WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.879 So I want to start with two numbers that, I mean, 00:00:01.960 --> 00:00:03.540 they just shouldn't exist in the same universe, 00:00:03.660 --> 00:00:07.160 8 % and 99%. Right. You look at the critical 00:00:07.160 --> 00:00:09.839 reception for this new Melania documentary, and 00:00:09.839 --> 00:00:13.980 it's a dismal 8%. I was total bomb with the critics. 00:00:14.099 --> 00:00:15.960 But then you flip over to the audience score 00:00:15.960 --> 00:00:19.940 on Rotten Tomatoes, and it's at 99%. I mean, 00:00:20.320 --> 00:00:24.780 how? How is that even possible? Well, it's not. 00:00:24.920 --> 00:00:27.519 Not naturally, anyway. It's really the definition 00:00:27.519 --> 00:00:30.000 of a broken metric. In statistics, you'd call 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:32.259 that an outlier and just, you know, toss the 00:00:32.259 --> 00:00:35.299 data. But right now in our culture, that gap 00:00:35.299 --> 00:00:38.979 isn't an error. It's the whole point. And that 00:00:38.979 --> 00:00:41.280 is exactly where we're diving in today. We've 00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:44.659 got this whole stack of sources that they really 00:00:44.659 --> 00:00:47.100 paint a picture of two completely separate realities 00:00:47.100 --> 00:00:49.780 just crashing into each other. We have the box 00:00:49.780 --> 00:00:52.640 office numbers for the Melania documentary, this 00:00:52.640 --> 00:00:54.719 culture war over the Super Bowl halftime show, 00:00:55.219 --> 00:00:57.799 a national prayer breakfast that got really tense. 00:00:58.479 --> 00:01:00.140 And then we've got some actual election data 00:01:00.140 --> 00:01:02.979 from New Jersey and Texas that suggests the ground 00:01:02.979 --> 00:01:05.219 is, well, it's shifting under everyone's feet. 00:01:05.439 --> 00:01:07.620 It's a fascinating collection, because you're 00:01:07.620 --> 00:01:10.459 right. We usually treat entertainment and hard 00:01:10.459 --> 00:01:13.439 politics as separate things. Of course. But looking 00:01:13.439 --> 00:01:16.620 at this stack, that distinction is just gone. 00:01:17.319 --> 00:01:20.459 The way people review a movie is now identical 00:01:20.459 --> 00:01:22.439 to how they approach an election. It's not about 00:01:22.439 --> 00:01:24.920 quality or policy. It's just about signaling 00:01:24.920 --> 00:01:28.060 which team you're on. Let's stick with the Melania 00:01:28.060 --> 00:01:30.879 documentary for a second, because the money side 00:01:30.879 --> 00:01:33.909 of this story is... Frankly even weirder than 00:01:33.909 --> 00:01:36.230 the reviews. Oh, yeah, the headlines are trying 00:01:36.230 --> 00:01:38.989 to spin it as a success You see things like strong 00:01:38.989 --> 00:01:41.569 box office showing but you dig into the actual 00:01:41.569 --> 00:01:45.409 numbers and the math is just It's horrifying 00:01:45.409 --> 00:01:48.930 horrifying is exactly the right word for any 00:01:48.930 --> 00:01:51.409 accountant looking at this. So the source material 00:01:51.409 --> 00:01:53.549 puts the opening weekend somewhere between, what, 00:01:53.650 --> 00:01:56.430 $7 and $10 million? Right. And look, if this 00:01:56.430 --> 00:01:58.590 were a small indie doc, you'd be popping champagne. 00:01:58.650 --> 00:02:00.769 That's a home run. But this is not a small production. 00:02:00.890 --> 00:02:03.150 Not even close. The sources are indicating the 00:02:03.150 --> 00:02:04.870 production and marketing budget was north of 00:02:04.870 --> 00:02:08.889 $100 million. $100 million for a documentary. 00:02:09.250 --> 00:02:12.449 They spent $35 million just on the ads. Wait, 00:02:12.509 --> 00:02:15.889 hold on. Titanic cost $200 million, and they 00:02:15.889 --> 00:02:19.270 literally built a ship and sank it. How do you 00:02:19.270 --> 00:02:21.810 spend $100 million on a biography? That is the 00:02:21.810 --> 00:02:24.490 $100 million question, isn't it? The source material 00:02:24.490 --> 00:02:27.409 actually speculates about bribery or, you know, 00:02:27.629 --> 00:02:29.430 money moving around in ways that you don't see 00:02:29.430 --> 00:02:31.770 on screen, because you just can't put that much 00:02:31.770 --> 00:02:34.330 money into a documentary. Not unless you're just 00:02:34.330 --> 00:02:36.949 burning cash for sport. So, okay, if they made 00:02:36.949 --> 00:02:41.250 $10 million on a $100 million investment in the 00:02:41.250 --> 00:02:44.030 movie business... That's a catastrophe. Financially, 00:02:44.169 --> 00:02:46.129 it's an absolute disaster. It's never going to 00:02:46.129 --> 00:02:49.409 recoup its costs. But, and this is the big, but 00:02:49.409 --> 00:02:51.689 what if the goal wasn't profit? What if it was 00:02:51.689 --> 00:02:54.469 propaganda? Exactly. Or base mobilization. Then 00:02:54.469 --> 00:02:56.669 maybe the money doesn't matter. The return on 00:02:56.669 --> 00:02:59.169 investment might just be that 99 percent audience 00:02:59.169 --> 00:03:01.330 score we were talking about. OK, so let's unpack 00:03:01.330 --> 00:03:03.870 that score, because the sources are calling foul 00:03:03.870 --> 00:03:06.629 play on that, too. It's not just that Trump supporters 00:03:06.629 --> 00:03:09.349 liked the film. The data suggests these reviewers 00:03:09.349 --> 00:03:12.530 aren't even real moviegoers. Right. This is the 00:03:12.530 --> 00:03:14.569 biggest gap in the history of Rotten Tomatoes. 00:03:14.789 --> 00:03:18.789 For context, a 99 % score puts this film above 00:03:18.789 --> 00:03:22.590 The Godfather, and Citizen Kane, and Star Wars. 00:03:23.430 --> 00:03:25.789 The analysis shows that the vast majority of 00:03:25.789 --> 00:03:28.569 these perfect scores came from accounts that 00:03:28.569 --> 00:03:31.930 had never reviewed a single film before. So people 00:03:31.930 --> 00:03:34.469 created accounts just to give this one movie 00:03:34.469 --> 00:03:37.069 five stars. Precisely. It's cooking the books. 00:03:37.550 --> 00:03:40.069 It's an organized effort to create the perception 00:03:40.069 --> 00:03:42.750 of popularity. It's a loyalty test. You log in, 00:03:42.870 --> 00:03:44.810 you vote five stars, and you prove you're on 00:03:44.810 --> 00:03:47.129 the team. Whether you saw the movie or not. It's 00:03:47.129 --> 00:03:49.490 completely irrelevant. And on the flip side, 00:03:49.650 --> 00:03:51.370 you have the actual credits. I have to share 00:03:51.370 --> 00:03:54.629 a couple of these lines because they are blistering. 00:03:54.840 --> 00:03:57.599 One called it an elaborate piece of designer 00:03:57.599 --> 00:04:00.580 taxidermy. Ouch. Another called it a 40 million 00:04:00.580 --> 00:04:03.120 dollar book report. Which is harsh, but I mean, 00:04:03.379 --> 00:04:05.960 it lines up with the IMDB data. While Rotten 00:04:05.960 --> 00:04:07.979 Tomatoes was getting flooded with perfect scores, 00:04:08.500 --> 00:04:11.199 IMDB saw the exact opposite. The rating there 00:04:11.199 --> 00:04:15.919 crashed to a 1 .3 out of 10. 1 .3? That's like 00:04:15.919 --> 00:04:18.680 Plan 9 from outer space territory. It's tied 00:04:18.680 --> 00:04:21.040 for the second worst rating in the site's history. 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:23.819 It's sitting right next to Kirk Cameron's Saving 00:04:23.819 --> 00:04:27.100 Christmas. And IMDb actually had to flag the 00:04:27.100 --> 00:04:30.600 page for unusual voting activity. So one platform 00:04:30.600 --> 00:04:33.939 is screaming masterpiece and the other is screaming 00:04:33.939 --> 00:04:36.819 garbage. And the reality of the film itself is 00:04:36.819 --> 00:04:38.920 just completely lost in all that noise. The movie 00:04:38.920 --> 00:04:41.500 is just a proxy war. And speaking of which, we're 00:04:41.500 --> 00:04:44.420 seeing the exact same dynamic play out with the 00:04:44.420 --> 00:04:46.600 Super Bowl. You can't just watch football anymore. 00:04:46.740 --> 00:04:49.199 Nope. The war on screens continues. I mean, we've 00:04:49.199 --> 00:04:51.300 seen boycotts before, but this year the grievance 00:04:51.300 --> 00:04:54.680 is so specific. It's all about the halftime show 00:04:54.680 --> 00:04:57.180 performer Bad Bunny. And the objection isn't 00:04:57.180 --> 00:04:59.600 his music. The sources are pretty blunt here. 00:04:59.720 --> 00:05:02.259 It's explicitly about identity. The complaints 00:05:02.259 --> 00:05:05.240 cited in the reports just boil down to, he's 00:05:05.240 --> 00:05:07.480 brown and he sings in Spanish. That seems to 00:05:07.480 --> 00:05:09.620 be the disqualifying factor for that wing of 00:05:09.620 --> 00:05:12.120 the audience. So the solution isn't just to turn 00:05:12.120 --> 00:05:14.379 off the TV for 15 minutes. It's to tune into 00:05:14.379 --> 00:05:16.959 a whole alternate reality halftime show. That's 00:05:16.959 --> 00:05:19.560 right. Turning Point USA is providing counter 00:05:19.560 --> 00:05:22.319 programming. If you don't want to watch a global 00:05:22.319 --> 00:05:25.379 Latin superstar, you can stream their event featuring 00:05:25.379 --> 00:05:29.990 inevitably. Kid Rock. It's uncanny how Kid Rock 00:05:29.990 --> 00:05:32.550 became the official house band for a political 00:05:32.550 --> 00:05:34.990 movement. But there's a detail in the ad for 00:05:34.990 --> 00:05:37.730 this alternative show that really caught my eye. 00:05:38.050 --> 00:05:40.170 They've also got Brantley Gilbert, the country 00:05:40.170 --> 00:05:41.990 singer. And this is where it gets into visual 00:05:41.990 --> 00:05:44.230 manipulation again. The source analysis points 00:05:44.230 --> 00:05:46.250 out that in the promotional graphics, Brantley 00:05:46.250 --> 00:05:49.029 Gilbert's skin tone appears to have been darkened. 00:05:49.269 --> 00:05:51.620 Wait, what? They darkened a white country singer? 00:05:51.899 --> 00:05:54.160 Why would they do that? The speculation is that 00:05:54.160 --> 00:05:56.540 they wanted the lineup to seem more diverse than 00:05:56.540 --> 00:05:59.319 it actually is without, you know, actually inviting 00:05:59.319 --> 00:06:02.279 any diverse performers who might not align with 00:06:02.279 --> 00:06:04.779 the message. It's a simulacrum of diversity. 00:06:05.120 --> 00:06:07.980 That is just wild. And meanwhile, you've got 00:06:07.980 --> 00:06:10.519 sitting senators weighing in. Tommy Tuberville 00:06:10.519 --> 00:06:12.740 called the Super Bowl the woke bowl. Which is 00:06:12.740 --> 00:06:14.360 confusing, right? He's a former football coach. 00:06:14.680 --> 00:06:16.500 He's complaining he can't watch the game because 00:06:16.500 --> 00:06:19.579 of work -ness, but the game itself is still just 00:06:19.579 --> 00:06:22.199 football. It signals that the cultural contamination 00:06:22.199 --> 00:06:25.279 is total. If the halftime show is work, then 00:06:25.279 --> 00:06:27.819 the whole event is tainted. And the ultimate 00:06:27.819 --> 00:06:31.100 sign of this split is Trump himself not going. 00:06:31.980 --> 00:06:34.480 The official line is travel distance, which, 00:06:34.759 --> 00:06:37.660 for a guy with a private jet, seems flimsy. Very 00:06:37.660 --> 00:06:40.139 flimsy. The sources are suggesting the real reason 00:06:40.139 --> 00:06:43.019 is image management. He's afraid of being booed. 00:06:43.420 --> 00:06:45.759 We've seen it happen recently. JD Vance got booed 00:06:45.759 --> 00:06:48.439 at the Olympics. A wrestler named Brody King 00:06:48.439 --> 00:06:52.120 sparked an anti -ice chant in Vegas. The safe 00:06:52.120 --> 00:06:54.800 spaces are shrinking. A Super Bowl stadium is 00:06:54.800 --> 00:06:57.160 an uncontrolled environment. Exactly. You can't 00:06:57.160 --> 00:06:59.220 filter that crowd like you can on Rotten Tomatoes. 00:06:59.339 --> 00:07:02.439 If 50 ,000 people decide to boo you, that shatters 00:07:02.439 --> 00:07:05.180 the whole narrative of universal adoration. So 00:07:05.180 --> 00:07:08.699 he stays home. This theme of performative politics 00:07:08.699 --> 00:07:11.079 versus this uncontrolled reality really came 00:07:11.079 --> 00:07:13.259 to a head in Washington this week, too, at the 00:07:13.259 --> 00:07:15.399 National Prayer Breakfast. This is usually the 00:07:15.399 --> 00:07:18.680 most boring, scripted, bipartisan thing all year. 00:07:19.100 --> 00:07:21.500 You sip coffee, you pray for unity, you go home. 00:07:21.720 --> 00:07:24.339 Usually. But this year, someone threw out the 00:07:24.339 --> 00:07:26.600 script. You had this incredible juxtaposition 00:07:26.600 --> 00:07:29.860 of Trump giving the keynote, which the sources 00:07:29.860 --> 00:07:33.620 describe as just his standard stump speech. Rambling, 00:07:33.759 --> 00:07:36.459 attacking enemies, airing grievances. From a 00:07:36.459 --> 00:07:39.439 pulpit. From a pulpit. But what happened next 00:07:39.439 --> 00:07:42.800 was the real breach of protocol. Representative 00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:45.360 Jonathan Jackson, who is Jesse Jackson's son, 00:07:45.819 --> 00:07:48.360 had to give the closing prayer. And he's standing 00:07:48.360 --> 00:07:51.019 feet away from Trump. Imagine that scene. He's 00:07:51.019 --> 00:07:52.649 standing feet... from the man who just spent 00:07:52.649 --> 00:07:55.569 20 minutes attacking half the country, and Jackson 00:07:55.569 --> 00:07:58.470 doesn't give some generic bless our leaders prayer, 00:07:58.709 --> 00:08:01.250 he goes surgical. I have the text here. He prayed 00:08:01.250 --> 00:08:03.889 for protection from the inequities of evil. He 00:08:03.889 --> 00:08:06.170 asked for greater clarity and greater courage. 00:08:06.410 --> 00:08:08.870 Inequities of evil? That's not subtle language. 00:08:09.189 --> 00:08:11.170 He's using the language of spiritual warfare, 00:08:11.329 --> 00:08:13.389 but he's applying it to the governance of the 00:08:13.389 --> 00:08:15.819 man standing right next to him. He even warned 00:08:15.819 --> 00:08:18.339 about the power to turn the country into a cosmic 00:08:18.339 --> 00:08:22.839 elegy of chaos. Wow. Cosmic elegy of chaos. It's 00:08:22.839 --> 00:08:25.079 powerful stuff. And the visual was apparently 00:08:25.079 --> 00:08:27.639 telling. Reports say Trump just had his eyes 00:08:27.639 --> 00:08:30.060 closed. Was he praying? Was he sleeping? Was 00:08:30.060 --> 00:08:33.460 he just seething? We don't know. But for a moment, 00:08:33.779 --> 00:08:36.700 the bubble popped. It was a direct, face -to 00:08:36.700 --> 00:08:39.429 -face moral confrontation. It's interesting you 00:08:39.429 --> 00:08:41.009 mention the digital world, because that bubble 00:08:41.009 --> 00:08:43.509 was also leaking this week. We have to talk about 00:08:43.509 --> 00:08:46.289 that deleted video from Trump's social media 00:08:46.289 --> 00:08:49.309 feed. Yeah, this is the much darker side of the 00:08:49.309 --> 00:08:51.629 separate reality we're talking about. A video 00:08:51.629 --> 00:08:53.549 gets posted to his official account, stays up 00:08:53.549 --> 00:08:55.649 for about 12 hours. Most of it is, you know, 00:08:55.850 --> 00:08:58.370 the standard conspiracy stuff about the 2020 00:08:58.370 --> 00:09:01.750 election. But then what? Then, just spliced into 00:09:01.750 --> 00:09:05.029 the middle, is a two -second clip depicting the 00:09:05.029 --> 00:09:08.570 Obamas as apes. It's just shocking that in 2026, 00:09:08.629 --> 00:09:10.950 we are still dealing with imagery that is so 00:09:10.950 --> 00:09:14.029 explicitly violently racist. It wasn't a dog 00:09:14.029 --> 00:09:15.970 whistle. It was a bullhorn. And the White House 00:09:15.970 --> 00:09:18.230 response was just chaotic. First, they blamed 00:09:18.230 --> 00:09:20.549 a staffer. Then, bizarrely, they claimed it was 00:09:20.549 --> 00:09:23.470 a reference to the Lion King. They're the Lion 00:09:23.470 --> 00:09:26.370 King. Yeah. The source notes, with some very 00:09:26.370 --> 00:09:29.350 dry humor, that there are no apes in the Lion 00:09:29.350 --> 00:09:32.529 King. There are lions. There are meerkats. No 00:09:32.529 --> 00:09:36.610 apes. It was just a desperate, nonsensical excuse. 00:09:36.710 --> 00:09:38.370 But unlike the Super Bowl stuff where everyone 00:09:38.370 --> 00:09:41.009 kind of falls in line, the GOP actually flinched 00:09:41.009 --> 00:09:43.610 at this one. They did. And the phrasing from 00:09:43.610 --> 00:09:45.730 Senator Tim Scott is what I want to focus on. 00:09:45.809 --> 00:09:48.309 He called it the most racist thing I've seen 00:09:48.309 --> 00:09:49.629 out of this White House. The most racist thing. 00:09:49.669 --> 00:09:51.850 Exactly. He didn't say this is racist and out 00:09:51.850 --> 00:09:54.960 of character. He implied a hierarchy. He's basically 00:09:54.960 --> 00:09:57.080 saying, I've seen a lot of racist things from 00:09:57.080 --> 00:09:59.639 this administration, but this one finally crossed 00:09:59.639 --> 00:10:02.360 a line. It suggests a fracture. A real fracture. 00:10:02.860 --> 00:10:05.100 There is a line where even the Republican establishment 00:10:05.100 --> 00:10:08.480 can't defend the anti -woke posturing anymore. 00:10:09.360 --> 00:10:12.100 So OK, we have all this culture war, noise, movies, 00:10:12.360 --> 00:10:14.940 football tweets. But underneath all of that, 00:10:15.120 --> 00:10:17.259 the actual machinery of democracy is turning. 00:10:17.340 --> 00:10:19.840 We had special elections this week, New Jersey 00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:22.620 and Texas. And if you look at the data, the voters 00:10:22.620 --> 00:10:24.539 seem to be telling a very different story from 00:10:24.539 --> 00:10:26.740 the Internet. This is where we need to pay attention. 00:10:27.500 --> 00:10:30.440 The noise says the country is deadlocked. The 00:10:30.440 --> 00:10:33.080 signal from these elections says the electorate 00:10:33.080 --> 00:10:36.850 is volatile and angry. Take a look at New Jersey's 00:10:36.850 --> 00:10:39.110 11th district. Right. This was the primary to 00:10:39.110 --> 00:10:41.389 replace a Democrat. It was framed as this classic 00:10:41.389 --> 00:10:44.549 establishment versus progressive fight, Tom Malinowski 00:10:44.549 --> 00:10:47.710 against Analei Mijia. And Mijia, the progressive, 00:10:48.049 --> 00:10:50.529 surged late. The result is still too close to 00:10:50.529 --> 00:10:53.190 call, but it's leaning her way. But the takeaway 00:10:53.190 --> 00:10:55.330 isn't that New Jersey suddenly went socialist. 00:10:55.809 --> 00:10:58.289 The source analysis argues this is about new 00:10:58.289 --> 00:11:00.710 blood versus old blood. Voters are just tired 00:11:00.710 --> 00:11:03.710 of the incumbents. Precisely. Malinowski is a 00:11:03.710 --> 00:11:06.809 known quantity. Mejia is fresh. The voters are 00:11:06.809 --> 00:11:09.190 signaling a throw the bums out mentality that 00:11:09.190 --> 00:11:11.509 goes beyond ideology. They just want change. 00:11:11.850 --> 00:11:14.450 But if New Jersey was a tremor, Texas was the 00:11:14.450 --> 00:11:17.690 earthquake. Oh, yeah. Senate District 9 is a 00:11:17.690 --> 00:11:20.070 deep red seat. And the Democrat, Taylor Remit, 00:11:20.149 --> 00:11:23.350 didn't just win. He he destroyed the curve. A 00:11:23.350 --> 00:11:26.529 32 point swing. In political science terms, that's 00:11:26.529 --> 00:11:28.429 catastrophic for the incumbent party. Usually 00:11:28.429 --> 00:11:30.549 fight over three or four points. Thirty two points 00:11:30.549 --> 00:11:32.659 means the bottom just fell out. And for the last 00:11:32.659 --> 00:11:34.960 few years, the narrative has been that Latino 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:38.299 voters are moving to the GOP. But in this race, 00:11:38.639 --> 00:11:42.240 Remit won 80 percent of the Latino vote. That 00:11:42.240 --> 00:11:45.000 is the number that should keep Republican strategists 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:48.639 awake at night. Eighty percent. It suggests that 00:11:48.639 --> 00:11:50.899 this whole realignment we've been hearing about 00:11:50.899 --> 00:11:54.799 is either a myth or it's highly reversible. So 00:11:54.799 --> 00:11:57.059 what happened? Why did it flip back so hard? 00:11:57.179 --> 00:12:00.120 It's likely a direct reaction to the specific 00:12:00.120 --> 00:12:02.340 nativist turn the rhetoric has taken. I mean, 00:12:02.379 --> 00:12:04.460 when you have the kind of discourse we saw with 00:12:04.460 --> 00:12:07.559 Bad Bunny or with immigration, that registers 00:12:07.559 --> 00:12:09.700 the source calls this a canary in the coal mine. 00:12:09.960 --> 00:12:12.659 Because if the GOP loses the Latino vote by those 00:12:12.659 --> 00:12:14.980 margins in the midterms, the whole map changes. 00:12:15.440 --> 00:12:18.299 Texas isn't safe. Arizona isn't safe. And even 00:12:18.299 --> 00:12:21.019 Nevada seems to be in play. We have representative 00:12:21.019 --> 00:12:23.779 Marc Amode retiring from a safe Republican seat. 00:12:23.919 --> 00:12:25.659 Another one of those signals. He's leaving a 00:12:25.659 --> 00:12:27.840 safe seat. Publicly, he says he's passing the 00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:29.740 torch. But the reading between the lines is that 00:12:29.740 --> 00:12:32.059 the job just sucks now. It's become miserable. 00:12:32.179 --> 00:12:34.360 And when you have safe incumbents quitting. It 00:12:34.360 --> 00:12:37.960 creates open seats. And open seats invite chaos. 00:12:38.620 --> 00:12:41.179 The GOP could lose that seat just because of 00:12:41.179 --> 00:12:43.379 a messy primary. It feels like the political 00:12:43.379 --> 00:12:45.419 professionals are finally realizing what the 00:12:45.419 --> 00:12:48.570 voters already knew. The whole system is unstable. 00:12:49.250 --> 00:12:52.110 Which brings us to the final real -world consequence 00:12:52.110 --> 00:12:54.429 of all this. The government is about to run out 00:12:54.429 --> 00:12:58.220 of money. Again. The DHS funding cliff. We are 00:12:58.220 --> 00:13:00.779 a week away. And the fight is all about ICE. 00:13:01.320 --> 00:13:03.980 The Democrats put forward this list of 10 demands 00:13:03.980 --> 00:13:06.620 that's basically a total overhaul. No masks, 00:13:07.120 --> 00:13:09.480 mandatory body cams, no enforcement at schools 00:13:09.480 --> 00:13:11.879 or churches. It's a transparency and human rights 00:13:11.879 --> 00:13:14.659 wish list. And naturally, the GOP response from 00:13:14.659 --> 00:13:16.899 Senator Thune was to call it unrealistic and 00:13:16.899 --> 00:13:18.950 just punt the whole thing to Trump. And what's 00:13:18.950 --> 00:13:20.669 Trump's position on this? Well, this connects 00:13:20.669 --> 00:13:22.929 right back to our separate realities theme. He 00:13:22.929 --> 00:13:24.690 gave an interview right before the Super Bowl. 00:13:25.029 --> 00:13:27.029 He was asked about migrants dying in custody, 00:13:27.250 --> 00:13:30.370 specifically two cases, Renee Good and Alex Preti. 00:13:31.009 --> 00:13:33.210 And his response wasn't about policy or safety. 00:13:33.509 --> 00:13:35.610 He said the real tragedy of their deaths was 00:13:35.610 --> 00:13:38.269 the bad publicity for IC. He said the bad PR 00:13:38.269 --> 00:13:41.649 was the tragedy, not the deaths. Yes. And he 00:13:41.649 --> 00:13:44.149 even qualified it by saying the deceased weren't 00:13:44.149 --> 00:13:49.419 angels. So. Look at that negotiating gap. One 00:13:49.419 --> 00:13:51.720 side is demanding body cameras to prevent death 00:13:51.720 --> 00:13:54.980 and abuse. The other side sees those deaths primarily 00:13:54.980 --> 00:13:57.360 as a public relations problem. How do you even 00:13:57.360 --> 00:14:00.080 begin to compromise between human rights and 00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:02.620 PR management? You don't. That's the conclusion. 00:14:02.980 --> 00:14:06.120 The ideological gap is unbridgeable right now. 00:14:06.840 --> 00:14:08.980 A shutdown seems almost inevitable because they 00:14:08.980 --> 00:14:11.059 aren't arguing about numbers on a spreadsheet. 00:14:11.539 --> 00:14:13.460 They're arguing about the fundamental value of 00:14:13.460 --> 00:14:15.259 the people caught in the system. So it all comes 00:14:15.259 --> 00:14:18.259 full circle from a movie review score that has 00:14:18.259 --> 00:14:20.259 nothing to do with the movie. To a halftime show 00:14:20.259 --> 00:14:22.220 that has nothing to do with football. To a budget 00:14:22.220 --> 00:14:24.360 negotiation that has nothing to do with the actual 00:14:24.360 --> 00:14:26.299 needs of the country. It's all the same phenomenon. 00:14:26.519 --> 00:14:29.720 We're seeing the creation of these bespoke realities. 00:14:29.840 --> 00:14:31.480 If you don't like the movie reviews, you buy 00:14:31.480 --> 00:14:33.419 the score. If you don't like the halftime show, 00:14:33.740 --> 00:14:35.500 you film your own. And if you don't like the 00:14:35.500 --> 00:14:37.820 bad press about human rights abuses, you just 00:14:37.820 --> 00:14:41.700 blame the victims. It's terrifying. But it's 00:14:41.700 --> 00:14:44.899 also strangely clarifying. because those election 00:14:44.899 --> 00:14:47.639 results in Texas and New Jersey suggest that 00:14:47.639 --> 00:14:50.879 reality eventually crashes the party. You can 00:14:50.879 --> 00:14:52.960 fake a Rotten Tomatoes score. You can't fake 00:14:52.960 --> 00:14:55.639 a 32 -point swing in a voting booth. That's the 00:14:55.639 --> 00:14:58.279 hope, right? The user score on the Internet might 00:14:58.279 --> 00:15:00.500 be rigged, but the voter score in the precinct 00:15:00.500 --> 00:15:03.440 is still, for now, the only metric that actually 00:15:03.440 --> 00:15:05.580 shifts power. So here's the question for you 00:15:05.580 --> 00:15:08.350 to chew on as we head toward the midterms. We're 00:15:08.350 --> 00:15:10.730 seeing this massive effort to curate the world, 00:15:11.029 --> 00:15:13.330 to fit a narrative. But when people actually 00:15:13.330 --> 00:15:16.669 walk into that voting booth alone, are they voting 00:15:16.669 --> 00:15:19.809 on that curated online reality? Or are they voting 00:15:19.809 --> 00:15:21.889 on the reality they see in their own neighborhoods? 00:15:22.289 --> 00:15:25.049 If Texas is any indication, the official narrative 00:15:25.049 --> 00:15:27.429 might be in for a very rude awakening. We'll 00:15:27.429 --> 00:15:29.230 be watching the numbers. Thanks for diving in 00:15:29.230 --> 00:15:29.549 with us.