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Feb. 20, 2023 - Sebastian Gorka

02:42:37

Sebastian Gorka FULL SHOW: James O'Keefe kicked out at Project Veritas

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	Transcription by CastingWords
	No longer a discussion about whether or not, uh, certain privileged people have control.
	And, uh, you know, I bring greetings and goodwill from a member of Congress whom I had a very good impression of when you spoke at last.
	And, uh... What?
	What?
	What was that?
	Greetings dear friends.
	No best of.
	We are in studio for this day that is a holiday for some.
	Whilst some are taking a vacation day.
	The man who bears the title President of the United States is in Kiev.
	It's not Kiev, you virtue-singling panderers.
	It's Kiev.
	Ask a Ukrainian.
	And that's him in, I guess, the presidential palace.
	Did you hear that mumbling and whispering?
	That's supposed to be leadership.
	That man within 30 foot of where he's sitting is a military aide who's holding a large thing called the nuclear football.
	That allows him to launch thousands of nuclear warheads because he is also the civilian commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world.
	He doesn't sound too well, does he?
	If that's meant to be a sign of leadership, well, let's have you judge again.
	Let's have you listen.
	This is the man who is the incumbent president in Kiev saying something.
	I don't know.
	Maybe you could decipher it.
	Let's play the cut again.
	And have apparently embraced the notion of democracy.
	No longer a discussion about whether or not certain privileged people have control.
	I bring greetings and goodwill from a member of Congress.
	I had a very good impression of you when you spoke there last.
	Maybe somebody on my team...
	I mean, I just literally got back from a few days away in the countryside.
	Mr. G, are you there?
	I am.
	What did he say there?
	Nothing.
	I heard greetings and goodwill.
	I did hear that part.
	Alex, he sounded so tired, didn't he?
	I could barely understand a word he said.
	Right, well, the mainstream media, they've got a take on it.
	There's a guy called Rick Stengel on MSNBC who, um... Well, this is what he said about Biden's visit in Kiev.
	Cut!
	- How important do you think the visit to Kyiv today was toward accomplishing that goal And basically, I think putting down a marker for the rest of the West to say, we're not going anywhere, you shouldn't either.
	Chris, I think it's historic.
	It's like when JFK went to Berlin in 1963, when Ronald Reagan went to West Berlin in 1987 and said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
	Yeah, I can see it.
	I can see it now.
	I can see it 60 years from now.
	I can see it 30 years from now.
	They will be playing the mumble mumble goodwill mumble mumble mumble goodwill as some kind of what?
	Example of how not to be a leader?
	Maybe.
	All right, let's talk about Ukraine.
	We have so much to cover.
	Project Veritas has lost its founder, James O'Keefe.
	He's either resigned or been fired from the leadership of the organization he created.
	The president is in Ukraine.
	The 45th president, President Trump, is going to Ohio, yeah.
	He's actually going to go to the site of that disastrous train accident with those toxic chemicals being burnt off on whose orders?
	Hmm, that is a question.
	President Trump will be in East Palestine on Wednesday, according to latest statements.
	Nikki Haley continues to make announcements about why she should be the President of the United States.
	Governor DeSantis is launching a nationwide campaign of speeches about law enforcement.
	Hey, Mr. G, why is the governor of Florida making speeches about law enforcement all over America?
	Because he's running for president, but trying to pretend that he's not running for president.
	Oh, thank you.
	That makes it much, much more understandable.
	Thank you.
	Oh, and somebody else who's in trouble, Don Lemon.
	Is that Tucker's thing?
	I do like that.
	I can't think of it any other way.
	Don Lemon wasn't on the morning show again today.
	Is he about to be booted for good from CNN?
	Well, we can hope springs eternal.
	But let's talk about Ukraine.
	So, why is there such a strange attitude to Ukraine in this country?
	We have the left wing, who really weren't into national security at all.
	Sending them pallets of cash, Abrams tanks, you name it.
	And then we have conservatives who either agree with them, like Graham Lindsay, who probably would give them nuclear weapons if he could.
	And then the rest, at least the vocal ones, who are saying, don't give them anything.
	The border's open.
	110,000 people died as a result of fentanyl poisoning.
	We've got trains on fire in Ohio.
	Don't give them a penny.
	Now surely there's a happy medium between the two.
	You don't have to be a rank isolationist or a neoconservative interventionist neoliberal.
	What about this idea?
	What about the idea that Russia invading anybody is a bad idea?
	What about the idea that If Ukraine falls, next it will be Poland and the Baltic States, which are NATO member nations that, by the way, we have provided an Article 5 guarantee to.
	And let's remind everybody, in 1995, we, we, along with the Brits and the Russians and others, convinced Kiev, convinced the newly independent Ukraine, to give up its nuclear weapons.
	It was the third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
	We didn't want there to be nuclear weapons in that new unstable nation, so we told Kiev, hey, give those nukes to Russia.
	We'll look after you.
	We signed something called the Budapest Memorandum where we promised we would look after Ukraine, its independence, its sovereignty.
	What idiots they were to trust us, am I right?
	Isn't it a matter of honor now?
	Forget geopolitics.
	How about honor?
	Thucydides was right.
	The Greek writer who basically started the art of historic writing.
	Nations only do things out of three concerns.
	Fear, interest, and honor.
	What about honor?
	We promised them.
	Imagine if Ukraine had nuclear weapons right now.
	You think Putin would have invaded?
	I know he wouldn't have invaded.
	Because he would have paid a very high penalty if those nuclear weapons had been launched against him in his dacha or in his office in Moscow.
	And then lastly, there's the question of a certain thing called a taboo, which was established in 1945.
	After the end of World War II, we said in the civilized world, The idea that you just invade your neighbor to take their territory is wrong!
	You can't do that with your neighbor's yard.
	You shouldn't do it if it's your neighbor's country, like Crimea.
	Why is that taboo, destroyed by Russia, no longer a problem?
	Could it happen to us?
	Mexico is not going to invade.
	Canada isn't.
	What about China?
	Is that okay?
	Just because, well, you know, D.C.
	is corrupt?
	Let's think again.
	Let's think about geopolitics and honor.
	promises made and promises kept.
	I'm Sebastian Gorka.
	We've got, oh my gosh, calls flooding in already.
	The number is 83333-GORKA.
	That's 833-334-6752.
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	The FBI t-shirt.
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	Hello, who's this? who's this?
	Shane.
	Hey Shane, what's your comment, what's your question?
	I'm just wondering why Trump and his supporters are calling DeSantis a rhino, because they weren't doing that three months ago.
	Well, because he's being used by billionaires who fund rhinos.
	His biggest funder, Ken Griffin, was the funder for not only Obama, but also McCain.
	That's a problem, dude.
	Don't you think DeSantis has a better chance of beating Biden in a general election?
	No, I don't.
	Next question.
	Is that it?
	Yeah, I enjoy losing again, I guess.
	Oh, go give your mama her phone back, dude.
	All right.
	Bye-bye.
	I thought he was going to curse.
	No, no problem.
	Let me go get a walkie.
	Let me go.
	Without Eric?
	Yeah, that is not something I know.
	Unless Mr. G knows.
	No, I'll ask Eric.
	Hello?
	Are you napping?
	I may have been just a moment ago.
	What's up?
	Oh, are you serious?
	Oh crap, I feel so bad.
	I just... I just...
	I just...
	you Making sense out of today's news, here's Dr. Sebastian Gorka.
	Welcome back, dear friends.
	He may be on a day off, but I just bugged Eric.
	He's going to put a new poll up right now on our website.
	I need you to tell me, can Project Veritas, that investigative journalism team, survive without James O'Keefe?
	He's out!
	The news broke just before we went on air.
	James O'Keefe has resigned or been fired.
	There will be a new head of the organization appointed.
	It really is identified with James ever since the early days when Andrew Breitbart Aided him with the original amazing undercover Acorn footage.
	Go to SebGawker.com and check out the new poll.
	I want to hear from you.
	Can Project Veritas survive without James O'Keefe?
	That's S-E-B.
	G-O-R-K-A-S-E-B-Gawker.com.
	All right.
	It's not Friday.
	It's not even Thursday.
	I do believe it's Monday.
	But we have so much geopolitics swirling around us, whether it is Chinese balloons or trains traveling from Warsaw to Kiev with the current incumbent with the White House.
	We asked him to come in studio.
	He is the Distinguished Fellow at the American First Policy Institute, also our Senior Strategic Mind at Newsmax.com, former member of the Trump Cabinet, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert Wilkie.
	Thank you for coming in on a Monday.
	Good to see you.
	Oh, on General Washington's birthday.
	Yeah, and D.C.
	is like a ghost town.
	Yes, they've probably forgotten General, well, this administration has forgotten General.
	They probably would have cancelled General Washington.
	That's right, that's right.
	We're going to talk about, well, show people.
	I just wanted to show people this.
	This is Foreign Affairs, not exactly pro-Trump magazine.
	This is Foreign Affairs.
	Bible of the American foreign policy establishment.
	This was their lead last week.
	Biden's foreign policy is a mess.
	So that's a big deal.
	If that's in foreign policy, foreign affairs, that's a big deal.
	That's a very big deal.
	And it's not going to be obviated by this trip.
	So let's talk about that for a second, because I was away at the weekend.
	Jeff was shocked.
	I was so little on social media.
	I didn't have good internet where I was.
	So that's why I was so little on social media.
	And I saw the news of Biden in Kiev.
	And I thought, well, this is a bit strange.
	A, he's about, what, six months later than Boris Johnson, which is a little bit embarrassing.
	Boris Johnson's second visit.
	Second visit, sorry, second visit.
	And then I'm thinking, if you're just being purely cynical, you're almost two years away from a presidential election, so you don't reap a lot of domestic benefit.
	Do you have any idea, as a former member of the cabinet, why would he do this now?
	Well, the perception of Biden around the world is weak.
	And that's both at home and abroad.
	I mean, look, this Ukrainian war is a byproduct of Biden and the failure of classical deterrence.
	Something that you wrote about in the Trump administration, which was a return to great power rivalry.
	You wrote it in the National Security Strategy.
	These people ignored it, saying that is a relic of the 20th century.
	We're just in competition with Russia, China, and Iran.
	Everything can be negotiated.
	That's right.
	Everything can be negotiated.
	Brute force just... What did Obama say?
	That's a relic of history.
	I would ask the citizens of Kherson.
	Absolutely.
	And as you often quote Trotsky, you may not be interested in war, but it is interested in you.
	So this is a means to shore up Biden's, the sense that he is a weak president.
	And as you said, it's almost a year too late.
	We're not backing up as foreign affairs says.
	Matching our means to our ends.
	We're not giving them what they need.
	We're giving them some, but we're not giving the things that will turn the tide in the end and chase people back.
	Just enough to show willing in that sense.
	Yes, that's right.
	So, I think it's an act of desperation.
	His party doesn't want him in the White House.
	So we played a clip at the opening of the show from MSNBC where one of their commentators called what Biden is doing in Kiev right now.
	It will be remembered.
	It will be remembered along with the Tear Down This Wall speech by Reagan and JFK's Ich bin ein Berliner speech in Berlin.
	Well, let's just show the viewers again, the listeners, this is what Biden, this is what they're saying will be remembered in the same breath.
	...as the Brandenburg Gate and the Ich bin ein Berliner speech.
	This is Biden in Kiev.
	Cut three.
	...and, uh, have, uh, apparently, uh, almost embraced the notion of democracy.
	No longer a discussion about whether or not, uh, certain privileged people have control.
	And, uh, you know, I bring greetings and goodwill from the member of Congress.
	I had a very good impression of him when he smoked at last.
	I don't even know if the people in the room could understand what he was saying, let alone us here.
	He was looking at another crib sheet.
	He probably thought he was in Uruguay.
	How does this look good?
	No, again, this is...
	This is a show of weakness in the sense that the issue is already bypassed.
	What's happened?
	Europe is reconfiguring itself regardless of what the White House thinks.
	I think in some ways it's good in that you and I would herald the coming of Poland as the replacement For Germany as the central power, military and political power on the continent.
	But again, why did this happen?
	Afghanistan, failure to confront the Chinese, failure to call these nations adversaries.
	Putin was given an invitation by Biden, Blinken and Sullivan.
	But let's be clear, this isn't an exaggeration, what the Secretary is saying.
	This is the same Biden who said, whether we respond to Russia depends upon the scale of the military operation.
	I mean, that's just like, go ahead and do it, Vladimir.
	That's right, absolutely.
	What you've seen, I mentioned you and your national security strategy, which you were one of the principal authors of in 2017.
	You said the great power rivalry is back.
	This last national security strategy was a triumphalist piece heralding the military and foreign policy genius of Joe Biden, based on the fact that he had sent artillery tubes to Ukraine.
	After he was dragged kicking and screaming by the lamented Boris Johnson now, the Eastern Europeans who saw, understood the danger, and it's always been incremental, it's always been It's always been an effort that was only designed to save face.
	There are no means to the end.
	When you are shown up by nations that have suffered for more than 40 years under the jackboot of communism, when you're actually demonstrated leadership by them and Not out of the White House.
	It is a sorry, sorry state of affairs.
	We're talking to Robert Wilkie, Senior National Security Analyst at Newsmax, Distinguished Fellow at the America First Foreign Policy Institute.
	I'm Sebastian Gawker.
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	My PhDweightloss.com. - I remember when both foreign policy and foreign affairs were actually serious.
	Foreign policy more so, but now they're just rags.
	You can keep that.
	Thank you.
	Can you play the keen cut, please, for the secretary?
	Cut seven.
	Which cut number is that?
	Seven.
	Seven.
	The average American looking at this, despite the administration saying, hey, look, we were able to defeat their electronic surveillance while the balloon was up over the United States.
	We learned a lot about them, and we recovered the payload.
	We're going to learn even more.
	But let's face it.
	We don't shoot down a surveillance balloon when the mission is complete.
	we shoot it down before it starts.
	Kind of obvious.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	All right.
	What have we not heard?
	Oh, play me cut eight, please.
	And oh, how much time we got?
	Let's do five, six and eight, please.
	If you're an office holder and you're just sitting there twiddling your thumbs and not getting anything done, no one ever says anything.
	You can kind of just fly under the radar.
	But when you're out there leading, when you're out there setting the agenda, not just for Florida, but really for the nation, which we've done over the last few years.
	Next.
	I think we need term limits.
	I think we need mental competency tests for people over the age of 75.
	And I think we need far more transparency than we're seeing today.
	And what I do strongly believe is the American people need options.
	I don't think you have to be 80 years old to be in Washington, D.C.
	It's kind of a thin grail if that's your campaign platform.
	Carry on.
	Dozens of Democratic leaders are saying that They not only don't think that he's the strongest candidate, you know, considering the larger field that could be possible given his age and other defects, but they don't think that you are the right person to be on the ticket.
	Why do you think that?
	I think that it is very important to focus on the needs of the American people and not political chatter out of Washington, D.C.
	Wow.
	That was Sterling stuff.
	By the way.
	Yeah.
	Brother Duffy is a lightweight.
	That congress, former congressman.
	On the left?
	Yeah.
	I haven't, I don't know much about him.
	Sean Duffy, he's married to Rachel.
	Yeah, she's a pistol.
	But he's such a... Does he have, is he a contributor?
	Yeah, well he has a show now with Dagan McDowell.
	What?
	Yeah, it's like a one day a week show.
	On business.
	She was on the real world on MTV.
	That's Tarlov next to him.
	Right, real, yeah, Tarlov has changed her hair, right?
	She's a mother now and married.
	All right, stand by.
	All right.
	All right.
	So are you if you're listening.
	That's why we're here to get you ready for anything.
	This is America First coming to you live from the reliefactor.com studios.
	The number here, we'll take your calls momentarily, is 833-333-GORKA.
	That's 833-333-46752.
	If you enjoy the show, please support those who make it possible.
	Great patriots like Michael Lindell, a friend of the president who's being harassed by the deep state and the left.
	You heard what the FBI did to him recently.
	They want to cancel him now.
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	We are back with the America First Policy Institute's Robert Wilkie, former secretary in the Trump administration.
	Secretary for Veterans Affairs.
	Something really obvious about the balloon farrago that was very nicely summarized by retired General Jack Keane is the following about the first balloon, Secretary Wilkie.
	Cut seven.
	The average American looking at this, despite the administration saying, hey, look, we were able to defeat their electronic surveillance while the balloon was up over the United States.
	We learned a lot about them, and we've recovered the payload.
	We're going to learn even more.
	But let's face it.
	We don't shoot down a surveillance balloon when the mission is complete.
	We shoot it down before it starts.
	So even if you buy the, we intercepted it all, but if you intercepted it and learned from it, then you don't shoot it down.
	If you don't want it to spy, you shoot it down before it does the mission.
	Is this not the most obvious thing, Secretary Wilkerson?
	Well, this goes back to something that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs keeps saying.
	And this is the mindset in the Pentagon.
	The Chinese are not adversaries.
	We treat them as competitors.
	Economic competitors.
	Great power competitors on the economic and cultural front.
	Well, if that's your mentality, the Chinese have you beaten.
	They've already won the information war.
	That's right.
	If you believe that.
	He's absolutely right.
	You'd shoot this thing.
	And their excuse was population sick.
	Well, I've been to Alaska several times.
	The highly dead state.
	The highly populated state.
	There are not a lot of folks in Alaska.
	And the same goes for Montana.
	And for the Canadian Yukon.
	If we have such a great relationship with Master Trudeau, the youngster in Ottawa, then it should have been possible to take this thing down when it was over.
	Why was it possible for the third balloon in the Yukon, but not this one?
	That's exactly right.
	They're afraid of themselves.
	You know, they've got Chinese and Russians in their heads.
	But this goes back to something that is fundamental about the leadership of that party.
	If you don't Believe in your nation.
	This is the issue.
	If you don't believe that this is the hope of the world, and that... I'll give you an example from Colin Powell.
	He always said that a platoon of United States Marines has done more for world peace than all the UN agencies, celebrity telethons, put together.
	Powell said that?
	Powell said that back in the 80s, I believe, in response to something Madeleine Albright had said.
	If you don't hold that view, then you're reduced to faculty lounge lunacy.
	And that's exactly what you see here.
	And the significance of the breaking announcement that the senior Chinese diplomat is going to Moscow for meetings?
	Yes.
	This is all connected?
	Yes.
	And they're playing two games here.
	They were in Hungary, they were in Budapest, saying, we want to broker peace.
	At the same time, they are working with their vassal state, Moscow.
	I mean, think about it if you're a Russian nationalist, what Putin has given you.
	You're now a vassal state of your ancient enemy, the Chinese.
	You've awakened Finland and Sweden from their slumber.
	To join NATO.
	To join NATO.
	And Poland.
	is the driving force in this new year.
	That's quite an achievement for Putin.
	It is.
	To get Finland and Sweden into NATO and to make the former satrapy, the former slave nation of Poland, the leading force.
	All right, so much more discussed.
	We'll have to get the secretary back in studio later this week.
	In the meantime, the number here is 833-33-GORKER.
	That's 833-334-6752.
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	I did that without moving my lips.
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	Hey Jeff, can we do that for the whole three hours of the show?
	I could just sit here and then there's my voice coming over.
	We could do that.
	Probably just have someone write it out for you and there you go.
	That's probably what they do on CNN, right?
	Oh, absolutely.
	Everything's written for them.
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	Alright, waiting so patiently!
	Line 1, Judy in Brooklyn.
	Hey Judy, happy Monday!
	Happy President Trump's Day.
	Oh, that's naughty.
	That's not President Trump Day.
	It's President Washington Day.
	Okay, well, President Washington and President Trump.
	All the President's Day.
	Okay, fine, fine.
	Sorry.
	I'm not from here.
	Sorry, you know that.
	I thought you were an American now, an Antipodean American.
	I only know what Captain Cook did out there, you know, in 1776.
	It's all up to Captain Cook.
	All right, what are you calling us now on this lovely President's Day for, Judy?
	Well, you kind of threw out a bit of a slight half a challenge, because you did not exactly care for the name Roke when Brent and Antoinette, you didn't like it.
	So I said, okay, let me rack my brain.
	So I've got like a suggestion, but I also have a suggestion for a t-shirt, if I may.
	Please go ahead.
	All right, so let's start with the Mar-a-Lago thing.
	So I figured like this, let's take out the woke out of it and I figured, let's, how does it sound?
	Welcome to the Wonder Women's Association at Mar-a-Lago.
	Wonder Women, instead of Woke Women.
	Wonder Women, yeah.
	I'm writing it down.
	Welcome to the Wonder Women's Association at Mar-a-Lago.
	Hang on, is this for a t-shirt or for a podcast?
	No, this is for when Brent wants all these wonderful women coming to Mar-a-Lago.
	Yeah, I love it.
	Alright, good.
	I like that.
	Or something added.
	Welcome to Melania's Wonder Women's Association at Mar-a-Lago.
	Alright, I'm writing it down.
	And then you said you had an idea for a t-shirt?
	Yes.
	Okay, so here's the idea for a t-shirt.
	You can put it front, back, whatever.
	So it's like this.
	Team Crazy.
	No, first let's start with this.
	Team Normal.
	Crime Fighters.
	Team Crazy.
	Crime Inviters.
	Then I've got Team Crazy CRT.
	Communism, Racism, and Transgenderism.
	That's what it stands for in Team Crazy.
	Team Normal.
	MAGA.
	Make America Great Again.
	I love the idea.
	There's too much word there, too much phrases, but I like the variation of something along Team Normal and Team Crazy.
	I'm gonna ruminate on those, Judy.
	Those are excellent.
	Well, Crime Fighters and Crime Inviters and CRT... I like that.
	That has a good ring to it.
	But I like the idea of Team Normal.
	Just have a t-shirt with the idea, you know, photographs of the good guys, Team Normal or Team Crazy, and then you choose which side you're on.
	Great job.
	Thank you, Judy.
	Happy President's Day.
	Let's go to line two, Gary in California.
	Thank you for taking my call, CBS.
	Yeah, just... I call it the...
	The Joe Heiden administration.
	Oh, Joe Heiden.
	I haven't heard that before.
	That's good.
	Joe Biden, Joe Heiden.
	I like that.
	Yeah, you know, even before he was president, hiding in the basement.
	Yep, absolutely.
	The Secretary, you know, the Transportation Secretary Heiden won't go over there and it's a crying shame that you have to have a former president go and You know, visit the site.
	Yeah, no, the idea that it took the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Biden's EPA, 13 days to go to the site of the train disaster.
	And I want to know who inside the EPA or the Biden administration ordered the burn off.
	They thought it would be a good idea to burn all those toxic chemicals into the atmosphere.
	At least President Trump is going.
	He'll be there in East Palestine in Ohio on Wednesday, accordingly.
	Of course, Biden's in Ukraine.
	President Trump is going to be with Americans in America.
	Let's go to Mark in Cleveland, Line 3.
	Hey, Mark.
	Thank you, Doctor.
	Can you hear me OK?
	Yes, I can.
	OK, I've got a question and two comments to make really quick.
	First of all, did you receive the copy I sent you of Antietam Sunrise?
	Antietam Sunrise.
	Not yet.
	What is that?
	Well, it's a tape, or it's a CD that my friends made, and I sent it out about two weeks ago down to Texas, the Texas address.
	Well, that takes some time.
	That goes to our headquarters, and then they have to ship it over to us here in the swamp, but I'm sure it will arrive.
	Okay, that's what I thought.
	Also, comment.
	Thank you very much for the update on the Mooch.
	You know, this guy, Trump got rid of him after about two weeks, and then the guy's bad-mouthed him on TV.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Two weeks?
	Don't give him credit.
	It was ten days.
	The Mooch lasted ten days in the White House.
	Okay.
	Okay, second comment.
	Moving along here, I see that Fetterman has had health issues, and I don't wish serious medical issues on anyone.
	But when he debated Dr. Oz, and he began by saying goodnight to everybody, I knew there was going to be serious problems.
	But the amazing thing was, about a week after the election, I was listening to you, and it just stuck in my head.
	You said that you thought he was going to be removed maybe in about, give him about three months or so.
	And if you take a look at a week after the election, and about a week and a half ago is when he started having problems.
	You were very perceptive and perspicacious in your judgment there.
	You know, and I know people who have strokes and everything else.
	I've known a number of them.
	It takes time.
	It takes time to recover from this kind of this series.
	If you recover at all.
	But I enjoy being perspicacious.
	I'm not sure if it was me who gave you that accurate prediction of how long Federman would last or whether it was Mr. G or another member of our team.
	But it's inevitable when you have a man Who cannot function, who needs to have massive text displays at debates.
	And as you said at the beginning of that debate with Oz, his first comments to the arrayed individuals was good night.
	Good night were the first thing that came out of his mouth.
	It's not a surprise that he was admitted to Walter Reed just a few days ago, suffering allegedly from some kind of clinical depression.
	We wish him well, but it was all so sadly predictable.
	More of your calls here on America First, 833-33-GORKA, that's 833.
	3-3-4-6-7-5-2 coming to you from the relieffactor.com studios.
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	All right.
	All right. All right.
	Oh, can we find out, do you know how to access older cuts, John?
	I don't necessarily know where Erikwood stores them.
	I can just re-cut them, what do you need?
	Just the one we had for the next interview on A-Block, JD Vance on Friday with the stick in the water.
	Yes.
	Stand by, Dr. G. What's his face?
	Alex might be able to help me.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you. .
	On the side of the U.S. Constitution, America first.
	Welcome back there, friends.
	President Trump, he's going to East Palestine on Wednesday.
	Biden decided to go to Kiev about a year late.
	Soon it will be the anniversary of that invasion.
	Shown up twice, twice by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the erstwhile Premier of the UK.
	Is he the Premier if they have a king?
	That's a good question.
	Let's just say the head of government, not the head of state.
	How does that make you feel?
	Oh, and with regards to Project Veritas, we have our brand new poll.
	He's out.
	James O'Keefe has been kicked out, resigned, what have you.
	The founder of Project Veritas.
	Go to our website.
	I'm asking you a very sincere question.
	Can this organization that was founded with, you know, advice and help from the likes of Andrew Breitbart, we get it, but really the face of Project Veritas was James O'Keefe.
	He's gone.
	He's out.
	Can it survive without him?
	Now if you build an institution, they say that The most crucial question, beyond the actual effectiveness of the institution that you build, is can it survive the loss of its leader, or if somebody else takes it over.
	If it can't, then you didn't really create an institution.
	What you created Production is a glorified promotional vehicle for one person.
	The challenge of succession is for any company, any organization, for-profit, non-profit.
	Mr. G., what do you think?
	James O'Keefe, him being booted out by the rest of the board or what have you, is Project Veritas just going to quietly disappear?
	Well, personally, what you were talking about, I'd rather create something that couldn't survive without me.
	I'd rather that than an institution.
	Yeah, but that's you!
	That's you, Mr. G. I'm a little different.
	You're a little bit different.
	Let's not talk about Mr. G. Let's talk about Project Veritas.
	Here's my thing with Project Veritas.
	It's got to be, why is he getting pushed out?
	Is he getting pushed out because of all the success that he had the last year?
	If that's the case, then the institution can't go on anymore.
	But why would that be the reason to kill the calf?
	Because there's too much pressure on everybody.
	Too much pressure on the board of all the type of information that he's exposing.
	That's what I'm wondering.
	We need to know the reason that he's being pushed out.
	This is true.
	This is true.
	I'm going to reach out to somebody I know on the board.
	I don't know if they'll talk to me, but I'm going to try.
	Is that your analysis?
	Have they been unusually successful in the last year?
	Is it all the Pfizer stuff, the COVID stuff?
	I mean, the FBI went after him.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's when you know you're really starting to make an impact when that happens.
	That's so true.
	So, let me ask you explicitly, beyond finding out why, can it survive without him?
	Oh, I definitely think it is.
	You just need other people.
	Really?
	Yeah, definitely can.
	You think he's the guy that's undercover in every one of those situations?
	No, no, no, but he's the guy who raised so much of the money.
	Yeah, I know, but I think the impact that it's had, that we've seen the last couple years, the money's still gonna come in.
	If they're still producing.
	You surprise me.
	You really do that.
	I like it.
	I'm Sebastian Gawker, this is America First Hour One.
	Where did it go?
	If you're America First, show it!
	With pride, with America First gear made in America.
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	Thank you.
	More announcements from Nikki Haley, the lady who said just a few months ago that she'd never run against President Trump.
	What happened?
	Can we trust her?
	Should you trust her?
	Also, James O'Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, is out!
	Breaking news!
	Yes, he is leaving the organization that he created.
	Looks like Don Lemon will also be following suit.
	He has been suspended from the morning program.
	Does that mean he will We'll be showin' the door.
	We'll give you all that and so much more.
	Breaking news and analysis.
	Salem News Channel, America First, Hour Two.
	The Doctor is in.
	America First, with Dr. Sebastian Gorka on Salem News Channel.
	The antidote to the mainstream media.
	The antidote to the mainstream media.
	Hello?
	Hello?
	Anyone there?
	Testing 1, 2, 3.
	I'm heading one, two, three.
	Anyone there?
	Hello?
	Anyone there?
	Thank you.
	Check, check, check.
	Alright.
	Yeah, we got this.
	Hey, Mr. Frantz.
	Hello?
	Hello, hello?
	We have no audio from you, if you can hear us.
	Well, look at that.
	Black studio.
	Look at that.
	Yeah, Comrex is up.
	Yeah, Skype one's up too.
	Bob?
	Mr. France?
	We have no audio from you.
	Can you text him, Jeff, tell him we have no audio?
	And then, John, you're gonna come in with the JD Vance, please?
	Copy that, coming in with JD Vance.
	All right.
	There's still no audio on Skype.
	Call his cell then.
	Check, check, check, check.
	There we go.
	Good to go?
	Yeah, we got him on Skype.
	Okay, buddy, bye.
	20 seconds. 20 seconds.
	20 seconds.
	Hey guys, so I'm here at Leslie Rund and there's dead worms and dead fish all throughout this Something I just discovered is that if you scrape the creek bed, it's like chemicals coming out of the ground.
	Can you come here and let me just show this to people.
	I don't know if you're going to be able to see this on the camera, but watch this.
	Just see that chemical pop out of the creek.
	This is disgusting.
	And the fact that we have not cleaned up The fact that these chemicals are still seeping in the ground is an insult to the people who live in East Palestine.
	Do not forget these people.
	We've got to keep applying pressure.
	That's how we're going to fix this problem.
	Thank you.
	That's the newly minted Senator of Ohio.
	He's a friend of the show, J.D.
	Vance, former Marine, doing what I guess the EPA couldn't do, which is actually go there and see what's happening as a result of that disastrous train accident.
	What's really going on on the ground, and why is Biden in Kiev instead of East Palestine?
	Let's talk to a good friend of the show.
	Not only is he a colleague of mine, from the 1420 The Answer Studios in Cleveland.
	He's also been a guest host of mine and one of the guys on the team said he was very good.
	I don't know who that was.
	Bob Franz!
	Welcome back to America First!
	Do we have sound?
	I don't think we have sound.
	We're gonna have to call him up.
	We've got video.
	We're gonna have to call him up on his cell phone.
	He looks very, very ready to roll in a very fancy studio with a black backdrop.
	Very modern podcasting style.
	He looks like he's ready to talk to us.
	We need to know what's going on.
	We're dialing him right now.
	Bob's gonna fill us in on what is happening on the ground.
	One, is he gonna see his phone?
	I know it's on the desk in front of him.
	He's looking at the TV camera.
	It's ringing now.
	He's talking but I can't hear him.
	This is the same company.
	He's Salem.
	I'm Salem.
	We can probably make it happen.
	I wish.
	I hope.
	But he's not looking.
	Look.
	Look at your phone.
	He's looking at the camera.
	Pick up your phone.
	No phone.
	No phone.
	I can hear you, Dr. G. Hey!
	We did it!
	I'm in a TV studio and there was a little bit of a glitch getting the audio connected.
	That's why I'm looking at a camera, not my phone.
	So we are good to go now.
	Thank you for your patience.
	All right, thank you.
	I was teeing it up for you nicely.
	I was telling about how we're the same company.
	You're a radio host.
	You're on the ground in Ohio.
	Somebody on my team said you did a pretty good job hosting for me.
	I don't know who that was, but thank you.
	You did do a good job.
	So we're hearing.
	So it's weird to be here in D.C., which, if you're a liberal, is the city that's going to fix everything.
	And then seeing these just shocking images, the footage of this train wreck that we showed just now, JD Vance, you know, poking a stick into a creek and then this, this rainbow colored chemical filth just rising up to the surface of the water.
	So first things first, I'm just going to give you the mic, pretend you're, you know, filling in for me, you're the guest host.
	Tell us what on earth is happening on the ground in East Palestine.
	Well, I can tell you this.
	You know, it's funny.
	I'm one of your fill-in hosts on your program, one of my fill-in hosts on my program here in Cleveland, and AM 1420, The Answer.
	Um, has parents who live nine miles from the site of that wreck.
	Oh wow.
	So he's been getting first-hand accounts on what they see, and they still see the remnants of that toxic cloud that came after that burn.
	Moreover, they've got friends who literally live right within the boundaries of East Palestine, and they are terrified.
	Um, and one of the things that they're telling me they're very concerned about is the fact that they're not doing anything about what is going to be clearly contaminated soil.
	What Norfolk Southern is doing is they're just laying down new track.
	They're laying down new track and cover, essentially, that is going to bury the contaminated soil, which will be great.
	Hey, nobody can touch the contaminated soil under the cinder and everything else that they have to lay for the track.
	But the bottom line is, of course, we don't know how deep that goes, the contamination.
	We don't know what kind of surprise these people are going to be in for with contaminated well water two years from now, two months from now, five, who knows, into the future.
	So they're terrified over what it could be.
	Give us the basics.
	So, you know, we see the horror stories.
	We see the lack of response from the federal government.
	What was this train carrying?
	Why did the accident occur?
	And where did it occur?
	Is it right next to a residential area?
	Is it a commercial area?
	Give us the basics before we get to the second and tertiary effects.
	Well, it's a rural area, so there isn't like a huge residential, very heavily populated area, but the train tracks basically just run through what is considered East Palestine proper.
	And so it affects everybody in the region, whether you have a home right next to the actual tracks, or a business, or you're a few blocks away.
	So it is large enough, and the spill and the burn If not ordered, I think the Ohio Governor, Mike DeWine, did declare that they approved and agreed with the decision to burn off that vinyl chloride, which is the biggest contaminant that they're talking about, that has continued to leave a smell hanging over the area.
	And again, I'm getting this from first-hand, well, not me first-hand, but my friend and sub-host.
	He's getting first-hand accounts from people on the scene that say, literally, there is a smell in the air that will not go away.
	They're worried about what they're breathing.
	They're worried that they're being told to drink this.
	Now, the governor and lieutenant governor, a few days ago, I think it was on Friday before the weekend, tried to calm and ease the fears of the people in East Palestine by drinking a couple of glasses of water there on site.
	But they drank cups from cups that, not at least on camera, We're not filled from the tap.
	We don't know what they were drinking.
	I saw one post that, you know, that circled in, zoomed into the corner, and you could see the corner of a, what was it, smart water, spring water bottle on the counter.
	People say, hang on, hang on.
	Did the cups get filled from a, you know, a bottle of mineral water?
	So clearly, clearly people do not trust the official version of events.
	But when you look at what people are responding on social media over the weekend, I saw these You know, iPhone films of black clouds that people were going crazy over.
	Can you sense, Bob, because you're there, you're covering for Cleveland, you're the show host, how much of this is potential overreaction and how much is it really just people who want some answers?
	Well, I think there's both, Seb.
	I really do.
	I mean, you have people that are going to overreact because they're terrified.
	When you see a cloud of what you're being told is a toxic chemical that was burned, you're going to be terrified, and there's going to be people who are freaked out.
	There are others who are trying to be reasonable about it, but the reality is we don't know.
	It's going to sound strange.
	It's similar to when they tried to force these, quote-unquote, vaxxers.
	I call them poison darts, these profit jabs.
	We don't know what the effect is going to be of these things in six months, or in two years, or in five years, or ten years, because they didn't study it.
	So the question that everybody has is, what is in the water, what is in the ground, what is in the air, and how long will it affect us?
	And the reality, Dr. G, is that there are a lot of people who do not trust Norfolk Southern, which of course is the train company here.
	They want everybody to take these $1,000 inconvenience checks.
	And guess what they're doing?
	Here's why they don't trust them, and here's why they don't trust the government.
	Biden's not giving them answers.
	Biden will go to Ukraine, but not to East Palestine.
	Buttigieg won't come anywhere near it.
	And they're making these people fill out W-9s if they take those $1,000 inconvenience checks, which indicates they're going to tax them as income, when what is supposed to be reimbursement.
	So would you trust a company that's trying to do that to you?
	No, of course not.
	It's like the new ATF.
	We're going to ban this type of accessory on a weapon unless you register it with the ATF.
	Yeah, right.
	Bob, some people say the complete disregard, the 13-day delay, Biden being in Kiev and not East Palestine, this is a function of this area being 70% pro-Trump voters.
	Do you give any credit to that political spin?
	You know I don't, Seb, and here's why.
	My belief is, and again I had a good conversation with somebody who kind of framed it very well for me, the people up in Flint, Michigan, which is very much liberal Democrat territory, they were drinking poison water or really bad water for a very long time and nobody did anything about it.
	I don't think this is about are they Trump voters or are they left-wing voters.
	I just think unless it's in a major U.S.
	capital city, or I'm sorry, a state capital city or the U.S.
	capital, it's just a bunch of rural folks in an area, it'll go away.
	Unless it's, you know, 48 illegal immigrants on Martha's Vineyard, they just don't care.
	If it were a train spill in Martha's Vineyard on Nantucket, the National Guard would be there before it even happened.
	He's the host of AM 1420's The Answer in Cleveland.
	Follow him right now.
	He's got a great Twitter handle.
	It's France Rance.
	France Rance with a Z. Thank you for stepping into the breach when I had to travel, Bob.
	You did a great, great job.
	35,000 followers and now they killed me, kicked me out, now that I'm back trying to start over again.
	I gotta rebuild my following.
	So Seb, Dr. G followers, help me out on Twitter.
	Follow him right now.
	He's back.
	It is France Rantz.
	F-A-R-N-T-Z-R-A-N-T-Z.
	Follow him right now.
	I'm Sebastian Gawker.
	This is America First coming to you live from just outside the insolubitous fetid rank swamp that is Washington, D.C.
	If you enjoy this show, we're going to have an amazing third day out today with Mr. Reagan.
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	Um, I was just, I was just,
	Thank you.
	What have we got?
	Oh, can you play me Cup 10?
	Democrat or Republican?
	Oh, this is good.
	Alright.
	And then, sorry, play me a little bit of cut four.
	Why?
	Joe Biden institutes a government-wide system of racial discrimination that dwarfs Jim Crow, and nobody seems to notice.
	That happened yesterday, by the way.
	Did you know that?
	Probably not, because there was no press conference or signing ceremony, no media coverage.
	But 24 hours ago it happened.
	Biden restructured the entire executive branch of the U.S.
	government to discriminate on the basis of immutable characteristics.
	All right, good.
	All right, stand by.
	Let's do this.
	Are you going to come in with anything?
	On this, I'm just going to do consumer research, and then we'll go to Todd.
	Bye.
	A man.
	A legend.
	A legal immigrant.
	Dr. Sebastian Gorka.
	That's a good liner for the next guest.
	Nicely done, Alex.
	Yes, I am a legal immigrant.
	Biden has just announced another 500 million for Kiev.
	I wonder how much Hunter Biden gets out of that.
	Dear friends, you've heard, you understand what has happened in the last few decades in America.
	The left has taken over every institution except talk radio and the military, but they're trying to take over the military as well.
	They've taken over the schools, the colleges, the news corporations, Hollywood, and now the private sector as well.
	With ESG, with this left-wing ideological concept, they are trying to distort your future.
	What do I mean by that?
	Massive corporations like BlackRock, like Vanguard, are being driven by left-wing ideologues that are endangering your future, including your retirement funds.
	To protect your savings in 2022 alone, decent, good, upstanding state treasurers have divested more than five billion dollars from BlackRock to stop the left-wing rot.
	There's one organization that's fought for consumers against fraud and abuse for decades, that's Consumers Research, and now they are prepared to tell you the truth about how your future and your pensions are being endangered.
	Find out right now They don't want a penny from you.
	They just want to educate you to the threat.
	It's ConsumersResearch.org.
	That's ConsumersResearch.org.
	Portions of America First are brought to you in part by Consumers Research.
	Okay, your calls momentarily.
	The number is 833-33-GORKA.
	That's 833-334-6752.
	8333-GAUKER.
	That's 833-334-6752.
	But we are delighted to have somebody in studio who usually is connecting with us by phone or Skype.
	He is a truth teller when it comes to what Biden has done on the border.
	From the Center for Immigration Studies, Todd Bensman.
	Welcome to America First.
	So great to be here.
	I do appreciate it.
	Do you like being in the swamp, Todd?
	No.
	Not so much.
	I'm in Texas.
	I like Texas.
	Yeah, Texas is good.
	Good place to visit.
	Well, yeah, when you've got a book to release, and we are delighted to discuss the release of Overrun, it's Todd's new book, how Joe Biden unleashed the greatest border crisis in U.S.
	history.
	When is the launch happening?
	Is it this week?
	It's published Tuesday, tomorrow, and it'll be in bookstores nationwide and anywhere books are sold.
	So tell us about, it's more than just reversing the policies of what we did in the Trump administration.
	Some very frightening things have been occurring in Mexico in the last two years and I think that's driven the choice of title for the book, Overrun.
	Will you explain how dark and cynical the last two years have become?
	Right, well, a lot of people dispute that there's even a crisis at the border, let alone what caused it.
	The book, Overrun, reveals one of the major causes, which is a duplicitous, incredibly mendacious move by the government of Mexico
	Which was, if you recall, in the final year or two of the Trump administration, they'd been pushing back family groups, tens of thousands, under Title 42 and Remain in Mexico, to Mexico, and they had to care for these high-maintenance kinds of illegal immigrants.
	They desperately wanted to get rid of them the second that they could so they ginned up a law, a federal law, in the Mexican Congress and waited to see who was going to win the election.
	Within 72 hours of confirming that it was Joe Biden, they passed that law with absolutely no publicity.
	The writing of the law was done in the months ahead, beforehand, and it had the effect of forcing Mexico, I'll put that in air quotes, to release tens upon tens of thousands of migrants 10 days before the end of the Trump administration when he could do nothing about it to the border.
	Is this documented?
	It's documented, yeah.
	And on top of that, I interviewed Trump's ambassador to Mexico who explained how he hit the roof when he found out about this 10 days before the administration ended and he knew there was nothing they could do about it.
	So hang on, let me just repeat because this is shocking.
	So, we managed, especially under COVID and Title 42, to push back huge amounts of illegal immigrants off U.S.
	territory, stay in Mexico and everything else.
	These people were being detained in Mexico.
	After President Trump, quote-unquote, lost the election, new legislation was brought into effect to release these people from where they were being held by the Mexican authorities so they could flood back into America, correct?
	Correct.
	Okay, and Who are these people?
	Are these mostly non-Mexican nationals?
	Are they Mexican nationals?
	Is it a mixture?
	What is it?
	Most of them were Central American family groups.
	High maintenance, baby formula, you're having to take care of them.
	They were in 58 Mexican detention centers.
	Very expensive.
	Under Mexican law, they had to care for children, so they created a new law.
	They put a delayed fuse in it so that 60 days would elapse through the transition period and then, bam, it would implement 10 days beforehand.
	They were all flooded to the border.
	Now, the question is, and of course, the Trump administration, had they tried to do this, something, they wouldn't have passed the law because Trump would have just said, hey, progressive trade tariffs, 28%.
	Right, right, we're going to punish you.
	Okay, so let me ask you a naive question.
	Senior National Security Fellow, Center for Immigration Studies.
	You've got to follow him right now.
	Benzeman Todd on Twitter.
	Benzeman Todd.
	The book is overrun.
	Launched tomorrow.
	You can get it now.
	What is Mexico's game plan?
	I mean, you've been studying this for decades.
	Are they just happy being a transit nation for the whole hemisphere?
	Do they have no problem with the brain drain of Mexicans as well?
	Do they just not give a crap?
	I mean, are they just in league with the cartels?
	What's the motivation of the people in power?
	Mexico has its own self-interest.
	Primarily, their self-interest is to not get stuck with the hot potato.
	They don't want to have to care for hundreds of thousands and millions.
	They want them to pass through... So why don't they seal their southern borders?
	Well, when we make them have an interest...
	Like when Trump said progressive trade tariffs, all of a sudden they had a national overriding national interest.
	And when that happened, they did block and deport on their southern border and they did it well for a long time.
	When Biden came in, he was a wimp.
	I mean, let's face it.
	They knew that he was not going to stand up.
	What about the brain drain of Mexicans?
	Do they not care that Mexicans are leaving for America?
	So, listen, 40% of everybody who is reaching the southern border right now is not from Mexico or Central America.
	They're from 150 different countries.
	Africa, Middle East, Afghanistan, you name it.
	The Mexican people, your grandparents, or not yours, but our grandparents' border crises all usually involve Mexicans.
	Not this time.
	This time they're sort of in the minority.
	It's Central Americans and all the rest around the world who are having to pass through Mexican territory.
	The Mexicans want them to pass through.
	The worst thing that could happen to them is to get stuck with them like Trump stuck them with.
	Unbelievable.
	All right.
	Incredible timing.
	Please order the book right now.
	It's overrun.
	He's Todd Bensman.
	Follow him on Twitter at BensmanTodd.
	Thank you for braving the swamp to come in studio.
	I'm Sebastian Gorka.
	Follow us on all social media that matters.
	Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Parler, Getter, Telegram.
	We're on salemnewschannel.com and Substack as well.
	Next, your calls.
	America first.
	Thank you.
	Making sense out of today's nonsense, here's Dr. Sebastian Gorka.
	I'm so curious how many of you didn't get to make it to the Holy Land with us in December, who really, really wanted to go.
	It was quite, quite... I'd been to Israel before, but so many of our, what was it, 350 listeners hadn't been before.
	If you haven't ever been, you need to go.
	Traveling to the Holy Land is truly one of the most amazing things you can do.
	Being able to walk In the same steps of our Lord and Savior is an overwhelmingly powerful experience that you will never, ever forget.
	Trust me.
	Please, go by yourself.
	Go visit Israel.
	For more information, go to holyland.israel.travel.
	Israel, exactly like nowhere else on earth.
	That's holyland, one word, holyland.israel.travel.
	Check it out today.
	You will not regret it.
	You need to go at least once in your life.
	All right, we'll go to your calls momentarily.
	The number is 833-33 Gorka.
	That's 833-334-6752.
	But I just want to follow up.
	Mike will be with you next.
	I want to follow up on the stories of what we heard.
	Just this most recent interview with Todd Bensman.
	Here are some of the... One of the consequences.
	This is from Neil Munro, Breitbart.
	Do you remember that 18-wheeler that had more than 50 illegal immigrants in it who were literally roasted to death?
	It's happened again.
	This time not in Texas.
	39 more migrants die on Mayorkas' secret highway to the U.S.
	border.
	A busload of at least 39 adults and children were killed in Panama on a migration path created and indirectly funded by Joe Biden's Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas.
	According to Todd Bensman, accidents happen in Panama, but this is something else.
	This is the Darien Gap, the Darien Gap Jungle Trail.
	These were migrants, adults and children who were trying to reach the United States.
	This is because of the influx that has been encouraged by open border policies and the last instance was 39 of them have died.
	The deaths of those individuals are on the hands of Alejandro Mayorkas and Joe Biden.
	Then if we look at here, the United States and what's happening inside our borders, this is John Binder, also at Breitbart, twice deported gang member wanted for murder among Biden's 1.2 million illegal alien gotaways.
	These are the people that we didn't intercept.
	A twice-deported gang member wanted for murder is among President Joe Biden's 1.2 million gotaway illegal aliens, those who are known to have successfully crossed the United States-Mexico border.
	Noé David Alvarez-Escamilla, 24-year-old 18th Street gang member from El Salvador, first crossed into the United States illegally in September of 2019, where he was apprehended by U.S.
	Border Patrol agents and quickly deported.
	2019, when who was the president?
	Yes, yeah, you know who the president was.
	Escamila is now wanted for aggravated homicide and illegal association in El Salvador.
	Then, in May of 2020, Escamila again illegally crossed the border into the United States.
	He was immediately deported to Mexico after being apprehended by the Border Patrol agents.
	For the third time, he crossed the border and was not apprehended by ICE agents until December 2020, where he was deported this month.
	How many times do you have to deport somebody who's a murderer?
	All right, let's go to Mike, line two, waiting very patiently.
	What's your question?
	What's your comment, Mike?
	Oh yeah, when you started mentioning the border, I lived in Arizona for 10 years, and I lived on the border for a couple years, and I can tell you it's a black hole of reporting.
	This is the worst.
	This makes Colombia look like a picnic, you know.
	The Colombians turned over distribution to Mexican cartels years ago, and they've been here for years, you know.
	And I don't know if you remember what happened to the Cardinal of Mexico in the Guadalajara airport, you know, when you talked about gang members.
	Do you remember that at all?
	I remember the story, yes.
	Yeah, well, what happened was, and this was in the 1990s, you know, the Tijuana cartel was at war with the Sinaloa cartel, and they recruited these gang members from San Diego.
	They took them to Mexico, and ex-Mexican special forces trained them to be sicarios.
	Now, they got a tip, and this came out, this is from the government's own investigation of Mexico.
	So, they got a tip that El Chapo, the wonderful El Chapo, He was in a white Crown Vic in a parking lot at the Guadalajara airport.
	So they stormed the airport and guess who was in the car?
	It's kind of hard to mistake the Cardinal Mexico for El Chapo, but I guess they did.
	And they riddled him with bullets and they killed him.
	So these are American citizens in the 90s recruited by the cartels that killed the Cardinal.
	That's ancient history, Mike.
	It's a tragedy.
	But what's happened in the last two years is far, far worse because it's happening every single day.
	Thousands of illegal crossing the border and billions are being made for the cartels.
	Thank you for your call.
	If you're calling us, please make sure your phone is linked to the only conservative Christian cell phone company in America.
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	Patriotmobile.com slash GORKA.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	President Trump.
	Mmm.
	Mmm.
	Let's post that.
	Are we dialing John up?
	Yeah, it's dialing now.
	Okay.
	Hey, guys.
	See me?
	Hey!
	Hey, how are you?
	So I just posted out your story.
	So is this gonna run tonight, but you're already posting clips?
	Yeah, six o'clock.
	We just finished up.
	We literally just did it at 3.45.
	Okay.
	So it'll be live at six.
	There's three big things.
	Obviously his response to Biden in Ukraine.
	Yep.
	Then, um, He explains why he's embracing absentee voting, and then he says that Ron DeSantis is looking and smelling and walking a lot more like Jeb Bush and Karl Rove and the Republicans of the past.
	Alright, that's good.
	And that was just the first three minutes, yeah.
	That was great.
	In that case, come in with a DeSantis cut, guys.
	Come in with five, John, alright?
	And then I'm going to do my pillow, and then I'm going to go straight to John.
	Copy that.
	Coming off cut five.
	How long did you have him on for, John?
	About 20 minutes.
	Nice.
	Yeah, it was a nice discussion.
	It was a good day, because it was just newsy.
	And he really ties Ukraine and Ohio together in a really smart way.
	Good.
	All right, 20 seconds.
	All right, 20 20 seconds.
	If you're an office holder and you're just sitting there twiddling your thumbs and not getting anything done, no one ever says anything.
	You can kind of just fly under the radar.
	But when you're out there leading, when you're out there setting the agenda, not just for Florida, but really for the nation, which we've done over the last few years.
	That's weird.
	What's the governor of Florida doing with a national speaking tour on law enforcement?
	I wonder what he could be doing in a few years time.
	I'm Sebastian Gorka.
	This is America First.
	If you enjoy this show, support those who make it possible.
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	This is a for-profit free market enterprise.
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	A man who is under the gun in the crosshairs of the left.
	Even the FBI have been harassing him.
	Now Walmart has gone woke and banned his products.
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	That's MyPillow.com, code GAUKUS.
	So literally, he's just recorded an interview with my old boss, President Trump.
	It's going to be on his show tonight on Real America's Voice, but he's already, already getting, preparing the battlefield of news coverage with clips about his interview.
	You can see it all tonight, but he has He decided to come and tell us how it was.
	He's the founder, the editor-in-chief of justthenews.com.
	John Solomon, how was the interview with my old boss, President Trump?
	It was great, and I wouldn't miss my Monday hit for anything on this show.
	I love being on here.
	It's so much fun.
	It was very robust.
	Listen, it's a newsy day, right?
	President Biden, you wake up to and he's in Ukraine instead of Ohio on Americans, President's Day.
	And President Trump didn't miss an opportunity to take a shot at that, saying that he abandoned the people of Ohio and he's going to go there.
	President Trump's going there on Wednesday.
	And he says, since I made my announcement, all of a sudden, FEMA and EPA and the others are starting to do the work they should have done two, three weeks ago.
	I think I get some credit for that, he says, but takes a really good shot at President Joe Biden on this President's Day, being a globalist rather than an America first president.
	And then he describes... Hang on, hang on.
	You got two more zingers that you're going to share with us.
	Please follow this man, Jay Solomon Reports.
	Jay Solomon Reports, bookmarked justthenews.com.
	And the show every evening is Just The News, Not Noise.
	But first things first, let's step back.
	As a person who understands communications, who's lived in the political swamp that is DC, isn't it a bit weird?
	Just as an American, that the president on President's Day is in Europe.
	Isn't that a bit strange, John?
	It is.
	It's not lost, and it's given everybody on the right, and quite frankly some people in the middle of the country, a free shot at him, which is, this is a globalist president, not an America First president.
	He'd rather hang out with Zelensky and all the cameras in Ukraine, rather than celebrate it here, or do something that a president could do for his own people, which is go to Ohio and try to comfort them through this terrible tragedy.
	He won't even give them a disaster declaration.
	And so I think the optics are backfiring.
	If you look on social media, it's been a bad day for President Joe Biden.
	Not even the Democrats are cheering too much.
	And so I do think that President Trump had that impulse.
	He knew exactly what sort of opportunity Joe Biden left on the table.
	And he didn't miss it.
	He came right out of an interview and said, Joe Biden in Ukraine?
	What?
	He should be in Ohio.
	And he just had a lot of fun with that.
	And I think a lot of other Republicans are today.
	Now, we played a clip from Governor DeSantis at the opening of the segment.
	He had something to say about the governor as well.
	He does.
	First off, if you noticed in the polls, in the last about month or so, President Trump has jumped five points on Ron DeSantis.
	That's quite a jump in polls that tend to be very stable around this time of the election season.
	He says the reason he's dumping in the polls is because he's been putting out a lot of substantive videos.
	He's kind of doing like the old Reagan fireside chats or the Reagan Saturday morning addresses.
	He's putting out these videos every three, four days addressing a policy prescription, being very substantive.
	And he says, I think that's moving my numbers, why Ron DeSantis goes around trying to get money from the likes of the Jeb Bush and Karl Rove crowd.
	He kind of paints Ron DeSantis as an old fashioned Republican in the light of a Jeb Bush, former Florida governor as well, or Karl Rove, who most MAGA Americans don't have a lot of respect for.
	So, clearly an early strategy.
	You're going to see him try to paint DeSantis as Jeb Bush, too.
	You hear that a lot in the interview today, for sure.
	I'm curious, you mentioned the fireside chats that go back to the radio and Roosevelt and Truman as well.
	How influential as a media person do you think that President Trump, probably for legal reasons to do with non-competes or whatever, may have his Twitter back, but he's sticking to truth social from a point of political communications.
	How much of a hobbling is that as we begin the campaign season?
	All right, you must have been in the room and silently on the wall there because we asked that question, Seb.
	And he said, listen, I know I have millions of people on Twitter, but I really like what I'm doing with Truth and I haven't forgotten what the Twitters and other social media did to me.
	And here's the funny thing, he said, I don't need to be on there for my message to get out.
	I put something out on Truth, and 20 minutes later it's on Twitter and Facebook.
	Those platforms can't live without me, so they can just pick it off of Truth for right now.
	Very interesting, perceptive answer from the President.
	He does not feel any pressure to go back.
	And he said, listen, I think a lot of those social media companies are going to go out of business, but Truth won't be one of them.
	Do you agree with his analysis, or do you think he needs to be on those platforms as somebody who wants to be President?
	You know, right now he's getting a good bounce on Twitter because someone posted it right away.
	I think you're going to see a hybrid.
	I think you're going to see Donald Trump stay on truth as the person Donald Trump, but probably have his campaign open up different sites on Twitter and Facebook to communicate and occasionally there.
	But I think he's going to be loyal to his brand.
	He has a long memory and he remembers what Twitter and Facebook did to him.
	Give us one more zinger from your interview today that people can see tonight on your show.
	I think it's a really important part.
	As you know, about a week ago, he put out an email to millions of Americans saying, I'm going to jump in on the absentee ballot and early voting game.
	That's a big change for the president.
	And he addresses why he's had that shift in his mindset, which is, I don't want to start Election Day behind the curve anymore.
	One day, I want to get back to same-day voting and paper ballots, except for elderly and military people.
	But until then, I know how Democrats are trying to win.
	I'm going to beat him at that as well so that in 2024 we have a Republican landslide.
	Very detailed answer on how he evolved on the issue of absentee voting and early voting.
	I think a lot of people will be interested in that tomorrow morning.
	That's real news, and of course it is, because John Solomon is the purveyor.
	I recommend Carrie Lake be in charge of those election efforts, especially election integrity.
	In the meantime, you've got to go to justinews.com, you've got to follow Jay Solomon Reports, and tonight, 6pm for the show, John.
	Yes, sir.
	6 o'clock on Real America's Voice.
	Should be a good interview.
	Congratulations.
	Thank you for joining us.
	I'm Sebastian Gorka.
	This is America First coming to you live from the reliefactor.com studios.
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	All right, any cuts we haven't any cuts we haven't played?
	Oh, we haven't played Cut 8, right?
	Oh, and Cut 10!
	Do you wanna look at it right now?
	Yeah, play Cut 10 again.
	Democrat or Republican?
	Democrat.
	Democrat?
	Why?
	Why?
	Can you just maybe tell me some of the good policies from the Democrats?
	No.
	No?
	No.
	I love that.
	All right.
	I'll probably... Can you block?
	I'll do merch 10 and 8.
	Copy that.
	that, Merch 10 and 8.
	Mm-hmm. . . .
	. . . . .
	. denounced as being against their humanitarian goals.
	They say we're always against things, we're never for anything.
	Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant.
	It's just that they know so much that isn't so.
	That's a perfect way to tee up our third hour.
	Yeah, it's Making Movies Great Again with our co-host Mr. Reagan, aka Chris Coles, who uses that audio quite frequently on his superb YouTube channel.
	Today we will be reviewing, oh my gosh, what a classic, the beginning of a multi-billion dollar franchise.
	Rambo First Blood.
	Don't miss it.
	Make sure you are subscribed to our podcast.
	That's how you guarantee you never miss any of our one-on-ones, including making movies great again.
	Go right now to your favorite podcast platform.
	Go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever it is.
	Plug in my name, Sebastian Gawker, America First.
	Leave us a five-star review because it helps.
	And then share the links with your friends.
	Do you remember Rush had that phrase, low information voters?
	Here's something I found on the internet.
	Which is, I think, the apotheosis of a low-information voter.
	Cut.
	10.
	Play cut.
	Democrat or Republican?
	Uh, Democrat.
	Democrat?
	Why?
	Why?
	Can you just maybe tell me some of the good policies from the Democrats?
	No.
	No?
	No.
	Isn't that good, John?
	Isn't that great?
	I like it.
	Alright, we need to educate those people.
	Oh my gosh, there's Alex!
	I can see Alex suddenly.
	He's there.
	He's gone again!
	Oh, there he is.
	He's there again.
	Nice to see your face again, Alex.
	Let's go to Matt waiting patiently in North Carolina, line one.
	Hello.
	Hey.
	Dr. G. Yes, what's up?
	I'm talking with my Vietnam vet friend here in my yard and I'm listening to your show, as usual.
	We decided that the greatest thing would be for Trump to stop denigrating DeSantis and they would make a great president and vice president team.
	What are your thoughts, sir?
	Well, I thought you were a loyal listener to the show.
	I said that, I don't know, six months ago.
	I said if Ron DeSantis were smart, then he'd be the veep.
	But it's not on President Trump.
	He's not denigrating him.
	This is an individual.
	Did you hear what George Soros said about DeSantis on Friday, Matt?
	Did you hear what he said?
	No sir, tell me.
	George Soros actually complimented Ron DeSantis.
	That's not a good look for somebody who says they're a conservative.
	Likewise, when you've got billionaires like Ken Griffin behind you funding you, which is true about Ron DeSantis, the same Ken Griffin who funded McCain's campaign and even Obama's library, you have a problem.
	So if he's smart, If he's smart, he says, thank you, thank you, President Trump, for helping to make me the governor.
	I would like to support you, and I would like to be a member of your cabinet.
	But he's got to come out and say something, because everybody knows he's running for president.
	Don't be shy and stop taking money from left-wing billionaires, Ron.
	It really doesn't look good.
	I'm Sebastian Gawker.
	This is America First.
	Wow.
	Where did that go?
	Another hour down.
	An hour three.
	So much fun.
	Don't go anywhere.
	This is the Salem News Channel.
	Yes.
	Yeah, ins and outs.
	Hang on, let me plug back in.
	Are you there?
	Okay.
	We'll be back one-on-one with Mike Green after these messages.
	More on the truth about Bitcoin with our special one-on-one guest Michael Green here on America First.
	Don't go anywhere!
	More one-on-one with Michael Green after these messages.
	Welcome back to America First with me, Sebastian Gorka, and Michael Green.
	You're listening to America First with me, Sebastian Gorka, and Chief Strategist and Portfolio Manager for Simplify Asset Management, Michael Green.
	Welcome back to America First One on One with me, Sebastian Gorka, and Michael Green.
	Thank you.
	Of all the gin joints and all the towns in all the world, she walks in a mine. - Impressive.
	Most impressive.
	See the thing you people wouldn't believe in.
	I want to talk to God. - Let's go see him together.
	Colonel, you came out you came out here to find out why one of your machines blew a gasket.
	You don't seem to want to accept the fact that you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare.
	With a man who's the best.
	With guns, with knives, with his bare hands.
	A man who's been trained to ignore pain.
	Ignore weather.
	To live off the land.
	To eat things that'll make a billy goat puke.
	In Vietnam, his job was to dispose of enemy personnel.
	To kill.
	Period.
	Win by attrition.
	Well, Rambo was the best.
	Are you telling me that 200 men against your boy is a no-win situation for us?
	You send that money, don't forget one thing.
	What?
	A good supply of body bags.
	Is that not the best line of the movie, First Blood?
	It's not even Rambo, he's not even in the scene.
	The amazing Richard Krenner and Brian Dennehy.
	Welcome to Making Movies Great Again with my buddy, my co-host, the one and only Chris Coles.
	He goes by Mr. Reagan on YouTube, also the Alpha Critic.
	Chris, let's start by, I chose this movie as the follow-up to Your Choice of Rocky.
	Did you enjoy watching First Blood?
	You know what's funny is I wasn't really looking forward to it.
	Why?
	And the reason I wasn't looking forward to it was because I thought I had seen this movie maybe 10 times.
	But I realized that I'd seen this movie maybe 10 times in this sort of TV version where it was like cut to pieces.
	You know, they used to like wash these things up for TV for family viewing in the 80s.
	And I probably hadn't seen it since I was, I don't know, 10, 11, 12 years old, something like that.
	So it has been such a long time since I've seen it.
	It was like watching a movie for the first time again.
	And you don't really, you know, we watch these movies that we know are classics, modern classics, we consider them, right?
	And we don't necessarily remember why, or at least I don't always remember why.
	I just remember it as this sort of iconic film from my childhood.
	But watching this again, you realize there's so much that modern cinema owes to this movie specifically.
	Like, this was the Kind of like the first modern action film.
	This was so jam-packed full of stuff.
	Isn't this something we find again and again and again?
	Whichever movie we've picked, we've been doing this for a couple of months now, we find that that movie, whether it's Die Hard, whether it's this one, kind of becomes a genesis for a genre and has so much... Blade Runner!
	I mean, Blade Runner!
	How many rip-offs of Blade Runner are there?
	So, I think we're picking the right movies, don't you, Chris?
	I was thinking just, uh, yeah, we definitely are picking the right movie.
	I was actually just thinking yesterday watching a little documentary on the making of Andor.
	I know you liked the Star Wars show Andor and I didn't.
	And I realized part of the reason is probably because they made Andor look a lot like Blade Runner.
	They took this almost like an Art Deco design to it, you know?
	Yeah so I was watching so I watched the movie with my wife then last night because I don't sleep um I got up and at midnight I started watching the movie again with David Murrell the author of the book First Blood doing a um a commentary audio commentary yeah it was fascinating and he is a dude is he a movie geek
	This guy, I mean, he's reading the thing at the end with the credits, oh yeah, and that great stunt coordinator, that Hollywood name, Steven whatever, I mean, this guy's such an insider geek, he used to teach literature in college, and he says, you do understand what First Blood did?
	Up to that point, any movie that had action in it, it had one action thing in the beginning.
	Every act had one action thing.
	One for the first act, one for the second, and then a culmination.
	This is the first movie that actually had action from the first act all the way through the movie.
	It changed it forever, and that's how we get, you know, Die Hard, Fast and Furious, the Marvel movies.
	So again, an iconic genre-creating film.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And you forget it until you watch it again.
	And you think about when it was actually produced.
	And you realize, yeah, this was the first modern action movie.
	And it's really done well.
	I mean, you don't... That's something that I find recurring as well when we watch these films.
	It's like, the reason why it is iconic, the reason why it sort of generated an entire genre of filmmaking is because it was done perfectly.
	It was done brilliantly.
	And you really, you really are engrossed in the film from the beginning to the end.
	It's very difficult.
	Like in a modern film or modern show, oftentimes I find myself going to the kitchen, making some food, pausing the thing.
	You know, I find myself distracted by my phone, something like that.
	This film, I would get lost in the film.
	In fact, there was moments when I would try to do something else and I couldn't because I had to watch the film, you know what I mean?
	I just loved it from the beginning to the end.
	There's no downtime.
	So we just played the opening scene where he finds out that Delmar, his buddy, has died as a result of cancer from Agent Orange.
	It's bucolic.
	He walks up to that lake scene, the mountain, absolutely beautiful.
	And then the mood totally changes.
	When he finds out the last member of his Green Beret unit is dead, we switch to this scene.
	It's Hope.
	That's the actual name of the real town.
	It's meant to be in Washington State, but it's actually in British Columbia, right?
	So it's a Canadian town pretending to be American.
	But at this point, you see a total change.
	His face.
	He's lost it.
	Last guy out of the unit, out of his detachment, is gone.
	And then in steps Brian Dennehy, the sheriff.
	Let's talk about I love Brian Dennehy.
	Just a guy who didn't get enough recognition.
	If you like him, check out the incredible movie Gorky Park with John Hurt as well.
	An amazing thriller based in the Soviet Union.
	Talk to us, Chris, about Brian Dennehy's performance.
	Well, Brian Dennehy in this film, it's such a nuanced character.
	Yeah.
	Because he's not necessarily a bad guy.
	His buddy is worse than he is.
	Gant, the guy who falls out of the helicopter.
	At the beginning, yeah, exactly right.
	But he is essentially the instigator of everything that happens in this film.
	Like, he does push Rambo, as Rambo says, he pushed me, pushed me.
	Yeah, he's pushing him.
	He's being a bit of a jerk, you know, at the beginning of the film.
	And, you know, there are guys like that in the police force, right?
	This is where you get the whole concept of police brutality, right?
	Nowadays, we only talk about police brutality when it's about, you know, Black Lives Matter and stuff like that.
	But, you know, since the dawn of time, you give some guys guns and you say, protect the public.
	And there's going to be a few guys who want to abuse that power and nobody likes those guys.
	We can all relate to Rambo.
	I think we've all had situations where there's like many, many guys against us or many people against us.
	And we think, man, you'd just love to go to war with all these guys.
	And Rambo can do it.
	So Rambo is kind of like, you know, you're living vicariously through him standing up against this large group of men.
	And he can actually take them all out.
	You know, it's it's a it's a it's you need a villain like Dennehy.
	You need a guy like that who can really piss you off.
	Even though he's not necessarily a bad person, he does piss you off.
	He makes you hate him, despite the fact that he's not maybe the worst guy in the world.
	But you think a little bit, maybe he deserves it.
	And that performance is just beautiful.
	Yeah, there's a little bit more depth to it, of course, in the novel.
	In the novel, which was written 10 years before the film ever got made, this movie was in absolute development hell.
	It was in 4 or 5 different studios, 26 different script writers.
	It was a cursed project for many people.
	The original book is rather anti-war.
	David Murrell in 1960s, early 70s was rather anti-war.
	And the Teasel character, Sheriff Teasel, is a Korean War vet.
	And he doesn't get why these Vietnam War vets are so, you know, broken by their experience and he just, you know, served his nation.
	The only hint you get of that in the movie is a moment when he sits down at his desk and there's a little frame of his war medals behind him.
	They don't discuss his war record any more than that.
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	All right, let's come in with the Del Mar scene.
	Like I said, he's a friend.
	My name is John Rambo.
	We served on the same team together in NAMM.
	I don't know if he ever talked about me.
	I've got a picture of us together.
	Somewhere.
	There's a chunk in my pocket.
	Here.
	Here it is.
	Here it is.
	That's me.
	That's Danforth and Westmore.
	Bronson, Ortega.
	And there's Delmar, right in the back.
	You better put him in the back, because he's so big.
	If he didn't, he'd take up the whole picture.
	Look how big he is.
	Delmar's gone.
	What time will he be back?
	He died.
	What?
	He died last summer.
	Died how?
	Cancer.
	Brought it back from there.
	All that orange stuff, they spread it around.
	Cut him down to nothing.
	I could lift him off the ship.
	For me, I've seen this, I don't know, 30, 40 times.
	For me, that line, Chris, cut him down to nothing.
	I could pick him up.
	I mean, just so powerful.
	And this scene isn't even in the novel.
	The novel starts with Rambo walking into the town and Teasel picking him up.
	So credit to the scriptwriters.
	Also, again, just like Rocky, whether it's this scene, the sudden shock, what?
	He's dead?
	And compared to the end scene where he literally has a mental breakdown in front of Colonel Troutman, I'm sorry, Sly's a bloody good actor.
	Yeah, he really is.
	Actually, that scene that you're talking about, that final scene, Such a beautifully acted scene, and how they bookended the film with the moment that he first realizes his buddy has died of cancer, and the moment where he's sort of at his wit's end, and Troutman's trying to talk him down, and he breaks down crying, sort of holding Troutman as if Troutman is his father or something.
	And it's really a beautifully performed scene.
	It really does evoke emotion.
	Troutman's holding back tears himself.
	And, you know, you feel like, yeah, this guy does deserve something.
	He does deserve a second chance.
	He does deserve sympathy.
	And from what I understand in the book, Rambo is more of an animal.
	He's more animalistic.
	He's more violent.
	He's a killer.
	He kills about 200 people in the book.
	Yeah, right, right.
	And in the film, they made Rambo more sympathetic, and they made the sheriff a little bit more of a villain, which in the book, it was, I think, the opposite.
	You really relate a lot more to John Rambo's character.
	I think in this version, even though he is crazy.
	I mean, there is a moment where Troutman says, you know, you brought this on.
	He does suggest like you wanted this, like there was something in you that wanted this to happen.
	And I kind of get that sense, too, that maybe Rambo He just, he was like, he didn't really have anywhere else to go.
	What does he know?
	He only knows one thing.
	He knows war.
	He knows fighting.
	And, you know, when he has that breakdown, he says, look, you know, over there, I was in charge of these million dollar machines.
	Here, I can't even hold down a job.
	I can't get a job parking cars.
	And then he throws, there it is!
	Beautiful.
	He throws the M60.
	I can't get a job parking cars.
	I mean, just that, that, that reversal of fortune.
	Morel actually said his goal was to bring the Vietnam War back to America.
	To, you know, take the violence of Vietnam and then have it burst onto the streets of America back when he had this, you know, anti-war attitude.
	Ten years later, this was the first depiction.
	Let's give it due.
	This was the real first Brave depiction of PTSD in a popular movie, right?
	What these people went through.
	And just this speech when he says, you know, I came home.
	They spat at me at the airport.
	They called me a baby killer.
	How do they dare to do that?
	They didn't walk in my shoes.
	They didn't see what I saw.
	And then this incredible story of his friend being blown up.
	All right, let's talk about the other man in this scene.
	I just, I don't know what it was when I saw this.
	Let's have a photograph of him.
	The moment he comes into the tent.
	I just love this silhouette.
	Richard Krenner as Troutman.
	I got a soft spot for this guy.
	I mean it just connect with me as the father figure or something.
	We've got some more still pictures of him.
	And of course the amazing story that this was Kirk Douglas.
	Troutman was Kirk Douglas.
	He was hired to play it.
	He went.
	I didn't know that.
	Oh yeah.
	So Kirk Douglas was on the set.
	And he took the script, rewrote the whole script to make himself the lead of the movie.
	Wow.
	Changed it so that he kills Rambo at the end and he's the hero.
	And the producers and the director said, no, sorry, we're not making that movie.
	So he walks off, literally walks off the set.
	On a Friday, they call Krenner's agent.
	Krenner says, OK, and he's on the set in British Columbia by Monday afternoon.
	I never heard that.
	Pretty good performance, right?
	Pretty good performance.
	I mean, not just a good performance, but he's yeah, he has this kind of like stoicism to him.
	Uh, and he has a sort of power.
	Just, just his look.
	It's a weight.
	Just a glance.
	Yeah.
	It's a weight.
	He has a presence.
	Yeah.
	Exactly right.
	And, and you notice something.
	I find that era to era, like there's certain eras in which you will have certain looks, that people will have a certain look to them, right?
	And it'll become popularized.
	In the eighties, I mean, you look at this guy, there is something Reagan-esque about him.
	Yes!
	He does have a little bit of a Reagan look.
	Reagan as the grandfather to the, to the country.
	Krenna to the father of Rambo.
	I mean, it all seemed to kind of like work.
	You know, things vibrate in certain frequencies at certain times.
	And at this time, you had this Reagan-esque character, and he kind of had that disposition as well about him.
	Just not just the look, but just how he was.
	And yeah, beautiful performance.
	You know, it's a different performance than what Rambo did.
	And like I said, there was this moment where he's holding back tears when he's listening to Rambo's story, realizing what this man has gone through.
	And yeah, just every little piece of it is just perfect.
	You know, the casting's perfect.
	It's a perfect movie.
	And then we can go back to the scene in the police station.
	We can notice the other actors.
	This must have been one of Caruso's first movies ever.
	David Caruso, the carrot top there is one of the sheriffs.
	Then we've got Michael Talbot.
	I think we've got a picture.
	Do you recognize this sheriff?
	There's Caruso.
	Do you recognize one of the sheriffs is this guy?
	No, I recognize Caruso.
	Who's this guy?
	He's one of the supporting actors for all of Miami Vice, the TV show.
	Oh, really?
	And he's the sheriff who gets the wooden spikes, the punji sticks, in his legs and starts screaming, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Look at Caruso.
	Caruso puts in quite a good performance as well, right?
	As the cop with a soul, with a conscience.
	The nice guy, yeah, the good cop.
	And actually, I think Caruso is the first one that gets stabbed by Rambo, intentionally.
	Like, you know, obviously the one cop falls out of the helicopter by accident.
	But he actually stabs Caruso in the leg with his bowie knife, which is pretty crazy.
	Yeah, all of them give great performances.
	It's, you know, the thing about this movie is that they went in with a sort of philosophical idea.
	Behind it, behind the action, you know, this philosophical idea of the forgotten soldier.
	And these people, like you said, who go through PTSD, they went through this idea of there are men who abuse their power in the world, and these men, you know, should maybe be stood up against, and how things can just all go to heck.
	And so there is a kind of soul to this movie.
	Whereas I think a lot of films today, they don't have that same kind of soul.
	If it's an action film, they just forget about that part of it.
	Right.
	And so this isn't just an action movie.
	This is a movie with, I think, some depth and some substance.
	No, absolutely.
	This isn't just another car chase movie with lots of explosions or whatever.
	This has depth to it.
	This has a certain layer of complexity.
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	There are lots of favorite moments you can pick in the movie.
	There's one moment that's incredibly powerful, I don't know if you agree, and it is with Danahee and Caruso, that moment when, I think we've got the footage or the b-roll of the helicopter incident, When Galt has fallen out of the helicopter, because he's an idiot.
	He didn't have his safety harness on.
	Rambo throws the rock at the helicopter.
	Spooks the pilot.
	He falls out.
	Only death that we see on screen in the whole movie, by the way.
	The only death.
	Even Teasel survives.
	And then that moment... Just a little bit of a filmic touch here.
	When Rambo goes down into the valley, into the gulch, And Galt's body is splayed on the rock.
	Did you notice the steam coming off the body?
	I mean, somebody had to think about that and somebody had to work that out.
	The prop master had to work out how we're going to have, yeah, it's a warm body that's just oozing blood over this rock, but we're going to have steam coming up.
	It's really kind of like mythical.
	And then, you know, he pulls up the face of the bloodied man who was trying to murder him.
	And then later, Dennehy comes down to the body.
	Caruso makes some quip about, you know, this war hero, Rambo, with his Medal of Honor.
	And I don't know how they do this in movies, but he, Dennehy grabs Caruso by the hair.
	He's not faking it.
	He grabs him and he puts his face into Galt's dead body and he says, you know, We were hanging out with each other when you were wiping your nose as a little kid.
	There's some energy, there's some force, there's some real acting in this movie.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, that's coming from somewhere personal, right?
	He's either, you know, gone through some stuff himself or he's imagining, you know, that that is his best friend or whatever that he grew up with.
	And yeah, it's perfect.
	There's also a Clever bit of I don't know who thought of this idea, but I apparently there's a bit like so he's holding this guy up Rambo's holding this guy's killed up and he takes his jacket off.
	Yes, and what I what struck me about that is like you're holding a dead body that just fell from a helicopter onto the rocks covered in blood and This guy's like most people including myself would be like I don't want to touch it, you know I'm out of here Yeah, but Rambo's like, I might need this jacket, you know?
	And he's just like pulling it off the dead body.
	It's just so morbid, but it kind of just shows how tough this guy is.
	The scene apparently where Rambo jumps onto this tree, they actually had to have him somehow jump onto a tree at some point or something.
	And Sylvester Stallone does it.
	He actually does it himself.
	He breaks like two ribs doing it.
	He broke a rib, bruised his spleen.
	We actually have a still here of the way they did it.
	So it's a little grainy but I picked this off the internet yesterday.
	Massive air mattress with cardboard boxes underneath and allegedly, he says this in the interview, either a stuntman did it or either Slide did it, three times they jump off that cliff.
	Three times just to get the shot.
	Yeah, that's incredible.
	When you first mentioned we were doing this project, for some reason I had either heard or for whatever reason I thought that they had shot this in Oregon, back where I'm from, but they didn't.
	They shot this in British Columbia.
	And I was watching this film before I looked it up and I was thinking, I don't remember that cliff in Oregon.
	I haven't seen that.
	It's such a cool place.
	It's such a beautiful, beautiful location.
	It does remind me of my childhood a bit, riding around on dirt bikes.
	That is the kind of terrain that we would, you know, that I would have been living in, riding around, hiking, bicycling, whatever it was.
	And, yeah, it just did remind me of home a little bit, even though it's British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon are all kind of similar climate-wise in terms of the vegetation and stuff like that.
	So, yeah, it really reminded me of home.
	Speaking of dirt bikes, in the movie, just as a little fine detail, he escapes the police headquarters on the motorbike in the novel as well, but he's fully naked.
	He rides down the high street.
	Is that right?
	Completely buck naked in the movie.
	They left that out in the novel.
	They left that out in the movie.
	All right.
	Probably best.
	Probably best.
	We've got to talk about this amazing scene.
	We've got to talk about the famous knife that he uses.
	The tarp, according to Sly, is actually something they found in the forest that he said, I'm just freezing myself.
	And he actually said, OK, we're going to make this part of the movie.
	So they filmed him taking that stinking tarp out and then cutting it up and making it into a poncho.
	Allegedly, that is an improvised prop.
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	All right.
	I think I'm going to have to do this now and again.
	There are moments when I have to just geek out.
	It's a perfect place to do it.
	We've noticed him falling out of the tree.
	He manages to suture himself up.
	How does he manage to suture himself up?
	Because of this co-star of the movie, which is his knife.
	Soon we'll see the scene of him with Teasel.
	This is an iconic image of the whole movie after he's downed all the other members of Teasel's team.
	He just comes out of nowhere, out of the dark, puts this massive knife up against his neck and he says, don't push it, right?
	You know, leave it, drop it.
	What is that knife?
	Well, when I was a kid, I wanted that knife badly.
	It was designed by this man, Jimmy Lyle.
	That's the knife.
	That's Sly with Jimmy Lyle, a legend, an utter legend in the industry.
	I bought cheap Chinese knockoffs when I was 14 years old.
	And then eventually, when I got to a certain age, I afforded myself A real one.
	And here it is.
	I brought it into the studio.
	We're going to geek out.
	This is one of the knives made by Jimmy Lyle, exactly the same as the one that Sly used in the movie.
	They took the classic US Air Force survival knife, doubled the size, hollowed out the handle.
	You've got the compass that you see him use in the movie.
	You've got the sutures.
	You've got the needle and thread, the fishing line.
	So, uh, The only difference between boys and men are the price of their toys, Chris.
	That's such a cool prop!
	I mean, so that was an actual produced product before the film?
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no So they made it even bigger, even scarier.
	So when he's got the bow and he's in Afghanistan, he's got an even bigger one of these.
	But yes, this is the legendary.
	This is how the survival knife industry was born because of Sly and Jimmy Lyle.
	Well, I gotta say, as a Boy Scout, and I was a Boy Scout, that is quite a fun gadget.
	Knives are critical in a survival situation, for sure.
	That's what you want.
	And yeah, to have the screw cap bottom and all that kind of stuff, I mean, I think I had stuff like that as a kid, but it was, like you said, like a cheap Chinese knockoff, and that looks like it's real quality right there.
	Oh my gosh.
	Yeah, I kind of want that now.
	Well, go to eBay.
	It took me about 12 years to find one, so just get busy.
	This scene where the knife comes into play, the darkness of the forest There's something mythical.
	It's like one of those Grimm's fairy tales with the scarecrow in the dark.
	They start shooting at the scarecrow.
	Then he's jumping off, you know, these tree stumps from the sky onto the sheriffs.
	The mood of this movie is very Very nicely engineered, right?
	It starts with that bucolic scene by the lake, moves to the little town with the awful harassing sheriff, then we get this kind of mythical horror story in the forest, and then it progresses into a complete action movie.
	But there's no sense of artificiality or hiccups.
	These transitions, at least for me, Chris, are rather smooth.
	Yeah, and I mean, it all starts when they're trying to shave him.
	He has that flashback where they're trying to give him that shave.
	He flashes back to being tortured in Vietnam, and he's like, this is not going to happen.
	Takes out everybody in the police station, gets on the motorcycle, rides off into the forest.
	And I don't think that audiences necessarily expected What was going to happen after they got into that forest?
	But once he was in the forest, he was in his element, right?
	So he becomes the soldier.
	He becomes Rambo the soldier.
	And he's the hunter.
	They're the hunters, but then it flips.
	Well, it's a great line.
	That's a great line in the film.
	One of them says, like, you know, time to go a-hunting.
	And they go, hunting?
	He goes, I think he's hunting us, or something like that.
	Right.
	And it's perfect.
	And actually, I think I, like, laughed out loud when I heard that line, because it was such a good line.
	Good lines will make you laugh out loud sometimes.
	They're just so perfect.
	Yeah.
	But I didn't remember, from when I was a kid, I thought that this forest scene took a little longer than it did.
	He takes these guys out really quickly.
	Yeah.
	He's sort of buried in the bushes.
	You don't see him.
	Jumps up, stabs the one guy.
	The other guy gets hit by his little trap.
	Yeah, all these guys he takes out one by one.
	He could have killed them all.
	He doesn't.
	He lets them live.
	And then he warns Brian Dennehy.
	And you know what?
	Brian Dennehy at that point could have said, you know what?
	It's not worth it.
	Let's just walk off.
	This guy hasn't really done anything wrong.
	Except he does believe that he killed his good friend.
	And that accident That, I think, is what drives Zennehy's character to keep going after him, despite the fact that, you know, he got the upper hand on all of them in that scene.
	I mean, there was a lot of men there with Dobermans as well.
	With multiple Dobermans, with M16s, with a very nice Heckler & Koch .308 rifle.
	Let's play that little clip, Eric.
	Don't push it.
	Let it go.
	Let's play it.
	I could have killed them all.
	I could have killed you.
	I'm telling you the law.
	Not you, it's me.
	Don't push it.
	Don't push it, I'll give you a war you won't believe.
	Let it go.
	Let it go.
	Just that red line, that red line and that grease on Dennehy's neck, just that subtle, subtle little bit of makeup to say, yeah, yeah, he was pressing a knife against his neck.
	Is Rambo a bad guy or did they just push him?
	I don't think anyone really looks at Rambo as a bad guy.
	I think we all look at Rambo as the hero of the film, a man that was pushed too far.
	But like I said, there is that discussion that they have toward the end.
	Yeah, I think that Rambo didn't need to let this escalate.
	You know, he could have just gone along with things.
	The thing about it is we often say in real life, we often say like, you know, don't Resist arrest.
	Don't resist the police.
	Don't fight back against them.
	You're going to get shot.
	You're going to get killed.
	You know, then it's going to become a whole political thing, depending on what your skin color is, which is ridiculous.
	But that's how things are today.
	But yeah, I mean, if you don't fight back a police, you're probably not going to die.
	The thing is, this is a fantasy movie, right?
	It's a fantastical tale.
	The police are in the wrong here.
	I think Rambo is justified in fighting back.
	And he's a fictional character.
	He's a fictional character that Fighting against an entire police force can win!
	And that's just not realistic.
	And the National Guard.
	Don't forget the National Guard.
	Single-handedly fight the entire National Guard and come out victorious.
	It's just a fantasy thing.
	I think we all have this idea.
	One man against an army.
	We all wish we could do it.
	It's sort of like Superman.
	You want to have those superpowers, but you know it's a fiction.
	It's like the idea of being able to, like, jump inside a car crusher and actually, like, survive or something, or, like, tear the machine apart.
	You couldn't do it.
	But it would be nice to believe so.
	And in a movie, you can experience that, right?
	And that's what we get here with Rambo.
	We are talking First Blood, the beginning of the franchise, very different from the movies that followed after this one.
	Our buddy, our co-host is Chris Coles, Mr. Reagan on YouTube, the Alpha Critic.
	We're broadcasting to you from the relieffactor.com studios.
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	All right, he's in a cave.
	They think they've killed him.
	And then he gets on the radio with the man who created him.
	And here we get the iconic line.
	Play cut.
	What's up to me?
	What the man kept pushing, sir?
	Well, you did some pushing of your own, John.
	They drew first blood, not me.
	Look, Johnny.
	Let me come in and get you the hell out of there.
	They drew first blood.
	Just the subtle delivery of that second time around, they drew first blood.
	Sly knows what he's doing.
	Sly is really good.
	Now, researching this film, I read lots of stuff.
	I listened to lots of stuff.
	People want us to believe that this is Plato, this is Aristotle, this is going into the cave.
	This is, you know, there's all kind of philosophical stuff and overlays, and then when he comes out in the other mineshaft, it's rebirth, it's resurrection.
	I don't know.
	Is this a movie that has to be diced and sliced into these philosophical analyses?
	Oh, absolutely not.
	I mean, look, there are profound messages in this film.
	But it doesn't need to be this symbolism that people expect.
	Now, some films have that.
	Some directors very intentionally do that sort of thing.
	I think 99% of that stuff is lost on the majority of the audience, which is why I always think it's a little bit silly to put that stuff in.
	To me, that stuff is more of a fun game for academics, right?
	If you're like a film theorist or something like that, then you'll be able to There's a lot of films that rely on that for their longevity.
	They'll be taught at university.
	Like, I actually went to film school, right?
	And I'm in film school, and they're talking about this film and how there's all this symbolism, and it's much better than you think it is because of all the symbolism, and I'm just thinking, like, nah, it's not that good, actually.
	If you have to rely on all this symbolic meaning for stuff for people to be able to appreciate it, it's not that good.
	You need to be able to appreciate it just by watching it, right?
	And if it has to be explained, then I'm sorry, the filmmaker has failed.
	Yeah, well that's exactly right.
	I mean, the audience just has to be able to watch the thing and like the thing.
	That's it.
	It's as simple as that.
	And this is a film that has that stuff in it.
	I mean, if you read the novel, I think maybe you might take some more symbolic meaning from things, but a lot of this stuff is just This is a movie about survival.
	This is a movie about one man against an army and winning.
	And he's, you know, I don't even think it's a cave.
	I think it's a mine shaft, right?
	Or something like that.
	Maybe it is a cave, but it looks like a mine to me.
	And they actually blow it up with a rocket launcher.
	And he's able to kind of get deep enough into the cave to survive.
	He finds the other exit, right, and the other side, and he climbs on out, and yeah, and he continues the war, which he doesn't have to do.
	He could actually have just walked away at that point.
	He could have disappeared, but he hijacks that National Guard truck with the M60 in the back that becomes the iconic weapon for the poster.
	Let's put the poster up.
	How iconic is that whole outfit?
	Hang on.
	Look at this.
	Look at this.
	The official poster.
	There you have the official poster from 1982 with his M60, known as the pig to anyone who served in Vietnam for obvious reasons.
	One of the least reliable squad machine guns out there.
	All right.
	I have to ask you, Chris, Mr. Coles, Mr. Reagan, have you seen the original version, the original ending of this movie?
	Oh, no, I haven't.
	Is it available on YouTube?
	Can you actually watch it?
	Well, we have a grainy, grainy version of it.
	So this is the original version as screened to test audiences, which bombed play.
	Yeah.
	Don't let them do it.
	You train me.
	You hate me.
	You kill me.
	You owe me that.
	Do it.
	So Rambo gives .45 handgun to Troutman and says, you made me.
	You do it.
	You kill me.
	Troutman pulls the gun away, pulls it away from Rambo, refuses to kill him.
	And then Rambo grabs the handgun, pulls it into his belly and commits suicide.
	That's the original ending, Chris.
	As screen to test audiences who utterly detested it because they'd come to identify with this man and then what?
	You're gonna kill him off?
	The guy that we identified with is the rebel standing up to the bent cop and so they had to go back to British Columbia, back to that old furniture warehouse that had been turned into a fake police department and film the ending that we're familiar with.
	Well, you know, I think Sylvester Stallone's a little bit of a poet.
	I think he likes that idea of, you know, and it's a little bit too real, right?
	I mean, there's so much of this film, you know, throughout the movie I'm just sitting there thinking, like, they don't really make movies like this anymore, where a punch in the nose actually does stop a guy in his tracks.
	You know, I mean, you punch a guy in the nose and he's not expecting it and he's gonna be out for a little bit, you know what I mean?
	He just punches one guy in the nose real quick and then scurries off to go get the motorcycle.
	You see this guy going, You know, and that's how it's gonna happen.
	But in movies today, you punch a guy in the nose and he's like unfazed.
	Either that or he's completely knocked out.
	One of the two.
	But this, you know, if a soldier has PTSD that's bad enough...
	Yeah, he may kill himself.
	You know, this is a real thing that happens in real life.
	It's a tragedy.
	You know, it's something that we don't like.
	You know, it's one of those things in life that we don't like to see.
	And if we want to experience reality, right, we just read a newspaper.
	You know, we don't want to see that.
	We don't want to see our fantasies devolve into the most deplorable tragedies of our reality.
	And so you want to see Rambo live, and yeah, audiences were right to hate that, but I can understand the sort of, like, poetic nature of him taking his life at the end, you know, as a story.
	I understand what the inclination was to write that in, but yeah, that was the wrong choice, terrible choice, and I'm so glad they fixed it in the end, and we got all the... I don't know if all the sequels were great, but I do really love Rambo 2, so I'm very happy he Rambo 2 is great.
	I love Rambo 3.
	I mean, blowing up Soviet helicopters with a bow and arrow.
	That's pretty cool.
	Pretty cool.
	I don't know if I've seen... I don't think I've seen Rambo 3.
	You've got to see Rambo 3 because it's in Afghanistan and Stephen Birkhoff, that crazy British actor, plays the evil Russian colonel general.
	And I mean, he chews up the scenery.
	It is a fabulous, fabulous sequel.
	Just popcorn movies.
	And of course, him playing that Afghan A version of rugby on horses is always amusing as well.
	All right, last few little tidbits.
	I think the only movie in American history to have in the credits, and I noticed this yesterday when I was re-watching it, to have a rat wrangler and a boar wrangler for the scene where he kills the boar.
	They had a boar wrangler and a rat wrangler, and the rats were white laboratory rats that had to be hand hair dyed black because they were all white.
	A little bit of fun detail for you.
	Oh, and let's not forget, because this, you know, the debate on Die Hard being a Christmas movie, I think we put that to bed.
	Of course, you have to know that First Blood is a Christmas movie as well, right?
	There are Christmas trees.
	There's a Coca-Cola Santa Claus billboard as well.
	Yes, Coca-Cola Santa Claus billboard.
	There's little plastic pine trees, Christmas trees in the back of the chef's department.
	So First Blood is, of course, a Christmas movie as well.
	All right.
	Oh, and Rambo.
	Where does the name come from?
	So Morel did admit that there is a French poet he liked called Rambo.
	But the name for Rambo actually came when his wife came back from shopping and said, have you tasted these apples?
	And he said, yeah, they're great.
	Oh, they have a weird name.
	They're called Rambo apples.
	So he literally named John Jay Rambo after the apple his wife brought home from the supermarket.
	All right.
	I had no idea.
	Final thoughts.
	How will this go down in history, Chris?
	Well, I think that it's cemented in history as, you know, one of the great, one of the great action films.
	Maybe, you know, maybe the first ever true 80s action film, the film that sparked that genre.
	I don't think it's going to ever lose that.
	No.
	I think that what's really great is moments like this, shows like ours, where we go back and we revisit these films And we recognize why they are the classics that they are.
	I think that, you know, a lot of us, we sort of take it for granted because we see it when we're young, like I did.
	And I think, OK, I'll go see Rambo again.
	I've seen it a bunch of times.
	But then you see it in its entirety again, you know, maybe 20 years after the last time I've seen it, maybe even more than that.
	And it really is an experience.
	It's something that you can appreciate, you know, new aspects of it every time you see it.
	And it is worth revisiting.
	And it is something that students should study.
	And I think that it's something that just every red-blooded American man needs to watch every once in a while.
	Yeah, and it's important to study not just from the concept of, you know, film history and the dramatic arts, but because of its role in the history of America and the Vietnam War.
	I mean, up there with the Deer Hunter, far, you know, far less commercial movie, but the Deer Hunter and First Blood are crucial to our understanding of popular cultures intersection with the Vietnam War and those who served us in that conflict.
	Alright, before I go and put my original Jimmy Lyle First Blood knife back in the safe, we have to choose another movie.
	Mr. Coles, it is your choice.
	You know what?
	I really thought about this.
	You take these choices seriously, I know you do.
	I do.
	So I thought I'd give you a choice between two.
	We can go in two different directions if you want.
	We can stick with the grittiness of Rambo, or we can go in a somewhat lighter direction.
	I'm thinking either the very first Mad Max movie, which I think is a classic, or we pivot and we go to Ghostbusters.
	What would you rather watch?
	Ooh, that is hard!
	So I love Ghostbusters, especially the second Ghostbusters.
	However, I'm going to take one for the team, because I've never given Mad Max the original one, it's due.
	No, I've seen the second one a million times.
	Right, the second one is so much easier.
	The second one is so much easier to watch, and then Tina Turner and everything else.
	Eric, what do you think?
	Should we stay gritty?
	I agree, especially because, like you said, the first Mad Max does not get enough attention.
	It doesn't.
	It doesn't.
	Let's do it.
	Mad Max.
	It's been decided.
	Good choice, brother.
	Good choice.
	Thank you, sir.
	Mad Max next.
	All right, guys.
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