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May 17, 2025 - Human Events Daily - Jack Posobiec
56:39
THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 84 — South African Refugees? Best Movie Ever?

Charlie, Jack, Tyler, Andrew, and Blake discuss the week's biggest topics, including: -Why does the left hate white South Africans so much? -What is each cast member's favorite movie, and is Ben Affleck a good actor? -Is The Godfather Part 2 overrated? Support the show

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Time Text
Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard.
We've got another thought...
Crime Thursday here for you.
Jack Posobiec here back in Washington, D.C. Of course, last week I was there at the Vatican, so we got to see the giant St. Peter's Basilica behind me.
Now I have this wonderful graphic of, I guess the other ear, of the dome of U.S. Capitol, not quite as old as that one, also not designed.
By Michelangelo, but a lot cooler because it's America.
But we've got a really cool, really great set list lined up for today for the entire show.
Great program.
And also, Charlie Kirk will be here in just a few minutes.
But, guys, let's zoom out here real quick.
Do we have, I believe we have Blake, Andrew, and Tyler lined up?
Hello, hello.
Jack, I thought you were going to call the Devil's Basilica behind you.
The Devil's Basilica.
Oh, man.
You mean because it was founded by a bunch of Freemasons?
No, just because of who operates out there right now.
And that, though.
That's another good reason.
We have Charlie coming soon, though.
I've actually read the...
There's a Dan Brown book that has all the Freemasons symbols of Washington, D.C. What's it called?
Last Symbol or Lost Symbol or something.
And it's very similar to National Treasure 2. It's like...
Literally almost the same plot, but it goes through it.
It's just got a ton of good information about the craziness of DC.
Blake, that's all true, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a lot of wacky symbols in it.
They were into their esoteric symbology stuff.
Man, Dan Brown, that's a blast from the past.
Remember in the early 2000s, Jack, where churches would need to have special events because Da Vinci Code was so popular?
And we would need to have priests and scholars come and be like, no guys.
Jesus didn't marry Mary Magdalene.
This is a fictional book.
The Priory of Sion is not real.
It's kind of like when SNL did that Sarah Palin skit.
Like, I can see Russia from my house.
And everybody actually thought she said it.
It was just a...
It's just a line from an SNL sketch.
Everyone thought she said it.
I think they still do.
What it taught me, though, was the power of memes, right?
And so this idea that if you had a meme that was stronger than another meme, that just that one meme getting out there into the world and being released into the wild would catch fire across...
You know, across people from person to person.
And then even two Catholics who, you know, are sitting there like, yes, we've always believed this for thousands of years, but whoa, there's a Hollywood movie about it and everybody's reading this book at the beach and suddenly.
So it's like, OK, so if this is the way the world works, then it's the person with the most powerful memes that wins.
So before we start today, I have just a little bit of a hook.
We have a collab that's starting tonight at Turning Point Action with Conviction Co.
This wonderful hat that you can see here.
Fantastic.
All proceeds are going to Turning Point Action, which is really cool.
I actually like the hat.
They're a great hat company.
Great hat seats.
Conviction Co.
Where's my hat, Tyler?
We got you one.
Did you really?
We got you one.
There's four unique hats.
They're a special collab.
So if you go tonight...
And buy your hat, Conviction Co., they're going to go fast.
So special limited edition.
Help support the mission.
That's it.
So Conviction Co., Turning Point Action, we want you to have this hat.
This hat, we have three others that are up.
Nice.
Thank you, Conviction Co.
And Charlie is joining us.
Yes, he'll be here in 20 minutes or so.
In the blink of an eye.
But we're going to start off.
Yeah, we've got to get in there.
Jack, I think we're starting off with Kill the Boar.
Well, it's about time.
It's about time.
It's a terrible thing to say.
They're just running around, farming up all those crops and living there for all those years.
By the way, you guys will remember this, like when this story first hit.
I remember it was like two years ago, a year ago, when it first went viral, at least in American social media.
I recall the first one pretty well because...
I helped start it.
Did you?
So I was following, this was at Tucker Carlson's show at Fox, and we were following the news, because what happens is every few years they make a new push to seize Whitey's land in South Africa, and just seize it without compensation.
And then there will always be some sort of excuse where they'll delay it or not quite do it, because I think they know once they do it, the country will completely collapse.
Well, there'll also be a pariah state.
Yeah, and so what happened was, we ran a segment.
I think it was that they were about to do it, and maybe Tucker mildly misspoke or we mildly misworded it as it was already happening.
Or maybe we even did it accurately, but whatever it was, Trump watched that segment and then did a very angry tweet about it that night or the following morning, and then...
South Africa put out a statement disavowing this, and it was a minor diplomatic incident, and it's flared up five times since then.
I remember when the moment happened, and Jack, I don't know if you remember, I'm sure you do remember this, because you're very with it online, but it was like the outrageousness of it, like the cartoonishness of...
having a popular political party in any country, let alone one that's in the G20 and that's hosting international competitions, and we all think of it Yeah, I get what you're saying.
Says something outrageous.
Kill a certain group of people.
And then when you call them out on it, they're like, oh, it's just a slogan.
It's a historical protest song.
You can't get mad at us because we're black people that are singing jokingly about killing people.
It's so cartoonish, too, because in comparison, as an example, Charlie, you've heard about this lately, where you said...
Deutschland über alles, which is like a line in the German national anthem from the 1800s.
And they're weird because the Germans are a mentally ill country.
And it just means Germany above all.
And it means in the context, put Germany above petty rivalries.
It's like America First.
Yeah, it's like America First.
Not even more like America First.
It's more like if you were saying USA ahead of California or something is really what the meaning is in the song.
And then, like, they freak out about that, and you'll have, like, ponderous CNN pieces where it's, like, you know, the dark national socialist tone of saying that.
And then you have this song where the lyrics are just, kill the boar, shoot, shoot.
And, like, you could watch them, and they're, like, doing popping gunshots in the air.
The left is coming after me for jokingly saying, Deutschland über alles.
Deutschland über alles.
Well, not exactly.
Because in Germany, they're like, oh.
I mean, or there's, like, I think, like, 200 people got investigated or even arrested.
Germany, or find, or some sort of police action, because it became trendy to, there was like a club song in France, and they would play that song, and then they would say Auslander raus, which means foreigners out, and you would get in trouble for saying that.
And some of them did Nazi salutes with it, but most did not.
You could just get in trouble just for saying it.
And then on the flip side, of course, we have...
In South Africa, and it's just like, kill the boar, shoot, shoot, shoot, kill the boar.
And like, Yamiche from MSNBC doesn't...
Yamiche.
Yamiche, she doesn't have anything to say about that.
Sushi woman.
Sushi woman from...
Who looks like she ate sushi.
But like, deep fried.
But the point is that she's like, got nothing to say about that, and yet she was...
What was her line?
I'm appalled.
I think we have the clip.
She was appalled.
Everybody's frankly appalled that we're letting in 50 white Afrikaners that literally are under attack.
Wait, wait.
I always try to do this before we get into a topic.
And let's go to Blake.
Blake, can you just give us in a couple sentences, like, let's say people are living under a rock, they have no idea what we're talking about.
What is Kill the Boer, the land appropriation, and the South African refugee situation as it stands for?
Okay, sure, sure, sure, sure.
The Boers are, it means farmer in Dutch, or at least in Afrikaan.
I believe it's farmer in Dutch.
The Dutch are the original European settlers in southern Africa.
The Dutch had a colony there in the 1600s, so there have been Dutch people there for about 400 years almost.
And they have a long-term presence there, especially in rural areas.
They're very successful farmers, hence the name.
And, of course, they remain pretty successful and prosperous in South Africa today.
This has become highly controversial.
South Africa is a highly unequal country.
It has had some difficulties since the end of apartheid.
And so a popular political position in South Africa.
It's worth noting the African National Congress.
That's Nelson Mandela's party.
They are a Marxist-Leninist party.
They are basically a communist party.
And there are groups to the left of them, such as the economic freedom fighters.
And so a common demand in South African politics is that there should be forcible land redistribution.
That they should seize land that is owned by white farmers in South Africa.
Now, it's worth noting, this has been done in other African countries.
It's been done in neighboring Zimbabwe.
The result was starvation.
So, this is not a novel idea.
This is an idea that has been attempted, and it has failed badly.
Now, in addition to this, South Africa is a dangerous country.
No one denies that, and it's dangerous wherever you go.
But within the dangers there, there's a particular type of murder that happens.
They call them farm murders, where you'll have people, usually a lot of them are workers on farms or they live near them, and you'll have intrusions on farms and they will just rob and often horribly murder the people on the farms.
Now, yes, this is within the context of a lot of crime happening in South Africa, but there's very much a targeted element where you would not...
Need to do this level of depraved violence against them, except that you do, in fact, want to murder these white farmers who you've been whipped into a frenzy against.
And so this is what happens in South Africa, is people who are running these successful farms get targeted, and while they're getting targeted for these horrifying murders, you have members of the South African parliament, of the government, who talk about, we should...
Kill white farmers.
We should massacre them.
Or they'll greatly downplay it.
So I want to do two things.
First of all, we should play this clip because this guy is...
What's the number on the...
For every one of ours, five of them.
Can you give me the number on that?
I don't see it in the sheet.
Can we show Andrew's shot first?
It's the greatest shot ever.
I wasn't going to bring it up out of respect for you, Charlie.
I was just going to say the fact that he's a Huskies fan.
This is the greatest thought crime ever.
I'm hearing laughing and I don't like it.
The South Africans say kill the boar and us Huskies say something the ducks that rhymes with ducks.
I'm just going to say it.
I would cry if I had a U of A logo behind me.
I didn't know.
I was like...
Tyler, that's your usual seat.
I'll sit over here.
It was a set-up.
National runner-up two years ago.
What were you this year?
You should have won it all this year.
Charlie, first, the guy I'm about to show you a clip from, I want you to attempt to read his name.
You know how bad I am at this?
I know, that's why I sent it to you.
Try to pronounce that one.
It is M-N-G-X.
So this is like a funny ongoing joke that we have here at the Charlie Kirk Show.
I have a lot of problems with this.
Charlie and accents.
Everybody thinks he's just making fun of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but that's literally the best he can do.
I think my personal favorite...
My phonetics are tough.
My personal favorite is that with Bolsonaro, Javier Bolsonaro of Brazil.
It's just Bolsonaro, but it's Latin American, so he has the compulsion.
Bolsonaro.
When I met him and I interviewed him, the team was like, it's Bolsonaro.
And he's like, Bolsonaro, not Bolsonaro.
Maybe they can't do it either.
You can lean into your Anglo and just go with it.
But anyway, so this...
He has a name like he's a freaking Superman villain.
But anyway, this is a guy who's in the South African parliament right now.
He is an elected office holder.
Let's play clip 418.
"Each one person that is being killed by the Texas industry will kill five white people.
We'll kill the white people.
To kill one of us, we'll kill five of you.
We'll kill the children, we'll kill the women, we'll kill anything that we find on our way.
So I think he was saying he wants five white people, right?
So he says, for everyone they kill of us, we'll kill five white people.
And he's like an elected leader.
We'll kill their children, we'll kill their women.
And I don't know if it was in the clip, but he also says we'll even kill their pets.
But this feels like a perfect example of Michael Anton's Celebration Parallax, because if you listen to the media, they're like, it's not happening.
But it's good that it is.
And this is it.
So for example...
The statement from the African National Congress Party, they put this out the other day.
This is like a real thing.
We tweeted this, and so they have this whole thing disavowed, the falsehood of Afrikaner refugees, and they included this line.
So they have a thing where we commemorate our Constitution, affirms equality, dignity, and non-racialism as the bedrock of national life.
Then they say, what the instigators of this falsehood seek is not safety, but...
Impunity from transformation.
They flee not from persecution, but from justice, equality, and accountability for historic privilege.
We go on like this.
My favorite part, though, is at the end.
For media inquiries, please reach out to Mangaliso Stalin Konza.
That same guy that was...
No, no, different guy, but they just have someone who's going by Stalin.
Stalin's his nickname.
Oh, yeah, great.
Well, so so what's really crazy about what you're saying is and I pulled this up last year I'll have to pull it up again.
I know it's on my Twitter somewhere.
But so what we call this whole bit about you're saying about the past transgressions and the historical disparities, etc.
So usually that type of language when we hear it in the United States, we would refer to that as CRT or critical race theory.
So these are typically policies and DEI is a similar related policy at Corporations and you see these in schools and the military and many different large organizations and institutions throughout the United States.
Here's what's crazy.
In South Africa, they have it literally written into...
Their constitution.
So that means it's like in their Bill of Rights.
So if you wanted to get rid of CRT in South Africa as it stands right now, for every single position at every job, at every government institution, this has been something that's led to, by the way, massive blackouts, what they call load shedding.
So there's huge blackouts throughout the country because they can't keep their power grid going because they can't hire qualified people because they always have to go through this CRT filter for every single position.
The whole thing's falling apart.
And you can't just get a new president elected and turn it off.
You actually have to change their foundational constitution from the 90s, which, by the way, was something that Bill Clinton supposedly in his administration helped Nelson Mandela on.
Can we play this Yamiche clip?
Because I think it's I think it's telling.
255.
This is where she says it's appalling because there's just lots of crime and everybody's getting hurt.
It's not just white South Africans.
255.
So the Trump administration, they're saying that essentially these white South Africans assimilate better and they're also not as much of a security risk.
That's really causing a lot of people to be appalled, frankly.
And I should tell people that this violence that they're talking about that are dealing with these Afrikaners, I've been hearing from people that say there is violence in South Africa, but it's affecting everybody of every single race, Katie.
Really, it's what you said on Twitter the other day.
Deep down, what a lot of these people want is they actually want it to boil over and they kill a ton of people so they can come in and say, this is what happens because they were racist.
They deserve to have this happen to them.
They really, really deep down want that to happen.
It's kind of like with the Floyd riots where sometimes some people really wanted that.
I mean, you're totally right.
This relates to BLM rioting where people were just like...
Like, the liberal media was bending over backwards, twisting themselves into pretzels to try and justify the looting as, like, a form of reparations, or this is what happens.
What was AOC saying?
That, you know, riots are the language of a...
Oh, I mean, they would all quote MLK because he said something of that nature.
Something of that.
I forget what the quote is, but it's like, riots are the language of a...
Of the unheard.
Of the unheard, yes, or something.
And I think that's kind of the way that...
I mean, that's really besides the point, because they don't want productivity.
What they want is, they just, like, want to kill and just, like, I totally agree.
None of this can be understood without understanding that the core of it is driven by resentment and hatred of people who are productive, who are successful, who are innovative.
I mean, that's fundamentally what undergirds any Marxist-Leninist movement.
But I do think that they think, in the back of their minds, like, if we could just seize this land and give it to the black South Africans, everything would be better.
Because our people would then share with all the wealth.
The thing that...
I get that it's beside the point.
It's a secondary point.
But, like, I'm challenging that assumption, being like, if you stole all that land, it...
There is not a single guarantee that it would be productive moving forward.
I don't know the example of Zimbabwe, like how it's gone after, but it doesn't seem like it's gone very well after they drove all the white farmers out.
Yeah, what happened, Rhodesia was the gem of Africa.
It was the most beautiful country.
It's actually where Lion King was inspired.
The Tree of Life is actually inspired from Rhodesia.
And yeah, they got rid of the nice government and the Mugabe, who was actually funded by the Soviets, took over.
Went after the white man.
In fact, one of our board members, Mike Miller, had his ranch taken away from him.
He was an American jeweler who bought a ranch in Rhodesia.
And he was in America.
He got a call.
And they're like, the communists, basically the blacks, say that they control all your land now.
And they killed everyone in the ranch.
Not everyone.
So one of the cool things.
So the head of Rhodesia, when it was still...
White minority role was Ian Smith was his name.
He was this World War II hero.
He's a very fascinating figure.
And then he settles in Rhodesia after the war.
And he eventually becomes the head of the government there.
And one of the more interesting things is once he did step down as president, people said he should leave.
And he was like, I am never going to leave.
And he just settled in Harare, which is the capital.
I think it used to be Stanley or some other name.
But he settles in Harare.
And they're like, dude, they're going to kill you.
And he's like, No, they won't.
They're not going to do it.
And they never did.
And he just lived there the rest of his life.
And what's really incredible is if you look at videos of modern-day Zimbabwe, any news stories about it on YouTube and stuff, you'll find comments and they'll just say, like, I'm a black Zimbabwean and getting rid of Ian Smith is the biggest mistake we ever made.
It was like a huge disaster.
It's very interesting.
He's a fascinating figure.
Rhodesia edits are really taking off on TikTok right now.
They're number two behind Charlie Kirk campus clips.
Is that right?
What do you mean, Rhodesia edits?
Tell me.
No, it's like what Blake is talking about.
I was joking.
It's like the Zoomers found out about Rhodesia.
So they'll find footage of what Harare and different parts of Rhodesia looked like during that time.
It was unbelievable.
And they'll put edits to it.
It usually starts off with...
If you remember that movie Blood Diamond with like Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly and they're at this bar and he goes and she goes oh well that's something you know that's easy for you to say as a white South African and he goes white South African I'm a Rhodesian and she goes I thought we said Zimbabwe now and he looks at her he just goes do we?
And then it cuts to like the music comes in and everybody's like, and it's just showing how nice Rhodesia was when it was, you know, when it was not under communist control.
But they're really, really all over TikTok right now.
Yeah, and there's a story from the New York Times where they said that Dylan Roof, who did that terrible killing, posted a...
With a jacket calling the last Rhodesian.
So, of course, they're trying to connect love of Rhodesian.
There's definitely a few people for whom this is a kind of aspirational thing in a sort of gross way.
I don't think we should deny that.
What we also shouldn't deny is to the extent that South Africa remains functional, a lot of it is because of these Afrikaners who have...
And the English.
English and Afrikaners who have built up the country and have worked very hard to sustain it, and this sort of Marxist ideology that views any form of success or any wealth disparity as the greatest crime ever, they will blow the country to smithereens.
Well, one of the only other functional sub-Saharan African nations is Kenya, which is also in the English system.
So it's like, you look at...
The way that we do laws and the way that we have customs and a form of government.
I mean, the English exports across the world succeeded at the highest clip, I would say, ever.
And what they're doing is trying to dismantle that vestige as well as, you know, drive out the whites and kill the whites.
And a lot of the most successful African countries are often the ones that were the most determined to kind of sustain their European legacy.
Like, West Africa is not a great place in general.
But for about 20 years after independence, probably the most successful one was Ivory Coast, which is so French that they go around making everyone call them Côte d 'Ivoire instead of Ivory Coast.
I always say Côte d 'Ivoire.
Yeah, something, whatever.
Also, there's no elephants there.
The Ivory Coast name is basically a lie.
But anyway.
It's because they killed them all for the ivory blink.
Look, well, ivory's pretty cool, so it's understandable.
There's still an ivory embargo in the West.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, they were trying to make them go extinct, man.
It's not good.
I have a whole thought crime on that, which is when it was legal to hunt elephants, there were more elephants.
When the poachers now do it, there's less elephants.
Anyway.
It's basic economics.
Hunters want more.
If you want the truth, a lot of it was post-independence.
A lot of the order broke down.
I'm sure that's true.
You had a lot more, like, they would actually police against poaching.
Well, no, that's what I'm saying, but because there was an incentive to do that.
Well, there was an incentive to keep it on the up and up.
Yes.
To make it orderly.
Well, there's still incentives, but now what it is is African countries are kind of, they lack state capacity.
So it's like stopping crime if you're in, you know, well, for example, if you're in a...
South African city.
Like, they have police.
The police are just not super effective.
What is cool, you may like this, though, is in, I think in Kenya, maybe some others, but because poachers are so bad and, like, so aggressive, in some African states, I think Kenya, but I just want to preface that I might be wrong, the anti-poaching police have the right to just shoot to kill if they find a poacher.
And the most effective anti-poaching groups, though, are the mercenaries.
Poaching is a very serious thing in Africa.
Rhinos are going to go extinct because our next topic we'll get to.
The Chinese.
If there's an animal and it's beautiful and rare and you'd want to make an animal cracker out of it, the Chinese want to eat it because they think it's an aphrodisiac.
It's a major problem.
Or a cure for cancer.
Mostly aphrodisiacs.
It's typically aphrodisiac.
No, it's true.
When I was in China, I would see it everywhere.
And you would find people just absolutely swore by it.
And it's not like in some secret shop where you've got to go for the curio shop.
It's the 1920s Chinatown or something.
It's just all over the place in regular pharmacies and stuff.
That's crazy.
But yeah, so now, obviously, they're letting in some of the Afrikaners into the U.S. Which I'm thrilled about.
Yeah.
We should take 600,000 of them.
And put them in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
We have actually a lot here in Arizona.
We have a lot of South Africans?
Really?
Tons of South Africans, yeah.
I wonder what their voting rates would be.
We have a South African on one of our boards.
I wonder if we...
But you think it would be like 80-20?
Well, I don't know.
So some of them are...
95. So the thing is, some of them are...
They're all conservative.
I don't want to over-assume things because some of them are very devoutly religious in that old Dutch reform sort of way.
But the truth is, they are kind of also a lot of much liberal in the way white Europeans are.
I don't know.
The South Africans I've met.
At the experiences they have, what they disdain, they come here hating race politics.
That's one of the things they hate.
And it's beyond that, too.
It's just the entire cultural of being anti-Marxist.
Every single one that I've met here in Arizona, again, we have a lot.
We have a lot of oddly conservative South Africans, and they're all...
Vocal.
One of the best ear, nose, and throat doctors in Scottsdale was a guy by the name, he's still alive, a doctor, head and neck surgery, Dr. Gordon Chait, South African.
Great guy.
Anyway, I just happen to know a lot of South Africans.
Well, when I was growing up, there was already a lot of South Africans at my school in Nevada.
They're super decent people.
Well, they were good.
That was good family, very productive, smart kids.
We have to be careful.
So what we have to watch out for is, thinking on it more, I think the liberal South African Europeans are the English.
This is one of the most underrated, weird rivalries in the world.
English South Africans and Boer Dutch South Africans do not like each other.
Blood Diamond was Rhodesia?
Probably.
I didn't see that movie.
Our team has clips.
It had ties to Rhodesia, yeah.
Okay, well there's a Rhodesia clip from Blood Diamond that we could play if you guys are interested.
Oh, you should totally play it.
439.
Let's go play it.
I'm from Rhodesia.
We say Zimbabwe, don't we?
Do we?
Piss off, huh?
I'll just think of TikTok.
Ah.
Dennis.
Ah.
Oh, I get it.
I thought it was just a movie clip, but it's the TikTok edits that Jack's talking about.
We say Zimbabwe, don't we?
Do we?
South African?
I hate how good of an actor he is.
He's like Tom Cruise.
You can make fun of these people, but they're really good to watch.
There's bad famous actors like Kevin Costner, who's an objectively awful actor.
Like, very bad.
And then...
You like Kevin Costner?
I don't have strong feelings about him.
You just really hated draft day?
You will never see Kevin Costner through the same lens when you acknowledge he's a terrible actor.
No, he was really bad in Waterworld.
I feel like Gen Xers would go to the grave defending Kevin Costner.
I've always defended Waterworld.
You like Waterworld, Jack?
I love Waterworld.
People just love terrible acting.
I think it's so good.
Star Wars Episode 3 just got re-released and I had to endure people pretending that movie is good.
Yeah, don't get me started on that.
I liked Waterworld.
Obviously, everyone, we've covered Yellowstone and the Hicklivery of that a million times.
I thought the postman was good.
Remember the Tom Petty scene?
No.
When he walks up like, hey, man, I know you.
You used to be someone.
He's like, not anymore, man.
I'm just anybody else now.
So good.
I feel like every Gen X male.
Defends Field of Dreams.
But I will say that Costner used to be made fun of for how bad of an actor he was.
Like JFK, he was a terrible actor in that movie.
Oh, I never watched that.
And I guess older Kevin Costner is more regal and more...
JFK is not a good movie.
But another bad actor is Ben Affleck.
He's a terrible actor.
Yes, yes.
100%.
Except in Accountant, where he literally plays someone who has a mental disorder.
I get that one confused with Bradley Cooper.
Pearl Harbor, I always bring up.
No, the new accountant's out, but I haven't seen it yet.
But no, the only one I like, Ben Affleck, is the accountant where he literally plays someone who is supposed to be like a wooden mute.
So he's like neurodivergent with personality issues.
And it's like, oh yeah, he can play that just fine.
Oh my gosh.
The internet believes that Gwyneth Paltrow is the worst actress ever.
I don't think that's right.
I don't know.
How come Gwyneth Paltrow never threw Harvey Weinstein under the bus?
And they say that Keanu Reeves is a bad actor.
I think he's a good actor.
Keanu Reeves is like...
He's also super-based and smart.
He's a bad actor that has survived.
And so, therefore, he's become kind of likable.
It's become a shtick.
It's become a staple of our childhood.
So it's okay now.
He was in The Matrix, which is a dumb movie.
No, the worst one...
The absolute worst one, and I will go to bat for that he'll die on this hill, is Jennifer Lawrence.
Jennifer Lawrence did not act.
She is horrible.
All of her casting dried up after Harvey Weinstein got arrested, and nobody even said anything about it because everybody knew what was going on there.
She's objectively just a bad, bad actress.
Yeah, she drives me crazy.
What was the one she got really famous for?
Hunger Games.
Hunger Games, yeah.
You've sometimes used Hunger Games.
I like it.
It's a phenomenal story.
By the way, let's just be honest, while Hunger Games is good, is Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Yeah, Philip Seymour Hoffman is great.
One of the greats.
You want to talk about acting?
Anything with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Blake is uninterested in.
Well, I've been watching all of the Mission Impossible movies, because the final one is coming out soon.
He's so good at that character, though.
He's pretty good in Mission Impossible 3. There is that archetype of the sage, kind of crafty, there's something happening with Charlie.
Well, they're talking about bringing back Philip Seymour Hoffman and using AI.
Okay, no, I've got to stand against this.
No, I don't know.
AI actors are bad news.
Wait, but Charlie, Charlie, how bad is it that we are not going to get in this lifetime?
Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Steve Bannon.
No, I mean, come on.
I mean, that's worth AI, okay?
The one I always wanted.
I can't unsee that.
Look at this.
You got to put the picture up.
You got to put the picture up.
I'll put it up.
Yeah, sorry.
It's Steve.
Like, it's literally Steve.
I mean, come on.
And he would do a marvelous job.
He would do such a good job.
That Baby Bannon thing?
It would be like him doing that monologue?
I made that.
I made that this morning.
I made a baby Stephen Miller last night to just test it out.
And then I made Baby Bannon this morning and it did like a million views.
Should we do Baby Bannon?
What platform do you use to make that?
Which AI generator?
So you have to use a bunch together.
So you have to generate a still image of...
The baby version of someone first.
Then you get the audio.
So you want the actual audio.
This is too much work.
I don't care.
Okay, Jack, wait, let me just play it.
441.
This is Baby Bannon.
Facts are on our side.
Joe Biden never got 15 million votes.
More votes than Barack Obama.
Impossible.
We didn't pick up net 12 house seats.
When we lost the presidential.
Impossible.
We didn't win 19 of the 20 bellwethers and lose the presidency.
Impossible.
So I made a pen into a crayon.
I used this software called Hydra that lets you animate steel images.
How much time do you spend on this, Jack?
Honestly, that one took like 20 minutes.
It wasn't hard at all.
This 442, if you throw that image up, that is Bannon.
Again, you have to control the memes.
I mean, come on.
That's Steve Bannon.
How did he die?
I think it was an oxy overdose.
He was so young.
He was only 46. I think it was an opioid thing.
I think he was the first pretty notable person to die of opioids.
Straight heroin.
Great job, Frank.
He has one of the greatest scenes ever in Hunger Games when he's talking about...
Blue Dark.
He was in Moneyball.
I forgot about that.
He was really good in Moneyball.
Punch Drunk Love.
Boogie Nights.
One of the greatest actors ever.
Almost famous.
The talented Mr. Ripley.
He's the CIA guy in Charlie Wilson 4. Before the devil knows your dad.
It's going to be a great idea, Charlie.
It's going to be a great idea.
Well, is it me or has there not been like a cultural transformational movie in like five years?
Like everyone gravitates towards it.
Everyone talks about it.
Five years?
Ten years?
Look at the side-by-side.
It's pretty good.
Our lifetimes?
The Paul Thomas Anderson movie.
No, like Avatar was the closest I could think of to that.
And yet Avatar's like had no cultural like sticking point at all.
Avatar was awful.
I think it's subconscious.
Consciously convince people to be environmentalists.
No, that was like the end of environmentalism.
People were environmentalists in the 90s, the 2000s?
No, no, no.
It had all these indigenous people.
Mass adoption of climate change didn't come until after.
Isn't there another one coming up, Bill?
It was a virulent...
Subculture.
We had that terrible The Day After Tomorrow movie in 2004.
And the plot was just like Fern Gully plus Pocahontas.
Avatar was not kicking off any of that stuff.
That was all just James Cameron absurd fandom.
Made a ton of money.
We got all those terrible 3D movies afterwards.
But the cultural staying power of it was minimal.
Although I do remember...
There was this extremely bizarre article.
It was the highest grossing film ever.
That's the thing though.
Compare Titanic.
Because it was a roller coaster.
People still talk about Titanic.
People went to Avatar.
People went to Avatar because it was like a roller coaster.
It was like the first big 3D movie.
It's like those movies.
And James Cameron spent a lot of time, by the way, in the interim between Titanic and that, making those movies that you watch at the observatory kind of things where you're like, oh, wow, I'm at the planetarium, but now I'm underwater.
Look at me.
Look at this.
That's all it was.
It was just a series of scenescapes that looked cool in 3D.
And that's why I did so much business.
I was in China when it came out at one point.
And I mean, there'd be theaters in downtown Shanghai where it was the only thing playing on every screen in a 24-screen theater.
And the Chinese loved it because they'd never seen anything like that before.
But it wasn't because of the plot or anything like that.
They could care less.
They just thought it was a cool experience.
And then we got Avatar 2, The Way of Water.
That already came out.
It already made...
Over two billion dollars, and it was equally irrelevant.
Or not irrelevant, but it had no staying power.
That's what you really have.
I want to watch The Master again.
It's the Scientology movie.
I really want to watch it.
It's so good.
So apparently adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind is still...
Yeah, Gone with the Wind is still number one.
Yeah, when you adjust for inflation, it's like Gone with the Wind and Star Wars.
Who watches these Avengers movies?
Dude, I have no idea.
Avengers Endgame, Avengers, Avatar.
I think Marvel Slop is one of the...
People love their Marvel Slop.
Avengers Infinity Wars, Avengers Endgame.
What is going on here?
They've been going down.
Yeah, they have.
Adjusted for inflation.
Now, this can all be pretty misleading because back in the day, a lot of these movies didn't have...
Like, total global releases.
Yeah, total global.
And then E.T. is up there.
I think The Godfather is still one of the greatest movies of all time.
Oh, I could watch The Godfather 1. I will die on that hill.
Godfather 1 is better than Godfather 2. Correct.
But, you know, Godfather...
Well...
Let me think about that.
3 is the worst, in my opinion.
I think 3 is the weakest.
Everyone thinks 3 is the weakest.
It's the weakest, but it's still a good movie.
I like 2 because it's not a provocative tip.
I've never talked about Godfather in this show.
The worst part about Godfather 3 is that Sofia Coppola is in it, and the best part of Godfather 3 is that she gets shot at the end of the Godfather 3. Spoilers.
People hate on her, but she's not that bad.
Let me think about this.
The reason I like Godfather 2, I think they successfully talked about the backstory.
And they did a really good job of flashbacking.
That's my problem with it.
You don't like it?
Well, we get this in a lot of movies now where people will be like, this movie was good because it explained how a thing happened.
Who cares?
I think Godfather 2 is the same way.
It's exactly correct.
Back to the Future 2. But that wasn't the only part of the movie.
It wasn't.
I think the stuff with Corleone is good.
I think the stuff with Michael is good.
But they aren't really that strongly related to each other.
I'm sure some film nerd can say these things play together.
But really, for the most part, they don't.
There's no, like, you could tell the entire story that was in Godfather Part 2 from, like, Michael's perspective without needing...
The Vito stuff.
And really, the only part where the overlap matters is at the end where there's the flashback and it's right after he's killed his brother.
His brother's the only one who sticks up for him when he joins the military.
That's a great scene, but you didn't need any of the prelude stuff.
Yeah, but that makes the whole movie.
Yeah, but none of the original Vito cutting that dude open with a knife has anything to do with that.
You're just getting more information that you already knew that doesn't actually add to the dramatic tension of the events that are ongoing.
Whereas in the first movie, it is a wholly self-contained film within one timeline, as opposed to needing these, like, bridges to go into the past that don't end up going anywhere.
Also, you get rid of Robert De Niro, and I think that's something we can all agree on.
Well, De Niro is in Godfather 2, right?
Yeah, yeah.
No, that's what I'm saying.
If you cut the flashbacks out, you would get rid of Robert De Niro.
I'm sorry.
Hot take.
He's actually a good actor.
Do you want my really controversial movie take?
No, I know, but he deserves to be.
I don't like Goodfellas.
I actively dislike it.
I agree.
I think it's overrated.
Yeah.
I'm not a huge fan.
Producer Foz is like banging on glass.
Do you want to know, the one with Jack Nicklaus is better than Goodfellas.
What's that one called?
The one we talked about, the Boston one.
The Departed?
Much better than The Departed.
The Departed has The Departed.
So first of all, this is me being super Midwestern German.
I generally don't like mob movies.
He's a good actor.
I'm sorry, I hate how good of an actor he is.
I generally don't like mob movies because I personally watch them and I just want the police to kick in the door and gun everyone down for the sake of law and order.
So I can't relate to these.
So you don't like The Sopranos?
I've never seen The Sopranos.
Breaking Bad?
I've never seen Breaking Bad.
See, they don't fully appeal to me.
That's so interesting.
So, you know, what's interesting with The Departed, you might want to go watch this, it's a remake of a Hong Kong movie.
And the Hong Kong movie is called Infernal Affairs, I believe.
And I haven't seen it, but my understanding is, a big issue with it is, in the Infernal Affairs, the Matt Damon equivalent character is...
More sympathetic than he is in The Departed.
So he survives, I believe, the end of Infernal Affairs.
But it's like, okay.
I think it's something like, you know, the Leonardo DiCaprio guy dies, but the Matt Damon equivalent goes straight as a cop.
I'm going off memory here.
It's been a long time.
But then when they made it in America, Matt Damon guy was so despicable that no one would tolerate him surviving that movie.
So they clearly just ran out of it.
They were like, how are we going to resolve this?
Kill everyone.
And they just killed everybody.
The amount of information you retain is unbelievable.
Infernal Affairs.
Infernal Affairs.
He's right.
I've seen the Hong Kong version.
It was one of the movies I would watch when I was doing language learning, even though I don't speak Cantonese, but you can still do it with the Mandarin subtitles.
They're similar.
And you're right.
The Matt Damon character is like...
He's just not a douchebag.
He is in the Departed version.
In the Departed version, you want him to get shot.
And then in this, it's like, oh, he's actually kind of cool.
It's more like he's seen as an upstanding, honorable police officer who's put into a bad situation, if that makes sense.
Now, are we Pulp Fiction fans?
Oh, yeah.
I love Pulp Fiction.
Is it really Trump's favorite movie?
Really?
It's not like Phantom of the Opera or something?
I never knew that was my favorite movie.
Well, there is a Phantom of the Opera movie, but it sucks.
The Phantom of the Opera movie, this is going to annoy you again because I remember it.
So the original Phantom of the Opera, the musical, takes place in the 1890s.
In the movie version, they changed the year to 1870 for no reason.
And that was the one year they should not have picked because in 1870...
Paris is surrounded by the Prussian army and they're all starving and they're eating the animals in the city zoo.
It would be like if you made a movie that was set in 1955 Germany and you just moved it to 1945 for no reason and there was no mention of World War II at all and everything was just normal.
I don't find that annoying, for the record.
I think it's really intriguing that you have all this information.
Well, but at the same time, the real issue with that isn't the dating of it.
And by the way, Emily Rossum is fantastic in that.
It was that Gerard Butler can't sing.
For all the fun that he is and the great characters that he's played in 300 and everything else, I'm sorry, but King Leonidas should not be singing love songs.
You know, to Christine Daae.
Like, it just, it really didn't work.
It really didn't work.
Well, that was a good time.
That was good, yeah.
Thanks for taking us down Movieville.
And then the dude from The Conjuring.
Wait, wait.
If Pulp Fiction is Trump's favorite movie, Rapid Fire, what is your favorite movie, Tyler, go?
Oh, I'm a big, I'm a big, we were just talking about this, Interstellar.
Oh, interesting.
Really?
I have a friend that's in there, actually.
That's like such a generic thing.
Isn't that Bradley Cooper?
You know what?
I'm out.
I can't do that.
We lost Jack.
It's McConaughey, right?
Matthew McConaughey.
I get those two confused all the time.
What about you, Blake?
Gun to Head, I usually...
I'm not big on number one favorites, but I usually will say Die Hard is my favorite action movie.
Love Die Hard.
My favorite comedy movie.
The original, though, right?
I usually say...
Die Hards are great.
For comedies, I usually say Thank You for Smoking.
No, Die Hard 2 sucks.
Thank You for Smoking is really good if you've never seen it.
Die Hard 3?
Which one is that?
That's the one in New York.
The Bombs in New York.
Wait, Thank You for Smoking.
Samuel L. Jackson's in that?
That's David Sacks' movie.
Oh yeah, he was involved in that.
He was the producer.
So was Elon.
Elon Musk had a cameo on Thank You for Smoking.
Die Hard 3 is really funny because Die Hard has the best TV edits.
So, like, in Die Hard...
Well, in Die Hard 3, remember, the villain makes him, like, wear the sign...
I don't remember it.
I gotta see.
He has the sign that says, I hate N-words.
Oh, I don't like that one.
In the town.
And then, on TV, they edit it digitally to say, I hate everyone.
And it makes it really funny, because then this crowd is surrounding him and, like, threatening to, like, you know, kill him or beat the crap out of him.
It's like, they're really militant about him saying he hates everyone.
The first Die Hard is one of the greatest movies.
And then on the first one, when he says, you know, Yippee-ki-yay, you know, MF-er, they change it to Yippee-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon.
Wait, I have a thought crime on this.
I have a thought crime on this.
My thought crime on this is that I like Lethal Weapon and the Lethal Weapon series better than Die Hard.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
What's your name?
What are the codes, Renee?
Russo or Rene, right?
Full circle, who are the bad guys in Lethal Weapon 2?
I don't remember.
The South Africans.
The South Africans.
And they have diplomatic immunity and they're using it to do crimes, but then they revoke it.
Who are the real bad guys based on in Die Hard 1?
Die Hard 1?
It was a bunch of irritating Germans.
It was Scandinavians, too.
Right, but they're based on the Red Army faction who are an actual left-wing KGB front group that operate in West Germany.
By the way, there's such an op on the modern American mind of who we villainize because of these movies, right?
Like, it is...
It's plausible that we hate South Africans or a certain cohort hates South Africans simply because of the movie depictions and things like that.
I mean, we really have to be on guard for that, right?
I mean, I grew up hating Germans when I was like 12 years old because of all the World War II movies I watched.
What was your guys' favorite movie, though?
Same.
Godfather or Lord of the Rings.
Oh, no.
We'll go down that track.
Is the Godfather gay?
No, Godfather's the least gay.
It's a movie filled with Italians being emotional.
No.
You're just being ridiculous.
With Italians being emotional?
Dude, this is the thing.
Italian men can get away with way more effeminate stuff and still be straight as an arrow.
I like The Dark Knight.
I think it's a great movie.
Oh, The Dark Knight's great.
I could watch The Dark Knight.
I agree with you.
It's really hard for me to pin one down.
I was going to go with...
The Godfather 2. I like it better than 1, but I love 1. And then I was going to go with...
This is going to get me in trouble.
Back to the Future 2. 2. I love going to the future.
I love the hoverboard stuff.
But that's just watchability.
He goes to the future and then goes back in time.
It's got everything.
I'm going to have another really terrible take.
You guys are going to hate me for this.
But Good Will Hunting, I still love that movie.
I know.
I know.
What is wrong with you?
My second top movie is Fury.
I love Fury.
What is wrong with you?
I haven't seen Fury.
No, it's not a Fury movie.
Speaking of villains and who we're allowed to have as villains, did you ever see Ben Affleck and terrible Ben Affleck movies?
Terrible Ben Affleck movies that also go into who we can have as villains.
Did you ever see The Sum of All Fears?
Yeah, I hate that movie.
So The Sum of All Fears, the book by Tom Clancy.
The villains who get a nuclear bomb and they use it to blow up the Denver Broncos, I think.
The villains in that are Islamic terrorists.
And when they made the movie in 2002, they were like, we can't attack the religion of peace.
That's not okay.
So they got rid of the Islamic terrorists and they made them neo-Nazis instead.
And then he was also on Bill Maher being like, you can't say that about Muslims.
One good Ben Affleck movie that doesn't get enough appreciation?
The Town.
He went back to Boston for...
The Town's alright.
It sounds good.
It's all right.
It's legitimately a good film.
It's all right.
It's a good flick.
It's a solid film.
You know who's one of those underrated actors?
I was looking...
Russell Crowe.
Russell Crowe.
Very underrated.
Well, The Gladiator is still one of my tops.
Do you like Fat Rock Crow as much or not?
I wanted to say...
They don't make movies like that anymore.
The new Gladiator...
Russell Crowe.
I didn't say Braveheart, but I thought it was too cliche.
So Ridley Scott, I'm sure...
The original Gladiator's good.
Alien's good.
Napoleon...
Wait.
Wait, beautiful buying.
And Gladiator 2 are two of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life.
If you ever want, Charlie, if we need to fill time, you can give me a camera and a microphone and I could go for an hour straight uninterrupted on how bad Napoleon was.
That was a terrible movie.
We did that.
Now, here's the question.
Yeah, we did, but we didn't go along enough on it.
I could have really.
Go back to Russell Crowe, though, because, you know, we gotta say, it's just weird, though, when I see the current big, fat Russell Crowe.
As opposed to like the gladiator Russell Crowe because that's like in my head that's always who he'll be but I guess he's on that like Taylor Swift tour diet or something, because he's just all chubbed up now.
He got fat during A Beautiful Mind, which was right next to you.
Yeah, Russell Crowe's gained a ton of weight.
The Shawshank Redemption, I forgot.
That's a great film.
That video of him driving the little scooter in The Pope's Exorcist is the funniest thing.
That became this meme for a while, because it's big, fat Russell Crowe driving a tiny little Vespa around Vatican City in a priest cassock.
It's hilarious.
Reservoir Dogs, great movie.
Fight Club, great movie.
Do you guys like Reservoir Dogs?
Love Reservoir Dogs.
I'm sure it's fine.
I haven't seen it.
I overall don't like Quentin Tarantino that much.
I feel like whenever I'm watching a Quentin Tarantino movie, I can't help escaping the feeling, this is a movie made by a...
Really weird person.
He's a sick puppy.
Kill Bill is objectively good.
He's obsessed with feet and is weird.
He's got a toe fetish.
He has his people talk forever in a way that I don't find interesting.
I like Kill Bill.
I just remembered the Russell Crowe Roger Ailes.
Did you watch The Loudest Voice?
No.
No one's watched this.
You gotta watch it.
Wait, he interviewed him?
No, he played Roger Ailes.
It's not a great depiction of Fox and all that stuff, so it's not like...
Do you guys remember the first time you saw Memento?
Do you remember that?
I have not seen Memento.
And even if I had, I would have forgotten it because you don't remember things.
I don't want to ruin it, but you should watch Memento.
Speaking of Quentin Tarantino, you know that new movie Sinners that's out right now is a total rip-off of Dust Till Dawn?
No.
It's the vampire one that he did with George Clooney, by the way, who has been in the news this week for Joe Biden, apparently.
The new movie Sinners, Michael B. Jordan, is kind of like a South Africa version of that because it's literally just a movie about instead of two guys trying to fight against vampires in a bar, it's two black guys killing white vampires also in a bar.
I missed that last part.
Also in a bar, he said.
Wait, we do actually have topics that we were prepared for.
Should we move on?
We have meetings stacked, so let's go five more minutes.
Pick your best one.
I literally have three more meetings.
Welcome to the office.
They made Pete Rose eligible for the Hall of Fame.
Did you hear about this?
Let's go!
Yes, we do!
They announced that the ban, Manfred, the commissioner of baseball, announced that they are revoking the ban on Sheila's show.
You are obsessed with Pete Rhodes.
Yeah, because Blake doesn't like him.
We can talk about the Menendez brothers if you want.
Do you want to do that?
Menendez brothers should have been shot.
Never bet against this team.
Most hits in MLB history.
He totally bet against his team.
17-time All-Star at five different positions.
Three-time world champion.
The guy that banned him died the next week.
Rookie of the year, two gold gloves, silver slugger, World Series MVP.
I mean, come on.
Okay, so there was another guy that Rob Manfred revoked the ban on.
I'm trying to remember the name.
But he was involved in...
Corrupting the morals of a 14-year-old girl.
Would you at least oppose putting that guy in the whole thing?
Yes, I don't even know who that is.
Pete Rose!
Okay, well...
Pete Rose also did that.
Can you prove it?
Well, he admitted it in court, but...
Well, I mean, it depends what you mean by corrupting the morals.
I think he did.
Well, you know...
Was he, like, criminally convicted for being a pedophile?
He was sued for it later and admitted that they had a relationship.
It was the 70s.
It was...
I'm kidding.
I don't know.
I don't know that part of it.
That's a lesser known part of the discussion, candidly.
Was his prohibition based on that?
No, that just came out later in addition to all the gambling he did.
He just doesn't seem to have been a very good guy, unfortunately.
And he totally bet on baseball.
But not great people are still allowed to be in the Hall of Fame.
It's not a character test.
For me, the key thing about...
Pete Rose, when he says he didn't bet against his own team, is that he lied at every step of the process.
He said, I don't bet.
And then he said, I bet, but not on baseball.
And then he said, I bet on baseball, but not in games my own team was involved in.
And we finally got up to the point of...
I bet on my own team, but never against my own team.
And that is when he accepted a ban to stop any further investigation.
And that's key to me.
He took the ban to avoid any further investigation which could have been criminal in nature.
So he took this ban to stay out of prison.
And then he suddenly tries to have it both ways by coming back 15 years later and saying, now I'm going to admit I bet, but not on my own team.
I'm going to admit betting, or not against my own team.
I'll admit I bet, including on my own team.
But please don't do all the...
Just stop the investigation.
He always was just...
He would lie on everything, and then when he thought there was some advantage to admitting some part of it, he would finally cop to it.
And so I just think he has no credibility for that sort of thing.
And then he also just does other crappy stuff.
But that's not what the Hall of Fame is about.
That's not what the Hall of Fame is about.
Should steroid guys get in the Hall of Fame?
Look, there's a point here.
Babe Ruth was really...
He's not objectively a bad dude.
Really?
What did he do?
Have you not researched anything about Babe Ruth?
What did he do?
The guy lived in whorehouses and just drank himself to the ball club.
No, no, no.
He drank?
He would be literally on the floor.
They would pick him up.
He'd go up and swing and hit the ball.
That makes him more impressive as a baseball player.
Yeah, but everything you're saying is like, he's just a bad dude.
Babe Ruth was like a bad dude.
I don't think having alcohol is comparable to betting on baseball.
He was a raging alcoholic.
He lived in literally the slums.
I'm telling you, like, whorehouses.
Like, this is what he did.
And what you're saying is, just because he's a bad guy, we should still celebrate Babe Ruth as the baseball player that he was.
We gotta go.
Sorry, guys.
Email us, freedomatrailacurk.com.
Thanks for committing thought crimes with us.
Talk to you next week.
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