for three hours. I'm afraid you are now owned by the Chinese communist party. But it was super cute because it was just lots of people saying, um, Oh, I'm just trying

to get in touch with my Chinese spy, my Chinese TikTok spy. Can you show me pictures of your cats? And so it was Chinese students and American students, Chinese and American people have a lot in common in terms of the insularity from the rest of the world. And they were saying, where do you go to school? What do you eat? All that kind of stuff. And that was cute for about two days. Now red notes, because it got very big very quickly that that will last about

another two days because the Chinese are already getting lots of English language experts in to see what's going on there. They will ring fence that in the same way that Clubhouse remember Clubhouse which briefly was here in the pandemic. Yeah. And for about four days you could have really long chat with Chinese people because the Chinese didn't know what this thing was. It got massive in about a week and then within a week they shut the whole thing down, which is what will happen with Red Note as well. So there are these little pockets of... Yeah, yeah, which is what will happen with Red Note as well. Oh really? So there are these little pockets of...

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And until... Openness. How interesting. For about three or four days until it gets absolutely... So that window has already shut. But yeah, TikTok is going to be a huge bargaining tool for Trump, but not for his relations

with China, but for his relations with Silicon Valley and billionaires and anyone who fancies a piece of that because it's just free money. Someone's already running it but he's found himself in a political situation. We say we can sell half of this to an American company who fancies it and ever listen if you ask me I'd say yeah I'll take 50% of TikTok so everybody will want a piece of it but of course if Trump lets you have it then Trump will want something in return. So that's a reason he'll make billions and billions out of it. But honestly, I think the major reason is it really, really worked for him during the election and he was really popular on it and he loved the reaction he got. And that's why he's rode in on the white charger and saved freedom.

The band he wants called for. Exactly. But one tiny little thing I would say was that, you know, people are always, there's that sort of, it's just, it's become a line of our age, hasn't it? Just turn off the internet, switch it off. What this shows is that if you want to, you can switch off the bits of the internet that are, and it's really interesting that they have the ability to shut off, say, all these porn sites that contain tons of images

of exploitation of children, of women, scenes of, you know, violence, all these sorts of things. I can see that they can switch off because they can switch TikTok off, but they don't. So bear in mind what they choose to switch off and what they choose to allow to stay there. And I think that once you've shown people how very easy it is, I wish we could push for further things because I honestly think that, I mean mean it would be that it would not be my number One thing I shut down on the internet

Yes I'm gonna if you are if you are planning to shut down a whole social media network because you think it's forcing propaganda down people's Throat them there might be other candidates. Please do Pornhub. I'm not interested. Thank you. Please do Pornhub They'll literally just cut that out and put that as a trader. Yeah, I know. I'm not going to be advertising it, but just take down the material. Any recommendations? I am reading an absolutely brilliant book called Cue the Sun, which is that line from The Truman Show. And it's by Emily Nussbaum, who used to be the TV critic of The New Yorker. She's a New Yorker writer now. And it's about the story of reality TV. And and it goes takes you right back to the

very star on radio in like the 40s of candid microphone and Alan Funt and all that anyway and it takes you all the way through to obviously now a reality TV star is about to have his second stint in the White House but it's it's it's brilliant I really think it's fascinating I think you'd love it by the way. That's so Cue the Sun. Yeah Cue the Sun. And I recommend there was a question for the Q&A thing, I'm not sure we're doing it, which is about why are there no 90 minute movies anymore? So I'm going to recommend

a 90 minute movie I saw this week, which is Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Colkin's film, A Real Pain, which is Jesse and Kieran as cousins who go back to Poland where their grandmother is from and do this as a Holocaust tour with other Americans. And it's just so charming, so funny, 90 minutes long. It's like a proper old fashioned, why don't we make films that are just stories about people anymore? And makes you think, it makes you laugh.

There's loads of great stuff in it. So I would recommend a real pain. Right, will we be seeing each other for the Q and A on Thursday? I feel we will. We won't, I'm afraid. No, we will. By the way, just from this week,

if you do send in a question, you must also do the DocuSign NDA as well because if that's okay with everyone. We're going to gum up your every interaction with an NDA. That is our guarantee. We're going to gum up all of your interactions. See you Thursday. See you on Thursday. Here is that clip from our mini series on Trump's insurrection. And these senators are being kind of ushered out through a very narrow corridor. And one of them says, we were 20 feet away from the rioters.

If the rioters had just looked the other way and seen that a whole bunch of senators were coming out, who knows what would have happened? Who knows what could have happened to Mike Pence? And I think it is important to point out that Donald Trump was getting these reports and did not care. The Senate has been evacuated at 2.18 PM. Nancy Pelosi is also pulled out of her chair by the Capitol police and taken off the podium and taken to a safe location at Fort McNair in southwest Washington. She originally tried to stay.

She didn't want to leave the building, but because of security, she had to get out of there. One of the Democratic members of the Congress at this point, as they realized that the rioters are starting to breach their area, one of the Democratic members of the Congress yells down to the Republicans, this is because of you. And the members are getting texts. This is how they know that things are bad, because they're getting texts from their family saying, what are you doing there? Why haven't you left? Are you safe? But they haven't got a television. They're not watching it. They're

trying to get on with the business of the day. I mean, it's this surreal. I keep thinking how surreal it was that inside the chambers, they're trying to do business as usual and feet away. The rioters are there saying that they want to have some of these people hung and that they want to overturn the election result. So then a few minutes after that, the house floor is evacuated, literally in front of the rioters. The police manage again to secure a very narrow passageway through the rioters to get them out.

One member afterwards says, I could look in the eyes of those officers and I saw the fear. They knew that the officers were outnumbered. To hear more, search the Rest is Politics U.S. wherever you get your podcasts.