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Episode Seventy Four: Immunity Tested and Cyrus Nowrasteh · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome the episode number seventy four of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name
• 0:04
  is John Ziggler. I'm your host on today's show. Stop me if you've
• 0:07
  heard this one before Donald Trump announces that he is on the verge of getting
• 0:12
  indicted again. I go on news Nation TV to tell truths no one dares
• 0:18
  to speak about the Republican race and a great interview with Hollywood filmmaker Cyrus Narasta,
• 0:25
  who was very close to the Sound of Freedom movie and has some contrarian
• 0:29
  opinions about a movie business currently in peril. I'm known as the Dutch Digital
• 0:35
  marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO and EMMO marketing specialist that also happens
• 0:41
  to be a big fan of John Ziggler and the Death of Journalism. Do
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  messaging and confaded messages in the best channels for your business. Please visit my
• 0:54
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• 0:59
  your story. The website is the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. If you
• 1:04
  want to grow your business, Peter can help. That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman
• 1:10
  dot com and hey, thanks for sponsoring the show. Well, here we
• 1:14
  go again. Donald Trump has once again announced that he is expecting to be
• 1:19
  indicted, this time in the January sixth investigation. Obviously, he's already been
• 1:25
  indicted twice during this calendar year, during this Republican nominating process, once in
• 1:30
  New York for a case that's I believe rather bogus involving hush money to Stormy
• 1:38
  Daniels, the former porn star, and then one case that I think actually
• 1:42
  is quite legitimate, although could end up being a little bit overblown and probably
• 1:47
  will not likely in my view, result in his conviction based upon what the
• 1:52
  jury pool is going to be. And that's the classified documents case. This
• 1:56
  one is the January sixth case related to election interference and the events that occurred
• 2:04
  that day and Trump's role in them, including potentially the facilitating of that riot
• 2:12
  or uprising or the attack on the Capitol, whatever you want to call it.
• 2:16
  It is not as of this taping actually happened, but Trump believes,
• 2:20
  because of a letter sent to him by Special Counsel Jack Smith, that that
• 2:23
  is inevitable. It appears to me as if he is trying to repeat history
• 2:30
  and get the troops to rally around him one more time. There's no indication
• 2:36
  that anyone's going to leave him because of this, because, after all,
• 2:39
  what was January sixth, well, January sixth one was something where Trump wasn't
• 2:46
  physically there. You could make, i think, a reasonable argument based upon
• 2:50
  what we currently know, that he was not directly responsible for what happened.
• 2:55
  Now, did he handle it very very poorly? In my opinion, he
• 3:00
  did. There are all sorts of things that he should not have done that
• 3:02
  he did do, and things that he could have done sooner that he did
• 3:06
  not do. But to make the case that, you know, if that's
• 3:09
  what they're going to try to do, that he was the direct cause of
• 3:14
  the riot, that he facilitated it, and that this was insurrection, I
• 3:20
  think that's a leap legally, but politically, and that's what really matters here,
• 3:23
  at least in the short run. Politically, January sixth was an attempt,
• 3:29
  in the minds of conservative Republican voters, especially Trump fans, to try
• 3:34
  to get some semblance of accountability for an election that they delusionally think might have
• 3:39
  been stolen, and the narrative surrounding January sixth as bad as it was back
• 3:46
  when it happened in twenty twenty one has changed rather dramatically, especially on the
• 3:52
  right, largely because of Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson, before he got fired
• 3:55
  at Fox News Channel almost single handedly shift did the narrative rather dramatically among Republican
• 4:02
  base voters because he put out those videos given to him by Kevin McCarthy,
• 4:06
  the Speaker of the House, and in my view, revised history to a
• 4:11
  large degree. Now, I am absolutely in the category that the media and
• 4:15
  the Democrats completely and totally overplayed their hand on January sixth. My view is
• 4:20
  it was really bad. It was wrong that Trump could have prevented it and
• 4:26
  did not. That Trump was actually happy, at least at first to see
• 4:30
  that it occurred that way, because it was a sign of support for him.
• 4:34
  You know, the threats against Mike Pence's life were absolutely an abomination.
• 4:41
  However, the idea that the protesters killed a whole bunch of people or police
• 4:46
  officers is just flat out wrong. The only person we know for sure was
• 4:49
  killed that day is actually Babbitt, a Trump protester and someone who you know,
• 4:56
  if she was a liberal, would have been seen as a hero shot
• 4:59
  by a black police officer and almost point blank range when she's unarmed. I
• 5:05
  mean, you know, if you reverse this situation politically, if she's black,
• 5:10
  the officer is white, and the media was in favor of Babbitt's political
• 5:15
  cause, I mean, she would literally be a heroine. Instead, she's
• 5:17
  totally forgotten in the media narrative. So there's lots that the media got wrong
• 5:24
  about January sixth, and they have, as they always do, completely and
• 5:29
  totally overplayed their hand and indicting Trump in his involvement in this may in fact
• 5:33
  be further evidence of them overplaying their hand. But politically, I don't see
• 5:40
  how this is going to be the magic bullet that finally stops Donald Trump,
• 5:46
  especially based upon the way that people responded in the Republican ranks to the first
• 5:51
  two indictments. Now, is it possible. Is it possible that there is
• 5:58
  and the effect cumulative effect that over time that Republican voters just get tired of
• 6:04
  this and say, you can't we have another option? Do we really need
• 6:10
  to have a nominee who's been enticed in three separate cases twice federally, maybe
• 6:16
  a fourth time. If the Georgia case comes to fruition, Do we really
• 6:21
  need this now in a rational world? I think that's a very strong argument.
• 6:28
  Steve Cortez, former Trump a who now works for Never Back Down,
• 6:31
  talked about this on this podcast. He and I have talked about it in
• 6:35
  person many times. I know Steve has believed that this is a very rational
• 6:43
  scenario that there could be this cumulative effect that eventually enough support drains from Trump
• 6:50
  that he becomes vulnerable, and at that point that's when everything changes. I
• 6:57
  have said, even though I'm very down and despondent and pessimistic about how it's
• 7:01
  all going to turn out, that the one element that has occurred over the
• 7:05
  last several months that is potentially good for the De Santis campaign and bad for
• 7:10
  the Trump campaign is that Trump is so far ahead now that it's going to
• 7:15
  become fairly easy for there to be a reverse momentum narrative. And that's something
• 7:20
  that the media is going to be very susceptible too. Maybe the hardcore right
• 7:27
  wing media will resist it. But if it becomes very clear that Trump is
• 7:32
  losing his lead and De Santis is gaining, hopefully it would be to sandus
• 7:36
  and not somebody else. If that happens in a real way, over sustained
• 7:42
  time, then that can be a narrative that has its own momentum. And
• 7:47
  that's really the only hope I see. And this is the only rational path,
• 7:51
  the one that I'm articulating right now is the only rational path to someone
• 7:58
  other than Donald Trump, hopefully round santists being the Republican nominee. That there
• 8:03
  is this cumulative effect that it's just too much, that you know, it
• 8:07
  just weighs Trump down enough people get tired and they look around and they go,
• 8:13
  well, you know, the Santist isn't Trump, but he's the best
• 8:16
  alternative. And you know, I went on News Nation television to talk about
• 8:22
  the state of the race, and I described for Dan Abrams on NewsNation,
• 8:26
  my former boss, and I guess I would call him a friend. He
• 8:30
  has me on every couple of weeks on the program to talk about media related
• 8:35
  issues, usually from the standpoint of an anti Trump conservative. And I broke
• 8:39
  it down that there's basically three groups in the Republican voting base. There's the
• 8:46
  Trump cultists, the Trump likers, and the never Trumpers. And I've been
• 8:50
  in never Trumpers since the very very beginning, and I think that the the
• 8:54
  Santist campaign has has made a mistake strategically in that they assumed that the never
• 9:00
  Trumpers were all going to be with them because of the twenty twenty two mid
• 9:05
  term and victory and because of the fantastic COVID response, and they have allowed
• 9:11
  other people to gain some traction in that track. I mean, Mike Penn
• 9:16
  says six percent in New Hampshire especially, Chris Christie has six or seven percent
• 9:22
  in that state, which is critical. Nicky Haley has her four or five
• 9:26
  percent. These are people who aren't obviously those two are associated with Donald Trump.
• 9:31
  But if you're someone who's tired of Donald Trump, you know, you
• 9:37
  could certainly go into that category. But and Chris Christy obviously is very much
• 9:43
  in the anti Trump attack attack attack mode. But while most never Trumpers are
• 9:48
  still with the Santas, he hasn't completely dominated that track because that track is
• 9:54
  probably at least twenty five percent, hopefully close to thirty percent, and of
• 10:00
  the Republican electorate, and the Santists isn't at twenty five or thirty percent nationally,
• 10:05
  and so he hasn't dominated that track and the middle track, the middle
• 10:09
  people, the people that I think the Santists really has been appealing to the
• 10:13
  Trump likers. I think his campaign knew that the Trump cultists were untouchable and
• 10:18
  that the only way they were coming along is if they had no choice in
• 10:22
  a general election. And that was going to be a big, big question,
• 10:26
  because you know, Trump could easily sabotage to Santis in a general election
• 10:30
  by controlling the Trump cultists. But that's a separate story. But the middle
• 10:33
  group, the Trump likers, just haven't been interested in anybody else, whether
• 10:39
  it's de Santists or any other candidate, largely because they've been rallying around Trump
• 10:45
  because of these indictments, and because they have nostalgia for his twenty sixteen victory,
• 10:52
  and frankly because to the extent that they even care about polling. It's
• 10:56
  bizarre the Trumpers sometimes care about polling and most of the time pretend that polling
• 11:00
  has no validity whatsoever. But you know, the general election polling between Biden
• 11:05
  and Trump has not been bad for Trump lately despite these indictments, and so
• 11:11
  the electability argument has kind of gone away. But is there gonna be this
• 11:18
  cumulative effect with regard to these indictments, assuming this January sixth one happens.
• 11:24
  I am very skeptical of that, because you know, there's one narrative that
• 11:28
  says it's a cumulative effect and it eventually has a negative impact on Trump's standing.
• 11:35
  Even if it's just with ten percent of the Republican electorate, that's significant,
• 11:41
  very significant. Potentially, it would need to be more than that for
• 11:43
  Trump to actually lose, but that would at least be a really good start
• 11:46
  that would let De Santist back in the ball game and get him traction and
• 11:52
  get him in punching range to where then some of these attacks might have more
• 11:56
  of an effect against Donald Trump. However, you know, I'm also of
• 12:03
  the belief that there's a second narrative here when it comes to this cumulative effect
• 12:07
  there. And it's a term I use not ironically because obviously the Santis versus
• 12:13
  Trump. To me, the number one issue is the reaction to COVID,
• 12:18
  and that is immunity. I think that there's a very strong argument to be
• 12:22
  made, based upon what we currently know, that Trump has immunity now to
• 12:28
  all indictments, as insane as that is, especially an indictment that in the
• 12:33
  minds of Republican voters isn't based in a whole lot of substance and is where
• 12:41
  in their minds he was acting on their behalf, he was fighting for them.
• 12:46
  In their minds, he wasn't. And by the way, he knows
• 12:48
  he lost the twenty twenty election. There's been voluminous amounts of evidence that have
• 12:54
  been released that he even he knew it, which he did lose the twenty
• 12:58
  twenty elections. So it's all a fraud, it's all scam, it's all
• 13:00
  him trying to save face. It's all classic Trump. But it doesn't matter
• 13:03
  because that's the perception, and the right wing media has fostered that perception.
• 13:09
  And so because a large percentage of not a significant majority of Republican voters at
• 13:16
  the very least have great questions about whether Trump really lost the twenty twenty election,
• 13:22
  this plays right in the Trump's hands, by the way, it plays
• 13:24
  right into his hands on the electability issue, because if he didn't really lose,
• 13:28
  then it's not like he's unelectable against Biden. Of course, no one
• 13:33
  wants to answer the question, what the hell is going to be different in
• 13:35
  twenty twenty four when you're running against an incumbent than it was in twenty twenty.
• 13:41
  If they really stole the election in twenty twenty when you're the incumbent,
• 13:43
  how they're not going to steal it from you when you're the challenger in twenty
• 13:46
  twenty four. No one wants to touch that question if you're a Trump fan.
• 13:52
  But as of right now, as much as I would love, love,
• 13:54
  love for there to be a cumulative effect of these indictments, I think
• 13:58
  it's more likely that there's just an immunity effect, where then nothing matters.
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  And I even suggested this to Steve when he did our interview on the podcast
• 14:07
  a few months ago when he first joined Never Met, Never Back Down the
• 14:11
  Rhonda Santis Political Action Committee, that you know, it isn't one man's cumulative
• 14:16
  effect, another man's immunity, and when it's Trump, I think the history
• 14:22
  shows it's probably immunity. And you know, we'll see. I'd like to
• 14:26
  know what the details are. I'd like to see this actually happen. Who
• 14:30
  the hell knows, but Trump seems pretty positive that that's going to happen.
• 14:33
  It's it's very odd, you know that this has happened now multiple times where
• 14:37
  Trump is the source of information on when he's going to be arrested and indicted.
• 14:43
  It's almost gotten to the point now where he's bragging about it. This
• 14:46
  is the upside down world in which we now live. But this is this
• 14:50
  is the Trump world. We're just living in it, and until something dramatic
• 14:54
  happens, I don't see how that changes. Interestingly, well, it's not
• 14:58
  directly related to the January sixth case, at least not as far as we
• 15:03
  know. There was a case in Michigan. It just I didn't even realize
• 15:07
  had been going on where sixteen Republican officials have been indicted for a scheme to
• 15:18
  basically defraud the Electoral College. Now, this seems incredibly hairbrained, and you
• 15:24
  know, I'm not sure based upon what I read about this, that it
• 15:28
  warrants felony indictments, but that's what these were. Sounds to me like some
• 15:31
  of these people may not even understood what the hell they were doing. I
• 15:35
  think some of these people might have just thought that they were pledging pledging their
• 15:39
  loyalty to Donald Trump, but that this hairbrained scheme to have Republicans pretend to
• 15:46
  be Michigan members of the Electoral College and vote in the electoral college when they
• 15:52
  weren't allowed to because obviously Biden won Michigan and he was the person who was
• 15:58
  going to yet the electoral college votes. Most people don't seem to understand that
• 16:03
  that the electoral college is not just a theoretical thing. You actually elect real
• 16:08
  people. My friend who now passed away, Frank o'harris, an NFL Hall
• 16:15
  of Famer Pittsburgh Steeler legend, he was has I mean, I think on
• 16:18
  multiple occasions he was an actual elector. I think he was an elector for
• 16:22
  Barack Obama and he might have been for Joe Biden. I'm not sure,
• 16:26
  but but he You know, these are real people that they really actually go
• 16:32
  and they vote. Now, they're supposed to vote based upon what the state
• 16:37
  results were. But that was one of the crazy things that Trump was putting
• 16:41
  out there after the twenty twenty election, was that somehow, you know,
• 16:45
  the electors really aren't legally obligated to vote the way that the state says.
• 16:52
  And there is actually a technical argument to be made in that direction. There
• 16:56
  have been a few so called faithless electors in our history. There's only been
• 17:03
  a handful, and they've never decided in an election. I do think it's
• 17:07
  a weakness in our system that the founders may not have fully contemplated. Like,
• 17:15
  for instance, can you imagine, with regard to this faithless elector situation,
• 17:21
  can you imagine if Donald Trump had just gotten forty four thousand more votes
• 17:26
  in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Now I realize that that's a lot
• 17:30
  more difficult than it sounds, but it's a very small number of votes.
• 17:33
  It's a you know, basically a small college football stadium of people in those
• 17:40
  three states. If he had gotten forty four thousand more votes in twenty twenty
• 17:44
  in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, and he had barely won those three
• 17:48
  states, right, we would have had, under the electoral college at that
• 17:53
  moment a two sixty nine two sixty nine tie. Now, under the best
• 18:02
  of circumstances, that would be a national crisis. But when you put Trump
• 18:06
  and the pandemic and everything else involved that was going on in twenty twenty into
• 18:11
  that equation, in my opinion, that's effectively a recipe for civil war.
• 18:18
  And then you add into it the fact that two hundred and sixty nine human
• 18:23
  beings would all have the theoretical ability to decide who the president of the United
• 18:32
  States was going to be because they could theoretically be a faithless elector I mean,
• 18:37
  a matching, you know, because the media would have wanted Biden to
• 18:41
  be the president. Can you imagine the pressure that those two hundred and sixty
• 18:45
  nine people who were supposed to vote for Trump under that scenario would have been
• 18:51
  under to flip their votes? And can you imagine if that happened, I
• 18:55
  mean it just it would have made what happened in two thousand with the Florida
• 18:59
  Rica between Bush and Gore seem like a picnic, literally like a picnic.
• 19:04
  And so anyway, this this Michigan story is very odd, and I think
• 19:11
  it's probably more of an indication of just how insane the Trump cult is,
• 19:15
  and that the Trump cult really has infiltrated the highest levels of state Republican parties
• 19:22
  like happened in Michigan. Now, as far as the state of the race,
• 19:27
  in our last episode, in episode seventy three, I kind of went
• 19:30
  through a very long dissertation about how while I am not yet willing to call
• 19:36
  the race for Trump, and probably won't for quite a while, yet,
• 19:40
  I'm still holding out for a miracle I still see, you know, maybe
• 19:44
  the cumulative effect of the indictments and creating a reverse momentum effect. And then
• 19:48
  all of a sudden, the narrative changes and the Santis has got the mojo
• 19:52
  back, and Trump is dead in the water, and you know, and
• 19:57
  then all of a sudden, you know, there's a win in Iowa,
• 20:00
  and maybe the Santis finishes a close second in New Hampshire, and maybe Scott
• 20:04
  and Haley decided to take a shot in the dark and back the right guy,
• 20:11
  and they back to Santis in South Carolina. By the way, even
• 20:15
  under that scenario, which is pretty much the best scenario I can come up
• 20:19
  with at this moment, he still has to somehow win Florida. And even
• 20:25
  if that happens, I know, I'm always the downer. I know,
• 20:27
  I'm Debbie Downer on this, just even when I'm trying to go through positive
• 20:32
  scenarios. But even if you then win South Carolina and then you win Florida,
• 20:37
  right, Okay, all that really does is get you to the finish
• 20:41
  line. I mean, at that point, you're you're going to get to
• 20:42
  the finish line if you if you win Iowa, you win South Carolina and
• 20:45
  then you win Florida. However, there are still so many states who have
• 20:53
  delegates to the convention that have no chance of going for on to Santis against
• 21:00
  Donald Trump. There is no chance, for instance, that Trump loses Kentucky
• 21:07
  or West Virginia or Tennessee or Alabama or Mississippi. You know, those are
• 21:17
  those are states that you know, the Appalachian Trail and the Deep South.
• 21:22
  There is just no chance whatsoever. Now that's not enough to win the nomination,
• 21:29
  but you know, there's no chance that a victory in Florida, unless
• 21:36
  Trump decides to fold his tent, which is never gonna happen, would suddenly
• 21:41
  mean that the whole map changes. It's not gonna That's not the way the
• 21:45
  world works when you have a Trump cult. And so while that scenario is
• 21:51
  possible, I'm not sure that even the scenario I'm outlining results in an ultimate
• 21:56
  to Sandus victory, certainly not a victory that would be of any value in
• 21:59
  a general election, because then you'd have a blood fast and you know,
• 22:04
  the Trump people would take their ball and go home, and then you'd lose
• 22:07
  the general election anyway. But anyway, I don't want to get too far
• 22:10
  ahead of myself. The point area is And in the last episode I articulated
• 22:15
  why I think you can start to make some conclusions, and I explained why
• 22:19
  I'm so pessimistic. And of course one of the things I've said is that
• 22:25
  New Hampshire seems to me to be a lost cause. And if you have
• 22:27
  limited resources, it seems to be the case with the Santist camp. Because
• 22:32
  now they're they're having trouble with fundraising and they're laying off campaign workers, then
• 22:37
  you ought to abandon New Hampshire. Well, of course I got sent by
• 22:41
  at least five or six people this morning a new pole out of New Hampshire
• 22:45
  that shows that Donald Trump, while leading, is only leading to Santists by
• 22:49
  fourteen points, and that most interestingly, Trump only has thirty seven percent.
• 22:55
  This is a University of New Hampshire pole. And so you know, a
• 22:57
  lot I understand it. A lot of people are saying to me, John,
• 23:00
  what's up with that? You know you said he should abandon New Hampshire.
• 23:04
  You think New Hampshire is a lost cause. I get it. Look,
• 23:08
  I'd be thrilled if that poll was correct, and I would love to
• 23:12
  see that poll be duplicated before I came to any kind of conclusions. The
• 23:18
  most interesting part of that poll is Trump at only thirty seven percent. I
• 23:23
  mean, that's remarkable under any circumstances. I mean, given the current perception
• 23:30
  of the race, former president one hundred percent name recognition, a state that
• 23:36
  he has won in the past, a state you know where he had that
• 23:40
  you know, rousing quote unquote victory over Caitlyn Collins in the CNN town hall.
• 23:45
  I mean, this is a state that seemingly has a very strong pro
• 23:49
  Trump population and where De Santis is hurt by the fact that he's very anti
• 23:56
  abortion and independent voters can can vote in New Hampshire, they can cross over.
• 24:00
  The rules there are different than other states. For Trump to only be
• 24:04
  at thirty seven percent is amazing and really pretty much the best news for the
• 24:10
  De Santis campaign that I have heard in quite a while. However, in
• 24:15
  a weird way, that thirty seven percent number is only more frustrating to me
• 24:21
  because when you look at it, I mean, he's still winning by fourteen
• 24:23
  points. Granted, yes, we're a long way from New Hampshire. Fourteen
• 24:27
  points doesn't seem like that much, but it really is, especially given the
• 24:30
  nature of this race. But what's frustrating about this is that I can see
• 24:37
  Trump winning New Hampshire pretty easily with thirty seven percent because there's too many damn
• 24:41
  candidates and none of them are gonna get the hell out before New Hampshire because
• 24:45
  there's not gonna be any reason to get out, because they're gonna get media
• 24:49
  coverage, they're gonna get attention. You know, they'll get crushed in Iowa
• 24:55
  in all likelihood, but they can still They'll be on the ballot New Hampshire,
• 24:59
  they'll be debates in New Hampshire, they'll get attention, and then you
• 25:02
  know, after New Hampshire, I can see people starting to get out because
• 25:06
  it's the first real primary state as opposed to a caucus. And the reality
• 25:11
  is with Chris Christie, you know already at like six seven percent, Ramaswami
• 25:17
  and Haley and Penns and Tim Scott all taking their piece of the pie,
• 25:23
  and it's all more than just two or three percent, and they're all gonna
• 25:26
  get into whatever these debates. Argument that the debates don't have Trump, which
• 25:30
  is going to further elevate them. The really infuriating element of this is thirty
• 25:37
  seven percent might be all Trump needs, and we're gonna see a repeat of
• 25:41
  twenty sixteen, which is almost exactly what happened in twenty sixteen, where he
• 25:48
  came nowhere near a majority of the vote until it was basically already over.
• 25:52
  But there were too many other candidates. And so I've seen the pole.
• 25:59
  I see some hope in the poll. It's only one poll. I hope
• 26:03
  it's duplicated. If I'm wrong, no one will be happier than me.
• 26:07
  But I'm telling you, I'm standing by my assessment when it comes to New
• 26:12
  Hampshire until I get more evidence than just that one poll. But it is
• 26:18
  there's a heartbeat there. There's a heartbeat, and so at this point,
• 26:22
  I guess that's that's good news. I'll take it now. Before we get
• 26:27
  to the main part of today's podcast, which is a really great interview with
• 26:32
  my very good friend Cyrus Nearasta, I want to play a couple of clips
• 26:37
  that illustrate almost better than I ever could two of the consistent themes of this
• 26:45
  podcast when it comes to media driven scams, and one is climate change and
• 26:52
  the other is equity. These are both boondoggles that the media is one hundred
• 26:57
  percent on board regarding and the first obviously is climate change, and both of
• 27:04
  these clips I want to play deal with this basically the phenomenon of you listen
• 27:11
  carefully, the truth is always going to come out because eventually they're going to
• 27:14
  say the quiet part out loud. And unfortunately we don't live in a world
• 27:18
  where the media actually calls them on it. They just let it go.
• 27:21
  They just give it a pass because it doesn't fit their agenda. And that
• 27:26
  happened this week with White House Press Secretary Karen Jehan Pierre, who is,
• 27:30
  by the way, the equity queen, since you know she's both black and
• 27:36
  female and lbgtq RSTUVWXYZ whatever it is. You know, that's why she has
• 27:44
  her job. But she made a very short statement that should have led every
• 27:48
  newscast, frankly because in referencing the fight against climate change and going out to
• 27:56
  the roots of climate change, she it is something that conservatives have been saying
• 28:02
  for a very long time that the so called Inflation Reduction Act was really nothing
• 28:07
  more than a way to get around throwing a whole lot of money at this
• 28:14
  climate change boom tooggle, and that is named it. The Inflation Reduction Act
• 28:18
  because politically that was more viable for what they really wanted it to do was
• 28:23
  to throw billions of dollars at climate change in a way that conservatives would be
• 28:32
  outraged by if they ever really looked at the details. And the media should
• 28:36
  have been reporting on, but of course they weren't because it's the Inflation Reduction
• 28:40
  Act. And here's what kareeen John Pierre said at the White House, and
• 28:45
  we're doing everything that we can to tackle the root causes of climate change.
• 28:49
  This is why the Inflation Reduction Act is so important. So there you have
• 28:52
  it. The Inflation Reduction Act was really all about going after the root causes
• 29:00
  of climate change. That should be a headline everywhere because that was a scam.
• 29:06
  Then the Inflation Reduction Act was a scam. And by the way,
• 29:08
  you know, there's very little evidence that inflation has been greatly reduced by the
• 29:12
  Inflation Reduction Act. To the extent inflation has been reduced, I would say
• 29:17
  that the Fed increasing interest rates has had a much more dramatic impact on that,
• 29:22
  but at this point it's probably too early to tell. But the more
• 29:25
  important part of this is she just said the quiet part out loud, she
• 29:30
  admitted something that conservatives have been claiming that was obviously true, but then she
• 29:34
  never gets called on it. And as far as the root causes of climate
• 29:38
  change, let me tell you what the real root causes of climate change are.
• 29:42
  The real root causes of climate change are natural cycles, sun spots,
• 29:51
  and then more importantly, rampant mental illness among prominent liberals, especially in the
• 29:57
  news media, also perverse self interests when it comes to so called scientists who
• 30:07
  are actually more like activists, and a perverse political agenda by socialists to use
• 30:15
  this issue to finally be able to force their agenda on America. That's what
• 30:22
  that's really about. Those are the root causes of quote unquote climate change,
• 30:29
  none of which has to do with man changing the weather. That's to me,
• 30:36
  by far the most logical and fact based look at this. Of course,
• 30:40
  the media would never even consider this because this is part of their religion.
• 30:44
  But it's the mental illness among prominent liberals, the political agenda of socialists
• 30:49
  to enact what they've always wanted but never been able to figure out a way
• 30:53
  to do it. But this is perfect, so we can pass the Inflation
• 30:56
  Reduction Act. Governmental own doggle, and it's really all about somehow going out
• 31:03
  to the root causes of climate change. And then of course you have the
• 31:06
  media and scientists going along with us because it's in their perverse self interest to
• 31:11
  do so, and they actually become activists on the issue and not scientists and
• 31:17
  not journalists because of course, as you know from the name of this podcast,
• 31:21
  journalism is dead. So that was coming Jean Pierre. Then we have
• 31:26
  this issue of equity, one that I've talked an awful lot about and the
• 31:30
  changing of the word the meaning of the word equality and transferring it to equity,
• 31:38
  the equality meaning equality of opportunity, equity meaning equity of outcome. And
• 31:45
  we have another example of the quiet part being said out loud, this from
• 31:52
  a zoom call what appears to be a zoom call from a Colonel Mark Wootton
• 31:56
  of Air Force Civil Air Patrols, the former commander of the Air Force Civil
• 32:01
  Air Patrol and he's talking about his advice with regard to hiring. And here
• 32:08
  he is. You'll be able to figure this out from his voice, but
• 32:12
  in case you can't, he's clearly a middle aged white guy virtue virtue signaling.
• 32:19
  He's signaling his virtue by saying, you know, the one thing that
• 32:23
  I think we ought to do with regard to hiring is not hiring so many
• 32:28
  white people, especially white dudes, because they all think alike. And here's
• 32:32
  what that sounded like. The only really guidance I putout there for him to
• 32:37
  consider is stop hiring middle aged white people, especially dudes they're pilots, because
• 32:45
  honestly, we all think alike too much. And if we're going to be
• 32:49
  preaching diversity and being inclusive and for crying out a lot, let's back it
• 32:53
  up with, you know, let's make the rhetoric meet the reality. So
• 32:58
  there you have, and I don't know how more clear it can be said
• 33:00
  than that. You've got middle aged whink guys saying don't hire middle aged whink
• 33:06
  guys, even when it comes to flying planes in the air force, an
• 33:12
  awfully serious matter. So we're not going to be determining jobs based upon merit
• 33:17
  or experience or ability. No, no, no, we need to get
• 33:21
  rid of white dudes because white dudes, you know, they don't help the
• 33:27
  cause of diversity and equity and they think too much alike, which, by
• 33:31
  the way, you know, the way I look at that is, in
• 33:35
  any kind of endeavor like that, there's only one way to think, which
• 33:37
  is how do I fly this plane safely and effectively? And so that's maybe
• 33:44
  why they all think alike. And for whatever reason, you have a higher
• 33:49
  percentage of middle aged white dudes who are in that realm. But you know,
• 33:54
  I don't see anything wrong with that. That just happens to be the
• 33:58
  way the cookie crumbles when you live in a world of equal opportunity. Now,
• 34:02
  yeah, look, you want to create some programs that help foster and
• 34:07
  promote other races and genders in that realm. Great, But coming out and
• 34:13
  saying that, you know what, don't hire people simply because they're white dudes.
• 34:19
  And this is from a white dude himself was a colonel in the Air
• 34:22
  Force Civil Air Patrol. That's a problem. Once again, it went viral
• 34:27
  on the right. Left wing media doesn't touch it. It quickly gets forgotten,
• 34:30
  and it's not part of the overall narrative for people who aren't following politics
• 34:37
  carefully and closely to see just how dramatic this agenda is, how obvious it
• 34:44
  is that straight white males especially have a target on their back. It's not
• 34:49
  just mild bias or discrimination. It is a target. Straight white males are
• 34:54
  the enemy of this government, period. End of sense. All right,
• 35:00
  Now, I've been talking a lot in the last few episodes about the remarkable
• 35:05
  story of the movie Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, which has shocked
• 35:12
  and horrified much of Hollywood and the liberal news media by already only a few
• 35:20
  weeks into its life in theaters, coming close to one hundred million dollars at
• 35:27
  the box office. By all accounts, it will surpass one hundred million dollars
• 35:30
  very quickly. This is a movie about child sex trafficking, and I had
• 35:37
  not seen the movie until the last couple of days. I went to go
• 35:42
  see the movie with our guest, which we'll get to momentarily. His name
• 35:45
  is Cyrus Narasta. He's a well known screenwriter and director of major Hollywood films.
• 35:52
  He wrote The Path to nine eleven, the docuseries on ABC that the
• 35:57
  Clinton's got censored and then are edited and later censored in Back in two thousand
• 36:02
  and six, I did my own documentary about the censoring of that film,
• 36:07
  called the Blocking the Path to nine to eleven or Blocking the Path to nine
• 36:10
  to eleven. Which some people bizarrely think is a nine to eleven conspiracy movie.
• 36:15
  It's not. It's a look at what happened to Cyrus' movie what he
• 36:20
  wrote The Path to nine to eleven, the two part document series that aired
• 36:23
  on ABC in a very stunted fashion because the Clintons had a conniption fit and
• 36:29
  Disney caved. But Cyrus has gone on since then to direct three major movies,
• 36:36
  The Stoning of soriah M, which starred Jim Caviezel, The Young Messiah,
• 36:40
  which ironically enough didn't have Jim Caviezel in it, but it is about
• 36:45
  Jesus, and a movie called Infidel, which stars Jim Caviezel. So Cyrus
• 36:52
  is very very close to Jim Caviezel, both professionally and personally. And Cyrus
• 36:58
  really wanted me to see the movie, and I didn't really want to see
• 37:01
  it because it revolves largely around an eleven year old girl who gets kidnapped into
• 37:08
  into sex trafficking, and you know, I've got an eleven year old girl,
• 37:13
  so it's not an easy movie for me to watch. That's what I
• 37:16
  anticipated, and that was in fact the case, but you know, Cyrus
• 37:21
  bought the ticket basically forced me to go, and we were going to talk
• 37:24
  to him on the show about it. So I figured, Okay, I'll
• 37:29
  take one for the cause here and I'll go see it. And it's very
• 37:32
  very good. I'm not sure it's quite as good as Cyrus thinks it is,
• 37:37
  but I'm very happy that it's doing very well because I think it's an
• 37:40
  important cause and I love the fact that this movie has succeeded against all the
• 37:47
  rules and against all the efforts by the liberal news media to try to destroy
• 37:52
  it. So on a visceral level, I think it's fantastic, and from
• 37:57
  a political standpoint, I think it's right that this important topic is getting more
• 38:04
  attention because so many people are going to see this movie in the theater.
• 38:07
  Plus I'm in favor of people seeing movies in the theater to begin with.
• 38:12
  I almost always am rooting for decent movies to do well at the box office
• 38:15
  because I think the theater experience is important, and I think we've lost something
• 38:20
  if we don't go to a public theater to see movies anymore, which in
• 38:24
  the streaming era may in fact be in our futures. So I'm thrilled that
• 38:30
  the movie is doing well. I'm happy for Jim Caviezel, and I'm happy
• 38:34
  for Cyrus. The part that angered me the most in watching it, other
• 38:38
  than obviously the issue of child sex trafficking, is that this movie is not
• 38:45
  conservative at all. I mean, it's absolutely astonishing, unbelievable, infuriating that
• 38:52
  the liberal media knee jerk fashion would attack a movie with such an incredibly important
• 39:00
  cause behind it simply because they perceive it one as usurping their authority to determine
• 39:08
  what projects get traction and which projects don't, as well as having a star
• 39:14
  Jim Caviezel, who they perceive as being conservative because he's Christian he played Jesus
• 39:21
  and Passion of the Christ, and because he's associated with the qan On movement.
• 39:27
  And it's possible he may now even be connected to Donald Trump because of
• 39:31
  the success of this movie. I don't know that that's one hundred percent for
• 39:36
  sure, but I've heard rumors that Trump may be trying to jump on the
• 39:39
  bandwagon when it comes to Sound of Freedom, and politically, frankly, I
• 39:45
  can't blame him. I actually think this movie fits more with the de Santist
• 39:49
  theme of his campaign. But I digress. But it really infuriates me that
• 39:55
  the liberal media would take an ant high sound of freedom position simply because they
• 40:04
  perceive it as somehow being conservative or nonliberal. This is a non political movie.
• 40:10
  Almost everybody in the credits in this movie is Hispanic. This company is
• 40:16
  not overtly conservative that did the movie. The movie was once owned by Disney,
• 40:23
  they decided to shelve it and then sell it to Angel's Studios. I
• 40:29
  mean, there's nothing conservative at all about this movie except the perception of its
• 40:35
  star. And so now we have the liberal media basically taking the position,
• 40:40
  whether they admit it or not, that a movie condemning child sex trafficking is
• 40:47
  bad. That's bad, but the mutilation of children who have been manipulated into
• 40:57
  believing that they're transgender that's good. In fact, preventing that is bad.
• 41:02
  I mean, this is the ft up world that we now live in,
• 41:06
  where in the contorted positions that the liberal mainstream media establishment has been somehow forced
• 41:15
  into taking, and it's just so infuriating. It's just so wrong, and
• 41:22
  a large part of me is thrilled that they have lost this battle on this
• 41:27
  movie, because you know, when Cyrus and I went to go see it,
• 41:31
  you know it was It was a Monday night and in the theater was
• 41:35
  almost packed. So this thing is not fading in any way, shape or
• 41:39
  form. And it's a massive success. It's a shocking success. And I
• 41:45
  wanted to have Cyrus come on the podcast to talk about that issue, his
• 41:51
  relationship to the movie, his relationship to Jim, the writer's strike, the
• 41:54
  actor's strike, some Hollywood issues, and also, by the way, a
• 42:00
  couple of other podcasts episodes that we've done, the jfk Assassination podcast episode,
• 42:06
  as well as the fact that Cyrus has listened to with the benefit of hindsight,
• 42:10
  probably more diligently than almost anybody else I know. So this interview encompasses
• 42:17
  a whole lot of subjects. I think you're going to find it to be
• 42:21
  very, very interesting and very important. So here is my interview with my
• 42:25
  friend Cyrus Narasta, screenwriter and Hollywood director Cyrus Narasta. Welcome to the Death
• 42:32
  of Journalism podcast. Thanks John, good to be with you. Always great
• 42:37
  to talk to you, Si, and so many things to talk about.
• 42:40
  I want to start with this smash hit Sound of Freedom, and you have
• 42:45
  a really strong and rather unique connection to this film. In a couple different
• 42:51
  ways, but the primary way is that you've actually directed the star of Sound
• 42:54
  of Freedom, Jim Caviezel in two different movies, Stoning of So I Am
• 43:00
  and Infidel. Interestingly, I don't know if you've ever thought about this,
• 43:04
  Cyrus, maybe a half, but you know you've directed three major movies,
• 43:08
  two star Jim Caviezel and the other one had a Jesus in it, So
• 43:14
  it's kind of an odd Jim Caviezel connection. And uh, and you were
• 43:17
  well aware of Sounding Freedom well before it came out. So give us a
• 43:22
  sense of your evolution, of your knowledge of this film and how surprised you
• 43:28
  are at its enormous success. Well, I shot Infidel in and finished the
• 43:37
  film in twenty nineteen, so that's four years ago, right, And when
• 43:47
  John, when Jim Caviezel came over to the house to talk about doing Infidel,
• 43:54
  he lives not far from me. He shows up with blonde hair and
• 44:04
  Betsy and I look at him and we say, what happened to you man?
• 44:07
  And he goes, you know, well, every now and then,
• 44:10
  you know, I do a movie, and when I do a movie,
• 44:13
  I have to adjust my appearance to look like the character I'm playing, and
• 44:17
  we go, oh, sure, of course. So that was the first
• 44:22
  I heard of Sound of Freedom. He had just finished shooting it in Columbia
• 44:28
  and he played a real guy who he said was blonde and okay. And
• 44:34
  then now, after we finished Infidel, he actually went back and shot a
• 44:37
  little bit more of Sound of Freedom. But it sounded fascinating to me.
• 44:45
  And obviously, look, I want any actor I'm working with, especially if
• 44:49
  his movie, I assume is going to come out before mine, I want
• 44:53
  that movie to do well. So I'm in Jim's corner on Sound of Freedom.
• 44:59
  The only problem is it's not coming out, and it's not coming out
• 45:05
  and it's not coming out. So, I mean, Infidel came out in
• 45:08
  twenty twenty in the middle of the pandemic, which is really smart on our
• 45:13
  part. But anyway, and what happened was, you know, I keep
• 45:19
  wondering about Sound of Freedom. Jim invited me to a screening of it.
• 45:22
  I would say late must have been late twenty nineteen, a rough cut,
• 45:30
  and I met the director, Alejandro Monteverde, and I was very impressed.
• 45:38
  You know how rough cuts can go zig I mean, you know, rough
• 45:43
  cuts can be pretty rough, and I thought, Okay, this movie is
• 45:45
  in good shape. This is going to be a powerful movie. I thought
• 45:50
  it was too long at the time. Later I found out way all,
• 45:54
  this really wasn't that rough a cut. This is going to be closer to
• 45:58
  what they want. While it was around two hours in twenty minutes, and
• 46:00
  I still thought that was long. And then I found out they were having
• 46:07
  some difficulties with, you know, the money behind it, because I think
• 46:14
  Fox had bought what I was told at the time was the Latin rights only.
• 46:22
  I was told at the time for five million dollars, which makes kind
• 46:27
  of makes sense. Now, this is a movie that I think is already
• 46:30
  doing well in the Latin market inside of the United States, obviously doing well
• 46:34
  in all markets, but I think it'll do terrifically in the Latin market,
• 46:37
  and how you do in for certain foreign locales can have a huge impact on
• 46:43
  your box office. It makes sense to me, Okay, Fox has paid
• 46:45
  five million for the Latin market. Then I asked Jim, well, what
• 46:49
  about the domestic US market, and he goes, well, he doesn't sound
• 46:52
  like they're interested in that. So then what happened was I saw another cut
• 47:00
  I actually saw two more cuts of the movie. Each time I thought it
• 47:05
  was improving. And then and then what happened was Disney acquired Fox. I
• 47:09
  guess that was in twenty one, the acquire part of Fox. And in
• 47:15
  that acquisition they acquired the rights to Sound of Freedom and apparently had no interest
• 47:23
  in it. And you know, I get it to a point, it's
• 47:28
  like their Disney. You know, this is a movie about child trafficking.
• 47:30
  But at the end of the day, they didn't even dump it onto a
• 47:34
  streamer. So I guess they producers and funders of the movie decided to make
• 47:42
  a deal to get it back and try and release it elsewhere. And they've
• 47:45
  released it now through this company Angel Studios, and you know the rest is
• 47:50
  history, all right. But from a movie you stand before we get to
• 47:53
  your connection to Jim, and I think Jim is obviously a huge part of
• 47:58
  this film, not just because the star, but because also the perception of
• 48:01
  the film, especially in the media, I think is guided by the perception
• 48:06
  of Jim Caviezel book. But first from a movie making standpoint, I mean,
• 48:09
  this film has taken a very strange, almost bizarre track to being a
• 48:16
  hit. I mean I can't think of a similar tracked movie, especially one
• 48:22
  that is now perceived as an independent film, even though it was one's own
• 48:27
  by Fox in Disney, to break out, and not just break out,
• 48:31
  but to break out to what looks like well over one hundred million dollars during
• 48:37
  the crowded summer box office season with a subject matter that's not exactly conducive to
• 48:45
  summer movie going, as you said, child sex trafficking. This is in
• 48:50
  an era when you know, we're told people don't want to go to the
• 48:52
  movies anymore for a variety of reasons. Just from a business standpoint, just
• 49:00
  how shocking and potentially how significant is Sound of Freedom breaking out this way in
• 49:07
  your view? I think I hope that it's earth shattering in terms of its
• 49:15
  impact on distribution, marketing, and the business. Because, first of all,
• 49:22
  it's a serious, dramatic movie about an important subject. It's not comic
• 49:28
  book characters, it's not the standard tent pole summer stuff. It tells me
• 49:36
  that not only is there an audience out there for these kinds of movies,
• 49:39
  but there's a distribution and marketing plan that was put in place here that I'm
• 49:46
  not I don't have intimate knowledge of but I'm just watching it that is tapped
• 49:52
  into something that perhaps Hollywood is that has completely escaped Hollywood and to come in
• 50:00
  there and, like you said, in the middle of the tent pole summer
• 50:04
  season and take out a huge chunk like this. And let's face it,
• 50:09
  Indiana Jones underperformed dramatically. They're not saying this, but I'm telling you a
• 50:17
  Mission Impossible it is also underperforming. And I was told yesterday by someone very
• 50:25
  in the know that Mission Impossible has made for over four hundred million dollars.
• 50:34
  Sound of Freedom was made for fourteen. So if there's a new distribution pattern,
• 50:40
  a new ability to sort of access viewers who might respond to these movies
• 50:49
  or different kinds of movies that have different kinds of messages and ideas behind them,
• 50:57
  if that's something that can be replicated or heated or become a pattern,
• 51:01
  I think it's really going to shake up Hollywood right now, which, let's
• 51:06
  face it, is in trouble. And to be clear, nobody involved with
• 51:10
  Sounded Freedom, including Jim, had any idea that this thing was going to
• 51:15
  break out like this, correct, correct, Yeah, when Jim told me.
• 51:22
  I saw Jim in early June, and he said, we're coming out
• 51:29
  July fourth, on over two thousand screams. My heart sunk. I said,
• 51:37
  I say, what lunatic thinks that a movie about child trafficking can compete
• 51:44
  with the summer tent poles. And I said to him, what about September?
• 51:50
  Because I'd heard originally the September was the plan, and that's usually where
• 51:52
  you roll out a more serious kind of movie. Let's say, I said
• 51:58
  to him, what about September, No, July fourth, Sounded Freedom July
• 52:01
  fourth, it's gonna do great. Jim's a very positive guy, so I
• 52:07
  heard him say well before he said that about Infidel. So all I can
• 52:12
  tell you is I thought they're going to get roasted. The movie will be
• 52:17
  gone in a week to ten days. What do I know? Yeah,
• 52:22
  clearly you were wrong, and thankfully so. I know you're you're happy for
• 52:27
  your friend. I know you're also probably a little bit disappointed in with the
• 52:30
  order in which things happened, because if Sounded Freedom had come out and done
• 52:34
  this before Infidel, then that might have changed the history of Infidel. Right.
• 52:38
  Well, yes, I mean not that we would have done this level
• 52:43
  of business, but I think we would have certainly opened stronger. It's just
• 52:46
  like, look, we're all parasites in this business, you know, the
• 52:51
  agents at the top of the list. But that's originally when he told me
• 52:55
  about Sound of Freedom, why I wanted it to do well. I was
• 53:00
  thinking completely selfishly that, boy, I hope this movie is good. I
• 53:04
  hope because it's clearly going to come out before mine. It didn't. But
• 53:07
  I'm really I'm thrilled for Jim because it looked like this movie was never going
• 53:10
  to see the light of day. It was tied up in financial knots.
• 53:15
  It was you know when years go by like that. I mean, the
• 53:17
  director went off and made another movie in the interim. So it's a it's
• 53:23
  a bit of a miracle, and it makes you think that, you know,
• 53:25
  here's a guy, Jim Caviezel. It reminds me of Passion of the
• 53:32
  Christ, not quite at the same level, but at a phenomenal level,
• 53:36
  because this movie caught a prairie fire completely unexpected, just as it did all
• 53:44
  right. Well, it was regarding to Infidel, which is a very good
• 53:46
  movie and I urge people to check it out. You did have a major
• 53:51
  problem that you were weighed down by the fact that I am in the movie,
• 53:54
  and I'm sure that that was a big major problems for how Infidel did
• 54:00
  at the box office. But it's a great movie, and I urge people
• 54:04
  to check it out if if they can. It's on streaming still at some
• 54:07
  point, Isn't it Isn't it? Yeah, you can get it on pay
• 54:08
  per view on lots of places. But I also urge people, if you
• 54:16
  haven't seen it, to go see Sound of Freedom, because you know,
• 54:21
  it's I haven't been in the theater and I told you this, John,
• 54:24
  when the people sit through the end credits and then applaud, and that's happened,
• 54:32
  you know. Apparently it's happening everywhere, including in like the heart of
• 54:37
  la and in the heart of New York City where the movie would screen.
• 54:39
  It's not just you know, in the hinter lands all right. Now,
• 54:45
  I want to talk about Jim Caviezel more specifically, because I do think he's
• 54:47
  a key part of this entire equation and why the left wing media is so
• 54:53
  enraged and I don't use a term likely, they are enraged by the success
• 55:00
  Sounded Freedom. I've only met Jim once many years ago at a conservative event
• 55:05
  in Santa Barber. We took a photograph, but I know you know him
• 55:07
  very very well. My perception of him from his public appearances is that he
• 55:14
  is a very serious, a very earnest guy. I also think he's a
• 55:17
  bit misguided about things, specifically with regard to Q and I, and he
• 55:23
  can he can believe some things that are pretty nutty, but that he is.
• 55:27
  He is a sincere guy and he's well intended. Is that a fair
• 55:31
  assessment of Jim Caviezel based upon your experience with him? Very fair? I
• 55:37
  love Jim m and believe it or not, Jim does have a light side,
• 55:46
  and I've told them, I said, you need to tap into that
• 55:50
  sometime for a movie or for a project. Um, but no, Jim,
• 55:54
  Jim's very straight up loyal, loyal guy to his friends, to his
• 56:00
  colleagues. It's like if I had to account for everything every actor I ever
• 56:07
  worked with said at an event somewhere or took a stance upon, I'd end
• 56:12
  up working with no one. You know, It's like it's a free country.
• 56:17
  Jib's got his opinions and so do other people, and that's fine.
• 56:25
  He when he comes to work with you, he comes to the floor,
• 56:30
  prepared, ready, and is a thorough professional. So um, I just
• 56:37
  think I think that they're look, they're looking for angles of attack on Jim.
• 56:45
  This stuff that he said somewhere a year and a half ago he'd already
• 56:50
  paid dearly for before this movie came out. He you know, basically his
• 56:55
  agents stopped calling him. His reps wouldn't have anything to do with him.
• 57:00
  These are people who had repped him for decades, so he's paid a price,
• 57:07
  you know. And I think that's one of the reasons why he's so
• 57:09
  gratified by the success of the movie. I mean, he's been over here.
• 57:14
  I've talked to him since the movie came out, and we were here
• 57:19
  for hours, and I could just see a a com has sort of come
• 57:24
  over him at the reception of the movie. Now it is my theory,
• 57:34
  and you and I talked about this after going to see Sound of Freedom a
• 57:37
  couple of days ago, about why it is that the left wing media is,
• 57:42
  i mean, unbelievably beside themselves that Sound of Freedom has succeeded. And
• 57:47
  frankly, after seeing the movie, I was even more upset and pissed off
• 57:52
  at the left wing media than I was beforehand, because I thought, well,
• 57:55
  is there something conservative about this film that there that they have a philosophical
• 58:00
  basis for attacking And there's absolutely nothing. I mean, I truly believe let's
• 58:06
  start here. Do you agree with me, Cyrus, that if the star
• 58:09
  of this movie was someone who is within the left wing club of Hollywood and
• 58:15
  this movie was a breakout hit, that that the left wing media would be
• 58:21
  applauding standing ovations given the subject matter, for the success of this movie.
• 58:25
  Do you agree with that without question? Yeah? And so this really is
• 58:31
  about Jim, But it's I don't think it's personal about Jim. I mean
• 58:37
  that they perceive him as inherently conservative because he's Christian and because of the QAnon
• 58:42
  thing, and and let me let's be clear. I mean, he's certainly
• 58:45
  not a liberal, there's no question about that. He's not in a liberal
• 58:47
  club by his stretch of imagination in Hollywood. But I think that the real
• 58:53
  root cause for why the liberal media hates Sound of Freedom is that this is
• 59:00
  an affront to their authority to determine which projects can succeed and which can't,
• 59:07
  and for something to get out of their grasp and not only succeed but to
• 59:12
  break out big despite and maybe even because of their criticism of the project,
• 59:19
  that really hits at the heart of who they are, and that is something
• 59:24
  that cannot be accepted. What do you make of my theory on the left
• 59:29
  wing reaction to the Time of Freedom Move, Well, no, I agree
• 59:32
  with you. I think you're right. I think that look, they believe
• 59:38
  that they should control the culture, and they realize how beneficial that has been
• 59:45
  to them. You know when I look, I talk to people all the
• 59:52
  time because I'm out with a tin cup trying to raise money for projects of
• 59:55
  my own and one conservatives I find, and even a lot of Christians who
• 1:00:06
  are some of the people I talk to, not exclusively, they don't quite
• 1:00:12
  understand how important to grasp on the culture is. Oh yeah, And I
• 1:00:17
  say to them, I say, look, you either fight the dragon or
• 1:00:22
  you become the dragon. And it's like that, you know, when it's
• 1:00:25
  whatever it is, it's education, it's entertainment, sports. Now you've got
• 1:00:35
  this stranglehold. And I think that that grasp of that stranglehold can be loosened.
• 1:00:45
  And I think Sound of Freedom is an example of that. It's just
• 1:00:51
  okay, who can come up with the game plan to get at those people,
• 1:00:53
  to get them to partake and participate and realize how important this is.
• 1:01:00
  And obviously these guys at Angel Studios who've released Sound of Freedom have figured out
• 1:01:06
  an angle of attack that's quite extraordinary and a shield of immediate results. Now
• 1:01:12
  I know you guys, as a screenwriter, you're on strike right now,
• 1:01:15
  and the actors are on strike. We weren't going to get to the strikes
• 1:01:19
  in a minute. But I'm curious. I don't whether that has prevented this
• 1:01:24
  from even being possible. I know there are rules and then there's reality.
• 1:01:30
  But has the Sound of Freedom success? Have you gotten any signals yet that
• 1:01:35
  it is changed the game and maybe loosen the purse strings people who are not
• 1:01:43
  within the Hollywood establishment, People who are maybe are more conservative, who see,
• 1:01:47
  wait a minute, there really is a financial market here. This isn't
• 1:01:52
  me just dumping my money into a cause that I'm never going to see again,
• 1:01:58
  which conservatives aren't really big into doing. Liberals do that a lot more
• 1:02:01
  than conservative big money people do. But is it possible that Sound of Freedom
• 1:02:06
  has changed the game with regard to the funding of movies and what the big
• 1:02:12
  money people see as possible. It's possible. I mean, it may be
• 1:02:16
  too soon to sort of really determine if that's had an impact or not.
• 1:02:22
  You know, I think it did. For a while. After the Passion
• 1:02:28
  of the Christ did well, there were a few even the studios were starting
• 1:02:31
  to sort of redo that model with their faith based movies. But you know,
• 1:02:37
  it remains to be sane. I mean, you think so, I'm
• 1:02:43
  getting a lot of calls about Jim, are you really? Yeah? So
• 1:02:49
  you think this has absolved him of all past sins perceived or real. It
• 1:02:54
  hasn't absolved him of all past sins. I think Jim is still a power.
• 1:02:59
  He is re established his drawing power within a certain lane, and that's
• 1:03:06
  a lane that mainstream Hollywood won't touch. So I don't think Jim's agents are
• 1:03:10
  going to be calling and begging him to come back and begging forgiveness. No,
• 1:03:16
  but you do think that obviously they're going to be more opportunities for him
• 1:03:20
  in the future because he he was just to starve one hundred million dollar plus
• 1:03:23
  movie. Yes, and money. Trump's basically everything in Hollywood, especially in
• 1:03:30
  this environment that gets us to the strike situation. Now you're an indistant to
• 1:03:37
  being a director. You're a screenwriter, and you've been on strike for months
• 1:03:40
  now. The actors are also striking. And I don't claim to have intimate
• 1:03:45
  knowledge of either of these strikes, but I've I've tried to become as educated
• 1:03:51
  as possible, and you and I have talked about it. And my basic
• 1:03:55
  perception here is that I think that the writers and maybe the actors are both
• 1:04:03
  while well intended and I certainly sympathize and empathize with them, I think they're
• 1:04:09
  a bit delusional because the business model has completely changed, and it feels to
• 1:04:15
  me cyrus as if they want the benefits or you guys want the benefits of
• 1:04:21
  the old system and the benefits of the new system, so you want to
• 1:04:27
  have your cake and eat it too. And what I mean by that is
• 1:04:30
  the old system was based upon residuals, and residuals have effectively gone away in
• 1:04:36
  the streaming era. But the streaming era came with it a lot of new
• 1:04:43
  jobs because, let's face it, without Netflix, without Apple, without Amazon,
• 1:04:48
  you know, without Disney plus over the last several years, there would
• 1:04:53
  have been massive unemployment in Hollywood, and that has not happened. But the
• 1:05:00
  price that you pay for those new jobs, and this new business model is
• 1:05:03
  the residuals go away, so you get paid one time, and if you
• 1:05:08
  don't have leverage, you don't get paid very much, but at least you
• 1:05:12
  get work. And it seems to me is there's a disconnect. I'm not
• 1:05:16
  siding with the elite companies that are you know that they overpay their CEOs insanely
• 1:05:23
  and I hate how wope they are and all that, so I'm not sympathizing
• 1:05:27
  with them. I'm just saying that from a bargaining position, it seems to
• 1:05:30
  me as if the writers and maybe to a lesser degree, the actors are
• 1:05:33
  a bit delusional for the reasons I've stated. What is your reaction to that
• 1:05:38
  assessment. Well, I'm concerned about that too. I do think the issues
• 1:05:46
  are legitimate ones, and I think that we're facing a lot. My concern
• 1:05:55
  also is the timing of it all, coming out of the pandemic at a
• 1:06:00
  time when there's too many streamers, when many of them are financially strapped,
• 1:06:06
  is it really Are we really in a position to get the things that we
• 1:06:12
  want now? In the strike of oh eight, the the strike was very,
• 1:06:20
  very focused on the legacy networks, so they made much better and deals
• 1:06:28
  with CBSNBC, ABC and Fox who had a lot of shows on the air
• 1:06:33
  at that time. Now they still have shows, but they were so focused
• 1:06:38
  on those deals, and people were saying in the gail, we got to
• 1:06:42
  try and get the same deal with the streamers, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:06:45
  And the perception was, well, this is new, we don't know
• 1:06:46
  if it's really gonna fly, etc. And I think this is also the
• 1:06:54
  byproduct of past negotiations that didn't see what was coming on the horizon, and
• 1:07:01
  now the timing is not great for a lot of reasons. So I am
• 1:07:09
  really concerned. Um, you know, I don't know what's going to happen.
• 1:07:14
  I think that it's I am I've been in the guild for gosh,
• 1:07:19
  nearly forty years, the Writer's Guild, and my wife Betsy's also in the
• 1:07:26
  guild, and you know, we support the issues, but at the same
• 1:07:31
  time, you want to win. What happens in a lot of these strikes,
• 1:07:36
  the guild gets very raw, raw, and then they declare victory and
• 1:07:44
  they say let's all celebrate, and then you look at the deal and you
• 1:07:48
  say, wait a second, what did we win again, and you know,
• 1:07:56
  anyway, so it's uh, it might be illusional, I hope not.
• 1:08:00
  What's the worst case scenario as you see it, because I mean I
• 1:08:04
  have seen some prominent people and who knows, you know, whether or not
• 1:08:10
  it's chicken little and whether or not it's it's posturing. But there has there
• 1:08:15
  has been some talk that if this goes poorly, that this could cause Hollywood
• 1:08:19
  to implode, which of course, you know, has conservatives very excited because
• 1:08:25
  I would love to see Hollywood implode. What what? What? What?
• 1:08:28
  What would be the worst case scenario? Is you cyrus Neurosta see it?
• 1:08:33
  Well, you know, the worst case scenario is you know, the guilds
• 1:08:38
  basically getting broken up or shattered or you know, I mean I did see
• 1:08:43
  this once and the I think it was in the late eighties. There was
• 1:08:45
  a strike was I think it was my first strike, and there was real
• 1:08:49
  internal dissension and fighting going on between different groups about what's the best way to
• 1:08:56
  proceed. And that can really shake up a guild. And if and if
• 1:09:01
  the companies see that, they'll want to capitalize on it. That's the worst
• 1:09:11
  case scenario. I mean. The other is, you know, look if
• 1:09:15
  they If the actors make a deal, and they're more likely to make a
• 1:09:17
  deal before the writers, that's going to put a lot of pressure on the
• 1:09:24
  writer's guild. And I think the actors will make a deal, you know,
• 1:09:30
  sooner or rather than later, and we'll see how it impacts the writers.
• 1:09:36
  But I think that it's it's not going to impact the writers till the
• 1:09:42
  guild itself is convinced. There's a lot of people in the writer's guild who
• 1:09:46
  are concerned and are starting to question, okay, the pace of the negotiations,
• 1:09:54
  but also what's really on the table? What are we missing here?
• 1:09:58
  When that starts to have and then the guilt powers to be will start to
• 1:10:05
  you know, after really consider, okay, how can we how can we
• 1:10:13
  answer these questions? So, Syrus, you don't perceive that the actors are
• 1:10:18
  on the same team or side as the screenwriters, do you know? That's
• 1:10:24
  what I'm That's what I'm hearing. A lot of the issues are the same,
• 1:10:29
  but but the self interest is not the same. And then in fact
• 1:10:32
  that you think it sounds to me like what you're saying is that the actors
• 1:10:36
  settling may actually force the hand of the writers. Is that is that fair.
• 1:10:41
  That's that's what I'm hearing. And I think that um, because it
• 1:10:47
  stops production, an actor strike is much more as much more leverage. So
• 1:10:56
  in the short run, your interests are aligned. But if the actors settle
• 1:11:01
  first, then all of a sudden, the writers are in a in a
• 1:11:04
  less leveraged position, or you know, have less leverage on their side,
• 1:11:09
  is right, and so and so the writers, the writer's gill will will
• 1:11:14
  follow the actors negotiations very closely, and they'll want them to make a strong
• 1:11:20
  deal. So now this isn't a subject that I think you and I are
• 1:11:25
  going to disagree on. But I also think that one of the major problems
• 1:11:29
  with the screenwriter's position is that obviously the world is changing fast, the business
• 1:11:36
  model is changing fast. I'm actually someone by the way, who and I
• 1:11:41
  think you might agree with this part. I think the death of theaters has
• 1:11:45
  been slightly overrated. I think people want to go to the theaters. It's
• 1:11:48
  just there's nothing for a certain audience to go see. Do you probably do
• 1:11:53
  you agree with that? Do you agree with what I just said? Yeah?
• 1:11:56
  Yeah, I mean I think if they put out great content, uh,
• 1:12:00
  and I would and I would put wokeness not being in that category.
• 1:12:03
  I mean, I think out wokeness has killed an awful lot of potentially good
• 1:12:08
  content that people still would go to the theater, especially people of a certain
• 1:12:12
  age. But but on the other side, so we have this perception that
• 1:12:16
  the theater is dying, the streaming business model doesn't seem to be working out
• 1:12:21
  very well, and you also have the specter of AI. And I think
• 1:12:30
  AI is a tremendous threat to screenwriters, largely because of the very formulaic perception
• 1:12:40
  that Hollywood now has of the stories in television and movies, where basically you
• 1:12:46
  literally can just plug in this wokeness quotient and they can, and an AI
• 1:12:53
  can churn out a story, uh in no time with with with no expense,
• 1:12:59
  and I really they probably can't do it in totality. You still need
• 1:13:02
  some human hand. But that to me is a threat to an enormous number
• 1:13:10
  of jobs, especially when they don't really care about the story and great writing
• 1:13:15
  anymore. They want formula that gives them you know this, this this whoken
• 1:13:20
  quotient, and a computer can do that. And so where do you stand
• 1:13:26
  on the threat of AI. Well, I mean, look, I think
• 1:13:31
  you just convinced me. No, I thought, Okay, I'm not.
• 1:13:36
  I'm not an expert on AI. I really don't know what it can and
• 1:13:41
  can't do, but I see why people are concerned about it. But yes,
• 1:13:47
  it can give us the formula, it can give us mission impossible seven.
• 1:13:51
  It's probably already rolled it out. Um. But the stuff that we
• 1:13:57
  think is on a higher level is really great is usually something that's kind of
• 1:14:03
  unique and has a human emotional sort of element to it. I mean,
• 1:14:09
  sounder freedom is an example of that that you know, or something really witty
• 1:14:15
  and funny and that we connect with as humans and comprehend the stuff that makes
• 1:14:21
  us laugh that we think has insight. I don't know how good AI is
• 1:14:27
  at that. It'll probably get there. But what's the evidence, Cyrus that
• 1:14:32
  Hollywood gives a crap about a great script? I mean what seriously? I
• 1:14:38
  mean, there's no evidence of that, is there? I can't find any
• 1:14:41
  in recent years? No, I mean they're looking for especially now, the
• 1:14:49
  studios are pulling out stuff that is tent pole driven, comic book driven,
• 1:14:56
  internationally driven. How well can it do in China? Those are the parameters,
• 1:15:03
  And I think a computer and AI. Uh, you know, function
• 1:15:08
  can do that exceedingly easily, and um and probably with a lot less trouble.
• 1:15:15
  You guys can sometimes be trouble a computer. It's a gonna bitch and
• 1:15:20
  moan, a complain and fight for their view of the story, and um
• 1:15:25
  and is a lot less expensive. And so to me, this is terrible
• 1:15:30
  time now, And it could be good timing if if you guys are able
• 1:15:33
  to make a deal that somehow prevents AI from being used, which I would
• 1:15:40
  strongly urge if possible to be part of any deal, then that would be
• 1:15:45
  great. But if I'm the if I'm the producers, if I'm the studios,
• 1:15:50
  I'm thinking you guys are almost obsolete in my world. And again I
• 1:15:56
  hate that. I want to make that clear. I hate that, But
• 1:15:58
  that's the reality. Yeah, And you know, I think we're going to
• 1:16:04
  reach a time where AI can do it all. AI will be able to
• 1:16:09
  shoot it, give you every conceivable camera angle, every conceivable editing option,
• 1:16:18
  music option, etc. And you know, I guess that's the future.
• 1:16:28
  I have to ask you about Bob Iger's comments. Who's the now new former
• 1:16:32
  and new CEO of Disney. You and I have a history of Bob Iger
• 1:16:36
  because he was leading Disney when You're amazing the film that you wrote, that
• 1:16:43
  dot docuseries that you wrote, the Path to nine to eleven, was heavily
• 1:16:46
  censored by the Clintons and by Bob Iger back in two thousand and six.
• 1:16:50
  That's how you and I met has actually played a role in how my wife
• 1:16:55
  and I met, So it had a huge role in both of our lives.
• 1:16:59
  And and you know, to this day, the Path of nine to
• 1:17:01
  eleven is not available publicly, although you can get it out of cyrus Nerossa's
• 1:17:05
  garage and it's it's the best film ever made about nine to eleven and aired
• 1:17:11
  on ABC two nights, huge ratings, but you know, ABC did censor
• 1:17:15
  it and then they killed it afterwards because of Bob Iger. And Iger made
• 1:17:19
  some statements about the strike which I kind of mirrored what I just said ironically
• 1:17:26
  enough that really upset people because they were seen as being tone death and let
• 1:17:31
  the meatcake, and you know that, you know, very elitist. What
• 1:17:34
  was your perception of what bob Iger said? Well, I mean, I
• 1:17:42
  think it's a good thing that Bob Iger has become sort of the ugly face
• 1:17:45
  of the opposition in this and the face of the companies. Um, I'm
• 1:17:53
  not a fan of Bob Iger, as you know. I think in many
• 1:17:56
  ways he's responsible for the sorry state of the movie business as it exists today.
• 1:18:04
  Disney's in serious trouble while their movie end of the business is in serious
• 1:18:10
  trouble. And I also think he's one of these guys who kind of mainstreamed
• 1:18:15
  cowardice in Hollywood. It started with the Path to nine to eleven. He
• 1:18:18
  completely caved, you know. Also, he's the first guy who went,
• 1:18:26
  you know, bowing to the Chinese and changing content and adjusting content to please
• 1:18:31
  the Chinese audience. And I just think that the boldness of you know,
• 1:18:38
  sort of the Disney storytelling model that had made the company what it is has
• 1:18:44
  been completely lost. So I do think that we're in a tough situation.
• 1:18:55
  I hope we can come to an agreement that these strikes don't last too long.
• 1:19:00
  But I do think Iiger is an ogre. But you know, at
• 1:19:09
  a certain point, I read where it's supposedly Tom Cruise showed up at one
• 1:19:12
  of these meetings between the companies and the Screen Actors Guild. Really yeah,
• 1:19:17
  and it was a meeting just a few days ago, and it was clear
• 1:19:21
  that why he was there because now with the actors strike in place, he
• 1:19:27
  can't promote this movie publicly because then you're still working for the companies and his
• 1:19:33
  big movies coming out, and he wants it to do well, so he's
• 1:19:39
  trying to get them to come together. It's gonna take some kind of peacemakers,
• 1:19:45
  power brokers, whatever to bring the parties together, whether it's Tom Cruise
• 1:19:48
  or Steven Spielberg or somebody else to sort of solve this thing. And I
• 1:19:58
  don't think Eiger's that guy. I want to ask you, Cyrus about something
• 1:20:02
  that I've already alluded to with regard to the threat of AI, and that's
• 1:20:05
  the formulaic nature of most Hollywood productions, both on television, movies and in
• 1:20:14
  streaming. And there's a perception among conservatives that a huge part of that formula
• 1:20:20
  is, whether with regard to casting or with regard to plot, that you
• 1:20:27
  have to have a certain number of woke points, as I call it.
• 1:20:30
  You know, you have to have casting that isn't going to upset the woke
• 1:20:32
  mob. You can't do anything from a plot perspective that might upset the woke
• 1:20:38
  mob and that that really controls everything, and that this has created a machinery
• 1:20:45
  in Hollywood that basically makes it impossible for a truly great production to be made
• 1:20:53
  because it has to go through this process. I mean, even if you
• 1:20:56
  start off with a great screenplay, it has to be woke a fly in
• 1:21:00
  order to become acceptable unless it's by you know, some superstar. And there
• 1:21:04
  are very few superstars left that have the ability to go around or above the
• 1:21:11
  Hollywood system. How true in your experience is the perception that I just laid
• 1:21:15
  on, Well, I think it's true to a certain extent, and yeah,
• 1:21:24
  you have to check certain boxes. I've experienced it. I mean,
• 1:21:29
  you know, it's just look. The only thing that can get around that
• 1:21:32
  is what you just said, which is, are there Maverick filmmakers and Maverick
• 1:21:41
  companies and Maverick stars who don't give a hoot and say, you know what,
• 1:21:46
  I don't care, this is my movie, Take it or leave it
• 1:21:49
  now. Tarantino has that kind of power, and we know that basically,
• 1:21:57
  you know, certain epithets sort of street lingo that predominate his movies. People
• 1:22:06
  have objected to and tried to stop from being repeated, and he's basically said,
• 1:22:13
  I don't care you don't like it. I'm not I'm not changing a
• 1:22:15
  frame. Just don't go see my movie. You need guys who are like
• 1:22:18
  that. Now he's still got the cool quotient about him, so it's it's
• 1:22:26
  kind of uncool to go after Quentin Tarantino, and you need those people who
• 1:22:30
  it's uncool to go after to stand up and do their movies and not give
• 1:22:36
  a darn, you know. But if there's a fewer and fewer of those,
• 1:22:42
  it certainly seems as if Kevin Costner might be in that category. Based
• 1:22:45
  upon Yellowstone, I would put Yellowstone while it's not perfect, but I mean
• 1:22:50
  Yellowstone, despite being a surprise hit and then having these these prequels also be
• 1:22:57
  hits with big stars, has not, in my opinion, completely caved to,
• 1:23:03
  you know, the pressures of wokeness. I mean, normally, the
• 1:23:08
  way this goes now is you have a show that maybe is a surprise hit
• 1:23:13
  in the first season, and then the second season they have to go all
• 1:23:15
  woke because now they have a big audience and they need to make sure they
• 1:23:19
  protect that so they don't want to be attacked by the woke mob, and
• 1:23:23
  they don't want to get canceled. Ted Lasso, to me was one of
• 1:23:27
  the worst examples of this. A great first season and then it just completely
• 1:23:30
  sold out to woke asm after that. Yellowstone, while again not perfect,
• 1:23:38
  Yellowstone has not done that. There's no gratuitous gay character or no obviously affirmative
• 1:23:44
  action characters with their gard to race or whatever else, and they've pretty much
• 1:23:49
  stayed true to themselves and there their audience is enormous. And so I guess
• 1:23:56
  I don't quite understand what does it take for the Hollywood leaves to see that
• 1:24:02
  this is a path to success. When a Yellowstone does as well as it
• 1:24:08
  has and Sound of Freedom does as well as it has, do these people
• 1:24:13
  not see this cyrus or do they just not care because their own personal job
• 1:24:17
  is much more threatened by not feeding the woke mob than it is by not
• 1:24:23
  producing things that are successful. Well, I think that the more that the
• 1:24:26
  ted Lassos and those sort of ultra woke or shows that go with that ultra
• 1:24:30
  woke direction sort of, the more that those shows face plant, the more
• 1:24:39
  people will will notice that. LL wait a second, are we giving people
• 1:24:43
  what they want to see or what we believe or because we're cowtowing to the
• 1:24:48
  woke mob. And how serious is that as a problem. I think that,
• 1:24:55
  you know, a lot of this though, is driven by the personal
• 1:25:01
  sort of biases and beliefs of people who are in the decision making pipeline.
• 1:25:11
  I mean, there was a you know, there was Christopher Ruffo released this.
• 1:25:15
  I don't know how he got a hold of it, this zoom of
• 1:25:16
  a meeting of all these Disney people and they're sitting there talking about how important
• 1:25:24
  it is to push you know, their agenda, which is whatever, whether
• 1:25:30
  it's a gay agenda, agenda or a trans agenda or this into the shows,
• 1:25:34
  and how excited they were about that. So it was plainly evident from
• 1:25:40
  that tape that this was an inside job to push ideas that they as individuals
• 1:25:47
  support. I mean, one of the key executives on that zoom, it
• 1:25:53
  was just amazing. She was talking about, well, I've got a trans
• 1:25:56
  child and a prance sexual child, and apparently the algorithmic odds of that in
• 1:26:02
  reality are like are like winning the powerball lottery which is now at a billion
• 1:26:09
  dollars. So and what that's really about is her narcissism and sort of setting
• 1:26:15
  up herself as just at the at the leading edge of this movement. I
• 1:26:24
  mean it's like, you know, the new thing in Hollywood is is actresses
• 1:26:30
  adopting kids and transitioning them. Charlie's Tharren Angeline has done this, numerous other
• 1:26:40
  actresses have done it. It's almost like it's a status symbol. So for
• 1:26:46
  how leading edge you are. So there's a lot of personal beliefs behind many
• 1:26:53
  of these choices. Now is it personal belief side or is mine more sin
• 1:27:00
  view? Maybe at least part of this equation, and my more cynical view
• 1:27:04
  is that if you signal your virtue in the right ways in Hollywood, it
• 1:27:13
  is basically job insurance. It basically fortifies your position. And if you promote
• 1:27:23
  and green light woke projects, that's part of the virtue signaling process. And
• 1:27:29
  nobody I say this all the time, and you can correct me if I'm
• 1:27:31
  wrong. Nobody ever gets fired in these studios for green lighting a woke project
• 1:27:38
  that fails. If you were to ever green light a conservative project, which
• 1:27:44
  you would probably never do to begin with, and it failed, you would
• 1:27:46
  be fired immediately. And so that's the number one goal of everybody in this
• 1:27:51
  business is when you get a kushy gig, don't get fired. And so
• 1:27:57
  wokeness is a path two jobs, secure eard Is it not to a servi
• 1:28:03
  extent? Yeah, I think that makes some sense. Yeah, I mean
• 1:28:09
  you agree with my assessment that you know, if you promote or green light
• 1:28:14
  a woke project that's you know, clearly accepted within woke them and it fails,
• 1:28:20
  not only do not get fired, you probably get patted on the back
• 1:28:24
  for a good effort, you know, good effort, and there's no accountability.
• 1:28:29
  But right what they'll say is good effort. Nice try. Too bad.
• 1:28:33
  There's some of Yahoo's out there exactly, Yeah, too bad. America
• 1:28:38
  is so stupid that they didn't understand how wonderful this woke project. You didn't,
• 1:28:42
  you know. That's what they're gonna do with, you know, snow
• 1:28:44
  White and the seven non Dwarfs, the seven you know homeless people from Portland.
• 1:28:48
  Uh. Movie that's going to come out on Disney next year based upon
• 1:28:53
  the photos that got they got released. It's going to be America's fall that
• 1:28:57
  they didn't want to Hispanic snow White. Um. And so there's always an
• 1:29:02
  excuse and and and I think the greatest misconception that conservatives have about Hollywood.
• 1:29:12
  It's not that you can't work in Hollywood. If you're a conservative. It's
• 1:29:16
  more difficult, there's no question about that. But if you're good and if
• 1:29:19
  you produce box office and you do a good job, you can work.
• 1:29:23
  You just can't work on conservative projects. It's the it's the content that matters,
• 1:29:29
  not the people and their political views. Would you tend to agree or
• 1:29:32
  disagree with it in general? I think that's true. Um, But I
• 1:29:41
  do think if you're a maverick, if you're a big movie star, a
• 1:29:45
  big TV star, or a big powerful director like a Clint Eastwood there you
• 1:29:49
  you know has been or a Taylor shared it, you can basically do what
• 1:29:56
  you want and come out as a concern. You would never come out as
• 1:30:00
  a conservative because you know it wouldn't be good for you. Like I mean,
• 1:30:03
  you mentioned Tarrella shirt and the guy right Yellowstone and the related projects.
• 1:30:11
  It is my belief, and you know him, I don't. I don't
• 1:30:14
  think Kevin cost is a hardcore conservative. But Kevin cost is not a liberal.
• 1:30:18
  I mean, he is clearly not a liberal, but he has never
• 1:30:26
  really allowed that to be clear in his public comments because he knows it wouldn't
• 1:30:30
  be good for his career, right, And so don't do you agree with
• 1:30:34
  what I just said there? No, I think that's true. I think
• 1:30:38
  people feel like, um, well he's smart then, you know, it's
• 1:30:42
  just like he's he's figuring out that maybe I can navigate this, do the
• 1:30:46
  things I want to do, etc. And not piss off half my audience.
• 1:30:53
  That's smart. Well, it's not just the audience, it's the power
• 1:30:56
  brokers in Hollywood. I meant. My point is they'll let they'll let Kevin
• 1:31:01
  Costner be conservative, just don't throw it in our faces. Just don't let
• 1:31:05
  it. Don't force us to deal with it. It's um you know,
• 1:31:10
  because that's uncomfortable. So if you're a conservative and you're quiet about it,
• 1:31:15
  then fine and you're good. You can work with us, we can work
• 1:31:17
  for us, whatever, We'll work with you, but you just can't become
• 1:31:21
  too public about it. And we really don't want a content to be overly
• 1:31:27
  conservative. And Yellowstone is probably about as close as you can get, right.
• 1:31:31
  I mean, it's it's clearly a fairly conservative based project, but it's
• 1:31:39
  not super overt about it. It's nowhere near as overt. As you know,
• 1:31:43
  the woke projects are in the other direction. So I just think that
• 1:31:45
  that's an important distinction. You know, it may not matter to people,
• 1:31:48
  but it's not It's not like they ban you from working. I mean,
• 1:31:53
  John Floyd hell As, as you know, doesn't work very much anymore,
• 1:31:57
  but but he's worked a lot, and obviously he's been out as a conservative
• 1:32:01
  for a long time. Clinton Eastwood obviously had the power to do what he
• 1:32:05
  wants. I mean, there are other examples. I'm not saying it helps
• 1:32:09
  you to be conservative. I'm just saying it's more about preventing conservative projects from
• 1:32:14
  getting an attraction, which again brings us back to Sound of Freedom, which
• 1:32:17
  is why, even though it's not a conservative project, it's perceived that way
• 1:32:21
  because of Jim Caviezel. That's why the left wing media is so upset.
• 1:32:26
  That's why the elites are so upset because this is this is escaping from their
• 1:32:31
  grasp and usurping their authority. Last thing I want to talk to you about,
• 1:32:36
  Cyrus. You have a connection to all sorts of very interesting people.
• 1:32:41
  You've also worked with Oliver Stone, and I know you know Oliver Stone a
• 1:32:45
  bit. Oliver Stone in my world, although I think he's done some great
• 1:32:49
  movies. I love some of the movies that Oliver has done. But obviously,
• 1:32:54
  speaking of Kevin Costner, he very famously directed and wrote JFK, which
• 1:33:00
  starts Kevin Costner is the main character, which is about the JFK assassination.
• 1:33:04
  And I know that you have partially a guess because of your connection to Oliver,
• 1:33:10
  partially because your own interest in history. You've been someone very very interested
• 1:33:15
  in the Kennedy assassination. You and I have talked about it many times in
• 1:33:19
  our own friendship. But you also listened to episode seventy one of this podcast,
• 1:33:26
  in which I doubt in great detail with my alternative theory about how Oswald
• 1:33:32
  acted alone, but the Warren Commission screwed it up on the logistics. What
• 1:33:36
  was your assessment is harsh or whatever as you want, What was your assessment
• 1:33:44
  of having listened to episode seventy one of this podcast. Well, my overriding
• 1:33:48
  assessment is that, boy, this guy zig is really obsessed with this assassination.
• 1:33:57
  What But the reason I listened to it with great interest is because so
• 1:34:02
  am I I mean, not to your extent, but your knowledge, your
• 1:34:08
  your knowledge, your inside knowledge of it and recall is remarkable. Um,
• 1:34:15
  I think you put forth a very you know, look convincing case. We've
• 1:34:19
  heard all the conspiracy theories, you know, and and and I hear this
• 1:34:24
  all the time from people that I know and respect, and it's just like,
• 1:34:28
  no, it's got to be conspiration. And they get very adamant about
• 1:34:30
  it's gotta be And I mean I said, okay, which one. There's
• 1:34:33
  like fifty different conspiracy theories about who was behind this, who did it,
• 1:34:38
  etc. Etc. Um. You know, Oliver's movie is out there because
• 1:34:47
  you know, it just is. It's a very fine piece of filmmaking.
• 1:34:53
  But to seize upon what's his name, the guy the game, Yeah,
• 1:34:59
  Jim Garrison is it's kind of like, I mean, I think some of
• 1:35:02
  the other characters from New Orleans had a lot more you know, we're a
• 1:35:08
  lot more interesting in terms of their association past associations with Oswald. I mean,
• 1:35:13
  I remember that day I was seven years old, the day Kennedy was
• 1:35:18
  shot. I was I think second grade, and I remember like they came
• 1:35:25
  and said, well, something's happened. We're sending you home early, and
• 1:35:30
  I was excited. Fantastic, What happened today that I get to go home
• 1:35:34
  early, and I knew just perfectly had something to do with the president.
• 1:35:39
  Something happened, and I knew my teachers were upset, and I didn't care.
• 1:35:43
  I'm going home. And I remember running down the hill with my little
• 1:35:45
  drawings and illustrations, and of course going home and walking into my house where
• 1:35:55
  my mother and my grandmother are crying. It's like, what's where are you
• 1:36:00
  crying? Like the President's dead? And I said, oh, and it's
• 1:36:04
  like, well, can I have some money to go get some milk outs?
• 1:36:06
  I mean, I'm a kid, Okay, I don't know. I
• 1:36:10
  don't know any better. And um, but that day had an impact.
• 1:36:15
  And one thing, one takeaway, even from your I think very convincing depiction
• 1:36:23
  of the one gunman as Oswald uh explanation. I still feel like this is
• 1:36:33
  a weird case. Oh yeah, there are so many strange things and you
• 1:36:39
  point them out. Okay, there are so many strange things associated with this.
• 1:36:44
  Oswald's passed in Russia, his connection to Cuba, UM, photos of
• 1:36:51
  him with rifles, UM, his comments and statements in the hospital or in
• 1:36:58
  the police station in Dallas after he's been arrested. As you pointed out his
• 1:37:02
  reaction to being told that he's been arrested for the shooting of the president,
• 1:37:06
  his comment, I'm a patsy. There's just you know, the ruby stuff.
• 1:37:14
  It's just there's so much weirdness, Oh yeah, associated with this case.
• 1:37:18
  No, it's the most amazing story certainly of its time, and there's
• 1:37:24
  no I understand completely. In fact, I was one of these people who
• 1:37:28
  bought into the conspiracy notion because it on its surface is so almost obvious that
• 1:37:34
  it happened to be a conspiracy because obviously we're dealing with the killing of a
• 1:37:40
  president. I do think that over time people have forgotten how different the world
• 1:37:47
  was in November of nineteen sixty three, What a more innocent time it was,
• 1:37:53
  a simpler time it was, and how it is that really events like
• 1:38:00
  the Kennedy assassination, like the killing of Martin Luther King Junior, like the
• 1:38:04
  RFK assassination, that all those things changed our perception and changed our behavior.
• 1:38:14
  And you know, the idea that a president could be in an open limousine
• 1:38:18
  driving past a building with open windows where nobody has any concern about who's in
• 1:38:26
  the window hanging out with a rifle is just inconceivable to us, right,
• 1:38:30
  But in November of nineteen sixty three, that was the world. It was
• 1:38:36
  a much more innocent time. And I think that that's part of why people
• 1:38:43
  have a difficult time understanding that this really could happen largely, although in my
• 1:38:48
  view, not completely the way that the Warren Commission said that it did.
• 1:38:54
  But you know, I have no problem with people if they're uneducated about especially
• 1:39:00
  looking at the basic facts and going well, that seems like a conspiracy,
• 1:39:03
  right, because it's it's right for all the reasons that you just said,
• 1:39:09
  um, And you know, and so I appreciate you you listening because I
• 1:39:14
  know it was a long listen about two and a half hours, um.
• 1:39:16
  And and I know that also I had disrupted one of your recent parties with
• 1:39:21
  this discussion. So I felt kindly kind of bad about that. But you
• 1:39:28
  were, you were, You were in fine zig form. I think that
• 1:39:31
  what that but that what that tells me is how passionate you are about the
• 1:39:39
  subject. I thought the podcast was riveting. Anybody who gets inside the case
• 1:39:45
  will recognize that it's a fascinating case and will be so endlessly. I've been
• 1:39:51
  to Dalla. I've been to Daily Plaza twice. Um. I've spent one
• 1:39:58
  day with with my young his son Mark, who lives in Texas. We
• 1:40:01
  spent hours there walking around and you walk all over, You walk up to
• 1:40:05
  the grass, you know, you walk up to the fence. You check
• 1:40:09
  out their railroad tracks behind that where you know, presumably, according to conspiracy
• 1:40:15
  theories, a second gunman was and did was responsible for the head on shot.
• 1:40:18
  Okay, from the front. You know, they have the big X
• 1:40:24
  marks the spot in the street. They have a fantastic library on the first
• 1:40:28
  floor of the Old School Book Depository because basically it's a museum to the assassination
• 1:40:32
  now with an incredible number of great books about it. But the most eerie
• 1:40:40
  thing for me of all was going up to the sixth floor where Oswald presumably
• 1:40:47
  shot from at the window and seeing that they had set up the boxes,
• 1:40:57
  because what Oswald had done was he didn't want somebody coming up on the sixth
• 1:41:00
  floor and see him at the window with a scut rifle because they might say
• 1:41:05
  something. So what he did was he set up all these boxes around that
• 1:41:11
  window and real high and basically so that he would be unseen from that spot
• 1:41:16
  and set himself up a kind of perfect sniper's nest. And when you stand
• 1:41:21
  there and you look at it is I just found it really eerie and pretty
• 1:41:29
  amazing, and I think that you're right. It's like for an audience today
• 1:41:35
  when we see how well protected our presidents are, the notion that, oh
• 1:41:43
  wait a second, they didn't send somebody up to these windows from these floors
• 1:41:46
  before. It must be a conspiracy. That's I mean, you know,
• 1:41:51
  that's why people go there. They also want to mentioned, speaking of you
• 1:41:56
  listening to podcast, you probably have listened to more of with the benefit of
• 1:42:01
  hindsight than anybody else I know. Actually, I feel badly for you that
• 1:42:06
  you've spent that much time listening to with the benefit of hindsight, and I
• 1:42:15
  just wanted to give you the chance to give your assessment of that within the
• 1:42:18
  scope of the of course, this is the podcast related to the entire Penn
• 1:42:24
  State Joe Paterna Jerryson Dusky situation. If we ever get to a point,
• 1:42:30
  which I doubt we ever will, where it's safe to do it. Have
• 1:42:34
  you thought much about how you're going to write the screenplay for the movie for
• 1:42:39
  What Really Happened? In the Penn State, Joe Paterno, Jerryson Dusky,
• 1:42:42
  Kay Cyrus, Well, you know you know how authors will write a book
• 1:42:46
  but won't allow its release until after their death. This will be This will
• 1:42:53
  be the first docuseriies in which that is done. You know what, I'll
• 1:42:58
  take that deal. I'll take that deal. So so when you're done,
• 1:43:01
  when you get a lull on your projects, when you when you get a
• 1:43:04
  luw on your projects, can you write the screenplay for this before you die?
• 1:43:09
  Under the deal, then it won't be released until you're dead. Let's
• 1:43:15
  consider that. We'll have to look at the fried prints of the deal,
• 1:43:17
  of the pages in contract. No. I think what you did on the
• 1:43:21
  Penn State case was remarkable. Now once again, I'm not gonna listen to
• 1:43:27
  anything unless I'm engaged, okay. I mean, betsials try to get me
• 1:43:32
  to watch different series and ten minutes I'm out. So I was riveted by
• 1:43:39
  the by the Penn State Sandusky UM podcast. I mean, I if you
• 1:43:47
  had told me beforehand, I forget how many hours it was, I might
• 1:43:55
  have resisted. What's your in it? Once you're into it, It's like,
• 1:44:01
  Look, I've talked to people about the case, and I don't clearly
• 1:44:04
  don't know as much about it as you, but I know enough from having
• 1:44:06
  listened to you it listen to the podcast that when I get people who are
• 1:44:14
  vehemently resistant to hearing anything about it because they bought the narrative, usually all
• 1:44:23
  they have to do is listen to the first two hours and it raises questions
• 1:44:29
  in their mind. And that's a huge victory because these are very smart,
• 1:44:31
  cynical people that I know who are really resistant. Not that they would stick
• 1:44:38
  with it and listen to all of it, but it raises initial questions.
• 1:44:44
  And I think that you know, like I said, I've said this to
• 1:44:45
  you before. In the same world, that's a Pulitzer level reporting, but
• 1:44:50
  we don't live in the same world unfortunately, but it's there. It's there
• 1:44:57
  for posterity, and you know, thanks to Mike Agavino. So I'm glad
• 1:45:02
  it exists. Well, we'll have to work on that post death screenwriting deal.
• 1:45:10
  We'll work on that next time we see having your attorneys call my attorneys.
• 1:45:15
  Well, Cyrus as always great talking, do you know, fantastic job
• 1:45:19
  on this interview. You're a great screenwriter, a great director, and even
• 1:45:24
  better friend. And I really appreciate you coming on and obviously I'll talk to
• 1:45:28
  you soon. Thanks for having me ze zeke hi to the girls. All
• 1:45:32
  right, thank you always great to talk to Cyrus Neurosta. Hope you enjoyed
• 1:45:38
  listening to that as much as I did doing that interview. I do want
• 1:45:42
  to mention because I referenced in episode seventy three that I would do this,
• 1:45:45
  and it seems like as good a time as ever to fulfill that promise,
• 1:45:50
  since Cyrus referenced episode seventy one and my very deep dive into the JFK assassination
• 1:45:59
  and my strong belief that Oswald acted alone but that the warrant Commission got the
• 1:46:03
  logistics wrong. I had mentioned in episode seventy three that I was going to
• 1:46:10
  review some of the reaction to that podcast episode, and I don't want to
• 1:46:15
  spend too much time on it, parsonally, because it is such a detailed
• 1:46:19
  episode that if I get two into it, there's no going back. If
• 1:46:25
  you haven't listened to it, I urge you to and you're interested in the
• 1:46:28
  topic, I urge you to listen. Starting around the forty three minute mark
• 1:46:31
  of episode number seventy one, but there were two basic issues that I think
• 1:46:36
  I wanted to address from based upon people's reaction to episode seventy one and my
• 1:46:45
  view on the assassination, and they basically deal with two different subjects that got
• 1:46:49
  some people asking questions. One is the testimony of one of the secret Service
• 1:46:56
  agents in the limousine gob the name of Roy Keller. And Roy Kellerman was
• 1:47:01
  the secret service agent who was in the front right seat of the limousine,
• 1:47:06
  and he sat right in front of Connelly, John Connolly, the governor of
• 1:47:10
  Texas, who sat right in front, although technically not directly in front,
• 1:47:15
  which is important from a logistics standpoint, but okay, but he sat right
• 1:47:17
  in front of John Kennedy, who was obviously then President United States. So
• 1:47:23
  you've got Roy Kellerman, secret service agent. And he testifies to the FBI
• 1:47:32
  five days after the assassination. Five days after the assassination, he testifies that
• 1:47:39
  he heard JFK make a statement after having been hit the first time. And
• 1:47:48
  I go into the details of that because if Kellerman is telling the truth,
• 1:47:54
  this effectively ends the single bullet theory. It ends it because for the single
• 1:48:00
  bullet theory to have been true the first time, Kennedy gets hit. He
• 1:48:06
  gets hit through the throat, and obviously where the bullet hole theoretically would have
• 1:48:13
  been in the throat, we have pictures of it. It would have been
• 1:48:16
  impossible anybody would understand this, impossible for Kennedy to say anything. So if
• 1:48:24
  Kellerman is right, the single bullet theory is wrong. And I said during
• 1:48:30
  the podcast, I don't know whether people didn't hear me or not that Kellerman's
• 1:48:34
  testimony. First of all, testimony like that in a panic situation is inherently
• 1:48:39
  at least somewhat suspect, even though he's a secret service agent, And even
• 1:48:43
  though he had spent many months, every single day with JFK and told the
• 1:48:48
  FBI he knew JFK's voice in a crowd, you know at one hundred percent
• 1:48:55
  certitude that it did not jibe. I said this, that testimony is not
• 1:49:00
  corroborated by either the Connolly's John Connolly and his wife or by Jackie Kennedy was
• 1:49:06
  sitting right next to JFK. So inherently there's a question whether or not is
• 1:49:13
  that true. Now, I don't think my theory needs Kellerman to be right.
• 1:49:18
  I think the preponderance of the evidence is still very much on my side
• 1:49:21
  without Kellerman. However, if Kellerman is right, then I'm positive I'm right,
• 1:49:29
  because there's no other possible way to make all these puzzle pieces fit.
• 1:49:34
  And I've thought a little bit more about the Kellerman testimony, and that's partially
• 1:49:40
  partially because I got questions about it, partially because I thought more about it,
• 1:49:43
  and I should have mentioned this in episode seventy one. But what Kellerman
• 1:49:49
  claims he heard JFK say, I think is significant if you look at my
• 1:49:57
  version of what happened, look at all this is puzzle pieces right now,
• 1:50:01
  all the puzzle pieces have to at least plausibly fit. What Kellerman claims he
• 1:50:08
  heard JFK say is my god, I've been hit. Now part of why
• 1:50:16
  I have never a hundred percent bought into the Kellerman testimony. Is my God,
• 1:50:23
  I've been hit sounds a lot like what John Conley claims to have said,
• 1:50:30
  which is my god, They're gonna kill us, all right, that's
• 1:50:32
  very similar. And in the midst of all this chaos and these two seats
• 1:50:38
  ahead, is it possible there was a mistake or a misperception or or you
• 1:50:43
  know who the hell knows under these extraordinary circumstances, and I'm not to this
• 1:50:48
  moment, I'm not saying I know that Kellerman is telling the truth. He
• 1:50:53
  has no incentive to lie. It's five days after the assassination, which is
• 1:50:58
  way before any of these narratives been created, way before the single bullet theory
• 1:51:01
  is a big deal. This is right out of the shoot. This is
• 1:51:05
  his first testimony to the FBI. He's a secret Service agent. He's been
• 1:51:10
  every day with JFK for many months. It's important to point out not only
• 1:51:14
  does he know JFK's voice, JFK sounds nothing like John Connolly. JFK's from
• 1:51:19
  Massachusetts, John Connolly's from Texas. I mean, so these are two very
• 1:51:25
  very different people. What Callerman claims, he said, my god, I've
• 1:51:30
  been hit. If you think about it fits with my theory almost perfectly.
• 1:51:39
  And here's why. Because my theory is that there's a delayed reaction, that
• 1:51:46
  the first shot described as a firecracker by secret Service agents and almost universally not
• 1:51:55
  like a gunshot, that there was something wrong with the first shot, and
• 1:52:00
  the effectively what happens is that the first shot hits Kennedy in the back,
• 1:52:04
  barely enters his body, it's almost like getting hit by a dart instead of
• 1:52:09
  a bullet, and then it falls out, which I'll get to, you
• 1:52:13
  know, because that's the second question about what happened to that bullet. But
• 1:52:16
  so he gets hit in the back in a way that would never have killed
• 1:52:21
  him ever. But everyone in that limo, here's the sound, and so
• 1:52:30
  there's a delay, there's a sound, and in the limo that sound had
• 1:52:33
  to have caused some semblance of alarm, like what the fuck was that?
• 1:52:40
  And I'm not talking about a huge delay. It only takes a second a
• 1:52:44
  second and a half for someone to understand that something has happened. What the
• 1:52:51
  hell was that? And at first they don't know what the hell that was?
• 1:52:58
  Then can he feels what's happened to his back and experiences this involuntary,
• 1:53:05
  delayed neuromuscular reaction and he realizes, my god, I've been hit. Now
• 1:53:15
  again, this is speculation on my part, but I can't think of a
• 1:53:20
  phrase that would more closely fit with my theory, because that's what you would
• 1:53:27
  say if there was a moment of recognition that something was wrong, and then
• 1:53:33
  a second second and a half later you go, oh my god, I
• 1:53:38
  know what's wrong. I've been hit again. Doesn't prove it, but I
• 1:53:45
  think it gives it a little bit more credibility, especially given the circumstances of
• 1:53:49
  Kellerman's testimony. Then there's the issue of okay, so what happened to that
• 1:53:54
  bullet? You know, under my theory, that's the magic bullet, that's
• 1:53:58
  the so called pristine bullet. This thing go bullet never goes through his body.
• 1:54:01
  I've explained in great, great detail why I'm very confident about this again,
• 1:54:08
  go back to episode seventy one to hear about this and why I'm so
• 1:54:13
  sure about it. But I was sent by a female listener some really interesting
• 1:54:17
  information that I either hadn't seen or forgotten about the chain of custody of that
• 1:54:24
  bullet that eventually the Warrant Commission I believe wrongly claims was found in John Connolly's
• 1:54:32
  stretcher because it fell out of his clothes after hitting him literally like six times,
• 1:54:39
  through all sorts of different bones and somehow falling out in pristine condition,
• 1:54:44
  which is something that nobody buys. It just doesn't pass the smell test.
• 1:54:47
  It's not logical, and I understand that because it doesn't make any any damn
• 1:54:51
  sense, And I do go into the very very weak chain of custody of
• 1:54:58
  that bullet. But what I did not either realize or had forgotten, was
• 1:55:03
  that the Warrant Commission addresses this chain of custody issue, and they basically acknowledge
• 1:55:13
  remarkably that, you know what, we really don't know who stretcher that bullet
• 1:55:17
  was found on. Now, to be fair, they go to great lens
• 1:55:21
  to make the argument that it was not Kennedy's stretcher because Kennedy, because he
• 1:55:28
  died, was never taken off that stretcher until he was put into his casket,
• 1:55:32
  and then supposedly that stretcher was significantly away from where the stretcher where this
• 1:55:40
  bullet was eventually found several hours later by a maintenance worker. And so I'm
• 1:55:45
  even willing to accept, you know what, maybe the Warrant Commission was right
• 1:55:49
  about that, But I find it absolutely incredibly amazing and astonishing that the Warren
• 1:55:58
  Commission exself it's self acknowledges because the witness wasn't sure himself whether or not it
• 1:56:05
  was actually Connolly stretcher or it was thought to be Connolly stretcher where this bullet
• 1:56:12
  was found. Now that's amazing. Now, conspiracy theorists will say, well,
• 1:56:16
  that means that this bullet you either wasn't really involved in the assassination even
• 1:56:21
  though it had the markings from the Manloker Garcano rifle that Oswald used, or
• 1:56:28
  I believe Oswald used from the sixth floor of the school book Depository building.
• 1:56:31
  So I think that solves that issue. But or they will say this is
• 1:56:35
  evidence that there were more than three shots fired. I mean, there's all
• 1:56:41
  sorts of things conspiracy theorists can use. If this, in fact is the
• 1:56:45
  case that this bullet was not found in Connolly Stretcher, Well, I have
• 1:56:51
  a different theory to explain all this. I still think it's possible that it
• 1:56:57
  was Kennedy Stretcher because there's so much confusion and chaos going on. Who the
• 1:57:01
  hell knows who was, who was counting, whose Stretcher was, who's who
• 1:57:05
  was paying attention to that. I find that very hard to believe. I'm
• 1:57:10
  not even sure anyone was really all not concerned with bullets at that time.
• 1:57:14
  They're trying to save the President of the United States life. But here's here's
• 1:57:18
  a theory that, again I have no proof for, but it would explain
• 1:57:24
  everything. And ironically it sort of vindicates a controversial scene in JFK, the
• 1:57:30
  movie by Oliver Stone, and that is the scene where, very nefariously and
• 1:57:35
  with ominous music, Oliver Stone depicts someone dropping the bullet, the Pristine bullet,
• 1:57:43
  into what was then perceived to be Connolly's stretcher, and it's like boom,
• 1:57:47
  boom boom. You know, no proof at all, Stone just theorizes
• 1:57:50
  that this is all part of a conspiracy. I don't even know how the
• 1:57:54
  hell that would help foster the conspiracy. Stone never, of course, is
• 1:58:00
  forced to explain this, because you know that's the way conspiracies work. It's
• 1:58:03
  just one of those things that seems ominous, like he's acknowledging how weird it
• 1:58:08
  is. And let's be clear, it's unbelievably weird that a body could be
• 1:58:12
  taken off of a stretcher and a Christine bullet just be laying there and no
• 1:58:17
  one noticed it at all. I mean, that seems under the circumstances,
• 1:58:23
  very odd. But I have an alternative theory. Here's what I think is
• 1:58:28
  possible. Again, I have no proof of this, but this would explain
• 1:58:30
  everything. So in the midst of the chaos of trying to save Kennedy's life.
• 1:58:35
  There are tons of people coming into that of that operating room. We
• 1:58:42
  have the interview of Jake or Hoover talking to Lyndon Johnson talking about how,
• 1:58:45
  in the effort to save Kennedy's life, a bullet pops out of his body,
• 1:58:49
  right, which I think is exactly what happened. That's my theory.
• 1:58:54
  No one cares about that bullet at that time. Someone picks it up,
• 1:58:59
  someone realizes the incredible historical significance of that bullet, and for all intents and
• 1:59:05
  purposes, they take it. They take the bullet in a fit of insanity,
• 1:59:13
  out of some sort of strange instinct of oh my god, this thing
• 1:59:15
  is incredibly valuable, this is incredibly important. And then later on they realize
• 1:59:20
  what the fuck did I just do? How the hell do I get out
• 1:59:24
  of this? And they can't get the bullet back to Kennedy's body because he's
• 1:59:29
  dead by that point and everything is changed. So what do they do they
• 1:59:32
  get rid of it? They just drop it on whatever stretcher they think or
• 1:59:36
  wherever they think they can get rid of it in a way that might provide
• 1:59:41
  plausible deniability that this is where it was found and that's what happens. Now.
• 1:59:46
  Again that is pure speculation on my part. But when you look at
• 1:59:50
  the unbelievably bad chain of custody of that bullet, and how even the Warrant
• 1:59:57
  Commission is like, you know what, that stretcher, this thing was found
• 2:00:00
  might not have had any connection to anybody. That is a scenario that fits,
• 2:00:03
  and you know how they could solve this And to my knowledge, and
• 2:00:08
  I've done research on this, no one has done this. But based on
• 2:00:12
  modern technology, this would be incredibly easy to solve this mystery. If there
• 2:00:16
  was one thing I would ask for investigators to do. And it's amazing to
• 2:00:21
  be that I've never even heard this become an issue. It was even hard
• 2:00:25
  to research because there's been so little on it. But all you have to
• 2:00:28
  do is take that pristine bullet Exhibit three ninety nine and do DNA testing on
• 2:00:36
  it. That's all you gotta do. They're based upon modern technology. It
• 2:00:41
  went into at least somebody's body. There has to be some DNA on it.
• 2:00:46
  There has to be something some DNA still embedded in that bullet. And
• 2:00:51
  what I believe is the only DNA of the people involved in this case that
• 2:00:57
  would still be in existence. On that bullet would belong to John F.
• 2:01:00
  Kennedy because the bullet hit him in the back, never went through the throat
• 2:01:04
  fell out in the chaos in Parkland, somehow found itself on this stretcher got
• 2:01:10
  found a couple hours later, and then Arland Specter, in a panic,
• 2:01:14
  decided that this was connected to John Connolly and that there was a single bullet
• 2:01:19
  theory to explain their problem with the Zubruder film timing. That's I think,
• 2:01:26
  as strange as it is, I think it's a much more possible explanation than
• 2:01:29
  anything else we've heard to try to explain what really did happen with the logistics
• 2:01:33
  of the JFK assassination again episode seventy one, And as I probably have just
• 2:01:39
  proven my friend Cyrus Neurosta's assessment that I'm way too obsessed with the case.
• 2:01:45
  But this tends to be my m O. When I bite into a story,
• 2:01:48
  I just can't let it go until it's all figured out. And there's
• 2:01:50
  still a couple of loose ends on the JFK assassination that will probably never be
• 2:01:56
  tied up, despite the best efforts of me and any many other people.
• 2:02:00
  All right, that'll do it for episode number seventy four the podcast. Thanks
• 2:02:03
  so much for listening. Please remember to subscribe, rate and review, and
• 2:02:06
  also share it. If you share it on social media, please tag me
• 2:02:10
  I'll share it as well. Until next time, thanks so much for listening.
• 2:02:14
  This is the Death of Journalism podcast and my name is John Zickler.