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May 26, 2021 - Viva & Barnes

01:58:40

Sidebar With Amanda Milius - Viva & Barnes LIVE

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Time	Text
	We're live.
	I hear a dog barking upstairs.
	I hear kids banging around.
	They're watching Pitch Perfect 2, 3, 4, or 5. I don't know.
	And yes, I was late by 10 seconds because I needed to share the sneak peek of today's vlog with the community members on membership YouTube.
	Locals, Patreon, and Subscribestar.
	Plus, I don't actually see either Robert or Amanda in the backstage, so hopefully they both come.
	Okay, well tonight, the plan is to talk to Amanda Milius.
	And for those of you who don't know who she is, she's...
	I hate these types of things.
	She's the daughter of the royalty of Hollywood, the screenwriter.
	What did he write?
	Red Dawn and Apocalypse Now.
	When you're the offspring of someone who's reputable in a domain, it becomes impossible but to live in the shadow of that giant that came before you.
	And I say this humbly as the son or one of the offspring of one of Montreal, if not Canada's most reputable, once upon a time, litigation attorneys, my dad.
	And so my dad has a name and a reputation in Montreal.
	And sometimes you live in that shadow, and it has its perks sometimes in terms of undue recognition, where I didn't necessarily do anything as an attorney to deserve any recognition, but having the same last name as Mortimer carried some weight.
	And it comes with some pitfalls in that...
	You know, you get in front of some judges who had an angry practice with your dad 20 years ago, and what better way to get revenge than with the seed of your adversary?
	I see Robert in the house, so I'm going to, before bringing him in, just give the standard disclaimers, and then Robert and I will discuss until Amanda comes.
	He doesn't look like it's bad news, so I think Amanda is still going to come.
	Standard disclaimers.
	Oh, Amanda's in the house now.
	I see everyone backstage.
	This is the beauty.
	Does everyone hear the pitter-patter of annoying stomping coming from upstairs of my basement studio?
	It drives me nuts, but if nobody hears it, all the better.
	Okay, standard disclaimers before we jump into this.
	You're on slow-mo, 20 seconds.
	That's just to control the chat.
	Superchats.
	YouTube takes 30% of Superchats.
	If anyone's offended by that or egregious and wants to support the channel, there are other methods of doing it.
	You can visit us on Locals, and you're going to hear Barnes plug it 15 times tonight.
	Maybe not 15. Five times, I think, is average.
	If you're going to be miffed if I don't read your Super Chat, don't give the Super Chat.
	I don't want anyone being miffed.
	Disrespectful Super Chats, if I read them and I see that they're disrespectful or harassing, I'm not going to bring them up.
	Thank you for the support if that's what you want to do with it, but I'm not bringing up Super Chats that are overtly...
	Insulting just for the sake of it.
	It does not buy a right to insult.
	It is to support the channel and to support us.
	What else?
	No legal advice.
	It's the internet.
	I always say keep it civil.
	Keep it respectful.
	If not, out of respect for others, out of respect for me.
	But it's the internet and we all know what that is and we're big boys and girls and we can deal with it.
	Now, without further ado, and it's not ado, it's further ado.
	I got swiftly corrected on that the last time.
	I'm going to bring in Barnes, then I'm going to bring in Amanda.
	Oh, and tonight, we're talking to Amanda Milius, director of The Plot Against the President.
	I watched it today.
	It's great.
	Well-produced, well-directed.
	The content is mind-boggling for anyone who didn't already have this in their brain.
	I didn't learn anything new from it because Robert and I have been discussing it for the last year and a half, and I delved into the Flynn saga.
	That was my learning curve.
	We're getting ahead of ourselves.
	It's an amazing documentary for anyone who does not fully appreciate the extent of what went down from 2016, late 2016, to 2020.
	We're going to talk about it and a bunch of other stuff, what life is like working in the White House.
	So let me see where we are in the chats because I saw something come up.
	Okay, boom.
	You missed my 829th super chat, Real Bambooga.
	You can always count him for a good joke.
	And I saw a yellow one.
	First time sending a super chat.
	I farted on the 30% that YouTube steals, not your 70%, though.
	Love your content.
	In fairness, you know, other platforms take, you know, 5% at Patreon.
	Video licensing agencies take, you know, 40%.
	Other platforms take 20%.
	So it is what it is.
	It's the easiest way to do it, but some people don't like feeding that beast.
	Okay, one more, one more.
	Gen Z Zager says, you need to issue a correction.
	You said you have barbecue for your birthday, but then you said it's typically steak.
	Barbecue is sauce, smoke, and brine.
	Okay, no retracto for that.
	I have barbecued steak.
	Okay, let's get this going here.
	We got five minutes in.
	We got people coming in.
	Robert, how you doing?
	Good, good.
	Okay, now we're going to bring in Amanda.
	Amanda, how you doing?
	Hi, guys.
	How's it going?
	Very good.
	I'm going to tinker with this.
	That's the layout that looks best.
	Okay, Amanda, I've seen you've done some interviews.
	You've done some live streams.
	I'm going to bring up...
	Every now and again, I hope it won't distract you.
	It's going to come up and be where you are on the bottom.
	If it's too big, it might overlay on your screen a little bit.
	But if it distracts you, let me know.
	I just like to bring up as much comment as possible.
	Everything distracts me.
	It goes with the flow.
	It'll be fine.
	This is amazing because I spend the day or two before doing a stream with someone who I've never met before, don't know, doing research.
	Look, we'll get the elephant out of the room because you're Amanda Milius.
	Your father, his name was...
	Oh, jeez.
	What's his first name?
	I forgot it now.
	John Milius.
	John Milius.
	Sorry.
	All I know, everywhere I go, when I put in Amanda Milius, John Milius comes up.
	Hollywood royalty wrote some of the greatest movies ever.
	I guess the first question is, what is it like living with that over your head from childhood to adulthood?
	I mean...
	I grew up in Los Angeles.
	So, you know, amongst the people, I mean, unfortunately, where I went to high school, I went to one of these, like, you know, really private high schools in L.A. with the most, you know, insane neurotic of the Los Angeles people.
	And my dad was hardly the most significant person.
	I mean, I, you know, so I didn't really think about it that much.
	He's so kind of unusual as a guy and as a dad anyways that, you know, the fact that he was well known in some circles really wasn't like, that wasn't the weird part about being raised by him.
	It was the, you know, parenting decisions, the drama, you know, my mom was also an actress and There's plenty about growing up in LA in that situation that is weird besides just the fact that he was well-known.
	I'd say one thing is that I really appreciate him.
	I myself am a fan of his work.
	I know that's a little weird because it's got this very nostalgic feeling to me when I watch it.
	But I feel like it feels that way for a lot of people.
	People talk about Red Dawn a lot these days.
	I've got the Red Dawn poster.
	Always.
	And the Russian generals had.
	I don't know if you can see that, but that's always been there.
	And it's, you know, it's something that I think a lot of people are really attached to that period of time in cinema, you know, with the cool film school brat breakout generation.
	And we're so far from that in movies that, you know, I just I appreciate the fact that I had the benefit of having this guy who's frankly a genius.
	Be somebody that I can go to and, you know, occasionally tell my problems to and hear really weird analogies about Vietnam in response.
	So, I don't know if it helped me that much, but...
	Well, I mean, there are legends, and then there's your dad.
	I mean, back when movies were movies and men were men, everything from Apocalypse Now to Dirty Harry, from Conan the Barbarian to Red Dawn, for those people who don't know, I think he described himself as a Zen anarchist, a guy with a teddy bear in one hand and an AK in the other.
	If I had an alter ego in cinematic life, I'd be your dad.
	So I'm a huge, huge fan of his work.
	He really helped bring back the film industry, which was actually in trouble in the late 1960s.
	Directors from George Lucas to Martin Scorsese sing his praises, and deservedly so.
	He had roles, of course, in Jaws and other things.
	Some of the best dialogue out of Jaws is from your dad.
	Just brilliant, brilliant work.
	He talks about the old sort of...
	You know, the Homer-inspired, the old storytelling structure that was based on sort of real narration that's really been lost in modern Hollywood culture and about, you know, reading the great literature, reading great books and the rest.
	Did that have any influence on you growing up?
	Yeah, no, for sure.
	I mean, one thing, look, I ended up going to film school.
	I went to the same film school that he did.
	I went to USC.
	And, you know, he...
	He was able to do something kind of, I find really cool, which is throw out the screenwriting handbook.
	You know, every textbook that you get, if you want to get into film writing, they kind of harp on these formulaic options, these ways to write, and he was always very against that, and he totally threw it out.
	And then, you know, look at the fact that his scripts turn out to be some of the most memorable that ever were.
	And it's very interesting, the three-act structure, all of that stuff.
	I just saw this article recently quoting him about that, and I think that that's one of the coolest things that he talks about.
	Somebody asked, just the comment was, how is he doing?
	He's okay.
	He's, you know, he had a stroke, like...
	10 years ago, so he's retired.
	He doesn't write anymore, but he lives in Los Angeles.
	My parents actually still go shooting every weekend, even though they've been divorced for 100 years.
	They actually go to the shooting range and don't shoot each other yet.
	That's as amicable of a divorce as anyone can expect.
	You know what it is?
	It's because she let him keep the guns.
	She used to tell me that.
	She'd be like, that's all he cared about.
	I took the house.
	All he wanted was the guns.
	And I was like...
	Not a bad deal.
	For Los Angeles divorces.
	So yeah, no, I mean, he's good.
	He still goes shooting.
	I mean, that's really what he likes to do.
	He likes hanging out with his shooting buddies.
	And I know he wishes that he could have made Genghis Khan.
	Genghis Khan is the last sort of real epic script that he wrote.
	And there's been attempts over...
	The last 10 years, 15 years, there's always an attempt to try to resurrect this movie.
	It's never happened.
	And it really is one of his most amazing scripts.
	So it would be cool if that happened one of these days.
	What happened in view of...
	I mean, after he made Red Dawn, even though the movie was kind of misunderstood by critics, but you have a movie that inspires...
	Viral rage by the second most powerful government in the world at the time, the Soviet Union, led to this onslaught of criticism of him.
	Can you describe, tell that story?
	Yeah, I mean, I guess it also got the first PG-13 rating because it had the most deaths per minute.
	The most murders per minute at the time of any movie that had come out, which when you see it today, it's absolutely tame.
	I mean, it's like a kid's movie at this point.
	So, you know, it had a lot of reaction.
	I think, I try not to say, like, he was blacklisted after that, because there's a lot of reasons that his career went the way that it did, but that was certainly part of it.
	It was a very, you know, it was the beginning of Hollywood.
	Really falling apart in that way.
	I'm not going to say it was like cancel culture, but he had a much harder time working as himself.
	He continued to be a writer and a rewriter.
	You know, a lot of times the things people don't know is one of the main things he did after that was he was always given scripts by other people.
	And, you know, he was one of the most successful rewriters.
	Of that time period.
	And then, you know, he didn't work for a long time after that, but he made a movie called Flight of the Intruder, which came out right around the same time as the first Iraq War, which you would think would, you know, it was a Navy movie.
	Did not help it.
	It's, you know, somewhat unknown.
	Stop.
	Sorry, I have a cat that decided to go completely insane.
	That's the cat that we just heard in the background?
	Yeah.
	I thought that was a kid.
	That is one vocal cat.
	Okay.
	I'm going to get read all about it by the...
	What is it?
	The...
	The men's whatever group about women that have careers and cats, because I'm a very conservative person with the lifestyle of a liberal.
	I live alone in an apartment with two cats and a career.
	But anyway, sorry, yeah, my dad.
	Yeah, so one interesting thing he did after Red Dawn, and he really...
	Had basically almost retired was he wrote the television show Rome, which I think is really underrated.
	It's one of the best pieces of fiction about that historical period of time and about politics.
	I think it's one of the best.
	I mean, I'm very inspired by Rome.
	I think it was such a great series.
	I try to watch it every few years and it's just amazing.
	I actually, I've watched Rome.
	It was great.
	I didn't know.
	I didn't know.
	It was fantastic.
	Now that you know he wrote it, you can feel him in it when you watch it.
	It's a very Millius-esque writing at times.
	That's very cool.
	Now, Amanda, I want to apologize for the shirt.
	I was going to wear a fancy shirt, but I figured anti-media shirt would be the most applicable for what we're going to invariably get into discussing tonight.
	We've jumped ahead of your life.
	I like to go back to the childhood with everybody, just so everybody can know, because I tend to think like, you know, Number of siblings, life growing up says a lot about how someone, I guess it says about how they turned out or lets you interpret how they turned out based on how they were.
	First things first, how many siblings growing up?
	What was your family like?
	When did your parents get divorced?
	And all these questions as to how you got into film school.
	I think your method is sound because they do that in therapy too.
	Everyone in Los Angeles has been in therapy since we were all six years old.
	So I'm very familiar.
	But I have two half-brothers from my dad's first marriage.
	And they're much older than I am.
	One of them is the DA.
	And the other one is a jazz musician.
	And they aren't as...
	I'm similar or kind of involved with my dad as I am.
	I think somehow either it was a sort of like twist, you know, a kind of cruel twist of fate to him that his sons would end up sort of rejecting his politics and lifestyle, and then I would end up being like 10 times worse.
	You know, I like to joke with my dad about how, you know, how does it feel not being the most right-wing person in the family anymore?
	So, but yeah, so my parents, they both actually are from...
	Missouri, they're both from St. Louis, which is crazy.
	But obviously they met in Hollywood.
	They met in the film industry.
	And they were married for like 10 years.
	Got divorced.
	I was really young.
	I mean, my dad was still out on movies, sort of.
	I mean, I really wasn't around for much of his active career.
	And, you know...
	I lived with my mom.
	I would go shooting with him.
	You know what was interesting, I guess, is that I spent all of my formative time with him doing the things that he likes to do.
	He's not the kind of guy that's going to go play with the kids doing what they want to do.
	You know what I mean?
	If you wanted to hang out with your dad, you had to go to the cigar club, or you had to go to the shooting range, or you had to go to his office and hang out there and entertain yourself.
	Riding up and down the stairs of Sony on a dolly and goofing around.
	So I think that was actually cool.
	I think it was kind of good for me to get used to that.
	I don't know that it was good for me to be...
	I was raised so significantly at the Havana Club in Los Angeles because there's a lot of stuff there that's really not for kids.
	And I became kind of a chain smoker, so I'm still a smoker, so I blame him.
	But, you know, I mean, I see you've got the cigar.
	You've got the milliest.
	You always have that, though.
	But yeah, so I mean, I think that was actually kind of cool.
	You know, you got to spend time sort of seeing him be him and tell stories and and, you know, get into arguments with people at the studio.
	And you got to see this stuff that was was actually pretty cool.
	Yeah, I like the Havana Club, but most of the stories that I have are not for public consumption.
	That's right.
	Right.
	Like, why would you bring?
	But like he brings me his daughter there like every weekend.
	And they're just like, okay, dude, we're just going to put you and your kid at the table.
	Does she want an ashtray?
	Do you want a cocktail?
	What do we do with her?
	If I may ask the totally indiscreet question, I think I know the answer.
	How old are you roughly?
	Oh, that's classified.
	I'm sorry.
	What era was it that you're being taken to the Havana Club?
	Yeah, it's tough to say.
	It's definitely between...
	It was after 1960 because it opened.
	So, yeah.
	That's my dog.
	We've all got pets going out of control.
	So what led to going to USC film school?
	Now he's been taken away.
	Yeah, exactly.
	When did you actually end up going to film school and what was your thought process in that?
	Okay, so I went to USC after I had worked in the film industry and kind of around the film industry for a while.
	I hadn't intended to.
	I went for grad school and I worked in the fashion industry.
	I had done all...
	Oh my God!
	Sorry, this is the loud one.
	Okay, down you go.
	Yeah, no, so I've done a lot of things around the film industry, and it really just made sense for me to jump in and actually go, and, you know, I really decided that that's what I wanted to do, and I think that was the right choice.
	You know, a lot of people go to film school right after undergrad, and it's really not, sometimes that works out, but I think I benefited a lot more from having gone to the school after I'd already worked for a while, and then I was really ready to kind of do my own thing when I came out.
	And so were you thinking about going into film then?
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, you don't go to the most expensive film school in the country and drag yourself over the coals and not want to work.
	That's what was insane about me leaving and joining the Trump administration.
	I mean, when I say it was a crazy decision, other people in my life thought that something had happened to me.
	They were like, what do you mean?
	You were just starting on this film career.
	You just toured a movie.
	What do you mean you're going to go move to a motel?
	In Nevada and volunteer for the Donald Trump campaign.
	Like, that sounded insane to anybody knowing where I was at that moment.
	I mean, I had just finished touring this movie, this little short film, which I had done to graduate USC.
	And I just didn't like where the film industry was.
	And it's one of those things where you just have this, like, life moment where just in my gut, I was like...
	This sucks.
	I don't like this.
	I like making movies, but I don't want to compete for the Women in Film grant.
	I don't want to even work on half the movies that these people are talking about.
	There was just nothing appealing about it at the time.
	And I just got grossed out by the whole industry.
	And so I started volunteering for the Trump campaign, and it was...
	It was just such a happy, wonderful time.
	I was hanging out with these really interesting people who were not from Los Angeles, who were just regular people that were really hardworking, and they were very unique, and everybody had a different reason for supporting the president.
	There was just this unexplainable, it's not going to be repeatable, this incredible joy of being around people working on that campaign.
	It was a magical time.
	And I was getting more and more into politics, and I wasn't able to talk about politics, certainly in Los Angeles, certainly anywhere I was working or anything like that.
	And so I just got stuck.
	I just didn't want to leave.
	So I kind of embedded myself, and then they hired me, thankfully.
	And that's how that happened.
	I thought I'd never make movies again, is really the answer.
	Well, we're going to get into...
	I mean, the documentary was great.
	First question I had was, what was the short movie and where can people see it for full...
	I don't know if it brings back cringe when you watch it.
	I think it's cool.
	It's really cool.
	Look, it's a post-apocalyptic lesbian weed western.
	So, it's one of those.
	And it's called The Lotus Gun.
	And it's...
	I mean, it's still out there.
	You know, I'm not...
	I'm not, like, you know, tweeting it every day, but, like, I mean, it's still out there, and it's really great.
	It actually stars one of the girls that ended up forming the podcast Red Scare, Dasha, and she's amazing in it, and I think it's her first movie, and she's just, like, a total star.
	I mean, they're both really great actresses.
	I think it's cool.
	I mean, again, it's a student film.
	You know, it's not, you know, it's not, like...
	Star Wars.
	It's a thesis project.
	But it's really cool.
	It's good.
	And I'm very happy with it.
	But yeah, after all that, I really didn't think I was going to make movies again.
	I thought I would just do politics.
	And I certainly didn't think I would ever do a documentary.
	Politically speaking, growing up, what was your family like politically?
	I understand now you're more right than your dad, but was he overtly conservative or how did that work?
	Well, he's not exactly, that's kind of a good question, right?
	He's not exactly conservative in your capital C way.
	You know, he always had a resentment towards the bowtie conservatives, the sort of National Review thing.
	He was almost into Trumpism before there was Trumpism.
	He's very pro-defense, but he's not...
	He's not, thank you, Mike.
	He's not one of these guys that was like sort of traditionally Republican.
	He really didn't like the relationship between Wall Street and the Republican Party.
	But I mean, he certainly was not a Democrat.
	I mean, he's very, like I said, very pro-defense, very independent.
	Very small, small government, kind of, as he said, he calls himself a Zen anarchist, which for years I didn't really understand what that meant.
	And now I've come around to pretty much decide that's the only ideology that makes any sense.
	So I'm on board.
	My mom was always very conservative.
	Both my parents were on the board of the NRA.
	They were very weird for Los Angeles.
	My mom was cruising around LA in her Porsche with her NRA stickers on it.
	We used to joke and call her the Bel Air gun mom.
	Very odd for my Brentwood upbringing.
	That was not like anybody else.
	So I got that from them a lot.
	Certainly my mom wasn't very super political on the day-to-day level, but one thing that they always really made me understand was the importance of the Second Amendment, the importance of the Constitution.
	So that was something that they definitely instilled in me.
	And of course, I had my Never-ending, rebellious phase, too.
	It's not like I grew up and was this really good conservative...
	I was a hippie for pretty much...
	I mean, I guess a heavy metal hippie for most of my life until I had to get dressed and go to a job and look like a normal person.
	So it's not like I was totally...
	Exactly.
	Socially conservative.
	But I think it kind of all makes sense in this era.
	Well, I think he describes an anarchy as what the government does should only be allowed to cattle, not to people.
	That's what he said.
	Government is something that should be done to cattle, not people.
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	I mean, the guy is so good.
	So good.
	Agreed.
	It was a good encapsulation of it.
	So can you explain to people, I mean, I think people have some sense of it, but not a full sense of it.
	I have many friends that work in Hollywood, and they keep their politics as silent and quiet as conceivably they can.
	Can you describe in the current Hollywood era why you joining the Trump campaign was going to be burning bridges that would be impossible to be rebuilt?
	You'd have to recreate a whole new path.
	Well, look, it's not like I left the Trump administration and then I went and I go and I tried to go get rehired in Hollywood.
	Like, I wouldn't even consider that because, you know...
	It's just a completely different situation.
	I mean, I've got half of the people I went to film school with will never speak to me again.
	I'm utterly shocked and appalled.
	Some of them are still friends with me, which I really appreciate, quietly, silently, behind the scenes.
	And there's no way.
	I mean, Hollywood has become so...
	It's tripping over itself.
	I mean, it's eating itself alive to become more woke than the next person.
	Working in the Trump administration, there was one point where somebody wrote me and they were like, I think it was after I had left the administration, I was actually working on the movie.
	And they were like, don't think we're going to forget this.
	We know you worked in the Trump administration.
	And I'm like, forget.
	I'm not asking you to forget it.
	I talk about it every day.
	I wear the t-shirt.
	I'm not in the closet.
	This isn't something I'm going...
	I'm going to sneak back to Hollywood and change my name and hope no one notices.
	I mean, yeah, I certainly don't think you could.
	There are a lot of people, there are more people these days that are, I don't know if it's conservative, but conservative friendly and certainly more interested in Trumpism and what happened in 2016 that aren't going to talk about it.
	You know, you definitely get that thing that Andrew Breitbart used to talk about all the time where you get tapped on the shoulder and someone's like, "Oh, hey, you know, I actually agree with you.
	Like, I just, I can't talk about it because I'll never get hired again.
	I've got a family to feed." And you understand that.
	I mean, not everybody can do that.
	I was in a unique position the first time to, A, be able to just up and leave, you know, to just cut.
	Cut loose and go to Washington, D.C. and join the Trump administration.
	And then afterwards, to have been in the unique position to have made this documentary, and now I have my own production company, I don't have to go back to Hollywood.
	And that's the kind of thing I like to say, is that nobody does.
	Things have changed enough that in the film industry, with technology, with making things cheaper, that's been going on for many years, that you don't need the gatekeeping of Hollywood.
	I would argue that the better content is going to come out of not Hollywood, whatever that is.
	That could be the right, that could just be the dissident content creators, whatever you want to call it.
	I just don't see...
	You can't have a creative environment and something as stifling as what Hollywood is at this point.
	So Robert asked about you burning bridges for yourself.
	This is a question I've always had because I imagine it happens.
	Does your career choice end up in you burning other bridges for family members with Hollywood, with the environment?
	Because it happens.
	We're in a unique spot, though, because my family...
	We start, right, with our dad.
	So he's already as conservative as you can possibly be in Hollywood.
	So it's not like...
	Um, it's not like anybody's going to be like surprised where they're like, did you hear that Amelius turned out to be a Republican?
	Like that can't be that big of a surprise.
	So I don't, I think that in some ways it's a little bit lucky.
	I think, I think actually a lot of people, frankly, I didn't change my politics.
	Even when I went to film school, everybody knew I was Republican.
	Um, I think people kind of put up with me and sort of just didn't care a little bit more because my dad was this known entity and he was this character and he had kind of Become this caricature, right?
	Like, you've got the Walter Sobchak literal caricature of him that people sort of found funny and they could gel with it, at least before the Trump era, when then things became totally insane and everyone's a fascist and whatever.
	But, so no, I mean, my family doesn't, nothing that I'm going to do is going to affect them.
	I mean, like I said, my brother's a lawyer.
	You guys would, I am definitely not.
	And my parents are retired, basically.
	So I don't really think that I was burning bridges for anybody but myself.
	Now, where did you start out, for people that don't know the backstory, in the Trump administration?
	Um, I started out so there's this thing called the inaugural committee, which is was after I worked on the campaign, somebody suggested that I work there.
	And I think that's a place where if you're not used to working in politics, a lot of people go and they work in the transition.
	I'd never worked in DC before I never worked in politics before.
	I never thought that I would I thought there was no way that I was actually going to get hired.
	And I thought that was crazy, that it was a crazy idea anyways.
	And so I worked on the inaugural committee, which is Kind of cool because it's very similar to production, right?
	Like, I've planned movies my whole life.
	I've planned productions.
	I've planned live productions.
	That's what the inauguration is.
	It's a production.
	And a lot of politics is that, actually.
	There's a lot of skills that transfer over.
	And, I mean, I actually think that filmmaking is kind of cool in that way where...
	It really just instills a very good work ethic and an efficiency and an ability to do things as cheaply as possible and as quickly as possible.
	And I think you can kind of translate that to almost any industry.
	So transferring into politics actually worked.
	It actually made sense.
	And so after that, I worked on the inaugural committee.
	That was super fun.
	And then I joined the State Department because I wanted to go.
	Where there was going to be actually the biggest policy differences.
	I didn't want to go somewhere where it was going to be really chill.
	And I had a friend of mine reach out and was like, hey, you should come over and work at NASA.
	It's the best place to work in government.
	There's nothing political going on.
	Nobody gets in arguments.
	And I was like, that's the opposite of what I want to do.
	I want to go get in an argument every day.
	I want to work on...
	And that's what I did at State.
	I did communications.
	I was the...
	First, I was the senior advisor for this bureau called IIP, which doesn't exist anymore, which was the International Information Programs, which is basically the foreign-facing messaging bureau for content and messaging.
	They kept it separate, domestic and foreign, for lots of reasons, were separate.
	And so I did that for a long time.
	Then I ended up becoming the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Content, which was sort of a role I created for myself because we merged the bureaus and I got to have a hand in how some of that went down.
	And I really got left to my own devices, which was probably in everybody's best interest.
	Possibly my ability.
	So it was good.
	I just realized now, I've said the State Department so many times, and I sort of conceptually just took for granted what it was.
	I need you to explain to me, what does the State Department do?
	What is the State Department for anyone who might actually not know the details?
	You know, I was in a meeting there one time, and I asked the same thing, and it did not go over well.
	I was like, couldn't we do this with five people out of a van and just get rid of this whole thing and just not do this?
	It's supposed to be, you know, the diplomatic core of our presence in the world.
	It is supposed to be our face to the world.
	You know, obviously every embassy in the world is part of the State Department.
	And the structure is...
	If you ever want...
	Working at the State Department for almost four years is like going to college for bureaucracy.
	You will learn government bureaucracy if you go there.
	And it's extremely structured.
	There's almost kind of a beauty in it in some ways, but...
	Such a sickness as well.
	It's very interesting.
	We execute foreign policy, and what you would imagine is that we would be executing the foreign policy of the administration that had won the election.
	And that was actually the weirdest thing, is that apparently that's actually not the case.
	There's this other thing called the policy.
	And there's, you know, the president's policy, and then there's the policy.
	And if you bump up against the policy, you know, God help you.
	And I think one of the things, you know, that we found out was just...
	And you'd have these conversations where you'd be like, no, like, we have direct orders from the president to the secretary or whatever.
	This is what we're doing.
	We're doing X. We're opening an embassy in Jerusalem.
	We're doing whatever it is.
	And you would just get met with the like, well, we can't do that.
	We don't do that.
	And I don't work for the secretary.
	This is the best one I got.
	I don't work for the secretary.
	I don't work for the president.
	I work for the State Department.
	And you're like, what do you think this is?
	A sovereign country that takes over like five city blocks in Washington, D.C. and it just like runs itself?
	You're not far off, but how many people?
	Functionally work at the State Department?
	How long have they been there for?
	70,000?
	I mean, with all the embassies and everything?
	Because you've got the local staff, you've got all the embassies, you've got all the different facilities in the United States that the State Department has.
	You've got consulates all over the place.
	You've got Maine State in D.C., which is the size of most countries' entire governments.
	It's massive.
	And also, I mean, one of the things I started learning when I worked there, you know that there's some insane amount, I wish I had the number off the top of my head, but if you want to freak yourself out, look up the number of people that have security clearances.
	It's something insane.
	It's like 1% of the population or something has some level of a security clearance.
	That's crazy.
	So, yeah, the government is just, and we all know this, it doesn't shrink.
	It never shrinks.
	That's one of the reasons why the policy exists sometimes.
	And it is so resistant to change and so resistant to...
	Someone needs to make it.
	That's a good comment.
	It wouldn't be the most exciting horror movie, but it would basically be my life every day for those three years.
	To some extent, I think the blob is a metaphor for government, if my memory serves me correctly.
	Yeah, yes, for a reason, yes.
	And, you know, look, each institution is different.
	I spent six months at the White House.
	I was over there on detail.
	That's a whole different situation because you're dealing with majority political appointees and then you're dealing with people that are all, like, vying to be closer to the sun.
	And that's when, you know, I ended up going back to the State Department because somebody asked me why I was fine with going back to the...
	Obviously, I love the president.
	I always say that I'm like the Jonestown-level Trump supporter.
	I just love him.
	But I would rather get stabbed in the front by my enemy than stabbed in the back by my friend.
	And those are the decisions you get to make when you decide if you're going to work at one of the agencies or in the White House.
	So I'd rather get knifed by my enemies than my actual friends.
	Well, it's very much how the administrative state The deep state operates.
	The deep state just being a dual government extended doctrine is that this is a permanent bureaucracy.
	I remember when I was at the deplorable with Cernovich and a bunch of folks said this whole town is about to wage war against this man and he doesn't seem to be awake to it.
	How much was that the reality in your experience in the State Department?
	I mean, absolutely.
	That's exactly what happened.
	There would be certain policy changes that I would always be curious to see the ones that they would not throw a fit about and then the ones that you couldn't touch.
	And I'm pretty sure you and I may have chatted about this at one point, but I got pulled aside one time and when we were doing a lot of the Israel stuff, which happened to be my portfolio, I was doing communications like foreign comms on the teams that did Iran, Iraq, Israel and immigration.
	I used to joke that I only work on things that start with I. But the idea was that I wanted to work on mainly as my priorities.
	Obviously, I had all kinds of other stuff, you know, that bureau that I was doing.
	But the priorities were things where our policy was drastically different than the one before.
	Because I didn't think it made any sense for a political appointee to stick their nose in where everything is just sort of running the same.
	The whole place to be is to where things are, to work is where things are different.
	So anyway.
	Somebody pulled me aside and they were like, "You are going to have a hard time getting this building to do a lot of the things that you guys want to do.
	The one thing you will have the hardest time doing is Israel." And I was like, what?
	Because I didn't even really understand that at the time.
	I didn't know that the State Department was built on this anti-Israel bias.
	And naively, I didn't know its history.
	I didn't know the history of America's diplomatic corps.
	I didn't know that there is this Arabist lore and sentiment that...
	Has continued certainly at the upper levels, right, of your sort of foreign policy elite, and then also down into the working level.
	And that's resulted in exactly what we see here, which is, if you recall, I think it was January 21st, one of the first sort of...
	I think it was like 1201.
	And they changed the Twitter handle of the Israel, our embassy in Israel, to be instead of just, you know, Israel, it was Israel, comma, and the...
	Gaza and whatever, the Occupied.
	They had the language.
	They're obsessed with their language.
	Whatever it was, their Palestinian language thing for a country we don't even recognize.
	That was amazing.
	Where you were like, yeah, by the way, you know that you guys work at the State Department.
	You guys keep capitalizing this P thing and talking about it.
	We don't recognize a country called Palestine.
	So if you're talking about Atlantis, it's just as relevant.
	I don't know what you guys are talking about.
	So anyway, but yeah, I was told that was going to be one of the biggest issues.
	And as somebody who's a thorough Zionist, I was just really surprised.
	I was really surprised that the State Department was in that vein.
	And actually, there's this really amazing book about it called The Arabists that is really a beautiful book, and I think it describes it perfectly.
	In the same capacity, you talk about early on the fun experience with Nord Stream 2. Oh, God.
	Can you describe something?
	I mean, for people who don't know, it's a pipeline that Germany requested.
	That's my inside joke with Darren Beatty that we just talk about in front of all the people.
	I mean, Nord Stream 2 just pisses off all the right people.
	There's the Atlanticist scum that...
	I mean, again, the Borg is so big.
	So there's this one faction.
	Obviously, you get your Russia enthusiasts, these guys that are just obsessed with recreating a second Cold War, and that were part of the folks that were certainly leading the charge to accuse the president falsely of being a Russian asset, and therefore accuse all of us of working for a Russian asset.
	The funnest thing is to watch them turn themselves into knots to figure out how to convince everybody that the most important, absolute most important priority we could possibly be working on in relation to Europe is Nord Stream 2, which is this second pipeline.
	And, you know, I'm not, like, Russian energy policy and you're, it's just, it's not...
	I'm glad some people are working on it.
	It really wasn't the thing.
	I don't remember running on that.
	I remember running on immigration and supporting Brexit and supporting these nationalist movements all over the world.
	Being at a rally, and I worked at a lot of rallies, I don't ever remember being at a rally and the president being like, and I promise we will stop.
	We will not allow Nord Stream 2. Like, nobody gives it.
	Anyway, so watching these people who supposedly worked for the Trump administration turn themselves in knots, you know, and the Atlanticists squeezing their policy into there, and just knowing what awful people these folks are, I have to say that...
	Darren Beatty's endless trolling on the inevitability of Nord Stream 2, just as a slap in the face to the exact perfect people, makes me smile.
	So I appreciate it.
	But it's not like one of my main policy issues that I care about or something.
	It's really more of a really good troll.
	We're getting into the, what do we call it, not the deep state policy, but the administrative policy, the policy of the State Department.
	On a global scale, there are people like myself now, outsiders looking in and have been looking in for a while and been on a relatively sharp learning curve as to what is beyond corruption in government.
	But for those of us who have the impression that it seems that the policy, global policy, is just to maintain conflict for the purpose.
	Oh, yeah.
	Once you get inside and once you get your foot in the door and you see this, how true is it?
	It's so frustrating.
	No, it's awful.
	It's horrible.
	It's frustrating.
	I mean, I don't want to get into speculating on meetings that I wasn't in or saying things I'm not supposed to, but you had all these occurrences that I'm sure people have read about over the course of the administration of the president who different factions would get in front of him and try to convince him of one thing or another.
	And I mean, so many times these guys...
	Who were hired by people that were supposed to be good guys, like Mike Pompeo, were hiring these people whose life's mission is to stay in Afghanistan, whose life's goal is to organize as many bullshit conflicts in the Middle East as they possibly can, who are romantically attached to being in Iraq, who are romantically attached to Syria.
	I mean, our Syria guy was like...
	I have no idea how he could have possibly been hired in our administration, and why anyone would be surprised that there were so many higher-level conflicts and issues with that.
	And it really comes down to personnel.
	That's the thing, is personnel really is policy, because when you think about it, I guess, you know, putting my hat in the...
	Oh, that's funny.
	No, no, who threw my hat in with football?
	I mean, I get it.
	You know, trying to sort of give the organization of these foreign policy decisions the benefit of the doubt, right?
	You've got decisions made at these lower levels and they gradually go up and then you get the whole interagency process and all that stuff.
	The people that are making the arguments in the room...
	No one is interpreting intelligence or interpreting the situation on the ground in a vacuum.
	They're coming to it with their own beliefs.
	They're coming to it with their own philosophy about either foreign policy or their own agenda.
	So no matter what, those people are going to inject their philosophy and their ideas about what should happen into these decisions as they make their way up the chain.
	It's personnel is policy.
	Those people and their ideas, that's why it's so important.
	You know, if we ever have an election again, and if we ever have...
	If we ever, you know, if in my lifetime a Republican ever wins, and if it's a Republican that even remotely represents the interests of the American people, it would be very interesting to see what would happen if we actually had like a full, an almost full government of people that all wanted to go in the same direction.
	That would be a very unique, interesting thing to see that I would like to see.
	And what, I want to get into, bridge into...
	Trump's failure to recognize that personnel is policy.
	I was telling people that Pat Buchanan's book about Nixon was a very good book about these problems.
	It's on my coffee table.
	It was a warning sign to everybody if they'd pay attention.
	But of the State Department people that were making policy decisions or had any role in general, what percentage would you say were Trumpists or true Trumpists at heart?
	Depending on the year.
	One really great thing that happened is they changed the personnel office in the last year.
	I think I left a few months after that had happened.
	They put Johnny McEntee and a bunch of guys who had been with the president since the campaign and a bunch of real Trump loyalists came in and they did an amazing job.
	Totally brought in the kind of people we should have been bringing in.
	At the beginning.
	And there's only so much those people can do, though, right?
	So they're coming into an institution that's already filled in all the highest levels with the worst people you could possibly find.
	The entire Bush administration, I mean, that's what's so incredible.
	The majority of people at state, their first prerequisite of some of the people that were doing the hiring, very...
	You know, close friends of the secretary and beyond, their number one quality they looked for is if the person worked in the Bush administration, which I would find disqualifying for me.
	But, you know, I get it.
	There's a lot of people I've met that they worked in the Bush administration.
	They're actually pretty good.
	Like, who else were they going to work for?
	The Republicans, that's what year it was.
	But I hardly would be...
	Looking at the Trump administration and the policies that we promised and then trying to make facsimiles of the Bush administration.
	I just think it absolutely made no sense.
	And, you know, they're good at this.
	They hire each other.
	You get one of them in there and it's like a disease.
	You get one Bush administration person in an agency and you turn around and three weeks later, the whole place is just like crawling with it.
	It's just unbelievable.
	Yeah, true.
	I've talked about this before.
	Obviously, yeah, I think that was one of the bigger mistakes, and I think it was on its way to being worked out.
	It's one of the reasons why I'm so bummed we don't have a second term, is because being such a different administration where we didn't have this exact bench to pull from, I think that we needed three years, apparently, to figure it out.
	It would have been really interesting to see what would have happened with this momentum, with the policy change, with the good guys that they brought in into the personnel office.
	And that would be very interesting.
	Practically speaking, again, for people who have no experience with anything that you've experienced here, the new administration comes in, you come into the State Department, somebody said it had 70,000 people working for it, whatever.
	Tens of thousands of people working for it.
	And Robert and I, we've been talking about these things for a while.
	Robert has been vocal about Trump's failings, which was not clearing house and bringing people.
	Practically speaking, how does it work?
	Do you lay people off?
	I had to learn this too.
	Maybe I talk about this a lot because I came from absolutely zero experience in government.
	From Los Angeles.
	There's the career employees, which is the majority, right?
	Like 99% of the government.
	And you've got this tiny, itty-bitty little fraction of political appointees who come in at the different levels.
	Obviously, you've got the cabinet secretaries, then their assistant secretaries, and then some of their deputies.
	None of those positions are filled right away.
	I mean, we didn't even have, I don't think we ever filled all of our positions.
	And so you go in and it's a very, it's, It's odd because it really is almost up to the person, the kind of person that comes in as a political appointee.
	It really is up to you to make of it what you do.
	I've seen political appointees come in who are very shy and who are very...
	Waiting for direction.
	This was not an administration where you could exactly sort of sit around at your desk and assume someone was going to tell you how this was going to work or what we were going to do.
	You had to be wanting to just jump in and make things happen immediately.
	And kind of have a lot of sort of self-determination there.
	Or maybe that's just me being a total nut, and that's why I did things the way I did.
	But there is, you know, I watch a lot of this.
	I learned from a lot of really great people.
	But the thing is, is that you kind of have power, but you don't, right?
	Because you don't know how this government works.
	You have your relationships and your chain of command, which...
	It's supposed to be empowered, right?
	But if you don't know the little traps and the little tricks and the ways that they can slow roll things, you don't know what you don't know, right?
	So if you go to somebody and you're like, okay, so we're going to...
	We're going to, I'm going to use like a communications example or something.
	We're going to put out a statement and it's going to say that we're doing this.
	We're opening the embassy or we're doing X, Y, and Z. Ten gazillion careers could come back to you and be like, oh yeah, we can't do that because it violates this rule that we found that says you can't actually put statements that we don't agree with out.
	On this platform, you could roll it up and put it in a trash can, but you can't actually put it here.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	I really want to help.
	Unless you're the kind of person that's like, fuck you, go do it.
	I'm going to go call whoever and go bark up the chain and be a complete nutcase about it.
	It's not going to happen.
	I can't give really perfect examples because I can't.
	Recite some of the stuff that, like, you know, we dealt with word for word, but for various reasons.
	But it's, you don't, once, you don't know what you don't know.
	And when you figure it out, it's very frustrating.
	It's very, very frustrating.
	And a lot of times it's because there was no connection amongst us.
	One of the things I think would have really helped, and I think my friends and I tried to do, is to...
	Stay connected with the other politicals that worked on your issues.
	Because you hear somebody say something where they're like, oh, I tried to do this thing on the oceans or something.
	I tried to do this.
	Or I tried to do this thing on this French statement.
	Or I tried to do this thing at the Department of Energy or whatever.
	And I was told we can't do X, Y, and Z. Only if you're talking with other folks can they be like, no, that's nonsense.
	Like, here, go do this.
	And we really failed by not arming our lower level of political appointees with this information.
	A lot of the stuff that I think I was able to be successful at doing is because I had the right friends that told me what was and what wasn't going to fly.
	It's like...
	If I hadn't been told, you know, for example, like not signing a waiver that says that you'll report to a career instead of a political, this is something that like a lot of politicals went along with, where they were like, oh, okay, I'll report to you.
	And you're like, the whole point of you being in government is not to do that.
	How did you let them, like, why did you do that?
	Why did you sign that?
	That's insane.
	Like, but where was our team?
	Where was our team of lawyers?
	Educating our politicals, telling them, you know, these are the kind of tricks you're going to see.
	Don't do it.
	A lot of the best advice I got was actually from some very interesting people that had served in the Reagan administration and who work around town and would host a lot of us incoming politicals and tell us all kinds of, you know, tell us all the secret information, which was very cool.
	It sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare.
	It sounds like everything that makes the bureaucracy for doing business as an individual...
	Hair-pullingly tedious.
	One thing I'll say about it, the last thing I'll say about it that's frustrating is, look, there's frustrating and then there's depressing.
	And it's depressing because here, I came from the film industry, like I said, and I've talked about this drastic difference before, where you have to be very efficient because you're spending somebody else's money.
	And you better spend it correctly or you're going to be in trouble.
	The whole thing in Hollywood, if you screw up...
	You know, it's a million dollars a minute or something like that, like on these big movies, whatever.
	So you really have this consciousness of getting things done correctly and quickly and being conscious of the money that you're spending.
	In government, it is the most just disgustingly abusive opposite.
	Idea where the taxpayer is nowhere to be found.
	There is no boss.
	Because the person whose money it is, they're not even allowed in the building.
	They can't even see what you're doing.
	So you've got these people creating programs where there's no metric.
	When there's no economic metric of success, you know, in capitalism, obviously, your metric for success is, was this profitable?
	Was this the most efficient way to do the thing?
	In government, there is no metric because it's just...
	Did this help promote you?
	Did you stay in your job that you can't get fired from?
	Does the program exist still to this day?
	That's why you've got these lesbian puppet shows for countering violent extremism happening all over the place.
	And you get these guys.
	That's why when they released that statement, I forget who said it, when they were like, well, we can't pull out of Afghanistan.
	What will happen to all of the programs for women and girls?
	And the country heard that and was like, What the fuck are you talking about?
	What programs?
	What do you mean?
	What are we doing there?
	And I heard that and I was like, I know exactly what they're talking about.
	That's why we're there.
	We are there so that bureaucrats can have a place to go have programs.
	It is the only reason.
	What is the State Department?
	The State Department is a facility where people can sit and come up with programs to do in foreign countries.
	I guess it's for people that like to travel and are too afraid to join the army.
	I don't know.
	It's very frustrating to see taxpayer dollars when you, especially like I said, and again, this is my last rant.
	I didn't realize it really was going to be therapy and I was going to come out here and say it.
	The last rant I'll say is that, look, as I said, the real life-changing moment for me was going and working with the people that were volunteering for the campaign.
	People that were working two or three jobs who did not have days off and they took days off to go walk with us and knock doors and hang door hangers and make phone calls.
	And these people were so awesome, and they wanted so badly for this president to come in and do something for them.
	And that's who I wanted to work for.
	And so when I go into government, and these people are not only looked down upon by this bureaucratic class, but they aren't even thought of.
	It's their money.
	It's their hard-earned taxpayer money that's being spent on these ridiculous programs.
	And they act like you're immoral if you do what I do, which is, you know, Act outraged at these stupid programs and do everything in your power to end them.
	They literally, they act like you're immoral, where they're like, well, she just must hate women and girls in Afghanistan.
	And I mean, she just, she's just, you know, it's one of these weird Trump fascists that's just a misogynist.
	And you're like, no, I don't have a fucking problem with the women and girls in Afghanistan.
	I just worked.
	With the women in Nevada who can't afford this stuff.
	And we have to stop doing this.
	It's just disgusting and it's wrong.
	So that's where my kind of motivation would come from to deal with this.
	Now, what led to the transition to wanting to do the film?
	I got kind of voluntold, which is a phrase Cash came up with that I really like.
	And he's been using it for a while.
	I stole it from him.
	But no, it was a very nice situation where basically I had a lot of friends that were directly involved and let's say directly affected by what had happened, by these accusations and by, as the whole country was, everything being thrown off kilter for all these years because there was this...
	Hoax running around of this Russian collusion.
	And a friend of mine said, you've got to meet my friend Lee Smith.
	He wrote the book.
	He's about to put it out.
	It is the absolute correct story.
	It featured a lot of people that I knew.
	I knew that story.
	About Devin's team fairly well.
	And so I got the manuscript and I was like, this is amazing.
	Like, this has to be a movie.
	Like, it's just so...
	And I've said this before, but the thing that he really nailed is it's people.
	A lot of times on the right or in politics, when you see people make documentaries, they make documentaries about something.
	It's about the Second Amendment.
	It's about...
	Whatever.
	You can't do that.
	I don't want to watch a homework assignment.
	What you want is to engage with people, villains and heroes and good...
	USA is the largest ship with no captain.
	Oh, yeah.
	I always use the ship narrative or the ship analogy when I talk about the government.
	Yeah, I've got...
	I've got, yeah, I've got a kind of complicated one with that.
	But yeah, so you can do a movie about these heroes and villains, and you have the most lush, amazing characters in this case.
	In the story of Devin Nunes' team, like I said, you've got the, I mean, like, Devin, who was like the John Wayne of the situation.
	You've got the mischievous...
	Brave, sidekick, Kash Patel.
	You've got evil, truly evil characters that you couldn't even write, like Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe.
	If I wrote those characters, it wouldn't fly in a script.
	They're so patently bad that it just wouldn't even make any sense.
	I can attest to that which I learned in this...
	Journey that now has, you know, firmly merged with Barnes's knowledge on the subject.
	Yeah, these are like Tom Clancy level corruption.
	You say it's inconceivable.
	You don't just come in front of Congress and lie through your teeth and have nothing happen.
	And look, we can talk about the plot against the president because it's all public now.
	But like what went on there, like I said to myself, when I watched it, it was nothing new for me because.
	I've been deeply involved in the Michael Flynn power.
	Nothing?
	What about, did you know about Pence's chief of staff?
	Okay, that might be the one.
	There's a couple of things.
	I say details that I didn't know.
	Wait till you see the series.
	Wait till you see the series.
	We keep threatening to release the series.
	I know people ask me about this a lot where we've got like the 7 to 10 part series.
	We're just trying to find a home for it.
	We go down a lot more of those rabbit holes.
	But I'm glad to hear you say that though because actually what we wanted is for Russiagate experts, right?
	Like guys like you.
	Folks that had been digesting this every day to be like, this is correct.
	This is the right telling of the story.
	This is what happened.
	And then also for people at home...
	Who can't follow this every single day to be able to watch it and have a pretty good idea of what happened.
	The curses?
	No one's going to believe it.
	You had some clips that I had never seen, like James Comey boasting about how he basically ambushed Flynn at the White House.
	Some of those clips, in retrospect, they're so much more damning, they're so much more impactful because you know what actually happened now as much as we know what happened.
	But there's so much in there.
	I was going to send it to some people I know, but they're just going to say these are lies.
	They're just going to say there's no way this can be true because what I had been indoctrinated to believe, it would be like a break in the matrix where they would have to say, I believed a lie for so many years.
	I must be an idiot.
	And therefore, to protect myself, I'm just not going to believe it.
	There's people that will not believe it.
	We've had some...
	I almost don't know why exactly, but we've actually had this weird amount of luck where I get a lot of people have written me and said, I played this for, you know, usually they're saying, like, my girlfriend, my wife, my neighbor, whoever it was that was, like, their main person that they argued with politically that couldn't get red-pilled.
	And they were like, it finally worked.
	I don't know.
	So I'm just, I don't know what it is.
	I'm just saying, try it.
	Because it's really gotten, I mean, I'm actually amazed.
	Some of the conversations I've had with folks, like I said, that I maybe grew up with, went to school with, whatever, people that are like, I had no idea that they lied.
	And that this is provable from the transcripts in Congress.
	That 65 people, you know, went under oath and said they had no evidence.
	I mean, how do you...
	Where do you go for that?
	Well, and I think, I mean, one of the things that's sort of weak on the right...
	The key to the film was it's a simplified cinematic summation that's narrative effective at presenting the story for people who aren't going to read a thousand articles or big books or all the rest.
	And it puts people's own words on there.
	You have the whistleblowers who are willing to talk about it and other people willing to talk about it, some who haven't gone on the record otherwise.
	That was excellent.
	I thought one of the things that's weak on the right has been lack of narrational skill, lack of cinematic style presentation.
	I remember when we were in D.C. and went to that White House communications of everybody, and there with Mike, and looking around at some of the people there, it looked like a Michael J. Fox 1985 Young Republicans convention.
	Was I with you?
	I wasn't with you.
	Only way I got in was you brought me in.
	But it was edgy.
	I mean, some of those people had no clue.
	Oh!
	Yes!
	And I did it as a test.
	I was screwing around being like, I'm going to parade Mike Cernovich through this administration communications party.
	I thought I was more outraged by the idea that nobody recognized him, right?
	Because I was like, how are you working in right-wing communications and you don't know who this man is?
	And then slowly it became, I mean, that was really the main sin.
	But then I think you guys left and then slowly people started to come up to me and they were like, was that Mike Zervich?
	Was that Mike Zervich?
	Was that Mike Zervich?
	And I was like, yeah, like you should have said hi.
	You should have talked to him.
	He's our guy.
	Like, what are you doing?
	But no, so...
	Yeah, it was, there's this distinct difference between the campaign folks, your kind of MAGA community on Twitter, and then like the administration and your RNC kids.
	I mean, Jesus, don't even get me started on the RNC kids.
	It's very, it's a different, I was always surprised by that too.
	It was where it was like really...
	I couldn't believe sometimes that I was one of the only people that were hanging out with...
	The MAGA kids in D.C. I was like, what are all these people doing?
	It was very weird to me.
	I didn't get that.
	I remember that.
	That's so funny.
	I totally remember that now.
	Well, it was a reminder that basically Rodney Dangerfield had won the White House and the rest of the country clubbers got to fill out the rest of the office positions.
	And when you don't even know or you're afraid to talk...
	To someone like Cernovich, I was like, man, this is a hopeless enterprise.
	This is why there's so many problems up here.
	And the gap between the president not only in policy, but the president and communication of policy in a wide range of the administration.
	Well, here's the thing.
	The president is such an absolute genius, a very stable genius, absolute genius in communication, and instinctually got it.
	And that was the real success of the administration's communication.
	It never came from anywhere else.
	There was some good ideas here, there, whatever.
	I mean, I worked in comps in the admin.
	And it's like, oh, we're going to do infrastructure week.
	And you're like, it's the Trump administration.
	Like, what are you doing?
	And then not only that, like, you also had this fear of the press, which I found very weird because it's that thing where like...
	When I was growing up and my mom was constantly threatening to call the police on me, and I was like, you do this whether I steal the car or I don't put my glass back in the right spot.
	So I might as well steal the car because I'm getting the same treatment anyways.
	So when the press is calling you Nazis every day, every day no matter what you do, the press is calling us Nazis.
	They're calling us Nazis.
	That means we don't have to worry about what the press says ever because...
	It's already gone to the nth degree.
	There is no appeasing this press.
	So what I couldn't understand is why these cabinet officials and all of these different appointees on every different level, they were just horrified, terrified of the press, where they were like, oh my God, well, I don't know if we can do that because we're just going to get killed by the press.
	And you're like, oh really?
	And that'll be different than yesterday.
	We could have been so bold.
	We could have been so much bigger.
	But I mean, at the same time, look, the amount of things that this administration was up against and the amount that they accomplished, it's just unbelievable.
	The work that was done in those four years is really, really incredible.
	I'm really proud of it.
	I do a lot of these things where I kind of come on and I like to dish and I do the Hollywood thing where we like to complain about some of that stuff.
	But at the end of the day, I mean, there's not going to be an administration like that for a long time.
	It was just so impressive and so amazing.
	What led you to do the movie?
	In other words, I mean, part of it is there aren't people with your skill set on the right period for the most part.
	So it was natural for you to do so.
	And you were leaving the administration to do it.
	What was your thought process as you went through it?
	I mean, look, I was starting to...
	It's that same thing where you're like, I had this gut feeling.
	I think I should do this.
	But it's very, very nerve-wracking as well because you get used to your...
	Day-to-day life.
	And I'm like, okay, so I'm going to quit the administration that I will never be able to get back into.
	It was hard enough.
	They're never going to let somebody like me in government again.
	You leave, you leave.
	And I was like, okay, so I'm going to do that.
	Start my own company.
	Try to get this movie done before the election, which was insane.
	I think we did it.
	I resigned end of March.
	And then we didn't, you know, started the company.
	We made the movie.
	Came out October 10th.
	Like, that's insane for a documentary.
	Like, completely insane.
	I will never work on that kind of timeline again.
	But the, you know, it was just obvious to me that I was like, this isn't going to get told.
	You know, you're watching even around the time that I resigned.
	Oh, the person asked, how do you see the movie?
	I'll post the link.
	It's on YouTube, Amazon Prime.
	I'll put the links in afterwards.
	Amazon Prime.
	DVDs on walmart.com and iTunes.
	That's plot against the president.
	Yes.
	Buy DVDs because you never know if it's going to stay online.
	That's true.
	Anyways, so yeah, the reason that he did it is because I realized this wasn't going to get told, right?
	So even though this information had come out, it had dribbled out.
	You know, Hannity and, like, folks at Fox would, like, kind of make a big deal out of it.
	But what I don't understand is how they didn't open every single show every day and say, this was a hoax.
	All of these people went under oath and said they have no evidence.
	And rub it in people's faces as much, because repetition is how it works.
	Repetition, the left understands that.
	That's why they said it to us every day.
	That's why there's still people walking around that they're like, well, there's some connection with Russia.
	I mean, surely there's got to be something.
	Someone in the chat had said, Dave, you've got to watch the Russian guy talking about communism infiltration.
	It was like from 30 years ago.
	I forget his name.
	I had already seen that interview where he talks about the four stages of indoctrination that take 10 to 15 years.
	And one of the things he said was about making the association and repeating the association over and over and over again, even if it's not true, the association between the accusation and the stink.
	Absolutely.
	There hasn't been an accusation.
	They're literally just writing headlines about it where they're just like, You know, I mean, this is what they do to people.
	It's unbelievable.
	And then on our side, yeah, Yuri, that's right.
	On our side, we have actual evidence of various crimes and nobody that just doesn't go anywhere where you're just like Hunter Biden cruising around.
	And, you know, they're doing the same thing with January 6th.
	They're doing the fact that I can even say that and everybody knows what I'm talking about.
	Like there's a date.
	And, like, something happened.
	And it's a thing.
	And it's, like, 9-11.
	And it's, like, it's just, it's so, it's almost beautiful to watch.
	Like, their narrative manipulation is just, it's just a thing of great art.
	And we do not do that.
	But, yeah, like you said, so I realized the story wasn't going to get told.
	It wasn't going to get told in a way that people would really get into.
	Like you said.
	The right doesn't do...
	And, you know, it's not anybody's fault.
	It's just that a lot of times on the right, people will be like, okay, I'm interested in a topic, therefore I can make a documentary about it.
	Because there's this thing with movies, and it's kind of wonderful in a way, but there's this thing with movies where people feel like if they watched movies, they can make movies, and that they somehow know.
	And if you, you know, spend your life like...
	Quentin Tarantino watching movies and making movies and being inspired specifically and learning by watching movies.
	That's one thing.
	But there's a reason that there's film schools.
	There's a reason that there's a craft.
	It's been honed and shaped and there are hard and fast tricks and techniques that are not debatable.
	Just because it's art doesn't mean that everything you do is good, right?
	Like there's like...
	It's kind of like math.
	You can't just decide because you read a book about something that you're going to be able to make a movie about it.
	So that's why I felt like I kind of realized I was in this unique position where I had this amazing, amazing story and I had the ability to tell it if I could get the right team.
	Get all the ducks in a row.
	I knew I would be able to do that.
	And I knew it would be good.
	I don't know.
	I, you know, a lot of times I don't have as, you know, you have different levels of confidence, right?
	In any kind of big project you're doing.
	But I was like, yeah, this will be good.
	All I have to do is get it in front of people and it will blow up.
	And it's good.
	So I'm glad.
	It's lucky.
	Luckily it worked.
	No, and look, there are bad documentaries out there.
	I won't name them because it's not a question of, you know, shaming the bad.
	But there are bad documentaries and there are compelling documentaries.
	And the plot against the president is compelling.
	Now, I want to bring one chat up.
	Three greats, one excellent stream.
	Oh, my God.
	How's it going?
	Great job, guys.
	Amanda, when, not if, are you going to make a documentary covering the election?
	We need one.
	Well, before we get there, the facts have to come out before you can make the documentary.
	And so I think facts are still going to be coming out about this election.
	Yeah, I mean, I like to...
	I've said this before, but I like to keep...
	Look, there's some documentarians, and this is just me directing.
	And again, one of the things my company is going to be doing is producing.
	I'm going to be producing a lot of movies that are directed by a lot of different people.
	I like working with a lot of different directors.
	Some directors like to work like this.
	They drop themselves in the middle of a war or a protest or a situation, and they've got the camera on them, and they're in the chaos, and they're filming, and then they come out of that and make a movie out of that.
	That's not how I work.
	I have a little more distance.
	I don't do it like that.
	So timing-wise, I think that the soonest that I would...
	And also, I don't talk about what I'm actually doing at that moment because then it wouldn't work.
	One of the reasons Plot Against the President went so well is because I didn't tell anybody that I was...
	Doing it and I lied about deadlines and I pretended it wasn't coming out for a long time and all kinds of stuff.
	So you never know.
	But I would say true.
	Yeah, facts haven't all come out yet.
	I think the story is still unfolding.
	And it's more even than just the election.
	I mean, I think there's this four-month period of time that's very interesting.
	I'm not going to want to start messing with it, probably not until the end of maybe next year at some point, because I just think it needs more distance.
	But we are working on a lot of projects right now.
	We've got a lot on the plate.
	Yeah, you mentioned a series related to Plot Against the President.
	What's that about?
	Well, we have 75 hours of footage, and we did 40-ish interviews, and a lot of those couldn't be included.
	There's entire storylines and rabbit holes, and you guys know, because you're experts on this topic, you could go down a rabbit hole on one aspect of...
	Certain things about Mueller, about how he got hired, certain things about Flynn, certain things about all of these little things.
	You could go down total rabbit holes.
	And I want to be able to do that to an extent.
	And the first cut of the movie that we did, it was like four and a half hours long.
	It was like the first, when I say first cut, it's the first time you edit it and you're like, okay.
	I want to watch that.
	That's everything.
	There.
	Done.
	But obviously, you don't leave it like that.
	You take it down to the 90-minute point.
	And so there's a lot of material there that I don't think anybody needs to see a Gone with the Wind-length documentary about Russiagate.
	Even I think that's a bit much.
	But I think in the series format, where it's like chapters, I think...
	It works really well.
	We've been messing around with it, but we need a home for it.
	We had one.
	It fell through.
	We are getting very close to locking in with another one.
	So I think we will be releasing it soon.
	It's different than releasing a movie.
	You need to have the proper home for it.
	No, it's a series like a la The Escobar.
	What was it called?
	Narcos?
	Yeah, but it's documentary.
	It's not fiction.
	You have your Roger Stone episode.
	You have your Michael Flynn rabbit hole.
	You have your McCabe, your Comey, your fusion episode.
	Each one of those sub-elements could be easy.
	That's what a lot of folks said.
	I think...
	I can't remember who's that.
	It was like Devin, the congressman.
	He was like, I think you guys interviewed me for like three days out of my life.
	Like, that's all that's in the movie?
	I'm like, that's how it works.
	And then they take offense.
	They think they might not have been interested enough or whatever.
	The people that I had to take out completely because there were certain folks who speak only about their one issue, about a particular issue.
	And if we didn't go down that rabbit hole and if it's too...
	To have the movie be 90 minutes long, if you can't engage on it at all, there's entire people that aren't in this.
	And they're really, really interesting.
	And there's really big ones that aren't in this.
	So the series is going to be, it'll be cool.
	It'll be very cool.
	Technical questions.
	I think in one interview you said you shot it, ultimately production was 100 days.
	Is that right?
	Done.
	The whole movie was 100, like the whole thing was done in like 100 days.
	Like we shot 40, shot, We shot 35 interviews in 40 days, which is insane.
	Like a month and a half.
	I think it was like a month and a half.
	And we did 40 interviews in a month and a half.
	Yes.
	And then edited it as we were still shooting, which is never the way you're supposed to do things.
	And then changed locations.
	We moved away, finished editing.
	We were coloring it in reels, which, by the way, is like...
	I mean, if you go to film school, the one thing you are taught is not to do that.
	Like, you are not allowed to do sound after picture cut.
	I mean, after, I mean, picture, continue editing after any, I mean, the stuff we were having to do to go back and forth with, remember, like, this was a big legal effort too.
	Like, it's one of the things I talk about that I say is why I like producing.
	And I think I'm able to get a lot of these, what you'd call controversial movies on.
	Large distribution platforms is because a lot of it is legal games.
	A lot of it is doing the work, hiring the right team.
	So we're finishing the movie.
	We're going back and forth with like...
	It was not how you're supposed to do it.
	I almost don't want to tell people how we did it because it's not like a trick you should learn and then go like, oh, I can edit a movie in a month.
	Sure, you just do it in reels.
	Don't do that.
	No.
	We were sound mixing on one floor while continuing changing edits on the next floor, driving in the middle of the night to the colorist.
	I think the movie ended up first appearing on...
	I think it was 48 hours after it was colored, after the final color session, which is bananas.
	Let me just put it this way.
	Most movies, at that point, then you hand it off to the distributor, and they spent six months quality control, doing all the little details, closed captioning, and all this stuff.
	I wasn't going to let it get delayed.
	Nothing was going to stop me from putting that out.
	What you ended up producing in record time was an exceptional film, one of the best films that's been made in this subject matter in this field.
	To what extent, I mean, I think, as I recall, your dad once did a script by sending Western Union telegrams.
	So to what extent did your dad's both Homeric understanding of broader narrative, but don't do the paint by colors they teach you in the textbooks.
	How much did that help you in this process?
	I think...
	I won't exactly ever know, but I think that, like, the instilled kind of slavery to story, that, like, the story, the fact that you're loyal to story first and that nothing else matters, that you can't, like, fall in love with some little thing that makes your movie longer because it looked too pretty and it was too hard and, you know, this happens.
	If it doesn't...
	Move the story with the characters.
	It doesn't absolutely tell you, you know, if it's not absolutely necessary to these characters being alive on the screen.
	Then you can't have it.
	You don't need it.
	And I think maybe that's some of the thing that helped us because we had such a short timeline is that we didn't have time to sort of be like flowery about it and just sort of like sit there and like have like many different screenings and just be like, I don't know, I kind of like the three-hour version.
	Like, nope, there was no time for that.
	So I think it kind of helped.
	And like I said, I mean, just really being loyal to character overall, which in a documentary, and I mean, that's one other thing.
	A lot of people when they're doing documentaries, All the rules that they know they learned for narrative, which is how I was kind of brought up or, you know, I only worked in narrative.
	I only worked in scripted.
	They throw the rules out.
	And it's like, you know, for example, the movie is very moody and dark and that's on purpose.
	You know, it's not an accident.
	That all of the footage of Washington, D.C. is like this dark, cold.
	The streets are wet.
	The steam is rising.
	It's moody.
	It's creepy.
	It's not like that just happened to be the best time to go shoot these areas.
	You do these things on purpose.
	And I've noticed a lot of times people do documentaries and they'll be like, okay, so now we're going to have a shot of, you know, we're telling this terribly creepy story and we'll have a shot of Washington, D.C. And it'll be like, The birds singing in spring, and the sun is shining on the White House, and you're like, I thought you were telling me a scary, bad story.
	If you're going to tell me a scary, dark story, put me in a scary, dark situation, and go find those things in nature.
	I mean, that was one of the things that I was actually the most neurotic about, and I tend to get the most neurotic about when I'm making movies, is the relationship with nature.
	And even if it's a documentary, I had to shoot it when I shot it because I had to shoot it at winter.
	I had to get some winter footage.
	I had to get this dark, wet, swampy, steamy transition into spring and summer.
	I get really attached to the nature elements and that doesn't go away when you're doing a doc.
	You can't tell the story of Russiagate and not have the creepy black I think that's kind of how I come to this.
	It's like visuals first.
	And I think that's what's rare in documentaries.
	A lot of people do documentaries and they're like, here, look at this document.
	And then here's a shot that I purchased of the Justice Department.
	And you're like...
	I don't like that.
	What was the, if I can ask and if you can tell, what was the budget or what did it ultimately come to the documentary?
	It was very small.
	Okay.
	I don't know what that means.
	If that's relevant to a blockbuster, sorry.
	It was under a million dollars by lot.
	And for a doc...
	Again, with that period of time, it's just very unheard of.
	It's nuts.
	But I mean, I think it helped me be able to take whatever deal I wanted.
	Like if I had spent too much on it, a lot of times you get boxed in and then you have to take a deal that gives you an advance and you can't put the movie on every single platform, right?
	You're locked into an Amazon or whoever maybe gives you the advance.
	And then if they decide to sit on it until...
	Three months after the election, there's nothing you can do and you're legally stuck in some situation.
	I was very careful.
	And this is something we deal with now, because I'm in production on two other things.
	We're in different levels of production.
	You always want to be cautious about your...
	You don't want to spend yourself into a corner.
	A lot of people, they get the opportunity to make bigger and bigger movies, which is really a blessing and great.
	And that's wonderful, but there's a reason that all throughout Hollywood, people really had a lot of creativity and a lot of ability to move when they're not tied to more than they can get back correctly.
	Now, in terms of, without getting into specific projects, what are some of the ideas of what you're building out now?
	Though I would recommend a specific subcomponent of...
	Plot against the president with Robert Mueller, because he has the most interesting history, to say the least.
	But that's another story for another day.
	What are some of the sort of ideas?
	Where are you going next?
	Well, it depends in what way.
	My production company is basically here in Virginia.
	And as I said, I want to be able to make...
	Movies that wouldn't be able to be made anywhere else, like in Hollywood or whatever.
	Documentaries from other directors.
	Movies about certain political figures.
	We're looking at a lot of different material and books that are coming out of the last few years.
	I don't want to give any...
	I don't want to give too much away, but look, I can tell you thematically, I always want to do things about issues that are hurting America and that are stories that, due to the powers that be, those stories won't be told.
	So, you know, I certainly know that I'm not entirely...
	This one is a little more vague.
	I don't know exactly which one we're going to do yet, but I'm certainly going to do something about China.
	And that China movie...
	We'll have a lot about what happened to Hollywood.
	Because one of the first places that I think when I was growing up, I really got to see, front row, the purchase of Hollywood by China.
	And this was something that happened that my dad was conscious about for a long time before anybody was talking about it.
	It's one of the issues that I've cared about a lot.
	And funnily enough, actually...
	There was this terrible remake of Red Dawn that had nothing to do with my dad, that we had nothing to do with, that we don't even talk about.
	We don't talk about the remake of Red Dawn.
	However, it's referenced a lot in national security presentations and in think tanks and whatnot, because it was the first time, it was a good example of...
	Hollywood bowing to China.
	And it was because, if you remember, there's that story about them digitally taking out the Chinese uniforms and symbols, because I guess they had them, it was China that invaded, and exchanging it for North Korea so that it wouldn't offend the Chinese audience and they could still sell it in China.
	And I talk about this all the time, the way that...
	My angle on how China has ruined Hollywood and purchased Hollywood is not just in its purchasing of production studios and distribution and all of the different parts of the film industry that an American company would be prohibited in buying because of the antitrust rules.
	It also is in...
	It's in the kind of movies that Hollywood is able to make.
	Hollywood has to make movies like The Fast and the Furious.
	You just saw this thing that happened with this absolute cuck.
	What an absolute total cuck.
	I'm asking this question without judgment.
	Unless he mastered his statement, he speaks fluent Mandarin, or he seems to speak fluent Mandarin.
	Does anybody know if that's true and why?
	He looks like a total pussy saying it, though.
	Right.
	The second thing.
	King of cucks.
	Him apologizing for having referred to Taiwan as a country.
	I mean, what's shocking is that there's a lot of Taiwanese Americans who are going to be utterly offended by that.
	They don't have the money.
	They don't have the power.
	I mean, they have to understand China.
	It's not even...
	He should apologize for those movies as well.
	He should apologize.
	I mean, how do you screw up a fun car chase movie?
	This is one thing I was getting in arguments with people because I actually really care about action movies.
	I really like what you could call big, dumb action movies.
	Alien is...
	It's maybe my second favorite movie of all time, and I'm not being ironic.
	I think it's a beautiful art film.
	Ron Cobb, who was the production designer, was a really good friend of my dad's, and we had his paintings in our house.
	And so when I saw Alien as a kid for the first time, it was this weird nostalgic feeling because I had seen this style of artwork in our house.
	And I was like, oh my god, this is...
	Anyway, so I have this big attachment to things like Terminator 2. Was like my favorite movie for a long time.
	I mean, I think Terminator 2 in some ways is like the great American film.
	So I love those movies and I love big, stupid movies.
	I like going to disaster movies, you know?
	I like going to the dumb...
	Explosive movie.
	Like, I'm not like a girl sitting here being like, I only like the French New Wave.
	I like the French New Wave too.
	But anyway, so I get in these arguments with people and I'm like, no, this internationalism has ruined American blockbusters.
	The idea that you're going to have a series that is as phony and unappealing and just...
	Paint by Numbers dorky as the Fast and Furious series where they're like, well, here I am with my perfect multicultural mix of friends and we're going to do...
	It's so bad.
	It's just garbage.
	Do you know how cool it would be to make a cool car chase movie these days?
	They even screwed up Mad Max.
	How do you screw up Mad Max?
	Sorry, some of them I have to bring up.
	Nice.
	I'm going to create an OnlyFans where all I do is just, like, dress down liberals and, like, talk politics.
	I might have to if this movie thing goes more.
	Anyway, so, no, the...
	But yeah, so that's what I was making the point about these movies, this internationalism.
	They have to make these movies that have no kind of American soul or culture or comedy to them because they have to be as easily translated into as many different languages as possible and sold and believed in all of these different countries and cultures because...
	That's the market they're going for.
	They're no longer making these $70 million movies that, you know, you can have a big summer blockbuster with that.
	It can be good.
	It's American, whatever.
	Now when they make these $200 million movies, they can't just be appealing to America.
	And the whole of America could reject them.
	We could all reject that Fast and Furious movie.
	It doesn't matter at all.
	They're not even the biggest market share of the international market and therefore get treated as such.
	Someone had asked, top five movies.
	It's a good question while we're on the subject.
	What are your top five?
	It changes all the time.
	I love Gone with the Wind.
	There's this movie called The Long Goodbye that I think...
	Which is by Robert Altman.
	I love a lot of Altman movies.
	I really like The Searchers.
	I like Alien.
	I like, like I said, I really love Terminator 2. But like, what mood am I in?
	You know, I like a lot of Antonioni movies.
	I'm looking right now at this poster for Zabriskie Point.
	I mean, I love...
	I don't really do like a top...
	Tippity Top movies thing.
	The Long Goodbye has this very nostalgic place in my heart.
	So I have to say it's definitely quite up there.
	And there's a lot of things about Los Angeles that I really love about it.
	Blade Runner was probably the most impactful movie on me.
	Yeah, these are good.
	Blade Runner is definitely just so big.
	Blade Runner is almost like a dream that I feel like I had.
	That's actually how Alien feels.
	They feel so personal.
	There are some really, really great film noir movies that I love.
	I still love The Big Sleep.
	I can always watch that.
	It's a lot.
	It's funny when someone asks me that because I was obsessed with Kobe Bryant.
	When I was growing up, I was really obsessed.
	Kobe Bryant was my favorite person ever.
	And he spoke at my film school, so I got to meet him.
	It was when he was touring his documentary.
	And I asked him, because he kept talking about how he wanted to do movies.
	It was actually kind of disappointing to me, because I was like, no, I want to hear you talk about basketball.
	I'm in film school.
	I don't want to hear about movies.
	I want to hear about basketball.
	But he was talking about movies.
	It was really awful because I got to ask him a question and I was like, so who are your top favorite directors?
	And he just didn't know.
	He was like, oh, yeah, damn.
	That is tough.
	And then he waits a few minutes and then he comes up and he goes, Darren Aronofsky.
	And I was like, fucking really?
	Really?
	He did Cube and Pie, right?
	Yeah, and like...
	Ten other just, who cares, movies.
	I mean, like, Black Swan, I think, whatever.
	Like, yeah, Pie is like his big, like, I just, but it was just like, and then I think he finally came around and he was like, he was like, oh, I really like Tarantino.
	And you're like, so you have the, you have the movie taste of a college boy, but that's, that's, that's fine.
	That's fine.
	That's fine.
	I was still just, I was like in tears meeting him anyway, so it didn't matter.
	But, but yeah.
	Now, in terms of film, just documentaries, or are you thinking about making other kinds of films as well?
	For the moment, probably docs.
	I have this one.
	I talked about this today with one of my business partners.
	I am probably going to make...
	Actually, I can't say it.
	I can't tell you the script that I'm going to do.
	It's going to be so exciting and surprising when it comes out that it's going to be so cool.
	But I am going to make a war movie.
	I won't tell you which war, but it will be very cool.
	Well, hopefully, if it's not predictive, at least be historical and there'll be less to worry about.
	Smooch Smash had asked, Amanda, how can we help fund your movie endeavors?
	Do you have any crowdsourcing, any donations, Paige?
	You know, we're talking about that right now because we...
	We have investors that we've worked with in the past, and we are putting together...
	See, yeah, I'm not a huge Nolan fan, but I appreciate Nolan.
	That's a respectable list.
	I'm not super into...
	Do I believe...
	I think you have to.
	I mean, I think he is a replicant, right?
	Don't you have to believe he's a replicant?
	Isn't everybody a replicant?
	All I care about is Rachel.
	I think I've dressed as Rachel from Blade Runner like three times for Halloween to the point where it's like a little ridiculous.
	But anyways...
	Support.
	Yes.
	Okay, so...
	Like, standby.
	We're going to make some announcements.
	We haven't done crowdfunding in the past based on how we're structuring our new company.
	And, you know, we're moving a lot of things around with that.
	There's going to be a lot of different kinds of content that we make.
	We're going to be making feature-length docs.
	We're also going to be doing new kinds of things.
	Smaller sort of expose and other types of material like that that's both political and not.
	But like I said, really the thrust is stories that have to get told about institutions, people, and things that are hurting the United States and that are harming our way of life and are potentially preventing it from continuing.
	So those are the themes.
	Yes, as far as the fundraising.
	I wonder if I should.
	What do you guys think?
	We talk about this all the time because we've got some little projects that wouldn't make sense for the investment, the way that we do our work that way, and we've not done crowdfunding.
	And I kind of wonder, I mean, maybe we should.
	Some of this stuff, it might be kind of cool.
	It might be cool to do that.
	I know what Robert thinks about it.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I think it varies.
	I think it depends on the project.
	I think there's certain things about film that make it tricky how exactly you do crowdsourcing.
	And maybe it's crowdsourcing more on distribution, maybe crowdsourcing in different respects, depending on the circumstance or the situation.
	But what I think is true, what one of the commenters mentioned, is that there's a lot of demand for a wide range of cinematic content that's not being met by the current marketplace.
	And the question is how to bridge that gap.
	So this is what I say all the time.
	This is why I am always in a good mood when they talk about how terrible Hollywood is.
	And whenever I get interviewed by this stuff, I said this in like the Hollywood Reporter and like whatever else was, where I'm like, go for it.
	Become more communist, Hollywood.
	It's just more content, money, and ability for me and people like me, people on the dissident side of content, to make material.
	I mean, they've abandoned everything.
	They have literally left.
	Everything on the table.
	Every kind of movie, documentaries, fiction, all kinds of stuff.
	I mean, Hollywood's going to get even worse.
	And so I actually think it's really amazing.
	This whole, yeah, the whole country wants to see things.
	I want to make things.
	I can pretty much make whatever I want.
	It's going to be...
	I don't see the downside for me yet.
	Like, I'm excited about it.
	So I definitely want to be bringing...
	And that's why...
	There's another reason why I'm focusing right now so much on producing and not directing, because there's so much that we want to get out.
	If I was only going to just produce my own movies, like the movies I direct...
	You can't do it more than once every two years.
	No one can direct.
	Woody Allen directs once a year.
	I think so does Clint Eastwood.
	They both put movies out around Christmas time.
	They're known for that.
	They've got a machine.
	I want to be able to produce five things a year and get more and more and more stuff out there.
	For the moment, that's what I'm looking at.
	I think we may have just...
	Walked ourselves into a new sidebar, Amanda.
	And Robert, Amanda, is Cash going to be okay now that the deep state turned on him for being so awesome?
	Thanks.
	Barnes, great hillside talk.
	A lot of people are asking to do a sidebar with Cash because for those who haven't seen the movie yet, the documentary, watch it, you'll know who we're talking about.
	You gotta do it with Cash.
	You gotta have Cash.
	You guys will have so much fun with Cash.
	He's amazing.
	I think he's gonna be just fine because he's such a fighter.
	He's always gonna be fine and he's so smart.
	I mean, Look at what he did in the investigation with Nunes.
	I mean, he just puts two and two together and he's like, no, this is a lie.
	Here's how we'll prove it.
	I'm going to do this.
	Boom, boom, boom.
	Done.
	Yes, that means he's got a major target.
	I mean, of course he's got a target over him.
	Like, they're already writing stuff about him still.
	Like, the other day, I mean, it just, it's endless.
	But he's just very smart and very fearless.
	And I think he is going to be doing, you know, huge things.
	You guys should definitely have him on because you know what else?
	I mean, he's an attorney.
	He started out as actually a public defender before he was counterterrorism and all that.
	He is awesome at breaking this stuff down.
	So, you know, he's doing great.
	We've been doing screenings together.
	We've been going...
	Yeah, Cash knows.
	Cash is very popular with the MAGA ladies, and I tell him that all the time, and I'm like, why don't you get a Twitter account like you would do, or whatever, and he's like, I don't want to do any of that social media stuff, and I'm like, dude, kind of like missing your Tom Cruise moment here in the, I'm like, but no, he's great.
	How is everybody else that was part of the Trump team that you were there, how are they all doing?
	Well, I mean, as far as, like, kind of appointees at my level and around there, I mean, I think a lot of people have left.
	Like, a lot of people moved to Florida.
	I think a lot of people just didn't want to be in D.C. anymore, which I totally understand.
	I still enjoy politics and sort of fighting and getting my nose and stuff and all of that.
	So I think I will always have at least...
	Some presence in D.C. But a lot of people left.
	Some of the folks that were in the movie, I'm really upset about what ended up happening with them.
	I don't think that Michael Flynn really ever got to be vindicated.
	Even though everyone knows.
	I don't think he should have had to have received a pardon.
	I don't think he was guilty for anything.
	So he shouldn't have had to get a pardon.
	I'm glad that he did.
	I'm very happy to count his team amongst some of my closest friends.
	And I'm so happy that he loved the movie.
	And that was great.
	But I think...
	Obviously, the last few months have been really awful for a lot of the people that prove themselves to be heroes and prove themselves to be correct.
	And, you know, I don't like what's happened the way that people are denigrating people like Sidney Powell, who was very brave and was absolutely correct in everything that she said in the movie.
	And she was solely...
	Courageous and correct when it came to what was going on with Michael Flynn's case.
	And I feel like a lot of her great work has been erased.
	There's been so much mudslung.
	One of the questions I was going to ask you is how much...
	Because we saw Flynn, we saw Sidney Powell in the context of Russiagate, but not in the context of the election 2021.
	And so you have like Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, to some extent have been marred by some of the things that they said in the election cycle, which is a totally different story.
	And it's a totally different everything than Russiagate.
	And Robert and I, we've talked at length about Sidney Powell and the amazing work she did in Flynn, which got somewhat tainted.
	I mean, what's your take on that?
	Have they...
	Have they been irreparably marred?
	Have they been somewhat tainted by the election stuff?
	I mean, I don't think we know yet.
	I have a lot of views on the last few months, and I think that there was a real...
	Leadership vacuum.
	And I think a lot of people stepped into roles that they did not belong in and that they should never have been expected to function in because there was no leadership in certain situations.
	And not trying to avoid and be cute about your question and not really get into it.
	It's just that...
	I have a lot of respect for those people and for what everybody did in the film and for what they did during Russiagate and to exonerate the president from this false claim.
	And I still kind of feel that there's this fog of war over the last few months that I, you know, I try not to come out and like make big statements because I just don't think the fog is cleared.
	Obviously, there's certain things that...
	Make a little bit more sense than others.
	Yeah, it's...
	Amanda, it's a fair answer because this is the tendency of social media is that people think individuals have to be everything or nothing.
	And so someone could have done something great in one context.
	If they make a mistake elsewhere, it's an entire write-off.
	And it's just the tendency.
	But I think people can make mistakes in one file and still have done masterfully in another.
	Right, and I mean, we don't even know what is a mistake yet.
	Like, we still, I mean, like, the way that the...
	People were saying that Peter Navarro had made mistakes in the claims that he was making about Corona in the beginning of this time last year and whatnot.
	And he's been proven completely correct in a lot of things that people were like, oh, this is irresponsible.
	He can't be saying this kind of stuff, blah, blah, blah.
	And Atlas and folks like that.
	Yeah, you know, when I don't know what the truth is, I try not to stick myself out there.
	I mean, that's actually kind of the sneaky thing is that I get to be the person behind the camera.
	I usually am not the person in front of the camera.
	I have to say doing this, the conversations in the press and the media I've been doing for the movie is the most in my life.
	I never intended to be one of these kind of right-wing women that like go on.
	TV and talk about things.
	It's never been on my list.
	So after this, I'm probably going to go back into my little hole and get back to work and not do so much of it.
	But one of the great things about being in that position is that I'm interviewing the people.
	Usually I'm asking the question and I like my place where I don't have to come out and stick my neck out until I'm entirely sure.
	And then when I am, I really do.
	Speaking of comebacks and second lives and futures, what's your take on Trump?
	Do you think that there will be a comeback?
	Do you think that's what he's interested in?
	No matter what, he is the leader of the party.
	There is nobody else.
	He's been removed from the internet and all television, everything completely, and he's still the most important person in America.
	I mean, what an amazing guy.
	So I certainly think that he will have an outsized influence on all of our upcoming elections, whether he runs or not.
	I'm kind of into the idea.
	I mean, people throw this stuff around all the time.
	I really think that...
	Of all the politicians, not just because of the movie, but of all the politicians I've met and that I like, one of the only ones that I just really just through and through trust more than anything is Devin Nunes.
	And I think that he is not a showboater.
	He doesn't go looking for the spotlight.
	He doesn't do a lot of headline seeking.
	In fact, there's nothing he probably tries to avoid more than the press.
	Very different kind of persona.
	but I think he's going to be, if the Republican party were smart, we would be paying attention to someone like him and, and looking to somebody like him as a, as a future prospect, obviously DeSantis.
	I mean, you know, DeSantis right now is in the limelight just because of what's going on in Florida and the rest of the world.
	He's done a good job.
	It's amazing.
	If you lead, people want you to be their leader.
	He's really done great.
	Wouldn't it be cool to see him as a very active VP under a Trump?
	It would be a great way to set it up for, if not, I guess Trump could only serve for another four years if I'm right, Robert, but it would be a good way to set it up for a 12-year plan because you have a young go-getter of a VP.
	Yeah.
	No, I think that would be great.
	I mean, you know, I...
	I was hoping the Trump era, and I think this is important, I was always saying whenever I was working in government, whenever I talk to people, and certainly when I do stuff like this now, how important it is to, if you're a normal person, right, like you're not a D.C. person, you're just a normal average person, to get involved in politics.
	I might say this just because that's what happened to me, that's what I did, and it worked out, but when I'm in D.C. and you're working in government, there's a reason that these institutions and...
	And these places are so filled with only one kind of person.
	And so in this period of time between elections, I think I just want more average people to just get involved in politics, whether that means running for something local or supporting somebody you like or whatever it is.
	We can't leave our country in the hands of the bureaucrats.
	And that means, you know, and it's always the toughest thing with Republicans.
	Republicans don't even like the government.
	Why would they want to work in the government?
	This is what is the main problem, is that that's how you end up with a government that is Democrat by default.
	We can't have that.
	So, you know, I certainly just hope that we see a lot of new fresh faces jumping in and running.
	You know what?
	That might be a good way to wind this up, because we're nearing two hours, and I don't want to cross two hours.
	It makes it very technically difficult to get the stream on podcast.
	Okay, Amanda.
	People can find the movie, The Plot Against the President.
	It is on YouTube.
	You can rent it for $3.99.
	You can buy it for $12, something like that.
	And you can get it in HD and regular definition.
	YouTube Premium, and it's on Amazon, and it's on iTunes.
	And if you, there's people tell us all the time, they're like, I don't want to get something on Amazon or iTunes.
	You can buy it on DVD at Walmart.com.
	And a lot of people have been doing that because even though it's 2021 and I was like, what do you mean DVDs?
	It's actually becoming a big thing because that's how people trust they have it in their collection forever and that it's not going to be removed.
	Or stealth edited on, not your movie per se, but stealth edited on social media platforms like YouTube and whatever.
	Right, right, yes.
	It's like the modern book, so to speak.
	Right, yeah.
	And where can people find you on social media?
	I actually have my own Twitter account now, which I've only had for about six months or less.
	I've had it for a couple months.
	It's at Amanda Milius, M-I-L-I-U-S.
	And I have the same handle for Instagram.
	And the movie account is at P-A-T-P movie, which is plot against the president movie.
	And that's also our website.
	And our website, people don't know this, but we actually have really cute merchandise.
	And I'm not entirely sure why, but we have these.
	Sweatpants that have become this cult item.
	Everybody has these...
	They're actually amazing.
	They're incredibly good joggers.
	If you like political movie clothes...
	Oh, and we have a cash shirt.
	That's the thing you've got.
	Go to PATPMovie.com.
	Look at our merchandise.
	If you've watched the movie and you're in love with Cash Patel, you can get the cash t-shirt.
	I'll put all the links in the pinned comment.
	And before we wind up, let me just do two more chats.
	I saw your Amazon.com order of the plot against the president for my library.
	Thank you for your work.
	And there's one more here.
	What do we got?
	He says, do you think Ivanka and Jared support the MAGA agenda?
	Too broad of a question.
	Well, okay, fine.
	Go for it.
	Let's end with this.
	Look, I worked under Jared's team for a period of time, and we did some of the more intense immigration efforts that happened.
	I think people tend to...
	People's point of view of anything that's complicated is to always make it a little bit more cartoonish.
	I absolutely think that, um, what Jared did in the Middle East is nothing short of miraculous.
	And it's going to be one of the most long lasting and impressive, um, testaments to the Trump administration.
	And one of the only things that will, will, will last for, for, for decades.
	And I mean, hopefully forever.
	I like them, and I think they did an amazing job.
	And this whole idea that, like, there's a lot of people that were working against the MAGA agenda, and it's not the smartest thing to think that it was necessarily...
	Because they're younger and they seem like Democrats or something.
	It's just a little bit of a juvenile way of looking at things.
	I could get into a whole show on this, but at the end of the day, you cannot deny some of the successes that were had.
	It's just really commendable.
	If you see your dad, just tell him he's a great American.
	We've got to go shooting in Los Angeles.
	We've got to come hang out with him.
	I have family in LA.
	When Canada decides to open the borders, I might take you up on that.
	If it was intended for me, I might take you up on it.
	If it wasn't, I might still ask the invite.
	Do you need an airlift?
	You're like behind enemy lines in Canada.
	I need a shovel, I think, is what it's going to take now.
	Amanda, stick around after this.
	We're going to close up with the crowd and then we'll say our proper goodbyes.
	Everyone in the chat.
	Thank you for tuning in.
	This was a good one.
	The chat was a little saucy tonight, but I think that has to do with something else than the subject matter for the evening.
	But everyone in the chat, thank you very much.
	Share the video around.
	Check out Amanda's links.
	I'll put them up in the pinned comment so you know where to go.
	And we'll see you all Sunday.
	Thank you for having me.
	There we go.
	I'm going to end it right now.
	Okay, I found the button.

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